The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  Oh Christ, poor Cecily, thought William as he ran. He ran down passageways, he stamped down stairs, he found blind corridors and locked doors, and then he found a door that opened and burst through it, dying for fresh air. It was a room, though, a kitchen and a parlour for the denizens, the maids, the whores. There was a cooking fire, and in front of it some women, old and young. One, in a shift only, threw up her hands and screeched, while another gasped as if transfixed. She had a cloth in front of her, and on the instant gathered it in both hands and conveyed it to her face to cover it. Too late, for he already knew her, as she knew him, and this third shock nearly took his heart from out his body. Her face was bruised and ruined, mouth torn and sore. Even the eyes he recognised, above the balled cloth pressed into her chin. Cecily, the maid who’d sold her teeth. So the maid upstairs, then? The naked, lovely maid? She’d also sold her teeth, and her face was covered, too. Deb. Who else but Deborah?

  TWELVE

  The yard at Deptford, and John Gunning both, had suffered much in terms of denigration. The men were idle was the bottom of the gossip, idle, prone to disappearance into holds or holes, and dishonest in the great dockyard tradition. John Gunning — owner, sailing master, drunk — was praised in general only for his choice of whores. But by next morning, when William woke up, the ship was ready for a trip downriver, and Gunning was a man renewed.

  William was aroused, in fact, by Samuel Holt, who shook him roughly from a drunken sleep. Light was Will’s first sensation, arising from the depths, then pain as it flooded through his eyes. No time to groan, though. Samuel wanted him alive, and upright.

  “Get on your feet, man! We are dropping down to Woolwich straight away! Look, Gunning’s in control, and they’re expecting us. There’s a breeze to hoy us down the river but we need two kedges clearing, just in case. Your job; we’re still short of a hand or two.”

  “But — ”

  But Sam had gone. Will lay there, in the cot, for only seconds more, then dragged himself upright. He felt sick and dizzy, perhaps not sober still, but the noises up above, the crashings and the runnings, made him aware, for the first time since he’d come on board this ship, that there was a Navy way, and by some miracle it had arisen from the dead. His mind flashed over the last evening and the night, but he allowed it no space to grow. There was a Navy way of sleeping when you found a minute out of nowhere, there was a Navy way of clearing your mind of clutter for the job in hand. He remembered Robinson, the dour master of the Welfare, who had used to say to the midshipmen “you may concentrate or die; the choice is yours,” with his hating little smile. Even that strange, good man William now cleared out. He pulled his breeches on, splashed water on his face from out his canvas basin, and licked his teeth to get the taste from off them. Of last night’s liquor, and debauchery.

  On deck, to some extent, the Biter was transformed. The yards and canvas, newly rigged and overhauled after the ministrations of the dockyardmen, were loosed off and ready, for hauling or for dropping from the yards. Men were up aloft, and the hands on deck had flaked and coiled halliards, braces, tacks and sheets. Compared with the ships that he had sailed on before, the men were few indeed — he counted eight he knew by sight, excluding Holt and Gunning, who was standing by the wheel. But there were four or five he did not know — Gunning’s own, perhaps? — and Kaye’s boat’s crew were not there for counting, either. Neither, he was taken by the realisation, was Lieutenant Kaye himself. What bizarre episode was this, to go to Woolwich to take on gunners stores without a Navy officer in full command?

  Mind clear again: Sam came to him with Jem Taylor, boatswain, to elucidate. They had split the people into their customary watches, and shore-based slackness was at an end. Taylor’s watch had cleared anchors and mooring gear to a large extent, with a little detail left to oversee — Will’s task. Now his hands were put to pull-and-tailing, mostly, while others cleared and bailed the cutter and the yawl, ran in the boom from overside, and overhauled the towing warps. The breeze was favourable and light, the tide unlikely to give them seizures, but towing would be inevitably necessary when they reached Biter’s new berth, and might be so before if things went awkward. Mr Bentley should work with Taylor, Mr Holt suggested delicately, but with the proviso that if need be Jem would be overside like the proverbial, and the midshipman — how grand, how grand! — would be on his own. Except he’d have some hairy arses to control. The implication — of course unspoken — was that he might not be up to it, for whatever reason. Will knew Samuel expected him to make a statement, to set his stall out, as it were: the idea being, to let the people know his mettle. Mind clear, and working quickly, Will made his choices.

  “Mr Holt,” he said. “For all I care Mr Taylor can go over the wall this very moment, and take whoever with him that he likes. I’ve anchored bigger ships than this before I’ve had my breakfast. Mr Taylor — just tell the men who stay that I can smell a slacker at a cable’s length, and I am all for retribution. However — they are seamen all, that I can see. There will not be any trouble.”

  He was aware how small he was beside the general seamen, how small and slight. Once on a day he had been small and slight and vicious, he had been famous for it, and some parts of that memory haunted him. He also knew that sometimes hardness was a weapon for an officer, sometimes the only one. He had struck the sailor down while on the press-gang; it occurred to him he should be glad he had. Now he held Jem Taylor’s eyes, unwavering, to drive the message home.

  “Aye, sir,” responded Taylor, mildly, and dropped his eyes. He was a powerful figure, although not much taller than William, and pretty equable, it seemed. Sam was satisfied as well, judging by his smile. At a sign, Jem Taylor went away.

  “Now,” said Sam, “how is it with your head? It’s not the way you handle men that worried me, but the way you look! Dog’s breakfasts are not in it, Will! How is your spirit?”

  “It will do. Sam, who is in command here, you or Gunning? Has Kaye not yet come back, or is he in his cabin with Black Bob?”

  “Then where’s his skiff, and where’s his cox? No, they’re all adrift, as usual. Your uncle’s fire-breathing didn’t wreak much renewal, did it? Although there is a chance he’s done it by arrangement with John Gunning, and will meet us down at Woolwich. One thing you never know on Biter; Will, is this: nothing!”

  “But is John Gunning — ?”

  “Oh, at this lark he is perfect. If his self-control was a whit as — ” He broke off. “And, ho! He has a man to oversee him! His very own admiral of the fleet!”

  Will saw his tutor, too, a strange vision of embarrassment and diffidence, approaching Gunning at the con, who signally ignored him. He was not ill dressed, looked like a gentleman and a seaman rather than a walker on dry land, but there was a scraggy, scarecrow air to him, enhanced by the oddly hanging sleeve that ended in a stump. He had been commissioned a lieutenant, William understood from some impatient sentences of Swifts, but now was on the sick and hurt, a pensioner officially unfit. Both Samuel and Will took him for his uncle’s spy, so left him well alone when Swift had gone, until some move was made by him. Strange spy, though; since then he’d been entirely indifferent.

  Gunning had men up on the fo’c’s’le and the stern with the warps — now singled up — and turned to face them with a crooked smile.

  “Mr Holt, there. Mr… Bentley, is it? We are set to slip and I hope you’re ready. I want the headsails hoisted and backed in to larboard, foresail up and ready in its bunt. The tide and breeze shall set us out, I’ll hold her stern in on its buoy until I get a slant. Five minutes, sir, till slip.”

  “Aye aye,” said Samuel, automatically. “Will, get those kedges and their cables set. You’ve got Hugg and Mann, they’re all right. Now, brave boys!” he shouted. “Man jib halliards, there! Behar! To me, to me!”

  The men themselves, as well as William, must have been rotten with the alcohol, shot with it through and through. Like him, though, they had a method, call it experience, or
work. They laid hands on the gear as necessary, sometimes to orders, more usually because they knew to pull or shove or belay was the thing required on that instant. William missed most of it, as he checked the flaking of the cables with his two men, and saw the anchors loose-lashed on the bulwarks clear to cut and slip if need arose. He heard the tramp of feet as yards shot up, the shout of “back those heads’ls” from Gunning, who looked calm and keen and properly in control. He felt the Biter heel as she laid off to the breeze, watched the fore braced round and sheeted, and took time to marvel in her quiet beauty as she cut out and swung round to take the seaward flow. Ugly old tub; and full of quiet beauty. Beneath his grinding head, he felt his spirits rise.

  And then last night. As he stood there, with the Biter slipping down the stream as easy as you’d wish, he remembered the shock and the excursions and his lips grimaced without him willing it. For the while now he had no duty but to stand and watch and wait for problems, so his mind rolled back the curtain, and he saw Cecily’s face again, and the parlour, and the roaring girls. He had stood there like a muffin, horrified and bewildered, until a quick concerted rush of them had pushed him through another door, and he’d been in a small back lane outside the courtyard, outside Dr Marigold’s altogether, sans help or company. But he had to help, or to find out, or enquire. Cecily was there, her face a sight to weep for, and Deb had lain upstairs, stark naked, while he had stared at her; and toothless too. Despite himself, now, on the Biter; he could see her form, and the vividness of it filled him with shame anew. She had been brutalised, debauched and robbed, and still he could not bleach that picture from his mind. He felt he had loved her when he’d met her; he felt now that that, however bedlam, was still in some wise true. He had to see her, speak to her, effect a rescue or some help.

  Sam had found him at the coaching entrance, called and alerted, so he said, by Mrs Lewis, who was “pretty mad” at all the goings-on. Sam, however, was a valued customer (he said) and had explained that his young friend was new, a country bumpkin, and probably insane with lust. William, far from appreciating this line of jolly conversation, gave a response so cold and miserable that Sam sobered quickly, and asked what was the business. Which, explained, he still had difficulty taking quite seriously as a tragedy to shake the world.

  “What, Deborah as well? Lying stark and bare and naked like a babe, except she had a cloth piled on her head? Well, the things they’ll do for money, these young lasses!”

  “She has lost her teeth! She has sold them too, or had them dragged out by the mountebank! Good God, Sam — ”

  “Good God, Will, it cannot just be true! We saw them only… when? Yesterday, the day before, Tuesday, was it? How can it have happened, they were at the Lodge! Sir A would not have let them be betrayed!”

  “But they are here! I saw both of them! Well, I saw Cecily and… Oh Sam, for Christ’s sake, we have to go inside again and talk to them!” It was quiet in the courtyard, and it was growing cold. There were ostlers in the stable, but no other passengers. From inside there was music, laughter, shouts, but the smaller part, where the women plied for money, was silent as the grave. What should we do, asked Sam, setting out the hopelessness before them: go and demand to see poor Cecily? Be conducted back into the peeping room and start to shout? Tell Mistress Pam or Mistress Margery we need conversation with the girls? Mistress Margery was a pleasant woman, and she would understand. She’d call them drunk and pack them off, and if such sweet talk failed, would call the men who did such things.

  “Such things as what?” asked William, although he guessed he knew. Sam did not bother to reply. He touched William lightly on the arm.

  “Look, friend, what do you hope to win by it, in any case? So we saw these young women, and we rendered some help to them, and you went all mooncalf over Deb on her looks alone, you booby. And now you’ve seen her in the natural and so what? Do you intend to marry her, for the sake of Hades? Or merely jam your club in her, like a normal Christian? But Will, she’s toothless now! So why go back? Surely you don’t want mating with a toothless crone!”

  It was so harsh and thoughtless, that William could not reply. He hardly knew himself, to tell the truth, but he was moved, he was truly anxious for Deb’s fate, for both the girls’. Anxious? Moved? And still the image of her nakedness burned in his mind, and — shamefully — he was glad that that transcendent beauty had not been Cecily’s but… oh great heavens, thought Will; I am cracked indeed.

  “Look,” said Samuel, “let’s go home and think this over, shall we? I’m cold, it’s late, we’ve had our drink and meat and whoring — well, I have, what you’ve achieved the lord in heaven knows! We can’t get in there now without a row, and you’ve no idea if we did, what we would try to do, have you? Spirit them away? Kidnap them? Take them back to Biter and install them in the captain’s cabin? We’ll come back tomorrow, if you’re mad enough. It boils down to this: if you want her, pay for her. That’s the way it works, my friend.”

  “But she isn’t whoring!”

  “Bah!”

  “Nay, Mistress Margery said she was a virgin, being kept for higher things.”

  “Aye, gums and all! Will, you are drunk so I forgive you. If Deb was a virgin six months before we first clapped eyes on her, I will kiss your arse and eat your hat. She is here for sale, man, they all are. That is how they earn their bread, I’ve told you, that is how they live. We pay to use their bodies, or they die. No more, the Biter’s miles away and I need sleep. Or a drink, at least. We will drink when we get back on board, to drive this from your mind. This rank insanity.”

  Will was drunk, and he did get drunker before he slept. Holt too, although not as drunk as he, and they prattled on about love and things for some long time. Sam’s angle was heartening in one way, but disheartened him also. No shame should be allowed to taint sex dealings with the fair, he said, because it was natural and inevitable and necessary, females as much as males knew that, and tried to use it for their own ends if they could. But sentiment and strong attachment — call it love? — was a toy for idle men, or very wealthy, and in any case largely a delusion and a snare. What Will had, he insisted, was a strong dose of new-grown lustiness, like a young bull turned into a field of season heifers after a winter growing up. You have the money in your pocket, he wound up. Buy her, if you have to. If you like suppurating gums!

  Will went to sleep in a torment, their dark, partitioned den turning giddily each time he closed his eyes. He believed Sam yet did not, he thought he would buy Deb then could not bear the thought, he could see her lovely body in great clearness, but could recall her face only as being of great beauty, with eyes that had called out to him. And also, Margery had said she was a virgin, not for sale, though Sam had shrieked at that, from great experience. As he slid to sleep he thought he would go back and buy her — but, what for? But definitely… he must.

  *

  The short drop downriver to the loading wharf at Woolwich passed off uneventfully, and Lieutenant Kaye — by what miracle no one knew — was there before them, and had bespoke a berth and loaders, even a launch to help tow and nudge the Biter in, all sail doused beforehand, no need for kedges, all smart and shipshape enough for the greatest stickler in the land. Also miraculous, the balls and powder were to hand, not hidden in a distant magazine by some grumpy clerk, and the loading crews pitched in with a will. For the next few hours the Biter was a veritable hive, which set the men a-grumbling, sure enough. Dame Rumour too; for by early evening it was noised “for definite” that they sailed that very night. William, when he heard it, was strangely hollowed out. He had avoided thought on the Deb problem all afternoon, but now it seemed he could not seek her, willy-nilly; which doubled his desire and determination.

  “Can it be true?” he asked of Sam, as they stood sweating in the waist. The shot and powder was all stowed, and some cable Kaye had had brought in by lighter was being snaked below into the cable tier. “Have you had a hint of it, at all?”

  “N
ot I,” Sam replied. “Which means exactly nothing, does it not? We’ll have a useful ebb till about the forenoon watch tomorrow, so it makes sense if he has a reason to be out there.” Will’s face was blank, so he explained his thought. “Sometimes we get intelligence from an agent or a tout. A ship is in the offing full of useful men, perhaps. Kaye gets his fee for each man he takes, and good information’s worth a cut of that, d’you see? He must have some sort of network, all the time he spends ashore!”

  “But are we ready? We have shot and powder, but I thought we needed food and water.”

  Sam grinned, but almost sympathetically.

  “Hell, man, if we do go we’ll be soon back. I’ve told you, Kaye loves a bed that only moves when he does, not the ship. We can go out half-watered and with naught to give the dogs but tack, because we stay so close to rendezvous. She’ll still be there, you know, whenever you turn up.” The grin hardened. “And still a virgin, naturally!”

  Will, though, was like the people on this score, despite he did not join their muttering. They were paid to sail, were fed and lived on board, but could hardly bear the thought of casting off and going from the shore. He gazed on Woolwich — a bleak, unfriendly aspect, as bleak as man could wish — and he wished he were on shore there, or better still, pulling upriver with a handy crew. Deb filled his mind, sometimes naked, sometimes wet and draggled in the rain. Come what may from it, he had to see her, had to test the truth. It was a pro bono act, he told himself, he must find out if she had suffered from some crime again, if she was being held against her will and needed aid or succour. A slight warm glow from that, until he realised he gave no thought at all to Cecily, who was as deeply injured. So clear the mind, and work.

  At the end of the first dog watch, Lieutenant Kaye let it be known, with no formality at all, that they would finish all the stowing and the overhauling of all gear that evening, and would slip moorings and away at eight bells in the first — midnight’s witching hour. The grumbling increased, both from the Navy men and Gunning’s crew, both sets as confident that there would be no retribution from their slack captain. There was a certain grudging admiration for his method, though. He had brought them down to hell-on-earth (or Woolwich), too far for most of them to hope to reach their stamping grounds to drink before they sailed. Added to that, enough gear and clutter still about the ship to give them three or four clear hours’ work. William felt merely miserable.