Peter Wicked

by Broos Campbell

  “I guess not, sir. I expect I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Good man. I’ve written down your course for you, and Mr. Horne here won’t let you come to grief. Ain’t that so, Mr. Horne?”

  “That’s so, sir.” If Horne resented being used as a dry nurse for the boy, he had the sense to keep it to himself. Well, tough if he didn’t like it, I thought—Peebles’s father the congressman would have a word or two with Secretary Stoddert if I missed the chance to let his boy come home with a prize beneath his feet.

  “You remember your instructions, Mr. Horne?”

  “Yes, sir. Follow you through the passage and rendezvous at Samanà if we get separated.”

  If they could find it, anyway. “Just follow the coast of Hispaniola nor’west till you come to a long, narrow bay with a fort on the northern headland,” I said. “That’ll be Samanà.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Horne, with just a hint of exaggerated patience, and I remembered too late that we’d sailed past the bay before meeting the Spanish guarda-costa off St. John’s.

  Hispaniola’s east coast was all lee shore, but I had to credit even Mr. Peebles with enough sense to stay clear of it. The trick to being a good commander, I was beginning to realize, is knowing when to keep your damn mouth shut; but knowing something and actually doing it ain’t always the same thing. “And watch yourself around Hourglass Shoal,” I said. “It might get rough there. I marked it on your chart.”

  Even Peebles had gotten an indulgent look. “We’ll be fine, sir,” he said. “Don’t you worry. And if we meet anyone I’ll just stand along, like you said, and not heave-to unless fired upon.”

  “Unless it’s one of our own,” I said. No point in getting anyone mad at the kid.

  I looked across the way at Corbeau and Peter pacing the leeward side of Tomahawk’s quarterdeck. Peter’s head hunched between his bony shoulders and his beak poked this way and that as he stalked along with his hands clasped behind his back. Malloy in the Constellation was supposed to be cruising somewhere along the north coast of Hispaniola. I hoped to pass him in the dark sometime in the next few days, so I could honestly say I’d been in his neighborhood but hadn’t seen him. He might be legally entitled to take possession of the Tomahawk, but I didn’t aim to give him Peter as well.

  I was nearly right on all counts. The light airs and long seas of morning gave way to black squalls and lightning in the afternoon, which in turn gave way to wild blows that night, through which we boomed along under jib and double-reefed fore-topsail, looking lively on deck when it gusted; and morning found us with light airs again, and so on through the cycle till we were well past Samanà—but if we snuck by the Constellation on any of those nights, nobody told me about it. We did run right spang into her a couple days later, though, south of the Silver Bank with Old Cape Français bearing south by west through the haze. By the time O’Lynn sang out from the crosstrees that the Connie was flying down on us from windward with bunting flanging every which way, and clouds of smoke spurting from her fo’c’s’le as she banged away with her bow chaser in case we hadn’t got the message, there wasn’t nothing for it but to heave-to on the starboard tack. She come plenty fast, too, wearing just about every stitch of cloth she possessed as she swooped down on us.

  “What’s she flying above her main royal?” I said to Gundy. “The gunner’s hanky?”

  He squinted at it. “Old woman’s smicket, I be thinkin’, zur.”

  “Smicket? Is that the Cornish word for skys’l? Oh, there it goes. And there go her stuns’ls, too.” The Connies were tucking and furling faster than a woman with ten kids getting in her laundry in a rainstorm. I looked at Gundy, but he was studiously watching our backed topsail and not meeting my eye. “C’mon,” I said, “what’s an ‘old woman’s smicket’?”

  He hung his head. “Ah spoke out o’ turn, zur.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Smicket be a woman’s shift, zur. On account of Cabbun Malloy be called Old Woman behind he back. Ooh look, zur, she be zendin’ a boat.”

  I bet I could travel the world over without finding a man so all-fired sure of my ignorance as Asa Malloy was. I’d’ve guessed he was at least forty-five, but with the powder he wore in his hair and the flat-faced spaniel he wore tucked under his arm as he paced around the chair he’d plonked me down in, he might’ve been even older, like a leftover from Revolutionary times—which he was, if truth be told. They’d been his best days, when he’d groveled his way up the staff of one of the Maryland regiments until an exploding gun at Guilford Court House had left him half deaf. He would’ve saved the world some trouble if he’d chosen to be a schoolmaster instead of a naval officer.

  I’d never been in the Constellation’s great cabin before, but I didn’t guess those lace curtains had been draped across the stern windows last February when old Tom Truxtun had whupped La Vengeance in a running battle that only ended when Truxtun got his mainmast shot away, allowing Johnny Crappo to bugger off in the dark after having struck his colors twice. My pal Jemmy Jarvis had been aloft in that mainmast, too, when the whole thing fell in the sea and drowned him. Malloy hadn’t had anything to do with it, but—entirely ornery though it was—I still disliked him for having been given the Constellation. She was above him. Yes, and I bet that damask carpet hadn’t been underfoot neither, when Tom Truxtun had her, all spangled with milkmaids and stinking of dog piss.

  “I mislike that sword you are wearing, Mr. Graves,” said Malloy.

  “Yes, sir. I don’t much care for it myself.”

  He put his hand behind his right ear. “Hey? What’s that you say?”

  “I said I’m entirely in agreement with you, sir.”

  “Then what do you mean by wearing it?”

  “I’m required to wear a sword, sir, and it’s the one I have.”

  “Well, I mislike it. Is that a memento mori on the pommel?”

  The sword knot had slipped, revealing the grinning death’s-head. “Yes, sir. It’s uglier as homemade shit.” I wondered how he’d like the arcane Latin mottos engraved on the blade, and the bylaws of the blood cult I’d stolen it from.

  He stuck his ear in my face. “Hey? What?”

  “I said I don’t know what to make of it! Sir!”

  “Do not,” he said, his finger quivering in my face, “wear that while you are in my ship.”

  “It’s my only sword, sir, and I’ll wear it if I want to.”

  “Say that again?”

  “I said I have another one, sir, but I don’t know where it’s gone to.”

  “Then you will wear no sword at all. Take it off right this moment, sir, and do not put it on again in my sight, ever.”

  “I’ll take it off for now, sir.”

  “Eh?”

  “I don’t want a row, sir.” I unslung my belt and scabbard, and laid them across my lap. He had no right to ask it of me, but he could put me under close arrest for so much as sneezing if he wanted. I’d be absolved as soon as I could complain about it to the commodore, but it might be a long several months before that happened, and I dasn’t just think of myself. There was still that tarnation Peter Wickett to think of.

  Malloy finally stopped pacing and lit on the yellow satin settee, with one knee crossed over the other and the dog in his lap. “You took your time in getting the Tomahawk to me.”

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded vigorously. The spaniel wagged his tail at me.

  “Why?”

  “Commodore Gaswell sent me out to arrest Peter Wickett, sir.” I saw his hand coming up to his ear again, and I repeated it louder. The story would be all over the lower decks before long, if the Tomahawks hadn’t spread it around already. “He told me to steer clear of you till I’d done that.”

  He drew back, his fingers to his lips. “He told you to—? Why—I shall write a letter to the Secretary of the Navy about this.”

  It’d make a change from his usual letters, I thought, in which he was ever careful to point out how much money
he was saving the Republic by never firing his guns. His letters were often reprinted for the public, though I doubted it was because he was admired; even newspaper editors have a sense of humor.

  “Why ever was Wickett not in irons?” he added.

  “I wouldn’t slap a pair of darbies on a brother officer, sir. It don’t look right.”

  “Hey?”

  “I said, because he’s an officer, sir.”

  Malloy give me a look like he’d been eating lemons soaked in lye. “An officer? He stole a vessel belonging to the United States Navy. That’s hardly the action of a gentleman.”

  “I didn’t say he was a gentleman, sir. I said he was an officer.”

  “And you also let a Frenchman run around loose! Why ever for, Mr. Graves? How could you countenance it?”

  “He’s an officer as well, sir, and as he’d given his parole—”

  “Parole! He is a prisoner of war who absconded from custody.”

  “Well, now, I reckon not, sir. He was in the custody of a navy officer, whose movements and actions were not his to question, till the Breeze was took by La Flamme, at which point he was released from his parole. Mr. Corbeau ain’t done nothing wrong, sir.”

  “Which officer is now safely locked up, no thanks to you,” said Malloy. “I shall send him home with that charming young chap, what’s his name—Peebles. Won’t his father be proud! A congressman or something, isn’t he?”

  As if he didn’t know. The way I calculated it, Old Woman Malloy aimed to get himself in the man’s good graces by letting the boy show up not just with the recaptured sloop, but with a traitor under his heel as well. It was a nice little one-up on me. I had to give him that, but I didn’t have to like it.

  “I don’t mean to question your judgment, sir,” I said, “but you might want to run it by Commodore Gaswell first.”

  He gave me another sour look—rotten vinegar weren’t in it. “Hey? What’s that? Do you presume to offer me advice?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I think you mean to offend, Mr. Graves, despite your backing and filling, pretending innocence while shooting your barbs, but I won’t rise to it. You were a promising young navigator, I allow, but never a gentleman. You might still make a good sailing master, was you to learn how to hold your tongue, but you should never have been let to set your foot on the ladder of promotion. Your father is a shopkeeper, isn’t he?”

  “Distiller and farmer, sir. A congressman once, too.”

  “Once isn’t is. And now he is parasite, sucking the blood of the common man by selling him cheap liquor.”

  “Graves & Son Genuine Patent Old Monongahela Rye ain’t cheap, Captain Malloy. It goes for a premium.”

  “You haven’t the ton, Mr. Graves,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoke, “however skillful a sailor you may be. I’ll have you out of my navy.”

  “That’s well with me, sir,” I said. “I was on my way home anyway.”

  “I remember that sad day you sauced me on my own quarterdeck. I knocked you down for it, and I ought . . . What was that? You say you’re on your way home?”

  “I’m done with the navy, sir. I calculate to try my luck running goods down the Ohio and Mississippi. I was all set to cut on out, too, when Commodore Gaswell sent word he wanted me to track Peter down on the sly. I only done it as a favor to the old gentleman. He’s been kind to me.” Malloy was of an age with the “old gentleman,” and he gratified me by setting his jowls all a-quiver. Even the dog couldn’t stand it; he hopped down and whizzed on a leg of the settee.

  “Good boy,” I said. I held out a finger, and he came over to lick it.

  “Is that how you resolve yourself, sir?” said Malloy. “You ease yourself by flying from your troubles? The service is better off without you, Mr. Graves.” He got up and pulled his handkerchief out of his sleeve. “Yes, do you abscond to the frontier. You will find it easier to lose yourself among the savages than to stay where the eyes of your betters are on you.” He got down on his knees and mopped up the puddle. The dog went over to him and wagged his tail. Malloy scrunched down to let him lick his face.

  “I’d a-larruped him a good one for slicking up the deck like that,” I said.

  “You are not I,” said Malloy. He’d gotten tarnal quiet for no reason I could fathom. It was almost eerie, the calm he had on him.

  “The commodore wanted to keep it quiet what Peter done, I guess,” I said. “But if you want to wave it around and call attention to it, you go right ahead. I ain’t a-goin’ to stop you.”

  He stared at me like a chicken eyes a bug. There was a power of dignity in the Old Woman, even on his knees with a piss-rag in his hand. “Stop me? You, stop me?”

  “No, I said I ain’t a-goin’ to stop you. I’m throwing over my commission. Then you won’t be my superior officer anymore, and I’ll be able to call you out. What d’ye think of that, Captain Malloy?”

  He sat back on his heels. “I think you haven’t a commission to ‘throw over.’ You still resent me for knocking you down. Surely it was a year ago by now. It will eat you up if you let it.” He took the wet handkerchief into his quarter galley. “I repent of it,” he called from behind the door, “if that mollifies you.” There was a muffled splashing as he wrung the cloth into the head. He came out without it, and rinsed his hands at a ewer and basin in the corner, watching me over his shoulder. “No, don’t get that sneering look in your eye, young man. My repentance is not born of fear, any more than is my contempt for dueling. Tell me, have you ordered any floggings since you’ve had your little command?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I can’t hear you—you have your head down. How many?”

  I squared my shoulders and looked him in the eye. “I disremember, sir.” That was a lie. I’d never forget the look of dumb patience on Hawkins’s face as Horne tore his back open.

  Malloy settled into the settee again. The spaniel stood on his lap and licked his chin. “I’ll wager you flogged at least one man and found you didn’t like it.”

  “No, sir, I don’t guess I did like it.”

  “Do you know why that is?”

  He toyed with the dog’s ears. The dog stared at him with melting eyes, and I got an unsettled feeling as I realized that something loved Asa Malloy.

  “I’ll tell you why it is, Mr. Graves. When you flog a man, it’s because you have failed. Failed to keep order, failed to hold the men’s respect, failed to lead. I myself have not had a man beaten since . . . well, since that incident that first drove you and me apart. We got on well before that, I do believe.”

  “Yes, sir, I remember. You learned me my sines and cosines so’s I could keep ’em in my head. You told me about Al-Jayyani the Moor, too, but I never could grasp spherical trigonometry. I like a triangle to have a hundred and eighty degrees and no more.”

  He smiled fondly, the indulgent schoolmarm. “You and Dick Towson were both charmed by the Indian maiden, Princess Sohcahtoa, as I recall. A lovely mnemonic, that.”

  “I guess it’s a bit more genteel than Oh hell, another hour of algebra.”

  He laughed. “I hadn’t heard that one.”

  “Sure, sir: O-H-A-H-O-A, for opposite, hypotenuse; adjacent, hypotenuse; and opposite, adjacent—”

  “With sine, cosine, and tangent understood,” he finished for me. “That isn’t bad. I tell you, Mr. Graves, I had a mind to—well, never mind what I had a mind to. Now that I’ve seen the Tomahawk, I find she’s really not what I had in mind.”

  That stung. “She’s a good sea boat, sir. Sags to leeward a bit, I allow, but she’s nimble as a cat with eight lives gone. I sank a frigate and captured a sloop in her.”

  He laughed again. It was the kind of indulgent chuckle that usually gets my pelt up, and it near about irked me into telling him so. But then he said, “Don’t allow your indignation to become more important than getting what you want, Mr. Graves. I relinquish the Tomahawk to you. You may console yourself that it be not the milk of human kindness that motiv
ates me, but a desire that the Breeze and young Mr. Peebles not disappear on my watch. I turn over responsibility for them to you.”

  “That’s easily dealt with, sir. I have a good bosun’s mate and quartermaster that will carry her home safe.”

  “Oh, nay, for shame,” said he, “to deny the young gentleman his chance. Mr. Peebles will sail her, or I withdraw my offer.”

  “You said, sir, that you repented of your ill-will toward me.”

  “Repentance is for the benefit of the trespasser, Mr. Graves, not the trespassed against.”

  He looked like as if he’d given me the key to his house when he said it. I went away smirking knowingly, with no idea what he meant.

  EIGHTEEN

  Gundy was a dark shape against the water tier down in the hold. The air was close in there, and I resisted the urge to climb out and direct him from the lower deck. I held the lantern in front of me, the deck above my head being too low to allow me to hold the light up. My shoes were soaked. The keelson was awash, and I could hear water lapping below the floor planks.

  “What do you mean it’s all run out?” I said. “Looks more like it’s coming in.”

  “Nay, that all be sweet water, zur.” He held up a dripping hand. “Give ’un a taste.”

  “No, I’ll take your word for it.” The barrels were laid on their sides, of course, and slow fat drops dripped from their middles. I held the lantern close to the barrel tops. “They’ve been started. Look at the pry marks.”

  “That be traison!” he said.

  “Not if it weren’t one of our own, it ain’t.”