During the next year and a half, Kite and the Spitfire enjoyed a varied existence. For the first quarter of that period, the schooner acted as Mulgrave’s yacht as he coasted slowly towards New York, spending weeks at a time visiting business associates and acquaintances among the merchants and trading houses of Savannah, Charleston, Norfolk, Williamsburg, Annapolis and Philadelphia. Before their arrival in the Savannah River, Spitfire had passed the bastions of the Morro Castle and called at Havana before dropping her anchor in Jamaican waters off Kingston. But her visits to these ports had been brief, for Mulgrave had come down with fever, a sweating and shuddering illness accompanied by delerium that reminded Kite and Puella of the terrible plague aboard the Enterprize.
The cramped conditions aboard Spitfire, where the stern cabin had been neatly but not spaciously divided for the two establishments of Mulgrave and Kite, forced a greater intimacy between the two men. The latter learned that like Lorimoor, Mulgrave had long suffered recurrent bouts of this sweating sickness, for it was not the bloody yellow-jack that laid Mulgrave low. Moreover, the affliction was one of the reasons he had maintained such a private life in St John’s and that its incurable nature had persuaded Mulgrave to effectively adopt Wentworth as his heir. Fear of the disease explained Mulgrave’s apparent parsimony as a host, his abstemiousness and his avoidance of the sun, when he conceived he was at most danger from suffering a feverish attack. Mulgrave confided that he believed that if he returned to England, he would throw off the disease, claiming, to Kite’s considerable surprise, that he believed the malady to be spread by the bites of mosquitoes.
‘If the little demons bite me and bite you, they will be biting every poxed rascal in St John’s,’ Mulgrave gasped in a lucid moment as Kite visited him one morning. ‘God knows what contagions they spread between us.’ He gestured at the net that was tented above his bed and that he had ordered Kite to sleep under while in St John’s. Kite had assumed the kindness to simply enable him to sleep undisturbed by the irritation of insects, whether mosquitoes or ants, or to avoid the more serious attentions of snakes and lizards. ‘You must always cover yourself with such a bed-tent, Kite, while in these warm and humid latitudes,’ Mulgrave had insisted.
Kite stared astern through the windows at the brilliant sunlight dancing upon the blue sea. The schooner lifted easily to the waves and the coast of Cuba fell astern, misty in the heat haze. He watched a bird dip into the wake, which drew out as a thin attenuated roil of disturbed water marking the passage of Spitfire’s hull, gradually fading as the greater power of the wind-blown waves over-rode the schooner’s temporary influence. Surely it was a kind of allegory of their own tiny existences, Kite thought, as Mulgrave closed his eyes; this small disturbance of the world, to be smoothed over after their passing.
Dorothea tended Mulgrave assiduously, making him concoctions which, though they could not prevent the fever, brought it swiftly to its climax and eased its passing. ‘She is clever,’ Puella whispered, as though in awe of Dorothea whom she loved and revered, ‘she know many things and Mr Mulgrave know she know.’
‘Knows, Puella, she knows many things and Mr Mulgrave knows she knows…’
Puella dutifully repeated Kite’s correction. She never resented these and accepted them from Kite, Dorothea or Mulgrave, and all three, almost as a matter of concerted policy, corrected not merely her grammar, but her accent and diction so that she enunicated Mulgrave’s title of ‘mister’ as if English were her native tongue, never falling into the cruder distortions of the lingua franca of the Antilles. The only occasion she complained of her tutoring was when she overheard some barbarous English used by Da Silva. Puella failed to recognise the coarse and rapid speech of the polyglot seamen as English, which in truth it scarcely resembled, but she comprehended that Kite addressed Da Silva in English, and that Da Silva responded incorrectly, mirroring her own mistakes without correction. This irritated her.
‘Why do you not speak with him about his corrections, Kite?’
‘About his errors, you mean Puella… Well, it does not greatly matter that Mr Da Silva does not speak good English. I understand him, as do Mr Mulgrave and Dorothea and all the men in the crew. Besides, he will not need to learn any more now, for he is too old.’
Puella frowned. ‘You confuse me, Kite.’
‘No more than you do me, my Puella,’ Kite laughed caressing her swelling belly.
Puella was delivered of a son in Charleston, so the infant boy was called Charles, then Joseph William after both his benefactor and his father. The boy was the colour of creamed coffee, with his mother’s dark, lustrous eyes and his father’s straight nose.
‘He could pass for an Italian,’ Mulgrave murmured as he regarded the baby in his arms. He had asked Puella to let him hold the tiny bundle in a request that seemed so uncharacteristic that Puella looked first at Kite, before acceding. ‘You must acknowledge him as your own, my boy,’ Mulgrave added, looking up at Kite who stood proudly by. Mulgrave’s eyes glittered with half-suppressed tears.
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Good. That is as it should be. Do not be distracted by these tedious social niceties that speak against our siring sons on the country…’
They had already encountered social ostracism in Savannah, where Mulgrave was asked to leave an assembly on account of Dorothea’s presence on his arm. The pretensions of English colonial society in the Carolinas, he afterwards remarked, were in odd contrast to those of the eponymous king after whom the colony was named. That the very men who asked Mulgrave to leave, all had black mistresses several of which openly paraded in grand coaches, only blackened Mulgrave’s mood. The hypocrisy of Antigua was muted by contrast, an attitude fostered by a few and thus far less widespread than in Savannah. Unlike St John’s where, although many of the blacks seen about the town were slaves, and though the disembarkation of slaves from the arriving Guineamen reminded everyone of the enthrallment of the vast majority of the black population of enforced immigrants, the atmosphere in Savannah seemed unduly repressive. ‘Here’, Mulgrave thought, voicing his observation to Kite in one of their moments of increasing friendship as the voyage advanced, ‘even the slaves themselves resent Dorothea’s good fortune. Is a black never to rise from the shackles of serfdom as we have done? Why, Kite you and I know these people are capable of all that we are. That their villainous chieftans and kings sell them into our custody should enable us to liberate them by degrees. Of course there can be no swift, revolutionary change, it would invite only the most savage repression, and the white must change with the black even more profoundly, for he must give up and share his advantages…’ Mulgrave trailed off and Kite suddenly saw him as an ageing man, left weakened by his last bout of fever.
‘Did you always think thus?’ Kite asked.
Mulgrave gave his pallid smile and shook his head. ‘No, of course not, and had Dorothea not treated my first bout of fever, I doubt that I should have ever done so. But a man in exile, reduced to a sweating shadow, has to rediscover much and in doing so often finds matters are not quite as he had formerly thought them.’
‘You were… exiled?’ Kite tried to draw Mulgrave, but the older man divined his intention. ‘You know Kite, curiosity about many things is a great virtue, without it mankind would never have advanced, but curiosity about each other is often a great bar to advancement of any kind.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ Kite apologised hurriedly, ‘I meant no offence…’
‘None was taken, I assure you.’
In the succeeding months, as Charlie was weaned and began his first tentative crawls across the cabin floor encouraged by Dorothea and Puella, Kite himself learned much. Although the grander elements of society in Savannah shunned them, Mulgrave’s wealth and mercantile power, assured him of welcome elsewhere. Kite frequently accompanied him on his quasi-social visits as he called upon those he had traded with over the years. In this way the two men heard of the military and naval disasters befalling British arms. In the north of America, all along the border with French Canada, French troops and their Indian allies, brilliantly directed by the Marquis de Montcalm, raided and harried, shooting and burning the settlers in the backwoods, raping the women and tomahawking the men, scalping indiscriminately and carrying off children to feed their barbarous and perverse appetites in the fastnesses of their forest lodges. This frisson of fear and loathing rippled down from the dense woods of the north to the marshes and pine barrens of the south, increasing the natural apprehension of the outnumbered whites at the overwhelming numerical superiority of the natives whom their own commercial rapacity brought into their colonial economies. Between red skin and black their lay only the distinction of colour, it was argued; what a red warrior did to the whites at Oswego or Fort William Henry, a black might do to the white of the Carolinas.
The British armies in North America proved powerless to stem this flood and seemed destined to emulate the fate of General Braddock. New York, Boston and the towns of New England were said to be overwhelmed with settlers seeking refuge from the horrors of the frontier. This situation was exacerbated by the perverse folly of the colonial assemblies, who refused to join forces in raising troops, or to co-operate in any way. Mulgrave, commenting upon this, said that if the French gained a foothold in any of the British colonies, the assembly of that colony would probably seek an accommodation with the enemy, in defiance of the legitimate right of the British parliament in London to decide such matters. The signal failure of British arms to prevent the encroaching raids of the French and Indians, Mulgrave claimed it would be argued in the assemblies, effectively removed the right of the Houses of Parliament in London to consider themselves the superior government of the American colonies, since they could not defend their own extensive and extended borders.
In Europe the story was much the same, with Admiral Byng failing to relieve the British garrison of Minorca. This surrendered ignominiously to the French, whereupon Byng fell victim to the malice of the Duke of Newcastle’s ministry who had him shot. The charge of alleged cowardice was proved to the government’s satisfaction by their own suppression of half of Byng’s dispatch which laid out his reasons for withdrawal. The execution had shaken British society and led to a political crisis. The outdated newspapers Kite and Mulgrave read reported defiant and scathing attacks by William Pitt, and eventually contained the news that Pitt had consented to join a ministry if the direction of the war was placed in his hands. That the King hated Pitt, only seemed to the two distant observers to play into the hands of the enemy, chief among which was France, though Russia and Austria were in the field against Britain’s continental ally, Prussia.
Pitt’s position was unstable and, as the French overran King George’s native electorate of Hanover, Frederick II suffered a humiliating defeat in Bohemia at Kolin. The heavy subsidies Britain paid to the Prussian monarch now seemed an inordinate waste and the National Debt rose accordingly.
But in this same period, Kite learned that war, though it interferes with trade, prospers traders. Prices rose and Wentworth’s letters spoke of great opportunities less, and of profitable deals more often. Nor were Mulgrave and Kite detached from this profiteering. Although the Spitfire’s voyage north was leisurely, consolidating the position of Mulgrave, Wentworth and Company as it progressed, she carried cargoes between her ports of call. These were often valuables, specie or bullion, payments placed on deposit and destined for other trading houses along the coast, or destined for the banks of Phildelphia, underwritten and guaranteed by Mulgrave’s signature. Armed, fast and well-manned as she was, Spitfire attracted this monetary traffic as merchant houses sought to salt away their gains before the impact of hostilities limited their freedom. Mulgrave’s name for probity, added to the fearsome appearance of the Spitfire’s crew added to her growing reputation, which was discreetly spread among the commercial fraternity, so that she was almost as laden as a Spanish treasure ship. Not one shipment was accepted without an agreed percentage, deductible on safe delivery, and payable to ‘the Said Master and Owner, and the Said Assigns of the Schooner Spitfire of St John’s in the Island of Antigua’.
And as Mulgrave paid his respectful farewells to men he had often previously known only by the bond inherent in their signatures, he introduced them to ‘the Said Master and Owner’ of the Spitfire. Kite’s reputation was enhanced by specious rumours that he had saved an entire slaver from the yellow-jack while his vessel was known to have been a fearsome privateer. This combination seemed to promise the smile of fortune upon the handsome young man’s enterprises, a perception given greater weight by the endorsement of so shrewd and respected a man as Mulgrave.
For Kite, the progress northward had a great charm. The intensity of his love affair with Puella, the birth of his son, the fruitful association with the relaxing Mulgrave and his friendship with Dorothea, indeed the entire domestic atmosphere that prevailed aboard Spitfire in her guise as a private yacht, conferred upon him a period of almost blissful happiness. At the time he was unaware that, in their prolonged visits, he was establishing relationships with trading houses and merchants that he would afterwards prize; but he was aware of his growing mastery of all aspects of his adopted profession of ship-master, developing what Da Silva acknowledged was a hidden ability far out-weighing his former clumsy attempts at surgery. Where this aptitude had come from, he could not guess, for he had never been told that his mother had been a Manx woman and her family had for generations fished the Irish Sea about the Isle of Man.
His basic understanding of navigation was brought to a practical competence by frequent practice and, unlike many masters formally but imperfectly instructed in the art, he never lost his sense of caution in conducting his ship. In mastering these skills he was helped not only by Da Silva, but by the curious loyalty of his oddly assorted crew. To man Spitfire, the Portuguese sailing master had brought together some forty men whose paths had never previously crossed, other than from them being part of the casual, unemployed fraternity of the waterfront. They had never previously sailed together, nor shared a common place of origin, and this prevented them forming cliques, allowing their present common experiences to swiftly weld them together into an efficient crew. Da Silva had ensured they were well paid, and that they enjoyed a sufficiency of leisure in port so that the sight of Puella and Dorothea failed to stir them to resentment. Otherwise, Da Silva kept them hard at work. In port they toiled at cargo-handling or the general maintenance that Spitfire demanded and Mulgrave could underwrite; or at sea in the gruelling grind of watch-keeping. Nor was opportunity neglected to remind them frequently that it was wartime, and that their present employment kept them from the clutches of the press gangs of the Royal Navy.
On their arrival at New York, Mulgrave disembarked. It had been his intention to cross the Atlantic in Spitfire, but at New York a number of considerations persuaded him to change his mind. The first grew out of his friendship for Kite who proved to be a young man of great promise. Not only had Kite shown his ability as a ship-master in practical terms, but he had also demonstrated a firm grasp of the principles of commerce and, in their dealing with several American houses, had demonstared an originality and independence of mind that suggested he would prosper on his own account. In particular, Kite had used his own money, mostly derived from his unspent pay-off from the Enterprize, to undertake a private speculation on a quantity of crocodile skins which he sold in Philadelphia at a profit. Mulgrave was therefore reluctant to deprive him of the opportunities thus offered by ordering the Spitfire to England, a reluctance that also took into consideration another factor.
One evening, on their passage from Annapolis to Philadelphia, when the Spitfire lay becalmed and rolling in a sluggish swell that promised a blow later, the two men had been enjoying a cigar after dinner. The women had withdrawn, as was their custom, to play with Charlie before he was settled to sleep, leaving the two men to discuss the completion of the voyage and their future plans.
‘On completion of your affairs in New York,’ Kite said, uneasy about his return to his native land. ‘I know it to be your intention to sail for England, sir, so may I ask what port you would consider it best to make for?’
‘Does it matter?’ Mulgrave asked absently.
Kite shrugged, affecting a disinterest he was far from feeling. ‘Only insofar as I apprehend that a passage to London is better made with a landfall to the southward, whereas a passage to Liverpool is otherwise, and with the probability of French ships on the lookout, I take it they will congregate in greater numbers between the Caskets and the Wight, than off Malin Head.’
‘You have been studying your charts, Kite. Where did you get them?’
‘From a merchant in Charleston.’
‘Rawllings?’
‘No sir, Bigsby, he was but newly out from Bristol where the slave trade is much fallen off.’
‘The war, I suppose…’
‘Yes, and the fierce competition of Liverpool Guineamen who run for lower wages than the Bristol ships.’
‘I see.’ Mulgrave paused. ‘Well then, you recommend Liverpool as entailing less risk, I assume.’
‘The matter is yours to decide sir,’ Kite replied, aware that much might depend upon Mulgrave’s decision. Now he had Puella and Charlie to consider and in England he was still regarded as a murderer. ‘Though I should point out that despite the armament of our guns we have not fired them in anger and that one hopes it will never be necessary…’
‘Amen to that,’ broke in Mulgrave, ‘but we cannot build assumptions on that score… The reminds me, we must obtain a letter-of-marque in either Philadelphia or New York. I was intending to wait until we arrived in England, but we need its protection to avoid our crew being poached by some damned Johnny in an under-manned frigate off the Lizard…’
‘So you’re for London?’ Kite asked quickly, visualising a passage up the Channel.
‘Or Liverpool,’ countered Mulgrave swiftly. Leaning forward he ground out his cigar. As the last curl of smoke rose up from the plate, Mulgrave looked up at Kite. ‘I have never asked you, Kite, for I am not curious – you know my views on personal curiosity – but you have never spoken with any enthusiasm for England. Even now, I do not detect any great eagerness in your desire to return home. Do you have any preference whether I should land by way of Liverpool, London, Bristol or Falmouth?’ Mulgrave paused a moment and then asked, ‘tell me, would you rather perhaps remain here, on the American coast, or in the Antilles?’
Mulgrave sat back and Kite, his heart beating, responded. ‘Sir, I cannot at this moment tell you what I should perhaps have told you long ago…’
Mulgrave held up his hand. ‘I do not want to know anything about your personal affairs, Kite, life is too short and perilous and whatever mischief lies in the past, I have known you long enough to trust you. Only do me the honour of answering my question with an honest answer.’
‘Well, sir, I should like to go home, but for the present I cannot. If, however, I could prevail upon you to undertake one small favour in my interest, that of conveying privately a letter to my sister, matters may yet resolve themselves.’
‘That seems a trivial enough request to which I can agree without reservation.’
‘It would ease my mind considerably, sir.’
‘Consider it done. There is, however, a favour which I must ask of you in return and which is another consideration persuading me to leave you and the schooner here, in the Americas. The present war makes a passage to England hazardous and to sail in this vessel, whether to Liverpool or London, might prove a risky or even a fatal enterprise. I am content, therefore, to take passage under convoy, perhaps in a man-of-war, if one can be found in New York. But I cannot take Dorothea. I am an old man and my health is failing; while the English air may cure my fevers, they will be otherwise to Dorothea who frets during the rains in Antigua and complains constantly that our present northing is proving detrimental to her. Her culture and traditions belong in the tropics, don’t you see Kite, England would, I greatly fear, be fatal to her…’ Mulgrave paused, then admitted frankly, ‘besides, I have the impediment of another woman in England: my wife. She is still alive and I must provide for her old age. Not that I have quite failed to provide for her, despite her infidelities. Moreover, I doubt that I shall live long and leaving Dorothea on her own in England, at the mercy of rapacious relatives as well as the merciless climate, would be a cruelty I cannot contemplate.’
‘What would you have me do, sir?’ Kite asked, awed by the confidence and the explanation that, were it known of in St John’s, would stop the speculation of a whole generation.
‘Keep always your own counsel, and ally yourself with no party. Find yourself a place, Kite, and build yourself a house from where, with your youth and wealth, you can command your own destiny. There, take Dorothea under your protection, she will be a companion to Puella and an undeniable asset.’ Mulgrave smiled. ‘And thereby please an old man.’
Two months later, one evening some time after their arrival in New York following a passage of boisterous weather that had kept them at sea, Kite was summoned by way of a note brought by a boy from the tavern where Mulgrave had appointed their rendezvous.
Come at Once without any Mention of myself. It is a matter of Business, the note read, but if you are Compelled to make known you Absence, say that an Accident has Occurred to me. Kite knew Mulgrave well enough to perceive the man did not want news of the summons getting to Dorothea and could guess its meaning. He was right. Mulgrave sat in a private room; he was dressed in travelling clothes, booted and with a new cloak on the bench beside him. On the floor stood his portmanteau.
‘We must say good-bye, Kite, but you have to write a letter for me to carry and I should be obliged if you would attend to it now.’ Mulgrave indicated pen, ink and paper on the table before him. His tone was as cold as when they had first met; this was indeed a business meeting, the abrupt conclusion of their partnership. Only the working of Mulgrave’s face showed the emotion he was under.
Under the circumstances, Kite had some trouble writing his long-meditated but oft-postponed letter to his sister Helen. Now the time and manner of its doing were forced upon him, he made a poor job of it. Hurriedly he completed and folded it, adding the superscription and handing it to Mulgrave who immediately stood up.
‘There is a frigate leaving tonight with dispatches; the captain has kindly undertaken to give me a passage if I serve as a volunteer. I believe,’ Mulgrave added ironically, ‘my status lies somewhere above a midshipman and below a lieutenant. Tell Dorothea that I have off to visit a ship in the harbour and that the boat was upset; she will believe you, having always feared such a thing. Sometimes these women have dreams that they believe to foretell the future…’ Mulgrave smiled sardonically. ‘So, let matters fall out in that wise. She will not argue and there will be no corpse to bury or to grieve over. I am sorry to burden you with this piece of theatre…’
Kite shook his head. ‘It is the least I can do, though I shall grieve your departure with Dorothea.’
‘You have a foolishly kind heart, Kite.’ Mulgrave looked at his watch and held out his hand. ‘If this war goes ill, as it seems it must, you may have to come home yourself, but in the mean time, I wish you well.’
Just then a young man in naval uniform, the white patches of a midshipman on his lapels, came into the room. ‘Mr Mulgrave? he asked, looking from one to another of them.
‘I am he,’ said Mulgrave.
‘Henry Hope at your service, sir.’ The midshipman gave a clumsy bow. ‘I have a boat at your disposal, but must urge you to hasten, sir. Captain Lasham is eager to get under weigh.’
Mulgrave stood up and Kite rose with him. ‘Sir, you will send us word of your whereabouts?’ He asked anxiously. ‘If and when I come home, I should like to pay my respects.’
Mulgrave smiled and nodded. ‘Of course, Kite. Wentworth is your man. He will know my whereabouts. Recall I still retain an interest in the company.’
‘Of course.’ Kite felt stupid; events had moved too fast. How could he tell Dorothea? She would take it extremely ill.
‘Goodbye, Kite.’ They shook hands.
‘Goodbye, sir…’ And Kite was left alone in the room as Mulgrave followed the midshipman out into the dark wintry night.
Dorothea was inconsolable and Kite sailed south for the sun and the warmth of the Antilles, bound for Antigua. The Spitfire bore a cargo of manufactured goods, New York gowns made ‘according to the latest London fashions’, wine and, despite the war, a small quantity of brandy. The schooner lay a month in St John’s, a month during which Charlie first called for his mama, Wentworth bought the consignment of gowns, Da Silva bought a second schooner and Kite made plans for building a house. Between them, Kite and Wentworth debated ways of expanding their trade and, in due course, having rented a dwelling for his women and the boy, Kite sailed on the first of several voyages between Antigua, Jamaica and the Carolinas. He refused to make another Guinea voyage himself, partly from fear of contracting yellow-jack and partly out of disgust for the trade, but he transhipped slaves between the islands, and bore cargoes of African manioc, camwood and scrivelloes to the American colonies.
Although French men-of-war and corsairs were at sea and active among the islands, Kite’s now legendary luck held. They were chased several times, but such was the clean state of Spitfire’s bottom and the skill of her master and crew, that the schooner escaped without having to fire a gun in her defence. Privately Kite grew anxious that when his luck ran out, as he felt sure it would, he would fail to live up to the valorous expectations of others. Moreover he was plagued by fears of being found a coward in the face of the enemy.
This feeling was encouraged by a stream of tales of French successes, stories which underwrote the creeping conviction of the inevitability of defeat. Ships with which they were familiar were captured by the enemy’s corsairs and carried into French ports as prizes to the privateers now operating out of Guadeloupe and Martinique to the south of them. Meanwhile the main business of the war continued badly for the British. During the succeeding summer the capture of the French naval base of Louisbourg, on Cape Breton Island, though it had been successfully carried out in the last war by a handful of American colonists, was abandoned. The British fleet bound for the Gulf of St Lawrence had been delayed by contrary winds which in turn allowed the French to slip reinforcements across the Atlantic, but this did not excuse the fact that the matter was bungled. The New York Gazette railed that 1757 was ‘a year of the most dishonour to the Crown, of the most detriment to the subject, and of the most disgrace to the nation’.
But the patient strategies of the remarkable Pitt, now re-established in government and with the conduct of the war in his capable hands, were beginning to tell. A story circulated from the naval ships refitting in English Harbour, told of an admiral who confronted Pitt with the impossibility of his instructions. Pitt, it was laughingly recounted, had discomfited the admiral. Standing up to lean on his crutches, Pitt revealed his bandaged feet, grossly swollen by gout. ‘I walk upon impossibilities, sir,’ the minister was reputed to have said, whereupon the humiliated admiral left to obey his orders. Such yarns bolstered morale, coming as they did from sea-officers, of which there were an increasing number in the island. The young lieutenants of the Royal Navy seen at assemblies in St John’s, seemed unaffected by the disasters raining down upon their colleagues in the army. At these same assemblies, local cynics marvelled at, and repeated the accuracy of Voltaire’s alleged comment upon Byng’s execution. ‘The English,’ the Frenchman was said to have remarked, ‘shoot an admiral; from time to time to encourage the others’. Whatever the truth of this reported witticism, reinforcing cruisers augmented the Leeward Islands squadron, and word began to circulate that the French could not long be left in possession of their West Indian Islands. With every man present his own master of strategy and tactics, opinions were voiced as to the best method of wresting from them Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Lucia and Marie Galante.
‘By heaven,’ remarked Wentworth rubbing his hands and discussing this matter over chocolate the following morning in the quayside office of Mulgrave, Wentworth and Company with a bunch of cronies, ‘think, gentlemen, what opportunities would be laid open to us with the French trade stopped!’
Then came news, by a schooner from Barbados which had had a brush with corsairs from St Lucia, that a fleet from England had arrived in the Windward Islands. The war in the West Indies was no longer to be a matter of mosquito bites, of enemy corsairs seizing British and colonial merchant vessels, or of British privateers retaliating by snapping up French inter-island traffic. Though British naval squadrons were maintained in the Antilles to protect trade and offer convoy, a major squadron had not yet made its appearance in the Caribbean Sea. In Antigua the news spread like wildfire.
Kite heard of it shortly after Spitfire’s anchor was dropped in the clear water of St John’s and warps were run ashore. They had endured a chase for three days and he was dog-tired and wanted only to see Puella and his son before taking to his bed. Dorothea greeted him; tears poured down her cheeks and the exhausted Kite at first unkindly attributed her misery to yet another outburst of grief at the loss of Mulgrave. He had learned that the black and mulatto women set great store by what he thought of as dreams, but which they claimed to be the portentous visitations of spirits. Kite had seen them in trances and knew the contempt many of his fellow whites had for such ‘primitive’ behaviour, but his own intimacy with Dorothea had persuaded him that she did indeed possess powers of perception that passed his own understanding. Now, tired yet eager to see Charlie and Puella, supposing that Dorothea had had one of her spirit-trances, but irritated by her suddenly clinging to him, Kite took her shoulders and pushed her ungently away.
‘Dorothea, I beseech you…’
‘Mr Kite, oh, Mr Kite, Charlie is dead.’