Horatio Hornblower Fanfiction: When My Time Comes by Sharpeslass

Author’s notes: I took some liberties with the time-line (sort of blended book with movie-verse and apparently added a small outboard motor to the Retribution… Well, they could have had a very good wind…)

Much thanks to Jedishampoo for the concept and for editing out a boatload of ellipses.

I also beg forgiveness from the estate of T.S. Eliot for borrowing and revising a few of his lines.

***

Yorkshire

Late February, 1802

What was he doing here? This was never a part of the job… not the one he’d signed on for. The thought had risen unbidden to Matthews’ mind with an increasing regularity as he approached his long journey’s end. Still, with the same compulsion that drove him to rigorous care in sewing up the hammocks enfolding the newly dead, he felt a part of himself obliged – certainly not always, but in some few cases – to take up this task. He knew precious few others who would do so.

The business of sailing was the business of tackles, rigs, cannons, and capricious winds… but it was also the bitter business of death. A thing young Jim Carver had learned first-hand on his first time out.

The poor lad had barely found his sea legs before Captain Sawyer’s foolish attempt on the Spanish fort had blown them out from under him. All of fourteen, Matthews supposed. The lad had clung to life with fierce tenacity; speaking under laudanum, pain and delirium of the mother who waited at home for news of him… speaking of a pride in family that Matthews had once known himself but through both tide and time had somehow lost. All of his real roots had been swept nearly away by the miles of sea now behind him.

He wiped a startled tear from his eye as the ale-cart (his latest in a line of begged or purchased conveyances) brought him ever closer to a humble cottage in Denby Dale… so very near to and so very like the Yorkshire home of his own youth.

He knew that without his aid young Jim Carver’s effects (not that he had many) would have arrived at his home one way or t’other, along with a letter his family might or might not have been able to read.

"Died in glory," it would have said. "Died fighting for His Royal Majesty King George." In short, died with his boots on. Aye, and they might have been too, he thought. But no one could confirm the fact, since they couldn’t locate the poor boy’s legs.

How Jim had screamed for the pain in them, those phantom limbs. For days upon days before he died… "Can you not save me from this pain in my legs?" Well, God or the devil had done what Dr. Clive could not. The lad doubtless felt no pain now. God rest his poor soul.

But Carver was just one of many dead. Matthews’ gesture on his behalf was merely a small nod to all the young seamen lost – one he felt was made no more significant by the difficulty of its undertaking.

Matthews had played father to many young men in his time at sea and yet had fathered no sons of his own… least none that he knew of. That thought brought back a smile, albeit one that touched his grim-set mouth alone. It never lit his eyes… which glinted bright sorrow through the weathered crinkles of a face that had spent too much of thirty-odd years in the wind, sun and rain.

There was some comfort to be had. Matthews thanked the Good Lord that Captain Hornblower had survived the ugly ordeal with life, limb and reputation intact.

For all his indiscriminate patrimony, Matthews felt a certain specific tenderness for the morose hero of the hour… of every hour. He allowed himself to take a sense of pride in the young officer… sentiments no less warranted, so he felt, than Commodore Pellew’s own. After all, hadn’t he raised Hornblower up from a mere midshipman? He hadn’t promoted the man but he had taught him a thing or two, and on occasion even saved his life. A debt well repaid. "His majesty’s latest bad bargain." Never had less true words been spoken. But who was to have known? At that early time, who was to have known?

The driver was waiting for his pennies and Matthews found himself almost unable to move as the chill of twilight deepened around him. His own legs, solid and real, were momentarily as useless as the lost limbs of dead Carver; the lad now sewed and sunk in sheets fifteen-fathoms deep.

He recovered himself at last and forced himself to action.

"Thank’ee." Out of habit he knuckled his forehead at the driver after handing over a few precious coins… coins that might have been fairly spent on drink and women, for Matthews was right fond of both.

But he knew where his heart slept.

With the Retribution in a Plymouth dock undergoing re-fits, Matthews had been in a position to make this sad journey. Not undertaking the effort would have sent the port-tavern ale running dry as dust down his throat and made lying with any woman seem like lying in a grave.

His shipmate Styles had had no such compunctions. "I’m not spending a fortnight’s leave and all my savings tramping more than halfway across bloody England."

Matthews hadn’t pressed him. It was doubtful Captain Hornblower would have granted Styles permission to travel so far from port in any case. The Captain wouldn’t overestimate Styles’ motivations any more than he would underestimate Matthews’ own. For himself, there was a part of him that wanted to see Yorkshire again, though he had no blood ties left to call him home. And, in spite of his usual fondness for company, the idea of a solitary journey had appealed to him.

Styles was doubtless about breaking any number of laws at this very moment. Matthews had felt a sincere apprehension that without his guidance the boisterous man might actually do himself some harm… or land himself in a gaol. But one could only play father to one man at a time, and he would have more time in the future with that black-sheep-of-a-bastard Styles.

Duty to the dead boy called louder… and would soon be over and done with.

Look ahead. Look ahead. Every dark task that is "now" will soon be a thing of the past, a memory with its own devils… but over just the same.

The door opened on a woman in her early thirties, clearly tired and poor, but a bright prettiness still shone through. Her hair was a deep auburn and her eyes the same sea green as her son’s had been. For a moment Matthews was lost for all his carefully rehearsed words.

"Mrs. Carver?" he managed.

"Miss Carver, sir."

"Ah, is your mother about then?"

She put her fisted hands at her hips. "My mother has been dead nigh on twenty years." Her eyes sparkled for a moment with humor. Matthews breathed hard and cursed his task more than ever.

Her dark-adapted gaze took in, and suddenly comprehended, his sailor’s clothing. What humor had shone in her eyes was banished. A light shut off… out. Darkness. The prettiness faded and ten years climbed onto her face in the work of an instant.

"You have news of my son… of Jimmy?"

"M’um, ‘tis bad news I’m afraid."

But she knew. He’d seen it in her eyes the moment she recognized the emblem, still of the Renown, on the hat he now helplessly held along with the small bundle of Jim Carver’s belongings. She knew already.

He still had to form the words. Convention demanded it.

"Your son was a fine lad m’um, a brave lad, one of the best. He died in duty… he died in battle… for," here he stumbled, but finished all the same, "King George M’um." (He died with his boots on… I’ll not trouble her with details. No, not even if she asks.) "He spoke of you to the end m’um." Matthews clenched and twisted his hat in his hands but looked unwaveringly into her eyes as they watered and spilled.

She was far younger than he’d expected, but what right had he had to expect anything? He’d hoped, nonetheless, for an aged woman with a husband and a dozen clinging children, warming her and comforting her in her grief.

But Matthews saw no signs of a husband in the tidy, fire-lit cottage and Carver had clearly not been one of a dozen.

Was he her first… her eldest… her only?

Matthews watched a drama of sorrow and anger unfold through the medium of Miss Carver’s eyes. The iris-sized shadow dance ended finally with the descent of a curtain of guilt and Matthews remembered that Jim Carver had not been pressed. He’d joined up of his own free will. "A few extra shillings to help me mum," the boy had once confided.

"The sea were in the boy’s blood, miss," Matthews now told the grieving mother, reading her transparent thoughts. "You couldn’t have stopped him going. Not ever."

Her hands, which she now held to her head, were work-worn and older in appearance than her flushed, heartsick face. He could not help himself. He dropped hat and bundle and caught those hands up in his own. He was shaken by their trembling through and through, and felt his own heart beat to the tune of her mourning.

[Who would have expected that she would be beautiful? Matthews wanted, in that instant, to take all of her pain and make it his own and then sink it, as he’d sunk his own griefs, into the bosom of the ocean to trouble him no more.]

This last trip… this last Captain… this mutiny… this court-martial… all of this death… (Kennedy, Wellard, Carver… each one of Matthew’s own in one way or another.) It was suddenly too much, and as if her pain had traveled into his own blood, through the conduit of their joined hands, his chin crumpled and he found himself fighting back tears.

It was a matter of moments for their clenched hands to draw them both into a tight embrace. He stroked her hair as he wept silently into it, giving and drawing comfort through the contact.

"There, lass," he whispered. "There." No words would ever be enough. No promises of brighter tomorrows would endure. He had only the soothing, stroking sounds and the platitudes that he used to still the cries of the men who had passed on under his watch and sometimes in his arms. "Shh… hush. T’will all be made right in the end. You’ll see. Quiet now." (He bit off the word lad.) All the same things he said to the dead men in their dying. For the woman in his arms was dying, or a part of her was.

Would it all be made right in the end? Matthews had once thought so, but didn’t know anymore.

He wasn’t sure he cared as much for the Almighty and His plans as much as he once had.

And there was a still greater loss of faith on his part. The siren song he’d always heard on the waves, the murmuring and in turn roaring promise of a deep sea, more powerful than God, had ceased to sing to him sometime during the dark voyage to Kingston. Now Matthews’ only belief was in what small human comfort he himself could give. At this moment, that wasn’t worth bloody much.

No thoughts of his, in spite of the tight embrace or the prettiness of the woman, were at the time carnal. So, it came as a surprise to him when she slipped her slender arms from around his neck and stretched a small palm to grasp at the front of his trousers.

His body responded instantly to the over-familiar touch. His own hands reflexively tightened into a fierce clench upon her waist. She’s not right in her mind just now, he told himself, willing his burgeoning hardness to subdue itself in spite of her insistent stroking.

"Lass," he warned. "You won’t want to be doing that."

"Won’t I then?" She fixed her swimming gaze on his uncertain eyes. Her own eyes now spoke of an eagerness to cling to life and living in spite of this near mortal blow. All passionate tears and face-aflame, she dragged soft lips across the graying stubble of his rough face and, never leaving off her maddening touching whispered into his ear. "You are a good man… I can tell it."

He couldn’t say if it was the absolute conviction in her voice that that caused his capitulation or (though much more likely) her nimble fingers at work, spreading, grasping and stroking at him through the worn fabric of his breeches. He pressed his lips to hers in spite of all his best intentions.

Matthews felt he was taking a terrible advantage. But God help him if he could stop this now it was started.

"Lass… love," he pulled away slightly, still trying to resist, hoping against his finer feelings that she would continue her ardent fostering of his failure to do so.

Her adept and undaunted hands unfastened his breeches and, in doing so, undid him completely. She reached into his trousers and caressed his bare, hardened flesh. He could barely breathe for the sweet pleasure of the touch.

This was never the same as paying for it… It was a different act entirely. This way was so much better. His eyes closed, his breath quickened and the taut threads of his resistance snapped. Matthews stepped away from her and pulled the still-open door shut, closing out the night’s chill and returning to her warm embrace.

Kissing her hungrily he pushed the loose linen off her shoulders with an abrupt movement of hard, calloused hands. The fabric caught briefly on her erect nipples, slid further and stopped its descent just above her waist, held in place by the tightly laced girdling of leather encircling her middle and holding up her rough homespun skirts.

To see her half-naked like this, backlit by the firelight of her small hearth, Matthews would have thought her more maid than mother. She was as fresh and ripe as the white flesh of an autumn apple, with neither bruise nor blemish. Only the dark duskiness that peaked each breast betrayed her untouched appearance.

He looked on her exposed flesh for only a moment before a pressing desire sent his hardened palms chafing over her bared breasts. His mouth soon followed, his rough half-grown beard leaving a trail of red where it scraped across her fair skin… in spite of his best efforts to gentle his loosed passions.

[ Miss Carver… oh, what in God’s name do I call her now?]

His mind reeled as her bare arms clutched him closer, fingers tangling in his grey curls. This wasn’t what I meant… not what I meant at all. But he was lifting her, carrying her unerringly as she clung to him, toward the small room that contained her narrow bed. No, he confirmed in his mind, no husband had lived here for some time… if ever there was such.

The passion between them was unstilted, as they made frantic tearing attempts at disrobing without breaking the contact of their mouths and hands.

Matthews’ fears that sorrow alone drove her were banished when his roving hands found her wet for him and undeniably willing. He tasted her first on his fingers then moved down her body to imbibe more fully.

The salt of her tears still clung to his lips as he pressed them fervently to the pooling heat between her thighs. It was a bittersweet blend of desperation, longing and comfort. She soon climaxed with gratifying shudders beneath the onslaught of his skilled tongue and he wasted no time in moving to take her.

It had been a long time for him… and longer still since he’d made the effort to pleasure a woman. Where the jaded whores and light-skirts that most often came his way were concerned Matthews had long ago abandoned any sort of performance-pride in favor of his own immediate gratifications. It was a green lad or a foolish man convinced by the formulaic fakeries of dockside doxies.

There was no pretence discernable in the responses of the woman beneath him now. Her legs wrapped around him as he sheathed himself in her almost virginal tightness. Only a slight gasp and a clenching series of convulsions betrayed that she had come for him a second time.

He tried very hard to stay silent… to maintain the quiet intensity she projected but found he could not manage it.

"Sweet Christ, Lass," he muttered, feeling the aching, perfect pain intensify as he moved within her. "Oh, God… Oh, God luv." He had no idea what else he might have said as he emptied himself into her soft body. It was all a haze of pounding blood and acute pleasure.

Dizzy and spent he collapsed atop her, breathing hard… recalling himself only some minutes later. He lifted himself gently from off her and moved to her side. She looked soft and content, though her pale face still bore the marks of her tears.

A sudden terrible guilt assailed him. "Lass," he said. "What is your name?"

"Does it matter?" she asked.

"Aye, to me it does. Very much." He stroked the gentle curve of her cheek as he spoke. "It does."

"Fine then." She smiled and for a moment looked very like a child. "My name is Jenny, if you think you’ll remember it."

"So I will, Jenny," he vowed in almost reverential tones. "It would take me a proper long time to forget."

"Sailors’ memories are short." Her words were somewhat sharp, but her eyes softened as she looked into his. "And what do they call you when you’re at home?"

"Matthews, mostly." He chuckled lightly. "It’s Daniel by birth. Dan, my family called me. Not that I can rightly remember when last I heard it used. Might not know to answer to it after all this time."

"You see?" she smiled. "Short memories."

"Not so short as all that, lass. I’ve been at sea nearly thirty years, so I have."

"Then p’rhap I’ll just call you ‘sailor.’ It’s no doubt what you’re used to hearing from my like." The bitterness was back now, with a deep draught of audible self-recrimination to boot.

"It weren’t like that love," he protested, meaning it. She only touched his face lightly in response and changed the subject.

"When does your ship leave?"

"Too soon, sweet Jenny. The Retribution is way off in Plymouth. I hadn’t thought to be here more or less an hour. I’ll have to be going before long."

"Of course." She pulled away slightly and made to rise, but Matthews caught her hand.

"It doesn’t mean I want to go."

"I know," she said but rose in any case, detaching his hand when he would have pulled her back to his side. As she began dressing, Matthews watched her, unwilling to move for the moment. She turned to smile at him, half-clothed with her rich hair tumbling over her still unbound shift. "You have been most kind."

He swallowed over a rising tightness in his throat. "I fear I’ve not been kind to you this night."

"But you have Mr. Matthews… Dan. I know that you needn’t have come here."

"I were in the neighborhood." She laughed out loud, this time with sincere good humor, and moved back toward him, sitting on the bed and taking up his hand in hers. She pressed his weathered palm to her gentle lips.

"Yes, Denby Dale’s but a stone’s throw from Plymouth."

"I liked the lad," Matthews muttered, embarrassed now. "And I hail from these parts."

"Family?" she asked.

"None now."

"But a friend here now, if ever you should need one."

"I hope so, lass."

[She pressed food on him before he departed and in spite of another frantic and unpremeditated coupling atop her rough kitchen table Matthews managed to tear himself away in enough time that he knew (if he set a brisk pace) he needn’t fear his ship sailing without her Bosun.]

***

Near Portsmouth

Early April, 1802

As the Retribution sailed toward England, Matthews leaned out over the rails. The sounds of the men celebrating the recent peace - with rowdiness and full-rations of rum - echoed from below decks. He held a piece of parchment loosely in his hand and the sea breeze ruffled it as the ship tacked into the wind.

"Good news?" asked Captain Hornblower coming up beside him; his spyglass tucked under one arm.

"Sir," said Matthews, straightening. "Yes, Sir. I think so Sir." He nodded at the letter. "I’m to be a father, Sir."

"Really, Matthews?" Hornblower smiled. "I don’t think I knew that you were even married."

Matthews shifted slightly. "Well, not as such, Sir. But these things don’t always work that way. You understand, Sir."

"Hah… h’erm," Hornblower strove for appropriate comment.

"S’all right, Sir. There’s no ill feelings between me and the lass, none at all." Matthews smiled in an effort to put his young commanding officer at ease. "It’s to be my first… that I know of, as might be. What with the peace and all, I might even have the chance to go and see ‘im, or her. Maybe marry the mother, if she’ll have me."

"That seems the right thing, Matthews." Sternness warred with amusement in Hornblower’s eyes. "The right thing altogether."

"Well, you never know, Sir. She’s a mite younger than I am. And now I might soon be out of a job, she may have better prospects."

"Certainly her child couldn’t wish for a better father." Horatio clearly felt on solid ground with this statement, and Matthews was touched by the words.

"I do try sir, in my own way. I do try."

He knuckled his forehead at the captain and headed for’ard to inspect his men’s work. Peace or no peace, there was no reason for things to fall slack.

Matthews felt his heart lift with the wind. He knew again with certainty that there were forces at work beyond his ken… In his time he’d hung from riggings, wielded a blade, seen death and heard cannon-shot. And with the same ears he had heard, in the silence of the stillest seas, the mermaids singing each, to each. And he knew now that when his own time came, they would sing for him.

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