Jane Austen After

  When the ship’s bell rang, an aproned sailor emerged, earrings swinging against his raw-scraped jaw, his long, greased tail of hair marking him as a man-of-war’s man. As Crawford followed Benwick in, he noticed that the serving sailor stumped on a wooden peg.

  The guests crowded in around the table, and sailors wearing their normal togs but white gloves did the serving, surprisingly deft. Crawford was placed between Sam Price, who as a lowly midshipman was quite silent, and Lt. Benwick. Across the table William Price sat between the two other guests, a merchant from London who was known to the ship’s surgeon, at the end of the table, and an older, saturnine man introduced as Sir Charles Peasekin.

  As always, Crawford waited for the principal man at table—in a naval ship that would be the captain, elsewhere the man of highest rank—to establish the tone. Lord Somerset and his companions had moved in tonnish circles, and the favorite topic had been on-dits, the more salacious the better, especially if wittily expressed.

  This captain did not talk bawdy, nor did he respond except with a single polite laugh when Sir Charles ventured a warm sally about the Laconia being the conduit to a grateful Persephone. Wentworth turned the subject to the success of a cruise off the Greek Isles, and said congenially, “Glass of wine with you, sir?”

  Sir Charles lifted his glass—the claret went round the table—the talk turned to Laconia’s successes during the past year—wind—fog—past errors in fog—the fog of rumor—possible war with the new American republic, but no one professed to believe it.

  “What do they have, two capital ships? Three? Be a mighty short war, even for the Boston beans,” the merchant declared to much laughter.

  “With everyone else at war, they needs must follow the fashion,” Sir Charles said, and was saluted with another toast. “But they will be hard put to find the successes of present company.” And that inspired yet a further hoist of glasses. “Come, Captain Wentworth, let us have the story of your battle with the French frigate who’d been marauding ’gainst our Indiamen.”

  Crawford was aware of mental turmoil. If the naval men had bragged, he could have despised them. But they only told stories on themselves, mirthful at near misses. Their careless bravery, like William Price’s careless strength, brought back with full force the sense of personal futility that he’d sustained when he first met William, then a scrubby midshipman longing for his step.

  During those days at Mansfield he had mounted William on one of his hunters, to genuine gratitude, but that pleasure had dimmed to inconsequence when, night after night, William enthralled the company with his stories about parts of the world Crawford could scarcely locate on a map. William Price had trod on every one of the great continents, and as a boy. But more than that, he faced danger and deprivation—all to a grand and glorious purpose in the King’s service.

  The Laconia was fighting to stave off French incursions as the allies prepared to encircle Boney from all sides. What could Henry Crawford lay claim to in achievement? Debauching another man’s wife, and losing the one woman he had ever loved. Nor were these two actions related to the same woman, so he had not even the excuse of devotion.

  The general talk altered to specific, each man explaining how he’d been caught at The Rock. When attention came to him, he tried to turn off interest with the slightest reference to Lord Somerset—knowing full well what that might imply.

  Sir Charles said, “Oho! Connected with government, are ye, no, no, don’t answer that. I know what’s o’clock.” He laid his finger beside his nose in the ancient schoolboy signal for tace, and everyone else exchanged intelligent glances: of course he was on a secret mission.

  Crawford shrugged, despising himself for the deliberate misdirection as Benwick said with hearty honesty, “Some may cavil at the civilians and their easy life, but I don’t. Boney is no respecter of persons—or rank, in spite of his jumped up princes and archdukes.”

  “We heard about Lord Chetwynd at the Temple, and how the damned frogs served him out,” the surgeon said to Crawford. “It’s one thing to be shot as a spy. We all take a similar risk whenever we go into action.”

  “Hear him, hear him!”

  “But to be torn apart by those devils in some torture chamber, well, that’s monstrous. Just monstrous.” And, raising his glass, “Death and damnation to the French, bumpers up and no heeltaps!”

  “Hear him, hear him!” the others shouted, as a new bottle passed from hand to hand.

  Crawford drank, accepting tribute for a danger he had never faced, and a vocation he did not pursue. Even William seemed to accept the implication that Henry was covertly in the diplomatic service, if not an outright spy—he might believe it, knowing Henry’s connection with his uncle high in the admiralty—and Fanny’s brother seemed as little prone to social misdirection as had been his sister.

  Sam Price finished his glass, but almost dropped it as the ship gave a skittish lurch. Crawford righted the glass for Sam, who could only have been fourteen or fifteen. He realized the boy was sinking under the combined weight of a substantial meal and far too many glasses of wine.

  Almost at the same moment Wentworth raised his gaze briefly to the pig-tailed steward, and Sam’s wineglass, when next filled, was pink with four parts water to one part wine.

  The boy’s eyelids were still drifting down; Crawford recalled William’s stories of midshipmen beginning their days at four in the morning, but at a naval dinner no one left until the captain had offered the toast to the king.

  So Crawford said, “I hear the packet arrived. Did you receive mail, Mr. Price?”

  Sam’s eyelids fluttered up, and he made a struggle for wakefulness. “Yes, sir,” he said thickly. And, in a lower mutter, “Devilish lot of ’em.”

  The surgeon adjacent laughed. “Got another quire, eh, Mr. Price?”

  “It’s m’sisters,” Samuel said, slightly slurring, and very despondent. “They would scribble a lot of letters.” After a moment, he added, “M’brother gets even more.” And in a much lower voice, “But the captain don’t nobble him into writing back of a Sunday, when a fellow would as soon catch a bit of rest.”

  “That’s females all over,” the merchant said. “Gibble-gabble until a man can’t think, and if it’s not in the dining room, it’s in the bedchamber. And if he goes away, it’s waiting for him writ-out, crossed and recrossed, at the letter office, and he has to pay for the privilege of receiving it. I assure you, I have five men under me, but I go to Persia to see to my rugs as often as ever I can.”

  “Here’s to ladies and their letters,” Benwick declared, raising his glass. “Long may they live and long may their letters to their dear ones be.”

  Crawford observed the captain drinking, as was proper, but he neither spoke nor smiled.

  o0o

  As the next few days passed, the idea of Fanny Price’s letters on board the same ship took hold of Henry Crawford. Partly there was the desire to touch something she had touched, to see how she shaped her letters, to hear her voice again in reading the words she wrote. He wanted to sniff the paper in the hope of tracing some last lingering scent that would identify her.

  But short of rifling through the effects of either brother, a thing he scorned to do, there was no getting at the least intelligence. Sam—Mr. Price to sailors three times his age—was busy every time Crawford saw him. Or he was down in the midshipmen’s berth which Crawford walked by just once, as he made his way around the ship. He discovered a particularly noisome space full of boys, and heard the hectoring shout of that drunken Musgrove bullying someone smaller. He paused, uncertain whether or not he should interfere, but then another, older voice shouted, “Stop your gob, Diccon Musgrove, or I’ll stop it for you! Just you leave him be.”

  William Price was just as busy. The second lieutenant on board a frigate generally served the worst watches. But every time Crawford saw William the young man would pause for a friendly greeting—while still keeping a weather-eye for the sailors in his charge, and the
sky, and the wind. Once or twice Crawford found William on the quarterdeck, and ventured into conversation, but opportunities to get near “Fanny Bertram” or “Mrs. Bertram” did not occur. Perhaps the bluff William was endeavoring to exercise delicacy.

  Midway through the third night Crawford woke when one of the young midshipman ran down the companionway, shrilling, “Turn up! All hands on deck!”

  “What’s toward?” someone asked the boy, as Crawford poked his head out.

  “Strange sail sighted, nor’nor’east.” The boy paused at the ladder.

  “Betwixt us and Minorca,” Benwick said, appearing from somewhere, his eyes wide and glittering in the flickering light of a candle someone held. “By God I’d love another prize.”

  William’s voice came from somewhere else as Crawford withdrew and began to pull on his clothes. “You’ve already enough to buy Miss Harville a pony.”

  “She shall have a coach-and-four, then,” Benwick shouted down the ladder, and then vanished onto the weather deck.

  Crawford finished dressing more slowly, recalling something someone had said about staying below if they were to see action. It was the safest place, and it was out of the way.

  But that was before the bangs and thuds of noise rumbled through the ship: the carpenter and his crew coming along to dismantle the flimsy walls, freeing up the space for the guns spaced along the deck. Crawford discovered that his space was indeed capacious compared to others, who had to share space with the enormous cannon.

  William appeared at his shoulder. “We’re clearing for action, Mr. Crawford,” he said. “You might wish to go below to the orlop, or you can stay on deck, but if we come to action, things might get warmish.”

  Crawford’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. He remembered that clearing for action was a precautionary measure. Many were the mirthful tales about unnecessary clearings for what turned out to be a sleepy fisher, or once, their own fleet, sailing the wrong way in a fog. Much jollity had accompanied the description of the two frigates treble-shotted and ready to blow one another out of the sea, as they drifted close enough to stare inside one another’s gun ports.

  At any rate, he hated the notion of hiding below in the stinking bowels of the ship, tumbled in with the ship’s animals, and not knowing what was going forward.

  “I should like to see an action,” Crawford said, keeping his voice even. “If I am not in the way.”

  William’s approval was instant. “I thought you might say that. You may join us on the weather deck; they are serving out hot grog just now. The captain likes the men to be well fed and ready.”

  Crawford followed William to the deck, to find a brisk wind and choppy seas. From the motions and words of the mariners, he discovered that the wind favored the coming French, but that the Laconia, having joined the night before with another fleet, was not alone.

  “Well, gentlemen,” Captain Wentworth said as he emerged from the cabin, where the carpenter’s mates were freeing the stern chasers. “I will not say that this is the worst wind we’ve ever met with, but we’ve had better.”

  “One comfort, if you please, sir,” Benwick offered. “Johnny Crapaud won’t like this cross-sea any more than we do.”

  “Quite true.” Wentworth studied sky, sea, and the slanting war ships approaching, his expression akin to Crawford’s friends before a fox hunt. “With luck they’ll have to close the lower gun ports on that fifty. That’ll pull her teeth some, eh?”

  Crawford accepted the hot drink pressed into his hand, and though his throat had gone dry, tried a sip. The sudden jolting of the deck bumped the enameled cup against his top tooth, and he lowered the cup and peered across at the foremost French ship. Teeth. Even if its lower gun ports could not be in use, it had two more rows of guns, hardly a toothless broadside.

  No one seemed worried, even when a deep boom was followed by a flash of light from the foremost Frenchman. A few seconds later puckers and splashes rose from the water not far from the stern.

  “We will not waste ammunition so profligately,” Wentworth said, peering through his glass. “We don’t have a coast conveniently to hand.”

  A sharp smell forced its way to Crawford’s notice. He turned. The smell came from tubs of slow match smoldering beside each gun; the men stood ready, tompions gripped, gun crews with tools. Abaft the foremast a couple of powder monkeys capered about, pushing one another.

  “Mr. Price commands the forward guns, if you would like to watch their work up close,” Captain Wentworth said to Crawford.

  Watch cannon up close? Why would anyone do that? But Henry Crawford had always fitted himself to the company he found himself in, and so he tipped his hat to the captain and moved forward, taking care to keep well back of the cannon and their crews.

  He reached William, and said, “Where is your brother? Are the boys down in the cockpit?”

  William’s face crinkled in a smile. “Sam is in command of the larboard guns on the gun deck.” He pointed at his feet.

  Henry said, “I see.” Boys—in command of men shooting cannon. It made as much sense as anything here did, he thought savagely, wishing he had stayed in Spain. Stayed in Italy. Stayed in England; stayed away from Mrs. Fraser’s party.

  “Beat to quarters,” Captain Wentworth ordered from the quarterdeck, and the Marines’ drummer began the steady tattoo that increased tension a thousandfold.

  Now you can marry me. He could see Maria so clearly, lying tousled in the bed next to him, fair hair spread on the pillow. Her face flushed with triumph.

  The crump and roar of the French guns jolted him to the present. Eerie whistles propelled great black blurs in arcs above and around, and once a large hiss; crack! Something in the rigging overhead smashed, followed by a hoarse cry. Great splats of blood dropped on the deck, followed by a rain of splinters; William shoved Crawford to one side, and a cable as thick as a man’s leg slithered to the deck with a roar almost as loud as the distant cannon.

  He stared at the rope, his mind wheeling back to that day. But you are already married!

  Rushworth will petition for a bill of divorcement. And you can’t marry Fanny Price now, she had retorted.

  Of course I can. You go home, I go home, no one is the wiser, certainly not the Count with his two and forty speeches. That is how the game is played, Mrs. Rushworth.

  But I’m not going home, until you promise to marry me. Good little Fanny would faint rather than have you now. Even if they let her, and good little Fanny always does what she’s told, the little minx. Hypocrite!

  “Fire!” the captain shouted, and William echoed, “Fire!”

  The distant roar was nothing to the mind-shattering noise of cannon hurling hot iron across the sea from not fifty paces away. The huge hulking guns leaped back, gouting steam and smoke. The men lunged forward to service the gun and load it again, as somewhere, a boy shrieked to another boy, their voices like the harsh cry of gulls.

  You and I are the hypocrites, he’d said. Oh, he would give anything to be back in that Richmond inn, facing her across the bed, though at the time he’d longed to be away from her. As always, anticipation had proved far better than the fact. We say what’s right but we make a mockery of it, which is why I will never marry you. Come, let’s kiss and part friends. What is life for but to make merry while we can?

  You proposed to Fanny Price! Was there ever any greater hypocritical act?

  So you meant that marriage vow to Rushworth? he’d retorted. For how long? A month? A day? An hour?

  “Fire!”

  More screeching balls, and this time the ship jolted as iron hit the hull, smashed the quarter-gallery from the stern, struck in the tops again, causing more cries, and a rain of objects.

  Don’t dare to fling that marriage in my face! What was I supposed to do, sit at home until I am thirty, waiting for you? Why didn’t you ask me the day after my father came home from Antigua? I was waiting for you. You knew I was waiting for you!

  A ball smashed into t
he farthermost gun, causing it to explode. Blood and flesh splintered, mercifully vanishing in a gout of smoke. Crawford shut his eyes against the smoke clearing. He could not even hear his frantic heart; he could only stand, willing himself to invisibility.

  Because marriage with you would have been just like my uncle’s marriage with my aunt. I spared us both that.

  But Fanny Price! How I hate you for that! She shan’t have you . . .

  “. . . and four wounded.”

  “Where is Musgrove?”

  “Says he’s wounded. I can’t see anything wrong with him, but he insists he can’t see out of his eyes.”

  “. . . then we’ll have to . . .”

  “Fire!”

  Another roar, followed by crashing below and to the side, and above.

  Anger vanished, cauterized by the terror all around Henry. He struggled to recall Fanny, but his mind refused to impose her gentle face over the stink and death and blood. Instead it flung him right back to Maria Rushworth pacing around that Richmond bedchamber like a caged bird, wringing her hands in fury as she begged and pleaded and argued with him to marry her—and all for the wrong reasons.

  How could he resent her? Mary was wrong. He was not angry with Maria, not any more. Hypocrite he certainly was, especially in what was mirthfully termed polite company, but he was not self-righteous enough to blame Maria for being so like him, when that had been part of her attraction. He just did not want to live with her.

  “Reload—bear a hand there, bear a . . .”

  Maria was no worse than anyone else in their circle, and better than many. She had a right to happiness, as did they all, because life was so short, made shorter by this madness of men and boys using all their brains and skill to operate these sea-conquering machines in order to murder other men and boys. And for what? When the smoke cleared, the sea would still belong to itself.