Tide of War (21 page)

“Exclusively Irish.”

“And in your opinion, between ourselves, might they have had any valid cause for their discontent?”

“Besides being flogged half to death, you mean, for every trifling misdemeanour?”

“Yes. I have read the punishment book. And it does seem as if the Irish contingent suffered, one might say, disproportionately.”

“One might well say that.”

“You think Captain Kerr had it in for them?”

McLeish inclined his head reflectively. “Speaking as a Lowland Scot, I must confess there are certain of my countrymen that have for some years harboured a particular suspicion of the Irish, especially those of the Catholic persuasion. Captain Kerr's family being Covenanters had suffered very harshly at the hands of the Irish under Montrose during the Civil War.”

“I see.” Nathan was in fact very far from seeing but the origins of the grievance were possibly too obscure for his mind to deal with at the present moment in time.

“The memory of a Scotsman for a grievance is very long,” explained the doctor gravely.

“ Well, thank you, Mr. McLeish, you have enlightened me considerably.”

“Well, I don't know about that.” The doctor leant both hands upon the table and began to heave himself up.

“Before you leave, there is just one more thing. At the time of the mutiny, I believe the captain instructed his officers to do as his assailants ordered.”

“Did he so?”

“That is what is recorded in the log.”

“Which log?”

“The first lieutenant's log.”

McLeish's expression was ambiguous.

“Possibly you were not there at the time?” Nathan suggested.

“Oh, I was there all right.”

“And is that what you heard?”

“The words I heard were ‘do your duty.'”

“Do your duty?”

“Of course I may have been mistaken.”

“Not, ‘do what they say'?”

“No. And I would propose that this would not be in the late captain's character, as it was generally perceived.”

“Well, thank you again, doctor, I appreciate your confidence.”

“Not at all, sir, I thank you for your hospitality.”

This time the doctor made it to his feet and proceeded somewhat unsteadily to the door.

A moment later Gabriel appeared. Nathan wondered how much he had heard. All of it, most probably.

“Shall I light the lantern, sir?” he enquired with the suspicion of a rebuke in his tone.

Nathan noted, with surprise, that it was almost dark. They had been eating and drinking and talking for the best part of four hours. He sat there for a moment longer contemplating the remains of the last bottle but thought better of it. Instead he made his way to the quarterdeck for some fresh air. Tully had the watch.

“All well, Mr. Tully?”

“All well, sir.”

“I think I will go aloft.”

Tully considered him gravely but was too courteous to suggest a more sedentary activity. Nathan felt his eyes upon him, however, as he groped his way down the ladder to the waist and so to the mainmast shrouds.

He climbed more carefully than was his wont—conscious of the drink he had consumed and paused just below the maintop, considering that it would be prudent to go up through the lubber's hole for once, but his pride would not permit it—especially with the furtive, measuring eyes he knew would be watching him from above and below. He reached for the futtock shrouds above his head, inclining back at an angle of about 45 degrees. Right hand over left, left over right, his feet searching for the ratlines in the dark … and now he was hanging backwards while the mast described its long, lazy arc through the night sky. He did not look down but he knew what he would see. The distant deck in the moonlight and the rushing sea, the bow rising and falling, rising and falling and the spray flung back over the unicorn's head, over the unicorn's flowing mane, the unicorn rushing through the forests of the night, rushing to meet its mate, no its virgin, its waiting virgin. For Christ's sake, no poetry, not now. Concentrate. Right hand over left, left hand over right … he missed his footing in the dark and only the desperate strength in his arms stopped him from plunging fifty feet to the deck. The stabbing pain in his arms and a sudden memory of hanging from the manacles in the
Maison d'Arrêt
in Paris … He scrambled over the edge of the top, breathing heavily, and the lookout scuttled away, knuckling his forehead.

For a moment Nathan considered going higher but a gleam of common sense penetrated the fogged particles of his brain and then the lookout went swarming lithely up the ratlines to a higher level like one of McLeish's
hominidae,
leaving him in sole possession. He stood, swaying slightly with the rhythm of the ship, his arm hooked into the shrouds, and looked down at the deck. It seemed further away than usual. He looked up at the stars. They seemed strangely
close. And all in the wrong place. But of course, it was the latitude, the unfamiliar equatorial latitude. He should know them, though, if he put his mind to it.

He was much impressed by Sir Isaac Newton's opinion that the planets were rocks hurled out from the sun: blobs of liquid fire that had cooled over the millennia and were now held in place by the balance between their own momentum and the magnetism that pulled them back. Doomed to circle in a perpetual orbit, neither going forward nor going back. Like mortal beings compelled to seek their own destiny but held back by their origins, their loyalties, their sense of belonging … their love.

A quick burst of light caught his eye. A comet or fiery meteor? A falling star? Gone, already. What did it mean—if anything? Vainglorious though it was, it was not hard to believe that it had some personal meaning: that someone or something was trying to communicate with him. Waving. Perhaps he should wave back. The crew would love that. First a tyrant and then a lunatic who climbs to the top of the mast and waves at the stars.

There were those who would say it was a portent of disaster. Or that someone great had died. But did you have to be great for the heavens to acknowledge your passing? Were there not enough stars even for the insignificant? Or were they entirely indifferent to the fate of men and of nations, mere inanimate lumps of rock or liquid fire, hurtling through the heavens in obedience to the laws of gravity? Just as the rushing sea was indifferent to the fate of those that sailed upon it. People prayed. They lit candles before plaster saints. Deliver us, Oh Lord, we pray thee from the perils of the sea … Did it make the slightest bit of difference? If he let go of this slender lifeline he would fall to the deck below and he would die.

Would a star fall from the heavens to mark his passing?

What had happened when Sara died?

Had she ceased to exist the moment the blade sliced through her slender neck? A terrible image of the guillotine on the Place du Trône … Of Sara climbing the steps to the scaffold, her hair shorn to the
neck, her chemise torn to the breast and the terror in her eyes … Seized by the greedy hands of the executioners and borne down on to a bloody plank, wet with the blood of those that had gone before her, and slid under that terrible blade.

How could it have happened? Why could he not prevent it?

And what had happened next—apart from the executioner holding up her head to show to the crowd … ? Was she in Heaven or Hell? Or projected into the vast crowded infinity of the universe? Transported to one of those distant glimmering specks of light?

Or nowhere.

She had once told him about her homeland in Provence. He could hear her now, a whisper on the wind …
There is a little town called Tourrettes. Near where we lived in Provence. I used to go there as a child. To the market with my father. Tourrettes-les-Vence. A walled town on top of a hill. It is very beautiful. I used to love going to Tourrettes. There is a café in the square where I drank lemonade and ate the little cakes—made of oranges—and watched the people coming to market.

If he ever lost her, she had said, that is where he would find her. In Tourrettes, drinking lemonade and eating little cakes made of oranges and waiting for him there.

And that is where he saw her in his imagination as he gazed up at the stars. Bleary now from the tears in his eyes.

The first captain we had was a tyrant who flogged us half to death; the second climbed into the rigging at night and gazed at the stars and cried.

He let go of the shroud and stood, balanced on the swaying platform as the ship rolled. If it was in the stars that he should fall, then fall he would. And if it was not …

He threw out his hand as he felt himself fall—and grabbed the rope.

As all drowning men do.

T
HE UNICORN MOVED
like a ghost ship through the amber haze shrouding the waters of the Mexican Gulf, under a full press of sail but the wind so light, the sea so calm, she seemed almost to glide over its silken surface with scarcely a ripple to mark her passing. The men standing by the guns and the lookouts double posted at the tops, so like Pym's report of her last, fateful visit to these shores that even Nathan, who had not been there, felt an eerie sense of history repeating itself.

They were sailing parallel with the coast of West Florida and on a course that should bring them in sight of Ship Island within the hour, according to the master, Mr. Baker, who went on to undermine the force of this prediction by muttering, “If it were not for this blasted fog” in an anxious voice while peering over the rail in the direction in which he clearly hoped the island would materialise.

Nathan had to trust to the master's judgement—though he had taken his own readings and checked them with Tully and pored over the chart countless times in the privacy of his cabin. He was far more informed on the topography of the region than had been the case during his original briefing at the Admiralty but it was hard to make much sense of it, for the simple reason that the sea and the land did not observe the simple rules of nature and keep to their respective
spheres as they did in every sensible part of the world. It was impossible at times to know where the one ended and the other began for the coast was cluttered with a myriad of offshore islands while the mainland itself, if it
was
mainland, was riddled by hundreds of rivers and creeks and inlets, many of them containing even more islands so that the entire region resembled a giant jigsaw with pieces that did not quite fit. A Devil's Jigsaw. It was a region that might have been better left to the swamp creatures and those Indian tribes that had long made their home here and doubtless they would have been left in peace had it not been for the existence of New Orleans.

The key not only to the Caribbean and the Floridas—but to the vast hinterland of North America west of the Mississippi:
Nathan recalled the words of Lord Chatham in the boardroom of the Admiralty. But for all its importance, New Orleans was as perplexing as the region it inhabited.

The port occupied a narrow strip of land between a river and a lake: the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain. Yet for all the water surrounding it, it was a damnable place to reach by boat. There were two main routes: the front door upriver from the Delta, and the back door by way of the Rigolets and the lake. Both were hazardous and slow, being afflicted with shallow waters, dangerous currents and shifting sandbanks. A fleet of small barges and rafts was required to convey cargoes between the port and the larger seagoing merchantmen waiting offshore, either at Chandeleur Island off the Delta or Ship Island off the Rigolets.

A French national ship such as the
Virginie
—or indeed a well-armed privateer—had only to wait at either of these locations to snap up a score of rich prizes—or cause the trade to dry up altogether, whilst enjoying ample opportunity of communicating with the Cajuns on the mainland.

Which was why Nathan had taken the precaution of clearing the ship for action and drumming the men to quarters—though it smacked of the same nervous apprehension as had possessed his hapless predecessor. The next few hours could very well see
the long-awaited encounter between the
Virginie
and the
Unicorn.
Nathan only wished he could be more confident of the outcome.

There were other causes for concern. The waters off the coast shoaled rapidly, even several miles out from the shore, and the depth varied dramatically so that he was obliged to maintain a seaman in the chains to cast the lead at frequent intervals for fear of running aground. And with the wind blowing from the southwest, as at present, there was a great danger of becoming embayed though for this reason their approach had been timed to coincide with the ebb which should help to carry them offshore.

And then there was this wretched haze: an opaque crystal ball shot through with sunlight, revealing nothing. As the
Unicorn
glided slowly onward Nathan had the impression that the heavy, liquid air parted before them and then closed after, drawing them in towards whatever menace lay in the hidden waters ahead.

“Land ho!”

A shout from the lookout in the foretop and it took all Nathan's self-control not to rush to the rail, as he would almost certainly have done on the
Speedwell.

“Ten points off the starboard bow.”

Slowly, painfully slowly to his straining vision, it emerged, not so much land as a denser patch of haze lying low in the sea to the northwest.

“Ship Island,” said the master at his shoulder, as much relief as satisfaction in his voice. But how could he be sure, with not a single identifiable feature to mark it out from its neighbours? There was only one chart of the region available to them: drawn by the Swiss engineer Des Barres for the British Navy during the American War. It showed Ship Island as a thin strip of land, five miles long, a few hundred yards wide and shaped like an eel with a projection near the head that could have been its gills. Otherwise it was quite without character. Little more than a sandbank composed of fine white quartz eroded from granite in the Appalachian Mountains carried seaward by the rivers and creeks and dumped a few miles offshore. But there
was a good anchorage at its western end—at least according to the chart—with four fathoms of water before the shoals began and the land and the sea began to play their tricks.