The French Admiral (42 page)

“Is fighting on land always like this?” Alan gaped in awe.

“Naw, mos' times hit's almost civilized.”

There was Hatmaker, curled up like a singed worm, his yellow hair muddied and his eyes staring at a beetle that crawled under his nose. A sailor was next, struck in the belly, flat on his back with his shirt up to reveal the huge purple bruise and bullet hole that he had clutched before he bled to death through the exit wound in his back. Nearer the logs there was Feather, the stubborn quartermaster's mate, sprawled across the body of a Virginia militiaman, a musket bayonet still in his chest and the musket sagged to the ground like a fallen mast.

And there was old Nat Queener that Coe was trying to help, shot through the body and feebly fluttering his hands over his slashed belly, life draining from him as Alan watched. He knelt down next to him and the old man turned his face to him. “We done good, didn't we, Mister Lewrie?”

“Aye, we did, Mister Queener,” Alan told him, tears coming to his eyes at the sight of him. He wasn't long for the world with a wound like that. “Anyone you want to know about you being hurt?”

“Ain't nobody back home, I outlived 'em all, Mister Lewrie. Mebbe ‘Chips' an' a few o' me mates in
Desperate,
iffen they made it.”

“I'm so damned sorry, Queener.” Alan shuddered.

“Don' ya take on so, sir. Hands'll be lookin' ta ya. Aw, I'd admire me somethin' wet afore I go, Coe. Got anythin'?”

Coe lifted up a small leather bottle of rum and Queener gulped at it greedily.

Alan got to his feet, hearing Queener give a groan and the last breath rattling in his throat.

“'E's gone, sir,” Coe said. “'E were a good shipmate.”

“Aye, he was. How many dead and wounded from our people?”

“Dunno, sir.”

“Find out and give me a list, Coe. You are senior hand, now.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Alan wandered off to pick his way across the field to retrieve his dropped pistols, the dragoon pistols, and to gather up the Ferguson he had discarded at the barrier. He ran across Governour, limping from a sword cut on his leg that was already bound up.

“Hard fight,” Governour said matter-of-factly. “But we got 'em all. No one to tell the tale back up at Gloucester Point, so we should be able to get away. It's after four. Once we make the worst wounded comfortable, we should think of being on our way.”

“What about the dead?” Alan demanded, suddenly angry that the officer was so callous.

“Have to leave 'em where they lay.” Governour shrugged. “We'll put the worst hurt up at the house where the Hayleys and their slaves can care for 'em. They'll send for surgeons. We can't care for them.”

“Goddamn you!” Alan shouted, whirling on him.

“Would you rather that was us?” Governour said with a sad smile, pointing to the nearest mutilated dead. “Grow up, for God's sake, Lewrie. Get the names of the dead to leave with the Hayley family. Maybe they'll put something up over their graves, I don't know, but that's all you can do after something like this. You're a Navy officer, or the nearest thing we have to one right now. Act like one.”

They laid out their own dead with as much dignity as they could. Of the thirty soldiers and officers from the Volunteers, there were eighteen dead or so badly wounded they would have to be left behind. Of the eighteen sailors and petty officers, only nine would be leaving on the boats. Of the French and Rebel militia, there were not twenty men left alive from the nearly hundred who had come to take them.

Alan copied out his list of dead and badly wounded, then went up to the house, where Mrs. Hayley and her sister Nancy waited on the porch by the back terrace, aghast at the carnage, tears flowing down their faces at the horror that had come to their peaceful farm.

“Mrs. Hayley, Miss Ledbetter,” Alan said, doffing his hat to them. “We are leaving soon. I have here a list of the people we left behind in your care, and the names of the dead. I trust in your Christian generosity to tend to them as gently as possible.”

“Yes, yes we shall,” Mrs. Hayley managed, stunned.

“I was going to give you some guineas, to pay for what we had to requisition, but I would admire if you used it instead to pay the surgeon who comes and perhaps to put up a small marker for our dead, along with the militiamen and French who died here today.”

“That is good of you, sir,” Mrs. Hayley whispered. “I . . .”

“This was a pointless, useless battle that no one'll remember in a year, most like,” Alan went on coldly. “Had we gotten clean away, none of these poor men would have died. It solved nothing, it meant nothing.”

“I'm sorry!” Mrs. Hayley wailed, no longer able to bear his words of reproach, knowing full well that she had given her son her consent to carry word down the Neck, scheming happily to get him away unseen so he could play a hero's part and she could be a patriot as well, never having seen the cost of patriotism firsthand.

“What happened to Rodney?” Nancy Ledbetter asked, her face ashen.

“I have no idea, nor do I particularly care,” Alan said. “He may be safe up the Neck, or he may lie dead out in the fields or woods. 'Tis all one to me. He brought it on himself if he was hurt or killed.”

“You're a brutal young man, sir.” Nancy wept, clutching the small bag of coins he offered her along with the paper. “How can you go through life so uncaring about others?”

“Think on this, Mistress Ledbetter,” Alan said. “You and your scheming and spying killed nigh on a hundred men, maybe your own nephew, too. How brutal were you, my dear? Would you have wept a tear on my corpse? I doubt it. You'd have bedded me if you thought there was anything more to gain by it, all to bring this about. How can you live with yourself, I ask you, instead? Good-bye, Mistress Ledbetter.”

He turned to go, but she clutched at his sleeve. “Forgive us!” she pleaded. “We did not know . . .”

“Take it up with God. He's better at forgiveness than I am.”

So saying, Alan made his way down to the boat landing, stopping to give what cheer he could to the wounded sailors and those soldiers he recognized in one of the slave huts where they had been installed to heal or die, as God willed.

He got down to the boats, where the small party waited to board for the escape across the bay. The tide was running out rapidly now, and the sun was almost gone. The barges twitched at the end of their painters as the inlet emptied with the outrush to the sea. They floated high instead of canting over with their keels in the tidal flats.

“Coe, take charge of the first boat,” he ordered his senior hand. “Corporal Knevet, better get your party aboard with Coe, here.”

“Yes, sir,” Knevet replied, wading out to the boat with the sailors.

Sir, Alan thought. The bastard actually called me “sir”!

There was a sharp pop up the creek, which had everyone diving for their rifles and a spot of cover from which to fire, but after a moment Governour and Burgess came out of the gloomy thickets to join them, the heavy dragoon pistol in Governour's hand still smoking.

“What was that?” Alan asked.

“Nothing much,” Governour replied. “We ready to depart?”

“Aye. Burgess?”

Burgess wore a bandage about his head and one arm was in a sling, but he shouldered past Alan to splash out into the shallows without one word, tears running down his face.

“Let's go, then,” Governour said.

• • •

There was no need to pole or row out of the inlet, for the wind was out of the south-east, so once past the mouth of the narrow inlet, with the lug sails set, they could wear up on the wind to beat through the pass at Monday Creek and get out into the bay far above the watching frigates in the mouth of the York. With the leeboards down in deep water, they were making a goodly clip, lost in the first of the night, dark sails and tarred hulls indistinguishable from the almost moonless waters.

“We want to keep a heading east-nor'east, Burgess,” Alan told the soldier, who was seated in his boat. “Keep an eye on the compass for me.”

“Yes, I will,” Burgess snuffled.

“What happened back there?” Alan asked, leaning close.

“God save us, it was George all over again,” Burgess said with a catch in his voice as he tried to mutter too soft to be overheard.

“George? Oh, your younger brother? What was?”

“We caught that Hayley brat,” Burgess told him. “Governour said he owed him a debt of blood, and he shot him in the belly, so he'd take days dying. We left him out there in the brambles, out of sight.”

Alan waited for a sense of shock, but his nerves were about out of the ability to be shocked by much of anything after all he had seen or done. He pondered how he felt about this revelation.

“Oh? Good,” Alan finally said, “serves the little bugger right.”

“God, Alan!” Burgess shuddered. “That makes us no better than the bastard who killed George. What does it matter, anyway? We've lost the army, mayhap lost the whole damned war here in the Chesapeake. All we had left was our honor, and now that's gone, too. What's a gentleman without his honor?”

“Alive,” Alan told him evenly. “And, if he's not caught with his breeches down or the weapon in his hand, he is still a gentleman to everyone else. I'd have shot the little shit-sack myself if I'd run across him first. Now you and Governour have these men to look after, and your family down in Wilmington to worry about. Forget it.”

“I'll never.”

“Hard times'd make a rat eat red onions,” Alan quoted back to him. “You do what you have to. This war has all cost us most of our decency, and it's not through with us yet. Like our sailing master says, the more you cry, the less you'll piss. Buck up and swear you'll never do it again, but it's done, and it wasn't your hand done it. Governour's still your brother. Worry about how he's dealing with it.”

“You're trying to make me feel
good
about it?” Burgess marveled.

“Let me know when you do.” Alan grinned in the dark. “Now keep an eye on that compass. There's just enough moon to steer by. What's our heading?”

“Um . . . just a touch north of east.”

Alan looked to the eastern horizon above them and found a star to steer by, swung the tiller slightly until he was on a close reach to the south-east breeze and leaned back, blanking his mind to what Burgess had just told him, blanking his mind to everything except getting across the bay before sunrise.

CHAPTER 14

“S
o
you made it out past Cape Charles on the night of the 21st, sheltered on Curtis Island, coasted to Chingoteag the next night, and were finally picked up by the brig
Dandelion
on the 24th,” Admiral Hood's flag captain said after reading the report before him.

“Aye, sir,” Alan replied.

The flag captain looked up from the written account that Alan had penned once ferried over to the
Barfleur.
It was an amazing document of raw courage, unbelievable bravery, and clever extemporizing to make the river barges seaworthy. Had there not been corroborating reports from the Loyalist Volunteer officers and the surviving seamen's testimony, the captain would have dismissed it as the work of a fabulist, much on a par with the adventures of a Munchausen.

He studied the young man that stood before his desk, swaying easy to the motion of the flagship. The flag captain was of the common opinion that the finest intelligence, the best character, and the most courage were usually found in the most attractive physical specimens, and he found nothing to dissuade this opinion in Midshipman Lewrie. The uniform was stained and faded, but that did not signify; the lad's hair was neat and clean, shorter than the usual mode and not roached back into such a severe style, the queue short and tied with a black silk ribbon, a pleasant light brown, touched blonde where the sun reached it from long service in tropic sunshine. The face was not too horsey and long, regular in appearance, the jaw not too prominent, but it was a firm jaw. The skin was tanned by sea service, and in the dim cabins, with only swaying lamps for illumination, the face was relaxed from the permanent squint sailors developed, showing the whitish chalk marks of frown lines and wrinkles-to-be in later years, held so squinted the sun could not stain them as it did the rest of the skin. And the eyes, which at first the captain believed to be aristocratic gray, now seemed more pale blue, of a most penetrating and arresting nature, windows to the restless soul within.

Had he not been in King's uniform, he would have dismissed him as one of those pretty lads more given to the theatres and low amusements of the city, almost too pretty, except for that pale scar on the cheek. As for the rest of him, the shoulders were broad without being common, and he was slim, well knit and wiry; the waist and hips were narrow, showing a good leg in breeches and stockings, instead of being beef to the heel like a gunner's mate or a representative of the lower orders. Could have been a courtier, but he gave off the redolence of a tarpaulin man.

“Hate to say so, but this report shall have to be redone,” the captain said with a rueful grin that was not unkindly. “It's one thing to state the facts, but all these . . . adjectives and adverbs and what you may call 'ems, my word. And one does not make recommendations as to rewards for army officers, or suggestions on adopting Ferguson rifles for the Sea Service and all, you see?”

“I do, sir,” Alan replied evenly, showing no fatigue or disappointment at this news. It was all one to him, tired as he was.

“The main thing is to be professional in tone, no emotions at all. Wouldn't want your contemporaries to think you were glory hunting. And none of this ‘it is my sad and inconsolable duty to report that so and so passed over,' d'ya see? Tone it down and list the dead and wounded later, preceded by the phrase, ‘as per margin.'”

“I list them in the margin, sir?” Alan wondered.

“No, but that is the form most preferred by Mr. Phillip Stephens, the First Secretary to the Admiralty. But you cannot address it to him, as you did, but to your captain or commanding officer.”

“Forgive me my ignorance, sir, but I have never had cause to write a report on anything before, even when in temporary command of a prize.”

“Well, such a report as yours shall cause a good stir back home, and in the
Chronicle,
I am sure, soon after, so one must adhere to the forms. I'll lend you my secretary to aid you in couching it in the proper manner, but it must be redone before I may pass it on to the admiral or post it to London.”

“Aye, sir.”

Admiral Hood entered the cabins at that moment, on his way aft to his own quarters under
Barfleur
's poop. Alan recognized him from Antigua and felt such a surge of loathing arise after witnessing the inexplicable behavior of a man with a reputation as a fighting admiral that he felt he had to bite his tongue to control his features.

“See me soon as you're through with your miscreant, sir,” Hood told his flag captain.

“Not a miscreant, sir, this is Lewrie, the one in charge of those barges we picked up today.”

“Ah,” Hood said, peering down at him over that beaky nose from his superior height. Alan was five and three-quarter feet tall, and he was having trouble finding headroom between the beams, even here in flag country, and Hood had to stoop to even walk, yet he gave the impression of great height in spite of the nearness of the overhead. “Met you once, I think.”

“At Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews' farewell ball on Anti-gua, sir.”

“Oh, that's it. This your report?”

“Needs rewriting, sir, as I was telling him.”

“Hmm,” Hood said, rubbing his nose as he leaned closer to one of the swaying lamps to peruse the document. “Yes, I dare say it does need a large dose of Navalese. Still, quite an adventure.”

“Aye, sir,” Alan replied, too upset to worry about toadying for once. He wanted to blurt out a question of why Hood had hung back at the Battle of the Chesapeake, wanted to demand why they had not come to rescue the army, which had resulted in so much misery.

“Welcome back to the Fleet, Lewrie,” Hood said, tossing the draft of the report down and walking off aft.

“Well, do your best with this,” the flag captain said.

“Aye, sir. Er, excuse me, sir, but would you happen to know if the
Desperate
frigate made it out as well, or what happened to her?”

“Oh, yes, she was your ship.” The captain frowned. “Off to New York for a quick refit, but she made it.”

“I would wish to get back aboard as soon as I could, sir.”

“Yes, quite understandable.” The captain frowned again, as though there were something wrong. “Well, that's all for now, Lewrie. Have that report back to me before the forenoon watch tomorrow.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

• • •

“I'm free now, sir,” the flag captain told Hood in the admiral's day cabin after tidying up the last of the paperwork necessary for the proper nautical administration of fourteen sail of the line and all their artillery, men and officers, their provisioning and discipline.

“Good,” Hood said, seated at ease behind his desk. “Before I forget, make a note regarding that young man, what was his name?”

“Lewrie, sir?”

“Yes. Seems a promising sort, did he not strike you so?” Hood asked.

“A most promising young man, sir, indeed,” the flag captain said with a pleased expression, gratified that he was such a discerning judge of his fellow man that even Admiral Samuel Hood agreed with his opinion.

Near the end of the month Alan reported back aboard
Desperate.

He was free of the Chiswicks, free of the land once more, back in the dubious bosom of the Navy for good and all, reporting back aboard his own ship to a sea of familiar faces. Railsford was there to welcome him, pumping his paw heartily. Peck the marine officer, Mister Monk the sailing master, Coke the bosun, and his mates Weems and Toliver, Knatchbull and Sitwell and Hogan 1 from the fo'c's'le guns, Hogan 2 from the loblolly boys, Tuckett and Cony laughing and waving at him, Mr. Dorne and the purser Mister Cheatham making shines over his reappearance. Even David Avery was there once he had gotten below, to clasp him to him as though he had arisen from the dead.

“Lord, what a pack of iron!” David laughed, offering him a glass of Black Strap as Alan unpacked his canvas sea bag of the pair of dragoon pistols, his own smaller pistols, cutlass, and all the tools that went along with the weapons, including bullet molds for the odd calibers.

“And all of it damned useful at one time or another,” Alan told his friend. “How the hell did you escape Yorktown?”

“When the storm blew up, I was washed downriver and thumped into the ship just before she cut her cables. They threw down a line and we got towed out into the bay,” David related. “Spent the night bouncing on the waves and the wake like a chariot being drawn by Poseidon's horses. Did you see anything of Carey?”

“Only at the boat landing before my last trip.” Alan sighed. “I suppose he's a prisoner by now, if he lived.”

“Yes, the sloop
Bonetta
came in bringing word from Cornwallis and a list of those taken. Him and Forrester, both. The captain was mighty upset about that. I saw Forrester. He was part of the
Bonetta
's crew.”

“Paroled?” Alan asked.

“On his word of honor to return to the Chesapeake. He came for his chest, and Carey's, so at least we know the little chub's alive. It was odd, but hate him as much as I did, I felt sorry for Francis at the end.”

“He'll be exchanged soon enough, if he gave parole. And he'll be home sooner than us,” Alan said. Giving one's parole allowed one to be swapped for an officer or supernumerary of equal rank from the other side's prison hulks, but one had to swear to no longer bear arms in the current conflict, which would remove one from service until some sort of peace treaty was signed. With rumors flying that England could not get together another decent regiment to fight in the Colonies, much less one more army of the strength of Cornwallis's force, a peace was expected to be negotiated. There were also rumors flying that the Lord North government would soon be voted out, and a more accommodating prime minister installed, intent on ending the war.

“Where's McGregor?” Alan asked, seeing that both master's mates' dog-boxes were standing empty.

“Left behind. Where's Feather?” David said.

“Dead,” Alan told him. He stripped off his filthy uniform and called for Freeling, who appeared after an insolently long time. “Get me a bucket of seawater to scrub up with, Freeling.”

“Goona make ha mess, zur, an' them decks jus' scrubbed thees mornin', they wuz,” Freeling said dolefully.

“Freeling, you'll do what I tell you soon as dammit, or I'll have a new steward down here and you'll be hauling on the halyards with the other idlers and waisters. That's after you've been up for punishment and gotten two dozen for insubordination, so move your stubborn arse and do it!” Alan said in a rush. Freeling took a look at him, felt the subtle difference in their prodigal midshipman, and stumbled away to perform his lowly duty without another word, knowing his game of truculent behavior was over.

“Damme, how did you do that?” Avery gawped.

“Life's too short to put up with his insolence,” Alan snapped, opening his chest. He dug out fresh linen, a clean uniform, and took the time to reach down and feel the bundle of gold to reassure himself it was still there.

“What happened to you?” Avery asked, intent on this miracle. “By God, I thought you were turning hard before you got left behind, but now you seem . . . I don't know, even more so.”

“I feel I've spent the last few days in hell, David,” Alan confessed. As he scrubbed up and dressed in a fresh uniform, he related his recent experiences to an open-mouthed David Avery, who found it hard to credit that anyone could live through them and still have any shred of sanity or decency left to him.

“Much as I thought I despised the Navy, David, it's a walk in a sunny park compared to land service. By God, I'll be glad to leave war behind me forever, should I live to be paid off, even as a two-a-penny midshipman with no prospects. I'll find something to do. I am just so glad to be back aboard
Desperate,
where my friends are.”

“Don't be too glad,” David warned him. “There's talk about her.”

“What talk?”

“About being the only ship to escape before the surrender.”

“Talk from who, these canting whip-jacks, these imitation tars, who found a hundred excuses to stay in New York instead of sailing to fight de Grasse one more time?” Alan sneered. “By God, it was one hell of a piece of ship-handling to get her downriver and through the shoals and the blockade in that storm, even if she did almost drown me. What did this pack of poltroons do, I ask you? Wrung their hands and said it was too bad. Let's wait for Digby and his three ships of the line. Let's throw dinners and balls and parades for His Royal Highness Prince William Henry. Hey, wasn't Virginia to be his personal royal colony? Let's not sail until all the powder's been replaced, everything Bristol Fashion from keelson to truck! God, I'm sick of the lot of 'em!”

Alan had knocked back his third glass of Black Strap, and the lack of sleep and adequate rations were playing hob with his senses. He was on his way to a good argumentative drunk.