A King`s Trade

whilst far overseas by doin' somethin'… glorious! He felt like spitting a foul taste from his mouth. This 'glorious ' enough for 'em, hey? I slay enough Frogs, sacrifice enough o'my people, t'keep me neck, un-stretched? Price is too damned high!

Surgeon Mr. Hodson and Surgeon's Mate Mr. Durant would tell him the cost, soon enough, Lewrie was sure.

He shoved himself erect from his slump on shot-gnawed railings, all but shook himself like a hound to wake himself from his lassitude. With three captured swords under his left arm, Lewrie descended an un-damaged ladderway on the larboard side to pace the main deck and waist of the French frigate, looking up at the cross-deck beams and the boat-tier, where the ruins of cutter, launch, gig, and jolly-boat sat like a pile of gayly-painted scrap lumber.

'Sir…' a voice intruded, and Lewrie turned to face it. Mr. Midshipman Darcy Gamble stood there, tears in his eyes. Nearby, Mr. Midshipman Grace knelt by a still form, just rolling it over face-up. ' 'Tis Mister Larkin, sir,' Gamble told him, and Lewrie looked down to see the rictus of agony on the poor lad's face, his final expression to the fact of his own hard death, so early in life. And the flickers of Midshipman Grace's cheap tin candle-lanthorn made the lad's wounds even more lurid. 'Oh, damn,' Lewrie softly muttered. 'Poor, wee lad.'

'Still has his pistol and dirk in his hands, sir,' Grace added, snuffling as he looked up at his captain. 'He went down fighting, sir.'

'Honourable wounds to the front, aye,' Gamble pointed out, striving for the stoicism the Navy demanded, but still on the ragged edge of open sorrow for a fallen mess-mate.

'We cannot let him just lie here, sir, perhaps…' Grace said.

'Time enough for Mister Larkin later, Mister Grace,' Lewrie told him, after harumphing to clear his throat. 'There's our ship, and our wounded, to see to, first. First, last, and always. Mister Gamble.'

'Sir?'

'Pick one,' Lewrie told him, extending the three sheathed swords to him, hilts first. 'With Lieutenant Catterall fallen, you are now an Acting-Lieutenant, and Third Officer into Proteus. You, Mister Grace, are now our senior Midshipman… for now, our only Midshipman, though there may be a likely lad or two I may advance, later.'

'I see, sir,' Grace replied, sadly thoughtful.

'Up to you t'show 'em the ropes of table, duties, and cockpit,' Lewrie further said, hoping new and demanding duties and responsibilities might take his mind off Larkin's loss.

'Hmm… a bit grand, these, sir,' Gamble said, his mouth cocked into a shy moue, selecting the plainer sword, though one with a finer and more serviceable blade. Midshipman The Honourable D'arcy Gamble came from well-to-do parents, and could, when confirmed by Admiralty, easily afford better to wear on his hip, but for now, his choice gave Lewrie an even better estimation of him.

'Very well, Lieutenant Gamble. Seek out Lieutenant Langlie and tell him my decision,' Lewrie ordered. 'My respects to him, and he is to work you 'til you drop to make both ships fit to sail, again.'

'Aye aye, sir,' Acting-Lieutenant Gamble said, with sudden pride awakening in his eyes.

'I'll have Andrews see to Mister Larkin, Mister Grace,' Lewrie added. 'For now, we've need… what?' he asked, feeling a cold chill in his innards as Grace's face screwed up in fresh, shy grief.

'Sorry, sir,' Grace all but wailed as he got to his feet. 'We saw your man fall. Didn't wish t'be the one t'tell you, sir, but… I s'pose I must. He… was in the main top with the other marksmen and… was shot, and tumbled out, and hit the…' Grace had to pause, and gulp, 'the edge of the gangway, sir, and…!'

'He's gone?' Lewrie croaked, suddenly much weaker, and wearier. 'Andrews is gone?' All these years, my right-hand man, Cox'n, and…? he thought, squinting his eyes in pain; How many people must I get killed? Strangers, enemies… friends? For he was…

'They… passed him out a starboard gun-port, sir, with the… other dead,' Mr. Grace managed to relate. 'Sorry, sir. Sorry.'

Gone. 'Fallen' was the euphemism of the age. It was what was done with Navy casualties in battle. The dead were put over the side, at once, to clear the decks for those who still fought, a brutal necessity to maintain their morale. In many cases, the hopelessly mangled and sure to die were 'put out of their misery' by a petty officer with a heavy mallet, then shoved, un-conscious and un-knowing, out the ports, too, as a 'mercy' for an old shipmate whom the surgeons couldn't save. It was why the inner sides of the hull, by the guns, were traditionally painted red, as red as fresh-spilled or fresh-splattered blood… in the heat of action, the living might not notice.

Lewrie looked down, not at Larkin, but at a bare patch of deck, willing himself not to weep. Andrews… Matthew Andrews!… a long-time companion, was dead and gone. No matter the gulf between common sailors and officers, how aloof and apart a captain must appear to his hands, Andrews and Aspinall had been his touchstones with reality, a pair of close friends, really, and his loss felt like an abyss, a part of his own years in-company with him, had been cut away and lost. In a way, perhaps it was best that Andrews had been put over the side… best that he was physically gone, for Lewrie didn't think he'd be able to bear to look on many more familiar dead faces. There would surely be enough of them, already.

Blaming himself, too, scathing himself, for Andrews had been the one to go ashore and lead his dozen 'Free Black volunteers' aboard the night in Portland Bight on Jamaica when he'd stolen them from one of the Beauman family's plantations… as a cock-snooking lark!

Had he not, would Andrews still live? Without that act, Proteus might still be in the Caribbean, not here, in this hour, engaged with a French frigate of greater firepower. Groome and Bodney might not have run away, were there no circus to lure them, no Africa in which to die. Whitbread, the others, might not be buried at Cape Town.

Yet, had not Andrews run from his own master on Jamaica, first? Bun from the softer chains of a house slave, better fed than the field hands, garbed in wealth-flaunting livery, yet run in spite of all? As the others had run, put everything at risk for a whiff of freedom, even the Royal Navy's harsh version. Andrews, and they, had endured sailors' poverty, plain victuals, and unending, back-breaking work in all sorts of weather, living with the constant risk of death or disablement, the sure coming of rheumatism or arthritis, the sicknesses that arose when hundreds of men were pent together so closely in a foul and reeking wet gun-deck, for… what? To be free men, to live a wild and adventurous life as free deep sea rovers; paid for their suffering, and worthy of their hire! Freely entered into, and, in the Navy, ready to fight the enemy, the ocean itself, to live, and maybe die, free!

'Damme,' Lewrie softly spat, raising his head, at last, stiffening his spine after a long, sad sigh. Steeling himself to play-act a role of captain, second only to God. He had two ships to save, perhaps hundreds of men, his own and the enemy's, to succour and tend to, prisoners to keep a wary eye on, and, sometime after the sun rose, another French frigate to be alert for, and possibly fight.

And, he was mortal-certain, the first of many at-sea burials, as early as tomorrow's Forenoon Watch, with more to follow as they sailed into the equatorial heat. There was a convoy to re-join and round back up, should anything have happened to Jamaica . Duty, that grim, demanding bitch, come to call with all her nagsome sisters, would never give a man a moment of his own! There would be a time to grieve Andrews and all his dead… once anchored in a safe harbour.

'Very well, sirs,' Lewrie forced himself to rasp, clapping both hands together in the small of his back. 'Let's be about it, hmm?'

Stern, now, a facade of grim stoicism back on his face, Lewrie made the shaky crossing back aboard Proteus, though his shuddery limbs threatened to betray him. There was no formal welcome from side-party or bosun's calls, just a bone-weary man clumping awkwardly to the oak planks of the larboard gangway of a shot-to-pieces ship.

'Sir,' Sailing Master Winwood said, doffing his hat as he came forward from the quarterdeck, limping from a leg wound upon his right thigh, his breeches cut away to reveal a thick, padded bandage.

'Mister Winwood,' Lewrie acknowledged. 'Oh. I know.' Mr. Winwood held in his hand a coin-silver bosun's call on its chain, Andrews's call, and mark of his post as Coxswain. Crushed… by the musket ball that slew him, or by his fall from high aloft?