“There is one missing,” he said suddenly, with a frown.
Stephen sat back on his heels. “Who, Papa?”
“The Frenchman,” said James slowly.
Stephen put his head on one side and bit his fingertip. “I have no other figures, Papa.” Then, with sudden cheerfulness: “Might we use the cook?” He pushed his fingers into the boat and pulled out a tiny being hardly bigger than his fingernail. He looked up at his father’s frowning face. “Will it do, sir?” James nodded slowly. “Where does he go, Papa?”
James reached in a finger through the planking and tapped a spot Harriet could not see.
“In the sick bay, sir?” His father nodded and Stephen placed the little figure on its back. James picked up the figures on the quarterdeck one by one, examining each till he found the one with epaulettes. He lifted it level with his eyes and looked into its tiny features.
“Ha!” he said, with apparent joy, and placed his model self next to the Frenchman. Stephen watched him.
“What are you talking about with the Frenchman, Papa?”
James bit his thumb. “He was crying. I made him cry more.” He began to sing some tune Harriet did not recognize. Stephen looked confused, but curious. James suddenly turned toward his son.
“Are you a spy?”
“No, sir!” Stephen said smartly, and lifted his chin. “Death to traitors, sir!” James laughed very heartily and clapped him on the back, then leaning close to the little boy and looking up at Harriet, he whispered: “Is she a spy?”
Stephen laughed. “No, sir! That is Mama. She is very clever.”
James met Harriet’s eye for a moment. “Pretty, too!” Harriet looked away.
Stephen pushed one of the gun carriages to and fro on its tiny wheels.
“I do not think baby Anne is a spy either, sir. I can’t answer for her character, but she is very little.”
A slow delighted smile spread over James’s face.
“I have a daughter too.” He turned to Stephen and took his shoulders. “You must look after them, Stephen. Do not let the spies get them!” Stephen looked a little afraid, but nodded bravely. “Good lad, good lad,” James said, rather distracted, then turned away, singing the same tune again. He brought his palm suddenly to his forehead with a slap that made Harriet jump. “I cannot get that song out of my head. Hate it. Smells bad.”
Stephen took the tiny figure of his father from the sick bay and placed it on the quarterdeck with the other officers and fitted the side planking back in place. James turned to watch him and put out a hand to touch the rigging. His fingers drifted down the main topgallant, and skimmed the mizzen staysail.
Stephen looked up at him and said quietly, “What are your orders, Captain?”
“Are we provisioned and watered, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where stands the wind?”
“North by northwest, sir.”
“Very good.” James traced the stern with a fingertip. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft Harriet had to strain to hear it. “You may set topsails, Mr. Westerman.”
5
Molloy they found in the Pear and Oats wreathed in his usual pipe smoke-though this time when he looked up at them he gave them a leering smile that made it look as if his face would spill and fall then and there.
“Come to make your thanks, Mrs. Bligh?”
“I have.”
“Any profit yet?”
“Nothing but extra trouble and questions.”
Molloy pulled his pipe out from between his teeth, spat on the floor and lost his good humor.
“I should never have let you bounce me about with your cards, Mrs. Bligh. Now I suppose I am to get my share of those troubles instead of coin.”
Jocasta met his eye steadily enough. “If you’ll take it.”
“Bah! Woman!” He looked about the place. A couple of men in worn coats nursed their beer at the far end of the long bar, and a young woman with nothing but a holed and dirty shawl over her stays pushed a filthy rag across one of the tabletops in the middle of the room. She was ghostly pale, and nothing in her figure or movement suggested she was much taken with the world around her. Molloy selected his places of business with care. There would be some warmth and some liquor to sit over, and not too far from the more populated places; but he needed rooms with corners enough for private conversation and where the few regulars would crawl in quiet and mind their own business, and the bright, noisy, curious or prosperous would stick their noses in only to hurry by again quick. “Still too early in the day for my usual trade. Send that lad out for food so at least I won’t starve listening to you, and listen I will.”
Jocasta took a handful of coins from her pocket and laid them on the table by her side. Sam hesitated a moment then snatched them up.
Jocasta spoke without looking at him. “Two doors down. Samson’s pie shop.” He nodded and was gone without a word. Molloy leaned back against the settle and drew a little circle in the air with the bitten end of his pipe.
“Begin, Mrs. Bligh.”
Jocasta hissed between her teeth, and Molloy smiled at it. Then she looked down at the table, wet her lips and opened them. “This girl came to see me on Friday gone, name of Kate Mitchell. .”
Stephen was quiet when they climbed back into the coach, but seemed content.
After they had gone a little way Harriet asked: “Are you glad to have seen your papa, my pet?”
He nodded and touched the rigging of his model with one hand. “He is still very strong, isn’t he, Mama?”
“Yes. He is.”
“And he liked the ship?”
“Very much, I think.”
“Then I shall bring it again, next time we come.” With that he looked out of the window at the passing hedgerow, and seemed to have no further need for conversation.
Harriet thought of her discussion with Trevelyan in the hallway and tried to will patience and quiet into her blood, then picked up the last of the letters from Isabella to Fitzraven. It was only now she noticed that this one had been franked in London, and the date was only some two weeks ago. What, she wondered, would Isabella need to communicate in a letter, given she must at this time have been seeing Fitzraven almost every day at His Majesty’s? It was short and its tone was so unlike the last that Harriet’s heart squeezed a little with the echo of Isabella’s disappointment in the man who had sired her. Then her pulse skipped forward, and she found she was holding the paper hard enough to crease it.
“Oh, Isabella! Why did you not think to tell us, child?”
“What is it, Mama?”
Harriet looked up a little guiltily. “Sorry, Stephen. I did not intend to speak aloud. Something in this letter has upset me.”
He frowned. “It is not about spies, is it, Mama?”
“I fear it might be, Stephen. It might be a little bit about spies. .”
Fitzraven,
I had hoped that we might become friends, but I see no natural affection for me in your manner or actions. I hold Mr. Bywater in great esteem, but I feel no necessity on commenting further on my friendship with that gentleman to you. I do not believe you have earned any right to be consulted as you suggest about who I should consider as a husband. I would not trifle with his affections by encouraging other men. And even if my heart were completely free I would not use my “charms,” as you refer to them, to extract gossip or rumor military or civilian. You mistake my profession.
I see the people you are with and I urge you with my last duty as a daughter to cease any contact with them. Until you can assure me the activities you hinted at have ceased entirely, or were no more than figments of your imagination, your strange need to demand respect through pretended or surreptitiously gathered knowledge, rather than earn it by the manners and behavior of a gentleman, I would ask we meet as mere acquaintances. Morgan has orders not to admit you to my presence.