The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  The sun emerged, and so did William Wentworth, though in truth he had made the occasional appearance on deck during the two days the ship had been lying to. He had stripped off the ruined, bedraggled clothes he had been wearing and arrived on the quarterdeck in a fresh shirt, coat, and breeches. He looked as if he was off to some gathering of the better sort on Beacon Hill, save for his hands, which were thoroughly wrapped in cloth bandages.

  “Good day, Mr. Wentworth,” Biddlecomb said. The fact that Wentworth’s hands, which he was sure had never known a day’s labor, had been so terribly torn up through the man’s own ignorance delighted Jack to such an extent that he found himself capable of civility.

  “Good morning, Captain. We are sailing, I see.”

  “Indeed we are,” Jack replied. “And if ever the sun reveals itself I may be able to determine where we are, and in which direction we must sail. How are your hands this morning? Has Dr. Walcott’s salve been of any use?”

  Wentworth sniffed and looked at his bandages, which were absurdly bulky. Jack was certain that Israel Wolcott, ship’s cook and surgeon when required, had deliberately wrapped Wentworth’s hands in that way for the pleasure of making him look ridiculous.

  “Ah, yes, Dr. Wolcott!” Wentworth said. “I should be curious to know which medical school he attended, one that does not require literacy, apparently. I suspect that his ‘salve’ as you call it was simply beef fat with something indescribably horrible added to it.”

  It was indeed beef fat, of that Jack was morally certain, but what the cook might have added to it he could not imagine, and did not care to. “You will not be playing the pianoforte for a while, I take it?”

  “No,” Wentworth said, “and happily there are no such marks of civilization about to make me long for it.”

  Any further sparring was interrupted by Charles Frost, who didn’t so much step from the scuttle as burst from it, as was his way. He had not been much in evidence during the storm, which was fine with Jack. Passengers were better off below in foul weather. Save for his moment of glory, Wentworth had been an insufferable pain.

  “Ah, Captain Biddlecomb!” Frost said in his expansive manner, arms wide as if embracing the world. “Tops’ls are set and drawing, God is in His heaven and we are under way, I see!”

  “Conditions are much improved, Mr. Frost,” Jack agreed.

  Frost looked around as if looking for some familiar landmark, but there was nothing but lumpy gray sea. “Do you know where we are? Were we much blown off course?”

  “I’ve had no opportunity for a sun sight,” Jack said, “but by my dead reckoning I don’t think we’ve lost much ground.”

  “Excellent! Glad to hear it!” He nodded toward the cannon, which still lay on its side on the quarterdeck, tied down like a rogue elephant. “This beast will be put back in its proper place soon, I’ll warrant?”

  “As soon as the seas are such that we can safely move it,” Jack said, “I intend to push it over the side.”

  Frost frowned and his eyebrows came together, and then his face brightened again. “You are practicing on me, Captain, I perceive,” he said.

  “Indeed I am,” Biddlecomb said. “As much as I would like to give it a burial at sea, it is still Mr. Oxnard’s property and I will see it back in its gunport with ringbolts properly fastened this time.”

  “Good, good! There’s not a moment to lose!”

  “Indeed,” Jack said, and then realizing that perhaps they were thinking of different things added, “Not a moment to lose doing what?”

  “Why, exercising the men with the great guns! Drill, sir, gunnery practice.”

  “Gunnery practice, Mr. Frost?”

  “Certainly, gunnery practice. I’m sure Oxnard told you that I had a certain expertise in these matters.”

  Jack searched back in his memory. Yes, Oxnard had mentioned it. Or so he thought. Either way, Frost was a particular friend of Oxnard, who was the owner of the Abigail and Jack’s employer, and that meant Jack was not inclined to argue with the man.

  “Yes, Mr. Frost, I do recall,” Jack said.

  “Well good. We’re sailing into dangerous waters you know, French privateers, French navy for all we know, looking for the main chance to snatch up an American merchantman. Oxnard won’t have it, and I am fully in agreement. We must defend ourselves.”

  “Defend ourselves…” Jack echoed.

  “Exactly! So as soon as ever we can, we must get this gun remounted and we must begin exercising the men. Loading and firing, loading and firing. And then we’ll be able to show Jean Crapeau what we are made of! What say you?”

  13

  Jonah Bolingbroke had been feeling like quite the clever blade, but he was feeling that no longer. Lying in a dark room, hands bound, body aching from various bruises, with no notion of why he was there or what fate might be his, it was hard to muster that cock-of-the-forecastle confidence that had generally carried him though most awkward situations.

  The Lady Adams was bound to sail on the morning tide and he aboard her as second mate. And if he was not aboard her, as was currently the case, she would sail anyway, and leave him on the beach. He had been safe within her wooden walls, secure in the tiny closet that was his private cabin, private save for the sailmaker with whom he shared it. A cabin had once seemed a luxury beyond his dreams, but it had been his, until he decided to push his luck to the breaking point.

  Second mate. That was a loftier position than he had ever aspired to, at least in the first years of his seagoing life. Eleven years old, sailing as ship’s boy, his life had consisted of constant labor of the most vile, dangerous, and exhausting kind; barely edible food and not much of it; and a regular boxing on the side of the head by the various brutes in the forecastle.

  That was a long time in his past. Since those days he had grown a foot and a half, put on 120 pounds, nearly all of it hard muscle, had learned to dominate a forecastle rather than cringe in the corner. With the authority concomitant with his new berth, the money from his advance on pay, and the considerable sum given him on his agreeing to injure Biddlecomb or kill him in an affair of honor, he had been feeling a flush of satisfaction, wealth, and power such as he had never known before.

  As far as employment was concerned, the job of doing major hurt to Jack Biddlecomb was one of the better opportunities that had come his way. Indeed, he had envisioned doing such a thing for free for some years, though the main chance had never really presented itself. But then there it was, and the pay had been excellent.

  There would have been quite a bit more, of course, if he had managed to fire a bullet into Biddlecomb’s gut, but Oxnard had put a stop to that. Still, there had been enough in that first payment to underwrite several nights in the finest nunnery in Philadelphia, a place where he would have found no welcome before, but where, with specie in his pocket, they had treated him very well indeed.

  His nights away from the ship carried with them considerable risks, and catching a dose of the pox was the least of them. Someone was looking to waylay him, he found, but who it was he did not know. There were a number of possibilities—Bolingbroke seemed to collect enemies the way some men collected artwork or butterflies—so he could not be entirely sure who the aggrieved party was. By his best guess, it was someone connected to this Biddlecomb business.

  Bolingbroke, no fool or stranger to such things, saw them watching, following, as he made his way through Southwark. They nearly had him once, that night in the alley. That had put a real fear into him, and he did not leave the ship after that. Not, at least, until the night before they were slated to sail, when arrogance, lust, and the erroneous impression that the watchers had abandoned their posts allowed his passions to supersede his native sense of preservation.

  The last time he had patronized that establishment they had been waiting for him—some big bastard, big as a bear, had chased him right through the door and down the basement steps. He kept a weather eye out the second time, moving cautiously, and the way ha
d seemed clear. But it was not.

  Bolingbroke had been halfway down the alley with its lantern above the nunnery door when one of them stepped from the shadows and called his name. There was light enough for Bolingbroke to see that it was not the same bear who had chased him before, which meant he might use his basement escape route a second time. He turned and flew up the brothel stairs and through the door, past the hulking doorman and through the parlor. There were not so many people there that night, making the way more clear as he leapt over the sofa and down the hall. He took the stairs to the cellar two at a time, leaping to the floor from three steps up and bounding along the way to the cellar door, a path that was always well lit since he was hardly the only patron who found need for a secondary exit.

  He ducked under the lantern, around the various obstacles, out the back door, and up the few stairs to the street level. And then his considerable momentum was stopped cold, like a ship running aground. A blow to the stomach doubled him over, a blow so solid he was sure he had run into a hitching post or some such.

  But then a massive hand grabbed him by the hair and pulled him straight, craning his head back at an unnatural angle, and he found himself looking into the face of the two-legged bear, an animal smart enough to not be fooled twice, apparently.

  “Jonah Bolingbroke?” the man said, and Bolingbroke could not help but note the odd combination of thoughtfulness and menace in his tone. “A word with you, sir, if you please.”

  In the end, the words had been few. Indeed, if this fellow had wanted information from Bolingbroke, he had neglected to ask. Most of the communication was of a type with which Bolingbroke was more familiar; kicks, blows, curses, though far from the worst of those he had experienced. Bolingbroke was shoved to the floor of a carriage and brought around to the place where he was now. Where that place was, he did not know.

  Nor did he know how long he had remained trussed and lying on the floor. Quite a while, it seemed, though time passed very slowly in such circumstances. There were a few things he could discern about his surroundings, despite the absence of light. He was lying on a carpet of some sort, and it was soft, and that told him something about the quality of the establishment. That and the smell. Or absence of smell. There was no odor of boiling food or unwashed men or smoky fires or any other sort of dank corruption, none of the sort of smells to which he was most accustomed. There was a hint of candles recently burned, wax candles, not the cheap tallow dips that gave feeble illumination to the miserable haunts he more habitually frequented, the sort of places where one was content with deep shadows and was not eager to see what was in those corners where the light could not reach.

  Very well, some wealthy cove, then, Bolingbroke thought. He was not entirely sure how to feel about this revelation. Relief, on the one hand. The wealthy sort did not tend to dole out painful and bloody retribution, and he was pleased about that. On the other hand, pain was something he was accustomed to, and could endure to a surprising degree. The rich, he knew, could arrange for punishment far worse and of much longer duration. He feared men of power, because he did not know what they were capable of doing.

  He was lost in that contemplation when the door opened and the sound made him jump. He shifted and turned his head in time to see a pair of well-worn shoes and wool stockings stepping up to him, and felt big hands grab him under the arms and lift him to his feet. It took a powerful man to do that, and this fellow, Bolingbroke noted, seemed to have not the least bit of difficulty.

  A hand on the back propelled him toward the open door, into a room well lit with the wax candles he had guessed at, and a big man in a suit of clothes far finer than that of Bolingbroke’s handler. He wore a waistcoat with some sort of embroidered pattern running around the edges, but no coat over that. His sleeves were rolled up and, for all his refinement, Bolingbroke could recognize a former seaman, a man raised on hard work who was now aping the gentleman. He would have recognized those characteristics even if he did not recognize the man, but recognize him he did.

  “Mr. Tillinghast, you may free his hands, I should think,” the seated man said. Bolingbroke felt the cold steel of a knife blade against his skin, an upward movement, and the lashings were cut free. He moved his arms gratefully, rubbed his wrists.

  “Sit, Bolingbroke,” the man said, and Bolingbroke looked around and then sat in the chair indicated, facing the man, while the one called Tillinghast, the two-legged bear who had been in his wake the past few weeks, stepped into view on his left.

  “So, Bolingbroke, do you know who I am?” the man said, his tone flat, which was more frightening to Bolingbroke than anger would have been.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Yes, Captain Rumstick.”

  The big man nodded. “And no doubt you know that Jack Biddlecomb is my godson? Jack Biddlecomb who you tried to kill a fortnight past?”

  Bolingbroke sat a little more upright. “Oh, I know. Everyone knows, no damned secret at all.” He had intended to be silent, to yield nothing, but once he opened his mouth it was like the side of a ship stove in, the words gushed like green water. Rumstick was a powerful man, and he had influence and connections at which Bolingbroke could only guess. To save himself, Bolingbroke had to be clever, which he considered himself to be, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

  “If something happens to me,” Bolingbroke went on, “there’ll be no question about who to look to.” It was a good play, he thought, though still his panic seemed to rise with every word he uttered. “It was an affair of honor, straight up, I did nothing wrong and Biddlecomb wasn’t touched. Hell, we never even came to blows. Everyone knows it. I told the captain of the Lady Adams, I said, ‘Anything happens to me, it’s Biddlecomb’s friends to look to, Captain Rumstick and them.’”

  He stopped, panting, as if he had just sprinted three blocks. Rumstick and Tillinghast remained silent, looking at him. There was a clock ticking somewhere behind him; in the silence he heard it for the first time.

  “Are you done?” Rumstick asked as if he did not actually care about the answer.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Because I am really not interested in you, you miserable little worm. I want to know who paid you to challenge Jack to this affair of honor…” his tone suggesting, quite correctly, that honor played no part in the affair.

  “No one paid me,” Bolingbroke said, and felt some of the old defiance creep back into his heart. What, really, could Rumstick do to him? “It was an affair of honor,” he spat. “Maybe you don’t know how those things work.”

  For all his airs, Rumstick was still more forecastle than quarterdeck, Bolingbroke guessed, more whorehouse than counting house. In his younger days, Rumstick would no doubt have beat him to death, but now, precisely because he was trying to be part of a world to which he did not belong, he would do no such thing, and probably would not let Tillinghast do so, either.

  Rumstick had the influence to see that Bolingbroke never shipped out of Philadelphia again, or Newport, or maybe Boston, but there were seaports the world over, and an experienced mariner like him would never want for employment. No, what in truth could this whoreson do?

  But Rumstick, far from being angry or offended, was smiling at Bolingbroke’s defiance. “Honor, you say? Pray, tell me who paid you to suddenly discover this great store of honor, because I know damn well you did not hit on this idea of your own.”

  “If there was someone, I would not tell you, but there wasn’t.” Bolingbroke was sure if there was violence in the offing, it would have been hull up by now, but he saw none on the horizon.

  Rumstick sighed. He and Tillinghast exchanged weary looks. “Bolingbroke, do you know of the British frigates, patrol off the Capes?”

  Bolingbroke shifted, unsure where this was bound. “Yes…” The size and composition of the lurking squadrons changed, but there was generally some Royal Navy presence hanging off the Capes of the Delaware Bay. And the Chesapeake, and New York, and Boston, for that matter.

 
“Do you know why the captains do not molest my vessels, or those of my friends?” Rumstick asked next. “Let me tell you. It’s because I see to it that they are amply supplied with seamen. If someone plays clever with me, then I arrange for him to be employed in His Majesty’s navy. That makes the captains of those ships my dear friends. Would you care to serve the king, Bolingbroke? It’s a job you may keep for life, however long that might be.”

  Bolingbroke felt a wash of fear go through him, and it extinguished any growing confidence that was smoldering there. Maiming or killing someone carried a considerable risk of being found out, and Rumstick likely did not want to chance having the law come after him. But this threat, this was different.

  It was well within Rumstick’s power, and it would indeed put him in the good stead of the commander of any British man-of-war. He, Bolingbroke, would disappear with never a trace. He might get a letter back to someone in the States, but what the hell good would that do? He would disappear into a torment far worse and more prolonged than a simple beating in a back alley. A cannonball through the gut would be the least of his worries, and the least likely fate to befall him. Flogging through the fleet, hanging for insubordination, a slow death from yellow jack in the West Indies, those were the more probable outcomes of his being pressed.

  “But…” Bolingbroke stuttered, flailing for some response. Unfortunately, all he found was the stupidest of possible arguments, and even more unfortunately, he said it out loud. “But I’m an American!”

  At that Rumstick and Tillinghast laughed. Not a cruel laugh, but one of genuine mirth. “And so you are, Bolingbroke!” Rumstick said. “You have papers to prove it?”