Cross of Fire (41 page)

It had taken a run to Doctor Howe to secure some laudanum. The doctor could only raise a hand in agreement as he muttered into his pillow that the draught was exactly what the wounded man required and Thomas Howard applied it to a leather mug of rum and plied it into Walter Kennedy’s hand. And Kennedy was not in the habit of refusing mugs of rum from officers.

Ten minutes later Kennedy had slumped to the deck and was snoring like the doctor, and then Thomas Howard had his arms under Dandon’s shoulders and was hauling him to the gundeck. The first watch was at supper above. He had half an hour when the deck would be empty. His supper would be after the second watch. That was the only fact that he would be assured of. Between now and then he was chancing that no soul would come across him heaving Dandon up from the hold.

Dandon stirred awake and eased Thomas Howard’s burden. They climbed together, their shoulders locked. Dandon protested aloud.

‘Thomas? What is this?’

‘I am getting you out of here, sir. Be quiet now.’

They reached the gundeck. Thomas had opened a port, had set a ladder from it and a boat waiting bobbing below. He had stolen a boat. When he had swung it over the side he had imagined its ropes around his neck.

Providently, no-one had seen.

The night had covered and no-one had seen.

Men were at supper one deck below and no-one had seen. Or cared not: had not cared to see an officer at some private business. Men had swung for less.

The rumour of the First being held in irons had already become fact. Turn your pipe to windward and let the young officer to his noose.

Dandon became strong now. He gripped himself against the gun as Howard slung a bag to the boat below.

‘This is madness, Thomas! Hold now. I wish no part!’

Howard pulled him by his shirt.

‘They will kill you! Do you understand? It is night. By morning you will be gone. Gone from me.’

‘Gone where?’

‘There is a compass in the boat. East and you will be back at Île de France. There are pirates there.’ He set to whispering. ‘Or west and Bourbon. Please, sir. You saved me once. I put your coat in the boat. Your yellow coat. Please move now.’

Dandon felt himself being pulled towards an open square.

‘I am to leap? My faith is not that strong.’

‘I have set a Jacob’s ladder to the boat. Climb down.’

They shared hands in the dark like walking a rural lane at night. Dandon stared at a cannon’s mouth as he let himself through a hole and felt the wind whip at him.

‘We are moving!’ he declared.

‘Barely. Fore-course only. I will release the boat when you are free.’

‘I will be crushed!’

‘Are you not a sailor, sir?’

‘No I am not! You have perceived me wrong, Thomas.’ He tried to scramble back through the hole. Thomas Howard held him by his wrists and pulled his face to him.

‘Go!’ he pleaded. ‘You must go. I cannot stand to—’ He let the wrists fall to hands and Dandon’s feet hit the slats of the ladder.

‘You did me good once. See it as no more than that. I am willing to fight pirates. I will hold with my captain . . . but I do not understand what this is.’ He let his hands slip and Dandon caught the lip of the port hole.

‘Thomas, you will be in trouble for this.’

Thomas Howard stood back from the hole.

‘I was in trouble from the moment I saw you once more.’ He smiled and became the boy again and wiped his eyes. ‘We have a tradition, I feel.’

‘Aye,’ Dandon said. ‘A corrupt tradition.’ And he vanished from the port hole.

Howard leaned out through the hole and saw that already Dandon was in the bucking boat.

‘I will release you!’ he called. ‘You are belayed above. Hold on to the gunwales.’

‘Wait!’ Dandon cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Do I have wine?’

‘Brandy. Wrapped inside your coat lest it break.’

‘Bless you!’

‘Fare well, sir! And thank you! I never got a chance to say it.’

‘I have brandy, what else is there to say? But hold Mister Howard.’

Howard stretched further out of the port.

Dandon, his hands still cupped and masking his voice just for Howard, whispered up to the freeboard.

‘To save your punishment! I can afford some small word! Something to give our good John!’

‘But you did not talk?’ Howard rubbed away tears now but only from the wind against the port and the spray of the salient sea.

‘I give willingly.’

‘I must cut the boat now.’

Dandon stood. The boat objected and Howard put his arm out motioning him to sit but still he called up.

‘Tell John that the Portos call the islands “The Three Brothers and the Seven Sisters”. It is the largest one that Devlin has gone to. Where the treasure lies. You mind me, Thomas.’ He lowered his voice and saluted. ‘You mind me, Thomas.’ He sat as the officer vanished from the hole.

Mere moments passed, a rope hit the water and Dandon watched the ship coast away and saw a white face against the gunwale and an arm that waved and waved until he could no longer perceive it against the blackening sky.

He rubbed his swollen eyes and went through the hemp sack and his coat for the brandy buried under the cheese and bread. He found also a compass with a mirror and fishing line and hook.

He popped the cork just as the
Standard
stopped buffeting the boat and the sea opened up around him like he was sitting on the moon.

He took a long draught, becoming Dandon again as something like strength returned to his arms and he flexed his fingers that had become dead. He saluted the
Standard
’s stern lights with the bottle.

‘Good boy, brave boy,’ he said, and drank long.

Often he had drunk without tasting. He had now gone days without wine and to him that was like days without sunlight.

He was lost to the bottle, he knew that. But now and then one bottle came along that meant something.

He let it roll in his mouth, allowed the brandy to wallow down his gullet like an oyster. Too much of what he drank and ate was stolen. Rarely was it gifted.

He let the waves roll him. The boat had a sail and he would make something of that soon.

For now he hugged his brandy, for the burns, for his closed eyes and aching organs that had taken the blows of his silence, and lastly for the apothecary boy he had once been.

He hugged his brandy and wept.

For no-one could see him do it.

Chapter Thirty-Two

It had been a silent dinner. Thomas Howard apologised that a brief sickness had come over him and meant he was unable to attend. Manvell was in irons in the same quarter. For a moment Coxon thought on the words they could whisper to each other through the thin hemp walls.

His table spelled misery now. Just the drunken doctor and the dull sailing-master. He was unable to discern which of them was worse company and felt strangely disembodied as he watched them tediously chase their peas around their plates; Coxon saw the tragedy of himself seated and eating with them.

When they first met he had seen them as men holding out for their pension, forgotten and aged, wasted and dilettante. He had scorned them and chortled about them with his strong young men, his favoured companions, as stalwart as he saw himself in the mirror that showed no age. Now he was sitting in the dark corner table at the wedding feast with the forgotten cousins and spinster aunts; the table where the servants forgot to pour. The sound of cutlery scraping irritating his teeth like chewing iron filings.

‘Doctor,’ he said at last, leaning back. ‘Perhaps if you were to pierce your peas with your fork. Might that suffice? Rather than concentrating on your tongue between your lips for us all to view and sweeping them with a broom.’

‘Sir?’ Doctor Howe flushed more than usual.

Coxon demonstrated with his own remnants.

‘
La
!’ He popped the pea satisfactorily between his teeth.

Doctor Howe followed, confused and unsure, like an ape given a mirror. He smiled bashfully as he skewered his strays.

A knock on the door was welcome distraction.

It was the bosun, Abel Wales. Since Manvell had been indisposed Coxon had made a point to learn the man’s name. Abel wrung his cap through his hands and tapped his forehead twice.

‘Beg your pardon, Captain, sorry to disturb.’

‘What is it, Wales?’ Coxon wiped his mouth and pushed back his chair. He knew the face of a man scared to talk but bound to do so.

‘The man Kennedy is dead for the drink.’ Wales wrung his hands. ‘And we’re missing a boat, Captain.’

He quickly moved aside as Coxon’s advance looked set to collide with him. He stumbled on his last words, used them as a shield as he called after the captain.

‘The pirate is gone.’

Coxon exploded into the mess. Instinctively men stood or covered their plates and mugs as if they were stolen. The only place to look was towards him and the bosun and his team with their belaying pins.

‘Who let the pirate go? Which of you has done this treachery?’

He ducked through the water bags and isinglass lanterns expertly yet still seemed at full furious height to them.

‘I will take this as mutiny!’ He looked at them all.

‘If the man does not present himself I will cast you all as mutinous! Every man will be punished!’

They looked back at him now with puzzled eyes. But he had seen those looks before also.

‘Do not think it cannot be done!’ He wheeled back to the bosun with accusing finger.

‘That includes you all! You are all in this! If you do not find this traitor you will be cast as the rest! The dereliction of your watch is enough to get you the lash!’

He saw his arm pointing, saw it tremble. He pulled it back and drew from his past resolve to damp his ill humour, the same resolve from decades ago when French frigates glinted on the horizon and midshipmen flapped about his decks. He straightened his cuffs and waistcoat.

‘I trust you, lads, to root out the criminal. Someone has cost you your gold. That is what has drawn my anger. My concern for you. It is troubled times for all of us unless you be kings and Whigs.’

He moved back towards the stair, through the bosun’s team playing with their wood and knotted rope and found Thomas Howard standing waiting at the foot.

‘It was me, Captain,’ Howard said and braced himself. ‘I let him go.’ His face drained white, a boy again as Coxon loomed over him. ‘No other is to blame.’

Coxon only felt his shoulder move but he was sure that it must have been only him that punched Thomas Howard’s face and sent him skidding on his back all the way to the scuttlebutt.

He watched the lieutenant sit up and rub his face then climbed the companion for air, for space where there would be no other face to look at, but the bosun, Abel Wales, was already at his back.