The Devil to Pay by David Donachie Read Free Book Online Page A

entered and, since he could not stay in place without beingbent near double, sat down, to be subjected to a straight look from his friend and captain.
    ‘Michael, I want to know what is going on right now, what the feeling is below decks, and no beating around. I have a very strong feeling you know something and you’re not telling me.’
    The response was not immediate and when it came was far from reassuring. ‘Jesus, can you not guess, John-boy?’
    ‘Is it Emily?’
    ‘Who else?’ O’Hagan replied, with a slow regretful shake of the head. ‘I thought it was all shite and would die out once we got to sea.’
    ‘Not now?’ There was no need to mention the vessels closing in on them.
    ‘There were a couple unhappy about having a woman aboard before we left Buckler’s Hard, no, even afore that, given you fetched that mistress of yours from France.’
    ‘One-time mistress,’ Pearce replied sharply, for he could recall that he had been afforded scant chance to refuse.
    Michael kept his voice low, to tell that there were those who had harboured the superstition that a woman aboard presaged back luck from that very moment, doubly so when they set out on the subsequent voyage to the Med. But they had kept their thoughts close, nothing more than an occasional murmur, scoffed at in the main, seeing as how most of the crew thought they had struck good fortune.
    Pearce was a better man to be in command than the fellow he had replaced, added to which, after that first mission to the Vendée and a skirmish off Portugal, he came across as lucky, another manifestation, albeit a reverse one, of their present superstitions. There was nothing to hangany worries on until the day they had set off in pursuit of Emily, with all the consequences in death and damage that entailed, which had given the doomsayers meat on which to gnaw and the rest of the crew a cause to first wonder and then be swayed.
    ‘You staying off the ship didn’t help either, bein’ seen to be putting your pleasure afore your duty, which others were unhappy about. But it was the lads we lost and buried that gave the moaners the air to spread their talk of devilry, to say that it would never have happened without the curse of Mrs Barclay.’
    ‘And you let this nonsense pass?’
    ‘I told you they never sought to include me, John-boy, nor Charlie and Rufus and even I can’t fight them all. They doomsayers was free to say that as long as your lady and her siren ways was aboard
Larcher
it was only matter of time till Old Nick sought his due and one by one, our shipmates began to fall in with it.’
    ‘Siren ways?’
    ‘She has a sweet voice, does she not?’
    ‘Which I have seen much appreciated.’
    ‘It was, John-boy, but not as we sit here.’
    ‘And now they are a majority in this nonsense?’
    ‘Hard to know who the doubters are, since they stay quiet.’
    ‘Do you believe in devilry, Michael?’
    That had the Irishman crossing himself hurriedly. ‘Jesus, you know I do.’
    ‘So I am bound to ask if you believe in this.’
    ‘As I am bound to be offended that you should.’
    Pearce dropped his head onto pointed fingers so hecould think; Michael was aware that his friend required silence, the time to make sense of what he had been told, not that he was unable to guess as his thoughts. If there was the suspicion aboard that Emily was a curse then he, her lover, had not only given it credence but also, by his own behaviour, allowed it to fester.
    If he had spent more time aboard he might have sensed things and perhaps would have been able to nip in the bud the Jonahs spreading foul gossip. But he had not and was now paying the price. The silence was held as both listened to the orders being issued, as well as the running of feet as the change of course was carried out.
    ‘It’s not the devil chasing us, Michael,’ Pearce said finally, ‘they are, at worst, Barbary pirates.’
    ‘Right at this moment there’s few on this barky who would be