by Hunter, Seth
“Did I not say she was beautiful?” He sighed and raised his hat one more time in ironic farewell. “And yours for the asking.”
Nathan shook his head and turned his back, but he was more disturbed than he cared to show, or would have wished to admit, even to himself, and the image stayed with him as they rowed out into the harbour: that tall figure in the flowing red robe at the water’s edge and the finely sculptured features of a goddess. It was an effort not to look back.
Instead he looked to the frigate. His frigate. Another beauty. Riding at anchor in the sparkling blue water against the splendid backdrop of La Cabana, as if the biggest, most expensive fortress in the Caribbean had been provided merely as a setting for her own more decorous splendour.
They lay off her a while, holding against the tide, while he observed her. The bum-boats were clustered about her, bringing produce from the shore: bananas, pineapples, melons, women … It was unlikely Pym would permit the latter commodity with his new captain preparing to come aboard but certainly some bargaining seemed to be in progress. Nathan ran his eye along her gun ports, restrained himself from counting them like a small boy—but only just. He already knew how many there were. The faint breeze lifted the ensign in a desultory wave and then let it fall again. Pym had moved it from the peak of the gaff to the flagstaff at her stern—the ensign of a rear-admiral of the blue, reminding Nathan that he must write to Admiral Ford in Port Royal, if only out of courtesy, to inform him that he had taken command and was in pursuit of his orders from their lordships of the Admiralty. They had rigged awnings on the quarterdeck and in the waist as a shade against the sun, so white they looked as if they had been painted or pipe-clayed like the belts of the marine sentries—Nathan could see one of them on the forecastle by the belfry and as he watched he heard the distant sound of the bell. Three bells in the afternoon watch.
Even this close he could not see a single scratch or stain on her hull nor a trace of rust from the metalwork. And the hammocks in their side netting with not a trace of bedding or clothes. Sure she hid her wounds well. No-one looking at her could have imagined that she had been battered by a hurricane, near wrecked on a reef, blighted by yellow fever and suffered the disgrace of mutiny with her captain kidnapped and dumped on a foreign shore with his throat cut.
Stainless she most certainly was not. She should have Kerr’s blood dripping from her scuppers.
“Row me around her if you would,” he begged the crew and he leaned eagerly forward as they crossed her bow, close enough to see the proud white face of the unicorn with its golden horn.
They came down her starboard side—the side he would board as her captain—and he could see the steps rigged ready for him with red side ropes. Dear God, he would have to wear gloves all the time for fear of leaving a stain upon the least object he touched. He checked himself sternly, recognising an old enemy in this tendency to mock and belittle when he was feeling personally threatened and on the defensive, fearful of himself being judged. And then as they came round the stern he saw Pym, leaning over the side and shouting down to the bum-boats to clear away and mind they did not scratch his precious paintwork, the whoresons.
“Very well, enough of this,” he said to the crew. Then, remembering his manners: “Thank’ee, but let us not keep Mr. Keeble waiting.”
And so they rowed to the Speedwell and he stepped aboard her for the last time with his heart in his boots. He could never have imagined when he took command of her in Bristol a little more than a year ago that he would be so sorry to be leaving her. Or that her crew would be so sorry to see him leave.
“We have had some adventures together,” said Keeble, the second mate who was now her skipper as they sat in what was now his cabin going through the ship’s papers and sharing a last tot of rum. “And I am sorry they are ended, though there were times I confess I never thought I would live to say it.”
“ Well, I suppose you will not be sorry to be quit the King’s service,” Nathan countered, “and free to go about your lawful business again.”
This was intended as ironic for the Speedwell had been steeped in villainy long before she came under Nathan’s command. But the Americans, he had discovered, were immune from the vice of irony, if they even recognised the nature of the beast, which was doubtful.
“If them that’s in the King’s service would only let us,” muttered Keeble darkly. Then, remembering himself, “Begging your pardon, sir. I was forgetting.”
Nathan had resumed his uniform for the trip to the Unicorn but it was the first time Keeble or any of the crew had seen him in it, or even knew him in his true occupation as a captain in the King’s Navy. He had come aboard in Bristol in the guise of their new owner, a Mr. Turner of New York, engaged in running contraband across the English Channel to Le Havre, and though they had not taken long to smoke him, he had acted more like a privateer captain or a smuggler—one of their own—than a representative of His Majesty, strutting the quarterdeck in his bicorn hat and his gold lace.
And yet throughout his commission the Speedwell had been under Admiralty protection—a hired vessel, safe from the depredations of any zealous King’s officer who aspired to take her as a prize—or press half her crew to supplement his own. There was more reason to regret his departure than the force of sentiment.
“Well you are at liberty to continue in the service if you wish,” Nathan assured him, with a smile. “And the same goes for any of the crew.”
If not spoken entirely in jest—for he would have taken as many of the Speedwell’s crew as his conscience and Keeble’s compliance would have allowed—this was a whimsical notion. None but the most reckless or feeble-minded would have considered the prospect for an instant. The lowest paid deckhand aboard the Speedwell earned far more than the six shillings a week available to him as an ordinary seaman aboard the Unicorn and without the risk of being flogged senseless for drunkenness or pissing upon the deck, should such degenerate conduct ever occur to him.
But surprisingly there was no answering smile from Keeble, or even an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders. “Well, I know of at least one who might take you up on that, sir,” he replied evenly. “And that is young Frankie Coyle.”
“Ah.” Nathan recalled the glum expression he had worn in the gig with William Place beside him in all his finery—and with a dirk at his hip. “I did wonder if he were so inclined. But you are in the nature of loco parentis to him … As a father figure, that is,” he added hastily for Keeble’s frown indicated he might take this amiss. “Would you not wish him to remain aboard the Speedwell and return to his home in Boston?”
“ Well, to be blunt, it was not much of a home he had there,” replied Keeble with a shake of his head. “And if that was his wish, I would not be the one to stand in the way of it.”
“Then if you have no objection, I will offer him a position as one of the captain’s servants,” said Nathan, “which is to say with the same status as young Place.”
The frown again. Keeble had little notion of the ranks accorded in the King’s Navy but he knew the status of William Place was somewhat higher than that of a servant. “But Billy Place is a gentleman, I think,” he observed, “for all the swearing he’s learned from I know not who.” Keeble was from Marblehead and a man of determined morals.
“Aye, and he will berth with the other young gentlemen aboard the Unicorn. As a volunteer first class.”
“And Frankie with them?”
“Frankie with them. Do you have any objection to that?”
“No, no, only that he is not, what you might say, used to being among gentlemen. His mother, well, not to put too fine a point on it, was a whore. And likely still is, if she still be alive when we come to Boston.”
“Well, he will not be the first whore’s son that was an officer in the King’s Navy,” Nathan assured him cheerfully. “And some have been made admiral. Do you not think he merits the opportunity?”
“Oh, he does that, sir. He does that. And I wish him
joy of it. It is only that I did not want you to be in ignorance and think I was making game of you if it came out.” He squared his shoulders. “But he is a good freeborn lad from Boston, Massachusetts, and as good as the son of any English gentleman, I dare say.”
“I am sure of it,” Nathan calmed him hastily, “so let us put it to him and give him the choice.” Of berthing with the young swine aboard the Unicorn or remaining with a parcel of Yankee rebels and reprobates, he thought of adding humorously, but it would have been the wrong note on which to have ended the conversation and he had played enough of that music for one day.
And so there were five passengers beside Nathan in the gig that finally pulled for the Unicorn—Imlay, Tully, Gabriel, Place and Coyle, the latter proud but self-conscious in the smart blue jacket that Place had lent him, and Nathan’s dirk that he had worn as a midshipman aboard the Hermes—a gift to commence his new career. And all their old shipmates lining the rail to see them off with, “Three cheers for the Captain,” and Mrs. Small alternately waving her handkerchief and pressing it to her tearful face. Nathan would dearly have liked to take her with him but lacked the nerve to impose a female cook on the crew of a man of war and besides she and Small had a notion of opening a French hotel in Boston.
“And you will come and see us there,” she said, “and I will cook you the best meal you ever had, as good as we had in Le Havre when you got us out of prison.”
“That I will,” he said, knowing it was unlikely he would see her or Small or Keeble or any of them ever again.
This time they approached the frigate from her starboard side and Gilbert Gabriel hailed out “Unicorn” to let them know her captain was aboard.
Thus Nathan came up the steps to the unearthly shriek of the boatswain’s call and the stamp and crash of the marines as they presented arms and as his head came level with the deck he was met with a startling spectacle of red, white and blue with the side boys all in white and the marines in red and the officers assembled on the quarterdeck every one whipping off his hat as Nathan made his entrance, gazing about him as if he had every right to be here. Pym stepped forward with a bow.
“Welcome aboard, sir. Shall I present you to the officers or do you first wish me to read your commission?”
His commission. My God, where was his commission, without which he was nothing? An impostor, a mere pretender, a mountebank. He had a brief, tragic-comic image of being sent back to the Speedwell to find it like a chastened schoolboy. But Gabriel, the Blessed Angel Gabriel, was holding out the necessary item and Nathan took it with a brief roll of his eye for the steward’s private gratification.
“Perhaps we should get the formalities over with first,” he proposed as he presented it to Pym, instantly cursing himself for not asking to be first introduced to the officers, which would have been the right thing to do—and now they must all stand there like lemons while the boatswain’s call summoned all hands aft. A great rush of people from every part of the ship and most—for all Kerr’s complaint—in blue jackets and white sailcloth trousers and pale straw hats. And as the weird keening died away, a shout of “Off hats” and in the silence with only the faintest of breezes ruffling the flag at her stern, Pym read out their lordship’s commission, formally appointing Nathaniel Peake Esquire to the command of His Majesty’s ship Unicorn, “willing and requiring all the officers and company belonging to the said ship to behave themselves in their several Employments with all due Respect and Obedience to you their Captain.”
And the silent ranks of attentive faces and the great walls of La Cabana rising above them and the pelicans rising and falling on the invisible currents of air and the harbour going about its business as if nothing untoward was happening in their midst. Nathan could not stop himself from glancing towards that part of the waterfront where he had left the woman in red and he did not know whether to be relieved or sorry that he could not see her.
“And you are likewise to observe as well the General Practical Instructions and what orders you may from time to time receive from any of your superior Officers for His Majesty’s Service. Hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your Peril. And for so doing this shall be your Order.”
The set, stoic expressions. Some eager faces, most not. Most with that look about them that said, let us wait and see; let us hope for the best while expecting the worst. Much like the crew of his first command, the Nereus. A cagey regard under a mask of compliance. Wondering what the tide had brought in. But something more, something he had not seen on the Nereus or anywhere else in the navy. What was it? A kind of despondency. They looked … whipped. Whipped into shape by a tyrant of a captain who had had his throat cut.
So that was that and now the introductions. As many commissioned officers and warrant officers, seamen and civilian, as the entire crew of the Speedwell and Nathan could have sworn he was the youngest amongst them, save for the midshipmen and even one of them looked his senior by several years.
Mr. Webster, second lieutenant, Mr. Maxwell, third lieutenant, Mr. Baker, master, whose log book he had read, or skipped through in the consul’s house—Nathan considered a remark, rejected it, moved on … repeating the names as he heard them as if committing them to memory when in truth they sank into the murky waters of his brain without a ripple and the faces like so much flotsam and jetsam passing before his drowning vision.
Mr. McGregor, lieutenant of marines, a gaunt, grim-looking Scot with a scar on his cheek—from battle or a duel? How would he react when he discovered that Nathan had brought his own Myrmidons with him? Would he take it as a slight or be relieved at the reinforcement? Mr. McLeish, the surgeon, another Scot, young and sober-looking, unlike many a ship’s surgeon of Nathan’s acquaintance. Mr. Sawyer, master’s mate—only one master’s mate, the other having taken off in the cutter. (Declan Keane. Yes, there was one name he would remember.) Four midshipmen: Holroyd, Meadows, Fleetwood and Lamb. Mr. McIvor, the purser; Mr. Bailey, the schoolmaster; Mr. Shaw, who was to be his clerk; Mr. Clyde, the gunner; Mr. Lloyd, the carpenter … At last Nathan found something to say that would not cause offence or reveal him as a complete fool.
“ Well, Mr. Lloyd, you have had your work cut out, I believe.”
“Aye, sir, we have that.” Bobbing his bald head and exposing a reef of broken teeth. A man of about forty, Nathan guessed, ancient by comparison with the rest of the crew, a tide of frowns rippling up from his bushy eyebrows to halfway up his shining pate, a man who knew more about the ship, the solid oaken core of her, than any other man present and might have cause for his worried expression.
“ Well, from what I have heard and seen so far you have worked wonders,” Nathan assured him, “and I would never have known the blows she has took.”
Careful now. Move on. Worried already that he might have offended Pym, who doubtless considered he was owed the credit for their survival—and was doubtless right.
Oh, what uncertain waters he sailed, what shoals and reefs, what quicksands. Better to say nothing but to bob his head this way and that with the occasional benediction of a repeated name like the god he was.
And so it went on. William Brown, master-at-arms; Jacob Young, coxswain, who had command of his barge—a bright enough lad, probably Nathan’s own age or thereabouts, his eyes less guarded than the rest. The boatswain and his mates; the quartermaster and his mates; William Kerr, captain’s steward … No trace of a falter in Pym’s neutral tone and yet it dropped like a smoking grenade upon the spotless deck.
Kerr. A coincidence of names or a poor kinsman taken into service? Almost certainly the latter. The captain’s steward. The man who had waited upon him at table, run his errands, washed and ironed his clothes, kept his razor stropped, might even have shaved that vulnerable throat … A thin, pinched man with a prominent Adam’s apple and a reedy voice. Had his captain, his kinsman, looked like this? What was Nathan to do with him? Consign him to outer darkness or make him subject to the Angel Gabriel? He might pr
efer the outer darkness. Nathan would.
Gun captains, captains of the foretop, maintop and mizzen. The smiling, perspiring faces and the guarded eyes. And that tired, uneasy, unhappy look about them that he recognised now as a look of defeat.
And with the Virginie still to fight. If they ever found her.
He looked to his guns. Blomefield pattern, like the sternchaser on the Speedwell. Twenty-six 18-pounders on her upper deck, two 6-pounders and two 32-pounder carronades on the forecastle, and four of each on the quarterdeck … Save that one of them was missing. Nathan could not help looking and noting that one significant gap, like a missing tooth, on the starboard side. But apart from that, everything shipshape and Bristol fashion. The wheels of the trucks greased with cook’s slush and the wood looking as if it had been polished with beeswax. And every gun fitted with a flintlock, Nathan noted with approval.
But how fast could they fire, and how accurately? It was not a question he would ask but he would find out soon enough, just as soon as they were at sea and out of sight of the land, in case it was not as good as he hoped.
And now below. Starting with the captain’s quarters—and such a wealth of space and light and polished wood and gleaming brass. Nathan stood for a moment in the door, staring as if stunned, struggling to take it in and that it was his. Day cabin, sleeping cabin, dining cabin. The sunlight lancing in through the stern windows and the motes of dust circling in the still air and the reflections of the water dancing on the ceiling. The long polished table and the chairs, the wood panelling. And the big 18-pounders on either side. A smell of soap and beeswax and coffee—fresh coffee. He wondered if Pym had made his home here during the interregnum or whether he had been too respectful, too hopeful of recovering his lost captain. Almost certainly the latter, and so it must have remained almost exactly as Kerr had left it when he had stepped out on his quarterdeck for the last time, all unknowing, to see if the cutter was prepared and ready. And yet there was no hint of his presence now, no ghostly coat hanging upon the door, no nightcap in his cot, no pictures on the walls, or any other personal effects; all cleared away, no doubt, barely hours before Nathan had come aboard. So he would not be troubled by the ghost of the late, hapless Captain Kerr.