Game of Bones

by David Donachie

  ‘Illingworth?’

  ‘Tom Biggins and Frog-spawn are tending to him, right now.’

  ‘What’s our position?’

  ‘We’re still driftin’ on the current, about five miles to the east of them islands. I’ve got boats out to keep her head steady and we’ve managed to keep well to the north of some nasty-looking cliffs off our starboard quarter.’

  ‘What about Tressoir?’

  ‘Still where he was, as far as I can see.’

  ‘Help me up,’ Harry croaked.

  ‘You’d best not. That stitchin’ ain’t too secure.’

  ‘Just do it!’

  Getting Harry to his feet wasn’t helped by the narrow confines of the crowded cockpit. The deckbeams were so low that he had to adopt a painful crouch till they reached the companionway that led up to the upper deck. Standing fully upright nearly did for him, and it was only by a supreme effort that he managed to hang on to consciousness. Every step of the steep ladder was a struggle, with Pender behind able to offer only limited help.

  ‘We could stretcher you out,’ he said, not in the least surprised when the response to that suggestion was somewhere between a grunt and a growl.

  They did make it eventually, and Pender could get beside his captain to take his weight. Not that looping Harry’s left arm over his shoulder was achieved without more suffering, but at least the pain was confined to the side of his back which was merely cut. Once in the cabin, Harry leant his head against the wooden bulkhead, his fists clenched as he sought to stay conscious.

  ‘What’s the state of the ship?’

  ‘Bad, your honour. We’ve taken more punishment than she can truly bear, though we were lucky below the waterline.’

  ‘The angle of fire was too high.’

  ‘Aye. But we don’t have a single upper mast standing, and what’s left of the rudder is only being worked by ropes running through the gunroom port. God help us if we meet a gale.’

  ‘I need a coat, Pender.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any use me arguing?’

  ‘None,’ Harry replied, his eyes tight shut. ‘I need to see for myself.’

  ‘Why didn’t that French bastard come after us?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to, with the damage he’s inflicted. And remember most of his men were ashore on the guns. Besides, he has, I hope, his own casualties to deal with.’

  ‘Can I suggest a cloak instead of a coat, Capt’n? If you try to get a jacket on you’ll pass out.’

  Harry pushed himself off the bulkhead and turned round, nodding as he did so. The pain across his back was a dull, constant ache but each movement of his right shoulder was agony.

  ‘Have we got the making of a sling?’ he asked. ‘I need to keep this arm still.’

  They cheered him when he came on deck, which made their depressed captain wonder if they were witless fools. Now, after he’d been nearly destroyed, he could see all of the signals he should have picked up before sailing into that channel. Tressoir’s confidence, that slight smile which seemed to mock him; the Frenchman’s lack of outright anger at the offer Harry had made. He’d guessed to the letter what his opponent would do, and had just been waiting for him to fall into his already baited trap.

  But cheers, however ill deserved, had to be acknowledged. His first task was to check, to his own satisfaction, that the ship was in no immediate danger of running aground on the Normandy shore, faint, low-lying, but a hazy danger some three miles to the south. He then made his way around the scarred deck, Pender at his side, to talk to what remained of his weary crew, so that encouraged they could return Bucephalas to a state fit to get them all safely home. It would be quite a task.

  ‘You need a chair, Captain,’ said Pender, softly in his ear, as Harry staggered slightly.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I won’t take that. Seeing you has given the lads heart. If you fall down, which you are bound to do if you try to stay on your feet, it will reverse it. You will sit down or walk this deck unaided.’

  Forced to nod, and angry at his own weakness, Harry nevertheless favoured Pender with a grim smile, a crooking of the lips that was a mixture of rueful acquiescence as much as regard.

  ‘Remember, I’m still the captain.’

  Seated, Harry finally got round to asking the question he’d been putting off since he came on deck. When Pender related the bill for his folly, he dropped his head forward on to his chest.

  ‘Fourteen killed and another ten serious with wounds. There’s about four of the crew who ain’t carrying some form of hurt, being it from the scraping of a ball, bruising, or a cut and they are all in the boats holding the ship’s head straight. There’s barely enough men left to sail the barky.’

  ‘Have what warrants there are report to me.’

  One by one the men Harry called ‘warrants,’ a nickname carried over from his navy days, detailed the damage. It was a sorry tale of wood smashed, both mast and bulwarks; guns dismounted and useless; sails tattered and the yards shot from their slings; blocks gone over the side and their ropes cut to ribbons. Yet while gunner, sailmaker, and carpenter detailed all this the steps necessary to put some of it right were already in place and beginning to take effect. They would have some canvas aloft, using spars lashed together to rig jury masts. A scrap of the same would do for a headsail and the driver’s boom that ran from the stump of the mizzen had survived.

  ‘The rudder is hangin’ by a single pintle. We can’t steer on sails alone and we’ll never make any headway into the wind without that working proper.’

  ‘It’s not just fashioning a bit of a sternpost, it’s the ironwork,’ said the carpenter, a tiny man called Shilling, known to all, because of his stunted appearance, as Farthing. ‘There are no gudgeons or pintles for the top part ’less we make them. But that means setting up the anvil and a charcoal brazier. I don’t fancy trying that on this here swell so we’d need to find somewhere calm so’s we can work. Meantime, if you’re prepared to cut some holes in the stern below your cabin we can improve on the jury rig we’ve made up to work it.’

  Farthing went on to describe how and where they’d rig the pulleys in his cabin, taking the ropes from the rudder and running them forward to either side of the capstan. That could then be used as a temporary steering gear, with the ropes lashed off if it needed to be used for another purpose. Translated that meant if you needed to hoist sails, you couldn’t steer, and vice versa.

  ‘That way,’ Farthing continued, ‘we can get as much purchase on the thing as we need, in a way that no amount of relieving tackles would manage. I can put a small spar up on top so that the man on deck can see which way the rudder is pointing, which will aid in whatever sail plan we manage to get aloft.’

  Harry replied, his head bent, and supported by the fingers of his good hand, ‘Set a party to do that, then set up the brazier over wetted sailcloth, hanging free of the deck with some chain. That way the swell won’t tip it over.’

  ‘It’ll take time to heat up, even with bellows.’

  ‘Then get started,’ said Harry, looking up. The sky had been overcast, except for a strip over the eastern horizon, but was clearing, the voluminous clouds thinning and changing shape, opening up to show a trace of blue sky, and presaging an alteration in the weather. Hard to be sure, but the wind seemed to be swinging slightly to the north, which if it continued would drop the temperature, produce a bright blue clear sky, and, for them, a contrary wind. But that same breeze would provide something to sail by, unless it blew a gale, at least enough to get him out of the long Normandy bay into deep water past the Cap de La Hogue.

  He needed a port. A friendly one, if possible, but the enemy shore would have to suffice if the weather turned foul. Life as a prisoner didn’t appeal, but it was a lot better than drowning, which would be their certain fate if the sea got up seriously. He wouldn’t know what his options were until he tried the ship out, saw how she manoeuvred. And on top of that, given the pain he was in and the blood
he’d lost, could he stay conscious long enough to make a judgement? The orders he issued were passed softly to Pender, and he, knowing how exhausted the men were, passed them on in as a gentle a voice as he could.

  ‘Cast off from the boats and stand by to tack.’

  Bucephalas came round very slowly, lying practically dead in the water at the point where the bows turned into both the wind and the leeway. The need to shift sails to compensate was made a hundred times more difficult because of the lack of the rigging to do so. The ship fell off twice before Harry abandoned any further attempt. He knew from memory where they stood, relative to the Banc de Cardonnet, a spit of sand very like the Goodwins, so he used both the boats and the temporary rudder assembly to steer a few degrees south for the lee of that. There, in waters made less forceful by the sandbank, they tried the same manoeuvre with greater success.

  Now the danger was reversed, with the tide full and about to turn he had to get to the north-west of that same bank to avoid drifting aground. Progress, using boats as well as what they had aloft, was agonizingly slow. All the while, amidships, the banging and shaping of metal over the anvil acted as spur to their efforts. Hanging over the shattered taffrail, men were working to repair the top section of the sternpost so that when the metal connections were ready there would be something in place to attach them to. Another two planks were waiting, ready to be fished either side of the damaged rudder so that the whole thing would be connected.

  The difficult decision to make was at what point he could safely heave to and carry out work that might take hours to complete. Harry had unwittingly fallen into a deep slumber, despite the pain he felt and the noise of metallurgy amidships. All around him men worked to get enough ropes reeved to work the scraps of sail. Hard-cases they might be, but they were true sailors, who had been afloat since they were boys. Once their tasks were allotted few further commands were necessary.

  The banging on the anvil had abated and Farthing was now at the stern, supervising the repair. Pender, conning the ship, was, like every man aboard, looking aft even as they worked. Which meant that Tressoir, in the Lothian, had cleared the eastern entrance to the channel between the Îles de St. Aubin before anyone aboard spotted him. The cry that followed when they did brought Harry awake in an instant, and his scream of agony as he tried to move underlined this new peril.

  ‘Why now?’ snapped Pender, angrily.

  ‘Who knows?’ Harry replied, his words coming in gasps. To him it seemed just another example of Tressoir’s ability to anticipate everything he would do. ‘Perhaps he preferred to leave us to carry out the repairs, rather than burden his own crew.’

  Painfully, and with Pender holding his left elbow, Harry got to his feet. ‘Get the boats in and let her head drop round to the north-east. We’ll have to try and run.’

  ‘To where?’ asked Pender, the posing of the question in such a loud voice testimony to his feelings of near despair.

  ‘Darkness,’ said Harry, wearily. ‘It’s the only hope we have.’

  For a crew already close to collapse from their forced exertions, the rest of the day was cruel indeed. Nothing really worked aboard Bucephalas, and men were scarce, so every task was a test of stamina as well as sheer brute strength. Half the sails they tried aloft on jury yards, in the hope of even a minuscule increase in speed, were blown out or broke the temporary bindings. And all the while Farthing worked on, occasionally finding he needed to return to brazier and anvil, to make tiny adjustments to his metalwork, which had to be an exact fit to his rough-hewn timber.

  Tressoir gained on them steadily, but Harry reckoned that his pace was insufficient to overhaul them before dark. The question he couldn’t answer was how badly the Frenchman wanted to take him. If it was paramount he’d seek to pursue even after the light faded. If not, he’d haul his wind as night fell and head back to his anchorage.

  With an insight that comes only occasionally, even to the best trained mind, Harry was sure he’d discerned Tressoir’s needs. The corvette he had sailed in originally was too crank for the task he’d set himself. The man needed a better vessel to be an effective privateer. But with his relationship to the Revolutionary government he could not purchase one. He’d set the trap that Harry had stumbled into for a ship, the frigate he’d asked for when the negotiations opened.

  The lack of damage to Harry’s hull was nothing to do with the angle of fire from the shore-based cannon. It was deliberate. So Tressoir had the means to repair any ship that wasn’t seriously holed, and the vessel he was now pursuing, put to rights, was perfect for privateering in the English Channel. That didn’t explain why he hadn’t come out sooner. But by his failure to strike and subsequent escape Harry had already confounded Tressoir’s initial plan, so the Frenchman was now engaged in an action for which he hadn’t anticipated the need.

  If Harry was right it would mean a continued pursuit, the harrying of a ship unable to manoeuvre, even if it took several days to bring her to. And if he thought capture impossible Tressoir would go for a kill. Sinking Bucephalas or running her aground wouldn’t be ideal, but he’d risk that. The one thing he didn’t want, should Harry elude him, was that they should know in England of his snare in the St. Aubin channel. In time of war Bucephalas’s failure to return, could be put down to any number of causes. So he’d rather see his enemies sunk and drowning, just so that they could not interfere with the possibility that another ship, perhaps the frigate he craved, would be sent from Portsmouth to take up the negotiations.

  ‘Pender. Get the wounded stretchered on to the deck, and enough canvas rigged as an awning to keep them from expiring of cold.’ He could see, even out of the corner of his eye, the penetrating look he was receiving from his servant. ‘Let everyone know that we might have to abandon ship and take to the boats, so one by one they should go below and fetch any possessions they wish to take along.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘THERE’S a pair of visitors to see you,’ said Ben Harper, his head hanging low. He seemed to be looking at the adjoining door to the bedchamber, and James assumed his behaviour to be shyness and embarrassment at what he’d got up to with Mary Blackett.

  ‘And one of them be a sheriff’s man,’ Ben added, his head sinking lower.

  ‘What can a tipstaff want with me?’

  James dressed quickly, and remained standing to greet such a person. The tipstaff was a big man made bigger by the coat he wore, so thick he was almost squat in appearance. Behind him stood a pock-marked fellow wearing a round hat, who was pointing his finger at the occupant of the room.

  ‘This is Mr James Ludlow, the brother of the man you’re after.’

  ‘There’s no reward for brothers, mate. That only applies to principals laid by the heels.’

  ‘What if he satisfies?’

  ‘That’ll be the day.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Wait outside, Marsh,’ said the tipstaff, shutting the door.

  ‘Why have you called upon me?’ asked James.

  Carefully, the sheriff’s man explained. The fellow outside, Marsh, was a man who worked for a bounty, be it taking up thieves or tipping the wink to a sheriff regarding the whereabouts of certain persons. His own name was Bullen, he was an under-sheriff at the Old Street Court in the City of London, and he had a writ to take up a gentleman by the name of Harry Ludlow for failure to comply with an outstanding debt.

  ‘Debt!’ barked James, his habitual easy manner evaporating at the suggestion.

  Bullen tapped the large staff on the wooden floorboards, light catching the embossed head in the shape of a crown that earned him his nickname.

  ‘The sum is a mere five thousand pounds, a trifle given what your brother has in the way of property. Not worth a night in Newgate for such a middling sum.’

  James had to sit down when the full enormity of what had happened was explained to him. He had no actual idea of how much money Harry was worth; that was something they’d never needed to discuss. But his holding
s, in government stocks and the like, had been substantial. These were deposited with Cantwell, famed for his probity. That and all his other property was watched over by their brother-in-law, Arthur Drumdryan, much to James’s chagrin. No wonder he hadn’t heard from Cantwell. But did Arthur’s silence mean he too was implicated? Much as James disliked him, he had to suppress that thought. Arthur might be many unpleasant things, but he was scrupulously honest.

  Trying to evaluate the depth of the losses, James realised they were enormous. There was the money that Harry had inherited from their father and the steady income he received from his farm tenants, all dwarfed by the profits he’d made from cruising as a privateer.

  ‘What happened to Cantwell’s Bank?’

  Bullen snorted, missing the point of the question. ‘How could a man like that fall for such a scheme?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said James, ‘I have only just returned after two years away. I need to know why the bank failed.’

  Bullen smacked his lips, then eyed the half-empty port bottle and the other chair. James, taking the hint, invited him to sit down, filled the empty glass, then rang the bell to order another bottle. Bullen teased him till the next drink arrived, and really only opened up on the third bottle.

  ‘Some projector offered to sell him the treasures of Italy. As you know, the Jacobins have been sacking the Lombardy plain, which they say is the richest seam of gold and jewels in the Christian world.’ Bullen’s face darkened as he looked at the floor. ‘Trust the Papists to hoard such stuff. If it was anyone else but Jacobins that had relieved them of it I would invoke divine justice. But a good God, a Protestant God, would not line the pockets of heathens even at the expense of Papist heretics. Why, he might as well give it to the infidel.’

  James tried to ask a question, not the least interested in differing religions, but received, in reply, a compelling glare. Bullen was going to tell this tale at his own pace, and no other, drinking liberal quantities of wine as he did so. And what a sorry tale it was, one that proved there wasn’t a man born, regardless of his personal rectitude, who could not be dunned out of his money by a silver tongue.