“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Grey bowed. “I understand that you…er…obliged General Stanley by bringing him here. And that you are now willing to convey me and my party to Havana?”
Lieutenant Rimes pursed his lips in thought.
“Well, I suppose I can do that, my lord. I’m to rendezvous with the fleet here in Jamaica, but as they won’t likely arrive for another two weeks, I think I can deliver you safe to Havana, then skip back here to make my meeting.”
A small knot formed in Grey’s stomach.
“You…mean to leave us in Havana?”
“Well, yes, my lord,” he said cheerfully. “Unless you can manage your business within two days, I’ll have to. Orders, you know.” He pulled a commiserating face.
“I’m not really meant to be going to Havana, you know,” the lieutenant said, leaning forward in a confidential manner and lowering his voice. “But I hadn’t any orders to stay in Jamaica, either, if you know what I mean. As written, my orders just say I’m to rendezvous here with the fleet, after delivering the message to Admiral Holmes. As I’ve already done that…well, the navy’s always willing to oblige the army—when it suits,” he added honestly. “And I’m thinking it wouldn’t do me any harm to have a look at Havana Harbor and be able to tell Admiral Pocock about it when he gets here. The Duke of Albemarle’s in command of the expedition,” he added, seeing Grey look blank. “But Admiral Pocock’s in charge of the ships.”
“To be sure.”
Grey was thinking that Lieutenant Rimes was equally likely to rise to great heights in his service or to be court-martialed and hanged at Execution Dock, but he kept these thoughts to himself.
“Wait a moment,” he said, calling the lieutenant’s attention—momentarily distracted by the sight of Azeel Sanchez, brilliant as a macaw in a yellow skirt and sapphire-blue bodice—to himself.
“Do you mean that you intend actually to sail into Havana Harbor?”
“Oh, yes, my lord.”
Grey cast a glance at the Otter’s unmistakable British colors, lifting gently in the tropical breeze.
“You will pardon my ignorance, I hope, Lieutenant Rimes—but are we not at war with Spain just now?”
“Certainly, my lord. That’s where you come in.”
“That’s where I come in?” Grey felt a sort of cold, inexorable horror rising from the base of his spine. “In what capacity, may I ask?”
“Well, my lord, the thing is, I have to bring you into Havana Harbor; it’s the only real anchorage on that coast. I mean, there are fishing villages and the like, but was I to land you in one of those places, you’d have to make your way overland to Havana, and it might take longer than you’ve got.”
“I see…” said John, in a tone indicating quite the opposite. Mr. Rimes noticed this and smiled reassuringly.
“So, I’ll bring you in under colors—they won’t shell a cutter, I don’t think, not until they see what’s what—and deliver you as an official visitor of some sort. The general thought perhaps you might be bringing some message to the English consul there, but of course you’ll know best about that.”
“Oh, indeed.” It couldn’t be patricide, could it? he thought. Strangling a stepfather, particularly under the circumstances…
“It’s all right, me lord,” Tom put in helpfully. “I’ve brought your full-dress uniform. Just in case you might need it.”
* * *
—
In the event, the officer of the battery guarding the boom chain declined to allow Mr. Rimes to pass, but neither did he offer to sink him. There were a good many curious looks directed at the cutter, but Grey’s party was allowed to come ashore. The officer’s English was on a par with Grey’s Spanish, but after a long conversation filled with vehement gesticulations, Rodrigo convinced him to provide transport into the city.
“What did you tell him?” Grey asked curiously, when at last they were allowed to pass through the battery guarding the west side of the harbor. An imposing fortress with a tall watchtower stood on a promontory in the distance, and he wondered whether this was Morro Castle or the other one.
Rodrigo shrugged and said something to Azeel, who answered.
“He didn’t understand the word ‘consul’—we don’t, either,” she added apologetically. “So Rodrigo said you have come to visit your mother, who is sick.”
Rodrigo had been following her words with great concentration and here added something else, which she translated in turn.
“He says everybody has a mother, sir.”
The address General Stanley had given was the Casa Hechevarria, in Calle Yoenis. When Grey and his fellow travelers were eventually delivered to the casa by a wagon driver whose normal cargo appeared to be untanned hides, the place proved to be a large, pleasant, yellow-plastered house with a walled garden and a beehive-like air of peaceful busyness about it. Grey could hear the murmur of voices and occasional laughter within, but none of the bees seemed inclined to answer the door.
After a wait of some five minutes had failed to produce anyone—let alone his mother or something comestible—Grey left his small, queasy party on the portico and ventured round the house. Splashing noises, sharp cries, and the reek of lye soap seemed to indicate that laundry was being done at no great distance. This impression was confirmed as he came round the corner of the house into a rear courtyard and was struck in the face by a thick cloud of hot, wet air, scented with dirty linen, woodsmoke, and fried plantains.
A number of women and children were working in the vicinity of a huge cauldron, this mounted on a sort of brick hearth with a fire beneath—this in turn being fed by two or three small, mostly naked children who were poking sticks into it. Two women were stirring the mess in the cauldron with huge wooden forks, one of them bawling at the children in Spanish with what he assumed were dire warnings against being underfoot, not getting splashed with boiling water, and keeping well clear of the soap bucket.
The courtyard itself looked like Dante’s Fifth Circle of Hell, with sullen gurglings from the cauldron and drifting wisps of steam and smoke giving the scene a sinister Stygian cast. More women were pinning up wet clothes on lines strung round the pillars supporting a sort of loggia, and still others were tending braziers and griddles in a corner, from which drifted the fragrant smells of food. Everyone was talking, all at once, in a Spanish punctuated by parrot-like shrieks of laughter. Knowing that his mother was much less likely to be interested in laundry than in food, he edged round the courtyard—totally ignored by everyone—toward the cooks.
He saw her at once; her back was turned to him, hair hanging casually down her back in a long, thick plait, and she was talking, waving her hands, to a coal-black woman who was squatting, barefooted, on the tiles of the courtyard, patting out some sort of dough onto a hot greased stone.