by Seth Hunter
He looked again. The woman was wearing some kind of shift or camisole, but her legs and arms and most of her chest were bare, and her long black hair was flying in the wind.
The French captain’s wife, maddened by the sound and fury of battle, exhibiting herself to the enemy? These and other equally fantastical notions crossed Nathan’s mind as he moved to the rail and brought the glass to his eye, hooking his arm through the mizzen shrouds while he searched for the focus. But nothing in his wildest imaginings could have astonished him more than the sight that greeted him when he found it.
He had seen her only once – though in circumstances etched in his memory – but even across the gap of 200 yards there was no mistaking the face framed in the lens of his Dolland glass.
‘Good God,’ he announced to the startled midshipman, ‘it is Sister Caterina!’
And then she jumped.
Chapter Sixteen
The Nun’s Story
Nathan swore an oath and turned away, pausing only to grab Mr Vivian by the seat of his pants as he threw off his coat and prepared to climb the rail.
‘Idiot,’ he told him. ‘Get some men forward and throw her a line.’
‘She might as well have put one round her neck afore she jumped,’ declared Mr Olafson, who was clearly of a more practical disposition.
Olafson was an oaf, but he was right. No one could possibly survive such a leap into such a sea. But they could see her dark head above the waves, her bare arms rising and falling as she fought to stay afloat.
Nathan crossed to Tully at the con. ‘We have to try,’ he insisted urgently. ‘Not just for her sake. She may have some intelligence for us.’
Tully read the message in his eye, but his own was doubtful. He looked aloft at the taut sails and then at the angry sea.
‘We could lose the ship,’ he said. But it was more in resignation than protest. He was already moving away, barking a stream of orders, and they heaved to the wind and backed the main topsail so that she lay to, pitching and rolling like an abandoned hulk.
‘We cannot hold her long,’ Tully shouted above the noise of the flapping canvas. Nathan did not doubt it. There was no possibility of launching a boat. The best they could do was drift down upon her until they were close enough to throw a line, and hope she stayed afloat that long, and the ship was not broached by the heavy seas. Not a man aboard would have bet on either.
But the swimmer had seen something they had not – a broken spar or even part of a mast, almost certainly from the wreck of the Comet – hurled like a javelin after her killer. It rose on the swell and they saw it at last, a skirt of trailing rigging spread about the timber like the tendrils of a giant jellyfish. She caught hold of a part and gripped it in two fists, resting a moment, and then she began to haul herself in. When she reached the spar she threw one arm over it and raised the other towards them. It might have been Nathan’s imagination, stirred by what he knew of her, but it seemed more a gesture of defiance than entreaty.
The Cherry was slowly drifting down upon her, still rolling violently but more or less holding her station, and a dozen men were running forward with their lines. The first two fell short but the third dropped close enough for her to let go the spar and swim for it. She caught a hold of the end with both hands and slowly they began to reel her in.
Nathan made his way forward to be there when she reached the side. There were two men hanging from ropes to help her up the tumbledown, and well they might for she was in the last stage of exhaustion when they finally heaved her aboard: a lovely wet silkie of the seas, her long black hair straggling like seaweed about her breasts, but a silkie with legs, kneeling, coughing and retching upon the deck. The sodden shift did little to hide her charms, and half the crew that was not fighting to keep the ship afloat, gawped and grinned like spectators at a fair. Nathan almost heard the sigh when he wrapped his boat cloak round her. He helped her to her feet and she gazed up at him with a weary smile, which swiftly changed to a puzzled frown as if she struggled to remember where she had seen him before.
Now was not the time to remind her. He led her aft to where his officers were doing their best not to stare in the same besotted fashion as the crew. It was a miracle to Nathan that the ship had not foundered while they gawked, though there were some disapproving looks too, he thought, notably from Joyce, who may have questioned his priorities in the matter.
Tully had the ship in motion, but the Forte was beyond their reach; they could barely see her topsails across the heaving sea and she might have been halfway to Ceylon for all the hope they had of catching her. But now a shout from the lookout alerted them to another sail, crabbing up from the south-east. She proved to be the Antelope, struggling belatedly to their assistance and so close to the wind that she was in mortal danger of being taken aback. Why she had been so far to windward was a puzzle to Nathan, but he would have to wait for Blake’s explanation of that. His other concerns were more pressing.
‘Permit me to present to you Sister Caterina Caresini of the Convent of San Paoli di Mare in Venice,’ he said, taking great pleasure in observing Tully’s expression. She looked shocked enough herself, that he should know. ‘You have Captain Tully to thank for holding the ship steady in such a sea,’ he informed her, ‘while we fished you out.’
‘I thank you, capitano.’ She blushed, performing a modest curtsey and laying on the accent. Her English, Nathan knew, was almost perfect. But Caterina, whatever other talents she possessed, was ever the actress.
He took her into his cabin, which in the Pondicherry’s elegant terminology, was known as the state room, and called for De Fournier to bring brandy and towels.
‘Clothes, too,’ he ordered, as an afterthought. ‘Clean clothes.’
‘We have no women’s clothes,’ replied De Fournier primly, ‘clean or otherwise.’
‘Come, sir,’ Nathan rebuked him sternly. ‘Are you telling me we have no women aboard?’
There were always women aboard, whatever the strictures against it. Every captain knew it and every crewman knew he knew it. But this time, it appeared, there were not. His turning out of Joyce’s harem had scourged the entire ship clear of the female presence before they left Bombay.
‘I am happy enough in men’s clothes,’ Caterina assured them and De Fournier departed with a scandalised expression in search of the purser’s slops.
‘I will leave you to your wardrobe, such as it is,’ Nathan told her, ‘but when you are ready I would welcome an opportunity to talk.’
‘Of course.’ But she was still regarding him quizzically. ‘It is you, is it not? My avenging angel from the sea?’
It is what she had called him in Venice. The avenging angel, who came to assist her in her fight against the French – and her own private enemies among the Venetians.
‘Captain Nathaniel Peake,’ she announced with sudden remembrance. ‘Of the fregata Unicorn. Venice. Just before the French came and put an end to us. And now you are here. Do you always come when I am most in need of you?’
‘I will tell you about it,’ said Nathan, ‘when you are dressed.’
The Caterina he had known in Venice was a woman of some consequence, and even greater infamy. The most beautiful woman in Venice, the English ambassador had called her, and the most dangerous. He did not know the half of it. Later Nathan had learned more of her background from Spiridion Foresti, who was her mentor in the world of intelligence and more than a little in love with her.
She had been born the daughter of a shepherd in the Veneto – the mainland territories of Venice – but had forsaken her family and flock for the precarious life of a player in a travelling theatre company, from which humble beginnings she had risen to become the most famous actress in Verona. But, like many an actress, her name was linked with scandal, and her indiscretions had attracted the attention of the Inquisition who had obliged her to enter a nunnery – Nathan gathered that it was either that or prison – whence, by means too devious for him to contemplate, sh
e had risen through the ranks of the religious to rule the most prestigious convent in Venice. Had she been a man, Nathan had little doubt that she would have worn a cardinal’s hat, or even a pontiff’s. As it was, she had made the Convent of San Paolo di Mare into the best and most notorious casino in Venice. When he had met her, she was at the peak of her powers and the occasional lover of the Admiral of the Venetian fleet. She was also, and rather more discreetly – so much so that not even the British ambassador had known of it – a leading intelligence agent for Spiridion Foresti.
Although Spiridion had asked him to look out for her, Nathan had never seriously thought to make her acquaintance, and certainly not in circumstances as bizarre as these.
When she entered the great cabin she was wearing the canvas ducks and striped shirt, the waistcoat and blue jacket that passed for the uniform of a British seaman, not that anyone with half an eye could ever have mistaken her for such. Her long dark hair was still wet and glossy from her swim and she had let it hang loose to dry, but she would not have been unconscious as to the effect. She wore no make-up, but she had a face that needed no artifice. She must have been about thirty-three or thirty-four, Nathan reckoned, but only because Spiridion had told him so – she looked ten years younger to him; it must have been all that sheep’s milk as a child, he thought, or some more potent brew. It was rumoured that her mother had been a witch.
‘This is very nice,’ she observed, looking about her. ‘You have risen in the world since last we met. Are you an admiral?’
‘Only a commodore,’ he told her, a little regretfully, as he poured wine for them both. He was aware of her penchant for admirals.
‘You were posing as an American sea captain, I recall, when you were in Venice. Captain Turner, was it not?’
‘Very good, but rather more than a captain. I was a merchant and shipowner and in good repute with Thomas Jefferson, who had sent me to buy the Venetian fleet.’
‘Ah yes.’ She smiled. ‘And you thought the Venetians would believe that.’ But then she frowned as another memory came. ‘You disappeared. We heard that you were taken by the French.’
‘By the Venetians, in fact. I spent a night in the Doge’s prison and they were about to throw me into the Canal of the Orphans with an anchor round my neck when the French came to my rescue.’ The frown deepened. Caterina was no friend to the French; she would rather he had stayed with the anchor. ‘They thought I was who I said I was – and a friend to the cause,’ he added, by way of an apology.
The frown went. She shrugged. She was herself no stranger to deceit.
‘So where did you learn to swim?’ he asked her. ‘Not the convent, I think.’ Though, in fact, it was such a convent, an indoor pool such as they had in the seraglio of the Great Turk would not entirely have surprised him.
‘In the streams of the Veneto when I was child.’ She eyed him thoughtfully as if deciding what he should know and what he should not. ‘I was the daughter of a shepherd. Chodeschino was our family name. It means sheep’s head in English.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Spiridion Foresti told me.’
Spiridion had told him many things about her, but had said that for the most part she was a mystery and that you could not rely upon what Caterina herself told you because she invariably lied. But in matters of intelligence, he had found her totally reliable – though for reasons he could not entirely explain.
‘I think it is partly pride,’ he had told Nathan when they were in the desert. ‘A feeling that she should give value for money – and certainly I paid an exorbitant price for her services. Also, she would know that an agent who is unreliable is of no use to anyone, and is very likely to meet with a swift and violent end. But I do not think it was that alone. Whatever she tells you to the contrary, and whatever frivolous airs she gives herself, she is an idealist and a patriot. I think she would like to see Venice as the capital of a united Italy which makes her an inveterate enemy of France, at least for the time being. If ever France were to support the notion of a unified Italy, she would be for France. As it is, she is for England. It is as simple as that. Not that anything is ever simple with Caterina Caresini.’
‘Spiridion Foresti,’ she said now, in the same tone, in fact, as Spiridion would say, ‘Caterina Caresini’, as if reflecting on the equal measure of pain and pleasure they had brought each other. From what Nathan knew of them, he thought they deserved each other, and that they would probably end up living together, with the same degree of mutual exasperation and admiration, on Spiridion’s beloved Zante, or some other island, a pair of old spies, recalling foul deeds and old tricks played upon a wicked world. ‘Do you know what happened to him, when Corfu fell to the French?’
‘He went to Tripoli,’ Nathan told her, ‘and then to Egypt to look for you.’
He saw the look of surprise – unfeigned, as far as he could tell.
‘Tripoli? So he –’ But whatever she was going to say, she thought better of it. ‘To look for me?’ She said it doubtfully, but with a measure of hope.
‘He had information you were with a French agent called Naudé. Xavier Naudé.’
‘Did he, indeed?’ She reflected upon this for a moment. ‘And did he know why I was with him?’
‘He thought you must have had your reasons.’
‘Well, you can tell him from me it was not from choice.’ She looked angry now, though this too might be an act. ‘Did Spiridion think it was by choice?’ Nathan shook his head vigorously; it would be unwise not to. ‘So where is he now – Spiridion?’
‘Went to Suez, to see if you were still there – and told me to look out for you in India. I never thought to find you, of course, least of all in the Arabian Sea.’
She gazed at him in frank astonishment. ‘There must be a God,’ she said.
He thought he would leave the theological discussions for a more appropriate time. ‘So where is Naudé now,’ he asked her, ‘and how came you to be aboard a French frigate?’
‘Because Naudé would have it so.’
‘I think you had better tell me the full story,’ Nathan advised her.
And so she did. It was a story like an adventure from the Arabian Nights, and he would not have believed a fraction of it, had he not known it to be true. The first part at least.
She had left Venice before the French came – on an American ship called the Saratoga, but they were taken by Barbary corsairs off Sicily and brought as hostages to Tripoli.
‘Was that where Spiridion saw me?’ she asked Nathan, who shrugged, smiling, not wishing to give too much away. ‘So was I not worth the hostage money?’
‘You would have to ask him.’
‘I would, believe me, if I saw him again. Though I might cut his throat first, to save him the trouble of lying.’ She was capable of it, he thought, and looked angry enough. ‘They made me a slave,’ she said indignantly, ‘in the seraglio of Pasha Yusuf Karamanli.’
‘Really.’ He looked properly shocked, though it was an effort not to smile. He had been sent to Tripoli himself to rescue her, along with the other hostages, but had been beaten to it by Naudé, at least in her case. ‘Clearly you did not remain there long.’
‘No. I have Naudé to thank for that.’
‘Out of the frying pan,’ he said, but she only frowned, clearly not familiar with the expression. It was said that she had learned English as the lover of Sir Richard Worsley when he was Minister to the Serenissima, but more lies were told of Caterina than she told herself, and it was probably not an expression the ambassador was likely to use.
‘Naudé took me with him to Egypt to see General Bonaparte.’
This was something Nathan had not known. ‘Bonaparte? In person?’
‘Bonaparte in person,’ she mocked. ‘Does he impress you, the little general? You admire him?’
‘As a general, there is surely much to admire.’ He shrugged. ‘But then I do not know him.’
In fact, he had come as close to knowing him in Paris as any
man who was not of his own family, and had saved his life when his horse had bolted in face of the royalist rebels. It would not have been wise, of course, to admit this to Caterina. Bonaparte was the destroyer of her beloved Venice – he had brought an end to its thousand-year history as an independent republic, and then handed it over, like so much plunder, to the Austrians. She would not warm to a man who had saved his life.
‘I hope he rots in hell,’ she said, ‘or in Cairo, which is worse, and his army with him.’
‘Well, this would save us all a great deal of trouble, certainly,’ Nathan assured her. ‘Were you with him in Cairo?’
‘For a whole month.’ She had clearly not enjoyed the experience.
‘And did you see much of Bonaparte in that time?’
He was surprised she had not found an opportunity to stab him, or poison him, or to contrive some other form of revenge. She was, after all, a Venetian. But, apparently, Bonaparte had been too preoccupied even to spend time with Caterina Caresini.
‘And you had no opportunity to escape?’
‘If I had, do you not think I would have taken it? Or do you think I was waiting for the opportunity to throw myself into the sea and hope that some passing British admiral would find the time to stop for me?’
‘I only wondered. And I am only a commodore,’ he reminded her. ‘I only mention it in case …’
‘Pah. I was kept under lock and key all the time we were there, or if they let me out it was with Naudé himself and his assassins. He was under no illusions about my wish to escape, even if you are. I gave that man hell, believe me.’
He did. ‘But what did he want with you?’
She gave him a look. ‘What do all men want?’
He had the grace to blush. ‘Forgive me, I should not have asked. And then? I mean, after Cairo?’
‘We crossed the desert to Suez.’ Her shoulders slumped for a moment, staring into her glass of brandy, and then flicked him a glance. ‘Have you ever been in the desert?’
