Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [38]
The man grunted again, then slowly gathered his limbs so he could rise to his feet. As he straightened up he held his face close to the guttering lamp. “That suit you?” he growled.
He was easily a head taller than Paul Jones, dark ringlets of hair gleaming in the lamplight. He had the battered face of a man well used to brawling in the streets outside gin houses, filthy now and crusted with blood. His body bragged strength, taut muscles rippling in thick forearms where a gallery of tattoos vied for space on the tanned skin. Anchors and snakes, whale flukes and rose briars, and even a crude etching of a naked woman. He stood with no sense of shame as he stared indolently at the two officers.
Paul Jones noted the ringlets and the broad gold earring. They reminded him of a man from his past, another mutiny…He shrugged the recollection away. “Quartermaster Towers?”
“What if I am?”
“You led the mutiny?”
Towers snarled, leaning forward on the balls of his feet. “I only did what you should have.”
Paul Jones stared at him.
The sailor continued. “You should have taken this ship the French gave you and used it to fight them, not against good English frigates. You’re an Englishman, aren’t you?”
Jones’s voice was icy. “I’m an American.”
Towers spat. “Like hell you are! You’re nothing but a bloody turncoat out for all you can get. They’d never even give you command of one little English cutter, never mind a whole bloody squadron…”
“Silence!” Lt. Dale barked.
“Silence yourself, puppy. The only way he could get to be a commodore was with the Froggies.”
Paul Jones’s voice was carefully controlled. “I am fighting for American freedom.”
Towers laughed. “Like hell. Nothing but a damned turncoat.” He snorted his disgust then hawked up a gob of phlegm, which he spat in Paul Jones’s face. “Turncoat! Traitorous bastard!”
The commodore ignored the phlegm dribbling down his cheek but his eyes hardened. The voice that had calmly answered the sailor’s taunts turned menacing. “In the Royal Navy they hang mutineers.”
“Hang me? You won’t hang me. I want justice. I did what was right and proper.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Paul Jones’s face. He turned on his heel and walked to the open doorway. He stopped to look back at the tall man leaning against the hull, glowering in the glow of the lamp.
“You’ll get justice, Quartermaster Towers. Just see if you don’t.”
***
John Paul Jones was beginning to wish he had ordered an awning to shade the deck where the officers’ mess table served as a bench for the court-martial. He sat at the center of the table flanked by the commanders of every ship in his squadron, each man with a record of the charges in front of him plus writing materials should the need for notes arise. All the officers had begun to feel the heat. Most bore in silence the chafing collars of best dress uniforms and sweat trickling down their ribcages. Only Pierre Landais muttered, mopping his face with a silk handkerchief.
Opposite the bench stood the three accused, behind them ranked the hundred English members of the crew, held prisoner by a cordon of armed marines. Beyond a second line of soldiers, this time facing outward, was the rest of Bonhomme Richard’s crew. They had been ordered to attend, not that an order had been necessary. All those who were loyal were eager to see Quartermaster Towers and his cohorts get what they deserved. There had been no takers to wager that the main offenders would not hang. Even the humblest ship’s boy knew the penalty for mutiny.
Pierre La Brune, first officer of Pallas, had been delegated to conduct the prisoners’ defense. It was a pointless and thankless task, but Paul Jones was determined the court-martial should be carried out in the proper manner. Richard Dale had counseled for the prosecution, by which time the hot afternoon sun had sucked away all Paul Jones’s concentration. His eyes kept flickering to Towers’s defiant grimace, conjuring back memories of another mutiny, six years before, on the island of Tobago in the Caribbean.
The commodore