Secrets of the Fearless

by Elizabeth Laird

  ‘You didn’t,’ interrupted Kit. ‘Mr Tawse sent you below when the firing ceased. “Get below, you imp of Satan,”’ he said, copying Mr Tawse’s voice so well that all the others laughed. ‘“Dancin’ about like a sandfly on a rottin’ jellyfish.” I heard him. When you came back up it was all finished. Anyway, it was not a proper fight at all, Mr Barton says, because the French sailors were half dead with scurvy. Mr Barton said he’d never seen such a sorry lot of poor fellows.’

  ‘Poor fellows? They were French!’ Tom’s eyes sparkled with scorn. ‘Every one of them a Johnny Crapaud! Snails for their dinner and the stink of garlic on them all! One Scotsman’s a match for ten of them, my daddy always says.’

  Kit frowned and seemed about to say something, but changed his mind.

  ‘What do they do with the . . . if someone’s killed?’ said John, as casually as he could.

  ‘It’s over the side and into the deep,’ said Tom cheerfully, tipping his arms in a graphic demonstration.

  ‘But first they sew you nice and tight into your hammock,’ said Davey, coming suddenly to life. ‘And down you go to the bottom, and all the little fishies have a nice dinner. And the crabs. ’Twon’t happen to me, though. A fortune-teller told me so. I’m to live till I’m seventy and marry a beautiful dark-haired lady and travel to foreign parts and see signs and wonders.’

  ‘And you believed all that?’ scoffed Tom.

  ‘Yes. She said,’ replied Davey simply.

  ‘I’d rather be eaten by fish than maggoty old worms anyway,’ said John, who had been giving the matter some thought. ‘Though not crabs. I don’t like the idea of crabs.’

  Kit, who had been mending the cuffs of Mr Tawse’s best blue uniform coat, held it out to Tom so that he could cut through the thread with his pocket knife.

  ‘You make me shiver with all this talk of fishes and maggots,’ he said disdainfully.

  The canvas screen moved aside and Nat Claypole’s sharp, ferrety face appeared.

  ‘Come to make trouble have you, Ratface?’ Tom said rudely. ‘Who are you calling thief this time?’

  Davey looked anxious.

  ‘Not me. I never took nothing. Been muckin’ out the pigs all day.’

  A nervous smile crossed Nat’s face.

  ‘I just . . . I came to see you.’ He was eyeing the table of boys warily as he approached. ‘Never said sorry to you, John, like I ought to. I know it was a long time ago. I was ’opin’ you’d forgotten all about it. ’Twas Mr ’Iggins made me set you up. I knowed you wasn’t no thief. I’ve wanted to tell you all this time.’

  ‘What did he pay you, you wee swindler?’ jeered Tom.

  ‘Nothin’.’ Nat slid on to the chest beside Kit. ‘’E’s that mean, you don’t know the ’alf of it. Give anything I would to be back in ’ere, messin’ with all of you.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you went a-sneaking off to him,’ said Tom severely.

  ‘I know. I know, but I’ve paid for it. Look.’

  He lifted his shirt to show his thin bony back. The other four took in their breath sharply as they saw the mass of welts and bruises that covered it.

  ‘Beats me up for nothing, ’e does, all the time,’ sniffed Nat, wiping a sleeve across his nose. ‘His last lad, ’e couldn’t take it no more. Jumped over the side one night, off Yarmouth. Drowned dead before ’e ever reached the shore, I reckon.’

  ‘The little fishies will be happy, then,’ said Davey, looking almost pleased at the thought.

  John had been watching Nat closely, saying nothing, as he tried to work out if the boy was sincere, or whether he had come on an underhand errand for the bosun’s mate. But Nat’s misery was unmistakable, and there was something like pleading in his close-set eyes as he turned his face towards John.

  ‘Is there something you want, Nat?’ John said, puzzled. He was unable to help himself feeling sorry for him.

  ‘Yes.’ Nat looked grateful. ‘’E’s on about that satchel of yours again. The one ’e swears you brought on board.’

  ‘My satchel?’ John stared in surprise. ‘But why? There’s nothing in it. Only old stuff of my father’s. And why has he remembered it now? I thought he’d given all that up months and months ago.’

  ‘There ain’t no satchel in Kit’s chest now,’ said Davey. ‘Weren’t one in there yesterday, anyways.’

  The others turned on him accusingly.

  ‘Davey!’ exploded Tom. ‘I’m warning you. I’m telling you. Next time you poke your fat fingers into someone else’s chest I’ll have you taken up for a thief. You’ll be hanged from the yardarm.’

  ‘But I haven’t got a chest of my own, Tom,’ Davey said reasonably. ‘And I didn’t take anything. I just stowed my little bit of mirror away. ’Orace likes my little bit of mirror. He likes to tap ’is beak on it. And it’s like I said, there weren’t no satchel in there. Where did you hide it, Kit?’

  Nat stood up.

  ‘I don’t want to know nothin’ about no satchel,’ he said quickly. ‘I don’t want to know if there ever was one, or where it is if it’s there. Mr ’Iggins would beat it out of me quick as a wink if he got a sniff of it.’

  ‘Yes, but why?’ said John.

  ‘No point in asking me, is there?’ complained Nat. ‘’E’s a deep one, Mr ’Iggins. Very restless ’e’s been lately. When that frigate brought letters a week ago, ’e received one that sent him into the vilest temper I ever seed. Beat me black and blue, ’e did, just because I dropped ’is second-best ’at and dented it. These last few days I seen ’im up on deck at night, with his dark lantern. More than once I seen ’im flashin’ the light out into the dark, as if there was someone out there.’

  ‘Calling up the mermaids, that’s what he’s doing,’ Davey said knowledgeably. ‘Beautiful girls mermaids are, with long golden hair. I’d like to see a mermaid.’

  ‘Pah!’ Tom elbowed him aside with disgust. ‘Sounds like he was sending signals. Out to where?’

  Nat shrugged.

  ‘’Ow should I know?’

  ‘Towards the coast of France, or out to sea?’ Kit had put his sewing down and was watching Nat intently.

  ‘Not a bleedin’ navigator, am I?’ Nat said, aggrieved. ‘In the dark it was, an’ all.’

  ‘Did anyone answer? Was there a signal back?’ asked John.

  ‘Not that I saw. ’Ere, there’s the bell. I’d best be off to polish his shoes or ’e’ll break my arm like he said ’e would.’

  A moment later, he was gone.

  Davey stood up and went across to the tiller beam where Horace was sitting, his head tucked under his wing. He began crooning to the bird and stroking his head. John, Tom and Kit sat and looked at each other in silence.

  ‘I’ll look through the satchel again,’ John said at last, getting up to retrieve it from where it had been stowed, half forgotten, behind a bulkhead. ‘There must be some answer to this mystery. There has to be!’

  Chapter Fifteen

  John frowned over the little notebook, turning its pages slowly. He had forgotten its very existence during the long months at sea. He held it up to his eyes, trying to decipher the crabbed handwriting and make some sense of the strange words and irregular columns of figures. He could see nothing in them at all. He put it down on the table and pushed it away from him.

  Here, John, can I take a look?’ said Tom. ‘Not private, is it?’

  ‘I don’t even know if it’s private or not,’ John said irritably, handing it to him.

  Tom flicked through the few small pages.

  ‘Och, it’s all nonsense,’ he said, losing interest. ‘It’s not even English as far as I can see. “Pont . . . fleuve . . . navire” – there’s no making anything of it.’

  Kit looked up sharply.

  ‘You permit me to look, John?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Kit took the book in his slender fingers.

  ‘But the words are in French! Rivière, côte, ville,’ he said. ‘And the names, the
y’re of French towns. Look here, Verdun, Fontainebleau . . .’

  He stopped and bit his lip, then looked up to see the others staring at him.

  ‘I didna ken you could speak French, Kit,’ Tom said, his normally open face suddenly closed with suspicion. ‘I knew you were a foreigner, of course, but you made us believe you were Italian, or Spanish, or some such thing. Always wondered why you never spoke of your folks and your home. Secrets to hide, are there, Kit?’

  The blood rushed to Kit’s face.

  ‘I never told you, or anyone, anything about myself, Tom,’ he said. ‘You believed what you chose. But my mother was as English as you are.’

  ‘Was? She’s dead, then?’

  Tom was leaning forward, his nose sharp, like a hound on the chase. John, equally curious, was watching closely. In spite of Kit’s humour and brilliant mimicry, John had always sensed an aloofness in him, an intense desire for privacy, which had repelled curiosity. Now, though, that a breach had been made in Kit’s defences, the truth would surely come tumbling out.

  The boy stared at them, his face defiant.

  ‘If you want to know so much, I will tell you. My father was French. You don’t need to look at me like that, Tom. I don’t have any reason to love the government of France. My father was . . . he died in the Red Terror, after the revolution.’

  ‘Oh ho!’ crowed Tom. ‘A duke or a marquis was he? An aristocrat? Did they slice off his head – whoosh! – with the guillotine?’

  Kit’s eyes squeezed shut for a moment, as if he had received a blow, and John gave Tom such a powerful nudge that Tom almost fell off the chest he was sitting on.

  ‘You’re an orphan, then, Kit?’ he said, longing to know more, but put off by the blank, closed look that had settled on Kit’s face.

  Kit nodded briefly, then picked up the notebook. He held it close up to the swinging lantern.

  ‘Words, numbers, letters, numbers – what is this?’ He read on, muttering to himself, then suddenly turned and was about to say something when the ship’s bell rang and the bosun’s whistle sounded.

  ‘All hands to gun drill!’ came the command, bawled along the decks and down the companionways.

  Instantly the boys leaped to their feet, the book was stowed in the satchel, which was poked back into its hiding place, the table was raised to the beam above and all four of them, along with the other six hundred men of the Fearless’s crew, had scattered to their separate gun stations, as cries of ‘Cast loose the gun!’ and ‘Roll out the gun!’ roared out from the throats of seventy-four gun captains.

  There was never a moment to think during gun drill. The seamen, stripped to the waist, were working at top speed, every man in each of the seventy-four gun crews knowing to a split second of timing exactly what he had to do. While they worked, the ship’s boys and the youngest marines transformed themselves into agile powder monkeys. It was their job to fetch up the gunpowder from the powder store, deep in the bowels of the ship. The task had terrified John at first. A false step on a companionway, a spark from a clash of metals – anything could set the gunpowder off to explode. The danger was so great that only one cartridge at a time could be carried up to the gun, and another had to be fetched from below for every firing.

  On his first few gun drills, John had raced empty-handed down to the powder store fast enough, but once the gunner there had thrust a full cartridge through the wet canvas curtain into John’s hand, he’d felt his stomach lurch with fright. On the return journey to the gun deck he’d held the cartridge out at arm’s length, almost tiptoeing along, scared that it might at any moment blow up in his face. He’d soon learned. His slowness had made Mr Stannard, the captain of the gun to which he’d been assigned, snarl and call him all kinds of horrible names. John had become as agile as the other boys, tucking the deadly cartridge inside his jacket just as they did, and swarming up the companionways as fast as the best of them.

  He’d even begun to enjoy the gun drill and take pride in his speed and nimbleness. He was used to praise now, instead of curses.

  Today, though, there would be no friendly slap of congratulation on the back from Mr Stannard. John couldn’t concentrate. He felt clumsy and kept stumbling. Once, he slipped on the orlop deck companionway, badly bruising his shins, and the crew had to wait ten precious seconds for his load of gunpowder, making them late to fire. Mr Stannard gave him a hard clout on the head for that, and the seamen let out a string of curses, but it didn’t help. He couldn’t stop his mind from going over and over again the words and letters in the booklet. He was heartily glad when gun drill was over at last and he could sneak back to the gun room.

  Mr Tawse and Jabez were settling down to their daily round of grog.

  ‘Ninety seconds between firings,’ Mr Tawse was saying with satisfaction. ‘It’s a deal sight more than old Frenchy can do. We’ll be ready for any of ’em as soon as they shows themselves out at sea. Give it to ’em for real, we will then.’

  ‘When’s that likely to be, Mr Tawse?’ said John, his stomach tightening at the thought.

  ‘How should I know, lad? Lookouts up aloft spied one of our frigates this morning. She signalled that a French warship had been seen approachin’. Wants to slip through our blockade and get upriver to Bordeaux, I shouldn’t wonder. She’ll come our way, if we’re lucky, and we’ll take her. Nice prize money handed out all round.’

  ‘She’ll be coming out of the West Indies, more’n likely,’ said Jabez, cocking his head sideways away from Horace, who was lovingly tugging at the lock of heavy blond hair behind his ear. ‘Could be gold on board. Time we saw a bit of action. Dreadful dull it is, lurkin’ around ’ere, on and on, with nothin’ to show for it.’

  Mr Tawse set his glass down on the table.

  ‘Information, that’s our problem,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘Or lack of it. Bonaparte, ’e always seems to know what we’re about to do. Gets everywhere, passin’ on all our secrets with his havey-cavey spyin’ ways. But our side, we never seems to know what . . . ’Ere, John, what’s the matter with you? Swallowed a fly?’

  An inarticulate cry had burst out of John. As if a candle had been lit inside his head, illuminating the dark places, he had suddenly seen what the meaning of the notebook in his satchel might be.

  ‘Mr Tawse! I think I know . . .’

  At that moment, Kit burst through the canvas screen.

  ‘John, your book! It’s . . .’

  ‘A code!’ they both said together.

  ‘What is all this?’ said Mr Tawse irritably, draining his glass. ‘Sit down, you two. Hoppin’ about like fleas on a dog’s back. You make my head spin.’

  John fetched out the satchel from its hiding place, took out the booklet and laid it open in front of Mr Tawse.

  ‘We discovered – Kit did – that these words are in French, sir,’ he said. ‘And each one pairs up with a number. It was when you said just now about the frigate signalling us. They did it with flags, didn’t they? You showed me the signal book, with a flag against each word. What if these numbers are like the flags? What if they stand in for words, French ones, so that spies could send messages in code?’

  ‘You could write a long message if you replaced the letters with these numbers,’ added Kit. ‘I was thinking about it all through gun drill. If this really is a French code book, our side could read any secret messages of theirs that we find.’

  For a long moment, Mr Tawse stared down at the crabbed markings in the booklet. Then he looked up, his brown eyes alert and serious.

  ‘If you’re correct . . .’ he began. Then he slapped his hands down on the table. ‘By God! If you’re right – I’m taking this direct to Mr Erskine. No, I’m taking you to Mr Erskine. Hasty does it now, lads. Clean shirts and trousers. Wash your hands. You’re going nowhere near no quarterdeck in a state to cause me disgrace. Jump to it! Come on!’

  John was already pulling his clean clothes out of Kit’s chest. A moment later, he was dressed and was washing his hands in th
e bucket by the table. Kit, who had turned modestly away, as he always did when changing his clothes, was ready a moment later.

  Mr Tawse looked them over them critically.

  ‘You’ll do,’ he said. ‘Now follow me. And mind your manners up there, do you hear? No talking till you’re spoken to. Respectful behaviour. No staring about like a couple of landlubbers.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ John and Kit snapped out together, but as they followed Mr Tawse up the nearest companionway, John nearly laughed out loud at the way Kit was waggling his eyebrows and pushing out his lips, in exact imitation of the captain.

  In his six months on board the Fearless, John had never once been on the quarterdeck. Though it covered nearly half the stern end of the ship, it was reserved for the officers. He had looked across at it often enough, from the fo’c’sle in the bows, and had looked down on it when he had climbed the rigging above. He had often seen Mr Erskine’s neat, well-groomed figure, surrounded by young blue-coated midshipmen, and the shorter, rounder shape of Captain Bannerman himself, striding the quarterdeck in lonely, almost regal splendour, sweeping the horizon with his telescope.

  John turned to Kit with a grin of excitement as they trod up the steps in Mr Tawse’s wake, but to his surprise Kit didn’t respond. He was clearly in no mood for acting now. His face was pale and tense.

  A pair of marines was standing guard at the door at the far end of the quarterdeck, their muskets by their sides. They jumped to attention as Mr Tawse and the boys approached.

  ‘What is your business here?’ barked one.

  ‘A matter of urgency for Mr Erskine, my lad. And don’t tell me he ain’t with the captain, for I know full well ’e is.’

  The marine pursed his lips, but turned and tapped lightly on the highly polished door. A servant opened it.

  ‘Master gunner to see the first officer,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘On “a matter of urgency”, ’e says.’

  The door closed, but it opened a moment later, and Mr Erskine came out. His one good eye opened wide when he saw the two barefoot boys standing awkwardly beside the master gunner.