He could think of no easy answer, and fell back weakly on the reply that if it was the law of the land then that was how it must be.
Carefully he folded the tract. His head told him to take the poisonous scrap aft immediately, but his heart urged him to settie things in his own mind first. He hesitated. The rain had stopped and he stepped out on deck among a general resumption of noisy quarrelling and laughing humanity. It was hard to think anything through under conditions like this.
If only Renzi was on hand the whole question could be logically teased out to its only possible conclusion . .. But Renzi was part of the past. Now he must make his own judgements.
He roused himself: in his place what would Renzi have done? Discuss it logically. With whom? Not Cockburn, he was an officer-in-waiting, and had no way of knowing the strengths and good sense to be found before the mast -his answer would be short and implacable. The master? A long-service man of the sea with only a few years before his well-earned retirement ashore.'Then who?
* * *
'So nice in you, m' love, to call, but if you're going t' stay f'r supper, then I must send for some vitdes.' Kydd setded back in the chair, cradling his china mug of porter — it had on it a colourful pair of handsome sailors each side of crossed flags and 'Success to the Formidable, and damnation to the French!' in gold lettering beneath.
She had been pleased to see him, that was clear; pleasure and guilt in equal measure came to him at her warm embrace. In an awkward, masculine way he sensed that a woman could accept a situation for what it was without the need for logical justification.
He drew out the tract, holding it gingerly. 'This'n was found on the mess-decks earlier.'
She took it with a questioning glance, and read slowly with a frown of concentration, her lips moving as she spelled out the words. As their import became clear, her brow lightened. 'Someone is takin' the sailor's part at last,' she said happily. 'I know about th' vitdes an' such, Ned told me, so I know it's true what they say.'
'Kitty, m'dear, what you are holdin' is an incitement t' mutiny an' treasonable — it c'n cost a man his neck.' She stared at him uncertainly. 'It's m' duty to hale aft any I fin' with this. An' then it's a court-martial an' the rope . . .'
She looked at him, incredulous. 'Ye're tellin' me that y'd see a man choked off f'r this?' she said, shaking the grubby paper at him.
Kydd shifted uncomfortably. 'It's m' duty, as I said.' He could have mentioned the Articles of War and their savage view of sedition and treasonable writings, but it seemed beside the point.
Her look hardened. 'I don't need t' remind you, Mr Thomas Kydd, what it's like t' go before th' mast in the navy. So when some gullion says as how it is, where's y' great crime? Tell me!'
'Don't ask me that, Kitty, it's not f'r me to say,' Kydd said, in a low voice. 'All I know is, the fleet's in open mutiny at Spithead, an' if the French sail'
'Then they'll sail 'n' fight, they've promised that,' she said scornfully.
Kydd looked at her with a frown. 'Kitty, ye know a lot about this.'
'Aye!' she said defiantly. 'There's those who think t' make the journey all the way fr'm Portsmouth t' the Nore just to let their brother Jack Tars know what's happening.'
'They're here, now?'
'Cruise along t' the Chequers Inn one night, and could be ye'd hear somethin' will get you thinking.'
Her face was uncompromising in its conviction, and in it he saw an unspoken rebuke for his lack of involvement.
Before he could speak, she thrust another paper at him, printed as a broadsheet but somewhat smudged. 'It's a petition, asking f'r redress. Sent t' Black Dick Howe three months ago, an' it was not th' first. Read it!'
Before he had covered the preliminaries she was on the offensive. 'Provisions at sixteen ounces to th' pound! Common
