Robby Run: A Novel of Blood and Ambition in The Antebellum Navy by Sutton Stern

Author:Sutton Stern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-04-11T06:22:45+00:00

Chapter 26

The stone floor of the prison was rough. The mortar of its walls was moist and stained. Roebuck and Benoit, the surgeon, ducked into the artificial night of a dark room at its entrance lit by a few candles on the floor. A guard with the smell of an old man sat in the back. Roebuck showed him a silver real. The man didn’t move. Roebuck showed another. The man looked at it. With the third real, the man rose and said wait here in Spanish.

It was ten minutes before a shackled Lieutenant Malvey emerged from a hall even darker than the room.

“Hello, Captain.”

“How is it for you inside, Mr. Malvey?” Roebuck asked.

“I’d rather be in chains on the Savannah.” Malvey tried a grin.

“Take these,” said Roebuck, handing over a burlap sack full of salt pork, a quinine tonic, and lemons.

Benoit said, “How much water do you receive a day?”

“Two mugs, one in the morning and again about half the day later. Have you seen Mr. Holman?”

Roebuck said, “Not yet, but I have for him what I’ve just given you.”

“How is your stomach?” Benoit said.

“I’ve got the shits.” Malvey’s lids closed. His face was cut and bruised. “Are they going release me?”

Benoit looked at the lieutenant’s tongue and used a magnifier to examine his eyes. “Take your shirt off, Lieutenant Malvey.”

“Rather not.”

“Do it,” said the surgeon.

Malvey pulled off his shirt.

Even in the room’s darkness Roebuck could see the long-elevated scars criss crossing his back. He said without thinking, “You’ve been flogged.”

“Aye, sir.”

“When?’

“Years ago.”

“For what?”

“Insubordination.”

“It’s a gift of yours.”

“One I’d be pleased to give up.”

Roebuck nodded. He wanted to ask how many lashes but didn’t.

The surgeon spent thirty minutes treating Malvey’s face and torso for cuts and feeling for broken bones. They looked in on Holman, who was faring better. Afterward, Benoit said Malvey had five broken ribs and if he was beaten again, one would poke a half-inch hole in his lung.

“They are beating him,” Roebuck said. It wasn’t hard to imagine Malvey asking for it.

“They are.”

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