By the Mast Divided (22 page)

‘I sense Mr Sykes has done this many times before,’ said Lutyens, as both Costello and Ridley returned to the deck, hand over hand and with ease, by way of a backstay. ‘He is easy in his manner of instruction.’

Emily Barclay gave a slight start when Lutyens spoke for she had not heard him move to join her at the poop rail, where she too was watching the training proceed with a degree of absorption, not least because the author of the letter she had read to her husband was part of it, very obviously so because, with one exception, he was the tallest of the group. Having read his words she was intensely curious to observe the source. Part of her reaction to Lutyens was induced by the guilty knowledge that such an interest was unwise.

‘I hazard he could instruct all he likes, sir,’ she replied, to cover her confusion. ‘Nothing would induce me to climb to such a height.’

‘I confess a similar reluctance,’ Lutyens replied, ‘while acknowledging that it must be safe, for the men who work aloft do it dozens of times daily.’

Emily frowned. ‘How many of those men below us would share that sentiment?’

‘Few, but it is to be hoped that familiarity will breed…’

‘Not contempt?’ Emily asked, mischievously interrupting.

Lutyens smiled. ‘I was about to say competence.’

She looked at the surgeon’s singular profile; high forehead and hairline, eyes that protruded enough to be obvious and a nose-shape that reminded her of a whippet puppy, and wondered what had brought him aboard HMS
Brilliant
. He was, according to her equally curious husband, the only son of the Pastor of the Lutheran Church in London, a place of worship frequented by Queen Charlotte, a native German, and sometimes by King George himself, who still had an attraction to the religion of his Hanoverian ancestors. Lutyens’ father was a fair way to being the Queen’s confessor, which made him an intimate of royalty and the court. With connections like that, the ship’s surgeon could surely have had what he wanted in terms of employment. Emily Barclay might know little of the world outside her Somerset home, but she did know that it was singular for anyone to have influence and not employ it.

‘How do you find life aboard, Mr Lutyens?’ she asked. ‘After all it must be very strange considering that to which you are accustomed.’ He turned and smiled, which had a pleasant effect on his unusual features. 
But he did not speak. ‘Forgive me,’ Emily said quickly. ‘It is unforgivable to make so direct an enquiry.’

‘Not so, Mrs Barclay,’ Lutyens replied. ‘I am happy to admit it is strange, and to confess to my ignorance to the whole of my surroundings. I certainly find everything very unfamiliar, as, I hazard, do you, yet I also find it a matter of deep fascination.’ Emily Barclay’s enquiring look encouraged him to continue. ‘Take the men you are now watching…’

‘I came merely to take the air,’ said Emily brusquely, at the same time giving Lutyens a searching stare to see if he had divined her true interest, relieved to see that he was not looking at her at all.

‘Quite, and very efficacious it is. But for myself there is another motive.’

‘Am I to be allowed to share it?’

‘Why not? I confess to an interest in the human spirit in all its guises, the way it reacts to upheaval, sudden change – dislocation, perhaps, being a better word. Those fellows, literally being shown the ropes, must be suffering from an extreme degree of that. Two days ago they led a very different existence and it is clear that they were not, as statute has it, bred to the sea, so they should not in truth be here. Do you not find their situation curious also?’

Emily, disconcerted by what the surgeon was saying, which only served to underline her own disquiet regarding her husband’s actions, was spared a reply by sudden activity on the quarterdeck. It was almost palpable the way the officers below them stiffened as soon as the marine boot crashed on the wooden deck. Ralph Barclay appeared and stood arms akimbo, then moved to the windward side of the deck, which was immediately cleared, for this was by custom the captain’s private space. Close to the weather gangway as he paced forward, he stopped to listen to Bosun Sykes explain, in detail, what was required to work aloft, thinking that in size and shape he had pulled together an unlikely bunch.

‘Mr Sykes,’ he called, ‘I suggest that time is not on your side. We are about to take on board a Deal pilot and once he is on the deck I cannot delay. If you wish these men to experience climbing the shrouds before that happens you will need to be quick.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ replied Sykes, before looking at them with a smile. ‘Now who is going to be first?’

‘Mr Sykes, the man closest to the shrouds should be first, and I trust you know how to deal with any reluctance.’

Rufus Dommet, in his gauche way, had failed to notice that those who stood with him had inched back since Costello had first started to 
clamber up the shrouds, leaving him well to the fore. Thus it was he Sykes indicated should proceed, a request which made Rufus step back smartly. Sykes was at his side in a second, his voice low.

‘Get up them shrouds now, boy, for I don’t want to have to drive you to it. But drive you I will, if I must.’

‘Is that disinclination, Mr Sykes?’ called Barclay, in an encouraging voice. ‘Let one man delay and they all will.’

Sykes called back, ‘Just gifting him some advice, sir,’ before he took Rufus’s arm and hauled him to the bulwarks. ‘Now you have been told, just clap on. As long as you have one arm and one foot working you need never fear.’

Rufus remained rooted to the spot, until both Ridley and Costello moved either side of him to propel him forward. Having got him to the side, they lifted him bodily on to the top of the bulwark, forcing him to reach for one of the ropes on the shrouds.

‘Right, mate,’ said Ridley, ‘get a foot on there and start climbing, for if you don’t that bastard Barclay will keelhaul you.’

‘Ever seen a man keelhauled?’ asked Costello, in a gravelly voice. ‘Seen a man go under the ship and come up the other side with scarce an inch of unbloodied skin on him?’

‘That there water looks cold,’ Ridley added, ‘and that is where you are going if you don’t go aloft.’

The grisly thought of a keelhauling, and the threat of that freezing grey-green water, made Rufus put his foot where it was required, and slowly he began to climb. The next candidate was brought forward before he was a third of the way up, treated similarly, placed where he really had no choice. Michael O’Hagan stepped forward without demur, saying to Pearce, ‘Sure, if you’d seen some of the scaffold I have had to work on, built by men of little sobriety, this would not cause you to fear.’

Pearce followed him, not with any confidence, because he had little knowledge of heights, but determined that if this was a test of nerve it was not one he was going to fail. He soon discovered it was nothing like any ladder he had ever climbed. The ropes in both his hands and beneath his feet had a life of their own, and the motion of others on the same set of shrouds made the whole apparatus live. Above him, one fellow slipped and was left hanging on by a hand, scrabbling with his foot, and Pearce had the sudden vision of him dropping and taking everyone below with him into the sea, but the fellow managed to get a foothold and began to climb again. Pearce didn’t move, he looked over his shoulder, thinking that closer to shore, and in smoother, inshore water, to dive from here 
could put him well clear of the ship’s side, with the chance to swim at some speed.

‘This is too slow, Mr Sykes,’ called Barclay, his tone less patient.

‘Move you,’ Sykes snapped at Pearce, before replying to the captain. ‘It is my opinion that more haste makes for less speed, sir.’

‘I think he means,’ Lutyens whispered to Emily Barclay, ‘that one falling man would make his task even harder.’

‘Impossible, I should think,’ Emily replied.

‘I have noted that opinion Mr Sykes,’ said Barclay, ‘but you will oblige me by following what I now say to be a direct order.’

Pearce was well above the deck now, and, looking down at Ralph Barclay, he felt a wholly specious sense of superiority. Progress had slowed as each man gingerly negotiated the lubber’s hole, affording him a chance to turn again and look at the view, which while not spectacular provided some interest, given the low lying nature of the nearest shore, the great bight of a sandy and muddy bay and the snow-white cliffs that edged it to the north. For the first time since being brought aboard he had a slight feeling of pleasure, for to be so high and be afforded such a view was agreeable.

It was now Ridley’s turn to yell at him. ‘You there! Truculence, move you arse,’ forcing Pearce to look up and see that his route was now clear.

‘Take that man’s name, Mr Thrale,’ yelled Barclay, to the officer of the watch. ‘I will have no foul usage of language on deck with my wife aboard.’

‘Women is ever trouble on a ship,’ said Kemp, still hovering on the gangway just in case he and his rattan were required. Several heads on the foc’stle had turned, having heard what the captain said.

‘What, like the gunner’s wife?’ asked a carpenter’s mate, kneeling next to Kemp, busy repairing a broken cleat.

‘She don’t count, fat sow.’

‘What about them two lovelies that’s stowed in the cable tier?’

‘They ain’t women, they’s whores,’ snarled Kemp, flicking his cane to the poop, not sure if the carpenter was joshing him. It would be maddening if he was not – the idea that some of his shipmates had smuggled women aboard and he was ignorant, for he had long ago learnt that, being unpopular, such things were not vouchsafed to the likes of him. The thought gave extra venom to his next remark. ‘I’m talking about a proper woman, like that stood up there wi’ the surgeon, one with ears too gentle for a bit of a blaspheme.’

‘It would perhaps be best if I went below,’ said Emily, in an 
embarrassed whisper. ‘I would not want my mere presence to be the cause of a man getting into trouble.’

‘I would advise that,’ said Lutyens, with an upward jerk of his head, ‘for if we are here to indulge in a touch of observation we are not alone. Eyes are upon you.’

Emily looked to the mainmast cap, to where Pearce now stood, obviously looking directly at her. He had on his face the kind of
half-amused
stare that young men used in a crowded ballroom to let a girl know that she was the object of their interest, and not just the possessor of a dance card. The odd thought popped into her head that such an expression was utterly at odds with the man’s station, that he had somehow managed to block out the present surroundings and take her back to a more familiar world. She could almost feel the power of his personality, and it was very disconcerting. Emily dropped her eyes quickly, and blushing, made for the steps that would take her back to the cabin, aware as she left of Lutyens’ eyes following her. When the surgeon looked up again it was to find himself under scrutiny.

Pearce, for just a precious minute free to stand at stare, was wondering about this surgeon; was he as ubiquitous in the officer’s part of the ship as he was before the mast, scribbling down anything that took his fancy? Was the captain’s wife a subject of that study, and if so, what had Lutyens concluded? He had an overwhelming desire to know what they had been talking about, a craving that found no satisfaction in the face of the man he was staring at.

‘Not Abel,’ said Rufus Dommet in his ear, breaking that train of thought. ‘He’ll never get up here.’

Pearce looked down to see a solitary Abel Scrivens, the last of the group, trying to edge backwards, then lifted his eyes to observe the way Barclay was fixated by the scene before him, standing, feet spread to take the motion of the ship, hands behind his back, exuding impatience.

‘Hates heights,’ added Ben Walker, ‘always has. He would never do any ladder work.’

‘Then God help him,’ Pearce replied.

‘Name?’ demanded Sykes, of a man who was shaking with fear, backing away, seemingly determined not to go aloft.

‘Scrivens.’

‘Move, Scrivens,’ the bosun growled, ‘or I will be obliged to fetch over Kemp, who I think you know, to get you to shift.’

Kemp had already moved from the gangway, drawn to a man who 
afforded him some gratification when struck, being as he was, a right noisy squealer. Sykes did not want to force Scrivens up the shrouds, for to his mind there was no point. Some men could not do it and there was an end to it, with no good coming of coercion, more likely something dire. Anyone aloft and uncertain threatened not only his own person but those with whom he worked, and no Yeoman of the Sheets, in charge on the ship’s yards, would thank him for that. He had served with captains before to whom he could have appealed, and left the likes of Scrivens to haul on ropes for eternity, but he had also shared a deck with men like his present captain who would brook no dissent.

Ralph Barclay might not have bothered if he had not been so
short-handed
, especially in the article of trained hands. To get from his ship what he wanted every man who had a rating of able or below would have to be of use in every department, on the guns, aloft on the yards, or just hauling on a fall to position a yard.

‘Mr Sykes,’ Barclay called, his voice even, almost benevolent. ‘I am aware that your warrant is a new one, and that perhaps you have not clearly understood my order.’

‘I have, sir.’

‘Then be so good, Mr Sykes, as to follow it to the letter.’

It was crude but effective. The bosun might have sympathy for a man like Scrivens, but Ralph Barclay had just humiliated him in front of everyone by referring to the fact of his recent promotion from bosun’s mate to a full warrant as a standing officer. He could not remove him, promote or demote him, for his warrant came from a higher authority, but to a man who needed to keep the respect of the crew, what had been said should be sufficient to harden his heart.

‘Right,’ he said to his two assistants, ‘get this bugger up them shrouds, and clout him if he freezes.’ Then Sykes turned, upset at his own harshness, and saw that Kemp had come to assist. ‘You can stow that rattan, Kemp. You’re too free with it.’