The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) by Nathan Goodwin (types of ebook readers TXT) 📕

with a quick nod of her head, she acknowledged him, before turning to speak with someone unseen behind her. On his first visit here, Sam had been shown to the office and introduced to her. She was a formidable widow with a harsh face and, if the translator were to have been believed, a harsh tongue to match. At that meeting, Sam had negotiated the terms of business and since then he had been dealt with by one of her English-speaking underlings, Monsieur Comtois, who arrived now wearing a midnight-blue coat, buckskin breeches, tall black boots and carrying his top hat. As he approached, he twitched his giant black moustache, as he was accustomed to doing, then said, ‘Bonjour, Monsieur. Welcome back.’ He quickly consulted the piece of paper in his hands. ‘Monsieur Ransley would like the same, yes?’

Sam nodded. ‘That be right, yes.’

‘Très bien. Your cart is ready. S’il vous plaît,’ he said, indicating that Sam should follow him. Close to the large exit doors, he was shown a cart laden with half-anker barrels, each containing three and three-quarter gallons of various types of liquor. Heaving himself up inside the cart, Sam quickly counted them: two hundred.

‘Bon,’ Monsieur Comtois said, slapping his hands together in a way which suggested that his time was precious and that he wanted the payment to wrap up the deal. ‘One hundred and thirty pounds.’

Sam pulled the purse from around his neck and counted the money into the outstretched hand of Monsieur Comtois, who promptly spirited it away into an inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Good day, Monsieur,’ Comtois said, shaking Sam’s hand, then, he called something in French to one of the workers and disappeared up the stairs.

Behind Sam, the workers were hitching the laden cart to a packhorse ready for the short journey to the beach.

The routine today was the same as it always had been: two French men incapable in English took the cart, with Sam in the back, to the boat where they would unload the contraband onto the sand before venturing wordlessly back to the warehouse. The men worked efficiently and had the cart emptied in minutes. Sam always felt the need to try and explain why he stood back, dumbly watching and not helping. The men rarely understood him until he showed the unsightly scars on his right shoulder with an accompanied mime of trying to lift his arm. Most gave an apathetic nod of the head so as to say that they had understood and did not really care.

With the cargo unloaded beside him, all Sam could do now was to wait for the return of the fishermen. He stood quietly, taking in long slow breaths of air, as he watched the sea edging slowly and reluctantly forwards. A dozen or more herring gulls swept overhead then came to a rowdy landing on the wet sand a short distance away, instantly tapping their yellow beaks on the surface at unseen creatures.

As time drew on, and his frequent glances at the city behind him continued in their failure to offer sight of the fishermen, so grew Sam’s agitation. The calmness of the water sluggishly creeping inward had been supplanted by a worsening anxiety at the sea growing greedily close towards the contraband and the new boat. He had half a mind to enter the city in search of the useless fishermen, but it would be an exhaustive search among the myriad brothels, inns and public houses. Besides which, the last thing that he could do was leave the cargo unattended, just minutes away from the foamy reaches of the high tide.

‘Looks like you be a-loading the boat single-handed,’ Rummy called, then heard the joke hidden within his own words: ‘Single-handed!’

Sam outwardly ignored him but inwardly he was thinking the same thing, that he would somehow have to load the boat by himself with only one fully functioning arm. He was certain that Rummy, standing facing him with a pipe hanging loosely from his mouth, would assist…for a price. But he only had the fishermen’s wages left. He looked grimly at Rummy, who had already determined what he was about to ask.

Rummy screwed his shrockled face into a sort-of-smile and smacked his hands to his hips.

‘Oh! Those tarnal French!’

Sam turned to see the unruly group of fishermen tramping towards him. Noticing that Rummy had scarpered back inside his hut, Sam said nothing but glowered at the men, who, clearly intoxicated, were struggling to keep the pace of Tom Swain. Nancy belonged to him and, as such, he had assumed the unofficial role of their leader. They arrived with a fear of Sam, all breathless and reeking of a displeasing mixture of ale, old sweat and tobacco. One of the men, William, was standing embarrassedly in only his drawers and under-stockings, hopelessly trying to use Tom as a shield.

‘Those tarnal French,’ Tom repeated. ‘Moved and seduced by the devil hisself.’

‘What be the worry?’ Sam asked impatiently.

‘We been robbed blind, that be what,’ Tom answered. ‘Tooked everything—including young William’s trousers.’

‘What you be meaning is some artful folk tooked your money–’ with a look of contempt at William, ‘—and your trousers when you be in the brothel cavorting and ravishing with whores.’

The sheepish silence confirmed the accusation.

‘If the tide be taking a single of these barrels, not one of you buffle-headed dunties be getting his wages!’ Sam shouted.

Immediately the fishermen set to work, throwing the half-anker barrels down a line, from one man to the next, until they reached the boat.

The tide, Sam judged, would grant them no more than fifteen minutes’ working time. The Nancy, slightly further out, was already beginning to awaken, her hull shifting like a sleepy whale in shallow waters.

‘Be moving whip-sticks,’ Sam ordered, wishing that they worked with the same diligence as the Frenchmen who had loaded and unloaded the cart.

Finally, the fishermen sank