A Burial at Sea

French contact in Egypt, and make some sort of trumped-up speech we give you as cover for that job.”

“Oh, is that to be my ‘primary’ job?” Charles said, hearing the bitterness in his own voice.

“Listen, Charles—if this doesn’t convince you nothing will. It wasn’t I who brought your name up. Gladstone did.”

This gave Lenox pause. “The prime minister? Asked for me?”

“Yes. And he had no idea that Teddy would be on our next ship to Egypt, either.” Edmund looked hopefully up at Charles, who was pacing toward the snow-covered window. “He likes you. And to be certain, it helped that you were my brother—someone we could trust. But he wouldn’t send an incompetent for loyalty’s sake.”

“Hmm.”

“Charles, listen to reason. England needs you. This may be the most important thing you do, you know.”

“A lucky coincidence?”

“I swear,” said Edmund.

“Well, I would have done it either way,” Charles said ruminatively. Then, pouring two more glasses of whisky, he added, “By name, the prime minister asked for me?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Lady Jane waved a hand and called out to her brother-in-law. “Edmund! Teddy!”

The father and son turned around and when they saw Lenox and Lady Jane, both smiled. Edmund’s grin was broad and happy; Teddy’s less enthused. He did look greenish.

“Hello, Uncle Charles,” he said when they were in earshot. “And Aunt Jane.”

Everyone shook hands. Edmund really was beaming, but in a low voice he said to Charles, “Remind me to speak to you for a moment before you go.”

“Are you ready to ship out?” Lady Jane asked Teddy, tapping him on the shoulder in what she must have imagined to be a hearty fashion.

He clearly longed to say that he wasn’t, but instead choked out the word, “Yes,” with something less than perfect zeal.

“And are you, Charles?” said Edmund.

“I am. I’m also ready to be back in London, strangely enough.”

Lady Jane squeezed his hand.

The men who had been carrying Lenox’s things had touched their caps and then vanished back into the streets of Plymouth (and, suspiciously, given that they were due on the Lucy soon, in the direction of a public house). The family stood alone over two trunks and four or so bags, waiting.

Off to their right was the massive, shamrock-green field where Sir Francis Drake had with famous tranquility played bowls while the Spanish armada loomed offshore, on the way to the rollicking Drake ultimately bestowed upon them. Lenox had walked over it several times in the past two weeks, twice with Lady Jane, and in the twilight of evening contemplated all sorts of things: seafaring, wives left at home, children, French spies. To the left was the dock that the famous settlers of America had left from, aboard the Mayflower.

Closer at hand was the intense activity of the docks. Every day Plymouth handled naval ships, commercial freighters, and several unsavory varieties of black-market transaction that just about managed to avoid the observation of the local constabulary. Men swarmed around them, voices rose in the middle distances, wood smacked against wood. It suddenly felt much more real, this sea voyage, than it had half an hour before.

The two brothers, Teddy, and Lady Jane waited by slip nineteen, and about five hundred yards out they saw the men who were coming to fetch them. They were easy to spot, these two, because their jolly boat (belonging to the Lucy, pitched up sideways alongside deck during voyages) was a vividly striped yellow and black, with its name, The Bumblebee, scrawled in large letters on one side. It certainly stood out among the dozen odd brownish boats near it. Idly Lenox wondered whether it attracted attention when the Lucy wanted to be stealthy, but perhaps she was too fast a ship, designed for speed as she was, to worry much about that: nothing with very heavy guns would be able to catch her in a fair race.

“Not long now,” said Edmund.

Charles felt his stomach turn over. “Perhaps Jane and I will take a short walk,” he said.

“Of course, of course.”

They went toward Drake’s lawns, and managed to escape in some small degree the din of the docks. As they walked they spoke to each other in low, earnest voices, saying nothing much and repeating it over and over, all of it tending toward the incontrovertible truth that they loved each other; that they loved the child they would have; that all would be well, even if it seemed bleak at the moment.

Feeling slightly better, they returned to find the Bumblebee tied on to shore and two able seamen transferring trunks and bags into its deep middle section. (Captain Martin had permitted Teddy Lenox to come on board with his uncle, but with the caveat that once the boy stepped on the deck of the Lucy all such preferential treatment would be terminated.) Not long now.

At the last moment Edmund pulled his brother aside, producing a thin sheaf of documents from some inner pocket of his jacket. “Here they are—your orders. Secure them somewhere in your cabin that nobody can find, even your servant, if it’s possible.”

“I thought I had the information already?” said Lenox, puzzled.

Edmund shook his head. “Those pages were a dummy. We wanted to leave off committing any facts to paper until the last possible moment. You can get rid of those.”

“Very well.”

“Be safe, Charles. On board and on land.” A pained look came into Edmund’s eyes. “And if you could—if it’s not trouble—not that I would ever ask you…”

Lenox laughed. “I’ll look after Teddy, Edmund. I swear.”

Edmund laughed too, but looked colossally relieved. “Good. Excellent. I want to see you both back safe, soon.”

“You shall.”

Before either of them knew it, Charles and his nephew were in the Bumblebee, and while Lenox could still feel Lady Jane’s final kiss on his cheek, they cast off. Both Lenoxes sat at the rear of the boat gazing back at Edmund and Jane, who stood on shore and waved them off. With the two powerful men rowing the Bumblebee Charles’s wife and his brother were soon indistinct among the hordes on the dock, and then it was impossible to see whether they had even remained by the slip where they had said good-bye. But only when there was really no possibility of making out who was who, or who was waving, or even whether any figure on land was a man or a woman or a shaved ape, did the two turn and look at their ship.

Teddy was a creature Lenox had always loved—a good-spirited, mischievous, endearingly freckled blond boy—but now Lenox realized that his nephew had come at least partially into manhood, and in that alchemical process become a mystery.

“Well,” he said, “are you ready? Or were you being brave?”

Teddy, looking queasy, said with winning honesty, “Being brave.”

Lenox clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “In a day’s time you won’t be able to remember feeling frightened.”

Teddy nodded but didn’t look as if he believed a word of it. “William says the food will be terrible.”

This was Teddy’s older brother, a pupil at Harrow now. “I have some provisions,” Lenox answered in a mild way. “You shan’t go hungry while I’m on board. But no word of it to the captain, d’you hear?”

The boy managed a smile. It was wiped off when they came up alongside the ship, and a row of men leaning on the railing cackled and shouted.

“This little white-faced beggar won’t see much more of the world, I reckon,” one called out, to general merriment.

Charles and Teddy climbed the rigging and as they neared the deck rough hands took them under the arms and pulled each up over the gunwale in turn, and onto the Lucy’s main deck. To Lenox they were courteous, and he even heard one murmur to another, “Which he’s the member of Parlyment,” but Teddy