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Dawn was fighting for life. On the fo'c'sle the master spy, William Wickham, laid the lines, as was his duty, along with the other dozen topmen. Light was putting up a good fight, vanquishing darkness inch by inch, minute by minute. But daylight wasn't the outright victor. Wickham, his face red from exertion glanced towards the harbour as sweat traced clean-skin marks through the grime on his face as the mist swirled in the Spanish harbour boding ill weather.
The blasted calling to arms, with the marines beating to quarters! Were the bells, the third of the morning watch having just sounded, indicating half past five, not affliction enough? How he hated the time bells!
Turning back to pay attention to the ropes that he was threading through the large round eyelet rings fixed to the deck he noticed his middie pacing past the other landsmen, busy as they were (as he was) on the unskilled tasks required for the ship to make way.
"Stow Anchor!" The sailing master called from the main deck, his order echoed through a chain of men starting with the officer of the watch to the midshipman in charge of the anchor-chain. Wickham noted the familiar tugging and heaving beneath him and he knew that a dozen more hands were as now shouldering the weight of the capstan.
Of the events that had previously unfolded on the maindeck Wickham was entirely ignorant; the pooling of the men around the excitement of a prisoner; the reason for their repatriation and, perhaps most significantly, the mizzenlad's name. As a result the future may well turn out to be far different than the one where William Wickham contemplated the reason a young boy had been returned to the flagship, especially if Wickham had heard the young boy's name.
Instead, the spymaster surveyed the crew for his quarry. He had two people to watch in the coming hours, during the battle. One he had located high above the deck at the present moment; the other, well – the Lord Admiral had not made his presence known as far as Wickham could see.
His target would have to be close by, Wickham knew, in order for the plan to be carried out smoothly. It called for perfect timing and, at the moment there were too many variable factors with which he had to consider before making his move. William Wickham strained further upwards as a figure appeared on the main deck. Now both were in his sight. The familiar tricorn, uniform bedecked with medals and insignia, and the form of Lord Nelson.
"Get yer 'head down!" A boot stamped next to Wickham, who knew better than to look round. He had to continue to be reserved, to remain undetected and so he resisted the urge to leap to his feet and wrap his section of rope around the man's neck.
Risking a glance up as the midshipman passed him by Wickham took in the care in which first Lord of the Admiralty was pacing around the deck inspecting even the lowliest of tasks being carried out by the humblest of men. The spymaster wondered whether his prior plan had come to fruition now, whether the events he had set in motion many months ago would come into play now as he had planned. Wickham had no choice but to hope – once the flagship was out in the open sea and he could put the last piece into place, as long as that part of the plan had been carried out effectively. All would be lost if it did not.
The noise of the drills being carried out, shouting of orders and racing around of the crew penetrated his thoughts and Wickham once again cursed his ill luck. He would be glad when this day was over and his task was over. His next mission, Wickham was determined, would take him nowhere near the sea.
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The smell in the hold was worse than that of the Surprise. Perhaps the fore-hold was not often used for prisoners and, undlike the rest of the ship, was not often cleaned or that the Captain preferred to keep the malodorous air within so that the memory would remind those occupying it as a reminder not to misdemeanour again.
Cicely's shoulder which had been hit and since redressed by Dr. Hardy on the Surprise, throbbed as she was wrenched by it again by Henry Jellicoe, Stephen Maturin's midshipman. The man, having been humiliated before his peers, subordinates and superiors through her misappropriated departure a couple of nights previously was taking out his frustrations and resentment on her.
They had barely gone through the fore-hole, the steps to below decks when he had beaten her, telling her as she foundered on the floor utterly shocked by his action, that the ship was one hand down because of her and that she had brought shame to the crew, the officers and, most significantly, him.
"You would have had a flogging above now, if had been up to me – " he pushed her towards the second hole, down to the lower gun deck," – and you may get one from me yet, if you do not hurry out of my sight!
Cicely had fervently hoped that her descent would be hasty – the pain the middie was inflicting, his icy features fixed as he laid into her, was awful and she focused on her swiftly unravelling plan and the ways she could now adapt it. Her imprisonment was a huge obstacle to what she had originally conceived – in order to keep James Fillings (for it was now clear that this young man was Nelson's assassin) in her sights.
Another kick, in her calves this time. How she wished she could turn back to Jellicoe and spend five minutes doing him in return at this moment. Cicely's heart beat faster therefore as the fore-hold cell, which was really a corner on the lowest deck of the ship shielded by wide wooden bars. Jellicoe would leave her alone once she had got there.
However Cicely's hope had now proved premature; as they neared Jellicoe gave her one last push so that she skimmed across the rough planks, landing roughly on her left hand, the one burned by Sergeant Harker. She roared in pain, but refused to look back when Midshipman Jellicoe ordered her to.
"You would lay me right back, wouldn't you?" he growled, the truth hanging between them ominously. Then his eyes rested on the book which had fallen from Cicely's clothing, that belonging to Stephen, his young-authored notebook which still contained her own handwritten "Zoonomia" notes.
Cicely had felt the book leave her chest-bands and fly through her shirt-neck and she turned to look for its terminus. A moment passed between them before they both turned back to the book. Jellicoe was quicker and he scooped it up in a beautiful one-armed movement, as if he were swooping on a fish in a river. Holding it high mockingly, Jellicoe read aloud from her own work, his voice sarcastic, deriding her ownership.
"You can read, Maturin? I don't think I've anyone under my command who can read. Can you write too? Is this yours?" He opened the book flat about halfway through, exposing a crudely-drawn bird, carefully annotated. Cicely waited, clenching her teeth as Jellicoe mocked her, and the writings until she thought she could take no more.
But there was worse to come, which hurt Cicely far more than her physical injuries. Henry Jellicoe tore the pages from the notebook, its spine and cover hanging limply from its binding as he pulled at it roughly. When it wouldn't yield easily to his destruction he turned to her own handwritten notes which tore into tiny fragments with ease.
"No!" Cicely heard herself cry. But it was no use – the book was defiled, her notes destroyed. What was left of Stephen's notebook Jellicoe hurled to the back of the gaol before aiming a kick at her, which missed.
"Get in there!" he bawled and Cicely scuttled forward, avoiding another ill-aimed booting. Throwing the wooden door closed behind her Henry Jellicoe gripped the bars and held them, his face, what might have been quite comely features had they not been twisted into a horrible grimace, snarled at her.
"I'll be glad when they whip you," he growled, his voice low and menacing. "You'll never forget to mind me!"
Cicely couldn't help it – as Jellicoe stalked back towards the hatch to make his ascent, some of the fragments of her notes sticking to his boots, she sat, knees bent, put her head on them and cried.
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Four bells rang true on the deck of the Surprise. Captain Jack Aubrey, resplendent in his full uniform, as had been the order from the Lord Admiral, stood on the quarter deck and broke off his survey of his command. He turned and glimpsed the flagship in his eye-arc upwards to the main mast.
The plan, as outlined to the captains, would, within the next few hours come to fruition. It was audacious. It was bold. It was daring. However it had been attempted before, just not on the scale Nelson was planning.
The fleet was to form two columns, one headed by the Victory and the other by Royal Sovereign, under command of Admiral Collingwood. Both columns would cut the enemy line in two places, the leeward and windward columns converging on the French flagship, Bucentaure and hammering with everything they had.
Aubrey watched the mizzenlads climb to supply the topmen with ropes – they would be vital to the strategy – Nelson's orders commanded the vessels to be full-sails so they would reach the enemy quickly, especially in the light winds which were playing about the ship. His eye rested on the flagship once more as he went to look to the main deck.
Of course there were disadvantages – not all of the fleet's ships would be able to see the Victory at once, making their response to the flag-signals slightly slower than they would otherwise have been were the ships in one single column. Clearly Nelson had banked on a slow, lapidary-nature to the combined French-Spanish fleet
How would the Surprise's supporting role be perceived? In what form would it take? To not engage with the enemy, as ordered, would, he knew, confuse the men. He had ordered the decks to be cleared already, as they were outing the harbour, fully aware of the spectacle a be-cannoned frigate miles from the scene of battle would look. But he knew his men too, and he had to keep a happy company.
What would be his ship's role? Jack asked himself that question as he examined Blakeney's inspection of the deck hands. Who knew? He would have to wait for the flag-signals from the Victory's mizzen.
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Opening her eyes, Cicely looked down at the rough floor on which she sat, and at Stephen's book. It had been quite badly damaged by Jellicoe but she had stowed it back inside her clothing quickly, close to her chest. She would not be able to rescue her "Zoonomia" notes, even if she could have reached them, so tiny a collection of pieces that they now were.
Her thoughts, in her stupor, had been of Stephen, of imagining him compiling the now much maligned notebook, imagining what he would have been like as a young man and a boy. Now, awake with the pounding of feet above her, distant cries, orders and orders being carried out she was pulled into the present, and what she had to do.
Cicely knew it was likely she would be imprisoned, Jack had said as much. It hadn't given her much time to prepare a counter plan but now, with the water swilling around the hull, an effect she could feel well in her makeshift gaol-cell deep down in the hold, one was forming.
She had to be sure, however, that her assertion was correct. It made complete sense to her that her friend, James Fillings, would be the assassin. How much of his story had contradicted two sources, that of Harris and of Captain Thomas Pullings himself? Even though Fillings was far simpler than she was, he was not a half-wit and only a half-wit would make up such a deliberate lie, that he had survived on to Portsmouth, when Harris and Pullings claimed their ship, the Acheron, was wrecked in the channel.
Cicely had to be sure, she knew. She could not think of any other explanation as to why James's account would differ so much from the corroborated truth but she also knew that she had to be sure – she had been wrong before in her idea that the assassin was Jean-Baptiste Lebec, the former captain of the Acheron. The only way would be to confront him.
But, when she thought about the James Fillings she knew, Cicely could barely believe that it would be true. Did he have it in him to carry out such an audacious act? And what would be his motive? Money? Alliance? It was true that his father, John Fotherington, who had befriended her in Brazil and had been searching out Jack Aubrey to kill him, had been a spy bent anti-British, pro-Catholic, pro-Jacobite sentiments. And that his grandfather had supplied a rebellion to the Jacobites in the 1730s in the north of England.
Cicely had told him of her plan, to kill Lebec and, as she had seen the ex-Acheron captain on the main deck that morning, she knew he hadn't carried out what he had promised. Either James Fillings was very clever, or very stupid.
The only way she could be sure, Cicely knew, would be to question him, ask him the truth. She knew it was likely he would tell her – perhaps he had been trying to do so before by his story of Acheron docking safely at Portsmouth.
Staring out along the hold-deck, the bilge pumps working now by the landsmen pushing and pulling at them strenuously, Cicely wondered how long would it be before the fleet would engage the enemy? And what then? Were a cannon to whistle through the air and land with a sharp thump against the hull, who would run to rescue her from her tiny prison?
"Cicely." A whisper made Cicely jerk her head from the prow-end of the flagship and she looked, guiltily, into the devil's face. "It's me, James," he added unnecessarily. Shocked, Cicely swallowed and tried to disguise her flustering as anger or upset at her being imprisoned.
"I heard you being brought aboard," he whispered, his voice still low. "Have you eaten? I've brought you this." Between the bars Cicely watched as her former pair and Nelson's supposed assassin pushed a lump of bread, clearly stolen from the stores.
"What're you doing here?" Cicely insisted in a returned whisper. "If anyone should find you here – "
"I've been sent on head duty," replied James glumly. "No-one expects to see me up yet." He pressed the bread further through the bars when he realised Cicely hadn't taken it, and he sat down adjacently. "I'm glad you're all right," he added, pulling from his clothing the other half that matched the bread he had given to Cicely.
"You too," replied Cicely, taking the bread and guiltily contemplating the thought she had just been harbouring. "I've got to get out of here, James," she added hopefully.
"The battle's comin'," James replied, sighing. "I hated the last one, the one on the Surprise, when we fought the Acheron. Do you remember?" Cicely nodded. How could she forget? She had run into Fotherington again and he had exposed her, both figuratively and literally. She had fought the French – fled from the French most of the time, in fact. But she had come face to face with the enemy, fighting in her brother's stead, for Edward's honour.
"I'll get you out, Cicely, I promise," he added, munching on his bread. "Somehow, before the battle. You still going to get Lebec?" Cicely nodded, trying to make her conformation appear seamless.
"He's to assassinate Nelson," Cicely concluded softly. "I've got to stop Nelson's assassin." Seemingly unswayed by her comment however James nodded vaguely in front of him, chewing on his bread. Above them six bells rang forth – seven o'clock. James looked at Cicely urgently and scrambled to his feet.
"I've got to go; I'm supposed to be done by the start of the forenoon!" Cicely watched him leap around as if on hot coals. "I…I…" he stopped and stared at Cicely. "I've got to go," he repeated agitatedly, before staring back at Cicely and then the bread that she hadn't touched, in her hand. "Eat that…I'll get you out of there, I promise," he added, making to hare towards the steps and up through the hatch. He paused.
"I'm so pleased to see you, Cicely," he added, grinning at her. "I'll be back!"
Cicely watched James hurry towards cleaning the outlets that the hands and officers used as latrines on the ship and vaguely wondered why, on the very edge of battle, the cleanliness of the privy facilities was so important.
Then, weary from thought Cicely lowered her head onto her knees, trying to block out the confusion that were her conflicting ideas. Tears welled again – could she do it? Stop James, if the assassin were indeed him, which was almost certain. How could she do it? How would she do it? What she did know was, however, that unless she got out of there someone would assassinate Lord Nelson.
As darkness invaded Cicely's mind Juana Margill watched her from the shadows.
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