Girl on the Orlop Deck (20 page)

On the
Victory
the quarter-deck was under grenade attack and musket fire from sharp shooters on the
Redoutable
’s three tops, which, being a mere forty-five feet away and locked in position, were perfect places from which to take aim on the
Victory
’s upper decks. The British marines returned fire from the poop deck and several of the French musketeers had been injured, although as both ships were lurching in the swell, and both were partially obscured by smoke, taking accurate aim was difficult. Even so the quarter-deck was a dangerous place to be.

Nelson and Hardy paced up and down the quarter-deck together keeping watch over the battle and ready to give such orders as were required. Hardy had reached the wheel and was walking back to the hatchway when he became aware that he had taken his last few steps on his own and, turning, he saw that Nelson had been hit and was on his knees, at exactly the same spot where his secretary had been killed an hour earlier. He was trying to support himself with his left hand, his fingers splayed against the deck, but as Hardy watched, his arm gave way and he fell on his side. There was instant movement towards him, first a sergeant-major of the marines and then two seamen who bent to lift him, and then Hardy himself. At first he was reassured to see that Nelson was smiling but when the Admiral spoke, his words belied the smile.

‘They’ve done for me at last, Hardy,’ he said, looking up at his old friend.

The words struck chill. ‘I hope not,’ Hardy told him.

But Nelson was stoically adamant. ‘Yes,’ he said with appalling calm, ‘my backbone is shot through.’

‘Cover his face,’ Hardy told the sergeant-major brusquely. ‘The men mustn’t see this.’

A handkerchief was found and draped over Nelson’s face, which he took patiently. Then the seamen lifted him and prepared to carry him below.

On the crowded orlop deck Mr Beattie had over forty patients waiting for attention and the place was dank and dark and stinking of bilge water, blood, sweat, vomit and shit. When he saw yet another officer being carried down the stairs, he was removing a shattered leg and was tired to his bones and bloody to his elbows, so he shouted to the bearers to take him to a forward position on the port side and to mind how they
handled him, but otherwise paid him little attention. Marianne barely glanced at him. She was holding a beaker of lemonade to the dry mouth of one of the wounded and the poor man was shaking so much it was hard for him to swallow. But within seconds someone started yelling for Mr Beattie, calling his name and shouting ‘Lord Nelson is here!’ and at that she turned her head and looked at where they were pointing and there was the wounded man being carried through the cockpit in his familiar coat with its embroidered stars. Oh my dear heart alive, she thought, not him too. Mr Beattie finished his operation, handed his patient over to his assistant, and walked towards the bearers, treading carefully along the crowded deck so as to avoid the spread-eagled limbs of his patients, his face grim. ‘Fetch a sheet,’ he said to Marianne as he passed her, ‘and follow me.’

The two bearers were still struggling through the throng and now the purser was running towards them too. He and Mr Beattie took Nelson away from them and carried him gently to one of the midshipmen’s berths. He seemed confused by the change over. ‘Who is carrying me now?’ he said.

‘Beattie, my lord,’ the surgeon said, as they laid him gently against the bulkhead, ‘and Mr Burke.’

As soon as he was in position, the two men began to strip him, removing his blood-soaked jacket and setting it aside, then his shoes and stockings and breeches, which they handed to Marianne. There was a miniature portrait of Lady Hamilton worn like a locket on his chest and that was removed too.

‘Doctor, I told you so,’ Nelson said, gazing ahead of him as if he couldn’t see. ‘Doctor, I am gone.’ He seemed confused, as if he didn’t know where he was or who he was speaking to. But then he paused and gathered his strength. ‘I have to leave Lady Hamilton and my adopted daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country,’ he said speaking directly to Mr Beattie. His voice was so low that Marianne could barely hear him.

Another injured man was being put down beside him, this time an unconscious midshipman with a terrible head wound which was bleeding profusely. One of his bearers took hold of Nelson’s discarded coat and put it under his head as a pillow. But appalling though the young man’s injuries were, all eyes were on Nelson and Mr Beattie, Nelson so pale and drooping and breathless, Mr Beattie examining him
as gently and thoroughly as he could, taking his pulse, checking the bullet wound in his back and asking him to describe his sensations. His account of them was movingly unemotional. He said he had no
sensation
in the lower part of his body but could feel a gush of blood every minute within his breast and acute pain in that part of his back where he’d been shot. ‘I felt it break my back,’ he said, looking at Beattie and added, ‘You can do nothing for me.’

The chaplain had arrived and was kneeling beside him, at a loss to know what to do or say.

‘Fetch some lemonade for him to drink,’ Beattie told him quietly, ‘and make a paper fan to give him what air you can. He will find it hard to breathe.’

The chaplain was so near to tears he could hardly speak. ‘Can I do nothing else for him?’ he said.

‘No, sir,’ Mr Beattie told him. ‘The shot is lodged in his spine. There is nothing to be done. He is dying.’

‘I’ll get the lemonade for ’ee, sir,’ Marianne said to the chaplain, trying to comfort him, but the poor man was too full of grief to hear her and the sight of his stricken face was making her want to weep too, so she walked off quickly to the nearest barrel. It didn’t seem possible that Nelson was dying. How would they fare without him with the battle still going on and nobody knowing the outcome?

It was worrying Nelson too. As the minutes laboured past he asked again and again to see his flag captain but even though Mr Beattie sent one messenger after another, Captain Hardy didn’t appear and Nelson began to fret for him saying that he was certain he must be killed. Eventually a midshipman with a flesh wound to his arm came down ‘with a message for the Admiral’ and was escorted to where he lay, propped up against a pillow and covered by his sheet, struggling for breath. The young man was overawed to be in his presence and stood silent for far too long until the chaplain urged him to proceed. Then he took a breath and made a short formal speech.

‘If you please sir,’ he said, ‘circumstances respecting the fleet require Captain’s Hardy’s presence on deck, but he sent to tell you, sir, he will avail himself of the first available opportunity to visit your lordship.’ Then he saluted and turned on his heel and fled, before he could disgrace himself by weeping in front of his commander.

The minutes dragged by. Nelson’s struggles for breath became more
acute and more obviously painful. The chaplain rubbed his chest in an effort to ease him and the purser sat with one arm under the pillow to support his head but nothing either of them did made any difference. Death was hauling him in by slow agonizing degrees, as the guns roared over his head and his shipmates screamed under the knife and his ship shuddered with the force of its own guns. From time to time they could hear cheering and the latest arrivals reported that another enemy ship had struck her colours and surrendered. But it wasn’t until three o’clock in the afternoon and an hour and a half after Nelson had been shot, that Hardy’s stocky figure finally appeared on the stairs and he came stooping into the cockpit.

Although he was now finding it extremely painful to breathe, Nelson questioned him at once. ‘Well, Hardy, how goes the battle? How goes the day with us?’

Hardy brought good news. ‘Very well, my lord,’ he said. ‘We have got twelve or fourteen of the enemy’s ships in our possession. Five of their van have tacked and show an intention of bearing down on us.’ And when Nelson looked concerned, he went on, ‘I have therefore called two or three of our fresh ships round us and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing.’

Nelson’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘I hope none of
our
ships have struck, Hardy.’

‘No, my lord,’ Hardy reassured him. ‘There is no fear of that.’

The two men looked at one another in the lamplight. ‘I am a dead man Hardy,’ Nelson said. ‘I am going fast. It will be all over with me soon.’

The battle and the agony continued. In the cockpit the work was endless. Mr Beattie and his assistants dealt with the injured three at a time: seamen or marines were called at regular intervals to remove the dead, among them the grey-faced man and the wounded midshipman. The chaplain and the purser stayed by Nelson’s side and never left him for a second, fanning him to give him air and rubbing his chest to try and ease his pain. Marianne fetched lemonade for anyone who needed it, cleared up vomit, cleaned her patients when they soiled themselves, and struggled on until her back was aching with the sheer physical effort of it and her eyes were hot with unshed tears. And above their heads the gunners fought on, sometimes firing such a volley that it shook the sides
of the ship so that Nelson called out, ‘Oh!
Victory
!
Victory
! How you distract my poor brain!’

It was after four o’clock and the first dog watch had begun before Hardy appeared again and this time he was able to tell his old friend that he had won a brilliant victory. He couldn’t say for certain how many enemy ships had been captured because it wasn’t possible to make out every ship distinctly but he could answer for fourteen or fifteen.

Nelson was struggling for breath and in such severe pain he didn’t have the strength to do more than urge his captain to anchor. But the watchers round his bedside could see he was pleased and, now that they were paying attention to what was going on beyond the cockpit, it was plain that the battle was nearly done for although they could hear guns they were in the distance.

Nelson was stirring and making another effort to speak. ‘Come nearer to me,’ he said to Hardy and, when his old friend stooped towards him, he whispered, ‘Don’t throw me overboard, Hardy.’

‘Oh no,’ Hardy said, appalled that he should even think of such a thing. ‘Certainly not.’

‘Then you know what to do,’ Nelson said. Every word he spoke now was making him catch his breath with pain but there were things that had to be said. ‘Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy. Take care of poor Lady Hamilton.’ He panted for quite a while, looking up at his friend, then he said, ‘Kiss me, Hardy.’ And Hardy knelt beside him and kissed his cheek.

‘Now I am satisifed,’ Nelson said, and his voice was so low and broken it was almost impossible to hear him. ‘Thank God I have done my duty.’

The watchers around him stayed perfectly still for several minutes, not wanting to disturb him because he seemed to be drifting away from them, but eventually Hardy bent towards him and kissed his forehead and at that he stirred and tried to look around him, saying ‘Who is that?’

‘It is Hardy,’ his captain said.

This time there was no recognition – only muttering. ‘Thank God … I have done … duty. Thank God … done my …’ Over and over again. Hardy went back to his duties on the quarter-deck, Mr Beattie returned to his patients, the loblollies to their lowly work. The muttering went on, getting weaker and weaker. Mr Beattie came back to the bedside at short intervals to check for a pulse. The muttering went on. Then, at a few minutes after half past four, breath and muttering stopped together
and the surgeon pronounced that Admiral Lord Nelson was dead. It had taken him three hours to die.

It seemed appropriate to the watchers that the gunfire had stopped too.

T
HE SILENCE THAT
followed when the guns stopped firing was such a relief that it made Marianne shake. After such a long ordeal, it was impossible to believe that the battle was over. But it was. The silence roared that it was. There would be no more wounded men hauled down those blood-drenched steps, no more screams of agony, no more dead men being carried away, no more knives. Then she realized that there were other quieter sounds on that nightmare deck that she hadn’t heard when the guns were pummelling her ears, that the wounded were groaning and weeping, that there were feet running about on the deck overhead, that the ghoulish Josh was sniffing and wiping his nose on his sleeve, that somebody was saying his prayers. But she barely had time to take it all in before Mr Beattie cut into her thoughts and began to give orders.

‘You and you,’ he said, pointing at Marianne and Josh, ‘empty the buckets. The rest of you scrub this deck and see the stairs clean.’ And, as they were all standing about looking stunned, ‘Jump to it! The battle may be over but we’ve still got work to do.’ It was true enough for there were still dozens of men who needed his attention.

Marianne picked up one of the buckets that stood beside the table. It was extremely heavy because it was full of shattered arms and legs and awash with blood and filth of every kind. It sloshed over the edge of the bucket as she carried it up the companionway, moving cautiously because the steps were slippery and the ship was rolling. It must be a storm coming, she thought, as she emerged onto the gun deck and she stood beside the capstan for a few seconds to steady herself and catch her breath. The deck was still full of smoke which was swirling about the guns and breathing out of the gun ports. Most of the gunners were slumped beside their guns in utter exhaustion, some with their heads in
their hands and all of them blackened by gunpowder and sweat, but one or two were lying on their backs as if they were asleep – or dead. No please God, she thought, don’t let them be dead. We’ve had enough men dead. For a brief moment she wondered what had happened to Taffy, but there was no time to ask and, anyway, they were in no state to answer questions, so she looked away, took a sustaining breath, picked up her burden and struggled up to the quarter-deck. The sight that battered her there was even more terrible than the orlop deck had been.

She had emerged into an evil-smelling, unfamiliar sunset. There were thick clouds of lavender-coloured gunsmoke drifting inshore and the air was so heavy with the smell of hot metal and spilt blood that it made her gasp for breath. The deck was covered in blood and debris, and although there were several crewmen working with shovels and brooms to clear it, they were slipping in the filth under their feet and struggling to keep their balance for there
was
a storm coming, with a strong wind blowing and a high sea running. But when she’d fought her way to the rail to empty her bucket, she saw, with a shock of horror, that if the deck was a shambles, the sea was much, much worse. It was a sullen bottle green, as if the battle had drained it of all proper colour, and it was full of unspeakable debris, bloody arms and legs, drifting corpses, great spars of wood and lengths of rigging, even live men struggling to stay afloat among the wreckage, their wet heads black in the half light, their arms flailing. Some way out, there were two long boats searching for the wounded and another was putting out from the black and yellow sides of the
Royal Sovereign
while all around them the shattered hulks of the great ships tossed at anchor, some of them with no masts at all, the rest with masts broken and rigging trailing and their sails shot full of holes. As she watched, one of the distant ships began to belch thick black smoke as if it was on fire. She tipped her bucket over the side, glad to let it go, and then she was suddenly overcome with sickness and had to hang over the rail retching violently, as the ship yawed and tipped towards the water.

With the speed of instinct, she felt the approach of the wave before she saw it, but, even so, it was much too late to get out of its way. It was rearing over the rail, engulfing her, sucking her down, pulling at her so powerfully there was nothing she could do to escape it. And then she was under the sea, that awful, filthy sea, among the shreds of bodies and the corpses, and she flailed her arms in panic and rose into the air again,
screaming in the roar of the water and more frightened than she’d ever been in her life. She knew she would drown if she wasn’t quick, that she was on her own and that no one could hear her, that there were no
longboats
anywhere near her, that she had to find something solid to cling to. Quick, quick, she told herself, afore it drags you under again. And she reared up in the water using her legs as if she was running as the wave dragged her away from the ship and she heard the roar of a great
explosion
. She knew the burning ship had blown up, but it was of no consequence compared to the terror of drowning. But then there was a ship’s timber with a spar attached to it being washed towards her by the next wave and near enough for her to make a grab at it. With the last of her energy she reached towards it, seized it and clung on.

It took her a very long time to get her breath back and by then she was too far away from the ship to call for help and the waves were pushing her towards the shore. Her jacket was ripped open, her hair had come out of its plait and was heavy with sea water and she was shivering with cold, for the sea was icy, but at least she was alive.

Jem saw the ship explode as he was doing what he could to repair the mizzen mast. He knew it was a French ship and that it was called the
Achille
for he’d seen the tricolour when it first took fire and he’d watched the longboats head off to rescue the crew, or as many of them as they could, and had been lost in admiration for them, because he knew what a dangerous job it would be, but for the moment all his attention was fixed on the repair. There were carpenters hard at work all over the fleet, because the storm was coming on apace. They needed to get the storm staysails up or they would be in trouble and, like all the others, Jem knew that the sooner he got this mast fixed the better. He was worried about Tom because he hadn’t seen him since the action began, but even friendship had to make way for getting the ship in trim. There was work to be done.

On the orlop deck on the
Victory
, Mr Beattie had examined Nelson’s body and was dressing it in a clean shirt. When Josh came panting up to tell him that Matt Morris had been washed overboard, he merely nodded and told him to go and fetch an empty leaguer. Matt was a good lad and he’d done sterling service that day but there were other matters that were more important than a boy overboard. The Admiral had to be provided
with a coffin of sorts and one of the big water barrels was the best thing he could think of. When the leaguer had been brought down to him, he and his assistants eased their commander’s body into its limited space. Then they filled it with brandy so as to preserve him, sealed it and Mr Beattie wrote his name on the side. ‘Admiral Lord Nelson died at Trafalgar October 21st 1805’. After that, they turned their attention to their waiting patients. There was work to be done.

The boy overboard was drifting, clinging to the spar as the waves pushed her towards the shore and the smoke cloud. Sometimes she was aware of what was going on, but sometimes she lost consciousness for a few seconds and came to her senses fearful that she could have lost her grip and fallen into the sea and drowned. But her clinging hands were locked in position, frozen by the cold. Even when she saw the fishing ship bobbing towards her through the cloud she couldn’t unclasp them to wave, although she tried as hard as she could. She couldn’t call out either. It was as if her throat was frozen too. She couldn’t wave and she couldn’t call, she could only drift. Please God, she prayed, let them see me.

The
Santa Maria
belonged to two local fishermen, Juan Carlo and his brother Sandro who, being weather-wise, had come out to lift their nets as soon as they saw that a storm was on its way. The great fleets could fight one another day and night for all they cared, but nets were nets and they couldn’t afford to lose them. It wasn’t easy to get their bearings in all that smoke and they had no intention of running aground on the shoals around Cape Trafalgar, so they headed south-west until they were through the cloud and could see their landmarks again. It came as a great surprise to them to see a woman’s body lying across a chunk of wreckage a few yards away from them, her breasts white in the green water and her long hair drifting across her face. Sandro took one look and crossed himself.

‘
Madre de Dios
,’ he said. ‘
Es una sirena
. It’s a mermaid.’

‘What of it?’ Juan Carlo said. ‘It’s a dead one whatever it is.’

But then the figure stirred and seemed to be trying to sit up.

‘
Madre de Dios
,’ Sandro said again. ‘It
is
a mermaid. A live mermaid, Juan. Think of that. Maybe we should catch it. We could put it on display and charge people to see it. What do you think?’

‘I think we should find our nets,’ his practical brother said, ‘and leave
mermaids to the waves.’ But then the mermaid was turned on her side by the next roller and he saw that she had legs and was human. ‘It’s a wench,’ he said, and decided to rescue her.

It took their combined strength to haul her into the boat because they had to do it wreckage and all as her hands were so tightly attached to the spar and once she was out of the water, she was shivering so much, what with extreme relief and extreme cold, that she couldn’t tell them who she was or what she was doing at sea, not that they could have understood her if she’d tried. Juan found a spare sail and wrapped it round her like a blanket and at that she managed to say ‘Thank ’ee kindly.’

‘Foreign,’ Juan said to his brother. ‘That’s never Spanish she’s speaking. And I never knew a Spanish woman who would wear breeches. That’s altogether peculiar. Let’s get that net lifted before the storm comes.’

Now that he’d got this foreign creature on board his boat and knew she wasn’t a mermaid and wasn’t likely to earn them any money, Sandro was losing interest in her. ‘This is all very well,’ he said, ‘but what are we going to do with her?’

‘We will give her to Mama,’ Juan told him, gazing out to sea. ‘She’ll know what to do.’ He had a great respect for his mother and thought her a very wise woman. Then he grinned. ‘She’s brought us good luck
whatever
else,’ he said, ‘for there’s our buoy. Now we can get the catch aboard.’

It was dark by the time the nets had been lifted and they were within reach of the shore and by then the stricken ships were lighting their lamps. To Marianne, gradually easing her fingers away from the spar and growing warmer under her improvised blanket, the sight of them was cheering. It was such a pleasantly normal thing and it proved that her shipmates weren’t too far away and that once the storm had passed she would probably be able to get back to them. But to the men on board the fleet, the lamps brought a message of death and the most anguished despair.

It wasn’t any time at all before they noticed that there were no Admiral’s lights on board the
Victory
and the news spread from ship to ship that Nelson had been killed. Their grief for him was overwhelming. Men who’d spent four hours down in the heat and horror of the gun decks, fighting hard, wept like children to hear the news. ‘We have lost Lord Nelson,’ they said, and it seemed the worst thing that could have
happened to them. And Jem, who’d just discovered that his old mate Tom had been shot and killed, wept too with his head on his knees and the tears rolling onto his breeches. We have lost Lord Nelson. Heaven help us all.

As soon as the
Santa Maria
had been pulled up on the darkening beach, Juan Carlos helped his speechless foreign girl out of the boat and led her up the beach path to the cottage he shared with his mother and his brother, while his brother followed behind carrying the wood. The sooner he handed her over to someone who would know what to do with her the better. Rescuing her had made him feel quite valiant but now, like his brother, he was at a loss to know what ought to be done next.

His mother had no doubt at all. ‘She must be got out of those wet clothes this minute,’ she said, taking in Marianne’s situation at a glance, ‘and then she must be given something dry to wear and then she must have food and drink and a bed to sleep in. Go and get the truckle bed and bring it in here. She is exhausted, poor child. What a blessing you took her from the sea and brought her home to me. Come,’ she said to Marianne, leading her by the hand. ‘Sit by the fire.’

Marianne couldn’t understand a word she was saying, but she knew she was being welcomed, especially when she was led to the fire, so she nodded and smiled and shivered and said ‘Thank ’ee kindly,’ over and over again, wanting them to know how grateful she was. ‘Thank ’ee kindly. I’m beholden to ’ee.’ Her fingers were still marked by their long frozen grip on the spar, white tipped and bloodless but ridged with red as if they were scarred; she was still shivering violently from time to time and her hair was so wet it was dripping at every step she took, but Mama found a rough towel and was soon busy drying her, telling her to sit by the fire and removing her jacket while her sons were out of the room. An old patched chemise was produced and pulled over her head, a patched skirt replaced her sodden breeches, boots that were much too big for her were eased onto her chilly feet, and, by the time the two men returned with a small truckle bed and set it in the corner of the room, she was warm and respectable and rubbing her hair dry.

Outside, the wind howled round the chimney, the sky was full of dark clouds and a heavy sea was running, the waves crashing onto the beach with a noise like falling masonry. She knew that injured men were still suffering and dying out there on those battered ships, but she was here
and safe, warmed by a fire and with another woman to look after her. Tomorrow she would try to persuade somebody to take her back to the fleet but for the moment it was enough to sit by the fire and count her blessings.