Fortune's Whelp (Fortune's Whelp Series Book 1) Page 4

  Michael grunted his non-committal.

  “We’ll see you return soon?” the Cornishman asked.

  “Not likely. I’ve arms and dispatches to deliver with my gang—”

  “Your Irish raparrees, you mean.”

  “Highwaymen in the service of the rightful king,” Michael replied, emphasizing each word.

  The Cornishman shrugged. “As you please.”

  “And I’ve other affairs to attend.”

  “To the king across the water, then!”

  The Cornishman took a swig from a jar of excellent French brandy, then Michael did.

  “The true king!” Michael toasted.

  As the gray glimmer of dawn grew behind them in the east, the Irishman and his gang carefully timed the rhythm of the pounding surf one last time, then, muscle and mind in unison, drew the jolly-boat through the waves, followed soon by the longboat.

  Aboard the Bristol-merchant the Irishman’s attention was soon taken by the sea and the future he had chosen with Barclay, whatever bloody intrigue it might turn out to be. As soon as he had done his duty in Ireland, he would head across St. George’s Channel to England, and then to London. He thought of nothing else: not of other men alive or dead; not of enemies past or present; not of women and children innocent, not of those names he commonly invoked and abused, those of God, Jesus, Joseph, or Mary; not even of the woman he professed to love. The prospect used to lure him to London was a trifling pretense, and the adventure it would unlock was merely a passing, if likely profitable, excitement.

  Beneath all lay an anger that had long since passed into a petard of black powder sheathed in cold iron, the hatred into a smoldering match set in a linstock poised above the fuse.

  Chapter 4

  By fate expell’d, on land and ocean tost...

  —Virgil, Aeneid, 3rd century BC

  Cows.

  He was looking at cows, at small black cows in wet green pasture.

  He could see big soft cow eyes, and small hummocks of grass grown up over piles of cow dung, and mist drifting across hills in the distance.

  Cows? Cows.

  From dark ships and fair women to cows?

  And those sounds: lowing, yes, and clanking? Yes, clanking, again and again.

  Cows and cowbells, he thought; then from a corner of his mind came a nagging questioning, an annoying denial of one of his senses, and as he followed its trail he realized the sounds came from beyond the edges of his private universe. Cows, pasture, and mist disappeared and he dreamed no more.

  Edward opened his eyes, or thought he did, yet saw nothing before him but blackness, dull and without depth—a blind darkness. He felt movement, too, a simple motion, a gentle swaying to and fro.

  No, two motions: his, and another in the background in all directions, yet somehow related to his. Stench was there also, not overpowering, but still there, foul, unclean, unlike that of the cows and pasture in his dream. He heard creaking, groaning, breathing, and snoring, all within arm’s reach, and on top of it all, the obnoxious muted-yet-loud clanking of a cowbell, and he wondered for a moment if perhaps he still dreamed this bovine cacophony.

  Every night for a fortnight the bell had interrupted his dreams and their shroud of sleep. Always an easy sleeper, he would have slept again shortly this time, as he did every time, his mind filtering the bell and smothering his annoyance, had he not heard movement at the small door in the nearby bulkhead where the bell hung. He rolled over, keeping his head down to avoid the deck beams above, and swung carefully out of his hammock and onto his knees, trying both to keep quiet and keep from falling through the rotting canvas that served as two of his four tiny cabin walls.

  The small bulkhead door whined open, and he heard shuffling and muttering, barely audible. Quickly he reached between the two canvas partitions, found a small arm, grabbed it and yanked hard, and with the small arm came a boy of perhaps twelve years. Edward quickly covered the lad’s mouth with a hand, but not in time to stop the beginning of an exclamation. He pulled the struggling boy close and whispered in his ear before the lad could pull a knife and shove it into his belly.

  “Whisht and strike amain, laddie! ‘Tis I, MacNaughton.”

  The boy stopped struggling. The bell had stopped clanking, replaced by woman’s voice with a Dutch accent.

  “Who is there? Boy? Are you there, boy? I heard you, boy!”

  “Don’t answer,” the man whispered.

  “Boy! Damn you, answer me! Bring me wine and water; I need to sleep!”

  Other than the noises of ship and sea—timbers creaking under the force of the sea, rigging straining under the force of the wind, elm tree pumps vomiting bilge and sea water overboard—there was only silence in return.

  “You pock-marked little sea heathen, where are you!” she shouted, her voice echoing.

  “Elizabeth! Maria! Wake up! Are you awake?” she changed tack, more quietly this time, as she must be more mindful of her servants than of the ship’s boy.

  “I know you are awake! Get up!” she finally cried loudly again in exasperation, but heavy breathing was her only response and she was likely to get no other. The passengers around her were still drunk enough to render them senseless to her demands. Even her young son was deep in sleep, aided by a beaker of wine and water.

  The bell clanked again. The man removed his hand from the boy’s mouth.

  “Is your heart still beating, Jack?” he whispered.

  “Aye, sir, but you scared the devil himself out of me!”

  “Faith, I rather doubt Old Roger would run from me,” Edward laughed in a whisper. “I know him well, but he’s nae friend nor family. What hour is it?”

  “Just past eight bells, sir, the middle watch just ended.”

  “Listen carefully. I’ll give you a pence each night, plus more reward when we reach Kinsale, if you find some oakum or other junk and silence the bell clapper, and you can get some sleep too.”

  “Aye, sir, I’ll do it! Bless you!”

  Into the black bowels of the small ship went the boy, and back to sleep went Edward, and though the Scotsman did not dream again of dark, swift ships and fair, disingenuous women, neither did he dream of cows, with or without bells around their necks. The bell at the small door clanked no more that night.

  He woke at dawn to a sharp headache between his eyes, the result of a night spent breathing the fetid, uncirculated air of the tiny closed space.

  Around him was a tight press of seasick humanity, five women and one boy, crammed within tiny cabins of rotting planks and rotting canvas on the tiny aft platform in the hold of a one hundred sixty-ton merchantman, the Peregrinator galley. The air in the berth stank of human waste, vomit, and ammonia, plus the counter-actives of liquor, sachet, and vinegar, and of the usual ship odors of wood, cordage, canvas, pitch, and tar. The small deck was littered with sea chests and portmanteaus, buckets and chamber pots, empty wine bottles and food scraps. Everything was wet, damp, or mildewed.

  He yawned and prepared to force himself to his feet. His senses told him that the seas had quieted, and that the scuttle to the aft platform had been opened to let out the fetid air and let in the fresh, but the fire hearth in the cook-room was still not lighted.

  He dressed, went topside, and passed his eyes first to windward to search the horizon, then aloft to see what sail was set, then over the small activities around him on deck and at the helm, and was pleased to hear the shout, “The pump sucks, the ship is free!” This was good news, for the ship had sprung a leak when she’d run north from a French privateer and into foul weather, and the pumps had been manned ever since, exhausting the small crew.

  Edward looked out across the sea again and saw no other sail but a small, similarly built merchant-galley a league distant with her main topsail clewed up, then set, then clewed up again, perhaps as a signal, although a gun or a weft in a flag would have been more common, if indeed it were a signal at all. At any rate, the Peregrinator could not afford to lie by for he
r. Certainly the ship in the distance did not seem in distress. He wondered idly why she was fooling with topsails in this ugly, windy weather, whose misty rains hid both predator and prey.

  For nearly two weeks—much too long—the Peregrinator had beat against wind and sea, patiently and slowly making progress, though often it seemed she made none at all. Captain and crew daily entreated the wind to veer and the swells to quiet, and coaxed the small frigate into the southwesterly winds without pressing her too hard. The ship now beat toward Kinsale Harbor, only two leagues distant, but those two leagues might mean hours, days, or even, if the wind and weather went relentlessly against them, weeks.

  So very close, Edward thought, but there is an infinity even in inches.

  Eight bells.

  The tintinnabulous pairs broke his reverie.

  “Captain MacNaughton! Nothing but this blowing, rainy weather. She’s a good sea boat in bad weather, the Peregrinator is, a fine ship, as long as the pumps are manned, that is. And if the wind doesn’t veer against us again, we’ll come to an anchor in Kinsale harbor today.”

  Edward smiled at the man. Giles Cronow he was called, a Welshman born in Monmouthshire and bred to the sea.

  “Good day to you, Captain Cronow. You’ll win our wager if we do.”

  “Aye, twelve days you said, taking into account that damn’d picaroon first driving us north, then the damn’d weather driving us farther north. But this is the thirteenth day of December, so you’re a day too short! Damn my eyes, what with all the French privateers cruising between England and Ireland, I’m surprised our luck has stood.”

  Edward was himself surprised that they had run into no other rovers during their passage. North they had run from a privateer in the late afternoon on their first day at sea after the long passage down the Severn River. By dint of good seamanship, Captain Cronow and his crew had prolonged the chase until darkness, where Fortune let her hide in the deep troughs of the sea amidst a moonless night. At dawn the French cruiser was nowhere to be found, but more foul weather was. After the dangers of sea and man-upon-sea were finally past, the small merchantman busily beat against the southerly wind and sea, turning the normally short passage into one far too long for Edward’s liking.

  A passing English merchantman, her captain’s voice shouted through a speaking trumpet but audible over wind and sea, had informed them two days past that a French man-of-war of forty-eight guns and more than three hundred men had captured the English hired ship Betty, and that other French cruisers had captured the Devonshire, Resolution, and Sussex, the only three East Indiamen expected in England this year. Several of the Peregrinator’s crew, just over their fright from being chased by a privateer at the outset, had grown fearful again at the news.

  Indeed, it was sea rover heaven and merchant seaman hell. Waters around the world were swarming with privateers and cruising men-of-war hoping to get rich by plundering the trade of enemy nations, as Edward himself was on a quest to do. The twin missions of his trip to Ireland—delivering secret letters and soliciting an investor—would, he hoped, be the means of acquiring the funds necessary to secure of his own privateering commission.

  Captain Cronow talked on. “But I’ll have none of your damned French claret, though, when I win our wager. It’s sherry-sack for me, Bristol milk by God, a dozen bottles you’ll owe me.”

  “A few more than that, I think. I’ve drunk four or five from your store so far,” Edward reminded the captain.

  “You’re my guest, sir, and better company than those poxy lubber bastards in the steerage—damn all soldiers and churchmen!—so I’ll take nothing in return for what you drink in my company.”

  The youthful voice of the ship’s boy interrupted the two men. “Your pardons, Captain Cronow, Captain MacNaughton, but I have a message to deliver to Captain MacNaughton, if it pleases you and him.”

  “Steer a direct course,” Edward told the lad, “no need for a traverse when the wind is large. What’s the message?”

  “Aye, sir. The bawd below wishes for your company,” said the boy.

  “Bawd?” Edward replied sternly.

  The boy’s eyes darted quickly to Cronow. Seeing no corporal punishment coming his way—yet—he relaxed a bit. “The lady below wishes to see you, sir.”

  “You’ll go farther in this world when you learn that it’s wise to never call a woman a whore and always to call her a lady, unless she tells you otherwise, and even then I wouldn’t believe her. You wish to have her favors, or those of her maids when you grow to man’s estate? Then understand that she’s a lady always, no matter her station. Whatever she may have done, it can be no worse than what most merchants and courtiers do every day.”

  “Aye, sir,” the boy replied with a disbelieving smirk he could not control.

  “Damn you, boy, you’ll take Captain MacNaughton’s advice and keep a respectful tongue in your head, or I’ll take a rope’s end and flay the skin from your young arse!” Cronow said sharply, smacking the lad upside the head.

  “Tell her I’ll come below soon,” Edward told the boy.

  “Aye, sir,” replied the boy again, this time with a rueful, respectful grin as he rubbed the side of his head. In an instant he had disappeared below.

  “Edward, my old friend,” laughed the captain, “You’re too kind, given how she pesters you. They say in Bristol that she was once a whore to Spanish merchants in the Low Countries before she married a papist English merchant trading there, a rich man who owned a Bristol trading company and an Irish estate. It’s a cozy berth you have below. Surely a rich, widowed lady-whore would be useful in outfitting a privateer? The crew jests that you threw the young officer out who was giving you competition!” Cronow laughed.

  But the captain had his facts wrong. An ensign, who along with an army lieutenant and an English parson was berthed in the steerage, had indeed made his way below, with less than honorable intentions. The widow Hardy, furious at the ensign’s assumption that her favors and those of her servants were for sale, had routed him from the cabins. Edward had merely escorted the young officer topside. If anything, the Scotsman had preserved him from having his skull broken, no matter that he probably deserved it. Even so, the officer blamed Edward for his failure to secure the pulchritude below.

  Edward smiled and shrugged. There was no malice in the captain’s words or the crew’s forecastle jests, only good-natured humor.

  “I’ll have the boy bring food to my cabin when the next glass is turned,” Cronow continued, his eyes never losing track of the condition of ship, sea, and air. “Join me, sir, if you still have an appetite when you’re through with your Scotch warming pans below. And take your time, sir—there’s five of them!”

  Edward returned below to the platform in the aft hold, a space not even twelve feet by eight feet, partitioned into four cabins, with only five feet from the planking under his feet to that of the deck above, and only four and a half feet to the beams themselves. He could not stand erect in the space, and moved about by stooping or squatting, and sometimes even by shuffling on his knees. The cabins were partitioned by port sail canvas rather than by bulkheads of light planks, giving rise to jokes about the gangplanks that must lie between Edward’s cabin and those of the women.

  As he entered he tried not to notice the disheveled and revealing condition of Mrs. Hardy’s servant women. One of them, Maria, a very intelligent and attractive young woman, had flirted with him since he had set foot aboard the Peregrinator in Bristol, often joining him for cards and backgammon, along with two navy wives en route to rejoin their warrant officer husbands at the navy yard in Kinsale after visiting family in Gloucestershire. With the games came far too much indulgence in a liquor the Dutch knew as jenever for its juniper flavoring, and the English as gin, leading Maria more than once to try to crawl into his hammock. But that he had not wanted to discommode his neighbors in the tight confines of the small ship, and also that he did not want to cause any problems with her demanding mistress, he migh
t have accepted her repeated offer.

  “Get dressed, you hussies!” Mrs. Hardy shouted. “Captain MacNaughton, I cannot wait for this abominable voyage to be over,” she said, as he turned away from the revealing condition of her servants. “I hope we haven’t disturbed you too much, sir, with our pleas for assistance and attention? Would you mind helping us secure our cabin walls—furl them, isn’t that what a seaman would say?—so that we may have some more air in here?”

  Mrs. Hardy, born Janneke van Tienhoven in the Low Countries and now a denizen of England, was known as Jane by her adopted compatriots and as “the foreign papist whore below” by Parson Waters in the steerage above. Edward had no such prejudices of origin and faith, knowing from experience that both good people and Fortune appeared in many guises.

  “I’m happy to help, madam, and in no way could the presence of several women so lovely disturb me. Nay, the robin’s song would grow harsh long before my service to you could weary me,” he said, bowing awkwardly in the confined space and hoping he adequately disguised his mocking tone. Too often had her damned bell awakened him in the night.

  “Oh, Captain MacNaughton,” she replied with sarcastic breathlessness, “are you a poet?”

  Edward blushed at being so easily discovered. “Clearly not, nor much of an actor either.”

  “A soldier, then? Or sailor?” she laughed, clearly flirting. “Nay, an adventurer I think, a Gentleman of Fortune, for you are no supercargo or merchant captain, no matter what you pretend. I know men: their professions are invariably written in their figures and characters. Am I right?”

  Edward, his self-confidence notwithstanding, blushed again. “You might be.”

  “An adventurer with business in Ireland, then, although it’s no longer a place of adventurers, but of factors, lawyers, and thieves. It must be money you seek.”

  “Naturally. Adventure requires silver and gold.”