The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  He drifted farther aft, but it did no good. Wentworth drifted aft with him, and while Jack was trying to look as if he was not avoiding Wentworth, Wentworth was trying to look as if he was not seeking Jack out. But Jack could see that he was, and sure enough, it was not a minute later that Wentworth approached him where he stood by the newly rebuilt helm.

  “Captain, how are you, sir?” Wentworth said with a forced casual air. “All’s well, I trust?”

  “Well enough,” Jack said. “And you? You are surviving this heat, I hope.”

  “Ah, the heat … It’s something, to be sure. Can’t say I’ve ever experienced the like.”

  For a moment the two men were silent, looking forward at the work taking place near the bow, and Jack thought through various ways he might make his excuses and send Wentworth away. At certain times he might find Wentworth amusing, but this was not one of them. Wentworth, however, stopped him by saying, “Captain, I wonder if I might have a word with you?”

  “Well, I’m quite occupied here, Mr. Wentworth…”

  “Of course. And this won’t take long. Or perhaps it will. In any event, I know this is really not my affair … but … it’s about this business of arming the ship.”

  “Yes?” Jack said. He felt as if he had gone en guarde. Wentworth was broaching the very subject over which he had just been agonizing, and Jack did not care for it.

  “Well, it’s simply … I’m not entirely sure this is the right course of action. Are you certain that fighting this fellow is the best thing? The British officers, you know, they’ve represented to me that they think the whole thing is mad.”

  “Yes, well, I generally don’t turn to British naval officers for advice,” Jack said. “Mr. Frost and I have been over all of this, have thought it through. Surely he’s explained to you our thinking here.”

  “Explained to me? No, why would he?” Wentworth asked.

  “You’re his assistant, aren’t you? Aren’t you assisting him on whatever business he’s on in Barbados?”

  Wentworth’s expression was one of surprise, and that in turn surprised Jack. “No,” Wentworth said, “I have no relationship with Mr. Frost. I’m bound to Barbados on family business. Actually, I think my father wanted to be shed of me for a bit, but that’s neither here nor there. No, I first met Mr. Frost at the City back in Philadelphia when we were waiting to board. I certainly do not know him any more than you. Much less, I would imagine.”

  “Indeed?” Jack said. This took him very much by surprise, altered his entire understanding of the situation aboard his own ship. He had thought the two of them a pair, confidants. But apparently not.

  “That’s just the thing,” Wentworth continued. “I don’t know what Frost is about, but it all seems damned odd. I mean, at first he seemed only interested in defending against privateers, but to hear him now he seems damned eager to seek out and fight this L’Armançon again. Why, I wonder? And why did Oxnard set him aboard, almost as if he wanted Frost to be certain we tangled with the Frenchies?”

  “Is that how it seems?” Jack asked. “Because it seems to me you know a bit more than you are letting on.”

  Wentworth appeared to flush at that, a slight reddening in the cheeks, but it might well have been the beastly heat. “I am only looking at the facts,” he protested. “You seem like a perfectly competent mariner, but doesn’t it strike you as odd that a fellow like Oxnard, who is a radical Republican to his very soul, would hire the son of a war hero who is so closely aligned with the Adams administration? One who is … what … but twenty years old?”

  A perfectly competent mariner … Jack thought, but those were not the words that really struck him.

  “I thought you said you didn’t know who my father was.” Jack could feel the irritation rising now, he felt those familiar danger signs. Concomitant with his decisiveness was a general inability to control impulses, and that failing applied to venting anger as much as it did to seeking pleasure. Both tendencies often saw him standing into danger.

  “Strictly speaking, I expressed surprise that you had a father. But yes, of course I know who your father is. Here you are, a sailor from Rhode Island named Biddlecomb, it took no great leap of the imagination.”

  “Then you will not be surprised to know that I am quite determined to take this fight to the enemy. That should take no great leap of the imagination, either.”

  He could hardly believe those words had come from his lips. If anyone else had suggested he was eager for a sea fight because he was Isaac Biddlecomb’s son he would have resented it bitterly, but here he had said it himself. But this discussion with Wentworth had served one purpose; Jack was now determined to fight and beat L’Armançon. Over the course of five minutes he had gone from maddening uncertainty to granite-hard resolve. Because that was how he was made.

  “I understand that this sort of thing is in your blood,” Wentworth said, starting to sound a bit annoyed himself, “but I think you would do well to consider what’s going on here. The whole thing seems damned odd to me.”

  “See here, Wentworth, if you don’t care to go into harm’s way, you are certainly welcome to remain ashore. It should be no difficulty to secure some other sort of passage to Barbados.”

  Wentworth stood a little straighter, and with visible effort controlled his expression and tone. “What, pray, are you insinuating, sir?”

  “I am insinuating nothing. I am saying, simply, that you need not sail with us…” Jack knew that he should stop there, keep his lips clamped shut, leave that suggestion hanging in the air, not take an ugly situation and push it over the edge. But he could not resist, because that was how he was made, so he added, “… if you are afraid.”

  With those four words Wentworth’s entire demeanor changed. The conciliatory, hesitant quality was gone, and in its place was the full arrogance and pride of the Boston Wentworths.

  “No one,” he said, his voice icy, “not you, Captain, no one, will suggest that I am afraid. I will thank you for an apology, or I will thank you for satisfaction.”

  “I will certainly give you satisfaction, sir, but you will not thank me for it, depend upon it,” Jack said, and though he had no qualms about fighting Wentworth, none at all, he did wonder if he might have handled that situation a whole lot better.

  24

  On the evening following his interview with Jonathan Ness, Ezra Rumstick called on his dear friend Isaac Biddlecomb. They did not have the opportunity to see one another as much as either man might have liked, but theirs was the sort of friendship that would not suffer because of it. They could sit by a fire, or by a bay window overlooking the street, drinks in hand, and their conversation would take up as if they had been apart only long enough for one of them to use the necessary.

  “Well, Isaac,” Ezra said, settling himself in a heavy upholstered chair in Isaac’s parlor. Isaac sat in its mate, and between them stood the gaming table, which now held a decanter and glasses rather than cards or dice. “You are in the vortex of power now, how does it feel?”

  “Ha!” said Isaac, filling the glasses. “Exhausting. Sessions, committees, salons, dear Lord it never ends. The bickering, I’d like to knock them all on their heads.”

  “Commanding a ship ain’t the best way to learn to navigate these waters, I reckon,” Ezra said. “Not a great deal of negotiating and, ‘If you please, sir,’ when you’re on your own quarterdeck.” He picked up a glass and took a sip.

  “You’ve hit it right on the head,” Isaac agreed. “A man gets used to ordering others to do this or that, gets used to the notion that there’s no one of equal rank aboard, no one whose sensitivities must be considered. Even those fellows who served in the army, and there’s quite a few of them in Congress, as you know, they are more accustomed to having superiors around, none of the autonomy of a ship’s master. I think they have an easier time of it than me.”

  “I would imagine,” Ezra agreed. They were silent for a minute, enjoying the drinks and the company.

/>   “I tell you, Ezra, it was so wonderfully simple during the war. You knew who the enemy was, at least once he fired the first shot. Now, you have no notion of who the enemy is. Even after he slips the knife in your back.”

  “‘Wonderfully simple during the war,’ is it? Your memory is going in your old age.”

  Isaac smiled. “You’re right. You’re right.”

  More silence. More drinking. “Have you had any word from Jack, at all?” Ezra said at last, working his way around to the real reason for his visit, beyond a genuine desire to see an old friend and shipmate.

  “No, no,” Isaac said with something approaching a sigh. “It’s rare that he writes when he’s abroad. I suppose I could go around to Oxnard’s, see if he has had word, but Oxnard’s another one I’d like to knock on the head, and I hardly trust myself around the man.”

  “He’s a rascal of the first order, to be sure,” Ezra said. “So, no word if the voyage was uneventful? Nasty storm a few weeks ago, they likely felt that.”

  “No doubt. But whatever Jack lacks in judgment ashore he makes up for in seamanship when he’s afloat, and then some. Abigail’s a good ship and Jack shipped a good crew, so I have no concerns on that front.”

  More silence. More drinking.

  “Actually,” Isaac said at last, “now that you mention Jack, it reminds me of a particularly odd letter I received … Lord … several weeks ago now. I was going to mention it to you, but I quite forgot the last time we were together. It was from Alexander Hamilton, of all people.”

  “Another rascal,” Ezra said, “but at least he is a Federalist rascal.”

  “Just so. Did you ever meet him?”

  “I’ve had the pleasure, if such it is,” Ezra said. “A few times. I’m not certain he would remember me. Have you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Isaac said. “We’ve met several times, corresponded on and off. He’s ostensibly in private practice, you know, but when it comes to politics he’s like an octopus, has his tentacles wrapped around everything. Adams can’t abide the man, but if one is in government, as I am, you can hardly avoid him.”

  “So … what was this letter about?” Ezra asked.

  “It was about Jack, not what I expected. A warning that Oxnard was not to be trusted, that he shouldn’t take command of Oxnard’s ship. Said it might even be a danger to him, hinted at some intrigue. Damned odd. How he happened to know about Jack getting the Abigail, or why he would care, I can’t imagine.”

  “Hamilton has people everywhere, and they make certain he knows what’s acting. No doubt Hamilton keeps abreast of a political enemy such as Oxnard.”

  “No doubt,” Isaac agreed. “But how Jack and the Abigail could play a part in any of that I can’t imagine. I mean, I’m delighted that my son has his first command, and a good little ship she is, but she’s still just an innocuous merchantman.”

  “True,” Rumstick said, not entirely sure what innocuous meant. Just a merchantman … he thought, but Oxnard saw to it she was a merchantman with guns. He wondered if that might have some relevance.

  “Anyway, I never did pass the warning to Jack,” Isaac continued. “The letter arrived a few days after Abigail set sail.”

  The two men fell silent again, but Ezra’s mind was racing. He considered telling Isaac about Bolingbroke and the duel, but saw no point. It was over, Isaac did not need the worry it would cause, and Ezra had every intention of finishing the business in whatever way it needed finishing.

  “These fellows, the officers in Adams’s administration, they are most of them holdovers from Washington, are they not?” Ezra asked, his thoughts setting a new course.

  “They are,” Isaac said.

  “And so I would imagine Hamilton had a hand in their selection. He might still have some influence over them.”

  “Might? Surely does, I would think. Wolcott of the Treasury and McHenry in particular are acolytes of Hamilton. He may well control them like puppets, and you can be sure that won’t be to President Adams’s benefit.”

  “No…” Rumstick said, his mind continuing down this new line of thinking. But he was being rude, and he knew it. He was there to visit his friend, so he turned to Isaac and said, “Now, pray, give me all the gossip about progress with the navy.” With that he could see in Isaac a renewed enthusiasm. He sat up a little straighter and launched into a subject of which he was genuinely knowledgeable, genuinely passionate.

  And Ezra listened, nodded, even made the odd comment, but his mind was elsewhere, on Hamilton, Oxnard, a battery of six pounders.

  * * *

  Jack Biddlecomb was thinking about his father. It was early, dawn was still an hour away, and he was washing his face in the basin on the sideboard, pulling on his shirt and breeches, and thinking about his father. Any business that involved a sword made him think of Isaac. In his mind the connection was organic, swords and his father indivisible.

  Jack’s grandfather, John Biddlecomb, had been a soldier. Jack never met him. His father hardly knew him. John Biddlecomb died fighting with Wolfe in Quebec in ’59. Isaac was eleven then. He had accompanied his father to Canada, had been beside him when he died.

  In those earlier years of his father’s childhood, on the little farm they owned in Bristol, Rhode Island, John had taught young Isaac the use of weapons, had labored to pass on skills he himself had gained through hard use. Isaac proved to have a modest ability with musket and pistol, and at best a moderate interest in them. But the sword was a different matter.

  Young Isaac had felt an affinity for steel and shown a concomitant skill with a blade. John Biddlecomb recognized this, encouraged it, worked Isaac through various drills with swords carved from oak barrel staves. And when Isaac had skill enough that he could be trusted to wield a blade in practice without being a danger to himself or his instructor, John switched to short swords with the points dulled and corked. After a particularly prosperous year, Jack’s grandfather had ordered a pair of the newly fashionable foils from London, their tips nail-headed and blunt, steel of such good quality that the weapons were still in use at Chez Biddlecomb.

  All these things Jack remembered as he tucked his shirt into his breeches. He looked at his coat draped over the back of a chair and decided against putting it on. It was already warm, and he would only have to take it off again for the fight.

  Instead, he picked up the sword and belt that lay on the bed and drew the weapon from the scabbard, let the light of the candle play off the lovely polished steel. The sword had been a gift from his father for his sixteenth birthday, though he had been nearly seventeen by the time he made it back from his various voyages to the family’s home to be presented with it. He and his father had been fencing since Jack was five and old enough to hold his own oak-stave sword.

  Jack held the sword straight out, felt the weight and balance in his hand, the excellent grip. Beautiful, beautiful. He thought back to those summer days fencing on the lawn at Stanton House, or in the big parlor with the furniture pushed aside. The past six or seven years had not been good between him and the old man. Jack set his own course, and his father did not approve. Jack was impetuous, often acted without thinking, and he knew it, and his father did not approve. Jack rejected all that he had grown up with: the money, the Biddlecomb name, the privilege that came with having a famous father, and Isaac did not approve.

  But those early days had been good. Those days when Jack was young and his father had come home from sea to remain ashore and Jack could revel in the way other men looked at his father, the respect and even awe with which they regarded him. He had shown Jack the basics of fencing and the two of them had gone at it, wooden swords and then foils flashing, clattering, until they had collapsed with exhaustion or laughter or both. Jack had demonstrated all of Isaac’s innate skill and then some.

  Isaac had even hired a fencing master to visit their home and bring the instruction to a new level, and together, father and son, they had practiced the drills, the footwork, the blade work, under the
sharp eye and lisping instruction of Sir William Wilde, Fencing Master to the Aristocracy. It was only years later that Jack came to understand that the “Sir” was as phony as the man’s credentials, but for all that, he knew fencing and he knew how to instruct and he left the Biddlecombs much better off, swordplaywise, than he had found them.

  His father had made that very point about Wilde’s good influence on that June day, in Jack’s eleventh year, when Jack for the first time had defeated his father’s blade decisively, had struck Isaac in the chest with a flawless lunge that bent the steel in a lovely arc and left his father gasping and looking down at that perfect hit. Had it been a sword, uncorked, and not the foil, Isaac would have been dead already.

  Jack stepped back and lowered the weapon, as surprised as Isaac had been. Isaac took two steps toward him, put his arm around Jack’s shoulder, and squeezed. “Well done, son, well done!” he said. “You’ve bested the old man at last!”

  Jack did not know what to say. He nodded in agreement.

  “See,” Isaac said, “I only had my father to instruct me, and only for a short time. I picked up what I could but never had the benefit of the regular instruction you’ve enjoyed. And that’s as it should be, because the Biddlecombs have a different place in society now.”

  It was the same with the sailing. More so, because Isaac needed no outside instructor to help him teach his boy about the ways of wind and water, tides, currents, rudder, sails. The Biddlecombs seemed to accumulate watercraft so fast Jack’s mother would joke about the boats breeding in the spring. Canoes, rowing boats, punts, bateaux, boats with sailing rigs, small sloops, they all seemed to find their way to the Biddlecomb dock, or upside down in the yard, or shoved into one of the outbuildings. There was never a dearth of boats to sail, and never a want of enthusiasm for sailing them.