Authors: Alex Beecroft
Blessed Isle
Riptide Publishing
PO Box 6652
Hillsborough, NJ 08844
http://www.riptidepublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by L.C. Chase,
http://lcchase.com/design.htm
Editor: Sarah Frantz
Layout: L.C. Chase,
http://lcchase.com/design.htm
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For Captain Harry Thompson, the command of the prison transport ship HMS Banshee is his opportunity to prove his worth, working-class origins be damned. But his criminal attraction to his upper-crust First Lieutenant, Garnet Littleton, threatens to overturn all he’s ever worked for.
Lust quickly proves to be the least of his problems, however. The deadly combination of typhus, rioting convicts, and a monstrous storm destroys his prospects . . . and shipwrecks him and Garnet on their own private island. After months of solitary paradise, the journey back to civilization —surviving mutineers, exposure, and desertion— is the ultimate test of their feelings for each other.
These two very different men each record their story for an unfathomable future in which the tale of their love—a love punishable by death in their own time—can finally be told. Today, dear reader, it is at last safe for you to hear it all.
About Blessed Isle Harry Thompson, his journal Year of Our Lord 1802 Harry Thompson, his journal Grace of God etc. Harry Thompson, his journal Garnet, etc.
Harry Thompson, his journal Garnet, etc.
Harry Thompson, his journal Acknowledgments About the Author
I light a candle and look on the man sprawled facedown among tangled bedclothes. The night air is sticky, airless, almost as hot as the day. I’m sat here at the desk, sleepless from the heat, as I will be until dawn brings a breeze from the sea, with the scent of tar and ships and a faint cool. I’ll sleep then. For now, I write. And look at him.
Gauze curtains hang around the bed, white, ghostly, veiling him. He’s kicked off everything but the tail end of a sheet and has hidden his face in the crook of his arm. His back is pale as milk and, in the candlelight, a sheen of sweat gilds his muscles. He is a tall man, lithe and slender, and his black hair gleams like jet, curling into the nape of his neck, where a final lock kicks up like a drake’s tail. I lean down to part the drapes and rest a hand gently on his bare shoulder. He shifts towards the touch without waking.
How did I come here? What strange movement of the heavens or gamble of Providence marked me out to be so blessed?
I reach for the open window and edge the sash a quarter inch further, letting in lush, choking air and a multitude of Saint Sebastian’s insect life. The pages of my journal lie limp and damp, and the ink sinks thirstily into them. A week ago, I examined a ship trading ice out of Greenland, crawled about the hold and parted the woven mats of straw to touch the cargo’s glassy sides and feel its burning chill with my fingertips. It was the first time I have been cold in almost a decade.
There might be some relief from this pressing humidity in the tiny boathouse beneath our dwelling. The thought of taking candle and journal and sneaking down there, to write in the cool, is appealing. But it would mean leaving him alone, and I begrudge every moment spent out of his presence. We have been forced to give up so much for this, our state of near-married bliss. Best appreciate it now, lest tomorrow the hangman snatch it away.
The oak-apple-gall-and-vinegar scent of the ink pricks my nose. I sand the page and smooth it. Why do I want to leave this record? Why not leave our story untold? It is dangerous to speak, let alone to commit the words to paper. My need to confess may be the death of us both. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that this love should go unrecorded, that posterity should judge men like myself—like him—by the poor fools driven out to grope strangers in alleys, all fumbling fingers and anonymous grunting. Those of us uncaught must perforce be silent. But one day, perhaps, when the world has grown kinder, this journal will be read by less jaundiced eyes. To them I will be able to say there was fidelity here, and love, and longsuffering sacrifice, and joy. To them I will be able to speak the truth.
I trim my pen and dip it. From the waterfront, the docks and warehouses all about us, comes the clap of rope against mast, and laughter: the riot of sailors trying to forget. In the town beyond, the notes of a
cavaquinho
fall like silver raindrops into the night. But, floating over all, from the hills of the interior comes a rumbling throb of drums as the slaves and the natives too remember their stories, keep their truths alive.
I should introduce myself. I am Captain Harry Thompson of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. I began my life as a Norfolk wherryman’s son. Pressed aboard the
Sovereign
under Captain Garvey at the age of fourteen, I took to the Navy as a bird, falling from its nest, takes to flight. It was my element and my delight. I filled my hours with work and study. Alone in my hammock at night, I imagined myself a great admiral, pacing the deck of a First Rate, my own flotilla following in a strictly measured line behind me. By diligent study of those better born than myself, I polished my manners and my mode of speech so that I could pass as a gentleman. In the year 1784 I was made lieutenant. The most junior lieutenant of the
Barfleur
under Admiral Lord Samuel Hood.
A man like myself, with no family connexions, may serve his whole life as a lieutenant, but I was determined that should not be my fate. If I required either a miracle or an act of heroism to secure a captain’s rank, I would produce one. So when, some years later, a French cannonball shattered the railing of the
Barfleur
, which burst into thrumming, foot-long splinters of sharpened oak that sprayed the quarterdeck like spears, I was ready. I leaped in front of the Admiral and received through my shoulder the dart that would otherwise have pierced his throat.
I remember the blur of the sky, hazy, hot, and deep, deep blue, all the masts bowing in towards me as if falling atop my face. I felt a crushing sensation as though they had indeed pinned me beneath them, and my mouth filled with blood. I could not have cried out even if I had tried, though I am pleased to say I did not try. I fell silently into oblivion. And then I awoke in my hammock with a vast pain, and an admiral in my debt.
Which may be taken as sufficient explanation for why, at thirty-four years of age, with a new wig atop my freshly shaved head and a servant going on before me to carry my baggage, I took possession of my first, and last, command.
HMS
Banshee
, a sloop of war, swung about her anchor rope in Plymouth that day under gentle English May-day sunshine, and looked as though she had sailed straight out of my boyish dreams. Her paint shone bright azure and gold, and her company, drawn up for my inspection, stood neat and biddable, the officers glittering, the men like a country garden in bright check shirts and ribbons.
I found, later the same day, that she was elderly, had been much knocked about in the Bay of Biscay, and was a leaky, wet ship. Always three feet of water in the well, no matter how we pumped. Always mildew on the food and in our clothes, and her finely dressed men wheezed and coughed as they worked.
My servant unpacked my things and did his best to make the cabin homelike, wiping the black bloom of mould from all the surfaces, installing my few belongings in this sumptuous, almost indecent, expanse of private space.
That week I was too full of work to see either officers or men as more than brief, bipedal shadows cast into the cave of my preoccupation. I had a convoy to organize. News had reached London that Captain Arthur Philip had successfully brought his fleet to Rio de Janeiro and, after reprovisioning there, had departed for Australia, his small payload of convicts largely intact. The birth of a new colony was underway, and I was directed to follow with a second fleet, comprising the convict transport vessels
Drake
,
Quicksilver
, and
Cornwall
, the supply ship
Ardent
, and the
Banshee
as escort and protector. All this I was to organise myself, and to achieve before the month was out.
In my zeal, I drove myself to achieve it all in little more than a week. I wonder now, looking back, whether—had I taken longer, been more scrupulous—I might have seen the seeds of the great calamity to come. A bruise here, a livid cheek there, among the men and women huddled behind iron bars in the holds of the transport ships. Doctors assure me the malady could not have lain low so long, but I cannot help wondering . . .
Yet hindsight makes Cassandras of us all, encouraging us to cry out, “You should have listened,” when it is far too late. Perhaps the doctors are right, and my fault came later. It is my fault just the same.
The weighed anchor rose with a pop and a spout of bubbles from Plymouth’s seabed. The day was fair, crisp and golden as white wine, and the breeze fresh. A Thursday, it was washing day aboard the
Banshee
, and we departed to our fate with the ensign flying, white sails bravely spread, and our rigging fluttering with shirts, small clothes, and stockings hung out to dry.
Now
, I thought, taking a turn at the wheel to see how she handled—she wallowed like a swimming cow—
I have the time to get to know my ship, my men
.