Certain that the mere sound of his breathing would disrupt the fragile truce, Summersgill forced himself to inhale and exhale once. The whole ship was tensed like the trigger of a pistol, drawn back almost to the firing point. He breathed again and resented the need, frightened to move.
In the strained silence, Kenyon took off his coat. During the fighting, the stripes on his back had begun to bleed again, and his shirt was marked with long, red parallel lines. A deliberate display? Or an instinctive act of solidarity with Walker’s other victims?
Whichever it was, the crew responded. Faces that had been implacable creased with confusion as a frisson of fellow-feeling went through the Nimrods.
“For the time being, this places me in charge. Lieutenant Cole, the prize is yours. Pick your prize crew and get aboard her immediately.”
“Yes, sir.” Cole nodded. Fear made his face bone white, but his voice held the genuine quarterdeck bark as he singled out a number of men. They looked at one another for support, for signs of defiance, but none seemed willing to make the first move, and Cole’s shoulders relaxed a fraction as the sailors came to his side.
“You will be glad to hear, gentlemen,” Kenyon continued, “that the vessel we rescued has promised a bounty for every man as soon as we get to port, and that’s on top of the prize money for the sloop. A good night’s work. As there will be considerable labor tomorrow, swaying up replacement masts on the prize, we will splice the main brace tonight.”
More cheers, and this time the laughter rang less hollow. Seizing the moment, the sergeant at arms and his mates began to quietly go among the men and hold out their hands for the weapons. Slowly the sailors handed them over, and as the purser brought out the grog they began, one by one, to form themselves into a well-worn, comfortable queue.
“The force of habit is a wonderful thing,” Summersgill said as Peter made his way up the rest of the risers onto the quarterdeck. They stood for a while side by side, both hanging onto the rail for dear life, neither remarking on it, as the ship eased back into normal life around them.
“Indeed.”
“What made you think of…” Even now the taboo was so great that he couldn’t get the words out; he settled for gesturing at the shirt, shamefully stained and on display.
Bowing his head, Peter gave a wan smile to the deck just in front of his feet. “I’ve had more rum pressed on me in sympathy this last night than I could drink in a lifetime. It occurred to me that if the men were sick of authority, an appeal to our common humanity might be in order. We are all Nimrods, after all. One ship’s company, in this together.”
Nevertheless, Summersgill thought, it must have hurt, to stand there so exposed and to know that he was asking for pity. Indeed, he looked half-dead—his color waxy pale, his movements stiffening and growing jerky with pain. “Well”—Summersgill found himself automatically lapsing into his fatherly tone of voice—“I dare say it will all look better after a good night’s sleep.”
“I’m sure it will. I’ll have the opportunity to find out when we get to shore. Until then—having only just coaxed the reins into my hands—I dare not put them down again for anything so trivial as sleep.”
He knew his own capabilities best, perhaps, but to Summersgill’s eyes he seemed sapped to the point of collapse. Worn, even fragile.
Then Kenyon said, “The captain’s injury…” Wincing, he shook his head. “I shouldn’t ask, but…” And Summersgill realized this was not merely physical exhaustion but a deeper wound, a strike at the heart of his certainties.
“It was Bates,” Summersgill confirmed quietly.
Rubbing his eyes as if to smooth out the involuntary grimace, Kenyon tensed. “You saw?”
At Summersgill’s nod, he clenched his jaw, the muscles standing out in his lean face, as the shadows shifted beneath cheekbones and brow. In the east the sky was lightening, and the sound of the ship’s bell rang out sweet and regular as though nothing had ever been wrong in the world, but the darkness lingered in Peter’s eyes. “Damn!” He walked away, over to the compass binnacle, where Hawkes, midshipman of the watch stood, cleaning the blood from his dirk.
“Damn!” Kenyon caught hold of Hawkes by the shoulder. The boy squeaked, surprised.
“Find Billy Bates, give him my compliments and ask him to wait upon me now please.”
Extraordinarily, Summersgill felt the stool pigeon’s stab of guilt. “You can’t mean to punish him for it, surely?”
Fragile was not the word for the look Kenyon turned on him then, ablaze with indignation. With all that fervor behind it, it was a pure expression but frightening for all that. “What else can I do? Am I to call him into the cabin and say, ‘You stabbed the captain in the back, well done, just don’t make a habit of it’? For God’s sake!”
“Please don’t take that tone with me, Peter.”
Shying from the rebuke, Kenyon took off his hat and smoothed back sticky, tangled hair. “My apologies, sir. But surely you see that I must punish him. I cannot wink at attempted murder. Indeed, for all I know it may be actual murder by now. It is touch and go whether the man survives. And he is the captain.”
With a sinking feeling, Summersgill realized there were disadvantages to Peter’s certainties. How easily the viewing of the world in absolutes lent itself to injustice, men, after all, being more complicated than the law.
“You would have killed him yourself had he accepted a challenge.” Summersgill waved aside the protest that that was a completely different thing. “Besides, do you think the crew would stand for it? I should imagine they would declare Bates a hero and hang us, rather than let us harm him. Is this the time for an investigation? Can we not at least put it off until we reach land?”
Peter turned aside for a moment, and the captain’s steward, who had been hovering nervously in the background for some time, took this opportunity to bring him a bowl of warm water and a towel. Peter washed the blood from his hands and face, shrugged into the clean coat that was offered and turned back looking paler yet but a great deal more civilized. For a moment he seemed utterly lost before covering it by glancing up imperiously and saying, “Where is that boy?”
“Here, sir!” Hawkes bounded up the ladder two steps at a time. The man he brought with him, however, was not Bates but a civilian, who would surely have been twisting his elegant tricorn between his hands had he not had one arm in a sling. His snuff-colored coat was fashionably cut and of the best material but had been sadly mauled in the action, and though he had managed to find a wig to go before the Nimrod’s commanding officer, it was clearly not his own. Unruly blond curls escaped in every direction, making him appear more like a dandelion clock than a gentleman, but his face was grave enough to instantly dash the comic effect.
“Adam Robinson, sir. Master of the Clara Bush. The vessel you so gallantly rescued…and I know my second has thanked you before. He…um…spoke of it, but I would just…like to say how deeply, deeply…”
“Please, Mr. Robinson.” Kenyon looked away, flustered. “It is no more than our duty. But I’m curious to know why, when I sent my young gentleman to find me a foremast jack, he returned with you.” He raised an eyebrow at Hawkes, who responded by standing rigidly to attention and looking very serious indeed.
“If you please, sir, I couldn’t find Bates on board. So I thought maybe he was with one of the cleanup crews. I run through the Caesar—that’s the name of the pirate ship, sir—and Mr. Cole telled me he weren’t there, so I went on to the Clara Bush, sir, and there…
“And there…I regret to say. I’m terribly…” Robinson successfully crumpled a corner of his tricorn with his left hand, looking almost ready to cry as he struggled for words.
Knowing that this was probably the first time the young merchant had ever faced battle, Summersgill could completely understand his scattered inability to express himself, but the fact that he would have been the same in the young man’s place did not prevent him from drawing unflattering comparisons with the ma
nliness of the officers around him. Even the boys showed more bravery. He was thankful when Walker’s steward returned with a tray of coffee. The pause to take a cup, to sip and wrap his hand around solid, comforting warmth, worked wonders for Robinson’s composure.
“I regret to say, Captain, that during the battle four of your men came aboard the Clara Bush. They said you had asked me to provide them with a boat so that they could go and alert the rest of the fleet.
“It sounded suspicious, but as you were in the thick of the fighting, there was no way to confirm it. And frankly, sir, I was so overcome with gratitude, how could I be carping or ungenerous in return?”
“How long ago?”
“Half an hour, perhaps a little more.”
Kenyon paced away, hands folded behind him. The men had now drunk their grog, and their ranks had thinned as one watch took to their hammocks. The other began the reassuring ritual of sluicing and scrubbing the decks—Summersgill had to move out of the way quickly to make room for a sailor scraping a bible-sized slab of pumice over the spot where he had been standing.
“They’ll be hull-down by now, but could be we could still see their sail from the maintop,” Hawkes suggested, with the air of a boy trying to impress.
“Indeed, I will have to consider carefully what to do.” Kenyon smiled a rare, genial smile. “You’ll stay to breakfast, Mr. Robinson? You must tell me what you require in the way of men and equipment for repairs. I should like to be underway to Bermuda within the day.”
The galley stoves had been lit; the contented rumble of several hundred men eating hot burgoo filtered up through the floor. Summersgill, who had become inured to the naval habit of eating anything it was humanly possible to digest, tucked in to his roasted porpoise with relish.
Despite the unorthodox bill of fare, the breakfast party was a great success. Hawkes fidgeted at first but was lured into trading comic songs by the other mids. Robinson relaxed into good-humored volubility and began a long recount of the exact steps which had ended with his ship being boarded.
It must have been a full hour into the meal when Kenyon looked up and caught Andrews’ ever-attentive eye. “Mr. Andrews, run up to the maintop, would you, and see if you can’t see the Clara Bush’s launch. I’m afraid that, in the confusion last night, several of our men may have run.”
Later, when the party had broken up, and the work of putting up new masts had begun on both sloop and brig, Summersgill stood in the captain’s cabin and watched as Kenyon wrote a large, careful “R” by the side of each of the four men’s names.
“They were the leaders of the mutiny,” he said quietly, amazed that this small thing should be the last act of what could have been so bloody a drama.
“Yes.” The lieutenant closed the book with a small but final snap. “And one, or perhaps all together must have done for Sanderson. I regret his death, but I find myself thankful not to have to pursue it any further.”
Smiling, Summersgill walked out onto the small balcony that ran beneath the Nimrod’s bright bow of windows. Here in the shade of the stern, with the cool foam of the great ship’s wake beneath him, it was warm but fresh, and the light that arced off the water felt equally clean—sharp as vinegar. “What does R mean?”
“‘Run’, sir. Deserted.”
“So they’ll be shot if they’re found?”
Coming to stand beside him, Kenyon cast a slightly smug expression on the sea. “Not necessarily. Men run all the time—often straight back to their old captains, their old ships. No one looks too closely into the past of a man-of-war’s man who wants to volunteer—they’re more precious than gold to any decent officer.” He canted his head slightly with a rueful, sideways smile. “Bates is a brute, but as you say, we owe him a second chance. The others are good men, pushed too far. This way, if they run back to the navy, nothing more need be said. And if they run into piracy, I will hang them with a clear conscience. Let it be their own choice.”
“Well,” Summersgill said, “I now know that the bloodcurdling accounts of derring-do that your mother recounts to her fascinated circle of friends while taking tea are not at all the fictions I used to suspect. I congratulate you.”
Looking longingly at the brandy bottle that hung above the table in its ingenious barge, rocking in counterpoint to the sea, he added, “And if it is not too wicked of me, may we drink to Captain Walker’s recovery being delayed at least until we reach Bermuda?”
Peter filled up a glass and passed it to him. Sunlight, flowing through the fine wine, cast moving tawny-bronze pools of radiance on the silvered wood of the walls. “According to Doctor O’Connor, that is a certainty, sir. Let us drink, instead, to the Nimrod, come through this storm unbowed.”
A splendid young man, Summersgill thought again. Just such a young man as he would like for his son. He determined not to let the acquaintance return to distant civility once they arrived. It would make him very happy indeed to see his daughter married so well. “To the Nimrod,” he said, lifting his glass. “And to us.”
Peter laughed, a startled, shy sound, barely to be heard over the froth and whisper of the wake. He closed his eyes briefly, utterly failing to mask the light of pleased embarrassment, and drank. “Indeed, sir. To us.”
Chapter Ten
Emily walked out of the cabin into a beautiful morning. The Nimrod was still silent, but now it seemed a silence of peace. Men smiled at her as she passed. Only a cable length away, the Caesar bustled with activity as Lieutenant Cole oversaw the raising of a new mast. The sun shone on a deck brown with gore, and she could see the tracks of it down the ship’s sides, where a tide of blood had run out of the gutters and spouted into the sea. Looking down, she saw the water was still pink. Something floated there and, recoiling, she saw it was a severed arm.
“Oh!” Covering her mouth, she half ran to the other side of the ship where the young owner of the merchant ship already stood, looking as haunted as she felt herself. She stumbled as she approached, and he took her arm in his undamaged hand, supporting her.
“I am quite fallen to pieces,” he said, unconsciously grotesque. “You shouldn’t have to… No one should have to see this. What a world we live in that men can do this to one another and be proud of it.”
He was wigless, and his fair hair caught the sunlight, surrounding him with a halo of light that brought out the blue of his eyes and made the gentle, sensitive look in his face seem like a benediction. Emily’s nausea eased suddenly, and she smiled, forgetting to twitch her arm out of a grasp that had forgetfully lingered.
“It is dreadful,” she agreed with relief. “But would you not say it was necessary? After all, the men who attacked you would hardly have ceased if you had only politely asked them to go away.”
The smile changed his whole aspect. Where melancholy he had seemed a little too boyish, smiling he was an Apollo. Her heart skipped a beat at the sunny kindliness of the expression. When it faded she found herself wishing fervently that it would come again.
“No, I suppose they would not. But I walked through the pirate ship to come on board. They did not throw their casualties overboard, as we do, and the… Oh God! The piles of carnage…pulped, like fruit.” He took his hand abruptly away from her to cover his eyes. “I was too happy at the time to register it. But now it returns to me, like a nightmare—a nightmare I cannot tell myself is untrue.”
“We throw our dead overboard?” she said, struck with her own mirroring horror. “Unnamed? Unburied? Like refuse?”
For a moment they stood together, watching as Mr. Robinson’s crew scrubbed at the decks, pink water gushing from the Clara Bush’s scuppers, and while the horror and disgust took up half her mind, the other half rejoiced at having found someone she could speak to who seemed to understand.
“Forgive me.” Now he took his hand from his face and offered it to her, smiling again, a smile that began tentative but became radiant when she placed her fingers in his grasp. “Adam Robinson, owner and master of the wreck tha
t you see over there.”
“Emily Jones.” She dropped him a little curtsy, her fingertips tingling and a warmth spreading down her arm and into her belly at his touch. Some sense of defiance prompted her to add, “My mother is a hat maker in London.” And she hugged the delight to her as his smile broadened.
“Thank goodness.” He bowed so rustically that Emily’s new dancing master would have been scandalized. “I thought you were a great personage. I was a little afraid to speak to you at all.”
“I’m very glad you did,” she said, hardly caring that it was too bold. After a month with only her elderly father and the barely human men of the navy for company, she felt rescued—a child assured that there are civil people in this world after all. “It has been a long voyage, and the company has been somewhat…limited.”
He reached up and toyed with the bow of his cravat, and she found herself watching his fingers, appreciating both the elegant shape of them and the ink stains that betrayed him as a tradesman. It occurred to her then that her father was not going to be pleased if she chose to encourage this acquaintance, and at that thought, it became clear to her that she very much wanted to.
“You are not one of these young ladies who spends all her time reading in the Naval Gazette then?” he asked with a nervous laugh.
“No indeed. I think trade to be the best policy for the betterment of our nation and the Empire, and once I am on land, I hope never to have to venture to sea again.” It was a little forward, perhaps, considering she knew nothing about him other than that she liked his smile, but the scattered parts of bodies even now being consumed by a frenzied knot of sharks beneath the keel made her conscious of how uncertain life was and how little time there was to waste. “What is it that you specialize in, Mr. Robinson?”
If he was taken aback by her obvious interest, he did not show it, but his smile did falter as he said, “At the moment? Nothing.” His fidgeting fingers left the cravat and rose to toy with his hair, pulling it. “I had a cargo of silk and sweetmeats,” he elaborated apologetically, “to take to America to trade for furs. But it seems the enemy’s cannon punctured the hold, allowing salt water to get among the boxes and bales. My stock is ruined and my ship… Well, they have been pumping all night, and Lieutenant Kenyon assures me that his men can keep the labor up until we reach Bermuda. So I have not lost everything, but…”
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