"A private revenge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Вудмен Ричард)

CHAPTER 7 Morris

It was clear from the self-possession of Morris's smile that he was not surprised at the presence of Nathaniel Drinkwater in the Pearl River. The solicitations of the unknown 'friend' suddenly assumed a sinister aspect and the infallibility of the nightmare was proved once again, for here, at last, Drinkwater knew, was the cacodemon presaged by his dream. This realisation steadied him and he met again the eyes of his enemy.

Morris's gross figure was largely hidden under the yellow silk robe but his hooded eyes seemed to complete his strange oriental transformation.

'Captain Drinkwater, what a pleasure!' Morris bowed, the smile wider as he sensed Drinkwater's uncertainty. 'Please be so kind as to have my traps, and in particular the two bronze-bound chests, hoisted aboard.'

'Mr Q!' Quilhampton, casting a suspicious eye in Morris's direction, crossed the deck. 'Have the goodness to escort this gentleman and his ... his servant to my cabin.' Drinkwater paused, then added, 'and look lively with those chests.'

'Mr Quilhampton, I do recall you too ... still with Captain Drinkwater, eh?' Something offensive in Morris's tone lingered after he had left the deck and the boom of the signal gun made Drinkwater start, even though he had absently nodded his permission for its discharge, for he had been watching the heavy chests swing aboard. He disguised his exposure with a barked order: 'Lively with those halliards now!'

The topsail yards rose on freshly slushed masts. The braces were manned and trimmed so that, as the anchor tripped from the mud of the river-bed, Patrician's head fell off downstream in a languid turn that carried her perilously close to the Guilford, before her long raking jib-boom pointed at the forts of the Bogue and the open sea beyond.

Drinkwater left the management of his ship to his officers and levelled his glass at the big Indiaman's quarterdeck. He could see Callan, arm outstretched as he got his own ship under weigh. A junk still lay alongside her and was being cast off as Patrician drew clear of Guilford's quarter.

'Leggo and haul!'

The foretopsail swung on its parrel, flogged, then bellied out to the favourable air that, with the current, swept them southwards. Astern other ships were blossoming canvas, including Fleetwood Pellew's Phaeton, and beyond the convoy the remaining ships lay idle, awaiting the outcome of the negotiations with the Chinese. Among them Drinkwater could just make out the half-repaired masts of Musquito.

Beside the binnacle, his dark face working with anxiety, the younger Ballantyne ordered the helm eased a spoke or two, while Fraser, speaking-trumpet in hand, supervised the setting of more sail.

As Guilford fell astern, Callan raised his hat and bellowed something across the widening gap of water. Drinkwater was not sure of what he said, though his gesture indicated something of success.

'Pleased to be going, sir,' remarked Quilhampton, who had returned to the deck, nodding at the Guilford.

'So it would seem,' acknowledged Drinkwater, fixing Quilhampton with a stare. 'You have secured our guest, have you?'

'Aye, sir ... he is Commander Morris, isn't he? I mean I didn't expect to see him here ...'

'Neither did I, Mr Q, believe me, neither did I, and I doubt he still holds naval rank.' And then another thought struck him. 'Is Tregembo aware of his identity?'

'Yes, sir ... leastways I think so, for he looked shocked when I entered the cabin ...'

"Tregembo was in my cabin?'

'Aye, sir; with Derrick and your steward ...'

'God's bones!'

Tregembo was a factor in the complex train of thought that assailed him with renewed force. It was clear that he could no longer avoid giving the matter of Morris his full attention. He looked about him. The convoy stretched astern of Patrician, each ship setting more canvas and with a red ensign at the peak, for Drinkwater had insisted they show a unity of national colours and that the East Indiamen forsake the gridiron ensign the Company flew east of St Helena.

It seemed his orders were being followed to the letter and he grunted his satisfaction. Ballantyne and Fraser had the conduct of the ship well in hand and he anticipated no trouble when they passed the Bogue; he could absent himself from the quarterdeck for a while.

'Mr Fraser! Do you call me if you need me.'

Drinkwater went below. Enveloped by the gloom of the gun-deck he paused, rubbing his eyes as a worm of apprehension writhed in his gut. Should he send for Quilhampton as a witness, or keep this stinking matter to himself?

The rousing click of the marine sentry's musket against his webbing buckles stirred him. He must show none of the weakness he felt. Morris was the lowest kind of creature that crawled upon the face of the earth. God rot him.

Drinkwater nodded perfunctorily at the marine and passed into his cabin.

Morris was sitting at the table. The boy knelt beside him bare-headed and the pair were almost in silhouette, backed by the expanse of the stern windows. The bright picture of the following convoy, the teeming river and the green hills of China lent a mesmeric effect to the confrontation. There was no sign of Drinkwater's staff and the door to the pantry was closed. Morris's hand stroked the boy's head, his fingers playing with a pixie ear as though it belonged to a spaniel. The concupiscent gesture uninterrupted by Drinkwater's arrival appalled him. It was Morris, in perfect possession of his wits, who broke the silence.

'Necessity makes strange bedfellows, Nathaniel.'

The double entendre, the use of his Christian name, even the sound of Morris's voice seemed to strangle any reply from Drinkwater and, for a gasping moment, he felt the sensation of drowning revive from the memory of his dream.

'So ... they gave you a frigate, eh? I always marked you for a coming man, did I not? In New York, I recall ... and later ... oh, I remember everything Nathaniel, everything ... the humiliations I suffered at your hands, the termination of my career, my illness and abandonment at the Cape ...'

There was no whining in this catalogue of grievance, but the sincere belief in a corrupt truth. Morris's tone brought Drinkwater to himself and swept aside the spectral remnants of his own fears.

'Hold your tongue, damn you! You cut no ice here, sir! I shall have you put aboard an Indiaman directly we ...'

'No! No, you will not do that, Nathaniel, consider the matter of the specie ...'

'D'you think I care a fiddler's damn for one per cent of anything that you've had a hand in?'

'Tch, tch, Nathaniel...'

'God damn you, sir, but desist from using my name!'

'We are excessively prejudiced, I fear, eh?' Morris was almost purring, his bloated face expanded laterally by a smile, his hand ever fondling the head and ears and nape of the boy. 'Come, come, then Captain, shed your tired old hypocrisy; make known what arrangements you have provided for my accommodation. You will not transfer me to an Indiaman, no, nor to one of those pestilential Country ships. For a start they will likely refuse me, for a second reason, if you need further persuasion, the specie, whether you wish to claim your percentage or not, will be at greater risk aboard another ship ... the pirates are dangerously active in these seas, my dear fellow ... Come, reconsider and do not be intemperate, you always were the very devil for duty, even as a tight-arsed little midshipman.'

'Morris, as God is my witness ...'

'Oh, silence! And stop that prating cant before you start! What use would I have for you now, eh?' The sly, archly languid tone was shed in an instant. It had come upon Morris lately, like his fat. Remembered was the sharp trading of insult for insult, of venom flecking the very spittle round his mouth in the malignant outbursts that had first alerted Midshipman Drinkwater to the presence of an envious and inept rival. Later, the horrified young Drinkwater discovered the bully was a sodomite who dominated a faction among the weaker members of the lower deck of the frigate Cyclops. *(* See An Eye of the Fleet.)

Morris's forbidden passion had awakened sympathetic lusts elsewhere on board, to become not a secret cabal which might have existed undetected by authority, but a hell's kitchen that dealt in intimidation and murder. It was whispered that sodomy was as old as the Bible; that some men deprived of any outlet for physical passion would inevitably be seduced by its specious attractions to relieve the misery of their lives aboard a man-of-war. Some such men might be forgiven the aberration if it impinged on no one unwillingly, whatever the raillings of the Articles of War. But Morris had made of his vice a weapon with which to terrorise, a means by which to indulge and fulfil a cruel megalomania. At the end of the affair, when he had been tactfully dismissed from the ship to avoid scandal, Morris had laid the blame on unrequited love. The thought still appalled Drinkwater.

'You sired siblings on your Elizabeth then.' Morris nodded at the portraits on the forward bulkhead. The indelicate remark presumed the familiarity of old friendship.

'You presume too much. Hold your tongue here!'

'Ah, I forgot. Captain Drinkwater commands here.' The sarcasm was as smooth as the yellow silk robe Morris wore. 'But I am beyond your orders, muy Capit#225;n. I am no longer in your navy. I resigned my commission from His Britannic Majesty's illustrious service. I am passed far beyond you and your lash.'

'Two boxes of specie do not purchase you immunity from authority,' Drinkwater cautioned, a horrible thought occurring to him of Morris and Rakitin in some unholy confederacy, combining with the disaffected elements of his tired and impatient crew. Morris smiled, unconcerned at Drinkwater's attitude.

'I have taken some insurance. More specie went aboard Guilford. Odious though it may seem to you, my arrival at Calcutta will be expected. You will have to attend to your duty most assiduously in respect of the Guilford, my dear fellow. As for me, I will not insist that you pander to my every whim; I doubt, candidly, that you would be able to ...'

Drinkwater stood stock-still, half listening to Morris's baiting sarcasm. He could see, beyond the rim of the table, the lip of the half-opened drawer where, prior to his arrival, it was clear Morris had been inspecting the contents of his journal. He opened his mouth to inveigh further, but thought better of it. A knock sounded on the cabin door. Midshipman Dutfield announced Lieutenant Fraser's compliments and the intelligence that they were approaching the Bogue.

'Very well, Mr Dutfield, I will be up directly.'

'A handsome young man, Captain.' Morris's laughter followed Drinkwater in his retreat to the quarterdeck.

Lieutenant Quilhampton flung his hat on his cot and wrenched at the stock about his thin neck. He turned to find Tregembo at the door of his tiny cabin. 'May I speak with 'ee, zur?'

'What the devil is it, Tregembo?'

'Do 'ee know who's come aboard, zur?'

'You mean that fat mandarin is, or was, Commander Morris? Aye, I know, and I doubt the captain is much pleased about the matter ... why?'

Quilhampton stared at the old Cornishman. He had never seen the weather-beaten face seamed with so much anxiety.

'Zur, forgive me for saying so, 'tis more than a fancy, but you only remember that bugger from the Hellebore ...'

'I mind enough that he was an evil sod with one of the midshipmen there ...'

'No,' interrupted Tregembo urgently and lowering his voice, 'I mean more'n that, zur; I mind him from way back on the old Cyclops, zur. 'E swore then as how he'd spavin the Cap'n, zur, and I know, zur, I feels it now as he's come to do just that.'

Quilhampton frowned. 'Spavin? You mean ruin Captain Drinkwater? How can he do that? You ain't suggesting this counterfeit mandarin fellow knew who commanded this ship? Come, come, Tregembo, I understand your dislike of matters as they stand, but he's clearly been engaged in trade and wants to leave Canton ... anything else is sheer foolish conjecture.'

Tregembo opened his mouth, shut it and stared at the lieutenant.

'Beg pardon for troubling you, zur.' And he left Quilhampton staring at the closed door.

Morris had been put in command of the brig Hellebore at Mocha, at the end of 1799, or beginning of 1800, he could not quite recall. He had superseded Commander Griffiths, killed in action, and had relieved Lieutenant Drinkwater of his temporary command. Quilhampton remembered Morris getting the step in rank that properly belonged to Drinkwater. Surely that fact would atone for any earlier disagreement between the two men? Doubtless so partisan a champion of Drinkwater as Tregembo would see such a miscarriage of justice in an unfavourable light as far as Morris was concerned. But he remembered other things too; those rumours about Morris that concerned allusions of sodomy with one of the midshipmen, and the scuttlebutt that the surgeon and his woman, a convict they had rescued from an open boat, had been poisoning Morris.*(See A Brig of War.) He had dismissed it at the time; young Midshipman Quilhampton had not then learnt the extent of the perfidy of ordinary mortals.

Was there something in Tregembo's alarum? Or was the old man a victim of senility, of over-anxiety on behalf of his master?

Of course, that was it! He was known to be jealous of his assumed influence over the captain. So what if he remembered the petty squabbles between a pair of midshipmen in an ancient and long-rotten frigate? Lieutenant Quilhampton shrugged off the matter and bellowed at the wardroom messman to fetch him a basin of warm water from the galley. While he waited he fell to calculating how long it would be before he might present himself in the Edinburgh drawing-room of Mistress Catriona MacEwan and whether, after so long a commission, he had accrued sufficient funds to take a wife.

Drinkwater's thoughts were hardly on the convoy he was marshalling off the Bogue. Patrician lay with her sails clewed up, only her mizen topsail still sheeted home and backed against its mast. Above his head a flutter of bunting tested his signalling system and already, in conformity with his orders, boats from the various ships were converging on the frigate. First to arrive was Phaeton's, to collect his final despatch to Admiral Drury. Her midshipman was of the same age as her commanding officer.

'Tell Captain Pellew that I'd be obliged if he would stand to the southward in company until sunset tomorrow.'

'Very well, sir.'

'And that I shall discharge him from his obligation at that lime by a gun and the union at the foremasthead.'

'Union at the foremasthead ... aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater turned to greet Callan. 'I did not expect you would come in person, Captain Callan,' he remarked, surprised.

'I do not think you understood my hail in the river, Captain Drinkwater, but I loaded several chests of specie from a junk, sent by order of the Hong without guard to avoid rousing the suspicions of the Imperial Customs. I counted the amount, ten thousand taels less a few score, some three and a half thousand sterling at seven shillings the liang. I think Drury and the Selectmen should be informed.'

'I agree. I have sent the substance of your news by Phaeton's boat.'

'You have?'

Drinkwater nodded. 'I also shipped specie, though I have not counted it, two chests.'

Callan's eyes lit up. 'By God, Captain, we've done it! The Hong must be under diabolical pressure ...'

'Captain Callan,' Drinkwater broke in, 'I'm not certain you are correct. It is my understanding that the removal of the specie may not necessarily have been with the full approbation of the Hong. It was brought off by a European, a man in mandarin costume named, I believe, Mister Morris ...'

Callan's expression darkened and his forehead furrowed. 'Morris? You say "brought off", is he here, on board?'

'In my cabin,' Drinkwater nodded.

'I must speak with him ...'

'One moment,' Drinkwater restrained Callan. 'What d' you know of him?'

Callan reflected a moment. 'He is a man of irregular habits, Captain, not approved of by society in Calcutta, but not unknown in these parts. He was ostracised to Canton but was undeniably successful as a man of business, holding high influence over certain of the native houses in Calcutta, Rangoon and now, here, in China.'

'If by "irregular habits" you refer to the sin of Sodom, I take it you forgive him on the grounds that you and your colleagues find his acumen of use to you.'

The veiled sarcasm in Drinkwater's voice stung Callan, who flushed. 'This is the east, Captain, things are not ordered here the way they are in England.'

'Come, come, sir,' said Drinkwater acidly, relieving himself of some of the bile formed by the encounter with Morris, 'it is unfair to suggest that Mr Morris's pederasty is unique to the orient. You find him useful, that I understand ...'

'Captain, you are under a misapprehension if you consider men of trade to be inferior to men of your warlike stamp ...'

'I infer no such imputation, Captain Callan. I simply remark upon your tolerance. Mr Morris does not strike me as a man upon whom, sodomite or not, I would put the least reliance.'

Drinkwater paused, he did not want to give Callan the information that he and Morris were old acquaintances. 'Well, perhaps I am wrong. He brought off the silver and has redeemed the trade for this year, at least. Tell me, whence did he come? Is he Country born?'

'No ... he came out in an Indiaman from the Cape, found employment in the Marine at Bombay, but shortly afterwards resigned. There was a whiff of scandal, I believe. I first knew him some six years ago when he arrived at Calcutta. He caused a flutter then for appearing in native costume. Shortly afterwards he moved to Rangoon on behalf of some Parsee interests, and then here, to Canton. But I must see him ...'

Callan went below, escorted by Belchambers to admit him past the marine sentry. Drinkwater was fully occupied himself as officers, mates and a master or two came aboard from the merchant ships. Patiently he answered their questions and issued his last-minute orders. Chiefly he impressed upon them the necessity of keeping in company and of not passing the Rhio archipelago without escort, for which purpose he named Pulo Tioman the rendezvous. Few demurred, only an officer off the Ligonier, with Guilford the only other Indiaman, objecting on the grounds of delay, while the second mate of a Country brig, the Hormuzeer, claimed his ship was swift enough to outrun even the fastest cruiser the French could send against them.

'Well, sir,' Drinkwater replied testily, 'the responsibility for his vessel lies undisputedly with your master, but if I were he I would prefer the company of others to the risk of isolation.'

The man went off grumbling and Drinkwater turned away, only to be confronted with Callan. 'Have you answered the purpose of your visit?' he asked the India officer.

'Yes, thank you. I am not certain I trust him, Captain Drinkwater, but he has shown me accounts which indicate the money is indeed from the Hong in just and equitable payment of debts. I would like to believe him ...'

'What possible advantage could he derive from the matter, his having admitted the sums to you?'

Callan shrugged. 'That is what makes me uneasy; on the face of it I cannot see any.'

'Then perhaps he will be content with a commission. Did you ask him from what he was running?'

'Why he abandoned his post at Canton?'

'Yes.'

'He volunteered that he was in danger of his life after the repulse of Admiral Drury and on account of the disfavour in which the native Chinese presently hold Europeans ... but that will pass', Callan added, 'the minute their supply of opium is throttled.'

'Nevertheless, he himself may well be in fear of some retribution.' Drinkwater did not know why he sprung thus to Morris's defence. Perhaps, he thought, as Callan summoned his boat, because at the back of his mind was a suspicion forming that was too dark, too terrible and too preposterous to be anything other than the invented phobia of a disturbed mind.