A Different Sort of Perfect (28 page)

She remained the captain's clerk. And she had a job
to do.

So it was best she not consider the image of the
lonely breakfast table.

The gun deck spread before her, an unblocked expanse
from stem to stern post; the carpenter's mates had done their job,
the cabins and contents swept down into the hold, and bright
sunlight poured through the open gunports and the stern's arched
windows. And the guns had been released. The gun crews clustered
around their predatory charges, rammers and swabs in eager hands,
the officers and midshipmen standing behind their batteries.
Overall hung the sharp, acrid smell of gunpowder and burning slow
match, filling the open area with anticipation.

One small face, glowing with sweat beneath a
fore-and-aft scraper, stared at her from near the capstan. It was
Staunton, commanding the aft batteries, and when she reluctantly
stepped from the ladder onto the deck, he approached her.

"My lady, you should go down into the hold."

Her innards numbed then tingled, leaving her cold and
angry. That wasn't what Captain Fleming had said. "I'd go mad in
the hold, listening to the battle and waiting for word."

He ducked his head, rather in agreement. "Then at
least into the orlop."

Still a horrid option. "The surgeon works there and
I'd be in the way." He opened his mouth again, but this time she
cut him off. "The captain told me to go below. I'm below."

His head wag this time smacked more of indecision
than agreement. "You know this isn't what he meant."

"Then perhaps he should have been more specific." The
deck heeled further and the sea's rippling gained volume; the wind
was picking up. The for'ard-most starboard gunport displayed
Armide,
a miniature ship encircled by a frame, larboard
stern quarter facing, perfect for the drawing room. Her innards
tingled again, but in a totally different manner, for
Armide
yawed, swinging her broadside toward
Topaze
. Toward
them.
And
Topaze
had obliterated targets at longer
range.

Then Mr. Abbot shouted something and his crew ran the
gun out, shoving its muzzle through the gunport and blocking the
view. But she'd seen that row of snarling teeth. The battle would
begin any moment. And the world would never be the same again.

Carefully she withdrew her pen and uncorked the
inkhorn, opening the book to the page she'd started with the
battle's sighting. As she loaded the pen, something in the distance
began hammering, like a carpenter clearing away below decks, or her
heart trying to explode from her breast; she'd had no idea it could
pound so hard. She didn't jump from her skin, though, a moment to
remember with pride.

"First gunfire, Lady Clara." Staunton stepped away,
then paused and glanced back over his shoulder. "If
Armide
crosses our bow or stern, lie flat on the deck," he said.
"Especially the stern."

She nodded, glancing at the repeater and noting the
time — five minutes past eight — in the book. "I shall." The
bulkheads of the captain's cabins had been swept into the hold and
there was nothing between her and the windows except the aft
hatchway ladder. A cannonball crossing the gun deck from there,
even if it missed her, would spray her position with glass shards
and wooden splinters. "I promise."

Staunton, already back at his station, nodded in
return.

"Steady, boys," Mr. Abbot called from the fo'c'sle
batteries. "She's going to pepper us some, but hold your fire until
they bear. Then we'll pay her out for her bloody-mindedness." His
reassuring gaze, glancing over the men of Chandler's and Staunton's
batteries, crossed her gaze and he froze, mouth open for a long,
silly-looking mutual stare. Then something hard slammed against the
hull and she jumped, oh how she jumped, with his attention full on
her. The hollow gun deck rang, a vast wooden bell with an enemy
clapper. His face stiffened and he turned back to his business; if
the captain hadn't forced her into the hold, neither would he,
although he clearly didn't like it.

The crew held their silence, peering past the guns in
the ports, and only the water's rustling broke the false calm. The
water, and the throbbing within her. What a curious, indescribable
feeling it was. It weighted her limbs, sharpened her hearing, upset
her pounding heart. Even though the temperature on the gun deck was
hotter than normal, with tubs of slow match burning, her arms had
goose flesh and her hand clutching the pen felt cold. Fear; this
could only be fear, real fear, the sort that made cowards of men
and sent them running in panic to safety. But the Topazes remained
firm, the gun captains peering along the barrels, muttering
instructions, and the crews shifted their charges with handspikes,
keeping the muzzles aligned on the target. Like them, she had a job
to do and she couldn't hide, wouldn't run. She too would hold her
position—

More hammering, closer and louder this time, trying
to drown the traitorous pounding of her heart. Another hard slam
against the hull, more ringing, and now that well-known patrician
voice, eager and full of fire, shouted a command on the upper deck,
audible through the fear-naught screens across the hatchways.
Topaze
yawed, the sudden pressure pushing Clara against the
ladder. She couldn't quite make out his next words but—

"Fire!" shouted Abbot, Chandler, and Staunton,
seemingly in the same shared breath. The gun captains yanked their
lanyards and the deck exploded, sound, heat, smoke pouring back
through the gunports as the big beasts recoiled between their
crews. She caught a breath, choking in the acrid smoke. Already the
swabbers were ramming their damp mops down the guns' barrels,
already the loaders stood by with charges and wads, the rammers
pushing forward. She checked the repeater and noted down the time,
twenty-two minutes past, but that was impossible, time couldn't be
passing that rapidly—

No more distant, impersonal hammering. Movement
beyond the gunports, rolling from opening to opening, from bow to
stern, and
Armide
ranged alongside, a pistol-shot away. Too
close to see all of her, but her row of cannons, larger than
Topaze
's, showed sharp and clear for a split heartbeat. They
vanished behind a sudden cloud of exploding smoke, red flashes
buried within—

And no more bell-ringing slams. Hard crashing
thunder, overhead, for'ard, all around, shatteringly loud. A voice
shouted; another screamed. The gun crews ignored it all. They
clapped onto the lines, just as they'd been trained to do, hauled
the beasts back to the gunports, Staunton checked their aim, and
the gun captains again jerked the lanyards—

It couldn't go on, couldn't get louder. But it did.
The repeater proved Captain Fleming's promise true: the crews fired
faster, straighter, more accurately, when given an enemy target, no
matter that the enemy was firing back. The smoke blew forward and
there was a hole, several holes, smashed into
Armide
's side,
two of her gunports battered into one larger, gaping mouth. At
twenty-seven minutes past—

What felt like a massive hand punched
Topaze
's
hull, punched through it. Number fourteen recoiled unchecked and
slammed backward through its ringbolts. In slow motion, too slow to
be real, the monstrous long gun tumbled sideways off its truck and
down, smashing to the deckboards and cartwheeling into the mainmast
and starboard pump. Chunks of splintered wood flew. More voices
cried out. The smoke blew away and far too much light lit the gun
deck. The hull yawned open, solid oak shattered and torn, and
beyond the opening
Armide
's equally battered side
loomed—

Abbot leaped over a match tub, snatched up a
handspike, and thrust it under the loose cannon's barrel, pinning
its wanton ton against the mainmast. He shouted words she couldn't
hear; her ears were ringing, the din too loud. Two sailors whipped
ropes around the brass monster and fastened it in place; another
grabbed the enemy cannonball that rumbled about the deck and threw
it overboard. Abbot shouted again, mouth moving but words inaudible
as the for'ard and after batteries fired together. Willing hands
lifted still forms off the deck, one writhing form, carried them
past the bowsed monster and down the main ladder. The last one,
visible in the unwonted sunlight, had dark sandy hair—

Chandler. Difficult, touchy, irritating Chandler, who
wanted to be made lieutenant more than he wanted to continue
breathing, who yearned to blear Staunton's eye and who'd showed her
little but contempt. Who couldn't conceal how hard he tried to be
the best, and whose constant striving helped make all of them
better.

Awkward lout. But as Staunton had said, he was
their
awkward lout, a part of their little community, one of
them. And the French had just done their utmost to kill him. To
kill them all.

They could not succeed. They wouldn't be allowed to
succeed.

The world seemed to whirl around her for a
breathless, smoky moment, then settled back into place. Time
resumed its normal course. Everything was as it should be. Clara
shoved her pen, book, and inkhorn beneath the ladder. Without a
word, she pushed through the gun crews to the thinned-out team
surrounding number twelve,
Biting Bruiser
, and grabbed the
abandoned rammer.

Powder smoke poured over the quarterdeck and Fleming
sucked it in hard as he directed the battle. The crisp, clustered
broadsides had shattered into individual guns firing at will. When
he glanced down through the open hold's maw, the gun deck looked
like a shadowy inferno, cascades of dark smoke shot through with
stabbing scarlet flames and half-glimpsed figures laboring without
pause. Overhead in the fighting tops, the tiny swivels barked,
interspersed with the sharp flat cracks of rifled muskets as the
Marines peppered
Armide
's upper deck. Hot, heavy, constant,
a pounding that went on and on, illustrating the crew's bottled-up
fury and sweeping any remaining compassion aside.
Armide
had
hammered the
Flirt
beyond helplessness and probably murdered
half her crew; the Topazes would not be content until they'd
accomplished as much in return. During a brief, wind-swept moment
of clarity, the powder smoke whipped aside and in the little
clearing, Abbot coolly pistoled a French gunner through the hole
punched in
Armide
's side, forcing a break in the enemy's
fire.

Armide
fell away, as if staggering back from
the rain of hammer blows. The master spun the wheel and
Topaze
chased her down.
Flirt
had fallen off the
battle's starboard side, sagging across
Armide
's stern as if
beyond control, and still not a breath of motion showed on her deck
or masts. She was out of it, no longer a combatant. Fleming called
for the sail-trimmers, thinning the gunners' ranks; it slowed
Topaze
's rate of fire, but if he could lay his frigate
across the enemy's bow, he could rake
Armide
's upper deck,
rake it as empty as
Flirt
's. Despite the Topazes' withering
cannonade, whenever the smoke blew clear he still spied the French
captain standing on his quarterdeck, directing his ship and crew,
maddeningly hale and hearty.

With t'gallants sheeted home
Topaze
surged
ahead. Her firing thinned out, from the for'ard battery aft, as the
guns no longer bore on their target, and the shattering din eased
from
fortissimo
to
forte.
But across the water the
French captain yelled a command, alien words in a powerful baritone
shout, and before
Topaze
could gain enough searoom to turn
Armide
dropped her maincourse and matched her speed, cutting
off the maneuver. The gunfire thundered again.

Fleming countered with spilling the wind from
Topaze
's sails, jolting her to a standstill and rocking her
masts like vertical whips; she accelerated into sternway, the
quartermaster again spun the wheel, and
Topaze
backed around
in a sweeping turn, aiming to cross
Armide
's stern instead
and protect
Flirt
from further fire. Another
incomprehensible French shout. But although
Armide
lost
steerage and drifted backward, this time the French captain didn't
try to match
Topaze
's turn. He let his frigate ease into
Topaze
's path, almost ramming the drifting
Flirt
with
his stern, and a mass of sailors gathered on
Armide
's upper
deck, too many for the swivel guns and sharpshooters to handle.
Across the rapidly diminishing distance between the two ships,
marlinspikes and boarding axes glinted, metallic and bright, in the
crowd's hands.

Despite the broiling tropical sun now beating down,
despite the burning slow match and overheated guns, ice numbed
Fleming from the inside out. He'd been too clever by half. Instead
of crossing
Armide
's stern, she was crossing his.
Topaze
should be where the
Flirt
drifted, but instead
she'd bump up against
Armide
's hull, that crowd would hook
on with grapnels and fasten the two ships together, boarding over
the taffrail, and instead of paying out
Armide,
his crew
would have to fight for their lives and their ship. And he had one
chance to stop it.

"Grape!" he shouted at the stern chasers' gun crews.
The starboard six pounder fired, recoiling to the ring bolts; the
shot passed over the clustered Frenchmen and harmlessly vanished.
Fleming grabbed the line and threw his weight against it, helping
the crew hold the gun in. "Reload with grape! Sweep her deck before
they can board us!"