"Bloody pantomime," he muttered. "Will, my boy, that's why you're here, d'you see? Now' to Samuel 'is Lieutenant Kaye on board? And my man Kershaw? My apologies to Mr. Kaye, but I am short of time."
Samuel made the slightest bow.
"You are expected, sir. Bob! Bring hot water from the galley. Hot water! Tea!"
"No time for tea, no time for nonsense," snapped Swift. "Mr. Bentley, follow here. This is for you."
He almost leapt aft, pushing Black Bob roughly to one side. Will and Sam exchanged a look, but had no time for conversation. William got in the cabin behind Swift, and Samuel after him. Kaye, a trifle strained about the lips, was already on his feet.
"Ah, Captain Swift. Capital to see you. How did you with the business at the yard?"
"No matter of that, excellent, right well," he said. "Kaye, we'll talk tonight, sir, I must fly. Now, Kershaw. Have you explained yourself?"
In the cabin dimness, William had not seen the man. He came forward hesitantly, not a little odd. He was not old forty maybe, maybe less but he had the air of someone for whom age was an irrelevance. He had suffered something, something devastating. He had one hand only, and a blinded eye, but the damage was not physical, thought Will. He was strung up like a racehorse, over bred Captain Swift touched him gently on the arm, and he somehow flinched.
"Explained himself? Not much he has! You are too shy, sir," said Swift. "Mr. Bentley, by the kind permission of Lieutenant Kaye here, Mr. Kershaw is the man I told you of. He is a good man -indeed with stars and sights and compasses and quadrants he is a genius and he has sailed with me before. He is to be your tutor, to mug you through your exam to be lieutenant. You are getting old, sir, and you bid fair to disgracing us! Mr. Kershaw will whisk you up to scratch in no time."
William's face was blazing, and he blessed the lack of light. But he would not drop his eyes from Kershaw's face, and all he saw there he distrusted. The eyes were slant, and slippery, the expression cant. The mouth was wet and nervous, the tongue un still behind the lips. Christ, you bastard man, thought William of his uncle: you have got me on this mad ship for some reason, and this is your spy. You bastard, bastard man.
Eleven
The hole they made for Charles Yorke was not a grave, nor yet an oubliette, in theory. There were men among his captors who wanted him to die, but there were others, by now, who could not bear the thought. Yorke lay in the weakening autumn sunshine, beside a rocky bank, and heard them arguing. He wondered, off and on, which faction would win the day, but there was part of him that almost did not care. Charles Yorke was weary, almost unto death.
The sequence of events he'd been a part of was very hazy as he lay there. He remembered leaving London, he remembered stopping with his uncle at the Lodge, and talking through the plan. He remembered that he and Warren dear, dead Warren had talked to people Charles had known before, who were worried over something. He remembered meetings with some leaders, and promises of more. He remembered that they'd said that he could live.
When was it, though? Two nights? Three? A week ago? The men who'd held them, the drunken band, had changed, had grown and dwindled, ever on the move. The only constant thing had been the drinking, and the blows. In barns and inns and scattered villages words had been said, spirits taken, and cruel, savage punishment meted out upon their bleeding forms: see these men, these spies. They are the enemy, they oppose. Learn what we do to those who will defy us.
There was a big man, a fat, strong, tall man who had been there many times, if not all. At first he had seemed a terror, a man without compassion in his soul. Since Warren's burning, Yorke thought, he had changed. Twice or three times he had mopped Yorke's face, dipped bread in gravy and helped him take it down, tried to express something perhaps, then given up on it. Yorke could hear his voice as he lay in the sunshine, deep and hollow, somehow hopeless. We have gone too far in this, he heard him saying. We must not kill this man, it is not possible. It is inhuman, it is cold blood, impossible.
They were in a clearing, in a scrubby wood. Yorke lay on a stony rise, beside a rocky outcrop, full of caves and fissures. The sun shone through branches, dappling the grass. If he moved his head he could see some of the fellows, although not the big one. Another one he recognised, a ginger man, was staring at the ground between his feet, face grey with days of alcohol and fatigue. A third man was weeping, face clutched in his hands. Weeping for me, thought Yorke, peculiarly. For my fate, or his own dilemma. How extraordinarily strange.
Then voices rose, and men began to shout. Yorke closed his eyes, afraid of what he might see if anger turned into more blows and kicks for him. He had a longing, enormous and unfathomable, not to be hurt afresh. His body shrank upon itself, he prayed, he prayed they would not set on him.
"He will find us out!" roared someone. "If we don't kill him, they will track us down and hang us!"
"They will track us down and hang us anyway!" yelled another voice. "God's blood, do you think they will applaud!"
"Oh God, oh God!" a young man cried; almost a boy in fact. "They said that we must save him, didn't they? Oh God, why have we done this dreadful thing!"
"Oh shut your din, you coward, and let us kill him now! At least with only corpses to accuse us we have a better chance."
And the big man's voice chimed in, an ending knell.
"So will you do it then, Tom Littleton? Will you cut his throat, or what? For if it's killing for the sake of argument, count me out. It is too late, too late."
Wrong, though, to say Yorke felt hope renewed. He felt nothing substantial, his mind was all aswirl, thoughts came and went, hope, fear, indifference, non-understanding. He could see a bird perched on a branch, but could not make out its colours or its kind, which disappointed him. Shouts came with murmurs, tears with shouts, then slowly they were mixed with movement, and the clunk of rocks. Men were moving, men were shifting stones, the argument had died away.
This went on, he imagined (or imagined he imagined; he was in a dream) for a time interminable. Sometimes men came to him, their faces swam before his eyes, sometimes he was left. By the time they came to move him the sun was high, judging by the heat. But their numbers had diminished. He saw the big man, Peter, and he tried to speak. But no sound came, no words, and the face was closed and shuttered anyway.
It was a sort of cavern they had made for him. He was lifted, for he could no longer walk, and transported not ungently across a rocky patch, then down into a cleft. Three men lowered him, and underneath him more took his weight, then eased him through split walls of stone that glittered with some kind of mica. As his new world darkened, Yorke came to some sort of senses, and dark foreboding rose in him. He would have screamed, but he saw a face close by his own, and something in it kept his mouth shut. It was a face that could turn to anger and to evil if he made a yell, and they would have killed him, he thought, upon the spot. Sometime, not long afterwards, he wished they had.