His firm voice, combined with his height, martial appearance, and reputation, not to mention his one hand on a pistol butt and the other gripping a sword, topped by the woman’s scorn, all aided by the menacing sight of Cronow, Foxcraft, and Fielding, quelled the immanent mutiny. Edward was pleased to note that the ship’s boy was at Cronow’s side, hands on pistols.
In spite of their fear, two of the three shamed men prepared to load the gun again. The third stood red-faced and unmoving, for the woman who had spoken had already seized the rope rammer from him and stood by to load the gun.
“Can’t we sweep their forecastle?” she asked Edward militantly. “There’s so many men there, we couldn’t miss. Bar shot is what they liked to use on my husband’s ship.”
Edward smiled sympathetically. “Any other time I’d agree with you, but today we can’t waste a shot. Killing a dozen French seamen won’t stop their captain from chasing, and it might make things worse if they capture us. Still, let’s make a change, as you suggest. Bar shot this time, Mr. Foxcraft,” Edward ordered, “but keep pointing at the foretop.” He picked up his long musket, loaded at the same time he had primed his pistols, and nodded to the woman using the rammer. “In honor of your suggestion.”
He brought the musket to full cock, aimed, and fired. The two dozen French seaman massed on the forecastle all dropped to the deck.
Edward laughed and shouted to the crew. “See, they’re not so brave, are they? Mr. Foxcraft, let’s get this gun loaded!”
The mate, to ensure there was no skullduggery, picked up a load of bar shot himself, in this case three iron bars square in cross-section and “armed” with rope-yarn at each end. Under his close supervision the navy wife rammed charge, wad, bar shot, and wad home.
“Why don’t you lay the gun this time, sir?” he suggested to Edward, who, having quickly reloaded his musket, set it aside, took the linstock, stepped forward, laid the gun carefully, blew on the match, removed the lead apron, checked to make sure all was clear to rear of the gun, timed the roll, and fired. But the shot, though another good one, was also another disappointment, the iron bars doing little more than ripping through the foretopsail. The gun crew loaded the final shot.
The privateer fired again, this time parting one of the larboard fore-shrouds.
“Pray louder in silence this time, damn you—if you please!” Edward shouted before he remembered that the parson had retreated below. This was it, they must strike. The privateer crew would board, hopefully not too annoyed by the noble attempt at defense, and take possession of the ship in sight of the harbor, barely a mile from safety.
He laid the gun again, and the Peregrinator fired her final shot. Three iron bars spun into the rigging and sails of the foremast.
Damn you, fly true, hit something, part a stay!
Nothing.
“You may lash your gun, Mr. Foxcraft. My apologies, Captain Cronow.”
Edward, in vain hope, fired his musket a second time, certain he knocked down a French seaman waving a cutlass. He set the gun aside, raised his spyglass, and stared at the Frenchman, furious disappointment in his chest. It had been a fair try, but no contest; it rankled that he had won at longer odds in the past, admittedly in situations reduced simply to win or die. That comparison did nothing to dispel his inner fury.
Wait.... There, French crewmen racing aloft, the topsail sheets veered! One of the bar shot had parted the foretopmast stay! The French ship immediately bore away, lowered both topsails, and steered before the wind to take the pressure off the foremast. Edward looked carefully at her stern as she changed course, for he wanted to remember this ship. Centered beneath her taffrail was the carved image of a black tulip.
The Peregrinator would escape after all. The privateer’s rigging was otherwise little damaged, and in most circumstances she might still have captured her prey. But not today, not so close to a hostile lee shore with a foretopmast that might go by the board. A simple, small, sure victory had suddenly become much too expensive.
The crew of the Peregrinator jeered from the tops and the rails at the retreating privateer, their fear changed to jubilation. Edward had one anxious moment more, wondering if the Frenchman might fire her upper battery out of spite. But the gun-ports remained closed.
“My compliments, Captain MacNaughton,” said Lieutenant Fielding.
“Thank you, sir, but the credit belongs to Captain Cronow, his crew, these valiant ladies, and, much as I hate to say it, Fortune. And perhaps to the men-of-war in the offing as well.”
“No, Mister MacNaughton,” the parson interrupted, having returned to deck once he heard the cheers and realized they had escaped the Frenchman. “It was not Fortune, but God’s Providence. O, how the mighty have fallen! O Lord, thy powerful arm hath smote thine enemies!”
Edward ignored both the parson’s insulting use of Mister instead of Captain and his vacuous bombast.
Foxcraft rolled his eyes. “To hear him speak, we must have sunk the French fleet! Surely he was in command, too.”
The mate’s remark irritated the parson. “The wind, Mr. MacNaughton, look about you! God sends the wind to blow for England!” he responded, refusing to stoop to the level of a heathen seaman.
Edward could no longer ignore the man. “The wind, sir, blows for none but herself.” He caught the Captain’s eye. “May I buy some of your brandy and sugar for the crew?”
“You may not buy it, sir, but you may have as much as you please. Jack! Have the cook pour more brandy, tell him to light the fire hearth as soon as the deck is cleared of powder, tell him to heat the brandy and sugar, we have thirsty lads here! Take the anker of good Nantz brandy from my cabin this time. And good work,” he yelled proudly at his crew, “good work, all of you, my hearts!”
His crew responded with three resounding “Huzzahs!” which brought Mrs. Hardy’s servants and son to the deck. Only the ensign remained absent.
Edward looked back one last time at the disappearing French privateer. His fingers tapped quickly on the rail, then paused abruptly.
With his spyglass he examined the small merchant-galley. Lost in a squall of rain during most of the chase, it had appeared again to windward of the privateer. There was little chance she could escape, given how close the two vessels were to each other. The privateer would soon be under full sail, and would surely set her sights on the new prey.
“The Mary and Martha Galley, Bristol,” Cronow noted matter-of-factly. “By God, the Frenchman will have her instead; she’ll not be able to escape in time. It’ll be two hours at least before the frigates from Kinsale work their way across the bar. At least we’ll be at anchor under the guns of Charles Fort before long.”
From a distance the merchant-galley could be mistaken for the Peregrinator, even to her reefed topsails. Then, as Edward watched, she clewed up her fore topsail then hauled the sheets home again, as she had done earlier.
I’ll be damned to hell! he thought as he grinned a strange grin of admiration, anger, and sheepishness. A coincidence? Maybe...but maybe a signal!
He watched back and forth as the privateer, still setting up her foretop stay, fired a gun across the bow of the Mary and Martha.
Of course that bastard privateer’s gunnery was poor at first! he thought. She wasn’t trying to capture us—she thought we were the Mary and Martha!
He smiled at the likely possibility of the French captain furious at the risks he had run by mistake. He put down his spyglass. Few would believe this tale. Instead, everyone would believe the unlikely story that a small leaky merchant-galley fought off a formidable fifty-odd gun privateer. It might even merit a line in the London Gazette. And why not? Everyone aboard had believed the fight to be a true one, and near the end of the chase it had been real.
Suddenly the French privateer bore away, leaving the Mary and Martha alone. For a moment Edward was perplexed: the ships sallying from Kinsale were still in the river. But soon the answer was apparent: out of the rain squall appeared an English man-o
f-war, colors flying, starboard broadside run out, surely drawn by the sounds of gunfire across the water.
“The Shoreham, by God,” Cronow shouted. “I know her by her topsails. Only thirty-two guns, but she’ll bugger this French bawd even if the frigates in the river can’t get out in time.”
Edward took two steps away from the rail and let out a deep breath. Only now did he realize how truly tired he was. Time to put away his sword and pistols, drink some brandy, celebrate with captain, crew, and passengers, then sleep and dream again. Perhaps in his dreams would come the closure he still needed? Their escape should have been enough to convince body and soul that they could rest now, but lingering questions of possible intrigue assailed him and would not let him relax.
Below he found the aft platform unusually quiet and, in a way, even clean. The cheers above had brought all topside, the widow’s son and servant included. Much of the platform’s filth had washed into the bilges when the ship took seawater over the deck and down the open hatchway. Fresh sea air had replaced the fetid atmosphere.
Hearing a small noise, a sniffle perhaps, he pulled open the canvas partitions of his cabin, and there in the cradle below his hammock he found the maid Maria, all shivers and giggles and winsome smiles.
“I thought you were on deck,” Edward said.
“I was, but now I’m back. It’s all over, then? We’re safe?”
“We are. And soon we’ll be at an anchor in Kinsale.”
“And there we part ways.”
“And there we part ways.”
“I’m cold, Captain MacNaughton. Can you not help me?”
He smiled twice, first to himself, then to the waiting woman. She giggled again. Knowing full well the obligation he would be under to the demanding Mrs. Hardy—and wondering if it would have been the ensign here instead had he not offended her—he shook his head and stepped into his cabin anyway; and for the first time since he had come aboard he lay in the cradle, wrapped in arms, legs, and petticoats, in sweet lips and salty breasts, and earned more knocks and bruises in the narrow bed in ten minutes than the Irish Sea had been able to serve either of them in nearly a fortnight. By the time they finally timed their rhythm with that of the sea, they came almost together, she pulling him even tighter, he trying to withdraw that he might not leave her with child.
Their passions sown and reaped, they lay together for a few moments more, half-dressed and embarrassed in the intimate unfamiliarity that Hogarth, a few decades hence, would depict so well.
Edward knew he must soon return to the quarterdeck. He was likely missed already, and probably the object of various vulgar musings. And he would have to meet Mrs. Hardy’s eye. No longer a bawd in the social or financial sense of the word, Mrs. Hardy still understood the moments in the lives of the persons around her, and would doubtless claim such a moment for herself at a more appropriate time and place, the thought of which did not displease him, even as he lay in the fatigues of fight and fornication. Maria had given him the physical release the day’s events had so far denied him, and he likely gave her the same.
He rose, licked the salt from his lips, and buttoned his breeches while Maria arranged herself and scampered to her own cabin, asking him in a saucy voice to send her a bottle of anything. The intimate spell was broken; relations had returned to normal. Mrs. Hardy would quickly quash any of Maria’s pert post-coital familiarity, and he returned to the quarterdeck feeling like a bit of a fool, albeit a much satisfied one.
The French privateer receded into the misty distance, and the Mary and Martha lay her course north.
“He must have a heart of oak and balls of brass!” muttered Michael O’Neal aboard the Mary and Martha.
He stared through his glass at the Peregrinator and at the tall man who had apparently commanded during the mock fight, and wondered what sort of fool had the nerve to fire his puny guns against La Tulipe Noir and come close to sending her foretopmast by the board!
He scanned the rest of the sea around him. The French privateer was now in full flight, having chosen the better part of valor. The Shoreham pursued, and the frigates from Kinsale had passed the river bar and would soon be in pursuit. From near the Old Head of Kinsale, a small fisher boat and its crew of sympathizers had earlier set a course for La Tulipe Noir to provide her captain with intelligence of the shipping in the harbor, but she’d fled at the sight of the Shoreham.
The Peregrinator tacked away from the dangerous lee shore, then soon again into the harbor. Darkness and the turn of the tide found her lying peacefully at anchor beneath the guns of Charles Fort, and Michael O’Neal landing the smugglers and their cargo ashore at Oysterhaven only a league away.
Chapter 7
Women are of the extremes,
either better or worse than men.
—La Bruyère, Of Women, 1691
The next morning found Edward MacNaughton at the Peregrinator’s starboard rail, one hand gripping a shroud to steady himself even though the harbor was as flat as glass. The sea inside his head, however, pitched and rolled like the Bay of Biscay in a storm. Too much damn’ Sherry sack, he thought. I’d almost rather be seasick.
“Ahoy there!” he called to a burly waterman not ten feet below, but got no answer. “Ahoy there, damn you! Is that cockleshell yours?”
After a few idle moments the waterman looked up. “Aye, Cap’n.”
“Do you know me, or do you address everyone as Captain?” he barked, making his head hurt even more. Hellfire, I know better than to drink that much!
“Aye, sir, I know you. This morning the whole of Kinsale knows Cap’n Edward McNutt, the famous buccaneer.”
“MacNaughton,” Edward replied severely. He squinted against the sunlight, too bright after more than a dozen cloudy days at sea, not to mention for a hangover.
“Ah, indeed, Cap’n MacNorton it is.”
“Jackanape,” Edward muttered under his breath. “Will you row me to the quay?”
“Aye, sir, the ship’s boy said you’d want a wherry.”
“When do you shove off?”
“When you’re ready, sir. The customs officers are staying aboard until the ship takes the tide; I can come back for them later.”
“I’m ready now, I’ll have a couple of seamen lower my baggage.”
“Very well, Cap’n MacScot. Oh, almost forgot, I have a message: you’re to meet Mistress O’Meary at the town square an hour or two before noon, her servants said, and they’ll pick up your baggage at the quay. Oh, and you’re to pick up a horse at the stable near Fryar’s Gate.”
“O’Meary?”
“Aye, from Ballyderreen, Sir William’s manor, not far outside Kinsale.”
“How will I know her?”
“Ah, she’s a fine looking woman, rides a fine horse, always has a couple of fine fierce wolfhounds with her. A striking sight, you can’t miss her. She’s Sir William’s ward, or his niece, or whatever he claims she is to him, if you take my meaning. Some say she’s—”
“Watch your tongue.”
“—wild Irish on the side, riding barefoot and astride on moonshiny nights doing wicked, unlawful things. It’s not hard to imagine her kissing her saddle with—”
“Hold your tongue, waterman!”
“Aye, of course, Cap’n MacHighland, no offense intended. I figured you’d have a seaman’s sense of such things, but I see now you’re a gentleman of sorts, so in that case you should know that hardly a gentleman for miles around doesn’t try to woo her and wed her. That’s all I was saying—she’s a handsome, propertied woman, that is if they don’t take her tattered estate from her for treason.”
“Treason?”
“She’s Irish, there was a war, the Irish lost, that’s reason enough. But marriage to the right man would save it, for sure. Are you a papist, Cap’n? If not, you should clean yourself up a bit if you want to stand a chance; you’ve got lots of competition. Right now you look a bit too salty and stink too much of tar to impress a lady. Rough night?”
> Edward picked up a bottle of claret, two-thirds full, from where it sat on the rail. He tossed it to the waterman. “See if this will shut your mouth,” he said lightly, but with enough of an edge to make the warning clear.
The waterman drew the cork and took a big swig. “Ah, thank you, Captain MacNaughton! I’ll love you like a brother now. Share? You look like you could use some hair of the dog.”
“I tried, it didn’t work. Drink up, waterman.”
A few minutes later, after saying goodbye to Captain Cronow, who was busy supervising preparations to break bulk and unlade some of the ship’s cargo into a lighter, Edward pitched his riding boots into the boat below. Only a fool would wear the stiff leather footwear except on horseback, and anyone who wore it shipboard would be a laughingstock. He clambered nimbly over the side in spite of his hangover and the brace of pistols in their holsters hanging over his shoulder.
Edward surveyed the harbor and city as the swift wherry skimmed the surface at the hands of the skilled waterman, causing a grey seal—rón mór in Irish—to duck quickly beneath the water. He saw fisher-boats lying “at a grappling” and also tied up at the quays, waiting for the bell to sound so they could sell their catch to the joulters, or middlemen, for the law required that they first try to sell it to local residents. He knew they also sold their catch cheaply to the garrison at Charles Fort. This bribe kept the fishermen from being pressed into the English navy, and kept the soldiers from foraging—plundering, that is—across the countryside, or at least as much as they otherwise would, for their pay was not enough to keep them fed.
He spotted a lighter and a yawl under sail from the naval yard across the bay where the men-of-war Shoreham, Pearl, and Dolphin, along with the Green-fish store-ship, lay at anchor. A sand lighter, with its load of sand dredged from the harbor by a complicated-looking machine and destined for use inland, rested at anchor some distance away, waiting for the tide so it could wallow back into the harbor. At anchor nearby lay vessels provisioning for voyages west, and several others waiting for convoy to Bristol and other English ports. Farther away, there was construction or repairs underway at Charles Fort, a vital bastion against the French.
Fortune's Whelp (Fortune's Whelp Series Book 1) Page 8
