Absolute Honour

by C. C. Humphreys

  Jack laughed. ‘Not too old to be swimming in the Atlantic in April, though?’

  ‘Ah, well!’ Red Hugh laughed, too. ‘That’s different. If danger goes, folly with the ladies is the one thing age does not seem to alter.’ He turned to Jack, his blue eyes sparkling. ‘As I am sure you will continue to discover.’

  Jack, in an effort not to appear a completely dull dog, had told a few tales of his own; especially of Fanny Harper, the courtesan who’d undertaken aspects of his ‘education’ not covered by the curriculum at Westminster School. The Irishman’s jest made him think on her, wonder again what had become of her.

  The last time he’d seen Fanny she’d been standing near naked and shamed in the Rotunda Pleasure Gardens, at Vauxhall, moments before the man who’d kept her, Lord Melbury, was shot to death by Jack’s father in a duel. The consequences of that night had led him … here, he supposed, to the deck of the Sweet Eliza by way of war, slavery and a Quaker widow’s flannel sheets. He hoped that Fanny had survived her disgrace, her charms leading her to another rich man’s bed. It was how she lived, after all.

  This sudden memory – both of her and the mayhem caused by the discovery of their affair – now made him sigh. ‘I regret to say you may be in the right.’

  Red Hugh dropped a hand onto Jack’s shoulder. ‘Nun-quam paenitet, lad. Never regret. Isn’t it the motto of the family McClune?’ His fingers suddenly dug in. ‘You know, I seem to recall there’s another point somewhere … in here.’

  Jack shrugged from the grip, catching the Irishman’s hand, twisting it back. He knew a few tricks of his own from his upbringing in Cornwall. They wrestled, hands slipping and gripping, seeking dominance, both laughing, until they heard a footfall and pulled apart to see who came.

  It was the boatswain, McRae. A Scot, Jack had parted with an outrageous two ermine skins to the fellow for a set of sailor’s clothes when it became clear that the two changes he’d allowed for the voyage would be insufficient, especially in the storms when nothing dried. So, like Jack, he was dressed in canvas trowsers – infinitely preferable with their drawstring to wool breeches, especially in the Heads when the ship was bucking and plunging and buttons annoyed – a bum-freezer jacket and check shirt. They were both London pigeons to Red Hugh’s peacock. Somehow, the Irishman, even in the worst of the weather, always contrived to have dry, clean clothes which, moreover, would not have been unfashionable at St James’s Palace. The dark-green waistcoat and burgundy coat he sported now caused Jack especial envy.

  McRae put knuckles to forehead, a sailor’s salute. ‘Mr McClune, we’ve pipes lit and a jug in the fo’castle, if you care to join us.’

  ‘Does Murphy play? Or is he too drunk?’

  The sailor nodded. ‘He’s had just enough to make his bow fly, and not enough to bring it crashing to the earth. Yet.’

  ‘Then I will join you with pleasure before it does. For he’s a demon with the fiddle.’ The sailor headed for’ard while Red Hugh turned to Jack. ‘So, my lad, I’ll to my countryman and you to your rest. Unless …’ He called up the deck, ‘McRae, can my young friend not join us this night?’

  Jack saw the sailor’s cheery face cloud, knew what that was. McRae, indeed all of the ship’s company, had seen the Dragoon uniform he first wore aboard, knew him for an officer and a guest at the Captain’s table. They could not see beyond the scarlet and braid, which Jack had only worn for less than two years, to the young man who’d drunk and sung in half the low taverns of London. They saw a baronet’s son and a lieutenant. Aboard even a merchant ship that rank divided.

  ‘It is fine, Hugh. I’ll to my hammock.’

  ‘Nonsense. The night is just beginning and you must hear Murphy play while he’s still sober.’ He took Jack’s arm, led him to the waiting McRae. ‘I’ll vouch for him.’

  The frown did not leave the face. ‘Aye, sir.’

  The whole larboard watch – Larbollians, as they were known – were crammed into the hold and all cheered when Red Hugh stooped through the low doorway. The cheer faded when Jack followed. Most men looked down, some stared challengingly.

  His guide did not hesitate. Seizing Jack’s arm, he thrust the younger man forward. ‘Now, lads. I know what you think you see here. An officer in King George’s Army, a gentleman. And maybe he is, maybe he is. But I tell you, mere appearances can deceive.’ He stooped and grabbed a bulky seaman from his squat, yanking him up as if he were gossamer. Each of his knuckles bore a letter, the left hand spelling ‘Hold’ the right ‘Fast’, a reminder when high up in the rigging. As Red Hugh rolled back the man’s shirt sleeve, he revealed more black stains – a ship, a swallow, an anchor. They were all, Jack noticed, rather well done. ‘You, Williams. You think you’ve a fine collection there, do you not?’

  ‘I ’ave.’ The Welshman thrust his chin out. ‘Best on the ship.’

  ‘Better than these?’ Before he could stop him, Red Hugh had leaned forward and wrenched Jack’s shirt open. Any protest he might have made was cut off by the approving gasp of the sailors as they saw the wolf’s jaws on his chest, the wreath of oak leaves around his shoulder that Ate had rendered so beautifully – and painfully! – in their cave the winter before.

  ‘Executed by a painted savage, no less!’ the Irishman declared. ‘And without the benefit of your fine needles.’

  Williams peered close. ‘Not bad,’ he grunted. ‘Seen better.’

  Red Hugh was not the only one who jeered. Pushing him back down, the Irishman pointed to another sailor. ‘Ingvarsson, you lump of fjord filth. How many men is it you claim to have killed?’

  The man had no eyebrows on a forehead that sloped into his eyes, and a scar that split his nose and ran to each ear. ‘Claim? It is five, by God. Five! And I could do six with pleasure,’ he growled.

  The others hooted. Then Red Hugh spoke, quietly now. ‘Well, ’tis obvious none of you have heard the tale – nay, the legend – of Black Jack, saviour of Canada.’

  Jack looked about him, wondering of whom these words were spoken. When he realized, he flushed pink, but no one noticed for all eyes were on Red Hugh. It was obvious that here, as at the Captain’s table, the Irishman could hold an audience.

  ‘Yer man, the Viking here, claims five souls despatched, one for each decade of his life. But I have to tell you that Black Jack …’ he paused and they waited, eager, ‘has four more scalps to his name, so he has. That’s nine for those who can’t count – and him scarce eighteen years of age. Nine! Dead at his hand, and not stabbed with a shive down a back alley nor shot genteelly and safely with a pistol firing over the red ranks. Killed face to face, man to man, with tomahawk and sword and his own strong hands. Frenchies and wild savages in equal numbers.’

  Jack was not sure whether to look modest or appalled at the revelation of what he’d told Red Hugh in private. He was not proud of the tally. In each case, they’d been necessary, that was all. And they were just the ones he could remember.

  The men had no such doubts. A cheer came which Red Hugh rode, calling out over it, ‘And to top it all, his mother was Jane Fitzsimmons, the nightingale of the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. By Christ, lads, he’s halfway to being an Irishman!’

  The cheering by now had become almost universal. Stooping again, Red Hugh grabbed the mug offered, Guinea rum spilling over its lip, then cried, ‘I give you that scourge of French manhood, that bed-warmer for their ladies, the newest member of the Fo’castle Club of the Sweet Eliza – Black Jack Absolute!’

  ‘Black Jack!’ came the cry, followed immediately by shouts of, ‘Pledge, pledge, pledge!’ A mug was thrust at Jack, and he seized it, slopping some of its contents down his shirt, raising it before him. He was still feeling a little nauseous from Red Hugh’s grip on deck but hesitation here would spell an end to a society he desperately wanted to enter. He knew what to do. ‘My lords,’ he cried, ‘a pox on all Puritans and a rope for all politicians.’

  ‘Huzzah!’ was the response.

  It seemed to take an in
ordinately long time to reach the bottom of the pewter but when he did he felt instantly better. Even more so when he’d sat rather suddenly down and Murphy began to play.

  McRae had been right about the fiddler. There’d been a glorious hour when the balance between rum swallowed and fine notes produced had been just right; a further half-hour when voices drowned out the faulty notes. Then he’d attempted some sad lament that only he seemed to know. On one especially long and tortured note, with the man’s nose almost touching his knee, another sailor stepped forward and grabbed bow and fiddle just before Murphy sank soundless to the deck.

  The silence only lasted a moment. There were boys as well as men in the room and one of these youths now stood up. With hands behind his back, and in a sweet voice not yet broken, he began to sing, ‘Lochaber, No More’.

  Of those still awake, more than half joined in the chorus of the old Jacobite song and Jack, with his eyes tight closed, was one of them. For the time of the singing he was no longer aboard the Sweet Eliza but back with his friends at Westminster, in a private room at the Five Chimneys on Tothill Fields where, three June 10ths in a row, each scholar sported a white rose to show their allegiance on the Old Pretender’s birthday:

  I gae then, my lass, to win honour and fame

  And if I should chance to come gloriously home

  I’ll bring a heart to thee with love running o’er

  And then I’ll leave thee and Lochaber no more.

  The chorus ended and Jack opened his eyes to find Red Hugh staring at him. The Irishman’s voice was soft, audible only to Jack, the song continuing beyond it.

  ‘Are those tears, lad?’

  Jack rubbed, laughed. ‘Possibly. It’s smoky down here, is it not?’

  Red Hugh regarded him for a moment. ‘Are you not, then, a follower of the Lost King?’

  Jack thought for a moment then shook his head. Any following he’d done had been merely a schoolboy attraction to the romance of a doomed cause. ‘In truth, I am not. Though I grew up in a house where my father is a Tory of the old school who damned the Hanoverians even while he fought for them in all their wars.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘I think my mother saw Ireland’s liberty in the Old King’s cause, at least for a while. But her beliefs have become more … extreme of late.’ He chuckled. ‘Indeed, I think she has moved beyond all kings.’

  The man before him nodded and gazed away to the singer, but not before Jack noticed something dark come into his regard.

  ‘And you?’ Jack asked. ‘Have you worn the oak leaf of the Stuarts yourself?’

  Red Hugh looked back. Whatever had fleeted in his eyes was gone. He smiled. ‘Aye, lad. I was out in the forty-five.’

  ‘You fought—’

  ‘I did. Stood under English grapeshot on that damn moor. Shed my own blood and the blood of others. Many others, may God have mercy upon me.’

  Jack thought back to the two battles he’d fought the previous year, both before the walls of Quebec. ‘I knew a Scotsman who was also at Culloden. A fine man. Donald Macdonald of—’

  ‘Of the Royal Ecossais! I know him well, heard he’d taken the Hanoverian shilling as I had taken the Austrian.’ He paused. ‘Knew, you said?’

  Jack nodded. ‘He died at the second battle of Quebec.’

  The Irishman sighed. ‘Another who’ll come no more. Like the Bonnie Prince.’

  ‘His cause is finished, then?’

  ‘With Charles Stuart a drunk in Germany, a wife-beater, a madman taken to the Anglican communion to gain support?’ He snorted his disgust. ‘Aye, most think that cause is through, to be sure.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Red Hugh shook his head. ‘I used to be a Jacobite, lad. Used to be. No more. And, sure, am I not about only me own business now?’ He turned to the boy who had just finished his performance. ‘But I do love the songs still. So sing, young Conor, sing us that one again.’

  The boy, delighted to have an audience still awake, did as he was bid. Red Hugh reached for two rum mugs, handed one to Jack, then raised him up and led him by the arm across to a butt that held rainwater. ‘The songs and the toasts. Shall we have an old one?’ He turned back, kicked out at some dozers at his feet who grumbled awake. ‘Here’s one, lads: to the King across the water!’

  As he spoke, he moved his mug over the bucket. Jack nearly did the same. In the shelter of certain Jacobite taverns in Whitechapel and Shadwell, sought out with his friends for the illicit thrill of them, he often had done the same. Yet that was before he’d joined the Army, before he’d sworn an officer’s oath to King George, to England. So he just raised his mug straight up and, when the Irishman turned back to him, said, ‘I’ll drink to this, sir: to friendship and Red Hugh McClune.’

  That something, that darkness was there again, there and gone. Light and good humour ruled his face once more. ‘And I’ll drink to you, Jack Absolute. To you!’

  – THREE –

  Privateer

  He woke where he’d fallen asleep, alone in the forecastle hold, his arm around Jeremiah. The goat was chewing his shirt-tail. Yet it was not that movement but the ship’s that caused him to jerk his head up. His yelp at the pain disturbed the ruminant, who bleated and shambled off. No, he realized, not movement. A lack of it.

  The Sweet Eliza appeared to have come to a dead stop.

  He stood and swayed, not only from the effects of motion on his head. The cabin’s floor seemed to be angled more acutely than ever. He knew, because the Captain swore about it continuously, that the ship was more prone to heel than most. It seemed that the constant trimming required had been somewhat neglected. Unless …

  Jack suddenly thought of the other reason they could have stopped. They’d made port. While he slept, the wind had freshened and driven them into some haven.

  Two grazed shins and a banged head later – the gun deck through which he tripped had no guns but was stuffed with goods in barrels and bails – he climbed the steep stair eagerly toward the light. And such light! The sun sliced into him, heating what was already hot. He closed his eyes, using his hands to feel the last few steps up. When he reached the quarterdeck, the combined effects of motion, sudden light and vicious heat had their effect. He staggered right, even though it seemed uphill, and vomited over the rail. Only then did he see that they had reached no port, that the sea still stretched away to the horizon and that it was as flat as the duck ponds in Hyde Park. He looked up. Such sails as were on the yards hung limp. Finally, he looked across to the larboard rail where, it appeared, the entire ship’s company stood, no doubt adding to the degree of heel. All had their backs to him, their attention, fortunately, on something else. Hoping perhaps that land lay thither, and recognizing the exquisite linen of one particular shirt, Jack made his way over.

  ‘What is it?’ he said, sliding between the Irishman and the purser. Both of them had telescopes raised, along with half a dozen others. ‘What do you all—’

  ‘Hush!’ Red Hugh lifted a finger to his lips, then pointed.

  At first Jack could see nothing, such was the glare of sun behind him on the water. Squinting, eventually he saw what everyone was staring at.

  It was another ship. Having no clue as to its size, he was uncertain how far away it was. Far enough so he could distinguish no person upon its decks; not so far that he could not tell that its sails, like those above him, also hung slack on the yards.

  Despite the heat, Jack suddenly flushed cool, the pain inside his head forgotten. ‘Which colours does she fly?’ he whispered.

  ‘It is the question we’d all like answered,’ came the soft reply.

  Jack stared harder. There was a piece of cloth on the ship’s stern that may have been a flag, but without wind to unfurl it, there was nothing to expel the sudden fear now knotting his stomach as the residue of rum had knotted it. All knew that French privateers cruised the sea lanes awaiting such lone vessels as the Sweet Eliza. There was a good chance, of course, that it was an E
nglish privateer or indeed a ship from a host of other neutral countries. There was a smaller chance that it owed allegiance to no country at all and flew under whatever colour it chose. Black, often, the universal sign of the pirate.

  Jack swallowed, looked about him at the silent, staring men. ‘Why is no one doing anything?’

  ‘And what would you have them do?’ There was irritation in Red Hugh’s reply. ‘You may have noticed that there’s no wind.’

  Jack looked again at the limp cloths above him. ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘It died, dear joy, it died.’

  Jack rubbed his eyes, looked again. It had to be a trick of light on water. Or maybe his eyes were just getting more used to the glare. But the other ship’s details appeared a touch clearer.

  ‘They’re not making way, are they?’

  ‘They are.’

  That cold flush came again. ‘But how?’ he said, suddenly annoyed. ‘How can they be? If the wind’s dead for us, it must be dead for them, too!’

  For reply, Red Hugh handed over his telescope. Jack looked to the prow of the ship, searched, didn’t see it to start with. Then he detected movement. Oars were moving in the flat water. Not from one boat either. There were three, pulling the ship ever so slowly towards them.

  From the side of his mouth, Jack whispered, ‘Why are we not doing the same?’

  ‘For we have but the one jolly boat. It tells you something of the size of their crew,’ Red Hugh replied, taking back his telescope.

  ‘Have you made her yet, Engledue?’ Link called down the line.

  All looked to the oldest man there. Red Hugh had told Jack that the Lieutenant was the most experienced man on the ship, more so even than his Captain; had served thirty years, mainly in the Royal Navy, his hair turning white under shrouds across the world. Apparently, he’d long since quit the sea but penury and a taste for rum had driven him back upon it. He lowered his telescope now, pinched his nose between his closed eyes, sighed.