A Burial at Sea

by Charles Finch

  “Oh, quite well, thank you. Is there anything else?”

  “You have had it all.”

  “We will leave, then. Separately I think.”

  “Of course.”

  “Where do your men think you are, if they know you’re gone?”

  Sournois laughed. “Here. I have been making a point of visiting the pleasure boats every evening. I am perhaps later than usual, but not much so.”

  “Very well.”

  Sournois stood and offered his hand. “We will not see each other again, Mr. Lenox, and yet I will scarcely be able to forget you.”

  They shook hands and Sournois left. Lenox spent ten minutes tidying his notes, rewriting them in places, and then felt the boat begin to slow, and finally to stop. There was a voice on deck, and then the boat began to move again.

  As he left the room he caught a glimpse of a roomful of six women, garishly painted, sipping mint tea and speaking to each other in bored voices. There were brothels in London, he knew—innumerable ones—and yet he felt shocked, to see these women, and in some measure as if Africa was responsible. Nonsense, and yet he could not persuade himself otherwise. He wanted to be back in Mayfair suddenly, and then laughed at the desire. How much pride the English took in their empire, and how little they understood its alien ways, its strange, disconcerting newness!

  On deck the mute Egyptian was smoking a European cigar. He nodded when Lenox appeared and then left him alone, vanishing into one of the boat’s many small rooms.

  It was still dark but a pale blue light had begun to rise on the edges of the horizon, pure and deep in color, heralding the day. There was a thin rain beating down, and from the deck Lenox caught a glimpse of Sournois, walking down the small dock where they had left him and toward a beach covered with upturned fishing boats. A great swell of some unnameable feeling—melancholy, perhaps, or homesickness, a longing for Jane—filled Lenox’s breast. He turned and stared at the lightening sky, his gaze there steady until they were back at the docks.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Though it was scarcely half past five, the docks were as busy as midday in Portsmouth. Lenox thought of what Sournois had said about the Suez as a possible broker of peace between France and England.

  He hired one of the donkey carts that lingered around the wharf to fetch him back to the consul’s house.

  When he arrived there were lights in every window and the noise of loud conversations within. He knocked at the door and the butler admitted him.

  “Sir, your presence is requested in—”

  “There you are, Lenox!” said a man behind him. It was Carrow, his face anxious. “Where in Christendom can you have been?”

  Lenox froze, trying to think of a reasonable explanation. “I … didn’t McEwan tell you?”

  “He did, and I asked him how could you possibly have been with friends at this hour. Where were you really?”

  “McEwan was quite right. With friends.”

  Carrow threw up his hands in frustration. “So a madman tries to murder you in your sleep and after escaping with your neck intact, just, you decide to visit with friends? At midnight? For five hours? One might question your judgment.”

  “These friends keep late hours. Egyptians, you see. I was working on behalf of Her Majesty.”

  These were the magic words apparently. “Oh.”

  “In my note I asked you to send someone at eight o’clock, to fetch Billings.”

  Carrow smiled grimly. “Well, you have eighteen of us.”

  “Where is he?”

  The butler, who looked very much like a man who had been woken at irregular intervals throughout the night, answered. “Mr. Billings is secured in the kitchens, under watch.”

  “Is Sir Wincombe awake?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Carrow. “He and Lady Megan are interviewing Billings at the moment, along with an Egyptian boy who brought Billings here for a few coins.”

  Lenox frowned. “Will the boy be punished?”

  “Who can say, in this damned strange country.”

  “I understood Sir Wincombe to mean that he only wished to speak with the boy, Mr. Lenox,” said the butler.

  “Could you fetch me McEwan?” said Lenox.

  “Yes, sir.”

  When he was gone, Lenox said to Carrow, “What are you planning to do with Billings?”

  “Bring him back to England, where they can hang him from a rope by the neck. Is it true he stole into your chambers?”

  “Quite true.”

  “And that you were with Egyptians all night?” Carrow asked doubtfully.

  “Yes, quite true.”

  “Well, I can only thank God you’re safe. Halifax, Martin … there’s been too much bloodshed already.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Carrow. With your permission I mean to return to the Lucy this afternoon, and have the Bootle ferry me to the docks when I need to be on land. I would appreciate it if you could spare two men to accompany me on my rounds, as well, strong ones.” Sournois might have been sincere when he said that Lenox wasn’t in danger, but for his own part Lenox wasn’t willing to take the chance.

  “But Billings is caught. Do you fear Butterworth?”

  “Have you not spoken to Billings?”

  “Why?”

  “I believe Butterworth is dead. Billings said as much. These precautions are for my personal comfort, Mr. Carrow. The situation here is tense.”

  “Say no more. Of course you shall have the men.”

  Lenox put his hands into his pockets. The dagger was still there. “Thank you,” he said.

  McEwan was coming down the stairs now. “There you are, sir,” he said, and he, too, looked as if his night had been sleepless. “I told them you was with your friends, sir.”

  “Ah, thank you, McEwan. Thank you. I think I shall go on saying that for many years to come. Thank you for saving my life. Was Billings troublesome after I left?”

  “He ordered me to unbind him, sir, as my captain. Which I told him he warn’t a captain of mine. Then he cursed me, and then he asked for some food, but I didn’t dare leave him alone. He got some in the end, though, when Sir Wincombe took him down to the kitchens.”

  A feeling of unease stole over Lenox. “And he is still bound?”

  “No, but there are men with him.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  Lenox went downstairs, Carrow and McEwan on his heels. To his relief Billings was seated by the broad hearth of the kitchen table. Over his head was a row of pots and pans, and beneath them a row of bells corresponding to the various rooms of the house.

  “There he is!” Billings bellowed when Lenox came into view. “The man who assaulted me!”

  Carrow laughed. Sir Wincombe looked at Billings and said, “My dear man, it won’t do, it won’t do.”

  But Billings had evidently decided on this as a stratagem. “Invited me to his room and assaulted me! He must have killed Halifax and Martin, too, the bastard!”

  If Billings was bothered by the incredulous faces ranged around the room, staring at him, he didn’t show it. He continued to bellow accusations at Lenox.

  “Tell me again, McEwan,” said Carrow, “how you found these two men?”

  “Mr. Billings had a knife at Mr. Lenox’s throat. And Mr. Billings said he wanted to have his penknife in Mr. Lenox.”

  “What do you say to that, Billings?” asked Carrow in a mild voice.

  “Lies! They both did it! I’ll get you, McEwan, you great cow!”

  Lenox turned to Carrow. “I would feel most comfortable if he were in the brig of the Lucy. Sir Wincombe?”

  “I see no reason why he shouldn’t be transported there.”

  “Thank you. Now, if nobody minds, I need two or three hundred hours of sleep to feel myself again. Sir Wincombe, I fear I must cancel my appointments this morning.”

  “Of course, Mr. Lenox, of course.”

  He slept uneasily, starting out of his rest more than once with a terror. Only when McEwan brought him
a glass of sherry at two that afternoon did his nerves settle. He ate ravenously of the lunch McEwan fetched in afterward, quail roasted golden with honey and raisins, cooked in the local fashion, mashed potatoes, and some of the red currant jelly Lady Jane had sent along with him. A cup of tea finally restored him to himself. It had been a harrowing week, and there was more ahead. The next morning he would meet with Ismail the Magnificent.

  He went back to the Lucy with a feeling of homecoming, her creaking boards and snapping sails. There was a smile from every sailor he saw. His cabin was empty, but McEwan set that straight soon enough, filling his bookshelves and covering his desk.

  When he was settled, he asked McEwan to find his nephew.

  Teddy came into his cabin with an anxious, distracted air, and though he seemed truly happy about Lenox’s survival—word had spread around the ship already, and the sailors held the life of Billings, who was in the brig, very cheap indeed—and enjoyed a cup of tea and a biscuit and spoke with Lenox about his one trip into Port Said, and what he had seen, his mien of distracted worry never left him. Nor could Lenox elicit the mood’s cause. Age, perhaps.

  After he said good-bye to his nephew Lenox took himself to the quarterdeck, where he said hello to the passing officers, including a curt Mitchell and a chatty Pettegree. Strange to think of how the wardroom had changed in only two weeks.

  For the rest of the day he stayed in his cabin and read—first by daylight, and after dusk by candlelight—a memorandum that Chowdery and Arbuthnot had prepared for him on the subject of Ismail the Magnificent.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  In the morning Lenox went across to the docks in the Bootle with four of Carrow’s heartiest, most impressive men, all dressed in their formal uniforms. At the docks were Chowdery, his wife—“She nearly always runs late, but she would not miss this!”—and Arbuthnot, who was rather graver, and who whispered instructions into Lenox’s ear as they stepped into carriages. A detachment of ten British soldiers were with them.

  At the wali’s palace Lenox met with a series of increasingly important gentlemen, who welcomed him and gave him further instructions about his introduction to Ismail.

  As it happened, however, Ismail himself was less formal. He shook Chowdery’s hand, waved off everyone else, and invited Lenox to sit on his balcony alone.

  It was hard to hear words like wali or khedive without picturing an exotic, long-bearded ruler, perhaps erratic in temperament and taste. Ismail was different. He had a short beard and, other than the medals pinned to his chest, wore what any gentleman in Hyde Park or the Place des Vosges might have. In fact the person he most resembled was King Henry the Eighth, or at least the portraits of him. Coffee and a tremendous array of foods were waiting on the balcony, which looked out over the port city.

  In a heavy accent, he said, “I have been to your country several times, Mr. Lenox—yes, and sat with your Victoria, and been inside your Parliament. They gave me the Order of the Bath. But my heart must belong to France. It was there I studied, and it is the French who have built my canal.”

  “I love France as well. I took my honeymoon there.”

  “Ah? Tell me of your wife, sir. She awaits your return in London?”

  A vision of Jane’s loving, calm face appeared in Lenox’s mind. “We were childhood friends, and now we are having a child.”

  “I congratulate you!” Ismail snapped his fingers and a man appeared from the shadows. “Please see that Mr. Lenox receives a present, for his child.”

  The man nodded and bowed his way away from them. “Thank you so much,” said Lenox. “I have brought you—”

  “Wonderful things, I do not doubt. You will have heard I like gadgets. Good. Yet the reason I wished to meet with you—more than a formal meeting, at which we would exchange presents, you understand—is because I know you are on the next ship for London.”

  “Oh?”

  “We need money, Mr. Lenox. Do you see my hands?” He held them out, as if for inspection. “With these hands I have taken my country, ripped it away from Africa, and joined it to Europe. Do you understand the importance of that?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then you will also understand the cost. Opera houses. Industry. The canal, Mr. Lenox. To become European, I had to spend money.”

  This was unusual frankness, Lenox believed, though the facts of Egypt’s debt were widely known. “Yes,” he said cautiously.

  “What will you give me, Mr. Lenox?”

  It was clear that the customary answer to this question, when Ismail posed it, was “My life,” or something close to that. Lenox merely inclined his head. “Certainly I will speak with my colleagues—”

  “We need action. Soon.”

  “Oh?”

  “I would never sell my share in the canal. That may go without saying. But it is in your interest as well as our own that Egypt succeed.”

  A thought dawned on Lenox, then. The wali said that his share in the canal was not for sale—but then, why not? It would take an almost unfathomable amount of money, say three, four, perhaps even five million pounds. But why not spend it? Even from here he could see the canal, crammed with small craft, and then, as Sournois has said, to join England’s interests to France’s …

  “You have my word that Great Britain will support your country, khedive.”

  “Good.”

  The wali rose, extended his hand, and, after they had shaken, walked away, his coffee still warm and untouched in its cup.

  The rest of the day was taken up with meetings with various members of Ismail’s retinue, men who offered various ideas, all of which came down to England buying into the canal, somehow and someway. To Lenox, more and more, it seemed that the idea of buying Egypt’s share outright would be ideal. That was the idea he would take back to Parliament.

  To celebrate the official meeting there was another supper that evening at the consulate, this time with Carrow and his officers in attendance and the traitor, the earl’s son, Ashenden, nowhere to be seen. Lenox inquired after him.

  “He is bound for the interior of the continent, I understand, on very short notice,” said Arbuthnot. “He is a great shooter.”

  “Indeed,” Lenox answered. “I shall have to tell people I have seen him when I’m in London again…”

  There were men of all nationalities present, Egyptian, French, English, American, Dutch. The noise and the pomp were both at high levels, and Lenox followed Sir Wincombe’s speech with a brief address of his own.

  In truth, though, he wanted to be back at sea. The glimpse of Jane he had seen in his mind today had made him long for her, for their house on Hampden Lane, for the mingled chaos and order of life in London. He felt a very long way from home.

  Over the next several days there were more meetings. For the sake of getting to and from them on time he moved back to the consulate after two nights on board the Lucy—the days were too taxing otherwise. At his meetings he heard a great many statistics about customs, about sugar production, about shallow and deep draft vessels. Ismail had been correct: it was, in fact, like Europe here. But when Lenox went back through the streets of Port Said on a tour, he saw that at the same time it was different, and perhaps always would be.

  Finally all of his responsibilities were concluded—an amiable supper with several important Frenchmen, Sournois not in their number. It was the morning of the Lucy’s departure. She was in fine shape, according to McEwan, having taken provisions on board and made a few minor repairs. The representative of the admiralty in Port Said had charged Carrow with returning the ship to England.

  They set out for the Lucy early in the morning, seen off by a not very regretful Chowdery, who looked eager to get back to his library, and his imperious wife, who bestowed on Lenox a small parcel of books and letters that she asked Lenox—with more of the air of an order than a request—to deliver to several addresses in London for her.

  For his part McEwan was carrying a bundle of packages that were larger
than anything he had taken away from the Lucy. Food, Lenox suspected. It was gray and cool as the Bootle carried them through the water. From a thousand yards away it was obvious that the Lucy had been painfully, thoroughly cleaned; she sparkled in her masts and her rigging. An involuntary smile made its way onto Lenox’s face.

  “Welcome!” said Carrow when they came back on board. “You two, help them with the trunk. Yes, you can put down your cocoa, it will still be here in a moment. Go, go.”

  (It had been a surprise to Lenox, who associated the navy so strongly with rum, to discover how strongly affectionate the men felt for their breakfast cocoa and biscuits.)

  “Your work went well on land, Mr. Lenox?” said Carrow.

  “I thank you, Captain, very well.”

  “Excellent. No more trips to shore?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “In that case, gentlemen, all sail set!” Carrow’s voice boomed out, and the men of the Lucy burst into action.

  As for Lenox, he asked McEwan for a cup of tea, and drank it by the taffrail, where he watched Port Said recede very slowly from view, with that occasional feeling one has in life of leaving a place to which one will likely never return.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  The next two weeks of sailing were full of happy, golden days. It was as if the gods of the sea had decided to offer some small compensation for the benighted journey to Egypt, with its murders, its storms, its threat of mutiny. The wind was steady and the sun warm, and all the men were in excellent spirits, both the sailors and the officers.

  Carrow’s presence helped enormously. After three or four days Lenox perceived that the young man had the makings not of a good but of a great captain. Martin had been good; Carrow would exceed him. What had seemed dourness in the third lieutenant now seemed like the poise and reserve of a man with responsibility. There was nothing tentative or halting about him. He commanded by instinct.

  In turn everyone on ship trusted him instinctively, and with good reason: Carrow knew more about sails than the sailmaker; more about the Lucy’s provisions than the purser; could set a mast as well as a forecastleman who had been on the water thirty years; could swab the decks if he had to; could make two provisions of salt beef seem like four; could give a speech; could fight a battle; could set a broken limb; could weather a storm; could laugh with his inferiors without losing their respect; could lead men. The bluejackets no sooner heard his words than they fell to his commands. With a different third lieutenant raised to the captaincy it might have been a different voyage.