Free Wide is the Water by Jane Aiken Hodge Page B

Now we’ll drink another glass of wine and say no more about it, if you please. I hope to make Plymouth in three or four days if the wind holds, and then this will be all over, best forgotten. But I must say I’m damned glad I don’t have to take you in in irons, Cousin Hart. I was – anxious.’
    â€˜Thank you.’ Alone in his cabin. Hart sat for a while, very still, contemplating the disaster he had escaped. And Bill, poor Bill, who had not …
    The more he thought of it, the more he respected his newfound cousin for the way he had handled the wholebusiness, and the more grateful he felt to him. If the conspiracy had been exposed, his own part or lack of one would inevitably have come to light, and there were no two ways about it – it would have meant ruin for him. He seized the first opportunity to mention that dangerous bottle of laudanum to Dick Purchas, who laughed and said, ‘You don’t think it really was laudanum, do you? Doc. Burnard has more sense than to leave that where thieving hands can reach it. No, it was when that was taken that we knew Grant really meant business. He’s behaving very well, have you noticed?’
    â€˜What does he know?’
    Dick Purchas shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. That he’s watched, that’s certain. I gave orders that it must be obvious after your poor Bill’s death. I didn’t want anything else to happen.’
    â€˜And it hasn’t. I envy you your power. I wish we could order things like that in our navy.’
    â€˜I expect you will one day. We’ve been sailors a long while, remember, long enough to learn that there’s no time for divided command at sea. A split-second decision can so easily make the difference between life and death. No time for your committees here. Do you know, I am beginning to hope that even the man Grant is beginning to recognise that. He’s certainly minding his step.’
    â€˜He must be a very frightened man.’
    â€˜If he’s not, he’s a fool! And I never thought him that. If he goes on behaving as he is now, I’m half-inclined to keep him on the
Sparrow
and just split up his friends. He has the makings of a damn good petty officer.’
    â€˜Cousin, you amaze me.’
    Dick laughed. ‘Well, it would solve a moral problem for me. I hardly like to send him to another ship without some word of warning to the captain, and yet how can I give that without telling the whole story, which, as you know, is the last thing I want to do?’
    â€˜And for which I’m more grateful to you than I can say,’ said Hart.
    He thought about this conversation a good deal in the next few days, when the
Sparrow
encountered contrary winds almost for the first time and wallowed unhappily to the west of the Bay of Biscay. And the more he thought, the more anxious he felt. Grant, he was sure, was not a man to change easily. He had a wife and children in Maine and had always seemed devoted to them. Impossible to believe that he had given up all hope of getting home. ‘It’s too good to be true,’ he told his cousin, ‘the way Grant’s behaving. I hope your watch on him is close.’
    â€˜It certainly is.’
    But not close enough. The ship ran into fog the next day, somewhere to the west of Ushant, and all attention was centred on the man taking soundings. They had seen no land so far, and though the master’s reckoning showed the ship as well clear of the dangerous, rocky shore, Captain Purchas was taking no chances. ‘I don’t intend to pile my
Sparrow
up on the rocks, as a gift to our French enemies,’ he told Hart, who had groped his way up on deck through the strangely silent, fog-muffled ship.
    Enemies? Friends? Hart had a sudden vivid memory of Captain Bougainville’s French officers crowding round Mercy on the
Guerrier,
Mercy in her low-cut dress of bronze satin that drew all eyes. Mercy laughing, flirting