by Sara Fraser
‘I realize already why the Englishmen here treat us with such contempt,’ Henri said hotly. ‘It can only be expected when we behave like savages.’
The cuirassier’s eyes were kindly, he had felt a great and instinctive liking for this young man from the first moment he had met him.
‘What right have the English to despise us for behaving like savages, Henri?’ he asked softly. ‘It is they who have imprisoned us in this vile jungle . . . We are its victims, not its creators.’
The words sank deep into Henri’s mind, and he could find no answer to them.
Chapter Sixteen
The twelfth day of December was almost springlike in the warmth of its air and the softness of the southern breezes. The sails of Ballard’s windmill which stood close to the shore near the abandoned Southsea Castle circled slowly, occasionally creaking to a halt when the fitful wind dropped. Each time the millstones stopped grinding, Samuel Ballard the miller would curse horribly and berate his long-suffering wife as if it were her fault when God stopped the winds. Close to the mill was the miller’s house and outbuildings, and in between the castle and the mill stood a small windowless building known as the Firebarn. It was here that ammunition was prepared for the practice of the Portsmouth garrison.
Lieutenant the Honourable John Coventry, adjutant of the Third Worcestershire Militia, leant negligently against the open doorway of the Firebarn and watched, without much enthusiasm, the white-jacketed fatigue party inside the building make up blank cartridges. The young adjutant was something of an ‘exquisite’, with his fair hair cropped in the upswept ‘à la Titus’ mode, and his side whiskers curling across his cheeks. His civilian dress was the very epitome of gentility; single-breasted, cutaway olive coat, striped waistcoat, white gaiter pantaloons strapped over polished shoes and an extremely high-wrapped pink cravat. In one hand he held his curly-brimmed high-crowned brown hat, while the other constantly toyed with the quizzing glass he wore dangling on a silk ribbon around his neck.
‘Goddemmit! Cannot your men hurry it along, Corporal?’ he drawled lazily. ‘I’ve no wish to spend the entire dammed day here.’
The corporal saluted the brim of his cap and shouted at the men, ‘Gerra move on wi’ it, you idle dogs!’
There was a brief flurry of quickened movement, then imperceptibly the pace of the work slowed back to the original tempo.
The Hon. John yawned and, pushing himself languidly erect turned to look across the flat Southsea Common at the skyline of Portsmouth, a mile distant, dominated by the tall square semaphore tower on its shore side. All over the common, squads of soldiers were at drill and the shouts of the drill sergeants and corporals mingled with the blaring sounds which came from the sheltered area beneath the castle ramparts, where Mr Charles Quinton, the Bandmaster of the Third, badgered his twenty-odd yellow-coated musicians through the scales of their bassoons, cor anglais, oboes, trumpets, fifes, serpents, tambourines, cymbals, triangles, and drums in tuneless cacophony.
The Hon. John yawned again and stretched wide his arms, causing the hard muscles of his deceptively languid-looking body to tense and contract. Then suddenly he noticed something which made him forget his boredom. Approaching him was a pony and trap. It was on the occupants of the trap that the adjutant focused his interest. Two young women sat side by side, one handling the reins very competently, while on a small dicky seat behind them was perched an older woman. The Hon. John lifted his hand in greeting and went smiling to meet them. The trap halted and he bowed low, with an elegant flourish of his hat.
‘La, sir! How gallant we are this morning,’ a laughing voice teased him. He straightened and caught his breath. The girl handling the reins had honey-coloured hair and large brown eyes, and the young man thought her to be one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Her companion was also blonde, but he found her plain and disagreeable in expression. Both girls were clothed alike in black close-fitting helmet hats with white ermine edging and long grey cloaks trimmed with the same fur. The pretty girl who handled the reins was Jessica Ward, and she nudged her companion, Dorothea Burd.
‘What do you think, Dotty? Is not the Honourable John Coventry both looking and behaving very gallant?’
Dorothea Burd sniffed crossly. ‘Cannot we drive on, Jessica? I thought that you wished to watch the Vulcan come in.’
‘The Vulcan, Miss Jessica?’ John Coventry raised his eyebrows quizzically.
‘Yes, Lieutenant Coventry . . . The Vulcan frigate! Jessica has a friend on it, returning from Portugal,’ Dorothea snapped at him, and added maliciously, ‘He is a real soldier.’
The adjutant flushed. It was a sore point with the militia that most people regarded them only as play-soldiers.
‘Miss Dorothea,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’m quite sure that your father regards the men in his regiment as “real” soldiers also.’
Dorothea’s father, Major Thomas Henry Burd, was commanding the Third Worcestershire in the absence of its Lieutenant-Colonel.
Coventry went on, ‘We may be classed as the Army of the Reserve, but we stand ready to meet any French assault on these shores, and are trained well enough and have bravery enough to give a good account of ourselves.’
‘I do not anticipate that Boney and his hordes will come at that time, Lieutenant Coventry,’ she said scathingly. ‘According to the latest gazette, he and his Grand Army are even now perishing in the snows of Russia . . . It hardly seems likely that he will suddenly swoop down like an eagle upon the fair city of Portsmouth, does it?’
Jessica’s red lips trembled as she struggled not to smile at her friend’s acid treatment of the languid exquisite. She liked the Honourable John well enough, but at times his affectations irritated her and she thought it only just that his vanity should be occasionally pricked a little. The young man made no reply to Dorothea’s attack. Instead he spoke to Jessica.
‘If you wish to watch a ship come in, Miss Jessica, the castle is certainly the best vantage point. Might I have the pleasure of escorting you there?’
‘Why? Is there a danger of French pirates carrying us off?’ Dorothea scoffed.
Jessica’s brown eyes softened at the sight of John Coventry’s obvious embarrassment, and she smiled at him sympathetically.
‘It would please me greatly, Lieutenant Coventry,’ she told him.
The older woman perched on the dicky seat was her maid Joan, who had come to wetnurse Jessica as a baby and had stayed to look after the girl ever since. Jessica handed the reins to her and told her to wait with the trap.
‘It’s such a lovely day,’ she told them all. ‘I feel like strolling for a while until we hear the signal gun.’
The two girls and the man walked slowly towards the ramparts of the castle, chatting as they went. Even Dorothea lost some of her tartness and joined amicably enough in the conversation. Coventry was utterly happy as he looked down at the lovely Jessica, who was so petite that the top of her head came only to his shoulder.
A hollow thump came loudly from the earthworks of the Lumps Fort battery, farther east along the shoreline, and Jessica clapped her hands in delight.
‘They must have sighted the Vulcan.’
‘May I inquire who is the friend you expect?’ the Hon. John asked, jealousy beginning to torment him.
‘His name is David Warburton. He was my very dear childhood playmate,’ the girl answered, her soft eyes shining in excited anticipation. ‘He was wounded July last, at the battle of Salamanca. One of his fellow officers brought news some time ago that he was now recovered sufficiently to be sent home to recuperate. It’s almost certain that he will be on the Vulcan. It will be such a surprise for him to find our family here in Portsmouth.’
‘Why should that be, Jessie?’ Dorothea Burd asked.
‘Well, he left for the Peninsula more than four years since, and my mother and I were then at home in Worcestershire. I’ve written to him of course, but not since we came here to be with father, and then after David had been
wounded we knew naught of his whereabouts until his friend called to tell us that David would be coming home, and naturally we were still at Holt End when that occurred. He has no way of knowing that we are here in Portsmouth.’
‘Has he a family of his own?’ the adjutant wanted to know, thinking that if the wounded man had, then he would not stay long with the Wards.
‘No, the poor boy has no one. He was orphaned as a child and came to live with his uncle, George Seymour, at our village. His uncle died some time past . . . George Seymour had a son, named William . . .’ She paused, and her eyes took on a faraway look as memories dominated her thoughts.
‘William was a very strange boy. He was much older than David or I, and although I think he loved David well enough, yet he had a streak of cruelty in him which sometimes frightened me very much . . .’ She shivered slightly.
‘And his cousin, William Seymour? Will not your friend wish to go and visit him for a while?’ Coventry broke in, clutching at straws.
Jessica smiled and shook her head. ‘William went into the army years ago, and no one has heard from him since, to my knowledge. He could be in India, or anywhere. Perhaps even dead. But it doesn’t matter. Davy will stay with us until he is completely recovered.’
The Hon. John’s heart sank.
‘Naturally I would have preferred to go to the dockyard and meet him myself,’ the girl went on happily, not realizing the effects her artless pleasure was having on John Coventry. ‘But Mama would not hear of such a thing. She says that a young lady must never be seen in such low places amongst the riffraff that congregate there. So instead we have to send one of the servants to meet every ship, and bring David to our home when he arrives.’ She looked up into the adjutant’s face. ‘Do you think it will help Davy to recover more quickly if he is amongst friends?’ she appealed.
The young man nodded slowly. ‘To convalesce under the same roof that you live beneath, Miss Jessica, would ensure a recovery from any wounds.’ he said sincerely.
They entered the castle and mounted the ramparts.
‘There she comes,’ Jessica called out excitedly. ‘Is she not most beautiful?’
The frigate was under full canvas, her white ensigns spreading bravely and the waves creaming back from the slicing impact of her black- and yellow-striped hull.
‘What a fine thing it must be, to be a man and have command of such a noble creation as that ship,’ Jessica murmured half to herself, as her romantic imagination was sent soaring by the sight. ‘Why, it resembles a very tiger of the sea.’
The Hon. John stared down at her small, wrapt face and envied with all his heart the fortunate David Warburton. His Britannic Majesty’s Ship Vulcan fired her cannonades in reply to the salutes of the shore batteries and swept through the narrow harbour entrance, under the frowning cannon muzzles of Fort Blockhouse on the Gosport side and the Point Battery of Spice Island on the other. Glazed-hatted boatswains’ mates shouted oaths and swung knotted rope-ends, starting the seamen up the rigging like agile monkeys and out along the yardarms. There they lay across and in concerted effort began to haul up and furl the salt-stiff sails by sheer strength of hands and muscles. The ship lost way and her great anchors dropped plummeting to the sea bed where their curved, barbed flukes gouged, dragged, gouged and then bit deep, sending clouds of muddy sand swirling up from the rocky bottom. The seamen gazed hungrily at the land while they finished furling, then lashing and trussing the folds of canvas, and grumbled bitterly to each other about the captain’s harshness in prohibiting shore leave.
‘Eighteen months at bleedin’ sea and not even a bleedin’ foot on the bloody beach, let alone inland,’ was the overriding grievance. On shore the lookout high up on the square semaphore tower overlooking the harbour entrance, snapped his telescope shut and bellowed,
‘The Vulcan frigate’s in, sir.’
A tiny midshipman wearing a cocked hat three sizes too large for him, ran to bring the news to the hoary-headed old lieutenant commanding the signal station, and within seconds the signal pennant rose to the mast head and the two arms of the semaphore-post began to twirl and set in their evolutions. From High Street, Portsmouth the message was picked up and relayed by other men peering through telescopes and shouting letters to operators at the stations on Southsea Beach, Portsdown Hill, Compton Down, Holder, Haste, Bannick and Pearly . . . On and on it flashed, to Chatley, Coopers Hill, Kingston, Putney, Chelsea, to arrive finally at the Admiralty House in Whitehall, London. From the dropping of the frigate’s anchor in Portsmouth Harbour, it took only fifteen minutes for the august Lords of the Admiralty 73 miles away in London to be informed of its safe arrival.
It took far less time for the news to spread through the narrow twisting alleyways and lanes of Spice Island, old Portsmouth, and Portsea. From dozens of beer-kens and taverns, cook-shops, and chop-houses, back-street brothels and main-street gambling hells, hundreds of pedlars, bumboat men, touts, ponces, bully-boys and ladies of easy virtue hastened to the beach.
Sarah Jenkins and Shimson Levi stood quietly to one side on the Point beach at Spice Island and observed the happenings. A trio of paint-plastered, wrinkled hags, clad in torn dirty dresses and bedraggled feather bonnets approached one of the boatmen, a big, peg-legged ex-petty officer. Their spokeswoman’s toothless red gash of a mouth curved wide in grotesque coquetry.
‘Come on dearie, take us out to the Vulcan. We’ll pay well.’
The boatman shifted the quid of tobacco he was chewing from one cheek to the other and spat a long stream of brown juice on to the shingle.
‘Sod orf!’ he growled. ‘You’m too bleedin’ old!’
The hag drew herself erect and swore at him in fury. His mahogany-brown face remained stolid and he spurted another stream of juice from his dark-stained mouth and said unheatedly,
‘It’s no use you agooin’ on at me, you old cow. I’d not be able to sell you to the Vulcan. I takes only tender wenches that I con get three shillin’ apiece for . . . I’d not get three pence for the likes o’ your withered bilboes. Look at ’um!’ He pointed at the shrivelled breasts displayed by the torn gown.
All along the beach similar scenes were enacted as the other boatmen haggled with the crowding whores. Each man trying to select the youngest, most attractive and best-dressed women, knowing from past experience that they would only get paid if the women were accepted on board the ship. The three hags withdrew a couple of paces and whispered together, then the spokeswoman came back to the boatman.
‘’Ere, dearie,’ she whined placatingly. ‘We’ll gi’ you four shillin’s each to take us out.’
He shook his head. ‘I’se told you once, you stupid cow . . . You’m too bleedin’ old and too bleedin’ ugly. Now bugger orf, afore I catches you a belt in the chops.’
The woman’s raddled face was tragic beneath the thick mask of rouge, enamel, and powder.
‘Lissen, cully, things ’um terrible hard wi’ us. We’ll gi you the rhino now if you’ll take us out.’
The boatman hesitated. ‘You’se got the sale-money, ’ave you?’ he questioned doubtfully.
‘Yes, we ’ave,’ the hag nodded excitedly and with a great show of grimy petticoats she fumbled beneath her skirts and produced some coins.
‘Get in, and look sharp about it.’ The man jerked his head, and, laughing with the feverish gaiety of heart-felt relief, the three women clambered aboard. The man pushed the boat off the beach then jumped in and rowed out to the frigate, which lay less than fifty yards offshore.
Sarah watched it go and when Shimson Levi would have spoken to her, she hushed him to silence.
‘Let me see what happens, it’s necessary that I know these things,’ she explained.
A gangway had been lowered along the frigate’s side and already several boatloads of women were waiting their turn to draw alongside its bottom platform. Eager, excited seamen and marines were clustered along the taffrails, cheering and cat-calling invitations at the women, as some deftly and oth
ers clumsily scrambled on to the platform and mounted to the deck where they were immediately besieged by the sex-starved crew. The three women’s boat joined at the end of the queue, but unfortunately for them a brazen-voiced naval officer, armed with a speaking trumpet was overseeing the gangway from a vantage point on the quarterdeck taffrail. The officer did a double-take at the new arrivals and raised the speaking trumpet to his lips.
‘Ahoy there! You, lubber wi’ the timber foot . . . Sheer away, blast you!’
The boatman cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted back, ‘What’s the matter, your honour?’
‘Damn your eyes, Timber Leg! It’s that load of ugly ducks you’ve got wi’ you that’s the matter. I’ll not let any of my men get between their spindle shanks, be damned if I will!’
‘We’em all right, yer honour,’ the hag’s spokeswoman interjected. ‘We’em clean decent bodies, so we be,’ she started to plead desperately. ‘Please let us aboard, yer honour, please!’
‘Be damned to ye, for a poxed-up old bitch!’ the officer roared. ‘Now sheer off, or I’ll bloody well sink you.’
The seamen and marines jeered at the three women, and the pedlars in the bumboats, waiting to sell drink, eatables and trinkets, once the overwhelming urges of the flesh had been satisfied, joined in the catcalling.
‘What price the one in the blue?’ ‘Sheer orf, Mother Gammy!’ ‘Aye, clear the way, old bitch!’
A young whore in another boat stood up and shouted to the officer.
‘Hey there, Jack Tar?’ She was a strapping, well-built girl with bold eyes and gaudy finery.
‘What does you want, my pretty? Is it to share my berth?’ the officer teased her, and a storm of lewd invitations and compliments came from the crew.
The young whore let slip the shawl she wore and pulling down the front of her low-cut gown she used both hands to free her firm, shapely breasts. She lifted and fondled the smooth white-skinned mounds with their dark-ringed jutting nipples and flaunted them before the avid, hungry eyes on the ship.