Kydd Read online

  His stomach contracted violently and he could stand it no longer. Hesitantly he approached the nearest mess, who were listening with appreciative attention to an engrossing yarn from a small, dark-haired sailor clutching a wooden tankard and gesturing grandly.

  The story finished with a flourish and helpless laughter, and they returned to their food. Kydd stood awkwardly, wondering what to say. The conversation died away, and they looked up at him curiously. “I’m — I’m new on board, just been pressed,” he began.

  They roared with laughter. “Never have guessed it, mate!” a stout, red-faced sailor said, eyeing his country breeches.

  “Just wondering, have you anything I can eat?” Kydd said.

  “Why, which would be your mess, then?” the stout man replied.

  “Only just got on the ship . . .” Kydd tried to explain.

  “Well, Johnny Raw, you’d better go aft ’n’ ask Mr. Tyrell ter give yer one, then, hadn’t you?” A hard-faced man leered and looked around for approval.

  “Shut your face and leave him be, Jeb. Shift outa there, younker,” the stout man said, thumbing at a ship’s boy sitting at the end of the table. “Bring your arse to anchor, mate, we’ll see you right.” He added, “Dan Phelps, fo’c’sleman.”

  Kydd introduced himself, sat down and looked around respectfully.

  The hard-faced man leaned across to him. “So yer new pressed, are yer? Know about the sea, do yer? No?” He didn’t wait for a reply. Jabbing his pot at Kydd, he snarled, “Yer’ll suffer, yer clueless lubber. You’re really gonna hurt.”

  The conversations tailed off, and around the table sea-hardened men stared at Kydd.

  Phelps’s eyebrows rose. “Give no mind to ’im. We has a sayin’ — ‘Messmate before a shipmate, shipmate before a stranger, stranger before a dog.’ ” He glared around and the talk resumed.

  Kydd remained quiet.

  Phelps chuckled, then turned to the old man at the ship’s side and called, “Crooky, lend our guest some traps — we can’t have him keelin’ over on his first day.”

  Kydd nodded gratefully as a wooden plate landed in front of him filled with a gray oatmeal mix and occasional lumps of meat. Ravenous, he spooned up some of the oatmeal but was instantly revolted. It was rancid, with flecks of black suggestive of darker secrets. The meat was a mass of gristle and definitely on the turn. There was nothing for it: he was famished, so he bolted it down without pause. The gristlebound hunks stayed in the bottom of the bowl.

  The repulsive food restored his energy, and Kydd’s spirits rose. He finished his meal and looked up, aware that he had been too hungry to pay attention to his duties as a guest at table. “Er, where are we going, d’ y’ reckon?” he asked. It was still a matter of amazement to him that their busy world was traveling along while they sat down to table.

  “Give it no mind, lad, it’s not our job to know the answer t’ that.” Phelps sniffed and leaned over to the grog tub. He waved his pot at the old man. “Light along a can for my frien’ here, Crooky.”

  Kydd gingerly took a pull at his tankard. It was small beer, somewhat rank with an elusive herb-like bitterness, but he nearly drained it in one.

  “I thought sailors only had rum,” he said, without thinking.

  Phelps grinned. “We does, but only when the swipes runs out.” He pursed his lips. “You sayin’ as you want to try some?” he said, in mock innocence.

  Kydd looked around, but the others did not seem to notice; they were all comfortably in conversation. “Are you offering?” he said.

  “Wait there,” said Phelps, and lurched heavily to his feet. He went forward out of sight and returned with his jacket clutched tight around him as though against the cold. He resumed his seat. “Give us yer pot, mate,” he instructed. Kydd did as he was told and caught the flash of a black bottle under the table. Then his tankard was returned.

  He waited casually, then lifted it. It caught him by surprise. In the dull pewter of his tankard was a deep, almost opaque mahogany-brown liquor. Its pungent fumes wafted up with a lazy potency, which dared him to go further.

  The buzz of conversation swirled around him. He took a swallow. This was not issue three-water grog, but neat spirit, and its burning progress to his stomach took his breath away. He surfaced with a grin. “A right true drop!”

  Phelps’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ll not get that sorta stingo usually, cully, but if yer play your cards right with Dan Phelps” — he tapped the side of his nose — “yer mebbe could see more of it.”

  Kydd raised his pot again. This time he was prepared for the spreading fire, and gloried in the flood of satisfaction it released. His whirling anxieties subsided and his natural cheerfulness began to reassert itself. He finished the last of the rum with regret.

  The piercing squeal of the boatswain’s call abruptly cut through the din. “Be damned. Starbowlines — that’s us. Fust dog-watch.” Phelps lurched to his feet and disappeared into the throng.

  The mess traps were cleared away rapidly and Kydd found himself the only one still seated. “Move yer arse, mate,” he was told, and once more found himself alone in the midst of many.

  Instinctively he turned to follow Phelps, who, he remembered, his head swimming, had left with the others up the main hatch ladder. It led to an almost identical gundeck from the one he had left, so he continued on up the next ladderway, muscles alive with discomfort, emerging into darkness. The night had already fallen.

  Overhead, past the hulking shadows of the boats on their skids above him, he saw the paleness of huge sails in regular towers, each at the same angle and each taut and trim. Nearby, but invisible, he could hear the regular plash and sibilance of the sea, and as he stood he became aware of a background of sounds meshing together. It was a continuous and oddly comforting interplay of creaks, dings, slattings and all manner of unfamiliar mutterings.

  Out into the starless night on either hand the darkness was broken only occasionally by the flash of a white wave. He felt rather than saw that they were traveling steadily through the water, a hypnotizing, unchanging sliding which gave no impression of headlong speed, and he marveled once again.

  He was still comfortably warm from the rum, and ambled along, won dering at the vast mystery of the ship with all its unfathomable shapes, sounds and implied dangers. The sights above disappeared abruptly as he passed under a deck, the unmistakable outline of a bell in its belfry silhouetted briefly against the pallid fore course.

  Loath to return between decks, he noticed a short ladder leading upward. He mounted, and found himself directly under the sails, the downdraft from them buffeting him with a deluge of cold air. He looked about quickly. Forward there was nothing but darkness, but aft he could make out men standing together, eerily illuminated by lights coming up from a low angle.

  He moved toward them along the gangway next to the boats.

  “Where you off to, matey?” A sailor had him by the arm. It was too dark even to make out his face.

  “Lay aft, that man!” Garrett’s high-pitched voice came from among the cluster around the lights.

  There was no point in hiding, he had done nothing wrong.

  “At the run!” Garrett screamed. Tortured muscles burned as Kydd staggered over to the group. They were around the ship’s wheel and the light from the binnacle was shining up into their faces.

  Garrett stalked up to Kydd and peered into his face. “When I say move, you fly! Stand at attention, you scurvy rogue. Who the devil do you think you are that you can just stroll about my quarterdeck under cover of night?” Garrett leaned forward, jutting his face at Kydd, who flinched. A stale smell of brandy hung about the officer.

  Kydd stood rigid, all traces of the rum falling away. He had no idea what offense, if any, he had committed.

  “Nothing to say?” Garrett asked dangerously. “Nothing to say? You know you’re caught out, and you know I’m going to punish you.” Garrett swayed forward, looking closely at Kydd’s shore clothing. His head jerked up
. “Ah. So you must be one of that sorry-looking crew the press brought aboard today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you’ll have to learn that common seamen don’t just wander about on the quarterdeck when it suits them. It is reserved for officers only — for your betters.” He rocked on his heels and cocked his head skyward as if looking for inspiration.

  “I’ve a mind to give you a spell in the bilboes to help you remember.” His gaze snapped back to Kydd. A vicious look, and then a saintly smile spread. “But I’m too soft. I’ll let it go — just this once. But if it happens again” — the voice rose to a biting crescendo — “by Harry, I’ll make you rue the day you ever set foot in this vessel!”

  Somewhere high above a sail started a fretful slapping. The man at the wheel eased a spoke or two and the noise stopped.

  “Get below — now!”

  Kydd turned wordlessly and made his escape. He hadn’t asked to be part of this. He was a wig maker of Guildford and belonged there, not in this alien company.

  He plunged down the ladders. He was friendless and unknown here, cut off from normal life as completely as it was possible to be. Not a soul aboard cared if he lived or died; even Phelps must regard him as a form of street beggar deserving of charity.

  At the end of the last dog-watch, hammocks were piped down and Kydd was tersely advised to be elsewhere. Once hammocks were slung, every conceivable space was occupied. “Get the softest plank you can find and kip out on that,” was the best advice he was offered. These men would be relieving the watch on deck at midnight and had little sympathy for a lost soul overlooked by the system.

  Worn out by the trials and challenges of the day, he was driven by some instinct to seek surcease in the deepest part of the ship. He found himself in the lowest deck of all, stumbling along a narrow dark passage past the foul-smelling anchor cable, laid out in massive elongated coils.

  Kydd felt desperately tired. A lump rose in his throat and raw emotion stung his eyes. Despair clamped in. He staggered around a corner, and just at that moment the lights of a cabin spilled out as a door opened. It was the boatswain, who looked at him in surprise. “Got yourself lost, then?” he said.

  “Nowhere t’ sleep,” mumbled Kydd, fighting the waves of exhaustion. “Jus’ came on the ship today,” he said. He swayed, but did not care.

  The boatswain looked at him narrowly. “That’s right — saw you at the jeer capstan. Well, lad, don’t worry, First Luff has a lot on his plate right now, sure he’ll see you in the morning.” He considered for a moment. “Come with me.” He pulled at some keys on a lanyard and used them to open a door in the center of the ship.

  “We keeps sails in here. Get your swede down there till morning, but don’t tell anyone.” He turned on his heel and thumped away up the ladder.

  Kydd felt his way into the room. It stank richly of linseed oil, tar and sea-smelling canvas, but blessedly he could feel the big bolsters of sails that would serve as his bed, and he crumpled into them.

  He lay on his back, staring up into the darkness at the one or two lanthorns in the distance outside that still glowed a fitful yellow. Then he jerked alert. He knew that he was not alone and he sat up, straining to hear.

  Without warning, a shape launched itself straight at him. He opened his mouth to scream, but with a low “miaow” a large cat was on his lap, circling contentedly. Kydd stroked it gently and the animal purred in ecstasy, then stretched out comfortably and settled down. Kydd crushed the animal to him. First one tear, then another fell onto its fur.

  CHAPTER 2

  * * *

  It was the cruelest journey, from the womb-like escape of sleep and a gentle dream of home — the musty little shop, his mother watching him as he stitched dutifully at a periwig, the sun splashing in through the thick windows — back to this waking nightmare.

  Then came a vigorous shaking. “Rouse yourself — you’re wanted on deck!” The boatswain’s distinctive voice brought Kydd to his senses. “On deck. First Lieutenant means to muster all pressed men.” The light from the lanthorn he carried deepened the lines in his face and sent a glow into the far corners of the sail room. “You’ll get the number of your mess then. And your watch ’n’ station.”

  Kydd struggled to his feet. “Thank ’ee, sir, I’m —”

  “Get going — ask y’r way to the quarterdeck, abaft the mainmast.”

  In the cold gray of dawn, the pathetic line of pressed men shuffled miserably.

  Kydd recognized the homespun and weatherworn old felt coat of a peddler, the patterned stockings, soft bonnet and greatcoat of a sedanchair man, the leather knee breeches and smock of an agricultural laborer. They looked out of place here.

  The wind off the sea was raw and blustery. Kydd’s plain broadcloth coat gave little protection and he shivered.

  The sea dominated in every direction, winter-hard, blue-gray, its vastness amazing to someone whose only experience of great waters had been the Thames at Weybridge. A slight breeze flurried the surface, but Kydd’s eyes kept returning to the metallic line of the horizon. The ship slipped through the sea in a continuous, unvarying motion. Day and night they would be moving like this, much faster than he could run, eating up the countless miles without ever stopping. And over the line of horizon was the outer world — that plane of existence containing the dangers and fables that were part of the folklore of his society. Where previously it could be marveled at or ignored, now it was advancing to meet him, both threatening and beguiling.

  The man at the wheel stood braced impassively, occasionally looking up at the weather leech of the main course, easing a spoke or two if it appeared to be on the point of shivering in the useful quartering breeze. Nearby, the officer of the watch paced slowly, his telescope of office under his arm.

  High up the mighty mainmast nearly overhead, on the sturdy platform of the main fighting top, figures could be seen preparing for some maneuver. As Kydd watched, one man swung out and appeared to hang down from the main yard. He moved out, the men in the top paying out a rope as he made his way along the hundred-foot spread of the yard. Even at this distance Kydd could see that the sailor was disdaining to cling on, instead balancing between the tiny footrope he stood on while leaning familiarly against the big spar.

  Kydd watched in awe. Then there was movement and the Master-at-Arms growled, “To yer front!”

  The First Lieutenant strode briskly out from the cabin spaces aft, accompanied by a junior officer. His clerk hurried after him with books and paper, quill and ink. Two men set up a table at which Tyrell and the clerk then sat.

  Tyrell looked up at them from under his bushy eyebrows and nodded to the lieutenant, who touched his hat and went over to the pressed men to address them. “Pay attention! You will now be assigned your watch and station. This is very important. It will tell you your duty for every motion of this vessel, be it by the actions of the sea or the malice of the enemy. You will present yourself at your place of duty immediately when you are called by the boatswain’s mates or any other in lawful authority over you.” The men stared at him with attitudes ranging from dumb resentment to outright fear. “And if not found at your post, you will answer for it at your peril!”

  The proceedings were efficient and rapid. In a short while Kydd was left standing holding a piece of paper bearing terse details of his future existence aboard Duke William. It appeared that the officer of his division, a Lieutenant Tewsley, and his deputy, Mr. Lacey, master’s mate, would also have these details to hand. Possession of these particulars seemed to Kydd a mark of finality. With them he could no longer claim, even to himself, that he was a temporary, unwilling visitor to their world. He was now unarguably an official part of it, and therefore subject to the most solemn penalties under the Articles of War.

  A tendril of his dream brushed briefly over his mind and he felt lonely, vulnerable and frightened. Apart from the hotheaded Stallard, there was not a soul aboard whom he knew, someone he could trust, to whom he could r
eveal all his present fears and anxieties. One thing was sure: from now on he could rely only on himself, his own strength of mind and will. Blinking, he focused his attention on the First Lieutenant.

  Tyrell finished scrawling in the margins of the book and rose. For a long moment he paused, his deep-set eyes fixed on the disconsolate group. Then he turned to the junior officer and snapped, “For God’s sake, arrange an issue of slops immediately. I’ll not have this ship looking like a dago doss-house!”

  The bird-like purser’s assistant held up a blue and white striped opennecked shirt. “Here’s a fine rig for a sailor,” he said. With it were some white duck trousers and a wide black leather belt.

  Kydd took them. The material was strong but coarse; it would never do in Guildford, but he could see that here its robustness would serve its purpose. He couldn’t help noticing how soft and pale his fingers were, and he wondered how long they would take to become brown and tough like a sailor’s. There was no escaping it — soon he would be a very different person from the one he was now.

  The assistant rummaged about and produced a short dark blue jacket adorned with plain anchor buttons and with it a glossy black tarpaulin hat and other seaman-like gear, and added them to the small pile. “Try them on.”

  It felt like dressing up, but it was plain that the short jacket and loosebottomed trousers gave a great deal of freedom for movement. There was need, perhaps, for a bit of work with needle and thread to smarten them up, but they would do.

  Trousers — these free-swinging garments were peculiar to the sea profession, and they felt loose and strange. Kydd had been in “kicks” — tight knee breeches — all his life, and so had everyone else of his acquaintance, high and low. He put on his glossy tarpaulin hat at a rakish angle and chuckled grimly at the sheer incongruity of it all.

  “So you’ll not be wanting these again,” the assistant said, disdainfully holding up Kydd’s sorry-looking country clothes. Without waiting for a reply he stuffed them into a sack.