The Glorious First Of June (Neville Burton: Worlds Apart Book 1)

by Georges Carrack

  “This is quite a place, isn’t it?” Neville said.

  Mills said only, “Yes, it is.” Bixby said nothing.

  “Corporal Bixby, it’s only the three of us. Feel free to speak freely. Look at all this. It might not be London, but it’s not the little city of Bury St. Edmunds where I come from in East Anglia.”

  The grand buildings of Toulon encircled most of the waterfront. Most were four and five stories of stone or brick, fronted with shops, restaurants, and trees along the wide cobble-paved boulevards facing landward. A few large palm trees grew at major intersections, but their wispy shadows gave slight shade from the sun.

  “See there, Corporal – palm trees! It is quite a thing to be so far from home.”

  “I’ve seen them before, but they’re nice, yeah,” said Bixby. “What befuddles me is that it doesn’t look like a revolution. It looks normal here … teeming with people, shops open….”

  “But there’s a lot of them are soldiers or officers from some country or other. They’re not all civilian.”

  “Like around Whitehall?” queried Mills.

  “Yes, right enough. There’s been some bashing about here, though. Look there … broken windows, trampled flower-beds. There’s a door bashed in.”

  Some popping noise could be heard in the distance that was, no doubt, the musket fire of another skirmish along the city’s defenses.

  “I’m pleased to see it getting quieter the farther we go away from the hubbub on the waterfront. I had hoped we might find some public conveyance,” grumbled Dr. Mills, “but I don’t see a thing. Whatever we find at Dr. Badeau’s we will have to carry back somehow. Everything with a wheel must be in military service. Oh, well. Keep on walking. I don’t think it’s far.”

  They took the Rue d’Alger inland, as per Dr. Badeau’s directions. At the corner of the Rue des Bonnetieres, they were stopped by a contingent of Spanish soldiers.

  “¡Alto! ¿A donde Ustedes?” demanded one who might have been a corporal. He did not seem suspicious, probably because he was obviously looking at a well-dressed gentleman accompanied by an English officer of some sort and an escort, but his duty was to stop and question, so he did.

  The three looked at each other, as if to query, “Do you speak Spanish? I don’t.”

  “Why can’t they bloody ask us in English?” Corporal Bixby complained aloud. “Can’t they see what color my coat is?” and, to assert his authority, stepped forward and announced loudly, “We are from His Royal Majesty’s Ship Castor on a supply mission of the utmost importance.”

  The Spanish soldier assumed a defiant pose in front of Corporal Bixby and tried again more adamantly, this time in French, “Ou vas-tu?” Bixby stood his ground.

  Dr. Mills had a response for that, answering in the same language. He showed the letter that Neville carried with the introduction from Dr. Badeau and the address atop the page. After a few words, the tapping of fingers on the paper, and gestures down the street to their left, the exchange concluded with bows and words that were obviously pleasantries. The Spaniards allowed them to continue. They were challenged twice more on the way to the address given them, once in French and again in Spanish, but passed with equal ease.

  “It’s still busy way in here, at least on the main streets, isn’t it?” queried Neville. “There goes our ‘public conveyance’, doctor.” A carriage passed carrying a single officer with military supplies and food or materials for trenching.

  “And there’s another.” A farm wagon rattled past carrying wounded toward the waterfront.

  “Ah, here we are, I think,” said Dr. Mills. “Eleven o’clock, already. This three-story brown stone thing with a book shop on the ground floor.”

  There were access doors for the second floor on each side of the shop. Brass numbers nailed to the heavy dark wooden door to the right announced that they had found 143 Rue Roche.

  “The number is right, and it matches his description. There’s a metal bracket above the door, but his sign is gone. The proof of this pudding will be in the key,” said Mills, reaching into his pocket.

  The key fit the door lock. A heavy ‘click’ gained them entrance. Bixby pushed them aside, unslung his musket and, pointing it into the foyer, marched inside. He tromped loudly up the stairs that began five feet inside. His companions followed. An artistic wooden sign lettered “M. Badeau, Docteur Medical” leaned against the wall under a quarter inch of dust.

  Mills pointed at it. “He probably took that down to prevent the place from being ransacked by someone seeking medical supplies.”

  Two stories up they reached another door, again with Dr. Badeau’s name lettered in red paint, into which the same key fit. Opening it, they stepped into a large and airy space with a fashionable parquet floor, six comfortable waiting chairs, and paintings of street scenes on the walls – Paris, perhaps. Three tall, metal-framed windows admitted a sufficiency of light that produced a calming effect on the umber walls. A tall white door with a green glass transom above it faced the entry.

  “Waiting room,” mumbled Mills, turning to Neville and Bixby. “Examination rooms through that door, I’d say. Come on.” The door opened to a hallway with more doors: one to his right, on the street side, two others on the left, and a third, probably a closet or cupboard, at the end. The hall existed in a green darkness with no windows and no lamp lit.

  “Have a look there in there, if you would, gentlemen,” Mills said, indicating the two doors to the left. “I’ll go in here. I think we’re safe; thank you, Bixby. We’ve come through two doors, both locked.” Mills turned the knob and opened the door on the street side. The hallway was momentarily flooded with light from windows, and then Bixby and Neville were plunged back into semi-darkness as Mills allowed it to close. Neville shuddered, a thought of his experience in the hold of the Angelique fleeting through his mind. There was enough strange green light from the entry transom for them to grope back to the waiting room door. Bixby blocked it open with a chair so the darkness was defeated well enough to inspect the two rooms.

  Both had the same impression after a quick look and exited, heading for the street-side door.

  Entering another well-lit room with windows to the street, they found the doctor coming out of yet another door at the far end.

  “Anything of interest?” he asked them.

  “Nothing, Sir,” replied Bixby. Hard to see with no candle, but there was a bit of light from the little alley window; only a chair, some sort of examination table, a low cabinet with a white cloth on top, and a bookshelf at the end.”

  Neville simply said, “Same, Sir.”

  “Bookshelves, hah?” said Mills happily. “There should be candles here somewhere. See if you can … Ah, there they are. You each take one of those and go back and look for this book, if you please.” He handed Neville a page with the title:

  ‘AN OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY AND CURE OF FEVER, ENDEMIC AND CONTAGIOUS; MORE EXPRESSLY, THE CONTAGIOUS FEVER OF JAILS, SHIPS, AND HOSPITALS; THE CONCENTRATED EPIDEMIC, VULGARLY THE YELLOW FEVER OF THE WEST INDIES’ by Jackson, Robert.

  “Dr. Badeau said it is here and that I could have it. You can read, can’t you Corporal?” he asked with no intention to insult the man. “Yes? Good.”

  Neville and Bixby returned in only a few minutes with the book, and found Mills exiting from the door at the far end again. “Ah, here you are. Found it? Lovely. Why, it’s in wonderful condition. I have the supplies list here. We should find them in that cupboard at the end of the hall. Let us …. Wait. I forgot those papers we came for, Mr. Burton. I left them on his desk in there,” he added, pointing to the door that must have been Dr. Badeau’s personal study. “Will you get them, please?”

  “Corporal, please come with me. Bring that sack we brought,” he said, heading for the hall.

  Neville turned, opened the door, and stepped into the second well-lit room. It was smaller, with two tall windows and a large desk. A man sat there. He was a heavy fellow; not fat, but strong-looking, wit
h a clean-shaven square chin, curly hair, wide-set brown eyes, and bushy eyebrows. Wearing his cravat, he looked ‘quite French’ to Neville. He was holding a finger to his lips, and began to speak quietly in clear English before Neville’s surprise wore off. He had a Suffolk accent, perhaps?

  “Hello, Mr. Burton. Dr. Mills told me of you and asked that we meet, though I am not entirely sure why. My name is Georges,” he said, holding out his hand. “You’ve injured your head?”

  “Hello, Georges. I am Midshipman Neville Burton,” shaking his hand and feeling awkward. The only pleasantry he offered was “Good to meet you,” which he was not sure was true, and, “My ear, Sir. I cut it.”

  “Perhaps because of a mutual acquaintance,” he continued. “I attended the colleges at Cambridge, in a more civilized day, and met there an interesting fellow who is now known as Sir William Mulholland. He made no mention of you then, but you would have been quite young, I suppose, with no thoughts of the Navy at the time. It is good to meet you. I expect I will see you again someday. Here are the papers Dr. Mills needs,” he finalized. “You’d best go, methinks.”

  He heard the door lock as he left, and went into the hall to help gather supplies from the medicine cabinet.

  “These?” he asked Mills, holding out the two-inch stack of papers bound with a thin red ribbon.

  “Yes, that’s them. I’ll carry those in my coat,” he said, studying Neville’s face – for composure? Taking them, and not seeing anything unexpected, he returned to his list.

  “That vial of antimony will be good, Corporal, and mercury, there. Ah, here are the three from Asia he told me of: asafedita, camphor, and four ampoules of laudanum. These can be difficult to find, as can this valerian. Take that.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Burton; one more thing. Will you go back in there and get a plant that you will find growing in a pot on the casement. It is a succulent. You know a succulent, don’t you? Long pointy fat leaves – no stalks. It’s aloe vera, and I would prefer to take it alive. It should grow aboard ship just fine, and is excellent for the treatment of burns. Even burns of the sun, with which I have been quite vexed since we came ‘round St. Vincent. I should have got such a plant in Gibraltar, but it completely slipped my mind.”

  Neville gave him a very strange look, wondering what he would find in the office this time, but went back in. Nothing; all quiet, and very bright after the hallway. There was a small plant in a pot on the window ledge. It looked alive, but quite dry.

  “I’m not sure I really know, Daniel,” Neville said with some annoyance for the fourth time while they stood at the foredeck railing, “… why he took me along, except maybe to help carry his medicines and books. That should be all the better for us if we get sick or hurt. He might have thought the lieutenants too important to go, which could be true any other time, but today they are just as bored as we are. They probably would have refused to carry, though. I must say that it was wonderful to get off the ship onto dry land, and I’m sorry you couldn’t go, but it wasn’t my choosing, was it?”

  Neville continued his description of the trip ashore. “That’s about all I can think of, Daniel. I should write it in my next letter home. I’m sure mother would find it interesting. Dad used to send us news of such things, and we found it exciting – those bits we understood, at least.”

  “Did you get to eat anything?” Daniel asked, holding his hand up to block a sudden splash coming over the bows. The breeze was kicking up again. The waves were mostly a small harbor chop that day, but the cross sea would sometimes mound two of them together and send a spout of water airborne. “Cor!” He added, “I’m always hungry. Awful short commons these days, and the water stinks. Makes it seem even worse being this close to land. I could use a nice plate of collops, that’s sure. If this breeze keeps up, we’ll be back in the tops in a few minutes reefing.”

  “Looks like it will, too. Yeah, some to eat, but not much. The doctor treated us to some drinking chocolate and a long stick of bread they call a ‘bag-ette’. We came by the front of this bakery, and none of us could walk past that smell.”

  “Reef t’gallants,” came the call.

  “See. I told you.”

  “Well, Mr. Burton, it seems we had quite an adventure ashore – if you listen to the scuttlebutt, that is,” quipped Dr. Mills.

  “I’ve heard a bit of it, Sir. You’re right. I heard Corporal Bixby had to fight our way through three street blockades and teach the Spaniards how to speak English.”

  “Right you are, and I took a whole chemists’ shop full of medicines from the Frenchies, and half a library full of books. How they think I carried that out here in a little jolly boat, I can’t fathom. Did you hear what a feast you had at a Parisian restaurant; ‘La Grande Boulangerie’? And, it only cost you tuppence. You. I paid for it, thank you. Ah, well, let them enjoy something. I must say I was glad of the chance to go ashore and stretch my legs.”

  “I agree, Doctor. It was marvelous. What of Georges, then? What was the point in that?”

  “I just thought it might be good for you to meet him. I didn’t really expect him to be there, but I had hoped. He was supposed to meet with Dr. Badeau and I but, once this mess began, I had given up hope. I suppose he just decided to use Dr. Badeau’s office for awhile until he returns. I have told him of Dr. Badeau’s predicament, so I suppose he will leave now. He was good enough to be sure I had the papers, but I had nothing for him. What the future brings, we never can know.”

  “What are those papers, Doctor,” he asked directly.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you, or even admit I had them. I have entrusted them to the captain for delivery home in the next pouch, and that’s the end of it.”

  “Where will they go? Where did you send them?”

  “To Whitehall. Everything that is Navy goes to Whitehall, you know,” he was willing to admit.

  “To Sir Mulholland?” Neville asked.

  “Ahhhh …. Yes, actually. His … mmmm … bureaucratic influence is considerable.”

  “One more thing, doctor?” asked Neville.

  “Depends what you ask.”

  “French. Do you know the language well, or just a bit? I couldn’t tell, having never heard it spoke before.”

  “Fairly well, I’d say. Why?”

  “I would much enjoy learning it, I believe. Could you teach me?”

  “I would be most pleased, sir. I’ll get you a book of it, but you mustn’t go too far in reading it without you talk with me. The French have a very odd way of pronouncing what you see on the printed page and, if you go too far learning it wrong, you may never be able to speak it at all.”

  “We have had our way here for months, now,” began Lt. Froste as he and Neville walked the leeward side of the quarterdeck. “It’s going fabulously well for the royalists, I guess, and for England; we have kept the French Navy in the harbor. They can’t do anything. From what I can read in the few letters and news sheets that we have received, we’re holding most of the rest of them in Brest, as well. Did you hear they raised their flag in the center of Toulon two days ago? You can see it, you know, when the east mole of the Petit Rade lines up with the big, ugly white dome. Look just one building to the left. It has a sort of flower thing in the middle, a ‘flooor-de-lee’, and it means they give us the city. Fabulous.”

  Then he dropped his voice and said, “Scuttlebutt is we’ll be doing something else soon. I’ve no idea how jack tar finds out these things before the officers, but it’s often not wrong and, this time, I, for one, would be most glad of it.”

  It meant nothing yet, however; their days came and went slowly, and it grew cold and the nights longer. They sailed to and fro as always. November crawled towards its end, and their remaining few marines returned to the ship. Some were wounded, keeping the doctor busy, but none had been killed. Despite McLay and Hycson’s tall tales of skirmishes, most of those who returned made it sound as if life aboard ship was far better than boredom in the furrows of Toulon’s defenses.
Concern increased as their telescopes revealed excavations on the part of the British enemy, the Republicans.

  “We’ll not be able to supply our troops in the city if the Republicans move their artillery up to where they can bombard the Petit Rade,” commented Froste one cold morning. “See there, on the left? It is the first of their field pieces, I believe.

  “Do you remember the Governor of Gibraltar when we were there?” he asked.

  “No. I would never have met such a man,” said Neville, adjusting his seat on the yard.

  “I didn’t mean that you met him. I didn’t either, but I remember his name: Charles O’Hara, an Irishman. I understand he’s now a Lieutenant General. He led an attack yesterday and was captured. He had to surrender to some French Colonel named Bonaparte. It turns out he had to surrender to George Washington in the American War as well. Sometimes I wonder if these Irish fellows are on our side.” After a pause, Froste added, “Don’t you breathe a word of that to the captain – or anyone else aboard. I’ll deny I said it.”

  “You see the smoke there, gentlemen?” Captain Troubridge asked of the officers on the quarterdeck a couple weeks later. He pointed toward the city, where a white plume rose from the vicinity of the Petit Rade. “The Republicans may have forced the counter-revolutionaries out last week, but maybe they’ll manage to burn their own city down.”

  The smoke increased quickly, and the speculation about its meaning increased with it. It appeared that the French ships were burning. Flames could be seen amongst them and from the arsenal, as well. Small explosions were heard.

  “Signal, Sir,” reported Colson. “Repair to Flag. Our number.”

  “Ready my barge, Lieutenant Froste,” he said, and went below.

  The ship waited, watching the fires continue ashore, while the captain was gone for two hours.