Mutiny - Kydd 04

by Julian Stockwin

  Renzi continued quietly, 'The vote was taken in indecent haste, passed, and the nobiluomi of Venice fell over each other to get away, turning their backs on their birthright and abandoning their noble obligations to save their skins. Gentlemen, the Serenissima is no more!'

  The brooding quiet lay heavy and ominous. When the people of Venice had digested the events, there would be a reaction. Even now far-off shouts could be heard. The French would be forming up to march in, whether to civil chaos or a humbled populace it didn't matter: the end was the same. They only had hours to decide what to do.

  'You seem very well informed, Renzi, for a foremast hand,' snarled Griffith.

  'The lady Carradini, whom I knew — before, is well placed in the highest of the land. You can be assured there are few secrets she does not know.'

  'And tells you?'

  Renzi's wintry smile was weary. 'She has a tendre for me. This is not for us to debate. What is more at issue is the next few hours.'

  'Have a care, Renzi, you are still under discipline, even here.'

  'Sir.'

  Leith stirred. 'I care not for your nautical niceties, gentlemen. Now, are you about to leave us again, Mr Renzi?'

  'No, sir.'

  Kydd realised the implication of the sea-bag: Renzi might have had a chance to get away but he had chosen to see things through with his friends. 'Thank ye, Nicholas,' he said softly.

  The dusty silence was broken by a tiny sound, a wispy slither. The pale edge of a paper appeared under the door, but when Kydd reached it there was no sign of anyone. 'Here, m' friend, it's all Dutch t' me,' Kydd said, passing it to Renzi.

  'Thank you. It says we are to stay here until after dark. Then we will receive a visitor, whom we may account a welcome one. I recognise the hand,' Renzi added gravely.

  'We wait?' Griffith ignored Renzi, addressing Leith directly.

  'Have you an alternative in mind, sir?'

  As evening approached the gloom in the musty warehouse deepened. Muffled shouts and random disorder erupted at intervals, a scuffle breaking out not far from the door. The situation was apparently resolved with a grunting, despairing cry, then silence.

  There was a feeble oil lantern in the spaces by the wall, but it served to keep the darkness at bay.

  Kydd could hardly bear the inactivity, the inability to do anything. He yearned for the lift and fall of a deck under his feet, but realised that, with the stranglehold now established by the French, it was probable he would never again know the sensation.

  The darkness outside was absolute when their visitor arrived. A hurried double knock and hoarse, 'Il giramondo — ehi!’ Dressed in a black cloak, the man kept his face averted in its hood. 'Dove il ufficiale di marina inglese?’ he asked tensely, the eyes glittering within the hood.

  'He wants the English naval officer,' Renzi said.

  Griffith stepped forward to a quarterdeck brace and said crisply, 'I am Lieutenant Griffith of His Britannic Majesty's frigate Bacchante'

  The man hesitated, then seemed to come to a decison. He threw off his hood and snapped smartly to attention. 'Tenenfe di vascello Bauducco - Paolo Bauducco.'

  'Lieutenant Paolo Bauducco,' Renzi murmured, and in turn made an appropriate introduction of Lieutenant Griffith.

  'Prendendo in considerations la grandest della marina inglese . . .'

  'The stream of passionate Italian appeared theatrical in the drab confines of the warehouse, the weak lanternlight picking up the occasional flash of rank and decorations under the cloak.

  Renzi held up his hands to pause the flow, and tried to put across the officer's plea. 'Er, it seems that, in deference to the regard he has for the Royal Navy, he wishes to put forward a proposition.'

  Griffith frowned, but Leith showed instant interest. Bauducco resumed, his ardour transparent.

  'Ah, he is a loyal Venetian, and today he was profoundly ashamed of the perfidy of the Doge and his ministers. He learned as well that the Arsenale, the famous naval dockyard and all the ships of Venice, are to be turned over to General Buonaparte.'

  Bauducco's voice swelled in anger.

  'This is intolerable. It seems ... if I understand him aright, that there are many men in the Venetian service who feel as he does.' Renzi cocked his head, as if in doubt of what he was hearing, and continued carefully, 'He goes on to say, sir, that this night he and his men intend to rise up against his captain and carry his vessel to sea. Would he be right to put before them that his vessel — a xebec only, but well armed — would then be taken into the sea service of Great Britain against the French?'

  There was a disbelieving silence. Griffith recovered first. 'Tell him that a British frigate at this moment lies to seaward, and we have but to reach her — and tell him too, damn it, that his offer is handsomely accepted.'

  The hours passed in a fever of waiting. They had been warned that when the time came they were not to delay an instant: there could be no turning back. But they were safe where they were — when they broke for freedom anything might be waiting for them out there in the night.

  The lantern had sputtered and died from lack of oil, and they had only the shadows of men and terse orders to assure them that deliverance was at hand. They emerged from their refuge, stepping warily behind the unknown emissary, past shuttered and silent buildings, sinister by their very quiet.

  In the open, noises, of disorder and signs of a gathering tumult were much clearer on the night air, sounds that were both distant and near, chilling in their portent of chaos to come. They hurried along the claustrophobic streets in a tight group, this way and that, until they reached yet another of the small humped bridges.

  On the other side was a rich gondola, its varnished black sides glittering in the illumination of a single street-light. A pair of gondoliers stood tense and ready. The party tumbled in, and packed into the cabin, falling against each other in their haste. The gondoliers poled off, but not before Renzi, raising the slats of the cabin window to catch a last sight, noticed a figure detach itself from the shadows and a gloved hand lift in silent farewell.

  The motion of the craft was purposeful and steady, the men in the cabin having no difficulty in visualising its track along the narrow canals, then the straight course and lively movement of the open lagoon.

  The regular creak and thrust of the gondoliers ceased unexpectedly, leaving the gondola to an aimless bobbing. Renzi peered out. 'We're in the lagoon, more to the south, and off the Arsenale — I can see the entrance.' This would be where the xebec would break out, through the twin towers of the gate from the internal basin and through the channel to open waters — if the rising were successful.

  Few craft were abroad that could be seen in the rising moon, and a motionless gondola was a dangerous curiosity. It couldn't be helped: if attention was diverted to the water by some incident their fate would be sealed. This was the Carradini gondola and Lucrezia would have paid the gondoliers well for their night's work — but enough?

  Renzi checked the flint and steel he had been given. It was essential that they attract the attention of the xebec at the right time or they would be left behind in its desperate flight. It was time, but there was no sign of insurrection or riot in the brighdy lit dockyard.

  Lifting more of the slats, he scanned the lagoon. At night there was no reason to sail about, the wharves had no men to work cargo and no one to account for its movement. A couple of other gondolas, far off, moving at speed, and some anonymous low river-boats were all that were in sight.

  Then from round the northern point of Venice came a larger vessel, a lugger. It altered course directly towards them.

  'Trouble,' he muttered, and alerted the others. Their die was cast: there was no way they could make it back into the maze of canals before the lugger closed with them.

  'Somethin' happenin'.' Kydd had been watching the dockyard. Renzi snatched a look. They could not see into the basin, but he could have sworn that a gunflash briefly lit up the front of one of the buildings.
<
br />   The lugger came on purposefully. But there were men at the Arsenale entrance — and then the bows of a vessel emerged into the channel, indistinct and with no sail hoisted. Renzi hesitated; if this was not the xebec, their one chance . . . but he could just make out the three counter-raked masts of such a vessel — and not only that: there was musket firing.

  This was their salvation — if he got the light going. Kydd held the wooden tube close, the grainy fuse close to Renzi's flint. Renzi struck it once, twice. No fat spark leaped across. Again — this time a faint orange speck.

  The xebec won through to open water; it was under oars, but a triangular sail was jerking up from the deck. It angled over.

  'For Christ's sake!' The strangled oath had come from Griffith. The flint must have got wet, and there was nothing for it but to keep trying, hard, vicious hits. A bigger spark, but it missed the fuse. Renzi steadied and struck again. The spark leaped, and landed squarely on the fuse with an instant orange fizz. Kydd stepped out into the well of the gondola, and the light caught, a pretty golden shower.

  The xebec immediately lay over towards them, but the lugger would reach them well before it could. But then the lugger unexpectedly abandoned its pursuit and resumed its course along the foreshore of St Mark's.

  As the xebec slashed towards them, Kydd laughed. 'It thinks th' shebek is takin' us in!'

  It was the work of moments for the sailors to tumble over the low gunwale and on to the narrow deck, then turn to heave in Leith and his servant. The two gondoliers scrambled up, leaving their smart black gondola to drift away into the night. It was now clear how Lucrezia had secured their loyalty. The lump in Renzi's throat tightened.

  Instinctively they made their way aft, to the narrow poop where Bauducco stood searching for signals. 'Dobbi amo stare attenti alia catena’ he muttered.

  Renzi heard the warning, and told the others. 'It seems the lagoon entrance to the open sea is chained. If this is so, I fear we cannot break through it in this light vessel.'

  The dark hummock of land that was Rochetta loomed, and a pair of lanterns appeared on the shore. They danced up and down energetically — Bauducco whooped with joy.

  'The chain is evidently lowered for us,' Renzi murmured, and the xebec passed through to the darkness of the sea beyond.

  They were free.

  Chapter 5

  The noon rendezvous had been made, the passengers transferred and Bacchante's crew made whole again. Now the xebec was curving in a respectful swash under their lee as they set course for Gibraltar, a lieutenant and midshipman of the Royal Navy aboard this newest addition to King George's fleet.

  Kydd saw Renzi at the fore-shrouds, looking back at the wasp-like lines of the xebec, and wandered over. The last few days had been too intense, too contrasted, and he needed to make sense of them — but what was bedevilling Renzi, threatening the friendship of years? 'So it's all over f'r Venice?'

  'I believe so,' Renzi responded. His hand twisted the shroud. 'Venice is old, ancient, and now extinct as a military power. That is all.'

  The little frigate stumbled to a wave and recovered in a hiss of foam. Kydd grabbed at a rope and shot an exasperated look at Renzi. His stiff manner perplexed him: he had done nothing to cause it that he could think of, and it had been the same since Gibraltar. 'Nicholas, if there's anything I've done that troubles ye, then—'

  'No!' Renzi's fierce response was unsettling. 'No. Not you,' he went on, in a more controlled tone. 'At the least, not in the proximate cause.'

  'Then—'

  'I will tell you — as my friend. As my dear friend.'

  'Nicholas?' said Kydd, with a numbing premonition.

  'And as one who I know will honour my — position.' He composed himself. 'This, then, is the essence. You will know that my presence on the lower deck of a man-o'-war is by choice. It is the self-sentence I have assumed to relieve my conscience of a family sin. And you may believe that it has been hard for me, at times very hard — not the sea life, you understand, which has its attractions, but that which bears so dire on the spirit.'

  It had always been a given, an unspoken acceptance that Renzi would never allow his origins to prevail over his convictions, never let the harsh, sometimes crude way of life on the lower deck affect his fine mind and acute sensibilities.

  Renzi continued: 'I mean no derogation of the seamen I have met, no imputation of brutishness — in fact, since making their close acquaintance, these are men I own myself proud to know, to call friend. No, it is the absence of something that to me is proving an insupportable burden - the blessed benison of intellectual companionship.'

  His eyes lifted to Kydd's face. 'Those years ago, when we met for the first time, it was as if you were a gift from the gods to help me bear my private burden. Now, it seems, the exigencies of the service have taken this solace from me, and I spend my days at sea in isolation, in a bleakness of spirit, day in, day out. The fo'c'sle is not the place for a child of learning. In short, my dear friend, the five years of my exile reaches its end in December and I shall not be continuing this life beyond that point.'

  Wordless, Kydd stared at him. He had no idea that Renzi had valued their friendship on that plane; he had gone along with the Diderot and the Rousseau to experience pleasure at the display of fine logic and meticulous reasoning as well as for the evident pleasure it gave his friend. As Renzi's words penetrated, he became aware that he had gained so much himself by the friendship: his own mind had been opened to riches of the intellect, he had glimpsed life in polite society, and now it was over. He would become like so many fine old seamen he knew, the very best kind of deep-sea mariner, but rough-hewn, without the graces, inarticulate.

  His mind struggled to adjust. So much in his world would no longer be there, but Renzi's was a fine and noble mind and it had no place on the gundeck of a ship of war. 'Nicholas, you'll—'

  'It is quite resolved. It will be so.'

  'Then — then you'll go back to y' folks?' Kydd said, trying to hide his sinking spirits.

  Renzi paused. 'I suppose I will. That is the logical conclusion.' They both gazed out on the blue-green waters. 'You will always be welcome, dear fellow, should you be passing by.'

  'Aye. An' if y' wants t' see how the Kydd school is progressin' . . .

  * * *

  Their keel ploughed a white furrow through the empty cobalt blue of the Mediterranean. Renzi had become ever more agreeable, courteously debating as in the old days, delicately plucking a great truth from a morass of contradictions for Kydd's admiration. They mourned the passing of Venice, the chaos of war now engulfing the world, the irrelevance of the individual in the face of colossal hostile forces.

  All too soon they sighted the great Rock of Gibraltar rearing up ahead. Kydd would rejoin his ship there and face his fate: a shameful horsewhipping at the hands of a jealous husband. It all seemed so forlorn. His feelings were now a dying ember of what was before but he would see through what had to come as a man.

  Bacchante glided into Rosia Bay, striking her sails smardy and losing no time in sending her important guest ashore. Achilles was not at anchor, and Kydd learned that she was in Morocco, at Tetuan for watering.

  The mate-of-the-watch had little to do in harbour, and after Renzi had seen to the brief ceremony attending the captain going ashore, he reflected on what had come to pass. There was no doubt that he had made the right decision regarding his future: he had served his sentence fully and he could take satisfaction not only in this but in the fact that he had been not unsuccessful in his adopted profession. Yet the thought of returning to his inheritance, to the confining, predictable and socially circumscribed round, was a soul-deadening prospect after vast seascapes, far shores and the sensory richness of a sea life.

  He reviewed the years of friendship he had enjoyed. Not just the times of shared danger, but golden memories of a night watch under the stars far out in the Pacific, with a silver moonpath glittering. Or when he had mischievously taken a contrary stand on
some matter of philosophy simply to have Kydd find within himself "some sturdy rejoinder, some expression of his undeniable strength of character.

  He burned at the remembrance of the logical outworking of one line of philosophy that, but for Kydd, would have seen him end his days in the savagery of a South Sea island. Other instances came to mind, the totality of which led to an inevitable conclusion.

  In his core being, he must still be the tempestuous soul he always had been, and his carefully nurtured rationality was an insufficient control. He needed Kydd's strength, his straight thinking to keep him stable and — dare he say? — the regard that Kydd obviously had for him. Now it was no longer there, only a lowering bleakness.

  Then, breaking through his thoughts, he saw a figure slowly emerge on deck from the main hatchway. Rigged once more as a master's mate in breeches and full coat, Kydd's face was pale and his movements deliberate. He came aft to report, as was his duty.

  'Steppin' ashore, Nicholas.'

  'Er, I wish you well of—'

  'That's kind in ye,' Kydd replied. Both men knew there was nothing Renzi could do in a matter of honour: the kindest thing was to be absent when the inevitable final scene took place.

  'Then I'll be away,' Kydd said. He held his head high as he stepped over the bulwarks and down to the boat.

  It stroked lazily towards Ragged Staff steps; Kydd did not look back. Renzi watched until he was out of sight. A vindictive husband, who wanted to take a full measure of revenge, could make Kydd pay a terrible price for his foolishness.

  Kydd returned before the end of Renzi's duty watch. The warm dusk had also seen Achilles put back into Gibraltar. 'Nicholas, do ye have time?'

  Renzi's relief was already on deck so they went to the main-shrouds, out of earshot of the one or two on deck aft. Renzi looked keenly at Kydd.