The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

The underworld was murkily lit by an amber lantern, and my body was held down on a satanic altar. My tormentors were a coven of demons, their hands and forearms red with blood. I could hear screams and groans of the damned. Some kind of primary devil leaned over me with a shiny saw, ready to begin an eternity of torment.

  I should have paid more attention to the maxims of Franklin.

  Then the devil frowned.

  “What’s wrong with this one?” Satan demanded at his minions.

  “Brought down insensible and gory. Dead, for all we know.”

  “Look at him blink. Which limb needs to come off?”

  “Blood everywhere, Dr. Beatty. We ain’t quite sure.”

  Grateful heavens, I wasn’t damned, but simply in the cockpit in the bowels of the Victory: stunned, carried, and now about to be amputated if I didn’t testify to my own health. I opened my mouth and a bubble of blood and saliva formed. I gaped like a fish, trying to summon speech.

  Surgeon Beatty yanked impatiently at my arms and legs. “Good God, the admiral’s dying, and you bother me with an intact lump like this? Get the useless bugger off the table so we can do some real work.”

  And the demons, or rather seamen, threw me against a bulkhead. Salvation!

  I slowly comprehended that I was still alive, and in the British flagship where I’d fallen. It was hellish in Victory’s cockpit, a grim preview of the afterlife. There were at least forty wounded crammed into a space little larger than a kitchen, some bleeding their life away, others sobbing from the agony of quick amputation, and still others lying stunned like poleaxed cattle. Everything was sticky with blood. Lanterns danced eerily, offal slid on the floor, and even here below the cannon, acrid gunsmoke made a thin fog in the air. The beams quaked from the continued roar of massive thirty-six-pounders overhead, the guns leaping and then slamming down with each discharge. The battle was still going on.

  My fall had carried me onto the British flagship. By peculiar damnation, I managed to change sides even when unconscious.

  I blearily peered about. There was a cluster of men opposite me, attending anxiously to someone important who was propped up against a timber on the larboard side of the flagship. The victim’s face was pale and sweating, his features twisted with great pain.

  It was Nelson.

  So the man I’d seen shot down by the French from the mizzen platform had truly been the commander of the British fleet. Could the Combined Fleet actually win the battle over the English because of this calamity?

  But Redoutable was being torn apart, wasn’t it?

  Cheers rumbled from the Victory’s crew above.

  “What’s that? What’s that?” I heard Nelson’s distinctive nasal voice. He coughed, the sound wet and dire.

  “Another one of the enemy must have struck its flag, your lordship,” a wounded lieutenant replied.

  The admiral lay back. “Good. Good.”

  Did these officers know I’d just been on the fighting platforms that had mortally wounded their commander? What had become of my Bonaparte rifle? Would I be remembered as a confidant of Nelson at Merton, or his would-be assassin from the Redoutable? I fumbled to check for belongings or wounds. None of the latter, but I was still wearing my Napoleonic pendant. I needed to put distance between this bunch and me until battle emotions cooled.

  I shifted slightly, shying toward the cockpit entry, trying hard not to be noticed. A midshipman was screaming and kicking on the surgery table as Beatty sawed, the boy’s teeth clamped on a soggy hank of rope. His leg fell away like a hank of beef. The boy gasped, giving great shuddering sobs as his stump was doused with vinegar, bound, and he was shifted to lie like cordwood with the others. There he could contemplate his future as a cripple.

  “This next one’s already dead,” a seaman reported.

  “We’ve no room,” Beatty snapped. “Throw him overboard.”

  I inched farther away. As my vision cleared I saw more than I wanted to. Cracked bone jutting from broken flesh. Skin roasted from flash or fire. Discarded legs and arms piled like pallid sausage. An eye gone, a foot crushed, and a man sucking breath with a three-foot wood splinter impaled between his ribs like a spear. A mouth opened to groan that had no teeth. A boy no more than twelve sobbed, looking at a wrist that no longer was attached to a hand.

  All this glory I had failed to prevent.

  There was a bustle of men stiffening to brief attention and a new officer came bent into the cockpit to confer with Nelson. This was Thomas Hardy, I recognized, having seen him after the Battle of the Nile. His uniform was tattered, slivers of wood hanging in fabric that was spattered with blood, but he otherwise seemed to be unhurt. He knelt next to the admiral. Nelson’s eyes focused for a moment in recognition, and he reached with his one remaining arm to clasp Hardy’s, left to left. You could see his body shaking as he gathered strength to talk. Thank God Emma couldn’t watch.

  “Well, Hardy, how goes the battle?” It was a croak. “How goes the day with us?”

  “Very well, my lord. We’ve twelve or fourteen of the enemy’s ships in our possession, but five of their van have tacked and show an intention of bearing down upon the Victory. I’ve therefore called two or three of our fresh ships round us, and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing.”

  Nelson managed a weak smile. “I hope none of our ships have struck, Hardy.”

  “No, my lord, no fear of that.”

  His head rolled back. “I’m a dead man. I’m going fast; it will all be over with me soon. Come nearer to me.”

  The captain leaned in.

  “Pray let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things belonging to me.”

  “I hope that Dr. Beatty can hold out some prospect of life.” The captain’s voice shook with emotion. He glanced at the surgeon.

  “Oh, no, it’s impossible! My back is shot through. Beatty will tell you so.”

  The hero was drowning in his own blood. You could hear his struggle for breath. In a melee slaughtering thousands, here was the pathos summed up in one man, one life, and one death. We were all weeping, and I realized I was witnessing something as historic as Napoleon’s coronation. We’d never see Nelson’s like again.

  Beatty came over to probe the admiral’s legs. The admiral reported no feeling. “My lord, unhappily for our country, nothing can be done for you.”

  “I know it. God be praised, I’ve done my duty.”

  Duty! It was what General Duhésme called me to as well in the Boulogne camp. But duty to which side? Duty to slaughter, endlessly repeated through history? I shifted and dragged myself a good foot toward the exit.

  “Fourteen or fifteen enemy ships surrendered,” Nelson muttered. “I’d bargained for twenty.”

  I didn’t see the admiral die. Witnessing history is all very fine, but not if it risks your own survival. I kept creeping. Another bustle and a bosun burst in, one ear trickling blood from the concussions, face black from powder, eyes wide and straining. He looked anxiously about and then pointed at me. “There’s the one! That’s the frog bastard!”

  A dozen heads swiveled. I gasped my protest. “I’m no Frenchman,” I said in quite fluent English. I dragged myself by my arms half outside the chamber. My hospital stay was over.

  The bosun followed me out. “He came over with the Redoutable’s mainmast, carrying a pretty gun from Boney hisself! Could’a been ’im who fired the fatal shot!”

  “I’m sure you’re confused . . .”

  “Let’s hang him!”

  “Come, Jack,” a saner seaman said, “the poor sod’s just another prisoner.”

  “We’ve no masts or yards left to hang anybody from anyway.”

  “Bloody hell, then I’ll rig one meself!”

  “Aye. I won’t have a damned jack traitor lying near our saintly admiral!”

  “I’m trying to leave . . .”
I wheezed.

  “Maybe we should just shoot him with his own damned rifle.”

  I was the only man in a dozen miles to try to keep out of this battle and now was being proposed for execution by both sides. By the devil’s horns, why are my accusers so unjust, and so enthusiastic? I’d promoted myself from spy to diplomat, but I was the only person who recognized my high station.

  I’d also been stunned, as if taking a blow from a hammer, and I struggled to think fast. These sailors still had their blood up from the battle, and I couldn’t wait for sense to return. I had to use trickery.

  “Just don’t drown me!” I suddenly cried.

  They paused. “As if you have a choice, assassin.”

  “I’m fearful of water, lads. Hang or shoot this misunderstood American if you must, but don’t put me overboard and watch the sharks. Oh, I hate the cold sea! Anything but that!”

  “Hate the sea? Can’t swim, I suppose.”

  “Not a stroke. Lord, I’ll sink into the black depths and be eaten by fishes. That’s a preview of hell, that is. Nelson dreads it, too. Yes, hemp around my neck would be a mercy. There’s a good fellow, give me a proper hanging. With ceremony and a Bible, if you don’t mind.”

  The sailors looked at each other and grunted. “That’s it then, lads. Sometimes simplest is best.” One bent. “Say hello to Davy Jones, assassin.”

  “But I can’t swim, I told you! Surely you won’t let me drown!”

  They laughed, grabbed, lurched me upright, and glared like a mob rousting a heretic. Hands tore at my wretched clothing, and one came away with the pendant.

  “Look here then, a medal from Napoleon!”

  “And a savage tomahawk!”

  “Bloody hell, he’s a filthy spy. Or worse.”

  “What’s worse than that?”

  “I’m just an American tourist,” I protested feebly. The broken sword I’d strapped to my inner thigh, and they didn’t snatch that.

  “Yes, the sea for him.”

  Sometimes I make my own luck.

  They hustled me up to the lowest gun deck and gave an angry shove toward a shot-smashed gunport. It reminded me somewhat of being pitched from a gambling salon or brothel, but I was usually fortified with alcohol when that occurred.

  The last glimpse I had of the lower gun deck of Victory was as ghastly as the medical cockpit below. Several cannon had been dismounted by French shot, their barrels tilted like sprawled logs. Bodies were being picked over to find the rare wounded, with one corpse shoved out a gunport even as I watched. Smoke smeared the horror with greasy gauze, and new beams of light poked from shot holes to highlight cones of carnage. Splinters had turned the deck into a bed of wooden spikes, wet with puddles of blood. Blobs of flesh were lodged against framing like hurled pudding. Disconnected fingers lay like worms.

  The entire cavity had been newly painted with blood, so heavy that it literally dripped from overhead beams in places. Some French cannonballs were embedded to jut like iron breasts. Loose balls rolled to the pitch of waves. I could hear the desultory clanging of a pump below, and the slosh of seawater as the ship groaned.

  “Here’s what your frog friends did, bloody spy.”

  “I’ve been trying to halt this slaughter.”

  “Rob us of victory, you mean.”

  “You probably shot poor Nelson with that fancy gun of yours.”

  “No, I tried to save him. I’m his friend.” I waved feebly. “If you’ll just ask . . .”

  “Pitch him, Jack. The French are bearing down again.”

  “Bloody right. No more time for this nonsense.”

  “Don’t drown me! I’m a British agent for Sir Sidney Smith!”

  “You’re a spy, a turncoat, and a Yankee dog. I can see it in your eyes.”

  I shut them. “I’ve got intelligence of the French fleet . . .”

  They stuffed me through the ragged gunport as if they were grinding sausage. “There you go!” I dropped into the sea.

  My rifle, and tomahawk, they kept.

  The lower gun deck isn’t far above the water. I rolled off the curved hull, cutting myself on the ragged edges of fresh shot holes and barnacles, and hit the cold Atlantic with a splash.

  The water was a shock, but the plunge flushed my thinking. My head stung, and I surmised I’d cut it on the long fall on the mizzen. I’d no idea how I’d survived at all, but as I kicked away from the Victory I saw the flagship had lost all its masts and the deck was a tangle of fallen timber. Sails dragged in the ocean.

  I must have fallen into a web of wreckage when the Redoutable’s mizzen came down, the tangle breaking the fall just enough to save my life.

  Now I backstroked away. The sailors stared at me with consternation.

  “Look at that. I thought the bugger couldn’t swim!”

  “He’s paddling like a damn duck. Say, Jack, I believe he lied to us.”

  “That ain’t fair. Come back and be hanged, you!”

  I waved.

  “Bloody damnation, let’s just shoot him. You there, marine! Your musket loaded?”

  So I rolled and struck out for all I was worth, and when a bullet plunked nearby I dove and swam underwater for a spell. Thank the Lord for idiots.

  When I surfaced, I looked back. One man shook his fist, but the wind was blowing Victory away. The others had lost interest or been ordered to other tasks. A swell lifted me and set me down again. The wind was picking up as the battle went from a boil to a simmer, and the black sky to the west foretold coming fury.

  I set off swimming toward Redoutable.

  It was drifting down on me even as Victory drifted away. For a mile in each direction battered battleships wandered, rigging trashed, guns thumping, men staggering. Everyone was exhausted. Firing cannon is bloody hard work.

  One ship, presumably French, was burning like a bonfire. Many of the French and Spanish vessels had already surrendered, including the gigantic Santisima Trinidad. Redoutable had struck to the Téméraire. The two ships, still locked together, floated about a hundred yards from where I’d been flung. I swam to the vessel I’d started on fairly easily, initially hoping for more of a hero’s welcome from the French. But wait, those soldiers had wanted to shoot me, too, hadn’t they? And the British prize crew that had clambered aboard might be even less friendly if they got word of my exit from the Victory.

  So I treaded water, thinking. For the first time I was in the neutral ocean, not attached to either side. No one was trying to enlist me, no one was trying to extinguish me. I was without any cause but my own, exempt from imperial passion, floating between both fleets. And somewhere my family waited, possibly in prison.

  The French vessel was an even greater wreck than the British, the main and mizzen entirely gone and foremast shorn short. The stubs gaped with yellow shards of wood erupted like prickly flowers. Cannon tilted at crazy angles. Its perforated hull was draped in shot-off sails like the skirts of a forlorn bride.

  The sea was a mess of floating spars, smashed boats, and bobbing bodies. Eddies were still tinted pink from the downspouts of blood. Remembering the threat of sharks, I needed to make a decision. I could hear English shouts and cheers across the water as enemy after enemy lowered their colors.

  All that regal beauty destroyed in an afternoon. The destruction, of course, made the splendor more poignant.

  How we love war! People will elect men who promise it. Napoleon understood this, and had his crown.

  No one tried to help me back aboard the Redoutable. Casualties were so heavy that she drifted like a ghost ship. Smoke steamed from her shot holes. Cries for help echoed from her ports. Shrouds and halyards hung into the heaving sea like lifelines, but warships no longer tempted me. I speculatively floated along the hull of the captured French warship to its stern and beyond, to the towrope holding the ship’s boats. I could hear th
e “crews” aboard, chickens clucking and sheep bleating.

  I rotated in the water. Captain Lucas had surrendered to some British officers who were pointing to a longboat to take him off. A new ship, the Swiftsure, was hove to off Redoutable’s stern, and lines were being rowed to take the prize in tow. The freshening wind made cat’s paws on the sea, and what would happen to these battered fleets when the storm fully struck? The clouds were getting blacker.

  I was tired of waiting for passage to Venice. It was time to pirate a boat of my own. One of the craft being towed behind Redoutable would do just fine.

  CHAPTER 32

  I swam along the line of boats and hauled myself into the captain’s gig, the smartest sailor of the lot. I moved aside two hen coops and used a boat’s knife tethered on a cord to cut the towline, slipping away from the rest of the chain of small craft. I tensed for an angry shot from Redoutable but didn’t get one; its marines were occupied with greater tragedies than the loss of a captain’s gig. Or the loss of Ethan Gage. Far from being missed, I’d likely be counted as dead, I realized. I could later resurrect myself, at least briefly, as whomever I chose.

  I drifted, coming to grips with the beauty and horror of the day. Nelson dead, England triumphant, the Combined Fleet destroyed. Napoleon would never seriously threaten England with invasion again.

  The admiral’s victory against the Combined Fleet was even more decisive than at the Nile. I would eventually learn that seventeen French and Spanish ships had been captured. One had blown up. Britain didn’t lose a single ship. England’s greatest naval victory had been accompanied by the death of its greatest naval hero, and was about to be followed by one of history’s most terrible storms.

  Swiftsure had taken its prize under tow, but Redoutable was settling. Across the water, I could hear the creak of pumps.

  Dripping and shivering from my dunking, I took inventory of my new flagship, a sixteen-footer I christened Astiza. The fleets were scattering, the wind building. Of the seventeen captured prizes, fifteen were so wrecked by gunfire that they were being towed. Five damaged British ships had to be towed as well, and dismasted warships like Victory were barely under control. The storm was pushing the hulks toward the lee shore of Spain.