A Different Sort of Perfect (9 page)

Wake and Mayne stood below the quarterdeck, grinning.
Indescribable gratitude swelled within her.

"I can't believe you finished so quickly. How very
clever of you! I thank you with all my heart."

Mayne bobbed his head and stared at the deck.

Wake turned his sennit hat in his hands. "It weren't
no problem, me lady, and there's cloth enough left for another or
two, we think. Mayne here," he jerked a thumb, but Mayne didn't
glance up, "well, he were a tailor's apprentice afore he ran away
to sea, and the rest of us have made hot-weather slops since we
were powder monkeys and ship's boys. There's—"

But Staunton hissed. "Better cut along, Wake."

"Aye, aye, Mr. Staunton." Still grinning, as if he
hadn't been cut off, Wake touched his forehead to Staunton, then to
her, and he and Mayne trotted off.

To her. The old forecastleman had saluted
her
.

But before she could absorb that, somewhere nearby a
drum began to thunder. Her heart leapt in response.

"Quarters!" Staunton exclaimed, and ran off, leaving
her standing, all a-flutter.

Pounding feet raced to battle stations, the jumbled
thumping emphasizing the furious drumbeat. Of course, the landmen
had to be prodded and yanked into position; best to start their
training for emergencies first thing. Fleming surreptitiously
gestured for Lady Clara to join him and she hurried over, her dark
eyes darker than ever. But her expression remained stoic, calm and
reserved, as if she disdained permitting any undignified emotion
access to her countenance.

"Stand behind me and—" But the carpenters began
hammering below with his first word. They'd be ripping down
bulkheads, creating a clean sweep on the gun deck from stem to
stern, and while the walls vanished, Hennessy and his mates would
stow the captain's, and now the captain's clerk's, belongings into
the hold. He raised his voice. "Stand behind me and take
notes."

She nodded, balancing the book in her arms and
scrambling for the quill. But that distracting pucker had formed
across her smooth forehead.

"Mainly we'll be determining the rate of fire," he
added, cradling the minute repeater in his palm. "I'll give you the
start and stop times, but you must calculate the difference and
note it down. I'll also give you the fall of shot. Are my
instructions clear?"

Her forehead cleared and she nodded again. For all
her outward calm, a ferocious excitement in her eyes mirrored the
drum's rousing roll. No modest, retiring violet, his spoiled
debutante; she responded to the drumbeat the way a keen mare
responded to the huntsman's horn, the way
Topaze
responded
to stu'ns'ls aloft and alow. Even more interesting.

On the gangway, eager hands prised up the main hatch
covers, flooding misty light into the gun deck below, and beside
him she stiffened into a pikestaff, staring into the depths. The
gun crews clustered around their charges in clumps of confused
scrambling, scattered every few feet along the starboard side.
Abbot stalked behind them, his experienced eyes glancing over the
vital items, ready in hands or within reach: powder horn, rammer,
swab, water, sand, powder boys with their charges behind each gun
over on the larboard side, and the burning slow match in its tubs
sent up a sharp, enticing fighting scent. Wake cast off the ropes
confining number sixteen,
Old Trusty,
and the long gun's
three thousand seven hundred pounds eased backward along the
grooves engraved in the deckboards from past firing. It was the
first cannon loosed.

Fleming leaned toward his clerk. "Note that number
sixteen is well manned and greased. It's a good choice for handling
sudden emergencies."

Her eyes widened, dark hot mountain pools, liquid and
astonishing as well as astonished. Ah. In his absorption with the
great gun exercise, he'd forgotten his clerk was female and he'd
leaned too close. Fleming straightened, tugging his sleeves down.
Firing a few broadsides was always exciting — the noise, the smell,
the raw power trembling at his control — and a lovely young
gentlewoman at his elbow made a surprising but apt complement. He
needed for her to become a member of his crew; but not like that,
and surreptitious eyes all over the frigate were watching.

In the confusion below, all the gun trucks now rolled
free and the crews waited for orders, swabs and rammers in hands.
It was all too painfully obvious which were the experienced gunners
and which the landmen, prodded into taking their proper positions —
at the end of a hauling rope, all they could be trusted with at
this point. Their blank faces screamed for patient training, if he
intended his gun crews to be ready before
Topaze
found and
tackled
Armide
. They'd be burning barrels of gunpowder and
hurling a lot of cannonballs into the sea in the next month or
two.

Fleming waved at Ackers, in the launch a quarter mile
to starboard towing the targets, the sea fog thinning beyond. His
coxswain waved back and released the first raft, a floating
contrivance of barrels, staves, and a single dark cloth fluttering
on a vertical pole.

"Mr. Abbot," he yelled, loudly enough for everyone to
hear, "have number sixteen's crew put through their paces. You
newcomers, some of you come from men-of-war with captains who never
fired the long guns, and some of you come from the land. This ship
fires the guns every single day. This is a fighting frigate and you
are expected to know your duties so precisely, you can perform in
the bloodiest battle, without officers if necessary. Your training
starts now. Mr. Abbot, let everyone see how it's done." Fleming
glanced at his clerk, stopping himself in time from leaning toward
her again. "Starting time is…"

Lady Clara dipped her pen into the inkhorn around her
neck, tapped off the excess with a practiced motion that didn't add
to the flecks of black staining her grey gown, and held the quill
ready.

Abbot swung around. "Mr. Chandler, have number
sixteen's crew fire three shots at the target."

Fleming glanced at the repeater watch. "…fourteen
minutes, fifty-three seconds past the hour."

She wrote.

Chandler swallowed, his prominent Adam's apple
bouncing up and down. "Aye, aye, sir." He turned to number sixteen,
where the crew stood ready, grinning and puffing out their chests;
no one aboard would be allowed to forget they'd been chosen to set
the example.

"Cast loose your gun." But they'd already completed
the first part of the drill, so Chandler hurried on, his voice
cracking. "Level your gun."

Swift movements, sure and practiced. Every man — and
now, every woman — knew the repeater watch was ticking. The
swabber, an experienced hand, levered up the cannon's breech with a
hard yank from his handspike and Wake shoved a wedge beneath the
gun, locking it level.

Chandler had time to haul in a breath, but only one
and a shallow one at that. "Out tompion."

If the ship had been heeling, they would have
released the tackle ropes and let the gun, all its thirty-three
hundredweight, roll in under its own mass. But in this level sea,
they clapped onto the tackles and hauled the gun in until the
muzzle was a foot inside the port. The sail-trimmer yanked out the
round wooden stopper plugging the muzzle and set it aside.

"Run out your gun." Chandler, and his voice, had
steadied; he knew the drill. Fleming restrained himself again, this
time from nodding approval. Only nerves bothered his elder
midshipman, as they'd bothered him during previous cruises whenever
he'd been on display, and of course those nerves would steady, too,
as the exercise unfolded. Chandler wasn't the most natural of
sailors and no phoenix, but he'd learned well.

The gun crew grabbed the side-tackles. Hand over hand
they heaved; the gun truck groaned, then it eased forward, quicker
and quicker until the cannon thrust through the open porthole and
the truck's wheels crunched against the frigate's side.

"Prime your gun."

Wake thrust the pointed priming iron into the touch
hole, one good jab to puncture the flannel-covered cartridge. Then
he yanked it out with a smoothness belying his gnarled knuckles and
bent over the cannon's breech, tipping the powder horn's finer
priming grain into the pan. The fireman's hand was ready and
grabbed the horn the moment Wake tipped it back up, and the
ventsman squashed his thumb over the touch hole, although with so
little wind there was no danger the priming powder would blow
away.

"Point your gun."

They knocked out the leveling wedge. The sponger
leaned on the handspike, raising the gun's muzzle, and Wake rammed
in quoins, his practiced eye fastened on the bobbing target a
half-mile beyond. The dark flag atop its pole lay flaccid, faintly
fluttering with the wastrel breeze. Fleming thinned his lips. He
should have ordered they use red cloth, or yellow, anything to
stand out in the featureless grey murk. Too late now. His heart
hammered, anticipation singing through him. Already it seemed he
could smell the gunpowder.

"Fire!"

For a breathless moment more Wake held poised,
curling over the cannon from the side and glaring along its barrel,
timing the shot with the frigate's movement. Suddenly he whipped
the linstock with its length of burning slow match across and
shoved it into the priming.

A second's delay, a hiss of burning powder. Fleming
sucked in the sharp smoke, tasted its chemical excitement in his
throat. Then the cannon roared, pounding his ears. Scarlet flames
burst from the muzzle. Bits of scorched wadding flared, blackened,
vanished. The lithe figure at his side flinched. The gun truck and
its weighty load bounded like a startled horse, eight feet back
between its crew members and beneath Wake's arching torso. The
flying cannon slammed against the thick breeching rope, snapping it
taut with a deep, singing
twang-g-g,
and the crew held it
inboard with the rear-tackles.

"Stop your vent." The ghostly grey smoke drifted over
Chandler, trailing away to leeward, and he coughed into his hands.
"Sponge your gun."

The sponger knew his job; Fleming eyed the sea around
the distant, forlorn target. Water splashed from the quiet surface,
shy and to the left, but not by much; if the target had been a
ship, Wake's shot would have hit the bows. Another splash, further
on, and then another as the cannonball bounced across the ocean's
surface for a further fifty yards before the splashes finally
stopped.

Chandler continued the exercise, his voice now sure
and clipped. "Load with cartridge."

At the quarterdeck railing beside Fleming, Lady Clara
sucked in quick, hard breaths, as if testing the gunpowder smell
for herself. Her dark eyes focused inward, as if she concentrated
on her own thoughts or feelings, and her chin tilted aside. Tiny
curls, darkened to flaxen yellow by the moist air, clung about her
face, and one little drop trickled past her ear. She didn't seem to
notice. Indeed yes, she'd jumped when the gun went off. But she
hadn't dropped nor clutched the book, and the pen still poised
above it, ready to write.

Perhaps there was more to his spoiled debutante than
he'd first imagined.

"Shot your gun."

The sponger yanked the rammer from the long gun's
muzzle, the loader pushed in the twelve-pound cannonball shot and a
chunk of cotton wadding, and the sponger rammed it down to join the
gunpowder cartridge. Their arms moved more quickly, as if the
actions they'd practiced during the last cruise had been awakened
in their bodies' memories, and now Chandler only had time for
gasping breaths between commands. "Run out your gun."

The second shot clipped the little raft's corner and
it rocked on its own created wave. Lady Clara gasped, sharp beneath
the approving murmurs around the ship, and she joined the delighted
cheer when the third shot slammed through the target, sending
splinters and the dark flag flying into the sea.

"Ending time nineteen minutes, thirty-five seconds."
His body started to lean toward her and her eyes started to widen.
Fleming straightened and folded his arms rather than tug down his
coat sleeves again. An apt complement, perhaps, but having a lovely
young gentlewoman on his quarterdeck was also proving to be a
decided nuisance in some regards.

Lady Clara scribbled in the book's margin, intense
focus driving out her delight. She glanced up. "Four minutes,
forty-two seconds." The words blew from her in a rush, then she
paused. "Is that good? It sounds good, and they certainly performed
well. Didn't they?"

Judging from her manner, she'd become engrossed in
the exercise. From the impassioned eagerness in her sparkling eyes,
she'd joined her soul to it, throwing her moral weight and support
behind the crew's efforts, and she'd cheered their success. Better
and better, and faster than he'd dared hope. The slowly dissipating
smell of burnt gunpowder added to the elation sweeping through him,
and he turned aside. Perhaps she hadn't noticed his response amidst
her own.

On the gun deck below, Abbot doffed his scraper.
Short auburn hair crumpled onto his forehead and stuck there; the
gun deck was always hot during firing. Around him, the gun crews
shuffled their tools, but they stared up at the bridge, at him,
faces carved into expectation. "Exercise complete, sir."

He wouldn't grin. But keeping his facial muscles
stiff presented a serious challenge if he was to match his clerk's
stoicism. "Our clerk, Mr. Abbot, reports a time of four minutes and
forty-two seconds."

No real cheer this time, but appreciative muttering
criss-crossed the gun deck. Even the Marine at the hatchway's
fear-naught screen dipped his chin in a nod. In the shadows behind
number sixteen,
Old Trusty,
Chandler's face broke into the
grin Fleming's muscles yearned for.