A Burial at Sea (2 page)

Lucy
had come off the same dockyards as Her Majesty’s ship
Challenger
in the same year, 1858, and both were corvettes, ships designed not for firing power, like a frigate, or quick jaunts out, like a brig, but for speed and maneuverability. She carried three masts; from stem to stern she measured about two hundred feet; as for men, she held roughly two hundred and twenty bluejackets—common seamen—and twenty-five or so more, from the rank of midshipman to captain, who belonged to the officer ranks. The
Challenger
, which was well known because of its long scientific mission to Australia and the surrounding seas, was quicker than the
Lucy
, but the
Lucy
was thought to be more agile and better in a fight.

In her means of propulsion she embodied perfectly the uncertain present state of the navy’s technology. She was not steam-powered but rather steam-
assisted
, which is to say that she used the power of coal to leave and enter harbor and during battle, but the rest of the time moved under sail, not all that differently than her forebears in the Napoleonic Wars sixty years earlier might have. Using coal added several knots to the
Lucy
’s speed, but it was a problematic fuel source: coaling stations were few and far between and the burners were thin-walled and had to be spared too much taxation lest they falter in an important situation. (New, thicker burners were being manufactured now, but even in her Plymouth refitting the
Lucy
didn’t receive one of them.)

Lenox had learned all of this information three nights before from the captain, Jacob Martin, a stern, youngish fellow, perhaps thirty-five, extremely religious, prematurely gray but physically very strong. Edmund said that he was much respected within the admiralty and destined for great things, perhaps even the command of a large warship within the next few months. Martin politely did his duty by welcoming Lenox to the ship and describing her outlines to him, but all the same didn’t quite seem to relish the prospect of a civilian passenger.

“Still,” he had said, “we must try to prove our worth now, the navy. It’s not like it was in my grandfather’s day. He was an admiral, Mr. Lenox, raised his flag at Trafalgar. Those chaps were heroes to the common Englishman. Now we must stretch ourselves in every new direction—diplomacy, science, trade—so that you mathematical fellows in Parliament will continue to see the use of us. Peacetime, you see.”

“Surely peace is the most desirable state of affairs for an officer of the navy?”

“Oh, yes!” said Martin, but in a slightly wistful tone, as if he weren’t entirely in agreement but couldn’t tactfully say as much.

They were in a private room at a public house near the water, where many officers regularly took supper. It was called the Yardarm. “I realize there must be fewer men afloat than during war,” said Lenox, trying to be sympathetic.

Martin nodded vehemently. “Yes, too many of my peers are on shore, eking out a life on half-pay. Dozens of children, all of them. Meanwhile the French have started to outpace us.”

“Our navy is much larger,” said Lenox. He spoke with authority—he had read the world’s driest blue book (or parliamentary report) on the subject.

“To be sure, but their ships are sound and fast and big, Mr. Lenox.” Martin swirled his wine in his glass, looking into it. “They were ahead of us on coal. Our
Warrior
was based on her
Gloire
. Who knows what they’re doing now. Meanwhile we’re all at sixes and sevens.”

“The navy?”

“It’s a period of transition.”

“Coal and steam, you mean, Captain? I know.”

“Do you?”

“I thought so, at any rate. Please enlighten me.”

“It’s not as it was,” said Martin. “We must now train our men to sail a full-rigged vessel, as we always have, and at the same time to coal a ship to fourteen knots under steam even as we fire a broadside. Because she’s built for speed the
Lucy
is very light in guns, of course—only twenty-one four-pounders, which would scarcely trouble a serious ship—but still, to be worried at once about sail, steam, and shooting is no easy task for a captain or a crew. And the Lord forbid you find yourself without coal.” He laughed bitterly and drank off the last of his wine.

“I understand the depots are few and far between.”

“You might say that. I think it’s more likely we’ll see three mermaids between here and Egypt than three proper depots where we can take our fill.”

Lenox tried good cheer. “Still, to be at sea! It’s stale to you, but for me I confess it’s a thrill.”

Martin smiled. “I apologize for sounding so negative, Mr. Lenox. I’ve been afloat since I was twelve, and I wouldn’t be anywhere else for money. But a captain’s job is a difficult one. When I’m on the water all of my problems are soluble, you see, but on land I can think over them and fret and worry myself half to oblivion. Before we leave, for instance, I must meet with the admiralty to discuss the prospects of my lieutenants. I’m bound to break one of their hearts. Well, but let us speak of other things. You’ll have a child soon, as I hear it? Might we drink to your wife’s health?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lenox fervently, and signaled to the waiter at the door for another bottle.

If supper at the Yardarm had been morose in stretches, due to Martin’s heavyhearted fears over the future of his service, Lenox’s visit to the wardroom of the
Lucy
had been entirely different.

It was in the wardroom where the rest of the officers took their meals. They were a far more rollicking, jovial set of men than their captain, and they had insisted Lenox actually visit the ship by way of introduction.

In the wardroom itself—a low-slung, long chamber at the stern of the ship with a row of very handsome curved windows, where lanterns swung gently from their moorings in the roof, casting a flickering light over the wineglasses and silver—Lenox met a bewildering array of men. All were seated at a single long table that ran fore-to-aft through the entire room. There were the ship’s five lieutenants, each of whom hoped one day to take on the responsibilities that Martin bemoaned; two marines, dressed in lobster-red, a captain and lieutenant, who commanded a squadron of twenty fighting men in the ship, and were thus part of the navy and not quite part of it at all; and finally the civil officers, each with a different responsibility, from the surgeon to the chaplain to the purser. Each of the fifteen or so people present sat in a dark mahogany chair, upholstered in navy blue, and as Lenox had learned from the rather rough quarterdeckman who had fetched him from shore, none could speak out of rank until the Queen was toasted.

When at last this happened the fierce decorum of the first glasses of wine fell off and people began to converse companionably. Lenox had already forgotten half the names he had heard, but to his pleasure he discovered that the person seated to his left, a second lieutenant called Halifax, was an agreeable sort.

“How long have you been with the
Lucy
?” Lenox asked him.

“About five months,” said Halifax. He was a plump fellow with a face slick and red from the warmth and wine. He seemed somehow gentle, though—not the card-playing, hard-drinking type Lenox might have expected. His voice was soft and melodious and his face was more than anything a kind one.

“What brought you on board?”

“Captain Martin’s previous second lieutenant had been lost at sea just before, and I met the ship at Port Mahon to replace him.”

“Poor chap.”

A troubled look passed over Halifax’s face, and his eyes ran along the faces at the table. “Yes. Unfortunately the navy can be unkind. Not all men get their wishes—not all lieutenants are made captain, for instance, however much they may feel they deserve it. Or take my case: nobody likes getting work at another man’s expense, of course, but I admit that I’m happy for the time at sea. Shore is dull, don’t you find?”

“I don’t,” said Lenox, “but then I’ve nothing to compare it to.”

“Very true. Do you fish, at least?”

“When I was a boy I did. Not since then.”

“I’ve a spare rod—you must come with me to the quarterdeck some time.” Halifax smiled to himself, his eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance. “Watching your line bob along the water as the sun goes down and the ship is quiet—a mild wind, leaning over the rail, cool breeze, perhaps a cigar—it’s the only way to live, Mr. Lenox.”

“What do you catch?”

“It depends where you are. My last ship, the
Defiant
, was broken up, but I sailed with her to the northern waters with Captain Robertson. There you found char, sculpins, cods, gunnels. Any number of things. We raked over a fair few hundred jellyfish. Have you ever seen one?”

“I haven’t, except in pictures.”

“They’re enormous, several feet long. Harmless, though their sting hurts like the dickens. Rather beautiful. Translucent.”

“And on our way to Egypt what will you find?”

A delighted look came into Halifax’s face. “The Mediterranean is a treat, from all I hear, enormous tuna fish, bream, mullet, marlins, swordfish. A velvet-belly shark, if we’re very lucky.”

“I must strike off my plans to go for a swim.”

“Nonsense—most refreshing thing in the world! If you’re sincerely afraid of sharks the captain will put a net out alongside of the ship, which you may swim in. Oh, but wait—a toast.”

The white-haired chaplain was rising, wildly inebriated, and when he had (not without difficulty) attained a standing position, proclaimed in a loud voice, “To a woman’s leg, sirs! Nothing could be finer in the world! And to my wife Edwina!”

There was a raucous cheer at this, and as anyone might have predicted who witnessed that moment, the wardroom’s supper went on very late into the night.

CHAPTER THREE

“Eat this,” said Lady Jane, and thrust out an orange at him.

“For the fiftieth time, dear heart, I’m not likely to come down with scurvy.”

They were walking down to the docks now. Behind them were two sailors from the
Lucy
, carrying Lenox’s effects: a large steamer trunk and two smaller bags. Lenox himself carried a small leather case full of documents that he thought it best to keep in his possession at all times. They were from his brother.

“Indulge me, won’t you?”

With a not unhappy sigh he took the piece of fruit she held out and began to peel it with his thumb. “I make this the sixteenth orange I’ve eaten in the last fortnight, and I’m not even counting the lemons you sneak onto every piece of fish I put in my mouth or those lime-flavored sherbets you plied me with at the admiral’s supper. I’m heartily sick of citrus fruits, you know. If I do get scurvy that will be the reason.”

“I would prefer you to return with all of your teeth, Charles. You can’t blame me for that.”

“I knew I was marrying a noblewoman. Such discrimination!”

She laughed. “I’ve packed a few more oranges in your trunk—eat them, will you?”

“I’ll make you a deal. I promise to choke down these oranges you give me if you promise in return to stay off your feet after I leave.”

“Oh, I shall,” she said. “Shake my hand—there, the deal is finished. I’m ahead of you anyhow—I told Toto I would let her read to me in the afternoons while I stayed in my bed.”

“Dr. Chavasse’s book?”

“I threw that away.
Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children
, indeed—that man knew no more about real mothering than Kirk does, or a bear in the woods. It’s more a book to frighten women than help them.”

“But he’s a doctor, Jane, and—”

“And what sort of name is Pye Henry Chavasse, too? I don’t trust a person who can’t have an honest name. Just call yourself Henry if your parents were foolish enough to burden you with ‘Pye,’ I say.”

“I’m not sure anyone related by blood to a man called Galahad Albion Lancelot Houghton can cast such aspersions.”

“He has the humility to go by Uncle Albert, doesn’t he? Pye Henry—for shame. At any rate I don’t need a book to tell me about what our child will be like. I have friends, oh, and cousins, all sorts of people who have been through it before.”

“That’s true enough.”

They turned into a small street that led straight down to the water. It was swarmed with bluejackets in the last minutes of their shore leave, some wildly drunk, others buying shipboard provisions at the general store, and still others kissing women who might equally be sweethearts from home or prostitutes working out of the coaching houses. As he was taking it all in he felt Jane clutch his arm.

“Stop a moment, will you?” she said softly.

He stopped and turned to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

There were tears standing unfallen in her gray eyes. “Must you go?” she said. Her bantering tone had vanished.

His heart fell. “I promised that I would.”

“I wish you hadn’t.”

She put her face to his chest and started to cry. Embarrassed, the two sailors carrying Lenox’s trunk and bags both studied a bill of goods in the window of the grocer’s they had stopped by, though Lenox knew for a fact that the smaller one, LeMoyne, couldn’t read.

“We’ll meet you by the water,” he said to the men, and shepherded Jane toward a tea shop next door. “Call it twenty minutes.”

He knew there to be a private room in the back, and as they entered he handed over half a crown to the landlady that they might take it. She obliged them by leaving them alone.

It was a small room, with Toby jugs—old clay mugs from Staffordshire, brown salt glazed and molded into human figures—lining a shelf on one wall. They sat opposite each other in the low wooden chairs.

“What’s happened to make you change your mind?” he asked Jane gently, taking her hand in his.

She wiped her eyes and tried to calm herself. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know you have to go. It’s only—it’s only—” She burst into fresh tears.