‘No blood,’ he said gently. ‘But I doubt that you will be doing any painting for a while. We need to get you to a surgeon.’
‘Fairbairn?’ asked James.
‘No,’ said Harry emphatically. He tried to tell himself that he wanted James out of danger, and that was true. But he knew it wasn’t the only reason. Now, more than ever, Harry needed freedom of action. The freedom that came from operating alone. Perhaps he should say that straight out. Maybe James would understand. But even as he considered it, Harry knew that he’d never ask.
‘There’s Williams aboard the Swiftsure, that is, if she has not already put to sea. If not, then someone local. We must bind you up now so that you cannot move your arm. I could try to set it myself, but if there is a doctor near by it is best left to him.’
‘These things are better done straightaway, Harry. Even I know that.’
‘True. But we have nothing with which to dull the pain.’
‘You decide, brother,’ said James. ‘But if you feel you can manage it, go ahead.’
‘Are you concerned about using it again?’
James positively snapped at him. ‘Of course I am. For God’s sake, I’m a painter.’
Harry called Pender over, and bade him hold James’s shoulder steady. Then he put the wooden handle of his knife between his brother’s teeth. ‘Bite hard on this, and make sure your tongue is out of the way.’
James fainted with the pain, going limp, as Harry pulled on the broken arm. There was a slight grating sound as the two broken ends came together. Harry smashed one of the desk drawers, using the two sides as splints. He lashed his brother’s arm to his side with the line that had been used on the outer cabin doors. James came to as he completed this, and Harry raised him up so that he sat with his back to the outer planking.
Having made his brother as comfortable as he could, Harry walked over to the body on the other side of the cabin and turned the man on his back. The eyes were wide open, black, and staring sightlessly in death. The mouth hung slack, exposing white teeth, stark against the dark lips and sallow, leathery skin. Blood oozed out of the hooked nose. That, with the skin and the dark patches under the eyes gave him the appearance of an Arab. Blood matted the front of his tunic, but against the black cloth it didn’t show as anything other than a glistening stain.
‘Harry,’ said James. ‘Have you observed his clothing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would it be too singular an idea to assume that all Genoese cut-throats wear some kind of uniform?’
Harry turned to look into the open doorway of the coach. ‘Just so. Just as it would be too singular, James, to assume that all such people take away their wounded. Remember last night. Not a word was exchanged between them, yet when Broadbridge and his men arrived they seemed to disappear. And they took the man I skewered with them.’
James patted the wooden slat holding his arm. ‘Far be it from me to praise them, but is it not admirable to care for your wounded?’
‘Yes. But in an emergency, I would expect them to abandon their dead. The man that Pender shot through the door. Do you remember the sound he made?’
It was his servant who answered. ‘He was a goner for sure, your honour. I’ve heard that sound too many times to doubt it.’
‘And I felt sure that the blow I struck last night was mortal. They left this fellow because they had no choice. But I’ll wager that when we go out on deck, there will be no sign of the two I shot either.’
‘You can’t be sure you killed them, Harry, either last night or now.’
‘Can’t I, James? I was less than ten feet away from the furthest one, and within three feet of the nearest. I know I put a bullet straight into the back of his head. He was certainly in no condition to walk away.’
Harry was right. Leaving James in the cabin he and Pender went to investigate. The lanterns showed no shortage of blood on the deck, one pool of sticky gore not only on the planking but also on the axe the man had dropped when Harry shot him. There was also plenty of blood on the poop, a sure sign that the shots fired through the skylight had not been wasted. But no bodies.
‘Let’s take another look at that fellow.’
They made their way back to the cabin and looked down at the still body. Black breeches, black shirt, and filthy bare feet. And that large black bandanna around the head. Pender bent and started to search him. His single pocket held a clasp fisherman’s knife and a few of the local coins. Pender looked up at Harry, who nodded. His servant removed the scarf first. The man had thick black hair, curled and matted where it had been compressed. Pender ripped the shirt open next, then cutting gingerly with the man’s own knife, he sliced at the breeches.
‘Harry,’ said James hoarsely. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘I’m not looking for anything. But if there is some distinguishing feature, I would want to see it. If they are so careful to remove their wounded and dead, it must mean that there’s something to identify them.’
‘What kind of feature?’
‘A tattoo perhaps. Something that might tell me if he was a sailor, perhaps even a French one.’
‘There’s nothing of that sort, your honour,’ said Pender, lifting the man’s arms to check. ‘I think we’d best do the same as we did with Captain Broadbridge, and heave him over the side.’
It was when they turned him over to secure the lashings round his arms that they saw the scar. It was in the shape of a crescent, a new rising moon. Harry bent to peer at it, holding a lantern close, and he saw the deformed skin with the indistinct letters that ran down the side of it.
James struggled awkwardly to his feet and came over to look. ‘There’s your mark, Harry. Though what you expect to learn from a scar, I cannot tell.’
‘Look closer, if you can.’
James put his good hand on Harry’s shoulder and knelt down beside him. ‘That’s no scar, James. It’s more like some kind of brand.’
Carefully they searched the rest of his body, but there were no more scars or marks of any significance. He was slipped over the side naked, with the two cannonballs lashed to his feet without even the small ceremony that had attended the earlier disposal of Broadbridge. As he was lowered into the water, Pender reached out to slash open the man’s stomach.
For all the blood he’d seen that night, James, looking over the rail at this, gagged and pushed away. Pender looked at Harry, holding the other arm, but he just nodded and they let the assassin slip into the black water. Pender walked over to where James leant awkwardly over the side.
‘You have to do that, your honour. Otherwise the body floats up in a few days if the cannonballs work loose. There’s many a villain gone to the gallows for not remembering that.’
‘Spare me the lore of the dark side of our lives, if you please.’
Harry joined them, a new note of urgency in his voice. ‘Come, James. You must rest, while Pender and I make all secure.’
It could have been pain, but it was more like a flash of alarm, almost of fear, in his brother’s face.
‘I don’t think they’ll return. But you never know. So we’ll berth in the main cabin till daylight. Pender and I will keep watch, then we can hail a boat and get you over to the Swiftsure.’
James was standing, head bowed, his good arm supporting his weight. ‘I apologise, Harry. I’m obviously not cut out for this sort of thing.’
‘Neither am I, James. After all, I’m just a simple sailor.’
Harry grinned at him, and James gave him a weak smile with his reply. ‘Well, one thing I’ve learned, brother: when I’m around you, I am unlikely to die of boredom.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JAMES lay on the foot-lockers, with a makeshift pillow under his head, while Pender put the cabin to rights. They shifted the desk over and jammed it against the damaged bulkhead. Pender transferred the key left behind by their assailants to the inside of the cabin door and locked it. Then he retied the other door handles together, while Harry pile
d all the loose debris in the cabin in the centre, and jammed the pikes upright, facing towards the skylight. When they’d done all they could, they threw themselves onto the deck, their backs propped against the planking. Pender closed his eyes straight away, but tired as Harry was, he could not countenance sleep. Now all was secure, and the tension created by caution drained away, it allowed him time to think. It was like trying to build a house with half the bricks missing. Every question he answered generated a dozen more uncertainties.
James, who had been still all the while, spoke softly, wearily, with his eyes fixed on the deck-beams above his head. ‘It is almost as if there is some unseen hand intent on our destruction.’
‘Chance,’ replied Harry quietly. ‘We have had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Twice.’ James did not need to elaborate on the unlikelihood of that.
Pender, for all his eyes were tight shut, wasn’t asleep either. ‘If this was chance, Captain Ludlow, I’d be more worried than I am already.’
‘Is that what killed Broadbridge, Harry?’
Harry answered with a question. ‘Who brought him out here?’
There was a long silence before Pender replied: ‘The men that killed him?’
‘Hark back to what Crosby said. A messenger came for him, saying that if he wanted to buy the Principessa, he should come along right away. Crosby said there was a boat waiting. That means he was deliberately lured out here to his death.’
‘He didn’t fall and break his neck,’ said James impatiently.
Harry spoke gently. He knew James to be in pain. ‘Please, brother, I’m merely thinking aloud.’
‘Those two buggers that stole our boat, most like,’ offered Pender.
‘There would have to be someone out here to look after the ship. You don’t leave a valuable vessel like this unguarded in port. It would be gone in five minutes.’
‘Captain,’ said Pender, ‘if’n there was one boat that came out, and one already here, why pinch ours?’
‘There wouldn’t be one for the guards. If they had a boat, they’d do precious little watching. What’s to stop them going ashore when they please.’
‘What about supplies?’
‘They’d come aboard with sufficient to sustain them.’
‘Then if we find out who had him brought out here, we have found his murderer,’ said Pender.
James couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. ‘Count di Toraglia.’
‘The message reached Broadbridge either before or when we were with the count and his wife.’
‘Didn’t Guistiani say he’d only just decided to sell?’
‘Was he precise?’ said Harry.
James pushed himself up onto his good arm. ‘The timing is wrong. I don’t think they sent a message at all, do you?’
Harry didn’t reply. He was reluctant to entertain the notion of the count’s guilt himself, but he could think, at present, of no other explanation. Yet what the man stood to gain from the cold-blooded murder of a potential purchaser escaped him. If someone wanted to buy something of yours, you took his money, not his life. But there was no gainsaying the fact, even if Harry didn’t bother to articulate it, that the men who had first attacked them in the cabin had made their entry with a key. Only the owner of the ship, or his hirelings, would have a key. How that connected to the attack made on them last night was even more of a mystery, but connected it was, for it had been undertaken by the same people.
‘No,’ said James emphatically. ‘No one could sit there, as calm as they did, having just sent orders to kill a man. They would have tried to fob us off.’
‘I don’t know who this Count di Toraglia is, your honour, but Broadbridge knew this boat was goin’ ages ago.’
James spoke again. ‘He havered about selling it. The rumour must have been around that it was coming on the market. Broadbridge could have picked that up. I wonder how much time elapsed between the arrival of that message and Bartholomew finally offering to advance him the money?’
Harry didn’t answer. His mind was racing furiously, trying to make sense of a dozen conflicting arguments. Why had the two men run when they’d come aboard? That didn’t make sense. They could have stayed in the locked cabin, moving Broadbridge’s body so that it couldn’t be seen through the skylight. They had the key. How could they know that of the three men who’d come abroad, one of them was practised at picking locks? He got to his feet and grabbed the lantern off the deck. Pender stood too as Harry called to him.
‘Lock the door behind me, just in case.’
Pender frowned and Harry looked at the skylight. ‘I know the quick way in. If you hear me yell your name, please get those pikes from under the skylight before I come through.’
His servant unlocked the door and Harry slipped through, hearing the key turn behind him. He emerged onto the moonlit deck, moving purposefully towards the companionway which led below. The swell had increased and the Principessa creaked as she rode, hauled up and jerked by her twin anchors. Habit made Harry sniff as he reached the lower deck, and by instinct he registered, with approval, that the air held no odour of damp or rot. Devoid of the men who would normally sling their hammocks here and with the minimum of stores aboard, the deck ran from the tiny manger at the front to a wooden bulkhead under the main cabin. Only the galley stove, the capstan, and the upper-deck supports interrupted the clean sweep. The lantern was not strong enough to reach every corner of the space, so Harry made his way forward down one side, then aft down the other, till he came to the bulkhead that separated the officers’ cabins from the rest.
He opened the door onto a small wardroom, with a stove in the middle and four tiny cabins, two each side. The two men lay trussed and dead on the table which occupied the centre of the room, their bodies cold to the touch. They were dressed in grubby shirts, breeches, and waistcoats. These, in the local manner, were gaily embroidered and decorated with coloured beads, which gave a macabre contrast to the looks of pain and suffering on their faces.
Unlike Broadbridge, they had not died without a struggle, for as Harry held the lantern over them he could see that their clothes were in disarray, and their faces bruised and cut. No surprise in these deaths. These men had been brutally overpowered. They were tied hand and foot, with several loops of rope around their upper body, and Harry knew just by looking at them that the corpses had been made ready to be slung over the side, very much in the manner that he and Pender had disposed of two other unfortunates tonight.
But Broadbridge had not been prepared for that. It was Pender who trussed him up. The late captain had been sat in his chair like a statue, stiff and cold like these two, as though he had been deliberately left, like the skeleton guarding a pirate’s treasure. It smacked of the same display as Captain Howlett swinging from his makeshift gibbet.
‘He was there, at the Guistianis’. He could easily have overheard them talking about the Principessa. And last night, just after we were attacked, Tilly came marching by, bold as brass, with a file of marines.’
‘I’m still left with the thought, why Broadbridge?’ said James.
‘Struck me as a touch headstrong, Mr James. Happen they thought no one else would fall for their lure.’
Harry answered James’s next question before he asked it. ‘Perhaps the French have someone in Ma Thomas’s. A spy. Though with a gossip like Crosby I doubt it’d be necessary.’
‘That is a very imaginative leap, Harry.’
‘Can you not see the hand of the French in this, James?’
‘I can see that there are other possibilities, perhaps too many for comfort.’
Harry started to pace up and down the available space, which, given their precautions, was not very much. ‘When we came aboard and found his body we surmised that they hadn’t slung him overboard because of the incoming ships. What if they’d never intended to put him over the side?’
‘To what purpose?’
‘To the same pu
rpose as hanging Captain Howlett. To serve as a warning to the British sailors that they are not safe, even in harbour.’ Harry increased the speed of his pacing. ‘The people we fought tonight were the same crowd that attacked us last night.’
‘Yes. But we both surmised that it was because they thought we were king’s officers,’ said James.
Pender was beginning to see what Harry was driving at. ‘We were on the wrong track altogether. Go on, Captain.’
‘I think they attacked us by mistake. Odd that I hinted as much to Bartholomew. I was trying to create the illusion that he and his compatriots were threatened, thinking that might get him to help me. Was I closer to the truth than I knew? Were they really lying in wait for Broadbridge? He was wearing a blue coat too. With the Swiftsure just arrived they might know he was in that vicinity, and what he was after.’
‘He had a lot of men with him, your honour. Too many to attack.’
‘Quite a number of them off the Swiftsure, Pender. As for his own men, he would have had to spread them along the quayside to catch those coming in. No point in standing together all in a bunch.’
‘But they wasn’t on the quay, they came down the alley from the town.’
‘Perhaps he’d only just gathered them up.’
James was not finished with his devil’s advocacy, needing for his own satisfaction to chase the very thought which came into his mind.
‘Could that not imply that someone at Ma Thomas’s tavern wanted him dead, hired these people to do the deed? They failed last night, so they lured him out to this ship tonight.’
Pender cut in, with such certainty that his words brooked no argument. ‘Not someone at Ma Thomas’s. Why lure him out here to kill him, and two others as well, when you can knife him in his bed?’
‘That would attract attention to the place.’
‘That’s naïve, James, if I may say so, even for someone like you. I doubt the customers of Ma Thomas’s, or the lady herself, would have much trouble, or any qualms, about disposing of a corpse. No. The question you must ask yourself is who stands to gain from this death. Quite obviously the French would do all in their power to hamper the efforts of British privateers, to stop them interfering with their trade.’
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