The Kingdom on the Waves Read online

  Says he of Norfolk: “It’s a New Year’s . . . burning. You got to burn, to grow.”

  Quoth Bono grimly, “Glorious, glorious. That is a pretty sentiment.”

  January 6th, 1776

  Several fellows of our Company were today detached to be taken up the James, that they might secure provisions. We wish them luck.

  Several of the women of the Dunluce were rowed to our ship this day to call for our laundry, which they propose to beat and boil in the galley of their ship, that it might be rid of the grease and smoke of battle, which contribute not a little to the oppressive fumes of our dark hold.

  I record only this fact, several women come aboard, but Oh! how much might such an unassuming phrase conceal from the ignorant or convey to he who wrote it; how doth the heart, barely able to wish, sing in such constrained phrases; and how oft doth beaming hope come masked by daily round.

  Miss Nsia was in the number of the washerwomen, and, with confusion of humility, came to my side and inquired whether Private Nothing wished his clothes washed; to which I assented gratefully.

  Then transpired my confusion, for I wore them, and knew not how with delicacy to change my dress with the ladies present.

  She awaited my clothes, and I, without a word — unable to refer with propriety to undress — stood hapless and motionless.

  At length, she prompted gently, “If Sir wish his clothes washed, he must needs give them to me in my hand.”

  “Prince O.,” said Bono, coming to my side, “you look like you been slugged with a maul.” He bowed to Miss Nsia. “But who wouldn’t be stupefied by such charms and excellences?”

  Still involved in my perplexity, I exclaimed piteously, “I am wearing my shirt.”

  They both regarded me; after which Bono, who knew not the cause of my consternation, granted cautiously, “That you are, Prince O. Yes, indeed.” He explained, “This boy is a rare genius, proclaimed by all the gentlemen of Boston. He recognize his own breeches, too.”

  She smiled; this did I see. Anger flared in my breast at Bono’s jesting, for I perceived the glint of the knife-edge in it; and I said, “I am — I apologize, Mademoiselle — I am confounded — I — as to where to change my dress that will not offend.”

  Bono took my arm and pointed back at some casks, where I saw dim movement. “There’s men removing the old garments behind the pork, Prince O. Why don’t you repair there and change and I’ll engage this fine lady til you return so she don’t become listless a-waiting.”

  I took my leave of them, my breast a welter of shame, longing, and pique; before I was three steps away, I perceived, Bono was already well on his way to introducing a relation of his heroism during the late assault. “Our clothes,” he said, “got somewhat fusty in the rebels’ little New Year’s callithump. They’re rowdy boys, and I reckon they knocked down a candle during their celebrations.”

  He talked on while I retired.

  I returning in my old white shirt, with my oznabrig and breeches in my hand, I found the two of them engaged in lively converse.

  “So I held my bayonet at his throat, and he submitted,” Bono said. “I tied him to the wagon.”

  I bowed again to announce my return.

  Miss Nsia said, “Private Williams been telling me about him and you in the fires. How you tie the bandage for that man.”

  “Without expertise, I fear, which might have proved fatal.”

  “I am sorry,” said Miss Nsia. “But you still brave for to try.”

  “Sweet Saint Pete,” exclaimed Bono, “do I see velveteen breeches?”

  “I had no other,” said I. “’Twas these which I wore when I listed.”

  Bono commenced to laugh. “Velveteen,” said he. “That’s fine. That is very fine, Prince O. A city is burning outside, we’re on a ship sending over bombs, our artillery been repulsed, the whole town is one big ruin, and our friend, he’s dying on the hospital ship — and then comes you, ready for a minuet at Ranelagh.” He explained to our lovely companion, “In London. Ranelagh.”

  “I wore them,” said I, “when I played the violin with a band of music in Boston.”

  Bono could not conceal nor restrain his mirth. “Daintily done! Daintily done!” he said, and Miss Nsia smiled at his horse-laugh.

  “I have,” said I with dignity, “my garments here, and I thank Miss Nsia for her assiduity in arranging for their washing at a time when to travel between ships is a matter of some hazard.”

  “Prince O. is a very fine talker, when he talks and don’t just stare.”

  “I am sure he is,” said Miss Nsia. “I come here back with the clothes on the morrow, if the boat come.”

  “You can hope there ain’t a sortie tonight, Prince O. Or if there is, you can pirouette after the enemy to fright them.”

  With this, we bade farewell to the damsel, and were left to each other’s company.

  “You were not wrong,” said Bono. “She is a tearing fine specimen. She got excellent reserve. Not so confounded get-at-able.”

  His coarseness repelled me; that she who I worshipped as a being almost celestial, whose music had so deeply touched the springs of my being, should in turn be valued by one who could not comprehend her merits, was a matter of strangulating distaste; and I could not bear to be near my friend. There was no place to go, though; no motion possible in that straitened space; and so I was suffered to sit nearby him as he mocked my breeches further and regaled our companions with tales of how I had once been preferred in the College of Lucidity, a tale told with all the trinkets of endearment —“sweet boy,” “my friend,” “this dear lad”— but conducing only to my shame as I observed Private Harrison’s smirk, the merriment of Charles and the others who did not think it cruel, their relief at diversion.

  The air still smells of burning.

  January 7th, 1776

  This day, unwanted idleness. The smoke hath cleared from the ruins of the city; we can perceive small people to be touring the empty lots and shells. It is desolate.

  I cannot abide this inaction; surveying the shore, I take each destructive role I might: I wish at once to be soldier and commander; in my fancy, I invade by land and sea; I calculate the angle of artillery and adjust the quoin to fire; I fire musket-volleys; I wish to prove myself against our enemy, to feel them run before us. I vow we shall tear through these scoundrels — and we shall see true liberty unleashed, as hounds strain first, and rush their prey, and then, sated, curl before the fire in utmost docility, twitching and smiling at their dreams.

  Jocko is gone from this world. We received word this day that he hath died of his wound. No one wishes to speak of it.

  In the midst of a long silence, Will asked our mess whether, if we win, the slaves down in the Sugar Isles going be freed. No one ventured a reply. He pursued this dolorous inquiry, asking how one might again find someone shipped off down there. When there was no further response, he laughed without mirth and said that it was a funny name, the Sugar Isles, because it sound so sweet.

  Again, we none of us could find heart sufficient to answer him.

  Little else has transpired. Many on the ship are poorly. They run fevers, and I like not the look of it. The Crepuscule’s crew protesting the proximity of the sick, we have dragged the pallets of the afflicted fore. Our Company lie between the fevered and the crew.

  We all fear the distemper.

  January 8th, 1776

  My spirits have been in an impossible ferment, as were they corked.

  Two of the women came today to return the clothing removed yesterday. Though Nsia was not among their number, Dr. Trefusis had clamored for a place aboard their skiff, that he might come and inquire after our health and our part in the battle. I narrated its events, not stinting Pro Bono’s actions therein. We then read Greek, and it was most welcome: Dr. Trefusis has set me upon the Voyage of the Argo; in which I recall those tales of heroism for which my fondness was so great in childhood. To read these ancient episodes is to be returned, as ’tw
ere, to myself; in lost antiquity, I seek my restoration. And so with gratitude did I con out the tales of Jason and his brethren plagued by the screaming race of harpies; or stranded on the infinite beach of Libyan Syrtis; my fancy conjuring up not simply the gray plain, the mist, the ship tilted in soft mud, not simply the scenes of battle, but also my chamber back in Boston, where of an evening, in my childhood, I would sit beside my mother, a fire in the hearth, and dream of spear and claw. They are a gift, these tales, the milk of solace, and he knoweth well who teaches me, that he grants a boon in thus recalling me to former ages.

  Pro Bono, however, mocked us when he came down from his exercise on deck, and jested — I recall not what raillery — at our bookishness, that we were fine gentlemen to be studying at such a time — this, when he himself and Dr. Trefusis, but a few weeks hence, were waggish in confederation like smirking schoolboys as I looked on.

  Dr. Trefusis was, I’ll warrant, not unriled by Bono’s jests at his expense, and protested with some pride that there were excellent reasons to study the ancient texts in time of war, et cetera; to which Bono replied that he had just apprehended news, would give us little appetite for our dainty repast of Greek tit-bits.

  “Which is, sir?” said Dr. Trefusis.

  “You told us of an agent who rode up to fetch down the Indians and such? To aid us?”

  “One Connolly,” said Dr. Trefusis. “Lord Dunmore dispatched him with the highest hopes for his success. He is to gather a force to supplement the —”

  “Aye, he been taken.”

  “What do you mean, ‘taken’? By the rebels?”

  “By a Funktown hatter.”

  “I see.”

  “Man knew his head from hatting. Recognized him. Committee of Safety took him. He was real insolent to them and they threw him in jail. Just heard about it on deck. They’re all squawking on the fo’c’sle. Lord Dunmore, he got a letter from him. The agent.”

  “Connolly.”

  “Is that the name? Well, it’s all up. No one’s going to the Indians. The agent’s in jail and the rebels has published the whole plan as an example of, you know, perfidy.”

  Dr. Trefusis scowled and swore. Bono crossed his arms in satisfaction at our discomfiture. My faculties could not encompass the news; for though I was not insensible of our perilous condition, I must own that my thoughts gnawed primarily on Bono’s pride in relating disaster, his satisfaction always in knowing. My idol wished always to be first in the telling, to regale others with the story in its fullness, from beginning to end, from miller’s hut to crown and castle. I considered, my choler rising: He was that nature of personage who, when they laugh, make all who don’t laugh feel prim; and when they are solemn, make all who have been laughing sensible of the chill of silence and the feebleness of gaiety. How doth the voice of one determine the pitch of the others!

  And so, to my shame, I felt only insolence toward my rival when I should have meditated upon our difficulties, the danger that, without allies, we might be overwhelmed and tried for treason, slain, or sold to the Sugar Isles.

  Dr. Trefusis, from the distraction of his countenance, clearly thought on our straights, and found little comfort there.

  “We ain’t going to yield,” said Bono. “You look at the ships — we’re a force, sir.”

  “That you are.”

  Bono and I both noted the “you”; Bono looked at the philosopher and said, “You’ll hang too, sir.”

  “Indeed.” Dr. Trefusis gave a wan smile. “I won’t make as fine an ornament as you, though.”

  “That’s the truth. I reckon they’re hanging me in effigy right now just so as they can have my face around town more. Special ladies’ request. ‘Hang that William Williams again. When his eyes bulge out, they seem to look at my very soul.’”

  Neither of us laughed at his jest; Dr. Trefusis was sorrowful at the news, while I endured the lashes of irritation as well as, in some confused wise, the murmurs of desperation.

  “Gents, I’m sorry I called halt to your boat story. I just reckoned you might like to be apprised that we’s alone in this battle with no aid coming and the rebels all around us. Now back to the Greek. I hear it repels grapeshot real fine.”

  But indeed, we had no stomach for our Greek dainties, once he had delivered his bitter mouthful.

  It is the night. I have lain in my hammock for some hours, my arm within striking distance of Pro Bono, and revolved thoughts of that most provocative of mentors, and how he urges me onwards with leading-strings, and how he tugs me back so I should not toddle too far beyond his ken; and at once, my soul moves its several ways: Indignation, rising hotly from her throne, remonstrates that he acts toward me as one would toward the most incompetent of younger brothers; that his superiority of address can in no way be tolerated —

  And then comes soothing Humility — who scolds me — He treateth thee as an infant because that is what thou art; thou art the least practical of youths, a flimsy, insubstantial thing, little adapted for this world, knowing only the languages of vanished places and the pretty fiddling of idleness, when all around, the kingdom burns. I might resent his censure; but I deserve it, for I am incapable of action, at best a digger of ditches, at worst, the spoiled poppet he imagines me, unable to speak with my fellow man, viewed by those around us as a prating fool, my speech incomprehensible, my manner stiff; while Bono is possessed of natural charms and social graces to which I never can pretend.

  And yet Bono was kind to me in my minority — and yet even his kindness was vanity — and yet he had none of my advantages — and yet — and yet . . . And so my thoughts ran on as I lay cramped in my hammock; and so they run on now, as I crouch next to the hearth in the galley; as I write huddled here, thinking upon my mentor and tormentor.

  January 12th, 1776

  Several men, Charles among them, are taken with a fever and a vomit which appear perilous; most so, as they require water at all hours, and we have not as much potable of that necessary element as we might wish, though surrounded by its lapping.

  We walk among the sick only when tending them. There is no doctor attached to our Regiment, so we minister as best we can. Better Joe hath suggested some specific remedies, which Isaac the Joiner decries loudly as the cant of heathenish superstition; and indeed, one wonders at the applications of bone.

  We none of us can abide too much longer this containment, trapped here as we all eat our diet of galling news and the smoke of ruin.

  January 14th, 1776

  I cannot abide here longer. I have requested to be sent on one of the foraging parties.

  The final sundering came in this way: Dr. Trefusis, hearing word that the sickness was general over the fleet, recommended that the bedding of the sick be washed with more regularity, as the folds of blankets might contain miasmatic gasses and the crumbs of animalcula which contribute to contagion. This proposal met with indifference one way or the other from Major Byrd, the commander of our regiment; but indifference is not condemnation, and once Dr. Trefusis continued in this vein so tirelessly that some of the women who found it not impossible that disease should be caused by beings invisible to the eye took up the cause as well, it was decided to attempt his palliative measures; and so the washerwomen undertook to circulate among the ships and douse the sheets.

  Need I say that I greeted with a silent jubilation the return to our ship of Miss Nsia, who had not accompanied the return of my uniform; and that I felt particular pleasure in the opportunity to work at her side aiding the sick, flattering myself that there is no sweeter connection between man and woman than that forged in mutual assistance of another — thus, in my gross vanity, making selflessness but a stage for selfish display. (Foolish heart!)

  We helped the sick to their feet, and to them donated our own bedrolls, consenting to go without blankets for one night. Nsia smiled upon me as I spake gently to those laid low, and as I took their hands.

  Bono, seeing her present, came to our side, however, greeting us both and p
roffering his help; and I could not mistake the bashful confusion upon her face at his appearance, the admiration in her eyes at his superior gifts of charm and form, his easiness in his limbs, his settled compact with the world.

  It was no surprise that she was taken with him; and yet, it burned in my vitals, as it burns now.

  He assumed the bulk of work, speaking more companionably with the men, with Charles than I might, as he was Charles’s sworn friend; he clucked at the children and squawked, bringing forth their shy laughter, whereas I could only speak to them gently, but could not make comic sounds, as I am not of a comic disposition. And all of this conduced to convince not simply Miss Nsia of his superiority to me in every way, but me as well. I could not evade it; I was and always would be a lesser man.

  The women washed the sheets in the galley and wrung them out, and we hung them to dry upon the rails, so our ship flapped gray in the winter breeze.

  Thereafter, the ladies joined our supper by way of payment for their services, and we sat below and held a more somber feast than our last musical festival, before Norfolk had burned.

  Our minds were turned, I suppose, to our fates, should our expedition fail, and to the torments that awaited us; and thus our conversation turned upon the dismal subject of punishment. Some told stories of wily crimes which elicited much laughter: slaying a master’s goose to get the meat, or theft of pewter trinkets. But most of the tales were grim. Better Joe spake of how, one day out of the Bight of Biafra, there had been an uprising upon the Guinea-man which carried him to the New World; that three men, having coated themselves with a spell that should have ensured invisibility, escaped their chains and attacked the purser; but still were solid to the eye, and were captured; and were then, in the sight of all, decapitated, their bodies and heads thrown from opposite rails of the ship, it being believed that such a death would mean that their spirits could not find their way back to Africa; and all knew, in that moment, that their home was lost, and that their gods could not find them; and that upon these shifting waves, there could be no safety, no village known, no family to grant a name, no ancestor to provide a comforting word of advice from their burial ground; no village more, no god more, no old father more, no old mother more, no name more; for buckra god give buckra power over all the sea; buckra god have the gun; buckra god, he crush us.