The King's Privateer Read online

  “Were she a civilian ship, she’d not need sixty hands in peacetime,” Mister Brainard speculated. “In these waters, that’d be about average for a crew. And, if Mister Choate says she’s fairly new, she’d be fast as the very devil, just like most Frog ships that’re frigate-built. Outrun pirates faster’n you could say ‘Jack-Ketch.’”

  “What else did you espy, Mister Choate?” Twigg grunted. “What impression did she make upon you?”

  “Well, sir, she was set up good as ‘Bristol Fashion.’ Looked to be a pretty ship.” Choate shrugged in confusion. “Saucy, sort of. Hands were dressed neat. Hull was coppered and her waterline was pretty clean, like she was recently careened and breamed.”

  “I see,” Twigg rasped, pulling at his long nose in frustration. “Odd, though, for visitors to come calling so early in the morning, even before M’Seur Sicard could be expected to have his breeches on.”

  So far, Twigg’s enthusiasm about La Malouine had seemed to be sadly misplaced. Although the ship had a larger than average crew, that would be only as expected in a country ship that had to face the danger of piracy on her lonely voyages. She was slow as Christmas, couldn’t outrun a well-paddled prao, so those extra hands would be necessary to man her guns, repel boarders if necessary or deal with the natives on those mysterious islands far out in the Great South Seas where La Malouine traded for sandalwood, bird’s nests, furs and shark fins. What made La Malouine at first suspicious could be explained away easily, and after a time, had been.

  There were at least ninety French ships in Whampoa Reach, and all during September and October, they had speculated upon all of them. Now it was nearly mid-November, and they still had no solid leads, no standout suspect to bait.

  Alan felt a twinge of sorrow for Twigg and his eternal suspicions about even the most trivial thing. But only a slight twinge of sorrow, he had to admit. So far, this adventure was a dead bust, and they knew no more today than they had the morning they’d sailed from Plymouth. Perhaps their disguised foe hadn’t come to Canton at all, and was lurking somewhere far out to sea, outfitting to begin another season of piracy once the opium and silver began to flow outward from India the next summer.

  Twigg and Wythy were from some shadow-world, anyway, Lewrie sighed as he watched their lanky secret agent pace deep in thought. God knows, HM Government paid the bastard to distrust everyone! Show Twigg an entry hall back home, point out the black-and-white marble tiles, and the bloody wretch’d see grey between the cracks, get out a crowbar and have ’em up to see what’s underneath! And I’ll bet that Ajit Roy of his tastes his food and drink first, too, Alan suspected.

  “Might not have come off this Poisson D’Or at all, sir,” Alan said, hiding a wry grin of almost cruel amusement at Twigg’s expense. “I mean, this fog hasn’t burned off or blown away. Who’s to say what ship he really was from? Once near Salem Witch or Poisson D’Or, he could have doubled under their stems and gone somewhere else. And neither Hogue nor I recognized him. Could have been anyone, sir.”

  “Why the covert visit at such an hour, then, sir?” Twigg said, turning to stamp back to them. “Why double under another ship’s stern or bow to throw us off, as you put it, unless there was a good reason? I’d not expect even a blind man could miss our continual observations by now, Mister Lewrie. Should never have entrusted spying-out duty to you or any of the ship’s people in the first place. I …”

  “Sir!” Hogue intruded on the beginning of Twigg’s latest tirade against amateur sleuths. “Damme if this ain’t the same bugger to the letter, sir!”

  “A little decorum, if you please!” Twigg snapped. “None to take notice but us. Be about your regular duties. Tom?”

  Wythy went to the starboard rail with him, and they proceeded to stroll the gangway as innocent as newly risen babes. Alan went back up to the poop deck to supervise the scrubbing, jiggling and thumping the mizzen shrouds and backstays with a belaying pin to test their tension, as a ship’s officer or mate would every morning.

  There was a sampan coming by, and a European sailor sat almost in the bows on the squarish bow thwart, a man dressed in tan canvas trousers, faded blue shirt and dark blue sailor’s jacket, with a red kerchief about his neck. His feet were bare and horny as any sailor’s and he looked sublimely at ease to ride without labor for a change, leaving the poling or sculling to the Chinese at the matching stern platform. A clay pipe fumed lazily in his mouth.

  Just forward of amidships, not quite under the thatch-laced “cabin” of the sampan, sat another European, though. And damned if he wasn’t the same man Alan had seen scaling La Malouine’s side not half an hour earlier! Closer to, when he could steal a glance at the sampan, he could espy a very slim young man, perhaps only a few years older than himself. There was that same dull red hair, pale skin and a slight, very tenuous attempt at a beard, which was the same dull ginger, a beard-lette which followed the line of the jaw very low down. Perhaps the man’s essay at hiding what seemed a rather slack chin, or drawing the observer’s eye upward from a prominent Adam’s apple.

  “Well, I’ll be blowed!” Alan whispered. “They come calling?” The sampan was not exactly aimed at Telesto’s main chains and boarding ladder, but she was tending slowly enough in that direction to give the impression that that was her destination. “What the Hell.”

  Alan strode to the rail to look down upon them directly as the sampan got within good musket shot, about 75 yards off.

  Since no one else seemed ready to do their duty, or even take outward notice of the sampan as they so-studiously avoided eyeing it, someone should do the normal thing.

  “Damme yer eyes, bosun!” he shouted to the quarterdeck below, then turned to face the boat and cup his hands to shout “Ahoy in the boat, there!”

  “Passant!” the sailor on the bows replied with a wave of his pipe, jabbing the stem up-river in the vague direction of Jack Ass Point. “Bon matin, m’seur!”

  “And a good morning to you as well, sir!” Alan waved back. “Bon matin a vous, aussi? Off to cherchez las putain in Hog Lane?”

  Which raised a great Gallic shrug and laugh from the sailor.

  “If you are, I hope your weddin’ tackle rots off,” Alan muttered, still smiling. “You poxy Frog bastard.”

  The sailor waved back once more, as did the other man, and then they were past amidships, on their way up-stream. But damned if they weren’t swiveling slowly on their seats and eyeing Telesto devilish sharp!

  I do believe they’re spying on us! Alan thought. What a lot of sauce these bloody Frogs have!

  Chapter 6

  “Choundas,” Twigg told them a week later. “One Guillaume Choundas. His ship, Poisson D’Or, has been out here in the Far East for the last two years. Coincidence? I think not. That’s about the time the first ships began to disappear.”

  “I see, sir,” Captain Ayscough nodded. “Awfully young to be a ship’s captain, though. What more do we know of him?”

  “Come now, Captain Ayscough,” Twigg sneered, “how many fond daddies get their sons made post-captain at the same age most young officers could only expect their lieutenancy! Admiral Rodney made his sixteen-year-old boy post into a fine frigate soon as he arrived in the West Indies on his last commission.”

  “Let me ask again, sir, what do we know of him?” Ayscough retorted with a growl. Twigg had not become any easier to swallow in the past months, and his harshness grated upon their captain most of all, forced as he was into the closest familiarity with him.

  “I mean, damme, sir, what a few Royal Navy officers do for their own don’t mean this pop-in-jay benefits from someone’s ‘interest’ in the same manner,” Ayscough went on. “Who and what the hell is he?”

  “He, like your officers and senior hands, Captain Ayscough, is reputed to have been an officer in the French Royal service,” Twigg replied snappishly. “Well thought of at one time, I’m told by certain informants. Commanded a sloop of war, what they call a corvette.”

  “To be well
thought of in their fleet, he’d have to be royal himself,” Choate pointed out, snuggling deeper into his coat. Despite a coal-fired heater in their captain’s quarters, it was a cool night, and a stiff wind on the Pearl River made it seem even chillier. “Some duke’s by-blow, at best.”

  “Not titled,” Twigg supplied. “A commoner’s lad. From Brittany. Perhaps from St. Malo. I believe his father’s family is in the … uhm … fishing trade.”

  “Wi’ the profit from his voyages sae far, sir, he could buy any bluidy title he desired once he’s hame,” McTaggart chuckled.

  Twigg glared in McTaggart’s direction, shutting him up. Alan was glad he was seated on the stern transom settee, out of range of Twigg’s considerable amount of bile.

  “Yet he rose in the French Navy,” Twigg went on.

  “Only because he couldn’t get into their Army, most like,” Alan said in spite of himself. “Never made officer with hay still in one’s ears. That takes both a title, and lashings of livres.”

  “Quite right, Mister Lewrie,” Twigg allowed, sounding almost pleasant for once. “So why did they not send one of their titled, and successful, frigate captains on this mission?”

  “For pretty much the same reason they sent us, sir,” Brainard the sailing master griped. “We’re nobodies. Expendable and not much loss to the Fleet if we fail.”

  “Thank you, Mister Brainard. I didn’t know you thought so well of us!” Ayscough laughed bitterly. “If you’re correct, though, one begins to wonder in what repute you were held to be part of our band, eh?”

  “Ain’t we a merry crew, Alan?” Burgess marveled with a cynical shake of his head.

  “Burge, there’s so much brotherly love and cooperation in this cabin, I feel positively inspired!” Alan whispered back.

  “Back to the subject at hand, please,” Twigg ordered. “And if you two could hold down the school-boy twitterings over there? Yes, Mister Brainard, the French sent this talented young peasant to do their dirty work for them. ’Cause they can’t sully their limp little hands at it, for one. For a second, they’re not ruthless enough to deal with native pirates and prosper. And perhaps, because they knew if they held out enough promise of reward to this wretch Choundas, he’d leap at any opportunity for continued employment.”

  For a summary, it still sounded hellish like the reasons they had been called to service themselves, to Alan’s lights.

  “He’s an aspiring brute from Brittany. Clever enough in his own fashion, I’m sure. Perhaps, like I said, a St. Malo corsair.”

  “So was this Sicard, sir,” Percival stuck in, breaking his usual silences. “Sicard has the large crew in La Malouine; this Choundas of yours has a small crew.”

  “Damme, he’ll fry his brains if he keeps that up,” Alan muttered to Chiswick.

  “Yes?” Twigg rapped out, impatient to go on, and a bit surprised to hear from Percival after all these months.

  “Well, sir, seems to me Choundas has the ship made for privateering, Sicard has the perfect old tub to act as the cartel for all the loot,” Percival stammered out, turning red from being on the spot, from the effort of erudition and from the possible fear he was making a total ass of himself. “They could both act innocent … or something.”

  “The two of them working in collusion?” Alan blurted, unwilling to see Percival take a single trick. “Well, damme!”

  “We have no proof of that, Mister Percival, though the connection is tempting,” Twigg allowed. “Sicard seems honest enough, and he’s never been in their Navy. Been out here for years. Dabbled at privateering in the last war against our trade, but then, what French sailor didn’t, at one time or another.”

  “Cargoes, Zachariah,” Wythy rumbled. “Where’d Sicard get his bloody odd cargo, then? Furs from Nootka Sound’d tie one ship up fer a tradin’ season. Take two of ’em t’do all we suspect. Mister Percival may have a point, at that. R’member, there’s no sign this Choundas put into Macao, nor traded opium fer silver with the mandarins. Come straight up-river, an’ what he’s landed so far’s general run-o’-the-mill Indian cargo.”

  “What if it’s this Sicard who’s the leader, and Choundas and Poisson D’Or are merely his bully-bucks, sent out to enforce what he’s arranged?” Choate enthused. “Look, Captain Sicard has been in the Far East and the Great South Seas for years. You said so yourself, Mister Twigg. He’d be the one most like to have contacts in past with native pirates. This Choundas is a newcomer, with a new ship. What connections could he establish with ’em on his own?”

  “Gentlemen, this idle speculation …” Twigg gloomed, those lips growing hair-thin in dislike at the direction his conference was going.

  “You suspected Sicard and La Malouine, for good reasons, sir, in the first place,” Alan pointed out, not without more than a slight amount of glee. “Maybe Choundas is just a messenger from France, a catch-fart from their Ministry of Marine. And a bloody pirate who needs his business stopped. But not the leader—merely a henchman.”

  “That means we got two ships t’keep an eye on,” Wythy added relentlessly. “That’s all right, long’s we’re anchored here in Whampoa Reach. Damme, we’ll need a second ship t’ follow both of ’em in the spring. If they stay that long.”

  “And two captains to shadow, now,” Ayscough said, smiling thinly.

  “Ajit-ji,” Wythy instructed as they stood near a stack of cotton bales ashore in Canton. “Nandu-ji.”

  “Jeehan, Weeth-sahib?” they chorused.

  “Piccha karna Fransisi havildar-sahibi vahahn. Ajit-ji, neela koortie, milna? Nandu, vo admi lal gooluhband, milna? Piccha karna, jeehan? Hoshiyar! Khatrah! Badmashes!”

  “Aiee, jeehan Weeth-sahib. Ek dum!”* Nandu and Ajit agreed, and walked away into the mob of sailors and traders milling about as Hog Lane got into full motion for another night.

  “That takes care of the bosuns or cox’ns,” Wythy sighed as the Indians put on a remarkable performance of two revelers wandering around in a daze, but following the two sailors from Poisson D’Or and La Malouine who had come ashore with Sicard and Choundas. They had come in separate sampans, but even so, their movements would be covered closely, and hopefully, surreptiously.

  “We’ll take Sicard,” Twigg whispered, and he and Lieutenant Percival went in one direction, leaving Wythy and Lewrie to loiter by the cotton bales until Choundas dismissed his cox’n, the same sailor they’d seen giving Telesto the eye the week before in the boat with him. A handful of coins changed hands, then Choundas clapped the fellow on the shoulder and barked a short, humorous comment before the sailor departed on his own errand, or amusements.

  “There he goes. Nice an’ slow, now, Mister Lewrie,” Wythy instructed. “No need t’ trod on his heels, nor breathe down his neck. Just keep the bugger in sight. Mister Cony, is it?”

  *“Follow the French mates there. Ajit, [the one] in the blue coat, see? Nandu, that man [in the] red scarf. Follow them, yes? Careful[ly]! Danger[ous]! Thieves!” “Yes, lord. At once!”

  “Aye, sir, that’s me name, sir,” Cony whispered, a trifle nervous.

  “Ye know what’s wanted?” Wythy inquired. “You go on ahead of him, stroll along at a fair clip like ye know where ye’re goin’, an’ if this Choundas bugger veers off from behind o’ ye, don’t worry ’bout it, ’cause we’re still followin’ him. If he gets outa sight, try an’ spot where he went t’ ground, an’ come back t’ join us. Right?”

  “Right, sir,” Cony said with a deep sigh of commitment. “Achcha, Cony-sahib!” Wythy praised. “Chabuk sawi! Ijazaht hai! Daro mut!”5

  “Jeehan, Mister Wythy, sir.” Cony essayed a brief grin before he took off on his dangerous chore.

  “He’ll be safe enough, should he not, Mister Wythy?” Lewrie asked.

  “Aye, he’s a clever’un. Picks things up quick as a wink, like he’s learned more Hindee’n most Englishmen out here ten years. It’s us that’s in more danger. Those Frogs know we’re officers off the ship that’s been payin’ close attention
to their doin’s. And ye’ll mind how they’ve been givin’ us the eagle-eye the last few days.”

  “Aye, sir,” Alan replied, feeling absolutely naked among the throngs of drunken, reeling sailors in Hog Lane. “God, I’d give my soul right now for the feel of a little rigging knife, though!”

  “And it’s be yer soul, if the mandarins’ soldiers caught ye armed,” Wythy warned. “One of their eight bloody rules ye never violate, not if ye know what’s good fer ye. Applies t’ the Frogs same’s us, thank the good Lord.”

  Choundas wandered Hog Lane for a while, strolling into Thirteen Factory Street at last, and wandering right past the factories to the bank of the foetid creek, and across the plank bridge to the front of the King Qua Hong. He looked to be in no hurry to get where he was going, but there wasn’t much down that way: Mou Qua’s Hong, a wide lane that did little business that late in the evening, and then one of the large customs houses, which would be shut.

  “Clever bugger. Clever as paint,” Wythy commented, taking Lewrie by the arm and steering him back the other way. “He’ll turn about and come right down our throats, t’ see if anyone’s tailin’ him. Not the skills ye expect t’ see in a French naval officer, damme’f they ain’t!”

  Choundas did reverse his course and struck out west once more, making a beeline for the bridge. Cony had already crossed over, and was across the street from him. There was nothing for it but for him to turn into Carpenter’s Square, and try to look as innocent as he could. Wythy and Alan turned their backs on him and suddenly got interested in an open-air grog shop that spilled out into Hog Lane, with all evidence of nothing more important in their lives than a mug of rum and hot water.