The Antigallican E-Book

Tom Bowling

• Herausgeber: Oldcastle Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 432

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Jersey fishing captain, Jean Cotterell is rescued by a French frigate - The Hortense - off the Grand Banks of Nova Scotia in May 1794. His fishing vessel has foundered and he is the sole survivor. The Hortense is part of Republican Admiral Jan Van Stabel's great fleet of over 100 ships bringing corn to France. Lord Howe's Channel Fleet is off Brest, hoping to intercept them. Life on The Hortense is like France under the Terror; chaotic, ungovernable, obsessed with savage, radical political theories. Separated from the French fleet in the Western Approaches she is intercepted by two British frigates and battle is joined... The Antigallican is the first in a series of novels set at the end of the 18th century at sea, in Britain, in the Channel Islands and in Revolutionary France. In Jean Cotterell we find a character that bears comparison with Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe, in a narrative that will delight fans of Patrick O'Brian.

Leseprobe

Jersey fishing captain, Jean Cotterell is rescued by a French frigate – The Hortense – off the Grand Banks of Nova Scotia in May 1794. His fishing vessel has foundered and he is the sole survivor. The Hortense is part of Republican Admiral Jan Van Stabel’s great fleet of over 100 ships bringing corn to France. Lord Howe’s Channel Fleet is off Brest, hoping to intercept them.

Life on The Hortense is like France under the Terror; chaotic, ungovernable, obsessed with savage, radical political theories. Separated from the French fleet in the Western Approaches she is intercepted by two British frigates and battle is joined…

The Antigallican is the first in a series of novels set at the end of the 18th century at sea, in Britain, in the Channel Islands and in Revolutionary France. In Jean Cotterell we find a character that bears comparison with Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe, in a narrative that will delight fans of Patrick O’Brian.

About the Author

Tom Bowling is a Londoner born into a seafaring family in the Neckinger, a part of Bermondsey allegedly named after the Devil’s Neckinger or noose worn by pirates executed there. He is the author of the Pocket Essential Pirates and Privateers and is currently working on the second book featuring Jean Cotterell, A Ship Aground.

‘With its captivating, pungent, and sharply drawn characters, this first instalment in a series of sea stories is a welcome addition to the Napoleonic sea story genre.’

Margaret Barr-Historical Novels Review

‘I believe [Tom Bowling] has a great future, and will become one of the leading authors in the historical naval fiction genre.’

Robert Squarebriggs-

THE ANTIGALLICAN

Tom Bowling

OLDCASTLEwww.oldcastlebooks.co.uk

Contents

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Historical Note

Copyright

Advertisement

To the memory of William Milne. A sailor, like his father and brothers, he was a charitable man in every sense, and a pleasure to know.

An`ti-Gal´li`can

a. 1. Opposed to what is Gallic or French

1

The light was dazzling. The sea was calm. There were no waves. The Gulf Stream’s swell met the cold northern water and caused the great ocean to rise and fall as a body, as if it were breathing. But that was the only movement. The black hull of the fishing boat L’Imprevu, a small, brigantine-rigged Terre-Neuveian wallowed in the swell, her stays creaking, a dirty grey tarpaulin suspended limply over part of her deck to serve as shade. A man and a boy hung in the rigging above the tarpaulin, sweating. The air around them felt thick and warm. The boy sang a ditty in Jerrais, Jersey French.

‘J’nos’nallons pour Terr’neuve, C’hest nouot pays d’Esden,’ he almost whispered. ‘We’re going to Newfoundland, it’s our garden of Eden.’ The man did not respond. The Newfoundland banks were not an ‘Eden’, even in summer.

The boy repeated the line, then wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He was called Thibault, and was just twelve years old. His hair was streaked blond from the sunlight and his face was ruddy. He wore just a shirt and breeches, like the rest of L’Imprevu’s crew. Thibault was the ship’s boy, and was acknowledged as the best pair of eyes aboard.

The man was Jean Cotterell. He was the captain of L’Imprevu. Cotterell was thirty. He had light-brown hair, blue-grey eyes and an angular, pointed face with broad cheekbones. His hair, like the boy’s, was bleached by exposure to the sun. Cotterell’s family claimed to be descended from the original Viking Jersey stock. He looked the part.

Cotterell scanned the horizon. To the south and west the sky met the sea in a great, seamless white and metal-blue expanse, full of startlingly bright light. Only dark, distant anvil clouds broke the scene’s calm consistency. L’Imprevu could have been in the English Channel in midsummer, not thousands of miles into the Atlantic. Below the clouds, fifteen or twenty miles away, an even darker smudge marked rain.

L’Imprevu was neither big enough nor rigged so as to have a masthead proper. Above them stood just the bare masts and rigging. Cotterell and the boy hung in the ratlines on the mizzen of the fishing boat. The big red fore and aft sail flopped beside them. Thibault’s usefulness as a lookout was beyond doubt. But he talked too much.

‘It’s hot,’ he said.

‘It’s May,’ said Cotterell.

‘My grandfather used to talk about the cold.’

‘You don’t remember that.’

Thibault’s brown eyes looked hurt. ‘He died before I was born. He told my mother,’ he whispered. ‘She gave me woollen hose.’

‘You’ll need them in the winter.’ Cotterell was softer. ‘Look after them.’

‘They are in my sea-chest.’ The boy was outraged at the idea he should scorn anything provided by his mother.

‘She knit them herself ?’

‘Of course.’ Cotterell imagined Thibault’s mother by the fire at la Grange, knitting for her son, surrounded by the other women, gossiping, clacking the needles. It seemed very remote from the deck of his boat in this great flat windless ocean, thousands of miles to the west. He looked again at the dark cloud on the horizon. That would change things.

‘We will still be here in the winter?’ asked Thibault.

‘That’s the plan, God willing.’

‘Fishing? Or looking for Frenchmen?’

Cotterell didn’t answer.

‘Are we going to fish ever, Jean Cotterell?’ Thibault asked.

Cotterell didn’t reply, but pointed to the south west, where the tall dark cloud promised a storm later. For now the southern sky and sea were welded together in shimmering, steely sunlight and only the very softest of airs blew. The oily surface of the swelling sea moved and shivered. L’Imprevu’s spars clattered as the sails received the zephyr, then spilled it. The vessel swung slightly and the rig creaked and clattered again as the breath of wind fell from the sails.

‘Imagine for a moment that you’re the captain of this vessel, Thibault.’

Thibault imagined. Cotterell suppressed a smile.

‘Would you put out boats and lines with that coming?’ Thibault looked at the dark cloud.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Strong winds. We’d have to fetch them in again soon.’

‘Good boy. So there’s your answer.’

He touched the boy’s head with affectionate familiarity. It was Thibault’s first season on the Banks and Cotterell had undertaken to educate the boy as a seaman. Cotterell looked down to the deck, to his other charges. L’Imprevu’s crew lay prone, looking for all the world as if they’d been struck by some giant hand. A tarpaulin was rigged over part of the deck, but still Cotterell could see parts of their bodies, feet and hands beyond it, unshaded. The sailors, he knew, were in shirts and breeches. Of course none wore shoes. Their clothes were old, sun-bleached and poor. Bright light shone down on the crewmen, as it did upon the fishing lines which were neatly rolled on the larboard side of L’Imprevu’s deck. An empty bait tub lay open, forward. The lines were not baited, and weren’t about to be. The vessel’s fish holds were empty and her boats were firmly chocked and lashed above them.

Cotterell and the boy hung in the rigging, sweltering under the burning sun. Cotterell looked to the horizon again. He almost wanted the gale to come. The air would clear. The decks would dampen and swell. The men would be busy. In the gusts and gales of an Atlantic blow, however brief, they would find the lack of fishing easier to bear. Action ends reflection in men. He began to sing in English:

‘Ye zephyrs fair that fan the air,

And wanton thro’ the grove,

O whisper to my charming fair,

“I die for her I love.”

This lass so neat, with smile so sweet,

Has won my right good will,

I’d crowns resign to call her mine;

Sweet lass of Richmond Hill.’

‘What’s that?’ asked the boy.

‘It’s a song.’

‘What does it say?’

‘You must have heard it.’

‘No. Where does it come from?’

‘I learned it on a big ship. The Asia. When I was your age.’

Cotterell began to translate for the boy. As he did so he looked at the base of the cloud on the horizon again. Something there drew him. Some anomaly. He couldn’t be sure what it was. He stopped translating and looked through his telescope, but could pick out nothing of significance. If the wind blew hard any French ships in that quarter would have to run before it. They would have to run towards him. Cotterell wasn’t on the Newfoundland Bank to fish, but to look out for French ships. Other fishing boats waited farther south and east, invisible beyond the horizon, but Cotterell and his sailors knew they were there. As soon as the French fleet was in view L’Imprevu, or one of the others, would pick up her skirts and run to the nearest British frigate. Cotterell’s men knew that was why they were sitting on the Banks without fishing. Cotterell’s men also knew that on other fishing boats over the horizon the lines stayed flaked, the hooks bare, the pulling boats chocked. The bait tub sat empty. The line of fishing boats – it couldn’t be called a fleet when the vessels were so far apart – were on the edge of the Grand Bank, between cold and warm water. It was where the best fish were found. But they would wait without working until the French had passed, as they had been ordered. The small fleet of fishing boats had to keep their holds empty if they were to outrun … well what? French warships, perhaps. For certain a fleet of French grain ships.

The crew of l’Imprevu, and those of the boats over the horizon, suffered loss of earnings in the same way. But release from competition didn’t help the men’s mood. Each day that passed cost the fishermen a day’s money. Would King George’s English admirals pay their losses? No promise had been made. Cotterell knew there was a fine balance between the men’s loyalty and their need to earn money. There was no point in their spending a year in Newfoundland and then returning to Jersey without a bag of money.

L’Imprevu’s spars clattered again. The ship’s wheel made small staccato movements as its chain links moved across the tiller below the deck, rocking back and forth; click, click, click-click.

Antoine LaRoche, a middle-aged man with black hair and a grey beard, stood, looked up and pointed towards the storm clouds. He called towards the masthead.

‘Shall I reduce sail, Cap’?’ Antoine spoke Jersey French. He had stepped back from the awning as he looked up, but he couldn’t see Cotterell. The sky was too bright. To Antoine his captain looked like a black paper cut-out against an almost unbearably white-hot sky.

Cotterell called, ‘It may go round.’

‘Shall I fetch water?’

‘We have water. Get in the shade again. Rest.’

Antoine took a last long look at the threatening cloud on the horizon, then obeyed. He lay on the deck. But his body didn’t look at ease. Cotterell could see the older man perfectly well looking down, his raised face round like a plate, his hand casting a blue shadow as it shaded his eyes. Cotterell smiled. He knew Antoine wouldn’t be satisfied until they were sailing or working or fishing or scrubbing decks. But Cotterell wanted them to rest. They were a small crew, six men, including the boy and himself, and L’Imprevu might have to hold station like this for weeks.

‘How long will we stay here?’ asked Thibault, reading his thoughts. The older men mightn’t have dared question Cotterell, but Thibault was full of self-confidence. The boy felt certain of his place next to Cotterell. Fishing the Banks was a trade handed down from Jersey father to Jersey son. Cotterell had learned it from his father, Jean-Jacques Cotterell. Thibault Dumaresq was the grandson of Jean-Jacques’ long dead mate.

‘As long as we need to,’ Cotterell replied quietly.

‘Damn the French,’ said the boy.

‘Watch your tongue. Your mother …’

‘My mother says damn them all and may God kill them all. She wrote it in the letter I received from her in St John.’ Thibault was deadly serious. ‘My mother says kill all lying, stealing, cheating colonials too, who are thieves and disloyal to their king.’

‘Does she?’

‘You could see the letter if you wished.’

Cotterell leaned back from the rigging, taking his weight on his hands, thinking and looking at Thibault. ‘Kill them all, she wrote?’ he asked.

‘Yes. But foremost the French.

‘She is very antigallican, your mother.’ Cotterell laughed. ‘Be patient and you may get your chance to kill Frenchmen.’

‘Here? What will I use? A fish gaff ?’

‘Join the King’s Navy. They’ll be glad of the company. I hear there are openings for young men.’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Oh?’

‘She wouldn’t allow it.’

‘Damn the English too?’ Cotterell was laughing at Thibault. ‘Your mother says damn everyone.’

‘Her life is hard. She doesn’t want me to suffer on the lower deck of a warship.’

‘Perhaps one of His Majesty’s ships will force the issue.’

‘How?’

‘They could press you and place a gun in your hands.’

‘Press?’ said the boy, outraged, ‘I’m a Jerseyman.’

‘And they would have your mother to answer to. The prospect will keep their Lordships awake at night.’

The boy held out his hand. Cotterell passed the telescope. Thibault lined it up with the horizon.

‘Bang. Bang. Bang,’ he said as he swung the instrument across the horizon. ‘Death to the French.’

‘Death to King George’s enemies,’ replied Cotterell.

‘She says I could do it if I could be sure to be an officer.’ Thibault was still looking through the telescope. ‘Join the King’s Navy, that is.’

‘How can you be sure of that?’ asked Cotterell, aware that though the boy’s eye might be to the telescope he, Cotterell, was being observed.

‘I could get a place as a Midshipman.’

‘You need interest. Do you have any?’

‘What is it, exactly?’

‘Someone to look over you.’

‘Like an angel?’

‘Something like an angel.’

A silence, then Thibault asked, ‘Don’t you have interest, Jean Cotterell?’

‘No. Why would I? I’m a poor fisherman.’

‘My mother says you do.’

‘I thought you didn’t know what it meant?’

The boy was silent for a moment.

‘Your mother is a good woman and a friend of my family … but,’ continued Cotterell, ‘she says a lot for a woman on the other side of the ocean.’

‘She talks about you in her letter.’

‘Then I am obliged and flattered.’

‘She asked me to remember her to you. Did I tell you?’

‘Many times.’

‘She says she hopes you are looking after me.’

‘Did you write back?’ asked Cotterell.

‘We left St John’s harbour in a dash.’

‘So we did.’

‘I’ll show you the letter if you would like.’

‘It’s in the sea-chest with the Jersey hose?’

Thibault looked suspicious. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘I think she meant this momentous document just for you, Thibault. Keep your eye on the horizon.’

‘She says you were seen with Captain d’Auvergne in St Helier.’

‘I am not familiar with that person.’

Thibault took the telescope from his eye and looked at Cotterell, eyes screwed up against the light. Cotterell looked back, expressionless.

‘She says if you have interest …’

‘Is he in Jersey, this Mister Overn?’

‘Captain d’Auvergne. Yes. I’m sure you know him if Mother says you do. She wrote it …

‘… in the letter you received in St John. Do you see anything?’

Cotterell pointed to the south west.

‘Clouds,’ said Thibault.

‘Does he live in Jersey, this man?’ Cotterell repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘In Gorey, her letter says.’

‘So Captain Overn is as far away as Veuve Dumaresq, your mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘And therefore just about as useful as a lookout on this fishing boat. Do not reduce yourself to the same condition.’

‘Which is?’

‘A person of little use. Be careful that I do not land you the next time we reach St John, leaving your mother to arrange with this Captain Overn to transport you and your weighty letters back to Gorey as best she can. Clear?’

‘Yes Jean,’ said the boy.

‘Captain,’ prompted Cotterell.

‘Yes, Cap’. Sorry Cap’.’ The boy returned to his telescope. Cotterell began to descend. The ratlines were hot to his touch.

Thibault looked at the base of the anvil cloud. ‘I can see a sail,’ he said quietly. Cotterell was beside him again in an instant.

‘Where?’

‘At the foot of the clouds.’

Cotterell looked.

‘I see nothing.’

‘It’s dark there. But I see a sail running towards us.’

Cotterell looked down for a moment. The crew had heard, though the boy had spoken in little more than a whisper. They were on their feet. The fishing boat creaked in expectation. Cotterell took the telescope. He looked through it at the foot of the cloud formation.

‘What sort of sail? A fisherman? A warship?’

‘Just a sail,’ the boy said. ‘A white patch.’

‘I see nothing.’

Thibault smiled. ‘Perhaps I’m wrong.’

They both knew he wasn’t.

As the ship on the horizon drew closer the boy eventually identified that she bore an American flag. While Cotterell went on deck, Thibault watched her approach through the telescope. He reported she flew an enormous stars and stripes. Closer yet and, Thibault called down to them, he could see every sail looked in perfect order, the whole was spick and span.

‘She’s beautiful!’ he called from his perch in the rigging, and meant it. The men were on deck wedging the hatches to the fish hold in anticipation of rough weather. They paused for half a second and looked at each other; some beauty.

‘Is she a warship?’ a voice called to the boy.

‘What else?’ Antoine answered from the deck. Cotterell and the crew of l’Imprevu sat in almost still air. The American vessel was under the heavy clouds, running under reefed sails. She aimed at L’Imprevu like an arrow. The clouds seemed to aim at L‘Imprevu too. They promised a full Atlantic blow.

The weather arrived first, beating the American frigate by hours. First rain fell. Large droplets of water landed on deck, splashing back as if the deck were a hot plate. Each drop left a dark mark on the bleached oak surface. There were spaces between the dark marks. Next the clouds gathered overhead. The sky grew gloomy. The dark rain marks on the sun-whitened wooden deck closed and became one. When the first airs came L’Imprevu ran too, both from the storm and from the American frigate, which was now less than ten miles away. L’Imprevu pointed north and east for Avalon and St John, her crew hoping the British frigates were there and not out on the Flemish Cap.

‘Rain before wind,’ said Antoine to Cotterell. ‘Things will become interesting if we keep all this sail up …’

‘We’ll keep our sails up while the American chases. With any luck he will lose interest in us and pick on someone else. Or night will come and save us.’

‘Why is he chasing?’

‘Shall we stop and ask?’ said Cotterell, regretting his sharpness as soon as he had spoken. Antoine deserved a proper answer. ‘At the very least he will scatter us fishermen back to Newfoundland,’ Cotterell continued, ‘so his French friends shall have a clear and unreported passage in our absence. But his appearance alone tells us the French fleet have set sail. We have to find King George’s frigates and tell them. The American, meanwhile, will want to detain those he can. He may even make Yankee crewmen of us.’

Now the wind blew and the sails filled on L’Imprevu. The American was three miles away, but now both vessels had power in their sails. L’Imprevu ran for her life. As she ran, the sea around her grew first into waves; then the waves heaped up and spray flew. After an hour the waves were large, big enough to bury the bow of the little fishing boat each time she descended a trough, big enough for the crew to feel the wind ease across her deck on the downhill slope of the wave. The wind never eased in her sails and her captain never let up his search for speed. Cotterell kept up every scrap of sail – mizzen over the starboard quarter, brigantine square-sail sweeping the deck. The spars screamed complaint. The cords, halyards and sheets were tight as a musical instrument. The wind beat against the sails, creating a thrumming running through the vessel, as if some tune was about to groan out of her. The sails stretched. The sheets hummed. Rain beaded on the sailcloth filler. Cotterell fetched Thibault down from his vantage point. The boy was almost lost in finding the safety of the deck, tripping and floating on the spume of a wave that broke over L’Imprevu, banging his head and his leg against the scupper. Two men fought the wheel, slipping and sliding in their struggle to hold their course. A false move during a gust meant they lost control of the wheel momentarily. The mizzen flipped to larboard then back to starboard, gear crashing on the mast as it did.

‘Hold your course,’ bellowed Cotterell. ‘We’ll lose the lot if you broach.’

‘We will lose control if we don’t reef now,’ Antoine shouted, clutching Cotterell’s shoulder and shouting in his ear. The American ship was behind them, clear for both men to see, now perhaps two miles off.

‘No.’ Said Cotterell.

Then there was a report like a gun. At first Cotterell thought the Americans must have aimed some sort of bow chaser at them, but the frigate was too far away to fire a gun and the seas were too rough to allow one to be aimed. He looked up. The mainmast angle on L’Imprevu seemed to be wrong. The rake was too much. The mast moved of its own accord, separately from the ship, he thought. Realisation of the awful truth came slowly to him. The mast was breaking. As Cotterell understood he turned to the men on the wheel to warn them. As he turned, a wave washed over the fishing boat, soaking the men on the wheel anew, sending Tomas, one of the crewmen, sliding forward like a man on a waterfall. Cotterell clutched a deadeye and held on for his life. The deck tilted as the bow buried. As the vessel stalled the mast snapped. The bow came up while the mast descended in a tangle of rigging. Another wave swept them and this time the helmsmen lost control of the boat entirely. L’Imprevu’s mizzen drove her stern on while her bow remained buried at the bottom of the trough. The broken mainmast and mainsail fell over to larboard, catching water there like a purse or a bucket dropped in a stream. The weight of water in the sails could only bring one result. She broached. Another wave broke, the vessel turned, the wind and sea seemed to roar in victory. Cotterell, standing on the starboard and holding his deadeye, found himself propelled through the air, off the deck and into the sea. The fishing boat, having broached to larboard, stayed on that side for a second, then rolled with the next wave and disappeared under the seas. Apart from that second of obscenely exposed hull, like a maiden aunt bowled over, skirts awry, arse exposed, L’Imprevu sank without a pause, without hesitation. She left no sign she’d ever been there, except Cotterell alone in the sea.

Jean Cotterell never saw the American pass, if she ever did. He never even confirmed for himself that she was American. But he saw his own vessel sink. There was a moment when he was in the water and he saw her hull nearby. Upturned, L’Imprevu was covered in barnacles and weed. He believed he could smell the black hull. Another wave washed across Cotterell, making him tumble. When he rose again, also tumbling, she was gone. He looked around himself but there was nothing. He was alone. There was no sign of L’Imprevu and no sign of the American vessel. There was no Thibault, no Antoine, neither of the two Tomases, no Michel, no Yves. He allowed himself to take the information in again. The vessel, the men, their hopes and prayers were gone. Surely not. Cotterell looked about himself. He was alone in the sea. For a moment he felt sorry for himself. Cotterell wondered how he would tell little Thibault’s mother, Widow Dumaresq, that he had lost her son. It would be too much to bear. She had already lost her father and her husband to the sea. Then he laughed at his own vanity. He would never tell her. Cotterell knew he was going to die. He prayed for the souls of the other sailors, then prayed for his own. Salt-water spray whipped around his head. It frothed over him, snatched at his mouth, stole his breath and stung his eyes. It tossed him head over heels, over and over. It clutched him and released him, first in one element, then the other. Out of the water his ears were beaten by the rushing of the wind, by the crashing of tons of water in the giant empty North Atlantic. Under the water was warmer, almost noiseless. Under the water was as safe as a womb. But Cotterell knew the water would kill him.

The wind eased as quickly as it had begun. Slowly the waves ceased to thunder and break so violently. Eventually, as the afternoon went on, the storm ended completely. Only the swell continued. Cotterell looked about himself. He was amazed to find a wooden spar from his foundered fishing boat. He forced his arm and head under some cord lashed to the wooden spar. Now he couldn’t be washed away again. The spar was his home, however temporary. He recognised it. From now until the end of my life, this is my home, he thought, then banished the idea. Down that path lies despair. But he was in a despairing situation.

Time passed. He called in English until his voice was hoarse, hoping the Americans would hear him, but there was no response and no sign of the American ship. Cotterell eventually began to believe he was completely alone. Knowing is one thing, truly believing is another, he thought. Now I believe.

‘Is this all that’s left?’ he said aloud, as if to fend off the thought. Only an hour, perhaps two before he spoke Cotterell had been standing on the deck of his fishing boat, where men had cried and fought the storm. Now they were gone.

The green swell carried him north and east. Cliffs of water peaked and collapsed. Cotterell rode the swell. Over and over he fell into a green abyss. Over and over he rose again as if by a miracle, still clutching his wooden spar. Each time he rose he looked for his fishing boat, l’Imprevu, as if by the same miracle she could rise again and sail. L’Imprevu wasn’t there and neither were his crew. Logic was swept aside. His mind was for a long time unable to accept the truth his senses told him. Had his time and his world, his ship and his men, had all of his experiences really been snatched away from him? Was this a nightmare? Cotterell was trapped between drowning and not drowning, between life and death. If it was a dream, he couldn’t wake. Cotterell wept bitter salt tears into the ocean. He didn’t want to think about the other sailors. He imagined their faces begging him to save them as the ship turned and foundered. He had never seen it but they must have done it. Save us. He was their captain. He’d let them down.

The fishermen’s faces were real to him; their voices too. How far now was the Newfoundland coast? He wondered aloud, but no answer came from the fishermen. He knew the answer, anyway. Two hundred miles. Where was the rest of the fleet? He knew the answer to that too. A day’s sail, if they hadn’t been scattered in their turn by the sight of the American warship’s sail. Self pity coursed through Cotterell for a moment, like a false heart beat. There was no hope of rescue. He set the thought aside. He determined to remain rational and hopeful. He closed his eyes and concentrated on remaining alive as long as he could.

By the end of the afternoon the chill of the green water had driven rational thought from his mind. Only the very core of Cotterell lived now. He had no energy for imaginings or nightmares, for drowning sailors and sinking ships. He had lost most of his clothes. The cold seemed to have soaked his skin, penetrating to his bones. His whole being, limbs, heart, mind, and even soul seemed to have frozen past numbness, to have slowed beyond dullness. Cotterell was barely able to hold his face out of the sea. He relaxed, little by little. Cotterell dozed towards death, spluttering awake each time he fell asleep into the water. The sea, now the long Atlantic rhythm he knew so well from his years of fishing, prepared to accept him. The sky overhead was as sharp and blue as a polished gem. He saw a gull, sitting in the water, turning its head, one beady eye after the other choosing the best place to strike. He knew when he died he would be consumed between the fish below and the birds above. Was the gull really there, so far out to sea waiting to feed on him? Cotterell couldn’t tell. He didn’t know if he was dead or alive. His body was completely numb. The spar and the cord had ceased to hurt. His eyes were red and sore, almost impossible to open. Only pain differentiated between opening his eyes and dreaming it. His mouth wouldn’t work. His lips wouldn’t part. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was desperately thirsty. Finally his raw eyes refused to open at all. He was beaten, like a prize-fighter who’d done twenty or thirty rounds with Mendoza or Humphries. This is how the end comes, he thought. Cotterell’s arms hung over the spar, tied by the cord, trapping him, refusing to let him drown. Now nothing but the cord kept him from slipping under the water. Sometimes pain came like flashes of light, but its source was inside him, not outside. Spasms of cramp sometimes woke Cotterell from his dream of death, but he knew he would die soon. He wondered if he already had. If he lifted his head brilliant pink light flooded his mind. He felt that if he could just swim through the light he would meet his makers, his Lord and his long-dead father. He repeated the words of the Nicene creed to no one at all, unspoken words addressed by his otherwise silent, dying mind to the inside of his own skull, ‘I believe in one God, the Father almighty, Creator of all things visible and invisible …’

He heard voices.

Cotterell couldn’t understand what the voices said. There was another sound. He realised he could hear the creak of rigging. Ropes ran, sheaves squeaked. Next he heard the greased slide and splash of a ship’s boat entering the sea. This is a fantasy, come to taunt me, he thought. So this is how a man dies, in a dream. An age passed, then the splash of oars was near him. A voice called in French, ‘Lift oars.’ Rough hands grasped Cotterell and lifted him from the sea.

‘Careful now. Careful. Is he alive?’ A gruff voice near Cotterell’s head spoke French with a strong English accent. Other men’s hands wrapped him in what felt like a large rough woollen blanket. He was like a baby, held in their arms.

‘Is he alive?’ the voice repeated.

‘No.’

Cotterell couldn’t reply, not even as much as a movement of the head or a blink of his eye. He couldn’t even open his eyes.

‘He’s breathing.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Pinch him.’

If they pinched him Cotterell didn’t feel it.

‘He’s dead,’ repeated a gloomy French voice. ‘Put him back.’

‘He’s not.’

Someone punched him in the stomach. Cotterell vomited a warm stream of salt water. He could feel it run between his teeth and out the corner of his mouth.

‘Do it again.’

The punch came again, this time in the solar plexus. Cotterell vomited again, this time warm salt water ran up the back of his throat, exiting through his nose. He gasped.

‘See. Breathing. I told you. You give up too easily.’

The owner of the voice punched Cotterell one more time for good luck. Cotterell gave a dry retch.

‘Don’t kill him.’

‘Would I be down here fishing for him if I wanted to kill him?’

Cotterell still couldn’t breathe steadily or speak or open his eyes. They bathed his face with fresh water from a keg held near his head. They ran the water over his eyes and lips. Cotterell could smell the fresh water as soon as they uncorked the keg and was greedy for it. But he couldn’t move his head, and neither could he ask for it. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t drink. His lips wouldn’t move. He felt a soaked rag held against his mouth for a few seconds, like a baby’s pap-feeder. Fresh water from the rag dribbled between his lips. Still Cotterell didn’t have the strength the take the kind man’s hand and hold the rag to his mouth and suck on it, which is what he wanted. Cotterell couldn’t see his rescuers, just felt himself stretched across their knees in a small boat while bright red light filtered through his eyelids. He coughed sea water and sweet water mixed.

‘Don’t give him any more now, you’ll kill him.’

Then shadow was cast over the boat. Whatever wind there had been calmed. The boat rose and fell and Cotterell couldn’t see, but he could feel the presence of a ship close by. They were in its lee. A canvas sling was tied about Cotterell and he was lifted from the boat to the ship, swinging free in the air as he rose, one arm dangling. His free hand felt rough manila netting. His fingers slipped around the netting, grasped for a second, then fell open. On deck they removed the sling. Under his body he could feel the comforting solidity of the oak deck of a big ship. He was certain he was either dead or dreaming. ‘What comes next?’ he wondered, and then allowed the swaddling warmth of sleep to smother his conscious mind.

2

After death comes life. Cotterell slept and dreamed, but his dream was obscene and surprising. He was in a cot in a dark place, naked except for a rough blanket over him. His arms and legs were like lead on the cot. His skin burned as if it was on fire but he couldn’t move. A lamp approached, shone into his face. Two women leaned over him. They were both under thirty, but not much. One was a coarse-looking countrywoman with red brown hair and a shawl over her shoulders. She had rosy cheeks and a friendly face. The other was thinner-faced and more serious looking, with grey eyes, a dirty red cap over her hair and a blue tunic. She was dressed like a man in a picture shown to his mother by a French priest. They had been in his mother’s parlour. Cotterell had been there and held the grubby picture while the old man and his mother talked. The priest had referred to the soldier as a sans culottes. It meant the revolutionary rabble. But it meant more. Just before Cotterell had left Jersey the sans culottes had left Paris under arms to defend their Republic. The priest had merely picked up his skirts and run to Jersey. Cotterell remembered the French priest’s eyes gleaming by the firelight.

‘Devils. Very devils.’ The old man had whispered. He’d felt at home with Cotterell’s mother, one of the few local Catholics on the island. ‘They believe in nothing. Imagine. Such people as there never were before.’

Later the priest offered Cotterell’s mother a benediction. He had a little nub of incense in his cloak which he lit and placed in a bowl. Cotterell had gone outside the cottage while they did it. Cotterell had said he would keep watch. The scent seemed to fill the air outside the cottage. Cotterell could smell it still, when he tried to remember. Refugee priests were banned from giving services and from prozelytising on the island and he’d been fearful someone would pass. What would he say? Jerseymen were Protestants, and Cotterell was a good Jerseyman. His Breton mother’s Catholic faith was tolerated on the island, but no more, and the parts of it she’d taught him had been in secret.

Cotterell lay in the cot with his eyes closed. His limbs were leaden. Had he slept? Was it a dream? Was he dead? He didn’t know. He raised his eyelids a little. The women were still there.

The two women by the cot talked quietly. They were discussing Cotterell, he knew. He couldn’t make out the words. Their lips moved but the words came out as if spoken through a muffler. The sans culottes lifted the blanket that covered Cotterell’s body. Both women laughed like girls. The countrywoman’s smile gaped. She had no teeth. They talked again, the sans culottes holding up the blanket all the while. The countrywoman gave a gummy grin as she felt for Cotterell’s penis. He felt it grow in her hand. He felt as though he was pinned to the cot but the penis rose with a life of its own, the only part of Cotterell’s body able to move.

Both women laughed again while the countrywoman worked him and the woman in the red cap looked on.

‘I told you,’ said the woman with no teeth. ‘I told you.’

‘Will he stay up?’ asked the revolutionary.

‘I think so.’

‘Go on then.’

The sans culottes slipped out of her pantaloons and climbed onto the cot. ‘Voila!’ She took his penis inside herself. ‘Voila!’ The sans culottes bounced up and down on him.

‘Bravo!’ hissed the woman with the red cheeks. ‘I told you.’

‘Fetch them …’

A noise behind them turned both away. A man’s voice spoke. ‘Told her what? Fetch who? What are you doing here with a light? Do you want to blow us all to pieces?’ The darkness came on again. The women’s voices laughed in the darkness, just once, and Cotterell’s vision ended. His mind drifted untrammelled in the complete darkness. He wondered if this was what madmen’s minds were like. Am I unhinged? Has the sea kept me alive to make me mad? His eyes were too heavy now. Cotterell slept.

He awoke, perfectly sane and sentient in a wooden cot on the orlop of a warship. Though his body caused him pain, Cotterell welcomed it as the affirmation that he was neither mad nor dead. He looked about himself. There was just one light on the deck, a large candle in a big glass case. Cotterell looked at the flickering flame. It was an expensive glass case, carefully carved in mahogany. A candle was mounted inside on a specially constructed holder. Cotterell knew that meant they were next to the filling room, the gunpowder store. By the slowly flickering light he could make out the whitewashed wooden walls which surrounded him. To one side was a companionway leading to the next deck. The feeling of his skin being on fire was still there, but now he could just about move his limbs, though they ached infernally. Cotterell’s hearing worked too. He could hear water trickling past the hull of the ship. The vessel was like a musical instrument. The creak of the rigging was conducted down to him by the mast. Even so far below deck Cotterell could hear and feel the ship was moving easily across the ocean, sailing large.

‘Awake?’ asked a voice in English. Cotterell focussed. A black man’s face was leaning over him. The man had large firm lips, high cheekbones, flashing whites to his eyes. He was very handsome and perhaps a little vain. Close cropped black curly hair jutting out beneath an incongruous, immaculate powdered white wig. The black man was in his mid-thirties. His eyes held Cotterell’s for a moment, then looked away. Cotterell allowed his own eyes to close. He tried with an almost physical effort to clear his mind. Was this another dream? Was he dead? Behind the black man a voice spoke.

‘What do you think?’ Another voice asked.

‘I don’t know.’ The black man replied.

‘He’ll live?’ asked the voice.

‘I said, I don’t know.’

‘He’s lucky.’ A pause, then, ‘Have you been on deck today Citizen Charles?’

‘Not since daylight,’ replied the black man.

‘There are still sheep in the sea, even now.’ Both voices were speaking French. French seamen say ‘moutons’ where Englishmen would say ‘white horses.’ Apart from the single word ‘awake’ Cotterell had heard nothing but French since he’d been on the vessel. The black man, Rasselas Charles, spoke good French with a definite but lilting English accent. The other voice was a country French accent – Cotterell recognised that it came from the Norman Cotentin. He’d heard that accent many times before, from fishermen around Jersey, from Frenchmen on the Gaspé or even Nova Scotia. But there was something else. It was extraordinary. Cotterell didn’t only recognise the accent; he recognised the voice that spoke it. Cotterell didn’t trust his senses. Was he still in a dream of death? He wondered. His dulled, slow-awakening brain worked through the logic. The world was becoming concrete again. The gunpowder filling-room with such a grand lamp meant he was on a warship. That he was by the gunpowder filling-room meant he was in the bowels of the ship, on the orlop deck or cockpit. The voices meant it was a French warship. The smell confirmed it. Down here upon the orlop, above the ballast, the ship stank. English warships do not stink in any quarter, or else someone would pay for it. Cotterell was a fisherman but he knew that much about the King George’s Navy. Now Cotterell heard another French voice, this time refined, sounding as if it belonged to a man of education, without the marks of a region in it. ‘It’s a miracle we saw him. If night had come …’

The Cotentin voice harrumphed. Apparently it did not much care for the opinions of the refined voice.

‘Or fog.’ Continued the refined voice, lecturing. ‘Fog is particularly common in the seas around the Banks.’

‘Really? Common?’ said the Cotentin voice in a tone which said ‘be quiet.’

The black man Charles leaned closer to Cotterell’s exhausted face. ‘How are you?’ he whispered in soft West Indian English. Cotterell couldn’t reply. ‘You were like a drowned rat when we took you out of the sea. You surprised us. We thought you were dead.’

Cotterell held the black man in his gaze for a second.

‘Don’t whisper. What are you saying to him, Citizen Charles?’ said the refined French voice. The word ‘citizen’ had an unpleasant taste for the man behind the voice, as if it was spoken with a mouthful of stones.

‘That everyone thought he was fish bait.’ Charles replied.

‘He may well have been bait. But for which fish?’ responded the refined voice. ‘He owes his life to France and the sharp eyes of our sailors.’

‘He is indeed a lucky man.’ Charles agreed. He took a piece of pale clean cloth and dipped it in a bowl of liquid, then wiped Cotterell’s eyes. Cotterell blinked. His eyes felt as if they had been scrubbed with sand. The liquid relieved the pain.

A man clumped forward in leather seaboots which creaked. He leaned over the black man’s shoulder. He was dressed as an officer of the French Navy, with long flowing black hair and a large, grey moustache stained brown by tobacco. The black hair was patently and cheaply dyed, making the officer look for all the world like an actor playing a ship’s officer. The uniform tunic didn’t fit very well. It looked as if the man would only need to give one good swing of his elbows to split it. Though he had been a child when he last saw the face, Cotterell immediately recognised it. The man leaned over Cotterell and spoke. He stank of cheap tobacco and brandy.

‘Chance fell for you, young fellow. The end of Floreal, Prairial approaches. You must have fallen into the warm current. Any earlier in the year or the current’s course changed by even a point, you would have died from cold within an hour.’

This was the Cotentin voice. He wore the clothes of a French naval captain but didn’t sound like one. Cotterell understood the words but not the sense. What the hell was Prairial? The Captain pawed at the skin on Cotterell’s face like a farmer examining a plough-horse’s mouth.

‘We lack seamen, that’s for sure. Don’t we Citizen Auchard?’

The refined voice, its owner still out of sight, agreed. ‘We certainly do, Commandant.’

Charles reached into the cot and pulled Cotterell’s hand from under the blanket. He showed the soft hand to the Captain in the flickering, dim light.

‘He’s no rough-handed seaman,’ said Charles.

The Captain ignored the hand. ‘Then we’ll make him one.’

Auchard came forward, a thin face, a prematurely balding head with a fine brow and almost non-existent eyebrows above one grey eye, the other covered by an eye patch. He was a perfect picture of a French maritime officer. Clean, precise, meticulous. Auchard took Cotterell’s hand into his own, felt the soft skin across Cotterell’s palm, then let him go again. He addressed Cotterell in French, ‘Which ship?’

No reply came. Cotterell could barely think, let alone speak.

‘Stop playing games with me. Which ship? How many men? And who are you? Passenger? Officer?’

Again no reply.

‘He speaks English in his dreams,’ supplied Charles. Auchard repeated the same words in strongly-accented English. Cotterell tried again to answer but no words would come and the effort exhausted him. Cotterell closed his eyes. He heard the French Captain‘s’s voice behind Auchard. ‘I know the English. They like red meat to eat and the wind in their sails. Take him on deck. He’ll improve.’

‘Later would be better. Don’t you think?’ Charles answered. He spoke quietly.

The Captain didn’t argue. ‘You’re the doctor.’

‘Not I,’ replied Charles.

‘What is a doctor but a man who consults his books and mends a fellow? There is no man on this vessel better read than you, sir. You be the doctor,’ said the Captain. ‘What do the books say about nearly drowned men?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But he’ll live?’

‘I expect so. I don’t know.’

‘Well … do your best.’

‘Keep him down here?’

‘As you see fit.’

Charles held a small cup to Cotterell’s lips. He allowed liquid to dribble from the cup into Cotterell’s mouth. It tasted bitter. Cotterell opened his eyes. The black, Charles, and the Frenchman, Auchard, looked at him for a moment in silence, then a voice called down the companionway, ‘Citizen Commandant! Citizen Commandant!’

‘On the faux-pont,’ called the Captain.

A boy of about twelve tumbled down the companionway. He was barefoot, wore trousers and shirt made of un-dyed canvas and a little blue muffler. He straightened himself on landing, like a cat. For a moment, looking out of the corner of his eye, Cotterell thought it was Thibault.

‘On deck, Citizen. Sail sighted.’

‘You saw it, Erique?’ asked the Captain.

‘No Citizen. Yannik is up there. I … Citizen Lefèvre called me down.’

‘Which point?’

‘South-west quarter, Citizen.’

‘Was it the Vendôme?’

‘Too far to see, Citizen.’

‘Just one sail?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Was it a fleet? Vanstabel’s fleet?’

‘He couldn’t see, Citizen.’

‘No signal? No flag?’

‘He said it was too far away.’

‘You’d have seen it, Erique. You’d have told me exactly what is out there.’ The Captain put his arm about the boy’s shoulders and addressed Charles. ‘This boy is a little gem. He has the best eyes in the maritime service. And probably the best ears too. Eyes and ears make a captain. One day he’ll be an admiral.’

Erique smiled, pleased. ‘Thank you Citizen.’

‘Which way was this vessel headed?’

‘Yannick just said he saw a sail, Citizen, with the hull down below the horizon.’

The Captain considered this. He sat on a chest.

‘Could it be your grain convoy?’ asked Charles.

‘It could,’ answered the Captain, ‘or it could be a British frigate waiting for the convoy.’

‘Mon Commandant.’ The boy was hopping from foot to foot. He had something else to say. The Captain waved him to speak. ‘Are we in a hurry?’

The Captain frowned. ‘What?’

‘Citizen Lefèvre said we were in a hurry and you are to come up immediately … sir.’

‘Says? He says?’

‘Yes, Citizen Commandant.’

‘He commands the Hortense or I do?’

‘You do. I suppose, sir. Captain sir. I mean …’ Then he corrected himself, ‘Citizen Commandant.’ The boy could feel a trap opening under his feet.

The Captain thought for a moment. ‘You go up the mast for me, Erique, and join Yannik. Keep your keen young eyes on that ship. As soon as it shows the slightest sign of belonging to that foul tyrant King George, or of getting any closer to us, you let me know straight away.’

‘Yes, Citizen.’

‘Me, mind you,’ said the Captain. ‘You tell me.’

The boy scrambled up the companionway again. When he’d gone the black man broke the silence, ‘Will we run?’

Auchard and the black stood around Cotterell, who was, for all outer purposes, unconscious in the cot. The Captain watched them from across the cabin. Auchard answered for his chief, all stiff formality. ‘It is not for you to question a Captain of the French maritime service.’

The black man didn’t reply. The Captain’s sense of humour returned. He laughed. ‘… no matter how he came by his command.’

‘I’m sure I don’t understand, sir,’ said Auchard, though he did.

The Captain confided, ‘Citizen Auchard will defend the honour of this uniform to the death, no matter who wears it. Isn’t that the case, Auchard?’ The refined voice didn’t answer. ‘And I happen to wear it.’ The Captain continued. ‘He doesn’t like revolutionaries and he doesn’t like negroes. The idea of his beloved maritime service being taken over by privateering scum, then used for transporting Jacobin niggers across the ocean in places reserved for officers revolts him.’

‘Citizen Commandant, I beg you,’ said Auchard.

The Captain continued to speak ‘confidentially’ to Charles. ‘Allow me to apologise on behalf of my officer, Citizen Charles. Don’t be uncomfortable with him. There are plenty of ex-slavers in our crew. Perhaps the very men who took you to America are among them.’ He paused as if a thought had occurred, though it was clear to them all that what came next was deliberate. ‘Perhaps you travelled in one of Auchard’s ‘negriers.’’

‘I have no slave ships,’ said Auchard, exasperated. ‘I never did.’

‘Your father’s then,’ replied the Captain.

Charles said very quietly, ‘I was born in Jamaica.’

The Captain was reassuring. ‘Auchard has an excess of military zeal, but that’s his only fault. He’s not to know that one word in the right ear from a man like you could lop off his head. Indulge us, I beg you Mr Charles. We’re not savages. We’re