Free Excerpt from Restive Souls — Moriarty's Tale

An excerpt from the novel Restive Souls, an alternative history novel about a great African nation rising on North America's East Coast

I’ve written before about the perks of becoming a paid subscriber and the conflict all writers face in deciding what to put behind a paywall.

I prefer to make the vast majority of my stuff free and allow anyone to comment.

Here’s an exception.

While my alternative history novel, Restive Souls, is being reviewed by a couple of publishers, I am making another excerpt available in two tiers. One is a free excerpt for everyone that you can find in this post below.

The other is a full version of Moriarty’s Tale in PDF format for paid subscribers. The full version is the first tale of Restive Souls Part Two: Carolina Rising. The PDF version is stored on Amazon S3. It is secure and free of viruses. The download button should show up near the end of this post if you’re a paid subscriber.

This provides you with another reason to become a paid subscriber. Restive Souls is a novel that dares Florida and other censor states to ban it.

It celebrates the early history of Black America and posits the question: What if slaves had been emancipated after the British won the Revolutionary War? This may seem subversive, but the question needed to be asked by someone, so I asked it.

In Restive Souls, what happens is that a great African nation blooms on the Carolina Coast.

When you become a paid subscriber, you are contributing directly to the fight against radical right-wing book censorship and their attempt to suppress African American heritage.

I’m also conceited enough to believe that you’ll be in on a ground-floor opportunity of sorts. If Restive Souls is even moderately successful (in the face of very ugly statistics for novels in general), I intend to open subsequent releases of the series to other authors, especially authors from backgrounds who would have benefitted from an earlier era of enlightenment.

Your paid subscription will also help me promote the novel when it is published.

As usual, I must emphasize that I appreciate all my subscribers, paid or otherwise. I realize there are a lot of great substacks out there. I don’t pay for many, either, so I don’t expect you to pay for mine. No matter your subscriber status, I hope you find enough engaging content here to justify the time you spend with me. That time is much more valuable than money.

No real background from the rest of the novel is essential for this excerpt. “Bolo’s Notes” are annotations by a fictional historian, Emmet Bolo.

So without further ado…

Moriarty’s Tale (1776)

1

My name is Sylverius Moriarty, son of Redmond Moriarty of Ballyneanig. I was born in 1735 in Ballyferriter near Tralee, County Kerry.

I was promoted to Captain of the HMS Ramillies after serving under Rear Admiral Augustus John Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol, on the HMS Dragon, a 74-gun Bellona-class third-rate ship of the line which had been sunk at harbor by a slave action in Portsmouth in 1775 as the flames of revolution began to scour the continental landscape.

I was able to save most of the crew of that ship, hence the reward of promotion from the position of Third Lieutenant.

The Dragon had been without a formal captain. As a result, the Earl of Bristol took it upon himself to take residence on the vessel. There, he quartered several women with whom he consorted either on the ship or within the lodgings along the docks of Portsmouth, while his mistress, Mary Nesbitt, lay in wait in Surrey.

The ship in flames, the poor Earl was somewhat bedridden through a combination of deep alcohol consumption and the devoted attention of his female entourage. I hesitate to mention the possibility that his being among the crew members I led to rescue may have had something to do with my promotion.

I am not here to discuss my former adventures, however. Their illustrations are but dull grey lines in comparison to the full color of those that followed my introduction to one Finneas Jewell, whom I met at a coppersmith in Cape Fear while I was seeking provisions for the Ramillies. At that time, Fort Johnston, along the west bank of the Cape Fear River, was the smallest of forts, little more than a well-fed redoubt, with about ten artillery pieces lent by the governor of South Carolina in the late 1740s.

But the cape and its dreary, difficult weather was home to a growing portion of hardy fishermen in those days, as well as British General Sir Henry Clinton, who landed in May 1775 in anticipation of eventual action against Sullivan Island in South Carolina.

As such, there existed an unorganized, small but growing settlement along the fringes of the fort, which was near the mouth of a great riverway that ate into the coast off the cape.

Here it was that I met Finneas, who worked for a smith providing copper and brass goods to the fort.

Finneas was a bulky African man of about fifty years who had been set free as a young lad and had business within the cape. He was confident, with a deep baritone voice as if shot through the tubes of the longest cannon; a voice that I felt could be heard from miles away if he so chose.

The smith, a Mr. Jameison, was a surprisingly timid-looking man considering the adventuresome nature of the environs. He wore spectacles with wire clearly made from his own smithing, and was dreadfully thin, nearly a ghost, and shorter than most women.

I found it strange that his shop was home to several sheets of copper, and when I inquired as to how he was able to acquire them in the face of British regulatory hurdles, he motioned to the African working at a small stall within the shop. The stall was a gathering place for a large assortment of copper pieces, mugs, candle holders, pipes, bowls, cooking ware, and an assortment of unidentifiable items.

“A fine apprentice, Mr. Jewell is,” the thin man sighed. “But I think he longs for the sea.”

I nodded politely, not caring.

The smith looked through his spectacles at me, saying, “as good a smith as he is, he is a better seaman. He can smell a school of shad in a roiling wave.”

That did at least nurture a chuckle from me, which I needed at that time.

I had been at sea for a lengthy period, and my body was weary enough that the laugh nearly hurt.

“The source of the sheathing is a mixture of his adventuresome personality and several strokes of luck, the details of which I’ll leave to him to provide, should he choose.”

I nodded at that, understanding the improperness of uttering another man’s biography to a stranger within a tight acquaintanceship circle such as theirs.

“Would you like to meet the lad?” asked the smith.

I considered why he’d ask such a question. Perhaps Jewell was a troublemaker that Jameison was aiming to dump onto my ship somehow through grandiose tales. I had no need for a rapscallion on my ship, which Jewell must surely be, I thought, if Mr. Jameison was eager to be rid of him in my favor.

This was a common trick within continental shores, a ploy as old as the sea itself. I would play along to some extent on behalf of polite consideration, I decided, but I’d certainly part company without a new crew member.

2

“And she’ll be held well you say,” I was saying to Finneas Jewell as the seas clobbered the aft. The helmsman and crew were fighting to aim the ship into a better angle along the waves. We had slipped into a difficult trough because I had not listened to Jewell in the first place.

“Aye, captain,” replied Jewell. “I placed them with my own hands, after which I ride here with you. She will hold.”

Jewell had convinced me some time ago of the importance of copper shears to line the bottom of ships. I was aware that the British Navy had begun a program around the fitting of all its ships in such a way. What was not known was that the idea had been pilfered by a British seaman from Jewell after an argument over the remains of some salt pork in New York more than two decades earlier.

I considered that permitting a former slave to lead the retrofit of one of His Majesty’s great ships was the surest path toward losing my commission, but sandbars around Sullivan Island, our target, were frightful. Many sandbars had been charted by the navy, but ships continued to be grounded by those sandbars yet to be charted. There could be no guarantee that the dastardly Atlantic’s western shores didn’t possess additional surprises.

Jewell was a man of impossible promises that one nevertheless found believable. He said he could fit all four ships in three months. I said impossible, so we fit the HMS Ramillies. She would lead the way on a roundabout along the island’s southwestern shores. It was on the southwestern point that the rebels had built a fort, which needed to be torn asunder were we to take Charlestown.

The ship bounced and swayed as the helmsman straightened her out to parallel the waves.

The storm flew over quickly. Soon we were basking in calm waters again.

“Come,” I said to Jewell, leaving the helm to the First Officer as the dark clouds overhead departed, dropping curtains of rain along the Carolina shores just beyond.

Plans to attack the island from its northern neighborly island had been abandoned after Jewell informed me that the waters between the two islands were too deep for troops to wade. I had to inform the commanding general, Henry Clinton, with a lie that the word of this unfortunate fact of ocean geography was passed to my First Officer by way of fishermen in Cape Fear. I found it unlikely that Clinton would respect the word of a former slave.

The Ramillies would be followed by a fleet led by the HMS Bristol. From there we would assault the fort’s main firing platform, protected by 26 and 32 pounders, with an enfilade, a technique which we hoped would provide a line of sight along an axis to the ships facing the fort’s guns.

Overall, confidence was high. Our forces consisted of nine man-of-war ships led by the flagship HMS Bristol, a 50-gun vessel of enormous power, flanked by the 50-gun HMS Experiment and its supplementary frigates Actaeon, Active, Solebay, Syren, Sphinx, and Friendship. Also accompanying us was the bomb vessel HMS Thunder. In all, this provided us more than 300 cannons.

All but my ship, the Ramillies, followed closely by the Sphinx, Syren, and Actaeon, would fall back as our ships led the charge into waters full of treacherous sandbars and shoals.

 The army forces in the expedition consisted of five Regiments of Foot, and part of another, the 46th.

When Jewell and I entered the captain’s quarters, I offered him a drink of the finest Irish whiskey a human could imagine, which I had saved for the eve of battle.

“Sit,” I commanded as I poured the drinks.

We sat at the large wood table in the center of the quarters. Finneas gratefully accepted the drink, and we clinked our glasses as I said, “A toast to the end of slavery, so that fine men like you can plow the fields with favor, toil in freedom and pursuit of luxury, and build the finest boats the sea has ever seen.” I was quite grateful, and the toast came from the heart.

“I am honored, sir,” said Finneas. He drank the whisky like water, spasming and spitting and coughing like someone had grabbed him by the throat.

I laughed heartily at that. “Now, Jewell, one can drink whiskey in that way, if one is prepared.” I downed mine in a similar fashion and poured us each another.

“I have never had such a beastly drink in all my years,” said Finneas.

“A man of your great experience? Why, you’ve been up and down this coast several times, mingling as a lover of the seas with the most brutish of vagabonds.”

“Never poured anything stronger than ale down this old throat Mister Moriarty.”

I waved him off. “Ah, t’isn’t much you have missed my friend. Do you remember, Finneas, how we first met that day on the Cape?”

“Like I remember my first day of freedom some decades ago, captain,” he said, swigging his drink down the second time without incident.

“I was not much fond of negroes, and I said as much to anyone who was within hailing distance. I’ll be frank with you on that.”

“I was awares,” said Finneas. “My kind, we get used to that mighty quick, but we also learn how to pick apart the obdurate from the aware.”

“I’m sorry, explain that to a barely educated man made even more illiterate by years in the salty winds.”

“You have a fine vocabulary, sir, truly. You seem not so illiterate. Well, then. The first thing you must know about a man from Africa is this – that they are not negroes, nor are they black. They are Igbo. They are Biafra, Benin, Senegambia, Captain Moriarty. Nations, just as England is a nation, so are we from.

“They do not become black or negro until they come to the white man’s shores. Europeans make the same mistake with the different peoples of this land you are attempting to conquer. They are all red men to you, but they are not red men to themselves. They are the Lenapehoking; they are the Oneida and the Pequot.”

I listened with great interest at his impassioned description of his background.

“And of what nation,” I inquired, “are you?”

“I am derived from the land known as Mbamba from the House of Kinlaza. It is a Christian land led by the teachings of the immortally divine Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita of the Kingdom of Kongo. I was sold into slavery by an opposing House. But I was of royal blood through the House of Kinlaza and a learned man. I learned Portuguese in my youth in Mbamba, and was able to gain my manumission in New England.

Bolo’s Notes

Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita was of course, the famous Dona of the Kinlaza, a prophetess and priestess in The Kingdom of Kongo whose followers united the kingdom against Belgium. Forces loyal to her killed Pedro IV Nusamu a Mvemba of the House of Água Rosada after she rebuked his Christianity, which she claimed had Kongolese roots because Christ himself was a Kongo, according to a vision she received while possessed by Saint Anthony.

The Kinlaza House of the Kongo ushered her into its domain. Many historians say that Guillaume Diderot’s fascination with congregational economics was influenced by Dona of the Kinlaza, who had instituted a similar system in Africa in the early 1700s. But it’s unclear how Diderot would have known about her.

“I married a Pequot woman in my youth. You do not know this. She was killed by bounty hunters who tracked her down as part of a claim on ancestral ownership from a war that annihilated the Pequot one hundred years earlier.

“Most Pequot were sent as slaves to islands far away after the war. Some have told me they were sent south of the land you call Florida, but I am not certain of this. The few who remained found homes among other clans. And an even smaller few were sent to places such as Boston to be fodder for wealthy families. One of these was a sachem named Sassakusu, taking the name of his father, who was the Pequot sachem beheaded by Mohawks during the war against the Pequot, his head and hands delivered to the English as an alliance trophy.”

I found that to be an alarming tale. “And these bounty hunters,” I asked, “they sought her for her lineage?”

Finneas nodded with a loud quick sniff.

“She slaved for a wealthy Boston family. They were a wicked bunch, whose patriarch was named Stewart Calaot. He found one of the child slaves desirable, a girl of eleven. Therefore, he kept her in his room at all hours. I consider myself of high fortune that that my wife was not a part of that lineage, but she was of the ancestry of the child. Upon adulthood, she mated with a Nashua man. Nobody knows how she consorted with him during her captivity, but family lore is that the Nashua man was also a slave for the household.

“After she had his child, she was burned alive in a great pit outdoors designed for the roasting of pork, a common practice of that wealthy family. But they spared her child, whose descendants begat my fine wife.

“By then, the family had mellowed to some extent. Calaot died, leaving behind a legacy of hatred or habit, depending on the offspring’s disposition.

“Theys with the breeding to hate my kind, it derives from your peers, and some, they will remain with those ill feelings til their dying days, simply because of an insane belief that the color of skin defines a person. But we from the lands of the lion, we can read a man and we know him, Mister Moriarty, better than he knows himself. And we can see inside him and know whether it is hate or habit.”

I nodded at that. “Habit, then, my friend. It still claws sometimes, I’ll say it.”

“’Tis why I admire you, Mr. Moriarty. Because you will say it, whatever it is.”

I offered another drink, but Finneas declined. “I will fall off this ship,” he laughed.

I nodded at that, respecting his restraint.

“And then,” I said, “After that smith – good God if I haven’t forgotten his name…”

“Mister Jamieson, sir.”

“Ah, indeed, Jameison. He tried to tell me of your gifts with the sea. That you could smell shad in a tidal wave, said he. I did laugh, thinking such hyperbole amusing, but damned if it isn’t the highest truth.”

“I don’t think I can right smell shad in a wave,” laughed Finneas, “but I do love the sea, and she loves me back.”

“Mr. Jameison presented his introductions and I attempted to be polite, but I made haste to exit his establishment after procuring my needed goods.”

Finneas nodded at that.

“And you followed me, Finneas. What an odd thing to do.”

“I sensed an adventure at the behest of your vessel, Captain Moriarty.”

“About that. How do these things that come to you do so, Finneas? It is as if you have discussions with the heavens themselves, these instincts of yours.”

“My people are bound to the earth and the sea. We hear the world speak to us. The European, he must have been this same way at one time, I think. In days yonder. But the European became bound to the pursuit of gold, and the territory of other men, and his spirit is dying. A man like you, he knows this, because your spirit lives.”

I pondered that for a moment within the realm of my somewhat whisky-addled mind, then poured myself another glass. “Are you sure you don’t wish to partake?”

“Perhaps on my final day upon this earth,” laughed Finneas.

I didn’t savor the drink as perhaps I should, but instead swallowed it hard and slammed the glass onto the table as if in finality. “My spirit,” I said, “is captivated by the sea, Finneas. It has nearly no concern under which flag or even vocation, so long as there are sails, salt, and the breaks of curling waves.”

Finneas, for the first time ever, produced a threatening look through his huge, white bushy eyebrows, through the long network of creased lines extending far beyond the contours of his mouth, through the thickly set, almost square jaw, through full-moon wide open eyes with pupils the color of walnut, through rounded lips that seemed permanently scarred and chapped.

Finneas was an imposing man with wildly unkempt hair that was more disorganized than I was used to seeing on an African, an untamed forest of curls bounding in multiple directions but never downward, as if they refused to acknowledge the laws of gravity. He bore one deep permanent but long-ago healed gash that stretched the length of one side of his face under his left eye. “I see your future, Mr. Moriarty. A man of the sea? Most certainly.”

Finneas picked up his glass and looked at it as if looking through it would reveal a set of mystical answers. “You will help slaves become a keystone to the nation that finally emerges from the conflicts that now usurp its soil.” He gently placed the glass onto the table. “This I know as well as I know the northern star.”

“You said as much, without mentioning the word slave, when you begged onto my ship those months ago.”

Finneas nodded. “That I did. I knew the secret to reaching you was copper.” Finneas looked surprised as he realized he was laughing at his own comment.

Finneas had approached me on a near run, I was recalling now. “Mister,” he had said, “I heard you sayin’ about the sheets in the smith house. You were wondering what they are for?”

“Aye,” I had said.

“They are for your ship sir,” he had said.

My ship? I had wondered.

Finneas had then provided me such a detailed and perfect explanation about how copper shears could be fitted onto bottoms of the four ships, and the benefits thereof, that I felt compelled to invite him onto the boat for more detailed explanations.

I had never considered a man of Africa to be more than a useful set of limbs for grueling work that Europeans were less suited to. Yet this Finneas Jewell fellow had proved to be more than the intellectual equal of any European I knew.

Granted, I was a man of limited educational means myself, but intellect has a habit of peering through even the most untested minds. And dare I say, I knew much about naval vessels, and much about the sea. Finneas knew more.

“Well, it’s a might good thing you tracked me down, Jewell. Although, truth be told, she hasn’t yet been put to a serious test.”

“And I pray she will not be, sir,” smiled Finneas.

I shook my head. “To round that island nearly guarantees an encounter with a sandbar. Even the best shearing won’t prevent us from running aground, but perhaps if our ship leads the way for the others, it can accept the island’s verdict and remain whole while providing a chance for the other ships to avoid the same fate. Running aground may not ruin the ship, if it comes to that, and the shearing will prevent considerable damage.”

“I make you out to be of greater ambition than that of a captain who watches from a ship aground as his compatriots rally to victory.”

I smirked in agreement. “’T’isn’t my preference, Jewell, but if our other ships are able to enfilade that fort, our mission is likely to succeed. I’ll always have the sea as my loving companion. She compliments me daily.”

Finneas lifted his glass with an empty toast. “A noble quest, Captain Moriarty.”

---

If you’re a paid subscriber, you can read the full tale by clicking on the button below, which will download a PDF version. Note that because this is in the hands of a couple of publishers, this download could disappear at any time. Let me know if you have any issues.