Chapter 1 ~ Ipswich
“Stay here.” Jess handed the reins to his mother
and hopped down from the wagon.
Mrs. Carter eyed the building. The back façade had
boarded-up windows and dingy paint, far different from the street-facing front.
“Jess, what is this place?”
The evening gloom lent a criminal darkness to the
building. The back lane they were on hadn’t pleased her when he turned the
wagon onto it. Were she to know the place warehoused smuggled goods, she would
be all for leaving and starting from scratch somewhere far away. “Just a
building, Ma. I know the man who owns it. He might direct me to a job.”
She nodded. Since they’d packed the cottage and
left it as the sunrise lightened the sky, she hadn’t asked many questions. A
week past, and she still hadn’t asked him the reason they had packed up and
abandoned their home, not after he told her Palmer was dead. She had never
asked about the smuggling he did with Palmer and Jem Webb. She had never asked
about the freight he hauled regular to Ipswich, even though the Naze had never
generated enough product to fill his wagon on such a regular basis.
She wrapped her heavy cloak closer. “I’ll stay.”
He entered the building without knocking.
The warehouse had never hived with activity. Today,
though, it seemed empty of folk. A single light gave him the direction to the
front. His bootsteps echoed as he wove between crates and barrels.
The lantern that guided Jess to the front swung
from a hook in the center of the anteroom. More shutters covered the two
windows. Off to one side of the narrow room was the man who fenced for the
smugglers. He sat behind a big desk, positioned off to one side rather than
directly across from the front door. A bottle of whiskey sat to his left. An
inkwell with its quill sat before him. The room was barren of other furniture
except for a handful of chairs, as nicked and scarred as the desk. When Jess
emerged from the door to the warehouse, the man growled, “Far enough. State
your business.”
“It’s Jess Carter, Mr. Helmes.”
“Carter, is it?” The man lifted his hand from his
lap. A gunmetal pistol remained pointed at Jess’ gut. “Who else?”
The pistol confirmed everything he had ever
thought about Dick Helmes. “Nobody,” and he had the wits to add, “I got
somebody waiting for me outside, in my wagon.” He didn’t name the person as his
mother. Better not to tell the fence that he’d brought someone bone-honest to
his warehouse.
“Ah. Another one of you who escaped the soldiers?”
“Yes.” Who
else had escaped? He had heard that the soldiers had arrested everyone at
the Hawthorn Inn. He had slipped through the net because he hadn’t returned to
the inn. Nor had he waited around to hear the gossip before he got himself and
his mother rolling with the dawn.
The pistol lifted. The lever released back into
place with a click. “Come forward then. Let’s see how you’ve survived the past
weeks.”
Jess dragged off his slouch-brimmed hat as he
stepped forward. He dodged the lantern by cocking his head over. Helmes peered
at him then nodded. He placed the pistol on papers scattered over the desk then
rested his hand beside the grip.
“So, you escaped. Anyone else you know about?”
“Palmer died. Far as I know, everyone else was
arrested, including Marthy Gilson.”
“Ol’ Marthy.” Helmes grinned, revealing his
gold-capped right eyetooth. He picked up the whiskey and drank from the bottle.
Then he set it back down with a thud. “They’ll be hanging the men and
transporting Marthy and the boy, so I would think. Why are you here?”
“I need work.”
“I’ll not hire you. No one here in Ipswich knows
my connection to Palmer and the rest of you. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“So would I. I got out by the slimmest chance.” He
didn’t add that the slimmest chance had amounted to saving Captain Farraday
after Palmer had fallen to his death. No sense letting Helmes know that Jess
had worked a deal to save his own skin. “I ain’t looking to toss that chance
away. I got nothing to tie me back to the inn, and the others will keep their
mouths shut. I’m out of work since the arrests.”
“And?”
The man wanted him to spell it out. Well, Jess had
learned to read earlier than most. “You got a warehouse. I’ve got my freight
wagon. I can haul for you, wherever you need, legit work, however you want it. Right
now, I ain’t even got a roof over my head.”
“My need for haulage is greatly reduced, due to
certain arrests.”
“Fair enough,” Jess allowed. He started to back
out of the office. “We’ll try farther north.”
“Wait.”
He stopped, hopeful. “You thought of something?”
“Maybe. I need to think on it.” He picked up the
bottle, eyed the amber liquid, then swirled it. Without looking directly at
Jess, he asked, “What are you willing to do? You willing to work hard? Like on
a farm?”
“I’m willing.”
“I need to think on it,” Helmes repeated. “Come
back early tomorrow.”
“I can do that. I can stable the horses where I
always do.”
“Do that. Bright and early in the morning.” He
saluted Jess with the bottle. “To new ventures,” and he drank again.
Agatha wrapped her cloak tighter.
When she came in after sunset, Aunt Sally would
cluck about the cold and the dark. Agatha, though, knew the farm to her bones. She
would never get lost on her own land.
The sinking sun had painted brilliant colors, gold
and pink, coral and orange. Not for the first time she wished she could capture
the radiance on a canvas. She had neither the talent nor the skill. Her mother,
may she rest in well-earned peace, had had both talent and skill, even though
she’d been raised to a life of leisure. Her watercolors still graced the house.
Agatha could only paint with the seeds she sowed and the harvests she reaped.
When there was a harvest.
The farm had struggled this year. When she had
finally admitted that the workers wouldn’t take orders from a woman—orders they
hadn’t hesitated to take from her as long as her bed-ridden stepfather was
alive—she had hired a steward. And then another. And then a third. The first
was a drunk. The second wasn’t work-brickle. And the third—.
What could she say about O’Malley? She had yet to
find a local lass who would claim the Irishman had forced her. Four had just
giggled. The fifth had rolled her eyes and returned to her work. Agatha feared
a crop of babies would fill the village next spring, and O’Malley would
continue spreading his seed far and wide.
He’d tried nothing with her, but his obedience to
orders was just a tad too ingratiating. He had a look that said he would plot
to overthrow her authority, although he never challenged her directly. His
mobile mouth often smirked with a hidden joke.
He had come to Helmesford with a recommendation
from her cousin Richard in Ipswich. She suspected more than a recommendation
between Richard and O’Malley. She had hesitated to hire the man—but she needed
a steward the workers would listen to. The early fields were coming to harvest.
More fields than she liked had never made it to sowing because the field men
had refused to listen to her for the first time in years. Without her
stepfather to back up her words, they just laughed and returned to their cider.
She had pleaded. She pointed out their need for pay. She was ignored by the
majority.
Oh, a few had come to work, or she would have no
early fields at all. Her first steward Mr. Hurst stayed sober long enough to
get many of the other fields plowed. The second steward Mr. Garner gradually
saw to the planting of the plowed fields. And the third steward Mr. O’Malley
steered them from first to last harvest. Yet Agatha had had to correct him
several times on the order of the harvest. Surely the man could see when fields
were ripened? Old Denny had shaken his head every time she had to repeat her orders
to O’Malley.
She had pleaded several times this year for Denny
to be her steward. The elderly man, however, wouldn’t take the job that his
knowledge deserved. He wouldn’t give orders to his fellows.
The sunset colors faded. She needed to get off
this hill and around the woods before the pitchblack night descended. But what am I going to do?
She took a last look over the farm then turned her
back and headed down. Helmes House stood beyond the wood, its ground-floor
windows lit against the deepening twilight. Aunt Sally would scold. Mrs. Cabot
would threaten to quit again because she had to keep dinner waiting. If she
could avoid Mr. O’Malley, then one thing might go right this evening.
Twilight turned to night as she skirted the woods.
The path showed a lighter color, and she sped along, stirring up the masses of
leaves. She stumbled a few times. She had stumbled so many times this past
year, but not as much and not as seriously as in the year after her mother’s
death.
Full dark had descended when she left the wood’s
edge and ventured toward the farm buildings nearer the house. Old Denny’s new
pup barked as she passed his cottage. The fowls squawked and fluttered before
settling back on their roosts. A cow lowed in the distant pasture.
She reached the kitchen garden. A dark shape
separated from the bricked wall, and Agatha stumbled to a halt.
“Out past dark, Miss Helmes?”
“Mr. O’Malley. You startled me. Did Mrs. Cabot not
send over your dinner?”
“I’ve had it. I’m looking for dessert.”
“Dessert? Do you need to speak with me this
evening, or can it wait till morning?”
He chuckled. “Always dodging back to the farm,
aren’t you?”
She had her feet under her again. “Well, Mr.
O’Malley, you are the farm’s steward.”
“I’m surprised you managed a love affair at all,
then, unless his talk of plowing got you excited. Was that it? You like your
men to talk of plowing your furrows?”
She blushed and was fiercely glad the darkness hid
it. “Have you been drinking?”
“Just cider. Not the fine stuff you keep in the
house. I’m sure you shared that one or two times. At least once. Had to be,
from what I’ve heard. Got your field seeded, then off he went, leaving you to
face it all.”
“What are you talking about?” Then she knew he’d
heard about her two heartaches, lost love and lost child, and wished she’d kept
her mouth shut. “How many fields are left to harvest, Mr. O’Malley?”
“You should know. You were up there counting
them.”
“If the weather holds fine—.”
“If the weather holds, we got no problems.”
“We should talk about the fields that lay fallow
this year. We’ve never tried over-wintering here. My stepfather was intrigued
by the idea—.”
“We get the last feed in, I’m off to see your
cousin in Ipswich.”
She had successfully diverted his innuendoes and
insinuations. She only needed confirmation that Cousin Richard had sent him for
more than a single job. “And for what reason do you need to see him, Mr.
O’Malley? You do not report to him, do you?”
He backed up a step. “Evening, Miss Helmes.” And
he walked away.
Agatha felt glee at the confirmation that his
avoided answer meant ... only to be dumped into gloom. She couldn’t fire him. Not
yet. Not until the last field was harvested.
What am I going to do?
Jess pulled the wagon up in the same spot as
yesterday. The early morning had not given any freshness to the back lane with
its dingy buildings.
“Jess, I do not like this place.”
“Nobody’ll bother you, Ma, not this early.”
“This man—he was part of the smuggling, wasn’t he?
It’s the reason you don’t go in the front door.”
“That’s over, Ma. You know that.”
“I don’t want you ruining the chance that Miss
Katie gave you.”
“It’ll be Mrs. Farraday by now, Ma. Mrs. Farraday
of Melton Hall.”
“She gave you a chance, a good one. She kept you
from rotting in gaol.”
“I’m taking that chance, ain’t I? But the world’s
a little closed when you don’t know where to go.”
“Melton Hall—.”
“No,” he said flatly and jumped down.
The warehouse’s back door opened. Dick Helmes
appeared. He hadn’t shaved. His shirt-front under his jacket looked as stained
as last night’s. The smuggler’s fence stared up at Mrs. Carter while Jess tried
to crowd him back into the warehouse.
“Who’s that?”
“No one you need to worry about.”
“Wife? Girl you’re plowing? She looks old for
you.”
“My ma,” Jess said tightly, “and you’ll treat her
with respect. Even Jem Webb did.”
Helmes laughed. “Mrs. Carter,” he called and swept
her a bow that conveyed mockery through its deepness.
Jess wanted to plant the man a facer, but he
controlled it. “I’m here, early like you said. Did you come up with other
work?”
He grinned, that gold tooth shining, and Jess
wanted to hit him again. Whatever the scheme was, it would only benefit Helmes.
“You said you’ll work on a farm.”
“Anything that’s honest work.”
“Now you’re qualifying it.”
“I don’t do murder. I don’t steal.”
“Just smuggling.”
He gave a clipped nod and didn’t argue that those
days were over. His ma had the right of it. Hard as it had been to find any
work all the way to London and back, it was better than giving this man a hold
over him.
“Happens that I know of a farm. Helmes House at
Helmesford. Not much, just a manor and the acreage around it. Several fields,
some pastures. A pretty situation that I want to keep an eye on. My cousin runs
it.”
“Harvest is nearly over.”
“She’ll take you on.”
A woman in charge? He remembered the tight ship
that Martha Gilson had kept at Hawthorn Inn. He reckoned Helmes’ age and
figured an old spinster in her fifties would be particular about the people she
hired and the jobs they did. But he was out of options. Winter was coming on. His
mother needed a stable place, warm and safe. “She’ll hire me at your word?”
“At my word.” He produced a sealed letter and a
loose sheet. Jess glanced down and saw a list of directions. “I got a man
there,” Helmes added. “The steward. Reece O’Malley. Make yourself known to him
as my man. He’ll set you and—your mother
into a good place.”
He reckoned he shouldn’t bloody the nose of the
man offering him a job. “My thanks.”
“Oh, it’s a tit for tat. I’ll get what I need from
you soon enough. For now, O’Malley’s a womanizer. My cousin’s a hard-headed
woman. He’ll have kept his paws to himself for a time. She’s no looker. But
with winter coming on, he’ll be thinking of sticking it closer to home. You see
that don’t happen. You keep his hands off my cousin.”
Jess winced at the crudity. “O’Malley ain’t going
to like my interference.”
“Then he can go jump. It’s my farm, soon as I
marry Agatha and get rid of that trustee of hers. I don’t plan to do that for
another few years. You just get there, get connected to him, and settle in. I’ll
likely come for Christmas. It’s traditional. And you’ll be there making sure
things fall my way, not his. You might even give them a push to help them fall
my way.”
“Yes, Mr. Helmes.”
“Any questions?”
He had dozens, but none that this man wanted to
hear. “No, sir.”
“Directions clear?” When Jess nodded, Helmes said,
“I’m surprised you can read.”
“Ma taught me. I’ll be on my way, sir, if there’s
nothing else.”
“There isn’t, Carter. You do what I said, and you
got a place for life.”
Jess turned away. The warehouse door slammed
behind him.
As he climbed up to the wagon seat, he reckoned
that Helmes offered the same thing that Jess had thought to have with the
smugglers on the Naze—a place for life. But smuggling had led only to death.
What would this venture lead to?
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