dramatis personae for William Price and the thetis

 

Dramatis Personae in William Price of the ‘Thetis’

 

Historical characters

Sir William Wickham – the king’s spymaster

Edward Pellew – Admiral of the Mediterranean Fleet, Gibraltar station

Colonel Charles William Maxwell – governor of Freetown, Sierra Leone

Captain Henry Hyde – Acting in Maxwell’s place during a military action

 

My characters

Quarterdeck

William Price  - Master and Commander, therefore known as ‘Captain.’

John Scully – first lieutenant. One time press’d from gaol, helped by William, worked hard for his slightly irregular commission, courtesy of working for Sir William Wickham

Nathaniel ‘Nat’ Erskine, second lieutenant; acting guide to Sam Price

Robert Pigeon, third lieutenant, not required but arranged by Admiral Pellew

Amelia Price, née Finch, surgeon, William’s wife, rescued from the pirate, Henry Burkett. Daughter and heiress of Amos Finch, American merchant with a fleet of ships.

Ziv Stark, Marine lieutenant

Michael Ashe, Marine Ensign, from Stackfield’s school

Hiram Gubbins, Sailing Master [technically non-commissioned officer] had sailed with Amelia’s father and turned evidence on the pirate Henry Burkett, and signed up to join the Royal Navy

John Smith the 3^rd, ‘Smitty’ , Master’s Mate– wife, Anne. Son of a London bargee, done out of his inheritance by a greedy hand and left to drown as a child.

 

 

Wilfrid ‘Frid’ Percival, Supernumerary, second son of the Viscount of Withimere, kidnapped by Jeb Walden, and decided to stay as carpenter to avoid arranged marriage.

William Stackfield, Chaplain and schoolmaster to the boys; informally indentured for having trained schoolboys for positions where they could steal from the military; now alive to what he has done, willing to atone. [William Price on land]

 

Midshipmen etc

Colin Prescott, almost 15 years old, a resourceful and fun-loving youth

Sam Price, William’s younger brother

George and Albert Cosgrove – brothers who aided William when dealing with associates of pirates and barrators

Peter Lord, now nearly 14, but still small in stature, and fascinated by the ‘smutty.’

Seth Porkins, second son of Jake Porkins, Gunner on the ‘Endeavour’[his brother is Jethro]

Emma Green, joined as a midshipmen but rated Surgeon’s mate

Molly Grierson, Surgeon’s mate

Roger Wilson, marine drummer boy, son of Sgt. Wilson

 

Marines

Sergeant George Wilson, career marine, a quiet man, happy with his life but ambitious for his son.

Corporal Henry Collins

15 marines

 

Non-commissioned Officers

Martin Beck, Bosun

Rob Bailey, purser, club foot, an honest man

Erasmus Pollard, clerk, from debtors. Wife, Lizzie

Jeb Walden, Quartermaster, one of Will’s four poachers

Hugh ‘Taffy’ Pugh, Yeoman of the Powder Room, one of Will’s four poachers

Adam Peacock, Master at Arms, one of Will’s four poachers, Taff’s lover

Pete Jackson, Captain of the Maintop, one of Will’s four poachers

Panerace D’Aiguilar ‘Haybean’, sailmaker

Abel Hardy, Gunner

Dempsey, Coxwain

Alexander MacReady, cook, one time pastry cook, big brawny man with long sensitive fingers who does wonders with salt beef with red wine.

 

Others

Able Seaman[AB] Wick, a big, slow-thinking man, very loyal to Will, Scully, and Amelia, self appointed servant [and bodyguard] to the Orlop.

AB Everdale Jackson- came with Gubbins to turn evicence, but had not sailed with Amos Finch

AB Joe Ado, who doesn’t answer to Joe, being given an extra name when he escaped slavery and joined up. A very able topsman, climbs with great skill, and strong swimmer. One of life’s happy people.

James Mackie, turned evidence against smugglers [William Price Sails North], wife, Pymma, children, Janet, Robert, David, Eufemia

Cruft, widowed whilst at sea, children Polly, Jacky, Matty & Mark, Tommy

Jepps, one time East-India Company sailor, knows gems

Eight ex-slaves signed up to serve with William:

Joe, about 13

Peasy

Kwaku ‘Ducky’

Quiou ‘Garden’ [as in Kew Gardens]

Numbo

Koomi – a bully and hanged for mutiny

Ephraim [originally Efun, but misheard by the sailors]

Africa [originally Afriye, but misheard by the sailors]

Cubba, married with wife and children also saved

Yammi, lost his family

Cudjoe, lost his family

Beko, Cudjoe’s brother, a remarkable counter-tenor

Servants

Cassie, Amelia’s maid, sister of Aeneas

Kitty, Amelia’s maid

Kwasi, becomes Colin’s valet

Paul Harris, Frid Percival’s valet, a useful seaman, too

 

 

Ship’s Boys

Tom

Ned, calls Amelia ‘Mam’ to pretend he still has a mother of sorts

Pip

Aeneas, taken from the pirate, Henry Burkett

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cyber-bumming around: a Mr. Beecher story

 

Cyber-bumming around

 

I’d had my surgery for my cyber bum – oh, all right, my prosthetic colono-rectal rediffusion filtration pack – and I was in isolation in the clinic. If you’ve ever been in post-surgical isolation, it was like that; if you haven’t, imagine being in solitary confinement in an uncomfortable bed, not allowed to move out of an uncomfortable position, well-fed whilst starving to death, because you are on a drip with nil by mouth, save water so sterile you could drink a toast with your compliments to the chemical factory. Add to this being kept ‘quiet,’ which is to say, no visitors or interactions with other inmates… uh, patients… whilst the frenetic hell which is hospital life broke like a wave around you. And no respite at night, because hospitals never sleep. Number 903 across the corridor from me was always receiving sudden visits of huge numbers of people with fancy machinery, or possibly huge numbers of machines with fancy people. I found out later he kept managing to undo his monitoring equipment in his sleep.

On the table, a box of homemade sweeties Bwephulp had made me sat, mournfully, until I was allowed them. And I was bored. And suffering data starvation.

So, I hacked into the hospital camera system.

Well, who wouldn’t?

I got my opportunity when the fellow in surgical gloves came into my cell… room… and looked around. He seemed unnerved that I was awake. I was unnerved by the gloves; I’m only too used to what that can mean. But I was thoroughly flushed out before all this began, and I swear they did it so high I could taste it. My insides were as clean and as scoured as a spaceship in the sandstorms of Shahara 4 left out a couple of years, and felt about as tissue thin. And it was why nil by mouth; they wanted the filters, rediffusers, additive centres, removal centres, mashers, grinders and pulverisers to settle in. I asked Jill, my proctologist, whether it would sound more like an industrial waste grinder or whether they would add circus music to cheer me up. She gave me one of those old-fashioned looks, and said, ‘James, it should not make any more noise than natural digestion.’ I locked onto those two little words, ‘should not.’ She told me off for looking cynical.

Don’t get me wrong. It could play Bootean rock music for all I care, so long as I can go out into less-than-fresh air and breathe in planetside newly minted pollution without starting to grow mould all over. Though that might limit my ability to pull.

Anyway, this chumski was looking at my notes.

“You might do me a favour and hand me my pocket box before you assault any part of me,” I said. I swear he jumped. But he handed me my box, which Jill had taken away from me, so now I was well away.

Did you know they have cameras in the surgical showers? I found out the times Jill was scheduled in surgery. That was a sight for bored eyes.

I started to eschew watching the medial staff off duty; some of them had some eclectic sexual habits, venues, sex toys, and games. I prefer participation to observation, not that I’ve had much chance since that fungal event. But there’s only so much perversion anyone can take. It would be a blackmailer’s dream… if I did not need surgical brain bleach.

Anyway, I started to see the chumski who had given me my pocket box, visiting other patients, regardless of their conditions. I knew a lot about their conditions. I also discovered that doctors add acronyms which are non-medical in nature to notes, like ‘WTM’ ‘will not take meds’; ‘DUN’ ‘double-up nutter,’ someone who thinks if one pill is good, forty is better; ‘MM’ ‘Moaning Murgatroyd’ – apparently a ‘Murgatroyd’ is a hypochondriac – along with some useful ones like ‘LPT’ or ‘Low Pain Threshold,’ and its counterpart, HPT which I imagine I don’t have to translate. There were noted by and for nurses, like ‘L8’ for ‘limbs, 8’, ie, wandering hand trouble, and ‘CB’ ‘Cheeky Bastard,’ which I found I had on mine. There’s some incomprehensible poem about having the gift to see ourselves as others see us. At least I wasn’t an ‘L8’ or worse ‘EW’, which as well as suggesting something nasty to start off with stands for ‘Effing wolf.’

Sorry, I got sidetracked there. But anyway, Chumski is wandering around, reading notes, and I am starting to wonder if he’s a blackmailer as he never goes to the doctors’ lounge or the nurse’s lounge, it being a small enough facility that they all know each other.

I decided to call Jill.

“James! What are you doing with your box?” she demanded. “You’re supposed to be resting!”

“I can’t rest when I’m so bored, it makes me want to scream,” I said. “I’m used to processing data at high speed, cross-correllating things, and it’s literally torture to have nothing to do. I’ve been able to sleep since that whatever-he-is gave me my box. Who is he, anyway? And why is he poking into everyone’s records?” I sent his picture to her.

Jill actually stopped telling me off and got very quiet.

“He came into your cube?” she asked, sharply.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ll need to do a complete rundown of your antibodies, he is not in steriles,” she said. “And poking around other people? How do you know?”

“Oh, please, Jill! Surveillance is my business,” I said. “I love that cheeky mole of yours.”

“You are in so much trouble, Mister Beecher,” said Jill. “Why has nobody else mentioned this man?”

“Because he has an air of being where he is supposed to be,” I said. “He wears surgical gloves, so you won’t get any finger prints. I was afraid he was going to examine me. But I can see if I can use facial recognition on him.”

There was a long pause.

“Do it,” she said. “We’re being billed for drugs we haven’t bought, backed up by prescription number.”

 

Once I and my pocket box were cleared to search outside of the hospital, a lot of things started falling into place.

Kimmo ‘Chemo’ Asukeeraa was suspected of being a drugs dealer, but nobody had been able to trace down a source on him.

If I’m a cheeky bastard, what does it make the man who has his own mail pigeon hole in the hospital, who is having drugs mailed to him while the hospital is billed?

The cops became involved, and the hospital was very grateful to me.

Not grateful enough to prevent Jill from taking samples from me from everywhere.

And I mean everywhere.

 

I waited until I was discharged, which was after three long months, and I was allowed to do some work during the last month, as well as to eat and drink and duly discharge, all of which was bagged up, collected, and some lucky sod got to test it.

Anyway, I was walking out of there, and Jill saying goodbye.

“Which should be the last time I see you,” she said.

Did I imagine the regret there? She did not have to point this out.

The flowers I had ordered arrived then, the ones I would not have been allowed to be with in the same room before surgery.

“Jill, I know we’ve been intimate in a way which is not necessarily romantic, but will you go out with me?” I asked, rather diffidently, as the delivery robot thrust flowers at her.

“Do you want to go out with Jill, the person, or Jill with a good figure and cute mole?” she asked.

“I’ve been in love with you since you put me back together when my backups failed the first time, and in lust with you since I saw you in that tight black slinky jumpsuit when they shipped you out to my pod when I had my next emergency,” I said. “I want to go out with both, and stay in with both, and find out about the ins and outs of both.”

She squealed with delight.

“Right answer!” she said.

“I’m not rich,” I said. “I have a good scout pension with benefits I haven’t been able to take up before, but my salary is pretty good.”

“So’s mine,” said Jill. “The world is full of arseholes, but most people like theirs functional, and it pays well. You wouldn’t come over all Wiłanu and want me to stop working because I see other men’s nethers?”

“Sweetheart,” I said, “I don’t care what you do to other men’s bottoms, so long as you love me despite my bottom.”

“I do,  James,” she said.

She said those two important little words again a couple of months later when we got married.