Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (47 page)

"Ram!" she gasped. "Ram, what do you do here?"

"I could ask you the same. And the gentleman who just left? Do you travel with him?"

"Poor Sir Dennis," she sighed. "He so wishes me to see his fine estate in County Cavan. If it's as grand as he vows and he's not lied too much about his debts, perhaps I'll permit him to make me Lady Doyle."

"You mean—Fred's dead?"

"Aye, poor soul. He was riding down Tryddyn Hill, near home. The path was steep and his saddle girth broke. I've been widowed these six months. And you? What's passed, and what brings ye here?"

When he told her about Georgia, she scoffed, saying he was a fool to go so far. But when she heard of Lucinda, she stiffened.

"Married! I scarce believe my ears!" She gestured helplessly. "Oh, Ram! After all we've been to each other!"

"May I remind you of Fred? And there was that Scot. And now this Irishman. Indeed. Annie, what's amazing I'm wedded?"

"The Scot was only a diversion," she retorted impatiently. "A mere lad who thought to advance his interest by me. As for the baronet, he's old and I doubt he'll live overlong. I'm young, and afterward I'll have a title. Oh, lad, why didn't ye wait?"

Though shocked, he remembered his manners and asked if she and her escort would honor him at supper,

"La, 'twill be a pleasure," she dimpled, "Madam your lady will doubtless be charmed to discuss your pretty foibles with me."

Red to the ears, he left. Curse the jade, she was as venomous as a cobra! And Fred; true, he'd always been a poor rider, but why should a girth break on a steep path? He must have been drunk.

Lucinda was so impressed at having a title to sup that she called Margot to prink her hair anew. But when the guests arrived, antagonism between the ladies was instant. Upon Lucinda flaunting her

possession of Ram, Annie said that, having known him very, very well, she'd always thought he would wed in the highest quarter.

"I vow ladies can't let him be, m'dear," she smiled sweetly. "There was delicious Lady Isabella. And the Countess of Blegley adored him. While I—"

"Ah, madam, but he married me!" Lucinda flashed. Then she made the blunder of saying that half the gentlemen of London had toasted her as the playhouse's finest actress.

Annie regarded her earnestly. "Really? Ah, now I know you! Sure you were in that dreary play My Lady's Lovers. You came on but once to weep: 'Sir, how could ye treat a body so without ofifering marriage?' I remember well, for you made so charming a bawd."

Lucinda gasped and Ram, humiliated for her, was so furious he was about to make reference to Annie's own past when Sir Dennis intervened.

"Eged, me charmer, I too saw the piece," he told Annie blandly. "True, our lovely hostess had but one line, but how she spoke it! Only a great actress indeed could have delivered it so feelingly."

Ram looked at him gratefully. By candlelight he did look old, with a once-handsome face that time and drink had blotched and crumbled. But though his eyes held humor, the set of his mouth didn't promise Annie easy dominance. If she bought his title by marrying him, she'd have no cheap bargain.

Further bickering was stilled by a snow-spattered courier from the trust office with a double letter for Ram. The enclosure he must deliver to Oglethorpe, his own was from Ben Martyn. It said the trustees had learned that, some months before, one Thomas Bacon, alias Hogg, who knew the Carolina and Georgia coasts well, had sailed from London for Cuba, having boasted beforehand that he'd picked up valuable information about the new colony and expected the Spaniards there would reward him for it by a highly paid position,

A traitor already! Was he a lone adventurer or was he Oglethorpe's agent? Ram scowled; it became an effort to act the host once more. Too, feminine acrimony had grown so marked that he felt only relief when Annie, yawning politely, declared: "Sweet Lucinda, I vow your sparkling conversation has lulled me completely. I must retire this very instant." Afterward, he spent a racking hour soothing Lucinda's feelings.

Finally she began to laugh, saying Mrs. Morgan must certainly lack all charm, since she was accepting so ancient a buck as that fortune-hunting Irish Papist.

Joseph's party arrived next day and all was a bustle of loading. But contrary winds held the Endurance in the river, and the Dublin packet too. Annie and Sir Dennis came aboard to wish Ram good fortune.

She gave him a small chest. "Opium, Jesuits' bark against agues and fevers, ipecacuanha as a sovereign purgative, and some Hindu drugs ye doubtless know. In a land so near the tropics, ye may have need of them all."

Though he had a good supply of drugs he was grateful, especially for the Jesuits' bark, brought by priests from Peru, for he'd heard it was most efficacious.

She had also brought gifts for Lucinda; two silk masks and a wide-brimmed straw hat. "To keep your complexion ever delicate while ye toil under the broiling sun," she cooed. " 'Tis said so many of our colony women are ruined in their skins, they're now as dark as the very savages."

She took Ram's arm. "Come, show me your ship and tell me how long before ye hope to reach the Carolinas." Then, when they were out of earshot: "You thrice-born fool! That brainless hussy's no wife for a raw country! She'll prink and whine and think to live as in London. 'Tis I should be with ye. Then you'd build an empire, as ye did in Hindustan. But, no, you had to take this pallid-stomached jade."

Ram laughed at her. "You, who dreamed only of coming to London and playing the great lady, you'd start anew in a land far more raw than India!"

"Aye—with you! London! I've seen it, and it's excessively dull. No, Ram, I've red blood in me. I thought you knew that."

He caught her wrist and pulled her face to face. "The truth! How did Fred die? How did the girth break? Was he alone?"

She returned his gaze, her eyes narrowed and hard. "I've never lied overmuch to you. Ram. I was with him. The path was steep and his horse stumbled. The strap parted and he fell over the cliff. His neck was broke."

His grip tightened but she didn't flinch. He could picture it all: her smoldering hatred; a knife drawn shrewdly across the girth beforehand; the dangerous path; she, a fine rider, in rear so that her mount could "accidentally" override his; then the fall that had left her a widow.

"Come back," she whispered huskily. "Sir Dennis is old, old!"

"Permit me to assist you overside." Frozen-faced, he led her toward the gangway, where the baronet awaited her. Strangely, her eyes became misty. "Oh, my love," she breathed, "only you understand me. Godspeed!"

He watched their wherry pull away, then went to the quarterdeck.

"Wind's changing this minute, sir," Captain Burrows greeted. "With luck, we'll be off Anglesey this time tomorrow."

Ram glanced upriver. The wherry was nearing the Dublin boat. He sighed with relief. Tliere went his last link with the old life!

BOOK FOUR

BLUE COAT

CHAPTER 16

THE SAVANNAH, 1733-34

The February forenoon was balmy with an offshore breeze as the Endurance anchored outside the bar off Charles Town and fired a gun for the pilot. Fort Johnson boomed an answer; a cutter came tacking out of the harbor.

Ram scanned the broad South Carolina bay through his perspective. Many vessels lay there and more were berthed along the busy waterfront, but he couldn't recognize Oglethorpe's Anne among them. What if she'd met with disaster? If so, his party would soon be Georgia's first comers, though without authority or specific knowledge of the trustees' plans. In that case, he thought grimly, at least he could make sure there'd be no treachery

"Lud, how I long to be ashore!" Lucinda fretted. "Captain, why do we delay? Why don't we sail in and land?"

"We await the King's Pilot, ma'am," Burrows explained, patient after weeks of such questions.

"Here comes the pilot now, m'dear," Ram said, giving her the glass. How like that day when L'Esperance had anchored in the Hooghly's mouth, he thought. He glanced forward to where his excited people were lining the bulwarks. Though some had found the voyage hard, losses had been light: the Buller babe had died of colic, but former dairy wench Nell Lann had borne a boy. A bull had broken loose and gored a cow to death; but then all hands had feasted on fresh beef for a week. Otherwise, all—human and animal—were well but sea weary.

The cutter ran alongside; the pilot and assistant came aboard.

"Endurance pink, Stephen Burrows, master, fifty-five days out of Liverpool with persons, stock and cargo for Georgia Colony," the skipper told them. "Here's the charterer, Mr. Anstruther."

"I'm just back from taking the Anne's passengers down from Beaufort to the new Georgia settlement," the pilot said. "They sailed in a sloop and some piraguas through the inland way."

"Why didn't they go in the Anne?"

"Too deep in draft. We had to tranship into lighter craft."

"But in London we heard the Savannah's amply deep. How can we make a colony if sea vessels can't reach it?" Ram's distrust of Oglethorpe flared anew. The other trustees had surely not contemplated this.

"I know my job, sir." The South Carolinian was curt. "The Anne could never get up to the new town. Nor can this craft."

"Eigh, hold on!" His man, who had been talking with some of the people, intervened. "These fowks is Yorkshire, saame as me." He touched his forelock to Ram. "Simon Parks, sir, bom in Whitby, and Ah says this 'ere pink can sail oop into t'Savannah easy as winkin'."

"Belay!" his superior growled. "Who's asking you?"

"Ah knaws t'river better'n you," Parks retorted. "Theer's a full two fathom off t'new settlement, even at low tide. Ah've sounded it."

They argued heatedly. At last the senior turned back to Ram. "I've enough to do here, so 'tis no concern o' mine if ye heed the fool. But I warn ye, there's a bad bar off the mouth and shoals around Tybee Island." He gave some directions to Burrows, and soon the pink was sailing between the fort and Sullivan's Island, with the harbor opening wide before it.

Ram questioned Parks, who insisted he had often been up the Savannah much higher than the new town. "Yamacraw Bluff, that's wheer 'tis, wi' a wee Indian tribe theer. Ah can pilot ye oop safe, sir, never fear. Three days by sea, 'stead of a week by piraguas through t'inland watters."

Even Lucinda was impressed with now-close Charles Town, with its tall church spire and fine buildings along its bustling waterfront. "It looks entrancing," she admitted. "Cork was miserably wet, and Madeira had scarce a town, despite its sunshine. I vow I must explore every foot of this charming place."

Her chance soon came. Burrows had port dues to pay and mail to deliver, so Ram and she went ashore with him and called upon Sam Everleigh, a merchant who had sent the trustees valued advice. He received them cordially and, while his wife took Lucinda under her wing, he gave Ram reassuring news.

Oglethorpe had arrived in mid-Januarv. After a fine welcome by Governor Johnson and the Assembly, he had sent the Anne south to Beaufort, on Port Royal Island off the mouth of the Savannah, where the future settlers were housed in some new military barracks. Then, guided by Colonel William Bull, a council member, and other gentlemen, he had gone overland to the Savannah to pick the site for the new town. And South Carolina had not only donated cattle and rice to her new sister, but had lent a detachment of Capt. Massey's Independent Company of Regulars and some Carolina Rangers under Capt. McPherson. After all, Everleigh chuckled, Georgia must be protected, since in future she must protect Carolina.

Back aboard, Lucinda voiced her disappointment. "Poo, 'tis a mere facade, all on the waterfront and nothing behind. And the styles are five years stale. And prices! But Mrs. Everleigh says they're in Carolina currency, whatever that means."

Ram explained that, as there was very little hard money in the province, Carolina had issued paper money worth only a seventh of English sterling. While she puzzled this out, he was thinking how lucky he was to have over £1,500 in gold. He'd be wealthy out here.

One phase of Charles Town life delighted Lucinda—its Negro slaves. "They wait on their mistresses so attentive, I vow I must have some to lessen poor Margot's burden." When he reminded her that slaves were forbidden in Georgia, she pouted that Mrs. Everleigh insisted life would be unberable without them. She cajoled until he promised that, should they ever be permitted, she could have all the slaves she wanted.

Next noon, with Parks as pilot, the pink set sail for the south, keeping in sight of a chain of islands fringing the mainland and behind which lay the inland water route. On the third day she entered Savannah's red mouth and anchored off Tybee Island to await the incoming tide.

At dawn, with a leadsman sounding constantly, she nosed cau-

tiously upriver. Everyone was on deck to watch the unfolding panorama : islands, mudbanks, marshes; feathery willows kissing the water, and live oaks draped fantastically in filmy gray moss; exotic palmettos and even more exotic magnolias; gaped-mouthed alligators that brought shrieks from the children; fat sturgeon leaping clear out of the water; myriad waterfowl and land birds of infinite variety.

After some miles the river bent to the west, forming a shallow half moon, its broad stream bisected by a long, wooded island, its right bank rising into a sheer bluff. On the bluff fluttered a British flag, and a gun barked a welcome. Soon anchors were settling into the muddy bottom, with half a fathom under the keel, midway between new-born Savannah Town and Hutchinson's Island.

Journey's end.

Only when the dinghy was being lowered did Ram realize Lucinda had disappeared. Now she returned, wearing her most fetching gown, an absurdly modish hat and carrying a parasol. "I'm ready!" she called gaily and let him hand her down into the boat, where Burrows, Rob and Joseph were already waiting.

From the narrow beach a steep path led up to the bluff's top, twenty feet above water. There, around a large wooden crane, people had gathered to cheer and wave in welcome.

The new arrivals—Lucinda needing much help—scrambled up. Inland before them stretched a meadowlike savannah, a mile broad and five long, and enclosed on three sides by a vast pine forest. Raw stumps showed where vagrants had been cleared from the town's site, but four had been left near the bluff's edge, and under them was a tent from which a man emerged—Oglethorpe.