Absolute Honour Read online

  The runner was stark-bollock naked.

  Jack clearly heard, ‘Stop him’, from the pack who had now crested the hill in pursuit, followed by a word that might be ‘trader’, which seemed, however, an odd thing to yell in a port.

  The sailors had stopped rowing to stare, although shouts from the Sweet Eliza urged them on. Even Jack, no seafarer, could see that if the wind veered much more there’d be no putting to sea that day. Under orders, they began to row again.

  On the shore, the naked figure had reached the dock, the pursuit about fifty yards behind. Jack could now see that the man was tall, his naked physique strong, and that he had bright red hair trailing out behind him like a flame. Arriving at the water’s edge, the man skidded to a stop. Jack didn’t blame him; it was a brisk day for a plunge. But he had mistook; for the man paused only to survey the water before him, note the one other rowboat pulled up to the jetty, pick up a small barrel that awaited collection and hurl it into the vessel, sinking it almost on the instant. Then, pausing only to raise two fingers to the pursuing men, he hurled himself into the Atlantic.

  The sailors had stopped rowing again in shock, despite the continuous calls from their officers. Reluctantly, they hefted their oars once more. ‘Hold there,’ countermanded Jack. Since he was dressed in the uniform of the King, they obeyed. ‘By God,’ he said, rising a little on his bench, ‘I think that fellow is making for us.’

  It was true. With a scrambling motion that drove him powerfully through the water, the red-haired man moved towards them like a spaniel after a shot duck. Behind him, the men on the dock continued yelling, the wind still making their yells indistinct. Some gesticulated for the Sweet Eliza’s jolly boat to return, others ran further down the dock, seeking a vessel for pursuit.

  Despite his obvious strength, the man was labouring, flailing. Then a combination of stroke and tide brought him close.

  ‘Here, sir, here,’ yelled Jack. ‘Take hold.’

  While the sailors shouted warnings and leaned away to counterbalance him, Jack reached out. The man’s fingers brushed Jack’s, a wave forced them apart, then together again. Jack grabbed, held a finger, a thumb. Bringing over his other arm, he grasped the hand of the swimmer. Another wave sucked at him again but the man reached his other hand and this time Jack had him. With an immense heave, he pulled him into the boat like a gaffed tuna.

  It nearly spilled them. But, with the man lying in the scuppers, Jack sitting and the sailors back at their oars, the boat gradually steadied.

  Jack looked at the newcomer. He was blue where he wasn’t red with hair, which was in most places but especially thick at chest and groin, like the pelt of some huge scarlet sea otter. The only lightness came from scars, of which he had an inordinate supply, criss-crossing his body like worm casts. Instantly Jack had his cloak off, and thrown over the man, who clutched at it but remained unable to speak.

  ‘Which way, sir?’ said one sailor to Jack. ‘Ship or shore?’

  Having been a fugitive himself – on several occasions – Jack paused now to consider the plight of the quarry. The blue-tinged nakedness gave a sort of infant innocence to the fellow; and there was only one person in slaver’s Newport he cared a fig about. ‘Are you a cut-purse, sir? Should we be returning you to the authorities and a deserved noose?’

  The head shook. Chattering lips tried to form words. ‘Ne … Ne …’

  ‘I fink ’e’s the last passenger we was waitin’ for,’ the other sailor, a Cockney, said.

  The man nodded and words came, the Irish accent unmistakeable. ‘That I a- a- am! And if y- y- you take me back, oagh, boys … well,’ he threw back the cloak, and gestured to his shrunken privates, ‘the lady-in-question’s hu- hu- husband will finish the job that the sea has st- started and render me truly the last King of Ireland!’

  The sailors laughed and Jack joined them. ‘Row,’ he said, then reached down, grasped the hand before him. ‘Jack Absolute, sir, at your service.’

  ‘A service I will repay for plucking me from the waves like Anchises from the flames of Troy. For, faith, I forget neither slight nor favour. And that’s as sure as my name is Red Hugh McClune.’

  It was only when Jack drew back his hand that he realized that something had lately occupied it. When he remembered what, he looked again swiftly to the sea. But water had drowned the Widow’s parting words.

  Never mind, thought Jack, patting his chest. I have her here. And she will always have a little piece of me in her.

  – TWO –

  Stink, Drink and

  Captain Link

  ‘What the Honourable fails to realize,’ Captain Link declared, ‘is that when I impregnate one of these black heathen sluts, I serve God, my employers and the slut herself.’

  ‘How so, Captain?’ The purser, Durkin, ever the crony, fed him the question.

  ‘Because the slut receives a Christian’s blessing, her offspring the inheritance of England’s blood – and my employers get half as much again for a proven brood mare!’ He guffawed as he raised his mug of rum. ‘To profit, gentlemen. Profit and fornication!’

  ‘Fornication!’ came the echo from the purser and the surgeon, the cry briefly rousing the slumbering First Lieutenant Engledue, who lifted his mug, sipped then slid his head back onto his hand.

  Jack sighed and did not drink. He abhorred the toast, but he’d also had quite enough. This Guinea rum, Newport’s finest export and the ship’s main cargo for the run to Bristol – where it would be sold to traders who would eventually swap it for slaves – had the strength of a donkey’s kick. He had vowed this night to be moderate, to dilute it half and half with rainwater. However, he was aware that he had promised himself the same every night from the end of the second week of the voyage when his nausea had passed. The only thing worse than being in Captain Link’s company was being drunk in his company. Yet he had failed to keep his vow above a half dozen times, such failures resulting in outbursts that had given the Captain weapons to use against him. He never called Jack anything other than ‘the Honourable’ since he’d blurted out that he was the son of a baronet and would be treated with respect. He’d also reacted badly to the realization that the ship transporting him was a slaver, and had been foolish enough to voice his opposition to the trade. Since that night, Captain Link had not let an evening pass when he would not lecture Jack as to the Christian rightness of it and describe its every detail. And having once seen Jack’s disgust when he’d volunteered how he always fucked at least a dozen of the slave women on the voyage, he returned again and again to the subject, like a dog to his own vomit.

  Link slammed his empty mug down. Immediately, his body slave, Barabbas, limped up to refill it. Jack found himself staring yet again at the Negro’s pouring hand. Three fingers and half a thumb, and not a knuckle on what remained unbroken. Link often boasted that Barabbas was the most spirited among a group of rebellious slaves he’d transported ten years before, and that he’d tamed him with whips and thumbscrews. He’d done Link’s bidding ever since.

  As the laughter continued and Barabbas slipped again into the shadows, Jack glanced away, to the man who shared his side of the table. The Irishman returned his gaze, a slight shake of the head indicating that Jack should leave this conversation well alone. But Jack had always found that hard to do.

  ‘Perhaps, sir,’ he said, ‘if you had experienced the helplessness of a slave you would be less prepared to exploit it.’

  Link leaned his jowly, purple-bruised face across at Jack. The man was scorbutic, his foul breath and decaying teeth additional indicators of the scurvy that had taken half the crew. ‘Do you speak again of your weeks spent with the Abenaki savages?’

  Jack nodded. He had told the story of his capture and escape after the Battle of Quebec in the early nights of the voyage when they had all still been polite strangers. Now, two months into the crossing, it was another source of mockery for Link. ‘I do. And may I say—’

  ‘May I say,’ interrupted the Captain
, his Bristol accent fashioning a mockery of Jack’s Westminster School-ed one, ‘that you were never a slave.’

  ‘Are you calling a me a liar, sir?’

  Jack’s voice, instead of rising, had dropped to a whisper. Link recognized the danger. The challenge went, if the mockery did not. ‘Not at all. But I do say you mistook your state. For you are both white, Christian and, above all, a Briton. And as you well know,’ he opened his half-toothed jaw and sang, ‘ “Britons never never never will be slaves.” ’

  The purser and the surgeon, when they recognized the tune, joined in, thumping their approval with pewter mugs.

  The verse done, the Captain continued. ‘Now, shall I tell you my favourites from among the tribes?’ He licked his lips. ‘The Yaruba, see, are tall and strong but have narry enough flesh on ’em, to my taste. The Mina are squat and too plump. No, sirs, for breasts and thighs, there’s none that can compare with your Ibo.’

  When Link’s cronies had finished with their huzzahs, when silence was brought by the necessity of more guzzling, a quiet voice intruded. ‘Now, Captain, I was wondering, so I was, about a little point you might clarify for me?’

  Link wiped his mouth. Since the Irishman rarely spoke at his table the Captain had few weapons against him, apart from the more obvious jibes at his country. ‘Well, sir?’

  ‘I was wondering,’ Red Hugh continued, ‘how Mrs Link and all the little Links of Bristol – six of the small blessings, I believe you said – how they received the joyous news of so many African siblings?’

  Jack only saw it because he happened to glance at Barabbas who was carrying the rum jug away. But that broken hand was raised, just failing to conceal the briefest of smiles.

  The slave was swifter than the master. ‘Mrs Link …’ he gaped.

  ‘And all the little Links,’ Red Hugh repeated.

  Comprehension came. ‘You dare – dare! – to place my wife in the same breath as … as …’

  ‘But, to be sure, as you were mentioning your progeny so fondly yourself, I thought your help-meet must share in your joy. Not to mention all the little Links.’

  Something about the repetition seemed to cause a dangerous mottling and puffing of the already purple jowls, and almost made Jack laugh, for as the Captain began to push himself up from the table he looked like nothing so much as a deranged and dangerous turkey.

  ‘Do … you know, sir, who you insult? I am God aboard my own ship. I could have you … make you … you would be stripped … whipped …’

  Link had taken three steps forward, bringing his head level to the taller man’s chest, for Red Hugh had also risen. They could not have been more opposite in shape – a bull terrier pressing into a heron. The Captain’s hand was shoved into the Irishman’s immaculate waistcoat – how the man remained so clean when the rest of them were so grubby mystified Jack – and he appeared to be engaged in wrenching off a pearl button. But as Jack watched, he saw the Irishman’s hand – its knuckles as covered in red hair as the rest of him – drop onto the Captain’s wrist.

  ‘What do you—’ Link began, then stopped, his eyes suddenly quizzical, the purple of his face whitening.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Red Hugh softly. ‘Now, now.’

  There was no sudden movement, nothing seemed to happen. But the Captain suddenly pulled away, backwards, sitting down hard into his chair. And as soon as he did, he vomited, spraying rum and salt cod across the table.

  It was Red Hugh who reached him first, an arm around his back. ‘Dear Captain, dear soul. Some water there, heh?’

  Water was brought, drunk, spewed up. The surgeon came and felt the Captain’s head. Link himself, gagging still, sat with filmy eyes.

  ‘I think, my dears, that our leader requires his bed. A good signal to retire to ours, eh, young Jack?’

  Jack, who had hardly left off staring at Link, enjoying what he was seeing, nodded. While Barabbas, the purser and the surgeon half-dragged Link across the room to his bunk, Jack and Red Hugh went to the cabin door accompanied by Lieutenant Engledue, who was awake at last. He yawned. ‘I think I will seize the moment, too,’ he murmured, holding the door open for them. ‘Pity about our noble leader. This Guinea rum, eh? It’s meant for the black traders, of course, who sell their kin to us. White folk can hardly handle it. Give me a smooth Madeira any day.’

  With a knowing smile to Red Hugh and a bow to Jack, he headed to his own bunk.

  The Irishman pulled Jack the other way, towards the quarterdeck. ‘A breath, do you not think, lad?’

  The air, as it had been for several days now, was heavy and hot. The south-westerlies that had at first driven them fast across the Atlantic, trailing a memory of icy New Found Land, had died on them two weeks before. Since then progress had been slow, every sail hoisted to catch what little breeze there was. Moreover, it was clear that no one was quite sure exactly where they were. Though he knew little of navigation, Jack was aware a midday sighting of the sun was required to gauge latitude. And the clouds that held the muggy heat upon them had prevented a view for several days now.

  Still, after the stench of Link’s cabin, even this air was an elixir. Down below, while the winds had driven them and it was too cold to stay on deck, they’d lived in a fug compounded of bodies that were never washed, of men succumbing to scurvy as their teeth rotted, of damp wool and canvas washed in urine and never given a chance to dry. They’d eaten weevil-filled biscuits and green meat, and belched out too much rum by the light and reek of whale-sperm candles. And beneath all this, the base note of all scents still survived, no matter how often vinegar was scrubbed across the decks and gunpowder flashed in the holds: the stink of a slave ship where Negroes had been chained together in their own shit and vomit and ceaseless terror. As soon as the weather improved a jot, both Red Hugh and Jack had slung their hammocks on the quarterdeck. Even if he’d shivered the first few nights, at least Jack still had his bearskin – and never did he think he’d say that its lingering smell was close to sweet. Yet, after eight weeks of imprisonment by the wind, it almost was.

  ‘Onion?’

  Jack shuddered. ‘Must I?’

  ‘You know you must. Unless you care for a touch of what’s making our noble Captain’s breath fouler than nature already did?’

  ‘And why are you certain this has any effect on the condition?’ grumbled Jack, taking the yellowing bulb and reaching for his paring knife.

  ‘Sure, and did I not read James Lind’s great treatise on the subject? Did not my company of Grenadiers survive the six-month siege of Kiskunhalas by eating almost nothing else?’ Red Hugh had expertly peeled the skin in one piece and now dropped it onto the deck. ‘We had the complexion of choirboys at the end of it,’ he said, munching happily, ‘and farts that could have floated a coach and four.’

  Jack laughed and began peeling his onion, as the tinkle of a bell told him that a friend drew near. Jeremiah, sole survivor of the five goats taken on board at Newport, nipped at his trouser leg. The goat had already snaffled the Irishman’s dropped onion skin, so, to a disapproving grunt from his companion – Jack was ever an easy mark for the goat – he sliced off a quarter of his onion and let it fall. The three chewed for a while in silence until Jeremiah, seeing that nothing else was forthcoming, went off to scrounge elsewhere.

  Suddenly Jack remembered what had allowed them this escape to the deck. ‘The Captain. What did you do to him?’

  ‘Poor auld fella was taken ill suddenly, is all.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Red Hugh considered, then swallowed the last of his onion. ‘Finish that and give me your hand.’ With a grimace, Jack duly did. The Irishman held him almost in a handshake but slightly higher, on the wrist, the grip light. ‘Now now,’ he said, as he had to the Captain, ‘now, now.’ Then he squeezed hard, the pad beneath his forefinger boring in under Jack’s thumb.

  The pain was sudden, intense and made Jack’s knees give. Red Hugh prevented his fall. Taking his hand back, Jack rubbed it, inhaling deeply
to clear the nausea. ‘How … ?’ he said after several moments.

  Red Hugh shrugged. ‘I had it from a man who had it from a man who had it from a man … from Transylvania.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s up on the border with the Turks. Some of our lads fought there.’ He smiled. ‘And now you have it.’

  Jack pushed himself off the rail, eager. ‘You’ll have to show me again.’

  ‘I will. But later. You can only learn it by the receiving of the thing. And you’ll be needing a little time to gather yesself.’

  Jack looked at his companion, wondering yet again. What did he truly know of this Red Hugh McClune? The man had leaked out some information about his past, on certain subjects – women often, some cases he’d taken as a lawyer in Dublin, for example. Mostly, since his audience demanded it, he’d told of his time in the Austrian Army. He’d not been a mere soldier but a Grenze. All had heard of them, the finest light infantry in Europe it was said, drawn largely from the Balkan provinces to serve the Hapsburgs against the Turks. Why an Irishman had joined them was never explained, though apparently he was one of many. The man was a born storyteller, could entrance an audience with his tales of breaches stormed, ambuscades laid, hideous tortures undergone. Yet question him on his present, as Jack tried to do, and only vagueness came. A trader, he’d say, sometimes. An engineer, at others.

  Jack rubbed his wrist. ‘I think, sir, that you are a very dangerous man.’

  His companion turned his face again to the sea. ‘Oh no, lad. I used to be a dangerous man, when I was younger. Not any more.’

  He had never stated his age. Jack took him to be near forty, a little grey in the beard he’d started growing the day he came aboard, which was full within a week – unlike Jack’s black one, only now coming into its prime. If they were nearly of a height, the thick mat of curly hair – the colour nearly the scarlet of the Dragoon coat Jack had stowed below – made the Irishman seem much taller. And if they matched each other in a slim physique, Red Hugh’s seemed to be constructed entirely from whipcord and scar.