Lone Star Rising: T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

by Jason Vail

  “Careful there,” the mate said. “Don’t fall and break your neck. It ain’t my day.”

  I retreated to the sick bay and tucked into my breakfast. I was hungrier than I expected.

  With no one to tend to, there was nothing to do but sit and stew. Staring at the bulkheads only led my mind to recall Fletcher’s face, not as it had appeared in life, but slack and open-mouthed as in death, his cheeks and forehead painted with that terrible rash. The faces of the other men, some already fading in my memory, threatened to rise up. My first thought was of the whiskey bottle among the books, but then I reached for my copy of Livy. I drew the candle close and tried to lose myself in the war against Philip of Macedon, and specifically the ambush of a Roman army by Thracians in a mountain pass where Quintus Minucius Thermus fell in confused fighting. But struggling with Latin is a great deal of work, and I could only do it so long before I had to put Livy aside. Yet my restless mind needed distraction, so I pulled one of Fletcher’s medical books from where it cushioned the whiskey bottle and turned my attention to the delivery of babies, the anatomy of the circulatory system, the structure of the brain, and substances that, while they have medicinal properties, can kill if too much is given to the patient.

  At four bells of the forenoon watch, individual voices sounded on the berth deck above the murmurs from above.

  “I am not sick! I tell you, I am fine! It is just my digestion!” It was Jean-Baptise Crequy’s voice, trying to sound indignant but with an undertone of fear.

  “Nonetheless,” Austin said, “it is for the good of the ship.”

  “You are feverish,” Adele added with a firmness I had not heard before in her voice. “You must go to the infirmary.”

  “If I am sick, I can be sick in my cabin just as well. Leave off me, I tell you.”

  “And what will you do when the master or the first lieutenant requires the cabin?” Austin asked. “Hide in a corner?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “When they find out, they will make you go, if they have to carry you. Have you no dignity?” Austin implored. “It is for your own good as much as ours.”

  “There is no reason for anyone to find out anything, if you would keep your voice down,” Adele said.

  “Too late,” I said, parting the curtain.

  “Damn you,” Crequy said to his sister, jerking his sleeve free from her grip.

  I marched up to him and put my hand out to feel his face. He flinched away but not far enough that I could not reach him.

  “She’s right. You’ve a fever,” I said.

  “It’s nothing!” he wailed. “A cold! Nothing more!”

  “You could be right,” I said. “But you’ll get into the sick bay nonetheless. If it’s nothing it will be over in a few days. And if not?” I shrugged.

  Reluctantly, Crequy let me take his arm and guide him through the curtain. He looked around at that barren space: shelves of books, a cabinet, table and chair. “Where am I to rest?” he asked.

  “Mister Austin will have your cot fetched down for you,” I said.

  “Of course,” Austin piped up.

  “And we shall need another chair,” Adele said.

  “Why?” I asked her.

  “Because I shall attend Jean.”

  “Miss Crequy,” I started to protest.

  “I am his sister, the only family he has. It is my duty and I shall not to leave him in the hands of strangers.”

  “I am hardly a stranger. Besides, if he is infected, it will be dangerous.”

  “That is my decision.”

  She said this so firmly that I could only agree. “Very well,” I said.

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  The sailors who brought down the cot, a wooden box holding a mattress, would not come through the curtain, and looked about the sick bay with distaste, revulsion and suspicion when I held the drapes aside. They could not be made to bring the thing in and left it on the deck, so Austin and I hung it ourselves while Crequy sat on my chair looking as if he had been sentenced to the guillotine.

  “That will do nicely,” Adele said rather more brightly than the occasion called for, as if she was rearranging the furniture in her bedroom. She prodded Crequy, and he rose and climbed into the cot while Austin steadied one end and I steadied the other.

  Crequy lay down at first, then sat up. “Wine,” he said. “Fetch me wine.” His tone was meant to be dignified and commanding, but an explosive sneeze ruined the effect. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and said, “Well, didn’t you hear me?”

  Austin and our purser had not lavished much money on the purchase of wine, and Crequy’s appetite for it had already run through most of what we had brought with us. Beer was too pedestrian for a man of his position, and rum was so strong that he only took it occasionally. I wished I followed that advice myself, when ashore. It would have saved me a lot of rugged mornings and cranky days.

  “I heard you,” I said. “We’re short of wine here.”

  “I think we can find a bottle on such a big ship, can’t we, Captain?” Adele asked. She regarded her brother with a slight smile that seemed more like a cat regarding a mouse, and it vanished quickly as she took up the problem of wine.

  “Austin,” I ordered, “can you see to that?”

  He sighed. “I’ll have a bottle fetched.”

  “Better make it a case, if we have one,” I said.

  Austin was a sober man with sober habits and he did not hold with excessive drinking. The look on his face gave away his disapproval.

  I said, “Just thinking of the crew. It will save them the trouble of having to visit here more than they have to.”

  “It is an unpopular place at the moment,” Austin said gravely. “I shall see to the case.”

  He pushed through the curtain, and his footfalls echoed down the berth deck.

  The place may have been unpopular but I was wrong about there being a lack of visitors, for by two bells on the afternoon watch, we had a steady stream of them. They padded down the forward companionway, many still barefoot despite the cold, and paused at the curtain. As there was no way to knock, and they were fearful enough not to barge in, they made their presence known by tugging on the curtain and calling out. Most wanted to inquire about Baron Crequy’s health and were satisfied with a peek through the curtain, a call and a wave, which the baron did not return. A few wanted out of the wager now that Crequy himself had fallen sick, but I sent them away. For some a sharp word of dismissal was not enough, and where words were ineffective, it was almost funny to see them scamper backward when I reached out to put my hands on them. One man stumbled over his heels and fell to the deck in his haste to avoid contact with me.

  A half dozen came not about the baron, however, but about his sister. She received them with the graciousness of a great lady, grateful for their sympathy, and they left smiling.

  Crequy ran through two bottles of wine before supper and was, as a result, frequently out of his cot to piss in the jar reserved for that purpose. Toward the end of the second bottle, he was too drunk to manage this task by himself. And by this, I mean both the getting out of the cot and the holding of the jar: which I had to do because if I hadn’t, he would have dropped the jar, as he needed both hands to steady himself against the rolling of the ship.

  “Caring for the sick is a dirty business,” Adele murmured as I sat down at the table after returning the baron to his bed.

  “I thought you were going to do it,” I said.

  “I am never one to refuse the help of a gentleman,” she said.

  “I did not value poor Fletcher enough when he was alive, I’m afraid.”

  “Well,” she said gazing over at Crequy, who had begun to snore, “he should sleep for quite a while now, so you should have some respite.”

  Hearing commotion on the upper deck which meant that supper was being served, I said, “I shall have a candlelight supper with a beautiful woman all to myself, except for that fellow in the corner.”


  “We shall ignore him.”

  I expected the steward’s mate to leave the tray at the curtain, but he surprised me. Not one but three mates brought supper, and set our table with as much ceremony as if we had dined in the great cabin. Their courtesy evidently did not extend to prolonged contact, so that we had to serve ourselves. Adele sent them off with smiles and thank you’s that fairly left them melted into puddles on the deck.

  It fell to me to do the service, and I sat there for a moment thinking about how odd it all was: the pair of us wrapped in our coats against the terrible cold in that dank place lighted only by a single candle; her brother in his cot swinging with the rolling of the ship; the long table on which our supper lay occupying space that had once held corpses and wounded men so that the black marks of their blood stains were still visible on the portions not covered by the cloth.

  Yet to look at that face, the sparkling eyes, the smile that made a man’s insides quiver at the thought it was just for him, drove away anything else. She could be hypnotic, I’ll give her that. The talent served her well, if what I read about her in the papers many years later was any indication.

  “Is something wrong, Captain?”

  “Er, no.”

  “Our supper will get cold,” she said gently. “Or do you prefer your beef that way?”

  “No, cold or not is fine as long as it’s cooked to shoe leather.” But I hastened to slice her a portion and ladle out potatoes and peas as well.

  “You are so British!” she laughed.

  “You can take the boy out of the country but not the country out of the boy.”

  “If you remain long with the Texans, you will have to try jerky.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dried beef or venison,” she said, cutting her slice of beef. “It’s as hard as rock. Ask Mister Crockett about it. I think he was raised on it.”

  “Hard as rock,” I mused. “No wonder he stayed so thin.”

  So our supper proceeded. Since I so seldom had the chance to be alone with her, I thought the conversation might develop beyond the superficial, but she seemed distracted, as if her thoughts were fixed elsewhere, and we did not get deeper than polite banter.

  After we finished, I piled the dishes on the tray and took them up to the gun deck, where I left the tray at the top of the ladder.

  When I returned, Adele was pouring a cup of wine by her brother’s cot. “He seems cold, Captain,” she said. “Could you fetch him another blanket?”

  “I will be right back.”

  I went aft to the wardroom, where the officers were finishing their supper. Willie gave me one of his spare blankets, and when I returned, Crequy was sitting up in bed, blurry eyed and blinking, a rivulet of wine running down his chin which Adele mopped up with a corner of the blanket he already had. “What happened to the wine?” he asked. “It’s so bitter.”

  “Fever makes things taste differently,” she said as she eased him back. “Now finish it up. It will help you sleep.”

  He made a face and polished off what remained in the cup.

  “It has been a pleasant evening, Captain,” she said after I had tucked the new blanket around Crequy, “but I must be going.”

  I had hoped she would stay longer. The sick are no company and no one dared to come down to talk to me during my weeks of confinement. But for her to remain into the evening would have compromised her reputation.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Take good care him. Call me if he needs me.”

  She left then, the curtain swirling about her slim figure.

  It wasn’t until many years later that I remembered a very small thing: she took the wine cup with her.

  About a half hour later, Crequy began to toss and turn. After all the wine he’d drunk, the last thing I expected was trouble sleeping. And to be honest, I was looking forward to an untroubled evening in which I could sleep the whole night through without any demand that I hold the pot for someone. I put down the medical book that had been teaching me essential facts about how to deliver a child, and went over to him. His face seemed warmer than when I’d felt it before, and he was sweating heavily despite the cold.

  “My neck hurts,” he said, and his head arched backwards against the pillow like the drawing of a bow. He cried out a long drawn out “Ahhhhhh! Dammmmmn!” that petered out as the spasm subsided. Another spasm seized him, this one more violent than the last, arching his back. I fetched a leather strap from the cupboard and held it to his lips, but his jaws were clamped so tightly shut he could not take it until, after several long moments, that spasm also subsided.

  “Easy there,” I said, feeling helpless. I patted his shoulder and it rose up under my palm as if in a shrug, but the movement was not voluntary as I first thought but another spasm that spread as if in a wave across the upper half of his body. Echoes of that convulsion lingered on his face as twitching of his lips.

  Then they passed and he lay in the cot, panting. “It hurts,” he said.

  “Just take it easy,” I said. “It will be over soon.”

  “It better be.” But then he said, “This isn’t right. Something’s ….” Except he didn’t finish the remark, for another spasm washed over him, more violent that any of the previous ones. His back arched so that only his head and heels were touching the mattress. His lips stretched in an idiot’s grin, and his eyes seemed to bulge almost out of his head.

  “Something’s wrong,” my mind finished for him. Something certainly was. I have seen epileptics before in their fits, but they were nothing compared to this. At last, the convulsion subsided. I waited a moment expecting another, but none came.

  I went to the forward companionway. Above my head, the gun deck was quiet, undoubtedly filled with sleeping men, the only sound muffled snoring and the flutter of the sails audible through the open waist.

  “Hello!” I shouted. “Someone fetch Mistress Crequy! Right away!”

  “What’s that yer saying?” a groggy voice answered from the dark.

  “Fetch Miss Crequy! It’s her brother!”

  “What about her brother?”

  “Never mind, damn it! Just do it!”

  Crequy was in the grip of another spasm when I returned to the sick bay. The leather strap had fallen from his mouth, he had had that terrible rictus on his face, and his body was as rigid as a piece of wood. I thought I should do something, but the only thing that occurred to me was to search the edges between the sideboards of the cot and the mattress for the strap, and even when I found it at last, Crequy was unable to take it until the spasm had passed.

  Light footfalls sounded on the forward ladder. Adele burst through the curtain and rushed to my side. “What’s happening?”

  “He’s having a fit. It’s a really bad one.”

  “Jean, Jean,” she said, cupping his face with her hands as he looked at her with frightened eyes, and even as she touched him, he was wracked with a spasm so violent that he vomited all over himself.

  I got her a towel to wipe her hands. “What can we do?”

  “Nothing,” she said, cleaning her hands and tossing the filthy towel aside. “Nothing. He gets like this, sometimes. We can only wait for it to pass.”

  “Adele!” Crequy fairly shrieked, but she shoved the strap into his mouth.

  “Bite down, Jean,” she said. “Another’s coming.”

  The convulsions returned as she predicted so that it seemed Crequy might burst the sides of the cot in his agony. This one went on for minutes and Crequy’s face darkened and the veins stood out from his neck and forehead like strands of rope. Adele mopped his brow with another towel and made sure that he did not spit out the strap. You might expect her to seem distressed at the sight of so much suffering, but it must have been something she was used to, for her face was flinty with focus and determination, reminding me of the faces of sailors who had once rowed me through a pounding surf that threatened to swamp the boat: men not distracted by the prospect of disaster but inten
t on doing what they could to avoid it.

  That convulsion too subsided eventually, but it was followed closely by another. Waves of convulsions now swept Crequy, each longer and more violent than the last, the intervals between them shorter and shorter, until it seemed as though he was seized with a single unending one.

  Then at last, the seizures dissipated, like water draining from a bath. Crequy went limp, his face waxen. I held my hand to his mouth. There was no breath. I felt his neck. There was no pulse.

  “He’s gone,” I said to Adele.

  She pressed her hands to her mouth. I thought she would scream, but she whispered so faintly that I almost didn’t hear the words: “I’m so very sorry, Jean.”

  I put my arms around her without thinking. She resisted a moment, then allowed my embrace.

  After a very long time, she straightened up and stepped away. She wiped her face, and paused a moment to gaze down at her brother’s body.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said.

  Then she walked past me out of the sick bay.

  We buried Crequy at sea the following morning. It had been almost two weeks since Fletcher died, and his books said that if I was going to come down with the pox, I should be showing signs of fever by now. But I felt out of sorts only by a great deal of restlessness and a desire to get far away from the miserable pit where I had spent so many weeks. So I judged myself past the crisis.

  To larboard, a long stretch of land was visible through a deep haze. “Where are we?” I murmured to Willie, one of the few who risked standing at my side.

  “That’s Cornwall,” he said. “You can’t tell?”

  “We’ve arrived then.” I was relieved that the long, terrible voyage was almost over.

  “Almost. Another day or so and we’ll be at Calais.”

  “It’s been a hard passage.”

  “I’ve had worse. At least we didn’t hit a rock, not for lack of Hammond’s trying.”

  “What are you saying about me?” Hammond cried from across the quarterdeck.