There is much that can be learned from etymology, which is why, I'm sure, that novices still have to start Latin in the first form, even though it's not been used for liturgy since Mordred the Great broke with Rome.
Back when he was teaching history at Alton, Cully used to start the novices' class with a quick lesson in Sanskrit, scratching symbols on the chalkboard. I think the purpose of it was to show the ideograph for "cow," and then "want," so that he could get to showing that, at least in Sanskrit, the word "war" means "wanting more cows," more or less.
I'm not entirely sure that the Khan is correct that the Monglian word for "music" comes from the phrase "the sounds one's enemies make when dying in great pain."
After all, if a man has committed mass murder, he just might lie.—Gray
It was, he often thought, a sad end for a man who had once been an honest sailor.
DuPuy shook his head. He puffed hard on his morning pipe, although it gave him little satisfaction.
Admiral Sir Simon Tremaine DuPuy—not, by God, Admiral Lord Sir Simon Tremaine DuPuy; he had turned down a baron's crest yet again—stood at the crossroads of his world, taking his morning pipe and coffee out on the balcony overlooking the port, as he did, fair weather or foul.
He preferred foul; it tended to match his mood these days, these months, these years.
Perversely, a nice Levanter was holding steady from due east, under a sky that held not even a hint of a threat of rain, and the air was so clear that he fancied a younger man could have made out the coast of Sicily, even though it was well over the razor-sharp horizon.
He sipped and puffed some more, enjoying the quiet, as much as he could.
The early morning, just as the dawn was breaking, was his quiet time, his time to himself. On the lower floors of the building, the endless administrative work that supported the Malta Fleet—such as it was—was just beginning for the day. Clerks—some of them with officer's commissions, yes, but just clerks nonetheless—churned through their little portions of the endless sea of paper that floated the Fleet. The Fleet couldn't have gotten by without them—or without someone in DuPuy's combined office and living-rooms. After all, DuPuy was more of a clerk than anything else, these awful, clear, cheery days.
DuPuy didn't like to think on that any more than he had to, and he had to spend most of his day with the unending demands of the faceless busybodies who would, more than soon enough, be nibbling the rest of his day like a pack of rats gnawing on all that remained of a formerly meaty bone.
Rats, jackals, vermin all—he sometimes thought that every one of them had his hand out.
DuPuy did not. Ever. You had to make compromises in this life, and compromise he did, but he got his six crowns seven every payday, and while as a younger man he had augmented his pay by gaming, he had not once taken a bent penny in graft.
He would lie and cheat and steal, yes—and worse, much worse—but not to fill his own purse. Once you started down that road, you never knew where it would take you, and Simon Tremaine DuPuy had never had to find out, because he had never taken a step down that road.
He looked over at the drydock, and nodded as approvingly as he could. McCaulkin, at least, could reliably be counted on to get good value for what he spent from the purse, taking only the traditional five-percent kickback, and with a new load of good black oak just in, McCaulkin would soon be far more busy supervising the work in the drydocks than he would in counting his graft.
Work had proceeded on the three-master in the drydock almost directly below him at only a maddeningly slow pace, rather than an unacceptably slow one, but it was largely done, finally, and only a matter of a day or two until the ship would slide down the ways.
It could do that now—the hull had long since been readied, and the masts solidly stepped, rudder affixed, hardware set in place—even the anchor had been catted. While there was endless carpentry still to be done, nothing essential remained except the rigging—the running rigging, of course; not the standing rigging, which had been completed in proper order, just after the stepping of the masts.
Sleepy-eyed mates—DuPuy couldn't see them well enough, but any man would be sleepy this early in the morning; DuPuy certainly was—were already at work, bossing the equally sleepy-eyed artificers who were, even now, up in the rigging on their ladders.
Old superstitions to the contrary, it was better to set the running while the ship was in drydock, when ordinary ladders could be employed for the use of McCaulkin's lot, rather than the ship's own rope-monkeys working at preposterous heights. A master could and usually would alter the running rigging later, of course, and McCaulkin had made that point repeatedly, despite DuPuy's invariable refusals.
Dammit, good as he was, McCaulkin didn't really understand that the purpose of the whole thing wasn't merely to get the ship out of drydock and off McCaulkin's plate, but to put it into service, and doing the work in drydock like this meant putting the ship back into service more quickly, rather than having it bob uselessly in the harbor for weeks until it could be properly sailed, and the running could be set above while the last bit of essential carpentry belowdecks was completed.
There had been more work to do than had been advertised, of course. Much more. DuPuy had suspected that there was a catch when Humphreys had agreed to the transfer of the ship from the Atlantic to the Med, and was sure that he was right when Digsworth hadn't tried to shortstop it at Gibraltar.
As he had known from just a quick perusal of the belly of the beast, the wily Mumbai thieves who had rebuilt the Lord Fauncher in ought-six had cut every corner they thought they could, and then some—substituting bleached black oak for good white oak for the ship's knees had just been the start, and hardly the end. DuPuy had not been at all surprised to find that all but the most accessible bolts were deviled, and only a little more when the notoriously stingy McCaulkin agreed with him that they would pretty much have to rebuild the ship from the keel up, recovering what they could.
And, to be fair—DuPuy prided himself on his fairness—they had recovered far more than he had initially expected that they would.
The former crew, now beached, was another matter. It would have been nice if he had been able to make a bonfire of them, as he had of the rotted wood that had been stripped off the Lord Fauncher—or, at the very least, hanged a few of the worst offenders, just to make an example of them.
But you couldn't hang an officer or man just because you knew he was incompetent. You had to at least find some hint of a crime, after all.
Hard to do when all the evidence was a thousand miles or more away. The officers' files, unsurprisingly, had still been "delayed in transmission"—a delay that was pushing a year now—but a quick inquiry had told him that every man, from the master down to the cabin boys, had been freshly assigned. Humphreys was, as could be expected, using the opportunity to rid himself of every bumbling nitwit of an officer and buggering thief of a sailor that he could. A few of the former had made decent clerks, surprisingly—but most had been set on half-pay, spending their nights in the seaside taverns drinking endless mugs of cheap beer, and their days sleeping off their latest drunks, while those crewmen who hadn't completed their impressment were pressed into service as dockmen.
But it would be done, soon, and the ship would join the Malta Fleet, such as it was.
Below, two dozen ships lay idly at anchor just outside the shallow harbor, although the moorages to the east were far busier than those to the west with supply boats coming and going with almost manic speed.
As well they should! DuPuy had thought he had made it clear to that idiot Bullworth that he expected Red squadron to sail on the tide, by which he had meant the noon tide, of course. Little chance of that—the squadron would be lucky to sail on the midnight.
The Cowperstown—he hated the name almost as much as he hated the last-century, five-deck design—had a damnably deep draft, and DuPuy had much less faith in Bullworth's first lieutenant's abilities as a sailing master than Bullworth did, or at least affected to.
It was just as well, all in all. DuPuy couldn't quite chit Bullworth for not quite having obeyed an order that DuPuy hadn't quite given, but he could demonstrate his unhappiness in another way, that would turn out to be convenient for reasons having nothing to do with Bullworth.
DuPuy had done his duty, and that was all that could be asked. For now. If DuPuy was lucky, the Cowperstown would run itself aground on the sandy bottom beyond the dredged channel to and through the breakwater, doing more damage to Bullworth's career than to the ship, and DuPuy could have Bullworth hauled before a board of inquiry in Northhampton, brevet Randolph to command of the squadron, and work to make the assignment permanent.
But, no; that wouldn't happen. Bullworth was a careful sailor, which is why he was waiting for the tide; he wouldn't run aground, and Randolph wouldn't be brevetted—even though he deserved it.
DuPuy smiled. Randolph, master of the Redemption, would have taken DuPuy's command to sail on the tide as meaning to sail on the previous midnight; were Randolph the commodore, there would not be two ragged squadrons crowding the blue waters off of Kawra right now.
He wouldn't say he liked Randolph—quite the contrary—but he did admire him. It most certainly wasn't a matter of Randolph being the son of the Earl of Moray—and the next earl, more sooner than later, what with the present earl's age and the news just having reached Malta of Randolph's older brother having broken his neck falling off a horse in some hunting accident. Hunting boars from horseback? Absurd.
DuPuy cut no slack at all for nobility or royalty, not when they wore a Navy uniform; he never had.
His Majesty himself, as a middie, had served under him on the old Indomitable, and Sublieutenant DuPuy had nearly come to blows when both of the boy's two Order knight attendants had objected to DuPuy having the young prince turned over the wardroom table for having fallen asleep on watch.
But DuPuy had done what was necessary, and His Majesty had taken every stroke without so much as a groan, and that had been that, as far as DuPuy was concerned from the moment that he had instructed Mr. Midshipman Pendragon to raise his trousers and return to duty, which, of course, he had done.
DuPuy's opinion that that had ended the matter had not been universally shared. The first hadn't much cared for DuPuy's disciplining His Majesty—affairs of the middies and the junior sublieutenant had been beneath the open notice of the captain, of course—and DuPuy had found himself summarily reassigned to supervising the training of the enlisted landsmen. DuPuy had been sure that he had sacrificed his chances of any promotion on the altar of duty until his name appeared on the next list, supposedly for his service in the Battle of the Samothraki Straits, although neither DuPuy nor any other sober man thought that that had anything to do with it.
It was by order of the King himself, undoubtedly at the urging of the then-Prince, the same urging that certainly had beached the Indomitable's first officer, and retired the ship's captain.
DuPuy wasn't sure if the King was having a joke, every time he had been presented, when His Majesty invariably found occasion to rub a royal hand against his equally royal buttocks—but DuPuy had no apologies to make, public or private, and always kept a boot-face on such occasions.
He liked the King's attitude, and—not that he would admit it to anybody—he admired Randolph's, as well, as strange as it was for a grandson of a man hanged as a Republican to admit, even to himself, fondness for a nobleman's performance.
The Redemption was as taut a ship as there was in the Fleet, and never missed a tick—but to hear Randolph talk about it, all the credit was due to others. If you made a general compliment, you'd hear from Randolph that his first, Braithwaite, was due all the credit that couldn't be apportioned to the second, and that Randolph hadn't seen a better bunch of middies in years. If you made a comment about how the Redemption flew a nice set of sails, you'd hear about how Sticky Washhall and Sneaky Weems were the best damned sailmakers in the Navy, and not just the Fleet; that the least of Bosun's Mate Nivens's mizzentopmen would make a foretopman's bonus on most other ships; that the landsmen were coming along handsomely, and that Randolph took last week's flogging as a reflection on himself, as a decent commander shouldn't have to have a man put under the lash more than three or four times a year. If you chuckled about what damage the for'ard catapults had done to the floating target off the Reddy's bow, the response would be that it was Flinger Fitzgerald who didn't believe in letting his hands loll about in port, and that Randolph had had to concede that Quarters Marino's theory about how Castelmareseian carrots improved eyesight ought to be given more general distribution—as should the carrots.
Much better than Bullworth's endless whinging about how the quality of seamen had slipped in recent years, and while-I'm-not-complaining-about-my-officers-Admiral—the phrase was one word to that idiot Bullworth—everybody knew that the up-and-coming ones put in for the Atlantic, not the Med.
Idiot.
The world was filled with idiots and compromises. When the battle flags went up for real—and they would—they would go up in the Med first and foremost, where the Crown faced the Dar al-Islam most directly, and not in the Atlantic, where the Crown supply lines stretched from Londinium to the New England colonies but the Dar was even more overextended, not just from Darmosh Kowayes across the ocean to Rabat, but from Rabat to the heart of the Dar.
Cut the connection of the limbs to the heart, that was the way of it; the heart of the Dar Al Islam wasn't on the African coast, or even in the Caliphate capitals, but in the cities of the Egyptian delta that churned out soldiers the way a baker did biscuits. Cut the sea lanes of the Med, and land troops in Sfax and al-Tarabala, and it would be all over within a few years.
But there weren't enough troops in the Med to do that. An invasion of north Africa couldn't be done with ten times the forces DuPuy had at his command.
The Crown could just wait, of course. Let the Dar build up in Africa, and let them plot and scheme with the Empire, and soon, maybe only in five or ten years, the Dar would move north while the Empire moved south, cutting the Med in half. The late King had been a fool not to finish with the Empire when he'd had the chance. In its present shrunken state, granted, the anything-but-holy and no-longer-Roman Empire was but a fragment and a wraith of its former self, and not the threat, by itself, that the Dar Al Islam was, but it wasn't dead and gone, after all.
DuPuy let his hand rest on the wheel; it comforted him.
By design, his balcony resembled the bridge of the old Sufficient as much as a landlocked balcony could, and he had pretended not to notice how the overly dramatic Bugeja winced at the ordered removal of the ancient marble to be replaced by the oak railing. What was left of the Sufficient's wheel was mounted on the decking that had been laid on the stone, the hub that it now spun upon impotently although the hub was greased after every rain, just as the ancient brass smoking lamp from his long-lost love's quarterdeck smouldered from a hook on the outside wall.
It all reminded him of the one place in the world that he belonged; it was lost to him forever, but by God he could mourn it properly this morning as he did every morning, as he waited for the two men in the world he hated the most.
They would both be early, of course; he had invited one and ordered the other to join him at seven bells, but he had, as was his habit, risen early, for none of the reasons of duty that had never let him sleep through the night about the Sufficient.
That had been different.
He smiled. The captain's midwatch-to-mornwatch visits to the quarterdeck had been widely admired and copied throughout the Fleet; a generation of lieutenants given their first command had since taken to rising at the change of mid-to-morning, and probably no more really understood why they did that than they did their adopted thin, effete trace of the butter-thick Marseilles accent that Mr. Midshipman DuPuy had never been quite able to rid himself of, Lieutenant DuPuy had stopped trying to, and Captain and Admiral DuPuy had found himself more and more falling into, as though he was regressing with age.
Which he was, in more ways than one—now, he rose early because he couldn't sleep through the night, and tried to fool himself that it was the softness of his feather bed.
What had been a blot on the horizon had clearly become a ship, and he bet himself a half crown that he would be able to identify it before the shorewatcher did.
"My glass, Scratch," he said, not looking behind him for his secretary.
Instead of handing him the glass, Scratch knocked gingerly on the wood of the balcony's arch.
"Both of them are here, Admiral," he said. "At the same time," he added, the only reproach in the content of the words, not in the tone. "I've had Bugsted lay out your clothes," he said, resignedly.
"I'm fine as I am—you may have him put them away."
"Yes, Admiral." Scratch didn't quite sigh.
It was, of course, every bit as much a violation of regulations for the admiral to wear utilities on ordinary duty ashore as it would be for a bone-buttoned middie to, but one of the few nice things about this damned shore office was that there was nobody on Malta who was in a position to correct him directly, although his secretary tried to, of course, and as long as he wasn't too blatant about it, DuPuy let it pass.
He was, by necessity, frugal. There were definite disadvantages to being an honest man, and not supplementing his pay with even the ordinary graft was not the worst of them, given what the cost of uniforms still did to his personal budget, despite him spending his days in cheap utilities.
He didn't sleep well at night, but it wasn't from his conscience bothering him—just his bowels and bladder.
"Show them in," he said.
"To the study?"
"Out here will serve," he said. "Bring a couple of mugs—mugs, mind you, not that cursed china that breaks at a cross look—and coffee for the both of them. And another cup for me, too." He'd rather offer the two of them poison—but coffee, brewed thick and rich with a pinch of salt added to the cup, would have to do. "And bring me my glass, dammit."
Scratch held out the tarnished old brass cylinder that had, of course, already been in his hand; the only apology DuPuy offered was a grunt as he accepted it and put it to his good eye, the left one.
Dammit, his good eye was going, too. Black flecks swum about his field of vision like a swarm of lazy flies, another of the indignities of age. He had no hope of making out any signal flags—much less pennants—until it drew much closer, but he had been hoping to get a feel for the sails. You could tell much about a master by the way he set his sails, as any schoolboy knew, although it went far beyond the elementary matter of Frenchmen and Spaniards typically flying two jibs when one was sufficient for an English master who knew how to use topgallants and stuns'ls.
All he could tell about this ship was that it was a two-master; its provenance or identity was beyond his ability to guess, at least for the moment, and he'd be unlikely to be able to spend any time on it for the next hour or so—he didn't need to consult a seer to figure that another half crown into the Widows and Orphans box was in his immediate future, as ill has he could afford it.
It shouldn't be a Crown ship.
DuPuy was more than vaguely familiar with Fleet schedules, and those of the fleet of merchantmen that serviced the Fleet. Neither of the two ragged squadrons at sea to the east were due in for some time, and the next slopman was either the Refuge or the Spirits, but the Refuge had been dispatched to Marseilles in large part as a message to the ever-greedy Bolognese merchants that the Fleet had other options; the Reffy would be coming in from the northeast, not the west. The Spirits had sailed west-norwest to Thessalonika, granted, and should be back any day, but it was a fat barkentine, and DuPuy's eyes weren't so bad or his mind so dull that he couldn't tell the difference between two and three masts, although he couldn't guess whether it was a schooner, brig, brigantine, ketch, or yawl, or even one of those strange two-masted fellucas you'd only find in the mild waters of the eastern Med.
Oh, well. He held out the glass, but Scratch wasn't there, of course, so he went back into the office to find the case. He had a much finer glass, presented to him along with his fancy-but-useless admiral's sword, in admonition that he would, henceforth, be watching things rather than actually doing things, but he had never once so much as put the gilded piece of frippery to his bad eye.
"Good morning, sir," Randolph said, stopping his limping pace to come to attention.
"Ah-salam oo-allay-koom," Abdul ibn Mussa al-Bakilani said. "A good morning to you, Admiral."
"G'morning, Lieutenant, and greetings, sir," DuPuy said.
Scratch arrived with the coffee, and both men, of course, accepted it. Al-Bakilani would have downed flaming piss if protocol demanded it, and he seemed to actually like the admiral's coffee, although that only meant that he thought it appropriate to seem to like the admiral's coffee.
Both of the men he hated most in the world were dressed as they should be—Lieutenant Lord Sir Alphonse Randolph in the impeccably tailored first-class blues that, certainly by no accident, showed off his broad shoulders and almost womanishly trim waist. He stood painfully straight, and not just because of the high starched collar of the white blouse beneath the jacket and waistcoat; Randolph was that sort.
His medals—the officer's uniform of the day on Malta specified medals, not just ribbons—had somehow been secured to each other and the short, waist-length jacket, and didn't click together to echo his boot heels as he drew himself up to an even stiffer brace. While it was traditional that a family crest was displayed on the right breast, Randolph's was on the left, beneath the medals that obscured everything except the second motto: Fari Que Sentiat. Save for a thin bristle of mustache below the sharp Moray nose, his face was shore-shorn, emphasizing the thick scar just below his cheekbone.
Technically, despite the medals, he was out of uniform. The sword at his waist was one of those overly curved Seeproosh-style sabers, not a proper officer's dress sword—as though to brag how he had obtained it, along with the limp. DuPuy probably wouldn't have corrected him, even if they weren't alone, and even if DuPuy wasn't in utilities himself. A bit of quiet braggadocio was a good thing in a master and commander, after all.
The Arab was arrayed in the long flowing robes of his people, only the high quality of the fine-woved linen and the silver stitching at the hems distinguishing him from any lesser man, although there was some significance to the tiny golden pendant secured by a preposterously thin gold chain around his neck, just as there was some scheme to the pattern of that rope-thing that would have secured his headscarf in place. DuPuy had never bothered to learn about such things, and the headscarf and rope-thing—called something like "argyle," if DuPuy remembered correctly—had been tucked into al-Bakilani's sash in a way that perversely reminded him of the way that Randolph had his handkerchief tucked into his sleeve.
A handsome enough man, for an Arab, if only because his smooth, dark face was free of pockmarks; the devil protected his own, after all.
Al-Bakilani had no weapon in evidence, although he did have a reputation as a warrior; the Caliphate's emissaries depending on other things than their prowess with weapons to protect themselves on Crown territory, and his unusual willingness to meet with DuPuy without the usual entourage that al-Bakilani's predecessor, a much less clever man, had always brought with him to any discussion. al-Bakilani had gracefully dispensed with that, shortly after his arrival. Perhaps he thought that DuPuy, who strongly preferred simply getting business done and over with, would be more flexible—although that hope was in vain, of course. Or maybe it was that he thought he was probing for some sign that DuPuy might be corruptible.
Which, in a sense, he was, of course. But not by the likes of al-Bakilani.
Hanging a Western Emirates ambassador was something that DuPuy would have gladly ordered—the thought of al-Bakilani jerking and pissing and shitting himself on the end of a rope was an utterly loverly image—but there were good reasons, and, more important, there were standing orders that such persons were sacrosanct, after all, just as the delegates from the Crown to the Caliphate were.
DuPuy hoped that his opposite number in Sfax was every bit as aggrieved with his guest as DuPuy was with his. But life was rarely so just.
"I—"
"Admiral—"
Both men immediately shut up, al-Bakilani making an expansive gesture for Randolph to proceed, which Randolph returned with a stiff smile and a perfectly correct bow.
"I beg your pardon, sir," Randolph said, "most humbly."
"No, please; my fault entirely," the Arab said, turning to DuPuy. "It appears I've arrived shamefully early for my appointment with His Excellency." It was the closest that he would come to criticizing DuPuy for having committed the solecism of having the two of them arrive together.
"No, it's not your fault," DuPuy said. "I intended to make an introduction. Hope I didn't embarrass either of you—Shaykh Abdul ibn Mussa al-Bakilani al-Medina Hajji, may I present Lieutenant Lord Sir Alphonse Randolph? Randolph, Shaykh al-Bakilani. Should have done this a week ago, but I'd expected that—oh, never mind."
He hadn't expected anything, but it always made sense to give al-Bakilani something to think about. DuPuy had quite deliberately generated an impression of deviousness by the simple expedient of being as straightforward as he could, and while the smooth smile never dropped from al-Bakilani's face, DuPuy could tell that he expected something subtle and clever from him, which DuPuy did his best to provide.
"I am, of course, honored to meet the lieutenant," al-Bakilani said. "My condolences on your recent loss; I hope you wouldn't be offended if I were to say a brief prayer for your late brother?"
"Not at all," Randolph said, his own boot-face firmly in place.
"Seems strange to pray for a Nasranite, isn't it?" DuPuy asked, just to see how al-Bakilani would handle it.
"Not at all." Al-Bakilani ducked his head as he murmured a short phrase in Arabic, then raised his head. "Roughly: 'whether it be of the True Believers, or those who are Jews or Christians or Sabaeans, whosoever believe in God and the last day and act aright, they have their reward at their Lord's hand.' So may it be for Francis Mordred Randolph, son of Michael Francis Randolph, Earl of Moray, may Allah show him mercy."
Al-Bakilani gave DuPuy a thin smile. Since word of the elder Randolph's death had only just reached Malta two days before, al-Bakilani was more giving DuPuy to know that his sources within the Fleet were in place than he was, once again, showing off his apparently encyclopedic knowledge of British noble families.
Which meant, of course, that either al-Bakilani had no such sources in the Fleet itself—something DuPuy knew was not the case—and wanted DuPuy to send Weatheral to chase around looking for his nonexistent spies, or that al-Bakilani was playing a double-bluff game of some sort, as he was.
Well, DuPuy would be glad to be rid of al-Bakilani. What business they had was long since finished. Sad days when you had to reveal at least part of your schedules and timetables to an enemy to minimize unwanted encounters at sea. What he should have been doing—what he wanted to do—was to issue a general order that any ship flying the Star and Crescent was to be taken, and to have enough ships and marines to do that, and sack every city along the northern arc of the Dar, from al-Gaheer to Bayrut, something that would take rather a lot more than a puny six undermanned squadrons more suited to pirate patrol than real warfare.
There was no point in letting his mind churn that over and over again, but while DuPuy controlled his words and actions, he never had been able to get a rein on his thoughts, and was too old to start trying.
He cleared his throat. "The reason I arranged for the two of you to meet—should have done it before, Shaykh; my apologies, again—will be evident in a moment, I expect. Mr. Randolph, is the Redemption ready for sea?"
"Yes, sir." He said it with no qualification, and it hadn't escaped DuPuy's notice that the manic supply boat activity in the rest of the squadron's berthings didn't include Redemption. No need to rush about like a headless chicken if you'd already made yourself ready.
"And your first officer—a Mister . . . Braithwaite, I believe?"
"Yes, sir. Lieutenant David Braithwaite, sir."
"Would you say he's ready for his own command?"
"Absolutely, sir."
"As I thought." He looked past Randolph's shoulder to Scratch, and gave a quick nod. Scratch, as was usual, overly theatrical, patted at his breast pocket, and departed the room with atypical haste. "I'm giving him the Reddy; you're the new master of the Lord Fauncher. Throckmorton's already issued the orders; you should have them in hand within the hour."
"Yes, sir." No expression, although he was sure that Randolph resented it. DuPuy certainly would have.
He turned to the Arab. "The lieutenant and the Lord Fauncher will be your host on the trip to Sfax; you're due there on the thirteenth, as I recall."
"His Excellency recalls correctly, of course," al-Bakilani said, not rising to the bait. "And may I congratulate the lieutenant on his new command?"
"Thank you," Randolph said. "I'm very much looking forward to it."
DuPuy watched his face closely; if there was any indication that this was the first that Randolph was hearing of it, DuPuy couldn't see it. Good. Throckmorton was the only officer he had told, although he was sure that Throckmorton's secretary, like Scratch, knew as well. Throckmorton wasn't DuPuy's idea of what a port captain ought to be, but at least he could keep his mouth closed.
"Now, Excellency, if you'll excuse us?"
"Of course, Admiral," al-Bakilani said, smiling gently. "I'm sure that you and the lieutenant have much to discuss about his new command, and I believe that your captain Postlethwaite is expecting me?"
DuPuy waited until the door had closed behind the Arab until he spoke. Randolph was still holding himself in a stiff brace; silent insolence of a sort, but not the sort that DuPuy cared about.
"Sit, Lieutenant, sit," he said, then changed his mind and shook his head. "Better—let's finish our coffee out on the balcony," he said, as always careful not to call it 'the quarterdeck' out loud. A beached sailor was a silly thing in and of itself; no need to be laughed at behind his back, any more than he already was—although there were, of course, worse things than being thought to be an utterly useless old man: being an utterly useless old man first among them.
"Yes, sir." Randolph followed him outside. DuPuy found that his own pipe had gone out, and gestured an invitation to Randolph to light his own, which Randolph took as the command that indeed it was.
"Well, go ahead, speak your mind," DuPuy said. He raised his glass to look at the distant ship. A two-master of a certainty, understandably if a bit aggressively flying a full complement of sails in the light air, but he couldn't tell anything more than that, not without his glass.
"Aye, aye, sir," Randolph said, eying the ship as he puffed on his pipe. "If you don't mind me asking, is there something about the Wellesley that I should know?"
"Wellesley? You don't mean the Lord Fauncher?"
"I mean the ship coming in from the nor'west, sir." Randolph didn't quite shrug. "I'd think it the Welly, sir, unless there's another master who flies both unreefed royals and topgallants without bothering with stuns'ls, sir—that's one of Johansen's quirks. Doesn't much care for stuns'ls, for some reason." He took a thoughtful pull on his pipe. "Good man, though. Probably be able to run a shakedown on the Lord Fauncher as well as anybody else."
"Is that a complaint, Lord Randolph?"
There was a flash of expression before Randolph resumed his boot-face. "Lord Randolph isn't at issue here, Admiral," he said. "Lieutenant Randolph, sir, has no complaint to make whatsoever." His lips might have tightened, just a touch. Perhaps not.
"You're wondering why I'm reassigning you."
"Well, yes, sir, I am."
"Speak your mind, Mr. Randolph," he said, gesturing at the motto on his breast. "Fari Que Sentiat means 'say what you think,' no? Something about a trip to Sfax beneath you? You have some objection to my orders, Mr. Randolph?"
"No, sir." Randolph told the lie without blinking. "If I'm to be transferred, I'd have thought I'd be ordered to report to Assignments, rather than to the Admiral. But I'll wager I can have the Lord Fauncher flying the Blue Peter as quickly and as well as most others, and better and faster than some."
"She slides down the ways tomorrow. You've got five days before you set sail for Sfax." DuPuy expected an objection, in posture if not in words, but didn't get one. It was an absurdly short time to ready a ship even for the most tentative of shakedowns, but not quite an impossibly short one, given the state of the Lord Fauncher's repairs, and her hold, something that Randolph apparently was aware of. "You're not asking me about her condition, I notice. You've been following the repairs?"
"No, sir. I've been busy seeing after the Redemption. The Lord Fauncher hasn't been a matter of my concern until this moment, and I think that one look about her is worth a thousand questions—I assume that Captain McCaulkin will find the time to receive me?"
"A safe assumption." DuPuy pointed his pipestem toward the drydock. "You can proceed there directly from here."
"Aye, aye, sir. Do I report to Assignments to find out about my crew, or do you wish to give me the bad news on that yourself? Sir."
More insolence, but DuPuy just smiled. "You can have your pick from the beach crew; see Shea, and then Throckmorton. He'll have them report to you by the end of the day, even if he has to have them dragged by the heels from every tavern and bordello across the island—as he more than likely will, with some of that lot."
"Yes, sir." If Randolph resented having to pick among the beach crew, as he surely should have, that didn't show in his face.
"Unless there's some officers or men from the Redemption you feel you need more than Braithwaite does?"
Braithwaite was probably a bit junior to be given the Reddy, but it would be interesting to see if he was as good a man as Randolph claimed—as he probably was; DuPuy had followed Braithwaite's career rather more carefully than he cared to let on at the moment.
"No, sir. Not with the Reddy about to sail on the tide—noon or midnight. I'll take my dogrobber, and leave it at that, Admiral."
Loyalty was a good thing. No doubt that Randolph would have preferred to have every crewman from the Reddy transferred—something that DuPuy had not quite openly offered, and a request that he would have denied, if it had been made—but, of course, Randolph wouldn't ask for any such thing.
DuPuy cocked his head to one side. "You haven't asked me why, Mr. Randolph."
"No, sir, I haven't."
"Carry on, Mr. Randolph."
"Aye, aye, sir."
And then he was alone again, with his pipe and the cold dregs of his morning coffee.
You couldn't persuade people with words, DuPuy had long since decided. If you couldn't order them, you had to let them see for themselves.
Randolph had taken the Redemption as the first command available, even though that had meant transfer from the far larger and more prestigious Atlantic Fleet to the hinter-waters of Malta, and had spent most of his year with the Malta Fleet chasing pirates. Give him a view, up close, of Sfax, and he'd at least begin to see—to see for himself, dammit—a fraction of the real forces arrayed against the Crown here.
DuPuy tried to do that with all his young officers, making sure that each ship, in turn, was seconded for a mission to a Dar port.
He was trying to take the long view; ten, twenty years from now—if there was to be a Crown in ten or twenty years—the Admiralty would have at least a leavening of senior captains and admirals who had seen the enemy for themselves, up-close.
That was important. Spending time around the likes of al-Bakilani was important, as well—let them know that the enemy could be charming, and soft-spoken, and even kindly, and they would be less willing to accept assurances that the Dar now believed that trade, rather than conquest, was the way to expand the Dar al-Islam.
But it was even more important to have that knowledge, that skepticism, and the passion created and represented by that knowledge and that skepticism in Parliament, and now he would have more of it, in the person of the Earl of Moray, sooner or later.
Preferably sooner, although he would have to think long and hard about trying to arrange that without doing something too obvious, or repetitious.
He made a tsking sound to himself. Weatherall had spies along the northern coast of Africa, although they were an untrustworthy lot, just as he was certain that al-Bakilani and the Dar had spies in Malta, even beyond the ever-reliable Scratch.
Pity. DuPuy had never had a better secretary, and Scratch had been—his treason aside—unwaveringly honest, never even taking a drink from the bottle of harsh issue rum that DuPuy kept in his desk. DuPuy could tell watered rum at a taste, and the level had never gone below his light scratch marks.
Oh, well.
He walked in to his office and unlocked his top drawer, pulled out the bottle, and poured himself a quick tot, habitually marking the bottle's level with the sharp edge of his ring, and then recorking it before downing the glass in one neat gulp.
With the bottle removed from the drawer, his private correspondence file was on top, and the hair he had placed between the second and third pages almost where he had left it. Scratch was almost as careful as DuPuy himself.
The latest letter from Francis Randolph, clumps of wax still attached, was at the very top of the pile. It was only reasonable, after all, that DuPuy would take a few moments to reread his correspondence with Francis Randolph upon being informed of Randolph's untimely demise.
The handwriting was excellent, if he did say so himself; it was just a matter of taking one's time, and never, ever using anything but his deliberately crude scratchings to sign his own correspondence.
. . . and you may have my assurances, my dear Admiral duPuy, that even absent our lengthy correspondence, I would have and indeed have fully adopted your view of the prevailing situation in the Mediterranean Sea, and will prevail upon both the earl and any others who will listen to my voice about the necessity of reinforcing the Malta Fleet, to the obvious necessities that we have discussed. I urge you to continue to take the long view on such matters, as this won't be solved in a fortnight or a month or a year, but it will be addressed, and what influence I have or will have is entirely in service of this necessity.
Probably a touch too arch, but . . . it would serve. Forging Randolph's personal seal would have been difficult, but that hadn't been necessary—DuPuy had used his own seal, and a bar of privately bought wax rather than Navy issue, and then removed almost all of the wax, leaving just enough behind to show that it had been sealed, no more. The paper had been a problem, but a few minutes with a bar and razor had turned a sheet of good broadside into something that a noble might well have used for private correspondence.
Good enough; it would serve.
It had served; he had written this letter more than a year ago, the moment that he had been informed of the younger Randolph's transfer to the Malta Fleet, and it had sealed the doom of Francis Randolph, unless the hunting accident was just that, which DuPuy didn't believe for a moment.
Randolph the elder, like his father, was notoriously apolitical, and was widely reported to have been more interested in boar hunting than anything else. Brave of him, certainly, but even more useless of him, and while DuPuy admired bravery, it should be in aid of something worthwhile. If you were going to spend your life, there were better and far more worthy causes than chasing a pig through a forest, armed with nothing more than a spear.
Well, the letter had done its duty, and now it was time to be rid of it, along with a few of the others, as well; they would just go into the fireplace—although he would want to be sure that Scratch was away from the offices before that, and would, of course, stir the ashes after the burning.
Pity he couldn't simply lay the matter on the Intelligence desk, but he had no faith in that idiot Weatherall, who had been bequeathed upon DuPuy by his predecessor.
Now would be a fine time for the burning, if Scratch was off on some errand. Which he wouldn't be, of course, until DuPuy dispatched him, so sending him off would be the next item of business for this depressingly bright and cheery day.
"Scratch?" He barely raised his voice before his secretary was through the door.
"Yes, Admiral?"
"I'd better speak to Assignments—would you ask Shea to see me as soon as possible? Tell him to bring the list of ensigns and junior lieutenants on the beach crew—I want some recommendations for the Lord Fauncher."
The last thing he really wanted were recommendations, of course; he had no intention of tying Randolph's hands any more than he already had, but he did want to make it implicitly clear to both Shea and Throckmorton that he would be most unhappy if the best available beached officers and jacks weren't easily available to Randolph.
Best of a slaggardly lot, granted, but that was the way of it . . .
"Yes, sir," Scratch said. "I was coming in to see you, Admiral—I'm sorry to bother you, I just got back from downstairs; the captain summoned me. There are two Order Knights waiting downstairs, on a matter that's clearly of importance."
His pipestem snapped in his hands. Order Knights? A matter of importance—that they had talked to Scratch about? The only reason that Scratch was still alive was that there were no Fleet secrets in the backwaters of Malta except those that DuPuy was busy manufacturing. The truth was simple, alas.
"It had better be important," he said, snarling loudly to cover his anger—at himself; his fury at Scratch had long since burned itself down to banked coals.
"I can assure you that it is—they confided in me, albeit briefly."
"Very well. Show them in. And stand by your desk, man—if it is something important, I'll want you close at hand."
It would most likely be. The Order, for all its faults, did not raise a bunch of panicky flibbertigibbets, after all.
And write your will, you bloody traitor, he thought at Scratch's retreating back If this is indeed something important, and not just a couple of self-important knights, you'll not see another sunrise.
It would be easy, and he had long since decided how to do it, when the time came, as it perhaps finally had.
Murder was best done in the dark and quiet. Tonight would do.
After DuPuy had gone to bed, he would arise, as though he had trouble sleeping, and walk down the hall to summon Scratch from his own bed for some late-night correspondence, bring him back to the office, and ask him to fetch his pipe from the mantelpiece.
Hmmm . . . it would be a kind of justice to take his saracen trophy battleaxe down from the mantelpiece, but Scratch might notice that it was missing. A simple baulk of wood from the wood bin wasn't as elegant, but it would serve just as well. He didn't need to kill him with a quick blow to the head, it would be enough just to stun Scratch—although DuPuy wouldn't mind if it actually killed him, of course—and then it would be just a matter of splashing Scratch with some rum and then pitching him over the rail, following him with the smoking lamp from the balcony.
And then back to bed, to be awakened at all the commotion, or even in the morning, if nobody noticed. An empty bottle beside his own bed, and a few splashes on his sheets, would explain his having missed all the excitement.
Not that it would be all that much excitement. Nobody would suspect a thing. A thieving admiral's secretary would have merely been at the admiral's bottle, and have gone out to the balcony to get himself a smoke without having to fear the smell waking the admiral; the drunken Scratch would have lost his balance, fallen over the rail, and shattered on the stones far below.
Nobody would think otherwise—except, perhaps, al-Bakilani, and what would he say?
Nothing, of course. But he would know, and while DuPuy would have had it otherwise were it possible, he took quiet pleasure from the necessity of that, just as he did in the sealed envelope that was in Throckmorton's safe, to be opened only upon DuPuy's death, in which he expressed a belief that al-Bakilani had decided to have him assassinated—and referred to conversations with Scratch, who would now never find himself hauled in front of Intelligence to be questioned on the letter, alas—and the small vial of poison secreted beneath his bed that would end his days when he was recalled.
In life, he would do his duty, even if his duty called for lying and deception; so would it be in death, he hoped.
But not too soon.
He still had more to do, and if Simon DuPuy couldn't serve his King from the quarterdeck of a warship, he would serve him as best he could from his luxurious prison.
There was service in that, and that it would never be known made it no less a service; and there was loyalty, as well, even though it would not be appreciated even if it was known; and if there was no honor to be had, well, you couldn't have everything.
Strange for a man who had thought of himself one of honor to have descended into such depravity, but needs must, when the devil drives, eh, old fellow?
He smiled to himself. It would be a beautiful thing, in its own way, to end his days with a blow to the Dar that he could never deliver alive, and if it wasn't as much of a blow as he would have wished for, it was all he could do, and a man couldn't ask for more than that.
But not tonight. Tonight was the time for Scratch to shuffle off this mortal coil; DuPuy's turn would come soon enough.
Still . . .
It was, he often thought, a sad end for a man who once, long ago—too long ago—had been an honest sailor.