JAMES lay on the foot-lockers, with a makeshift pillow under his head, while Pender put the cabin to rights. They shifted the desk over and jammed it against the damaged bulkhead. Pender transferred the key left behind by their assailants to the inside of the cabin door and locked it. Then he retied the other door handles together, while Harry piled all the loose debris in the cabin in the centre, and jammed the pikes upright, facing towards the skylight. When they’d done all they could, they threw themselves onto the deck, their backs propped against the planking. Pender closed his eyes straight away, but tired as Harry was, he could not countenance sleep. Now all was secure, and the tension created by caution drained away, it allowed him time to think. It was like trying to build a house with half the bricks missing. Every question he answered generated a dozen more uncertainties.
James, who had been still all the while, spoke softly, wearily, with his eyes fixed on the deck-beams above his head. ‘It is almost as if there is some unseen hand intent on our destruction.’
‘Chance,’ replied Harry quietly. ‘We have had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Twice.’ James did not need to elaborate on the unlikelihood of that.
Pender, for all his eyes were tight shut, wasn’t asleep either. ‘If this was chance, Captain Ludlow, I’d be more worried than I am already.’
‘Is that what killed Broadbridge, Harry?’
Harry answered with a question. ‘Who brought him out here?’
There was a long silence before Pender replied: ‘The men that killed him?’
‘Hark back to what Crosby said. A messenger came for him, saying that if he wanted to buy the Principessa, he should come along right away. Crosby said there was a boat waiting. That means he was deliberately lured out here to his death.’
‘He didn’t fall and break his neck,’ said James impatiently.
Harry spoke gently. He knew James to be in pain. ‘Please, brother, I’m merely thinking aloud.’
‘Those two buggers that stole our boat, most like,’ offered Pender.
‘There would have to be someone out here to look after the ship. You don’t leave a valuable vessel like this unguarded in port. It would be gone in five minutes.’
‘Captain,’ said Pender, ‘if’n there was one boat that came out, and one already here, why pinch ours?’
‘There wouldn’t be one for the guards. If they had a boat, they’d do precious little watching. What’s to stop them going ashore when they please.’
‘What about supplies?’
‘They’d come aboard with sufficient to sustain them.’
‘Then if we find out who had him brought out here, we have found his murderer,’ said Pender.
James couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. ‘Count di Toraglia.’
‘The message reached Broadbridge either before or when we were with the count and his wife.’
‘Didn’t Guistiani say he’d only just decided to sell?’
‘Was he precise?’ said Harry.
James pushed himself up onto his good arm. ‘The timing is wrong. I don’t think they sent a message at all, do you?’
Harry didn’t reply. He was reluctant to entertain the notion of the count’s guilt himself, but he could think, at present, of no other explanation. Yet what the man stood to gain from the cold-blooded murder of a potential purchaser escaped him. If someone wanted to buy something of yours, you took his money, not his life. But there was no gainsaying the fact, even if Harry didn’t bother to articulate it, that the men who had first attacked them in the cabin had made their entry with a key. Only the owner of the ship, or his hirelings, would have a key. How that connected to the attack made on them last night was even more of a mystery, but connected it was, for it had been undertaken by the same people.
‘No,’ said James emphatically. ‘No one could sit there, as calm as they did, having just sent orders to kill a man. They would have tried to fob us off.’
‘I don’t know who this Count di Toraglia is, your honour, but Broadbridge knew this boat was goin’ ages ago.’
James spoke again. ‘He havered about selling it. The rumour must have been around that it was coming on the market. Broadbridge could have picked that up. I wonder how much time elapsed between the arrival of that message and Bartholomew finally offering to advance him the money?’
Harry didn’t answer. His mind was racing furiously, trying to make sense of a dozen conflicting arguments. Why had the two men run when they’d come aboard? That didn’t make sense. They could have stayed in the locked cabin, moving Broadbridge’s body so that it couldn’t be seen through the skylight. They had the key. How could they know that of the three men who’d come abroad, one of them was practised at picking locks? He got to his feet and grabbed the lantern off the deck. Pender stood too as Harry called to him.
‘Lock the door behind me, just in case.’
Pender frowned and Harry looked at the skylight. ‘I know the quick way in. If you hear me yell your name, please get those pikes from under the skylight before I come through.’
His servant unlocked the door and Harry slipped through, hearing the key turn behind him. He emerged onto the moonlit deck, moving purposefully towards the companionway which led below. The swell had increased and the Principessa creaked as she rode, hauled up and jerked by her twin anchors. Habit made Harry sniff as he reached the lower deck, and by instinct he registered, with approval, that the air held no odour of damp or rot. Devoid of the men who would normally sling their hammocks here and with the minimum of stores aboard, the deck ran from the tiny manger at the front to a wooden bulkhead under the main cabin. Only the galley stove, the capstan, and the upper-deck supports interrupted the clean sweep. The lantern was not strong enough to reach every corner of the space, so Harry made his way forward down one side, then aft down the other, till he came to the bulkhead that separated the officers’ cabins from the rest.
He opened the door onto a small wardroom, with a stove in the middle and four tiny cabins, two each side. The two men lay trussed and dead on the table which occupied the centre of the room, their bodies cold to the touch. They were dressed in grubby shirts, breeches, and waistcoats. These, in the local manner, were gaily embroidered and decorated with coloured beads, which gave a macabre contrast to the looks of pain and suffering on their faces.
Unlike Broadbridge, they had not died without a struggle, for as Harry held the lantern over them he could see that their clothes were in disarray, and their faces bruised and cut. No surprise in these deaths. These men had been brutally overpowered. They were tied hand and foot, with several loops of rope around their upper body, and Harry knew just by looking at them that the corpses had been made ready to be slung over the side, very much in the manner that he and Pender had disposed of two other unfortunates tonight.
But Broadbridge had not been prepared for that. It was Pender who trussed him up. The late captain had been sat in his chair like a statue, stiff and cold like these two, as though he had been deliberately left, like the skeleton guarding a pirate’s treasure. It smacked of the same display as Captain Howlett swinging from his makeshift gibbet.
‘He was there, at the Guistianis’. He could easily have overheard them talking about the Principessa. And last night, just after we were attacked, Tilly came marching by, bold as brass, with a file of marines.’
‘I’m still left with the thought, why Broadbridge?’ said James.
‘Struck me as a touch headstrong, Mr James. Happen they thought no one else would fall for their lure.’
Harry answered James’s next question before he asked it. ‘Perhaps the French have someone in Ma Thomas’s. A spy. Though with a gossip like Crosby I doubt it’d be necessary.’
‘That is a very imaginative leap, Harry.’
‘Can you not see the hand of the French in this, James?’
‘I can see that there are other possibilities, perhaps too many for comfort.’
Harry started to pace up and down the available space, which, given their precautions, was not very much. ‘When we came aboard and found his body we surmised that they hadn’t slung him overboard because of the incoming ships. What if they’d never intended to put him over the side?’
‘To what purpose?’
‘To the same purpose as hanging Captain Howlett. To serve as a warning to the British sailors that they are not safe, even in harbour.’ Harry increased the speed of his pacing. ‘The people we fought tonight were the same crowd that attacked us last night.’
‘Yes. But we both surmised that it was because they thought we were king’s officers,’ said James.
Pender was beginning to see what Harry was driving at. ‘We were on the wrong track altogether. Go on, Captain.’
‘I think they attacked us by mistake. Odd that I hinted as much to Bartholomew. I was trying to create the illusion that he and his compatriots were threatened, thinking that might get him to help me. Was I closer to the truth than I knew? Were they really lying in wait for Broadbridge? He was wearing a blue coat too. With the Swiftsure just arrived they might know he was in that vicinity, and what he was after.’
‘He had a lot of men with him, your honour. Too many to attack.’
‘Quite a number of them off the Swiftsure, Pender. As for his own men, he would have had to spread them along the quayside to catch those coming in. No point in standing together all in a bunch.’
‘But they wasn’t on the quay, they came down the alley from the town.’
‘Perhaps he’d only just gathered them up.’
James was not finished with his devil’s advocacy, needing for his own satisfaction to chase the very thought which came into his mind.
‘Could that not imply that someone at Ma Thomas’s tavern wanted him dead, hired these people to do the deed? They failed last night, so they lured him out to this ship tonight.’
Pender cut in, with such certainty that his words brooked no argument. ‘Not someone at Ma Thomas’s. Why lure him out here to kill him, and two others as well, when you can knife him in his bed?’
‘That would attract attention to the place.’
‘That’s naïve, James, if I may say so, even for someone like you. I doubt the customers of Ma Thomas’s, or the lady herself, would have much trouble, or any qualms, about disposing of a corpse. No. The question you must ask yourself is who stands to gain from this death. Quite obviously the French would do all in their power to hamper the efforts of British privateers, to stop them interfering with their trade.’
After a long pause, James finally conceded Harry’s point. ‘There are things we may not know about, some form of rivalry. But it does increasingly look to be the work of the French.’
‘I would guess that had we not happened along last night, Broadbridge and perhaps one or two of his hands would have been found at daybreak, hanging from a gibbet in the same manner as Howlett.’
‘I doubt my brain can contain this, Harry. I yearn for some sleep. Perhaps things will be clearer in daylight.’
James moved slightly, and his gasp of pain was clearly audible.
‘I’ll take first watch, Captain,’ said Pender.
Harry didn’t sleep, mulling over in his mind what he knew, and what he suspected. More importantly, what to do about it. If he could prove a connection, Tilly would be obliged to hoist anchor and leave at the very least. Yet he was at a loss to know whom to approach in order to make something happen. Doria, he felt instinctively, would be useless, since he patently cared only for his pocket. The power structures hereabout were so fragmented as to baffle an outsider. Perhaps he could get Bartholomew to act. Whoever lured him and his compatriots here, and granted them permission to sail, might strongly favour the British cause, instead of doing it for the profits that the privateers brought. Thinking about Doria, and his pocket, and profits, made him wander off at a tangent.
How did Bartholomew avoid excise duty? He conjured up a memory of his own captures. That gave him pause. He could see a pile of cargo in his mind’s eye, with cordage and sails, and all manner of items from barrels of turpentine to boxes of nails. But what of the vessel itself? If you took prizes, you captured ships. You could unload a cargo at any convenient bay, and with such a mountainous coastline there was no shortage of places hereabouts. And moving goods on mules in these parts excited no comment, since it was the customary form of transport. But you could not dispose of the ships themselves so easily, and they represented a major share, sometimes the best part, of the profits to be derived from privateering. Bartholomew must be disposing of his cargoes, vessels and all, somewhere else entirely, and only using Genoa as a place to victual.
And the lack of proper crews? He distinctly remembered Hood saying that they went in for long voyages. The longer the voyage, the more men you needed. Every ship you took had to have a strong enough party aboard to both sail the prize and cow the prisoners. With the size of crew Bartholomew and his acolytes took to sea, any reasonable success would leave them without sufficient crew to man their own ships. And sailing in convoy? He would hate to do that, for it implied some sort of commodore. Someone would have to coordinate the actions of the various ships in the fleet, otherwise they’d be forever fouling one another’s hawse.
And there was bound to be no end of arguments. It stood to reason that men who held command in such circumstances would not take lightly to having their actions either directed or questioned. And when it came to sharing out the booty, there would be endless disputes about who did the most to effect the capture in the first place. At that moment Harry knew that he could never sail with Bartholomew and his band.
Harry was off again on another tangent. They must drop off their ships and goods at another port, re-embarking their crews, then sail back to Genoa to spend the money. That meant that the place Bartholomew unloaded was not secure. He shook his head violently, forcing his mind back to the more immediate problem, searching for a solution.
With the clarity that often comes from thinking laterally, his mind cleared away the inessentials, leaving the core of the problem exposed. Nothing he could do, in the form of laying accusations, would shift that French sloop. It had to be the actions, or the disapproval, of someone much more powerful. Also, he doubted, without positive proof, impossible to refute, that even the eminent Admiral Hood could achieve as much. The chances of laying a hand on the actual person responsible posed insurmountable difficulties. Having exposed the nub of the problem, it seemed to require little mental effort to expose the solution. He recalled the conversation with Hood, and the suggestion that he should just blow it out of the water.
Harry stopped frowning and smiled, half wondering if this was what Hood had been hinting all along. The British navy couldn’t go near the French ship. Up until a few hours ago neither could he, for he lacked the means. But not now. Even if he declined the half-offered chance to join the syndicate, perhaps he could convince Bartholomew that Broadbridge’s death was a warning to him and all his fellow captains. In that case it might be possible to persuade him to take some action, in conjunction with Harry, to remove the threat altogether.
Harry felt the blood begin to race through his veins as the outline of his proposed action took shape. He started guiltily. Was this his real reason for suggesting that James have his wound attended to aboard the Swiftsure? That his brother would then be away from him, and unable to question or interfere with his plans.
It was the old thrill, when an idea presented itself and the whole thing seemed to fall into place in a matter of seconds. It was all there now in his mind’s eye. A blatant attack, guns blazing, was out of the question. Hood couldn’t do it, and neither could he. But what was to stop him, with or without the aid of Bartholomew, from adopting the same tactics as the French, and indulging in a little activity at night? Harry had been given plenty of time to examine the sloop. She had no boarding nets rigged, so given enough people he could make her capture painless, and above all, quiet. It couldn’t be done with a British ship in the harbour. But Swiftsure was due to sail tomorrow. There would be a gap of at least two days between her rejoining the fleet and another British warship coming in to revictual.
Given luck they could take her, cut her cable, and sail her out of the harbour, for all the world as though she’d set out on her own. A stage-managed capture, away from the sight of land, by a ship of the Royal Navy would be easy to arrange. Harry’s smile increased in size, as he contemplated Hood’s response as Harry Ludlow, having not only turfed the French out of Genoa, turned up off Toulon with their ship as a prize.
He took over the watch from Pender earlier than necessary, and had his servant let him out of the cabin again, ordering him to get some sleep. If he was going to go through with his plans he needed to know if the Principessa was a good ship to buy. As the sun rose over the mountains he set about checking the rest of the ship, half his mind on what he was examining, and the other half gnawing away at his scheme, looking for flaws.
To some it would seem ghoulish, to be looking over the Principessa now, given the recent deaths. It was even more ghoulish to contemplate the possible quality of Broadbridge’s men. Sutton and his mates were now without a captain, and there should be enough real sailors aboard to make a start at forming an efficient crew. If they were of the right stripe he’d have no need to involve Bartholomew. And if he could accomplish his goal with what was to be his own crew, it would augur well for the future. A successful action, right at the beginning, would do wonders for their morale. It sounded as though they’d been on short commons under Broadbridge, both in the article of food and the opportunity for a bit of profit.
They’d had to watch the crews of the other ships flinging money about and behaving as though Genoa was Fiddler’s Green, which must have been galling. A capture, and a payment to go with it, would be all he needed to have their undying loyalty. He was standing on what seemed a dry and weatherly ship. Given a willing crew, all the rest he could manage. The more he thought on it, the better it looked. All Harry needed to square the circle was his exemptions from Hood, and as far as the Mediterranean was concerned he was sitting pretty.