“Very,” Matthew answered.
Falco nodded. “You can sleep when you’re dead. Which I don’t intend to be, this day. Mr. Spedder!” The first mate came over. “Send a man aloft to tighten the lower right edge of the topgallant. I don’t want any luff in that sail. Then pick five men, and make sure the Ga is among them. Pass out every axe, saw and cutting tool we have. I want the cabins cleared of all heavy furniture. The beds, the dressers, the chairs and washstands…everything over the side. The doors too. Start with my cabin.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Oh…Miss Grigsby and Mr. Corbett will be joining that work detail. Go along with you, children!”
Thus began a hideous afternoon, but one with no uncertain purpose. Axes fell, saws worked and hammers knocked things to pieces small enough to be carted up to the deck and thrown over. Minx Cutter joined the workers, as did Saffron who had given her baby to the elderly woman to watch over. Saffron had tended to Minx’s wounds as best she could, washing them and wrapping a cloth bandage around the deeper of the two, the forehead cut. But Minx was sullen and silent, and Matthew made sure to stay out of her way. It appeared to him that killing a woman was not to her liking either, and possibly the spirit of Nathan Spade still did not rest easily in her memory.
Starting with the captain’s cabin, one cabin after another was cleared of its furniture. Whether they had much of an impact on the ship’s speed was hard to say, but Matthew noted in the late afternoon as he helped pitch another bedframe over that Hardwick’s craft had not gained anymore between them but was holding steady.
As the sun was sliding down and deep violet began to paint the eastern sky, the job had been finished. Everything possible had been broken apart and cast off, even the doors. The Nightflyer was now a creature of sails and hull with fewer innards. Would it be enough? Even Captain Falco seemed not to know.
But as the darkness descended, there came a flash of fire and a concussion from the direction of Hardwick’s cannons. A volley had been sent flying. Without waiting for an invitation, Matthew, Berry and Minx climbed up to the poop deck and there stood the captain at the stern railing peering again through his spyglass.
“The balls troubled fish, nothing else,” said Falco, who himself sounded weary onto collapse. It was possible only the cane was holding him up. “But they’re reloading.”
A second volley was fired. Thunder rolled across the sea. Six geysers of water shot up two hundred yards from the Nightflyer’s wake.
“Wasting their balls and powder,” was the captain’s comment. “Dark falling. They wanted to get their shot off while they could still see. We’ll have no lights on this ship tonight.” He paused, watching the other vessel, and then he said, “But I speak too quickly.”
“What is it?” Berry asked.
“Hardwick is changing course. Going to…north by northeast, it appears. Crossing our stern.” He grunted. “Giving up the chase, or pretending to. But I think Hardwick knows he can’t catch us in the dark, or find us for that matter.”
“Thank God,” said Minx.
“Thank the axes, saws and hammers. Thank your strength. Thank those sails above your heads. I think we’ve seen the last of the revenge.”
“The what?” Matthew asked.
“Temple’s Revenge. The name of Hardwick’s ship.”
“May I?” Matthew held his hand out for the spyglass, and Falco gave it to him. Through the lens, Matthew could see the dim shape of the vessel moving away to their starboard side. As he watched, he saw first one oil lamp and then another flare to life aboard Temple’s Revenge. Several lamps were lit. Matthew wondered which one spread its glow upon Professor Fell and what guise he maintained on that ship.
Indeed, the professor had called halt to the chase, probably on the advice of the ship’s master. They were heading north by northeast? To England?
I think we’ve seen the last of the revenge, Falco had said.
The ship…yes, Matthew thought. But the revenge…no.
Never, if he knew Professor Fell.
“We should run without lamps for a few hours longer,” Falco decided. “In the meantime, we have candles below in the galley. To illuminate your mutton stew, biscuits, shelled peas and cups of lemon water.”
“That at least sounds good,” said Berry, who was so tired she could hardly stand but also so famished she couldn’t sleep without eating.
“Oh, the first five nights, it is good. You will not be as coddled on this trip back as you were on the trip here. You will eat with the crew, and what the crew eats…because you are part of the crew.”
“Fair enough.” Minx lifted her chin and gave Falco a haughty stare that might have withered any other man to cinders. “Just don’t let anyone get between my food and my knife.”
“I’m sure that won’t happen, miss,” the good captain said, with the nod and slight bow of a gentleman. “After you put your knife away, you might consider letting me look at those wounds. I’m not sure a needle and catgut are needed, but scars would not be to your liking.”
Minx didn’t reply. Matthew was thinking that she bore her scars within, and any on the outside paled in comparison.
After the meal in the galley, the ship settled down for the night. Watches were set, and much to his chagrin Matthew was given an order by Mr. Spedder to report to the poop deck at eight strikes of the ship’s bell. Four o’clock in the morning, by his knowledge of that damn bell ringing on the way over. He was assigned a hammock in the cramped and—it must be said—smelly quarters amid the other men who were not on duty, the women and children being quartered elsewhere, and within a very few minutes of taking his boots off and stretching out into the netting he was gone to the world.
However weary he was, he awakened before the eight bells. He lay in the hammock, assaulted by the snoring, rumblings and fartings of the men around him. He was greatly bothered by something he could not rid from his mind.
The Lesser Key Of Solomon, the book was titled. The compendium of demons and spells to raise them. What were the odds that he would have found a second copy of that tome in Professor Fell’s library? Like the stealing of sugar, it boded ill. And it boded evil, to be perfectly honest about it. Also…another thorn in his mind…the matter of Brazio Valeriani.
I shall pay five thousand pounds to the person who locates Brazio Valeriani, the professor had said. I shall pay ten thousand pounds to the person who brings him to me. Force may be necessary. You are my eyes and my hands. Seek and ye shall find.
Ten thousand pounds. A fortune. For one man?
Why?
The professor’s words: If you found him I would pay you enough to own that little town of yours.
Again: why?
Matthew knew himself. This was going to eat at him, day and night. Yes, Professor Fell’s castle and refuge and gunpowder plant and much of his criminal Parliament might be destroyed—for today—but there was always tomorrow, and the professor was nothing if not industrious. And ambitious.
But what exactly was his ambition?
He knew his own mind. He could not let this rest, and neither could he fully rest.
The ship’s bell sounded eight. Matthew got up at once, pulled on his boots and rid himself of the palace of snores.
His instructions had been to report to the poop deck and make the rounds of the deck, every thirty minutes turning an hour-glass mounted on a gimbel next to the ship’s wheel and tending to the bell until he was relieved in four hours. A lovely proposition, for one so weary as he. Yet when he went on deck and the fresh breeze hit his face and he saw the huge sky full of stars and a silver moon still just past full shining upon the sea he thought he was so lucky to be alive in this month of March in this year of 1703. He had survived so much. He was so much stronger than before. Before when? Before yesterday.