Sea Witch (7 page)

Eight

For Tiola and Jenna, a living had to be made. The revenue from selling Mother’s jewellery would not last forever, nor when Captain Rogers had finally decided to make sail for England, had his generous patronage been of further use. He had been content to pay for their board and lodging in lieu of Jenna’s medicinal skills – Tiola’s in reality, but she had thought a man such as Rogers would not contemplate receiving treatment from a girl. Easier for all parties if Tiola assisted Jenna and made pretence it was the older woman who possessed the skill.

With only a few days left before the money ran out, and a roof over their heads consequently about to be denied them, the solution was solved by chance coincidence – or ordained providence?

Jenna, not as adventurous as the younger Tiola, tended to use the wider and safer main streets or the East India Company market for food and provisions. Tiola found the maze of alleyways more fascinating to explore, although knowing Jenna disapproved, rarely told of where she had been. Here, the scum of Cape Town scrabbled a living by plying their trades; here, the beggars and whores, the thieves and charlatans eked a meagre existence of day to day drudged survival. Elsewhere, near the grandeur of the fort and the V.O.C. gardens were the well-to-do houses, the estates of the rich merchants and traders, ship owners, slavers. The wealthy. Tiola preferred the honesty of the poor.

Most of them were thieves and scoundrels out for all they could get for free, ready to rob as soon as look at you, but they had honour among their own and judged people for what they were, not for what they alluded to be. Those fat profiteers in their mansions, with their acres of estates, their bulging purses and their conceit? Tiola wanted nothing to do with them, although she realised Jenna would be doing all she could to encourage such acquaintances. Tiola was a gentleman’s daughter and would, in Jenna’s dutiful opinion, soon be needing a gentleman as a husband. Father? A gentleman? A respected clergyman, a man with an outer veneer of honest decency? More like a man diseased by mouldering rot!

Early morning found Tiola scrambling over a pile of mildewed cabbage leaves attempting to catch an injured cat. She had been stalking the mangy creature for several days, anxious that the bloodied maggoty ear needed attention. Jenna had scoffed, saying it would be best to leave the animal to die, one less of the caterwauling little pests would be a blessing. Tiola, as usual, ignored her.

She lunged, caught the cat’s tail. He turned yowling his fury and scratched her hand, but she held tight, bundling him quickly into the scrap of sacking she had brought for the purpose. Wrapping it around his body she inspected the ear. Most of it was missing.

“Been fighting have you Tom? You need to move quicker on your paws lad, if you are going to survive that game.” Tucking him into a secure grip she turned for home, the single room they would soon be having to vacate on the top floor at the rear of the
Golden Hind
tavern.

In places the alleys were no more than corridors between buildings, most of them piled with accumulated debris blown there by the persistent wind. Rats scurried, the smell of rot and sewage nauseating. She turned left then right, aware this was the favoured area for the prostitutes, set near the taverns and the harbour. Sailors were not interested in walking far before they found their eager-awaited entertainment.

She had been accosted on several occasions in these back streets, grappled by men assuming she was a working girl looking for custom. One, this morning, had been blind drunk, easy to push to the ground and leave lying in the garbage, legs and arms waving helplessly as if he were a beetle on its back.

For another she had used her skill of Voice. “
I am not for you. Be on your way
.” And he had shambled off looking puzzled, half remembering something that for some reason now eluded him.

The cat was wriggling; Tiola was concentrating on keeping the wild thing confined within the sacking, on not getting scratched again or bitten, then stopped, cocked her head, listening intently.

“Help me!” A desperate plea, faint but urgent. Tiola let the cat go, the moth-eaten tabby streaking off the way they had come. She backtracked a few yards and peered up a dead-end passage providing a rear entrance to a tavern and a storehouse. It was littered with the usual heaps of strewn rubbish – but at the far end a woman huddled against a brick wall. Not a woman, a girl, not much younger than herself. Thirteen perhaps? A girl with blood and urine staining her petticoats and ragged gown. The girl groaned, sank to her knees, her suffering blowing through her lips and rising into a scream as her arms clutched around her abdomen.

Tiola glanced up and down for aid; this was a rarely used alley. No one was in sight or within hailing distance. What to do?

~ You know what to do. ~
The guiding voice of her grandmother, and of all her grandmothers, sharing their knowledge of Craft.

She ran to the girl, put her arms around her shoulders, smoothed aside her sweat-soaked hair. “I am here to help. Be easy, dear-heart.” Unobtrusively, Tiola lifted the drape of the girl’s clothes, peeped beneath. “For how long have you been like this?”

“Don’t know. I’ve ‘ad pain in m’ belly all night. I’m s’posed to be fetchin’ the bread. Stopped ‘ere, couldn’t go nay further.” The girl issued another scream. “What’s wrong with me?” she cried. “Am I dyin’?”

“What is wrong? By the Deep, child, you are having a baby!”

The girl said nothing, her face blank, not understanding.

Do I know how to deal with this on my own?
Tiola thought, doubting herself.
I am not many years older than this girl.

~ You are as old as the stars and the seas. You know what to do. ~
The voice of her ancestors again; her creators and mentors. Their combined wisdom passed down through the generations to accumulate in Tiola.

The girl scrunched her face, began to strain, bearing down.

“No, do not push yet, your baby is not ready.”

“I’ve got to! It ‘urts somethin’ terrible!”

“Pant, short breaths – that’s it, good girl.” Again Tiola looked along the alley in hope of someone coming. No one. She would have to manage on her own. The child’s head was beginning to emerge. “We are nearly there, dear-heart.” She spoke calmly, hiding her anxiety. Working by instinct and what she had learnt on her maternal grandfather’s farm, she felt around its neck, was relieved to find it unencumbered by the cord.

“
Ais
, alright my lovely, a big push now, as hard as you can.”

Tiola eased the baby from the birth canal, tiny and sickly it lay limp and silent in her hands. She cleared its nose and mouth, and then tipped it upside down and with the ankles between her fingers, swung it sideways a few times as she would do with a lamb, smiled with elation as the infant filled its feeble lungs and emitted a thin, wailing cry.

“You have a daughter, a little girl.” Tiola removed the ribbon that secured her hair in a single braid, tied the umbilical cord and with the knife she carried at her hip, cut it. Reaching for the sack intended for the cat – not clean but better than nothing – she wrapped the baby in it, gave her into her mother’s arms.

The girl was bewildered, but smiling. “She’m beau’iful ain’t she?”

“
Ais
, yes, that she is.” The afterbirth, the lining of the womb, came away. Deftly, Tiola spread it, checked it was whole. Anything left behind would turn putrid, could cause death for the mother.

“What is this? What is going on here?”

From where she was squatting, Tiola stared up into the frowning face of a middle-aged, plump woman, dressed well, if gaudily.

“Thank the Lady someone has come,” Tiola said, rising to her feet. “I found her in labour, she has delivered a girl. I am not certain if I did everything correct.”

Immediately, the woman became concerned, took charge. Found to her surprise the makeshift midwife had been highly competent.

“She did not appear to know she was pregnant,” Tiola explained as the woman removed her shawl and put it around the mother and child, already muzzling for her first essential milk.

“She’d not be, dear, she’s simple in the head poor lass. Don’t often know her own name. I suggest we get her to my place, make her comfortable then go in search of her pa. Though after this, I reckon he’ll say he’s had enough of her.”

“Will he turn her on to the streets?”

“Probably, that’s where most of them end up, dear. Or floating face down in the harbour.” The woman handed the baby to Tiola then lifted the girl into her own arms. “My place is around the corner, not far. I’m Bella Dubois. French mother, God knows who for a father.”

Her ‘place’ turned out to be a whorehouse, brick built, two storeys high. Inside, it was clean and tidy if vulgar in decor. On the ground floor larger, communal rooms where clients could play cards or dice, drink whatever their fancy before making use of the opulent bedchambers above.

Bella called two women in their mid-twenties, who cooed and fussed and chattered, and took the mother and baby to private rooms at the rear, the proprietress’s own as Tiola discovered when she was also invited through.

“You managed well, dear,” Bella applauded as she poured herself a generous brandy. “Where did you learn your skill?”

Tiola offered a truthful answer. “I grew up on a farm.”

A shrewd woman, Bella regarded her thoughtfully. This girl knew more than how to bring a few lambs or calves into the world. She came straight out with what was on her mind. “We have no midwife in this quarter of Cape Town, last one died two months back of fever. I care for my girls; in our line of work there are often babes born.” Direct to the point, added, “You are young, dear, but you obviously have a talent. Do you know for instance, how to get a dead babe from its nest? How to deliver a child born backside first or upside down? How to stop a baby being made or be rid of one not wanted?”

Giving an enigmatic smile in response Tiola replied, “Should the answer be
ais
, yes, what would there be in it for myself and my guardian, Miss Pendeen?”

“There could be lodging for you both. At a cheap rent.”

The offer was wonderful, but Tiola had no intention of sounding too eager too soon. “I intend no disrespect Ma’am, Jenna would not concede to live in a brothel. We are respectable people. My late father was a clergyman.” She did not add what else he had been.

Bella Dubois ducked her head over her shoulder. “There are two spare rooms upstairs, with their own entrance out the back. You would be welcome to those. They need cleaning out, mind, I have been using them as store rooms.”

Tiola haggled. “The rent would be waived? In return, any fee for your girls will not be expected.”

Knowing a good bargain when she heard one, Bella nodded consent. “Fair enough, dear.”

“Then
ais
,” Tiola answered, offering her hand to seal the bargain,

“I accept your offer. I know all those things you ask.” Thought,
And more
.

Nine

June – 1716

The
Salvation
, hove to in the long Atlantic swell three miles out from Nassau harbour, fell over yet another wave.

Christopher Columbus was a bloody fool to believe this was the eastern coast of Asia
, Jesamiah thought to himself as the ship beneath his widespread feet rolled truculently again, and the island on the horizon disappeared from his vision.
His navigation was only out by several thousand miles. The daft sod
.

Only the name,
Baja Mar
– Shallow Sea – acted as a reminder of that brief, Spanish possession. Finding more lucrative land further west, Spain had soon relinquished their claim on these flat, often barren isles. The present-day Spanish, however, had recently renewed their interest in the Bahama Islands.

Forget the fact that the Spanish had agreed and signed a treaty of peace with the British. Here in the Caribbean, documents signed in Europe held no sway. Spaniards continued to prey on English ships, while the English persisted in attacking treasure-laden Spanish galleons. And Nassau had become a haven for the pirates who needed somewhere to spend their hard won doubloons and pieces of eight. Rotting meat to buzzing flies. A safe, wide, beach on which to careen and carouse; a port to exchange plunder for silver coin to spend on women and drink. The few established landowners, tavern, and shopkeepers being only too happy to milk those of the Sweet Trade of all they had.

Twice already in the past few months Spanish ships had raided Nassau, their intention, to deal the drunken English a lesson and retrieve what they considered to be rightfully theirs. The crew of the
Salvation
, not remotely averse to relieving the royal appointed governor of his hoarded baubles, had elected to make a third attempt. A short, sharp raid; take what they can and leave. The fact they were not Spanish seemed neither here nor there.

Jesamiah’s luck had not deserted him. Two days out from Port Royal the severely listing sloop had almost been run down in thick mist by a brigantine. Glad to see the end of the leaking bucket, the men had climbed aboard and joined the crew, thankful to find the
Salvation
was a pirate craft. Had she been a Royal Navy vessel they would have either been pressed into service or hanged. Jesamiah had to relinquish his previous position as quartermaster and serve before the mast as able crew but he had no objection to hard work. Aboard a pirate ship they were brothers with a common cause; to hunt prey. Everything was shared equally, the work, the plunder. Unlike the Navy, they made their own rules and the few elected officers were there for practicality, nothing more.

Driven by the Trade Winds the Atlantic rolled beneath the keel as they waited for the moon to appear. The ship was wallowing, the almost non-existent breeze doing nothing to hold her steady as she lay in the star-studded darkness with her mizzen topsail backed. First, she lay right over until her gun tackles groaned with the pressure of holding the cannon in position and it was hard for men to stay upright on the sloping deck. For a few heart-stopping seconds she remained there, not moving, then slowly, so very slowly, she righted herself, only to roll as steeply down on the other side. The blocks holding everything securely in place protested, taking the strain as she tipped over in the opposite direction, everything stretched to the limit. Men cursed and muttered prayers until the swell had finished moving under her and she swung upward again, to repeat the whole process. Jesamiah was hanging on to a secured belaying pin to stop himself from slipping down the deck and ignominiously landing on his backside in the scuppers.

From the quarterdeck the Captain, Jean de Cabo, a surly Frenchman, was watching the sky for the first hint of the rising moon. Only a fool would cross those sand bars into Nassau harbour in the dark. A full moon and a slow speed was chancy, but Jesamiah, Rue and this Captain had done it all before.

At last, a pale hint of silver on the horizon. De Cabo dipped his head once, an abrupt jerk. Said in French, “
Allez
, let us go.”

The crew cheered.

Thank God
, Jesamiah thought as he and other topmen scurried up the main mast to prepare to drop canvas. The helmsman turned the wheel and headed the ship into the waves, causing her to pitch rather than roll. Pitching, Jesamiah could handle, rolling, even after all these years at sea, brought the contents of his stomach up into his gullet.

Only a few miles to cover and they crossed them easily the
Salvation
hoisting through one oncoming wave after another. Heaving her bow up to the sky she rolled her keel slightly before the pitch was completed, the forward-pointing spar of the bowsprit continuing to rise higher and higher until she managed to toss free and slide down the opposite side. Then her bow started its downward arc, the sea swirling beneath her, pushing her stern upwards as the tail end of the roller passed behind, while for’ard, the bow almost immediately began the next rise as she completed the corkscrew movement. Pitch, roll. Heave, roll. Jesamiah, balancing in bare feet on the ratlines slung beneath the main topsail yard was blissfully happy.

With the moon risen they had no difficulty crossing the sandbar. Ahead, spread along the beach, were the dying embers of campfires and the slumbering scatter of bothies, tents and shacks that formed the pirate snakepit of Nassau. Even the military fort to the far side of the harbour was partially derelict. A succession of corrupt governors had taken poor care of the place.

One hundred yards from the beach, with the
Salvation
flying British colours in case anyone should be watching, the anchor was let go and the bow came around, jerked at the end of the cable and faced into the waves. Unhurried, the longboat was lowered over the side and those chosen for the first part of the raid were pulling for shore. Jesamiah, dressed in a looted best coat, clean, white breeches and polished boots, stood in the stern, his left hand holding the hilt of a cutlass, also a prize from a raided ship. He touched his earring for luck. This was going to be so easy!

Jean de Cabo had not been enthusiastic about the plan, but when challenged by his crew to come up with a better one than Jesamiah’s, had reluctantly conceded. A short, skinny man with a permanent scowl on his wrinkled face, he sat apprehensive in the stern. If this went well, would the men decide Acorne would make for a better captain? Captains clung to the pride of their rank and title as determined as a drowning man grips a floating barrel. De Cabo shrugged, checked the two primed pistols thrust through his belt. There were ways of ensuring he kept his cherished position of authority.

Jesamiah stepped ashore, de Cabo, sullen, at his heels. Strolling together they sauntered along the wooden jetty towards the main street of the town. The first sign of life was a drunk, flat on his back, arms outstretched, mouth open, snoring. Jesamiah kicked him lightly with the toe of his boot. Kicked him harder. A snorted grunt, nothing more.

Nassau. The same as any other port. Ships at anchor, others heeled on their side, partially careened. Near the jetties a tramp of warehouses, chandlers’ bothies, rope-makers, sail menders. Water barrels, hogsheads for flour, fruit, vegetables and salted meat. Kegs of gunpowder, piles of hemp. Pots of paint…none of it tidy. This was a pirate haven, where all that mattered were the taverns and the brothels. There was one church which, judging by the smell as Jesamiah walked past up the hill, housed pigs.

The hush of the wind rustled through the trees scattering the moonlight into dancing shadows. A dog barked somewhere, was abruptly silenced after a high-pitched yelp. A cat slunk from behind a heap of sacking, a dead rat clamped between its jaws, the head drooping, tail dragging in the dust. Jesamiah grimaced. He had no liking for rats, not since the night he had found one, a huge male, bloody and decapitated, left by his brother between the sheets of his bed. He had made the mistake of shrieking his fear – well, he had been only five years old – and at least once a week after that there had been the remains of a dead rat left somewhere for him to find. Even on the day of his mother’s funeral, when he was almost fifteen years old, Phillipe had slipped a severed head into his coat pocket. Jesamiah had found it, searching for a kerchief while standing there at the graveside. Remembering, his hatred for Phillipe gorged into his throat as bile. One day he would take his revenge. One day he would stop thinking about it and actually do it. Abruptly, he pulled his mind back to the present.

At the main gate to the Governor’s house, a solitary guard, asleep. Jesamiah stepped across the inner courtyard and hammered on the worn and scratched oak door. After a long while a bleary-eyed servant, in need of a shave and a wash, shambled up from the kitchens to see who was making all the noise.

“I must see the Governor. I need immediate interview with him!” Jesamiah thrust past the sleep-muddled footman, striding into the gloom of what could have been an attractive hallway had it been cleaned occasionally of dust and cobwebs. One corner of the ceiling was mildewed, in another the plaster was cracked and peeling, everything looked and smelt shabby and neglected.

Fifteen minutes. Twenty, twenty-five. A man lumbered, yawning, down the stairs, Jesamiah noticing his stockings were silk and the buttons of his waistcoat were silver with a diamond inlay. Very pretty.

“M’dear fellow!” Jesamiah boomed heartily, affecting an upper class accent and bowing in extravagant formality. “Apologies for tipping ye from y’bed, I am in some grave dilemma and require urgent advice from someone of y’wisdom.”

The Governor, suspicious, peered at him through sleep-tainted eyes. “And you are, Sir?”

“Oake, Captain Jesamiah Oake of the vessel
Salvation
,” Jesamiah lied, sweeping a second bow for all the world as if he were some dandy come straight from the coffee houses of London. “This,” he indicated de Cabo, “is m’first officer; the fellow is French, but of the Huguenot persuasion so has as much antipathy towards the Frogs as do we.” He glanced around the hall, at the several official rooms leading from it. Lowering his voice he coughed and said, “Me enquiry don’t warrant being imparted in the draught of a doorway.”

From somewhere in the house a clock was chiming three. Made aware of his lack of manners the Governor reddened, ushered his guests up the stairs to his private quarters and shouted for breakfast to be brought.

“It is a little early, but once roused my stomach growls for sustenance. You will join me gentlemen?”

A free breakfast too? How delightful!

Seating himself at a scratched cherry-wood table Jesamiah explained his need. “As ye are aware, we sadly lost our dear Queen Anne some while ago, God rest her.”

Gravely, the Governor shook his head. “A sorry thing indeed. She was a good woman. I was at Court twice, don’t y’know?”

“Sixteen children she bore,” Jesamiah continued, ignoring the boasting. “Or was it seventeen? And not one of them surviving longer than their dear lady mother. No direct line of succession to call upon, o’course, leaving one hell of an Anne’s Fan between the Scots Stuarts who want their james as King, and the English Government who are in favour of George of Hanover. A man wholly devoid of charm and speaks only German I b’lieve. A King of England, who cannot utter a word in English, eh?” Jesamiah paused, allowing his inference to sink in. “When I sailed from Plymouth the Jacobites were about to rise in protest. I therefore need to know, Governor, whether their determination for civil war succeeded? Is King George overthrown?”

Spluttering indignation the Governor pushed his chair aside as he leapt to his feet. “If you are counselling I support rebellion, then you must think again! I am a loyal supporter of the Crown, and I beg you not to think otherwise!”

Placating him, Jesamiah patted the air with his hands. “Nay, nay sir, be seated, I merely ask because I have a gang of scrofulous Scotsmen on board who have been plaguing m’patience to drink the health of his Majesty King James, third of that name. Before I hang them for treason I need to know if they
are
treasonous. I’d look the fool were I t’set them decorating the yardarm only to discover Hanover had been plucked by the royal balls and sent back to Germany, would I not?” He chuckled, his fingers idly toying with the blue ribbon laced into his hair, his eyes lighting as the door opened. “Ah! Breakfast!”

Bacon, sausages, black pudding, kidneys – bread, churned butter and a jug of steaming, black coffee. It took barely fifteen minutes to empty the platters of the lot.

Patting his full belly, Jesamiah languidly stretched feeling the satisfying pull of muscles along his shoulders. “And now,” he said, abandoning the ridiculous accent as he calmly removed a pistol from his belt, half cocking the hammer as he did so. “I have the second part of my business to complete. The first was interesting, but I confess I have no care whatsoever for which fat bastard sets his backside on the throne. One is, no doubt, as bad as the other.” He pointed the pistol at the Governor and clicked the hammer full home.

De Cabo, who had uttered few words beyond a few grunts of response to Jesamiah’s occasional translations, also rose and went to stand beside the door in case anyone should enter, his own brace of pistols drawn and cocked.

“We require very little from you, my dear Governor,” Jesamiah continued pleasantly. “Merely the contents of your treasury. The breakfast we thank you for, an unexpected bonus.”

The Governor scrabbled to his feet with all affability gone. Jesamiah lowered the pistol and pointed it at the man’s groin. “We will have what we came for mate, with or without you in one piece to witness it. I can as easily shoot you now, as later.” He smiled, menacingly, waved the weapon to emphasise his meaning. “Now what is it to be, eh? The cache of treasure you have accumulated, or your more personal package? Do I remove the private tool and tackle kept so snugly in your breeches?”

“Damned Jacobite! You will never get out of the harbour!” the Governor spluttered anger. His face suffused scarlet.