He frowned. ‘I thought there was some provision in England.’
‘There isn’t, sir,’ she said, sprung tight and ready to argue if he tried to say she might like to consider shore work. Shore work would mean some miserable convent hospital surrounded by people she didn’t know. And, she was eleven years older than Missouri. People would assume he was her son and take that as an excuse to be repulsive. ‘And I can’t afford the rent.’
‘You’re sure you’re happy, without protection? It might be better to come aboard as a married woman now.’
‘I trust in the authority of your officers, sir,’ she promised. It was true; the officers were strict, and she had never had any trouble. Partly, that was because she was tall and flat-chested, and possessed of a sexless straightforwardness that made her invisible most of the time. When it didn’t, she found that a lot of difficulties could be solved by stabbing someone with a suture needle and then lamenting how dreadfully clumsy you were. Perhaps you got the occasional punch in the head, but you couldn’t go round being precious about things like that. A bit of fighting was improving.
‘I’m not asking to be paid, sir,’ she pressed. ‘I just want a berth and three meals a day for me and my brother. The same as before. As a volunteer.’ She swallowed. ‘Please. I’m good. If you hire a student instead it’ll cost you a fortune and he’ll know half as much.’
‘I know,’ the captain said, waving his hand. ‘I’ll sign you on as Mr Lawrence and then we can pay you for your trouble. Just do me one favour; cut your hair and put on some trousers, and at least the Admiralty inspector will think we’ve made some sort of nod to the rules when he comes round. And – aha, hello young man,’ he added to Missouri, who smiled and hid behind her skirt.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Agatha said, afire with a disproportionate sense of victory. Lord Lawrence could go and bugger a duck.
Much later, in England, people were shocked when she told them she had joined the navy just to avoid paying rent. But what you had to remember about the Spanish navy, especially in those days, was that they had thought the English habit of sending their sailors out to sea for years at a time was barbaric. Spanish ships only ever did short stints; normally it was about six weeks. It wasn’t the punishing life it was for English sailors. A few weeks at sea, a week in port; easy. It had been a good life, and for five years, she hadn’t regretted it for a second.
When the war came, it was sudden. The Trinidad left Cadiz to escort a merchant ship to Arabia, and when they came home, the British had gone peculiar and declared war on themselves – some of them in the colonies in America, against some others at home, apparently because of tea, which Agatha had to admit did seem typical. The ones in America seemed for hazy reasons to be the favoured side as far as Madrid was concerned, and the short, cheerful runs round Europe and Africa were finished. They were sent to Florida.
She wasn’t scared. The Trinidad was a behemoth. Nothing had even come close to sinking it. Like everyone else, she was just irritated that they would have to cart a whole army regiment across the Atlantic. That was to say, two hundred people who would be seasick for the entire crossing.
Missouri, who was ten by then, had a lot more in the way of common sense. He studied the troops as they clanked aboard, disapproval etched across him.
‘So we’re at war now,’ he said. ‘Does that mean we’re meant to start killing people?’
‘Well, we might,’ said Agatha, who was distracted, because most of the boarding troops were Irish; it seemed mad that they would be part of the Spanish army, but they were wearing the colours and looking cheerful at the idea of a fight. For the first time in all her life with the fleet, she felt anxious about her own surname and wondered if she should pretend to be fully Spanish.
‘But the English haven’t done anything to us. You’re English.’
Agatha pulled him against her side. He was small, and it always gave her a nasty stab of guilt if she looked at him for too long. He should have been taller, but for those months they’d waited for Lawrence’s reply, she hadn’t been able to feed him properly and it had never stopped showing. ‘You won’t have to do anything, we’re just moving the soldiers on this run. And anyway, it’s going to fizzle out soon. America’s too big, the colonies will never be able to organise themselves properly without London.’
He looked uncomfortable. He was too dutiful to argue, though, and only took himself off to what everyone acknowledged was his corner of the infirmary, along with his exam books and the ship’s cat. She stroked them both on her way past and worried that, despite growing up on a ship with a thousand people on it, he was turning out shy.
They arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi in boiling, swampy weather. It kept blowing itself into storms, and as the Trinidad and the fleet from Havana furled their sails to keep from smashing into the reefs, the sky roiled muggy grey. A mile from the last British outpost in Florida, the officers sent the children below.
Agatha had seen skirmishes before. What she hadn’t seen was a wholesale assault on a port. She hadn’t seen the way people on the dock looked when the fleet sailed in. People literally dropped what they had been carrying and ran, and rightly so, because the wharves were in range of the flagship’s guns.
For all the British must have known an attack was coming, the place looked utterly unprepared. The wooden church towers were peaceful, and there was a soft haze over the swamp in the distance. They had called in their own troops and allies – there was an Indian encampment just outside the town and she watched as their warriors mounted up to face the Spanish battalions – but there were too few. Maybe a few hundred. The Trinidad alone had brought that many men. The fleet had brought thousands.
If it had been a simple matter of chaos, it might have been better. But from this distance, she could see the geometry of the battle plan, the weight of the calculation behind the bang of a thousand soldiers marching. Their jackets were bright white. Immaculate.
The ships were, everyone said, only there to transport troops and set them ashore some distance from the port, but they shelled the town too. One of the officers said something about forcing the pitiful few British ships clear of the bay. She saw people vaporise, and even though it was right in front of her, she couldn’t quite believe it. Chain shot was designed to punch through a ship’s hull; it wasn’t supposed to be used on humans. The strafe destroyed everything in the harbour. A warehouse exploded, and it must have been a powder magazine, because the flash was pure, apocalyptic silver. She didn’t hear it even so, because the thunder of the guns just in front of her would have drowned out God himself.
The guns only stopped when their troops reached the town. She always remembered how the soldiers sounded. It was the way that some of the men were laughing; hysterical, too high. She was glad when an Indian rider powered through some of them. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. But then someone wrenched him off the horse by his hair and six men ripped him to pieces. The horse tore away, and then she lost it, black in the black smoke.
She went to find Missouri afterwards on the gun deck. He ran across and hugged her, and then asked, panicked, if she was all right. She didn’t understand at first, but then saw she was covered with other people’s blood; insufficient though they had been, the port guns were in range. She promised she was, and crushed him close again to prove it. The deck was still full of eye-aching smoke and the tang of gunpowder. The gunners themselves were blank with relief now it was over. Here and there, powder monkeys were coming through with buckets of water, which they tipped over the guns. The metal hissed, and simmering bubbles rushed across the muzzles before bursting away into mists of steam.