A Burial at Sea (33 page)

Carrow’s presence helped enormously. After three or four days Lenox perceived that the young man had the makings not of a good but of a great captain. Martin had been good; Carrow would exceed him. What had seemed dourness in the third lieutenant now seemed like the poise and reserve of a man with responsibility. There was nothing tentative or halting about him. He commanded by instinct.

In turn everyone on ship trusted him instinctively, and with good reason: Carrow knew more about sails than the sailmaker; more about the
Lucy
’s provisions than the purser; could set a mast as well as a forecastleman who had been on the water thirty years; could swab the decks if he had to; could make two provisions of salt beef seem like four; could give a speech; could fight a battle; could set a broken limb; could weather a storm; could laugh with his inferiors without losing their respect; could lead men. The bluejackets no sooner heard his words than they fell to his commands. With a different third lieutenant raised to the captaincy it might have been a different voyage.

Lenox had friends in the upper reaches of the navy, and as each day passed his conviction grew that he must tell them what he knew of Carrow’s talent. It was impossible to say with an institution as self-regarding and hidebound as the admiralty, but he hoped that in fact the fate that Billings had assigned himself—to take the
Lucy
in the absence of another leader—would fall instead to Carrow. At least some good might come of the whole foul chain of events.

For his part Lenox spent his afternoons reading and his mornings writing an account, by the end some forty pages, of his impressions of Egypt. This was an accompaniment of his official six-page report, and he planned to circulate it among certain key allies in Parliament, for it argued well, he hoped, for England’s greater involvement in Egypt’s affairs. There were a select few issues that he had argued passionately about on the floor of the House of Commons—cholera safety, for instance, suffrage, Ireland—and now, almost accidentally, almost by the way, he felt he had found another.

The only blot on Lenox’s happiness was Teddy’s behavior. He was still in a preoccupied and restless mood, and he seemed to have less to do with his fellows in the gunroom. It was a pity, after they had all seemed to get along so well. When Lenox tried to ask the boy, he met with a definite—if polite—rejection. What would Edmund say, if he found his son this way?

For that matter, he wondered, what would he say, or Jane, when they learned about the murderer who had been loose aboard the
Lucy
? Lenox thought of this and felt a certain gladness that the world was still a large place; it was getting smaller, to be sure, distances were collapsing—why, the Suez was an example of that! Yet it was a relief to him that he hadn’t been able to, say, telegram Jane from the deck of the
Lucy
. Fifty years hence it would be possible, but for now it had saved her, and his brother, a great deal of worry. Then, there was a feeling of majesty to sailing back from Egypt, of wide distances traversed. Though he loved progress, part of him hoped the steamship wouldn’t make Egypt a mere two-day voyage away, and take that feeling of majesty with it.

On the sixth day of their voyage he woke to find that they were becalmed. He went on deck and found Lieutenant Lee staring with a look of puzzlement at the water.

“What’s down there?” said Lenox.

“I just wonder whether we might give the men a swim. Perhaps I’ll ask the Captain.”

So it was that Lenox witnessed the men as they dipped a sail into the water and bound it off at the end to form a kind of swimming pool just beside the ship. The sailors—many of whom were appalling swimmers, or couldn’t swim at all—spent hours that morning splashing in the water, with great happiness neglecting their duties as the officers looked indulgently on.

Lenox, meanwhile, had another plan for the windless day. After he had spent an hour or two at his desk, he wandered over to what had been Halifax’s cabin. Its contents were intact, and in the corner there stood, still, his fishing poles and his tackle box.

Lenox had some experience fishing, in the lakes and ponds of Sussex, where he had grown up. With Carrow’s permission he cast off over the rail and spent a happy two hours there. The sun was wonderfully warm without being too hot, and the sky was a clear, cloudless blue. He realized that he would miss being on the water, when the voyage was over.

His luck was indifferent. Two bites in the first hour came to nothing, and it was only when he had nearly given up that he felt a powerful tug on his line. McEwan, who had been fetching up a couple of sandwiches, helped him tug the great fish in.

“What is it?” Lenox said when they caught a glimpse of silver beneath the water. “You, fetch the cook!” he said to a passing sailor.

They had pulled the fish in when the cook came and told them it was a sea bream. “And twelve pounds or I’m a liar,” he added.

That night the wardroom ate the fish in white wine and lemon, and toasted many times over to the memory of Halifax.

The next day there was wind again, and the ship sailed upon it again. Lenox felt an urge to see Billings.

The
Lucy
’s former first lieutenant was in a brig on the lowest deck, with the rats, the supplies, and the goods for trade that the ship had taken on in Egypt. It was lightless and bleak there, and the brig itself was a very small room, without room for a grown man to lie down fully. When he saw it Lenox felt a pang of sympathy for Billings. Softness, that.

“Lieutenant,” he said.

“That you, Lenox?”

“Yesterday I went fishing with Halifax’s rod and reel.”

“Go and throttle yourself with the reel, if you please.”

“Do you feel any remorse?”

There was a pause. “I want to do it again.”

“So now you admit that you killed them?”

“It’s my word against yours, down here.”

Lenox sighed. “You’re getting enough to eat and drink?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good day, then.”

These were the last words he ever exchanged with Billings. Within eight months the man was hanged, though not before he gained a measure of Fleet Street notoriety as the “Surgeon of the
Lucy,
” a sobriquet that seemed terribly unfair to Tradescant. Lurid details emerged of Billings’s childhood, of his father, and a report from Egypt indicated that a hastily covered corpse answering to Butterworth’s description had been discovered near Port Said.

The episode had one sequel that mitigated the awfulness of the murders in Lenox’s mind. Some three months after he was back in London Lenox received a call from Halifax’s father, Mr. Bertram Halifax. In person and character he was exactly like his son: gentle, quick to smile, kind-spirited.

“I came to thank you for your letter, Mr. Lenox. It was most thoughtful of you.”

“Your son seemed a wonderful fellow.”

“Ah, he was! Never cried as a baby, you know. That’s rare. Always smiled, from birth on.” The father’s voice was shaky now. “A splendid lad, I swear it.”

“Could I take you to lunch?” Lenox asked. “I’d like to hear more about him.”

The elder Halifax recovered his nerve, and answered cheerfully in the affirmative. As they ate they found each other’s company congenial, and thereafter the two men met every six weeks or so, perhaps every two months, for lunch, until after a year they had become true and firm friends.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

When they were three days from London—they were taking Lenox and Billings there, before the
Lucy
went on again to Plymouth—Teddy Lenox knocked on his uncle’s cabin door.

“Come in!” called Lenox.

“Hello, Uncle Charles.”

“Teddy! How are you?”

“Could I have a crown, Uncle, please?”

“A crown! That’s a great deal of money. What do you want to buy?”

“Nothing.”

“I can get you that for cheaper than a crown. Come now, tell me what’s happened?”

The boy’s bottom lip started to tremble, until he screwed it up tight. At last he managed to choke out the words, “I owe it to Pimples.”

“You’ve been gambling?”

“Follow the Leader,” Teddy managed to say, and then he burst into tears.

“There, there,” he said. “You shall have it, but your father shall hear of it, d’you understand?”

Teddy nodded miserably, but already his face looked a little bit brighter. “Thank you.”

“And you must never gamble again.”

“Oh, never!”

So that was what had caused the lad’s mood. How clearly Lenox remembered the stormy emotions of that age, when anything might seem like the end of the world! What it made him think of most of all was the child growing in Lady Jane, and the thousand such moments that awaited him in the next twenty years, as the child grew into an adult. It filled him partway with fear, but mostly with happiness.

“Well, here you are,” he said, and handed over the money. “And in the bargain I’ll give you a cup of tea. McEwan!”

“Thank you, Uncle Charles!” said Teddy, the coin in his tightly clenched fest. “I’ll pay you back out of my pocket money, I promise.”

“Well, and interest begins at nine percent. There, McEwan, fetch us some tea—and some biscuits, why not?” With his own child he would have to be sterner, but that was a father’s job, and an uncle might be a gentler touch.

The smile returned to Teddy’s face after that, and again he was thick with his fellow midshipmen, all of them somewhere between boyhood and manhood. On the final night of the voyage Carrow had them all to eat in the captain’s dining room, and delivered a very fine toast in Lenox’s honor. In turn Lenox rose and spoke of the
Lucy
and her men, and how fond he had grown of her.

“She has come to seem like home to me in these few short weeks—”

“You could always join up,” said Carrow, and everyone laughed.

“Not just at the moment, thank you,” said Lenox, and laughed too. “At any rate, I wanted to thank you all. Thank God the Queen has you all serving in her navy.”

“The Queen!” shouted Pimples, and the toast was taken up by everyone else, shouted in high spirits, and then they drank.

The next morning was breezy and wet. They saw land at eight, and by ten they were close indeed to Greenwich, where they would dock. Lenox had packed his trunk, and Teddy, by special dispensation from Carrow, was permitted fifteen minutes on land to see his father, before the
Bootle
returned to fetch Billings.

The last thing Lenox packed was his sheaf of notes from the meeting with Sournois, the first thing he would pass to Edmund.

“McEwan!” he called out when his cabin was bare again.

The steward’s head popped around the doorway, its cheeks full. “Sir? A last cup of tea, sir, or a sandwich?”

“Come in here, would you?”

“Of course, sir.”

“I don’t suppose you want to leave the
Lucy
? Come work for me?”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“Tell me then, what reward I can give you for saving my life—and for tipping me off about Follow the Leader, too.”

“None, sir, please.”

Lenox went to his desk and found a piece of paper. “Here’s what I’ll do, then. Have you been to Harrods?”

“No, sir. I’ve heard of it.”

“They’ve everything you can imagine to eat—ostrich eggs and chocolates from Ghent and cakes and pies, food as far as the eye can see. Next time you’re in London, take this note to the food hall, and have twenty pounds of credit as a thank you from me. They’ll know my signature. That should keep you in cold chicken and marmalade for a year or so.”

McEwan’s eyes widened. “Thank you, sir!”

“No, it is you who must accept my thanks. You’ve been a wonderful steward.”

A few moments later the anchor went down. The officers were standing in a ring, offering him a formal good-bye. Lenox shook them each by hand, Tradescant, Carrow, the chaplain, and said his thanks. A moment later he was over the gunwales and into the
Bootle
.

Both he and Teddy looked back at the
Lucy
for a moment, and then turned their gaze toward the docks at Greenwich. This was the day they had been due to return; Edmund would come, he knew, but he had told Lady Jane not to, only to wait at home.

Then he saw with a great lift of his heart that she stood on the docks, staring distractedly in exactly the wrong direction, her hair different than when he had left her, her stomach much larger, their two dogs, Bear and Rabbit, sitting and staring along with her in exactly the wrong direction. With her was his brother.

“Jane!” he called out when they were near. “Edmund!”

“Father!” said Teddy.

Jane whirled and saw them and a great smile appeared on her face. “Charles, Charles!” she said.

“Don’t shift yourself, please,” he said. “Stay there—your health.”

“Bother it!”

He stepped onto the dock and Jane gave him a tight, quick hug, with so many people looking on. “Oh dear, I’ll become emotional. Here now, show me your teeth—ah, so the scurvy didn’t claim you—excellent, good. Oh, you dear man,” she said, and embraced him again.

Meanwhile Edmund and Teddy were meeting, speaking to each other with smiles on their faces.

“How are you?” said Charles, and took her hands in his. “Happy and healthy?”

“Happy, and very healthy indeed. How wonderful to have you back, though! I’ve planned a supper for this evening—Dallington, of course, McConnell, your brother, Molly, Graham will come, Lord Cabot—how happy we are to have you back!”

“How happy I am to be home!”

He turned and looked back out toward the
Lucy
. As it always did when one traveled, the world felt bigger. But then, in due course, it would shrink back down to its normal size—or perhaps, if he were lucky, seem slightly bigger than it had been before.

“Tell me, did you capsize many times?” Lady Jane asked. “Were they kind to you? What was that sultan fellow like? Tell me everything, all at one time, please.”