'Send 'im in!' roared the unseen personage within.
'Rear Admiral Edgcumbe,' said the lieutenant softly, and ushered Renzi in.
The Admiral sat behind a massive dark-polished desk, his expression more curious than fierce. 'So you has the French, an' a manner to go with it, I'm told,' he mused, looking keenly at Renzi.
He slid across a piece of paper and quill. 'Write 'Render to me your return affecting stores that are rotten.''
Renzi complied, his hand flying across the page, sure and fluent.
'Damme, that's a splendid hand for a sailor,' grunted the Admiral, and looked up sharply. 'Are ye a forger?' 'Er, no, sir.'
'Pity. First class with a pen, y' forger.' His head snapped up. 'What's the county town o' Wiltshire?'
'Sarum — which is Salisbury,' said Renzi immediately. It was a little too close for comfort: his family were prominent in the next county and he had reason to remember the spires of old Salisbury.
Admiral Edgcumbe smiled. 'Ah, quick an' sharp with it,' he said, with satisfaction, and leaned back in his chair.
'Flags!' he roared.
The lieutenant instantly poked his head inside the room. 'This one'll do. Get 'im in a decent rig an' on the staff.'
'Aye-aye, sir.'
'See he doesn't run, an' have him aboard the packet in good time.' He bent his head again to his work, thus dismissing both men.
By the evening it had become clear what was going on. The Admiral was newly promoted commander-in-chief designate to the Jamaica station and was due to sail shortly with his staff to take up the appointment. He had been unlucky in the matter of fever — it was damnably difficult to find good replacement staff at short notice - and word about Renzi had reached him just in time. Renzi would be a writer, a form of clerk entrusted only with duplication of orders and unimportant matters, but would prove useful with his good knowledge of the language of the enemy. The lieutenant clearly felt that Renzi had been plucked from an existence as a sea menial to a prestigious position with real prospects, and should be grateful.
For himself, Renzi felt a lurch of premonition at the mention of Jamaica, but perhaps in the naval headquarters there would be no exposure and therefore little risk of confrontation. A new life of petty politics at headquarters was not to his liking, for he had deliberately chosen the sea life as the purest form of exile.
Next day the packet swarmed with the Admiral's retinue. Renzi, as a seaman, knew precisely where to keep out of the way and watched with wry amusement the fluster and confusion as the pretty little topsail cutter put to sea. A small frigate accompanied them as escort, the pair foaming along in the freshness after the hurricane, heading westward deep into the glittering blue of the Caribbean sea.
The island of Jamaica was raised five days later without incident, an impressive blue-grey monolith appearing out of the morning on the distant horizon. They had passed St Kitts during the night and Hispaniola was a disappointing low scrubby headland, approaching then receding as, with the favourable north-easterlies, they headed direct for the southern coast of Jamaica.
Off Morant Bay they hove to, a pilot schooner plunging and rolling as she sent across the Kingston pilot, and in turn took aboard the Admiral's flag lieutenant. They would remain there for the night while warning of the arrival of their august passenger reached the capital overland.
It had been a pleasant, if crowded passage; the tedium of a sea voyage without duties brought Renzi an unexpected pang of sympathy for the passengers he had previously scorned. More immediately useful was the information he had gleaned from casual talking with the Admiral's staff. In the West Indies there was wealth, more millions than he had ever suspected, a river of silver and gold heading back to England from trade and its support, but above all from sugar. The plantation society, the plantocracy, had high political significance in London and lived like lords, if the tales of high living were to be believed, but with the great wealth there was another of corrupt and unscrupulous conspirators who infested every class.
He
