On a Lee Shore (22 page)

Davy was a gentle nurse. The wet cloths he laid across the bruises on Kit’s back were applied with care, and while they didn’t take the pain away, Kit appreciated the attention. He also appreciated that Davy had been badly scared by Kit’s situation and needed to talk about it, much though Kit might have wished he’d be quiet. “That’s why I never went for the Navy, see.” Davy sighed. “Captain Dorling sails so shorthanded it’s hard work, but he’s less likely to lose hands that way.”

“True,” Kit said. “Give me the merchant fleet every time! In the Navy you had to worry about the French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese. Mind you, now we’re on the Africa we have to worry about everyone.”

“The captain isn’t worried,” Davy said. “Though he does seem annoyed by the Miranda.”

Kit shifted, uneasy at the recollection that he was in the captain’s bed, and grunted at the pain of it. “My back is beginning to stiffen up. Davy, I need to move. The captain will want his cabin back.”

“No,” Davy said. “He told me to keep you here until he’d had a chance to talk to you. He was going to see Wigram first. Why don’t you try to sleep? It’s getting late.”

“I’m not sleeping in here,” Kit snapped and began to push himself up. The pain that had been waiting for him to notice it roared through him, and he fell back, biting off a cry.

At once the cabin door opened, and from the way Davy moved back toward the window, Kit knew it was Griffin who had entered.

“Is your patient being uncooperative?” Griffin asked and continued without waiting for an answer. “Yes, I see that he is. Be still, Kit. Davy, give me that cloth, you can go now. See O’Neill. He’ll have orders for you.”

“Yes, sir,” Davy said and left.

“I should go too,” Kit said.

“No. Lie down,” Griffin growled. His hand on the back of Kit’s neck, pushing him down onto the oilcloth again, made obedience a necessity. “That’s better.”

The cloth splashed in the bucket again, and Griffin fished it out and wadded it between his hands to wring it out before spreading it across Kit’s shoulders.

“Hurt?” Griffin asked. A stupid question in Kit’s opinion.

“Wasn’t it meant to?” he asked. “I thought that was the whole point of it. Pain as a punishment to remind us who’s in charge?”

Griffin snorted. “Believe me, boy, it could be so much worse. Valliere did his work well. He sends his apologies about the cut. Once the rope strands get wet they are heavier and harder to control.” Griffin removed the cloth again. “I told him to make it look fair but to go easy, and I think he did. At least none of the complaints I’ve heard are that you got off lightly. We did what we could. You’ll be up in a day or so, hurting but working, but Wigram will be groaning in his cot for a while longer. With any luck the bastard will be pissing blood for a week. Maybe that will take his mind off women. And it’ll get him off my back too.”

Kit listened to this, frowning into the little dark cave formed by his arms as Griffin laid the damp rag across his ribs. “Pirate politics, sir?” he asked.

“Yes,” Griffin said quietly. “I’m sorry you got caught up in it. Wigram is ambitious. He talks big and some of the men listen to him. Too many of them want prizes at all costs. I need to find them a ship, let them transfer to it, and be rid of them bag and baggage.”

“You could have let them have that Portuguese ship,” Kit said bleakly. “The one where all the crew was killed. They could have gone then. Of course, then you’d be loosing a band of mad dogs on the Leeward Isles, and all their killings would be on your conscience.”

“What need have I of a conscience?” Griffin said, and Kit flinched as the cloth was pulled away and plopped back in the bucket again.

“For now, Kit, I need them. I need the whole of both crews for what I have in mind. And I need you too, healthy and cooperative, and prepared to take my orders. Once I’ve achieved my goal, then I will rid myself of Wigram and his cronies. They will last less than a month. You’ll see.”

“And if I follow your orders and help you achieve your goal, what then?” Kit asked.

“Then…” Griffin’s voice trailed off in a sigh, and the wet cloth touched the top of Kit’s shoulder, wadded up and dabbing gently. “Then we’ll see what happens. My first goal is to keep you alive. I’m having your things moved in here.”

“Sir,” Kit shifted, gasping a little as he turned his head to look at Griffin. “The hands will talk. Assumptions will be made.”

“That we are messmates? Yes, what of it?” Griffin face was drawn, his eyes overly bright. “That way you are much less likely to get a knife in the ribs. We can watch each other’s backs.” He looked at Kit’s, his lips tightening. “I hate this,” he said, his voice gruff. “I hate that I did this to you. I’m sorry, Kit.”

He seemed sincere and genuinely distressed. “It will soon heal,” Kit said, resting his head on his wrist. “I understood the necessity before, even without what you’ve just told me. Now—well, had the positions been reversed I would probably have done the same.”

“That hard-hearted, Kit?” Griffin asked, the cloth moving slowly. A trickle of wet tickled his side and was mopped away. “You’re all duty, aren’t you? You’d see any one of us hanged.”

“Can you blame me after what happened on the—damn, what was the snow’s name?”

“Sao Paulo,” Griffin murmured.

“Yes, captain and crew murdered, ship sent to the seabed. And Vargas, on the Hypatia. After that I should be prepared to haul on the ropes myself.” Kit scowled. “But I know there were some who didn’t want it. Who would have let the Sao Paulo go on its way. And some of the men here are good men—bad pirates. You can see their hearts aren’t in it. Valliere, Maxwell, Lewis and—no, just Lewis. Protheroe seems to enjoy the chase.”

“As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” Griffin said. “That’s why Protheroe’s here. Sheep stealing. But the magistrate decided he was too young to hang and sent him to Jamaica. He says it took him less than a morning to decide that he preferred a sea life to cutting cane and has been on the account ever since. And Lewis, sheep were his downfall too. He helped his brother drive a flock to Haverford West, got pressed, got fever, got left on Antigua to recover if he could.”

“He seems happy enough now,” Kit murmured.

“Yes,” Griffin sighed. “He is. They are. I…would sooner my crew was happy than not. Kit, I want you to know that I regret—what was the name? The master of the Hypatia. I regret his death. It was not by design.”

Kit couldn’t think of anything to say in reply to that. He wondered if “my crew” included him and Davy Forrest and how difficult Griffin was going to make it for him to leave. He wondered what steps Griffin had taken to avoid deaths on the Hypatia. He wondered—for Griffin’s hands were gentle on his back, soothing the pain, or at least taking his mind off it—how he could manage sharing the captain’s cabin. He wondered if anything would be expected from him in return for sleeping safely.

When the silence had gone on a little too long for comfort, Kit cleared his throat. “If I stay, share the cabin, I mean, I insist on you having your own bed back.”

Griffin grunted, the rag making another sweep just above Kit’s waist. There was no pain there—Valliere’s stripes were all across his shoulders and ribs—just the coolness of the rag and the warmth of Griffin’s fingertips.

“There’ll be no need,” Griffin said after a moment. “When I’m sleeping you’ll be on deck and vice versa. Denny will ensure you come to no harm. From anyone, Kit.” The rag went back into the bucket with a splash, and Griffin laid one of his own linen towels over Kit’s back.

“But, to please you, I will have your hammock brought aft again. After all, you’re an asset, Lieutenant Penrose,” he said more briskly. “One of which I intend to make full use, for my own nefarious ends. I can only assure you that you won’t be disappointed with the results.”

There was laughter in his voice, but when Kit turned to look at him, he was on his feet heading for the door, which closed behind him with a decisive click.

Kit sighed and let his head back down onto his arms, feeling an uncomfortable mixture of relief and disappointment.

Chapter Thirteen

Kit was comfortable in his new quarters before the pain and stiffness in his back had eased. Griffin kept his things and his person as neat as Kit could have wished, and Denny seemed to relish having somebody else to look out for. Kit soon got used to his mild grumbling as he swept the floor and aired the cabin. Kit found it amusing that he should be sitting with Denny cleaning Denny’s shoes—“A bet’s a bet, Mr. Kit!”—while Denny cleaned his and the captain’s.

For the first few days even shoe cleaning was beyond him. The damage done to the muscles of his back made even breathing something to be done with care. Apart from trips to the heads, Kit barely left the cabin. He recalled seeing recently flogged sailors moving with the same upright stance and exaggerated caution and how he had dismissed their frailty as malingering. After all, flogging was a fine old tradition of the Navy. Now he knew how they had felt and was filled with shame. But because of that he made himself get up and move and was on deck to observe Griffin taking the readings on the second morning.

“Glad to see you up and about,” O’Neill said and feigned slapping him on the back, roaring with laughter as Kit flinched.

Valliere’s greeting was more cautious but warmed when Kit whispered his thanks before asking all the usual questions about their course, currents, and what the weather might have in store.

They worked on a more extended watch system than Kit had been used to in the Navy. Griffin had suggested they split the hours of darkness evenly, he taking the first stint and handing over to Kit after midnight. Kit found no fault in this because he loved to be on deck at dawn. He was also used to snatching sleep when he could. He would take four solid hours once the sun was up and headings had been taken, which could be augmented with a nap in the afternoon to keep him going.

Griffin’s prediction about Wigram was correct. He was laid up for a week, which made the atmosphere a good deal lighter apart from among his friends. Hussey and Lucas were Scots from Leith who had abandoned the herring fisheries for life on the account. Muddiford was from Barnstaple. Kit hadn’t yet heard how he came to be a pirate but suspected it had something to do with the long knife at his waist and his readiness to use it. Then there was John Longland, who gave himself the airs of a gentleman but whose conversation about women fell a long way short of the mark. He had been most vocal in his protests at the way Wigram had been treated, but all four had made sure that Kit got to hear that they felt he should have minded his own business.

“Any man who takes up with a Portsmouth whore should expect to have to blink at the occasional gentleman caller,” Longland said. “And any Englishwoman who takes up with a fucking Frenchie deserves all she gets.”

He also passed some comments about how if he’d known that Griffin intended to set up a molly-house he’d have stayed on the Garnet, but Kit only knew about that from Davy. Huge eyed, he described how Protheroe had dangled the man over the side and would probably have let him fall if it hadn’t been for Muddiford flashing his knife.

“There’s no love lost down there now,” Davy said. “And they say Wigram will be on his feet soon. I hope the captain knows where he’s going and that there’s something at the end of the journey that will brighten everyone up.”

There was an unvoiced question there that Kit was still unable to answer, and that worried him. They were now so far to the south and west that the coastal trade had thinned and prizes were few. Kit studied the charts and their headings and made a few assumptions. All he could say to Davy was that Griffin had a plan, but only Jago Stockley knew what it was.

“My guess is that it’s something that will make La Griffe even more famous,” he suggested. “And the crews rich as nabobs.”

“Can I tell them that?” Davy asked, and Kit shrugged.

“If you like. But I can’t guarantee they’ll believe you.”

Some must have done because the cheerfulness even survived Wigram’s morose and resentful return to duty. He spent the first day making hell wherever he could, citing his responsibility for the sails as an excuse to send those men capable of it scampering all over the rigging to make unnecessary adjustments that he changed back again with a peevish shout and a promise of punishment.

The looks he directed at Kit were venomous, but he didn’t refer to what had happened on the Eugenie or its aftermath. In fact he didn’t speak to Kit at all but addressed his remarks to the helmsman or saved up his reports for the captain.

Griffin puzzled Kit. The day of the flogging his treatment of Kit had been both brusque and tender. Thereafter he let him have his privacy and demanded a level of privacy of his own, which Kit was happy to grant, but he seemed happier. He was also drinking far less, which pleased Kit.

Kit couldn’t help but remember the taste of brandy on the man’s tongue and felt that it would be easier for them both to forget it if Griffin moderated his consumption. That said, forgetting was easier to say than do. Especially during those times when they passed time together discussing the ship and her course, the intricacies of navigation, and speculation about the state of England and her enemies.

“To get a letter of marque would be a step on the path to respectability,” Griffin said one afternoon. “Not that I would be able to go very far along it.” He grinned at Kit. “But it would be a start.”

It was a brilliant day, with a stiff east wind and middling high seas. Africa was cresting each wave with a spray of foam. Garnet was well behind now and the Africa twice had to slow to wait for her to catch up. Griffin was taking a turn at the tiller while Kit fretted about Garnet’s progress.

“Respectability is a marvelous thing,” Kit agreed, lowering the glass. “But I’d wager some of the Garnet’s crew would willingly trade it for a more seaworthy ship. Such a pity Captain Stockley had his mind more on the pleasures of Tortuga than his command. Garnet is in sore need of careening.”

“That’s the pirate way,” Griffin said cheerfully. “Live life for today, don’t worry about tomorrow, and the devil take the hindmost.”