Storm Tide Page 14

  ‘You were able to make that calculation in your head?’ Tew’s gruff manner could not hide the admiration in his voice.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Tew put down the dividers. ‘How long did you serve aboard your last ship? It was three years, was it not?’

  ‘Nine months, sir,’ Rob corrected him.

  Tew fixed him with a frown. ‘You may have a fine head for figures, but on this question your memory is faulty. It was three years. I am quite certain of it.’

  Rob sensed this was not the time to argue.

  ‘I am promoting you to master’s mate,’ Tew said. ‘In order to do this, I must certify to the Admiralty that you have served at least three years at sea.’ He stared at Rob. ‘That is why I fear you have mis-recollected your time aboard the Dunstanburgh Castle. It was three years, was it not?’

  ‘I believe it must have been, sir.’

  ‘Then there is no obstacle.’ Tew stood and shook Rob’s hand. ‘Congratulations, Mr Courtney. You will assist Mr Verrier, the second lieutenant. I expect great things from you.’

  Rob could no longer keep the grin from spreading across his face.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  He stumbled out of the cabin in a daze. To his surprise, a group of his messmates were clustered around waiting for him. They thumped him on the back and cheered when they heard his news, while Angus pressed a cup of rum into his hand.

  ‘Well done,’ said Angus.

  A shadow fell over them from the quarterdeck, sharp in the tropical sunshine. Even without looking up, Rob recognised the stiff neck and beaked nose. His friends went quiet.

  ‘Back to work!’ shouted Coyningham. ‘Back to work, or you will feel the touch of the lash.’

  ‘He cannot flog you now,’ said Angus, ‘but do not think you are safe. He will find some other way to bring you down.’

  R

  ob did not forget Angus’s warning. He kept his guard up, never trusting that his new rank or the captain’s favour would protect him. He had seen the look in Coyningham’s eyes.

  But soon enough, Rob had new worries to concern him. A steady breeze gave them swift passage. Each day, the marks on the chart drew nearer the coast of America. Every man aboard felt the anticipation – and the danger. Captain Tew exercised the guns twice a day, using live powder and shot so the gun crews could practise their aim on pieces of driftwood. The tension in the ship was palpable.

  One of the drawbacks of Rob’s promotion was that he spent more time on deck, away from the tops where he loved to be. But he still managed to contrive reasons to climb the rigging. One afternoon, he had gone aloft on the pretext of checking the buntlines. All was shipshape – the men knew Rob would inspect them in person and kept them in good order – but he dallied for a few moments, enjoying the respite from the bustle on deck. He stared into the distance, remembering something Louisa had said.

  ‘You gaze at that blue horizon and long to discover what is beyond it.’

  He had sailed over the horizon, and halfway round the world from Africa. What had he discovered? Coyningham’s sadism, Spinkley’s greed, Lyall’s debauchery. Rob had been swindled, beaten, imprisoned and almost murdered. Perhaps his father had been right. Perhaps he should have stayed safe in the walled paradise of Nativity Bay.

  But then he would never have seen the marvels of London, met Angus, or known the camaraderie of the gun-deck. Angus was a true friend, loyal and always ready with a razor-sharp quip. He understood the value of teamwork, and underneath that world-weary exterior beat a kindly heart. When Rob looked back at the youth he had been a year ago, he cringed at his naivety. If he had not left Fort Auspice, he would have remained a child all his life.

  ‘In any event,’ Rob told himself, ‘you cannot return until you have reclaimed the sword.’

  It hurt every time he thought of it. Part of the reason he drove himself so hard aboard the ship was the guilt that he carried. It ached like an open wound. Up on the yards, or lying in his hammock at night, it was always in his thoughts. There was the pain of his betrayal by Hugo, the burning injustice of the way he had been tricked by Spinkley. But most of all there was one, simple question: why?

  H

  e ran through his memories so often he could see them in his sleep. He pored over them, sifting them for any hint or meaning. Very quickly, he saw that one name linked everything that had happened in London.

  Spinkley at their first meeting: You are not by chance related to Baron Dartmouth, and then on the docks, Do you know on whose orders I arrested this man? Was it Dartmouth who had also sent Lendal to murder him in the hulk’s hold? Why? How would such a great man even come to know of Rob’s existence, let alone decide to ruin him?

  Rob asked his friends in the crew if they had heard of the man. Most knew no more of the peerage of Great Britain than they did of the dark side of the moon. But one, a clerk named Williams who had joined the navy in a fit of despair after his wife cuckolded him, was better educated than most.

  ‘Baron Dartmouth is First Lord of Trade and Foreign Plantations.’

  ‘Do you know anything more?’

  Williams had shrugged. ‘I read about him in the newspaper. It’s not like he had me to tea.’

  It had left Rob none the wiser. ‘Why would a Lord of Trade want to kill me?’ he wondered.

  ‘He’s responsible for the American colonies,’ said Williams. ‘Where we’re going.’

  ‘But I never meant to go to America. I am only here because Dartmouth chased me into the arms of the navy.’

  Rob was more confused than ever. Was it possible he was related to a peer of the realm? He knew there had been many branches of the Courtney family tree over the centuries. But even if he was, what could have drawn Dartmouth’s attention – or his implacable hatred?

  However much he thought about it, he could not fathom the answers.

  ‘Perhaps I will find out in America,’ he thought now, his legs dangling from the crosstrees.

  Something appeared in the distance, breaking into his thoughts. Rob’s gaze snapped to the horizon.

  For weeks, there had been only grey waves as far as the eye could see. Now, suddenly, a low smear broke the monotony, the leading edge of a vast continent.

  Rob took a deep breath and shouted down to the deck.

  ‘Land ho!’

  He stared at the distant land, wishing he had brought a spyglass so he could observe it in more detail.

  America.

  C

  al Courtney joined the Continental Army camped outside Boston. He was a hero. The attack on the powder magazine had been a failure, but it was an heroic failure. He was toasted, saluted, and commissioned as a lieutenant. Men clapped his shoulder and shook his hand and murmured, ‘God rest your brother.’ Cal tried not to let them see him wince.

  The army was a rabble. No uniforms, no tents, and little regard to rank. The men were volunteers, not professional soldiers. Coopers and clerks, blacksmiths and booksellers, farmhands, tanners, wheelwrights and vagrants. When they formed up for inspection, they looked barely more professional than the hotheads of the Army of the Blood of Liberty. But Cal loved it. After so many years in secret, trying to hold his tongue in front of his father and hiding his pamphlets under the bed, it was a release to be able to talk openly. With his comrades, he sat around the campfires until dawn talking of Thomas Paine, Congress, the rights of man and the cause. They drank toasts to George Washington, and death to the tyrant King George. At last he could express himself. This, he felt, was the meaning of liberty.

  Though it had come at a price.

  He had not only lost his brother in the raid on the powder magazine. When he slunk home from the raid, bloodied and burned, he had hardly been able to face his parents. His mother had read the news about Aidan in his face, even before he could stammer it out. He would never forget her scream – nor the tears that brimmed in his father’s eyes.

  It was the first time Cal had ever seen Theo cry. For a moment, the two men had stared at each other, united in grief, and Cal had felt closer to his father than he had in years. He wanted to embrace him, as he had done when a child.

  Then his gaze had turned to fury.

  ‘You killed your brother!’ he shouted. ‘You killed your brother. And for what?’

  ‘He died a hero,’ Cal insisted – bellowing, though he did not realise it. ‘For a cause.’

  ‘He died because you would not do as you were told. You speak of a cause, but you are a traitor to your family, and that is the greatest cause of all.’

  Theo looked as if he might try to box Cal’s ears. But something had snapped inside him, and when he tried to raise his fist it fell back, like a fire starved of kindling. He had nothing left in him.

  Cal went to his room, packed his few belongings, and left. No one tried to stop him. His mother was sobbing in her bedroom, while his father simply stayed in the parlour.

  Just as he was passing through the gate, he heard a door open behind.

  ‘Cal?’

  His heart lifted, he looked back. His father stood in the farmhouse doorway, his face lined and wet with tears. He seemed to have aged twenty years in fifteen minutes.

  ‘Father?’

  He longed for a smile, for a trace of warmth that might lift the burden of guilt he felt. But his father’s face set hard.

  ‘Go. You are no longer my son.’

  Cal ran and did not look back. Later, there were times when he would wake in the night, a silent scream echoing through his body. He would weep bitter tears at life’s cruelty, his own stubborn nature, the collision of fate that had ripped his father from his soul. At other times, when the mails came, Cal found himself hoping there would be a letter from his parents. Then he would scold himself, and harden his hea
rt again.

  You do not understand, he raged, speaking in his mind what he could not say to his father. It was not my fault. There was no other way. If you and men like you had stood up to the King of England, maybe we would not have to fight now. It was not my fault.

  It would have been easier if he had someone to fight. Every time he thought of Aidan, he thought of that desperate clifftop battle. He wished so hard the outcome had been different, he thought his heart would split open. The prospect of action was like the promise of salvation, as if by fighting he could change the battle he had already lost.

  His enemies were not far off. If Cal climbed the hills, he could see them clearly across the water, bottled up in Boston: parading on the common, guarding the long wharf, or marching through the streets. Often they came within rifle range. But General Washington had forbidden his troops to fire unless given the order. They had to conserve their gunpowder. Cal had heard a rumour that if every man in the army was called into action, they would not have ten shots apiece.

  He wished he had saved the powder from the arsenal. He wished Aidan had not died.

  Cal waited, as summer turned to autumn and the dreaded camp fever began to take hold. The thrill of liberty wore thin. They dug latrines, chopped firewood, marched up and down the drill ground until their feet were raw. They cleaned muskets that had never been fired.

  Even with a full supply of powder the army could not hurt Boston. The city was surrounded by water on every side except for a narrow neck that joined it to the mainland. The British had dug in to withstand an almighty siege, while their men-of-war in the harbour covered any approach by water. The Americans had few cannons, and none of the big siege guns that would be needed to take the city.

  One day, Cal was pissing in a latrine when he overheard two officers talking. They were lamenting the lack of guns.

  ‘Everything is a matter of position,’ said one, a red-faced colonel. ‘I was with Ethan Allen and his boys when they took Fort Royal last spring. We captured two dozen cannons the British had left behind, twenty-four pounders and mortars. If we had those here, we’d have Boston at our feet.’

  ‘But they’re on the wrong side of the mountains,’ said his companion, also a colonel. ‘And there’s no way to get them across.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Cal interrupted.

  The two colonels looked up, disconcerted to be interrupted by a lowly lieutenant.

  ‘You should mind your manners, sir,’ said one, ‘or I will mind them for you.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ asked the other.

  ‘Massachusetts,’ said Cal.

  ‘And how do you reckon to tell two Green Mountain men how the land lies in Vermont.’

  ‘My father is Theo Courtney,’ said Cal. The two colonels exchanged glances. They knew the name. ‘He helped take Fort Royal from the French in the last war. He often told me the stories. He said there was a secret path across the mountains the French used.’

  The colonels considered that.

  ‘Where is it?’ asked one.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cal admitted. Then, raising his voice as the colonel began to jeer at him, he said, ‘But I can find it.’

  ‘You are wasting our time,’ said the colonel. ‘How could a Massachusetts man find paths over mountains that we do not know about?’

  ‘There’s a man who can show them to me. An Abenaki Indian, a friend of my father’s from the old days.’

  ‘The Abenaki fight with the British.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Cal grinned. ‘But I have a plan.’

  Ten minutes later, he was in a comfortable study in a nearby farmhouse, explaining his proposal to an increasingly intrigued general. Two days later, with the first winds of winter swirling around Cambridge, he rode out from the camp with fifty men and a captain’s commission in his saddlebag. None of the men wore uniform, and they rode horses that had not been branded with the Continental Army’s mark.

  N

  ot so long ago, the Abenaki village had been the frontier between the British and French empires, as the two great powers battled for control of North America. The French had lost, but the peace had been brief. The palings that made a stockade around the log huts of the village were freshly cut, their points still sharp.

  The Abenaki scouts had met Cal ten miles away, as soon as he crossed into their lands. He had expected it. This was a time of war. Cal had left most of his men camped a day’s march away, bringing only one lieutenant and one sergeant to avoid being seen as a threat. Even so, the Abenaki kept a close eye as they escorted him to their settlement.

  The headman of the tribe, the sachem, came into the clearing in front of the longhouse. He was not the biggest man, nor particularly old, but he had wise eyes and a presence that brought stillness into the bustle of the village. The men around him gripped their tomahawks and guns. Strangers were not welcome in these troubled times.

  Cal swallowed. ‘The son of Siumo the Hawk sends his greetings,’ he announced.

  The sachem squinted, as if trying to remember past events. Then he tipped back his head and laughed.

  ‘Caleb Courtney!’ he cried. ‘Can it be?’

  Cal gave a shamefaced grin. The sachem strode forwards and wrapped him in a warm embrace. He smelled of bear fat and woodsmoke.

  ‘The last time we met, you were a little cub,’ he said. ‘Now look at you. A grown man.’ He touched the rifle slung across Cal’s back. ‘And a warrior. It is good to see you.’

  ‘It is good to see you, too, Moses.’ Cal knew the Abenaki chieftain had other names, other titles, but Cal had always known him by the name the Abenaki had been given by French missionaries.

  Moses brought Cal and his men into the longhouse and seated them by the fire.

  ‘How is your father?’

  When he was Cal’s age, Theo Courtney had been captured by the Abenaki and adopted into their tribe. He had lived for a year as an Indian, learning their ways and their knowledge of the forest. They had named him Siumo, the hawk. Moses had been his companion and his best friend. When Theo returned to the British army, Moses had gone with him and enlisted. After the war, he had accompanied Theo and Abigail – with the infant Cal – to Massachusetts. Cal had memories of sitting on Moses’ knee by the fire on winter nights, while Moses and Theo swapped tales of their exploits. Later, Moses had grown bored of life in the colony. He had returned to his village and become sachem of the tribe.

  ‘My father is well,’ Cal lied. ‘Though he will be happier when the rebels have been thrashed, and the good rule of King George is assured in the colonies.’

  He struggled to remain passive as he said it, watching Moses for any sign he might have guessed the truth. He hated having to lie to a man he had known all his life: it felt a shameful thing to do. But it was the only way.

  Moses was my father’s friend, he reminded himself. The thought tapped into a bitterness in his heart that drowned any guilt.

  ‘And you?’ Moses looked at the men with Cal. ‘Are these men British soldiers?’

  ‘We are scouts,’ said Cal. ‘You know the rebels took Fort Royal last spring?’

  Moses sucked a deep draught on his pipe and nodded. ‘That was a bad loss. It has made the forest a dangerous place for us. The tribe goes hungry when we can no longer be safe where the ancestors hunted.’

  ‘The British are planning a new campaign in the spring.’ Cal had had plenty of time on the march from Boston to perfect this story. ‘I know you and my father found a path over the mountains. If you show me the path, we can use it to bring our guns here this summer and retake the fort.’

  Moses was deep in thought. He was not yet forty, but the cares of his life had scored creases into his face like a much older man.

  ‘It is dangerous,’ he warned. ‘The rebels have many patrols on the way to the mountains. If they know I am helping you, they may attack our village.’

  ‘If you don’t,’ said Cal solemnly, ‘your people will starve.’

  Moses nodded and stared into the fire. A sachem’s job was to keep his tribe safe, living from season to season as their ancestors had for generations. He was too young to remember a time before the white men came, with their guns and alcohol and wars started by kings he had never heard of. But he was old enough to have heard stories of the old days from his grandparents, of a time when the world was safe and known. Moses’ life had been spent twisting like a leaf in a hurricane, making alliances with men he could not trust, knowing the outcome might be decided in palaces thousands of miles away across the great ocean. Every choice was like shooting a rifle in the dark, knowing you might hit the wolf – or your own child.