Fortune's Whelp (Fortune's Whelp Series Book 1) Read online

  Out of the wind he grew warm, although still he shivered, his woolen clothing retaining body heat in spite of being soaked. He heard nothing but wind and wave, saw nothing but shades of darkness. For several minutes he did not move, reveling in the relative comfort of his position and happy to have escaped Poseidon’s brazen-hoofed sea steeds. He shifted his position, and once again his clothing grasped his limbs like the cold tentacles of an ancient sea monster, reminding him that he must never for a moment grow comfortable.

  The Irishman grew impatient with waiting for moonlight to see by, and bothered by thoughts of his woman back in Ireland. He started to stand, then stopped. He’d heard a sound, and it was neither wind nor wave, nor of his own making. It did not belong to the rhythm of the stormy night.

  Above? Above.

  Several pebbles fell upon his head, and the Irishman pressed against the cliff face and stared upward. A familiar sound came and went.

  And soon again the same, but this time not from above. It came from nearby, perhaps only a few feet away. Next he heard a stumble, a fall, a scrape of metal on rock, and a quiet curse, all carried quickly away by the wind. Then nothing more. Even the sounds from above ceased. The moon peered through a break in the clouds.

  Two, the Irishman thought, I might have two enemies here to greet me tonight.

  Holding his cutlass at his side, he moved slowly and quietly in the direction of the sounds he had heard nearest to him. A few yards ahead he discerned a dark, squatting form, a pair of dark lanterns at its feet. It stared upward, this shape, trying, perhaps, as the Irishman had, to discover the source of the sounds above.

  The Irishman flung himself upon the form, knocking it to the ground while bringing his cutlass to bear and covering its mouth with his left hand. A wide-eyed man, for it was indeed flesh and blood, stared up at him but did not move.

  No one else came forth, and the Irishman sensed no one else nearby, except perhaps above. He inspected the man’s face in the darkness, grinned, removed cutlass and knee from throat and chest, and crouched down beside him.

  “Damn you, O’Neal!” the man, his accent that of a Cornish gentleman, whispered hoarsely, “You might’ve killed me!”

  “Who’s above?” the Irishman asked quietly.

  “Damn you!” the man repeated with a cough, his hand at his throat. He sat up as the Irishman sheathed his cutlass. “The ‘good men’ of Padstow. What other fools would be here on a night like this?”

  The Irishman grunted. A few of the gentry and merchants of the nearby Cornish town, then, most of them fat and well-armed gentlemen and merchants, each with armed servants in tow and some of them members of the local trainband—the local militia—whose members in general were often referred to as “cuckolds all in a row.” They probably watched for French invaders or smugglers, or at least made a pretense of doing so, and wished they were at home bedding their maids or mistresses instead.

  “Then why did you signal me ashore?” the Irishman demanded quietly.

  “I didn’t!”

  “Then it was their lantern I saw, as I thought it might be.”

  “And still you came, you damned bog-trotting cully.”

  The Irishman replied, his cold words contrasting oddly with his grin. “I’ve gutted men for less than that.”

  A lull came in the wind, and now both men heard voices from above.

  “Wait here,” the Irishman ordered.

  He climbed two dozen yards up a nearby cleft to listen.

  “French invaders! Irish assassins! Smugglers and pirates! Cud Zookes, boy! There’s naught here—”

  “The old woman—”

  “Damn the old witch! There’s naught here but a mad woman’s nightmares. No one has answered our false fire. If a smuggler were in the offing she’d have signaled back. Time to be home and away.”

  “But the old woman says she sees them every month at this time of the moon, and maybe we didn’t use the correct signal—”

  “A pox on her tales! And what’s she doing out here at night at the same moon every month? Use your head, boy.”

  “And the broken oar I discovered on the shore last month, the day after this same moon?”

  “Egad boy, there’s flotsam and jetsam all over this Cornish coast, at least until the wreck-mongers get to it. It’s the Cornishman’s grace of God, a wreck is. Let’s go then, it’s charity we do by leaving any wreck goods on the shore. Better a roaring fire, some brandy, and a wench’s plump tits and buttocks than this wind and rain.”

  “But sir—”

  “What’s wrong with you, boy? Damn your listening at keyholes and damn those gossips who claim a French pirate used to visit your aunt up the Helford—my own dear sister, God save her, and Goddamn that poxy fool I married her to. I tell you, if there’s anything out there it’s our tin boats and our tall-hatted fishermen, for only a fool would try to come ashore on a night like this. A few hours in a scold’s bridle might teach that witch to hold her tongue, and so keep good men out of this weather. No more of this nonsense from you, boy; we’re going home to warm ourselves with a fire and some good cool-Nantz that found its way here by accident from the Loire. Are you coming with us?”

  And the voices were no more, either because the wind had grown great again, bringing with it the gusting rain, or because the men had gone, and the Irishman was left to wonder cynically if the speaker himself were not involved in local smuggling, including the Irishman’s own cargo.

  “They’re gone?” whispered the Cornishman when the Irishman returned.

  Annoyed, the Irishman answered distractedly, wondering about how many men might be visiting his own woman in his absence. It angered him that he could not keep her stowed away in his mind while he tended to this business of smuggling and other intrigue. Something had set her loose between decks tonight.

  “I think so. Wait here and keep watch. Are your men and ponies safe?”

  “Hidden nearby. Far easier for someone to find us than them,” replied the Cornishman, who was a smuggler for profit as well as a Jacobite agent serving the exiled James.

  “I’m going to climb all the way up this time and make sure the coast is clear, I’ll make my signal if it is.”

  The Irishman picked up one of the dark lanterns and climbed slowly back up the sharp cleft, the wind and light rain masking the sounds of his climb. He gained the flat ground at the top of the cliff, peered across it, and saw nothing. The men of the trainband were gone, back to their wives and mistresses. Yet, as he was about to climb back down, the Irishman heard, in a brief respite from the wind, a soft snort only a horse could have made.

  Minutes passed. The Irishman breathed slowly in spite of his pounding heart. He looked not at the night, but through it, knowing that sooner or later a shape would resolve from the darkness and present itself.

  Then he saw the vague form, less distinct than the Cornishman had been below, but still clear enough to identify: a man leading a horse. The twain were making their way slowly along the cliff wall.

  Is this the youth who had spoken earlier? the Irishman wondered. An enthusiastic lad disregarding the cynicism and negligence of his elders? Or an older man, a retired soldier or the muster master of the trainband, who waits to see what crawls from its hole after the dogs have gone?

  No matter. I’ll kill him when he comes.

  He silently drew his cutlass with his right hand and his skean—an Irish dagger with a blade more than a foot long—with his left, and waited for man and horse to come blindly within range of cut and thrust.

  He has no weapon at the ready, the Irishman thought, so he’ll die quickly. I can cut his throat, push steel through his belly, or just heave him over the cliff. The horse? I’ll run it over the cliff to prevent it from returning without a rider. A horse without a rider creates alarm. But if neither show, alarm will be delayed, for there are many reasons the pair might not immediately return.

  His mouth dried as he waited to kill. He trembled agreeably at the thought of
murder. And then it came to him: Reason, gnawing at the corners of his mind. Now he regretted giving in to his bloody inclination. He ought to have slipped back into the cleft and huddled there like a frightened rabbit until the man passed, but now he was trapped by his own bloodlust and curiosity.

  On came man and horse.

  The horse! Will he discover me when his master cannot? the Irishman wondered.

  Closer came the dismounted rider, so close he came... and stopped short, looking over the cliff toward the water.

  For an eternity the Irishman waited, wanting to feel the perverse joy at killing by surprise. Soon man and horse were above him, on top of him. The Irishman’s grip tightened on his cutlass and skean as he lost his sense of balance and time. Only by his instincts could he see.

  Now! Now! they shouted.

  Soon the struggle was over.

  A minute later the Irishman opened and closed one panel of the darkened lantern three times, making a signal to sea. A tiny light—the flash of a “false fire” ignited in a tub—winked twice in response. Lying by offshore was the Mary and Martha, a small merchant-galley whose pretended destination for trade was Portugal, but had, in fact, been the coast of France. Usually her hold would have been filled entirely with smuggled French wine and brandy traded for a cargo of English cloth and lead, but on this voyage she carried more than spirits; part of her hold was packed tightly with boxes of muskets, horse pistols, swords, and saddles, and with casks of powder and shot, all destined for Jacobite rebels—or patriots, depending on one’s point of view—who waited in England and Ireland for the invasion that would restore King James.

  The merchantman was commanded by an Englishman of Jacobite sympathy and apolitical greed. For several days and nights this late November of 1695, he had sailed the coast between Trevose and St. Agnes Heads, signaling by night off this and two other coves and awaiting reply.

  As he did, he ran a dangerous gauntlet. Europe had been at war since 1688 when English Protestants deposed the papist King James II and put the staunch Dutch Protestant William III of Orange and his wife Mary, daughter of James II, on the throne. Louis XIV of France supported the dethroned James, and soon after the war began the French king helped the exiled English king invade Ireland as a stepping stone to regaining the English throne. But in less than two years the Irish campaign was over, and the defeated James was back in exile at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in France, plotting again to regain his throne. Such plots and plans were but a part of a much greater campaign, for arrayed against France’s ambitions were England and most of Europe, Protestant and Catholic.

  The Irishman’s purpose was to trade in smuggled goods and to see arms and ammunition safely delivered to agents in England and Ireland.

  He signaled again, this time to acknowledge the Bristol merchant-galley’s flash of light, set the lantern on the ground and uncovered a single panel so that the light would show to sea, and clambered down the hill.

  “Is the trainband gone?” the Cornishman asked worriedly.

  “Aye.”

  “What took so long?”

  “One of them returned, a sly bastard.”

  “You killed him!”

  “Sure now, and I’d spoil the enterprises of men in France, England, and Ireland.” Having provoked an astonished look on the Cornishman’s face, the Irishman grinned. “He’s gone. But I almost forgot myself and killed him anyway.”

  “Damn you, Irishman, you are a fool,” the Cornishman said and departed.

  He returned ten minutes later with a long string of fat little horses in tow, hardy animals every one, yet none had ever known food other than local grasses and furze. With the ponies were a dozen or so Cornishmen, stout miners mostly, along with two or three fishermen, all skilled at the brutal sport of Cornish wrestling: a ‘Cornish hug’ and a cudgel awaited anyone who dared interfere with the night’s work.

  As soon as the ship’s longboat was ashore, the Cornishmen went to work. The Irishman supervised the seamen from the ship, but the Cornishmen took their orders from their compatriot, for they could not understand the Irishman’s ‘brogue upon the tongue,’ nor the Irishman their ‘jouring speech.’ Quickly and quietly they unloaded small casks—ankers, half-ankers, and firkins—of powder and shot, along with boxes of muskets and pistols, and packed them on the small horses. Twice more the Irishman had to shake off thoughts of his woman in Ireland, whose strange business it was to be constantly wooed by other men, no matter that she had promised herself to him.

  Abruptly the Cornishman briefly stepped away into the darkness. When he returned he was accompanied by a stranger dressed as a common tradesman, yet who foolishly carried himself with the bearing of a Great Man.

  “And who’s this?” the Irishman asked with a hint of suspicion. A messenger, doubtless. The Irishman did not recognize this particular one, although he had met several during covert journeys from Ireland to England: once aboard the Mary and Martha, twice aboard a French privateer, and thrice aboard fishing vessels.

  “I have come in haste from France by way of London,” the stranger said, with no intention of giving his name. He was English, with the patronizing haughtiness of a nobleman or elite intellectual, and the Irishman hated him immediately. The stranger nodded at the Cornish smuggler, who stepped out of earshot.

  “You are Michael O’Neal?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then you will know what to do with this,” the stranger said, passing to him a small but heavy package tightly wrapped in tarred canvas.

  The Irishman took it but did not open it. He knew that inside were coins and also innocuous-appearing letters with secret messages written in cipher or penned between their lines in disappearing inks, some whose words would reveal themselves when heated, others when wet or with a candle placed behind the paper; and even these hidden messages might have hidden meanings. The money, an odd assortment, was to support James’ agents in Ireland as they laid in arms, bought horses, and recruited fighting men for the anticipated invasion of England and the restoration of King James II to his rightful throne. Once already this year had invasion plans been quashed, but another was being readied. The Irishman slipped the package into a bag slung across his chest, opposite his cutlass.

  “I have one more message,” the stranger said.

  The Irishman was silent.

  “Sir George Barclay,” the stranger whispered in a manner neither statement nor question. “He asks that you join him in London. He says there may be work soon—profitable work—for a man like you. He says it would be wise if you were there by the end of January, and even wiser by the end of December.”

  The Irishman said nothing.

  “As you like, O’Neal, but Sir George urges you to London immediately,” the stranger whispered, as if the wind might carry the words across land and sea. “You know the taverns to frequent while you wait. Sir George says you are well-suited to the affairs at hand, and well-acquainted with the ways in and out of London. He needs men like you. King James needs men like you.”

  The Irishman laughed softly and wickedly. “So the honorable old Scottish warrior intends to return to England one day soon as a secret soldier. It’s a bloody business to restore a king, and a desperate business that would bring a poor Irishman to do the dirty work of the English and French. Or is it only the Irish and the Scots who have this sort of courage?”

  “It’s in your own Irish interest, as you well know,” the stranger said forcefully.

  The Irishman ground his teeth in return. “I’ve business in Ireland first, landing the rest of this cargo. You may send word to your bloody-minded master that I’ll come to London as quick as I can. If he’s seeking me, he’s seeking others and therefore isn’t ready to strike, whatever his business is. My part alone is unlikely to breed or abort this—what shall we call it? Regicide?”

  “Who speaks of regicide?” hissed the disguised gentleman sharply. “And Sir George is not my master!”

  And indeed, there was no suggestion of
regicide in Barclay’s verbal missive. But plotting against King William’s life was rampant in Jacobite taverns, sputtered by rum-sodden firebrands. Yet they had reason to hope: a very real plot against William’s life had been suspended this past year only because the king had traveled outside of the country. The Irishman felt sure of his prediction. He had a habit of foreseeing the likely deeds of men, not to mention that he knew what sort of violence would be required to restore James to his throne. Barclay knew this too, even if the order had yet to be given.

  “What else could it be, then?” he said, deliberately provoking the messenger. “To restore King James will require the death of Prince William. Surely even King James himself understands this much.”

  The Englishman fidgeted but remained silent. The Irishman might have the right of it, but speculation—were there indeed a plan—might foil it.

  “As you please. Go then, master-less lord, and do your bidding,” the Irishman said mockingly.

  Even in the darkness he could tell that the stranger’s blood was rising. He was not to be sneered at by any damn’d Teague. Yet the gentleman held his anger in check. Perhaps he knew better than to challenge this wild descendent of Irish kings and kerns, a man known, or at least said, to have been buccaneer and pirate, highwayman and rapparee, interloper and smuggler, duelist and prize fighter, cattle thief and black renter, spy and assassin. More likely, the stranger knew that the mission at hand was far more important than any personal affront that could be settled later with thirty-four inches of German or Spanish steel.

  The Irishman snorted at his English Jacobite ally, then returned his attention to his business. Two hours later, the trade of smuggled goods and treasonable arms was done.

  “A drink before you’re on your way?” asked the Cornishman as Michael prepared to help launch the jollyboat.

  “Where’s the stranger?”

  “Gone, too important to keep our company for long.” The Cornishman nodded toward the sea. “God speed you, Irishman, among the hagboats and fisher boats, the herring and charcoal, the tin and lead and copper. You’ll hardly be noticed among this sea of ships, and anyway, you have passes to escape the French, and the English shouldn’t bother you.”