Poetic Justice (29 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I have great comfort from this fellow;

Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him;

His complexion is perfect gallows.

Stand fast, good fate, to his hanging!...

If he be not borned to be hanged,

Our case is miserable.

The Tempest, I, i

Suddenly it was morning, the sun appearing from the gray sea with an almost audible pop. Dawn came early and swift in the northern seas, John recalled, flexing his aching hands on the ship's wheel. Another night gone, another day begun, and London and Jessica were ever farther behind him.

Six days out of Chatham, the Araminta (a sloop, they called her, in that absurd argot of the Royal Navy; with her two masts, she was a brig by any other name) was being shoved slowly easterly, into the sun, by a wicked finger of a wind. Her captain wasn't much of a navigator, and the master had taken ill and been left behind in port, so there was little chance the sloop would be put through the complex maneuvers that might send it more truly northward.

John knew this route well, having made several summer trips to St. Petersburg on behalf of the Foreign Office, and he might have been able to plot a better course. But he was hardly going to volunteer to move them farther faster. In fact, he had spent the night making minute adjustments in his steering to slow the sloop's progress, navigating by the stars and the direction of the spray against his face. He might have been hanged for this, except the captain was an amiable dunce who didn't know enough about his vessel to know when it was being reined in.

But John would never get back to London at this rate. Ever since he had awakened four days ago in the sickbay, with an opium hangover and the clothes of a quartermaster named Jem Mercer, he had thought of nothing but Jessica, waiting there for him to come back and wed her. Now her birthday was less than a fortnight away and he was halfway to Denmark, filling the role of another man.

At least it was a slow progress, given the erratic and unreliable breezes here on the continental shelf that linked Britain to the rest of Europe. This was the shallowest of seas, with treacherous sandbanks and shoals even a hundred miles from land. John gazed ahead into the pale dawn, scanning for a chance to ground the sloop. But he knew he couldn't do it. He loved ships too much to deliberately damage one. He'd have to find another way home.

At eight bells, the dawn quiet was broken by the boatswain's piping and the thunder of feet as the starboard watch came on deck. Another quartermaster's mate came up behind him and checked the log, squinting to see the chalk marks in the early light. "Relieving you, Mercer. Easy night of it, I hope."

John had long since given up declaring that he wasn't Jem Mercer, able-bodied seaman and quartermaster's mate on transfer from the Berendt. A ship's company tolerated all sorts of eccentricities, and so they took little note of John's insistence that he commanded his own ship, or that he was an art dealer in London and not a quartermaster's mate at all. Occasionally a sailor would waggle a finger at his temple, pantomiming a lunatic, but no one even blinked at John's demand to be sent home immediately. This was the softest of walls, but as effective as brick in preventing his return.

"Easy enough. We've made about three knots steadily, but are a bit off-course, I think. You might bear a degree or two southerly. Shallow water, this."

"And chill." Genially, his replacement eased him aside and took over the wheel. "Go on below till breakfast, lad. And before you get into the hammock, you change into dry clothes, won't you? Wouldn't want you to take a chill from the spray."

It was annoying to be treated as a dimwit, but he supposed that he had invited it with his behavior early in the week, when the residue of concussion and rage had made him refuse even to eat. That had ended when he realized malnutrition could be a liability. Now he was eating again, but lightly. He hoarded the extra biscuits and salt-pork, hiding the bundle of food in an old cask, ready for the time he made his escape.

As the lowliest of the sailors crawled around him, holystoning the deck, John walked back across the stern, pulling his salt-wet shirt off over his head. Leaning on the rail, he gazed at the wake spreading out behind them like a bird's tail feathers. He imagined it leading all the way back to England, an unbroken line between him and Jessica.

"Lend a hand, mate," someone called from below. The captain's launch, its single sail furled tight, was tethered directly under the stern. A gunner's mate clung one-handed to the ropes a few feet down the hull, holding out a fishing net squirming with fish. John grabbed the net and hauled it aboard as the other sailor scrambled nimbly onto deck. "Best fishing waters in the north. We'll breakfast well this morning."

John watched him go below, then looked back at the launch, trailing behind in the middle of the wake. It was a capacious enough boat, meant for a four-man crew but sailable by one, as the fisherman had just proved. He turned and looked into the sun, calculating silently from the last reckoning of their position. They'd travelled two hundred thirty miles from home, give or take a league or so. It was a long, difficult voyage back, but John knew his strengths and thought he could do it. Captain Bligh, after all, sailed ten times that far in an open boat, across cannibal-infested waters.

It was just a matter of good luck and good sailing skills, and John knew he possessed at least one of those. He grabbed up his shirt and headed below decks to the tiny rectangle of floor reserved for his—or rather, Jem Mercer's—sea-chest. All around him the men of the larboard watch were slinging hammocks, ready for a few hours sleep before breakfast was piped in the forenoon watch. Turning his back to block their view, John grabbed up a change of clothes, a boat cloak, and a few other essentials and stuffed them in an oilcloth bag. It was only a matter of minutes before the boat crew pulled in the launch, so he did no more than retrieve his food hoard and sling a jug of water from a leather thong over his shoulder before returning to the stern.

The infernal noise of thirty men pumicing a deck drowned out the sound of John's escape. He dropped down into the boat and undid the knots that connected it to the Araminta. Crouching down near the tiller, he waited till he saw the watch, high above on the mast, train his spyglass eastward. Then, as silently as he could, he fixed the oars and began rowing away from the ship.

He had pulled all the way out of the wake, away from the sloop's powerful draw, before the man on watch turned back. John knew to the instant when he had been spotted, and was ready for the pursuit when the cry of "On deck!" blazed over the distance. Abandoning any attempt at secrecy, he set the sail to take the best advantage of the fleeting breeze.

The sloop was small enough that turning about was the work of a few moments, and even as John added his rowing to the force granted by the wind, he knew it was futile. His luck was out, as it had been for a month or more. Still he kept rowing, stopping only to wipe the seawater out of his eyes or to work the tiller. He mostly kept his head down, concentrating on the arduous task. But when a shadow cut off the light of the rising sun, he looked up. The sloop bore down on him like a great seabird, canvas spread like wings and blocking the sun.

His muscles burned so much that he could only swing an oar at the boathook as it caught his prow. Over the roaring of blood in his ears, he could hear the cheers of his shipmates. He didn't know, and didn't care, if they cheered him or the marines who grabbed his aching arms and hauled him back on board.

The captain, that genial fool, was waiting at the rail when John was tossed aboard. He was doing his best to look like an Old Testament prophet of wrath, but his face didn't mold into wrathful lines. "Don't you know desertion's a hanging offense? I could have you flogged around the fleet!" There was a murmur from the assembled ship's company, of approval or disapproval even the captain didn't seem to know. "We punish on Tuesday. Shackle him until then."

One marine consoled John, as they dragged him down the stairs, "Don't you be worriting none, mate. The captain's not a hanging sort. And if he means to punish you Tuesday, it won't be flogging around the fleet neither. We shan't catch up to the fleet till the Skagerrak at least. A dozen stripes, he might order you. But he's not the sort to hurt a poor loon like you."

A poor loon like you. John laughed weakly as he was left alone in the damp hold, the shackles chill and wet around his wrists and ankles. He supposed he should be grateful for the sympathy of his shipmates, and he was, especially when several appeared during the course of the next few hours to slip him a cup of grog or an ungnawed seabiscuit. It was just so ironic, that all his life he had lived on his wits, put all his pride into his sharp intellect, and now everyone thought him a lunatic.

And after a day or so, he decided he might become one. The hold was an unpleasant place, with water sloshing in whenever the sea got rough and the old timbers groaned, with rats the size of cats eying him speculatively, with the shackles and the salt wearing holes in his wrists. When his lamp sputtered out after a few hours, the darkness dug into his eyes as the damp dug into his bones. But he could live with that. He'd suffered nearly as much indignity as a boy in a China-bound privateering vessel.

No, it was the realization that he was indeed a fool that drove him nearly to despair. He had underestimated Wiley. And given his experience with other collectors, other obsessives, John should have known better. He had presumed that Wiley wasn't a killer, and so dismissed him as any kind of physical threat. He had presumed that his vast experience would protect him, but he had never imagined being so distracted by his emotions that he wouldn't hear an approaching attacker in time to parry him. It was a mental mistake, and he was being properly punished for it. The injustice of it was, though, that Jessica was being punished too, and she was blameless in this.

What would she do, when she realized he was gone? She would suspect right away that his pre-wedding absence was involuntary. Would she be valiant and foolish and confront Wiley? Or would she turn pragmatic and persuade her uncle to approve another marriage, to that poet, probably?

Such speculations were likely to drive him mad, so instead he spent the last night huddled in a boat cloak against the damp, thinking about flogging. They punished at noon, when the sun was high and blazing, the marine had told him. After six lashes, the captain would call a temporary halt to give the flogged man a few gulps of water. Then it would begin again.

In the utter darkness of the hold, he felt around on the floor for the battered tin jug that held his water ration. He plunged his hand into it, closing his fingers to catch the insects as the water ran through, then flinging them away into the darkness. He drank as much as he could swallow, choosing to blame the crawling sensation down his throat on the rancid taste.

Flogging could be no worse than this.

He had never been flogged, and never flogged either. But then, he'd never been in the Navy. Privateering crews were a practical lot, and sailed by choice, not conscription. To enforce appropriate behavior, the captain needed only to threaten to leave an unruly crewman at the next port of call without any prize money.

It wouldn't be so bad, he told himself as the marines returned Tuesday morning to take him above. A dozen stripes, that's all, the marine assured him again, pushing John's head down so he wouldn't hit the hatchway. He spoke loudly over the singing of the sails, "It won't hurt so much after the sixth or seventh lash, that's what I hear."

After days in the hold, the sun blazing off the water blinded John. Involuntarily his eyes closed to ward off the glare, and only the rough guidance of the marines got him across the deck to the gangway, where they unshackled his arms. Once the pain from his raw wrists faded, he forced open his eyes. The deck was crowded by both watches, ragged rows of his shipmates watching him with curiosity and sympathy and perhaps morbid enjoyment of his humiliation. The officers were there too, assembled behind the captain in his full-dress uniform: the sole lieutenant looking young and bored, the two little midshipmen each with a hand on his blade, just in case the marines couldn't handle the felon alone.

Before him was a metal grating, beside it the burly boatswain's mate fondling a cat-o'-nine-tails. John focused on the leather whip, counting the tails as the mate stroked each one. It was true, there were nine of them, thin and sharp and coated with something that looked like tar.

The boatswain's mate grinned at him, revealing two missing teeth. John narrowed his eyes against the light, focusing all his ill will on that mouth gaping in an insolent grin. The grin faltered, fell off, and the mate went back to combing his cat.

The captain of the marines raised his hand. The Navy had a ceremony for everything, John was learning, even for flogging a man. The ship's corporal shaded his eyes and read aloud from a sheet gripped hard against the wind's grasp. "Desertion. Theft of a boat."

"What say you to these charges, Mercer?"

John rubbed his wrist and said wearily, "I am not Mercer. I am not of the Royal Navy, and thus I cannot be guilty of desertion."

The captain ignored this, as John knew he would. "He is in your division, Mr. Polter. Have you anything to say for him?"

The lieutenant, prodded by a midshipman's elbow, shook himself awake. "Sir, he's a good man at the wheel, notwithstanding his mental instability. Takes a good noon reckoning, and seems to know these waters well. I wouldn't want to lose him for long, what with the master left behind."

The captain nodded judiciously. "Good point, Mr. Polter. Just a dozen lashes, then, Barrett. And do make it quick. The hands will want their dinner."

John's personal marines seized him, one on each arm, and yanked his shirt off over his head. There was a roll of drums, the lonely whine of a pipe, as John's hands were bound to the grating with leather ropes. The marine shoved at his bared back, so that he was pressed face first against the hot metal. He closed his eyes, willing away the humiliation, the utter helplessness, the anticipation of worse. No, the pain didn't matter, it was the lack of control that agonized him. To be spread-eagled thus, his arms seized above him, his back naked, his shame plain to all his shipmates, while three hundred miles away his life was slipping away. It was too much to bear.