by Hunter, Seth
The unlucky hero had suffered another calamity when sent to the King of Lycia with a sealed letter falsely accusing him of sleeping with the King’s daughter. In later years a Letter of Bellerophon had become a euphemism for a document that was prejudicial to the bearer and while Nathan did not imagine the First Lord of the Admiralty had written anything quite so malicious he did wonder why he had not been permitted to read it before it was placed in the envelope and fixed with the distinctive black seal.
He saw how the captain’s eyes flickered briefly over the words written on the single sheet of parchment, flashed sharply across his desk to Nathan, and then applied themselves to more sustained study. Then he folded the document and carefully replaced it in the envelope.
“Weel, weel, weel,” he said, regarding Nathan with a speculative frown. Bellerophon being a difficult word in the English tongue, or at least that spoken by the majority of her crew, she was known by them—and to a significant proportion of the fleet—as the Billy Ruffian but the name might be equally applied to her captain, Nathan considered: a genial bruiser in his fifties with a large freckled face and large freckled hands and quite possibly a large freckled head beneath the powdered curls of his unfashionably large wig. Thomas Pasley was a Scot—quite probably he had never been mistaken for anything less—a Lowland Scot with the rash, roguish air of a certain style of Highland gentleman. Nathan knew him by repute but they had not previously met, a circumstance that must be counted fortunate if Nathan was to maintain his character as a New York merchant and captain by the name of Turner.
“I am required and requested to give you every assistance in going about your business, lawful or otherwise,” declared the captain, with an arch look, “a duty which I believe I have to some extent fulfilled in seeing off yonder Frenchman who I doubt was as eager to be of service.”
Nathan agreed he had been under the same impression and expressed his appreciation, once more, for the Bellerophon’s timely arrival.
“Aye,” growled his champion, “that’s as may be. Doubtless you would also appreciate some assistance in mending the mess he has made of your rigging.”
He dismissed Nathan’s protests to the contrary and summoned a servant to convey his instruction to the first lieutenant and to bring a bottle of brandy on his return.
“For I believe the gentleman has time to take a glass with me?” Raising his sandy eyebrows at Nathan in a manner that brooked no dissent.
The glass was succeeded by another, and then another, in the course of which Captain Pasley became more genial and revealed an unexpected warmth for Nathan’s supposed countrymen.
“A great people,” he declared, “and a great nation in the making, though ’tis a pity it were so painful a birth.”
Pasley had fought in the American War but with deep regret, he assured Nathan, at the rift that had led first to the rebellion and then to the loss of the American colonies, both of which might have been prevented, “Had the parcel of toadies about the King had as much sense between them as a soused herring.”
The captain, Nathan gathered, was a dyed-in-the-wool Whig and while he had not gone so far as those of his persuasion who had rejoiced in the American victories over the King’s Army he could obtain no satisfaction in suppressing the liberties of those he considered his fellow countrymen.
And so they raised their glasses in successive toasts to President George and King George. “God bless his addled wits,” added the captain in an aside that would doubtless be considered disrespectful if not treasonable in some quarters. The Bellerophon had been detached from blockade duty with the fleet off Brest to serve as guard ship to the royal family during their present visit to Weymouth, he disclosed, the King having developed a fondness for sea bathing and his ministers being fearful that the French, hearing of this whimsy, might send a raiding party to carry him off.
“Doubtless towing his bathing machine behind them,” the captain concluded with a smirk.
They agreed that the Ministry’s folly was the Speedwell’s good fortune and drank to that. Then to the port of Salem, which Pasley had visited once during the French and Indian War and been welcomed heartily.
The captain had by now become quite hearty himself and when Nathan apologised for the delay he had occasioned, Pasley observed that he might repent of it by offering up half a dozen of his topmen as volunteers in the King’s service, for he had no doubt that the buggers were deserters in the first place.
He laughed jovially at Nathan’s confusion and apologised himself for the “joke.”
Aye, thought Nathan, as he joined in the laughter, and how much of a joke would it have been had he not carried the Admiralty’s protection?
“We will be off Weymouth sooner than any French raiding party, I dare say,” Pasley declared, “and His Majesty may take his bathe with an easy mind, if that is not impertinent in me. You were running for Ushant, I take it?”
“Only to keep the wind on my quarter,” Nathan confided. “I did not expect to sail so far.”
“No.” The captain appeared thoughtful. “You are acquainted with the English Channel?”
“Not as well as I would wish,” Nathan replied cautiously, in his character as Captain Turner of New York or Salem or wherever it was he was supposed to hail from; he had begun to forget.
“Well, ’tis wider than you might think. Thirty-five leagues from Ushant to Scilly,” he informed Nathan with a twinkle in his eye that should have warned him what was coming next. “D’ye ken the verse?”
To Nathan’s frank alarm he let out a long groan which proved the prelude to song: “Ohhhhhhhh . . .”
We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true British sailors,
We’ll rant and we’ll roar across the salt seas . . .
—banging his feet in what he supposed to be the rhythm—
Until we strike soundings in the channel of old England,
From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues.
A tentative knock on the door brought timely relief. The repairs to Nathan’s vessel were completed, reported the captain’s servant, with a wary look at them both, and he was free to resume his voyage.
“Do you take care of yourself, now,” said the captain in a low voice as he saw Nathan into the gig, “and do not be consorting with the enemy any more than you can help.”
Nathan’s return to the Speedwell was greeted with grins and cheers from the crew, many of whom had doubtless anticipated their prompt transfer into the service of King George.
“Silence there,” roared Tully but even he struggled to keep a straight face as he inquired of Nathan what course they should set.
“Whatever will take us directly to Le Havre,” Nathan instructed him, forming his words with care, “and let us trust there will be no more diversions.”
In the privacy of his cabin he took out the letter that Pasley had returned to him. The black Admiralty seal had clearly been broken and resealed by the captain of the Bellerophon with a blob of red wax. After a moment’s hesitation Nathan slid his dirk under it and lifted it away from the envelope.
The letter was, as he had anticipated, embossed with the familiar fouled anchor of the Admiralty and bore the signature of the First Lord. But the content was surprising. It instructed “whomsoever it concerns” that “the bearer of this letter, Captain Nathan Peake, is an American national proceeding with dispatches to the American Minister in Paris” and that “the said Captain Peake is to be permitted to continue his voyage without let or hindrance and to be given such assistance as may be required.”
On the surface there was little to trouble “the bearer of this letter” but Nathan could not help but brood a little over the use of his real name and the description of him as “an American national.” Why not the agreed nom-de-guerre of Turner? Possibly the First Lord feared he might be accosted by an officer who knew him, but in that cas
e why state that he was an American? If the letter was meant only for the eyes of a British officer why not state that Nathan, too, was British?
It was not inconceivable that Nathan’s parentage made him over-sensitive on this subject but he could not help but feel that the First Lord wished him to be known as an American, and not only to the French.
But why?
Could it be that if anything went wrong with his mission—if he was, for instance, revealed to be carrying contraband—then he could be exposed as an American acting in American interests, or even his own?
He shook his head. He could not fathom it, not with his wits befuddled by Pasley’s cognac, and he doubted if it would be much clearer to him if he were sober. But one thing was certain: he had become the puppet of politicians and whatever knavery they were up to, he very much doubted if it would be to his advantage. He put the letter back in the envelope, resealed it as best he could, and replaced it in the secret compartment of his chest.
When he rejoined Tully on the deck, the Bellerophon was hull down to the north and the coast of France a dark smudge off their starboard bow.
Chapter 9
Street Theatre
It is curious,” remarked Gilbert Imlay, when they emerged from the theatre, “that despite the war and the food shortages and the death carts and the prisons and the fact that one might be strung up for wearing clean linen or the wrong kind of shoes, Paris does not lack entertainment of a more conventional nature.” He cast a glance back over his shoulder. “A pity it is so mundane. I confess I have seen better acting at the waxworks.”
“We bow to your insight, my dear,” murmured his wife in her deceptively mild manner, “doubtless gained from the time you spend there, watching that little Swiss girl making wax heads from real ones.”
Sara Seton smiled to herself as she arranged the threadbare shawl around her shoulders. She had not known the Imlays long but she found their relationship far more intriguing than anything she had observed at the theatre, particularly the recent performance which had been every bit as bad as Imlay had proposed. And yet the theatre was enjoying something of a renaissance in Paris—as if there was not enough drama on the streets. Sara frequently felt she was part of some vast audience swept along from one performance to the next. Except that you could never be sure if you were in the audience or on the stage. And everyone a player, ready to speak his lines as if a lifetime had been spent in the rehearsing of them, with a little clerk scribbling away in a corner, taking it all down for posterity. Or your trial.
“Come along, my dears.” Imlay offered each of the women an arm. “Let us be on our way.” He raised his voice for the benefit of any police informers that might be lurking in the vicinity. “I am looking forward to my bowl of gruel and a morsel of bread and if we have any wine in the house we will raise our chipped mugs to Citizen Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. Vive la République.”
“Fool,” said Mary but she took his arm as happily as a young bride and Sara took the other and they hobbled off together in their wooden clogs down the Rue des Sans Culottes, as it had been recently renamed, though most Parisians continued to call it by its original name, the Rue Gratte Cul—the Street of Arse Scratchers.
They were almost home when they heard the drum.
It was a familiar sound in Paris but it was wise not to ignore it; it might be the last sound you ever heard. They could hear the shouts now, not clearly but enough to know what they were selling, the new street criers of Paris. Death was a word that carried.
“La mort aux riches. La mort aux prêtres. La mort aux aristocrates.”
Sara stumbled on a cobble, cursing her clogs, not quite running, not yet frightened, more apprehensive, as if anxious to avoid an embarrassing encounter. There was an opening to the right, leading to a little court behind a tall iron gate. Imlay tried it but it was locked. He rattled vainly at the bars. On the other side was a pleasant cobbled yard with a tree and a well and a line of washing . . .
“I suppose I might lift you both,” he considered, but with a doubtful glance at Mary that might, in other circumstances, have been taken amiss. Then they looked back and saw the mob surging up the street: a tumult of rags and banners and flambeaus, red bonnets and ruddy faces in the light of the torches and the little drummer leading the way, rat-a-tat-tat. Imlay started shouting and waving his hat, urging Sara and Mary to do the same. “Vive la Nation. Vive la République. La mort aux aristocrates . . .” It was better not to be specific; you never knew who was in and who was out. And then the mob was upon them and the mood, thank God, was friendly, or at least not overtly hostile. Those were grins, yes, and not snarls? They were calling them Citizens anyway, and Sara was glad for once of her drab costume: brown skirt, black shawl, the grubby tricolour in her hat. She put her hand up to make sure it was there. She was swept along again and someone had an arm round her waist and was twirling her around in some kind of a dance: a man with one eye and a battered beaver hat and a meat cleaver in his hand. She took him by the wrist to make sure she knew where it was and he grinned in her face. A blast of—God, what?—through rotted teeth.
She could see Mary in the crowd as they danced, not too far away, trying to reach her and then they were in her own street and Imlay was at her side, catching her by the arm, swinging her away with an ingratiating smile at the man with the meat cleaver. Then he said, “Merde,” and she looked up and saw they’d got someone. A man of middling years with no hat and his wig awry, dark clothes, spectacles at an angle on his nose—he looked like a clerk in a law office or a minor official. Sara thought of a mole, burrowing away at a filing cabinet in the dim light of an office, minding his own business or his employers’ . . . Harmless. No apparent reason why he had attracted the attention of the mob. But then the mob was moved by hidden currents. Surges. Moods you could never fathom until it was too late and they’d pulled you down. Perhaps it was the wig—the wig was bad. And was it powdered? Fatal. He was mouthing protests, his head twisting this way and that in a bid to engage one of his tormentors, to lock on to a face, to evoke a shared humanity. She heard the cry, “À la lanterne”—taken up, turned into a bay, a howl. There was a street lamp on the wall above their heads and they threw a rope over the bracket and strung him up in a flash, his little legs working furiously just a few inches above the ground and his fingers clawing at the noose. Sara stepped forward impulsively but Imlay hauled her back and shook his head, glaring: was she mad? And when she looked again someone had gutted him with one quick, clean stroke of a butcher’s knife so his insides slid out like a bunch of sausages on to the cobbles.
Sara was sick on the cobbles. Then she pushed her way back through the crowd, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, hoping no one would take exception to such delicacy of feeling. She knew what would happen next. After the evisceration there would be the beheading and then they would drag the corpse after them through the streets, displaying it in those districts where they considered it would prove most edifying, sometimes leaving parts on a window ledge or in a doorway to make the point more strongly. But it was impossible to move against the tide of bodies and they were carrying her along with them down the street, dancing and singing and with the head of their victim bobbing on a pike before them.
Then they stopped and set up that terrible baying again, “À la lanterne, à la lanterne,” and she saw they had someone else.
He was taller, more upright than the other but he had a rope round his neck and they were pulling him along like a wild beast. A young man, personable but with a weathered complexion and long, dark hair untied and hanging loosely around his face—he could have been a gypsy, she thought, or a seafarer—though respectably dressed in a dark blue jacket and trousers and a linen shirt with a clean white stock. As he came closer she saw he had a cut on his bottom lip and blood in his hair. She looked round for Imlay, wishing he could stop it. He usually carried a pistol in
his coat, though it would take more than a pistol to stop a mob like this.
They had thrown the rope up over the lamp and were trying to haul him up but he had hold of it and was—my God, he was climbing it. Swarming up it hand over hand and kicking out at the crowd below and crying out to them in English, though not the English they had taught her at convent school.
And then Mary was there, shouting at them in the excellent but by no means native French of an English governess and Sara struggled towards her, thinking it was all over for them now, and all for an English spy they’d kill anyway, but Imlay was already at Mary’s side, berating the crowd in that cool, authoritative manner of his.
“Can you not see that he is an American?”
It seemed to have some effect. They formed a circle around their victim and stared up at him as if at some exotic beast in the zoo. He dropped to the ground and tugged the rope from his neck. His expression, one might say, attentive.
Everyone was talking now, expostulating, explaining, and Sara gathered that his crime was that he was not wearing the tricolour. But now that they had discovered he was Américaine some at least were inclined to be indulgent. And while the matter hung in the balance the man stood up and put his hand in his pocket and produced not a knife as she half expected and feared—for that would have been fatal—but a tin whistle.
He put it to his bloody lips and began to play, tapping out the rhythm with his boot. The tune was familiar to Sara though she could not place it at first until someone started singing the words—in English. And she saw with a shock that it was Imlay.
