Bellewether Read online

  Having dealt with Harvey too, I felt a little sorry for the Fisher brothers, and it must have shown on my face because Malaika said, “No need to feel too bad for them. They still have millions in the bank, they just don’t flash their cash around.”

  The undetermined Fisher brother—who still looked like Frank to me, from this distance—had by now cast off his lines and was easing his little boat expertly out of its slip. It was hardly the size of boat I’d have imagined a millionaire owning.

  “Now, Harvey,” Malaika went on, “is all flash. Guess which boat here is his?”

  That was easy. I pointed it out. “That one.” The only one that demanded you see it, admire it, and pay it attention. It wasn’t a sailboat at all but a motor yacht, pointed and sleek with a narrow black stripe that sliced hard through its shimmering reflection in the water of the harbour and set all the smaller boats’ reflections wavering and trembling.

  The Fisher brother’s boat seemed unimpressed. Sail up, it tilted slightly without slowing down, still nosing its way purposefully towards the open water.

  I could see, just beyond it, the curve of Snug Cove and the rise of the shore where the Wilde House sat waiting for me in the woods. And even though Malaika was my boss, I knew I couldn’t sit here on a break forever. Lunch had ended half an hour ago. I needed to get back to work.

  But I sat five more minutes, enjoying the sunlight and breeze and the bright sky above, watching that one small sailboat head out. It had no cares or worries, no meetings to keep, no brave faces to wear, and no pledges to honour. It moved fast and freely, so fast that soon I could see only the speck of the boat and the white slash of sail reaching up and I envied it, riding the blue of the water and leaning with confidence into the wind.

  Lydia

  She saw the sails at sunrise.

  She’d been sent up to the field to fetch the mare, although perhaps “sent” was too strong a word. Her father had done nothing more than ask her if she’d go, because the mare would not come willingly to any of the men but led them all a tiring chase, whereas for Lydia she came directly, took the halter quietly, and let herself be led downhill as meekly as a lamb.

  To Lydia, it was a welcome chore. These first days of October had been busy ones that kept her in the garden cutting squash to dry and harvesting the beans for seed and digging her potatoes. There’d been pies to bake and pickles to be scalded—she had left the last to Violet, who made pickles best of any she had tasted—but the garden on its own had wanted more hours in the day than she could give it, and the digging left her shoulders sore, so it had been a great relief to start this day by simply walking up along the orchard wall into the upper field to find the mare.

  Her father had a mind to go to Hempstead to Aunt Hannah’s, and the mare would take him there and back more swiftly than the waggon team. She was a grey, a four-year-old with something of a filly’s mischief glinting in her eyes as she stopped grazing, raised her fine head, and watched Lydia approach.

  “There’d be no point,” was Lydia’s advice. “I’ve neither will nor energy to chase you so you’d have to play the game alone, which would be little fun.”

  The mare flicked one ear in acknowledgement of this and gave in gracefully, and although she did not step forward, she at least stood still and did not run. Lydia wasn’t entirely sure herself why the mare favoured her, but they had shared this rapport from the very first day that her father had brought the mare home as a yearling. Just as a horse could sense a nervous rider or a cruel one, it appeared that the mare could sense Lydia already carried a full share of troubles and did not need more. Whatever the reason, the mare bent her head to the halter and made no complaint and submitted herself to be led.

  Not that Lydia was in a rush to be leading her anywhere just at the moment. The day, being only begun, was still peaceful; the chill of the air making mist of her breath as the sun ventured up from its bed into view, sending pink and gold streaks spreading over the eastern sky.

  Here on the upland where the land had been well cleared, she had a view not only of the bay but of the wider Sound, and of the ships that came and went continually between New York’s harbour and the sea.

  Benjamin had come here often as a boy to chase his dreams of grand adventure, studying the passing ships so that he could, like Joseph, know the types of vessels by their varied shapes and rigging, be they brigs or sloops or bilanders or snows. He’d watched them for so long that he could name most of the New York ships on sight, amazing Lydia, who only recognized her brother William’s four: the Bellewether, the Honest John, the Katharine, and the Fox.

  Of these, her favourite was the Bellewether, because although the smallest of them all it was the prettiest and swiftest.

  “She will run before all others,” had been William’s explanation of the sloop’s name. “Like the sheep we bell to lead the flock.”

  “You’ve spelled it wrong,” their mother had said mildly as she’d read the brave name painted on the hull. “It is spelled ‘bellwether,’ without the second e.”

  “But ‘belle’ is French for ‘beautiful,’ and she is surely that,” had been his answer.

  And she was. Built to outrun the privateers that prowled the trade routes, she had turned the tables on them many times and carried her fair share of captured ships as prizes into New York’s harbour, but the true prizes for Lydia had been the letters carried from Jamaica from her brother Daniel, and the gifts and parcels that he regularly sent, which, since their mother’s death, had been one of the few bright things their family could look forward to. The sight of the Bellewether’s sails sweeping past in the Sound was a sight that, on most days, brought Lydia joy.

  But this morning, the sight of sails sliding below her and into the bay brought a darker confusion.

  Those sails were the Bellewether’s, but they’d been set strangely. In this uncertain light, moving through shadows and mist on the dark water close to the shore, she appeared to have no more than half a mast, less of her rigging, and dangerous, jagged holes scarring her deck.

  Lydia, who had been stroking the mare’s warm neck, stilled her hand. And then she moved it and took a firm hold of the mare’s tangled mane, and in one scrambling motion she hauled herself up, clinging to the mare’s withers and urging her into a quick walk at first, then a run, down the slope of the field, racing home with a warning.

  Because on the heels of the Bellewether, gliding now into the bay, sailed a second ship—larger and darker and trailing the wounded sloop’s wake like a predator.

  • • •

  The men who came ashore to them were Spanish.

  Her father, from her warning, was already dressed and waiting just outside the open kitchen door. He’d given up his plans for Hempstead and instead told Benjamin to ride the mare around the bottom of the bay through Millbank and up to Mr. Fisher’s at Cross Harbor so that Mr. Fisher, in his turn, could have word sent to William in New York. “He needs to know his ship has been brought back in this condition.”

  They’d had a better view now of the Bellewether between the trees as she’d gone past to drop her anchor in the cove below them, and it seemed a miracle that she was still afloat. She’d had her tall mast snapped in two and was missing two-thirds of her bowsprit, her sails and hull damaged, her rigging much shattered.

  “I’ll ride into New York myself,” had been Benjamin’s answer.

  “No. Leave Mr. Fisher to send someone. I’ll need you back here.”

  There’d been, as usual when Father used that tone, no point in arguing, so Benjamin had done as he was told. As too had Lydia, when she’d been told to keep back in the kitchen out of sight, with Violet.

  Joseph had come down to join their father on the threshold of the open door. Mr. de Brassart had been yet asleep in bed. Mr. de Sabran, though, had stepped through from his chamber to the kitchen and despite the fact he did not speak their language and could not have known the cause of this new tension in the household, he apparently had sensed
that it meant trouble, for he’d dressed in his full uniform and taken up position between Lydia and Violet and the door, as though preparing to defend them from whatever might attempt to enter.

  Lydia, to her surprise, felt safer for his silent presence. But she did not like to be kept back where she could not see what was happening, where she could only hear the brief words Joseph and her father were exchanging, low, with one another.

  “British?” asked her father.

  “No,” said Joseph. “Those are not the colours of a British ship.”

  “What colours are they?”

  “I don’t know.” Then, “They’re putting four men in that boat. They’ll outnumber us.”

  “We have four men.”

  “Only two we can trust.” Joseph’s tone was agitated, and their father noticed.

  “Go inside,” he said. When Joseph did not move at once, their father laid a firm but gentle hand upon her brother’s shoulder. “Go. It will be fine. They’ve brought the Bellewether back home, I doubt they’re anything but friendly.”

  He did not relax his guarded stance, though, even after Joseph had obediently left his side and sullenly retreated past them all into the front part of the house. Nor did her father go to meet the strangers as they came ashore but stood and waited, holding to the high ground so that when their leader reached them he was winded from the climb.

  Lydia, by taking one step closer to the kitchen window, could just see the figures crossing from the woods towards them. If there had been four men in the landing party, two must have been left down with the boat, because she only saw two men approaching now—the one in front with black hair and a short clipped beard, wearing a black coat faced in scarlet; and the man behind him taller, dressed in grey, and with skin darker brown than Violet’s.

  Both men appeared to have empty hands. Neither was holding a weapon.

  “Good day!” called the bearded man, cheerfully. “I look for señor Wilde.”

  Her father, standing so he blocked the doorway, spoke with caution. “You have found him.”

  “I’m glad. This is not a small hill that you have, and my legs are not used to the land.” He spoke English with ease, and in spite of his words and his breathing seemed physically fit, in the prime years between youth and middle age. Neither as tall nor as broad as her father, he nonetheless stood as his equal and, facing him over the threshold, thrust out his right hand. “An honour, señor Wilde. I am Domingo del Rio Caballero, capitán of El Montero, this beautiful ship you see down in the bay with the not-very-beautiful one of your son’s, at the moment. And this is my—how do you say it in English? First mate, is it not? Juan Ramírez.”

  Her father shook the black man’s hand as well. “Mr. Ramírez. And Captain—?”

  “Del Rio,” the captain supplied. “I regret we could not take your son’s ship the whole way to New York, but it’s not so safe for us, you understand. The English may not be at war with Spain but they still like to seize our ships and ask forgiveness after, and we’ve had a very tiring voyage these past days and are not looking for a fight.”

  The emphasis he put upon those last few words made Lydia suspect he’d seen beyond her father and had glimpsed the armed French officer who stood within the shadows of the kitchen, though she could not know for sure.

  Mr. de Sabran had not moved.

  Her father said, “Captain del Rio, I am grateful you have brought my son’s ship back to us. But I confess I’m curious how you came to possess it in the first place?”

  “Ah. That,” the Spaniard said, “is a good story. And good stories, so my father always told me, become better ones when told with food and drink.” His grin, what she could see of it, was self-assured. “May we come in?”

  • • •

  It was, if not the oddest group to share a meal, at least the most unlikely one. At one end of the table sat her father in his customary chair with Joseph at his right hand, and then next the two French officers, and rounding out the table’s other end the Spanish captain and his first mate, who was evidently—from his introduction and the fact he used a surname—a free black, and so around again to Lydia, who couldn’t help but think that if the English Captain Wheelock were to turn up at that moment in his scarlet coat, their keeping room would hold the old and new worlds fully balanced.

  She found it increasingly obvious, looking at Mr. de Sabran, which side of the scales he belonged upon. His manners were the plainer kind, and what his movements lacked in grace and elegance they gained in pure economy, so that he looked more like her father and her brother than the Europeans. The only thing he did that they did not was use his own knife from his pocket when he cut and ate his food—the same small, curved, bone-handled knife he made use of for various purposes—but this one habit that had seemed so strange to her at the beginning now seemed entirely normal. Mr. de Brassart and Captain del Rio and Mr. Ramírez all handled their cutlery in the same fashion and brandished their cups with a similar flair, as though bred to a dining room finer than this one, with plates made of porcelain, not pewter and wood.

  To be fair, no one yet had complained of the meal. Since the uncommon hour made it too late for breakfast and still a few hours too early for dinner, it had been a scramble for Violet to make them a meal on short notice. She’d curdled some cream with sweet wine and a grating of cinnamon, serving it warm to the table, and thickened the porridge of Indian meal they had eaten at breakfast and fried it in cakes drizzled thick with molasses, brought pickle and cheese from the cellar and rounded it off with two pies of the first apples picked from their orchard, still fresh from her baking of yesterday. Even with Lydia helping it had been a great deal of work to assemble, and Violet—who rarely withheld her opinions—would normally have raised a protest against the disruption of her day’s routine. But she hadn’t said a word, seeming distracted by her fascinated study of their guest Mr. Ramírez.

  He was returning the favour, his gaze seeking Violet on several occasions, but it wasn’t obvious whether he watched her because he considered her pretty or because he viewed her with sympathy.

  Surely there must be a range of emotions a free black man felt when he looked at a slave.

  Lydia didn’t know much about free black men. They were an oddity, even in larger New York. In her memory there’d only been two who had come to this part of Long Island: one last year, who’d stopped at Cross Harbor to preach at the New Lights Church, and one a few years before that—a bootmaker who’d briefly set up his business in Millbank only to leave so discreetly and in such great haste there were many who still felt convinced he’d been stolen away.

  Neither man, though, had looked like this Spaniard, who could not be older than forty, his close-clipped hair dark with no sign yet of whitening, shoulders as broad as her father’s beneath the fine grey fabric of his coat that at its turned-back cuffs was trimmed with silver cord and buttons, with a narrow fall of lace across his dark brown hands.

  Lydia had thought Mr. de Brassart might in his turn raise a protest against being made to share the meal and table with a black man, but in keeping with the day and its surprises he had not. Instead, the whole of his attention had been captured by the Spanish captain, whose name he had recognized.

  “You wouldn’t by chance be,” de Brassart had said when they’d been introduced, “the great pirate Captain del Rio made famous in all of those stories by Madame MacPherson?”

  Del Rio had smiled and corrected him. “Great pirate-hunter. And no, he’s my father.”

  “Is he? My mother devoured those tales. And you must resemble him strongly, for you look exactly how I would have pictured him from the descriptions.”

  The smile had become a grin, brilliantly white against the trimmed black beard. “But my father will tell you he’s much more handsome.”

  “He is still alive?”

  “Very much so. But now he leaves all the adventures to me and to Juan, here. Now Juan, he could tell you some stories, and true ones. He sailed man
y years with my father.”

  But de Brassart, predictably, hadn’t asked anything of Juan Ramírez.

  And Captain del Rio had proven that he could tell colourful stories himself, like the one he was telling them now. “So on the fourth night, we fell in with—this is how you say it, yes?—we fell in with the Bellewether. This ship I know and recognize, because I have done business many times, señor, with your son Daniel. So we keep in company with her all night, since on the sea it’s good always to have a friend beside you. With so many English ships around, it’s better not to be alone.”

  De Brassart asked, “Why would the English bother you? Your kings have signed a treaty of neutrality.”

  The Spanish captain even shrugged with style. “We are not at war, but the English still capture our ships, and whatever we carry they say that we carry for you, for the French, you see? Then by declaring our cargoes French property they can condemn them and claim them and keep them for sale, so they capture our ships and they carry us into their ports and they take all our cargoes. They give back our ships, but our profits . . .” He shrugged again, raising one hand in a gesture as though he were scattering unseen coins into the empty air. “Two times I’ve been carried now into Antigua, and if it continues this way I cannot make a living,” he said, “and besides, it is very annoying.”

  Joseph, who’d kept silent so far, spoke up unexpectedly, and in the tone that Lydia knew carried trouble. “Are you saying, Captain, that the British have no honour?”

  Del Rio reached towards the centre of the table with his knife to take more salt and used the movement to glance sideways at her brother as though noticing him there for the first time. That single glance appeared to take her brother’s measure, and she felt a quick flood of protective feelings that she just as quickly sought to stifle, lest they do more harm than good, for Joseph lately rose to anger if he sensed that he was being treated softly.