Burning Bright (21 page)

“
Me
, sir? Yes, sir. But—what should I tell them?”

Ramsay smiled at Elinor, a wicked, delighted grin. “Tell them we’re going to war.”

In which they are not allowed to go to war, but do so anyway

beg your pardon, Captain,” Elinor said, “but it sounded very much as if Admiral Durrant intended us
not
to go to war.”

“What did I tell you, Miss Pembroke, about us being cleverer than he?” Ramsay held the great cabin door open for her, then brushed past her to open a long cabinet and take out two rolls of paper. “Help me lay this out, would you?” He unrolled the first cylinder and spread it on the table, where its edges extended past the tabletop. It threatened to roll back up again, and Elinor found a cruet and the silver salt cellar to pinion the edges.

Then she walked around the table until she could see it right way up. It was, as she expected, a map of the Caribbean, but far finer than the admiral’s and with fewer labels along the coasts of the islands. It also showed most of the North and South American coastlines, also labeled, with country borders sketched in more palely than the black outlines of the islands.

“If you please, would you give us a little more light?” Ramsay said, and Elinor fetched candlesticks and set the candles burning so she could see that the map was colored in green and blue and yellow, with a few specks of purple near the edges and solid green over most of the North American continent. Yellow predominated along the shores of the mainland, with two large blotches of green, and one of the islands was particolored blue and yellow. “Do you understand what you’re looking at?” Ramsay said.

Elinor traced the outline of the yellow peninsula protruding from the northern continent. “Admiral Durrant said this was Florida, which is Spanish territory, so I gather whatever is colored yellow belongs to Spain. And the rest of North America is our American colonies, so I presume green is British possessions and blue must be French.”

“Very good—ah, gentlemen, please join us. Miss Pembroke, if you’ll be seated?”

The lieutenants took seats around the table and Sampson Brown stood behind Ramsay. None of them looked surprised to be hauled away from duty or their beds. “Not good news, Miles?” Beaumont said.

“Oh no, Arthur, the best news,” Ramsay replied with a smile, and quickly recounted the conversation of the board room.

When he was finished, Livingston said, “Begging your pardon, Captain, but I don’t see how our being stuck in the ass-end of nowhere constitutes good news.”

“Mr. Livingston, watch your language. Admiral Durrant thinks that’s what he’s doing, but he hasn’t given any thought to how we’re getting there,” Ramsay said. “More important, though, is that he confirmed that the pirates have learned to use Seers to locate our ships and steer clear of them.”

“I thought he denied it,” Elinor said.

“With the vehemence of someone who would like an unpleasant fact to be untrue. For an Extraordinary Seer to compel Visions of particular places or objects, he—or she, my apologies—must have something on which to focus. The implication is that someone within the Admiralty is passing information to the pirates, and the admiral takes that accusation of treason personally. So he declares loudly that it is impossible.

“The First Lord, on the other hand, informed me that the War Office’s Seers have discovered that the leader of the Brethren of the Coast is an Extraordinary Seer who has discovered how to direct his Vision without a focus. The Admiralty has been scrambling to learn the secret and deploy it against Napoleon, or at any rate to defend against Evans’ use of it, but we are far from a solution.”

Ramsay went to the writing desk and dug through the drawer, came up with a pencil, and returned to the table. He pulled out his belt knife and began sharpening the tip, flicks of wood and lead flying in the candlelight. “Admiral Durrant means well, but he’s set in his ways—you know that, Miss Pembroke—and it takes a preponderance of evidence to change his mind. We’re going to provide that evidence by eliminating that pirate squadron and proving that
Athena
and her resident Scorcher are of far more use than a handful of frigates.”

The quiet Lieutenant Fitzgerald leaned forward. “Where did you say our fleet would be?”

“Here.” Ramsay drew an X on the map.

“And we’re going to assume the pirates know that.”

“Yes.”

“Then…” Fitzgerald put his finger on a spot on the largest yellow island and drew an invisible line along its coast and past Florida. “This is what the admiral thinks the pirates’ route will be.”

“It would make sense. They’ve the advantage of the prevailing winds,” said Beaumont.

“Correct,” said Ramsay. “So the question, gentlemen, is—what route would allow the pirates to most effectively attack our waiting fleet, and take it unawares?”

The three lieutenants bowed over the map. Brown crossed his arms and watched over Ramsay’s shoulder. “If the fleet’s attention is southward, then this route through the Bahamas would take them up and around so they could attack from the north,” said Livingston, his animosity gone for the moment.

“And our fleet would be beating against the wind the whole time,” said Beaumont. “The pirates would have the advantage of surprise.”

“And if they took the channel between Providence and Eleuthera, and then came around east of Abaco and took advantage of that row of keys…good Lord, they’d be thumbing their noses at England the whole way!” Fitzgerald looked stunned. Ramsay looked smug.

“Now, gentlemen, and Miss Pembroke, we should remember our orders,” he said. “We’ve been ordered to the coast of Saint-Domingue, and I intend to follow that order. So we will take
this
route, here between the Bahamian islands, and if we happen to run into any pirates along the way, we will do our duty as instructed by Admiral Durrant himself. Is everyone clear?”

Fitzgerald’s stunned look gave way to amazement. Beaumont and Livingston looked almost as pleased as Ramsay. Brown snorted and pushed past the captain, putting his stubby finger on the yellow island. “Don’t suppose you know when they were leaving?” he said.

“Tomorrow or day after.”

Brown snorted again. “Fair enough. Lay out that other map and let’s see if I can plot us an interception. But I can tell you right now it’ll probably be off Nassau, which is close to poetic justice.”

Ramsay nodded, then said to Elinor’s puzzled expression, “Providence Island was a pirate haven about a hundred years ago. We drove them out by making it… unprofitable for them to stay there.”

Elinor nodded. “I see. But, Captain, what I do not see is how
Athena
can defeat several ships, even if they are smaller than she is.”

“Well, Miss Pembroke,” Ramsay said, the smile giving way to the wry quirk of his lips, “that would be where you come in.”

It was easy to believe, here in the open ocean between Bermuda and the rest of the world, that
Athena
was the only ship that ever sailed the seas. How any two ships might cross paths across that grey-green expanse was a mystery to Elinor, but Brown and Ramsay, plotting their location twice a day, seemed completely unconcerned that they might sail all the way from Bermuda to Saint-Domingue without encountering any other ships, let alone the pirates they were searching for. But she was only the Scorcher, not the captain, so she paced the deck or pretended to read in the great cabin and tried not to think about the upcoming confrontation.

“We can’t afford to take more than two prizes,” Ramsay had told her the day after their impromptu council of war. They had been alone in the great cabin, heads bowed together over a sheet of paper, and Elinor felt as if Livingston’s crass remark was no longer an impediment to their friendship. Still, she made no comment on the propriety of their situation, not wanting to draw attention to it and risk Ramsay deciding he might be damaging her reputation. “We simply don’t have the manpower to sail more than three ships, even over such a short distance as from the Bahamas back to Bermuda.”

“Is there nowhere closer you might bring prizes?”

“Port Royal in Jamaica is the only other major harbor we have out here, and it’s a good deal farther. Besides”—Ramsay smiled, a wicked light in his eye—“I want Admiral Durrant to get a good look at our success.”

Elinor returned his smile. “For my part, I share that sentiment, Captain.”

“At any rate,” Ramsay continued, “we can’t make a plan of attack until we see how many ships we’re facing, but we can strategize in general.”

He sketched the outline of a ship with one mast and three sails, a large, roughly trapezoidal one and two smaller triangular ones. “This is a Bermuda sloop. We’ve commissioned several of these because they’ve a shallow enough draft to chase the pirates into coastal waters a ship like
Athena
can’t navigate. Unfortunately, the pirates have several of them as well. They’re fast, well-built, and maneuverable, and we waste a great deal of shot trying to sink them.

“Now, the pirates are making this run up the coast to strike at Colonial targets, which means they’ll have larger ships for the transport of cargo and the sloops for protection—as small as they are, they can still do plenty of damage. So your primary role will be to burn through those masts and leave the sloops dead in the water. We’ll pick them off after we’ve captured the primary vessels.”

“I am not certain how quickly I can accomplish that.”

“You’re the one who knows your abilities, but if you start a fire on the sails as well, they’ll be preoccupied with fighting several fires at once. Keep in mind, though, that those sails are likely to be fire-resistant.”

“Do we carry any of the substance they spread on the sails to make them so?”

“Yes, and I should have thought of that. Ask Mr. Ayres for that and some canvas.”

Elinor sighed. “Mr. Ayres does not like me much.”

“He’ll have to learn to behave himself. For what it’s worth, I think he’s more afraid of you than disapproving.”

“That is not much comfort, Captain.”

Ramsay leaned back in his seat and ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. “I served under a few captains who ran their ships on fear rather than respect, and I swore I’d never do that. I think I’ve succeeded. But there are still men, some of the newer men, on this ship who fear me.”