"Non, non, mon Dieu, «on!"
"Mademoiselle vicomtesse, je regrette…" he said gently, taking her hands instead. "Charles Auguste, Baron de Crillart… il nous a quittй." Before she had time to take a breath for another hysterical scream, he told her the rest. "Aussi, Chevalier Louis de Crillart, il nous a quittй."
God, how I hate that bloody phrase, he thought; nous a quittй… left us, gone away from us. Like it was their bloody idea!
Sophie let go of his hands, put them to either side of her head as if to tear her hair out by the roots, and screamed and screamed, as she sank to her knees. Had not Phoebe gone down to her, she would have tumbled to the base of the ladder, broken her neck. Phoebe cradled her head upon her breast, crooning to her, gentling her, while Alan stood, embarrassed by his role and his slowness… his uselessness.
"Charles… Louis…!" Sophie wailed, gone white, with her eyes ready to roll back into her head in a faint. "Madame!"
"What?" Lewrie started, finally noticing the blood on her gown.
"Oui, Alain," Phoebe whispered as he went down to them, looking up with tears running free on her face, as bleak as if she'd lost someone, too. "Madame de Crillart. Ze murs, uhm… walls?… zey break open. Boulets de canon? Ze grande dame, elle est morte. Pauvre petite mademoiselle… she 'as lose 'er famille entiиre… 'ave no one, now."
"I…" he whimpered, turning away, overcome. And sure that it was all his own bloody fault! "Oh, bloody…"
"Go, I see to 'er," Phoebe urged. "You' ship, she…"
Lewrie staggered away across the littered quarterdeck, and his borrowed cutlass clattered to the deck as it slipped from his nerveless fingers. He fetched up at the battered taffrails by one of the stern-chasers which still radiated spent heat. Scrubbing bis face with both hands, trying to deny what he'd done, wondering if he could have done something different, taken another course of action that wouldn't have gotten so many innocent and helpless slaughtered.
Off on the nor'east horizon a frigate was flying, pursued by a British ship. Near the transports, both fetched-to and looking as if they'd been knocked about, Cockerel cruised slowly. And the corvette he'd crippled had struck her colours, a Royal Navy ensign flying at her taffrail. How had the civilians fared aboard those transports, he wondered; had they suffered this much, after putting up token opposition, then striking? He feared they hadn't.
Damme, he thought; I could have stood on, just a few minutes longer, endured her fire, and help would have arrived, these French would have had to sheer off, soon as they saw our warships closing…!
He turned to the sound of tumult, saw wounded men being brought aboard, the healthy slowly crawling across the bulwarks as empty-eyed as the defeated, saw his mates and petty officers putting them to work on the chain-pumps after they'd embraced their families, and gotten a sip of something to relieve their dry mouths. Agamemnon fetching-to and lowering her boats-boats crammed with strong, helpful sailors to salve his ship and his prize. And saw men who'd faced battle and suffered come back aboard to find a loved one departed.
Shouldn't be like this, he groused. Hard as the aftermath of a battle is… shouldn't be like this.
Men could fall, be cruelly wounded and linger in their agonies among shipmates, in a tough masculine world where men could josh the dying, buck them up to go game or offer awkward comfort. And grieve for good friends departed, of a certainty, as their canvas-shrouded corpses were put over the side with round-shot at their feet. But to hear the lamentations of the orphaned, the widowed… 'stead of imagining some far-off bereavement, notified half a year later that the son, the father, the brother, the husband or lover was Discharged, Dead…!
"Shouldn't ought to be like this," he muttered, leaning on the taffrails for a few, last private moments, letting his own tears flow, choking on his own bereaved sobs before stern duty recalled him.
Phoebe had quieted Sophie de Maubeuge, last vicomtesse of her lineage, turned her over to the care of another aristocratic family's women, and made her way back up the quarter-deck ladder to find him. She saw him far aft, leaning forward, head down, squeezing the rails, and her heart went out to him. She hitched up her skirts, ready to run to him, but Spendlove intervened.
"Ma'am?" he called, stepping in front of her, snuffling himself as the list of familiar hands who'd fallen accumulated in his ledger, as he recognised the bodies of friends and mentors and troublemakers from a full year's association. "Don't. Not now."
"M'sieur Spen'loove, 'e need…" Phoebe pled weakly.
"Ma'am," Spendlove objected gently, taking her nearest hand, "I know you an' Mister Lewrie… well, 'tain't my place to say, what's… but, ma'am? Do you care for him? Do you love him?"
"Vis all ma 'eart!" she declared, weeping anew at the force of her affection.
"Then, ma'am… give him a minute or two more, if you do," Mister Midshipman Spendlove dared to suggest. "He'll be back with us. For now, though, ma'am… let Mister Lewrie… let our captain have a cry."
L'ENVOI
Cessere ratemque accepere mari. Per quot
discrimina rerum expediter!
They have yielded, they have received
the vessel on the sea. I find my way,
now, through many a change in
Fortune.
– Valerius Flaccus
Argonautica, Book 1,216-218
Twilight at Gibraltar on the decks of H.M.S. Victory, the fleet anchored about her, with glims and binnacle and belfry lights agleam, and lanterns strung by entry-ports, poop and quarterdeck aboard the flagship. Wardroom and great-cabin lights reflected off the waters from over forty vessels. And from the transports from England: the ships that had brought, just a few weeks too late, the regiments of British Redcoats that might have made the difference, the ones held back too long by indifference, miscommunication. They'd put in to Gibraltar just days before Admiral Hood's ships had returned from the defeat at Toulon, as if in the worst sort of mockery. They had been held at Gibraltar, pending instructions from Hood to send them on to him, though he had no idea of their arrival at all, and was even then arranging for the hurried evacuation of Coalition forces.
Lewrie paced fretfully, turned out in the best that local chandlers could boast, now his packet had come from home; pristine new breeches, waist-coat and shirt, and a new hat. He'd clung to the Hessian boots, though-they seemed to be all the rage among Sea Officers lately-and, perversely, to the tatty older coat. He wore an elegant smallsword at his hip, taken from the captain of the corvette he had captured as prize, though he still longed for his original hanger.
"Lieutenant Lewrie?" a flag lieutenant called at last. "Milord Hood is now free, and may see you, sir."
Lewrie crossed the vast expanse of Victory's quarterdeck, aft to the admiral's quarters under the poop-but was brought up short by the sight of Captain Howard Braxton leaving those great-cabins. He seemed ill, as ill as he had in the days just after his recovery; spent and old, white-faced, the incline of his mouth to larboard even more pronounced.
"Sir," Lewrie said icily, doffing his hat properly in salute.
It took Braxton a moment to notice him. When he did, he turned even paler, almost dropped the bundles of logbooks and ledgers he bore. Then his eyes flared before slitting in anger, and mottled ire coloured his cheeks. "Goddamn you, sir!" Braxton bleated in a harsh whisper. "Happy now, are you, Lewrie? Happy now! May God damn you to hell!" he hissed, before stalking away for the entry-port.