A Man of No Country Read online

  ‘Your pardon, my dear,’ he replied. ‘I hope I have not become dull. I was just wondering to myself when I shall find the limits of Sedgwick’s abilities.’ He waved towards the driver’s seat. ‘Where the deuce does a run field slave learn how to drive a carriage?’

  ‘Do you remember after the wedding we went on our bridal tour and spent a month on my uncle’s estate in Herefordshire?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ said Clay, sliding closer across the leather of the seat.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you may hold my hand inside the carriage,’ she said. ‘Well, while we were so pleasantly diverted, your coxswain took the opportunity to get Chatham, my uncle’s coachman, to teach him. Chatham says he has quite a gift with horses.’

  ‘Goodness,’ he marveled. ‘And this in a man who has learnt to hand, reef and steer as well as any sailor, in two scant years.’

  ‘He has also accomplished a tolerable fluency with his letters,’ added Lydia. ‘His writing still leaves a little to be desired, but he reads very well indeed.’

  ‘Unlike all of his shipmates,’ grumbled Clay.

  ‘Not all of them, dear,’ corrected his wife. ‘He told me of a seaman who has been teaching him. I believe he said his name was Rosie, although why a sailor should have a girl’s name was never made clear.’

  ‘Rosie is what the men call Joshua Rosso. He used to be a merchant’s clerk in Bristol. The two of them are messmates.’

  ‘Might more not be made of Sedgwick, if so few of his peers are literate?’ asked Lydia.

  ‘It might indeed,’ said Clay. ‘I did ask him if he would like an acting warrant to be a master’s mate, or even try his hand as a midshipman. He has a very easy but natural authority with the men, you know.’

  ‘Does his race not stand against him? There cannot be many negro officers in the navy.’

  ‘Not many, I grant you,’ he replied. ‘But there are a few. There is even a captain now. John Perkins is his name. He was promoted to master and commander earlier this year, and like Sedgwick, he joined the service as a run slave.’

  ‘So how did he respond to your suggestion to advance him?’ she asked.

  ‘He thanked me for my offer, and said that he was quite content as he was. It does seem a sad waste of his talents.’ The couple looked again at the broad shoulders of the coxswain, and in the moment of quiet Lydia felt the dread of her husband’s impending departure steal over her like a chill mist.

  ‘Oh, why are you not ordered to rejoin the Channel Fleet?’ she lamented. ‘At least I would be able to see you when the Titan came into port. The Mediterranean seems so very far away.’

  ‘I expect that they have need of a frigate there, and mine was the next available,’ he said. He saw the moisture in her eyes and drew her into his arms. ‘Oh, Lydia, my darling. I have long since learnt that a sea officer must accept his duty without question and go to whichever corner of the world he is bidden. If being a naval officer’s wife is not to drive you quite out of your senses, I fear you must learn to do the same.’ She smiled through her tears and stroked his head of chestnut curls. Then she kissed him and pushed him away.

  ‘You are quite correct, Alex,’ she said. ‘I have so enjoyed our last few months together it has made me selfish. I just might have wished that the corner of the world to which you were being sent was nearer at hand. Fear not, I will soon regain my composure.’

  ‘I shall not be quite as distant from you as you fear,’ said Clay. ‘Hanging Jack’s command may be named the Mediterranean Fleet, but they retreated from that sea almost a year ago. In the meantime the French have made much of our absence to spread their power.’

  ‘Where will you operate then?’ she asked, a little hope showing in her face.

  ‘The fleet is principally based in the Atlantic blockading the Dons in Cadiz. An occasional resupply in Gibraltar is as close to the Mediterranean as I am likely to actually go.’

  ‘Hanging Jack?’ she queried. ‘Is that what they call Admiral Lord St Vincent? It seems a little disrespectful for such an august leader.’

  ‘The hands began to call him that after the rather firm way he suppressed an attempted mutiny aboard some of his ships earlier this year,’ he explained. ‘He had all the ringleaders hanged and made their messmates perform the execution. But sailors are no respecters of rank or reputation. Before he was Hanging Jack they used to call him Sour Kraut because he is reputed to never smile.’

  ‘There is no danger that you shall ever warrant such a given name,’ she said.

  ‘Too true,’ he said and favoured her with his most dazzling example. ‘No, instead they call me Pipe.’

  ‘Pipe?’ she exclaimed, a twinkle in her eye. ‘Why do they call you that?’

  ‘Oh, I imagine it to be a simple play on my name – a clay pipe that you might smoke, or possibly the pipe clay that the marines use to whiten the leather of their cross belts. None of the men are impertinent enough to use it in front of me, so I have never had occasion to ask about the origins.’

  Lydia laughed aloud at this, causing Sedgwick to glance around.

  ‘We shall be coming into this ‘ere town soon, sir,’ he said, indicating the approaching buildings. ‘Shall I go to the Crown Inn or directly to the Titan?’ Clay looked at Lydia and raised his eye brows in inquiry. She longed to spend some more time with him, but she could tell he was eager to get onboard his ship again. His tall body leant forward in the seat and one gloved hand tapped against his knee. She felt a brief flicker of annoyance at how much less distressed he was, before she remembered his words. A sea officer must accept his duty without question.

  ‘The Titan please, Sedgwick,’ she ordered.

  ‘Are you sure, my dear?’ he asked. ‘I am not expected before noon.’

  ‘You have your duty to attend to,’ she said, and then leant forward to whisper in his ear. ‘But when you have completed that, come and find me at the inn tonight, Captain Pipe.’

  *****

  ‘Home at bleeding last,’ exclaimed Sam Evans. He expanded his arms out on either side like a large bird about to take flight and sniffed at the air with a smile of appreciation. ‘And for once the barky smells moderately sweet.’ At six-foot-six he was the tallest member of the Titan’s crew. His legs spread far under the mess table and his massive frame occupied much of one side.

  ‘That be the smell of new-hewn oak and fresh paint,’ said Adam Trevan in his thick Cornish accent. ‘I grant you, the dockyard have done a fair job at putting the ship to rights. You would barely know it had been through a battle not four months ago. But don’t you go getting too content with that fresh smell, Sam lad. After a week at sea with us packed in her she’ll reek like a charnel house privy. Be just like that London town of yours.’

  The two sailors taking their ease at the mess table could not have been more of a contrast. Where Evans was huge and dark, his companion was lean and athletic. Trevan's long blond hair was tied in a neat pig tail that hung down his back. In one ear he wore a hoop of gold, while his seaman’s clothes hung easily on his wiry frame. He had frank blue eyes set in a handsome face, burnt brown by his many years at sea.

  ‘So where’s Able, then?’ he asked the big Londoner. ‘I thought you said as how he was onboard already?’ In response Evans pointed over his friend’s shoulder. Trevan looked around to find a familiar figure approaching the table.

  ‘Good evening, shipmates,’ said Able Sedgwick, his smile broad in the dim light of the lower deck.

  ‘Able!’ exclaimed Trevan and Evans together, and the friends slapped backs and embraced.

  ‘How you been getting on with our Pipe?’ asked the Cornishman. ‘I hear he got spliced to a right comely wench, by all accounts.’

  ‘She is certainly a beauty, and right kindly too,’ said Sedgwick. ‘But truth to tell the wedding was a strange, cold affair. They are sweet enough on each other, but her family are a proud lot. Peacocks ain’t in it. I reckon they look down on our Pipe as not being good enough for them.’
/>   ‘That’s nobs for you, all over,’ growled Evans. ‘Always turning up their noses at the likes of us. Still, you would have thought Pipe would be a fair catch. A post captain like him with piles of bleeding prize money to flash, what more does they want?’

  ‘I am not sure that it is a matter of money, Sam,’ explained the coxswain. ‘They are noble through and through. You should have seen Lady Ashton’s place.’

  ‘Bah! That’s all so much bleeding gammon,’ said Evans. ‘Go back awhile, and most of these grand lords will have a maid for a grandma as couldn’t keep the King out of her petticoats. I used to see no end of them as a lad back in London. Dukes and Earls and the like, with noses all pointed up to the sky, but happy enough to come a scuttling out east to Whitechapel when they felt randy for a whore, or wanted to see one of my prize fights.’

  ‘Any news as to where we might be bound then, Able?’ asked Trevan. ‘I heard we may not be going back to join the Channel Fleet.’

  ‘You heard right then, Adam,’ said Sedgwick. ‘It’s to be the Mediterranean Fleet for us, which suits me just fine. I was dreading a winter off the Brittany coast.’

  ‘Compared with Barbados even the Med will seem devilish cold,’ said Evans. ‘Not as I’m complaining, mind. Don’t mind a jug of bishop in the sun. Remember Madeira back in ninety five, Adam, when that bleeder Rosie tricked me into eating them revolting bean things?’

  ‘Olives, weren’t it?’ chuckled the Cornishman. ‘And Sean got so pissed he took on all them Yankee sailors in a mill, and you had to come and rescue him!’

  While the laughter subsided, Sedgwick looked around the lower deck. More and more of the crew were now arriving on board. They poured down the ladder ways and out onto the lower deck of the frigate. Friends greeted each other with smiles and back-slaps, while old rivals met with glares or patrician disregard. The noise level had been climbing steadily as the number of seamen increased. The predominant buzz of English was threaded through with other languages – Welsh, Gaelic, Cornish, the sing-song tones of Scandinavia, the guttural growl of German. Through all this babble and swirl he could see the occasional newcomer to the ship as they picked their uncertain way through the crowd.

  ‘Speaking of Rosie, there he is,’ he exclaimed. ‘Talking with that new hand. Hoy, Rosie!’

  Joshua Rosso looked round at his name, and waved a friendly hand in the direction of his messmates. He had a swarthy, Mediterranean look about him with his dark curly hair, olive skin and deep brown eyes, but when he spoke his accent was pure Bristol. Once he had finished his conversation with the new volunteer he came over to join them.

  ‘Who’s your new mate, then?’ growled Evans. ‘Skinny little bleeder, ain’t he?’

  ‘Just one of them new volunteers who wouldn’t know a back stay from his back side,’ said Rosso, as he thumped down on one of the mess stools. ‘Said his name was Oates, I think. He’s another Bristol boy, so maybe there is some hope for him yet. Bugger me, I’m knackered.’

  ‘Knackered!’ exclaimed Trevan. ‘You’re fresh back from a run ashore!’

  ‘Aye, but I just spent the last two days searching every grog shop in Plymouth for our Sean,’ he said. ‘And I have not found any trace of the daft bugger.’

  ‘Have you tried the brothels?’ asked Sedgwick.

  ‘That I have, every last one.’

  ‘No wonder you’re knackered,’ said Evans to general laughter.

  ‘Why do you suppose he ain’t come back from leave, then?’ asked Trevan.

  ‘Wasn’t he going to head back to his village in Ireland?’ said Sedgwick. ‘He got all melancholy and sick for home last commission when he clapped eyes on the Munster coast.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Evans. ‘He kept rattling on about the green of the hills like he’d never seen bleeding grass before. You don’t suppose he will have run, do you?’

  ‘Not a chance.’ said Trevan. ‘With all that prize money we have yet to touch? The Sean O’Malley I know wouldn’t want to leave that behind, not while there’s still a mug of gin to be bought or a willing whore to be found.’

  ‘He was talking about some girl he said he was sweet on back home,’ said Sedgwick. ‘He got you to write to her, didn’t he, Rosie? Maybe she was warm on him too?’

  ‘What, do you reckon he might have settled down with her?’ asked Rosso

  ‘Ha!’ exclaimed Evans. ‘Sean O’Malley, getting settled all regular with a girl! That’ll be the bleeding day!’

  *****

  ‘So here is the choice, like,’ said Liam Dougherty. ‘Either you can be after marrying my daughter, or me and the lads are going to beat the shite out of your miserable fecking hide.’ The farmer patted the club he held in one hand in the open palm of the other, to emphasise each word. There was a growl of approval from the group of his male relations who were assembled behind him in the barn.

  ‘Now hush there, Liam,’ urged Father O’Connell. ‘There will be no need for such violence. I am sure Sean is after doing the right thing by your girl.’

  ‘That’s right, Father,’ said Sean O’Malley. ‘If there is any cause for such a demand, of course I’ll oblige. But the fact is, on my honour, I never lay with the colleen.’

  ‘Will you give me the lie to my face, and before a priest an’ all?’ roared the indignant parent. He pointed his club towards the upper floor of the barn. ‘Didn’t I catch you in that hay up there with her?’

  ‘Sure you did, but I was only after giving her a kiss, like,’ protested the sailor.

  ‘She was as naked as Eve from the waist up!’

  ‘Ah, now, Mr Dougherty, be fair. I didn’t say as I was kissing her on the face.’

  Liam Dougherty made a lunge for O’Malley, who slipped behind the large figure of the clergyman.

  ‘Liam!’ warned the priest. ‘Lay no hands on this man. Away with you now, and take your family outside. Let me see if with a little calm, I can’t reason with him.’

  ‘Very well, Father,’ grumbled the farmer. ‘But you watch this ruffian’s blarney. I thought that St Patrick cast all the serpents out of Ireland, but I’m after thinking he might have missed one.’ He looked O’Malley up and down. His hostile gaze travelled from the dark hair on top of O’Malley’s head, via his twinkling brown eyes, down past his short sailor’s jacket, to his high waisted trousers. ‘Five foot six?’ he asked.

  ‘Five seven and a fecking half,’ corrected the sailor. He drew himself upright. ‘Every inch of it trained top man.’

  ‘Did you hear that, fellers?’ said the farmer as he left the barn. ‘Your man says he’s five seven and a half. We’re going to need to make that grave we dug earlier a little longer.’

  ‘Now Sean, I have known you since you were no more than a baby,’ began Father O’Connell. ‘I need to hear the truth from you about all of this. You can think of it as your confession to me as a priest. Tell me straight, did you perform an act of fornication with Dougherty’s daughter?’

  ‘She’s a comely enough wench to be sure, but as God is my witness I did no more than kissing and cuddling with her.’

  ‘Are you quite sure now?’ asked the priest. ‘Sailor’s have a reputation, you know, even this far from the sea.’

  ‘Am I fecking sure?’ exclaimed O’Malley. ‘Pardon my language, Father, but I have done a fair bit of whoring in my time. I think I know when I’ve had my fill.’

  ‘Very well, I believe you, Sean. And do you have any proper feelings for this girl at all?’

  ‘That I do, Father. Did you not see the letters I wrote to her from my ship? I know she’s not a reader, so I thought she might have brought them to you, so you could tell her what was in them, like?’

  ‘She certainly didn’t bring them to me, if she ever got them, Sean,’ said the priest. ‘And since when did you learn your letters? You were a very indifferent scholar when I tried to teach you as a boy.’

  ‘Ah, well now, Father, when I say I wrote them it was more like dictation. It was my shipmate Rosie,
Joshua Rosso that is, who did the actual setting of the words down like,’ said O’Malley. ‘Goodness, what a lot of this confessing I’m after doing today.’

  ‘Sean, this is serious,’ warned Father O’Connell. ‘Liam Dougherty is not a man to be trifled with. I don’t think as he was jesting about that grave. If you truly have feelings for this girl, why not come before me in the church and let’s have you two wed properly? You may not have left her with child, but after this ruckus she will still be as good as ruined.’

  ‘Father, I do care for the colleen, but I can’t be marrying her now,’ said the sailor. ‘Like I said, since I joined the navy I have done a deal of whoring. I can’t lie with a nice girl before I am certain I’m clean like. That’s why I never took advantage of her in the hay. She was game enough, I can tell you, unbuttoning her frock like and showing me the goods. Things might have got properly out of hand if Dougherty hadn’t shown up when he did. But do you see? I can’t, in all honesty, marry her just yet.’

  ‘But are you saying you will make an honest women of her in time?’ asked the clergyman.

  ‘Sure I will,’ he said. ‘I promise, just as soon as I can do it proper like. I’ll stop my whoring, save up some of my pay and prize money and come back and do it right. But for now I have to get back to my ship in England, or they’ll take me as a deserter.’

  ‘And how exactly do you propose to get out past this mob of angry Dougherties?’

  ‘Might you have a word with them for me, at all?’ said O’Malley.

  ‘Matters have gone a long way past the point when words will answer, Sean,’ said the priest. He looked around the barn in the hope of inspiration. The only other occupant was Dougherty’s mare Kerry, in her stall by the door. Father O’Connell got up from his upturned tub, and went to inspect the horse. Kerry stopped chewing hay as he entered her stall.