I presumed it was the officers who were running, those who had sworn allegiance to the usurper and would face a hangman’s noose if caught. Sir Andrew knows only two sentences: death, and service in her majesty’s army. So the provost had told me, and I supposed the ordinary sailors would most likely be transformed into pikemen within the week.
We could not pursue the boats, as they could cross the sandbars and we could not; and in any case, Royal Stilwell was our prize. Meteor came about, sailed to within twenty-five yards of Stilwell’s stern and hove to, motionless in the water, our guns bearing on the enemy. We could hear angry voices on the enemy ship, and see people moving about on the stern. But no firearms were presented at us, and whatever threats were being made, they were not made at us.
“Stilwell,” called Oakeshott through his speaking trumpet. “Stilwell, do you strike your colors?”
For a moment, we heard nothing but angry voices raised in argument with one another, and then one voice overtopped the rest.
“Ay!” he called. “We surrender!” And a few moments later, Stilwell’s flags came down.
Kevin leaped to the poop rail, took off his hat, and waved it. “Three cheers for Captain Oakeshott!”
As the cheers rang out, I saw the soldiers of the garrison shoulder their weapons and prepare to march down to the main deck and the loading port, all in preparation to board the enemy ship, and alarm suddenly flew through all my senses. And then I went to the poop rail and took Kevin by the shoulder, and drew him to where the captain stood accepting the congratulations of his officers.
“Gentlemen,” said I, “I think you do not want to put any royal soldiers on that enemy vessel.”
Kevin and Oakeshott looked at me in surprise. “Why not, sir?” asked the captain.
“Remember that Stilwell was a royal ship before the rebellion,” I said. “If royal soldiers go aboard, they may retake the vessel for the Queen, and we may say adieu to our prize.”
“But the ship was in enemy hands,” Oakeshott said. “We have taken her as a fair prize of war.”
“The status of prizes is decided by the rulings of a prize court,” said I. “And courts are composed of judges—judges appointed by royal authority, and inclined (if they value their livelihood) to do as the Queen wills. If they rule the vessel was the Queen’s all along, there is nothing we can do.”
Kevin nodded. “We’ll put only privateersmen aboard,” he said.
Oakeshott looked at me for a long, thoughtful moment, and then he rushed to the entry port and began assigning our own men to the prize crew. The soldiers he sent back to the poop, to keep the enemy vessel under their guns.
In the meantime, railing voices continued to be heard from the great galleon, along with snatches of song and intimations of swift violence. When they were deserted by their captain and officers, Stilwell’s crew had broken into the ship’s spirit store, and now they were all ranting drunk. When the prize crew arrived, they found the ship in such disorder that they had to batten the crew into the forecastle. Lest the prize crew succumb to the same temptation, our officer ordered every cask aboard to be started, and every bottle broken.
The prize crew, in their forced sobriety, found Royal Stilwell sound enough. She had run softly aground on the sand, and her bottom was but little damaged. Some guns and other gear had broken free when the ship fell onto her side, but these had already been secured by Stilwell’s own crew some time during the night.
Meteor anchored in deep water nearby, the guns were secured, and the fires were lit to prepare dinner. The tide continued to come in with great speed, and after two hours, we made an attempt to right Royal Stilwell, by shifting the kedge anchor out to larboard of her, and hauling on it with the ship’s capstan. At first, the ship moved not at all, but as the tide came racing in, the ship’s timbers gave out a series of groans, the capstan pawls clacked, at first with agonizing slowness, and then with speed as the ship began to come upright.
Stilwell did not completely right itself while it remained on the sand, but it was level enough that the prize crew could begin lightening her, first by starting all the water casks so the water ran into the hold, where it could be pumped out. While this was being done, some of the heavier guns were taken out, dropped into boats by slings, and then carried to Meteor, where they were hoisted aboard.
As the tide reached its height, boiling along Stilwell’s sides, the kedge anchor was moved aft again, and Sea-Holly came out to help us. Hawsers were passed between the ships, and Stilwell’s capstan manned again. Between the kedge anchor and the two ships hauling, Stilwell came off the sand—“Easy as mittens,” as Captain Oakeshott put it. Afloat, the ship retained only a slight starboard list, a result of the items shifting in the hold.
The prize crew got some sail aloft, and under the guidance of Pilot Foster we came to the mouth of the Brood, and up the river to Longfirth. There we were met by the entire city thronging the wharves, flags waving from every ship in the harbor, a military band playing, and a salute of cannon-fire from the citadel.
Kevin, Oakeshott, and I had in the meantime taken counsel, and managed a plan to retain possession of our prize. We would first appeal to Sir Andrew de Berardinis, in hopes that he would use his powers martial to appoint himself, or a friend, judge of a prize court—and if the Lord Governor declined, I would take Sea-Holly to Selford and there recruit Lord Roundsilver and any other friends I could, to support me when I brought the matter before the prize court established to rule on Lady Tern.
But first there was the celebration, while the town reveled on the quay, the band played, and the prisoners were let out of Stilwell’s forecastle and marched to prison. After which the officers of Meteor were treated to a torchlight procession to the citadel, where the Lord Governor treated us to a carousal in our honor, with food and wine and music, all to celebrate our courage and enterprise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
* * *
ou are still awake, I see. Perhaps the tale of the sea-battle was too rousing to permit slumber. I shall proceed in a quieter key.
Four days later I was at sea again, on Sea-Holly carrying the last two hundred of the Trained Bands back to Selford. Sir Andrew had proved himself a great host, but was reluctant to establish a prize court in Longfirth, and so I set sail again, to play politician in the capital, while Kevin remained behind to see to Stilwell’s repairs, and Captain Oakeshott took Meteor a-privateering.
The voyage to Longfirth had taken but two days, but the return would take four or five, for we set out in the teeth of the wind, which meant we could not run down to the line of Selford’s longitude, but were obliged to take a zigzag course, close-hauled at first upon the larboard tack, then upon the starboard. Close-hauled, and with a high sea and a stiff breeze, Sea-Holly’s sterncastle was subject to a corkscrew motion, first swooping up as a wave passed beneath it, then descending in a serious of sharp, angry judders that left loose objects bouncing on their shelves, and stomachs bouncing likewise. For the first time in my life I was lightly touched with seasickness, though by evening I was well enough to eat supper. Not so our cargo of soldiers, who were so ill that the main deck was filled with their vile reek, and many rolled uncaring in their own spew.
Accordingly, I took the air on deck after supper, and securely wrapped in my old cheviot overcoat and my boat cloak over it, with the brim of my old apprentice cap pulled down about my ears, I enjoyed the bracing chill wind that had crossed the entire ocean to fill our sails, the spray that came in a fine briny mist from the bows, and the stars that seemed to whirl overhead in a drunken saraband as the ship pitched and rolled beneath my feet. I was alone on the poop deck, for the watch was forward, and the ship was directed by officers and helmsmen sheltering under the break of the poop.
“Wouldn’t it have been too easy,” Orlanda said, “for Sir Andrew to have agreed to your proposal, and simply given you the ship?”
Possibly I disappointed her by not shrieking and leaping like a startled hin
d. I had drunk enough at dinner to face the nymph with something like an equable disposition, and so I blinked spray from my eyes and turned to where she stood beneath the great triangular shadow of the lateen sail. Orlanda was wreathed in a cloak of deep forest green, with a hood over her flaming hair. Starlight glittered in her emerald eyes, and drops of spray stood like jewels on her shoulders.
“Was it not difficult enough,” I asked, “to have captured the ship in the first place, a vessel five times the size of our own?”
“Was that difficult?” she asked. “It seemed simple enough to bombard a helpless wreck until it surrendered. And your own part did not seem particularly courageous, or expert.”
“I make no claim to extraordinary bravery, or any expertise in war.”
Her lips turned up in a wry smile. “How fortunate for you, since you failed to so much as cut a bandit’s throat when you had him by stealth from behind.”
“Yet he died.”
She reached out a gloved hand and touched me on the breast, right over Sir Basil’s parchment from Oberlin Fraters Bank. “And you plundered him. Maybe you are naught but a bandit yourself, and deserve the same fate.”
My blood ran cold at her touch, for now I knew that document might doom me, if Orlanda inspired anyone to question it. I decided to stay away from that ominous subject.
“Am I to understand,” said I, “that you convinced Sir Andrew to refuse to empanel a prize court?”
“Why, yes,” she said, her face all wide-eyed innocence. “And I may inspire others to thwart you, once you reach Selford. For the virtuous and tedious Queen has lost all her friends, thanks to you, but still must depend on others for advice, and a whisper in her ear is as good as a shout from the heavens.”
“If you wished to harm me,” I said, “you needn’t have bothered with the Lord Governor, but merely inspired a lead ball to pierce my breast during the fight with Royal Stilwell. Or to strike an arm or leg, and leave me a cripple.”
Scorn mounted her face. “Oh. War.” She put all her venom into the word. “If you wish to be a warrior, Quillifer, you will find that war is its own punishment, and needs no help from me. There are missiles enough in battle for one to have your name on it, and I need not carve it there.”
Strangely perhaps, I found this cause at least for a little optimism, knowing that any death in battle would be the result of chance and not divine malevolence. Yet death in combat was still death, and I desired not to make its acquaintance either way.
“So, our contest will continue in the courts, then,” I said.
“The courts, the palaces, the bedrooms,” she said. “You do not discriminate, and neither shall I.”
“You know,” said I, “I am beginning to feel honored, that you pay such attention to me.”
“See if you feel honored,” said she, “when I am done.”
And then she vanished into the night and spray, and left me alone on the deck, to ponder my fate.
* * *
As soon as I returned to the capital, I wrote to the duke and begged the favor of an audience. He returned that I should come to dinner the following day, and when I arrived, I found it a magnificent occasion, with the barrel-vaulted hall filled with many of the great men and ladies of the realm, all sitting at the table like an unimaginative imitation of the fresco over their heads, with all the gods and goddesses roistering with their wine-cups.
The duke’s two cannons had been memorialized in sugar-paste, with all the ornaments, scrollwork, dolphins, and spells faithfully reproduced. Each gun was six feet long and covered in real gold leaf, and was displayed as a centerpiece, along with edible cannonballs, rammers, tompions, and other items of the cannoneer’s art.
The two glittering figures of the duke and duchess presided from the head of the table, but as I was at the other end, in the company of secretaries and lawyers and poor relations, I could see them only by craning my neck around the sugar-paste battery, and then only when they stood to offer a toast or make a speech.
The dinner was intended to honor the Knight Marshal, Sir Erskine Latter, who had just been made the Queen’s Captain General and placed in full command of her majesty’s array for war. The little I could see of him did not raise my confidence in early victory, for the great veteran was elderly, with gray hair cut level with his earlobes, and he stooped as he shuffled along, between a pair of attendants who, I decided, had the duty of picking him up if he fell. He was swathed to the chin in a coat of sable fur, as if even this room, with its blazing hearths and scores of diners, was too cold for him. When he spoke in response to the praise of the other diners, I could not hear him, and I was thankful that I did not serve in his army.
I lost track of the number of dishes, with their fanciful stuffed chimeras, breads and pie-crusts in the shape of bastions and towers, marrow-bones mounted to look like cannon and stuffed with spiced mincemeat, jellies in the form of the Knight Marshal’s blazon, powder-horns filled with sugared fruit, and desserts in the shape of laurel crowns. I had a bite or two of each remove, drank more fully of the wines that were paired with each dish, and asked those about me for the news.
The Estates General had concluded their business, I was told, and having done their duty, had dispersed. Now the Queen was filling vacant offices with great efficiency, having spent the last weeks judging, as well as she could, the character, talents, and loyalty of the hopeful applicants.
Those who intended to replace the Chancellor were disappointed, for he had been retained in his office and made Baron Hulme, which further outraged those among the nobility who had disparaged him for being a commoner. He would now have to guide the finances of the nation from the House of Peers, which would make it more difficult, as the power over the budget largely rested with the Burgesses. He would need a deputy in that House, and there was much speculation concerning who that worthy gentleman would be.
As I mentioned that I had been away in Longfirth, I was asked about the news there, and I considered letting my neighbors know about the capture of Royal Stilwell. But I decided to keep that information a secret until I had conferred with his grace the duke, and instead said that Sir Basil of the Heugh had been found there, and killed.
“Was he hanged?” asked one of the lawyers.
“I killed him myself,” said I, “for I had been his captive, and recognized him on the street in Longfirth.” I was then obliged to tell the whole story. This news rapidly spread the length of the table, and came to the ears of the duke, who rose and called for attention.
“I have been told,” he said, “that the outlaw Sir Basil of the Heugh has been captured and executed. This report is of interest to many of us, as Sir Basil has been a plague on the realm, and has held for ransom a number of our friends. Can the bearer of these tidings kindly confirm this news?”
I rose, which caused a stir among the company, as I was known to many of them, and not all of them were my friends, while others knew me only as someone out of favor with her majesty. I waited for the murmur to die down, and then spoke.
“Your report errs in only one detail, your grace, that the outlaw was executed. Sir Basil is dead, but he was killed before he could be brought to a judge.”
“Do you know the circumstance?”
“I do, your grace.” I then related the story again, as modestly as I could, emphasizing the chance nature of the encounter, and the supposed sanguine history of the dirk.
There was a greater stir among the company when I finished, and then I heard a merry laugh from engineer Ransome, who as the creator of the duke’s two great guns was seated far up the table.
“Quillifer it was who also brought to justice the assassin Burgoyne,” said he. “Perhaps he will soon bring a like fate to all the rogues and renegadoes of the kingdom.”
“I intend to leave a few for the Queen’s Captain General,” I said.
The Captain General nodded his gray head, and said something which I did not hear. Her grace the duchess kindly offered a translati
on.
“The lord Knight Marshal says that such a doughty and valiant fighter as yourself would surely distinguish himself and win renown in the army.”
I smiled. “I thank the Knight Marshal for his flattering words, but I already serve the Queen as a privateer, aboard the ship Meteor.”
Which caused more of a stir, because though Meteor’s capture of the Lady Tern was known, my connection with the former was not.
The duke smiled, raised his glass, and said, “It seems you serve her majesty thoroughly, in many spheres. To your very good health.”
I thanked his grace and the others for their courtesy, and pledged them in return. After the feast ended and the diners, stuffed with glories both martial and culinary, began to totter upright, I made my way through the throng in the direction of the Roundsilvers. I viewed the Knight Marshal as the old warrior departed the feast, upheld by his two gentlemen as he shuffled along, and saw the sable coat part to reveal the broad ornate belt wrapping his narrow midsection. From this belt dangled a number of jeweled charms, and I saw also a religious medallion worn about his neck, containing a parchment with a quotation from the Pilgrim. The Captain General, I saw, was not leaving his campaign to chance, but invoking every form of spiritual aid known to man.
Were he not just proclaimed the greatest soldier in the realm, I might have considered him a superstitious, senescent fool.
As I watched the great captain depart, a hand touched my arm, and a familiar voice spoke in my ear.
“Thank you for killing Sir Basil. Did you by any chance retrieve aught of my ransom?”
I turned to find Lord Utterback offering his sardonic smile. He was dressed to take his place in this shining company, and wore the magnificent blue-and-yellow suit. Gems flashed from his collar, and from every finger.
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