Below deck, there was no staying still unless the person was anchored in place, for the decks became elusive, replaced by whatever whimsicality gravity offered them, flinging the sailors this way and that.
There was no mercy in the February wind, no grace in the whitecaps, only fury and gale-force vengeance. The air all around Stirling was thick with a briny mist, enveloping him with a nightcap mantle of spray and the whiplashes of the bursting gusts.
The universe was one single point. That was how he felt. As the ship rocked violently almost to the tipping point, everything he was, had been, or ever would be was concentrated into a tiny string of moments, each one lasting longer than the last. It was as if in that moment he was truly born and about to die shortly thereafter.
The wind felt strong enough to pick up a man and fling him over the sides of the ship into the swirling watery mass beyond. All of Stirling’s senses were maxed out, every muscle already working beyond normal capacity and still there was no end in sight.
He had only recently regained full use of his legs thanks to Clementine’s sweet ministrations. Would God now take his life from him as repayment for this short but sweet gift? What of Clementine? How could she survive another moment of melancholy when word would reach Constantinople of the Renown’s demise?
Total darkness prevailed as the dismal clouds continued to overcast the caliginous sky. The wind whipped fiercer than before, causing the waves to tower over the helpless ship. Stirling knew they were caught. There was no way out. This was the end.
As the entire wooden frame jolted, Stirling grabbed a bollard, saving himself from being tossed over the side. Fear weaved through his stomach. The sensation stood in such contrast to the sweet flutters he had felt when Clementine had agreed to his proposal of marriage. He could not bear it anymore - this feeling of complete uselessness in the face of overwhelming force.
He wanted to let go of his hold and let the world claim his life like it had done to so many of his comrades in battle. Seeing the next upsurge soaring to the heavens before him, Stirling knew he wouldn’t survive the next monstrous wave in the making. It rose up with dreadful purpose, blotting out everything else.
Unlike the first one of a similar magnitude, this one already broke on the summit. The ship would not have the same good fortune of getting there before it came crashing down.
On cue and in concert with their destiny, the man standing behind the wheel started to pray. When Stirling looked in his direction, he saw the Captain miming the sailor’s words.
“O Almighty and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things which thou commandest; through Jesus Christ our Lord - Amen.
We beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord - Amen.”
There was no way out. This was the end. When the man in charge turns to God alone, all is lost. Stirling braced himself as the HMS Renown listed to one side and vanished into the swell. Water rose up all around him like an impenetrable wall. The screams of the men belonging to the largest navy in the world drowned into a watery grave – their voyage to Davy Jones’ Locker had begun.
“Clementine, I love you. May we meet again in heaven.”
BLACKNESS!
Chapter 31
She woke with a start. Close by, Sally slept on her bed. Clementine immediately tried to find solace in her steady breathing and the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Yet, the rhythmic motion only reminded her of that which eluded her.
She closed her eyes, at the same time, forcing her mind to settle. Still listening to her friend’s breathing, she soon found herself in that state which described itself as partial sleep. It was when the body thought it was at rest but the mind fought, creating images that seemed like veritable dreams, but were not.
On cue, angry and worried thoughts flooded through her. She saw celestial bands in the heavens. Were they stars stringed together, lighting the night sky? No! Her mind screamed in an attempt to tell that she was not asleep.
Terror coursed over her, coaxing forth the lowest hell, resounding with the howling of despair. Clementine saw men being thrown this way and that as the world around them offered dreary, watery abodes of pain and horror. Her eyes snapped open again, yet the vision remained.
It was dark in the room. Next to her, Sally whimpered in her sleep, shifting her weight to one side. Clementine breathed heavily. She did not know whether she was awake or not. Her brain continued to work hard and fast, drawing her in, to a place where she did not want to be.
The heavenly groups she had at first beheld were not the sweet twinkling of stars or even the romantic luminance of the moon. They were stabs of lightning being hurled down onto the world with malicious force.
Clementine tried her upmost to piece everything together – she asked herself what was it that she was seeing. It was then when her vision focused.
She saw a lonesome ship in a black, undulating void that propelled it any way it wanted to. There was no logic to the vessel’s movements, just the pushing and pulling as if it were a message in a bottle without port or destination.
That was when she saw him – Stirling, standing on the bridge of a frigate or a sloop or a corvette. He was alone. She smiled briefly when she realized that he had fully regained the use of his legs. The respite was short lived.
A towering wall of water rose up all around him, dragging the ship lower into a valley in the middle of the sea. It remained there, not moving, as if it was teasing Clementine into believing that it found itself in a safe haven of sorts.
On the towering wall of water’s summit, white frothing emerged, gradually growing until it resembled a charge of white stallions galloping down a hill. The ship turned to face this terrible onslaught. A hellish cacophony that sounded like the pounding of thousands of hooves on a hard ground filled Clementine’s ears – the ship was no more.
Clementine screamed her lungs out after that. Sally woke, rushing to her friend’s side. She immediately started stroking Clementine’s head and whispered soothing words with little coos of her voice, like she was comforting a swaddling babe. They remained glued to one another until Clementine broke away.
“He is gone, Sally,” she said.
“Who is gone? What are you talking about? It was only a nightmare.”
“No, I saw him on board ship. It was horrible. There was a storm and the vessel floundered. My Stirling is no more.”
“No, I don’t believe that. Close your eyes,” Sally ordered.
Clementine did her bidding, letting her eyelids drop. Not listening to a word Sally was saying, she allowed her mind to drift once more.
Soft sensations of eternal love crept over her. They stood in such contrast to what she had felt before. Where there had once been evil and death, there was a warm glow stroking her insides.
Clementine tried to focus her thinking, anything to again conjure up an image of the man she loved. The pleasant sensation in her stomach grew stronger with every beat of her heart. She smiled. True love was eternal no matter what happened. Clementine always knew that, but on that night, she truly experienced it.
It was as if space and time became the finest point imaginable. Time collapsed into one tiny speck, becoming irrelevant. It was as if her entire universe began and ended with Stirling. He was all that mattered and all that ever would matter.
He was the sky and the clouds, the gentle river and the birds that sung like on the day he had proposed to her. Clementine could feel him in the air, stroking her skin with tender fingers. He called out to her from the abyss, a divine message, telling her not to worry any longer.
After that, she opened her eyes. “Stirling is alive,” she croaked.
“Of course he is, Clementine. He is on his way to England.”
“No, Sa
lly, not for a while yet.”
“What do you mean?” Sally pulled away and stared at her friend in the darkness.
“I don’t know. All that matters is that Stirling is all right.”
The two nurses snuggled under the covers together both happy to have the other so close. It did not take long for them both to slip into the sweet realms of slumber. The nightmare from before did not return. Instead, Clementine sat close to a stream listening to the birds in the trees. It was a beautiful spot that she did not recognize. However, it did not matter for she knew it was in England.
* * *
“God, where am I?”
Stirling heard a crashing sound close to him. He tried to move but the effort was too great. He gritted his teeth, eliciting a crunching sound. The sides of his mouth and his tongue were parched and covered with something gritty. He groaned as he spat. There was no moisture in his mouth that was filled with a briny taste. He felt as if he had just swallowed a spoon laden to the brim with salt.
“The ship! I am drowning.” But there was no water, just a moderately soft surface and heat all around him.
“I should be feeling cold,” he croaked. “The wave – it came upon us – I saw it.” He moved his hands and balled them into fists. He frowned. A silky substance made up of millions of little grains slipped through his fingers.
With effort, he managed to open his eyelids a crack. It felt as if weights had been suspended from the lashes. Blinding light seared his eyeballs the moment they parted, forcing him to close them again. On his next attempt, Stirling lifted his arm until his hand hovered in front of his face. This time, the glare was not as potent. It took him a moment to become accustomed to the sunlight, nearly forcing him to sneeze on more than one occasion.
The rhythmic rush of water was continuous. A little further afield, Stirling saw the white crash of the waves onto the shore. He lay on a beach beneath the scorching midday sun. After only a few more heartbeats, he realized that he must have been washed ashore by the huge waves belonging to the storm.
The clouds had miraculously disappeared. The sky was a pristine blue. Above him the occasional seagull hung in the air in mid-flight. Stirling gradually adopted a sitting position. He gulped when he swivelled his head to the left and right.
In both directions, there was nothing other than miles and miles of endless beach. When he centred his head, a blue expanse stretched out before him like a shimmering aquatic carpet. It amazed him how something so magnificent could also be so vile.
Where the hell was he? The last he’d heard was that the HMS Renown had been sailing off the Algerian coast belonging to France’s North African Empire – maybe that was where he had washed ashore.
Stirling tried to recreate a map of the region in his mind. He remembered that the capital was the city of Algiers – wherever that was. With a moan, he looked behind him. What little knowledge he had of the place was confirmed. The land was magical and seductive and at the same time hostile, rugged and lethal.
He was lost somewhere between the Atlantic coastline where the French Empire ended in the west of Africa and the Ottoman Empire to the east in Libya. That was the case if Algeria was actually where he was stranded. It had to be. There was no other option. When the storm had hit them, the ship was far away from the European mainland.
He instinctively knew that the dominant north-western mountain range filling out the horizon behind him was the Tell Atlas range. It stretched for more than 370 miles eastward from the Moroccan border. The high plateau area, referred to by the French name Hautes Plaines, or Hauts Plateaux consisted of undulating, steppe-like plains lying between the Tell and Saharan Atlas ranges.
Like the scaling on a sleeping dragon, the elevation dropped from something between 3,600 to 4,300 feet in the west, to about 1,300 feet in the east. Judging by the height of the range before him, Alistair estimated that he had washed ashore closer to the east than the west.
Moving his tongue that felt like a rough bit of leather around in his mouth, he was reminded of how thirsty he was. The climate was so dry. It was as if the undulating steppe-like plains were a part of the Sahara beyond.
It was a cruel twist of fate to have survived the Charge of the Light Brigade, the bitter ignominy and fear of believing to never being able to walk again and a savage Mediterranean tempest to die alone on a deserted beach.
Slowly, Stirling lay back until his back touched the sand again. He was exhausted. From his short perusal of the lay of the land there was nothing he could use to make a shelter. Right then, it did not seem necessary but he knew when night came that the temperatures would drop. Gradually, his eyes slipped shut.
He did not sleep. He was stuck between being fully awake and dreaming. He had no concept of time. It was like living in a scorched purgatory. The ground felt as if it was sucking him down into the depths of hell. He tried to fight the growing feeling of despair his nervous mind was giving him. Yet, there was nothing he could think of that might alter his predicament. He was doing to die of thirst and soon.
As time went by, Stirling hung in limbo between wishing for something positive to happen and wanting to die and be free of the torment that was growing with each beat of his heart.
His hair felt so heavy, like it was sucking him into the sand. Each heartbeat lasted for minutes. His mind trapped in nothingness, the surrounding environs its home, slowly torturing his sanity toward a slow and agonizing death.
He thought of screaming for salvation, but he knew that it would never come. And besides, he would have only managed a meagre croak because the inside of his mouth was so dry. It seemed as if centuries had passed since his last drink of water…
…Millennia since the last time he held Clementine in his arms – that was when he wanted to cry, to beg, to pray to God that he gift him one more moment with the woman he loved. The dark side of him pleaded for his body to succumb like those of his shipmates during the storm – Why had he been spared only to find himself where he was?
Being alone and thirsty was like time shattered into a thousand broken pieces, each shard reforming to become an endless tunnel – it was all that was left of the world.
Stirling managed one last thought of Clementine before unconsciousness claimed him. His cracked lips mouthed, I love you, Clementine. May God keep you safe for I no longer can.
They waved at one another like when he had left Portsmouth for the Crimea. He watched her until her frame disappeared amongst the thousands of other people lining the docks. He was immediately swept away from the colourful display of the waving Union Jack flags and dresses on the women into the dark abyss of the storm.
* * *
It had been months since Stirling’s clandestine departure. There had been no word of his travels. It was as if the world had swallowed him up. All that had come her way was an official report that one of her majesty’s ships had sunk off the coast of Algeria.
Clementine intuitively knew it was the one he had sailed on. She had never had the heart to ask Florence the name of the vessel that had berthed him and she, in turn, had never offered to give her that information – it was an unspoken rule between them. Florence knew what there was to know and Clementine basked in a bubble of ignorant bliss fuelled by platitudes of her own making.
Clementine thought of the night when she had had the vision of the faltering ship in the squall. That what had started out as so horrible had turned into hope when a little voice had told her that Stirling was still alive. There had been no more dreams since then. It was as if the connection binding them had been broken. It made her worry whether he was dead after all.
However, she had had very little time to think about it. Work had been endless. New casualties arrived on a daily basis. The Scutari Hospital was a beehive of activity.
News had reached them that the conflict was drawing to a close. The Russians no longer had a Black Sea fleet to speak of. Most of the Crimean peninsula was in the hands of the allies. Clementine knew that it was only a m
atter of days or maybe weeks when they would receive the news of a cessation in hostilities.
This would not bring Stirling back though. No matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise, she knew he was lost to her forever. The man she loved would have written to her like he had always done.
“Clementine…”
She whirled on her heels when she heard that familiar voice. “Rory, oh my goodness, Rory.” She rushed forward, thudding into the heavy bulk of his chest. “I can’t believe you are here…and…alive.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks as all of the pent-up sadness escaped her. Wracking sobs shuddered her frame. Somehow, being in the big man’s embrace provided her with something to hold on to. Rory Bennett reminded her of Stirling.
“There, there, Clementine. Everything is going to be all right,” he said in his deep baritone.
“Stirling is gone.”
Diaries of a Heartbroken Duchess: A Historical Regency Romance Collection Page 54