The Price of Glory (7 page)

Nathan was shocked into immobility, his brain unable to comprehend the enormity of the deed, even while it registered the spatter of blood and other gruesome material on his cheek. God knows, he had seen enough of violent death in his time but this was beyond anything he had witnessed on the deck of ship of war or even at the foot of the guillotine. This was callous, cruel—and most shocking of all—
casual
violence, and for a moment he could neither move nor speak. But he could hear; and though the count spoke softly, and as nonchalantly as if he was ordering the eradication of vermin, Nathan distinctly heard him say: “Kill them. Kill them all.”

N
ATHAN
LIKED TO
THINK
that he was a reasonable man. Slow to anger. Cool-headed in a crisis.

His mother had always refuted this.

“You have always been emotional,” she had informed him on more than one occasion and to his profound irritation. “Just like your father. Though he, too, would have it otherwise. You suffer from a rush of blood to the head. Or a red mist, descending.”

Certainly, it was one or the other that saved him now. Without considering the consequences, let alone the danger, Nathan strode forward, grabbed the chevalier by the throat and pressed his pistol into the man's cheek with such force he heard something crack.

“Get back,” he ordered the others, who in truth had scarcely had a chance to move. “Back—or by God I'll blow his head off. “

He felt de Batz trying to pull away and he shifted his grip to the collar and lifted him from the ground, shaking him like a rat, whatever his title, for he was a small man and inconsequential in weight.

“You don't think I mean it? By Christ, only tempt me.” He cocked the pistol with his thumb, though a part of his mind registered that he had neglected to slide back the metal cap that kept the powder dry, a frequent mistake that one day would be the death of him. Too late, now, for he did not have a free hand, but he doubted anyone had noticed, least of all the man in his grip. The blood had drained from the chevalier's face and his eyes were as venomous as a snake's, but there was fear there, too, and pain, for Nathan had pressed the pistol so hard into his cheek he had broken the flesh and possibly one or two of his teeth.

The seamen had advanced in a long menacing line, clearly ready to resume the slaughter they had so lately interrupted. Gilbert Gabriel was at his captain's side, Connor too, eager to knock heads.

“Steady boys, steady” Nathan admonished them, for he did not want to have another fight on his hands. He heard the echo of the lines from “Hearts of Oak,” the battle hymn of the King's Navy, and he laughed aloud, laughed with a half-crazed delight at the absurdity of it all; laughed in the chevalier's face which stopped his capers as effectively as if Nathan had brained him with his pistol, for if he had not known his assailant was mad before, he did now. Nathan whirled him round like a partner in a dance, and called out for William Brown, the
Unicorn
's master at arms, a hulking turnkey of a brute with a pistol in one hand and a tomahawk in the other, which he had acquired in the swamps about New Orleans during a similar engagement. Nathan threw the chevalier in his direction, so violently he sprawled in the dust.

“Take this thing and keep him under close guard and if he gives you abuse, gag him.”

But now he had to calm down; now he had to take control of the situation before it got entirely out of hand. He faced the enemy again—the enemy, his allies—and one of them stepped forward: a youngish man who, to confuse matters further, wore a blue jacket, though not the uniform of the National Guard. In fact, unless Nathan was much mistaken, it was the uniform of a warrant officer in the British navy. This was not the only surprise.

“I guess this is what you might call a stand off,” the fellow observed in an amiable drawl and in perfect English—or as near perfect as a citizen of the United States would ever achieve. “But perhaps I can be of assistance.”

There were questions to be asked of this, but they would keep.

“Stand these men down,” Nathan instructed him firmly. “For I am under orders to assist the forces of King Louis of France which I believe places us upon the same side in this quarrel and it would be folly to fall out among ourselves.”

“I'm with you there, sir,” agreed the American equably, “though we were doing well enough, I believe, without your assistance. However, stand down it is.”

He instructed the men accordingly—in passable if by no means fluent French—and though there was some reluctance and a few fierce looks towards their late commander, the majority seemed relieved to accept the arrangement. Lowering their weapons, they began to move away, looking to their wounds and their wounded.

“And when you have tended to your people, report back to me.” This was received with a jaunty tip of the hat which, though it had altogether too much of the New England about it to pass muster in the King's Navy, encouraged Nathan to believe he could safely stand his own men down.

“Mr. Lamb!”

“Here, sir.” The midshipman was still at his post beside the loaded cannon, swinging his sword about as if he were mowing grass. Nathan pointed to the Republican soldiers who had retired to the rear and were huddled in a sullen group about their abandoned guns. “Take a dozen hands and make those men secure.” Secure was not quite the word but it was to be hoped Lamb would interpret it adequately.

“And Mr. Brown …”

“Sir?”

Nathan glanced towards de Batz, now in the grip of one of Brown's bullies. What on earth was to be done with him? The sensible thing would be to send him back to his men; accept his offence as a moment of madness committed in the heat of battle. Except that it had not been in the heat of battle. He had murdered a prisoner in cold blood—Nathan's prisoner and therefore a prisoner of His Britannic Majesty—and besides, there had been that soft-spoken command:
Kill them. Kill them all
.

Had he meant only the Republican guards? But even if he had, it would have been a flagrant abuse of the unwritten rules of war between civilised nations.

By God, he was rehearsing his defence already.

The chevalier returned his scrutiny with a look of such pure hatred, Nathan knew he had made an enemy for life. Walking over to the ramparts, he peered through one of the embrasures toward where he had left the
Unicorn
. The light was fading fast and he could not see her at first, and for one awful moment he thought she had foundered. But no, there she was, some distance from where he had left her—and by God, she was afloat! The rising tide had lifted her off the sandbank, moored by the head in mid-Channel. Nathan looked to the sun, an immense red buoy on the horizon, marking its own demise. Two hours to the turn of the tide. He glanced up at the Union flag flapping at the masthead. The wind held steady from sou'-sou'-east. His brain struggled with the calculations. Others could do this as easily as read the time but for Nathan it was always an effort, like assembling some gigantic, moving puzzle and forever losing the pieces. He switched his thoughts to another problem, somewhat easier to resolve.

“Mr. Brown?”

“Sir?”

“Take the prisoner back to the ship and clap him in irons.”

“Clap him in irons it is, sir.”

Joyous words to Brown's ears; he liked nothing better than to clap a man in irons, lest it was to see him lashed up to a grating for a good flogging. The last captain of the
Unicorn
had been more to his taste in this regard; though he had finished up with his throat cut.

“And let Mr. Tully know what has happened here.”

Brown frowned. This was more difficult. Nathan wondered if he should send Holroyd or Lamb. He tried once more.

“Tell him we have taken the fort and made contact with our allies.”

The frown cleared a little.

“Aye aye, sir.”

And now for their allies. And the American in the British naval jacket.

“Bennett, sir. Benjamin Bennett.”

He removed his hat, a large, sloppy, black affair such as a Sussex drover might wear on a weekday. Save that there was a feather in it and a humorous look in his eye that Nathan had not seen in many drovers, not mocking as the chevalier's had been, too good-humoured for that, but as if they were playing a game.

They stood on the ramparts of the redoubt in the light of a lantern, for it was properly dark now in the shadows of the fort. Nathan's men sprawled comfortably about the guns and their allies comported themselves in a like manner on the far side of the redoubt. Out to sea he could see the broken masts of the
Unicorn
against the paler sky and if he looked the other way, the lights of the smaller vessels moored off Long Island, in the mouth of the Auray, just inside the Gulf.

“Well, Bennett, I take it you are an American.”

“From Nantucket, sir, Rhode Island.”

So not Boston. Much superior to Boston, at least in the view of the residents of Nantucket.

“A seafaring man.”

“I am, sir, as are most men from Nantucket.”

“And once in the King's Navy, I think, by the coat you are wearing, unless you acquired it by other means.”

Bennett glanced down at it with a look of surprise as if he had quite forgotten that he was wearing it, and what it might signify.

“Ah yes, sir, the coat. I fear it needs a good wash and a bit of make and mend.” He flicked at some particular blemish that had caught his eye, remarkably given the state it was in, for even by the poor light of the lantern it was apparent that it needed a good deal more than a wash; it needed burning. But it still had most of its brass buttons, if a little tarnished, and Nathan could make out what had once been white edging on the fall-down collar. “I served aboard the brig sloop
Phoebe
for a year or so, in the squadron of Admiral Saumarez, off the Isle of Oberon.”

“You were a volunteer?”

“Ah, well as to that, only in a manner of speaking, sir, being as I was pressed into the service.”

Nathan nodded understandingly. It did happen.

“I was second mate on the
Tristan
barque out of Nantucket and bound for Bristol on our usual run when we ran foul of the
Phoebe,
so to speak, in the Bay of Biscay and I was among those that was took. I was rated able seaman but the captain allowed as how I might assist the master, seeing as I possessed some small skill in navigation.”

Nathan understood this, too. Not many captains would relish having a man on the lower deck who could read a chart and a sextant, not if he had the slightest fear of the hands seizing the ship. Men had been hanged for less.

“And now you are a deserter,” he said, with just enough menace in his voice to remind him of the consequences thereof, and that this was not a conversation between equals.

The head came up, the eyes sharp. “A deserter? Never say that, sir. Never say that. We was chasing a blockade runner into La Rochelle when we grounded—aye sir, as you did, but on a falling tide—and the gunboats came out and pounded us so bad we was forced to strike.”

Nathan frowned, as much for his ignorance of the event as the ignominy of a King's ship forced to strike her colours. He followed the news of nautical encounters as rigorously as any officer in the service and felt sure he must have read of such an incident in the
Gazette.
However, a brig was not the greatest of the King's ships and it was possible the journal had dealt somewhat sketchily with the affair, especially as it had involved surrender.

“So you were taken prisoner?”

“I was, sir, with all the officers and crew, but seeing as I was American, and a pressed man at that, they reckoned I was no more eager to serve King George than they and might be willing to sling my hook in a French ship. I told them I'd as soon not, begging their pardons, which I fear they took ill, but they allowed I was not so great a menace to the Republic as to be shut up with the rest of the crew and they might save themselves the expense of accommodating me. So I was left to make my own arrangements, along with the rest of lads from home.”

It was a plausible if garrulous explanation. Nathan had heard that there were more than a hundred American ships locked up in La Rochelle by the British blockade and most of their crews with them. But it did not explain how he came to be serving with the Chouans.

“Ah, well, that is a longer story,” he began, when Nathan put this question to him, “but in short, after I had been there a few days I had seen enough of the place, not having the means to make my stay there a little more pleasurable, so I took it into my head to move along the coast a bit, in the hope of maybe stealing a boat and making my way back to the squadron.”

“Your zeal does you credit,” murmured Nathan, who did not believe a word of it.

“Well, a man can do worse than a life at sea, even in a King's ship,” the reprobate assured him, as if Nathan looked a man of promise and should give it some consideration. “And I was never going to get back to Nantucket on my own, was I? Not in the kind of tub I might pick up in a French fishing port.”

There was that.

“And you did not fear to be taken up by the authorities as an Englishman and a spy?”

“It was a risk, sure, but I spoke enough of the language to get by, I reckoned.” He noted Nathan's frown, for this was unusual, and grinned. “I had a girl once from Louisiana—Creole—who taught me the lingo.”

Nathan wondered at that, but did not challenge him. “So, you made your way up the coast …”

“I did. But before I had got very far, I fell in with a band of Chouans who had other plans for me and were as persuasive, you might say, as an English press gang.”

“This is the band you are with now?”

“Smaller, no more than a score or so—but we encountered a good few more on our travels. We were more than five thousand strong at one point but we took some hard knocks. Very hard.” A grim look came over him and he fell silent for a moment.