Even Sir Ian MacGregor had been openly though unaccountably pleased with Jeremy and had gone out of his way to be complimentary at the dinner table and over Sir Arthur's excellent port and native segaros. Arrangements had been made for the impostor to accompany Sir Arthur and the military men on an inspection tour of the garrison tomorrow, and the Duchess had asked him to stop first at King's House so she could give him privately a list of items on which she wanted specific information.
The only sour note in the evening had been the attitude of Janine Groliere. Dressed in a simple yellow gown that had somehow brought out the beauty of her delicate coloring and burnished hair, she had seemed to be looking in Jeremy's direction whenever he had chanced to glance at her. And there had invariably been a gleam of sardonic humor in her eyes. While he was in a sense grateful that she now served the Duchess and thus could not spread her tale of his real identity, he fervently wished her elsewhere, for that steady, unwavering gaze made him decidedly uncomfortable.
Now, after changing into fresh linen, he made his way into the taproom of the Golden Bucket and sat down at a small table. Dirk, who already knew many of the servants and much of the backstairs gossip of King's House, took a chair at a table directly behind him, for a man and his master could not drink together without causing a lifting of eyebrows. However, their backs were almost touching, and they were able to converse in low tones.
Jeremy ordered a rum punch, the specialty of the establishment, which turned out to be a stronger version of the fruit-juice-and-rum concoction that he had drunk with Sir Arthur and Lady Bartlett at the Citadel, and he looked around the room with considerable interest. There were perhaps forty tables, and light was provided by candles surrounded by glass windscreens. There was no roof over the center of the room, and the stars were plainly visible. Equally unusual was the presence of three banyan trees along a wall, each of which seemed to grow into the hostelry. Close examination showed that the trees were being used as pillars to help support the second story of the tavern, and some of the branches literally extended through the flooring of the apartments above.
The murmur of conversation swelled and ebbed, and it appeared as though the majority of tables were occupied. Most of the men present seemed to be officers of the ships in the harbor; at least they were somewhat better dressed than the seamen, though they were more or less of the same type. Some sat with beautifully gowned, overly rouged young women, and occasionally an unaccompanied wench would stroll through the room and smile invitingly at the newcomer. Each time Jeremy shook his head, and the girl would move on quietly, without trying to press her attentions on him.
Directly ahead of Jeremy was a large tables and one of the occupants in particular caught his notice, for the man was the last person one might expect to see in the taproom of an establishment like the Golden Bucket. Very tall and thin, with straight black hair and a short black beard, he wore the vestments of a clergyman: a somber black suit with a thin line of white piping at the neck and a large silver cross on his chest, held by a thin silver chain. Strangely, his companions seemed to be the roughest and most disreputable men in the room. Occasionally one would rise and leave, and soon another would saunter up to the table and take his place. Now and then a trollop accompanied one of the men, but the minister, if such he was, greeted all comers with the same quiet calm and good humor.
He was in no wise abashed or perturbed when one of the wenches was thoroughly fondled or kissed, nor did he seem taken aback at the vulgarity of his friends' language. Jeremy noticed, however, that he drank no intoxicating liquor and that when he spoke, softly but earnestly, the others fell silent and listened to his words attentively.
Suddenly Dirk gasped and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. Jeremy half turned in his seat, then stared: approaching was the most unusual young woman he had ever seen in his life. Walking sedately beside her as she half ran, half bounded across the room was a lean gray wolfhound, and apparently both mistress and animal were familiars of the establishment, for no one but the two young adventurers from New York looked up.
Tall, with a feminine but muscular figure, the girl seemed to be in her early twenties. Her hair was cut short at the nape of her neck and had been trimmed to an inch and one half in length. A shimmering blue-black, it was as disarrayed as though she had been standing on the windy quarter-deck of a ship. Her features were alert and strong, and her hazel eyes showed intelligence and humor. Her costume, to say the least, was unorthodox: she wore an open-throated man's shirt that did little to conceal the swelling of her breasts, and a pair of man's trousers of faded blue-green, which she had cut off below the knees. On her feet were simple leather sandals, each held by a single leather thong wound around the ankle, and encircling her waist was a wide, brass-studded belt of black leather of the sort worn by boucaniers.
It was inconceivable to Jeremy that any female, even one with such a wild, untamed appearance, could have joined the half-savage men who were bound together in a fanatical brotherhood that knew no law, no discipline save its own. Only tonight at dinner he had heard Sir Arthur Bartlett tell of the mysterious rites of the privateers who landed on Hispaniola, held secret ceremonies, and afterward caught and killed the cattle of the island, then cooked the meat in long strips over green wooden frames called boucan.
The governor general had said that every man who wore the black, brass-knobbed belt was one who had been initiated into the elite clan of the privateers.
Studying the girl, the young gunsmith decided that perhaps she was capable of being one of the boucaniers. She arrived at the table of the minister and his motley assortment of companions, and as she bent down and kissed the cleric on the top of his balding head, she laughed. Never had Jeremy heard so joyously free a sound. It was an expression of genuine merriment, and he was in some strange way reminded of the gypsies he had once seen in his childhood in England.
A place was made at the table for the young woman, and she sat down directly facing Jeremy. She promptly and obviously inquired about him from her companions, and her eyes seemed to bore into him as she nodded in reply to what was being said to her. Without warning the lines of her face relaxed, and she winked at Jeremy, then grinned. It was not the greeting of a harlot, nor even the usual salutation of a woman to someone of the opposite sex. Rather she seemed to be welcoming him to the island in an amiable, extraordinarily casual manner.
He was about to reply in kind when a table somewhere crashed over, and the sound of a loud, violently angry voice cut through the hubbub. Jeremy was on his feet instantly, as were most of the others in the room. What he saw made him forget all else, and he worked his way forward through the crowd, Dirk at his elbow. A heavy-set, florid man, flashily dressed in a suit of violet and sky blue, was thrashing out again and again with a short bull whip. Writhing on the floor at his feet was an Arawak, a smaller and darker Indian than the sturdy giants of the Iroquois nation whom Jeremy had grown accustomed to seeing in New York.
"I saw you lurkin' out there, you dirty little cur!" the man shouted, accenting each phrase with another vicious blow. "Run off from me, will you? I'll beat you till I've taught a lesson to every slave at Mangrove."
Jeremy was about to back away when a low-pitched feminine voice spoke softly into his ear. "The Arawak are not slaves. They are free men, and plantation owners have no right to impress them into service." Without turning around, he knew that the speaker was the weirdly attired girl with black hair. "The governor general would stop outrages like this if he could, but by the time he hears of it that poor little devil will be lying half dead in the slave pens at Mangrove Plantation, and not one of the blacks or Indians there will dare to speak up to the Crown investigators for fear of their own skins."