Buccaneer (3 page)

Martha brought in two pewter tankards of lemon juice and set them on the floor beside each man’s chair. Alston waited until she left the room and said: “Read your letter, Ned, while I have my drink.”

It was brief and from his father. The writing was hurried and the signature scrawled so that no one intercepting the letter could identify the writer.

Without preliminaries it said:

“Both estates have been seized and a Parliamentary general lives in the northern one while the southern one is abandoned except for the steward and his wife, who struggle to look after the place.

“Parliament finally called on me to compound. In exchange for every penny I possess (and more: I would have had to mortgage the Barbados plantation) I could have kept the northern estate and, of course, would have had to swear loyalty to Parliament and the Lord Protector.

“Were I not the sixth earl and father to you and your elder brother, I might have considered it, solely to keep our people employed on the estates after all their years of loyal service, but neither of you would have wished it and I value my sons’ opinions of me too highly to risk their scorn should I compromise with Cromwell.

“So I have raised secretly what cash I can. I have secretly left sums which will look after our pensioners, and the rest we have taken with us – by the time you receive this we shall be with Prince Charles in France (or Spain – reports of his present whereabouts vary).

“Thus have we been forced to flee our own country, and it is a strange feeling. I am no longer an Englishman but a ‘Cavalier’, and Parliament will call me a traitor.

“I would have been persuaded to stay, despite conditions here during recent years, if I thought my departure would result in retaliation against you in Barbados, but this will happen anyway. The fleet under Penn and Venables is preparing to sail and will arrive off your coasts very soon after you receive this by the
William and Mary
. They will try to arrest you and a few others before going on to attack Spanish possessions with men pressed in the islands. As you have your
Griffin
sloop with you I know you can escape.

“Estates can be recovered in time – these scoundrels with their long faces, constant hymn-singing and hatred of laughter and happiness, concerned only with destroying what is beautiful, worthwhile or cheerful, cannot stay in power for ever. So remember, the important thing is to stay alive, even if it means fleeing now, to fight them on another day. The people of England will eventually throw out this tyranny.

“I do not wish to give you orders, merely to beg you not to take risks in trying to keep the plantation: orders have been given for General Venables to detain you and bring you back to England. I can give you no address and I presume you will have none for a year or two, but we have mutual friends with whom we can correspond. My prayers are for you.”

For a few moments Ned felt like a man standing on a high wall watching his ladder crashing to the ground. Henry Sydney Broughton Yorke, sixth Earl of Ilex, and his heir George were fugitives and Ned himself was to be “detained”. What his father had euphemistically called the “northern estate”, which stretched from Godmersham to Molash, in the shadow of the North Downs, and the “southern estate”, rich sheep country also in Kent surrounding Saltwood, and including the remains of the castle in which the three knights had slept the night on their way from France to Canterbury to murder Thomas à Becket, were abandoned to Cromwell. Cromwell, the Lord Protector, Parliament, the Roundheads, the Commonwealth: the hydra had many heads.

Where his father once sat at the head of his table at Godmersham, a Parliamentary favourite now claimed ownership: at Saltwood, a man and wife struggled with a thousand acres… And the small estate house at Ilex, across the county boundary in Sussex, was not even mentioned.

For a few moments he pictured the Godmersham house, with its tall, patterned red brick chimneys, where he had spent much of his childhood. If he relied on his memory, it was always either spring or autumn because the great beech trees protecting the house from the west and north, and scattered over the hills and valleys forming the estate, were bright green with fresh life or like beaten copper as autumn came. And he remembered the church in which (by coincidence) there was the oldest known image of St Thomas à Becket.

Then Saltwood came to his memory. He preferred it to Godmersham because the old castle had been his playground and as a child he frightened himself into hearing the clatter of hooves and clanking of armour as the knights rode off for Canterbury, to murder Becket at what they thought was the King’s wish. When King Edward later claimed that he had been misunderstood, the Earl of Ilex was blamed for sheltering the knights, but the Earl replied indignantly. When three knights riding directly from the Court, then in France, banged on his door and demanded food and shelter “in the King’s name”, was he to refuse them entry and be accused of treason?

Now owls skimmed silently round the ruined walls of Saltwood castle, and no one cared about the house. No doubt the great flocks of sheep had been stolen, and Roundhead troops were probably living there and, unless exceptional men, using choice furniture for firewood and family portraits as pistol targets.

He refused to think of the house at Ilex. The estate was small, only a few hundred acres, but it had been a favourite home for the Yorke family. He and his brother had been born there, and his mother had used it during her last few years, dying in time to avoid seeing a civil war exile her family.

“Bad news?” Alston asked, and Yorke realized he must have been staring at the letter for a quarter of an hour or more.

He shrugged his shoulders. “No news from England can be good these days. My father tells me he refused to compound and has fled to France with my brother to join the Prince.”

“So Parliament will be upon you,” Alston said grimly. “Your father was lucky to be able to hold on for so long.”

“I suppose so. Anyway, he also confirms that Cromwell’s preparing a fleet to attack some Spanish possessions and will strip these islands of servants to provide men for its army.”

Alston nodded and then asked quietly: “What are you going to do?”

“Leave, I think. At this moment my head is spinning, but really I have no choice.”

“Ned, believe me,” Alston said firmly, “more than any of us you have no choice. Your father had warned you. You have the finest estate, and thanks to you the best run –” he held up a hand, “–no, I am not flattering you. You have the best of the indentured servants and you and your father have invested a great deal of money in the place while most of the other planters have produced just enough sugar or cotton to pay their expenses and keep them in hot liquors. But you know of one man who will be even more powerful when Venables and Penn arrive and who for years has had his eye on this plantation…”

“Yes. Wilson wants to drive me out and buy the place for a few guineas.”

“More likely he’ll wait until a new Assembly confiscates all Royalist property and shares it among themselves. With a big fleet anchored here, they can decide that without worrying about the planters causing any trouble.”

“No, Wilson is too cunning for that. He wants to
buy
it; then he has the deeds in his name, all properly executed, so that when the monarchy is restored Wilson will still own it: I could not claim the Parliamentarians confiscated it.”

“That sounds like Wilson: full of cunning – and rumbullion. You’ll leave the island in the
Griffin
?”

“Yes, I suppose so. It’s hard to take in,” he said, waving the letter. “I’ll take any of my indentured servants who want to leave, and try my luck at one of the other islands. They say Antigua and St Christopher are still sympathetic to Royalists.”

Alston again shrugged his shoulders. “If Venables goes on to pay them a visit and takes your servants…”

“There are other places,” Yorke said vaguely, thinking of something else.

“And Ned…”

“Yes?”

“This is none of my affair, but I’m your oldest friend out here, and friendship has obligations which –”

“What do you want, John? Just ask and –”

“No,” Alston interrupted, “I don’t want anything: I will probably leave too, before Penn and Venables arrive. No, this concerns you and Wilson. Or, rather, you and Aurelia. Can you possibly leave her with that drunken pig?”

Yorke held out his hands in a helpless and hopeless gesture. “She won’t leave him. The marriage vows…”

“Which he breaks regularly! At least three of his women servants claim to be his mistress and I’ve heard he’s been trying to buy a mulatto woman for the same purpose.”

“Yes, Aurelia knows. That fellow Hart is getting him another one from a Dutch sloop. Costing him twenty pounds – twice as much as a female slave normally sells for, but this one caught his eye.”

He sipped his drink and then put the mug down. “Did anyone in the town know when Penn’s fleet is expected?”

“Daily – it was nearly ready when the
William and Mary
sailed from Portland. Ships of war are bigger, so they can sail faster in strong winds, but I suppose keeping in some sort of formation slows them down. People – Wilson and other sycophants like Woods – say they’ll be here in less than a week.”

“A week!” Yorke exclaimed. “That doesn’t give me much time.”

“Where will you go, then? Montserrat?”

“It’s too near. As you say, Venables will search all these islands, and he knows where to find the extra men he needs, although he’s going to have trouble. Why, Cromwell’s transportations alone have sent thousands of servants out here: the Irish after the fighting at Drogheda and Wexford, the Scots after Dunbar, and English after – well, after the King’s execution. Those servants won’t fight for Cromwell; they suffered enough as his prisoners in the Civil War.”

“Aye, once Venables gets here the pillory, whipping post and ducking stool in St Michael’s parish will be kept busy. And I don’t suppose he’ll be satisfied with this silly business here of charging a man a sucking pig for mentioning the words ‘Cavalier’ or ‘Roundhead’.”

“Under Venables or Penn I’m sure anyone using the word ‘Royalist’ will be arrested,” Yorke said sourly. “And because the Lord Protector’s foot soldiers cost Parliament only eight pence a day, I’m sure they’ll have enough men to search all ten parishes on the island looking for ‘recruits’. And they’ll tax each plantation to supply horses – so many per dozen servants.”

“Well, there are only six churches for his men to damage if they find ‘graven images’. And who knows, the fleet might arrive at night and run ashore at Cuckold’s Point in the darkness.”

Yorke laughed mirthlessly. “Do you want to sail with me in the
Griffin
?”

Alston shook his head. “No, and I won’t sail in company with you, because my
Lucy
is slow and needs careening. Neither of us can make plans or arrange a rendezvous because we don’t know what we are going to do. But we’ll meet somewhere…”

Alston stood up and held out his hand, and as Yorke shook it he said: “Until then, Ned, unless you need a hand earlier. You can do something for Aurelia?”

Yorke looked bleak. “You have no idea how stubborn French Huguenot women can be.”

“Stubborn? I’d put it down as misguided loyalty!”

“The effect is just the same,” Yorke said ruefully, following Alston to the door and calling for his own horse, as well as his visitor’s.

He watched Alston galloping away to the north, the sea glittering beyond him to the westward. The end, or simply a pause, in a five-year friendship? While a servant saddled his horse and brought it to the door, Yorke went back into the house and sat down again, suddenly overwhelmed by his father’s letter, the news delivered by Alston, and his sudden decision to quit the island. The only thing missing, he thought bitterly, was a decision about Aurelia, and that did not rest with him.

Then his father’s letter seemed almost to attack him, to drain his spirit and energy like some enormous leech. Apart from losing the Yorke estates in Kent, had George managed to take enough money or jewels? Or would his father become one of the motley crowd of penniless refugees traipsing after the exiled Court like itinerant tinkers?

The history of the Yorke family was turbulent, but never before had the government of the day labelled them traitors, driven them from their own lands. And, after being among the first to establish a plantation among the Caribbee islands, they were now being forced out of there as well.

To go where? Not, if his father’s information was to be trusted, to Virginia, Antigua or Somers Island, and certainly not to any of the other Caribee islands, because Penn and Venables would search them one after another.

In about half an hour, his world had collapsed because there was not the slightest question of being able to stay in Barbados. In Barbados the younger son of the sixth Earl of Ilex was certainly an active Royalist in any Roundhead’s list, quite apart from Wilson waiting in the shadows.

The sun’s height and heat told him it was about ten o’clock. Wilson would stay roistering in Bridgetown until sunset and probably later, because today’s news would be the best he had ever had; the steel that sharpened his greed.

Very well, he told himself, his father had sent him a warning about Penn’s fleet and told him to quit; John Alston confirmed that it was due at any moment. If Edward Yorke was going to quit (flee, he corrected himself) the island in his sloop the
Griffin
for a completely unknown destination he needed her laden with provisions, and as much sugar and rum as possible to use as currency.

He went to the door and called his foreman, a stocky Lincolnshire man called Saxby. His name certainly was not Saxby, but he answered to no other. (Was it his surname or his Christian name? Ned had never asked.) As far as Ned knew he had deserted from the Navy many years ago, served in privateers along the coast of Brazil and the Main, and then come on shore when lameness made him, as he expressed it, “pitch and roll”. Red of complexion and blue-eyed, his hair sprinkled with grey, he was famous for three qualities: a stentorian voice, a dislike of hot liquors (which made him one of the few men on the island who did not drink rumbullion or mobbie), and a great appetite for women, which the women indentured servants seemed quite happy to fulfil, even if pregnancy extended their indentures by two years and the father’s (if he could be traced) by three.