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Chapter 33
The sun was just above the horizon, turning the sea to silver, when I rose to help Minerva to get ready. I was her second, and she allowed me to dress her in a fine white linen shirt, white stockings and blue breeches. I wound a crimson scarf about her slender waist, fixing her sword belt above it.
‘This duel is my fault,’ I said. ‘I should be fighting him. If you hadn’t stepped in ... ’
‘You would have butted him. I stopped you. You’re too weak to fight. Your wounds are only just healed.’ She picked up her pistol, sighting along the barrel. ‘That’s what he wanted. Now he has me to contend with.’
She seemed supremely confident, and I hid my fear for her, knowing how fast it can flow from one person to another, as she checked her weapons, rising the hammer on her pistol and letting it fall, click and thud. Click and thud. She took up her cutlass, testing the blade on her thumb, plucking a hair, cleaving it in the air.
There was a knock. ‘Ready to board!’ Duffy, the bo’sun, called.
Minerva stepped down, as seemingly light and carefree as if we were taking a run on shore. The boat crew held their sweeps aloft, dropping them at the command of the bo’sun, as neat and smart as any naval boat in Portsmouth harbour. We took our place on the thwarts. Minerva sat with Graham and me. Limster sat opposite with his second and Pelling. They did not look at each other and nobody spoke. The only sound was the splash of the blades in the water and the working of the oars between the tholepins as the men rowed towards the shore.
Long lines of curling rollers made beaching the boat difficult, but the bo’sun had chosen his shore party well. The lead oarsmen leaped into chest-high surf, taking lines to tow us ashore. At command, the others shipped their sweeps and more jumped out to pull the boat up above the water line.
Our feet marked the firm, wet sand as we walked up the beach. The sea surged forward and back, washing our footprints away as quickly as we made them. We went on towards a dense line of trees, Pelling casting about for the right spot.
‘Stop!’
We halted. Pelling stepped forward, turning the duellists back to back.
‘Seconds!’
We came up with the weapons. Minerva’s eyes met mine as she took the pistol from me. Then she lowered her gaze and her face became expressionless, as impossibly distant as in the old days, when she was my slave. She would not let me see her hope, or her fear.
Limster’s second and I moved away to stand at a distance with Graham, who stood fidgeting with his doctor’s bag, clasping and unclasping the fastening, his face pale beneath the freckles and etched with lines of worry and disapproval. He would dearly have loved to stop this from happening, but no one could intervene now. Not even the captain; Broom had kept well out of it. Such things had to be decided in the manner laid down in the Articles. They were our laws. Ours was a world turned upside-down, where normal rules did not apply. To lay our own code aside would be to jeopardise what little order there was upon the pirate ship.
Pelling held the duellists back to back, and then stepped smartly away as he began to count. Limster was at least a head taller than Minerva, his bulk dwarfing her. They stepped from each other, pistols held at the shoulder, measuring their tread. Pelling calling the numbers sounded like a tolling bell. We were all listening for the pause, quicker than a pulse beat, when the counting would cease.
Limster did not wait. Pelling was still counting when he turned. Pelling stuttered and Minerva must have heard the swish of Limster’s feet in the dry sand, for she leaped round, only to find herself staring down the barrel of his gun. There was a crack and white smoke puffed out. The ball went past her, bedding itself in the tree behind her. Now, it was her turn.
She raised her pistol, but Limster broke the rules again, diving sideways so that she would miss him.
He was coming at her, low to the ground, cutlass drawn. She threw away her pistol and drew her blade. A cutlass is a clumsy weapon made for slashing, not sword play. My own arms and hands twitched to be fighting for her. I was better with a sword than Minerva, but she was quick on her feet, dancing about Limster, dodging rather than parrying his blows. She was following Pelling’s advice, pushing him towards softer sand with her back to the sea, the rising sun on the water making it harder for him to see her clearly. The morning was warming. Limster was coxcomb red, sweating from the heat and exertion, and the rum of the night before. Beads formed on his forehead, dropping into his eyes, making him shake his head like a bull bothered by flies. Minerva kept skipping in and out of his line of vision, keeping him off balance, turning him around and back again.
‘Keep still, damn you!’ He was losing his temper. ‘Stand and fight like a man!’
Wait, wait your moment. I mouthed the words. Get under his guard. Wait. Wait.
He lunged and missed. She leaped away, but he came back at her, sweeping his cutlass in a great arc. The edge caught her shoulder. Blood bloomed, soaking her sleeve in seconds. I could feel the numbness in my own arm.
‘First blood! That’s an end to it,’ Graham shouted, stepping forward, bag in hand.
The fight ended with first blood drawn. Limster had won. Those were the rules, but the big man showed no sign of laying his weapon aside. He came at a run, cutlass raised, ready to cleave Minerva in two.
‘I’ll kill him!’ I was screaming, reaching for my own weapon.
Graham dropped his bag and reached for his pistol. ‘Hold!’ he yelled. ‘One step more and I’ll shoot!’
Limster was like a bull charging: he had no intention of stopping; but our shouting distracted him and then he stumbled, catching his foot on a root, or piece of driftwood, half hidden in the sand. It was the chance that Minerva wanted. He twisted, trying to save himself, but he was off balance and pitching forward. She lunged, catching him under his raised cutlass arm. Her thrust met his weight falling towards her, pushed the blade up to the hilt, right through to his heart.
Graham cut Minerva’s sodden shirt sleeve away, stanched the blood and cleaned the wound with rum, before stitching the gaping edges together and binding her arm with strips of linen. Minerva did not cry out once. She was carried from the beach between Duffy and one of his crew. Graham gave her a draft of rum, which she choked on, but which seemed to revive her, and she leaned against my shoulder as the oarsmen pulled away from the shore.
Pirate justice is swift and final. Limster had behaved without honour, so he was left where he lay, his blood seeping into the sand.
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Chapter 34
‘It’s a deep cut. To the bone,’ Graham said as we laid Minerva in my cot in the cabin. ‘But it’s clean and I dare say she’ll live. I’ll give her opium to make her sleep. If you could help me?’ I held her up while he dropped the tincture on to her tongue. ‘Now she needs to rest. She does not need you hovering over her. Come.’
He led me out to the great cabin and bade me sit down there with him.
‘You laid a heavy duty on me today, you and Minerva. How d’you think I would feel if I had to attend either one of you, dead or dying?’ He sighed. ‘I went to Broom, but even he could do nothing to stop the fight you got yourselves into. This is no life for you. You should not be having to do with scum like Limster. Belonging to nowhere, and to no one. A life of endless wandering that’s all risk and no gain, with a rope at the end. What is the point of it?’
He did not need an answer. He was talking as much about himself as he was about us.
‘I’m thinking of leaving the account,’ he went on. ‘I’m tired of seeing young men killed and maimed, of patching up torn bodies only to watch the wounds corrupt, knowing there’s nothing I can do. I have more than enough now to set up a practice. In London, Edinburgh. Anywhere. Somewhere I can start anew and where no one will know me, or my history. It is only loyalty to Broom that keeps me here. And you.’ He turned to me. ‘Come back with me, Nancy. You can pass as my daughter.’
‘I cannot. I will not leave without Minerva. Especially not now. She risked her life to save mine. I cannot desert her.’
‘She could come with you.’
‘What as?’ I looked at him. ‘My slave? My servant? She would not do it, and I will not ask her. You know what life would be for her in England, the slights and insults that she would suffer, the assumptions people would make. I fear we are destined to roam for ever.’
‘I hope not. Truly, I do. What of your young man, William?’
‘After what happened on the
Eagle
?’ I shrugged. ‘He thinks me a pirate. I’ve given up all hope of him.’
‘But he knows the circumstances, the reasons for you taking up this way of life?’
I nodded.
‘Well, then if he really loves you, that will make no difference.’
‘He might be dead for all I know.’
‘And he might not. Never give up hope, my dear.’ Graham leaned forward and put his hand on mine as if he really were my father. ‘Never give up hope. I told you that before.’
‘When will you leave?’ I asked, wishing to change the subject away from William and me.
‘As soon as I can.’
‘Have you told Broom?’
‘Not yet. But he knows my thinking.’
I could see Graham’s mind was made up, so it would be no good pleading, but I had grown very fond of him and I would sorely miss his company. I was about to tell him as much, hoping to persuade him to stay a little while longer, when Broom came in with Pelling, as out of temper as I’d ever seen him.
‘See this.’ He snapped his fingers and Pelling handed him a piece of paper. ‘It’s a round robin.’ He flattened out the folds to show names written down in a circle. ‘A craven compass of cowardly conspiracy.’ He turned the paper round with his finger. ‘I’ll have every bastard on it off this ship.’
He called ship’s company and held up the paper to them.
‘This here is a round robin. So designed so none can be found out as leader.’ He looked around. ‘Well, you can forget all that. Every jack who signed it, every name upon it, can sling his hook. With the exception of him lying dead on yonder shore.’
‘Vote!’ a few desperate voices called.
‘Vote! Aye. Let’s vote on it!’
‘A vote! A vote! Oh, by all means!’ Broom grinned. ‘Oh, most certainly! Who votes to keep these scumsters on board?’
Not a hand was raised.
‘Now! Like I said – haul your gear or, by God, I’ll throw the lot of you to the sharks!’
The men who had put their names to the round robin withdrew. Pelling was all for getting rid of Low’s whole crew, but Broom did not agree, and neither did the men. We needed them. Fewer men meant more work for everyone else. Pelling had a particular aversion to the band of musicians who had sailed with Low, and argued that they were the least necessary.
Their leader, Hack, stood up, much aggrieved. He was a tall, gangling, saturnine man with an easy way about him. He always had his fiddle by him. It was part of him, like an extension of his arm.
‘How fair is that, shipmates?’ he asked the company. ‘We ain’t put our names to no round robin, and who don’t like a little entertainment in the evening when the work is over, or a little tune to ease the graft of the day?’ Hauling on ropes, turning the capstan, were all done to a rhythm. Music made this kind of labour much easier. Hack plucked the strings of his fiddle, letting the instrument speak for him. Croker, another of the musicians, joined in on a tin whistle which he kept in his top pocket. The duet earned them a round of applause.
The men voted for the musicians to stay. The ship’s company had spoken and the jigs and reels started up in earnest. Pelling muttered that no good would come of it, but there was nothing he could do about it.
‘Business ain’t finished!’ Broom roared over the ruckus. ‘These men can stay, if that’s what you want, but there has been enough irregularity on board this ship. You,’ he turned to me, ‘and Minerva will revert to female attire. Carry out no more duties. And you keep out of the sun. I want you looking like a lady, not a Barbary pirate. The rest of you,’ he looked them over. ‘Smarten up! Officers should look like officers, men like sailors, not harbour scum!’
‘We don’t have no officers!’ someone shouted.
‘We do now. Mr Halston, Mr Duffy, Mr Phillips, you are now ship’s officers. You will all remove to the ward room and keep to the quarterdeck. And that lad there. What’s your name?’
‘Tom Andrews, Sir.’ He stepped forward. He was in his early twenties, but looked younger, with a cap of bright curly hair and fair skin. Being singled out had brought the colour up into his cheeks.
‘And what’s your history?’
‘I’m a navigator, sir. Taken by Low off the
Hopewell
, an East Indiaman, on my first voyage out for the company.’
He gave a rueful grin and received a rippling laugh of sympathy. He had been kept by Low for his skills.
‘Well, you’ll do,’ Broom said. ‘At least you
look
like a gentleman, and we need a young ’un. So you’ll join ’em.’
Eyes went to Pelling. He wasn’t named and he was normally quick to feel a slight, but he was standing by mild as milk. It meant that Broom had a plan, another scheme up his sleeve, and Pelling was in on it; but they weren’t telling the rest of us yet.
‘Mr Pelling, you will get this floating midden shipshape. Look at this!’ He kicked at a pile of badly-coiled rope, and scraped a fingernail at the crusted salt of the rail. ‘This ship should be clean. Tidy. You should be able to eat off the deck.’ He looked us over. ‘Anyone want to try it?’
The planks were sticky with tar and salt, whiskery with caulking popping out from between the planks. No one volunteered.
‘Thought not. I want that deck holystoned until it’s as smooth as satin. Get to it as soon as we are rid of these mutinous bastards.’
The men groaned. Holystones were so called because they were roughly the size of Bibles. They slid on a mix of sand and water and I was suddenly glad that Broom had said I had to be a lady. Scrubbing the decks was hard on the hands, as well as being backbreaking work.
‘Aye, aye, Cap’n.’ Pelling took his orders as meek as a midshipman. ‘What are you going to do with them lot what signed the round robin?’
‘They got a choice. They can go and join their mate on the shore and shift for themselves, or they can join the sharks overboard. It’s more choice than they’d have given us. Make no mistake about that. We’ve wasted enough time on them already. Make sail!’