The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  “She wasn’t on that ship, Ishmael. She left earlier.”

  “They don’t know that you know that. It will give you a reason to get on her deck, to see if any military officers are on board. Surely there can’t be many with passage on a merchant ship. If there’s only two then you can discover their faces, maybe even their real names.”

  Duncan borrowed the telescope kept on the quarterdeck and studied the ship. It was a tempting suggestion. If the two men were indeed on board, he might even get some notion of when they would arrive in London.

  But then suddenly there was a movement of bright color on the deck as figures emerged from a passage. His heart sank and he handed the telescope to Ishmael. “Not now,” he said. There were over a dozen scarlet-coated army officers on the ship.

  They were awakened shortly after dawn by angry shouts from the main deck. The only time Duncan had heard their Welsh captain raise his voice had been during the storm, to be heard over the wind, but now he raged as loudly as during the height of the gale. “You have no right!” Captain Rhys shouted. “The owners will hear of this, by God!”

  As Duncan ventured to the galley for breakfast porridge and bacon, he puzzled over the busy sound of hammers. It was not the sound of repair work in the rigging; it was the sound of carpenters arranging new berths by knocking down bulkheads and erecting new walls, much as was done on warships before and after battle. When he and Ishmael finally emerged into the main deck’s chaos of sawhorses, nail casks, lumber, saws, and mallets, they discovered that many in the work party were from the naval yard, under the supervision of a young lieutenant.

  Duncan approached the rail to stand beside the bosun, a wiry, compact man named Darby who had been born in Ayrshire, on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Darby watched the naval work party with obvious disapproval. “Spit and polish it’ll be all the way to the pool of the Thames,” he groused. “And pray to God no one recognizes the deserters among our crew.”

  “I don’t follow,” Duncan admitted.

  “The captain was much put out when that colonel came aboard with his damned orders, expecting us to do his bidding without as much as a by your leave. But then the colonel offers to speak with the port commissioner about supplying all the stores we need to make repairs this very day, with naval carpenters to complete them, then agrees to add officer victuals, not just for the new passengers but for all our own officers and Philadelphia passengers. Plus a case of brandy so long as we can weigh anchor on tomorrow morning’s tide. ’Course the captain, practical man as he is, knows it means there’ll be no ships from America for days after ours, so the bidding will be high for his cargo. ‘So well,’ says Captain Rhys with a salute, ‘if it’s a military necessity then we will do our duty and God save the king.’ ”

  “New passengers?” Ishmael asked over Darby’s shoulder.

  “Here come the pretty boys themselves,” said the bosun, pointing in the direction of the ship with the mermaid figurehead. “Two buckets of damned lobsters.”

  Duncan’s heart sank as he saw the two launches approaching the Galileo. They were packed with red-coated officers. His mind raced. He darted down the passageway to the captain’s cabin and did not wait for a reply to his urgent knock, then entered to see Captain Rhys standing over a table strewn with charts.

  “McCallum,” he acknowledged stiffly. The two men had grown friendly during the storm, when Duncan had helped save the ship more than once by ascending the shrouds to cut away torn rigging. But Duncan knew it was a breach of etiquette to intrude so on the captain.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but you have men in the sick bay,” Duncan observed.

  “Regrettably, yes.”

  “You recall I set a broken arm. It needs close watching, and that gouge from the stay was deep. It could fester if not frequently cleaned and hydrated. Not to mention the concussion.”

  “I’m not sure I follow. We do the best we can.”

  “I wish to be assigned as ship’s surgeon. I studied medicine at the university in Edinburgh. And if you have need, I can still reef sail as well as any able-bodied seaman. My companion can pass as the surgeon’s mate.”

  “McCallum, why would you suddenly want to—” The captain paused. “This has to do with our new passengers,” he ventured.

  “I fought in the French War as a ranger, the irregular troops, they called us. Rangers and lobsterbacks don’t mix well. We can take mess with the crew and sleep in the infirmary. We ask for no special privileges.”

  The captain studied Duncan. “You’ll want refund of your passage fare,” he guessed.

  “Not at all. Mr. Mulligan paid full fare for us in Philadelphia and he need never know about this arrangement. You and I will simply be doing ourselves a mutual favor. The crew just needs to call me their surgeon. Let them think perhaps I am a deserter who fears close contact with the soldiers.”

  The Welshman’s bearded face slowly broke into a grin, and he offered his hand. “I just wish I could avoid the prigs as well,” he said.

  “Bates, Ishmael is going to tie you to your cot if you persist in squirming so!” Duncan railed at his patient, the seaman who had taken a bad fall during the storm.

  “But I feel fine, sir. My mates will think I’m a malingerer.”

  “That fall caused a swelling in your cerebellum,” Duncan explained. “Until your headaches disappear and your eyes can focus enough for you to read, you will not go aloft.”

  Bates reflected his dissatisfaction with an exaggerated grimace, then turned over in his cot to face the wall, pulling the blanket over him. “Don’t even think I got one of those cerebellums,” he muttered. “And it’d be a miracle indeed if suddenly I knew how to read.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bates,” Duncan said to his back. “Reading lessons will be given by Mr. Ishmael starting at eight bells on the forenoon watch.” It was Ishmael’s turn to grimace.

  Duncan turned to the Nipmuc as Bates sullenly pulled the blanket over his head. “It will give you something to pass the time.”

  “I’d rather be aloft,” Ishmael said. He had been disappearing for hours at a time, climbing to the maintop or sometimes even the lofty crosstrees, where he tied himself to the mast and read books borrowed from the purser, a literate man who had abandoned his shorebound life as a merchant when his family had all died of the black flux.

  Duncan would have greatly enjoyed their long days of fast, fair-weather sailing were it not for the boisterous, haughty officers who dominated the main deck when they were not draining bottles of claret in the mess cabin. He was able to avoid them while performing his duties as surgeon, which he lingered over as long as possible. Several times a day he slipped past them to join Ishmael at his high perch. His grandfather used to scold him good-naturedly for his skylarking, swinging through the rigging of the old Scot’s ketch, and he resisted the frequent temptation to swing from mast to mast now.

  He lost himself instead in watching the ever-changing Atlantic. Seldom did an hour go by without the sighting of a whale, and sometimes they would spy great schools of the leviathans, too numerous to count. One day they reduced sail to join with an outbound Portsmouth merchantman, learning that French forces had invaded Corsica over British protests and that Parliament was so upset with Prime Minister Grafton for allowing it that he might be swept from office. That night in the crew mess several of the sailors perversely toasted the French victory.

  The bosun was able to find some paper for Duncan, and he took advantage of the languid pace of life on board to begin a letter to Edentown.

  Dearest Sarah—

  Long ago my grandfather introduced me to the nautical tradition of sea letters, composed over weeks and even months so that they read more like a journal than a mere missive. Once he even read to me a thirty-page letter written by his own father who served as mate on one of the early tobacco ships, written to the woman he loved. Now I will write to the woman I love and, if you can suffer it, sometimes express confidences I would not offer to anyone else, f
or you are my conscience, mo muirninn, the other half of my heart.

  We endured a furious tempest for days after leaving the American coast, one so severe that I fear lesser ships with lesser captains may not have survived. Ishmael, who suffered greatly but now recovers, says it was brought on by the incognitum, not to kill us but to remind us that the hand of his ancient world is upon us. He states it was a dire wind populated by demons, but also one that portends momentous deeds of far-reaching consequences. I know not of great deeds but demons do now inhabit our world. We were forced into Halifax for repairs, where a score of army officers joined us, several out of Philadelphia, including the two you encountered at the tavern. My hunter’s instinct tells me the killers of our friends are among them—and if true, Ishmael will doubtless say the hand of the incognitum brought them to us.

  But enough of the darkness. I am a captive of the Atlantic for a few weeks, and have begun to taste the joys I first felt sailing on my grandfather’s ketch. My favorite berth has always been atop a mast, and now that I have introduced Ishmael to the joys of perching in the tops he seems addicted to them. My grandfather used to say up there you grow into the endlessness. When I asked him to explain he said he couldn’t, because it was my turn to grow into it. It took me a long time but eventually I knew he meant that although at first you feel tiny and insignificant up there, gradually you become part of the majesty, part of the never-ending power of the planet. The dear old man, who insisted his aunt was a selkie, also said that if you look at it long enough the sea will push back everything that is incomplete in your life. When I look at it long enough, Ezra and Pierre are staring back.

  Duncan read over what he had written, the likely first of many installments, before folding it into the oilcloth pouch he would keep it in. There were questions he wanted to ask Sarah, but refrained from putting them into writing. Who did she meet in secret on a Boston ship? Why, he kept wondering, would she meet with Ezra about his mission on the Ohio? Most of all he remembered the way she had recited the words of an Iroquois on the warpath when she had gazed at the ruins of Preston House. A warrior must be blooded, she had said, like an angry vow.

  The crew were much like the calloused but gentlehearted men Duncan had known from his Hebrides sailing days. Several of them were indeed Scots, and over the simple but plentiful meals they often shared stories of the old life in their beloved homeland. No one acknowledged, though every one of them knew, that their old way of life had been extinguished by men wearing the same scarlet coats as their passengers.

  The captain’s own patience with his military passengers quickly wore thin, and he began inviting Duncan and Ishmael to join him for private meals in his cabin. “They roister about my ship as if they owned it, damn their eyes,” he groused over one of their ample lunches. “Why, my bosun Darby says they are bribing the cook to siphon my best wine into their bottles. Thank God for these winds, for we’ll see them off on the Thames soon enough.” The flinty-eyed Welshman glared at the door as a raucous laugh rose in the passageway. “Too damned idle, that’s the problem. They are from different regiments, just thrown together for the voyage, so there’s no one really in charge. Except that strutting Major Hastings seems to think he is running everything, including my ship. They seek out mischief like schoolboys on a holiday.” He lowered his voice. “Darby found some of them in the aft hold, exploring the cargo. They said they were just accessing their trunks, but they weren’t anywhere near their own baggage, and they had been well instructed that they needed permission to enter the holds.”

  Duncan exchanged a quick glance with Ishmael. “Why tell us?”

  “Because Darby says they were showing unnatural interest in a great curving object wrapped in straw and canvas. I recollect that particular item is yours, McCallum.”

  Duncan, feigning indifference, gave a shrug. “Probably just trying to capture rats for their competitions.” After a week on board, the officers had taken to betting on inane events like whether a seaman climbing the port shrouds would reach the top faster than one on the starboard shrouds, or how long a great whale would stay submerged after breaching. When the galley had caught two rats in a cage, they had taken to staging races across the main deck. “Of course,” he added, “I doubt the owners would take kindly to strangers, even officers of the king, rummaging about the cargo. Not to mention how they might shift crates in their quest for new rodent champions.”

  It was a point that resonated with Captain Rhys. Shifting crates could affect the lay of the ship in the water, which in turn could affect her speed and handling. The Welshman frowned. “Surely they wouldn’t be so foolish.” He eyed Duncan silently, clearly suspecting there were secrets about Duncan’s cargo that were not being shared, and noticed the excitement on Ishmael’s face. The news was the closest thing yet to evidence the killers were on board. “I’ll have the bosun remind them at their next meal and have him keep a watch on the hatch into the aft hold.”

  “It was probably that loud artillery officer who’s always boasting of his winnings,” Ishmael said, catching Duncan’s eye. “Perhaps trying to stow some of his new coin.” They had been carefully assessing the officers from a distance, identifying five that might fit the vague description they had of the killers.

  “No, surprisingly it was that major and his aide, the glib lieutenant who stays at his side like the faithful pup.”

  Duncan tried not to react to the news. He had carefully avoided the only two men he had encountered previously, the energetic lieutenant and the arrogant major whose wig Sarah had pinned to a tavern mantel.

  Duncan’s former patient Bates stirred Duncan and Ishmael from sleep early the next morning. “Beg pardon, sir,” Bates said to Duncan.

  “Are you bleeding?” Duncan asked, pointing to a red trickle along the sailor’s temple.

  “A scratch, nothing more, but it’s why I’m here, ye might say. One came back, and I knocked him good with a belaying pin.”

  “I am afraid I am a bit dull from slumber,” Duncan admitted, rubbing his eyes.

  “On sentinel duty,” Bates said, “we’ve been keeping watch on the aft hold from the shadows, like Mr. Darby said.”

  Duncan gestured Bates closer to examine his wound. “He came in the dark, with a muted lantern,” Bates explained. “I gave him a chance at first, since sometimes a man just wants a bit of privacy, but he got right to it, pushing aside the bales of skins we had stacked in front of your crates. When he starts prying at the top one I sprang up and said we brook no thievery on this good ship, and let ’im have it.”

  “Have what exactly, Bates?”

  “Like I said, a hard swing of my belaying pin. Ye can do some damage with a good oak pin. We used them to repel boarders off Madagascar once. Just a glancing blow to the skull, mind. I refrained from crushing his throat or smashing his kidneys.”

  “And he fought back?” Ishmael asked.

  “He just groaned and spun about, then dropped. For a moment or two he lay there like a turbot on ice, if ye get my meaning, then he found his feet and fled. If he’s got one of those cerebellums it be aching something fierce by now.” Bates touched the bloody spot on his head. “That I got when I slipped on the ladder trying to catch the bastard. The bosun says we’re to hang strands with fresh yellow paint on them tonight, so as to mark the intruders.”

  “Did you see his face?” Duncan asked.

  “It was that dark, sir. Slight in build and young. A thin face. He weren’t one of the crew, I be sure of that. Had to be one of those lobsterbacks.”

  The young lobsterback who showed up at sick call was an ensign from an infantry regiment whom Duncan had treated once before for a particularly intense hangover, which Duncan had suspected was his first ever. He now wore a cap pulled low over his head.

  “It’s a piercing awful headache, doctor,” the nervous officer moaned.

  “Ensign Lewis, I recall,” Duncan ventured.

  “Aye, sir. You gave me willow bark last time that helped considera
bly.”

  “I can prepare willow bark,” Duncan replied with a nod. His hand shot up to remove the cap.

  Lewis just stared down into his hands.

  “I wasn’t aware we engaged the enemy last night, Ensign Lewis,” Duncan observed as he studied the broken skin along the top of Lewis’s scalp.

  “No sir, yes sir. I mean—I had an accident.”

  Duncan pushed the young officer’s head down. Blood was still oozing from the wound. “Ensign, I will be challenged to know how to treat such a wound if I don’t know how it happened. Without knowing what kind of contamination was presented, we face the danger of putrefaction,” he declared, working to put solemn warning in his voice.

  “Mother Mary! My head? My head might putrefy?”

  “I fear it. As it is, I would just shave it and stitch it up.”

  “Shave my head?” the ensign cried. “Prithee, sir, no! Just some willow bark and I will be on my way. With a shaved head they would mock me all the way to London. I have neither means nor opportunity to purchase a wig.”

  “Then I will dress the wound the best I can and you must return once a day until I say otherwise. It would go better if you would explain how this happened. Did one of the officers beat you, perhaps? They seem an imperious short-tempered lot.”

  “Never! I mustn’t speak ill of them! I had an urge, sir, in the middle of the night and fell in the dark passage on the way to the head.”

  Duncan pretended to examine the wound further while he considered the opportunity the ensign presented. He could be a valuable source of information. “Glad to hear that. Some of your companions look like they could handle themselves in a scrape. My sense is they’re not just some of those pudgy staff officers who inhabit garrison headquarters.”

  “Oh no, we have some prodigious warriors among us. Most bore arms in the French War. Major Hastings and his lieutenant trained with the famous rangers, and even fought the savages!”