'"Ear 'em, sir?" Cony whispered. "Sounds more like two now."
"How far to South Brent from here?" Alan asked the carter.
"Jus' shy of a league, sir," the grizzled old man replied, looking a trifle concerned. "Maght be an' 'ighwayman, ye know. Lonely stretch o' road 'ere'bouts. 'R could be trav'lers lahk y'selves, sir."
"Let's be prepared, then," Alan ordered. The carter and his boy had bell-mouthed fowling pieces under their seat, and they took them out and unwrapped the rags from the fire-locks. Alan drew one of his dragoon pistols, checked the priming and stuck it into the top of his riding boot. That pistol's mate went into the waistband of his breeches. Finally, he freed his hanger in its scabbard so it could be drawn easily.
" 'Tis two men, sir," Cony muttered cautiously as two riders hove into sight on the slight rise behind them like specters from the mists. They checked for a moment from a fast canter, then came on at the same pace.
"Stand and meet them here, then, whoever they are," Alan ordered. He reined his mare out to one side of the wagon, while Cony wheeled his mount to the other side. The old carter kept his fowling-piece out of sight, but stood in the front of the wagon looking backward, with one hand on his boy's shoulder to steady him.
But once within musket shot, the two riders slowed down to a walk and raised their free hands peaceably. Alan kept his caution-they looked like hard men. One was stocky and thick, tanned dark as a Hindoo, and sported a long seaman's queue at the collar of his muddy traveling cloak. The second was a bit more slender, a little taller, though just as darkly tanned. He seemed a little more elegant, but it was hard to tell at that moment as he was just as unshaven and mud-splashed as his companion.
"Gentlemen, peace to you," the slender one began, halting his animal out of reach of a sword thrust. "We've heard your cart axle this last hour and rode hard to catch up with you. "Tis a lonely stretch of road, and that's no error. Fog and mist, and I'll confess a little unnerving to ride alone on a morning such as this."
Alan nodded civilly but gave no reply.
"Allow me to name myself," the fellow went on. "Andrew Ayscough. And my man there, that's Bert Hagley. On our way to Plymouth to take up the King's Service. You going that way as well, sir?"
"The road goes to Plymouth eventually, sir," Alan replied.
"Then for as far as you fare, we'd be much obliged to ride with you, sir," Ayscough asked, "if you do not begrudge a little company on the road, sir? Four men are a harder proposition for highwaymen than two. Our horses are fagged out. Being alone out here made us push 'em a little harder than was good for them. That and having to be in Plymouth by the first bell of the forenoon watch, sir."
"You're seamen, the both of you?' Alan asked, losing a little of his caution.
"Aye, sir," Ayscough admitted. "Down to join a ship. I've a warrant to be master gunner, and Bert there's to be my Yeoman of the Powder Room."
"Already down for a ship, hey? Not just going to Plymouth to seek a berth?" Alan queried further. The man looked like the sort to be a warrant master gunner. He even had what looked to be a permanent tattoo on one cheek from imbedded grains of burnt gunpowder. "I suppose there'd be no harm in you riding along for as far as we go. What ship?"
"Telestos, sir," Ayscough replied evenly.
"Alan Lewrie," he said with a relieved smile, untensing his body and kneeing his horse forward to offer his hand to Ayscough. "That's my man Will Cony. Cony, say hello to Mister Ayscough and Mister Hagley."
"Aye, sir," Cony intoned, still a little wary.
Near to, with his hands empty of weapons, one hand on reins and the other groping like a sailor out of his depth on horseback at the front of the saddle, Ayscough appeared to be a man in his late thirties to early forties. The hair was salt and pepper, worn long at the back in sailor's fashion. The complexion matched as well; scoured by winds and sun, and pebbled with smallpox scars. But the man's speech was pleasant, almost gentlemanly, and the eyes were bright blue and lively.
"Telestos, did you say?" Alan said as they began to ride along together, smirking a little at the man's unfamiliarity with the Greek pantheon. "What do you know of her?"
"She's an eighty-gunned, two-decked Third Rate, sir. Bought in-frame at Chatham in 1782." Ayscough chuckled as they headed west. "Completed but never served, she did. By the time she was launched and rigged, the war was over. And you know how eighties are, sir. Too light in the upper-works some say. Snap in two in a bad sea, some of 'em did. But Telestos had her lines taken off a French line-of-battle ship. Laid up in-ordinary for a while, then just got sold as a… trading vessel." Here Ayscough tipped him a conspiratorial wink. "Now she's to fit out as an Indiaman."
"For the East India Company?" Alan asked, a little confused. If he was to join Telesto as a Navy officer, what was the need for subterfuge about being an Indiaman? And Ayscough said he was in possession of a warrant for a King's ship.
"That's all they told me, sir," Ayscough commented with a shrug.
"Telestos," Alan said, feeling cautious once more. "That's Greek, is it not? I read a little Greek. Horrible language."
"Why, I believe 'tis one of Zeus' daughters, sir. The ancient goddess of good fortune," Ayscough replied brightly. "A favorite of mine, sir. She's always treated me well. Do you know, sir, you have the look of a seaman yourself, you and your man Cony. Might you be on your way to join a ship as well?"
"Only going to visit relations near Plymouth," Alan lied, not knowing quite the reason why he did so. "I know little of the sea. Nor do I care to, sir. Life is brutal, short and nasty enough on land for most people, is it not?"
"Ah, I thought you to be, sir," Ayscough said, frowning. "After all, you have what looks like seamen's chests in your cart. Why, at first, I fancied you to be a sailorman, sir. Perhaps even an officer. I've heard tell of an Alan Lewrie. A Navy lieutenant, I believe."
"Lots of Lewries here in the west, Mister Ayscough, but thankee for the compliment," Alan replied, now chill with dread. "One of my distant cousins, perhaps. My family is from Wheddon Cross. The Navy? God no, not me!" He pretended a hearty chuckle. "I mean, who in his right mind would really be a sailor?"
"I see," Ayscough said, pursing his lips. He put both hands on the front of the saddle and frowned once more, as if making up his mind. "Bert!" he shouted, digging under his cloak for a weapon!
"Ambush!" Alan screamed, raking his heels into his horse's flanks and groping to his boot-top for his pistol. He sawed the reins so his horse shouldered against Ayscough's as he tried to thumb back the hammer of his pistol.
Ayscough got a weapon out, a pistol, though he was having trouble staying seated. Alan lashed out with his rein hand, kicked Ayscough's mount in the belly, making it rear, and shoved hard. The other horse shied away, and Ayscough came out of the saddle to tumble into the slushy road.
There was a loud shot and a million rooks stirred up cawing. Time slowed down to a gelatinous crawl. Alan jerked the reins to turn his terrorized horse, saw Ayscough rolling to his knees to free his gun hand and begin to take aim. Alan's muzzle came up and he fired first. Missed! Thanks to the curvetting of the damned horse! Alan dropped his smoking barker, clawed at his waistband to get its twin, all the while looking down the enormous barrel of Ayscough's gun. There was another loud shot, another angry chorus from the wheeling rooks, and Ayscough grunted as the air was driven from his lungs. He pitched face-down into the slush, the mud and the stalings from myriad animals, his pistol discharging into the road with a muffled thud, his cloak flapping over his head like a shroud. The back of it had been rivened with a positive barrage of pistol balls.
"Cony?" Alan shouted from a terribly dry mouth, wheeling around to face the next foe.
"Ah'm arright, sir, no thanks t' the likes o' this'un!"
"Jesus!" the waggoner's lad said, trembling, in awe of having killed his first man. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" It was his shot from that fowling-piece that had taken Ayscough down: a mix of pistol and musket balls, bird-shot and wh
atever else looked handy.
Alan dismounted, handed the reins to the boy and pulled Ayscough's head up out of the mud, but the man was most thoroughly dead. So was Cony's foe, run through by his seaman's knife.
"Wot yew suppose t'was all about, sir?" Cony asked, dismounting and coming to his side. They were both shaking like leaves at the sudden viciousness of the attack, at how quickly two men had died and at how easily it could have been them soaking in the snow and mud.
"Something about that ship we're joining, I think," Alan said. "They must have something on them, some kind of clue. You search that one yonder."
"Bloody 'ighwaymen," the old carter grumbled as he got down from the wagon seat and began to strip off Ayscough's high-topped dragoon boots. He tried one against the sole of his worn old shoes to see if they would be a good fit, and grunted with satisfaction. "Wot'iver 'appened t' 'stand an' deliver', J asks ya? They wuz gonna kill ever' last' one of us'n, I reckon, an' then rob the wagon, too."
"Pretending to be honest seamen," Alan said shuddering. "Our lucky day you and your lad were so quick on the hop, sir. Cony and I would have ended our lives here if it hadn't been for you."
"Why, thankee, sir, thankee right, kindly," the old man preened.
Alan found a purse of gold on Ayscough's body: one and two-guinea coins, along with a goodly supply of shillings- nigh on one hundred pounds altogether! There was also a note written on foolscap, in a quite good hand. It described Lewrie and Cony, gave a hint of what route they would be taking, the name of the ship they would be joining, and an assurance that they would be staying at the Lamb and Flag Inn in Plymouth!
"Your lucky day, too, sir," Alan said, once the old carter had his new boots on and was stamping about to try them out. Alan counted out a stack of coins and gave them over. "I put a high price on my hide, and they'll not be needing these where they're going."
"How'd yew know, sir?" Cony asked, once he had turned Hagley's pockets inside out and helped lumber the corpse into the back of the wagon.
"Ah, well, you see, Cony," Alan sighed. "Ayscough there said the ship's name was Telestos, not Telesto. He claimed to have studied Greek, but he called her Fortune, one of Zeus' daughters. But it's common knowledge her name translates as Success, and she was one of Ocean's daughters. And Hesiod's Theogony is almost the first thing one reads in Greek, so he couldn't have been a real student."
"Oh, I see, sir!" Cony said, in awe of his employer's knowledge.
"And he mentioned our sea-chests, trying to confirm if we were sailors on our way to Plymouth, and if I was the Alan Lewrie that was in the Royal Navy. While he swore he was a master gunner with a warrant for our ship, you see. But where were their sea-chests?"
"Sent on ahead, sir, by coaster?"
"And what sailor would ride a horse when he could coast along with his chest, Cony?" Alan drawled, at his ease once more, and with his nerves calmed down to only a mild after-zinging. It wouldn't do for Cony to know that he suspected that it was Lord Cantner who had sicced these bully-bucks on them. Or too much of the why.
Had to be him, no question, Alan thought as he retrieved his dropped pistol, cleaned it and reloaded. The old fart wants me dead, and he swore he'd have my heart's blood! I can't remember mentioning Plymouth, and I didn't tell Cony I don't think. The talk around my lodgings was I was going to sea again. But Lord Cantner could have snooped around-he knows everyone worth knowing back in London. He could have found where I was going easy enough. But what's this about this Lamb and Flag Inn? I've never even heard of the bloody place. And I'd have gone direct to the ship to report aboard. I just hope there's no more of these murderous bastards on my trail, he thought grimly.
By the time they got the bodies to South Brent and whistled up the magistrate, their own mothers would not have known them. The carter and his boy had outfitted themselves in their hats and cloaks and shoes, putting their old castoffs on the corpses, which made them appear even more the very picture of desperate highwaymen. The magistrate had not even opened more than one eye from a mid-morning snooze to adjudge the matter. Perpetrators dead, hoist by their own petard. No one local, from the looks of them to stir up more trouble. All they needed was burying. Case closed.
"Lieutenant Lewrie, come aboard to join, sir," Alan said to the officer on deck once he had gone up the gangplank to the quarterdeck.
"A little bit less of it, if you please, Mister Lewrie," the officer in the plain blue frock coat told him. There was much about the man that bespoke a naval officer-the way he held himself erect, the hands in the small of the back and the restless grey eyes that cast about at every starting. But instead of naval uniform, the man wore dark blue breeches and black stockings, and there was nothing on his cocked hat or his coat sleeves to show any indication of rank.
"Sir?" Alan replied, taken a little aback. Although he had obeyed the strictures of his letter from the Secretary to the Admiralty, Phillip Stephens, and worn a civilian suit, he had expected a nicer welcome than that. "I'm at a loss, then, sir," he admitted. "And you are…?"
"I am captain of this vessel. Andrew Ayscough," the older man informed him, civilly offering his hand.
It was not the first time that Alan Lewrie had been totally stupefied in his life-certainly it was not going to be the last- but the way his jaw dropped, and the ashen pallor which claimed his phyz did much to convince his new captain he was dealing with a slack-jawed fool.
"Are ye well, Mister Lewrie?" Ayscough asked.
"I would be a lot better, sir, if I hadn't seen you dead in the road east of Ivybridge," Alan finally stammered.
To make matters worse, there was a superficial similarity to the dead Ayscough. This living version had salt-and-pepper hair, eyes of a most penetrating nature, a seamanly queue of hair over the collar of his plain blue coat and the same weathered face, though the man that stood before Lewrie bore the unconscious, outward ton of command that the other had not.
"My cabin, Mister Lewrie," Ayscough suggested with a harsh rasp.
"Aye, sir."
They made their way aft from the starboard gangway to the quarterdeck, then under the poop. Aft of there were many cabins usually not found on a man-of-war, before they reached the captain's quarters right aft. There was no Marine sentry, no one to guard the lord and master's privacy. And as Alan had observed, even in his present confused state, no inkling of Navy anywhere aboard Telesto.
"Now what the devil is this?" Ayscough asked, flinging his hat across the cabins to hook onto a peg with a practiced motion.
"Sir, I should like to see some bona fides that you are who you say you are before I say another word," Alan finally managed.
"Piss on what you want, you impudent puppy!" Ayscough rapped back. "Prove to me you're who you say you are first."
Alan dug into his coat and drew out his letters from the Admiralty, laid them on Ayscough's desk and let the man peruse them.
"Alan Lewrie, to be fourth officer, right," Ayscough allowed grudgingly. "Here." He produced his own papers from a drawer in his desk, a drawer that he had to unlock first.
"Post-captain, Royal Navy," Alan read aloud. "Very well, sir. I shall have to take on faith that you are a commission Sea Officer."
"Now what the devil is this tale of yours?"
Alan repeated his assertion, and filled the man in on what had occurred on the forest road. He produced the note, and what was left of the guineas in the purse.
"We found nothing else on them, sir," Alan concluded. "At first, I thought it might be… well, something of a personal nature. Someone trying to gain revenge for an incident that happened in London before I departed. But the coincidence of the name, well… now I wonder."
"What sort of an incident?" Ayscough demanded, mollifying his tone and his suspicious glower enough to trot out a squat leather bottle of brandy and offer Lewrie a glass.
"Urn, it was a lady, sir. Her husband… names aren't important, surely, for the lady's sake. Now, the gentleman was quite old, unable to duel, b
ut he swore he'd have my heart's blood." Alan tried to quibble around the meat of the matter.
"He had suspicions you were tupping his wife?"
"A little stronger than suspicion, sir." Alan shrugged, feeling as at-sea and cornered as he had during his first interview with
his captain aboard Ariadne back in 1780. Ayscough raised his eyebrows and almost unbent from his stiffness for a moment. "Not flagrante delicto, surely,"
Ayscough finally asked.
"Well engaged, sir," Alan said, nodding in affirmation. "Damme, what sort o' sailors they going to send me, then?" the captain barked. "Can't even manage a boarding action without witnesses. Yes, I can see why you thought it might be personal, except for the following facts: one, this assassin used my name; two, he knew the name of this ship; three, he knew you were to join her; and, four, he knew the route you were taking. Daddies trying to head off their daughters on their way to Gretna Green to elope with some smarmy bastard have less information. I don't like the smell of this, Lewrie. I want you to go ashore and take lodgings for a couple of days until we have more of our people assembled. The Lamb and Flag is good."
"Not there, sir." Alan protested, "The man knew that, too!"
"Goddamn my eyes!" Ayscough roared, slamming a tough fist on his desk, hard enough to make the deck quake. "There's a spy about. Back in London, unless I miss my guess. I know it involves the honor of a lady, Lewrie, but just who was this son of a bitch you think was behind your attempted murder?"
"Lord Roger Cantner, sir."
"Hmm." Ayscough pondered, drumming fingers and staring at the overhead beams, dropping out of his energetic anger in a flash. "No, I've never heard of him. And surely, it wasn't anyone at the Admiralty."
"Pardon me, sir," Alan interrupted Ayscough's musings. "But if I might inquire… what the hell am I doing here, and what the devil is this commission all about?" "They told you nothing."
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