“Criminals are unknowable,” said Lenox. “A dissatisfaction I have still yet to learn how to live with.”
Tradescant came forward. “We must permit Mr. Lenox a respite from our conversation, Captain,” he said.
“Of course, of course.”
Lenox thought it foolish—he couldn’t sleep again after all that sleep, surely—and yet when they had gone he sank almost instantly into the same profound rest he had taken before. The last thing he remembered was Fizz, the little terrier, jumping up onto the bed and lumping himself companionably against Lenox’s leg, happy for the warmth. It was a comfort.
When he woke it was dark out, and Tradescant was leaning over him. “Fever almost gone. All that’s wrong with you now is a sunburn and your … perhaps less than optimal physical condition.”
“Too many parliamentary dinners,” said Lenox.
“It was certainly an unaccustomed amount of exercise,” said Tradescant, and laughed dryly at his own joke. “But rest again, please. Rest again.”
Only in the morning did Lenox at last feel himself. His skin still tingled and prickled with heat, as it might when he overpeppered his food, but he felt clear-eyed.
It was neither Tradescant nor Carrow whose footsteps woke him now, but McEwan’s, and, behind him, Evers’s.
The small deal table beside Lenox’s sickbed had been empty the night before, but since then had become a smaller replica of his desk. There was his Darwin, his letter paper, his pen and ink, his water pitcher, his toast-rack-correspondence stand, even the small picture of Jane.
Lenox was touched. “You did this?” he said to McEwan. “Thank you.”
“You must be hungry by now,” said McEwan. “Surely, sir.” His voice was pained.
“I am, in fact. I have a roaring appetite.”
With a great exhale of relief McEwan left, saying not so much as a word.
Evers sidled up to the bed. “Paying my respects, sir,” he said.
“I’ve yet to thank you properly for your acting performance. The stage lost a star when you went to sea I think, Evers.”
The bluejacket laughed. “Well, and perhaps the sea lost a sailor when you took up to politicking and detecting and all sorts. You’re a proper Lucy, now you’ve half drowned yourself.”
“Out of the way!” McEwan bellowed from the doorway, and came past Evers with a heavy tray, laden with every manner of fowl and pastry and vegetable he had been able to conjure. Lenox took a piece of lightly buttered toast and a cup of tea, to see how they would sit with him. Evers touched his cap and left with a promise to be back, but McEwan, rather disconcertingly, watched every bite go down, each of them a small drama to him, full of suspense until Lenox had completed the ritual of mastication and ingestion.
After the tea and toast Lenox made his way through a leg of cold chicken and a half of a new potato.
McEwan took the tray away with a promise to be back soon. Lenox read Darwin and dozed, still physically worn out, pleased to be alive. Occasionally the feeling of the water, or the terror of being at the mercy of Billings, came back to him, but he felt safe on the ship. There was a cool breeze that reached him now and then, and he thought he might almost attain the quarterdeck, if a chair could be placed by the railing there.
When McEwan returned it was with a treat. With great ingenuity he had somehow manufactured a small cup of cool sherbet. It was orange-flavored—“Saved the peels of your oranges,” he said with a hint of entirely justifiable arrogance—and Lenox thought he had never tasted anything sweeter or more refreshing. It took all the heat out of his cheeks and soothed him to no end.
The next morning he wrote at length to Lady Jane, a letter he might never send so as not to alarm her, and then, with McEwan’s help and Tradescant’s permission, began the slow climb to the quarterdeck. It was arduous work, as difficult in its way as attaining the crow’s nest, but eventually he reached the hatchway.
When he poked his head through, his breathing labored, he heard all the chatter of the deck stop.
He looked up to see that every pair of eyes was on him, from the foremast to the mizzenmast, the deck to the crow’s nest. Then, spontaneously, the men and the officers broke into a long ringing applause.
“Three cheers!” said Andersen, the Swede, and the men gave Lenox three cheers, before clustering around to help him to his chair.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
They reached Port Said two days later. On the final morning of their voyage Lenox felt truly well for perhaps the first time since his long swim, still greatly weakened but now capable of moving about the ship on his own. He spent a great many hours with his nephew Teddy, whom, though the ship was shorthanded for officers, Carrow permitted some degree of latitude in his duties.
The men seemed to bear a philosophical attitude toward Billings’s actions, and now his disappearance. Death was not uncommon at sea, perhaps. There were words of sadness for Captain Martin (still unburied) and at first a great deal of gossip on the decks, but even twenty-four hours after Lenox’s swim, while Lenox was only just returning to consciousness, the ship had apparently become itself again—albeit with a much reduced wardroom. Evers was back in his crow’s nest, Andersen back on the rigging, and Alice Cresswell walking the poop deck as a fourth lieutenant with all the pride and pomp of a king at his coronation.
Lenox watched their approach to the port from the railing at the Lucy’s spar. It was a marvel, this city. He realized that he had previously thought of the Suez Canal as a modest piece of imperial construction, for all of its expense and fame. Now he saw that it was unlike anything else in the world.
There were ships of every nation, Dutch flags, French ones, a dozen others, crowding the waters of the port. The air was black with steam, the docks frantic with action, and the sheer multitude of small craft on the water was overwhelming. In fact the water seemed more densely populated than the town. Men in skiffs went between all the larger ships, selling fresh fish and Egyptian delicacies. There were pleasure boats with prostitutes crowding their decks, official boats levying taxes and examining goods. Every one of them seemed to linger in the Lucy’s path until the last possible moment.
When they were quite close to dropping anchor, Carrow came to stand beside Lenox. “And this is what we’re hoping to buy into?” he said.
“I believe so.”
“It’s closer to Gehenna than anything I ever saw.”
“Certainly it gives an overpowering impression.”
“Filth, children running loose, any manner of ship crowding our boards. The men will love it. Hauling them back onto the Lucy at the end of a week’s time would be no pleasure, so I fear I must keep them on board. Still, I doubt they’ll mind if I permit them the freedom of the pleasure barges—most of them are close to jumping off and swimming every time one passes anyhow.”
“How will you spend your time in port?”
“There is a great deal to do about the ship, taking inventory, that sort of thing. I don’t doubt there will be congenial company if I do go on land.”
“You must come to dine with me, at least,” said Lenox.
“I should be honored. And there may well be other officers I’ve met, of our nation and others, staying at the officers’ club here.”
“You’re a captain now,” said Lenox, half as a question.
Carrow laughed. “Hard to believe, I know, and I never imagined how bitterly I would regret fulfilling my boyhood dream. Martin dead, Halifax gone, Billings a monster living in our midst all this while. Even Butterworth I thought I knew. Not a talkative chap, but not unkind either.”