? ? ?
It seemed strange and inhospitable to drink in celebration with the French lieutenants also standing with them in the parlour. Even though her father turned it to a toast including all, “That we may see a quick end to this war,” the wine felt cold and tasted oddly bitter.
She was glad to set her cup down on the little table in the corner, and to take a seat.
Mr. de Sabran also sat, continuing to read the letter Henry had delivered to him, sent from Captain Wheelock, written tidily in French. Uncertain which disturbed him more—that letter or Quebec’s surrender—she knew only that he had withdrawn into his attitude of deep reserve, reverting to his customary frown.
Beside her, Henry, from politeness, had moved on to other news that might be counted less offensive to their involuntary houseguests. “You know they’ve issued warrants in New York for the arrest of James Depeyster and George Folliot?”
Both men were well-respected merchants in the city, friends of William’s. “No,” she said, “I did not know.”
“It’s all the talk. Their ship captain has fled or else he’ll face a charge of treason.”
“For what action?”
“Why, for trading with the enemy.” Her cousin’s mild expression seemed to think the answer obvious. “I’m told that our new admiral means to end the Monte Christi trade, and twice now Mr. Kennedy, who keeps the New York customhouse, has published advertisements for informants to come forward should they know of those engaged with it, so any merchants who persist in breaking laws,” he said, “must face the consequences.”
Henry knew of many things that Lydia did not. He had been educated well, yet he was able to explain things in a way that did not make her feel ridiculously ignorant, so while with someone else she might have kept her lack of knowledge hidden, she dared to ask Henry, “And what is the Monte Christi trade?”
He told her, “Monte Christi is a harbour on the Spanish side of Hispaniola. You recall that Hispaniola, though a single island, is divided—with the one side owned by France, the other owned by Spain? Well, let’s say I am Monte Christi harbour,” he proposed, “and this space here, between our chairs, marks out where Spanish territory ends, and France’s starts. Then you, my dear, can be the French harbour of Cap-Fran?ois, for truly the two harbours are this close together on the map.” He hitched his chair a fraction closer. “In the Monte Christi trade, a ship might take out papers in New York to carry its provisions to another British port—to Kingston, say—but then it sails instead to Monte Christi harbour.”
Lydia said, “But, since Spain is neutral, surely that is not illegal?”
“To drop anchor there? Of course not. Nor to even trade in merchandise, providing it includes no banned provisions, such as flour,” he said. “But that is not what this ship in my harbour here intends. Because the truth is Monte Christi harbour is naught but an empty bay, constructed with one purpose: an illegal trade with France. And so the ships that anchor here offload their cargoes onto smaller ships, and send them round this bit of land to you.” He passed his cup of wine across the arms of both their chairs and placed it in her hand, to illustrate how it was done. “So now you have whatever I’ve brought down to sell to you—and trust me, it most often is provisions—and you send me back, by way of those same smaller ships, my payment and new cargoes of French sugar and molasses and whatever else we have arranged.” He held his hand out for his wine cup and she passed it back to him. “These will of course be certified as Spanish by false papers, and so legal to be brought back to be sold here in New York.” He drank. “You see?” he asked. “It’s simply done.”
She frowned, and worked it through. “But these provisions that the Monte Christi traders sell the French, are those not sent to feed the armies fighting ours?”
“Exactly,” Henry said. “That’s why the admiral means to put an end to it. Apparently he’s stepped up his patrols.”
Her father added his approval, and said, “William is well out of that. With Daniel in Jamaica they can profit more supplying king and country than can those disloyal men who do their trading at the Mount.”
She raised her head.
Across the room, Mr. Ramírez briefly met her gaze before his own skipped sideways like a pebble striking on a stone. She heard again the parting promise of the Spanish captain: With my own hands I will pass him very safely to your brother at the Mount. And the flicker of confusion in Del Rio’s eyes, so quickly overcome, when afterwards she’d talked about Jamaica.
Now, although she had a dreadful feeling she already knew the answer, she still asked her father in a tone she hoped was calm, “What is the Mount?”
“Another name for Monte Christi,” he replied. “Monte is the Spanish word for ‘mountain,’ so our men call it the Mount.”
“I see.” She saw more than she wanted to, but knew she could not share it with the others. Not with Henry, not with Joseph, and above all not her father. Not until she’d had a chance to ask her brother William—to his face, so she could watch his eyes and see the truth of what he answered—what he’d got them all involved in.
“Henry,” she asked carefully, “may I please have more wine?”
Jean-Philippe
The week had started well enough.
He had been glad to see the Spanish captain and his ship depart, and not entirely surprised to see it carry a new passenger, for he had marked the way the younger son looked always at the sea. Nor had he been surprised to see Ramírez left behind.
He’d thought that it might happen when he’d seen Ramírez and Del Rio talking with each other very earnestly one evening, and from how the men had shaken hands it had seemed a farewell was in the offing.
He got on well with Ramírez, who spoke decent French as well as Spanish and, from what Pierre had said, good English. He had always got on well with men who did their work without intruding needlessly upon his own.
Ramírez evidently felt the same way about interference, for one evening when the Spaniard had been sitting at the parlour table looking over Joseph Wilde’s drawings for the ship repair, de Brassart had come close behind his shoulder, peering over, while Ramírez sighed and waited.
“Have you built a ship before?” de Brassart had enquired, as though prepared to offer his advice.
“Only a hundred. More or less,” Ramírez had replied, with a politeness that was somehow not polite, and had made Jean-Philippe feel kinship with the man.
Pierre agreed he was an interesting character.
“It is a shame,” Pierre had said to Jean-Philippe the next day as they’d worked together in the orchard, bringing in the last of the large harvest, “that Madame Wilde is not still alive to meet him, for she would have much enjoyed to see a free black man with such an education. She was not like others of her faith, you understand.”
“What faith is that?” Though Jean-Philippe recalled de Brassart telling him that Madame Wilde had not shared the religion of her husband, he could not remember what she had been, other than a Protestant.
“The Quakers, they are called. I don’t know why, I did not ask. She said above all they believe in peace, but I am not so sure because they cast her out for marrying a man who, while he was not of their church, was also peaceful, so I think they are not altogether good. She also said that, while they don’t believe in slavery, in their church the blacks are not allowed to sit with whites, they have to sit off separately, and this she could not reconcile. Madame Wilde,” he said, “believed we all are equal under God.”