CHAPTER 9

John Finney was having a rather bad evening. He had stayed in that night, ostensibly to go over his books; but mostly to avoid the sneers he’d been getting on the streets since the mocking broadside sheet had appeared days before. Tale of The De-Bollocked Bumpkin, it was titled in large block letters. There was an engraving, a satirical cartoon below that which featured a slim young woman holding both baby and pistols, shooting at an overdressed, lump-faced churl in a hugely unfashionable wig, tiny hat and flaring coat, like a “Macaroni” of a previous decade, the suiting portrayed as checkered calico, and the male figure leaping legs widespread like some damned “Molly” in an Italian toe-dance company to avoid losing his wedding tackle. A long, stringy caption above the female read: “In his abfence, my dear hufband’s piftols shall defend mine honour, cur!”

Whilst over the leaping male figure, a caption read: “Oy means ter have yer, niver a care have oy fer any damnd marriage vow—Oicks!”

There was printed below a short narration, a titillating story of caution to all lusting bachelors who pursued happily married women too hotly. No names were named—but then, none were necessary, as it stated “. . . as one here in Nassau did quite lately!”

“I’ll murder Augustus,” Finney swore, tearing the sheet into tiny bits. It was only the fourth he’d gotten in anonymous mail so far. He was certain Augustus Hedley was the artist, Peyton Boudreau the author and sponsor, and Caroline . . . “Thet bitch! Oh, thet bitch! I’ll make her sorry she wuz iver born, I will! Wipe thet sneer off ’er face, take ’er an’ have me way with ’er, make ’er beg fer it!”

He instead took another full glass of claret in two gulps, and filled his crystal stem with more. For the moment, he had more pressing worries. He returned to his ledgers, both the legitimate ones his clerk prepared, and the illicit ones kept in his own scrawls, which he himself had trouble reading a month later. It was not a good year.

After Conch Bar, and the wholesale hangings which had followed, half the old lads had gone off for easier pickings; deeper in the Caribbean, or up to the American coast, where Congress was too cheap to keep a navy, or a coast guard worth the name. Walker’s Cay had run more away to waters less well patrolled. Finney had had to increase the import of legitimate goods as stolen wares reduced in quantity, so his profit margin had fallen to only a little better than his Bay Street competitors.

He’d lost huge sums, too, in all the goods that Rodgers, and that damned Lieutenant Lewrie, had burned at Walker’s Cay, the pirated, and the hoarded true imports. Those staples, those delicacies, all gone up in flames, depriving him of his expected large markups. And there had been the import duties the cynical, greedy Searcher of Customs had imposed on goods he’d never be able to land and sell, and the bribes demanded to keep him out of court on smuggling charges to boot!

There wasn’t much better news from his grandiose plantings on Eleuthera. His overseer had written that both white lands, and red lands farther inland, were failing. Bahamian soil was like a lying whore; rich and fertile to start with, but too thin to turn under and hope it would revive after a fallow year, its nutrients sucked out of it. And with so few animals in the Bahamas, and lack of grazing land for big herds, costly to manure and fertilize. Unless he shipped in tons of manure, his overseer wasn’t confident. Cotton, sisal, hemp, sugar cane, even indigo and aloes—none of it prospered. And, the overseer had ended on a dismal note, the Georgia Tidewater and Sea Isle cotton nurslings might be infected with the dreaded Chenille Bug!

He’d be forced to sell, before the fine plantation house could be completed, as fine a mansion as any in the Bahamas, grander than the one Col. Andrew Deveaux had erected on Cat Island. The only value he’d get back from the sale would be the slaves, the ones he’d gotten for so little from Malone (the foolish, greedy bastard!) after he’d taken the Matilda!

Finney took another sip of claret and made a face. Try as hard as he might, he’d never developed a palate for it. Petulantly, it went into the fireplace to shatter in a shower of wine across the imported Turkey carpet!

“Fireplace!” he gloomed at that extravagance, a gaudy, useless showpiece in a climate that never got close to freezing. He went over to his sideboard to pour himself a cut-crystal glass of Demerara rum.

“Excuse me, Captain Finney, sir,” his butler said, opening the wide double doors to the entry hall.

“Clean it up,” Finney snorted, putting his feet on his desk.

“I will, Captain, sir,” the butler agreed, secretly amused by his plebeian employer, and his demand to be addressed with a title he never really had—Captain. “In the meantime, sir, this letter came for you. From Commodore Garvey, sir.”

“Fetch it here, then, damn yer eyes,” Finney sulked, finding no joy this evening in the obsequiousness of his hired help. Finney tore the wax seal off and unfolded the letter. “Damn ’is blood!”

Another of the broadside sheets! Finney wondered just how much he had to pay the bastard to at least be civil to him. They acted as strangers in public, no matter their agreement, or the sums he shoved into Garvey’s accounts by the side door at the bank. Now he was down, Garvey’d shoved the knife in, sarcastic and sneering, as was his way. Finney dreaded Garvey might demand even more than the princely three hundred pounds a month he already cost him. “Shit! Shit!”

My dear sir;
Have you seen one of these? I was not aware your interest in interrupting Alacrity’s mail had an Intimate Raison d’Être.

was the inscription penned in the left margin.

The enfolding, larger folio-sized sheet of paper had a hastily written note which quite took his mind from the curses he was about to hurl at the uppity cur, who’d sprinkle his notes with Latin, French or even Greek, just to (Finney swore) gall him over his lack of schooling.

Lt. Coltrop’s Aemilia cutter is just returned from Spanish Wells in some haste. He informs me that Whippet put into port there four days past, inquired of Lt. Blair of the Barracouta sloop as to the nature of my patrol Assignments, and was last seen heading North towards Great Abaco! A ketch-rigged Warship and a merchant ship were seen to be in company with her by a shing lugger who put into Spanish Wells.

Aware of my stringent Requirements for Whippet and Alacrity to stay far South, Lt. Coltrop came to me at once, sure that Rodgers and Lewrie may be staging some immense Mutiny against me, sir. The only cause for hope they may have to redeem themselves would be, as you know, a sudden Revelation about a certain Matter. Do what you think best, as shall I, from this moment forward.

“Jesus an’ Mary,” Finney shivered. “It’s all up, ain’t it?”

“Sir?” his butler inquired distantly.

“Get out. I said, get out! Leave it!” Finney shouted as he got to his feet. He shoved the broadside sheet and the letter into one of his private ledgers, tucked them under his arm, and began to pace his palatial parlor and receiving rooms. He took inventory of his fineries as if seeing them for the first time, a visitor to his town house. The inventory took him through the dining room, into the large salon on the other side of the entrance hall, through still-rooms and butler’s pantries, through wine cellar and library, up the stairs to peek into all four huge bedrooms, marveling again how well furnished they were. Sumptuous, some said. Bordello “Flash,” others cruelly whispered behind his back— after they’d had his meats, wines and music, after they’d fawned to his face and simpered at his japes!

“It’s all up,” he told himself again, halfway between tears and rage. “Don’t want me t’have nothin’, won’t let me have nothin’, niver in this life, the bastards! Build all this, they find a way t’take it from me, they do. Wisht t’God I’da had time t’kill Boudreau . . . an’ do fer that uppity bitch an’ her rogue! Ah, well. Me curses on ’em, ’tis the best ye’ll do, Jack, me lad. It’s all up. Ye had a good run, did ya not?”

Not only would he lose the plantation, but he’d lose the slaves, this house and all its lovely “pretties,” the best that money could buy. His stores, his ships, his chandlery, his . . . “Ah, shame of it, now!”

But, there was money in the house, and money in his stores. And in the bank. Enough to start over somewhere else. And he still had a fine little ship in the harbour, ready to take him anywhere in the wide world he wished. He ripped open the chifforobe in his own bedroom, took out a leather traveling case, and set the ledgers inside it, then began to pack both it and an ornate sea chest, his mind already calculating the best of the tide.