Still lay the water over which we moved, with no sound but the ripple of our passing and the steady chunk of the oars. Fog lay thick about us and somewhere ahead an island. A long, thin, wooded island, and there was the harbor, Damariscove, settled, it was said, by a Captain Dammerill.
Yet the fisherman whose boat we hired shrugged when I said it. “Aye, it may be, but there were lads as came ashore there to dry their fish many a year before he ever caught the shadow of it.”
My father, too, had spoken of this, for fishers from the Grand Banks had come here to smoke or dry their fish before heading homeward for the shores of Europe. I spoke of this, and he looked at me again.
“Did he have a name, then?”
“He did. Barnabas Sackett, it was.”
He chuckled. “I ken the man. Ah, a rare one he was, too! A rare one! Tricky and sharp but strong! He made a name for himself amongst we who come from Newfoundland, for we love a daring man, and that he was.”
He turned to glance my way. “You do favor him, although you’re taller. D’ you ken Tilly and Pike, then?
“They were his friends, and if it is to sea you are going, you’ll be in luck, for there’s a ship of theirs at the island now, or there was.”
“Of John Tilly’s?”
“Aye. The Abigail. She’s been about a bit but seaworthy. She’s been taking on water and trading for fur.”
My father’s old ship and in port here! Suddenly I was impatient at the chunking of the oars, the slow, steady movement through the water. I had been relaxed, resting, waiting to arrive at Damariscove and thinking if I was lucky we might—I swore softly, bitterly. The ship might be gone before we arrived. Why could I not have known?
As if in answer to my impatience a small breeze blew up, and the fog began to thin. The old man went forward and hoisted the sail. Yet even so our progress was slow, too slow.
There was naught to be done but to hope she would not sail until we arrived. Henry looked around, amused by my impatience. “There will be other ships,” he said.
“Aye, but yon’s a special ship, and I would dearly love to sail in her, be her master whoever he may be. If he be John Tilly—”
The fog lifted, and the wind picked up a little. It was not yet midday, but Damariscove was far off. A gull dipped low above us, and I felt a queer excitement stir within me.
I was at sea! How often had I heard stories of the sea and of ships! Of my father’s battles with pirates. What was the man’s name? Bardie, Nick Bardle. There was another, too, but I had seen him, knew him from long ago when Yance and I had slipped aboard his ship at Jamestown and spiked his guns. A rare bit of action that and one that pleased our father, although it was done without his knowledge.
Jonathan Delve, that was the name. An evil man and one who hated our father.
Finally I dozed, rocked by the movement of the boat, and when I awakened again, it was fairly dark, and there was a darker line along the sky with a light showing low down near the sea.
“Are we there, then?”
“Yon,” our boatman said. “Would ye be landed?”
“Not if the Abigail is close by. I’d like to board her.”
“At night? They are a touchy lot aboard there and wary. I’d say you’d best be known to them if you’d board, but I’ll take you alongside. And there she lies, two points abaft the beam. I’ll bring her around, and we can hail her.”
There was a stern light showing and an anchor light in the chains. We edged in close, and a hail came from her. “Lay off there! Lay off!”
“Is John Tilly aboard? If he is, I’d speak with him.”
“The cap’n? Lay off there. Who be you?”
“The name is Sackett,” I said. “I think it will have a familiar sound.”
“Sackett?” The watchman exclaimed. “Well, I’ll be!” In another tone he called out, evidently to someone else on deck. “Joel? Call the captain. Tell him we’ve a Sackett out here.”
I saw light come into the darkness as the door yawned open; then there was a rush of feet, and a strong voice, which I knew at once, called down, “Sackett? Is it you, Barnabas?”
“It’s Kin,” I answered. “Kin Sackett, his eldest, and seeking passage to the Indies if it is there you’ll be going.”
“Come aboard, lad, come aboard!”
They dropped a ladder over, and I went up with Henry after me. My first time on a rope ladder, but I had the hang of it from words my father had spoken. The boatman had been paid, and there was naught to do but hoist our gear aboard, and little enough we had of it.
He was a strongly made man, his hair white and his beard neatly trimmed. “Ah, lad! It is good to see you! How is my old friend, your father?”
“He is gone, captain. The Senecas killed him … finally. Black Tom Watkins was with him, and they died well.”
“That he would do.” He paused for a moment. “So he is gone! It is hard to believe.”
“My mother is in England. She took Noelle and Brian there for their education.”
“Aye. I knew of that, and I have seen them both … in London. It was only a short time ago.”
“Aye. I had brought my ship up the Thames and sought them out. Your brother is a handsome lad, strongly built and something of a scholar. But your sister? She is a beauty, Kin, a beauty! I declare, lovely as your mother was. She will be even more beautiful when she becomes a woman, and she has not long to wait, believe me! Ah, what a handsome pair they are!
“Brian is a scholar. He has been reading for the law but much else besides. But there’s been trouble, too, over your land in the fens. William, of whom your father often spoke and who was by all accounts an honest man, died. His nephew fell heir to his holdings and has laid claim to your father’s land as well. I fear there will be trouble.”
“Brian will know what to do, and if it is help he needs, we will come.”
“Help is less important now than friends in positions of power. I do not know, Kin, what will happen.”
We walked aft together, and in the comfort of his cabin over a pot of coffee we talked long into the night of the old days and the new, and in the end I told him what I wished to do.
“To find one girl, Kin, I doubt if it can be done, yet you are your father’s son, and he was not a man to be stayed by doubt. What I can do I will do.”
“There is gossip alongshore; this I know. I want to know the gossip about the ships of Joseph Pittingel and what I can discover about a man named Max Bauer. I believe these stolen girls would be sold to outlying plantations where they could be kept unseen.”
“If it is waterfront gossip you will be wanting, then Port Royal is the place. They be a packet of rascals there but friendly enough if they like you, and you’ll have a good name among them.”
“I will?”
“Aye, they’ll know the name Sackett, for Barnabas made a name. Have you heard the story told of how he took the pirate ship in Newfoundland and then hung high the pirate Duval until he cooled down? Pirates favor a bold man, and your father was that, lad, he was all of that.”
He glanced at Henry. “A slave?”
“A friend. He volunteered to help. He’s an Ashanti.”
“I know them. He will find some of his people in the islands, but most of them have taken to the hills in what is called the Cockpit County, and the wise do not go a-searching for them. There be those who call it the Land of Look Behind because you’d better or they’ll be all over you. On Jamaica and elsewhere, too, they are called maroons.”
“They will receive me,” Henry said coolly. “I was a king among them.”
“But these are long from Africa, most of them,” John Tilly suggested. “Will they remember?”
“They will,” Henry replied, “and if not, I shall remind them.”
Fair blew the winds for Jamaica, and the good ship Abigail, named for my mother, proved a good sailer. Soon I was lending a hand at the sailing, learning the ropes, as the saying was, and taking a turn at the helm.
Each night we had a man or two back from the fo’c’sle to tell us what he knew of Joseph Pittingel, his ships, and of Max Bauer.
Soon a picture began to come forth, a picture of a man both shrewd and dangerous, a man who had many friends or at least associates throughout the islands and along the coast of the mainland. A man even more formidable than we had assumed and a situation that must be handled with extreme care, for he had friends in important positions who could cast a man into jail or have him hanged.
That he was a slaver came as a surprise to many of those to whom we talked. This he had apparently kept from anyone, yet here and there a seaman would drop a word to let us realize that there were those who did know. A picture of the man became clearer, a picture of an adroit, cunning man who presented one picture to officials and to merchants and another entirely to those he considered menials.
John Tilly listened, asked a question or two, and when the last of the seamen had left the cabin, he said quietly, “This is no easy matter you have taken upon yourself, for if the man has the least suspicion of what you do, he will surely have you murdered or thrown into prison, and he will have the power, you can be sure.”
“I think of Noelle. What if it had been she?”
“Aye, and the poor lasses with no man to stand by them. It must be done, lad. It must be done.”
“First, to find that girl. Henry will help, for you know as well as I that there are no secrets from the slaves. He can go among them and among the maroons as I could not, for they would tell me nothing.”
Several times we passed ships at sea, but they were either too far off to be seen clearly or they made haste to seek distance. It was a time when piracy was rampant, and many a ship would not hesitate to seize another if opportunity allowed.
Wet blew the wind against our faces, leaving the taste of salt upon our lips. Much was the time I spent upon deck, my body growing accustomed to the dip and roll of the vessel and the sails overhead, all strong with wind. At times the rain beat against our faces like hailstones, but I could see how a man could grow to love such a life, and how easily he could come to live upon the sea.
There was a power there, a power in the roll and swell of the waves that told a man he was but tolerated here. This was a world of fish under the sea and gulls or frigate birds above it.
Captain Tilly was a cunning man with wind and sea, knowing very well how to get the most from his ship, and we went swiftly along the coast to the south, and I never knew when we passed our old shore along the Carolina coast.
The seas grew warmer. We worked often without shirts, and the whiteness disappeared from our bodies, and they grew red, then brown, strongly tanned by tropical suns. Jamaica was a long green shore of a deeper green than found in our northern lands.
We sighted Great Plumb Point and the Pallisadoes, a long neck of land staggered here and there with trees that gave the neck of land its name, for they appeared a long broken wall to keep men out.
We held our course along shore to Little Plumb Point and passed between it and Gun Key, then rounding the point and coming at last to the well-sheltered bay.
Captain Tilly stopped beside me as I stared shoreward. Never had I seen so many houses or stores and drinking places along the waterfront. If there was one, there were at least twenty ships in the harbor, and more seemed to lie deeper witnin the bight of land.
No other place had I seen but Jamestown, and you could have tucked all of it into a corner of this.
“Be not trusting, lad,” Tilly warned. “They are knaves aboard there and proud of it. They’ll have your money, and if you say the wrong word, you will be killed out of hand. Port Royal is said to be the wickedest city on earth, the Babylon of the west, they call it.
“They be pirates and those who prey upon them and more jewels and gold than you’ll see ever in London town.”
We dropped our hook close in before the town, and a boat was got over the side. Tilly eyed me as I got into the boat. “To a tailor first, Kin Sackett, for in that outfit of buckskins you’ll stand out like a lone tree on a headland, and every man in town will know where you go. And I’ve just the man for you.”
“I’ve no great sum about me, captain,” I said doubtfully. “Yonder we lived off the country, and while we’ve gold at Shooting Creek, I’d naught with me when we came along to Cape Ann and Shawmut.”
He chuckled. “Ah, lad! Think nothing of it. I’ll be your banker here. This ship was given me by your father, and all I have is by his favor. You’ll be needing money, for nothing speaks but money. Money and a man’s cunning or strength, for they be fighting men here, and strength is respected.”
He glanced at me suddenly. “Can you handle a blade, Kin? You’ll no be wearing more than a pistol in your sash. Here is the cutlass and the knife.”
“Aye,” I said doubtfully. “I’ve been well taught as a boy, for my father was a swordsman and Jeremy Ring as well and in another way Sakim, also. We fenced much as boys, but I’ve never fought for blood with a blade.”
I caught myself at that. “Except with a knife,” I said, “among the Indians. No year passed in those mountains without attacks by Indians, so we’d had our taste of that.”
“Aye. I’ve heard of those attacks on your forts.” He looked at me and shook his head. “Your father gone! ’Tis hard to believe. He was so strong, so fierce a fighting man, and he seemed like one to live forever.”
He had seemed so to me, as a child. He was a gentle but powerfully muscled man, trained in the arts of war by his father, who had been a professional soldier. He came from the fens, in the country of Hereward the Wake, and many a story did I hear of wars and struggle by land and sea.
“It is a jungle yon,” Tilly warned, “and the men and women are savages. Port Royal is no place for the good or the weak. Killings happen by day and night, fights are many, and rum is the greatest evil of all.”
Captain Tilly, I recalled, was not only a ship’s captain but an ordained minister. It was he who had married my father and mother these many years agone. Yet minister of the gospel or not, I knew well what he spoke of Port Royal was the truth, for many a tale had I heard of the place whilst mingling with the seamen in Jamestown on our rare visits there.
With four stout seamen at the oars, we pulled for shore, Captain Tilly, Henry, and I, and soon were alongside the landing. I was first up the ladder. Beyond the rough planks of the landing was a stone-built dock and beyond that a line of dives, sailors’ “rests,” and the like. A drunken sailor, kerchief tied about his head and gold, diamond-studded rings in his ears, staggered past.
Tilly pointed with his thumb at a narrow street. “Up there,” he said, “there be a tavern that’s clean. It be called the Bristol. Go there, and tell them I sent you, and have something to eat and wait. I shall send a tailor to you.”
Henry looked at me. “If it is well with you, I will be looking about for some of my people.”
The narrow streets were crowded with seamen from the ships, some of them obviously piratical craft, others merchantmen of one variety or another. Looking about, it became apparent that good business could be done here had one the mind for it, for many goods, looted undoubtedly from merchant ships, were going for less than the market price. If a man could buy here, then get away with his cargo without losing it again, he might quickly become a wealthy man.
We found the Bristol, and I entered and spoke for a room, using the name of Captain Tilly; once in the room, I had hot water brought to me and bathed there. Scarcely was I finished when there was a knock at the door. Knife in hand and pants hastily drawn on, I opened the door.
A short, fat florid man with a balding head stood there; behind him was a black slave. “Master Sackett? May I enter?”
Without awaiting my reply, he walked in, followed by the slave. “Measure him,” he said grandly, choosing the best chair in the room. “Measure him carefully!”
He glanced sharply at me, then at my buckskins. “We will have something for you. We work very quickly. I have,” he said proudly, “forty men employed and several women. All slaves, all my own.”
“I came aboard ship very quickly,” I said apologetically. “There was no time to secure proper clothing.”
He shrugged, waving a hand with a gesture of dismissal. “In Port Royal it is often the case. One moment a mere seaman and the next rolling in wealth. We get all kinds here and are surprised at nothing.
“You would be surprised,” he added, “at the number of the gentry we receive here, many in abject poverty. Some have been shipped out as slaves or prisoners to be sold as slaves. Imprisoned for debt, most of them.”
“How about women?” I suggested. “Are any of them sold as indentured servants?”
“Many! Some likely lasses, too! Some of them use themselves wisely and end doing very well for themselves. Most—” He shrugged. “Most do not. Most are mere slatterns, passed on from one to another, ending doing the most menial tasks.”
He went on, chattering away, noting the measurements as the slave chanted them to him. He glanced at me several times, stripped to the waist as I was, and then said, “Have you ever engaged in pugilism? You are obviously an extraordinarily powerful man.”
Then, hastily, he lifted a hand. “I do not mean to offend! Fisticuffs are often staged here and much money wagered. One of the best we had was a gentleman down on his luck. He did very well, you know. Owns a plantation of his own now.”
“I am afraid I know nothing of such things,” I said, “but I am flattered to be considered a fighting man. I have come here”—the idea came to me suddenly—“looking for what may be the least marketable item Port Royal may have. I mean, with so many ships being taken … well, there must have been some books aboard some of them. Books of history, of knowledge.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “It was in my mind to open a school for young gentlemen in Virginia. There is nothing of the kind, and when the chance came to come here, where so many rich prizes are brought—”
He was astonished. “You come to Port Royal for books?” He got quickly to his feet. “I never heard of such a thing! To Port Royal, of all places! Men come here for strange reasons, but certainly none for anything … I am sorry, Master Sackett. It is not easy for me to grasp.”
“Do not worry yourself about it,” I said, “but if you hear of any such, please inform me.”
He looked at me closely. “Captain Tilly said you were a young gentleman.”
I waved a hand. “Of course! I came to Virginia expecting to find a plantation, but after living much in the forest and surveying much land, it seemed to me it would be better … better to own the land and let somebody else work it.
“Besides, she lives—”
“ ‘She’?” He smiled. “Ah, now I begin to understand.”
“You understand nothing!” I said. “She has a younger brother, and there are others about. If I started a school, I could then have access to her home.”
He chuckled. “Oh, well! I suppose it does make a kind of sense!” He got to his feet, looking over the measurements he had compiled. “Do you know? I might have clothes that would fit. I might have.”
“How could that be?”
“It often happens. Clothes are ordered, then for one reason or another he who ordered them does not appear. It seems I have clothing … Your shoulders are a little broader, your chest deeper, your waist … yes, your waist is smaller. With just a little work, a few minutes only, I could have an outfit that would suit admirably, something to make do with until your own are finished.” He glanced sharply at me. “That is, if you want them.”
“I shall want three complete outfits,” I said. “You choose the colors that will suit me. I haven’t the time.”
“You trust my judgment?”
“I do. You appear to be a man of taste. Ordinarily I would not consider such a thing, but I have much to do and am but lately from the forest and am lacking in awareness of what is being worn.
“One thing only. A little on the conservative side? I am no fop.”
“Of course.” His vanity was pleased, I could see that, and I felt he would do me well. Yet I had other thoughts. “In such a place as this,” I commented, “I expect most of the talk is of piratical ventures, looting, slaving, and the like. Do you hear anything at all of outlying plantations? I would assume life on some of them is very refined.”
I was choosing my words with some care. My world in growing up had been one where English of the Elizabethan sort was well spoken, but growing older and in wilder lands, both Yance and I had become careless. Yet here I had another sort of impression to make, and Captain John Tilly was obviously a man of repute.
“On the contrary! Little that happens in the Indies is not known in Port Royal. Information, you know, is the foundation of piracy. I do not approve, but one does not voice such opinions here. I do not approve, and yet the successful pirates do not rely upon chance. They learn to know which vessels carry treasure of easily sold goods, and they seek them out.”
“Are they slavers?”
He shrugged. “Very few. A slave ship can be smelled for miles, as a rule. Pirates avoid them. The cargo is difficult to handle, dangerous to carry, and offers far less profit than open piracy or privateering.”
“Not even white slaves?”
Was I mistaken, or was there a subtle change in his manner? “I doubt if there are any such,” he replied.
“When a man begins to deal in human beings,” I commented, “it would seem to me color would be a minor consideration.”
“You want three outfits, then?” He stood up and closed his book with a snap. “Come, Charles, we must be off.”
He paused. “The one suit I could deliver tomorrow if it is acceptable.”
“It would be a favor,” I said.
He lingered as Charles left. “Slavery, of whatever color, is not a topic much discussed here. I would suggest avoiding it … if you will permit.”
“Of course. I am a stranger, and I do not know what it is that concerns your citizens. In any event, I shall be here but a few days … if I can find what I want.”
“The name is Jayne.” He hesitated. “Augustus Jayne. If you have need of me, please call.”
When he was gone, I sat down near the window. Jayne might know something and might not, yet if he did not know, I believe he suspected.
The idea of seeking books to open a school was unusual enough and harmless seeming enough to enable them to pigeonhole me as a mere eccentric. Yet in all the loot taken from vessels of all countries, there must have been books, for many ship’s officers carried them, and many brought along whole libraries when going to the colonies. Also, I suspected they were the least marketable of items.
The search might allow me admittance to many places otherwise closed to a stranger, even into homes on some of the outlying plantations.
Yet two days later I had learned nothing. Henry came and went, and several times I saw him with neatly dressed black men, most of them very black indeed, several with bloodshot eyes. They were maroons, down from the hills. They carried themselves proudly and went their own way, having little to do with either whites or the other blacks.
My clothes arrived, and I dressed, then stared at myself in the mirror. Accustomed as I was to the wearing of buckskin leggings and hunting coat, all fringed to let the rain off easier, I was startled to see what a fine spectacle I had become. Pleased yet displeased by the result.
A doublet of forest green, the sleeves slashed to show the linen shirt beneath, knee breeches of a somewhat deeper green that met high boots of Spanish leather. The collar of the doublet was covered with a band of rich lace of white. As I was staring at myself and wondering whether to admire or laugh, Captain Tilly knocked at the door, then entered. He paused a minute, looking me over carefully. “You look quite the young gentleman, Kin. You are a strikingly handsome man, and that can be an advantage at times.”
“Thank you, captain. I like myself better in buckskins, but if this is the style, then I shall wear it, and if any laugh, they shall answer for it.”
“Aye, you being your father’s son, I suspected as much, so I brought this.” He lifted the sword case he had by his side. “It is a good blade, one your father left aboard ship, and I rousted it from an old chest for you. Wear it in good health.”
The blade was a good one and came easily from its sheath. I stretched it, moved it, tried the balance. “Aye! A handsome blade, although it has been years since I used one.”
“You have fenced?”
“With father, as I said, and Jeremy as well, with Kane O’Hara and with Sakim. They were reputed good, so I expect I have been well taught.”
“Be careful! There are fine swordsmen here and deadly fighters, although they favor the cutlass and the cut and slash method rather than parry and thrust.”
A thought came to me. “My father had an old friend, one who chose not to stay in the mountains.”
“Jublain? Aye, a fine man and a fighter. I wonder now what has become of him. He went back to England, then to the Low Countries, I believe. He was never one to stay still, but a rover always. I heard somewhere that he’d gone out east, to the Moslem lands.”
We talked long, and then he returned to the Abigail, and I bedded down for the night, but I did not sleep. After a bit I got up, moved by some strange restlessness, and went again to my window. My room was in darkness, the street but dimly lit by reflected light, and a man stood on the corner across from the hotel. As I stood beside the window, I could see him but dimly, for he was in deep shadow. He stood there a moment, then crossed the street, going away. At once I knew him. Only one man was so large yet moved so easily.
Max Bauer!
Max Bauer here! Had he followed me? Or was it mere coincidence?
He had disappeared now, going away into the street below, yet I was sure he knew I was here. He might even know what room I was in.
And life was cheap here. No need to attempt murder himself, for it could be bought here for a few shillings or even a gallon of rum.
Every second, every minute, I must be on guard. I must be aware and ready.
And I was ready.