Alexander Kent - In the King`s Name

He touched the timber: it felt like ice, and the white paint looked very fresh in the faint glare of a light. This was pointless. Murray would be asleep too, after what he had been struggling to do all day, or still preparing his report. Despite all his brutal experience, the Scot was not the kind of man to dismiss it simply as his duty.

Here, even the smells were different. The hemp and tar, salt and canvas seemed miles away, and clean. Adam’s foot brushed against something and he heard someone gulp and mutter. It was a fold of the loose smock worn by one of Murray’s assistants, his “crew” as he called them, slumped in a trestle chair and already snoring again.

Even in the feeble glow, Adam could see the tell-tale stains. Too many memories. Even the confined smells. Oils of thyme and lavender and mint, and others less medicinal, more sinister. Alcohol, blood, sickness. And always the pain. The fear.

The door was not completely shut, in case of an emergency, and it swung easily under his hand, so that the light of a shuttered lantern seemed almost blinding. Nobody moved. One man was slouched in a canvas seat, a partly folded bandage in his lap, his splinted leg propped on a chest: one of the seamen who had been injured off Biscay.

Murray was beside the cot, his back to the door, stooped, unmoving, the inert body lying in his shadow. He could have been asleep or dead. Adam looked down into the still face, younger than he remembered, eyes shut, skin as white as the sheet that partly covered his bare shoulders.

Then Murray spoke softly, without turning his head. “I knew you’d come. I felt it.” He moved his head slightly and Adam saw that he was dabbing Lord’s mouth with a rag, and with his other hand was gripping Lord’s free hand. The right arm was stiff with linen bandages and protected by what appeared to be weighted pillows. There were stained dressings on the deck, and more piled in a keg nearby.

Murray half-turned his hawkish profile and said quietly, “Pass me that jug, will you?” He bobbed his head with a little sarcastic smile. “If you please, sir? ” He released the hand he had been holding and lowered it to the cot, and waited, motionless. Then he said, “Come on, laddie. Once again, eh?”

Adam almost held his breath. It was over. If I had kept away …

But the hand was moving. Hesitantly, slowly, then decisively toward Murray’s hairy, outthrust one. He grasped it and dabbed the man’s mouth again. “I am here, Brian. We are here.”

The voice was very faint. “Arm hurts.”

Murray’s tousled hair fell over his forehead. “At least you can feel it, thank God.” He lifted the sheet and listened to the heart before moistening the dry lips again. Adam could smell the brandy.

The surgeon was staring now at the glittering array of instruments nearby. “Not this time!”

As if he were speaking to himself, or to death.

Lieutenant Hector Monteith stood at the foot of the mizzen mast, and glared around at the seamen already mustered by the quarter-davits to lower the jolly-boat for towing astern.

“Take the strain! Turns for lowering!” His foot tapped impatiently as one man broke into a fit of coughing. “We don’t have the rest of the forenoon, Scully!” Then, “Lower away!”

The jolly-boat, maid of all work, gave a jerk and began to move, empty but for a man fore and aft to check the tackles. Always a lonely task at sea.

Monteith bawled, “ Handsomely!” He moved to the side. “This is not a contest!” He saw the man in the boat’s bows hold up his fist. “Avast lowering!” The boat had settled on the water, lifting and falling easily on the frigate’s wash. “Recall those men.” He glanced along the rank of seamen on the quarterdeck and knew the first lieutenant was on the opposite gangway. Watching him. “And don’t forget! A boat towing astern could save a life!”

The seaman named Scully, who had coughed, muttered, “So long as it’s not yours!”

Luke Jago turned away from the boat tier where he had been changing the lashings on the gig. His gig. When they finally reached Freetown the captain would want the gig, no excuses. Jago had no complaints about that. A man-of-war was always judged by her boats. And that was how it should be.

He saw Monteith, hands on hips, overseeing the men mustered by the sloping davits. The watch had almost run its course, but Monteith would not dismiss them until the stroke of eight bells. He was the third lieutenant, and a junior one at that, with a face so youthful he might still have been a midshipman, but he had all the makings of a “hard-horse.” Suppose he ever gained a command of his own?

God help his ship’s company, Jago thought. He gripped the hammock nettings as the deck sloped suddenly and some loose tackle clattered against a hatch coaming.

On cue, Monteith snapped, “Stow that properly and in a seamanlike manner, Logan!”

The seaman answered just as sharply, “It’s Lawrence, sir,” but he hurried to obey.

Jago thought of Falmouth and the big grey house, and the girl on the captain’s arm at the church. All those people … an’ I was a guest. An’ more than that .

He had been recalling all the stories, yarns he had shared with John Allday, Sir Richard Bolitho’s old coxswain, who had been with the admiral when he had been shot down aboard his flagship, Frobisher , in 1815. Allday was landlord of the Old Hyperion inn and had a charming wife to warm his bed, and a daughter, too. Everything. But in many ways he was still the admiral’s coxswain, and his heart was aboard Frobisher . Even the fine model Allday had been making of their old ship remained unfinished, as if he was unwilling to break something between them, some link to the past.

Jago heard the shrill of a call and the cry, echoed below deck: “Up Spirits!” and murmured, “But stand fast, the Holy Ghost!” He had already caught the whiff of rum, even in this keen Atlantic air.

There were voices and he saw the first lieutenant stride across the quarterdeck, not to speak with Monteith but to attract the attention of an untidy figure in a linen smock, one of the surgeon’s crew. The man looked utterly drained and unsteady on his feet, and had doubtless been working in the sick-bay without sleep since the previous morning. “Jock” Murray, as he was known behind his back, never seemed to spare himself, nor those who shared his trade.

Jago was too far away to hear what was being said, but words were not necessary. He saw Vincent gesture to his right arm, and the other man’s drawn face clearing and breaking into a wan smile. Then his astonishment as Vincent reached out and clapped him across the shoulder. Some seamen were stopping nearby as if to share it, and one of them shouted to the working party near the quarter-davits, who were still waiting to be dismissed.

Only Monteith remained alone, and unaware that a man’s life had been saved.

Jago jumped down to the deck and took a couple of deep breaths. But the pain was still there, like a knot in his stomach. A tot of grog might help . Why did he always think that? It never had.

“Ah, here you are, Luke!”

It was Sergeant Fairfax, his uniform a vivid scarlet amidst the shrouds and canvas. They were friends and had served together in the past, although Jago could barely recall when or where.

Fairfax rubbed his chin, having reached a decision. “Thought you might drop into the barracks directly. I owe you a tot, I seem to remember. Maybe a couple?”

Jago touched his arm and saw the fresh pipeclay drift from his belt. “Later, mebbee, Tom. I’ll be with the cap’n.”

Fairfax knew him better than most. Except, maybe, Bolitho. He glanced over toward the cabin skylight. “So be it, matey!”