Seize the Fire (2 page)
Authors: Laura Kinsale
It was bloody hell being a hero.
NAVAL CHRONICLE
14 November 1827
Gazette
Letters
Copy of a letter from Vice Admiral Sir Edward Codrington to His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, dated on Board of H.M.S.
Asia,
the 21st October.
Sir,
It is with regret and respect I must add to my formal report the following information regarding the conduct of Captain Sheridan Drake, formerly in command of H.M.S. Century. At eight o'clock yesterday morning Captain Drake carried out orders to transfer his command of the Century. As he was then honorably relieved of further duty, and in view of his history of gallant service to his King, I invited him to join me aboard the flagship. When His Majesty's forces were unexpectedly and dishonorably fired upon, precipitating the action I have described in my previous dispatch, I had personal reason to be deeply grateful that Captain Drake did so, for when the flagship was struck with a five-inch shell which dismasted the mizzen, he valiantly and selflessly threw himself forward into the path of the descending mast to save me from crushing. He then fell upon the bomb itself, which had struck the deck with fuse still burning not three feet from my person, and carried the live shell to the rail to dispatch it, thus risking his own life to save the lives, not only of myself, but of all on board. Although he accomplished his intention, I much regret to report that in the course of this noble action he was lost overboard and was not recovered. I respectfully beg to draw Your Royal Highness's attention to his unselfish conduct and sacrifice, which appears to me to be highly commendable.
I have the honor to be, with deepest respect,
Yr Obedient Servant,
Edw. Codrington
THE LONDON TIMES
15 November 1827
His Majesty the King has taken the unprecedented step of conferring upon the late Captain Sheridan Drake the Most Honorable Order of Knight of the Bath in a posthumous investiture which took place last evening. Captain Drake, readers will recall, courageously stepped beneath a falling mast to save the life of Vice Admiral Sir Edward Codrington and then sacrificed his own life to extinguish a bomb which threatened all aboard the Vice Admiral's flagship during the action which has come to be known as the Battle of Navarino in the Ionian Sea.
Although many here at home and in the government lament the conflict with our ancient Ottoman ally that this unfortunate and unnecessary battle represents, by His action, His Majesty very properly acknowledges once again the selfless and noble gallantry of the men of His Royal Navy, who have served so well in the cause of Great Britain.
NAVAL CHRONICLE
10 December 1827
Gazette
Letters
Copy of a letter from Vice Admiral Sir Edward Codrington to His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, dated on Board of H.M.S. Asia, the 1st instant.
Sir,
It is with true pleasure I inform His Royal Highness of the recovery, alive and unharmed, of Captain Sheridan Drake, who was reported missing overboard and feared dead in the action at Navarino.
Captain Drake informs me that he succeeded in swimming ashore and was succored by a Greek fisherman and his daughter, who cared for him until he recovered amply to present himself again for duty.
I have instructed Captain Drake to proceed at once to Plymouth and thence to London bearing this dispatch, to place himself at the service of His Royal Highness.
I have the honor to be, with deepest respect,
Yr Obedient Servant,
Edw. Codrington
10 December. War Office to Office of the Lord Chamberlain
.
Having considered as requested the matter of Captain Drake's K.B., we are sending him along to you directly. It is immaterial, I fear, that His Majesty finds the captain's unexpected appearance to be in a bit of bad taste—these things happen, and now we must follow through with it and get the fellow properly knighted or face a great deal of ridicule and questioning of motives.
With upmost respect, I hope it will comfort His Majesty to realize that this office does not yet consider Captain Drake's gallantry to be quite at the end of its usefulness.
Palmerston
the combat veterans of Vietnam
With respect, and love,
and hope for healing.
Table of Contents
As a princess, Her Serene Highness Olympia of Oriens felt she was unimpressive. She was quite a common height, not petite or lofty, too plump to be delicate but not substantial enough to be stately. She didn't live in a palace. She didn't even live in her own country. For that matter, she'd never actually seen her own country.
She had been born in England, and had lived as long as she could remember in a substantial brick house with ivy on the walls. Her home fronted on the main street of Wisbeach, facing the north brink of the River Nen. It possessed the same laconic, self-satisfied elegance as its neighbors, a little string of successful bankers, solicitors and gentleman farmers tucked deep among the canals and dikes and marshes of the misty fenlands, which Olympia supposed were about as different from the mountain passes of Oriens as it was possible for landscape to be.
She drank tea with her governess-companion, Mrs. Julia Plumb, and was dressed by an experienced lady's maid. She ate dishes provided by a German cook, had two housemaids and three men to keep the stable and the large garden behind. In a cottage at the back of the garden lived Mr. Stubbins, her language master, who had taught her French, Italian, German and Spanish, plus the Rights of Man and the truths held to be self-evident among enlightened thinkers like Mr. Jefferson, Monsieur Rousseau and, of course, Mr. Stubbins.
She dreamed, in her yellow chintz-hung bedroom above the river, of widening the boundaries of her life. She dreamed mostly of returning to Oriens—where she had never yet been—and leading her people to democracy.
Sometimes Olympia felt she had a great bubble of energy within her, a bubble that threatened to expand and explode in the quiet landscape of her life. She should be somewhere, accomplishing something. She should be making plans, executing agendas, fomenting rebellions. She should not be waiting, waiting, waiting for life to begin.
So she had read, and dreamed, and heard in her mind the crowds cheering and the bells ringing freedom through the streets of a city she had never seen. Until one week ago, when the letter had arrived, and real life had begun with an unpleasant jolt.
Now, amid the befogged and treeless desolation of the marsh a few miles beyond Wisbeach, Olympia stood on a set of sandstone steps, gazing reverently up at the snow-dusted walls of Hatherleigh Hall. He was in there somewhere, girded in this modern Gothic mansion that loomed up out of the fens in a dark jumble of spires, towers and gargoyle-infested flying buttresses. Captain Sir Sheridan Drake—descendant of Sir Francis; decorated veteran of the Napoleonic and Burmese wars, of battles in Canada and the Caribbean; celebrated naval tactician; and most recently, created Knight of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath for his valor and selfless heroism in the Battle of Navarino.
Olympia slipped her hand from her muff and adjusted the coverings on the potted fuchsia she was carrying as carefully as her cold fingers would allow. She hoped the plant hadn't frozen on the four-mile walk from town; it was the only one still alive of the five she'd carefully potted in honor of the naval victory at Navarino as soon as the Cambridge and Norwich papers had announced that Captain Sir Sheridan was coming home. A potted plant perhaps had not been a perfect choice of tributes, but she did not excel at needlework, so an embroidered banner had been out of the question. She'd fantasized about a presentation-sized oil painting of the glorious naval battle, but that was far beyond her pin money. So she'd settled for the plant, and a gift from the heart—her own small, leather-bound and gilded copy of Jean Jacques Rousseau's
The Social Contract
in the original French.
She knew just what Sir Sheridan would look like. Tall, of course—splendidly tall in his blue captain's uniform with immaculate white breeches, a white-plumed
chapeau bras
and gold epaulettes. But he wouldn't be handsome in the ordinary style. No; she envisioned a plain face, a dependable face, saved from homeliness by kind eyes and a noble brow, and perhaps even some freckles and a touching way of casting down his eyes and blushing when confronted with a lady's regard.
She'd pondered what to say to him for days. Mere words seemed inadequate to express her admiration each time she thought of how he had thrown himself beneath a falling mast in order to save the life of his commander and then boldly leapt overboard into shark-infested waters to prevent a live bomb from destroying the ship. She wished she had something more than a frozen fuchsia plant to honor him. And yet she'd dreamed, deep down in the depths of sleepless nights, when the house seemed very quiet and her life seemed very small, that he would smile and understand, and value a potted fuchsia as if it were a medal of royal gold.
But those were dreams. Now that she was here at his door, her heart beat a slow thud of self-conscious terror, confirming her worst suspicion about herself—that in spite of what she wished to be, and ought to be, and would need to be, she was a coward at the bone.
The bell sounded dully beyond the ornate door when she pulled the chain. The moment she let go of it, a quantity of heavy snow cascaded from the portico's roof, pouring over her shoulders and bonnet and landing on the stone with a muffled thump. The front door of Hatherleigh Hall opened just as she was wiping her face and peering out through the broken and bedraggled plume of a green-dyed hat feather.
A small brown man with bare feet and a red fez on his shaved head stood in the doorway, trailing multitudes of blankets wrapped snugly around his body. The servant ignored Olympia's snow-damage and made a rakish bow, sweeping the step with the corner of a blanket. He looked up at her, blinking and squinting with dark eyes in a round face. "O Beloved," he said in a liquid soprano. "How may I serve thee?"
Olympia, standing with snow in small piles on her shoulders and a lump melting off the tip of her nose, wished she might sink through the stone. Finding that option closed, she forged ahead as if nothing had occurred and placed a slightly damp calling card in his shivering hand.
"Ah!" he said, tucking it beneath his fez and hitching up the blankets. Leaving the front door standing open, he led her through the vestibule and across the polished chessboard of pink-and-white marble into the looming depths of a great hall.
Olympia darted discreet glances at the shadowy cavern. Carved wood flowed up the walls in ornate rhythms, punctuated by dusty banners and dark glittering sunbursts of steel: broadswords and sabers, axes and pikes and pistols, all arranged so artistically that they seemed something else entirely until she looked twice.
With much nodding and bowing, the servant told her she must wait at the foot of the paneled staircase. Instead of walking up the stairs he mounted the banister, sliding himself to the top like a monkey up a palm tree, where he disappeared into the gloom above. Far off in the house she could hear the slap of his feet on smooth wood, and then his voice, awakening echoes in the huge hall. "Sheridan Pasha!" The name was followed by the little man's faint shriek. The sound of a scuffle drifted from the darkness. "Sheridan Pasha! No, no! I was not sleeping!"
"Lying dog." A distant male voice carried clearly on the cold air. "Give over those blankets."
The little man cried again, a sound that rose to a mournful ululation. "Sheridan Pasha—I beg you! My daughters, my wife! Who will send them money when I am a dead and frozen corpse?"
"Who sends them money now?" The unseen speaker gave a snort. "They only exist when it suits you anyway. What the duece would you do with a woman if you had one? Look here, you Egyptian donkey—there's a hole in this shirt I could poke a nine-pound cannon through, and I've got no shaving water."
The servant replied vigorously to that, a plaintive rise and fall of tones in a language foreign to Olympia, who spoke five fluently and could read and write in four more. The deeper voice answered in English, the thump of footsteps closer and clearer as the speaker moved down the corridor toward the stairs. "Well, send her to the devil! Damned if I'll be ambushed by another bombazine horror in a hideous hat." Disgust reverberated in the air. "Females! The streets ain't safe. Get her…"