Fox nodded and winked at the ladies and, with a gentle push of one foot against the deck, propelled himself into the air above them, catching himself upon a backstay. There he pulled shut the sack’s drawstring, and with even greater effort—engendering still more laughter—crammed the now-full sack between his breadfruits. “We thank you, gentle mortals!” he called, the falsetto now rather ragged. “Now we, the gods, must return to our demesne! Be ye welcome within the orbit of Earth, and good fortune to you!” With that he reversed himself in the air and, propelling himself off the backstay with a low twang, shot belowdecks to grand applause and a renewed chant of “Gai-a! Gai-a! Gai-a!” Gowse, too, bowed and took his leave, though not so ostentatiously.
Liddon now leapt to the quarterdeck rail and addressed the men. “All right, lads,” he called, “you’ve had your fun, now back to work.” But there was no rancor in it, and the men smiled and called “Aye aye!” Then Liddon winked. “Whiskey at eight bells!” he cried, and the men applauded, then dispersed to their stations with amiable chatter. Some of them glanced toward Arabella with slight apprehension as they passed; she smiled and nodded in reassurance.
“That was … quite a spectacle,” Lady Corey said to Arabella.
“One of the more entertaining performances I have had the good fortune to experience,” Arabella replied. “Well worth the price of admission.”
“I am not certain I would go so far. But it did no harm, I suppose.”
At that moment Fox returned to the deck, receiving a smattering of applause to which he bowed in acknowledgement. He had resumed his habitual clothing, though his face still bore traces of green paint. After consulting with Liddon and the officer of the watch on the state of the ship, he came over to the two women. “I am told,” he said with a small self-satisfied grin, “that while I was … asleep in my cabin, we received a visitation from the gods of Sky and Earth. May I trust that you ladies were appropriately deferent?”
“We gave the gods every obeisance they deserved,” Arabella replied with a matching small smile, which drew a smirk from Lady Corey. “May we expect that, now that the gods have been suitably appeased, the rest of the voyage will be without untoward incident?”
“I certainly hope so,” Fox said. His smile did not vanish completely, but it became more contemplative. “I certainly hope so.”
9
FLEUR DE LYS
After they passed within the orbit of the Earth, the tedium of the previous days resumed, to which was added the discomfort of still greater heat. Though Touchstone was now embedded in a mighty current, rushing toward Venus at just over eleven thousand knots, relative to the ship the air did not move, lying upon Arabella like a steaming towel hot from the wash-tub. The heat was already worse than any English summer day she had experienced, and as they drew still nearer the Sun she knew it would grow even hotter. And the days ran on and on, endlessly unchanging.
And then, one Wednesday, the lookout at the bowsprit called “Sail ho! On deck there, sail ho!”
Every one rushed to the bow for a better view—including Lady Corey, eager for any distraction from the tedium of endless travel, and Arabella with her. Fox sprang directly from the quarterdeck, shouting “Clear the way, there!” as he sailed the length of the ship, neatly dodging the mainmast and all its lines, before catching himself on the poop-rail. Even before he had properly come to a halt, he had drawn a spyglass from his pocket and brought it to his eye.
Arabella, for her part, squinted into the Sun, shading her eyes with a hand. The distant sail lay very near the Sun, and she feared for the captain’s eyesight.
“Oh ho,” muttered Fox, a low satisfied chuckle. “Oh ho ho ho!” He clapped the spyglass shut, turned aft, and called, “Mr. Liddon! Set a course to close, and pipe the watch below to the pedals!”
“Aye aye, sir!” came the immediate, and obviously quite pleased, reply. This was followed by a rapid stream of commands and piping which roused the crew to eager action.
“What have we, Captain?” asked Lady Corey, speaking before Arabella could ask the same question.
“French merchantman, I do believe. And on this course, at this season, she’ll be heavy with Parisian luxuries bound for Bonaparte’s Venusian colonies.” He nodded to Arabella. “We have you to thank for this opportunity, Miss Ashby. We would most likely never have found such a rich prize on our original course.”
But Fox’s acknowledgement only made Arabella’s heart fall. “My course was meant only to bring us to Venus more quickly, sir. I did not intend … rapine!”
Fox spread his hands. “Touchstone is a privateer, miss. Our letters of marque and reprisal not only permit but command us to subdue, seize, and take any French vessel we may encounter.”
His words brought to mind a previous encounter between a privateer and a merchantman—one in which a French corsair had disabled Diana and nearly killed her captain—and brought the smell of gunpowder and blood strongly to memory. “I wish you would not, sir. You know that my need to reach Venus is exceptionally pressing.”
Fox nodded. “I understand your reluctance. But I must give chase. If I did not, the men would be sorely disappointed to be deprived of such an opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the Ogre of Paris. Sorely disappointed.” He pointed to himself, then drew a finger across his throat. “If you catch my meaning. And, though I am loath to confess it”—his eyes and his mouth turned downward with reluctance—“I would welcome the assistance of yourself and your greenwood box in the enterprise.”
Despite Fox’s tacit acknowledgement of her navigational superiority—the first such she had received from him—Arabella was appalled. “I will not participate in such a barbarous action!”
“Your delicate sensibilities do you credit.” He inclined his head to her. “I ask only because I suspect your navigation would increase our chances of success and reduce the time required for the chase and capture. However, I am entirely prepared to proceed without you; I have, as I am sure you are aware, carried out many such actions with nothing more than compass and sextant and my own crude methods.”
Arabella’s heart thudded in her chest. “How much time do you anticipate this action will require?”
Fox returned the spyglass to his eye and contemplated the distant ship. “Some days, I should imagine. Less, if she proves unworthy of our attentions. More, if she proves too stout a fish for our line.” He lowered the glass. “Some merchantmen put up more of a fight than others.”
“Indeed,” she said, recalling the smell of blood and gunpowder, and a storm of deadly splinters. “I beg of you, sir, leave off this chase, for your own sake as well as that of human decency.”
“I am sorry, Miss Ashby, but I may not. Now, if the two of you will excuse me, I have an attack to plan. May I assume you will not be pedaling?”
“I will not,” Arabella snapped. Lady Corey’s reply was only a cold stare.
“Very well.” He bowed to both of them and departed.
* * *
The octuple crash of the great guns assaulted Arabella’s hearing yet again, and she pushed the wax balls into her ears more firmly. Even so, she could not fail to hear the cheers that followed—the cannonballs must have successfully demolished the floating target.
Touchstone’s crew, those not laboring at the pedals, had been drilling and drilling for days. The exercise, she knew, was intended to intimidate the French merchantman—growing nearer hour by hour, and already plainly visible to the naked eye—as well as to sharpen the men’s speed and accuracy with the great guns. The prey, for her part, was doing the same, the triple pops of her cannon clearly audible in the intervals between Fox’s drills. Her pulsers, too, whirled day and night, but Touchstone was a predator, built for speed and manned with a large and enthusiastic crew; that she would intercept the merchantman seemed a foregone conclusion.
Another horrific bang interrupted Arabella’s concentration—they were coming more frequently now, indicating that the men were in
deed improving—and again the impulse of the shot made every unsecured thing in the cabin lurch toward the forward bulkhead, including the book she was reading. She grasped the book as it tried to float away, and repositioned it in the air before her tired eyes.
It was a book of aerial navigation, open to the chapter on ship-to-ship combat.
She hated herself for studying it. The mere thought of participating in any way in a vicious, unprovoked attack upon an innocent merchantman—the very type of attack which had nearly cost her captain’s life—was abhorrent to her. Yet study it she did, for the thought of losing her life or liberty in an unsuccessful attack, and as a result being separated from her fiancé for years or even for ever, was still more abhorrent. If there were any way for her to ensure victory for Touchstone, she owed it to her captain to discover it.
It was a brutal, savage business, and only Fox’s repeated assurances—and, obviously, survival to this point—gave her any reason at all to hope that such a battle could truly be won. “The key to successful privateering,” he had said over supper the previous evening, “is for both captains to properly understand the balance of forces before the engagement begins. Only a foolish privateer, obviously, would even approach an obviously superior merchantman. And when approached by an obviously superior privateer, a merchant captain will generally strike his colors rather than suffer destruction. It is only when both captains believe themselves superior that a protracted battle occurs.”
Fox seemed confident that the coming encounter would be resolved rapidly, bloodlessly, and in his favor.
Yet still both ships continued to drill.
* * *
Hours passed. Arabella’s eyes grew bleary from relentless reading, and her ears rang from the endless practice of the great guns, yet still she pressed herself to comprehend the problem.
She had shifted her station to the captain’s cabin, where the greenwood box rested, while Fox occupied himself on the quarterdeck, directing his men in their preparations for battle. Again and again she set the dials; turned the key; released the lever; endured the endless wait while the device performed its calculations; and transcribed the result into her commonplace-book. All the while she fanned herself against the cabin’s stultifying heat.
Not infrequently did she wonder why she was even bothering. How could she, a novice navigator who had experienced only a single action, have the audacity to think that she might devise a stratagem that had eluded the minds of centuries of experienced airmen? Yet something—some nebulous concept, born of her reading and her direct experience—had taken hold of her mind and would not let go. It was as though there were a word on the tip of her tongue, or a memory just beyond recollection. And so she tried one idea after another, using the greenwood box to calculate the application of each, and discarded each as it proved impractical.
Again and again she returned to the incident with the wind-whales, when the box had returned the impossible negative result which had saved them from the great bull whale. Some combination of forward and backward pulsers, some set of the sails, would—she was certain—provide a new and unanticipated tactic that …
The whirring of the gears halted with a definitive click, interrupting her thoughts, and she inspected the device’s dials. This combination was different from any she had seen before, and at first she was distressed. Had she, in her distracted state, set the dials incorrectly? She reviewed her notes, examined the result again. No, all seemed in order, though unconventional in the extreme.
She translated the set of the mechanism’s hands into a detailed sailing-plan. By now the calculations were second nature.
She inspected her own written result.
The whole maneuver lay as clear in her mind as though she were witnessing it spread out in the air before her. Drive forward at full speed, set main and mizzen sails hard a-larboard, pause, then back pulsers, while at the same time sheeting home starboard and larboard topsails. The imagined ship spun in the air, yawing and rolling simultaneously in a twisted corkscrew motion, and in a twinkling had reversed herself, swapping head for stern in less than three ship’s lengths.
Properly applied, it would permit Touchstone to shoot past the prey, whirl about, and demolish her pulsers in the opening moments of the battle.
It was, she reflected, nearly insane to tumble in two dimensions simultaneously while driving forward at speed—certainly something no conventional navigator would ever have devised. Yet she, through dogged and perhaps naive persistence and with the help of the greenwood box, had stumbled upon it.
It would be dizzying in the extreme to perform, and would require the most particular coordination between pulsers, sails, and cannon. Yet Touchstone and her crew were, she was certain, capable of it.
But would it be moral for her to tell Fox about it?
A rapid victory would reduce or even eliminate the loss of life. But if she were wrong—if she had overlooked some flaw in her tactic—or if Fox and his crew failed in its execution, it might lead to disaster. Or, perhaps even worse, if it were successful … it might encourage Fox to seek out more opportunities for depredation, delaying their arrival at Venus still further.
Staring at the dials, she blew out a breath. She had succeeded in devising a unique stratagem. But what should she do with it?
* * *
“Ought we not go below?” Lady Corey said. Arabella could not recall ever having heard her so anxious.
“You may if you wish,” Arabella replied, struggling to keep the tremor out of her own voice. “But I will remain here on deck.” They were, she felt, in a reasonably protected location, in the ship’s waist.
In the rigging above them airmen floated, one arm or leg hooked around a sheet or halyard, staring forward with grim concentration and ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice. They were all properly dressed in shirts and trousers; whether this was for protection in the coming battle, or at the captain’s orders for the women’s propriety she did not know. Whatever the reason, she was glad of it, for it obviated Lady Corey’s objections to her remaining abovedecks. How absurd, she thought, that the sight of a man’s naked breast should be more objectionable than to see him possibly blown to bits.
From below came the rhythmic beat of the drum, with the accompanying grunts of the men and creaking of pedals, as the pulsers drove them toward their rendezvous with the prey. Abaft, Fox and the other officers prowled the quarterdeck, peering through spyglasses and muttering to each other. Ahead, the smoke and smell of slow-match drifted from the forward companion ladder.
Beyond the gun deck, of course, loomed the French merchantman, so close now that the open mouths of her three cannon were plainly visible—three dark circles like the pupils of some fierce aerial carnivore’s eyes. Behind the guns lay a great spread of sail, ready for whatever maneuvers might be required, and far abaft of them the whirring pulsers that propelled the two ships ever nearer each other. Arabella wasn’t certain, but she thought she heard the cries of the other ship’s commander as he sought to rally his men for battle.
Fox’s men needed no such encouragement. Fierce, disciplined, and highly motivated by their own thirst for plunder, they hung taut in the rigging and scattered about the deck—well trained, well armed, and entirely committed to the coming battle.
For her part, Arabella was torn. Again and again in the hours since her discovery she had begun to approach Fox or Liddon to tell them about her new maneuver, but each time she had held back. The idea would not be accepted, not at such a late moment before the battle. Or they would dismiss her completely, despite the success her navigation had brought them already. Or they would accept it, and disaster would result. And so she remained mute.
Yet she refused to quit the deck. She would observe the battle, with the maneuver tidily written out and neatly folded in her reticule, and present it to Fox when and if it seemed necessary.
She trembled with anticipation and consternation.
The French merchantman’s sails n
ow occupied a greater span of the heavens than Arabella’s two hands spread out before her thumb-tip to thumb-tip. Airmen could be clearly seen bustling about the rigging, and the cries of their first mate plainly heard. Fox, on the quarterdeck above Arabella, gritted his teeth in a fierce grin, squinting through his spyglass.
The battle would begin within moments.
Fox collapsed the spyglass with a harsh metallic click. “Fire as she bears,” he remarked to Liddon, “as we discussed.”
“Fire as she bears!” Liddon called through the scuttle, and the order was repeated down the length of the ship to the gun deck beneath her prow.
A long moment passed in which the world seemed to gather its breath, Arabella along with it.
And then Touchstone’s eight guns spoke in perfect unison, a great blast of sound and fire that caused the ship to jerk backward in the air. Almost faster than the eye could follow, the eight balls emerged from the jet of flame and smoke and flew unerringly toward the target, diminishing to specks … and converged upon the pennant at the merchantman’s mainmast peak, utterly obliterating it.
The rest of the prey’s sails, her masts and rigging and crew and, most especially, her critical pulsers, stood completely undamaged.
Arabella stared in stunned incomprehension. The action had been flawlessly executed … and had completely failed to impair the merchantman in any significant way. How could Fox have thrown away his shot so thoughtlessly? Or was it the targeting that was at fault?
Whatever the reason the opening salvo had failed, it would take a minute and a half for the crew to prepare the next. Touchstone lay open to the French counterattack, which would surely follow within seconds. Yet Fox made no attempt to maneuver. Instead, the two ships continued to drive directly toward each other, pulsers whirling.
Silence lay over both ships, save for the fading echo of the opening volley.
And then a call from the merchantman’s quarterdeck broke the silence. A single syllable of command, incomprehensible French sailing jargon.
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