"Mr. Kershaw," he said. "Good morning, sir. Now tell me who you spy for on this day."
His bitterness surprised him, as did the question that had slipped out. He had not intended rudeness. But the necessary apology was stillborn on his lips. Kershaw was not insulted, it appeared. The ghost of amusement curved his lips, but overall his face was calm and sombre.
"Your friend will not be joining us," he said. "He is not downriver waiting, that is a lie. We are going to approach a Frenchman that Lieutenant Kaye has intelligence about, off the North Foreland. Sam Holt has been abandoned to his fate."
The wind was blowing chill, but still quite light. Will stared across the rain-washed marsh and woods, a featureless and un human landscape. Inside him was an awful loneliness.
"Go on," he said.
The thin, stooped man was not shy or crushed today. His swinging moods, the fear and gloom that sometimes overwhelmed him, could hardly have been guessed at.
"He got a message through," he said. "Two messages one for Kaye and a word-of-mouth to me. He gave the time and place the gangs were going to meet and do their Adur run, and said that he would stay there, not return. He gave some indication of the numbers under arms, and warned it would be very stiff and bloody. He said that Kaye should tell you."
"How know you this?" A pause. "Are you Kaye's confidant?"
"I spy," said Kershaw, blankly. "That is what you think, so I'll confirm it. Sometimes I do not know whose side I'm on, is all. Black Bob gave me the writing to his master. He gives me everything of Kaye's. He hates him."
The Biter lurched, as the helmsman pulled her round a point or so nearer the wind to keep the channel. Kershaw's thin, bony hand touched the rail for balance. The marks of torture were horrible upon it.
"I was not told," said Will.
"Indeed. Holt's word-of-mouth was that I should, if possible, get the message out that he was safe to Dr. Marigold's establishment for you. One Annette, who could be trusted. I could not make shift. Or, let's say, shall we, I did not. In excuse, I was told it was not essential, at a pinch you would know, or guess. In truth, I had become afraid of Kaye, for which I stand ashamed. I could say I did not know by then that he'd decided to avoid the Sussex venture, but that would be another lie. My message should have been, for you to run to Sussex on the instant and save Holt's life, get him away. However stiff and bloody it will be down there, he is now abandoned. He has been left to face it quite alone."
"They have to know he's there first," said Will, robustly. "We planned to spy the leaders out if we could not get up a force to take them. He's pretty good at secrecy, he knows the area like his hand. When we do not turn up in Biter '
Some look in Kershaw's face caused him to stop.
"What?" he asked. "Surely they could not guess him out? The only way they'd know is if What, Slack Dickie would betray him? But how? But why?"
"I do not know," Kershaw replied. "Leastways, I don't know if he'd sink that low, or if he thinks it that important. The how would not be that difficult, would it? If you know certain people."
"What, the smugglers? Mr. Kershaw, what is it you mean? Are you suggesting Kaye is linked up with them somehow? He is a Navy officer! And he agreed! He would have ... he was taking the Biter round to apprehend them, save that this Frenchman thing came up. I do believe he thinks that is a more important venture, to move against the enemies of the Crown."
Indeed, he thought, he has told me to my face. He has called me unpatriotic over this very thing. Kershaw, three feet from him, remained unmoving, face unreadable. If Kaye is tied to them, Will thought, and my uncle is tied to Kaye, then what means that? Impossible! Whatever else Swift is, he's honest. And he'd 'gnore a hundred smugglers, if he could kill one Frenchman. They are the enemy.
Kershaw watched his face as if he read it. He said quietly: "The French ship we're seeking is very fast, I've heard of her. Two dipping lugs, damn near as long as we are, she moves like shit from out a goose and goes to windward like a knife. Kaye gathered information from the time you saw him at the Lamb. I heard him speaking with one man that I knew of old. The Biter may come up with her somehow, if she be taken by surprise, but if she runs ... She was built of fir, in Kent, by Englishmen. She was built for speed, you know, not honesty. The man who skippers her knows these coastal waters as well as I do; better. Mr. Bentley, I make one prediction only, for I cannot answer any more. Whatever reason Kaye has given you for attempting it, we will not get near to her, or catch her under sail, we cannot. And Mr. Holt is on a Sussex beach alone. I have said too much."
He walked away towards Mr. Gunning at the con, who was conversing quietly with the helmsman. Will ached with tiredness, soon to go off watch, but he tried to struggle with what Kershaw had implied but would not say. Kaye's move against the French lugger was a blind, a cover, because he did not want to land at the Adur, and he had made it impossible for Will or Sam to seek out any other aid in time. The move against the French would do no harm in any case; the lugger was a match for them, would show them heels. But even less than half successful as a venture, it occurred to Will, it would do Slack Dickie good in their lordships' eyes: to spy out, find, attack a vessel full of men who should be chained in jails and prison hulks. The irony, that Sam should have put him up to it, by telling of Celine. And now might be a sacrifice.
The last part, in his cot a half an hour later, kept Will awake, but not for very long, because he felt he could have died for lack of sleep. The part about why Kaye should want to protect the villains on the beach if he did why he might let Sam be killed if true he could not hold to with his mind at all. He saw Deborah in her torn shift, face racked with fear, surrounded by a baying horde. Deb could be dead already, dead many hours, dead to him for ever.
Like all the other things he faced, there was nothing he could do, at all, about it.
From the very first part of the action against the Frenchman, it looked to Will as if Kershaw had got it wrong. The engagement was undertaken fast and brilliantly, a combination of fine seamanship, and bravery, and luck, with Kaye elated to the point of blood-lust. His tactics were excellent, although they did cost several men. The French lost more, however, including their pilot-captain. It would be an extremely close run thing.
They'd gone right round the foreland before they picked up signs of their quarry, and Kaye himself, after poring over Gunning's chart, had climbed up to the maintop to look forward through a glass. This had caused some cynical amusement in Will's breast, for he had decided Kershaw's version would be right in outline, if not in detail. Slack Dickie with a spyglass, keen, did not ring true. Indeed, he'd climbed down again disconsolate, with nothing seen. It was a half an hour later, with the daylight almost gone, before a cry went up.
It was the absence of good light that let them bring it off. Lieutenant Kaye, instead of piling on, ordered Gunning quietly to shorten sail, and made as if to bring Biter to and snug her for the night. From a distance she looked like a merchantman, a tubby, snub by collier from the north. The lugger, lying offshore a half a mile, must have studied them, but decided there was no danger there. She had two boats alongside, disgorging men it seemed, and an empty one, a yawl, was heading for the shore. Impossible to tell if they were starting the loading job or finishing, but Kaye was in the mood to wait and see. Within five minutes, his brig was almost drifting, under rags. The wind was freshening with the dark, and to the north west black, rolling clouds were piled. It might be a very dirty night.