Tide of War (37 page)

“Hell,” she said.

He nodded as if this confirmed his suspicion. “And what brought you to Cuba?”

“You,” she said. She kissed him, with surprising gentleness, on the
mouth. “But I have come to take you to heaven.”

“Apparently,” he said. “But both Heaven and Hell involve death, I am told, as an intermediate stage.”

“And you do not want to die?”

“Not yet.”

He was superstitious enough to fear that their banter had become sinister and she would metamorphose into the old woman in the courtyard in the back streets of La Habana and he would smell that reek of death before it took him.

“And yet you flirt with it,” she said.

“Is that what I am doing?”

“You must have known it was a risk. Coming here. Pretending to be Imlay and with the French.”

He leaned on one elbow and looked down at her.

“Did you tell them who I am?”

“How could I? I did not know. I told them—” She corrected herself. “I told
him
—for he is the only one that need concern you—that I needed time to think about you and to consult my spirits.”

“Is that what we have been doing?”

“Yes. Did you not know?” She looked up at him curiously and then with a sudden, fluid movement she stood up and walked to the window. He gazed at the beauty of her in the glow of that one flickering candle and the moonlight.

He thought of Sara, too, and there was a great pain in his chest. He could not think of Sara. The pain went.

“Imlay spoke of you,” he said. “In the Havana.”

“Did he so?”

“You know Imlay?” He was conscious of a feeling very like jealousy.

“We have met,” she said. “Professionally.”

But that was not reassuring, given what Imlay had said of her profession.

“He said you were a princess.”

“He was right. My father was a king, so that would make me a princess, would it not? In your country.”

“And yet you became a slave?”

She turned then and he was aware of her regard, though he could not see her eyes.

“Yes. My father was defeated in battle and I was sold as a slave.”

There was that in her tone that warned him not to pursue the matter.

“I am sorry. I want to know about you.”

“Good. But there is plenty of time.” She looked around at the room, at the mess they had made. “We did not have our wine.”

She clapped her hands.

One of the wall hangings moved and to Nathan's astonishment a figure promptly appeared, a woman. He sat up and tried to cover himself with the rug from the couch.

Adedike laughed.

“Too late for that,” she said. “I would suppose she has seen everything now. She likes to peep.”

She said something to her then in her own language and the woman bowed and went back through the curtain into what must be another room or recess beyond.

“Was she there all the time?” Nathan asked, shocked.

“I very much hope so or I will have her whipped. And if you had continued to thrash me she would have rushed in with a knife and cut your throat.”

“I did not thrash you.” He was indignant. “It was, what we call in English, a spank.” He blushed.

“Ah yes. I know a little English but not much. A ‘spank,' is it not? It was not unpleasant. Is that what you do in England to your women?”

“No.” He said, grinning at the thought, and his own abrupt denial.

“Oh. Only slaves? But no, for slaves you use the whip, or the cat.”

He shook his head. No longer smiling. “Not me. I would never do that.”

“No? Then why do you come with your ships and your guns?”

“I came only for the men in the brig—who killed my captain.”

The woman came back with wine and glasses and a small bowl of sweetmeats on a tray. She looked about her at the mess they had
made of the room. Nathan righted the table, taking care where he put his feet for the broken glass and she set the tray down and smiled her thanks. He blushed for his nakedness and for what she might have seen earlier. Adedike spoke sharply to her and she left.

“And what would you do with them?” she said to Nathan. “These men in the brig?”

“I would take them to Port Royal in Jamaica for trial.”

“And the Army of Lucumi?”

So this was the interrogation. Well, it was better than the last time, in the House of Arrest in Paris. Thus far.

“I have no quarrel with the Army of Lucumi,” he assured her.

He poured wine for them both.

“I don't know if I can believe you,” she said.

“Why would I lie?” He handed her the wine. “I could not fight the Army of Lucumi, even if I wanted to.”

“No? With your fine ship and all your fine men? And you are their captain?”

“I am.”

“So young to be the captain of a ship.” She stepped up close to him and sipped her wine, watching him the while.

“Very well. You may take them.” She gestured towards the window with the hand holding the glass. “With my blessing. You may take them for trial in Port Royal. And then you may hang them.”

She walked away from him and stood at the window with her back to him. He looked at the shape of her in the flickering candlelight, no longer lustful but awed by her beauty. He supposed he could fall in love with her. He had never made love to a woman that he was not in love with, a little. And with Sara … But he must not think on Sara.

“You
will
hang them, I suppose,” she said.

“Probably,” he said.

He stood up close to her. The window looked out over the bay and he could see the lights of the brig and the cutter.

“There is one, O'Neill, who is the leader,” she said. “He is the one who cut the throat of your captain. The others …” He felt her
shoulder lift in a shrug. “They do as he says. Save one. His name is Keane. When O'Neill would have insulted me he was angry and not only because he feared what I would do.”

“They will all get a fair trial,” he assured her glibly, knowing it would be as fair as for any men accused of mutiny in the King's navy … “When we get them to Port Royal.”

She turned to face him. “There is a price,” she said. Her voice as brisk as when he had first entered the room.

“What?”

“Olumiji will not let them go for nothing.”

“Olumiji?”

“Our general. We need guns. Muskets. Powder and shot. And a captain of artillery.”

“That is not in my power to give you,” he said.

“That is the price,” she repeated.

“You would fight the Spaniards?”

“Olumiji would fight the Spaniards.”

“They are very many. I don't think he can win.”

“Then he will go back into the mountains. Where they cannot follow.”

“And you?”

“I will go back to La Habana.”

“You are not afraid of what they may do to you?”

“I have powerful protectors.”

“Among the Spaniards?”

“And the French.” She turned to face him then and he saw the mischief in her eyes. “Are you jealous, my Englishman?”

He wondered then if she was a spy for the French. And others. An agent like Imlay, who served several masters and was entirely his own.

“Would you not wish to return to where you came from—in Africa?”

She threw her head back and laughed, a deep, rounded chuckle, like a man's. “Even if that were possible I could not live there now.” She considered him, still with the mischief in her eyes. “Perhaps I will go back to Saint-Domingue,” she said. “When they get rid of the
English. Or perhaps I will go to Paris. Or England. With you.”

He could just imagine it. Taking her down to Sussex. He could almost see her in London though. She and his mother would get on like a house on fire.

He looked past her to the lights of the two vessels moored in the bay and she twisted her head round to look at them.

“If you cannot pay the price you cannot have them,” she said.

“I have only the guns in my ship,” he said, making a swift decision.

“How many?”

“A hundred. Muskets. Fifty pistols.” It was about half the total in the ship's armoury, not counting the side arms for the marines.

“That is not enough.”

“It is all I have.”

She watched his face carefully. “And powder and shot?”

“Yes. I could spare you that.”

He could not believe he was offering to deliver guns to these people: rebels against his king's allies. Was she truly a witch?

“How many boats would you need to deliver them?”

“Three. Four maybe.”

“And when you enter the bay you will be close to the brig?”

“ We could be.”

“Then you may do what you want—and afterwards bring the guns to the shore. And you will leave the brig to us.”

“And then?”

“And then the boats will go back to your ship … And you will stay with me.”

He thought she was joking. He smiled. Then he realised that she was not.

“You will be our captain of artillery,” she said.

“But—I am the captain of a ship. In the King's navy.”

“That is the price,” she said.

T
HE THREE BOATS APPROACHED
the Serpent's Mouth in what might just be described as line ahead but considerably slower than Nathan would have wished. He had a dozen oars to each boat but most of them were pulled by Whiteley's marines dressed in seamen's slops and they had as much idea of rowing as they did of taking in a reef in a storm. He had planned to go in with the flood and out on the ebb but now he feared he had waited too long and would miss his tide. If it turned now they would never get through the narrow gap between the two headlands, not with the tide against them and a parcel of guffies at the oars. He could sense the sharp, mistrustful eyes focused upon them from the deck of the brig but he forced himself not to stare back as he steered for the centre of the gap, about half a cable's length from the moored vessel. He could only hope that Olumiji had told them enough to gull them for long enough. He could see the men waiting at the jetty with two mule carts for the guns and the powder kegs stacked in the centre of each boat.

They were right in the middle of the gap now and the tide, thank God, still with them. He looked behind at the following boats. Tully in the second, Holroyd in the third with a scarf wrapped round the lower part of his face to avoid recognition. Just about keeping their
station. A swift glance towards the brig. She was pointing almost directly towards him, the gun ports still closed and the hands lining the side, staring out at the approaching flotilla. The cutter swinging idly at her mooring about fifty yards beyond, with no-one aboard that he could see.

He should start to turn now and head towards the jetty if that was his direction but he kept on, holding on as long as possible to his present course. Three more strokes of the oar. Level now with the bow of the brig. He heard a shout from her decks, more questioning than alarmed, ignored it, carried on, still not looking. Another shout, angrier now and threw the tiller over, yelling an order to the rowers. They came round in a slow arc, painfully slow, until they were pointing directly at the brig.

“Pull!” he urged them. “For God's sake, pull!”

He shot a glance back and saw the other two boats had turned with him, all three rushing for their target at different points along the brig's side.

Shouts of alarm now and a louder voice raised in command. Nathan saw men running towards the 6-pounder in the bows but then she started to swing on her spring cable to bring her broadside to bear. Fifty yards. Less. The gun ports flew open and they ran out the guns. One, two, three … How many crew did she have? Sixteen he had been told. But enough to fire all four guns in her broadside if they did not have to worry about sailing her. And, Christ, they had them loaded. Loaded and ready to fire. He could see the smoke from the slow matches burning in the tubs. He had expected this. Expected it but hoped against hope that they would not be so alert or as efficient.

He heard the orders—in a calm, steady voice.

“Point your gun …”

Saw the squat black muzzles shifting in the gun ports. Saw his own particular gun, the one that was aimed directly at him. Saw the gun captain through the open port bent over the breech with his powder horn, carefully measuring the fine powder into the quill.

“Fire as you bear!”

The sharp crack of the report and Nathan flinched. But it came from his own boat—from Whiteley, lying full length in the bow with the hunting rifle he preferred to the Brown Bess musket issued to his marines. And whether it hit its target or not, they gained ten precious yards before Nathan saw the spurt of flame from the powder quill in the breech of the cannon.

“Down!” he screamed. “Everyone down!”

He felt the scorched wind across his back, the brutal howling fury of the grape, but they had fired too high or else the gun would go no lower. He roared at the shocked marines to take up their oars again and pull.

Twenty yards, no more.

“Pull!”

A plume of fire through the smoke and a deafening report. Nathan gave an appalled glance to his right, saw the grape tear through Tully's boat, and then he was pushing the tiller hard over to his right and yelling for his crew to ship oars. They bobbed at the brig's side with an infuriating gap of three or four feet but one of the few seamen in his crew leaned over with a boat hook and thrust it into the mizzen shrouds and hauled them in.

Nathan leaped for the shrouds and hauled himself up to the rail. But seeing two men running at him, one with a pistol and the other with a pike, he wisely kept going in the direction of the mizzen top. The pike man attempted to foil him in this intent by thrusting the weapon up at his belly. Nathan let go with one hand to fend it off, arching his body back, but the curved blade caught in the ratlines and instead of gutting him, merely succeeded in piercing his thigh. The pain, though, was impressive. Nathan seized hold of it and pulled it out, appalled by the gush of blood but short of dropping back into the launch he could only continue his advance, wrenching the pike out of the man's hands and dropping down on to the deck. The sudden pain in his leg caused him to stumble and almost fall, a fortunate mishap as his second assailant chose that precise moment to fire the
pistol at his head. This, being lower than it was, avoided the worst effects of the discharge only suffering an additional parting to the scalp. Nathan, still possessed sufficient of his wits to reverse the pike and thrust upwards into the man's belly. But his own blood was flowing freely now from the wound in his scalp and the former owner of the pike, deprived of this weapon, seized up a belaying pin and hurled it at his head. Then, noting the number of boarders now in contention, he sprinted for the opposite side of the brig, leaped up on to the rail and cast himself into the sea.