“Well then, I trust the celestial tables are still fresh in mind. You will relieve Mister Kerr as navigator.” Pelles picked up the leather envelope containing Nolan’s orders. With the dexterity of a card sharp his thumb and forefinger untied the ribbon and drew out a sheaf of papers. “Are you acquainted with our prisoner, Mister Curran?”
“No sir!”
“I did not mean as an accomplice. Are you aware of the circumstances of his confinement?”
“Isn’t he to be hanged, sir?”
“Hanged? That would be a great mercy.” Pelles puffed his pipe and spread the papers on his blotter, looking them over.
A silence passed and Curran tried eventually to staunch it. “Mister Hancock of Constellation said that he was a murderer and a traitor.”
“Of murder he is innocent. Mister Philip Nolan, now our guest, was involved in a duel at Richmond; he prevailed, and to my mind when a gentleman shoots a fool, it is not murder. Mister Nolan’s crime was his association with Aaron Burr.”
Curran tried to think; the western conspiracy and Burr’s trial were many years ago, while Curran was just a child. His comprehension was further muddled by distance, for his own boyhood was spent in the Levant and Europe, and the news that reached him was in the form of newspapers, always weeks and sometimes months old. “Wasn’t Burr found innocent, sir?”
“The court at Richmond ruled that the charges against Burr were not proven. The big flies escaped—rightly, for all I know. Nolan admitted to carrying messages for Burr—and was found guilty for leaving his post to do so.” Pelles sat back in his chair, stuffed an additional pinch of tobacco into his pipe, and puffed it to life. “You and I would have never had any business with Philip Nolan had the trial been a regular one, but it was not. Colonel Burr was a clever man, and he had clever lawyers. He walked free, but an example had to be made. Nolan was a commissioned officer, and it would not do to question the loyalty of the Army.”
“How long is his sentence, sir?”
“It is indefinite, Mister Curran.”
Pelles handed Nolan’s order of confinement across the desk. Curran noted the date and drew a breath; the document was dated five years before the start of the last war with Britain.
Curran read the order silently, astounded and then awed by its simple, terrible severity. “I am surprised, sir, that I have never heard of Nolan.”
“He is a ghost—or as close to a phantom as a living soul can be. His commission was rescinded, he was stricken from the Army list, and his name was blotted from the records of the Military Academy.” Pelles took the documents and placed them back into their worn leather envelope. “It has been the decision of the Navy Department that the circumstances of his confinement be kept in strict confidence. Likewise his dossier, biographical notes, endorsements, and papers.”
Now Curran came to understand the extraordinary conduct of Constellation’s boat, and the strained silence about Enterprise’s cutter as he and Nolan were rowed to the ship. None of the boat crews had spoken because they dared not.
“As you see, Mister Nolan is a special case. And as it was you who has brought him to Enterprise, Lieutenant Curran, it shall be you who will bear responsibility for his custody. You are not at liberty to discuss our prisoner with the officers or sailors of any other vessel, or the persons manning any shore station or office of the American Navy.”
Pelles handed the papers back to Curran. He continued, “You will see to it that around the prisoner there is no talk of home or the politics of our nation. You will ensure that no books, pamphlets, or letters come into his possession in which he could read of our country. Should a newspaper be lent to him, first cut from it the words ‘United States’ even if they appear in an advertisement for a private concern.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have the carpenter prepare Nolan a cabin aft of the midshipman’s berth. Unless he attempts to escape, he is to have the freedom of the decks during daylight. Once a week he will dine with the officers in the wardroom, and on the second Sunday of each month he will dine with me, in my cabin. At all other times he will take his meals alone.”
“Does he receive mail, sir?”
“He does not. Letters addressed to Mister Nolan are intercepted at Washington City.”
“May he write them, sir? Letters, I mean.”
“He may not write to or communicate with any person without my express permission.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I won’t keep you any longer; I am sure you have much to do.”
Curran stood, clasped his hat under his arm, and made a short bow. Captain Pelles placed his fingertips over the scar on his face, a gesture he made when he was tired.
“You’ll find that I run a taut ship, Mister Curran. Ensure that my orders are carried out.”
THE PLACE THE CARPENTER PREPARED FOR PHILIP NOLAN WAS ON THE ORLOP deck, not exactly adjacent to the midshipmen’s berth, but probably closer than a civilized person would care to lodge. Enterprise had once carried a chaplain, and it was Captain Garret in 1816 who first had the cabin built; as it was below the gun deck and did not have to be cleared for action, the space had wooden, not canvas, walls and a louvered door. Garret was a bit of a fire-and-brimstone sort and had felt that a man of the cloth berthing in close proximity to the midshipmites might compel them to live a godly life. It did not. Parson Hiedgockle preached daily sermons but left the ship amid whispers of a pederastical connexion with a Neapolitan castrato named Velluti. Enterprise never again sailed with a chaplain.
What had been the parson’s cabin had been gradually taken over by the carpenter’s mates, used as a storeroom and hidey hole, and it was not without some grumbling that they had cleared out their adzes, hammers, planes, bevels, mallets, and pots of varnish. After the Marines had thoroughly searched Nolan’s belongings, he was led belowdecks and put in. It was not half an hour later that he was brought a lantern with a candle and could examine the space he had been allotted.
Lifting the light and peering about, Nolan found it to be a dry place, and there was no evidence of rats. Even subtracting the tumblehome of the ship’s hull, his berth and the enclosed deck space were just wider than the span of both arms held out from his shoulders. The overhead too was generous, a good three inches higher than his head excepting the places where the frames crossed. Fiddled shelves had been put in fore and aft, and a hinged plank folded down from the forward partition. Though warped slightly, the board had provision for an inkwell, but the tool marks and paint stains on it showed that it had not been used recently as a desk. The carpenters had taken away all of their stores, leaving only a three-legged stool and one shelf filled with dusty Bibles provided for “Seamen, Sailors, and other various Seafarers” by the evangelical committee of an organization called the Brethren of the Nazarene.
It would not have taken long for Nolan to stow all of his things, but he kept most of them in the sailcloth bag. He hung his coat on a dowel and hook he made long ago on Revenge and placed his chains and manacles on the shelf next to the Bibles. Nolan sat up from the berth when a Marine brought in his supper—a broken chunk of hardtack and a sharp-smelling tankard of water. Judging from this stingy meal, Nolan was sure he would soon be put somewhere else, and he sat back on the berth and crossed his legs.
The ship rode easily at anchor, and the lantern barely moved on its hook. This cabin, though dark, was a much more commodious place than he had ever been kept, even aboard flagships, and he did not allow himself to become settled. He was used to the games sometimes played on him when he was first taken aboard. In his years at sea, Nolan had been the butt of occasional horseplay, and now he calmly anticipated that the ship’s corporal would barge in, tell him to immediately