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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Privateersman
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
Following an encounter with a mystery vessel, the red flags fluttering from the top masts of the "Bucephalas" signal that His Majesty's Navy has reached a state of mutiny. However, Harry Ludlow soon finds himself back at sea and staking everything he owns in a bid to alter the course of history.
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Seitenzahl: 603
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A Game of Bones
DAVID DONACHIE
To Helen, Bob, Donna, and Diane
Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THOSE familiar with the Normandy coast will recognise the location of the Îles de St. Aubin if not the name. Dramatic imperatives required that the Marcoufs gained a dimension they lack in reality, though in their true incarnation in the days of sail they were more of a hazard.
CHAPTER ONE
THE SOUND was much altered, the boom of the cannon lengthened to distant, rolling thunder. But what Harry Ludlow was hearing, as he sat high in the crosstrees, was too regular to be elemental. He knew he was in the English Channel, as certain as any sailor can be that he was in deep water, and that an action was being fought outside the limited range of his vision. But more he could not say, since the white blanket of fog seemed to press against his very eyes. And, naturally, there was little wind to move him forward. Over and over, accompanied by the sound of his own clanking pumps and the annoying rattle of Flowers playing a set of bones, he heard the dull, reverberating thud, his head twisting like that of a snake as he tried to place the source.
Looking down, the deck of Bucephalas was similarly invisible, conjuring up the impression that he was suspended in space, with no credible means of support. But he knew it was there, just as he was sure that every man, bar those pumping, would be on deck, like him searching vainly over the bowsprit, seeking some clue as to which course they should follow. Closing his eyes, Harry leant against the rough-grained wood of his upper mast. He suspected that he was close to a small corvette his lookouts had spied the previous night, a tub so slow he would have guaranteed a capture in clear weather. He was fairly certain that whatever vessels they were approaching, the range was shortening. But he’d been a sailor all his life; captain’s servant, naval officer, and now a privateer, so he was no stranger to fog. And he knew from long experience just how much it could distort sound.
He felt the ropes moving long before Pender came to join him, but he was unaware of his identity till he spoke, his soft Hampshire burr also affected by the damp, cloying mist.
‘How we doin’, your honour?’ His face, deep-tanned and damp, swimming into view.
‘One ship is firing heavy ordnance,’ Harry replied, ‘the other something smaller. Yet they have a regularity that goes with practice. The larger cannon are more haphazard. So I think one is a substantial merchantman, lacking the crew for a proper fight.’
‘Could the other be a warship?’
There was a wealth of unstated concern in that question, since avoiding such vessels was of paramount importance. Bucephalas was in no fit state to face even a modest foe. Two years away from home had done nothing for her hull, and in one sea fight she’d sustained damage below the waterline, and subsequent leakage, that demanded constant attention. Yet even in perfect trim, the reasons for steering clear of an enemy ship of war, French, Spanish, or Dutch, were obvious. Privateers made their profits from taking and selling the ships and cargoes of the King’s enemies, not from pitched battles where their only reward was glory.
And Pender was trying to remind him, without actually saying so, that here in home waters they were as much at risk from their own King’s ships. With the war four years old, and the number of enemies that faced Great Britain multiplying, there was not a Royal Navy vessel at sea, from first-rate to sloop, that wasn’t short of its complement. Harry Ludlow had aboard Bucephalas a crew of hard-bitten, fighting sailors, all blue-water men, that any King’s officer would give his eye-teeth for. Legally they couldn’t strip men out of Harry’s ship, since he carried protections for his crew. But that very thing had happened the last time they’d been this close to home, proof that such judicial niceties were likely to result more in breach than observance. After such an absence, and in line for their fair share of the fortune Harry and the two-year cruise had earned them, his men were anxious to avoid anything that smacked of risk.
But they had in their captain a man who could never resist the sound of gunfire. They knew he’d steer towards it, even if in the fog he couldn’t see that those very same cannon might threaten him. It was in his nature, and had marked his behaviour since the first day he took command of his own vessel, but recent events had exaggerated the trait. Harry Ludlow had suffered a grievous personal loss. The men who’d sailed with him from the Gulf of Mexico, via the port of New York, had learned one thing very quickly: the only thing that lifted his melancholy was action, especially that of the most desperate kind.
‘Happen we won’t see them,’ said Pender, trying to make his voice sound rational instead of hopeful. ‘In this pea soup we could sail right past, not a yardarm apart, and never know they was close.’
‘Helmsman!’ Harry shouted, leaning past Pender to do so. ‘Steer two points to larboard, and tell that bastard Flowers to belay on the bones.’
‘Captain,’ Pender growled, as those very same instruments, made from the jawbone of a right whale, gave an angry, final crack. ‘We have no need of this.’
‘Nonsense,’ Harry replied, his voice as tight as the hand gripping the stay. ‘It could be the icing on the cake, especially if it’s that wallowing tub of a corvette we saw last night.’
‘A cake we might lose altogether if’n it ain’t.’
‘You’re not shy, are you?’ Harry hissed, using a tone of voice that he’d never before employed with this man.
Pender’s voice was equally unfriendly. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if another asked me such a question.’
There was a time when Harry Ludlow would have quickly apologised. But then there had been a period, seemingly distant now, when he would never have thought such a thing, let alone said it. Too much time alone had changed him. What his brother James, now on deck and as worried as the rest of the crew, termed introspection. Pender didn’t care a toss what it was in Latin, Greek, or double Dutch. To him it was a bad mood that threatened them all, an excuse for him to indulge in the very limits of the customary relationship he had with his captain, and chastise the man.
‘We don’t need icing. And I don’t need fighting to ease my sleep.’
‘Go back on deck, Pender,’ Harry replied calmly. ‘And that, just in case you are in any doubt, is a direct order.’
The temptation to stay and argue was overwhelming, but Pender knew it would be fruitless. Whatever bond had existed between them was no longer there. What had happened in New Orleans had changed that, just as it had altered Harry Ludlow. The man who loved life and laughter and could calculate danger to the inch was no more. Gone was the captain who cared not only for his crew’s welfare but for their good opinion.
‘And, Pender,’ Harry added, as the man who’d once been his servant, and until recently been a friend, turned to leave, ‘you mistake your position. You will in future remember that I am the captain of this ship. We may not be a naval vessel, but that does not deny me the right to impose discipline, to the extent of flogging someone if required.’
Pender was too shocked to respond, a most unusual state for a man who prided himself on never bowing to authority. And he was hurt, something Harry Ludlow would have seen if he’d turned to look. They’d been together for nearly five years, the only break enforced by unfortunate circumstance, and in that time they’d been through all manner of exploits. The man threatening him with a flogging had sailed halfway across the world to rescue him, and a goodly portion of his crew, from the hell of a King’s ship. Pender slid down the backstay, and as he descended the lump in his throat seemed to grow to match the anger that swelled in his breast.
On deck, with the heat from below thinning the fog slightly, it was easier to see both people and objects. The men had been looking over the side all right, but they turned to gaze at him in an anxious way that indicated their concerns. James Ludlow, standing by the binnacle, approached him as he landed, just as Harry, hearing another boom of cannon, louder this time, called down for a second slight alteration to the course.
‘What did he say?’
‘He reminded me of a captain’s rights in the article of punishment, one which, if he saw fit, goes as far as letting the cat out of the bag.’
James didn’t gasp, a melodramatic device adopted by some members of the crew, since there was no real surprise in what Pender was saying. Sharing the great cabin with Harry these last weeks, as they’d crossed the Atlantic without the sight of so much as a fishing smack, had been an increasingly unpleasant experience, in which his normally considerate brother had turned into a waspish pest. Though in the confines of the ship his company was hard to avoid, James had done his very best, trying to reduce his presence in the cabin to that of nothing more than sleeping. Harry ate alone, stared out of the casement windows at the wake in utter silence, and banned everyone from proximity while he walked the quarterdeck. When altering sail or giving orders he generally behaved like the kind of martinet naval officer he’d often claimed to despise.
‘I think he’ll only be happy if we’re sunk,’ James replied.
‘If he wants he can jump from where he sits now,’ said Pender bitterly. Yet more booms erupted, seeming now to move the air around them, causing him to pause. ‘And with my blessing, as long as he takes care to find the deck.’
James put a hand on Pender’s shoulder, his voice low and compelling. ‘It is a temporary thing, an attack of melancholia brought about by his loss. It will pass, in time.’
‘You said that in the Gulf when we took on them two armed merchantmen,’ Pender replied, looking around the ship, though the scars of that engagement where hidden by the mist.
They’d had an even closer shave in the Florida Channel, crossing swords with a Spanish frigate. If the wind hadn’t turned foul, so that the Dons couldn’t get across their hawse, they’d not be here, talking now. James was well aware that the crew’d had to pump ever since that day just to keep a check on the water level in the well. All that labour for damage that had Harry been a little more patient could have been fixed in New York.
‘It’s only by God’s good grace,’ Pender continued, ‘that we crossed this far without sighting a ship-of-the-line to attack. And now, when every man aboard can smell the peat of his own home fire, with a King’s ransom to be shared, he’s steering a course that might see us all pressed or sunk in sight of the shore.’
As he spoke, making no attempt to lower his voice, the murmurings of the crew changed to growls. Flowers started to rattle the whalebones again, his sharp, staccato rhythm a perfect foil to their mood. They were edging towards the pair by the shrouds, as if by proximity they could enforce some kind of collective action. James was about to speak, to reassure them, when Harry’s voice, louder now, called out.
‘Two ships fine on the starboard bow. I can only see their topmasts, but they’re there for certain. Take station on the larboard guns and prepare to fire as they bear.’
The hesitation was minimal. But it was palpable, which made James wonder just how these men would behave if it actually came to a fight. Nor was he sure whether it was ingrained discipline, fear, or Pender’s voice repeating the command which had them doing as Harry had ordered. But once the spell was broken they moved quick enough, well aware that whatever they were about to engage in, it could only be made worse by tardiness.
Aloft Harry felt his spirits lift as the fog thinned slightly. Bucephalas was drifting along on one of the numerous ever-changing currents of the Channel, the slight warming caused by a more southerly flow just enough to provide faint vision. The thin trace of the two ships’ upper masts, hidden a moment ago, were now like spiders’ webs right ahead. Peering forward to look at the pennants made him feel even happier. He recognised one as French, and the other as the flag of the East India Company. The enemy ship’s masthead was lower than the merchantman, a good indication that it must be the corvette, either a privateer like him, or a navy ship on a speculative cruise. Whatever, it was a worthy opponent, one that would occupy all his thoughts as he sought to best her, so that the images that had occupied his mind these last weeks would be blotted out.
The fog, still thick closer to sea level, made it hard to see the state of the action. John Company ships, big ocean-going vessels, were well armed. They had to be in order to survive the long voyage to and from India, where the threats to their security started as soon as they weighed, and didn’t diminish until they dropped anchor in the Hooghly. But their crews, numerous by normal merchant service standards, were not of sufficient numbers to both fight and sail the ship, and certainly too few to defend against a determined and well-executed attempt to board by a heavily manned enemy.
Judging by the twin sets of topmasts, edging slightly closer, that was the objective of the Frenchman, using the lee and shallower draft of the larger, drifting vessel to reduce the gap. And in the light airs that kept the fog in place, the Indiaman was short on options to avoid such a fate. What sails they had aloft hung limp in the moist air, only occasionally ruffled as a wisp of breeze lifted the edge. And all the while the guns boomed out, the blast thudding into Harry’s ears, and the smoke adding a different hue to the mist which obscured the decks.
Nothing in their actions indicated that they’d seen him approach. Harry Ludlow prided himself on being tactically astute. So in a situation where hard information was lacking he normally favoured caution. With very little wind and no idea of precisely how matters stood, he’d no way of ensuring that when he did engage, both ships would not assume him to be an enemy and turn their guns to face this new threat. He could find himself caught between two fires, bombarded as much by his fellow-countrymen as his enemies. But with the exhilaration that now suffused his whole being, he didn’t care. There was a fight to engage in, with the risk of success, death, or mutilation. For a man in his mood, that was more than enough.
‘Lookout aloft,’ he yelled, aware that he could do nothing more from up here. In any engagement his place was on deck. The man got his orders from a captain already sliding down towards the deck, simple instructions to keep an eye on the masts, and tell him if they showed any sign of becoming entangled.
Landing with a thud, he looked around, checking as much as the mist would allow that all his men were in place. The quarterdeck was empty, no one willing to risk their captain’s wrath by encroaching on his preserve by so much as a strake of planking. He called to the helmsman, ordering him to steer the ship, which was crawling through the water, so as to take him to the blind side of the Frenchman. He might not make it, might not get the chance to put an unexpected broadside into her hull before they collided. So be it.
It was at that moment Harry Ludlow realised he was unarmed. Pender, normally present at his side, was nowhere to be seen. And the weapons that his servant habitually had ready were missing too. James was likewise absent, the artist brother who always had his sketch-pad ready at a time like this, so that the earliest image of the action could be recorded accurately. Those of the crew he could see, men prone to look aft on these occasions to discern in their captain’s eye the state of the approaching battle, were staring fixedly forward.
He’d served on ships with unpopular captains. He knew full well what this meant. But he didn’t give a toss. All his attention was taken up with the ethereal shapes which suddenly loomed up at Bucephalas out of the fog, the outlines of the two battling ships, now so close together that the merchantman could very well have already been boarded. He lifted a finger to feel the faint wind, and gazed aloft, doubtful that either it, or the fickle Channel current, would carry him beyond the Frenchman with any chance of maintaining surprise. Better to get off some early roundshot and force the enemy to respond. Turning round, Harry stepped behind the helmsman and pulled a cutlass from the rack, issuing simultaneous orders to port the helm.
‘Larboard battery, fire as you bear.’
‘Which ship, Captain?’ called one of the senior gun captains.
‘Damn you, you fool!’ Harry shrieked. ‘Can’t you see that the largest one’s an Indiaman? Fire at the bastards in the corvette, then stand by to board.’
Bucephalas swung round on a southerly course, to crawl, parallel, down the Indiaman’s side, guns trained right forward. The Frenchman was half hidden behind the Company ship, set at an angle across her stern, showing everything abaft his own mainmast to Harry’s gun crews. The sound of battle, of sword on sword, of men screaming and swearing drifted towards them through the mist. As each gun captain saw, peering through the port, the shadowy outline of the corvette’s stern, he pulled on the flintlocks, sending balls crashing into the other ship.
The response from the Indiaman was immediate, and devastating. Her cannon, double-shotted and square-on to Bucephalas, roared out a salvo that took Harry’s ship all the way forward from amidships to the bows. The foremast, just above the cap, snapped in two like a matchstick. As it toppled slowly over the starboard side, with ropes snapping and blocks falling, it took the wounded bowsprit with it, leaving Harry Ludlow with nothing forward of the mainmast with which to control the ship.
Even in such light airs the head immediately began to fall off, the force of the making tide swinging it round to expose his naked bows. Harry screamed for axes, at the same time ordering his men to man what larboard guns could still fire. Practically dead in the water, and with little in this situation to defend himself, there were several agonizing minutes while he lay at the mercy of his opponents. They, either French or English, he knew not which, used the time badly. Instead of smashing through his unprotected bows with roundshot, an action which would probably have crippled him, they loaded their cannon with bar shot, elevated the aim, and sent their next broadside scything through the mainmast rigging.
The range was opening, as the leeway took the two ships away from his, the fog closing in again to hide them from his gaze. He rushed forward, determined to keep them in view, ready to put boats over the side if need be to make boarding possible. Yet he was aware, as he yelled the orders that would clear the debris off his deck, that if his crew were responding they were doing so without the enthusiasm that had made every endeavour on this cruise a resounding success.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MAN THE boats!’ he cried, as he saw the last faint outline of the hulls disappear. This was shouted at a crew desperately engaged in clearing the ship of the existing wreckage, as well as tending to the wounded, too heavily occupied to respond with speed. The level of invective they were subjected to, when it became apparent that Harry Ludlow seemed to care nothing for his casualties, drove yet another spoke into their diminishing regard for their irascible captain.
He was beside himself, spinning this way and that, oblivious to the blood that stained the deck, cursing men individually and collectively as the boats were hauled alongside; Pender, who’d been absent from his usual station by his captain’s side, was particularly exposed to it – so much so, that for the sake of his own self-respect, let alone his standing amongst the crew, he could not help but respond.
‘Are you out of your head, Capt’n?’
‘Don’t dare address me in that manner,’ Harry roared.
Pender responded in kind. ‘I can and I will. That’s the English Channel below our keel, fifty-fathom water with a swell that can make just trying to row a boat near fatal.’
Harry raised his cutlass in a threatening manner. ‘Get on that damned rope and haul those boats in, Pender, or so help me I’ll use this.’
‘Harry!’
He spun round. His brother James was standing there, the shock on his face extreme.
‘What in the name of God are you thinking about?’
‘I’m thinking about taking one or both of those ships, which I could do easily if there was a man aboard with the stomach for a fight.’
‘We can’t board an armed, moving vessel in deep water,’ Pender pleaded, more to James than to his commander. Even a self-confessed lubber like the younger Ludlow could appreciate the difficulties. It was hard enough to try and board a ship in harbour with everyone asleep. But in open water, with a ponderous channel swell and a crew that was alert and dangerous? ‘It’s suicide.’
‘Is that what you want, Harry, to kill yourself?’
James had to avoid the temptation to step back when faced with the aggressive way his brother approached him. But he held his ground, and felt the heat of Harry’s breath as he spoke quietly, but insistently, his voice devoid of any affection.
‘You will oblige me by going to and staying in my cabin. The running of this ship is my concern, not yours.’
‘I have a share …’
Harry raised his voice once more, seemingly no longer concerned about the damage he was doing to his brother’s position.
‘Your share! So does every man aboard in the profits we earn. But I don’t hear any of them have the damned cheek to demand explanations from me on the deck of my own ship. You presume too much, brother.’
‘And what about me, Captain?’ asked Pender.
Harry spun round to face him. ‘You may go below if you wish, and skulk in the bilges where you will be safe.’
‘Does that go for anyone who’s of the same mind?’
The voice had come from the back of the assembled crew, the fog making it even harder to discern the source. But the murmur that rippled through the ranks indicated it was not a single individual who felt that way.
‘I want no man along with me who lacks courage.’
‘What about those who’re brave enough,’ Pender added, ‘but too brainy to see the sense?’
‘I think, Harry,’ said James, calmly, ‘that you have a mutiny on your hands.’
‘Then I’ll go by myself.’ Harry spoke as he turned, the words uttered before he saw the pistol James was holding, aimed steadily at his head.
‘This may change your mind.’
‘You won’t use it, James,’ Harry replied bitterly, raising his cutlass so that the point was aimed at his brother. ‘And if you did, I’m not sure that I would care.’
‘There’s not a man aboard wants that, Captain,’ said Pender, moving closer.
‘There’s one,’ Harry replied.
He hadn’t turned towards Pender, so he didn’t even catch a glimpse of the weighted sandbag with which he hit him. James did, and as the blow was struck he stepped smartly backwards so that his brother, falling forwards, wouldn’t run him through. He saw first the surprise in Harry’s eyes, then observed calmly the way they went out of focus, this coinciding with the first hint of a loss of the power to stay upright. Two sailors, the Pole, Jubilee, and another called Carrick, stepped forward, to take their captain under the arms. James spoke again, as soon as they had him secure.
‘Take him to the cabin, Jubilee. Pender, we’d best double the party on the pumps. And would it be possible to get some kind of jury foremast rigged, so that we can steer properly?’
Seeing the way the man was looking at him, some of the confidence he’d demonstrated evaporated, to be replaced by an uncertain tone. ‘That is the right term, is it not?’
‘It is,’ Pender replied, with a grin. ‘But I never thought to hear it from your lips.’
James looked sadly at Harry, being borne away by the two sailors, his feet dragging along the planking.
‘Neither did I, Pender. Neither did I.’
The April sun had burnt off the fog by the time Harry came round. Light streamed into the cabin through the casements, which immediately told him the bows were pointing to the north. He tried to sit up but James put a hand on his chest, and still weakened by the blow, he had little strength to resist.
‘I wasn’t exaggerating about mutiny, brother,’ James said, as he saw Harry’s eyes casting around with uncertainty. ‘And since you are in a position in which, temporarily, I can overawe you, I intend to take this opportunity to pass on a few unpalatable truths.’
The eyes turned away from him as Harry looked at the bulkhead beside his cot.
‘No one could be more saddened at your loss than I was myself. But I must tell you that since that day you have not been fit company for a human being. You have been boorish, bad-tempered, moody, and damned rude, both to me and to the crew. And in an attempt to smother your sadness, you’ve taken us all to the edge of perdition on more than one occasion.’
‘Are you finished?’
‘No, Harry, I am not. You have accused men who have been loyal to you of cowardice, not least Pender. How you could do that to a man who more than once has saved both your life and mine, escapes me.’
‘Then in the time you’ve been at sea with me you have learnt nothing. A captain must be obeyed.’
‘Even a fool?’ Harry opened his mouth to respond but James was too quick for him. ‘That sounds very like some of the worst kind of naval officers we have encountered, a species you purported to despise. Do you really subscribe to the values of men who will serve out a seaman a hundred lashes for no purpose other than some notion of wounded vanity? Perhaps you should have stayed in the King’s service after all. Or is it merely the corrupting influence of power that all you seafarers have. I for one am very grateful that Father saw fit to send me to school, and not to sea.’
That was designed to wound Harry deeply, and James could see he had succeeded. The son of a successful sailor, Harry had been listed on the books of his father’s ship when he was barely breeched. His entire education had been afloat, first rated as a captain’s servant, then as a midshipman, and finally as a lieutenant. While he was growing up with salt in his veins, James had benefited from their father’s increasing wealth. Harry progressed from ship to ship when Thomas Ludlow had become both an admiral and a knight.
Profiting mightily from the lucrative Leeward Islands command, and too forthright in his disputes with the Admiralty to be re-employed, Thomas had retired to become a country gentleman. A widower, he’d seen his daughter married to the offspring of an earl, and his youngest son progress through school and university and private study to become a successful artist. But for all their achievements, he was most proud of his eldest boy who, with a fair wind and an absence of peril, looked set to follow him to the very pinnacle of naval rank.
James had often wondered if Harry’s court martial had hastened their father’s death. Having just participated in a successful battle against the French, in which Admiral Rodney had trounced an enemy fleet in the Saintes Channel, Harry had every right to expect substantial financial reward, and a step in the promotion ladder. Instead, for reasons on which he’d never elaborated, he’d fought a duel with his first lieutenant, and put a pistol ball in the man’s shoulder. Called upon to apologise, he refused, leaving a court that was kindly disposed towards him no alternative but to remove his commission.
James, respecting his brother’s feelings, never mentioned the matter nor enquired the cause. But several years at sea, and the odd hint dropped by his brother, had allowed him to form certain opinions. Carter, the wounded man, had been well known as a martinet. He not only liked to flog the men, he also took delight in demeaning his officers. James suspected that the argument had been about many things, but that the primary one was naval discipline, too zealously applied.
Harry was not one to condemn flogging out of hand. As he often said to James, it was a right given to all captains, in law, and there were men with whom he’d sailed who’d respond to nothing else. And the feelings of the rest of the crew required consideration, especially where the culprit stole from his mates. But he did not use it unnecessarily, and sailing in a ship manned by volunteers, each of whom had a vested interest in efficiency, he’d never had to let the cat out of the bag on the entire cruise. In happier times James had heard Harry rail against a system that dragged unwilling men to sea, in ships sometimes officered by sadists, who were fed rotten food, robbed of their meagre pay, and denied shore leave in harbour, all accompanied by regular flogging to keep them in line.
‘Do I deserve that?’ asked Harry, trying to subdue the harsh note of anger in his voice.
‘You do, brother, and a great deal more abuse besides. The men you lead have followed you, unquestioningly, into battles that were none of their concern.’
‘What a collection of saints you make them sound.’
The men who crewed Bucephalas were far from that. They were in the main hard-bitten scoundrels who welcomed a fight, and loved to take a prize then spend their share of the profits ashore. This was done with no regard for the future, in a land they called Fiddler’s Green, on all the things that tars cherished: drink, gambling, women, and song. And when the money ran out they wanted to get back to sea and earn some more.
‘Regardless of their personal morals they have not let you down, so it is particularly sad to see you do that very thing to them. I presume you are not anticipating a long run ashore yourself. If life on land bored you before it will do so doubly now. Once the ship is repaired, I can see you desperate to get away again. When you do, you will need a crew.’
Harry sat bolt upright, before James could restrain him, his eyes blazing angrily. ‘There’s no shortage of men willing to sail with me, brother, though there might be some that I will wish to leave ashore.’
James yawned slightly before he replied, and when he did so it was in a tone of studied languor that Harry had heard him use so often to devastating effect.
‘If you’re referring to me, Harry, I must tell you that persuasion or command will not be required. And if your mood does not improve with earth under your feet, I doubt I shall seek your company on terra firma either.’
The hail from the masthead with the skylight closed was faint and incomprehensible. Harry pulled himself to his feet, rubbing the back of his head as he did so.
‘Who hit me?’ he demanded.
‘Collectively, everyone on deck, including me.’
‘Would you have shot me, James?’
There was no avoiding Harry’s stare, nor did he try to. Both knew that for all his veneer of sophistication, honed by years spent mixing with the cream of society in the salons of London, James Ludlow had a fierce temper. His languid manner covered a steely determination that surfaced rarely. But when it did he was as capable as his brother of irrationality.
‘How can I tell, Harry? But let me say this. If I had pulled the trigger it would have downed neither a brother nor a friend.’
‘It will be good to have my cabin to myself again,’ said Harry, pushing past him to make his way out on to the deck.
The crew, some looking aloft and others peering over the larboard bow, knew he’d come on deck. But none turned in his direction, and lest he doubt their indifference, they went back to the tasks they’d been performing without orders. The pumps clanked on, sending a steady stream of silver water over the side. The stump of a jury mast had been rigged, with another spar acting as a temporary bowsprit. The men working in that section were occupied in reeving the ropes and blocks that would operate the small scraps of sail which was all that these makeshift timbers would sustain. Harry resisted the temptation to call aloft to the lookout. Eventually, Pender, who’d been supervising the work, came aft to report.
‘Two boats in the water, due east, full of men.’ His voice was flat, not friendly, not servile. ‘One of them has waved a shirt so we reckons they’re distressed.’
‘Position?’ Harry demanded, not looking him in the eye.
Pender, if he was angered by that, kept it out of his voice. ‘Can’t rightly say. We’ve drifted somewhat since the fog lifted. Even on a sea like this it makes it easier to work.’
‘How long?’
‘Four hours. I assume we was on a course you set afore that.’
Harry finally looked at him, and there was no regard either there or in his tone. ‘Your assumptions are unwelcome, Pender.’
‘They tend to go with the answers to questions, Capt’n,’ Pender replied, bitterly. ‘If you ask for one you get the other.’
Harry ignored him and turned away, pulling a telescope from the rack and heading towards the side of the ship. A call to the lookout told him where to aim and soon the boats, crammed full and low in the water, swam into view. He dropped the glass to study the progress of the work forward, and reckoned that they could close the gap with what he had aloft. The commands he issued were obeyed with such alacrity that he had no cause to complain, but there were no smiles nor jokes, none of the usual banter which marked a crew at ease with their station.
Once the course had been set, with the gentle breeze playing on Bucephalas’s quarter, they retired as far away as possible from Harry Ludlow, leaving the windward side of the quarterdeck, the traditional preserve of the ship’s captain, for him to pace alone. Once within hailing distance he took a speaking trumpet and called for the occupants of the boats to identify themselves. The man who complied, wearing a salt-streaked but well-tailored blue coat, and waving a hat trimmed with expensive ostrich feathers, made Harry suspect their provenance before the voice became distinct enough to confirm it.
‘Lothian!’ he shouted. ‘East Indiaman. Ten weeks out of Calcutta, bound for the Pool of London.’
‘We will heave to,’ Harry replied, dejectedly. There might be two India ships which had got into difficulties in the same day, but he doubted it. This was the one he’d encountered in the fog. ‘We have sustained damage that makes it hard to manoeuvre. It is safer if you close with us.’
‘God bless you, sir, for stopping.’
‘Open the gangway,’ he called out, his voice containing a goodly portion of the anger he felt. Bucephalas hadn’t stopped, but had been found wallowing and drifting. ‘And put down some side ropes in case he has passengers. A sling in the yards and a sail rigged as a stretcher to lift out any wounded.’
They rocked on the swell while the boat struggled to make up the leeway to the side of Harry’s ship. If it was hard work, it was at least safe. Without anything to steer by the head, he could easily have caught a fluke of wind that, swinging his ship, would drive them under. Finally the first boat crunched into Bucephalas and the crew manned the side ropes to help the distressed survivors aboard. Several wounded men came up in the slings, and were immediately taken below to the cockpit, there to join those already under medical care.
The captain in the well-cut coat, having seen his crew off both boats, was the last to board, making sure before he did that his final possessions, his cutter and longboat, were securely lashed to the rescuer. He climbed up the ladder with an ease born of long usage, and as he came through the gangway he looked around at the damage which no amount of temporary repair could disguise. Finally he spotted Harry Ludlow, standing on the quarterdeck, and lifted his plumed hat in salute.
‘Captain Henry Illingworth. To whom do I owe the honour, sir?’
‘Providence,’ Harry replied, wearily. ‘Which as you know is exceeding fickle.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘HE’S A damned villain, sir,’ boomed Illingworth, his loud voice magnified by the low timbers of Harry’s cabin, to which they’d repaired as soon as the introductions were completed.
His florid complexion, aided no doubt by his wine, gave him a colour to go with his abundant grey-tinged red hair. Thick lips, prominent teeth, and bulging eyes, on a face dominated by a thick nose, made it impossible for him to hide any emotion. He looked either very angry, very subdued, or when he smiled exceedingly self-satisfied. All three had been on display as he’d described how having set sail from Calcutta in convoy he’d run ahead of his compatriots with the aim of being first home, only to meet his nemesis in the English Channel.
‘Damn me if he didn’t offer to sell me back my ship if I met his price in decent coin. Goes by the name of Auguste Tressoir. Had the damn cheek to introduce himself, and give me chapter and verse about the charms of his domicile port.’
‘Which is?’ asked James.
‘Isigny-sur-Mer,’ Illingworth snorted, derisively. ‘It may have been sur mer in times ancient, sir. But from my knowledge of the place it’s a silted-up backwater now, useless for any depth of keel without a near-flood tide. But that is where he’s taken my ship. Worse than that, Tressoir’s made prisoners of my passengers. He intends to hold them, as well as the Lothian, for ransom.’
‘Then they must be worthy of it,’ James replied, as Illingworth held out his goblet for a refill.
A large handkerchief was produced, and the thick nose, after a hearty blow, received a vigorous rub. ‘They are that, Mr Ludlow. Sir William Parker and his family are exceedingly well connected. Indeed, two of his brothers are admirals, both favoured with advantageous appointments by the ministry.’
Harry wasn’t sure whether it was the look of enquiry he wore or his own momentum that made Illingworth continue. ‘It was a most unfortunate occurrence that Sir William let this be known. But he is a man of parts, one might almost say a person of a boastful persuasion, who demanded of Tressoir that he treat both him and his party with respect.’
‘You, I trust, would not have done so.’
‘Never, sir. Silence is always the best policy on these occasions. Tressoir had been gifted enough by the mere capture of my ship. Lothian had a cargo worth a quarter of a million sterling.’
‘Did that include your private ventures?’ Harry asked.
‘A few pearls, sir, of trifling value,’ Illingworth replied, coughing slightly, then suddenly reproducing the handkerchief to cover both his face and the embarrassment of dissembling. At least he hadn’t insulted them with an outright lie.
James smiled, as aware as Harry of Illingworth’s dissimulation. Every John Company captain carried valuables back from the East, to augment a scale of pay which was well above the norm for ships’ masters. Diamonds, pearls, silks, and spices were the favoured personal cargoes, and all would be sold to professional smugglers, long before his ship made its landfall, thus avoiding the need either to pay duty or to admit officially to their presence. Five thousand pounds’ profit was not uncommon on the round trip, much more if the captain had the means and experience to place private advantage ahead of Company benefit. Well aware that he was unlikely to be believed as to the value of his goods, Illingworth kept talking, if anything more loudly than before.
‘Sir William may well have had some ventures of his own. Lord knows his wife’s jewellery was worth a mint of money. Besides that, it is not uncommon for returning Company officials to bring back the results of their labours. In that they merely follow in the footsteps of Clive and Warren Hastings, though I doubt that Sir William was amongst the first rank of Bengal nabobs.’
‘If that’s the case your ship could be worth as much as a million pounds,’ said James, enjoying the startled reaction that the figure produced.
‘Nothing like that, I do assure you, sir.’
‘Then half, perhaps?’
‘Sadly, yes,’ said Illingworth. But he wasn’t downcast. In fact, he was looking eagerly at Harry, mouth half open and eyes alight. It soon became obvious why. Leaving the protection of a convoy might be lauded if he’d arrived safe home. But having been separated and captured, Illingworth could well be in deep trouble.
‘I know she’ll not become a potential prize until Tressoir’s had her twenty-four hours, but she might still be worth the chase. Naturally, I would be willing to reward any man who chose to recover her before then. And I’m sure Sir William would have both the means and the inclination to do likewise. Added to that, the Company can in such circumstances be exceedingly generous.’
‘I cannot go in pursuit of your ship, Captain Illingworth. During your short time on the deck you will have observed that I have sustained damage that makes such a notion impossible. And no doubt you have heard the pumps clanking away.’
‘I observed both when I came aboard, Captain Ludlow.’ Illingworth lifted a thick, enquiring eyebrow. ‘There was a ship that tried to engage us just after we’d been taken. It was impossible to make out her true nature in the fog, of course, but I reckoned her as British. Tressoir had a man in the tops yelling out her course and speed. He showed some skill in his timing, as well as the way he employed my cannon. Indeed he removed the fellow’s upper foremast, bowsprit, and goodly section of bulwark.’
‘That would be us,’ answered James.
Illingworth turned to face him, his brows now knitted in something approaching indignation. ‘A little more subtlety might have achieved a result. That bull at the gate approach, when you didn’t know the state of affairs, was gallant enough, but exceeding hazardous. The whole advantage of the fog was tossed away.’
The merchant captain’s hands had begun to move, as he tried to convey the movements of the two protagonists. Busy with that, he didn’t see the reaction his words had produced on Harry’s face.
‘Had you come up on his open side and boarded he would have had a hard job to avoid being taken, since my own crew were barely constrained. Let me say without doubt that I would have granted you his ship as your prize, something in which the Directors of the East India Company would have supported me.’
‘We have no need of Company rewards, Captain Illingworth,’ snapped Harry. ‘Nor of advice on the way to capture enemy vessels. This is an area in which, I think, I have somewhat more experience than you.’
‘I intended no slur, sir.’
Harry stood up and glared at him. ‘Yet you have seen fit to issue one. And that to a fellow sailor who has just gone out of his way to rescue you. I suggest to you that being personally in distress does not grant you the right to question the actions of a man like myself.’
‘Forgive me, sir,’ Illingworth protested. But he spoke in vain, since Harry’s back was already halfway through the cabin door. He turned his gaze on to James. ‘I meant no slur.’
‘You would not need to with a man in such a mood,’ James replied, sadly. ‘It might be best if you avoided his presence until we make our landfall.’
‘I have yet to ask where we’re headed.’
‘The Downs, Captain. Our family home is no more than six miles from the very heart of the Deal anchorage.’
‘An excellent place to berth, sir. I had intended to shave the Goodwins myself, weather and tide permitting, having always found the offshore tradesmen in that part of the world very obliging.’
The way he said ‘offshore tradesmen’ was designed to avoid the word smuggler, while leaving James in no doubt about what he meant. James’s waspish reaction, so close to the tone of his brother Harry, shocked him.
‘I have had some experience of Deal smugglers, sir, and it was somewhat less than obliging. Indeed they are to me a damnable crew.’
Illingworth recovered quickly from what was obviously another gaffe, returning to the safer subject of the ship and its problems.
‘Deal lacks a dockyard, sir, and the Stour is a mite shallow for a ship of your draft. If I’m not mistaken your vessel badly requires such services.’
‘You have the right of it. The hull has gone two years without a scrape, and nearly all of that spent in warm waters. I am told we are trailing several feet of weed. And we have been in many a battle, Captain Illingworth, being hit hard below the waterline on one occasion.’
James looked away, remembering Harry in the harbour at New York. With the new nation, and its trade, booming, every shipwright had been occupied. Too busy to effect repairs immediately, they’d naturally assumed that the privateer captain would wait. He did, but only long enough to trade the gold and silver he was carrying for Federal bonds guaranteeing him vast tracts of land if they couldn’t be redeemed.
Several of the crew, seeing the results of their cruise turned from coin into paper, were less than happy, even though in a country desperately short of specie Harry had concluded a splendid transaction. But once that deal was done he couldn’t abide the inaction and so set sail with his bottom unrepaired.
Illingworth, still talking, dragged James’s thoughts back from these unpleasant recollections.
‘Then I would not be surprised if you have lost some of your copper, Mr Ludlow, and that the worms are at this very minute gnawing on your hull.’
‘Then I bid them cease,’ said James, standing up, ‘lest we founder where we are.’
‘I beg you speak softly, Mr Ludlow,’ Illingworth replied with deep gravity. ‘The teredo worm has ears and an abiding hatred of the species Homo sapiens. Having spent time in Indian waters, and seen what damage they can do in mere weeks, I am convinced of it.’
‘No doubt my brother has plans to take care of that. My guess is that he will head for the dockyard at Blackwall Reach, since that is where Bucephalas was built.’
‘Then you will oblige me if you do so, sir,’ Illingworth added, now looking distinctly gloomy, ‘though I look forward with some trepidation to informing the Directors of the loss of my own vessel. I have even less desire to pass on to them the terms that villain Tressoir proposed.’
James came on deck long after he’d been told of the latest hail from the masthead, time enough for those already present to have confirmed the nationality of the two frigates bearing down on them. They were closing fast, their man-of-war’s pennants streaming to leeward. Pender was standing close to Harry, but it was obvious from the gap between them that no contact existed.
‘Signal, Capt’n,’ said Dreaver, quietly, his foxy face anxious lest he inadvertently cause offence. ‘Master to repair aboard.’
‘Pender, the ship’s papers and log,’ Harry replied, ‘and let’s get the cutter over the side.’
Pender hesitated and looked set to object, entirely due to the tone Harry had used, plus the lack of the usual courtesies. But there was really no point in quibbling. Both orders had to be obeyed, as much to oblige the Royal Navy as to satisfy his captain. Illingworth, following James’s advice to stay out of Harry’s way, was not on deck. But he was sent for and the speed with which he appeared testified to his knowledge of what had happened, plus the possible consequences. He came to join them forward of the mainmast, hat in hand, his face wearing an extremely worried look.
‘The lead ship has been identified as Amethyst,’ said James. ‘The other seems new built, and is therefore a mystery.’
Illingworth nodded. Bucephalas was manned by ex-navy men to whom the outlines and figureheads of the King’s ships were as familiar as their own faces. His forehead creased with concern. ‘I fear we are both at risk here, Captain Ludlow. Let us hope that the officers on those ships have their full complements aboard.’
‘I carry exemptions for my crew, sir,’ replied Harry, without turning to face him, his voice showing no trace of sympathy for Illingworth’s plight, nor even a hint that what he was saying, judging by past experience, could well be over-sanguine. ‘They are signed by a senior member of government. So I expect, close to home shores, they will suffice to protect me.’
Illingworth glanced at his own men, now without even a ship to safeguard them from impressment, then opened his mouth to ask the obvious question. Harry spun round and cut him off abruptly.
‘I suggest, sir, that you accompany me. I will have enough of a task pleading for my own crew without doing the same for yours.’
‘Are your crew named, sir, in their exemptions?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet you must on such a long commission have lost many of their number, to natural causes if not the bloody cost of battle.’
Illingworth was right. Of the eighty men who’d set sail from Deal two years previously just under sixty were coming home, and a round dozen of them were carrying wounds that might well keep them ashore in future. The truth of the remark didn’t please Harry, as was obvious from his increasing silent anger, but that didn’t halt the merchant captain, to whom the fate of his own thirty crewmen was much more important than his rescuer’s ire.
‘Perhaps your losses are enough to cover the number of unwounded sailors I brought aboard. It would be a cruel fate that saw them taken aboard a man-of-war after a voyage to India.’
‘What would happen, Captain Illingworth, if, in a careful study of my log, such a manoeuvre were to be rumbled?’
Hat off, with his red-grey hair streaming straight back to leeward, Illingworth, even as he composed his face to plead, looked very like a man wearing a gargoyle mask. ‘Every captain afloat seeks to avoid the press. The navy expects subterfuge.’
Harry continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I would expose my own men to the fate which awaits yours, sir, that is what would happen. Having plucked you from the sea I feel that I have done enough in the charity line.’
‘As you wish, sir,’ replied Illingworth, replacing his hat.
He stepped aside to let Pender give Harry the large oilskin pouch containing his papers. From somewhere forward the sound of playing bones, accompanied by tuneless whistling, could be heard again, a tattoo of rapid, then slow, rhythmic cracks which seemed to heighten the drama of the occasion. Harry had never liked the sound much, whether it was made with metal spoons or whale bones. The instruments Flowers was using were his pride and joy, twin nine-inch pieces of hard bone, flat and smooth on the playing face, and intricately carved with scrimshaw work on the arched back.
‘Will someone tell that damn bone player to belay,’ snapped Harry, rubbing his forehead. ‘The noise drives me mad.’
No one had to pass on the message, since the sound of bones and whistling ceased abruptly. The boat was already bobbing in the water and both captains climbed down in silence, which was maintained as they were rowed across to the frigate, even though Illingworth looked set to speak on several occasions. But Harry stared past him, not willing to converse in a situation he dreaded, in which he would be at the least exposed to a very high degree of condescension.
CHAPTER FOUR
THEIR reception was as frigid as Harry expected, with no hint of ceremony as they came aboard. The officers and midshipmen on deck, efficient like the crew, either ignored the pair or stared with ill-mannered curiosity, trying to guess which one was the privateer captain: Illingworth was the better dressed, so they naturally directed their extra malevolence at him. Left hanging about on deck, so that they would know the depth of the navy’s disdain, they were finally ushered into the great cabin after forty minutes.
‘Good God, it’s you!’ said the captain, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.
‘Rykert,’ Harry replied, holding forward his papers.
The frigate captain didn’t take them right away. Instead he indicated to his steward to bring forward a couple of chairs. Clearly, whatever attitude he had assumed for this meeting had been blown off course by the fact that he knew Harry Ludlow.
‘How many years is it since I last saw you?’ he asked. When Harry didn’t reply, he kept talking, his voice betraying suppressed excitement. ‘It was on Albemarle I recall. Have you heard about St Vincent?’
Harry shook his head slowly as Rykert grinned happily, and spoke enthusiastically. ‘Then you’ll be pleased to know that on St Valentine’s Day Admiral Jervis trounced the Spanish fleet, with our old acquaintance Horatio Nelson very much to the fore. Indeed, rumour has it that without his cheek there would have been no fight to speak of. He had the Captain and you’ll not be surprised to hear that even without the necessary orders he took her into the thick of the action. The man’s the hero of the nation now. Captured two ships at once, crossing the deck of the San Josef to board the Santissima Trinidad. It’s been called ‘Nelson’s patent bridge for capturing first-rates.’ Isn’t that just the finest thing?’
Rykert’s voice trailed off as he picked up the look in Harry’s eye, not sure if it was sadness or indifference, his own face losing the happy expression that his visitor, in receipt of such news, should have shared. No doubt he would have been intrigued at the flow of Harry’s thoughts. The mention of the Albemarle had conjured up happy memories; Rykert and he had taken passage to America aboard her in the year ’82, Harry on his way to an appointment in Admiral Hood’s flagship, Barfleur, while Rykert was bound for Halifax. Yet it was the name of her captain that had the greater impact. Harry’d been a relatively new lieutenant when they met, perhaps more impressionable than he was now. An instant rapport formed immediately, manifested in a dozen different ways. Partly it was Nelson’s directness which appealed, his way of cutting through the normal hyperbole of naval conversation to state the kernel of any truth. But the way he ran his ship impressed Harry just as much, since he was able to converse easily with everyone from his premier to the lowest waister without the least trace of condescension, while the considerate way he treated his midshipmen was an example to every officer in the service.
Others spoke of Nelson’s reckless bravery, but to Harry it had been evident from the very first dinner they shared, a trait made manifest as soon as any discussion of tactics took place. Nelson had absolute faith in the quality of the British seamen and was fond of quoting his own mentor, his ‘sea daddy,’ Captain William Locker, a man who never tired of repeating that ‘No officer could do wrong who put his ship alongside that of the enemy.’ Nelson’s only quibble with that remark was to enquire as to the absolute need for a ship.
In another man that might have been taken for bombast. But Nelson’s past exploits, happily related to Harry by the Albemarle’s officers, scotched such a notion. The two became firm friends, exchanging many a letter. That lasted until Harry was dismissed the service and terminated the correspondence. Thinking now of how much he’d idolised the man, and how far he’d fallen from the standards he set himself to emulate, brought a lump to Harry’s throat. And nothing served to demonstrate this more than his recent behaviour aboard his own ship.
‘Are you all right, Ludlow?’ Rykert asked, slowly, since his visitor had been silent for almost half a minute.
‘Allow me to name Captain Illingworth, of the Lothian,’ said Harry, quickly turning to the man in question, who’d had the good grace to stay behind him. ‘His ship was taken by a French privateer not twelve hours ago. Mr Illingworth, this is Captain Julius Rykert.’
Illingworth bowed, then followed Harry’s example and sat down. ‘I wish I could say it was a pleasure, sir. But the villain who took my ship has robbed the day of any of that commodity.’
Rykert kept his eyes on Illingworth as he took Harry’s packet. ‘The Lothian?’
