Mutineer

by Sutherland, J. A.

  “The responsibility is mine, sir,” she said.

  Neals’ eyes narrowed.

  “They were in my charge. I knew they were tired,” she continued, “and I should have checked the work, sir. The fault lies with me. I am sorry.” Confine me to my berth, stop my pay … dismiss me from the Service, if you like, you bastard, but I’ll not play this game for you.

  Neals blinked as though confused by what she’d said. “Sorry?”

  “I apologize, sir, for my inattention.”

  The captain was silent for a long moment, then, “Beg.”

  Alexis wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “Sir?”

  “Beg, Carew. You wish to apologize, to be forgiven your lapse? Then beg for it.”

  Her world seemed to have narrowed to her and the captain. She was dimly aware of the assembled crew and a low muttering. She sighed — it was a small price to pay, she supposed, but still it galled her. She might be new to the Navy, but she did know that officers should not be treated so.

  “Sir, I … I apologize for my lapse and beg you to forgive it.”

  Neals narrowed his eyes and she saw his lips twitch. “From your knees, Carew.”

  She heard a gasp and Lieutenant Williard stepped toward the captain, saying something about officers and honor but she couldn’t seem to focus on anything but Neals.

  “She has no honor, lieutenant! She’s a jumped-up little bint who’s no place here!”

  “No,” Alexis said softly.

  Neals spun back to her. “What did you say?”

  “No, sir, I will not kneel. I admit my fault in not noticing the gasket. I will even beg your forgiveness for it.” She shook her head. “I will kneel to my Queen, sir, and to no other.”

  “Are you refusing to obey my orders?”

  “I believe no Queen’s Officer would obey such an order, sir.” She knew it would be too much, going too far, but the words came from her mouth as though of their own accord. “And no honorable man would give it.”

  There was silence for a moment. Neals’ face grew very still and then he smiled.

  “Mister Youngs!”

  “Aye, sir?” the purser called.

  “You have the ship’s muster book?”

  “Aye, sir.” He pulled his tablet from pocket and looked to the captain expectantly.

  Alexis close her eyes, almost feeling relief. The tension ebbed out of her. And here it comes, dismissed. She’d be put ashore at the next port and have to make her own way home to Dalthus. Her grandfather would be quite disappointed in her … or perhaps not, after he’d heard the details. She felt a twinge of guilt at abandoning her men, but they might get on better without her. If she were not there as a focus for Neals’ ire … he’d still be a brutal, cruel bastard, but her lads might catch less of it.

  “Carew is disrated. Mark it accordingly.”

  Alexis’ eyes sprang open and her blood ran cold.

  “Sir!” Williard called out and shouts sounded from the assembled men.

  “Arms!” Lieutenant Blowse shouted and his marines drew their sidearms. The men stilled, but there was a low current of muttering.

  Alexis was dimly aware of what was occurring around her, but she focused on the captain’s words. Disrated? Could he really?

  Disrating was something she’d heard of happening to the petty officers — the bosun, the warrants, and master’s mates who came up from the ranks of spacers. To be disrated was to be demoted back to the crew, it was not something that happened to officers who held a commission. Midshipmen, however, lived in an odd, middle-ground — being officers-in-training and not holding commissions from Admiralty. They were, in fact, on par with the master’s mates in some respects.

  He can, she thought. And I’ve turned sixteen, so there’s not even that to keep me off the crew.

  She’d expected to be dismissed and have to leave the Navy. She had not expected to be sent into the crew as a common spacer. She had no real objection to it — she’d originally tried to join as a common spacer before Captain Grantham of Merlin had brought her aboard as midshipman — but not on this ship.

  Not on Hermione.

  Neals was speaking again and she stared at him in shock, the words not truly registering.

  “And as you’ve been good enough to admit the untied gasket was your fault …” He smiled. “Mister Maslin, rig a grating and send for your cat, if you please.”

  * * * * *

  Alexis was moving as though in a dream.

  She was peripherally aware of the sounds and movement around her — more shouts from the assembled men, Neals’ voice and that of Lieutenant Blowse barking out commands, Williard saying something to the captain and being shouted down, and, lastly, the bosun’s mates upending a grating and affixing it to a column — but she seemed unable to move or speak. Which was quite odd, because she was moving. Stepping away from the other officers — not ‘other’ now, I suppose — and towards the men. She heard a voice which sounded quite like her own, which was even odder, as she was certain she was entirely unable to speak.

  “Nabb! Broady! Scholer! Back to your places the lot of you and mind your tongues! Don’t you dare disappoint me, lads, or I’ll know the reason why!”

  Is this really happening? How on earth had things gone so wrong so quickly? Though she probably should have expected this or something like it. Neals had made it clear from the moment she’d come aboard that he hated her and thought she had no place on a Queen’s Ship.

  Her vision seemed to have narrowed to the rigged grating and it was drawing closer, though she had no conscious awareness of walking toward it. The thought entered her head that she would not be dragged to her place screaming as Isom had been. She thought of Nabb, stepping forward first to “show the lads how it’s done,” his disdain for the man who’d ordered it clear in his every movement. And of Robert Alan — the first man she’d ever seen flogged aboard Merlin — who, for whatever else he might have been, had stepped forward and grasped the grating with an almost casual indifference.

  I must do no less.

  She looked down and found her hands already at the collar of her jumpsuit, but trembling and shaking so that she was unable to make them grasp the fastenings. She heard the bosun speak and realized that he was right beside her.

  “Leave that, Mister Carew,” he said, his voice soft and not unkind. “We’ll cut the back and … and leave you what decency there is aboard this …”

  “Thank you, Mister Maslin.” Her voice, at least, sounded steady to her, though she wasn’t at all certain where the words were coming from. “I do find myself altogether unable.”

  She tried to raise her hands to the grating’s corners, but found her arms were too weak. Two bosun’s mates took her wrists gently and raised them. She almost laughed when the straps they’d attached to each corner wouldn’t reach and they had to reattach them lower on the grating.

  “Thank you,” she heard herself whisper, absurdly, and one of them looked at her in surprise, then quickly away unable to meet her eyes. “It’s not your fault, Lain — nor yours, Hayer. Do as you’re ordered.”

  She felt someone close behind her and she flinched as cold metal touched her neck just under her collar. It ran down her spine, sending a shiver through her and she heard the hiss of tearing cloth. She heard Neals was saying something and then the bosun, but she didn’t understand them. All of her attention seemed focused on the white thermoplastic of the grating directly in front of her.

  Then came the whistle of something moving fast through the air and a loud crack. An endless moment, in which she thought to herself, This must be another nightmare. It can’t truly be happening. And lines of fire flashed across her bare back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Alexis woke lying on her stomach, an odd position for her to be sleeping in. She pulled her arms under herself and started to rise, but gasped and fell back to the surface of the cot as pain tore through her back. Though the room was dark, she could tell from the sli
ghtly antiseptic smell that she was in the sick berth on the orlop deck.

  “Mister Rochford?” The memory of what had happened and why she was here came to her, and she wondered if it was even appropriate for her to call for him directly, seeing as how she was no longer a midshipman. “Mister Rochford, sir?”

  She twisted, slowly and carefully, and eased her legs off the cot to sit up, feeling the skin on her back pull and then gasping as something separated. The captain must not have allowed them to seal the wounds. They’d hurt more that way and for longer, serving as a reminder. And scar. She’d seen enough of that in her short time in the Navy. Well-treated, the marks of the lash would leave thin, white lines that would fade in time. Left alone to be pulled open again every time she moved wrong, the scars would form wide and knotted. Either way, she’d bear a remembrance of Captain Neals for the rest of her days.

  Moving more slowly and carefully, she sat up and looked around in the dark, puzzled. The lights were off completely, something that she’d never seen in the sick berth. They’d be dimmed so the men could sleep, but there was always some light for the berth attendants to move about.

  “Mister Rochford, sir!” she called out more loudly.

  “Shh!” There was a clatter in the darkness. “Damn your eyes, be quiet! They’ll hear you!”

  She sensed someone moving toward her in the darkness. “Mister Rochford?”

  “It is,” he whispered. “Lie back down and be still, now, but especially be quiet!”

  “What’s happening? Why are you hiding here in the dark?”

  “The men are about and there’ve been gunshots. They’ve someone just outside the door. Quiet now, or he’ll hear!”

  They’ve done it. She closed her eyes and her heart fell. For the men who’d mutinied, and even for some of those who hadn’t, there’d be no turning back. Admiralty would sentence them to death and hunt them the rest of their days.

  “If there’s a man outside the hatch, Mister Rochford, do you think they don’t know you’re in here? Help me stand, please.”

  “It’s best you stay here, I think. Wait until it settles down and see what happens.”

  Alexis eased off the bed, ignoring the pain from her back and shuffled through the dark toward where she thought the hatch must be. She wished she had a uniform to put on, but was uncertain which she should wear — that of a midshipman or a common spacer. Anything but this, I suspect. She had on only a sick berth gown, open at the back, and regulation underpants. As she shuffled through the dark sick berth, she felt the underpants sticking to her body where her blood had dried after the flogging. I must be a sight.

  “Will you turn a bloody light on, Mister Rochford? There’s little point in hiding, I think.” The ship’s surgeon didn’t answer, so Alexis continued on her way. She felt along the wall until she reached the hatchway and slid it open.

  She squinted against the light outside and recognized the spacer standing by the hatchway. The man straightened from where he was leaning against the bulkhead and Alexis saw that he was holding a pistol. They’ve done it. They’ve really gone and done it.

  “Lufkin.”

  “Mister Carew, sir, I’ll have to ask that you stay in the sick berth, sir.”

  Alexis considered how to proceed. A mutiny could go one of many different ways. She wondered how many of the officers and crew were dead already. “Is the ship taken, then, Lufkin?”

  The spacer looked down at the deck, then back at her. “It’s done, sir. They’re all up on the mess deck considering things right now.”

  “And how many are dead already?”

  Lufkin looked down again and said nothing. Alexis took a step around him and headed for the companionway.

  “Mister Carew, sir! I’m to keep you here!”

  “Follow and help me or shoot me in the back, one, Lufkin,” she said, not looking back, “but I’m going up to speak to the lads.”

  “Mister Carew, sir, at least dress a bit!” Lufkin said, rushing after her.

  She started climbing the steep ladderway to the gundeck and then up to the mess deck. A few steps up and she gasped as she felt a new tear in her back and a warm trickle flowed down her skin.

  “You’re bleeding, sir, please come back down and let the surgeon fix it up!”

  “Just keep them off me, Lufkin, and let me have my say. Then I’ll do as you ask. Fair enough?”

  She could hear them now, a muted roar of shouting from the deck above. She reached the hatch and rested her hand on it and took a deep, steadying breath. She slid the hatchway open and the roar of shouting men flowed over her. Men were crowded onto the mess deck, many pushing and shoving. She could only see a few feet in, as her view was blocked by the backs of those standing closest to the hatch.

  “Let me through, lads!” she called, but they didn’t move. There were more shouts and a gunshot rang out, followed by a cry of pain. Alexis raised her arms and struck the two nearest men hard on their backs. “Make a lane! Lively now!” The men spun around angrily, arms raised to strike, but froze when they saw her. “Did you hear me, lads? Make a lane!”

  The two men stepped aside and she strode out into the mess deck, but didn’t get far — the deck was crowded and chaotic and her first steps brought her to face two more backs. Without her having to ask, the two men who’d first gotten out of her way tapped the next two on the shoulder. They turned around and after a moment’s stare at her, quieted and moved out of her way. She stepped forward and the process repeated, until, by the time she was halfway down the length of the deck, all of the men were silent and had turned to watch her.

  She knew she must look a fright. Her hair, which she’d never properly dried, was out of its customary ponytail and it had dried in an unkempt rat’s nest. She was barefoot and barelegged below the sick berth gown that reached past her knees. That gown gaped open in the back and the air was cool on her bare skin and the marks from the bosun’s cat. More than one of the stripes from that cat had reopened and several trickles of blood ran down her back. The sting from those marks made her wince with each step, but she clenched her jaw and kept going.

  A lane had opened up to the other end of the deck and she could see what had been the focus of the men’s attention. Captain Neals, dressed in his nightshirt and surely dragged from his bed, was kneeling on the deck, his hands bound behind him. Next to him were several of the officers, in uniform or not depending on whether they’d been on watch, also kneeling and bound. She saw that Lieutenant Dorsett was missing, and Lieutenant Roope, as was Midshipman Brattle.

  As she drew closer, she saw the first bodies. Three, scarlet-clad, piled by the far bulkhead. She swallowed hard and forced her eyes away. She’d known the marines would be the hardest hit by this — the men would have to take those on guard and stop the others from rallying to defend the officers. Some of those she’d sparred with every day and who’d become the closest thing to friends she had aboard Hermione would be lying dead on the deck, killed by spacers she’d worked with and cared for just as much.

  She forced that thought down, as well — this wasn’t the time for the right and wrong of what the men felt they’d been forced to and there’d be time enough for the dead later, now was for the living and to see that they stayed that way.

  Morrey Hacker, pistol in hand, was standing amongst the kneeling officers on the raised platform from which Captain Neals typically addressed the crew. He glared at her as she approached and then behind her.

  “I told you to keep her in the sick berth, Lufkin!”

  “And what was I to do when she wouldn’t, then?”

  Hacker waved his free hand in frustration. “Put her back through the bloody hatch, man! She’s not but half your size, for pity’s sake!”

  “I see you weren’t just towed along in it after all, Morrey Hacker,” Alexis said.

  He returned his gaze to her and narrowed his eyes at her words. “We’ve no quarrel with you, Mister Carew, you’re not like these others.” He waved his hand
at the kneeling officers. “Best you stay in the sick berth until it’s all over.”

  “Until what’s all over, Hacker? It appears it is. What’s left to be done, then?”

  “Back to the sick berth, Mister Carew — this is none of yours here!”

  “I think I’d like to address the crew, Hacker.” She stopped just short of the platform at the very edge of the crowd.

  “We’ve taken the ship! We’ll hear no more from officers!”

  “But I’m not an officer, am I, Hacker?” She took a step forward. She could see some confusion in Hacker’s eyes. He hadn’t wanted to be involved in mutiny, but if it was coming he’d wanted to lead it. And now she could tell he wasn’t entirely sure where to take it. “If I’m disrated and one of the crew, then I’ve as much right to be here as any man aboard, haven’t I, Hacker?” He started to speak, but Alexis cut him off, seeing an opportunity. She hopped up onto the platform, feeling yet another line on her back split open and fresh blood flow. “And if I am an officer, then I should be with the others, yes? Kneeling there. Are you captain now, Hacker, and we should kneel for you? Do you want me kneeling, just like Neals did?”

  Hacker looked around and realized what it must look like, him standing alone on the platform with the officers kneeling. “No, damn you! That’s not what I meant! You’re twisting —”

  “Let her speak!” Someone in the crowd yelled, followed by others.

  “Her back’s bloodied as ours, she’s the right!”

  Hacker shrugged and Alexis turned to the assembled crew. Her eye was drawn to the port side where a small group of men, perhaps no more than sixty, huddled looking on. Those would be the ones who’d not participated in the mutiny. Most of those who held a warrant position to the ship where there — the carpenter, the gunner, the purser, and their mates. Those men held too much position to risk it in mutiny. She didn’t see the bosun and wondered if Mister Maslin was now one of the dead, but she did see most of the men of her division in the group. She didn’t take the time to mark them all, but she was relieved they hadn’t participated.