The men inside the hut were surging forward, and Bentley eyed them nervously. When they were close enough to threaten, he raised his pistol.
"You, sir!" snapped the leading rider. "Put up that arm immediately! How dare you threaten those poor men! Is it you caused them these injuries?"
The light inside was feeble and outside rather worse, but the blood and broken arm were clear enough. The smugglers were very close to Will and pressing harder, with smiles upon the nearest faces.
"But sir! They are smugglers! We caught them at it!"
There was a baying of denial from the men in front of him. One, large, black-haired with a deep cut on his cheek, reached out for the barrel of his gun. He had to shoot, or raise it clear. He could not shoot.
Beside him, with a lightning movement, Sam swished his cutlass point across and upwards, as if to prod the big man's neck.
"Call them off," he shouted. "If they press us we must kill them, we are officers of the King. Call them off, as they are clearly yours!"
"How dare you! I am here to see the law upheld! These men are injured, have you attacked them? You slander them with talk of smuggling, where is your evidence? You say you are the Impress, where are your warrants? If you have warrants, which local justice backed them? Not I, for certain! Anybody?"
There was a tendency to jeering in the smuggling gang, but well suppressed. Samuel, if not Bentley, knew quite clearly what had happened to them and his main aim was to get out of it unscathed. The militiamen had got down off their horses, and several pieces were levelled at point blank.
"Our warrant is with our captain," he said quietly. "I grant that in the heat of things ..."
A louder jeer. The big man reached again for Bentley's pistol, so he thrust it fiercely into his belt. "Tis not uncocked," the man said, in a delighted voice. "But you soon will be, won't you, sir! Unbollocked, also!"
"Make it safe," the justice said, peremptorily. "Then give it to Saunders there. You, sir' to Samuel 'that man will take your cutlass. You must come to the village, where we have a secure room for such as you. It looks that charges will be laid."
"Aye, attempted murder!" came one voice from out of the hut. "Look at Peter's arm! John's face is broken in!"
Sam raised his cutlass furiously, but not in threat. Immediately gun muzzles were thrust at him.
"We are Navy officers!" he shouted. "These men are thieves!"
Will yelled: "They have a lugger in the creek, full of contraband. All you have to do, sir"
"Disarm them," the magistrate curtly ordered. "Young man, be careful that your pistol does not go off. Saunders, take it out. Aye, so. Now you, sir, your cutlass if you please. Where are the others of your gang? What ship are you? I suggest you call them out if they're in hiding or it will be the worse for them."
Will, feeling naked and confused, looked to Holt for guidance, but he was deep in rage. A smuggler and two militiamen made as if to jostle or strike at them, but Sam launched himself, unarmed, towards them, baring his teeth as if he might bite chunks. The men dropped back, and the magistrate gestured them away.
"No beatings, boys," he said. "The law will deal with these two in due time. Is anybody killed? Have they done murder? Where is your boat? What is your tender called?"
Neither Sam nor Will replied, nor would they answer any more questions of any sort. In a few minutes their wrists were bound, and each was led off by a horseman with a saddle line at a none too gentle pace, the justice staying behind, they guessed, to confer with the free trade men. The walk was not above a mile, and when they reached a dark, empty building on a marshy edge, lamps were lit and they were bundled in short order down cellar stairs into a small cramped room. It was damp and silent with a small, dirty window half below ground level, but their jailers did, at least, untie their wrists and leave them with a stump of candle when they locked them in; about two hours' worth. They listened in silence to the footsteps on the stair, then across bare wooden boards above them.
"Well," said Sam at last. "Here's a tale to tell the parish priest! I'd not have come ashore with you an' I'd known you were a criminal! Do you have a way to get us out?"
There was amusement in it almost, but Will could not respond. He was crushed by the weight of it, he was astonished more than anything. They had caught smugglers red-handed, been shot at, might have died. And they were locked up in a dungeon, with a magistrate claiming they had transgressed the law.
"Oh come on, Will," said Sam, seeing his face. "It could be worse, you know."
"But how? Good God, Sam, I... well, speak up, then: but how?"
Sam walked to the window, which was stoutly built and would not open however hard he shook. Presumably it had outside bars as well, although it was too dirty to be seen through.
"Oh I forgot," he said. "You like the free trade gentlemen, don't you? And they did not kill us it is true, and they did not toss us headfirst in the mud or beat us senseless, so mayhap you're right, they're gentlefolk. That is one way we got off scot-free, my friend we are still breathing. If we'd been Customs we might not have done so well. Or not been protected by that magistrate."
Will turned this over in his mind. Without the justice, he could not deny, things could have gone much harder for them. But here they were, imprisoned, and who knew what next day might bring?
"They won't be hanging us and that's another thing," said Sam, as if he'd read the thought. "Lucky that mad bastard Tilley did not have time to kill the one whose face he smashed. I tell you, if they find him, no justice on a horse will keep him from hanging from a tree, but all we've done is overstep the mark. It could be weeks in prison though, less Kaye should buy us out. Months."
"But did we break the law? The warrant thing "
"We did not have "the warrant thing"," Holt interrupted. "That's against the letter of the law, and it means everything if the courts down here should say so, which they will. Then the backing of the warrant, which we also did not have: another big transgression if they should care to deem it so. Then protections. We did not ask to see them of the free trade men, and free trade men have protections of the best in my experience. If ours did not last night they will tomorrow, you may depend on it our magistrate will draw them up, let's say. Of course we're lucky, Will. They won't be hanging us."
There were no chairs or benches in the room, but there were steps up to the door. Sam sat first, and Bentley got beside him. They were silent, but the only sound outside was of a wind, moaning across the marshland wastes.
"Why do you say I like the smugglers?" he said finally. "That is mad. I dislike all who break the law. Did I hang back tonight, in your opinion? Surely not?"
Sam did not reply. Will tried to remember if he had ever expressed sympathy with smugglers, but could not recall he had. His difficulty was, that in certain areas, and certain men he'd known ... "There was a man who saved my life," he said. "It sounds a stupid thing but..." He paused. Perhaps he should not be so open with Sam Holt. "He called it a necessary trade," he went on. "He said it was condoned. And then they hanged him."
Sam kept his silence, while Will remembered Jesse Broad. Another thought dropped in, a much more recent one.
"You said you'd hang them all. You said you hate them. Remember, as we came downriver? But Richard Kaye tended to my opinion, did he not?"
This elicited a brief laugh, as Will had hoped it might.
"You've made my case," Sam said. "If Kaye agrees with you, you must be wrong. Maybe it is a question of who you know and where you come from. Your man sounds fine, and so God keep his soul. To me it is a vile trade, and where I lived and grew, so it was applied. They work as families in my part, except such families could only live in hell. I've seen two hundred men run stuff ashore, nay three hundred with the batmen and musketeers, and I've seen them murder, burn and beat. My father, who believed the good in man, refused to stand for some of them in court after a bloody incident on the Adur, and it ruined him in many ways. They did not offer violence in his case, the backers were a very subtle crew. All other lawyers in the area, all judges, magistrates, even clerks, refused to deal with him, they cut him and ignored him, froze him out."