It was more than Emily could bear, this incessant, frenzied speculating about who might have survived and who had not. Briefly, before being taken from the Isabelle by Trevelyan and his marines, she had seen Fly Austen and Morgan Evans, and therefore knew they had escaped harm during the confrontation with the American frigates – but had they survived their ship’s final destruction? And what about the others? Of them, she had no real news at all. Those on Trevelyan’s Serendipity were forbidden to speak to her. She knew there was someone on duty outside her locked door. She could see the heels of a pair of boots in the space between the door and wooden planks of the floor – the same space through which they had passed a tray of stale biscuits hours before – but no one had answered her calls or cared about her grief.
In need of fresh air, Emily crawled out of her cot, mindful of her swollen ankle and aching shoulder. She clambered over the still-warm cannon that sat silent below the cot, negotiated her way round the network of thick ropes that held it in place, and finally pushed open the heavy gunport. A cold sea-spray met her face with a sharp slap, but despite its sting, she filled her lungs with the early morning air and gazed out over the grey swells towards the faint glimmer of light between the dark horizon and the black wall of clouds hovering above it. She stuck her head out the gunport, welcoming the freshness from the surging sea and the wind that tossed the straight strands of her hair about her shoulders. She forced herself to breathe deeply until her pounding heart slowed. But nature could not diminish her sorrow, and desiring only to sleep, she closed up the heavy port, jumping back with a start as it fell into place with a thud and plunged her cabin once more into semi-darkness.
Using the gun’s ropes for assistance, Emily groped her way back towards her cot and was almost at her destination when her bare feet tripped over objects that had been relegated to the wet floor ten hours ago when she had first been thrust into this unfamiliar cabin. Kneeling down, her shaking hands felt about for the pair of leather shoes with the gleaming silver buckles, and the precious volumes of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. In her crouched position, she pressed them to her breast until she heard the ship’s bell clang four times – 6:00 a.m. Listless, she scrabbled to find her footing on the cannon, and tumbled into her cot. There she set the shoes and volumes down beside her pillow, wrapped herself into her blanket – a frock coat that held a faint musky scent within its voluminous folds – and let her tears come again.
There would be no sunrise this day.
6:30 a.m.
At Sea
“SIR? CAPTAIN AUSTEN?”
Fly Austen struggled to open his heavy eyelids as the dread of his troubled dreams began to recede into the void of his subconscious. Who was speaking to him? He was so exhausted, so wet and cold and hungry, that he could not tell. And where was he? There was a rocking motion beneath him, but no ceiling over his head. He sat up – his back screaming in pain as he did so – to cast his sleepy eyes around him.
It was early morning. He was in a small boat – a cutter – bobbing about on dull waves under a leaden sky that was spitting cold rain. With him, crowded into the boat, were eighteen indistinguishable men, all with soot-blackened faces. Some, with discernible wounds, slept, while others gazed at nothing, perhaps, like him, trying to reconcile the events of the last several hours. Every one of them was soaked to the skin and they huddled together to steal what warmth they could from their neighbouring comrades. Floating nearby were two more cutters and one larger pinnace, each carrying roughly the same number of exhausted, wet men, and each towing – by means of ropes and discarded shirts – bits and pieces of charred timber on which were sprawled another handful of survivors. One young lad had even lashed himself to an empty chicken coop to ride out the waves.
Fly rubbed his eyes as if trying to banish the dismal scene before him. Was this all that was left? In his fitful dreams, he had been able to save his men from the burning Isabelle, but this ragged bunch, drifting on the waves as helplessly as a bullet-ridden bird, spoke the true tale. As bitter awareness filled his dark eyes, he turned them towards Morgan Evans, who tried a second time to rouse him with his words.
“Captain Austen?”
Fly nodded wearily as his glance flickered over his meagre fleet. “Aye?”
“They’ve spotted us again, sir.”
“Who has?”
“The Amethyst and the Expedition. I beg you to look behind you, sir.”
Fly twisted his sore body in order to follow Morgan’s finger and squinted at the two murky sails, running towards them from the north.
“They’re still a few hours off, but – we’re sure of it – they’re on their way, sir.”
Fly recalled sighting the two British ships before Trevelyan had set the Isabelle afire, but as the flames’ guiding glow had been extinguished and darkness had settled on the sea long before their arrival, they could be of no assistance to the poor souls, with nothing to cling to, who had cried out most piteously for help.
Fly winced. “How many of us are there, Mr. Evans?”
“Seventy-five in the boats, another twelve in the water, sir.”
“But there were so many on the Isabelle.”
“I was told there were four hundred of us in all, sir.” Morgan hesitated. “Four hundred and one if you include Miss Emily.”
Fly gave the carpenter’s mate a grim smile as he made a tremendous effort to stand up. With his boots splashing in the several inches of seawater that had poured into the cutter, he examined the boats and floating timbers of the once-proud Isabelle, and the men who remained. Had they been able to lower the large launch and the second pinnace before the fire engulfed them, many more lives could have been saved. And the skiff, it could have carried a few more, but its fate was unknown long before Trevelyan’s men and their torches had done their contemptible work. In the bow of the surviving pinnace, Fly noticed the unruly mop of hair that belonged to Biscuit.“You there, Biscuit! What the devil are you about?”
The old Scottish cook raised his woeful face from his hands, wiped at his whiskery cheeks, and reluctantly met Captain Austen’s stare. “Canna help me sobbin’, sir. Ya see, I lost me stove, me old reliable Brodie stove. She be keepin’ comp’ny with a pod o’ queer sea monsters by now, no doubt.”
“Brighten yourself up and tell me what provisions we have amongst us.”
“Why, none, sir, none at all. No food, no water. Ya see – there weren’t no time, sir.”
Fly clenched his fists to fight the gnawing thirst and hunger that caused him more agony than his back. He didn’t want to have to think, let alone lead men. He would gladly lie back down in the cold water that slithered up and down in the cutter’s belly if only he could sleep and forget.
Morgan and a few of the others who were still alert looked up expectantly at Fly. They waited. At last Fly took a deep breath and stepped up onto the cutter’s bench, balancing himself on his weary legs.
“Men! We must work together. We must stay occupied. These boats … each one of them should be fitted with sailing gear.” He forced an injection of fervour into his strained voice. “If there is mast and canvas to be found – raise them! If oars – lower them! And for goodness sakes, find something with which to bail this infernal seawater! If we can pull together, our reward just may be a hot breakfast.” He peered at the approaching ships through the rain that now fell harder, and to himself added, “so long as, this time, Providence is on our side.”
11
Friday, June 18
9:00 p.m.
Sunset at Sea
WITH HIS RED SCARF tied around his bandaged head, a shirtless Magpie grunted as he lifted the oars from the calm waters and laid them to rest with a heavy thump on the gunwales. He then pulled his bare feet up onto the skiff’s middle bench and sat cross-legged to watch the sun fall from the western sky. Under normal circumstances, he loved to watch the burning orb as it gradually disappeared, leaving in its wake an afterglow of pearl and rosy pinks, but now he was
relieved to see the last of it. This day had been harsh. The sun’s penetrating rays had been relentless and had burned his skin. There had been no water to drink, the contents of the wineskin given him by Biscuit long gone. The last two days, though stormy and frightening, had afforded drops of water from the low-hanging clouds. He had eagerly caught them on his tongue, and in his hands to give to Gus. But today there had been nothing.
The air already felt cooler. Soon it would be dark. Magpie didn’t like to think of it. There were such strange sounds heard at night. Throughout the past two, he had slept uneasily next to Gus, under a tent of canvas he’d fashioned from the boat’s stowed sail, fancying he heard shouting voices and the creaking timbers of ships passing by. Again and again he had bolted upright, his heart pounding with anticipation, hoping to see the Isabelle and his buddies hailing him with their swinging lanterns as they stood lined along the rail. It was never the Isabelle. It was never anything at all. Worst were the sounds – real or imagined – that he could not identify: cries and groans, murmurs and gurgles that caused his shaking body to break out into gooseflesh. Frightening, fanciful images had whirled about in his head like a waterspout. But as the sky had been without stars or light of any kind, the black-cloaked night had refused to share her eerie secrets.
“Is there anything left to eat?” Gus whispered from under his blanket.
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Magpie said cheerfully, reaching for his duffle bag and rummaging about inside. “I’ll find us some biscuit.”
Yesterday they had been lucky. Gus had suddenly remembered the breakfast Dr. Braden had brought to him on the mizzenmast platform the morning of the Isabelle’s last day. Luckily he’d never gotten around to eating it and it was still there in his pocket. Seawater had annihilated the two biscuits, but the fat square of cheese was still edible.
Magpie felt Gus’s hopeful gaze on him as he pretended to search for food. Wrapped in a blanket under the canvas tent, Gus had both arms dressed in crude splints that Magpie had created using strips of cloth from his own linen shirt and the ribs of a crushed barrel he had located wedged under the skiff’s aft bench. Being certain that Gus also had a broken right leg, he had applied a longer splint to it, with the aid of a boarding pike found fastened to the innards of the boat’s larboard side.
“How many days has it been?” Gus asked, the light having left his eyes when Magpie’s search proved fruitless.
Old Bailey Beck had once told Magpie about stranded sailors who carved X’s on the tree trunks of their uninhabited islands to keep track of time. He well knew how many days it had been, but he’d scratched time markers anyway on one of the skiff’s planks just in case.
“Four.”
Gus tried lifting his head. “And can you see land?”
“Please don’t try gittin’ up, Mr. Walby. Ya’ll heal quicker if ya stay put.”
“Are there any boats to be seen, then?”
Magpie peered into the gathering gloom on the horizons. Yesterday he thought he’d seen thousands of sails in the whitecaps on the rough sea. Now all was calm and flat and the distances were frighteningly empty. His hesitation in replying was answer enough for Gus. When he spoke again there was a note of anxiety in his voice.
“Can we raise a sail, then, Magpie?”
“There’s no mast to be had, Mr. Walby. I kin only row, but I ain’t very strong.”
“Which way are the winds blowing?”
“From the north.”
“And the currents – which way do they flow?”
“Can’t rightly tell, Mr. Walby, on account of me bein’ a sail maker, not a sailin’ master. Mr. Harding, though, could tell us, if he were here.”
“But he’s not here!” Gus turned his head away. “I don’t know – I don’t know if I can hang on much longer.”
“Oh, but ya gotta, Mr. Walby. Ya just gotta hang on.”
Gus stared blankly at the canvas walls of his shelter; his voice was hollow. “Was it all just a dream then, Magpie? The two ships I saw through the glass? What – what of them? You never said.”
Magpie’s weary mind raced. What could he answer? He had lost sight of the Amethyst and her sister ship the night the Isabelle had been burned. He laughed nervously. “Oh, no, sir. They be on their way fer us still, I’m sure. Tell ya what, if ya just sleep now I’ll … why, I’ll try catchin’ us a fish fer supper.”
There was a disquieting cast in Gus’s watery eyes as he fixed them on Magpie, but he nodded and soon drifted off. The moment Magpie heard his even breathing, he seized the spyglass that lay against his bare left foot and stared through it, long and hard, trying to will a ship to come into view. There was no sight of land or sail, marine life or bird, anywhere, but he kept on staring through the glass anyway, until the sky’s colours had completely faded and a rolling fog appeared, creeping silently over the water like a phantom flotilla. Magpie was about to crawl into the open-ended tent alongside Gus when he heard a low thud at the skiff’s stern, as if something had struck it.
For a moment, he sat paralyzed, trying to think what it might be: a big fish, a bottle with a message inside, a sea creature intent on making him his supper, perhaps? Whatever it was wouldn’t go away. It continued to knock insistently against the stern the way a sailor used to knock on his sail room door on the Isabelle. Quietly and carefully, Magpie made his way aft so as not to disturb Gus’s slumber or upset the boat, and when he had kneeled down upon the backbench he peeked over the side.
What he found there caused his stomach to heave. He covered his mouth to stifle his shrieks and his one eye began streaming from the stench, but he could not look away. It was a dead sailor, come to meet his own kind. His face was burned beyond recognition and it appeared something in the sea had been gnawing it. His body was horribly bloated, his clothes taut and torn, and astoundingly, his hat was still on his head, sitting low on the thick waves of his chestnut hair. Across the front of the black felt hat, embroidered on a faded blue ribbon, were the words “HMS Isabelle.”
Magpie had seen his ship burning from afar and guessed the outcome. This sailor had come, like a human dispatch, to confirm the worst. With a terrible fascination, Magpie stared at the mangled body until his fear subsided and his insides settled enough for him to fetch his flute from the pocket of his trousers. He put the instrument to his sunburned lips and began piping a tune that the Duke of Clarence had taught him to play – a piece called “Grazing Sheep” (or something like it), composed, he’d been told, by a man named Bach a long time ago. Its beautiful notes calmed him. When the tune was done, he reached down into the dark water, lifted the hat from the dead man’s head, and, despite the stench and dampness, placed it on his own. Then, putting his fist to the hat’s brim in a final salute, he gently nudged the unknown sailor away from the skiff, back into the waves.
Midnight
(First Watch, Eight Bells)
Aboard the USS Serendipity
“WITH RESPECT, DR. BRADEN, you look very tired, sir.”
Leander was sitting at the small table in the surgeon’s cockpit, updating medical notes in the journal that had belonged to the Serendipity’s former physician. He took off his spectacles and raised his sore eyes to find his assistant standing over him. The young man’s forehead, partially hidden by wisps of fine, black hair, was furrowed with lines of concern. Leander wondered if the lad had seen eighteen years.
“I am, thank you, Mr. Norlan. Are you off, then?”
“I wondered, sir, if you might like to accompany me above deck for some fresh air. I know it’s late, but the air down here is particularly stagnant, and I believe … I believe Captain Trevelyan said it was quite all right for you to go up after dark.”
Aye, being the nocturnal beast that I have become, thought Leander, standing up to stretch his muscles, which had not been exercised in days. His entire body hurt, the result of having assumed a permanently hunched-over position on this American ship where, around the clock, it seemed, he had performed amputations,
extracted grapeshot, examined throats, set broken limbs, and mixed tonics for this foreign crew. The low beams of the orlop deck suited the man who stood less than five feet; it was hellish for one who stood over six.
Leander looked at Joe Norlan, whose features at times reminded him of someone he once knew, though he could not say whom. He spoke like an Englishman and there was often a certain expression in his hazel eyes, as if he were communicating some secret code he hoped Leander would soon crack. If a second opportunity were afforded, he would gladly exchange conversation with the young man. Not tonight, though. Tonight he longed to be alone.
“Perhaps another time. I need you well rested and alert in the morning.”
There was a hint of disappointment in Joe’s voice as he said, “Good night then, sir,” and left the cockpit.
Leander closed the medical journal and picked up a lantern to take a last peek at his patients as they slept on their flat wooden cots, and gave a few instructions to the loblolly boy whose duty it was to stay the night with them. Then, wearily he climbed the ladder to the lower deck where his light cast long shadows across the congested field of hammocks that stretched before him, each filled with the rounded form of a snoring sailor. He headed aft, towards the two rows of tiny cabins that lined both sides of the ship, and stopped before his own door, the very last one on the starboard side. Despite his fatigue, he knew sleep would not come, and suddenly he wished he’d taken Joe Norlan up on his invitation.
With a change of heart, Leander retraced his steps and trudged up a second ladder, which brought him to the gun deck. Gazing ahead into the gloom, he caught sight of a group of idlers, playing cards and swilling mugs of what was most likely grog at a lowered table between two large guns that had last seen action against the Isabelle. The scene reminded him of Bailey Beck and Morgan Evans and their penchant for late-night gaming. Surprised, the men paused in their play to watch him. Leander greeted them with a nod of his head. Uncertain whether they should speak or salute in reply, the men raised their mugs to him instead. As Leander slipped away into the shadows of the deck, he heard one of them say, “Never seen the like afore! Why, he stitched me up and took care o’ me like I were one o’ his kind!”
Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle Page 26