The Price of War - Chapter Twelve

[morethanhonour]

More Than Honour
Book One: The Price of War
Chapter Twelve

“To the king.”

“To the king,” Edward answered. He raise his glass of wine and, since the low deck of the ship did not prohibit the movement, stood for the toast. His captain did the same. They drank together, satisfied by a warm meal in the White Horse on Playfair street. It was, perhaps, not the finest food Portsmouth had to offer, but it was plentiful, freshly cooked, hot, and cheap enough for the sum Orr had collected from the Admiralty in lieu of prize money to cover their expenses. Somehow, their conversation turned to all the ships they had passed on their voyage.

“Belle Rêve,” Captain Orr murmured wistfully. “She was a lovely one. God above knows what she was carrying.” He grinned, and Edward mirrored the expression. The loss of prize money meant less now that he had knew of the box carried to the chief of Naval Intelligence and heard his captain mourn the ships they had been glide past them without challenge. “Couldn’t have been worth too much,” Orr acknowledged, and the words served as a slight balm to them both, “or she’d have had protection.”

“No doubt Santa Ana had good stores,” Edward ventured, deep enough in his cups to dare such a line of speech. Orr raised his glass in agreement. “The Dagoes spare no expenses for their officers.”

“Nine of ten of ‘em are smugglers on top of that.” The captain and his young officer drained then refilled their glasses to that sentiment. “Quicksilver,” he suggested. His mind went to more legal supplies she could have been carrying for some merchant too. “Grain, maybe molasses.” Back it swam to the more valuable, “Even brandy.” Another glass of wine was emptied by each man, and Edward poured the rest of the bottle between them. Orr called for another, the third of the night. He chuckled and raised his glass. “To victory over France. So we may drink her brandy without a second thought.” Edward laughed but drank the toast. Brandy could only be gotten from France, so there was no legal way for a man for a man to obtain the spirit. Which was not to say that any man who truly wanted it would go without it if he had ready money.

“Sir,” Edward said. He leaned forward, holding his glass. Orr smiled at him, neither man sober enough to stand too much on proper ceremony. “Nymphe.”

“Siren, she ought to be called.” Yet Orr’s voice was warm. He held his glass up to toast again and looked at Edward over the top of it. “Better you should have never seen her, my boy. She’ll drive you mad. Oh, yes. I see her even now, sailing in your eyes.” The way in which he spoke was like Merlin might have spoken to Lancelot, who lusted for his king’s wife, Guenevere, understanding of his desires but warning of the fate that such things would bring. “I exchanged broadsides with her six months ago. She caught the wind and flew. God Himself must have led her, for even Spitfire couldn’t catch her, couldn’t hardly keep her in sight.” He had set down his glass, and now his finger traced the mouth of it. “God willing, she’ll never burn or sink. Not a beauty like Nymphe, but I wouldn’t put it past her captain to destroy her himself rather than see her be a British prize.” Orr shook his head. “Wolf of a man.”

“You’ve met him?” Edward ignored his own wine. He felt all of ten again, running errands for uniformed men in London and rewarded with a few bits to take home to his mother and stories to whet his imagination and feed his slowly growing need to go to sea. He leaned forward, and Orr did the same. Any captain loved an audience, and Captain Orr was no exception.

“I saw him that engagement, though damned if I don’t hope to exchange a few words someday. ‘Do you surrender?’ That, I’d most like.” He laughed, but Edward’s eager gaze brought him back. “After that, though, I was just like you, my lad. His Nymphe came to me in dreams, and I had to know about her. And her master too. Oh, I learned of him. Captain Andre Michel. They say France hasn’t ever seen a sea officer like him in all her history and never will again. As red a Republican as any of ‘em but, well.” He smiled. “If every one of those bastards could do half what this man can? We’d all be learning French and the aristocrats here would be just waiting for the chop.”

Edward drew in a breath. Somehow, this made Nymphe all the more intoxicating. Perhaps the wine had finally gone to his head. He saw the ship, her sails full and her sleek hull gliding through water and fog. Her flag, the tri-colour of the young French Republic government England would not acknowledge as a nation, fluttered above her. Wine thick in his blood, head dizzy from the heat of the room, and naturally inclined to think those better off than him by no more merit than the family they were born to were undeserving of their lot, Edward felt it somehow justice that such a powerful beauty answered to untitled men. Men, he savoured the thought, who had earned her, not ones who were in possession of rich and important fathers done favours by rich and important friends. The same was true of America, with its fledgling government. Any man might aspire to any position, regardless of his birth. Edward’s vision swam as he drank to his thoughts.

“To the Nymphe,” Edward said, raising his glass after his captain refilled it with the dark, dangerous wine. Orr echoed his words, and they drank. While Orr surely drank to only the lovely ship, her charms fully deserving such a toast, Edward did not. He, instead, drank not just to every plank of wood that made her shapely figure but her flag and the virtues she represented. He drank to the spirit of freedom and the dream of self-determination without limits. He raised and drained his glass to the equality she defended.

Two days later, Spitfire set sail again, bound once more for the Mediterranean, or Edward guessed. Mister Lowell had applied for a transfer while in Portsmouth. Orr and the other captain had been amenable to the move, and Lowell’s replacement presented himself shortly after. Gregory Small was in his late twenties and of a rather nondescript appearance. His voice was not loud, but it was not timid either. He was polite without being ingratiating. He came and went without drawing attention to himself, but he did not do so, Edward felt, with the air of being a sneak of some sort.

Small took well to Craig, Edward noted with considerable relief a few days in. He was not so hopeless at figures as Lowell, and he took a keen interest when Craig managed an equation he had not. He was not an ambitious man, Edward determined. A midshipman at fifteen, his certificates read when the lieutenant looked them over, yet Small had never stood for examination. He conducted himself toward Edward without the slightest undertone of bitterness, which, as a midshipman, Edward had sometimes seen older men do to younger lieutenants. Usually, though, those were men who failed their exams several times over and blamed every imagined cause without ever blaming themselves.

On the first Sunday after leaving Portsmouth, after the required monthly service of reading the Articles of War to the ship’s company, Captain Orr and his lieutenant were pulled from a game of chess by the shout of the young Craig. Immediately after his voice, still with its boyhood high pitch, called out, the marine sentry began to drum. Beat and roll, beat and roll. Craig’s call passed through the ship like a fire, and only one gun crew was still readying themselves by the time the pair of commissioned officers came out from the privacy of the captain’s cabin.

“Where away?” Orr demanded. Craig surrendered his spy glass at the very instant his superior officer’s hand was beginning to open, and he pointed in the general direction.

“Starboard, sir. She’s flying French colours, sir.”

“So she is,” Orr replied, fixing what Craig had seen in his enhanced gaze. “What do you make of her, Mister Burr?” He offered the glass.

Edward accepted it then raised it to his eye. “She’s a corvette, sir.” He felt like he was before his examination board again. “Twenty guns, sir.” His heart raced in his ears. “Cleared for action, sir.” The wind blew against his face, and even the gentle breeze felt sharp. “She has the wind, sir. For now, at least.”

“Thanks to Mister Craig’s sharp eye and prompt call,” Orr said with full sincerity, “we are cleared for action, even hand at his station.” The corvette was gaining with every second, and Edward found the captain’s educational tone only put him more on edge. “Were you captain, Mister Burr, what would you do?”

Edward stared but realised he was now the one wasting time. “Come about,” he said suddenly. Something in him had a plan, and he succumbed to it without worrying about its sense. That he forgot to add the note of respect at the end escaped him. “She’s running with the wind. If we put Spitfire into close reach on the larboard tack, we’ll intercept her. To fire a proper broadside, she’ll have to quit her advantage.” He stopped to breathe and remembered himself, this man, and their respective ranks. “Or so I would say, sir.”

Orr smiled. “Bring us about,” he called to the crew. “Close reach on the larboard tack. Gun crews, load. You fire at Mister Burr’s word and not a moment before, not a single one.”

The ship turned, and Edward barely dared to breathe. The two vessels drew nearer to one another. A bow chaser fired from the corvette’s deck and struck the water only yards away from Spitfire. Second after painful second crawled by. Finally, the French ship strayed too close to her would-be prey.

“Fire!” Edward shouted.

Eleven guns rang out at once. Craig and Small cried the orders to reload and Edward watched the corvette move. Under the fire of the first broadside, she began to answer in kind. Her firing was sporadic as she turned, not the well-timed unison of a British crew.

Edward looked up at her rigging. Inspiration leaped forward. “Sir,” he called to Captain Orr on the quarterdeck, “permission for special instructions to the gun crews?”

“Granted,” Orr called without hesitation.

Despite the circumstances, Edward did not let himself doubt. Any moment, Captain Orr might deem his efforts unsuitable or too dangerous or incorrect and call his own orders. For now-- for this brief instant-- he had been granted full command. Edward felt he could not waste the opportunity nor let himself question his instincts. “Mackenzie, Cole, Robb, Lewis, Daniels.” Those captains of the gun crews looked at him. “Aim for the rigging. Elevate the guns.” He listened to the wood scrape as he was obeyed. “The rest of you-- her deck and hull. Fire as you bear!”

The whole process had taken about three minutes. As Spitfire unleashed her wave, so did the corvette. The French cannon balls sent two guns near the bow flying. Small shouted orders to get the injured below and the disabled guns back into action. Craig called for a reload and echoed Edward’s order to fire again. The third volley from Spitfire topped the foremast of the Republican ship she faced.

The English call to reload was met with the sinking of the tri-colour over her mainmast. A cheer went up from the men aboard Spitfire. Edward looked toward his captain on the quarterdeck. Only when he saw Orr smile and bow his head for a moment did he allow himself a grin. He hurried to his superior’s side.

“She’s struck her colours, sir,” he reported. He touched his hat in salute, suddenly self-conscious about how absent the captain had been from the orders of battle. Allowed or not, he felt keenly that he had overstepped. He looked at Orr, apologies forming on the tip of his tongue. However, the captain smiled.

Orr regarded the waiting surrendered ship. “Twenty guns, probably a hundred men on her crew. Not more than six officers, I should say.” Edward knew his voice was not required, so he remained still and silent, waiting for his orders regarding the prize. “Take one midshipman and twenty men and wait for us in London.”

“Thank you, sir,” Edward said, touching his hat at being granted command of the prize. While it was not his place to ask, the words found their way out nonetheless. “London, sir?”

“London, Mister Burr.” Orr smiled and indulged the young lieutenant. “We’ve an errand in Gibraltar, but then our orders take us to London.” Nothing too important, Edward thought, or he would have been sent on his way without the explanation. “I would rather you go there with prize and prisoners and wait for us.”

Edward touched his hat again. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” He saluted again and quit the quarterdeck to collect his sea-chest, midshipman, and twenty men.