The French Prize (40 page)

“Oh, yes,” Renaudin said. In his mind he felt the snap and kick of the pistol, saw the back of Bar
è
re's head blow apart. “I perceive your meaning very well.”

 

26

Among the spectators at Jack and William's duel was the surgeon from His Majesty's Ship
Warrior
, whom Chandler had asked be present, an unnecessary request given that, like his fellow officers, the surgeon would never have missed the fun of watching two Yankee Doodles go after one another with swords. He addressed the combatants' wounds, which were minor and required only bandaging. Chandler made the two exhausted men agree that honor had been satisfied. They shook hands, also on Chandler's insistence.

“Well fought, Captain,” Wentworth said.

“And you, Mr. Wentworth,” Biddlecomb said. They spoke in tones that were stilted, overly formal, what one might expect of two men who had spent the morning trying to run one another through.

They returned to English Harbour; the combatants, the seconds, the sizable crowd who had turned out for the affair. Jack went back to work on the
Abigail
. Wentworth, for lack of anything better to do, began to drink and to marinate in his various concerns. The officers of the
Warrior
continued to hope Captain Wallace would see his way to bribing the dockyard superintendent to speed up work on the seventy-four, and her crew continued to hope he would not.

Two days later, when
Abigail
's hands began heaving the windlass to bring the anchor cable to short peak and prepare to weigh, the laceration on Jack's side was still sore and restricting his movements. He was standing on his quarterdeck in his favorite spot at the starboard rail, just forward of the helm. He looked down the length of the deck, and what he saw was very different from what he had seen from that same spot on the day they had put out from Philadelphia.

That sight had been odd enough, with six new guns run out through six fresh-cut gunports, but this was something new entirely. Rather than a cluster of guns aft there were now six guns per side, a dozen great guns evenly spaced fore and aft. Rather than a handful of merchant sailors he now had thirty or more men on the crew, twenty of whom were experienced men-of-war's men, hands from a sloop-of-war that had been condemned, stranding them in English Harbour. They were slated to be put on
Warrior
's books, but somehow the dockyard superintendent had shipped them aboard
Abigail
, with the understanding that their passage back from Barbados would be paid for by Mr. Frost.

That must have set Frost back some considerable sum of ready money
, Jack thought.

“Short peak!” Tucker cried from the foredeck.

“Hands aloft to loose sail!” Jack cried and the men swarmed up the shrouds, far more men than he was used to seeing on any vessel he had ever sailed aboard. They laid out on fore and main topgallant yard, topsail yards, lower yards, the mizzen as well, and after what seemed to Jack an extraordinarily brief time they were back on deck, the sails hanging in their gear.

Impressive
 … he thought. He could grow accustomed to these man-of-war-style crews, dozens of men to do a job that would be done by six aboard a merchantman. The sails were sheeted home, halyards hauled away. With many hands on the braces the foresails were braced aback, main and mizzen hauled around to cast the ship to larboard, with Israel Walcott the cook grumbling about the mouths to feed but happily ignoring his usual station at the foresheet.

The anchor tripped,
Abigail
fell off to larboard, the foresails were braced around, and the ship gathered way. The tide was ebbing and the sun was near her zenith as they stood out of English Harbour and met the Atlantic rollers coming in.

Ten knots of breeze was blowing from the east southeast as Biddlecomb put the ship on a larboard tack, full and by, plunging along and sending the occasional shower of warm spray aft. They had pretty well cleared the land by the time Jack felt he could stand it no longer, looked aloft, and shouted, “Masthead, there! What do you see?”

Lacey was on the main topgallant and Wentworth, Jack noticed, was in the maintop, but sitting with his back against the mast and looking aft, staring off at nothing in particular that Jack could see. Their interactions had been formal and stiff since the duel, and they had largely avoided one another. Or, more correctly, Wentworth had avoided Jack, because Jack did not have the time to give any thought to whom he might bump into or whom he wished to avoid.

There was a moment's pause as Lacey took one last scan of the horizon and called, “Looks like a fishing boat a half a league to weather, sir, nothing beyond that.”

Jack was not sure if he was relieved or disappointed by this report. Certainly he had thought it very unlikely that the French corvette, or any armed French vessel, would be hovering around English Harbour. But Frost had disagreed, and said it was in fact quite likely indeed. Frost felt the master of
L'Arman
ç
on
would have been humiliated by his defeat and eager to make amends before the
Directoire
made amends for him with the help of a guillotine. And so far Frost had been right about such things.

“What ho, Captain?” Frost's big voice rang out from the leeward side. “No sign of Jean Crapeau?”

“No,” Jack said as the big man approached. Frost was looking very much in his element, very pleased with the improvements to the
Abigail.
But there was a patina of anxiety there as well, as if he felt personally responsible for how things might work out. And well he might, given how much of their present circumstance was his doing.

“The man aloft said there was a fishing boat to weather, nothing more,” Jack said. “Visibility is everything we might wish, so if the Frenchie was anywhere within three leagues we'd see him.”

“Indeed?” Frost said, and the disappointment in his voice was unmistakable now. He looked aloft.
Abigail
had all plain sail set and topmast studdingsails on the weather side. “Mayhaps you should reduce canvas?” he suggested. “Not run clear of here so fast?”

Jack, who had been scanning the horizon to windward, turned and looked at him. This was an odd suggestion, bordering on the bizarre. Certainly Jack agreed with the plan to fight their way to Barbados if need be. He was enjoying the command of this ersatz man-of-war. He had come to appreciate the aesthetics of the neat row of guns, larboard and starboard, in their symmetrical perfection, the oversized crew that could perform tasks so fast, so efficient.

He secretly relished his role of naval commander, of being predator and not prey, and he was secretly embarrassed to be relishing it. Silently he assured himself that he was not his father, did not wish to be and would never be his father, while at the same time understanding at last why a man might want to stand on the quarterdeck of a man-of-war and think himself master of all before him, and of anything that might come up over the horizon.

But for all his embrace of things naval, Jack still preferred to run to Barbados unchallenged. He had been raised on stories of men-of-war and the bold men who sailed them, and he had learned a lot, even when he was not trying to. And so he knew that captains of men-of-war (which he reminded himself he was not) did not put their ships and men in harm's way without a good reason for doing so. And he was not sure what reason he might have to seek battle with
L'Arman
ç
on
.

“Mr. Frost,” Jack asked, “you have said yourself many times that Mr. Oxnard wishes
Abigail
to reach Barbados unharmed, and not wind up a prize of the French. I would think if we could sneak past her in the night, leave her over the horizon by dawn, that would be preferable to fighting.”

“Well, of course it would!” Frost said, all but spluttering. “Of course, only a fool would think otherwise. But I'm saying only we should proceed with caution, slow, you understand, like an Indian sneaking along through the woods, or some such. If Jean Crapeau is just over the horizon, say, and here we come blundering along, all the kites flying, and we run right under his guns as fast as ever we can, that would be a disaster. That's what I'm saying.”

Jack nodded. “I see,” he said, and thought,
what sort of fool do you reckon I am?
He glanced up at the maintop, and suddenly he was enveloped with the sickening thought that, possibly, contrary to all reason, Wentworth might actually have been right about Frost.

“Let me put some thought into that, Mr. Frost,” Biddlecomb said, “but for the moment I am loath to not take full advantage of a fine topgallant breeze. No mariner could stand to lose such a main chance.”

“Of course, Captain, of course, you would be negligent to do otherwise,” Frost assured him. He retreated to the leeward side and Jack kept his station at the weather rail, kept his eyes moving from sails to the horizon, to the wake astern. Occasionally he would amble over to the binnacle and take a look at the compass. He felt the warm, comfortable, driving breeze flow over his face and judged from long experience any minute changes in strength or direction.

The glass was turned, the bells rang out, the sails were carefully adjusted until Jack was satisfied. But not an inch of canvas was taken in, and when he was not directly conning his ship, Jack's mind went over that odd conversation he and Frost had had. He was thinking on what it might mean, what might be at the back of Frost's enthusiasms, and his money. He was considering the unthinkable; asking Wentworth just what it was he suspected.

Abigail
continued to plow her long, white furrow through the sea, heeling to leeward and pitching in a soft, pleasing, rocking sort of motion. Eight bells rang out and the watch changed, and then one bell in the afternoon watch. Jack was still thinking about whether he should shorten sail, if there was something that Frost knew but for some reason could not say, when the man at the masthead—it was Adams now—sang out, “Sail ho! Right to windward it is, sir, t'gan'sls is all I can see!”

Two hours
, Jack thought.
Two hours and this fellow will be up with us, if he intends to come up with us. And if it's
L'Arman
ç
on
then it won't matter much what intrigues Frost or Wentworth or any of them are playing at.

*   *   *

There was a spot on the second floor of the City Tavern where, if Rumstick squatted a bit, he could look down the stairs and see Ness seated at his familiar table by the fireplace. It was ten minutes before the hour they had appointed for their meeting, and both men were in place; Ness in his seat and Rumstick squatting down, ignoring the looks of the tavern girls and watching Ness wait.

He was not waiting calmly. He was nervous. Even though his back was mostly turned toward Rumstick (which is why Rumstick remained unseen) his agitation was clear. He was fiddling with the cloth on the table, fiddling with the pewter plate, darting glances around. It might have been a good idea to check the tavern to see if Ness had planted some of his compatriots around, but it was too late for that. And Rumstick had done what he wanted to do. He had taken the measure of the man, got a good sense for his state of mind, which was not pacific, not at all.

Rumstick went down the back staircase, out the door that led into the alley, around to the front of the tavern, and in through the front door. He looked around the room and did a credible job of appearing to see Ness for the first time, crossed the noisy, crowded space, and sat with care at Ness's table.

“Good day, sir,” Rumstick said, pretending not to notice Ness's irritation. “Have you had a chance to make some inquiries?”

“I have, yes, I have,” Ness said, speaking much softer than Rumstick had done, and in a more conspiratorial tone. He leaned forward, then back again as one of the serving girls brought two tankards. Rumstick thanked her and Ness shooed her away.

“Here's what I know,” Ness continued, “and I'll warn you, it's not much. The truth of the matter is this: myself, some of my friends, we hoped to stop Oxnard's ship from sailing. The man is making money like a fiend, and he funnels it right to Bache and other enemies of the administration. Stop his money coming in, you stop it going to our enemies, you see?” Ness put just the slightest emphasis on the word
our
, no doubt to remind Rumstick that they were on the same side.

“In any event,” Ness continued, “that was our thinking, and we acted on it. This Bolingbroke fellow was hired by an associate of mine. Not an associate, really, more a sort of glorified errand boy. He's the kind who knows his way about the waterfront, you understand. Knows, for instance, if you need someone for this or that sort of mischief, who to talk to.”

“I know the sort,” Rumstick said, and he did, very well. “But you're telling me, Ness, that Bolingbroke was hired to kill Jack Biddlecomb just to make a small dent in Oxnard's wealth?”

“Well, I never thought my man would try such a thing!” Ness protested. “I told him simply to find a way to stop the ship from sailing. I expected him to spread the word that no hands should sign aboard for the voyage, or keep the stevedores from off-loading the ship, something along those lines. I hardly expected him to find someone to challenge the master to a duel, which I dare say was the least effective means of keeping her tied to the dock.”

Rumstick leaned back, took up his tankard, and took a long pull of the ale, but his eyes did not leave Ness's, and it made the man's discomfort visibly worse. At last he put the tankard back down on the table. He was sailing into shoal water now. It was time to cast the lead.

“That's interesting. Interesting,” he said, and let it hang in the air. “But I'll tell you the truth, I had thought it ran deeper than that. And perhaps involved some more prominent people. Not that I don't think you're prominent, Ness, but I was thinking of men higher up than you.”