Elizabeth Mansfield (2 page)

The shouting was deafening as shadowy figures swirled about him. He swung his makeshift weapon wildly, hoping desperately that he wouldn’t accidentally strike his friend. “Daniel, are you … there?”

“Aye, lad,” came a breathless, discouraged answer from somewhere behind him.

“Don’t despair,” Tom urged, swinging the belaying pin vigorously about him, keeping two of the ruffians at bay. Just then, from behind, came a sharp blow. The flat side of a cutlass had struck powerfully and painfully against his ear. He swayed dizzily. The pin was wrenched from his weakened grasp, and three men jumped on him at once. He felt himself toppling over backwards, but he kept swinging his fists as he fell. With a string of curses, his assailants slammed his head down upon the cobbles. It struck with an agonizing thud. Streaks of red and yellow lightning seemed to obscure his vision and sear his brain with pain.

By the time he could see again, the fight was over. He lifted his head and looked about him. Two of the press-men were leading Daniel off, his shoulders pathetically stooped and his hands bound behind his back. Three others of the gang, looking very much the worse for wear, were trussing up his own wrists with leather straps. And the sixth lay stretched out on the cobbles, blood trickling from his nose. Above it all, the King’s officer stood apart, his hands unsullied by the struggle he’d just witnessed. Catching Tom’s eye, the officer smiled in grim satisfaction. Tom well understood the expression. The man on the ground might be dead, and another of his gang might not have the use of his right arm for a long spell, but the two men the officer had caught were trained seamen. He and Daniel were the sort of catch the press-gangs most desired. This had been, for the officer, a very good night’s work.

After having been alternately shoved and dragged along the waterfront for what seemed like miles, his head aching painfully and his spirits in despair, Tom was pushed into a longboat manned by eight uniformed sailors. Daniel was nowhere in sight. The King’s officer dismissed the ruffians of the press-gang and climbed into the boat, giving Tom a smug smile as he seated himself on a thwart facing his prisoner. Tom’s fingers ached to choke that smile from his face.

The sailors began to row toward an imposing frigate (painted with the yellow and black stripes that Admiral Nelson required of naval vessels) which rode at anchor some distance from the dock. It was His
Majesty’s Ship
Undaunted
, and despite the darkness Tom could see that it carried at least fifty guns and floated in the water at over six hundred tons. As the longboat drew up alongside the vessel, a sailor prodded Tom with an oar, urging him to climb up the ladder to the upper deck.

Despite the desperation of his condition, Tom couldn’t refrain from peering with considerable interest through the darkness at the activity on deck. While the King’s officer, who had followed him up the ladder, held a whispered colloquy with the vessel’s first lieutenant, Tom looked around, marvelling at the pristine neatness of the ship. But before he had an opportunity to scrutinize what was a vastly different vessel from the one he’d just abandoned, the lieutenant, a stocky, balding man in his mid-twenties, with a florid complexion that bespoke a hot temper, gave an order to the two sailors who were guarding him, and he was roughly dragged across the deck to the companionway.

At the end of the passage, he was unceremoniously ushered into what he instantly recognized was the captain’s cabin. It was a low-ceilinged, unpretentious compartment with panelled walls and a row of wide windows (which usually graced the stern of a sailing ship) covering the far wall. The captain himself was nowhere in evidence, for the chair behind the huge desk (a piece of furniture which gleamed with polish and importance in its impressive position at the dead center of the room) was empty. The only sign of the cabin’s inhabitant was a coat trimmed with gold braid which had been thrown over a cabinet in the corner.

After his eyes became accustomed to the light—provided by a lamp swinging at eye level from the rafters on a long, brass chain—he could see that the desk was covered with navigational charts and a heavily-bound ship’s log. But his eyes were immediately drawn to the group of men who had been standing at the desk when he’d entered. Two of them were uniformed sailors, set to guard the prisoner standing between them. It was Daniel, his face chalky-white in the lamplight, his hands still secured behind him and blood dripping from a cut on his upper lip. Tom felt his stomach lurch with nausea as their eyes met. Daniel’s face was rigid with terror.
And no wonder
, Tom thought miserably. Daniel’s life was no longer worth a brass farthing.

The worst circumstance that life could impose on Daniel had occurred: impressment. All through their sailing days, merchant seamen were edified with blood-chilling tales of the sort of life they could expect if they were so unfortunate as to be impressed into naval service. Service in His Majesty’s Navy was hell for impressed seamen. They were forced to fill the most unwanted posts, to work at the dirtiest jobs and made to expose themselves to the greatest dangers. The food the King allotted for ordinary seamen was rotten beyond belief, and the pay a pittance. And the chance of coming out of the experience alive—after who-knew-how-many forced voyages—was slim indeed. The Navy, unable to recruit enough seamen to staff its ships because of this notorious mistreatment, had for centuries used the nightmarish device of impressment to fill its berths. And this time, Tom and his best friend had been caught in the net. For
him
there was a ray of hope—the ship-master’s apprentice papers in the pocket of his coat; but for Daniel there was no hope at all.

He started across the cabin to stand beside his friend, but he was jerked back to his place by the sailors who were guarding him. The lieutenant and the King’s officer conferred again briefly, and then the lieutenant went to a door near the far corner of the wall at Tom’s right and tapped gently. At the sound of a voice from within, the lieutenant opened the door and disappeared inside. He emerged a few moments later, followed by a tall, lean man of late middle age with a head of iron-grey hair, a short beard and a pair of narrow, glinting eyes. The man was in his shirt-sleeves, but Tom knew it was the captain even before he reached for the gold-trimmed coat and shrugged himself into it.

The lieutenant, meanwhile, came into the circle of light which surrounded the desk and, bending over, began to shuffle the papers about until he found what appeared to Tom to be a ship’s roster.

“Sit down, Mr. Benson, sit down,” the captain muttered from the shadows where he stood leaning his elbow on the cabinet and looking from Tom to Daniel and back again.

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Mr. Benson, the lieutenant, took the chair behind the desk, picked up a pen from the inkstand and wrote something on the paper. Then he looked up at the two prisoners coldly. “Which one of you is the murderer?” he asked.

“It’s the taller one, of course,” came the captain’s voice from the shadows. “Isn’t that so, Moresby?”

The King’s officer chuckled. “You’re right again, Captain Brock.”

At the sound of the captain’s name, Daniel’s eyes flew to Tom’s with a look of desperation. Sir Everard Brock was notorious. His reputation for cruelty was legendary among seamen.

“Start with the other one,” the captain ordered.

Mr. Benson nodded. “What’s your name, fellow?” he demanded of Daniel.

“Dan’l Hicks, sir.”

“You were an ordinary seaman on the
Triton
?”

“Aye, sir, but… I …”

“Yes?”

“I’ve finished my time.”

“Finished? Didn’t sign up again, eh? Had enough of the old scow?” Mr. Benson asked with a sardonic grimace.

“Well, I … I suppose ye could say that.”

“Good. If they’re not expecting you back on board the
Triton
, no one will be looking for you.” He dipped the pen carefully in the inkwell.

“But ye see, sir, there
will
be someone—”

“What?” the lieutenant asked, writing.

“Someone lookin’ fer me. I have a wife, y’ see, an’ she—”

“Forget your wife, fellow. Can’t worry about wives. Haven’t you heard that the Prime Minister, Mr. Addington, declared war on Napoleon this past May? This is wartime,” Mr. Benson said pompously, adding Daniel’s name to the roster. “Cut his bonds,” he ordered the guards.

“Y’ don’t understand, sir,” Daniel pleaded as a sailor stepped behind him and sliced the cords at his wrists with a small, curved-bladed knife. “I—”

The lieutenant paid no attention but merely held out the pen. “Here. Put your X right here.”

Daniels’s hands were trembling. “But… y’ see… I
can’t
sign on. My wife’s in the family way, if y’ know what I mean. She’ll starve t’ death if I—”

Mr. Benson’s eyes narrowed angrily. “Are you daring to contradict me, Hicks? If I don’t have your X on this sheet at once, it’ll be ten stripes for you!”

“Twenty,” came the captain’s voice ominously out of the shadows.

“Twenty!” Mr. Benson echoed.

Daniel cast Tom a look of stricken anguish. Tom, his mind racing about to think of a way out of this rat-trap, could do nothing at the moment but signal with a blink of the eyes that Daniel should acquiesce. Poor Daniel groaned despairingly, stepped forward and took the pen from the lieutenant’s hand. He knew well enough how to sign his name, but he wrote an X as a gesture to himself that he still had a spark of rebellious spirit within him.

Mr. Benson threw a look of satisfaction over his shoulder at the captain and turned to Tom. “Now
you
, murderer,” he said with a kind of malicious enjoyment, “what’s
your
name?”

“Collinson, sir. Thomas Collinson.” Tom used the opportunity to move closer to the desk and
Daniel’s side.

“You don’t appear to be overly disturbed about having killed a man,” the lieutenant remarked, looking him over interestedly.

“If you’re speaking of the press-man I laid low, he damn well deserved it.”

Mr. Benson’s self-satisfied expression changed to one of discomfort. He was not accustomed to back-talk. This fellow was a cool one, and that type could make him look foolish before the captain. “Watch your tongue, fellow,” he growled threateningly, “if you know what’s good for you.”

Tom shrugged. “May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb” he said, brazenly directing his words to the captain.

Captain Brock said nothing, but he moved in closer to the light and peered at Tom intently. The lieutenant, meanwhile, jumped angrily to his feet. “Oh, you won’t hang, fellow,” he sneered, “but you’ll wish by tomorrow that you had. Hanging’s too good for the likes of you.”

“Don’t think to frighten me with this fustian,” Tom retorted. “A civil trial might be more damaging to the Navy than to me, and
that’s
why I won’t hang.”

The lieutenant, red-faced with fury, reached out and grasped Tom by the collar of his coat, but before he was able to do anything further, the captain’s voice stopped him. “Hold on there, Mr. Benson. Let the fellow be for a moment.” He walked into the circle of light and studied Tom’s face before turning to the King’s officer. “Speaks the King’s English, Moresby, did you notice? You haven’t made a mistake again, have you?”

The officer stepped forward, his brow wrinkled with sudden alarm. If a member of the nobility had been mistakenly caught in his net, he could find himself in a great deal of difficulty. He circled Tom slowly, looking carefully at his clothing, his hands and the careless way his hair had been cut. “I don’t think so, Captain Brock,” he said thoughtfully. “Looks all right to me. He came off the
Triton
, after all, and that’s not the sort of berth a gentleman would seek.”

“Where did you learn a gentleman’s English, fellow?” the captain asked Tom.

“At Cambridge. Where else?” Tom responded flippantly.

The captain drew in his breath and nodded at the lieutenant.

Mr. Benson, who still clutched Tom’s collar with one hand, smashed him in the mouth with the other. “The captain asked you a question, sailor. Answer him properly, or you’ll feel the taste of wet leather!”

Tom pulled himself free of the lieutenant’s grasp and licked the blood from his split lip before he answered. “I read a bit, that’s all,” he muttered.

“That’s
not
all,” the captain said in a voice so icy that Tom understood how he could command this ship with its crew of hundreds. “One doesn’t learn to speak well only by reading. Well?”

Tom gave the captain a sardonic shrug. “I had a mother who set great store by appearances. She trained me. She thought that if her boy
appeared
to be a gentleman, he might be taken for one.”

“How very interesting,” the captain murmured, his voice, even while tinged with amusement, still chillingly cold. “And
were
you taken for one?”

Tom smiled wryly. “Not until now.”

The captain let out a grudging laugh. “You’ve a sharp wit, Collinson, but you’ll find that wit is no advantage here. Carry on, Mr. Benson.” And he walked back out of the light.

The lieutenant sat down and leered up at Tom with satisfaction. “As I was saying, sailor, you’re not going to hang. That would be too easy a punishment for you. You’re going to serve on this ship. You’re going to labor through two watches every day.
Two
! And once a week, the bo’sun will deliver upon your back at least… er …”

“Thirty-five,” came the voice from the shadows.

“Thirty-five stripes. Do you understand, Collinson?
Thirty-five
. Every week. Why, when we put into port, you’ll be so bone-weary and sore you’ll be glad that you have to stay behind in the brig instead of going ashore with the rest of the scum you’ll be calling your shipmates. What have you to say to
that
with your clever tongue, eh, Collinson?”

Tom moved close to the desk, carefully stepping on Daniel’s foot and pressing down on it with just enough weight to indicate that the pressure was not accidental. He hoped Daniel would recognize it as a signal to stay alert. Meanwhile, he faced Mr. Benson with a leer of his own. “What I have to say, sir, is that you can’t do it. I’m sorry to disappoint you … and you too, Captain Brock. You may be able to bring me to the magistrates on the charge of murder, but you can’t make me sign on. I have papers.”