In Northern Seas

by Philip K Allan

  He opened his eyes to find that the rain was still pouring down, and the midshipman beside him had just turned over the glass and signalled to the belfry. Eight bells rang out, and with a squeal of boatswain’s pipes the watch changed over. The quartermaster surrendered the wheel to his replacement and headed gratefully below deck. Around him the new afterguard came charging up to replace their fellows on the quarterdeck, followed by Lieutenant Blake, tugging his hat low against the driving rain as he came up to relieve him.

  ‘What orders, Edward?’ his friend asked, glancing down at the slate that hung beside the binnacle.

  ‘Course is west by south,’ replied Preston. ‘You’re to set topgallants if the wind moderates enough for her to bear them. Mr Armstrong says to watch for islands to the northward, and the captain wants to know the moment the wind should freshen.’

  ‘West by south, topgallants, northward isles, captain if it freshens, aye,’ repeated Blake, blinking into the driving rain and hunching a little deeper into his coat. ‘Now get below, shift out of those wet clothes, and enjoy Britton’s beef pudding in the warm, curse you!’

  ‘As you insist, John,’ said Preston.

  Down in his cabin, Dray, his servant, had just brought in some towels that had been heated on the galley stove, and he rapidly stripped Preston of his wet clothes before helping him to dry himself.

  ‘Bless you, Dray, but that does feel better,’ said the officer, as his head emerged through a fresh linen shirt. He towelled his hair dry, while the youngster knelt down at his feet to buckle him into his britches and stockings. A comb through his hair, and Preston began winding his neck cloth about his throat and then tying it one handed, using his mouth to hold the other end. Then he smoothed it into place.

  ‘Not quite as Beau Brummell would have it done, but tolerable nonetheless,’ he commented to his reflection in the square of polished steel that hung over the washstand.

  ‘Aye, you do that well now, sir,’ said Dray, looking up from his place on the deck. ‘Here are your shoes.’ Preston pushed his feet into them, and the youngster stood back up and held the lieutenant’s coat out to him.

  ‘Thank you, Dray,’ said Preston, as he shrugged it on, before stepped through the cabin door and into the wardroom.

  ‘A quorum at last!’ exclaimed Armstrong, from the far side of the table. ‘Poor some wine for Mr Preston, Britton, and then away and fetch your noble beef. I am famished.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied the harassed steward. He filled the lieutenant’s glass and Preston took a sip, then relaxed into his chair and surveyed the crowded table.

  ‘Any sign of that damned Frenchman in the offing?’ asked Taylor, from the head of the table.

  ‘Not this watch, George,’ reported Preston. ‘Although a sighting of Noah’s Ark might be more likely, should this rain persist.’

  ‘You seem oddly content with life, Edward,’ observed Macpherson, from his place beside him. ‘I would have expected to find you melancholy in the absence of Miss Hockley.’

  ‘What, have the Hockleys departed?’ asked Corbett, his voice peevish. ‘Why am I always the last to learn of such matters?’

  ‘The captain’s coxswain took them to St Petersburg in the longboat this morning, Doctor,’ explained Taylor. ‘They plan to take passage home from there.’

  ‘Handsome filly, that one,’ remarked Faulkner. ‘I admire your taste, Edward, although I shall not regret the absence of that frightful old puritan of a father.’

  ‘I find that he grows on one, upon closer acquaintance,’ said Preston.

  ‘Really?’ queried Faulkner. ‘You astonish me. Why, only yesterday you barely had a civilised word to say about the rogue. What can have occasioned the change?’

  ‘The captain arranged for me to spend an hour in his company this morning,’ explained the lieutenant.

  ‘Goodness!’ said Macpherson. ‘What had you done to merit such punishment?’

  ‘When he has a mind to do so, Mr Hockley can make his society very agreeable,’ said Preston.

  ‘What the devil did you find to converse about, Edward?’ asked Armstrong.

  ‘Mutual acquaintances back in Yorkshire, maritime matters, the state of navigation, how disagreeable the weather is at present,’ listed Preston. ‘Oh, and finding that he was so determined to be amiable, I took my opportunity and asked for his daughter’s hand.’

  ‘Mind your back there, sir!’ announced Britton as he burst through the wardroom door with the steaming pudding held aloft.

  ‘Not now, Britton!’ exclaimed Armstrong, waving him away. ‘So pray tell us. What did he say?’

  ‘That if Miss Hockley will have me, he has no objections to the match.’ There was a roar of approval from the assembled officers, and Preston found his back being pummelled from one side while Macpherson grabbed his hand on the other.

  ‘Well done, laddie!’ he enthused.

  ‘Which it is hotter than brimstone, sirs,’ supplemented Britton, juggling the dish he still held.

  ‘So has an understanding been reached with the lady?’ asked Faulkner.

  ‘It has indeed, George,’ said the lieutenant. ‘I saw her immediately after she was reconciled with her father. We shall make the arrangements when I am next on leave.’

  ‘I can’t answer for the consequences if it ain’t set down soon, sirs!’ added the steward.

  ‘Oh quit your whining, and put it on the table, man, and let us drink to their health,’ grumbled Taylor.

  The steward banged the pudding down with a sigh of relief and stood back, wiping his hands on his apron. Meanwhile, Taylor rose to his feet and raised his glass aloft.

  ‘Gentlemen! Let us drink to the engagement of Mr Preston and Miss Hockley, with a bumper, if you please.’ The toast was drunk with considerable good cheer, and the meal got underway. But the first plate of food had only just been served when there was a knock at the wardroom door.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir, but Corporal Edwards is outside,’ reported Britton. ‘He’s asking for Mr Corbett. He says how the prisoner is poorly, an’ having some manner of fit.’

  Chapter 13

  Return

  The body of William Ludlow slid down the tabletop as it was tilted up by his messmates. His remains had been sewn into his hammock with, as was the custom, the last stitch passed through his nose in final confirmation that he was indeed dead. The eighteen-pounder round shot placed at his feet ensured that he vanished beneath the waters of the Baltic. Clay closed his service book and nodded to the boatswain.

  ‘On hats!’ ordered Hutchinson, leading the way by cramming his leather one down over his long grey hair.

  ‘Dismiss the men, if you please, Mr Taylor,’ ordered his captain.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the first lieutenant.

  Clay climbed up the ladder way and emerged onto the quarterdeck, to be greeted by a triumphant crowing from the frigate’s hen coop.

  ‘An egg, by Jove, sir,’ exclaimed Preston, who was officer of the watch. ‘I had despaired of tasting one again this voyage. It would seem that our young ladies find longer days and milder weather more agreeable to them.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the captain, smiling at the transformation in the lieutenant. ‘I understand you are something of an expert on the preferences of young ladies more generally. Did that assist in gaining the hand of Miss Hockley?’ He half listened to Preston’s fulsome reply, but his mind was on the burial service. Fresh air, and a serious walk, he told himself, that is what I need.

  ‘Excellent, Mr Preston,’ he concluded, shaking the officer’s hand. ‘You have my congratulations and best wishes. I shall walk for a while. Pray see I am not disturbed, unless the ship is in peril.’

  He began to pace up and down the windward side of the quarterdeck, his head bowed and his hands clasped behind his back. Although he was only in his thirties, Clay had spent two decades amongst sailors. This had given him an acute feel for their moods. He could sense when they were content, and when they were nursin
g a grievance. He could tell when they were rebellious and angry or when they were boisterous and playful. On one ship he had even witnessed the sullenness and indifference to authority that had preceded a mutiny. A line of soldiers drilled to stand stiffly at attention reveal nothing, but a row of jostling sailors could tell an observant commander all he needed to know. He had watched his crew just now, drawn up in their blocks and divisions, as they had witnessed the burial, and what he had seen surprised him.

  William Ludlow had been a thief, and sailors had no time for such people. Thieving upset the harmony of a ship and was often dealt with ruthlessly by the men. Clay had little doubt that the same casual violence his crew showed the enemy could equally be turned onto those who broke the code of the lower deck. So when the ship’s surgeon was unable to give him a cause of Ludlow’s death, Clay’s first thought was that his sailors were in some way responsible. But that was not what he had just witnessed. He had expected to see indifference. Instead he had detected boiling rage.

  Up and down Clay paced, his path kept clear of crew and officers by Preston. His mind churned over the possibilities. Why were they so angry? He sifted through the facts, trying to think of a solution that would fit the various pieces into a whole. What were the crew of his ship thinking, and more importantly, what would they do next?

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said a tentative voice.

  ‘Oh, what is it now?’ demanded Clay, rounding on the unfortunate officer.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but the lookout is reporting a sail in sight,’ said Preston, ‘off the bow. He believes it may be the Liberté.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Preston,’ said Clay. ‘You were quite correct to draw my attention to it. How far off is this sighting?’

  ‘Topsails just clear of the horizon, sir.’

  ‘Very well, get the topgallants on her,’ he ordered. ‘Royals too, if she will bear them, and let us give chase.’

  ‘All hands!’ roared the boatswain’s mates. ‘All hands to make sail!’

  The watch below came running up on deck, spreading out from the fore hatchway like ants teeming from a nest. The top men flew up the shrouds to loosen the sails, while the other seamen took their places at the sheets. Clay looked with satisfaction at the speed with which they ran to their stations now, with hardly any need for direction from the petty officers.

  ‘They have the look of a tolerable crew,’ he commented to Preston.

  ‘Aye, the new have blended well with the former Titans, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Do you think we will catch the Liberté?’

  ‘Only if she is game,’ said Clay. ‘Even after the buffeting we gave her, I daresay she can give us royals, and yet prove the swifter ship.’

  Sail bloomed above sail on the frigate’s lofty masts, her speed growing with each one. By the time the main royal was sheeted home, high above Clay’s head, the Griffin was leaning over at an angle as steep as that required to slide Ludlow’s remains into the sea. Preston and his captain had both made their way up to the windward side of the deck, where they could hold onto the mizzen shrouds. Clay leant out over the side and glanced down. The Griffin had rolled a good foot of bright copper clear of the waves. Then he focused his telescope on the ship ahead.

  ‘She is setting more sail too, Mr Preston,’ he reported. ‘Even on that fished yard we shot through. I don’t believe she is anxious to renew our acquaintance.’

  ‘Now here is a merry dance for you,’ exclaimed Vansittart, struggling up the steep deck to join them. ‘One moment I am playing at backgammon with Lieutenant Macpherson in the wardroom, the next the board is on the floor and the world is angled over like the deuced pyramid of a pharaoh! Probably for the best, mind, for he’s a dashed fine player.’

  ‘Apologies to have inconvenienced you, sir, but we have our Frenchman ahead,’ said Clay. ‘I wanted to come up to her, yet it seems she wishes to keep her distance.’

  ‘If this is the same ship you thrashed some weeks ago, it is hardly a surprise,’ said the diplomat. ‘I dare say it is a case of once bitten and twice shy. Does she lie between us and the fleet at Copenhagen?’

  ‘At present, but we will be turning to the south once we have left the Gulf of Finland, sir.’

  ‘Can you catch her?’

  ‘Not without her carrying something away,’ said Clay.

  ‘Let her be, Captain,’ urged Vansittart. ‘You might chase her for a month and not catch her. The word we carry from Russia is of much greater significance than this Frenchman.’

  ‘It goes against every instinct to allow an enemy to escape,’ protested Clay.

  ‘Nevertheless, that is what we must do,’ said the diplomat. ‘War with Russia has been averted. We must try and do the same for Denmark.’

  ******

  It was breakfast once more, and the lower deck was full of noise. The previous day’s brief chase of the Liberté, abandoned when it had barely started, was still being discussed. But there was also something else in the air, something more urgent. Drained mugs of small beer were banged down on mess tables, sleeves were dragged across mouths and hot burgoo was being shovelled down hungry throats.

  ‘Bleeding hell, but that’s better,’ announced Rankin, letting his empty bowl drop back onto the table top. ‘Filled a proper hole, has that.’

  ‘You’ve changed your fecking tune,’ said O’Malley. ‘Time was when you didn’t care for our fare at all.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s grown on me with closer acquaintance, my Irish friend,’ smiled the Londoner. ‘Although how you can eat them maggoty rusks is beyond me.’

  ‘They be fine, once you knows how to drive the weevils out,’ said Trevan, tapping away at his ship’s biscuit.

  ‘You seem in good spirits, Josh,’ commented Sedgwick, who had hardly touched his breakfast.

  ‘Maybe I am starting to relish the society of negros,’ said Rankin.

  ‘So you ain’t missing your mate Ludlow, then?’ asked the coxswain.

  ‘I ain’t sure where you got the notion as we was friends,’ commented Rankin, his eyes watchful.

  ‘Didn’t you both come from Seven Dials?’ continued Sedgwick. The rest of the table were silent now, watching the two men.

  ‘Plenty of folk hail from there,’ said the valet. ‘Sam here, for one. Don’t mean as how we are all acquainted.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Evans. ‘An’ I didn’t recall the little bleeder either, at first. But now that Able has had me thinking upon it, I reckon I can place him. I am certain I saw that Ludlow hanging around with your sort, Josh.’

  ‘My sort?’ queried Rankin. ‘What’s that suppose to bleeding mean? You best go easy with your tone there, Sam lad. My sort has friends what you really don’t want to go messing with.’

  ‘So you was mates with him, then?’ persisted Sedgwick.

  ‘What of it?’ said Rankin. ‘I knew no end of folk, back in the day. Don’t matter, now he’s gone and died, does it?’

  ‘Aye, but how did he come to die?’ asked Sedgwick.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ demanded Rankin. ‘Speak plain! You trying to say as how I somehow had a part in his sickening? Coz that would take a bleeding miracle, seeing as I never went near the bugger the whole time the Lobsters had him. Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ he concluded, rising to his feet.

  ‘Sit yourself down, flunky,’ growled a voice from behind him, and firm hands pushed Rankin back onto his stool. The valet glanced around to see that a crowd of sailors had gathered to listen. He looked across to the tables where the petty officers normally messed, but they were empty. Directly behind him stood Hibbert and Perkins, two of the watch’s larger sailors.

  ‘You are all going to be in such a world of shit, once I tell Mr Vansittart about this,’ he said. ‘He’s mates with the bleeding Prime Minister! An’ he plays cards of an evening with Prinny at the palace.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the Hollander,’ said Sedgwick. ‘Funny you mentioning him. Have you noticed how he’s gone right off his morning coffee? Th
e day poor Ludlow was taken sick, you was in a perishing hurry to fetch his brew from the galley. Strange how you ain’t done so since.’

  ‘What has that got to do with anything?’ demanded Rankin.

  ‘Oh, I think it were proper revealing,’ said Sedgwick. ‘Sean here says how Ludlow’s ready to tell all, then one of the Lobsters passes us to collect his scoff, and you can’t get up to the galley fast enough. You even left the burgoo that you seem to be so fond of now.’

  ‘Aye, Ludlow was singing,’ snarled the valet, leaning forward and pointing. ‘And the only name what he spouted was Sam here!’

  ‘True, but I been thinking upon that an’ all,’ said the coxswain. ‘So I had a word with Conway. Now he’s had time to ponder, he ain’t so sure as Ludlow was fingering the person what was squeezing him. He thinks he might have been trying to warn someone.’

  ‘Why would he want to warn bleeding Sam?’ demanded Rankin.

  ‘Perhaps this clock he stole was going to be stashed in Big Sam’s dunnage?’

  ‘And why would I be after setting up Sam here?’ scoffed the valet.

  ‘Coz I lumped you back in that bar, Joshua Rankin,’ said Evans. ‘You always was a nasty shit, as hates them what stands up to you. I daresay Ludlow cheeked you, an’ that’s why you shopped him in the first place, and then snuffed him out when that didn’t answer. I got a good mind to finish you now.’

  ‘Easy, Sam,’ said Sedgwick, placing a hand across the chest of the big sailor.