Sophia's Secret (46 page)

Handing him my coffee cup, I thanked him and sat back and gave the spaniel’s floppy ears a scratch and counted myself lucky that he’d asked that question in a general sense, and hadn’t been expecting me to answer.

The harbour at Leith was a maze of great ships and small vessels, some anchored, others moving between and around them at various speeds and in varied directions, so that the oarsman seated opposite Sophia in the rowboat had to choose his course with care and change it often. This was Edinburgh’s harbour and would at any time be crowded, but today the traffic was so thick it seemed that one could almost walk from oar to oar across the deep green water to the cheers of those who called to one another from their passing craft, in hearty voices made more boisterous with drink.

Sophia wrapped her hood more closely round her face and made an effort not to look beyond the oarsman to the crippled hulk of the French ship that rode nearby at anchor, marked with scars of heavy fighting, and its rigging all in tatters. She had seen it from the shore and been affected by it then, and it was worse to be this close and see the charred and jagged edges of the holes left by the cannon blasts, and know the men who had been standing where the holes now were would have been killed.

There were no scars that she could see upon the ship they were approaching. It rolled languidly upon the water like the great cat that it had been named for – the
Leopard
– and it seemed to overlook the harbour as a wild leopard might when resting from a recent hunt, self-satisfied, content to let the smaller prey pass by. Yet there was something predatory in its shadow as it fell across Sophia, and the scraping of the two hulls growled a warning as the oarsman brought the rowboat alongside. He reached to take hold of a hanging rope ladder and called to hail a crewman on the deck above.

‘Here is a lady for your captain,’ he said with a smirk that plainly showed what purpose he believed she’d come to serve.

She did not seek to change his mind – her own was set so fixedly she did not care what others thought. She landed steady on her feet upon the creaking deck, and bore the crewman’s leering scrutiny with patience, only seeking to remind him when it seemed he had forgotten that the captain would be waiting for her.

She felt the stares as they passed by, and heard the voices of the other men call out and laugh and speak in rude suggestive language, but she took no more notice of them than she did of the ship itself, of the great rising masts and the knots of the rigging and wet canvas scent of the slumbering sails. She had wondered for so long just how it would feel to set foot on a ship and to walk on its decks, and now here she was walking upon one and none of her senses took note of the fact. She might have been walking the road of a town, and the steps to the door of the captain’s cabin might have been but the steps to a house. All that mattered to Sophia was the man inside, and what she’d come to say to him.

The cabin had a bay of casement windows curving round its farther end, through which the afternoon’s strong light poured in to warm the panelled walls and spill across the smooth edge of the desk at which the captain sat.

He had not looked up at the crewman’s knock, he’d only said a curt ‘Come in’, and gone on looking at the spread of papers that so held his interest.

‘Your visitor, sir,’ said the crewman, and coughed, and discreetly withdrew.

And the captain raised his head then, faintly frowning, and seeing Sophia he stopped short as though he’d been struck.

‘Captain Gordon,’ she greeted him levelly.

Recovering himself, he rose and came across to take her hand and raise it to his lips, too much the gentleman to cast aside formalities in even such an unexpected circumstance. But clearly her appearance had surprised him, and he did not try to hide it. ‘How the devil came you here?’

‘It was not difficult,’ she lied. She did not tell him the excuses she had made to Mrs Malcolm and to Kirsty of her need to come to town, nor of the earliness with which she had set out by hired coach, nor of the trouble it had caused her to negotiate her way around the busy port. ‘I asked which ship was yours, and found a boatman who would carry me.’

‘I meant how came you here to Leith? Why are you not at Slains?’

She drew her hand away from his. ‘The countess thought a change of air might do me good. I have been staying some few weeks with friends of hers, not far from here.’

‘Oh, aye? What friends would those be?’

Once Sophia might have told him, but not now. ‘I do not think that you would know them.’

Captain Gordon fixed his gaze upon her face, and took her measure. Then he said, ‘Come, let us sit.’

The cabin was a man’s space, but was not without its luxuries. The chairs had been upholstered in a rich red fabric, and a silver tray upon a table gleamed beneath its strange assortment of small porcelain cups and dishes ringed around a central covered pot. ‘You have good timing,’ said the captain. ‘Yesterday there’d not have been much I could offer you by way of a refreshment, but my cook today has done a bit of trading with a Dutch ship lately come from the East Indies that is forced to wait in harbour here, and chief among his prizes was a box of china tea, to the drinking of which he is trying to convert me.’ Picking up the porcelain pot, he poured a clear brown liquid into one of the cups. ‘I must confess I do prefer my whisky still, but I am told that drinking tea will be the coming fashion. Here,’ he said, and handed her the cup. ‘It is still hot, I think.’

She held the cup and looked toward the windows, through whose glass panes she could see the battered French ship framed as though it were a painting done in honour of the victory of the battle that had stained this same sea red with blood just days before. The drink was bitter on her tongue.

She said, ‘I am surprised to find you on a new ship.’

‘Aye, the
Edinburgh
did not survive the strain of my last voyage. You’ll recall I had my doubts about its worthiness,’ he said, and smiled in the manner of a man who means to share a private joke.

She felt a surge of anger at that smile, and could not keep it in. ‘I do recall a great deal, Captain. Tell me, do you think King James will yet make you an admiral when he comes?’ She flung the question at him, challenging, and pointed to the windows and the French ship. ‘Do you think that he will honour you for that?’

He did not answer her, which only flamed her temper more.

‘How could you? After all you told the countess and the earl, how could you do a thing like this? How could you so betray us?’

In a quiet tone he said, ‘It was my duty.’

‘Duty might demand you keep the English side, and even fire upon the French, but it does not excuse you everything. No other English ship but yours did take a prisoner, and
that
,’ she said, ‘I do not think was done because of duty.’

He was watching her with eyes she could not fathom. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘That was not done from duty.’

Rising from his chair he exhaled hard and turned away and crossed to stand before the windows, looking out. He did not speak for some few minutes, then he said, ‘Were any man to ask me, I would tell him that I am more proud of what I did that day than I have been of any other thing I’ve done in all my life.’

There was a quality about his voice, a passion in his words, that made her anger start to fade. But still she did not understand.

Until he told her why.

A man in his position, he explained, had little chance to chart his own course in these times, but he had done what he could do. He’d kept the
Edinburgh
from being fit to sail and kept himself on land as long as he was able, in the hope the king would use that time to make good his return. The king had not, and in the end new orders came for Captain Gordon to assume a new command, and bring the
Leopard
north.

‘And even captains,’ he informed Sophia, ‘must obey their orders.’

On arrival at the entrance to the Firth, he’d found the French ships already engaged and under fire. He’d kept the
Leopard
back as best he could, and had managed with seemingly clumsy manoeuvres to block some of his own side’s fire against the fleeing
Proteus
to let it get away.

‘But there was nothing to be done for them,’ he said, gazing across at the ravaged French ship. ‘No way to save the
Salisbury
. She was an English ship once, did you know? The French did capture her from us, in their turn, some while back. She’s seen her share of war. And when the French commander wheeled his squadron round and headed north, she had the rearguard.’

She had done what she’d been asked to do, protecting the retreating squadron so the king might make good his escape, but she had done it at a sore cost to herself and her brave crew. They had not stood a chance.

The English ships had caught her up, and though two other French ships had turned back to try to help her, it had been no use. The battle had raged fiercely all that afternoon and evening till the other French ships too had finally slipped away and left the struggling
Salisbury
alone, to face her enemies as night fell.

In the darkness of the early morning she had struck her colours and the sight of that surrender had ignited something deep in Gordon that he couldn’t quite explain, not even now. And it had stirred him into action.

‘It occurred to me that while I could not rescue her, I might yet do some service to the men she carried. Better they should fall into my hands,’ he said, ‘than into those of men who had no sympathy for Jacobites.’

He’d roused his few most trusted crewmen and ordered them to get a boat at once into the water, with him in it, and they’d rowed like fury through the drifting smoke and charred debris, and beating out the other English ships nearby he’d climbed on board the
Salisbury
and claimed her as his prize.

The captain of the French ship had been gallant in defeat. An able-looking man, he had managed to conduct himself, in spite of his great weariness and bloodied clothes, with consummate politeness. ‘It is kind of you to think of it,’ he’d said when Gordon, having given proof that their allegiance was the same, had offered aid. ‘There are some letters I would wish to send to France, to Paris, if that somehow could be managed.’

‘I will see it done.’

‘And one more thing. I have on board this ship a noble passenger, Lord Griffin…’

‘Griffin! Is he yet alive?’

‘He was but slightly wounded yesterday, and rests now with our surgeon, but I fear what may befall him when the English take him prisoner.’

The English, Gordon had agreed, would not be pleased to find the aged lord, who long ago had served the old King James and who had since been living at the court of Saint-Germain. ‘What the devil were they thinking of? Why did they send Lord Griffin, at his age?’

‘He sent himself,’ had been the answer, with a Gallic shrug. ‘He was not told about the young king’s plans, and did not learn of them until we were about to put to sea, and then was so determined to be part of the adventure that he bought a horse and rode at once to Dunkirk, and secured himself a place on board my ship. He is a…how is it you say? A character. I would not like to see him come to harm.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Come, I will take you.’

They had found the old man below decks, sitting calmly in the chaos of the wounded and the dead. Despite his bandaged head, he had looked fit and even cheerful, as though welcoming the prospect of adventure. He had listened to their plans politely, but had answered Gordon, ‘Oh, you needn’t bother with all that, my boy. I’ll not be harmed.’

‘My Lord, if the English do take a French nobleman, he will be treated with care, but if they come upon an English noble like yourself, then they will call your presence on this ship no less than treason, and will show you little mercy. They will have your head.’

Lord Griffin’s eyes held all the patience of the aged speaking to the young. ‘I am an old man, and I’ll warrant that my bones will ache the same if I am sleeping in a palace or a prison. But,’ he said, ‘if it will give you peace, my boy, then I will come.’

He gave consent to being carried on a stretcher, so it would appear he was more gravely wounded and could be confined, upon the
Leopard
, to the surgeon’s care. ‘My surgeon,’ Gordon said to both Lord Griffin and the French ship’s captain, ‘is a Jacobite, as I am, and will help to keep you hidden till we can arrange to move you somewhere safer.’

Someone jostled past Gordon and, stepping to the side, he bumped another wounded man who lay insensible upon the deck, his breaths so shallow there was barely any movement of the stinking, blood-soaked rags that bound his shoulder.

In that dim light the man’s pale face was difficult to see, but Gordon saw all that he needed to. He did not look away, but in a tightened voice demanded, ‘What did happen to this man?’

Lord Griffin gave the answer. ‘He was wounded while saving the life of a young lad who had not the sense to get clear of a cannon-ball.’ When Gordon did not move, Lord Griffin thought to add, ‘The lad got out of it uninjured. I was there, I saw it all, though I confess it was that same shot brought the roof down on my head so I remember little else.’

He rubbed his neatly bandaged temple while the captain of the French ship looked more closely at the wounded man and said, ‘I do not know his face, though by his uniform he looks to be an officer of one of the king’s Irish brigades. We have several such men aboard the
Salisbury
.’

‘My countrymen,’ Lord Griffin said, ‘will likely not be too pleased to find
them
here, either.’

‘No.’ The frown on Captain Gordon’s face grew deeper. ‘No, indeed they will not.’ And he called for one more stretcher. ‘I will take this man, as well.’

‘But,’ – this in protest from the French ship’s captain – ‘surely it will draw too much attention if you carry two such wounded men across on your small boat?’

Gordon’s voice froze over. ‘I remind you, sir, that “small boat” does obey my orders, as indeed your ship must now do also, and I’ll thank you not to question my command.’