by Seth Hunter
Nathan looked to his own enfants and saw that Banjo had taken Connor’s place at his back in some unspoken, or at least unofficial role as bodyguard.
“George,” he addressed him self-consciously, for though he did not normally call the hands by their first names, he could not bring himself to utter the name Banjo in civilised converse with a fellow human being, “do you see the flag there?”
Banjo saw the flag there. The Republican tricolour flapping limply from the flagstaff halfway along the battery.
“Would you be so good as to haul it down for me?”
Nathan had neglected to bring a Union flag to haul in its place. It would have required a greater degree of composure—and optimism—than he possessed. But it would serve to inform Tully and anyone else who might be watching that the fort had fallen.
The two cannon had been redeployed as Nathan suggested, but here was Michael Connor knuckling his forehead with an apologetic crouch that brought him to near human dimensions.
“Mr. Holroyd’s compliments, sir, but he begs to report that the guns is already loaded, sir, with round shot, and wishes to know if your honour is still desirous of loading them with grape?”
Nathan shook his head. “It is no matter,” he said. “Round shot will do.”
He drew one of his pistols from his belt, cocked it and fired into the air. The battle continued unabated. He summoned Connor again.
“My compliments to Mr. Holroyd, and would he be so good as to fire a round—above their heads.”
The roar of the cannon succeeded where the pistol had failed. The warring parties stopped fighting and stared in their direction, but instead of waiting respectfully for Nathan to address them, as he had vaguely surmised, the men of the Blue party, apparently acting upon instruction from their officer, broke away and rushed en masse towards this new adversary. Nathan wished now that he had insisted upon loading the cannon with grape, but he had near a hundred armed men at his disposal and though he scarce had time to make a proper tally, his attackers could not have exceeded a score. He raised the still loaded pistol with the intention of discharging it at the officer and unleashing a more general slaughter, when to his further confusion, the men stopped just a few yards in front of him and turned to face their former opponents; all save the officer who approached Nathan and asked him, somewhat breathlessly but in a calm enough voice, if he spoke French.
“I do,” Nathan assured him, lowering his pistol, but frowning a little as he wondered what was coming next and whether it would inconvenience him at all.
“Then permit me to present myself …” the fellow made a small bow. “I am Captain Le Goff, of the Republican Guard, and to prevent further bloodshed I am obliged to offer you my sword.”
Which object he presented to Nathan, hilt first.
Nathan regarded it with concern, for it was dripping with blood from the captain’s recent exertions and he was not aware of the proper form on such an occasion. Men had surrendered to him before, but they had never offered him their swords and he was somewhat touched, though aware that there could be complications.
They were not long in making themselves known to him.
“We are your prisoners, sir,” the captain insisted, “and I would be obliged if you would inform these animals of that fact before they make you an accomplice in their atrocities.”
Indeed the animals appeared to be gathering themselves for a rush. They certainly looked capable of atrocities, Nathan thought, if indulged.
“Who are they ?” he enquired of his apparent prisoner.
“These ones?” The officer made a contemptuous gesture of his chin in their general direction. “They are the ones that call themselves the Chouans.” He smiled a crooked smile and added, with a sneer: “Your allies.”
Nathan regarded them with new interest. The Screech Owls. They had a look of a peasant army, he supposed, taken as a whole.
“Very well.” Nathan took the proffered sword and gave it to the Angel Gabriel. “Instruct your men to lay down their arms.”
The captain frowned. He was a man of middling years with a grizzled jaw and a long drooping moustache, greying a little at the edges. Le Goff—the blacksmith. And possibly that is what he was, in his civilian capacity, though it was more likely, if he was an artillery-man, that he was a professional soldier, a veteran. Certainly he spoke like one. “I beg you to first make yourself known to these pigs,” he implored Nathan, “and inform them we are your prisoners and under your protection, or I fear there will be a massacre.”
In this supposition he was undoubtedly correct, for the pigs had taken the opportunity to reload their weapons and were clearly preparing to resume hostilities. Nathan viewed them with a stern eye and asked who was their commander.
One of the herd, more elegantly groomed than his associates, stepped forward and executed a bow that might have been reassuring, had it not been so clearly mocking. He was a small man, almost childlike in stature, though there was nothing childish about his face, its wolfish features flecked with blood, and he carried a sword that had seen some service.
“I have that privilege,” he announced. “And who have I the honour of addressing?”
Nathan told him, and the fellow had the courtesy to remove his hat. “Then permit me to present myself. I am the Chevalier de Batz, in the service of His Most Christian Majesty King Louis of France, and these sons of whores are my prisoners.”
Nathan took in the long lean jaw and the wide mouth—and the mad, cruel savagery in the eyes. He acknowledged the man’s title with a polite inclination of the head, but not his claim.
“I am desolated to have to disagree with you, sir,” he replied, “for I have just accepted their surrender and they are under my protection.”
The whole situation was taking on the nature of farce, and though it was preferable to the outcome Nathan had anticipated earlier, he felt it necessary to assert his authority. Unhappily, so did the chevalier and his manner of doing so was rather more to the point, and considerably less polite. With a sigh of one exposed to intolerable boredom he removed his sword from the right to the left hand, extended the empty palm to one of his obedient vassals, who stepped forward to place a pistol into it, and before Nathan had grasped the significance of this gesture, much less made any move to counter it, he coolly aimed it at Captain Le Goff and shot him through the head.
Nathan was shocked into immobility, his brain unable to comprehend the enormity of the deed, even while it registered the spatter of blood and other gruesome material on his cheek. God knows, he had seen enough of violent death in his time but this was beyond anything he had witnessed on the deck of ship of war or even at the foot of the guillotine. This was callous, cruel—and most shocking of all—casual violence, and for a moment he could neither move nor speak. But he could hear; and though the count spoke softly, and as nonchalantly as if he was ordering the eradication of vermin, Nathan distinctly heard him say: “Kill them. Kill them all.”
CHAPTER FOUR
the Screech Owls
NATHAN LIKED TO THINK that he was a reasonable man. Slow to anger. Cool-headed in a crisis.
His mother had always refuted this.
“You have always been emotional,” she had informed him on more than one occasion and to his profound irritation. “Just like your father. Though he, too, would have it otherwise. You suffer from a rush of blood to the head. Or a red mist, descending.”
Certainly, it was one or the other that saved him now. Without considering the consequences, let alone the danger, Nathan strode forward, grabbed the chevalier by the throat and pressed his pistol into the man’s cheek with such force he heard something crack.
“Get back,” he ordered the others, who in truth had scarcely had a chance to move. “Back—or by God I’ll blow his head off. “
He felt de Batz trying to pull away and he shifted his grip to the collar and lifted him from the ground, shaking him like a rat, whatever his title, for he was a small man and inconsequen
tial in weight.
“You don’t think I mean it? By Christ, only tempt me.” He cocked the pistol with his thumb, though a part of his mind registered that he had neglected to slide back the metal cap that kept the powder dry, a frequent mistake that one day would be the death of him. Too late, now, for he did not have a free hand, but he doubted anyone had noticed, least of all the man in his grip. The blood had drained from the chevalier’s face and his eyes were as venomous as a snake’s, but there was fear there, too, and pain, for Nathan had pressed the pistol so hard into his cheek he had broken the flesh and possibly one or two of his teeth.
The seamen had advanced in a long menacing line, clearly ready to resume the slaughter they had so lately interrupted. Gilbert Gabriel was at his captain’s side, Connor too, eager to knock heads.
“Steady boys, steady” Nathan admonished them, for he did not want to have another fight on his hands. He heard the echo of the lines from “Hearts of Oak,” the battle hymn of the King’s Navy, and he laughed aloud, laughed with a half-crazed delight at the absurdity of it all; laughed in the chevalier’s face which stopped his capers as effectively as if Nathan had brained him with his pistol, for if he had not known his assailant was mad before, he did now. Nathan whirled him round like a partner in a dance, and called out for William Brown, the Unicorn’s master at arms, a hulking turnkey of a brute with a pistol in one hand and a tomahawk in the other, which he had acquired in the swamps about New Orleans during a similar engagement. Nathan threw the chevalier in his direction, so violently he sprawled in the dust.
“Take this thing and keep him under close guard and if he gives you abuse, gag him.”
But now he had to calm down; now he had to take control of the situation before it got entirely out of hand. He faced the enemy again—the enemy, his allies—and one of them stepped forward: a youngish man who, to confuse matters further, wore a blue jacket, though not the uniform of the National Guard. In fact, unless Nathan was much mistaken, it was the uniform of a warrant officer in the British navy. This was not the only surprise.
“I guess this is what you might call a stand off,” the fellow observed in an amiable drawl and in perfect English—or as near perfect as a citizen of the United States would ever achieve. “But perhaps I can be of assistance.”
There were questions to be asked of this, but they would keep.
“Stand these men down,” Nathan instructed him firmly. “For I am under orders to assist the forces of King Louis of France which I believe places us upon the same side in this quarrel and it would be folly to fall out among ourselves.”
“I’m with you there, sir,” agreed the American equably, “though we were doing well enough, I believe, without your assistance. However, stand down it is.”
He instructed the men accordingly—in passable if by no means fluent French—and though there was some reluctance and a few fierce looks towards their late commander, the majority seemed relieved to accept the arrangement. Lowering their weapons, they began to move away, looking to their wounds and their wounded.
“And when you have tended to your people, report back to me.” This was received with a jaunty tip of the hat which, though it had altogether too much of the New England about it to pass muster in the King’s Navy, encouraged Nathan to believe he could safely stand his own men down.
“Mr. Lamb!”
“Here, sir.” The midshipman was still at his post beside the loaded cannon, swinging his sword about as if he were mowing grass. Nathan pointed to the Republican soldiers who had retired to the rear and were huddled in a sullen group about their abandoned guns. “Take a dozen hands and make those men secure.” Secure was not quite the word but it was to be hoped Lamb would interpret it adequately.
“And Mr. Brown …”
“Sir?”
Nathan glanced towards de Batz, now in the grip of one of Brown’s bullies. What on earth was to be done with him? The sensible thing would be to send him back to his men; accept his offence as a moment of madness committed in the heat of battle. Except that it had not been in the heat of battle. He had murdered a prisoner in cold blood—Nathan’s prisoner and therefore a prisoner of His Britannic Majesty—and besides, there had been that soft-spoken command: Kill them. Kill them all.
Had he meant only the Republican guards? But even if he had, it would have been a flagrant abuse of the unwritten rules of war between civilised nations.
By God, he was rehearsing his defence already.
The chevalier returned his scrutiny with a look of such pure hatred, Nathan knew he had made an enemy for life. Walking over to the ramparts, he peered through one of the embrasures toward where he had left the Unicorn. The light was fading fast and he could not see her at first, and for one awful moment he thought she had foundered. But no, there she was, some distance from where he had left her—and by God, she was afloat! The rising tide had lifted her off the sandbank, moored by the head in mid-Channel. Nathan looked to the sun, an immense red buoy on the horizon, marking its own demise. Two hours to the turn of the tide. He glanced up at the Union flag flapping at the masthead. The wind held steady from sou’-sou’-east. His brain struggled with the calculations. Others could do this as easily as read the time but for Nathan it was always an effort, like assembling some gigantic, moving puzzle and forever losing the pieces. He switched his thoughts to another problem, somewhat easier to resolve.
“Mr. Brown?”
“Sir?”
“Take the prisoner back to the ship and clap him in irons.”
“Clap him in irons it is, sir.”
Joyous words to Brown’s ears; he liked nothing better than to clap a man in irons, lest it was to see him lashed up to a grating for a good flogging. The last captain of the Unicorn had been more to his taste in this regard; though he had finished up with his throat cut.
“And let Mr. Tully know what has happened here.”
Brown frowned. This was more difficult. Nathan wondered if he should send Holroyd or Lamb. He tried once more.
“Tell him we have taken the fort and made contact with our allies.”
The frown cleared a little.
“Aye aye, sir.”
And now for their allies. And the American in the British naval jacket.
“Bennett, sir. Benjamin Bennett.”
He removed his hat, a large, sloppy, black affair such as a Sussex drover might wear on a weekday. Save that there was a feather in it and a humorous look in his eye that Nathan had not seen in many drovers, not mocking as the chevalier’s had been, too good-humoured for that, but as if they were playing a game.
They stood on the ramparts of the redoubt in the light of a lantern, for it was properly dark now in the shadows of the fort. Nathan’s men sprawled comfortably about the guns and their allies comported themselves in a like manner on the far side of the redoubt. Out to sea he could see the broken masts of the Unicorn against the paler sky and if he looked the other way, the lights of the smaller vessels moored off Long Island, in the mouth of the Auray, just inside the Gulf.
“Well, Bennett, I take it you are an American.”
“From Nantucket, sir, Rhode Island.”
So not Boston. Much superior to Boston, at least in the view of the residents of Nantucket.
“A seafaring man.”
“I am, sir, as are most men from Nantucket.”
“And once in the King’s Navy, I think, by the coat you are wearing, unless you acquired it by other means.”
Bennett glanced down at it with a look of surprise as if he had quite forgotten that he was wearing it, and what it might signify.
“Ah yes, sir, the coat. I fear it needs a good wash and a bit of make and mend.” He flicked at some particular blemish that had caught his eye, remarkably given the state it was in, for even by the poor light of the lantern it was apparent that it needed a good deal more than a wash; it needed burning. But it still had most of its brass buttons, if a little tarnished, and Nathan could make out what had once b
een white edging on the fall-down collar. “I served aboard the brig sloop Phoebe for a year or so, in the squadron of Admiral Saumarez, off the Isle of Oberon.”
“You were a volunteer?”
“Ah, well as to that, only in a manner of speaking, sir, being as I was pressed into the service.”
Nathan nodded understandingly. It did happen.
“I was second mate on the Tristan barque out of Nantucket and bound for Bristol on our usual run when we ran foul of the Phoebe, so to speak, in the Bay of Biscay and I was among those that was took. I was rated able seaman but the captain allowed as how I might assist the master, seeing as I possessed some small skill in navigation.”
Nathan understood this, too. Not many captains would relish having a man on the lower deck who could read a chart and a sextant, not if he had the slightest fear of the hands seizing the ship. Men had been hanged for less.
“And now you are a deserter,” he said, with just enough menace in his voice to remind him of the consequences thereof, and that this was not a conversation between equals.
The head came up, the eyes sharp. “A deserter? Never say that, sir. Never say that. We was chasing a blockade runner into La Rochelle when we grounded—aye sir, as you did, but on a falling tide—and the gunboats came out and pounded us so bad we was forced to strike.”
Nathan frowned, as much for his ignorance of the event as the ignominy of a King’s ship forced to strike her colours. He followed the news of nautical encounters as rigorously as any officer in the service and felt sure he must have read of such an incident in the Gazette. However, a brig was not the greatest of the King’s ships and it was possible the journal had dealt somewhat sketchily with the affair, especially as it had involved surrender.
“So you were taken prisoner?”
“I was, sir, with all the officers and crew, but seeing as I was American, and a pressed man at that, they reckoned I was no more eager to serve King George than they and might be willing to sling my hook in a French ship. I told them I’d as soon not, begging their pardons, which I fear they took ill, but they allowed I was not so great a menace to the Republic as to be shut up with the rest of the crew and they might save themselves the expense of accommodating me. So I was left to make my own arrangements, along with the rest of lads from home.”