Free Honour Redeemed by David Donachie

someone to make sure his skull isn’t cracked.’
    ‘Then he’ll be here till doomsday, what with Mr Lewis lopping off legs and arms. Welsh he may be, but he’ll not put no blackamoor afore one of his own. He’ll be lancing boils before he gets round to this creature.’
    Markham looked at the surgeon’s back, at a filthy grey shirt streaked with the dark stain of excessive perspiration. To appeal to Lewis would probably be counter-productive. All he could do was leave Bellamy here, and drop by occasionally to see if he’d been treated. He stood up, passing over the coins.
    ‘Then make sure he doesn’t die of thirst.’
    ‘Happily,’ the loblolly boy replied, lifting his leather bucket and tipping it over Bellamy’s face. The Negro sat up suddenly, shaking his head, and cursing in an unintelligible tongue. The medical attendant looked at Markham triumphantly, with a toothless grin. ‘See, I told you he was lead-swingin’, didn’t I just?’
    ‘Which ship are you off?’ Markham demanded.
    ‘Agamemnon.’
    ‘Then I’ll have you know that your captain is a personal friend. So if you don’t want to find yourself out of this cushioned billet, digging trenches, you’ll do as I ask.’
    ‘I’ll take care of him, all right, your honour,’ the man replied, completely unabashed. Then he laughed, exposinghis gums again. ‘Can’t let him pass over, can I. If a sweep brings you luck with a dirty face and hands, stands to reason this crow will bring on double.’
    ‘Markham!’
    He recognised the voice well before he turned to face Captain Richard de Lisle, the commanding officer of the Hebe. Standing in the entrance, against the white bright sand, he was no more than a tubby silhouette. Small, compact and a stickler for his amour propre, he didn’t realise how such a position demeaned him.
    ‘Sir.’
    ‘I watched you disobey your orders coming ashore, and Bernard has confirmed that your deviation was deliberate. And what am I subjected to the minute I myself land? Colonel Hanger giving me chapter and verse about your damned insubordination.’
    ‘Have you, sir?’ Markham replied. He felt suddenly weary, too tired to stand to attention. The sun might be deflected by the awning, but the breeze had fallen away and the late afternoon heat was trapped and stifling in the confined space. Lanester’s food, which had revived him originally, was now inducing its own post-prandial torpor. Normally, facing de Lisle, he stood rigidly to attention and never looked the man in the eye. This was not through fear, but from a desire to avoid the little smirks that touched the captain’s lips every time he delivered one of his insults.
    Forced to weigh anchor from the Nore with the rest of the fleet, and told that he would have to take soldiers aboard to make up for his lack of proper marines, de Lisle had hit the cabin roof when he’d found out the identity of the officer who led them. He was careful to avoid the word bastard, having already discovered such a barb might cause Markham to strike a blow. But there were plenty of other cracks in his locker for an illegitimate rake, a known duellist who clearly lacked two guineas to rub together. That applied even if his natural father had beena full general, since dead parents had no influence. Hints that Markham was a Papist, and should never have been given a commission in the first place, surfaced often, as did references to what had happened in the American war, during and after the Battle of Guildford.
    If George Markham had withstood these insults with seeming fortitude, it was only through long exposure. There had hardly been a time in his life when he’d not been vulnerable to such gibes from some source. His parentage, when he was a child, had been no mystery. With a wealthy Protestant father not married to a middling Catholic mother, he’d fallen foul of both religious groups, an outsider to one and a traitor to the other. That had at least taught him to fight