By the Mast Divided (26 page)

Pearce decided an appeal to a national commonality was necessary, even if he risked imparting information in the process. ‘You doubt the word of a fellow Scot?’

‘You, a Scot?’ Dysart said dismissively. ‘Ye dinna sound like wan tae me.’

‘I spent most of my formative years south of the border in England.’

‘Well, it’s no done much for yer wits.’

Martin Dent was intent on avoiding Pearce and Charlie Taverner, staying out of their way until he had another chance to impose trouble. He knew the ship better than his adversaries, the places to hide, and those where to accost him would be public. Every mention of the name underlined what Dysart had said – he was popular, more so than the 
other ship’s boys. It was pointless for Pearce to speculate on the nature of this popularity, though difficult to avoid doing so. He had to stand outside himself and examine the problem objectively, something the Abbé Morlant, his French tutor, had taught him always to do.

How distant Morlant seemed now, and those comfortable days in Paris – the calm of proper study with his soft voiced Abbé mingled with the excitement of an upheaval that truly seemed to make people free. He remembered citizens smiling at each other in the streets, or engaging in fearless and open debate; the common bonds of humanity that culminated in the great Festival of the Revolution, when it seemed that everyone in the city had come to the same place with the same purpose – to express their happiness at the present state of their country and their lives. In that great expanse of the Champs de Mars – a huge open field where once soldiers drilled and cannon fired salutes to Kings, now filled with flowers, food, flaring torches, dancing, laughing, kissing and embracing commoners – it had been truly possible to believe that the world had changed.

‘That sounds like shite to me,’ said Michael, when Pearce advanced the proposition that there was good in everyone and that the boy would have been chastened by the death of Scrivens, that he would give up his grudge from mortification at the result of his actions. Michael took a mouthful of grog before adding, ‘The little sod will not stop till he has killed you and you cannot, for your own sake, think he will.’

‘Well, Michael,’ Pearce replied, with just a trace of exasperation, ‘if you have any ideas on what to do, I would be grateful.’

‘Simple,’ said Charlie Taverner, who felt equally under threat. ‘Collar him, gag him, and drop him overboard on a dark and windy night.’

‘That sounds about right,’ added Ben Walker, with a gleam in his eyes and a tone in his voice that made Pearce reckon him easily capable of killing a fellow human being.

‘Murder?’ said a shocked Rufus Dommet.

‘Preservation,’ Michael insisted. ‘Charlie and Ben are right, for if I have learnt one thing in my life, it is best to collapse a ditch on a man who is your enemy before he collapses one on you.’

‘And you believe in God?’ said Pearce.

‘I do,’ O’Hagan insisted, ‘but I have no yearning to meet him before my given time.’

‘We’re all at risk,’ said Ben, slapping the table with a flat hand. ‘You do know that Pearce?’ The silence that followed allowed Ben to look at each of them in turn, and for the first time Pearce saw, in that serious 
troubled face, a degree of determination that underlined how much he was his own man. ‘Abel did the boy no harm, yet he died as a plain result of his actions. If any of us come between Pearce and Dent…’

‘And me,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘don’t forget me.’

‘…we will suffer the same fate as Abel.’

Silence greeted that sobering thought, as Ben again looked from one to the other, until all four had nodded to acknowledge the truth of what he was saying. ‘Then it stands to reason that we all have to have eyes for each other’s back. We goes no place alone, an’ we stay close to each other at all times.’

Rufus shuddered. ‘Christ, Ben, that be scary.’

‘Not scary, Rufus, deadly more like if’n you don’t harken.’

‘I think I will try talking to him,’ said Pearce.

‘Try that, Pearce,’ growled Charlie, emptying his jug, ‘but I reckon Ben has the right of it. And when you have failed, then help me to chuck him overboard, for that is what I will do if I get the chance.’

Silence fell as Gherson approached. It was understood between them – without anything ever being said – that they should not trust him.

Martin got Charlie Taverner with the boiling water at an unguarded moment, just as he and Rufus were collecting from the cook their chosen piece of meat, as well as their rations to make a pudding called duff. Aiming for Charlie’s head, his lack of height allied to haste meant he got him on the legs, and although it hurt like the devil when the water penetrated Taverner’s ducks, it did not scald him as it was supposed to. Martin was gone before Charlie got out his first cursing screech, the mess kid with the dinner inside dropped to roll on the deck, the boy emerging from behind the cook’s coppers grinning like a monkey. That grin faded as Martin saw Pearce and O’Hagan standing in front of him, Ben Walker just behind them.

He dodged well left, to get outside Pearce, who had to dive across the planking to grab his ankle. Once he got a grip on that he hauled the boy in, fending off the scrabbling, scratching hands that Martin used in an attempt to get free. Holding him close, he just avoided a bite that would have removed his nose, and with his free hand he began to slap the boy on the face, side to side, not too hard, but enough to stop him struggling.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Pearce said.

‘Fuck off,’ Martin spat.

‘Belay that.’ 

The bark was from Sam Devenow; Pearce knew that before he looked. ‘Take your hands off young Martin, you green-livered swab.’

‘Young Dent tried to kill me, Devenow,’ said Pearce, wondering how something so true could sound so feeble.

Devenow snorted, then started to move towards Pearce. ‘Then the pity is he ain’t succeeded!’

From the look in his eye Pearce knew that he was going to have to fight. Was it about grog or was it about Martin Dent? It didn’t matter now – all he could be sure of was that slight tremble shaking his body that always came when danger threatened.

‘It was him that caused that burial this morning,’ called Charlie Taverner, emerging from the galley, to stand close to Pearce, with Rufus, looking very fearful, just behind him. ‘And he has just this second tried to maim me.’

Devenow stopped and glared at Charlie. ‘Who asked you to butt your nose in?’

‘It’s my business, too,’ called Ben.

‘Then I’ll deal with you,’ Devenow growled, looking past Pearce, ‘once I have dealt with this bugger here.’

Pearce knew that to wait would be fatal – he reckoned he had no chance anyway, but that would be ten times worse if he did not get in the first blow. He threw Martin Dent at Devenow’s feet, which took the sailor’s eye off him for a second, grabbed the second mess kid out of Rufus’s hand and slung it at Devenow’s head. The man was too quick or too wise, he ducked under and it flew past, the contents, flour, suet and raisins, going everywhere.

‘You just shot your bolt, mate,’ he said, rolling up his shirtsleeves to expose thick matted forearms.

‘Kill him, Sam,’ said Martin Dent, with a look of hate quite startling in its intensity.

Devenow grinned. ‘I might just do that, young Martin. Happen there’ll be another bit of canvas dropped overboard on the morrow, and a lesson learnt by all and sundry of these pressed bastards. That it don’t do to be flighty with Samuel Devenow.’

‘Back away, Pearce,’ said Charlie, who then looked confused at once more letting slip the name.

‘I can’t, Charlie.’

He was aware of the gathering crowd, and of men who had made their way to the companionways without bidding, their task to keep a lookout for anyone in authority. Gherson had come from the table, but 
sensing what was happening he stood well to the rear of Ben Walker, who had his fists bunched, and a dogged expression on his face, one that said he was willing to take on all comers and had moved to the edge of the throng. The cook had emerged from behind his galley stove, and his bulk cut off the view from aft. Pearce felt the knot in his stomach, fear mixed with the notion that there was not a soul on this ship who would intervene, and that Devenow might be right. With a sword he could take him, for all his lessons in Paris had not been on logic and philosophy, but he might as well whistle for a seizure as that. Any weapons were locked and chained in racks that could only be undone by the Master at Arms.

‘Would the word I’d be looking for be belay?’ asked Michael O’Hagan, a quizzical expression on his face, as he stepped forward to stand in front of Pearce.

‘What?’ asked Devenow, confused.

‘Well, now, you stupid sods have this tongue that no Christian can grasp. I want to tell you to lay off, but I know if I speak plain English you’ll be too dim to understand it.’

‘Michael,’ said Pearce.

O’Hagan half turned his head. ‘I think what I should say to you, John-boy, is stow it.’

‘This is my fight.’

Pearce was still trembling slightly, and he felt it was in his voice too. But he knew from the past that once he started to fight, the trembling disappeared, only to recur more violently once matters were settled.

O’Hagan gave him a very gentle backwards push. ‘And it will be your hurt for sure, an’ maybe a maiming.’

‘Step aside, Paddy,’ growled Devenow.

‘Hold your wind, Devenow,’ Michael replied, without turning, and it was evidence of the respect his size and weight afforded him that the t’ween decks bully stood stock-still.

‘Be that as it must,’ said Pearce. ‘I cannot let another fight in my place.’

‘Yet you can put yourself between that bastard Kemp’s rattan and a weaker man’s back?’

‘That is different.’

‘I did not have you down for a fool, John-boy. Sure, I am going to have to have words with this ugly bastard at some time, and it would not, to me, make sense to wait until he had beaten you senseless.’ The Irishman grinned. ‘I had a mind to get you to teach me to read and write, for I am taken with this notion of yours that if I dig a canal I should own it.’ 

‘Still,’ Pearce protested, aware in both heart and head that it sounded weak.

‘What would you suggest then, John-boy, that I wait till all taken from the Pelican bow the knee to this sod. Not just you, but Rufus, Ben and Charlie, for he will oppress them all unless he is stopped. Think on this, it is not just for you, it is for all of us, for if I cannot get respect here then not one of us will be safe. And I think if we are to get respect anywhere else on this damned ship, or to ever get off it, you will be the one to bring it about, for which we need you whole.’

‘I don’t follow,’ insisted Pearce, though he knew in his heart what Michael was driving at. It made no difference whether he wanted the role or not, the men of mess number twelve, with the exception of Gherson, saw him as some kind of leader. He was educated, they were not; he had seen a larger world and they looked to his knowledge to somehow rescue them from the hand fate had played. Dammit he could even swim.

‘You have the head, and I have the muscle, so, as I said, John-boy, stow it.’

‘Are you pair going to natter much longer?’ asked Devenow.

O’Hagan turned back to stare the man down, cutting off Pearce’s last feeble protest. ‘Now I have a mind to do this right, shirts off, a mark on the deck to go toe to toe.’

‘Suits me,’ said Devenow.

‘With no one having the right to step in.’

It was the one-legged cook who answered then, producing from under his apron a huge meat cleaver. ‘I say aye to that, and I will take the arm of any man who interferes, Paddy.’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ said Michael, his voice lilting and wonderfully sarcastic, ‘and here’s me thinking that Sam here was universally loved.’

As they took their shirts off, the proceedings took on a natural formality; a square was formed, a piece of line laid across the deck for the fighters to step up to, and hushed bets were placed. There was no noise, nothing to alert authority to what was none of their business. Pearce looked at the assembled crewmen, at their eyes, trying to see what they thought, hoping that in their hearts they wanted Michael to win, to see a bully humbled, thinking that if they used their heads they would back the man they knew. The Pelicans were hopeful, and keen to let Michael know it, all except Cornelius Gherson, who took care to avoid any notion that he might be involved, showing no desire to exchange a glance with Pearce. He suspected that if asked, Gherson would have backed Devenow. 

There must be others who would pick up on what was happening, the likes of Sykes the Bosun, or Coyle, the red-faced ex-soldier who had brought them downriver, but a look around produced no evidence of their presence. They might be close, but they would stay out of this, as he had seen men of authority do many times in his life with an account that could not be settled any other way. Perhaps the officers likewise would turn a blind eye. Kemp he could see in the crowd, forearming his dripping nose, his rat-like face alight and eager for bloodshed. Ridley the other bosun’s mate was there too, his face showing, if anything, a hint of worry. Hale, the captain’s coxswain, elbowed himself to a place near the cook, and whispered something in his ear, which made the fat, sweating, one-legged fellow wave his cleaver and nod. Then a movement caught Pearce’s eye, and behind a stanchion he was sure he saw the popping pale-blue eyes of the surgeon.

‘Right,’ said Costello, the dark-skinned bosun’s mate, who had stepped forward to take charge. ‘You know the rules. As long as your toe is to the line you are fighting. You may step back to change your toe at any time, but not to delay or rest, for that will mean a forfeit. The first man to fail to stand up to the line for a count of three is the loser.’

‘Michael,’ said Pearce again, for, stripped off, Devenow was even more formidable, a mass of rippling muscles covered with tattoos: anchors, female names, a mermaid and on his hairy chest a flaming cannon. ‘I ask again.’

‘I have been to fairs, John-boy,’ Michael replied loudly, jabbing a finger at the tattoos, ‘where they have painted ladies like this one here. They are nought to be a’feart of.’