Betsy and the Emperor (9781439115879) (2 page)

T
he warm trade winds of St. Helena gently caressed my legs as I ran—the silent greeting of my old friend, the night. My nightgown rippled, billowed in front of me, filled with the breeze like a great white mainsail. The wind picked up speed, whistling over the jagged edges of the dark, towering mountains all around me. They stood, lined up rocky shoulder to rocky shoulder in their gray, impenetrable armor like ancient warriors, spears of granite piercing the night sky. St. Helena's mountains overwhelmed, even terrified, her visitors: “The Rock,” “The Fortress,” even “Hell” or “Purgatory” were names by which the island had come to be known. Even residents of St. Helena had no kinder names for her.

I confess I did not like the mountains by day, much less by night. At times they seemed to lean inward, threatening to crush any poor human insect
who dared to pass below. Tonight was such a night. And yet, as I ran over the gently sloping valleys—the grazing pastures of the island's small herds of sheep and cows—I felt safe. The grassy hills were a great green cove, a haven where the rocky warriors could not pass. Confidently, I sailed on.

Freedom!
It had been so long since I'd tasted its sweetness. Hawthorne had been more of a prison than a boarding school for girls: sundown curfews, grease-laden suppers I would gladly have swapped for the murderer's “bread and water,” and sour-dispositioned matrons who watched over us like guard hounds.

I neared Plantation House, the magnificent white-columned governor's mansion. The majestic building stood idle and dark, as it had for many years. It was as if it were a glorious crystal chandelier—with all its candles snuffed. I'd always wondered why the East India Company, for which my father was superintendent of public sales, had assigned him to the Briars instead of to the more opulent and unoccupied Plantation House. The thought angered me.

Half a mile to Jamestown, I began to grow weary. I was no longer accustomed to such activity. Running had not been part of the headmistress's prescribed course of study for young ladies!

I regretted that I could not have ridden my horse Belle into Jamestown, but she was suffering from a sore tendon and I did not want to risk laming her. In the future, when she reached maturity, I hoped to run her in the Deadwood Races.

Exhausted, I trudged on.

 

Jamestowners were ordinarily the last residents of St. Helena to retire each night. The town was a center of unrestrained activity and unchecked impulses. Still, I was surprised at what I heard and saw when I passed the old stone clock tower and arrived in the center of town.

Hundreds of people were dashing to and fro, squealing like greased pigs hunting for cover. I was in danger of being trampled, so I ran into the alleyway next to Porteous' Inn and stood on a fish crate, where I could watch the crowd in relative safety. People were cramming themselves into buildings, struggling to pass six or eight abreast through the narrow doorways. Doors slammed after them, one following another like pistol shots along the long row of brown, wood-frame houses. Heavy padlocks—rarely used on St. Helena—were slapped onto shop entrances by nervous proprietors. Frantic women closed and
locked shutters on upstairs windows, pulled down parchment shades, and extinguished their oil lamps. The lights of Jamestown were going out like dying fireflies.

Of those people who remained in the street, most were men; they were shouting and had gathered in a large group. A few held muskets.

I didn't know what to make of all the commotion. No one seemed to be in any condition to be asked what the trouble was. If St. Helena was being attacked, then surely the soldiers would have been alerted. But no soldiers were to be seen. Perhaps it was a slave rebellion, similar to the one Toby told me had broken out on Haiti close to twenty-five years ago.

Then, suddenly, I heard the voice of a small boy coming from behind a rum keg discarded outside the inn. He seemed to be talking to a companion.

I crept nearer and peered over the top of the huge barrel. There were two children—a boy of approximately nine years of age and a younger girl who resembled him and was probably his sister. They were too preoccupied to notice me. They were street urchins, crouched low in their patchwork tatters, faces smeared with grime. The boy was gleefully relating a tale to the girl, who was pale with fright.

“And Boney eats three white goats every day…,” the boy said, “and little children….” Trembling, the girl tried to edge away from him, but he caught her by her dirty hair and held her fast. His face took on an even more sinister aspect. “Only English ones,” he whispered loudly into her ear. She whimpered. “Only girls!”

The girl screamed, jumped up, and ran down the alley, her brother close at her heels. I laughed, thinking of how many times I had terrified my own younger siblings, Willie and Alexander, with fairy stories. But who was “Boney”? I didn't recall having heard that tale before.

I turned around in time to see one of the Jamestown men passing oil-soaked rags wound on top of sticks to his comrades. Then he touched a burning acacia branch to his stick until the top exploded in orange flame. Though I was standing more than five yards away, I could feel the heat of that torch as it sent thick, black smoke and fumes of burning whale oil into the air. The torch was used to light another—this, another—and on and on through the crowd of men the flame was passed rapidly from torch to torch until all were lit. Then the men marched together in the general direction of the sea. With all the chaos, I'd almost forgotten about the
ship's arrival! I wondered whether the men, too, were headed toward her. I followed them.

I gathered my bed jacket closer around me to ward off the cool, coastal breeze. A sizable crowd had gathered on the rocky beach—not just the Jamestowners, but rough-looking types from other parts of the island as well. There were armed soldiers, too: on the beach, up in the hills—I'd never seen so many. They must have been called from their posts all over St. Helena. But why? Were they expecting trouble?

The great ship strained at her anchor in rough seas, three hundred yards offshore. I tried to make out the sea-worn letters on her hull:
N-O-R-T…Northumberland!
She was British, to be sure—a tattered Union Jack fluttered from a jackstaff on her bowsprit—and a battleship, at that. At least a dozen guns sprouted from her barnacled sides.
Well,
I reasoned,
at least we aren't being attacked by foreigners.
But what if pirates had taken over the ship?

A large landing boat packed with men and horses was already on its way from the
Northumberland.
It was still too far away to see any details. The crowd surged toward the water, and the British soldiers, bayonets fixed to their muskets, urged them back.

A leathery old man wearing a buckskin smithy's
apron stood next to me, peering out to sea through a spyglass. His face was as red as pomegranate seeds, with deep brown creases around his mouth and neck. He was a Yamstock—a native St. Helenian. They all had that wind-battered look to them. He aimed his glass at the approaching landing boat.

“Who are they?” I asked the Yamstock.

He put his spyglass under his arm and turned to look at me. The man had only one eye! The right socket was empty, and the lid appeared to have been sewn shut.

He cocked his head at a peculiar angle and stared at me a long time, in a way that made me sorry I hadn't thought to change into something more substantial than my nightgown before leaving the Briars.

“Who wants t'know?” he said in a voice halfway between a gargle and a growl.

“Betsy. Betsy Balcombe.”

He stared at me again and made a strange clucking noise with his tongue. “See fer yerself,” he said, handing me the spyglass.

I put the cold brass to my eye. The boat and its passengers looked terribly small. I couldn't see any details.

Then, without warning, the Yamstock rudely
yanked the glass from my hands. I was stunned and disappointed. Crazy old man!

“Yer got the thing turned wrong way round!” he growled, handing it back to me, this time with the eyepiece facing the proper direction.

“Hmmm…,” I said, aiming it at the boat again. I could see the men in the boat very clearly now.

“What d'yer see with those pretty young eyes o'yers?” the Yamstock asked, a bit contemptuously.

“Horses, sailors…and oarsmen.”

“Aye! Go on.”

The moonlight seemed to be fading. I strained to see.

“And…officers. One of them's tall…gray-haired. With fancy whiskers and uniform.”

“Aye. That'd be the adm'ral,” the Yamstock said.

“Admiral? Which one?”

“Go on, I say! What else?”

I took the spyglass away from my eye. The Yamstock's bullying was beginning to annoy me.

“Go on!” he snapped.

I scowled at him for his rudeness. Still, I was anxious to learn who was on the boat. So I placed the glass against my eye. I looked through it a long time in silence. A cloud had drifted in front of the moon, and
I could no longer see anything worth mentioning. The Yamstock grew impatient with me.

“Well? Well? D'yer see some men what don't look like limeys?”

The clouds shifted again, and the moon shone brightly over the ocean.

This time when I looked at the boat, I noticed a group of men—officers it seemed—I hadn't seen before. They wore strange uniforms. And what was this? There were a few ladies on board too! They wore fancy long dresses of a style unfamiliar to me, and they had silk shawls wrapped around their shoulders. The men and women seemed to be engaged in serious discussion.

“Yes,” I said to the Yamstock. “Foreigners. Some ladies, too.”

He laughed—an unpleasant, raspy sound.

“Aye!” he said.

I studied the group of foreigners. One man puzzled me. He was small and stood as straight as a measuring stick, but apart from the others, and spoke to no one. No one tried to speak to him. He was the only man on board who was still facing away from the shore. Instead, motionless, hands clasped tightly behind his back, he stared out across the sea.

“One of the men—I can't see his face,” I said. “He's wearing a big bicorne hat. And he's shorter than the others.”

“Ahhh!” the Yamstock exulted. “That'd be Boney!” He snatched the spyglass from me and looked through it.

Boney. That name again! So he wasn't just a character in a children's fairy tale! He was real. But who was he?

“Is he a pirate?” I asked the Yamstock.

“A pirate?” he said with a snarl, never taking his eye from the glass. “Aye! And a murderer. Ravisher of women, too!”

“Why are they bringing him here?”

The Yamstock turned toward me and glowered with his one eye. “Aye, they should o' hung that little French disease from London Tower and let the rats make short work o' what was left!”

The Yamstock jammed the spyglass into his apron pocket and stomped away, without a word of farewell.

I was tired and eager to return to the Briars. But having come this far, I was anxious to get a better look at the little Frenchman. I'd never seen a real pirate before!

The clock in Jamestown's stone tower struck the
hour. By the first stroke, the landing boat from the
Northumberland
had moored. By the fifth and last stroke, the passengers began to disembark. The order of their exit seemed to have been well planned. First, armed British sailors, sea legs wobbly from their long voyage, tumbled out onto the beach like crabs. As soon as they were able, they formed two neat columns facing each other. Next came navy officers and their orderlies, who helped the foreign ladies out of the boat. The ladies seemed very relieved to be on dry land.

Then, on horseback, came the silver-haired Admiral in his striking black uniform and gold-fringed epaulets. His chest was littered with war medals. He reminded me of the pictures I'd seen of the great English Admiral Nelson, painted to pay tribute to him after he'd died defeating the French at Trafalgar. Of course, unlike Nelson, this fellow had whiskers—and both of his arms.

Then came the foreign officers and orderlies in stiff blue uniforms with red cuffs and white sashes. They waited patiently in formation by the side of the boat. Staring straight ahead, their faces were expressionless.

The crowd of onlookers, which had up to this
point watched the scene unfold in near silence, became restless. They began to murmur and press toward the boat. Once more the soldiers held them at bay. The Jamestown men raised their torches high into the air so they could get a better view of the boat. There was a growing sense of anticipation in the air—excitement of an almost tangible sort. I hadn't felt anything like it since the day I'd stood with a crowd outside the palace in London, hoping for a glimpse of the prince regent.

I began to wonder whether there wasn't some member of the royal family aboard. Surely a pirate wasn't worthy of all this attention—not even if he were Jean Lafitte himself! But it was apparent that only one passenger remained aboard: the little Frenchman. Up close he looked even smaller and less impressive than I'd supposed. I was more than a little disappointed. The man was about to mount his horse—a magnificent black charger, trimmed in red and gold—but hesitated. He slid his small, black-booted heel from the stirrup and turned to face the murmuring crowd. As they saw him, they grew louder—more fearful and hostile. The Jamestown men pushed past the soldiers, gave out a yell—almost a war cry—and marched down the beach to within a
few yards of the boat. There they waited and watched.

The crowd's behavior seemed to have a strange and powerful effect upon the Frenchman. He took a slow, deep breath that seemed to infuse him with electric energy. His gray eyes flashed fire; his jaw set in rigid determination. Life flooded into his face and limbs, adding such strength and presence to his appearance that it hardly seemed he could be the same man he was a moment before. He actually seemed to grow taller before my very eyes!