A Different Sort of Perfect

by Vivian Roycroft

  Fleming leaned toward his clerk. "Note that number sixteen is well manned and greased. It's a good choice for handling sudden emergencies."

  Her eyes widened, dark hot mountain pools, liquid and astonishing as well as astonished. Ah. In his absorption with the great gun exercise, he'd forgotten his clerk was female and he'd leaned too close. Fleming straightened, tugging his sleeves down. Firing a few broadsides was always exciting — the noise, the smell, the raw power trembling at his control — and a lovely young gentlewoman at his elbow made a surprising but apt complement. He needed for her to become a member of his crew; but not like that, and surreptitious eyes all over the frigate were watching.

  In the confusion below, all the gun trucks now rolled free and the crews waited for orders, swabs and rammers in hands. It was all too painfully obvious which were the experienced gunners and which the landmen, prodded into taking their proper positions — at the end of a hauling rope, all they could be trusted with at this point. Their blank faces screamed for patient training, if he intended his gun crews to be ready before Topaze found and tackled Armide. They'd be burning barrels of gunpowder and hurling a lot of cannonballs into the sea in the next month or two.

  Fleming waved at Ackers, in the launch a quarter mile to starboard towing the targets, the sea fog thinning beyond. His coxswain waved back and released the first raft, a floating contrivance of barrels, staves, and a single dark cloth fluttering on a vertical pole.

  "Mr. Abbot," he yelled, loudly enough for everyone to hear, "have number sixteen's crew put through their paces. You newcomers, some of you come from men-of-war with captains who never fired the long guns, and some of you come from the land. This ship fires the guns every single day. This is a fighting frigate and you are expected to know your duties so precisely, you can perform in the bloodiest battle, without officers if necessary. Your training starts now. Mr. Abbot, let everyone see how it's done." Fleming glanced at his clerk, stopping himself in time from leaning toward her again. "Starting time is…"

  Lady Clara dipped her pen into the inkhorn around her neck, tapped off the excess with a practiced motion that didn't add to the flecks of black staining her grey gown, and held the quill ready.

  Abbot swung around. "Mr. Chandler, have number sixteen's crew fire three shots at the target."

  Fleming glanced at the repeater watch. "…fourteen minutes, fifty-three seconds past the hour."

  She wrote.

  Chandler swallowed, his prominent Adam's apple bouncing up and down. "Aye, aye, sir." He turned to number sixteen, where the crew stood ready, grinning and puffing out their chests; no one aboard would be allowed to forget they'd been chosen to set the example.

  "Cast loose your gun." But they'd already completed the first part of the drill, so Chandler hurried on, his voice cracking. "Level your gun."

  Swift movements, sure and practiced. Every man — and now, every woman — knew the repeater watch was ticking. The swabber, an experienced hand, levered up the cannon's breech with a hard yank from his handspike and Wake shoved a wedge beneath the gun, locking it level.

  Chandler had time to haul in a breath, but only one and a shallow one at that. "Out tompion."

  If the ship had been heeling, they would have released the tackle ropes and let the gun, all its thirty-three hundredweight, roll in under its own mass. But in this level sea, they clapped onto the tackles and hauled the gun in until the muzzle was a foot inside the port. The sail-trimmer yanked out the round wooden stopper plugging the muzzle and set it aside.

  "Run out your gun." Chandler, and his voice, had steadied; he knew the drill. Fleming restrained himself again, this time from nodding approval. Only nerves bothered his elder midshipman, as they'd bothered him during previous cruises whenever he'd been on display, and of course those nerves would steady, too, as the exercise unfolded. Chandler wasn't the most natural of sailors and no phoenix, but he'd learned well.

  The gun crew grabbed the side-tackles. Hand over hand they heaved; the gun truck groaned, then it eased forward, quicker and quicker until the cannon thrust through the open porthole and the truck's wheels crunched against the frigate's side.

  "Prime your gun."

  Wake thrust the pointed priming iron into the touch hole, one good jab to puncture the flannel-covered cartridge. Then he yanked it out with a smoothness belying his gnarled knuckles and bent over the cannon's breech, tipping the powder horn's finer priming grain into the pan. The fireman's hand was ready and grabbed the horn the moment Wake tipped it back up, and the ventsman squashed his thumb over the touch hole, although with so little wind there was no danger the priming powder would blow away.

  "Point your gun."

  They knocked out the leveling wedge. The sponger leaned on the handspike, raising the gun's muzzle, and Wake rammed in quoins, his practiced eye fastened on the bobbing target a half-mile beyond. The dark flag atop its pole lay flaccid, faintly fluttering with the wastrel breeze. Fleming thinned his lips. He should have ordered they use red cloth, or yellow, anything to stand out in the featureless grey murk. Too late now. His heart hammered, anticipation singing through him. Already it seemed he could smell the gunpowder.

  "Fire!"

  For a breathless moment more Wake held poised, curling over the cannon from the side and glaring along its barrel, timing the shot with the frigate's movement. Suddenly he whipped the linstock with its length of burning slow match across and shoved it into the priming.

  A second's delay, a hiss of burning powder. Fleming sucked in the sharp smoke, tasted its chemical excitement in his throat. Then the cannon roared, pounding his ears. Scarlet flames burst from the muzzle. Bits of scorched wadding flared, blackened, vanished. The lithe figure at his side flinched. The gun truck and its weighty load bounded like a startled horse, eight feet back between its crew members and beneath Wake's arching torso. The flying cannon slammed against the thick breeching rope, snapping it taut with a deep, singing twang-g-g, and the crew held it inboard with the rear-tackles.

  "Stop your vent." The ghostly grey smoke drifted over Chandler, trailing away to leeward, and he coughed into his hands. "Sponge your gun."

  The sponger knew his job; Fleming eyed the sea around the distant, forlorn target. Water splashed from the quiet surface, shy and to the left, but not by much; if the target had been a ship, Wake's shot would have hit the bows. Another splash, further on, and then another as the cannonball bounced across the ocean's surface for a further fifty yards before the splashes finally stopped.

  Chandler continued the exercise, his voice now sure and clipped. "Load with cartridge."

  At the quarterdeck railing beside Fleming, Lady Clara sucked in quick, hard breaths, as if testing the gunpowder smell for herself. Her dark eyes focused inward, as if she concentrated on her own thoughts or feelings, and her chin tilted aside. Tiny curls, darkened to flaxen yellow by the moist air, clung about her face, and one little drop trickled past her ear. She didn't seem to notice. Indeed yes, she'd jumped when the gun went off. But she hadn't dropped nor clutched the book, and the pen still poised above it, ready to write.

  Perhaps there was more to his spoiled debutante than he'd first imagined.

  "Shot your gun."

  The sponger yanked the rammer from the long gun's muzzle, the loader pushed in the twelve-pound cannonball shot and a chunk of cotton wadding, and the sponger rammed it down to join the gunpowder cartridge. Their arms moved more quickly, as if the actions they'd practiced during the last cruise had been awakened in their bodies' memories, and now Chandler only had time for gasping breaths between commands. "Run out your gun."

  The second shot clipped the little raft's corner and it rocked on its own created wave. Lady Clara gasped, sharp beneath the approving murmurs around the ship, and she joined the delighted cheer when the third shot slammed through the target, sending splinters and the dark flag flying into the sea.

  "Ending time nineteen minutes, thirty-five seconds." His body started to lean toward her and he
r eyes started to widen. Fleming straightened and folded his arms rather than tug down his coat sleeves again. An apt complement, perhaps, but having a lovely young gentlewoman on his quarterdeck was also proving to be a decided nuisance in some regards.

  Lady Clara scribbled in the book's margin, intense focus driving out her delight. She glanced up. "Four minutes, forty-two seconds." The words blew from her in a rush, then she paused. "Is that good? It sounds good, and they certainly performed well. Didn't they?"

  Judging from her manner, she'd become engrossed in the exercise. From the impassioned eagerness in her sparkling eyes, she'd joined her soul to it, throwing her moral weight and support behind the crew's efforts, and she'd cheered their success. Better and better, and faster than he'd dared hope. The slowly dissipating smell of burnt gunpowder added to the elation sweeping through him, and he turned aside. Perhaps she hadn't noticed his response amidst her own.

  On the gun deck below, Abbot doffed his scraper. Short auburn hair crumpled onto his forehead and stuck there; the gun deck was always hot during firing. Around him, the gun crews shuffled their tools, but they stared up at the bridge, at him, faces carved into expectation. "Exercise complete, sir."

  He wouldn't grin. But keeping his facial muscles stiff presented a serious challenge if he was to match his clerk's stoicism. "Our clerk, Mr. Abbot, reports a time of four minutes and forty-two seconds."

  No real cheer this time, but appreciative muttering criss-crossed the gun deck. Even the Marine at the hatchway's fear-naught screen dipped his chin in a nod. In the shadows behind number sixteen, Old Trusty, Chandler's face broke into the grin Fleming's muscles yearned for.

  But her eyes didn't leave him. "It is good, then?"

  Stubborn to go with spoiled. But not flighty and not shy. "I have known better, Lady Clara."

  She deflated, rather like James Sadler's flash modern balloon, the one that had dumped him into the Thames.

  His lips defeated him in the end, their edges curling up despite his determination. "But never by much. And I promise you that when the enemy's in front of their cannons, they'll fire even straighter and faster."

  In the depths of the gun deck, somewhere in the stern battery beneath the quarterdeck, a young soprano sniggered. Staunton or one of the powder boys had overheard, blast the little monkey. Her face brightened to a rosy glow, startling in the grey, misty seascape surrounding the Topaze. She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders.

  And drilled Fleming with an old-fashioned, governess-for-twenty-years, take-no-prisoners glare.

  The heat from the gun deck rose through the decking, from his collar to his cheeks. But it wasn't really the heat, of course. He'd made game of her, she didn't appreciate his sport, and she had no qualms against directing her displeasure toward its proper target. If he wished to keep her temper sweet, he needed to lose his hunting license.

  But that wouldn't guide her into place as a member of his crew. No one else was safe from the captain's sport, and if he didn't treat her in the same manner as he treated everyone else, the crew would see through his charade.

  Unfortunately, even with that disaster dangling over him, his usually quick tongue refused to risk another shot. Perhaps it feared being bitten off should hers prove quicker. But the image of tongue versus tongue wasn't one he needed to pursue, either, and Fleming caught himself clearing his throat.

  It was her eyes, those dark liquid pools. It could only be so. They were too dark to be natural, so dark that the word popped into his thoughts whenever he glanced at her, and the shifting emotions they displayed enthralled him. Using them, she had mesmerized him at some deep, incomprehensible level, as that Austrian physician claimed he'd accomplished with animal magnetic fluids. Not that concepts such as animal were any safer topics of thought.

  Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. His mind had carried him around in a complete circle. And now that startling rosy pink glow again crept up her cheeks. He'd been staring and she didn't appreciate such forwardness, either. She searched for the man she loved, and any impertinence from Mrs. Fleming's little boy would be treated in the manner it deserved.

  He yanked his gaze away. On the gun deck below, every face waited for his next orders, or for something. Abbot watched and waited along with the rest, scraper in hand, chin sinking onto his chest. If Fleming didn't know his first lieutenant better, he'd swear the man was worried.

  Which was even more ridiculous.

  "Mr. Abbot," but his voice sounded hoarse, as if he'd run a mile on dry, dusty roads. He cleared his throat again. "Mr. Abbot, take each gun crew through three shots slowly. Once the new men have learned their tasks, we'll try a rolling broadside."

  Abbot's mouth moved, chewing over his orders. "Aye, aye, sir." He clapped on his hat and swung around. "Mr. Chandler, Mr. Staunton, let's teach our crews. From for'ard aft, each gun will singly fire three shots." Unspoken words waved for attention beneath his orders: watch how I instruct the new hands.

  "Aye, aye, sir." The two young voices, soprano and tenor, spoke together.

  Abbot stalked for'ard, nearly walking into a moongazing landman who didn't know enough to get out of the first lieutenant's path — no, that was Hennessy, the captain's steward and an experienced loader, and he certainly knew better. But there he stood, staring at the quarterdeck with his mouth drifting open and mechanical wheels spinning behind his sharp little eyes. Abbot snaked out an arm, pushed him into his proper position — Hennessy stumbled, started, grabbed onto the fireman beside him, stayed standing by a mutual effort, and Abbot stalked on.

  Whatever she'd done with her eyes, his entire crew seemed affected.

  The for'ard-most starboard gun, number two, fired its three slow shots, only threatening the target with its final effort. The lovely gunpowder smoke drifted along the ship, billowing over the quarterdeck, enticing, alluring, beckoning, and before number four fired its second time Fleming snapped alert and found he'd drifted down the ladder to the gangway on its haze. Clerk glued to his side — female clerk, crab it — he hovered above the guns in turn, observing the crew, the timing, the fall of each shot. Habit yanked the necessary information from him, and the scritching of the crow quill pen followed his steps.

  It was the only way he knew she was there. He wasn't going to look and be mesmerized again.

  And halfway through, as Chandler instructed his second crew on their duties, his feet found the midship ladder before them and of course descended to the gun deck itself.

  Clerk in tow.

  Female clerk.

  And no one seemed to notice.

  Except him.

  The firing continued unabated. Heart singing, Fleming joined in the exercise. The splendid exercise.

  His plan was coming off. And it seemed perfect.

  Chapter Ten

  Oh, she never expected anything like this aboard even the most fighting of ships! Raging, dizzy excitement lurked within the crisp chemical smells of burning gunpowder and slow match, the pacing thunder of the rolling broadside, the laboring men swarming about the cannons, the crack of muskets and swivel guns from the fighting tops. Heat suffused Clara's face in another flush, but not this time of mortification. Her heart pounded in time to the firing and she had to fight not to be swept along by the thrill. If Captain Fleming indeed depended upon her to keep accurate records, then it would be horrible to contribute only errors to something so exciting.

  Book and pen in hand, inkhorn bouncing on its strap about her neck, she hung on Captain Fleming's coattails and followed him from clew to earring as he oversaw the exercise. With so much to learn, his actions promised to be an excellent guide, and so she took him as her example. When he crouched behind a particular gun, she too peered along its length, trying to ascertain what he found so fascinating. When he exclaimed, "Good shot!" to one gun crew, she noted where the cannonball splashed into the sea in relation to the floating target, and marked the entry for future reference. And when he instructed the next-to-last gun crew to pause and
wait for the uproll before firing, she watched how the ship's extra height carried the shot farther than that fired by the preceding crew, and made a note of that, as well.

  The excitement seemed to affect almost everyone. Even the dullest of landmen perked up and closed his mouth as the long guns banged and roared. Several sailors, upon catching her eye through the billowing gunpowder smoke, treated her to a kind, disarming grin, some nodding in greeting, and in the waist's central battery — what the captain called the slaughterhouse — Wake took a moment from shoving in quoins to touch his knuckle to forehead in cheerful salute. Only Mr. Abbot and Chandler didn't include her in their masculine satisfaction.

  Well, hers wasn't the sort of personality that needed for everyone to like her. They'd just have to carry their swollen heads about without her assistance.

  It seemed to last for hours, and indeed the sun fell well toward the horizon before Captain Fleming ordered the guns bowsed down as he returned to the quarterdeck. By then Clara panted from her exertions, throat parched but enthusiasm unbounded. And only as the last gunpowder smoke drifted away did she realize how deafened she felt, how everyone seemed to be speaking more loudly but still she had difficulty discerning their words. In a daze, she slipped the crow pen into the inkhorn's holder and yanked the leather strap from around her neck.