Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [542]
Now the brief peace was over. Who knew what move Bonaparte with his mighty armies would make next? England had only her navy to protect her, and she stood alone.
A sound: a faint splash, followed by the soft creak of an oar on wood: almost indistinguishable from the water lapping on the muddy shore of the harbour. A sound, but no light.
Young Peter Wilson waited patiently on the bank in front of the carts.
The luggers began to arrive.
There were seven of them: long, light vessels, with well-rigged foresail, carrying oars as well, with decks for only a few feet at stem and stern. Otherwise they were open, for quick unloading of their precious cargoes. They were manned by crews of strong men, and being so light and easy to handle, they could run ahead of almost any of the revenue cutters who tried to arrest them.
“Here comes the moonrakers’ run,” Peter whispered.
For Peter Wilson was a smuggler.
To pick him out and call him a smuggler would have been absurd. There was hardly a person he knew in Christchurch or the surrounding region, from gentlemen, like the rich Wilsons in the manor near the town, to the humblest peasant, who was not involved in some way in the trade. He himself came from a family of ten. All of them were. So were their cousins – a vast network of sea and rivergoing people, some descended from the many illegitimate children of Captain Jack Wilson, before he married Nellie Godfrey, others deriving from who knew what ancient sources; some, like Peter, had thin and narrow faces, but they came in all shapes and sizes, and they infested the rivers, the ports, and the heathland villages for miles around. Slippery Wilson, his father, did well. But he was only a minor figure compared to the great, the legendary Isaac Gulliver, the father figure of smuggling in the whole area south of Sarum. Gulliver had organised tonight’s run, paid for it and drawn his profit. The contraband would pass that very night along roads his men guarded, rest at inns he owned, and in this way pass westwards across open heathland, up over Cranborne Chase and then down to Sarum.
Peter always took part when the luggers landed at Hengistbury Head. He knew every inch of the headland and could have driven a cart of rum and brandy safely across it with his eyes closed.
Tonight’s cargo consisted of a little tobacco, but chiefly brandy, rum and Geneva spirits. As the luggers came in close, dozens of men sprang forward and began to help unload. The work was accomplished in a quarter of an hour. Then twenty carts, each with an armed man riding up front, wound slowly along the headland, past the earthwork walls, and made their way westward. They were unlikely to be troubled by the excise men, who knew better than to interfere on land; some years the smugglers travelled in broad daylight, but in times of war it was wisest to be discreet.
In fact, the smuggling business was pestilential to the government for reasons which had little to do with the contraband itself, or the charming sideline of taking eloping couples to be married in the island of Jersey. For the smugglers exported gold, of which England was running perilously short, to pay for the contraband from France: the fantastic sum of over ten thousand guineas a week was leaving the island this way. And the smuggling sailors did not hesitate to sell information to the French about England’s naval and shore defences.
But Peter Wilson knew nothing of that. Tomorrow, at Sarum, he would be handsomely paid. Then he would buy a wedding ring. For the very next week, on his nineteenth birthday, Peter Wilson was going to be married. He smiled to himself