H. M. S. Cockerel (35 page)

No wonder they lit out, he shuddered, taking a look aft along the floating battery's side. She was slightly down by the stern, and fires raged unchecked aft, snarling like famished dogs over the forward edge of the quarterdeck, beginning to eat at the gangways on either beam, and the after-half of the gun deck was sizzling with low sheets of flamelets.

And shells were still falling from Fort La Garde, bursting above her, splashing down all about the cove, close aboard. One came down in a knot of swimmers and paddlers, clinging to any old sort of flotsam by the beach. Up rose a pillar of water, mud, gravel . . . men, or pieces of men; broken coop crates and bits of timber. When the feather collapsed, there weren't four heads to be seen still afloat!

“Mister Scott, sir,” Spendlove cried, tears running on his face.

“Yes?” Lewrie asked, staring at the sea below him with foreboding.

Dear God, if I can't find something solid to cling to . . . ! Alan shuddered.

“
Dead,
sir!” Spendlove shouted, as if in accusation. “Blown to . . . dear
God,
sir, there were bits of him, scattered . . .” He pointed aft to the raging furnace of the quarterdeck, where Scott would have taken himself, to ready
Zélé
to up-anchor. Spendlove's shirtfront was wet with breakfast, his terrified reaction to his first dead men.

Lewrie could but nod at that sad news, more concerned with surviving himself at that moment, gazing like a hypnotised rabbit under a snake's steely glare, at the sea. Hungry waters lapped and gurgled with what sounded like glee against the side, as if they'd been waiting for him for a very long time.

“See to the men, Mister Spendlove. Get as many ashore as you can,” he ordered. “Be calm. They'll need that.”

“Aye, sir,” Spendlove gulped, fighting back his own fears.

Waistcoat too, I s'pose, Lewrie surmised; good broadcloth, it'll soak up water like a sponge. He peeled it off and cast it away. Lewrie undid the buckle of his neckstock and lace front to toss them away, too. This day, he wore old cotton stockings, his worst-stained pair of cotton breeches, the working pair he'd had run up out of sailcloth.

It struck him that they were French, and he giggled.

Serge de Nîmes,
they called the fabric . . . sailcloth. Bloody Frogs invented it, didn't they? But he could not recall what the French called “sails.”
Vela?
No, that was Latin.

Weak and shuddering, feeling a bit faint at his prospect of drowning, chilling all over, feeling his knees buckling, and his death grip on the stay slipping, he imagined he was already a spirit, a shade, freed of his body's mortal husk, outside of himself and distanced from the world. His ears were ringing, not from an excess of noise but from an almost total lack of sound. A shell burst, its fuse wrongly selected, right over the bluffs, and he could barely hear its barking
Crack!

“Sir, sir!” from far away. “Mister Lewrie, sir! 'Old on, Mister Lewrie, I'm acomin'!”

And there was Cony, paddling and treading water at his feet. So
far
below, though!

“Got ya somethin' t' 'ang onta, sir,” Cony promised. There was a small, rectangular hatch grating from a limber hole off the orlop deck, a bar to intruders who had no business secreting themselves in the dark recesses of the bilges or the carpenter's walks; cross-hatched of wood two-by-four, with ventilation squares. “It'll float like anythin', sir! Ya gotta jump on
down,
Mister Lewrie. I'll be right 'ere, no worries.”

“Ah . . .” Lewrie said, grimacing with fear that looked like a grin.

“She's burnin' damn' fierce, Mister Lewrie, she'll blow sky-high any minute now,” Cony insisted, swiping water and soaked flaxen hair out of his eyes. “Ever'body else'z off 'er, sir, ain't no reason t'stay no longer. Come
on,
sir!”

Lewrie sat down on the fore-chain platform, easing his buttocks to the edge, his toes dangling, terror-breaths whooshing in and out, as if the next would be the last.

“God love ya, Mister Lewrie, sir,” Cony coaxed, his face crimped with worry. “All these years t'gether, I don't mean t'lose ya now. Wot I tell y'r good lady an' y'r kiddies, if I went an' lost ya? Come on, sir! 'Old y'r nose an' slide off! I'll be right by y'r side, swear it by Jesus, I do, sir!”

Well . . . he sighed. He clapped his cocked hat firmly on his head, took a deep breath, held his nose, compressed his lips, took one last fond look at the bluffs—and let go of the stay.

He fell, he splashed like a cannon ball, arrowing down . . .
down,
and
down,
wanting to scream, blinded by brine, forever lost, lungs aching, wishing he'd taken a deeper breath, deep enough to last forever . . .

“Shit!” he yelped as he broke surface, felt light and air on his face, felt Cony's hand on his shirt collar. Retching and coughing from smoke, from water in his mouth, his eyes, weeping with salt-water sting and pure, semi-hysterical relief.

“Grab ahold o' this, sir, there ya be, safe'z 'ouses,” Cony cooed, and Lewrie flailed about until his hands seized the hatch grating, took it to his bosom trying to get his whole chest over the twoby-three foot grating. Feeling it wobble under him, threatening to tip him over.

“Shit!” he reiterated.

“'Ang on, sir, jus' th' edge, t'keep y'r 'ead 'bove water, an' . . .” Cony instructed. “That's better, sir. You jus' 'ang on, an' I'll tow.”

“Lost my hat,” Lewrie carped, prying one stinging eye open.

“Hat's no matter, Mister Lewrie,” Cony laughed. “Gotta get shed o' y'r sword, sir.”

“No!” Lewrie insisted, almost petulantly.

“Drag ya down, do ya slip an' let go, sir,” Cony explained.

“No!” Lewrie growled, groping fearfully for the scabbard which dangled between his legs. He dragged it around to lie athwart the grating before his eyes, then resumed his death grip.

“'Ere we go then, sir,” Cony fretted, beginning to side-stroke and tow. “Do ya kick y'r legs, sir? Push like ya wuz aclimbin' real steep stairs, that'd help. Y'll get the 'ang of it.”

Once away from
Zélé
's side, out of her lee, they met the wind, which helped propel them into the cove, toward the beach. Grunting as he gyrated his legs in an unfamiliar motion, he could begin to feel each tiny thrust as he clung to his raft, gagging and spitting with the water just under his chin, and wavelets slopping over his shoulders, to his ears at times, from behind. Halfway there, he lost his right shoe, no matter how he'd crimped his toes to keep it.

There were dead in the water, men floating face-down with their long hair come undone from tarry queues, fanned out like tentacles from flattened jellyfish. And bits and pieces of men who'd been torn apart by one of those underwater shell-bursts. Cony thrust their way through a bobbing assortment of broken barricoes, stubs of lumber, jagged, still smoking planks and ship's beams. Here an abandoned hammock, inches under but still afloat, there a man who'd drowned even with two rolled hammocks about his chest. Coils of loose rope, swaying upwards for the sun like sea snakes he'd seen in the China Seas.

Sharks!
he quailed, to himself, grimly pushing and kicking, finding a rhythm at last with Cony's towing strokes. Bloody hell, I've seen 'em, every shipwreck, every battle, looking for survivors . . . Some bit of half-submerged flotsam touched his bare foot and he all but screamed, biting his sword belt to keep from unmanning himself.

Rumblings, distant earthquake quivers in the water, pressure he could feel squeezing on his stomach and lungs. Groans and cries astern. He dared turn his head to look, and saw
Zélé
with two-thirds heartily burning, the foremast toppling slowly, great gouts of bubbles foaming around her as she settled lower and lower. Her stern was probably already on the rocky bottom, he thought, with waves burbling around her great-cabin windows. She at least would not have far to go, not in four fathoms, and she drew two; she'd lay awash, until everything above that new waterline had charred to crumbly coals.

“Right, sir,” Cony said cheerfully, “we're here. Hit me knee on a rock.” He left off side-stroking and stood up, waist-deep. Alan was not that brave—he thrust with his legs until he was past Cony before he groped for the bottom with his feet. When he at last stood up, he'd reached thigh-deep water. And he was cold.

“Christ,” he sighed, beginning to shiver, his teeth to chatter as that brisk November wind found every water-logged inch of him. Immersed, it hadn't felt quite so bad. His legs below the surface were warmer.

“Lucky we wuz so near th' beach, sir, else we'da froze up solid an' gone under,” Cony said, hugging himself to still his own shiverings.

“Cony, I . . .” Lewrie blushed. “Thankee, Will Cony. Thankee.”

“Aw, sir,” Cony shrugged modestly as they splashed through tiny surf-rushes onto the gravel of the beach. “Weren't . . . well, sir. After all this time, I'd not care t'be servin' another officer. So I 'spect it'd be better t'save th' one I'm usedta.”

“Whatever reason, Cony . . . my hand on't,” Lewrie offered, shaking Cony's paw vigorously. “I'm in your debt.
Damme,
if I ain't.”

“All these years, sir . . . well, I swore I wouldn't lose ya. An' so I didn't. Thankee, sir. Thankee kindly.”

“Now, let's see what we have left,” Lewrie said, breaking free, feeling a tad uncomfortable over such a close and affectionate display of emotion toward another man. Even one who'd just saved his life.

There wasn't much. Crillart and his gunners were grouped off to one side, only about half the number Lewrie had recalled, trying to put names to half-known faces, trying to dredge up the identity of missing men. Of Spaniards, there were only four still alive. Spendlove, Porter and Lisney were huddled together in a group. He still had Preston and Sadler, Gracey, Gittons . . . there was Gunner's Mate Bittfield . . .

“Bosun?” he called. “Taken a muster?”

“Aye, sir,” Porter nodded, in a daze still. “Nothin' to write on, sir, I . . .”

“Later,” Lewrie agreed, clapping him on the shoulder. “We'll sort it out later. Stout fellow, Porter. To get as many as you did ashore.”

“Oh, aye, sir . . . thankee,” Porter straightened, bucking up.

Lewrie undid the knee buckles of his breeches, letting a minor flood of sea water escape down his shins. He pulled up his stockings from his ankles, where they'd settled. And winced as he plodded across the rough shingle of the beach. Lock-jaw fever was so easy to die of, he couldn't recall a time he'd ever gone barefoot, even as a child.

There was a muffled
boom
from
Zélé
as part of her soggy powder at last took light in the magazine, a dull
whoomph,
accompanied by a spurt of smoke from her gun ports. She'd settled now, with only her upper bulwarks and gangways, her jib boom and quarterdeck above the surface. The fires had abated, with too little dry timber to feed on. She fumed now like a slag heap in Birmingham, the smoke thin and bluish like burning autumn leaves.

It struck Lewrie suddenly that he had just lost everything. His sea chest had gone down with her. All his clothes, books, a career-span of official documents and letters, orders and . . .

His two pairs of pistols, shoes, stockings, homemade preserves he had packed, that Caroline had put up. His dressing gown no one liked.

Christ, her letters! he groaned. And the miniature portrait, and Sewallis's crude first drawings, Hugh's messy handprints from the latest post . . . that
juju
bag, too. Lucy Beauman had had one of her family slaves make it . . . a “witch” to keep him safe from the sea, long ago when he was ashore on Antigua, recovering from Yellow Jack. He hadn't really worn it in ages, but to lose it. Yet . . .

“Fat lot of good it did me, after all,” he whispered. “I got ashore without it.”

Hurtful as his losses were, the one that really stung was that, for all his vows to keep his sailors alive, come what may, he'd lost some of them—he'd failed. And, for the first time in his career, he had lost a ship.

C H A P T E R 1 0

C
harles,”
Lewrie muttered, standing over the despondent Lieutenant Crillart. “We have to get moving. We stay on this beach, we'll freeze to death. It looks as if we could climb up to the Hieres Road and march to Saint Margaret. That's what, 'bout half a mile?”

“Oui, Alain,”
de Crillart nodded slowly, getting to his feet as creakily as a doddering ancient. Lewrie offered him a hand up. “All zose
hommes splendide. Moi
. . . my men!”

“I know. Mine, too, Charles. Mister Scott . . .” Lewrie replied.

“Sir!” Bosun Porter shouted in alarm suddenly. “Riders comin'!”

Spilling down from the gentlest slope above the beach, just west of where the French field guns had fired, were a knot of horse-men, men in oversized shakos, bearing lances. Blue uniforms, green uniforms all sprigged in red braiding. And the lances bore small, burgee-cut pennons of blue-white-red, the Tricolour. They were French. About twenty cavalrymen, followed by officers in cocked hats.

“Well, shit,” Lewrie sighed as the leading horsemen curvetted all about them, brandishing lance points or sabres. “Stand fast, lads! Stay calm. Stand fast!”

It was all they
could
do. To run . . . well, there'd be no running, not shoeless on shingle, no escape from a lance tip in the back. They were already disarmed, except for Admiralty-pattern sheath knives, and Captain Braxton had made sure the points had been blunted long before.

“Silly-lookin' bashtids,” Landsman Preston grumbled. Some of the cavalrymen wore braids in their hair, pigtails on either side of their faces, with the rest long and loose-flowing as women, or shorn peasant-short in Republican, revolutionary style. Tall dragoon boots above the knee, Republican trousers instead of breeches, gaudy new and unfamiliar uniforms. Not a queue, not a powdered head in sight. And they were a scruffy-looking lot, too, as if their new rags had been sewn up from a set of old rags. And they stank. Lord, how they stank, bad as rotting meat, their horses galled raw by hard service!

“'Oo eez een charge?” a cavalry officer asked, one of the riders in green and red, with the ridiculous pigtails beside his cheeks.

“I am,” Lewrie spat, disgusted at being captured, and so easily.

The cavalry officer extended his heavy sabre, blade inverted and point down, inches from Alan's nose, with a triumphant smirk on his face.
“Parlez-vous français, m'sieur?”
he sneered.

“Ah, foutre, non,”
Lewrie said with a sad shrug.
“Je ne parle pas.”

“Espèce de salaud!”
the officer barked, making his horse rear and slash with its hooves, baring yellow teeth.
“Je demande qu' est-ce que votre nom, vous fumier!”

“Lt. Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy,” he replied proudly, refusing to give horse or rider an inch, prickly with pride—the only item he had left in any abundance. “Captain of the
Zélé,
floating battery.” He pointed over his shoulder to the wreck.
“Parlez-vous anglais?”

“Oui,”
the officer barked, not sounding very happy about speaking the language of an ancient foe. “You
'ear
me speak eet. Lieutenant, or
capitaine
. . . w'eech are you?”

“Both,” Lewrie grinned, happy to have confused him.

“Et Zélé?
Zat eez
français.”

“Captured. French ship, British crew,
m'sieur.
Why she sank so quick. French,” Alan said with another expressive shrug.

“You mak' ze leetle joke,
m'sieur, hein?
” the cavalryman grinned without mirth.

“
Oui,
I make the little joke,
m'sieur.
”

The rider clucked and kneed his mount to take a step forward, and Alan had to give ground at last. The sword point touched his chest and began to dig into his breastbone.

“
Mais,
ve
sink
you, an'
votre
ship . . . so 'oo is laugh, now,
hein, un petit merdeux!
” The rider laughed, and swung his arm back for a cut.

“Arrêtez!”
a voice shouted from up the hill, leaving Alan with a hair's-breadth between life and death as he beheld the weak November sun twinkling on the sabre's fresh-honed edge. He
knew
he was being a fool,
knew
his truculence could get him hacked to bits. But he could not help himself.

But the officer balked, looked over his shoulder, and loosed the tension in his sword arm. The sabre came down harmlessly to the rider's side, and he jerked his reins to ride away, to speak with the clutch of officers who had called to him.

“Good God, sir, shouldn't you . . . ?” Spendlove shivered. “If we get 'em mad enough . . .”

“Aye, Mister Spendlove, I'll be good, from now on.”

With the officer apart from them, the cavalrymen, the lancers and dragoons dismounted, hemming in the survivors to a tight knot, musketoons or long pistols out and half-cocked, to pat them down for weapons. For anything that struck their fancy, too, it seemed. A sergeant came up to Lewrie's side, turned out his pockets and got a few shillings, began to touch the sword. Alan glared at him and pushed the scabbard behind his thigh. Republican or not, an officer's glare was still useful on a Revolutionary. The sergeant moved his hand and tore his watch away, snarling a garlicky breath through dingy, discoloured teeth. He held up the watch, admiring the blue riband, fouled anchor and crossed cannon fob, done in damascene silver and gold, opened the case and held it to his ear to see if it still ticked. And made off with it, chortling and jeering.

Alan looked to the staff officers up the beach. The cavalry officer was catching pluperfect Hell from the fellow on the dapple-gray gelding. He sheathed his sabre, bowed his head and turned red as the froggings on his jacket. Then they were coming down the beach toward Lewrie, the one on the fine dapple-gray in the lead, the horse stepping and prancing as head-high as his master. He drew to a halt, tossed the reins without even looking to a lancer on the off side, and swung a leg over the horse's neck to spring lithely down.

Another
bloody minikin, Lewrie thought sourly as he studied him; just like that Captain Nelson. And young, too. Christ, he don't look a day over twenty-one!

The officer wore glossy top boots, snug buff trousers and a dark blue, single-breasted uniform coat, cut horizontal across the waist, with vine and leaf pattern embroidery up the front, buttoned up against chilly winds almost to the throat. The stand-and-fall collar was also ornately embroidered with gold lace, very wide and spread halfway to his shoulders. A long burgundy wool sash about his slim waist, a silver-laced black belt over it with a damascened buckle supported the frog for a light-cavalry sabre. Long shirt collar turned up against his neck, wrapped in a silk stock. Plain black beaver cocked hat, big as a watermelon, dressed only with the Tricolour cockade, shadowed his eyes. Eyes, Lewrie noted, that were not young at all; very large, penetrating, studious and sober, and so reserved. Yet darting lazily, taking everything in. Lewrie reassessed his age upwards—maybe mid-twenties, he thought. The cavalry captain was, like all cavalry (English especially), hoorawing brutes, dangers to all, including themselves. But this fellow . . .

“M'sieur, permettez-moi . . .”
the cavalryman said in a gentler and much more polite tone of voice as he did the introductions.
“ . . .
ze
lieutenant colonel, Napoléone Buonaparte, chef du artillerie, à Général Dugommier, commandeur de l'Armée.
'Is
aides-de-camp,
ze
capitaines Marmot et Junot . . . m'sieurs, ici Capitaine Luray, marine royal, de roi brittanique, Georges troisième.”

“Colonel,” Lewrie nodded, laying a hand on his breast to salute with a slight bow.

“Capitaine Luray, enchanté,”
the little fellow smiled of a sudden, and offered his hand, reeling off a rapid, very fluid French.

“Ze colonel say please to forgive, 'e 'ave no
anglais, m'sieur,
” the cavalryman translated. “But 'e eez delight to mak' you' ac . . . acquaintance. 'E offer 'is congratulation . . .
votre gunnerie . . . votre courage magnifique.
You no strike
votre
flag, sink viz
les
canons
blaze?
Magnifique, treés magnifique!
”

He had no choice but to take the offered hand and shake it, face to face at last with enemy Frogs, not the tame Royalists in Toulon. It was a wrench, though, to be forced by gentlemanly convention to have to be pleasant to the fellow who'd just sunk his ship. That was a tad more than he thought should be expected of anybody.

The cavalryman rattled on, laying on meaningless gilt-and-be-shit compliments. Colonel Buonaparte dropped his hand at last and took two steps away, removing his hat and finding a space of open ground where he could be seen better by everyone on the beach. Possibly to make a better spectacle of himself, Lewrie thought, listening with half an ear. Lewrie knew preening when he saw it.

And he was a pretty picture. Without his hat, he could show off his long hair, so fine and straight. It hung Republican fashion down to his coat collars, ungathered in any queue, fell straight down along each side of his face, and was combed forward over what appeared to be a good, squarish brow, like oils Lewrie'd seen of princes and pages in ancient times. Almost girlish, he grinned slightly. His nose was long and acquiline, but narrow, with wide-ish nostrils over a short upper lip, a pouty, thin-lipped mouth. But a most determined chin. Narrow, high-jawed face, lean as a scholar . . .

“Hmm? Please convey to the Colonel Buonaparte that I cannot in good conscience take credit for the accuracy of our gunnery,
capitaine,
” Lewrie said, once he had a word in edgewise. “Our sea mortars were in the charge of a most experienced and talented Spanish officer, Comandante Don Luis de Esquevarre y Saltado y Perez, and his bombardiers. A most gallant man. He went down with the ship, unfortunately.”

Least I can do for the arrogant shit, Alan thought; let
someone
remember his deeds, now he's dead and gone.

“Ah,
m'sieur le colonel
is sadden to 'ear zis, Capitaine Luray. 'E 'ad wish 'e may 'ave meet ze
artilleriste avec
ze
grand courage.
Ze colonel, 'e alzo say, 'e 'eez 'ave ze 'ighes' respect
pour votre
generosity
à votre
late
ami. Encore,
'e e'spress 'is amazement
de votre
brave deeds.”

“I thank him kindly,” Lewrie smiled.

“Colonel Buonaparte, 'e say 'e eez know
les batteries de Général Carteau
sink ze
bateau,
ze
batterie le flotte,
las' mont', in ze Petit-Rade,
avant
'e arrive. An' now 'e 'ave ze grand distinction to do same.
An'
not only sink
une batterie le flotte
. . . but tak' 'er
officeurs
an' crew prisoner. Weech ze ozzer
chef du artillerie
do not,” the captain said, with a smirk again.

Damme, there it is, Lewrie sighed; knew they'd get around to a surrender, sooner or later. To this vauntin' little coxcomb? Then we'll be months in gaol, maybe a whole
year
before France gets beaten silly. Christ! Damned if I think I'm going to like
that!

“The colonel has been in charge of the batteries of La Seyne?” Lewrie asked, stalling for time, staving off the inevitable. And trying to think of something, anything, for a plan of escape. “Tell the colonel . . . the gracious Colonel Buonaparte, that my ship was the one that gave his gunners so much grief. By Balaguer?
Oui,
us.”

That saved them another precious minute, as the young Buonaparte looked almost wolfish that he'd at last sunk his greatest thorn in his side; his
bête-noire,
as he put it. He smiled a bit wider, sure he had done something praiseworthy. And Lewrie could surmise by then that he was a man who lived for praise and hon-ours. All the short ones did.

“Forgive me asking,
capitaine,
but . . .” Lewrie said, almost chum-mily by then. “I thought it was the mortars at Fort La Garde that sank us. The colonel only had the two light field pieces, and never hit us.”

After a long babble in frog, and some chuckles among Marmot and Junot, and a look on young Colonel Buonaparte's face like the cat that ate the canary, the cavalryman began to translate. The colonel crossed his arms over his chest, pouting chin-high in triumph. Posing!