Adam walked to the side of the quarterdeck and touched one of the blunt carronades as he passed. Hot, as if it had just been fired, and already loaded, each round packed with cast-iron balls in tiers, and deadly metal disks. At short range, they could transform a crowded deck into a slaughterhouse.
He unslung the telescope and trained it abeam, and felt the metal sear his fingers. Towards and across the harbour entrance. Like the impression on the chart, “hacked out of the African coastline,” as Julyan had described it.
He imagined the governor’s building. The line of cannon, and the flag. Not a lot of room to manoeuvre, but compared with Portsmouth Harbour, where ships of the line were expected to enter and depart at the drop of a signal, New Haven seemed spacious.
And quiet.
Vincent said, “Shall I shorten sail, sir?” He had moved to join him, perhaps so the others would not be concerned by any apparent lastminute hesitation. And so they might.
Adam looked briefly at the feathered wind-vane. “We’re going in.”
“And the boats? Cast them adrift?”
Adam glanced down at the boat tier. If boats were kept aboard during a fight, their flying splinters caused more casualties. He had seen it often enough, even as a midshipman. Like David … He shut his mind to it.
“Hold your course, Mark. Be ready to run out.” Their eyes met. “Then fire when I give the word!”
“By th’ mark, seven!”
Captain James Tyacke paused at the top of a steep slope and leaned against a pile of freshly cut timber. He sensed that the cutter’s crew had also stopped, and were watching him or peering up and around at the bare headland. There was not only timber, but piles of bricks, either to extend the pier or the gun emplacements, most of which faced the harbour entrance or the open sea. The musket fire and the single explosion had demonstrated more clearly than anything that the threat was coming from the opposite direction.
He tugged at his coat and drew a long, slow breath; he was sweating strongly. The uniform had been a gesture. He was paying for it now.
He could see the flagstaff clearly against the sky, and some of the buildings also; he could even see that the flag halliard was lifting and trailing slightly in the hot wind, which Fitzgerald had already noted with his keen and younger eyes. Not lowered. It had been cut.
Perhaps the governor, Ballantyne, had already sighted Onward and was attempting to warn her?
Fitzgerald said, “Heads down, lads, but keep your eyes open!” Calmly enough, but there was an edge to his words. He was looking down toward the jetty and pier, and the sea beyond. A sailor’s instinct.
Napier was squatting on a slab of rock, the satchel between his feet. He looked up and found Tyacke’s eyes on him and smiled.
It was time to move. Their arrival must have been seen. Tyacke fought the desire to turn and stare back at the sea. Suppose something had made Adam change his mind? Who would dispute it, or blame him?
Fitzgerald stood up and eased his shoulders. “I was thinkin’, sor …” There was a faint click and he froze, and another voice murmured, “Still! Someone’s comin’!”
Tyacke groped for his sword hilt, but let his hand fall. If he had led them into a trap, it was already too late. He called, “Stand fast!” and gestured to Napier. “You, with me!”
He stared past the others at the litter of building gear and beyond, like a skeleton against the hillside, a partly demolished barn with a rusting horseshoe nailed on a post.
“An unavoidable delay, Captain Tyacke, but you are welcome, beyond words!” It was a deep, authoritative voice, and for a moment seemed to come from nowhere, or the ground itself.
Tyacke had on two occasions seen, but never met, Sir Duncan Ballantyne, but he was as he remembered, and as Adam Bolitho had described. A face from the Armada. Even to the neatly trimmed beard, showing grey now against darkly tanned skin.
He strode toward them, frowning with a faint disapproval as one of the seamen released the hammer of his musket. He said calmly, “My own men were watching you as well.”
Two or three heads appeared as he spoke, and Tyacke saw the gleam of weapons. He took the proferred hand. Strong, but the palm was smooth. A gentleman.
Tyacke said, controlling the urge to touch his scars, “How did you know my name?”
Ballantyne smiled diplomatically.
“I know of only one flag captain.” His dark eyes rested on Napier. “A younger blood, too. I am honoured!” He gestured toward the building with its empty flag mast. “Come.”
He was coatless, but Tyacke noted the finely made shirt and white breeches, obviously expensive, as were the black riding boots, their polish gleaming beneath the inevitable coating of dust. About sixty years of age, according to Flags’ notebook. Without the beard, he would seem younger.
Guilty, he thought. You’re as guilty as hell. And one day I’ll prove it.
Ballantyne had stopped and was pointing back at the water. “I see that you were taking no chances, either!” He laughed.
The corporal was standing bareheaded behind his swivel gun, his hair in the sunlight blazing almost as brightly as his uniform.
Tyacke found that he had fallen into step beside Ballantyne. Corporal Price would have known that, at this range and bearing, the swivel gun would have been an indiscriminate killer.
“Your men can rest a while.” Ballantyne waved toward the nearest building. “I can offer you something to quench your thirst.” Again the quick, quizzical glance. “But we are under siege at present! Here-I will show you something.” He halted again. “Your ship is under sail? Then who commands her?”
“Captain Adam Bolitho. I understood that you had already met him.”
The tanned hand was on Tyacke’s sleeve. “Bolitho? Must be God’s will!” He repeated the name, as if his mind was elsewhere. “A fine young man. But a certain sadness in him too, I felt.”
They had reached the gateway to a circular courtyard, cobbled, and probably built by slaves. Common enough in New Haven, or whatever it had originally been called. But Tyacke noticed none of it. Across the courtyard before him was the mast, the severed halliard still catching the breeze from the sea.
A man lay dead at the foot of the mast, but one hand was still moving, firmly grasping the halliard. The same green uniform, but with a piece of scarlet bunting which Tyacke had at first taken for blood wrapped around his neck like a scarf.
Ballantyne kicked a loose stone across the yard until it rolled against the corpse.
He said, “So that they can tell the difference!” He turned back toward Tyacke, his eyes filling his face. “Mutineers, rebels, call them what you will. They are still traitors!”
He walked on, and although Tyacke was a tall man he had to quicken his pace to keep up with him. He thought he had seen some human shadows through a colonnade, as if there were others watching, perhaps waiting to remove the dead intruder.
Now they were on another side of the building, on a terrace overlooking the next stretch of anchorage. There were a few small vessels, obviously derelict or abandoned, and beyond, the full panorama of hills.
Tyacke kept walking toward the low wall but stopped when Ballantyne touched his sleeve.
“No further, Captain. We are possibly out of range here, but why take the risk?”
As if in response there was a dull bang, probably a musket, but no hint of any fall of shot.
Ballantyne said calmly, “We are the ones under siege. We can withstand any frontal attack by those scum, but we are cut off from our supply routes.” His hand indicated the terrace. “This place was built to defend others!”
He had taken Tyacke’s arm again. “Look yonder, Captain. Perhaps the fight is already lost!”