The French Admiral Read online

  After a few minutes, however, he became bored, and began to peek into the open window more and more, wondering if the raiders of whichever side had left anything worth looting.

  He rose and scanned the area of the stock pond. The soldier Mollow was out of the water and dressing, near his rifle and ready for immediate danger, while Burgess Chiswick was toweling himself dry and already in his breeches and stockings.

  Thinking there would be little danger, he rose from the chair and entered the house. It was a lot grander than he had thought inside as well. There was a large room with a plank floor that had been oiled or varnished at one time, and was still shiny under the dust of neglect that had gathered. There had been a cleverly made fireplace and hearth on one wall, and a neat mantel. There had been a bookcase, now smashed into kindling, and perhaps a dozen books scattered on the floor. The furniture was heavy and European made, either brought by the emigrants or ordered with profits from the farm’s produce, though the cabinets and chests were empty. One of the books that lay open took his interest, one of Fielding’s novels —Joseph Andrews— which he had heard was a merry story.

  “God, what a smell,” he whispered, now that he was in the house.

  Folding the book closed and sticking it into his waistband, he prowled towards the overturned dining table. The glint of metal caught his eyes, and he knelt to pick up a discarded pewter knife, a pair of spoons, and a fork, which went into his breeches pockets. They could use them in Desperate’s midshipmen’s mess, if only to replace the ones that their steward Freeling had lost over the months. He found a pewter mug smashed flat by something, another fork which was in good shape, and a ladle, which would come in handy for dipping out soup or rum toddies.

  Then he tried the bedrooms, which both opened off the main room.

  “Oh, my God!” he screeched once he had the door open to reveal what had been hidden. The stench of long decomposition rolled over him like a channel fog.

  He dropped the ladle and almost dropped his rifle as he backed away. But it was the sight that had forced him to retreat; there was a nude woman on the high bed, long dead and eyeless. She had been ripped open like a slaughtered hog and had stained the sheets black with her blood and entrails. And pinned to the wall . . .

  At the horror Alan lost what little breakfast he’d had.

  Pinned to the wall with a bayonet, a tiny baby too small to be a suckling babe—perhaps ripped from that ravaged belly before birth — now with parchment-dark skin and tiny little bones and leathery looking stains on the whitewash. Beside it, written in blood: THOU SHALT NEVER BIRTH ANOTHER REBEL.

  “Jesus Christ!” Alan was gagging, bent almost double but unable to take his eyes from the sight. “Oh, my merciful God in Heaven!”

  Burgess burst into the cabin with his rifle ready for firing. He came to Alan’s side and dragged him away and gave him a firm shove toward the door and the fresher air on the porch.

  Alan clung to a porch post and continued to heave, though his stomach was empty. “God, I never saw anything like that! No one should ever see such a sight! God in Heaven!”

  He emptied his pockets of his loot and flung the utensils into the dirt of the yard, threw away the merry book, and felt he could use one more very long bath to get the oily, cold-sweat feel of putrefaction off his skin, to be cleansed of what he had seen in that bedroom.

  “Here,” Burgess said, shoving a small, stoppered flask at him. He tore off the cork and took a long pull at whatever it was, which almost choked him. It was alcoholic, that he realized, but hot as fire and twice the bite of neat rum—at the moment he needed it badly.

  “What the devil is this stuff?” he managed to choke out.

  “Corn whiskey,” Burgess said, dragging him free of the porch and walking him over to the well on the other side of the yard. “You’ll not see its like in England, but it’s popular here—and cheap.”

  “That could take your mind off your own death,” Alan said.

  Burgess cranked up the bucket from the bottom of the well, sniffed at the water to see if the well had been fouled, then offered him the bucket in lieu of the missing dipper. Alan took a sip or two, but felt better dumping it over his head and shoulders and swiping his face with both of his hands.

  “Wot was it?” Mollow asked, now dressed in full uniform and ready for a killing, his Ferguson at full cock.

  “Dead woman and baby in the house,” Burgess said tightly. “Poor Mister Lewrie saw it and near lost his wits.”

  “The usual sort o’ thing, Mister Burgess?” Mollow asked.

  “Worse than the usual,” Burgess replied.

  “Should I be booryin’ ’em?”

  “Much too late for that,” Chiswick said with a shake of his head.

  “The usual?” Alan demanded, after another long pull at the flask. “The usual? What’s so bloody usual about seeing a woman gutted and her unborn babe stuck to the wall with steel?”

  “They were Rebels,” Chiswick told him.

  “Damn you to hell, Rebel or savage, no one deserved that!”

  “I’m not saying anyone ever deserves that, Alan,” Burgess insisted, taking back his flask now that Lewrie looked human once more and full of normal, righteous anger. “But like your whore must have told you, this is the worst sort of civil war. It’s not flags and trumpets and regulars going at each other like a war in Europe, not here in the South, anyways. It’s partisan fighting, and horrors like this on every hand. Families turned on each other, neighbors turned on each other, and after a while the decent spirit of Man gets lost in the tit-for-tat.”

  “How would you know they were Rebels?” Alan asked.

  “You read that . . . epitaph on the wall,” Burgess said. “And you’ll notice there’s no men’s bodies about the place. Off with the fighting in the spring and summer most like and not coming home again, or still bearing arms and not had the chance to discover what happened to their people. Arnold and Phillips were through here; Tarleton was through here scouting and foraging with us as well. Who knows who did it, or when?”

  “If that’s the sort of war we’re fighting, then God damn us all for murdering cowards!” Alan raged. “Women and little babies, for Christ’s sake! It’s one thing for a man to be punished for rebellion, but this!”

  “Like my brother George,” Burgess spat. “This could just as easy be a Loyalist farm and those innocents slain by the Rebels!”

  “And it still wouldn’t make it right,” Alan declared.

  “No, it would not.” Burgess softened, laying a firm hand on Alan’s shoulder to steady him. “And I hope the officer and the men who did this die just as painful and as gruesome a death, no matter what uniform they wear. All we can do is make sure we would not do such a deed.”

  “God, get me away from this hateful country and back to sea where I belong,” Alan prayed. “Where the fighting is clean and upright, and a man can keep his honor!”

  “Speaking of that, we’d best be getting back to the others,” the young infantryman said. “Mollow, find that seaman. We’ll be leaving.”

  “Aye,” the soldier replied. “Be takin’ the road, I ’spect? Cain’t lead no stock through the woods.”

  “We’ll have to. You scout ahead, once we’re ready.”

  Alan went back into the sun to fetch his waistcoat and jacket, still damp but a lot cleaner than they had been before, and donned them. He hung his military accoutrements about him and took up the rifle once more as Mollow and Cony gathered the stock for leading. He was happy to shake the dust of the place from him and unable to smell anything else than the sick and copper odor of death that clung to the farm-stead. The fresh blood smell of the ’spatched cocks and the hogs almost made him start gagging all over again, and he walked as far from them as he could, letting Cony lead the horse with the drag as they started out.

  He trudged along, stumbling over shallow wagon ruts and loose rocks in the lane between the fences, too shaken to care where they were going.

 
God, how could any human being with any honor at all do such a murthering thing? he asked himself. Bastard, I may be, but I could never raise my hand against a woman. Maybe Cheatham is right—I am not the basest person that was ever born after all. The Navy would never do such a deed or allow it to happen. Thank God Father shoved me in the Fleet and not some regiment bound for the Colonies, or I’d have run screaming into the backwoods by now, sick of it all.

  He tried to harken back to all the women he had known who had done him dirty, trying to discover one who might have deserved such a death, and was amazed that even the Covent Garden whore who had pinched his purse of nearly ten pounds when he was a feckless fifteen could not engage his rage enough to wish her such agony.

  And the babe. God in heaven, how could he ever sear that fiendish sight from his memory. He hated babies, usually; squawling little bundles of nastiness best kept out of sight with a nurse and trotted out at bedtime for a cuff on the head. The getting of them was enjoyable, but the keeping of them was not, a matter best left to the sluts who dropped them.

  Then there was Lucy Beauman. What if it had been her slashed open like that? What if he and Lucy married someday? And what if it had been his child, his heir, nailed to the wall by some rampaging fiend?

  I’d hunt the bastard down and kill him slow, Alan vowed, suddenly full of anger instead of sickness. Whoever did that deserves to die, and to die horribly. I wish I could find him and make him pay, and I don’t care if it’s that hero Tarleton, or that turncoat Arnold, or Cornwallis himself. The regular army would make him roast, by God.

  They reached the main road, Alan never being aware of the dread and anticipation with which the soldiers had walked that sunken farm lane, sure an ambush would occur at any moment. In his anger he was oblivious.

  “You are looking positively wolfish,” Chiswick commented as they waited for Mollow to scout west against any party advancing on Yorktown to their rear.

  “Must be your . . . what did you call it . . . whiskey?”

  “Liked it, did you?” Chiswick grinned. “There’ll be plenty more in camp. The soldiers can brew it themselves from corn, and this country is full of that. Easiest way to get corn products to market from up in the Piedmont, and no taxes to pay for import of claret or port.”

  “It helps,” Alan confessed. “Look here, Burgess. You said to the private that it was the usual, or worse than the usual. So you have seen such an atrocity before?”

  “Yes, more than enough, unfortunately.”

  “Has your unit ever . . .” Alan asked, wondering what a band of Loyalist volunteers could do in reprisal to the people they ran across who supported the rebellion.

  “No, we have not!” Burgess snapped, his eyes narrowing. “How dare you accuse me of such a thing. I’ve half a mind to call you out for it. We may not be an English unit, by God, but we’re not a pack of thieving and murthering poltroons, like the Fannings and ‘Bloody Bill’ Cunninghams.”

  “My apologies, then, Burgess,” Alan said, seeing that Chiswick was indeed ready to kill him for the slur on his unit’s honor, and on his own personal honor.

  “That is not good enough, sir,” Burgess said.

  “I most humbly beg your pardon, Mister Chiswick, for by the asking of a question meant in all innocence, that you might have felt that I had cast any aspersions upon you or your company,” Alan said in the most formal tone of complete and abject apology, amazed at himself to be backing down from any man, even someone he was beginning to like. He would not have done it in London, and they would have met and crossed swords or stood and delivered a volley out of sheer pride and honor.

  He shifted the rifle to his left hand and offered Burgess the right, which Burgess took after a moment. “I am sorry I was so quick to take offense, Alan, but damme, that was a little close to my feelings. We’ve flogged and hung before to prevent that sort of thing.”

  “Then I shall be easy in my mind that we are still decent Christians, no matter what sort of service we have seen.” Alan smiled as they shook hands heartily.

  “Well, not well-churched Christians, I think.” Burgess smiled.

  “But never capable of such as we saw, so that says something for our salvation,” Alan said. “For being a pair of rake-hells?”

  “Amen to that.”

  Once determining that the Williamsburg road was clear of enemy activity, they led their menagerie east, back to the working party, just in time to see the end of labors. Two stout pines had been cut down for replacement masts, trimmed of limbs and laid out to be skinned clean of bark and knurls. Two lighter timbers had been selected for replacement royal and topgallant yards. Other blocks from the butts had been shaped roughly into new trestletree pieces, which the carpenter and his crew would finish later aboard ship. Not being content merely to satisfy the ready needs of the ship, they had harvested several spare spars as well for future service, the entire gathering slung between the two caissons and the twelve horses reharnessed into a single large team ahead of both wagons.

  “Good God above, it’s Noah!” Railsford laughed loudly as they hove into sight, leading the cattle and sheep, dragging the pig carcasses.

  “Sure you do not want to join the army, Mister Lewrie?” the elder Chiswick asked as he surveyed their small herd. “I could use a good forager such as yourself.”

  “Though the foraging proved rough on your uniform,” Railsford said as he saw the state of Alan’s clothes, and his stockings which were little higher than his shoe tops, leaving his legs bare below his breeches.

  “The fortunes of war, sir,” Alan replied, offering the Ferguson back to Lieutenant Chiswick, who opened the breech and checked the flint professionally in an automatic response to see if the user had fouled it, or done something dumb with a good gun.

  “We heard but one shot,” Chiswick said.

  “That was Mollow killing the second hog.” Burgess grinned. “After our sailor here had wrestled and stabbed the first to death, like Samson slaying the lions in the wilderness. That’s how he got skinned up.”

  “Any sign?” his brother asked.

  “Quiet as church on a Monday. Looted farmstead, where we found all this, but no sign of French or Rebels. I’ll tell you the rest later.”

  “Good.” Lieutenant Chiswick nodded. “You missed dinner, but we’ve no time to feed you now. I’d like to get back across Yorktown Creek before dark.”

  “I shall cope,” Burgess replied with a shrug.

  I shan’t, Alan thought, but no one was asking him, and he realized that it was already midafternoon and he had not had a bite to eat since before dawn. Mollow could get a crumb or two from his fellow soldiers, Cony could depend on his mates to have saved him a morsel or two, but Alan had to go without, and it was a long, slow trek back in the heat and humidity, with only stale water for sustenance.

  By the time they reached the boat landing and began loading the boats with their prize, it was nearly dark. The army encampments were lit up with squad fires and they could detect the tempting aromas of individual messes in the process of cooking their meals, the smell of bake ovens and the sight of game and domestic meats being roasted for the officers in front of their pavilion tents.

  “You would be welcome to eat with us,” Burgess offered as he came to Lewrie’s side near the docks. “Would your captain allow you?”

  “You do not know my captain.” Alan grimaced. “I am his prime case of sloth and sinfulness, not to be let out of his sight long enough to get into more trouble.”

  “A man after my own heart, you are,” Burgess chuckled. “But perhaps in future, before you sail, I and Governour could send an invitation aboard for you to dine with us. We could kill one of the fatted calves for you.”

  “Don’t wait for me for an excuse, but I’d enjoy continuing the pleasance of your company indeed, Burgess,” Alan said, sure that he had made himself a new friend, if even for a short acquaintance. “I’ll bring some wine, even if it’s a poor rough-and-ready issue wine.”

/>   “Then you should be doubly welcome. I shall say good evening to you, then, until next time.”

  “Until next time, aye,” Alan replied, shaking hands with him once more and adding his warm respects to the elder brother as well. Then it was into the boats and a row out to Desperate. He would not be going empty-handed, even so. The North Carolina Volunteers had gotten one of the sheep, one of the hogs, and both calves, while Desperate got the cow, one hog, one sheep, and the chickens, one of which Alan still possessed for his own mess.

  By the time they had lashed their new spars and masts aboard for hoisting the next morning, it was full dark, and the few buildings in the town were lit up, as well as the ships in the anchorage. A cool sea wind had sprung up to blow away the heat of the day, and the cook and his assistants were busy boiling the cow for supper. With the news of their good fortune at foraging, everyone had a good word for Lewrie as he strolled the decks, sniffing at the good smells and almost slavering like a famished dog for his fresh meal. Even Treghues had been kindly in his praise, for he had gotten a chicken out of the encounter.

  “A good day’s work, was it not, Mister Coke?” Alan said as he met him by the larboard gangway, where the bosun and the carpenter were assaying their precious lumber still.

  “A fine day indeed, Mister Lewrie,” Coke replied. “Though I’d be easier in my mind ta soak these spars in a mast pond fer a few weeks ta season ’em. Guess a dash o’ tar’ll have ta do.”

  “Anything to get us off this wretched coast and back to the fleet,” Alan said. The chime of the last bell in the second dogwatch freed him from the deck, and he went below to partake of his dinner, knowing that even Freeling could not make the chicken that awaited him unpalatable.