Redcoat

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Yes, sir.” Which had cost Vane five precious guineas.

  “And he’ll urge peace on General Washington.” Sir William, now that the peace he wanted was so desperately needed, was happy to grant the enemy commander his proper rank. “Mrs Crowl is most sanguine about the chances of a treaty. Her views encourage me, indeed they do.”

  “She would encourage you, sir,” Vane said bitterly. “As long as we believe there might be peace, we’re hardly likely to make outright war.”

  Sir William offered a tolerant smile to his aide’s scepticism. The smile, far from placating Vane, only goaded him into one of those indiscreet outbursts that he so often regretted. He was feeling sore at Sir William’s refusal to let him hunt with the Rangers, and, even though he could still tap Ezra Woollard’s knowledge, Vane had assumed that a swifter result could be obtained with the help of Major William Moir and his vengeful Loyalist horsemen. “I must assume, sir, that Sir Henry Clinton might feel differently about these traitors?”

  Sir William’s face showed instant anger. “Sir Henry has not succeeded me yet, nor will he until I see fit to relinquish this command. You will not correspond with Sir Henry on this matter, or any other!” Sir William was related to the King, albeit on the blanket’s other side, and there were times when he was capable of a most royal and frigid hauteur. This was one of them. “Do not get above your station, Captain Vane! You are my aide because I appointed you, and I can just as easily return you to obscurity!”

  Vane, knowing he had gone too far, blushed. “I apologize, sir.”

  But Sir William was not placated by contrition. “You will forget this matter! That is an order!”

  Vane was horrified at the reprimand. This affable man, to protect his mistress and pursue his chimera of peace, was ordering Vane to ignore treachery. Vane pretended compliance. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  “If you disobey me, Captain Vane, I shall return you to regimental duty. There will be no advancement for you, none!”

  The chill was back now, a gulf fixed between men who had been so close when, in the hopeful days of last autumn, Sir William had believed that with the fall of Philadelphia peace and happiness would be restored to the colonies.

  But peace had not come, and happiness now was burning rebel prisoners in a straw-filled barn, yet still Sir William pursued his dream of amity. However, Sir William’s dreams were not Captain Vane’s, and Vane would not be so easily cheated. Sir William had mentioned the Widow, and such a mention could only sharpen Vane’s desire for revenge which, if it could not be expedited by a cavalry patrol on the river bank, might be found closer to home in the knowledge of a warehouse foreman. Sir William wanted peace, but Vane wanted victory, and he would have it.

  Thirty-Four

  Abel Becket, dressed in his old-fashioned black Steinkirk stock above his usual sober suit, was unnaturally loquacious as he walked beside the limping Jonathon on the quayside beneath the dark loom of a moored merchant ship. “She carried finished goods to the planters on Antigua. Clocks, chronometers and navigational instruments from London. Enamelled watch-cases from Switzerland, French glass, and sword blades from Austria; luxuries, and all to Antigua! You mark that!”

  “I haven’t forgotten our business, sir.” Jonathon stumped beside his uncle and looked up at the salt-streaked hull of the Deirdre-Ann, a merchantman that was now being loaded with a cargo from Becket’s warehouse.

  “We purchased those finished goods with specie lodged in London. They were delivered on our behalf to Antigua.” Abel Becket repeated the island’s name with a kind of wonder that such a small place could afford so many luxuries. “And the Antigua planters paid us with molasses, rum, indigo and unsawn mahogany.”

  “As they always do, sir.”

  Abel Becket pretended to ignore his nephew’s sardonic tone; “And from here she’ll carry the sawn mahogany, walnut, oak and linseed to Europe. Trade, Jonathon, trade! It’s the lifeblood of this coast.”

  Jonathon steeled himself for the sermon which he knew was coming, for his uncle missed no opportunity these days to mock his nephew’s rebellious allegiance. “Not liberty, Jonathon, but trade! Liberty’s a shibboleth, a word mouthed by politicians to rouse the mob! And at the rebellion’s end, my boy, the mob will still be a mob, the price of bread will have doubled, and only the lawyers will be rich. Liberty’s a word to stamp on coins, but the coins are made by trade, Jonathon, trade!”

  “So you’re fond of telling me, sir.” Jonathon was inured to the propaganda now. He was staring towards the merchant ships which waited in the river for their turn at the wharves, but he was not interested in those great movers of trade; instead, he searched for a glimpse of Caroline’s shallop. However, the only moving vessel was a British sloop which, with topsails set, slipped its mooring to glide southwards on one of the neverending patrols to deter the rebel gunboats that still haunted the lower river.

  “You can negotiate the gangplank?” Abel Becket asked Jonathon in a rare moment of solicitousness.

  “I can, sir.” Jonathon’s stump was still an agony of soreness, but he was determined to overcome the pain. Each morning he smeared the leather cup of the wooden leg with butter to ease the friction, yet, within minutes, it was as if needles of fire stabbed at the raw flesh. He had insisted on discarding the crutches, using a stick instead.

  The gangplank was steep but ridged with battens of timber and provided with a rope balustrade. Jonathon forced his way up, ignoring the torment in his stump and determined not to show any weakness in front of the British sailors who, under Ezra Woollard’s wary gaze, lowered roped stacks of timber into the Deirdre-Ann’s holds. On either side of the gaping hatches were cannons, testimony to the dangers of American privateers. Roundshot was stacked on gratings about the mast steps.

  Woollard offered his confiding grin to Jonathon. “You’re as nimble as a squirrel, Master Jonathon.”

  Jonathon suppressed his instinctive dislike of his uncle’s foreman who, in his days of greater prosperity, had offered marriage to Caroline. “I try, Mister Woollard.”

  “We’ll soon have you swarming up the ratlines!” Woollard gave a knowing and mocking laugh, then turned to bellow an order at the men who hoisted the precious timber with ropes threaded through intricate blocks. There had been a time when such scenes had been Jonathon’s bread and butter, when he would have supervised the lading himself to prevent the peculation of ship’s captains and wharf men, but now he did not care. He watched as burly men rolled hogsheads of dried beef up the aft gangplank and as great tuns of fresh water were lowered into the stern hold.

  “I’m thinking of opening a proper chandlery,” Abel Becket said. “There are captains who want nothing more than to linger in port and will claim a broken shoe-buckle as reason enough.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  Becket smiled at his nephew. “And I thought perhaps you might care to organize such a chandlery for me? You could use the old rope store? It will only need a lick of limewash.”

  “I’d enjoy that, sir.” Jonathon must needs pretend an enthusiasm for his return to work, but it was only a front for, in less than a week’s time, he would be given the papers of his father’s inheritance to sign, and on that day, if Sam had found the naval disguise, Jonathon intended to leave Philadelphia and forget all about trade and chandlery. He would travel north with Caroline, north to the rebel army, and only when the battles were done and the great issue decided would he retrieve what, if anything, was left of his property.

  Yet, to admit such a plan to his uncle was to court disaster, for his uncle would permit no such thing. Thus, for just a few more days which he counted with the avidity of a prisoner expecting release, Jonathon must dissimulate, pretend a fascination with the purchase of hemp and tar and indigo and canvas and timber, when all he dreamed of, and all he wanted, were Caroline and victory.

  Becket ducked under the break of the poop and, after a perfunctory knock, pushed open a high-silled and polished door. “Good afternoo
n, Captain.”

  “Mister Becket! A pleasure, sir!” A tall, grey-haired man with the wind-hardened face of a sailor marked his place in the bible he had been reading and held out a hand in greeting. “And this is your nephew?”

  “Indeed it is.” Abel Becket, at that moment, even seemed proud of Jonathon. “Captain Carroll, Jonathon, Master of the Deirdre-Ann.”

  “A fine ship, sir.” Jonathon felt the words were expected of him.

  “She is, too. Six years old this Whitsun and built of nothing but the finest English oak.” Captain Oscar Carroll had a soft voice that contrasted strangely with his harsh face. He was also afflicted by a tic which drew down his left eye in disconcerting spasms that seemed like batteries of confiding winks. “Your uncle tells me you’re a rarely promising trader, Master Jonathon?”

  “It’s kind of him to say so, sir.”

  “It’s a fine life, that of a trader, but not as fine as a tar’s life, eh?” Captain Carroll gestured round his cabin as proof of his assertion, and the cabin was indeed a comfortable and snug place.

  It was panelled in a pale oak that bore paintings of sea monsters within each frame. The galleried windows looked on to the moored ships in the river and Jonathon, invited to sit down, stared longingly for a sight of the small, dark-canvassed shallop. His uncle talked of London with the English sea captain, speaking of merchants who had their offices in Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane. The mood in London, Captain Carroll said, was one of irritation. The rebellion had disturbed trade. Some merchants complained of the army’s failure to bring the rebels swiftly to heel, while others averred that the army should never have been sent in the first place. “There’s sympathy in London for your rebels. They’re costing us a rare sum of money and there’s those who don’t think the game’s worth the candle!”

  “The devil never lacked adherents,” Becket said grimly. He paused as a steward brought in a can of hot sweet tea. “Have you been troubled by privateers?” Becket’s question to the Captain was anxious.

  Carroll shook his head. “I’ve seen none myself this year, but I hear they took a fine Bristol craft in the islands a month back.” The Captain, his face quivering with the involuntary spasms, packed a small-bowled pipe which he lit from a shielded candle that evidently burned for just such a convenience. “But the northern route home is safe.”

  “And news of the French?”

  “Watchful, watchful.” Carroll, after the enigmatic reply, puffed a cloud of aromatic smoke that curled beneath the painted beams of his cabin. “They do say in London that Philadelphia might be abandoned, Mr Becket.” It was evident that Carroll was floating a rumour to see how this prominent Loyalist merchant would react. “I’ve heard that if the French declare war we’ll need men in the islands, and the good Lord alone knows where we find more men.”

  “Not from the Philadelphia garrison.” Becket’s tone defied contradiction.

  “If you say so.” Captain Carroll nevertheless sounded dubious.

  Abel Becket, hearing the vacillation in the Englishman’s tone, pressed his argument. “You agree the British are intent on holding the colonies? If so, how can they abandon the largest city in America? No, Captain, Philadelphia is safe.”

  “For your sake, I pray so. I helped carry the Loyalist folk out of Boston, and it was not a happy day, Mr Becket, not happy at all!”

  “Philadelphia will not be abandoned.” Becket used his most decisive tone.

  “I’m glad of that.” Carroll, abandoning the topic, turned to Jonathon who, thus far, had sat silent. The Captain’s twitching face seemed to wink at Jonathon. “I hear you took that wound with the rebels, Mister Jonathon?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Foolishness in youth leads to wisdom in age, does it not, Mister Becket?”

  Abel Becket did not answer the complacent saw, looking at his nephew instead. “You have learned your lesson, have you not, Jonathon?”

  “I’ve learned not to close with infantry armed with loaded muskets.”

  Jonathon’s quip was rewarded with a smile from the ship’s captain. “At least there’ll be no infantry to trouble you in London, that’s for certain.”

  The word hung in the cabin like the smoke from the Captain’s pipe. “London?” Jonathon’s voice was a croak.

  “You’ll forgive us, Captain Carroll?” Abel Becket demanded.

  Carroll glanced from uncle to nephew, then nodded. “With pleasure, sir. With pleasure.” Carroll slid down the bench and ducked out into the spring sunlight where the loading still continued.

  The door latched shut. A rippling light was reflected on to the cabin ceiling from the waters at the ship’s stern. The deck above was loud with men’s feet and the creak of a windlass, but Jonathon, sensing disaster, was oblivious of everything except his uncle’s narrow face. “London?”

  “Did you imagine, for one instant, that I would permit you to take a proportion of my trade and hand it over, with its profits, to the rebellion?”

  Jonathon was trembling. “London?” It seemed he was capable of saying nothing else.

  “You are diseased, boy!” Abel Becket used his harshest voice. “Diseased with disaffection! Your sister carries the contagion, and that slut you write to … oh yes, sir, I know of your letters! You need quarantine and, by God, you will have it!”

  “You can’t …”

  “I am your guardian. I do what is best for you.” Uncle faced nephew over the cabin table. “Good God, boy, don’t you know what a favour I offer you? London! The greatest city on earth! I never had such a chance, never!” Abel Becket produced a packet of papers from an inner pocket. “There is a draft of money, sufficient for a frugal life for a twelve-month. A letter of introduction to Mr John Martin of Angel Passage. You will reside with his family and work in his counting house!” Abel Becket suddenly offered his nephew a rare smile. “Mr Martin, a particular friend of mine, has a daughter. A not wholly ugly girl, I am told, and – ”

  “No!” Jonathon’s protest was not just at the prospect of marrying a London girl, but at this whole fate which had been sprung on him with such abruptness.

  “Take a care!”

  “I will stay here – ”

  “You will do as you are ordered!” Abel Becket thumped the table, rattling the can of tea and jarring some chessmen that were arrayed on a board. “You have disobeyed me once, sir, and you will not do so again. And you have been punished! The Lord saw. fit to take your leg, and if you tread the paths of disobedience again I doubt not that He will take your life! You will go to London, sir, and there, at the heart of the world’s commerce, you will learn mastery of trade. There, sir, is your money, and there, sir, is your letter of introduction.” The papers were pushed across the table. “Your dunnage was brought aboard an hour ago. I have enclosed a bible in your bag that you will read each day …”

  Abel Becket’s words had broken off because Jonathon, despite the pain in his raw stump, had abruptly flung himself along the polished bench towards the cabin door, but, before he even cleared the table’s edge, the door swung open to reveal a tall red-coated British officer. Jonathon, utterly taken aback by the sight, froze.

  Captain Christopher Vane seemed oblivious to the charged atmosphere in the cabin. He nodded a greeting to Abel Becket. “The paper you wanted, sir.” He took a folded document from his pocket and held it towards the merchant. “The official pass, sir. I didn’t submit it to Sir William himself, but I think you’ll find it will pass scrutiny.” Vane looked at Jonathon. “You must be Jonathon?” Jonathon said nothing, but Vane did not seem to mind. “You’re a most fortunate young man.”

  “Fortunate?”

  Vane gestured towards the paper that Abel Becket now perused. “You are freed, Mister Jonathon. You are no longer a prisoner of His Majesty’s army, and are thereby empowered to pass beyond the city limits. I think you’ll find everything is in order, sir.” This last was to Abel Becket who, smiling, put the paper into his pocket.

  “I thank yo
u, Captain Vane.”

  Vane hesitated. “And Mr Woollard …?”

  “Is ordered to tell you whatever you wish to know.” Becket waited till the Englishman had gone, then looked at his nephew. “Do you still wish to escape? You,heard Captain Vane. You’re a free man now. You may leave this cabin, but I doubt that either Captain Vane or Ezra Woollard will permit you to pass from the deck.”

  Jonathon stayed still. He knew he could do nothing at this moment.

  Abel Becket, seeing his nephew’s defiance broken, smiled. “Mr Martin will return you in one year, though if he judges you still to be of a traitorous sympathy he will, on my behalf, keep you in London.” Becket leaned earnestly forward. “The Lord spared you for a purpose.”

  “I have no purpose in London.” Jonathon’s voice was miserable.

  “Did you think I would let you marry that Fisher slut? Did you believe that all my work, all my profits, all my diligence, would go to her?”

  “If I have to wait ten years, I will marry her.”

  Becket scorned the defiance with a sneer. “Other men would have disinherited you, or left you to rot in the prison you deserved, but I am showing you favour, sir, favour! London and learning and opportunity!” Becket eased his way from behind the table and stood. “You will thank me one day.”

  There were tears of rage in Jonathon’s eyes as he stared at his uncle. “I will curse you.”

  “Your passage is paid. You have a gentleman’s accommodation in the ship’s stern. Pray use my London friends with politeness.” Abel Becket picked up his hat. “You sail on the evening tide.” He held out his hand. “Farewell.”

  Jonathon neither took the hand nor answered, but merely turned away. His uncle left.

  Jonathon waited. About him, shivering to the small breeze’s touch on furled sails and bare poles, the Deirdre-Ann creaked. The stern windows would not open, but even if they had, there was a red-coated sentry at the pier’s end who would have raised the alarm. Jonathon was trapped.