The Pirate and the Pagan Read online

  Every man in the room had made a great deal of money over the last three years, recouping all their losses of the lean years they had spent in exile. But only a fool would have been unable to make a fortune in London with its relaxed policy of free enterprise. So now it was their responsibility to see that England prospered as she should.

  “Everything always boils down to money whether you’re discussing a whore or a nation,” said Lauderdale bluntly.

  Charles sighed. “I need more money for ships, more money for spies, more money for bribes.”

  “We must continue to harry the Dutch fleet without actually declaring war on them,” said Arlington.

  “Two years we’ve been coursing that hare and haven’t caught it yet,” said Charles cynically.

  “Grant me letters-of-marque against the Dutch,” suggested Ruark Helford. He had been one of Prince Rupert’s Privateers preying on Parliament’s shipping while Cromwell ruled.

  Jack Grenvile grinned. “Breathes there a Cornishman who isn’t a pirate at heart?”

  Ruark quipped, “You should certainly know.”

  Charles looked at Ruark. “You could be effective in Cornwall, Ruark. Smuggling is rampant. No wonder my tax coffers are bare. Every man and his mistress finds a way to get ’round paying excise tax. Everything imported here is supposed to be taxed whether it’s tobacco from America, wine from France, or Venetian glass. So what happens? Instead of sailing into London and paying the taxes, they slip it in the back door along the Cornish coast. I’ve decided to make you the magistrate and high commissioner of the whole region. Catch and punish the smugglers and we’ll see the tax money roll in.”

  Helford raised his eyebrows slightly at Charles, who nodded imperceptibly in answer. Yes, there would be a great deal more involved than catching petty smugglers. A base in Cornwall was an excellent cover for international spying.

  “’Od’s Fish, I don’t know why you bother us for advice when you seem to have all the answers,” drawled Buckingham.

  Clifford quipped, “Well, so long as one of us uses his brains, that leaves the rest of us free to indulge our other organs.”

  The meeting broke up at midnight and Lord Helford walked back to the palace with the King. They cut through the old Mulberry Gardens west of the palace.

  “Never thought I’d live to see the night you went dutifully home to a wife,” said Ruark, laughing.

  Charles gave him an amused look. “I’m not the only one present who needs an heir … you’re not that much younger than I.”

  Helford sobered. “I could tolerate a wife if I didn’t have to see her outside the bedroom.”

  “Tolerance with women isn’t your long suit, Ruark.”

  The two men could have been brothers. Both had the animal strength of a six-foot physique, black hair, dark skin, and impeccable manners.

  “This business of smuggling,” Charles said quietly. “The goods coming in aren’t nearly so damaging as the information that’s being smuggled out. Put a stop to leaking my navy’s secrets to the Dutch for me, Ru.”

  “I’ll finish up my business in London and as soon as you sign my letters-of-marque I’ll be ready to leave.”

  “Perhaps I should ask you to seek out your brother Rory and give him the letters-of-marque,” said Charles.

  Ruark Helford stiffened. “Rory’s dead,” he said quietly.

  “A convenient rumor the scoundrel circulates for some dark reason of his own, I have no doubt,” said Charles, unable to keep the amusement from his voice.

  “Is that an order, Your Majesty?” he asked coldly.

  Charles nodded his head. “I think his services will be invaluable to me.”

  “Give my regards to the Queen, Your Majesty,” said Ruark Helford, bowing formally.

  Charles hid a grin. He knew he had hit a sore spot mentioning the pirate Rory. “My regards to you mistress. I don’t envy you explaining why you must desert her for Cornwall.”

  Ruark Helford’s brows drew together slightly. “I don’t explain myself to women, Sire.”

  Charles laughed. “One day you’ll meet your match, Helford. ’Tis the fate of all libertines, my friend.”

  Cat stretched her arms above her head and stood up from the kitchen table to light the lantern.

  “Where are you going?” asked Spider between great yawns.

  “I forgot to go down to see if the boat can be repaired.”

  “We can go in the morning,” protested the boy.

  “It’s low tide now. I can go alone, you go on to bed.”

  “’Course you can’t go alone,” he said firmly, all sleepiness gone from his voice. “If I don’t look out for you, who will?” He asked the question with the inborn arrogance of a grown man and suddenly she felt such a pang that the boy she had looked after for years would soon grow into a man. For one brief moment she wished he would never turn into a man, for she hated them, but then she chided herself for having such wicked, selfish thoughts about her young brother.

  Cat held the lantern high as they walked through the cellars, and on into the caverns hollowed from the cliff’s rock. The salt tang of tidewrack assailed their nostrils as they bent their heads to go through the narrow passage into the cave. As she emerged from the passage and lifted the lantern, Cat was startled by a bright, flickering light from the sea. It was close in, almost in the shallows, and both of them knew in the same instant that it was a ship’s lantern which thought their own light was a signal. Quickly Cat snuffed out her lantern, and as she did so, Spider pointed out a ship. It looked like a small French frigate. Its sails had been furled, but it was now in the business of hoisting sail as fast as it could. Voices carried clearly across the water. “Vite! Patrouille marine!”

  Both of them had a smattering of French, and knew the ship had spotted a navy patrol boat. They peered out across the dark, choppy waters and saw it quite a way off, but resolutely closing the distance.

  “Dans la mer!” came an order, followed by four muffled splashes.

  “They’re dumping cargo into the sea,” Cat translated. “If they are caught and searched, there’ll be no evidence unless the patrol takes time to fish it out of the drink.”

  A sailor called a question, “Planche à bouteilles?”

  The answer came quickly, “Oui, oui—embariller—sel, sel.”

  “What did he say?” asked Cat low.

  “Sel is salt. Embariller means packed in casks. Must be fish,” said Spider in disgust.

  “No, no—he asked the captain if he should dump the planche à bouteilles as well. That’s a wooden crate of bottles. I know what they’ve done!” said Cat excitedly. “They’ve packed the stuff in rock salt so it’ll sink. It’ll take a few hours for the salt to melt, then around about daybreak the stuff will float up.”

  Spider said in wonder, “Isn’t it amazing how somebody’s misfortune is somebody else’s gain? The world has a kind of balance to it, y’know?”

  “But we’ve got to be quick and cunning.” Cat laughed. “We’ll go up to the kitchen and get a couple of hours’ sleep by the fire. Tide will be rising by then.”

  * * *

  Sunrise was still a good hour away and they had accomplished everything they’d hoped for. The sea had thrown up four large casks of brandy and five cases marked vin de champagne, holding fifty bottles in all. Cat had never heard of champagne, but vin was wine and the tide had done almost all the work for them. For the small price of a thorough wetting they had secured the contraband, lined it up in the cave in front of the entrance to the passage, and they now stood in the cavernous cellar waiting for high tide and the indraft to float it all “home.”

  Later that morning, as always, Cat, mounted on Ebony, greeted the golden dawn. Today, however, she expected to have company on the lonely stretch of sand. She sat alert, watching the distance, then as two tiny figures became visible around the far headland she urged the black horse faster and faster until the blood of both surged recklessly. The tide was still high enough
to cover the horse up to its hocks and she deliberately splashed the two men who were obviously looking for something.

  “G’day, m’lady,” they muttered, abashed to be caught there so blatantly.

  She nodded aloofly and waited. One of the men finally spoke. “Did ye see aught up the beach, m’lady?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not wreckers, are you?” she asked boldly, allowing a hint of loathing to sound in her voice.

  Quickly they denied it vehemently. “Nay, nay, lady. Engaged in a spot of honest smuggling, that’s all, I swear it.”

  “If I thought you were connected to wreckers, I’d turn you over to the militia instantly!” she warned again.

  “Nay, nay,” said the younger man, “my dad here’s the tavern keeper at Mawnan. We were expectin’ a delivery o’ brandy.”

  “I’ve ridden for miles this morning; the beach is empty, I’m afraid.” She smiled. “Well, you can’t trust the French, y’know.”

  “No, m’lady,” they muttered, and knew she lied.

  She touched her heel to her horse’s side, then as if she had second thoughts stopped and said, “If you’ve the money, I could let you have four kegs of brandy and say, fifty bottles of French wine from my father’s cellars.”

  They looked at each other shrewdly, wondering how St. Catherine’s wench had managed to locate and secure the stuff before they had. They shrugged. There was nothing they could do, for she’d have the militia on them as soon as look at them.

  “Bring a wagon to Roseland this afternoon and I’ll have one of the servants fetch it up from the cellars,” she said airily as she turned the black Barbary and took off like the wind.

  Lord Randal St. Catherine could smell his own sweat for the first time in his life and it smelled of fear! His luck had been all bad lately until he was reduced to one elegant satin suit and his well-sprung coach. He knew that tomorrow he would have to leave for Roseland. Then his luck seemed to change and it turned out to be a fateful night for him. It went by many names, but luck, fate, or destiny chose to stand at his shoulder this night as he sat at a gaming table at the Groom Porter’s Lodge.

  Early in the evening he had begun by dealing from the bottom whenever it was his turn, but as the night wore on he found he need not slur and knap to win, for the right cards seemed to be falling into his hands by divine power. It was as if he had made a pact with the devil. Whatever cards he needed to win, he turned up.

  When his winnings reached four thousand pounds, he had enough sense to quit the table. He ordered a double brandy, giving silent thanks that he’d not had enough money in his pocket to buy it before he’d begun to play as he usually did.

  As he stepped out onto the cobblestone street he found it unusually deserted. Stripped bare of humanity, the buildings looked ugly and decayed. Centuries of rottenness, overcrowding, and greed made London a stinking cesspool of corruption and he knew he was as much a part of it as the open sewage kennels which ran along the sides of the streets.

  The upper stories of the houses and buildings overhung one another, shutting out the light and the air and cloaking the night with a sinister pall.

  “A pox on all coachmen!” he muttered as his eyes darted up and down the street, trying to decide in which pub he would find his man. He walked to the corner and glanced through the diamond-paned windows of the Rose and Crown, then turned the corner and spat an obscenity as a dark cat slunk across his path.

  He saw his coach down a dirty side alley across from the Cock and Bull and knew he’d found his quarry. He glanced to left and right furtively before going into the alley, for London streets were unsafe for beggars, not to mention those with a fortune in their pockets. He heard a muffled step, glanced behind him, and saw only a well-dressed figure, a wide-brimmed cavalier’s hat pulled low across the face.

  He quickened his steps toward his coach. Inside was an iron bar used to lever the wheels from mud. His hand reached out to open the door as he heard the unmistakable sound of a sword stick being drawn from its sheath. It was then he smelled the fear on himself. He turned to look into the face of death and took the steel. It slipped between his ribs as if he’d been a rack of lamb skewered by a French chef.

  As the strange metallic taste came into his mouth he knew at his heart root this was no random robbery, but a deliberate and calculated assault by a gentleman he had had the bad judgment to cheat. Someone as ruthlessly cold-blooded as himself. By the time his coachman found him he was lying in the gutter where he belonged, yet he still clung to life by a thread.

  “Lil,” he whispered, “Lady Rich wood …”

  His driver, afraid to make a run for it, lifted him into the coach and just barely made out the grating words, “Cockspur … Street … Number 5 …” He climbed on top and whipped up the horses. He could make no time on the twisting streets until he reached the Strand, then he let the horses have their heads until they were past the bend in the River Thames, and it took all his strength to steer them round the corner into the short Cockspur Street.

  He lifted St. Catherine from the coach and struggled up the steps at the fashionable little house which was number five. A liveried footman answered the door, but the burly coachman brushed him aside and pushed into the reception hall on the first floor. The coachman tried to set St. Catherine on his feet, but knew if he let go of him altogether, he would collapse.

  A very attractive woman perhaps in her late thirties appeared after a few minutes and stood staring in disbelief. Finally, St. Catherine gasped, “Lil … I’m dying!”

  “So I see,” she drawled in a beautiful, provocative voice. She was never at a loss for words and tonight was no exception. “Randal, darling, I wonder why it is when life deals a man a low blow and the world decides to turn its callous back upon him, the first person he turns to is his closest female relative?” She paused dramatically, yet did not seem to take a breath as she continued, “No matter how shabbily or dishonorably he has treated that female in the past?” She paused again, smoothing the folds of her elegant silk gown. “Shall I tell you the answer, darling? It is because a woman, no matter how harshly she has been treated, will not shut the door in the face of a brother, even though that brother be an enemy.”

  “Lil …” he gasped, his face whiter than death, “send … for … my … daughter.”

  “Oh, I shall, Randal, never fear.” She motioned her hand for the coachman to take him upstairs. “You always were the most inconsiderate brute alive. Even in extremis you had to bleed all over my new carpet,” she drawled. Over her shoulder she casually bade the footman, “Secure the coach and horses in the carriage house, James—I’m sure he won’t have a crown to his name.”

  Lil dismissed an upstairs maid and led the way into a small, luxurious bedroom. “Disrobe him,” she ordered his man as he laid him on the bed. She glanced at the wound dispassionately. It frothed and bubbled bright red blood with each shallow breath he drew. Without a word she whipped a sheet from the bed, tore off a long strip, and bound it tightly about his ribs.

  “Doctor …” It came out in a rattle.

  “Doctor?” Lil gave a droll little laugh. “Surely, darling, you mean undertaker.”

  “You’re … hard … Lil!” he rasped bitterly.

  “Yes, Randal, hard. Shall I tell you why?” she drawled. “You shoved me out of Roseland on my arse when I was fifteen, and because I was particularly partial to eating every day, I soon learned to live by my wits. To save myself I had to marry an old man. Didn’t expect that, did you, Randal? Didn’t expect I’d become Lady Richwood? Then when you thought he might be of some use to you, you latched onto my husband until you bled him dry. Well, he may have died penniless but Lord Richwood was my means of being presented at Court and that, Randal darling, is the only way I’ve survived. Now I’m particularly partial to servants, silk gowns, and security.”

  “Whoremonger!” he said, sneering.

  She made a small moue with her lips. “Introductions, Randal. Discreet liaisons b
etween young women of breeding and gentlemen of His Majesty’s Court. Someone as coarse as you would naturally call it flesh peddling and that, darling, is what has made me hard.”

  She swept from the room, taking the coachman with her. “Come, I’ll pay you what wages he owes you,” she said, speaking briskly for the first time.

  “Shall I come round tomorrow?” he asked uncertainly.

  “If I were you, I’d cut my losses. Let’s face it, if he were rich as Buckingham, he still couldn’t bribe the Grim Reaper to overlook him for more than another day or two.”

  The driver touched his forelock and departed thinking she was a crafy bitch to secure the coach and horses. Still, it was a bleeding miracle she’d given him his wages!

  Lil dispatched a footman for a doctor and sat down at her desk to pen a hurried note. She stroked her chin reflectively for a moment with the goose-feather quill, then in an elegant scrawl wrote:

  Lady Summer St. Catherine:

  Your father has suffered a critical accident. Come immediately.

  “Auntie Lil”

  Lady Richwood

  She addressed it to Lady Summer St. Catherine of Roseland and gave orders that it was to be put on the mail coach for Plymouth immediately. Then she stared out the long window into the night-darkened streets. “Well, Lady Summer, you’ve had all the advantages of the fine upbringing I was denied. Let’s see how you cope with this fine mess. The pain and the expense can be yours; I want none of it!”

  She walked slowly through the house, picked up a decanter of brandy, and thought, Funny, but I’m not really hard at all. She brushed away a tear and carried the brandy up to her brother. She knew she was in for a long vigil.

  “Death and damnation!” swore Cat as she read the note from her aunt. “Wouldn’t you just know it? The first money we’ve ever had and now I have to waste it traveling up to London. It’s just so damned typical of him!”