Race Before the Wind

Copyright © Jill Salkeld 1988

Part Three: 1826-1831

The Men of Enterprise

Chapter Ten

In the days following the double tragedy, it seemed that all life had gone out of the boatyard. The shipwrights worked harder than ever, but they spoke in low voices under a grey and sombre sky. There was no more laughter. None of them were told where Vinnie had died, for they were as superstitious as sailors, and would not have climbed the scaffolding again.

Tom and Jess drew strength from one another, doing their best to fill the gap left in their children's lives and to behave naturally with Annis, who was just learning to talk. The little girl had been spoiled by Mace in particular since the day she was born, and although he had been absent since the end of November she still missed his bright presence, and his voice singing her to sleep. Often when a door opened she would turn in sudden expectation, as if her gangling, tousle-headed uncle might stride into the room at any moment, to shout her name gleefully and toss her in his arms. It broke Jessica's heart.

Mace's body was conveyed home to Bursledon. He was buried in the churchyard, alongside the unmarked graves where Vinnie and their baby lay. A midnight trip to the churchyard and a bribe accepted by the sexton had allowed Vinnie to lie in consecrated ground. Tom knew this mattered to him more than it would have done to the young couple. For them, it would have been enough that they were together.

The Elderfields had assumed that Obadiah would return to London after Mace's funeral, but he remained at Crosstrees, having quitted his job in Deptford. He was a sullen guest, and showed scant affection for his sister or anyone else. Tom suspected that he stayed in the hope of being offered employment, perhaps even a partnership to keep the name of Elderfield & Tandy alive. Tom was not interested. He thought Obadiah a feckless drifter; and while yachts continued to be built to Mace's designs, Mace would be his partner still.

Three nights after the funeral, Tom lay awake into the small hours, as he had done every night since the execution. He stared up into the darkness, hands clasped behind his head. From the age of fifteen, he had had good reason to hate and despise those who stepped outside the law to commit murder and call it justice. Yet now, he would have struck down the Earl of Wickham in cold blood without a twinge of conscience.

If harm came to Wickham - even by accident - his friends would demand a full and careful inquiry. In the event of any hint of foul play, Tom would be the prime suspect. Either he would share Mace's fate, or his family would be in more danger than they were at present; for it the law could not gather sufficient evidence to punish him, there were men who would do so without that evidence. He had been given a taste of their methods in East Cowes.

Jessica stirred beside him, already half awake. "Can't you sleep, darling?" she said.

"How can Wickham - how can he believe that you'd ever go back to him now, ever love him, whatever threats he used?"

Jessica turned on to her side and touched her fingers to his lips, "I don't even know whether he still wants me back."

"Is it only vengeance, then? Nothing but that? He killed Mace for no other reason than to hurt me?"

"Don't you know," she whispered, "why Macey and those other men were hanged, and why all those hundreds of labourers from five counties are filling the convict ships? The mobs were a threat to property, not to lives. The rest was just propaganda by the press. Not one person was ever killed by a so-called rioter, were they?"

"No," he said, with bitterness. "The muskets and sabres were all on the other side."

"Because property is - well, it's sacrosanct to landowners like Wickham."

"That's always been true, Jess. Why else did keepers set traps and spring-guns in the old days, unless their pheasants were more important than men's lives?"

"Wickham loved me. I was stolen from him by a bold upstart, a blacksmith's son who dared to outwit and humiliate a peer of the realm and to do so in front of witnesses. You poached his property,,,,,, and his lordship was always death on poachers."

Tom grimaced at the ceiling. "I thought you said he was the poor man's friend."

"He used to say that he paid his men fair wages, and therefore they shouldn't kill his game. It was unsportsmanlike, he said."

"And spring-guns weren't?" Tom caught his breath suddenly, and raised himself to one elbow. "Guns and traps have been illegal for three years. Would Wickham be one of those to carry on using them regardless?"

"Yes," she said. "I think he would. The law can't be enforced, can it? When has a gamekeeper employed by a powerful landowner ever been arrested for murdering a poacher?"

Tom lay back, frowning. Jessica said, "What is it? What are you thinking?"

But his thoughts were hazy as yet. Instead of replying he reached for his wife, needing her desperately; needing also to escape, just for an hour or two, from the plans for vengeance that might well result in failure and his own death.

Four years of marriage had not sated Jessica's appetite for his lovemaking, and by the time he took her she was aware of nothing beyond the breathless, joyful reality of their united bodies. Not until Tom sank down exhausted beside her did Jessica hear the sounds from the yard, and see a light leap across the ceiling from between the closed curtains.

"Tom!"

She leapt naked from the bed and rushed to drag back the curtains. Tom was at her side within seconds.

The tool-store and mould-loft were ablaze, with sparks blowing in a rising wind across piles of newly delivered oak timber and the upturned hulls of two skiffs under repair.

Blowing towards the flyer.

Tom and Jessica dressed frantically in the nearest clothes to hand, and ran from the bedchamber fumbling with hooks and buttons, yelling to wake the household. The twins were easily roused. Annis was left in the care of the maidservant.

Jess and the twins, equipped with bowls and buckets, were at the front door when Tom came bounding after them. "Obadiah's gone. His bed has been slept in, and his knapsack is still there. What do you reckon, Jess?"

"You don't think - why should he? and he doesn't know about the insurance."

"He does," said Honor. "I-I thought it was all right. Our own uncle -"

Tom gave her a look that made her flinch, and hustled her through the doorway with the others. "Run into Bursledon," he told her. "Yell at the top of your voice. Knock on every door. Not just where our men are billeted. Bring the whole bloody village. We'll need more buckets too. Now run!"

While Honor fled down the drive, the rest of the family sprinted to the river. At the end of the jetty they filled their buckets from deep water, racing then to douse the blazing tool store, the shed nearest to Joie-de-Vivre.

The fire was more widespread than at first appeared. The sheds and stores were not by any means tinder-dry, but each one of them had been set alight from the inside. Almost nothing within could be saved, even where the outer walls remained intact.

More than two hundred villagers eventually ran or shambled down the lane to the yard. Tom organised them to form chains from the jetty and slipways to the blazing buildings and smouldering piles of timber.

All four Elderfields formed one end of another chain, climbing the scaffolding to protect Joie-de-Vivre from the thousands of sparks and glowing pieces of thatch blown on to her deck and into the standing rigging. It was very clear in Tom's mind that if he lost everything else, the whole of four years' investment, he must not lose Mace's flyer.

The fact that he would have to declare himself bankrupt if Joie-de-Vivre burned did not occur to him that night.

It took an hour to bring the flames under control. At four o'clock in the morning, with the villagers and shipwrights trudging home in small, weary groups, Tom and Jessica stood at the gates to thank them individually and bid them a grateful goodnight. Around them, the ruins of the boatyard smokes in the darkness. The proud sign advertising the name of Elderfield and Tandy was charred at the edges, and hung crookedly on blackened posts.

Tom and Jessica returned to Crosstrees to find the twins sitting on the steps. In the dim light from the hallway the children's faces were flushed and charcoal-smeared, their clothes, holed by flying sparks. Honor's long hair had been singed in places.

"We saved her," Honor said with a catch in her voice. "We saved the flyer for Uncle Macey."

The four of them went indoors, saying little, all of them knowing the extent of the disaster. Most of Tom's working capital for the coming year had been invested in the timber, ninety per cent of which would be unusable. Tom felt bone-tired and suddenly old. He had no idea whether saving Joie=de=Vivre would be enough to save the company.

Honor said, her eyes bleak, "It can't have been Uncle Obadiah. It just can't."

Tom hugged his daughter into his side. "Maybe it wasn't. Never mind, little girl. You weren't to know." But his tone was flat and not totally forgiving.

In the hall they stopped, in sheer disbelief. Obadiah was descending the stairs casually, morosely, knapsack on his back. To the Elderfields, his intention to leave the house before dawn was sufficient proof of guilt.

Tom let go of Honor and stood at the foot of the stairs. "Where the hell were you," he said, "when half the village was working to save my yard?"

Obadiah paused about six stairs from the bottom. An unpleasant smile twisted his heavy features. "Watching," he said.

Tom was on him almost before the word was out. Obadiah was more than ready for a fight; had sought one, surely, with his public exit from Crosstrees. He blocked Tom's first punch and tried to kick Tom's legs from under him. He received in answer a straight jab in the ribs, and with apparent rage he launched himself at his opponent. The two men rolled together down the stairs into the hall.

The battle did not last long. Obadiah found himself under attack from two sturdy fourteen-year-olds who fought like wild animals, with fists, feet and teeth, while Jessica's nails tore viciously at him as she struggled to drag the men apart. Whatever damage Tom was doing to him was nothing by comparison.

Swearing obscenely, he rolled out of reach and staggered to his feet, backing against the wall. Honor would have flown at him again, had Jessica not grabbed her arm as Tom stood up from the floor. Tom knew how his daughter felt. It took a tremendous effort of self-control not to hurl himself at Obadiah.

He said, panting, "D'you fancy....telling us why....you felt the need to destroy my company.....?"

Obadiah threw up his head and let out a great guffaw of mirthless laughter. "You," he said, "have destroyed more than that, Elderfield, in your time."

Tom snarled, "A pretty sight, eh, Jess? The cornered rat, striking out at everyone who stands too close. Don't push your luck, Tandy."

"Tandys stick together," said Obadiah harshly. "That's what folk reckoned, back in Hatchley. It wasn't ever quite like that, was it, Elderfield? You and Amos...mates from the start. Not Amos and me. But that wasn't enough for you - oh, no! You had to get him killed, and then take Jessie - take her from her own family. She came home pregnant. As for Mace......he always did think the sun shone out of your baby-blue eyes. It was the outside. Never you."

"You choice, then. Not mine."

Obadiah half laughed, then shook his head. "You bloody sicken me. His lordship was right about you, Elderfield. You're a sore that's been allowed to fester too long in this county. You needed......cauterising."

Tom was shaking with fury, "You told Wickham the insurance had been cancelled? You were paid - by Wickham - by the man who murdered your own brother ="

"No. He offered, all right, but I wouldn't stoop so low. I thought his idea a good one, that was all. I did it for the pleasure of watching your precious yard burn and seeing your face afterwards."

Tom held Luke's wrist as the boy started forward. "Get out of our sight, Tandy," he hissed, "and if you value your miserable life, don't ever set foot on my property again."

Obadiah sneered at him. "Or you'll do what?"

Tom blinked. He heard himself saying, "Jess should have told you. I've got friends on the coast. A gang four hundred strong, led by an old seaman who once took something that was mine. If I needed the services of his men, even now, in compensation, and as a favour, he'd be honour bound to oblige me. Maybe you wouldn't mind fleeing from the vengeance of the Free Traders. After all, you've done it before and survived. Think about it, Tandy. Look over your shoulder now and then."

Obadiah's face was sallow and sweating. One might have thought he had been placed under a curse, as, in a way, he had.

Tom said through his teeth, "Now get out of my house."

Obadiah shouldered past him, looking neither to right nor left. As he walked fast down the drive, the Elderfields stood in the doorway to watch him go.

"You really meant it,"Jessica murmured. "You'd go to Hicks, after what he did..."

"Because of what he did, I don't know." Tom narrowed his eyes at his brother-in-law's departing figure. "Maybe I should."

"Not to hurt Obadiah?" She shook his arm. "Tom, don't!"

"No," he said. "Not for that. Besides, the Free Trade doesn't wield that sort of power any more, although your brother is too far out of touch with South Coast people to realise it. These days, only the Earl of Wickham can engineer a 'just execution' and get away with it. Or think he has."

Whatever his family heard in his voice, Tom became aware that they were staring up at him with a kind of awe.

Luke said, "You've decided, haven't you, Papa? You know how to keep your promise to Uncle Macey."

"Yes," he said quietly. "I know, now."

Part 3, The Men of Enterprise, Chapter 11

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