The French Prize (11 page)

“Harwood, where the devil are you?” the mate snapped.

“Here, sir,” Jack said, trying not to sound like a man in the middle of a fistfight.

“Get your dunnage and get aft. We have to leave Noddle ashore, so the old man's moved Dailey into his berth and he wants you to ship as third.” He took one last glaring look around, and having said what he had to say, he was up the ladder and gone.

And that was an end to it. Because as pathetic a creature as a third mate might be, he was a mate nonetheless, and no one in the forecastle, particularly not as ill-considered a whore's whelp as Jonah Bolingbroke, would voluntarily get athwart his hawse. He would not cross him even after Jack, his sea bag over his shoulder, heading up the ladder on his way aft, pointed to the half-filled shoes on deck and said, “Bolingbroke, that's disgusting. Get that cleaned up and be quick about it.”

So their enmity, by no means ended, was tabled until they reached Boston, their next port of call, and Bolingbroke was paid off and disappeared in the mysterious and debauched way of sailors ashore. And Jack went on hating him, despite the fact that everything that Jack Biddlecomb was, everything he had thus far accomplished, he owed to Jonah Bolingbroke.

*   *   *

With his move aft, Jack was no longer Harwood but rather Mr. Harwood, and once he had left the
Hancock
in Philadelphia and shipped aboard another as second he became Mr. Biddlecomb, which he remained until the blessed moment when he became Captain Biddlecomb. And, as Captain Biddlecomb, Jack spent much of his time below, laboring over bills of lading, and bills of health and general clearances and clearing manifests and invoices, lists of passengers, lists of crew, lists of sea stores. He discovered that the life of ease he had always imagined his former captain Mr. Asquith enjoyed was not so easy at all, that it was, in fact, more drudgery and paper than he had quite realized. That, despite the fact that Jack had always had a hand in keeping the ship's books and accounts in order.

His days were spent pen in hand, or arguing with chandlers and sailmakers and riggers and ship's carpenters and, more obsequiously, with Robert Oxnard, as well as Oxnard's agent, William Dailey. Dailey, in particular, seemed to have an endless assortment of papers for him to consider, and on the worst of their meetings Jack found himself signing forms for this or that without even understanding in any meaningful way what it was he was signing.

In the evening, when the ship's carpenters and the riggers and the longshoremen were done with their labors, and there was no one left aboard in need of supervision, Jack and Stiles and a gaggle of sundry young gentlemen took their pleasure in Philadelphia, the greatest city in the burgeoning United States of America. Like a pack of feral dogs they roamed the taverns, pursuing women and the endless amusements that only a thriving port city could offer.

Philadelphia, capital of the United States, was no creaky, arthritic, staid farm community with its entrenched and homogeneous population, a churchgoing, disapproving community always keeping a weather eye out for impropriety, and quashing the first hint of it. This was a seaport, its lifeblood flowed from the Atlantic, up the Delaware Bay to the wharves and anchorages on the Delaware River, and when it was spent it flowed out again. And carried on that stream the goods and the people of the Atlantic world, sailors with no communal ties who sated long-pent desires, always with the knowledge that, no matter how debauched they became, no matter how quickly they ran through three, four, or six months' wages, their hard-won abilities to hand, reef, and steer would provide for them both their passport and their breakfast.

It was midmorning, a week and a half after his aborted duel with Bolingbroke, Jack having given up waiting for an invitation to continue the affair, that he returned after a particularly grueling and vexing time at Oxnard's to the wharf where
Abigail
remained tied, fore and aft. Jack had managed to infuriate Oxnard by returning to the chandler an entire delivery of salt pork, ten barrels of it, meant to feed the
Abigail
's men. His reason for returning it, a reason by Oxnard's lights entirely inadequate, had to do with its being rancid beyond what even a foremast hand could be expected to eat. Jack suspected that some teamster along the way had emptied out most of the brine to lighten the barrels and make them easier to transport.

“Now see here, Jack, your foremast hand don't need fancy cooking, none of your French cuisine with sauces and such. Just give them their salt pork and dried peas and a run ashore and they're merry as grigs,” Oxnard had explained. But Jack had served his time in the forecastle, had eaten his share of rancid beef purchased, as this no doubt had been, at a greatly reduced price, or taken off the chandler's hands in exchange for some other consideration. For his men, Jack would have none of it.

In the end he won that fight, but it meant Oxnard had little appetite for the next request. “And, pray, sir, don't forget that I will need that
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
,” Jack reminded him.

The
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
. It was an innocuous document by any standard—a list of the ship's crew—but thanks to a decree by the
Directoire
it had become very crucial indeed. Since 1778, when France had first joined the Americans in their fight against the British, the French had required American ships to show a passport, no more, to prove their nationality. But now the
Directoire
, furious at the new American treaty with England, was requiring a
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
as well. Any ship boarded by a French privateer that could not produce one was considered a fair prize. It was retaliation and a chance for plunder, no more, but when one ship was armed with heavy cannon and the other was not, all the treaties in the world counted for little.

This was not a situation in which Jack wished to find himself, his own newly installed great guns notwithstanding. But for all the importance that the
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
carried, Oxnard gave Jack's request a wave of the hand and a “Yes, yes, of course,” by way of dismissal.

And that in turn put Jack in a foul mood, which he nursed and stoked on the way back to the
Abigail
's berth. He paused on the wharf and ran his eyes over the ship tied there. The bulwarks were done now, the paint fresh; black from the rail down to the gunnel, which was a brilliant red, then the chief of the hull oiled down to the lower wale, which was black like the bulwarks. The gunports were neatly cut, three per side, and the great guns came poking out like some hibernating beasts testing the air for spring.

It was all excellently well done, shipshape and Bristol fashion, and normally Jack would have looked on it with the same appreciation with which he might run his eye over the fine lines of a young woman in a silk dress. But the presence of the guns, thrust upon him, still grated and made his mood fouler still.

With those irritants already gnawing at him, Jack Biddlecomb was not in an ideal temper for the surprise of finding, on entering his cabin, a young gentleman sitting at his table, scratching away with a pen at some correspondence, a small stack of papers to one side, a glass of wine at hand, a cigar smoldering in a saucer that belonged to a tea set his mother had sent aboard.

“What, ho?” Jack asked, too surprised to come up with more.

The young man looked up. A smooth, close-shaven face, good skin, very pale. Hair the color of wet sand. He looked to be about Jack's age, perhaps a year or two older. The shirt and stock visible around the periphery of his silk jacket were white beyond anything Jack could hope to achieve with his own shirts. Indeed, they made the fresh paint of the great cabin seem yellowed in contrast.

“Oh, yes,” the young man said, showing none of the surprise that Jack was exhibiting. “My chest and bags are on the deck above. Pray, fetch them down here directly.” He lifted the cigar, put it between his lips, and readdressed himself to his writing.

“And you would be…?” Jack queried.

The young man looked up again, and now there was the slightest crease of irritation on his brow. “William Wentworth, Esquire. Of the Boston Wentworths.”

“The Boston Wentworths? Indeed?” Jack had no notion of who the Boston Wentworths were.

“Indeed, yes. You'll find the name on my chest. Which, you may recall, I requested that you bring down directly.”

Jack took a step into the cabin. Wentworth leaned back in his chair, regarding him with curiosity and vague amusement. “And why,” Jack asked, “would you expect me to fetch your dunnage?”

Wentworth took a pull on his cigar and exhaled a column of smoke like a blast from a cannon's muzzle. His amusement at Jack's effrontery made his lips twist up at the corners. “Well, that is what you hardy tarpaulins do, is it not? Fetch one's ‘dunnage'?”

Jack took another step and sat on the edge of his berth. Wentworth's eyes followed him, though his body moved hardly at all. “Fetching dunnage is indeed what we hardy tarpaulins do,” Jack agreed. “Doling out sound thrashings to those who annoy us is another, so one must take care in our company.”

Wentworth laughed out loud. He plucked the cigar from his mouth and tapped the ash into the tea saucer. “Oh, my dear man, I suggest you not try that, out of consideration for your own health. Now, Ned Buntline or whatever your name might be, off with you and fetch my dunnage, as I asked.” Once again he turned to his writing. He managed to scratch out a few more words in what Jack saw was an astoundingly neat copperplate before looking up again, the amusement quite gone from his face.

“I say, are you still here, Ned?”

“That's Captain Ned. Captain Jack, actually.”

Wentworth leaned back again, but his look of mild irritation did not alter. “Captain Jack. Captain of…?”

Jack held up his hands to indicate their surroundings. “All that you behold before you,” he said.

“Really?” Wentworth said. “Captain of this ship? You are not the gnarled old sea dog I had envisioned. Forgive me. I am terribly disappointed.”

“I quite understand,” said Jack, who was also disappointed, having hoped to give greater discomfort to this loathsome intruder. “I fear you will be more disappointed still, Master Wentworth, when I tell you that you are in my cabin and I must ask you to leave it at once.”

At that Wentworth smiled again and looked around with an expression approaching surprise. “This? The master's cabin? Surely not.”

“Indeed it is. The cabins for passengers, if such you are, and I dare say it is looking less and less likely, but if such you are, those cabins open onto the alleyway outside my door.”

“You know,” Wentworth said, tapping more ash into the saucer, “I did look into those rooms, but I took them to be pantries or closets or such. Though now that you mention it, each did seem to sport a singular manner of shelving which might be construed as a sort of bed.”

“We hardy tarpaulins call them ‘berths' but yes, that is the very thing.”

Wentworth shook his head at the wonder of it. “And here I had been congratulating myself on doing the decent thing and taking the most unaccommodating space for myself, thinking sure there must be finer cabins elsewhere aboard for the master—yourself, apparently—and Mr. Frost.”

Jack had heard the name Frost recently but he could not recall where, and at the moment he did not care. His patience with this banter was at an end, so he said, “And why, pray, might you be looking for a cabin aboard my ship at all?”

By way of answer, Wentworth dug through the small pile of papers on Jack's table, extracted one, and handed it to him. Jack recognized immediately the flowing hand and ostentatious signature of Robert Oxnard, Esquire, and he read:

Dear Captain Biddlecomb,

This note shall be presented to you by Mr. William Wentworth, Esquire, of Boston, whom you will kindly provide passage to Barbados on your upcoming passage thence, and in addition …

The note went on to address such issues as cabin stores (Wentworth would provide his own), manner in which Wentworth was to be treated (decently), and sundry other concerns. By the end of the first paragraph Jack had read enough to know he was stuck with Wentworth, and between the great guns and this young scion of the Boston Wentworths he wondered what Oxnard might foist on him next. He handed the note back to Wentworth and shouted up through the skylight, “Maguire! What, ho, there, Maguire!”

A moment later the big seaman stood crowding the great cabin door. “Maguire, pray fetch down Mr. Wentworth's dunnage. Let him take out what he'll need for the voyage, then see the rest stowed down in the orlop. Mr. Wentworth may have his choice of any of the cabins forward.”

“Cabins, sir?” Maguire asked.

“Yes. In the alleyway outside there. You know, the ones designed for the convenience of the gentry.”

 

8

With the myriad of considerations and annoyances great and small that were part of preparing the
Abigail
for sea, Jack Biddlecomb entirely forgot Wentworth's allusion to a Mr. Frost who would apparently be requiring a cabin, and a good one at that. And Jack continued to not recall the gentleman for the next five days, until the moment he laid eyes on him, on the very morning of the day they were slated to sail.

They had worked like demons, he and Tucker and the men. The flour and sundry cargo, indigo, salt cod, barrel hoops, casks of nails, had been stowed down; the guns lashed tight in place; powder, shot, and other gunner's stores (
God help us!
Jack had thought as they came aboard) stowed down as well, with rammers, worms, sponges, and the like mounted in a rack built special on the mizzenmast to house them.