Peter Wicked

by Broos Campbell

  He reached into his coat, but then he pulled his hand out again. “Just to satisfy your old pap’s curiosity, what do you propose to do out west? Sell whiskey to the Indians?”

  “Why not? Ain’t no worse than selling it to riverboat men and backwoods pukes.”

  “Indians killed your mother. Damn near done for you, too.”

  “Well, I guess I disremember it, as I was kinda young at the—”

  He swept his paw across and knocked me out of my chair. I waited till the stars cleared. He was standing over me with his hand out, but I pushed it aside and he stepped back and I got to my feet. I squared up the chair with the table and sat down again.

  “I ain’t gonna let you do that again.”

  He sat down. “I won’t.”

  He looked so small that I believed him. “You know I won’t raise a hand to you. But I ain’t gonna let you.”

  “You were cut out of her living flesh, Matthew. Don’t you never forget that.”

  “You weren’t there.” He didn’t say nothing to that, so I said, “I’ve heard all them stories. I was born with a full head of hair. I cussed her murderer with an Irish hex. All kinds of fool stories. But ain’t a one of ’em got a mention of you in it. Every time I asked about you, they just told me to tend to my own affairs. Well, if this ain’t my affair, I don’t know what is.”

  “What did Cyrus tell you?”

  I yanked my neck-cloth loose and unhooked the chain from around my neck. The dented pewter heart looked small and grimy in my hand. “He give me this.”

  He looked at me like I was hurting him. Or maybe I was just making him tired. “That’s an odd thing for one man to give another.”

  “You saying you never seen it afore?”

  He turned his head to one side, holding his yap shut tight like he was trying to avoid a dose.

  My hands trembled so, I couldn’t hardly spring the latch. But I got it at last. The lid popped open, and I held it so he could see the portrait inside. “There. My mother.”

  He took it from me. His hand was softer than I expected. So was the look on his face.

  “That’s her,” I said. “That’s her, ain’t it? Ain’t it?”

  He half smiled, shaking his head, his eyes closed. “That’s her. Course that’s her. Can’t you tell by looking?”

  “I can tell by looking I don’t take after you. Phillip looks like you. Geordie looked like you and her.”

  “Geordie’s dead. Let him be.”

  “He had the same mother as me. I just always guessed we had the same father, too. I ain’t no kin to you nor Phillip. Am I.”

  “I guess we done all right by you, Matthew. I might’ve done better, but another man might’ve done worse. And Phillip knows he don’t owe you, yet here you are in his house.”

  “He knows?”

  “Of course he knows.” He snapped the locket shut. “Tell me now, what did Cyrus say about her?”

  I dragged my mind back to last spring, when Gaswell had sent me into San Domingo. I remembered him sitting behind his big mahogany table, in his shirtsleeves and bare feet, telling me he’d seen a portrait of my mother in a locket that my father wore at Yorktown. And then later he gave me the same locket that the old man now had in his hand.

  “He said she was a great beauty, and you talked your head off about her at Yorktown. You never talked about her around me.”

  “I talked about her all I needed to. Go on.”

  “He said I had the same features as her. Same cheekbones. He said, ‘A woman like that, you keep next to your heart.’ And he said . . . He said she was Creole and I’d gotten a lick of the tarbrush from her. But the woman in the locket is white.”

  “Portraits lie. She was dark enough.” He said it like I had something to do with it.

  “All I know is stories. You tell me what happened.”

  “What happened is, I’m all the father you got.” He reached into his coat again and took out two letters and set them on the table. “Cyrus wrote me you might get a notion in your head. So I took the caution of calling in a few markers and otherwise annoying some old friends. I think it’d best be the last thing I do for you.”

  He put the locket in his pocket.

  If anyone had asked, I would’ve said the locket was the most valuable thing I owned. If anyone had asked, I’d have said I wouldn’t take house or fortune for it; it couldn’t be replaced. But he needed the past more than I did, and I was willing to trade.

  The letters were from the Secretary, on heavy paper and properly sealed with wax. One was addressed to a Lieutenant Graves, the other to a captain of the same name:

  Washington City

  Navy Department 13th August 1800

  Lieut. Matthew Graves

  Baltimore—

  Sir I am honored to inclose an acting order as lieutenant—You are entitled to your pay and emoluments from 15 June 1800 & Mr. Archibald Campbell Esqre the Navy agent at Baltimore upon shewing him this will pay you from that date—I assume you still to have your uniforms, &c.—

  Your obed Servt

  B STODDERT

  Reading the first one got my heart a-thumping, but as I read the one addressed to “Captain” Graves it like to hopped right out of my chest, even with the pro forma second paragraph:

  Sir It is the command of the President of the United States, that you repair at once to Norfolk, Virginia—there to assume command of the schooner Tomahawk, and then proceed to Cape Francois in St. Domingo & join the American Squadron on that Station, placing yourself under the command of the Commanding Officer of the Vessels of the United States—he is to acquaint you with your purpose—

  You are to use all your efforts to protect the American Commerce, to capture French armed Vessels, which are to be sent to the United States, and always with some of the persons found on board at the time of capture & to treat the vessels & people of all other Nations with civility & friendship—indeed French Vessels if not armed, are not to be molested—

  Wishing you great Success & Glory

  I have the honor to be Sir

  Your most obed Servt

  B STODDERT

  I was aware that the old man stood by the stairs for a time, looking at me as I read the sheets over and over; and then he went and got his bag and walked out the door. His footsteps faded away, and after a while Constance came and lit the lamp.

  NINE

  A pair of armed schooners swung to their anchors in Hampton Roads. One of them was tiny, probably no more than sixty feet long on deck and eighteen or twenty on the beam, and maybe of eighty tons burden. She had a stepped quarterdeck and wreaths around the arched quarter-galley windows on either side of her after-cabin, and was a quarter of a century old if she was a day. Even from the quay I could see remnants of blue paint and yellow trim through the black coat that had been slapped on her. I would’ve taken her for a trader, except the Stars and Stripes fluttered at her peak. “Supply ship,” I muttered. She even had a lumpy pile of something amidships under a tarpaulin.

  The schooner that rode alongside her, now—she was a beauty. The rake of her masts and the sharpness of her bow hinted at great speed, and she was pierced for sixteen guns. She was a senior lieutenant’s command, or maybe even a master commandant’s, but with orders from the president in my pocket—even at second hand, given by the Secretary rather than His Rotundancy himself, they were enough to swell my head and more—I say, with orders from the president in my pocket, I was willing to take on all comers.

  “Here, you,” I said as I stepped into the boat of one of the men that had been trying to catch my eye, “take me out to the Tomahawk.”

  “Aye aye, Cap.”

  He said it with a smirk, as a man well might who went home every evening to a soft bed and a warm wife, and never had to lay aloft on a stormy night. No doubt he was making more than the seventeen dollars a month I could offer him, too. I studied the big schooner’s lines as we approached, with all the desire I ever felt for anything I could not ha
ve. We rounded her stern and passed abaft the little schooner I’d taken for a transport. She was handsome enough, despite her age, and on her transom, picked out in gold over the five arched stern windows, was the name I knew in my heart would be there.

  “Tommyhawk,” said the boatman, nodding up at her. “Bein’t you a mite disappointed, there, Cap?”

  “Nothing wrong with her and plenty right. Why should I be disappointed?”

  He shifted his cud into his cheek and spat to leeward. “I were right disappointed when I saw what my missus looked like under her shift. But there be plenty of gals about, while you bein’t so free to take another.”

  “I am content. Lay us alongside.”

  A white-faced midshipman looked through the open rail in time to see us hook on. “Oh, Lordy,” he said, and ran to the hatchway. “Hey, there! Somebody’s coming aboard of us!”

  “I’ll thank you to quit your dern laughing,” I said to the boatman, who was not laughing, and swung myself aboard. The open rail only extended around the quarterdeck; from her mainmast forward she had just enough bulwark to trip over, though it rose a little as it ran around the fo’c’s’le. She carried a trio of three-pounders on either side. Just abaft of the foremast was a windlass, rather than a capstan. While I waited for the midshipman to collect himself and whoever he was squeaking at below decks, I glanced aloft. She had her topmasts up, and despite her small size they were crossed for square topsails, fore and main, which would help her before the wind.

  At last a gray-bearded petty officer in wide slop trousers and a faded blue jacket, a black bosun with a brand-new silver whistle on a lanyard around his neck, and a pair of foremast jacks turned out from below. The midshipman turned toward me with something like triumph on his face. He lifted his hat and held it over his head, the enlisted men doffed their hats and knuckled their foreheads, and the bosun, a big dark man who wore his hair in long, matted braids, lifted his hat with his left hand and fluttered the fingers of his right hand over his silver whistle as he piped me aboard.

  I took out and read aloud my letter from the Secretary that gave me the authority to command the schooner. Afterwards, I gaped around like a looby. I don’t know what I was expecting—shooting off thirteen guns for myself, maybe. Shit and perdition! Four men, a boy, and a two-masted jolly boat weren’t much of a command, but begad it was mine.

  “Welcome to the Tomahawk, sir,” said the midshipman as the wailing died away. “My name is Peebles. These here are the standing officers—I mean, the standing officer, Mr. Horne, the bosun. And the old fellow is Gundy, the quartermaster—”

  “Thank’ee, Mr. Peebles,” I said. “Mr. Horne and I are old shipmates.” I couldn’t help grinning at the bosun. “What brings you to this tub, Mr. Horne?”

  “An acting warrant as bosun, sir,” he said, shaking the hand I offered.

  “I guess you’ll have a proper warrant before the year’s out. We’re to rendezvous with the San Domingo squadron as soon as we can. Are her stores in her yet?”

  “Aye, sir. Bread, water, beer, salt junk, peas and beans, guns and small arms, powder, shot—we just finished stowing the last of it.”

  I looked at the two jacks. “The five of you did all that?”

  Horne smiled. “I had a few favors owed me by the along-shore men, sir.”

  I nodded. A good warrant officer was a fiefdom unto himself, and it didn’t do to pry. I held out my hand to the gray-bearded quartermaster. “Gundy, is it?”

  “Iss, zur.”

  “That’s quite an accent you got there. West Country?”

  He gave me a gap-toothed grin. “Us call ’un the wet country, zur, as rains zo much.”

  “Where abouts? Bristol? Cornwall?”

  “Blaamed if I know, zur. My vaather was a gadabout.” He indicated the blue-eyed, yellow-haired seaman; chubby as a Dutchman, but tough-looking for all that. “Eriksson, a Svensker.” He pointed at the little dark-haired one. “And the go-by-the-ground—O’Lynn, an Irishman. Both can ’an’, reef, and steer, zur, and come rated able.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you men.” They made agreeable noises, strongly flavored with their own accents, and I glanced around the deck. Right aft was the tiller; forward of that was the binnacle, where the compass and other navigation equipment would be kept, with a low door in the forward part of it that I expected was the top of the companionway to the after-cabin—my cabin, I thought with a surge of pleasure. At the fore part of the quarterdeck was a pair of three-pounders with their noses poking through the rail, a pair of pump shafts side by side near the midline, and the mainmast, which had a good deal of rake to it; forward of all was a small hatchway. Then came the open waist with another pair of three-pounders on either side, the main hatchway, the windlass, the foremast, a tiny fo’c’s’le, a short chimney right forward, and the head. That was about it, except for whatever it was that lurked beneath the tarpaulin.

  “Mr. Peebles, what’s under here?”

  He beamed like a parson at Easter dinner. “It’s our stinger, sir! Here, Mr. Horne, help me unveil her.”

  They tugged off the canvas, revealing a squat iron gun. It was mounted on a slide instead of a carriage. A little wheel under the after part of the slide would allow it to traverse from side to side.

  “Twelve-pounder carronade, sir,” said Peebles. “This little beauty gives us twenty-one pounds of metal on both sides. We could take on an eighteen-pounder gunboat, sir!”

  I could dismiss that last part out of hand. Our carronade’s effective range was only about two hundred and thirty yards, while an eighteen-pounder long gun could throw a five-inch ball more than a mile. I hated to think of what would happen to the schooner in the time it would take her to make up the distance. Worse, the carronade wasn’t much more than two foot long. The damned thing was like to fling flaming wads into our own rigging when firing to windward, and maybe right into the belly of the forecourse when firing to leeward. The tarred lines and sun-bleached sails would go up like a candle. Still, I mused, a carronade was fast to load; with the foresail brailed up and fire buckets ready to hand, we might could play merry hell alongside anything close to our size.

  “Gundy, replace that tarpaulin. Mr. Peebles, show me my cabin.”

  The after-cabin was near about palatial, even when Horne and Peebles followed me in. There was a good six feet of headroom between the beams, which was eight inches more than I needed; and the deck was about eight feet long by twelve wide. No doubt it looked bigger than it was because there was nary a stick of furniture in it, except for the long, padded locker built under the stern windows. Beneath the deck was a storage place. I lifted the hatch and looked at several kegs of liquor and a barrel of apples, the kind of stuff that the people would get into if no one was looking, along with a barrel of potatoes and several jute sacks of turnips and parsnips. The turnips they could have and welcome to ’em, but the other goods would come in handy.

  “The powder and shot are forward—” Peebles caught himself with a quick glance at Horne. “I mean, forrard with the . . .” He glanced at Horne again, who touched himself on the breast. “With the bosun’s stores, sir.”

  “There’ll be no smoking below decks, then,” I said. “Any man who violates that order will get his pipe broken and a dozen at the hatch grating.”

  Horne give me a look when I said it, but I guessed he knew me well enough to know I’d just said it for effect. Gundy, O’Lynn, and Eriksson might be out of eyeshot, but they could hear; word traveled fast in a vessel as small as the Tomahawk. It would be law in the fo’c’s’le soon enough without my having to do anything more about it.

  Forward, under the ladder, was a cubby with a small table and a store of charts. To larboard was a small sleeping cabin for the mate, which was Peebles, and a larger one to starboard for the captain—“Which is me,” I thought with a jolt. My sleeping space had a privy; there was a corresponding one on the larboard side for Peebles and the warrant and petty officers, in the after deck’s forwar
d-most cabin, where Horne and Gundy had slung their hammocks. Their cabin was barely six feet long and was divided down the middle by the pump shafts, but it was sited right about where the schooner reached her full width of beam, giving them a good eighteen feet athwartships. There were lieutenants in frigates who didn’t have as much room. A table on the larboard side showed that the cabin was also the gunroom. If we had a carpenter aboard, he’d probably have built collapsible bulkheads already, and shelves and cupboards, too.

  “Show me where the men sleep.”

  From the gunroom we climbed a ladder that ran up the forward side of the mainmast, through the small hatch at the fore part of the quarterdeck, and stepped down into the waist and over to the main hatch. Peering down into it revealed an open hold, filled in its lower parts with barrels and bags and sail lockers and the cable tier. Eriksson and O’Lynn had plenty of room for now, but it would get crowded soon enough with a couple dozen others in there. Full complement would be about thirty all told.

  I thought of the chimney I’d seen up in the bows. “Is there a galley, Mr. Peebles?”

  “Yes, sir. Right forward under the forecastle. I mean, right forrard under the fo’c’s’le.” He repeated the words to himself in a whisper, like he wasn’t entirely convinced yet that people actually talked like that.

  The galley ran the width of the bows and had a sink as well as a brick and iron stove, but there was barely four feet of headroom in there, and the hawse boxes for the anchor cables ran through it from the deck to the hawseholes, and the foremast stood right spang in the middle of all. I could feel the heat rising through the hatch already. It would be a fair bit of hell in there once we reached the tropics.

  I turned around and ran my eye along the length of the schooner, and on up her masts, and then down again toward our three enlisted men chatting away by the starboard three-pounders. “Very good, Mr. Peebles. Was there any letters for me?”

  His face went paler and he ducked his head. “Yes, sir. In my cabin, sir.”

  “Well, God rot your fucking eyes, Mr. Peebles! Go fetch ’em this instant!”