Any Approaching Enemy: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (16 page)

“Down helm, Mr. Eliot,” he ordered. “We will bear away directly.”

“Down helm it is,” Eliot repeated. “Course, sir?”

“South-by-east. We’ll let him try a stern chase if he wants it. Mr. Sykes.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Signal to
Pylades
to break off and assume station to windward.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

“Stephen,” Charles said, “secure the guns and put as many men to work in the rigging as necessary. We will run.” He had not even looked to see what damage the Frenchman had suffered.

Louisa
’s turn took the enemy frigate unprepared, and it was several moments before her sails braced around to take up his wake. Charles ordered as much sail as he thought the state of her rigging could support, adding more as the repairs to stays, lines, and halyards were completed. She ran easily, with the wind fine on her starboard quarter. For a time the French frigate closed marginally to a quarter of a mile behind. Charles breathed easier as it became apparent that she carried no bow chasers. The distance steadied as more canvas was added, and gradually,
Louisa
and
Pylades
began to draw away. The sun dipped low in the west; darkness tinted the eastern horizon. With the last of the light, the Frenchman wore around and began the long beat back to Malta.

“Mr. Sykes,” Charles said, “if you would be so kind as to call on the cockpit and inform Mrs. Edgemont and Miss Bridges that their presence would be welcome on quarterdeck, with my compliments.” He was not altogether looking forward to the reunion with his wife.

SIX

“IT WILL MEAN ADDED RESPONSIBILITY, MR. BEECHUM,” Charles said. “You will have to stand a regular watch schedule.”

“Yes, sir,” Beechum answered.

“You do know that it is a temporary assignment? I haven’t the authority to promote you on my own.” Charles sat at the table in his cabin, the women having been banished to the deck above. Beechum sat opposite him.

“Yes, sir. I understand,” Beechum answered, sitting stiffly on the edge of his chair, absurdly eager.

“If your performance is satisfactory, I will recommend to the admiral that the step be made permanent. It’s possible, probable even, that he won’t approve it without an examination. Still, it won’t hurt to have it on your record.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Beechum said earnestly. “I want to say that I appreciate your confidence, sir.”

“Lieutenant Winchester will inform you of your duties.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man said, rising and taking up his hat. With a second “Thank you, sir,” he backed out of the cabin.

Charles sat for a moment longer, savoring his too rarely found privacy. Beechum would do well, he thought. If not, it wouldn’t be for lack of effort. He looked around his cabin and grimaced. The flotsam of Penny and Molly’s occupation was much in evidence. Penny’s traveling luggage lay in his sleeping cabin, covered by a growing pile of petticoats and stockings and other ladies’ garments. Molly’s were stacked on the seat under the stern windows. A shawl lay folded over the back of a chair, a bonnet draped carelessly from his desk. There was a dainty pair of shoes jumbled in a corner where they had been kicked. Attwater insisted that such items remain where they were; he claimed the women fussed at him when they couldn’t find their things.

Grudgingly, Charles pushed his chair back from the table and stood. Collecting his hat and sword from their pegs on the bulkhead, he exited the cabin, nodded to the sentry, and went out. Stephen Winchester touched his hat as Charles mounted the ladderway to the quarterdeck. “Have you talked to Beechum?”

“Just this moment,” Winchester said.

“Stephen, you’re the official first now,” Charles said. “I’ve entered it in the book. Beechum is acting second. I’ve listed Talmage as a supernumerary.”

Winchester nodded in acknowledgment but said nothing.

Charles proceeded across the deck to Penny, who stood waiting for him expectantly by the weather rail. When he arrived, she placed her arm in his. “Did everything go well with Isaac Beechum?”

“Quite well,” Charles said. She’d been on board ten days now, and not for the first time, he wondered about her and her thoughts. She had not reacted the way he’d thought she would two days before, when they had gotten into the running fight. She hadn’t protested the cannon fire, hadn’t sought safety for herself when they were fired upon, hadn’t insisted on anything except that she remain by his side. Most surprisingly, when
Louisa
was well out of harm’s way and he had allowed her and Molly back on deck, she had not been outwardly angry. She had looked at him carefully to see if he was injured and felt his arms and chest in case he was secretly bandaged.

“Thou art fortunate,” she’d said when satisfied. “There would have been no end to my displeasure if it were otherwise.”

“Then I am twice charmed,” he’d answered, “uninjured and beloved.”

Charles looked out over the rail and scanned the surface of the sea. In the distance off the stern lay the receding dot of land that was Cape Passero, the last extremity of Sicily, soon to sink entirely below the horizon.
Louisa
’s course lay one point southerly of due east, with the wind steady from the west, and was making a fair turn of speed—near ten knots, by the last casting of the log, and without even her studding sails set. If he leaned out over the rail and looked forward, he could just see the edge of her bow wave curling out from the stem.
Pylades
surged alongside, two hundred yards to port. Bevan flew every scrap of canvas that she would carry and still struggled to keep up.
Pylades,
Charles had observed, was not a particularly fast sailer on any point of the wind. She could lie a half-point closer to it than
Louisa,
however, and make more headway with her canvas braced up tight. At present the wakes of the two ships lay in straight parallel lines westward as far as the eye could see. Their course would carry them in two or three days to the southern tip of the Peloponnesian peninsula and into the waters of the Ottoman Empire. But he wasn’t looking for land, Turkish or otherwise. The lookouts in the tops had specific instructions to search the horizons for sails, in particular the westward-bearing sails of merchantmen or friendly ships of war that might reasonably carry news of Nelson’s squadron were it farther east.

There was the other question that he frequently returned to. Was it such a good idea to be sailing the length and breadth of hostile waters with Penny and Molly on board? He knew that it exposed them to unnecessary danger and, at least partly as a consequence, made him more cautious. But it was not as simple as that. The dangers were such that he could avoid them if he chose … probably. And, the thought came to him, he didn’t fully understand why she had come, or for what length of time she intended to stay. She’d said in Naples that she wished to visit “for a time.” How long was a time? He often found the workings of women’s minds difficult to follow. Penny’s were sometimes unfathomable. Could he ask her? Not directly, he thought. He couldn’t say “How long are you planning to stay?” or “When do you think you’ll be leaving?” She might take that to mean that he didn’t welcome her company. No, he would be more subtle.

“How are you enjoying your time on
Louisa
?” he asked when she came onto the deck. His tone was one of polite interest.

“Very well,” she answered. “It’s so beautiful. I am very happy to be with thee. Dost thou not agree?”

“Certainly,” Charles said, smiling at her. “I’ll be disconsolate when you have to leave.”

“As will I,” she answered, smiling back at him.

Charles realized that he was rather quickly reaching something of an impasse. He cleared his throat. “Yes, it’s delightful having you and Molly on board … for this time,” he continued hopefully.

She looked out over the sea and squeezed his arm but said nothing.

He steeled himself. “How long do you think you will be able to stay?”

Penny’s eyes remained focused on some indefinite point on the horizon. “For a time,” she said after a moment. “As long as necessary. Dost thou wish me gone?”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “I am very pleased …” His mind turned a corner. “Necessary for what?”

She stepped apart from him and looked around to see if they might be overheard. “I thought thou knew. I came to be with thee … as thy wife … so that thou and I might conceive a child.”

“Oh,” Charles said, “I see.” He paused for a long moment, then put his head close to hers and whispered, “How will you know?” He had some thought that it would be months before she became large enough in the belly to notice.

She took a deep breath and explained it to him in low tones. Charles felt as if he were being made privy to the mysteries of some obscure cult. The only thing he knew, or was sure that he wanted to know, when she finished was that there would be some indication within two weeks of their progress thus far.

“I must also converse with thee about thy lands in Tattenall before I depart,” she said afterward.

“All in good time,” Charles answered, then remembered that he had to speak with Eliot about their course.

EARLY IN THE afternoon watch, the lookout in the foremast tops shouted down that he’d seen two sail headed westward five leagues off to the southeast. Charles ordered
Louisa
’s course altered to intercept them and signaled
Pylades
to follow. In time, the pair of sail became visible from the deck and were determined to be a snow and a brigantine, both of which ran up the blue and gold flags of Sweden as soon as the English warships came into view.

“We will display the Union flag,” he said to Sykes. “Hoist out my gig. I’ll go across.” As
Louisa
neared, the two merchantmen hove to. Charles climbed the snow’s side, two marines following close behind.

“May I see your bill of lading, sir?” Charles asked the master of the
Bengtsfors,
out of Gothenburg. The profoundly blond man of middle height and age, with tangled hair down to his shoulders, reached inside his jacket. He produced the document showing a cargo of wheat and oil from Crete, bound for Denmark.

“Thank you, sir,” Charles said, returning the papers. “You are a long way from home.”

“Ja,” the master said, rubbing at two-week-old stubble on his chin. “Three month, more.”

“Tell me, have you seen any other English ships in these waters?”

“No.” The man shook his head thoughtfully. “No English. Many French.”

“Many French? When? Where?”

The Swedish master was momentarily diverted by something he saw aboard
Louisa.
“You hab vimmen?” he asked.

“Yes,” Charles answered, “the government issues them to us for long voyages. When did you see the French fleet?”

The Swede rubbed his chin again. “Five day,” he said. “Ver’ large. By Cape Kiros. Sail east. What name you vimmen?”

“Miss Bridges and Mrs. Edgemont,” Charles answered, seeing the two watching from the rail of his quarterdeck. “Do you want to say hello?” He walked with him to the side.

“Hallo, Miss Bridges! Hallo, Mrs. Edgemont!” the Swede’s voice boomed across the water. The two women waved back. “You hab two vimmen,” he said seriously. “You sell one?”

“I am sorry,” Charles said. “The other belongs to the brig.”

“
Captain report on board,
if you please, Mr. Sykes,” Charles said as soon as his feet regained
Louisa
’s deck. “Signal it to
Pylades.
”

“Yes, sir,” Sykes answered, touched his hat, and left.

On the quarterdeck, Charles found Penny and Molly. “You had better be nice to me. I had an offer to sell one of you to that gentleman.”

“How much?” Molly asked, which brought a frown from Penny.

“We did not get that far into the negotiations. I’ve signaled for Daniel to come across. I thought I’d warn you.”

“Oh, my. I won’t be but a minute,” she said, and fled.

“Seriously, he did not offer to purchase us?” Penny said.

“I think he figured that so long as I had two, he’d probably be doing me a favor.”

“Surely thou didst not consider it?”

“He seemed a very nice sort of fellow.”

Daniel Bevan came aboard on the leeward side. After tipping his hat to Penny, he said to Charles, “What have you learned?”

“Well, that women have actual monetary value, for one. Also that the French were seen south of Crete these five days past.”

Bevan removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “What do you think it means?”

“The women or the French?”

“Let’s start with the French,” Bevan offered dryly.

“I don’t know what their objective is, except that it’s something in the eastern Mediterranean, Crete itself possibly, or Cyprus, Alexandretta, the Levant, who knows. The consul in Naples thinks Egypt, but I don’t know if I agree. Crete seems a little far north for their course to be in that direction. However, I do think that where the French fleet has gone, Nelson will sooner or later follow.”

“What makes you think so?”

“If we can obtain intelligence on their movements from local shipping, so can Nelson. In the event, it’s all we have. We’ll bend a little southerly along Crete and see what we can learn.”

Charles looked to Bevan for confirmation but saw that his friend’s attention had been diverted by the appearance of Molly across the deck. She stood almost shyly by the far rail in a fresh dress, with her head erect and her hands folded in front. His heart went out to her. She looked both vulnerable and determined. He had come to have a certain careful affection for Molly.

“If you will excuse me,” Bevan said.

Charles caught his arm. “Daniel,” he said seriously, “whatever you do, do the right thing by her. She’s done nothing to injure you.”

Bevan nodded wordlessly and crossed the deck with a determined step. Charles watched carefully while trying to look as if he weren’t. Bevan talked in low tones; Molly mostly listened, nodding occasionally, her eyes never leaving his face.

“What do you think she’ll do?” he said to Penny, still standing beside him.

“It is not for me to decide,” she said thoughtfully. “I hope she will do what she believes to be correct.”

“Poor Molly,” said Charles.

“Poor Daniel Bevan,” said Penny.

After a few moments, Bevan fell silent. Molly nodded her head, said something, then left him to cross toward Charles and Penny. “Don’t Daniel want me to come visit with him for a time,” she said. “He says I can have my own place to sleep. I want to give it a chance.”

“You have only to come to the rail and wave,” Charles said, “and I’ll fetch you straightaway.”

Molly smiled. “Thank you, sir. Don’t I appreciate it. I can take care of myself.”

While she went below with Penny to collect her pencils and paper and some clothing, Charles walked over to his friend. There didn’t seem to be much to say, so the two men stood silently waiting until the women returned. As Molly was lowered over the side, Charles finally said, “Good luck.” Bevan touched his hat and descended the side steps.

Charles and Penny stood watching Bevan’s cutter pulling back to the brig. “Do you know what this means?” Charles said.

“What?”

“That we’ll have the cabin to ourselves.”

“Except for Timothy Attwater.”

“Well, yes.”

Penny went to the cabin while Charles proceeded to the quarterdeck to give the orders for their new course. On the way, he passed Talmage, whom he acknowledged with a curt nod. He hoped they found Nelson soon. Seeing Talmage reminded him that he had not yet spoken to Winchester about the prohibition of duels. Then he thought that as nothing had happened thus far, perhaps it would not be necessary.