by Mark Keating
'To my things! Capitaine Coqsan, if you please?'
'With your permission, Capitaine Bessette?' Devlin smiled.
'Yes, yes! Go now!' Then he added, 'Mademoiselle Bernadette may stay with us.'
'By your leave, Capitaine.' And he joined Dandon back in the surf. Then in confidence, in low English, he queried Dandon's actions. 'Have you done this before, Dandon?'
'I have done everything at least once, Captain,' he muttered into his chest as they dragged the boat from the shore. The sea sucked back the longboat to her realm and they leaped aboard.
Devlin spat the spray from his mouth as he picked up the oars. 'Do you always play at life, Dandon?' he asked, his limbs taking the strain of the sea.
'You have to play at something, Captain.' Dandon smiled, forgetting to pick up his own share of wood.
On returning to the shore with their colourful companions, the party, after brief blushing introductions and curtsies, began the ungraceful trudge up the steep incline from the beach. The early afternoon sun beat mercilessly at the necks and backs of the men, the quintet of ladies protected by elegant flimsy parasols that they twirled as often as they giggled at the leers of the five soldiers.
Devlin and Dandon struggled with the mahogany and walnut case with the brass fittings, barely two foot square, which the soldiers had opened and inspected. They carried and dragged it up the path between them, grateful for the half-logs embedded in the shingle for purchase, but were still exhausted when they reached the crest, only to be told that there was now a downhill walk of another half-mile east.
Abelard Xavier, Bessette's lieutenant, was amused by the two sweating men. At first their appearance had caused apprehension amongst the men and the captain, but now they represented pleasure and relief from the dull days of gardening and watches. They were unarmed, not so much as a clasp knife between them, and had brought with them such lovely, warm, blushing women, perspiring like flowers in the dew.
Mindful of his duty, Abelard stopped at a gap in the path that tumbled down to the beach and gave a clear view of the brigantine in the bay. He ordered one of his men to remain to observe the ship. From this point they were halfway to the barracks, more than enough time for a warning should any party leave the ship.
Reluctantly the man took up the post, permitting his hand to brush briefly across the lavender taffeta dress of Annie as she passed.
Devlin and Dandon exchanged glances over the top of the chest between struggles for air, their eyes conveying as much as words.
A new wave of enthusiasm flowed over the pair when they came to a corner and looked down into a dusty clearing almost a hundred feet below. In the clearing sat a small square stockade, barely large enough for the two L-shaped barracks housed within its log walls.
In the right-hand corner, closest to them, a simple platform with a sailcloth shade rose above the perimeter, serving as a watchtower. A soldier sat beneath the shade, cross-legged, and looked up at their approach.
Nine, thought Devlin. Nine men. Nine shots. His eye fell upon the familiar sight between the barracks, behind a redoubt, of a single small gun, a field gun on iron-spoked wheels - perhaps a nine-pounder or less. One gun. They carried on along the path, moving downwards now, the burning sun almost fanned away by the uplifting fluttering of his heart.
Coxon sipped at his Bordeaux. He sat at his open stern windows, clad in only his shirt, breeches and stockings. That morning he had washed his hair, which had been rank with the smell of salt water and smoke from the small hearth in the galley. An amber carbolic soap that he had picked up in Chatham and was now worn to a sliver had provided the much-needed distraction from his concerns and the perfect companion to his morning ablutions.
His senses absorbed the morning beauty of the Caymans through the open windows. It had always been peaceful in the Caymans. Even the wildlife and sea creatures were otherworldly; he recalled letters he had written suggesting that naturalists should be as prominent as parsons on naval ships above fifth-rate.
The sound of his door swinging open pulled his head from the windows. He passed a taciturn look not at the hulking form of a marine announcing a visitor, but at the black-suited frame of Edward Talton of the Honourable East India Company standing uninvited in his doorway.
'Pardon my interruption, Captain.' Talton was vexed, his glasses steamed. 'But I would like to enquire whether you may have a more efficient pen I could borrow, rather than these apparent chickens' quills I have acquired that break so.'
Coxon ignored his question. 'Mister Talton, did you perceive a lighted lantern outside my cabin?'
'I did, sir, but-'
'And perhaps a stout fellow in clay piping and red?'
'Ah, but-'
'If you did perceive these things, then you should understand that' - his voice rose now to a bellow that caused the surface of his wine to tremble - 'you are to knock before entering my chambers, sir!'
'My apologies, Captain Coxon.' Talton almost cracked his spine resigning himself to a bow. 'I am unfamiliar with your naval customs.'
'I collect it has always been customary to knock before one enters private rooms.'
'Quite.' Talton conceded the point, as if they were agreeing on the rudeness of a third party.
Coxon rose to pull on his white waistcoat draped over the back of a chair, placing down his goblet of wine, his taste for it gone. 'Furthermore,' he lowered his voice as he focused on buttoning half of the seventeen plate buttons, noting with pleasure that some weight had returned to him, 'I expect that whilst you are on board you are to obey me and my officers absolutely. As one day, sir, it may save your life.'
He saw Talton's fishlike mouth droop open, about to protest, but lifted an indignant finger, anticipating his voice. 'Despite the fact that this ship sails by grant of the investment of the company. Do you understand, Mister Talton?'
Talton agreed, anxiously removing his spectacles and cleaning them furiously, sending dazzling reflections of sunlight dancing around the small cabin.
'Please do not blame your man by the door, Captain. My intrusion was too swift for him to question.' He carefully entwined the thin golden arms of his spectacles behind his ears. 'Now, would it be possible to avail myself of a writing instrument?' He held up between his thumb and forefinger the fletchless, ink-stained quill that was the cause of his distress.
Coxon approached and inspected the pen. 'Crow, I perceive.' He took it from Talton and flexed it in his hand. 'Not hardened enough, I'll wager.'
'It is the third of such a type that I have had ruin on me.' Talton sighed.
'I imagine it is part of my duty to ensure that the company's secretary and observer be furnished with appropriate tools…' Coxon's voice trailed off, diplomatic and polite again, noting the pride that he saw rising in Talton's thin mouth.
Coxon moved over to his writing desk with its pewter wells and green leather surface. From a narrow drawer he picked out a quill, the fletch removed save for a few feathers at the very end for dusting the paper. With some ceremony he presented the expensive pen that had once belonged to the left wing of a Suffolk spring swan.
Talton, visibly pleased, gratefully acknowledged the loan. He declined the volunteering of ink, bowed and reversed out of the cabin. Coxon had no objection to the loss of the quill, the whole desk and its contents being originally Guinneys' official bureau, and he smiled accordingly.
Moving to pick up his wine again, he casually passed his eye across the chart laid out upon the table. A solid black line reaching from the Caymans plotted them to the island in less than five hours' time. Luncheon. Designating boarding parties, gunner captains, checking shot garlands - and then head to him with all malice.
Coxon knew Devlin was already there. A few short weeks ago the whole scenario seemed merely the fancy of Whitehall, but there had been times when pacing on the quarterdeck alone, the feeling of a heaviness in the air seemed to drift off the still waters. A tight feeling across the chest born of expectation. The same fe
eling he felt moments before the cry 'Sail ho!' brought a line of French frigates across the horizon.
How strangely his fate had shifted. By now he had imagined himself closeted in a few rented rooms in Portsmouth on half-pay, brought down to master and commander or, worse, paid off altogether; unable to recover from the loss of the Noble, ending up as an old sot bestowing wisdom on young officers in exchange for noggins of rum.
Now he was watching the sea rise and fall from the stern windows as the Starling ploughed along at five knots running off the wind. Post-captain still. Honour would be restored; position retained. Life in the bell jar he loved.
Luncheon. A side of dried beef, soaked in salt water for two days until it became almost palatable, sauerkraut, carrots and shelled peas. All wasted on Guinneys, who nibbled at shavings of beef upon ship's biscuit, but drained enough wine for three courses seemingly without effect.
Coxon asked his first lieutenant to dine with him as this would probably be the last meal they ate this day, now they were but three hours from the island.
Coxon maintained his old habit of cutting off a slice of beef to keep in his coat pocket along with his own compass, a precaution against the unknown of tomorrow, and he shared this with Guinneys.
'Amusing so,' Guinneys said. 'I have often seen common seamen hiding tack upon themselves before a fleet action. You reveal your background too much, Captain!' He smiled kindly.
'Why do you dislike me so, William?' Coxon stared straight at him, masticating violently against the almost wooden beef. The question was meant to shock, a shot across Guinneys' bows to aggravate and draw out an honest response. He had expected Guinneys to reply with a denial, a simpering, snorting retort. Instead Guinneys placed down his glass with a chime of crystal.
'I suppose it may be because you are not a gentleman, Captain,' he said.
'Explain?' Coxon spoke through his beef, strangely satisfied by the answer.
'Well, you have the rolling gait of a sailor, not the strut of an officer born. You do not hunt, which I'm afraid I do not understand at all. But mostly it is because you are a post- captain. And since you are not a gentleman, that means you must have done some great deed of war whilst I must now rot in peacetime whoring myself to these damned company men waiting for you, or someone like you, to die off.'
His glass fairly flew to his mouth; he closed his eyes as he drained it, putting it down with a grimace. 'Damn! St James, my arse! Where do they dredge this stuff from?'
'Thank you, William. I hope you do not get your wish.'
'What wish is that, sir?' Guinneys wiped his mouth, genuinely enquiring with wide eyes, as if he had missed something.
For the second time that day, Coxon's door swept open unannounced and, without apology or doffing of hat, the sixteen-year-old midshipman Thomas Howard scuffed into the room skidding like a dog on a marble floor.
'Surgeon sent me, sir!' he squealed and, not waiting for reproach from the two angry faces, bravely dropped his tone to declare, 'It's Mister Talton, Captain. He's dead, sir!'
Coxon had spent almost a fortnight in the rear quarters of the lower deck on the way from Cape Coast Castle with Edward Talton. They shared a common narrow corridor, divided by wooden and hemp walls. Doors almost as thin as gaming cards separated him from Talton and Midshipman Howard. Coxon welcomed the closeness of the windowless cubbyholes, the flimsy folds. Here was solitude.
Talton had now found his own solitude.
Surgeon Richard Wood sat on the narrow cot that doubled as a locker, mopping his brow fervently. The heat was stifling, the air like sawdust. Coxon filled the door frame, Guinneys' head strained a view over his shoulder. Midshipman Howard fidgeted behind them, both wanting to see and afraid to do so again.
Talton sat in his shirt at the fold-down desk that clipped out of the wall, his cuffs tucked under, pen still in his right hand, his head hanging to his chest.
The tortoiseshell lamp was swinging with the sea, giving his shadow an eerie animation in the gloom, back and forth across the paper.
'Who found him?' Coxon asked in a whisper.
'Midshipman Howard. Not ten minutes ago, Captain.'
Surgeon Wood sighed the words in his lowland, melancholy Scots. He was the archetypal image of a navy surgeon too old to be at sea, too old to be successful on land. With a shiny bald pate above a distinguished set of gold pince-nez, he dressed like a farmer going to church and cut men like a tailor getting paid by the yard.
Coxon had turned round to look at Howard, and spoke softly to him. The boy was visibly shaken. His hat was slanted, his freckled face red and swollen.
'How did you come to find him, Thomas?'
Thomas Howard gathered himself instantly at his captain's voice. He explained that he had been late on watch, that Lieutenant Anderson had punished him by having him pick oakum all morning. His hands and wrists cramped like hell and, begging your pardon, sir, he had gone to his cabin to pity himself somewhat.
Talton's door had been ajar but the noise of the pen that filled his days was absent and Howard had cadged a peek, to his horror. No more keyholes for Thomas Howard after that lesson, Captain. No, sir.
Lieutenant Scott stumbled into the corridor; news had swabbed the deck faster than forty hands. Coxon shifted back to the door and almost stepped through Guinneys, who stayed silent and watchful.
'What killed him, Mister Wood?' Coxon asked.
'He wasn't killed, Captain. He just died.' Wood rose with tired difficulty.
'Of what, would you say?'
'I don't know.' He sighed mournfully, removing his half- framed spectacles and pinching his bridge. 'A failure of some kind. He's not marked. No injury. He just died.'
Guinneys shook his head. 'To think I heard him scribbling away not more than an hour ago. Before lunch. I was taking of some water from the scuttle-butt for that poxed vegetation in my hole that I'm damned if I can get to do anything but wilt.' He tutted at his lack of horticultural ability. 'It must be the lack of light. Perhaps I should cloister it next to the coop. Out of the way.'
Coxon looked around the room absently. Guinneys' prattling was barely audible, or worth attention. He had not liked Talton. No one had. And damn him now. Hours away from retribution and a company man dies in his lap.
'No burial until tomorrow, Doctor. Too much to do today.'
'Aye, Captain.'
Surveying the cramped room, he looked over Talton's shoulder. A pile of letters by his left hand. His large effeminate hand plainly readable. A letter to a Mrs Williams.
Was Bath still as nice as he remembered? Were her daughters married yet? And were there any new dogs that he did not know about? And on and on, and then Coxon froze.
His eyes had travelled from the papers on the left to the hand that wrote them on the right, lying pale upon a fresh blank page. The blood ran cold to his feet. Without hesitation he swung round to the scant hook that held Talton's short black velvet coat.
'Best rule out if Mister Howard's hands are as wandering as his eyes.' His arm had reached the coat before he had finished speaking. 'Purse present. Tobacco present…' He tentatively picked his way through the pockets. 'No offence, Mister Howard. Back to your watch.'
'Thank you, Captain.' Howard gratefully walked out of the corridor, shuffling past Scott and Guinneys; then the sound of his feet went rattling up the companion ladder as fast as hail.
Coxon smiled at Guinneys and Scott. 'We were all sixteen once, eh, lads? Doctor, would you like to attend to some men to remove this body, if you please?'
'Aye, Captain.' The two men stepped into the corridor.
'William' - Coxon laid his palm on Guinneys' shoulder - 'would you secure this room once Mister Talton has been sequestered below?'
'Of course, Captain.' Guinneys tapped his head.
'I will be in my cabin, sorrowfully recording this event. Gentlemen, if you please.' Coxon was already climbing to the upper deck before he had finished speaking. He was greeted with the traditional flurry of acti
vity whenever the captain's head appeared, but instead of continuing to his coach he stayed by the companion hatch and looked about him.
He had felt the instinctive swell of the water, the keel rising a little more than previously, and he tramped up to the quarterdeck, nodding to the timoneer at the helm, saluting the midshipmen and Sailing Master Dawson before expectantly looking up to the topmast with a shielded hand at the man aloft. No cry came, and he hoped the distraction would ease the thought that was rising uncomfortably in his mind. He leaned over the rail and looked fore to the bow, carving through the waves like a carpenter's plane, curling out spirals of sea along the strakes like wood shavings. He stared until his eyes could no longer take the peppering of salt-spray spitting up from below and the thought could no longer be ignored.
He moved amidships, ignoring the salutes that greeted almost every step, the bodies making themselves both busy and invisible before him. He clasped his hands behind him to hide the tremble that rattled through them.
'The door had been ajar.' Thomas Howard's words had flown past him at first, only returning when he spied the broken crow quill that Talton had shown him not an hour earlier perched in his dead right hand.
The exclusive swan pen was still nestling in Talton's coat. Coxon had felt the tip of the fletch and glimpsed a flash of white. Yet Guinneys had heard him writing.
He tried to imagine the act of Talton removing his coat and ignoring the elegant pen his captain had bestowed upon him and then sitting at his writing place and picking up a broken nib and musing on the variety of ink blots he was about to create. Yet Guinneys had heard him writing.
The Starling hit a rogue wave. His thoughts were broken by the sudden rise of the deck, the clutching of lifelines by barefooted men, the sway of the horizon as the Starling regained her hold upon the water like a horse on turf after the gate.
All ears filled with the cries of the bosun hailing out to the watch to regain their point of wind as the leeway shifted through everyone's feet; then came a cry from the topsail reverberating through the caller's speaking trumpet, the cry Coxon knew was imminent when he'd felt the keel rise beneath him as tides met.