Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle

by CHERYL COOPER

  “She’s not haughty at all, Auntie,” insisted Gus.

  Aunt Sophia frowned at her nephew. “Is she the one ya dashed that letter off to yesterday?”

  Gus nodded with excitement.

  “Well, she won’t have got it yet. She won’t know yer coming.”

  “There’s nothing more pleasing than a surprise,” Old Dr. Braden serenely remarked.

  “And why should she stoop to receive ya at all? Yer nothing but a midshipmite, and a broken one at that.”

  “Because, Auntie, because … because we’re friends,” stammered Gus, wounded by her slight.

  “I’m very much hopeful she’ll agree to receive us both, even if she has to call off her guards and archers,” said the doctor, lifting his mug to his lips and taking a generous sip, despite the fact that the tea was of poor quality and tasted quite as if Aunt Sophia had boiled it in laundry water. But he seemed content, and continued in his pleasant manner. “Mr. Walby has delighted me with stories of her warmth and compassion, and her keen sense of adventure.”

  “Well, I dunno,” said Aunt Sophia with a toss of her head. “I never heard of a princess what had compassion fer nobody.”

  Old Dr. Braden winked at Gus. “I must confess that I’m most anxious to make her acquaintance.”

  Aunt Sophia’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “Gus ain’t got no money fer travelling, and no proper clothes fer visiting with a princess, even if she ain’t a haughty one. And I ain’t giving ya nothing fer his expenses.”

  “With your permission, good madam, I shall take care of his expenses,” said the doctor, sampling his slice of buttered bread.

  For a moment Aunt Sophia fell quiet, and then she began hemming and hawing, and soon she was squawking something fierce about having to take on Gus’s chores, for she had no husband — the one she once had having abandoned her months ago for a tawdry harlot in a travelling theatre — and with so many babes underfoot, she simply could not manage more chores; and how if she were to ask the field labourers to take them on she would have to pay them extra, and this would cause her undue grief, for she had very little at her disposal, having seen no money from Gus’s uncle, her seafaring, ne’er-do-well of a brother, in a crow’s age.

  Her tedious quibbling left Gus holding his breath. Oh, what if she refused to let him go? He was near to abandoning hope when old Dr. Braden calmly set a five-pound note upon the table, and slid it toward Aunt Sophia. The sudden change in her countenance and deportment was quite remarkable.

  “Well, ya appear to be a decent sort, Doctor, so ya can take him. He’s more hindrance than help ’round here anyways.” She wagged a finger at him. “But I ain’t putting ya up fer the night.”

  Old Dr. Braden bestowed a generous smile upon her. “As there are many hours of daylight remaining, the minute Mr. Walby has gathered his belongings we shall be on our way, and out of yours.” He lightly tapped the palms of his hands upon the table and looked toward Gus, who sat there in a happy trance, hardly daring to believe his good luck. “Well, young sir, get a move on. Go pack your things.”

  Spurred to action, Gus grabbed his crutch and hobbled across the kitchen’s stone floor to the narrow passage of stairs that led to his garret room.

  “Now, Doctor, if ya kin bear his sour company and that bent leg o’ his,” said Aunt Sophia, determined to have the last word, “yer welcome to keep him … fer good.”

  2:30 p.m.

  Portsmouth Harbour

  The prisoners due for transportation were ordered on deck — the frail ones coaxed along with the aid of the guards’ musket butts — where they were to deliver up their mean hammocks and bed-sacks before being herded into rows, according to their ultimate destination. Standing before them, his boots planted in a wide stance upon a raised dais in the bow of the Illustrious, was the smug, slovenly lieutenant-in-command, who, in a savage voice, shouted out the place names one-at-a-time: “Dartmoor Prison in the county of Devon; Newgate Prison, London; Woolwich on the Thames, Portchester Castle, Portchester; His Britannic Majesty’s Prison Ship Brunswick in the Medway River; His Britannic Majesty’s Prison Ships Hector and La Brave, Plymouth …”

  Trevelyan was among the herded prisoners. Assessing the scenes around him, he could not help but feel encouraged; over half the ship’s company of shuffling skeletons was being moved to make room for a fresh crop of incoming prisoners, newly acquired from various American prizes taken on the Atlantic. With the addition of surly English officers from shore, and their armed soldiers brought along to keep the prisoners orderly — the guards of the prison hulk evidently incapable of instilling them with confidence based on the number of recently attempted escapes — the deck was terribly overcrowded, and every so often one of the frail prisoners would collapse in the crush, crying out in painful despair. Wherever Trevelyan looked, there were sweating, stinking bodies and confusion, and the smoky air around the Illustrious quivered with pitiful bleats and raucous commands.

  Perhaps this would be easier than he had imagined.

  It was essential he stay as close as possible to Twitch, who was now able to stand thanks to a few additional loaves of bread, though the two men were careful not to speak to one another. Their last words had been communicated late in the night, when the others were asleep.

  “When they find out, do ya think they’ll hang me?” Twitch had whispered in fearful gulps.

  “Nay, it’s me they want, not you,” Trevelyan had assured him, as he handed over his clothes and the final bribe of bread.

  Now, as the two waited in their respective lines under the hot afternoon sun, Trevelyan gave Twitch a furtive glance. The American’s countenance was a shade of sickly pale, but he was smartly outfitted in a once-fine muslin shirt, knee breeches, and wooden clogs, his convulsing infrequent and barely noticeable, looking decidedly more regal than his counterparts in their coarse yellow jackets and trousers, stamped with the initials TO for Transport Office, and those pathetic souls who wore nothing at all.

  Trevelyan was clad only in his linen drawers, but in a canvas bag he carried a tricorne and a velvet coat — valuable souvenirs of his brief stay on the Illustrious. Initially, he had thought it wise to wear them, and then changed his mind, deciding he’d be more conspicuous in them than out. They would come in handy, if not now then somewhere down the road. Having overheard chatter that this would be the day for the prisoners’ removal from the hulk, he had smudged his face with tar and hacked off his hair — grown long in his weeks of captivity — with the aid of scissors filched from the careless master, and zealously guarded by the prisoner who had done the filching. His oily, straw-coloured hair now stood straight up on his head, in an untamed style reminiscent of Twitch.

  The lieutenant-in-command was in a foul mood. His voice was hoarse from reprimanding his guards for their bumbling organization of the prisoners; his face damp and crimson with fury at discovering, while counting, that some men had either been trampled upon somewhere on the deck, or forgotten in their Black Holes. “As you’re all good-for-nothing,” he yelled in exasperation, “you shall help dole out the rations of fish and bread, and then get yourselves to the aft sheds and out of my way. I shall do the counting myself.” He crossed his arms, and set his foot to tap upon the dais while the guards, still brandishing their muskets, scurried about with the hulk’s boys, handing the prisoners their pittance of food for the long journey to their next hell. When it finally came time for the lieutenant to count out the eleven prisoners bound for Newgate, and the sixty-two bound for Woolwich on the Thames, all of whom would be transported together, Trevelyan held his breath until the man was satisfied and had turned away his grumbling, red-faced attention to count the next group. Then, slowly, so as not to excite notice, he traded places with Twitch.

  He kept his head down, waiting for a heavy hand to seize his arm, or a bayonet to be thrust into his buttocks. But when nothing happened, when the deck didn’t erupt in pandemonium over his trickery, he dared to glance up. Two English officers and a c
omplement of soldiers were leading the Newgate-Woolwich line of misery toward the set of wooden steps that would take them down to the floating gallery at the water’s edge, and to the waiting launches that would, in turn, take them to shore.

  Trevelyan felt some relief, but he could not control the trembling of his hands. He now stood in the line headed for Dartmoor Prison, which had already been checked and counted. But stories of such cruel treatment and suffering had come to those on the Illustrious in missives from fellow Americans holed up in that fearsome prison on its black moor that he would have no part of it. He would have to change lines again. But how, when there was no one to change with him this time?

  The transportation dragged on. Trevelyan compared the sorry business to his imminent execution, only the executioner had decided to eat his lunch before carrying out his gruesome task. Perspiration rolled down his chest, his bare feet burned on the scorching timbers of the deck, his frayed nerves already made breathing difficult, but the close proximity of others pressing up against him gave him an unbearable sense of suffocation. The sun grew hotter still. The air grew increasingly fetid. And those already weakened by deprivation and want began to drop to the deck. Harassed by the English officers and their angry impatience, the lieutenant ordered the lines to move out with their escorts, even if it meant tripping over those who had fallen.

  Trevelyan made his move, this time swiftly, squeezing into the bit of space left vacant by a wizened, bearded prisoner who had fortuitously fainted beside him and, most likely, passed from life. He hoped there was far too much chaos in the removal of bodies for anyone to notice the hunchbacked Thomas Trevelyan being led off the rotting decks of the Illustrious in his filthy drawers, away from those guards and boys and other assorted company who might recall his face.

  He had managed to painfully descend the wooden stairs, and had just stepped into his designated launch — cheered at having made it this far — when nearby voices suddenly sent his pulse escalating. No more than five feet away from him was Twitch, crammed into the launch with the others headed for Newgate and Woolwich, being questioned by two English officers.

  “You are Captain Thomas Trevelyan?” said one of them incredulously.

  “I am,” was Twitch’s solemn answer, his shrunken body shivering.

  The second officer guffawed. “Why you’re just a corpuscle! You’re right puny! And you have set all of England quaking in their beds at night?”

  “We were expecting a hairy monstrosity with fangs and a serpent’s tail.”

  They both gave Twitch’s rear end a thorough inspection, but seeing nothing untoward they burst into laughter before giving him a dismissive shove. Gathering around him his dignity and his fine, loose-fitting rags, which hung from him like draperies, Twitch held his head high, and fixed his blinking gaze upon the distant town of Portsmouth. Trevelyan shot an anxious glance toward the two sentry huts on the floating gallery. Had the guards posted there overheard the jocular exchange? He kept thinking, any time now, a dozen guards would pounce upon him, shrieking obscenities, foaming at the mouth in their enthusiasm to either rip him apart or empty their bullets into his bare chest. But their attention was directed upon the slowly descending prisoners, as if they fully expected a number of them, in one last desperate attempt to escape their fate, to hurl themselves into the harbour. Trevelyan felt his shoulders droop with relief. Closing his eyes, he was able, for the first time, to draw deep breaths.

  No one bothered to make inquiries about Asa Bumpus of New Bedford, who had been slated for Dartmoor Prison, and who, instead, was heading for another prison hulk, moored in the Medway River at Chatham.

  5:00 p.m.

  (First Dog Watch, Two Bells)

  Aboard HMS Amethyst

  Captain Prickett came hurrying onto the poop deck, his shirttails flying behind him like a billowing jib sail, his pillows having wreaked havoc upon his hair.

  “Oh, Mr. Austen, I do apologize for oversleeping,” he said, tucking his shirt into his stained breeches, and peeking sheepishly about at the milling Amethysts. “Now tell me why the hospital is suddenly full of men? And guns, I heard guns! What’s going on?”

  “Mr. Brockley didn’t offer you an explanation?”

  “Not at all! When I awoke he was nowhere to be found, and neither, for that matter, was Mrs. Kettle.”

  Fly’s voice was measured in good patience, though he longed to inform the captain that the blast of guns had first rang through the air hours ago. “We are still following the movements of the two ships we spotted yesterday.”

  Prickett looked nervously into the distances. “Yes, yes, but who are they? And what is their business? And why are they firing their guns?”

  “We’ve not been able to ascertain.”

  “Why not?”

  Before giving Prickett a full accounting of the carronade accident, Fly peered down the length of the ship to see if he could spot Bridlington. If the first lieutenant were to catch sight of Prickett, raised at last from his hospital bed, he would be sure to make a beeline for the skylight — around which the two now stood — to pour forth his distorted version of the episode. When no one rushed forward to interrupt them, Fly hoped the man was safely at supper in the wardroom.

  “There was only one shot fired after our accident, and we thought at first it may have been intended for us, but our deficient spyglasses can only see so far. It appears — it is my opinion — that the subsequent shots we all heard were meant for one another.”

  “You don’t think they’re in pursuit of us?” He took the glass from Fly’s grasp to have a look.

  “I cannot be certain of that. At times they seem to have gained on us, at others they have retreated, but always, they seem to follow our course, which makes me wonder —”

  “Wonder at what, Mr. Austen?”

  “Might one of them be one of ours — a ship of His Majesty’s navy?

  “What if this is true?” he asked, squinting through the lens.

  “Do you not think we should turn about to investigate?”

  “I want no part of their business. The sooner we get home the better.”

  Fly’s mind raced back to the decks of the Isabelle, to the desperate situation Captain Moreland and his loyal crew had encountered, surrounded and outgunned by three enemy ships. If only Prickett had heeded his signals for assistance on that June day. “What if they require our help?”

  Prickett returned the glass, and then cleared and lowered his voice. “Mr. Austen, tell no one else, kind sir,” — he gave a darting glance around him — “but my thinking is unclear, my eyes bleary. I have no stamina at present for an engagement of any sort.”

  “Even if we go back far enough so that we may have a clear view of the action. If one of our ships is in trouble we can stand to and wait, and come in if necessary.”

  “It’ll be dark soon.”

  “We shall have good light until half after eight.”

  “Mr. Austen, I am a bundle of palpitations.”

  “Sir! What if it’s the Lady Jane, and she’s being chased by a privateer or an American man-o’-war?” Fly pulled his trump card. “Think of your Admiralty’s orders, sir, given in Halifax.”

  Prickett fiddled with his straining waistband for several indecisive moments and then he looked up at Fly, his features set. “Right! We’ll turn around to investigate. However, if they should both prove to be formidable foes, I’ll put you in charge of handling the gun crews and getting us through it all. See that we suffer no more deaths and no more injuries, for I warrant our Mr. Brockley doesn’t know what he’s about.” With a firm clap on Fly’s arm, Prickett stomped toward the quarterdeck, bellowing with each step he took. “Pass the word for the sailing master! Where the devil has he got to? Quartermaster? What speeds have you recorded on the log board? What’s our present depth? Ah, there’s our master now. Good man, tell the lads to turn her around. We’re going straight at ’em!”

  Fly stared after him, shaking his head, not knowing whet
her to laugh or cry. Amidst whistles and hoots and shouts, the Amethysts worked swiftly to set a new course and tack the ship, turning her bow into the wind. For a time, Fly watched them at their various tasks, and then he walked to the taffrail and leaned upon it, fixing his thoughts upon the stern’s foamy trail, which led and opened into the rolling blue vastness. “I shall never forgive you, old fellow, for abandoning me,” he whispered.

  It was a snuffling Magpie who finally pulled him back to the cares of the present. The little sailmaker touched his fist to his temple in a respectful salute, but his chin was trembling. “Is there a problem in the hospital?” Fly asked.

  “Not at all, sir. Mr. Evans bandaged up the gunners’ burns, and I done the disinfectin’ like ya asked me to. I’ve bin on the mizzen for a bit, sir, and I was wonderin’ if ya’d permit me to go out in the boats with the lads.”

  “The boats?” frowned Fly. “Perhaps, Magpie, sitting way up high on the top, you misunderstood. The master didn’t call for the boats to be lowered. We’re turning around to —”

  “Beg pardon, sir,” he said, his words now coming out in dry gulps. “Ya gotta know! We spotted a body floatin’ in the waves, and I … I need to see if —” He dropped his curly head on his chest, unable to finish his sentence.

  25

  Thursday, August 26

  2:00 p.m.

  Hartwood Hall

  The library door quietly opened and closed. With a small shrug of annoyance, Emily twisted around on the scarlet sofa by the fireplace so that she could identify the interloper. Since her breakfast, eaten in blessed solitude, she had been hiding out, reading in the magnificent dimensions of the library under its mythically painted ceilings, surrounded by gilded and mirrored recesses and endless rows of bookshelves, her shoes off, her legs curled beneath her, and an assortment of medical tomes scattered upon the cushions beside her. But it was an old, mouldy edition of Daniel Dafoe’s The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe that she now held in her hands, having found it so absorbing and evocative that she was reluctant to tear her eyes away from its pages.