The French Admiral (39 page)

“Two or three feet wide, four feet long, ready planed from heavy wood, Feather told me. I suppose we can nail or peg something together that would suit.”

“Heavy wood, you say.” Burgess chuckled, going to the double doors to the front parlor. He rapped one of them significantly. “How would you prefer oiled mahogany. Inch and a half thick, over eight feet long and over three feet wide, both of them.”

“Two sets of leeboards!” Alan exclaimed. “Burgess, you're a paragon! I was looking right at them and never gave 'em a thought!”

“I was ready to take 'em myself for our fortifications,” Burgess said. “Damn the place, I'd strip it down to the raw bricks rather than be captured for the want of a nail.”

“What fortifications?”

“Oh, Brother and I have been busy in the woods,” Burgess said. “Preparing a reception for anyone coming up the road. Our visitors tonight never even spotted 'em. We put up some rail fences and laid some surprises, too. See here, Alan, you said you were a hunter back in England, didn't you?”

“Yes, some.”

“Ever see a fence you didn't want to put your horse to?”

“Never,” Alan bragged, loosened up by the whiskey.

“Nor did I ever know a cavalryman that wouldn't either. There's
chevaux-de-frise
behind those new fences in the trees, not out front, mind, but in back, where you don't see 'em 'til you're in mid-leap, and if they had sent cavalry against us, they'd end up on the spikes.” Burgess snickered with anticipation at the sight. “With our Fergusons, we could have had an edge, too, 'cause we could lay down to fire and load just as fast as standing. There's rifle pits in the woods, too, so we could have had several fallback positions to snipe from while any infantry would have come at us standing up.”

“Had they been necessary, we could have given anyone a hot reception,” Governour boasted. “We even provided for you. Up by the creek it's too marshy for cavalry or infantry, but south of the woods, they could come across the fields. We put up some log ramparts for you and your sailors, covered with leaves and deadfall to look like a pile of junk wood. Would have made a neat little redan to guard the boats while we covered things south of you.”

“You were that confident?” Alan wondered aloud.

“If they had sent troops down here, and if they followed usual practice, we could have cut them to pieces. If they didn't send too many, that is. And after besting them we'd be gone before they could summon a larger force.”

“It would have mattered how many they would have sent, though, would it not?” Alan asked, throwing a damper on their celebrations.

“Well, if a battalion had come, the best we could have hoped for was to fall back through the woods to you by the boats, while you held out,” Governour said, since it was now moot speculation. “Your men and Mollow with a half-dozen riflemen could have slowed them up. After that . . .”

“After that, we would have swum for our lives to the boats and hoped they wouldn't have murdered us out in the open water,” Alan said.

“We would have put up a damned hard fight they'd have remembered for the rest of their lives,” Governour said tautly. “Now, how much can you accomplish tonight if we work in the barns?”

“The leeboards,” Alan said, shaking off the gruesome image of their entire force laid out defeated and dead, just like the revellers in the front yard. “The keels have to wait 'til morning, unless we want to show torches down by the boats.”

“No. Get as much done as you can.”

“Governour,” Alan said, getting a premonitory chill once more, “we'll be days along the eastern shore, and God knows what we'll run into. Would it be possible if you or Burgess or Knevet worked with some of my free hands and drilled them on those spare Fergusons?”

“A damned sensible idea, Alan,” Burgess said. “Best to be prepared for any eventuality.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Using as few torches as possible in the barns to shield the lights from prying eyes, they had worked until nearly midnight. The mahogany door panels were taken down and drilled to accept the axles of the small front wagon wheels, nailed to the naves and ready for installation in the morning at first light on the barges through existing rowports. Alan finally let his men get some rest and went back to the house to take his own. He entered the front parlor where Governour was already snoring on his pallet before the fire, sleeping rough on the carpet. Burgess was ensconced on a settee on his side. Even in repose, the Chiswick brothers were a ruthless-looking crew, Alan thought as he studied them by firelight. They were taller than he was, which gave them authority in spite of their low ranks, slim and almost angular. Even if he had not seen them in action, he would walk warily about them if he met them on the street back home. They had an air about them of habitual command, the sense of being obeyed. Perhaps it came from owning slaves and bossing them about, Alan decided, but they were impressive creatures, perhaps what that Frog Rousseau meant by natural nobility. Daunting personalities, magnificent physical specimens, and pretty enough to turn heads on the Strand or in the parks back in England, should they ever live to get there. Burgess had told him they still had relations in Surrey somewhere, and with the Rebels in possession of everything they had built up in the Carolinas, they were hoping to return to England and make a new start. Such an enterprise was dear to his own heart as well; he wished them joy of it.

He sat down in a chair by the sideboard and discovered a bottle of rhenish that had been opened but barely touched. Being careful not to wake his compatriots, he poured himself a glass and sat back to ease his weary body. The house was silent as a tomb, except for the Chiswicks and their snoring. The sentry at the foot of the stairs was drowsing as well.

Don't I have an assignation waiting for me? Alan asked himself. He checked his watch and discovered that it was a few minutes past the appointed hour of midnight. No, after this afternoon, she'll hate the very sight of me. Still, she's a whore, ain't she? What's another guinea or two now?

He stripped off his coat and waistcoat, undid his neckcloth and tossed them onto the chair next to him. He lit a candle with a stick of kindling that had fallen from the low-burning fire and made his way out into the hallway with a bottle of wine and two glasses in one hand, and the candle-stand in the other. There was no sentry on the back stairs from the butler's pantry, though there was one at the back steps wrapped in a blanket against the chill of the night, and very much awake. Alan made his way up the dark stairs to the rear passage of the upper story. There was a door and a mean little narrow corridor that gave entrance to the rooms above through the back, so that night-soil and other unsavory removals could be done without staining the main hallways. He went all the way to the end and found a final doorway. He blew out the candle and opened the door furtively, inch at a time to avoid creaking hinges. It opened noiselessly, though, obviously well oiled to avoid disturbing anyone who was using the chamber.

There was a sliver of moon coming through the windows, just enough to see that he was in a large and well-furnished suite at the end of the house. Surely, it had to be Nancy's; she had said her bedchambers were at the end of the house, overlooking the front yard and porches. He was in her sitting room. Groping like a blind man, he snaked his way on past all the furniture to the far doors, which stood open. Once his eyes were used to the gloom, he could espy a tall bed and several chests and wardrobes, a dressing table, and a mirror that glinted moonlight.

With a smile, he crossed to the bed and found a small table by the headboard on which he could deposit his unlit candle-stand and his wine and glasses, though not without a tell-tale clink of glass on glass.

“Who's there?” a tremulously fearful small voice exclaimed.

“'Tis Alan, Nancy love,” he whispered, removing his shoes.

“Oh God, after what happened today, ya still come to me and expect me to welcome ya?” she hissed, sitting up in bed with the sheets drawn up around her neck as a thin defense. “Leave my chambers at once, or I'll yell the house down.”

“There'll be no more guineas if I do,” he warned her, unbut-toning his shirt. “Your visitors this afternoon brought wine and tasty delicacies, but no gold for you.”

“Wh . . . what do ya take me for!” she complained in the dark.

“Sookie told me about you. So why make such a show of outrage?”

“Oh, you smug bastard!” she cried. “If I ever gave my favors ta a man, it was not for coin, sir! What sort of vile creature are you, ta think all women are whores for your pleasure? Just 'cause you've bought some women in the past doesn't mean we're all for sale for ya!”

“So your lovers just
happen
to leave you something worthwhile on their way out the door,” Alan scoffed.

“Goddamn ya, get out before I scream!” she said louder. “Ya shot down people I knew today, officers that'd been welcome here before, and now ya come creeping into my chambers with blood on your hands and think a guinea makes it alright? Get out, I mean it!”

To make her point, she picked something up from the nightstand and threw it at him. Whatever it was struck him on the shoulder, and he flinched away from her anger. The object clanked to the floor noisily.

“Go, before I kill ya!” she warned.

“Very well,” Alan fumed, heading for the door, bumping into the tables and chairs and making even more of a racket than she would have, trying to salvage his pride.

Once downstairs, and into another bottle of wine to replace the one she had thrown at him as a parting gesture, he had to realize that he could not exactly blame her. One or more of the men who had been shot down in ambush had most likely been in her bed once before. What really made him mad was the way she had gulled him out of those guineas.

He was also unhappy that he had gained no useful information from her in spite of being at his most charming, as much as he would have been charming with a courtesan, and he had a nagging feeling that she had gotten more from him than he hoped to learn from her.

Good thing we're leaving here tomorrow, he thought grumpily as he poured himself another glass of wine, before she found a way to get down the stairs some night and cut my nutmegs off for spite.

CHAPTER 13

H
e
woke up feeling like the wrath of God had descended on his skull, having sat up and finished half the bottle on top of all his exertions the day before. A clock had chimed three before he had been calm enough to sleep, and he had been roused at five to head down to the boats to oversee the last construction.

While he was standing around trying to look commanding (and awake), Burgess Chiswick joined him, looking a lot fresher than Alan felt. He did, however, bring a large mug of coffee with him, which Alan appreciated.

“Well, this looks promising, I suppose,” Burgess said. “Though I know little about the construction of boats. What are your men doing to those beams?”

“Drilling holes,” Alan said. “We're ready, except for the keel pieces to add weight and stability. See the boreholes through the existing keels? We'll bolt these on.”

“With what?”

“Pine dowels, slightly oversized and hammered into the boreholes. Like the bung in a beer barrel. Should hold for long enough to get us over to the eastern shore and round the capes,” Alan said.

“Metal would be better, would it not?” Burgess asked.

“We found some flat angle-iron forged with holes in it for various uses, and some bolts, but nothing long enough to go all the way from side to side. They'd have to be nine or ten inches long.”

“Thought I heard a disturbance upstairs last night. Did the fair Miss Nancy treat you well?” Burgess leered.

“No, she threw me out, along with a shower of glassware and stuff,” Alan admitted ruefully. “'Twas a bad idea after the ambush.”

“Ah, well.”

“Shit,” Feather spat as the dowel he had shaped splintered as he tried to drive it into the first hole in a beam before lifting it up to fit against the keel member. “This 'ere pine's too light, sir. Even do we get it tamped down wi'out breakin', I wouldn't trust 'em in a seaway.”

“What about a musket barrel?” Burgess suggested, kneeling down to look at one of the beams. “There's hunting guns and those French muskets to use. With a vise and a file, we could cut down some lengths to fit into the holes. And then, if some of those bolts are large enough, we could force-thread them down into the barrel bores. That would hold your angle-iron plates on to spread the load if they flex.”

“An' iffen the bolts and plates fall off, sir, the musket barrel'd still be snug enough inside ta 'old.” Feather smiled, revealing what few teeth he still possessed.

“Well, this isn't going to work.” Alan frowned, angry at the delay. “We have to give 'em a try.”

Using a piece of string, Feather measured the extreme width of a beam, knotted it carefully, and headed for the barn and carpenter shop to measure off lengths of musket barrel to file off. Queener left off the work with an auger and went with him. He was back in moments with one of the French muskets, trying it in the boreholes already made. With a piece of chalk, he scribed circles inside the marks already made on the shaped beams to show the size of the bore necessary, and dug into the wooden tool box to find an auger with a smaller bit, and to try various bolts until he found some that could be wound down the barrels.

The musket barrels worked well. They were driven down into the holes with mallets until they were flush, and the angle-iron plates were fitted on. Then the bolts were cranked down into the barrels, cutting their own threads in much the same fashion that a weapon was rifled by a worm-borer. After four hours of filing and sawing, drilling, and turning, the barges were ready to be put back on the water. They were now as seaworthy as they could be made without starting from scratch in their construction. Borrowing a few soldiers for muscle power, they shoved them back off the X-shaped bow cradles onto the sand and mud, then hauled them into the still waters of the inlet.

“Hurrah, it floats!” Alan exulted as his crew cheered.

Coe and a small crew scrambled into the nearest barge and got to work to pole her out into deeper water where she would truly be floating, instead of resting with her lowermost quick-work on the mud.

“Try sailing her while you're out there,” Alan ordered. “There's a high tide, and enough water in the cove to see how she handles.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Thank you for your timely suggestion, Burgess,” Alan said to the soldier. “For better or worse, now we can do no more. Best start fetching food and whatever down from the barns so we may be ready to sail as soon as it's dark.”

“I have never heard a better thing in my life,” Burgess said, and trotted back toward the house. Alan turned back to the water and sat on a stump to watch how Coe was doing. The boat had a slight way on her from their last bit of poling as they raised the pair of lug sails. They were cut short but full so as not to overset the boat with too much pressure too high above the deck and her center of gravity. The barge paid off the wind for a while, then began to make her way forward. She heeled over more than Alan liked to see by the light wind in the inlet, but she was sailing. A few more hands to weather should counteract her tendency to heel, he thought, and heavier cargo of provisions and passengers would help.

The boat made a lot of leeway, but as soon as Coe and his men put the leeboards down and they bit into the water, she began to hold her own, no longer sloughing downwind at such an alarming rate.

“Damme if they don't work,” he told Feather, who was standing by him. “I shall put you and your man in my report when we rejoin the fleet.”

“Queener, sir. Name's Nat Queener,” the old man stuck in, taking a pause in his tobacco chewing to nod and speak for himself.

“Well, it was handily done and damned clever work,” Alan said.

“Thankee, sir, thankee right kindly.” Queener bobbed, tugging at his forelock, or what was left of it, and Alan was struck once more by how little he had known about most of the men—not Coe or this Queener or Cony, wherever the devil he was at this moment, even after all those months on
Desperate.
Queener was too old and frail to play pulley-hauley at fores'ls or halyards, or take a strain on a tackle, too spavined by a hard life at sea to go aloft any longer, but he was a good member of the carpenter's crew and knew two lifetimes' worth about boats. The Navy was full of such oldsters, and Alan vowed that he would not overlook their talents or their contributions again if given a chance.

Coe tacked the barge about and came back up the inlet at a goodly clip, the once ungainly barge now behaving like a well-found cutter. He bore up to the prevailing winds to try her close-hauled, but there was not enough width to the inlet, or wind, to judge her behavior. The best that could be said was that the boat was tractable. She would not win an impromptu race from anchorage to stores dock, but she could be sailed safely and would perform like a tired dray horse to get them off the Guinea Neck and out to sea, which was all they asked of her.

Coe finally brought her up to the shallows at the mouth of the creek, handed the sails and raised the leeboards, and let her drive onto the mud and sand in the shallows gently with the last of her forward motion. He and his crew waded ashore wearing smiles like landed conquerors.

“Them sodjers is acomin', Mister Lewrie,” Feather said, directing his attention inland to a file of riflemen bearing the first boxes and small kegs of water, cornmeal travel bread, boiled and jerked meat, and the dried powder and ball car-touches.

“Feather, see to loading the boats and then make sure the hands have their dinner,” Alan instructed. “We plan to leave on the falling tide around half past four or so while there's still enough water in the inlet to float 'em out easy.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Governour Chiswick was there with the advance party, his face set in what Alan recognized by enforced association as bleak anger. He waved for Alan to join him and stalked a way up the brambled bank of the creek for privacy.

“We have trouble,” Chiswick whispered. “That damned Hayley brat is missing. Little bastard took off sometime in the night. So you know where he headed.”

“Jesus,” Alan said, “how did he get past your guards? I thought you had the neck watched so a mouse couldn't escape?”

“Keep your voice down, damn you,” Governour warned. “We don't need to panic your sailors, or my people. And yes, he shouldn't have been able to get through, but he stole a rifleman's tunic and the sentries didn't remark on him strolling right past them. We'd better get out of here, now, before he can bring troops down here from Gloucester Point.”

“We could pole out into the marshes by Big Island, but we'd be naked as dammit until the sun went down. There's not cover enough out there for a snake. Night is the best time.”

“
Now
is the best time, Alan,” Governour insisted. “Unless you want to be killed or captured. After yesterday's ambush, I doubt if anyone is going to offer quarter to us, not if they belong to the same unit as those men we shot down.”

“What time did he go, do you think?” Alan said, thinking.

“We think around five this morning, just before first light,” Governour explained, impatient to even bother. “One of the sentries on the perimeter thinks he saw someone heading off west, but he thought it was one of our men going to relieve himself. And the sentry who lost his tunic was guarding the house. He got off at four, and took an hour with that Sookie, and when he turned out his coat was gone, so it had to be between four and five.”

“Sookie!” Alan gasped. “I'll bet her mistress put her up to that. They must have planned it.”

“Of
course
they planned it,” Governour fumed.

“He went on foot?” Alan asked.

“Yes. No horses are missing.”

“It is two hours up the peninsula, the roads are so bad,” Alan speculated. “Say he left at five, so he could not get there before eight in the morning on foot, even if he knew the country. Take an hour to get someone to act and get a party on the roads. If they sent cavalry, they could have gotten here by eleven to start scouting us. Hell, even infantry could have been here by now!”

“Hmm, there is that,” Governour said, puffing out his cheeks as he studied his watch. “'Tis just gone one in the afternoon.”

“There is the possibility he could have come across a snake, or no one believed him,” Alan said.

“No, they'd believe him if he got there. I would.”

“So where are they, then?” Alan asked.

“Cornwallis is supposed to be surrendering this morning, as are Tarleton and Simcoe on this side of the river. Perhaps they are waiting until the formalities are over before gathering up our little band of stragglers. We hid our true numbers from the brat, damn his blood, so they may not think eighteen or twenty survivors are all that important. A stupid reason, I grant you, but stupider things have happened in war.”

“Take this whole damned campaign as a case in point,” Alan said. “But, they wouldn't be coming to collect survivors, they'd be coming with blood in their eyes, Governour. We killed six of them yesterday, did we not? Why aren't they here already, howling for revenge?”

“I don't know,” Governour admitted, a hard thing for him to do. “We've seen no boats going downriver, so no one has raised the hue and cry yet. Nothing stirring on those French ships blockading the river to the east. Look, once we get the boats loaded, what are the chances of getting out of here?”

“Just like I said last night. Horrible,” Alan said. “There's no cover out there in the marshes. Big Island isn't high enough to hide a small dog. We put our bows outside Monday Creek and those French will blow us out of the water with artillery. With this outflowing tide, we could gain two knots, and the wind is fair enough, but it's also fair for a frigate to run us down north of the Guinea Neck shoals before we could get ten miles.”

“We should have left last night,” Governour said petulantly.

“In boats that would have capsized without the leeboards and decent keels.” Alan sniffed, wondering just how thick in the skull one had to be to wear a red coat and go for a soldier.

“I grow weary of your attitude, you stubborn jackass,” Governour said. “A couple of years in the navy doesn't make you a genius at nautical matters.”

“But it beats what you know of boats by a long chalk,” Alan shot right back. “I'm not King Canute, and neither are you, we can't change things to suit. We cannot get away until dark, we've already discussed that. Now, what do we do until then? You tell me, you're the bloody soldier! But don't come raw with me.”

Oh, shit, he thought. This brute's going to kill me for that, see if he doesn't. But he'll not blame this on me. God, are we fucked for fair. The Rebels an' Frogs are going to come down here and knacker us like sheep. What's the bloody difference, him or them; now or later?

Governour did indeed appear as if murder was on his mind, his face turning purple with anger, and his hands twitching out of control. But after a long minute in which they locked stares and would be damned if either would be the first to look away, Governour spun on his heels and stalked off on his long legs, hands jabbed together in the small of his back, and Alan let out a soft breath of relief that he was still alive.