Chapter 29
Chapter
Catherine finds Rogers and McNeil on the quarterdeck, planning their next steps. “Good morning,” she says and both men turn to her, acknowledging her greeting while she squints into the bright morning sun.
“There’s no tea,” Rogers says, “but we’ve jerky for breakfast if you’d like it.”
“I would, thank you.” She takes the sliver of chewy, hard meat, and when she’s finished eating, she motions Rogers over to a quiet corner where they can speak privately.
“Well then,” she says. “I presume you’ve recovered?”
“I have, thank you.”
Catherine nods. “Good. Then I believe you’ve some explaining to do, Rogers. Or do you prefer some other name?”
“Rogers will do. And the Home Office begs your pardon,” he begins, much as he had yesterday, such that she wonders how many times he’s said that exact same thing before. And to how many people he’s said it. “But there are reasons for the obfuscation.”
“I’m sure you think so,” she replies. “And we’ll get to that. But first, let’s discuss the state of this ship. With the damage to the berthing, we don’t have enough room for the men to sleep.”
She noticed when she woke that the crew had laid their heads down anywhere they could find, littering the damp passageways and decks with their shivering bodies. “And from my breakfast, it appears we’re low on food.”
Rogers nods his assent at both statements.
“We’re low but can ration ourselves to get to Boston.
If we can fix the steam pipes this morning, we’ll be at port in four more days.
Perhaps five. As for berthing, these are seasoned men.
Farmers if not sailors. It won’t be the first time they’ve slept on the floor. ”
“That may be true,” she says, “But I’m certain it will be the first time they’ve slept in pools of cold seawater. I’d like to extend the captain’s cabin to them. It’s spacious and drier than the rest of the ship.”
“It’s kind of you, Mrs. McGann,” he says, and her heart thrills a little bit at his use of that name, even if it is a fake one, “but they won’t take it.
As far as they know, you’re the captain’s wife.
They won’t displace you, even if you asked them to.
They may even be offended that you would ask, that you thought them weak. ”
Catherine mulls this over for a moment. As much as she might not want to, she suspects that Rogers is correct, and the last thing she wants to do is insult their honor. Men, she knows, are often prickly about that sort of thing.
“Fine,” she agrees. “As for Boston, how will we find McGann when we get there?”
Rogers looks at her sharply. “We won’t,” he says. “We head to Boston because it’s the closest port. We’ll moor there as intended and re-stock. I have no intention of going on a rescue mission.”
“You can’t mean to leave him. Isn’t the Home Office…” she waves her hand in the air, “...heroic?”
He gives her another shrewd look and she’s struck by how different he is from Andrew. McGann is tall and muscular and warm, whereas this man is much smaller, with a wiry strength and a calculating demeanor that nearly causes her to shiver, and not in the delicious way that Andrew does.
“The Home Office is meant to gather information,” he says. “We are the instruments of politicians, and politics is a chess game, Mrs. McGann, not a brawl.”
“So, you’re a spy then?”
“I do what is asked of me,” he replies, “by queen and country.”
“And what exactly has the queen asked you to do with Andrew McGann?”
Rogers pauses for a moment, as if deciding what he might say.
“This may be hard for you to hear,” he says finally, “but my presence here has nothing to do with Captain McGann, except in a peripheral sense, and everything to do with the East India Company. He’s had certain dealings with them in the past. It’s a long, and frankly somewhat sordid, story that—”
“He told me,” she cuts him off. “About the ship in Jamaica and the deal for the insurance payout. What I don’t understand is why they would be after him now. Or what any of it has to do with the Home Office. And who is James, exactly? It’s quite clear he’s no moderately incompetent helmsman.”
She watches him absorb her words, although his face gives away no indication that she’s said anything at all except for the slightest flash of surprise in his eyes.
She’s reminded of those awful moments during the season when one of the crueler debutantes would land a particularly sly or vicious public barb and the recipient had no choice but to act as if nothing at all were amiss.
But one could always tell where the barb landed if one looked hard enough.
She feels, frankly, this whole conversation is far too close to the battle of wits and secrets and cruelty that is London’s season. She squelches her sigh.
At least she was good at navigating a season, so she’s not utterly out of her depth here.
“What you may not know,” Rogers is saying, “is that there’s been a movement to disband the East India Company building in Parliament for several years, and it’s come to a head.
The time is ripe to bring about their downfall, if we have the evidence to see it done.
A smoking pistol, you might say, to once and for all turn the tide of public opinion against them.
The East India Company has overstepped its bounds one too many times, and each time it does, it costs the Crown both coin and credibility.
The Home Office would like to have that pistol, Mrs. McGann. ”
Catherine thinks of the key in her pocket and the lockbox it opens, filled with a daguerreotype that’s just the kind of evidence he says he needs. “And you believe Andrew has the evidence you want?”
Rogers raises an eyebrow. “I couldn’t say for sure.” He pauses and turns that cold, assessing look on her once more. “Could you?”
She raises an eyebrow in return and holds his gaze, but she doesn’t answer. Not yet. That’s another trick she’s learned in the ton: silence is often necessary to force others to speak.
“It is rumored, of course,” he goes on as she hoped he would, “that Captain McGann had enough evidence of their wrongdoing to cut a deal with them in the first place and to hold them at bay for four long years. It’s unusual, you will agree, that they just let him go the way they did.
After he scuttled their ship. He must have something rather spectacular over their heads for them to agree to that. ”
She’d thought much the same when Andrew had told her that story, but she doesn’t mention it to Rogers.
Instead, she concentrates on the question she’d asked earlier and noticed he hadn’t yet answered.
“Who is James?” she asks again. “And why now? It can’t be so much more convenient to kill a man at sea rather than on land. ”
Rogers slides his eyes to her. “I don’t suppose you’d buy that he was a disgruntled sailor?”
“Not in the least.”
He turns his back and walks to the railing, gazing out at the sea before answering.
“It’s true,” he says, “that McGann being at sea, where accidents happen away from prying eyes, is reason enough to provoke the attention of the Company now instead of before, when he was in London or even Kent. Should something befall McGann at sea, it might draw a little attention but certainly not the way an accident on English soil might, given his family.”
“Who is James?” she asks once more, but not before she makes a mental note of his phrasing. Given his family.
“I’m getting to that,” Rogers says. “Forgive the long-winded route, please. What I mean to say is that McGann being away from his brother is fortuitous to the East India Company for a great many reasons, unwanted publicity being one of them. And the fact that we believe James is working on behalf of McGann’s brother and not the East India Company is another. ”
“I beg your pardon? Why would his brother have any interest in this at all?”
“Did he not tell you?” Rogers asks, not sounding surprised in the least that Andrew hadn’t shared this information with her. “McGann’s brother is Barclay.”
“Barclay,” Catherine says, trying to still her features and her increasingly rapid heartbeat. “As in the Duke of?”
“The very one.”
“That’s preposterous. The duke has no brothers.”
“I assure you, it’s not. Although it is a rather well-kept secret, given McGann’s… parentage.”
Catherine keeps her face blank. McGann is the brother of a duke, and he’s never mentioned it. More than that, he purposely kept it a secret, even after she’d told him everything—about her father and the ton and her engagement.
His secrecy hurts, but she isn’t about to let Rogers see it play out on her face. Not now, when the man is staring at her and clearly trying to gauge her reaction to the news.
“I’m not sure I understand,” is all she says. “What does the Duke of Barclay have to do with all of this? Piracy and sabotage and the East India Company and what have you. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“The Home Office quite agrees, Mrs. McGann. That’s why I’m here. I know why the East India Company would go to these lengths. If Parliament changes their charter, or revokes it, fortunes will be lost. Barclay is something of an unexpected development, however. His role here isn’t yet clear.”
“McGann could certainly tell you more,” she says. “If you rescue him.”
Rogers glares at her, but she thinks her point landed nonetheless.
“As I said, the man himself is of little importance. The East India Company is what we’re after, and any involvement of Barclay’s will make this messier.
So, we’ll proceed to Boston and contact the Home Office for further orders.
Jamaica is ten days away,” he goes on, “if we’re exceedingly lucky, which I will remind you we have not been to date.
A fortnight or more if we’re not. We don’t have the food nor a stable enough ship for that length of journey.
I won’t risk it. Not to mention the crew signed on for Boston, not Jamaica, and a mutiny is the last thing we need. ”
“You know where they’re going,” Catherine says. “They’re taking Andrew to Jamaica. How did you know that?”
“It’s only conjecture, not a certainty.”
She sizes Rogers up for a moment and feels a strange swell of confidence in her chest. The marriage mart really has trained her to be good at something other than being a debutante or a wife.
“What if I told you,” she says, “that I know why they’re going to Jamaica and that what they hope to find there is exactly the kind of evidence you’re looking for. Your smoking pistol, as it were.”
Rogers raises that stupid eyebrow at her again. “Then I’d be listening,” he says.
“Wonderful.” She smiles. “I’ll be glad to tell you more on the way to Jamaica. Surely there is somewhere to stop for food and supplies along the way.”
“On the way to Jamaica?” McNeil’s voice cuts through their conversation. She hadn’t noticed when he rose from the charts and made his way toward them. “We could stop in Bermuda. She’s only a day or two away. I was going to suggest it, to shore up the repairs.”
Catherine doesn’t even try to hide her triumphant smile. “Then we’re agreed,” she says. “Bermuda and then Jamaica.”
“Aye,” McNeil says, “but only if we can straighten out the steam pipes. That arsehole James,” he looks at Catherine, “begging your pardon, ma’am,” but she only waves him on.
“He put holes straight through two of our pipes. We need a hell of a sealant to fix that kind of damage, red lead or the like, but we haven’t any. ”
“Oakum?” Rogers asks, but McNeil shakes his head.
“No junk rope left to make it.”
“What’s oakum?” Catherine asks.
“A mix of fiber and tar pitch to be used as a plaster.” Rogers frowns.
“Red lead is best—that’s a powder mixed with linseed oil to make a paste—but without it, oakum would get us to port.
And without that, I’m not clear we’re going anywhere.
” He turns his attention back to McNeil.
“There’s nothing to unpick for the fibers? ”
“Nay. Between the fires and cannonball damage, everything’s done for. We’ve no other fabric or rope that’s strong enough.”
“We might,” Catherine says, thinking of the heap of silk and lace she arrived in. “I have my wedding dress.”
Rogers snorts at her but McNeil stops him. “What’s it made of, Mrs. McGann? Silk?” He turns to Rogers. “Silk’s strong, sir. My sister’s a seamstress and has always said it’s the strongest fabric outside of hemp. It could work.”
“Silk is strong,” Rogers agrees, “but unfortunately it’s also rather smooth. The threads won’t take the tar pitch like rope fibers would.”
“It might if we add in lace,” Catherine says. “Which I also happen to have. A lovely piece of French work on my veil. That will work, won’t it?”
“I think we’ve got to try, Mrs. McGann,” McNeil says. “Though I’m sorry about your wedding gown. I know you must treasure it. The captain’ll be right impressed by your sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice, indeed,” Rogers adds drolly but says nothing more after the glare that Catherine shoots him.
“I’ll go and fetch it then.” She strides briskly away to resurrect her wedding gown from the corner grave she’d buried it in.