A Burial at Sea

“Since the new prime minister came in, yes. I report to him. These weeks we have been—”

“You might have told me,” said Charles, his tone full of forced jocularity.

With comprehension in his eyes Edmund said, “I would have, believe me—I would have come to you first were I permitted to speak of it.”

“And why can you now? This favor?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“It’s France,” said Edmund. “We’re worried about France.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Everything has been cordial, hasn’t it? Uneasily so, I suppose, but—”

Edmund sat down. “Charles,” he said with a hard look, “will you go to Egypt for us?”

Taken aback, Charles returned his brother’s stare. “Why—I suppose I could,” he said at last. “If you needed me to.”

So that spark had burst into this conflagration; Lenox would set sail twelve hours from now aboard the Lucy, a corvette bound for the Suez.

A cool breeze fluttered the thin white curtains on either side of him. He felt his nerves shake slightly, his stomach tighten, as he contemplated the idea of leaving, of all his fresh responsibility. This Plymouth house—a cream-colored old Georgian in a row, let by the week or month to officers and their families—had in just two weeks come to feel almost like home, and he realized with a feeling of surprise that he would be sorry to leave it, even though he had looked forward to nothing else for two months but his voyage. Then he understood that it wasn’t the house he would miss, but the home that his wife had made of it.

He heard the door open downstairs.

“Charles?” a voice rang from the bottom of the stairs. It was Lady Jane.

Before he answered he hesitated for a brief moment and looked out again at Plymouth Harbor, under its falling golden sun, savoring the idea, every boy’s dream, of being out at sea.

“Up here!” he cried then. “Let me give you a hand.”

But she was clambering up the stairs. “Nonsense! I’m already halfway there.”

She came in, pink-faced, dark-haired, smallish, pretty in a rather plain way, dressed all in blue and gray—and holding her belly, which, though her dress hid it, had begun to round out.

For after hesitation and dispute, something wonderful had happened to them, that daily miracle of the world that nevertheless always manages to catch us off guard, no matter our planning, no matter our dreams, no matter our circumstances: she was pregnant.

CHAPTER TWO

The next morning was bright, and now the harbor shifted and glittered brilliantly. Anchored some way out, close enough that one could see men moving aboard her but far enough that their faces were indistinct, lay the Lucy, bobbing up and down.

She had come into dry dock some six weeks before, after a two-year tour in distant waters, and had since then been refitted: her old and tattered sails, mended so often they were three-quarters patch, replaced with snow-white new ones, the dented copper below her waterline smoothed and reinforced, her old bolts refitted, her formerly bare engine room again coaled. She looked young once more.

Lucy had come off the same dockyards as Her Majesty’s ship Challenger in the same year, 1858, and both were corvettes, ships designed not for firing power, like a frigate, or quick jaunts out, like a brig, but for speed and maneuverability. She carried three masts; from stem to stern she measured about two hundred feet; as for men, she held roughly two hundred and twenty bluejackets—common seamen—and twenty-five or so more, from the rank of midshipman to captain, who belonged to the officer ranks. The Challenger, which was well known because of its long scientific mission to Australia and the surrounding seas, was quicker than the Lucy, but the Lucy was thought to be more agile and better in a fight.

In her means of propulsion she embodied perfectly the uncertain present state of the navy’s technology. She was not steam-powered but rather steam-assisted, which is to say that she used the power of coal to leave and enter harbor and during battle, but the rest of the time moved under sail, not all that differently than her forebears in the Napoleonic Wars sixty years earlier might have. Using coal added several knots to the Lucy’s speed, but it was a problematic fuel source: coaling stations were few and far between and the burners were thin-walled and had to be spared too much taxation lest they falter in an important situation. (New, thicker burners were being manufactured now, but even in her Plymouth refitting the Lucy didn’t receive one of them.)

Lenox had learned all of this information three nights before from the captain, Jacob Martin, a stern, youngish fellow, perhaps thirty-five, extremely religious, prematurely gray but physically very strong. Edmund said that he was much respected within the admiralty and destined for great things, perhaps even the command of a large warship within the next few months. Martin politely did his duty by welcoming Lenox to the ship and describing her outlines to him, but all the same didn’t quite seem to relish the prospect of a civilian passenger.

“Still,” he had said, “we must try to prove our worth now, the navy. It’s not like it was in my grandfather’s day. He was an admiral, Mr. Lenox, raised his flag at Trafalgar. Those chaps were heroes to the common Englishman. Now we must stretch ourselves in every new direction—diplomacy, science, trade—so that you mathematical fellows in Parliament will continue to see the use of us. Peacetime, you see.”

“Surely peace is the most desirable state of affairs for an officer of the navy?”

“Oh, yes!” said Martin, but in a slightly wistful tone, as if he weren’t entirely in agreement but couldn’t tactfully say as much.

They were in a private room at a public house near the water, where many officers regularly took supper. It was called the Yardarm. “I realize there must be fewer men afloat than during war,” said Lenox, trying to be sympathetic.

Martin nodded vehemently. “Yes, too many of my peers are on shore, eking out a life on half-pay. Dozens of children, all of them. Meanwhile the French have started to outpace us.”

“Our navy is much larger,” said Lenox. He spoke with authority—he had read the world’s driest blue book (or parliamentary report) on the subject.

“To be sure, but their ships are sound and fast and big, Mr. Lenox.” Martin swirled his wine in his glass, looking into it. “They were ahead of us on coal. Our Warrior was based on her Gloire. Who knows what they’re doing now. Meanwhile we’re all at sixes and sevens.”

“The navy?”

“It’s a period of transition.”

“Coal and steam, you mean, Captain? I know.”

“Do you?”

“I thought so, at any rate. Please enlighten me.”

“It’s not as it was,” said Martin. “We must now train our men to sail a full-rigged vessel, as we always have, and at the same time to coal a ship to fourteen knots under steam even as we fire a broadside. Because she’s built for speed the Lucy is very light in guns, of course—only twenty-one four-pounders, which would scarcely trouble a serious ship—but still, to be worried at once about sail, steam, and shooting is no easy task for a captain or a crew. And the Lord forbid you find yourself without coal.” He laughed bitterly and drank off the last of his wine.

“I understand the depots are few and far between.”

“You might say that. I think it’s more likely we’ll see three mermaids between here and Egypt than three proper depots where we can take our fill.”

Lenox tried good cheer. “Still, to be at sea! It’s stale to you, but for me I confess it’s a thrill.”

Martin smiled. “I apologize for sounding so negative, Mr. Lenox. I’ve been afloat since I was twelve, and I wouldn’t be anywhere else for money. But a captain’s job is a difficult one. When I’m on the water all of my problems are soluble, you see, but on land I can think over them and fret and worry myself half to oblivion. Before