Winds of Folly (23 page)

Nathan was reduced to silently shaking his head. The Queen's expression hardened. ‘You do not tell me you seriously contemplate returning to Corsica.'

‘That is something I must discuss with the British Envoy,' Nathan prevaricated.

The Queen turned her face towards Lady Hamilton. She looked, Nathan thought, like one of Emma's Attitudes, if nothing like as pretty. One of the Furies perhaps.

‘Sir William will do anything for a quiet life,' returned Emma mildly. ‘He has a sign above his bed that reads “
Ubi bene, ibi patria
” – where I am at ease, there is my homeland. His priority is to ensure that he continues to live peacefully in Naples until he dies. And in the present circumstances he thinks neutrality is the safest option.'

Nathan stared at her in amazement, not so much at what she had said but how she had said it. Her French – unlike her English – was flawless; it should not have mattered, but it gave him a completely different view of her.

‘And did neutrality save Tuscany?' the Queen demanded. She was close to tears. ‘Did it save Genoa? Is it saving the Veneto? When will these people learn? Did it save France, or my sister, when the King her husband decided
he
would do anything for a quiet life? Pah! It makes me sick.' She turned back to Nathan. ‘You will go to Venice,' she said. It was like an order. ‘And if Dandolo is dead, then another will take his place. It will be arranged.'

*

It was almost dusk when Nathan returned to the
Unicorn
. He felt as weary as if he had done a full day's hauling upon the ropes, and his brain felt as ill-used as his body. But he knew as soon as he stepped aboard that it was not yet over. The hands appeared sullen and apprehensive and the officers tense.

‘What is amiss?' he enquired of Duncan, taking him aside.

‘I regret to have to inform you, sir, that one of the officers has been struck by one of the men.' Duncan kept his voice low though every man aboard must have known of the incident. And Nathan knew at once who the officer must be.

‘Mr Bailey,' he said.

‘Yes, sir.'

Damn him to hell. For striking an officer was a hanging offence.

‘And who struck him?' He knew this, too, but he hoped against hope that it was not true.

‘George Banjo, sir. I have placed him in irons in the orlop.'

‘A
ll hands to weigh!'

At the shrill wailing of the boatswain's pipes the two English men-o'-war seemed to stir restlessly at their moorings. Then came the rush of feet upon the decks as the hands began the laborious process of weighing anchor. Laborious but welcome, at least to the
Unicorn
's Captain, who watched with grim satisfaction as his ship came alive with running, swarming men.

‘Topmen aloft!'

‘Ship capstan bars!'

Despite the wide variety of entertainment available ashore – and the antics of the Neapolitan court could not fail to appeal to anyone with the slightest sense of the absurd – Nathan was not at all sorry to be leaving the place; he only wished he could have left his problems with it. He lifted his gaze to the shore. It was barely sunrise and the city, all heedless of this busy, if orderly, bustle, slept on. But perhaps not entirely heedless. Nathan looked up towards the heights of Pizzofalcone and won dered if Sir William Hamilton was watching their departure
from his observatory in the Palazzo Sussa, his lovely lady at his side.

‘Pin and swift!'

Nathan had taken his leave of them both the night before and he writhed inwardly at the memory, and the look in Emma's eye, when she had wished him bon voyage.
I hope you will take fond memories with you, Captain, of your brief stay in Naples
. Indeed he would, and she knew what would be the most vivid of them in the lonely hours of the night, the saucy witch.

‘Heave and rally!'

The hands leaned their weight into the capstan-bars, the messenger slowly coiled round the drumhead, and the cable gave a long groan as they took up the slack. The merest hint of a breeze stirred the still waters and swept away the thin cobwebs of mist lingering in the shallows.

‘Heave and weigh!'

A brief clouding of the water at the bow as the heavy anchor stirred from its sandy bed in the depths below, and slowly, painfully slowly to the music of its own complaints and the rhythmic clicking of the pawls, the heavy cable came aboard. It was the only music permitted, at least aboard the frigate, for Mr Duncan frowned upon singing in the King's Navy while the men were at work. But from across the water came the jaunty chant of the shantyman aboard the
Bonne Aventure
where Lieutenant Compton clearly favoured a more relaxed regime.

What will we do with a drunken sailor,

What will we do with a drunken sailor,

What will we do with a drunken sailor,

Earl-eye in the morning!

An obvious choice but no less popular for that, judging from the lusty chorus as they heaved the capstan round:

Way hay and up she rises

Way hay and up she rises

Way hay and up she rises

Earl-eye in the morning!

Slowly under topgallants and staysails, and with the merest hint of a breeze from the south-west, the two vessels slipped from their moorings off the mole. But whether or not they were watched from the shore, there was one at least who observed their departure from the sea. As they glided through the silent anchorage, Nathan glanced towards the Neapolitan flagship and saw the lone figure on the weather side of the poop deck. Admiral Caracciolo had risen early to see them off. Nathan could not help but wonder why – and at the nature of the missive that had alerted him to their departure. He wondered, more pointedly, if the Admiral had given orders to have them shadowed out to sea, but there was no sign of life aboard the three Neapolitan frigates. Their sails were furled, their flags flapping idly in the breeze; they might have been moored in cement.

The two men solemnly raised their hats and exchanged bows across the half-cable's length that separated them as the impudent canto of the shantyman rang out across the still waters:

Shave his belly with a rusty razor,

Shave his belly with a rusty razor,

Shave his belly with a rusty razor,

Earl-eye in the morning!

‘Let go the foretops'l. Let go the maintops'l.'

The capstan still turning steadily and the sails filling as the frigate cleared the mole and met the first gentle swell out in the bay. More music now to Nathan's ears as the ship gathered way, and to the groaning voice of the cable and the clicking castanets of the pawls was added the full orchestra of creaking ropes and spars and blocks and the harmonious rush of water along her sides.

‘Helm-a-lee!'

‘Course nor'-nor'-west.'

Nathan hoped they would get the message, those hidden watchers on the shore, as the frigate's bows came round to the north. Back to Corsica and be damned to the lot of you.

Give 'im a poke at Emmy Lyon

Give 'im a poke at Emmy Lyon

Give 'im a poke at Emmy Lyon

Earl-eye in the morning!

Nathan's head jerked round and he stared back towards the
Bonne Aventure
. It was not unusual to substitute bawdy lyrics for the orthodox version but he was startled to find Emma the subject of a capstan shanty. Was she known throughout the fleet, then – or was this a singular tribute? And how the hell did they know her by her maiden name?

There was a stamp of feet from the forecastle as his own hands joined in the lustful chorus. Mr Duncan reddened and raised his chin to bellow down the length of the gundeck but Nathan caught his eye and gently shook his head. It would reinforce the view that he was soft on the crew; they'd see a harder side soon enough when he dealt with the problem awaiting him down in the orlop deck.

Perhaps this would not have been a priority with other
Captains, but Nathan hated the idea of hanging any man, and besides, there was a personal bond with this one. He had purchased Banjo's freedom with his own money from the Governor of New Orleans when the African had helped to save the ship off the coast of Louisiana, and ever since he had been a valued, if occasionally difficult, member of the crew. He even acted as one of Nathan's unofficial bodyguards when the Captain took it upon himself to lead a boarding party or an action ashore. And now he was in chains in the dark limbo beneath the waterline.

There were two versions of the incident that had led to his arrest.

The official one – related to Nathan by the first lieutenant – was that Banjo had offered his unsought advice to Lieutenant Bailey as to the correct way of frapping the gun-tackle to the barrel of an 18-pounder, and the officer, taking exception to this, had called him a black heathen bastard, whereupon the gun captain had struck the officer in the face with his fist.

The unofficial version – related to Nathan by Gilbert Gabriel in the privacy of his cabin – was that the lieutenant had given a wrong instruction to the gun crew and when George ‘being the cod's head that he is' had politely questioned him, the officer had called him a ‘fucking black heathen bastard' and a ‘horse marine' to boot. Whereupon the gun captain had grabbed him by the collar and thrown him across the deck.

It was not known whether Banjo had objected to being called black, heathen, a bastard or a horse marine – the common shipboard term for an awkward lubberly fellow – or to all four terms of abuse. It did not matter in the least. Nor which of the two versions of the incident was correct. The undisputed fact was that Banjo had struck an officer and the penalty was death.

‘Right up and down, sir,' came the cry from the bosun on
the forecastle, and upon the first lieutenant's response Nathan gave a last look towards the shore and informed Mr Duncan he was going below for his breakfast.

A wonderful smell of coffee awaited him in his day cabin and there was a dish of fresh eggs and bacon from the provisions they had taken aboard at Naples. Nathan loaded up his plate and cut himself a hunk of fresh-baked bread, for there were few problems in this world, he had found, that could entirely remove his appetite. He suspected he would have dined heartily of the condemned man's breakfast, though it probably helped if the condemned man was not oneself.

‘What would my father do?' Nathan enquired of his servant when he had poured his second cup of coffee. It was a legitimate question, given that Gabriel had been his father's servant for the best part of twenty years before entering Nathan's employ.

‘What about?' Gabriel was never at his best first thing in the morning and possibly the problem did not weigh so heavily on his mind as it did on his Captain's.

‘George Banjo.'

‘Hang him,' replied Gabriel shortly.

‘Just like that?'

‘Oh, he'd give him a trial first – and give the officer a piece of his mind in private, like as not – but then he'd hang him. He wouldn't have any choice, no more'n you have.'

‘He didn't hang you when he had you up for highway robbery.'

‘I weren't in the Navy,' Gabriel pointed out reasonably.

Nathan knew most of the
Articles of War
by heart, but he had refreshed his memory as soon as the offence was brought to his attention; Article 22 was, as he already knew, unequivocal:

If any officer, mariner, soldier or other person in the fleet, shall strike any of his superior officers, or draw, or offer to draw, or lift up any weapon against him, being in the execution of his office, on any pretence whatsoever, every such person being convicted of any such offence, by the sentence of a court martial, shall suffer death.

The only let-out, for Nathan personally, if not Banjo, was that phrase
by the sentence of a court martial
.

In theory, the maximum punishment a Captain could order on his own authority without a court martial was a dozen lashes, though this was so often exceeded it had ceased to have any real meaning. But a hanging was a different matter. Nathan could legitimately wait until he returned to the squadron when a proper court martial could be convened with three Post Captains present. But that would mean keeping Banjo in irons for as long as the commission lasted – which could be a matter of months.

The alternative was to convene a drumhead court martial with himself and two of his officers in judgement.

But whatever he did, sooner or later, George Banjo would hang.

‘You've spoken to him?'

Gabriel was reluctant to admit it, but he gave a grudging nod. Nathan knew that Gabriel had been as close to him as any of the men.

‘How's he taking it?'

Gabriel shrugged. ‘How'd you expect?' But then, after a short pause: ‘He knows you'll have to hang him.'