Chapter 10 #3
“Yes, and it was worse than anything you could imagine.” He closed his eyes as his mind conjured the sensation of war—the screaming of the cannonballs through the smoky darkness of fighting, the acrid taste of soot and blood in his mouth, the stinging of his eyes as sweat and dirt burned them.
Worse than all of that was the sounds of the men dying.
Some of them cried out in agony, making noises he didn’t think any animal, much less any human, could ever make.
Others cried for their mothers or their wives.
Some just lay in pools of blood and excrement, gurgling their last breaths.
“I thought I would die,” he whispered. “Sometimes I wished I did, because what came after that battle was worse than death.”
“Tell me about the battle,” she said.
He didn’t think he could. He’d never spoken of it before, not even to the other officers who’d survived it with him. But he heard his voice and felt his mouth moving, and somehow, he was telling her.
“I don’t know the name of the battle—or if it even had a name.
I remember fragments from that day and all of them out of order.
The acrid smell of gunpowder is my strongest memory.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that scent.
Even to this day, if I smell gunpowder, it takes me back to the violent roll of the sea under my feet and the deafening crack of wood when it splinters. ”
Her hand squeezed his. “What else?”
“The scent of blood. Jesus—the feel of blood as I trudged through it. It was so thick on the boards that it might have been seawater. It doesn’t feel like water when it coats your hands, though.
It’s thick and viscous. Impossible to wash away…
” Other fractured memories flitted through his mind, but he pushed them away.
He couldn’t bear to think of the worst things he’d seen.
He glanced at Tamsin then. She watched him, her eyes full of compassion.
“We lost that battle and barely avoided being captured. Miraculously, we limped away to lick our wounds. At least I thought that was what we’d do.
We sailed to the shallow waters of an island close to Spain, and I waited for Armstrong to tell us to sew the dead into shrouds for burial at sea.
I thought we’d scrub the blood off the decks and the surgeon would sew us all up.
I had a bad gash on my right arm from a piece of wood that had been blown off one of the masts and turned into a projectile. ”
“I take it comfort and burial weren’t what happened,” Tamsin said.
Garret’s legs felt too weak to hold him, and he started to buckle.
She held him as they sank to the sun-warmed stone floor of the terrace.
Her hands slid down his arms and grasped his hands.
With the light behind her, the mass of her loose dark hair looked like a halo.
“Captain Armstrong was angry,” he told her, meeting her clear blue eyes.
Those eyes reminded him of the waters of the Caribbean.
They were so pure, so blue, so unbelievably pretty.
“Not at the French who’d attacked us, and not at our fellow British ships, who’d made a piss-poor attempt at defending us and each other.
Not at himself for giving confusing orders in the midst of battle.
He was part of the reason we’d lost so many men.
He had the gunners wait too long to fire, he ordered the ship to turn too early, our broadside was—well, that doesn’t matter.
He blamed the crew, not himself. He ordered the men flogged. ”
Tamsin’s mouth compressed into a thin line, and he could see she knew something about what flogging in the navy meant.
Garret had known about flogging too—or at least he’d thought he had.
No one could really understand it until they’d seen it.
“I was a lieutenant, and I thought I had some authority. I argued with Armstrong, defended the seamen. Then he turned on me.”
“Oh, Garret.”
Hearing her say his name was a balm. Nothing could take away the pain of what he’d seen and done, but being here with her soothed the worst of the sting.
“Usually, the bosun’s mate administers the first twelve lashes and the second bosun’s mate gives the next twelve, even though the rule is that without a court-martial a man shouldn’t receive more than twelve.
The captain ordered me to administer the flogging.
He ordered all surviving hands on deck and lined the seamen up, bloodied and broken men, some who could barely stand, and picked out every tenth, fourteen men in all.
Then he ordered seventy-two lashes each. ”
Garret would never forget watching the bosun take the cat out of the bag where the weapon was stored.
He sometimes woke up in the night, flexing his hand, feeling the weight of the thick braided hemp handle, smelling the tar that coated it, flinching at the tickle of the braided tails against his leg.
“The first man was stripped of his shirt and lashed to an upturned grating. Armstrong ordered me to flog him or else I’d be flogged and keelhauled.
I knew he’d do it. What I’d taken as casual cruelty—the way he carried a cane to start the seamen seemingly at random—was worse than I’d imagined.
He was a monster. My arm was injured, and I couldn’t deliver much of a blow, so Armstrong said every weak blow I gave meant the bosun’s mate would give the seamen another.
So I worked harder, my arm bleeding and burning in agony as I flogged man after man. ”
Tamsin’s hands gripped his tighter, her hold on him almost painful.
“I tried to focus on my pain, so I didn’t have to think of theirs.
I went through four or maybe five cats. By the time the last man—he wasn’t even a man; he was a boy, really—was lashed to the grate I could barely stand.
My boots were mired in the blood of the men I’d whipped.
I was covered in blood and little pieces of flesh.
I had to use my left arm because I couldn’t lift my right any longer.
I remember looking at that boy’s back after the first twelve lashes and seeing the scorched and blackened skin.
It looked like tenderized meat. That was when I blacked out.
Later the surgeon told me I’d lost so much blood from my wound that he was surprised I’d managed to stand as long as I had.
As it was, I developed an infection and a fever and spent most of the way back to port in my hammock.
“That was for the best. Even though I’d argued with Armstrong in support of the men, they hated me.
They blamed me for the harshness of their punishment.
Of the fourteen men I flogged, all were in worse shape than me, but none were allowed to take to their beds.
The surgeon rubbed salt in their wounds to prevent infection, and they went back to work.
” He glanced at Tamsin then, expecting to see derision and scorn in her eyes.
Instead, he saw tenderness and understanding.
She had no reason to give him any sympathy.
For all she knew, her father had died from a flogging administered in much the same way that he’d flogged those men.
“When we arrived in Portsmouth, my father came for me. I don’t know how he knew I’d been injured or when the ship was coming in, but he was there.
He’d planned to take me to Ireland to recover, but I was too weak.
I stayed in Portsmouth a month. When I was up and out of bed, I told my father I didn’t care what happened to me, I was never going back on a ship.
I’d rather go to prison or face court-martial.
Whatever the punishment, I was done with the navy.
He left that day and came back three days later.
I don’t know what he did or who he paid, but we left that evening for home in Ireland. ”
“Did you ever tell him what happened?” she asked quietly.
“No. We didn’t talk of it. I think he wanted to let me speak of it in my own time. But I’ve never wanted to speak of it, and I never have. Until now.”
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “For trusting me.”
“I’m sure you hate me now.”
“I could never hate you.” She was still sitting on the terrace floor facing him, but now she rose onto her knees and released his hands.
She took his face, one palm on each side of his jaw, and leaned forward, slowly, her eyes never leaving his.
He hadn’t believed that anyone could look at him like that, knowing what he’d done.
He was a monster, wasn’t he? But Tamsin was looking at him like he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. He didn’t move. His entire body seemed rooted in place by her light touch. And when she kissed him, a surge of desire like he’d never felt before ripped through him.
Garret clenched his fists to keep himself from grabbing her and taking what he wanted. A moment ago, he’d been close to tears, but the slide of her lips had awakened another feeling altogether, a desperate longing that threatened to overwhelm him.
She moved closer, hooking her legs over his.
Garret was pleased for the freedom of movement her livery afforded, and he lifted one fist and pressed it against her lower back so her core nudged his growing erection.
Her hands slid back and into his hair as her tongue licked at him.
She closed her hand on a section of his hair, and he welcomed the sting of it.
Right now he needed to feel something other than the ache of anguish inside him.