“Unputdownable”
(HIM magazine on DEATH’S HEAD)
“A fine example of this genre”
(Gay Times on FORTUNES OF WAR)
“A powerful futuristic thriller”
(Capital Gay on DEATH’S HEAD)
“...the MASTER of gay thrillers ... Mel Keegan’s name is a byword for thrilling gay adventure in the past, present and future”
(Millivres on AQUAMARINE)
“This rip-roaring and colourful new gay thriller zooms along with a breathless enthusiasm that never flags”
(Time Out on ICE, WIND AND FIRE)
“Gripping”
(Scotsgay on STORM TIDE)
Also by MEL KEEGAN
In GMP and Millivres:
ICE, WIND AND FIRE
DEATH’S HEAD (abridged)
EQUINOX
FORTUNES OF WAR
STORM TIDE
WHITE ROSE OF NIGHT
AN EAST WIND BLOWING
AQUAMARINE
In DreamCraft:
HELLGATE: The Rabelais Alliance
HELLGATE: Deep Sky
HELLGATE: Cry Liberty
HELLGATE: Probe
AQUAMARINE (reissue)
THE SWORDSMAN
TIGER, TIGER
WINDRAGE
FORTUNES OF WAR (reissue)
WHITE ROSE OF NIGHT (reissue)
DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT
NOCTURNE
TWILIGHT
THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE
NARC: DEATH’S HEAD UNABRIDGED
NARC: EQUINOX (reissue)
NARC: SCORPIO
NARC: STOPOVER
NARC: APHELION
shorts & ChapBooks
CALLISTO SWITCH
BREAKHEART (re-edit, reissue)
CRIMES OF PASSION
The Deceivers
Mel Keegan
DreamCraft, Australia
THE DECEIVERS
© 2003 by Mel Keegan
All rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between real persons or other characters, alive or dead, is strictly coincidental.
First published in August, 2003 by DreamCraft Multimedia.
ISBN: 0-9750884-2-4
No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever, including but not limited to lending, uploading and copying, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
DreamCraft Multimedia
Box 270, Brighton 5048, South Australia
See MEL KEEGAN ONLINE for everything Keegan:
http://www.melkeegan.com
Chapter One
The Kilpatrick Hills were bleak in the grudging sun of late afternoon, veiled by a thin pall of river mist and the ever-present smoke of a thousand chimneys and factories too numerous to count. Crowded rooftops huddled along the north bank of the river, which had begun to widen out fast on its way west to Greenock and Helensburgh. The whole course of the Clyde was sullied now, by the burgeoning of industry. Shipyards and factories brought in labor; the population on these shores was growing every year, which in turn meant more homes, and children, and then more jobs. Would the Celts and Romans who had known this river as the Kluta, the wide, wild passage from the Firth itself, even recognize it today? Bill Ryan thought not.
Not so many years ago these riverlands were almost virgin wilderness, but since boyhood Ryan had watched the clamor for work transform the Clyde into a maze of competing shipyards, which in places had begun to shoulder for space and business, even for survival. The big yards in Dumbarton and Greenock gave birth to the China clippers themselves; and cheek-by-jowl with the great ladies of sail were the steamers — even now the old world and the new found a way to exist side by side, in a kind of uneasy truce.
Commercial ambition and steam engines aside, sail continued to rule most of the world’s seas, and the old romantics swore it always would. But Ryan was sure the stubborn belief was no more than a fantasy. Hands in pockets, the collar of his black greatcoat turned up against the persistent mist and drizzle, a black woolen cap pulled firmly down around his ears, he stood on the riverbank and frowned into the jungle of industry just west of the town of Dumbarton.
A steam screw had launched just hours before. She was arrestingly ugly, still little more than a raw hull with dormant boilers and the fearsome engines of a locomotive. The dead weight of her steel body made her ride low in the water, as if she were laden with cargo. In fact, she carried no superstructure. The fitters would labor for weeks or months more before she was seaworthy.
Bill Ryan disliked steamers intensely. Even as he stood glaring at this new eyesore, which wallowed like an iron hog in the gray, murky river waters, a packet was inbound from some foreign port, most likely Scandinavian, in which case it was probably loaded with timber. Its single squat funnel belched the dragon’s breath of black coal smoke while its engines drummed with a ceaseless, savage beat, setting a man’s teeth on edge.
Yet it was more than twenty years since these vessels had begun to compete for business in the freight trade, and almost as long since they had taken to racing their rivals under sail. One day, Ryan thought bitterly as he watched the inbound steamer come lumbering up the Clyde as if it had declared war upon the ocean — one day the sky would be black with smoke and the sea just a constant din of engines. Gone forever would be the pavane of man, sail and wind, the elegant, pagan dance of wood and water, sweat and sinew. That day, Ryan would mourn. Few generations in history were ever compelled to bear witness to the end of an era; fewer people yet had the wits to recognize what they were seeing.
He turned, hands thrust deeply into his pockets as the wind got up, strong, sharp and cold. Tenacious enough to survive in the jungle of iron, hawsers, cable and chain, herring gulls squabbled along the waterfront. The iron rasp and the bell-like chime of tools, steel on steel, clattered through the thickening sea mist. The heavy air smelt of brine, rust, old wet wood, and the tainted river.
The weather had begun to deteriorate in the late morning and worsened steadily through the afternoon, when Ryan arrived in Dumbarton. The Linwood and Clough shipyard lay more than a mile from the train, but his luck held. The drizzle did not begin in earnest until he was in Duncan Linwood’s office, with his coat draped over the hatstand and a glass of malt whisky in his hand.
The old man always made Ryan think of a clan chieftain. He was well turned sixty, with fierce silver whiskers and a capacious belly. The Hebridean accent was still so thick, after forty years away from the islands, a knife could have sliced it like cheese. Ryan had always liked him for his honesty and forthright speech — qualities which seldom endeared Linwood to his business associates.
But then, Bill Ryan was not a businessman, and he had no desire to be. Left to himself, he would not have been found within ten miles of a shipyard fitting out steam packets. He and old Duncan Linwood were separated by a thousand differences, not merely age and heritage. And then, Ryan thought with a crooked smile, they were united by one great common-ground: the kinship of the sea.
For three decades now, Linwood had built ships; for fifteen years, since his beginnings as a midshipman, Ryan had sailed in them. The tradition and continuity of sail were a brotherhood — a fraternity, Ryan thought grimly, which the coming of steam was sure to undermine. Linwood certainly agreed with the sentiment, but he was businessman enough not to be blinded by his love for sail. The coming of steam, he said, was the natural order of things. The days of the sail packet trade, from the great China clippers right down to the modest coastal smacks and schooners, were numbered.
Without a doubt, he was right — but a lot of men were going to be hard to convince. Jonathan Hale was of Linwood’s generation, but no matter how long they lived, the two would never see eye to eye. It was often amusing to listen to their arguments, but Bill Ryan was sure Linwood had seen the way of the future, while Jon Hale was simply hiding his head in the sand. Like so many old men, he clung to yesteryear as if with the loss of the past, he would lose himself also. The future which Linwood and Ryan could see fast approaching would roll over Jonathan Hale like a steam locomotive, leaving wreckage in its wake. Hale’s business, the Eastcoast Packet Company, would be reduced to dust.
Even now Eastcoast Packet struggled to survive, half-dead already and flailing its arms like a drowning swimmer. And Hale was mortgaging every stick and stone he possessed to build the vessel Linwood had dubbed ‘Hale’s Folly.’
Yet old Jon was right in his own way. The new ship was a beautiful hull, long, slender and filled with the grace of a Viking raider. One of the schooner’s masts was up already, showing proudly over the shingled rooftop of Linwood’s site office. In another week the riggers would be working on her tackle. She would launch in a matter of months, perhaps the last of her kind to come out of Linwood’s yard. And what would become of her, Bill Ryan could not begin to guess. She was a butterfly, gorgeous and lighter than air in a world of steam-puffing iron warthogs. Ryan breathed a sigh.
If Eastcoast Packet were a horse, the animal would have been shot a year ago. The company was sick unto death, and this beautiful, redundant folly of a hull was only partially responsible for the state of affairs. The Spindrift was a lady, a duchess, a queen of the sea. Beside her the steamers looked and sounded like tawdry old tarts, dirty, lumbering and foul. Ryan did not wonder at Jonathan Hale’s determination to build the finest, fastest schooner in the merchant trade, but even as he watched the Spindrift take shape, her first mast already towering over the nearby sheds and workshops of Linwood’s yards, he could only wonder how much of a company would be left for young Jim to inherit when Jonathan passed away.
In these last months Jonathan was failing so badly, even a blind man could see it. Jim was painfully aware of his father’s pallor and frailty, the blue of his lips, the charcoal smudges circling his eyes. For six months and more the doctors had warned him, his heart was fragile and his lungs were poor. They cautioned him to rest, keep warm, stay out of the wet sea air and not exert himself either with travel or business.
All of which brought Bill Ryan to Dumbarton on a misty, cold and steel-gray April afternoon. Old salts swore they could smell a northeast gale coming in from Scandinavia, and with a glance at the wind-torn skies in that direction, Ryan was inclined to agree. The clouds were tattered, driven hard ahead of some goblin in the air, and the only good thing to be said for the gale was, it would blow the sea fog west and scour the coal smoke away from Dumbarton.
He had traveled up from Scarborough overnight on the North Star, and caught the early train across from Edinburgh. Jim would certainly have shared the journey with him, but his father was confined to bed on doctor’s orders, coddled by his nurse, and young Jim Hale was effectively manacled to the business.
Linwood was not at all surprised to see Ryan’s face at his door. He knew the Adelaide was docked for repairs, he knew the elder Hale was similarly docked, and he was well aware that Jim must be tied down. Since Ryan’s own ship was off the water for a week at least, the captain might as well be employed on Eastcoast Packet business as kicking his heels in Scarborough.
Kicking his heels? The thought made Ryan smile as he stood at the corner of Linwood’s site office and watched the tradesmen and laborers at work on the Spindrift. Skill and strength, steel, hemp, wood and water, fused into something which was almost alive.
Time spent with Jim was never a waste, Ryan thought with a self-mocking smile. How could it be? Since the Adelaide was the last genuinely competitive hull Eastcoast possessed, Ryan spent a great deal of his time at sea. He found all too little opportunity to enjoy Jim’s company. Any hour they could find together was a treasure. If they could wrangle a way to be alone, such an hour was the nearest thing to heaven Ryan knew, even if it must be snatched before the dawn tide, and in privacy amounting to paranoid secrecy.
A door banged with the sharp sound of mallet on plank and he turned to watch Duncan Linwood wrapping a vast tartan muffler about his neck as he stepped out of the white pine office building into the wind and rain. Linwood turned up his collar against the striking cold, and his boots splashed through the sheet of muddy water under the timber steps.
As frail as old Jon Hale had become at almost the same age, Linwood was robust. He still had the working man’s big shoulders and tool-scarred hands, and Ryan wondered if the man’s taste for whisky had pickled him in his youth, rendering him impervious to the ravages of time. He was pulling on a pair of green leather gloves as he joined Ryan, and he led the way down to the slip where the Spindrift lay cradled. With an audible sigh, Linwood cast a glance at the beautiful hull.
“Your payment is already in the bank,” Ryan said with rueful humor. “You’ve no cause for concern, Mr. Linwood.” Yet, he added, though he did not say it aloud. He knew Linwood must have some inkling of the state of Eastcoast Packet’s financial health, since he and Jonathan Hale had been friends since they were young men who shared one love. Not a woman; not such dark, rich, heady pleasures as Ryan shared with young Jim Hale, but a love nonetheless.
The sea was a harsh and unforgiving mistress. A man either loved or hated her, no middle-ground could exist. Even Bill Ryan, who counted himself the realist, the pragmatist, could not shake off the conviction that wood and canvas and hemp wooed the sea goddess, while iron hulls, belching funnels and pounding steam engines battered her, even raped her.
It was a sentiment Duncan Linwood would have understood, although he might pretend to be amused. He shared Ryan’s revulsion for steam, though he would have denied it to the end. His eyes rested on the Spindrift, his mouth softened, and a tiny shake of his head both acknowledged the new ship’s beauty and her doom.
So Linwood built her, breathed life into her — almost the last of her kind, obsolete before her timbers tasted the salt of the water. Was he gulled by Jon Hale’s positive talking? Or did Duncan nurse the secret hope that his old friend might be right? Could the Spindrift out-race, out-earn and outlive her ugly, steam-driven siblings? Ryan was never sure what was in the man’s mind, but Linwood gave him a shrewd sidelong look as they fell into step, walking away from the yard office and the new hull.
“I’m not concerned about the pennies, Captain,” Linwood was saying in his dry tones, rich with thick Hebridean vowels. “Not when I’ve a legal contract to hold over Jon Hale’s foolish head!” He puffed out his cheeks as they walked up to the employees’ gate onto the street. “But I know he’s in a good deal more strife than any man of his age and health should be, and yon bonny ship is only half of his worries.”
“Rather less than half,” Ryan corrected. “Mr. Hale has two other wolves snapping at his heels, either of which could spell ruin for the Spindrift almost before you launch her, along with every other sailing vessel on the coast. The only good thing you can say for those two wolves is, between ’em they’re likely to put the steam packets themselves out of commission before Christmas!”
“Aye, and good riddance to them,” Linwood said bluffly with a glare at the river, and the ugly hull of the just-launched steam screw. It wallowed in the water like a dead thing. Then he turned his back on the gray murk of the river and the orderly chaos of the shipyard, and Ryan had to step out briskly to catch up with him.
They turned out of the employees’ gate and headed east along the maze of yards, factories, sheds and warehouses toward the outskirts of the town. The Linwoods lived in the big house at the far end of the high street, and Duncan was headed for home, but in a tiny street fifty yards closer to the river was a public house.
It flew both the flag of Scotland and a white ensign over a door whose lintel was so low, a tall man ducked to enter or was laid flat. The Lord of the Isles served the working men from the yards and factories near at hand and was usually packed to the doors, but at four in the afternoon the pub was almost empty. Upstairs were four bedrooms, and Ryan had left his baggage in the largest of them, over the bar. The room fronted onto the street and from the windows he could almost see the Spindrift, and could certainly see the top of her first standing mast.
“Aye, I’d be glad to see Jon Hale’s wolves run amok,” Linwood said dryly as he stepped into the sudden, humid warmth of the bar.
“You would?” Ryan followed him inside. “I meant,” he said acerbically, “steam and sail alike will soon be done for, at least as far as the coastal freight trade is concerned.”
“I know exactly what you meant.” Linwood hung his greatcoat up on the rack by the door and tugged down the sleeves of a black jacket.
“Then, what does it matter if old Jon Hale, bless him, wants to build a floating folly, a man’s last eccentricity?” Ryan asked. “It’s doomed, and you and I both know it, but —”
“I know a good deal more than I care to about the demise of sail and steam on these coasts, Captain,” Linwood snorted. “The damned railway. Mark my words, laddie, and remember them. In ten years there’ll not be one tenth of the shipping on these coasts as there is today, and what do you think that means for the likes of me? I don’t have the resources to build clipper ships. I’m not out of the same mold as your Walter Hood and your Robert Steel.” He looked darkly at Ryan. “They’ll feel the pinch. And me?” He shook his head. “I’ll not survive, Captain Ryan ... and if I had a son to fret over, I’d be a worried man indeed.”
But Linwood had four daughters, all of them married and three of them gone from Scotland. One was in London, one in Canada. The future of Linwood and Clough was purely Duncan’s concern since Gordon Clough and his wife died, childless, in the wreck of the Artemis back in ’45. The shipyard was willed to Linwood.
“It’ll be privation and hunger,” the old man was saying bitterly. “You’ll soon not set foot in any port in England or Scotland without seeing gangs of ragged men standing on street corners for want of work, and barefoot, unfed children.”
“I’ve heard that,” Ryan agreed quietly. “It was in the Telegraph, if I remember correctly. They’re saying the same in King’s Lynn. Forty-five thousand seamen will soon be out of work, when the railway has snatched their trade right out from under them.”
The Lord of the Isles was quiet, warm, with a mound of coal blazing in the black-lead hearth. The tapbar smelt of beeswax; jars of pickles, onions and eggs stood ranked along the back, while from the kitchen came the aroma of baking bread and from the cellar, the pungent smell of hops. Ryan’s insides gave a growl of hunger, reminding him of how long it was since he eaten, but for the moment he was content to stand aside and let Linwood buy him a glass of the best malt in the house.
“Ye’ll be returning to Scarborough today,” Linwood guessed. His eyes were foxy, bright in the light of fire and gaslamps. He frowned thoughtfully at Ryan as he searched a pocket for coins.
“I’ll be on the night train back to Edinburgh,” Ryan said easily, following Linwood to the bar. A little terrier of a man was polishing glasses there, and knew exactly what Linwood would want without Duncan saying a word. Ryan accepted a glass, tried the contents and went on, voice a little hoarse with the strong spirit, “The Mascot ships out on the morning tide, headed south ... have you a message for Mr. Hale?”
“Junior or Senior?” Linwood said aridly.
“Either one.” Ryan took another sip. “Sadly, I think you’ll be doing business with young Jim before much longer.”
“So I hear, and the world will be poorer for the loss of Jon Hale.” Linwood drained his glass in one quick swig, which was an insult to so fine a whisky. “Well, tell him the Spindrift will launch in August, not a day past the contract, and if you’ll take the responsibility upon yourself to approve of the hawsers, Captain Ryan, we’ll have her rigged by July at latest.”
The hawsers were of Scandinavian manufacture rather than English, and Linwood adhered strictly to the contract he was so fond of quoting. The new cables from Trondheim were probably superior to those originally promised, but an Eastcoast Packet officer must see them with his own eyes and approve their use, though they came recommended by Linwood and Clough. Ryan did not take the responsibility lightly; those damned hawsers were the reason for his being here.
“You’ve already had my signature on the matter, Mr. Linwood,” he said affably. “And as to your payment ... well, I don’t think you need to be concerned.”
“Not yet,” Linwood added pointedly. His eyes looked piercingly into Ryan’s, needling for more. “Och, don’t try to pretend. I know Jon’s having his troubles. He’s got the damned railway on the one hand and the wreckers on the other. You think I’m blind? I read the same newspapers.”
“No, sir, not at all.” Ryan permitted a faint smile. “The wreckers are the second of the two wolves I mentioned, snapping at Hale’s heels.” His brows knitted into a deep frown. “I think the east coast wreckers are also nearing the end of their time. See it from their perspective for a moment. When the railway wreaks doom on the coastal trade, the wreckers will be out of business too, they’ll go the way of the smugglers fifty years ago. This is their last hurrah, and by God, they’ll make the most of it.”
“All of which may come down to the only decent word to be said for the railway.” Linwood took a brimmed glass to the window and looked through tiny glass panes toward the yard where he had built hulls since he came in from the islands. Ryan knew his story, had learned it at second- and third-hand from men who had known Linwood for twenty years and more, and respected him. Linwood’s lifetime business partner, Gordon Clough, had died more than fifteen years before, when the threat which steam held over sail still seemed negligible, harmless as a squall down over the horizon.
But soon every shipyard from the big companies whose fortunes were built on the China clippers right down to the much more modest Linwood and Clough must tool-up to install boilers and screws, else succumb to the merciless march of progress, and even then the coastal freight trade was doomed by the railway. Ryan doubted if Linwood had the resources, much less the inclination, to build steel and steam monsters, leviathans for the North Atlantic, the New York run. Little ships like the Spindrift were his life and had long been his fortune. The time was at hand, Ryan thought, when retreat was the better part of valor.
And what could possible be in store for the packet companies, century-old, family-owned freight-shipping businesses like Eastcoast? For a moment Ryan considered Jim Hale’s uncertain inheritance, and he sighed. Linwood heard the small expression of regret and looked up at him, eyes shrewd now. Ryan answered with an eloquent shrug.
“I’m just thinking of young Jim Hale,” he admitted. “The lad has ten years of his life invested in Eastcoast, and I doubt he’ll be fairly compensated for his efforts. I wouldn’t give a snap of the fingers for Eastcoast in the next five years, but it’s all Jim has. The freight trade, and the Spindrift, for what she’s worth.”
“Well, don’t be too sure now,” Duncan Linwood said wisely. “You of all men should know there’s a deal more to the trade than running grain and coal from Norwich to King’s Lynn. Do you know, has Jim looked into the trade in wine, butter and timber from the Continent?” Bushy silver brows arched, creasing Linwood’s forehead. “Aye, tell him from me to look to overseas business if he wants to keep Eastcoast Packet on the water. The steam screws burn a deal too much coal to make the long runs profitable. Mark my words, there’ll be tea clippers on the China run ten years after I’m in the ground, Captain Ryan. It’s not all steam, not yet, by a long chalk.”
Surprised, Ryan tilted his head at Linwood. “That’s sound advice, sir, and thank you. I’ll tell him everything you’ve said. I don’t know where Jim’s ambitions lie, but he’s far from dull or foolish.”
“You’ve a fondness for the lad,” Linwood observed thoughtfully.
An odd prickle crept down Ryan’s spine, like an ice-cold spider. What did Linwood know, what had he heard? Nothing! They had been careful to the point of paranoia. Scarborough was an old-fashioned town, not the place where two men wanted to get caught in an intimate scene. Ryan’s face felt like a wooden mask as he said, “Jim Hale’s a good lad and I’ve believed for some time, he deserves better than he’s getting. I’ve a fondness for him. I served with scores like him in the Navy. Salt of the earth, Mr. Linwood.” Then he held his breath and waited.
He need not have been concerned. “As you say. And tell him what I said of the Continental trade. It’s sound advice, if he’s a mind to make a last-ditch stand,” Linwood said sourly. “Yon schooner’ll take on the North Atlantic for him. The Spindrift is the finest hull out of my yard in thirty years, and there’s the pity of it. There’s a lifetime of knowing invested in every curve and plane of her, every board and timber. If she’d been built back in the ’30’s ...” He shook his head. “Progress, devil take it. And devil take the steam screws, the ‘tin scows’ as they call ’em, and railway alike.” He emptied the glass in one swig and color bloomed in his cheeks.
Ryan lifted his own glass. “Well said. I believe I’ll drink on that, Mr. Linwood.”
“I thought ye might.” Linwood touched the rim of Ryan’s glass with his own, though it was empty now. “Well, I must away home, Captain. Doubtless we’ll meet again, since old Jon’s taken to his bed — and the boy is bound to the mast of the sinking ship and doesn’t dare turn his back on it!”
“You believe Eastcoast is in such straits already?” Ryan was taken aback. “Forgive me. I’ve command of an Eastcoast vessel but Jon Hale doesn’t show me his account books.”
The empty glass slapped down on the polished tapbar and Linwood angled a glare at Ryan that might have been a warning. “The truth, Captain? I believe Jon’s as good as dead in the water right now, as much as it pains me to say it, and if he had the sense he was born with, he’d know it himself. He’d sell up and get out, while he still owns the roof he lives under.”
“A harsh judgment,” Ryan observed.
“And accurate.” Linwood leaned back on the bar and frowned deeply at Ryan. “Jon’s old, he can afford to indulge an old man’s fantasy, but you’re still young, Captain. If you haven’t woken up to the truth, it’s time you did. Steam already commands the Atlantic. The Great Britain, the Leviathan and a dozen others took her surrender decades ago. The coastal freight trade is one of the only places ships under sail still prosper — and the tea routes, where it’ll be decades yet before steamers get to be so profitable, even the China clippers’ll have to be retired.”
He waggled a bony finger under Ryan’s nose. “Now, I know full well, Bill Ryan, you once held a Naval commission. You had command of your own vessel. I also know you’ve come down so low in the world, you’re skippering a merchant schooner, though it’s no business of mine how you came to grief, and I’ll not pry into your affairs.” He paused, eyes twinkling with an almost reluctant humor. “Still, if the scuttlebutt I hear is any more than idle bilgewater, you were damned lucky to get a merchant command, and you doubtless feel indebted to old Hale for putting you back on a deck, any deck.” His silver head shook minutely, warning or regret. “But don’t you go down with Eastcoast, Captain. When Eastcoast Packet runs aground with all the rest of them, look to yourself. It’s no more than the same sound advice I’d give to any lad on the coast this year.”
“Well taken, sir,” Ryan said reasonably, impressed by Linwood’s plain speaking, though the old man’s words held nothing of surprise. “I’ll bid you good day,” he offered as Linwood bustled to the door and shrugged back into his coat. He handed the old man his muffler. “They say there’s a storm coming, but you should get home before it breaks. Which is more than I can say for myself.”
On the threshold, collar up, muffler tight around his chin, hands buried in pockets, Linwood turned back with a grim expression. “A storm? It’s wreckers’ weather. Mind yourself, Bill Ryan.”
He was gone with that, leaving Ryan on the pub’s doorstep in the sharp, wet river wind, frowning as he mulled over the advice. Linwood had a lifetime of experience, not merely in ships, the sea and shipbuilding, but in business and the ways of men; and he was rarely wrong about any of those.
The railway did indeed spell the end of coastal shipping just as the fleets of steamers being launched every year now sounded the death knell for sail; and both those forces of progress rendered the Spindrift just an old man’s dream. Soon enough the wreckers who lived on the struggling freight companies like fleas on a harness horse would also be finished.
Little wonder, Ryan thought bitterly, they were busier now than ever, making what hay they could while the sun shone through this last season. The terrier-like little man who tended the bar drifted closer with a bottle, and Ryan held out his glass. A rising wind began to batter at the window and the hearth beckoned him.
He settled in a leather chair in the corner, listening to the first sounds of a gale in the chimney. The clock on the mantelpiece read a quarter before five and he began to seriously consider staying overnight. His bag was upstairs in a comfortable room and he could watch the storm break over Dumbarton and fly on, headed for the Irish ports. But he was expected back in Scarborough aboard the Mascot, and his absence would only cause Jim to fret. He might be the Mascot’s only reason for stopping in Scarborough; without him, she could sail by, and Jim would fret all the more.
Sporadic rain flurried against the window glass and Ryan gritted his teeth. At least he had time to get a decent meal before he made his way back to the station ... the train back into Glasgow, the late express to Edinburgh and a cab to the docks. And he could not keep the thought out of his mind: it was a shame the trains did not turn south, and run all the way through to York on the same ‘line,’ the same ‘gauge.’ If the train had run through to York, Bill Ryan would have been on it, and be damned to catching a ride on the Mascot.
He was just sixteen years old when the Great Western Railway became the fascination of the whole country. Prince Albert had traveled by train from London to Bristol, and the newspapers reported speeds of 65mph between Paddington and Slough. The event set a milestone and if the lore could be believed, Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself, the great engineer, was on the footplate for the whole journey. The reminiscence made Ryan smile. When he read the news in a letter from his father, he was in the Canary Islands, already six months at sea; the year was 1845.
Fifteen years sped by in Ryan’s life like as many months and now the network of railways connected almost everywhere to almost everywhere. As soon as the lines were finished — and the day was not far in the future — Bill Ryan, for one, would not be on a coastal packet, butting his way through the treacherous North Sea from Glasgow to Scarborough. Freight and passengers would be safer aboard the trains, they would travel faster and enjoy infinitely more comfort.
If the likes of himself and Jonathan Hale dreamed on about the ‘romance of sail,’ it was because they chose to forget the danger, the inconvenience and the damned discomfort. Ryan was not the kind of man to fool himself. He first went to sea soon after his fifteenth birthday and he was still at sea as he contemplated the approach of his thirty-third.
Ships were what he knew; the sea was his trade, his livelihood, and he was caught in the same snare as the tens of thousands of the country’s other seamen. The vast probability was, he would soon be unemployed with half his life ahead of him, and like most of the merchant seamen in Scarborough and King’s Lynn and Norwich, he could turn his hand to no other trade. The future seemed bleak, if he allowed himself to look that way. Ryan rarely permitted himself the luxury of pessimism.
The bell over the door jingled and a draught of cold, rain-wet air blustered into the pub around the coattails of another patron. Ryan did not look up from the hearth until he heard his name, and recognized the man’s voice.
“Captain — damn, Billy Ryan, I knew it was you! I saw you in the street, saw you come in here. I had an errand to run, then I came straight here. What brings you up to Scotland, old son?”
Joel Tremayne? Ryan hardly believed his ears. He set down his glass and turned from the hearth, still disbelieving as he saw the man. A hand’s-span taller than Ryan, as yellow-blond as Ryan was dark, Tremayne was three years older, wind-tanned and sun-creased, with the tough hands and wide shoulders of a man who had worked hard all his life.
“What the hell brings you to Scotland? Damn! Joel, you’re looking good, but you’re the last man in the world I’d think to see here!” Ryan was out of the chair as he spoke, and took Tremayne’s cold hands.
“Business brings me here.” Tremayne dragged him into a bearhug and slapped his back painfully before he would let Ryan go. “I’ve got a sloop out of the water in McBride’s yard for a thorough refit.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Linwood and Clough, and beyond.
No such vessel was on the slips in the yards of Linwood’s neighbors, but five other modest facilities separated L&C from the much bigger big yard where a China clipper was being rigged in preparation for launch. “Who’re you sailing for these days?” Ryan wanted to know as Tremayne fronted up to the bar and gestured for a pint of the house bitter.
The man had not bothered to take off his coat and was obviously staying only a moment. “I sail for myself, sailing master and owner, and it’s a good feeling.” Tremayne angled a glance at Ryan. “And you? I did worry for you,” he added quietly, “but I lost track of you after Southampton.”
Ryan nodded roughly southeast. “I did all right, Joel. I found a berth with Eastcoast Packet. I’ve got the Adelaide this year. She’s a schooner, an old one but a good one.”
“Eastcoast ... coastal freight, is it?” Tremayne wondered with a disquieting shrewdness as he sampled the house’s dark ale.
“Not always. Scandinavia, the islands, Scotland, Ireland and home,” Ryan said with a spurious indifference. “It’s ... a challenge.”
“Hunting down your own cargoes as you go and tying up in your home port when luck permits, I imagine it is.” Tremayne set down the tankard and blotted froth from his upper lip. He regarded Ryan thoughtfully. “How long’s it been, Billy?”
“Two years, is it?” Ryan said easily. In fact, it was six months longer. Time had a tendency to race like a full Atlantic gale when a man was fighting to survive.
He leaned one elbow on the bar and looked up into Joel Tremayne’s sun-browned face. Too handsome for his own good, was Joel. And he knew it. Squinting against the sun had tanned-in a set of white lines like fans of permanent creases around his pale blue eyes, and the effect only improved his looks. He was still in fighting trim, if Ryan was any judge; the wounds in his right shoulder would have healed away to thin, silvery lines. Tremayne looked better out of the uniform — and he knew that, too. He was well-dressed, with a heavy gold pocket watch and three thick gold rings among his fingers; Ryan thought he detected the faint aroma of money, like a fine cologne.
They had been regarding one another in silence for almost a minute, while the barman polished glasses and sorted bottles, when Tremayne said quietly, “You’re too good for this shit, Billy.”
Ryan looked away. “Easy to say it, Joel. Now let’s see you convince an owner.” He felt the old anger rise, hot and clenched in his middle, and choked it down. “I was lucky to get any command. Jonathan Hale took a gamble on me, and I’ll not forget it.”
“Hale?” Tremayne echoed musingly. “I should know that name, now. I’ve heard it, and recently.”
“Probably around here.” Ryan nodded in the direction of Linwood and Clough. “You might have heard the words ‘Hale’s Folly.’ Which is a damned cruel name for a ‘bonny wee ship,’ as Duncan Linwood calls her.”
“The schooner with one mast up —?” Tremayne was impressed. “Yes, I’ve heard the name. I’ve also heard men saying the Spindrift will be the fastest schooner on the water. True?”
Ryan pushed away from the bar. “Finish your ale, come and judge for yourself. I’m here on Eastcoast’s business, as it happens.”
He lifted his coat from the rack as Tremayne drained his glass. A few pennies rattled on the bar, and Ryan was ahead of him as they stepped out of the pub. The rain had stopped and the wind was gusting powerfully now. It caught at Ryan’s coat, tugged at him, and if he looked into the northeast he saw the leading edge of something big and dark, poised in the sky like an avenging angel. Though the day was gray as the side of a battleship, the air smelt cleaner and the river mist was gone.
“What are you going to do?” Tremayne wanted to know as they swung down the narrow street toward the river.
“When ...? Ryan prompted, hands deep in pockets, eyes still on the sky.
“When the schooner Adelaide is sold off for firewood, and like every other merchant seaman in port you’re counting the farthings left in your pocket and wondering if you can afford a pint of beer and still eat tonight,” Tremayne said bluntly. “Christ, Billy! What’s it going to be? Are you going to sell your soul to the Army? Get out there to Egypt, get a spade in your hand and help dig a bloody great ditch through the desert at Suez? Or will you get a job on the railway, laying tracks and digging tunnels?”
“I’ve thought about it,” Ryan admitted between clenched teeth. “And I’ve thought about the Army. Every man has this year. They’ll shove any fit, strong body into a uniform. In the last decade our troops have fought on almost every continent in the world. India, China, Africa. We’re enjoying a few years of peace now only because the British Army is stationed en masse in — how many countries? Jesus God! How many fronts does this government think we can fight on, all at once? You can only ask yourself where the next war will break out, and who we’ll be fighting.”
Tremayne angled a glance at him. “That’s how you build an empire, and hold onto it. Read a few pages of Caesar. It was no damned different twenty centuries ago.” He paused, brow creasing slightly. “A shilling a day, Billy, is that it? Spill your own blood, wade in your friends’ guts, come home maimed. Is this all you think you’re worth?”
“Do you want to say what you mean?” Ryan heard the edge in his own voice, felt his lips compress. The anger was too close to the surface and he struggled to smother it. “There isn’t a seaman in England who hasn’t thought about taking the Queen’s shilling or tunnel-digging for the railway — a lot of them have already done it, and don’t imagine the decision doesn’t take courage! More courage than I’ve been able to find.” He gave Tremayne a hard look. “Make your point, Joel, or drop it. I’ll buy you a whisky and we can talk over better times.”
They were on the street above the river now, listening to the distance-muffled rasp and clatter of tools from Linwood and Clough. The wind caught at Tremayne’s shock of yellow hair as he turned toward Ryan and looked him up and down as if he were a commodity at market.
“All right, Bill.” Tremayne was serious now, shrewd as a horse trader. “I walked a deck with you, and I know you were good. I’d be gambling you still are. And the sea is where you belong.”
“I have a command,” Ryan said tersely. The wind snatched his words away.
“A merchantman, tramping around the ports of Europe looking for a paying cargo to get you home, because if you come back under ballast your boss will take pleasure in skinning you alive.” Tremayne snorted. “What are they paying you? You deserve better.”
Suddenly tired, Ryan stepped out across the street toward the employees’ gate in Linwood and Cough’s high brick wall. “Are you trying to make me an offer? Then just make it, Joel. I’m not going to fence with you.”
“I’m coming to it,” Tremayne said easily, falling into step with him. “I have a sloop in the McBride yard, refitting.”
“So you said.” The gate creaked on rusting hinges as Ryan swung it open and held it for Tremayne. A few faces turned toward them as they appeared, but Ryan was known here, and welcome on Eastcoast business. His belly tightened once more, he heard the thud of his pulse in his ears as he guessed what Joel was going to say.
“The Mercury needs a skipper,” Tremayne said into the wind as the gate latched. “She’s a fast hull. I’ve a good crew, they’ve been with me for three voyages, and ... the money’s good, Billy.” His fair brows rose. The wind tossed his straw-colored hair into his eyes and he raked it back. “The money,” he added deliberately, “is more than you’ll have seen in years. Possibly ever.”
“Which means,” Ryan said in an acid tone, “whatever you’re carrying as cargo wouldn’t pass inspection if I get boarded, and the next thing I know, I’ll be looking at the wrong side of the prison gate. What is it, Joel, brandy and spirits out of France? Rum coming in from Jamaica?”
“Nothing coming in.” Tremayne’s voice dropped and he stepped closer. His eyes glittered. “Going out.”
“Of England?” Ryan’s curiosity was piqued in spite of his better judgment. He looked up into Tremayne’s brown face, seeing the angular cheekbones, the winter-pale blue eyes, the white teeth framed in Joel’s sudden and disarming grin.
“Or Scotland or Ireland,” Tremayne said easily.
“Then, what the hell is your cargo, and where’s it going?” Ryan demanded in a harsh undertone. What could Joel be smuggling? None of it made sense.
They were walking again, into the teeth of the wind, toward the site office and around the corner, to the slip where the Spindrift still lay under construction. Tremayne visually measured the length and beam of her, the height of the mast, and whistled. She had the dimensions of a racing hull. Ryan fell in behind him as he worked his way closer, among the bales and stacks of construction materials and tools, and at last climbed up onto a mound of crates to see over the sheer strake. He was counting the hanging knees and half beams, the solid formers which buttressed her sides, and he whistled again as he hopped down.
“She’s built to run before a full Atlantic gale,” Ryan affirmed, “and she’s got the keel to carry a full rig plus a jackyard topsail. And she’ll hold it longer than you’d think, especially under cargo.”
“She launches soon,” Tremayne guessed.
“August.” Ryan tugged up the collar of his greatcoat as the wind whipped across the river with renewed vigor.
“She’ll be yours to command, then.”
“I’d expect her to come to me.” Ryan cocked his head at Tremayne. “I’m not Eastcoast’s only captain, but I am the best. She was built for the Skagerak run, Joel. I won’t take her out and run contraband for you, have this pretty little thing impounded, put myself in jail and ruin the old man who built her. If that’s what you’re thinking —”
“Not contraband,” Tremayne said quickly, and came closer, his voice soft under the wind. “I already told you, Billy, my cargoes head out of this country, not in.” His eyes were hard, hawkish. “There’s a war being fought.”
Ryan tipped back his head and closed his eyes against the gray overcast. “There’s ten wars being fought, there’s not a continent at peace. Which one are you talking about?”
And yet again Tremayne surprised him. “America.” His brows quirked. “Don’t you take a look at the newspaper over breakfast? Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Gettysberg.”
“Sometimes I don’t see an English newspaper for a month,” Ryan said tersely. “I try to catch up when I’m home, but I’m rarely in port for long. The Adelaide is either on the water or she’s losing money, and there are times when she’s all Eastcoast has, as a bulwark against the receiver.”
Perhaps Tremayne should have been surprised but no flicker of expression crossed his face. “All of which means Eastcoast are pinning all their hopes on this little lady.” He gave the Spindrift a thoughtful look. “And unless I miss my guess, Billy, the building of her is bleeding them white. I’m looking at quality, and quality never comes cheap.”
“You’re right, of course.” Ryan swore softly and turned his back on the graceful, gorgeous hull. “You want the truth, Joel? I’m not even sure Eastcoast will survive in business long enough for me to get my feet on the deck of the Spindrift. She could be auctioned off for a coal barge as soon as she hits the water.”
“Which is certainly a sin and should be a crime.” Tremayne’s teeth closed on his lip and he studied Ryan almost rudely. “There’s a command waiting for you. Take out the Mercury. My sloop’ll be back on the water in ten days and she has a cargo waiting to load. She’s yours, if you want to take her out.”
“To America?” Ryan asked while a sliver of dreadful fascination wormed through his insides. Tremayne nodded, waiting. “Carrying what, exactly?” Ryan insisted. “What’s this rich cargo of yours, and what’s to become of a sailing master apprehended as a smuggler?”
“Ah, now ... there’s the trick.” Tremayne was plucking at his ear and wearing a crooked smile, like a schoolboy caught doing the forbidden. “Can’t you guess?” The crooked smile broke into a grin. “It’s guns and ammunition, Billy. What else could it be? You’d be taking a heavy load of rifle shells and as many guns as we can pack into the empty spaces, and running them through to ... oh, somewhere in the south, should I say. Warm waters, if nothing else.”
“Then you’re supporting the Confederacy,” Ryan whispered.
But Tremayne only shrugged. “On the last trip we carried ammunition to the Union. It’s a foreign war and I don’t know enough about it to pick sides, so the only decent thing is to supply both sides evenly and not tip the scales one way or the other. The truth is, the conflict makes no sense to me. They all speak the same language, wear the same clothes, kneel in the same church, eat the same food. If I’m any judge — and obviously I’m not! — they should be at a table, talking up a truce. If I even halfway understood the stories in the Telegraph, the war is about the abolition of slavery. For my money, the sooner human bondage is abolished the better, but there’s a lot of generals and politicians who’d rather send their own people’s sons to die by the thousand than give up the right to own the sons of another people, body and soul. The logic mystifies me, which probably means I’m missing half the story — which in turn is reason enough for not tipping the scales in a foreign war. But my dear, departed da had a favorite saying. ‘Great wars,’ he said, ‘are the way God shapes the world through the hands of men.’ His logic, I can see! I’ll not pick sides in someone else’s war, Billy. If I’m going to supply one side, I’ll supply both, leave it to the Almighty to sort saints from sinners, and sleep easy.” He paused. “And the money —”
“Had better be good,” Ryan said acidly, “because the Mercury will be heading to sea like a powderkeg. She could blow the insides out of herself. We’ve seen it happen to a ship. You were there, you were right beside me.”
The accident was dire, the explosion monstrous. When the smoke cleared only smashed bits of driftwood remained of the Percival Gantry, nothing much larger than an oar. Nothing to suggest the presence, the fiery death, of a cutter doing service as a powder hulk. Ryan would always remember the rush of heat boiling over him, scorching his face and lungs — diving swiftly onto the deck as the air filled with a thousand projectiles, the screams of men who did not get down in time, the sudden, bright blaze of spot fires as sails and rigging caught alight just overhead, touched off by cartwheeling shards of burning debris from the Percival Gantry —
“We’ve made the run three times, and not a care in the world,” Tremayne was saying. “Afraid, are you, Billy?” He frowned deeply. “You were never afraid before, not a day in your life. You once told me, a man who has nothing to lose doesn’t feel fear.”
“And a man who has something to lose?” Ryan challenged.
Tremayne’s eyes widened. “Command of an old merchant schooner, tramping around Europe, hunting for a decent paying cargo to get you home? You can do better. Come on, Ryan! What’s stopping you? There’s nothing to keep you here.”
“I’ve a deal of unfinished business,” Ryan said thickly.
“In Glasgow?”
“In Scarborough.” Ryan took a breath. “I can’t just walk away, Joel, not on a job with this kind of risk, no matter how much money you’re paying.”
A moment of dense silence, in which the wind lashed across the river, and then some sixth sense made Tremayne say, “You’ve got someone. Haven’t you? A lover, Billy?”
For the first time in an hour Ryan smiled. He gave Tremayne a mocking look. “What, you don’t believe it? The old salt finally found a berth, a place to hang his hat and put up his feet?”
“I’ll be damned,” Tremayne said softly, eyes dancing.
“Very probably,” Ryan said in dry tones.
“Well, I’m glad for you.” Tremayne looked genuinely delighted. “What’s his name?”
“Jim.” It felt so odd, talking about the relationship for the first time. Ryan could never utter a word about his feelings to any soul in Scarborough. In a town of almost twenty thousand people, he knew four or five men who shared the ‘inclinations,’ and none of them could be trusted to keep a secret. A few jars of rum, and the news would be out. It would be all over Scarborough by morning, and Jim Hale and Captain Bill Ryan might never live it down. Speaking openly about his feelings seemed almost like making words in a foreign language, but Ryan said quietly, “He’s Jim Hale.”
“Hale?” Tremayne’s brows arched and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Scarborough, down the east coast.
“Only son of the Jon Hale who owns Eastcoast Packet and is building this pretty little ship,” Ryan affirmed with a sigh.
For a moment Tremayne blinked, then threw back his head and laughed. “And you’re bedding the owner’s son? Good God, Billy Ryan, you never do anything by halves, do you? You never did. Couldn’t you have found yourself a pretty lad in the darkest tavern, possibly in another town?”
“Affairs of the heart don’t work like that, as well you know,” Ryan scoffed.
“As well I know.” Tremayne’s eyes were warm on him now, amused and overtly affectionate. “Well, damn. You know, I was going to invite you along to my hotel for dinner and a shot or two of malt and ... so forth. But I suppose now you’re about to tell me it’s true love and you intend to remain faithful.”
“It’s true love and I intend to remain faithful,” Ryan intoned dutifully. “But I appreciate the offer,” he added, “and I haven’t forgotten, Joel. I never will. Those were good times.”
“Good times,” Tremayne echoed. “We should have stuck together. Going separate ways was a mistake.”
“No. We were ... under suspicion,” Ryan said regretfully. “You can’t be too careful, especially when you’re trying to claw your way back up from perdition.” He lifted a brow at Tremayne. “And if I may say so, you appear to have clawed your way back in style. You own the Mercury?”
“By a stroke of luck.” Tremayne made dismissive gestures. “The cards could have gone against me just as easily, but I won the hull, the right to carry the existing cargo and the services of a damned good crew.”
“You always did have the luck.” Ryan cast an eye at the overcast. “It’ll be raining soon. Do you want that whisky?”
But Tremayne pulled out the gold pocket watch, took a look at the time and shook his head. “I’ve a meeting. Later, perhaps.”
“I’m on the night train to Edinburgh,” Ryan warned.
“Then, much later. I know where to find you now.” Tremayne gestured at the Spindrift as they strode back toward the gate into the street. “And I’ll make you a firm offer, Billy. When Eastcoast goes under — and notice I said when — I’ll come looking for you. I’ve made three trips out to America on the Mercury and I was hoping to avoid making a fourth. I’m not so desperate for money anymore.”
“An ammunition ship,” Ryan said doubtfully.
“Maybe, and maybe not.” Tremayne’s expression darkened. “Last time out there, I was appalled ... war has always been a filthy business, and the war in America is one of the worst I’ve seen. The numbers of dead and injured dizzy a man’s brain, Billy, and they’ve no medical supplies. It’s getting worse than the Crimea, the longer it goes on. Next trip out, we should be headed for America loaded to the gunwales under opium, carbolic, bandages and catgut.” He stepped back to let Ryan swing open the gate. “I know where to find you now. I’ll see you in Scarborough, Billy-boy.”
“I look forward to it,” Ryan said honestly, “but I’ll tell you the truth, Joel. I’m serious about Jim Hale. His father’s dying fast, about as fast as Eastcoast is going down. I’ll not run out on Jim, not when he’s in trouble.”
“Then bring him along,” Tremayne offered affably. “He’s a ship owner’s son? Then he knows ships, he knows the sea.”
“But Jim won’t leave his father when the old man’s on his deathbed,” Ryan added.
Tremayne puffed out his cheeks as they waited at the side of the street for a cart to rumble by. “Then we’re all waiting on God’s pleasure, are we? Waiting for a sick old man to pass away and stop complicating the issue.”
“That’s a cruel way of putting it, but you’re far from wrong,” Ryan affirmed. “And then ...?”
“When it happens,” Tremayne said expansively, “you and your Jim should be free to leave Scarborough. And I sure as hell don’t want to take the Mercury to America again. I told you, Billy, she’s yours. Five or six voyages out as her sailing master, and you can get well out of this game — right out, and in style, as you put it.”
The offer was sorely tempting but Ryan was hesitant. “My head wants to call it a deal, but my heart tells me to wait.”
The other man almost recoiled. “You mean the owner’s son is too namby-pamby to walk a deck with you? That was never the kind of lad who caught your eye.”
“Namby —?” Ryan actually laughed. “Quite the contrary, Joel, and that’s the problem. I’ll give you short odds, Jim Hale will want to see if he can take the bull by the horns, give it a good kick in the arse, light a fire under Eastcoast and make a going concern of it. He can’t do a thing, nor make a decision, while his father is on this earth, but after we’ve done the graveside duty it’ll be Jim Hale, not Jonathan, calling Eastcoast’s shots, tendering for cargoes, hiring crew. And remember, he’ll have the Spindrift to work with.”