The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7), Nathan Goodwin [little red riding hood ebook TXT] 📗

Sam took a long breath and, on Ransley’s heels, rushed towards the vessel.

‘Merciful Lord!’ said a man, whose voice Sam recognised to be Evan May, one of the Folkestone fishermen who led many of the voyages. ‘That were a grabby storm—I nearly be a-turning back.’

‘Let’s be getting her unloaded, then,’ Ransley ordered.

Seconds later, the first in a long line of barrels was being heaved over the side of the galley into Ransley’s open hands. He took the barrel, then tossed it over to the first tubman in the line, who set it down and waited for the next, before taking the two barrels to one side and strapping them to his chest and back.

With his right arm all but useless, Sam always felt inadequate at this crucial, pinnacle moment in the smuggling run. He had proven himself to be a good deputy to Ransley, yet still he knew that, the moment in which the boat hit the shore, he ceased to be of any great use to the gang. He had absolutely no bearing on the success or failure of the run at this point in time.

The first tubman was ready to go.

Sam ran ahead of him through the line of batmen to make one final check that there were no signs of any of the blockade. ‘Go!’ he instructed to the two men waiting behind him. They hurried up the beach, soon lost to the darkness. Sam spun around to the next three tubmen, who were ascending the beach incline towards him, ‘Be hurrying yourselves!’ he called out needlessly.

The men snorted as they pushed past him.

Despite the inclement night, the run was going smoothly so far. From his position at the top of the beach he could just make out vague black shapes moving in the gloom of the night. A constant line of tubmen were now trudging past him on their way to the meeting point at the Bell in Hythe.

Sam jiggled his pistol nervously at his side. The worst part of not being able to take an active role was that it worsened his apprehension.

Just then came the loud crack from a pistol shot.

Sam whirled around to see that it was one of his batmen who had fired the shot. But why? He couldn’t tell. The men began to shout, but their cries were snatched on the wind.

‘Hurry!’ Sam shouted to the tubmen heading towards him, as he ran back down the beach towards the galley.

More gunfire. This time half a dozen of his men had opened up. Now there was return fire and shouting.

‘Ransley—it be the blockade men!’ Sam called. ‘We need to be getting out of here!’

‘I’ll not get the boat back out of here in these conditions,’ Evan May yelled down.

‘Leave the tarnal thing—move to the meeting place,’ Ransley bawled at the men around him.

The waiting tubmen ran up the beach without any cargo, followed by Sam, then Ransley. In the midst of battling gunfire, the line of batmen then folded into the gap, making their own slow retreat up the beach.

The cries and screams of injured men provided a melancholic punctuation to the sounds of intermittent musket fire. Sam had no idea from which side the men were falling, just that he needed to get as many of them to the meeting point as possible.

As the beach levelled out, Sam and Ransley met with the last in the line of tubmen laden with barrels.

‘Dump ‘em,’ Sam encouraged, knowing that they stood a much better chance of survival without the extra weight hanging around their necks.

The men obeyed and threw down their loads.

Sam stood still for a moment to catch his breath and turned to look behind him. The gunfire had stopped for several seconds, allowing the batmen to progress away from the beach. He squinted into the darkness, trying to make out if they were being pursued, but it was impossible to tell what or who the shifting dark shapes were.

‘Come on!’ Ransley called back. ‘Only another mile or so and we be there.’

The group continued apace, only pausing for the briefest of moments. By the time the Bell came into view, Sam was certain that they had left the blockade officers behind. As Sam had organised, there were four horses and carts awaiting them, hidden in the shadows of the yard to the rear of the inn. They were there ready to take the bulk of the goods onwards to Aldington, the knowledge of which location was kept from most present, thereby protecting their final destination from any potential discoveries through bribery.

‘Brenbutter, landlord!’ Ransley barked, kicking open the street door.

Sam followed him inside, the heat from the spluttering fire instantly smacking against his cold skin. He glanced around him. Every table, every nook and space available was taken with the Aldington Gang. Then he noticed a man writhing on his back, clasping at his stomach. His gabardine was hoisted up and Sam could see a large, blood-filled hole in his navel.

Sam thrust an elbow at Ransley, indicating the injured man. Then he saw another—James Carter—collapsed at the foot of the bar holding a cloth to his leg, a small piece of white bone jutting from the crimson pulp around it. How he had managed to get here, Sam had no idea.

Ransley strode into the bar and looked around him. ‘You,’ he said, pointing to Thomas Denard, ‘Take one of the horses and go fetch Doctor Papworth-Hougham from Brookland.’

‘We be needing someone else, Ransley,’ Sam muttered. ‘Be looking around you.’

‘He be all we got,’ Ransley snapped. ‘Now be doing your job—pay these men and get Marshall to be hastening with the brenbutter.’

‘It be coming,’ Henry Marshall, the landlord said breathlessly when Sam approached the bar. He was lining up pints of beer