The King's Bounty

by Sara Fraser

  A chorus of shouted oaths and jeers came from the long queue which brought Sergeant Belton to the galley.

  ‘What’s the delay, you fat swab?’ he demanded of the Cockney.

  ‘It’s this bleedin’ Yankee, Sar’nt Belton. He says he wants the full eight pound o’ ration. I’se told ’im we got no more ’til the barges come, but ’e wun’t lissen.’

  The burly marine stared hard at the New Englander. ‘Is this true, what he tells me?’

  Nathan Caldicott nodded vigorously. ‘You’re darn right it’s the truth,’ he answered heatedly. ‘I want what is my messmates’ entitlement, eight pounds of bread per mess per day. Now I ain’t complaining about this stuff being a mite stale.’ He hefted one of the round loaves and tried without success to depress the crust with his fingers and thumbs. ‘It’s a mite musty as well!’ He brushed at the thick layer of mildew that covered it. ‘But that can’t be helped these days. I do insist, however, on being given the official ration scale, not the six pounds only, that this fat-gutted bastard has issued.’

  Belton’s face was expressionless, and his tone even.

  ‘Take what you’ve bin give, Yankee Doodle, and draw your burgoo and then get them bones o’ yours back below.’

  ‘Now just a moment . . .’ Caldicott started to argue, and Belton stepped to him and thrust his beefy red face close to the other’s.

  ‘Doon’t talk back to me, Yankee Doodle,’ he hissed. ‘A bloody good mate o’ mine was killed on the Macedonian afore she struck to one o’ your men o’ war. I’se got a bit o’ respect for you Yankees as fightin’ tars, but my mate meant the world to me and when I thinks about him, then I feels like shoving’ a bayonet through every bloody Jonathan’s guts. So while I’m still holding me temper, draw your rations and get below!’

  Nathan Caldicott drew a deep breath and shook his head slowly.

  ‘Sar’nt, while I have all due sympathy for your sad loss, yet I must refuse to obey your order. A matter of principle is involved here.’

  For long moments, the Englishman’s big ham-like fists clenched and unclenched as he fought to control himself. Henri Chanteur, who had already felt the weight of those fists, feared for his friend, whom he knew would stand no chance against the marine. At last the man spoke.

  ‘You leave me no choice, Yankee,’ he raised his voice and shouted, ‘Corporal Noakes . . . Git in here wi’ two files o’ men.’

  Almost immediately the galley filled with armed marines. The mood of the prisoners, which as the argument proceeded had become increasingly noisy and belligerent, subsided abruptly into muttering apprehension. Sergeant Belton grabbed Caldicott by the front of his ragged jacket.

  ‘You can thank your lucky stars, Yankee Doodle, that I’ve got pity in me for brave men such as yourself who are here in these damned hulks. I’m putting you in the Black Hole for the rest o’ the day; and I’ll gi’ you fair warning, that if you ever gets uppity wi’ me agen, I’ll knock seven sorts o’ shit out o’ you and put you in front o’ Captain Redmond. Take him away!’

  Erect and proud, Caldicott was marched away between two marines.

  The sergeant shouted at the rest of the prisoners, ‘Draw your rations and get below. If I ’as any more trouble from any one o’ you, then that man will regret it to his dying day . . . And that’s a promise!’

  Henri collected the bread and a leather bucket full of burgoo for his mess and went below. His messmates were in their usual spot, crouched or sitting on the deck beneath one of the iron scuttles. Six small tin bowls and the same number of pannikins were arranged in a row before them. The prisoners were not issued with knives, forks, or spoons and each man either ate with his fingers or bought, begged, or stole implements of bone or wood that those men who possessed tools and knives had carved. Gaston de Chambray smiled at Henri.

  ‘You have been a long time, mon ami . . . What caused the delay?’

  Henri told them about Nathan Caldicott’s dispute.

  ‘Some of these Americans have a great deal of fire in their bellies,’ the cuirassier colonel observed admiringly. ‘It’s easy to have spirit when you have only been here a little while,’ one of the other men pointed out. ‘If these Yankees had been prisoners for as long as most of us, or had fought and suffered for as long as we French, then I doubt that their spirits would be so high.’

  ‘Very true,’ de Chambray agreed mildly. ‘A few years in this damp atmosphere soon deadens the fire in any man’s belly!’

  The meagre breakfast was soon consumed and the bowls wiped clean with scraps of bread. Henri put the remainder of his bread together with his bone spoon into the sack, sewed from rags, which in common with most of the prisoners he wore on a cord around his waist. Then he went with Gaston de Chambray for a fencing lesson.

  All about the battery, men were busily engaged in their occupations. For one sou an hour a man could be taught by their fellow captives, masters of fencing, stick play, mathematics, languages, logic, drama, and literature. Manufacturers of tobacco shredded, dried, and blended different types of grass and weeds which they had bribed the guards to bring them. Cobblers cobbled shoes, and tailors sewed busily. Merchants of all kinds abounded, striding up and down the battery calling their wares. Some were vendors of marvellous models carved from animal bones and lumps of wood, or moulded from iron-hard bread. They offered miniature ships with cannon rigging, and sails. Tableaux of the Passion. Sets of dominoes and chessmen. Crucifixes and rosaries. Rings, bracelets, necklaces, and brooches. Two or three supreme craftsmen even offered animated groups of tiny fiddlers, drummers, and dancers which moved and swayed, and spun round and round when tiny wheels were turned to operate minute pulley systems of wood and catgut.

  There was always brisk bidding and haggling for favoured hammock positions that were constantly being bought, sold and bargained for. Just as there were always bidders for the portions of stale cheese, butter, and cone sugar that the richer captives eagerly sought and craved. But few craved the ragged, stinking jackets and trousers that some naked men offered for sale. Henri himself supplemented his last few coins by giving lessons in the art of ‘La Savate’, and this brought him a few sous from week to week.

  On the deck below les raffales gambled and quarrelled the hours away, or lay entwined in dark corners and tried to find brief oblivion from their misery in each others’ bodies.

  In the rancid depths of the Orlop deck, the Imperial Mantles hunted for rats amongst the filth they slept on, and some went boldly into the noisome bilges in pursuit of their prey. Others merely lay staring blankly into the darkness, their minds empty and stultified beyond redemption.

  Henri Chanteur and his friend Gaston de Chambray took the slender foils, made from whippy bamboo canes and began their practice. Changing and counter-changing, thrusting, disengaging, thrusting, parrying, riposting, counter-riposting, counter-counter-riposting, while the short fiery-mannered fencing master strutted about his pupils exhorting, encouraging, abusing these would-be exponents of his art.

  The bored sentries stared through the loopholes or tramped in endless circles on the gallery. They watched and listened to the tumultuous vitality that filled the prisoners’ quarters and asked themselves yet again who it was who really found captivity the most irksome and enervating. Those who were guarded? Or the guards themselves . . .?

  Deep in the very bowels of the hulk, in a wooden box six feet square, whose only opening was a series of tiny airholes, Nathan Caldicott lay naked on the rough planks in the pitch blackness. He could hear only the gurgling lapping of the poisonous bilge water, and the soft pattering scurrying pads of the rats. His eyes wide and filled with blindness, he lay on his back and fought desperately to retain his sanity.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sarah Jenkins was at breakfast in her chambers when her maid announced that Captain Arthur Redmond RN had called. Sarah smiled at the gaunt old woman in her widow’s weeds.

  ‘Show the gentleman in, Anna.’

  The old woman bobbed
a curtsey. ‘Yes, mum.’

  For Sarah the thrill of having a maid to serve her, a cook to prepare her food, and women to wash and clean her luxurious chambers was still a novel and exhilarating experience.

  The gambling club which she had opened in partnership with Shimson Levi had been an instant success, and now half-way through February 1813, the officers of the army garrison, the navy, and the dockyard together with the local gentry and rich merchants flocked there nightly to eat and drink to excess, to ogle and flirt with the abundance of beautiful young hostesses. Most important of all they came to gamble at the card tables at rouge-et-noir, whist and French hazard; or throw dice across the green baize, or risk their money on the newly introduced roly-poly wheel, which the French termed roulette. Hebrew Star and Portugal John had sent for two or three croupiers from London and had also found that several of the young girls recruited by Sarah and Shimson Levi were no mean hands as card sharps. These the two experts had trained, and now the club boasted some of the most attractive dealers in the whole of England.

  What had ensured the rapid success of the club had been the attendance on its opening night of the doyen of the local beau monde, General the Earl Harcourt, the Governor himself, a man with an eye for a good horse, and an insatiable appetite for women, gambling, and drink. The money flowed so freely that Shimson Levi lost the worried frown he had worn as Sarah had insisted continually on purchasing only the finest furnishings and appointments for the large three-storied house in the Barrack Row, near the King James Gate at Spice Island which had become ‘The Golden Venture’.

  Sarah’s chambers were on the top floor of the house and could be reached only up a narrow steep staircase and through a heavy oaken door. Arthur Redmond found that the climb up the stairs taxed his lungs and legs, but counted the discomfort as nothing. He still could not believe in his good fortune. That a. near-penniless, rum-soaked old sailor such as himself should have attracted the interest and fond regard of the beautiful woman he was calling on. It had been two weeks since he had first met her, and during those two weeks Arthur Redmond had fallen, like any callow addle-pated midshipman, head over heels in love.

  Sarah heard the heavy footfalls on the stairway and smiled to herself. Her motives in ensnaring the officer could be summed up in two words . . . Henri Chanteur. With the help of Shimson Levi, who by now was so besotted with her that he would indulge her every whim, she had distributed some discreet and judicious bribes amongst the clerks at the transport office in the dockyard, and discovered that Henri was imprisoned on the Crown. Although she did not love Henri, yet she felt a great affection for him, and a responsibility for his imprisonment and had determined that before all else she would ensure his escape back to France. She had also determined that Arthur Redmond should unwittingly aid her to gain this objective. The door opened and the captain entered. He bowed deeply.

  ‘My compliments ma’am!’ he grunted, the sight of her affecting him so that all the gallant phrases he had practised in the privacy of his cabin aboard the Crown fled from his mind. Straightening, he feasted his eyes on the woman and felt his mouth grow dry with longing. She wore a brown and yellow striped sarsenet gown, which was cut low to show off the smooth roundness of her breasts and shoulders. Her chestnut hair was drawn back over her small ears, its rich colouring accentuated by her delicate lace mobcap. She smiled at him and his heart began to thump against his ribs.

  ‘Good morning, Captain Redmond. Will you take breakfast with me?’

  He bowed again. ‘Delighted to accept, ma’am . . . delighted,’ he said gruffly.

  The gaunt maid took the bicorn hat from his nervously twisting hands and questioned,

  ‘’Ow about that sword, Capting? Will you be wanting it?’

  ‘Ohhh!’ He blushed furiously and flustered as he unslung his sword and gave it to the woman together with his white gloves. Then, hot and uncomfortable in his best blue uniform coat with its heavy gold epaulets and braid, and his tight white breeches and stockings, he perched stiffly on the edge of the graceful chair that Sarah invited him to take by her side. He sat flushed, sweaty and quite unable to think of anything to say. Sarah chattered constantly to try and put him at his ease, and he ate the savoury, hot-spiced kedgeree, the tender juicy lamb cutlets, the cold brawn and pickles without even being conscious of their taste. In a euphoric daze, Arthur Redmond gazed at the woman he loved and could not recall ever feeling quite so happy before in his entire life.

  It was while they were both sipping hot sweet chocolate that Sarah reminded him of the drink-fuddled promise he had made to her the night before.

  ‘You will take me on the hulks today, won’t you, Captain?’ she smiled sweetly at him. ‘You do remember assuring me that you would do so, don’t you?’

  Redmond at first said he didn’t recall saying it. But the tightening of her sensual lips and the slight frown that appeared between her flawless eyebrows warned him that he had better recall the promise if he wished to continue to bask in her smiles.

  ‘Very well, ma’am. I will take you,’ he told her gruffly

  She dazzled him with her gratitude, touching his cheek tenderly. ‘I know that you may think it most unbecoming for a lady to wish to visit such horrid places,’ Sarah said demurely. ‘But I do declare I have the most overpowering desire to see at first hand those dreadful Frenchmen. And I know that with you I shall be perfectly safe from them.’

  Stimulated by the soft touch of her fingers, and the fragrant nearness of her perfumed body, Redmond’s overpowering desire was to take the woman in his arms and possess her there and then.

  Sensing the strain she was subjecting him to, Sarah withdrew her fingers and rose from the table.

  ‘Wait here for me, Captain. There are household matters I must attend to before we go.’

  Redmond grinned bemusedly. ‘What a wife she’ll make me,’ he told himself silently. ‘Beauty and practicality in the same woman . . . What more could a man ask for?’

  He rose also and when she had departed, seated himself on one of the three flowing-lined chaise-longues in the room and gave himself up to his pleasant imaginings, visualizing in his mind’s eye the joys of matrimony with such a magnificent creature, the nights of ecstatic pleasure with her naked body in his arms, and the days and evenings of good food, drink and sport, both indoor and out, that her income from the club would obtain for him.

  ‘I am indeed a fortunate man,’ he sighed contentedly.

  *

  At two o’clock in the afternoon, the iron bars began to sound against the walls and gratings of the Crown. The sailors wielding the bars released some of the frustrations and resentments of their harsh life by hammering the wood and metal with all their strength and yelling oaths and execrations at the tops of their voices. The prisoners’ leaders started to muster their messes, for one hour after the din had subsided they would be driven up on deck for the daily count and if any man was absent from a mess, then the mess leader was held responsible and punished.

  Henri Chanteur reported to Gaston de Chambray, and the cuirassier ordered, ‘Lay out your fish.’

  One by one the men pulled from their waist-sacks long black and brown strips of vile-smelling salted herring and cod. De Chambray counted them. One man had produced only three fish instead of the four every other man showed. De Chambray regarded him sternly.

  ‘What has happened to the fourth fish, Second-Lieutenant Archard?’

  The lieutenant, who was little more than a boy, shuffled his bare feet on the planking and hung his head in shame.

  ‘Please mon colonel . . . I ate it,’ he whispered nervously.

  Henri felt a surge of pity for the youngster. He looked at the deeply ulcerated, pus-trickling legs and feet, and the awful thinness of the wasted body and felt an impulse to spring to the lad’s defence. Henri smothered that impulse. He knew by now that Gaston de Chambray imposed an iron discipline upon his mess for a very good reason . . . survival. Without that discipline, men quickly lost all v
estiges of self-respect and ended inevitably amongst the ranks of the Imperial Mantles.

  The death toll was high amongst the prisoners. Scorbutic diatesis, tuberculosis, bronchial disease and a dozen different fevers struck men down daily. But at least here in the messes of les officiers and messieurs ou bourgeois, a sick man would be tended by his messmates, and they would do their utmost to have him transferred to one of the hospital hulks. Among les raffales and the Imperial Mantles, however, a sick man was first robbed of anything he might possess and then left to his own devices and ignored. Unless he was fortunate enough to attract the attention of the guards, he invariably grew worse and died. The attention of the guards was perhaps the most difficult things to attract if one was a raffale or an Imperial Mantle, because when they were mustered they presented such a spectacle of verminous, filthy degeneration that the guards were reluctant even to stand near them, let alone examine them. It was no use either for a sick man to hope that he would be discovered on the Orlop deck, for the guards rarely went down to it.

  De Chambray pursed his lips and appeared lost in thought. The young officer, sick and worn-out as he was, began to weep soundlessly, the tears welling from his deep-sunk eyes.

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ the colonel told him harshly.

  ‘But I was so hungry, mon colonel,’ the youngster pleaded. ‘Don’t send me from the mess, I beg you. I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘I have no other course open to me,’ the cuirassier answered gruffly, more affected than he cared to show. ‘You have disobeyed my strictest order. Take your fish and go from among us.’ The words were uttered quietly, but with an awful finality. The lieutenant, knowing that a man expelled from his mess became an outcast in the upper battery who could expect no help from anyone, stared beseechingly at each of his messmates in turn. They either refused to meet his eyes or, like Henri, shook their heads sadly. Sobbing loudly now, the lad picked up his fish and shuffled away. He would join them at today’s muster but after that would no longer be regarded as a live person by them.