The Flag of Freedom (35 page)

Spiridion had rounded on Lisle. ‘Where is the other woman?' he snapped.

The Scot shrugged. ‘Naudé took her,' he said.

‘Naudé took her? Took her where?'

‘To Cairo.'

‘Cairo? Why?'

‘Why? You must ask the Frenchman that. And the woman.'

Spiridion leaned towards him. His voice was now almost as soft as Imlay's. ‘I am asking you, Lisle. And by God, you had better tell me.'

He was a much bigger man than the Scot but there was no fear in the man's eyes. If anything, it was a look of bored contempt.

‘That is all I can tell you,' he said. ‘He said he was going to Cairo and that he was taking her with him.'

‘And she went willingly?'

‘I heard no complaint.'

‘So why did you bring them here from Tripoli?' Nathan demanded.

‘Because I was paid to,' Lisle said simply. ‘By the Frenchman. And they made no complaint about that, either.' He looked at the woman on the floor. ‘Not until you came along.'

‘So why did you come here?' Nathan persevered. ‘To Abukir?'

Another insolent shrug, or perhaps it was simply disinterested.

‘Because the Frenchman wanted to come here,' he said, ‘and he was paying.'

They made him take them to his cabin and there were the charts spread across his table – detailed soundings of Abukir and another beach called Marabut, closer to Alexandria. But nothing else. If there were any written orders, they did not find them, and Lisle claimed to be entirely ignorant of the French intentions.

The ‘Frenchman', as he persisted in calling Naudé, had engaged them to conduct a hydrographical survey – he had no idea of the reason why.

Nathan did not believe him, but he did not hang him. There had been enough deaths for one day. He left him there with his ship – and the dead and the dying and the wounded. In truth, he did not know what else to do with them. The schooner was too badly holed to take as a prize so far from home, even if they could have dragged her off
the bank. Had she been a French ship he might have burned her to the waterline where she lay, but he still served King George, and King George was not at war with the Pasha of Tripoli. Besides, he had the wounded to consider, and at least they had a surgeon aboard the
Meshuda
who looked like he was trying not to kill them.

‘What is the butcher's bill?' he asked Tully as soon as he came aboard the
Swallow
.

‘Four dead, six wounded.'

‘Four? Only four?' It seemed impossible after the slaughter he had seen aboard the
Meshuda
. ‘And Mr Lamb?'

‘He is alive, but …'

Nathan made his way down to the cockpit in the orlop. He could hear the screams long before he reached it. Three men were trying to hold down one of their shipmates while Kite sawed off his leg below the knee. Lamb was half-sitting against a bulkhead with his head turned away, ashen-faced, his expression twisted in horror or pain or both. He had a blood-soaked rag pressed to his shoulder. Nathan went to him and carefully eased it away. There was an ugly hole in the skin, just below the collarbone. A musket-ball, most like. He moved the boy forward slightly to examine his back, but there was no exit wound. The ball was still inside him.

Nathan leaned him gently back against the bulkhead.

‘You will be all right,' he said as convincingly as he could. Then, lowering his voice, ‘I will not let that butcher near you.'

He found a clean bandage and bound up the wound as best he could.

‘Just bide there a while,' he told the boy, as if he might consider taking a stroll. ‘I will be back soon with someone who can attend to you.'

But who else was there? He could not take the surgeon from the wounded in the
Meshuda
, even if he was willing to leave his crewmates.

He put the question to Spiridion when he returned to the quarterdeck. But for once the Greek was at a loss. ‘You might try the fort,' he said. ‘But I do not think it would be wise.'

Nathan did not think so either. There had already been several speculative shots from the guns in the fort. Well short and wildly off target, but he would not care to test them by going closer.

‘Your best hope is Candia,' Spiridion told him. ‘There are a number of doctors there – Greeks for the most part, and Venetians who have fled from the French. But you will have to bribe the Turkish Governor, I think. And it could take you a week to reach there if the wind does not pick up.'

The wind had dropped almost to nothing, but something strange seemed to have happened to the sky. It was no longer blue but curiously opaque, though there was not a cloud in sight, and the sun appeared as if veiled – Nathan could look on it without shielding his eyes. Spiridion had noticed it, too.

‘This I do not like,' he said. ‘Perhaps you had better move further out to sea.'

‘You think there is a storm coming?'

Spiridion frowned. ‘Possibly. A kind of a storm.' He seemed strangely distracted.

‘Well, there is no reason for us to stay here,' said Nathan. He looked around for Imlay but he was nowhere to be seen. He had not seen him, in fact, since they came back from the
Meshuda
with the Consul's daughter. ‘Pass the word for Mr Imlay,' he said to one of the boys. He saw Tully talking to Cribb over on the opposite rail and made to move towards them. But Spiridion caught at his sleeve.

‘I have a favour to ask,' he said. ‘Will you let me have a boat, so that I might go ashore?' He looked away towards the distant beach. ‘I think there is time.'

Nathan was bemused. ‘Time for what? I thought you said it would not be wise to go ashore.'

‘I have to follow Naudé to Cairo.' Spiridion dropped his voice. ‘I have to find out what has happened to Suora Caterina.'

‘Ah.' Nathan nodded. Sister Caterina. He had almost forgotten her. ‘Do you not think Suora Caterina can look after herself?' he enquired, for his experience of her in Venice, though brief, had assured him that she was a woman of some resource.

But Spiridion thought not; not in this instance. He did not believe she had chosen to accompany the Frenchman of her own free will. ‘And she has no friends in Cairo,' he said. He felt it was his duty to help her if he could.

Nathan could not help wondering if there was more to this than loyalty to a fellow agent, but he knew better than to ask, or to try and talk him out of it.

‘But how will you get to Cairo?' he asked him.

‘I will apply to the caravanserai for a mount.' Spiridion nodded towards the stone building he had pointed out
earlier on the far side of the bay on its little hump of hill. ‘I am perfectly able to take care of myself,' he assured Nathan. ‘And of course, I will have Mr Banjo to assist me.'

Of course. Nathan could hardly keep Banjo aboard the
Swallow
, though he would dearly have liked to.

So he gave them a boat and wished them well, though he felt a great sense of loneliness as he watched them go, wondering if he would ever see either of them again.

He became aware of Imlay at his side.

‘I have sent Miss Devereaux below,' he said, ‘with Qualtrough to attend to her.'

‘How is she?'

‘Very shocked, very low. It has been a terrible ordeal for her. I have put her in your cabin – I hope you do not mind.'

Nathan wondered what was wrong with Imlay's cabin, but he let it pass.

‘The men behaved very well,' said Imlay, looking down at them in the waist as they secured the guns, ‘do you not think?'

‘Very well,' agreed Nathan, his mind on other things. He felt the hint of a breeze on his cheek, but not from the west. It had backed right round to the south-east. Cribb had felt it, too, and was giving orders to trim the sails.

‘And not for God, I think,' Imlay went on, ‘nor King and Country, like your British seafarers.'

‘Some of them are British,' Nathan pointed out.

‘But not many – and not under a British flag.' He gazed up at the rattlesnake writhing now among the red stripes at their stern, as the wind lifted it. ‘Nor did they fight for
Freedom,' he said. He looked at Nathan. ‘So what did they fight for? Their pay – or the sheer joy of fighting?'

‘Or the sheer hell of it,' said Nathan. He had no idea what men fought for. He wondered sometimes what
he
fought for. But now was not the time. He raised his eyes to the sky. It was darker; darker than it had any business to be at this time of day, and the sun a pale, veiled countenance, dropping to the west. ‘You tell me.'

‘Oh, I merely ask the question. I do not know the answer.' Imlay beamed amiably. ‘But we won,' he said, ‘that is the important thing. I believe you sent for me?'

‘Yes.' Nathan told him of his intention to sail for Crete and why.

It was not well received.

‘I told Louisa I would take her back to her father,' said Imlay. ‘In Naples.'

‘And so we will. But first we must go to Crete to treat our wounded.'

‘Well, I suppose it is on the way,' conceded Imlay doubtfully.

Nathan left him standing there with his scowling face and crossed the deck to join Tully and Cribb. He was halfway there when a sudden gust of wind laid them hard over and he finished at a run, clutching at the rail. Cribb was already roaring at the topmen to take in sail. There was another gust, not so strong, but Nathan felt the heat of it on his face, as if he had opened an oven door.

‘Dear God,' said Tully, staring off towards the shore. ‘What has happened to the horizon?'

I
t was like a wall of sand rolling across the desert and into the sea. And with it came the wind.

The
khamsin
, Cathcart called it, a wind out of the desert. And it seemed to bring most of the desert with it.

They had barely reefed sail and got the boats aboard when it struck them. A blast from Hell that heeled them over almost onto their beam ends and then drove them before it into the open sea – at least so Nathan hoped, for it was like navigating in a fog, save that the air was thick with stinging sand. First it wiped out the sun, then the sky, then the mastheads until he could see no more than a few feet before his face. The crew staggered blindly about the deck or sought what shelter they could, neckerchiefs tied round nose, mouth, even eyes. Nathan, who had no handkerchief, could only crouch in the lee of the binnacle,
with his hand clamped about his face to filter the gritty particles.

But these were just the outriders of the storm. Within minutes, the wall of sand was upon them and Nathan could barely see the compass with his nose pressed up against the glass.

He spared a thought for the stranded schooner and wondered if she could survive, but there was no way of reaching her, or even finding her in such a storm. He could only hope that she was close enough to the land, and in shallow enough water, to endure the pounding of the waves. The
Swallow
's own fate was, besides, precarious. They were still without jib or staysail, both of which had been carried away by the falling topgallant, and the two quartermasters were fighting desperately to keep her head out to sea and stop her yawing to leeward. How they could breathe in this, let alone steer, was a mystery to Nathan, who was stooped beside them, one hand to his face, the other gripping the binnacle, less for support than reassurance that there was something solid, something real in that intangible world of wind and sand and salt spray.

He had no sense of direction, or time, or distance. He could barely breathe. He felt a wave of panic and struggled to his feet, staggering like a blind man, hands stretched out before him. Someone seized him and thrust something into his groping hands – a towel or turban, soaked in water – and Nathan wrapped it gratefully around his face and head, leaving a small gap for his eyes. He tried to thank this unknown Samaritan but found he could not speak, even if the man could hear him. He was wearing a
similar guise but Nathan somehow knew it was Tully. So they sheltered together in the lee of the binnacle, while the ship plunged madly on.

And then the rain came down. A red rain, thick with the sand of the desert, so that it seemed to be raining blood. As if in Divine Judgement on the slaughter they had wrought upon the
Meshuda
.

But at least it cleared the air a little, though they could see nothing resembling a horizon. The land had vanished completely and they were surrounded by a heaving if strangely sluggish sea. They could take no kind of a reading, but from the chronometer Nathan judged they must be five or six leagues north of Alexandria.

And then he saw them. Dim shapes moving through the yellow murk off the larboard bow. He thought at first it was a trick of the imagination, or the storm, a phantom fleet that came and went in the mist of sand and rain. Even when others saw them, pointing and shouting in his face, he could not rid his mind of the suspicion that they were some mischief of the desert, something like a mirage, projected far out to sea. It was only when he heard the sound of the guns – signal guns fired singly and at intervals – that he accepted them as real. And then a beam of sunlight pierced the clouds and he saw the French tricolour streaming bravely from the stern of a giant three-decker.