The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  It was a matter of half a day’s inquiry to find the ship that Bolingbroke had signed aboard, but that information did Tillinghast little good. If plucking him out of a tavern or a rooming house was a tricky business, then extracting him from amid a ship’s company was all but impossible.

  That left Tillinghast with the singular option of waiting to catch Bolingbroke by himself, which he did at last when Bolingbroke made a somewhat furtive exit from the ship. It was just shy of midnight, eight days after the meeting with Jack, when Bolingbroke came slinking down the gangplank. And Tillinghast, happily, was as he often was: lurking in the shadows, watching.

  He followed Bolingbroke down Second Street to Southwark, then up South Street and a left onto Fourth, the neighborhoods becoming more notorious by degrees. They had gone another two blocks before Tillinghast guessed at his destination, and when Bolingbroke turned into a narrow alley strewn with broken barrels and half-stove packing crates and sundry garbage, Tillinghast saw he was right.

  Three granite steps leading to a single door in the back of one of the brick row houses, a lantern burning feebly above it, marked the unlikely entrance to one of the city’s more well-respected brothels. A knock, a few hushed words through a half-open door, and Bolingbroke was inside.

  I’d reckon this establishment a bit rich for that son of a bitch’s blood, Tillinghast thought. Tillinghast knew the place by reputation only, but the reputation had always been that it was no half-dime-a-throw sort of house.

  The creature seems to have money to toss about …

  Tillinghast found a dark place not too far from the door from where he could watch and still remain unseen in the shadows. From there he saw one man make his sheepish entrance into the building, and two leave. Neither was Bolingbroke, but one Tillinghast recognized as a member of Congress. And these damnable Republican dogs say our tax dollars are not well spent, Tillinghast thought as the man stumbled off into the dark.

  It was not above forty-five minutes later that Bolingbroke appeared, stepping slowly, reluctantly from the door. He looked up and down the alley with a wariness that made Tillinghast wonder if he realized he was being watched. It was pointless to try and sneak up on him, so Tillinghast took the other tack, stumbling out of the shadows, weaving toward the brothel door, the least suspicious of approaches.

  They passed one another just ten feet from the door, and as they did, Tillinghast straightened, turned, and said, calm and sober, “Bolingbroke? A word, if I may?”

  Bolingbroke stopped and turned. His eyes were wide, his face more panic-stricken than Tillinghast would have thought was quite appropriate for the pacific tone he was taking with the man. He shook his head, took a step back toward the wall that formed the east side of the alley. “No, no…” he said. He turned, his back hunched, his hands resting on the edge of the remnants of a wooden crate.

  “See here,” Tillinghast began, but Bolingbroke straightened and turned in one motion, the crate in his hands, and smashed it into Tillinghast’s shoulders and head. Tillinghast felt a laceration open up on his cheek as he stumbled back, a minor wound compared to the humiliation he felt at allowing this little puke to fool him in that way.

  He heard Bolingbroke’s feet taking off down the alley. He tossed off the broken slats of the crate and ran after him, wondering if he had any chance against the younger man in a flat-out footrace. But again Bolingbroke did what Tillinghast did not expect, and rather than head for the end of the alley he bounded back up the brothel steps and through the door, Tillinghast right behind.

  Bolingbroke was halfway down the hall by the time the startled doorman, some great heap of muscle in an ill-fitting suit, had taken two steps in his direction. He succeeded in blurting out, “Here, now—” before Tillinghast charged in behind him and rammed him in the small of the back. Tillinghast heard the man grunt and had a glimpse of him lifting from his feet and coming down on some silly little table against the wall, which he turned into kindling on his way to the floor. Then Tillinghast was past, his eyes on Bolingbroke’s blue jacket, which had ducked into the sitting room on the side and was just then leaping a sofa between two startled young women and their even more startled uncles.

  Tillinghast followed right behind, putting a foot on the sofa, launching himself over the back. He had a glimpse of young women lounging about the room, men of various ages with stocks undone and legs splayed in casual repose jerking upright in surprise, a cloud of smoke hanging low, the sharp smell of liquor and perfume. And then he was following Bolingbroke out the back door of the room. He had no more than a glimpse of Bolingbroke’s white duck trousers as the man disappeared through another door at the far end of the hall.

  What he might find on the other side of that door Tillinghast did not like to think on, but he thundered down the hall and swung himself through the door and found it was a set of stairs leading to an uninviting cellar below. He took the stairs two at a time, landed on the dirt floor at the bottom. There were lanterns hanging from low floor joists casting a weak light around the place. Tillinghast looked right and left. Bolingbroke was not to be seen. He stepped cautiously off to his left, around a pile of what he guessed was old furniture with a tarp draped over it. He could feel cool, fresh air wafting through the musty space. He came around the tarp-covered pile. A door hung open, and through it Tillinghast could see the steps that led up to the street level.

  “Of course there’s a bloody back way out of a place like this!” he said out loud, disgusted by the great chain of blunders he had committed that night. Damn Bolingbroke, he thought, of course he would know where the back way is!

  He heard footfalls on the steps behind him, and had no doubt it was the doorman, having recovered his breath and coming for his pound of flesh. Tillinghast sighed and headed for the door in Bolingbroke’s wake.

  * * *

  The tide carried the Abigail swiftly down the Delaware River, but the breeze pushed her more swiftly still, so rather than simply drifting down to the bay, they enjoyed the benefit of steerage. That made the passage less stressful than it might otherwise have been, because having control, however illusionary it might be, was always more comforting than simply being swept along. Jack kept the quarterdeck, conning the vessel as needed, though the way was clear and the shipping not too numerous and for the most part he was not much needed at all.

  He looked out over the shoreline, the stands of trees and the rolling fields turning an early-spring green. Windmill Island, League Island, Mud Island with Fort Mifflin and the new construction there. He could not pass that way without thinking of the brutal weeks of fighting that his father and Uncle Ezra and the others, the sailors of the ridiculous Mosquito Fleet of 1777, had endured in their vain attempt to keep the mighty Royal Navy at bay. It was heroic, almost beyond description, night after night in their little ships taking on the massive men-of-war. In the end it had been for naught, though it was heroic nonetheless.

  But that generation, those who had won independency, were not lacking for admirers and hagiographers, and Jack did not much feel the need to add his hosannas to the rest. His father knew how he felt. Or he should, in any event. That was enough.

  “A propitious start to the voyage, Captain, wouldn’t you say?” Charles Frost called, emerging from the after scuttle onto the quarterdeck and pulling Jack from his reverie.

  “All’s well that begins well,” Jack said. “No, forgive me, that’s not how it goes at all. In any event, yes, a fine start, and we’ll carry this tide for the next five or six hours, I should think. Your quarters, you find them accommodating?”

  “Goodness, yes!” Frost said with enthusiasm. “The good Mr. Tucker has seen to doubling the space. I’ve made many a sea voyage, Captain, and I can tell you I have never had so commodious a cabin in so small a vessel. Beg your pardon, of course, I mean no disrespect to your command, sir.”

  “Nor did I take it as such,” Jack assured him. “Abigail is of no great size, I’ll warrant, but she’s a fine sea boat.”
>
  “She is that,” Frost said, and then, in a different tone, went on. “Mr. Wentworth, I’m afraid, was a bit put out that my cabin was rendered so spacious and his was not.”

  “Well, we can only make so many changes, you know. Who knows how many cabins we shall need for the voyage back?” Jack, of course, had had nothing to do with altering Frost’s accommodations, though he was sorry he had not thought of it first, so he could at least give himself credit for Wentworth’s discomfort.

  As Jack had predicted, they did carry the tide for another five hours, but as the ebbing current began to grow weak with age they found the wind began to fail as well. Jack could see that they would soon be swept back up the bay just as they had been swept down, so he worked the ship over to Deep Water Point on the western shore and came to anchor with the best bower in four fathoms of water.

  He felt keenly an obligation to invite Frost and Wentworth to the cabin for dinner, at least once at the start of the voyage. It was one of those duties owed by a ship’s master to his passengers when the passengers were of the better sort. It was also true that Frost was a particular friend of Oxnard’s, so it would do Jack no harm to get in his good graces. On the other hand, he felt oppressed by the many things still to be done, and did not feel he had the hours to devote to being a proper host.

  What’s more, it seemed a bit silly, dinner at sea, when they were in fact at anchor within ten leagues of where they had started, at a place where a man with a good arm might actually throw a biscuit onto the shore. And truly he did not really want to dine with them and play the smiling, gracious host, not for Wentworth’s pleasure, in particular, so he made his excuses and bought himself an extra day.

  The sun rose the following morning on a hazy sky and a wind fair for clearing Cape Henlopen, so they weighed even before the turn of the tide. With topsails, topgallants, and the foresail set they were able to stem the current with ease, and when at last the tide began to ebb they found themselves within a mile of the Capes. From there it was a matter of less than an hour’s time before the waters emptying from the Delaware Bay swept them the balance of the way to sea, with Cape May passing down their larboard side, and, much nearer still, Cape Henlopen to starboard.

  An hour after clearing the Capes, Jack found himself standing by the middle gun on the weather side, one foot on the gun carriage, his admittedly new favorite spot from which to look over the set of the sails. He was wrestling with a moral dilemma, but it was not much of a contest, since the easy way out, which he would have preferred, stood on very shaky legs. He gave a barely audible sigh, spun around, and approached Frost and Wentworth, who were standing by the leeward quarter and watching the shoreline disappear in their wake.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “I would be honored if you would dine with me today in the cabin, four bells in the afternoon watch? Two o’clock,” he added.

  “Delighted, Captain Biddlecomb, delighted!” Frost said. “Wentworth, what say you?”

  Wentworth gave a small nod of his head in Jack’s direction. “I should be honored, Captain,” he said. “But let me check my calendar. Oh, no, it appears I am quite free these next six weeks or more.”

  “Very well, then,” Jack said, annoyed by Wentworth’s tone of noblesse oblige, such condescension being the master’s prerogative, not his passengers’, but he said only, “It will be my pleasure to see you at table.”

  It would have been a nightmare, in fact, hosting the gentlemen passengers in the cabin if Jack had been left to his own devices. He had put no thought into cabin stores and would have contented himself with the same salt pork and salt beef and dried peas and ship’s biscuits and such that were served out in the forecastle.

  Had he considered the possibility of having to entertain, he would have thought vaguely that something could be done to dress up the seamen’s rations into a meal acceptable to a more discerning palate, and would have thought no more about it. That is, until confronted with the horrible reality that nothing could be done to render a seaman’s fare edible to any but a seaman.

  Such a transubstantiation certainly could not have been performed by the ship’s cook, a former seaman of indeterminate but advanced age named Israel Walcott, a man whose chief qualifications for the job of cook were that he was willing to do it, he could boil water, he had been taught how to make a plum duff, and he was too lame to do anything else.

  Nor would his steward have been of any help, a young man named Barnabus Simon foisted on Jack by Robert Oxnard for reasons Jack did not quite understand, but which had nothing to do with Jack’s convenience or comfort. In their short time together Jack had formed the impression that Simon was lazy, incompetent, ignorant of his duties, sullen, and dishonest. Once they had cleared land and the inevitable dinner with the passengers was behind him, Jack was determined to send him packing to the forecastle.

  It was Jack’s mother, Virginia Biddlecomb, who had seen to it that dinner would not be an utter humiliation. Unbidden, she had sent aboard cabin stores consisting of cured and fresh beef, hams, vegetables, chickens in portable coops, a goodly supply of wine, brandy, and port, cheeses of various descriptions, real bread as opposed to ship’s biscuit, along with well-fruited spice breads, dried fruit, butter, jam, and even some dishes prepared by Maurice the day before sailing and packed to travel.

  Each of those dishes was made in quantities to feed upward of half a dozen men, as if Virginia had anticipated this very situation, which, in fact, she had. She had never asked for Jack’s input or permission, because she knew he would have had nothing of value to add, would have dismissed the very notion and then deeply regretted it later.

  At noon, after Jack had fixed their position, triangulating off the Capes, he commenced to badgering Simon to prepare the meal and set the cabin in order to receive guests. One of Maurice’s dinners, an asparagus soup and rabbit fricassee, was heated in the galley on deck, and since Simon was not to be trusted with such a task it was done under the watchful eye of Lucas Harwar, whom Jack had shipped as second mate.

  And so, after considerable effort and forethought by a number of people, none of them Jack Biddlecomb, a respectable meal was laid by the time a seaman on deck rang out four bells, the last note just dying away when Frost knocked on the cabin door.

  “Come, come, welcome,” Jack said with all the graciousness he could muster as he led his guests around the narrow confines of the cabin and seated them at the table. “Simon! Some wine, here, Simon!” he called and soon the steward appeared with a bottle, from which he filled each glass with all the grace of a gin-house keeper filling glasses for his drunk-for-a-penny customers.

  Despite the want of good service, dinner passed tolerably well, Frost doing more than his part to uphold the conversation and keep it on course, straight and true. Wentworth dipped heavily into the wine, and in truth Jack had the impression he had been doing so even before arriving for dinner, making free with his own private stores, which rendered the generally taciturn young man more taciturn still. But since he was unlikely to have anything to say that Jack cared to hear, it was not a problem.

  “So, pray, what brings you gentlemen to Barbados?” Jack asked as Frost served out the last of the rabbit. “Mr. Oxnard never indicated you would be returning in this ship, so I assume you are bound for an extended stay?”

  Wentworth made a sort of noncommittal face and poured the remains of the wine into his glass. Frost looked up from his task. “Business, this and that. Some work for the government. I have any number of friends in the administration. I help out where I can, on an informal basis, you know. But still, the less said…”

  “Oh, of course,” Jack said, embarrassed to have appeared to be prying. Then Simon stepped up and took the empty serving dish, sloshing juice on the tablecloth, and Jack was for once happy for the distraction.

  The meal had been cleared, only a single plate and one wineglass dropped and broken, cheese and port were laid out, and cigars fired up when Frost asked, “What of your man, Captain,
the big Irish fellow? Maguire? Is he up and about?”

  “Oh, certainly, a good night’s sleep on a soft deck and he’s right as rain. I believe he’s standing his trick at the helm as we speak,” Jack said. The skylight was partially open and Jack had been keeping tabs on what was taking place topside, sometimes without even realizing he was doing so.

  “No punishment?” Frost asked. “No consequences for his actions?”

  Jack shrugged and took a puff of his cigar. “No,” he said. “It would be pointless, as I said at the time. If he were a poor seaman I would leave him on the beach, but since he’s a most excellent hand once he’s beyond the reach of liquor, I am willing to forgive his foolishness.”

  “Foolishness, indeed?” Wentworth asked. “And what if he had struck you? What if his fist had connected, had knocked you to the floor in front of your men?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said, and he genuinely did not, as he had never thought on that. “It’s never happened. A man must be pretty well in his cups to swing at a ship’s master in that way, and thus their punches are generally pretty easy to avoid.”

  Wentworth made a grunting sound and took another puff on his cigar, then removed it from his lips and regarded it. “It’s all so wonderfully in keeping with this spirit of republicanism that seems to run amuck these days,” he said.

  “Now, Mr. Wentworth,” said Frost, and Jack could hear just a hint of alarm as the conversation wandered into the shoals of politics, “Captain Biddlecomb has his ways, you know, which come from being at sea many a year.”

  “No, truly,” Wentworth said, looking up from his cigar. “Was it not the worthy Sir Francis Drake who said, ‘I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman’? Such a good republican spirit that reigns here at sea.”