Robbie Taggart

by Michael Phillips

  “Cargill!” called Murdock.

  “What . . . already?” exclaimed Robbie.

  “Ye dozed right through Glamis, sir.”

  In truth Robbie had not dozed at all, but he had no idea his thoughts had been so deep as to cause him to miss an entire station.

  “Next’ll be Perth,” the conductor continued. “An’ afore ye know it ye’ll be in Glasgow an’ able t’ meet up wi’ yer ship.”

  “Yes, it won’t be long,” Robbie replied, with less enthusiasm than he knew he should be feeling.

  “I’m truly envyin’ ye.”

  “I’ll be sure to think of you, Murdock, when I’m out on the high seas sucking in a deep draught of the salt air from the warm breeze.”

  “Ye’re a lucky man indeed.” Murdock sighed, then ambled on down the aisle, his shoulders drooping a bit, and his gray uniform appearing not so trim on his aging frame as it had before.

  Robbie watched him go, wishing he had the heart to cheer him. But he could hardly lift another man’s spirits when his own were so heavy they could sink all the way to Davy Jones’s Locker. He might have been able to nurse his wounded heart with the consolation of his preserved freedom if only he could be certain it was freedom that would actually meet him at his destination.

  But he was not as sure as Murdock that the Queen’s Navy could provide adventure enough to restore the heart of one Lieutenant Robbie Taggart.

  2

  Out of Kilter

  Robbie turned down the lamp and rubbed his weary eyes.

  He could not stand to look at one more chart. He had been at it some six hours already, plotting imaginary courses for imaginary ships in imaginary battles. Unfortunately, his orders were not imaginary in the least.

  Frustrated, forgetting the precariously perched open bottle of ink, he slammed his hand down on the oversized pages before him.

  The next instant he lunged at the bottle, but not before a large black smear had spread over his day’s labor. Almost the same moment came a brisk rap at the door. Ignoring the unknown caller, Robbie grabbed for a cloth in a frantic attempt to salvage his work.

  “Just a minute!” he snapped, more distracted than angry.

  The door opened, but Robbie did not immediately glance up.

  “Is this how you greet a superior officer, Mister Taggart?” barked out a voice behind him. It was the last voice Robbie wanted to hear.

  He quickly dropped the cloth and jerked around, the color fading from his face. Not one to be easily intimidated, Robbie nevertheless had but to hear that voice to know that trouble had come calling on him. In a neutral environment nothing about the man would have caused him the least anxiety. But on this particular assignment, the man behind that dreaded voice held all the cards. He was the power, and he knew how to exercise it to dominate others. In addition, he seemed to enjoy making his subordinates squirm.

  Commander Anton Barclay was not a large man. But a soldier or sailor knows that a man’s power does not always lie solely in his size. What he lacked in stature—he was known behind his back as “wee Bonaparte”—he more than made up for with his irascible ill-temper. Had a war been on, Barclay would have been the kind of leader whose crew would unquestioningly follow him to certain death. Their actions, however, would not arise out of loyalty or love toward the man, but rather from raw fear. Civilians wondered at this unlikely man’s effect on those under him. And every time Robbie himself cringed under the commander’s icy stare, he could not help marveling at the weakness of his own knees.

  Through the years Barclay had wielded his power with exacting skill, using the privileges of his rank to his best advantage. He was highly thought of at the Admiralty offices, had risen steadily, had built around him a loyal and sometimes ruthless band of attendant henchmen, and was thus in a position to rule the little world of his command with an iron fist. Though flogging had been suspended a few years earlier, Barclay was among a few who continued the practice with successful, albeit brutal, results. Corporal discipline, however, was but the least of his methods used to insure that his will was carried out.

  Robbie had already fallen foul of the “wee Bonaparte” more times than he wished to remember, and with an inward sigh of impending doom, he snapped his frame to a taut attention, thrusting his ink-smeared hand to his forehead in salute.

  “I had no idea it was you, sir—”

  “It is not your concern to have ideas, Mr. Taggart!” bellowed the commander. “Your only concern is to deport yourself as an officer and a gentleman at all times, and no matter with whom—even your lowborn associates. And especially to show to me the respect of my position! Is that clear? You are a representative of the Queen, God bless her! But perhaps you are not equal to the task.”

  “I will try to be, sir. I think I am equal to it.”

  “Ha!” barked Barclay. “Then you are an egotistical buffoon, for there are few indeed who will ever be equal to such a task!”

  Robbie stood erectly at attention. Sometimes he wondered if Barclay purposefully baited him, hoping he would lose control. Being assaulted would no doubt be a small price for him to pay in exchange for being able to bring charges of mutiny against Robbie. Deliberately he tried to relax the tension building up in him; he would not give him the satisfaction!

  “Now,” continued the commander, unperturbed, “perhaps you can explain to me why this is the second night in a row you have burned the Queen’s oil late into the night.”

  “I was working on these charts, sir.” Robbie gestured toward the table.

  “You are given sufficient time during daylight hours to complete this work,” replied Barclay. “But then I forgot—you have been tramping all over the countryside lately.”

  “That was some time ago, sir.” Even as he said the words, Robbie thought to himself that in a sense the accusation was valid. He had been back from his visit to Aviemere for over a month and had still not managed to catch up on his workload.

  “Yes, before you came under my command,” said Barclay in a tone laden with meaning. “You were with Simonson before, were you not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A fine officer . . .” added Barclay, allowing his sentence to remain intentionally unfinished. He was baiting Robbie again, but Robbie did not see his purpose in time.

  “Yes, sir,” Robbie agreed, this time with more enthusiasm in his voice. He had not known a fairer or more honorable man than his previous commander.

  “A weak-kneed, dottering old man!” Barclay retorted. “And he spoiled you, Taggart! Made you think you were somebody. Gave you a promotion you didn’t deserve. Do you really think you’re cut out of officer’s cloth? He gave you too much, Taggart—too much latitude. And now I have to work doubly hard to undo that fool’s work!”

  “He was a man I respected,” said Robbie, trying to remain calm, but the defiance in his tone unmistakable. For perhaps the first time he was beyond caring what Barclay did to him; he couldn’t listen to Captain Simonson being degraded without speaking up.

  Apparently choosing to ignore Robbie’s tone, Barclay continued in a different vein. “Well, he’s dead now. Not around to hold your hand any longer, as is the brother of Dunsleve—that fool of a duke who purchased your commission.”

  “I believe I have succeeded on my own merit, sir.”

  “No doubt, no doubt!” replied Barclay with something like a smile. “Of course you would think so! By burning lamps into the night, I presume.”

  “By performing my assigned duties well, and with honor,” returned Robbie.

  “You enjoy your work, then . . .”

  Barclay drew out the words, then flicked a hand at the charts. “And you obviously must prefer the late hours. And I would be the last one to stand in the way of such diligence. Therefore, I want you to re-copy these charts and then make similar diagrams outlining each of the major naval battles of the eighteenth century, concluding with Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar. Have them in my office by 7:00 a.m.”

 
“But, sir, it’s past 10:00 now.”

  “Is it?”

  “I have duty at 7:00, sir.”

  “I am well aware of that, Mr. Taggart. I have my own duties as well, one of which is to make men of my officers.”

  With the words, Barclay made an abrupt about-face and moved briskly to the door, where he paused and turned once more toward Robbie. “I hope you are not under the misconception, Taggart, that you are going to succeed further in Her Majesty’s Navy as easily as you have risen to your present rank—though I can hardly make myself say the word, such a mockery is your commission of things once held in such regard in this empire. Nevertheless, you are now under my command, and you will not find me as you found Simonson. You are going to get nowhere, Taggart. Do you understand me? But you are going to work harder than any mother’s son ever did to get there!”

  Barclay’s final expression emphasized the triumph in his voice. When the door slammed shut behind him, it was some moments before Robbie was able to relax his tense frame.

  For several minutes longer he just stood, staring at the door, seething with mingled anger and frustration. In his many years of roving he had always been able to get along with anyone. But in his last four years, which represented the eternity of his navy life, he had run headlong into a system which discouraged Robbie’s kind of carefree good nature. He would have been better off not to have accepted the stupid commission. But it was too late for that now! He had endured the snubbing of the majority of his gentry comrades ever since. He had been able to take most of it, even laugh it off. But this Commander Anton Barclay was too much!

  Perhaps it was true that he had been spoiled by the fair-minded Simonson. He had taken a liking to Robbie, had seen his potential, and decided to encourage him. And it was a well-known fact—one he could not live down—that he had received his commission as a gift from the Duke of Dunsleve after saving the lord’s life. One might have thought that a man respected by his commander and of a bent toward heroism might be well thought of. But such was not the case among the higher ranks of the Queen’s Service. That was a realm of the gentry, and promotion was difficult enough in a peacetime navy top-heavy with aging brass and with few ships to go around. Robbie had quickly learned that if you were a lowly commoner who by some wild fluke chanced to cross the impenetrable barrier between seamen and midshipmen, further promotion was next to impossible. His advancement from midshipman to lieutenant had come quickly, barely after his first year. Simonson had been instrumental in that. But after three years he had not risen once, even within the grades of lieutenancy. He had heard that Simonson had taken a good deal of abuse for pushing through the promotion, and might have even hurt his own career in doing so.

  That was the Navy, thought Robbie bitterly; the gentry must protect their dominion at all costs. About the only good thing to come out of those years was meeting Jamie. It was no doubt best for her to marry Graystone; what would he have had to offer her anyway?

  Robbie sighed, then turned his attention back to the charts, suddenly feeling very tired.

  As he picked up a pen, he realized that, despite the fact that he wanted nothing more than to command his own ship, the tardiness of a promotion was something he could deal with, if only that lack was compensated with some action. But he had seen actual sea duty only twice in the last four years. He might as well be working for some accounting firm. Though as he reflected on those two stints at sea, he wondered all over again if perhaps having to wait even ten years before being assigned permanently to a ship might be worth it. For life at sea, wearing the proud blue of the Royal Navy, could be rich!

  Once he had been sent to Latin America with a detail of financiers to protect them while they attempted to collect debts from some local bankers and plantation owners. The excursion had proved routine in every way and totally uneventful, for the Latins had been at the time unwilling to cause any trouble before the might of the British Empire.

  The second assignment, however, had been more like what Robbie had expected from the navy. He had been consigned to eight months duty on the Persian Gulf on slave patrol. Even forty-six years after slavery had been officially abolished throughout the British dominions in 1833, it still flourished in many parts of the world, principally Arabia and Asia. Robbie had never felt more vital and useful in his life, especially on that day when he had been in temporary command of the gunboat on patrol near Ras Tanura.

  He spotted the trawler just before dawn. The look of it was innocent enough—a fisher out for his morning catch. But when the little boat made an abrupt turn to starboard, an action obviously triggered by the untimely sight of the gunboat, Robbie knew something was up. He instantly made chase. At that moment, with his engines ordered full steam ahead, he realized how far from innocent the trawler actually was. For it not only proved to be equipped with powerful steam engines hidden beneath the guise of a poor old scow, but it also had aboard two 13 cm. bore cannons, one astern and one port. They clearly intended to protect their “cargo” at all costs.

  But Robbie had other ideas. British gunboats had, since the Crimean War, been feared throughout the world. The term “gunboat diplomacy” had been coined for just the kind of skirmish in which Robbie was about to engage the British crown, and his intention was to live up to the image.

  The sea spray in his face had been exhilarating; now he tingled just with the memory of it. The speed of the gunboat could only be rivaled by the grandeur of a clipper under full sail in a strong nor’easter. But a clipper could not make such a pace in a dead calm.

  When he began to close the gap between the two boats, the slaver first showed its guns. The first blast from the stern cannon went wide and Robbie wasted no time in returning fire. He shattered its jib-boom but caused no fatal damage. A volly of shots ensued lasting five minutes, until Robbie, having maneuvered his vessel to the starboard side of the slaver to avoid the port cannon, inflicted the final crippling shot. With a hole the diameter of a small birch in its starboard hull, the trawler was quick to raise the white flag.

  Robbie overtook the slaver and boarded her with half his crew. The four wretched slave traders were unceremoniously hauled aboard the gunboat. It fell to Robbie to yank open the fore hatch where he discovered the most miserable sight he had ever seen. There in the hulls, huddled in a single mass, up to their waists in water from the sinking vessel, were eight human forms, all of tender age. The foul stench nearly sent Robbie reeling off his feet, and he had to step down into the filth to lift the creatures out, for they had not the strength to do so on their own. But when he held the youngest, a child of no more than five, in his arms, it was then he realized that he was performing a service that truly counted in this life. At that moment he felt proud of who he was, of his gallant blue uniform, and of the Crown that had enabled him to free these poor, half-starved creatures.

  But since that time he had been landlocked, a subtle punishment he felt more and more every day, for the crime of his own low birth. He had freed those children who would have been slaves, and yet was he not himself locked into an even more insidious form of slavery in the name of the class system that had held down for centuries those in Britain not fortunate enough to be born into the aristocracy?

  All of that was changing, though too slowly to do Robbie much good. Cardwell had tried, but the House of Lords had kept his military reforms at bay. And the Queen’s Royal Warrant had helped considerably. Yet class distinctions still permeated everything, whether spoken of directly or not. And rather than causing him to despise his low birth, Robbie had come instead to despise the system that held a man’s breeding against him. It was hypocritical, he thought, to make such an effort to free enslaved peoples throughout the world, when at home a slavery of class existed under everyone’s noses, perpetuated by the rich and powerful.

  Robbie had always judged men by different standards, and inside he knew he could hold his own against any lord, or son of a lord, in the Royal Service—even Barclay. He could take his stand alongs
ide any man, either in the power of his fists or the strength of his mind. That’s what mattered. That’s what made a man a man, not money or breeding or fancy title. A man was a man for all that; yet it seemed as if the poet’s powerful words were never so ignored as in his own homeland. Maybe that’s why Scotland still resented England even after more than a century and a half of being politically united—because the southern giant looked down on her northern neighbor just as those in power looked down on men like Robbie.

  After so many years of battling such attitudes, Robbie had to admit that a certain bitterness had begun to encase his heart. That day on the slaver, holding that young boy in his arms, had been a long time ago. Since then the grand uniform had faded, if not in reality, then certainly in spirit. The Crown had also tarnished a bit. And Robbie, too, was becoming a different man.

  3

  Final Insult

  The days and weeks passed into months, and winter gradually descended upon the London barracks where Robbie was housed with his unit. While the passage of time is said to heal all wounds, and Robbie’s heart had indeed managed to close over the scar that had resulted from his loss of Jamie, his dissatisfaction with his present life only deepened as winter drew on.

  Barclay’s innate ill-temper seemed particularly bent on Robbie. It was hard to tell why, and Robbie tried not to analyze it too deeply; thinking about it only made him angry. And in the Navy, to harbor anger toward a superior officer was a sure road to trouble. But Barclay had given him every low and dirty duty that could possibly be found, most of which even seamen were above doing. No other officer under Barclay’s command had to endure what Robbie did. What was it about him that so annoyed the commander? No doubt the man would say he had an independent spirit that had to be broken.