Authors: Donna Thorland
He opened the document she indicated, and found deeds for a fine house he had seen in Salem, a warehouse and a cottage he had heard tell of, and the lease for a significant portion of Misery Island.
“It is a generous offer,” said Sparhawk.
“But it is not an English barony. What say you? Will it be Captain Sparhawk, or my Lord Polkerris?”
“Sparhawk,” he said without hesitation, because it was not an English baron’s son but James Sparhawk who was worthy of Sarah Ward.
• • •
Micah sent for ice from his icehouse and fresh water, and once both arrived, he warned Sarah against making another escape attempt.
“I will tie you to the bed if I must,” he said. Then he left to speak with Eli Derby.
Sarah rested for a little while and considered whether she might be able to climb down from the window.
The Ward house had been a humble antique structure in its bones, with ceilings barely seven feet tall—an easy drop from a second-story window.
Not so this monument to Micah Wild’s ambition. The ceilings of the ground floor were a lofty twelve feet. There was a porch roof she might climb out to and use to lower herself to the iron railings, but it would take a clear head and a strong grip, neither of which she now possessed.
She resolved to use one of the Chinese vases lining the fireplace mantel to brain whoever next opened the door, and make her way out down the back stairs. She only hoped that it would prove to be Micah Wild.
It was not Micah Wild. When Mrs. Friary put her gray head through the door, her face a mask of worry, a tray of cakes in her hands, Sarah hid the vase behind her back and sat down on the bed.
The old woman praised her courage for saving Ned, asked politely after her father’s health, and told her how happy everyone was to see her back where she ought to be. It wasn’t for her to say, of course, but everyone knew Micah had made a mistake marrying Elizabeth Pierce. And no one was going to mind when Sarah moved into the bedroom down the hall, even if the divorce took time to arrange.
Sarah resolved to go out the window as soon as Mrs. Friary left.
She ate the cakes first. Then she knotted up her skirts the way she used to when sneaking out of the house with Benji to drink rum in the
Sally
’s
cutter, and swung her legs out the window. The porch over the door below was two feet from her window, and she was forced to swing, jump, and scramble onto it, clutching the painted white balustrade and thanking the architect for fastening it to the slate tiles with iron spikes.
From there the way down to the ground was easier. She lowered herself from the balustrade, wrapped her legs around one of the supporting columns, and shimmied down until her feet met the iron rail. Then, with relief—and scraped knees and elbows smudged with roof soot—she found herself outside the back door, looking toward the river.
And unfortunately, standing on the granite steps below was Micah Wild. “Is that how you used to get out of your father’s house to come see me?” he asked incredulously.
“It was easier with a smaller house,” she said. “I am leaving, Micah.”
He took her by the elbow. “We are both leaving. That damnable interfering Ferrers woman has poisoned the well with Eli Derby. There’s nothing for it now. We must collect the gold and make for Providence.”
She backed toward the door, but his men were waiting there for her, and when she tried to run, they caught her and forced her into the boat. Her screams, before they gagged her, brought Mrs. Friary and the servants to the door, but too late to help her, and then they were away down the river, heading for the harbor.
When they went aboard the
Conant
, Sarah recognized her skipper, Jerathmiel Finch, who had been her father’s first choice to captain the
Sally
on the run to Saint Eustatius. Micah had vetoed the choice, judging Jerathmiel insufficiently dedicated to the Rebel cause, but Sarah had suspected he was just insufficiently dedicated to Micah Wild. He was a sensible man and a better sailor than Molineaux had been, and Sarah hoped she might be able to prevail upon him to release her.
Micah shocked her when he ordered Captain Finch to clear the deck for action and make for Misery Island.
“What is happening?” she asked her former betrothed as he scanned the harbor with a spyglass.
“Derby would not partner with me, but we have been friends since childhood, and he had the decency to warn me. Your lover has been given permission to enter Salem Harbor and retrieve you, with the
Sally
.”
“We should run for it,” said Finch. “I do not have a man-of-war’s crew. I have boys lured by the promise of prize money. Farmers’ and shopkeepers’ sons. They have never fired a cannon.”
“We cannot run,” said Wild, “until we have landed at Misery Island and taken my property off.”
They made for Misery Island. Finch ordered netting rigged. It was meant to catch splinters during a battle, which meant he anticipated one. Next he called for powder. By the time the
Conant
came within sight of the windswept rock that Salem’s early settlers had dubbed Misery Island, they had spotted a sail on the horizon.
It was the
Sally
. Finch turned to Micah Wild. “Take the girl with you in the cutter, and leave her on the island until this business is done.”
Wild balked, but Finch, who, as Sarah recalled, had served in the navy in his youth, gave him no choice. “I won’t fight Abednego Ward’s schooner with his daughter aboard. It’s not right. It would be dishonorable, and damnably unlucky.”
Micah took his sword, two pistols, and a shovel and hurried Sarah into the boat. She watched the
Sally
draw near, her sails stiff in the breeze. Sarah’s heart rose in her throat. She had not seen the schooner fly like that since her father had been well. She stood up and waved, hoping her brother or Sparhawk, whoever had command of the
Sally
, might see her and forgo engaging the
Conant
, and come for her.
Her heart sank when the
Sally
tacked and disappeared behind Misery Island. They had not seen her. They likely meant to engage the
Conant
, to come up into the wind and gain the weather gauge, the crucial advantage in any fight at sea.
Sarah lost sight of the schooner as she went around the other side of the island, and now she had no doubt that the
Sally
meant to fight the
Conant.
Micah dragged the boat up the rocky strand, and Sarah followed him through the scrubby trees to a clearing within sight of the water. He checked one of the trees—Sarah saw notches in the trunk—then crossed to the other side of the glade, then paced, counting, to a point slightly north of the clearing’s center.
Then he began to dig.
He did not look up when the guns of the
Conant
spoke, but Sarah did. Both ships were visible now from this vantage.
The
Conant
had fired high into the
Sally
’s
rigging and struck a spar. One of her topsails tore loose and flapped in the wind. The
Sally
’s guns made no answer until she tacked and came up on the
Conant
again. Once more the
Conant
fired high, meaning, Sarah realized, to take her a prize. No doubt these had been Micah’s instructions to Jerathmiel Finch. He still wanted the
Sally
, after all.
The
Sally
exhibited no such delicacy. She fired on her downward roll, low into the hull of the
Conant
, and the
Conant
’s side exploded in a shower of splinters.
The
Conant
had been holed below the waterline—a crippling blow. She could not run now. And neither could Micah Wild.
Sarah turned to her former betrothed and saw that he had unearthed the familiar French chest. It was no longer filled as it had been in Molineaux’s cabin, but a small fortune in Spanish gold remained, and Wild was filling his sack with the glimmering coins.
“The
Conant
is crippled,” she said.
“But we have the gold,” replied Wild, scooping coins out of the chest. “And there is a snow docked on the other side of the island. We can take her to Marblehead, buy another schooner, hire another crew.”
“You may have the snow, sir,” said James Sparhawk, who had approached silently through the trees, pistol in hand, “but Sarah, and the gold, belong to me.”
• • •
Micah took the snow. As he crossed the island, his hangdog expression suggested he saw little scope now for his powers of persuasion and had no stomach to put his fencing lessons to the test.
“There is water aboard, and she is seaworthy,” said Sparhawk as they watched Wild go. “Though where he will be welcome now is difficult to say.”
“Providence, perhaps,” she said. “The Browns have a reputation for boldness, and an idiosyncratic understanding of private property.” When Wild’s boat was out of sight and Sparhawk lowered his pistol, she threw herself into his arms.
“How is it that you are here? Who is commanding the
Sally
?” she asked.
“Benji captains her, and my father and yours shared command of her guns. They have cruelly mauled the
Conant
, by the looks of it. Mr. Cheap is with them as well, and Ned.”
They returned, hand in hand, to the clearing, where Micah Wild’s unburied gold lay glittering in the sun.
“It is evidence,” she said, “against Admiral Graves. You can use it to prove your innocence, to regain your rank.”
“Or I could use it to repair the
Conant
. Your brother, as Red Abed’s eldest, lays a legitimate claim to the
Sally
. And means to rebuild your family’s fortunes with her, as a privateer. And as it happens, I have already accepted a commission from the Americans, and been amply rewarded for it. I believe we hold the lease to a quarter of this island. There is a warehouse in town, no doubt intended for my ill-gotten goods, a cottage that I suspect we will sell immediately, unless my father wants it, and a house to which I understand you are attached.”
“What of Polkerris? Your father has acknowledged you. If you went home to England, you would be a baron.”
“England,” he said, “has never been my home. I was born on Nevis. And raised aboard frigates. And my father cannot go home to England. He traded the Americans’ intelligence to obtain the papers Angela Ferrers held, to obtain my freedom. He will settle, he tells me, wherever I do, at least until he has had time to correct my swordplay. The ‘dropsical Spaniard,’ apparently, has much to answer for.”
She laughed. “Perhaps he can teach Ned as well,” she said.
“Does that mean you will have us?” he asked. “I will not be a baron. Or a naval officer.”
“I had always planned to wed a sea captain,” she said. “That is, if you intend to marry me.”
“I was waiting to do so in my father’s house the day Wild took you off Castle Island. I have been waiting ever since. I will marry you on the
Sally
, if you like. Or in Salem, if you would prefer.” Then he added with a smile, “The Reverend Edwards is with us. And I do hope you can endure the man’s Puritanical thunder, because my father has already paid him.”
They were married on the
Sally
, in a mercifully short ceremony with less thunder than tenderness, because the reverend had known James Sparhawk from the day he was born, and had certainly not hoped to see an occasion as happy as this for the boy he had long thought dead.
Ned and Abednego and Benji and Trent stood by, and afterward Red Abed patted Sparhawk on the shoulder and kissed his daughter. Trent retired to the rail with the old pirate to share a jug of rum.
The
Sally
met no opposition entering Salem Harbor. Sarah had been unconscious when Micah had brought her in on the
Conant
, but now she saw that the wharves were alive with a bustle they had not known since her childhood, since the trouble had started with Parliament and the navy’s predation had cast a pall over the port’s trade. Now hammers and axes rang, and all up and down the waterfront vessels of every size and description, from tiny snows to substantial schooners like the
Conant
,
were fitting out.
There was a committee of Salem selectmen, mariners all, and headed by Eli Derby, waiting for them when they dropped anchor at the Long Wharf.
Sparhawk and Abednego and Benji spent an hour closeted with these men, bargaining for water and cordage and spars for the
Sally
and repairs for the
Conant
’s
hull. They paid for these in hard cash, Spanish gold to be exact, which was very warmly received.
Sarah took Ned and Trent to the house Micah Wild had built for her, and, after explaining the change in circumstances to the anxious servants and showing them the deeds and leases, she took up the responsibilities, so long delayed, of a new bride. She arranged for her father and Trent to have the principal chambers on the second floor, and chose a smaller, more modest room for herself and Sparhawk. Ned and Benji, she knew, would sleep on the
Sally
.
By the time her father and Benji and Sparhawk returned, there was a breakfast of sorts laid in the parlor, the best Mrs. Friary could do at the moment, with a ham and bread and a bowl of potent milk punch sprinkled with nutmeg; and because there was a tower of ginger cakes sparkling with castor sugar, Sarah thought it was a very good breakfast indeed.
It was evening by the time she and Sparhawk were finally alone. Mrs. Friary had taken the ticking covers off the furniture for the occasion, and Sarah and her husband sat together on the sofa, looking out the windows at the river.
“I am very glad to have the house,” she said, “but I do not intend to live in it. Not all the time. I want to sail with you, like my mother did with my father.”
James Sparhawk turned to his new bride and drew her into his arms, then had a better idea and pulled her into his lap. “On runs to the sugar islands,” he said. “And when we carry
safe
cargo. But never with a hold full of powder, and never when we are looking for a fight.”