On A Lee Shore Read online

  Kit was left in a quandary. Should he wait for Tristan or should he go home? It was the sight of a quart of small beer being passed to another customer that decided him, and he got his beer and found a quiet spot to sit and drink it.

  At this hour most of the quiet souls had gone home to their wives. Now more of the customers were drunk, the uniforms were more disheveled, and there were more men obviously up from the docks. A group of the girls were squealing over the antics of a tiny monkey sitting on the shoulder of a rakishly attired fellow with a pigtail, and Mother Carey was talking to another whose gloriously embroidered coat hung on him like a blanket. Kit blinked sleepily and reached for his mug only to draw back his hand as someone brushed past.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  “Ah.” The man turned his head and looked down at him. “Bless you, lad, I didn’t see you there,” he said. “I should ask you to excuse me.”

  He passed by, leaving Kit with only the impression of height and breadth of shoulder and the glint of gold at one ear, but the voice had had something of home in it, reminding Kit of the windswept coasts and moors of Cornwall.

  After that all he wanted was to go. He was getting up to leave when he saw Tristan coming downstairs with his arm around his doxy. He scanned the room and Kit raised his hand, but Tristan smiled in another direction. He hurried down the stairs and across to the tall man who had recently spoken to Kit. They greeted each other, laughing, and Tristan sent his girl for more wine. Kit sighed, tucked his hat under his arm, and made his way to the door.

  Kit had been aware of the clock chiming when he left Mother Carey’s. He had not caught the hour, but he knew it was late—not perhaps midnight but certainly eleven. The streets were busy. Night soil carts and delivery drays headed out against the tide of incomers bringing goods from the countryside to the city. Men pushed barrows, horses and oxen strained against their harnesses. Lanterns flickering above doorways and on corners and torches carried by linkboys accompanying chairs, coaches, and pedestrians, made great leaping shadows in which anything could lurk. Kit walked quickly and with care. It was important to stay alert. Too many of his acquaintance had been robbed after such a night out. He kept to the broadest roads and had climbed most of Gracechurch Street before he was approached.

  “Call you a chair, sir?” The linkboy was a dirty scrap of a youth with bony wrists showing at the cuffs of his jacket. He bounded along at Kit’s side, torch bobbing. “Or I could light your way. On’y a farthing, sir. I’ll see you right.”

  Contemplating shoes soaked in horse piss or worse, Kit gave the boy a short nod. “I’m bound for close to Moorgate. If that is too far, best say now.”

  “Ha’penny if you want me to take you past the Wall, sir.”

  “Fair enough.” Kit agreed and placed the boy on the inside of the pavement. A half penny wasn’t cheap, but the light was welcome.

  “You a soldier, sir?” the boy asked after a moment.

  “No, I’m a naval man,” Kit replied. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, you have an—an air, sir, that’s all.”

  “I don’t pay extra for flattery,” Kit warned and grinned as the boy gave him a reproachful glare.

  “I was just askin’.” The boy scowled up the road. “There’s been folks robbed hereabouts.

  “I can protect us both,” Kit said. “What’s your name?”

  “Will, sir.”

  “Well, Will, maybe you should be giving me a farthing?”

  That earned him a scornful sniff, and he smiled again as they hurried on their way.

  At the corner of Gracechurch and Lombard Street two draymen had come to blows, and the traffic had backed up in a raucous shouting mob.

  “We could cut through White Hart Court, sir,” Will suggested, but after taking a look at the fetid darkness of the alleyway, Kit shook his head.

  “Let’s go by Cornhill,” he said. “Yes, I know it’s farther, but I’ll buy you a pie. There’s usually a pie man by St. Peter’s.”

  Will agreed to that readily enough, and they stepped out toward the watchman’s fire by the church. Where Gracechurch met Cornhill the press of vehicles was a little less, but there were more people about. As they walked west toward the Royal Exchange, Kit and the boy had to take to the street to avoid a hallooing group of toughs and their wenches and again when a knot of men proved to be gathered around two girls who were trying to gouge each other’s eyes out. Will gave another of his scornful sniffs and nodded up the road.

  “It’s no better over there,” he said, gesturing with what remained of his pie. “Over by ’Change.”

  Kit looked up at the clock tower and sighed. The rumors about the place made him feel a little light-headed. “No, we’ll just pick our way. Careful boy, you’ll not get all that pie crust in your mouth in one go.”

  “Betcha a penny,” Will said. They marched on along the road, Will wheezing around his mouthful of pastry and Kit trying to ignore the people around him. The area around the Royal Exchange was notorious. Stalls and vendors had set up under the eaves of the huge building, and they were still serving customers even at this hour. But there were other sorts of trade. Even a glance could show that many of the figures chatting or moving from stall to stall were men. Groups flowed together, broke apart, couples would stand to talk then move away from the press at arm’s length from each other, or one of them might walk away and the other follow. It was discreetly done, unless one knew what one was looking for.

  Not that Kit was looking. He glanced down at Will, who was still munching and speeded his pace a little.

  Will swallowed and coughed up a crumb. “Slow down,” he said. “I’m s’posed to be lighting your way, remember.”

  “Yes, you are,” Kit said. “Not too much farther now. Another half mile or so.”

  “Easy,” Will said. “That pie was good. Can I have some eels?”

  “No,” Kit said. “You can buy eels with your ha’penny on your way back.”

  He had turned his head to speak to Will and so blundered shoulder first into a man who was just stepping from the shelter of a doorway.

  “Damn your eyes, can’t you watch where you are going?” Will waved his torch to fend off Kit’s attacker, but the man was staring at Kit.

  “Penrose!” His voice was faint and faltering. A wide-eyed young man who had been standing in his shadow swore and pushed past them both, the bright buttons of his servant’s livery glinting in the light of Will’s torch. He ran across the street and ducked into the shadows again.

  Kit watched his furtive scurry then turned back to Captain Wells who was gaping at him like a landed cod. Kit couldn’t think of a word to say, so he gave him a low bow and began to walk on.

  “Penrose!” Wells put out his hand to grasp Kit’s sleeve. “I know I can count upon you, of all people, not to mention this. If you try to blacken my name, I can ask some inconvenient questions of my own.” He nodded to Will who let out a yelp of annoyance.

  Kit swallowed a response that would have brought them to blows and tipped his hat to Wells instead. “I wouldn’t dream of raising such a distasteful subject with anyone of consequence. However, after the concerns you expressed this morning, I hope your encounter this evening proved to be educational. Good night to you, Captain.”

  “Penrose, you bastard,” Wells hissed, but Kit jerked his sleeve free, turned his shoulder to him, and walked on.

  “Bloody mollies,” Will said, looking back. “I thought he was going to draw on you, sir. If he’d had a pistol I reckon you’d be stone dead.”

  “So did I, Will.” Kit shook his head. “But it seems he’s all talk.”

  Kit paid Will off on the doorstep of his lodgings and climbed the stairs as quietly as he could. He was tired, far beyond what the evening’s revel merited, and got into bed with a sigh of relief.

  Naturally, he couldn’t sleep.

  Thinking it through sensibly, he assumed that part of the reason for his wakefulness was that the aching nervousness
of the past months was over. True, the job aroused mirth in his best friend, but Kit knew he could do it well. Most importantly, he would be at sea again and sailing into waters he knew. Best of all, he would be employed by a man for whom no less than Sir William Tregarne had a profound respect.

  Then there was the situation with Wells. That the man had baited Kit with the secret vice was familiar and annoying, but that he himself indulged in it was a shock. Kit found him contemptible. It was one thing to have such inconvenient and illicit desires, but quite another to act upon them, and it was beyond contemptible to indulge with those who had little choice but to comply.

  Kit shied away from the memory of Captain Gasson and began to make a mental shopping list of all he needed to take with him. Sir William had given him an advance on his wages.

  “Got to do me credit, Kit. Best not go to him looking like a shopkeeper.”

  “Shopkeeper,” Kit said aloud into the darkness and closed his eyes with a groan. The man he had seen talking to Tristan had been broad shouldered and narrow-waisted with a long, graceful stride. He had not been a shopkeeper—that was for sure. Kit winced at the sudden sharp pang of lust, knotted his hands in his covers, and set himself the task of recalling as much as he could of the route to the Leeward Isles.

  * * *

  Kit had sent an affectionate message of farewell to Tristan, so he was both pleased and surprised to see his friend on the morning of his departure.

  “I couldn’t let you go without drinking your health,” Tristan said, flipping out his coat tails to seat himself on the room’s one good chair. “And I brought my man to help with your chest. Dear me, Kit, is that what you’re wearing?”

  Kit looked down at his waistcoat and breeches and adjusted his neck cloth. “All perfectly serviceable and appropriate for a young gentleman in straitened circumstances. I have a good feeling about this trip, Tris.” He checked the fit of his sword in its scabbard and wedged it into his sea chest. A pair of pistols followed.

  “So it seems,” Tristan said. “Are you expecting war to break out? Or—Oh, I know. Pirates. Montbars has been seen in that area. Or Blackbeard. Or La Griffe.”

  Kit shrugged, his hands full of books. “We’ll be traveling fast, and the Hypatia is well gunned. No pirate is going to approach a naval vessel, not when there’s much easier prey, so, no, I’m not expecting it. But it’s as well to be prepared.”

  He inspected his room—already looking abandoned—and locked and strapped the chest. “Now, that drink?”

  “With a good will,” Tristan said as they left Tristan’s man to bring down the chest. “I will miss you, Kit.”

  “And I you.” Kit slapped him on the shoulder. “But I should be back by Christmas. I’ll astound you with my adventures then.”

  In Portsmouth, after two long miserable days of travel, there was no good friend with a willing servant to help him, and Kit had to cart the sea chest himself. Any help was reserved for the considerable amount of baggage placed in his care by the Navy Office, most of which, from the red faces of the men borrowed from the naval depot, seemed to be paper.

  Kit tracked his new employer down at the Blue Posts Inn where he was sitting, half packed, in one of the better chambers. Sir George Wilberforce was obviously not a natural traveler. He was older than Kit had expected, but that was fair because Sir George was startled at Kit’s youth.

  “How old d’you say, sir? Speak up, don’t mumble, I’m a little deaf on this side.”

  Sir George was stooped from many hours at the desk, though he had not been tall to start off with, and had a small, wizened face like an elderly monkey. But his eyes were a bright clear blue and his smile was kind. It soon became clear that with numbers and their manipulation he had no superior.

  “Why so surprised, Mr. Penrose? King George may need fighting ships and men, but someone needs to know how much everything costs and where it can be obtained. And if men make accounts then someone,” he laid a hand on the front of a coat fashionable twenty years before, “has to audit them. I just—um—where did I put that ledger?”

  Kit had been traveling since boyhood, and the Navy had taught him to create order from chaos. He soon organized both Sir George’s belonging and his papers and, when the day of embarkation arrived, the young gentleman sent along to fetch them was only kept waiting an hour. The Letter boy was kept well content with a pint of porter and a meat pie while Kit made one final check on their rooms and Sir George paid the reckoning.

  “No rush.” The young gentleman mopped gravy from his chin with a grubby kerchief. “We’re in no danger of missing the tide.”

  Eventually they were ready, and Sir George’s mass of baggage was loaded onto a handcart to make the short trip to the harbor. Kit hitched his sea chest onto his back again and followed the handcart at a leisurely pace.

  “Are you sure you can manage, sir?” their young gentleman guide asked. “I can manage a little more.” He could barely see over the bundled-up great coat he was carrying and had two walking canes and a parasol under his arm.

  “I’ll be all right as long as I keep moving,” Kit said. “Are you sailing with us?”

  “Lord, no, sir,” the boy replied. “I’m from the Grenadier. She’s in dry dock, so my old man has loaned me to the office as a runner. You’re on the Hypatia.”

  There was a scornful tone in his voice that gave Kit a jolt. He remembered hearing it often enough, from his own lips among others, when discussing inferior vessels.

  “The Hypatia,” Kit said. “If I remember correctly she’s a naval snow. Dutch construction, very clean lines, carries twenty-two guns.”

  “I don’t think it’s the same one,” the boy said. “But a sound enough ship. She’ll get you there safely, I’m sure.”

  After such damning with faint praise, Kit was prepared for the worst. They were met on the dock by the crew of a long boat who loaded the baggage, including Kit’s chest, in double quick time and helped Sir George and Kit into the boat. Kit waved good-bye to the youngster then turned to Sir George.

  “The Hypatia, sir,” he said, pitching his voice to carry over the calls of the cox’n. “I take it she’s a naval vessel.”

  “She was,” Sir George said, “until last year when she was sold. Now she’s a merchant ship and none the worse for that.”

  “But I thought we were supposed to proceed with all speed,” Kit said. “Wouldn’t the regular post ship have been a better idea?”

  “And take up berths needed by officers? Oh, dear me, no.” Sir George shook his head. “Not when a good friend of the Navy is going in the direction we need and has allowed us to travel with him for a very economical rate. Take care of the pennies, Mr. Penrose, and the guineas take care of themselves.”

  “I see,” Kit said.

  The Hypatia he remembered had had the reputation of being a fast ship and, well crewed with a competent captain, would carry them sweetly to their destination.

  God willing.

  Chapter Two

  Sir George had no faults to find with the Hypatia. In fact he seemed delighted with everything about her. Even the incredibly, by a landsman’s standards, cramped accommodation was exclaimed over and pronounced “Ideal.”

  Kit had more reservations but kept them to himself until he had a chance to see the ship and crew at sea. For now, it fell to him to see to the stowing of Sir George’s baggage. A change of clothing, a few small personal items, and the locked chest containing the most vital of the documents went under Sir George’s cot. As for Kit’s own possessions, he had just enough room to slide his sea chest under the muzzle of the four-pounder gun sharing their cabin.

  “You’ll have to sling a hammock over it,” the smirking master’s mate advised. “You can ask one of the crew if you don’t know how.”

  Kit assured him that he would work it out for himself and began to set up the artfully constructed traveling desk Sir George had purchased in Portsmouth. Sir George insisted it be set in place before they had even left
port.

  “No time to waste, Penrose. I hope you’ve thought to put the other crates where you can get at them,” Sir George admonished him when he’d looked through his document chest. “Because, I’ll be honest with you, Penrose, I won’t know what I’ll want till I want it.”

  Kit hoped that the old man wouldn’t be too testy over the inevitable delays. The two hands who had stowed the boxes had accepted his interference with good grace, and Kit was certain he would be able to get to all of them without too much difficulty.

  He had just finished fitting the desk together when he felt the first real sign of life from the ship.

  “Sir George, would you care to go on deck?”

  “Why, what’s happening?” Sir George asked, closing his book.

  “The hands are weighing anchor,” Kit said. “Can you feel how the ship moves? She knows she’s free. I thought you might like to come up and wave good-bye to Portsmouth.”

  “The last glimpse of England, eh?” Sir George grinned and straightened his wig. “That will be most agreeable.”

  Sir George was a little unsteady on his feet, and Kit left him holding onto the railing while he went to pay his respects to the captain and ask if there was a corner where the captain’s paying passenger could stand. The captain expressed delight at the request. He sent men running to find a chair for Sir George and promised to join him shortly, just as soon as they were in more open waters.

  Kit had no fault to find with the running of the ship. The men moved willingly and the master seemed deft enough. Sir George held onto his wig with one hand and poured out questions, gesturing with the other.

  “So that’s what a stay is.” He peered up at the heavy rope thrumming taut between the two masts. “I always wondered. One might be familiar with the term on paper, but it’s good to have some knowledge of the practical application.”

  “Indeed, sir,” Kit said.