Avery was holding it. “For the captain of the frigate La Fortune.” He gave a grave smile. “I learned my French the hard way. As their prisoner.”
Bouverie rubbed his chin. “So she is in Algiers. Under a great battery, you say.”
Adam said, “The bait in the trap, sir. They will not expect us to ignore it.”
It was as if some invisible bonds had been cut. Bouverie almost sprang out of the chair.
“Out of the question! Even if we hold Rosamund-”
Avery heard himself correcting gently, “Rosario, sir,” and cursed himself. Always the good flag lieutenant…
Adam persisted, “No, sir, we use her. To spring the trap. They know we are trailing our cloaks, and they will be expecting the brigantine. I am sure she is a regular visitor there.”
He was aware of the tawny eyes on him, Avery watching but not seeing him. As if he were somewhere else… He was suddenly deeply moved. With my uncle.
“ Rosario appears to be an agile vessel, sir. It would seem only fair if we were to ‘chase’ her into Algiers?”
Bouverie swallowed. “A cutting-out expedition? I’m not at all certain-” Then he nodded again, vigorously. “It might work, it’s daring enough. Foolhardy, some will say.”
Adam returned to the stern windows. One of the Rosario ’s crew had told him that they had often carried female slaves, some very young girls. The master had delighted in abusing them.
He thought of Zenoria, her back laid open by a whip. Keen had rescued her, and she had married him. Not out of love. Out of gratitude.
The mark of Satan, she had called it.
He heard himself say, “Time is short, sir. We cannot delay.”
“The authority for such an act, which might provoke another outbreak of war…”
“Is yours, sir.”
Why should it matter? Bouverie would not be the first or the last officer to await a decision from a higher authority. But it did matter. It had to.
He said, “I can take Rosario. I am short-handed, but we could share the burden between us. Then so would the laurels be equally divided.”
He saw the shot go home. Like one of old Stranace’s.
“We’ll do it. I’ll send you some good hands within the hour.” Bouverie was thinking fast, like a flood-gate bursting open. “Will you take the Rosario ’s master with you, in case?…”
Adam picked up his hat and saw blood on his sleeve. Jago’s cutlass.
“I shall take him. Later, I shall see him hang.” He looked at Avery. “By the authority vested in me!”
Adam Bolitho lowered his telescope and moved into the shadow of the brigantine’s foresail. There would be hundreds of eyes watching from the shore. One mistake would be enough to betray them.
Bang.
He saw a waterspout burst from the sea. Close. But was it near enough to deceive their audience?
He had seen Matchless leaning over as she had changed tack for her final approach, and he had seen the citadel, all and more than Avery had described. It looked as if it had been there for centuries, since time began. Avery had told him about a secret, cave-like entrance to which they had been taken in a large galley. You could lose an army trying to storm such a place. Or a fleet.
He glanced at the Rosario ’s master. Once aboard and in command of his own vessel again, he seemed to have grown in stature, as if all the pathetic pleading and whimpering for his life had been forgotten. Slumped by the bulwark, Jago sat with both legs out-thrust, his eyes never leaving the man’s face.
Nothing was certain. The master had intended to hoist some sort of recognition signal as they had tacked closer to the protective headland. Adam had said, “No. They will know Rosario. They will not expect a signal when she is being chased by an enemy!”
Somebody had even laughed.
He turned to look at the swivel-guns, all loaded and primed. And the hatch covers. He could imagine the extra seamen and marines crammed in the holds, listening to the occasional bang of Matchless’s bow-chaser, sweating it out. Captain Bosanquet was down there with them, apparently more concerned with the state of his uniform in the filthy hold than the prospect of being dead within the next hour.
He stepped into the shadow again and held his breath, and carefully raised his glass and trained it on the citadel, and the main wall which Avery had remembered so clearly. A movement. He watched, hardly daring to blink. Guns, an entire line of them, thrusting their muzzles through the embrasures, the menace undiminished by distance. He could almost hear their iron trucks squeaking over the worn stone.
He felt the hull shiver. Whatever else he was, Rosario ’s master knew these waters well. They were in the shallows now, heading for the anchorage. Avery was right. He felt almost light-headed. Right. The great guns would not depress enough to endanger the brigantine. Like the batteries he had seen at Halifax, carefully sited on the mainland and on a small island in the harbour, so that no enemy ship could slip past them undetected.
But here there was no island.
He saw the first gun fire and recoil, smoke writhing above the old walls like a ragged spectre. Then, one by one, the others followed. The sound seemed to be all around them, like an unending echo. Probably bronzed guns. They were just as deadly to a wooden hull.
He thought of Unrivalled outside, somewhere around the headland and still out of sight. Galbraith and Cristie, and all the others who despite his own attempts to remain detached were no longer strangers to him.
Could he never accept it? Like the moment when Galbraith had picked men for the Rosario ’s raiding party. It had been difficult for him; almost everybody, even the green hands, had volunteered. Madness, then. What would Galbraith be thinking now? Feeling pride at having been left in command? Or seeing a chance of permanent promotion if things went badly wrong?
A seaman called, “One o’ them galleys headin’ this way, sir! Starboard bow!”
Matchless was firing again, a broadside this time; it was impossible to tell where the shots were falling. There were more local vessels in evidence. Lateen sails and elderly schooners, with dhows etched against the water like bats.
He felt his mouth go dry as splashes burst around Matchless’s bows. Close. Too damned close. He bit his lip and scrambled to the opposite side.
When he lifted his head again, it was all he could do to stop himself from shouting aloud.
Directly across the larboard bow, and framed against the citadel’s high walls, was the frigate. He tried to take it in, to hold it in his mind, like all those other times. The range and the bearing, the point of embrace. To see the frigate lying at her anchor, brailed-up sails filling and emptying in the offshore wind the only suggestion of movement, was unnerving. Unreal.
He cleared his throat. “Ready about! Warn all hands, Mr Wynter!”
He groped for the short, curved fighting sword and loosened it. He could hear Jago’s voice in his thoughts. “Take the old one, sir. The sword!”
And his own reply. Like somebody else. “When I’ve earned it!”
The Rosario ’s ragged seamen were hauling on halliards and braces, their bare feet gripping the deck like claws, without feeling.
It only needed one of them to shout, to signal. He found his fingers clenched on the hilt of the hanger. They must not be taken. There would be no quarter. No pity.
He moved around the mast and watched the helmsman putting down the wheel, one of Unrivalled’s topmen at his side, a dirk in his fist.
“Matchless ’as gone about, sir!” The man breathed out noisily. “They’re best off out o’ this little lot!”
Adam stared at the frigate. Old but well maintained, her name, La Fortune, in faded gilt lettering across her counter. Thirty guns at a guess. A giant to the local craft on which she preyed in the name of France. There were faces along her gangway and poop, but no muzzles were run out. Adam felt his body trembling. Why should they be? Those great guns had seen off the impudent intruder. He could hear some of them cheering, laughing. Not too many of them, however; the rest were probably ashore, evidence of their security here.
Rosario ’s master jumped away from the helmsman and cupped his hands, staring wild-eyed as the frigate’s masts towered over them. The dirk drove into his side and he fell without even a murmur.
Even at the end he must have realised that nothing Adam could do would match the horror his new masters
