In Gallant Company (6 page)

The surgeon made to follow, but D'Esterre said, ‘No more, Robert. Your poor play might blunt my skill!' He smiled. ‘Be off with you to your bottles and pills.'

The surgeon did not give his usual laugh, but walked away, feeling for handholds as he went.

D'Esterre gestured towards the silent cabins. ‘Is he worried?'

‘A little.'

The marine tugged at his tight neckcloth. ‘Wish to God I was coming with you. If I can't put my lads to a fight, they will be as rusty as old pikes!'

Bolitho gave a great yawn. ‘I'm for bed.' He shook his head as D'Esterre flicked the cards between his fingers. ‘I'd not play with you anyway. You have the uncomfortable knack of winning.'

As he lay in his cot, hands thrust behind his head, Bolitho listened to the ship, identifying each sound as it fitted into the pattern and fabric of the hull.

The watch below, slung in their close-packed hammocks like pods, the air foul around them because of the bilges, and because the gunports had to be tightly sealed against sea and rain. Everything bloomed with damp, the deckheads dripping, the pumps clanking mournfully as
Trojan
worked her massive bulk over a stiff quarter-sea.

On the orlop deck beneath the waterline the surgeon would soon be asleep in his sickbay. He had only a handful of ill or injured men to deal with. It was to be hoped it remained like that.

Further forward in the midshipman's berth all would be quiet, although probably a flickering glim would betray somebody trying to read a complicated navigational problem, with a solution expected in the forenoon by Bunce.

Their own world. Seamen and marines. Painters and caulkers, ropemakers and gun captains, coopers and topmen, as mixed a crowd as you could meet in a whole city.

And right aft, doubtless still at his big table, the one who ruled all of them, the captain.

Bolitho looked up at the darkness. Pears was almost directly above him. With the watchful Foley nearby, and a glass at his elbow as he pondered over the day's events and tomorrow's uncertainties.

That was the difference, he decided. We obey and execute his orders as best we can. But he has to give them. And the reward or the blame must be on his shoulders.

Bolitho rolled over and buried his face in the musty pillow.

There were certain advantages in remaining a mere lieutenant.

THE FOLLOWING DAY
was little different from the preceding ones. Overnight the wind had backed slightly but had lost much of its strength, so that the great, dripping sails filled and sagged in noisy confusion and added in some way to the general air of tension.

Towards noon, with the drizzle as heavy as ever and the sea an expanse of dirty grey, the pipe echoed around the ship, ‘Hands lay aft to witness punishment!' It was common enough, and under normal conditions might have excited little comment. In a King's ship discipline was hard and quickly executed, and the punishment given by members of the company to one of their own caught stealing from a shipmate's meagre possessions was far worse.

But today should have been different. After all the weeks and months of frustration and waiting, of being cooped up in harbour with little more comfort than a prison hulk, or beating up and down the coastline on some fruitless mission or other, it had been hoped that this would bring a change.

The weather did nothing to help. As Bolitho stood with the other lieutenants, while the marines clattered up and across the poop in two scarlet lines, the ship's company hurried aft. They had to squint against the blown spray and rain, and the biting wind which stirred the dripping canvas with long, uneven gusts. A sullen, unhappy start, Bolitho thought.

The man to be punished came to the larboard gangway, flanked by Paget, the swarthy master-at-arms, and Mr Tolcher, the boatswain. Paget was a tight-lipped, bitter man, and set against him and the squat boatswain the prisoner looked by far the most innocent.

Bolitho watched him, a young Swede named Carlsson. He had a clean-cut face with long flaxen hair, and was staring around as if he had never laid eyes on the ship before. He was typical of the
Trojan
's mixture, Bolitho thought. You never knew what sort of man you would confront from day to day. Many tongues and races had been gathered up into
Trojan
's hull in two years, and yet somehow they all seemed to settle in a very short while of coming aboard.

Bolitho hated floggings, even though they were part of a sailor's life. There still seemed to be no alternative for a captain to maintain discipline when far away from higher authority and the company of other ships.

The grating was rigged by the gangway, and Balleine, a muscular boatswain's mate, stood waiting beside it, the red baize bag dangling at his side.

Cairns crossed the quarterdeck as Pears appeared beneath the poop.

‘Company assembled, sir.' His eyes were expressionless.

‘Very well.'

Pears glanced at the compass and then walked heavily forward to the quarterdeck rail. There was a hush over the crowded seamen who filled the gundeck and overflowed on to the gangways and into the shrouds themselves.

Bolitho glanced at the midshipmen grouped alongside the older warrant officers. He had been sick at a flogging when he had been a midshipman.

He thought about Carlsson. Found asleep on watch after a whole day of fighting wind and rebellious canvas.

With some officers it might have made a difference. But Lieutenant Sparke had no such weakness as sentiment. Bolitho wondered if he was thinking about it now. How it had cast a blight over the very day he was going to lead a boat attack. He glanced sideways at him but saw nothing but Sparke's usual tight severity.

Pears nodded. ‘Uncover.' He removed his hat and tucked it beneath his arm, while the others followed his example.

Bolitho looked to larboard, half expecting to see the sails of their faithful shadow. During the night the schooner had edged closer, and was now visible from the tops of the lower shrouds,
but not from the quarterdeck as yet. That made it harder to accept in a sailor's simple reasoning. A Yankee rebel cruising along as safe as you please, and one of their own about to be flogged.

Pears opened the Articles of War and read the relevant numbers with little change from his normal tone. He finished with the words, ‘. . . he shall be punished according to the Laws and Customs of such cases used at sea.' He replaced his hat, adding, ‘Two dozen lashes.'

The rest of the proceedings moved swiftly. Carlsson was stripped to the waist and seized up to the grating, his arms spread up and out as if he was crucified.

Balleine had taken his cat-o'-nine-tails from the red baize bag and was running it through his fingers, his face set in a grim frown. He was to be in Bolitho's boat for the attack. Was he thinking of that?

Pears said in his harsh voice, ‘Do your duty.'

Balleine's thick arm came back, over and down, the lash swishing across the man's naked shoulders with a dull crack. Bolitho heard the man gasp as the air was knocked from his lungs.

‘One,' counted the master-at-arms.

Nearby, the surgeon and his mates waited to attend the man should he faint.

Bolitho made himself watch the ritual of punishment, his heart like lead. It was unreal. The grey light, the stark clarity of the sailmaker's patches on the heavily flapping main-course. The lash rose and fell, and the scars across the Swede's skin soon changed to overflowing red droplets, which altered into a bloody mess of torn flesh as the flogging continued. Some of the blood had spattered across the man's flaxen hair, the rest eddied and faded in the drizzle across the deck planking.

‘Twenty-one!'

Bolitho heard a midshipman sobbing quietly, and saw Forbes, the youngest one aboard, gripping his companion's arm to control himself.

Carlsson had not cried out once, but as the final stroke cracked over his mutilated back he broke, and started to weep.

‘Cut him down.'

Bolitho looked from the captain's profile to the watching company. Two dozen lashes was nothing to what some captains awarded. But in this case it might destroy the man. Bolitho doubted if Carlsson had understood more than a few words of what had been said to him.

The surgeon's assistants moved in to carry the sobbing man below. Two seamen started to swab up the blood, and others hurried to obey Tolcher's order to unrig the grating and replace it.

The marines trooped down either poop ladder, and Captain D'Esterre sheathed his bright sword as the company broke up and continued about its affairs.

Sparke said to Bolitho, ‘We had best go over the raid again, so that we know each other's thinking.'

Bolitho shrugged. ‘Aye, sir.'

Maybe Sparke's attitude was the right one. Bolitho liked Carlsson, what he knew of him. Obedient, cheerful and hard-working. But suppose it had been one of the ship's real troublemakers who had been caught sleeping on watch. Would he still have felt the same dismay?

Sparke leaned his hands on the quarterdeck rail and peered down at the two cutters which had already been manhandled away from the other boats on the tier in readiness for swaying out.

He said, ‘I am not too hopeful.' He gestured at the vibrating shrouds and halliards. ‘Mr Bunce is usually right, but this time –'

A seaman yelled from the maintop, ‘Deck there! T' other vessel's fallin' off, sir!'

Dalyell, who was officer of the watch, snatched a glass and climbed into the weather shrouds.

He exclaimed, ‘Right, by God! The schooner's falling downwind. Not much, but she'll be visible to all hands by the time they've had their spirit ration!' He laughed at Bolitho's face. ‘Damme, Dick, that bugger is a saucy one!'

Bolitho shaded his eyes against the strange light and saw a brief blur across the tumbling water. Perhaps the schooner's master believed the same as Bunce and was drawing nearer so as not to lose his large quarry. Or maybe he was merely trying
to provoke the captain into doing something foolish. Bolitho pictured Pears' face as he had read from the Articles of War. There was no chance of the latter.

Sparke was saying, ‘It will have to be very fast. They might have boarding nets, but I doubt it. It would hamper her people more than ours.'

He was thinking aloud, seeing his name and citation in the
Gazette
, Bolitho guessed. It was clear in his eyes, like fever, or lust.

‘I will go and see the master.' Sparke hurried away, his chin thrusting forward like a galley prow.

Stockdale emerged from somewhere and knuckled his forehead.

‘I've seen to the weapons, sir. I've put all the cutlasses and boarding axes to the grindstone.' He wheezed painfully. ‘We still going, sir?'

Bolitho crossed to the side and took a telescope from the midshipman of the watch.

‘I hope so.'

Then he saw that the midshipman was Forbes, the one who had been holding on to his friend during the flogging.

‘Are you well, Mr Forbes?'

The boy nodded wretchedly and sniffed. ‘Aye, sir.'

‘Good.' He trained the glass across the nettings. ‘It comes hard to see a man punished. So we must always be on the look-out to remove the cause in the first place.'

He held his breath as the other vessel's topmasts flitted above the heaving water, as if the rest of her were totally submerged. She had a red square stitched against the throat of her mainsail. A makeshift patch, he wondered, or some special form of recognition? He shivered, feeling the rain trickling over his collar, plastering his hair to his forehead. It was uncanny to see the disembodied masts, to know nothing of the vessel and crew.

He turned to speak with Stockdale, but he had vanished as silently as he had appeared.

Dalycll lurched up the sloping deck and said hoarsely, ‘It looks as if you'll be staying with us, Dick.' He grinned unfeelingly. ‘I'm not sorry. I've no wish to do George Probyn's work when he's in his cups!'

Bolitho grimaced. ‘I'm coming round to everyone else's view, Simon. I'll go below now.' He looked up at the flapping masthead pendant. ‘It seems I shall have the afternoon watch after all.'

But it appeared that the captain had other ideas and still retained some powerful faith in his sailing master. Bolitho was relieved from his watchkeeping duties, and spent most of the time compiling a letter to his father. He merely added to the same long letter whenever he found the opportunity, and ended it just as abruptly whenever they spoke with a homebound packet. It would be a link with his father. The reverse would also be true as Bolitho described daily events, the sighting of ships and islands, the life which was no more for Captain James.

He sat on his sea chest, squinting his eyes as he tried to think of something new to put in his letter.

A chill seemed to run up his spine. As if a ghost had suddenly entered his tiny cabin. He looked up, startled, and saw the deckhead lantern flickering as before. But was it? He stared, and then peered round at the small hanging space where his other clothing had been swaying and creaking just moments earlier.

Bolitho stood up, but remembered to duck his head as he rushed out and aft into the wardroom. The stern windows were dull grey, streaked with spindrift and caked salt.

He pressed his face against them and exclaimed. ‘My God! The Sage was right!'

He hurried up to the quarterdeck, instantly aware of the motionless figures all around him, their eyes peering across the quarter or up at the sails which were lifting and then drooping, shaking against the pressures of rigging and spars.

Cairns had the watch, and looked at him gravely. ‘The fog, Dick.' He pointed across the nettings. ‘It is coming now.'

Bolitho watched the slow progress, the way it seemed to smooth the turbulence from the waves and flatten the crests as it approached.