Remix for Eglantine_br: The Tithe to Hell
Title: The Tithe to Hell
Author: anteros_lmc
Remix of: The Butterflies Wake, The Ritual, Fortress Dreams, The Evil That Men Do, To Spain, A New Way to Break
Author of original: eglantine_br
Rating: Gen, PG 13
Length: 4300
Disclaimer: Usual thing. Some of the OCs are eglantine_br's some are mine but tbh I've lost track who belongs to whom!
Author's Note: Erm...I kind of got a bit carried away here. I adore eglantine_br's writing so much that I ended up re-mixing six of her stories! These pieces follow a single arc from the point where Kennedy and Hornblower are separated during the cutting out of the Papillion, to just before their reunion in El Ferrol. Most of these stories deal with Kennedy's time as a prisoner of war and many of the details are drawn from historical accounts written by young naval prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars. I've been very naughty and stretched the rules of the remix in places but mylodon said that they are more like guidelines than actual rules anyway ;)
The Luck of the Devil
(remix of The Butterflies Wake)
“You'll be all right, Mr Hornblower, head wounds always bleed terrible bad, sir.” Finch looked at him with that honest ugly smile.
“Where is Mr Kennedy?” Hornblower pushed Finch's hand down, searching his eyes.
Finch looked down. Matthews came forward and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Mr Kennedy he was in the boat sir.”
Hornblower didn’t reply, he stood up abruptly, hesitated for a moment, and walked aft, staggering slightly, though the Papillion barely rolled as she glided out through the mouth of the Gironde estuary.
Finch coughed and spat over the side, he could still feel the water rattling in his lungs. “What happened to the boat?”
“Dunno, cast off in the thick of it, suppose. Least that's what Mr Simpson said.” Styles replied. “Didn’t notice it were gone till we came about and got out past them damn shore batteries.”
“Mr Kennedy was still in the boat. Current must ‘ave took him. Could be anywhere by now, if the bloody frogs haven’t got him already.” Matthews wasn’t looking at Finch as he spoke, he was gazing aft at Hornblower. The midshipman was standing at the foot of the quarterdeck companion, head bowed, gripping the rail.
“Poor bugger.” Styles shook his head.
Matthews was still watching Hornblower, he still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t ascended the companion. His knuckles were white against the dark wood of the rail.
“Mr Hornblower was right lucky though!" Styles chipped in again. “Lucky you fancied a swim, eh Finch?” He slapped the older man on the back almost knocking him over and setting off another fit of coughing. “Nice night for it!”
“Aye he’s got the luck of the devil’s very own, that one.” Finch wheezed when the coughing fit abated.
Mathews lifted his eyes heavenwards and shook his head wearily at his shipmates. When he turned and looked aft again Mr Hornblower had gone.
Blood, Silk, Emptiness
(additional scene The Butterflies Wake)
Hornblower spent the first night, perhaps the second too, in the sick berth. The captain had insisted. Simpson’s shot had gone through the soft flesh above his armpit. He knew it had missed the axillary artery and torn a ragged hole in Cleveland’s silk shirt. There had been a lot of blood. Hornblower was worried about the shirt. It kept him awake, wondering whether it could be repaired. And, if it could be repaired, whether the blood stains would come out. He didn’t know how to wash bloodstains from silk. Perhaps Mary, his father’s housekeeper, would know. His head was aching, a sharp crescendo of pain. Dr Heppelwhite came and gave him something to drink. He woke some time later; the stiletto pain had gone, replaced by a dense fug. Hornblower wondered why he’d been so worried about the shirt when there was something more important to worry about. He just couldn’t remember what.
By the third night Hornblower was back in the midshipmen’s berth. The mess had received him like a hero, crowding round and jostling him with questions. Was it true that Simpson fired on two? That his own pistol had misfired? That Simpson came at him with a knife? That the captain had shot the bastard right through the head? Hornblower answered all the questions in the hope that answers would make them stop. But they didn’t, only dousing the lights made them stop.
Now Horatio was lying curled in his hammock staring straight through the darkness at his loss. He knew it was there. If he put his hand out he could touch it. A gaping void of suffocating pain and emptiness. It was right there. Right there beside him. Obscene as an open grave. An empty space where Archie’s hammock should have hung. How could such a narrow space contain such an immense impossible absence? And the space was inside him too, a hollow heavy emptiness filling his chest and settling in his gut like a dead weight. He had failed; failed Clayton, Eccleston, Chadd and Pellew. Over and over again he had failed. But all these failures paled into insignificance because now he had failed Archie. Simpson was dead and it had made no difference. Simpson was dead and Archie was still gone.
The Bad Son
(remix of The Ritual)
Hornblower stared down at the paper, standard Admiralty issue begged from the first lieutenant. His own supply of writing paper was long since exhausted; folded neatly at the bottom of his sea chest. Half the page was covered with his regular looping hand. The hand looked familiar but the words didn’t seem to belong. “Dear Father” the letter began. The strange words proceeded to remark on the weather and the health of the captain. Then they stopped, abruptly, as if the mysterious penman had been called away.
It was almost two months now. Two months since then. Hornblower couldn’t comprehend how two months had flown, when every second of every hour of every waking watch had dragged and crawled with infinitesimal pain.
He knew he should write to his father. It must be three months since his last letter. One month before, two months after. His father would be worried. Ever the dutiful son, Hornblower had written as diligently and regularly as the exigencies of the service would allow. That made it worse. His father would be counting off the weeks when the letter had not come. Hornblower added Bad Son to his long list of failures.
But he could not bring himself to write the words that would set the seal on Archie's loss. He could not bring himself to tell his father that Mr Archibald Kennedy, his dearest friend, was missing. Had been missing for two months now.
Two months. Eight weeks. Eight weeks was nothing at sea. At sea anything could happen. Men who had been given up for lost could reappear days, weeks, months, even years later. Please God, please let it not be years. Lost shipmates stepped blithely off captured and recaptured prizes, or appeared over the horizon in an open boat, or found their way on to other ships of the fleet, or returned in a cartel from a sojourn in a French depot. Men came back at sea. Hadn’t he done it himself?
But once he committed those words to paper, once his father read that letter, once he knew, then Mr Archibald Kennedy, his dearest friend, would also be missing from home. Missing from the blue peaked room, from the hearth rug with the chessboard on it and the doorstep by the boxwood tree. Missing from the meadow and from the pool.
Hornblower laid down this pen. Folded the paper carefully and placed it in his seachest.
Correspondence
(remix of Fortress Dreams)
It had been raining all afternoon. Matthieu wriggled his toes in his boots, he could feel the water oozing. The gens d’armes of the neighbouring jurisdiction should have been there by noon and it was well after three. Those swines were always late for the correspondence. Matthieu spat in the puddle pooling around his feet and tried to ignore the water trickling down his neck. Trust his luck that their captain today was Vessiot. Ever the stickler for form, he insisted they await the prisoners at the check point beyond the town. Captain Bourdin would have been happy to wait at the estaminet just inside the gate. But no, today it had to be Vessiot, so there they were standing by the road side in the pissing rain waiting for the correspondence. Eight of them no less. Eight gens d’armes for seven prisoners. Why bother to make such a fuss over a bunch of lousy conscripts and deserters?
Matthieu heard them before he saw them, the faint hard clink of spurs and chains ringing through the teaming rain. It seemed an age before they appeared over the brow of the hill; two mounted gens d’armes in the van, two in the rear and four on foot marching with bayonets fixed on either side of the little column. Between them trudged a straggling line of prisoners chained waist to waist, their wrists shackled.
The ragged column stumbled to a halt before Vessiot’s company; guards and prisoners alike equally drenched. The prisoners’ thin frocks clung to their shoulders and water streamed from their mud spattered trousers. Some were lucky enough to have kept their boots, most were barefoot, their swollen bloodied feet wrapped in sodden rags. One man coughed wetly and continually. Even the mounted guards in their heavy cloaks slumped under the relentless downpour, their feather plumes limp and bedraggled.
The captain dismounted, produced the correspondence documents from his satchel and handed them to Vessiot. Usually the paperwork amounted to little more than a flimsy sheaf, but this time there was also a thick dossier. The captain was saying something about “Anglais mauvais sujet” and nodding towards a prisoner chained towards the back of the line behind the prisoner with the cough. He was a small man, more of a boy really, barefoot, with dirty unkempt hair and a yellow sore at the corner of his mouth. Something about his stance caught Matthieu’s eye; while the other prisoners were grumbling and shivering in the rain, he alone was standing perfectly still, head bowed, seemingly oblivious to the sheeting rain. In addition to the waist chain, he wore a second chain around his neck which his wrist shackles were fastened to. Matthieu wondered idly how the poor bastard ate, as the chains were too short to allow his hands to move more than a few inches from his throat. Perhaps he didn’t eat. He certainly looked more than half starved.
The business of the correspondence was always tedious, each prisoner had to be unchained and rechained, their documents checked, their allowances accounted for and any personal belongings handed over. Matthieu knew from experience that the allowances would not tally. They never did. The captain helped himself liberally to the five centimes daily allowance paid to the prisoners by the government. They all did it, even Vessiot. Not that he admitted it.
“What about that one?” Vessiot demanded irritably, pointing at the small still man at the back of the line. “Where’s his allowance?”
The captain shrugged. “I don’t know. I can only give you what I was given and I have no allowance for that one.”
“Then how am I supposed to feed him?” Vessiot snapped.
The captain grinned and swung himself back into the saddle. “Who cares? Doesn’t look like he’s long for this earth anyway, if the march doesn’t finish him, Bitche will.”
Matthieu wasn’t convinced. He didn’t think the prisoner looked finished, he looked like he was waiting. Waiting for his next chance. “Better not take any chances then…” Matthieu muttered to himself as he fixed his bayonet. Then Vessiot gave the word and the little column moved off through the rain.
A Fortunate Man
(remix of The Evil That Men Do)
Gilles’ father never ceased to remind him that he was one of the lucky ones, that he was safe from the fate that had befallen the boys he grew up with, that he was safe from conscription, safe from the front. And lest he should forget his great good fortune, a letter arrived from his father the first Monday of every month to remind him. Gilles had no idea how his father’s letters managed to arrive as regular as clockwork when the whole of France was going to hell in a hand cart. But then his father always had been proud of his ability to make things happen, to grease the right palms, to get things done.
Fortunate? Gilles snorted. That was a joke. If he was fortunate then he must be the only fortunate man in that backwater of hell. Who ever heard of a fortunate man in Bitche?
Gilles shivered and took another slug of brandy, it was bitterly cold in the guardroom, even by the fire where he sat waiting for Bouchoir to appear with the buckets and disinfectant. His father’s letter lay crumpled on the table beside a flask of brandy, in the margin was a list of underlined names. More dead. Not that he cared for any of the names, not that he cared for anything since he had seen the one and only name he cared for in the margin of his father’s letter. Émile Renaud. He could almost see his father’s self satisfied smirk as he had inscribed the name and carefully underlined it. Gilles father had never approved of Émile, not since they were children. He’s not good enough for you. You are better than him. You are to son of the chief of police, his father is a common tradesman. Must you spend so much time with him?. And eventually You have responsibilities. It's about time you found a wife. But Gilles did not want a wife and there was no one that he wanted to spend his time with but Émile. His father had other ideas though and the war had given him the perfect opportunity. So when the men of the town were drafted into the foot regiments Gilles father conspired to arrange a position for him as a guard at Bitche.
"I’ll come and join you," Émile had joked the night before the conscripts marched. "I’ll desert and let the gens d'armes catch me and then they will send me to your fortress as a mauvais sujet. You can be my guard and I promise I will be a very, very bad prisoner indeed. So bad that you will have to keep me under lock and key for the whole of the war." His blue eyes were dancing with laughter. Émile was always laughing. He had been laughing as the conscripts marched out of the town.
Gilles received a letter from Émile several months later, the regiment had been ordered north to Brest where they were kicking their heels waiting to board the troop transport ships. There was great speculation as to their destination, some said Portugal, some Ireland, others the West Indies. Émile wrote that if he reached the Indies he would bring Gilles a monkey.
The next letter that came was from his father. They hadn't even reached Ushant. The transport had been driven onshore and wrecked by two English frigates in the Passage du Raz. It was night and there had been a gale blowing. A few of the seamen made it ashore, most of the troops were drowned.
Since then, not a minute of an hour, day or night, had gone by that Gilles had not wished himself at the bottom of the sea beside Émile. But no. He was one of the fortunate ones. He was fortunate to have been condemned this purgatory, skulking behind walls and ramparts like a coward while Émile had marched laughing to his death at the hands of the British Navy. And now it was his penance to spend the rest of the war cooped up with those bastards. Gilles poured all his anger and guilt and despair into his bitter burning hatred of the British sailors and by God he made them pay. The blood and the brandy blotted out the pain.
The door of the guard room banged open and a blast of icy cold heralded Bouchoir's arrival. "About fucking time" Gilles grumbled as he drained the last of the brandy and headed for the door. "Lets see if those filthy bastards have learned to toe the line."
The Shambles
(additional scene To Spain)
The boys were ranged against the side of the barn, balanced precariously on an assortment of buckets, rocks and logs, dirty cheeks pressed hard against the rough timbers. The barn belonged to Anton’s father and consequently the largest knot-hole was his privilege and his alone. The other boys did their best to peer through smaller cracks and crannies, jostling each other for a better view of the shambles. The small village had neither gaol or cachot so when the gens d’armes passed through escorting prisoners, they were locked in Anton’s father’s barn. Anton’s father was the butcher and one end of the barn, the shambles, was filled with pens and stalls where the beasts were held before slaughter. The pens always stank of blood and fear and excrement but the boys didn’t care. They would suffer the stench for a glimpse of the fearsome creatures chained inside the pens.
The appearance of the blue jacketed gens d’armes always caused a stir in the village, the children gaping in open mouthed admiration at the red plumes in their cocked hats and their long carbines and muskets. But they were as nothing to the prisoners. Mostly they were conscripts and deserters whose only crime was to want to go home, but that didn’t stop the boys inventing fantastical barbaric crimes for them and from speculating whether they were destined for the galleys or the firing squad.
That afternoon there had been great excitement, eight gens d’armes had marched into the village escorting a small group of prisoners, several of whom were chained and shackled. One of them was rumoured to be a murderous brigand, who had already escaped twice, no doubt slaughtering the guards as he hacked his way to freedom. No prison could hold him, not even Bitche. A wicked, barbarous outlaw. The very devil himself, and worse, an Englishman.
“It must be him,” hissed Jean as he peered through a gap in the barn wall. “The one on the right. Look at him, he’s huge!”
“What a beast! Look at the size of his hands. How many men do you think he’s killed?”
“Hundreds.”
“Why isn’t he chained?” a small voice asked.
“No chains strong enough.” Jean announced authoritatively.
The children jostled for cracks through which to view the giant killer.
“No,” said Anton. “It’s him. There on the left.”
“Where?”
More jostling and pushing as the children sought new vantage points.
“There’s no one there.”
“Can’t see anyone.”
“There. In the straw at the back.” Anton tapped the wall as he spoke.
They had to squint to see him, curled small and pale and dirty in the filthy straw, like the runt of a litter. A heavy chain wound round his wrists and passed about his neck where it was fastened with a huge padlock. A second chain shackled his bare feet.
“Him? Never!” Jean scoffed. “There’s nothing of him!”
“It’s him,” Anton insisted quietly.
“What makes you think it’s him?”
“Because he’s watching us.” Anton replied.
That was when the children noticed the sharp blue eyes fixed on wall of the barn. The blue gaze seemed to pierce the wooden wall, holding the children frozen in a moment of perfect thrilling fear. Then the prisoner blinked and the spell was broken. The children tumbled down from their vantage points and scattered away through the village shrieking with bravado.
The prisoner heard them go, heard their running feet and the peal of their laughter. Kennedy blinked again and turned his back on their freedom and their joy.
The Old Ways
(remix of A New Way to Break)
Don Carlos Alphonse Ferran Rivas Massaredo had seen hundreds of prisoners come and go over the years. They were of little interest. The garrison took care of them. He signed their papers as required and paid no more attention to them than to the cattle in the pasture, and considerably less than he paid to his precious horses. Unless the prisoners were English. Don Massaredo prided himself on his sympathy with the English. He cleaved to the old ways, to the noble values of his fathers; dignity, civility, duty and honour. The French rabble cared nothing for dignity or civility, less still for duty and honour. But the English, these were values the English cherished.
The Don took pains to ensure that the fort at El Ferrol was a bastion of the old ways, a bulwark against the tide of republicanism sweeping south from Paris. He would not sully his fortress with the casual depravity of the French. There were no chains in the cells, the prisoners had cots, blankets and linen, water to wash and shave and the daily run of the courtyard.
Don Massaredo was happy to receive the parole of the English officers and in return he offered these gentlemen his hospitality. He welcomed them as guests to his table, his library and the sanctuary of his chapel. They conversed about the arts, literature, politics, travel, economics, the course of the war even. They were not Frenchmen.
But for too long there had been no English prisoners. Some said the English were afraid to come too close in to Spanish waters. Others said the Spanish ships were afraid to go out and face the British fleet. Don Massaredo missed the company of the English. Consequently he was surprised and delighted when the despatch from the garrison at Corunna indicated that there was an English officer among the small group of prisoners being transferred to the fort. Only a junior officer to be sure, a midshipman of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, not yet worthy of parole, but perhaps they could pass an evening in conversation over the dinner table. They were not French after all.
The Englishman proved to be a sore disappointment. He was little more than a boy with a famished feral appearance. He came with a heavy dossier and heavier chains. If ever he had been a young gentleman then every last vestige of gentility had long since been stripped from him. He stood mulishly in the courtyard, head bowed, squinting surreptitiously up at the brilliant blue sky. The chains and shackles had been cut from the prisoners when Don Masseredo entered the courtyard; they lay heaped obscenely in the dirt, like the entrails of some great iron beast. Most of the prisoners were flexing their cramped limbs and rubbing chaffed wrists and necks. The Englishman stood shivering and motionless. Don Massaredo spoke to the men, he spoke to them of honour and dignity, he assured them that they were noble Spaniards, that they were not Frenchmen. When he stopped speaking the Englishman still had not moved or raised his head. He just stood, trembling.
Later that afternoon the Don sat at his desk, the thick dossier that accompanied the Englishman open before him. His eyes narrowed as he read. Madre de Dios had honour departed this earth? Still, they were not Frenchmen, they were gentlemen, and they would dine together as such.
The corporal looked somewhat flustered when he returned to Don Massaredo’s study. The prisoner had declined the pleasure of dining with the Don. The prisoner had, in fact, declined to speak at all. Don Massaredo frowned at the affront to his dignity and hospitality, his mouth tightening into a thin hard line.
A week later the Englishman tried to escape. He didn’t get far. Don Massaredo had him beaten naked in the courtyard and locked in his cell for a week. It was enough. They were not Frenchmen. Perhaps in a week he would learn some manners.
He did not. The second time he tried to escape it took them longer to find him. Don Massaredo was furious. If the Englishman would not learn manners then the pit would teach him. They were not Frenchmen after all, they were Spaniards, and they knew how to break a man.
The Tithe to Hell
(additional scene A New Way to Break)
After the bright glare of the whitewashed courtyard it took his eyes time to adjust to the dank gloom of the cell. Hunter was seething beside him; Hornblower felt nothing but numb disbelief.
The moment he had struck Le Rêve’s colours and surrendered his ship, his sword and his honour was a half remembered nightmare. Hornblower had stumbled through the following hours in a daze, his entire will bent on retaining his composure and command. It was paramount that he lead his men into captivity with discipline and dignity. But all the time his mind was working feverishly, twisting and turning to find a way to escape, a way out of the nightmare, a glimmer of hope that would postpone the inevitable.
Hornblower was so preoccupied with his thoughts that it came as a surprise when the door of the cell slammed shut behind them. The dull clang jolted him back to his senses and he realised it was too late. There had been no daring eleventh hour escape, no audacious plan had surfaced from the whirling chaos of his mind. He was a prisoner. He had surrendered his ship, led his men into captivity, lost the Admiralty despatches and failed the trust that Captain Sir Edward Pellew had placed in him. The sham of his bright and brilliant naval career was crumbling about him before it had even begun. True, it was not unheard of for prizes to be recaptured but it took a special talent to sail right into the middle of the enemy fleet. And to heap ignominy upon ignominy, at the fateful moment he, the ship’s captain, had been asleep below in his cot. To be abandoned to rot in this God forsaken Spanish hole for the rest of eternity was little more than he deserved. Acting Lieutenant Hornblower, HMS Indefatigable, had proved himself unfit to hold his commission and serve on an English ship of war.
Hornblower knew the men said he had the luck of the devil. Well now the devil had come to claim his own and it was his lot to pay the tithe to hell. And this was it. This was where he would drag out the rest of the war in misery and despair. A ten foot square stone cell with a tiny barred window. Against one wall a double bunk, against the other a single cot, heaped over with a filthy grey blanket. Nothing, but nothing, could compound his humiliation and disgrace. Hornblower took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and stepped into the prison cell.
Author: anteros_lmc
Remix of: The Butterflies Wake, The Ritual, Fortress Dreams, The Evil That Men Do, To Spain, A New Way to Break
Author of original: eglantine_br
Rating: Gen, PG 13
Length: 4300
Disclaimer: Usual thing. Some of the OCs are eglantine_br's some are mine but tbh I've lost track who belongs to whom!
Author's Note: Erm...I kind of got a bit carried away here. I adore eglantine_br's writing so much that I ended up re-mixing six of her stories! These pieces follow a single arc from the point where Kennedy and Hornblower are separated during the cutting out of the Papillion, to just before their reunion in El Ferrol. Most of these stories deal with Kennedy's time as a prisoner of war and many of the details are drawn from historical accounts written by young naval prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars. I've been very naughty and stretched the rules of the remix in places but mylodon said that they are more like guidelines than actual rules anyway ;)
The Luck of the Devil
(remix of The Butterflies Wake)
“You'll be all right, Mr Hornblower, head wounds always bleed terrible bad, sir.” Finch looked at him with that honest ugly smile.
“Where is Mr Kennedy?” Hornblower pushed Finch's hand down, searching his eyes.
Finch looked down. Matthews came forward and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Mr Kennedy he was in the boat sir.”
Hornblower didn’t reply, he stood up abruptly, hesitated for a moment, and walked aft, staggering slightly, though the Papillion barely rolled as she glided out through the mouth of the Gironde estuary.
Finch coughed and spat over the side, he could still feel the water rattling in his lungs. “What happened to the boat?”
“Dunno, cast off in the thick of it, suppose. Least that's what Mr Simpson said.” Styles replied. “Didn’t notice it were gone till we came about and got out past them damn shore batteries.”
“Mr Kennedy was still in the boat. Current must ‘ave took him. Could be anywhere by now, if the bloody frogs haven’t got him already.” Matthews wasn’t looking at Finch as he spoke, he was gazing aft at Hornblower. The midshipman was standing at the foot of the quarterdeck companion, head bowed, gripping the rail.
“Poor bugger.” Styles shook his head.
Matthews was still watching Hornblower, he still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t ascended the companion. His knuckles were white against the dark wood of the rail.
“Mr Hornblower was right lucky though!" Styles chipped in again. “Lucky you fancied a swim, eh Finch?” He slapped the older man on the back almost knocking him over and setting off another fit of coughing. “Nice night for it!”
“Aye he’s got the luck of the devil’s very own, that one.” Finch wheezed when the coughing fit abated.
Mathews lifted his eyes heavenwards and shook his head wearily at his shipmates. When he turned and looked aft again Mr Hornblower had gone.
Blood, Silk, Emptiness
(additional scene The Butterflies Wake)
Hornblower spent the first night, perhaps the second too, in the sick berth. The captain had insisted. Simpson’s shot had gone through the soft flesh above his armpit. He knew it had missed the axillary artery and torn a ragged hole in Cleveland’s silk shirt. There had been a lot of blood. Hornblower was worried about the shirt. It kept him awake, wondering whether it could be repaired. And, if it could be repaired, whether the blood stains would come out. He didn’t know how to wash bloodstains from silk. Perhaps Mary, his father’s housekeeper, would know. His head was aching, a sharp crescendo of pain. Dr Heppelwhite came and gave him something to drink. He woke some time later; the stiletto pain had gone, replaced by a dense fug. Hornblower wondered why he’d been so worried about the shirt when there was something more important to worry about. He just couldn’t remember what.
By the third night Hornblower was back in the midshipmen’s berth. The mess had received him like a hero, crowding round and jostling him with questions. Was it true that Simpson fired on two? That his own pistol had misfired? That Simpson came at him with a knife? That the captain had shot the bastard right through the head? Hornblower answered all the questions in the hope that answers would make them stop. But they didn’t, only dousing the lights made them stop.
Now Horatio was lying curled in his hammock staring straight through the darkness at his loss. He knew it was there. If he put his hand out he could touch it. A gaping void of suffocating pain and emptiness. It was right there. Right there beside him. Obscene as an open grave. An empty space where Archie’s hammock should have hung. How could such a narrow space contain such an immense impossible absence? And the space was inside him too, a hollow heavy emptiness filling his chest and settling in his gut like a dead weight. He had failed; failed Clayton, Eccleston, Chadd and Pellew. Over and over again he had failed. But all these failures paled into insignificance because now he had failed Archie. Simpson was dead and it had made no difference. Simpson was dead and Archie was still gone.
The Bad Son
(remix of The Ritual)
Hornblower stared down at the paper, standard Admiralty issue begged from the first lieutenant. His own supply of writing paper was long since exhausted; folded neatly at the bottom of his sea chest. Half the page was covered with his regular looping hand. The hand looked familiar but the words didn’t seem to belong. “Dear Father” the letter began. The strange words proceeded to remark on the weather and the health of the captain. Then they stopped, abruptly, as if the mysterious penman had been called away.
It was almost two months now. Two months since then. Hornblower couldn’t comprehend how two months had flown, when every second of every hour of every waking watch had dragged and crawled with infinitesimal pain.
He knew he should write to his father. It must be three months since his last letter. One month before, two months after. His father would be worried. Ever the dutiful son, Hornblower had written as diligently and regularly as the exigencies of the service would allow. That made it worse. His father would be counting off the weeks when the letter had not come. Hornblower added Bad Son to his long list of failures.
But he could not bring himself to write the words that would set the seal on Archie's loss. He could not bring himself to tell his father that Mr Archibald Kennedy, his dearest friend, was missing. Had been missing for two months now.
Two months. Eight weeks. Eight weeks was nothing at sea. At sea anything could happen. Men who had been given up for lost could reappear days, weeks, months, even years later. Please God, please let it not be years. Lost shipmates stepped blithely off captured and recaptured prizes, or appeared over the horizon in an open boat, or found their way on to other ships of the fleet, or returned in a cartel from a sojourn in a French depot. Men came back at sea. Hadn’t he done it himself?
But once he committed those words to paper, once his father read that letter, once he knew, then Mr Archibald Kennedy, his dearest friend, would also be missing from home. Missing from the blue peaked room, from the hearth rug with the chessboard on it and the doorstep by the boxwood tree. Missing from the meadow and from the pool.
Hornblower laid down this pen. Folded the paper carefully and placed it in his seachest.
Correspondence
(remix of Fortress Dreams)
It had been raining all afternoon. Matthieu wriggled his toes in his boots, he could feel the water oozing. The gens d’armes of the neighbouring jurisdiction should have been there by noon and it was well after three. Those swines were always late for the correspondence. Matthieu spat in the puddle pooling around his feet and tried to ignore the water trickling down his neck. Trust his luck that their captain today was Vessiot. Ever the stickler for form, he insisted they await the prisoners at the check point beyond the town. Captain Bourdin would have been happy to wait at the estaminet just inside the gate. But no, today it had to be Vessiot, so there they were standing by the road side in the pissing rain waiting for the correspondence. Eight of them no less. Eight gens d’armes for seven prisoners. Why bother to make such a fuss over a bunch of lousy conscripts and deserters?
Matthieu heard them before he saw them, the faint hard clink of spurs and chains ringing through the teaming rain. It seemed an age before they appeared over the brow of the hill; two mounted gens d’armes in the van, two in the rear and four on foot marching with bayonets fixed on either side of the little column. Between them trudged a straggling line of prisoners chained waist to waist, their wrists shackled.
The ragged column stumbled to a halt before Vessiot’s company; guards and prisoners alike equally drenched. The prisoners’ thin frocks clung to their shoulders and water streamed from their mud spattered trousers. Some were lucky enough to have kept their boots, most were barefoot, their swollen bloodied feet wrapped in sodden rags. One man coughed wetly and continually. Even the mounted guards in their heavy cloaks slumped under the relentless downpour, their feather plumes limp and bedraggled.
The captain dismounted, produced the correspondence documents from his satchel and handed them to Vessiot. Usually the paperwork amounted to little more than a flimsy sheaf, but this time there was also a thick dossier. The captain was saying something about “Anglais mauvais sujet” and nodding towards a prisoner chained towards the back of the line behind the prisoner with the cough. He was a small man, more of a boy really, barefoot, with dirty unkempt hair and a yellow sore at the corner of his mouth. Something about his stance caught Matthieu’s eye; while the other prisoners were grumbling and shivering in the rain, he alone was standing perfectly still, head bowed, seemingly oblivious to the sheeting rain. In addition to the waist chain, he wore a second chain around his neck which his wrist shackles were fastened to. Matthieu wondered idly how the poor bastard ate, as the chains were too short to allow his hands to move more than a few inches from his throat. Perhaps he didn’t eat. He certainly looked more than half starved.
The business of the correspondence was always tedious, each prisoner had to be unchained and rechained, their documents checked, their allowances accounted for and any personal belongings handed over. Matthieu knew from experience that the allowances would not tally. They never did. The captain helped himself liberally to the five centimes daily allowance paid to the prisoners by the government. They all did it, even Vessiot. Not that he admitted it.
“What about that one?” Vessiot demanded irritably, pointing at the small still man at the back of the line. “Where’s his allowance?”
The captain shrugged. “I don’t know. I can only give you what I was given and I have no allowance for that one.”
“Then how am I supposed to feed him?” Vessiot snapped.
The captain grinned and swung himself back into the saddle. “Who cares? Doesn’t look like he’s long for this earth anyway, if the march doesn’t finish him, Bitche will.”
Matthieu wasn’t convinced. He didn’t think the prisoner looked finished, he looked like he was waiting. Waiting for his next chance. “Better not take any chances then…” Matthieu muttered to himself as he fixed his bayonet. Then Vessiot gave the word and the little column moved off through the rain.
A Fortunate Man
(remix of The Evil That Men Do)
Gilles’ father never ceased to remind him that he was one of the lucky ones, that he was safe from the fate that had befallen the boys he grew up with, that he was safe from conscription, safe from the front. And lest he should forget his great good fortune, a letter arrived from his father the first Monday of every month to remind him. Gilles had no idea how his father’s letters managed to arrive as regular as clockwork when the whole of France was going to hell in a hand cart. But then his father always had been proud of his ability to make things happen, to grease the right palms, to get things done.
Fortunate? Gilles snorted. That was a joke. If he was fortunate then he must be the only fortunate man in that backwater of hell. Who ever heard of a fortunate man in Bitche?
Gilles shivered and took another slug of brandy, it was bitterly cold in the guardroom, even by the fire where he sat waiting for Bouchoir to appear with the buckets and disinfectant. His father’s letter lay crumpled on the table beside a flask of brandy, in the margin was a list of underlined names. More dead. Not that he cared for any of the names, not that he cared for anything since he had seen the one and only name he cared for in the margin of his father’s letter. Émile Renaud. He could almost see his father’s self satisfied smirk as he had inscribed the name and carefully underlined it. Gilles father had never approved of Émile, not since they were children. He’s not good enough for you. You are better than him. You are to son of the chief of police, his father is a common tradesman. Must you spend so much time with him?. And eventually You have responsibilities. It's about time you found a wife. But Gilles did not want a wife and there was no one that he wanted to spend his time with but Émile. His father had other ideas though and the war had given him the perfect opportunity. So when the men of the town were drafted into the foot regiments Gilles father conspired to arrange a position for him as a guard at Bitche.
"I’ll come and join you," Émile had joked the night before the conscripts marched. "I’ll desert and let the gens d'armes catch me and then they will send me to your fortress as a mauvais sujet. You can be my guard and I promise I will be a very, very bad prisoner indeed. So bad that you will have to keep me under lock and key for the whole of the war." His blue eyes were dancing with laughter. Émile was always laughing. He had been laughing as the conscripts marched out of the town.
Gilles received a letter from Émile several months later, the regiment had been ordered north to Brest where they were kicking their heels waiting to board the troop transport ships. There was great speculation as to their destination, some said Portugal, some Ireland, others the West Indies. Émile wrote that if he reached the Indies he would bring Gilles a monkey.
The next letter that came was from his father. They hadn't even reached Ushant. The transport had been driven onshore and wrecked by two English frigates in the Passage du Raz. It was night and there had been a gale blowing. A few of the seamen made it ashore, most of the troops were drowned.
Since then, not a minute of an hour, day or night, had gone by that Gilles had not wished himself at the bottom of the sea beside Émile. But no. He was one of the fortunate ones. He was fortunate to have been condemned this purgatory, skulking behind walls and ramparts like a coward while Émile had marched laughing to his death at the hands of the British Navy. And now it was his penance to spend the rest of the war cooped up with those bastards. Gilles poured all his anger and guilt and despair into his bitter burning hatred of the British sailors and by God he made them pay. The blood and the brandy blotted out the pain.
The door of the guard room banged open and a blast of icy cold heralded Bouchoir's arrival. "About fucking time" Gilles grumbled as he drained the last of the brandy and headed for the door. "Lets see if those filthy bastards have learned to toe the line."
The Shambles
(additional scene To Spain)
The boys were ranged against the side of the barn, balanced precariously on an assortment of buckets, rocks and logs, dirty cheeks pressed hard against the rough timbers. The barn belonged to Anton’s father and consequently the largest knot-hole was his privilege and his alone. The other boys did their best to peer through smaller cracks and crannies, jostling each other for a better view of the shambles. The small village had neither gaol or cachot so when the gens d’armes passed through escorting prisoners, they were locked in Anton’s father’s barn. Anton’s father was the butcher and one end of the barn, the shambles, was filled with pens and stalls where the beasts were held before slaughter. The pens always stank of blood and fear and excrement but the boys didn’t care. They would suffer the stench for a glimpse of the fearsome creatures chained inside the pens.
The appearance of the blue jacketed gens d’armes always caused a stir in the village, the children gaping in open mouthed admiration at the red plumes in their cocked hats and their long carbines and muskets. But they were as nothing to the prisoners. Mostly they were conscripts and deserters whose only crime was to want to go home, but that didn’t stop the boys inventing fantastical barbaric crimes for them and from speculating whether they were destined for the galleys or the firing squad.
That afternoon there had been great excitement, eight gens d’armes had marched into the village escorting a small group of prisoners, several of whom were chained and shackled. One of them was rumoured to be a murderous brigand, who had already escaped twice, no doubt slaughtering the guards as he hacked his way to freedom. No prison could hold him, not even Bitche. A wicked, barbarous outlaw. The very devil himself, and worse, an Englishman.
“It must be him,” hissed Jean as he peered through a gap in the barn wall. “The one on the right. Look at him, he’s huge!”
“What a beast! Look at the size of his hands. How many men do you think he’s killed?”
“Hundreds.”
“Why isn’t he chained?” a small voice asked.
“No chains strong enough.” Jean announced authoritatively.
The children jostled for cracks through which to view the giant killer.
“No,” said Anton. “It’s him. There on the left.”
“Where?”
More jostling and pushing as the children sought new vantage points.
“There’s no one there.”
“Can’t see anyone.”
“There. In the straw at the back.” Anton tapped the wall as he spoke.
They had to squint to see him, curled small and pale and dirty in the filthy straw, like the runt of a litter. A heavy chain wound round his wrists and passed about his neck where it was fastened with a huge padlock. A second chain shackled his bare feet.
“Him? Never!” Jean scoffed. “There’s nothing of him!”
“It’s him,” Anton insisted quietly.
“What makes you think it’s him?”
“Because he’s watching us.” Anton replied.
That was when the children noticed the sharp blue eyes fixed on wall of the barn. The blue gaze seemed to pierce the wooden wall, holding the children frozen in a moment of perfect thrilling fear. Then the prisoner blinked and the spell was broken. The children tumbled down from their vantage points and scattered away through the village shrieking with bravado.
The prisoner heard them go, heard their running feet and the peal of their laughter. Kennedy blinked again and turned his back on their freedom and their joy.
The Old Ways
(remix of A New Way to Break)
Don Carlos Alphonse Ferran Rivas Massaredo had seen hundreds of prisoners come and go over the years. They were of little interest. The garrison took care of them. He signed their papers as required and paid no more attention to them than to the cattle in the pasture, and considerably less than he paid to his precious horses. Unless the prisoners were English. Don Massaredo prided himself on his sympathy with the English. He cleaved to the old ways, to the noble values of his fathers; dignity, civility, duty and honour. The French rabble cared nothing for dignity or civility, less still for duty and honour. But the English, these were values the English cherished.
The Don took pains to ensure that the fort at El Ferrol was a bastion of the old ways, a bulwark against the tide of republicanism sweeping south from Paris. He would not sully his fortress with the casual depravity of the French. There were no chains in the cells, the prisoners had cots, blankets and linen, water to wash and shave and the daily run of the courtyard.
Don Massaredo was happy to receive the parole of the English officers and in return he offered these gentlemen his hospitality. He welcomed them as guests to his table, his library and the sanctuary of his chapel. They conversed about the arts, literature, politics, travel, economics, the course of the war even. They were not Frenchmen.
But for too long there had been no English prisoners. Some said the English were afraid to come too close in to Spanish waters. Others said the Spanish ships were afraid to go out and face the British fleet. Don Massaredo missed the company of the English. Consequently he was surprised and delighted when the despatch from the garrison at Corunna indicated that there was an English officer among the small group of prisoners being transferred to the fort. Only a junior officer to be sure, a midshipman of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, not yet worthy of parole, but perhaps they could pass an evening in conversation over the dinner table. They were not French after all.
The Englishman proved to be a sore disappointment. He was little more than a boy with a famished feral appearance. He came with a heavy dossier and heavier chains. If ever he had been a young gentleman then every last vestige of gentility had long since been stripped from him. He stood mulishly in the courtyard, head bowed, squinting surreptitiously up at the brilliant blue sky. The chains and shackles had been cut from the prisoners when Don Masseredo entered the courtyard; they lay heaped obscenely in the dirt, like the entrails of some great iron beast. Most of the prisoners were flexing their cramped limbs and rubbing chaffed wrists and necks. The Englishman stood shivering and motionless. Don Massaredo spoke to the men, he spoke to them of honour and dignity, he assured them that they were noble Spaniards, that they were not Frenchmen. When he stopped speaking the Englishman still had not moved or raised his head. He just stood, trembling.
Later that afternoon the Don sat at his desk, the thick dossier that accompanied the Englishman open before him. His eyes narrowed as he read. Madre de Dios had honour departed this earth? Still, they were not Frenchmen, they were gentlemen, and they would dine together as such.
The corporal looked somewhat flustered when he returned to Don Massaredo’s study. The prisoner had declined the pleasure of dining with the Don. The prisoner had, in fact, declined to speak at all. Don Massaredo frowned at the affront to his dignity and hospitality, his mouth tightening into a thin hard line.
A week later the Englishman tried to escape. He didn’t get far. Don Massaredo had him beaten naked in the courtyard and locked in his cell for a week. It was enough. They were not Frenchmen. Perhaps in a week he would learn some manners.
He did not. The second time he tried to escape it took them longer to find him. Don Massaredo was furious. If the Englishman would not learn manners then the pit would teach him. They were not Frenchmen after all, they were Spaniards, and they knew how to break a man.
The Tithe to Hell
(additional scene A New Way to Break)
After the bright glare of the whitewashed courtyard it took his eyes time to adjust to the dank gloom of the cell. Hunter was seething beside him; Hornblower felt nothing but numb disbelief.
The moment he had struck Le Rêve’s colours and surrendered his ship, his sword and his honour was a half remembered nightmare. Hornblower had stumbled through the following hours in a daze, his entire will bent on retaining his composure and command. It was paramount that he lead his men into captivity with discipline and dignity. But all the time his mind was working feverishly, twisting and turning to find a way to escape, a way out of the nightmare, a glimmer of hope that would postpone the inevitable.
Hornblower was so preoccupied with his thoughts that it came as a surprise when the door of the cell slammed shut behind them. The dull clang jolted him back to his senses and he realised it was too late. There had been no daring eleventh hour escape, no audacious plan had surfaced from the whirling chaos of his mind. He was a prisoner. He had surrendered his ship, led his men into captivity, lost the Admiralty despatches and failed the trust that Captain Sir Edward Pellew had placed in him. The sham of his bright and brilliant naval career was crumbling about him before it had even begun. True, it was not unheard of for prizes to be recaptured but it took a special talent to sail right into the middle of the enemy fleet. And to heap ignominy upon ignominy, at the fateful moment he, the ship’s captain, had been asleep below in his cot. To be abandoned to rot in this God forsaken Spanish hole for the rest of eternity was little more than he deserved. Acting Lieutenant Hornblower, HMS Indefatigable, had proved himself unfit to hold his commission and serve on an English ship of war.
Hornblower knew the men said he had the luck of the devil. Well now the devil had come to claim his own and it was his lot to pay the tithe to hell. And this was it. This was where he would drag out the rest of the war in misery and despair. A ten foot square stone cell with a tiny barred window. Against one wall a double bunk, against the other a single cot, heaped over with a filthy grey blanket. Nothing, but nothing, could compound his humiliation and disgrace. Hornblower took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and stepped into the prison cell.