by Jay Worrall
In his cabin, Charles stood while Attwater helped him into a fresh shirt, then he sank cautiously and gratefully into a chair at the table. The pain along his side was just manageable so long as he made no attempt to change his position and was careful not to breathe too deeply. Penny busied herself tending to Claudette. When the child was settled, she spoke with Attwater about having hot soup prepared for Charles, and making sure her husband stayed in his chair and did not exert himself.
Charles was not worried about exerting himself. He didn’t think he would be capable of rising if he wanted to.
“Thou art comfortable?” Penny said when they were alone.
“I don’t know if I would say ‘comfortable,’ ” Charles answered. “I do know that I’m not moving.”
She sat in the chair on his right side and took his hand in hers. “I am sorry that I spoke harshly with thee before,” she said. “It was shameful of me. I want thee to know that I appreciate thou rescuing us. I only wish it were not necessary.”
“You’d better apologize to Stephen,” Charles said with a chuckle that he instantly suppressed. “I think you frightened him more than the French ever would.”
“I was angered,” she said. “Stephen Winchester was not responsible. I shall speak with him and ask his forgiveness.”
“I’m sorry about Molly,” Charles said. “For all the world, I would have prevented it were it in my power. I admired her also.”
“And Jacob Talmage?” she said.
“And Talmage,” Charles answered.
She rose from her chair. “If thou can manage, I will visit with Daniel Bevan to see if I can comfort him. I will put thee to bed on my return.”
“What about Claudette?” Charles said, eyeing the girl dubiously, thinking he might be called on to tickle her.
“Timothy Attwater will attend to her when he returns. Please be sure that she has something to eat.”
“On your way, would you ask Winchester to call on me at his earliest convenience?” Charles said. “Tell him I would appreciate a report on the condition of our little flotilla.”
“YOU’RE NOT SERIOUS,” Charles said.
“I’m decided, Charlie,” Bevan answered. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. I don’t like being a ship’s commander. I’m resigning my commission; in fact, I have already written the letter to send on to Gibraltar.”
Charles and Bevan sat at the table in Charles’s cabin, Bevan’s crutch leaning against its edge. Penny had withdrawn to put Claudette down for the night. Charles listened to his friend’s words, but he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was heresy of the highest order. Commanding one’s own ship and making post were the whole point.
“Daniel,” he said, “I know you’re upset. Losing Molly is a blow to us all. But don’t throw away your whole career because of it.”
“It’s not because of Molly,” Bevan said patiently. “At least not in the way you think. I’ve never liked being a ship’s commander. I told you this before, when we were at the rendezvous waiting for Nelson. Don’t you remember?”
Charles nodded. “I remember. You were daft then, and you’re daft now.”
“No, I’m not, Charlie. I’m not good at it. I worry about every little detail, so much that I can’t sleep. Molly and I had talked about this. I was going to quit anyway and find a place where we could be together.”
“Jesus, Daniel,” Charles said. “What will you do? Where are you going to go?”
“There’s not much point in buying a farm now,” Bevan said. “However, I recall that I slept quite well as the first lieutenant on Louisa.”
Charles stared uncomprehending at his friend. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you should send Winchester to Gibraltar with Pylades and the prize. You could even give him leave so that he can see Penny safely home and visit with his own wife and child. I’ve already spoken with him. He’s agreeable if you are.”
“Then who would be my first?”
Bevan smiled. “You could enter me as a volunteer for the time being,” he said.
Penny came out from the sleeping cabin. “Shhh,” she said. “Speak softly, Claudette is asleep.”
“Did you know that Daniel has decided to resign his commission?” Charles said.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “What a very good idea. Others should follow his example.”
“PLEASE CONVEY MY fondest congratulations to Ellie,” Charles said, standing on the recently tidied quarterdeck of the former Republican national frigate Embuscade. The afternoon before, the French wounded had been carried below, where they were looked after by Pylades’s surgeon and confined along with the rest of the crew. The Union flag of Great Britain had been hoisted above the French tricolor on the mizzen, signifying that she was a captured prize.
After Charles’s discussions with Bevan, he had agreed to send the crippled Pylades and the frigate to Gibraltar under Winchester’s command, carrying Penny and Nelson’s dispatches with them. There was no time for him to see to the repair of the brig’s masts if he was to overhaul his admiral before the squadron reached Egypt. The solution he had settled on was to transfer most of Pylades’s crew to Embuscade and have the frigate tow the brig. He took off a few of Bevan’s former crew to bring Louisa up to her complement. In exchange, he sent Sergeant Cooley and all but a corporal and a half dozen of his marines over to keep order among the French prisoners.
With nothing else to say, he reluctantly moved to stand in front of Penny. Finding the right words was difficult. “I’m going to miss you,” he offered. He knew from her expression that she was unhappy. He also knew that it wasn’t only because they were about to separate. After Bevan had left, they’d spoken of little else the night before.
“I still do not wish thee to go on to Egypt,” she said. “I wish thee to return home to heal thy injury.”
“I appreciate your concern,” he answered. “Under other circumstances, I would consider it. Please understand that I must do this. There is no one who can take my place.”
“I understand perfectly,” Penny said, unsmiling. “But I do not agree.”
“Then those are the terms on which we must part,” Charles said stiffly. “Please hold up Claudette so that I may say good-bye to her.”
Penny bent, hoisted the child into her arms, and straightened. “ Au revoir, my little one,” Charles said. He carefully leaned forward from the waist and kissed the child on her cheek. “Be a good girl for Mama.”
“Gud-bye, Sharrle,” Claudette said with a small tear in the corner of her eye. She held out her arms to embrace him. Charles leaned a little farther forward, which brought a pain from his wounded side. He held the pose for only a minute, with the child’s arms around his neck, before, with a sharp intake of breath, he pulled away.
“I must return to my ship and you to England,” Charles said to Penny, unhappy at the tension between them. Not knowing what to do or say, he nodded to her, then turned toward the chair in which he would be swayed over the rail and back down into Louisa’s cutter, waiting alongside.
Penny placed Claudette back on the deck and came after him. He stopped. “Charles Edgemont,” she whispered, taking his arm, “go and do what thou must do. Take my tenderness and caring with thee. Know that my heart goest where thou goest. I will look for thy return when thou art free to do so.”
Charles put his arm around her and held her close. “Never doubt that I love you more than anything on earth,” he said. He stepped to the chair, sat carefully, and signaled that he be hoisted away.
ELEVEN
“EVERY STITCH OF CANVAS SHE’LL CARRY, DANIEL,” Charles said as soon as he was set down on Louisa’s deck. “East-by-southeast.”
“East-by-southeast, if you please, Mr. Eliot,” Bevan said, leaning on his crutch.
“Aye, Mr. Bevan,” Eliot answered with a broad smile. “And, may I say, it’s good to have you back. It’s like old times, to my way of thinking.”
“The pleasure is all mine,”
Bevan said. “Besides which, someone has to see to it that you tend to your duties.”
Charles did not find himself in the mood for lighthearted banter. He’d slept little the night before due to the pain along his ribs, which now throbbed as if someone were trying to drive a spike into his side with a mallet. He looked forward and saw Keswick blow on his call, signaling the topmen aloft to let fall the canvas. The waisters soon came pounding up the ladderways to take their places on the halyards and clew lines. Amid the immaculately organized confusion, the sails billowed down like descending curtains, to be tautened and braced around to catch the breeze. Almost immediately, he felt the deck begin to move beneath his feet. With a strong, steady westerly wind on her starboard quarter, Louisa would fly.
Feeling satisfied but drained, he walked to the port side rail and looked outward. He saw Embuscade already sliding rearward, a half cable’s length away. He picked out Penny behind the railing and raised his hat to wave it. Penny waved back, then bent to lift Claudette so that she could see. “Write to me,” Charles started to shout, but filling his lungs for the effort brought a jolt of pain. “Write,” he muttered to himself as the frigate, the almost mastless Pylades in tow, drifted farther and farther astern. As the figures on Embuscade’s quarterdeck grew indistinguishable, he replaced his hat. A kind of emptiness came over him.
“I’m going below, Daniel,” he said. “Call me for any reason you think necessary.”
“All right, Charlie,” Bevan said, then tilted his head skyward to study the set of the sails above.
Comfortable at least that his ship was in good hands, Charles descended the ladderway, placing his feet one at a time on the steps and holding tightly to the rail with his right hand. He acknowledged the sentry at the door and passed into his cabin. “Attwater,” he called wearily.
“Yes, sir?” his steward answered, emerging from the small room to the side where his bed hung.
“Help me with my coat, will you? I can’t seem to manage.”
With Attwater’s assistance, Charles pulled his right arm out of its sleeve but had to have the garment lowered to slide below his left arm, which hung more or less uselessly by his side. He found he could move the limb if he had to, but doing so brought a sharp protest from his damaged muscles. Without prompting, Attwater unbuckled the belt that held Charles’s sword and hung it from its peg on the bulkhead.
“It ain’t the same without Mrs. Edgemont not being here, ain’t it, sir,” his steward said.
“No,” Charles said, guessing that was the answer Attwater wanted.
“Can’t I get you a mug of coffee?” Attwater asked, clearly trying to be cheerful.
“Thank you, no. I only want to rest.” Charles pushed a chair back from the table with his foot and lowered himself carefully into it.
“I’ll just fetch you a bowl of nice ’ot soup, then. Don’t you need something in you.”
“It’s not necessary,” Charles said. “I’m not hungry. I’ll just sit here for a bit.”
“I’ll get the soup anyway, and some biscuit,” Attwater insisted. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve lost a mess of blood, and ain’t you as pale as a sheet. I won’t be a minute.”
Charles was too tired to argue. “Fine,” he said.
With his servant departed, he took a look around the cabin. The room seemed oppressively empty and quiet with Penny and Claudette and all their things gone. He half expected to see his wife emerge from the sleeping cabin or to hear the child’s excited giggles. He raised his right hand off the table and wiggled his fingers as if to tickle, but no sounds came.
When Attwater returned, Charles obediently ate his soup and drank a tankard of small beer. “Didn’t Mrs. Edgemont not order me to see that you don’t get your nourishment and your rest,” the steward told him at least a half-dozen times. From the way that Attwater went on, Charles decided Penny must have put the fear of God into him on the subject. The thought improved his spirits. Afterward, he allowed himself to be helped into his bed and was asleep before Attwater had his shoes off.
LOUISA DID FLY over the seemingly vast, unbounded sea. With an unvarying westerly wind, she made twelve and even thirteen knots, by the casting of the log, hour by hour and day by day. They shortened sail only at night after the third day, for fear they might run upon the stern of one of the lumbering seventy-fours in the darkness, or else pass them completely by.
Charles and Bevan soon resumed their long-established and easy relationship. Sometimes, Charles thought, it was as if Bevan had never been gone. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself as he hobbled across the deck on his crutch and one good leg to bellow out orders or point to some deficiency of workmanship. Then he would hobble back to rest on a chair lashed to a ringbolt near the wheel and offer good-humored comments about whatever entered his mind. Except, Charles knew, when his memories of Molly intruded. Then he would stare silently out at the sea until a new object for his attention presented itself.
As they ran, they made repairs to damage inflicted during the boarding of Embuscade and the final touches to the rigging. By the fourth day, thanks to Bevan’s efforts, Louisa was as trim and shipshape as she had ever been. Charles found that he took no small pleasure in looking at her when everything was proper and in its place. She was a beautiful, living presence, with a spirit of her own. Gradually, his strength began to return, so he spent longer hours on deck, although he could still not do anything strenuous involving his left side or arm. Getting up from a chair or sitting down was also an adventure best engaged in cautiously. To lower himself into bed, he welcomed assistance.
He and Bevan took to having their suppers together most evenings, which helped assuage the emptiness left by Penny’s departure. One evening when the two men were alone in the cabin, Charles asked his friend how he was getting along.
“You mean my leg?” Bevan said. “It gets a little better day by day.”
“No,” Charles said. “I mean without Molly. How are you getting along with Molly gone?”
“Oh, yes,” Bevan answered, looking out through the stern windows. “I miss her, of course. I miss her badly. But you know, your life is what it is. You decide for yourself whether it makes you happy or sad. She always said, ‘Your life ain’t nothing if you ain’t happy in it.’ I’m not happy that she’s gone. I’m blessed that I knew her.”
On their fifth day, shortly after noon, a cry came down from the lookout in the fore crosstrees: “Deck there. I see sails two points to starboard off the for’ard bow.”
“Ask him how many,” Charles said to Bevan. To Eliot he said, “Two points to starboard, if you please.”
Bevan bellowed up into the tops. The lookout answered hesitantly, “I can just see their t’gallants, zur. I see two … might be three … I see more, could be any number.”
“That’ll be Nelson, unless I miss my guess,” Charles said. “Mr. Sykes, would you see to the hoisting of the recognition signal, please.”
Within the hour, the lookout had counted fifteen sail, thirteen of them ships of the line. The recognition signal had been answered and another set of flags, relayed by the rearmost seventy-four, ordered them to close on the flagship. Charles could just see the distant white rectangles each time Louisa’s stern rose on the crest of a wave. By the end of the afternoon watch, the ponderous warships were visible from their hulls up, mountains of canvas on their masts, the fleet spread over the now-crowded horizon.
As they passed Majestic to port, Charles saw the figure of Captain Westcott on her quarterdeck and raised his hat. Westcott waved his own in return. Vanguard was visible several ships ahead.
Charles nodded to Beechum in the waist, and the first gun of the salute to the rear admiral’s flag boomed out. On the count of five, the second cannon fired its powder charge and lurched inward. Then the third. On the thirteenth gun of the salute, signal bunting soared up the flagship’s halyards. Charles knew what it said; he’d expected it.
“Captain to report on board,
” Bevan observed.
“Yes,” Charles said. “Prepare to heave to and have the gig hoisted out.” He tested his left arm tentatively. It was growing stronger daily, but he didn’t want to stress it. “I think I’d best be lowered down in a sling.”
“A sorry lot we are,” Bevan said, thumping his crutch on the deck. “Two old cripples.” Charles smiled.
Vanguard took in most of her sails, came to, and laid her fore topsail against its mast. Charles’s gig skipped across the water to come to a halt under the two-decker’s tall side, where they found a chair swung down from the main yardarm. “Must have seen you needed assistance getting down to yer boat,” Williams observed.
“I expect you’re right,” Charles said, seating himself. “Please wait alongside. I don’t think I’ll be long.”
“Captain Edgemont,” Admiral Nelson greeted him as he was set down on the deck. “I see that you are impaired, sir. I trust it is not serious.”
“More painful than serious, sir,” Charles said, touching his hat. “We were obliged to board a French frigate upon leaving Syracuse harbor. I’ve prepared a report on the incident.” He removed an envelope from his coat pocket and held it out.
“My word,” Nelson said. “I’ll read it later, if you agree.” He took the paper and waved it in front of him. “Does this require any action on my part?”
“No, sir,” Charles said. “I’ve sent the prize on to Gibraltar with Pylades.”
Nelson pocketed the document. “I shall certainly read it as soon as I am able,” he said. “But for now we’ve only the moment. I make it that we are two days out from Alexandria. I thought it important to acquaint you with my thinking for the coming battle.”