Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  When he entered the foyer of the building one of the secretaries recognized Tom, and greeted him respectfully. ‘I will see if his lordship will receive you,’ he said. ‘In the meantime will you wait in the parlour, Mr Courtney.’

  A uniformed footman took Tom’s boat cloak, and brought him a glass of Madeira. While he sat in an easy chair before the crackling fire, Tom rehearsed the appeal he intended to put to Nicholas Childs. He could be reasonably certain that Childs had not yet heard from brother William. Unless he had become clairvoyant, William would not expect him to call here, so he was unlikely to have sent an urgent message to Childs to warn him not to offer Tom assistance.

  On the other hand, Tom had realized the futility of asking Childs for command of a Company ship. There were many captains of vast experience and long service who would take precedence over him. Tom had never had his own full command, and Childs would never give him one of the magnificent Indiamen. The best he could expect was a berth as a junior officer on a ship bound for India, and Dorian was in Africa.

  As he turned the problem over Tom frowned into the fire and sipped his wine. Lord Childs knew all about Dorian’s capture – in fact, Tom had heard him discussing it with Hal when they were guests at Bombay House. If Tom asked for a ship he would realize his intention of going after his captured brother, instead of trading for profit. Furthermore, if Tom procured any other vessel, Childs would do his best to prevent him even rounding the Cape. Hal had said that the Company was bitterly opposed to interlopers in their chartered territories. No, best to feign disinterest in that part of the world. I’ll take the skin off this cat from the tail end, he decided grimly.

  Lord Childs kept him waiting less than an hour, which Tom took as a mark of high favour. The chairman of the board of the East India Company was probably one of the busiest men in London, and Tom had arrived without invitation or warning.

  On the other hand I am a brother knight of the Order, and my family owns 7 per cent of the shares in the Company. He cannot guess that, only days ago, I came close to slitting Billy’s throat.

  The secretary led him up the main staircase, and through the antechamber to Childs’s office. The furnishings bespoke the Company’s vast wealth and circumstance. The carpets underfoot were of lustrous silk and the paintings that hung upon the panelled walls were imposing seascapes depicting the ships of the Company in full sail off the exotic shores of the Carnatic and Coromandel coasts. When Tom passed under a chandelier that looked like an inverted ice mountain and entered the inner chamber through carved and gilt doors, Lord Childs rose from his desk and came to meet him. This was enough to allay any misgivings that Tom still might have about his reception. ‘My dear young Thomas.’ Childs clasped his hand and, with thumb and forefinger, gave him the recognition grip of brother knights of the Order. ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’

  Tom gave him the counter-sign. ‘My lord, it is gracious of you to receive me at such short notice.’

  Childs made a deprecatory gesture. ‘Not at all. I am only sorry that I was forced to make you wait. The Dutch ambassador . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sure you understand.’ Childs wore a full wig and the star of the Garter on his gold-embroidered lapels. ‘How is your dear brother, William?’

  ‘In the best of health, my lord. He asked me to convey his deepest respects.’

  ‘I was most sad not to be able to attend your father’s funeral, but Plymouth is so far from London.’ Childs led Tom to a chair below the tall windows that looked out over the rooftops to a distant view of the river and its shipping. ‘A remarkable man, your father. He will be greatly missed by all of us who knew him well.’

  For a few minutes more they exchanged pleasantries, then Childs leaned back and reached down over his ample midriff to haul the gold watch from his fob pocket. ‘Bless my soul, ’tis past ten, and I am expected at St James’s.’ He stuffed it back into his pocket. ‘I am sure you did not come here merely to pass the time of day.’

  ‘My lord, if I may come to the point, I am in need of employment.’

  ‘You have come to the right quarter.’ Childs nodded so vehemently that his jowls wobbled like a turkey cock. ‘The Seraph sails in ten days for the Carnatic. Edward Anderson is her master. You know both him and his ship, of course. He has a berth for a third officer, which is yours for the asking.’

  ‘I had in mind something more – more warlike?’

  ‘Ah, Mr Pepys is a personal friend of mine, and he knew your father. I have not the least doubt that we can find a berth for you on one of the men-o’-war. I think a fighting frigate might suit a young man of your temperament.’

  ‘Again, sir, may I be blunt?’ Tom interrupted apologetically. ‘I have at my disposal a small cutter. She is very fast and handy, an ideal craft to raid French commercial shipping in the Channel.’ Childs stared at him in astonishment, and Tom hurried on before he could refuse. ‘I also have a crew of fighting seamen to serve her, some of the same men who served under my father on the Seraph. All I lack is a letter of marque to attack the French.’

  Childs chuckled so heartily that his belly bounced on his lap like a rubber ball. ‘The apple does not fall too far from the tree, does it? Like your father, you want to lead rather than follow. Of course, your warlike exploits are common knowledge. You should have al-Auf’s severed head incorporated into the escutcheon of your coat-of-arms when you receive your own knighthood one of these fine days.’

  Abruptly he stopped laughing, and Tom had a glimpse of the shrewd, calculating mind behind the benign blue eyes. Childs stood up and went to the window. He stood there, staring out at the river, until Tom began to fidget in his chair. Then it dawned upon him that the pause was deliberate. He said, ‘My lord, I would want you to have a share of any prize I am able to take under this commission. I thought five per cent might be an appropriate expression of my gratitude.’

  ‘Ten per cent might be even more appropriate,’ Childs observed.

  ‘Ten per cent indeed,’ Tom agreed. ‘And, of course, the sooner I can sail, the sooner I will be able to make good those ten points to you.’

  Childs turned to him, rubbing his hands together briskly, his expression affable. ‘I will be talking to certain personages at St James’s this very morning, gentlemen who have commissions in their gift. Call upon me again in three days’ time, that is Thursday, at ten of the clock. I may have news for you then.’

  Those three days of waiting passed like a funeral procession, every minute filled with fears and misgivings. If William had taken the precaution of contacting all the powerful men he knew in London, all doors would close to Tom. Just enough time had elapsed since he had left High Weald for a messenger to dash all his plans.

  Even if Childs could deliver a commission he had no ship and no crew, for he could not broach the subject with any of the men before he had the King’s letter in his pocket. Luke Jervis had already sailed on another of his nefarious trips to meet a French counterpart somewhere in mid-Channel. This time he might run foul of the King’s Excise men, and he might never return. The doubts gathered like circling vultures to plague not only Tom’s waking hours but his dreams. When Luke did return, would he be willing to risk his little Raven in such a hazardous enterprise? He must already be a rich man, and Aboli had said that he had a wife and a brood of infants.

  During those three days, his men looked at him expectantly, but Tom could offer them nothing. He dared not even tell them what Childs had promised, lest he raise their hopes too high. On the Thursday morning he slipped out of his lodgings like a thief, without even telling Aboli where he was going.

  The clock in the steeple of the little church in Leadenhall Street had barely struck ten when Lord Childs’s secretary came down to the visitors’ parlour to summon him.

  One glance at Childs’s genial expression was enough to set at rest all the nightmares that had beset Tom. As soon as they had greeted each other and were seated face to face, Childs picked up the heavy parchment document from the desktop
in front of him. Tom recognized the great red seal of the Chancellor of England at the foot of the single page. It was identical to the commission under which his father had sailed when the Seraph put out to sea. Childs read out the first line in a pedantic tone. ‘Be it known by these presents that our trusty and well-beloved subject, Thomas Courtney . . .’ He read no further, but looked up and smiled at Tom.

  ‘By heaven’s grace, you have it!’ Tom interjected excitedly.

  ‘I doubt that any other captain has received his commission with such despatch,’ Childs remarked. ‘This augurs well for our enterprise.’ He emphasized the possessive plural as he set aside the commission, and picked up another document. ‘This is a separate contract that embodies our agreement. I have left the name of the ship blank, but we should fill that in now.’ He picked up a quill and sharpened the tip before he dipped it in the inkwell and looked up at Tom expectantly. Tom took a deep breath before he committed himself. ‘The Raven,’ he said.

  ‘The Raven!’ Childs wrote, in a stylish hand, and then looked up at Tom. ‘Now I will need your signature.’

  Tom barely glanced at the deed of joint venture before he scrawled his acceptance. Childs counter-signed, then sanded the page. Still smiling affably, he crossed to a side table on which stood a platoon of crystal decanters and poured two glasses to the rim. He handed one to Tom and saluted him with the other.

  ‘Perdition to Louis the Fourteenth and a black pox on the French!’

  Aboli haggled for a ferryman to row them upriver to where Luke Jervis had his moorings on a small island with the unlikely name of Eel Pie. From a cable’s length they saw that the Raven had returned from her most recent jaunt and was tied up at the wooden jetty. As they closed the distance Luke came out of the cottage set among a stand of willow trees and sauntered out onto the jetty to meet them, leaving a thin stream of blue pipe smoke in the air behind him. Tom sprang ashore while Aboli paid the ferryman his sixpence. ‘A profitable voyage, Master Luke?’ he asked.

  ‘The Excise men gave us a run off Sheerness. I had to toss three hogsheads of brandy overboard before we could give them the slip. All my profits for the last six months gone down to Davy Jones.’ He rubbed the scar on his cheek and looked mournful. ‘I think I’m getting too old for the game, Mr Courtney.’

  ‘Perhaps I can interest you in something less taxing on your nerves,’ Tom suggested.

  Luke perked up noticeably. ‘I thought you had something in mind. You remind me of your father. He was ever the man with an eye to the main chance.’

  At that moment a woman appeared in the doorway of the cottage. Her apron was grimy from the cooking-fire and she carried a naked infant with a dirty bottom on her hip. The child clung with both hands to the soft white breast that dangled, limp as a spaniel’s ear, from the opening of her blouse. ‘Luke Jervis, don’t you dare go off carousing with your riff-raff friends and leave me here with no food in the house and six hungry babes to feed!’ she screeched, her hair dangling lankly down her face.

  Luke winked at Tom. ‘My little angel. Marriage is a fine and noble state. Too good for the likes of me, I oftimes think.’

  The woman shrieked, ‘It’s time you looked for honest work, instead of sneaking away in the night and coming home with some cock-and-bull story about losing your coin, when I know full well you’ve been lying at anchor with some poxy slut in Pussy Bay.’

  ‘Do you have honest work for me, Mr Courtney? Any work that takes me well out of earshot of my good wife?’

  ‘That is what I came to talk to you about.’ Tom grinned with relief.

  Three nights later, the Raven crept inshore of the French coast with a leadsman in the bows. ‘By the mark five!’ He called the depth softly, then opened the shutter of the lantern a crack to examine the tallow on the end of the lead to see what it had picked up from the sea bottom. ‘Sand and shell!’ he reported, little louder than a whisper.

  ‘Huitre Bank.’ Luke nodded in the dark, his position confirmed. ‘That’s Calais over to starboard, Honfleur beyond the headland.’ His pronunciation of the difficult names was fluent. Tom knew from Aboli that he spoke the language like a native. ‘The beach shoals in very gently here, and with this breath of wind from the east we’ll be able to wade ashore without difficulty,’ he told Tom. ‘Be ready to drop over when I give the word.’

  Tom had decided that only he and Luke would go ashore to scout the anchorage of Calais. Luke knew the ground and might be able to talk them out of any trouble they met. He had been tempted to take Aboli with them, but the smallest party was prudent, and Aboli’s black face would be hard to pass off if they were challenged by a French patrol.

  ‘By the mark two!’ came the soft call from the bows.

  ‘Ready now,’ Luke murmured, and handed the wheel to his mate. He and Tom picked up their leather sacks and moved up to the bows. Both men were dressed in rough fishermen’s clothes with clogs on their feet and leather jerkins over wool petticoats. Their heads were covered with wool caps. At that moment they felt the Raven take the bottom, a soft bump on the sandy beach.

  ‘’Vast heaving!’ Luke whispered, to the men on the long sweeps, and they rested on the oars. He went over the side first and the water came to his armpits. Tom handed down the two sacks to him, then followed him over. The water was cold enough to take his breath away.

  ‘Heave away!’ the mate called quietly to the oarsmen, and the Raven backed slowly off the sand. Luke had chosen the incoming tide to make certain they would not be stranded. Within a dozen strokes the little boat had disappeared into the night, and Tom shivered again, not only from the cold. It was an eerie feeling to be alone on an enemy shore, not knowing what waited for them on the beach.

  The water shallowed quickly and they came out on the hard wet sand and crouched there, listening. There was only the flop and hiss of the low surf, so they jumped up and hurried into the dunes. They rested there for a few minutes to listen again and catch their breath, then moved quickly through the dunes and low scrub towards the headland. Half a mile further along, they almost ran into the wreckage of an ancient shipwreck stranded above the high-water mark.

  ‘It’s the old Bonheur, a Breton coaster,’ Luke told Tom. ‘A good landmark for our return.’ He dropped on his knees and scratched a hole in the sand under the bone-white ribs of the hull. Then he dropped one of the leather sacks into it and covered it with the loose sand. ‘We’ll find it here when we need it.’

  They went on faster now, and climbed the headland. On the crest they moved slower, using the low salt scrub as cover, trying to keep out of sight as they searched for a hiding-place. They found one in the ruins of a stone-built structure that Luke said had been a French army blockhouse during the Dutch wars. It had been sited to give an unrestricted view over the approaches and the main anchorage. They scouted the area around the fort to make certain that it was deserted and that there were no signs of recent occupation before they settled in. From his sack Luke brought out a pair of pistols for each of them. They loaded them with fresh powder, checked the priming and laid them ready to hand. Then they waited for the dawn. Eventually, the eastern horizon turned lemon and rosebud pink and cast a lovely warm glow over the scene below them.

  Even at this hour there was a swarm of activity around the fleet of French men-o’-war that lay at anchor in the harbour. Through the lens of his telescope Tom counted fifteen three-deckers, with eighty guns apiece, and a huge gathering of lesser ships. Many did not have their yards crossed and workmen swarmed over their decks.

  The activity on shore was also brisk, and as soon as the sun rose out of the morning haze, they saw companies of troops marching into the town along the road from Paris. The sunlight glittered on the bayonets of their sloped muskets, and the feathers and ribbons in their tricorn hats bobbed and fluttered with each pace. A train of wagons was following, rumbling over the rutted roadway.

  A little later a squadron of cavalry in gold-frogged jackets and blue capes with polished black high
boots trotted out from the town. For a heartstopping moment Tom thought they were heading straight up the slope towards their hiding-place. He let out his breath in a sigh of relief as they turned away at the crossroads outside the town and rode southwards along the road, flanked on both sides with lines of poplar trees. Their dustcloud disappeared in the direction of Honfleur.

  As the sun climbed higher, burning off the low cloud, and the light strengthened, Tom could concentrate his telescope on a search of the harbour. There were dozens of smaller craft among the warships. Some were lighters and barges taking out stores and men to the larger vessels. A barge flying warning flags rowed slowly to one of the three-deckers, riding low in the water under the high-piled kegs of black powder.

  Other craft were tied up at the wharf or anchored higgledy-piggledy about the bay. Many were rigged fore and aft, with single mast and bowsprit. In smaller vessels this new arrangement of sails had some advantages over the more traditional square-rigged ships, and was becoming increasingly popular in all modern navies. They could be handled by fewer men and were faster on the wind. They were often employed as scouts and auxiliaries to the main battle fleet. An intermittent stream of these vessels and other small ships was coming and going in and out of the bay, all keeping well in-shore to avoid the attentions of the Royal Navy. The English fleet was blockading the main Channel ports, waiting for the French to sally forth in any strength. Out in mid-Channel Tom had caught an occasional glimpse of the distant sails of the English fleet. The Raven was also out there somewhere, waiting for nightfall before coming into the beach again and picking them up out of the shallows.

  Tom turned his attention from the shipping out in the Channel and avidly studied the smaller French vessels in the anchorage. Most were much larger than the little Raven, and many were armed with small cannon. He picked out a dozen that might serve his purpose well, but then was forced to discard one after the other as he discovered their defects. Some were in a poor state of repair or too lightly armed, others were coasters and not suited to long voyages and heavy seas, still others did not have the burden to carry the cargo and men he required.