Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (34 page)

“Penny?” he said as she was finishing her pasty.

“Yes?” she answered, her eyes darting at him and then back to the ships.

“When I first talked about marriage, you said that you couldn’t abide my profession. What changed?”

She was silent for a moment as she wiped her mouth with a napkin and brushed at the crumbs on her lap. “I was attracted to thee the first day,” she said. “I also thought about marriage soon after. I told thee that I was brought up to believe that war and violence are wrong. I still believe this very strongly. And thy profession is still difficult for me.”

Charles nodded his understanding and reached for her hand.

“I promised thee after thy suggestion that we marry that I would think and pray and seek guidance from God. I did this,” she said earnestly. “I labored very hard with my heart and my mind.” “Yes?” Charles said.

Penny looked at him tenderly and touched his lips with her fingertips. “I believe this to be true, Charlie, that God brought thee into my life for a purpose. I think thou art meant to be a challenge to my beliefs in order to strengthen them. In addition to being a husband to me, I believe that God wants thou to be a teacher also, so that I may see the world as other men see it and so that I may understand it better, even if I do not agree.”

“What about my career?” Charles asked. “What about my being in the navy? How do you feel about that?”

“For myself, I wish thy career was more peaceful and less dangerous,” she said carefully. “And I wish that thou wouldst not be gone at sea for so long. But thy career is for thee to decide. I will honor thy decision. I will not labor with thee longer on it.”

“Thank you,” Charles said.

“Perhaps I will labor with thee on other things,” she said pertly.

Charles chuckled. “I’m sure you will.” He lay back on the blanket, pulling her down beside him. They lay together in each other’s arms for some time without words. Charles felt warm and secure with her beside him and her breath on his cheek, at peace with himself and the world. His mind wandered over the ups and downs, joys and difficulties to be overcome, that would be their lives together. For some reason he thought of Molly.

“There’s going to be a lot of that, isn’t there?” he said sleepily.

“A lot of what?”

“A lot of Mollies—wayward women, beggar children, foundling infants.”

“Only until all the problems and inequities of the world are ended,” she said happily and kissed his chin.

“Fine,” Charles mumbled and drifted into sleep.

When he awoke he saw Penny asleep beside him, her head resting on his arm. He moved slightly and her eyes flickered open.

“I am very tender toward thee,” he whispered, mimicking what she had said when he proposed, and she snuggled closer to him.

“How shall we be married?” she mumbled, her voice still thick with sleep.

“How do you mean?” he asked lazily. “In a church, of course. I was thinking of St. John’s at the New Gate by Chester. It’s a beautiful old place and the parson was an acquaintance of my father’s. I could inquire about Chester Cathedral if you like.”

Penny’s eyes opened wide and she pushed herself up on one elbow. “I cannot be married in a church by a hireling priest,” she announced abruptly. There was alarm in her voice.

Charles sat up and stroked her hand to reassure her. “Why not?”

“Because, because…Oh, thou dost not understand! Because God does not bide in buildings made by the hand of man, despite their pretentious spires and their paid clergy. And God does not speak through those hireling priests!”

Charles struggled to digest this latest roadblock to their union. “What then, a Quaker marriage in one of your meetinghouses?”

“Thank thee,” she said thoughtfully, “but we cannot. My meeting, any meeting, will not sanction my marriage to you, much less celebrate it. No, we must find another way.”

“What other way? There is no other way,” Charles sputtered, his voice rising in timbre. “We could go to Scotland. They’ll marry anyone. But it’s still by a clergyman, only the Church of Scotland. It would be much easier in a local church. We could avoid all the traveling.”

“I cannot marry thee in a church in Scotland or elsewhere,” she repeated as she sat upright. “It’s unchristian.”

Charles’s mouth worked as he tried to fathom the opposition between church and Christianity. Finally he said, “How, then? Do you want to go abroad? I’m told they permit civil ceremonies in Rhode Island.”

Her eyes grew thoughtful and she fell silent, her mouth in a firm line. “There must be another way,” she said at length.

“Not in England, there isn’t,” he said quickly. “It’s either in front of a clergyman or nothing.”

“Would it be possible to stand before a clergyman in a place other than a church?”

Charles noted her use of the term “clergyman” in place of her usual “priest,” which she generally used with the same inflection that others did with “pederast” or “procurer.” He took it as an offer of compromise. “It might be possible,” he said carefully. “It would cost something extra, of course. Something for the parson’s trouble.”

“How much extra?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Charles answered. “Twenty-five or fifty pounds perhaps. A trifle.”

“It is less dear to marry in a chapel?”

“I should think so, yes. It’s the normal way of doing things. It’s what they’re accustomed to.”

“All right,” Penny said as if the words were being dragged from her by horses. “In a small chapel, by a priest, with a very inexpensive ceremony.”

“Thank you,” Charles answered. “I will write to the vicar at St. Alban’s in Tattenall. That should serve.”

DURING THE REMAINDER
of their time in Portsmouth they were only able to see each other sporadically, usually at dinner. Charles needed to be with the
Louisa,
watching the work done on her and seeing if he could get one or two other small changes made at the same time. Almost all of one day he was busy at the dockyard superintendent’s office signing invoices. At the victualling yard he prepared requests for stores. At the ordnance yard he was informed that the
Louisa
’s armament was to be augmented by four snub-nosed thirty-two-pounder carronades, two each for the fore- and aftercastles. The carronades were brutally powerful short-range weapons mounted on traversable slides rather than carriages, and did not count against the
Louisa
’s rating of twenty-eight guns. He eagerly agreed to it and the paperwork took a good part of that day.

The last two days in port passed in a rush of activity that lasted from before dawn to well after dark for Charles and everyone else connected with the
Louisa.
As soon as she was kedged back into the water, a long patch of bright new copper over the repair to her hull, her crew was transported back on board. The wharf at the victualling yard was next for a long day of sorting, inspecting, positioning, and repositioning the ninety tons of water casks, sixty tons of provisions, and thirty tons of fuel that would provide drink and food for her crew at normal rations for ninety days. That night Charles staggered back to the George for a late supper with Penny, then returned to his cabin on board his ship to collapse into exhausted sleep.

The next morning, the
Louisa
transferred to the gun wharf, where her twelve-pounders, nine-pounders, and four new carronades were swayed aboard one by one, delicately lowered into position, and secured. Only then were the nearly fifty tons of shot, hundredweight barrels of powder, and other ordnance stores brought aboard and stowed away.
Louisa
slowly returned to her normal routine at anchor, ready to sail on the morning tide.

Charles spent his last evening with Penny in a small parlor at the inn. He had arranged for a special dinner for the two of them to celebrate together in private, but instead ate in strained conversation with many long, awkward silences.

“When thou next returns, will we have sufficient time to marry?” Penny asked at one point.

“I’ll request leave,” Charles answered. “I don’t know what Jervis will say.” He was thinking that if he disposed of the
Santa Brigida,
leave was much more likely to be granted than otherwise. But he had carefully avoided mentioning anything about the Spanish frigate to her, and he wasn’t about to bring the subject up on their last day together.

“Thou wilt write to me?” Penny said.

“Every day,” Charles answered. “But I don’t have many opportunities for posting my letters.”

“I know,” she said, “like thou didst with Ellie. I will write to thee of my love also.”

After very hard and repeated good-byes, Charles made his solitary way back to his ship.

AT FOUR BELLS
in the morning watch in the first tentative light of day, the
Louisa
swung her bow with the turning tide and started toward the harbor mouth and the broader waters of Spithead beyond. As they eased past the point, Bevan nudged Charles and called to Winchester, gesturing to port.

Charles looked and saw Penny and Ellie standing among a half-dozen others in the half-light, waving handkerchiefs. He waved back, his heart breaking. As the
Louisa
nosed into the Spithead channel, he said to no one in particular, “All normal sail and set a course to weather Ushant.”

ELEVEN

T
HE
LOUISA
BEAT DOWN PAST CAPE PRIOR ON OCTOBER 7, 1797
, under double-reefed topgallants. The wind shrieked through the rigging in capricious gusts, sweeping cold rain in sheets across the decks. Charles stood, wet and uncomfortable, in his tarpaulin rain gear on the quarterdeck, his feet wide apart and his legs compensating unconsciously for the movement of the ship. He could just make out the
Dientes del Diablo,
a surging froth of white surf against the steel-gray seas, transforming into billowing towers of spray as the Atlantic rollers crashed down on the rocks at metered intervals. “Beechum!” he shouted to the signals midshipman huddled in the lee of the binnacle fifteen yards away.

“Yes, sir?” the boy answered after hurrying to him.

“Run up the foremast and report back what the lookout sees,” Charles ordered. There would be no shouting back and forth to the tops in this weather.

“Yes, sir,” the boy said, and glanced dubiously at the upper masts oscillating wildly as the ship crested a large wave at an oblique angle, corkscrewed, and started down into the trough.

“Tell him I want to know the whereabouts of the Spanish frigate and anything else he sees in the Ferrol yards.”

“Yes, sir.” The midshipman repeated his instructions: “Report back to you the location of the frigate and other activity in the yards.”

“Very good. Get along.” The boy departed.

“Any guesses?” Charles said, turning to Bevan.

The lieutenant shrugged almost imperceptibly under his bulky oilskin. “Difficult to say. Depends on how badly we hurt her and whether or not they have the parts on hand for repairs.”

“I’m betting they don’t,” Charles said. “I’ll bet she’s still moored in the yards.”

“You always were an optimist,” Bevan replied dryly.

The
Louisa
rose on another wave, crested, corkscrewed, and slid downward, then repeated the cycle and started over again, green water crashing over her bow each time she rose. Almost against his will his eyes were drawn back to the reef, nearly fine on the starboard beam, a maelstrom of exploding foam. Charles saw Beechum climbing cautiously back down the foremast ratlines.

“The lookout says that the frigate is tied up alongside a wharf in the yard, sir,” the boy reported breathlessly. “He thinks she may have her foremast out of her. He says it’s hard to tell in this weather.”

“Thank you,” Charles said. “Back up you go and report anything important.”

He had spent a great deal of time thinking about the Spanish frigate during the five weeks since their last meeting, wondering or guessing how badly she might have been damaged. Now it seemed possible that her lower foremast had been more seriously wounded than he had thought; seriously enough that it needed to be replaced. If the Ferrol yards had a replacement lower mast section, they would have done the work already. Since they apparently did not have a suitable timber available, one would have to be ordered. Such a request would probably be sent overland and word would only just now be reaching Madrid that it was required. There would be some urgency about it, Charles knew; the potential for damage to British shipping that a heavy frigate could make was great. The only source for such a made-up spar, three feet in diameter and some seventy-five feet long, would be one of the other major Spanish naval yards at Cádiz or Cartagena. A transport from Cádiz was the best bet. Anything from Cartagena would require passing through the many British warships around Gibraltar. Supply by road across Castile and the Galician mountains was almost unthinkable, especially at this time of year, when the dirt tracks would be a morass. In all probability the Spanish authorities would try to slip a transport laden with naval stores, including the mast sections, past the blockade at Cádiz. That wouldn’t be too difficult at night and in the right weather conditions. If Charles were the captain of such a ship, he would immediately stand well out to sea to avoid the naval traffic along the Portuguese coast and make a dash into Coruna Bay from the northwest, with the prevailing winds on his quarter.