Tide of War (17 page)

“You must come aboard before we sail,” Nathan urged the consul in all sincerity. He had become quite fond of Portillo during their stay in the Havana, as appreciative of his generous hospitality and dry good humour as he was respectful of his insight. Certainly he would have preferred him to Imlay as a “political adviser” for all that the latter complained that he was “wedded to the Spanish interest.”

“I think you will have quite enough to think on when you are aboard the
Unicorn,
” he said now, “without having to worry about visiting dignitaries, even so humble as myself.”

They had almost reached the waterfront when Nathan became
aware that they were being followed by another, more curious entourage. It was led by a massive Negro in a long white robe and a tall white hat, wielding a staff like a symbol of office. Behind him came a woman, almost as tall, in a long red robe, her face shaded by a large red parasol held aloft by another woman, who tripped along behind her. And bringing up the rear was a small boy dressed as an Oriental page in a golden turban and embroidered robes, carrying a small monkey in a red waistcoat.

At first Nathan thought they might simply be heading in the same direction but there was something in their purposeful tread and the fact that they maintained exactly the same distance between the two groups that made him fear the worst. Sure enough when they reached the waterfront they turned in the same direction. He looked back rather nervously once or twice and with increasing irritation. He could not see the features of the woman in red but he thought he felt her eyes burning into him.

He strode forward to catch up with Imlay.

“For God's sake, man, it is like a travelling show,” he complained.

“I am not sure I quite follow you,” Imlay replied courteously.

“Why, have you not seen what is following
us?”
Nathan admonished him, stopping and looking back.

“Good God,” exclaimed Imlay—and then he smiled and raised his hat.

“I wish,” said Nathan, “that you would not encourage your harem to follow you around as if you were some Oriental satrap on a royal progress. Perhaps you would be so good as to conduct your farewells in private—unless you are planning to bring them with you.”

“ Well, as to that, it is not my harem, worse luck, and nor is it me they are following.”

“Then who…?”

“You, my dear fellow. You.”

He turned and continued on his way and after a moment of astonished perplexity Nathan hurried to catch up with him.

“What do you mean,
me?
Who are those people?”

“I cannot answer for all of them,” replied Imlay smoothly, “but the woman in red is La Princesa Negra. I told you she had lost her heart to you. I imagine she has gotten wind of your departure and has come to grieve at the waterside. The least you could do is give her a wave.”

“Be damned,” said Nathan faintly.

They had reached the wharf where the gig was waiting for them, with four of the hands to pull oar and both Place and Coyle to instruct them: Place wore his blue naval jacket with a dirk at his hip, quite the midshipman already, and Coyle was chewing his lip and appearing close to tears: the two boys had cemented their friendship on the voyage out and within the hour they would part.

Nathan could see the
Unicorn
at her mooring under the guns of La Cabana with the blue ensign at her stern lifting in lazy obedience to some faint breeze on the far side of the harbour. Pym must have given her a new coat of paint during her enforced stay on New Providence for she looked as good as new with the broad yellow stripe along her hull and the gun ports picked out in black and the shrouds so freshly tarred they almost gleamed.
In as good order, I dare say, as when she left Chatham Dockyard.

If only in appearance.

“Let us first row out to the frigate,” Nathan instructed, or rather requested of the hands for they were now under Mr. Keeble's orders.

“To go aboard her, sir?” piped Place, with enthusiasm and alarm in equal measure.

Nathan knew exactly how he felt. “No, we will content ourselves to sit up at half a cable's length where we might admire her without drawing attention to ourselves.”

As they pulled out into the crowded harbour Nathan looked back and saw his mysterious followers standing on the wharf, as still as statues. Then the woman in red stepped forward, clear of the shade of the parasol, and for the first time he saw her features and felt almost as if he had been kicked in the stomach. He looked at Imlay to share his wonderment and Imlay smiled.

“Did I not say she was beautiful?” He sighed and raised his hat one more time in ironic farewell. “And yours for the asking.”

Nathan shook his head and turned his back, but he was more disturbed than he cared to show, or would have wished to admit, even to himself, and the image stayed with him as they rowed out into the harbour: that tall figure in the flowing red robe at the water's edge and the finely sculptured features of a goddess. It was an effort not to look back.

Instead he looked to the frigate.
His
frigate. Another beauty. Riding at anchor in the sparkling blue water against the splendid backdrop of La Cabana, as if the biggest, most expensive fortress in the Caribbean had been provided merely as a setting for her own more decorous splendour.

They lay off her a while, holding against the tide, while he observed her. The bum-boats were clustered about her, bringing produce from the shore: bananas, pineapples, melons, women … It was unlikely Pym would permit the latter commodity with his new captain preparing to come aboard but certainly some bargaining seemed to be in progress. Nathan ran his eye along her gun ports, restrained himself from counting them like a small boy—but only just. He already knew how many there were. The faint breeze lifted the ensign in a desultory wave and then let it fall again. Pym had moved it from the peak of the gaff to the flagstaff at her stern—the ensign of a rear-admiral of the blue, reminding Nathan that he must write to Admiral Ford in Port Royal, if only out of courtesy, to inform him that he had taken command and was in pursuit of his orders from their lordships of the Admiralty. They had rigged awnings on the quarterdeck and in the waist as a shade against the sun, so white they looked as if they had been painted or pipe-clayed like the belts of the marine sentries—Nathan could see one of them on the forecastle by the belfry and as he watched he heard the distant sound of the bell. Three bells in the afternoon watch.

Even this close he could not see a single scratch or stain on her hull nor a trace of rust from the metalwork. And the hammocks in their
side netting with not a trace of bedding or clothes. Sure she hid her wounds well. No-one looking at her could have imagined that she had been battered by a hurricane, near wrecked on a reef, blighted by yellow fever and suffered the disgrace of mutiny with her captain kidnapped and dumped on a foreign shore with his throat cut.

Stainless she most certainly was not. She should have Kerr's blood dripping from her scuppers.

“Row me around her if you would,” he begged the crew and he leaned eagerly forward as they crossed her bow, close enough to see the proud white face of the unicorn with its golden horn.

They came down her starboard side—the side he would board as her captain—and he could see the steps rigged ready for him with red side ropes. Dear God, he would have to wear gloves all the time for fear of leaving a stain upon the least object he touched. He checked himself sternly, recognising an old enemy in this tendency to mock and belittle when he was feeling personally threatened and on the defensive, fearful of himself being judged. And then as they came round the stern he saw Pym, leaning over the side and shouting down to the bum-boats to clear away and mind they did not scratch his precious paintwork, the whoresons.

“Very well, enough of this,” he said to the crew. Then, remembering his manners: “Thank'ee, but let us not keep Mr. Keeble waiting.”

And so they rowed to the
Speedwell
and he stepped aboard her for the last time with his heart in his boots. He could never have imagined when he took command of her in Bristol a little more than a year ago that he would be so sorry to be leaving her. Or that her crew would be so sorry to see him leave.

“We have had some adventures together,” said Keeble, the second mate who was now her skipper as they sat in what was now his cabin going through the ship's papers and sharing a last tot of rum. “And I am sorry they are ended, though there were times I confess I never thought I would live to say it.”

“ Well, I suppose you will not be sorry to be quit the King's service,” Nathan countered, “and free to go about your lawful business again.”

This was intended as ironic for the
Speedwell
had been steeped in villainy long before she came under Nathan's command. But the Americans, he had discovered, were immune from the vice of irony, if they even recognised the nature of the beast, which was doubtful.

“If them that's in the King's service would only let us,” muttered Keeble darkly. Then, remembering himself, “Begging your pardon, sir. I was forgetting.”

Nathan had resumed his uniform for the trip to the
Unicorn
but it was the first time Keeble or any of the crew had seen him in it, or even knew him in his true occupation as a captain in the King's Navy. He had come aboard in Bristol in the guise of their new owner, a Mr. Turner of New York, engaged in running contraband across the English Channel to Le Havre, and though they had not taken long to smoke him, he had acted more like a privateer captain or a smuggler—one of their own—than a representative of His Majesty, strutting the quarterdeck in his bicorn hat and his gold lace.

And yet throughout his commission the
Speedwell
had been under Admiralty protection—a hired vessel, safe from the depredations of any zealous King's officer who aspired to take her as a prize—or press half her crew to supplement his own. There was more reason to regret his departure than the force of sentiment.

“Well you are at liberty to continue in the service if you wish,” Nathan assured him, with a smile. “And the same goes for any of the crew.”

If not spoken entirely in jest—for he would have taken as many of the
Speedwell
's crew as his conscience and Keeble's compliance would have allowed—this was a whimsical notion. None but the most reckless or feeble-minded would have considered the prospect for an instant. The lowest paid deckhand aboard the
Speedwell
earned far more than the six shillings a week available to him as an ordinary seaman aboard the
Unicorn
and without the risk of being flogged senseless for drunkenness or pissing upon the deck, should such degenerate conduct ever occur to him.

But surprisingly there was no answering smile from Keeble, or even
an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders. “Well, I know of at least one who might take you up on that, sir,” he replied evenly. “And that is young Frankie Coyle.”

“Ah.” Nathan recalled the glum expression he had worn in the gig with William Place beside him in all his finery—and with a dirk at his hip. “I did wonder if he were so inclined. But you are in the nature of
loco parentis
to him … As a father figure, that is,” he added hastily for Keeble's frown indicated he might take this amiss. “Would you not wish him to remain aboard the
Speedwell
and return to his home in Boston?”

“ Well, to be blunt, it was not much of a home he had there,” replied Keeble with a shake of his head. “And if that was his wish, I would not be the one to stand in the way of it.”

“Then if you have no objection, I will offer him a position as one of the captain's servants,” said Nathan, “which is to say with the same status as young Place.”

The frown again. Keeble had little notion of the ranks accorded in the King's Navy but he knew the status of William Place was somewhat higher than that of a servant. “But Billy Place is a gentleman, I think,” he observed, “for all the swearing he's learned from I know not who.” Keeble was from Marblehead and a man of determined morals.

“Aye, and he will berth with the other young gentlemen aboard the
Unicorn.
As a volunteer first class.”

“And Frankie with them?”

“Frankie with them. Do you have any objection to that?”

“No, no, only that he is not, what you might say, used to being among gentlemen. His mother, well, not to put too fine a point on it, was a whore. And likely still is, if she still be alive when we come to Boston.”

“Well, he will not be the first whore's son that was an officer in the King's Navy,” Nathan assured him cheerfully. “And some have been made admiral. Do you not think he merits the opportunity?”

“Oh, he does that, sir. He does that. And I wish him joy of it. It is only that I did not want you to be in ignorance and think I was
making game of you if it came out.” He squared his shoulders. “But he is a good freeborn lad from Boston, Massachusetts, and as good as the son of any English gentleman, I dare say.”

“I am sure of it,” Nathan calmed him hastily, “so let us put it to him and give him the choice.” Of berthing with the young swine aboard the
Unicorn
or remaining with a parcel of Yankee rebels and reprobates, he thought of adding humorously, but it would have been the wrong note on which to have ended the conversation and he had played enough of that music for one day.

And so there were five passengers beside Nathan in the gig that finally pulled for the
Unicorn
—Imlay, Tully, Gabriel, Place and Coyle, the latter proud but self-conscious in the smart blue jacket that Place had lent him, and Nathan's dirk that he had worn as a midshipman aboard the
Hermes
—a gift to commence his new career. And all their old shipmates lining the rail to see them off with, “Three cheers for the Captain,” and Mrs. Small alternately waving her handkerchief and pressing it to her tearful face. Nathan would dearly have liked to take her with him but lacked the nerve to impose a female cook on the crew of a man of war and besides she and Small had a notion of opening a French hotel in Boston.