There was a shout from on deck, the sound of gunfire, a scream, shouted orders. Chaos. Luc … ‘Yes,’ she said and pulled it from her waistband. ‘But you take it. Someone might need it. Watch his back, Ferris, please.’
‘You call me Ferret, miss. You’re one of us. Yeah, I’ll watch your man’s back for ye.’
He was gone, swarming up the side like his namesake after a rabbit, and Averil was left in the tossing boat with no idea what was happening above. She got to her feet, was thrown down, crawled, flinched as shots rang out above and voices yelled. Her hands groped until she had collected up everything that was left. A long tube made of some hard material must contain the charts, she supposed. She stuffed it all into the net and tied the neck tight.
A man screamed, there was a splash. More yelling. Her foot found something sharp that she had missed: a cutlass. With it tight in her left hand she worked along the gig, testing each rope, each knot, as though they tethered Luc and his men to life.
A pistol cracked, the brig lost way and they were wallowing, so suddenly that for a moment it was like the awful, endless second when the Bengal Queen hit the rocks. The fighting had stopped. Averil shifted the cutlass into her right hand and stared up. Who was she going to see, looking down from the rail?
Then a voice roared, ‘Ferris, what the hell are you doing up here?’ and she sagged on to a rowing bench in relief. There was the sound of Ferret’s voice, making excuses, she supposed, and then the wiry little man came scrambling down the ropes.
‘All’s well. Nobbut a few scratches all round and a hole in Tom Patch’s shoulder and that’s just an in-and-out,’ he said, as a rope came over the side and he lashed the net to it. ‘You better hold on tight to this, miss, and get pulled up with it. And keep yer ‘ead down when you get on deck—Cap’n’s fit to be tied. ‘E says you’re to stick with me and keep out of the way or he’ll leave you in the gig and cut the lines.’
‘He doesn’t mean it,’ Averil said and saw the glint of white as Ferret rolled his eyes.
‘Ha! Most likely drop me over instead. Up you go.’
It was worse than being swung on board the Bengal Queen in the bo’sun’s chair. Averil clung like a monkey and landed on the deck in a jumble of netting and sharp objects, rolled clear and stood up as Ferret came over the side to attack the bundle and free the weapons.
‘Where is he?’ she panted, looking round. They had lit a couple of lanterns and in the swaying light she could see that the deck of the brig was crowded. The original crew was huddled around the foremast with three of Luc’s men systematically tying their hands and feet and removing hidden weapons. The rest of the men were moving about the small ship with a purposeful air of getting themselves familiar with its workings and she could see Potts at the wheel, feet braced, face calm, transformed from cook to helmsman.
‘Cap’n’s below in the cabin getting them papers safe.’ Ferret dug the chart roll out. ‘Be calling for this any minute, I expect—you want to take that down to ‘im, miss?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ Averil said with complete truth, ‘but I might as well get it over with.’
‘Bark’s worse than ‘is bite,’ Ferret said as he tidied the net away.
‘He shot the last person who upset him, I hear,’ she muttered as she made her way along the sloping deck and down the steep ladder.
Luc was scribbling on a piece of paper, his head bent over a table spread with charts. In the corner a redheaded man sat scowling in the light of the swaying lantern, his hands tied to the arms of the chair. ‘Take this up to Potts,’ Luc said, and pushed the note across the table without looking up. ‘Tell him to hold that heading until told otherwise.’
‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ Averil said as she snatched the paper, dumped the chart roll on the table and beat a hasty retreat.
‘Then get back down here!’ he roared after her.
She had to face the music sooner or later, she thought, as she climbed down the ladder again. Better down there and not on deck in full view, and hearing, of the crew.
But Luc’s attention was elsewhere when she peered round the cabin door again, so she slid in and perched in a corner.
‘We’re smuggling, that’s all,’ the red-haired man protested. It sounded like a continuing argument. ‘Picking up lace and brandy.’
‘I am sure you were.’ A cupboard door in the bulkhead swung open on its hinges to reveal an empty interior. Luc studied an oilskin package in his hand, then slit the seals. ‘Paid with by this, presumably.’
‘Don’t know anything about that,’ the man said, shifting in his bonds. ‘Private letters, those. Mr—er, the gentleman who hires us said they were letters to relatives in France. Personal stuff. I wouldn’t dream of looking,’ he added with unconvincing righteousness.
‘Indeed?’ Averil shivered at the cold disbelief in Luc’s voice as he spread the papers open on top of the charts. ‘They are certainly in French. What an interest his Continental relatives must have in naval affairs. Ship movements, provisioning, rates of sickness, armaments, prizes taken …’ He read on. ‘Rumours of plans for changes at Plymouth. Interesting—I hadn’t heard about those.’
He looked up. That wolf’s smile had the same effect on the other man as it had on Averil the first time he had used it on her. ‘Treason, Mr Trethowan, that is what this is. You’ll hang for it, along with your anonymous gentleman. Unless you cooperate, of course. I might be able to do something for you if I had names to bargain with, otherwise …’ He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness and smiled that smile again.
‘He’ll kill me. He’s got influence, a tame admiral.’
‘So have I—and the First Lord of the Admiralty trumps your man’s cousin any day. It is his cousin, isn’t it?’
‘If you know it all, why ask me?’ The red-haired man hunched a resentful shoulder, then winced as it made the cord dig into his wrist.
‘Who else on the islands is involved in this?’
‘No one, I swear. That interfering Governor is suspicious—had the brig searched last week, arrested my bo’sun on some trumped-up charge the day before yesterday—and his men are asking questions.’