Bellewether Read online

  As she pulled her gaze deliberately away it caught and clung a moment to the silent, level one of Mr. de Sabran, directly opposite. He was frowning, as he often did, and yet this time there seemed to be no anger in it, only what appeared to be the kind of concentration that a man might give a puzzling thing he sought to understand.

  She broke the contact as Del Rio gave his answer to her brother: “No, of course I would not say this.” With a faint curve of his mouth he added lightly, “I am saying war can be a complicated game of many moves and many players, and a man must guard his backs.”

  She saw the lowering of Joseph’s eyebrows and she intervened to keep the interchange from turning to an argument. She said, “Forgive me, Captain, but you have not finished telling us your story.” As he looked to her with interest, she reminded him, “You had just met the Bellewether at sea.”

  “Ah. Yes. This was at night, as I have said, and in the dark all things are hidden, so we sail the night in company with her and all seems well. But when the dawn comes, the light shows us all is not well, that the Bellewether has suffered much from some attack. And when we come up close enough to call to them, we see there are not many men aboard that ship, and those we see are not the men that we expect to see aboard the Bellewether, you understand. They are men who sail with Big-Headed Tom.” He paused his narrative to ask, “You know this name?”

  None of them did, so he elaborated. “All of us who sail in the West Indies know this name. He’s not a good man. Very violent.” To de Brassart, with more emphasis, he said, “He is a pirate.” Then he reached and slid his knife point once again into the salt. “He is a plague to all my countrymen, to all us Spanish. When he takes a ship he kills each man aboard, her crew and all her officers. He has killed many friends of mine. So when I see his men on board the Bellewether, this is not good.”

  He knew the way to spin a tale and keep the listener in suspense. He salted his food in the pause, and sliced it with precision.

  “So,” he said, “I talk with Juan, and he reminds me Daniel Wilde has always been a good man and an honest one, and so we think we should not let his brother’s ship be kept by pirates. But how to take it back—this is a problem.”

  Lydia knew that the Bellewether’s crew numbered near fifty men, but a ship that had been captured would be running with a prize crew put aboard her by the capturer, and prize crews were significantly smaller, sometimes ten or fewer men. She pointed out, “Your ship is larger than the Bellewether.”

  “It’s true. I sail on El Montero with a hundred men and eighteen guns, but these I could not use to full effect on this occasion.”

  She was puzzled. “But why not?”

  He smiled. “Because, señora Wilde, your brother’s ship it was already very damaged, and if I had fired a shot at it myself, if I had made another hole in it, that would not have been wise. You cannot tell a friend, ‘Come, look, see how I’ve saved your ship, it’s at the bottom of the ocean.’ I don’t think he’d be so grateful.”

  She could see his point, and smiled herself at how he’d stated it. With such a man, she thought, it was impossible to not be slightly charmed.

  She was still smiling when her eyes again met Mr. de Sabran’s, across the table. He did not look charmed, though it appeared this time his frown was aimed directly at the Spanish captain.

  Unperturbed, Del Rio carried on. “Then I remember that the men aboard the Bellewether, they do not know we will not harm that ship. So I . . . well, in my language we say tirarse un farol, yes? The words mean exactly to show them a lantern, a light, but a false one, like when you are playing at the cards and you make someone think that you carry the king when you only have deuces.”

  Her father translated. “You bluffed.”

  “If that is the same meaning, then yes,” said the captain. “I bluffed. I tell Juan to knock open our gun ports, to show them our teeth, and we fire at the same time our deck guns and muskets, but just at their rigging because it is already bad. And they think we are truly attacking them.”

  De Brassart nodded. “And so they surrendered.”

  The Spanish captain looked at him as though he did not understand the word, his eyebrows faintly drawn together, but from what he said next Lydia assumed it was the concept of surrender that was foreign to him. “No, of course not. No man would surrender in such circumstances. But he might run, and this is what they tried to do. It is unfortunate for them,” he said, “that no ship is as fast as El Montero.”

  Lydia owned that the Spanish ship might have had an advantage in that quarter, with the Bellewether so badly mauled and poorly handled, but she knew that if her brother’s ship had been in fine condition there was none upon the seas that could sail faster.

  From good manners she said nothing, though she shared a glance along the table with her father, who had evidently had the same thought, for his eyes danced in the way they did when he was trying not to smile.

  He said, “Well, we are grateful to you, Captain, for returning her. I hope it did not cost you any men?”

  “It cost one man a finger, and another has a new scar on his shoulder, but I give thanks to God the rest of my crew are all well.”

  De Brassart asked, “What of the pirate crew?”

  “They did not do so well. There were I think eleven of them to begin with, and when it was finished there were only seven we could find.” His tone was light, as though it were lost nails that he was speaking of, not human lives. “We put them down together on a little island we were passing, very scenic, with a little bay like this, you know, for swimming. If they’re careful of the sharks.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was being truthful, but she didn’t care at all about the pirate crew. She only asked, “And did they tell you, Captain, what became of those who’d been aboard the Bellewether?”

  He had told her already, she knew. He had said that when Big-Headed Tom took a ship, he killed everyone on it. But some of those men had been sailors she’d known, and she wanted to be very sure.

  “No.” The Spaniard’s eyes levelled on hers with a blend of directness and sympathy. “No, they did not tell me.” But his voice and his expression told her he had known, as she herself knew.

  Lydia looked down, and thought of all the men who’d started on that voyage several weeks ago, and would not now be coming home—the brothers and the sons and husbands—and she found the knowledge very hard.

  Del Rio said, “But I am happy to have brought the Bellewether back to your house.” He helped himself to one more piece of apple pie and added, “And to have as my reward this pleasant company and such a banquet. This one here with the apples is particularly excellent. My compliments, señora.”

  “They are owed to Violet, not to me,” she told him.

  “To Violet? Ah, your cook. Then I will have to have her tell my cook the way that this is made, I think.”

  The fact that he’d referred to Violet as their cook—as someone skilled at what she did, and not a piece of property—made Lydia increase her good opinion of him, and she offered, “Those are apples from our orchard, Captain. I am sure that we could spare you some.”

  “You have an orchard here?” He looked up from his plate and took a keener interest. “Because I still have room within my hold if you would like for me to take your harvest for you to the markets. They would bring a handsome price for you.”

  “But not at English ports,” said Joseph.

  The Spaniard turned to him. “I’m sorry?”

  “You have said you will not sail to English ports,” was Joseph’s clipped reply, “and it’s against our laws to send provisions to be sold at any other.”

  “Ah. Because there is a war, you mean.” A casual wave of the fork in his hand dismissed such things as trifles. “There are many neutral ports where I could carry your apples, if you would prefer it.”

  Her brother asked, “Neutral in whose view?”

  His voice held a challenge and Captain del Rio’s gaze shifted to match i
t, and it was like watching a sword blade of steel sliding out of a decorative scabbard.

  “Your king views the ports of my country as neutral, señor,” he replied, “and since you seem to hold him in such high esteem I am sure you would share this view?”

  Lydia looked to her father, who seemed unaware how the mood of the table had changed, so she hastily stepped in herself.

  “It’s kind of you to make the offer, Captain, but my eldest brother carries a commission to supply our troops at Albany, and always sends a good part of our harvest there directly. What remains, we use ourselves. Though I am certain, as a token of our gratitude,” she told him with a pointed look at Joseph meant to make him hold his tongue, “we could at least give you a bushel as our gift, so that your cook may make you pies.”

  His eyes returned to her, and with relief she watched the challenge in them change and warm again to gallantry. “They will not be as good as these, I think,” he said. “But I would be most pleased, señora Wilde, by such a present.” He took his cup in hand and faced her father, his good-natured smile resurfacing. “Although I think before we have done anything, we need to find a place to put your ship.”

  • • •

  They beached the Bellewether that evening, when the tide was at its highest in the cove.

  She did not see it done. However well-behaved the Spanish captain and his first mate might have been that morning, Lydia had reasoned she could not expect the same of El Montero’s crew. And having seen a ship careened before, she knew it would take many men to haul the battered Bellewether into the shallows and run her aground upon the sand, then drag her further up beyond the water’s reach and tilt her so she lay half on one side.

  And while all those men were at liberty down in the cove, she’d decided her presence would be a distraction—if not for the men, for her father and Benjamin, who’d feel the need to look out for her safety.

  She stayed instead with Violet, in the house. Her father had instructed Joseph to remain there also, saying it was simply to protect the women, even though they all were well aware it was to spare him the uncomfortable experience of being thus surrounded by a group of strange men—armed men—speaking in a foreign language. Joseph had accepted this arrangement with a nod, and gone upstairs to pace his chamber.

  Both of their French prisoners had kept within the house as well. Mr. de Brassart settled in the parlour with a book as he so often did, but Mr. de Sabran stayed planted firmly in the kitchen with his chair drawn up to one side of the hearth, watching the closed door and windows as though he were waiting for trouble.

  Violet at last said to Lydia, “He’s vexing me, now. I can’t do my work with him under my feet.”

  While she sympathized, Lydia knew there was no way to easily shift him, and if she were perfectly honest she wasn’t inclined to. Although she disliked and distrusted the French, she was forced to admit that his sitting there made her feel safer.

  And when heavy footsteps approached and a shadow passed outside the window and there came a knock at the door, she looked first to Mr. de Sabran and waited for his nod before she crossed over to answer it.

  French Peter stood on the threshold, his red woolen cap in his hands.

  It occurred to her she did not know his last name. Her mother had known it, and greeted him always as Mr. Whatever-it-was, but to Lydia he was French Peter and only that, and tonight all of a sudden that felt like a failing. She could say no more than, “Good evening.”

  French Peter, returning the greeting, asked after her father. “I must . . . there is something I need to discuss with him.”

  Lydia told him, “He’s down at the cove. There are quite a few men down there now. Spanish sailors. They’ve brought back a ship of my brother’s and now they’re careening it, so you may want to wait.”

  “No. Thank you, no. I will find him and speak to him now.” And he thanked her again, put his cap on his head, and before stepping back from the threshold spoke past her and into the kitchen, addressing the man who still sat to the side of the hearth. He said, “Bonsoir, Marine.”

  And to her surprise Mr. de Sabran replied almost pleasantly, “Bonsoir, Monsieur Boudreau.”

  She asked her father later on that night, when both French officers had taken to their chamber and the rest of them were readying themselves for bed upstairs, if he had ever learned French Peter’s surname.

  “It is Bowdro, I believe,” he told her.

  “Boudreau?”

  “Very possibly.” He laid his waistcoat neatly on the clothes-press without asking why she wished to know.

  She was not certain what she could have told him. Only that it shamed her slightly knowing that a stranger had observed French Peter’s name when she had not.

  Benjamin, already in his bed and half asleep, said, “His arrival was well-timed tonight. I might have lost an arm if not for him.”

  “Not quite an arm,” their father answered dryly.

  “Well, I might at least have had a bruise,” amended Benjamin. “That spar was twice as tall as me. French Peter caught it as if it were no more than a sapling.” Then he seemed to catch himself as though he’d heard what he’d just said, and in the silence that fell afterwards he rolled himself more tightly in his blankets. “Anyhow,” he finished, “I am glad that he was there.”

  Lydia hoped it was not all a wasted effort, and she told them so. “It sounds as if there’s little of the ship that may be salvaged.”

  “That,” her father said, “will be for William to decide.”

  They could but wait for William’s answer and instructions. After Benjamin had ridden to Cross Harbor and so passed the word, arriving home again midafternoon, they’d seen the sails of Mr. Fisher’s small sloop heading out along the far shore of the bay into the Sound, away towards her brother’s dock in New York harbour so he could deliver him the news.

  “Till then,” her father said, “we have our own concerns. And I am glad to hear you find French Peter helpful,” he told Benjamin, “because he will be helping in the orchard with our harvest.”

  Benjamin rose halfway on one elbow, more awake. “Beginning when?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  It was after sunset and that left her only candlelight to view her father’s features by, but still she saw their firm and stubborn lines.

  She looked at Benjamin, and he at her, and neither of them dared to ask the question that was uppermost in both their minds, and yet their father heard it notwithstanding, for he told them both, “Your brother has done well enough these weeks with the French officers.”

  Lydia said, “But we had no choice, with them. And with French Peter—”

  “He has lost a child.” Her father’s tone reminded both of them he knew the pain of that. “He wants to pay me for the coffin, but he has no money of his own, for as a refugee he has been forced to live on charity. So if he seeks to pay me with his labour I cannot deny him that. Sometimes,” he said, “you must allow a man to be a man.”

  He said no more, but Lydia thought long about those final words.

  She turned them over in her mind while she lay in her bed that night. And she was thinking of them still when, early the next morning, she watched Mr. de Sabran fit the final pieces to the cider press, his dark head bent in concentration.

  Maybe, she thought, that was what he sought to do when he threw all his focus into work, as he was doing, as though idleness were something he did not know how to manage. Maybe he was seeking to remind himself—remind them all—that while he was a prisoner at the mercy of his keepers, far from home and from his purpose, he had not yet ceased to be a man.

  • • •

  The wind had changed.

  It held the black-hulled El Montero captive at its anchor in the bay, although the Spanish captain did not seem concerned. “No, no,” Del Rio said, “it’s not a problem. We are flying now the colours of the—” Breaking off, he looked up at the green-and-white-striped flag that flew above his mast, and ask
ed Mr. Ramírez, “What are these ones?”

  And Ramírez answered in a clear deep voice, surprising them by speaking English, “These ones, capitán, would be the colours of a merchant who is Portuguese.”

  “You see then,” Del Rio returned, “we are Portuguese, just at these times. And the English and Portuguese, they are good friends, yes? So we will be fine.”

  He was—as seemed to be his habit—right. They had attracted some attention, with their sleek black hull and Spanish bottom, sheathed in lead to guard against the worms that could destroy a ship in warmer waters. But while a couple of their neighbours had rowed up from Millbank or over from Cross Harbor for a closer look at El Montero, it was the sad Bellewether that truly held their interest, and her father having called across to one of them a version of how she had been so damaged, word was passed along and heads were shaken at the loss of men, and lively curses called down on the English pirate who had brought the ship to ruin.

  And then William had arrived. Not by the sea, but by the forest road, on horseback.

  Violet, coming from the milking, saw him first. And entering the kitchen said to Lydia, “Your brother’s here,” in tones that didn’t hide the fact she’d never had much time for William. She was like her mother, Phyllis, who had many times remarked that, for a man who liked to stand and talk as much as William did, he never truly stood for anything. Which wasn’t wholly accurate. He stood for many things, but in a shifting way. He was the perfect model of a man of business, showing to all men the face they wanted most to see. With men of learning, he would mirror their own interests, speak of books and of philosophy, and yet with men who worked along his docks he could as easily share stories that would curl a barmaid’s hair, and leave both groups convinced that here, indeed, was someone they could trust and like. A man like them.

  It was a gift he’d had since birth, so Lydia believed. Everyone saw what they wanted in William, their parents included. Like many a firstborn, he had a strong look of their father which gained as he grew—the wide chest and broad shoulders and height that allowed him to walk with authority. That likeness had saved him from trouble a number of times, so their mother had said. “I’d look down at his little face,” she’d once told Lydia, “and it was just like your father was looking back up at me, and goodness knows that I’ve never been able to stay angry long with your father.”