It was clear to see that young Julian was his father’s son—in appearance, at least—because their faces were similarly constructed, the color of the eyes was nearly the same, and the hairline and abundance of hair as well though Garrett—being what Matthew reasoned was in his later fifties—had gone all gray. The rear admiral’s face, though his features so resembled his son’s, showed the work of many years of wind and sea, both of which had conspired to whittle the flesh down to reveal the sharp juttings and angles of bone like the edges of dangerous shoals. The deep lines across his forehead and two between his fierce eyes bespoke a life of if not concern for his captains and crews then a continual worry over the condition and upkeep of ships, which Matthew figured was enough to make any man cling to his glossy coat and medals when his day was done. Matthew thought that in any event this man had seen such storms of nature as the paintings on the walls depicted, and likely had lived through the storms of sea battles as well.
The elder Devane’s eyes suddenly turned upon Matthew with the force of such a maelstrom. “Who is this? One of your sodomite friends? One of the male concubines you’re so fond of entertaining?”
“His name is Matthew Corbett,” Julian answered, calmly and evenly. “He is a business associate. And you must know, sir, that half the Royal Navy indulges at sea in the practice you so despise me for.”
“Oh, of course!” The gaze he set upon his son might have burned holes through salt-crusted leather. “You would remake the world in your image, wouldn’t you?”
“No, I would not,” Julian said. “For if I did, who would there be for me to victimize?”
That hung in the air like a foul-weather flag for a few seconds, until the rear admiral swung upon Windom so suddenly Matthew feared an attack of violence. “How dare you let this creature into my house!” Garrett seethed. “You’ll be docked a week’s pay for this affront!”
All Windom could do was take a backward step, slump his shoulders in deference and stare at the floor.
“Well,” said Julian, “we didn’t come all this way just to destroy the lock on your gate, Father.”
“My lock? Yes, I heard that shot! Are you carrying a cannon around with you now, the better to rob old women and infants?” His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘come all this way’? Come from where?”
“Up the coast a distance. I have some questions to ask you, and—”
“The nerve of you! The audacity! Breaking in here at this hour to demand of me!”
Matthew thought the man was going to start foaming at the mouth, fall down and begin gnawing at the carpet, but before that could happen Julian said firmly, “I want to know, first of all, if a mortar vessel and a ship-of-the-line have been stolen recently from any of the navy’s dockyards.”
That made Garrett’s jaw drop. “Are you now insane, to boot?” His left arm came up and pointed into Matthew’s face. “Does this ‘associate’ of yours not know to remove his tricorn in the house of a gentleman? Sir!” The fearsome face faced Matthew, striking him with fear. “Were you born amid swine?”
“As a matter of fact,” Matthew replied, “yes sir, I was.” He removed the tricorn and then the woolen cap that had so warmed his head on the cold voyage across the bay.
“God save us from such as these,” said Garrett, speaking to Windom, who in response took another backward step toward the door. Then, to his son again: “A mortar vessel and ship-of-the-line stolen from a Royal Navy yard? You’re jabbering an idiocy!”
“I would remind the rear admiral,” Julian said, “that in the year 1667 the Dutch sailed a fleet into the Sheerness naval yard, captured the place and used it as a base to attack the English fleet anchored on the Medway river, so such an event might not be as idiotic as—”
“And I would present that of course all you could take away from your wasted naval education is a British failure, irrespective of the year or of the unfortified conditions of Sheerness at the time. So don’t brandish that dulled sword at me, and again I say—”
His speech of indignation was interrupted by the high-pitched ringing of a bell…once…then once more, coming from further back in the manse.
“Now you’ve awakened Paul,” said the rear admiral, with what Matthew thought was a wisp of a smirk upon his thin-lipped mouth. “Good for you. Of course Paul will want to come see his fine loyal brother. Windom, go fetch my son, please.”
“Yes sir.” Windom set one of the lanterns upon a small table between two of the chairs and left the room. Garrett placed the ship’s lantern atop the center of the desk and opened its shutters to afford the most light possible. “Mister…Corbett, is it?” he inquired. “What’s all this about stolen Royal Navy ships?”
Matthew decided he must tread carefully upon this uncertain earth. “I can only say, sir, that we have reason to believe such a thing has happened.”
“Then you are as much a fool as is the creature standing beside you. Don’t you realize every naval shipyard on the island of England is guarded by a fortress? Oh yes, we suffered that calamity with the Dutch thirty-six years ago, but since then the yards have been strictly fortified. There are cannons a-plenty facing the seaward entrance to every shipyard, with flag codes also strictly followed. Guards walk the docks armed to the teeth. The roadway entrance is also heavily guarded, and any workman laboring on a ship must pass through the sentry’s station. It would be utterly impossible for any human being to steal Royal Navy ships, and that is that!” He turned again his livid attention upon Julian. “What insanity is this, that has caused you to assault my home at such an hour—at any hour—with this kind of nonsense?”
“Oh,” Julian said with a shrug, “I thought it might be a lark.”
Someone was coming through the door. “Here’s not a lark,” said Garrett, “but a wounded eagle. Come in, Paul, and see your brother.”
Windom was pushing a wheeled chair. In it was not a wounded eagle, but the wreckage of a man.
Paul Devane was wearing a nightgown similar to the one his father wore, but a dun-colored blanket was arranged across the lap and the legs. Matthew could instantly tell that the blanket had nothing to fill it from the knees down. The man—some ten or more years older than Julian, though it was difficult to tell because the bones seemed to be oddly and disturbingly misshapen in his face—had dark brown hair and the slate-colored eyes of his father; across the nose and covering the mouth and jaw was a black cloth mask held by laces around the back of the head. In Paul’s lap was a blue bowl into which the saliva dripped from what was likely, Matthew surmised, the hole where the jaw and chin had been, and the mask—newly applied by Windom, Matthew thought—was already wet. Even as Matthew thought that, Paul gave a convulsive shudder and made a noise of trying to swallow his own saliva and it sounded like someone drowning, going under for the third time.
Paul’s hair was neatly combed; his eyes were bloodshot from the effort of living, but in them Matthew saw a rush of recognition. Paul wheeled himself forward, nearly up against Julian, and reaching out he grasped one of his brother’s hands and pressed it against his own cheek.
“Now we shall have to wash your face before we put you to bed again,” said Garrett.
There was a moment that seemed as if a storm had suddenly struck lightning in the room. Matthew felt it like the rumble of thunder in his bones, and the strong fishy aroma of the whale oil in the lanterns had taken on the rusted iron smell of disaster about to crash down from the clouds.
But…it passed. Matthew thought that they might be yet destined to brave many storms on this mission, but here in this room standing in Paul’s feeble though touching and obviously heartfelt embrace, Julian was not going to allow the bad man to come out.
At least, not all the way out. Julian stroked his brother’s hair with his other hand. “The warden treating you well in this somber prison, is he?” Julian asked.
Paul might have managed a
laugh in his throat, but it became a terrible gurgling sound. He looked up at Julian and Matthew saw a sparkle of humor in the tortured eyes.
“May I offer the gentlemen tea, sir?” Windom asked his master.
“Heavens, no. They are on their way out. We have no use for sodomites and defilers of God’s world in this house, do we, Paul?”
The older son did not answer or respond, other than to keep Julian’s hand pressed against his cheek. His eyes closed, perhaps in memory of a younger and better time when both brothers had God’s world ahead of them. Windom moved in, took up the blue bowl and emptied it into a larger clay pot attached to the rear of the chair by leather bindings, then quickly returned it to its more useful place. Matthew couldn’t help but wonder how many times a day—and night—Windom performed that task, and how many times he turned the clay pot over to clear it out.
“You have the answer to your idiotic question about stolen mortar vessels and ships-of-the-line,” Garrett rumbled on, a storm unto himself. “Now get out.”
“A moment,” said Julian. He tapped Paul lightly on the temple and Paul looked up at him. “I miss our sailing days,” he said quietly. “But I have them still.” He tapped his own head. “Don’t you?”
Paul slurped and nodded and made something of a whine of assent.
“You are looking at a hero, Corbett,” Garrett suddenly said in a great exhalation of breath, as if he had been carrying this in his throat for so long it had become lodged there. “A patriot. Unlike your associate, who has never cared for anything or anyone not seen in his shaving mirror. The man who sits before you gave everything for his country. Your associate can tell you, if you ask him. Oh yes, he knows the story very well…and that story is the nearest he’ll ever get to being worth as much as a dog’s turd on the street.”
“Charming, Father,” Julian said easily, still stroking his brother’s hair. “You flatter me.”
Paul convulsed and sounded as if he were strangling once more. Julian put a supporting hand on one of Paul’s shoulders. Paul’s other hand came up from the blanket to grasp Julian’s wrist with what Matthew saw were only two fingers—the thumb and the index—as the remainder of the hand had been surgically sliced away.
“Easy, easy,” Julian said, and his brother’s body seemed to relax. In another few seconds the strangling sound ceased. Paul looked up at Julian and nodded, as the saliva continued to drip from the black cloth mask into the bowl.
“I want you out of this house, and never return here,” said Garrett.
“Very well…for now.” Julian offered his father the same charming smile that Matthew recalled receiving from him in London just before the trap had snapped shut on Matthew’s neck. He patted his brother’s shoulder and smiled down into the ruined face. “I’ll come back and take you sailing someday. I vow it. Would you—”
“Don’t lie!” Garrett snapped. “And don’t coddle him! He knows his condition!”
“A condition not helped by being held prisoner here, the same as it was last time. Get him out in the fresh air, for God’s sake! Take him over to the harbor and let him—”
“Let him catch his death of cold in that fresh air and see men walking on two legs at the harbor, working and laughing and…and being whole? Oh, yes, that would be very helpful to him! Windom, return Paul to his room.” Windom paused, a shade of indecision on his face as he looked from the rear admiral to Julian and back again. “Take him, this instant,” Garrett commanded in a deadly-quiet voice, his gaze fixed upon his younger son.
“Yes sir,” said the servant, and he took his position behind the chair to turn it and wheel it away. Paul made a noise like a grunt and his eyes narrowed with anger as he regarded his father; it was clear he wanted to remain in the room, but it was not to be.
Julian stepped toward his departing brother and, laying a hand upon his shoulder, walked beside the chair until Windom reached the door. At the door Paul grasped Julian’s hand with both his whole right hand and the mangled left, and Matthew saw the knuckles whiten with the squeeze.
“I’ll come back for you,” Julian said, and then Paul released him and Windom pushed the chair onward, the wheels making small squeaking sounds on the lacquered black floorboards. The noise diminished as Windom guided his charge toward, Matthew presumed, Paul’s chamber on the lower level at the back of the house.
“Our business is concluded,” Garrett said. With a face of solid granite he motioned Julian and Matthew out of the room. He opened the front door to the cold winds that had begun to crisscross each other and blow through the naked trees on the far side of the road. Without another word Julian put on his tricorn, pulled his cloak up tighter around his shoulders and chin, readjusted the saddlebag across his shoulder, and strode out of the house; Matthew put on the hopefully lice-free woolen cap, then his tricorn, and likewise situated his cloak tighter around his body, for winter had for sure and quite suddenly descended upon the land.
They walked through the blasted gate and along the road toward the harbor lights.
Matthew said quietly, “Do you want to—”
“No,” came the answer, delivered like a blow to the jaw.
Matthew remained silent. They walked on, side-by-side for a few yards until Julian said sharply, “Don’t walk beside me. Walk either in front or behind.” This one was delivered through the gritted teeth of the bad man, returned from his visit home.
Matthew thought he could fling a curse into Julian’s face but his teeth—which had already seen enough torment to last the rest of his days—might well wind up littering the road. He stalked onward, five or six paces in front, his head down and the need for sleep on this long day pressing in upon him, laboring his legs and fogging his thinking, but always the horrible clock that dictated Berry’s fate ticking—always ticking—in his mind.
six.
“Young Julian! Sir, please wait!”
It was Windom’s voice. Julian abruptly stopped and turned around, as did Matthew. They had not gotten quite a hundred yards from the house, and here came Windom carrying a lantern and wearing a heavy brown fearnaught coat over his nightgown and a white woolen cap with a brown tassel at its summit.
“Windom!” Julian said. “Christ, man! Get out of this cold!”
“A word, sir. Just a word and then I must get back. Your father went upstairs after you left, he doesn’t know I’ve come after you.”
“I should say not. What is it?”
“Well…your question about the two ships. The mortar vessel and the ship-of-the-line.” He glanced quickly at Matthew, who had come to stand beside Julian whether he wanted the company or not. “It’s peculiar, sir…I mean…well…what I overheard…that is—”
“Settle down,” Julian told him. “All right, put your thoughts in order and start over again.”
“Yes, sir. Well…a few days ago…three days, I think…yes, three days…a man came to visit Master Devane…and you know your father keeps his business office at the house. It was a business visit…but I saw the man in, and Master Devane told me to take the admiral’s coat.”
“So an admiral visited him? I’m sure that’s not so—”
“Not so very uncommon, sir, because after all he is the harbormaster and has his…um…his history. But usually they are social calls when one of the gentlemen in blue is passing Bristol and perhaps puts into port for supplies. This one had a request. I overheard it when I brought in the teacart. He wanted to know if there would be any merchant traffic at sea between Bristol and Swansea on the date of last night. I mean…this being morning…it would have been the night before last.”
“An unusual question,” said Julian. “What was his reason?”
“He told Master Devane he was tasked with performing nighttime military maneuvers off the coast of Wales between here and Swansea, and they would be firing shells onto a stationary target at sea. Evidently the gentleman
didn’t wish merchant shipping to wander in range.”
Matthew’s ears had perked up. “Shells, you say? Not cannonballs?”
“No, sir. Shells was the term used, and he identified the vessel under his command as the mortar ship Volcano,” Windom replied. “I thought it curious that you should arrive asking about the theft of a mortar ship, when—”
“Of course,” Julian interrupted, his voice tense. “Father gave this admiral the all-clear?”
“He checked the bills of passage and the ledger. I assisted him in gathering the papers. The last merchant of the day from Bristol was scheduled to be docking in Swansea near six o’clock, and two from Swansea to Bristol well after midnight.”
“Ah.” Julian nodded. He looked at Matthew, raised his eyebrows and then returned his attention to Windom. “The admiral. What was his name?”
“I didn’t catch that, sir, and of course I wasn’t introduced to him.”
“What did he look like?” Julian asked.
“A large man, sir. Bearlike, I would say. He had a heavy black beard down his chest and a long mane of black hair that hung about his shoulders. About his beard…he had applied streaks of crimson and orange dye to it, so that it took on the appearance of flames. I could tell Master Devane didn’t care for the man’s grooming habits, as he feels the navy is becoming far too lax with such. But this gentleman spoke well and seemed to have excellent manners, which Master Devane holds in high regard. Also his uniform was well-decorated.”
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