The King's Privateer Read online

  “Fuck you,” Lewrie mouthed slow and silent, hoping the bastard could read lips, then gave him a sly grin.

  “And just who was that Chinee you pointed out to me, Lewrie?” Twigg asked, once they were outside after the ceremony was ended.

  “He was the third partner in the brothel with Sicard and our jolly friend, sir,” Alan replied. “He’s not one of your pirates?”

  “None I recognize, no,” Twigg said, pulling at his long nose. “By the color of his button, he’s well-connected. One of the Viceroy’s staff. Too well-connected, for my liking. Could get us sent away empty-handed, if he wishes. Or ambush us down-river between here and Lintin Island once he boots us out.”

  “They couldn’t get away with that, sir, not with so many ships in the Reach, armed as they are,” Lewrie protested. “Why, we’d blow their city to flinders if they tried!”

  “Nothing official,” Twigg replied, frowning. “Set upon by … pirates … if you will. So sorry. Nothing to do with his Celestial Emperor’s glorious navy, or his crooked mandarins. And trade is too good for anyone to protest too much, not this year. Just a country ship, not ‘John Company,’ they’ll say back in London. Anyone wish to dispatch a fleet and army to Canton? No? Any questions for His Majesty’s Minister? End of session, then.”

  “Arrogant shitten bastards,” Lewrie spat.

  “Who, Mister Lewrie?” Twigg asked lightly. “The Chinese and their arrogance? Or Parliament?”

  “Little of both, maybe, Mister Twigg.”

  “Excuse me, sir, you’re wanted on deck!” Hogue said, bursting into the wardroom like a bombard. “All officers to the quarterdeck.”

  They grabbed their swords on the way, sure it was the suspected attack by pirates, or a demand they sail away at once.

  “Surely they wouldn’t dare, not in the middle of Whampoa Reach?” Burgess Chiswick panted as they dashed topsides. “Should I muster my half-company, d’you think?”

  Ayscough and Twigg stood together by the taffrail of the poop, and they ascended in a thundering pack to join him aft.

  “Just got a note from the Superintendent ashore at the ‘John Company’ hong,” Ayscough explained, mad as any time Alan had ever seen him. “Seems we have to go ashore tomorrow and entertain more questions from the mandarins about the murder. And look yonder.”

  “The bloody bastards!” Percival shouted, quite beside himself and ready to tear up a section of taffrail to shred in his bare hands.

  “Poisson D’Or’s been ordered out of harbor,” Ayscough grunted. “For the sake of the rest of the traders,” he continued, the sarcasm hotly dripping. “Her chop’s been withdrawn, and her cargo’s been impounded.”

  “By the same mandarin Choundas and Sicard dealt with,” Twigg surmised. “You may lay any odds you like there’ll still be profit enough paid to Sicard to reimburse Choundas for this … penalty!”

  Poisson D’Or had already gotten her anchors up, and was paying off from the land breeze with foresails and spanker, her hands aloft ready to let fall her tops’ls once her stern was clear of the American trading brig Salem Witch.

  “Damme, to hell with the mandarins!” Alan cried. “Let’s be after them, then! We’ll never find the bastard until next autumn, else!”

  “We’d be fouled by every mandarin junk in the river, Mister Lewrie,” Ayscough snarled. “To keep us here for more ‘questioning,’ see? Might even touch off a war, them and us alone. Goddamn and blast that poxy French bugger! Goddamn him to the hottest fires of hell!”

  “Smarter than I thought,” Twigg sighed, sounding sadly amused. “I underestimated them, d’you see, gentlemen. Which mistake I shall not make again. They could have gotten Choundas’ cox’n off with ten pounds’ bribe paid to the court, but I suppose they thought it was better the poor wretch got scragged, so he couldn’t talk. Now we know we’re dealing with craftier foes. Choundas gets clean away, kicked out of the port, while we have to wait here for our cargoes to arrive. And Sicard stays here, ever the innocent, to keep an eye on us. After murdering the one man who knew most about the native pirates and their lairs. I hate to admit it, gentlemen, but they’ve made fools of us. And of me. This whole thing was planned long before we tailed them ashore the night Tom Wythy was knifed.”

  “They lured us, sir?” Mr. Choate asked.

  “Aye, lured us. Gulled us, more like it,” Twigg snorted. “One of us … Tom or I was to die that night. Perhaps both. To cripple our endeavor. Why else meet with a mandarin on the Viceroy’s staff so openly? Trail their colors before us like a false fox? Then pin us in port with more questions, and boot Poisson D’Or out, freeing her to continue her plans for the next season’s raiding. But before the next year is out, we’ll have them, you mark my words!”

  Damme, another year out here, Alan groaned to himself.

  “Choundas might be waiting for us to sail in the spring,” Ayscough said. “His ship and Sicard’s combined against us.”

  “Ah, but for now, Captain Ayscough, our crafty little peasant has left something of great value behind in Canton,” Twigg spat. “An item he cannot do without, or threaten us with such combination.”

  “And what is that, sir?” Ayscough wondered gloomily.

  “Why, La Malouine, Captain,” Twigg almost chuckled. “Sicard and La Malouine. Mister Percival said something a few weeks ago that set me to thinking. I believe he was correct.”

  “Sir?” Percival gawped, swelling with pride, but unsure about what he had done in spite of himself.

  “Who has the largest crew? Sicard. But who has the frigate-built ship with more gunports? Choundas. Somewhere out at sea, in the islands, perhaps among the native pirates, I believe these two ships trade hands back and forth. Perhaps there’s more of his fell crew waiting with the Mindanao pirates or the Sea Dyaks even now for his return for them. Well, at the moment, he’s a little short of the wherewithal, and shall be for some months, if La Malouine will play the innocent here in Canton.”

  “No point in her not, sir,” Ayscough agreed. “There’s little profit in taking an outward-bound vessel, ’less he’s willing to give up hands enough to take her all the way back to France. Better he lays low until the opium and silver start heading for Canton next summer.”

  “Then once Sicard sails, we follow him, and he leads us to Choundas, sir?” Choate asked. “Then it’s two ships against our one.”

  “Aye, he’d like that, I’m thinking,” Twigg replied, nodding. “In fact, this departure could be another ruse to draw us out, with Sicard in pursuit a few days later for just that purpose. Well, we shall not be drawn, sir. Truly, we shall not.”

  “It occurs to me, though, sir,” the first officer went on. “Surely, if we know who he is now, sir, and may lay this plot to our government officials back in Calcutta, there’d be a stiff note to the French ambassador, and the game’s blocked at both ends for them. And they know who we are, more’s to the point, Mister Twigg. Surely, this Choundas’ll haul his wind and cut his losses. Go back to France.”

  “And go home a failure?” Twigg barked, rounding on Choate. “I think not. That wouldn’t show him clever enough to remain a secret. And if we did send a ‘stiff note,’ as you say, it’s fourteen to eighteen months before a reply could be sent out here from London or Paris. Once they’d wrangled over where the commas go. And who’d take his place, sir, soon as we’re called home? How many more ships’d disappear the next time? Well, we’re here now, and we have a chance to stop this bugger’s business so thoroughly the French’ll give up on the whole bloody idea. Wrap things up neat and proper before we lay eyes on the Lizard.”

  Poisson D’Or let fall her tops’ls as she took the night wind abeam, drifting slantwise away from her anchorage. Her taffrail lanterns were burning, as were many smaller work-lights to illuminate her crew’s labors. They could espy Choundas by the quartermasters by her wheel on the quarterdeck. They could watch him stroll over to the starboard bulwarks to look back at them as his ship’s bows turned down-river.
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  There was just enough light, for those with telescopes, to see the smug sense of victory on his face.

  IV

  “Nunc love sub domino caedes et vulnera semper, nunc mare, nunc leti mille repente viae.”

  “But now that Jupiter is lord, there are wounds and carnage without cease; now the sea slays, and there are a thousand ways of sudden death.”

  “The Poet Sick—To Messalla”

  —TIBULLUS

  Chapter 1

  In March, the trading season ended in Canton. Whampoa Reach emptied slowly, as ships drifted down-river to Macao, at the mouth of the Pearl River estuary. For many traders and merchants, their families awaited them, and for a time, Macao rang with balls and parties in celebration of a successful season. For some ships, there was time enough to celebrate their freedom from the strictures of Chinese law in one of the most sinful seaports known to mankind, then hoist anchor and hope for the best in the South China Seas as the winds shifted more favorably for Calcutta, Pondichery, Chandernargore, Ile de France in the middle of the Indian Ocean or all the way to the Cape of Good Hope to begin the long voyage home laden with the treasures of the Far East.

  Telesto was one of the first ships to put to sea after two perfunctory days of revel and refit in Macao, bearing south for the Johore Straits and the Straits of Malacca. And in her wake, sure as Fate, another ship dared the changing Monsoon winds—Sicard and La Malouine. They could recognize her, hull down over the horizon, during the first day of passage. And though she fell back until only her tops’ls could barely be espied as the days passed, she was there every morning, the sight of which tops’ls made Twigg almost hum a snatch of song now and again in sheer delight.

  “Ship’s company, off hats!” Lieutenant Choate commanded. The hands, brought aft by the summoning call from the “Spithead Nightingales,” the bosun’s pipes, took off their flat-brimmed dark tarred felt hats, or the tarred woven sennet ones, and stood swaying and shuffling in a dense pack.

  Perhaps they thought it was a call aft to witness punishment. The sight of their officers and mates wearing steel on their hips was rare. Rarer still was Chiswick’s half-company of native sepoys clad in dhotis, red coats and cross-belts, tricornes and puggarees for the first time in over six months, drawn up like a Marine detachment on a proper warship with their muskets held stiffly at shoulder arms, Chiswick and his native subadar and havildars before them.

  “Men!” Captain Ayscough began in a rumble that could carry as far forward as the fo’c’sle belfry. “I know there have been some rumors flying below decks about just what it is we’re doing out here.”

  Amen to that, most of the men nodded in agreement.

  “What are we doing with such a heavy battery hidden away below. Why do we have Hindoo troops with us,” Ayscough continued, hands in the small of his back and rocking easily to Telesto’s motion from the vantage point of the quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist and upper gun deck. “Maybe you wondered why we run this ship ‘Admiralty Fashion.’ And, I’m sure, since poor Mister Wythy’s death in Canton, you’ve been wondering what led to it. Well, it’s come time to tell you all. It’s the French, lads! The bloody French!”

  Ayscough sketched out for them the fact that they were a Navy vessel in disguise. He outlined what Sicard and Choundas were up to with the native pirates. How good English sailors had been overcome and slaughtered far from home for opium and silver by not only native pirates, but by the French as well.

  He drew a sheaf of documents from one large side pocket of his dark blue frock coat. “I bear a Letter of Marque from ‘John Company,’ lads! I hold active commission from our good King George the Third! And I have a Frog pirate lurking off my stern-quarters! They risked drawing steel on Mister Lewrie, one of your officers. They murdered an agent of the Crown back in Canton, and then their leader, Choundas, threw his henchman’s life away, let him be strangled to death at the hands of those Goddamned heathen Chinee rather than let him answer questions! Choundas is out here somewhere, men, and we’re going to find him and kill him, him and all his sneering, torturing, Godless Frog crew. And any pagan pirate that’d deign to shake hands with him. For now, though, the ship that gathers up his spoils, washes good English blood off their foul booty and sails the seas acting innocent as your own babies, is astern of us. Well, we’ll stop this bugger’s dirty business. We’ll do it to save the lives of other God-fearing English seamen. We’ll do it to revenge Mister Wythy’s murder. And we’ll do it to put such a fear of retribution into the bastardly Frogs and all their help-meets in these waters that them that survived’ll tremble in their beds and piss their breeches whenever they think of it!”

  There was a ragged howl of agreement with Captain Ayscough’s sentiments. No fouler creature drew breath than a Frenchman, to true English thinking. No Jolly Jack would abide a pirate. Unless of course he was English, and preyed on other nations’ shipping—then he was Drake and Robin Hood rolled into one. And sailors were a most sentimental lot, their feelings simple sometimes, but close to the surface, and closely held dear. Ayscough had them.

  Except for one hand, speaking for a pack of whispering mess-mates. “Er, ’scuse me, Cap’um, but … er … beggin’ yer pardon an’ all, sir, don’t mean ter … uhm …”

  One of his mates gave him a nudge.

  “D’zat mean we goes back ter Navy pay, Cap’um?” he finally stammered out.

  “It does not!” Ayscough smiled. “Merchantman pay-rate until we pay off back home in old England!”

  If anything, that raised an even greater chorus of cheering.

  “Mister Abernathy, we shall splice the mainbrace!” Ayscough said in conclusion. “Mister Choate? Dismiss the hands.”

  “Ship’s company, on hats and, dismiss!” Choate yelled. “All hands forward to splice the mainbrace!”

  Abernathy and his Jack in the Bread Room, the assistant purser, went below with a bosun’s mate, master-at-arms and ship’s corporals to fetch out a keg of rum. There would be no debts due on this issue. No “sippers” for sewing another man’s kit back up, for taking a watch, or for a favor or debt. All would get full, honest measure in addition to whatever issue came at seven bells of the forenoon watch at “clear decks and up spirits.”

  “Still there, Mister Hogue?” Ayscough shouted up to the cross-trees of the main-mast.

  “Still there, sir!” Hogue assured him with an answering yell.

  “Mister Percival, I’d admire you hoisted the cutter off the midships tiers in the day watch. And dismount the taffrail lanterns.”

  “Aye, sir,” Percival replied.

  “Mister Choate, gun drill in the day watch as well. Sharpen ’em up. Say, an hour and a half on the great guns, and then rig out boarding nettings along the bulwarks, and chain slings aloft on the yards. Strike useless furniture below once it’s dark.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Mister McTaggart, fetch a spare stuns’l boom and a boat compass to install in the cutter, if you’d be so good, sir.”

  “Aye aye, captain.”

  “Before dawn, gentlemen, this bastard Sicard will wish he never laid eyes on our Telesto,” Ayscough predicted grimly. “We’ll begin to get some of our own back with these poxy Frogs!”

  It was a nacky ruse, Lewrie had to admit as he saw it put into service. The heaviest ship’s boat, the thirty-six-foot cutter, was swayed off the tiers and lowered over the side around three in the afternoon. A studding sail boom about twenty feet long and six inches thick was lashed across her stemposts. At each end of the boom, a heavy glass lantern had been lashed. The captain’s cox’n was put in charge of her, given a boat compass and a small crew to set sails, a barricoe of water and some dry rations in case they were away from the ship for longer than planned, and then they were paid out to be towed astern. They were given muskets, pistols, cutlasses and a small boat-gun mounted in the bows, partly to counteract the weight of the lanterns and boom. The cox’n was entrusted with slow-match, flint and tinder, and a hope
they could find them in the morning.

  As the late afternoon progressed, and the armorer’s whetstone competed with the fifers, fiddlers and pipers, Telesto’s lower courses were reduced, taken in by one reef. The stays’ls between the fore and main-mast, and the stays’l between main and mizzen, were lowered. The ship soughed a little less lively in the sea, slowing by perhaps half a knot. Just enough to allow La Malouine to draw a few miles closer to them before full dark, so that any lookout from her cross-trees or upper royal mast cap could just barely, with a strong telescope, make Telesto out as riding a slight bit higher above the horizon—enough to make out her tops’ls in full and reassure them she was still there.

  Chiswick and Lewrie paced the quarterdeck, from nettings on the starboard side to the taffrail and back, each time pausing by the stern to raise a telescope, though seeing anything from the deck was a forlorn hope. The sun was westering rapidly, and the skies to the east were already gloomy, the skies to their starboard side going amber and the high-piled billows of clouds beginning to take on the colors of sunset in one of those magnificent tropical displays.

  “I would suppose the timing of this is rather tricky,” Burgess opined, staring down at the cox’n and his crew, lazing happily in the cutter being towed about one decent musket-shot astern in their wake. With time on their hands, one definite job to do and sheer, blessed idleness until they were let slip, they were napping or skylarking to their hearts’ content.

  “I’ve heard of it done, mind,” Alan admitted. “Never thought I’d see it attempted. Like club-hauling off a lee shore. At least the moon’s going to cooperate. Be dark as a cow’s arse by eight of the clock. What little is left before the new moon’ll get hidden by those clouds, too, I trust.”