Part 2

Portsmouth 1803

Charlie Hammond pulled the collar of his heavy great coat close around his throat and bent into the stiff wind that had gone from gusting to a steady blow as he walked along the Hard. The whole world was gray in this final hour before dusk, with a sky the color of thin buttermilk, and a sea, dark as slate, that was whipped into a rough chop of sharp, frothy peaks.

In the harbor the ships at anchor were bouncing on the chop. He could not see her, but somewhere was his own "Calypso". Tomorrow he'd be back aboard her. For nearly ten years she'd been his, and to say that she was not his pride, and that the men who served her were not as stout of heart, as brave and fine as any captain could ever wish for would be a betrayal in itself. To say that the course he had set for himself, the events he was about to set in motion, did not raise a conflict still in his mind and his heart would simply be a lie.

Ten years the master of a frigate, twenty-five years in command of King's ships that had killed hundred's of England's enemies, taken many thousands of pounds in prizes. His body bore a map of scars that told the story in grim detail of his bravery and of the sacrifices he had made. He had money, but he had always had money. It was recognition that eluded him. Commodores, admirals, peers were made above his head while he fought and served year after year, men who had done no more, and indeed sometimes far less than he. He had his ideas as to why it might be so. Interest, politics, rumor and prejudice ruled His Majesty's Navy every bit as much as the quest for excellence and the imperative for military success.

The irony of his desire for the approval of the very body that he'd come to disdain, persisting so long after his allegiance had finally, irrevocably turned, was not lost on him, and he laughed out loud at himself, for there was no one to hear him. He quickened his pace. He'd promised Mary a quiet dinner, just the two of them alone. This would be their final night together for a length of time he could not know. The die would soon be cast. The circle would close, and the conflict and the lies would come to an end, one way or another.

He stopped suddenly, turning and looking out at the water where a flash of light had taken his eye. The winter sun, pale and shrouded and so far away, was dropping, but for a moment the veil of gray broke, and a ribbon of pale gold glittered on the surface of the shifting sea, and in that strange and unpredictable way of memory, he found himself looking out over another sea, on another day…

********

Ireland 1801

"And that one?" Daniel Hammond pointed at the largest of three men 'o war which lay at anchor in the great sheltered bay. From his vantage point atop the massive headlands, the Cove of Cork spread out below, shining blue and silver in the sun of a rare, clear morning.

"'Carmarthen, first-rate, a seventy-four, Captain Grenville, I think," Charlie replied, fumbling with his reins. He'd not been on a horse in quite some time, and he felt top-heavy and ungainly. The horse, excited by the freshness of the wind could not stand still, and Charlie felt that the broad back of the beast was pitching like a top deck in a gale. Beside him, his cousin Dan smiled and sat his own mount as calmly as would any country doctor who spent his days riding from village to village in all weathers.

"An inspiring sight," said Dan.

"Aye." Charlie stared out at the great harbour. It was vast, the sheer size of the anchorage nearly unmatched, but gaining it could be tricky in bad weather with Gowan's Head on the lee shore. Still, this would have been the place, had he been the one to choose, to land a fleet. Bad weather, though, had prevented the landing of forty-three French ships and fifteen thousand troops at Bantry Bay, to the South and West in the spring of '96. And when the French came again in '98, landing at Killala in County Mayo, far to the North, they were already too late and too far away to aid the Irish rebels in Leinster and Munster, slaughtered in a fierce, bloody rout by British troops.

"Never again, Charlie," said Dan softly, as if reading his thoughts.

"Dan?" Charlie turned to look at him, a little startled.

The other man shook his head, his mouth forming a grim, close-lipped smile. Dan was a dozen years younger than Charlie, but his hair was just as white, his face careworn.

"Looking at the ships," he sighed, " I could not help but think of Jamie."

James Hammond had been Daniel's stepson, his true son in all but blood, and Dan had given the lad, and his sister, Mary, his own name when he'd married their mother. A wild, handsome boy with a restless spirit and a passionate temper, he'd joined with the United Irishmen at eighteen, and at twenty-one he'd been aboard the French ship that was carrying the Irish republican leader, Wolfe Tone, to join the rebellion. Their small fleet had barely made it past the British blockade at Brest, only to be caught off the coast of Donegal. Tried and found guilty of treason, Tone committed suicide in prison before he could be hanged. Jamie had no such opportunity to claim his own fate.

"I am sorry, Dan," Charlie said. "I never should have—"

Daniel leaned forward to stroke his horse's neck as the animal dipped its head to scratch at a foreleg. "I don't blame you, Charlie. God knows, if a few heated political discussions over a little too much whiskey could have influenced that boy, he'd have been as just as likely to hold my opinions as yours. And you are an officer of the King! Politics is one thing, practicality and the harsh truth, quite another, and I believe you have always known it, Charlie, however you might like to argue."

He could say nothing. The anger and self-loathing he felt was like a little poisonous black spot on his soul that was always with him, and he imagined he could see it inside him, spreading like a dark stain. Duality and deception had long since become a way of life, but there were times, such as now, speaking with this good man whom he loved like a brother, when the lie was especially painful to bear.

 "Jamie always knew his own mind," Daniel said. "And I never knew a one that could change it, save Mary, perhaps, but even she could not have kept him home when he wanted to go. It's hard on her still, his loss, and for such a hopeless cause. I can only thank the Lord that my Cait was not alive to see it."

Charlie looked at the opposing bluff, a high sheer wall of rock, topped by a sentinel of newly mounted gun batteries. Ireland was the great, swinging back door to Britain, and Britain knew it, and though England and France talked of peace, she was nervous still. And if she was nervous, that meant there was still the awesome possibility, that chance, if only fate would take a hand.

"It is not, you know," Charlie said finally, quietly. "Not hopeless. The French were as much slaves as the Irish, and the French are free. The Americans—"

"Were never under the thumb of the British the way we are," Daniel finished the sentence for him. "For all their wailing. Well you should know it, and I lived there too, remember? No Catholics at Trinity College, and no sons of a Catholic mother.  It was America or France for me to study medicine, and my French was never any good."

"The French gave the Americans their freedom," Charlie said.

Daniel gave a humorless laugh and shook his head again. "Thirty-thousand dead in what we are now calling 'The Year of the French', Charlie. Not to mention the countless dead in the countless struggles of a thousand years of bloody history. Ireland is too small, too weak, too divided, too important ever to be free. And I submit to you, sir, that those French were not these French. Do you mean to exchange one tyrant for another?"

Again, Charlie could say nothing. The ambition of Bonaparte was indeed enough to give pause. But he could not believe that the bright flame of the Revolution, the overwhelming tide of freedom could be so quickly turned by one man.

 "It's over, Charlie. Look at that flag."

Daniel pointed out over the water, to the ensign that flew, bow and stern, off the big seventy-four.

"The final cross on the Union Jack is complete," Dan said. "We are British now." He gathered up his reins and began to turn his horse. Reaching over to clap a hand on Charlie's shoulder, he smiled his generous grin.

"Damn it to hell, Charlie, let's change the subject and let's go home. I'll wager Mary's laid on a monstrous great tea just to impress you. I wish you'd just marry the girl and stop her mooning."

Charlie laughed.

"You think I'm not serious?" Daniel asked as Charlie fell in beside him and they started down the green slope towards the village. "The poor thing's been in love with you her whole life. I'd give you my blessing in a moment if I thought you'd take her and make both yourselves happy."

"And if I thought you were serious, I'd simply remind you that I am already married," Charlie replied.

"To a woman who left you years ago and lives on the other side of the ocean? You'd let her go if she asked it of you, Charlie, and I can't think she wouldn't do the same."

Charlie laughed again, loudly, and caught the front of his saddle as his skittish mount startled. "Jesus, Dan! I'm old enough to be her father! Damn near old enough to be her grandfather! And I ought to feel like her uncle," he added, a little shamefully.

"But you don't, do you?" Daniel looked him in the eye. "You're never to old to be happy at last. Hang politics, Charlie. No man lives in a perfect world, and we must all make the best of things in our own small ways.  Sail your beautiful ship, serve the King, marry a young, beautiful girl. Have a dozen children if you like. The future is uncertain at the best of times, and happiness is precious and rare. I learned that with Cait. And I learned it by losing Jamie."

*********

Less than one hour later, in a event remarkably cruel in it's irony, Daniel Hammond lay dying on the bare ground before a rude tenant cottage, struck down by the flat of Dragoon Captain's sword as he tried to stay the local magistrate's eviction crew from bringing a roof down around the ears of an elderly woman who was a patient and an old friend.

"Hell," Dan had muttered as they approached the cluster of cottages on the outskirts of the village. "Bloody crowbar brigade."

It was not an unfamiliar sight. A gang of some two-dozen men armed with crowbars and sledgehammers, standing beside a wagon that was yoked to a pair of draft horses, containing a contraption of pulleys and levers that would be used to demolish the tenant dwelling.

"Why?" Charlie wondered.

"The land belongs to Lord Blackbridge'," Daniel said. "He's had the notion for years that this valley would profit him better were he to run sheep over it."

"Sheep? Good lord, Dan, my brother is selling the sheep off the estate in Kilcrea for all they're worth, thinking that wool prices will fall the minute the peace is declared. Clearing the valley for sheep is hardly a sensible economy."

"Nonetheless, once the tenancies run out, there's nothing to stop a landlord doing as he pleases. Look at fat old Begley," Dan pointed to the magistrate, red-faced and complacent, standing amid a cluster of blue-coated dragoons. "Coward thinks he needs to call out the cavalry just to toss a poor family out of their home. Idiot still thinks there's rebellion crouching in every hedgerow. Come on." He clucked to his horse and Charlie followed, trotting forward to meet the magistrate.

"Good day, Tom," Daniel addressed the magistrate as he dismounted.

"Good day to you, Daniel," the fat man puffed. "What brings you here today?"

"I've come to look in on Dierdre O'Dowd," Dan replied. "She's not been at all well you know."

Out of the corner of his eye Charlie saw the eviction gang going about their work. Heavy iron hooks attached to ropes were being thrown onto the cottage roof, and the ends secured to the pulleys. Two men came forward with sledgehammers.

"Where has the family gone?" Dan asked, his voice cool.

Begley pursed his lips. "Well, they won't come out, will they? It's always the way. Silly damned fools."

"You can't pull the roof down on their heads, Tom." Daniel started toward the door of the cottage. "Michael!" he called loudly. "Michael O'Dowd! It's Dr. Hammond! Open up, man!"

"Stephens," the Captain of Dragoons motioned to his corporal to dismount, and Charlie watched as the young man moved towards Daniel. The door of the cottage opened a crack, and he could see the pale face of a young man.

"Jazus, Dr. Hammond," he heard the man say in a low voice, "Mammy's still so sick, I fear to move her! Can ye not do somethin' ta help?"

Dan was speaking quietly to the man, but the door closed again quickly as one of the men came forward, as if meaning to force the door. Daniel turned. "Wait! Damn you!" he shouted at the man, who retreated a few paces.

"Surely you can give them some time?" Charlie said to the magistrate. "What difference can another week make? This is monstrous, man!"

"The tenants have been given ample warning to quit the estate," Begley replied blandly. "I have an immediate eviction warrant and they shall be evicted forthwith. Forcibly, if necessary."

There was a smashing of glass and the sound of a child's scream as a sledgehammer crashed through the cottage's one tiny window. The driver of the wagon team snapped the reins on the backs of the dray horses.

"No!" Daniel yelled, and he turned again, crashing into the dragoon corporal who could not get out of his way. "Stop it! For God’s sake!"

Charlie saw the corporal trying to restrain Daniel, and in a split second, Dan had drawn the man's saber and broken away. Charlie saw that he meant to slash the ropes that were attached to the roof of the cottage, but the Captain clearly believed his man was in danger, and he spurred his horse forward, drew his own sword and swung, striking Daniel across the forehead with the flat of the heavy blade, sending him spinning, drops of blood flying, to fall, motionless on the bare, black earth.

Go to Part Three