Seaflower: A Kydd Novel

by Julian Stockwin

  Then Renzi saw the leading schooner suddenly surge round, head to wind. Her sails shook until the vessel paid off on the other tack – going before the wind away from them! Shaking his head in disbelief, he looked about, searching for a reason for the sudden retreat: perhaps the headsails of a ship-of-the-line appearing around a headland, a vengeful frigate from the south. Nothing. The other schooner followed suit and, under the incredulous gaze of the brig’s crew, the privateers were seen making for Guadeloupe and their lair.

  Excited, the sailors jabbered away, looking for an explanation for their deliverance.

  Jowett seemed not to share their jubilation. ‘’Cos they seen that,’ he said. His arm pointed towards the north-east. The cloud banks had extended across the sky and darkened. ‘It’s a reg’lar goin’ hurricanoe, that’s what yer sees.’

  ‘We bears up fer English Harbour,’ said the helmsman.

  ‘Nah, we bin holdin’ course fer St John’s an’ we c’n never beat back to the east’d in time.’

  ‘If we makes it ter Antego west about, we’ll be in the lee o’ the storm.’

  Jowett growled. ‘Shut yer jabber – we goes t’ St John’s.’

  The brig was battened down tight; it was hard on the unfortunates in the airless hold and if they foundered or struck on the rocks their end would not be pleasant. Renzi cringed as he gave Louise his assurances and asked her to calm her compatriots. She did this without question, quietly accepting imprisonment in the claustrophobic darkness.

  They kept well clear of the breakers to the south-west of Antigua but by the time the rock-studded danger of Five Isles was abeam, the brig was bucketing and rolling in ugly seas. ‘Only a league or so,’ yelled Jowett, to the men on the yard. They had come up with the little islet of Sandy Island off St John’s and were now within a few miles of safety – but that now seemed impossible, for it lay in the teeth of the fresh gale, hourly increasing in strength.

  Seamen gathered on deck. The distant sight of the town, no more than five miles ahead, taunted and beckoned. The little brig strained to her uttermost close-hauled, but could not lie close enough to the wind to fetch harbour.

  A fizz, then a sudden gout of choking smoke, and a rocket soared up into the grey evening sky to explode high above. Jowett was trying to get a larger vessel to come to their aid, but it was unlikely that any would risk putting to sea under the threat of a hurricane. It was stalemate: on this point of sailing they could only reach the rocky coast to the south where, without charts or local knowledge, they were sure to be wrecked. Or they could run with the gale, but that was no alternative for the hurricane would grow and overwhelm them. It was only a matter of time.

  ‘Wind’s backin’!’ screamed a seaman, as the wind shifted into the north – and with it came a chance. It would need acute judgement, but at the right moment it would be possible to go about then beat down to St John’s. It was a desperate matter, for they would be close up against the coast on one side and the battering storm on the other.

  Renzi watched Jowett: the thirty lives aboard were in his hands. Jowett stood facing directly into the streaming wind, his nose unconsciously lifting in little sniffs as he judged its mood. ‘Ready about,’ he snapped. The brig seemed to stumble as her bow came up into the wind. Renzi willed the plain little vessel to go through stays without complaint, which she did, and they lay over on the larboard tack, every minute gathering speed in the blasting gale.

  Explosions of white heaved skyward from the seas pounding the rocks under their lee. The clouds massing took on an ugly cast, but St John’s grew ever nearer. Soon they encountered the breaking seas over the bar at the harbour entrance and, once inside the headland of Hamilton’s fort, the waves lost their viciousness. Weary and weatherbeaten they headed directly for St John’s town.

  Renzi survived the storm in the company of Louise and the French in a stone warehouse. Worn out and emotionally drained, he snatched what sleep he could with the insane howling of the storm outside. In the morning he looked outside, in the gusting winds and rain of the dying hurricane, and saw their brig miraculously still alongside the wharf, snubbing and rearing like a spirited horse, but safe.

  The time of trial had left Renzi strangely depressed: the lunacy of war was au fond the outworking of the crass irrationality that lay in the heart of Unenlightened Man, but he knew that what lay on him was more personal. At least Kydd would not meet the hurricane at sea: he was safe ashore, but in what circumstances? His helplessness in the face of the situation was probably the true reason for his dejection, Renzi realised. Moody and hungry, he awaited events.

  Rather later a busy little man arrived from the civil administration to relieve him of his charges. He left Louise with no false hopes for Kydd, and when the goodbyes were said, French fashion, he saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes.

  The brig was uncomfortable to work in, her movement brisk and jerky, but it would not need much to make her ready for the short voyage south again to the naval dockyard at English Harbour.

  In the afternoon, Renzi begged leave and went into town, seeking a bookshop, the well of contentment that might restore his balance. Three hours later he returned, spirits restored, his bag stuffed with gold – another Goethe, for ‘Prometheus’ had awakened in him a grudging respect for the man; a second-hand Raynal, the Histoire des deux Indes, which had probably been the property of a French royalist; and an interesting new work by the Plutarchian Robertson on ‘conjectural history’.

  And, most important, a glorious find, newspapers from England a bare six weeks old. He exulted as he tramped back to the brig: this was what it was to be alive! At the gangway a cross-looking lieutenant was waiting. Jowett called down from the deck of the brig and the officer rounded on him. ‘Are you Renzi?’ he huffed.

  ‘I am, sir.’

  ‘Parley-vous le fronsay vraymont?’

  Astonished, Renzi could only stare.

  ‘Answer, then, if indeed you have the French!’

  ‘Mais bien sûr – qu’est-ce que ça vous fait?’

  The lieutenant smiled in satisfaction. ‘That will do. Follow me.’

  Without thinking, Renzi fell into step beside the man, but was swiftly told, ‘Fall in astern, if you please.’ The officer’s look of disdain caused Renzi nothing but secret amusement. A short walk took them to an imposing stone building: a blue ensign and marine sentry at the door proclaimed it a naval establishment. The marine slapped his musket to the present as the officer entered, then winked at Renzi.

  The lieutenant paused. ‘Play your cards right, my man, and your days as a foremast hand may well be at an end.’ Mystified, Renzi followed him down the passageway. They stopped at a door; the lieutenant knocked and leaned inside. ‘The man Renzi, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Send ’im in!’ roared the unseen personage within.

  ‘Rear Admiral Edgcumbe,’ said the lieutenant softly, and ushered Renzi in.

  The Admiral sat behind a massive dark-polished desk, his expression more curious than fierce. ‘So you has the French, an’ a manner to go with it, I’m told,’ he mused, looking keenly at Renzi.

  He slid across a piece of paper and quill. ‘Write “Render to me your return affecting stores that are rotten.”’

  Renzi complied, his hand flying across the page, sure and fluent.

  ‘Damme, that’s a splendid hand for a sailor,’ grunted the Admiral, and looked up sharply. ‘Are ye a forger?’

  ‘Er, no, sir.’

  ‘Pity. First class with a pen, y’ forger.’ His head snapped up. ‘What’s the county town o’ Wiltshire?’

  ‘Sarum – which is Salisbury,’ said Renzi immediately. It was a little too close for comfort: his family were prominent in the next county and he had reason to remember the spires of old Salisbury.

  Admiral Edgcumbe smiled. ‘Ah, quick an’ sharp with it,’ he said, with satisfaction, and leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Flags!’ he roared.

  The lieutenant instantly poked his head ins
ide the room. ‘This one’ll do. Get ’im in a decent rig an’ on the staff.’

  ‘Aye-aye, sir.’

  ‘See he doesn’t run, an’ have him aboard the packet in good time.’ He bent his head again to his work, thus dismissing both men.

  By the evening it had become clear what was going on. The Admiral was newly promoted commander-in-chief designate to the Jamaica station and was due to sail shortly with his staff to take up the appointment. He had been unlucky in the matter of fever – it was damnably difficult to find good replacement staff at short notice – and word about Renzi had reached him just in time. Renzi would be a writer, a form of clerk entrusted only with duplication of orders and unimportant matters, but would prove useful with his good knowledge of the language of the enemy. The lieutenant clearly felt that Renzi had been plucked from an existence as a sea menial to a prestigious position with real prospects, and should be grateful.

  For himself, Renzi felt a lurch of premonition at the mention of Jamaica, but perhaps in the naval headquarters there would be no exposure and therefore little risk of confrontation. A new life of petty politics at headquarters was not to his liking, for he had deliberately chosen the sea life as the purest form of exile.

  Next day the packet swarmed with the Admiral’s retinue. Renzi, as a seaman, knew precisely where to keep out of the way and watched with wry amusement the fluster and confusion as the pretty little topsail cutter put to sea. A small frigate accompanied them as escort, the pair foaming along in the freshness after the hurricane, heading westward deep into the glittering blue of the Caribbean sea.

  The island of Jamaica was raised five days later without incident, an impressive blue-grey monolith appearing out of the morning on the distant horizon. They had passed St Kitts during the night and Hispaniola was a disappointing low scrubby headland, approaching then receding as, with the favourable north-easterlies, they headed direct for the southern coast of Jamaica.

  Off Morant Bay they hove to, a pilot schooner plunging and rolling as she sent across the Kingston pilot, and in turn took aboard the Admiral’s flag lieutenant. They would remain there for the night while warning of the arrival of their august passenger reached the capital overland.

  It had been a pleasant, if crowded passage; the tedium of a sea voyage without duties brought Renzi an unexpected pang of sympathy for the passengers he had previously scorned. More immediately useful was the information he had gleaned from casual talking with the Admiral’s staff. In the West Indies there was wealth, more millions than he had ever suspected, a river of silver and gold heading back to England from trade and its support, but above all from sugar. The plantation society, the plantocracy, had high political significance in London and lived like lords, if the tales of high living were to be believed, but with the great wealth there was another of corrupt and unscrupulous conspirators who infested every class.

  He had met the First Clerk, Mr Jacobs, a dry but astute man who weighed and measured each word before it was uttered. From him Renzi learned that they would be going not to the capital, Kingston, but further inland to Spanish Town, the administrative centre of Jamaica, and would be involved primarily in the necessary dealings of the navy with the civil administration. It was not a prospect that pleased Renzi.

  Morning saw the two ships proceeding sedately westward to the entrance of Kingston harbour. On the sheltered inner side of a low encircling spit of land miles long was the Jamaica station of the Royal Navy: a mighty 74-gun ship-of-the-line, four frigates, sloops of war, and countless brigs and schooners.

  The Admiral had transferred to the frigate during the night in order to make his arrival with all appropriate ceremony, and in the light airs of the morning, clouds of smoke eddied about the anchored 74 as her salute crashed out at the sight of the frigate’s bunting.

  The packet followed humbly in the wake of the frigate, but when the bigger ship went to meet her brethren, it passed across the bay to bring up noisily into the wind opposite a wharf at the end of a street in Kingston town. A heaving line sailed across and they were pulled alongside.

  The hot, sandy streets were alive: drays filled with the trade goods of two continents, merchants concluding deals in the broad piazzas, processions of traders with their slaves following behind. The cheery green and white of the houses was complemented by the gardens, which differed wildly from the calm neatness of English cultivation: here there were fruit-trees, coconuts, tall palms and a riot of colour from vines.

  There was little time for Renzi to stand and stare. Mr Jacobs was clearly discontented with the arrangements for transport. The ketureens – the ubiquitous Jamaican gig sporting a gay raised sunroof on rods – offered insufficient security against possible rain for the two chests of correspondence. When this had been settled, with dozens of negroes walking beside and an overseer riding ahead to clear the way of wagons and carts, they set out on the flat road to Spanish Town. After passing a great lagoon with vast reed beds, they stopped at the Ferry Inn to refresh and change horses before the final run to the old town.

  ‘It is of an age, I believe,’ Renzi said to Jacobs, as they wound along among the outer streets of Spanish Town.

  ‘It is. Founded by Christopher Columbus, and settled by the Dons. Captured by us in 1655.’

  Renzi would have to be content with that bare information, but his mind expanded upon it: two centuries of Spanish indolence and fixed ways, eventless years that were in stark contrast to the tumults in Europe. Then the English had flooded in, upsetting the staid times with their thrusting, mercantile rudeness, turning the old, comfortable social certainties on their head.

  The procession ground into a large square with imposing buildings that would not have been out of place in far Castile. One notable exception was a distinguished white marble edifice set between the two largest structures. They disembarked in its shadow and, to his surprise, Renzi saw that it was a splendid colonnaded statue of an undeniable sea flavour – cannons, rope and the sterns of fleeing enemy ships.

  ‘Rodney,’ explained Jacobs.

  Of course. Renzi remembered. Admiral Rodney had fought the French de Grasse to a smashing defeat in a great fleet action some ten years earlier off Guadeloupe; as a result, Jamaica had been saved from French colonisation.

  He looked around the square: it had a slightly offended air, as of an older gentleman put out by a younger man not fully recognising his dignity. But the cool, ochre-painted stone of the government offices was real enough. There he would see out his working life for the immediate future. These were his prospects. He could envisage only a dreary vista of daily sameness in the months ahead.

  The work was easy enough: the endless round of returns, reports, minutiae of the Fleet, now lying at anchor. It had to be victualled, clothed, repaired, administered. As Renzi dealt with his tiny part of the steady stream, he grew increasingly respectful of the scale of the operation: tens of thousands of men, the Fleet as big as a county town, a moving town that might be anywhere, yet needing the same flow of all manner of goods.

  In the main Renzi was left to himself. He often caught flashes of suspicion from Jacobs, but realised that these were because of his reserved, indeed secretive nature. His, however, was a circumstance of endurance, of serving a sentence, and he had no care of what his interim fellows supposed. His thoughts strayed to Kydd. By now he would probably be a lonely corpse in up-country Guadeloupe, or a prisoner-of-war in a French vessel on his way to incarceration, anything. In the absence of any knowledge, logic was useless, and in sadness he forced his mind to other things.

  The Admiral did not live in Spanish Town: his mansion was out of town in the cooler hills north of Kingston, and after several weeks Renzi was summoned there.

  Admiral Edgcumbe received him at his desk, leaving him standing respectfully. ‘What do ye think o’ that?’ he said, thrusting a newspaper at him and jabbing a blunt finger at the top of one column. It was a copy of the Moniteur from Paris, not three months old, and the article about the u
nstable, now executed Robespierre was interesting and significant. Renzi hesitated – what was he being asked to do? Had the Admiral sent for him merely to ask his opinion on a newspaper article?

  ‘By this, sir, I believe we find that the Thermidor coup has established itself. Robespierre overstepped himself, the Committee felt threatened, combined to overthrow him, execute him, and then––’

  ‘Belay all that, what does it mean?’

  Renzi resumed carefully, ‘It means that the Terror in Paris is spent. The revolution is now controlled.’ He paused, the Admiral’s intense eyes on his. ‘It would be reasonable to suppose that their attention is no longer distracted by the fratricide, that they are now able to turn their attention outward to the larger considerations of the war, perhaps even––’

  ‘Enough.’ The Admiral sat back with a loud grunt. ‘And now be so good as to tell me who in Hades you are, sir.’

  A fleeting smile forced its way on to Renzi’s face. ‘May I sit, sir?’

  ‘You may.’ The flinty eyes did not spare him.

  Deliberately, Renzi relaxed. He crossed his legs and clasped them over the knee, languid and confident, a London beau manqué. ‘You may believe I am a gentleman,’ he said, in tones he had last used in the company of the Duke of Norfolk. The Admiral said nothing, but his gaze did not alter. ‘And you may also know that I have done nothing of which I need be ashamed – you have my sacred word on that.’

  There was a ‘Humph’.

  ‘My beliefs include a devotion to the Rationalist cause, I do not care for the comforts of the old thinking.’ He straightened and fixed the Admiral with a level gaze. ‘Sir, if I am to say more, I must ask for your word, as a gentleman, that this will go no further than yourself.’ He held his breath. This was, on the face of it, a preposterous impertinence from a lowly clerk to a blue-blood admiral.