Martha Peake

Martha Peake Read Free Page B

Book: Martha Peake Read Free
Author: Patrick McGrath
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Harry was the leader of a loose association of men who worked that stretch of the coast, which was known for its many sheltered bays and inlets, its caves, its hidden beaches, its myriad natural harbours where on a moonless night a small coasting vessel, or even a merchantman could offload hundreds of gallons of spirits—not to say tobacco, lace, glass, tea, silk, satin, and china—and every local man was ready to help bring the cargo ashore, to carry it up the shingle, to load it into carts and wagons, and see it safely cached inland, all before dawn.
    But that night everything had gone wrong, they had been surprised by a cutter from the Excise, the landing had been abandoned in confusion, and Harry had been lucky to escape unobserved with his wagon. The night was dark, no moon at all, and he had come away up the track from the beach as though the very devil himself were after him, standing astride the buckboard and flailing with the whip, the terrified horses rearing and stumbling on the slope, but once on the high ground galloping wildly across the cliffs. Behind him, in a narrow shingled cove, a man lay dead, all the rest were scattered,and several hundred casks of rum and sugar were in the hands of the damned Excise.
    He brought the wagon in off the road that ran down to the harbour, he wheeled the horses into the yard at the back of the house, he pulled them up to a clattering halt, and sweating and cursing he jumped down off the wagon and stamped in through his own back door and hauled up the trapdoor to his cellar. Down he went with a cask of liquor on his shoulder, breathing hard, the sweat still streaming down his face, and set it on the straw-covered stones of the cellar floor. He did not rest. One after another the casks were lifted from the wagon and hefted onto his shoulder, each one eight gallons of liquor, and stowed in the cellar. At last he was done, he let down the trapdoor, and he knelt on the floor, panting, to secure the bolts. Grace Foy, awoken by his noise, and with an infant in her arms, unlatched the kitchen door and found him there on the floor. Still kneeling, wiping his forehead, he told her that the Excise had disturbed them, the merchantman had had to cut her cables and make a run for it.
    “We came away with nothing,” he shouted, careless of his sleeping children—“Nothing!”—and in his rage, for he had been drinking earlier that night, he hammered his fist on the floorboards.
    “Nothing at all?” murmured Grace. She was still half-asleep. She sat down on a chair and her head sank forward as she gave the infant her breast.
    “Some bloody rum is all.”
    “Where is it now?” Grace yawned.
    “Here below,” said Harry.
    That woke her up.
    “You brought it here?” she cried, rising to her feet, as the infant began to wail. “You brought it here? They will come here, Harry, what were you thinking of?”
    Harry shoved home the last bolt but still he knelt there on the trapdoor, his hands flat on the floor, staring at the wooden boards. Asingle branch of candles sputtered and flared on the sideboard at the back wall. He muttered that he would move them in the morning, the Excise men were all over the countryside. He did not say there was a man dead on the beach.
    “Why did you not leave it there?”
    But Harry in his temper was careless of all risk. Nor did he have any patience for Grace’s fears, he had seen how childbirth tamed a woman. He stamped out through the back door to look to the horses and she followed him out, a shawl about her shoulders and the infant screaming in her arms. She told him he must get the liquor out of the house, for if the Excise were about they would surely come looking for him in Port Jethro. She did not care where he put it but it must be moved.
    “They have no search warrant,” he shouted.
    “They will come in without it—”
    “Over my dead body!”
    “Over your dead body!”
    Only Grace Foy attempted to tell Harry Peake what to do, and

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