He was also unhappy that he had gained no useful information from her in spite of being at his most charming, as much as he would have been charming with a courtesan, and he had a nagging feeling that she had gotten more from him than he hoped to learn from her.
Good thing we’re leaving here tomorrow, he thought grumpily as he poured himself another glass of wine, before she found a way to get down the stairs some night and cut my nutmegs off for spite.
CHAPTER 13
He woke up feeling like the wrath of God had descended on his skull, having sat up and finished half the bottle on top of all his exertions the day before. A clock had chimed three before he had been calm enough to sleep, and he had been roused at five to head down to the boats to oversee the last construction.
While he was standing around trying to look commanding (and awake), Burgess Chiswick joined him, looking a lot fresher than Alan felt. He did, however, bring a large mug of coffee with him, which Alan appreciated.
“Well, this looks promising, I suppose,” Burgess said. “Though I know little about the construction of boats. What are your men doing to those beams?”
“Drilling holes,” Alan said. “We’re ready, except for the keel pieces to add weight and stability. See the boreholes through the existing keels? We’ll bolt these on.”
“With what?”
“Pine dowels, slightly oversized and hammered into the boreholes. Like the bung in a beer barrel. Should hold for long enough to get us over to the eastern shore and round the capes,” Alan said.
“Metal would be better, would it not?” Burgess asked.
“We found some flat angle-iron forged with holes in it for various uses, and some bolts, but nothing long enough to go all the way from side to side. They’d have to be nine or ten inches long.”
“Thought I heard a disturbance upstairs last night. Did the fair Miss Nancy treat you well?” Burgess leered.
“No, she threw me out, along with a shower of glassware and stuff,” Alan admitted ruefully. “’Twas a bad idea after the ambush.”
“Ah, well.”
“Shit,” Feather spat as the dowel he had shaped splintered as he tried to drive it into the first hole in a beam before lifting it up to fit against the keel member. “This ’ere pine’s too light, sir. Even do we get it tamped down wi’out breakin’, I wouldn’t trust ’em in a seaway.”
“What about a musket barrel?” Burgess suggested, kneeling down to look at one of the beams. “There’s hunting guns and those French muskets to use. With a vise and a file, we could cut down some lengths to fit into the holes. And then, if some of those bolts are large enough, we could force-thread them down into the barrel bores. That would hold your angle-iron plates on to spread the load if they flex.”
“An’ iffen the bolts and plates fall off, sir, the musket barrel’d still be snug enough inside ta ’old.” Feather smiled, revealing what few teeth he still possessed.
“Well, this isn’t going to work.” Alan frowned, angry at the delay. “We have to give ’em a try.”
Using a piece of string, Feather measured the extreme width of a beam, knotted it carefully, and headed for the barn and carpenter shop to measure off lengths of musket barrel to file off. Queener left off the work with an auger and went with him. He was back in moments with one of the French muskets, trying it in the boreholes already made. With a piece of chalk, he scribed circles inside the marks already made on the shaped beams to show the size of the bore necessary, and dug into the wooden tool box to find an auger with a smaller bit, and to try various bolts until he found some that could be wound down the barrels.
The musket barrels worked well. They were driven down into the holes with mallets until they were flush, and the angle-iron plates were fitted on. Then the bolts were cranked down into the barrels, cutting their own threads in much the same fashion that a weapon was rifled by a worm-borer. After four hours of filing and sawing, drilling, and turning, the barges were ready to be put back on the water. They were now as seaworthy as they could be made without starting from scratch in their construction. Borrowing a few soldiers for muscle power, they shoved them back off the X-shaped bow cradles onto the sand and mud, then hauled them into the still waters of the inlet.
“Hurrah, it floats!” Alan exulted as his crew cheered.
Coe and a small crew scrambled into the nearest barge and got to work to pole her out into deeper water where she would truly be floating, instead of resting with her lowermost quick-work on the mud.
“Try sailing her while you’re out there,” Alan ordered. “There’s a high tide, and enough water in the cove to see how she handles.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Thank you for your timely suggestion, Burgess,” Alan said to the soldier. “For better or worse, now we can do no more. Best start fetching food and whatever down from the barns so we may be ready to sail as soon as it’s dark.”
“I have never heard a better thing in my life,” Burgess said, and trotted back toward the house. Alan turned back to the water and sat on a stump to watch how Coe was doing. The boat had a slight way on her from their last bit of poling as they raised the pair of lug sails. They were cut short but full so as not to overset the boat with too much pressure too high above the deck and her center of gravity. The barge paid off the wind for a while, then began to make her way forward. She heeled over more than Alan liked to see by the light wind in the inlet, but she was sailing. A few more hands to weather should counteract her tendency to heel, he thought, and heavier cargo of provisions and passengers would help.
The boat made a lot of leeway, but as soon as Coe and his men put the leeboards down and they bit into the water, she began to hold her own, no longer sloughing downwind at such an alarming rate.
“Damme if they don’t work,” he told Feather, who was standing by him. “I shall put you and your man in my report when we rejoin the fleet.”
“Queener, sir. Name’s Nat Queener,” the old man stuck in, taking a pause in his tobacco chewing to nod and speak for himself.
“Well, it was handily done and damned clever work,” Alan said.
“Thankee, sir, thankee right kindly.” Queener bobbed, tugging at his forelock, or what was left of it, and Alan was struck once more by how little he had known about most of the men—not Coe or this Queener or Cony, wherever the devil he was at this moment, even after all those months on Desperate. Queener was too old and frail to play pulley-hauley at fores’ls or halyards, or take a strain on a tackle, too spavined by a hard life at sea to go aloft any longer, but he was a good member of the carpenter’s crew and knew two lifetimes’ worth about boats. The Navy was full of such oldsters, and Alan vowed that he would not overlook their talents or their contributions again if given a chance.
Coe tacked the barge about and came back up the inlet at a goodly clip, the once ungainly barge now behaving like a well-found cutter. He bore up to the prevailing winds to try her close-hauled, but there was not enough width to the inlet, or wind, to judge her behavior. The best that could be said was that the boat was tractable. She would not win an impromptu race from anchorage to stores dock, but she could be sailed safely and would perform like a tired dray horse to get them off the Guinea Neck and out to sea, which was all they asked of her.
Coe finally brought her up to the shallows at the mouth of the creek, handed the sails and raised the leeboards, and let her drive onto the mud and sand in the shallows gently with the last of her forward motion. He and his crew waded ashore wearing smiles like landed conquerors.
“Them sodjers is acomin’, Mister Lewrie,” Feather said, directing his attention inland to a file of riflemen bearing the first boxes and small kegs of water, cornmeal travel bread, boiled and jerked meat, and the dried powder and ball car-touches.
“Feather, see to loading the boats and then make sure the hands have their dinner,” Alan instructed. “We plan to leave on the falling tide around half past four or so while there’s still enough water in the inlet t
o float ’em out easy.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Governour Chiswick was there with the advance party, his face set in what Alan recognized by enforced association as bleak anger. He waved for Alan to join him and stalked a way up the brambled bank of the creek for privacy.
“We have trouble,” Chiswick whispered. “That damned Hayley brat is missing. Little bastard took off sometime in the night. So you know where he headed.”
“Jesus,” Alan said, “how did he get past your guards? I thought you had the neck watched so a mouse couldn’t escape?”
“Keep your voice down, damn you,” Governour warned. “We don’t need to panic your sailors, or my people. And yes, he shouldn’t have been able to get through, but he stole a rifleman’s tunic and the sentries didn’t remark on him strolling right past them. We’d better get out of here, now, before he can bring troops down here from Gloucester Point.”
“We could pole out into the marshes by Big Island, but we’d be naked as dammit until the sun went down. There’s not cover enough out there for a snake. Night is the best time.”
“Now is the best time, Alan,” Governour insisted. “Unless you want to be killed or captured. After yesterday’s ambush, I doubt if anyone is going to offer quarter to us, not if they belong to the same unit as those men we shot down.”
“What time did he go, do you think?” Alan said, thinking.
“We think around five this morning, just before first light,” Governour explained, impatient to even bother. “One of the sentries on the perimeter thinks he saw someone heading off west, but he thought it was one of our men going to relieve himself. And the sentry who lost his tunic was guarding the house. He got off at four, and took an hour with that Sookie, and when he turned out his coat was gone, so it had to be between four and five.”
“Sookie!” Alan gasped. “I’ll bet her mistress put her up to that. They must have planned it.”
“Of course they planned it,” Governour fumed.
“He went on foot?” Alan asked.
“Yes. No horses are missing.”
“It is two hours up the peninsula, the roads are so bad,” Alan speculated. “Say he left at five, so he could not get there before eight in the morning on foot, even if he knew the country. Take an hour to get someone to act and get a party on the roads. If they sent cavalry, they could have gotten here by eleven to start scouting us. Hell, even infantry could have been here by now!”
“Hmm, there is that,” Governour said, puffing out his cheeks as he studied his watch. “’Tis just gone one in the afternoon.”
“There is the possibility he could have come across a snake, or no one believed him,” Alan said.
“No, they’d believe him if he got there. I would.”
“So where are they, then?” Alan asked.
“Cornwallis is supposed to be surrendering this morning, as are Tarleton and Simcoe on this side of the river. Perhaps they are waiting until the formalities are over before gathering up our little band of stragglers. We hid our true numbers from the brat, damn his blood, so they may not think eighteen or twenty survivors are all that important. A stupid reason, I grant you, but stupider things have happened in war.”
“Take this whole damned campaign as a case in point,” Alan said. “But, they wouldn’t be coming to collect survivors, they’d be coming with blood in their eyes, Governour. We killed six of them yesterday, did we not? Why aren’t they here already, howling for revenge?”
“I don’t know,” Governour admitted, a hard thing for him to do. “We’ve seen no boats going downriver, so no one has raised the hue and cry yet. Nothing stirring on those French ships blockading the river to the east. Look, once we get the boats loaded, what are the chances of getting out of here?”
“Just like I said last night. Horrible,” Alan said. “There’s no cover out there in the marshes. Big Island isn’t high enough to hide a small dog. We put our bows outside Monday Creek and those French will blow us out of the water with artillery. With this outflowing tide, we could gain two knots, and the wind is fair enough, but it’s also fair for a frigate to run us down north of the Guinea Neck shoals before we could get ten miles.”
“We should have left last night,” Governour said petulantly.
“In boats that would have capsized without the leeboards and decent keels.” Alan sniffed, wondering just how thick in the skull one had to be to wear a red coat and go for a soldier.
“I grow weary of your attitude, you stubborn jackass,” Governour said. “A couple of years in the navy doesn’t make you a genius at nautical matters.”
“But it beats what you know of boats by a long chalk,” Alan shot right back. “I’m not King Canute, and neither are you, we can’t change things to suit. We cannot get away until dark, we’ve already discussed that. Now, what do we do until then? You tell me, you’re the bloody soldier! But don’t come raw with me.”
Oh, shit, he thought. This brute’s going to kill me for that, see if he doesn’t. But he’ll not blame this on me. God, are we fucked for fair. The Rebels an’ Frogs are going to come down here and knacker us like sheep. What’s the bloody difference, him or them; now or later?
Governour did indeed appear as if murder was on his mind, his face turning purple with anger, and his hands twitching out of control. But after a long minute in which they locked stares and would be damned if either would be the first to look away, Governour spun on his heels and stalked off on his long legs, hands jabbed together in the small of his back, and Alan let out a soft breath of relief that he was still alive.
His relief was short, however, for Governour Chiswick turned just as suddenly and stalked back toward him, and it was all Alan could do to stand his ground without fleeing into the woods.
“You’re a know-it-all Captain Sharp, Lewrie,” Governour said in a rasp, not a sword’s length away from him. “Damn your blood, sir. And damn you for being right. My apologies for rowing at you.”
A hand was extended, from which Alan almost flinched until he realized it didn’t hold a weapon. They shook hands.
“Sorry I lost my temper as well, Governour,” Alan said warmly, his legs almost turning to jelly with surprise.
“Well, until dusk, there’s nothing to do but do what soldiers do best,” Governour said, smiling as much as he could while still grinding his teeth. “Wait. Take positions in the woods by our preparations and hope for the best.”
“Have everything ready for a quick getaway,” Alan added.
“If they come, Alan, we shall have no chance of retreat, and damned little of surrender, either, you know?” Governour softened. “I believe we can prevail, but until we see how many troops come, we won’t know. I wish to God I could have gotten Burgess away, for my family’s sake. The rest of our regiment, what’s left of it, is going into Rebel hands this day. I have to save what I can. They’re my neighbors, my friends, they trust me . . . oh, damme for a weak, puling . . .”
“I have a crew to worry about as well, Governour, men from my own ship,” Alan told him. “They’re depending on me, too.”
“You understand. Good,” Governour said. “Good lad.”
Maybe not as well as you’d like, Alan thought. I’d like to get the hell out of here with a whole skin, and damn the ones who run too slow. But you can’t say that aloud, can you, can’t even think it, but have to go all noble and talk of Duty and the King and Honor and be the last arse-hole into the boat. God help me, but He must know I’m such a canting hypocrite! If you’re dead-serious in what you say, Governour, then you’re a hell of a lot better than I’ll ever be.
They finished loading the boats and drew them out nearly fifty yards off the mouth of the creek, where there was water deep enough to float them. The North Carolina Volunteers filtered off into the woods with their rifles and cartridge pouches to stand guard, and Alan put his own men on watch as well, drilling them once more on loading and firing the Ferguson rifle, just in case. They ate a late dinner of cold boi
led meat and dry cornbread, while over by Yorktown, the shattered remnants of a once-proud army marched into captivity with their flags cased, dressed in the last finery the quartermasters had issued, instead of letting it be captured still in the crates. They marched drunk and surly, as though by infusions of rum and hot sneers they could belittle the victors. By battalion and regiments, they tramped through a gauntlet of Rebel and French troops to lay down their colors and honor-draped drums, pile their muskets and accoutrements, and march away naked and helpless. Lord Cornwallis pleaded illness and sent his second-in-command to represent him. That officer surrendered his sword to Washington’s second-in-command, while a British band of fifers played gay music to lessen the shame.
Alan thought of going back up to the house and giving the Hayley sisters some guineas for what they had taken, but after their deception he could not find the generosity in heart to do so, and was sure that if he did go up to the house, he would most likely be tempted to torch the damned place. Had they just sat there, we’d be away with no one hurt by dusk, but they could not leave well enough alone, and that damned imp, he thought furiously, probably thinks he’s a fucking hero!
As the afternoon drew on, he began to feel a lot calmer. There was no sign of the enemy, no movement from any of the ships out in the river to put a landing party ashore or come closer for a peek. He started to think they could get away scot-free after all.
But then, a little after three, an outlying picket who had been watching the ford onto the neck came drifting back from tree to tree to carry word that there was an enemy force on the Gloucester road.
“How many men?” Governour asked his scout as they held a quick conference in the trees at the eastern end of the tobacco fields near the muddy lane.
The French Admiral Page 34