By the Mast Divided (44 page)

The Frenchmen were sailors, who – just like their English counterparts – drank like fish and fought like idiots at any opportunity. Many of them must be incapable by now and would get more so before the night was over. But they would not all be drunk and he still did not know the size of any party aboard the Indiaman, for everyone aboard kept inside out of
the cold wind, no doubt huddled close to the stove in the great cabin, the chimney of which was belching smoke into the afternoon sky. There was a train of smoke from the
Mercedes
too, which was worrying, given that they needed to pass her in a narrow channel where they could be close enough to each other to lob a gobbet of spit.

He took a walk through the alley where the prisoners were held, merely nodding to the fellow, a different one, guarding their door. He established that it was one man as before, and that the approach and passing of a strange face did not cause any more alarm than it had that morning. Then he went back to the shoreline, to watch the depth of mud between land and water lengthen. On the hill the church bell tolled the half and whole hour to a sun that was sinking inexorably in the west, taking with it what little warmth it had afforded and leaving Pearce chilled to the marrow.

He left before the last of the light went, to make his way back to his companions, the church bell tolling in his ears. It was an unhappy sound to a man who, in his heightened imagination, and well aware of how little he had actually been able to discover, could easily turn the clanging into a knell of doom.

‘Where the hell is that Irish sod?’ demanded Charlie Taverner, stepping to the edge of the trees and peering for the umpteenth time along the darkening shoreline. ‘He should have been back with that powder an age past.’

‘Ye can tell yer no’ a sailor,’ said Dysart, wincing as shifting his body made him aware of the pain in his arm.

Charlie did an impersonation of a sailor’s gait, all bandy legs and rolling body. ‘If I walk like this, Dysart, and swear and drink enough, I’ll get taken for one, won’t I, Rufus?’

The funny walk made Rufus laugh out loud, a sound that pleased Charlie no end and had him repeating the impersonation.

Dysart was less taken with it. ‘At sea ye learn no’ to fret, Taverner, for there is naught you can do. It’s aw wind, tide and the lap of the gods, is that no right, Mr Burns?’

The midshipman sat toying with a rough-looking club. He looked at Dysart for a moment and nodded, though without much conviction. He had hardly said one word since coming ashore, and his face told anyone who cared to look that he had the weight of the world on his slender shoulders. Toby Burns did not speak for he feared his voice would betray his feelings. If being aboard HMS
Brilliant
had been less than salutary,
what had happened here was hellish. All he could reflect on was home, of apples from the family orchard, or fishing in the nearby stream.

He thought of his clerical father delivering grace at the head of a table laden with food; of his mother, who treated him with a tenderness that he longed to experience now, arms that would envelop and comfort him, filling his nostrils with a smell of lemons that he could conjure up without effort. There had been school, which he hated, yet which now seemed a paradise compared to what he was living through. Would those who shared his classroom, who had been so envious of the position his relationship to Captain Barclay had earned him, covet this; the certainty of capture by a fiendish enemy who might well tear him limb from limb?

‘I didn’t have much to fret about till you and your lot came a-calling,’ Charlie sighed.

‘’Cept not having a pot to piss in,’ murmured Rufus.

‘This ain’t no better, Rufus.’

‘No better than what?’ asked Dysart.

Charlie looked at the Scotsman, with his spiky, sand-coloured hair, and that patch of skin red and angry where the surgeon has shaved it to tend to his head wound. Dysart had the kind of brows, near to invisible, and pallid complexion that exaggerated the nature of his pale-blue eyes. It suddenly occurred to Charlie that he might be old enough to have been one of his early victims, for rolling sailors had been a pastime amongst him and his mates a few years back; ashore, drunk and insensible they were easy meat even for fourteen-year-olds, provided you got to their purse before some greedy whore did.

‘Ever been to London, Dysart?’

‘Berthed at Wapping once or twice.’

‘And had a jug in the Prospect of Whitby?’

Dysart grinned. ‘I have that an aw.’

‘My old stamping ground, that was, from the Fleet all the way down to Wapping Steps.’

‘Fleeced many a mark thereabouts, didn’t you, Charlie?’

Taverner glared at Rufus to shut him up. ‘I would have found you easy meat and that’s no error.’

‘Was that your trade, Taverner?’ asked Dysart, in a less friendly tone. ‘Fleecing folk?’

‘You has to make your way in the world, and with whatever means God gifts you. My tongue and my wits was mine.’

The temptation to explain was strong, especially in the face of the
look of disapproval on the Scotsman’s face. Taverner senior had laboured long, hard and honestly as a roofer all his life, only to end up dead not yet thirty under a pile of wood scaffold that collapsed under him and his workmates. Nothing came from the man who had put up that scaffold, or from the builder who had employed him to erect it, which left
eight-year
-old Charlie, his mother and his three younger sisters to fend for themselves. Honest toil never brought in enough – it was law-breaking, not law-abiding that had kept the family out of the workhouse, until age did for his mother and the girls grew old enough to fend for themselves. Those eight years had felt like a hundred. There was no point in even trying to justify such a life as he had led. You had to live it to know why it was as it was.

‘Mister,’ Charlie sneered, determined to change the subject, his arm pointed in the general direction of Burns. ‘Did you not term him that?’

‘I did,’ Dysart replied, nonplussed, as the midshipman stiffened, for he discerned a threat in Taverner’s tone.

‘Here we are, stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no ship, and still, to you, this pup is mister.’

‘Mr Burns is a young gentleman,’ Dysart insisted, ‘and that gets him the courtesy.’

‘You’d be better off gifting him the toe of your boot.’

‘Sure, a fine bunch you are.’ O’Hagan’s voice made everyone turn. He and young Martin stood silhouetted at the edge of the trees, the gunpowder barrel under one Irish arm. ‘Nobody keeping watch.’

‘We was just about to get a fire going,’ said Charlie quickly, ‘now that dusk is upon us.’

‘Then I’d best put this powder well away from here, for any fire you light is likely to blow us to Kingdom Come.’

‘Rufus, Mr Burns,’ Charlie spat, ‘it’s time to fetch some kindling.’

When Pearce arrived they had a small blaze going, well back in the trees, and with no fear in what light was left that any smoke would give away their presence.

The rise of the tide indicated to Pearce that it was time to move. Thankful for a moon, they left the woods to pass silent and dark houses on the way into Lézardrieux, with only the odd barking dog to note their presence. Pearce and Michael were in the lead; Dysart, the two boys and the barrel of gunpowder behind, with Rufus and Charlie Taverner, very nervously bringing up the rear.

‘Don’t tiptoe,’ Pearce insisted, ‘walk normally but quietly and upright,
for if you crouch you will look suspicious.’

Rufus and Burns had contrived clubs – pathetic affairs made of crooked wood, with stones lashed to the timber by strips of bark – and Pearce recalled with an odd feeling the way they had shown them to him for his approval, as though he was in all respects what he did not want to be, their leader. He had said kind words in praise of their efforts, feeling like a hypocrite, even more of one as he observed the way his approbation cheered them both. It was a sobering thought, that apart from Michael O’Hagan, they were not warriors, and his skill was in fisticuffs, not the use of weapons. Pearce certainly did not think of himself in that vein either – childhood scrapping did not count. He could use a sword, but had only ever done so in bloodless contests at a Parisian fencing school. Even if they had to be whispered, the need to share his concerns was overwhelming.

‘We’re a mite short on muscle, Michael.’

‘We are that, John-boy.’

‘Dysart would have been a fighter, but he’s now useless with that broken arm. I would hazard that Charlie and Rufus have spent their lives avoiding any skirmish rather than engaging in one. Martin Dent is like Burns, too small to count, and here I am, a total impostor, leading them into a strange port in a strange land to rescue a group of men they don’t know. And what do we have to do? Steal a huge and complex ship from under the noses of its captors. Am I mad or what?’

‘Sure, anything for an easy life,’ the Irishman replied.

Pearce felt the anger well up in his breast, but that died as he heard the chuckle that followed Michael’s words. Unbidden, he felt his own laughter begin to bubble up, and it forced him to halt as it burst forth in serried splutters. Michael O’Hagan was laughing too, and making as much of a hash of maintaining a decent silence as Pearce. They ended up leaning on each other, hands on heaving shoulders, wheezing as they sought air from their pained and starved lungs, with an angry Dysart hissing at them to, ‘Hud yer bluddy wheest, ye pair o’ dozy sods.’

‘Sorry,’ Pearce gasped, forced to pound his chest in order to regain control.

‘So ye should be, daft buggers.’

‘Are you all right, Michael?’

‘I will be, John-boy,’ replied a panting O’Hagan, ‘just give me a minute and I will be.’

‘We’d best get moving.’

The wind had dropped as they sighted the topmasts of both vessels.
Hearing the creaking of their timbers as they rode the incoming tide, a ripple of murmurs went down the line. Pearce led them to a deep doorway on the quayside that had been like a coal-black recess even in the early evening light. At night it would, he hoped, keep those who would stay here safe from view, provided they did not speak and no one came to the place. He went off alone, to examine the ships.

The privateer was gloomily lit on the deck, but only chinks of light came from the casements of the Indiaman’s great cabin, indicating that those who had drawn the short straw to stay aboard were still there. Apart from the stars, the lanterns outside the taverns provided the only light in the place. They were quieter now, and he was tempted to enter and see how many potential foes were still capable of reacting if the alarm was raised. But that would be unwise, though he hoped, from the low buzz of conversation coming through the wooden shutters, that it would be few. The rest of the fishing village appeared to be asleep.

‘Come along, Michael,’ Pearce said on his return. ‘This is, I fear, a task for thee and me.’

‘A club?’ Michael asked.

Pearce smiled, wondering if his friend could see it by the light of the moon. ‘I think nature has endowed you with what you need.’

The first problem arose when they entered the narrow passageway – the height of the buildings cutting out what little light existed.

‘This will never do, John-boy. I cannot see my hand in front of my nose.’

‘I am damned if I know what to do about it.’

A wave of weariness assailed Pearce then, a product of too little sleep and too much thinking, not helped by a resurgence of the numerous doubts that had flitted through his brain all day. It was a more certain hand that took his arm and led him back out to a point where the starlight and moon gave a glimmer of sight.

‘Wait here.’

Michael moved away, heading for the nearest tavern, and Pearce had a heart-stopping moment when he thought that the Irishman was going to walk in and demand a candle. But he stopped outside, right under the light, and without waiting to calculate any risk he reached up and took hold of the iron bracket that attached the lantern to the wall. Slowly, wrenching back and forth, he detached it from its fixing. Holding it out, with the wooden dowels that had been sunk in the stone still fixed to the end of the bracket, he returned to join Pearce, and they set off up an alley in which they could now see where they were putting their feet.

As soon as they turned into the right alleyway Pearce felt a familiar sensation. He began to shake, and he wondered if it was evident in his voice as he started talking, not loudly but audibly in French, Michael’s head bowed, pretending to listen. If it was the Irishman gave no sign, and as they approached the point where the sentry should have been, he laughed so loud that Pearce nearly had a seizure, which was doubled in its effect when he realised there was no one to hear it, no one guarding the prisoners – a fact that put paid to his trembling.

As he walked past the door, Pearce, under his breath, swore heartily in two languages, cursing his own stupidity for not realising that on a cold night no sentry would stand outside. He recalled from his visit earlier that day the interior doorway the sentinel had opened to give him access to the prisoners in the large room they occupied. He racked his brain but without success to try and recall if there was another room. Finally, because there was no choice, he tapped softly on the shutter, so that he could communicate with those inside. It swung open on a dark room, and One Tooth’s face appeared at the window. The look Pearce got when he explained was eloquent testimony to the fact that he was not alone in thinking himself dense.

‘Sentry sleeps, we reckon, in the corridor between the front door and ours. There ain’t no other, and there’s no way up a floor either from what we has seen, though the sound of feet give me to reckon there’s habitation above us.’

‘On his own?’ asked Michael, which was answered with a nod.

The silence that followed was punctuated by an odd sound, a sort of low rattle that made Pearce move from the window to the door. The wood was too thick for any sound to penetrate but there was definitely something making a noise. It was only when he stood back, perplexed, that he realised it was coming from above his head. At the top of the studded oak door was a skylight, slightly ajar. Beckoning to Michael, he had himself lifted on a cupped hand, put his ear next to the gap and heard the unmistakable sound of snoring; he also caught a very strong whiff of a human being not overly fussy about washing.