Game of Bones

by David Donachie

  ‘I wish he was here, Pender, just to help me sort out my thinking.’

  ‘I’m game to stand in as best I can.’

  ‘You deserve more than that, friend,’ Harry sighed. ‘Part of me is surprised that you’re still around to listen. I don’t think I’ve treated you in recent times in a way that’s merited it.’

  ‘You ain’t,’ Pender replied, with a snap of impatience in his own voice. ‘But that, I hope and pray, is behind you.’

  Harry didn’t want to labour that point, since to do so would only revive unpleasant memories. He knew, deep down, that Pender was lukewarm about the whole business, and this conversation was proof. Pender would have followed him anywhere; he’d come with his captain out of loyalty not because he thought he was in the right.

  ‘Let’s say first, I’m bothered as to why you’re doin’ it.’ The raised eyebrows were met with an intense stare, as Pender continued. ‘Seems to me that the best place we could be heading is back to New York.’

  ‘Tressoir has my ship,’ said Harry, in a soft, but firm voice.

  They couldn’t look at each other then, neither willing to intimate what they both suspected, that Bucephalas was a talisman, and only a means to an end. Harry Ludlow needed a success, something to bring back his self-esteem, a stroke so bold that perhaps he could erase the past year from his memory. And not just that. Being in Portsmouth in the midst of mutiny, and seeing how stupid the authorities had been to let it happen at all, had revived conflicting emotions about his own life; a joy that he wasn’t subjected to the discipline of naval life, mixed with a feeling that perhaps, if he’d still been serving, his presence could have made a difference. But that, to Pender’s certain knowledge, was a conversation not even James Ludlow could have with his brother. So his surprise when Harry did partially open up was substantial.

  ‘I have a feeling: if I just go back to America, and trade in those bonds, then I’ll never go to sea again.’ He had to turn his head away then, so that Pender wouldn’t see his face and observe the misery he felt as everything he’d tried to blot from his thinking came flooding back.

  ‘I can’t see that happening,’ Pender responded, guardedly.

  ‘I’ll have the funds to buy a ship. But will I have the heart?’ This time Pender stayed silent, as Harry continued hoarsely, ‘I can’t blame you for being concerned. But I would say that we’ve got this far, which, much as I hoped, I’d never have believed possible outside Walmer Castle.’

  ‘Perhaps your luck is on the turn.’

  Harry didn’t want to mention luck lest he tempt Providence. ‘James says I have a habit of making presumptions sound like certainties, that I give the impression of knowing more than I really do.’

  ‘That would be hard to dispute.’

  Fighting to control his features, Harry looked Pender in the eye again. ‘Yet you know as well as I do that in any fight a great deal has to be left to chance. I could sit here and list possibilities, things that would guarantee we’d fail, that you haven’t even thought of. Like the precautions he might well take to raise the alarm. Fire beacons, for instance. Horse messengers. Signal cannon.’

  ‘What if it rains,’ Pender asked, ‘or blows a gale? Guns and flame would be useless.’

  As he formed the words of his reply, Harry’s thinking crystallized. Standing in for James, Pender had done better than either of them could have hoped. Once examined, the solution became obvious. How did a man like Derouac, who possessed no military ability at all, know so much? Why tell him about guard boats and let him overhear discussions of cannon positions and booms? Why take him for a stroll along the quay just before you load him into a boat? Had he been fed the information, manoeuvred into absorbing detail for a dual purpose? The Frenchman didn’t know his enemy, and any attempt to question the brother would be pointless. Was Sir Peter Parker bold or cautious, would he attack or negotiate? Had Tressoir been clever enough to provide sufficient detail to deter a careful man, yet been cautious enough to show only so much in case he was bent on attack?

  Pender was looking at him, still waiting for an answer to his question, curious why his captain suddenly looked so pleased with himself.

  ‘Something tells me that we won’t find any one of those things.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you after I’ve had another session with Derouac.’

  ‘You said that Captain Illingworth was still in a bad way when you left Isigny, but he was fit enough to hold a conversation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did Tressoir talk with him?’

  Derouac’s little brown eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips in disapproval. ‘I told you, Captain, he is a gentleman. And so naturally he came to converse with my master, to ensure that all his needs were met.’

  ‘Did he mention, in this conversation, the value of the Lothian or of the hostages?’

  The lips pressed together even more before Derouac replied, ‘That would be a base thing to bring up with a wounded man.’

  ‘So our gentleman sent you seventy miles in an open boat to carry a message to Admiral Parker, when he had, in a sickbed, someone who could have answered his most pressing question.’ Harry watched the confusion on the steward’s face for a second or two, before adding, ‘I’ve never known such nobility. When did he offer to trade for the Lothian, Derouac? Was it before Sir William told Tressoir who his relatives were, or after?’

  Harry returned to the deck, his mind racing. ‘I bet you the value of the Lothian he’s prepared another trap.’

  ‘I can’t say that I’m jolted by that notion,’ Pender replied.

  Harry’s heels dug in to the planking with increasing force as he explained his reasoning. It had all started with Sir William and his big mouth, and in some sense it had continued with that. He wanted a proper ship, preferably a frigate, though he’d never thought that Parker might trade him one. If the Royal Navy was famous for anything it was its love of a fight, and that’s what he planned for. So he set up the snare at St. Aubin, which only backfired because of a mutiny he knew nothing about.

  ‘He didn’t do too bad,’ said Pender. ‘I seem to recall he won, hands down.’

  Harry pretended not to hear. ‘What do we really know about him? Our Frenchman says he’s at loggerheads with the government in Paris. What evidence do we have for that except his own words? None! He says he’s a nobleman. I grant you he has an air about him, but is that the truth or another furbelow? The one thing we do know about him is that he’s a devious sod. I think everything he told Derouac, or allowed him to see, was deliberate, bait on the line. It’s the way he likes to fight, by showing a false picture. Only this time the habit could work against him.’

  ‘Please God!’ said Pender, with some passion. ‘I’ll take a wager that there’s no cannon on the northern shore of the Aure River. And that the boom Derouac talked about is designed to snare any ship that’s gone upriver, rather than preventing it getting there. Tressoir is prepared to negotiate or be attacked, just like he was at St. Aubin. And if it’s the latter, he expects someone who isn’t wise to his ways. He feels secure, able to fight anybody on his own patch.’

  Harry could see, every time he turned, the way Pender was looking at him, willing himself to believe but not entirely convinced. ‘Examine what he did in the past. He set up two situations in which he fought on his own terms, by creating a false image. I admit he fooled me on both occasions. But I do believe it was a trap most captains with an ounce of aggression would have fallen into. He’s trying the same again. Only he’s expecting the navy, not us, and we’ve crossed swords with him before. We know his ways.’

  ‘That’s pushin’ it a bit, your honour.’

  ‘Pender, I think we have the means to best him. For once we have a surprise for him, instead of the other way round. Even if he thinks the Good Intent a threat, he has no knowledge of who’s aboard.’ Harry looked at him, a wry grin on his face. ‘I can’t promise success, no one ever can. And don’t think I have
n’t thought what would happen if I lose again. I know that going after those ships is risky, but then that’s the same as everything I’ve done in my life. But I also know something that applies to everyone, including Tressoir: too rigid a plan is as dangerous as no plan at all. We have the means to knock him off his stroke, and once we’ve done that he will be on the defensive. I think we’ll succeed in doing that by the speed of our approach.’

  ‘And after?’

  ‘Then it’s down to the fortunes of war. But I have a feeling in my bones, given that I know what he’s about, that this time I’m going to beat him.’ Harry took a deep breath, and looked Pender right in the eye. ‘This is nothing to do with anything I said to you before, but if you don’t wish to come, I’ll understand.’

  Pender’s face didn’t change at all, but his voice was tight with suppressed anger. ‘You think with them centipedes, even if he is preparing a surprise, we can get to him before he’s ready?’

  Harry breathed out very slowly. ‘They can move twice as fast as any cutter. According to Derouac that’s what we’ll find in the head of the estuary, a boat that I think has been instructed to run ahead of any raiding party, or a ship, and draw them in. But they won’t be able to do that against centipedes.’

  ‘And when we get upriver?’

  ‘That practically everything Derouac was allowed to see will be altered.’

  Pender wasn’t finished with his Devil’s advocacy. ‘All we need now is the men to row the sods. All boats are different, and since you’re relying on speed, that’s important. None of the lads we took aboard are Deal locals. And if some of our crew ever manned one it’s so long ago they’ll have forgotten how.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get in plenty of practice. The rate that the Good Intent travels leaves a lot of time for training.’ Harry shook his head slowly, but he couldn’t keep the repressed excitement out of his voice. Pender knew it to be the Harry Ludlow of old, which induced a set of mixed feelings he did his best to hide. In that kind of mood, he was never going to be deflected.

  ‘We’d best get started,’ he said, ‘one boat at a time.’

  Harry was pacing again, heels hitting the deck with regular thuds. ‘We can’t man them both fully and leave enough men to watch over the ship. So we’ll put ten of the better rowers in the smaller crew.’

  ‘Captain,’ Pender interrupted, determined to nail the last conundrum. ‘You said that about plans bein’ too set. What will you do if there is no guard boat?’

  ‘Improvise!’

  If Tressoir had a lookout on the top of les Îles de St. Aubin, Harry prayed he would be mystified by what he saw. The Good Intent sailing by was surely no threat to anyone. A squat-looking two-masted merchantman of a type they’d be unlikely to recognise, perhaps too small and unsuitable for bearing much in the way of cargo, struggling, even with a following wind, to make any great easting. Nor would what she was towing seem dangerous, though the idea of a ship at sea pulling a small barge behind it was certainly singular. The two centipedes, too big to be hauled on board, were lashed together with a tarpaulin over both, so that they looked like one flat-bottomed vessel.

  Harry, flying a French flag and a La Rochelle pennant, had steered well to the west of the islands, shaving Barfleur, so that his approach to the channel that ran between the St. Aubin islands and the Baie du Grand Vey ran parallel with the arc of the Normandy coastline. This gave him half a day of a strong, making current, and was the common route for a merchant ship. It dispensed with the need to navigate or raise a mass of canvas aloft, as well as lessening the risk from the dangers posed by enemy cruisers. The decks were untidy, in the way of merchant ships, with the majority of his men confined below as long as the daylight lasted. No attempt was made to examine the Île du Large to see if they were being observed, since to do that would only make anyone on top suspicious.

  The tension on board was so palpable it could have been cut with a knife, and Harry Ludlow was as prone to the effects of that as anyone. He longed to do something, even to run up the foremast rigging, instead of just standing by the wheel, his skin itching with that feeling of being observed. He knew fretting wouldn’t bring darkness any quicker but that didn’t stop his agitation. This became acute as they opened the Baie du Grand Vey early in the afternoon, close to the height of the tide. The whole estuary of the two rivers was well on the way to being at flood, just a few centimetres short of the previous day’s level.

  There was nevertheless a certain amount of admiration for what he suspected Tressoir had contrived. Instead of keeping his men indefinitely at maximum alert so that even a seemingly innocent trading vessel became a hazard demanding a response, he’d allowed the majority of them the comfort of staying in the town. Most captains would have had their ship beating back and forth off the estuary, wearing out wood, canvas, and the men’s patience, so as not to be caught unawares.

  It was the Aubins which gave him that option, of course, and the lookouts there, the day before, at the very height of the early May tide, must have been screwed up in anticipation. Harry hoped they would now relax somewhat. Would they see the way Willerby was throwing their filth over the side as normal, instead of a careful ploy designed to show the rate of the various currents as they washed around the estuary? He watched each piece of flotsam carefully, any sudden change of direction as it drifted towards land an eddy that denoted either a submerged rock or the tip of a sandbank. This stretch of coastline hadn’t been surveyed since the outbreak of the war, so the charts were inaccurate. The rocks were constants, but the flow of silt from inland changed the shape of the sandbars over time.

  The rest of the afternoon seemed to last an eternity as the Good Intent wallowed on under a blue sky full of high, billowing clouds. Her sailing qualities, a disadvantage in a fight, were now an asset, especially when the tide turned as they came abreast of the eastern edge of les Roches de Grandcamp. The increasing ebb practically killed any forward progress, so that the decision to anchor, inshore of the tip of le Banc du Cardonnet, in good holding ground, looked natural.

  Evening came, then darkness. The night sky was the same high clouds, with occasional long patches of moonlight. When they disappeared, nothing would be seen other than a set of lanterns fore and aft, to light the deck and warn against collision. Even through a telescope they would appear from the islands, now nearly five miles distant, as mere pinpricks.

  All the weaponry was already loaded in the centipedes, flares, muskets, grenades, pikes, and cutlasses, laid out along the middle of the boats ready for use. With the moon and stars obscured by a huge cloud, the men took their allotted stations. With Pender, Dreaver, and himself he had a total strength of forty-seven men, many less than Tressoir could muster, in a situation in which a numerical advantage would, by a less sanguine mind, have been considered essential.

  But Harry Ludlow’s spirits couldn’t have been higher as they cast off from the blind side of the ship. Both boats maintained an easy pace back towards the river mouth, Harry having set a shaded lantern showing just a slit in the stern of his boat so that Dreaver could follow. He could hear him faintly, calling out the pace that they’d practised in open water.

  With the tide low and falling, the sea was breaking over the base of les Roches de Grandcamp, giving them an aural then a visual fix. The spits of sand that projected out from the estuary, the Bancs du Grandcamp, were exposed at low water and presented the greatest hazard. To avoid sticking on them, they had to proceed slowly, Harry’s plan to stay well to the north until he was sure he was off the main channel, then turn south and pick up speed.

  Pender was casting a lead, instructed not to call out depths unless the water shoaled sharply. On a mainly cloudy night there could be no dead reckoning, only informed guesswork. Harry had triangulated the return, calculating the strokes they’d need to close the distance and counting them off as the oars struck. But the leeway was an unknown addition. So it was with his heart in his mouth that he gave the signal, two sharp f
lashes of the lantern, that turned both galleys due south. Next came the order to row, followed by him calling out the increasing pace of the strokes.

  The centipedes were up to maximum speed within a minute, moving at such a pace that the sweat Harry had on his brow cooled rapidly. They were committed now. Despite Derouac’s information and Harry’s confidence they were entering the unknown, the area of any conflict in which whatever the plan laid, however careful the preparation, events inevitably took their own course.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE SKY cleared almost as soon as the oars started to bite, giving Harry a chance to fix his position and alter course to put both boats in the centre of the rapidly widening yet twisting channel. But it also lit up the whole seascape with that singular light that made any object, sandbank or boat, look like a black mark on a dappled silver screen. He had no doubt that if the St. Aubin lookouts were awake they’d see him, especially as the oar strokes of such large galleys threw up great quantities of sparkling water.

  They weren’t as alert as they should have been. It was several minutes before the fire started to flicker on top of l’Îles du Large, the red glow at the base spreading rapidly as the flames took hold in the dry wood. Once he’d seen it, Harry turned away. Staring at the fire would serve little purpose. Any danger that threatened them now lay up ahead, not behind.

  ‘Boat!’ called Pender, softly, as they approached solid earth, and the River Vire, at the Point de Grouin.

  ‘Where away?’

  ‘Right ahead and pulling, though not flat out.’

  Harry’s heart lifted. For all his apparent certainty he’d had his doubts, and several anxious minutes had been spent staring at the looming bulk of the eastern shore, the fear acute that he might see another flicker of flame. There was nothing, just the boat they’d anticipated, pulling enough to stay ahead.