Heart of War

C h a p t e r 1 Fogbound Duet Two ships-of-war move together up the English Channel. One is English, the other French. They sailed in a dense fog muffled in night. Their countries are at war, but for the moment, the two ships are allied in a dance of survival. As they continue to sail-out their duet, however, their circumstances will change. The two ships are not aware of this fact. The joined ships move as a dancing pair, invariably keeping their unseen distance within the space of a few feet. The English ship is aware of the French ship’s presence while the French ship thinks herself entirely alone; but she does know her exact position, while the English ship is helplessly lost on the French side of the Channel. Nothing aboard the frigate HMS Ramses moves except Aimsworth’s lips, whispering between the nearly joined ears of the young Captain Parker and his First Lieutenant Hanson as they stare sightlessly out into black fog. Each holds his tricorn hat in his left hand so as not to bump one another while whispering at close quarters. All of Ramses’ customary sounds had long ceased: no bells, no holy stones, and no orders, except in whispers. The first dog watch was only halfway through. First light was two hours away, not that it would make a bit of difference. They’d still be blind. Men stood at quarters above and below decks like frozen statues. The topsmen shivered from the bite of the westerly breeze. Some closed their eyes to shield themselves from the maddening blankness that tricked them into trying to see. Ramses’ crew was accustomed to turning out to reef on a black, squally night to feel their way inch by inch into the circling tops. But they had never been ordered to stand rigidly still like a bloody Marine sentry, except for inspections. They had trouble quelling their restlessness and trouble quieting the endless gear that fills a man-of-war. The ship’s master had removed the hood from the binnacle in order to put his nose to the compass glass to see the rose. He reached out and lightly touched the helmsman’s hand to adjust his course. Then he listened to the sound of their dance partner. The pattern had not changed. Captain Parker had called up Michael O’Shea to stand next to him because O’Shea was known for having a sixth sense. They were lost on a lee shore in enemy waters, and they needed all the help from the gods and the enemy that they could get. Ramses had sailed into this fog bank in the dark of night. She had tried several tacks to free herself from the clutches of the looming shore, but none had succeeded. The northwest winds were light and variable, but none had brought them out of this cold, slate vault. And the ominous shoreline loomed ever nearer. Then they had another problem. They were in shallow waters. An inshore riptide had swept them into the French coast during the night. They didn’t know their exact position except that it was perilous. They had moved-on east of Le Harve and past the prime meridian due south of Greenwich. Lieutenant Aimsworth could no longer smell the fragerance of the Seine River. Yet, he could not hear the bells of St. Valery en Caux. Somewhere in between the two. For the last two months, Ramses had stalked the French side of the channel in search of a band of renegades who had burned British shipyards. Parker had a personal reason for finding the ship-burning renegades. Years ago, Captain Parker, as a lieutenant, had been aboard the Kent of seventy-four guns when she was torched by a renegade. She exploded, killing many of his mates. Both Parker and Aimsworth had been active smugglers out of Plymouth before joining the Royal Navy, but their sources had little information to offer them about the renegades for whom they searched. This was strange, because there was little that their smuggling connections didn’t know. What now kept Ramses on a safe heading was only her dance partner, whose leadsmen called out soundings every minute and whose pilot interpreted these soundings to the slightly deaf French captain. Captain Parker, like any smuggler or fisherman, had known his home waters. He had found his way home in fogs such as this many times, but this was the other side of the channel. Parker, like many of his crew, spoke passable French, but his friend Aimsworth’s was faultless. And this was no time for mistakes. Parker had listened for an hour to Aimsworth’s translations of the pilot’s words to the captain. Then Parker decided that the pilot did indeed know exactly where he was, and so they had continued to keep company with the unseen ship out of pure helplessness, even though they were at times shocked by the way the bottom rolled up and down beneath their keel. Even the tight voices of the French leadsmen betrayed their apprehension from time to time; but each time the pilot’s sonorous voice predicted a happy outcome, and each time he was exactly right in predicting the next call from his two leadsmen. Captain Parker had brought O’Shea and Aimsworth on deck as soon as he realized the fog had the grip on them. O’Shea had immediately sensed the other ship, and Parker had edged Ramses nearer to her partner, hoping that she knew the waters better than he. As they edged over nearer their partner, Parker sent his order to be whispered about the ship: “Stand by for boarding.” Each man tightened his grip on some piece of his wooden world. It was his reassurance in the dissolving darkness of the wet night and the endless abyss threatening to engulf their floating village. Nowhere was a mate more appreciated. While each man was familiar with such obsidian darkness, something primal disturbed his quiet, some fear of being swallowed up by an indifferent gulp of this vast ocean. It wasn’t enough to be assailed by fog and darkness; they had to contend with other predators, men-of-war like them, hunting the seas. Parker, once a fisherman, saw in his imagination a sea bass, having stuffed himself with sculpins, pausing to enjoy his fullness. An unseen shark with a single flip of his tail sucks down the sea bass. They lived each day in order to live yet another. At this moment, Parker had no intention of boarding, but it was not uncommon for two ships sailing so close to bump bilges in the night, and even in clear weather. If this did happen, Parker wanted the advantage of preparedness. So the statues on Ramses’ decks, while prepared for the most aroused height of hot-blooded exercise, now stood frozen. Only unhappy whispers suggesting satisfying acts like “carving up the buggers” slipped beneath the blanket of fog over Ramses’ decks. Of one thing Captain Parker was now certain, partly from the combined senses of his gifted ones and, most recently, from the overheard conversations onboard the French ship, his dance partner knew the dance floor. There was now no doubt that the pilot could accurately interpret the bottom samples stuck to the lead weights. He read them like a chart. This was not unusual for a pilot in his home waters. What was unusual was the three-way conversation between the French ship’s master, her captain, and the ship’s architect. The architect had a difference of opinion with the captain on how their ship should be trimmed. From this conversation, Captain Parker learned that she carried her guns down in her hold and that they were in the process of moving them fore and aft within the hold to determine the proper trim for their ship. The French captain loudly complained about the long time it was taking to make the weight shift with the guns. He roundly blamed the French Admiralty’s stinginess for not providing an adequate shakedown crew.