Lords of the Nile

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Lords of the Nile Page 8

by Jonathan Spencer


  Hazzard reached the top of the ladder on the middle gundeck, plotting the course to the small boats at the stern, and found Derrien’s deputy Citizen Masson waiting, with a fist.

  The loaded blow caught Hazzard on the left cheekbone, spinning him over onto several soldiers in their bedrolls on the deck who shouted out, ‘Ehh, tiens, salaud! Qu’est-ce qui est!’

  Sarah tried to take Masson by the arm, ‘Non! C’est pas lui! It’s not him, you don’t understand!’

  Masson threw her down with a curse and she rolled against an upright with a cry – and some of the soldiers did not like it. ‘Eh – laisse-la tranqulle, salaud!’ Leave her alone, you bastard!

  Masson swung his fist again and Hazzard went flying into the gloom, banging into a water-butt and two hammocks, their occupants crashing to the deck with curses.

  ‘Non,’ called Hazzard, trying the same tack as below, ‘Écoutez-moi!’ Listen to me!

  He swung a left and Hazzard dodged behind a post and heard the fist crash into it, and someone called in excited support, bravo! Masson swung again, losing his footing and hitting the bulkhead, swearing – the spectators cheered. Hazzard delivered his first hit to Masson’s right ear, then his left into the sternum and there was another roar from the crowd.

  Quickmatch coiled twelve yards from hanging magazine, he thought, allow a yard per coil…

  Hazzard tried to weight the odds in his favour, ‘Salaud de merde!’ Bloody bastard! and hit Masson again in the stomach, shouting in French, ‘Taking a sailor’s wages, cheating his family—’

  The thick-necked Masson lunged for him, but Hazzard rolled away, spectators urging him on, their hatred of Derrien, Masson and the state easily stirred. They shoved Masson around between them but he drew a short dagger and swung it at them. He swiped it high and narrowly missed Hazzard’s head. ‘Ohhhh-lo-lo,’ shouts rose from the crowd again, ‘Pas juste!’ Unfair! Someone called out ‘Eh, prends ça…’ and an older sailor in tattered canvas denims tossed Hazzard a knife – it was the masthead lookout.

  It bounced on the deck and Hazzard snatched it up, ducking another blow, and brought the blade up, slashing at Masson’s wrist. Masson howled and dropped his knife, the crowd sensing a victory. Hazzard put his boot behind Masson’s right heel and the deputy went down hard to still more cheers. Hazzard leapt on him, the knife raised.

  ‘Non!’ cried Masson, ‘Je cède!’ I give in!

  ‘William!’ It was Sarah.

  Hazzard raised the knife high, ‘Compliments to Citizen Croquemort…’

  With all his strength he brought it down into Masson’s palm, driving the blade through the hand and into the planks, pinning him to the deck. Masson screamed and the crowd gave a bloodthirsty roar with raised fists, Hwaaa!

  He heard Cook – ‘Sir!’ – and Hazzard launched himself at the steps, hands clapping at his back, soldiers pushing him up and away out of trouble, but all he could think of was the sound echoing all about him, Boots again, marines, somewhere, everywhere.

  Sarah took his hand, pulling him up, his thoughts racing, Upper gundeck, Jory said, take a line astern, he looked behind them. ‘Jory! Where is he!’

  Quickmatch. Run.

  ‘He went up!’ she cried.

  Main gundeck.

  All was quiet, the noise from below so far unremarked. The fresh night air hit him and he sucked it in, craving oxygen after the fight, the muscles tired as he dodged round the closed hatches, round the cannons and stores, pulling Sarah tight in his grip behind him. Boats stacked amidships, casks lashed in rows – quickmatch, detonation of Orlop – and he could almost feel the heave of the decks as the blast burst the ship at the seams, no, not yet, still time. He flew up the steps to the gangway, a marine running towards him, too far, Sarah behind, and he flung himself at the starboard rail, looking down.

  ‘There’s one—’ he said, seeing a line, grabbing the sodden rope, but Sarah pulled him round.

  ‘Will…’ Her voice was low, calm.

  He looked at her.

  Of course, he thought, it would have gone off by now.

  While he faced down Derrien and the marines, when she was in the dark behind him, a scrabbling sound: Sarah at work, snapping the brittle coil of quickmatch.

  A dozen marines tramped unhurried across the darkness of the main deck below, lamps swinging. Several knelt and assumed firing positions, some standing, a pair coming from the quarterdeck along the gangway to Hazzard’s left, some forward from the fo’c’sle. They formed up on all sides. Rigging hands looked down from above, pointing.

  Trapped.

  Derrien stepped out from the fo’c’sle hatchway, flushed with triumph, pistol in outstretched hand. ‘Take him alive.’

  A cry went up as Cook crashed into two marines on the gangway from behind, head down, arms out, and they fell to the main gundeck eight feet below. Muskets rose, the locks rattling, but no one fired. Cook shielded Hazzard and Sarah, waiting.

  ‘Sir…’

  ‘Sar’nt.’

  ‘Can’t make the boat from here, sir.’

  ‘Mm.’

  The darkness of the sea was pocked with the shimmering lights of ships’ lamps all round, so many stars in a floating night sky. Masson exploded onto the deck below, nursing his bloody hand, his face clenched in pain and outrage. Derrien called up.

  ‘You will come down, Mr Hazzard. Or Masson will come up.’

  Hazzard thought of Berthollet at dinner. Young De Villiers, Jollois, innocents.

  Fortunes of war.

  There would be no mercy this time, Hazzard knew. He had broken his parole. A cell in the belly of the ship and then – what? Shot for a spy in Egypt? And Sarah would have to give evidence.

  Never stop.

  ‘Do they know, Citizen,’ Hazzard called out in French, ‘what innocent blood is on their hands already because of your crimes? Your theft, your murder of their daughters back home? In Paris? In Toulon?’

  Derrien looked momentarily amused. ‘The charade is over, Mr Hazzard. You have nowhere to go,’ he said reasonably. But he noticed that the concentration of the marines had wavered.

  A lieutenant appeared on the quarterdeck at the mainmast stays, four more marines behind him, officers coming to doors and ladders, roused from sleep, or a late game of cards disturbed. And the comtesse de Biasi, in her nightgown, cap and shawl, clutching at the lieutenant, pointing with a gasp at Sarah, then down at Derrien on the gundeck below, ‘C’est lui! It is he! There, as I said, Citizen Derrien, he has run mad…!’

  The four marines commanded by the lieutenant aimed their muskets – but not at Hazzard: at Derrien. The others looked back at him, questioning.

  ‘You will lower that pistol, Citizen,’ warned the lieutenant, ‘or fall dead to this deck!’

  Derrien flicked a glance at him. ‘You do not command me—’

  ‘I am the officer of the watch, m’sieur, and, for this moment, I rule the world.’

  Hazzard heard the clatter of latches behind him and saw a flare of light from the broadside hatch just below, above the flying spray. A head appeared, then another, looking up, sailors, soldiers who had watched the fight. Some of the other gun-ports opened, others looking up, pointing.

  He spoke to Cook.

  ‘Can’t be taken again, Jory.’

  ‘Sir.’

  A door on the quarterdeck opened, more voices, the captain, pulling on his coat, Lt Marais behind. Bonaparte would come next.

  He whispered to Sarah: ‘Will you follow me?’

  She looked at him. ‘I broke the fuse.’

  Quickmatch. Two hundred tons of powder.

  ‘I know.’

  Masson snatched the weapon of the marine to his left, someone called, ‘Non!’ and he aimed roughly and pulled the trigger. Three muskets went off in quick succession, Masson spinning round, Derrien falling back, a bullet chipping splinters from the rail near Hazzard, a stinging claw raking at his shoulder.

  Options limited.

  ‘Jory,’ he sai
d, ‘Go.’

  Hazzard dived backwards over the rail, the wet line slipping from his hand, Sarah reaching for him, her hands trying to catch hold of his neck, his collar, to save him, to stop him as he lost his grip on her – the officer of the watch rushing in for her, his hands reaching round Sarah’s waist, good man, blood on her neck, her face uncomprehending, and a final cry: ‘Will—?’

  His last view of her, her mouth open, the blood, her eyes closing as she collapsed into the lieutenant’s arms. Cook’s voice, ‘Sir!’ jumping after him headfirst, Derrien shouting, ‘Get him!’

  Hazzard’s thoughts began to focus on odd details, the sting of the spray and salt scent of the water, the hum of the shrouds, the roar of the sea. Then his world was suddenly silent as he realised what had happened.

  Sarah.

  Hit.

  He struck the waves over twenty feet below, Cook following.

  * * *

  At the open gundeck hatchway, the group of sailors watched as the two men crashed into the sea. ‘Là-bas!’ Over there! One pointed at the frothing surface, the raging wake of the warship churning them over, ‘Vite!’ and within a moment a net of kegs was thrown far out, and they watched them splash and bob on the waves.

  ‘Ce n’était pas juste,’ they agreed, No, it was not right.

  Some crossed themselves, but the old masthead lookout in his ragged canvas culottes did not. He leaned out and looked up at the rail above, at the marines and officers searching in the darkness, holding up lanterns, muskets searching, and muttered, ‘Salauds.’ Bastards.

  He looked down at the dark of the sea, ‘Père Neptune… en vos bras les hommes sont égaux. Protégez nos frères de la mer.’

  Father Neptune, in your arms, all men are equal.

  Protect our brothers of the sea.

  Neptune

  The slam of the water on Hazzard’s back drove the air from his lungs and he sank down another two fathoms, but his arms splayed out instantly and propelled him back to the surface almost at once. He burst through the waves.

  The boiling eddies of the ship’s wake tossed him violently, and he went under again. ‘Sir!’ Cook surfaced, an arm raised, both of them rolling end over end in the swell, the roar of Orient fading and a fearful knocking in the back of Hazzard’s mind: watch out… watch out…

  He remembered and turned to see the 80-gun Tonnant bearing down upon them, the night sky a slate grey above a frothing sea, the ship a leviathan in silhouette, white spray flying from her rearing bows.

  ‘Jory…!’

  He dived and struck out but felt something on his legs, fouling, tangling, get off get off, tentacles wrapping round him, pulling him down. He sank, gulping, rose again and gasped, fighting it off, a mouthful of seawater and the hollow clunk of wood as it rode over his head, forgive me, Sarah. An empty cask, and another, a rope, a net, barrels, floating, not the underside of Tonnant – not dead not dead, it’s good, saving me…

  ‘Jory! Here!’

  Cook splashed towards him and they each took hold of the net and the kegs, five of them and an open crate, a life-raft of bobbing wood between them as Tonnant roared past, its mass filling their ears with a storm of sound. No one saw them, no one called out – they had become flotsam, jettisoned with the refuse and scraps. They hooked their arms over the nets, the floating kegs buoying them up.

  It took another hour before the fleet lines passed them by. No frigate came, no sloop, no fleet boat. No one knew. They faced the darkness of the open sea, alone. His ribs ached and his shoulder burned with a deep fire. He wanted to sleep.

  ‘Dead man’s float, sir… dead man…’ gasped Cook, spread-eagled on the surface, and Hazzard did likewise, turning over onto his back, hefting his knees over a cask. Boots boots. He kicked them off and they sank away, his stockinged feet lighter, free. His shoulder was stiff, a bite out of it, the sea numbing it, Derrien’s last shot? Masson’s fists?

  Lying back, they floated face up on the tangle of casks and netting, able to breathe easy at last, meagre offerings to Neptune, thought Hazzard, grateful for his intervention – and he would thank him for a French sailor who had flown no flag, but knew only the power of the sea.

  Watch for Cygnus.

  With the passing of the fleet the dark bowl of the skies glowed bright with stars, the breadth of the heavens bringing them closer, smothering him in its infinity.

  Silence.

  A wash of waves.

  Onset of vertigo, he noted, a gentle swinging left, then swinging right.

  His head sank back and his ears filled with water, the dull roar of the engine of the Earth. The swell rising, then falling, calming, he lost himself in the swirling deeps around Polaris, and in his mind Sarah was more than hit, she was dead.

  Cygnus.

  The great swan of Zeus, flying above, wings outstretched, the sailor’s guide, taking him home.

  Now find Vega.

  Orientate.

  Ship making eight knots, no six, from 11oE… with the current, that makes…

  ‘Better ’n the Indian Ocean, ain’t it…’ murmured Cook, far away.

  Hazzard heard him, muffled, his voice carried more by the water than the air. The memory of their first ship going down, stranding them in the hot seas off old Dutch Ceylon. Water like a Turkish bath, clear to a thousand fathoms… could see every fish in the—

  ‘Are you wounded?’ gasped Hazzard, pulling his head out of the water.

  Took a while to reply.

  ‘Jory?’ He tried to lift his head to look, but could not.

  ‘No, sir…’

  Blood in the water.

  Cook understood. His voice rumbled hoarsely. ‘No sharks in the Med, sir…’

  Hazzard wondered who had told him that. Bloody old wives’ tale. Poseidon had transformed the kidnappers of Dionysus into dolphins – who, then, did he make into sharks? Generals and ministers of the Crown and their sucking-mouthed lamprey minions?

  They pulled each other in closer to the floating net bag, tying themselves together, old habit learned long ago.

  ‘Be a mermaid along any minute, sir…’

  The air burnt his throat, bubbling, and he coughed it out, then lay his head back on the tangle of rope in the water. The net of casks ran under their backs, and they rested their limbs on the floating bed of barrels, spent, exposed. But safe, under the dome of night.

  Time passed, somewhere.

  Barrels.

  ‘Anything inside…’ he said, his throat dry as a ship’s rusk.

  Cook looked at one. ‘Smells like… gunpowder…’

  They had their arms on a cask between the two, an old armchair at a club. It smelled to Hazzard more like salt fish. He remembered the French had it on the Île-de-France.

  He had seen the lines trailing, a dozen of them, dragging through the water astern, and he had thought they could catch one and get to the slung boats, cut one free. Sarah would have had difficulty. But he knew she would have tried. Jumped from a drainpipe after all.

  Dead?

  Left her to die.

  He had to bow to her decision, in the end, no choice, her waist plucked from him by the French watch-officer just as he went over, her head crooked, confusion in her eye.

  ‘She was in France,’ said Hazzard, ‘for two years… false name, false history…’

  Spy.

  ‘She was hit, in the back, or the neck, when I went over…’

  Cook had turned to look at him, one eye half-closed, swollen, bruised. ‘Take more’n that to put her down, sir…’ He looked away again. ‘Made o’ruddy iron, that one.’

  They floated silently, the swell softly raising them up, then setting them down, a vast, soft bed. So easy, thought Hazzard, to roll into its bosom, breathe in, and forget.

  ‘Could have knocked me down with a bloody feather,’ mumbled Cook, ‘when I saw that bastard Derrien again.’

  A wave, lifting Hazzard gently, then sinking away.

  A shooting star streaked across the sky li
ke an Indian rocket. It flared with a hiss, and vanished… are they searching for us with rockets? The stars looked down, quiet, watchful. No one searching.

  ‘Sir.’

  Cygnus, Ursa Major… Polaris in the north – count degrees from horizon, forty-five minutes, then account for speed of current… too tired too tired.

  He closed his eyes, as if to sear the image of the sky on his memory. Which way now, Poseidon, or is it Neptune? Send us the kidnappers of Dionysus that they may guide us.

  ‘Sir…’ More insistent. ‘Why didn’t the magazine blow?’

  Hazzard floated.

  Six knots, add perhaps two knots extra… why? Why not slower? Big convoy, always as fast as the slowest ship. Over fourteen hours, no, too fast, too great a difference, too far out. Miss everything, hit open sea. Guessing.

  ‘That fuse was broke ’fore you lit it. I saw.’

  Hazzard admitted it. ‘Yes…’

  A good ruse, he thought, set off a tangle of quickmatch while you get out the back, let them scramble for it, not connected to anything.

  Sarah had broken the fuse too. Both of them had, without the other knowing. Two busy little consciences, too parsimonious to kill off a few innocents like De Villiers and Jollois or the comtesse, had condemned Egypt to the heel of a fantasist who thought he was Julius Caesar.

  I have such dreams, Mr Hazzard.

  Bonaparte.

  Tens of thousands.

  Cook asked nothing more, knew not to, guessed Hazzard.

  Sparing the Orient had brought another feeling along with it: although Wayland had been right about Egypt, and he had accepted it instinctively as soon as he had heard Acton say it, part of him would not believe it. Somewhere deep within he wanted them to land, to prove it all true.

  So that Lewis and Blake would pay.

  Lies.

  He would tell Cook, explain somehow, one day.

  But chiefly Hazzard did not blow the magazine on Orient because he knew, he knew, he would have to leave Sarah behind. He had sacrificed a nation to the murder and savagery of war for the sake of his own desire. And the conscious acceptance of this made him want to slip from the floating casks and sink slowly to the bottom of Poseidon’s lair for ever.

 

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