‘Ohh yes, it is Carlo ’ Beckford stood up, a hand at his mouth. Then, urgently:
‘I think we must leave this house at once. We must leave the district.’ He took
back the lantern, and turned toward the door.
‘Wait.’ James. ‘Where does he keep his papers?’
‘Papers?’
‘There may be something among his papers that will lead us to Milson.’
‘There is no time for that. We must get away from this house. It may be watched.’
‘We will face that presently, if we must.’ James. ‘Now then where are his papers?’
‘I don’t know, I tell you. I have been here only once before, in daylight. Carlo advised me never to come here again.’
A scuffling sound from the street, furtive movement and the clatter of something dropped.
Both James and Rennie tensed and turned toward the door, their hands on the hilts of their swords.
‘Jesu, what did I say to you?’ Beckford, in a frantic whisper, and he shut the lantern slide with a subdued click.
Darkness.
Another scuffling of movement outside.
‘Now we are trapped.’ Beckford, a whisper.
‘Is there a back way?’ James.
‘I do not know.’
‘Hm, well, even if there is we would likely lose our way in the darkness.’ Rennie.
‘Not if we could get through to the alleyway on the side. It will lead us down to the harbour, where we can commandeer a boat and make our way to Expedient.’
‘Expedient, James?’
‘Where we have men at our disposal a fighting force. Marines, and armed seamen.’
‘A fighting force? In Naples? To what purpose, good heaven? Look here, James, I am in command, and I do not--’
‘Then for Christ’s sake, lead us!’ James, a vehement whisper. ‘Lead us down to the harbour, and into a boat. And get us back to Expedient, that is our home, and our only hope in this.’
‘I do not like it.’ Rennie, tersely.
‘Then we must go out of that door into the street, and face certain death.’
‘I I think we should look for the back way.’ Beckford.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
They stepped through the small kitchen, past the body on the floor, and found that beyond the stove to the left there was a low beamed room, with a door in the rear wall. Rennie led the way into this room, as Beckford again opened the dark lantern and held it up. Rennie grasped the iron latch of the rear door, but the latch was jammed and the door firmly closed. He leaned heavily against it and shoved with all his strength, but the door would not budge.
Rennie stood back and tried to kick the door open. Once, twice, a third time. It would not budge.
Behind them came the sound of the street door creaking open.
James pushed past Beckford, and said to Rennie:
‘Together. Our full weight.’
Rennie gave a quick nod. Both took a breath and ran at the door, shoulder first. The door gave a little, but was still shut. They stepped back, took another breath and ran at the door again. This time the door gave with a rasping rush, and night air filled their nostrils, tainted by the stink of the small, rubbish strewn rear courtyard. Rats fled into the undergrowth by the stone wall at the rear. There was another stone wall to their left. Behind them in the house, scuffling footfalls. Rennie, James and Beckford were all now in the courtyard.
James drew one of his pistols from under his coat, and cocked it. He pointed it at the open doorway. Almost at once a dark figure appeared in the doorway, and James fired.
The flash of pan powder. The face of the figure lit for an instant.
crack
The ball struck him between the eyes. A despairing shriek. The figure stumbled and fell dead in the doorway.
Rennie and Beckford, neither of them particularly agile, scrambled over the wall to the left and into the alleyway, Bedford taking the lantern with him.
Darkness.
James discarded the spent pistol, and drew the other from under his coat, cocked it, aimed it, and waited. A movement in the doorway, and before he could fire
the flash of a pistol there. The deafening concussion of the shot as the ball flew past James’s ear and struck the rear wall in a scatter of sparks. James ducked instinctively, and at the same time fired. His ball smashed through the open door, splintering the timber.
James dropped the second spent pistol and a moment after he was at the left wall, his hand on the broken top. He pulled himself up, and vaulted over, his sword scabbard clattering against the stone. Behind him the flash of another pistol, the crack of the shot, and the ball sang away into the air.
As soon as he was on the cobbles of the alley he ran after Rennie and Beckford, who were some distance ahead of him, the glimmer of the dark lantern bobbing in the gloom.
The alleyway was long and narrow, and led dipping and twisting right down to the harbour front.
James managed to elude his pursuers. He ducked into a yard off the alleyway, and hid behind a cart filled with dung. The stink was almost overpowering. He held a pinching hand to his nose, and covered his mouth with his kerchief, breathing through the fabric. His pursuers he thought there were at least four ran on down the alley without pausing, and after a minute or two James emerged and continued down toward the waterfront.
He could now smell the sea, and hear the familiar sounds of small vessels riding at their moorings clinking, and washing slaps, and the creaking complaint of ropes. He had lost sight of Rennie and Beckford when he ducked into the yard, and was now unsure of their whereabouts. Nor could he see the pursuers. He kept on at a steady pace, rounded a kink in the alleyway, the downward slope of the cobbles now more marked, and saw that the harbour front was immediately ahead.
He paused a moment in the shadows, then crept out of the alley, which gave directly on to a paved hard. There was a stone jetty, and beyond it the dark sweep of the bay, scattered across with reflected lights from the shore, and the riding lights of ships in the distance.
The harbour front appeared to be deserted. No sign of Rennie and Beckford, nor of the gang of pursuers.
James retreated into the shadows at the mouth of the alley, and waited until he was sure there was no one else about, then made his way quickly and quietly across the hard to the jetty, glancing about him as he went.
There were two boats moored on the left side of the jetty, tethered to iron rings set in the stone. The nearest boat lay at the bottom of a flight of shallow steps. He crept down the steps, glanced round again, and crouched down just above the waterline. He was about to haul the boat right in alongside the jetty when he saw a head rise above the gunwhale. He put a hand on his sword.
‘James, is that you ?’ Rennie’s hoarse whisper.
‘Aye it is.’ With relief.
‘Thank God.’
‘Where are the ruffians?’
‘They have gone away toward the other end. We slipped into the boat and lay low.’
James stood, and hauled on the mooring rope until the boat bumped against the stone. He saw now that it was small fishing boat, with a stout forward raking mast for a lateen sail, and a curved stem-head.
‘Cast off, will ye, James?’
James unfastened the rope, threw the end into the boat, and stepped lightly into the boat himself.
‘Where is Mr. Beckford?’
‘I am here.’ Beckford, from the thwart amidships, under which he had been crouching.
Rennie passed James a long sweep, and he used it to shove off.
They positioned themselves double banked on the middle thwart, facing aft, and Rennie took up another sweep. Beckford had now gone aft, unsteadily.
‘Mr. Beckford.’
‘Yes ?’
‘Take the helm, if y’please. We will row, and you must steer.’
‘I I do not think I am capable. I know very little of boats.’
Rennie expelled a breath. ‘Can ye row, Mr. Bec
kford?’
‘I expect so I have little experience, but I think perhaps--’
‘Then you will row, and I will steer.’
They changed places, Beckford again unsteady, and the boat yawed alarmingly before he found his place on the thwart beside James. James gave him Rennie’s sweep, and keeping his voice low called to Rennie:
‘Before we proceed where is Expedient, exact? She ain’t in this part of the bay, I think.’
‘Let us go out into the bay then we will get our bearings.’ Rennie took up the tiller, facing forrard in the stern sheets. ‘Give way together!’
They set off.
To James’s surprise Beckford acquitted himself with vigour and determination, and although he occasionally dug his sweep a little too deep and lost the rhythm, or rowed too shallow and showered Rennie at the tiller, they were soon well out into the bay, far from pursuit.
‘Oars!’ Rennie called.
James ceased rowing, but Beckford redoubled his efforts, thinking that Rennie had wished for greater action until James nudged him with an elbow, and said:
‘Nay, nay that means we stop.’
‘Oh.’
Rennie peered all round, and tried to get his bearings. At length he said:
‘We are in the western half of the bay, and Expedient lies halfway across. I intend to steer due east toward her.’
‘William?’
‘Yes, James.’
‘I think perhaps we should steer east south east, lest we run against the fortifications that lie due east.’
‘Hm well well .just as you say, James.’ A sniff. ‘East south east it is.’
Again they set off.
Presently they became aware that moored ships were all round them, and that if they continued unchecked they would likely come into collision with one of them, or run athwart its hawse.
‘Oars!’ Rennie called, and the boat glided slower and slower until they were hove to.
‘Hm, I confess I don’t know where Expedient lies.’ Rennie, half to himself, peering
round him in the darkness. The slap of water under the stern, and the boat nearly
still. ‘We ain’t lost, exact but I do not know where she lies.’
James, resting on his oar, waited a moment, then:
‘Why don’t we hail her?’
‘Eh?’
‘Why don’t we simply call: Ahoy there, Expedient! We ain’t pursued out here in the bay. There is an anchor watch aboard, and our voices would be heard. Sound carries at night.’
‘Nay, James, we cannot be certain we was not pursued. Those villains may have found a boat of their own. If they heard us--’
Over him: ‘Then all the more reason we should reach the safety of our ship don’t you think so?’
Another sniff, then:
‘Aye, very well.’
James lifted his head, cupped a hand to his mouth, and in his loudest and most penetrating quarterdeck bellow:
‘AHOY THERE, EXPEDIENT!’
His voice echoed across the bay, and presently, from the middle distance, came an answering shout:
‘Who are you ?’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Twenty minutes after, in the great cabin aboard Expedient, all three of them took comfort in pints of grog as they recovered from their ordeal. Beckford had never before drunk grog, and having long been accustomed to the fine wines of the residence he found the experience unpleasant at first.
‘It is it ain’t altogether the taste is rather ’ He put down his tankard and wrinkled his nose in distaste. His face was still very pallid.
‘Grog is a remedial drink, Mr. Beckford.’ Rennie, a sniff.
‘What is it, exact ?’
‘This is three water. One quarter of a pint of rum, and three quarters of a pint of plain water.’
‘Ah. Rum. Yes.’ Again he made a face.
‘Wine is for pleasure, at table. Grog is for lifting the spirits.’
‘Even as we lift the spirit.’ James, holding up his tankard.
‘Hhh-hhh-hhh-lift-the-spirit-hhh-hhh.’ The simple joke appealed to Rennie’s naval sense of humour, and James joined in his merriment, laughing and holding up his tankard again to Beckford’s evident bewilderment.
‘Drink up, Mr. Beckford,’ urged Rennie. ‘It will do ye nothing but good.’
In reluctant obedience Beckford lifted his tankard and took a dutiful swallow. To his surprise he found that this second attempt did indeed produce a beneficial effect. The grog warmed him right through, and he felt a pleasant flush in his cheeks as fear receded.
Presently all three were obliged to address their great underlying difficulty. They had escaped assassination, and reached the safety of the ship, but Rennie and James were farther from their objective than when they had sailed into the bay and dropped anchor. Symonds had vanished. Marion Milson was now perhaps altogether out of reach and his invention perhaps already in the hands of the enemy. Their whole scheme was in dark disarray. Beckford’s position in the affair was equally dire. Not only had he lost a colleague and friend. He was now almost certainly a marked man himself.
Soon rum euphoria diminished, and the mood in the cabin darkened. Rennie attempted to shake off the gloom.
‘Gentlemen .’ He put down his tankard on the table. ‘ we must put aside
the setbacks of this evening all of our setbacks in this affair and make a plan of action for tomorrow.’
‘Yes, yes I expect so.’ James, putting down his own tankard. ‘However, it is hard to see what plan we could make that will answer.’ A sigh.
‘Come, James, this ain’t like you.’ Rennie, leaning back in his chair and looking at him. ‘We are sea officers of long experience, and we know adversity in all its guises. We have been in far greater trouble than this, on many an--’
‘Yes? When?’
‘Well well in storms, and in actions, when all seemed lost many times.’
‘At sea, yes. Where we knew what we were doing, and could meet the challenge, no matter how harsh. This ain’t a seagoing challenge, William. It is landmen’s work, dark dealings in darker places we neither know nor apprehend.’
‘It is all about the sea, though, ain’t it? In the end.’
‘Oh, yes, Milson’s wretched damned invention. Of which we know almost nothing and what little we do know sounds so fanciful and absurd it may as well have been Dr. Swift that concocted it, in his long ago book.’ Bitterly.
‘The merits nor otherwise of Milson’s invention ain’t strictly our business, James.
Our business is--’
‘Yes, yes, our business is to find Milson, and his papers, and bring him to England, no matter how testing hard that may be.’ Over him.
‘Exact.’
‘But at what cost, hey? What is the undertaker’s reckoning up to now? An hundred and thirty dead? An hundred and forty? Leave alone the graveyard toll for tonight.’
‘We are at war, James.’
‘And I wish I was at home, and at peace! I am sick of bloodshed. I am sick of battle, and the stink of death. God damn Milson and his devilish machine. Is not war at sea horrible and destructive enough, without his infernal imaginings, and his fiery damned mischief? Why could he not keep himself far away in Sweden, buried deep under the snow?’
‘Erm Captain Rennie ?’ Beckford.
‘Mr. Beckford?’ Turning to him.
‘I wonder if I may impose upon your good nature and ask if I might now go to my bed? I am very weary, and I fear the rum has gone to my head.’
‘In course, in course, my dear fellow I am remiss.’ He turned toward the cabin door, and:
‘Dart! Ollary Dart, there!’
His steward came in, and approached the table.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Mr. Beckford will be spending the night on board, Dart. Erm Mr. Tancred’s cabin is vacant, I believe?’
‘Since he was lost, sir, yes, it has remained so.’
‘Very good. Prepare it, will ye, and let m
e know the moment it is ready?’
‘It is ready now, sir.’
‘Eh?’
‘I took the liberty of preparing the cabin when you returned, sir in anticipation of its requirement.’
‘Ah, well well excellent.’ A sniff. ‘Then I will bid ye goodnight, Mr. Beckford. Dart will light you along.’
‘Goodnight, and thank you, Captain Rennie.’ A little bow. ‘Sir James.’ Another little bow, and Beckford followed the steward a little unsteadily from the cabin.
When they had gone, James rose and pushed in his chair, then:
‘I will take it as a kindness if y’will never mention again my absurd outburst of a moment ago. I am most thoroughly ashamed.’
‘Outburst, James? I think ye must be mistook. We have had an amiable and civilized discussion, and now we will go to our cots, sleep sound, and return to our duty tomorrow.’
‘Thankee, William. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, James.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
In the morning arrangements were made for the fishing boat to be returned, and Rennie and James and Beckford who had a headache went in Rennie’s gig to the mole, in a light breeze, the water glancing and glittering under a hazy sun, and on to Palazzo Sessa. Where they were greeted with astonishing news.
Last night, not long after they had set out from the residence, Marion Milson himself had arrived there and demanded to be taken in and given protection.
Sir William looked distracted and rather frail, this morning. Mr. Symonds’ disappearance, Milson’s late arrival, and now news of the death of Beckford’s friend, conveyed by Beckford at once, had dismayed and disturbed him. He seemed distinctly put out that his routine of life had been so thoroughly upset.
‘Emma talks of returning to the villa at Caserta, and has suggested that I should leave the city behind myself.’ A sigh.
‘You go to Caserta, sir? Will you wish me to go with you?’ Beckford.
‘Nay, nay ’ Impatiently, waving a hand. ‘I shall not go there. When this matter is settled satisfactory, I shall go to the Villa Angelica at Vesuvius, or to Posillipo, at the shore. I think that I must rest ’
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