Fletcher's Fortune Read online

  Kate looked up at me, pale as death, as always, and with no expression that I could read. The Bosun was staring at the Frogs, pulling his lip and scratching his chin. He was muttering and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Here it comes. Here it comes,” says he.

  I peered at the enemy. They were no more than half a mile off, coming on under topsails. One fine big frigate was in the lead and his fellow close astern. With our speed and theirs combined, I would guess we were closing at about five knots. But the wind was dropping and we were all moving slowly. Ladybird was in our wake and Bonne Femme Yvette making slowly out to sea. It could not be long now before someone found the range and started the slaughter.

  Then a pair of white clouds burst from the bows of the leading Frenchman, with twin spurts of flame and a heavy thud-thud followed by the awful, familiar howl of approaching shot. I was under fire again.

  28

  Having spared his unfortunate father a hideous death by fire, the NOBLE MR LUCEY, blinded, burned and wounded as he was, proceeded to arouse the street to the danger, and on the arrival of the PHOENIX COMPANY’S FIRE BRIGADE added his strength to the manning of their pump until the bleeding of his many wounds cast him down, a hero in the forefront of the battle.

  (From a special edition of the Clarion of the North, 20th July 1793.)

  *

  Two men sat in a private room at the Royal Oak, Lonborough. It was a beautiful day outside and summer birdsong came merrily through the open windows from the rose garden. But inside, the room was cold with a broken friendship. Nathan Pendennis struggled for something to say that would melt the frost.

  “The newspapers have made a hero of you,” he said, “have you seen the reports?”

  “No,” said Edward Lucey, “I’ve been these last ten days in bed, here at the Oak, as you know.”

  “Ah,” said Pendennis, feeling as if he’d somehow deserted Lucey in the face of danger. He looked at the sickly face, heavily bandaged over the right eye, and felt embarrassed. Edward Lucey had lost his father and his home, and almost lost his sight. For a week after the fire his life had hung on a thread and only in the last few days had the doctors known that he would survive. Today, 30th July, was Lucey’s first day out of bed. Pendennis actually blushed as he remembered how they’d parted in London; his own high tone of disapproval and then his own stupid folly in doing the self-same thing that had brought down that disapproval on Edward Lucey’s head.

  “I came as soon as I could, Edward,” he said, as if in mitigation. “Your Chief Clerk’s letter reached me in Polmouth on the 26th and I came at once.” He smiled weakly. “Three nights on the road again.”

  “Yes,” said Lucey.

  Pendennis fumbled in a leather satchel and offered some newspaper cuttings to Lucey.

  “Look, Edward,” he said, “see what they’ve said of you. These came with your Chief Clerk’s letter. My wife and daughters wept over them. They think you a very Sir Galahad.”

  But Lucey turned his face away.

  “No,” he said, “it’s my fault. I brought this on my father. Now he’s dead, and half Market Street is burned to the ground.”

  “But you brought him from the fire,” said Pendennis. “He was still alive when you brought him out. He died a Christian death with friends around him.”

  “Yet it is still my fault,” insisted Lucey. “I have done wrong.”

  “No more than I,” said Pendennis, and both men hung their heads. Each was smarting under a wholly unaccustomed burden of guilt. And each was grieving for the tragic loss of his innocent, unquestioning sense of moral superiority over the common herd.

  “Edward,” said Pendennis, at length, “whatever we have done, whatever has passed between us, we must act together in this. In the name of your father’s memory, I offer you my hand. We cannot allow the Coignwoods to succeed.”

  For a moment Edward Lucey didn’t move. Then he nodded and took Pendennis’s hand. They looked each other in the eye. Each forgave the other, which was relatively easy, and each forgave himself, which was extremely hard. At once the sunshine came into the room and the two men could speak more easily.

  “Was anything saved from the fire?” asked Pendennis.

  “Nothing,” said Lucey, “the destruction was complete.”

  Pendennis nodded gloomily.

  “No doubt that was the Coignwoods’ aim in starting the fire,” he said, “to hinder us in the Fletcher campaign. Well, at least we have my copy of the Will! But what of this young man, Potter? Your Clerk said you have suspicions.”

  “Yes,” said Lucey, “all our people were strictly enjoined never to admit the Coignwoods, and the outer door was locked. Yet Victor gained entry. Perhaps Potter betrayed us? Who knows? All that was found of him was bones.”

  “Yes,” said Pendennis. “Now, Edward, I have something to say to you. Please hear me out before you make a reply.” Lucey nodded and Pendennis continued, “Edward, I have seen the ruins of your father’s offices. A legal practice of forty years lies in ashes.” He looked enquiringly at Lucey, “Were the premises insured?”

  “Yes,” said Lucey.

  “Well and good,” said Pendennis. “And yet the practice itself is stopped, and you must wonder what your future may be.” Lucey shrugged. “In that case, I propose that you leave your Chief Clerk to salvage what he may of the practice, while you return with me to Polmouth. The climate is healthful for your convalescence, and I have need of talent in my business, and ... ”

  “No sir!” said Lucey. “I have an obligation to ... ”

  “Please,” said Pendennis, “allow me to finish. There’s more.” He sighed and shuffled in his seat. “Edward, I’ve five daughters who live for nothing but new gowns and going to balls. But they think you a hero, and as far as I’m concerned, you can have any one of ’em you choose. I’ve no son, Edward. D’you see what I’m offering?”

  Lucey did see, and was not such a damned fool in the face of a golden opportunity as to let his pride stand in the way. He smiled and the matter was settled between them.

  “Now,” said Pendennis, “to business. Who else knows about Victor Coignwood?”

  “Only Mr Day, our Chief Clerk,” said Lucey. “I told him on the night of the fire. He knows everything of the Fletcher business.” Lucey paused and added, “And Day knows how to hold his tongue.”

  They looked at each other and shared unspoken thoughts and all the bounce went out of Nathan Pendennis.

  “Mr Pendennis,” said Lucey, “this cannot go on. We are both afraid of what the woman can say about us, but we cannot be blocked by it.” Pendennis sighed and looked at his boots. The optimism of a few seconds ago had died horribly and the muscles of his stomach turned in knots at the thought of facing ridicule from all those whose respect he was used to enjoying. And this in the very year that he’d finally got himself elected Lord Mayor! It was a tremendous fence to jump and Pendennis faltered.

  “Is there no other way?” he mumbled. “I’d hoped things might be arranged quietly.”

  “How?” asked Lucey. “What other way is there than through the courts? Victor Coignwood must answer to the Law.”

  “But could we win in the courts?” said Pendennis. “It would be your word against his. And she will swear that he was with her on the night of the fire. Only imagine the effect of that woman on any man that sits on a jury! They’d believe her if she said Victor was in the moon that night! She can have no fear of the Law, else they’d have fled, and they’re still living at Coignwood Hall.”

  “Yet we must do what is right,” said Lucey. “We must try. And as for our own reputations, we must hope that enough of our past credit will survive to enable us to ride out the storm.”

  “But my wife,” groaned Pendennis, “my wife will ... ” He lapsed into silence. The thought was too ghastly for words.

  So Pendennis and Lucey argued the matter to and fro. Eventually, and with many forebodings, they resolved to do their duty at wha
tever cost to themselves.

  It is very much to their credit that they reached this decision before rather than after the entry into the room of a Mr Taylor, bookseller of 38 Market Street.

  “Beggin’ your pardons, gennelmen,” said the landlord, as he opened the door, “but Mr Taylor here, he wouldn’t take no refusal, but must see you at once.”

  “Mr Lucey!” cried the bookseller, rushing forward to clasp Lucey’s hand as if it were royal. “Only your warning saved my house and the lives of my family! We saw everything Mr Lucey! First my wife saw the glow of the fire and then we looked out together. I’d have come before, but the shock brought her to bed with the child, a month before her time, and I feared to leave her side.”

  Pendennis and Lucey stared at Mr Taylor, not grasping the meaning of his words.

  “Victor Coignwood!” he explained. “We saw him emerge from your house that night. We saw the blade shining in his hand. I am come to offer my wife and myself as witnesses in your behalf.”

  “At last!” cried Pendennis, jumping to his feet, “We have the advantage of ’em!” He turned to Mr Taylor. “Sir,” he cried, “you and I shall go at once to the Magistrate’s to obtain a warrant for the arrest of Victor Coignwood on a charge of arson and murder, and for his mother as an accessory to these crimes!”

  29

  “Down lads!” cries Mr Shaw, the instant the Frenchman’s bow-chasers fired. “Everyone down!” So we all laid flat on the deck except for him. He had to keep an eye on the enemy’s progress to judge the moment when we should fire. The Bosun muttered some more and squinted at the Frog under his upraised hand.

  “Come on, then ... come on ... come on!” says he, and I realised he was not urging on the French but impatient for the range to close so we could begin. Nothing happened for an age, then I heard “thud-thud” again. Then the rushing of shot and the most appalling crash as a shot thundered into the fo’c’sle bulwark just ahead of us. Big splinters, the length of a man, came whirling through the air, end over end. A terrific thump sounded nearby.

  “Christ!” I thought. “Missed us.” And in that moment Bosun Shaw tumbled on to his back, not a foot from me, jerking in all his limbs and the clothes torn off him. I lifted my head and gasped at the terrible wound that had laid open his head and breast down to the shattered bone. Blood pumped out and he no longer had the look of a human being. Even as I looked he rattled out his last breath and died. He was still within seconds.

  “Over the side with him!” says a voice. It was Kate Booth.

  “What?” says I.

  “Over the side,” says she. “”Tis the way of it in action.”

  “Aye!” says one of my gunners. “Poor sod’s gone now. Nothing to be done than heave him over.” They looked at me as their leader so I got up and took the remains of Bosun Shaw, who’d been so pleased with my book-keeping, and who’d thought his fortune made, and rolled him dripping and half-naked over the rail. Then, being stood up with all the rest laid down, some twenty marines and seamen together, I realised that the command of the fo’c’sle was mine. I gulped at the responsibility but there was no avoiding it, so I looked at the enemy to see how close they were.

  They were close. A hundred yards or less. I could even see the busy efforts of the men at their bow-chasers. I was amazed to see them working their guns on the non-recoil principle, lashed permanently in the run-out position so that one of the crew must swarm along the barrel to ply rammer and sponge with his legs dangling over the waves.

  But they were still too far off for carronade fire. I wanted to be inside fifty yards for that. We edged closer. Then ... BOOM! BOOM-BOOM! BOOM! In a ragged volley our maindeck battery opened fire. Not a fancy drill-broadside to impress the ladies but steady, aimed fire as each gun-captain saw his target. The noise was staggering as the whole row of guns blasted out fire and shot. But there’s nothing so wonderfully uplifting as the fire of your own guns and the fo’c’sle crew leapt to their feet as one man and burst into spontaneous cheering.

  With my own eyes I saw the mighty blow fall upon the leading Frenchman. Dust and splinters burst up as our shot tore through her sides and scoured her decks, smashing guns and men together. Lieutenant Seymour must have been delighted. At his point of aim, a gaping hole yawned through the ruin where her second and third ports had been. Screams echoed across the water and the dull roar of exploding cartridges came from within the hull.

  It was as perfect an opening broadside as could be imagined and must have done dreadful harm to that ship. Meanwhile their gunners hadn’t fired and ours were already ramming home their second rounds. But my turn was coming.

  “Man the gun!” says I, and took up the lanyard where it lay coiled round the head of the breech-screw. I stared over the sights and tried to judge the moment as Sammy had taught me. I wanted to put my fire right into the great hole blown by our guns. Slowly the Frog came on and his bowsprit lunged into my line of fire. Pop! Pop! Pop! came the small arms from their fighting tops. And Crack! Crack! Bang! as Sergeant Arnold’s men returned it. Then the gilded bulk of the enemy’s figurehead swayed into my sights and I took up the slack on the trigger-line. As the gap in her hull came under my gun I saw the darting living figures.

  BOOM! I fired and the target vanished in our smoke. The carronade drove back up its slide and we fell upon it to reload. Kate thrust a cartridge to our loader and I made ready to prick it and prime the lock. Such is the handiness of carronades that I fired again before our maindeck gave their second broadside. With the two ships inching past each other, bow to stern, the ripple of concussions ran from end to end of our ship as each gun, now trained square on the beam, bore on the wretched Frenchman. We were about thirty yards apart and our guns double-shotted, each throwing a pair of round-shot sewn together in a canvas bag for quicker loading. Six hundred and forty-eight pounds of hurtling iron, and too close to miss.

  The Frenchman fired too. Lacking the skill to train on the bow, her gunners had waited with their guns on the beam and they fired as they slid past. More than half their guns were silent, thanks to the mauling we’d given them, but shot came aboard us none the less. Then she was running past and I heaved round my gun to deliver a raking shot into her stern.

  The load was double canister: 800 musket-balls and I sent it straight down her gundeck, through the stern windows. I saw the window — panes, frames, glass and paint — smash into a shower of twinkling shards. I saw her name too, Thermidor, picked out in gold leaf among ornately carved laurel wreaths done in oak. And I saw Ladybird run past her, in our wake, and pour in her small broadside, adding insult to injury.

  Phiandra’s two broadsides effectively ruined Thermidor as a fighting ship. I would guess about five minutes of intense action achieved that and we saw no more of her thereafter. She ran downwind to tend her wounded and fight her fires, and left her consort to do battle alone. But now we were cutting their line, passing astern of Thermidor and about to run across the bows of our second enemy. Things were looking distinctly better. We faced one opponent with ourselves and Ladybird barely touched. We also had the chance of another raking broadside, if anything more damaging than the one we had given Thermidor. If we were quick, our starboard battery could fire straight into the bows of the second ship.

  “Starboard gun!” says I to my gun-crew and saw Sergeant Arnold yelling at his marines to bring them to the starboard bulwark. He was a good officer, calm and deliberate under fire and in complete control of his men.

  So across the deck we went. And from below, I heard the main-deck guns being made ready. Also I saw two of our larboard eighteen-pounders thrown over in a jumble of gear with dead men beneath them. We weren’t entirely as untouched as I’d thought. Then ... Thud-thud! And it was the same story again as the second Frog’s bow-chasers fired. The shot roared through our rigging and a splintering crash came from above. Men jerked up their heads to see the damage. A flutter of torn canvas and cord marked the spot. Our main topmast was chopped to a stump and the men
in the top were struggling to clear away the hanging end with its useless sail and spar. Axes flashed and men shouted.

  “Never mind that!” cries Lieutenant Seymour, from the gundeck. “Mind your guns. She’s coming into range.”

  I looked at the second Frenchman, another frigate, every bit as fine and large as the first. With the wind slacking, she was barely creeping towards us. Taureus, her name was. But, if anything, we were closing too fast. We would pass across her bows too soon and with the range too great for accurate fire. Even as I thought this, Captain Bollington’s voice rang out.

  “Back the fore topsail and take some of the way off her!” Men leapt to obey and our speed slowed just sufficient to bring us to the right place at the right time. I bent over my gun again, to take a sight. We were all set to rake them by the bow. But we never did.

  “Damn their eyes!” says Kate Booth. “Look, they’re coming about!” Sure enough, Taureus was slowly coming before the wind to direct her broadside upon us. Her Captain knew enough of his trade to avoid the threat of being raked, and was manoeuvring for a broadside-to-broadside slogging match. It was a sound move for him to make. He had the bigger ship with thicker sides to resist shot. He had twenty main battery guns to our sixteen. And he had eighteen-pounders, French measure, which threw a ball of nearly twenty English pounds.

  But he was just a shade late and once again Phiandra shook to the detonation of her guns. The gunners marked their aim and fired double-shotted at an enemy still barely a quarter turned. My carronade could do nothing. I was still out of range and, in any case, I was blinded by the choking clouds of powder-smoke lit orange by the flaring guns. I looked back and caught a glimpse of our main-deck guns, bounding like live things in the midst of their half-naked crews with all the tools of their trade: rammers, buckets, tackles and shot-racks. On the quarterdeck, Captain Bollington was alive with delight and yelling encouragement to his men.

  I turned back to my gun and searched for a target but there was nothing to see for the smoke. And then, in an instant, something happened that no human eye ever witnessed before the age of gunpowder. Fifty yards away, a bank of flame leapt from Taureus as she let off her broadside in a simultaneous roar. Instinctively I ducked as the shot found us, and as I did, my eyes swept across the backs of Kate and my gunners to see the most hideous thing. A few paces off was a file of marines, ready with their muskets. Faster than thought, a round-shot passed through them with a deep, swift VOOM! Seemingly without cause, three men exploded before me in a hideous smackety-smack like the slapping of some monster fish on a slab. Blood and flesh sprayed everywhere and the deck ran slimy with it. A man’s torso, limp and severed, rolled against my foot with the lungs and pipes trailing out behind. The face drained its living colour and stared up at me waxy yellow. It was Sergeant Arnold. Automatically, I seized the thing and hurled it over the side. And the ghastly part that lingers in my memory was the lack of weight in that gutted piece of a man that seemed whole to me because I’d known him.