Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (30 page)

“All right,” she continued, “back to the smuggling run tonight. I’m fortunate that I have set my own course of study over the years. For a while, I was interested in chemistry, and learned the rudiments of some chemical compositions. I’ve been working on something for the last couple of days.” She slewed a glance toward her maid. Though they were very much mistress and maidservant and very different in a multitude of ways, Anne would have been a fool not to listen to and consult with a woman of so much strength and integrity. It didn’t change the fact that her final decision was always her own.

Mary eyed her fearfully. “Why do I no’ like the poor direction this is taking?” she said, her
r
s rolling with agitation.

Anne sat on her bed and Irusan leaped up onto her lap. She ruffled his thick mane of fur. “I said I would not allow you to help tonight, but I think I may need you,” she confessed. When she explained what she required, Mary reared back in amazement.

“Milady, I could never do that!”

“I don’t even know if you’ll need to, but I can’t think of any other way. I can’t be in two places at once, and there’s no one I trust as I trust you,” she said, echoing Pam’s words to her. “Please, Mary, I’ve asked you only to do the part I think you can handle without danger to yourself. Once you’ve done your part, I want you to scurry back here, to Cliff House, and safely into bed.”

“You don’t think I’m worrit about my own safety, do ya?” the maid said, anger flaring in her mild eyes. “I’d go to the ends of the airth for you. But I just don’t know if I can do it.”

Anne reached out and put one hand on her maid’s wiry arm. “I have faith in you, Mary. I have faith in your intelligence and ability.”

“All right,” Mary said, covering Anne’s long-fingered, strong hand with her own. “I’ll do’t, milady.” She crossed herself.

“Anne, dear?” Lolly called out, tapping on her door.

“Yes, Lolly … come in,” Anne called, squeezing Mary’s arm and releasing it. For the next half hour she listened to Lolly’s litany of complaints about Mrs. Quintrell, and soothed the companion’s hurt feelings, all the while planning in her head that evening’s work. She had a lot to do before then, and some of it required that no one observe her. Not even Pamela.

***

It was late, and down at the ocean the tide was turning, pulling back from the shore, each wave just a fraction of an inch lower on the sandy beach than the one that preceded it.

Inside Cliff House, Lolly, having imbibed a goodly amount of excellent fortified wine, was snoring, and Robbie was sound asleep, weary from another day of letters and numbers. Mary paced the wood floor, alone in Anne’s chamber for fear of waking her child. But Anne and Pamela were in Pamela’s bedchamber, almost ready to go, Anne having substituted for her friend’s maid, Alice, who was busy on some vital task devised by her mistress.

Anne had helped in every detail of Pam’s elaborate costume, but still was amazed by the transformation. She gaped at Pam, now dressed in the best of her brother’s clothes, a brocade jacket, plumed hat, tight breeches, but her own boots, custom fit from a cobbler in St. Ives, she said.

“I had to give some explanation why I needed a pair of boots,” she said, glancing into her mirror and catching Anne’s eye. “So I said it was for a costume party in London.” She turned around, slowly, and held out her hands. “This is it, the last time Lord Brag will command his smuggling gang.”

Anne’s stomach clenched. She put one hand flat over her belly and said, “Then let’s make it a good one.” She paused, but decided one more time to warn her friend about the men upon whom she relied. “Pam, do you really trust all your men, Micklethwaite, especially?”

“I do,” she said, blithely, turning to examine herself in the mirror again. She donned her black cloth mask and smiled. “I have too much information on the good captain to think he would do otherwise than keep his word to me. What possible reason could he have to cross me? We both profit in this enterprise.”

“There are other things than profit, my dear, unfathomable reasons for betrayal.”

Pam whirled and took her friend’s two hands in her own. With a teary smile, she cried, “Anne, stop worrying. We have an enormous shipment tonight; at least twenty thousand pounds or more in goods is coming ashore, and my share will amount to at least four or five thousand pounds. Everything will go well, and with my share I’ll be able to leave St. Wyllow. Edward and I will live upon it for thirty years in Canada!”

“I’ll never see you again,” Anne said, tears welling in her own eyes.

“You don’t know that! I may come back, or you may visit.”

Anne pulled her into a hug, then set her away. “It’s time.”

“Your part is simple, Anne,” Pam reminded her. “All you have to do is open the tunnel door, direct my boys, then, once the goods are unloaded, lock it up for me again.”

Anne smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Pam, just keep your mind on your task and be careful.” On her way to the tunnel, she had a slight detour planned, into Marcus’s workshop.

***

“If I was the smuggler,” Darkefell whispered to Osei, “I would take advantage of the high tide to row a boat right up to the tunnel cave and unload. You’d need fewer men that way.”

“You would make an accomplished criminal, begging your pardon, sir,” Osei murmured, a smile in his voice.

They crept through the dark along the wet beach, not daring to carry a lantern, and so depending on the faint differentiation in light and shadow from the cliff and water. “I have a bad feeling about this,” Darkefell murmured. They both wore dark clothes, and Darkefell had smudged his face with lampblack, trying to conceal any gleam of his pale skin, but he was perspiring and the ocean mist was clinging to his cheeks and forehead. He had the awful feeling the lampblack was streaking, but he dared not mop his face, for fear of wiping the soot off completely.

Both men stopped and listened, as they had done often while approaching the site for the smugglers’ landing. The ocean had calmed, and the receding tide tossed playful waves on the shore. The sound was the merest whisper and nothing more. But this time when they paused, Darkefell heard another sound; the plash of oars in water echoed faintly against the rocky cliff side. He looked out over the ocean and saw a light winking, a signal to those onshore, no doubt.

His was a difficult position this night. His intent was to be an observer. If things went well and there was no danger, he would not interfere. Anne, he was certain, would not get herself involved in an ongoing smuggling affair, so his assumption was that Pamela St. James was doing one last run. Perhaps it had already been arranged before Marcus’s death, or perhaps she needed the money.

Her brother’s death would have left her in a difficult position, for his commission was surrendered to the crown upon his death, its entire value gone in an instant, and she may have had his affairs to put in order. If he had died insolvent, all his debts would descend upon her as his only surviving relative. Darkefell had done his utmost to keep from judging her, though his anger burned brightly at Pamela’s involving his Anne in such an illicit and dangerous affair.

Not that anyone could keep Anne out of it, if she had made up her mind.

But if things went badly, he and Osei were both armed. He had tried to keep his secretary from coming with him, but the fellow was fond of Anne too, and insisted on sharing the danger with his employer. Osei, as mild as he seemed, was a good fellow in a tight spot, wiry and athletic beyond a slight limp he worked hard to mask, the remnant of an injury sustained when he was thrown from a slave ship six years before.

As a young prince, in Africa, Osei had been trained in warcraft, and though tribal warfare and smuggling were vastly different events, the characteristics needed, those of steady nerves and decisive action, transferred perfectly from one activity to the other. If Anne was in peril, Darkefell was going to whisk her away, hand her over to Osei, and then make sure Pamela St. James escaped harm.

Both men hunkered down close to the cliff in the shadow of a jutting rock outcropping that sprung from the beach. The plash of oars got louder. A group of fellows—Johnny Quintrell was among them, but if things got dangerous he was dedicated to assisting Darkefell and Osei—silently emerged from the shadows near the tunnel entrance. The figure in front, illuminated by a lantern on a rock outcropping, was garbed in dashing array and waving a cutlass with debonair abandon.

“Now, men,” the smuggler said, cultured voice strong, “Unload the goods swiftly, carry them to the base of the cliff and hand them up to the fellows above. Ropes are only for the heaviest crates. Work quickly, be diligent, and there will be an extra reward for you all!”

“That must be Lord Brag,” Darkefell murmured. “If I’m right, it is Miss St. James in her brother’s clothes.”

“The figure is slight enough to be the lady,” Osei agreed.

The carriers got to work by lantern light. Another rowboat slid ashore, piled with more goods. It was going smoothly. Darkefell wondered if he had been vigilant for naught. Had he worried about Anne, only to find she did not need him? The rowboats returned to the water, as another came in to shore. It was a large shipment, and Darkefell thought the tunnel must be stuffed with goods by now. They could not move all of that out of the tunnel in one night, certainly, and would need several nights of cover to do so.

He heard rustling behind him and turned, still hunched down between the rock outcropping and the cliff face. He stiffened. Movement. He dug his elbow in Osei’s ribs and his secretary turned, too, and drew in his breath quickly, quietly.

This new band of men creeping toward the smugglers was either a rival smuggling gang or the excise officers. Darkefell had cast about for information among locals who were willing to talk and found out that rival gangs often raided each other’s stashes. All-out war was not uncommon. The St. Wyllow Whips gang had been fortunate so far, but Darkefell knew that was because they had Puddicombe, the excise officer, in their pocket, his silence bought with exorbitant bribes. But who was this, and why were they sneaking up on the smugglers?

He indicated to Osei to follow him, tugging on his wrist, and the two men slipped along the cliff face, keeping pace with the stealthy movements of the band of men creeping toward the landing site. One of the smugglers shouted out suddenly, and the lot of them looked up from their tasks.

The group of men approaching suddenly rose and began to run down the beach toward the smugglers, but their progress was cut short, very suddenly, and very violently. Above, something swung out from the cliff and a loud
pop
echoed, while an explosion of sparks showered down. Then an explosion among the raiding party scattered them. Voices cried out, one calling, “Mr. Puddicombe, what’re we ta do?”

Some of the smugglers, meanwhile, hastened to push the rowboats back out to sea, while others, faintly visible by the light of lanterns, dispersed.

Darkefell looked above; lit by a flare, a gruesome specter hovered off the edge of the cliff, a ragged piratical form. A hideous moaning wailed, echoing down in the cut and around them. Something dropped a few feet from his hiding place and exploded in a shower of sparks, and the group of men huddling together, some of them crying out to each other questions about what was going on, leaped and yelled at the explosion. Smoke drifted around, and confusion reigned. Who belonged to what group? Who could tell?

The specter above burst into flames, accompanied by shrieks and howls so frightening some of the men just beyond cried out and retreated. More huddled together, but when ragged bits of flaming cloth fell in a shower of red sparks, and embers landed on the wet beach, sizzling and popping, they scattered. The stench of gunpowder and kerosene filled the air, and more explosions blasted the sand around them.

Under cover of the yells and percussion of explosions, Darkefell said to Osei, “Let’s go to the tunnel.”

They ran, while other explosions rocketed around them. His mind tumbling, he wondered what was going on. What was that specter? The infamous Barbary Ghost? If so, who was wielding it? And where were the explosions coming from?

He would find out once he got to the tunnel and found Johnny Quintrell.

***

“Damn them,
damn
them!” Pamela cried, her back to the tunnel wall. She pulled off her black mask, sweat gleaming on her face in the dim lantern light. “Who double-crossed me?”

“I would bet on Micklethwaite,” Anne said, out of breath. The grenades and smoke bombs she created from Marcus’s provisions were almost gone, but fireworks exploded above, and the effigy was still aflame, thanks to Mary’s timely effort. This was the Barbary Ghost’s revenge, reprisal for the tragic wrong that had been done to poor Marcus St. James. Anne could only hope that the rest of Pamela’s helpers had scattered, and that they could get all of the goods down the tunnel and behind the locked door before whomever was on the beach figured out they were out of explosives.

“Micklethwaite? Why?”

“Later,” Anne said, lifting a crate and lugging it down the tunnel. She was only supposed to open the tunnel door, but she had always intended to do much more. Pamela was too trusting. Anne had suspected from the start that there was betrayal afoot. As she returned to her friend, she continued, “Right now, let’s just get this task finished.”

There were only a couple of the most trusted of the young men left to help them, and Anne shouted to them to move the last of the ankers of gin and crates of goods down the tunnel just beyond the plank door. If she and Pam could manage that, and send the young fellows up through the house and out—she prayed to God that Cliff House was not surrounded by prevention men—then they may yet escape harm or charges. Mary had done her part above on the cliff, swinging the effigy of the Barbary Ghost out, setting the fireworks and flares alight, and letting the stuffed pirate blaze, dropping bits of stinking, flaming cloth all over the raiders, whomever they were. Her banshee wail had been a bit of inspired theatrics Anne silently blessed her for.