I turned to find Lord Utterback offering his sardonic smile. He was dressed to take his place in this shining company, and wore the magnificent blue-and-yellow suit. Gems flashed from his collar, and from every finger.
“Sir Basil carried very little money,” said I, after I had recovered from my surprise. “He either hid your ransom, or sent it ahead to Steggerda, where he was bound.”
“Even dead,” said Utterback, “he remains an inconvenience.”
“But I rescued your slinkskin gloves, which I found in his luggage. If you call on me, I will restore them to you.”
He laughed. “Thank you! For sake of the gloves, I forgive your fault in not finding the ransom.”
“How does your lordship?” I asked. “Excellent well, from all I perceive.”
“Well enough.” He smiled. “Though my deeds have scarce equaled yours,” said he. “Capture of Lady Tern, sticking an outlaw like you stuck that stag at Kingsmere, capture of an assassin.”
“Yet strangely, the events at Kingsmere did not win me glory,” I said.
“What did you expect?” He shrugged. “I would not have stuck my finger in that hell’s pottage of conspiracy, and my position is far more secure than yours.” He gave me a searching look. “Indeed, I expected that you would be downhearted, and instead I find you leaping from triumph to triumph.”
“Hardly that,” said I. “In sober fact, you might find that my life has been cursed in quite a singular manner. Let me say that, when next we have a few hours, I can contribute much to our old discussion of Freedom and Necessity.”
“I will look forward to it. But I had hoped to cheer you by offering you a post, and instead you have already turned it down.”
“Have I?” I was surprised. “I must be the most inconsiderate wight on earth.”
“You declined the Knight Marshal’s offer to join the army,” said Utterback. “I am myself to be a soldier—my father has decided I am to command a troop of cavalry, which he will raise at his own expense.”
“I am sure you will be a great captain,” said I, though in truth I did not know what qualifications Utterback had for such a post, unless it were a rich, willful father.
“I had hoped you would join me,” said his lordship. “The Utterback Troop stands in need of a secretary.”
I laughed. “You’d hoped that I would be so downcast that I’d go off with you? A fine plan, were it not for the deadly war for which you are bound, and for the cavalry, which would bring into unnecessarily sharp relief my tentative relationship with the equine species.”
“Ay,” said he, “for knife fights with outlaws are so much more temperate and congenial than battles.”
“That was as close to battle as I hope ever to be. Yet”—I took his arm and spoke into his ear—“I have more news from Longfirth, which I hoped to deliver privately to his grace before I spoke of it in public. Yet the news might concern you as well. Perhaps we should go board the duke if we can.”
Lord Utterback and I made our way to the duke, who was saying farewell to a number of his guests. He saw us together and remembered, I guess, that I wished to speak with him, and he asked us to await him in his cabinet. So, Utterback and I took ourselves there, and amused ourselves by looking at the curiosities, the chalcedony statues, the enameled and gilded caskets, the ancient coins, and the carven cameos.
My lord told me of the Utterback Troop. He had raised men in Blacksykes, where his mother’s family lived, and his father was Lord Lieutenant, but they were all hopeful youths with no experience, and he hoped to leaven his troop with veterans, who he proposed to find in the capital. “You will see my heralds beating drums, posting bills, and promising bounties,” he said.
“What sort of bounties?” asked I.
“What do you care? You will not join me.”
Lord Utterback had received martial training, as did all men of the nobility, but he had never commanded any detachment of soldiers greater than the few country lads he had led into Ethlebight after the reivers’ attack. So, while Utterback would be coronel of the troop, a seasoned soldier named Snype would serve as his second-in-command, and would teach the men their drill.
This reassured me a little that Lord Utterback would not, at the first opportunity, ride straight into folly.
The duke presently joined us, and I unfolded to him and to Utterback the story of Royal Stilwell’s capture, and my fear that the Crown would reclaim the ship without paying prize or head money.
“We shall go to the Chancellor tomorrow,” he said. “I will send a message to him now.”
He proved as good as his word. Early on a cold, wet morning in which rain clouds prowled the sky, we went to the home of the newly raised Lord Hulme. The Chancellor lived in a house very large and rambling, with thatched roofs that straggled, like unkempt hair, down to the windows—it was not grand or imposing, for the house was a place of business, not a palace. Men of affairs already bustled in and out, amid and through an amiable collection of dogs which romped about the courtyard. We met his lordship in his private study, a place as dark and disorderly as his office in the palace, and he offered each of us a tisane that filled the room with a strong herbal scent.
We informed the Chancellor of the capture of Royal Stilwell, and of our concerns. He listened gravely, and then leaned forward with a frown.
“My understanding of the privateering commissions is that they were intended to aid Ethlebight by allowing its seamen to make captures,” he said. “How is establishing a prize court here in Selford, and awarding monies to sailors here and in Longfirth, intended to aid your city?”
“The owners and officers,” said I, “and many of the men of the Meteor, are drawn from Ethlebight. Much of the money will come to our city because we live there—we will rebuild our homes, commission new vessels in the shipyards, and ransom our friends, who will return home and amplify the wealth of the town.”
“In that case, why not apply to the prize court we have already established in Ethlebight?”
“We have two great prizes,” said I. “Both Lady Tern and Royal Stilwell are too large to enter the port of Ethlebight. We would have to sail to Amberstone, then carry the ships’ papers, et cetera, by land to Ethlebight for judgment by the court.” I saw Lord Hulme raise a hand to begin an objection, and I spoke quickly to head him off. “Which is a mere inconvenience, I agree. But what is more to the point is that this will cause delay.”
The Chancellor raised his eyebrows, and again I answered the question before it was asked. “Both Tern and Stilwell are great galleons suitable for war. We had intended to lease these warships to the Crown, for her majesty’s use in securing the sea against any further incursion by Clayborne.”
There were three classes of ships in the navy: royal ships owned by the Crown; ships owned by nobles and prominent men, who at their own expense, and from gallantry or hope of royal favor, allowed the Crown use of their ships in war; and the most numerous category, ships contracted to the Crown for the duration of the conflict. Most of these were small vessels intended to support the larger ships, and to carry supplies and troops, but it was not unknown for large warships to be made a part of the fleet in this way.
The Chancellor’s eyebrows were still lifted, like the leaves of a drawbridge raised to allow a boat to pass beneath. “You propose to lease her majesty’s own flagship back to her?” he said.
“A court has not yet ruled whose flagship it is,” I pointed out. “According to De Jure Praedae, any ship taken by an enemy, and retaken before noon of the following day, is considered a recapture, and not a prize of war. But Royal Stilwell was held by the rebels for months, and therefore was not a recapture, and is therefore a fair prize of war.”