Leeward 🏳️‍🌈 [PUBLISHED BY CANELO]

2: Aureate

20 June 1800

Captain Hiram Nightingale had weathered three weeks across the Atlantic without so much as a turned stomach. His head had ached at the remorseless sun, but he had become accustomed to that after years of sensitivity. Now, though, with the wind shifting in the Maiden's courses and Antigua nearing, he found himself on the edge of his cot, hands pressed to his eyes. Hot shivers of nausea disturbed him as every wave rolled the cabin in slow undulations.

He had not been seasick since he was a twelve-year-old midshipman spending his first nights away from land. That was decades ago and yet the emotions were the same: crushing loneliness, doubt eating at his bones, terror at what lay ahead.

As a child, however, he had wanted to go home. He could not do that now – not without returning to memories that hurt to reawaken.

Nightingale slowly removed his hands. They shook as if he was in the southern latitudes and not the baking heat of the tropics. Disgusted, he gripped a thin wrist to try and stop it. The trembling continued.

Damn it, he thought. Damn it, damn it. He had prayed this venture would stop such weakness.

"By the mark four!"

The cry from the main deck echoed through the bulkheads. Nightingale pretended that he was hiding down here to avoid the general busyness of a ship coming into port. They did not need him, a Royal Navy post-captain, judging the actions of a West Indiaman. In truth, they had performed well; the Maiden's skipper, Whitehead, had been very accommodating in giving him this passage – and he had kept his head during the blow across the Northern Tropic, only losing one spar.

Soon, Nightingale would step back into that sphere of command, although on a much higher pedestal. If he set his feet right, a commodore's pennant may await him. Once, he might have yearned for such a thing, hoisting his flag, taking responsibility for a flotilla of vessels, achieving glory.

Another hot wave of nausea rolled over him. He breathed through it, chest aching with every intake of air. What would people say if they knew Captain – perhaps Commodore – Nightingale was shivering and quaking like a child, close to weeping?

Angry, he rose to his feet. He tottered at the sudden change in position then, in one determined movement, flipped open the lid of his sea-chest. His clothes had been packed and repacked with a neat, naval precision. Back in Portsmouth, Louisa had cast a questing eye over the contents and asked, "Are you certain you have everything you need?" as if ramming home the point that he would be gone for months, perhaps more, before she decided to join him.

Nightingale had delayed the inevitable all the way across the Atlantic. Atop his books and papers and spare shirts and breeches and drawers, he touched the thick deep-blue wool of his captain's dress coat. Slowly, gently, he pulled it out, shaking out the pleats and brushing the non-existent dust from the epaulettes. Gold lace trimmed the cuffs and the lapels, and anchors decorated the silver buttons. None of it looked bright or impressive in the cramped confines of the merchant ship's cabin. Nightingale rubbed at a patch of lace, realised he was deliberately obstructing his obligation, so drew the coat quickly over his arms. He had to tug at it to fit his now-thinner frame, fiddling like an awkward boy.

It was the first time he had donned it in almost two years. On the Lion, he had never appeared on deck without it in full. That seventy-four-gun heroine was far away now, though, and he simply felt shabby. The tired, ageing man he had become should have been a stranger, yet he well recognised the pallid appearance, the drawn mouth and sallow green eyes, the curling red hair pulled sharply back into its tie. He had become a mockery of his former glory.