Renzi sat back. It was Wilikins. The only one to know if he’d taken the bait in order for Miller to put it in train. ‘And it worked, I do confess.’
‘Um, do you tell me now, Mr Smith, how did you catch on to us at all?’
‘I’ll let you know if, first, you tell me something. What became of the crews of the prizes you captured?’
‘Oh, well. Had to make it all pay, so had an arrangement with Emperor Dessalines in Haiti. Quite took to the idea of running white slaves.’
‘You … sold them into slavery?’
‘Don’t take on so. You’ll get ’em back, should you make a ruckus. Can’t be seen to have any kind o’ slavery, his nation founded on the back of a slave revolt.’
Renzi shook his head in disbelief and admiration. The whole thing could only have worked with meticulous attention to detail, immaculate management and business acumen on a heroic scale.
‘Very well. This is how you were dished, Mr Miller.’
There was no need to involve Louise but by the time he had finished there was admiration on both sides. With nothing in writing and everything hearsay, there was every likelihood that the man would get away with whatever he could salvage from the sudden demise of his business.
In a way, Renzi could only honour him for the achievement.
Chapter 13
Dodd entered the room diffidently. ‘Can I show you something, sir?’ he asked, hovering.
‘Oh, er, I think we’ve concluded our little talk,’ Renzi said. ‘Thank you, Mr Miller, for a very enlightening conversation.’
He rose and left with the sergeant. There were more than enough men to safeguard their capture and the prisoners could await developments.
Dodd led him out of the front of the house. ‘There, sir,’ he said, pointing at the fort where a ridiculously large Union Flag flew proudly aloft.
Renzi beamed. They had done it! Now to savour the sweets of victory.
He handed over to Curzon and stepped out for the fort. He would hear details of the action first, then join Kydd in L’Aurore for a suitably rousing celebration.
At the gate two Royal Marine sentries from the ship recognised him and, with huge grins, elaborately presented arms. He doffed his hat to them and went inside.
It was a bedlam of noisy activity and Renzi quickly picked up that this had been selected as the provisional seat of government of the new military ruler of Marie-Galante.
‘Er, where’s the, er, governor?’ he asked a distracted officer.
‘Oh – in the end office,’ he said, and bustled off.
Renzi had a duty before anything else to report that the prime objective of the assault had been secured, so he went down the corridor to the large office at the end. He knocked at the open door.
At the commandant’s desk sat Kydd, looking worried, an army adjutant politely waiting while he read a document.
‘Ahoy there!’ Renzi said lightly.
‘Oh? Ah – it’s you, Nicholas.’ He turned to the army officer. ‘Do spare me ten minutes, if you will.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ the man said, and left quietly.
Kydd, deep lines of tension in his face, motioned Renzi to a seat. ‘Did you find your base?’
‘Indeed. All’s under hatches, including His Knobbs. It’s the end for them.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Kydd said, but his tone betrayed deep distraction.
‘You’re governor, then?’
‘I’m senior naval officer in charge, if that’s what you mean. I keep post until relieved by a civil appointee.’
‘Not Tyrell?’
‘Captain Tyrell fell in the action.’
‘I should say I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘And I hope even sorrier to hear that I’ll probably swing for it,’ Kydd said bitterly.
Renzi couldn’t believe his ears. ‘I thought you said-’
‘He was shot from behind. Captain Hinckley saw me standing over the body with a smoking gun.’
‘You – you didn’t-’
‘No,’ Kydd said coldly. ‘I did not. But I’m being blamed for it.’
‘How can this be so?’
Kydd explained the simple circumstances behind the situation, then went on sourly, ‘As there’s none higher than me to have me arrested, I’m free as one of your summer clouds. I can do what I like – which is anything, as here everyone is under martial law and I’m the last authority.’
It was bizarre – and deadly serious.
‘So what will happen?’
‘I can’t blame Hinckley. He saw what he saw and has a duty to lay the information at the proper level – after we return.’ His face went bleak. ‘Until then I must do my duty.’
‘You’ll see it through, brother, never fear.’
‘With every wardroom and mess-deck in the squadron alive with the gossip that I’ve taken my revenge? A hard thing to get by, Nicholas.’
Renzi could think of nothing to say that was not feeble in the face of what Kydd had to endure now. At a stroke his elation had evaporated and he was left with a lowering sense of inevitability.
‘Thus, old friend, you see I have to get on. I’ll join you in L’Aurore when I can.’
So close to Antigua, the news brought an instant response from St John’s. An interim administrator was appointed and sent in the same vessel that brought Kydd’s recall. He would go in L’Aurore as, in the sight of all, he remained her lawful captain.
When she picked up her moorings in St John’s Road, Kydd’s pennant still flew defiantly; it would take nothing less than a court-martial to decree its hauling down. Aware that every eye in the fleet was now on him, he boarded his barge in immaculate full-dress uniform with all the dignity he could muster.
It was more than two miles, past every ship of the Leeward Islands Squadron, before he was able to arrive at the stone jetty. He could feel dozens of telescopes, hundreds of eyes, all feasting on the spectacle of the hour. He sat alone, looking neither left nor right, Poulden giving his orders in a subdued manner, the men avoiding his eye as they pulled their oars.
And there was not a thing he could do – neither shout his innocence to the skies nor blaze his contempt on all who could believe him capable of the act of murder.
Instead he ignored the gaping onlookers and boarded his carriage with his head held high to be whisked away to the admiral’s residence.
Half expecting the guard turned out and a provost with an arrest warrant waiting, he was relieved to be shown immediately into Cochrane’s office.
‘Get out, Flags,’ the admiral told his aide and waited impatiently until they were alone.
‘Sit down,’ he told Kydd testily. ‘We all know what this is about.’
He fixed his eyes in a piercing gaze on him. ‘Did you do it?’
Kydd gulped, as he held back the torrent of feeling that threatened to unman him. ‘No, sir.’
‘Hinckley saw only you, standing with a gun just fired over the body, no one else in sight. What do you say to that?’
‘I – I can’t account for it, sir. I saw Captain Tyrell, started up towards him and tripped. The gun went off. When I reached him I found he was already dead.’
‘Damn it all,’ blazed Cochrane, slamming his hand on the desk and rising in frustration. ‘You – the captain of a prime frigate – and you’re saying you fell over! Tripped! For God’s sake, give me something I can use to stop this going to trial.’ He began pacing the room, his expression grim. ‘You know you’ve robbed me of my victory,’ he said, with a twisted smile. ‘There’s going to be nothing but this affair spoken of in London these six months.’
Something of the sense of what he’d said penetrated and he tried to make amends. He sat in a chair opposite. ‘I’ll grant he was a tyrant, a miserable dog who deserved his fate – but, Hell’s bells, the world won’t see it that way.’
Kydd replied in a low voice, ‘One of my previous officers serving in Hannibal told me in confidence he thought the man was mad – he could be right.’