A Burial at Sea

by Charles Finch

Lenox rose. “Incidentally, what is Follow the Leader?”

  Martin smiled, some incipient anger gone. “I suggest you be on deck at half-past six, if you want a seat for the start at seven. You’ll see then. It’s a treat, I can promise you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The sun was still in the sky, though sinking, at around the time Lenox came up on deck. It had been a beautiful day, mild, clear, and warm enough that the gentle breeze had felt welcome upon the skin. Now the sails were slack, the ship all but still, as overhead a calm, whitish blue filled the sky. The constant sound of the water seemed to lessen slightly, and the rock of the ship became gentle.

  On the quarterdeck were rows of chairs, brought up from the wardroom. About a dozen in all. McEwan was sitting in one, eating a piece of candied ginger. “Here, Mr. Lenox!” he said, after gulping a bit down. “I’ve got you a seat, here in the first row!”

  Now here was impressive loyalty. “Splendid. Thank you.”

  “I hoped to make a request, too, sir.”

  “Go on.”

  “If you could release me from my duties for the evening, I’ve been nominated by the other stewards to compete.”

  “In Follow the Leader?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  So it was some sort of eating contest. “Well, of course.”

  “Are you quite sure, sir? You might want a glass of wine during the show.”

  “No, I’d rather keep a clear head. If you could fetch me up a cloak you can be on your own. It’s cooler than I had expected here.”

  “Very good, sir. And, sir, have ten bob on me, if you like a flutter. I reckon you’ll get decent odds, too.”

  “I’ll put ten bob on you for each of us,” said Lenox. “Who makes the book?”

  “Thank you, sir! Just talk to Mr. Mercer, sir.”

  This was Pimples, who was taking bets from all sides, presumably with the tacit approval of his superiors. Lenox found him and placed the two bets.

  The midshipman frowned. “McEwan, Mr. Lenox? Are you sure of that? I don’t want you to lose your money, after you treated us to that bread and ham and champagne and all.” He said the word champagne “shampin,” or something that sounded approximately like that.

  “My finances can just about stand the loss, should McEwan let me down,” Lenox said, trying to keep the corners of his mouth down.

  Pimples nodded gravely. “If you feel sure, sir. The odds will be nineteen to three. Already set, wish I could give you better.”

  “As you please.”

  Lenox, a full smile on his face now, resumed his seat, the cloak he had asked for laid across it. The deck was filling. A group of men had lofted paper lanterns up along the rigging, which cast a lovely soft yellow color over the whole ship.

  “We’ll have to pray there aren’t pirates, or Frenchies,” muttered the person next to Lenox. It was Carrow, he saw.

  “Why?”

  “Ship all lit up, sails slack, the men saving their second ration of grog for just now…”

  “Still, the ship looks wonderful with the lanterns.”

  “To each their own, Mr. Lenox.”

  Nearly every Lucy was on deck now, and to Lenox’s surprise a group of them began singing. The melody caught on, and soon more than half the men had joined in. It was a long, flowing ballad called “Don’t Forget Your Old Shipmate.” Lenox tried to memorize the first verse as the next several proceeded: “We’re the boys that fear no noise/Whilst thundering cannons roar, And long/We’ve toiled on rolling wave, And soon/We’ll be safe on shore,/Don’t forget your old shipmate, Folde rol…”

  By the time he had this committed to memory he was in time to hear a verse that gave him a pang for Jane, when the men shouted the word, “Plymouth”: “Since we sailed from Plymouth Sound, Four years”—here many shouted “days!”—“gone, or nigh, Jack, Were there ever chummies, now, Such as you and I, Jack? Don’t forget your old shipmate, Fal dee ral dee ral dee rye eye doe…”

  After some two dozen verses of this song a small faction broke out singing a frankly pornographic ditty called “The Mermaid,” which was the cause of tremendous merriment and laughter. Then a smaller group, admired by all the others, sang in wonderfully mellow voices a song about Admiral Benbow. This was the leader of a fleet whose subordinates had rebelled against him and refused to fight the French, a refusal for which they had been court-martialed. If anyone other than Lenox saw the irony of the Lucy’s crew singing a song about insubordination, they didn’t show it. But Lenox reminded himself to bring up Benbow to his nephew. The admiral had been born to a tanner, a birth no doubt lower than Billings’s.…

  Suddenly the song broke off and the master’s mate, a fellow with a booming voice, called them to order. All the officers turned forward and watched; for a moment the ship was entirely silent.

  “The contestants!” he said.

  Up the main hatchway—the passage from the main deck to below deck—came a parade of two dozen men, all of them grinning fearlessly. (Their bravery in part liquid, Lenox suspected.) Last among them was McEwan, and though in proportion he was not dissimilar to an ox, he was the only man in the group who didn’t look to possess that beast’s natural strength.

  “And now, a game of Follow the Leader! Place your final bets, sirs!”

  “Hey now!” called out Martin, but good-naturedly, and the sailors laughed.

  “The nominee of the first mess, sponger Matthew Tart, to lead the first round, time to be no more than two minutes and thirty seconds! Ready, gentlemen? Yes? In that case proceed to the cathead at the fore of the ship, as per tradition, and keep an eye on Mr. Tart.”

  “Christ in the waves,” muttered Tradescant, who was behind Lenox.

  “Something the matter?”

  “I always have to treat one or two of the buggers.”

  “I still don’t know the game.”

  Now he learned. Matthew Tart, sponger of the Lucy’s first gun, took his hand off the cathead and with no little speed began to shimmy up the foremast, hiking his haunches up behind him with his arms and then pushing with his feet. When he was halfway up, not far from the perch where Halifax had been murdered, Tart leaped forward into thin air and then, after an excruciating second or so, grabbed onto a thin rope. He traversed this hand over hand to the mainmast, flung himself onto the rigging there, and then dropped in a somersault onto the deck just beside the sunlight of the captain’s dining room. From there he walked on his hands to the aft of the ship, the sailors congregated on deck respectfully making way for him, all silent, and when he had reached the taffrail launched himself clear off the ship.

  There was a gasp. Lenox half stood, while beside him Carrow emitted a hoarse chuckle.

  Then Tart’s head popped up. He was evidently perched on the Bumblebee, the jolly boat stowed behind the ship’s back rail.

  It had been a spectacular performance, and the ship cheered Tart with universal admiration.

  Each of the two dozen men followed him now, attempting to traverse the Lucy exactly as Tart had: for such was the game. One slipped on the foremast, to general groans, and two others failed to walk on their hands. Another refused to jump onto the covered jolly boat. “Which I’ll do anything, but I ain’t going overboard this ship. I can’t swim,” he said, and was mocked for his sincerity.

  The last man to go was McEwan. From the second his steward’s hand left the cat’s head Lenox found himself not breathing. But he needn’t have worried. McEwan, for all his size, was as nimble and agile as a monkey. He made it through the first course in the quickest time, and rewarded himself with a chicken leg from his pocket, to general good-natured jeering.

  The second round began, and Lenox found that he was enjoying himself immensely. So were the other officers, who gasped when a contestant almost fell and cheered when the round’s leader did something spectacular.

  They went places on the Lucy that Lenox hadn’t even thought existed: up and down the bowsprit, hanging upside down by their legs, all across
every mast and rope that would hold a human’s weight, in and out of every boat slung up on deck. They went on their hands, on their legs, on one foot, and holding a flag. They went quickly and slowly—sometimes too slowly, as in the third round two men were ejected for dawdling. A great popular favorite from the eighth gun was disqualified for using his hands to brace himself as he walked along the ship’s rail, and attempting the same trick a man came perilously close to falling off the side of the ship.

  By the fifth round there were four men left. Easily the best of them, to Lenox’s shock, was McEwan. He had earned the crowd’s support early on, perhaps because he cut such a rounded, unathletic figure, and despite it moved with the ease of a man taking a Sunday stroll through Hyde Park.

  It was McEwan’s turn to lead now. With startling quickness he climbed hand over hand up the mainmast. When he was no more than a fattish dot in the sky, it seemed, far up in the crow’s nest, he hooked his legs over the ledge of the crow’s nest and waved down. Then he let go.

  The sound of two hundred and nineteen men gasping at once must have filled McEwan’s ears as he fell. One poor soul, a leading seaman named Peter Lee, cried out “No, not McEwan!” in a high-pitched squeal, an utterance that he would find it difficult to live down for the rest of the voyage.

  For one horrifying moment Lenox felt sure that his steward was going to crash heavily into the deck, mangled out of all recognition, for the sake of a game. Just when it seemed as if he had been falling for about ten minutes, however, McEwan reached out a hand with almost casual grace and found a length of rope. Having caught on to this he made his way to the mainmast, and then, as something like an encore, climbed down it backwards—that is, with his face pointing toward the deck and his legs toward the sky.

  When he achieved the deck there was a moment of breathless silence, followed by overwhelming applause, wave after wave of it, always getting louder just as you thought it might begin to fade. McEwan continued to bow and wave with great grace. When all eyes turned to the other competitors, some moments later, they, in a unanimous gesture, bowed to Lenox’s steward, admitting their defeat.

  Even Carrow was grinning. “Wish I had bet on him. Couldn’t, as an officer, of course.”

  “I did!” said Lenox.

  “He hasn’t played for four or five years. Did the same thing last time. Poor Pimples gave terribly long odds, didn’t he? Then again memories are short, and two of the other fellows had won it in recent years. Still—such a performance!”

  The performer waddled over toward Lenox now, shaking hands distractedly along his way. “There,” he said, “aren’t you glad of that ten bob now, sir?” he asked.

  “I congratulate you, my good man—but here now, why are you a steward? You should be up amongst the tops all the time.”

  “Oh, no, sir. Much more comfortable below deck, you see. Always a bite to be had when one feels peckish. Speaking of which, sir, could I fetch you a glass of wine or a biscuit?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  After the singing had gone on for some time longer, and in fact grown quite maudlin, the officers began to go down the hatchway to the wardroom. A group of men, though drunk, cleared the chairs off the quarterdeck with great alacrity and efficiency. Another group rerigged the ship that she might sail steadily through the night. Soon the visible signs of the evening’s festivities had been effaced, but their happy mood lingered.

  Lenox, for his part, wanted to speak to Pettegree.

  He caught the purser in the wardroom and invited him to take the air of the quarterdeck.

  “Did you enjoy the game?” Pettegree asked when they were alone. Each man had a glass of port in hand.

  “Very much, yes. It determines me to climb to the crow’s nest.”

  “I’ve been afloat twenty years and I’ve never ventured that high. Leave it to the sailors, I say.”

  “You may well be right.” Lenox thought of Jane, pregnant and perhaps, though he hoped not, fretting about his safety. “At any rate, I had hoped for a word with you earlier.”

  “The inventory.”

  “Yes. Was there anything missing?”

  Pettegree shook his head. “I’m happy to report that there wasn’t.”

  “It was unlikely, I suppose. Thank you for telling me.”

  “There was one thing I noticed, scarcely worth mentioning—”

  Lenox laughed. “I wish I had a shilling for every time I heard that preface in the course of my career, only for it to be followed by a decisive piece of information. Pray, go on.”

  “We’re short a bottle of whisky.”

  “From the spirit room?”

  “Yes, precisely.”

  Just near the gun room was a small closet with a caged metal door and a large, impressive lock. It held the ship’s spirits, wine and brandy for the captain and the officers, rum for the men’s grog, as well as a bottle or two of harder alcoholic drinks. When ships were foundering or there was mutiny afoot, sailors were occasionally known to break into it, an offense punishable by hanging.

  “How many bottles had there been, and how many are there now?”

  “The captain keeps them on hand to entertain only,” said Pettegree. “We have two bottles of decent whisky at the start of every voyage, and the same at the end of every voyage. The same two bottles for almost a decade. But at the moment there’s only one bottle there.”

  “You don’t seem put out that the other one has vanished.”

  “It’s not my place to question the captain’s choices.”

  “The captain’s choices, you say? Is he the only one with access to the spirit room?”

  “He and I have the two keys. Mine hasn’t left my person while we’ve been at sea, and his—”

  “Neither of your assistants has borrowed it?”

  “Never. And the only other key is his.”

  “Did he not have to—to check out the bottle? Keep a record?”

  “Oh, no, the whisky is quite his property.”

  “I see.”

  “If you like I can ascertain from him that he was the one who took it, though I can’t imagine any other possibility.”

  Lenox’s mind flashed back to his visit to the captain’s quarters. On his desk had been an ebony ashtray with several cigar ends in it, and next to that a bottle of spirits, half empty. It might well have been whisky.

  “If you wouldn’t mind keeping it between us, I’d be grateful,” said Lenox. “If it comes up I may mention it, but it doesn’t seem our place—he’s been under a great deal of stress between Halifax and the rolled shot—”

  Pettegree nodded vehemently. “Oh, of course, of course. I’ll not say a word of it.”

  Lenox went straight to the wardroom from there in search of Tradescant. The surgeon was absent from the dining table, however, where a few men were playing at cards, and also from his cabin.

  Making his way forward to the surgery, Lenox looked at his watch. It was late; he ought to go to sleep. But it was worth speaking to Tradescant as soon as possible.

  The surgeon was in a small, leather-backed chair in one corner of the surgery, a candle on a ledge at the level of his snow-white hair, reading a book. He looked up.

  “Hello, Mr. Lenox,” he said, and from the faint slur in his words Lenox concluded that the surgeon had gone one or two drinks past sober. “Did you enjoy the game?”

  “Very much, yes.”

  “Your steward won! He was terrifically impressive, I thought. I hope he won’t need convincing that he’s still a steward.”

  Lenox smiled. “I don’t think it’s gone to his head.”

  “How may I help you?”

  “Are your patients quite well?”

  “Oh, yes. The one long-termer.” He gestured toward the back of the room, where the man who had been smacked in the head with a beam not long out of Plymouth Harbor slumbered on. “I believe he’ll come out of his sleep sooner or later, though to be honest it’s taking longer than I would have liked. Then there are th
ese two chaps, leftover from the storm. Both should be back on duty tomorrow, a few nasty bruises left but not much else.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it.”

  “In fact I was just thinking what a quiet trip it had been, and then remembered poor Mr. Halifax. Though it wasn’t five days ago it seems like a dream, doesn’t it?”

  “May I ask you a peculiar question?”

  “Yes, but please, sit down, have a glass with me.” Tradescant lit another candle and uncorked a dusty, roundish bottle of some richly ruby-colored liquid. He poured two very small glasses of it. “To Halifax!” he said, and drained his glass.

  “To Halifax.” Lenox drank his off too, and then smacked his lips. “Delicious wine. Where did you come by it?”

  Tradescant’s eyes flickered in the candlelight and he smiled. “It’s an 1842 Burgundy. My father gave me six cases when I first went to sea. They’re quite valuable, and I think he intended for me to sell them and live off of the profits. But it was the only present he ever gave me, you see, and so I take two bottles on each voyage. I only drink it with others. It gives me a kind of pleasure.”

  “Better than money.”

  “Dissimilar—but yes, perhaps better. I don’t mind about money. I suppose he would give me some of that, too, if I needed it especially. He gave me a house in town some years ago, and he’s just about alive. I’m a bastard, you see. My father is—” and here Tradescant named one of the great dukes of the realm, of a family second only to the royal family in prestige, nearly ninety now, who in his day had been one of the few political and social rulers of Europe.

  “I didn’t know,” said Lenox. “A very great man indeed.”

  “In some respects, yes. My mother was a charwoman, may she rest in peace, and I think it very likely she had more wisdom than he did, and more kindness beside.” Tradescant laughed. “Now I am nearly fifty. It’s an age when parents don’t matter as much as they did … or they matter more in some ways, and less in others. I’ve been happy in my life.”

  It was a singularly confessional speech, and Lenox smiled—not too broadly, but encouragingly, grateful for the man’s confidence. “If all you had out of your father was that wine, it wouldn’t have been too hard a transaction.”