Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle (91 page)

“Well, now, Mr. Austen, should we take her a prize?” asked Prickett, who had only recently returned to the quarterdeck, perhaps once he was assured his crew would not be entering into the fray. “Though her masts have gone by the board, her hull looks sound. We shouldn’t have any difficulty taking her into Portsmouth with us.”

“She is
not
our prize, sir,” said Fly coldly.

“Mr. Burgo couldn’t possibly succeed in taking that schooner into port. Why he hardly has enough men to man his own brig, let alone provide a prize master and crew to take command of the schooner.”

“Perhaps we should ask Mr. Burgo if he requires our assistance. As the schooner is fairly his, he should have a say in the matter.”

Prickett’s hands found his hips. “I cannot agree, Mr. Austen! He’s a damned privateer, and his brig is nothing but a bumboat!”

“That
damned
privateer once saved our lives.”

“I cannot recall such a time, Mr. Austen.” Prickett held his head high for a moment before surprising Fly by swooping in close to him and dropping his voice to a dramatic whisper. “I am at the end of my career. I cannot countenance returning home to my family and peers empty-handed, and having to inform the Admiralty that I have no idea what happened to the
Lady Jane
.”

Fly remained aloof. “Our cruise has not ended; we may still find her.”

“On that score, I hold little hope.” Prickett pulled away to shout at his men. “Heave to! Heave to, lads! Lower the boats and prepare the launch for me. Oh, Mr. Weevil, there you are, my good man! Could you see to packing a basket for me, and include some good wine and good eats, won’t you?”

“Shall you require my company?”

“For what purpose, Mr. Austen?”

Fly frowned. “Do you not intend to board the schooner, and interview what remains of her crew to root out Royal Navy deserters?”

Prickett made a face. “Nay, I shall leave
you
to do the honours, Mr. Austen. You may take Bridlington with you; he’ll help you identify the scoundrels. I’ll have no part in cleaning up the mess on that schooner. In the meantime, I plan to pay a visit to our friend, Mr. Burgo, and make certain he’s amenable to our receiving a share in the prize money. And, knowing the very prospect should send her quivering with ecstasy, I shall ask Mrs. Kettle to accompany me.”

1:00 p.m.

Magpie sat rocking in
the cutter as the oarsmen raised and held their oars upright in the air and allowed the boat to bump up against the beaten hull of the American schooner. Having manoeuvred through waves littered with the wreckage of war and avoided the jagged stump of a fallen mast, they had come from the
Amethyst
to offer assistance to the Remarkables, who had already boarded the defeated vessel and taken command. In an effort to stay alert, Magpie rubbed his eye, pretending he didn’t see the streams of blood oozing from the scuppers, nor the lifeless bodies in the waves whose faces were contorted in grisly expressions, laying bare their final agony on earth. How he wished Morgan Evans could have come with him, for he knew no one else on board the cutter, and no one paid him any heed. But minutes before Mr. Austen had stepped into the very first boat to push off after Captain Prickett’s launch had left for the
Prosperous and Remarkable
, he had expressly asked Mr. Evans to stay with the Amethysts, saying “I would feel more at ease, for you’ll know how to act should an emergency arise.”

Magpie anxiously assessed the silent row of men sneering down at him from the schooner’s broken side, armed with various forms of weaponry, their sunburned faces displaying hostility, and then he broke into a shaky laugh. Among them were those he recognized as Prosper Burgo’s ruffians: there was the man whose nose resembled a tumorous strawberry, and beside him was the one with the missing ears, who, in turn, was standing next to the one with a mouthful of cracked teeth and a neck smeared in tattoos. And when it came his turn to climb up the schooner’s side on the suspended rope ladder, Magpie no longer felt the sensation that a flock of birds were flapping their wings in his stomach.

Leaping onto the deck, and fearful lest a glance around should reveal untold horrors, Magpie’s eye immediately lighted upon Mr. Austen, who had already established himself on a stool before a makeshift table near the schooner’s wheel. Stretching before the commander, in a line that snaked toward the bow of the ship, were the battle-weary Americans, some blackened with smoke, others weakened by blood loss, all of them guarded by Prosper’s ruffians, who had their weapons of intimidation at the ready. Sitting next to Mr. Austen, pressing a white handkerchief to his long crooked nose as if he could not tolerate the stench assaulting his nostrils, was First Lieutenant Bridlington. Magpie stepped closer to listen to them as they, one-by-one, conducted their interviews of the seamen.

“I was born a British subject, sir, but I ain’t a deserter,” declared one poor sailor whose shirt was slowly turning red from a gaping lesion on his neck. “I’ve a certificate of citizenship, and it shows I’m rightly an American, if ya’ll allow me to fetch it fer ya. It’s down below in me ditty bag.”

Bridlington dropped the handkerchief from his face to whistle his indignation. “Oh, what will that prove? I happen to know that these so-called
certificates
are usually false and therefore invalid, and that anyone can easily purchase one for a mere dollar, even a low-born such as yourself.”

Mr. Austen addressed the man with calm decency. “You have my permission to go and retrieve it.”

“Fine then!” retaliated Bridlington, wagging his finger at the bleeding sailor. “But your damned certificate better provide more particulars beyond your name, and the colour of your hair and eyes. Fie! Don’t we
all
have brown hair and brown eyes?”

Appropriating the white handkerchief from a sputtering Bridlington, Mr. Austen offered it to the sailor. “Hold this to your face to stop up the blood, and hurry back.”

The next American in line looked like a mean boxer at the Fives Court in St. Martin’s Lane. He kicked at the deck with his feet, and his fists were working at his sides, causing Magpie to wonder if he might haul off and punch Bridlington in the face, just as Mr. Evans had done. When he stated his case, he leaned in dangerously close to the first lieutenant and spoke in rough accentuated words. “Yer damn right I’m a deserter. I deserted six years ago after being whipped within an inch of my life, and I’ve found peace o’ mind with the Americans. Ya can’t blame a simple man like myself. I’ve been fed better, paid better, treated better, and haven’t been whipped fer no cause at all.”

Mr. Austen placed a restraining hand on Bridlington, who had leapt to his feet to fume, and simply nodded to two of his own men standing nearby, who came forward to lead the belligerent away to the
Amethyst
’s cutter.

Magpie felt a large hand upon his shoulder, and looked up to find Prosper Burgo’s jack-of-all-tradesman. “Pemberton Baker!”

“Well, if it ain’t the little one-eyed sailmaker!” said Pemberton, his pudding face devoid of emotion. “Have ya come to offer yerself up fer the prize crew?”

“Oh, nay, sir, I came with the others, thinkin’ ya might need me to patch up a sail or two,” he said, wishing he could pluck up the courage to ask Pemberton if he’d seen Dr. Braden and Biscuit in his travels; too afraid the answer would be no. “Where’s Mr. Burgo?”

Pemberton yanked his thumb across the water where the
Prosperous and Remarkable
was hove to. “He were about to join me, but yer captain came visitin’ with a picnic basket o’ victuals. Chose an odd time fer a visit, and he brought with him that snudge snout, Mrs. Kettle.”

“Oh, Mrs. Kettle says she’s goin’ to marry Mr. Burgo.”

There was no humour in Pemberton’s laugh. “There won’t be no marryin’ unless she binds him up in hemp and tries starvin’ him to commitment. And she won’t be none too happy to learn he’s been married afore — seven bloody times.”

“I suppose not.” Magpie ventured a shy glance around the schooner. “Do ya need me help, Pemberton?”

“Hmmm! Well now, yer too wee to help with the mendin’ o’ planks or jury-mastin’ this wreck, but, as yer good with a needle, head aft. They could use ya there.”

“What for?”

“To stitch up a couple o’ hammocks.”

Knowing what that involved, Magpie’s mouth went as dry as a white-hot beach, and those birds in his belly tried to take flight again.

“Just worry yerself about the ones what are still intact,” said Pemberton, “and keep a lookout for those what lost their heads, and miscellaneous body parts.”

“What … what do I do if I finds body parts?”

“Why ya throw ’em overboard fer the fishes.”

Saturday, August 28

7:00 a.m.

(Morning Watch, Six Bells)

Aboard the
Prosperous and Remarkable

Magpie had been shivering
on his heap of discarded sails, his mind tortured with visions of blue lips and still, ashen faces, when he realized Mr. Austen was leaning over him.

“Sir?” he asked sleepily, his bleary eye falling for a quick second upon the ghastly row of canvas-bound corpses he’d helped to ready for their admittance to the sea.

“Mr. Evans has come to fetch us. We’ve been invited to breakfast with Mr. Burgo on his brig. Are you up for it?”

Magpie studied Mr. Austen’s drawn face, and wondered if the commander had been able to find a bit of canvas upon which to lay his head, for well into the night Magpie had seen him questioning the Americans and simultaneously organizing the transport of the twenty-seven presumed deserters across the water to the
Amethyst
. At midnight, refusing to bed upon the schooner for fear his throat would be slashed in the night, Lord Bridlington had taken his leave, remarking to Mr. Austen as he settled into one of the returning boats: “Won’t Captain Prickett be pleased with us!”

“I’d like that, sir,” said Magpie, tossing aside his crude blankets.

“Then we must hurry, for Mr. Evans brings word that Captain Prickett is most anxious to be away.”

The morning was cold and dreary. Magpie’s teeth chattered as he sat in the
Amethyst
’s cutter, hugging his thin body in an effort to stay warm, but relieved to be away from the sadness and death on the schooner. He tried to set his mind on Emily, remembering their many pleasant conversations together on the
Isabelle
; it helped to blot out the image of the little white face of a boy his age he had had to sew into his small, canvas coffin, and the terrible realization that the cannonball he had placed at the boy’s feet would drag him down to the
auld place
. Wisps of fog rolled past the cutter as the drowsy oarsmen pulled toward the
Prosperous and Remarkable
, giving a nebulous appearance to the three ships, sitting hove to in a triangular formation on the Atlantic, their hulls and masts as hallucinatory as a desert mirage. In the surrounding silence, the sound of the oars hitting the waves gave Magpie the shakes. If it weren’t for the presence of Mr. Austen sitting grim-faced on his boat plank, and Morgan Evans heaving on one of the oars, Magpie would have been certain he was locked in an endless nightmare.

Prosper Burgo’s howl of welcome and hearty handshake served to prop up Magpie’s nerves, and the mug of coffee pressed into his hands was guzzled with gratitude and timely, for, upon following Mr. Austen and Mr. Evans into the privateersman’s domain on the brig’s stern, he encountered Mrs. Kettle, beaming like a child who’d been praised by her teacher for the successful completion of her sums.

The laundress darted a wry face at his dirty feet. “Have ya come to take breakfast with us? We ain’t servin’ up no Maggot Pie here.” She cackled away, while everyone found something to sit upon.

Mr. Austen, who had an uncanny ability to ignore the existence of Mrs. Kettle, smiled warmly at Prosper. “It is astounding to find you here on this lonely patch of the sea, but we’re most delighted to see you again.”

Prosper sank down on a barrel, and wrapped his arm around his puffed-up woman. “I’ve been followin’ ya since ya left Halifax. We set out the minute we got word ya was headin’ back to England to fight them Yankee privateers plunderin’ yer coasts. I was a bit down on me luck in the east … thought I’d better try new ground.”

Magpie piped up. “But Prosper, where’s yer red hull got to? We might’ve known ya long afore this.”

Prosper snarled. “Ah, too many were comin’ to know me
Prosperous and Remarkable
on account o’ that bloody-red hull, so we painted her up fer a disguise.” He looked over at Mr. Austen. “Just as well ya didn’t recognize me right off. I didn’t need yer help, leastwise from yer fat captain. What a galoot! He woulda turned his guns on me in order to claim that Yankee schooner fer himself.”

“I am sorry for the visit he paid you,” said Mr. Austen, accepting Prosper’s offering of a coffee refill.

“He’s a shack rag, yer captain; his blusterin’ gave me a headache.” Prosper showed some teeth. “But I did gladly accept his offerin’ o’ wine. Now, I’ve the greatest respect fer ya, Mr. Austen, as well as fer Mr. Evans here, and wee Magpie with his patched-up eye, but I ain’t about to share me prize and its contraband with ya.”

“We’ve come for no other reason than to enjoy the company of old friends, Prosper, and to take you up on your hospitality after a most difficult night.”

Prosper nodded with satisfaction, planted a wet kiss on Mrs. Kettle’s blooming cheek — sending her into a paroxysm of snorty giggles — and stood up to begin spooning out the breakfast. “Eat up! Then we must away, fer I don’t rest easy in foggy weather.”

Magpie wasn’t certain his stomach could withstand the vile mash of burgoo bubbling in a copper pot on Prosper’s table, nor the mouldy biscuits, which — being as they were infested with black-headed maggots — seemed to be moving about on a cracked plate. But it was a dish of yellowish muck that really put him off. Seeing him blanch, Prosper centred him out. “What? Ain’t ya ever seen slush afore?”