Time of Terror

by Hunter, Seth

  “And your mother is American?”

  Ah. Here it was.

  “She was born in New York, my lord, when it was an English colony.”

  But perhaps it was a mistake to remind Chatham of its current status. The loss of the American colonies still caused apoplexy at certain levels of society and was widely blamed for driving the King mad. One did not mention “the former colonies” in his presence for fear of another seizure and perhaps it was the same with Chatham whose father, too, had succumbed to an affliction of the brain in his later years.

  “And she has lived in London for many years,” he continued lamely.

  “Yes. So I have heard.”

  Not good. Not good at all. Nathan felt the blood rush to his face as he prepared his defence, or a swift, savage attack before he was sunk.

  “And your father, is he well?”

  “Very well thank you, my lord.”

  “He farms, I believe, in Sussex.”

  “He does, my lord. It gives him an interest. After the sea.”

  Nathan felt on surer ground here but Chatham’s nose was in his papers again.

  “And you have been having some adventures with smugglers on the south coast.”

  As if they were a game devised for the amusement of junior officers.

  “We have been called upon to act in support of the Revenue officers on occasion, my lord.”

  “Quite so. And on one such you were fired upon by the French—before hostilities were declared.”

  Clearly the report had found its way to the First Lord’s desk, if not the cannonball.

  “Yes, my lord. We were swept in by the tide but managed to beat out again.”

  “You are well acquainted with the French coast at that point?”

  “I have learned to know it better since, my lord.” He smiled to indicate he meant this humorously but the rheumy eyes regarded him coldly across the beak of a nose.

  “I have it in my mind to send you back there.”

  “To the Somme, my lord?”

  “To Le Havre.”

  Nathan’s face doubtless reflected his incomprehension.

  “To be blunt,” said Chatham, “we would like you to land a certain cargo.”

  A short silence broken only by the rain on the window and the guttering candles.

  “A cargo, my lord?”

  “To a certain party in Le Havre.”

  Nathan nodded slowly as if this made perfect sense, to take a King’s ship into a French port at time of war and land a cargo.

  “In Nereus?”

  Chatham regarded him thoughtfully as if some doubt had arisen in his mind.

  “I do not believe that is to be contemplated,” he said, “unless you wish to give the French a second chance to maul you. No, you will assume command of an American vessel presently berthed at Bristol and sail it to Le Havre under an American flag where you will deliver its cargo to an American gentleman currently in residence there.”

  “An American vessel,” Nathan repeated with a nod that implied understanding though this in fact was still far from being the case. The British blockade applied to American ships as to any other. Any vessel attempting to run that blockade was liable to be seized by a British cruiser—whatever flag she was flying.

  “Quite.” The First Lord was consulting his papers again. “The Speedwell of Salem. Two-hundred-ton barque. Taken by a British cruiser off La Rochelle and fetched into Bristol as a prize. She is now owned by the Admiralty but she has been issued with papers in the name of the gentleman in Le Havre. In a few days it is our intent that she will resume her voyage with a new cargo and a new captain.”

  He looked up and met Nathan’s eye.

  “It is an unusual commission,” he conceded. “Should you decline it you may return to Nereus without blemish to character or career. You will forget this conversation. It will not have occurred. I know I may rely upon your absolute discretion in this.” His frown warned of the consequences should this reliance prove to be misplaced. “However, if you accept, you will be doing your sovereign and your country a considerable service—and that will not be forgotten.”

  Nathan bowed his head politely but he felt his heart pounding with something very like exultation. Clearly the prospect of advancement was of far more importance to him than he had been prepared to acknowledge. But his mind seethed with questions.

  “And the Nereus, my lord?”

  “Will be under temporary command until your return.”

  “And my officers?” The frown had returned but Nathan persisted. “I beg you, allow me at least one, my lord. If only to keep a proper watch.”

  “You may take one officer,” Chatham conceded, “and a servant. But you must understand that the slightest indiscretion would not only jeopardise your mission but almost certainly cost you your life.”

  Presumably he meant at the hands of the French though this was not something one could be sure of.

  “And when would I . . . ?”

  “You would travel to Bristol tonight with Captain Marsh. You may send to your servant for whatever you require from the Nereus.” A slight pause. “I take it from these questions that you accept the commission.”

  Nathan inclined his head in a polite bow. “Of course, my lord.”

  But he could not prevent his face from relaxing into a wide grin.

  “Thank you, my lord. You will not regret it.”

  Chatham arched his brow in indignant surprise. “I sincerely hope I will not,” he said, and stuck his long nose back into his papers.

  Nathan was halfway down the stairs when it occurred to him that transferring his command from a 16-gun sloop of war to an American blockade runner might not, outside the confines of Bedlam, be regarded as a promotion. And that sailing the vessel into Le Havre at a time of war—for all the service it might do King George—might well end in his own bloody execution.

  Chapter 6

  the Secret Cargo

  He was awake in an instant, out of a deep sleep, staring into the dark, wondering where he was and why.

  For weeks now he had slept in a dockside tavern. He was familiar with all its smells and sounds: the creaking stairs and the banging shutters, the puttering snores of the landlord and his lady and the more carnal sounds of his fellow guests. He was inured to the crooning of cats and the hectoring of whores; even the raving drunks seldom woke him.

  This was not the tavern.

  For a moment he imagined he was back on Nereus . . . But it was too quiet. On Nereus at any time of day or night there would be half a hundred men on deck and as many below. If you did not hear them you would smell them, that packed mass of humanity, and if you did not smell them you could sense them in other ways, like a great breathing animal in the dark.

  But of course this was not the Nereus. This was the Speedwell of Salem. He pronounced it in his head, deliberately, to assure himself he was not dreaming or deluded.

  The Speedwell of Salem.

  It had an ominous ring, as if she had been waiting for him all these years, a raddled corpse rising from the sea—or his own past.

  His mother had told him the story of her great-grandmother Sarah Good who had been hanged as a witch in Salem. One of nineteen falsely accused by children who had known no better and wrongly convicted by magistrates who should have. But Nathan had been a child himself when he heard the story and the old witch, innocent or guilty, had come to him in his dreams night after night and scared the wits out of him. He would see her flying across the moon on her broomstick or twisting on the gallows with her face black and her tongue hanging and her eyes staring. And he would wake as he had now, staring into the dark with the fear of death upon him.

  He had even been to Salem once. His American cousins had taken him there—to the bus
tling seaport and to the quiet village of the same name that was properly called Danvers or Old Salem. They had shown him the courtroom and the place where the gallows had stood. And the graves.

  Nathan shook his head clear of the memory. He should have no fear of it now and yet . . . The Speedwell of Salem. Such a portentous ring and the figure at her bow very like a witch, flying on her broomstick . . .

  He drew the smell of her into his lungs. The usual smell of any vessel long at sea, of hemp and tar and timber and bilge water; and a sweet stench of corruption that could be dead rat or the meat for tomorrow’s dinner, a hint of lye . . .

  But no brimstone.

  And no tobacco, either.

  Their cargo had arrived two days ago, weeks after Chatham had said it would, by river barge from Gloucester, escorted by Captain Marsh and four of his men. Tobacco. Best Virginia. In five hundred wooden chests.

  Nathan wondered.

  Was it normal to ship tobacco in chests, padlocked and bound with rope? Was it not usual to ship tobacco in hessian bales? Tully said that it was sometimes packed in crates to avoid becoming too damp or too dry, adding with a straight face that smugglers always packed it in crates or half kegs to make it easy to carry. They had hauled the chests up by the yardarm tackles, out of the barges and into the hold, with Captain Marsh counting them in like a tally clerk and insisting Nathan sign for them personally. Nathan had shrugged and signed, wondering if he was signing his own death warrant, for he had no doubt that it was contraband and he was now a smuggler, according to the law. The gamekeeper turned poacher. But on whose behalf?

  If you are apprehended, the First Lord had assured him, we will be obliged to disown you.

  No surprise there.

  He had long suspected he was born to hang, like his unfortunate ancestor, the witch of Salem.

  He could not sleep.

  He swung out of his cot, pulled on his clothes, and went up on deck.

  It was a cool night for midsummer. Midsummer’s Eve. He gazed down the length of the deck. One hundred and twenty feet from stern to stem. About the same size as the Nereus and built for speed. But lacking the status of a King’s ship—and the complement. Nathan’s command had been reduced from 105 officers and crew to just 18. And a disreputable crew at that, little better than smugglers if he was any judge of character.

  A dark figure detached itself from the starboard rail and approached him, touching his cap. Tully. The one officer Nathan had been permitted and he had chosen Tully. Why? His smuggling background or something else? An element of reliance, a sense of their both being outsiders?

  “Where is the watch?” Nathan asked him, his voice a little sharper than he intended.

  “There are two men forward,” Tully replied, looking a little embarrassed. “An anchor watch, only.”

  Nathan looked forward and saw the huddled shapes below the belfry in the bow, almost certainly asleep. Some things would have to change when they were at sea—but not until. Half her crew had done a runner or been pressed into the Royal Navy before Nathan had joined her and he did not want to lose the rest. Tully had gone scavenging along the Bristol waterfront and brought him six more hands, all American. They were reliable, he said, as near as he could judge. And so they should be, on the pay they were getting and the promise of a bonus when their cargo was safely delivered.

  Nathan walked to the rail. Still no wind. He looked up through the rigging. No stars. A hint of rain or mist in the air. He felt it tingling on his face and the backs of his hands and knew it for what it was: not rain or mist but dew. The rail was soaked with it.

  He gazed out over the crowded anchorage. Upwards of a hundred vessels waiting for a wind to take them down the Bristol Channel and out into the open sea, their lights glinting on the oily water. The tide was on the ebb. Where it moved through the lights it seemed to be rushing like a mill race. An illusion. The ship’s gig barely bobbed at the side, knocking gently on the hull, the water chuckling under her bow.

  A faint movement in the air, scarcely a breeze and yet . . . He turned his head and felt it on his cheek, saw it move the rigging. The American flag, the Stars and Stripes, at their stern stirred and flapped. A breeze—and from the northeast. If it held it would take them out into the Bristol Channel and away.

  One of their neighbours was moving. Nathan heard the commands across the water as she got underway, saw the lights at masthead and stern drifting slowly across the surface, the outline of her sails against the harbour lights. Lugsails. He remembered the lugger Fortune that had started it all. Or so it seemed to him now. For it was that incident at the mouth of the Somme that had surely brought him to the attentions of their lordships. And now here he was a smuggler himself, taking five hundred chests of Best Virginia to a mysterious American in Le Havre and a bundle of dispatches in a sealed oilskin bag marked for the attention of the American Minister in Paris.

  Why?

  Nathan knew the American Minister in Paris. Or at least knew of him. His name was Morris. Gouverneur Morris. A French Huguenot name. The family had fled France at the time of Louis XIV like many French Protestants, like his own mother’s in fact. They owned land on the Harlem River but their real business was banking. Most of them had stayed loyal to King George during the war but not Gouverneur who had been a secretary to General Washington. Nathan had met his brother once in New York. He, too, had backed the rebellion. It was said the family had backed both sides so that, whoever won, they should not lose by it.

  It was entirely possible, of course, that there was nothing in the bag, or nothing important; that it was meant to provide cover, a form of diplomatic protection so no one would go rooting among the chests.

  So what was in the chests?

  He crossed the deck to the small inspection hatch leading down into the hold and pulled aside the tarpaulin. Tully was there at once with a light and a wooden mallet to knock away the clamps. Nathan thanked him but took the lantern and climbed down the ladder alone.

  It was a tight fit. They had left about two feet of space at the end of the hold, jammed with baulks of timber to stop the cargo from shifting. Nathan had barely enough room to lift the light. The chests rose above his head, each about the size of a tea chest: four feet high and two feet wide and two feet deep. He chose three at random and rapped on the sides. They all sounded the same and told him nothing except that they weren’t empty. He put his nose to them; he even put his ear to them. He took out his pocket knife and inserted the blade between two lathes of wood and tried to slide it along. He could just about move it but there was something there, an obstruction, something not quite solid but solid enough. He pulled it out and smelled it. Tobacco. Might even be Best Virginia; he was no smoker.

  Should he be relieved?

  But why were they shipping tobacco at time of war to an American shipping agent in Le Havre? Was it intended for the American Minister in Paris? A bribe for services rendered? Or a means of bribing others?

  And what services?

  It was quite possible that Morris had been left as chargé d’affaires by the British. But if so it was a secret arrangement. Certainly not something Nathan had read about in the newspapers.

  He could speculate all night and every night and still not get to the bottom of it. And nor was he meant to.

  He climbed the ladder to the deck. The breeze had freshened. Another vessel was moving out of the anchorage. Nathan looked up at the sky to the east. Another hour and it would be dawn.

  “Rouse the crew,” he told Tully. “I believe we will make sail.”

  Chapter 7

  the Chase

  The Speedwell of Salem close-hauled in the chops of the Channel, ten miles off the Lizard; a fine summer’s day with the wind holding steady from the northeast and Nathan fifty feet above the deck with one arm hooked through the shrouds and the glass to his eye. What he could
see was not at all to his liking.

  A ship of war—a brig very like the Nereus, was running before them at a distance of about three miles and on a course that would bring them up with her, Nathan reckoned, within the hour. He steadied the glass as best he could and searched for clues to her identity. She was flying the ensign from her stern but she was still too far off to see her pennant. He could see her gun ports though—eight of them ranged along her starboard side. To all appearances she was a King’s ship but an instinct bred from ten years at sea and in a trade that had honed the art of deceit to perfection persuaded Nathan that she was making game of His Majesty’s commission.

  There were grounds for this suspicion.

  He would have expected her to come running down on them the moment they were sighted. Even if they had seen her flag the Navy was greedy for crew and had no respect for neutrals, especially not Americans; they’d have taken at least half his topmen on the spurious grounds that they had been born subject to King George and were liable for impressment.

  And then there was the set of her sails. She was close-hauled like the Speedwell but sailing a little too close and her sails kept feathering, slowing her down. If this was sheer carelessness it was not what he would expect of a Navy crew, and if it was not, then they were deliberately spilling the wind to let the Speedwell catch up with them. But why? They had the weather gage; it would be easy enough for them to come round and they could be down on him in no time . . . Unless they were afraid he would run and did not wish to put themselves to the trouble of a chase.

  He chewed his bottom lip while he considered his options. If she was a King’s ship and planned to board him, he had papers to prove he was Southampton bound with dispatches for the American Minister in London and if they tried to press his crew he could show them his Admiralty protection. A King’s ship did not worry him. What worried him was that she might be a privateer—and a French one at that.

  The region was infested with the breed, many of them little better than pirates, licensed by letter of marque to sweep the seas of enemy shipping. Nathan had papers to show the French, too, if the need arose; papers that stated he was bound for Le Havre and carrying dispatches for the American Minister in Paris. But privateer captains were infamously poor readers. They’d take what prize they could, whatever papers her captain had in his possession, and leave it to the whims of fate and the courts to determine whether or not he was trading with the enemy. Nathan would not risk being seized by a Frenchman and sailed into the nearest French port to take his chances with a corrupt magistracy.