Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea

by Kage Baker

  When the Sceptre seemed officially put to sea—the roll to her movement now being much more regular and deeper—one of the yacht’s young men came knocking on the cabin door. In an even more honeyed drawl than Mr. Pickett’s own, he invited Lady Beatrice to come above and join “the Cap’n.”

  Mrs. Corvey bade her Watch her step most carefully, and Lady Beatrice followed the American boy back up to the deck.

  Mr. Pickett was at the stern with the tiller handle held easily against his broad chest. When Lady Beatrice approached, he put out his arm and pulled her in to his other side.

  “I see you use a tiller, not a wheel, sir,” Lady Beatrice said breathlessly.

  “Can’t get a proper feel for a ship unless you get your arm round her!” Pickett had to shout above the rush of wind and water, the myriad sounds of the sails and rigging. “Just like a beautiful woman, my darling Beatrice!”

  Lady Beatrice put her hand on his, neatly displaying the ruby troth ring on her hand, and smiled up at him.

  “Shall I be jealous, dear…Treadway?” and then dropped her eyes, as if flustered at using his Christian name.

  “Never!” he bellowed tenderly. “Dearly as I hold the good old Sceptre, she is out here tonight for your sake—not the other way around! You shall stand in for Britannia, my Beatrice, as I strike an unparalleled blow for her imperial honor!”

  And he proceeded to enlighten her in full as to their errand and intentions. To Lady Beatrice’s relief, his plan was nearly precisely as they had supposed; in fact, Mrs. Corvey may have over-anticipated his cunning in setting it up. It was much more direct, more smash-and-grab than the Ladies had expected. Pickett had taken no security precautions at all—not entirely unreasonably, he expected the isolation of his sea-cave lair and the darkness of tonight to hide his activities from the residents of Torquay. But it did mean that should anyone discover him and take objection, he had left the submersible with little defense.

  However, he had not overlooked the matter of publicizing his exploits. In fact, he appeared to have a better grasp of that necessity than the sanity of his plans in general. He confided to Lady Beatrice that he had written a letter to the London Times, detailing the entire affair and setting out his noble goals—he confessed to her that he would have mailed it already, (having no doubt as to his success) but had held it back in order to discuss it with her first.

  “For I have not forgotten what a dire stroke that vile Ponsonby played against me,” said Pickett. “Why, he might have cost me all! Especially you, my Beatrice…how could you ever have discerned my quality behind that ridiculous accent?”

  “Dearest, I have been in no doubt as to your quality at any time. I am certain your letter needs no advice from me, but I would be honored to be allowed to see it,” said Lady Beatrice, her eyes fixed on his.

  She had found that a close focus on a man’s eyes had a salubrious effect on his attention; in that, when she did it, his internal compass swung to her and would not be altered. Pickett had proven especially susceptible…now the red flush occasioned by mention of Ponsonby faded, and a foolish smile spread across his face.

  He drew a folded paper from his coat breast and handed it to her.

  In Lady Beatrice’s opinion—which was considerably better informed than most young women in England, due to her past education and present occupation—Mr. Pickett’s letter was actually a well-written statement of his ideals and designs. Unfortunately, it was also, she judged, practically guaranteed to start a war between England and France, should it become public—even if he failed to sink Le Cygne Impériale. It managed to be both belligerent and condescending, and to imply that the failure to agree with Mr. Pickett’s own national ideals (whatever he thought he was at the moment) was symptomatic both of an incurable mental disease and a moral failure. Further, she judged the letter would also serve to promote a profound state of hostilities between both France and England, and Mr. Pickett’s native America.

  “Oh, splendid, Treadway,” she murmured. “I am no judge of politics, of course, but you do seem to have hit upon every possible point of importance.”

  “I hoped you would like it,” said Mr. Pickett, and blushed as though she were critiquing a love sonnet. Lady Beatrice concluded that Americans’ passions seemed very intimately wound up in their politics.

  “It is profoundly—imperial,” she said by way of experiment, and was gratified at the way his arm tightened about her waist in passion.

  In that very moment, the young man reappeared, a tray with two wine glasses in hand and a white towel about his forearm, and advised them that the meal was about to be served.

  “Masden!” bellowed Pickett, and surrendered the tiller to the man who stepped promptly up.

  Pickett and Lacy Beatrice toasted one another and drained their glasses; then at Pickett’s instigation, tossed them over the side rather than break them on the deck. The men on deck cheered as they then withdrew.

  “Does not Mr. Felan assist you?” asked Lady Beatrice as they moved carefully across the desk.

  “Ha! Good fellow, but a landsman through and through,” said Pickett. He swung Lady Beatrice effortlessly over the companionway’s raised sill, setting her on the steep stairway-ladder there. “No, all my hands have been with me since we left the States; Mr. Felan serves in other capacities. Tonight, he’s running the gun crew.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  Mr. Pickett bestowed a long kiss on Lady Beatrice at the closed cabin door.

  “I will join you shortly, my love,” he said. “You just go in and get comfy. No need to trouble your dear mamma with all our plans, though.”

  “Of course not,” and Lady Beatrice cast him a last long look up through her lashes. He might have been reeling as went back down the corridor; it may have been the motion of the ship. Still, she was satisfied he was left in a continuing state of smitten lust.

  Mrs. Corvey was alone in the cabin, looking out the window with her back to the door. Her dark glasses were in place when she turned to the door, but she had obviously been studying the sea outside via one of her specialty lenses.

  “So far, so good,” she told Lady Beatrice. “At least, we are headed the direction Mr. Felmouth said we should to catch the Frenchie. How is Captain Kidd, eh?”

  Lady Beatrice actually rolled her eyes briefly as she recounted what she had most lately learned. She emphasized the letter to the Times, and also the lax security surrounding the gun platform.

  “Essentially, he has left his treasure in a deserted place and left but one vicious dog and the isolation to guard it,” she said. “Perhaps you should inform the others?”

  “I shouldn’t like them to let their guard down, thinking it’ll be easy,” said Mrs. Corvey; but she already had the clicker in hand. Her fingers flew over the bead-buttons, sending a brief cautionary comment to Maude. She repeated it, and to their combined relief a confirming chirp came back in a few moments. Maude relayed no questions, though.

  “Now all we need to do is get that letter before he can send it,” said Mrs. Corvey, putting the clicker back. In response, Lady Beatrice drew from her own bosom the folded paper she had removed from Pickett’s coat while pressed ardently to his chest. Mrs. Corvey smiled contentedly and tucked it away inside the bodice of her gown.

  “For he won’t be checking my bosom for anything he needs,” she commented with a dry laugh.

  When Mr. Pickett entered boisterously, rubbing his hands together in anticipatory glee, they were both seated at the table while Lady Beatrice described the table settings to Mrs. Corvey.

  Dinner began with oysters, seethed in champagne and then served cold. There were miniature vegetable terrines as well, that looked like petit fours but tasted of herbs and mushrooms. Then a clear pale green soup with marigold petals floating in it; upon asking—and being told by a beaming Mrs. Drumm that it was a broth of eels—Mr. Picket was seen to hastily lay his spoon down. However, Lady Beatrice and Mrs. Corvey thought it enchanting.

  The
theme of a picnic at sea was evidently addressed by Mrs. Drumm by making portions small, rich and easily eaten with the fingers. At least by Lady Beatrice and Pickett: Mrs. Corvey plied her knife and fork in a lady-like manner, while appearing utterly unaware of the play going on between the other two diners.

  There were very small fish fillets in a cream sauce—easily fed in a single mouthful, easily eaten with consummate grace by Lady Beatrice. The poultry course was exclusively pigeon wings, arranged across the plate like waves in a savory sauce—it was revealed that Lady Beatrice’s white teeth could crack a wing bone for its marrow with no vulgar noise whatsoever; unless one counted the muted lustful whimpers from her dining partner. When the meat course came and she proceeded to feed stamp-sized pieces of braised foie gras to Pickett, it did appear that the gentleman might choke on his own tongue; if he did not simply faint from an excess of sensual stimulation.

  Lady Beatrice had read Mr. Fielding’s Tom Jones.

  Mrs. Corvey began to wonder if Pickett would survive the dessert course. In fact, when it arrived—an assortment of summer berries arranged like a Roman mosaic in a mortar of almond cream—she was willing to bet their mission would end with the villain felled by a brain paroxysm. However, Mrs. Drumm deftly carved the dessert into tiles, revealing an underpinning of rich cake; poured rum over each serving and set them ablaze. This precluded Lady Beatrice from feeding Picket by hand, but her work between fork and lips was so provocative that it was a miracle Pickett did not plant his own fork in his eye.

  The meal ended with tiny glasses of sherry (Mrs. Drumm had been correct; it was poor stuff), after which the participants sat quietly. Lady Beatrice exchanged compliments with Pickett, and idle talk with Mrs. Corvey for the duration of their sherry. Pickett breathed in and out, as if he had to concentrate to keep doing it.

  He might have sat there all evening staring at Lady Beatrice had not she finally reminded him—with a discreet tap on his foot under the table—that he had promised to show her something special.

  Pickett, eyes fairly starting from his head, pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and hastily checked the time.

  “Indulge me just a few minutes more, ladies,” he said. “I have a splendid viewing to show you, dear Beatrice, but it is dependent on when and where we are upon the sea. Let me go up and check to see how our course stands.”

  He departed hastily.

  “Do you suppose we have been so fortunate as to have made him miss his rendezvous?” Lady Beatrice said.

  “No, worse luck. Still, you all but dragged him under the table; very good work, Beatrice. The attack would go on whether or not he is on time,” Mrs. Corvey said. “Though you may have impaired his judgment for a while, I fear it will not last in the face of his larger obsession.”

  And on the heels of her observation, a cannon blast rang out from above.

  The Ladies had made their final swim round the last curve before the sea-caves, and come ashore. Before them lay a small deep cove, where the water surged in great slow pulses against the cliffs but only broke into a small fringe of foam on the shingle. It seemed there was no great power in the waves here. When they made their way down to the beach it was obvious why: the cove was carpeted, just below the surface, with great waving kelp fronds.

  Their ultimate goal was immediately visible—a wide arch at the back of the cove, in the base of the cliff, where there was no beach between the cliff face and the breakers. At the moment, the sea almost filled it, but flickering light from within revealed the shape of the cave mouth and lit the waters directly before it.

  The Ladies clustered together in the lee of a large boulder, and examined the prospect.

  “Very clever, indeed,” said Miss Rendlesham. “One cannot walk to this beach, nor see that light from the water, I would wager. Even night fishers would miss this.”

  “It poses a problem for us, though. Clearly there is a well-lit cave in the cliffs, and we would be visible even if we could get in. But I don’t think we can get in through that arch, with the waters flooding it so high,” said Jane.

  “It is probably always flooded to some extent.” Mrs. Otley was re-braiding her soaked hair, it having come nearly all the way down in their rigorous swim; she peered a little sideways as she bent her neck to reach the braid. “There appears to be a continuation of this bay itself, under the cliff. A subterranean harbor, if you will. No wonder Mr. Pickett has based his operation here!”

  “So if we get through the arch, what are we likely to see, Erato?” asked Jane.

  She thought. “A cave. Probably with a fairly high ceiling, as the workers would need to walk about and breathe. But the water probably fills most of it, like a tank. When they leave or enter, the gun platform doubtless does so under the water.”

  “When I watched it from above,” said Herbertina, “there was only a wake to be seen. The gun rose afterward. I think Erato is correct, ladies; and that means we cannot come at it until it leaves the cave.”

  Miss Rendlesham looked out over the waters of the cove, rising and falling smoothly over the kelp. “I cannot think they go quickly when they leave. Else they would tangle themselves dreadfully. I think they probably go with caution through that web out there, where we could slip like seals. We could come at them as soon as they leave the lamplight of the cave, in fact.”

  This was decided, after some further examination of the area, as the best plan. It was not far at all from where they sat hidden to the entrance of the cave; one of them could have crossed the entire cove in five minutes or so, even breast-stroking through the kelp.

  Accordingly, they set to keeping watch on the arch for movement. While the submarine moved swiftly in open water, it must proceed slowly when it first made its entrances into the world. The little cove had cast up a quantity of driftwood all along the shingle where they sat—it made for a good low fire behind their boulder, where they could rest and warm themselves, yet watch the long slit of lamplight from the cave without being themselves detected.

  Maude sent the pre-arranged signal that let Mrs. Corvey know they were in position; no answer came for quite some time, whereby they assumed she was in company and could not respond. Before Maude was worried enough to try again, though, the confirming chirp sounded from inside her corset. Maude promptly sent a Query signal, but no questions were sent, nor any intelligence on Mrs. Corvey’s end of the business. Whatever was happening on board the Sceptre, it was close enough to normal to leave Mrs.

  Corvey unworried.

  In point of fact, while Mrs. Corvey was relatively unworried, things were not at all normal on board the Sceptre: unless Mr. Pickett habitually took out crews entirely composed of untested landsmen. The majority of his crew was ill at present, some of them so violently as to be incapacitated; indeed, none of them was operating at peak efficiency.

  There was not a man among them that could go aloft, save at a creeping pace like a sloth clinging to a branch. Only one other man aboard, aside from Mr. Pickett, could manage the tiller without puking, so sensitive had they all become to the movement of the sea. The cannon shot that had roused the dinner party had occurred when one of the gunners setting up beside the stern guns had been overcome by vertigo, and dropped his punk into the touch-hole.

  There was a definite air of hysteria on deck, unbecoming to a prize-winning racing vessel—let alone a nascent war ship. Lady Beatrice and Mrs. Corvey had come up on deck when the shouting grew louder and yet Pickett did not reappear; they now stood in the shelter of the companionway, watching as the crew and captain raced in a frenzy from one untended demand to another on the rolling vessel.

  “How amazing. I wonder what she gave them?” said Lady Beatrice.

  “Lightly poisoned plum duff. I must be certain she understands there’s to be none of this spontaneous mischief in my house,” said Mrs. Corvey.

  “Oh, I am certain this is a response to a special provocation,” said Lady Beatrice. “And it must be admitted it is useful for us.”
/>   “As long as we can get home again.”

  Though the crew was much diminished in effectiveness, they did manage to re-establish the Sceptre’s course, once Mr. Picket took over the tiller once more. The spotter in the bows, though he leaned at an acute angle clasping his belly unhappily, reported at length that he saw the expected signal light on the shore. They steered for it.

  At a distance, of course, two lights close together may appear as one to the traveler on the sea. And it must be admitted, the lookout was not at his most observant; he was in acute discomfort, quite aside from having to bend over the rail and vomit at intervals. It was therefore not apparent to the advancing Sceptre that she was, in fact, steering for the fire lit to warm her enemies as they waited in ambush on the shore.

  It was hearing, not sight, that first alerted the Ladies to the imminent departure of the gun platform: a hollow clanging and echo of orders called out. Thus warned, the shadow that occluded the arch was obvious—but the Ladies were already in the water and making their way as nimbly as a pack of seals on an intercept course.

  The submarine apparently needed to make a straight line departure for the open sea. There was hardly room in the little cove for any maneuvering, in any event, and bearing from side to side would inevitably tangle the vessel in the kelp. This was fortunate for the approaching marauders—they could mark the approaching wake of the submarine along the line of reflected light from the cave mouth itself, and swim out at an angle to meet it. The craft itself was only a shadow in the water, invisible save where agitation broke the glittering surface of the waves into many golden mirrors.

  They had hoped and intended to encounter it at the surface when the gun barrel arose, as that would have made actually securing contact with it much easier. It continued underwater as it drove through the kelp bed, though, and they would surely have lost it—slow though its initial progress was—had not Miss Rendlesham managed to dive below the surge and get a bight of rope about the vessel’s stubby mast.