He rode out of Cottington Court in fine fettle, near certain his proposal, even if it had not been openly acknowledged, was going to be accepted. There were particulars to be observed and they would take a while, but as of this moment time was a commodity he had in abundance. Of course, he could be called back to service at any moment and he had to hope in that event Betsey would understand. But the chances of a ship were slim: the nation was at peace and the Royal Navy had been run down accordingly.
What he left behind was not so blissful; Henry Tulkington, who had avoided Brazier on his return from the walk, was still furious at the way he had been spoken to. No one else in the locality would have dared, yet here was this stranger treating him as if he was of no account. He was also determined to challenge his sister as soon as he was gone and it was not a tranquil exchange, made worse by the way Aunt Sarah backed up the brother so forcibly.
‘You hardly know the fellow, Elisabeth.’
That she had to admit was true; she had met him on a dozen or so occasions, yes, but today was the only time in which their talk had been in any way private and not carried out under the public gaze. Given that, her reply was slightly defensive.
‘I intend that I should get to know him better – and you too, Aunt.’
Betsey deliberately looked at Henry as she uttered those words, the implication plain: he was included. He was stood with a shawl around his shoulders which, given his piqued expression, made him appear like some old crone. The look he gave her said in no uncertain terms he was not in any way interested in getting to know Brazier better, quite the reverse.
‘I would like to know how far your folly has taken you.’
‘Folly!’
‘It is nothing less. A near stranger to you, as Aunt Sarah says, whom you met on a few occasions in Jamaica, and one who has the audacity to turn up at our house—’
‘He was invited Henry. I invited him.’
‘I refer not to his presence, but his effrontery. I found his manner insufferable.’
‘I daresay he felt the same about yours, and I would remind you that you have no say in the matter of whom I meet and converse with, or for that matter whom I like or dislike.’
‘As your elder brother I have responsibility to see you do not do anything you might later regret.’ Henry looked away, breaking eye contact, his voice wheedling and his manner that of a person deeply hurt. ‘Not that your Brazier fellow even came close to acknowledging that my opinion counted for anything. I daresay he is accustomed to berating the common seaman and lacks the discernment required for polite society. Even now, as I think of the words he used, I shudder at the thought of his clear intentions.’
‘Is it not that you’re feeling chilled?’
‘Elisabeth,’ Aunt Sarah interjected, ‘attempts at levity will not aid matters.’
‘Nor will it help to impugn Captain Brazier’s intentions.’
‘At least,’ Henry said, with a direct stare and growl meant to appear fierce, ‘tempted as I was, I didn’t stoop to threatening him.’
Eye contact was lost again. ‘I made reference to his being a serving officer, who could be off to sea at the drop of a hat and for months if not years, which would leave you all alone, not that he would care. I made it plain that you are not some trophy to be taken up as an ornament. His response was a clear warning that speaking in such a way, which I took to be my right, I risked being called out to provide satisfaction.’
Betsey was genuinely shocked. ‘You surely don’t mean he challenged you to a duel?’
‘Not in his exact words. He is easily insulted, I suspect; touchy in his character.’ Henry looked her in the eye again, to drive home his point. ‘Pistols or swords at dawn was implied and we both know what the result would be, from one who seemingly would stoop to kill a member of your own family to achieve his ends. Is that the sort of ruffian with whom you are happy to consort?’
‘Consort? So far I have not done anything but share a pleasant interlude and a walk with a man whose company I enjoy.’
Aunt Sarah cut in again, her tone more pleading than hectoring. ‘It is a short step from that to a greater degree of familiarity, which, even though I could not hear the words you exchanged, led me to believe was taking place.’
‘I am minded to forbid this, Elisabeth.’
‘While I will remind you I no longer require your permission to do anything, and nor do I need to come to you for money, Henry. I have my own.’
‘But I do reserve the right to say who can and who cannot enter my house. I am quite prepared to issue an instruction that Captain Brazier is not to be admitted onto my property.’
‘And when did you arrive at that notion?’
‘At this very moment.’
Betsey wanted to shout liar but held her anger in check, to answer calmly, although it sounded forced even in her own ears. ‘Then I shall arrange to meet him elsewhere.’
The air of self-satisfaction in the response was infuriating, underlying his threat was no spontaneous notion. ‘Then it best be close by. I own every horse in the stables, likewise the carriages. They are for your use only if I can be sure it is not to meet that man.’
‘You would confine me to Cottington Court?’
‘It would be for your own sake, Elisabeth,’ Aunt Sarah pleaded. ‘Henry means well.’
Betsey pushed past her brother, emitting a reply, made more in sorrow than anger. ‘How can you say that when you know it is the very opposite of the truth?’
Stood in the doorway she spun to address Henry again. ‘I wonder what people will say, brother, when they see me walking to Deal like some common churl. They’re bound to ask what is amiss and I will be happy to tell them that I am going to visit, against your express wishes, a certain Captain Brazier in Lower Deal. No great wit will be required to deduce from that why I would be so determined.’
For the second time that day the house reverberated to the sound of a slammed door.
The journey back to the Three Kings was tediously slow. Brazier found himself behind a herd of cattle being driven, he was told by the herder, towards the Deal slaughterhouse. There they would be slain, butchered, the majority salted and packed in barrels, doubtless for sale to the ships taking on stores. He was obliged to hang back to avoid being totally enveloped in the cloud of dust created, but at least the time could be employed in the making of some decisions.
To stay where he was made no sense, when he would be in Deal for some time. Whatever bill Garlick presented to him he could afford but it was a poor use of funds. Matters with Betsey could not be rushed: the rituals of proper courtship must be outwardly observed and he was determined to give no one an excuse to question his behaviour, which applied most to her brother.
It would be better to rent a house and to do that he required his needs to be met by at least one servant. Anyone local he would not know, while he envisaged two very good reasons not to employ such people. First they might gossip, and the notion of his comings and goings, as well as those whom he entertained, being talked about in the gin shops and taverns of the town was not to be contemplated.
Added to that, complete trust was necessary – a hard thing to judge in any person you did not know intimately. All he interviewed would claim saintliness in that area, but experience told him the people who protested their honesty with the greatest vehemence were often the most light-fingered; besides, the alternative was much more attractive.
The men who had served him aboard HMS Diomede had also been discharged and might be still unemployed. He had the means to contact those who would be keen to serve with him again, not that in such an event it was necessary. At the first hint of a new conflict, with ships of war being commissioned, he would surely be in line for a command. Then the nautical grapevine would be activated.
At once, country roads would then be full of volunteers making their way to whatever port the captain they favoured had berthed his ship, with no fear of press gangs so early in an outbreak, the more likely threat coming from recruiting parties seeking to get them drunk and aboard other vessels.
Any house would have to be of a size in which he could entertain, and not just Betsey Langridge and her ever-present chaperone. There was Admiral Braddock, who had already intimated he would have Brazier to dinner and that must be reciprocated. Other naval officers of equal or lesser rank resided in Deal and good manners and tradition obliged him to invite them to dine as well. It would be possible to get Admiral Pollock over from Adisham for any gathering of blue coats, which would ease his isolation.
It was a stiff naval officer who dismounted at the Three Kings, for he had been too long in the saddle this day. Ben was out front and he requested the lad take Bonnie back to the Naval Yard, with Brazier hoisting him astride the beast, ignoring the lad’s protests.
‘Never mind Mr Garlick, young ’un. I will tell him I insisted you must ride her and he will not argue with me.’
‘Hope my mates see me, your honour,’ he called gaily as he trotted away. ‘It’ll make them right green.’
Garlick was in his usual spot and once more the owner showed what Brazier thought to be excessive inquisitiveness. He had sought directions, so his destination could be no mystery. As before it was ignored in favour of instructions that a bath should be provided and his dust-covered uniform required to be sponged and pressed.
‘And dinner, Captain?’
‘After the bath.’ The lack of a bathing machine belonging to the hotel already established, Brazier added, ‘While that is being prepared, I require a number of towels and a gown to wear down to the seashore.’
Garlick visibly shuddered, a reaction to which Brazier was well accustomed. All of his crews had reckoned him deranged to go swimming in the sea and risk not just drowning, but seizure by some many-tentacled or sabre-toothed creature of the deep. Sailors might bathe in a sail slung over the side, but they remained sure that just below the surface of the water lay any number of threats to their lives – and what they could not witness, they were prone to imagine.
In his room, divested of his clothes, he donned a pair of cotton ducks. At sea, he plunged naked, but that would not serve on an open beach in sight of humanity of both sexes.
‘At least,’ he said to himself, ‘I have no need to fear a shark.’
In which he was utterly correct. Such a creature would never have borne the temperature of the water, indeed Brazier was unsure if he could himself, for it was still winter cold, icy enough on entry to make him gasp. Once he was fully immersed and moving, that eased, as did those aches he had garnered in the saddle. To then, still chilled, lower himself into a bathtub full of hot water was bliss indeed and a very strong aid to contemplation of a happy future.
Betsey Langridge, from her bedroom window, saw her brother depart in the company of his coachman and postilion, her lips pursed at the thought of what he had said about confining her, which would not occur. It was an empty threat; Henry had never been physical in that way. Indeed, with that twelve-year gap between them he had always been something of a distant and indifferent presence in her life, until it had become plain she intended to wed Stephen Langridge.
He had objected quite strongly and he had proved obdurate for many a month. Yet he had come round eventually, to provide her a fitting ceremony in St Saviour’s, the quality folk of Kent, from the Lord Lieutenant down, invited to Cottington Court to toast the couple and wish them God’s Speed to their new life in the West Indies.
Joshua Moyle had even been sober throughout the ceremony, which Betsey put down to the restrictions placed on him by his wife. He had, of course and as usual, reverted to type at the subsequent feast and got thoroughly drunk.
Her mind inevitably turned to Edward Brazier. Would Henry come round in the same manner once he saw how determined she was? Unavoidably this led to her examining her own feelings, naturally wondering if it had been wise to be so openly encouraging. She did, in reality, hardly know him, so perhaps it would have been better to hold back on his desire that she use his Christian name. But then, it had felt right at the moment of saying it.
She could not avoid conjuring up an image of him as a darkly handsome suitor. That acknowledged, Betsey reminded herself it was not only his appearance she admired: it was his whole presence, especially his voice, so deep and warm. It would be less so on a quarterdeck, no doubt brisk and commanding; that too stood in the credit column.
It was impossible to think in those terms without wondering again what her late husband would think of such fancies. Would Stephen approve? Surely he would not have wanted her to remain a widow after he was gone? Betsey was utterly certain that was not her wish, for she missed not just Stephen but the whole gamut of the married estate: the companionship, the need to run her own house, even the shared silliness and, if it made her blush to think on it, the intimacy of the bedchamber.
Henry was right about her being a desirable catch, but wrong about Edward, as she now allowed herself to think of him. It had been very evident in the Caribbean how different he was and how she had reacted to his presence. Of any number of suitors who had made plain their feelings, some surely genuine, many obviously not, the only one to induce any kind of emotion in her breast had not long left her side.
Was the feeling real, was it the first stirrings of true affection? Honesty forced her to admit she was unsure.
Henry Tulkington was a man of business and not singular in his interests. He had any number of matters that took up his time and attention, determined, as he was, to present to the world, like his father before him, a facade of wealth, success and respectability. Many of his activities could be carried out openly, either at Cottington Court or in various places in the surrounding towns, but the enterprise that made him the most in terms of money had to be clandestine.
The slaughterhouse-cum-tannery, which he owned, just outside the north-west end of Deal, was not a place to excite visitors or invite folk of quality to reside nearby, so it was surrounded by mean dwellings and even they gave it as wide a berth as they could. Still, being poor, they could not avoid the stench of either rotting offal, a river of congealing blood, or the drying hides of leather. It provided a location for Henry Tulkington to do business without it being observed or overheard.
As ever, it was noisy with the sound of cattle and pigs, never more so than when the latter were having their throats cut, which had to be done not long after arrival, given the creatures were barred from the town unless they came for immediate butchering. Tulkington hated it too, abhorring the sight of so much blood and, as ever, he hurried to John Hawker’s second-storey workplace, where on any day, hot or cold, there was a tray of herbs above the stove, the scent of which fought the noxious odours from below.
‘You’re content with the arrangements?’
Hawker, being a man of few words, merely nodded at what was an oft-asked question, habitual rather than essential, regarding a coming shipment. This attitude was repeated when Tulkington queried the transport that would later take the contraband to where it could either be sold or collected by customers regularly supplied. Hawker apart, those seeing to the landing would not know those locations; goods, once brought ashore and stored, were distributed by men who never saw the carrying vessel.
‘And the master’s payment?’
Hawker held up an oilskin pouch heavy with coin, this as Tulkington eased closer to the stove, backing to it in order to enjoy the heat on his thighs, confirming he had done what he could to prevent problems. Tulkington dealt with those, locally, who were tasked to enforce the law, people who never saw any reason to expend effort to interdict smuggling: the magistrates, Justices of the Peace, members of the town council and even some of the local clergy, which included Moyle, who enjoyed fulminating against wrongdoing from the pulpit to the same level he enjoyed drinking untaxed brandy.
Outsiders reckoned places such as Deal were so steeped in crime that every hand, from the lowest to the highest, was stained: the truth was less stark, but no less damning. Every soul in the town knew what went on and would, in conversation and with outright hypocrisy, condemn it heartily. This they did before either spending their illegitimate proceeds or, in the higher reaches on the social scale, contracting for delivery of their own illicit and revenue-free supplies.
An occasional head might be raised, Temperance Societies or Baptists seeking to curtail smuggling as well as drinking by prayer and the threat of providing information. This was a good way to have your meeting house torched by an angry mob of the local boat fraternity, who would claim, with an apparently clear conscience, to depend on the trade to provide for everyday food and shelter.
Corcoran, the fellow employed to superintend the activities of the Kent Preventatives, had a near-Herculean task and was poorly rewarded for his efforts by the sinecure holder who, in theory, was supposed to carry out the work. Corcoran did not operate on the coast, but had his station inland, from where he could oversee the work of those patrolling the Thames Estuary, the east coast centred on Dover, added to the southern area of his responsibilities, which ran through Folkestone all the way to the Romney Marshes, with active smuggling taking place along the whole coast, not that he ever had the bodies required to be truly effective.
There was always a shortage in the number of men covering Deal, but another method existed to ensure the activities at a certain location stood at a very low risk of interruption. That task fell to Hawker and he now outlined how the local Revenue would be diverted on this occasion. The method was simple, for they were not overeager, hardly surprising given their miserable stipend, but obliged to stir occasionally in order to justify it.
The strategy was to grant to them an occasional morsel of success. Deal Beach was a community and one in which everyone sought to know the business of everyone else. Thus gossip was rife, albeit never allowed to take place in the presence of anyone not recognised: a strange face stuck out and brought about immediate suspicion, given the Revenue had over the years tried to slip in spies.
Competition for employment was rampant, given there were too many boats and too little trade in porterage, while jealousies, as well as long-standing family feuds, abounded. This led to loose tongues, if the ears listening were held to be safe, and Hawker was seen as very sound indeed, as well as a fellow it could be profitable to be in with, so he picked up hints of what was being planned.
Thus he could alert the Revenue and give them the occasional smuggling sprat, which would both ensure they were busy and, if Tulkington’s men were in a period of being active, divert them away from the landing of any cargo Hawker was charged to oversee. Not that they were always presented with an easy success; that was too risky. He often chose to tell the owner of any lugger set for a Channel dash they were on to him. This left them either in the wrong place or on the wrong night to intercept, while mightily enhancing the standing of Hawker.
‘They should be chasing their arses when we’re busy. I’ve told them a tale ’bout three hundred pounds of tea coming in by the Albion, but it will really land above Sandown Castle. They might see a rate of moving lanterns, but will be too late to put a stopper on it.’
Tulkington stated himself to be fully satisfied regarding weather and the arrangements, only to then change the subject, to get lifted eyebrows from a fellow not much given to showing his thinking.
‘I have to own to a problem, John. My foolish sister has become enamoured of an adventurer fellow, a naval officer, and I reckon his pursuit of her should be discouraged.’
‘An’ how far does this being discouraged go?’
There was meaning in that, which had to be cogitated upon. Hawker’s reputation served both him and Tulkington well and it was not just for taking anyone needing to be seen to out in a boat. He was the man who ran the slaughterhouse and tannery, very happy with what the more lurid minds gossiped about. Rumour had it there were bodies who had gone through the slaughterhouse doors whole, to either emerge in pieces or not at all. Even more terrifying was the thought of human parts being salted and mixed in with barrels full of pork.
‘A warning only, perhaps,’ Tulkington said finally. ‘That failing, who knows.’
‘Best tell me, Mr Tulkington.’ Which he did, to get a doubtful response. ‘Navy is tricky, bound to stand out.’
‘He’s not attached to the Downs Squadron, but a visitor newly arrived, a rogue of a captain come with the express desire of seducing Elisabeth and getting his hands on her possessions.’
‘What’s he look like?’
‘Your height, black hair and I’d say a swarthy complexion, a haughty manner too. He was at my house today and, I have to admit to you, the fellow is lucky to have got away unscathed. The way he addressed me was enough to have him depart bleeding and bruised but I could not act as I would have wished in the article of chastisement, with my sister and aunt in the house.’
Tulkington was now looking at the stove and warming his hands, back turned, which allowed John Hawker to smile without being observed, for if the sister was the excuse, it would be her brother who felt insulted. That would warrant a beating and it was not the first time; it did not do to show disrespect to Henry Tulkington, for he took it ill.
Traders in the town knew to their cost what happened if they tried to dun the owner of Cottington Court; even a lawyer who sought to bring a suit against him was physically so discouraged as to drop it. Then there was his near neighbour, a farmer called Colpoys, who had got into a trifling boundary dispute, only to wake one morning in a ditch, bloody and battered.
Even if he insisted upon discretion, Henry Tulkington liked it that folk were cautious of him and his name, as well as a reputation inherited from his sire. Both, as it was with contraband, were whispered about rather than openly stated. He was ever talking bold when, in truth, in the physical line, he was a true fraidy-cat. Anything of that nature thus fell to his factotum Hawker, who was happy to oblige, taking pleasure, as he did, in chastisement – and even more, if that was required.
Lack any aggressive ability he might, but Tulkington was still the man in charge, the brains who arranged everything Hawker was tasked to carry out, never ever to get his own hands dirty while the fellow he trusted to execute those responsibilities was more than content with the arrangement.
‘I have a notion I might have already seen this cove. If it’s the same bugger, he was at the Griffin’s Head two days’ past and he deserves a cudgel.’
‘Why would he be there?’ was the apprehensive enquiry.
‘Passing through, I reckon, not prying – and besides, if he were, it would not be in uniform.’
‘He is residing at the Three Kings, for it was to there my sister sent him a note.’
‘Sweet on him, is she?’ That got Hawker a look that told him that was none of his concern; his enquiry was unwelcome. ‘So a sound beating, happen.’
‘That will satisfy me.’
‘In your name?’
‘I don’t want my sister to know anything about it.’
‘You’re sure you don’t want him seen to proper?’
‘The Good Lord knows I’m tempted.’
Hawker could smile fully and openly then at that piece of hypocrisy; if Tulkington was a regular at St Saviour’s and St George’s, as well as generous when the plate came round, he was not one to obey any commandments.
‘I hope that a beating will send the message he is not welcome hereabouts – that and maybe the loss of his purse. If he does not desist … well.’
‘He’s bound to connect with you, Mr Tulkington. Just arrived he is, you say, and that means there likely ain’t nobody else he’s crossed.’
The Tulkington brow furrowed. ‘You said he deserved a cudgel. Why?’
‘Not one to take a hint, politely given. I was talking close and quiet with Trotter, regarding your meeting with Spafford, an’ he comes barging along to take a seat, without so much as a by your leave. I would have laid into him then, sword or no, if we had not been making the arrangements.’
‘So you have an antipathy of your own?’
‘While he has a face I know, as does Daisy Trotter.’
‘Then it would be a good idea to leave him with Trotter’s name as the one handing out the beating, not yours or mine.’
‘Clever that,’ Hawker replied with real feeling; the notion was typically cunning of Tulkington. ‘How soon?’
‘The weather is good and the sea reasonably calm, so we can expect the promised landing to come in on time. If it can be done before you go to meet the ship that would serve.’
‘Can’t say fer certain, Mr Tulkington. Sod has to be where we can get at him and it’ll not be much good, given your notion on Daisy, if I is spotted.’
There was truth in that. John Hawker was a too-well-known face in the town, being the man charged to collect taxes on behalf of the King’s Treasury, a well-rewarded government sinecure actually held and delegated by Henry Tulkington. As a cover for shifting contraband – the folk being taxed for legal vending were often the same people selling the superior products Hawker had to offer – it could not be bettered.
‘Then don’t get involved.’
Hawker nodded slowly. ‘Makes sense, even if it be a pity.’