Petals on the River (3 page)

a cutting retort.
 
"A hanging from the yardarm for insubordination if I

had my way!" He gestured angrily with his cane.
 
"Now, you useless

grog-sucker, get below!
 
You've earned a three-day stint cleaning the

mudhook's chains!"

"Come on now, Mistah Arper," Potts cajoled, waggling his head from side

to side.
 
"Here we be, bouts ta be given shore leave, an' I gots an itch

in me crotch ta finds meself a doxy or two ta scratch meself pon."

"You'll stroll no further than the limits of the cable locker for the

next five days," Harper rumbled, seething with rage.
 
"Now, Potts have

you anything further to complain about?"

The pig eyes narrowed with almost tangible hostility, but'the swabber

had no choice but to obey or see his sentence lengthened by several more

days.
 
"Nary a thing, Mistah Arper."

"Good!
 
Then report to the cable her at once." Scowling darkly James

Harper briefly marked the huge swabber's progress, then signaled another

seaman to follow and lock Potts in the forward compartment. Curtly

dismissing the tar from mind, Harper faced the bosun's mate and lent his

consideration to the matter at hand.

"The male prisoners've been accounted for, sir," the younger man

announced as he handed over the list.
 
Then he added for Harper's ears

alone, "Minus the thirty-one what died enroute."

"'Tis an uncommon loss the London Pride has suffered, Mr.
 
Blake,"

Harper muttered.

"Aye, sir, an' seem's as how ye begged the cap'n not ta let his mussus

limit the prisoners' rations afore we left, I figures ye gots goqd

reason ta fret.
 
Another week at sea an' there wouldna've been enough o'

them poor devils alive ta pay for the crew's vittles, much less our

wages."

Harper's jaw tensed as he recalled the numerous times he had been

required to order the cohvicts' bodies hurled overboard, all because the

ship's owner, J.
 
Horace Turnbull, had grown suspicious of the Pride's

accounting from previous voyages and had insisted his daughter accompany

her husband on this particular crossing to make a proper evaluation.

Having given Gertrude unprecedented authority to examine the ship's

ledgers, the old shipping baron had further instructed her to curb

whatever costs she might consider superfluous, a mandate which had

reaped dire consequences.

"One must imagine that when Mr.
 
Turnbull gave his daughter leave to use

her own judgments, he had no idea he'd be losing more on this voyage

than in the last five years we've been delivering prisoners to

the colonies.
 
In her eagerness to save her father a few shillings, Mrs.

Fitch has mindlessly managed to murder no less than a fourth of the

prisoners.
 
That should shorten the old man's profits by several hundred

pounds, at least."

"If Mr.
 
Turnbull thought there was thievin' going' on afore this here

voyage," Roger Blake mumbled grimly, "ye can bet he'll be thinkin' it

for certain this time."

"And will no doubt send his precious daughter on the following voyage to

take another accounting." Harper frowned at the gloomy prospect.

"Was Mr.
 
Turnbull right, sir?
 
Be there a thief among us?"

James Harper heaved a laborious sigh.
 
"Whatever the truth, Mr. Blake, I

prefer to keep my suspicions to myself." He shrugged as he added,

"Still, if I were to discover the identity of the culprit, I'd be loath

to ferret him out for Mrs.
 
Fitch.
 
She's made it evident she suspects

us all of swindling her father."

"Aye, ta be sure, sir," Roger Blake heartily agreed.
 
Mrs.
 
Fitch

definitely had a way of making an honest seaman feel less than worthy of

respect and trust.
 
Even the captain wasn't excluded from her criticism.

She had, however, seemed peculiarly inclined to lend an attentive ear to

the babble of Jacob Potts, although that vile tar had the distinction of

being despised by their small company of officers and a goodly share of

his shipmates.

Casting a glance toward the bridge, Roger Blake mentally laid odds that

he would find the older couple locked in another verbal fray and smiled

ruefully as he won his bet.
 
The portly pair were at it again, and he

knew by experience that Mrs.
 
Fitch would not desist until she had

gotten her way.
 
Thankful that he was not encumbered with the likes of

that great white whale for a wife, Roger returned to his duties.

Shemaine was able to enjoy a vague sense of relief after the banishment

of Potts, but it was not long before the murmuring voices of the other

women began to intrude into her awareness.
 
Their fretting comments and

morbid speculations on what further hardships they would experience

under the authority of their new masters began to trickle down into her

consciousness, heightening her dread with a pungent taste of grim

reality.
 
Despite the adversities she had been forced to endure since

leaving England, she had sought to bolster her courage by clinging to a

frail fragment of hope that, by some miracle, her parents or even her

fiance would find out where she had been taken and arrive in time to

save her from the fate of being sold as an indentured servant.
 
But as

yet, no beloved face had appeared and only a few moments remained before

that humiliating event was set to begin.

Shemaine ran her slender fingers beneath the iron band that encircled

her wrist in an effort to ease the constant chafing.
 
It was cruel irony

that she was even there, but after sipping the bitter draught of English

justice firsthand she had ceased to believe that she was the only

prisoner aboard the Pride who had been unjustly condemned.

Others had received equally harsh sentences for nothing more dastardly

than stealing a loaf of bread or expressing a political view, which some

of the young Irish hotbloods were wont to do.
 
In spite of the frailty

of their crimes and the sheer absurdity of their convictions, their

departure as unsavory rabble from the shores of England had been

expedited by pompous, bewigged magistrates who had enjoined the gaol

keepers to offer royal pardons to any and every felon who would agree to

a term of indentured labor in the colonies.
 
The alternatives had made

such proposals seem magnanimous.
 
It was either bound servitude beyond

the shores of England or a choice between two extremes, a hanging at

Triple Tree for more grievous crimes or, for lesser offenses, the

probability of rape, murder, or mutilation in the foul pits of Newgate

Prison, a place where absolutely no attempt was made to distinguish

between or to separate prisoners by gender, age, or severity of

offenses.

It was impossible for Shemaine to forget the trauma of being snatched

from her family' s stable and, like the foulest offender, hauled into a

court of law by an ugly slip of a man who had identified himself only as

Ned, the thieftaker.
 
A short stint in Newgate had taught her the

futility of tearful supplications and desperately spoken promises of

reward to anyone who would travel to her father's warehouses in Scotland

and take her parents news of her arrest.
 
It had been absurd to think

that anyone would believe her guarantee of a weighty purse when she had

been confronted by no kinder visage than the stony faces of criminals,

gaolers, and their helpless victims.

Later, after she had come aboard the London Pride and witnessed

firsthand the travails of others, she had lost all hope of ever finding

a sympathetic benefactor.
 
She had seen suckling babes torn from the

breasts of desperately pleading mothers, like Annie Carver, who had not

foreseen the possibility of her infant being snatched from her arms and

sold to a passing stranger.
 
Mere children, with haunted eyes and

runnels of unchecked tears streaking down their thin filthy faces, had

been left behind on the docks while they watched their only kin led

across the gangplank in chains.
 
Other youngsters, convicted of

fretfully feeble crimes, had been shackled alongside hardened

whoremongers and thieves.

The only two to board the Pride had not survived.

Such sights had been an outrageous affront to Shemaine's sensibilities

and carefully nurtured upbringing.
 
She had not even imagined the like

of such barbarism until she had seen and experienced it for herself.
 
En

masse they had been treated like common vermin, something detestable

that had to be spewed forth from the shores of England to make the

country fit and clean for a more genteel class of people, no doubt that

same breed of aristocrat who had hired a thieftaker to seize her and to

concoct a crime that would see her condemned to seven years in prison,

just to prevent her from spoiling her fiance's sterling heritage with

her own Irish-blended blood.

Of late, Shemaine's memories of her past bliss had grown dim and

strangely distant, as if she had but dreamed the princely Maurice du

Mercer had asked her to marry him.
 
After all, Maurice was a titled

Englishman and could have chosen from a vast assortment of young maidens

of the same noble standing as he, whereas she could claim no loftier

status than being the solitary offspring of a marriage between a

hotheaded Irish merchant and a gracious English lady.

"Impudent little peasant," countesses had been inclined to whisper

whenever Maurice had swept her around in a promenade.
 
Yet the wealth of

her father probably would have staggered the wits of selfexalted

aristocrats who were so eager to boast of their highly esteemed titles

but in truth could lay claim to very little of actual monetary worth.

Maurice, on the other hand, had not only been heir to the vast fortunes,

estates, and title of his late father, the Marquess of Merlonridge,

Phillip du Mercer, he was atso the grandson of Edith du Mercer, a most

formidable matron and protectress of a lineage well fortified with

impeccable credentials.

Still, if the copious bribe which had been offered to her by the elder