Victory Read online

  I had never thought, at home, that I would ever miss our crowded straw mattress. I wondered often if my little sisters missed me, and whether they had to go to school now unprotected—or if they went at all. As for my mother, I ached with longing when I thought of her, and sometimes—quietly, in the dark—I wept.

  It was a dark, stuffy, tilting world we boys lived in. Up on deck the business of the ship went on: every officer and man followed his exact ordered routine, and the real sailors, the topmen, the fo’c’slemen and the afterguard, clambered up and down the rigging of those towering masts amazingly fast, controlling the sails. The ship’s whole true life was up there. But I was hardly ever free to go up to the fresh air; Mr. Carroll always had some nasty below-decks work for me to do.

  I was the boy in Mr. Carroll’s mess—the men all ate their meals in groups of four or six, called messes, and many of them had a boy attached, to do the dirty work. We did jobs like cleaning out the spittoon, the bucket they spat tobacco-juice into. One of their two pleasures was chewing a chunk of solid tobacco, very slowly, spitting out the brown juice from time to time until the tobacco disintegrated and the bits had to be spat out too. The other pleasure was drinking rum, which was issued to every man jack of us twice a day—half a ration for boys—diluted with water and called grog. You could drink your grog there and then or keep it for a swap. Most of us boys swapped it, though we were also allowed to have money added to our pay instead of being issued grog.

  Mr. Carroll was given so many tots of grog in exchange for little treats from the galley that he was nearly always half drunk. He was clever at keeping himself sober at inspection time, when any visibly drunk man would be ordered a dozen lashes, but Stephen and I knew all too well that he would be drunk half an hour afterward, raging at us and at Tommy. Once he broke a big wooden ladle over my back, and once he threw a pot of hot water at Stephen, scalding him so badly that he had to go to the surgeon for the hurt skin to be dressed. Stephen told the surgeon it was an accident. I had argued that he should say what really happened, and he said I was a fool; that the cook would deny it and call him a lying little rogue, which any officer would believe because there would be no proof against it, and then the cook would beat him half to death. He was probably right.

  But worse than the cook was one of the midshipmen, Oliver Pickin. HMS Victory had about twenty midshipmen; they were in training to be officers someday, but they had to learn to do everything the sailors did, including climbing to the tops of the masts. Some of them were as young as Stephen and me, some were quite old, but most were young men, wild and rash and looking for anyone they could mistreat in the way that they were often mistreated themselves. Oliver Pickin reminded me of my brother Dick; he was about the same size and just as mean-spirited. The only time I felt sorry for redheaded William Pope was when young Mr. Pickin one day got William a dozen strokes of the cane for failing to salute him. Of course William hadn’t saluted him; he’d been staggering along with an armful of hammocks that stopped him from seeing anything, let alone saluting it.

  Within four weeks of our sailing from Chatham we were headed south through stormy weather into the Bay of Biscay. We had put in to Portsmouth and Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson had come aboard. I knew by now that Nelson was the hero of the Royal Navy, and of all England too, though back on the farm I had scarcely even known that we were at war with the French. He had won great victories at the Battle of the Nile and at Copenhagen, and lost his right arm and the sight of his right eye in battle, and all the men loved him. When they talked of “the Admiral” it was Nelson they meant, even though there were full admirals like Lord Collingwood who held higher rank.

  At first, I saw no more of Lord Nelson than a small figure on the quarterdeck at inspection, with stars and decorations gleaming on his blue coat. That first day he came aboard, war was declared on France again after a few weeks of peace, and all the men cheered. Then we sailed across the English Channel to meet Lord Collingwood’s fleet, and the Admiral left us again before we even found them. Word was that he was taking command of the fleet in the Mediterranean, and was in a hurry to get down there and fight the French. So he went aboard Captain Hardy’s frigate Amphion, smaller and faster than big old Victory, and they sailed south.

  When Captain Sutton found Lord Collingwood, we were sent south too. The wind was good but strong, and these were stormy waters, so Victory’s decks were wildly atilt most of the time, a hard matter for those of us set often to carrying things (and harder still for the sailors sent up the rigging.) Lurching over the deck one day with two buckets of swill for the pigs, I was passing Oliver Pickin and an older midshipman, Mr. Harrington, when a furious gust of wind sent Harrington and me both tumbling on top of Pickin, with the pigswill from my buckets splashing over all three of us.

  Pickin cried out in fury, and scrambled up and began lashing at me with his cane. Harrington protested: “Oliver, for God’s sake—the boy fell, and so did we—it’s not his doing!”

  Pickin was beside himself. “Clumsy little whoreson—”

  “Stop!” yelled Harrington, and held his arm.

  And Pickin did stop, but glared at me as I scurried away to find a mop, and I knew he would not forget.

  Nor did he. Two days later word came to the galley that the captain’s cook wanted a dozen eggs, and Mr. Carroll sent me up with them. It was a long way, the captain’s quarters being in the stern of the ship and the galley way forward. I was making my way cautiously along the deck, holding the wooden rack of eggs with both my hands, when the whistles of the bosun’s mates shrilled for the men to reduce sail. I stood frozen beside one of the great deck-top carronades as dozens of seamen came running for the rigging, and seeing my plight they tried to steer clear of me. Most of them were good fellows when sober, and knew from their own experience what a whipping I would get if I broke even one of those eggs.

  But when I dodged out again, a foot was stuck suddenly between my own, and tripped me, and the eggs and their frame went smashing down on the deck as I fell. I wailed in horror, and as I scrambled up, a hand took tight hold of my ear. “It’s the clumsy pig boy!” cried Midshipman Oliver Pickin, grinning, and I knew beyond doubt that it was his foot that had brought me down.

  I wrenched my head away. “You tripped me! You did that!”

  “Are you accusing me, brat?”

  “Those eggs were for the captain—”

  Pickin looked round, his face full of triumph and malice. “Insolence to an officer!” he cried. He grabbed at a couple of sailors who were running for the mast. “Clap hold of him, you!”

  A bosun’s mate was in full cry after the sailors, flicking at them with his cane. “Up with you, you idle scum! Aloft there!” He paused as he saw Pickin.

  “Insolence!” the midshipman was yelling. “Insolence! A bar in his mouth for three days! You—take this fellow’s name!”

  The bosun’s mate looked at me and at Pickin, and I knew there was nothing he could do for me: Oliver Pickin was a bullying malicious midshipman but he was an officer, and the rules of the Royal Navy were rock hard.

  And so it was that for two full days and nights I had to go about the ship with a five-inch iron bolt forced across my open mouth and tied with yarn behind my head, like a bit in the mouth of a horse. I could neither eat nor drink, and at night I could not sleep for the pain. Stephen and two or three of the other boys were good to me, and gently spooned water into my mouth so that I should not totally parch, but I was wretched beyond belief. I felt there was no hope in life; that I was doomed to the Navy and its injustices forever. I thought seriously of throwing myself into the sea, where I should drown very fast because I could not swim.

  I crawled into a corner of the gundeck alone, in despair, and I wept.

  And there my uncle found me. In all the weeks since we were pressed, we had seen each other only for brief moments, through the demands of his work and my own, and though he knew of the bad state I was in, there was nothing he could do about it. This t
ime, though, as he looked into my dirty distorted face, there was an angry set to his mouth that I had never seen before.

  “I know what led to this, Sam,” he said. “One of my mates was watching. I think I can do something. Have faith—by tomorrow there may be help.”

  With a damp rag he wiped my chin clear of the blood that kept trickling down from where the metal cut into my lips. Then looking angrier still, he hurried away.

  At the end of the next day, when we were slinging our hammocks, with Stephen helping me because I was so weak at the knees after working without food, big William Pope came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. I stopped still, wary, and then I felt his fingers at the back of my head, untying the tight yarn. He turned me to face him, and eased the iron bolt carefully out of my mouth. One of my teeth came with it; knocked loose when the bolt was put in, it had been held in place only by the bolt itself.

  Our Scottish boy Colin Turner was there too, watching wide-eyed, with two wooden mugs in his hands. William sat me down on a cask, took one of the mugs from Colin and held it to my mouth.

  I said thickly, “What is it?”

  “Drink,” said William. “Go on. Little sips.”

  So I did. It was warm, and seemed to spread comfort through my whole body as it trickled down my throat.

  “Portable soup,” Colin said, “to make you better.” And I remembered that he was boy to the surgeons’ mates, and guessed that he had begged or stolen this from their store. Portable soup was a kind of dried jelly that became a thin beef broth when added to hot water; it was given to patients in the sick bay to strengthen them.

  When I had drunk it all down, sitting there on the cask like a limp bundle of rags, I looked at the others and found tears coming out of my eyes, not of misery this time but of gratitude and relief. “Thank you,” I said. “Oh thank you.”

  “Bosun’s orders, the first I ever was glad to get,” William said. “And they are changing your mess, putting you with the ropers and sailmakers. Stephen is to take your place eating with the cook.”

  Stephen made a wry face, but grinned at me. “It will be no worse than the pigs,” he said.

  William put the other mug into my hand. “Grog, to help you sleep,” he said. “Drink it down quick before someone catches us.”

  So I slept that night like a baby, perhaps for the first time since I had been one. And the next day, though I had thought it impossible, my life changed once more.

  Molly

  IN CONNECTICUT

  Molly wakes up the next morning out of a dream that she cannot remember, with a sound ringing through her head: the double stroke of a bell, repeated. Bong-bong, bong-bong, bong-bong . . . She feels she has heard it before, but she doesn’t know where.

  Sunshine is spilling around the edges of the blinds into the cheery yellow-white bedroom. It’s early morning: six-thirty, her alarm clock tells her. She lies there on her back for a little while, looking at the picture on the wall at the foot of her bed: a framed photograph of her mother and father on a beach somewhere. They are laughing, and in her father’s arms is a chubby smiling baby. The baby is Molly, though it looks rather like Donald.

  Molly feels drained, empty, as if something had washed all feeling out of her. It is the way she felt yesterday after all that crying; it has survived her night’s sleep. But jumping out of her memory comes the discovery of the little square of cloth inside her Nelson book, and the emptiness is suddenly filled. Awesome! says a voice inside her head, and she wants to jump up and tell the whole world. At the very least she wants to e-mail her friends Sally, Jen and Naomi, and send off a letter to her grandparents, who prefer paper to computers.

  But at the same time she feels strongly again that she should tell nobody at all; that it’s a pity even Russell knows.

  Why? she wonders.

  Not yet! says the voice in her head, offering no reason.

  She gets out of bed and goes to her desk. There is the book, with its damaged blue cover and the little brown envelope inside, hidden away in the dark for so long but now revealed. Today she will start reading about Nelson. Now that she has a piece of his ship’s flag, she has a powerful urge to find out what he was like.

  Molly goes downstairs in her pajamas to get some orange juice, and she is only halfway down the stairs when she realizes that the one person she must tell about her discovery is Mr. Waterford.

  Kate is in the kitchen, feeding Donald small spoonfuls of cereal. He gurgles at Molly, and bangs the table of his high chair. Kate puts out an arm and gives Molly a hug. “I forgot to remind you, you’re babysitting,” she says. “I’m taking Russ to his driving test.”

  “No problem,” says Molly, and she thinks: Russell! He’ll have his license, he can drive me to see Mr. Waterford!

  Kate still has her arm around her. “You’re such a good girl,” she says, and squeezes her again. Then she lets her go, and Molly heads for the refrigerator.

  “We’ll leave about eight-fifteen,” Kate says. “Back by eleven. I’ve changed Donald. Put him down for a nap when he starts to fuss.”

  “Okay,” says Molly. She pours herself some juice, kisses Donald on the nose and sits at the kitchen table. Kate says hesitantly, “Are you all right, love?”

  Molly looks up. There is an odd expression on her mother’s face, as if she were far more concerned about Molly than a small babysitting job deserves. And so she is. Kate was deeply troubled by yesterday’s outburst of grief; it was far more serious than anything she has ever seen happen to a child. She has been awake half the night worrying about it.

  Molly says, “I’m fine.”

  “I had a long talk with Carl this morning,” Kate says. She sits down.

  “In Italy?”

  “It’s lunchtime there. We decided . . . Darling, how would you like it if you and Donald and I made a quick trip to see Granny and Grandad before you start school?”

  Molly stares at her. A miracle has exploded into her life like a meteor. She can hardly believe it. “To London? Really?”

  “Really,” Kate says, and finds her daughter’s arms wound around her neck, so tightly that she splutters. Donald wails. Molly gives him another kiss.

  “We’re going home!” she tells him. “We’re going home!”

  “Just for a week,” Kate says cautiously.

  Molly says, “That’s wonderful!”

  Donald is fast asleep in his crib, sucking his thumb, and Molly is downstairs again, listening as the sucking sounds grow gradually fainter over the baby monitor. When the outside door bursts open, she can tell instantly from the look on Russell’s face that he has failed his driving test. He heads for the refrigerator, scowling, and pulls out the carton of orange juice.

  “Poor Russ,” Kate says, coming in after him. “He drove very well but he got a very picky examiner.”

  “He’s a jerk!” Russell says, pouring juice so crossly that it splashes over the edge of the glass. “A pompous jerk!”

  Molly says, “What happened?”

  Russell gives an explosive angry grunt and drinks his juice. Kate says, “Russ had to turn left, and he was really careful to make a hand signal, because the examiner had reminded him to be sure to do that. But he didn’t put on his flasher as well, so the man failed him.”

  “He said that stuff about hand signals just to throw me,” Russell says bitterly. “And he kept calling me Carl.”

  “Well, it is your first name,” Kate says mildly. “He wasn’t to know we don’t use it.”

  “Stop by that lamppost, Carl! Carl, we’re going to turn left at the light!” Russell makes his angry grunt again. Looking at him, Molly sees an echo of her stepfather in the straight nose and lean jawline, and the shape of those arched eyebrows.

  At the same time it occurs to her that Russ will not now be able to drive her to see Mr. Waterford, and that she cannot possibly ask Carl or her mother to take her there.

  Later that day, Molly begins to read The Life of Nelson. She discovers that Hor
atio Nelson was born in Norfolk, and that when he was a small boy and was punished for stealing pears from his schoolmaster’s pear-tree, he said he “only took them because every other boy was afraid.”

  Then she turns the page and comes across the bookmark that Mr. Waterford put inside the book when he sold it to her. She remembers the way he smiled at her as he did so. The bookmark is tucked so securely between two pages that it has even survived the book’s disastrous crash when she threw it at Jack. Molly looks at the bookmark, and sees printed on it the name and address of Mr. Waterford’s shop, his telephone and fax numbers—and his e-mail address.

  So she turns on her computer and writes him an e-mail.

  Dear Mr. Waterford, she writes, I am Molly Jennings, the English girl who bought Robert Southey’s The Life of Nelson. Something amazing has happened. Hidden inside the front of the book there was a sort of envelope with a piece of cloth inside that is a piece of HMS Victory’s flag at Trafalgar. . . .

  . . . and she tells him about the inscription, and Emma’s note about her father Samuel Robbins—and then, taking a deep breath, she types out the question that is her real reason for wanting to talk to him.

  Is it still all right for me to keep this book? she writes.

  She is so nervous about the answer she may get to this question that she hits the “Send” button even before she has signed the e-mail. And off it goes, irrevocably launched into the ether, on that mysterious instant journey taken by all e-mails.

  There is a tap at the door, and Kate puts her head in. “Want to come and get a pizza, darling? Russ has a sailboat race at two, so I thought we’d all have lunch on the way.”

  “Sure,” Molly says. She puts the computer to sleep. It’s too much to hope that Mr. Waterford will send her an instant reply.

  “Russ can drive us,” Kate says. “I told him it’s like getting back on the horse after you’ve fallen off.”