Free Cross of Fire by Mark Keating

to the grey horizon and a picture of the crosstrees and furled sails of a dozen ships in the pool as if painted on the walls of a child’s bedroom.
    He was home.
    Even the sound of feet overhead and the hammering from the fore was comforting. The crash of the man stumbling through the coach shattered Coxon’s reverie, the reparation coming before Coxon could scowl.
    ‘My apologies, Captain,’ the young man made to salute, instinct over sense, forgetting that his hands were full.
    His hat was under his arm amongst a large parallel rule and rolled-up charts sticking out from every angle like spines on a porcupine. The salute precipitated the clanging fall of brass instruments and notebooks and another profuse apology as the man bent to gather his detritus.
    ‘Most sorry, sir!’ More metallic pieces of him seemed to fall off like a clock flying open as it tumbled down a staircase.
    ‘I am most dreadfully sorry, sir.’
    He bundled some of the tools and charts to the table with his hat which collided with Coxon’s and the coffee pot, agitating it across the table. He slapped his hand on it just in time for the save and just in time to scald his palm, which he now blew on and shook before handing it out to his captain.
    ‘Lieutenant Christopher Manvell, Captain! At your service, sir!’
    Coxon looked down at the hand and watched it slowly withdraw as he left it hanging.
    ‘ You are my appointed First?’ Coxon’s eyes dragged up the slender body of the man. A handsome if somewhat chalky face under queued auburn hair the shine and thinness of which gave the man a feminine appearance to Coxon’s mind, although it probably merely contrasted with his own coarse grey. The thick long eyebrows were dark and raised giving a permanently astonished look to the man’s face.
    ‘I am,’ Manvell said seriously. ‘Please forgive my brusque entrance, Captain.’
    ‘You did not knock, Lieutenant.’
    ‘No. Unquestionably I did not. For my innocence I did not expect you to be here, Captain, so soon. I had hoped to set up my charts in anticipation of your arrival.’
    ‘You are clumsy, sir!’
    ‘Indeed. But I am blessedly thin which has limited my propensity to disturb I find.’ He smiled and then pulled it back behind his lips as Coxon glared.
    Coxon moved away to the window lockers, turned his back. ‘Take up your hat, Mister Manvell. Leave and enter again. Correctly if you please.’
    Manvell backed from the room, sliding his hat from the table along with a divider which clanged like a dropped anvil behind Coxon’s back.
    Moments later Coxon heard the faint rap and bid enter. Manvell slunk into the room; Coxon watched his first lieutenant’s dejected reflection in the diamond shaped panes.
    ‘Come in, man.’
    Manvell stepped forward. ‘Lieutenant Christopher Manvell, Captain. Reporting for duty.’
    Another rap from the other outer coach door, the official entrance for visitors where a cot lay for gentlemen not of the crew, botanists or political advisers and such, and where a stool and marine and a hanging lighted lantern indicated that the captain was within.
    Coxon held up a hand for Manvell to be silent and called the party in. Thomas Howard swept through the door, his hat already neatly under his arm. His voice stalled as he saw Manvell.
    ‘What is it, Mister Howard?’ Coxon asked.
    Howard looked between them both.
    ‘I . . . I merely wished to inform the Standard that I could not find Lieutenant Manvell, sir.’
    Coxon introduced the lieutenant with an open palm.
    ‘It seems I have found him myself, Mister Howard. That will be all.’
    ‘Very good, sir.’ Howard clicked his heels and spun around out of the room, glad at that moment that he was not the First after the sight of Manvell’s flushed face and the mess of instruments and papers on the floor.
    Coxon scratched his hair, smoothing it forward as he spoke, his concentration on the polish of his floor.
    ‘Now, Mister Manvell,’ his eyes flashed