Chapter Two
Next morning at his usual spot in the mess hall for ambulatories, Andrew found a page torn from what looked like a recent edition of the Naval Chronicle, that dry-as-toast journal of fleet actions and promotions. He put too much sugar in his porridge, stirred and read.
‘Well, I’ll be…’
‘Bad news?’ the matron asked, as she buttered toast for a one-armed man.
‘No.’ He laughed and held it out. ‘Mrs Mason, it seems that I am a hero.’ He looked around at his fellow shipmates and prisoners, engaged in conversation and eating, always eating, even as he did. ‘Read it.’
She did. He knew she was a no-nonsense nurse. She had seen everything, except perhaps such an article. She stared at him. ‘You, Master?’
‘Me, which shows you how little the chap who wrote this knows about prisoners.’ He tapped the article when she handed it back. ‘We were in that bloody hell on earth together. No heroes. Just us.’
To his further surprise, in mere minutes, the medical director of Stonehouse himself turned up, fairly bursting with enthusiasm.
As Andrew tried to sprinkle more sugar on his porridge, Chief Surgeon Holyoke grabbed his arm, spraying sugar across the table.
‘Master Hadfield, look!’ He held the current Naval Chronicle in its entirety. ‘Read.’
Andrew put down his now-empty spoon and held out his scrap of the article. ‘This came my way. Our little swim off the Spanish coast has made us famous.’
‘More than that,’ the chief said, and turned his attention to the matron. ‘Mrs Mason, our sailing master here has been called a hero for swimming with Captain Tate on his back.’
Andrew picked up his spoon and dug in for more sugar, embarrassed at the attention. He was not an acclaim-seeker. ‘Any of us would have done it,’ he murmured, wanting the conversation over. ‘I happened to be closest to him.’
The surgeon was having none of that. He waved his arm around the table, where Andrew’s fellow escapees were seated and watching this little to-do with interest. ‘The Royal Navy has declared your sailing master a hero for carrying Captain Tate on his back through stormy seas to the blockade. What say you?’
Lord help me, Andrew thought, as his partners in terror and incarceration cheered.
‘See there?’ the chief said. His expression sobered and he tried another tack. ‘The more this dismal war grinds on, the more we need our heroes.’
‘I’m no hero,’ Andy protested, but softly this time, because his protestation was going nowhere. ‘I did my duty. We all did.’
Chief Surgeon Holyoke then gave him more to stew about. ‘Very well, sir, I won’t tease you.’ He chuckled. ‘But I have to say that all the wounded officers in Block Two are reading their Chronicles. The word is out. You might find yourself the center of attention.’
Oh, Lord no. So much for his plans to rest in hospital until he got that letter from the Navy Board. Holyoke himself had hinted only yesterday that since he was more sound of mind and limb, he could take leave for a week or so.
But go where? He had been an orphan since thirteen, workhouse escapee and the personal property of the Royal Navy because Napoleon’s never-ending war was, well, never-ending. Even the idea of leave was foreign to Andrew Hadfield, who hadn’t been long off a ship in years, except to be captured.
He mulled the matter around, walking up and down the ward, sitting beside other sailors worse off than any of his men now, who were in various stages of recovery.
It was clear that Stonehouse needed the bed he would vacate.
He paid a visit to the chief surgeon, finding Holyoke in his office behind mounds of paper.
Andrew smiled at the sight, which earned him a glare from the surgeon, and then a sigh.
‘Do you know, Master Hadfield, there are days I miss the chaos of life aboard ship?’
‘I do not doubt you, sir,’ Andrew said. He didn’t care for paperwork, either.
As nasty, terror-filled and boring beyond belief his prison days had been, he never once missed the tedium of his daily entry in the ship’s log.
For some reason known only to God or Neptune, a ship’s sailing master kept the official log, not the captain.
Andrew had yet to meet a master who relished that exacting task.
‘What is on your mind, Master?’
‘Sir, you mentioned I could leave for a week or so,’ he said. ‘How do I get approval?’
The chief pushed aside some of the paper. ‘I must declare you fit enough to stagger about, and have your signature to the effect that I have not lost my mind in so doing.’
Right there in the admin block, Holyoke listened to his heart and lungs, prodded a little here and there and signed a paper testifying that Andrew Hadfield, sailing master, thirty-seven years old and possessed of all his parts, was sound enough to inflict himself upon the world again.
It came with a caution. ‘Do not exert yourself, Master,’ the chief said, his expression serious. ‘Your entire ordeal might recall itself to your mind in ways you have not anticipated.’
‘That sounds ominous and cautionary.’
‘It should. I mean it.’
But where was he going? He had no family.
He mentioned his dilemma at dinner, and his fellow crewmen had all manner of ribald and hilarious suggestions, none of which appealed.
He finally decided on the most prosaic of destinations: nearby Plymouth and more specifically, the Drake, favoured hotel of the officer class.
He had two mundane tasks in Plymouth, both of which were necessary.
Maybe something else would occur to him.
Two days later, Master Hadfield sprang himself from Stonehouse with a few misgivings that surfaced almost immediately, to his dismay.
Burdened solely by a tattered, hand-me-down and nearly empty duffel slung over his shoulder, he discovered that walking from the Stonehouse quadrangle to the nearest hackney stand exhausted him.
He considered returning to the safety of the hospital.
Andy’s misgivings receded, mainly because the short ride to Plymouth restored him sufficiently. Even more positive was his visit to Carter and Brustein, where the chief accountant happily knew what to do with Andrew’s official voucher for two years’ back pay.
His additional request for cash in hand to refurbish himself and finance a Christmas visit somewhere also met with enthusiasm.
‘With this voucher and your already-existing prize money, you’re doing well, sir,’ the accountant said, which Andrew suspected was high praise.
Accountants were built that way. ‘Name the amount, and I will send you on your merry way.’
Maddy and Son’s Clothier was his next stop, to be measured for badly needed new uniforms. Arriving naked on the deck of the blockader had been followed by a borrowed nightshirt, then cast-off clothing at Stonehouse from less-fortunate warrant officers who didn’t survive the hospital.
He was no clothes horse, but disliked being this shabby.
Maddy’s wasn’t far from Carter and Brustein’s, but he stopped several times to rest, sitting on a bench by the water. The wintry breeze seemed to whistle through his skull, reminding him of the chief surgeon’s caution: ‘Do not, I repeat, do not overexert yourself.’
To his relief, the clothier shop was warm.
Andy spent the next hour nodding where needed as the tailor measured him for new uniforms. He asked the tailor that trousers, shirts and coats be left a little roomier, because he was still putting on weight, or hoping to, after that sojourn in a Spanish fortaleza where food was scarce and beatings regular.
The tailor came to attention at that news. ‘You were one of those gallant men who escaped and swam to the blockade?’
‘Aye, we did. Where did you…?’
The tailor waved his tape measure around, indicating the universe at large. ‘Everyone knows. And one of your number carried the captain on his back?’
‘Aye, one did.’ That was all Andrew said about the matter. His intention now was to go to the Drake, Mrs Fillion’s marvelous inn, and eat. He knew the doughty lady well enough to know that plenty of heroes passed in and out of the Drake. He wouldn’t be noticed.
‘Master Hadfield, where should we send your new uniforms?’
‘I suppose my order will take some time?’ he asked, unsure what address to leave.
He knew the Drake would store whatever he had ordered from Maddy’s until his return from anywhere—to be determined—even Bangkok, for that matter.
‘I suppose the Drake is best. I realize that Christmas is no time to demand uniforms.’
‘Master Hadfield, your order goes to the top of the list,’ Mr Maddy himself said firmly, when he totted up the bill. ‘You’re a hero.’
Sigh. A hero.
Andy took a careful stroll to the Drake, still embarrassed that a mere walk exhausted him. He gave Mrs Fillion the now-traditional kiss on the cheek that every mariner administered, and asked for a second-floor room. She held out the key, and being Mrs Fillion, couldn’t help a saucy comment.
‘Master Hadfield, if you ever marry, I will put you and your wife on the third floor at the back, the quiet floor for couples long away from each other, thanks to Boney and the blockade.’
He refused to let her embarrass him, because truth to tell, he liked Mrs Fillion. They all did. ‘No woman is that brave, my dear,’ he teased in turn.
‘These are your best years,’ she reminded him.
Then why do I feel eighty? he asked himself.
Andrew considered the matter after his dinner of beef roast, chicken, a mound of potatoes and two puddings. When Mrs Fillion circulated among the tables, he remembered the clothing he ordered and gestured to her.
‘Mrs F, I have ordered new uniforms, well, new everything,’ he said. ‘I wonder, could I leave them in your storeroom, if I do decide to travel a bit?’
‘Aye, you may. Come with me.’
He followed her into the kitchen, where he snagged two biscuits, then down steep stairs to the storeroom he remembered.
He paused in the doorway, seeing trunks, books, rain slickers and boxes.
The sight drew him up sharply, because he knew that many of the long-stored items could never be reclaimed by dead men.
‘There’s the whole history of Napoleon’s wars here,’ he said.
‘Aye, lad. It always gives even me a start when I open the door.’ She stood a moment, then directed him to the right. ‘There’s some space here. You tell me if you think it is enough. Your new hat will take up some space.’
He observed a tidy area. ‘This is fine. I shouldn’t need you to keep it long.’
A grimy letter, stuck half under a box on the shelf below, caught his eye—rather, the name did.
He looked closer, then reached for it. He blew off the dust, remembering precisely when he had written it to a widow.
‘Mrs Fillion, this is a relic from the Nile. I left it here by mistake. I know what I will do now.’
‘You mean you won’t stay here and eat?’ She looked at the name and sighed. ‘My goodness. The Battle of the Nile. Isn’t that what you chaps called it?’
‘Or the Battle of Aboukir Bay.’ He gestured to the letter. ‘You remember Sailing Master Edward Hale, don’t you?’
She nodded. ‘He loved to talk about his wife and their daughter, Sadie.’ She touched the name, running her finger across it. ‘Didn’t you…? Weren’t you…?’
‘Aye. I was his mate at the battle. He died in my arms and I became the sailing master,’ Andrew said, remembering too vividly the yard-long splinter from the quarterdeck railing that flew into Master Hale’s neck, killing him instantly.
Once he set his mentor down on the bloody deck and moved to the master’s position, Andrew’s own course had been charted.
It was a gamble, at best. Mrs Hale had long known of her husband’s passing, but the forgotten letter became his purpose.
‘Mrs Fillion, I’ve known Edward’s widow and Sadie for many years.
I believe I will look for her at Endicott, their last address.
This is only my account of the battle but she might like it. Endicott isn’t far from here, is it?’
‘Nay, lad. Ten miles maybe.’ Mrs Fillion started toward the open door. ‘I know she wasn’t a young woman, but it’s been no more than…than…’
‘Almost thirteen years,’ he said, thinking of where his life had taken him since then. There were times in prison when a day seemed to stretch into a fortnight. Thirteen years. ‘Not that long. I’ll find her.’