‘He may have gone even further than that, Flowers.’
‘How we goin’ to deal with them?’
‘Let’s deal with these first,’ Harry replied, pointing to the guns on the quay. ‘We need to get them back aboard the Lothian.’
‘Christ, your honour, we’re a bit short of manpower for that sort of thing.’
‘Leave the one you were using in place, loaded and ready, and get a rope on the rest and haul them up amidships of the Indiaman.’
The next hour was a whirlwind of activity. Men too wounded to labour were sent aboard Bucephalas, with instructions that those more ambulant should look to their companions. The four who had died were laid out in the forepeak, for burial when and if they got to sea. Guards had to be posted so that no sudden attack could be launched from the town, and a constant watch kept on the river to ward off any danger of a counterattack.
Pender was instructed to make a sea anchor from the available canvas so that Bucephalas when towed would hold some strain on the cable and avoid running into the Indiaman’s stern. Before the guns were brought alongside, Harry had men smash their way into the small warehouses that lined the quay, to look for powder, shot, and canvas, with strict instructions to confine themselves to the ground floors. The population of Isigny had taken no part in the fight. The last thing he wanted was that by some inadvertent action they should have reason to do so.
Aboard the Lothian, also ablaze with lanterns, those who could be spared were hauling out a thick cable to tow his ship while others were reeving a whip from the capstan to the mainyard strong enough to lift first the gun barrels, then the carriages they rested on. Illingworth, ghostly pale, was limping round the ship, checking on various pieces of equipment to ensure that they were in good working order. Seeing him stagger and lean on the rail, Harry had two of his men fetch the captain. Another was sent for a chair so that he could sit by the wheel.
‘I would like to be sanguine, Captain Ludlow,’ he said, rubbing a weary hand across his brow, ‘but how do you propose to get us out of this predicament?’
‘I’ll get us out,’ said Harry, emphatically. ‘No one would have given us a dog’s chance of getting in, but we managed that.’
‘Would I be allowed to enumerate some of the imponderables?’
‘You don’t have to, Captain Illingworth. I know what they are. There’s a battery of 6-pounders a quarter of a mile downstream, which we have to sail past, and the range is less than the toss of a ship’s biscuit.’
‘With our opponent right behind them, no doubt.’
Harry shook his head. ‘No, he’s further downriver, I should think, anchored across the stream like he was when we arrived, hiding behind a cable boom that stretches between the banks.’
‘That is one imponderable that I knew nothing of,’ Illingworth replied, with deepening gloom.
Knowing about it didn’t help Harry, who had spent some of the time since the battle had ended wondering what he could have done differently. He should have interrogated that Frenchman earlier. Yet if he’d left a party to cut the boom, that would have left him even more short-handed when he attacked. It was tempting to look at what had happened up till now and class it as easy. But that wasn’t the case. The margin had been tight, and every man he’d brought on to the quay had taken part in the fight. Happy at last with the word luck, he knew he’d ridden it hard. It hadn’t been flawless, but it would have to bear even more strain for a satisfactory conclusion. His shout for Jubilee made Illingworth jump, and sent a flash of pain across his lined face.
‘We have to break though it. I am hoping we will be able to.’ Jubilee’s arrival killed whatever question Illingworth harboured. Harry led him away from the merchant captain, head bent as he quizzed him. Then, sending him back to his duties, he returned to the wheel. ‘We had a go at sawing through it when we came upriver.’
‘A go?’
‘That was the man with the saw,’ said Harry, pointing at Jubilee’s retreating back. ‘He reckons he got more than halfway through before he had to abandon the job. Now you know as well as I do, Captain Illingworth, that a strand of rope is only as strong as its weakest part.’
‘I think we should leave the Parkers here.’
‘No!’
Illingworth, who’d sunk down in the chair, pulled himself up so that his words would carry some weight. ‘Captain Ludlow, what you are proposing do to is extremely dangerous. First, you’ve mentioned that battery, which could easily kill all of us, including my passengers.’
‘They’re no more than 6-pounder cannon. A ship this size will be able to bear the damage. Look at what she’s withstood already.’
‘I cannot share your certainty. And even if you are right, we will be drifting downriver towards a rope boom and an armed enemy with no means of halting our progress. Should Lothian be brought to a standstill by that boom, your ship cannot help but run on board my stern. We will then be just as helpless as you were at St. Aubin.’
‘That is possible, I grant you.’
‘Then for God’s sake leave Sir William and his family here. He is so attached to his honour that he will not blame you. Indeed he’ll thank you for it.’
‘I don’t care a toss for Sir William’s honour,’ Harry snapped, ‘but I do care for my ability to pursue my chosen profession.’
‘I fail to see the connection, sir.’
Harry opened his mouth to explain, but the thought of the complexities of his situation stopped him. ‘A state of ignorance that you must suffer, Captain, since I have no intention of enlightening you.’
‘That is not satisfactory to me.’
‘I have one question to put to you, Captain Illingworth,’ said Harry softly, crouching down so that his words should not sound in any way threatening. ‘Will you take the wheel of your ship, or shall I?’
He hesitated a second, looking into Harry’s eyes, easily able to see how determined he was. ‘Lothian is mine, sir. I know her ways.’
‘Thank you,’ Harry replied, unbuttoning his coat. His back was aching like the very Devil, and he wondered if the pain of his exertions showed in his face the way they did in Illingworth’s. ‘Now if you will forgive me we are a little short of muscle on the capstan. You would oblige me if you would see the guns aboard.’
Time stopped them from getting more than three of the artillery pieces on to the upper deck. They were watched by Charlotte Parker and Lady Katherine Fitzgerald, who’d come out of the cabin, probably to get away from Sir William, and, sick of their staring, Harry sent them off to see Pender, to find out how matters were progressing on Bucephalas. What he heard when they returned was not entirely satisfactory, though he was impressed by the crisp delivery of Lady Katherine, as well as her command of the technical terminology. The men who’d raided the warehouses had stolen enough canvas. There was no way of cutting and sewing it into a suit of sails, but the decks were clear, the rudder checked, and the sea anchor already in the water.
‘Are we going to have another fight, Captain Ludlow?’ she asked. Unlike Parker’s daughter, there was no trace of alarm in those green eyes as Harry replied in the affirmative. She merely nodded. ‘Then there will be a possibility of more men wounded?’
‘There is a very good chance.’
‘Then it would be to advantage if we were to prepare bandages and such, and set aside an area for them to be attended to.’
‘Very much so, Lady Katherine,’ Harry replied. ‘I would suggest the orlop deck, which is the one below the lower deck.’
There was a slight flash of anger in the eyes, as if what he’d said smacked of condescension, though nothing in her voice matched it. ‘I know where the orlop is, Captain Ludlow. You seem to forget I have, unfortunately, been on this ship for several months.’
Harry was now aching all over, covered in sweat from his exertions on the capstan. Nevertheless he managed an elegant bow, which brought a slight but engaging smile to her lips. For a second their eyes locked.
Char
lotte Parker, aware of how long the stare held, was looking at the pair with slight amazement. Harry turned to her and smiled. ‘You may inform your father that we are about to unmoor the ship. He and Lady Parker would be safer below decks.’
‘In his mind he is already there, Captain Ludlow, in the bilges indeed, so much have you cast down his spirits.’
‘Then tell him that I am merely following instructions given to me by your uncle. In order to oblige your father I would have to deny Admiral Parker’s wishes, a dangerous thing to do for someone in my occupation.’
‘Is that the truth, sir?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘If it is, you would have saved him great hardship if you said so earlier.’
Katherine Fitzgerald took Miss Parker’s arm, to lead her away. ‘I think then as now Captain Ludlow had other things on his mind, matters that overbore the sensitive subject of your father’s pride.’
Harry grinned at her, then turned and yelled, ‘Belay!’ in a voice loud enough to have both women scurrying back towards the cabin.
‘Captain Illingworth, there are enough men aboard to see to the unmooring. The current should take you out from the bank, but as you will see I have trimmed your yards round to take what little wind we have.’
‘And Bucephalas?’
‘Will be at single cable, which my men will slip as soon as you have some way on the ship, and there is strain on the tow.’
‘You have set yourself too much of a task, sir.’ He continued quickly when he observed Harry’s frown, ‘If I am repeating myself in saying that, you must forgive me.’
‘I think I am committed, Captain Illingworth, so it makes little difference.’
‘It would pain me to see you killed, sir.’ Wan and pale as he was, he managed to communicate in his eyes that the sentiments he stated were genuine. But Harry’s eyes were just as expressive.
‘Then I must wish you good fortune, and express the fond wish to see you again, so that we may toast that most ephemeral commodity.’
Harry went to the gangway to join Pender. Dreaver was aboard Bucephalas to con the ship, with a couple of men and the walking wounded to help him. Illingworth had been allotted another dozen, the very minimum he could work with, considering that he might get a chance to raise more sail. Four were put into the centipedes, so that they could drift downstream and pick up the survivors from Harry’s party. The remainder were on the quayside, armed and ready. A mere seventeen sailors, they had their own task: to attack a gun emplacement that if it hadn’t been fortified before would certainly be so now.
‘Might I suggest that you use the time available to house at least one of the cannon,’ said Harry, softly. The merchant captain nodded as Harry repeated his final wish. ‘Cast off your mooring as soon as you hear the first shot, Captain Illingworth. The very first, pistol, musket, or gun.’
The merchant captain nodded once more, and eased his hand out from his side to shake Harry’s. He responded gently and made his way down the gangplank. Two of his crew allotted to the Lothian were at the bottom, joking with their mates, in the way that men do when seeing friends off to a fight.
‘Lads,’ said Harry quietly, ‘if that Sir William Parker tries to interfere, clap him in the cable tier to moan at the rats.’
He was gone before they could reply, leading his men along the stone quay, now clear of guns. Those that had not gone aboard the Lothian had been tipped into the river. His shoulder ached abominably, after the exertions on the capstan, but he could do nothing to ease it, so it had to be ignored.
The path that led down the riverbank was well worn, having been used frequently in the past by Tressoir’s men. At this very moment they could be right ahead, lying in ambush to catch the Englishmen they knew must come. Covering something like half the distance on this trail was a calculated risk, a belief that if they had prepared a trap it would have been laid on the rising ground near their gun emplacements. There they’d have a clear sight of their approaching enemies, plus a safe haven to withdraw to if matters went against them.
The first grey tinge of approaching daylight was touching the sky, oddly deepening the gloom rather than easing it, as it took away what illumination they’d enjoyed from the moon and the stars. Harry, still out front, was gnawing on all the things that could go wrong. He was banking on the hope that Tressoir would not deplete his ship to reinforce these guns. Well placed as they were, they were too light in calibre to sink or stop a large ship floating downriver. They’d been put there to stop ships’ boats, and might very well have been turned round by now to blast this track.
But that didn’t alter the facts. The Frenchman would know that the only place he could stop Harry Ludlow was at that boom, which would allow him to fire into a stationary target snagged on his rope. Against that, he must be aware that Harry knew about the boom, and so would only come downriver if he had some plan to break it. The only thing Harry could do was to put himself in his enemy’s shoes and try to think like him. And that had worked well enough to bring him here.
‘Halt,’ he whispered, holding up his hand, as he felt the ground beneath his feet begin to rise a fraction. ‘Pender, you and I will go forward, me in the undergrowth on the riverbank, you circling round through those trees on the left.’
‘Some trees,’ said Pender softly, nodding towards the stunted growths, gnarled, thin affairs, that were obviously part of an apple orchard.
‘The rest of you keep one of us in sight, but don’t come forward if they open up with muskets. All we’re trying to do right now is fix their position.’
The next ten minutes, with the sky getting lighter all the time, were the most nerve-racking in Harry’s entire career. There was no way of moving through the bushes in silence: it was as if every twig he broke or leaf he rustled was audible for miles, and to use what little cover there was he had to stay within the deepest thickets. He could see nothing much to his front, his only hope that whoever let fly first would do so excitedly or that Pender might observe them as they revealed themselves and shout a warning.
The bushes ended so abruptly that he jumped back into them in fear, tripping on a root and rolling a quarter of the way back down the incline. Covered in scratches, his shoulders throbbing with pain, he hauled himself back to the clearing which overlooked the river. The guns were gone, the stone walls set up to protect them containing nothing but the detritus of human occupation. He could see the hoof prints where mules or horses had been used to take them away. At the soft footfall behind him he spun round, pistol out.
‘Shall I call forward the lads?’ said Pender.
‘Do that,’ said Harry, raising his pistol. ‘And get someone to bring on the galleys.’
In the misty morning air the discharge sent up all those birds who listened to these creatures blunder through their habitat. ‘Tell one or two of them to fire off their weapons as soon as they get here. We wouldn’t want Captain Illingworth to entertain any doubts.’
‘Can I ask just one question, Capt’n?’ said Pender, sweeping his musket around the empty emplacement. ‘Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?’
‘That very much depends on Jubilee,’ Harry replied, enigmatically.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE ASSAULT party were in the centipedes well before the Lothian made it out into the channel. Harry had watched the upper rigging anxiously, jerking back and forth as if willing it to move. There was little in the way of a breeze, but slowly, agonizingly, the three masts separated, taking individual form. Then at last the bowsprit cleared the downstream undergrowth, as Illingworth took his ship well out into the channel, way beyond the centre, to give Dreaver some ability to manoeuvre in hauling off Bucephalas.
The next part was tricky, for both men conning their ships. Having towed Bucephalas out on a short cable it had to be paid out to lessen the risk of a collision, without either ship losing her momentum. The River Aure was far from a fast-flowing stream: a better description would be steady without being entirely gentle. But Illingworth was
a very experienced sailor, who’d had to move his ship around many a crowded harbour, and the cone-shaped canvas sea anchor, acting like a drag, stopped Harry’s ship, much lighter than the Indiaman, from closing the gap.
‘Right, lads,’ said Harry, softly. ‘Let’s get downriver and see what that bastard has got prepared for us.’
The oars bit into the water. There was no haste now, since Harry didn’t want to get too far ahead of the ships. Still mulling over the problems he might face, he knew that surprise was impossible. Tressoir would see Lothian’s upper poles well before he was in any danger, and would thus have ample time to get his men into position and steady them for their task. The idea that he might rush downstream in the galleys, to try and board, had to be put aside. This was daylight, not night, and the Frenchman had shifted those batteries. What surprise they’d achieved eight hours earlier would not work again. Those gunners would be itching to get their revenge, and would have a better idea of how to lay their pieces to blast these flimsy galleys out of the water.
Really, it all came down to one hope which diminished the more it was gnawed at: that Jubilee had so damaged the boom that it would give way when Illingworth, in a fully laden 800-ton ship, ran on to it. Unless he’d got into a boat and inspected the entire length of the thing Tressoir would have no idea that his main defence had been weakened. And if it went as Harry hoped it would, the surprise would be just as acute as the night before, and the result similar. The problem was what to do if he was wrong.
‘Pender,’ he called. ‘Come alongside.’
His servant obliged, the dark-tanned face fixed with a look of deep curiosity. Having been with Harry Ludlow as long as he had, he knew his propensity for sudden changes of plan, and judging by his captain’s expression, this was one of those occasions. Oars were boated in both galleys so that the counters were touching, and as they continued to drift downstream, Harry leant over to whisper so that their conversation would be as private as possible.
Game of Bones Page 32
