Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (33 page)

Dacre was too far gone to get back to the other bank. For Verity it was his only hope. With even greater frenzy than he had given to the pursuit of the cracksman, he now began to haul himself desperately in the opposite direction. He glanced once at the appalling drop below him and almost wept with despair as his blistered palms snatched the coarse rope, without seeming to bring the safety of the cliff much closer. He glanced once over his shoulder. Where was Crowe? Probably he could not even see what the girl was doing as she crouched carefully with her back to the men of the ambush. How much longer before the terror of feeling the rope slack in his hands, and the last dizzy moments of falling?

But his strength might save him. By the hackneyed perspective of fear, the cliff was now approaching with greater speed. He glanced back and saw Dacre still dangling and jerking, hopelessly short of the other side. And then the moment came. Verity felt the tension go and seemed poised, for an instant, above the drop. But the fall of the rope saved him, carrying him toward the cliff as well as down. He landed ten feet below the ridge, knocked breathless on a slope where grass grew in the crevices between the rock. But though the incline of the ground and the glassy smoothness of the footing would certainly have precipitated him helplessly over the edge, he had hugged the rope to him and his grip withstood the jarring of the impact as he broke the worst of the fall with his feet. He lay against the rock for a moment, feeling the moisture between his palms and the hairy texture of the rope, until he realized that it was his own blood.

He clung there, coughing and dizzy from lack of breath, his eyes blurred by perspiration and tears of relief. For the first time since it had all begun, he thought that he was going to live to see Bella and Paddington Green again. There were figures at an enormous distance on the far cliff, a splash of pink silk among grey and brown. There was no rope, and no cracksman, not even a head among the rocks and the foam.

'Lord 'ave mercy,' said Verity softly to himself, ' 'e's gone at last.'

There were voices above him now and someone was pulling gently at the rope.

'All right!' he cried, 'I'm 'ere! I'm hanging on!'

They helped him over the edge and he lay down among the smell of sweet, decaying leaves.

‘I never saw,' he gasped inquiringly, 'I never saw the end. 'ad me back to it.'

There were grey, frogged jackets, and fresh young faces.

'He's gone, Mr Verity, sir,' said one of them. 'Couldn't even keep the end of the rope as it fell. Went smash among the rocks in the middle. Guess he didn't even live long enough to drown.'

20

The hills of Maine were blue with the haze of a bright October afternoon, the nearest height overlooking Portland harbour black with people. The cheering spectators of the Prince of Wales's progress through the town had scrambled for this higher ground to watch the embarkation of the heir apparent on HMS
Hero.
Already the ugly squat stacks of the
Hero,
the
Nile
and the
Ariadne
were funnelling their columns of black smoke upward through the tall graceful rigging. As the noise of the crowd blended in a single roar of farewell, hats waving and handkerchiefs fluttering, the young man who was the centre of so much approbation stepped into the admiral's barge. The oars of the bluejackets cut the waters of the bay and the little boat pitched and bucked its way across a rising swell toward the anchored flagship. From the
Hero
and her consorts the first booming of a royal salute and the plumes of white gun-smoke carried across a darkening sky. Two signals fluttered out from the
Hero's
yards, the Prince's standard and the 'boats' recall'. Straining to starboard under the force of the rising sea, the three great ships steamed majestically in line astern between the Cape Elizabeth light and the hills beyond. Their guns still boomed, answering the salutes of the American forts, as with banners of black smoke trailing in the wind they made for the open sea and England.

Sergeant Verity, leaning on the rail of Her Majesty's supply auxiliary
Galloper,
watched them go. Tied to the wharf, where she had been loaded with the impediments of the royal tour, the
Galloper
slopped against the harbour swell. At every wave, the commissariat supply vessel wallowed like a dying whale.

'You never were in the least danger, I assure you,' said Crowe beside him. 'We made pretty sure you could reach the other side before we let her cut the rope.'

'Pretty sure, Mr Crowe? I was bloody near ten feet short of it, that's all!'

Crowe clapped him on the back.

'Come on now, Verity! Care might kill a cat! Look to the future! There!'

Crowe pointed to the open port of the lower deck, where the
Galloper
was made fast. Approaching it was an intriguing little procession. At the head moved the bustling figure of Miss Jolly in turquoise silk, followed by Maggie in black bombazine with a veil. Jennifer, in white cotton, walked beside her young mistress, her hair arranged in an elegant coiffure.

'What's it to me?' asked Verity suspiciously.

'Well,' said Crowe, 'I guess it's this. Miss Jolly has done the job that the Treasury asked of her. So she goes home. Miss Maggie is, after a fashion, part of the conspiracy to murder Captain Willson Moore. However, she never knew murder was intended and so there's no cause to do more than deport her back where she came from. But then there's that Moslem Venus there, our sultry Jenny.'

‘I understood, Mr Crowe, that the young Khan person was no more to do with us and wasn't to come aboard.'

'She sure is, Verity,' said Crowe gently. 'Seems, one way or another, she turned out a regular slave after all. Her master being dead and his possessions forfeit, I suppose she becomes almost the property of the Treasury. However, she must be given to someone.'

'Set 'er free!'

'To starve in the streets of a country she hardly knows? To be took up by traders and sold into the fate we just saved her from? No. She knows the master she wants and the papers of transfer have been completed.'

' 'oo, Mr Crowe?'

'You, Mr Verity. You may not have slavery in England, nor do they in Maine, but she swears to be your woman, follow you, serve you, sleep at the foot of your bed at night . . .'

'You lost yer bloody reason, Mr Crowe? The bed I sleep in is in Paddington Green with Mrs Verity!' The awfulness of the crisis threatened by Jennifer's dutiful attachment to him sank deeper into his mind. ' 'ere, Mr Crowe, I can't go back to Paddington Green, to Mrs Verity and her old father, taking this young person with me! What'll they say? What'll the 'ole street say?'

‘I guess they'll say you're a pretty lucky fellow, Verity.'

'I ain't doing it, Mr Crowe. She goes where Lieutenant Dacre's belongings go. That's an end of it.'

Crowe sighed.

'No one knows Lieutenant Dacre, my friend.'

'Not know him?' squealed Verity. 'He fell off a bleedin' rope over the Hudson in front of you a few days back. Ask Jolly!'

'Miss Jolly," said Crowe innocently, 'though full of natural resentment against her assailant, felt that she could not finally identify him as Lieutenant Dacre, when the matter was put to her yesterday by the Treasury investigators.'

Verity was aware of a second procession coming aboard, made up of porters carrying valises, hat-boxes and bandboxes, all of them coloured and ribboned in such a way as to suggest the presence of expensive feminine garments within.

'No,' he said bitterly, indicating the immaculate luggage, 'I bet she couldn't, not the way it was put to 'er. Well, Mr Crowe, I identify him as Lieutenant Dacre.'

'You and who else, Verity?'

Verity thumped the ship's rail with his fist.

'Can't you see, Mr Crowe? It's all to save people's faces? The truth is being bent corkscrew to save 'em? Young Jolly been bribed with a few baubles, and I'm to be paid off by 'aving that young Khan doxy to warm me bed at night! That Captain Oliphant of yours, he's no better than Inspector Croaker.'

'He's cleverer, Mr Verity.'

'So's Lieutenant Dacre, come to that, or was. I s'posc you was under instruction that he wasn't to be took alive. Save everyone's face by pretending it never was Dacre!'

Crowe shook his head.

'The rope was cut to save you. You'd have caught him on it, and fought him, and he'd have killed you. Anyone could see that. As for it being the same Lieutenant Dacre you knew in London three years ago, if you say so, it's good enough for me.'

'You tell Captain Oliphant, Mr Crowe, tell 'im that so soon as this boat gets to England, the Khan girl shall go with her Miss Maggie. Don't tell me she ever wanted anything else. And if I gotta shout from the 'ouse-tops that it was Lieutenant Dacre done the Philadelphia Mint, I bloody will. Tell 'im that, Mr Crowe. There ain't no quarrel between you and me.'

They parted at length, Crowe standing on the wharf as the ropes of the
Galloper
went slack. Verity leant on the rail, talking to his friend.

'I'd give something,' he said, 'to show 'em up. Parade Mr Dacre in front of 'em.'

Crowe nodded.

'The time may come,' he said vaguely. A stretch of dark water had begun to open up between the ship and the wharf.

'Whatcher mean, Mr Crowe?'

'Something I could be shot for telling you, old friend!' 'Whatcher mean? Quick, Mr Crowe! Quick!' 'You two on the rope performed a miracle!' 'Quick!'

'The rope,' bawled Crowe, 'when recovered and measured, was twenty feet shorter than the distance between the two posts.'

His face broadened in a final grin as, in the gathering twilight, he raised his hat to salute his friend for a last time.

The voyage of the
Galloper
was an unhappy interlude in Verity's life. The weather alternated between an oppressive yellow fog and violent storms. He struggled on deck during the calmer periods only to find the universe enveloped in a yellow cloud which seemed to insulate the
Galloper
from all light and sound beyond a few yards distant. The ocean itself was dumb, only a huge, silent fog-swell rocking the ship slowly with its mute undulations. From time to time there was a creaking of the masts and cordage as the vessel drooped from side to side, and the occasional shrill alarm of the fog-whistle. Here and there, the fog-lights emitted their dim yellow glare which carried no more than a few yards even at midday.

Verity thought about Crowe's final remarks, as he paced through the wet, dun haze of the deck.

'No,' he said to himself, 'they must a-measured it wrong, that's all. Something o' the sort.'

He went back to his cabin on the lower deck, next to that occupied by the three young women. It was no more than an open space which had been divided into separate quarters by the erection of painted canvas 'walls'. Every sound from one 'cabin' could be clearly heard in the next. If one of the girls happened to lean against the intervening canvas, her shape appeared in the 'wall' of Verity's own sleeping quarters. Lying awake, as the ship rolled and creaked, he heard the warm sighs and murmurs, Jennifer's voice calling Maggie in muted urgency, the soft and silken whisper of flesh against flesh. Then there would be Miss Jolly's giggling, a furtive spoken exchange, snorts of laughter, and languorous spoken entreaties. Irritably, Verity jammed his fingers in his ears and thought of England.

On the next night, the fog cleared and the gale hit them, rising by the hour, the sailors taking in reef after reef of canvas in the face of the storm. As the sea struck the ancient supply vessel in a scries of squalls, clouds of hail began to ring and spin on the decks like salvoes of small shot. Now the soft exchanges beyond the canvas wall gave way to piteous wails of sickness and fear. Verity decided that he preferred the gale to the fog.

Day after day passed in this fashion. Then there was a rumour that Galway had been sighted, though no one whom Verity asked could confirm having seen it. There was a growing body of opinion which put the ship's position somewhere in the northern half of the Bay of Biscay. The
Galloper
hove to, taking soundings. These produced coarse gravel at eighty-three fathoms, which was said to put her off Ushant. That night there appeared in the sky several bursts of red rockets, answered by others from a considerable distance. The
Galloper,
under full steam, made for the spot and found the
Himalaya
riding at anchor and awaiting her rendezvous with the
Hero.
By a freak of the storms, aided by the delays to the other ships who were supposed to keep in convoy, the supply vessel had crossed the Atlantic as rapidly, though in less comfort, as her seniors.

The next morning, the
Hero
and the
Ariadne,
followed at a proper distance by the
Galloper,
sighted the Cornish coast, the rocks rising black in the grey dawn. Verity, from the deck of the supply ship, gazed with affectionate nostalgia upon the county of his boyhood. He was still looking toward it for a last time when he heard the booming salute of the Citadel guns as the Prince's flagship entered Plymouth Sound.

'Mr Verity?' the chief petty officer of the watch appeared at his side. 'Telegraph from the
Ariadne.
Escort for you, from Plymouth to London. You'll be put off in the first boat.'

Verity's pink face looked round and blank. 'Escort, Mr Scott? 'ang on, I haven't done anything to be arrested for, 'ave I ?' The petty officer shrugged.

'Couldn't say, Mr Verity. There's police matrons waiting for them young tits as well. Only you're the one that's to be sent under escort.'

As the whaler tossed and rolled across the grey water from the weed-hung side of the
Galloper,
Verity looked at the quay ahead of him. There was no sign of a police uniform, but he hardly expected that. It was as he struggled up the steps, his box manhandled after him, that a cheery face with red mutton-chop whiskers peered down at him.