A Burial at Sea (20 page)

“Now tell me,” said Martin, when the table had quieted. “What brings you into these waters?”

“We carried famine relief to Ireland,” said Captain Collier.

“God bless you,” said Lenox, with more fervor than he had intended; he felt his own country’s inaction during Ireland’s struggle a point of shame, brought into sharp relief by the Americans’ generosity.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Was your passage eventful?”

“Not in the least, thank goodness. I feared spring storms, but they never materialized. Now we make our way to the African coast, where we will break up the slave traders for a month or so, and then fill our empty holds with goods for our shores. A routine peacetime voyage, all in all. I suspect we’re rather like you; trying to make ourselves useful.”

“That is our situation indeed,” said Martin. Here he began his familiar disquisition on the lethargy of the British navy, the strange uses to which it was being put. He concluded by saying, almost apologetically, “We understand Mr. Lenox’s mission to be of singular importance, but there are ships afloat that are doing—well, what you might call busywork, even.”

“What we need, in my opinion,” Collier said, “is a return to the age of Banks.”

There was an immediate hum of gratified agreement. “Yes, absolutely,” said Martin. “Scientific discovery has always been the second-greatest adornment of our navy.”

“I know of Banks, of course—a famous figure—but must admit my ignorance of his achievements,” Lenox interjected, a statement met with incredulity all around. “I fear it may be a similar black spot for many landsmen. Pray tell me, for what is he most widely known?”

“His voyage with Cook’s
Endeavor,
first to Brazil, then to Botany Bay,” said Collier. “But, Captain Martin, you are his fellow Englishman; please tell us.”

Martin, with great seriousness, said, “He is the greatest figure in our navy’s history, barring Drake and Nelson, in my opinion—that is a bold statement but one I stand by, though Banks was never a great seaman himself. There is a whole genus of Australian flowers named after him, nearly two hundred plants in all,
Banksia,
and he was the first to bring the eucalyptus tree, the acacia, the mimosa, back to the Western world.”

“The bougainvillea,” murmured Carrow. He was smiling, Lenox observed. “Named it after his friend, a Frenchman—and this in the 1780s, when there was a good deal of nerve between the nations.”

“Just so, because science exalts our natures,” said Collier, “above even national pride, at times. That’s why I wish our navies would undertake more voyages of the kind Captain Cook led.”

“I’m reading the
Voyage of the Beagle
at the moment,” said Lenox, “and—”

“A truly great book,” one of the American officers chimed in.

“Unfortunate that Darwin lost his mind subsequently,” said Martin. “Apes, indeed.”

“We’ve had that discussion too often in our own wardroom for it to be fruitful any longer,” said Collier, smiling. “Mr. Lenox, what were you saying?”

“Only that perhaps science is still alive in the navy. Mr. Darwin is.”

“The
Beagle
sailed forty years ago, I’m sorry to say,” Martin put in. “There’s nothing like it afloat now. More’s the pity.”

As the discussion wended onward, they ate a wonderful meal, no doubt the best of the
Constellation
’s diminished stores, a tender leg of lamb, creamy mashed potatoes, a dessert of black sugar cake. There was, too, a great deal of excellent wine. Having been at seas slightly longer than the
Lucy
s, the men of the
Constellation
eagerly heard the most recent news, and they were into their cigars and port by the time the noise subsided in the faintest degree.

When it did, Collier stood. “Gentlemen,” he said, “raise your glasses, please, along with me. I am very happy to welcome you on board, Captain Martin, Mr. Billings, Mr. Carrow, Mr. Lee, the Honorable Mr. Lenox. My family came from England to Massachusetts in the 1630s, and though we have fought against you twice, first in our revolution, then in the war at the start of this century, we have never forgotten that our roots were planted first in English soil. We honor the old country. And it gives me pleasure that our nations have finally understood this special connection, and that we may eat a meal such as this one in the spirit of pure friendship. Your health, gentlemen—oh, and as is your custom, I believe, to the Queen.”

“The Queen!”

Martin stood up then, and praised Collier and his ship, her taut rigging and shipshape sails, and then echoed Collier’s delight in the friendship between their nations.

“And now,” Collier said, when the toasts were all delivered, “if you can stay a little while longer we have some excellent brandy—American, but good, I promise you—and we would welcome your company for as long as you please to drink it with us.”

It was very late at night indeed—nearly morning—when the
Bumblebee
readied herself for her short voyage back to the
Lucy
. Alice Cresswell and Teddy Lenox for their part were shamefully drunk, and the officers, roughly but with a hint of indulgence, piled them into the bottom of the boat; then all of them, including Lenox, turned back to wave goodbye to the Americans as the rowers began to pull. The men of the
Constellation,
among them her own officers, were lined along the rail of the ship, waving back and shouting messages of goodwill, of good sailing, and of good luck.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Though it was abominably late and he was slightly the worse for drink, when Lenox returned to his cabin he found that he didn’t feel like falling straight into bed. He went to his desk and lit a candle there.

“Sir?” said McEwan groggily, from the other side of the door. “D’you need anything?”

“No, no, thank you,” said Lenox.

“G’night, sir. Oh! But the Americans, how were they?”

“Most friendly.”

“Did they try to boast about the old wars, 1812 and that?”

“Not at all.”

“My old granddad fought them then. He was sore about it still, up till he died. Said they were up-jumped ruffians, the Americans.”

“On the contrary, I found them most civilized.”

“Well, and perhaps they grown up, in all this time.”

“Perhaps. Good night, McEwan.”

“G’night, sir.”

Lenox poured himself a glass of wine and rocked back in his chair, looking out through his porthole. The scent of the still sea blew lightly into the cabin, and above it the sky had just begun to lighten from black to pale purple. In the half-light there was a melancholy to the lightless gray of the water, a solitude in it, and he felt something stir inside him: a feeling that reminded him again of homesickness.

He thought of Jane, sitting on her rose-colored sofa, writing letters at her morning desk, moving through the house, setting small things aright. How did these men tolerate lives at sea, always abroad, always a thousand miles from home! But then, perhaps they weren’t as happy by their hearths as he was by his.

It had been only a week after Edmund had asked Charles to go to Egypt that Jane had begun to act strangely. For two days she had spoken very little and spent much time closeted with her close friend the Duchess of Marchmain—Duch, for short—and refusing all invitations.

Lenox had too much delicacy to ask her what was the matter, but he had gone and sat with her at unusual times, running home during breaks from Parliament, hoping to invite her confidence.

It was on the third day that he finally received it. He had been reading on the sofa by the fire—there was still a winter chill in the air, halfway through March—and eating an edge of toast, when Jane spoke.

“Tell me,” she said, “how old was your mother when you were born?”

He put his book facedown beside him. “Nearly twenty-four, I think.”

“Twenty-one when Edmund was born, then?”

“Yes.”

Jane smiled. “I wish she had lived longer. She was such a kind woman.”

“Yes,” he said, and felt a lump in his throat. It was something he tried never to think about.

“I’m fearfully old,” she said.

“You’re not!”

“I am, I am. Too old to be a mother.”

Since their marriage Lenox had been hoping that she might consent to have a child with him, and now with a start he realized that perhaps the opportunity was being taken from him. “McConnell and every other doctor you’ve seen have told you you’re not,” he said.

She laughed, a kind of choked laugh. “I suppose they were right!”

He stood up. “Jane?”

“I’m going to have a child, anyhow,” she said, and burst into tears.

What had he felt in that moment? It was impossible to describe the jumble inside him: pride mixed up with fear mixed up with a great surge of excitement mixed up with a million questions mixed up with concern for his wife mixed up with … with everything, anything a human could feel.

“My goodness,” was all he said. His hands were in his pockets and he rocked back on his feet, staring at a spot on the ground.

“Is that what you have to say?”

His face broke into a great grin, and he went and took her by the hands. “No. I have much more to say. Only I don’t know where to begin. At first I thought I would thank you for marrying me, which still surprises me every day, though it happened years ago, and then I thought I would say how happy I felt, but you were crying. So I thought I would stand there and be silent.”

She had stopped crying, but her face was still wet with tears. “Oh, Charles,” she said.

“When did you know?”

“I’ve suspected it for some while, but I went to the doctor with Duch yesterday. He confirmed it.”

Lenox frowned. “The doctor, there’s a point. Do you have the best man? McConnell knows all of them in Harley Street—we’ll ask him—and of course we must be sure to speak—”

“No, no—this habit you have of solving problems that don’t exist! I have an excellent doctor. Toto used him too.”

Lenox sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. In a quick voice he said, “You have made me happy beyond measure, Jane—really, you have.”

She tilted her head up and kissed his cheek then. “I’m so relieved to tell you.”

“Were you anxious?”

“I don’t know, quite. My head was all in a muddle.”

And then she did something that Lenox could almost feel in his cabin, so far from London: she took his hand and put it in hers, and they sat, companionably silent for the most part, occasionally bursting into little exchanges about this or that—which room would the nursery be! If it were a boy he must be put down for Harrow immediately!—until deep in the morning.

There was a feeling of nervous elation bound up in having so much happiness, he had found. Every time he thought of his child, growing strong within Jane, he had a fizzy feeling in his head and had to remind himself to behave normally, not to run around telling strangers.

Outside of his cabin the sky was pale white now, and soon, he knew, it would flash into goldenness. Really he must rest.

But not for twenty minutes, he decided; he would write his wife first, and tell her how much he missed her, and how very much he loved her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Butterworth knows something
, the note from Evers had said.

Lenox woke up late the next morning with a foggy head, but the phrase popped straight into his thoughts. As he ate breakfast and sipped his coffee, he considered the little he knew of Billings’s valet. Butterworth was jaundiced yellow, some harmless seafarer’s disease, Billings had mentioned, and too tall by several inches for the low ceilings on board a ship, which meant he always seemed slightly stooped.

Billings himself was in the wardroom, writing a letter, when Lenox put his head out. Seated alongside him was Mitchell, who was whittling down a piece of light-colored spruce into what appeared to be a finely detailed model of the
Lucy
.

It was a minor piece of information that Lenox registered almost automatically: Mitchell must be used to having a knife in his hands …

“D’you know,” the detective said in a conversational tone, “I almost feel guilty, asking McEwan to fetch me more coffee. He possesses such surpassing grace amidships that it seems he ought to be there.”

Billings looked up, smiling; Mitchell looked up too, but without the smile. “Oh, he’s landed where he wants to be,” said Billings. “It’s no bad job.”

“Have you had your own stewards long? How were they chosen?”

“Butterworth came to sea with me—my father’s servant.”

“He must be trustworthy, in that case.”

“Oh, very. Mitchell, did your chap come along with you?”

“He and I have been together on several voyages now, but all on the
Lucy,
” said Mitchell, still whittling. “We met when I was a midshipman in the
Challenger,
and when I had my step up I brought him along as my steward. Excellent fellow.”

“It’s common, then, for a steward to follow an officer from assignment to assignment?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mitchell. “In fact many of them act as butlers when their gentlemen are ashore. A bit rough, as butlers go, but nobody can keep a house clean like a steward.”

“It’s true that I have been amazed at the amount of time McEwan spends tidying.”

For the first time in their acquaintance, Mitchell smiled at him, albeit thinly. “Such is life afloat, Mr. Lenox.”

Billings took a last mouthful of egg and stood up. “I think I’ll take a turn on the quarterdeck,” he said. “Last night’s wine has given me a morning head, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Mitchell.

“Mr. Lenox?” Billings asked.

“I’ll stay here, if it’s all the same to you.”

After they had gone Lenox rose and went to the closed door behind which lay Billings’s cabin, and the tiny nook where Butterworth slept. He knocked on the door, but nobody answered. As he began to push it open, a heavy voice behind him said, “Oy! Who’s that?”