(no subject)
Title: Acheron (Pt 1/?)
Rating: PG-13
Pairings or characters involved: Pullings/Devigny
Notes: Takes place in the movieverse, after Tom Pullings has sailed away with the prize L'Acheron, and after the events of "A Question of Instrument."
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Twenty-seven men incapacitated in sickbay below-decks; all of them French, with the exception of a whaleman who'd lost his footing on the ratlines and tumbled from the mizzenyard their second day out. There had been forty-two men on the sick list the day Tom Pullings had taken command of Acheron, but fifteen had died since: all of them men who'd been the worst-injured in the battle, most of them going within the first two days of the voyage.
The prize-crew from Surprise numbered forty-eight, including Silas Hogg, prizemaster's mate and sailmaster; John Higgins, nominally surgeon but practically -- and more realistically, considering his skills or lack thereof -- serving as a glorified loblolly boy to the French doctor Philippe Devigny; two detachments of Marines, each a four-man fire squad, under the command of a very nervous-looking lance corporal; and thirty-six whalemen from Albatross' crew, all rated able. Also aboard were three French officers of the defeated Acheron's crew: the aforementioned Devigny; Claude Saint-Juste, third lieutenant; Rene Belchard, purser. Eleven of Acheron's able seamen, mainly Americans and a few Portuguese who'd enlisted or been pressed into the privateer's crew, were now manning watches under the supervision of the thin ranks of Surprises. The cook and his mate, two more Acherons, were allowed to keep their usual berths and move about more or less freely.
And sixty-eight prisoners below decks, nearly all Frenchmen; berthed in the main hold, the forward hold, and the cable tier, guarded at all times by Marines who were serving watch and watch. Sixty-eight men who were rested and largely fit, who had been confined in the stinking darkness of the lower decks for close on a week without a breath of fresh air or a sight of the sun. Sixty-eight men whom, it could safely be said, were desperate, all of whom had nothing to look forward to except being paroled, penniless, in Valparaiso, stranded five thousand miles from their homes.
Thomas Pullings closed his logbook with a snap, then slid the leather-bound volume away across the desk. It was not yet four bells in the afternoon watch, but the great cabin had deadlights covering most of its glassless windows, and so a small lamp burned at Tom's elbow with a fitful, pale light.
He laced his fingers under his chin and leaned forward onto his elbows, watching his shadow crawl across the wall in company with his movements.
"Sergeant Entwhistle?" he called, after a moment. The cabin door opened, and the Marine sentry peered in, ducking his head in salute. "Pass the word for Mr Hogg, if you please." Another bob of the head, and the door shut quietly again.
Abovedecks there was the shuffle of feet, shouts, the flap of sails and halyards in the brisk south wind; somewhere abaft, just over his head, a man was singing the same four bars of "Round the Corner, Sally" over and over again in a pleasant tenor. There was a black smudge of ink on the knuckle of Tom's right forefinger and the dull beginnings of a headache fluttering behind his eyelids. He closed his eyes.
A sudden memory swam up of Jack Aubrey's face; younger, pleased, flushed with excitement.
"Well, Tom? Is it everything you thought it would be?"
When the tap came at the door, Pullings straightened in his chair, schooling his face into calm authority. "Come, Mr Hogg," he said.
But it was not Hogg; Philippe Devigny, the French surgeon, entered, then closed the door quietly behind him.
"My apologies, M'sieu Capitaine, but I thought it best to come myself with this news. Your man Hogg is below, being seen to by M'sieu Higgins. Some casks of beef were being shifted in the after hold, and his foot and leg became caught between a rolling barrel and l'estemenaire couple." At Tom's look of blank incomprehension, the surgeon paused for a moment, grimacing in thought. "L'estemenaire, le pied-morceau." His voice took on a trace of impatience as his hands sketched a flattened crescent shape in the air. "Ah... futtock?"
It took all of Tom's remaining resolution to keep the frustration he felt from his voice. "Thank you. The details are not important, Dr Devigny. Is Mr Hogg badly injured?"
"The foot and ankle were much bruised and are swelling. I don't believe any bones are broken, but M'sieu Hogg moves with difficulty, and he will not be able to place much weight on it. I have had Higgins draw a bucket of cool water, seawater, and now he is resting his foot in it to reduce the humors."
"Very well. Please ask Mr Higgins to keep me informed on his condition."
The surgeon bowed.
The fluttering had become unambiguous pain. Tom pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing his eyes. When he opened them again, he regarded the papers and documents spread before him on the little oak table, demanding his attention, and beyond them, the Frenchman still standing, watching him.
"That will be all, Dr Devigny. Thank you for your help."
The surgeon hesitated. He said, "Capitaine Pullings, are you not well?"
"I'm fine," Tom said shortly. "A bit of a headache. It's so damned dark in here." Almost instantly he was sorry for his churlish tone. He added, with an attempt at civility, "There's not much light to read by, that is, and I've been going through these papers all morning. I'll take a turn on deck at the end of the watch. I expect the fresh air will do me good."
Devigny moved the two or three steps around the little table that brought him before Tom's chair. The light of the lamp made his ruddy skin sallow, and his long black hair, gathered in a careless queue, shone like jet. His eyes held a weariness that matched Tom's own.
"Permit me." The surgeon laid one hand, square and strong and capable, on Tom's forehead. "You've been working very hard, it seems. Perhaps you have worked too much." With his other hand, he took Pullings' wrist. His fingers slid over the pulse beneath the thin skin.
Like most of the officers working in the hot and airless reaches of the lower decks, Devigny had removed his coat and waistcoat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows. He was smaller than Tom and slighter, but his tanned forearms were roped with muscle. As he leaned closer a faint scent of medicinal stores, camphor and vervain and black bark, rose from his person, overlaid with the clean odors of salt air and warm skin.
Tom shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The crumpled linen of Devigny's shirt-ruffle tickled his cheek. As Devigny counted the time of his pulse aloud, nearly inaudibly -- quatorze, quinze, seize -- Tom fixed his gaze before him on the surgeon's chest, rising and falling with the even measure of his breath.
"Monsieur, this isn't necessary," he said. "I'm not ill, I assure you."
Abruptly the rough, warm palm on his forehead lifted and his wrist was released. Pullings sat back, vaguely relieved, and looked up at the Frenchman.
"You are indeed quite well, M'sieu. There is no fever, no elevation of the heart. My apologies, but I must be sure." Devigny smiled at Tom, a crooked, oddly charming smile. "You are my responsibility, you see."
He still stood close, very close, and without preamble, he reached out again and took Tom's face between his hands. He bent low, his breath stirring Tom's hair. Inches away, his wide, dark, solemn eyes held Tom's own.
"This was a very serious grief," he said. "Does it still pain you, this wound?"
With the end of a fingertip, he touched at the heavy puckered seam of scar tissue that ran from Tom's left eyebrow across his face, disappearing into the hair at the right side of his jaw. The gesture was light but strangely uncomfortable; Pullings felt a pins-and-needles sensation, like the blood rushing back to a limb gone numb.
"Not often," Tom said, at last. "I was fortunate."
"Was it one of my countrymen who did this to you?" Devigny's tone was one of mild inquiry.
"No, a Turk. It was off the Morani Isles."
This time he sat still beneath Devigny's hands. Tom's eyes drifted nearly shut as an odd relaxed lassitude, an unwillingness to move, took hold of him and grew with Devigny's gentle, strangely impersonal touch. The surgeon brushed the hair at his temple aside, his thumb smoothing the fine hairs of Tom's eyebrow. His fingers traced the long path of the scar, slowly exploring the delicate hollow of an eye-socket, the arch of Tom's nose, the curve of his cheekbone. Finally, a warm hand cupped Tom's jaw lightly.
"It's good work, I think," Devigny said. He smiled again, faintly. "My compliments to your doctor."
Tom couldn't help returning his grin. "He's a treasure, our Dr Maturin. Can't be approached before his first cup of coffee in the morning, but I assure you, sir, he can bring a dead man back if he gets him before the turning of the tide. He's very learned, as well. He's the one who told me the meaning behind Acheron."
"Indeed?" Devigny straightened, stepping back out of the flickering light of the lamp. He rolled his sleeves down, then began buttoning his cuffs. "And what did he tell you?"
"That the Acheron," Tom said, laughing, "by the lights of the old Greeks, or some such heathens, is a river that runs through Hell. One of five, I believe."
"Yes," the Frenchman said. His eyes gleamed in the lamplight. "The name means 'river of pain'. It is one of five and it is the fifth river, the last to cross to the underworld. There the souls drift down, and there they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged to have pity on them, and to let them come out of torment. Mon capitaine, shall I play my fiddle for you tonight? It may rest you and ease the ache in your head."
"Why, thank you," Pullings said. The strange moment thoroughly broken, he rose from his chair and shook the surgeon's hand cordially. "It would be very good of you. Will you join me for dinner, or are you needed elsewhere?"
Devigny smiled before he turned for the door.
"Always," he said, "I am at the Captain's service."
Rating: PG-13
Pairings or characters involved: Pullings/Devigny
Notes: Takes place in the movieverse, after Tom Pullings has sailed away with the prize L'Acheron, and after the events of "A Question of Instrument."
_____________________________________
Twenty-seven men incapacitated in sickbay below-decks; all of them French, with the exception of a whaleman who'd lost his footing on the ratlines and tumbled from the mizzenyard their second day out. There had been forty-two men on the sick list the day Tom Pullings had taken command of Acheron, but fifteen had died since: all of them men who'd been the worst-injured in the battle, most of them going within the first two days of the voyage.
The prize-crew from Surprise numbered forty-eight, including Silas Hogg, prizemaster's mate and sailmaster; John Higgins, nominally surgeon but practically -- and more realistically, considering his skills or lack thereof -- serving as a glorified loblolly boy to the French doctor Philippe Devigny; two detachments of Marines, each a four-man fire squad, under the command of a very nervous-looking lance corporal; and thirty-six whalemen from Albatross' crew, all rated able. Also aboard were three French officers of the defeated Acheron's crew: the aforementioned Devigny; Claude Saint-Juste, third lieutenant; Rene Belchard, purser. Eleven of Acheron's able seamen, mainly Americans and a few Portuguese who'd enlisted or been pressed into the privateer's crew, were now manning watches under the supervision of the thin ranks of Surprises. The cook and his mate, two more Acherons, were allowed to keep their usual berths and move about more or less freely.
And sixty-eight prisoners below decks, nearly all Frenchmen; berthed in the main hold, the forward hold, and the cable tier, guarded at all times by Marines who were serving watch and watch. Sixty-eight men who were rested and largely fit, who had been confined in the stinking darkness of the lower decks for close on a week without a breath of fresh air or a sight of the sun. Sixty-eight men whom, it could safely be said, were desperate, all of whom had nothing to look forward to except being paroled, penniless, in Valparaiso, stranded five thousand miles from their homes.
Thomas Pullings closed his logbook with a snap, then slid the leather-bound volume away across the desk. It was not yet four bells in the afternoon watch, but the great cabin had deadlights covering most of its glassless windows, and so a small lamp burned at Tom's elbow with a fitful, pale light.
He laced his fingers under his chin and leaned forward onto his elbows, watching his shadow crawl across the wall in company with his movements.
"Sergeant Entwhistle?" he called, after a moment. The cabin door opened, and the Marine sentry peered in, ducking his head in salute. "Pass the word for Mr Hogg, if you please." Another bob of the head, and the door shut quietly again.
Abovedecks there was the shuffle of feet, shouts, the flap of sails and halyards in the brisk south wind; somewhere abaft, just over his head, a man was singing the same four bars of "Round the Corner, Sally" over and over again in a pleasant tenor. There was a black smudge of ink on the knuckle of Tom's right forefinger and the dull beginnings of a headache fluttering behind his eyelids. He closed his eyes.
A sudden memory swam up of Jack Aubrey's face; younger, pleased, flushed with excitement.
"Well, Tom? Is it everything you thought it would be?"
When the tap came at the door, Pullings straightened in his chair, schooling his face into calm authority. "Come, Mr Hogg," he said.
But it was not Hogg; Philippe Devigny, the French surgeon, entered, then closed the door quietly behind him.
"My apologies, M'sieu Capitaine, but I thought it best to come myself with this news. Your man Hogg is below, being seen to by M'sieu Higgins. Some casks of beef were being shifted in the after hold, and his foot and leg became caught between a rolling barrel and l'estemenaire couple." At Tom's look of blank incomprehension, the surgeon paused for a moment, grimacing in thought. "L'estemenaire, le pied-morceau." His voice took on a trace of impatience as his hands sketched a flattened crescent shape in the air. "Ah... futtock?"
It took all of Tom's remaining resolution to keep the frustration he felt from his voice. "Thank you. The details are not important, Dr Devigny. Is Mr Hogg badly injured?"
"The foot and ankle were much bruised and are swelling. I don't believe any bones are broken, but M'sieu Hogg moves with difficulty, and he will not be able to place much weight on it. I have had Higgins draw a bucket of cool water, seawater, and now he is resting his foot in it to reduce the humors."
"Very well. Please ask Mr Higgins to keep me informed on his condition."
The surgeon bowed.
The fluttering had become unambiguous pain. Tom pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing his eyes. When he opened them again, he regarded the papers and documents spread before him on the little oak table, demanding his attention, and beyond them, the Frenchman still standing, watching him.
"That will be all, Dr Devigny. Thank you for your help."
The surgeon hesitated. He said, "Capitaine Pullings, are you not well?"
"I'm fine," Tom said shortly. "A bit of a headache. It's so damned dark in here." Almost instantly he was sorry for his churlish tone. He added, with an attempt at civility, "There's not much light to read by, that is, and I've been going through these papers all morning. I'll take a turn on deck at the end of the watch. I expect the fresh air will do me good."
Devigny moved the two or three steps around the little table that brought him before Tom's chair. The light of the lamp made his ruddy skin sallow, and his long black hair, gathered in a careless queue, shone like jet. His eyes held a weariness that matched Tom's own.
"Permit me." The surgeon laid one hand, square and strong and capable, on Tom's forehead. "You've been working very hard, it seems. Perhaps you have worked too much." With his other hand, he took Pullings' wrist. His fingers slid over the pulse beneath the thin skin.
Like most of the officers working in the hot and airless reaches of the lower decks, Devigny had removed his coat and waistcoat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows. He was smaller than Tom and slighter, but his tanned forearms were roped with muscle. As he leaned closer a faint scent of medicinal stores, camphor and vervain and black bark, rose from his person, overlaid with the clean odors of salt air and warm skin.
Tom shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The crumpled linen of Devigny's shirt-ruffle tickled his cheek. As Devigny counted the time of his pulse aloud, nearly inaudibly -- quatorze, quinze, seize -- Tom fixed his gaze before him on the surgeon's chest, rising and falling with the even measure of his breath.
"Monsieur, this isn't necessary," he said. "I'm not ill, I assure you."
Abruptly the rough, warm palm on his forehead lifted and his wrist was released. Pullings sat back, vaguely relieved, and looked up at the Frenchman.
"You are indeed quite well, M'sieu. There is no fever, no elevation of the heart. My apologies, but I must be sure." Devigny smiled at Tom, a crooked, oddly charming smile. "You are my responsibility, you see."
He still stood close, very close, and without preamble, he reached out again and took Tom's face between his hands. He bent low, his breath stirring Tom's hair. Inches away, his wide, dark, solemn eyes held Tom's own.
"This was a very serious grief," he said. "Does it still pain you, this wound?"
With the end of a fingertip, he touched at the heavy puckered seam of scar tissue that ran from Tom's left eyebrow across his face, disappearing into the hair at the right side of his jaw. The gesture was light but strangely uncomfortable; Pullings felt a pins-and-needles sensation, like the blood rushing back to a limb gone numb.
"Not often," Tom said, at last. "I was fortunate."
"Was it one of my countrymen who did this to you?" Devigny's tone was one of mild inquiry.
"No, a Turk. It was off the Morani Isles."
This time he sat still beneath Devigny's hands. Tom's eyes drifted nearly shut as an odd relaxed lassitude, an unwillingness to move, took hold of him and grew with Devigny's gentle, strangely impersonal touch. The surgeon brushed the hair at his temple aside, his thumb smoothing the fine hairs of Tom's eyebrow. His fingers traced the long path of the scar, slowly exploring the delicate hollow of an eye-socket, the arch of Tom's nose, the curve of his cheekbone. Finally, a warm hand cupped Tom's jaw lightly.
"It's good work, I think," Devigny said. He smiled again, faintly. "My compliments to your doctor."
Tom couldn't help returning his grin. "He's a treasure, our Dr Maturin. Can't be approached before his first cup of coffee in the morning, but I assure you, sir, he can bring a dead man back if he gets him before the turning of the tide. He's very learned, as well. He's the one who told me the meaning behind Acheron."
"Indeed?" Devigny straightened, stepping back out of the flickering light of the lamp. He rolled his sleeves down, then began buttoning his cuffs. "And what did he tell you?"
"That the Acheron," Tom said, laughing, "by the lights of the old Greeks, or some such heathens, is a river that runs through Hell. One of five, I believe."
"Yes," the Frenchman said. His eyes gleamed in the lamplight. "The name means 'river of pain'. It is one of five and it is the fifth river, the last to cross to the underworld. There the souls drift down, and there they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged to have pity on them, and to let them come out of torment. Mon capitaine, shall I play my fiddle for you tonight? It may rest you and ease the ache in your head."
"Why, thank you," Pullings said. The strange moment thoroughly broken, he rose from his chair and shook the surgeon's hand cordially. "It would be very good of you. Will you join me for dinner, or are you needed elsewhere?"
Devigny smiled before he turned for the door.
"Always," he said, "I am at the Captain's service."