Quarterdeck

something disquieting about this thick-set seaman: Kydd had seen him come aboard with the new men and several times he'd noticed the man looking his way with a significant cast.

Kydd paced forward. The man glanced over his shoulder at him and turned his back, busying himself with his task. When Kydd drew near he straightened and turned, touching his forelock. 'Mr Kydd, sir,' he said, his voice not much more than a low rasp.

Surprised, Kydd stopped.

'Sir, ye remembers me?'

There was an edge of slyness to his manner that Kydd did not like. Was he a sea-lawyer perhaps? But the man was only a little shorter than Kydd himself, powerfully built, with hard, muscular arms and a deep tattooed chest: he had no need of cozening ways on the mess-deck.

The man gave a cold smile. 'Dobbie, petty officer o' the afterguard,' he added, still in a low tone.

Kydd could not recall anyone by that name. The midshipman popped up out of the main-hatchway but saw them together and disappeared below again. 'No, can't say as I do,' Kydd replied. Unless the seaman had something of value to say to an officer he was sailing closer to the wind than a common sailor should. 'I don't remember you, Dobbie—now be about y'r duties.'

He turned to go, but Dobbie said quietly, 'In Sandwich.' Kydd stopped and turned. Dobbie stared back, his gaze holding Kydd's with a hard intensity. 'Aye—when you was there. I remembers ye well . . . sir.'

It had been less than a year ago but the Sandwich was a name Kydd had hoped never to hear again. She had been the mutineers' flagship and at the centre of the whirlwind of insurrection and violence at the Nore. It had climaxed in failure for the mutiny and an end to the high-minded attempt to complete the work begun at Spithead. Many sailors had paid with their lives. Kydd had joined the mutiny in good faith but had been carried along by events that had overwhelmed them all. But for mysterious appeals at the highest level he should have shared their fate.

'Dick Parker. Now there was a prime hand, don' ye think? Saw what was goin' on, but concerns hisself with the men, not th' gentry. Sorely missed, is he.'

Kydd drew back. Was Dobbie simply trying to ingratiate himself, or was this a direct attempt at drawing Kydd into some crazy plot? Anxiety and foreboding flooded in. Either way this had to be stopped.

'Enough o' this nonsense. Where I came from before I went t' the quarterdeck is no concern o' yours, Dobbie. Pay y'r respects to an officer an' carry on.' Even in his own ears it rang false, lacking in authority.

Dobbie looked relaxed, a lazy smile spreading across his face. Kydd glanced uneasily about; no one was within earshot. 'Did ye not hear? I said—'

'Me mates said t' me, 'An' who's this officer then, new-rigged an' has the cut o' the jib of the fo'c'sle about 'im?' What c'n I say?' Dobbie was confident and as watchful as a snake. 'I keeps m' silence, 'cos I knows you has t' keep discipline, an' if they catches on that you is th' Tom Kydd as was alongside Dick Parker all the time—'

'What is it ye want?' Kydd snapped.

Dobbie picked up the end of the fall and inspected its whipping, then squinted up at Kydd. 'Ah, well. I was wonderin'—you was in deep. Not a delegate, but 'twas your scratch what was clapped on all them vittlin' papers, I saw yez. Now don't y' think it a mort strange that so many good men went t' the yardarm but Mr Tom Kydd gets a pardon? Rest gets the rope, you gets th' King's full pardon 'n' later the quarterdeck.' The lazy smile turned cruel. 'We gets t' sea, the gennelmen in the fo'c'sle hear about you, why, could go hard f'r a poxy spy . . .'

Kydd flushed.

Dobbie tossed aside the rope and folded his arms. 'Your choice, Mr Tom Kydd. You makes m' life sweet aboard—I'm a-goin' t' be in your division—or the fo'c'sle hands are goin' to be getting some interestin' news.'

'Damn you t' hell! I didn't—' But Dobbie turned and padded off forward.

Kydd burned with emotion. It was utterly beyond him to have spied treacherously on his shipmates as they had fought together for their rights. He was incapable of such an act. But the men of the fo'c'sle would not know that. Dobbie was one of them, and he was claiming to have been with Kydd at the mutiny and to have the full story. Unable to defend himself in person, Kydd knew there was little doubt whom they would believe.

The consequences could not be more serious. He would not be able to command these men, that much was certain; the captain would quickly recognise this and he would be finished as an officer. But it might be worse: a dark night, quiet watch and a belaying pin to the head, then quickly overside . . .

And the wardroom—if they believed he owed his advancement to spying and betrayal, what future had he among them?

It was incredible how matters had reached such a stand so quickly. He would have to move fast, whatever his course. The obvious action was to submit. It had definite advantages. Nothing further would happen because it was in Dobbie's interest to keep his leverage intact. And it would be simple: Kydd as an officer could easily ensure Dobbie's comfortable existence.

The other tack would be to brazen it out. But Kydd knew this was hopeless: he would be left only with his pride at not yielding to blackmail, and that was no choice at all.

He yearned for Renzi's cool appraisal and logical options: he would find the answers. But he was in Newfoundland. Kydd was not close to Adams and the others: he would have to face it alone.

His solitary, haunted pacing about the upper deck did not seem to attract attention, and two hours had passed before he found his course of action.

Kydd knew the lower deck, its strengths and loyalties as well as its ignorance; its rough justice and depth of sentiment could move men's souls to achieve great things—or stir them to passionate vindictiveness. He would now put his trust in them, an unshakeable faith that he, even as an officer, could rely on their sense of honour, fairness and loyalty.

The afternoon ebbed to a pallid dusk, and the hands secured, then went below for grog and supper. Kydd waited until they were in full flow. Then he went down the after hatchway to the gun-deck and paused at the foot of the ladder.