He was breathing unsteadily. Bentley felt his face begin to burn.
‘Nephew,’ said the captain, ‘I think that I was wrong. I no longer think this is a normal outburst, I think there is a plot afoot. It is too organised. Too successful. They miss Hagan, good; but they get the second. Thank God it was not the other way about, but it is a pattern; there is a will behind it. Agreed?’
William swallowed again. He made a vague gesture, opened his mouth to reply; although he had nothing to utter, if the truth were known. Swift, however, carried on.
‘That shepherd lad, that bugger Fox. Well boy, were you not surprised? And the breaking of the whistle-pipe. An act of provocation. Insane, yes? He could have been flogged. He could have been locked in irons and left to rot. And yet, what happens? There is a will, I tell you, the people have a will.’
William could not quite follow. It was somehow incoherent. He fixed his gaze on a knothole in a deckhead beam. ‘You are tongue-tied, my boy,’ said Swift. ‘Do not be. I know what is troubling you. The beating that that scum handed out. Yes, yes, that is it, no shame, no shame. It was not what it seemed, I am certain; I am certain it was not what it seemed!’
Maybe, just maybe, Swift’s explanation was not so very far-fetched, Bentley thought. At any rate, he dearly wanted to believe it. The boy’s behaviour had been odd in the extreme, true. The silence, the refusal to respond in any way, even to the wildest taunts that Simon Allen and little James threw at him. And God, true it was that his fists had been like bombshells. He had certainly been shamming on that score. He had been playing meek. So why not on the others, too?
His uncle spoke again: ‘We have set ourselves up, William, and you are lucky not to have got a knife between your ribs today. Has it occurred to you, yet, that the shot may have been meant for your legs? Or that when you went forward you were to be bludgeoned or knifed?’
It had not. But somehow the idea was not far-fetched.
That shepherd boy. Since the fight, what had been the villain’s manner? He had been seen abroad. Had he not dropped this pretence, this humble, eyes-glued-down pretence? William was not sure. But by hell, he’d find out soon enough.
He looked at his uncle’s face and was startled by the paleness of his eyes. They were almost white, and he was breathing rapidly. All the fury that had not been apparent the night before at dinner was there, although still deeply suppressed.
‘Be my eyes, boy!’ he said, and his voice was strangled. ‘Be my eyes as I commanded you. But take care! Take care! We are in control of these scum and we will defeat them. But take care!’
William wanted to ask his uncle whether he thought the boatswain was to be trusted. He had wondered at the way the giant warrant officer hung round the shepherd boy. But for the moment, better to say nothing. His uncle’s face was working; he appeared deeply moved.
‘We will make an example, my boy,’ Swift choked out. ‘Be my eyes and find me someone. We will make an example. Find me someone.’
It was a weird interview, it had a strange quality, it was disturbing; and how, he wondered almost idly, could they make an example in a crew that had been whipped practically to a man? But over all, he had a wonderful, growing, sense of lightness, of relief. That damned, dissembling snake of a boy. The laughter of the people rang in his ears again. That damned dissembling snake. His uncle was right.
Loudly, on deck above them, the ship’s bell rang the half. Daniel Swift gave a great sigh, and relaxed. The wide, bright smile flooded across his drawn face, changing it with striking completeness.
‘Off with you then, boy,’ he said jovially. ‘And William – mind how you go. We are targets now, but we will show the scum. Find me a swine, William, find me a swine. And we will lead him to the slaughter house!’ He threw back his head and laughed.
Bentley, as he went about his duties, was not certain, to be honest with himself, if he quite believed in all his uncle had said about the affair. He was tired, and tense, and the night had been long, and very strange. But this much he could hang on to – he could expunge his shame; he could hold up his head in pride once more. There was something afoot in the ship, and he had been trusted anew to root it out. As he came onto the deck he was checked by the sudden chill. The air was keen and icy. He filled his lungs with pleasure, surveying the clean decks and the foam-flecked sea. The cold he had felt in the night had come in with a vengeance. Good. It was appropriate; it suited the new mood. He would find a victim, sure enough. He would not let his uncle down this time. He breathed again, then shivered. Jesu, it was cold.
As always, the worsening of the weather, and the accompanying absorption of the people, pushed at least the outward signs of bad feeling out of sight. The wind veered southerly in a steady arc, until the Welfare was close-hauled and battering into seas that became ever steeper, and ever colder. The wind got stronger, and to Jesse Broad, handing the main topgallants in the late afternoon, the air felt like razors through his jacket and trousers. After an hour aloft his feet were bone-white and clumsy, his fingers numb. In the mess, Grandfather Fulman grumbled as he tried to get some feeling back into his old shanks.
‘’Tis too early for this weather, to be sure,’ he said. ‘We should not be getting it cold like this yet, I reckon. This damned ship is cursed and that’s a fact.’
The gunports were all lashed and weather-proofed, and by nightfall the hatches had had to be battened. But the main and lower decks were as cold as charity, and getting colder. A brisk trade in woollen clothes and waterproof coats began, and some of the more pathetic drunkards, left by now with practically nothing to cover themselves, caused merriment or pity, depending on whom they tried to touch for an old or unwanted garment. The purser began to tout for customers at greatly inflated prices – that even the worst-off had to agree to, if they did not want to freeze to death when sent on deck or aloft.
Butterbum chose this moment, also, to make a further inventory check of the beasts in Thomas Fox’s care. He could hardly have chosen a worse one.
Throughout the hot and foetid weather of the doldrums, Thomas had been fighting a battle to keep the animals healthy. Most of the chickens had finally gone to the captain’s table by then, which was a blessing, and Allgood had one day released him from his heads-cleaning duties, which gave him more time. But the bigger beasts, especially the sheep, were in deadly trouble. The constant heat, the lack of proper feedstuffs, the filthy, insect-infested water from the deep casks in the hold, all combined to make them a weak and sickly flock.
Many and many a time Thomas had wished to tell the purser that the sheep must be killed and eaten. He knew it was his duty to do so, for the husbandman had also to make the decision when the chances of survival got so slim as to outweigh the advantages of fresh meat on the hoof. But how could he do it? He could no more talk to Butterbum than he could fly. So he had worked and worked at saving them. Had coddled and hand-fed. With a pair of shears and Doyle’s help had taken most of their wool off to save them from the awful humid heat below, where they had always to be kept, whatever the weather, by captain’s edict. And had watched them grow scrawnier, and weaker, and more and more like walking corpses.
Now there before him stood the repulsive fatness of the purser, his face a carefully arranged mixture of shock and pleasure. Thomas knelt among the shivering sheep, their wool only a little regrown. The air between the decks was damp, with great runnels of condensation pouring down the outer walls, and drips from the deckhead constantly wetting everything.
‘I have come to check the sheep, boy,’ he said. ‘But before God, I think I am too late. What do you call this, then? Good husbandry? Why sir, I have seen nothing like it in twenty years at sea!’