A Man of No Country Read online

‘Surely that must be very injurious to the health,’ said Taylor, his grey hair darker than normal with sweat. ‘Drinking such cold liquid on a hot day will play Old Nick with one's humours.’

  ‘It may well do, but the notion does have a certain appeal,’ said Faulkner holding up his warm glass of watered wine. ‘Does one simply add lumps of the stuff directly into a glass?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ said the American.

  ‘Do we at least make some progress with all this endless sailing?’ said Macpherson as his attention returned from the heavenly notion of ice in drinks to the reality of the wardroom.

  ‘We are, of a rather indifferent sort,’ said Armstrong. ‘I have just now completed my noon calculations with Mr Taylor.’

  ‘That is some comfort I suppose,’ grumbled the marine. ‘So when might we join the rest of the fleet, Jacob?’

  ‘Ah, knowing where we might be is one thing. Knowing the admiral’s whereabouts is quite another. They will have been forced to beat their way against this wind just as we have, so by rights we should overhaul them presently. Perhaps it will happen in a week, but it may prove to be sooner if this damned wind will shift.’

  ‘A week!’ said Faulkner, aghast, ‘And what then? We yet have no certain intelligence of the French. Is the captain quite decided that their destination is Egypt?

  ‘He is,’ said Taylor. ‘Thanks to the revelation of that French captain.’

  ‘It does seem a little thin,’ said Faulkner. ‘To place such reliance on a Frenchman with poor English who had just consumed a deal of navy rum. What if he was making sport of us?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Macpherson. ‘If the French have played us false, and doubled back towards the west, will the admiral not be furious with the man who sent him on a wild chase towards Egypt?’

  ‘No doubt he will be,’ said Taylor. ‘But the captain is a deep one who rarely gets such matters wrong. He reminds me of a captain I served with back in the American War, when I had just joined the service. He once used a box of bird skins to track down a Spanish treasure fleet. God, but it is hot down here!’ The first lieutenant paused to take a thirsty pull from his drink.

  ‘Bird skins to track down treasure!’ exclaimed the purser. ‘Come now George, pray do not clam up. You have pricked our interest now. Will you not oblige us and share the particulars of this incident?’

  ‘If you insist, gentlemen,’ said Taylor. ‘I was but a master’s mate then, serving on board the frigate Cerebus, 28 under Captain Mann. We were sent to patrol off the Azores in very indifferent weather, when we came upon a large Spanish cutter. The Cerebus was a fast ship and had been newly coppered, so we overhauled her easy enough and forced her to strike. Captain Mann spoke tolerable Spanish and he was able to ask the young lieutenant in charge of the cutter where he was going. Five days out of Cadiz, bound for Havana, was his reply, which seemed reasonable to us. Like enough they were carrying dispatches, and had thrown them overboard when their capture was certain. And then the midshipman who had been sent to make a search of the cutter came running up with these big lead-lined boxes.’

  ‘What was in them?’ asked Macpherson.

  ‘They were well sealed, but when we finally had the lids off, we saw they were packed full of beautiful tropical bird skins with feathers of every colour. Well, Captain Mann took one look at them and smoked what the Dons were about straight away.’ Taylor glanced expectantly at his fellow officers, who looked blank in return. Eventually Faulkner cleared his throat.

  ‘I do not have the pleasure of quite following you, George,’ he said. ‘What was the significance of the feathers?’

  ‘Why would any sane man chose to transport boxes of tropical bird skins from Spain, where they are presumably a rarity, to the tropics where there must be all manner of such creatures?’ explained Taylor. ‘Don’t be disheartened, Charles, I was no sharper than you at the time.’

  ‘So this Captain Mann concluded from the skins that the cutter must have been travelling from the Americas to Spain as oppose to the other way round,’ said Macpherson. ‘Very well, but how would that have altered matters?’

  ‘If the young lieutenant had told his story that way about, all might have been well,’ said Taylor. ‘But he had tried to dissemble. Which made the captain consider, why was it so important for the Dons to conceal that they were really sailing inbound for Spain?’

  ‘Because they were not simply carrying dispatches,’ mused the Scot, ‘or exotic feathers for that matter. Something more was afoot.’

  ‘And that was Captain Mann’s conclusion,’ said Taylor. ‘He decided that this single innocent cutter might be part of some larger force. An expendable scout sent ahead to observe if the way was clear for those who followed after.’

  ‘A treasure fleet!’ exclaimed Armstrong. ‘Did you run them to ground?’

  ‘We did, forty leagues to the west of the cutter, and following in their wake,’ said Taylor. ‘They were too well protected for us to hazard an attack, so we sent the captured cutter for reinforcements, while we kept them in sight. Once the Dons saw they had been rumbled, they put into Santa Cruz in Tenerife, where they were obliged to remain under blockade till the end of the war.’

  ‘Well, I never,’ said Macpherson. ‘He must have been quite the accomplished cove, this Captain Mann. Whatever became of him? It is not a name with which I am familiar.’

  ‘He died the following year of the Yellow Jack, in Jamaica, I am afraid,’ said the first lieutenant.

  ‘Pity, we could have used his powers of deduction to help the master at arms solve the identity of our murderer,’ said Armstrong. ‘Are we any nearer to catching the ne’er do well?’

  ‘No, nor are we like to be,’ said Taylor.

  ‘If you ask me, this Oates fellow was the cutpurse all along,’ said Faulkner. ‘He tried one theft too many, got caught, and the lower deck administered their own brand of justice. Swift and thorough retribution. Why else would all this thieving have stopped with his demise?’

  ‘Nothing would please me more than for this matter to be resolved, Charles, but I fear you are incorrect,’ said Taylor. ‘It is true that the lower deck is quite capable of administering what it thinks of as justice after a fashion. But if matters have been resolved, where is the return of our contented crew? Have you not seen John Grainger of late?’

  ‘Aye, I have,’ said Macpherson. ‘He would seem to have been very badly beaten.’

  ‘And yet he has clearly not been fighting, for where is the opponent with corresponding injuries?’

  ‘So what do you think may have happened?’ asked Faulkner.

  ‘I would say he has been set upon, by those who deem him to be in some way responsible,’ said Taylor. ‘You may think that the murder of Oates was the end of matters, Charles, but it is plain that the men do not agree.’

  Chapter 13

  Egypt

  The light of the lantern sent the men’s shadows flickering across the curved surfaces of hogs heads and barrels that were stacked all around them. The atmosphere was close in the hold, deep below the water line, and the air was full of sound. There was the constant gurgle of water as it rushed along the skin of the ship and the groan of the timber frames as the hull twisted and straightened a little with each fresh wave. Beneath this was the scratch and occasional squeal of the hold’s many rats, and over all the sound of the two sailor’s breathing.

  ‘What the hell are we about down here in the hold, Able?’ said Grainger. His face was full of suspicion, with one eye still partly closed from his beating, and a cut visible on his lip. The look of him was not improved by being lit from below, by the shuttered lantern that Sedgwick had put down on the deck at their feet.

  ‘Easy there, John,’ said the coxswain. ‘It is only the two of us down here. I don’t know where Powell and Black are, but I had nothing to do with what happened to you.’

  ‘So what are we doing down here then?’ he repeated. ‘I warn you now; I am not going to let an
yone catch me that way again.’

  ‘I am not going to hurt you,’ said Sedgwick. ‘I just want you and I to have a little chat about a few things. In the quiet down here, were we shan’t be disturbed any. Come on, take a seat, why don’t you?’ He indicated the pair of boxes he had placed facing each other to one side of the lantern. He had positioned them earlier, and had done his best to estimate how far Grainger might be able to spring with his murderous curved knife. But now that he was down here with the tall, wiry sailor, the seats looked too close to each other. He sat down on his box, and dragged it a little farther back as he did so. His fellow seaman shrugged his shoulders and sat down too. Sedgwick let his right hand rest close to where he could feel the cold touch of his open clasp knife, pushed into the waistband of his trousers.

  ‘All right, my friend, assuming you are my friend, why don’t you tell me what this is all about?’ asked Grainger, folding his arms.

  ‘I wanted to ask you how well you knew that man what was killed?’ said Sedgwick. ‘You know, Daniel Oates, the little skinny runt from Bristol?’

  ‘I hardly knew him at all.’

  ‘Is that so?’ queried the coxswain. ‘Wasn’t he a messmate of yours?’

  ‘He was, but maybe I keep myself to myself.’

  ‘Did you know that he knew his letters? Rosie told me he could read quite well.’

  ‘Can’t say as I did know that, but what of it?’ said Grainger.

  ‘A man as can read might get to looking in places he shouldn’t.’

  ‘He might, and what of that? You reckon that’s what got him killed?’

  ‘Aye, I think I do,’ said Sedgwick. ‘I am starting to think that he may have learnt things about a shipmate that had been set down, in a private place.’ Grainger uncoiled his arms and leant forward, his face full of anger.

  ‘What the fuck are you trying to say? At least those two turds who jumped me spoke plain. What shipmate do you mean? If you mean it was me, why don’t you have the fucking balls to just say as much?’

  ‘Oates had his throat cut, just in the manner that you seem to favour,’ said Sedgwick, his gaze fixed on his fellow seaman. ‘Done with a deal of skill, I should say. Just like when you knocked off the sentry, when we was storming that battery.’

  ‘Use your head, Blackamoor!’ spat Grainger. ‘Dozens of men saw me do that, and all the rest learnt of it soon after. Anyone who wanted to finger me for the killing had only to do for him that way for half the ship to believe it was me. Skill, you say? It takes no skill to kill such a puny man if he be taken unawares. One of the ship’s boys could have done it. Do you not think I can kill a man in many different ways?’

  ‘Oh, I am sure you can,’ agreed the coxswain. He slipped his hand a little closer to his knife.

  ‘So why then would I choose to do it in a manner that so decidedly points back to me? And besides, why would I wish to kill him at all?’

  ‘Do you remember New Year’s Eve?’ said Sedgwick. ‘The Grunters were all having a right roister in the wardroom and some of the lads had a bit of a dance too. I went to the heads, just about dusk. None of the lanterns had been lit under the forecastle then, so when I came back it was dark by the galley. I heard Oates, clear as I can hear you now. He was threatening someone. He said how that person would swing for what he had done, and how Oates would grass on him to the Grunters unless he paid up. I reckon that other person was you.’

  ‘What are you talking about? What would that little shit have on me?’

  ‘I think that Oates had read your journal.’

  Although he was prepared for Grainger to attack him, Sedgwick was stunned by the sheer speed with which the man moved. His hand had only just gripped the handle of his knife before his opponent cannoned into him. He was knocked backwards off his seat and down onto the deck, with Grainger on top of him. The coxswain was a powerful man, stronger than the wiry Grainger, but he was also slower. By the time he had wrenched his knife out, Grainger was lying on his chest, his curved blade pressed against the skin of his throat and his battered face, contorted with fury, was close above him.

  ‘Breathe and I shall kill you,’ he hissed, through clenched teeth. ‘I warned you I would not be taken unawares again. Now drop your knife.’ Sedgwick let it fall from his hand and then lay still on the deck.

  ‘When did you find my journal?’ Grainger breathed.

  ‘A few weeks ago, when all hands were called on deck to reduce sail in the mid watch. It must have tumbled from out of your hammock. I picked it up because I thought it was mine. The one I bought in Gibraltar.’

  ‘And what have you read there?’

  ‘Enough to see you hanged as a pirate.’

  ‘Well, if you are right, and I murdered that little shit Oates for having such knowledge, what will stop me from killing you in your turn, eh?’ Out of the corner of his eye he saw the knuckles of Grainger’s hand whiten on the handle of his knife, and felt the razor sharp edge press against his throat. He closed his eyes and tensed for one final effort to save himself, but instead he felt the weight lift from his chest. When he opened them again, Grainger had gone. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, and saw him sat back on his box, his knife returned to its sheath.

  ‘Did you learn nothing about me, when we were in the sea together, then?’ he said, his face angry and his eyes glaring at the coxswain. ‘I thought you were smarter than Powell and Black, but I was wrong. You’re just as stupid as them.’ He turned his gaze on the flickering lantern. ‘Fortunately for you, Able, I am not the murderer you seek. Oh, I have committed no end of murders in my past, as you now know only too well, but Oates ain’t amongst them. When the crew of the Saint Dmitry ran off into the woods, on that beach in Portugal, I crossed a line. I decided to stop running, and wait instead for your marines to come ashore. I am weary of all the wickedness I have done. So I decided I would leave that life behind. Since I joined the barky, I swear on all I hold sacred I have committed no more crimes.’ Sedgwick picked himself back up and sat down on the other box. He felt his neck, as if surprised it was unharmed.

  ‘How true an account is the one in your journal?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s as true as I can recall it,’ said Grainger, still looking at the lamp. ‘Most of it I set down as hard upon the events as I was able.’

  ‘Did you really hack up that poor man for attacking your captain and then set him adrift on a grating?’ asked Sedgwick. ‘Because I was seven years a field slave in Barbados, and I saw no end of dreadful things done, but none are the match of that.’

  ‘Our captain was a savage man, and not to be trifled with. If I had refused to do what he had ordered, a grating would quickly have been found for me too.’

  ‘But why do you keep such a journal?’ asked Sedgwick. ‘Do you not care about the risk you run in setting down such things? There is enough to condemn you a hundred times over, all in your own hand.’

  ‘Because it helps me to survive,’ said Grainger, his voice choked. ‘I have followed this life since I was no older than one of the ship’s boys. A Barbary captain named Ali Hamadu took my father’s ship. I joined his crew to avoid slavery, and so I became a slave of another kind. They forced me to do such terrible things, so many times that I lost all notion of what was right and what was wrong. But that is not the worst of it. No, that comes later, after many years, when you find that you have come to take pleasure in such base work. I liked to kill. I enjoyed it when I stalked and killed that poor Spanish guard up on the cliff. His was a young throat, tight against my hand, firm against my blade. He was no more than seventeen, I should say. But when I shut my eyes to sleep, the spirits of those I have killed seek me out in dreams. So now I set it all down, every one of my killings. I confess all to my journal. On the page I can control them. It serves to stop them from leaving my book and seeking me out in the night.’

  Sedgwick looked at Grainger in the pool of orange light as he tried to decide what he should do. He had been sure that this man was behind the murde
r, and the thefts too, but he seemed so convincing now, as he spoke from the heart. He could sense the deep ocean of pain and suffering that lay behind the sailor’s gruff words.

  ‘Of course none of this is new to you, Able,’ Grainger said at last.

  ‘What do you mean? I have never been a pirate.’

  ‘No, but you have been a slave. You must have witnessed some cruel things in the middle passage aboard the ship that took you from Africa. What terrible punishments were done to you on the plantation? Does the recollection not haunt your dreams? Does what has happened to you not plague you? You cope with it just as I do.’

  ‘I am not sure I follow you.’

  ‘I have seen you, with your mate Rosso, as you scribble away in that journal that looks just like mine,’ he explained. ‘Why do you write all that stuff down? Is it not for the same reason? Do you not try and clap on to a past that you had no grip over at the time?’

  ‘What? No, no, that is not my purpose,’ said Sedgwick, his voice confused. ‘It is true, I do feel better once I have set matters down, but I have always been clear. I write for the pamphlet I will publish one day, to help the cause of Abolition.’

  ‘Maybe what you do serves both purposes,’ said Grainger.

  ‘Maybe,’ conceded Sedgwick.

  ‘You and I are not so very different, you know, Able. The men call me a man of no country, but where is yours?’ Sedgwick stared in his turn into the lamp. After a while he looked back at Grainger.

  ‘So was all that talk of you being on a Neapolitan ship so much gammon?’ he asked. ‘It was plain enough you had never spent much time in Naples.’ Grainger shrugged.

  ‘I needed to spin some yarn that would convince the Grunters as to how I came to be on the Russian ship. Parts of it were true. I do know my navigation, and I did serve on Barbary ships since I was a boy, but every one of them was a corsair. My last ship was wrecked in a storm off Sicily. I did have a journal that covered those years too, but I lost all my possessions when the ship foundered. The few survivors that made it to the beach that night were all killed by villagers, eager for revenge after years of attacks by slavers like us, but I managed to convince them that I had been a slave too. My blue eyes helped me there. I made my way to Leghorn, and then took up with a Russian privateer. They were happy to recruit any sailor who looked like he had seen some action.’