Newt's Emerald

Chapter Ten Rule, Britannia!

Loud swearing accompanied a heavier tug upon the door, which burst open. Fontaine came in angrily, without looking where he was going. Not seeing Truthful tied up on the lounge where he expected her to be, he began to turn — just as she brought the sailmaker’s needle down as hard as she could into his shoulder.

Fontaine screeched like a cat, a high-pitched and extremely unpleasant scream. Truthful pulled the needle out and plunged it in again, but before she could attempt a third attack, she was savagely thrown back against the wall, leaving the needle firmly embedded in Fontaine’s shoulder.

“I’ll kill you, Hell-bitch!” he raged, curiously enough in an English that sounded very like one of the London accents Truthful had just begun to know. “Spitfire!”

Truthful staggered away from him, intent on keeping him from seeing the rope to the sea anchor.

“You’re not even French!” she exclaimed. “You’re just a filthy English turncoat!”

“I am an officer of the Imperial Guard!” shouted Fontaine, lunging at her. Truthful dodged aside and he careered into the wall. “One of the Emperor’s most trusted men!”

“Turncoat!” taunted Truthful, dodging another attack. “Traitor!”

Fontaine stopped chasing her and drew himself up as much as he could, his head bowed under the low ceiling. He reached inside his coat and drew out a pocket pistol.

“And no gentleman,” said Truthful. She did not straighten up, but readied herself to hurl herself down to the deck on the right. The Newington-Lacys had told her this was always the best thing to do if you were about to be shot, as most pistols pulled up and to the right. Only now did she question how they knew this, or whether it was even remotely true.

The sound of the lock being cocked was the most ominous thing Truthful had ever heard. Fontaine’s finger curled about the trigger and pulled it back. There was a terribly loud report, a great deal of smoke, and Truthful felt a savage pain in both elbows. But that was from her violent dive to the deck. If she was hit, she hadn’t felt it yet. Apparently this was also a possibility, she had been told by the boys, and the thing to do was to keep moving until you did notice whatever terrible wound had been inflicted.

She rolled over and sprang up, leaping for the door. Fontaine raced after her, his fingers clawing the back of her coat without purchase as she ran up the ladder and out on to the deck.

Truthful didn’t pause, but immediately flung herself on the nearest ratline and began to climb. Below her, Fontaine emerged shouting expletives in a mixture of French and English. Several sailors ran back from the bows and began to climb up the ratlines around the shrouds supporting the main mast, racing Truthful to the top.

But the Admiral’s daughter wasn’t just climbing to the fighting top, a kind of crow’s nest platform. She slid up through the lubber’s hole like a rat and kept on climbing, till she could reach out to the backstay, the thick cable that supported the mast from the stern. Withdrawing her hands into the sleeves of her coat to protect her skin, she gripped the stay and jumped off, sliding down the rope to the quarterdeck as her pursuers were still climbing up from the deck.

The surprised mate who was steering the ship lunged at her while trying to keep a hold of the wheel, and succeeded in neither action. Truthful evaded his grasp and the wheel spun out of the mate’s hand. The ship luffed up into the wind, sails flapping everywhere. It lost most of its way in a matter of minutes, broaching to against the moderate swell.

“Get her!” shouted Fontaine, fairly shrieking now, as Truthful ran around the quarterdeck, swung on another stay and kicked a sailor back down the ladder to the main deck. At the same time several other officers were shouting orders for all hands on deck to bring the ship back under steerage way, sailors were emerging from below, and then there came the harsh crack of a gun some distance away on the larboard side.

A sloop of war was bearing down on the wallowing Undine, the red ensign flying from her mizzenmast, guns run out and fully manned, a scarlet cluster of marines and a throng of armed seamen in her waist ready to board. An officer in a blue coat was standing at the bow, a speaking trumpet at his mouth.

“Prepare to be boarded! Do not offer resistance!”

This order was answered by a hoarse shout that rose seemingly from the figurehead of the ship.

“About time you got here!”

It was Harnett shouting, Truthful realized. He had survived being lashed to the bowsprit. He hadn’t drowned, though she doubted he was at all comfortable. A wave of relief flowed through her, she stopped running, turned to face her pursuers, and stretched up to her full height with her nose in the air.

“So you are done up, Monsieur Fontaine!” she said haughtily. “Or whatever your real name is. I shall enjoy seeing you hang!”

Fontaine grimaced, anger stark on his face. Reversing his empty pistol, he brought it savagely down on Truthful’s head. She felt an intense burst of pain, had a brief cartwheeling vision of deck, sky and sea and then all was blackness.

“Henri . . . I mean, Tru . . . damnation woman, wake up!”

Harnett was still shouting, thought Truthful, as sound once again entered her head and with the sound, consciousness. Gingerly, she opened her eyes to see a small portrait of herself reflected in Harnett’s eyes of the deepest blue. The colour of the sea, she thought dreamily, and smiled.

“Thank God!” exclaimed Harnett. Then, as if suddenly struck by the impropriety of staring at her face from three inches away, her jerked back. “That is, about time!”

Truthful gazed at him dumbly. Even through the throbbing pain in her head, she could see his relief of a moment before fade into an almost hostile stiffness. Deep inside, she felt a sudden pain at the loss of the friendly camaraderie she had enjoyed with him when she had been Henri de Vienne. Only then did she become aware that she was lying on an open deck, with several blankets expertly wound around her and tucked up to her chin. Masts loomed up into the dark grey fog above, but they were not the Undine’s masts. The yards and rigging were too exact, the sails trimmed just so, the deck too clean. Truthful knew instinctively that this was a King’s ship.

“Welcome aboard His Majesty’s sloop Lyonesse,” said another voice. Truthful turned her head to see a young naval officer beaming down at her. “Though I should wish it were in different circumstances, Miss . . . um . . .”

“The lady’s name is not to be revealed,” snapped Harnett. “Her identity needs to be concealed for reasons of military secrecy, Captain. Hence the now regrettably incomplete disguise.”

“Certainly, sir,” replied the naval officer stiffly, his smile wiped from his face. Truthful felt for him, considering that he had rescued them both, and Harnett in particular from being lashed to a bowsprit.

Harnett obviously realised this as well.

“My apologies, Captain. I am short-tempered. Unlike Naval officers, I am not at home up to my neck in seawater.”

“I quite understand, sir,” replied the Commander, unbending a little. “However, I trust I shall be allowed to introduce myself? Richard Boling, at your service, ma’am. Master and Commander of the Lyonesse.”

“Delighted,” whispered Truthful. Her head ached terribly, and she found it difficult to open her eyes. “Please, what happened? How did you find us?”

“A belated rescue,” said Harnett, before Boling could answer. “My . . . ahem . . . associates were suspicious when we didn’t emerge from Lady Plathenden’s residence. One of them was watching the river. He saw the Undine being loaded from the house and alerted General Leye, who in turn sent an urgent message to the Admiralty, though unfortunately of course this all took some time. But once the facts were ascertained, things were put in motion, though I can’t say exactly how our rescuers caught up with us. Perhaps you could enlarge on that Captain Boling?”

“We were in the Pool awaiting dispatches to carry to . . . well, westwards,” continued Commander Boling, taking his cue. “Orders came for us and several other vessels to search for and intercept the Undine, on suspicion of having kidnapped two of General Leye’s officers. I have to say that she is an uncommonly fast vessel and we might not have caught her if it weren’t for the sea anchor and then that scuffle around the wheel. I saw the latter through my glass, but was the former also your work, ma’am?”

“Yes,” muttered Truthful. “I didn’t know what else to do . . .”

“I am amazed that a young lady might be so . . . so . . . nautically well-informed,” said Captain Boling enthusiastically.

“My father is an ad . . . that is to say my father is a naval . . . I mean I was brought up to have some familiarity with the sea and ships,” said Truthful faintly.

“Even so, you have my utmost admiration, ma’am.”

“My head?” asked Truthful, freeing one arm from the blanket and gingerly feeling a sore point on the back of her head. She couldn’t quite remember what had happened. A fleeting memory of the Newington-Lacys laughing about Robert’s loss of memory after falling off a horse went through her mind. She had been giving Fontaine her well-considered opinion and then . . .

“That damned Frenchman!” erupted Harnett, twisting his hands as if he was wringing Fontaine’s neck. “Ah, I beg your pardon. That wretched fellow.”

“Oh,” replied Truthful, still dazed. “He hit us both on the head, then. We must have identical bruises.”

Harnett’s hand went automatically to the back of his head, to feel his own memento of Fontaine’s bludgeoning. But he brought it back down again with obvious willpower.

“I don’t begrudge my own bruises,” he said sternly. “But he knew you were a woman!”

“Fellow’s practically a pirate,” muttered Boling. “Probably get a mention if I hang him from the yard-arm. But I suppose you will want to take him away, Colonel?”

“Yes, we will,” said Harnett. He hesitated, then added in a lower voice that Truthful almost couldn’t catch. “The truth is he’s a damned traitor, original name of Kellett. We caught him before, during the war, and he got away. He’s been slipping about under our noses for the past year or more. The General will be very pleased to lay him by the heels again.”

“I hope he is hanged,” muttered Truthful.

“He will be dealt with appropriately, milady,” said Harnett stiffly. “Fortunately he will no longer offer you any . . . his fate will not be your concern.”

Truthful hardly heard him, for behind Harnett’s words she saw that he was still deeply angry at her deception and probably angrier at himself for being unable to see through it, an anger exacerbated perhaps by the fact that it was she who had enabled their rescuers to catch up while he had been helpless. Major Harnett, one of General Leye’s confidential agents, unable to see through a deception perpetrated by a chit hardly out of the schoolroom, aided by a glamour focused on a false moustache! And then to be held fast and half-drowned while a mere woman rigged a makeshift sea-anchor and grappled with the enemy coxswain!

She also had the sudden insight that his current embarrassment and cold remoteness could easily grow into a real dislike of Lady Truthful. A dislike founded on something more personal and concrete than stories of her cutting Trellingsworth.

“I am sorry I couldn’t tell you who . . . that is . . .” she murmured, looking up at Harnett. “I had to adopt my disguise—”

“Best we do not discuss this, or any other matter, in public,” said Harnett coldly, and Truthful saw the anger she had feared in his eyes. He met her gaze only for a moment, before turning away to look out upon the sea.

“I see,” said Truthful. She suddenly felt angry too. The least Harnett could do was listen to her, she thought. After all, if it wasn’t for her he would still be tied to the bowsprit, swilling down great drafts of seawater. She looked over to Commander Boling and smiled at him. “I think I need to rest, Captain.”

“Of course, ma’am, I shall have you carried to my cabin,” she heard Boling say, but it was muffled and far off. Through half-lidded eyes she looked at Harnett, but he would not look at her. Then she heard footsteps, heard a muttered command and felt hands lifting her, sailors carrying her in the slung blanket like a stretcher, carrying her away to the captain’s cabin.

At the last minute Truthful was unable to resist peeking back at Harnett, hoping that he would turn and look at her.

But he didn’t. He just kept staring out to sea.