Under Enemy Colors (7 page)

A
sullen and sickly crew appeared the next morning, and Hayden put them to work. A frigate named for the goddess of order should make a better showing, he thought. His subsequent inspection of the ship, however, was enough to dishearten the most stolid officer. The bosun’s stores were in disarray. There was but one useable cable in the cable tier—the others having been allowed to rot. The quarterdeck leaked and required repitching, and there was everywhere a general want of cleanliness and order.

The captain of the hold seemed to know his business, and smartly reported the state of their stores, though the reclusive purser did not know it himself. Hayden’s most disastrous find, however, was in the forward magazine. By the dim illumination, which came through a pane of glass in the light room, he examined the powder—but it was the smell of it that truly angered him.

“Who is the gunner, Mr Landry?” Hayden asked. He’d met the man but the name now escaped him.

“Mr Fitch is acting gunner, Mr Hayden.” Landry, who the day previous had been most obliging, was now sullen and resentful of Hayden’s presence, as though the first lieutenant interfered in the running of the frigate. Having been found with his ship in such disarray was perhaps at the root of it, but Hayden did not care for the man’s manner.

“Would you call for him, Mr Landry?”

Landry hesitated by the door a moment, as though he might refuse, but when Hayden turned and faced him, he touched his hat. Before he could comply, however, Lord Arthur, who had become Hayden’s shadow, interceded.

“I’ll fetch him directly, Mr Hayden,” the boy offered, and was off at a run.

Landry walked out onto the orlop, bent low, as though he would examine the cables.

Hayden watched him, with more detachment than he would have expected of himself. He had known his kind before. Landry was a sad little fellow, he had decided, awkward and ungracious in both manner and address—the boy whom everyone picked on at school.

A moment later the acting gunner, the bald and tattooed Mr Fitch, shuffled into the magazine, followed by the second lieutenant. He glanced nervously at Landry as he made his way down the three steps.

“Is it not your duty, Mr Fitch, to keep this storeroom aired and dry at all times?” Hayden asked.

The man did not answer but nodded dumbly.

“Then how do you explain this?” Hayden reached into the powder barrel and removed a handful of tacky powder, which he let fall in doughy dollops back into the barrel. The acting gunner winced.

“What became of the gunner whom you replaced?”

“He died, Mr Hayden,” Landry offered. “The surgeon said his heart gave out. We slipped him over the side some weeks ago.”

“You are relieved of your duties as gunner, Mr Fitch,” Hayden stated. “I will leave it for the captain to decide your fate when he returns.”

“It was Captain Hart who appointed Fitch, Mr Hayden,” Landry said, eyeing him with poorly concealed hostility.

“So I assumed, Mr Landry, but I will put another man in his place until the captain returns. We cannot have our powder thus neglected. Can we?” He gestured to the door. “You may go, Mr Fitch. Mr Landry will find you other duties. Count yourself lucky that I am not captain, here, for I would have you flogged this very day for negligence such as this.” The man made an awkward knuckle and then backed up the stairs, retreating into the dimness, the quick padding of bare feet marking his flight.

Hayden turned to Landry. “Although there is little point, let us test this powder before I write to the Ordnance Board for more. Have a few cartridges made up for the carronades, if you please, Mr Landry.” Hayden went out and left the lieutenant to suffer his resentments alone. Wickham followed quickly behind.

A few moments later they were on the quarterdeck, the tompion removed from a thirty-two-pounder carronade. The first cartridge did not fire at all and had to be drawn out with a worm—a long, corkscrew-like rod—a task no one relished for obvious reasons. The second made a dull thump, though much debris was left in the barrel. They managed to fire a ball after two more misfires, but as Mr Barthe observed, he could “throw it further himself.”

Lieutenant Hayden would now have the unenviable task of requesting powder to replace that which had been spoiled. The quantities of powder in the magazines, however, did beg another question.

“How often do you exercise the great guns, Mr Landry?” he asked after the final cartridge was drawn out, split, and its contents spilled over the side.

“Never, Mr Hayden. At least not since I’ve been aboard. Gun drills are done without powder or shot.”

Hayden felt his eyes close, and it took some effort to keep his face impassive. He turned quickly away. “Ready to raise the mast, Mr Franks?”

Men placed at the capstan put their chests against the bars and pushed, drawing taut a line running through the leading block to the sheer pendant. It creaked like an old door as it stretched, and the mizzen lifted a few inches.

“Stand clear!” Hayden ordered.

When the mast was raised a little more, it slewed suddenly to one side, swinging heavily back and forth.

The men at the capstan bars continued to turn until the mizzen attained an angle perhaps fifteen degrees shy of vertical. The back line, reeved through a block made fast to one of the sheer heads, was then hauled. It had been attached to the mast under the bibbs, and this brought the spar almost to vertical. Hayden and some of the larger men put their shoulders against it, and with the help of a tackle, wrestled the heel of the mast over the aperture where it would step through the deck. Slowly the great spar was lowered. It did not want to pass cleanly through the lower deck, but was finally coaxed and cajoled upright enough that it passed, the heel tenon seating neatly in the step beneath.

“’Tis home, Mr Hayden!” came a call from below.

“Well done!” Hayden said to the men around him, then the same to the men at the bars. “We shall make up the shrouds, Mr Franks,” Hayden ordered. “Perhaps Aldrich can assist you.” He was sure that Aldrich would soon have the job in hand, if Franks did not get too much in the way, but Franks surprised him. Despite the man’s obvious lack of proficiency in his trade, he exhibited a great capacity to learn, and was not embarrassed to do so, though many in his position would have attempted to bluster their way through, hoping to hide their defects. It raised Mr Franks considerably in Hayden’s opinion. A man willing to learn was never a cause lost.

He assigned Stuckey another day of demeaning work, and set the bosun’s mate to chase him about. Such an act could backfire, Hayden well knew, if the crew sympathised with the offender, but it seemed that Stuckey had little sympathy from the others, though no one had the nerve to mock him either, a fact Hayden took note of.

The shrouds were made up and the tops got over the mast. Attending to some job of work, Hayden lifted his head to glimpse something large plunging from above. A tumbling man grasped at the shrouds, his fall checked, lost his grip, fell, then caught hold of the still-slack shrouds once more, burning his hands as he slid too quickly the last thirty feet to the deck, landing with an awkward thump. Somehow on his feet, the boy—for it was a boy, despite his massive size—leaned against the rail a moment, shaken. Wickham approached him.

“Are you injured, Giles?” the young nobleman asked.

The boy shook his head, unable to quite catch his breath. “No, sir,” he whispered. “Begging your pardon. I’ll be all right in a moment, sir.”

Hayden crossed the deck and realized the lad, who still trembled, was a good half a foot taller than he, and much broader across the shoulders and chest. “Giles? Is that your name?” Hayden asked.

“Aye, sir,” the lad answered. His face had turned pale as a fish belly.

“Sit down on the deck and put your head between your knees. Someone bring the boy some water.”

Giles slid down the bulwark and hung his head, great forearms thrown over his neck, elbows on the knees, none of this structure too steady. “Sorry, sir,” the boy whispered, his voice barely audible.

“Don’t apologize,” Hayden bid him. “You’ve had quite a fright.”

“If I hadn’t grabbed the shrouds…”

Hayden crouched down, trying to get a glimpse of the boy’s face. The lad lolled to one side and would have slid limply to the deck, but Hayden and Wickham caught him and supported his ample weight. The doctor appeared then, fetched from his charges by Mr Archer.

Griffiths bent over the boy and felt for the carotid pulse. “What happened?” he asked.

“He fell from the mizzen top,” Hayden reported, “but managed to catch hold of a shroud or he would have come to much harm.”

“He didn’t fall to the deck, then?” the doctor asked.

“No. He slid down the shroud,” Wickham said, “but then turned ashen and light-headed.”

“Got the vapours,” one of the crew whispered and the men laughed.

“Well, he’ll come round in a moment, I’ll venture,” Griffiths said, and the boy did move at that instant, one eye slitting open. “There you are, Giles. All of a piece, I see. Nothing broken, no severed arteries, not even a modest contusion. I think you’ll live. No, don’t try to sit up. Lay still a moment and let the blood find its natural level.” Griffiths looked up at Hayden and nodded. “He’ll be perfectly hale in a moment. Saved the deck a nasty bashing, I should think.”

Hayden retreated with Wickham in his wake, and a servant called them for the midday meal.

“That was a bit of luck that he saved himself that way,” Hayden said, as they reached the top of the companionway. “You know him, do you?”

Wickham nodded. “I do, sir. We are the same age but for three days.”

Hayden must have shown his surprise.

“He has great size for his years, doesn’t he?” Wickham stated.

“For any tally of years, I would venture.”

Wickham looked around rather furtively and then leaned closer to Hayden, pitching his voice low. “Did you hear the men whispering, sir? saying that Giles didn’t fall?”

“What did they mean, he didn’t fall? We saw him come tumbl—” But then he realized what was meant. “They believed it was not an accident?”

“That’s what I assume, sir.”

Hayden pressed a palm against his forehead, appalled. “Did anyone see what happened? Did they see someone push the boy?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Send young Giles down to me.”

A moment later Giles descended the companionway stair and Hayden met him outside the gunroom. Not being captain, he did not have a cabin suitable for private interviews, so he led the boy down to the orlop and ranged forward of the sick-berth—the nearest thing to privacy they would find at that time of day. Giles’ big, simple face could not hide the apprehension he felt, and Hayden wondered how much of that was just being young and called by a superior officer.

“Feeling better, Giles? No harm done?”

“I’m perfectly hale, Mr Hayden.”

Hayden fixed his gaze on the boy-man, trying to read his doughy, rather inexpressive face. “Tell me honestly, Giles, did you fall from the mizzen top, or were you pushed?”

A small flare of alarm, open to interpretation. “Pushed, sir?! Why, Mr Hayden…” but his sentence devolved into incoherency. Finally, in a small voice, he managed, “I lost me balance and tumbled, sir. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

“You are certain?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hayden eyed him a moment more, but the boy’s gaze slid down to the deck. “Who was on the mizzen top with you? I did not notice.”

“Why, I hardly remember…Cole, I think. And that Dutchman van De…They call him The Demon, sir, but I don’t know his right name. Oh, and Smithers, though he’d shinnied up the mast a bit by then.”

“And no one bumped you or collided with you in any way?”

“No, sir. Just born awkward, that’s all.”

“All right. You may go.”

Hayden followed the boy up the stairs, where he encountered Wickham outside the midshipmen’s berth, clearly waiting for him. His eyes followed Giles up to the gun-deck, his footsteps heard retreating across the planking.

“Giles assured me it was an accident,” Hayden observed in response to the midshipman’s raised eyebrow, “but I am not convinced he told me the truth. Do you know Cole, a Dutchman they call The Demon—”

“Van Damon, sir.”

“—and Smithers?”

“Harry Smithers I know well enough, Mr Hayden. He is a bit slow-witted but of good character, I think. Van Damon and Cole came aboard from the
Hunter
when she was decommissioned. I’ve never had any cause to think ill of them. Cole is a good seaman.”

“Thank you, Mr Wickham.”

“Not at all, sir.” The midshipman turned to go, but then stopped. “There are some good men in the crew, sir.”

This brought Hayden up short and he paused with his hand on the gunroom door. “I have no doubt of it. But what made you say such a thing?”

Wickham appeared suddenly reticent. “I don’t know, sir. I suppose it’s because of the ship’s reputation…”

“And what reputation is that?”

“Well, you know, Mr Hayden; that the crew are all shy and don’t know their business.”