Falconer's Quest Page 8

  Matt went on, “The world enters in, Father John. And so does evil. Being inside Salem did not keep me from losing my father and my mother.”

  Falconer said softly, “You have given this much thought.”

  “I want to be a man of God, just like you, Father John. But I don’t know if I want to be that man back in Salem town.”

  “It is your home, lad.”

  “It was Mama’s home,” Matt corrected. The unspoken sadness almost made him chant the words. “I don’t know where my home is yet. I pray to God for guidance. I pray that He will be with me each day, wherever my home is.”

  “Oh, yes indeed, well said.” Harkness lifted his chin so that he could use one fist to lightly thump the table. “What a wise and brave lad you are.”

  “I have a boy of three,” Lieutenant Bivens said. “I can only hope and pray he grows into a person with your share of wisdom and faith.”

  Falconer waited until the burning in his chest and eyes faded a trifle, then said, “I feel certain our God will answer your prayers.”

  Chapter 10

  Lieutenant Bivens took to practicing swordplay with the midshipmen to restore his injured arm. He held a heavier cutlass in his weakened left hand, and the middies used smaller rapiers, their blades so thin they whipped like springs. Even so, Bivens grimaced as their blows landed upon his own blade. Falconer heard the clash of steel upon steel ring like a call of former days. Matt watched the middies and the sweating lieutenant, but did not join in. When not involved in his lessons of seamanship, he continued to remain near Mrs. Henning, reading to her from the lady’s book of psalms and singing the occasional hymn.

  During their journey south along the coast of Portugal, Reginald Langston spent a good deal of time in his cabin, working through a box of papers he had collected from his London offices, reading from the Good Book, or resting in his bunk. He confessed to Falconer that the journey was a healing balm, as he gradually set aside the tensions and cares that had been building over recent months. He shared this news almost diffidently with Falconer. The journey had forced Reginald to accept how little control he had over events and timing. He was learning to release his tomorrows to God, and in so doing was sleeping better than he had in half a year.

  The wind remained favorable, and squalls were few. On the sixth morning they came in sight of the cliffs that marked southernmost Portugal and the end of the Iberian Peninsula. The captain ordered the men aloft and turned the ship eastward on a heading for the Strait of Gibraltar.

  Captain Harkness had assigned Matt duty with the middle watch, treating the lad as just another middy in every manner save pistolry and swordsmanship with Bivens. In these the captain silently accepted Falconer’s lead and allowed the boy to chart his own course. That particular day, as the ship swooped through the course change, the wind shifted with them.

  Bivens noticed it as well. He lowered the musket he was priming and called over the cluster of midshipmen up to the quarterdeck. “Wind has gone ten degrees to the north, Captain!”

  “Bosun, pipe the watch aloft!”

  Falconer did not say a word as Matt scrambled up the ropes with the other two middies of that watch. But his heart constricted as he looked aloft. He knew full well that the higher up the masts they went, the more every motion of the ship was magnified. On numerous occasions Matt had been as far as the maintop, a platform and staging area where the lower mast was joined to the upper. The upper one was a single seasoned tree trunk, usually pine. The lower masts were formed by several trunks bound together with iron bands. This time Matt gripped the main shrouds and clambered higher. These shrouds were heavily tarred, which added strength to the ropes and also granted the seamen a better grip. In many cases the boys clung to the shrouds by their knees while using both hands to manage the sails.

  The two middies and Matt, however, were stationed where guide ropes, known as ratlines, connected to the mast. A second circular station was set there for the watchmen. The middies were supposedly sent aloft to direct the topmen, but these sailors knew far more about setting sails than any young midshipman. In truth, the middies were there to learn the ship—bow chaser to stern anchor and every rigging in between.

  A voice spoke softly to Falconer’s left, “It appears a terrifying height from here.”

  Falconer nodded in a brief salute to Amelia Henning, then returned his attention to the small figure above. “It is far more frightening up there.”

  “Does your son know fear?”

  He glanced down once more. “Ma’am?”

  “Oh, it is a silly question. But he is so remarkably calm. I know he is just a lad, yet I feel able to talk with him of nearly anything that comes to heart and mind.” Her focus followed Falconer’s to where Matt clung to a ratline, standing upon a perch that looked smaller than a halfpenny. “How will he get down?”

  “That is part of the test. If he still has strength in his limbs, he will go out the crosstie and come down the outer sheet.”

  “Test?”

  “It’s part of a midshipman’s training, ma’am. Learning to maintain one’s strength and courage where there is both risk and danger.”

  “Oh, there they go.” Her voice raised an octave. “He looks so awfully small.”

  Indeed he did, a blond-headed waif perched impossibly high, two full sails above the deck, upon a tossing sea. Matt followed one of the topmen out along the wooden boom, another middy behind him. They were all barefoot. The topman was an experienced mate. Falconer could see the sailor smile reassuringly as he talked the middies out to the crosstie’s narrow end. There the topman clambered onto the rope ladder, scarcely as wide as Falconer’s thigh. He climbed up higher, so that the middies moved onto the ladder with him holding the upper ratline and keeping it stable. As stable as any rope ladder could be, high above a wave-tossed deck, with three bodies moving slowly earthward.

  Falconer resisted the urge to race over and steady the ladder. He had been tested in the very same manner, and knew the lad had to make it on his own. But Falconer remained so tightly poised to spring if the lad’s grip slipped that he could not breathe.

  His chest did not unlock until Matt’s feet touched the deck. Harkness had obviously felt the strain as well, for when the second middy stepped from the ladder the skipper’s voice cracked slightly as he called down, “Well done, the pair of you! Ye’ll be old salts before you know it.”

  Falconer pressed a fist to his chest, forcing his lungs to drink in a breath. His heart thudded as loud as a hammer on teak.

  Mrs. Henning sighed audibly. “I admire your calm, sir.”

  “On the contrary, ma’am.” Falconer found it necessary to lean against the railing. “I was merely frozen solid with fear.”

  Matt did not skip across the deck, though he might as well have. “I was high as a mountaintop, Father John!”

  “Indeed you were.” Once more Falconer resisted his urge to wrap his arms around the boy. “Yes, indeed,” he said again. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”

  Matt took hold of Falconer’s hand, and Falconer could feel the gummy tar upon the lad’s fingers. Matt craned up and traced the line he had just taken. “I was so afraid, Father John. I prayed ever so hard.”

  “Courage comes from acting in the face of fear, lad.”

  Matt kept his gaze upon the rigging overhead. “I have been very afraid for so long, Father John.”

  “Of what?”

  Matt shrugged. “I did not even know—didn’t know it was fear until just now. Is that strange?”

  This time, Falconer gave in to his impulse. He squatted down beside the boy. “I will tell you the honest truth that resides in my heart. I have no experience with lads. None. But I think you are remarkable, both in what you think and in your deeds. So I shall answer you as I would a man. Which, I think, you are.”

  Matt dropped his gaze to Falconer’s. He had his mother’s eyes, clear as smoke from a holy fire.

  Falconer went on, “You are more a
lone than any lad ever deserved to be. You have lost both mother and father. Yet you remain a good lad, not giving in to rage or useless grief. You pray, you sing, you care for others. Your fear is natural. Your pain is what makes you human just now. But I am certain…”

  Falconer’s throat clenched tight. He used his free hand to brush at the boy’s hair where it fell across his forehead. When he could speak again, he continued, “I am certain that you are well on your way to wholeness—body, soul, and spirit. And that neither your fear nor your loss will conquer you.”

  Falconer had forgotten the woman was nearby until he heard movement. He glanced over and saw how her shoulders were bowed, her head supported by her uplifted arms resting on the railing. He knew he should go to her, but not before he was finished with the business at hand.

  He took Matt’s shoulders in both his hands. “I am very proud of you, my son.”

  Late that afternoon, as they passed Cape Trafalgar, a British frigate appeared on the horizon and greeted them with a round of cannon fire.

  “Captain Clovis sends his compliments, sir,” Bivens said as he read the signal flags through his telescope. “He asks our business and our destination.”

  Captain Harkness bristled at the challenge. “Respond that our destination is obviously the Mediterranean. Our business is our own.”

  Falconer spoke loud enough to cause the lieutenant to hesitate as he sorted through their own chest of signal flags. “I beg you to reconsider, Captain.”

  Harkness jabbed a finger at the warship as it hove to a half dozen leagues away. “No popinjay frigate flying British colors has the right to demand anything of an American merchant vessel.”

  “Permission to join you on the quarterdeck, sir.” When Harkness waved him forward, Falconer climbed the stairs to where Reginald Langston had now joined them.

  “We are entering alien territories, sir,” Falconer said gently. “I would suggest we seek allies in every quarter possible.”

  Harkness glanced at Reginald. But the owner was clearly not intending to offer any opinion. “What do you advise?” the captain asked, looking Falconer full in the face.

  The American ship’s longboat covered the distance in half an hour. The waves were steep and the wind fresh, such that they arrived at the British vessel fully drenched. Falconer and Bivens climbed the rope ladder, saluted first the foredeck and then the ship’s colors, and requested a private word with the skipper.

  A middy led them to the captain’s day cabin. This being both a smaller frigate and a warship, the quarters were not nearly as large or ornate as upon the Langston vessel. A good deal of the day cabin was also taken up by twin eighteen-pounders, the numbers denoting the size of shot the cannons fired.

  Captain Clovis was a stubby, barrel-chested man with a beard that spilled over his navy uniform jacket. He accepted their salutes with a nod, invited them to sit, and directed his steward to serve coffee. While the mate bustled about, Clovis said, “You’re sailing one of those newfangled clippers.”

  “Aye, sir,” Bivens replied.

  “British made?”

  “Boston.”

  “I hear they are fast.”

  “Chesapeake headwaters to Portsmouth docks in seventeen days and three hours, sir.”

  That news turned the steward around. Clovis was a proud man, bearing as he did the imprint of the British navy. He tried but did not fully succeed in hiding his astonishment. “Not much to her abeam, not much at all. What’s your armaments? Twenty guns?”

  “Sixteen, sir.”

  “Not but sixteen, is it?” The captain sniffed. “Fourteen amidships, one in the forecastle and a single stern chaser, why, that would scarcely disturb an infant at rest.”

  “We merchants prefer to leave the fighting to your good selves,” Bivens said politely.

  “Nice to hear a merchant acknowledge our place upon the waters. Why, many’s the time I’ve been snubbed by you Yankee merchants. Snubbed!”

  Bivens cast a glance at Falconer. “Indeed, sir. Not good judgment on their part, I would say.”

  “Drink your coffee, man. It’ll go stone cold on you.” Clovis was clearly mollified by their attitude. “Now then. What brings you on board my vessel?”

  At a nod from the lieutenant, Falconer said, “Might I ask, sir. Are you part of the Gibraltar squadron?”

  “That depends on who’s doing the asking.”

  “John Falconer is a senior official within the Langston merchant empire,” Bivens replied. “Reginald Langston, the owner, is on board.”

  “I’ve heard nothing but good things about yon Langston and his vessels,” Clovis said, settling further into his chair.

  Falconer pulled the oilskin pouch from beneath his coat and used his napkin to dry off the exterior. He then untied the strap and removed the folded documents. “We carry official requests from the French and Spanish ambassadors to the Court of Saint James for all possible assistance. And another from the Admiralty.”

  Clovis inspected them carefully. When he lifted his chin, his tone had become less guarded still. “What do you seek?”

  “Counsel and allies, Captain.” Swiftly Falconer recounted their mission.

  When he finished, Clovis rose from his chair and stumped to the rear windows. He released the bottom latch and used the rope pulley to winch it open. The salt air was fresh and tangy. “The pirate La Rue has taken to calling himself an admiral now. Ali Saleem has given him control over the entire pirate fleet.”

  “You know him?”

  “Know of him, sir. Never met him personally. If we had, he’d not be sailing these waters ever again. Of that I can assure you most confidently.”

  Falconer chose his words carefully. “The war against the French is over…the Mediterranean is open waters.”

  “The northern sea is free and open,” Clovis corrected, addressing his words to the stern waters. “The south is a political quagmire. Do you wish to know why we permit this man to prey upon the helpless? Well, then, I shall tell you. Because we have no choice, sir. Because we are ordered to leave him be, by the same powers that signed your document! The French and the Spanish and the Whitehall officials tie the Admiralty’s hands!”

  Clovis began stumping back and forth between their chairs and the stern windows. Even seated, Falconer was almost at eye level with the skipper. “Ali Saleem is a prince,” Clovis went on. “Not any made-up title. A genuine prince of the desert realm. La Rue is his most trusted deputy. Ali Saleem has entered into a treaty with both the French and the Spanish, who by all accounts are well paid for this patronage. In return, La Rue is free to inflict his suffering upon the innocent. So long, I might add, as he is not caught in international waters. Five times I have chased him, sir. Five times! At least I have caught sight of his vessel and given chase—whether or not he was on board I cannot say for certain. Each time he has slipped into one of his harbors, where I am ordered not to enter.”

  Falconer glanced at Bivens and took a breath. “I would like to tell you of our plans.”

  As Falconer spoke, Clovis returned to his seat, fixing a glare at Falconer that might have melted a lesser man. When Falconer finished, Clovis continued his fierce inspection. But when he finally spoke, it was to say, “I should like nothing better than to come to your aid and join you in your quest.”

  Chapter 11

  Captain Harkness had never had occasion to visit Marseilles. Falconer had been there once and Bivens three times. Together they inked out a crude map, mainly the port area and the old town. Though Reginald Langston had never reason to call on his company’s new offices, he had read enough reports to offer some aid, at least in regard to the upper-class market areas where neither sailor had set foot. Captain Harkness used the largest paper on board for his map—the reverse side of the South Seas anchorages. The map became the centerpiece for their final dinners on board. They plotted with the care of a small frigate entering enemy waters. With meaningful looks from Falconer, they kept their discussions veile
d until Matt had gone off to bed.

  Amelia Henning was repeatedly invited to dine with them. Each time she begged permission to take her meals in the solitude of her cabin. The final night before their arrival in Marseilles, however, Harkness turned to his first lieutenant over coffee. “Ask the lady to join us, Bivens.”

  The young officer rose from his chair. “Aye, sir.”

  “If she declines, insist. As gently as possible, mind. But make it clear we need her presence this time.”

  Bivens saluted and departed. Harkness turned to Falconer and said, “You showed an uncommon way of communicating with the lady, sir. I would rather you handled this.”

  “If you wish.”

  Harkness nodded. “You know what’s to be done.”

  The woman obviously did not argue, for they waited scarcely three minutes before Amelia Henning appeared. The officers rose as one, and Harkness stepped forward to greet her. “Thank you for attending us, Mrs. Henning.”

  “You are welcome. Your man made it sound urgent.”

  “Indeed so. You should find that chair comfortable. Will you take coffee?” Harkness waited for his officers to resume their places, then motioned to Falconer.

  The lady was seated between Reginald Langston and the first lieutenant. She was dressed in the same threadbare garments, but at least they had been washed as properly as shipboard life allowed. Her wayward hair was controlled somewhat by a pair of tortoiseshell combs. The blisters which had marked her face were healing. Falconer found himself reducing his earlier estimate of her age by a decade, down possibly to her late twenties. Were it not for the internal wounds she carried, Falconer realized, Amelia Henning would be a remarkably attractive woman.

  “We arrive in Marseilles with the dawn,” Falconer told her. “Our preparations are nearing completion. We must discuss your role.”

  Her chin lifted into a fiercely stubborn line. “I shall remain with the ship’s company and retrieve my daughter.”