Almost a Scandal (38 page)

“Saber cut,” Col bit off. “Go back with Mr. Jellicoe,” he said to her. His eyes were pouring worry over her. “My compliments to the captain, Mr. Jellicoe, but you may tell him Mr. Kent—”

Sally wouldn’t let him finish. “I’m fine, sir. Just a touch light-headed. But I’ll manage. There’s no need for me to leave
Swiftsure.
I’m not likely to get another chance to command a third rate again. And you’re needed elsewhere.”

“This is not a discussion, Mr. Kent.” Col held firm. “You are, to use a colorful phrase, leaking blood like bilge water, so you will obey my orders, which at the moment are to sit down and recover yourself. ” He propped her against the rail. “Compliments of
Swiftsure,
Mr. Jellicoe, tell the boat Mr. Kent is injured, I am staying to secure the prize, and that I have need of you as well. That is all. Now, who is in command of this vessel?” Col demanded of no one in particular.

When no answers were forthcoming, Sally addressed the wreck of the ensign who was still slowly bleeding his life away into the deck. “
Monsieur. Où est votre capitaine?”

“
En bas
.” The poor boy’s answer was thin with despair.
“Blessé. Il n’y a personne d’autre.”

“Below, he says, wounded. And that there are no others.”

“Christ. No wonder they couldn’t even strike their colors.” Col’s relentless gaze swept the deck. “Well, tell him the ship is ours. Moffatt, strike that flag and put up our colors.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Col turned back to her, his eyes still hard and devoid of compromise. “No one else, he says? Not even a surgeon?”

But in the intervening moments while he had been speaking to Moffatt, the last agonized breath of life had eked out of the poor Frenchman. “He’s gone, sir.”

And because the well of her pity had not yet been wrung dry, she found herself rising, wanting to stand on her own two feet. Wanting to move, needing to prove she was still alive by living through the sharpening pain. “With your permission, sir, I’ll go below and venture to find out.”

But Col was clearly a dog with a bone he meant to chew on for a while longer. “You should stay put.”

What had he once told her?
There’s more than one way to splice a line.
“All right. I can see what needs doing from here. I’m worried that the weather will worsen. Are there anchors still remaining under all that mess?”

The diversion worked. Col’s all-seeing gaze swept forward, over the welter of spars and rigging littering the foredeck, cataloguing the debris that would have to be cleared before he could even assess the state of
Swiftsure
’s anchors. His mind leapt to the problem, and he began to move away, forward. Over his shoulder, he growled, “Stay put,” with the frustration of a man who knew full well she would disobey him. “Mr. Jellicoe, set a man clearing this rigging away, and then see what still needs plugging below the waterline. Here, is the French carpenter alive and working? You there—”

“Marin,”
she supplied helpfully, both so the dazed French sailor standing nearby would know he was being addressed, and to remind Col that she was eminently more useful working instead of sitting. “I’ll look for both the carpenter and the surgeon, and put an eye to what needs repairing below, shall I? I’ll never be able to climb, so Mr. Jellicoe can see to a jury rig for the foremast.
Marin,
” she called again to the French sailor, without waiting for Col’s answer. “
Venez avec moi.
Come with me.”

It was too sensible and useful a suggestion for him to pass up. Col nodded grimly and turned back to his own work. “Moffatt, get the towline worked from
Audacious.
We’ll want at least two anchors at the ready at the bow, and another kedge at the stern.”

As the companionway near the waist had been shattered beyond safe use, Sally was forced to pick her way forward to find a ladder below. By the time she found the surgery deep in the hold, the captain of
Swiftsure
had already expired of his wounds, but the quantity of French wounded meant that the surgeon, Dupuis, and his assistant, were still employed ceaselessly in caring for the injured and dying.

But there was one officer, besides the surgeon. Ensign Gravois proved to be the French equivalent of Ian Worth—small, inexperienced, and absolutely astonished to find himself still alive.

“I was charged by my
capitaine
to make the surrender of his ship to you, monsieur,” he said with formal gravity, and made her a beautifully correct bow. Sally thought he would have handed her the captain’s sword, except her hands were too busy to accept it—she was still holding Col’s handkerchief to her hot face with one, while gripping a nearby post to keep her upright with the other.

“I thank you, monsieur, but it is not I who am in command. And I think, under the circumstances, the formalities can be dispensed with. Come, is there a carpenter or a mate? And I will need you to organize anyone who is hale enough to work the pumps. It’s going to be the devil of a thing to keep this shattered ship afloat.”

Even in the short time she had been belowdecks, the motion of the ship was becoming more violently pronounced. The long swell out of the west she had noticed two mornings ago when the enemy fleet had come out of Cadiz was racing toward them with a vengeance.

Sally kept Gravois with her, using him to translate and convince the dispirited remains of the French crew to work to save themselves from the oncoming gale with the same élan they had fought the British. Hours passed in a feverish haze of toil as they worked endlessly to man the pumps to keep the vessel afloat through the course of the fiercest gale Sally had ever had the displeasure of witnessing or experiencing.

She left Ensign Gravois to continue to chide and shame his men into action, and took a smaller party of men onto the deck to report and see what help they might be there.

Audacious
had taken the big, lumbering wreck of
Swiftsure
in tow, but as the gale howled out of the Atlantic onto them, the wind tore at them from the west, pushing them relentlessly onto the shallow coast.

Just as Sally had feared,
Swiftsure
was endangering
Audacious,
pulling the smaller frigate onto the lee shore. Before Sally could even open her mouth to voice her concerns, Col was headed down the deck.

“We’ll have to cut the towline,” he yelled over the shriek of the wind. “Put two men to cut the line, and take another party to the kedge. The rest, come with me.”

The strain on the cable was so great, it took Moffatt only a single blow to hew through the line, which went sailing over the rail with the strength of a lash.

Col and his men immediately dropped the anchors at the bow, while Sally saw to the kedge astern.

As the gale wore on into the night, many of the English ships in tow, as well as the French and Spanish ships around them, had to be cut free or abandoned. Thanks to Col’s foresight,
Swiftsure
’s anchors held firm, although the relentless working of the sea against the battered frames of the hull caused the weakened joints to work loose, and the seams to open with regularity.

Moffatt proved himself to be an anvil of a man. While Col kept the watch on deck, the mate came below to work tirelessly with Sally, hammering iron spikes to shore up loose timbers and plugging leaks with every bung they could find or fashion.

But anvil or not, even Moffatt had his weaknesses. “I don’t like the lay of this Frenchie, sir,” Moffatt fretted. “She’s like to work apart like a poxy French tart.”

“Nonsense, Moffatt.” Sally tried to bolster his flagging spirits. “This ship is as British as you, built with English oak by the Wells brothers at Depford yard. She’ll hold together still, despite the drumming we gave her. Poor old girl didn’t deserve such rough treatment from her own brethren, but we can keep her shored up, if we stay at it.”

A stout-built ship she may have been, but they still had to man the pumps constantly, and it was everything Sally could do to keep a steady rotation of men at the heavy, exhausting work in order to keep the sea from overtaking them.

There was little opportunity for rest, and absolutely none for sleep. Sally prowled the distressed hull, always finding more work to be done. No matter the pounding blaze in her head, she could not rest. As long as Col worked so tirelessly above, she would work below, keeping the men working in rotation so none of them stayed on deck too long. Not even Col.

When Will Jellicoe brought her a mug of dark aromatic coffee that he, or perhaps Ensign Gravois, had conjured out of God only knew where, she said, “Take one up to Mr. Colyear, Will. He’ll have greater need of the fortification.”

“No need,” Col said as he came down the companionway, slapping his sopping hat against a post. “I’m already here. For the moment, anyway. Thank you.”

He took the proffered cup, and over its steam, he narrowed his eyes at her. “Why haven’t you seen to that? There’s a damn French surgeon, so fetch him now.”

“He’s been busy—” she began to explain.

“Fetch him now, Mr. Jellicoe, if you please. Sit down, Kent, before you fall down.” He took her arm, as if he would steer her someplace more suited to his purpose.

“Where?” she joked with bleak humor. She had been spelling the men at the pumps with easier though necessary jobs, such as restoring the batten walls and securing all the openings the British cannon had blasted in the ship, but there was no furniture, even in the captain’s cabin, or in the wardroom where they stood. There, the stern gallery had been obliterated in the fight, and rain and seawater were blowing sideways through the opening, dousing them in a chilly mist. “I was about to see if we could rig up a tarpaulin to keep out the worst of the weather, and keep us from taking on any more unnecessary water.”

“After you’ve seen the surgeon.” He steered her out of the wardroom and sat her on a companionway stair. “Has the surgeon even had a look at you?”

Sally gave up trying to convince him her injury was superficial, and as such, too low on both her and the surgeon’s list of priorities. “As you like it, Mr. Colyear.”

“Nothing is as I’d like it, especially not this, but it’s the way it will be.”

Before Sally could puzzle out that cryptic statement, Dupuis arrived.

“See to it,” Col directed him with more belligerence than Sally thought was warranted. “Make a clean job of it, damn your eyes.”

“It’s clean enough.” The surgeon sniffed as he peeled off the handkerchief and peered at her forehead. “Bathed in its own blood.”

Sally didn’t think she had a nerve ending left after the numbing exhaustion of the battle and now the gale, but she was wrong. The pain, which had settled into a dull, omnipresent throb, flared anew into a searing heat. She felt as if her face were on fire, with pinpricks of flame licking across her skin as he lashed her face together.

She was glad Col stayed the entire time. He crouched next to her, holding the lantern high so Dupuis would have adequate light, and his knee pushed up hard against the outside of her thigh, solid and reassuring. Sally had to clench her hands into the fabric of her trousers to keep from reaching for his hand with every stitch, every sharp burn of the needle and thread.

To keep from crying like a girl.

She clenched her eyes shut and concentrated on breathing without twitching.

“Calme-toi,”
Dupuis kept adjuring her. “Stay still.”

And, thanks to Col, she did. With his help, it was over soon enough, and she was anxious to return to the diversion of working to keep the damn boat afloat.

The moment Col was summoned back on deck, she was up and back at it, hauling spare spars and canvas up from the depth of the hold, using every bit of stored timber that could be found, to continue with the endless round of repairs. She kept the entire crew busy—no one could be spared, not even the wounded. Injured men were put to work reworking and splicing lines into usable cordage, or picking apart what could not be saved into loose hemp to stuff into leaking seams.

But by the third—or was it fourth?— day the pain was sapping the last of her strength. The heat in her face wouldn’t abate. Her skin felt scalded, and the constant fight to save the ship began to seem to Sally like a scene from Dante’s
Inferno
—a vain struggle without any end. It seemed as if
Swiftsure
began to take on a sort of hellish slant, a dreamscape of sullen dripping gray, and strange yellow lamplight.

She wanted to be on deck, where the blessed dark and the chill night air could cool the heat within her.

Col’s voice sounded in her ear. “Kent, I don’t like the way you look. Get below and rest.”

“I’ll rest when this bloody hurricane is over. When the gale starts to abate. Is it abating, do you think?” She turned her face up to the blessed cool of the rain, letting it wash over her, and douse the fire in her face and in her throat.

Devil take her, but what she would give at that moment for a nice sip of British tea.

And that was when the night closed in upon her and went completely black.

*   *   *

It was almost three more days before the hurricane did finally begin to abate. In all, it had been seven days of unending work and ceaseless toil. Seven days of incessant worry. Seven days of watching Sally Kent’s condition go from bad to worse.

Seven days of self-recrimination, of mentally retracing his steps, of wishing he had done things differently.

He could have prevented it. It never should have happened. It never would have happened if he had ceased trying to order fate, and had left her aboard
Audacious.
He should never have ordered her to take part in the boarding. He should have left well enough alone. But he hadn’t.

He’d had seven days of being afraid. More afraid than he’d ever been in his life. Afraid she was slowly dying as he watched.

So at the first sign of lightening skies on the seventh day, Col was on deck. “Sway out those boats, Moffatt, and get a line to
Audacious.
I want to get this damn ship back under tow.”