“I am truly disillusioned, Mr. Lindsay. I can find nothing of the senior officer in you.”
“Captain, please, show mercy, sir. Please don’t send me to my death.” Octavius dropped his head between his knees and began blubbering incoherently.
“I don’t know whether to despise you or to pity you.”
Octavius began rocking back and forth on the floor, and in a voice choked with terror sobbed, “Please, sir, don’t hang me. Give … give me fifty lashes, flog me around the fleet when we return to England, just please … I don’t want to hang.”
James’s blue-veined hands flew to his mouth and he shut his eyes as if in pain. A moment later he cried out, “For God’s sake, man, what were you thinking? What could you possibly have been thinking?”
“You are a friend of my father’s,” Octavius beseeched him. “He can make you a rich man when this war is done. I’ll see to it. I’ll personally see to it. Just don’t put me to death.”
“Mr. Lindsay, you are familiar with the Articles of War by now,” James said, reaching out to steady himself against the nearest post. “I may have no choice.”
“I didn’t know it was her. I swear I didn’t know it was her.”
James straightened himself. “What nonsense! You’ve despised that woman from the moment she came on board.”
“I wouldn’t have harmed her. I thought … I thought – ”
“You thought what?” snapped Fly.
Octavius hid his humiliation with his hands. A wrenching silence followed, broken only by the prisoner’s guttural sobs. Captain and commander turned their backs to him and moved away while Gus Walby braved a few steps towards them, still keeping a respectable distance.
“What will you do with him, sir?” Fly asked in a steely voice.
“I don’t know,” said James wearily. “Given the seriousness of his offence and the fact that he is an officer, his punishment will have to be decided by a court-martial. We have no choice but to wait until we reach Halifax. Only there will we find enough captains and perhaps a few admirals willing to sit and determine his fate.”
“Shall we leave him here in the bilboes with the marine?”
“Aye, for now. It’ll be sufficient punishment keeping him here for all to see and taunt. Would you go ask Osmund Brockley to see to his head wound? I need time to think.” James placed his right hand on Fly’s shoulder.
“Are you well, sir?” asked Fly, alarmed by the ashen colour of James’s face.
“I am in desperate need of some fresh air.” Together they left the gun deck, leaving behind the forgotten Mr. Walby.
Meg Kettle, who had been silently mending her shirts in the shadows, waited until the captain and Mr. Austen were long gone. She then perked up and laughed at the young midshipman, who stood gaping down at the prisoner as if he were a spectacle at St. Bartholomew’s Fair.
“’Ave ya bin able ta figure it all out, Mr. Walby?”
Gus looked surprised, as if he’d only then just noticed her sitting there. His lips parted, indicating to Meg that he might speak. Instead, he clamped his mouth shut, turned suddenly on his heels, and hurried away. Meg stood up to address the pathetic prisoner on the floor and made a sucking sound with her tongue. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Thee men, if they didna despise ya before, will be despisin’ ya now. Why ya just put a nail inta yer own coffin.”
1:30 p.m.
(Afternoon Watch, Three Bells)
ACCOMPANIED BY A MARINE SENTRY, Fly climbed down the ladder from the foc’s’le deck and into the hospital. The room was as quiet as a crypt. Osmund tiptoed around with his chamber pots and bandages. Mr. Crump had nothing amusing to say. Along with Biscuit and several seamen who were crowded round the galley entrance, he kept a silent watch on the thin sheet of canvas that separated them from Emily, as faithfully as if he were above deck combing the seas for an enemy sighting. On a stool next to a slumbering Magpie, who was now in his new hammock, Gus Walby sat clutching Fly’s sister’s novel, Sense and Sensibility, evidently hopeful that he would soon be invited to enter Emily’s sacred corner. Near Gus sat Morgan Evans, who respectfully pulled his knitted hat from his shaggy-haired head and saluted the moment Fly glanced in his direction. The wounded sailors – those who could – sat upright in their beds and saluted him in turn, though immediately afterwards their focus darted back to the canvas.
“Where’s Dr. Braden?” Fly asked the cook when his boot-clad feet were firmly planted on the hospital floor.
“In with thee wee lass, sir.”
“You are rather subdued, Biscuit.”
Biscuit hung his orange head. “Outta respect for thee lass, sir.”
Fly waved his arms in a dismissive gesture at the men lingering round the galley entrance, and in a muted voice ordered them away. “Back to work, back to work, all of you vagabonds. The last thing the doctor needs is to have you all underfoot.”
“Mr. Austen, you’ll let us all know how she fares?” pleaded an old sailor.
“I will. Now out you go.”
Fly waited for the “vagabonds” to clear out before making his way to the canvas curtain where Leander, having heard him come in, stood ready to greet him. It did not escape Fly’s notice that his friend appeared haggard and uncharacteristically dishevelled, that his brow was furrowed in worry, and that his lips were set in a grim line. “Come in,” said Leander quietly. “It’s all right. She’s in a deep sleep.”
Fly stared down at the quiet form in the cot. There was a hideous blue-black bruise on her face and the reddened imprint of fingers on her neck. “Does she have similar injuries elsewhere on her body?” he asked, finding himself unable to cease blinking.
Leander, his fist held to his mouth, turned his gaze from Emily and glanced up at Fly over his spectacles and nodded. Neither man spoke for a while. Beyond the open gunport, the wind had picked up and a low rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance. Above their heads, the bell sounded three times. Fly stepped closer to Leander and spoke as softly as he could so that the vigilant sailors lying in the hospital could not hear his words.
“You must know, my friend … she was not Lindsay’s intended victim.”
“What?” Leander gave Fly a bewildered stare.
“Evidently, he had not been informed that our little sail maker was wounded and lying here … in the protection of your hospital. He all but made an outright confession. Perhaps it was his distraught mind speaking … perhaps he figured his punishment would be more lenient if James and I knew the truth.”
Leander seethed with revulsion. “I’ll kill him! I swear I’ll kill him!”
“Most every man on this ship will harbour the same sentiments once they have heard of Mr. Lindsay’s exploits. But I believe it best we tell no one else of this sordid intelligence, leastwise Emily. For now, I need you to put down your fighting scabbard and come with me to the captain’s cabin.”
“Can
