The Privateer's Revenge (36 page)

C
HAPTER 16

R
ENZI WAS ON HIS WAY BACK
to Guernsey and to Kydd. He had kept his word and stayed with d'Auvergne until it was obvious there was no more to be done, and then, accepting only what he was owed in wages, he quit the place.

It had been a catastrophe—not for want of courage: there had been every reason to expect a different conclusion but for the treachery of Querelle. The head of the secret police, Fouché, had moved rapidly and, with bloodshed and torture, the conspiracy to kidnap Bonaparte had been comprehensively crushed.

Georges had been taken after a gigantic struggle, the old soldier Pichegru dragged from his bed to the Temple prison. Troops had been sent across the Rhine to arrest the Duc d'Enghien and orders poured out of Paris for apprehending lesser names.

Bonaparte's vengeance was savage: arrests, trials and executions followed swiftly one on another. Georges was guillotined with eleven others, bellowing,
“Vive le Roi!”
even as the blade fell. The Duc d'Enghien was imprisoned and put on trial for his life while Pichegru was found strangled in his cell with a stick and necker-chief, some said to prevent unwanted disclosures at the trial.

It had been a searing experience: Renzi knew he looked haggard and drawn, and that it would take some time to emerge from the darkness of tainted violence. To see his friend again was now all he asked; he remembered the last letter, the reference to his “surprise,” and hoped it would allow some small leavening of Kydd's existence—what means he himself had been able to bring back was not as much as he had hoped.

St Peter Port was unchanged, the waterfront as active as ever. He checked the address on Kydd's letter. Off Fountain Street to the south: quite up to the fringes of respectability—was this his surprise? He found the house easily enough, a somewhat decayed dwelling but of some size.

“Oh?” The strikingly featured woman who answered the door seemed disconcerted at his appearance.

“Madame,” Renzi said, with an abject bow, “I have no wish to intrude. My recent understanding is that Mr Thomas Kydd is in residence here.”

“Ah!” she said. “You're naught but a bailiff come after the poor lamb!”

“Indeed I am not,” Renzi said, with the first smile for many weeks. “I am his friend.”

“You're not Mr Renzi?” she said, incredulous.

“I am.”

She took him by the arm and said warmly, “Why, do come in! I'm Rosie—he's not living here any more but you'll have such a surprise when y' hear what he's a-doing now.”

An hour later, warmed by a stiff tot and the odd group's open regard for him as a friend of Kydd, he stood in the street outside, bemused at the turn of events. Kydd was the talk of the town and, to a fair way of thinking, a rich man—a privateer captain of all things—still out on his third voyage but expected daily.

Renzi wandered down to the foreshore where they had last walked together. By all accounts Kydd's days of penury were well and truly behind him, and his own little contributions would no longer be needed—in fact, the new address he had been given was up on Grange Road, one of the imposing villas that looked down haughtily on the bustling seaport.

It would be a quite different man he would shortly be seeing. Their time together in
Teazer
was over, of course, however brief in the larger span of life. He'd wedge himself no longer in his tight little cabin, musing on mystical paradigms and vaulting theories while the sea tossed about their sturdy barque—and he would be so much the poorer to have to develop his thoughts in some dingy shorebound building.

Renzi shook off his selfish concerns. Now their ways would necessarily diverge, given their utterly different courses in life, and with Kydd busy amassing a fortune as a privateer captain there would be little point in lingering in Guernsey waiting for his infrequent returns.

No, it was time to part. The bleakness returned, threatening to become a desolation. He cast about for something to fasten on to. Was there anything perhaps he could give Kydd to show him how much he had appreciated his friendship? Given his circumstances, it would have to be a forlorn sort of present.

Then a thought struck. There
was
one last service he could do for his friend.

With the prospect of increasing wealth and Kydd's consequent high standing in society, there was little doubt that he would now see any resumption of his attempt to clear his name as irrelevant. Renzi had heard from Rosie of Kydd's naïve plan to unbribe the perpetrators. It had no chance, of course, but if he himself by other means was able to get to the bottom of it, it would be a satisfying thing indeed to offer his friend.

Renzi strode purposefully along the Pollet to Smith Street and made his way up to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief. “Renzi,” he snapped at the guard. “Confidential secretary to Commodore d'Auvergne of the Jersey Squadron. If you please—Mr Jessop, high clerk to Sir James.”

Being of such stature, the man maintained his own office; Renzi entered, then made play of closing the door behind him and testing the latch. Then he intoned gravely, “Renzi, sir. We have corresponded on occasion.”

Mystified, Jessop rose to shake hands.

“Sir. I have come on a matter of some delicacy. You are aware, are you not, of the commodore's
other
responsibilities?”

“Um, if you are referring to his activities of a clandestine nature arising from his connections with . . . yes, Mr Renzi, as high clerk to the commander-in-chief I am generally made cognisant—”

“There is no necessity for details at this time, Mr Jessop. The matter under privy investigation at this time merely requires an indication only concerning a possible breach of confidentiality. It may or may not be necessary to take the issue further but for now a simple response will answer.”

Jessop frowned and waited.

“Within the last several months has any communication of a covert or unusual nature been received by this office from the admiral commanding at Plymouth? Do please indicate with an affirmative or negative only.”

The man's face cleared. “Absolutely not. As you must be aware this is a commander-in-chief's station and does not have anything operationally to do with a subordinate admiral in another station. Therefore we have had nothing from Admiral . . . Lockwood, isn't it? Apart from the routine and mundane, that is.”

“You can be quite certain that nothing touching on covert operations or deployments—”

“Sir. You can rest assured that anything of such a nature must pass across my desk and there has been no such.”

“Nothing that can require a secret deviation from operational orders, perhaps?”

“Mr Renzi, I myself make up the order packs for captains and there have been no secret orders issued a commander on this station these last six months. As you must know, such operations as might be classed as covert are generally attended to by Commodore d'Auvergne. Of course,
Cerberus
frigate was once diverted—”

“Thank you, Mr Jessop. That has been most helpful. Good day to you, sir.”

So there could be little doubt that Kydd's forged “secret orders” had not originated from Lockwood. Therefore it must have been effected locally.

Renzi fought down his weariness and concentrated on a careful review of the procedure: he himself had signed for the orders but not sighted them, locking them away in the confidential drawer for the captain's later attention. When Kydd had opened them he recalled that the outer, normal orders had been in a packet as usual, only the secret orders sealed. He did not recall anything singular about the seal.

Surely they could not have been falsely planted in
Teazer
—there had been no signs of a lock forced and, in any case, the idea of any getting past Tysoe for access to Kydd's inner cabin was ludicrous. Therefore the false orders must have been inserted prior to their delivery to
Teazer
.

They had been brought in the usual fashion from the commander-in-chief's office by Prosser, the master's mate, who had signed for them properly. He had presumably then returned without delay in the boat to hand them over.

If at the flag office there had been no secret orders and in
Teazer
there were—there could be only one conclusion: that Prosser had himself inserted them or knew of the act.

Prosser! But what possible motivation could he have had for the deed? Vain, insensitive and no leader of men, he was much more likely to have been led by another. Standish? There was no way of telling. Prosser would never risk his career in admitting anything—he had now his acting lieutenancy. And the principal in the affair would have ensured that all tracks had been been well and truly covered.

It was unfortunate but there was no way forward. As a failed commander Kydd would therefore be for ever under a cloud and—A wave of rage roared through Renzi, shaking him with its intensity. It moved him, as nothing else had, that the gross world of deceit and treachery had reached out and touched his friend.

Renzi knew that unless he did
something
he would . . . but then . . . he realised he could.

The devil that was in him spoke seductively through the storm, plotting a course of action that in its very symmetry was beguiling and deeply satisfying. If the virtuous were to be brought low by an immoral and felonious act, then the wicked should be likewise: in one stroke he could turn the world he despised against itself and at the same time achieve justice for Kydd at last.

Feverishly he assembled a plan. He would need accomplices who wouldn't talk—with his inside knowledge of the shadow world of spies and assassins that would be easy. Vipère and Hyène would now be available; he brought to mind their saturnine, grave-robbing features. Yes, they would do admirably.

Next, a suitable location. What better than the old sail-loft in which Kydd had spent so much time recently? Excellent. Then let the game commence . . .

Sitting at the single table in the dank and empty space, Renzi trimmed the one candle. It shone up with a trembling flame illuminating his face from below with a malevolent gleam. The table was bare, save an open razor in the centre.

He waited calmly. At the appointed hour there was a scuffle outside; a struggling body was forced within and flung to the ground before him, the pinioned arms splayed immovably sideways, the gagged and blindfolded head desperately turning this way and that.

The struggles eventually ceased and Renzi nodded; first the gag and then the blindfold were removed and a terrified Prosser looked about wildly. He tried to rise but was held down. “For God's sake, Renzi, what's happening?” he choked out.

Renzi watched him writhe. He had no pity for the man's ordeal, called from the warmth of the Mermaid Club on a pretext, then rapidly bundled away blindfolded into the night.

“What're they doing?” Prosser shouted, terror rising. Vipère cuffed him to silence.

Renzi contemplated the creature who had brought Kydd down and who was now trembling uncontrollably, his eyes staring at Renzi's cruel mask of a face.

“You played Mr Kydd false with your poisonous secret orders. You'll tell me why.”

“I—I didn't do it! It wasn't me, I swear!”

Icy anger seized Renzi. “I've the blood of far better men than you on my hands,” he snarled, with the conviction of perfect truth. “Yours will not cost me a moment's pause.” He was shaking now at the sudden insight that he really meant it. His hand slid to the razor and, picking it up slowly, he tested its edge.

“You—you're mad!” Prosser gasped, hypnotised by the weapon's gleaming menace.

Renzi rose suddenly, shifting his grip on the razor to a workman-like underhand. The two others yanked Prosser's head back by the hair.

“No!” Prosser screamed. “I beg you!”

Renzi paused and the man fell limply. “H-how did you know?” he said weakly. “He said no one would ever discover us.”

It all came out. Such a simple, foolish act, conceived in jealousy and hatred but with such consequences—it had been Carthew. When he had seen his position as senior commander and favourite threatened by Kydd, and aware of Saumarez's strict moral code, he had bribed a smuggler to land the chest and persuaded Prosser to tamper with the orders.

There had been no one else. Carthew had promised Prosser that on this remote station Standish would get the ship and he himself would achieve his long-sought lieutenancy. He had been right— and, but for Renzi, he would certainly have got away with it.

But Renzi could see no path forward. Without evidence, without witnesses, there would be no happy ending. In lieu, should he put an end to this reptile's life? He moved forward—Prosser shrieked as the razor went straight to his throat. It stayed poised while a tiny nick beneath exuded a trail of scarlet. “Your life is now forfeit,” Renzi said levelly. “My dearest friend has been ruined by your acts. Can you give me any reason why I should not end it?”