Race Before the Wind

Copyright © Jill Salkeld 1988

Part Two: 1816-1822

The Venturer's Agent

Chapter Twelve

Louisa sat alone on the first floor, stitching at her embroidery, drawn curtains shutting out the night. She could not read, for tonight the real world pressed too close. Tom was not due home until tomorrow morning, but her day had been far from empty without him.

Images of the eventful afternoon crowded unbidden into her mind: the terror of walking along the busy High Street, imagining accusation in every face; the scent of newly cut grass in Mr. Locke's cottage garden on the edge of town; the surprise of the maidservant at Louisa's appearance on the doorstep.

Mr. Locke had made her welcome, especially when she explained the purpose of the visit. The dapper, eager little man rushed about the room, checking doors were locked and windows fastened. He had sworn in as a Special Constable only a month ago, and took his duties seriously. Louisa had approached him in preference to a Riding Officer, or the men of Hurst garrison, simply because he knew her father. An observer would assume that she was paying a social call.

"You wish to say....." Mr. Locke brimmed with excitement; fiddling with a snuff box, straightening a picture, returning a book to a wall-shelf. "You wish me to believe that some forty or fifty men will be on the beach tonight, near Pennington Creek Saltern?"

"I do." Louisa sat demurely, with folded hands, her nervousness well hidden.

"With some two hundred barrels?"

"Yes."

"And you will not tell me how you came by this information?"

"No, Mr. Locke. I cannot. I'm sorry."

"And yet the Saltern there is owned by Captain Hicks, your husband's employer. Did Mr. Elderfield send you here, to inform on the smugglers on his behalf?"

"No, indeed. He would not be a party to it, if he knew. Mr. Locke, if you apprehend forty men tonight, you will owe me eight hundred pounds."

The prospect astounded him. "Madam, we can hardly hope for such a complete triumph."

"I understand that. Ten or fifteen would do, since I am to receive, by law, one half of the value of the cargo."

"By all means," he said faintly.

"My husband must not guess the source of this money. I plan to fabricate some tale of the death of a distant relative."

"You have my solemn assurance, he will never learn of this interview from my lips. Permit me to say, Mrs. Elderfield, that you are a courageous lady."

"No," she said, for don't you encourage the townsfolk to be public-spirited in these matters? Besides, I am merely passing the time of day with my father's friend."

Though Louisa's hand shook on the tambour-frame as she recalled this conversation, she was relieved to have acquitted herself well. She was helping Tom to quit the Trade, to start afresh. Had he not told her that it was really only his financial commitments that kept him tied to the Free Trade?

The ethics of what she had done did not trouble Louisa. She had gleaned something, over the years - mainly from Edward Verity - of how Jack Bezant had once treated Tom. Bezant was an evil man; and as for the rest, it was well known that sentences for smuggling offences were rarely harsh or long, except for the ringleaders.

The sound of distant musket-fire cracked the still night. Louisa froze, listening, and Lizzie the maid, entering the room with Mrs. Elderfield's usual supper of strong tea and one oatmeal biscuit, gave a shriek and dropped the tray with a clatter.

Louisa said absently, watching the closed curtains, "Get a cloth, girl, and wipe it up."

"But ma'am - that was guns, ma'am."

"Yes." Louisa had hoped there would be no shooting. "The Preventive Men must be out in force."

"But ma'am, my Harry be out there wi' Mr. Bezant tonight."

Louisa paled slightly, laying down her embroidery. "I'm sure that your Harry will come to no hard. The Excisemen do not intend murder, you know, unlike some of Mr. Bezant's men. Come, Lizzie, fetch a cloth and clean up that mess at once."

But when she had gone, Louis rose and crossed to the window, drawing back the curtain a fraction. She saw nothing but her own reflection, large-eyed, the lamplight making a halo around her crimped hair. She heard the muskets again, and shivered in the draught from the window. How often Tom had stood here, studying the clouds, hands deep in his pickets. Well, things would be different now. If her husband watched the weather in future, his concern would be for Mr. Ward's new steamer, not for Marshlight, or Bold Intent, or Escapade.

She stood dreaming, hardly aware of the passage of time. The last of the twilight faded, and the night grew black. She turned away from the window at last; but at once there was a sort of commotion from the street below; running footsteps, someone's gasping breath, a hammering on the front door. She heard the butler, Robinson, utter a few startled words, and then in the hall, breathless and agonised.

"Get.....Mrs. Elderfield. I need to speak to she..."

Louisa guessed that he had come to tell her of the arrests. She hurried downstairs, to see Edward leaning exhausted against the door-jamb, and Robinson looking puzzled and irritated at the intrusion.

"Why, Edward," she said, the hour is late for visiting. I hope your wife has not been taken ill."

"Miss Louisa, please." He had been calling her that ever since his days as the Fordyces' footman. Separated by class divisions, they had never become real friends. Now he stammered slightly, and his eyes were haunted by some nameless horror. "You've got to come wi' I. Marshlight made fine speed. Home early....sailed past Hurst an hour ago."

"Dear God," she whispered, clutching at the bannister for support, and knowing what his next words would be.

"Someone informed on the tubmen. There be three men dead, and Jack Bezant were wounded and escaped - he be dying, they say - and Aristo came ashore to help in the fighting, and so did the rest o' Marshlight's crew -"

"Is Tom hurt? Has he been wounded?

"A musket ball got he in the chest. They say he won't last another hour."

How odd it was, Louisa thought in some detached part of her mind, that she could remain calm, when her husband was dying and she had murdered him, as surely as if she had fired the gun herself.

"Robinson," she said, "I want both horses saddled -"

"The boy be seeing to that. I told he already," said Trekker; and then, despairingly, "Miss Louisa, there ain't much time.'

They rode hard along the dark lane towards Keyhaven and Pennington Creek. The marshes were eerie, with their mounds and ponds and shells of windmills long disused. On the banks, bramble stems clawed the night sky, like the limbs of gigantic spiders crushed into the salt-grass.

At a barely discernible junction, Trekker said, "Turn off here."

Louisa drew rein. "Here? Is Tom at West Mills, then?"

"Where else be suitable for tending wounded men? Hicks' boathouse?"

His voice sounded wrong somehow, and false. Quite suddenly, Louisa felt the black loneliness of the place. If anyone but Edward had come for her, she would not have trusted them so readily, nor believed the tale of Marshlight's unscheduled return.

"Edward," she said, "are you being honest with me?"

"Miss Louisa," he said, with an edge to his voice that made her heart knock against her ribs, "Why should a smuggler lie to 'ee tonight?"

Now she knew what was happening, and why he had lured her here. She said lightly, starting to guide her horse past him, "Your joke is in poor taste, if my husband is still in mid-Channel. I should like to go home now. Please let me pass."

"I be sorry," he said, "terrible sorry, 'cause I like 'ee....but you ain't going home."

It was not the tone nor the words that frightened her most, but his use of the past tense when he spoke of having liked her. As though she were a memory, and dead long ago.

Louisa screamed, at the same time urging her horse forward; but all at once the lane was full of shadows, men leaping to grab the reins, while someone dragged her roughly to the ground and clamped a bruising hand over her mouth.

A whispered voice said, "Shut your noise, bitch!" And she saw above her a man's dreadful face, with a sabre slash across the forehead, and blood running down his cheeks and into his eyes. "Shall we make an end?" he grated over his shoulder. "The bitch won't stay quiet."

Another voice, belonging to Nathan Street, her neighbour's butler, said, "Kiss her with the holly, then. Bezant wants her at West Mills."

For a brief and terrifying instant she saw her captor raised above his head the holly club which was the standard weapon of the tubmen's armed escorts. Then the club fell, and Louisa had time to think that after all it was a quick and easy death, before the darkness took her.

But she had not died, for the gradual awakening brought no visions of either heaven or hell, only the worst headache she had ever known, and the realisation that she was lying on cold flagstone, hands tied behind her back, in a room alive with candlelight and shadows - the living-room at West Mills Cottage.

Men were talking in low voices. Louisa tried to sit up, and groaned as a piercing agony split her head in two. She saw blood on the floor where her head had lain. The voices ceased when she moved.

Eddie Verity knelt beside her, and she squinted up at him.

"Edward, make them let me go," A plea without hope. "I won't tell...anyone about this....if you'll only let me no."

Nathan Street laughed unpleasantly. "Get up, bitch, and talk to Mr. Bezant."

Trekker touched her face, his mouth twisting as she shrank from him in fear, "Miss Louisa," he said, quite gently, ""I'll see they don't hurt 'ee too much, if you do what we say. Can you stand?"

She let him help her up, a glimmer of hope born within her now. She would behave herself, and they would punish her and let her go. When Tom came home he would kill them, every one of them, and Edward Verity most of all, for his treachery when she had thought him an ally.

He said, with that haunted look in his eyes, "Do you know why I done this, Miss Louisa?"

She stared bleakly at him, without comprehension, and he held her arm as though afraid she would fall.

"Mr. Bezant," he said, "wants 'ee to admit that Tom put 'ee up to it. But I don't believe that, and so I brought 'ee here. To hear 'ee let Mr. Bezant know the truth."

Louisa said, trembling in spite of all her prayers for courage. "Tom doesn't know. I wear it - on my husband's life, which is more dear to me that anything in this world."

"Good," said Trekker He glanced towards the hearthrug, where a chair stood with its back to her. "She be ready to make confession, sir."

The occupant of the fireside chair said, "Then let her stand before me."

As Eddie Verity led her forward, she became aware that the room was full of men, lounging in corners or perched on the arms of chairs. She wondered inconsequentially where Rachel was; and then she faced Jack Bezant, and forgot all else.

The beachmaster sat hunched and grim, one hand gripping the arm of the chair as though to draw strength from its solidity. His face was not florid now, but grey and curiously waxen, with here and there a smudge of pink, as from a careless application of rouge. His right hand clutched his belly, and faint and wick with horror, Louisa saw that an Exciseman's cutlass or sabre had ripped him open, so that only the clutching hand held back his spilling entrails. So Edward had told one truth; Jack Bezant was indeed dying.

Seeing her, Bezant's mouth curved in a parody of amusement. "So you'd swear on your husband's life, would you? Swear, then.....before these twelve good men and true.....to tell the whole truth and nothing but."

Louisa heard rather than saw the men close in around her for a better view, and to acknowledge that the trial was beginning. Only Eddie Verity remained where he was, holding her arm, offering in this way a little of the comfort that he dared not give her in words.

Through and beyond the fear, Louisa knew clearly that whatever happened, she must not allow these evil and misguided men to convict Tom for her own crime.

With head high, she swore the oath. Edward's grip on her arm relaxed slightly, and Bezant watched her face, and waited.

Seeing that he would not interrupt her, she said softly, "My husband's loyalty is to Captain Hicks, and to you all - even you, Mr. Bezant, in spite of your cruelty. He has too much honour, you see." Here, she ignored Bezant's sneering look. "He cannot afford to give up the Trade, and so I have acquired, for his sake, the money that will make us free of you, Mr. Bezant, and your kind."

There were murmurs from eleven of the jurors. Trekker said nothing, but drew his breath in sharply, and his hand jerked on her arm.

Jack Bezant said, "Seems you were right, men, and I was wrong. I must recommend to the jury....against my wishes, and my hopes.....you return a verdict of Not Guilty on Thomas Elderfield, in his absence.....unless you find reason to doubt the testimony of this informer."

Nathan Street spoke up. "We were all of a mond with Trekker, sir, before the trial. There's not a man among us that thought Aristo guilty, nor wanted to, for 'tis well known he's more loyal to us that to this bitch."

"Then I must instruct you," said Bezant, in a loud, strained voice, "to find the female defendant guilty as charged. Retired, gentlemen, to consider your verdict."

"With respect, sir," said Nathan Street, "I don't reckon as any of us need to consider. She's guilty, out of her own mouth, of killing three of our men, two of them having wives and children to support, and...." He shuffled his feet. "And of causing your own injury, sir."

"My death, in fact."

"What's the sentence, then, sir?"

"The usual," said Bezant, smiling a terrible smile.

"Nothing fancy. Trekker has asked us for that favour, and I grant it willingly."

Louisa, who had stood quietly through all this, now turned to Eddie Verity, her courage momentarily leaving her. "You promised. You said they wouldn't hurt me."

"Nor will they. You'll not have time, Miss Louisa, to feel anything much."

"No!" Louisa screamed at him, tearing herself free, shrinking back againt the mantelshelf because in every other direction the jurors stood implacable and grim. "I didn't mean it to happen like this. I didn't want anyone to be killed or hurt. If they'd caught you, it would have been enough. Oh God, I didn't mean ti....."

Nathan Street, said, "Want me to shut her mouth now, sir?"

Jack Bezant, smiling sti,, said, "Rhank you, Nat but the rest of her sentence must be carried out first."

These low words cut through Louisa's terror, and her sobbing ceased, hiccupping into precarious calm. She stared at Jack Bezant.

"For God's sake, I cannot bear it. What do you mean to do to me?"

"Do you remember," Bezant said, "a stormy night, this last winter? When you husband....took his boat out from here, to salvage a floating cargo? He had a woman to crew for him, and brought her back here afterwards."

"No," she said. "No, it's not true."

"Thought he was faithful, did you? So you've given your life for him, and nothing would please him better."

"You're lying," she whispered; though at his words, the suspicions she had buried since that February night rose like gibbering demons to mock her. "Tom loves me, he would never be unfaithful, and he's never, never wish me harm."

"Loves you, you say? He was sorry for you, I'll allow that. You stupid whimpering little bitch, he married you because he wanted a woman to come home to, like we all do....But you weren't up to being a smuggler's wife. He doesn't stay in this game for the money....he loves it. Loves it better than any woman, except maybe one. The one who crewed for him....the night he saved the brandy."

Louisa leaned against the mantelshelf. Bezant was right, of course, what she had done would only set Tom free, to go to Jessica Tandy, the woman he truly loved.

She knew then that she could bear whatever fate Bezant had chosen for her, and bear it with courage and a willing heart. She had told Edward the exact truth: Tom was everything in the world to her. Before he entered her life she had been nothing; he had taught her to face the world with her head high. Perhaps she had asked too much, in asking for his love as well; but without that love, she was still nothing. There was no use in living if loneliness was all she had left.

And what a gesture it would be, to die for his sake, setting him free at last. Bezant would feel no satisfaction in his supposed vengeance, if she showed no fear and did not mind.

She stood upright, tall and straight, and smiled down at Jack Bezant. "You had better kill me, then," she said quietly, "and have done with all this nonsense."

It left him at a loss; she saw the disbelief in his ravaged face, and then his glance slid sideways to Nathan Street, and he murmured, "Do as the lady says."

Eddie Verity, sidling oiut of the candlelight, saw Street step towards her, picking up a holly club. It seemed that judge and jury held their breath.

Trekker stumbled unnoticed into the bedroom, and shut the door behind him. His wife lay wide awake, round-eyed with horror at all she had heard, her arm around the baby girl.

He knelt beside the bed and leaned forward, pillowing his head on his arms, and then moving to clamp both hands over his ears, his face contorted in anguish as he heard Nathan Street bring the club down again and again, smashing Louisa's skull, continuing lo g after she must have died.

Rachel Verity watched him in helpless pity, offering no comfort. After what Eddie had done that night, she did not know what comfort she could give him.

Part 2, The Venturer's Agent, Chapter 13

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