On A Lee Shore Read online

  A good resolution, but easier to say than do. Soon the little man, Denny, the tarnished bullion on his enormous coat glinting in the dimness, ordered them up on deck.

  “You got to work,” he said, all self-importance. “Bo’sun Wigram’ll see you behave. If’n you don’t he’ll have the skin off your back.”

  “I thought pirates didn’t flog.” Davy stared at him. “I thought that’s why you become pirates, so you don’t get flogged.”

  “Pirates don’t flog good pirates,” Denny said as they emerged on deck.

  “But cowardly lubberly landsmen who need to learn their place—we flog those with a good will.” Bo’sun Wigram looked them over with a chilly eye. He was middle aged, middle sized, and had a slash of a mouth that closed tightly over small, tobacco-stained teeth. “Welcome to the Africa. Forrest is it? Davy Forrest—what can you do?”

  “Make and reef sail, sir,” Davy said. “Steer a course, mend a cask, stitch a sail.” That didn’t seem to be enough, so Davy ploughed on looking more and more uneasy, desperate for some kind of positive reaction. “I had a fiddle, ’less someone’s broke it.”

  “Ah,” Wigram nodded, “so that’s why he brought you aboard. Our fiddler got knifed last month—you can replace him. As for you, Lieutenant Christopher Penrose, I know what you can do, and we decided we’d sooner have you on the ship pissing off than vice versa. I don’t like the Navy, sir, and I especially don’t like officers. You will accept orders without argument, treat every man here as your equal, and treat me and the captain with respect. Later you’ll sign our articles, or the captain will want to know why. And just so you don’t get ideas about stirring up your friend here, you can go in different watches.”

  “Damnation,” Kit muttered as he and Davy were driven off to get to work.

  That first day he was given tasks he hadn’t had to do since his early days as a Volunteer Per Order, gritting his teeth as each request was delivered by Wigram with a “Smartly now, Lieutenant Penrose.” Soon that phrase was taken up by the pirates who lounged about the deck and chanted along with Wigram, who smiled his tight-lipped smile and left them to it.

  Kit took the only revenge he could and swabbed and scrubbed and spliced and served in as cheerful, efficient, and naval a way as he could. That night he was given food, from the Hypatia most likely, and got into his hammock. He tried to count his blessings—he was alive, the day’s hard work had stopped his bruises from stiffening, and he had a potential ally in Davy Forrest. Beyond that, where there was life there was hope. He allowed time to worry about the Hypatia but assured himself that Uttley would cope and that Sir George would manage well enough now he was accustomed to shipboard life. There was no helping them now—the sensible thing to do was rest. Kit was addressing himself to sleep when he heard a whisper, a chuckle, the soft rustle of fabric against skin, and a grunt of pleasure. Kit clapped his hands to his ears to block out the sounds but could do nothing to stop the images in his mind’s eye. He screwed his eyes tight closed, concentrating on the sounds of the ship, but it was a long time before he was able to sleep.

  Next morning, Kit awoke with a groan as his hammock was shaken. A gruff voice said, “I thought you’d be hurting today. Saunders, unofficial ship’s surgeon. I’ve been told to take a look at you. Get yourself down to my cabin. You have five minutes. Bring a bottle of gin.”

  Kit opened aching eyes and watched bemused as a tall, scrawny man walked away.

  “You better go.” It was Denny wearing a floppy brimmed hat with a feather and looking very pleased with himself. “’E don’t like to be kept waiting, he don’t. You can take this. It’s not full but ’e won’t notice.”

  Kit accepted the onion bottle Denny thrust into his hand, which was not full and nor was it gin. He got out of his hammock and watched, startled, as Denny hopped up into it and pulled the blanket over his head.

  It took rather more than five minutes to find Saunders. This was because the first hand he asked sent him aft. He was shouted at by Wigram and sent up on deck where it occurred to him that saying “I need to find the surgeon. Could you please tell me where he is?” had been a bad idea. Holding up the bottle and saying “I’ve been told to take this to Saunders” worked admirably, and Kit was soon at the door of a fetid hole below the waterline.

  Kit knocked on the door frame. The door had been replaced with a sheet of sailcloth, and Saunders swept it aside with one hand and took the bottle from Kit with the other.

  “Come in,” he said.

  Anywhere below on a ship the Africa’s size stank, but the compound of smells in the doctor’s surgery made Kit’s eyes water. Alcohol, tobacco, and feet combined with bilge water, cheap candle grease, and some sharp, stinging chemical smells that caught at the back of the throat.

  “Sit down.” Saunders nodded to a stool against the hull. He was seated on a similar one and leaned so Kit could edge past. “What did you want? Or are you the one I was told to look at?”

  “You asked me to come down here,” Kit said, a little wary. He had had a chance to look around and even by that dim light neither the surgeon nor his implements looked very clean.

  “That’s right,” Saunders said. “First things first.”

  He offered Kit the bottle, and when he declined, upended it and drank, Adam’s apple bobbing. He only took the bottle away because he needed to breathe. With a gusty sigh he set it down. “Sack. An unexpected treat. So…” He reached out and gripped Kit’s collar to hold him still and peered into his eyes. “Look up—now down. Left—right. Follow my finger. Have you eaten? How are your bowels? Good and open?”

  Kit answered the questions as concisely as he could. In fact Saunders didn’t leave him time for more than a yes or a no. He did show some interest in Kit’s fever after the wreck of the Malvern but said that in his opinion it had been brought on by the cold and damp. He sounded Kit’s chest and nodded. “That should be all right. Hmm, teeth look all right as well. Have you got the pox?”

  “No!” Kit said. “I have not!”

  “You soon will have if you stay on the Aphrodite,” Saunders said with a grin and reached for the bottle again.

  “I thought I was on the sloop Africa,” Kit said.

  Saunders rolled his eyes at him over the bulge of the bottle before replying. “Aphrodite. La Griffe took her a year ago. Denny couldn’t say it and started calling her the Africa Ditty and the name stuck. Speaking of Denny, don’t let him sleep in your hammock.”

  “Too late,” Kit said with a sigh. “Why, what has he got?”

  “If there’s a flea on board it finds its way to Denny. Or a louse. I take it you’re clean?”

  “As far as anyone can be,” Kit said, taking his fingers out of his hair where he was scratching automatically. “How often do you clean ship?”

  “This isn’t the Navy, Mr. Penrose,” Saunders said. “Not often enough. Next time we have her ashore for careening I’ll do all the usual things. But cleanliness is of far less concern to the men aboard than obtaining the ingredients for punch.”

  “Punch?” Kit said. “They have just stolen half a ship full of gin. I would have thought that would be enough for them.”

  Saunders shrugged and picked up the bottle of sack. “Made according to correct alchemical principles it balances the humors perfectly. The heat of the rum, the coldness of the lemons, the sweetness of the sugar combine felicitously…” Saunders paused. “Felicitously—I can’t be drunk enough if I can still say that. Drink the punch regularly and you will keep the scurvy at bay.”

  Kit nodded, having private doubts but prepared to go along with it. “Then I will drink the punch whenever the opportunity arises. Doctor, is that a copy of Boyle’s essays?”

  “You can read! His Majesty’s Navy has improved since my day,” Saunders said and offered Kit the bottle again.

  When Kit returned to the deck of the Africa, Wigram asked him where he had been, told him he didn’t care before he could answer, and set him to repairing a sail.


  With a borrowed sailmaker’s palm and needle, Kit stitched away at the swathe of canvas across his lap, feeling the warmth of the sun through his shirt, and had almost finished the first seam before he remembered what Saunders had said when he woke him.

  I’ve been told to take a look at you, the man had said. Kit wondered by whom.

  Chapter Five

  The day passed very slowly for Kit. But that’s not to say he was bored. His hands were occupied with a necessary if unexciting job, and he had plenty to look at.

  The brigantine for instance, her tan sails golden in this brilliant light, was never completely out of sight, or not for long. Kit assumed that was how they had found the Hypatia. The Africa, the eyes spotting the prey and sending a signal—a light by night, pennants by day perhaps—to call up her consort.

  That is what I would do, given two such ships, Kit mused, but I would hope to better purpose and with a less odd crew.

  He had made a mental note of the number of the crew—a guess because he hadn’t yet seen them all—and had totted up their accents. There were Scots, Welsh, Irish, and a couple of French-speaking blacks, including one fine-looking older man who gave Kit a friendly nod as he passed. Kit thought he’d caught a word or two of Dutch, but English predominated, and the accent of home, of the West Country, was the one he heard most often.

  Which is proper because we do make the best sailors, he comforted himself.

  The thought of justifying piracy to Sir George or Sir William because the Cornish were just so damned good at it amused him, and he smiled as he set the last stitch on the run and began to turn the sail to patch around a cringle.

  “Smiling, that’s good.” Davy Forrest stooped to help him shift the canvas then sat cross-legged and produced his own palm. “Someone down there’s snoring like—like—I dunno what like, but I’d had enough sleep anyway. How are they treating you?”

  “I’m glad to see you, Davy, and could ask the same question, but I see that you’re not doing so badly.”

  Davy looked down at his new shirt and shrugged. “My stuff were rummaged, and I only had the one shirt so they gave me another one. They say watches take care of one another.” He began to set stitches, working with practiced speed. “So,” he repeated, “how are they treating you?”

  “With caution,” Kit said. “There’s usually someone keeping an eye on me. What they imagine I might do I have no idea. There must be close to seventy of them.”

  “Fifty-eight counting us,” Davy said and added with a grin, “but there’s these Scotch twins, see, so I guess that’s put your count out.”

  “Twins,” Kit snorted. “That would do it. Have you any idea where we are headed?”

  “Antigua,” Davy said. “But for now we’re lurking just off the main shipping lane to see if any other prizes come along. I heard say that Probert told them a new naval vessel is on its way out, so they want to get a sight of it to see if it will be a problem.”

  Sir George’s voice sounded in Kit’s head—Miranda, that was it. Our naval presence in St. Kitts. The Miranda was a new ship, a copper-bottomed beauty designed for these waters and carrying twenty-four guns. She’d be a match for either the Africa or the brigantine. She might be a match for them both together.

  “Yes,” he said, “they’d do well to worry. Davy, we’ve been aboard two days.”

  “Less’n that Kit,” Davy pointed out.

  “Well yes, but what I’m trying to say is that until we get to port we have no way of getting off this damned ship and back to where we belong. I just want you to know that if you have to show willing I’ll understand. There are times you have to do things you’d sooner not just to keep going, and it was clear to me you were a forced man. When we win free, I’ll bear witness to it.”

  Davy grunted, bending his head over his work. He had already half done the stitching around his cringle with neat, strong, even stitches. “Thanks, Kit,” he said after a minute. “And if we win free, I’ll do the same for you.”

  “No ifs about it,” Kit said. “My hand to my heart, if there’s a way, I’ll find it.”

  “Will you now?” Wigram could move quietly, Kit noted. “Thinking of leaving us already? Not good enough for you, aren’t we? Or is the good lieutenant pining for his mammy?”

  There was nothing to be said, so Kit set another stitch.

  “You wouldn’t want to lead young Davy astray now,” Wigram continued. “Not after he spoke up for you, and all. That would not be a grateful thing to do.”

  Davy was looking worried, unsure what to say. “I don’t… I didn’t…” he faltered, and Kit put his needle down and stood.

  “Davy is a free man,” Kit said, “This is a free company, is it not? One where a man may join and leave as he chooses? Otherwise you’ve merely traded one type of servitude for another with the additional hazard of being hanged at the end of it.”

  “What do you know about it?” Wigram snarled. “You officer boys with your silver spoons and lace in your caps. Davy is a good hand, a fine worker, and I’ll see to it he does well and gets his share of knocks and prizes, as befits a gentleman of our profession. You—you’re here for one reason alone and that’s to navigate when we need you to.”

  At the sound of sharp voices some of the crew had stopped what they were doing and were converging on Kit and Wigram, probably hoping to see some kind of show. Kit ignored them.

  “If I’m here to navigate,” he snapped, “why am I on deck sewing sails? I need to see your charts and your instruments. Dammit, I need a destination so I can plot a course.”

  Wigram chuckled. “His voice goes quite shrill when he’s angry, don’t it boys?” he said. “You sure you’re not a maid in disguise? That would make you far more popular with your watch. Hell’s teeth, it would make you more popular with me.”

  Kit glared at him. “Do you want me to navigate or not? I need to know how the ship sails, how close we can come to the wind, her draught, her handling, whether she’s slow to answer to the tiller.”

  “Listen to him—squeak, squeak, squeak—like a boy with his beard just coming.” Wigram sniggered, his thumbs hooked into his belt. “Trying to convince us he’s a man. He’ll be telling us how many girls he’s had next.”

  There was a murmur of laughter at that little sally, but Kit noticed that not all the men were laughing and that some were edging away or were returning to what they had been doing before they sensed blood in the water. Kit took the warning to heart. Someone had arrived who outranked Wigram.

  Kit swallowed his fury and continued in a more reasonable tone. “Do you have a cross-staff or a quadrant? An astrolabe? How often have you tested your compass against the stars or the sun? It should be done—if you can’t rely on your compass in an overcast…”

  “That’s true, Wigram,” authority said, his voice a pleasant, slightly accented rumble, and stepped past Kit, whose lips tightened as he recognized the broad shoulders and long, easy stride of the man who had split his lip on the Hypatia. He paused shoulder to shoulder with Wigram and turned his head to murmur to him, then turned fully to smile at Kit.

  There was nothing in his attire to mark him out as any different from the rest of the crew. He wore the same loose linen shirt and breeches and carried a brace of pistols in a sash round his waist, as did most of the others. Most of the others had sun-browned skin, some were blond, the ends salt bleached, some looked to be in their mid-thirties, but the captain was handsome. He looked down his well-shaped nose at Kit, the elegant curves of his lips twisting in a derisive grin, but there was no humor at all in his clear gray eyes.

  Kit had been prepared for hatred when he had come aboard. A naval officer thrown among pirates was bound to be treated as an enemy. But so far his stay had been easy. Some of the crew distrusted and disliked him, but most treated him with the same careless ease they extended to everyone else. A few—Saunders, O’Neill—he thought he could come to call friend. But the captain hated him, of that he was sure, and so he brace
d up, lifted his chin, and glared back.

  “Yes,” the captain said. “I had you brought aboard with some very clear ideas in mind. Why buy a dog, as they say, then bark yourself? O’Neill, take Mr. Penrose below and show him the charts. Don’t leave him alone for one moment. I don’t trust him as far as I can spit. And that’s not far.” To illustrate he hawked and deposited a glob of phlegm between Wigram’s feet. “Wigram, clear that up. The rest of you go and do something useful. Valliere, put up the pennant for the Garnet. Someone might see it, if anyone’s sober.” With a final contemptuous flick of the eyes in Kit’s direction, he stepped up onto the railing and began to climb the ratlines.

  Kit watched him until a nudge from O’Neill brought his attention back to the deck. He and Wigram exchanged the kind of look that promised that the matter would be taken further, then they parted—Wigram to fetch a bucket and mop and Kit to follow O’Neill below.

  The chartroom was a cupboard with a fold down shelf and a lantern. Kit hadn’t expected even that much, so he was pleased and impressed at the quality of the other equipment. They were mismatched, of varying materials, and bore makers names from Bristol, Zeebrugge, and Lisbon, but all were well kept and functioning.

  The charts were a mixed bunch as well. Most were Spanish, beautiful, well-made things with careful annotations and corrections in a legible hand. But there was a standard set of British naval charts, water stained down one edge, and several homemade ones drawn on a section of a larger map that Kit assumed was Dutch.

  On an upper shelf a package wrapped in oilskin proved to contain books. Kit read the titles with a surprised lift of the eyebrows.

  “Is the captain a scholar?” he asked. “A mathematician?”

  O’Neill snorted. “He was an Oxford man. Get him on the numbers, young Kit, and he can prove you’re not a pirate but a spinster aunt with two cats running a tannery business in Sligo.”