Epilogue
It should not have been possible for the common human head to feel like that. It certainly should not have been the case that so much pain could have been concentrated into so small a space.
Something appeared to be trying to hack at the edges of his agony with a rusty saw. Gradually Bush realised that somebody was ... whistling?
A voice responded, and his mind painfully deciphered the words. "Clayton. Shut. Up.
What on earth did I drink last night? the part of Bush's mind currently capable of thinking mumbled. And how much of it?
"Some people," another voice answered in what Bush thought were unnecessarily loud tones, "simply cannot hold their drink."
Memory reconstructed itself, despite part of Bush's consciousness just begging to die quietly. At the same time he realised that he had collapsed with his head and arms draped over a table but had to acknowledge he did not feel strong enough to do anything about it at the present.
Oh, yes, the celebration for Hornblower's new command. They had been joined by an old friend of Hornblower and Kennedy, a lieutenant with a job in the dockyards, who seemed to know all the best places to drink. It was emerging that he also had an exceptionally hard head.
"If you can't take it," the tone held a careful assumption of reasonableness, "you shouldn't try it."
"Clayton," Bush had now established it was Kennedy's voice under the slurring, "if you don't shut up then once I see straight I am going to come after you with my sword."
Hornblower, Bush had to assume, was still unconscious, unless he was the one who had groaned a moment before. Bush thought that might have been himself. He couldn't remember when he had last had such a hangover. He really was too old for this.
"Oh, very well," Clayton's voice said. "I'm off for some breakfast. Bacon anyone?"
There was a thump, which suggested Kennedy had found something to throw, then the sound of a door opening and closing, without any attempt at silence. Bush, who had been considering the benefits of murder, abandoned the attempt to winch his eyes open and hoped to pass out again soon.
Vaguely, just before he slipped under, he remembered part of a drunken conversation with Hornblower last night. Speculation on how the course of a single decision could change one's life. It had all seemed very complicated, but perhaps that had merely been the drink.
Of course, Bush thought muzzily, decisions changed things. If he had followed the voice of sense last night he'd be feeling a lot better now. But why worry about it? You couldn't change things. Hornblower had seemed to think the matter important, but all Bush considered to matter was that at the moment he was well satisfied with life as it was. Or would be, if only he could exchange his head for one which hadn't drunk quite so much.
Maybe Hornblower was onto something after all.
The End
Endnote: There are really two 'what if's here. I know I'm not the first person to have wanted to explore just how the trial would have turned out if Pellew had not undergone a mysterious personality transplant between series, but I wanted to write my thoughts out and at the same time put the idea into some kind of wider story and finally the idea for Part One came to me. Part Two is how I think things should have happened in Kingston.
Additional Note: 'The country had endured a mad Prime Minister not so many years ago ...' The Earl of Chatham (Pitt the Elder) was mentally unbalanced, perhaps manic depressive, for most of his last two years in office. Astonishingly this was not an isolated case. When, some years after this story, Lord Castlereagh developed mania no-one troubled to remove him from his post as Foreign Secretary. Strange, but true.
It should not have been possible for the common human head to feel like that. It certainly should not have been the case that so much pain could have been concentrated into so small a space.
Something appeared to be trying to hack at the edges of his agony with a rusty saw. Gradually Bush realised that somebody was ... whistling?
A voice responded, and his mind painfully deciphered the words. "Clayton. Shut. Up.
What on earth did I drink last night? the part of Bush's mind currently capable of thinking mumbled. And how much of it?
"Some people," another voice answered in what Bush thought were unnecessarily loud tones, "simply cannot hold their drink."
Memory reconstructed itself, despite part of Bush's consciousness just begging to die quietly. At the same time he realised that he had collapsed with his head and arms draped over a table but had to acknowledge he did not feel strong enough to do anything about it at the present.
Oh, yes, the celebration for Hornblower's new command. They had been joined by an old friend of Hornblower and Kennedy, a lieutenant with a job in the dockyards, who seemed to know all the best places to drink. It was emerging that he also had an exceptionally hard head.
"If you can't take it," the tone held a careful assumption of reasonableness, "you shouldn't try it."
"Clayton," Bush had now established it was Kennedy's voice under the slurring, "if you don't shut up then once I see straight I am going to come after you with my sword."
Hornblower, Bush had to assume, was still unconscious, unless he was the one who had groaned a moment before. Bush thought that might have been himself. He couldn't remember when he had last had such a hangover. He really was too old for this.
"Oh, very well," Clayton's voice said. "I'm off for some breakfast. Bacon anyone?"
There was a thump, which suggested Kennedy had found something to throw, then the sound of a door opening and closing, without any attempt at silence. Bush, who had been considering the benefits of murder, abandoned the attempt to winch his eyes open and hoped to pass out again soon.
Vaguely, just before he slipped under, he remembered part of a drunken conversation with Hornblower last night. Speculation on how the course of a single decision could change one's life. It had all seemed very complicated, but perhaps that had merely been the drink.
Of course, Bush thought muzzily, decisions changed things. If he had followed the voice of sense last night he'd be feeling a lot better now. But why worry about it? You couldn't change things. Hornblower had seemed to think the matter important, but all Bush considered to matter was that at the moment he was well satisfied with life as it was. Or would be, if only he could exchange his head for one which hadn't drunk quite so much.
Maybe Hornblower was onto something after all.
The End
Endnote: There are really two 'what if's here. I know I'm not the first person to have wanted to explore just how the trial would have turned out if Pellew had not undergone a mysterious personality transplant between series, but I wanted to write my thoughts out and at the same time put the idea into some kind of wider story and finally the idea for Part One came to me. Part Two is how I think things should have happened in Kingston.
Additional Note: 'The country had endured a mad Prime Minister not so many years ago ...' The Earl of Chatham (Pitt the Elder) was mentally unbalanced, perhaps manic depressive, for most of his last two years in office. Astonishingly this was not an isolated case. When, some years after this story, Lord Castlereagh developed mania no-one troubled to remove him from his post as Foreign Secretary. Strange, but true.