The King's Coat

by Dewey Lambdin

  Boggs and Leonard made a project of inspecting the galley and rations on the chance the native cook’s dirty habits might be to blame, but could find nothing they could fault in cleanliness.

  By dawn Lady Cantner’s maid dropped in a swoon and cried in terror as she realized she was afflicted. Everyone began to walk the decks cutty-eyed, wary of being too close to another person, and one could smell a miasma of sweaty fear amid the odors of the sickness.

  They threw the island animals overboard on the suspicion that they might have carried the fever aboard, along with their coops and pens, and the manger was hosed out, and scrubbed with vinegar or wine.

  The wind veered dead foul, forcing them to face a long board to the suth’rd, which would take them closer to the French island of Martinique. Regretfully they had to tack and stand nor’east as close to the wind as possible for Anguilla, the nearest British settlement.

  Boggs was by now half-drunk most of the time in sheer panic at the thought of dying and his inability to do any good for anyone. He made up bags of assafoetida for everyone to wear, and the crew eagerly seized their bags of “Devil’s Dung” like a talismens.

  Docken died. The acting bosun died, along with three more men. Two of the youngest victims seemed to recover, though they were weak as kittens and all their hair had fallen out, so there was some hope.

  “We are seven days from Anguilla,” Kenyon told them aft on the tiny poop by the taffrail. “Lewrie, we must have the starboard guns run out and the larboard guns hauled back to the centerline to ease her heel. It will make her faster through the water.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Mister Claghorne, we must drive this ship like Jehu for the nearest port. Nevis or St. Kitts, if Anguilla will not serve. It is our only hope that we reach a friendly port with medical facilities greater than our own.” Kenyon seemed foursquare and dependable amid all the suppressed hysteria, but Lewrie could see the tension around his eyes, the desperate glance as he realized just how powerless any man was in the face of the unknown—Yellow Jack.

  * * *

  On the third day in late afternoon they spied a merchant ship. They hoisted their colors and recognition signal. When she was close enough to hail they discovered she was a packet brig, the Black Friars, bound for Kingston.

  “Have you a doctor on board?” Kenyon yelled across the surging water that separated them.

  “Yes. Have you no surgeon?” the master called back.

  “We have many sick aboard.”

  “What is it?” the man asked warily.

  “We have fever,” Kenyon had to admit.

  “I cannot help you,” the master said as Black Friars sped out of reach on an opposite course.

  “Goddamn you,” Kenyon shouted. “Bring to, or I will fire into you!”

  Lewrie sprang to one of the after swivels and hastily loaded it. He placed a pound ball right in her transom, but Black Friars did not stop for them, but began to loose t’gallants for more speed. Lieutenant Kenyon looked ready to weep as he watched a possible salvation tearing down to leeward, but he could do nothing. No one would turn a hand for them … for fear of the Yellow Jack …

  Leonard went down sick. Boggs decocted a foul-tasting brew of quinine bark and forced the hands to drink it, but no one had faith in his cures. The maidservant died at sundown.

  It made no sense. Kenyon, Mooney, Claghorne and Lewrie and Purnell discussed it aft, avoiding Boggs, who by then could not raise a cup to his own lips, much less offer help to the sick.

  Men had sickened who had not gone ashore into the tropical miasma. They should have been safe. Men who had spent the night ashore did not get sick, but members of the gig’s crew who had only been to the boat landing in broad daylight had sickened and died. All ate the same rations, drank the same grog and Black Strap and small beer, breathed the same air ashore, on deck at anchor or below decks.

  Had it been the whores? Mooney wondered, something you could get from native women? Yet hardly any of the West Indians in the crew had gotten it, and only one of them had died of it. They were on the mend, or immune somehow. When questioned, most admitted to having the Vómito Negro when they were very young, and surviving.

  “The salt rations?” Lewrie said, wondering out loud. “Sir, we were ashore and we ate fresh food and drank clean drink. We have not been stricken with it. But the crew on salt rations and biscuit for the most part have.”

  “Then how do you explain the maid, or the manservant?” Kenyon asked.

  “He was much older, and the woman’s constitution is not a man’s, sir,” Lewrie said, making rationalizations for his own funk … I don’t have to die, he told himself grimly, aware of the sour reek of fear on his body and in his clothes. Some of the hands are getting better, the younger ones. Mostly, it’s the old and the weak that are dying. Oh God, why not in battle, but not like this. I swear to You I’ll offer You anything You want, but don’t let me die …

  Purnell’s breathing made him turn his head. Tad was all covered in sweat, his neckcloth and shirt already soaked with it, and his hands on the tabletop trembled like a fresh-killed cock.

  “I am all right,” Purnell rasped. “Really, I am…”

  “Oh God … take Mister Purnell to the surgeon,” Kenyon ordered.

  Around midnight Leonard, the captain’s clerk, died. When they held his burial at dawn after Quarters one could hear the hands weeping and snuffling, but it was not any affection for the departed acting purser; it was pity for themselves in the face of the Yellow Jack.

  Lewrie was on deck in full uniform to enforce orders, also armed with a pair of pistols and his dirk. The crew was trembling on the edge of panic, and if the officers lost control the men would run wild, get to the rum and spirits, and destroy any chance they might have had to work their way into a friendly port.

  Lord and Lady Cantner stood nearby, holding their small bags of Devil’s Dung to their noses to allay the stench. Lewrie went to them.

  “This wind is holding, milord. Six more days should see us fair into Anguilla,” he said, doffing his hat.

  “Pray God it does,” Lady Cantner said.

  “You can still work the ship?” the lord asked, working his sour little mouth as though eating a lime. “Your captain does nothing to assure me. And that mate is so inarticulate he seems half-witted. Pagh, I hate the smell of this…”

  “Perhaps one of milady’s scented sachets would serve as well, milord. The assafoetida seems to have had little effect.”

  “Gladly,” Lord Cantner said, throwing the foul-smelling bag over the side. “There’s not much to choose between that stuff and the odors from the sick men up forward. Stap me, what a foul stench it is. I’d rather sniff a corpse’s arse.”

  You can take your pick of arseholes up forward, Lewrie thought.

  “Your surgeon is a fool.”

  “Only a surgeon’s mate, milord. An apothecary, mostly. But I doubt if a surgeon’s skill at cutting would avail us.”

  “No one will tell us anything, and who the hell are you? Your name escapes me.”

  “Midshipman Alan Lewrie, milord.”

  “You look like you might know something. How long you been wearing the King’s coat?”

  “One year, milord.”

  “God’s teeth.” And Lord Cantner turned away in misery.

  “It is not his fault, my dear,” Lady Cantner said. “Is there anything I could do to help, Mister Lewrie, perhaps help tend to the sick, or read to them?”

  “Delia!” Lord Cantner was shocked at her suggestion.

  Tending the sick was for the worst sort, those already so degraded that the odors and sights of sick and injured people could have no further influence. It was a job for abbatoir workers, not titled ladies …

  “I doubt if anyone could appreciate a good book just now, milady,” Alan said gently, sharing an astounded glance with Lord Cantner that his lady would even consider such a thing. “The loblolly men shall suffice for the hands. Though I wond
er—”

  “Yes?”

  “The other midshipman, Mister Purnell, was taken ill last night.”

  “And he is your friend,” she said, full of pity.

  “Aye, milady, he is.”

  The thought of Tad lying helpless and puking scared him silly, and Tad Purnell lying sick could have been him so easily, still might be …

  “I shall go to him at once,” Lady Cantner said, “if you would approve, my dear.”

  “A gentleman, is he?”

  “Aye, milord. Of a good trading family from Bristol.”

  “I suppose,” Lord Cantner relented sourly.

  “Mister Lewrie?” Claghorne called from farther forward.

  “Excuse me, milord … milady.”

  Claghorne stood by the quartermaster at the tiller head, his hands behind his back and his feet planted firmly on the tilting deck, and glooming bleak as poverty.

  “Mister Lewrie, the captain’s took sick as hell,” he said in a low mutter. “I’ll be dependin’ on you an’ Mister Mooney ta see us through.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Lewrie said, turning cold all over with another shock to his already shattered nerves. “Has Boggs seen to him?”

  “Boggs stands more chance o’ dyin’ o’ barrel-fever than Yeller Jack. Drunk as an emperor down below. Keep that quiet. We don’t want the people gettin’ scared.”

  “They’re not already, sir?” Alan shivered.

  “Aye, true enough,” Claghorne said. “Knew I could count on ya to buck up an’ stay solid. Must be the only person not scared out a yer boots by this.”

  “You misjudge me badly, Mister Claghorne.”

  “Then keep it up, ’cause so everyone else misjudges ya, too.”

  “May I suggest sir, that you inform Lord Cantner of Lieutenant Kenyon and his distress?”

  “I can’t talk his break-teeth kinda words,” Claghorne said. “You do it. I’ve a ship ta run and he can go hang before I let him shit on me again. Stuck up squinty-eyed little hop-o’-my-thumb fool!”

  “Aye, sir, but he is very influential. A word from him in the right place and the officer who brought him safe into harbor could gain a commission overnight.”

  “I’m a scaly old fish, Lewrie. Not one o’ yer bowin’ an’ arse-kissin’ buggers. I’d be a tarpaulin mate forever before I’d piss down his back, nor anyone else’s, fer favor.”

  Lewrie shrugged, knowing that Claghorne was out of his element in the face of a peer and was throwing away a sterling opportunity to gain influence because he lacked the wit, and took such a perverse pride in being a tarry, self-made man of his hands, beholden to no one.

  I must be healthy, Lewrie assured himself wryly; I can still toady with the best right in the middle of shrieking hysteria …

  * * *

  The wind held steady for hours as they drove nor’east. They were still five days from harbor, if the wind held. Thankfully no one else had gone down ill in the last few hours. Perhaps something they had done had worked against the fever. For all the fear and grief, it had so far been a remarkably fast passage to windward.

  “God, give us just a little luck…” Alan felt weights slough from his shoulders each time they cast the log. He could get ashore, away from whatever was causing the Yellow Jack. Tad could get a doctor, and he would get credit for standing as an acting officer.

  “Sail ho!” the lookout cried from the mainmast gaff throat. “Four points off the weather bow.”

  “Aloft with you, Mister Lewrie, an’ spy her out,” Claghorne ordered. Alan seized a glass and scrambled up into the rigging to hug the mainmast alongside the lookout.

  “Brig,” Alan said, studying the sail through the telescope.

  “Aye, zur,” said the lookout. “An’ a Frenchy, I thinks, zur.”

  “French? Why?” Lewrie asked, afraid he was right.

  “Jus’ looks French ta me, zur. Can’t rightly say.”

  “Keep us informed,” Alan said, heading down to report to Claghorne. “A brig, sir, coming north with a soldier’s wind. The lookout thinks she’s French.”

  “Goddamn, what would a Frog brig be doing so close to Anguilla or Nevis?”

  “Looking for morsels such as us, Mister Claghorne?” Lewrie offered, drawing a withering glare from the master’s mate.

  “An’ goddamn you, too, sir,” Claghorne shouted.

  “Aye aye, sir.” Alan shied, backing away.

  An hour passed. By then the strange sail was hull-down over the horizon, both ships doomed to intersect at a point off to the east with no way to avoid meeting. Parrot was going as fast as possible but could not get to windward. Neither, in their pitiful condition, could they run. They had already been seen, and any course of evasion would only take them that much farther away from safety and help for their sick, after getting so tantalizingly near. And neither, reduced in manpower, could they fight well if the brig was indeed French.

  “Goddamn me, she’s French, all right,” Claghorne said after returning from the lookout perch himself. “Privateer outa Martinique, most-like. Maybe not heavy-gunned but loaded with men for prize crews.”

  “So they’ll try to board us, sir,” Lewrie said, wondering if their luck could possibly get any worse.

  “They might not, if they see we have Yeller Jack aboard. Them Popish breast-beaters is superstitious as hell. We hoist the Quarantine flag, let ’em see our sick, an’ they might let us go fer safer pickin’s.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  Claghorne did not answer him, but walked away to the windward rail and began to pace. As close as they were to death from Yellow Jack, it was preferable to being taken a prize and led off to some prison hulk or dungeon on Martinique. With Kenyon down sick, the burden of running, fighting or striking their colors devolved on him, as if he didn’t already have enough to worry about.

  “Mister Lewrie,” Lady Cantner called from the hatch to the wardroom. “I think you should come…”

  Tad was slung in a hammock below the skylight, where there was a chance for some breeze below decks, and Lewrie thought he looked as dead as anyone could that still breathed. He was yellow, the skin stretched taut over his skull, while his eyes were sunk deep in currant-colored circles of exhaustion.

  “Tad, how do you keep?” Alan asked softly.

  “God, Alan, I am so sick … when I’m gone do write my parents and say I fell in action, will you do that?”

  “You’ll be fine, you silly hobbledehoy.” But Tad’s hand was dry as sunbaked timber and hot as a gun barrel, and leaning close to him Alan could smell the corruption of the blood in the bile Purnell had been bringing up.

  “I can taste it,” Tad was saying. “I can taste death, Alan, I’m going to die—”

  “Nonsense,” Alan said, realizing he was probably right.

  “Thanks for … that night,” Tad managed so softly that Alan had to lean ever closer, and it was like bending down over a hot oven. “It was wonderful, not so hard, after all…”

  “Just like riding a cockhorse,” Alan said, trying to plaster a smile on his face. Tad tried to smile back but began coughing and retching and choking, fighting for breath.

  Alan tried to lift him but he was drowning in his own vomit. Tad gripped his hand with all his strength, going rigid, eyes wide open. After a final gasping try for a breath, he went limp, eyes blank and staring at Lewrie.

  “Goddamn it,” Alan cursed, tears burning his eyes. “Just Goddamn sweet fuck all!”

  Lady Cantner came to him and held out her arms, tears on her face, and he sank into her arms gladly. “Damme, he was such a decent little chub. Oh, Goddamn this…”

  “He was your friend,” she said, stroking his hair, “but his sorrow and pain are ended. God harvests the flowers early, and leaves weeds such as us to suffer and try to understand.”

  That’s a hellish sort of comfort, he thought miserably. “Half a dozen worse people could have died except him. God, what a terrible thing this is! Tad, half the crew sick or dead, Lie
utenant Kenyon like to be on his own deathbed, maybe a French privateer ready to take us. What next, for Christ’s sake? God, I’m so scared…”

  “There, there,” Lady Cantner continued to comfort.

  God stap me, but she has a great set of poonts, Alan thought inanely, appreciating the tender and yielding surfaces against which his face was now pressed as she gentled him.

  “You must have faith, Mister Lewrie,” Lord Cantner said from the door to the aft cabin, just a second before Alan decided that dying would not be so bad, if he could grab hold of Lady Cantner’s bouncers for a second. “I’m sure the other officers shall see us through.”

  “Aye, milord,” Alan replied, stepping back and wiping his eyes. Lady Cantner offered a handkerchief and Lewrie applied it to his face. It was Mrs. Hillwood’s … still redolent of lovemaking. Alan found it hard to keep a straight face, or stifle an urge to begin howling with laughter. He finally managed to say, almost strangling, “We shall do what we can, me and Mister Claghorne. Right now, we are the officers, milord.”

  Lord Cantner’s look of annoyance at finding a snivelling midshipman on his wife’s tits changed to a stricken rictus at that news.

  “Was it his mother’s?” Lady Cantner asked of the handkerchief.

  “Er … not exactly, milady,” Lewrie said, pulling himself together. He had to escape them before he burst out in manic laughter and they ended up clapping him in irons. “I thank you for your comfort when I had given way to despair, milady. I have to go on deck, now. Mister Claghorne will be needing me. Excuse me.”

  Fine bastard’s gullion you are, he scathed himself; your best friend just died, all hell riding down on us, scared so bad I wouldn’t trust mine arse with a fart, and you’re ready to laugh like a deranged loon, and feel up the “blanket” of our “live-lumber”!

  He took a glass from the binnacle rack and crossed to join Claghorne, who stood by the windward rail and gripped the narrow bulwark as he stared at their approaching stranger with a forlorn expression.

  “About three miles off, now,” Claghorne sighed heavily. “She’ll be up ta us an’ alongside in an hour, holdin’ the wind gauge, dammit.”

  “French, sir?” Lewrie asked, hoping against hope.