Brig of War Read online

  Privateers and Gentlemen:

  BRIG OF WAR

  Walter Jon Williams

  Originally published as The Raider, as by “Jon Williams.”

  Copyright (c) 1981, 2012 by Walter Jon Williams.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Other Books by Walter Jon Williams

  Novels

  Hardwired

  Knight Moves

  Voice of the Whirlwind

  Days of Atonement

  Aristoi

  Metropolitan

  City on Fire

  Ambassador of Progress

  Angel Station

  The Rift

  Implied Spaces

  Divertimenti

  The Crown Jewels

  House of Shards

  Rock of Ages

  Dread Empire's Fall

  The Praxis

  The Sundering

  Conventions of War

  Investments

  Impersonations (September 2016)

  Dagmar Shaw Thrillers

  This Is Not a Game

  Deep State

  The Fourth Wall

  Collections

  Facets

  Frankensteins & Foreign Devils

  The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories

  To

  Walter and Eva Williams,

  who put up with a lot...

  PART ONE:

  United States

  CHAPTER 1

  Lieutenant Favian Markham, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was not yet asleep when he heard the knock on his cabin door. He had spent the morning watch, from four until eight, as officer of the deck, after which he’d sleepily eaten breakfast in the wardroom while trying to write a letter to Miss Emma Greenhow in Portsmouth before realizing he had grown too sleepy to see his own handwriting. He’d then had retired to his cabin, with the intention of sleeping through at least the next watch, and if possible, the entire Sabbath. But now a summons had come. Resignedly he rolled over and acknowledged the knock.

  “Captain wants you on deck, sir. Ship in sight on the weather beam.”

  “Thank you, Mr.— ah— Zantzinger,” Favian said, peering uncertainly through the slats of the wooden screen that served as his cabin door. “Tell the captain I shall be at his service momentarily.”

  He heard the midshipman’s footsteps on the companion as he swung his long legs out of the cramped berth, and felt a warning stab of pain from his touchy stomach as he groped uncertainly for his shoes. A ship, he thought. He brushed his dark hair forward. Too much to hope she was an enemy warship; but it would not be unreasonable to trust she was a fat Indiaman crammed with specie, like the one John Rodgers had captured a few months before.

  Favian reached into his locker for his neckcloth and cravat, then decided against wearing them in the tropical heat and brought out his undress coat instead. He let his collar float loose, like Lord Byron. Taking his undress round hat from its peg, he held it in the crook of his arm and stepped from the cabin, ducking his six feet four inches to avoid ramming the deckhead beams with his forehead, looking, he knew, the very picture of an ill-tempered executive officer— dyspeptic, approaching thirty, no longer hopeful of promotion, and awakened in the midst of a profoundly needed nap.

  Scratching his long side-whiskers, he went up the companion. The berth deck was deserted, the gun deck above almost barren of humanity. The word of the sighting had passed swiftly among the crew, and except for a few shellbacks peering out the gun ports that had been opened for ventilation, all were on the open spar deck above, adding their weight to the weather rail and probably saving the ship a few inches of leeway as they stared out at the weather horizon. Favian felt the warm Atlantic sun on his shoulders as he buttoned his coat and donned his hat.

  He blinked in the strong tropical sunlight. Captain Stephen Decatur stood on the little roundhouse aft, peering to windward with his long glass while Midshipman Zantzinger stood by, holding the captain’s straw hat. Decatur wore a black homespun coat, for he affected a carelessness of dress as well a genial attitude with the crew, just as Favian, to complement it, insisted on formality. It was a kind of working relationship that suited the two men well, and just as well suited the ship.

  Favian went up the roundhouse ladder and saluted his captain with bared head. “You sent for me, sir?”

  Decatur took his eye from the glass and looked up at his tall, gangling first lieutenant with an easy, familiar smile. “Sorry to get you up. Rub the sleep from your eyes and take a look at this singular apparition.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Singular apparition indeed, Favian thought. He put his hat back on his head, tipped it back, took the long glass from Decatur, and peered through the tube.

  United States was on the edge of the Sargasso Sea, and the water was a sour yellow. The wind was fresh and warm from the south-southeast and blew into Favian’s face as he adjusted the glass to the movement of the rolling frigate.

  Standing out on the bilious yellow horizon and into the blue, cloud-scudded sky were the three masts of a ship, traveling swiftly and easily under topsails and topgallants, sails that were etched against the blue sky in gently curved, classic lines, well cut and trimmed to perfection. Beneath the masts, barely visible above the wave tops, rode the black hull of a ship.

  Favian lowered the telescope and faced his captain. Decatur’s black eyes were calmly leveled at his, expectant. This was one of the little dramas at which Decatur excelled, Favian thought: that of the captain receiving dramatic news from his first officer— news that, Favian had no doubt, Decatur knew full well already.

  Favian had no intention of playing his own part badly. He knew that his words might go down in history, to be read by generations of boys who would promptly go out and make the same kind of mistake Favian had made at that age, and Favian had no intention of letting it be said that Decatur’s hand-picked first officer was not equal to the occasion.

  “A warship, Captain. She’s got a new suit of white sails aloft, so she’s probably just been overhauled and has a clean bottom.” Before his words could be buzzed among the hands, he added, “May I recommend sending the men to quarters, sir?”

  Decatur received the words with practiced self-assurance. “Not yet, Mr. Markham, if you please. Let’s haul our wind and go for a closer look.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.” Nothing like keeping an audience in suspense, Favian thought.

  “Hands to the braces!” he called. “Smartly, now! Mr. Sloat, starboard your helm!”

  United States turned into the wind with her accustomed sluggishness, Favian seeing the sails trimmed and the yards properly fanned. The motion of the ship changed abruptly, and Favian felt his breakfast tumble in his stomach, tasting for a second rice pudding unpleasantly mixed with bile. He fought the sensation and it swiftly passed.

  Decatur was using the long glass, so Favian picked another from the rack and peered at the mysterious ship. She, too, had altered course, studding sails blossoming from her fore-topmast and top-gallant yards as she bore down in chase. She’d seen United States, and wanted a closer look— confirmation, as if any was needed, that the mystery vessel was a warship and looking for trouble.

  “Mr. Stansbury, make our number.” Decatur was speaking to the signal midshipman, who bustled to the flag locker and then to the halyards. The sliver of black that was the hull of the other warship rose slowly above the yellow horizon, and as Favian peered intently through the long glass he caught a glimpse, between tossing waves, of a yellow stripe on the black hull,
broken by black gunports.

  “She doesn’t answer the private signal, sir,” Stansbury reported.

  “She’s British, Captain,” Favian said, returning the long glass to its rack. “She’s painted in the Nelson chequer. We don’t have any ships with yellow stripes.”

  “I think you’re right, Mr. Markham,” Decatur said. As he lowered his glass, his lips twitched in a languorous, satisfied smile. “Clear the ship for action, if you please, Mr. Markham.”

  Even as Favian bawled the order, heard the blare of the trumpet and the thunder of five hundred sets of feet in response, he appreciated the value of the moment as patriotic tableau: the calm, heroic Decatur, standing motionless on the little roundhouse in full view of everyone on deck, smiling and self-confident as the ship burst into frenzied activity around him. If they’d had a flag up over the quarterdeck to form a backdrop for the captain, the scene would have been perfect.

  Favian fought a burst of impatience at these necessary preliminaries and wondered if Decatur, behind his casual, assured mask, felt the same. The whole of the naval officer’s life was geared to those brief moments when he might be in combat; both Decatur and Favian had spent seven years of peacetime duty, of paperwork and drill, beef and rice on Sundays followed by pork and peas on Mondays— all aimed simply at those rare and fleeting moments when an American ship might lie yard arm-to-yard arm with an enemy ship, amidst the smoke and flame of guns, and the officers would at last discover whether all those years of drill had been in vain. Favian felt both irritable and headstrong as he paced along the spar deck supervising the work of the crew, and wished he could fling himself against the enemy then and there, and somehow requite himself for those years of drill, bad food, scant pay, and no promotion.

  But if time and tide wait for no man, Favian thought, neither do they speed. The wind would bring the ships together in due course. It was a pity, for fame’s and promotion’s sake, that Hull in Constitution had already beaten Dacres in Guerrière; for Favian’s future’s sake, it would have been best if United States had been the first American ship to meet and defeat an enemy. Charles Morris, Hull’s first officer, had been jumped two grades of rank to captain. Would the Navy Department hand out another such plum in so short a time?

  But he was anticipating. The battle was yet to commence, and its outcome was by no means sure.

  “Watch it there, Cassin!” Favian snapped out at a helpless midshipman. “I’ll not have your section’s lashings cast off in such a lubberly manner, strewn about the deck! Stow ’em away properly!”

  His tension somewhat relieved by his little outburst of anger, Favian ducked down the companion to the gun deck, stooping beneath the deck-head beams, watching the gun crews at the business of making their guns ready to fire, casting the lashings off the long black twenty-four-pound guns, clearing away the side tackles, preventer tackles, and breechings, while the gun captains returned from the gunner’s storeroom with their cartouche boxes, priming irons stuck in their belts, while the ship’s boys scattered sand on the deck to prevent seamen’s feet from slipping on the blood that might soon anoint the planking. It was the familiar bustle, enacted at least once each day on the well-drilled frigate. But this time the air seemed taut, as with an electric charge; the glances of the hands were feverish, their speech terse.

  “What d’ye think, Markham?” asked John Funck, the fifth lieutenant. He commanded the larboard twenty-four-pounders— the guns that would soon, if the other warship proved hostile, greet the enemy with a deadly hail of roundshot.

  “It’s a warship, and it’s not one of ours,” Favian said. “She could be French, but a Frenchman would probably have run. There’s a small chance she might be Portuguese in these waters.”

  Funck nodded. He was twenty-two, six years younger than Favian, too young to have fought off Tripoli. He seemed calm as he faced the prospect of his first action, but there was a muscle jumping in his cheek, and Favian knew how well looks could deceive. He remembered his own barely controlled terror as he faced his first man in a duel, at the age of seventeen, in that quiet orchard in Spain, and how afterward his friends had, to his immense surprise, praised him for his courage; he remembered also the strange, sudden paralysis of his arm on the morning before he stepped with Decatur into the ketch Intrepid to sail into Tripoli harbor to burn the Philadelphia. He flexed the fingers of his right hand at the memory.

  It would be easier for Funck. A frigate action was less personal than a duel or a cutting-out party. He’d never see an enemy until it was over. A good first battle.

  “She’s British, all right,” he concluded. “She’s got to be. I’ll be down when the time comes to open fire.”

  “Aye.” Funck nodded tersely, and Favian passed by him, stepping carefully over the twenty-four-pounders’ training tackles, which stretched back from the gun carriages almost to the deck’s center line. The gun deck was as it should be, the screens between the captain’s great cabin broken down to reveal the long black guns that shared Decatur’s living space— the reminder, amid the captain’s comparative luxury, of the single, deadly purpose of the ship’s existence.

  Favian heard cheering above; probably flags were being raised. He ducked down to the berth deck to take his sword from his locker, then carefully took from his chest the two balanced dueling pistols, a gift from his father, and loaded them. They were exquisite, with octagonal barrels, so that he could take hurried aim along the top of the barrel if there was no time to aim properly. He stuffed the pistols into his waistband and strapped on his sword— this was another gift, from the town of Portsmouth, following the adventure in Tripoli harbor. Favian left his cabin and made his way to the spar deck, his head turning to windward involuntarily as he gained the deck, seeking the strange sails coming ever closer on the yellow horizon. They were larger, fore studding sails set, edging down the wind, the hull risen clearly from the waves.

  “Mr. Markham, come look at this. It will amuse you.” Decatur’s voice floated over the spar deck. Favian, holding his scabbard carefully so as not to foul himself on the crowded, busy deck, joined his captain on the roundhouse and uncovered in salute.

  “Ship cleared for action, Captain.”

  “Very well. I’ll tour the decks in a moment. Take the glass and see if you recognize that ship.”

  Favian handed his hat to Zantzinger, took the long glass, and put it to his eye. The other ship leaped into focus: the sleek lines, the well-tended rigging, the yellow stripe down its side. “A little large for a Britisher, sir,” Favian reported. “She’s— good God! It’s Macedonian!”

  Decatur grinned delightedly from beneath his straw hat. “It is indeed,” he said. “Captain John Carden, unless they’ve given her a new man.”

  Favian suppressed a grimace. Just a few months before the declaration of war Macedonian had visited Norfolk, and the officers of United States had played host to their British counterparts. Favian had not been impressed.

  “Carden’s a brave man, by all accounts,” he said. It would not do to defame a fellow officer in front of the hands, even if the man was an enemy. “But you know him better than I. I spent my time with Lieutenant Hope, whose talk was all of flogging.”

  “D’you doubt we’ll beat ’em now, Markham?”

  “Never did, sir.” Another little dialogue for the benefit of Clio, the Muse of history. Favian might find himself quoted in some musty text as an example of the “spirit of the early Navy.”

  “Carden told me that a twenty-four-pounder was too large a gun for a frigate— that his eighteens could be worked faster and more accurately in a fight,” Decatur said. “Besides, he said we had no practice in war.”

  Favian lowered the glass and looked down the length of the spar deck, seeing the men standing ready at the rows of deadly forty-two-pound carronades. “They’ve had all the practice they need to handle the likes of Carden, sir,” he said. As you well know, he might have added. Decatur’s habit of speaking for the history books could grow irrit
ating. United States was a bigger ship, constructed more stoutly, and with an armament that could overmatch Macedonian both at short ranges and long bowls. Constitution’s victory over Guerrière had removed from American hearts any lingering doubts about whether an American forty-four could beat a British thirty-eight in a fair fight. As far as Favian was concerned, the question was not whether the American frigate could beat the British, but by how much. And, though he didn’t quite admit it to himself, there was another question, of interest to at least one member of the crew: whether Favian Markham would survive the victory.

  “I’ll take my tour of the ship now, Mr. Markham,” Decatur said. “I’d be obliged if you’d accompany.”

  “Of course, sir.” The tour of the decks was as much a part of the ritual of battle as the raising of the flags, and it was the sort of thing at which Decatur excelled: going down amid his men, the sailors and marines, clapping backs, making jokes, giving little homilies and speeches, exuding self-confidence, bringing the ship’s company to the proper pitch of battle. There would be nothing out of place, Favian knew, nothing Decatur would have to reprimand the crew about, or awkwardly choose to ignore, for Favian had made his own tour of the ship to prevent just such an occurrence. He considered smoothing his captain’s path to be part of his job: Decatur, who so obviously felt the breath of history on his neck, had quite enough to think about as it was. Favian had known his captain for years, from Decatur’s days as a reckless, headstrong midshipman to these more sober, stalwart days of 1812; and Favian knew that somewhere in this more solid version of Decatur the reckless youth was waiting to blaze out. Favian prudently considered that he wanted his captain to keep his head, and so he gave Decatur no reason for upset.