The East Indiaman Read online

  Kite sighed and smiled. ‘Would you truly splice your entire life to mine?’

  ‘’Tis what I promised before God.’

  But Kite had little thought for God, though he looked kindly upon his wife. He was more worried about matters temporal than spiritual. He wanted to convince himself that Sarah was right and that he was fretting unnecessarily. Truth to tell, he had slept badly ever since returning to Liverpool from London. Disturbed by dreams in which phantasms reminiscent of Puella merged with fleshy images of Mrs Hooker, where pale mounds of inviting flesh divided to reveal dark pits of pleasure, he woke sweating in the half-light of dawn beset by guilt. Were these plaguing succubae manifestations of his own inner torment, or the warnings of fate? Though they might fade in the cold light of day, their power to unsettle him remained potent, simultaneously stirring the lusts of his ageing manhood and leaving him unmanned and trembling like a terrified child left alone in the night.

  These carnal phantasmagoria soon withered, to be replaced by the horrors of his situation and the inexorable loom of financial ruin. Along with images of his corpulent Antiguan partner Wentworth, and his sexually rapacious wife Kitty, whose bodies were now rotting, Kite lay abed in the dawn miserable with apprehension. He had a child again now, a small and perfect daughter whose existence depended upon the success of her father’s enterprises and these were failing fast. Since the loss of Sea Lyon, his only commercial triumph had been the rather shameful extraction of two hundred pounds from Hooker’s purse. Before travelling to London he had already put the refitting of Spitfire in hand, hoping to charter her to one of the several Liverpool consortia still game to send privateers to sea. He had had no plans to take her to sea himself, but now, it seemed, fate ordained otherwise.

  Apart from the few thousand pounds he had been willing to invest in an East India voyage, he had little left. He had taken most of the risk of his own vessels himself and their loss yielded him no fat compensation from under-writers. There would be men on the Liverpool Exchange who would delight in his downfall. Jasper Watkinson his former clerk, and Frith, with whom Kite had fallen out some years earlier, would delight in his downfall The news was already circulating that Captain Kite had lost his last commercial vessel to the Yankees.

  As he lay and stared up at the ceiling, he thought of all those who depended upon him. Men had already died in his service, victims of the war at sea; their families hovered on the brink of destitution, though Sarah had done her best for them. Now there was the matter of his clerks and the stevedore who worked for him, his house-keeper, the maid and Bandy Ben, the odd-job man and messenger who could scarcely string a sentence together but who could manipulate numbers with an amazing speed. All these desperate souls looked to him for their living and it was beyond his powers to see how he could satisfy their hungry mouths for longer than a few more weeks.

  Kite lay thus in the growing daylight, harrowed by anxiety, until an uneasy sleep took him for an hour into a blessed oblivion.

  None of this was in any way obvious the following morning when the Kites’ housekeeper, Mrs O’Riordan, brought news of the early arrival of the guests. Siobhan O’Riordan displayed a quite proper irritation, unintimidated by the huge size of the man standing upon the doorstep, his wig slightly awry and his wide coat-tails waving in the wind blowing up from the River Mersey.

  ‘The Master’s not expecting you until tomorrow,’ she protested, staring past the bulk of the man and catching the first whiff of Hooker’s body odour as she saw the cavalcade of five coaches that lined the street. Mrs O’Riordan had not quite believed what Kite had told her to expect and the sight of an entourage as big as this ugly, smelly bear of a man took her by surprise.

  ‘Please step inside and I shall let the Master know of your arrival.’

  Leaving Hooker in the hall and passing through the kitchen with a hissed aside to Maggie to ‘clap yer eyeball to yon keyhole and watch the fella.’ Then she passed through into the long salle d’armes Kite had had built along one wall of the garden and where he and his wife were accustomed to exercise with foils. Sarah was considered eccentric in this, though men forgave her most things when she smiled and the ladies of her acquaintance shrugged off such an odd accomplishment with a shudder and the observation that she was from America where a woman had to protect herself against the Iroquois or the Mohawks, or other red men whose designs on a white female were not to be imagined.

  Mrs O’Riordan watched her employers for a moment, thinking that while Captain Kite was a fine figure of a man despite the ugly disfigurement of the mask, it was somehow demeaning that he should be in full retreat from his wife. To be sure Sarah Kite was a kind and considerate mistress, but Mrs O’Riordan, though entertaining no love for the English en masse, nevertheless liked to know where she stood. Moreover, Sarah Kite was too unpredictable to occupy the unequivocal status of an English gentlewoman in Siobhan O’Riodran’s estimation. Why, look at the body! Just like a young man in those tight breeches! She had seen a few fast women wear breeches for riding and, thank Jesus, Mary and all the Saints, Mistress Kite still favoured a skirted habit and the sideways saddle when she rode a horse herself. But seeing her shamelessly prancing up and down this strip of canvas why, her round backside was too large for such a thing!

  The fierce clash of blades was so swift that Mrs O’Riordan could not make out what was happening beyond noting the fact that the Captain was falling back fast before his wife’s onslaught. In a moment or two he would come up against the far wall with a jarring crash but then she watched, quite forgetting the big man waiting for her in the hall, as Kite stood his ground and quickly parried his wife’s lunge.

  They were body to body now, and Mrs O’Riordan ached to put a bet on the outcome, but dare not think of such a thing for it was shameful to think of the Captain being beaten by a woman, even if that woman was his wife. No, by God! That made it all a thousand times worse!

  Suddenly the clash of blades stopped. Both parties seemed locked together in an hiatus, foil pressed against foil, their bodies motionless apart from the expansion and contraction of their chests as they drew breath. Mrs O’Riordan recalled her purpose and seized her moment.

  ‘Your guests is here, Cap’n!’ she called and Kite’s head, his face masked, turned towards her.

  ‘What? Hooker?’

  ‘That’s what he calls himself, Cap’n.’

  ‘Bring him through, Mrs O’Riordan, bring him through.’ Then Kite addressed his wife. ‘Well you haven’t hit me, Sarah, is it a draw, or shall we resume?’

  Mrs O’Riordan hesitated, wanting to see what these two would do now.

  ‘It most certainly is not a draw! Come, do your worst.’

  With a shout, Kite thrust his wife bodily from him so that she fell back three steps before catching her balance. Before she could come en garde, Kite was attacking and she fell back with a quick succession of deft parries. Satisfied, Mrs O’Riordan retired herself, smacking Maggie’s rump as the maid bent at the keyhole, remarking that ‘the two fools are playing at soldiers when the whole household knows there’s not’ing but ruination and penury for all of us.’

  The bout was still in full swing when Mrs O’Riordan led Hooker through her own domain and into the salle.

  ‘You’ll have to wait ’til they’ve finished, sir,’ she said, ‘when one of them thinks they’ve killed the other they’ll see you’re here.’

  But it was almost all over. As Sarah, again pressing Kite hard, forced him backwards and then made what she thought would be a triumphant thrust. Kite executed a circular parry, bound her blade and with a vicious flick of his wrist, tore the foil from Sarah’s grip so that it spun to one side and landed with a clatter two yards from Hooker’s feet. With a ponderous groan he bent and picked it up. Holding it hilt first towards Sarah he bowed.

  ‘Josiah Hooker at your service, Ma’am.’

  Sarah removed her mask and shook her hair. Her face was flushed and gleaming with sweat, yet she squared up to Hooker
without demur. ‘Mr Hooker’, she replied bobbing a curtsey and recovering her foil, ‘you are most kind’. She flashed him a devastating smile and added, ‘my husband hates to lose.’

  Watching, Kite saw the look of admiration cross Hooker’s face, following the first astonishment at her beauty.

  As she drew her breath, Sarah inhaled Hooker’s strangely repulsive odour and fell back a step. Hurriedly removing his own mask, Kite came forward and shook Hooker’s hand.

  ‘We are practising, Mr Hooker, for our lives may depend upon it.’

  ‘Please Captain, do call me Josiah.’

  ‘Very well, and I am William and you have already met my wife Sarah. Come,’ Kite gestured at the door, ‘let us go through and welcome you properly. Where is your wife?’

  ‘She remains in my carriage…’

  ‘And you have your servants and the dacoits?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Then we had better get them quartered.’

  ‘And your ship?’

  ‘My schooner, Josiah,’ Kite said pointedly. ‘Tomorrow you shall see the Spitfire. You should not expect too much of her either.’

  ‘I will go and welcome your wife, Mr Hooker.’

  ‘Josiah, please, Sarah.’

  ‘And what is her name, Josiah?’

  ‘I call her by an English name, my dear,’ Hooker said with presumptuous familiarity. ‘Rose.’

  ‘How charming,’ said Sarah, flicking her husband a quick look and wrinkling her nose as she left the two men.

  During the remainder of that day Kite’s household was in turmoil as Mrs O’Riordan moved with a frantic resolution from one minor crisis to another in accommodating what she quickly denominated ‘the flashy heathen’. The exotic Mrs ‘Rose’ Hooker had two attendant maids, said to be wives to the head dacoit, while Hooker had his turbanned ‘boy’. As for the dacoit body-guards, they were found an upper floor in Kite’s counting-house. This had formerly been used for the storage of small parcels of valuable cargo but, so far had Kite’s business already collapsed, it was now empty. As for the heavy, iron-bound chest which Hooker had brought with him and which contained his putative fortune, this was lodged in the bed-room assigned to Hooker and his wife. Regarding the transfer of this heavy item, handled by two dacoits, Kite reflected that his own future might very well lie inside its pad-locked and studded carapace.

  By late afternoon, when Kite and Sarah, Hooker and the inimitable Rose sat down to dine, a sort of order had returned to the ship-owner’s house. All seemed to augur well, despite the unexpectedly early arrival of the Hooker ménage. As Kite joined his wife in bed she said, ‘You did not tell me he stank. How in God’s name can we share the quarters of the Spitfire with such a man?’

  Kite sighed and he shook his head as he eased himself down between the warmed sheets. ‘I do not know; all I know is that beggars cannot be choosers.’

  ‘Are matters that dire?’

  Kite nodded, leaning over to blow out the bedside candles. ‘Yes,’ he announced to the sudden darkness. ‘They are dire indeed.’

  ‘Then we shall have to bear things as they are until they get better,’ Sarah said, drawing close to him.

  ‘Will they ever get better, Sarah?’ he asked, his voice catching with emotion. ‘All my life, it seems, I have been lifted up by fate just high enough to see a bright future, only to have such dazzling opportunities dashed from my grasp. Sometimes I wish I had never left the Lakes and had been hanged for a murder I did not commit.2’

  ‘Don’t be foolish William,’ Sarah said sharply. ‘You would never have come to America and we should never have met. Besides, it is not for you to order providence. The worth of a person, man or woman, is not how they rise in life, but how they withstand the onslaughts of fate. You pin too much hope on your enterprises…’

  ‘But a man must, Sarah! Why else should he get out of bed each morning but in expectation of a small improvement in his life? Even the meanest of us works for his penny or indeed begs in hope.’

  ‘That is what I mean, you silly fellow. It is hope backed by courage and endeavour that mark you. I adore you for this quality as much as for your other attributes, but fate is never kind, only indifferent. Be grateful for what you have, for it is not inconsiderable and we have a new opportunity in this stinking Hooker and his Brahmin wife.’

  Kite sighed. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, staring up into the darkness. ‘But I worry about the child…’

  ‘Shhh…’ He felt her hand upon his face, stopping his mouth, then she moved against him and her lips found his. After they had kissed Sarah moved under him and whispered, ‘make us one, William, and we shall be inseparable.’

  Next morning, a forenoon of low mist and Septembral chill, with the Mersey’s ebb tide slapping pettishly along the quaysides, Kite and Hooker arrived to view the Spitfire lying in her riverside mud-berth. Under such a grey miasma she appeared small and unprepossessing, reduced to her lower masts with timber and debris littering her deck and her paintwork neglected. To all but an experienced eye she bore the superficial look of a vessel fit for the breakers, not a voyage to India.

  To Kite, however, the signs of work-in-hand were encouraging. He knew the condition of the schooner’s hull was sound, for he had coppered her in his days of affluence when he had taken her to sea to prey upon the enemy. Moreover the timber and lumber littering her deck were clear evidence, not of neglect but of between-decks modification, alterations that would accommodate Hooker and his household in a modicum of comfort. From below came the noises of hammering and sawing, and the occasional appearance of a workman told of the activity taking place there.

  Kite pointed these adjustments out to Hooker as the two men stood staring down upon the cluttered deck as the Spitfire lay with a slight list as she settled on the mud in the falling tide. A man emerged from the after companionway and, seeing the two gentlemen looking down upon the schooner, called out a ‘Good morning’. A moment later he had scrambled ashore over a rickety gangway and stood beside them, wiping the palm of his right hand on the tail of his soiled brown broadcloth coat.

  ‘Zachariah,’ Kite said greeting the ugly man whose physical bulk rivalled that of Hooker, ‘may I introduce Mr Hooker.’ Kite turned to Hooker. ‘Josiah, Zachariah Harper, a staunch servant of my shipping interest who will, I hope, consent to come with us as mate of the Spitfire. Do not be perturbed by his rebellious accent. A Yankee Zacharaiah may well be, but one well disposed to us…’ Kite smiled as Hooker shook hands with the American-born Loyalist.

  ‘I’d be honoured, Cap’n Kite.’ Harper’s ugly visage cracked into a grin of enormous enthusiasm.

  ‘And you’d have no qualms about fighting your fellow countrymen?’ Hooker asked rather pompously.

  As Kite laughed, Harper shook his head. ‘Not in the least, Mr Hooker, I’d welcome the chance. The damned Whigamore rebels took everything I once owned and I wish them naught but ill. As for any French or Spanish we might meet, well they’ll meet the same response from me, sir.’

  ‘So how’s she coming along, Zachariah?’ Kite said, nodding at the schooner.

  ‘Well enough. The carpenters’ll be finished by the end of the week and we have already made up most of the rigging in the loft. I’ve a new main and foresail being cut and most of the stores are on order and due for delivery at the end of the month. I’d say that we should be ready to sail well before the middle of October.’

  Kite considered matters for a moment, then nodded. ‘Very well. From next week I shall attend the vessel daily myself to expedite matters and ease your burden. I should like to acquire a new stock of small arms and I’ll have to arrange for powder and shot…’

  After the three men had climbed aboard the schooner, the discussion turned to the minutiae of storing a vessel for a long passage in wartime. Taking notes in his pocket book, Kite consulted with both Harper and Hooker, planning and costing the many items to be considered in completing Spitfire for sea, so that it was late afternoon when Kite and H
ooker returned to the terrace of houses from which the Mersey formed but a distant view.

  Having shifted their clothes, the two men joined their wives. Kite detected a degree of chill between them, an assumption that Sarah confirmed with a slight raising of her eyebrow. It was scarcely to be supposed that the women would find anything in common and Kite knew that Sarah would have found the constraint of attending her guest very irksome. It was even less to be supposed that any true friendship would develop between them in the inevitable weeks which would pass before Spitfire was ready for sea. Once at sea perhaps the common experience of their lives would remedy this situation, but Kite was apprehensive as to the relationship between the two couples. The fact that he would be obliged to Hooker could hardly be countered by Hooker’s dependence upon him for a safe passage. If they ran into trouble, it was a convention that Hooker would take his part in the defence of the schooner and, moreover, prime his dacoits for the same purpose and they had already discussed this point. Hooker had been fulsome in his reassurances.

  ‘Oh, you need have no apprehension upon that point, William,’ he had soothed in a manner which Kite had found less that comforting. Growing acquaintance with Josiah Hooker suggested that he was all that he claimed to be, and yet a doubt lingered in Kite’s mind and, in the lonely hours of the dawn, it was this that now filled his thoughts.

  After the household had settled into its uneasy new regime, with the men out for most of the day and Mrs Hooker left to ruminate in her room, Sarah attended to her usual business and the winding up of her affairs in Liverpool. Kite determined to resolve his dilemma by opening up a frank discussion with his new, if dubious partner and, one evening in mid-September as the two men sat over their port and the women had withdrawn, he asked, ‘Josiah, why did you decide not to settle in England? You will forgive my curiosity, but you clearly have the means.’