The East Indiaman Read online

  The boy’s expression grew crestfallen. ‘Why I dunno sir… but he’s big, sir, big as a house, sir.’

  ‘That big?’ remarked Kite with a wry smile at the lad’s resourcefulness.

  ‘Well, p’r’aps not quite as big as that but bloody big for a man, sir.’

  Kite sighed. He had enough on his mind and he fished in his pocket. He produced some coin and dropped four pennies into the boy’s out-stretched hand. ‘Tell the gentleman that I have no business with him, but I have no wish to rob you.’

  The lad looked at the money and grinned. ‘May I tell him where you’re lodging, sir, in case he asks?’

  Kite laughed at the boy’s cunning. ‘And how much will you sell that intelligence for, I wonder, eh? I’m for Vidler’s Yard and the Liverpool mail, my lad, but it’s no good coming after me. You may tell him that too.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ said the grinning youth, touching his forehead and dodging off through the crowd of passers-by.

  Kite watched for a moment and then turned to walk westwards. What a pitiful place the world was, he mused, with every jack out to trade to advantage off his fellow, and what a relative thing wealth was, to be sure. That pot-boy was happy with his four-pence while he, Captain William Kite, ship-owner of Liverpool, considered himself ruined with only five thousand pounds to his name!

  Less four-pence, he added as a rueful afterthought; less four-pence.

  Kite did not arrive at Vidler’s Yard until much later, for he had had first to return to his lodgings and collect his effects. Now a porter followed him in anticipation of a small fee and Kite contemplated his much diminished fortune dwindling by another four-pence or so before he escaped from the stink and clamour of London. He had hoped to be in the city longer, but it was clear he could expect nothing from the Honourable East India Company. He had just sufficient funds to purchase an interest in one of their vessels, but it was clear the Bengal Club had no interest in absorbing a North-Countryman who was teetering on hard-times. The excuse advanced by Woolnough and Drysdale, that he was too late to invest in the year’s expedition to the east, was no more than an unsubtle dismissal. He had owned ships too long himself to know they were simply brushing his offer aside. No doubt they were fully capitalised and had no wish to diminish their profits. Well, perhaps they had a point, Kite thought, for he shuddered at the thought of helping these city gentry spread any losses. God knew he had taken more than sufficient himself!

  ‘We have sound backing, Captain Kite,’ Drysdale had said, ‘and are content with our associates whose influence and investment is considerable.’

  ‘You Liverpool men are unfamiliar with our methods,’ Woolnough had added and Kite had been stung to retort:

  ‘Aye, because we have no opportunity to do so, nor do we have the protection of Their Lordships at the Admiralty in Whitehall.’

  Drysdale and Woolnough had shrugged wearily. ‘That is not our affair, Captain,’ they had said, before wishing him well with a false courtesy that eased him towards the door.

  ‘Damn them,’ Kite had said but now, as he thought of returning to Liverpool and breaking the news to Sarah, his heart sank. It was not for himself that he grieved, but for her and the beautiful child she had borne him. He had come south full of high hopes and optimism, for a man must buoy himself up when he is near ruin. There was no tax on anticipation. But the world had been kicking him in the teeth for too long for him to sustain such hopes much longer. Ever since had had been hunted for a murder he had never committed, he had thought fate indifferent to him. He could have borne such indifference if it were not for the fact that others seemed to profit against all odds. He had lost Puella, his first wife, a beautiful black woman who had given him two sons, both of whom had died in infancy. Now he feared that he had blighted the life of his second wife, a Rhode Island loyalist whom he had married before this wretched rebellion of the American colonists broke out. God, what a damnable mess the world was in with Burgoyne’s army incarcerated in North America and the English Channel, North and Irish Seas full of conceited Yankee privateersmen!

  ‘Cap’n Kite! Cap’n Kite!’

  The sound of his name being called out broke into his thoughts as he swung into Vidler’s Yard. A crowd of passengers gathered round the black and maroon mail coaches assembled there. Ostlers were busy putting the six-strong horse teams in their traces, and the smell of anumals and dung were pungent in the warm air of the August afternoon.

  ‘Cap’n Kite! Cap’n Kite!’

  ‘Who wants him?’ Kite called out, looking round and catching sight of a face that was now familiar to him. Since Kite had last seen him, the pot-boy had shed his apron and donned a scruffy coat and cap, but he danced up to Kite with an expression of relief on his face.

  ‘Cap’n Kite, sir, where have you been? I’ve been here an age awaiting for you.’

  Dragged from his melancholy thoughts by the sight of the importunate young man, Kite regarded him with a not unkindly smile. ‘And what’s it to you, cully? May a gentleman not go where he pleases?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, sir, and a street urchin too,’ the lad cheekily responded.

  ‘Well then, why d’you hound me?’ Kite asked. ‘Surely not for another thruppence?’

  ‘’Twas four-pence the last-time, sir.’

  ‘You have a true cockney cheek and I am out of sorts with your citizenry,’ Kite said. ‘Now tell me what it is you want, young shaver?’

  ‘I have to ask you if you will please to wait upon a Mr Hooker who has taken rooms only a short walk from here in Gravitt’s Yard.’

  Kite shook his head. ‘I have a seat booked in the Liverpool mail. I am sorry to disappoint this Mr Hooker…’

  ‘I am told to insist, sir.’ The boy stood his ground with a fierce expression.

  ‘What is your name, boy?’

  ‘Jack, sir, Jack Bow.’

  ‘Well Master Jack Bow, do you tell your paymaster that Captain Kite is his own man, at least for the time being…’

  Then a thought struck Kite; he had already concluded that he must return to sea himself, and give up all hope of restoring his fortunes by any means other than plying the trade he knew best, that of a ship-master. He feared that, with the losses of ships from Liverpool, he would be unable to find an employer willing to give him a vessel, despite his reputation as a privateer commander. That had been long-overtaken by his ill-luck as a ship-owner. The capitalists of Liverpool did not like even an oblique connection with ill-luck, particularly in such ill-starred times with Yankee letters of marque skulking under every headland round the coast. But suppose this Hooker was a ship-owner? A London ship-owner who might be seeking him for the purpose of offering him a ship. Of course he would have to return to Liverpool and square matters with Sarah, but this Jack Bow had called him Captain Kite, so Hooker had clearly made some enquiries.

  Kite pulled out his watch and looked from it to the boy who had noted the hesitation in his quarry and waited expectantly.

  ‘Were d’you say this Hooker is, Jack Bow?’

  ‘Follow me, sir,’ responded the boy eagerly, with a grin of unfeigned delight. Kite motioned the porter to follow and, with a sigh, set off in the lad’s wake.

  Chapter Three

  The Nabob

  Kite’s surge of optimism proved momentary. Gravitt’s Yard turned out to be a mean court-yard, reached through an archway of damp brick, flagged with uneven paving and surrounded by tall tenements from which numerous indeterminate smells emanated. From open windows came too the noises of a population long inured to a lack of privacy, a fact emphasised by a variety of apparel that hung to dry or air in an atmosphere that never, thanks to the precipitous nature of the architecture, felt the warmth of direct sunlight. With a plummeting heart Kite followed Jack Bow into a black opening which boasted a door of uncertain age, but which suggested by the rubbish swept up across its foot that it was never closed. They clattered up several flights of bare wooden stairs. On one landing a pair of grubby children squatted, the
ir large eyes following Kite and Bow as they passed. Approaching the top floor where the gloom eased, relieved by a filthy skylight above the stairwell, they were confronted by two Indians in white coats and turbans, but Jack shoved past them and, running up the final flight stopped outside another door.

  Jack knocked, then turned and grinned self-importantly at Kite.

  ‘I thought you worked at the Ship and Turtle,’ Kite remarked as he stared apprehensively around the dark and fetid landing, his heart pounding at the speed of their ascent.

  ‘I did, sir, until this afternoon when Mr Hooker promised me a berth upon the first ship he has,’ Bow answered and Kite raised an eyebrow. So, both he and this scruffy urchin were reduced to the same supplicant status. What a pass; thank God none of his Liverpool acquaintances could see him now!

  ‘It would seem, Master Bow, that your new employer has departed and left us both in the lurch,’ Kite remarked as the porter finally caught up with them, panting with the effort of lugging Kite’s portmanteaux up five flights of steep stairs.

  ‘Sir, I hope…’ But what the porter hoped was not known, for at that moment the door outside which they waited was suddenly alive with the thudding of drawn bolts and, a moment later Kite was confronted with the enormous figure of Mr Hooker and a nauseatingly sickly odour.

  ‘Captain Kite, how good of you to come and I do apologise for the importunity of my conduct in sending young Jack here in pursuit of you. Do come in sir, do come in, and please do not be deceived by appearances. This humble apartment is but a posting stage, sir, an ephemeral moment on life’s journey…’

  Hooker backed into a narrow passage as he delivered himself of this assertion and, as Bow stood aside, Kite motioned the porter to deposit his bag, paid the man a generous shilling. Kite reluctantly entered the establishment, half falling over a small spaniel at his feet.

  ‘Come sir, do you follow me.’ Hooker withdrew followed by the dog whose claws pattered on the bare boards. Kite hesitated a moment as Bow lifted his portmanteaux over the threshold and then found himself shoved unceremoniously deeper into the passageway. A moment later the door was closed and Kite felt a sudden surge of alarm, as though he had been put in gaol.

  He almost gagged at the smell of the air but them Bow hissed, ‘You’ll get used to it, sir,’ with a solicitude Kite found disconcerting. With an effort he mastered the nausea that rose threateningly in his throat, coughed and followed Hooker and his stinking dog.

  Hooker led Kite into a room which opened onto the inner courtyard. Being on the top floor, it was flooded with light from the westering sun which streamed in through the uncurtained windows which were mercifully opened. It took Kite a moment to adjust to this, but when he had regarded his surroundings he was at least partially mollified.

  Two brocaded upright chairs stood on a square of carpet Kite recognised as being of Indian manufacture. They were incongruously out of place in such a squalid setting, but hinted that perhaps Hooker’s circumstances were indeed temporary and that these items of furniture and furnishing were all that he could bring with him. But as suddenly as this thought had occurred to Kite, Hooker turned and interposed his massive bulk between his guest and much of the window. As Hooker held out an indicating arm, the altered light threw a corner of the room into almost theatrical illumination.

  As Kite’s gaze was automatically attracted to it, partly by this relative shift in the value of the light in the room and partly by his host’s gesture, he was even more astonished. For alongside a door which appeared to lead into another room, stood a wide couch upon which reclined a gaudily bedizened woman whom Kite saw from her bare feet upwards as he traversed his gaze to penetrate the darker corner of the chamber. Her bare feet were in full sunlight, the golden rings adorning her toes gleaming, as did the gilded thread woven into the hem of her flowing scarlet skirt. But then the figure receded into increasing shadow, so that the bangles upon her naked lower arms showed only high-lights, while the lavish adornment about her neck, and the stone that showed in her nose, seemed no brighter than the whites of her dark eyes.

  ‘My wife, Captain Kite…’

  Kite covered his astonishment with a low and well-footed bow. ‘Your servant, ma’am.’

  Without a word the woman inclined her head in acknowledgement and with a faint rattling of gold and silver adornments, drew her head scarf partially across her lower face in a gesture of modesty that to Kite’s heightened awareness, struck him as being at once and quite ridiculously coquettish.

  ‘Do please sit down sir, sit down.’

  Hooker continued to sweep his gesturing hand round to indicate one of the chairs before flicking his coat-tails out from his bottom and lowering himself into the other. It groaned faintly under his weight, the spaniel leapt into his lap and Kite gingerly lowered himself into his chair.

  ‘It is my intention to leave for Liverpool, Mr Hooker,’ Kite said pointedly and restraining a hand that reached instinctively for his watch. ‘I regret that I do not have much time…’

  Hooker held up his hand and Kite noticed a ring in which was set a large emerald. At least Kite supposed it was an emerald, as Hooker’s words rather than his suspect jewellery, claimed Kite’s attention. ‘You will not, I think, wish to rush off too precipitately, Captain Kite, once you have heard all I have to say to you. I shall have Jack here run back and re-engage your lodgings for tonight…’

  ‘No!’ Kite almost shouted. ‘No, forgive me sir, but I am set upon the matter.’ He took out his watch, consulted it and added, ‘I may give you ten minutes, after which I insist that Jack carries my dunnage back to Vidler’s Yard…’

  ‘If you insist, Captain,’ Hooker cut in, ‘then let us waste no more time on the pleasantries.’ He clicked his hands and a moment later a turbanned Indian servant wearing a plain, high-necked white coat, done up to the neck, his feet as bare as his mistresses’, stood before Kite with a glass of wine.

  Astonished at the sudden manifestation, Kite took the glass and was compelled to listen to Hooker who had abruptly thrown off his prolix, over-courteous manner and spoke with a rapid intensity, leaning forward every few moments to lend emphasis to a point so that Kite realised with a shock that it was he and not his wretched spaniel, that stank to high heaven.

  ‘Quite fortuitously, I know a little of you, sir, having read of your recent loss in the newspapers. Perhaps I may have some consolation for you if you can overcome your prejudice and stay a little longer than the ten minutes you have allowed me to make my case, but let that pass. Pray heed me sir, for what I have to say may not be life and death to you, but it may prove so to me. Yet I cannot suppose that your own circumstances today are so very much different from my own…’

  ‘If you would come to the point,’ Kite interjected, a slight edge to his voice.

  ‘Of course. I myself have been a petitioner at the East India house in recent days, Captain Kite,’ Hooker went on. ‘I do not know your own business, but mine was to seek to invest a considerable sum in this year’s fleets. I had thought that the present difficulties arising from the war with the American Colonies would have made investors shy of such an undertaking, and my approach most welcome. Unfortunately I was wrong and there are sufficient interests vested in the India and the China fleets to entertain prejudices against me as a man of no substance in this fair and inequitable city.’ Hooker swept his arm about his mean lodgings. ‘It is true that our current circumstances may lead you to suppose that I have no means, but this is a calculated deception. I tell you this, Captain Kite because,’ and here Hooker’s heavily jowled and sweating face broke into an oddly engaging smile, ‘I conceive you a man of honour and, in any case, if you are on the Liverpool mail this evening you can do me and my humble menage little harm.

  ‘There is, however, a quantity of cash in my possession amounting to the equivalent of forty-five thousand pounds… Ah, I see you have taken notice of your humble servant at last.’ Hooker smiled again, sipped his wine and resumed. Kite nodded. He
had found a faint current of fresh air wafting in through the open window and was feeling less faint. As if accompanying this change in his circumstances Mrs Hooker moved with a shimmer of gorgeous silks.

  ‘Now, Captain Kite, I brought this small fortune out of India, intending to retire to this country of my forefathers but alas I have an old enemy who, hearing of my arrival, has seen fit to poison the minds of those whom I thought to be my neighbours and I have decided to return to Calcutta. My wife, being a high-caste Brahmin, is not disappointed since she finds this city oppressive and the countryside, where we had hoped to reside, not to her liking. All this being the case,’ Hooker went on as if his wife was a thousand miles away, ‘I wished to invest my money at the same time as entrusting myself and my family, effects and household, to the East India Company in order to return to India. I suffered too much of anxiety on the voyage hither to London to wish to repeat the process in reverse. In addition I have no desire to hazard my entire capital and expose it to seizure by any American, French or Spanish privateers. Their activity has greatly increased of late, a fact of which I have no need to remind you. Instead I wished to invest it, thus removing the risk of its loss and the augmentation of the sum. Alas, however, the Directors in the wisdom of their self-interest, have rejected my advance and I am compelled to seek out assistance from another source.

  ‘Now sir, you may consider my importuning you in this way and regaling you with my private woes as a story so incredible as to not warrant your consideration and to only earn your contempt. But the truth is that I conceive my stumbling over you as remarkably providential and it occurred in this wise.

  ‘As I remarked, I read of the loss of your vessel, the Sea Lyon I recall, and that she was the last of your ships, the others all having been taken in recent months. That I think, was what impressed you name upon my mind and sharpened my desire to protect my own assets when I return to India.