The Price of War - Chapter One

[morethanhonour]

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

“‘...A bully on land and a bucko at sea...’”

Amongst the rattling of the cannons recoiling and the preceding booms of their shot firing at the enemy, no one heard the eighteen-year-old midshipman singing to himself. Even he barely heard the words.

“Reload!” His shout rang out, heard and echoed by his fellows down the line. No man at any of the three guns under his command truly replied to him. Rather, they set about obeying the order. One man swabbed the cannon, twisting the dry bristles as he drew the tool out. The next man seized a bag of gunpowder from the seven-year-old boy who had hurried over with it in his bucket. The man jammed the bag into the gun. Beside him, yet another man waited with a rammer. He moved forward and pushed twice on the bag of powder, forcing it down deep into the gun. Then a rag was shoved down against the powder in the same manner. Another man thrust a wet sponge down the gun and drew it out. The last man rolled a cannon ball into the muzzle. The first took his place beside and behind the gun with his lint stock. Another man pierced the bag of powder through a small hole in the gun, and the first man waited. The process took one minute and ten seconds.

“Gun ready,” cried the man with the lint stock. A man at every gun called the same thing.

The first and third lieutenants exchanged a glance and shouted the order, which each of the four midshipmen repeated. “Fire!”

All twelve guns on the larboard side of the gun deck of the forty-four-gun frigate Virtue, of His Britannic Majesty’s Royal Navy, fired in unison upon their prey. The noise was deafening, but one sound pierced the aftermath as the hunted ship responded to the broadside in kind. The midshipmen called together for their gun crews to reload.

Before the lieutenants could give the next command to fire, a shot from their enemy ripped through the hull of the gun deck. One cannon broke free of its restraints and flew back, crushing an unlucky member of its crew instantly. The force of impact and shards of splintered wood, some two feet long and several inches thick, sent his four mates down and knocked the overseeing midshipman flat. There was now no song on the youth’s lips, only a strangled cry as his shoulder dislocated.

He hurried to his feet just as hands laid on him to pull him up. The third lieutenant felt the injured shoulder and made mercifully swift work of slamming it back into its proper place. “Eddie.”

“It’s fine, Ben,” the midshipman muttered under his breath, quiet as he could over the roar of the firing ordered by the first lieutenant. “I’m fine.”

“Better be.” Lieutenant Benjamin Peck’s pale eyes darted away as he shouted for the gun crews to reload. He turned his attention back to his friend, and a smile appeared on his sweat-streaked face. “Next port, Eddie. Food, drink, bed, and girl. All on me.” He clapped a hand to the other’s rattled shoulder. “Back to it.”

Midshipman Edward Burr repositioned himself between his two remaining guns as Ben shouted for the dead and wounded to be separated. Lifeless corpses were pushed to the side while the injured were carted off to the surgeon.

“Poor devils,” Edward said to himself as one man screamed. His leg was surely lost, from the look of him as his mates lifted him up. It seemed in poor taste to wish-- particularly in the heat of action-- any man dead, but when a surgeon too fond of his stores of brandy might be replaced with his attentive mate-- a quiet young man of twenty but the son of a physician and a quick study of all his father’s medical books--, the midshipman could not truly bring himself to feel guilty over the fleeting thought. It might serve them best, if one were willing to admit such a thing. Another broadside brought Edward from his thoughts and back to the battle.

Another round rang out, and a cry came from above. The seconds lasted for hours; the eerie silence of a lull in the action descended. Neither side spent shot from cannons, and the musket fire from the main deck ceased. Finally, above the heads of the gun deck crew, cheers rang out.

“Wilkes,” Ben called to the junior most midshipman, a boy not quite thirteen yet, “pass word for the captain. We request further orders.”

As the boy hurried off up the companion way after offering the customary “aye aye, sir” and salute, Edward stole forward. He peered out the gun port and grinned at what he saw. The new tricolour emblem of the French Republic was sliding down the mast of the opposing ship. “Mister Peck, sir,” he called with the due formality of a midshipman addressing a lieutenant in front of subordinate and superior officers alike.

“Mister Burr?” Ben answered him in the same fashion.

“She’s striking her colours, sir.”

“Is she? Good!”

“Damn good!” The booming voice sounded from the bottom of the companion way from the main deck to the gun deck. Every man stood up straight and touched either the brim of his hat or his bare head with the knuckle of a crook’d finger as the captain made himself known. He was a short man, Captain Henry Caldwell. Unlike Edward and Ben, he did not have to stoop to avoid the beams above. His grey eyes contained what always seemed to Edward to be a quiet mirth, some amusement at a private joke. His once dark hair was streaked with grey, and the number of silver strands seemed sometimes to multiply between the mere hours in which Edward saw the man. At present, his grin was plain for all to see. He spoke with a measured warmth. “Fine work, all of you.”

The forty-year-old first lieutenant, Mader, answered for all of them. “Thank you, sir.” Every man saluted again.

“Mister Mader,” Caldwell smiled at him, “ten men and see she reaches Gibraltar.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Mader replied. He touched his hat and disappeared below to collect his sea chest and decide on the men for his prize crew.

Caldwell looked around him again, and his twinkling eyes fell on Edward. “Mister Burr.”

“Yes, sir.” Edward put a knuckle to his forehead. Only now had he realised his hat had been displaced when the shot had thrown him back.

“Have Moore or Clay look at your brown then report to my cabin.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Moore, the surgeon, would undoubtedly be up to his armpits in injured sailors. If he were lucky, Edward let himself think, the minor wound to his head-- no doubt also from his fall-- would be seen to by the careful hands of the surgeon’s mate, Clay. He saluted once then did so again with the rest of the men as their captain departed. While the hands busied themselves with the work of cleaning the deck and seeing to the dead, Edward caught Ben’s eye. For a moment, they dropped the pretence of rank. “What do you suppose he wants, eh, Ben?”

“Best way to find out isn’t to keep him waiting.” They shared a smile before Edward departed, though not before he remembered to salute his friend and senior officer.

Edward climbed down the ladder leading from the gun deck to the berth deck. Idly, he thanked whatever saint or angel wanted the credit that he was able to make his way amongst the hammocks, each with their allotted fourteen inches of space, that he could go to the surgeon’s domain of his own volition. Others had not fared so well. Men groaned from cots inside the room while others lay still. Some had succumbed to the laudanum poured down their throats to ease the pain, others to a much more permanent rest.

The surgeon was at his table, scraping his saw across the broken remains of the leg belonging to Jack Burke, the man of Edward’s gun crew who had been so injured. Edward bit his lip and tried not to dismiss the man as wholly lost just yet. Still, he knew the odds were not in the sailor’s favour. If Burke survived Moore, an infection might still claim him easily. He could not bring himself to hope.

A loose grip caught Edward’s sore arm, and he turned to see Clay’s smile upon him. He had a young face. Were he to claim fourteen years rather than twenty, not a soul would have doubted him. His studious youth left his physique frail and his skin light. Only as of late had he begun to brown under the Mediterranean sun. His thin hands with their long fingers always struck Edward as feminine, as did Clay’s gentle fashion of probing a wound. Between his kind words and warm gaze, men rarely seemed to remember they ought to be crying out in terrible pain.

To those hands, Edward surrendered unconditionally. Clay coaxed him to a chair without uttering a sound. Edward sat, and Clay loosened the midshipman’s black neckcloth. he felt beneath the fabric, fingers lingering over a patch to skin to mark Edward’s pulse. The patient felt blood rise in his cheeks as his heart beat faster. Clay was obviously satisfied, as he moved on without comment. His hands paused when Edward flinched under a touch to his shoulder. Clay felt the injury but offered no further relief. He pushed open the blue coat of the officer and unbuttoned the wool waistcoat Edward wore. His fingers felt Edward’s sides through his linen shirt, and Edward could guess that he was feeling for damage to the ribs.

“Are you always so thorough?” Edward said with a laugh. The cold gaze the other man’s too dark eyes afforded him crippled the merriment in the jest, and the midshipman resumed his silence for the rest of the inspection.

Finally, Clay pressed a rag to the wound on Edward’s forehead. Edward took up holding it, and Clay swiftly withdrew his hand at the slightest brush against it by Edward’s. “Nothing that won’t mend on its own. Off with you, now.”

“Thank you,” Edward replied. He smiled, and the expression remained on his face despite the small frown Clay gave him in return.

Up the ladder, Edward went. Ben was still on the gun deck, directing the carpenters to the damage done by the French cannon ball. Edward saluted, and Ben smiled wide at him. For a moment, Edward was struck by the same impression he so often had of the captain: the man he looked at had some secret joy he was longing to share. Where the captain was concerned, Edward felt no great surprise or even true curiosity. The master of a ship and the God of her crew could not be expected to share his secrets with mere mortals. But what could Ben conceal that would make him look so?

“And,” Edward wondered to himself as he knocked at the door of the captain’s cabin, “will he share it with me when we have a moment to ourselves?”

The captain called to enter, and Edward obeyed. Only once the heavy oak door shut behind him did he remember his fallen hat and unbuttoned waistcoat. While he tried to right the latter problem, he heard Caldwell’s rich laughter. Edward stopped, sheepish, and saluted again.

“Come in, come in,” Caldwell said, gesturing to accent his words. “Mister Peck tells me, Mister Burr, that your conduct with your gun crews was exceptional.” Every word contained unconcealed fondness. There was no secret that Peck and Burr, who had served under Caldwell for three and four continuous years, were among the captain’s favourites.

“Thank you, sir. That is most kind of him.”

“Yes, quite.” Caldwell chuckled briefly before a thought robbed him of his good humour. “There at the last broadside from the Frogs, Laughlin was at the bow.” Edward understood from the captain’s expression and voice. When the dead were given their due service, Second Lieutenant Peter Laughlin would be among those they honoured. He bowed his head politely, but Caldwell spoke again, willing himself back into better spirits. “Can’t properly manage a ship this size and a crew this number with only two lieutenants, wouldn’t you say so, Mister Burr?” Before Edward could think of the proper reply, the captain smiled at him. “Congratulations, Acting-Lieutenant Burr.”