A Burial at Sea

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

There was the cold, sharp shock of the water, and then the brilliance of the sky and sun. He kept himself afloat and turned, turned, panic in his heart, looking for the Lucy, until at last he spotted her.

He started to swim.

His arms were already tired from oaring, and after twenty feet or so of swimming they burned. Should’ve kept up more regular exercise, he thought, but then Parliament tended to be a sedentary place, full of late-night meals at committee meetings. How many months had it been since he took his scull on the Thames? Now, with the current against him, he wished dearly he had kept in better fitness.

He swam for what felt like an hour, more, and then permitted himself to look up. To his despair the Lucy was no closer, although the Bumblebee was by now a landward speck. He rested on his back for a while. Thanked God that it was the middle of the day, and warm enough.

He kicked off his socks, his trousers, and swam on.

In the next four hours there were times when he thought he might give up. He had thrown up, had swallowed seawater and thrown that up too. He would have promised to walk from Mayfair to John O’Groats for a drop of fresh water, after two hours. After three the seabed seemed a comforting thought. His friend Halifax was there.

The sun began exert a terrible pressure on his head, in his temples. On he swam, or, more accurately, drifted with some purpose.

The Lucy came closer, it seemed, but never very close.

He swam on.

He had never known such fatigue, or for his body to be in such open rebellion against him: actions he had taken for granted once upon a time, in the life before he was in the water, seemed impossible now. He couldn’t turn his head more than a fraction of an inch. He couldn’t swallow, quite.

It was when he kicked hard for ten yards and looked up to see that the ship seemed farther away than it had, much farther, that he felt certain he would die.

It was just as he was drifting out of consciousness, when even the thought of Jane couldn’t make him put one arm in front of the other, that great strong hands pulled him up underneath his arms.

“We’ve got you, sir,” said a voice that in some distant chamber of his mind Lenox recorded as belonging to McEwan.

Then he fainted dead away.

There was a blur of light and hurried voices when he woke, a feeling of being rumbled along over the planks of the deck. A bright light appeared in his eyes, and Tradescant’s anxious face, inspecting him.

At last he managed to croak a word, “Water!” and immediately, blessedly, received a small sip of the stuff. Instantly he threw up. He took a little more, then, and finally could bear to have half of a glass tipped into his face.

After that he fell into a sweet, undreaming sleep.

When he woke up it was to a voice saying, “A middling fever. Don’t think he’ll be delirious.” Lenox opened his eyes and saw Tradescant and Carrow standing five feet off, speaking in low voices. They were in Tradescant’s surgery. The other beds were all empty.

“Some good news, that,” Lenox managed to croak.

Carrow turned at the voice and strode over to Lenox, his face filled with worry. “My dear man,” he said, “I can’t tell you the pleasure it gives me to see you awake.”

“How long has it been?”

“We pulled you on board twenty hours ago,” said Tradescant.

“Am I well?”

“You took a bad sunburn unfortunately.”

Lenox tried to open his eyes wide and felt his skin fill with fire. Once he had started to feel the sunburn it was impossible to stop feeling it, and maddening. “Balm,” he said. “My cabin. Jane sent it.”

Tradescant smiled and held it up. “Mr. McEwan found it for you,” he said. “And is ready with food, should you need it. Your nephew will be beyond happiness—he has been here every fifteen minutes.”

Despite Tradescant’s jolliness, Carrow still looked unhappy. “Still, we must apologize, Mr. Lenox, both I and my officers and even Her Majesty’s navy.”

Of course, Lenox thought stupidly. He’s the captain now.

“No need,” said Lenox. “Glad to be alive. Found Billings?”

Carrow frowned. “No. We have fixed the rudder. At the moment we are on his path, but I shall leave it to your discretion: shall we follow him or take you to Egypt?”

“You’re the captain,” said Lenox.

To Lenox’s surprise Carrow looked as if this were natural enough; he didn’t seem overawed. “We shall follow him on for six more hours, then. After that we will be near enough in sight of land to tell whether we may catch him. Frankly I doubt it, but I would sail to the Arctic to catch him, the fiend.”

“A dangerous man. I have seen it before.” Lenox coughed then, and his lungs and throat burned, but he went on. “Capable of maintaining a professional life and obeying a private devil simultaneously.”

“He was always rather peculiar, Billings. Spoke to himself. If anything I would have said he was too gentle for the service, however.”

“Criminals are unknowable,” said Lenox. “A dissatisfaction I have still yet to learn how to live with.”

Tradescant came forward. “We must permit Mr. Lenox a respite from our conversation, Captain,” he said.

“Of course, of course.”

Lenox thought it foolish—he couldn’t sleep again after all that sleep, surely—and yet when they had gone he sank almost instantly into the same profound rest he had taken before. The last thing he remembered was Fizz, the little terrier, jumping up onto the bed and lumping himself companionably against Lenox’s leg, happy for the warmth. It was a comfort.

When he woke it was dark out, and Tradescant was leaning over him. “Fever almost gone. All that’s wrong with you now is a sunburn and your … perhaps less than optimal physical condition.”

“Too many parliamentary dinners,” said Lenox.

“It was certainly an unaccustomed amount of exercise,” said Tradescant, and laughed dryly at his own joke. “But rest again, please. Rest again.”

Only in the morning did Lenox at last feel himself. His skin still tingled and prickled with heat, as it might when he overpeppered his food, but he felt clear-eyed.

It was neither Tradescant nor Carrow whose footsteps woke him now, but McEwan’s, and, behind him, Evers’s.

The small deal table beside Lenox’s sickbed had been empty the night before, but since then had become a smaller replica of his desk. There was his Darwin, his letter paper, his pen and ink, his water pitcher, his toast-rack-correspondence stand, even the small picture of Jane.

Lenox was touched. “You did this?” he said to McEwan. “Thank you.”

“You must be hungry by now,” said McEwan. “Surely, sir.” His voice was pained.

“I am, in fact. I have a roaring appetite.”

With a great exhale of relief McEwan left, saying not so much as a word.

Evers sidled up to the bed. “Paying my respects, sir,” he said.

“I’ve yet to thank you properly for your acting performance. The stage lost a star when you went to sea I think, Evers.”

The bluejacket laughed. “Well, and perhaps the sea lost a sailor when you took up to politicking and detecting and all sorts. You’re a proper Lucy, now you’ve half drowned yourself.”

“Out of the way!” McEwan bellowed from the doorway, and came past Evers with a heavy tray, laden with every manner of fowl and pastry and vegetable he had been able to conjure. Lenox took a piece of lightly buttered toast and a cup of tea, to see how they would sit with him. Evers touched his cap and left with a promise to be back, but McEwan, rather disconcertingly, watched every bite go down, each of them a small drama to him, full of suspense until Lenox had completed the ritual of mastication and ingestion.

After the tea and toast Lenox made his way through a leg of cold chicken and a half of a new potato.

McEwan took the tray away with a promise to be back soon. Lenox read Darwin and dozed, still physically worn out, pleased to be alive. Occasionally the feeling of the water, or the terror of being at the mercy of Billings, came back to him, but he felt safe on the ship. There was a cool breeze that reached him now and then, and he thought he might almost attain the quarterdeck, if a chair could be placed by the railing there.

When McEwan returned it was with a treat. With great ingenuity he had somehow manufactured a small cup of cool sherbet. It was orange-flavored—“Saved the peels of your oranges,” he said with a hint of entirely justifiable arrogance—and Lenox thought he had never tasted anything sweeter or more refreshing. It took all the heat out of his cheeks and soothed him to no end.

The next morning he wrote at length to Lady Jane, a letter he might never send so as not to alarm her, and then, with McEwan’s help and Tradescant’s permission, began the slow climb to the quarterdeck. It was arduous work, as difficult in its way as attaining the crow’s nest, but eventually he reached the hatchway.

When he poked his head through, his breathing labored, he heard all the chatter of the deck stop.

He looked up to see that every pair of eyes was on him, from the foremast to the mizzenmast, the deck to the crow’s nest. Then, spontaneously, the men and the officers broke into a long ringing applause.

“Three cheers!” said Andersen, the Swede, and the men gave Lenox three cheers, before clustering around to help him to his chair.