“I scoff at you for imagining I wanted the emerald back; it means nothing to me. It’s true, my mother does hold an obscene sentiment for it — what exactly, I’m not at liberty to say. As my debts are exorbitant, the emerald would be nothing but a drop in a black hole.”
“Then speak plainly, sir. What is it you want?”
“I want you to pay off my debts.”
It was Emily’s turn to laugh. “Do you imagine, sir, that I have a chest of gold coins stashed under my bed on the first floor, and would — in good faith — share it with a man such as yourself, one I hardly know and one who has no discipline when it comes to his addictions?”
His features hardened. “Ah, but you shall pay my debts.”
“How so?”
“When we are married.”
Emily blinked, her eyes falling first on his dark-red lips, and then plunking down on his belly. “Surely you jest! Tell me you are trifling with me.”
“I do not jest, nor do I trifle.”
“Sir! We have been acquainted for five days.”
“If we’d met for the first time, standing up before the clergyman, it would’ve made little difference to me.”
“Oh, but to me it would,” said Emily, shaking her head with mock gravity, “for you have not yet apprised me of the secrets you hide under your powdered wigs.”
Wetherell’s retort was a swift one. “And you shall remain unapprised, for my wigs come to bed with me.”
“I cannot think of two people more unsuited for one another.”
“What does suitability have to do with anything?” Wetherell groaned, taking up his pacing again. “To me your connections and physical attractiveness alone will suffice. We shall produce at least one heir, and then you shall live here with my mother, and I shall take up residence in London. After that we need not bother with one another.”
Emily’s hand made its way to her mouth. Before answering, she had to trust she would not be prevailed upon by her churning stomach to spring for the duke’s chamber pot. “When my annulment has been formally ratified,” she said with slow enunciation, “I shall not be seeking to remarry.”
Wetherell made a sucking sound with his tongue. “Your Royal Highness, a woman such as yourself, who has blemished her reputation with her reckless flight to the sea and her cavorting with Jack Tars, is fortunate indeed that a gentleman such as myself, of such unblemished lineage, has chosen to accept you as a wife.”
“Sir, let me be clear: in order to marry, I must be a willing participant.”
“That did not stop you the first time.”
“I do not want a husband, and even if I did I would not choose you.”
Wetherell reddened. “I have been informed that you do not have a choice in the matter.”
“Informed? Informed by whom?”
“You must face reality, Your Royal Highness. You are an embarrassment to your relations; one who has no prospects. Marrying me is your only salvation, your only path to regaining any manner of respectability.” He re-knotted his cravat while he delivered his final blow. “Your family has not only given their permission, they have promised that our marriage shall take place, and the ball my mother is planning shall be the celebratory backdrop for our upcoming nuptials.”
A litany of events and innuendoes collided in Emily’s head. All at once so many things, so many baffling speeches and glances and secret conversations, began to make perfect sense. She felt a flush of heat race through her veins, and her eyes strayed around the room, seeing nothing at first, not even Wetherell in his extravagant costume. Then the storm played into her thoughts. Periodic lightning threw silver-grey shadows upon the burial cavern, the rain pounded the gardens and the earth, and the subsequent thunder rattled the windowpanes. The noise was so tremendous, surely the family — were they listening at the door — would not hear if she were to leap up to slam drawers and overturn tables and smash china vases. But even this therapeutic notion could not lift her from her chair. Without warning, she was seized with a tickle of laughter, and try as she might she had no control over it. At first her laughs came in short, chuckling gulps, which shook her shoulders, and soon her whole body joined in, throwing her into complete convulsions, barely able to breathe let alone speak, and with each peek at Wetherell she helplessly slipped further and further off her chair.
Wetherell’s lower lip hit the floor. In horror, he watched her unbridled display, as if he expected — any second now — to see her explode, and her severed head and limbs propelled across the room. A curious shade of purple, similar to the colour of his fine coach, overspread his face, and he began jerking his head in a strange manner, as if he were trying to rid his ears of water. But when Emily did nothing to stop her gales of laughter, or dash away the mirthful tears rolling down her face, he tugged on the hem of his jacket and headed for the door, moving so swiftly he walked over on his ankle, causing the crooked calf padding to slide further down his leg.
28
Noon
(Forenoon Watch, Eight Bells)
Aboard HMS Amethyst
It was all over just past noon, at the precise moment when two of the Amethyst’s midshipmen, bearing their sextants and quadrants, had completed their measurements of latitude and were reporting their findings to Captain Prickett and Fly Austen. The American schooner bobbed in the waves, as helpless as a toy whose owner had inflicted many imaginary battles upon her, and in doing so had shredded her sails, bloodied her crew, and charred her timbers. On either side of her, lying in the water like a pair of giant oars, lay the schooner’s masts, which had come crashing down amidst great cheering from the Amethysts and the Remarkables, sending the vanquished crew scampering to escape certain death under their frightening weight.
It had been Prosper Burgo’s fight from start to finish. The Amethyst had not fired a single shot; nevertheless, she had stood by with her colours proudly raised once more, a beacon to the privateersman and his Remarkables that a friend was in their midst. Now, abandoning their guns and stations, the Amethysts gathered at the rails to witness the aftermath, and at the sight of Prosper lowering his boats there came a second, cheerful outpouring of “Huzzah!” Of those who raised their voices, Fly was certain it was Mrs. Kettle who whooped the loudest. Dressed in her very best, she danced out in the open, waving a dainty handkerchief and yoo-hooing in the hopes that Prosper might hear her from across the watery divide. “I just knew he’d come back fer me … I just knew it,” was her effusive cry to the sailors and anyone else who cared to listen.
“Well, now, Mr. Austen, should we take her a prize?” asked Prickett, who had only recently returned to the quarterdeck, perhaps once he was assured his crew would not be entering into the fray. “Though her masts have gone by the board, her hull looks sound. We shouldn’t have any difficulty taking her into Portsmouth with us.”
“She is not our prize, sir,” said Fly coldly.
“Mr. Burgo couldn’t possibly succeed in taking that schooner into port. Why he hardly has enough men to man his own brig, let alone provide a prize master and crew to take command of the schooner.”
“Perhaps we should ask Mr. Burgo if he requires our assistance. As the schooner is fairly his, he should have a say in the matter.”
Prickett’s hands found his hips. “I cannot agree, Mr. Austen! He’s a damned privateer, and his brig is nothing but a bumboat!”
“That damned privateer once saved our lives.”
“I cannot recall such a time, Mr. Austen.” Prickett held his head high for a moment before surprising Fly by swooping in close to him and dropping his voice to a dramatic whisper. “I am at the end of my career. I cannot countenance returning home to my family and peers empty-handed, and having to inform the Admiralty that I have no idea what happened to the Lady Jane.”
Fly remained aloof. “Our cruise has not ended; we may still find her.”
“On that score, I hold little hope.” Prickett pulled away to shout at his men. “Heave to! Heave to, lads! Lo
wer the boats and prepare the launch for me. Oh, Mr. Weevil, there you are, my good man! Could you see to packing a basket for me, and include some good wine and good eats, won’t you?”
“Shall you require my company?”
“For what purpose, Mr. Austen?”
Fly frowned. “Do you not intend to board the schooner, and interview what remains of her crew to root out Royal Navy deserters?”
Prickett made a face. “Nay, I shall leave you to do the honours, Mr. Austen. You may take Bridlington with you; he’ll help you identify the scoundrels. I’ll have no part in cleaning up the mess on that schooner. In the meantime, I plan to pay a visit to our friend, Mr. Burgo, and make certain he’s amenable to our receiving a share in the prize money. And, knowing the very prospect should send her quivering with ecstasy, I shall ask Mrs. Kettle to accompany me.”
1:00 p.m.
Magpie sat rocking in the cutter as the oarsmen raised and held their oars upright in the air and allowed the boat to bump up against the beaten hull of the American schooner. Having manoeuvred through waves littered with the wreckage of war and avoided the jagged stump of a fallen mast, they had come from the Amethyst to offer assistance to the Remarkables, who had already boarded the defeated vessel and taken command. In an effort to stay alert, Magpie rubbed his eye, pretending he didn’t see the streams of blood oozing from the scuppers, nor the lifeless bodies in the waves whose faces were contorted in grisly expressions, laying bare their final agony on earth. How he wished Morgan Evans could have come with him, for he knew no one else on board the cutter, and no one paid him any heed. But minutes before Mr. Austen had stepped into the very first boat to push off after Captain Prickett’s launch had left for the Prosperous and Remarkable, he had expressly asked Mr. Evans to stay with the Amethysts, saying “I would feel more at ease, for you’ll know how to act should an emergency arise.”
Magpie anxiously assessed the silent row of men sneering down at him from the schooner’s broken side, armed with various forms of weaponry, their sunburned faces displaying hostility, and then he broke into a shaky laugh. Among them were those he recognized as Prosper Burgo’s ruffians: there was the man whose nose resembled a tumorous strawberry, and beside him was the one with the missing ears, who, in turn, was standing next to the one with a mouthful of cracked teeth and a neck smeared in tattoos. And when it came his turn to climb up the schooner’s side on the suspended rope ladder, Magpie no longer felt the sensation that a flock of birds were flapping their wings in his stomach.
Leaping onto the deck, and fearful lest a glance around should reveal untold horrors, Magpie’s eye immediately lighted upon Mr. Austen, who had already established himself on a stool before a makeshift table near the schooner’s wheel. Stretching before the commander, in a line that snaked toward the bow of the ship, were the battle-weary Americans, some blackened with smoke, others weakened by blood loss, all of them guarded by Prosper’s ruffians, who had their weapons of intimidation at the ready. Sitting next to Mr. Austen, pressing a white handkerchief to his long crooked nose as if he could not tolerate the stench assaulting his nostrils, was First Lieutenant Bridlington. Magpie stepped closer to listen to them as they, one-by-one, conducted their interviews of the seamen.
“I was born a British subject, sir, but I ain’t a deserter,” declared one poor sailor whose shirt was slowly turning red from a gaping lesion on his neck. “I’ve a certificate of citizenship, and it shows I’m rightly an American, if ya’ll allow me to fetch it fer ya. It’s down below in me ditty bag.”
Bridlington dropped the handkerchief from his face to whistle his indignation. “Oh, what will that prove? I happen to know that these so-called certificates are usually false and therefore invalid, and that anyone can easily purchase one for a mere dollar, even a low-born such as yourself.”
Mr. Austen addressed the man with calm decency. “You have my permission to go and retrieve it.”
“Fine then!” retaliated Bridlington, wagging his finger at the bleeding sailor. “But your damned certificate better provide more particulars beyond your name, and the colour of your hair and eyes. Fie! Don’t we all have brown hair and brown eyes?”
Appropriating the white handkerchief from a sputtering Bridlington, Mr. Austen offered it to the sailor. “Hold this to your face to stop up the blood, and hurry back.”
The next American in line looked like a mean boxer at the Fives Court in St. Martin’s Lane. He kicked at the deck with his feet, and his fists were working at his sides, causing Magpie to wonder if he might haul off and punch Bridlington in the face, just as Mr. Evans had done. When he stated his case, he leaned in dangerously close to the first lieutenant and spoke in rough accentuated words. “Yer damn right I’m a deserter. I deserted six years ago after being whipped within an inch of my life, and I’ve found peace o’ mind with the Americans. Ya can’t blame a simple man like myself. I’ve been fed better, paid better, treated better, and haven’t been whipped fer no cause at all.”
Mr. Austen placed a restraining hand on Bridlington, who had leapt to his feet to fume, and simply nodded to two of his own men standing nearby, who came forward to lead the belligerent away to the Amethyst’s cutter.
Magpie felt a large hand upon his shoulder, and looked up to find Prosper Burgo’s jack-of-all-tradesman. “Pemberton Baker!”
“Well, if it ain’t the little one-eyed sailmaker!” said Pemberton, his pudding face devoid of emotion. “Have ya come to offer yerself up fer the prize crew?”
“Oh, nay, sir, I came with the others, thinkin’ ya might need me to patch up a sail or two,” he said, wishing he could pluck up the courage to ask Pemberton if he’d seen Dr. Braden and Biscuit in his travels; too afraid the answer would be no. “Where’s Mr. Burgo?”
Pemberton yanked his thumb across the water where the Prosperous and Remarkable was hove to. “He were about to join me, but yer captain came visitin’ with a picnic basket o’ victuals. Chose an odd time fer a visit, and he brought with him that snudge snout, Mrs. Kettle.”
“Oh, Mrs. Kettle says she’s goin’ to marry Mr. Burgo.”
There was no humour in Pemberton’s laugh. “There won’t be no marryin’ unless she binds him up in hemp and tries starvin’ him to commitment. And she won’t be none too happy to learn he’s been married afore — seven bloody times.”
“I suppose not.” Magpie ventured a shy glance around the schooner. “Do ya need me help, Pemberton?”
“Hmmm! Well now, yer too wee to help with the mendin’ o’ planks or jury-mastin’ this wreck, but, as yer good with a needle, head aft. They could use ya there.”
“What for?”
“To stitch up a couple o’ hammocks.”
Knowing what that involved, Magpie’s mouth went as dry as a white-hot beach, and those birds in his belly tried to take flight again.
“Just worry yerself about the ones what are still intact,” said Pemberton, “and keep a lookout for those what lost their heads, and miscellaneous body parts.”
“What … what do I do if I finds body parts?”
“Why ya throw ’em overboard fer the fishes.”
Saturday, August 28
7:00 a.m.
(Morning Watch, Six Bells)
Aboard the Prosperous and Remarkable
Magpie had been shivering on his heap of discarded sails, his mind tortured with visions of blue lips and still, ashen faces, when he realized Mr. Austen was leaning over him.
“Sir?” he asked sleepily, his bleary eye falling for a quick second upon the ghastly row of canvas-bound corpses he’d helped to ready for their admittance to the sea.
“Mr. Evans has come to fetch us. We’ve been invited to breakfast with Mr. Burgo on his brig. Are you up for it?”
Magpie studied Mr. Austen’s drawn face, and wondered if the commander had been able to find a bit of canvas upon which to lay his head, for well into the night Magpie had seen him questioning the Americans and simultaneously organizing the transport of the twent
y-seven presumed deserters across the water to the Amethyst. At midnight, refusing to bed upon the schooner for fear his throat would be slashed in the night, Lord Bridlington had taken his leave, remarking to Mr. Austen as he settled into one of the returning boats: “Won’t Captain Prickett be pleased with us!”
“I’d like that, sir,” said Magpie, tossing aside his crude blankets.
“Then we must hurry, for Mr. Evans brings word that Captain Prickett is most anxious to be away.”
The morning was cold and dreary. Magpie’s teeth chattered as he sat in the Amethyst’s cutter, hugging his thin body in an effort to stay warm, but relieved to be away from the sadness and death on the schooner. He tried to set his mind on Emily, remembering their many pleasant conversations together on the Isabelle; it helped to blot out the image of the little white face of a boy his age he had had to sew into his small, canvas coffin, and the terrible realization that the cannonball he had placed at the boy’s feet would drag him down to the auld place. Wisps of fog rolled past the cutter as the drowsy oarsmen pulled toward the Prosperous and Remarkable, giving a nebulous appearance to the three ships, sitting hove to in a triangular formation on the Atlantic, their hulls and masts as hallucinatory as a desert mirage. In the surrounding silence, the sound of the oars hitting the waves gave Magpie the shakes. If it weren’t for the presence of Mr. Austen sitting grim-faced on his boat plank, and Morgan Evans heaving on one of the oars, Magpie would have been certain he was locked in an endless nightmare.
Prosper Burgo’s howl of welcome and hearty handshake served to prop up Magpie’s nerves, and the mug of coffee pressed into his hands was guzzled with gratitude and timely, for, upon following Mr. Austen and Mr. Evans into the privateersman’s domain on the brig’s stern, he encountered Mrs. Kettle, beaming like a child who’d been praised by her teacher for the successful completion of her sums.
The laundress darted a wry face at his dirty feet. “Have ya come to take breakfast with us? We ain’t servin’ up no Maggot Pie here.” She cackled away, while everyone found something to sit upon.
Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle Page 67