The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  Will felt bright anger spring inside him, but he crushed it in his throat. Sir A was clearly stricken; he was clearly almost beat. It came to Will that they must leave, immediate. They had to go to London, ask at Marigold’s, search. But what if she’d been forced back to Portsmouth, as Annette had said she had been once? What if she was a nymph, a Shitty Corner slattern? Why had Sir Arthur let her go?

  “That magistrate?” he said, abruptly. “That Wimbarton who raped and held her once? She could not…?” Sir Arthur shook his head. “No. Well, thank God for that, in any way. But sir — where is she? Why know you not where she might be?”

  Sam had an edge of anger in his voice. “Did she insist on going? Was she so sure then that she would find him? I fear, sir…” His voice trailed off. The thought hung in the air. “Aye,” he finished. “I fear.”

  Sir Arthur, slowly and with not much trace of dignity, stood. He faced them, and his face was misery. He reached out for a bell.

  “I fear I have done wrong,” he said. He jerked the bell-pull. “If I have done so, I did all for the best, believe me. She left here of her own free will; she left with some good sum in money; she seemed… bold and confident. Boys, you must forgive me. I must rest; I must lie down a while. Pray prepare yourselves for dinner, then afterwards we’ll — ” The door opened without a knock, and Mrs Houghton came in. She read the case instantly, and tutted with concern, hurrying to Sir A and laying her hand upon his shoulder.

  “Now, sir!” she said. “Oh, you look terrible! Now come along with me and take some rest. Boys! Why have you let him get like this? For shame, sirs, shame on you.”

  Sir Arthur shook his head, touching her hand.

  “Nay, Mrs Houghton, the blame is all on me. We were talking of the pretty maid, and William — ”

  “Ho!” she said, impatiently. “Why Master Will, surely you do not still…? Now look, sirs, can’t you see the bad effect? Poor Sir A is in a pother about the lass. We knew not what should be done. She said herself she must move on. She had a plan, I think, to… she had a plan. Sir A was very, very kind to her.”

  “She needed help and kindness,” said Sir A. “Nay, she deserved it. But I — ”

  “Tush for shame!” snapped Mrs Houghton. “Come, sir, you must to bed awhile. Sirs, forgive me, but dinner… I am not certain sure Sir Arthur should attend.”

  “Oh, Mrs Houghton!”

  But Sam, quick thinking, already had it in control. With smiles and words he told the baronet that they must go to Deptford anyway; they were required on the Biter, no excuses for delay. In a day or two they would be sailing and they had to do their duty. All four of them felt great relief.

  THIRTEEN

  On board ship, Captain Kaye had told Rex Shilling solemnly, there was only one true demon; it lived in a bottle, which must stay tightly corked. An easy proposition, Shilling had thought, given locks and keys and armaments, a few marines and good strong honest warrant men. Drunkenness, as Kaye’s gig disappeared towards the distant city, seemed the least of his concerns, and he found Taylor’s worry on the subject irritating, and distasteful. Savary tried tentatively to back the boatswain up, but Shilling was scathing.

  “What are you thinking, Mister Boatswain?” he asked. “That they can conjure liquor from thin air? I have the keys to everything, and they remain with me.”

  Savary coughed, politely.

  “Sir,” he said. “Mr Shilling. My experience in tented camps, indeed in some fine barracks, has been that men can… well, they cajole, and they threaten… sometimes force.”

  The midshipman was contemptuous.

  “The army. Well. Mr Savary, if you should see an attempt on board here, on my person or on any drink supply, then you must order fatal shooting. And there’s an end to it.”

  There was not an end, though. Nor, indeed, was there any such attempt, not visibly. As Taylor and his mates knew, men could spirit drink from any void, or none. Wines, or ales, or brandy; anything to make tars crazy.

  “That bastard’s mad,” said Taylor, to the giants Hugg and Tilley. “As mad as Kaye for going off and leaving us. As mad as giving us the Scotchmen for our help. Eyes skinned, friends, and handspikes at the ready. First sign of drunkenness, break heads. It will be the only way.”

  “So far as I can see,” said Tommy Hugg, “them haggis-shaggers are half-flanged already. They came out of Dickie’s den last night reeking of distilleries, and I doubt they’d finished. They look the men to drink three days away and yet stand upright. I’ll take the opportunity to kill the lot, if they cross me.”

  “We’ll do a sweep below,” said Tilley. “We know the places, don’t us, boys? By God, it’s not so long ago we used ’em all ourselves!”

  “And I’ll speak to the haggis-shaggers, as you dub ’em, Tommy,” the boatswain said. “They’re on our side, God save us! By Holy Mary, such allies have I never had before!”

  The watch they kept was steady, the watch they kept was firm. Under Taylor’s instruction the people were put to shipboard tasks that kept them jumping, which tore their muscles to the last. Spare yards were shifted, checked for rot, re-tarred; cables great and small were overhauled; bolts of flax and canvas broken out, opened out, refolded; everything that was heavy and unwieldable moved around, and jiggled, and re-stowed. Throughout the daylight hours there was no discernible movement to fray the normal discipline, although the men kept grumbling as they were ground into the work. The Scotsmen, who were nominally part of the afterguard on this occasion, were conspicuous more by absence than by overlooking sweaty toilers; but gave no trouble either, as Taylor reported it to Groat.

  “However, sir,” he said, “I have a fear that they are getting drink. Not the Scotch alone, although I guess that they’re behind it, but all hands. I see that — ”

  Shilling interrupted him.

  “If you think it is their fault, you must pull them up on it,” he said. “You are the boatswain. You have the measure of the ship and people. If they are getting drink, then stop them.”

  Taylor, a mild man, considered a sharp answer, then abandoned it.

  “Sir,” he said. “The Scotchmen show no signs of liquor, and I have seen nothing definite. I would say, though, that the generality are looking… there is a slacking off; you know the signs, sir.” He stopped. It occurred to him that this midshipman did not. But a boatswain could not suggest that of an officer, nor yet a snotty boy. “You know the aspect. It is growing fast apace. The people are the worse for wear, sir. The bare end needs a whipping.”

  “Is that a metaphor?” said Shilling, icily. “Would you use irony to me, sir? I would exhort you to recall your place. Insolence is a vice I will not tolerate.”

  Jem Taylor, although not unwise, was by no means an educated man. He had never heard such words before, leastways not used in anger, and had no idea, even, if he should feel insulted. His low opinion of such bugs as Rex, however, was slipping ever lower. He almost felt a satisfaction at the ruckus he was pretty sure would come.

  “Aye aye,” he said. “Beg pardon, sir, if I have caused offence.”

  Lieutenant Savary approached them at this point. He was excited.

  “Sir!” he said. “Mr Shilling, an’ it please you! A soldier has been hit. One of my men, Simms. A broken bottle! It got him in the face! They are milling by that armoured store, sir, underneath the poop! I fear they wish to get the swords and guns!”

  “Good God, the roundhouse!” Shilling’s face was wild. “Has he got his musket? Can he not shoot?”

  Savary stared at him.

  “He was hit, sir! His face is bleeding. He was alone!”

  Taylor said decisively: “They must not get in there, sir! The small arms and cutlasses.” He bellowed, suddenly: “Hugg! Tilley! Scotchmen, to me! On the double! Roundhouse!”

  “Aye aye!” said Tilley. Appeared from nowhere, he went roaring along the waist, six feet of handspike like a feather in his fist. “Hugg’s going through the ’tween!”

  “Prime
your piece!” Shilling snapped at the soldier-officer. “If they touch that storeroom, we must kill them!”

  The deck, though fairly thronged with sailors, was peaceful still. No whoops, no shouts, no rushes. Then out of a thick group of them, Jack Ashdown pushed his way. He went straight to Taylor, but addressed his news to Shilling, out of deference.

  “No use shouting for the Scotchmen, sir,” he said, “they — ”

  “Who are you?” said Shilling, rudely.

  “Why not, sailor?” Taylor asked. “Beg pardon, sir.”

  “They’re in the cabin,” Ashdown said. “They are not after weapons, they want — ”

  “Good God!” said Shilling. “The captain’s cabin? What mean you, man? Why?”

  “Black Bob,” said Taylor, flatly. Half a statement, but a question too. Ashdown nodded.

  “They plan to make an arse of him,” he said. “Them first, and then a general arse. They had him cornered by the manger, but he shot away. They are in drink, sir. The company is in drink.”

  To the boatswain and the Irish seaman, this was merely information, day-to-day, and coolly given. But Shilling was in stays entirely, while poor Savary had turned pale, then began to blush furiously.

  “An arse?” he faltered. “But…”

  “Buggery,” said Taylor, brutally. “Maybe you do not have it in the army.” It was no time for jesting really, he thought, but what the hell? They went to sea with babies, and the babies had command.

  “Good God,” said Savary, but his voice was cut off by a shrill and piercing scream. It came from aft, and was too high to be a grown man, and was followed by terrific shouts and roars too low to be from boys. Suddenly the men packed in the well were also on the move, surging towards the poop-break, and a rising, throbbing noise came from their throats.

  “Sir!” said Taylor, urgently. “We must act!”

  Shilling, to give him due, was already galvanised.

  “Shoot the leader!” he roared at Savary, and his high voice cut through the fug of liquor and excitement like a knife. He snatched the cutlass that he’d worn all day with ostentation, and almost sprinted across the deck to reach the drunken men.

  “But my man is hurt!” said Savary, forlornly, and Taylor shouted: “If he can see, sir, he can shoot.”

  He raised his voice a notch.

  “Bloodshed, you bastards! I’ll break your heads, the lot of you, and string you from the mainyard! Do you want to die, you goats!”

  “Can I use a weapon, sir?” asked Ashdown, and Taylor tore a belaying pin from off the nearest rail for him.

  “They’ll try to kill you, man,” he said, but Ashdown only smiled and went his way. Savary, stock-still and white as cream, was gasping with the effort to grip his courage. He snatched a long dirk out, had an army cutlass in his other hand, and rushed towards the poop.

  At this instant, amid a general screaming uproar, the tiny form of the African burst from the captain’s doorway and went across the broad deck like a hare. The drunken crewmen split apart in some confusion, although some did try to seize him as he ran. Then the Lamonts came out, one by one, their faces awful in their concentration.

  “Stop!” shouted Savary. “Stop before I cut you down!”

  It was cruelly comical the way that they ignored him, even when he waved a cutlass in the face of one. They hardly glanced, they hardly broke their step, they swept on across the crowded well-deck and the people cleared a path. As they clattered down a hatchway, Tilley, who had run along between decks to head them off, appeared from out of the dimness, handspike already swinging for a blow across the leader’s face or chest — and was overwhelmed. The two bigger of the brothers took a flank apiece, then moved out sharply while pushing back his arms by the power of their onrush. And the youngest Scotchman, like a coiled wire come unsprung, went between them into him, full in his face, full in his stomach, and Tilley went down backwards like a slaughtered ox.

  They might have fallen on him then, and wrought some fearful damage, but Tom Tilley struck his head as he went down, and lay unconscious, like a dunnage sack. Other drunken sailors eyed the fallen giant, and maybe wondered at their chances, but the Lamonts, it seemed, were determined not to lose the small black tail that so enraptured them. Within a dozen paces they had gripped him, and his renewed screams split the darkness as shrilly as a rabbit’s in a fox’s teeth.

  Taylor had gone aft, with Savary in his wake, but Ashdown braved the drunken rioters between decks. It was darker by now, almost full night, and down below few glims had yet been lighted. But Ashdown, following the screams, soon came on the brothers and their prey, although he could not see the details of their infamy. He allowed himself no time to think, or fear the odds, but threw himself into the seething blackness, and lashed about him with the iron belaying pin.

  With other men he might have triumphed, but with the wild Lamonts, Ashdown had no chance. His intention was to clear a space for Bob to vanish in, and it appeared he was prepared to lose his life for it. His first blows landed hard, and the Scotchmen shrugged them off. Before he had withdrawn and struck three times, they were on him. The pin, his only hope, was in Wee Doddie’s hand, was jammed into Jack Ashdown’s stomach, reversed, and smashed across his arm. Directed at his elbow, the blow would have crippled him forever, but Dod’s palm, luckily, was full of his own blood, and the two-foot iron flew from his grip and disappeared after a glancing hit.

  Then it was fists and feet, gouging fingers, tearing attacks on vital organs, butting foreheads, teeth, and knees. Ashdown, a man of no great stature but formed of steel apparently, fought like a tiger, fought and held them long after it was possible for a normal human being. His dedication, coupled with their hatred, swayed them from their first purpose also; they were consumed in their determination that they would finish him for good. Had Tom Tilley regained his consciousness half a minute later they surely would have killed the Irishman, but as the boatswain’s mate came to and lumbered into sight, the Scots relinquished this secondary objective, and renewed the hunt for Bob. Ashdown was abandoned, and they had disappeared when Tilley came upon him. Tilley was horrified by the wreck before him, and terrorized some of the drunkards instantly to pick him up and take him to the surgeon’s cockpit. He wanted desperately to track the brothers down, but needed reinforcements. Black Bob was screaming, so was still alive, but to judge by noises from on deck and aft, the riot was getting worse.

  *

  Sam and Will Bentley, once Sir A and Mrs Houghton had left them on their own, tracked down the steward Tony, told him of the change of plan, and in fifteen minutes were dressed and mounted for the weary ride. Will, although his head was void of clear ideas, was desperate to be started. Sam was not so eager.

  “My arse aches,” he announced, from the saddle he had sat upon for only thirty seconds. “And we ha’n’t even jogged a jot. Tony, this horsemanship’s unnatural.”

  Tony’s frank face, turned up at him, was troubled.

  “Mr Sam,” he said. “There is something that you have to know. And Mr Bentley.”

  “Deborah,” said Will. His voice was flat. His heart was full of fear.

  “She is safe, sir,” said Tony, although his voice was grave. “I am confident. She went off from here some weeks ago, and she was, well, full of vim. The master, see, and Mistress Houghton — Well, maybe they got the wrong idea.”

  Will’s horse began to stamp. It was a fresh one. Tony would send the others back to London in a train. They were inexpensive hacks, not quality like Sir A’s.

  “Go on,” said Will. “What wrong idea?”

  Tony heaved a breath. Divided loyalties.

  “He’d heard intelligence,” he said. “Well, rumour, maybe. Talk of shooting at that place I took Deb to, that gay house, Dr Marigold’s. Talk of brawling. Talk of murder. Mistress Houghton, sir, was… full of horror, so to say.”

  “But I was part of that,” said Will. “I did the shooting. If it was murder, Tony, then I’m the murderer, not po
or Deb. What was the wrong idea? Was I not mentioned? Did I get away scot-free?”

  The steward held his silence. One shoulder moved a fraction, almost a shrug. Sam said: “Don’t treat Sir A too harsh, Will. Or Mrs Houghton. To them she must have seemed a liability. At best unsuitable, at worst a snare. A drag.”

  “Aye, that’s it entire, sir,” said Tony. “Might not be fair, but you’re an officer, while she’s… oh, sir, I liked her, sir, I like her, and, sir — I think she is all right! Sir Arthur thought she was a danger to you, that he had to rid you of somehow, even any how so long it was no harm, she must have nothing more to do with you, d’you see? He gave her money, sir, much money, and I, sir… well… I think she is all right.”

  The horse, impatient, moved about erratically, did dancing steps. Will tried to still it, but used the time to catch his thoughts. Then Tony blurted, “Sir, I should not lie to you. She went off with an officer, a high-up in the Customs House. He had fancied her before, sir. He had mentioned it. To me. And I… I…”

  “You played the pander, did you?” Holt said, harshly. “’Fore God, Tony! This man is in love!”

  “Aye, sir,” said Tony, bravely. “I hoped, indeed, that he would understand. You are sailing, sirs, for the Americas, as I have heard it, soon, and the maid, sirs, is then beyond all reach. She could have gone to London, sirs, and settled in the gutter. She could have become another Spithead Nymph. She’d spoke of it to the maidens, not just once. Ask Eliza. She had already almost trod that route before. This man had a carriage, sirs. And a wife.”

  Bentley had been about to speak. This stopped his mouth. The horse, snubbed on the bit, fiercely shook its head.

  “Oh, good!” Sam’s laugh was genuine. “So she’ll live in comfort, will she, but not be put at risk of being took to wife herself and so lose her chance with William? Ho, Will, that’s capital! Tony is looking for a very noble tip!”

  Tony, not at all nonplussed, took Will’s horse’s bridle and nuzzled at its ear. His eyes sought Will’s. He smiled.