The French Admiral Read online

  “Smelt like a farm, though, sir,” Cony said almost in his ear, taking dangerous liberty with ship’s discipline and the separation expected between a common seaman and a midshipman. “Cain’t hide that from my nose, sir.”

  “We shall see directly, then,” Alan said, trying to appear as stoical as a post-captain, while ready to squirm with anticipation. It was five minutes before Mollow came sneaking through the brush to them, almost on his hands and knees.

  “We’re in luck, that we are,” Mollow said, showing the same lack of formality to Lewrie that he had to his own lieutenant before.

  “Was it a cow?” Alan asked, still whispering.

  “It’s a whole damn fuckin’ ark over thar,” Mollow said. “Farm paddock an’ pastures. They’s a cow with two calves, coupla sheep an’ two half-grown pigs. Mighty skittish, so we don’t wanta spook ’em. Mighta been turned out wild. No sign o’ life from the house yit. Mister Burgess is a’checkin’ that out now, but we can move up. Mind ya do it quiet, now. I’ll fetch the horses.”

  They followed Mollow’s trail through the woods until they reached a rail fence made of split pine logs stacked zigzag atop each other waist high. Mollow had very quietly taken a stretch of them down to let room for the horses to be led through. There was a dry dirt lane before them that led to a wider clearing to the left and the hint of a house and some outbuildings. In a pasture directly ahead of them, there were some animals grazing or rooting about, warily distanced to the far side of the pasture near the trees, but showing no real signs of distress.

  “Put a halter on that cow, an’ the little ’uns’ll tag along quiet as mice, Mister Lewrie,” Cony said, taking his musket off half cock. “Pigs might be a problem, though, sir.”

  “We could pack them back on the horses once they’re dead.”

  “Better’n venison any day, sir,” Cony said, slinging his gun and heading off for the farmstead to the left.

  Ensign Chiswick met them in the middle of the road, his rifle also now slung muzzle down and a rag wrapped around the lock to keep dirt out.

  “Place looks abandoned,” he said in a normal tone of voice. “The barn’s been burned down and the house appears to have been looted. The doors and window shutters are off and the yard’s full of castoffs.”

  “It’s not hunting, but we’ll take something home for the pot,” Alan said, glad that they did not have to take aim and fire at something that would draw attention to themselves.

  “And look what else I found,” Chiswick said, holding up his left hand in triumph.

  It looked like a rough lump of candle wax, which made Alan wonder just what a colonial thought valuable.

  “It’s soap!” Chiswick chortled. “Homemade soap. Might take the hide off you, but it’ll get you clean enough for a burying.”

  “I’d pass on the burying,” Alan said quickly, “but it has been a time since I had a full bath.”

  “I had noticed,” Chiswick japed, wrinkling his nose as though he thought Alan stank worse than most people did. “There is a small creek in the place, dammed up below the barn for a stock pond. Once we get these animals rounded up, we may bathe before heading back.”

  “Is that safe, way out here?” Alan asked.

  “Nothing ran those animals off, so it should be. Now, how are you at roping wild pigs?”

  It turned out that Alan was terrible at roping wild pigs. It was easy enough to get a rope around the neck of the mother cow, for they had not been running wild very long. Once she was led into the barnyard, her calves followed along docilely enough. The sheep could be hemmed in with much shouting and waving into a corner of fencing, where Alan could dive onto one and hold it down until a lead could be placed on it. In the barnyard they found two chickens and a rooster, which were despatched with a piece of light wood and gutted on the spot to tie them on the saddles.

  The pigs, though. The pigs were devils in disguise, squealing and snorting and making mock charges at them, almost impossible to grab and fast as the wind for being built so low to the ground. A man on horseback could not keep up with their bursts of speed or match their twists and turns. Mollow was an expert with a length of rope, forming a noose at one end and throwing it in a whistling arc to settle over any target’s neck to draw snug, making it look like an effortless skill. Even that did not avail over the thick necks of the pigs.

  “The devil with it!” Alan gasped after his fourth trip at a dead run across the pasture. “Why don’t we . . . just shoot . . . the buggers?”

  “Suppose we’ll have to,” Chiswick said, panting on his knees by Lewrie. “Hate to do it, though.”

  “I hate the bastards,” Alan growled. “I’ll do it!”

  “The noise is what I meant. Look out!”

  One of the pigs had raced back straight for them, evidently wanting to get his own back. He was not a wild boar with tusks to slash a man open, but he had a mean set of teeth anyway. Chiswick jumped free, but Alan could not move in time and could only roll away as the hog slammed into him at full tilt, almost knocking all the wind out of him, rooting with his snout at Alan’s crotch.

  “Damned if you do!” Alan cried, drawing his dirk with one hand and grabbing a forefoot with the other. He stabbed down, up, sideways, as the hog rolled him like a slopbucket around the pasture and began to squeal in pain. Alan had a chance to roll on top and get a few more strokes in with his dirk while the blood flew like a fountain. Finally, assured the animal was dead, he gladly got to his feet and backed away.

  The other pig succumbed to a rifle shot, and their course in animal husbandry was over for the day, leaving them time to laugh at Lewrie’s appearance. He was pig blood and pig shit, old, dried cow pats and grass stains from head to foot, his stockings torn down to his ankles, one shoe missing, and the seams of his jacket ripped open. The black ribbon that bound his clubbed-back hair was gone and his hair hung lank and dirty on either side of his face.

  “Hurrah, you done fer ’im, sir!” Cony roared, taking an opportunity to get a laugh on an officer-to-be.

  “Might be needin’ this,” Mollow said, offering him his shoe.

  “Still have that soap, Chiswick?” Alan glared, his chest heaving for air after his battle to the death with an enraged porker. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer of a bath.”

  They slit both pigs’ throats, dragged them into the farmyard and hung them up to bleed fully after slicing their bellies open and gutting them. Mollow made a drag from two fence poles depended from one of the horses’ saddles and laced them together so that the carcasses could be carried. Then Chiswick gallantly offered to stand guard while Cony and Lewrie got an opportunity for a wash in the stock pond.

  Cony was having little of it. He took off his shirt, socks and shoes, rolled up his slop trousers and waded in for a quick splash, not having much use for soap. “’Tis unhealthy ta take too many baths, sir, so it is,” he said firmly. “One at yer birthin’, one at yer weddin’, one at yer dyin’, that’s all a good Englishman needs.”

  Alan, though, was happy to shuck his clothes and let them soak in the pond while he waded in with soap in hand, naked as the day he was born.

  There was little enough fresh water aboard ship, rationed at one gallon per day per man, and most of that used for boiling rations in the steep-tubs, with only a pint a day for sponging or shaving, so it was heaven to lie back with his posterior resting on the shallow bottom and lave himself with water warmed by the sun. He scrubbed with the hard lump of soap until all his saltwater boils and chafes stung, but it felt like a healing sting, like staunching a cut in seawater. He stood up knee deep and lathered his whole body, then dunked and rinsed. He soaped his scalp and rubbed and scratched with his fingers until his hair felt almost squeaky between his hands.

  “A little bit of heaven, is it not?” Burgess asked, squatting by the bank with rifle in hand to stand guard for him.

  “Maybe it is dangerous to staunch one’s perspiration, or bathe too often, but now and then, it’s marvel
ous!” Alan sighed happily.

  “I told your seaman to scrub out the worst from your uniform.”

  “Thank you right kindly, Chiswick. Let me know when this is maddening to you and I shall spend another twenty minutes in the water.”

  “Take your time.” Chiswick waved as if it did not matter. “I had a dunk two days ago in a creek closer to the town. Don’t forget to do behind your ears. Your momma would not allow that to pass unwashed.”

  “Never had one,” Alan replied. “I’ve always had dirty ears. No one would know me without them.”

  “For dear old nurse, then,” Chiswick shot back. He rose to his feet and took a long look around. “This must have been a nice farm once.”

  “Really?” Alan said, wondering what had been so nice about a cabin made of pine logs with no mark of real civilization to it.

  “For this part of the world, yes,” Chiswick said, changing his tone, which made Alan swivel to look at him. “More than half the farmers in the Colonies would give dearly to look so prosperous or orderly.”

  “What was your own place like?” Alan asked, raising one leg to give it equal treatment with the soap.

  “Oh, we were proper squires in the Carolinas,” Burgess said, smiling but not much amused by the remembrance. “Had a brick house and some columns out on the portico. Painted barns and outbuildings. We grew tobacco, corn, rice, and timber, and had the mill, too. Tried our hand with indigo, but never got the hang of it, not like some closer to the coast. We had a decent herd of cattle and sheep. And some really fine horses.”

  “I hope you killed all your pigs . . . painfully,” Alan said.

  “Never asked ’em.” Burgess grinned.

  “So you were what my whore in Charlestown called Tide-water people?”

  “Charleston,” Burgess corrected without thought. “Yes, we were, in a way. Sort of betwixt and between Piedmonters and Tidewater, not fully one or the other. People firmly established in the Tidewater put on more airs than we could afford.”

  “I’m sorry you got burned out,” Alan said, rising and dripping water as he waded the few paces ashore. “Regular troops or Regulators or whatever?”

  “You did learn a lot from that whore of yours,” Burgess replied, tossing him a scrap of cloth with which to dry himself. It had been some woman’s sack gown once, a light blue linen worked with white embroidery in a pattern that was now hard to identify, evidently something that Burgess had found in the house or the yard, smelling strongly of mildew and leaf mold. It was fairly clean and dry, though, so he used it without another care.

  “No, ’twas a troop of horse rode through while the army and the militia were away over toward Charlotte,” Burgess said, his hazel eyes narrowing in anger. “Wild as over-mountain men, not even an organized troop, most of ’em. Some local hothead Patriots, too, as they like to style themselves. Most of our neighbors were Scots, loyal to the Crown.”

  “Were you there then?” Alan asked, sitting down in the sun to finish drying with the scrap of gown across his lap for modesty.

  “Aye, I was there.” Burgess winced, his hands growing tight on the rifle. “My daddy and momma, my sister Caroline, and my younger brother.”

  “Did they harm any of you?”

  “They shot George.” Burgess glared. “Shot him down like a dog. He was just fourteen; he didn’t know. They were taking his favorite horse and he went after them and . . . they just shot him down. And they laughed. He bled to death before we could do anything for him.”

  “My God, I’m sorry, Chiswick,” Alan said, shocked in spite of all the deaths he had seen in his short time in the Navy.

  Burgess went on. “Could have been worse. Their leader, one of the local Rebels, was a gentleman. Else we’d have all been killed, and my momma and sister raped. Their leader had that man beat half to death right on the spot. But then, he went on looting the place after that, so it wasn’t much comfort to us. We all got used pretty ill, anyway, what with all the shoving and pushing. Couple of our house servants got shot, and they ran off the rest, along with the stock. Then they allowed us some time to gather what we could, and torched the place.”

  Alan didn’t know what to say, so he finished dressing. Cony had done a fair job as hammock-man and had gotten out all the worst smuts.

  “I’ll stand guard for your bath now,” Alan offered.

  “I knew that bastard, Lewrie,” Burgess almost moaned.

  “That Rebel neighbor?”

  “It was one of our cousins,” Burgess said, verging on tears.

  “Holy shit on a biscuit!” Alan gaped. That proves it. The whole bloody country’s mad as a lunatick in Bedlam, he thought.

  “I grew up with him, played with him, hunted with him, sported with him and his family,” Burgess said. “They were better off than us, real squires of the county. They had no use for more land, but they’ve got ours now, and some of our slaves and our stock. From Momma’s side they were, in the Carolina’s longer than we were, closer to Wilmington, and the town turned into a hotbed of rebellion until we occupied it. Their daddy was at all the meetings and conventions, saying he was for the King and only wanted his rights as an Englishman, but then they all changed and turned on us ’cause Daddy was a newcomer and stood up for King George. God, I cannot tell you how much I hate them. How I want to see them suffer and die. You cannot know what it is to be betrayed by your own blood!”

  “The hell I can’t,” Alan said without mirth. “When we get back I shall tell you about it, if there’s time. But if we got our wishes, a battalion of people would be consigned to Hell. Now stick your head under water for a while to cool the heat of your blood.”

  “I guess they used us for an example, of what would happen if any more of our neighbors stayed Loyalist.” Burgess muttered on as he stripped away his uniform to take a scrub. “Like I said, most of our neighbors were Scots. They came over after Culloden, and when they give an oath, they never break it. Most of the lower Cape Fear is like that, around Cross Creek and Campbelltown. I suppose we were just too good a target. Daddy had helped Colonel Hamilton outfit the Royal North Carolina Regiment, our unit, so they had to do something to punish us, what with Governour already with the colors and all, and half the men away fighting. But we felt so safe there, with our neighbors of one mind with us to support the Crown. And with the Fannings and Cunninghams and Tarletons on our side raiding the Rebels, they had to respond. But everyone in the county loved George, Lewrie. He was the best horseman and hunter going, not afraid of anything. I’d rather it had been me, sometimes.”

  “But your family is safe, now,” Alan said, trying to change the subject. God, he thought, and I believed I had a vicious set of relations.

  “For the moment,” Burgess said, wading into the water and sitting down in the shallows. He did duck his head and came up spluttering, and it seemed to calm him. “Wilmington, though, is full of Rebels and sympathizers. Were it not for Major Craig and his garrison, and Fort Johnston at the tip of the peninsula, I fear they’d be slaughtered in their beds. Daddy’s not been the same since, Momma’s not a strong person, and only poor Caroline with what blacks we haven’t been forced to sell to keep body and soul together to run things. She’s a strong girl, is Caroline, but I doubt even she can cope if things get worse. Prices are high, higher for Loyalists from those Rebel townspeople. We left what money we had, but we haven’t been paid in months. They were going to seek cheaper lodgings, last we saw them before we marched north. Sorry, Lewrie.”

  “Sometimes it helps to talk. Go on and bathe. I’ll guard.”

  While the army men splashed in the sun-warmed water, he wandered up to a higher vantage point above the stock pond by the burned-out barn and outbuildings. Cony had gone to see to the stock they had captured, and was using a seaman’s knife to cut some grass for the cows, once more back in the peaceful world of animals and farm chores he had left God knew how long before to take the joining bounty and enter the harsh world of the Navy.

  “Keep
a sharp eye, Cony,” Lewrie had to remind him.

  “Aye, sir,” Cony said, as he ruffled the becoming tuft of woolly hair on one calf’s skull. “Poor beasts. Shoulda been weaned long ago, I ’spects, but nary a soul about fer months ta do it, most like. Nearly a yearlin’ now an’ still nuhsin’ ’is momma.”

  Reluctantly, Cony took up his musket, cartouche bag, and powder horn and headed off toward the edge of the woods to the west, where they came down almost to the edge of the stock pond. Watching him go, Alan could see that the fence between the pasture where they had seized their livestock and the stock pond had been torn down; perhaps by the raiders who had looted the place, or perhaps by the animals in their thirst once things had settled down and they had returned to the farmstead from the woods where they had fled.

  Alan went off toward the yard of the house to keep an eye on the dirt lane that ran down from the Williamsburg road, and the wider expanse of the pastures and fields. There was corn growing there, rows of beans and potatoes of some kind, which might have been ripe enough to pick. Alan reminded himself that they might want to gather some before going back to the working party. He hunted about for a sack or keg for carrying.

  Further north up the road there was another fence, beyond the home garden enclosure, and there were broad-leaved plants there, some already turning brittle and brown under the hot autumn sun; tobacco, he surmised, never having seen it growing before, or having much use for it up until then. He did know that tobacco fetched high prices in London shops, so perhaps Burgess was correct that this had been a fairly prosperous farm once.

  Alan was dressed informally in breeches and damp shirt—his waistcoat and short blue jacket were still drying after a good scrubbing—so he was concerned that he stood out too prominently against the greenery. He went back from his vantage point to the shadows of the house, where he could still see a long distance should anyone attempt to sneak up on them, but not be as easily spotted.

  The house was not as rude as he had first thought, either, being well made and chinked, the timbers adzed flat instead of the logs being laid round or still furred with bark. There had once been precious glass in the windows, and the door and shutters that had been ripped off had once been gaily painted and of good milled lumber, most likely done by the owners themselves. The porch was neat, the supporting posts made square and solid and whitewashed still, the floor of the porch planed or sanded and closefitting as a ship’s deck, and nearly as white. There were overturned chairs with cleverly rushed seats scattered about, and he righted one for a rest on the porch near one of the windows.