The Gun Ketch (41 page)

After that joyous news, though, there was a plaint that brought tears to his eyes as he read of her tightly denied fears; that he and
Alacrity
had been sunk or wrecked; that he had died of some fever; that he'd fallen out of love with her and now spurned her; that he did not really desire children, and had turned his back on her, as a rich man might discard an inconveniently pregnant mistress who was no longer as attractive or slim.

...I try and try to imagine you being so involved in some stern Duty that even our Love must be relegated a poor second for the nonce, but dearest Alan, it has been
so long
since you sailed away, and not one word from you have I received, nor any hearsay as to...

"Oh, Caroline, Christ!" he whispered through a throat constricted by his weeping. "Goddamme, no, it's not like that!"

He would sail at once to Nassau, he vowed. Damn the threats, or the consequences! Let them court-martial him for anything they damned well pleased, just so long as he could see her one more time, and tell her that her fears had no substance!

"And Goddamn the bastard who did this to me!" he raged. "Cruel, malicious
bastard!
How could anyone ... ? Dozens and dozens of letters and they've kept 'em all. Damme, do they read 'em? Do they gloat over her pain? By Christ, I'll have their
heart's blood for thisl"

On the patio, Andrew Deveaux and his wife sat in the shade, and winced as they heard the strangled howl from within their drawing room.

"That poor young man," Mrs. Deveaux shuddered. "And his terrified young wife, Andrew! Do you truly believe that his commodore keeps his letters deliberately, dear?"

"I do," Deveaux scowled, running his hands through his thick and unruly long blond hair. "That, and a lot worse. Oh, it's foul, I..."

"You're dead, swear to Jesus, you're a dead man!" Lewrie wailed.

"I'd not wish to walk on Lieutenant Lewrie's bad side, dear," Mrs. Deveaux frowned. "Not even were I the King of France!"

It took an hour for Lewrie to collect himself enough to join them on the patio for tea, though he was still fretful and jerking at inability to be in action at that instant He could not keep his handsstill, and one crossed leg juddered upon the other as he rocked irately on his chair.

"I trust your wife is well, Lieutenant Lewrie," Deveaux asked.

"Aye, sir," Alan said, trying to be as gracious as his hosts. "The physician and midwife are confident the child's due late this month. A boy, they believe. Why, I could be a father now, even as we speak!"

"And your other letters are reassuring as well?"

"From my shore agent, Courts & Co., my bank back home, my grandmother in Devon. Even one from my father in India. Caroline had saved them, no longer..." he gulped down a threatening spasm of raw emotion, "no longer believing I could, or would, respond to her until I returned to Nassau."

Sore as he hurt, he had to grin slightly, remembering what his father Sir Hugo had penned. It had begun "You silly ranti-poling dog, sir! Have I not drummed into you one should rent, not purchase, quim?" That smile, however, was just as quickly gone.

"God, it's so petty. So base! So cruel to her!"

"It's Jack Finney," Deveaux declared bluntly. "Sugar?"

"Finney? How could he get at Fleet mail, sir?" Alan gaped.

"Not Finney directly," Deveaux allowed. "I doubt he has interests in your personal letters. But you did anger him when you caught his ship trading in pirated goods, and you stung him upon his sorest spot when you burned the cache and hauled him into court. He has powerful friends, sir. And money enough to buy anyone he desires."

"So even you believe he's a pirate, sir?" Alan hoped aloud.

"I'm certain of it," Deveaux stated firmly.

"So he's bought himself a clerk in the Commodore's office, then. That way, he'd know where our patrols would be, so he might tell his piratical confederates," Alan realized. "And he never sued us because he would have been exposed as a smuggler at the least! Those goods we burned were never landed or bonded. And all this time Rodgers and I were fearing he'd end up making us jump through his lawyers' hoops!"

"I expect it cost him considerable to stay out of court on any smuggling charges, to boot," Deveaux smiled thinly. "The assembly in which I sit, sir, the courts, the Governor's Council... see here, sir, Nassau is an offal-ditch, an open sewer, a cesspit of corruption, and
all
is for sale! When I was awarded my grant of land for what little I did to retake New Providence, I was more than happy to settle on Cat Island. Did you know even this salubrious isle was named long ago for an Arthur Catt, a pirate? And does that not
tell
you something about the Bahamas, sir? Most of the year, I am quite content to avoid Nassau with all its back-stabbing, money-grubbing squalor, and limit my visits to Assembly sessions. Even so, this far happily removed, we still get a whiff of its corruption, like an ill wind from an abbatoir. I have heard rumours. Peyton did not speak of them in his letter to you?"

"Some vague hints, sir. But I took them to involve my letters. And my exile. He wasn't sure what had happened to me, either. He had written before, demanding me to answer him, to answer Caroline, or tell him why I would not. But how could I? I never got those, either!"

"And thought to use me as intermediary, after he no longer could trust the Navy to forward mail. Or trust the Navy at all, sir," Colonel Deveaux said grimly. "He's begun to suspect something foul in our government, and said to me he'd also begun to nose about, to make discreet inquiries. I only pray to God they are discreet. There're thousands at stake in this, and the men involved are not above murder to keep their doings quiet. And to ask about John Finney's doings ... though a power of talk about him is common coin. People love to gossip about 'Calico Jack.' He's the sort who gets talked about. And loves it."

"Do you know him well, sir?" Alan inquired.

"Well enough, only as an acquaintance, mind," Deveaux smirked. "He's not the sort one has for a firm or trustworthy friend."

"I hear a lot of people say the same, Colonel Deveaux."

"Nodding acquaintances before the Dons landed, and allies when I mustered the volunteers. He helped arm them, you see, and brought his battleworthy bully bucks along," Deveaux chuckled. "In such need as we were, beggars can't be choosers. Back to those suspicions, and the rumours, though. Drunk sailors will brag, and the brag in taverns on the docks, and in Over-The-Hill, is that some of Finney's old hands were up to their old games, once their wartime prize money ran out, as you and Commander Rodgers believed. Too smart to take British ships, but assured that no one'd cry over foreign vessels if they got taken. Not only was Finney profiting from the cargoes he bought up cheap, but he was selling arms and powder to support them out of his chandlery, and brokering the best ships they took after they were repainted and renamed, and all marks of their former identity erased. Just as you thought in the beginning."

"And I wish we'd caught just one of 'em who could have been made to swear to that at his trial, sir!" Alan growled."Faint hopes of that, Lieutenant Lewrie," Deveaux smiled. "Look at how quietly Doyle's men went to the gallows. I suspect Finney was no longer dealing with Doyle. Just too untrustworthy and wild! But he'd done so in the past, and they could have exposed it all to save their lives, were it not for the certain knowledge of what Finney would have done to their wives, sweethearts and parents. Their children."

"I find it hard to remember that murderous buccaneers have such, sir," Alan responded.

"Now who stands to profit most from their depredations?" Deveaux prodded. "Who gains? Who loses if it ends?"

"Finney, of course, sir," Alan said quickly. "He's reaping a bumper harvest from it, and undercutting the other Bay Street traders something sinful. I'm surprised they haven't done for him long ago."

"Ah, but he only undercuts them by a few pence overall, so as long as their prices stay high, they have no complaints," Deveaux said with a crafty glint in his eyes. "British ships are not bothered, so their insurance rates stay low. Foreign traders are ... discouraged, also keeping cheaper goods off the market to compete with theirs, most of the time, at least. Now, who else might profit by this?"

"Well, the ships'-husbands in England, the shipowners here in the Bahamas," Alan pondered. "Insurance companies and mercantile interests in England. Stap me, I s'pose that pleases Parliament, too, if they own commercial interests. Or members who are owned by merchants!"

"Parliament is pleased, brokers and bankers in the City," Colonel Deveaux chanted, "the Privy Council is pleased, and so, do I assume, is His Majesty King George. Revenues are up, insurance is low, trade flows freely ... and piracy is a minor inconvenience for foreign competitors only, just the thing for Dons, Frogs and crude rebel Yankees. And not so much piracy that anyone has to really
do
anything about it! Until you came along, that is, and quashed Doyle's band like so many noxious bugs. You even made our Royal Governor look good!"

"Surely not the governor, sir?" Alan frowned. "You cannot mean that Finney could purchase a Royal Governor. Were the Bahamas still owned by the old proprietors, but we're a Crown Colony now, and ..."

"Oh, not Maxwell!" Deveaux barked in sour humour. "Our previous governor was decent enough. And certainly not this new clown, our third Earl of Dunmore! He's too rich to bribe, and so arrogant, he'd be insulted if one tried! Lord Dunmore was Royal Governor of Virginia before the Revolution, you know. And I do think he
started
it, all by himself! Had he not been such a venal, greedy, lofty, pustulant
toad
as to set off Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, we ..." Deveaux had to sip his tea to calm down. "No, Lewrie, Lord Dunmore was born without a jot of brains, and he's lost ground as he's aged. While he may be grasping and greedy, he'd never scruple piracy. I was thinking of someone a trifle lower down. Someone ... nautical, perhaps."

"You can't mean ...!" Lewrie almost choked on his tea. "Damme, but ... your pardons, Mistress Deveaux ... Commodore Garvey, sir? What possible motive could he have?"

"Beyond money?" Deveaux snorted. "Think! How does one enforce the Navigation Acts? How does one succeed in command of a foreign squadron? And prosper?"

"Suppressing piracy'd suit," Lewrie said, rankled by Deveaux's impatient tone. "Keep down smuggling, keep the sea lanes safe. Seize ships and goods not British, and ... oh! And avoid getting sued to his hairline for false arrest! Christ! Pardons again, ma'am. As long as Finney and his crowd pillage only foreign ships, he's every Bay Street merchant's darling. The competition is frightened off, so he doesn't have an armada of interlopers to deal with, so our weak squadron isn't overrun. And if Finney does Garvey's dirty work, the Navy isn't sued so often. And money, of course."

"And money, of course," Deveaux echoed. "And how is it done?"

"We're too few already, sir, to really patrol the Bahamas," Alan said, shutting his eyes in thought for a moment. "Finney would be told which areas are unpatrolled. Maybe Finney asks him to keep warships away from certain cays. Or, he could send our worst officers, knowing which ones are just too bone-lazy, stupid, or fearful to intervene, to certain areas."

"In like manner, once you and Commander Rodgers are perceived as energetic officers, you are sent very far away," Deveaux added. "To isolate you from this year's playing field So there will not be any Court of Inquiry at which any dangerous discoveries might appear that would harm either Garvey, or Finney. And your evidence from Walker's Cay is lost forever. Peyton Boudreau has heard some whisperings about that Some very guarded rumours, so far. One goes, 'we won't have no more trouble from those sods any longer—Calico Jack's stopped their business for us.' He overheard that one personally, Captain Lewrie, which sent him to digging and suspecting."

"Well, I'm damned, sir!" Alan breathed. "Despise Garvey though I may... and you'd best believe I do!... still, he's a Commission Sea Officer, sir, and a senior one. A man sworn, and an English gentleman! To condone piracy for a price, that's ....!" Lewrie spluttered. "I know you must consider me hopelessly naive, Colonel Deveaux, but condoning Finney's piracy is condoning wholesale murder!"

"Peyton Boudreau is a top-lofty, aristocratic cynic, Lieutenant Lewrie," Deveaux said with wistful amusement. "Or at least, he poses as one. A hard man to shock. Yet even he found it hard to dismiss after a time. There were too many rumours, too much muttered gossip to ignore. There's a toast that's heard in Over-The-Hill that Finney's old mates and sailors enjoy. 'To our Navy—our own, and the one we
rent'
d'ya see? He's learned enough to lay evidence with the solicitor-general, William Wylly. He's another Loyalist, not so long in these islands that he's been corrupted. Nor will ever be, if his repute is as good as I've heard. They were going to peek into Garvey's finances."

"Stap me, sir, should Finney get wind of it, though," Alan said.

"I know. Thank God he had enough sense to see Wylly, instead of proceeding further on his own. I fear for him. We like him very much, sir. And there's too much at stake for them to go gentle with him, if his investigation was exposed."

"As do I and Caroline, sir," Alan assured them. "Remote as you are here on Cat Island, how do you converse so easily with Nassau?"

"I've a small schooner. I know nothing of the sea myself, you know," Deveaux confessed with a small laugh. "But, with packet boats so rare or irregular, I thought to establish a mail-boat service for my own use, and the use of my neighbors. It breaks even, just."