Banners Page 17

  “I have thought,” he said. “I’m thinking still.”

  In the aromatic Thames Street café, strangers from two continents sat across a tiny walnut table from each other, silently contemplating the problem that had crawled its way into the moment. Like the Irish coffee, there was just enough spirit in it.

  Timing was critical with a man like the captain.

  As was not pushing.

  “Well,” the French Jew slowly said, “I’ve asked too much of you. Please forget about it.”

  The captain took his time drawing in the scent of the Irish coffee he had finished drinking. “Not likely.”

  “I’m so very sorry.”

  The captain waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing.”

  “Allow me to make up for my indiscretion.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I would like to invest in your ship.”

  Boyle looked a little surprised, or at least momentarily confused by the change of subject. “You didn’t discuss that with the Comet’s senior owners?”

  “Cash only. No records. Dealing with you alone.”

  “That’s not an investment. That’s a donation. Comet is not a charity.”

  “Oh, no! Oh, certainly not. But I am a patriot too. Now, look at me. I am no soldier or any kind of a sailor, but in my own way I too wish to fight for the flag. I want to support the war effort, and I don’t expect a profit.”

  Boyle wiped his hands on the linen napkin, which already was smudged from his morning’s work. “You are neither an unintelligent man nor an unthoughtful one. You know that anyone who fights for a flag is a mindless fool. We fight for what the flag represents. And we must mind what it represents, that it is worth fighting for.”

  The Frenchman smiled with genuine delight. “Well said. Captain, I know you have endured some unsavory publicity about your using portions of prize cargoes for your own crew, consuming the foodstuffs, confiscating weapons—there has been some legal wrangling as to the ethics of that. But what else should you do? I find the questioning to be petty. I would like to help. Perhaps my silent donation could go to provisions for your vessel so that you have no need of such confiscations. My means are considerable. Bottomless, as they say.”

  “The source, may I ask?”

  “Toothbrushes.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I founded a new line of bone toothbrushes with horsehair, and tortoiseshell hair brushes with boars’ hair. But the toothbrushes are the anchor, as you sailors might say. Allow me to supply your entire crew.”

  “An entrepreneur.”

  “Much like yourself.”

  “Such generosity might be construed as a bribe.”

  “But I’m not asking for anything in return.”

  “The future remains undefined.”

  “True, but to protect you we shall have no written contract and I shall have no hold over you. A silent, and mute, partner.”

  “Still, it has an odor. No records, no paper trail—Why would you do this?”

  “I trust you, Captain.”

  “Why would you trust me?”

  “I’m an excellent judge of character.”

  From the look in his cool blue eyes, Boyle disclosed himself as also an excellent judge of others. There was curiosity in those eyes, maybe a touch of opportunity, but caution too.

  “You’re a gambler, Captain,” the Frenchman goaded, with a slight change of tone. “You wouldn’t deprive me of the same pleasure, would you?”

  The funny eyebrows went up, then down again.

  Caution finally closed the door.

  “I must get back to the schooner,” Boyle said as he stood. “Mr. Yambrick. Miss …”

  “A captain’s work is never done.” The Frenchman stood also, but did not move to put his coat on, indicating passively that he would not impose further on the captain’s company even to walk out to the street.

  “Let me know if you think of any way to enhance your effectiveness against Great Britain. I will help in any way, spiritual or corporeal, that I can. If I were a younger man, I should be glad of a chance to serve under your command. I am proud to say I know you, Captain Boyle. I hope you will not be discomposed if I tell people that we are friends.”

  “At your own risk,” Boyle said with an uncharacteristically humble smile. “And I will consider your offer, sir.”

  “Samuel.”

  Leaves blew down the street on the harbor wind, carrying the captain away as the Frenchman and Pdut watched through the slight coating of grime on the café window. Pdut was less interested in the complicated man who had just left them. She finished her Irish coffee, pushed it aside, then took what was left of the captain’s and finished that too.

  The French Jew kept watching the corner where the captain had left his sight. “He certainly is hard-boiled.”

  “What you talk him for?” Pdut asked.

  “About. What did I talk to him about.”

  “About talk?”

  “You’re hopeless,” he muttered. “You heard us, didn’t you?”

  “Heerd, yis.”

  “But as ever you do not understand. You can’t put one and one together at all, can you? You lump around with that numb brain.”

  He glanced around at the self-concerned patrons of the café. Too many ears. He switched to French for the lecture, yet still kept his voice down.

  “The best way to help Napoleon is to stir up these colonies. These states. At this very moment the Grand Armée of France is moving into Russia. Britain must be kept busy while the Russian conquest is completed. When the emperor returns, he will have wealth, weapons, power, territory. Britain will be weak and we will cross the Channel. Then America is nothing. Napoleon will control the world. The Rothschilds banking empire will control Napoleon. And I will have been here first.”

  Realizing her attention was drifting, he snatched the second cup of Irish coffee from her hand and slapped her away from it.

  “Napoleon has broken the old monarchs and established a world bank, while in America they cannot even decide upon a leader. Thus they will have no consistent goals. We have Napoleon now and forever. We are secure. I mean to engage Captain Boyle’s help in our cause, though he will never know it. At least, not until it’s too late.”

  1813

  FELL’S POINT

  JANUARY 4

  THE MAN CALLING HIMSELF, for now, Samuel Yambrick sat on the outside steps of the house he had rented, basking in the rare winter sunlight that mitigated the bite of cold. He sat in his wool knee-length overcoat and hat as if waiting for a coach, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Between the coat, hat, his whiskers, and the sun, he was comfortable enough to remain out here. He wanted to be cold. His own comfort was a shame to him.

  As he sat he thumbed the edge of a used newspaper, as he had thumbed the same paper every day since December when it first arrived, smuggling in from his contacts in London. Thus it was in English, a somewhat irritating language for him to read. He wished newspapers could be in Latin. Much more precise.

  He was about to read the article yet again, when a ceramic chamber pot shot past him three feet in the air and shattered on the cobbled street. It blasted into shards, leaving no hint of its original form, immediately to be further crushed under the hooves of a pair of draft horses drawing a beer wagon. The horses either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Their feet, the sizes of dinner plates, made a pleasant sound on the stones and broken bits.

  Behind the flying pottery came a freakish scream, which then twisted itself into a howl, then fizzled out and was followed by more smashing inside the open door. Then a teacup, still with its saucer, flew madly over his head and went into the street, there to commit complete suicide. Later he would come out with a whisk broom and collect the destruction.

  He heard angry footsteps inside, if footsteps could be angry, and he believed they could. Knew it, in fact. Had it well memorized. Inside, Pdut was involved in one of her fits of fury or frustration. He knew not which, for she was a b
lunderer when it came to explaining herself, or anything.

  The howling and wrecking went on without pause. Mirrors, dishes, windows, the entire set of salt-glazed dishware, the porcelain dog he bought her last week. He had of course kept the breakables in the house at a minimum, or at least breakables of any worth. After all, she had to have something to break or the episode would migrate outside to the windows of others.

  People passed, peering curiously at him as they heard the frantic noises of rage and destruction inside, offered help or worry with their expressions, but he merely shrugged, waved, and assured then with his own expression that he was monitoring the war inside the door and waiting it out. So they walked on, with something to gossip about tonight.

  He was satisfied to be alone here on the open street, thumbing his newspaper and digesting yet again the crushing headline. Disappointment chewed at him. Rarely surprised by events, he had been attempting for weeks to suffer the dire news as the rest of the world moved forward. Were things changing, or were they merely different for now? How should he revise his plans? Would his sponsors still move on his advice? Would those who moved above the thunder and rush of ordinary life yet have confidence in him or in the world as he described it to them? He was a spinner of possibilities, a measurer of investments, a diviner of futures. His success depended upon the faith of others and that faith upon his record of wins.

  This was not a win.

  Half of a shattered saucer skidded beside him and landed on the step, accompanied by a mad shriek and quite a lot of foul language in French. He was glad it was in French, for the sakes of the passing shoppers and merchants. Their glances told them nothing and his rolled eyes and little waves permitted them to be on their ways, for the havoc, while out of hand, was in hand.

  Firewood. After she was finished razing the rooms, he would have to get more firewood to warm the place again after having the doors open all morning. If the doors weren’t open, she would come barging out. He had no idea why.

  So the doors were open, the windows were shattered, the heat flowing out. Appropriate, somehow.

  He gazed again at the newspaper in his winter-reddened hands.

  BONAPARTE RETREATS FROM RUSSIA

  GRAND ARMÉE FROZEN TO DEATH

  The International Highway

  THE COAST OF BRAZIL

  JANUARY 14

  THE COMET STOOD TEN miles off Pernambuco on the east coast of South America, as foreign a land as the world could offer, a sea of a different kind—a green sea of jungles and insects, predators and victims. The poetry was not lost on Tom Boyle as he hailed the very large brig that had hove to at his approach. Obviously it was not an English ship, so he had not fired a warning shot. The high-bulwarked brig had backed its two course sails and slowed to be hailed. Now the two ships, big and small, rode a current within half a cable’s length.

  In the rigging, Mary Pickersgill’s signal flags flew, asking the question of identity. Who are you? What is your home port?

  Too much to spell out, the questions were represented by only two flags whose symbolic meaning was known internationally.

  On the stern of the other ship, an officer in an unrecognized military uniform had ordered his own signals raised. WASA, Lisbon. Then the signal for cargo and the individual letters “C-O-O-K W-A-R-E-S C-O-F-F-E-E” were spelled out in English. Boyle knew that Dieter spoke Spanish, but fortune favored him today and he could deal with this brig on his own. If they had to speak directly, translation was always awkward and reading the other man’s inflections and tones would have been difficult. He reminded himself to learn Spanish one of these days.

  “Raise ‘pass on,’” he said to Tommy Ring, who was manning the ensign halyard with Steven Sigsby’s help.

  He waved at the Portuguese officer as the lone flag went up into the schooner’s rigging.

  The officer gave him a salute, and the brig again hoisted her courses and moved onward toward the port of Pernambuco.

  Boyle sat back on the schooner’s rail and watched the other ship move away toward the mountainous land mass to his west.

  John Dieter appeared at his side, and leaned with those tattooed arms on the deckhouse. “Well, you were right. How did you know there would be activity here, of all places?”

  “Seasonal alterations in commerce. It’s winter up north now. More trade in the tropics.”

  “And this is a trade route?”

  “Everything from flannel shirts to johnnycake.”

  Dieter shook his head and twisted up half a grin. “Wish I were you.”

  Boyle smiled at the compliment. “Just one problem.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s not a trading ship.”

  Dieter watched the foreign brig braced around to sail away. “Huh … what’s his game, then?”

  “Don’t know. Could be what he says. Maybe they’re short of ships.”

  Above them the mainsail was scandalized to keep it from filling, and forward the brailed foresail waited to be hauled out again. The Comet floated easily with just a jib puffed out before her.

  The early day was dark, with glowering clouds from horizon to horizon, but no storm. The ocean was rolling quietly, enough to carry them slowly along, as if it were rocking a baby.

  “Make sail?” Dieter asked.

  “Not yet,” Boyle said. “Let’s lie off here a while. Do some repairs.”

  Dieter simply nodded, too exhausted to engage in chatter, and went off to arrange repair parties and oversee the work.

  Boyle watched in silence as the man-of-war moved away, and every man left aboard the Comet also watched until he was ordered away into a work group, those who were awake anyway. He had fewer than one hundred aboard now, after leaving prize crews on several captured vessels. Capture after capture, he had taken a bite out of British commerce, he and the other privateers who had set out of the United States’ ports up and down the coast. The Royal Navy still tried to blockade the US coastline, but there was simply too much coast and too much ocean for them to sentry. Privateers, in small brig-rigs and schooners such as the Comet, slipped out like little birds, their captures slipping back in, past the palace guards, along a thousand miles of landfalls, bays, and inlets leading to America’s bustling port cities, where auctions transferred the prizes to dollars. Still, too many of the privateers’ prizes had been recaptured by the British before reaching an American port and thus offered no profit or win, but only a cost. The blockade had greatly reduced trade and crippled the American economy. The Royal Navy was dominant in the world for good reason. They were competent.

  As the day wore on, he watched the coast of South America. He felt the pulse of the ship and the men around him, those who were left. The prisoners also had been put off Comet and transferred to a prize ship, thereafter to be landed in the United States to become someone else’s problem to house and feed. Or perhaps, of course, they might be captured by the Royal Navy and put right back into service against the United States. Skill and cleverness were part of the equation, and luck everything else.

  Comet was chopped up with battle fatigue, her lines spliced and spliced again, filthy and blackened from gunpowder blasts, the deck scored by the iron wheels of the gun trucks, rails chipped and blown out, fitted with new wood, then blown out again, sails tattered, repaired, tattered again, and the port watch was busy making a new main stuns’l boom after the last one had been shattered almost in the middle. The crew’s grimy clothing told of days at sea broken only by the tempers of weather and strife, of bad water and dwindling food supplies, of exhaustion of the body and weariness of the mind, a state in which all adversaries melted one into the other, kept in order only in the captain’s log book. Many wounds but so far no deaths aboard, by the luck of the stars. Boyle counted his blessings and drew in a deep breath of the breeze off the aromatic jungle just barely in sight.

  The deep breath made his ribs hurt on the left side. Until now he hadn’t realized. Had he fallen? Been struck by a flying fragment of wood?
Been elbowed by someone?

  He rubbed the sore spot absently and continued to watch the place near land where the brig had left his sight, disappearing into the distant coastline and ultimately the harbor at Suape.

  “Tom?”

  John Dieter again. How much time had passed? Hours. Boyle noticed he was hungry now. His thoughts had consumed him. When the ship wasn’t moving, he sometimes forgot to be alive.

  “Tom.”

  Boyle buried a flinch and came out of his concentration. “John—sorry.”

  “We’re squared away, if you want to get under sail at change of watch.”

  “Mm.”

  “You don’t want to get going?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Should we put in to the port for supplies and water?”

  “No, we’ll just lie off here for a while.”

  “Drills?”

  “No …”

  Dieter lingered at his side, waiting to see whether there would be an explanation forthcoming, then went ahead and made a guess. “That Portuguese man-of-war?”

  Inwardly impressed at how well Dieter knew him, Boyle wondered, “Why is he here? What’s his true business?”

  Dieter folded his arms and sighed, staring out at the horizon. “Gambling?”

  “Only if I were her captain,” Boyle commented. “Could be a sign.”

  “Of …”

  “Of something.”

  Morning chipped away into afternoon accompanied by the constant percussion of chisels and mallets, the smells of oakum and hot tar, sweat of the men and stew to feed them. Stew, again. There were no maneuvers except to hold the ship more or less in place, which took its own kind of skill at the tiller tackles and at sail handling. A very dreary and monotonous kind.

  Boyle knew the men, at least his officers, were watching him, noticing his obsession with the coastline. His senses were piqued, his mind racing. So much had changed in just these few months of predation, political changes, the fortunes of war—not just the war of the United States and England, but other wars in the world. There was no such thing as isolation anymore, not for any nation, ever again.