The King's Bounty

by Sara Fraser

  Twice a week, Wednesday and Friday, occurred the ‘maigre’ days. On these days, instead of being issued half a pound of salt beef to go with their cabbage or turnip, each man was given two pieces of salted fish and a pound of potatoes. The tubers were usually half-rotten, the fish was always completely so. The wiser prisoners saved the fish issue and sold it back to the purveyors at a penny a piece. This money was then pooled by the mess and used to buy cheese or butter, onions or extra vegetables. The purveyors were happy with this arrangement since they drew money from the government to purchase fresh fish, and this system enabled them to issue the same old fish time after time and keep the money thus saved for their own uses. It was rumoured that some of the blackened, leather-like herring and cod had been passing back and forth between the dockyard and the hulks for the last ten years. Henri, after seeing the fish, had been forced to give credence to this rumour.

  Les raffales and the Imperial Mantles invariably ate their issue, and paid a heavy price in food-poisoning, consequent ill health and even death for doing so. It was because of this that de Chambray and his fellow senior officers did all in their power to stop their men consuming the deadly putridity, no matter what agonies of hunger they might undergo.

  The mess watched the young officer shuffle away and although in their hearts they pitied him, each man admitted the necessity of the sentence of banishment.

  ‘The dockyard purveyors are here, gentlemen,’ de Chambray stated. ‘When we muster, Capitain Chanteur will sell them back the fish. Therefore you will pass them to him after the count is completed.’

  Exactly one hour after the sounding, the hatch was opened.

  ‘All prisoners to muster! All prisoners on top for muster!’ the orders rang out, and from the depths of the hulk the Imperial Mantles came blinking and stinking to pass between the lines of watchful officiers and messieurs ou bourgeois and through the hatch. It was necessary that the Imperial Mantles and raffales should precede the rest, because if not, then the hammocks and other possessions of the inhabitants of the upper battery would disappear below. The ship’s garrison, knowing that if this happened an outbreak of such violence would explode as could well mean their own destruction, consequently left the prisoners to enforce their own procedure to and from muster. Once the parade was over the upper battery men would descend first and the rest would follow.

  The muster was complete and the counting had begun when Captain Arthur Redmond returned to the vessel, accompanied by Sarah Jenkins and her pampered new pet, a spiteful King Charles spaniel. The appearance of a beautiful woman on board the hulk caused a sensation among prisoners and guards alike, and the men muttered and nudged each other excitedly and voiced audible desires about what they would like to do to this woman whose blue cloak and hood only accentuated the voluptuous curves of her breasts.

  The entire ship’s garrison of fifty marines, a marine lieutenant and ensign, and twenty sailors were present at the muster. A pair of canister and grape-shotted cannon muzzles gaped menacingly from the poopdeck at the captive horde, while on all sides the bayoneted, loaded muskets of squads of grimfaced marines were ready to blast the life from any potential rioters or mutineers.

  After the initial surge of interest and speculation about the woman, the captives’ attention mostly centred upon the plump spaniel dog in her arms. These veterans of a dozen hard-fought campaigns knew, from past experience, that with the addition of garlic and herbs the flesh of a tender young dog made excellent stew. Lips were licked and hollow stomachs patted in pleasant recollection.

  Sarah and Redmond stood a little behind and to the side of the cannon with their sailor guncrews, and she shuddered in acute disgust at the spectacle before her. Nothing had prepared her for this shaggy host of human animals in their bizarre orange-yellow rags. She held a silver pomander of crushed rosemary to her nose in a futile effort to mask the overpowering stench of the mob, and her green eyes searched for Henri Chanteur, even as she felt the hopelessness of being able to pick him out from this crowd of nearly a thousand men, all made so weirdly similar in features by their hair-covered faces and dirt-caked skin.

  At the bottom of the poopdeck ladder, the two cocked-hatted purveyors waited, surrounded by their helpers. Once the counting had been finished and the total reported to the marine lieutenant, who in turn reported it to Redmond, the mess orderlies formed a line before the purveyors, each man carrying the stinking putrid fish in his arms.

  One at a time, the orderlies approached and under the unblinking stares of the purveyors, counted out their fish, droping the slimy pieces into the open mouths of the jute sacks held out by the purveyors’ men. Once the prisoner had counted his fish, the teller of the purveyors handed him the coins due. Henri stood patiently in the line and waited his turn. He too had stared at the woman with interest, but her hood hid her face and hair from him and loth to torment his imagination with thoughts of warm, soft, sweet-scented womanflesh, he had turned away and ignored her. For her part, Sarah had not yet abandoned hope of sighting Henri in the dense mass. Conscious that Arthur Redmond’s head was continually turning towards her, she feigned a growing indifference to the captives and petted and fussed her spaniel who snapped pettishly at her stroking fingers. But all the time her keen eyes flickered eagerly across the suffering-worn faces below. Finally her gaze came to rest on the line of orderlies, and her heart seemed to stop. It was Henry! Without any shadow of a doubt it was Henry!

  Momentarily forgetting her caution she stared openly at his slender figure, and could have wept at the contrast between this grotesque, matted-haired wreck, and the handsome, lithe-muscled gallant she had pleasured herself with in distant Shropshire.

  In the velvet reticule slung from her wrist, Sarah had a letter which she had written in case there should be an opportunity to contact Henri. Her agile mind now formulated a plan of action which would enable her to pass the letter to him. Stealthily, she slipped the folded paper from her reticule and crumpled it into a tight ball in her fingers. The next move was to draw his attention to herself. She moved the hood back from her face and stroked the dog in her arms. Henri was now counting the fish into the sack; desperately she willed him to look up at her. He straightened and took the money handed to him then turned. As he turned, Sarah acted. Her strong fingers dug into the fat body of the spaniel and twisted hard. The dog squealed in shock and pain and she let him fall from her arms.

  ‘Catch my dog! Please catch him!’ she shouted, and a sailor on the nearer gun bent and grabbed the animal’s tail. It twisted and its white sharp teeth sank into the man’s wrist.

  ‘You little barstard!’ he yelled, and sent it flying from the poopdeck with a swinging kick. Yelping in fright, the spaniel bolted into the forest of the prisoners’ bare legs.

  Henri’s eyes went to the woman and for a second or two he thought he had gone mad. ‘Sarah?’ he gasped aloud. ‘Ma belle Sarah?’

  Everyone else was intent on the dog and Sarah smiled and winked at him, then with a flick of her fingers sent the small ball of paper flying to his feet. In an instant he had lifted and secreted it. Not daring to risk another shared glance, he slipped back into the ranks of his mess. His thoughts were a wild chaotic jumble and he shook his head in an effort to clear and marshal them.

  ‘Please catch my dog, Arthur. Please,’ Sarah begged the captain. His face flaming with mortification, Redmond strode to the top of the ladder and bellowed,

  ‘Bring that damned beast to me.’

  The prisoners seized their opportunity with alacrity and started to mill about, shouting, screaming, singing and making barking noises. For all his slightly unbalanced mind, Redmond was no fool. He realized instantly his mistake and also saw that a first-class riot was on the verge of beginning. He snatched a musket from a marine flanking the top of the ladder and selecting the noisiest of those prisoners nearest to him, aimed and fired. The crash of the discharge was followed almost immediately by the anguished howl of a man as the ball drilled into his thigh. T
he shot and the scream brought the prisoners to a hushed standstill, and Redmond shouted,

  ‘Get below, you scum! Get below this instant, or Goddam ye! I’ll gi’ you a charge o’ grapeshot in your tripes.’

  Without allowing them a moment in which to react, Redmond ordered the marines to drive everyone below decks.

  ‘If any say nay, then blow their guts out!’ he bellowed.

  The marines moved quickly and efficiently, and before the threat of their long, slightly curved bayonets, the prisoners fled the deck in haste.

  Unfortunately for Redmond’s chances of happiness with Sarah Jenkins, the dog disappeared below with the prisoners.

  ‘He’s gone?’ she stamped her foot angrily. ‘You mean to tell me, Captain Redmond, that my dog has been stolen by those . . . those . . . savages!’

  ‘Please ma’am ’twas no fault of mine,’ he muttered in a placatory tone, and was conscious of the barely-hidden, mocking grins of the men witnessing his discomfiture.

  ‘Of course it’s your fault! You are the commander of this vessel, are you not!’ she berated him. ‘Of course it’s your fault, so spare me your mealy-mouthed excuses, sir!’

  Refusing to listen to his mumbled apologies, she stormed off the poop and down the gangway into the boat waiting there. He followed her, forgetting all dignity in his fear of losing her. Her face set and hard, she sat stiffly on the forward bench and would not look at him all through the journey back to shore, not heeding any of his entreaties or wild promises. Inwardly her heart held only contentment.

  ‘Now that Henry knows that I’m going to help him to escape, he’ll be the happiest man in all England,’ she thought, and found it increasingly difficult to stop her own happiness from showing in her face.

  As soon as he was below decks, Henri pushed his way through the mobs of men scuffling and disputing bitterly as to who should share in the eating of the already strangled spaniel. He settled against the bulwark under the light of a scuttle and eagerly scanned his letter. The delicately-coloured paper with the subtle scent of Sarah still lingering upon it, threatened to tear asunder between his trembling hands as he smoothed its folds.

  Unusual for a woman of the people, she was literate and wrote a fine strong copperplate.

  ‘My dear Henry,’ she had written. ‘I am going to help you to escape. Try to send word to me at The Golden Venture, Barrack Row, as to your needs. Do not be afraid to promise high reward to the messenger you find. I have sufficient means to pay . . . Your true friend, Sarah.’

  In spite of the joyful hope that the message brought him, Henri felt an underlying disquiet. She had written as one would write to a friend, not a lover.

  ‘Is that all I am to her?’ he wondered. ‘Only a friend?’

  His eyes burned as he read and re-read the note, but try as he would, he could not find his own deeply-felt love reciprocated in its words.

  Arthur Redmond walked by Sarah’s side through the narrow bustling streets as far as Barrack Row. She refused even to look at him and ignored all his entreaties to speak. When they reached the Golden Venture, the sturdy door opened to admit her and then slammed in his face. ‘Doon’t you fret, Jolly Jack!’ an old beggarwoman cackled, and pointed to her toothless gums. ‘’Ere’s a sorft ’arbour for your needs.’

  He pushed her roughly aside and hurried back to the beach, a terrible fury growing within him. ‘They shall pay for this! By God’s blood, they shall pay!’ he vowed.

  Once aboard the Crown he shouted for the marine trumpeter. ‘Give the call for the fireboats!’ he ordered, and stamped backwards and forwards across the deck, not able to contain his impatience for revenge.

  The brass trumpet sent the call blasting across the harbour waters, and the fire-pump barges that constantly patrolled the lines of moored shipping came ponderously rolling and dipping under the thrust of their long sweeps to the sides of the Crown. Redmond raised a wide-muzzled speaking horn to his mouth.

  ‘Have the goodness to flush out my lower decks, will you,’ he shouted, his face twisting spasmodically, betraying the turmoil in his mind.

  The four longshoremen commanding the pump-barges didn’t question the order, so rare at this inclement time of the year. They were all well-used to the eccentricities of the captains of the various hulks. They rapped out commands and the stiff leather hosepipes were slung across and thrust into the port-holes of the upper battery. Teams of men manned the twin shafts of the pumps and in well-drilled unison began to push down and pull up, chanting in deep-pitched voices,

  ‘Heave awaaay! Push awaaay! Heave away, Johnny oh!’ while a red-stocking-capped boy perched astride the pump and sang out the cadence in his pure soprano.

  The vacuum chambers of the engines sucked greedily at the icy green sea water, drawing it into their lungs of metal, wood, and leather and belching it through the release valves in great vomits. The masses of freezing liquid came gushing into the upper battery, soaking everything within, hammocks, clothing, men’s bodies.

  A tremendous howl of dismay and fury erupted from the prisoners, and hearing it, Redmond danced on his toes and howled back.

  ‘That’ll learn ye, ye hell-spawned scum! That’ll cool your appetite for dog flesh, I’ll warrant!’ he roared with demented laughter and urged on the pump crews. ‘Drive it strongly, ye swabs! Drive it hard, blast ye! Drive it hard . . .!’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was the end of February before the court martial was convened to try the artisan for his attack on his superiors. During that month he remained in a cage-cell in one corner of the guardroom, and after the first anguished days of imprisonment, he lapsed into a dull apathy, obeying what orders he was given, without question or expression. The remainder of his recruit squad had proved surprisingly adept at drill, had completed their foot and musket exercises, and were well advanced in section and company drill. Two or three members of the squad were called to give evidence at the court martial. Jethro Stanton was one of them.

  The senior officer, a grizzled old colonel, snapped questions at Jethro and seemed not to hear any replies.

  ‘What’s that, man? What’s that you say? Speak up, damn you!’ he barked after each sentence of Jethro’s, and before the young soldier could repeat himself the colonel would snap,

  ‘Oh, no matter! No matter!’ and ask another question.

  After giving his evidence, Jethro was dismissed and returned to his barrack room seething with anger at the charade of a fair trial he had witnessed. He took off his shako and placing it on the table sat down in front of it. Turpin Wright was room orderly for the day, and he came to join his friend.

  ‘Now then, matey, what’s the cause o’ you lookin’ so grumpy?’ he asked.

  Jethro stared down at the bright brass front plate of his shako and replied by asking quietly, ‘What do you think the artisan will get?’

  Wright shrugged his shoulders. ‘Wun’t be less than a thousand I reckon, cully, and more likely it’ll be a firing squad.’

  ‘God blast their black hearts!’ Jethro burst out savagely. ‘It’s nothing less than murder, which ever they give him. The poor devil should never have been court martialled in the first place.’

  There was a long silence as both men sat immersed in their own thoughts, then the door of the room opened and Big Sadie came in, her arms piled high with the men’s dry laundry which they paid her, and the other women, three pence a week each to wash and iron for them.

  ‘Hello, my handsome,’ she greeted Jethro, and went on, ‘that cove bin give fifteen hundred.’

  ‘Who told you? The colonel hisself, I suppose?’ Turpin Wright growled sarcastically.

  ‘Doon’t you take that tone wi’ me,’ her face mottled angrily. ‘’Tis no fault o’ mine the poor bugger’s bin served so.’

  ‘I knows that you silly cow,’ Turpin said impatiently. ‘But am you sure o’ what you says?’

  ‘That I am,’ she answered, tossing her tangled blonde hair. ‘I’se just heard two o’ the orf
ficers talkin’ about it . . . The sentence is to be carried out arter dinner.’ She paused and shook her head. ‘It’s a mortal shame, so it is. Fifteen hundred ’ull kill the poor sod. There’ll be a few o’ the young ’uns who’ll leave their dinners on the parade ground I’m thinking’. And God only knows, there’s little enough in their bellies to begin with.’

  ‘Just so, Sadie my duck,’ Turpin nodded agreement. ‘That’s always a surety, that is.’ He turned and patted Jethro’s shoulder. ‘You’se sin summat like a flogging parade afore, arn’t you boy.’

  ‘That I have,’ the younger man said bitterly. ‘I saw them flog my own father . . . God’s curse on them!’

  *

  Lieutenant the Honourable John Coventry was also incensed when he received the news that the punishment parade was to be held that afternoon.

  ‘Devil take me!’ he grumbled, and stared aggrievedly at the drummer who had brought him the message from the C.O., Major Thomas Burd. Both men were in the entrance hall of the Ward’s house in Portsmouth, and through the slightly open door of the salon, Coventry could hear the musical laughter of Jessica who, together with her mother and father, was entertaining David Warburton and himself at luncheon.

  ‘Inform Major Burd that I shall return to barracks presently.’ He dismissed the drummer, who saluted and hurried away. The Honourable John Coventry went back into the salon.

  ‘Why look so glum, Coventry?’ Joseph Ward winked mischievously at his table companions. ‘Have orders come that the French have landed?’

  ‘Demmee, I wish it were that, sir,’ the young man said petulantly, and for a moment, even dressed as he was in the full glory of his finest regimentals, he resembled nothing more than a spoiled child. ‘There is to be a punishment parade after luncheon for that demned recruit who attacked the sergeant-major.’

  Joseph Ward’s lean features grew troubled. ‘What was the sentence of the court martial?’ he questioned.