A Burial at Sea

There were gasps all over the deck, and then the Bumblebee fell heavily into the water. Lenox saw Carrow edging onto deck, gathering men around him.

“You first, your honourable,” said Billings, and shoved Lenox toward the gunwale. “Hope you like to row.”

They followed him down the outside of the Lucy. He had a terrible, alert feeling in his stomach, a knowledge that he might soon be dead regardless of whether he followed their directions.

They got into the Bumblebee and Billings thrust the oars at Lenox, who began to row slowly toward the direction of Africa.

Billings had a manic, wild energy now. His gentle, quiet manner had vanished. He kept looking back at the Lucy, whose rail was lined with bluejackets and officers.

It was Carrow who cried out, “Let him go! Bring him back! You can go!”

“Not likely!” Billings shouted back. He laughed. “They’ll be hours on that rudder, the fools.”

Butterworth, less delighted, merely nodded.

“You’ve been with the family a long time?” Lenox asked as he rowed, trying to keep his voice composed.

“Yes,” said Butterworth shortly.

“Why did you cut them open, Mr. Billings?” said Lenox.

“Can I put my penknife in him, Butterworth?”

“No, Master Billings,” said the steward quietly.

“Let me.”

“No. Your father wouldn’t like it.”

“Did it start early?” Lenox asked. “Small animals? Then bigger ones?”

Butterworth was silent, but Billings, whose personality had received a kind of electric jolt from his exposure, was happy to speak. “You think you know my history, Mr. Lenox?”

“I cannot think why you cut Martin and Halifax open as you did, unless deliberate cruelty gives you pleasure.”

Billings shrugged. “There were animals. I remember when I was five, and my father was trying to make a proper gentleman of me, I saw the fox torn apart. The excitement of it—the thrill of it—there were animals, you could say there were animals. Little buggers. Got them with my penknife, didn’t I?” He was jabbering. “Cut them tidily, made them neat. Got them right. My father knew. Tried to beat me for wickedness, oh, ever so hard, when he drank. Sent me to sea, hoping to fix me. I’m still the same, though. You never change.”

“Are these the first humans you’ve killed, Billings?” said Lenox, slowing the pace at which he rowed. The Lucy was getting smaller. His heart was hammering in his chest.

“Except in battle. Wasn’t any different than the cats and dogs and squirrels,” said Billings with another shrug.

“And Butterworth? You can tolerate this?”

“I can tolerate anything in my family, Mr. Lenox,” said Butterworth. “Row faster. Master Billings, water?”

“Yes.”

“Why must you call him master? He’s a man grown.”

Nobody spoke, until Butterworth said, “Faster, I told you faster. Here, give me one of the oars.”

They sat and rowed, all exchanging looks, for ten, fifteen minutes. Lenox tried to speak and Billings raised the gun. Ten more minutes, fifteen. The Lucy was getting farther and farther now, Lenox realized with a surge of panic.

“Was it because they passed you over as captain?” Lenox finally said, increasing his pace slightly.

A transformation took place in Billings. The manic liveliness of the past hour gave way to the self-possession of the first lieutenant Lenox had thought he knew. “It was a damned travesty, I can tell you that.”

“Oh?”

“Halifax wasn’t a bad sort in the wardroom. Genial enough. He had no place at the helm of a ship, however.”

“And yet he had great interest.”

Billings laughed bitterly, but he still seemed to be the better Billings, the professional man. “You might say that. His grandmother gave birth to, oh, forty admirals or thereabouts.”

“The system is unfair.”

Suddenly the mad version of Billings returned. “Let me put my penknife in him,” he said to Butterworth. “Let me, Father.”

“No,” said Butterworth. “You, row.”

Lenox rowed on. The Lucy continued to recede from view, until he could no longer distinguish between the people on board her deck.

Some part of him wanted to plead for his life now; but another, resistant part forbade it. Foolishness, if it got him killed, but then men lived and died all the time by the peculiarities of their soul, which they could never expect one another to understand.

All he could manage was, “You really ought to let me go.”

“We’re going to keep you, deal with you on land,” said Billings, eyes demonic, purposeful.

Butterworth gave him an appraising glance. “You say that now.”

“You have my word, you will not be followed,” said Lenox.

“Let me put my penknife in him!” said Billings.

“No!” roared Butterworth. “Give us your shoes and your coat, Lenox. They look comfortable.”

“Please don’t kill me,” he managed to choke out.

Butterworth shook his head, and then gave Lenox a tremendous shove into the water.

As he emerged, he heard Butterworth say, “If you can make it back, you can live. It’s a fairer bargain than many a sailor I know has had.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

There was the cold, sharp shock of the water, and then the brilliance of the sky and sun. He kept himself afloat and turned, turned, panic in his heart, looking for the Lucy, until at last he spotted her.

He started to swim.

His arms were already tired from oaring, and after twenty feet or so of swimming they burned. Should’ve kept up more regular exercise, he thought, but then Parliament tended to be a sedentary place, full of late-night meals at committee meetings. How many months had it been since he took his scull on the Thames? Now, with the current against him, he wished dearly he had kept in better fitness.

He swam for what felt like an hour, more, and then permitted himself to look up. To his despair the Lucy was no closer, although the Bumblebee was by now a landward speck. He rested on his back for a while. Thanked God that it was the middle of the day, and warm enough.

He kicked off his socks, his trousers, and swam on.

In the next four hours there were times when he thought he might give up. He had thrown up, had swallowed seawater and thrown that up too. He would have promised to walk from Mayfair to John O’Groats for a drop of fresh water, after two hours. After three the seabed seemed a comforting thought. His friend Halifax was there.

The sun began exert a terrible pressure on his head, in his temples. On he swam, or, more accurately, drifted with some purpose.

The Lucy came closer, it seemed, but never very close.

He swam on.

He had never known such fatigue, or for his body to be in such open rebellion against him: actions he had taken for granted once upon a time, in the life before he was in the water, seemed impossible now. He couldn’t turn