A letter from Flanders, January 1802

Author: Skud
Fandom: Hornblower
Rating: Explicit sexuality
Categories: Serious fiction, Epistolary fiction
Date published: 2004-07-09 (also on LiveJournal)
Archive URL: http://scriptorium.infotrope.net/fiction/edletter1.mhtml
Length: words (0 kb)

This work is part of the All the King's Men series:
ATKM Reading Guide; Consent; Major MacPherson's Ass; All the King's Men; Pellew to Edrington, May 1799; Edrington to Pellew, May 1799; Hornblower to Edrington, May 1799; A Lying Sort of Summer; Thus Friends Absent Speak; Edrington to Kennedy, June 1800; Nature and Degree; A letter from Flanders, January 1802; A letter from Kingston, January 1802; Another Sunrise; For the Sake of a Wavering Light

Feedback welcome by email to Skud at fanfic@infotrope.net or via LiveJournal comments

Disclaimer: The characters in this work belong to C. S. Forester and A&E and are used without permission. Please also read this site's standard disclaimer.

Flanders, January 1802

"Lieutenant."

The hunched figure by the fire turned and looked up at him. "Oh. Major Edrington."

"Is... is Lieutenant Marks any better?"

"He's dead."

Edrington looked away, then back again to where Norton sat wrapped in his cloak, staring into the fire. His face was blotchy, his hair dishevelled, and the way he he hugged his arms around his chest made him look very young.

"I'm sorry." Edrington put a hand on his shoulder, meant to be reassuring, which suddenly seemed intrusive. "Excuse me." He stepped forward and lit a spill from the glowing coals of the fire.

"He did his duty, my Lord," said Norton in a low, shaking voice.

Edrington nodded, and turned abruptly on his heel.

* * *

My dear Lieutenant Bush,
I hope I do not presume too much on what I have come to consider -- despite its brevity -- as our friendship in taking up my pen to write to you.
You are, I believe, better able than most men to comprehend the uneasiness that besets me when I consider the situation we discussed upon our last meeting. Certain though I am of H and A's carefulness and sound judgement -- but no, that is too much like dissembling, for if I were certain I would at this moment be sleeping soundly, rather than writing to you. To come to the point, then: I would deem it a great kindness if, upon receipt of this letter, you would respond in kind and, I hope, offer me some assurance that my fears are as unfounded as I once told you yours were. Neither of them would thank me for my inquiry, and would, I am sure, inform me in no uncertain terms that they are well able to take care of themselves, which I hope you will understand as sufficient reason for me to apply to you for news, rather than to them directly.
I said that I would at this moment be sleeping, and indeed I should be doing so, were I able. I assure you that it is not through want of trying: I have seldom known hours to pass so slowly as they did tonight as I lay a-bed. I have not the patience for counting sheep past a hundred or so -- I doubt you will be surprised to hear it -- and instead fell to counting men, which is seldom effective as a soporific, especially when the men one is counting are all among the fallen.
Sir Edward Pellew once spoke to me of the Mathematics of Defeat, but I find that the Mathematics of Victory are hardly any pleasanter to consider; I have never known a victory entirely bloodless, and this time the cost was six of my men, the sixth having died tonight as I lay thinking about the other five, their widows and children, and the friends who mourn them and then step up to take their places in the ranks. There, I am waxing melancholic, and if this letter reaches you and you read it you have my permission to laugh at me, after the way I spoke to you of courage and duty and discipline. I only ask that you laugh at me in daylight, when I will be able to join you with equanimity.
I hope you will not laugh, however, when I tell you that my thoughts soon turned from the men under my command to those I hold in affection. Before we parted in Plymouth, you said that you would consider what I had said about H and A. I hope that that consideration, coupled with several weeks in their company, has brought you to esteem them as I do. I admit I cannot imagine anyone failing to succumb to A's charm and courage -- in fact I have witnessed the contrary on many occasions -- and if you have an ounce of sense in you I am sure you will by now appreciate H's value as an officer, even if he is the more difficult of the two to know as a man. If you feel for them even a fraction of the fondness I do, you cannot fail to appreciate the disquiet I felt as my mind turned from the general subject of the loss of good men our country daily endures to the specific (and yet strangely unknown, to me) dangers attendant upon sailors at sea during a time of war, and the even more particular risks you described aboard the Renown. Before I left England I spoke to a man -- I will not name him -- who has known Sawyer since before the first war, and confirmed that his manner and habits are quite changed this last year or two, and that he would not wish to sail under him now for all the prize-money in the world.
Now I cannot send this letter at all, for I doubt you would wish to receive such words aboard ship, but I hope you will not begrudge me the pretense of continuing to address you as I have done so far.

(continuing in a slightly different hand, as if the pen had been re-cut...)

In any case, after several hours of such thoughts, I was determined to rise and write to you -- a decision, I might add, which required more than a little fortitude. You must imagine me sitting huddled under my heaviest coat, with a candle and a glass of brandy in front of me and the ink nearly freezing in its bottle. Unless you are in the Baltic, you cannot fail but be warmer than I am tonight. I would almost envy you for it, if not for the fact that some other time I shall be in Egypt or the Indies while you are rounding the Horn in a storm.
You will look after my boys, won't you? I would ask them to look after you too, but I am sure they would look at me as if I had gone mad, and in any case I am not writing to them, at least not at the moment. I told you I would tell them nothing, and I didn't, despite their quizzing. You may imagine their amusement at the state of my wrists -- and my back -- and my rug! They were most solicitous for my welfare, and offered to let me rest, but I believe I managed to convince them that I was not in need of any coddling, despite my advanced years (as A was so kind as to mention).
That memory, I think, is almost enough to subdue the ranks of dead men marching through my mind. That, and the memory of what preceded it -- a dark stranger who followed me home and fucked me senseless and left marks on my wrists that I can still see, faintly; you should be proud of that -- has quite banished every unpleasant thought. And so, as I find it rather difficult to write with my prick in my hand, and my left hand at that, which I am sure you will understand is far from what I would wish, were it not even more difficult to write with it, I shall conclude this rather rambling letter, and then no doubt put it to the flame.

* * *

Two sheets, folded and pushed under the other papers in his writing desk. He took them out, turned them over in his hand, but did not unfold them.

Outside his tent, the field was frosted white under the pale morning sun. The fire had died to the merest glow under a thick layer of ash, and Norton was asleep, huddled into a ball against a tree stump.

Edrington kindled the fire, adding sticks and then logs until there was a healthy blaze. Norton stirred.

"Good morning, Lieutenant."

Norton rubbed his eyes, and unfolded his limbs. "Good morning, sir."

A small smile, sympathetic. "You look almost as badly in need of coffee as I am."

They sat on wooden stools by the fire, gloved hands wrapped around their cups, sipping at the black brew as the camp awoke around them.