Any Approaching Enemy: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars

by Jay Worrall

A grinding crash sounded as Louisa’s bow came harshly aboard the frigate, sending a shock through the ship that almost caused Charles to fall. The maindeck cannon exploded inward, unattended now by any crew. He heard the deep bark of the forecastle carronades a heartbeat after. He did not pause to observe their effect.

  “HUZZAH!” An insanely loud shout went up as Louisa ’s crew rushed over the bow and along the bowsprit onto the French deck; the clash of steel, screams, cries, and the bangs of pistols and muskets accompanied the seething mass of struggling men. Charles saw the marines stand back from the rail, fix their bayonets, and start across behind Sergeant Cooley, whose sword was drawn and held before him.

  “There you are,” Talmage said as Charles approached. Twenty young, fit foremast topmen clustered around him, armed with cutlasses and pikes. “As soon as the marines are across, we’ll go.”

  “Remember to look out for Mrs. Edgemont and Mrs. Bevan,” Charles said.

  “They all know about the women,” Talmage said. “I think they’re as anxious about them as you are.”

  Beechum arrived, slightly breathless, from the forecastle. “I’ll come with you sirs, if I may.”

  “Of course,” Charles said.

  “Remember, lads,” Talmage declared, drawing his sword, “straight along the deck and over the rail as fast as we can. No dawdling to kill Frenchies just for the fun of it.” He grinned wildly, his teeth showing white, and started forward.

  Charles followed, sliding out his own blade and feeling its weight surprisingly light in his hand. The men came next, Beechum bringing up the rear. They were at the forecastle, then the beak and over, dropping onto the French deck. All around was a wild tumult of struggling, cursing, brawling men hacking and stabbing with their weapons at the chaotic mass around them. Almost at once Charles was confronted by a young officer, his sword slashing down. Charles raised his own in time to block the strike, and steel clashed loudly against steel with a force that sent a shock through his shoulder. The man raised his weapon to strike again, then, with a shocked look, slipped toward the deck as Talmage yanked his blade back from the man’s belly. Frantic confusion followed as more men poured across, several slipping on fallen bodies and the blood-soaked deck. The odors of spent powder, sweat, fear, and death filled the air. Pistols banged, swords rang on steel, wild screams, grunts, cheers, and curses overwhelmed every other sensation.

  “This way,” Talmage shouted and threw himself against a wall of men, lunging and jabbing with his hanger. Charles focused on the urgency of getting to Penny and pressed forward, slashing desperately to break through the enemy in front. He barely dodged a boarding pike thrust viciously at his middle; it sliced along his ribs and caught momentarily in his coat. As the man pulled back to free his weapon, Charles swung his sword wildly at the face, opening a spurting gash from ear to shoulder. The French seaman fell backward and disappeared beneath him. Charles found himself pushed forward from behind, chest to chest with a Frenchman whose breath stank and whose eyes were wide with panic or bloodlust. With hardly room to move his arms, Charles heaved the man back a crack, pulled one of his pistols from his belt, cocked, and fired, the muzzle hard against his opponent’s abdomen. The mortally wounded man had no space to fall.

  From somewhere came two loud explosions that tore through the massed French with terrible effect. The wall of humanity before him wavered and, step by step, gave way. Charles found space to raise his sword and swung it in a wide arc before him.

  “Lunge, sir, don’t slash,” a voice close beside him said.

  “What?” Charles glanced to see Talmage.

  “Stick ’em, don’t hack ’em,” the lieutenant said, intense concentration on his face as he jabbed his blade forward. “Parry and lunge, it’s more efficient.”

  Charles lunged at a man with a thick black mustache over white teeth and an ax held high, stabbing the blade into his throat. The man toppled backward. Through the gap, Charles glimpsed the far rail of the frigate’s deck, no more than ten feet distant.

  “Here!” he yelled, desperate to get across. “To me! This way!”

  The men following pushed forward, by sheer weight forcing the thinning line of defenders back and apart. Charles heard another pair of piercing explosions behind him and turned in time to see a cloud of spent powder drifting from Louisa’s forecastle. He decided that Sykes must be directing the few men left on board in the reloading of the carronades to fire them into the frigate’s defenders.

  Charles had little time to admire Sykes’s initiative. He ran for the railing and looked over. Six feet below lay Pylades, tied up alongside, bow to stern, her foremast shrouds opposite him. Without hesitation, he mounted the rail cap, balanced himself, and jumped, landing with a harsh jolt against the cables. The impact knocked the sword from his hand and took the air out of him. He scrabbled frantically for purchase, to keep from sliding down over the side into the narrow line of sea between the two hulls. A foot found a ratline and then his fingers. He hung, secure for the moment, to catch his breath.

  Scarcely had he inhaled than he saw a man running toward him with a pike held out, intent on stabbing him with its iron point. Charles pivoted sideways toward the far edge of the shrouds and jumped, landing heavily on the deck. The Frenchman hesitated a fraction, then lunged wildly, swinging his weapon sideways. Charles stepped inside the arc of the sweep and took the blow on his ribs, pinning the shank against his side, then clutching it with his hands. As he wrestled for control, he glimpsed Beechum and Eliot climbing down the shrouds, then several of his crew leaping from the frigate’s rail to the deck. One, whom Charles recognized as the foretopman Baker, cleaved his cutlass down on the Frenchman’s skull with horrible effect.

  Charles threw the pike down and knelt to retrieve his sword while a bloodied Talmage and a half-dozen more men made their way across. Charles counted fourteen seamen, Beechum, Eliot, and Talmage, who had suffered a gash to the side of his forehead and had blood running over one eye and down his face.

  “Are you fit?” Charles asked.

  “A scratch,” Talmage replied, wiping an already saturated sleeve across the eye to clear his vision.

  Charles paused for a moment and bent from the waist with his hands on his knees to collect his last reserves. His breathing came in ragged gasps, and he became aware for the first time of a burning pain along his left side. As he straightened, his sword arm hung limp, almost too much used to raise the heavy blade. It seemed the fingers of his right hand could neither tighten around the grip to wield it nor open to let it drop. He dimly heard the noise of the battle still raging on the frigate as he looked aft along the brig’s deck. Clustered around the main hatchway, he saw a dozen or more French seamen with swords and axes. Beyond them he made out a smaller group near the wheel including two women, a child, a pair of French soldiers with muskets, and an English officer lying on his back on the deck. Irritated by the hurt along his side, Charles searched with his fingers along his wet and sticky waist until they bumped against the butt of a pistol. It was enough. He couldn’t remember what had happened to the other of the pair he had brought with him.

  “Let’s go,” he rasped to the men around him, and started toward the French at the hatch. He saw that they were standing on top of the grating that confined Pylades’s crew below. Charles launched himself toward the first person in his way, a middle-aged seaman with a kerchief around his head and an ax in his hands. Charles thrust at the man’s middle to force him to lower the ax handle for protection, then drove his sword deep into his chest, where it wedged firmly between the ribs and stuck fast. Charles heaved to withdraw the blade, succeeding only in wrenching the dying seaman’s body off the grating and partway across the deck. Disgusted with himself at losing his sword, he released his grip and looked for Penny.

  He found her immediately, standing in front of the wheel next to Molly and holding Claudette tightly in her arms. He saw Bevan next, lying on the deck a few yards away, his thigh heavily wrapped and two soldiers stan
ding over him with their muskets. His and Bevan’s eyes met, and despite Charles’s shake of his head, his friend reached out to grab the legs of the nearest soldier. Charles moved forward, scratching for his pistol. The first soldier struggled to free himself from Bevan’s grip, lowering his musket for balance. The second reversed his weapon so that its bayonet poised in the air, pointing downward. He moved to thrust it into the struggling Welshman.

  Before he could act, Charles saw Molly dart forward with a shrill scream, pulling the knife she had used to sharpen her pencils out from inside her sleeve. She stabbed her blade up into the soft underarm of the soldier moving to strike her husband. The other soldier wrenched one boot free from Bevan’s grasp and stumbled sideways, clutching tightly to his musket, one of his fingers within the guard for its trigger. The pan flashed, and a ball of gray-black smoke exploded from the barrel. Molly jerked backward as if she had been kicked by a horse and fell to the deck. She lay unmoving, her arms spread, her legs casually crossed, the hem of her dress around her white-stockinged calves.

  From twenty feet away, Charles cocked his pistol and raised it. The soldier with his still-smoking musket stared at him wide-eyed, resigned.

  Charles’s finger tightened on the trigger, but he couldn’t fire on the defenseless man. “Surrender, you son of a bitch,” he snarled. “Surrender or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

  “Rendez-vous, s’il vous plaît,” Penny said, moving forward and taking the heavy weapon from the soldier’s hands. “Merci, monsieur,” she said, then slid the thing over the rail, where it fell into the sea with a splash. Still holding Claudette, she returned and dropped to her knees beside Molly. She took one look at the wound over her companion’s heart and gave a small cry. Penny pushed the little girl’s face against her breast so that she would not see and held her tightly. After a moment she closed Molly’s eyes one at a time with her fingers, then straightened her skirt.

  Charles looked forward to see that the Frenchmen around the hatch had surrendered; his men were herding them toward the rail. He didn’t see Talmage anywhere, although he did hear the report of a pistol from somewhere forward. Someone else can deal with it, he thought. Pylades’s crew members were pouring up and across the deck, onto the frigate to participate in what, to Charles’s ears, sounded like the tail end of the struggle for control. He felt a weariness come over him. With a final effort, he crossed the deck to where Bevan lay and lowered himself to sit cross-legged beside him.

  “I’m sorry,” Charles said. “There was nothing I could do. I would have tried anything in my power to save her.”

  Bevan pushed himself to a sitting position, his injured leg held stiffly out in front. “It’s nothing to do with you, Charlie,” he choked. “She decided it herself. She must have known what the result could be.” He looked across at Molly’s form at rest, and added, “I wish to God she hadn’t.”

  Charles felt Penny kneel beside him. She set Claudette on the deck. There was worry on the little girl’s face, so he grinned and reached out his arm to wiggle his fingers. Claudette smiled uncertainly but clasped her sides to protect her middle. Charles stroked her hair instead.

  “Charlie, what hast thou done to thyself ?” Penny said, pulling back the left side of his coat.

  He looked down to see a ragged tear in his shirt, a large area soaked with blood that had run down as far as his knee. The entirety of his struggle to cross the French frigate’s deck and along the Pylades began to run together in his mind. He couldn’t remember when he had received the injury.

  “Sorry,” he said stupidly as she stripped off the coat, then began to undo the buttons of his shirt.

  “I am not pleased with thee,” she said through clenched teeth. “Thy warfare has taken my friend.”

  Talmage appeared from the direction of the hatchway, walking with some difficulty and still wiping at the blood seeping down the side of his face. Charles noted a second stain of red on Talmage’s shirt, partly hidden by his coat. He patted the boards beside him. “Sit,” he said. The lieutenant sank down, dropping his sword loudly on the deck.

  “Ouch!” Charles said as his wife’s fingers probed the gash along his ribs. Another seaman arrived from the frigate.

  “Lieutenant Winchester’s respects, sir,” he said, touching his knuckles to his forehead. “He asks if you require any assistance.”

  Charles opened his mouth, but Penny spoke first. “I require thee to bring me a pail of clear, fresh water,” she said. “Stephen Winchester may inquire later, when I have more time.”

  The messenger looked to Charles, who nodded and said, “Get the water, please.” As soon as the man turned away, she raised the hem of her dress and tore off a strip from one of her petticoats.

  “Hold this here,” she said, pressing the cloth against his side. She spoke tersely, tight-lipped and strained. Charles saw tears running down her cheeks. She turned to examine Talmage, now lying full-length on the deck. “Oh, dear God, no,” she exclaimed.

  “What?” Charles said, turning to look more carefully at his lieutenant. He saw that Talmage’s face and lips had gone a ghostly white, and a growing pool of red was spreading beneath him. “Jacob,” he said. “Jacob!”

  Talmage’s eyes flickered open. His mouth moved as if to speak, but only a trickle of red liquid bubbled out. The eyes rolled up in their sockets and went dim.

  The water arrived, followed closely by Pylades’s surgeon with his case of unguents and dressings. “Please, help this man,” Penny pleaded. She was holding Talmage’s hand, rubbing furiously at his wrist.

  The surgeon knelt down to examine Talmage. After the briefest look, he straightened. “He’s gone, missus. I couldn’t have helped him anyway. He’s been shot through the lung.”

  She lay Talmage’s hand gently on the deck. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. In a firmer voice to the surgeon, she said, “Please, wilt thou attend to my husband.”

  A heavy bandage was being wound around Charles’s ribs when Winchester came across himself. He looked at Molly and Talmage, and the two men sitting on the deck, then removed his hat out of respect. His own uniform coat and breeches were flecked with drying blood, but he had no obvious injury.

  “The frigate is carried?” Charles asked.

  “The last surrendered a quarter of an hour ago. We’ve just finished disarming them.”

  “The butcher’s bill?”

  “Don’t know yet. Not too bad, I think. There are a lot of cuts and scrapes; Lincoln and his mate are looking after them now. How are things here?”

  “Things here? How are things here?” Penny interrupted, her voice rising. She set Claudette on the deck next to Charles and stared ashen-faced at the hapless Winchester.

  “Things here are terrible,” she said, rising to her feet and advancing on him. “Terrible, terrible, bloody, bloody, horrible. Thou, Stephen Winchester, are whole. Molly has died, her life stolen away. Poor Jacob Talmage has passed, drowned in his own blood. Those men”—she pointed toward the bodies of some Frenchmen by the hatchway—“those men are dead or soon to die.”

  Winchester took a step backward. Penny followed him closely, enraged, her voice risen to a scream. “Men speak of a butcher’s bill as if it were sheep flesh. By this thou means the human beings killed and grievously injured. But even that is not the true bill. Each of them is a son and a brother, a father, a husband. They are gone. The many who nurtured and loved them remain. They are the ones who must pay thy precious butcher’s bill for all these dead, for this war, for all wars.”

  Winchester’s backside bumped against the brig’s wheel, and he could retreat no farther. “I am most sincerely sorry if I sounded callous or uncaring,” he said. “I assure you that I did not mean to be. I beg your forgiveness.”

  Penny’s bloodstained hands covered her face, and her shoulders heaved.

  Charles pushed himself painfully to his feet. Holding the child by her hand, he moved to stand behind his wife and put his arm around her shoulders. “Penny,�
�� he said.

  “Don’t thou touch me,” she choked. “I have agreed to abide thy profession. Here, see the fruits of it. In truth, thou hast a very sad career.” She turned away from him, picked up Claudette, who had started crying, and walked to the taffrail. There she sank to the deck with the child in her arms and sobbed.

  Charles followed and carefully lowered himself beside her but did not speak. Penny turned her face against his shoulder, her tears running down his arm. “Molly was so brave. She tried too hard to become something better than fate made her. No person should have to struggle that hard in all their life. Jacob Talmage once confided to me that all he wanted was to please thee, which he could never do. Now both are gone.”

  Charles could not hold her because she was on his left side. The pain around his ribs had grown into a fiery ball as severe as any he had ever experienced. The slightest movement brought stabs of almost unendurable agony. Instead, he contented himself with patting her knee with his right hand and stroking Claudette’s back. After a time, when Penny had calmed, he said, “You should speak with Daniel.”

  “Yes,” Penny said, rubbing her palm across her eyes, “he will be heartbroken.” She rose, picking up the child. “Thou should come also.”

  “I can’t,” Charles said. “I don’t believe I can stand.”

  She called two crewmen, who lifted Charles under his arms until he came to his feet. Even so, the movement left him breathless. From an upright position, he saw that Pylades’s decks had been cleared of the dead and wounded. Bevan, he learned, had been taken below, the surviving French returned to their frigate under guard. Molly, Talmage, and the other English dead had been carried below to be sewn into hammocks with round shot at their feet. Charles’s sword was found, wiped clean, and returned to him.

  “I will see thee back to thy cabin and into thy bed,” Penny said.

  Penny, Claudette, and Charles walked to the side, where he stared at the rail of the French frigate, six feet above. A ladder had been rigged for the crew to pass back and forth, but he knew that he could not climb it. Penny summoned a seaman, who went across to arrange for assistance. Soon a handful of men rove one whip to hoist them on board the ship and then another to get him over to Louisa’s decks. Charles saw topmen aloft working to disentangle his ship’s bowsprit from the Frenchman’s mizzen rigging. Neither ship looked to be so badly damaged that she would be unable to make sail before long.