Текст книги "Lord John and the Hand of Devils"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon,Diana Gabaldon
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The chiming clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour: two o’clock. The captain was likely telling the truth about searching everywhere else before coming to Grey’s door.

Jones at length opened his eyes—they were bloodshot, enhancing the resemblance to Alfred—though the teeth remained fixed in his lip. At last he shook his head in resignation and sighed.

“I’ll have to trust you, I suppose,” he said.

“I am distinctly honored,” Grey said, with an edge. “Thank you, Tom.”

Byrd had reappeared with a tray hastily furnished with two cups of tea. The tea was stewed and black, undoubtedly from the urn kept for the night watch, but served in Grey’s decent vine-patterned china. He took a cup gratefully, adding a substantial dollop of brandy from the decanter.

Jones stared at the cup of tea in his own hand, as though wondering where it had come from, but essayed a cautious sip, then coughed and rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.

“The cannon. Herbert said he thought you knew nothing about the process of gun-founding; is that true?”

“Nothing more than he told me himself.” The hot tea and brandy were both comfort and stimulant; Grey began to feel more alert. “Why?”

Jones blew out his breath, making a small cloud of steam; the air in the sitting room was still chilly.

“Without describing the entire process to you—you doknow that the bronze of a cannon is an alloy, produced by—”

“Yes, I do know that.” Grey was sufficiently awake by now as to be annoyed. “What does that—”

“I am sure that the burst cannon—all of them—had been cast from an inferior alloy, one lacking the proper proportion of copper.” He stared meaningfully at Grey, obviously expecting him to drop his tea, clutch his head, or otherwise exhibit signs of horrified comprehension.

“Oh?” Grey said, and reached for the brandy again.

Jones heaved a sigh that went all the way to his feet, and put out a hand for the decanter in turn.

“Not to put too fine a point upon the matter, Major,” he said, eyes on the amber stream splashing into his tea, “I am a spy.”

Grey narrowly prevented himself saying, “Oh?” again, and instead said, “For the French? Or the Austrians?” Tom Byrd, who had been loitering respectfully in the background, stiffened, then bent casually to pick up the poker from the hearth.

“Neither, for God’s sake,” Jones said crossly. “I am in the employ of His Majesty’s government.”

“Well, who the bloody hell are you spying on,then?” Grey said, losing patience.

“The Arsenal,” Jones replied, looking surprised, as though this should be obvious. “Or rather, the foundry.”

There ensued a tedious ten minutes of extraction which brought Grey to the point of wishing to gnash his own teeth. At the end of it, though, he had managed to get Jones to admit—with extreme reluctance—that he was not in fact employed by the Arsenal, as Grey had assumed. He wasa genuine captain in the Royal Artillery Regiment, though, and as such had been sent to nose unofficially about the Arsenal and see what he could discover regarding the matter of the exploding cannons—the Royal Artillery having an interest, as Grey might suppose.

“Couldn’t be official, d’ye see,” Jones said, becoming more confidential. “The Royal Commission had already been appointed, and it’s their show, so to speak.”

Grey nodded, curious. Twelvetrees, who was a member of the Commission of Inquiry, belonged to the Royal Artillery; why ought the regiment be sending Jones to do surreptitiously what Twelvetrees was doing so overtly? Unless…unless someone suspected Twelvetrees of something?

“To whom do you report your findings?” Grey asked. Jones began again to look shifty, and a small premonitory prickle ran suddenly down Grey’s spine.

Jones’s lips worked in and out in indecision, but at last he bit the bullet and blurted, “A man named Bowles.”

As though cued by an invisible prompter, the teacup began to rattle gently in its saucer. Grey felt a monstrous sense of irritation; was he never going to be allowed to drink a full cup of tea in peace, for God’s sake? Very carefully, he set down the cup and saucer, and wiped his hands upon the skirts of his dressing gown.

“Oh, you know him, do you?” Jones’s red-rimmed eyes fixed on Grey, suddenly alert.

“I know of him.” Grey did not wish to admit to his relations with Bowles, let alone discuss them. He had met the mysterious Mr. Bowles once, and had no wish to repeat the experience.

“So you had no official standing at the laboratory?”

“No, that’s why I needed Gormley.”

Herbert Gormley had no great authority within the hierarchy of the Ordnance Office, but he had the necessary knowledge to locate the remains of the exploded cannon, and sufficient administrative skill to have them quietly brought to the guns’ graveyard near the proving grounds and sequestered there for autopsy.

“There are hundreds of broken guns there; they should have been safe!” Jones’s teeth were clenched in frustration; in hopes of preventing further damage to the man’s molars, Grey poured more brandy into his empty cup.

Jones gulped it and set down the cup, eyes watering.

“But they weren’t,” he said hoarsely. “They’re gone. There were eight of them under my investigation—all gone. But onlythose eight—the ones Gormley found for me. Everything else is still there. And now Gormley’s gone, too. You can’t tell me that’s coincidence, Major!”

Grey had no intention of doing so.

“You do not suppose that Gormless—Gormley—had anything to do with the removal of the exploded cannon?”

Jones shook his head violently.

“Not a chance. No, he’s onto me. Has to be.”

“He? Whom do you mean?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Jones’s hands clenched together in an unconscious pantomime of neck-wringing. “Not for sure. But I’ll get him,” he added, giving Grey a fierce look, with a glimpse of clenched, bared fang. “If he’s harmed poor little Herbert, I’ll—I’ll—”

The man would be toothless before he was forty, Grey thought.

“We will find Mr. Gormley,” he said firmly. “But wherever he is, I doubt that we can discover him before daylight. Compose yourself, Captain, if you please—and then tell me the goddamn truth about what’s going on at the Arsenal.”

The truth, once extracted and divested of its encrustations of laborious speculation and deductive dead ends, was relatively simple: Gormley and Jones had concluded, on the basis of close examination, that someone at the foundry was abstracting a good part of the copper meant to be used in the alloy for casting. Result being that while new cannon cast with this alloy looked quite as usual, the metal was more brittle than it should be, thus liable to sudden failure under sustained fire.

“Those marks you noticed on Tom Pilchard,” Jones said, describing a series of semicircles in the air with a blunt forefinger. “Those are the marks where holes left in the casting have been plugged later, then sanded flat and burnished over. You might get a hole or two in any casting—completely normal—but if the alloy’s wanting, you’ll get a lot more.”

“And a much higher chance of the metal’s fracturing where you have several holes together, such as those I saw. Quite.”

He did. He saw himself and four other men, standing no more than a foot away from a cannon riddled like a cheese with invisible holes, each charge rammed down its smoking barrel one more throw of crooked dice. Grey was beginning to have a metallic taste in the back of his mouth. Rather than lift the cup and saucer again, he simply picked up the decanter and drank from it, holding it round the neck.

“Whoever is taking the copper—they’re selling it, of course?” Copper was largely imported, and valuable.

“Yes, but I haven’t been able to trace any of it,” Jones admitted, moodily. “The damn stuff hasn’t any identifying marks. And with the Dockyards so handy…might be going anywhere. To the Dutch, the French—maybe to someone private, the East India Company perhaps—wouldn’t put it past the bastards.” He glanced at the window, where a slice of night still showed black between the heavy curtains, and sighed.

“We will find him,” Grey repeated, more gently, though he was himself by no means so sure of it. He coughed, and drank again.

“If you are correct—if copper has been abstracted—then surely whoever is responsible for the casting would know of it?”

“Howard Stoughton,” Jones said bleakly. “The Master Founder. Yes, most likely. I’ve been watching him for weeks, though, and he’s not put a foot wrong. No hint of any secret meetings with foreign agents; he scarcely leaves the foundry, and when he does, he goes home and stays there. But if it isthe copper, and it ishim, and Gormley’s found some proof…”

Another thought occurred to Grey, and he felt obliged to put it, despite the risk to Jones’s tooth enamel.

“We have two assumptions here, Captain, do we not? Firstly, that you and Mr. Gormley are correct in your assessment of the cause of the cannons’ failure. And secondly, that Mr. Gormley is missing because he has discovered who is responsible for the abstraction of copper from the Arsenal and been removed in consequence. But these are assumptions only, for the moment.

“Have you considered the alternative possibility,” he said, taking a firmer hold of the brandy bottle in case he should require a weapon, “that Mr. Gormley might himself have been involved in the matter?”

Jones’s inflamed eyes swiveled slowly in Grey’s direction, bulging slightly, and the muscles of his neck bunched. Before he could speak, though, a discreet cough came from the vicinity of the hearth.

“Me lord?” Tom Byrd, who had been listening raptly, poker in hand, now set it down and stepped diffidently forward.

“Yes, Tom?”

“Beg pardon, me lord. Only as I was in the Lark’s Nest Wednesday—having stopped for a bite on my way back from the Arsenal, see—and the place was a-buzz, riled like it was a hornets’ nest, rather than a lark’s. Was a press gang going through the neighborhood, they said; took up two men was regulars, and there was talk about would they maybe go and try to get them back—but you could see there wasn’t nothing in it but talk. They warned me to go careful when I left, though.”

The young valet hesitated, looking from one gentleman to another.

“I think they maybe got him, this Gormley.”

“A press gang?” Jones said, his scowl diminishing only slightly. “Well, it’s a thought, but—”

“Begging your pardon, sir, it’s maybe summat more than a thought. I saw them.”

Grey’s heart began to beat faster.

“The press gang?”

Tom turned a freckled, earnest face in his employer’s direction.

“Yes, sir. ’Twas a heavy fog comin’ in from the river, and so I heard them coming down the street afore they saw me, and ducked rabbity into an alleyway and hid behind a pile of rubbish. But they passed me by close, sir, and I did see ’em; six sailors and four men they’d seized, all roped together.”

He hesitated, frowning.

“It wasfoggy, sir. And I ain’t—haven’t—seen him before. But it was right near the Arsenal, and that what you called him—Gormless. It’s only—would he maybe be a dark, small, clever-looking cove, with a pretty face like a girl’s and dressed like a clerk?”

“He would,” Grey said, ignoring Jones, who had made a sound like a stuck pig. “Could you see anything to tell which ship they came from?”

Tom Byrd shook his head.

“No, sir. They was real sailors, though, the way they talked.”

Jones stared at him.

“Why wouldn’t they be real sailors? What do you mean, boy?”

“Mr. Byrd has a somewhat suspicious mind,” Grey intervened tactfully, seeing Tom flush with indignation. “A most valuable attribute, on occasion. On the present occasion, I presume that he means only that your initial supposition was that Mr. Gormley had been abducted by the person or persons responsible for the removal of copper from the foundry, but apparently that is not the case. By the way,” he added, struck by a thought, “have you any indication that copper ismissing from the foundry? That would be evidence in support of your theory.”

“Yes,” Jones said, a small measure of satisfaction lightening the anxiety in his face. “We have got that, by God. When I reported our suspicions about the copper, Mr. Bowles undertook to introduce another of his subordinates, a man named Stapleton, into the foundry in the capacity of clerk and set him to inspect the accounts and inventory on the quiet. A good man, Stapleton,” he added with approval. “Got the information in less than a week.”

“Splendid,” Grey said, and took a searingly large swallow of brandy. The hairs rose on his body at the mention of Neil Stapleton. Neil of the hot blue eyes…and even more incendiary attributes. Known to his intimates—if not necessarily his friends—as Neil the Cunt.

He’d met Stapleton twice: initially, at a very private club called Lavender House, in such circumstances as to leave no doubt of either’s private inclinations. And again when Grey had ruthlessly threatened to expose those inclinations to Hubert Bowles, in order to force Stapleton to obtain urgent information for him. Christ, how close had he come to meeting the man again? He shoved that thought hastily away and took another drink.

Jones was showing signs of impatience, tapping his feet back and forth in a soundless tattoo upon the carpet.

“It’s got to be a ship anchored by the Dockyards. Soon as it’s light, I’m going through them like a dose of salts, and then we’ll be to the bottom of this!”

“I wish you the best of luck,” Grey said politely. “And I do hope that the gentleman Tom saw in the custody of the press gang wasMr. Gormley. However—if he was, does this not rather obviate your conclusion that he was in possession of incriminating information regarding the perpetrator?”

Jones gave him a glassy look, and Tom Byrd looked reproving.

“Now, me lord, you know you oughtn’t talk like that at this hour of the morning. You got to pardon his lordship, sir,” he said apologetically to Jones. “His father—the duke, you know—had him schooled in logic. He can’t really help it, like.”

Jones shook his head like a swimmer emerging from heavy surf, and reached wordlessly for the brandy, which Grey surrendered with a brief gesture of apology.

“I mean,” he amended, “if Gormley’s been taken by a press gang, it might be simple misfortune. It needn’t have anything to do with your inquiries.”

Jones pressed his lips together, looking displeased.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the first thing is to get Gormley back. Agreed?”

“Certainly,” Grey said, wondering privately just how complex a matter it might prove to pry a new seaman—no matter how unwillingly recruited—from the rapacious grasp of the navy.

Jones nodded, satisfied, and glanced at the clock. A few minutes until three; the sun would not be up for several hours yet. Tom Byrd yawned suddenly, and Grey felt his own jaw muscles creak in sympathy.

All conversation seemed to have ceased abruptly; there was nothing more to say, and they sat for some moments in silence. There were sounds from the distant barracks and the murmur of the fire, but these were muted, unreal. The night hung over them, heavy with possibilities—most of them threatening.

Grey began to be conscious of his heartbeat, and just behind each beat, a slight, sharp pain in his chest.

“I’m going to bed,” he said abruptly, gathering his feet under him. “Tom, will you find Captain Jones somewhere to sleep?”

Disregarding the captain’s muttered reply that he needn’t bother, wouldn’t sleep anyway, he stood and turned for the door, his brandy-clouded vision smearing light and shadow. Just short of the door, though, one final question occurred to him.

“Captain—you are positive that all the explosions are the result of weakened alloy, are you?” Grey asked, swinging round. “No evidence of deliberate sabotage—as, for instance, by the provision of bombs packed with a higher grade of powder than they should be?”

Jones blinked at him, owl-eyed.

“Why, yes,” he said slowly. “In fact, there is. That’s what began the investigation; the Ordnance Office discovered two grapeshot cartridges packed with a great deal more powder than they should have been, and fine-ground, too—you know that’s unstable, yes? But very explosive. Bombs, they were.”

Grey nodded, his hands curving in unconscious memory of the shape and the weight of the grapeshot cartridges he had handled at Crefeld, tossing them in careless hurry, as though they had been harmless as stones.

“This was just as they began to be aware of the destruction of the cannon,” Jones said, shrugging, “and so they convened the Commission of Inquiry.”

Dry-mouthed, Grey licked his lips.

“How did they discover this?”

“Testing on the proving grounds. Came near to killing one of the proving crew. Gormley was almost sure that it had nothing to do with the cannons’ fracturing, though.”

“Almost?” Grey echoed, with a skeptical intonation.

“He could prove it was the alloy, he said. He could assay the metal from the ruined cannon, and prove that it lacked the proper mix of copper. He couldn’t do it openly, though; he had to wait on an opportunity to use the laboratory’s facilities secretly.”

Jones’s throat worked, whether with anger or grief, Grey couldn’t tell. He swallowed his emotion, though, and went on.

“But they took the cannon before he could make his tests. That’s why I was sure at first that he’d come to you, Major,” he added, fixing Grey with a gimlet eye.

“That bit of shrapnel you took away is the only metal from an exploded cannon that hasn’t been melted down and lost. It’s the only bit of proof that’s left. You will take care of it, won’t you?”

What do you mean, there are no press gangs operating near the Arsenal?”

Grey thought Jones would explode like a milling shed, walls and roof flying every which way. His heavy face quivered with rage, eyes bulging as he loomed over the diminutive harbormaster of the Royal Dockyards.

The harbormaster, accustomed to dealing with volatile sea captains, was unmoved.

“Putting aside the matter of courtesy—the navy would not normally so intrude upon the operations of another service—” he said mildly, “there are no ships outfitting in the yards just at present. If they are not outfitting, they do not require additional crew. If they do not require seamen, plainly the captains do not send out press gangs to acquire them. Quod erat demonstrandum,” he added, obviously considering this the coup de grвce.

The captain seemed disposed to argue the point—or to assault the harbormaster. Feeling that this would be counter to their best interests, Grey seized him by the arm and propelled him out of the office.

“That whoreson is lying to us!”

“Possibly,” Grey said, urging Jones down the length of the dock by main force. “But possibly not. Come, let us see whether Tom has discovered anything.”

Whether ships were outfitting in the yards or not, ships were most assuredly being built and repaired there. The ribs and keelson of a large ship rose like a whale’s skeleton on one side, while on the other, a newly completed keel lay in the channel, swarms of men covering it like ants, laying deck in a racket of hammers and curses.

The shipyard was littered with timbers, planking, rolls of copper, hogsheads of nails, barrels of tar, coils of rope, heaps of sawdust, mallets, saws, drawknives, planes, and all the other bewildering impedimenta of shipbuilding. Men were everywhere; England was at war, and the dockyards buzzed like a hive.

Out in the river, small craft plied to and fro, sails white against the brown of the Thames and the dark shapes of the prison hulks anchored in the distance. Two larger ships lay at anchor, though, and these were the focus of Grey’s attention.

Not sure precisely where Tom Byrd might be, he took Jones firmly by the arm and sauntered to and fro, whistling “Lilibulero.” Passing workmen spared them a glance now and then, but the docks were thick with tradesmen and uniforms; they were not conspicuous.

Eventually his valet stepped cautiously out from behind a large heap of timbers, a small brass spyglass in hand.

“Yes, me lord?”

“For God’s sake, put that away, Tom, or you’ll be taken up as a French spy. I’d have the devil of a time getting you out of a naval prison.”

Seeing that his employer was not joking, Tom tucked the spyglass hastily inside his jacket.

“Have you seen anyone familiar?”

“Well, I can’t be sure, me lord, but I thinkI’ve maybe spotted a cove as was one of the press gang I saw.”

“Where?” Jones’s eyebrows bristled, eyes gleaming beneath them with readiness to strangle someone.

Byrd nodded toward the water.

“He was a-going out to one o’ the big ships, sir. That un.” He nodded toward the vessel on the left, a three-masted thing with its canvas furled. “Maybe half an hour gone; I’ve not seen him come back.”

Grey stood for a moment, gazing at the ships. He had vivid memories of his last venture on the high seas, and thus a marked disinclination to set foot on board a ship again. On the other hand, his involuntary voyage had been at the hands of the East India Company, and it did not appear that either of the ships presently at anchor intended any immediate departure.

Jones quivered at his side, like a hunting dog scenting pheasant on the wind.

“All right,” Grey said, resigned. “No help for it, I suppose. Stick close, though, Tom. I don’t want to see youpressed.”

Him, me lord.” Tom Byrd spoke under his breath, with the barest of nods toward a man who stood with his back to them, shouting something up into the rigging. “I’m sure.”

“All right. See if you can find out who he is, without making too much of a stir. I think we’ll have time.”

Turning his back, Grey strolled nonchalantly to the rail, where he stood looking toward the Woolwich shore. The Arsenal was no more than a splotch of dark buildings at this distance, set amid the ruffled acres of its proving grounds. Below, he could hear the sounds of Jones’s impromptu search party.

Captain Hanson of the Sunrisehad been surprised, to say the least, by their sudden appearance, and had reiterated the harbormaster’s statement about press gangs. Still, he was not harried at present, was a young and naturally amiable man—and was acquainted with Grey’s brother. He had therefore graciously invited Jones to search the ship if he liked—in case his Mister Gormley had somehow smuggled himself aboard—accompanied by the third lieutenant and two or three able seamen to open or lift anything he would like to look into or under.

It was apparent from this that there was nothing suspicious to be found aboard, but Jones had had little choice but to conduct his search, leaving Grey to converse with the captain—and Tom to circle warily about the decks, in hopes of spotting the man he had seen in the fog.

Captain Hanson had after a short time excused himself, offering Grey the use of his cabin—an offer Grey had politely declined, saying that he would prefer to take the air on deck until his friend was at liberty.

He turned his back to the rail, glancing casually over the deck. The man Tom had picked out was certainly one who invited recognition; he bore a strong resemblance to a Barbary ape, that part of his hair not tarred into a pigtail standing up in a ginger crest on his head.

He seemed also to be in a position of some authority; at the moment, he had one foot resting on a barrel, an elbow resting on the raised knee, and his chin upon the palm of his hand, squinting quizzically at something—the cut of the jib? The lie of the bilge? Grey knew nothing of nautical terms.

It wouldn’t do to stare; he turned back to the shore, noting as he did so Tom, in cordial conversation with a young sailor near the back—well, aft, he did know that much—of the ship.

What next? He was sure that Jones would not find Gormley aboard the Sunrise.He supposed they would have to go and search the other ship, as well. He’d seen men shouting to and fro between the ships—the other lay not more than a few hundred yards away; doubtless the Barbary ape could have taken Gormley there without difficulty—though he had no idea why he should have done so.

The ape—Grey glanced covertly at the man again—was plainly part of the crew of the Sunrise.And yet Captain Hanson had said unequivocally that he had sent out no press gangs. Ergo, if Tom were correct in his identification—and a face like that one would be memorable, coming out of the fog—the ape had been conducting some private enterprise of his own.

Now, thatwas an interesting notion. And if they failed to find any trace of Gormley on the other ship, it might be worth having Tom brought face to face with both Captain Hanson and the ape, to tell his story. Grey supposed that any captain worth his salt would be interested to know if his crew were conducting a clandestine trade in bodies.

The thought gave him a faint chill. Christ, what if it werebodies? The ape and his cohorts might be augmenting their pay by dealing as resurrection men, providing cadavers to the dissection rooms.

No. He dismissed the grisly vision of a dead and eviscerated Gormless as both too dramatic and too complicated to be true. Back to Occam, then. Given multiple alternatives, the simplest explanation is most likely to be true. And the simplest explanation for the disappearance of Herbert Gormley was, firstly, that Tom had seen the Barbary ape but had notseen Gormley, being mistaken in his identification. Or secondly—and equally likely, he thought, knowing Tom—that his valet hadseen them both, and the ape had done something unaccountable with his captives.

They were presently operating under the second assumption, but perhaps that had been reckless of him. If…

All thought was momentarily suspended, his eye caught by a small boat halfway out from the shore. Or, rather, by the glint of sunlight on yellow hair. Grey uttered an oath which caused the sailor nearest him to drop his jaw, and leaned out over the rail, trying for a better look.

“He’s called Appledore,” said a voice in his ear, startling him.

“Who’s called Appledore?”

“Him what we’re watching, me lord—he’s a bosun’s mate, they say. And”—Tom swelled a bit with excited importance—“he was ashore Wednesday, and came back to the ship at…well, I don’t quite know, the peculiar way they have of telling time on ships, all bells and watches and such, but it was late.”

“Excellent,” he said, scarcely listening. “Tom, give me your spyglass.”

He clapped the instrument to his eye, catching wild swathes of river, sky, and clouds, until suddenly he brought the boat in view, its contents sharp and clear. There were two men in the boat. One of them was unfamiliar, a heavyset fellow muffled in a coat and cocked hat, a portmanteau at his feet. The man rowing in his shirtsleeves, though, yellow hair a-flutter in the wind, was Neil the Cunt. Which almost certainly meant that the other gentleman must be Howard Stoughton, master founder of the Royal Brass Foundry.

The small boat was not making for either of the two large ships, but steering a course a little way to the south. Following the direction of its bow, he saw a small, brisk-looking craft tacking slowly to and fro.

“Stay here.” Grey thrust the spyglass back into Tom’s hands. “See that small boat, with two men? Don’t take your eyes off it!”

“Where you going, me lord?” Tom, startled, was trying to look at his employer and through the glass at the same time, but Grey was already halfway to the door that led below.

“To organize a boarding party!” he called over his shoulder, and plunged without hesitation into the bowels of the Sunrise.

The captain’s gig hurtled over the river’s chop, propelled by half a dozen burly sailors. The captain himself had come; Grey was shouting further explanation into his ear, clinging with one hand to the side of the boat, with the other to the impressive-looking cutlass the mate had shoved into his hand.

Tom Byrd and Captain Jones were likewise armed. Tom looked thrilled, Jones grimly dangerous.

The small boat was moving much more slowly, but had a substantial lead. It would undoubtedly reach the brig—Hanson said it was a brig—before they did, but that would not matter, so long as they were in time to prevent the brig’s fleeing downriver.

As they drew closer, he saw Neil Stapleton turn a startled face toward them, then turn back, redoubling his efforts at the oars.

For an instant, he wondered whether Stapleton was indeed Bowles’s man. But, no—he had caught a crab, as the sailors said, one oar skimming the surface and slewing his boat half round. Clever enough to look accidental, but slowing the smaller craft, while the gig cleaved the waters to the bosun’s bark.

Hanson was kneeling, gripping Grey’s shoulder to avoid being thrown from the boat, roaring something at the men on board the brig. They looked surprised, glancing from the oncoming gig to the smaller boat, struggling to reach them.

The small boat thumped the side of the brig; Grey heard it, and the cries of outrage from the men on deck. The impact had knocked the heavyset man into the bottom of the boat; he rose, cursing, and reached up, scrambling awkwardly over the rail of the brig, half-tumbling into the arms of the waiting sailors.

He gained his feet and turned back, reaching urgently over the rail for his portmanteau. But Stapleton had dug his oars and was pulling rapidly away, coming fast toward the gig.

“’Vast rowing!” bellowed the bosun, and the crew of the gig shipped oars as one, letting the long, sleek boat glide up beside the smaller one. Hands reached out to grab the sides, and Stapleton let go his oars.

His face was scarlet with exertion and excitement, blue eyes bright as candle flames. Grey spared the space of one deep breath to admire his beauty, then grabbed him by the arm and yanked him head over arse into the gig.

“Is it Stoughton?” Jones was yelling. Grey barely heard him above the bellowing to and fro of Hanson and the men on the deck of the brig above.

Stapleton was on hands and knees, gasping for breath, his face nearly in Grey’s lap, but managed to look up and nod. Other hands were grappling across the portmanteau; it fell with a thud into the bottom of the gig, and Jones lunged for it.