Britannia’s Son (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 4)

by Andrew Wareham

  “They will die, will they not?”

  “Almost for sure, not one in a thousand survives a wound that opens the belly and pierces the gut. It is a cruel wound, painful and slow – but with pocket pistols there was no choice.”

  “I did not know you had them, Frederick.”

  “I never move without them, this is the first time I have ever needed them.”

  “It was as well, I suspect – why was there no choice?”

  “They are not very powerful, and with their short barrels are very inaccurate. I had to hit, dared not miss either – so I could not aim for leg or arm, had to take the body as target. Their muzzle-velocity, the speed of the bullet, my dear, is low, so I could not risk hitting ribs which might deflect the shot. A man with a broken rib may fall down, but he is likely to get up again and be very angry. The belly is soft flesh, and a wound there always finishes a fight. So, belly it had to be. I did not especially like it, but I did not choose to pick up a knife and become an armed robber.”

  “They were very poor, dressed in rags.”

  “Tens of thousands in this country of ours are very poor – most try to work, few steal, fewer still use violence. They are ragged – the army and navy cry out for men and they will clothe them. They have no money – sign on as a merchant seaman – there are always ships in the Pool of London – jump ship in Canada or the States, rich lands of opportunity. You would say they are criminal because they are poor? It is just as likely that they are poor because they are criminal, because they will not make any effort to enrich themselves. I do not understand, my love, but I know that my sailors, my lower-deck men, utterly hate thieves, have no sympathy, and no mercy for them, will throw them over the side if they catch them in the act – and few are poorer than sailors!”

  She was silent a while, distastefully sipping her coffee, a brew she took because it was his favourite and it would be extravagance to call for both coffee and tea.

  “Will you drink a drop of brandy, my dear – even a sip or two would help you to regain your calm, let you sleep more easily.”

  “I can think of something much better than brandy for making us both sleep,” she replied, then flushed scarlet, unable to imagine how she had come to say such a thing.

  He laughed aloud, agreed on the instant, stood and held out a hand. “Then let us put your suggestion into immediate effect, my love, and I am so pleased that you know you can make such a suggestion – do not have this silly idea that so many seem to have, that the bed is for men alone.”

  She came to him instantly, not at all sure that he was in the right – the church did not seem to think so – but perhaps the church could sometimes be, not wrong, but incorrect in a particular interpretation, say. Equally, of course, it might be argued that whatever happened in a bedroom was the business of nobody else at all, was simply a matter for husband and wife to arrange between them. She smiled as she realised just how self-serving her morality could be, and wasted no time at all in her dressing room.

  At Long Common, Bosomtwi was bustling about, a grin from ear to ear, his son lusty and vigorous at his mother’s breast, all well in his world for the first time since his father had become so foolishly ambitious.

  “His name Frederick, sir, isn’t it, and Marc and Jean say theirs’ going to be Hercules and Charybdis when they born next month.”

  “And what of you, Ablett?”

  “Mary’s due in May, sir – a girl, I hope, to be called Elizabeth, of course!”

  “What of Sid, the chef?”

  “Oh, him – he’s just a cook, sir – he won’t take a wife.”

  Quiet weeks leading up to the Christmas festival, to be spent in Long Common this year – little happening, Frederick and Elizabeth falling into close companionship, each sufficient for the other in the absence of society, a piano arriving to make the house liveable.

  Early in December Ablett appeared officially in front of Frederick, a dated copy of the Times in hand, turned to the London news, little more than a society gossip column.

  “Would you listen to this, sir – I don’t expect you saw it, not being about the war, sir. ‘The need for a constabulary, a police force, grows. Two villains, armed with knives, were yestereve taken up for dead from the streets near our theatres, having unwisely tried to prey on a Hero and his Lady, he said to have been a Naval Captain on furlough whilst recovering from injuries inflicted by a Barbarian and Treacherous Foe. The Authorities, so-called, a pack of elderly dotards in Constables’ Guise, again have left our streets unprotected, the Innocent victims to Packs of Ruffians, except where, fortunately, they are able to exact their own Retribution’.”

  Ablett grinned, in part proud of the way his reading had improved in the past year.

  “No action, then – I had half expected a visit from a Runner, I will confess.”

  “It wasn’t the best idea, sir, to tell everybody your name!”

  Frederick accepted the rebuke meekly, aware that he had been rather careless that evening.

  Iain was in their company every day as they moved between the three related houses, riding the few miles in the bitter cold of another harsh winter and glad the distance was no greater. An easterly wind set in with heavy snow, isolating many of the villages, choking the lanes and all except the busier roads.

  “God help sailors on blockade, my love,” Frederick commented, toasting before a great fire.

  “And the poor, the ragged and the homeless, Frederick!”

  “That describes most sailors, especially in this weather. For the rest – God makes the storms, does he not?”

  They left the topic, simple faith and equally simple unbelief having little to say to each other – there were many other more comfortable and useful things to talk about.

  “The war, Frederick, will it ever end?”

  “No – not until there is a final victory – England and France have been fighting since the Battle of Hastings, I am told, more years at war than in peace since then, and never a decision. Nor will there be, for it seems that England cannot win on land and France cannot win at sea – so it is stalemate, except that England, having the sea, will always have colonies, and France will not, or very few. So, the French wish to expand, and the English wish to prevent them.”

  “And that will last for all eternity, you suppose?”

  “Unless successful alliances can be formed, yes, and every alliance has failed so far.”

  She nodded – it made sense.

  “More alliances are in the making all the time, of course, my dear, and both sides are determined to destroy those of the other. Britain is richer, France has the army – gold against gunpowder, on land!”

  “The Northern Alliance is in the making again, the newssheets tell us.”

  “Danes, Swedes and Russians, each with a respectable fleet; if they come together under a unified command, add themselves to the French and Spanish, and the remnants of the Dutch, and, at the same time, the Turk comes out to play in the Mediterranean, then England will be hard pressed to survive. So it becomes necessary to find a pretext to thump ‘em in detail, destroy them one by one and, in passing, take their colonies, because they cannot survive without a fleet.”

  “We have no colonies in Europe – so we do not much care what happens there, Frederick.”

  “Europe is nothing to us – while we can bring in wheat from Canada, the States and India we do not need Europe. Wool from the Cape, and, we are told, from Botany Bay eventually. Gold from West Africa, tea and silks and rice and spices and sugar from the East and West Indies, coffee and tin and silver from wherever. The colonies mean life to England, while we have a Navy. So we must strangle the French and Dutch colonies, leave them to buy from us or do without – thus and thus only we have strength, all coming from the sea.”

  She nodded gravely, absorbing his words, the dogma of the Navy, of her new life.

  “On land, what does England do?”

  “It does not matter, too much – we adapt to circum
stances. Let Russia, Prussia, Austria, France and Spain squabble over Western Europe. Let Russia and Austria fight over the corpse of the Ottoman Empire and divided Poland. As one or another becomes weaker, we supply that one with gold and arms, let him battle the longer, make the eventual victory more expensive. Whilst the victories are Pyrrhic, it matters not to us who the winner is. If Russia loses an army to conquer Poland in this decade, then Austria will lose an army to carve out her share in the next, and neither army will be sent against us.”

  This degree of cynicism was too much for her – it was an outrage.

  “Should not we bear arms for the right, Frederick?”

  “I would always wish to, my dear, if only I could discover who or what was right.”

  She waited suspiciously, mistrusting the mild reasonableness of his reply, knowing he would do his best now to say something utterly outrageous.

  “Were the French people right to rise against tyranny in their Revolution?”

  “Yes – without doubt!”

  “I agree – that means that they were right to cut the heads off of tens of thousands of people who supported, or might be expected to support, the king?”

  “No, Frederick, and, before you ask, they were not right to invade the Italian states and the Lowlands and the Swiss and Germans, or to attempt to invade Ireland. By the same token, husband, are we right to invade India?”

  “I am a sailor, my love – I obey orders, wave the flag and cry ‘Huzzay’ and sink my admiral’s enemies. I do not choose who to fight – that I leave to the politicians – noble, Christian souls all, who always do what is right!”

  As a doctrine it had the merit of simplicity and the virtue of honesty, but it lacked the comfort of self-delusion.

  “You are a Freethinker, husband!”

  “I confess, ma’am, I am, though I prefer to say simply that I have come to think a little over the last few years as I have read more.”

  “Unguided reading, sir, can lead man into sin!”

  “Quite right, a very bad habit, reading and thinking for oneself. It deprives priests of a living – it is, after all, their job to tell us what we may or may not think, to act as police of the mind.”

  “Not all priests are bullies, sir – many wish only to serve. It is possible to be a priest and a good man, sir, even in your Church of England!”

  “I understand our new young man in Bredy to be of the best character, my dear. A pity he has not a little more of intelligence, but one cannot ask for everything!”

  “He is an enthusiast, I am told, sir, a member of some ‘Movement’, or some such thing. He believes in the Word and in the power of prayer, which is a very good thing, but is just a little high for my liking.”

  “Unwashed, my dear? That is very bad!”

  “No, sir! Not in that sense, as I suspect you may be aware! Robes and incense and decorated altar cloths and a general faint taint of the Romish Jezebel. He has chosen not to wed.”

  Frederick became immediately serious – anything that smacked of Rome carried an undertone of treason, of Irish rebellion and Jacobite invasion.

  “I will have a quiet chat with him, my lady fair, see if I cannot dissuade him from any extremes.”

  Later, relaxed in her bed in the firelit room, quiet and warm in his arms, she cast her mind back to the attack in the streets of London.

  “Frederick, the robbers you killed – could you not have frightened them away?”

  “The pistols made a loud bang, the noise might have scared them.”

  “It was too late then!”

  “It was too late when they threatened you. They were not going to live after that.”

  “Papa said you were a fierce man, and that your hands were red with blood. He was right, but he did not understand, he thought you took a pleasure in killing.”

  He shook his head, glanced at his hands as if to reassure himself.

  “Not that, very few do – I have only met one, a man who called himself Smith, coxswain to my captain in Athene. He used knives, the men said it was because he liked the feeling of being close, touching the man he killed. He was brave, too, when we found him on the deck of the Hercule his body bore four sword wounds, each from a different blade, according to those who had seen him, any of them reason to fall back. Of course, he knew his captain was dead, probably felt obliged to follow him.”

  “But… that is barbarian!”

  “It is war.”

  “So, that kind Bosomtwi and Ablett, so polite and helpful and caring, they would immolate themselves like berserk Vikings if you fell?”

  “Quite possibly – but only if they had scragged the man who killed me first. They would not leave that duty undone.”

  The concept of revenge did not make the proposition any easier to bear, but she felt that admonitions to turn the other cheek might be wasted.

  “It is truly primitive, Frederick!”

  “In part, yes – but, we do rely on each other, especially at sea. A crew must work together, or drown together – we need to trust our mates absolutely – we cannot check that they have done their work properly, we assume it is so, and so we need each other. And so we avenge each other, we must. As for a captain and his followers – Ablett and Bosomtwi will live here till the day they die, or close by on their own lands if they save for them, but they will always have a claim on me, as will Sid and Marc and Jean. In return, they will die before I do, if they can – although, not Sid, perhaps, he is only a cook - it is part of the bargain, it is almost feudal, you might say.”

  “It is a hard way of life.”

  “It is, and while there is war I must remain in it, I believe – but when the war ends I shall go to half-pay willingly. I have a duty, for the Navy has been good to me, but also I have self-interest, for the Navy has been good for me! My service at sea has brought me to the notice of the politicians and the newssheets – hence the Colonelcy of Marines and the baronetcy. At the end of the war, a known figure, what then? Lord Lieutenant of the County? A position on the Navy Board or Ordnance or on one of a hundred other places that actually need men who can do some work? And then, Baron Harris of Boorley Green and our children with assured places in this England of ours!”

  “When we have those children, husband.”

  “They will come – especially if we devote our best endeavours to achieving them!”

  Later again she returned to the subject of the Navy, relaxed but not quite ready for sleep.

  “You like the Navy, Frederick, but you are not a Nelson, the Navy the whole of your life, above and beyond everything else.”

  “No – I have never met Nelson, but I am told he is a wonderful man, but… too much inclined to enthusiasm for my taste! His victories speak for themselves. None could deny his leadership. His captains love him. And Nelson’s Bridge! To take two Spaniards, one after the other – who else could have done that? Yet, even so, he is not quite the thing, my dear… not what one expects of an English gentleman!”

  “Perhaps that is why he is the only one of his sort, my love. Do you hope to serve with him?”

  “No – though I have no doubt that if I met him I would fall under his spell, yet I would have to be captain of a clumsy great 74, every minute under his flag-captain’s eye, part of a fleet – the very sailing I love least. As well, there is little chance of glory and none of prize-money in such service. No, it is a frigate for me, if possibly I can get another.”

  “At most twelve months before you must go to sea again, if you can.”

  “After harvest, if possible. I must see whether this arm will use a sword again – I suspect it will, but I must exercise it. A letter to Hartley, I believe – he must find me a fencing master.”

  A young man, a Mr Chalfont, somewhat threadbare, lean, certainly not over-fed, was waiting at Abbey when they returned in the New Year. Hartley introduced him with some slight trepidation, felt that he might have been improper in offering the position to a relative.

  “Mr Chalfont is
my wife’s elder brother, sir, was a lieutenant in the Dorsets and is an accomplished swordsman.”

  “To my cost, Sir Frederick! I was bidden to send my papers in, sir, serving in Ireland in the late insurrection. I was challenged by a civilian of sufficient rank to meet me, my own age but no more than a silly boy seeking excitement. I killed him, and his brother the next week when he sought me out. My colonel felt this to be excessive, and was under some considerable pressure.”

  “I see I must not provoke you, Mr Chalfont! It is always good to have people we know, of good family, here, sir. I would wish you to stay some months, if that is possible, sir, while we establish whether I shall be able to bear arms again.”

  Chalfont murmured his gratitude, raised an eyebrow at terms of half a guinea a day and his keep, a level of generosity he had not expected.

  “Mrs Hartley has begged me to stay with her, sir.”

  “Excellent – we will make an arrangement with her, of course. When shall we make a start? Will tomorrow suit you?”

  Chalfont gave grudging approval to Frederick’s working hanger – it was not an elegant, gentlemanly accoutrement, but it was certainly an effective weapon.

  “A butcher’s tool, Sir Frederick – may I?” Chalfont took the blade, weighed it in his hand, made a couple of passes with it, a sweeping flourish, handed it back. “Well balanced and of a good length for your height, sir. Most untutored swordsmen choose a blade too long for their arms, as if the possession of a large weapon will compensate for lack of skill in its use.”

  “I’ve heard of that before somewhere, Mr Chalfont,” came the innocent reply.

  “I’m sorry, sir – I forgot you were a sailor!”

  “Touché?”

  Chalfont managed a smile, an unaccustomed exercise.

  “Do you wish to learn the classical fence, sir, or become a working sword user again?”

  “Working, Mr Chalfont! Boarding is the only time I shall use a sword – watch right, left and ahead simultaneously, parry two and stick an unwary third, recover, hoping someone else has chopped the first two, and go in to number four. Hustle, bustle, cut and recover, stamp on a seaman’s bare toes and belt the hilt into his nose as he bends over, stick your thumb in his mate’s eye and slash at face height to break up a group of matelots. Not elegant – dead in seconds in a duel, but it works in, what does Shakespeare call it, the ‘hurly-burly’. Good word for a boarding. Bedlam with the loonies unchained.”