Smuggler's Moon by Bruce Alexander Read Free Book Online Page A

reader, for if you have ever visited that corner of the realm, it must surely have struck you what a verdant and fruitful spot it is. If all the world were as this, then hunger would be quite unknown.
    “Now, that’s both good and bad,” continued Constable Perkins, ”my point being that a man an’t got much choicehere in Kent for honest employment. There used to be iron smelting done here, but that’s gone up north, and the wool weaving that was done here, that’s moved up north, too, to those big mills where it’s all done by power loom. So the result is you got to work doing old-fashioned farm labor for seven or eight shillings a week, and at best that’s just seasonal work. That’s
honest
employment I’m talking about.”
    “And for those who would sully their hands with
dishonest
employment—what choice have they?”
    “Just one other, and that be the owling trade.”
    “The owling trade?” repeated Sir John. ”What, praytell, is the owling trade?”
    “That is what others might call the smuggling trade. Out here it’s the owling trade.”
    “Whatever for?”
    “Oh, in truth, Sir John, your guess would be as good as my own. All I can say is that owls fly by night, and that’s when the smugglers conduct their business, as well. And let me tell you, sir, it can be a very profitable business, too. Instead of the seven or so shillings a farm worker might make in a week, he’ll get ten shillings in a single night.”
    “Would that be ten shillings every night?”
    “No sir, that an’t the way it works. It an’t every night that you go out, but when there’s a boat coming in from France, the word goes round that men are needed down on the beach, and half the town turns out to unload what’s been brought across.”
    “So it’s that way, is it?” said Sir John. ”And how often might this great crowd be needed on the beach?”
    “Oh, no less than once a week, nor more than three times.”
    “Then an average of two?”
    “I suppose so, yes sir.”
    A teasing smile twitched at the corners of Sir John’s mouth. ”It strikes me that you know a good deal about this … owling trade, as you call it.”
    ”You could say that, sir.” And there was a similar air of playfulness in Mr. Perkins’s response.
    “Could it be you have had some direct personal experience of all this?”
    “Oh, it could be indeed,” said the constable. ”Yet I always figured you knew all that and took me in the Bow Street Runners anyways.”
    “Well, I’d heard a few rumors, but I put no great stock in them. It was your army record interested me far more.”
    “Glad to hear it, sir.”
    “Tell me, Perkins, could your direct personal experience of the owling trade have had some relation to your later experience in the grenadiers?”
    “It could. It did.”
    I had been watching the two men carefully, greatly enjoying the game they played between them. Clarissa, equally fascinated, seemed nevertheless to be somewhat confused by what passed between them. Were they teasing, or were they in earnest?
    “There is a tale to tell there, Sir John,” said Mr. Perkins.
    “Then tell it by all means,” said the magistrate. ”And you may rest assured that naught in the telling will be held against you.”
    “Ah well, in that case, I’ll not hold back further.” And with a wink at me and a nod to Clarissa, he began his story. ”I was a lad about the age of Jeremy here, doing farm labor for a family by the name of Griggs. It wasn’t quite year-round labor, for I was not paid in the winter when there was naught for me to do. Still, the Griggses were decent people, and they’d given me a place to sleep behind the kitchen and kept me fed through the winter, so it was
almost
year-round. I was orphaned by then, and this was the best I could do for myself at that time in my life. I was reconciled to it.
    “There was a Griggs daughter about my own age I used to dote upon, and I had saved up a bit to buy her a Christmas gift. So