The Fallon Blood, page 2
part #1 of Fallon Series
Small, breathy whimpers started in her throat, in time to the creaking of the bed’s rope underpinnings, growing louder and louder. Her teeth sank into the side of his neck to stifle her cries. With a scream she couldn’t fight back, she came. And then his breath rasped past her ear as he, too, reached release.
For just a moment he let his weight rest on her, then rolled over, pulling her over on top of him. He smoothed away damp hair from her forehead. “You’ve an angel’s talent for making a man happy, lass. What’s your name?”
She smiled against his chest. “Bess, sir. And if I may say so, you have a talent for making a woman happy.”
Michael chuckled deep in his throat. “Well, I thank you, Bess. Did I by any chance ask you about going to America? And if I did, what was it you answered?”
“Oh, I don’t want to go there, sir. They say the savages cuts off people’s heads.”
Michael sighed and settled deeper in the pillows. “Too pretty a head to be cut off. Still, could be, could be rich in America.” His voice drifted drowsily. “Ought to come. Ought to—”
The words trailed away, and she lifted up on his chest to look at him. His eyes were closed, and he breathed the long, regular breaths of a deep sleep.
She pushed at his shoulder, without much hope of success. He slept on. With a regretful sigh she clambered off him and shrugged back into her clothes. On impulse she gently kissed his lips. Then she pulled a blanket over him and tiptoed out, softly closing the door behind her.
Light shining through the window finally wakened Michael. He lay still for a minute, wondering which hurt more, the sun burning through his eyelids or his head reminding him of the night before. With an effort he pushed himself up. The mirror showed him in remarkably fine shape for a man who knew himself at least half dead. As he stared in the glass he realized he’d found a decision in the ale, and that decision still held.
Splashing water in his face he hurriedly dressed, wondering vaguely how he’d managed to fold his shirt so neatly and yet leave his pants in a heap on the floor. Then, pitcher in hand, he walked down the hall to his friend’s room. Timothy lay sprawled on his back, fully clothed and snoring loud enough to rattle the windows. Michael held the pitcher over his head and slowly turned it upside down.
Timothy jerked erect, choking and sputtering. “I’ll kill you. Friend or not, I’ll break your head.”
“I’m going to America, Timothy.”
“I’ll tear off your limbs one by one. And then—What was that you said?”
“I’m going to America.”
“Praise be. Some sense at last. When?”
“As soon as you stop wallowing about there and tell me how to find this man of yours in Liverpool.”
“Wallowing about, is it? I—Forget about telling you. I’ll take you myself.” He reared up out of the bed. “What are you waiting for? The horse won’t hitch himself.”
Fifteen minutes later they were on the road to Liverpool.
2
The Rose, bound from Liverpool, England, for Charlestown, in His Majesty’s colony of South Carolina, was far from looking like her namesake. Eighty feet long and thirty in the beam, full-sided and deep, she was made to cram the largest amount of cargo possible into the smallest amount of space, a cargo largely of indentured men and women.
The Rose made landfall on a brisk, January morning in 1765. A shadowy line appeared, like mist on the horizon. Slowly that faint darkness grew more substantial, until a continent reared up out of the sea to lie before them, sweeping across the whole of their vision as if it were the whole world brought together. America.
The closer the ship came to land, the more the crew resembled a stirred ant heap. They bustled around at jobs Michael now recognized, but some things he didn’t know at all. One clambered out on the bowsprit, legs wrapped around the slim spar, hands clutching the jibstay, eyes fastened to the waters ahead. Another scrambled to the topmast cap of the foremast, one hand holding him against the sway of the mast while the other shaded his eyes to search their path.
Andrew Toomey, a young ship’s officer with whom Michael had spent many an hour, passed by. He was frowning: Michael caught his arm. “What’s happening, Andrew? Why the extra lookouts?”
Toomey looked quickly to the quarterdeck to see if the captain was watching. “He’s going through the Swash.”
“Is that so dangerous, then?”
The young man hesitated. “Mr. Reed, the first mate, has made this approach a dozen times. There’s been talk of building a lighthouse, he says, but there’s none yet. So we take a bearing on two points of land and steer straight for a small river mouth. That’ll put us fairly in the Swash. The lookouts will watch for the water to change color over the Charlestown Bar and keep us squarely in the channel.”
“I’ve a feeling there’s more,” Michael said quietly.
“There is,” Toomey said with a short nod. “Just inside the Swash there’s another small bar. Even before we clear the Swash we must bear away from the harbor mouth to clear it. And then we’ll tack back up. There’s little room in the channel, and it’s an awfully sharp tack. If we go in irons we’ll strike the Bar, or drift into the shallows and break up in the surf.”
“Well, those are certainly joyous alternatives. I take it this isn’t the normal way to enter this harbor. There’d not be this excitement if it was.”
Toomey took another look for the captain. “A vessel this size would usually lie outside the Bar until a good part of her cargo had been lightered ashore, then go in through the Eight Foot Channel. But Captain Harding says the lightermen are all thieves and will pilfer the cargo before it gets to shore. As he’s responsible for it until it does get to shore, not so much as a packet of needles will be allowed over the side before he’s safely tied up.”
The man was going to risk all their lives to prevent a few pounds of theft? “Is he drunk, or a madman?”
“Sir, it’s his command. He can do with it as he wishes. There’s an old saying that at sea the captain and God rank in that order.”
“Mr. Toomey!” Captain Harding’s shout brought the same galvanized leap from the young man that it always did. The captain leaned over the quarterdeck rail and bawled his words for the whole ship to hear. “Why is it, Mr. Toomey, that every time I look for you, you’re talking to that damned Irishman? I don’t like my officers fraternizing with the cargo. Perhaps if you study the question from the foretop you can come up with an answer. Now, Mr. Toomey. Right this minute.”
With an apologetic glance at Michael, Toomey turned and trotted to the foremast shrouds. He went up like a spider, feet nimble on the ratlines, swinging out on the futtock shrouds, almost upside down, to climb precariously over the outside edge of the top.
Harding had bent back over a fistful of manifests with Mr. Reed. He appeared to have forgotten Toomey as soon as he finished shouting.
As shouts began to come down from the lookouts, Harding kept his eyes on the papers, refusing to show any of the agitation that gripped the rest of the crew. Reed attempted to do the same, albeit nervously. Seamen went about their jobs tensely, ears cocked for the shuddering crack of the keel breaking on the Bar. The other passengers noted none of it. Their attention was all on the shore, so startlingly green—and so low to the water.
“It’s flat!” Gale cried. “A high tide’ll cover it.”
“It is a judgment from God that we are put down in such a land,” Mrs. Hanna intoned. “We must pray to Him to receive our souls.”
The ship’s head dropped away, toward the south. Michael watched the sails. If disaster came the first warning would be there.
“Do you think they’d set us ashore in a marsh, Mr. Fallon?” Hanna wrung his hands, ignoring his wife’s furious looks and the finger she kept jabbing in his side. “Savages, Mr. Fallon. How will we protect ourselves against savages?”
Michael pulled his attention back to the deck. “Savages, is it? I don’t know much about savages, but I’ve seen half a dozen ports in Europe that show no more to the sea than this.” The sails were all slack, the foreyards not yet turned. He glanced toward the shore, but at the water, not the land. From where the breakers began they had only a few hundred yards before they’d be in the shallows. “No, I don’t think it’s savages should worry you at all.”
“I say it’s a wilderness,” Gale said stoutly, “and wildernesses have savages.”
“It is God’s judgment.” Mrs. Hanna’s voice was like a funeral bell.
Abruptly the wind caught in the sails all at the same time, and the mass of canvas cracked like God’s whip to chastise the wicked. The same thought seemed to strike Mrs. Hanna, for she looked to the sky, white-faced and trembling, quiet for the first time since coming on board.
Michael looked to the breaker line, less than a hundred yards from the ship. “You’re a lucky man, Gale. You don’t even begin to know how lucky. Why, with no more luck than you’ve got right now, I expect you’ll live to a rancid old age.”
Gale blinked uncertainly, and the rest fell to arguing over whether it was an insult or not, and if so, how much of one. Hanna’s wife stood stiffly, eyes closed and mouth moving in silent prayer.
Michael kept his eyes ahead, running the low, sandy beaches and the scrub-pine forests toward the point they’d round into the harbor. The Rose moved slowly into the wind, creeping past the point and on out beyond the middle of the harbor mouth before turning in. As it did, he smiled, a smile of delighted surprise.
The harbor mouth was two miles and more across, and inside it widened and ran deep. Down the length of it were anchored over a hundred sail, ships of every size from coasting schooners, little more than decked-over longboats, to vessels more than twice the size of the Rose, as big as frigates. Lighters and barges and small sloops snuggled in close to many of them, while barrels and crates were swung out on booms and onto larger vessels, or they themselves were loaded for the trip to shore or upriver.
A host of smaller craft flitted across the water like mayflies, fishing boats under patched sail with crews of two or three black men, large dories rowed by four or six with a steersman and a passenger attired in the height of fashion, even dugouts made from roughly hollowed tree trunks and paddled by roughly dressed men who could have passed for savages had it not been for their white skins and European features.
Michael knew now how the Vikings had felt, sailing into the mouth of some Irish river and seeing for the first time the land they meant to have. This is mine, each had said, and known inside that he would have the land or die on it. He smiled now as they had smiled then, like the sea-wolf staking his claim. “This is mine,” he said softly. “This is mine.”
Two rivers came down to form the harbor, and on the peninsula between them the city was built. Charlestown. It wasn’t so large as London, but it could hold its own against all but a handful of towns in England. Two tall steeples towered over the spread of it, stretching from river to river. As they wended through the pack of the harbor, details began to appear. Buildings of brick were everywhere, prominent dwellings of the sort built by men of wealth. The streets bustled and flowed with traffic in a continuous and purposeful stream. The reverberations of a church bell pealing the hour floated out over the harbor. With a crash the anchor fell free, and the Rose swung at her place in the river.
3
A scraping along the ship’s side drew Michael to the rail. Bobbing alongside was a boat rowed by a weathered black man. He swung his oars in, and stood to grab a deadeye and steady the boat for his passenger to scramble over the rail. The passenger moved with a seaman’s nimbleness, easily timing his leap to the rise of the swells, but his clothes were those of a clerk: an unadorned black tricorn, a somber gray suit, and shoes with plain steel buckles. Once on deck he headed quickly for the quarterdeck, looking neither left nor right.
“Hold there,” Harding shouted. “Not the owner himself boards this ship without permission. Who the devil might you be?”
The man hastily made a leg, sweeping his hat before him with a flourish. He had a wide grin on his long, narrow face. “Sure and you must remember me, Captain Harding. Christopher Byrne, sir, at your service. It’s in the employ of Mr. Thomas Carver I am. It’s to him a good bit of your cargo is consigned, or so I’m told.”
“Back over the side, Mr. Byrne. Mr. Carver will have to wait until I’m tied to the wharf before I unload one bale. He knows my way. If he wanted his goods lightered ashore he should have used his own ship.”
“You’re mistaking my purpose, Captain. I’m not after the cargo. That’s to be landed at the bridge, as agreed. Mr. Carver sent me out most particularly to fetch back an indentured man you’re supposed to have for him. A clerk, he is.”
Harding thrust out his hand, and Reed had the list ready to put in it. Some of the bound men stepped forward eagerly. The captain looked up sharply. “Which one of you is Michael Fallon?”
Michael straightened from the rail. “I am.”
Harding’s mouth tightened. “You, is it? I’ll be glad enough to get rid of this one, Mr. Byrne. He is a pest, taking up my officers’ time when they should be about their duties. All right, then. Into the boat with you.”
“I’ve some belongings below—”
“Then get them. Get them and get over the side.” He turned away.
It took only moments for Michael to gather his few possessions and stuff them into the same bag he’d carried to the King’s Man. Another pair of breeches, two extra shirts, some smallclothes, that was the sum of it. In the bottom, though, wrapped in a rag, was the money he’d gotten for one pair of officer’s pistols with set triggers, chased with silver, and one sword, finely balanced and engraved on the blade in German.
Little enough it was, too. The man who bought them thought they were stolen, brought in as they were by a ragged Irishman, and paid accordingly. Michael had been in no position to haggle. It was a small foundation for an empire, he thought, but it was a beginning.
Byrne was waiting astride the railing when Michael went back on deck. “Over the side with you, lad,” he said with a mock grin. “We’ve not much time to get where we’re going.”
Michael nodded, and climbed down to the boat as smoothly as he could.
It was of overlapping planks, and pointed at both ends. The oarsman sat amidships, one calloused foot braced against the seat in front of him. He eyed Michael expressionlessly as the Irishman took his seat. Michael studied him as well. He knew they had black slaves in the colonies, but he’d thought of them as ragged men, laboring dolefully. The boatman’s clothes might be faded, but they were far from rags. And despite his impassive face he appeared more satisfied than sad.
The boat rocked as Byrne entered, and the boatman greeted him with a smile. “Carver’s Bridge, Daniel. Quick as you can.”
“No time at all, Mr. Byrne. No time at all.” The oarsman pushed them away from the Rose with one oar, then fitted both in the locks and began long, powerful strokes that took in his whole body from braced foot to broad shoulders. The boat literally skipped across the water.
“This bridge, now,” Michael said. “What kind of bridge would a man be owning? Is it a toll bridge of some kind?”
Daniel chuckled and nearly missed a stroke. Byrne threw back his head and laughed. “No, no, it’s not that kind of bridge at all. It’s a custom around here to call a wharf a bridge. So, Mr. Carver’s bridge is really Mr. Carver’s wharf. Is there any other question you might be wanting to ask?”
“There is.” Michael jerked his head at the boatman. “Is he one of those slaves I’ve heard of?”
“Daniel? Lord no, man. Daniel’s a free man. Aren’t you Daniel?”
The black man nodded. “Yes sir, Mr. Byrne. I’m a free man, like my daddy was before me. Now his daddy was a slave to Mr. Perroneau Tristam, till he saved Mr. Tristam from drowning in the Stono Inlet. Mr. Tristam gave him his freedom, ten pounds currency, a boat, and a new suit of clothes every year till the day he died. We been boatmen ever since, and I reckon we always will be.”
“I apologize, Daniel,” Michael said, “if I offended you.”
This time the boatman missed a stroke, and sat all the way up before remembering to take it up again. “No, sir. You didn’t offend me none.”
“He’s got something in common with you, Daniel,” Byrne said. “In a manner of speaking, that is. He’s a Black Irishman.”
Daniel looked from the red-headed Irishman to the dark-haired one. “He don’t look no kind of black to me.”
“None the less, he is. He has the mark of it. Tell me Fallon, have you done much clerking?”
“A goodly bit.”
Byrne nodded, still eyeing Michael shrewdly. “Times looks tell a false tale, I’ve no doubt.”
Michael’s eyes flickered. “And you? Are you a clerk?”
“A clerk! God save me. I’m second mate on the Annalee, one of Mr. Carver’s own.”
“A fine position, that.”
Byrne’s irritation had faded to a kind of seriousness. “A little advice for you, Fallon. There aren’t many will accept an indentured man who acts as though he’s as good as they are. When I boarded the Rose, I could pick out the other bound men. But you, now, lounging against the rail. Man, I thought you were a paying passenger, maybe even in the captain’s cabin. You’ll have to watch that.”
“I’ll show respect where it’s due, but I’ll truckle to no man.”
“I did not speak of truckling,” Byrne said sharply. “I just would watch yourself. Many consider a bound man no better than a slave, and they’ll do you harm if they think you’re getting above yourself.”
“You give much advice, and freely.”
“I know what it takes to survive as a bound man. I was one.”
Michael looked up in surprise and started to speak, but the other’s attention was on grabbing a ladder as they slid in beside a wharf. Daniel rose quickly, taking hold of the ladder himself, and Byrne disappeared up it.
