Game of Bones

by David Donachie

  ‘I have my orders, Captain Ludlow,’ the youngster said, throwing back one side of his coat to reveal a sword.

  ‘You have that. But if you hail your captain he may pass on to you the intelligence he has just received. On the other hand you may use your own eyes. But it makes no odds if you do neither. If you fail to comply, I will be compelled to use force.’

  ‘Harry, what are you about?’ asked James.

  ‘I am in the process of regaining our freedom of action, brother.

  ‘Pender,’ he said loudly, ‘get a party of men together and disarm the Amethysts. Once that is done get them into a boat so that they can row back to where they rightfully belong.’

  ‘I warn you, sir,’ piped Levenson, ‘this is dangerous, especially with the whole fleet hard by.’

  ‘The whole fleet you refer to is no threat to me, young man, though it may well prove so to you. You should by now be able to see the line-of-battle ships with the naked eye. If you cast a glance aloft, you will see something to shock you.’

  Levenson had his hand capped over his eye, even though the sun was behind him. He probably would have preferred to remain silent, but in his youth he exclaimed with surprise at what he saw.

  ‘What does it signify?’ he asked after a slight pause.

  ‘It’s very simple, sir. The whole of the Channel Fleet is in a state of mutiny.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  HARRY and Rykert stared silently at each other across the water as Levenson and his men came aboard. The King’s ship let the cutter drift free, and was under way before the last man made it to the deck, signalling to Precise to fetch her wake. Harry, in a less frantic mood, got Illingworth and his men, less a pair too wounded to travel, back into their boats, with the suggestion that their safest landfall would be to the east of Hayling Island. He then set a course to run between the north shore of the Isle of Wight and Spit Sand, having decided to make for the Beaulieu Estuary and Buckler’s Hard. Any temptation to stay around the fleet, to find out what was going on, was put to one side. Safety was paramount, and there was little of that to be had for a damaged privateering ship in Britain’s premier naval base.

  Strictly speaking, Buckler’s Hard wasn’t designed for repairs; it was a yard for new building, naval in the main, and large merchant ships since it had been extended in the previous decade. The village itself was three rows of houses running inland from the slipways, a site entirely dedicated to the shipwright’s craft, laid out and constructed with that very purpose in mind by the second Duke of Montagu. There was a resident doctor, happy to take temporary charge, for a fee, of a dozen extra patients.

  Sheltered from the prevailing westerly winds, it could provide Harry with new upper foremasts. And being in a tidal basin he would have little difficulty in careening Bucephalas then refloating her when his hull was repaired. But the prime asset of Buckler’s Hard was its isolation. It took its wood from the surrounding New Forest, bringing in everything else by sea; access to the village from the interior was severely limited, a pair of rutted tracks easily guarded against the chance of intruders. And every man, woman, and child in the place depended in some way on the yard for their livelihood, so that their eyes, ears, and local knowledge were well tuned to any threats of danger.

  Theoretically exempt from impressment, the owners and villagers were not inclined to take chances: by land, no press gang could get within ten miles of the place without being observed, and the long wynd of the Beaulieu was a double safeguard. With a sentinel placed inshore of Gull Island, and a boat standing by to relay any message he cared to send, Harry Ludlow was as secure as he could be outside the liberties of the Cinque Ports, none of which, in any case, had the facilities to repair Bucephalas.

  His greatest difficulty was in persuading Balthazar Adams, son of the owner, to stop work on the ships he was building and attend to his needs. He had a 38-gun frigate, Boadicea, on the stocks, as well as the Snake, a 16-gun sloop, both under the watchful eye of an agent from the Navy Board, keen to see them completed. Fortunately, he was temporarily absent. Even more telling, the remaining gold Harry was carrying spoke loud in these times, when the new paper money, recently introduced by the Bank of England, was deeply mistrusted.

  Balthazar Adams, in the way of all boatbuilders, seemed able to ally every misfortune of both the nation and her allies in his bid to talk up the necessity of charging a high price. And his face, with doleful, slanting eyes and a prominent nose, gave him the appearance of a particularly sad hound, adding an extra physical dimension to the Armageddon-like list of woes. His father, Henry Adams, was a Banquo presence during the discussions. Supposedly retired, like most fathers he couldn’t abide the idea of letting go and sat silently by the window of the extension tacked on to the front of his house to give him a better view of the work in progress. Drawings of ships built and proposed, together with sketches for figureheads lined the small room which, with the exception of a large astrolabe, was simply furnished. Every so often, old Henry would peer through his telescope at the ships on the stocks, an instrument so powerful he must have been able to count his workers’ every pore.

  ‘I don’t know what’s to become of us, Captain Ludlow,’ said Balthazar, ‘what with our fleet no more good than an ancient coracle in the defending line. There’s no Nelson or Jervis on hand to help us now. Those French dogs could be here at any minute, sailing up the Solent without so much as a frigate to bar their passage, to be received with cheers from our own tars, very likely.’

  He raised his hand to indicate the hulls that towered over the space between the houses, dominating the small cottages to such an extent that in some cases they cut out any sunlight from the front doors. Children, too small to work, played around the great oak baulks that held the structures in place, their high-pitched cries mingling with the crash of hammers and the sawing of wood, all overborne by the smell of hot pitch.

  ‘I must finish these ships afore then, sir, or face ruin. And what would happen to the poor folks of this village if that came to pass. Starvation, sir, that is what would occur, with those bairns you see afrolickin’ now, wrapped cold and dead in sacking, to be tossed into an open pit.’

  ‘And the men too weak to fill it in,’ said James, his voice as doom laden as that of Adams. ‘Woe unto us.’

  ‘How right you are,’ the master shipwright replied. He knew he was being practised on and gave James a glare. But it was fleeting, soon replaced by his more doleful countenance.

  ‘All I asked you, Mr Adams, was how much and how quickly,’ said Harry. He’d been quite happy to let the man go through the whole rehearsed litany, being well accustomed to such behaviour. But James’s intervention had brought matters to a head. ‘I have already said that I will pay you in gold. Foreign coinage, I grant you, but you may have it by weight.’

  It was Henry who replied to that, an older, more frail version of his son, shaking his head in a way that swung his now fleshy jowls.

  ‘Now there’s something to mull on. I don’t care for paper, sir. And neither will the nation. The stuff will go the same way as the assignats of those damned French Jacobins, and become worthless.’

  ‘Most of the damage to the upperworks can be left,’ said Harry, to Balthazar, as if old Adams hadn’t spoken. ‘I need that hole below the waterline plugged, or better still repaired, and I’ll stand as much scraping as you can manage between tides. You can see for yourself that we require new upper foremasts and bowsprit, plus any rigging, sails, and spars I can’t supply myself. I reckon, at most, with my crew to clear and restow the hold, three days.’

  He raised his hand to spin the astrolabe, then pointed to the stacked timber outside. ‘Which will serve to season some of this green timber you’re using in the King’s ships.’

  Balthazar Adams opened his mouth to protest, but his father chuckled. And when the son saw the smile on Harry’s face, he couldn’t help but respond.

  ‘Gold, you say?’ he growled, looking out at Bucephalas, rocking gently
on the tidal water in the middle of the river, close to the ranks of spars, masts, and poles which floated in the water. There was no doubting her trade. Not even the most myopic soul could mistake her for a merchant vessel. Just over a hundred feet long and well armed, the natural grace of her lines was somewhat spoiled by the accumulated damage. But she was still a hunter, not prey. ‘I take it you have enjoyed some good fortune.’

  Harry face clouded immediately. ‘And some bad.’

  Adams responded to that as well, his lugubrious countenance becoming sombre again. ‘There always is a reverse side of every coin, gold, silver, or copper, Captain Ludlow, an’ no amount of prayer will ever alter that fact.’

  ‘A price, Mr Adams, if you please,’ said James quickly, as he saw Harry turn away, seemingly staring at the figurehead drawings pinned to the office wall. The shipwright grabbed a quill and looked at the ship before leaning over beside his father to scribble on a scrap of paper. Whispers were exchanged and repeated several times, with questions to Harry about the state of various ship’s sections. Finally both seemed satisfied. The son held the paper at arm’s length, looked at it hard, then grunted.

  ‘We can see no profit in this, but as God-fearing Christians we cannot indulge in usury.’

  James took the paper out of Balthazar Adams’s hand and shoved it under Harry’s nose. Three hundred and seventy guineas seemed steep to him, but then he was no sailor. He wasn’t sure if the nod in response was because his brother looked at it, or didn’t care.

  ‘I think we must insist on the time limit, sir,’ said Harry, after a moment’s silence. He hadn’t turned, and was clearly still affected by what Balthazar Adams had said about the fickle nature of fortune.

  ‘Never fear, it will be swift,’ growled old Adams, spinning round to look James straight in the eye, ‘since I want your lads barred from every place but the village chapel, and that’s not an injunction that will hold for long.’ He turned again, to indicate the children playing tag around the yard. ‘I’ve enough brats here as it is, without your lot getting to the womenfolk and producing a dozen more. That’s not something my workers would take kindly to. We want our chisels bent to working on wood, not human flesh.’

  ‘Make it so, Mr Adams,’ said James. ‘But you must take time to tell us what in God’s name has been going on at Spithead.’

  What followed was rumour piled on conjecture, with father and son seemingly unaware of the contradictions of what they imparted. One minute it was a peaceful revolt, another, bloody revolution, with the only absolute being that without a fleet, the nation was defenceless. It was clear that every capital ship had acted as one, then elected delegates to represent them, an unprecedented action which had the whole country awash with rumours regarding French spies, Jacobin agitators, United Irish rebels, and banned Corresponding Societies. Whatever the cause was, it brought Harry back into the conversation, pushing to the back of his mind unhappy memories.

  Speculation as to what would happen next was natural, though not a subject on which any one of them could be brought to agree. The only points on which they did concur were the shocking fact that such a thing could happen, and the absolute necessity, by fair means or foul, that the mutiny should be brought to an end.

  ‘You will most certainly need this, Pender,’ said Harry, handing him a folded letter, ‘and I still rate it a sound idea to kit you out in a servant’s livery to go with it, just so there can be no mistake. The fleet might have mutinied, but that’s not certain to deflect the Impressment Service from hunting out bodies. In fact they might well be toiling twice as hard.’

  ‘Portsmouth was my home, Capt’n,’ Pender replied, taking the letter which identified him as a gentleman’s servant, and therefore theoretically inviolate. ‘The press never took me when I lived there, nor when I went back to fetch my nippers, an’ I don’t suppose they could do so now. Why, if any of my old mates were to spy me in the street in a servant’s get-up I’d be a laughing stock.’

  ‘Very well,’ Harry replied uneasily, ‘get our dunnage aboard the cutter. And Pender, I want you to put this into the chest containing the residue of our specie. Put it down into the furthest reaches of the hold and chain it to the deck. Pick the men personally whom you want to guard it.’

  ‘But that’s only paper, Capt’n.’

  ‘That might be so. But it has a value of a quarter of a million sterling, redeemable in America by whosoever holds it in their hand.’

  ‘Only in ten years, brother,’ said James.

  He’d been unsure whether Harry, acting in his usual headstrong way, had done the right thing in New York. Tying funds up of that magnitude three thousand miles away seemed to him fraught with risk. Not least because of the unstable nature of the borrower. They might call themselves the United States, but nothing James had observed in his time there had convinced him that was the case. And the new President, Adams, commanded none of the affection afforded to the victor of the Revolutionary War, George Washington.

  ‘That may very well be so. But both you and I know how much these certificates will be worth, just as we are both aware of how indiscreet our men can be. Old Henry Adams may not trust the crew with his women, but neither do I trust his men when there’s something as valuable as this to steal, and a ready escape route into deep forests just waiting to be employed.’

  ‘Why don’t we take that, and the balance of the coin, with us?’

  ‘I’d rather land it at Deal, brother. It’s no safer but certainly a lot more discreet. Only the fear of loss would make me deposit this at Portsmouth. And if I did every naval officer in the port would know within an hour, which will do nothing for our reception.’

  ‘The reception will be as it always is with the navy, which means we’re likely to be exposed to no end of condescension. I still can’t fathom why you want to go there.’

  ‘I’ve told you, curiosity. There’s never been a whole fleet mutiny before. Single ships yes, like Culloden and the Bounty. I’m afire to see how they’ve managed it for one thing, as well as sort out the truth from the fiction of what the Adamses said. While we were below he told me half the Board of Admiralty is in the town, trying to sort matters out.’

  James smiled and gave Harry a knowing look. ‘Always supposing that is the truth, do you expect them to consult you?’

  ‘No.’

  James slowly yawned. ‘So you will merely be an observer, on the periphery.’

  ‘How can you not wish to be present at such a telling thing? It’s the most amazing event since the Paris mob stormed the Bastille. The whole British nation stands in peril and you yawn.’

  ‘I do not mind being present,’ said James, ‘but I have a natural affection for being at the centre of things, which even when mutinous hardly includes Portsmouth.’

  With the wind still blowing north-westerly, the cutter, sails bowsed into tight triangles, flew across the Solent, eating up the ten miles between the mouth of the Beaulieu and Nettlestone Point at a spanking pace. The sun was shining, a perfect late April day. Huge voluminous clouds, black in the centre, edged with bright silver, lay to the north over the Hampshire Downs, promising rain. Harry was as happy as James had ever seen him, as though being off the ship had released him from his memories. But it was partly, he knew, his sheer love of movement. Harry hated to be still, and derived as much pleasure from racing along in a cutter as he did doing twelve knots in Bucephalas.

  Most of the Channel Fleet still lay at St Helen’s, with four of the line plus some frigates anchored at Spithead. From a distance the combined squadrons were as dangerous an armada as had ever been. Each great ship, the foremost engines of war that existed, had a destructive power that inspired awe. Guns that ranged in calibre from mere nine-pounders to a massive sixty-eight on the carronades, one broadside delivering several thousand pounds of metal into an enemy hull. No land force, even rarely a fortress battery, could match it for power.

  Constantly in service, with the majority of the crews bred to the se
a, this was the instrument that allowed Britain to match the great continental armies. These ships, and the dozens of others in service around the globe, were the ‘Wooden Walls,’ the bulwarks which made Britain great. It was little wonder the depth of the alarm when this protection seemed removed.

  Close to, the differences from any fleet Harry had ever seen were subtle but very telling. The red flags and bunting were singular enough, but the really sinister note was struck by the nooses strung from the yardarms, as though each ship was getting ready to partake of a mass execution. There was no irregularity apart from that: from what little they could see from their low elevation, work was being carried out in a normal fashion, with boats loading stores and repair work to the rigging proceeding normally. Taking a detour to sail through the St Helen’s fleet, dodging the other sightseers who’d come to witness the tumult, they discovered that each vessel was, apart from the mutinous insignia, the very opposite of a hotbed of bloody insurrection.

  There were no cheering mobs on deck, nor any sign of drunkenness or laxity. Indeed, even from his lowly position Harry observed that the junior officers were at their proper stations. The crews, at anchor, were below, and by the sounds emanating from the open lower deck gun ports, were behaving better than they did in normal times. Balthazar Adams had told him that the mutineers had sent the ‘wives’ ashore, and forbidden them to return until matters were settled. No drink, other than the normal rations, was to be consumed. So there were no bumboats full of whores and traders scurrying around, no hint of fiddlers and licentiousness, none of the normal ’tween-decks riot.

  ‘Look, your honour,’ said Pender, pointing towards a boat slicing through their wake. Harry turned, close enough to see that it carried no officer: two men sat in the stern, both dressed in clean scarlet kerseymere waistcoats. The crew of what was clearly a captain’s barge were titivated to the nines, a riot of blue and gold, with jaunty caps to finish off their exclusive rig. It was not uncommon for wealthy captains to dress their barge crew to impress. It was unusual to see anyone else sitting in a place officers reserved exclusively for themselves.