False Colors (18 page)

Captain Gillingham eased his bandaged foot on the stool and gave a theatrical wince of pain. Beside him, Mr. O’Connor, First Lieutenant of the
Albion
, raised a hand to his forehead, accidentally displaying the hand of cards concealed in his cuff.

“I am far too ill to go,” said the captain, holding out a gilt edged invitation to John. “And as you’ve been humming the same tune all the way from Portsmouth—driving your mess mates insane, so I’ve heard—I am sending you in my place.”

John took the invitation with as much care as its pristine whiteness, the beauty of its calligraphy, and its eighteen-caratgold embellishment seemed to warrant.

“It comes from a fellow called Hibbert, I understand,” Gillingham went on, pouring himself a glass of port from the decanter that stood glittering by his elbow. With the stopper out, the scent, reeling sweet and over-warm, rolled stickily through the room, almost overwhelming the smell of cigars, boiled wool waistcoats, and the sweat that stood out on O’Connor’s brow.

If Gillingham was too robust for a man with an attack of gout, O’Connor’s blood red cheeks and over-bright eyes were too stark for a man in health. “A merchant of some kind. I believe someone did tell me, but I find I have forgotten. At any rate, he owns that big house on Parade Square. You are desired and requested to attend an opera evening in his gardens in celebration of the season. I’ve no doubt the Admiral and all the other captains have been equally desired. Wear your number one coat, I think, and best not to venture any opinions, not even if you’re asked. You mustn’t disgrace the ship.”

John wondered if he could say, “Surely, sir, if you’re too ill your Premier should go in your place,” but a second glance at O’Connor’s hectic flush stopped him. “I will attempt not to, sir,” he said doubtfully.

“I can’t bear the opera myself. Such screeching and wailing! Not to mention the machinery: painted waves ten feet high, gods descending in fluttering streamers out of the sky; explosions, fireworks and alarums. I always emerge with my poor head ready to split. But I understand it’s quite the thing….” Gillingham felt underneath the skirts of his coat and brought out his own cards, examining the spread with an intent eye. “Very well. Dismissed.”

So John found himself in his best coat, with O’Connor’s best Irish linen shirt beneath it, his wig re-curled and powdered a shining glacial white, and the purser’s gold laced hat—ever so slightly too small—precariously balanced atop it, walking across Parade Square in the fleeting tropical dusk.

In the center of the square a gibbet cut a sinister line across the sky, and as John clutched his hat to his head, the wind blew a maggot onto the cobbles in front of his shoe. Drawing back his foot from the writhing thing he looked up at the body that hung, decomposing, in its iron cage. One of its arms chose that moment to separate from its shoulder, falling with a sticky, tearing plop onto the grill beneath it.

Impossible to know whether this was a white man or a black, now, reduced as it was to bones and matter. Above it a yellowing notice proclaimed its crime in ink so streaked as to be illegible. Pressing his handkerchief to his nose, breathing in the sharply reviving scent of bergamot cologne, John took a step forward, standing on tiptoes to peer at the letters. It said “sodomite” surely? Death…the wages of sin…and it came to him that this could easily be him, putrefying for the public’s entertainment, giving the young children nightmares and the older something to laugh at.

John started, guiltily, half turning, hand dropping to the hilt of his dress sword. A glimpse of blue resolved itself into a rotund, middle-aged man in the uniform of a captain, whose absurdly cupid-bow lips primmed up in an attempt to hide a smile. “Did I startle you?”

“I am no phantom of the night, I assure you. Captain Smith of the
Otter
.”
“Lieutenant Cavendish of the
Albion
, sir.” John made a leg, and in straightening tucked his ill-fitting hat under his arm. They turned by common accord to look back at the spectacle of His Majesty’s justice. It shivered in the wind, the rope creaking. “I thought piracy long stamped out in these parts,” said John at last, encouraged by something comfortable, approachable about the other man. “Fifty years ago, perhaps, but now?”
“This war is responsible for many lesser misfortunes.” Smith looked down to the harbor, whose waters held a phosphorescent light. In its unearthly glow, the topmasts of the fleet nodded gently back, lit from below against a dark sky. “We press men away from their homes to risk their lives at sea, will they or nil they, and if they desert we brand them traitors, outlaws, so that they have little choice but to turn to piracy to support themselves….” He shrugged apologetically. “At the same time we are so preoccupied by the war that we will not spare naval ships to patrol and defend the islands. In those circumstances it seems surprising to me that there hasn’t been more piracy than we have seen. It is a weed that grows up when the patch is untended. But forgive me, I am tedious to you in anticipation of being tedious to Admiral Rodney.”
To their right, light shone from the many windows of Hibbert house; golden sails cross braced by black sashes. Its brick colonnade had an almost monastic look, as shadowed figures hurried between its pink columns. The narrow front garden and the palm trees that edged the path glittered with a thousand lanterns in pierced work covers, as though the stars had fallen at Thomas Hibbert’s feet. As John watched, two of them detached themselves and spiraled upwards on a gust of air—fireflies, he realized, anticipating the evening’s dancing.
“Are you…?” Captain Smith indicated the blazing arch of the front gates, where a rank of servants stood, taking in the invitations, giving out glasses of rum punch. A long queue of carriages, coming down from Jamaica’s plantations, had formed outside the gates. Teams of horses snorted, sidling as they were pinched into the narrowest space possible. Black grooms, in a rainbow of liveries, held the horses’ heads, wiped the footplates of the carriages, held open the door for the peacock-gorgeous civilians and their bejeweled ladies to descend. At the door the guests, relieved of their invitations and cloaks, were plied with arrack and pastries.
The night bustled with raised voices, wheels, hooves, and feet. Within, however, a string quartet played Purcell, and the music spilled into the street, breathing calm reason, measure, and beauty, as a counterpoint to the clamor.
“I am, sir. Captain Gillingham is indisposed and directed me to come in his stead.”
Smith gave a smile too good-humored to be called cynical. “He is a martyr to his ailments, poor man. Shall we go in together, then? I confess I have no liking for these affairs, and to cruise with a consort would be reassuring.”
John wondered if his face showed the discomfort he felt at the laughter, the noise, the lights and music. Could Smith see beneath his over-groomed exterior to the child beneath; attracted and repelled, guilty, frightened? But circumstances had changed—the party was innocent enough, it was he who was stained. He shook himself and managed to smile. “I believe I would find it strengthening in equal measure myself, sir.”
Inside, they joined the knot of other officers. Jamaica’s naval establishment, grouped three deep around the punchbowl, made a wall of dark blue and gold that seemed to breathe solidity and tradition. The ballroom was otherwise a delicate creamy white, with jonquil panels, and flowers hand-painted beneath the cornice. Fresh and clean in Kingston’s scouring light, no doubt, to John’s English trained eyes it looked bare, fragile as the inside of an egg.
Once John had elbowed through the scrimmage to secure his glass of punch, he emerged to a dance floor where many of Jamaica’s fine young things were dancing “All in a Garden Green.” A faint restraint about the way they leaned in for the kisses indicated how very early in the evening it was; inhibitions not yet dissolved by rapid-beating hearts and too much to drink.
Through a door to the end of the ballroom hurried a steady flow of musicians. As John watched two men negotiating a kettle-drum through the arch, an eddy in the crowd brought him face to face with Admiral Rodney, conqueror of Martinique.
A slender, refined man with a thin face and ferocious, hawklike eyes, Rodney nodded slightly as they made their bows. But when Smith introduced John, the Admiral gave a wintery smile. “Lieutenant Cavendish. Or should I do as my men do, and call you ‘Bomber Cavendish’?”
John winced, turned the flinch into a sickly smile, and buried his nose in his glass, where various nameless fruits were turning to pulp.
“No need to be coy, Mr. Cavendish. Though circumstances render it impolitic to say so openly, you are owed the Navy’s thanks.”
Choking on a lurking grape, fighting down the involuntary cough and the watering of his eyes, John looked up, perplexed. Was he not supposed to be feeling guilty? How many reversals of interpretation would his actions withstand before he ceased to understand them himself? “I’m sorry, sir?”
Rodney rubbed at a speck which had had the temerity to settle on his gold braid. He frowned. It was like watching a blade being half drawn, slid back into the scabbard—a moment’s sharpness and threat, sheathed. “Mr. Cavendish, pray do not be so slow. It was necessary to put down the Barbary Corsairs and to halt—if only for a short time—the ravages of our coastal towns, the abhorrent trade in our captured countrymen. This you achieved admirably. It was also necessary to do it in such a way that the men in Whitehall could plausibly throw up their hands in horror and deny all responsibility. This too you achieved. Dear me, lieutenant, did you imagine that we would have confined ourselves to demoting you, had we been truly displeased?”
The orchestra—a true Italian orchestra, imported for the occasion—belted out “A Health to Betty” at a volume suitable to be heard over the sound of the top couple galloping down the set as fast as high heels and hoops would permit. As he watched the interweaving couples reversing, reversing, traversing down the line and finally—to great applause—returning to their places, John couldn’t help but give a small, rueful laugh. What a fine illustration of the state of his life; enough to make a man dizzy.
“Forgive me, sir. Do I understand correctly that I was deliberately used, then punished for it? I did not realize His Majesty’s Navy was so much a statesmen’s tool. It smacks of dishonesty. Whether or not I can approve of the ultimate ends of the mission, the fact remains that my people were sent into the valley of the shadow of death and deprived of their prize money when they unexpectedly returned. If this is a moment for plain speaking, I should like to petition you for justice on their behalf.”
Rodney’s stare grew even more eagle-like, intent, inhuman. To John’s right, Smith lowered his head and coughed politely into a closed hand.
“You take your heretical principles too far, Mr. Cavendish,” said the Admiral at last, quite gently. “Pray do not forget that I am not to be questioned or rebuked by the likes of you.” He pivoted neatly—with the grace an aristocratic dancing master must have beaten into him as a child—to catch Smith’s eye. “You were saying something about pirates, Captain Smith?”
“Yes sir.” Smith swallowed his smile, his round choirboy face assuming a serious expression. John kept his eyes fixed on the upturned tilt of the end of Smith’s nose, as he breathed down his prickly, half apologetic, half defensive response to Rodney’s rebuke. Rodney was right, of course. He
didn’t
have the authority to speak to the commander-in-chief like that. He should not have dared it, insubordinate and undisciplined as it was.
“If you remember the
Queen Anne’s Avenger
, captured last week?” Smith continued, giving a jerk of the head towards the open windows where the dim shapes of vendors and whores filled Parade Square, keeping the coachmen of the rich entertained. “The captain of which is hanging out there, looking somewhat worse for wear?”
“Of course,” Rodney brought out a snuff box and sniffed away even the memory of the stench.
“While we were bringing him home, he told me—in exchange for gentler treatment—that he was part of a…
consortium
? A group, at least, which included two other vessels, their rendezvous being set for the third of next month at Pirate’s Bay, Tobago.”
“You want to bring off the hat trick? Get all three?”
“If you please, sir.”
John had thought it was impossible for Smith to look less than good humored, but for a moment he caught a glimpse of boarlike ferocity on the heavy face. The cheerful hazel eyes had narrowed, darkened to bronze. “I thought you pitied them,” he blurted out, astonished.
“I do.” Smith’s smile lay only lightly buried. It gleamed out once more, irrepressible. “As I pity anyone who falls so low. But a man who has become a wild beast must be treated as one, no matter the circumstances of his fall. I’ve seen what they do….” He emptied his glass in one swallow, then chewed on a slice of apple that had turned bright vermilion in the liquor, and looked up with sudden practicality. “But I’m under-manned; Purser, Coxswain, Master, both lieutenants, all down with this wicked ague. I can find volunteers enough to man the lower decks, but as for officers….”
A burst of applause from the garden punctuated his silence, and with one accord the crush inside the ballroom began to force its way out through the double doors. John found himself swept along, an ostrich feather in his eye, the panniers of two heavily brocaded skirts digging into his flank and buttocks as a lady and her chaperone tried to push their way past. With a half shrug of resignation, the outermost layer of naval officers allowed themselves to be scoured away and swept out into the relative cool and space of the garden. There, on a stage crammed full of minarets and miniature siege towers, Rinaldo, Goffredo, and Argante discussed in recitative song the siege of Jerusalem, Rinaldo’s love for Goffredo’s daughter Almirena, and the prospects of a truce.
The babble of conversation continued unbroken around the stage. Off left an idle-looking boy was already throwing walnuts. One smacked into Goffredo’s calf, making him lose his place, and there was a roar of laughter from the crowd.
“I understand the
Albion
is being careened?” Rodney watched the musicians with the appreciative eye of a man who understood teamwork.
“Yes sir.” John smiled, relieved to have been forgiven.
“Then I imagine Gillingham’s officers are standing about with nothing better to do than attend the opera. Do you suppose any of them would volunteer for the task, or would I have to issue an order?”
John looked at Smith, who was now grinning openly, and at the Admiral’s wry look of challenge, and laughed. “I would be very happy to volunteer, sir.”
Behind him Rinaldo hit the first notes of an aria. Silence swept through the hall as the angelic voice soared into the heavy tropical night, bracing as a fall of cool water. John gasped as memory came flooding back on the castrato’s voice:
Alfie looking at him as though he was the fixed point about which the stars moved, the answer to every riddle in the universe…
.
The yearning notes should not leave him pierced through the heart with regret; should not make him want to learn poetic words of love and frustration and sing until he had made something sublime out of his pain. Instead he eased his nails out of the crescent-shaped wounds in his palms and said, rather more fervently than necessary, “I should be
very
happy to be employed, sir.”