by Lynn Bryant
Paul froze halfway through another yell and stared at his lieutenant in some surprise. It was very unlike Carl to lose his temper. After a moment, he said in more moderate tones:
“Sorry. I’m bloody furious.”
“You shock me,” Carl said with heavy sarcasm. “I’m going to find Sergeant O’Reilly and I’ll ask for volunteers. They need to know what you’re asking them to do.”
“Yes, of course. Look, if nobody wants to…”
“Don’t be bloody stupid. They’ll all volunteer. I will choose the healthiest and those without wives or families to go back to. And when we get there, you will stay on deck and deal with the navy and I will go below and supervise getting those sick men up, because you have a family and I don’t.”
“You bloody won’t, Carl.”
“You get difficult about this and I’m not coming with you. We don’t know what this is yet and you’re not nearly as indestructible as you think you are. I am not going to be the one to go back to Rowena and tell her you died of some pestilence that you picked up on a frigate that you’d no bloody right to be on. While I’m finding the men, get a message to Adam Norris and tell him where we’ll be.”
Paul nodded and watched as his lieutenant went to the door. “Carl - thank you.”
“I’m not doing it for you, Major,” Lieutenant Swanson said flatly. “Get moving.”
Paul sketched an ironic salute. “Yes, sir,” he said meekly and Carl turned, picked up a wooden piggin from the bar and threw it at him. Paul caught it neatly, set it down again and followed his irate junior from the room.
***
Captain Hugh Kelly was checking through his first lieutenant’s exhaustive list of repairs made to both the Iris and the Kronborg when a tap on the door made him look up.
“What is it, Brian?”
“Sorry, sir, I know you’re busy. There’s an officer to see you, sir, Lieutenant Perkins from one of the frigates. He says it’s urgent.”
“Show him in.”
Perkins proved to be a solid man of around Hugh’s own age with slightly bulging brown eyes and hair already thinning. He wore a worried expression.
“What is it, Mr Perkins?”
“Sorry, sir. I wasn’t sure who to go to, with the Admiral and his staff on shore dining with the officers. And I think it’s urgent, sir.”
“Well?”
“Sir, there’s trouble aboard the Flight.”
“The Flight?” Hugh wrinkled his brow trying to remember the ship. “Don’t think I know her?”
“She’s a frigate, sir, normally used for escort duty, but she’s been commandeered by the impress service. A lot of the ships are down crew, sickness mostly, so they’ve been touring the coast stopping merchantmen and fishing boats. Arrived here with around sixty pressed men.”
“All right,” Hugh said, puzzled. “And?”
“She’s been at anchor for a week now. Apparently there’s sickness aboard. Some deaths.”
“And?” Hugh prompted.
“Sir, I don’t know what happened. But apparently the army has boarded the ship. Some officer is over there kicking up a rumpus and threatening the crew and I’m told shots have been fired.”
Hugh got up unable to believe what he was hearing. “Shots? The army is shooting at our crew?”
“I think so, sir.”
“All right, Mr Perkins. Where are they moored?” Hugh went to the door and opened it. “Brian. Get the large boat out and I want full oars and a dozen marines with me! Let’s see if the fucking army feels like shoving my crew around!”
His oarsmen, each of them armed for boarding, took the choppy waters of the bay in their stride. He could see the Flight bobbing precariously at anchor, a boat moored beside her, and as his vessel pulled closer Hugh could hear no sound of conflict or shooting. He directed the crew to pull up beside the other boat which was manned by four local oarsmen, woollen caps pulled down over their ears against the cold wind. Two red-coated privates were seated, one at each end of the boat, muskets held in steady hands. As Hugh’s men hauled alongside one of them shifted.
“Who goes there, sir?”
“Who goes there?” Hugh said, furiously. “I do, soldier, and since I’m a captain of his Majesty’s navy and you’re a common soldier who probably ended up in the army through a magistrate’s order and are about as well-trained as a ship’s monkey I suggest you stay out of my fucking way until I’ve found out why some arsehole in a red coat is threatening our men for going about their lawful duties! I’ve got twelve marines plus my crew here, every one of them is armed and we are more than capable of taking on the dregs of the British infantry, so if you want to make an issue of it…”
“Dawson!” a voice bellowed from above. “What the bloody hell is that racket about down there?”
Hugh spun around and peered up the side of the ship. The private followed his gaze and raised his voice. “Sorry, sir. There’s a navy captain down here who seems almost as pissed off as you are.”
“Excellent news!” the voice said in cut glass tones. “Let him come up, Dawson, I am looking forward to this particular conversation.”
The private shaded his eyes against the light. “If I let him come up, sir, you have to promise you’re not going to shoot him,” he said, and Hugh turned to stare at him in complete astonishment unable to believe what he was hearing.
“I’ll shoot you if you don’t send him up!” the voice roared, and Hugh moved forward.
“Out of my bloody way!” he said shortly. “I intend to find out what the hell is going on here.”
Private Dawson shrugged and stepped to one side. “Yes, sir. Good luck.”
Hugh glared back at him, his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder. There was something about the other man’s manner that he found infuriating although he could not actually have described it as insolence, but he was aware that the correct target for his anger was on deck. He looked back at his marines.
“Hendy, Fletcher, follow me up. If anybody gives you any trouble, shoot them! The rest of you stay ready. I’d rather not have to kill Lord Cathcart’s army but I will if I have to!”
At the top of the ladder, Hugh hesitated. There was no sign of life and certainly no sign of the owner of the impressive bellow he had heard earlier. Cautiously he swung himself over and found himself on an empty deck. Looking around he took two steps towards the companion ladder and heard, even above the creaking of the masts and the muted rumble of the waves, an ominous click. He spun around and the voice said:
“Don’t move, Captain, and tell your lads to put down those worn out pieces of junk they’re lugging around with them or they are going to get their heads blown off by a Baker rifle, and you need to trust me when I tell you that both Carter and Grogan are from the 95th, they won’t miss.”
Hugh lifted his hands and motioned the two marines to lay down their weapons. “Have I walked into a mutiny by any chance?” he asked, keeping his voice even.
There was a brief pause. “Captain Kelly. Good to meet you again. No, it’s not a mutiny, it’s a rescue mission.”
Hugh turned in some surprise. “Major van Daan. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Dealing with the navy’s mess,” Paul van Daan said shortly. “And not for the first time.”
“What mess? What the hell are you on about and why is it anything to do with you anyway?” Hugh demanded furiously. “If it’s aboard this ship, it’s a navy matter and you’ve no bloody right to force your way aboard throwing your weight around and bullying the crew. Where’s the captain?”
“Lieutenant Paget? Dead, I’m told, along with half his crew and at least thirty pressed men. It might have been less if they’d turned back once they realised they’d got fever aboard, which I’m told they did fairly soon out of Bristol but if they’d turned back and let these lads go ashore they wouldn’t have got their bonuses, would they? And since then they’ve kept them below decks aboard this floating charnel house letting them pass the illnes
s on and burying them quietly at sea so that nobody works out what the fuck they did!”
Hugh stood staring at him, caught between his anger at the man’s arrogant usurpation of navy authority and his horror at the thought that the story might be true. Paul van Daan was looking back at him, the deep blue eyes dark with fury.
“How did you get to hear about this?” Hugh said finally.
Van Daan gave a mirthless laugh and pointed to the distant shore. “We’re billeted at the inn over there. A matter of tides, I’d say. You know how unpredictable they are at sea, Captain, but coastal tides are pretty reliable in where they deposit what’s thrown in the water.”
Hugh caught his breath in sheer horror. “Oh Christ, the bodies have been washing up!”
“Very regularly for the past few days. The local parson came to me. One or two might have been a coincidence, but half a dozen and it was fairly clear something was going on. After that it didn’t take long to find out.”
Hugh looked around. “The crew?”
“Currently under the command of the bosun. I’d hang the bastard, personally, but that will be up to the navy.”
“Are you sure, Major?” Hugh said coldly. “I rather got the impression that you thought the navy incapable of managing its own affairs.”
“Very true,” Van Daan said. “And what I’ve seen here today has confirmed my suspicions.”
Hugh took a deep breath, trying to restrain himself. “Tell your men to put those bloody rifles down,” he said. “You can hardly order them to shoot me and you’re in enough trouble, boy.”
“That depends on what you intend to do next,” the major said. “You try and order me off this ship before I’ve got those poor bastards ashore and I’ll shoot you myself.”
The sheer effrontery of the man took Hugh’s breath away. “Are you even aware of how outranked you are here?” he demanded. “Do you have any idea….”
“I’m not stupid, Captain. Just now I simply don’t give a damn.”
“Oh stop being so bloody melodramatic!” Hugh said in exasperation. “I have taken your point; the navy gave you a hard time as a boy and you’re still pissed off! What did they do, give you a smack round the head for being an insolent little bastard, because I’m sure you were! Whatever happened here, you should have taken it to the naval commanders, it’s not the business of the army.”
“I did take it to the naval commanders,” Paul van Daan said flatly. “I was informed by that arsehole Popham that it was none of my damned business and if there was sickness aboard a navy ship he would look into it once the campaign was over and the Danish fleet secured, but in the meantime, as long as it was contained, it was the business of the navy. Which I have translated as ‘let them all die as long as they don’t get in our way’.”
Hugh did not reply. His silence seemed to mollify the major slightly. After a long moment, Paul van Daan turned to the two green jacketed riflemen. “Stand down,” he said quietly. “Grogan, go and find out how it’s going below.”
The older of the two riflemen saluted and shouldered his rifle, moving away. Hugh moved forward.
“I’m going to see,” he said.
“Good luck with that, Captain. I’ve already been down there.”
Hugh went to the top of the companionway leading down to the lower deck and descended into the dimness. The Flight was a twelve gun frigate without the spacious decks of his own ship and space was always tight even with a small crew. He was accustomed to the smells of a ship packed with men. There were strict rules about the cleanliness of ships but he was aware that on a long voyage there was a wide variety of interpretations of those rules depending on the captain or lieutenant commanding the vessel. But descending the ladder into the bowels of the Flight brought back only one memory.
He had been barely eighteen when he had boarded his first slaver, a French ship off the Indies and the stench had invaded his nostrils making him want to gag. The air in the hold was thick and loathsome making it hard to breath and he had stood, boarding axe still in his hand, staring in horror at the rows of chained bodies, too close together to enable any movement. Some were dead, others close to it, lying in their own filth since the sailors themselves had long since succumbed to the fever and dysentery and had given up all attempts to keep the slave decks clean.
It should not have seemed worse, Hugh knew, to find these conditions aboard a Royal Navy ship, but it did. He knew that these men, dead and dying, had been pressed into service, taken from fishing fleets and merchantmen and small boats and given no choice about their service. He had seen fever aboard ships before and knew that in such close quarters it spread fast and killed quickly, but this ship had been only days out of Bristol when this sickness struck and he knew with angry certainty that the arrogant young army major was right; it should have turned back and there was no excuse for it. At the very least it would have saved many of the crew. Greed had done this. A bonus was paid to the press gang for every good seaman they were able to provide and Lieutenant Paget, probably an impecunious officer on half pay, had succumbed to temptation and probably hoped to make enough profit from those men who survived to make up for the inconvenience of those who died. He could not have known it would get this bad and his greed had killed him.
The space would normally have been packed with hammocks, closely strung together. The mess caused by sickness and diarrhoea had made their use impossible so the men lay on bare boards, many of them without blankets or pillows. Some attempt had been made to sluice down the deck with buckets of seawater but that had clearly been abandoned and buckets and brooms stood idle and reeking against the bulwark while the men lay in their own dirt. Hugh stepped forward into filth and heat and groans and the sound of dying men.
“Oh dear God,” he whispered.
There were men moving about among the sick and dying but they were not sailors. They wore army uniforms, all in shirts with sleeves rolled up, and several of them had tied cloths across their faces to limit the stench. In the centre a young officer with brown hair tied back and a look of taut grief in his green eyes, was directing as his men sorted the dead from the living, carrying corpses over to the foot of the far companionway. Hugh made his way forward.
“What are you doing with the dead men?” he asked.
The officer turned, a lieutenant in his twenties. He studied Hugh for a moment then saluted. “We’ll take them ashore and see to their burial, sir, the local parson will arrange it. Can’t keep dumping them into the sea, it’s too close to the shore. The tides…”
“Yes, I know, your major told me. We’ll get them laid out on deck and I’ll organise a boat to take them ashore. If one of your men will show them the way, they can take them up to this churchyard. I’ll get a few of my marines to act as gravediggers.”
“Thank you, Captain.” The green eyes studied Hugh. “Major van Daan has got the ship’s books and logs. He’s hoping that proper records were taken at least, when they came aboard. That way we’ll be able to notify their families. If you ask him…”
“They’ll have kept records.” Hugh gave a bitter smile. “Only way to pick up their bonuses. Captain Hugh Kelly of the Iris. What’s your name, Lieutenant?”
“Lieutenant Carl Swanson, 110th light company.”
“These your men?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t your job, Mr Swanson. I’ve got a dozen marines and sailors with me, I’ll get them up and take over here.”
The young officer gave a tight smile. “Happy to hand over to you, sir. Although I think I might have trouble getting the major off this ship before he’s seen these men to safety. Do I need to?”
Hugh met the steady green eyes. “He has no jurisdiction here and I outrank him,” he said.
“He has twenty five men of our light company. He doesn’t need jurisdiction just at the moment, sir. But I’d really like to minimise the amount of trouble he’s in, if I can.”
Hugh found his lips curving in a reluctant smile. “H
ow much of your time do you spend hauling him out of it, Lieutenant?”
“More than I like, sir. Was he rude?”
“He threatened to have me shot, Mr Swanson.”
The young lieutenant winced visibly. “I’m so sorry, sir. He lost his temper. He’ll apologise when he’s calmed down, I promise.”
Hugh hesitated, torn between a wholly instinctive desire to get the army off a navy vessel where they had no right to be and an uncomfortable sense that the young lieutenant was currently the most sensible person on the Flight. Finally he nodded.
“Where were you intending to take them?”
“There’s a farm just on the edge of the village. My captain is over there now with a few of the men, getting a hay barn cleared and trying to find bedding and food for them. The local parson is helping. He reported the bodies.”
“How many still aboard?”
“Nine dead. Around fourteen crew members still able-bodied. They’re currently locked in the officers’ cabins.”
“Did they resist?”
“Not for very long thank God or he’d have shot them, he’s seriously pissed off. They were drunk. They’re not our business, sir, we just needed them out of the way.”
Hugh nodded. He was finding it hard to breathe in the thick, foul air and he wondered at the surprising calm of the young officer. “And the sick?”
“About fifteen still very ill. The rest have either missed it, God knows how, or have had it and are very weak but seem to be on the mend. They’re all filthy and half starved; I think all the normal supply lines must have broken down once the lieutenant and the purser died. Most of the crew were roaring drunk when we boarded.”
Hugh wondered dismally how it could get any worse. “I think we’d better get them all to this barn of yours to start with,” he said. “Once we’re ashore we’ll separate the sick from the well. I’ll need to report to Admiral Gambier or Captain Popham.”
“Well good luck with that, Captain, but if you’re lucky you might manage to drag them away from dinner,” a sardonic voice said from the ladder and Hugh turned, almost relieved at a legitimate target.