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"The battle?" she asked, turning around to face him.
"C’mon, girl! There’s only one battle for a sailor—only one battle for England—really for England, like!"
She smiled at him. "Oh ... you mean Trafalgar?"
" ’Course, I mean Trafalgar! You’re teasin’ me, aren’t you? You’ve gotta be."
"You were at Trafalgar! Really?" She was impressed, and she allowed it to show in her voice and her eyes.
"Surely I was. Never forget that if I live to be a hundred— which I won’t. Great day that was ... an’ terrible, too. I reckon there’s bin none other like it, nor won’t be again."
She poured the water onto the tea. "What ship were you on?"
"Why, the Victory, o’ course." He said it with pride in his voice so sharp and clear that for a moment she could hear in it the young man he had been over half a century before, when England had been on the brink of invasion by Napoleon’s armies and nothing stood between them and conquest except the wooden walls of the British fleet—and the skill and bravado of Horatio Nelson and the men who sailed with him. She felt a stirring of the same pride in herself, a shiver of excitement and knowledge of the cost, because she, too, had seen battle and knew its reality as well as its dream.
She brought the tea over to him and offered him a cup. He took it, and his eyes met hers over the rim.
"I was there," he said softly. "I remember that morning like it were yesterday. First signal come in about six. That was on the nineteenth of October. Enemy had their tops’1 yards hoisted. Least that’s what we heard later. Then they were coming out o’ port under sail. Half past nine and bright light over the sea when we heard it on the Victory." He shook his head. "All day we tacked and veered around toward Gibraltar, but we never saw ’em. Visibility was poor—you got to understand that. Weather gettin’ worse all the time. Under closereefed topsails, we were, an’ too close to Cádiz."
She nodded, sipping her tea, not interrupting.
"Admiral gave the signal to wear and come northwest, back to our first position. Next day, that was, you see?"
"Yes, I see. I know the battle was on the twenty-first."
He nodded again, appreciation in his face. "By dawn o’ the twenty-first the admiral had it exactly right. Twenty-one miles north by west o’ Cape Trafalgar, we were, and to windward o’ the enemy." His eyes were smiling, shining blue, like the sea that historic day. "I can smell the salt in the air," he said softly, screwing up his face as if the glare of the water blinded him still. "Ordered us into two columns and make full sail."
She did not speak.
He was smiling, his tea forgotten. "Made a notch on me gun, I did, like the man next to me. He was an Irishman, I remember. The admiral came around to all of us. He asked what we were doin’. The Irishman told him we were making a mark for another victory, like all the others, just in case he fell in the battle. Nelson laughed an’ said as he would make notches enough in the enemy’s ships.
"About eleven in the morning the admiral went below to pray, and wrote in his diary, as we learned afterwards. Then he came up to be with us all. That was when he had the signal run up." He smiled and shook his head as if some thought consumed him. "He was going to say ’Nelson confides,’ but Lieutenant Pascoe told him that ’expects’ was in the Popham code, an’ he didn’t have to spell it out letter by letter. So what he sent was ’England expects that every man will do his duty.’ " He gave a little shrug, looking at her to make sure she knew how those words had become immortal. He saw it in her face, and was satisfied.
"I don’t really know what happened in the lee column," he went on, still looking at her, but his eyes already sea blue and far away, his inner vision filled with the great ships, sails billowing in the wind, high up masts that scraped the sky, coming around to face the enemy, men at the ready, muscles taut, silent by their guns, the decks behind them painted red, not to show the blood when the slaughter began.
She could see in his eyes and the curve of his lips the memory of a sharper light than this English summer, the pitch of the deck as the ship hit the waves, the waiting, and then the roar and slam of cannon fire, the smell of saltpeter, the sting of smoke in the eyes and nose.
"You can’t imagine the noise," he said so softly it was almost a whisper. "Make them train engines they got now sound like silence. Gunner, I was, an’ a good one. Nobody knows how many broadsides we fired that day. But it was about half past one that the admiral was hit. Pacing the quarterdeck, he was. With the captain—Captain Hardy." He screwed up his face. "There was some idiots as says he was paradin’ with a chest full o’ medals. They haven’t been in a sea battle! Anyway, when he was at sea he never dressed like that. Shabby, he was, wore an ordinary blue jacket, like anyone else. He wore sequin copies of his orders, but if you ever spent time at sea, you’d know they tarnish in a matter o’ days:’ He shook his head in denial again. "And you couldn’t hardly see anybody to make ’em out clear during a battle. Smoke everywhere. Could miss your own mother not a dozen feet from you." He stopped for a few minutes to catch his breath.
Hester thought of offering him more tea, fresh and hot, but she could see that memory was more important, so she sat and waited.
He resumed his story, telling her of the knowledge of victory and the crushing grief felt by the entire fleet when they knew Nelson was dead. Then of the other losses, the ships and the men gone, the wounded, the securing of the prizes, and then the storm which had arisen and caused even further devastation. He described it in simple, vivid words, and his emotion was as sharp as if it had all happened weeks before, not fifty-five years.
He told of putting Nelson’s body in a cask of brandy to preserve it so it could be buried in England, as he had wished.
"Just a little man, he was. Up to my chin, no more," he said with a fierce sniff. "Funny that. We won the greatest victory at sea ever—saved our country from invasion — an’ we came home with flags lowered, like we lost—because he were dead." He fell silent for some time.
She rose and boiled the kettle again, resetting the tray and making a light supper for him with a piece of pie cut into a thin slice, and hot tea.
After he had eaten with some pleasure, he told her of Nelson’s funeral and how all London had turned out to wish him a last farewell.
"Buried in a special coffin, he was," he added with pride. "Plain an’ simple, like death, or the sea. Made from wood taken from the wreckage of the French flagship at the Battle of the Nile. Pleased as punch when Hallowell gave it to him way back, he was. Kept it all those years. Laid in the Painted Hall in Greenwich Hospital. First mourners come on January fourth." He smiled with supreme satisfaction. "Prince o’ Wales hisself."
He took a deep breath and let it out in a rasping cough, but held up his hand to prevent her from interrupting him. "Laid there four days. While all the world went by to pay their respects. Then we took him up the river, on Wednesday morning. The coffin was placed on one of the royal barges made for King Charles II, an’ all covered over in black velvet, with black ostrich plumes, and went in a flotilla up to London. Eleven other barges, there were, all the livery companies with their banners flying. Never seen so much gold and color. Stiff wind that day, too. Fired the guns every minute, all the way up to Whitehall Stairs."
He stopped again, blinking hard, but he could not keep the tears from spilling over and running down his cheeks.
"Next day we took him to Saint Paul’s. Great procession, but mostly army. Only navy there was us — from the Victory herself." His voice cracked, but it was from pride as well as grief. "I was one of them what carried our battle ensigns. We opened them up now and again so the crowd could see the shot holes in them. They all took their hats off as we passed. It made a sound like the noise of the sea." He rubbed his hand across his cheek. "There isn’t anything I’d take this side o’ heaven to trade places with any man alive who wasn’t there."
