Memoirs of Dr. Edward Boyle - Vol. 1

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

Memoirs of Dr. Edward Boyle

 

They say it is best to be the firstborn. The eldest son inherits the family fortune, after all. The eldest born is burdened with being the heir to the family’s legacy. The second born often conscripted off to an officer’s post in a military fort in Gwynon, and the third born trained to be a courtier. My name is Edward Boyle, son of Antony and Bronwen Boyle, youngest of four brothers. I was given something my elder siblings never had. Choice.

 

My Origins

I loved animals since I was a wee lad. Of course, every boy wants his own puppy, but my love went beyond that. I grew up in a coastal estate a ways outside Novo Horos, Aeldin. On saint’s days, my father would take me into the city markets. Nothing there excited me more than the exotic beasts the traders brought in from foreign lands. Tigers, parrots, monkeys, snakes from the Alnorid. I knew from then on that someday I wanted to travel the world like them, discovering all new creatures and bringing them back to show the civilized world.

 

My Education

I come from the noble house of Boyle. We were considered gentry in the imperial court. Not high nobility perhaps, but well to do. Naturally, I was well educated as a child. I had many tutors. From them I learned to read, to write, to understand maths, and speak Flexio, the holy tongue. My brothers detested their lessons of course, always more interested in learning to shoot or swing a sword about. In retrospect, I recall many tutors making me recite scripture, saints, and liturgy. Perhaps my parents were trying to turn me into a clergyman! Perish the thought.

 

Naturally I had little interest in becoming a priest. I always excelled the most in lessons of naturalism and biology. I knew it was the path I wanted to pursue, so when I turned fifteen I begged my mother and father to send me to the university of Novo Horos, the most prestigious learning institution in Aeldin. They agreed, perhaps knowing having a child attend the university would aid in the family’s reputation.

 

Naturally many of the classes I took revolved around the school of biology. As such, I often came by the medical wing of the university. There I saw many sick men, women and children. Everything from gout, to plague, to leprosy. For the diseased would come far to seek treatment in the university, which had a reputation for its learned doctors and charitable work towards the poor. I had grown up quite sheltered, and had no idea such suffering existed in the world. In the months to come I would reach the epiphany that I didnt just want to study animals. I wanted to help people as well. I wanted to be a doctor.

 

My First Commission

By my third year in education I was pursuing a full imperial degree in medicine. I had learned much by then. How to treat wounds of all kinds, infections, diseases, plague, et cetera. I was still a young lad of eighteen, but I thought I knew everything. Oh, how wrong I was.

 

As it turns out, the university had a partnership going with the Imperial Navy. They would send promising young medical students on chartered voyages, giving vessels a trained medic, and in turn generating field experience for us young, naive pupils. Most of my colleagues seemed horrified at the idea of being conscripted onto a warship. They made sure to pick the largest, cushiest roles. Glorified merchant convoys sailing around safe, charted seaways.

 

Not for me.

 

I studied the sea charts of the Imperium and found one HMS Bourdon. A class-B war galleon known to patrol the waters between the exotic lands of the Alnorid to the Cathant. This was my chance to do what I’d wanted to do as a child. See the world, document its creatures, discover nature’s secrets for science. I implored the headmaster of the school of medicine to appoint me to the Bourdon, and as such I was assigned.

 

On a brisk fall morning, I made my way to the Novo Horos dockyards to where the HMS Bourdon was marked. I met Captain Audrus Twain, a hardy man twice my age. Barrel chested and broad shouldered, the very model of a modern navy captain. He welcomed me with open arms, introduced me to the small cabin aboard the poop deck where my office was to be, and set me to work right away loading the ship. I was shocked, after all, I was an esteemed student of the school of medicine! Not some lowly conscripted sailor grunt. Ah, but soon I would learn a hard lesson which Captain Twain was quick to impart upon me.

 

We’re all equal at sea.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Life Aboard the HMS Bourdon

 

Terrible, simply terrible. Those were my impressions during my first month among at sea. The Bourdon had long since set off and we were somewhere off the coast of Vanheim. I was miserable. I had not yet gained my sealegs and spent my days in a perpetual nausea atop the swaying waves of the ocean.

 

The food was horrid! The meat was either rotted or dried and salted. The water was murky and dirty. I barely had enough room to store all my medicines and reagents in my tiny cabin, let alone sleep comfortably. And the stench! Dear god. Below deck in the crew's quarters and in the galley was the worst. What’s more, my doctor’s work was most unpleasant. I spent most my days pulling out teeth or alleviating cases of gout or scurvy. Hardly work worthy of my education! And on folk with no concept of personal hygiene, no less. Nevertheless, I did not protest and I did not complain. Whining did not befit me.

 

That said, some days I cried myself to sleep, I am not ashamed to admit that, looking back upon it now. Sometimes the Bourdon would make port in some fishing village, and I would think to run away. To flee inland. Naturally I would be a disgrace to my parents and never be allowed back to the university if I did, so I held myself back. Yet the fact remained, naval life simply did not suit me.

 

That is, until I began to speak to the crew. Originally, they had held me to a distance. After all, I was a noble’s child and a posh newcomer, and these men had been sailing together for years. But after I’d fixed a few cases of genital infection and dug out some shards of shrapnel from the odd arm or so, I began to earn their respect.

 

I first grew to know sailmaker Norris. A man of fourty. Old, by naval standards. He had little to no teeth left and was missing three fingers in his left hand. A wound he told me he’d sustained while purging Alnorid pirates off the coast of Manju twenty years ago. His parents had sold him to the navy when he was only ten, for they were poor and could not raise him themselves.

 

The Caulker’s mate Blakeford was a young lad of seventeen, about my age. He had a recurring case of whooping cough and I would see him in my cabin often. Over the months I grew to know his story. He apprenticed himself to a merchant vessel hoping to be able to support his sisters with the income, but had been forcefully press ganged into the imperial navy at fifteen. Naturally, he was stuck here now, with the penalty for desertion being death. He had not seen his sisters in years.

 

Finally was midshipman Fredrus. He was perhaps the youngest among us, a wee lad of thirteen. Yet, he held an officer's role. He had been born into a naval family and raised to lead since birth. His voice, not yet dropped, still carried well over the ship’s deck. It was comical at first, seeing such a young boy command gruff, grown men. Yet, I soon saw the truth of things. The boy had never truly gotten to be a lad. To play, to make trouble, to chase girls. He had been forced to grow up faster than any boy ever should. I took my off-hours to engage in some horseplay with him. I ended up seeing myself as an older brother of sorts to the lad.

 

Yes, knowing these folk put things into perspective. In truth, I had been quite sheltered in my life until now and I had never known true hardship. These men, who had known suffering all their lives, were the very people I’d pledged to help when I took my doctor’s oath. From then on, things became more bearable to me. I gained my sea legs, and my cramped little cabin didnt seem so bad after all.

 

On a warm evening of the sun’s smile, I was dining in the captain’s cabin alongside the ship’s officers. As we finished and were about to clear out, the captain beckoned me to stay. He produced for himself a violin of fine make, and for me a lovely hand-crafted cello. He asked me if I played, gleefully I said yes. Life aboard the Bourdon was rough, and the joys of music was something I had never dreamed to have the luxury of here.

 

We played through the night, and it was the beginning of a true friendship between me and Captain Audrus. I think he had expected me to experience hardships in my first months, and now I had adjusted and become one with the crew, I had earned my reward.

 

In time, I came to quite enjoy life on the sea. I would spend the next five years of my life serving aboard HMS Bourdon, alongside Audrus and his crew.

 

[Chorale__ 2147]

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