Fair Winds and Homeward Sail: Sophy Croft's Story Page 9

  Then her hazy thoughts centered around the unfamiliar sensation of a ring pushing over her knuckle. She had never owned any jewelry; the ring felt strange, but not unpleasantly so. It carried the warmth of her husband’s fingers. Her husband!

  She looked into his face, and found him looking back at her with an anxiousness that she intuited was twin to hers. She smiled, humor frothing inside her like the bubbles of champagne, and she saw an answering smile in his face. Then he kissed her, and that brought a host of new sensations.

  The next thing she knew, they were walking out of the church, everyone talking at once. “Mrs. Croft. Mrs. Croft.” That was now her name.

  “. . . and if any of you younkers lay on a shivaree, I’ll have you at the grating in a pig’s whisker,” Captain Croft said, eyeing O’Malley, whose round cheeks reddened as he tried to look innocent. He was to serve as second lieutenant for a captain waiting at Yarmouth. “So you’ll tell the officers when you report back aboard ship. I’ll not have my wife embarrassed by custom better kept before the mast, do you hear me?”

  O’Malley blushed to the ears, and agreed, then grinning, shook the captain’s hand.

  “Come,” Captain Croft said, handing his new wife up into the waiting carriage, and Lady Bickerton after, for a bride always takes precedence—and Lady Bickerton, with a broad smile, had stepped back to make certain it was so.

  Captain Croft looked in at them, smiling, and said, “You are all invited to breakfast.”

  The rest of the day passed as swiftly as Sophy’s wedding—a blur of smiling faces and congratulations. Before she quite knew it, she stood alone with her husband in the splendid chamber he had procured in the best Gosport inn.

  “Does it suit?” he asked as her gaze traveled from object to object.

  She faced him, and noticed his best scraper in his hands, his fingers turning it about and about as he gazed anxiously at her.

  The coarse jests of his fellow officers when they had been alone echoed in his ears, most of these being metaphors for ships in battle. He accepted all these in the spirit given—he had spoken such things himself to his newly-married friends, but when they were gone and he was at last alone with his new wife, he could not but reflect that he knew exactly how to handle himself on the deck of a French ship of the line, but his bride was not a Tonnant-class 84.

  They faced each other, eager, awkward, uncertain. How were they to begin?

  She closed the distance between them, instinctively comprehending his dilemma. “I would be content anywhere,” she said, and seeing that he had nearly crushed the hat and ruined its lace, she took it from his hands and laid it on a side table. “I am only thinking about how strange I feel. Happy,” she said quickly as she turned back to him. “But . . .”

  “Aye,” he corroborated, low-voiced. “I was thinking the same. And so here we are, Mrs. Croft. I like that sound of that,” he added.

  She intuited that he would stand there talking until she did something. And so she reached up to close her fingers about his face, and when he stilled under her hands, she caressed his cheeks and lingered over the stubble on his chin. Tenderness became eagerness. She laughed, her spirits fizzing like bubbles of champagne, and leaned up for her first married kiss.

  He knew where he was now. It was time to set sail, and he was chivalrous enough to let her captain the ship.

  o0o

  Sophy managed to repair the sadly crushed hat before the captain departed the next morning to make all ready.

  An hour later, she sat in a gig hired to take her and her trunk to the sally-port, where the boat was in waiting to row her out to the ship riding anchor at Spithead.

  For the first time, she entered a boat. Captain Croft was there to hand her in. Her heart thundered in her ears. The boat rocked and swayed so abominably, and water entered, swirling about her half-boots. Did that mean it leaked?

  But no one seemed upset as the captain placed her in the stern sheets, and sat beside her, with her trunk before her feet. She thrust her hands into her muff as the wintry wind did its best to take away her worn old calash.

  “Stretch out!” The coxswain howled, making her jump. But when she saw the captain grinning at her, she did her best to hide her fright and smile back. He was not worried, so she must not be worried.

  He said, low-voiced, “At first I was going to go round t’other side, for this is not my command. I am merely taking this ship round as a favor to another captain. But no, I’ll be piped up right and proper, with you by me.”

  A great deal of this did not make sense to her, however she recollected Lady Bickerton’s words about the strictness of naval custom, and so she agreed with a nod.

  She could not speak, as her lips were rapidly going numb from being pressed together. The boat tossed up and down on the gray-green waters for what felt like an eternity, until at last the great ship loomed over them, impossibly high. Incomprehensible shouts back and forth resulted in an object being swung down and steadied by the seamen in their embroidered hats and matching coats.

  “This is a bosun’s chair,” the captain said to Sophy. “Climb in, and clap on to these ropes. They will boom you up.”

  Sophy eyed the chair doubtfully, but when she spied the long climb up the tumblehome, which seemed mountainous to her, she vouchsafed no answer as she climbed in, shut her eyes, and gripped the ropes tightly. She jerked and jiggled—held her breath—jiggled some more as her stomach seemed to turn over in her—then an unfamiliar man said hoarsely, “Step smartly, ma’am, and we’ll tidy this here chair away so you can join the capting.”

  Sophy opened her eyes to discover the ship’s deck below her feet, and the captain climbing over the rail a few steps away as pipes wailed on an eerie high note. A row of red-coated marines stamped and clashed their weapons, and the blue-coated rows beyond all lifted their hats.

  Sophy saw her husband salute one of the masts, and she wondered if she was expected to do so as well, but no one seemed to expect anything of her. Captain Croft took her arm, giving her the smile that belonged only to her. “Come, Mrs. Croft, I have the honor of presenting the officers . . .”

  After a positive whirlwind of names in a stream of bowing gold-buttoned coats and laced hats, she was at last led into a strangely shaped space. The ceiling was very low—she was afraid at first her bonnet would scrape it—but the checkerboard canvas tacked on the floor looked clean, and the beautiful row of inward leaning windows all across the back let in plenty of gray wintry light.

  She discovered that the captain’s cabin was actually several smaller rooms, all oddly shaped because of the bulkheads, and great covered objects that turned out to be cannon.

  Her trunk was set down, and the captain said, “Ordinarily it would be struck into the hold, but as we are only sailing a day and a night, and we do not expect to beat to quarters in order to clear to fighting sail, well, it can bide here.”

  He took her arm and conducted her around the ship. Most of the names of things went straight past her. Everything was new and strange, from the sharp smell of the pitch painted over the ropes and fitted between the deck boards to the clackity-clack of blocks overhead and the drumming of the sails to the gentle curve of the deck with its dip in the center.

  Everywhere men moved about purposefully. When the sailors caught her eye they knuckled their foreheads and mumbled. Sophy smiled and dipped her knee each time, for she dreaded being taken for a fine lady who thought herself above her company.

  These were the men who risked their lives along with her husband for king and country—the thin young officers in their ill-fitting coats were roughly the same age as Frederick, bringing him sharply to mind—and she would treat those little boys dashing about behind the jumble of boxes and animals on the deck with the same politeness as she would the intimidating officers there on the quarterdeck.

  The tweeting pipe, more shouts, and the thunder of running feet heralded some change. Men scrambled with heart-stopping speed aloft, and this time the
thunder was from the sails being dropped and sheeted home. The ship gave a lurch, and another, then juddered as the anchor was brought in, men singing out as they bent into turning the capstan spokes.

  Sophy stayed in the door to the cabin and watched from there as best she could from the waist, as the marine guard stood silently by. She was fascinated, yet terrified to be considered in the way. But as the ship began to come alive, rising on the swells and plunging down, she began to feel a corresponding rising and plunging in her middle, which increased as the motion of the water increased.

  The captain returned, took one look, and said, “Let me show you the hammock. You lie flat, with the stern windows open, and the fresh air will do you good.”

  By then Sophy was shivering, but she consented, was soon snugly tucked up in a swinging bed whose motion she found gentle and soothing, whereupon she fell asleep.

  She wakened from time to time through the night as unfamiliar noises startled her. The sudden noise of holystoning directly overhead jolted her into wakefulness before dawn. She rose, discovered that she had slept in her traveling gown, and shook it out as best she could. The cabin was cold and damp, and her middle too uncertain for her to wish to change.

  By the time they reached Yarmouth, she was already in a fair way to feeling better. And when the ship was steered to the wharf alongside the others gathered there, she was almost sorry to be leaving it. She had not explored at all!

  But somewhere on that peninsula between river and sea lay her new home.

  By nightfall, as snow began to fall in earnest, she and Captain Croft sat before a fire in their new lodgings. They had been assigned to a small, drafty apartment in an old house in a row directly off the wharf, with a grand view of the line of ships bobbing gently on the swells. Several other officers were also located in the house.

  “Heh,” the captain said, toasting her with his spiced wine. He smiled, the firelight flickering with ruddy warmth over his handsome face. “A new wife, a new life in a new home, in a new year.”

  “And next year, a new century,” Sophy said, tipping her glass to his. “I wonder what it will bring?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It brought no outward changes, though the quiet alteration from everything appearing new and interesting, to the regulation of daily habit, occurred slowly.

  Captain Croft was kept busy assisting the port admiral. While he spent his days on duty, she walked over the peninsula, along the wall, and up and down King Street to salute the friends she began to make among the wives of mariners there. Though she had never found her way among the young ladies of Taunton, among naval wives there appeared to be less strict attention to birth rank.

  Naval rank was all, or nearly so; she discovered for the first time in her life she had gained status. Captain Croft was one of Nelson’s cherished fighting captains, whom everyone expected to achieve great things before he got much older.

  So she was invited everywhere, and dined often with the port admiral and his lady. But she enjoyed everyone, and every thing, she met with. She explored to the Rows, the close-packed flint-faced houses where mostly dwelled the Scottish fisher folk, whose soft accents entranced her ear. She loved the music many of them shared so freely, and sampled dishes at inns that featured northern cooking.

  Sophy had never had a maidservant, but she had had plenty of experience with servants, and because the captain’s position required him to entertain—for naval captains, she found, were social beings when on shore—with the captain’s encouragement she eventually hired a man, two maids, and then a cook, all of whom understood the naval ways of touch and go.

  The entertainment reached its height when none other than the great Admiral Nelson landed at Yarmouth, with a very large and unwell Lady Hamilton in company, as well as her husband, the frail Sir William.

  For two days the town celebrated as the Admiral was feted; Sophy scarcely caught a glimpse of him at the dinner for two hundred, at which he was given Freedom of the Borough. Up and down both sides of the long table in a vast ballroom glittered a sea of gold buttons, braid, and epaulettes on dress uniforms, and each wife had brought out her best, Sophy included, wearing pale rose satin that for the first time in her life she had ordered made up for her by a modiste.

  The next morning, the church at St. Nicholas was never more packed than when Nelson attended divine service there. Afterward she was finally presented to him, finding him surprisingly small in comparison with herself, one eye staring into infinity, and one sleeve pinned to his coat with its beautiful medals.

  “. . . Admiral Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte.”

  Thoroughly discommoded in that great crowd, with jewels glinting all around, and eyes staring, Sophy could barely force her gaze up from the floor as she curtseyed.

  But force it she did, and then was glad: his smile wreathed his entire face. Surely he must be tired, living in the public eye with little escape, but when he touched her hand and said, “Charmed. I am happy to meet the wives of my excellent officers, and Croft is among the most excellent. I shall be wanting him when Boney comes north again, as I know he will,” she believed every word.

  Then he was gone, and the Hamiltons—who had scarcely been seen—were gone with him, leaving a sense of general emptiness in Yarmouth. Hard on his leaving the news coming northward created urgency, rumors of a French invasion in preparation! Captain Croft was much away from home; contingencies were decided upon then abandoned, as the news changed with every dispatch.

  In spring, Croft left for the first time, but only as long as it took to join the attack on Copenhagen. He was given a frigate, and there soon came word of a terrible battle, with heavy losses.

  Sophy was frantic for news until a hasty letter arrived from Captain Croft:

  . . . and so with three ships run aground, Sir Hype Parker flew the signal to retreat, if Nelson thought it right. We could not see it for the smoke, we could only see Admiral Graves’ masthead, which kept the signal for close action. And so we kept our guns hot, firing both sides into the smoke in support of Nelson, who had told his flag captain that he had been looking through his glass through his blind eye. And so once again he won the day, though our cost was high.

  You should see me right behind this letter, for my frigate was one that took heavy damage. I am to sail back one of the few prizes taken, for most of the captured ships were ordered burnt as we hadn’t the men to fill them. It broke our hearts, such beautiful ships . . .

  And by autumn came the news that Bonaparte was negotiating for peace.

  o0o

  Within a few months, Sophy had gone from the quiet of daily habit to the pinnacle of felicity to uncertainty and fear. In spite of that wondrous celebration of Admiral Nelson, Lord Keith’s extreme disapprobation of Nelson’s actions prevailed in Whitehall.

  For the first time, Sophy understood that these upright, bluff, daring captains and admirals were not all in agreement. There was jealousy and bitterness enough in high places, exacerbated by a constant need for supplies, men, and the troubling news out of France that never seemed to end.

  In short, it seemed that Nelson’s career was finished.

  Captain Croft had been assigned to assist the port admiral again, which pleased Sophy. But he came home one day, his smile gone. “I am ordered to command a fleet in the North Sea,” he said. “Nelson’s captains are all broken up into different fleets, if they are not landed on the beach. I suppose I must consider myself lucky that I am not one of these. We are to shift ourselves to Deal. I will go ahead and scout us a house, if you will settle our affairs here.”

  Sophy studied her husband with her eyes wide. She had never seen this mood, so withdrawn and inward. She remembered Lady Bickerton’s words about sudden shifts and long absences, and said only, “How long do I have to prepare?”

  He kissed her. “You are a good soul, Sophy. Not a warm word, though I cannot say the same for myself when I first heard the orders. Nelson is finished, alas. Keith has prevailed. Unless the A
dmiralty change their minds again, I will be sailing within the month.”

  Two weeks later, she sat alone in a house she loathed from the first time she walked into it all alone. There were no servants—there was not enough money for them—so she professed herself perfectly willing to cook and clean for herself.

  Though she busied herself disposing Captain Croft’s things the way she knew he liked them, they sat there empty and cold in disuse, a constant reminder of his absence. He had never lived in this house, which slowly engendered in her a sense of emptiness and worry.

  As the north wind howled and the sky either pressed down in great bands of angry clouds, or else darkened over altogether, she fought against the bleak conviction that she would never see her husband again.

  Sleepless nights of worry turned into a nagging cough, and cold hands and feet. She never could get warm; it took all her resources to drag herself to the post to fetch and send letters.

  She lived for news. Frederick was now a man grown, and though his letters continued to say little, she was able to divine from those few words that he was anxious to gain his step to captaincy. He had rounded the Horn; he had fought the French off in the West Indies; he had chased pirates off the Madagascar. But he too had sailed with Nelson, and it seemed that promotions went to those in other more favored fleets.

  Her letters from Edward were also becoming rare. He was now ensconced at Oxford, flourishing in his studies, but he had little time of his own—to earn a little extra he was tutoring at night.

  Sophy sat at the window looking out day after day, slowly losing her appetite. She did not want to cook because she lost interest in eating. She could scarce find it in her to walk to the market she was so tired— but at night she could not sleep.

  After endless days endured in this fashion, she fell victim to a fever, and, lonely and miserable, she became convinced she was dying of consumption, she wrote a short note to Edward to say that she knew the captain would concur if Edward was to sell her things if she died, to help him so the he would not have to tutor.