“Aye, but we ’ave Kestrel. They don’t.”
“Nor will they.” Brendan picked up his speaking trumpet. The metal was cold against his lips. “Hands to the sheets! Topmen aloft! Shake out the t’gallant and up with jib fores’l! Lively now, laddies!”
Whooping and hollering, men flew to halyards and sheets. Grommets rattled, canvas thundered, swayed, and rose. Kestrel quivered in eagerness, swinging her bowsprit around, her sleek sides following. Beneath her the sea whispered and began to cream as she heeled over and found speed. Wallowing clumsily, Proud Mistress followed suit, her crew scampering up the shrouds to set her topsails. Brendan pulled out his spyglass and trained it on her quarterdeck. Sure enough, there was Matt, his red hair standing out in all directions beneath his floppy hat, his coat half-unbuttoned, his canvas breeches ragged and stained. He looked up, caught sight of Brendan, and touched his temple in a disgusted salute.
“Bet Ashton’s steamin’ about us seein’ the prizes first!” Liam cried, rubbing his giant hands together in glee, for prize sighting had become a friendly contest between the two captains.
Brendan adjusted his sketchbook over his arm. “Think so?”
“Don’t you?”
“Well, I should think he’s steaming more over the fact that Kestrel’s showing her heels to that ridiculously caked-up figurehead of his.” He tipped his head back and yelled, “Mr. Starr! Come on down and prepare your gun for battle! We’ll be upon them by eight bells!”
“Aye, Cap’n!”
High above, the topgallant snapped to attention, swelled mightily, and strained against its yards. Kestrel lifted her nose and pulled herself up in the water, higher and higher and higher. Beneath her sharp bows, the sea began to roar and fall away in great snowy blankets of white.
Brendan grinned.
“Tack on studding sails!”
Spray was driving over the rail now, freezing on shrouds and deck alike.
One of the Newburyporters muttered, “Jesus! There ain’t even any wind and she’s movin’ like the hounds of hell are on her tail!”
“Aye, and I’d like to know how the blazes she’s doing it! Gawd, we must be makin’ six knots!”
“Seven when those studders go on!”
“But there ain’t no wind!”
But Brendan, staring forward, paid no heed to the reverent looks the Newburyporters were throwing his way. The cutter was now speared on Kestrel’s bowsprit, the two merchantmen fleeing like sheep. . . .
And then the studding sails were on. Like the swift raptor she was, Kestrel folded her wings, dove through the mists, and swooped in for the kill.
###
A bucket of sand by her leg and a slow match in her hand, Mira stood beside Freedom, her heart racing, her mouth dry, and her chest tight with that strange, nervous anticipation she always felt before battle. Just aft, Brendan clung to the shrouds, looking resplendent and handsome in his fine blue coat with its rows of gold buttons. His waistcoat was as red as a cardinal’s breast, his boots gleamed in the gray light, and his tricorne was perched jauntily atop his chestnut curls. From his wrist dangled his speaking trumpet, which he was swinging with uncontained excitement—and in his hand was his sketchbook.
She forced herself to look away.
The wind had backed, and Kestrel, close-hauled, was catching it over her starboard bows. Her lofty bowsprit rose up, down, up, down, in perfect rhythm, each downward plunge smashing the waves and sending big, hissing blankets of snowy foam out and away from either beam. The cutter, a Royal Mail packet with one tall mast stepped well forward, was dead ahead now. Sporting a straight-running bowsprit and carrying a cloud of sail, she would be a fast sailer and armed to the teeth. She would also be carrying the king’s messages and cash, probably to the British troops in New York. Mira imagined the guffaws from her decks at the audacity of the Yankee schooner sweeping down on them out of the fog.
Soon they wouldn’t be laughing.
“Mr. Wilbur! Ease the fore and main and prepare to tack!”
Nope, they wouldn’t be laughing at all. She smiled smugly and blew on her slow match, her eyes still on the cutter.
“Sheet in fore stays’l, fore and main!”
“Stand by the heads’ls!”
“Cast off the preventer on the fore!”
“Hard alee!” Brendan’s pencil was flying over the page. “And let fly!” The schooner paced herself, gathered her wings, and swung her bows neatly through the wind. The great boom of the mainsail passed over their heads. Sails filled on the opposite tack, and the deck heeled over.
“Pass jib and foresail!”
“Close haul for larboard tack!”
Up until that last moment, the cutter never expected the schooner to attack. Surprise was with them, and taking full advantage of it, Brendan sent Kestrel swooping around the cutter’s stern, and a broadside slamming through her windows that cut down everything in its path. Before Kestrel was even to windward of her, the cutter had lost her topmast, and with it, a good deal of her speed and agility.
Brendan wasted no time. “Run out your guns, laddies! Again!”
Cupping the match with her hand, Mira lowered it to Freedom’s vent and quickly stepped aside. A puff of flame, a thunderous roar, and the cannon flung itself inboard against the breeching, its sharp bark lost beneath the angry, sporadic roar of the cutter’s guns, which, in her crew’s confusion, seemed to be hitting everything but her target. Or perhaps it was just that Kestrel was blessed with an Irishman’s luck, for she moved like a dancer, teasing and flirtatious in one moment, flitting away on her heel the next.
And now Brendan was sending her right across the cutter’s bows.
A voice, sharp with indignation and rage, roared out from her deck, sounding tinny and artificial through a speaking trumpet. “Damn you for an impudent dog! This is a king’s ship! How dare you fire on us? Show your colors or I’ll sink you where you stand!”
Brendan leaned out from the shrouds that supported Kestrel’s foremast, lifted his own speaking trumpet to his lips, and called back, “I invite you to try it!”
Those who had telescopes to their eyes saw the British commander go an angry red beneath his carefully powdered hair. “By God, what ship are you?!” he demanded.
For answer, Kestrel ran her huge, thirteen-striped flag up the halyard and poured a broadside of chain shot into the cutter’s rigging. The crew sent up a mighty cheer.
“Take that, ye bloody bunch o’ British buggers!”
“Damn ye and yer prig-faced king!”
“Get a real ship! Ha, ha, ha!”
“Huzzah f’r Kestrel! Huzzah f’r Kestrel!”
Their raucous voices drowned out the sounds of cracking wood as the cutter’s mast teetered and came down in a hopeless tangle of cordage and spars.
“Think he knows who we are now, Cap’n?”
“Aye, Liam, I think that gave him a good idea.”
“But he ’asn’t struck t’ us yet!”
“Nor do I expect him to. That’s young Oliver Heathmore who commands her.”
Brendan would know, of course, Liam thought. He remembered his acquaintances from his Royal Navy days well. “Not young Oliver Heathmore!” he said, jaw agape.
Brendan grinned. “An ambitious young pup if ever there was one. Oh well, we shall try not to do him too grave an injury. I want his dispatches and his money, not his ship.”
“She’d make a nice prize, though.”
“Not when Mr. Starr finishes with her!”
The little gunner and his team were already swabbing out Freedom’s bore with a wet sheepskin sponge attached to a flexible rammer. Seconds later, both charge and shot were rammed home and the gun run swiftly out on a squeal of tackle.
“As you bear!” Brendan called to each gun crew.
Handspikes flashed, and Kestrel, now running down the cutter’s beam and circling her stern, took dead aim on her. The wind took her, leaning her over. Farther.
And farther.
>
“Fire!”
The cutter disappeared in a wreath of smoke.
“Captain Heathmore! I invite you to strike while you’re still afloat!” Brendan called, hanging out from the shrouds by his elbow, the sea sweeping beneath his feet. “If you do not, I shall sink you where you stand!”
The Briton’s voice came madly through the trumpet. “Damn you to hell for this, you blasted rebel! I’ll see you pay, so help me God!”
Brendan turned to Liam, his expression full of mock hurt. “Did you hear that? He called me a blasted rebel! Why, to think he doesn’t even recognize me!”
“If ’e did, he’d strike fer sure,” Liam joked.
Gunfire was echoing across the water now as somewhere off to starboard, Proud Mistress engaged the other ship, a two-masted snow. Coughing and choking on the smoke, Mira strained her ears for her captain’s next order. The smoke began to clear, and she anxiously peered through it, seized by a momentary panic that he’d been hit by the sporadic fire coming from the cutter.
And then she saw him.
He was still clinging to the shrouds, his speaking trumpet dangling from his wrist, his drawing pad balanced on his arm. He was sketching wildly.
The man was insane.
At that moment he looked up. “Don’t just stand there, Mr. Starr!”
She didn’t—and the last shot did it. Dismasted and listing badly, the cutter was all but dead in the water. On her deck, her young commander squinted through the acrid haze and saw a handsome brig rounding up the two merchantmen who’d fallen in with him the day before, as well as the defeated snow. And then the smoke cleared, drifting away with the mists.
Captain Oliver Heathmore and his crew caught a collective breath.
There stood the schooner.
She was like nothing they’d ever seen. Graceful but deadly. Beautifully deadly, like a sultry woman who knows her own power and wields it with ruthless purpose. She wore her sails like a queen would her robes. Her two masts were sharply raked, as though swept backward by the pass of a giant hand. Her bows were keener than a butcher’s knife, her bowsprit lean and long and haughty, her profile so low in the water, she seemed to be born of it, rather than to it.
Heathmore looked at the sea reflecting along her trim black sides, the giltwork picked out in red and gold at her stern.
Kestrel, he read. And beneath that, Newburyport.
And then he looked up and saw a tall figure, immaculate in the blue coat of an American privateer, standing near the helm. He was holding up a book of some sort, his speaking trumpet hung from his wrist, and he was grinning.
Bringing his telescope to his eye for a better view, Captain Oliver Heathmore peered at that book and saw that it was a drawing of a sea fight—and not just any sea fight, but the one he’d just lost.
The man raised the speaking trumpet to his lips. “Well, what d’you think, Ollie? Do you like it?”
And then Heathmore recognized the mirthful eyes beneath the jaunty tricorne of the American.
There was no mistaking that weightless grin, the Irish cadences in that lilting voice.
“The devil take me,” he swore silently.
The devil had.
Chapter 20
Marine News
On Sunday last, the privateers Proud Mistress and Kestrel, Captains Ashton and Merrick, of this port, returned from a very successful cruise against the Enemy after sailing together in consort in the vicinity of Sandy Hook.
From a reliable source we learn that the schooner Kestrel, Merrick commanding, ran down and overtook the fast-sailing Royal Mail packet Sussex, bound from London to New York and carrying specie and dispatches to the Enemy which is stationed there. In company with said packet were two merchantmen, the one carrying sugar, cotton, molasses, and some coffee, the other laden with 1,000 muskets and bayonets, 12 tons of musket shot, 100 rounds of grape shot, and several barrels of powder, all destined for His Majesty’s forces, and a snow carrying 12 guns and 10 swivels, which Ashton engaged, the firing, by all accounts, lasting less than an hour. While the Royal Navy packet certainly gave a good account of herself before striking her colours to the schooner, her master hauling them down with his own hand, we have been told that the damage she incurred was so grave that Captains Merrick and Ashton deemed her unfit for sea and were thus forced to sink her. To all accounts, Captains Merrick and Ashton conducted themselves in a commendable, daring, but gentlemanly manner with the merchantmen, the latter even returning the private money and belongings of a lady passenger who was aboard one of the merchantmen.
Ephraim Ashton cackled to himself and put down the newspaper. He’d read the account eight times; certainly enough to memorize it by now—which, of course, he’d done. From across the breakfast table Eveleen Merrick watched him, but so caught up was he in his private gloating, he was totally unaware of her perusal. Shoving a one-eyed tabby cat off his lap, Ephraim continued reading, his bushy eyebrows curling out over his nose.
With their three prizes in tow, Captains Merrick and Ashton, while in the latitude of the shoals of Nantucket, but many miles to eastward of them, spied a large British vessel having the appearance of a merchantman, and made towards her; but to their astonishment found her to be a frigate disguised. A light breeze prevailing, Captains Merrick and Ashton hauled off in different directions—one only could be pursued—and the frigate gained rapidly upon Merrick. Finding he could not run away, the wind favoring the frigate’s square rig, Captain Merrick had recourse to stratagem—on a sudden he hauled down every sail, and had all hands on deck employed with setting poles, as if shoving the schooner off a bank! The people on board the frigate were amazed at the danger they had run, and to save themselves from being grounded, immediately clawed off and left the clever and more knowing Merrick “to make himself scarce,” as soon as darkness rendered it prudent for him to hoist sail in a sea two hundred fathoms deep!
Ephraim threw back his head and roared with laughter.
Kestrel and Proud Mistress were welcomed into our port amid much celebration and rejoicing, the both receiving a 13-gun salute by ships in our harbour and the field guns on Plum Island. We have a fear that they have brought in so many prizes that there is not room for them in the river. For those who wish to view these two privateers who have done so much to aid the cause of Liberty, they are tied up at the wharf of Capt. Ephraim Ashton, where the gallant Captain Merrick informs us his ship is open to any who wish to go aboard her and count the shot-holes in her sails.
Ephraim slapped the paper down on the table and whooped until the tears ran from his eyes. Tripes ’n’ bloody guts, what more could he ask? A son who brought him more and more glory every time he sailed, and now a future son-in-law whose cleverness and daring eclipsed even Matt’s.
No sooner had that future son-in-law brought his victorious Kestrel into port and fought his way through the cheering throng than he’d shown up right here on the doorstep, hat in hand, cheeks flushed with excitement, and looking every inch the valiant young sea captain that he was. It had been the perfect opportunity to force him down in a chair, force some good hot cooking down his throat, and force him to relate every last, glorious, delicious detail of the cruise.
There was no need for anyone to know, of course, that the newspaper’s informant—that reliable source—was none other than Ephraim himself.
Ephraim gave a private hoot of laughter. With such triumphs, he could even overlook Matt’s philandering (his son was presently holed up at Wolfe Tavern, paying court to that lady passenger he’d found aboard the merchantman) and pretend it didn’t exist. Merrick, at least, was no rake. In fact, Newburyport’s newest hero was upstairs in the east room, where Ephraim had dragged him following supper last night. That he was sleeping soundly, he had no doubt; he hadn’t heard a sound from up there all morning.
Still cackling over his own shrewdness, Ephraim leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. “Ah, Eveleen, that brother of yers is one helluva sea officer, a
in’t he? Never would’ve guessed it, that first day I met him. Looked like somethin’ the cat brought in, by God.”
She glanced up from behind a plate of johnnycakes, ham, and a slab of cheese that would’ve kept a nest of mice in good spirits for a year. “Brendan learned to sail before he could walk. At least, that was what our da always told us.”
“Yer papa must’ve been a seaman himself, teaching his son such things when he was just a babe.”
“He was.” Eveleen stared down at her plate, lips curved in a winsome smile that made her look almost pretty. Especially since Ephraim had rarely seen her smile. She picked up a corn muffin and pasted an inch-thick cap of butter and strawberry jam atop it.
And then she put the muffin aside and looked at Ephraim. The smile was gone, her eyes sad. “He was an admiral in the Royal Navy when he was cut down on the decks of his own flagship.”
Ephraim’s jaw dropped. “An admiral? Ye mean to tell me yer daddy was an admiral? In the Royal Navy?”
“Yes.”
Ephraim’s throat worked. He was having a hard time digesting this. “Holy hell!” he expostulated, rising to his feet. “Don’t that beat all. Abigail! Abigail!” he roared, his voice shaking the very timbers of the house. “C’mon in here; I got something to tell ye!”
He couldn’t wait to spread this around!
Upstairs, it was still quiet. Obviously that admiral’s son could sleep through anything.
Abigail bustled into the room, wiping her hands on her apron. “Honestly, Ephraim, all that bellowing! You’re going to wake the captain.”
He seized her by the shoulders. “Did you know that Merrick’s papa was an admiral? An admiral, Ab! How the Brits must be nettled to know that we have his son on our side now!”
“They have always been nettled,” Eveleen said, her eyes downcast. “Even when he was in their navy.”
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