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For a few weeks, the imminent birthday celebration of lord William Aldershot became the craze in town. Its news spread far-flung Virginia like raging fire in a wilderness. The day finally came. From the drone downstairs Aldershot knew his guests had begun to arrive. Alone in his bedroom, he sank into a rocking chair, thanking God for a landmark of fifty years. These days Aldershot looked paunchy and kept a horseshoe moustache. The man admired his good fortunes. With over two hundred slaves on his plantation, the Gazette ranked him one of the ten most envied men in Virginia. From his plantation he exported tons of tobacco to London and prospered beyond dreams of avarice. That’s not to say he hadn’t had his down moments. Like when he lost his first child to small pox five years ago, Aldershot had been greatly destabilized for a good while. Another of such momentous times, as Aldershot could remember, was that voyage returning from Africa eleven years ago. He could now smile over that one. Thank God I belong.
Reversing time eleven years, not up to two months after that voyage, Cole’s boy, Alistair Clarke, had squealed to the Royal Navy. It seemed Clarke never let go of his grudge with Cole. Everyone that survived that gory feud with the officers got summoned to the court of vice-admiralty in New-York. They were charged with the murder of Rear Admiral O’Sullivan and his comrades. The story had stirred an enormous interest with papers in America and England at the time. Lord William Aldershot did this…Lord William Aldershot did that. Hearing after hearing, yet some ghosts continued to assure Aldershot that he shared a different fate from the rest. His acquaintances, lords of Grand Lodges in America and England, would ensure he remained untouchable by the law. Be your brother’s keeper - the code of Free Masons had to be honored. How the court declared Aldershot innocent in that case remained dodgy and the papers could only rave about it.
Captain Cole and his men though had a different story. They had been preparing to make their next voyage to Africa when the Royal Navy raided The New-York Harbor Company for their arrest. They strongly denied all charges. However the king’s Privy Council in England wanted to get to the bottom of the matter and this prompted lords of admiralty in the British parliament to drag the cause for almost a year; their own, missing like needles in a haystack, somebody needed to be a scapegoat. They sent their people over from London. The Margaret Scott turned out to be the only lead their investigators had. They examined parts of the deck and the masts where the vessel was riddled with bullets. It was kind of obvious who did it. In August 1781, the Judge had no choice but to reach a verdict. He pronounced the accused not guilty on grounds of “no substantial evidence”. The gavel slammed against the sound block, everyone gained freedom again. They embraced and shared laughs in a Manhattan courtroom.
But it did not end there. Months later the papers reported how on Christmas Eve, the Royal Navy had marched through a drifting snow that whitened streets of Jamaica, Queens to arrest Cole again. This time they had all evidence needed to send him to the gallows. The all-black schooner had been found berthed at a boat workshop in Philadelphia. According to workshop records, the ship had been there for more than a year, and registered to one Henry Cole of Queens, New-York. It was said that Cole couldn’t turn away his miserable stare from his twin girls on that cold night. His neighbors gathered outside to watch him taken away in manacles. Some days later Henry Cole and his men were found guilty of the murder of Rear Admiral O’Sullivan and his crew, and for the theft of His Majesty’s property. The public saw their hanging in January 1782.
Alistair Clarke though, had been held in witness protective custody throughout the trial. The Navy agreed to relocate him to London immediately after Cole’s trial so that he could begin life anew. However, up until May 1782 Clarke slept on the chilling floors of a Navy gaol, like a prisoner. He begged the officers day and night through the cell gate to honor their side of the pact but they ignored him. An anonymous man, as the papers had termed it, slit Clarke’s throat wide-open in the barracks. An art work of his corpse in a pool of blood made headlines in New-York and London in June 1782. The Navy was accused of complicity.
As for Aldershot, he had scrapped all intentions of returning to Africa after the trial, focusing on his tobacco trafficking business and feeding the Country’s infant Government with a fat share of his profit. This relentless generosity earned him a gifted seat in the Virginia General Assembly in 1784. Much of his success over the last eleven years had been down to one man and he admitted it - The man who tipped-off the Navy, the anonymous man who slew Clarke, that overseer who knew how to keep Aldershot’s slaves working from daybreak to moonrise. Gabriel Richardson, the man had been a blessing to Aldershot. He snapped out of his trance. Time to attend to the guests.

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