Before The Broadside
Historical flash-fiction
Frozen I stood, not by frost, but fear.
We lined the gunwales, cutlasses and axes slick in our grips; our throats dry as the breeze that carried us, inevitable as time, into our enemy’s reach. My heart was a smith’s hammer against my breast, beating with the quarters drum, thrumming to break out.
Two ships, of two-hundred souls each, meeting by a sliver of chance in this silver-hued, sky-vast sea. We were crawling up their port-side, but already I could mark sweat-glazed French faces.
Wouldst thou think ill o’me if, in this moment, I wished I were born of Brittany, over Britain? For I would find myself amongst the ragged, rabid dogs that now hollered for English blood. But then England hollered back. Lo, we haggard hounds leaned o’er the gunwales and bellowed! What we might do, would do, will do, with our shots and swords unto them, with some invoking mothers, daughters, and the Lord.
But not I. Though my throat was past raw, I dared not use it. The men at my flanks were frothing at their muzzles, but there I swayed, saving my spittle. For I could not scream, or speak, but barely breathe. Against the gunwale I leaned, a flintlock in my left grasp and in my right, a cleaver.
‘Cleaver’ is not a byname for my boarding axe or cutlass. Aye, we have drawn blood in countless encounters, but ne’er have we taken life. This knife is first to hand for broth bones and officer’s roasts. “All hands!” the cry had rung, so to deck we scrambled, and the flintlock pistol was thrust unto me.
I knew not how to use it — an inkling would have to do.
I am no pyrate. I ne’er sought to be. I chose to see the world, as a galley cook, albeit. Yet here I stood, under grey skies, the gunwhale and me and four-hundred souls, about to meet our doom and maker. Our maker, aye. If here He be, then a certain recipe for blood He hath made ready. The ingredients were cast in Fate’s pot, to be stirred until red.
Red as the cross of St George that fluttered o’erhead.
Frozen I stood, not by frost, but fear. I gripped my tools tight, and listened, not to the singing steel and scorching oak, but my disquiet heart. I stole a salted breath before powder smoke soiled the air. For now it began.
Take me, the cook’s hand, plunged into the fray. Toss and turn him, stun and sear him. Then the blinding, thundering broadside, and swift volleys of lead spheres. Splinter, fracture, rupture, ruin. Now bring us all to boil, this four-hundred soul-soup, and skim off the living from the slop.
By some grace, or gristle of luck, I shall rise up to the top.
