Game of Bones

by David Donachie

  ‘Captain Henry Illingworth. To whom do I owe the honour, sir?’

  ‘Providence,’ Harry replied, wearily. ‘Which as you know is exceeding fickle.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘HE’S A damned villain, sir,’ boomed Illingworth, his loud voice magnified by the low timbers of Harry’s cabin, to which they’d repaired as soon as the introductions were completed.

  His florid complexion, aided no doubt by his wine, gave him a colour to go with his abundant grey-tinged red hair. Thick lips, prominent teeth, and bulging eyes, on a face dominated by a thick nose, made it impossible for him to hide any emotion. He looked either very angry, very subdued, or when he smiled exceedingly self-satisfied. All three had been on display as he’d described how having set sail from Calcutta in convoy he’d run ahead of his compatriots with the aim of being first home, only to meet his nemesis in the English Channel.

  ‘Damn me if he didn’t offer to sell me back my ship if I met his price in decent coin. Goes by the name of Auguste Tressoir. Had the damn cheek to introduce himself, and give me chapter and verse about the charms of his domicile port.’

  ‘Which is?’ asked James.

  ‘Isigny-sur-Mer,’ Illingworth snorted, derisively. ‘It may have been sur mer in times ancient, sir. But from my knowledge of the place it’s a silted-up backwater now, useless for any depth of keel without a near-flood tide. But that is where he’s taken my ship. Worse than that, Tressoir’s made prisoners of my passengers. He intends to hold them, as well as the Lothian, for ransom.’

  ‘Then they must be worthy of it,’ James replied, as Illingworth held out his goblet for a refill.

  A large handkerchief was produced, and the thick nose, after a hearty blow, received a vigorous rub. ‘They are that, Mr Ludlow. Sir William Parker and his family are exceedingly well connected. Indeed, two of his brothers are admirals, both favoured with advantageous appointments by the ministry.’

  Harry wasn’t sure whether it was the look of enquiry he wore or his own momentum that made Illingworth continue. ‘It was a most unfortunate occurrence that Sir William let this be known. But he is a man of parts, one might almost say a person of a boastful persuasion, who demanded of Tressoir that he treat both him and his party with respect.’

  ‘You, I trust, would not have done so.’

  ‘Never, sir. Silence is always the best policy on these occasions. Tressoir had been gifted enough by the mere capture of my ship. Lothian had a cargo worth a quarter of a million sterling.’

  ‘Did that include your private ventures?’ Harry asked.

  ‘A few pearls, sir, of trifling value,’ Illingworth replied, coughing slightly, then suddenly reproducing the handkerchief to cover both his face and the embarrassment of dissembling. At least he hadn’t insulted them with an outright lie.

  James smiled, as aware as Harry of Illingworth’s dissimulation. Every John Company captain carried valuables back from the East, to augment a scale of pay which was well above the norm for ships’ masters. Diamonds, pearls, silks, and spices were the favoured personal cargoes, and all would be sold to professional smugglers, long before his ship made its landfall, thus avoiding the need either to pay duty or to admit officially to their presence. Five thousand pounds’ profit was not uncommon on the round trip, much more if the captain had the means and experience to place private advantage ahead of Company benefit. Well aware that he was unlikely to be believed as to the value of his goods, Illingworth kept talking, if anything more loudly than before.

  ‘Sir William may well have had some ventures of his own. Lord knows his wife’s jewellery was worth a mint of money. Besides that, it is not uncommon for returning Company officials to bring back the results of their labours. In that they merely follow in the footsteps of Clive and Warren Hastings, though I doubt that Sir William was amongst the first rank of Bengal nabobs.’

  ‘If that’s the case your ship could be worth as much as a million pounds,’ said James, enjoying the startled reaction that the figure produced.

  ‘Nothing like that, I do assure you, sir.’

  ‘Then half, perhaps?’

  ‘Sadly, yes,’ said Illingworth. But he wasn’t downcast. In fact, he was looking eagerly at Harry, mouth half open and eyes alight. It soon became obvious why. Leaving the protection of a convoy might be lauded if he’d arrived safe home. But having been separated and captured, Illingworth could well be in deep trouble.

  ‘I know she’ll not become a potential prize until Tressoir’s had her twenty-four hours, but she might still be worth the chase. Naturally, I would be willing to reward any man who chose to recover her before then. And I’m sure Sir William would have both the means and the inclination to do likewise. Added to that, the Company can in such circumstances be exceedingly generous.’

  ‘I cannot go in pursuit of your ship, Captain Illingworth. During your short time on the deck you will have observed that I have sustained damage that makes such a notion impossible. And no doubt you have heard the pumps clanking away.’

  ‘I observed both when I came aboard, Captain Ludlow.’ Illingworth lifted a thick, enquiring eyebrow. ‘There was a ship that tried to engage us just after we’d been taken. It was impossible to make out her true nature in the fog, of course, but I reckoned her as British. Tressoir had a man in the tops yelling out her course and speed. He showed some skill in his timing, as well as the way he employed my cannon. Indeed he removed the fellow’s upper foremast, bowsprit, and goodly section of bulwark.’

  ‘That would be us,’ answered James.

  Illingworth turned to face him, his brows now knitted in something approaching indignation. ‘A little more subtlety might have achieved a result. That bull at the gate approach, when you didn’t know the state of affairs, was gallant enough, but exceeding hazardous. The whole advantage of the fog was tossed away.’

  The merchant captain’s hands had begun to move, as he tried to convey the movements of the two protagonists. Busy with that, he didn’t see the reaction his words had produced on Harry’s face.

  ‘Had you come up on his open side and boarded he would have had a hard job to avoid being taken, since my own crew were barely constrained. Let me say without doubt that I would have granted you his ship as your prize, something in which the Directors of the East India Company would have supported me.’

  ‘We have no need of Company rewards, Captain Illingworth,’ snapped Harry. ‘Nor of advice on the way to capture enemy vessels. This is an area in which, I think, I have somewhat more experience than you.’

  ‘I intended no slur, sir.’

  Harry stood up and glared at him. ‘Yet you have seen fit to issue one. And that to a fellow sailor who has just gone out of his way to rescue you. I suggest to you that being personally in distress does not grant you the right to question the actions of a man like myself.’

  ‘Forgive me, sir,’ Illingworth protested. But he spoke in vain, since Harry’s back was already halfway through the cabin door. He turned his gaze on to James. ‘I meant no slur.’

  ‘You would not need to with a man in such a mood,’ James replied, sadly. ‘It might be best if you avoided his presence until we make our landfall.’

  ‘I have yet to ask where we’re headed.’

  ‘The Downs, Captain. Our family home is no more than six miles from the very heart of the Deal anchorage.’

  ‘An excellent place to berth, sir. I had intended to shave the Goodwins myself, weather and tide permitting, having always found the offshore tradesmen in that part of the world very obliging.’

  The way he said ‘offshore tradesmen’ was designed to avoid the word smuggler, while leaving James in no doubt about what he meant. James’s waspish reaction, so close to the tone of his brother Harry, shocked him.

  ‘I have had some experience of Deal smugglers, sir, and it was somewhat less than obliging. Indeed they are to me a damnable crew.’

  Illingworth recovered quickly from what was obviously another gaffe, returning to the saf
er subject of the ship and its problems.

  ‘Deal lacks a dockyard, sir, and the Stour is a mite shallow for a ship of your draft. If I’m not mistaken your vessel badly requires such services.’

  ‘You have the right of it. The hull has gone two years without a scrape, and nearly all of that spent in warm waters. I am told we are trailing several feet of weed. And we have been in many a battle, Captain Illingworth, being hit hard below the waterline on one occasion.’

  James looked away, remembering Harry in the harbour at New York. With the new nation, and its trade, booming, every shipwright had been occupied. Too busy to effect repairs immediately, they’d naturally assumed that the privateer captain would wait. He did, but only long enough to trade the gold and silver he was carrying for Federal bonds guaranteeing him vast tracts of land if they couldn’t be redeemed.

  Several of the crew, seeing the results of their cruise turned from coin into paper, were less than happy, even though in a country desperately short of specie Harry had concluded a splendid transaction. But once that deal was done he couldn’t abide the inaction and so set sail with his bottom unrepaired.

  Illingworth, still talking, dragged James’s thoughts back from these unpleasant recollections.

  ‘Then I would not be surprised if you have lost some of your copper, Mr Ludlow, and that the worms are at this very minute gnawing on your hull.’

  ‘Then I bid them cease,’ said James, standing up, ‘lest we founder where we are.’

  ‘I beg you speak softly, Mr Ludlow,’ Illingworth replied with deep gravity. ‘The teredo worm has ears and an abiding hatred of the species Homo sapiens. Having spent time in Indian waters, and seen what damage they can do in mere weeks, I am convinced of it.’

  ‘No doubt my brother has plans to take care of that. My guess is that he will head for the dockyard at Blackwall Reach, since that is where Bucephalas was built.’

  ‘Then you will oblige me if you do so, sir,’ Illingworth added, now looking distinctly gloomy, ‘though I look forward with some trepidation to informing the Directors of the loss of my own vessel. I have even less desire to pass on to them the terms that villain Tressoir proposed.’

  James came on deck long after he’d been told of the latest hail from the masthead, time enough for those already present to have confirmed the nationality of the two frigates bearing down on them. They were closing fast, their man-of-war’s pennants streaming to leeward. Pender was standing close to Harry, but it was obvious from the gap between them that no contact existed.

  ‘Signal, Capt’n,’ said Dreaver, quietly, his foxy face anxious lest he inadvertently cause offence. ‘Master to repair aboard.’

  ‘Pender, the ship’s papers and log,’ Harry replied, ‘and let’s get the cutter over the side.’

  Pender hesitated and looked set to object, entirely due to the tone Harry had used, plus the lack of the usual courtesies. But there was really no point in quibbling. Both orders had to be obeyed, as much to oblige the Royal Navy as to satisfy his captain. Illingworth, following James’s advice to stay out of Harry’s way, was not on deck. But he was sent for and the speed with which he appeared testified to his knowledge of what had happened, plus the possible consequences. He came to join them forward of the mainmast, hat in hand, his face wearing an extremely worried look.

  ‘The lead ship has been identified as Amethyst,’ said James. ‘The other seems new built, and is therefore a mystery.’

  Illingworth nodded. Bucephalas was manned by ex-navy men to whom the outlines and figureheads of the King’s ships were as familiar as their own faces. His forehead creased with concern. ‘I fear we are both at risk here, Captain Ludlow. Let us hope that the officers on those ships have their full complements aboard.’

  ‘I carry exemptions for my crew, sir,’ replied Harry, without turning to face him, his voice showing no trace of sympathy for Illingworth’s plight, nor even a hint that what he was saying, judging by past experience, could well be over-sanguine. ‘They are signed by a senior member of government. So I expect, close to home shores, they will suffice to protect me.’

  Illingworth glanced at his own men, now without even a ship to safeguard them from impressment, then opened his mouth to ask the obvious question. Harry spun round and cut him off abruptly.

  ‘I suggest, sir, that you accompany me. I will have enough of a task pleading for my own crew without doing the same for yours.’

  ‘Are your crew named, sir, in their exemptions?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet you must on such a long commission have lost many of their number, to natural causes if not the bloody cost of battle.’

  Illingworth was right. Of the eighty men who’d set sail from Deal two years previously just under sixty were coming home, and a round dozen of them were carrying wounds that might well keep them ashore in future. The truth of the remark didn’t please Harry, as was obvious from his increasing silent anger, but that didn’t halt the merchant captain, to whom the fate of his own thirty crewmen was much more important than his rescuer’s ire.

  ‘Perhaps your losses are enough to cover the number of unwounded sailors I brought aboard. It would be a cruel fate that saw them taken aboard a man-of-war after a voyage to India.’

  ‘What would happen, Captain Illingworth, if, in a careful study of my log, such a manoeuvre were to be rumbled?’

  Hat off, with his red-grey hair streaming straight back to leeward, Illingworth, even as he composed his face to plead, looked very like a man wearing a gargoyle mask. ‘Every captain afloat seeks to avoid the press. The navy expects subterfuge.’

  Harry continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I would expose my own men to the fate which awaits yours, sir, that is what would happen. Having plucked you from the sea I feel that I have done enough in the charity line.’

  ‘As you wish, sir,’ replied Illingworth, replacing his hat.

  He stepped aside to let Pender give Harry the large oilskin pouch containing his papers. From somewhere forward the sound of playing bones, accompanied by tuneless whistling, could be heard again, a tattoo of rapid, then slow, rhythmic cracks which seemed to heighten the drama of the occasion. Harry had never liked the sound much, whether it was made with metal spoons or whale bones. The instruments Flowers was using were his pride and joy, twin nine-inch pieces of hard bone, flat and smooth on the playing face, and intricately carved with scrimshaw work on the arched back.

  ‘Will someone tell that damn bone player to belay,’ snapped Harry, rubbing his forehead. ‘The noise drives me mad.’

  No one had to pass on the message, since the sound of bones and whistling ceased abruptly. The boat was already bobbing in the water and both captains climbed down in silence, which was maintained as they were rowed across to the frigate, even though Illingworth looked set to speak on several occasions. But Harry stared past him, not willing to converse in a situation he dreaded, in which he would be at the least exposed to a very high degree of condescension.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEIR reception was as frigid as Harry expected, with no hint of ceremony as they came aboard. The officers and midshipmen on deck, efficient like the crew, either ignored the pair or stared with ill-mannered curiosity, trying to guess which one was the privateer captain: Illingworth was the better dressed, so they naturally directed their extra malevolence at him. Left hanging about on deck, so that they would know the depth of the navy’s disdain, they were finally ushered into the great cabin after forty minutes.

  ‘Good God, it’s you!’ said the captain, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

  ‘Rykert,’ Harry replied, holding forward his papers.

  The frigate captain didn’t take them right away. Instead he indicated to his steward to bring forward a couple of chairs. Clearly, whatever attitude he had assumed for this meeting had been blown off course by the fact that he knew Harry Ludlow.

  ‘How many years is it since I last saw you?’ he asked. When Harry didn’t reply, he kept talki
ng, his voice betraying suppressed excitement. ‘It was on Albemarle I recall. Have you heard about St Vincent?’

  Harry shook his head slowly as Rykert grinned happily, and spoke enthusiastically. ‘Then you’ll be pleased to know that on St Valentine’s Day Admiral Jervis trounced the Spanish fleet, with our old acquaintance Horatio Nelson very much to the fore. Indeed, rumour has it that without his cheek there would have been no fight to speak of. He had the Captain and you’ll not be surprised to hear that even without the necessary orders he took her into the thick of the action. The man’s the hero of the nation now. Captured two ships at once, crossing the deck of the San Josef to board the Santissima Trinidad. It’s been called ‘Nelson’s patent bridge for capturing first-rates.’ Isn’t that just the finest thing?’

  Rykert’s voice trailed off as he picked up the look in Harry’s eye, not sure if it was sadness or indifference, his own face losing the happy expression that his visitor, in receipt of such news, should have shared. No doubt he would have been intrigued at the flow of Harry’s thoughts. The mention of the Albemarle had conjured up happy memories; Rykert and he had taken passage to America aboard her in the year ’82, Harry on his way to an appointment in Admiral Hood’s flagship, Barfleur, while Rykert was bound for Halifax. Yet it was the name of her captain that had the greater impact. Harry’d been a relatively new lieutenant when they met, perhaps more impressionable than he was now. An instant rapport formed immediately, manifested in a dozen different ways. Partly it was Nelson’s directness which appealed, his way of cutting through the normal hyperbole of naval conversation to state the kernel of any truth. But the way he ran his ship impressed Harry just as much, since he was able to converse easily with everyone from his premier to the lowest waister without the least trace of condescension, while the considerate way he treated his midshipmen was an example to every officer in the service.