LITMIR.BIZ

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seemed to bulge from his head. His tongue protruded. His body began to shiver, twisting in convulsions on the end of the rope.

      “All right,” Sir James said finally, and nodded to the crowd. Immediately, one or two stout fellows rushed forward, friends of the condemned man. They grabbed at his kicking feet and hauled on them, trying to break his neck with merciful quickness. But they were clumsy at their work, and the pirate was strong, dragging the other men through the mud with his vigorous kicking. The death throes continued for some seconds and then finally, abruptly, the body went limp.

      The men stepped away. Urine trickled down LeClerc’s pants legs onto the mud. The body twisted slackly back and forth on the end of the rope.

      “Well executed, indeed,” Commander Scott said, with a broad grin. He tossed a gold coin to the executioner.

      Sir James turned and climbed back into the coach, thinking to himself that he was exceedingly hungry. To sharpen his appetite further, as well as to drive out the foul smells of the town, he permitted himself a pinch of snuff.

      IT WAS COMMANDER SCOTT’S suggestion that they stop by the port, to see if the new secretary had yet disembarked. The coach pulled up to the docks, as near to the wharf as possible; the driver knew that the governor preferred to walk no more than necessary. The coachman opened the door and Sir James stepped out, wincing, into the fetid morning air.

      He found himself facing a young man in his early thirties, who, like the governor, was sweating in a heavy doublet. The young man bowed and said, “Your Excellency.”

      “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Almont asked, with a slight bow. He could no longer bow deeply because of the pain in his leg, and in any case he disliked this pomp and formality.

      “Charles Morton, sir, captain of the merchantman Godspeed, late of Bristol.” He presented his papers.

      Almont did not even glance at them. “What cargoes do you carry?”

      “West Country broadcloths, Your Excellency, and glass from Stourbridge, and iron goods. Your Excellency holds the manifest in his hands.”

      “Have you passengers?” He opened the manifest and realized he had forgotten his spectacles; the listing was a black blur. He examined the manifest with brief impatience, and closed it again.

      “I carry Mr. Robert Hacklett, the new secretary to Your Excellency, and his wife,” Morton said. “I carry eight freeborn commoners as merchants to the Colony. And I carry thirty-seven felon women sent by Lord Ambritton of London to be wives for the colonists.”

      “So good of Lord Ambritton,” Almont said dryly. From time to time, an official in one of the larger cities of England would arrange for convict women to be sent to Jamaica, a simple ruse to avoid the expense of jailing them at home. Sir James had no illusions about what this latest group of women would be like. “And where is Mr. Hacklett?”

      “On board, gathering his belongings with Mrs. Hacklett, Your Excellency.” Captain Morton shifted his feet. “Mrs. Hacklett had a most uncomfortable passage, Your Excellency.”

      “I have no doubt,” Almont said. He was irritated that his new secretary was not on the dock to meet him. “Does Mr. Hacklett carry messages for me?”

      “I believe he may, sir,” Morton said.

      “Be so good as to ask him to join me at Government House at his earliest convenience.”

      “I will, Your Excellency.”

      “You may await the arrival of the purser and Mr. Gower, the customs inspector, who will verify your manifest and supervise the unloading of your cargoes. Have you many deaths to report?”

      “Only two, Your Excellency, both ordinary seamen. One lost overboard and one dead of dropsy. Had it been otherwise, I would not have come to port.”

      Almont hesitated. “How do you mean, not have come to port?”

      “I mean, had anyone died of the plague, Your Excellency.”

      Almont frowned in the morning heat. “The plague?”

      “Your Excellency knows of the plague which has lately infected London and certain of the outlying towns of the land?”

      “I know nothing at all,” Almont said. “There is plague in London?”

      “Indeed, sir, for some months now it has been spreading with great confusion and loss of life. They say it was brought from Amsterdam.”

      Almont sighed. That explained why there had been no ships from England in recent weeks, and no messages from the Court. He remembered the London plague of ten years earlier, and hoped that his sister and niece had had the presence of mind to go to the country house. But he was not unduly disturbed. Governor Almont accepted calamity with equanimity. He himself lived daily in the shadow of dysentery and shaking fever, which carried off several citizens of Port Royal each week.

      “I will hear more of this news,” he said. “Please join me at dinner this evening.”

      “With great pleasure,” Morton said, bowing once more. “Your Excellency honors me.”

      “Save that opinion until you see the table this poor colony provides,” Almont said. “One last thing, Captain,” he said. “I am in need of female servants for the mansion. The last group of blacks, being sickly, have died. I would be most grateful if you would contrive for the convict women to be sent to the mansion as soon as possible. I shall handle their dispersal.”

      “Your Excellency.”

      Almont gave a final, brief nod, and climbed painfully back into his coach. With a sigh of relief, he sank back in the seat and rode to the mansion. “A dismal malodorous day,” Commander Scott commented, and indeed, for a long time afterward, the ghastly smells of the town lingered in the governor’s nostrils and did not dissipate until he took another pinch of snuff.

       CHAPTER 3

      DRESSED IN LIGHTER clothing, Governor Almont breakfasted alone in the dining hall of the mansion. As was his custom, he ate a light meal of poached fish and a little wine, followed by another of the minor pleasures of his posting, a cup of rich, dark coffee. During his tenure as governor, he had become increasingly fond of coffee, and he delighted in the fact that he had virtually unlimited quantities of this delicacy, so scarce at home.

      While he was finishing his coffee, his aide, John Cruikshank, entered. John was a Puritan, forced to leave Cambridge in some haste when Charles II was restored to the throne. He was a sallow-faced, serious, tedious man, but dutiful enough.

      “The convict women are here, Your Excellency.”

      Almont grimaced at the thought. He wiped his lips. “Send them along. Are they clean, John?”

      “Reasonably clean, sir.”

      “Then send them along.”

      The women entered the dining room noisily. They chattered and stared and pointed to this article and that. An unruly lot, dressed in identical gray fustian, and barefooted. His aide lined them along one wall and Almont pushed away from the table.

      The women fell silent as he walked past them. In fact, the only sound in the room was the scraping of the governor’s painful left foot over the floor, as he walked down the line, looking at each.

      They were as ugly, tangled, and scurrilous a collection as he’d ever seen. He paused before one woman, who was taller than he, a nasty creature with a pocked face and missing teeth. “What’s your name?”

      “Charlotte Bixby, my lord.” She attempted a clumsy sort of curtsey.

      “And your crime?”

      “Faith, my lord, I did no crime, it was all a falsehood that they put to me and—”

      “Murder

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