Allday was right after all, just as he had known about Bezant. The master died with an obscenity on his lips even as dusk closed in, when the oars were cutting across the lively whitecaps and the wet sail drummed to the wind.

In between baling and comforting the distraught Sophie, Catherine saw and heard it all. Her man’s voice raised above the din of wind and canvas as he spoke a few words from a prayer he must have used many times. She covered the girl’s ears as the body went over the side, for even in the depths there could be no peace for the Golden Plover’s master. The shark denied him even that.

Captain Valentine Keen looked up at the flapping sail and swung the tiller sharply. To see the canvas momentarily out of control came as a shock, for he knew he must have slipped into a doze. And worse, nobody in this overcrowded boat had noticed it.

The ocean was moving in a deep swell, but the wind was not strong enough to break it into crests. The sun was almost on the horizon; soon it would be cooler, and the nightly business of using oars and sail combined to carry them to the east would begin.

He glanced at the others, some curled up on the bottom boards, others resting on the oars, which were propped in their rowlocks across the boat.

Lady Catherine was sitting in the sternsheets, her shoulders covered with some canvas while Bolitho leaned against her as if asleep.

Ozzard was on his knees, examining his rations and checking the water in the remaining barricoe. It could not last much longer. One more day, then the despair would sap any remaining resistance like some creeping fever.

Over a week now since the barquentine had thundered across the reef. It felt ten times that long. The meagre rations had finally gone except for a bag of biscuits. Brandy for the sick, rum for when the water ran out. Tomorrow; the next day?

Catherine stirred and gave a quiet sob. Bolitho was instantly roused, his arm cradling her body away from the lurch and pitch of the sun-blistered hull.

Keen tried not to think back over the years, twenty to be exact, to when they had served together in the Great South Sea. Bolitho had been his young captain in the frigate Tempest, and he a junior lieutenant. There had been another escape in an open boat. Bolitho would be remembering it now, how the woman he had loved had died in his arms.

A larger longboat, but the same hopelessness and danger. Allday had been there too, had called on the others to restrain Bolitho when he had wrapped her body in a length of chain and lowered her gently over the side.

How could Bolitho ever forget, especially now that he had found the love which had always been denied him?

Allday was down on the boards, lolling against the side, his shaggy, greying hair rippling in the breeze.

Keen felt his eyes prick with emotion at the memory of two nights ago. They had all been close to collapse when a freak rain squall had come out of the dusk and advanced on the boat like a curtain, tearing the sea into a mass of spray and bubbles. They had come to life, clutching at buckets and pieces of canvas, even mugs in readiness to catch a little of the fresh rainwater.

Then, as if a giant’s hand were deflecting the rain, it had seemed to veer away within half a cable of the boat.

The young sailor named Tucker from Portsmouth had broken completely, sobbing out his heart until fatigue wore him down into silence.

It had been then that Catherine had said, “Now, John Allday! I’ve heard you singing about the gardens at Falmouth—you have a fair voice indeed!” She had looked at Yovell, suddenly pleading, desperate for support. “You will vouch for that, Mr Yovell?”

And so it had been. As the first stars had appeared and they had tried to gauge the course to steer, Allday had sat by the tiller and had sung a song much beloved by sailors, and written by the mariner’s friend, Charles Dibdin, who, it was said, had composed the song How Hyperion Cleared the Way to commemorate her last valiant fight.

It was claimed by even the hardest man who served at sea and braved all its dangers and cruelties, that no matter what might happen there was always an angel at the masthead to care for his safety.

“Clear the wreck, stow the yards, and bounce everything tight,

And under reefed foresail we’ll scud:

Avast! nor don’t think me a milksop so soft

To be taken for trifles aback,

For they say there’s a Providence sits up aloft,

To keep watch for the life of Poor Jack.”

Exhausted, blistered and tortured by thirst, they had listened, and it seemed that for just a few minutes their perils had been held at bay.

There had been tears, too, and Keen had seen Jenour with his head in his hands, the girl Sophie staring at Allday as if he were some kind of wizard.

Bolitho cleared his throat. “How is it, Val?”

Keen glanced at the stars. “Due east as far as I can tell, although I’ve no idea how far we’ve drifted.”

“No matter.” Bolitho cupped her shoulder in his hand and felt its smoothness through the stained shirt. The skin was hot, burning. He brushed some of her hair from her eyes and saw that she was watching him; caring and fearing for him, her spirits beginning to desert even her.

“How long, dearest of men?”

He pressed his cheek against her hair. “A day. Maybe two.” He kept his voice low, but the others probably knew as well as anyone.

The seaman Tucker gave a wild laugh, cut short by the sore dryness of his throat.

Bolitho gestured to the oars. “Time to begin, watch by watch!”

Keen exclaimed, “What is the matter with Tucker?”

Owen said heavily, “He took some water, sir.” He gestured towards the sea as it lifted almost to the gunwale before sliding down again.

Allday muttered, “That’s him done for.” He said it without emotion one way or the other. “Bloody fool.”

Tucker pushed his oar away and tried to reach the side before Jenour and Cuppage seized him and dragged him to the foot of the small mast. Cuppage pulled out some codline and tied the babbling man’s wrists behind him. “Shut your trap, you stupid bugger!”

Bolitho clambered into Tucker’s place and thrust the oar out over the water. It seemed to weigh twice as much as before. He shut his ears to Tucker’s cracked, rambling voice. The beginning of the end.

Catherine sat with Keen while Ozzard poured some water one cup at a time, across the barricoe’s leather lip.

Keen raised it to her mouth. “Hold it there as long as you can. A sip at a time.”

She shivered, and almost dropped the cup as Tucker screamed, “Water! Give me water, you poxy bitch!”

In the deep shadows there was the sound of a fist on bone, and Tucker fell silent.

Catherine whispered, “There was no need. I’ve heard far worse.”

Keen tried to smile. It had not been merely out of regard for her feelings that Allday had laid him low. One more outbreak from Tucker, and it might consume the boat in fighting madness.

Keen felt the pistol in his belt and tried to remember who else was armed.

She saw his hand on the pistol and said softly, “You’ve done this before, Val … I guessed as much.” She turned away as something fell heavily in the sea astern. The shark or its victim, it was too dark to tell.

She said, “He must not see me suffer.” She tried to control her voice, but her body was shaking too badly. “He has given enough because of me.”

“Give way all!”

The oars rose and fell once more while the water was passed carefully from hand to hand.

Then they changed around yet again, and Bolitho slumped down beside her in the sternsheets.

“How is your eye?”

Bolitho forced a smile. “Better than I thought possible.” He had sensed rather than seen her despair when she had been speaking with Keen.

“You lie.” She leaned against him and felt him stiffen. “Stop worrying about me, Richard … I am the cause of all this. You should have left me in that prison. You might never have known …”

Great white shapes flapped out of the darkness and circled the jolly-boat before continuing on their way.

He said, “Tonight, those birds will nest in Africa.”

She pushed her wet hair away as spray drifted over the gunwale.

“I would like to be in some secret place, Richard. Our beach perhaps … To run naked in the sea, to love on the sand.” She began to cry very quietly, the sound muffled by his shoulder. “Just to live with you.”

She had fallen into a deep sleep when the young seaman named Tucker choked and died. The oarsmen rested on their looms like souls beyond care or caring. Only Yovell crossed himself in the darkness as the body went over the side and drifted away.

Bolitho held her shoulder, ready to shield her from the frenzy of a shark’s attack. But there was nothing. The shark had patience enough for all of them.

When the first hint of dawn opened up the sea around them, Catherine saw that Tucker was missing. It was too draining even to think what it must have been like for him in his dying moments of madness. It was over now. A release.

She saw Ozzard sounding the barricoe, his quick shake of the head to Bolitho beside him.

“Half a cup, then?” Bolitho was almost pleading.

Ozzard shrugged. “Less.”

Sophie stepped carefully across the outflung legs and the sprawled bodies of the ones off watch.

Catherine held out her arms. “What is it, Sophie? Come here to me.”

The girl gripped her hand and hesitated. “Is that land? Over there?” She seemed afraid that she might be going mad like Tucker.

Keen stood up from his oar and shaded his eyes.

“Oh, dear God! Land it is!”

Allday peered up at the boat’s masthead and tried to grin. “See? He keeps watch for the life of Poor Jack!”

As the light strengthened it became more and more obvious that the land Sophie had sighted was little more than an island. But just the nearness of it seemed to put new life into the jolly-boat, and when the oars were manned and the sail reset, Bolitho could see no disappointment in their sunburned faces.

Keen said between strokes on his oar, “Do you know it, sir?”

Bolitho turned and saw Catherine watching him. “Yes, I do.” He should have felt pleased, proud even that he had brought them this far. At least they were not merely heading into an empty horizon and going mad in the process.

Jenour panted, “Does it have a name, Sir Richard?”

She was still watching him. Reading him like a book. Knowing the desperation, the sudden despair this place had rekindled from some old memory. Like the other midshipman, his friend, of whom he rarely spoke even to her: these recollections were equally painful.

It was a barren place, an island to be avoided, with a treacherous, rocky coastline. This was slave territory, and in earlier times the haunt of pirates. But the latter had now gone further south, to the richer pickings on the sea-routes to and around the Cape of Good Hope.

“I forget what it is called.” Even that she would know was a lie. This small, hostile island was known by local traders as the Island of the Living Dead. Nothing grew there, nothing survived. He said suddenly, “Twenty miles beyond this place is a rich, wooded island. Fresh streams, fish too.”

Yovell asked politely, “This place cannot help us then?”

He sounded so lost that Bolitho answered, “There may be rock pools with rainwater. Shellfish.” He saw the strength draining out of them like sand from a glass. He insisted, “What say, all of you? One more try? We can gather shellfish and mix them with the last of the biscuits.”

Yovell seemed satisfied. “We’ve nothing else to do, have we, sir? Not for the present, in any case.”

Owen grinned and wiped his cracked lips. “Well said, sir! Twenty miles after what we’ve been through? I could swim there, but for the sharks, that is!”

Catherine watched them returning to life, instead of the spectres they had almost become. But how long could he persuade them?

By noon the boat had entered a small cove, where the rocks slid beneath the keel in water so clear it could barely be seen.

Bolitho stood and shaded his eyes as they glided above their own shadow.

“Ready with the grapnel! Stephen, Owen, over the side now! Back water, the rest of you!”

With the flag lieutenant and the keen-eyed lookout floundering and slipping on the bottom while they guided the stem clear of any jagged rocks, the jolly-boat finally came to rest.

Bolitho watched them lurching and falling on the shelving beach as they left the boat and tried to run up the slope. A ship was one thing, but having been penned up in a small open boat made them stagger like drunken men.

Catherine stared with surprise as Allday handed her a pair of leather sandals he had cut and fashioned from Ozzard’s satchel.

She said huskily, “You are a dear man, John.”

Allday was embarrassed, the danger this place might hold momentarily forgotten.

“Well, m’lady, as Mr Yovell rightly said, I had nothing else to do.”

Bolitho walked with her through the shallows and waited while she tied on her sandals. It was just as well. The beach was as hot as a stove.

“See to it, Val. Take your cox’n and climb that hill. Might even be able to see the other island in this light … it would give them heart.”

Keen said gravely, “I believe you have done that, sir, to all of us.”

Allday was about to leave the beached boat when Ozzard tugged at his sleeve. “Look, John!”

It was a small pouch, hidden carefully behind the empty barricoe. It was tightly tied and very heavy.

Allday felt it. “It’s gold, matey.”

“But whose?”

“Whoever put it there is one of the mutineers, an’ that’s no error.”

They stuffed the pouch back into its hiding place. Allday said, “Leave it to me.”

Ozzard said, “I’ll keep watch over the last of our supplies.” He added meaningly, “Especially the rum.”

Keen started up the hillside, the highest point on this barren place, but in truth little more than a sun-scorched hump.

As they passed some scattered rocks Tojohns grunted, “Jesus, look at that!”

It was a skeleton, lying where the man had fallen, shipwrecked, marooned or murdered. They would never know.

They were almost at the top, and Keen tried not to think of water, even the sound of it in a glass.

They reached the summit, and Keen dropped to his knees and said sharply, “Down, man!”

The other island was visible as Bolitho had prophesied, like a pale green mist below the horizon.

But all Keen could see was the anchored vessel directly below him, the brig he had observed from Golden Plover’s masthead. The slaver which had come to collect the gold now scattered across the Hundred Mile Reef.

“I’ll go and warn our people. You stay here, Tojohns. If you see a boat heading ashore, come at once.”

He scrabbled down the dry hill, his mind stunned by this new discovery. Even this lifeless place had been a symbol of their success. Now it was only a trap.

Bolitho listened to him without comment, his eyes on Sophie and Ozzard as they collected some of the shellfish Jenour’s party had discovered in a rock pool.

They all stood round, waiting for Ozzard’s judgement as he dipped his cup into the bucket Owen had filled with water from a small hillside gully. Then he said solemnly, “Rainwater. I’ll put it in the cask.”

Yovell flung his arms around the young maid and beamed. “Like wine, eh, my dear!”

Bolitho called, “Listen to me, all of you. The slaver that was after us is anchored yonder.” He saw them coming to terms with it. “And we cannot survive here.” He thought of the skeleton Keen had described. There were probably others. “So at dusk we will leave.” He let each word sink in. “We must reach that island. There’s a fair breeze … we might not even need the oars.”

Allday watched their reactions, especially those of the two remaining hands from the Golden Plover. Not Owen, surely. He had proved his loyalty more than once. What about the tough Tynesider, Cuppage? But his expression had not changed at the mention of the slaver. It might have been the salt-water-crazed Tucker, who had taken his secret with him. Or even the old master, Bezant: some pitiful compensation for losing his ship to men he had once trusted.

Allday fingered the old dirk in his belt. Whoever it is, I’ll see him to hell!

Where trees had once stood and now lay like whitened bones in the sand, Catherine took Bolitho in her arms and held him, free only for a moment from curious eyes.

They stood looking at one another in complete silence. Then she said quietly, “Once I doubted. Now I know we shall reach safety.”

On the hillside the sandblown skeleton could have been listening, sharing the hope to which he had, once, also clung.

11

A DAY TO REMEMBER

“EASY ALL!” Bolitho peered up at the stars and saw Allday’s shadow move while he pushed the tiller-bar to windward. The oars rose dripping from the water and stayed motionless above it. It was strange to feel the boat still moving ahead, the tilt of the hull as the wind filled the sail, dark against the great panorama of stars.

It had gone better than Bolitho had dared to hope. They had refloated the boat before dusk and had pulled steadily, close inshore almost within an oar’s length of some of the rocks, until they had headed out to sea. The anchored brig had been hidden out of sight on the other side of the island, and even when the jolly-boat had spread her sail in the darkening shadows, they had seen no lights, no movement at all.

Perhaps the brig’s master had given up hope of discovering if anyone had survived the wreck, and was now intent only on gathering another human cargo, transferred perhaps from another slaver.

Ozzard whispered, “Last of the water, sir.”

Bolitho thought of the rainwater Jenour’s party had discovered. They had all but filled one barricoe, and after consuming a foul-tasting meal of shellfish and a mash of ship’s biscuits they had each taken a mug of water. In ordinary times nobody would have touched it, but as Yovell had remarked, it seemed like wine.

Keen climbed up beside him and said, “We shall see the island clearly at first light. Two more miles, maybe less with this wind.” He was calculating aloud. “At least we can survive there until we find help.”

On the bottom boards Catherine stirred and took the cup from Ozzard, while in the bows they could hear Sophie retching. She was their only casualty from eating the raw shellfish. A fire had been out of the question with the brig so near.

Tojohns wiped his mouth with his hand. “I can hear surf, sir!”

Bolitho breathed out slowly and felt Catherine reach for him in the darkness.

He said, “That’s it, Val. The outer spur. Once daylight comes we can follow it until we find a passage. All we have to do after that is make for the beach. There might even be a merchantman there, with a watering party ashore. It is a favourite place, and the streams are somewhat better than Stephen’s gully!”

Surprisingly, someone laughed this time, and Sophie managed to control her retching to listen.

Bolitho gripped Catherine’s hand. “Try to rest, Kate. You’ve done enough for ten able-bodied seamen.”

She said quietly, “It’s hard to accept that there is land out there.”

Bolitho smiled. “Old hands will be able to smell it soon.”

He made her comfortable and then climbed over to the nearest thwart to relieve Tojohns at his oar.

Allday said harshly, “Stand by! Give way all!”

He thought he already had the scent of the island, and marvelled at the way Bolitho and Keen had managed to get them this far. But they were not safe yet. He grimaced in the darkness. After coming all this way it would be the devil’s work if they hit one of the smaller outflung reefs.

But once on the island he knew they could manage to keep going. After that other fearful place, the others all knew they could survive until Lady Luck took over. Lady Luck … He thought of Herrick, and wondered if he would ever make it up with Bolitho. After what Lady Catherine had done for Herrick’s wife, and what she had given to all of them in this damned boat, he didn’t much care either way. A sailor’s woman; and even in her soiled breeches and shirt, her hair brailed up and clinging with salt, she was still a sight to make any man stare.

Catherine lay with one arm covering her face as men moved about the boat, retrimming the sail so that the bottom boards tilted even further. She was not asleep although she knew they all believed so, and in these moments of privacy she allowed herself reflection and despair. And thoughts … whether any of them would ever be the same, how long it might be before she saw Falmouth again. The leaves would have gone from the trees, and the petals from the roses she found so beautiful. She had clung to the memory in the hours and days in this pitching boat to prevent herself from breaking down and allowing her hopelessness to infect the others. Just let us reach there, she whispered, I will do the rest. But when, when …

There was another pause for it was hard work, and the time spent at the oars became shorter for each man.

She looked over her arm and saw Allday at the tiller, one elbow propped on the gunwale as if he was part of the boat. Bronzed faces, some with badly sunburned skins: men usually so clean and disciplined were now bearded with stubble, their hair as matted as her own.

She turned her head so that she could see Bolitho, his injured eye closed as he lay back on his loom, taking the stroke from the seaman Owen.

“Here comes the dawn.”

“And there’s part of the reef!” That was Jenour, unable as usual to hide his emotion.

Some strange gulls flew low overhead, their wings very white while the boat still lay in shadow. Allday murmured approvingly to Ozzard, “One o’ those in th’ pot’ll do me!”

The seaman named Bill Cuppage plucked his filthy shirt from his body, and stared with astonishment as something caught the dawn’s first light and held it like a mirror. Jenour saw his expression and swung with a gasp. “Ship, sir!”

Bolitho squinted across the quarter and felt his jaw tighten with disbelief and disappointment.

He called sharply, “Easy, all! Take in the sail!”

With neither oars nor canvas to steady it, the jolly-boat slid down into the swell and broached-to in steep, sickening rolls.

Keen said hoarsely, “Brig, sir. All sails set.”

Catherine had one hand across her mouth as she watched the distant masts with their pale, bellying sails. As yet, no vessel showed herself above the receding shadows.

“Might it be another, Val?”

Keen tore his eyes from the pyramid of sails and looked at her. “I fear not.”

Allday muttered, “Might not see us. We’re low in the water.”

Ozzard climbed forward and handed a mug of brandy to Sophie.

“Here, drink this, miss. Give you strength.”

She stared at him over the rim, “What shall we do?”

Ozzard did not answer but turned aft to watch as the brig’s two masts began to turn, the sails in momentary confusion while she changed tack until she was bows-on towards them.

Bolitho said, “Make sail again! Man your oars! The brig won’t risk passing through the reef at this stage.”

There was a dull bang, and seconds later a ball splashed down astern of the slow-moving jolly-boat.

Tojohns lay back on his oar and said between his teeth, “That bugger don’t need to!”

Catherine climbed on to a thwart and added her own strength to Yovell’s oar, her bare feet pressing hard on a stretcher.

There was another bang, and this time the ball ricocheted across the water like an enraged dolphin before hurling up a tall, thin waterspout. Cuppage was a big man, but he moved like lightning. Tossing his oar away, he vaulted into the bows and gripped Sophie with his arm around her neck, his other hand producing a cocked pistol, which he pressed against her face.

“Let her go!” Bolitho saw the girl staring aft at him, her eyes wide with terror. “What use is this, man?”

“Use?” Cuppage flinched as another ball ripped across the water. “I’ll tell you what! Yon brig’s master will want a word with you, or he’ll kill us all! It’d only take one ball!” He began to work his way along the boat, dragging the half-strangled girl with him.

Owen called, “I thought you was one of them, you bastard! Never saw you with the bosun’s party!”

Cuppage ignored him, his teeth bared with exertion. “One move, an’ she gets ‘er ‘ead blown off!”

Bolitho looked at him without emotion. He was beaten. Whether the slaver’s master accepted Cuppage’s story no longer mattered.

Aboard the brig they must have realised what was happening. She was shortening sail, tacking once more to remain well clear of the reef.

Allday said, “Changing sides again, matey?” He sounded very calm. “Well, don’t forget your little bag.”

Cuppage swung round and saw Ozzard holding the bag over the side.

Allday continued, “No gold, no hope—not for you, matey. They won’t believe your yarn and they’ll kill you with the rest of us!”

Cuppage yelled, “Give me that, you little scum!”

“Catch, then!” Ozzard flung it towards him and Cuppage gave a scream of fury as the bag flew past his outstretched hand and splashed into the sea.

Allday stopped in front of Catherine and spat out, “Don’t look.”

The knife flashed in the sunlight and Cuppage lolled against the gunwale, while Tojohns and Owen pulled the girl to safety.

Allday moved with surprising speed and reached Cuppage even as he fell gasping across the gunwale, and as he tugged his old knife from his back he exclaimed savagely, “Go and look for it, you bastard!”

Cuppage drifted away, his arms moving feebly until he vanished.

Keen said dully, “That was well done, Allday.” He stared at the brig, which was shortening sail yet again as she ran down on the drifting jolly-boat.

Allday looked at Bolitho and the woman beside him. “Too late. God damn that bloody mutineer. But for him …”

Bolitho glanced towards the lush, green island. So near, yet a million miles away.

But all he could hear was her voice. Don’t leave me.

He had failed.

Rarely had the Falmouth parish church of King Charles the Martyr seen so mixed and solemn a gathering. While the great organ played in the background the pews soon filled with people from all walks of life, from the governor of Pendennis Castle to lowly farm workers, their boots grubby and scraped from the fields on this early harvest. Many stood on the cobbles outside the church, watching out of curiosity, or to capture some private memory of the man whose life and service were to be honoured here today. Not some stranger, or mysterious hero of whom they had read or been told about, but one of their own sons.

The rector was very aware of the importance of the occasion. There would of course be a grander memorial service in London with all the pomp of traditional ceremony. But this was Sir Richard’s home, where his ancestors had come and gone, leaving only their historic records in stone along these same walls.

The whole county had been shocked by the news of Sir Richard Bolitho’s death and of the manner in which he had died. But there had always been hope, and the speculation which this man’s charisma had long encouraged. To fall in battle was one thing; to be lost at sea in some kind of accident was difficult for most of these people to accept.

The rector glanced at the fine marble bust of old Captain Julius Bolitho, who had fallen in 1664. The engraving seemed to fit the whole of this remarkable family, he thought.

The spirits of your fathers

Shall start from every wave;

For the deck it was their field of fame,

And ocean was their grave.

Today’s service seemed to have killed the last of their simple faith, and many of the ships in Carrick Road had half-masted their ensigns.

He saw Squire Lewis Roxby guiding his wife Nancy to the family pew. Roxby looked grim, watching over her with a tenderness he rarely showed either as a magistrate or as one of the wealthiest men in the county. This was another side to the King of Cornwall.

Captain Keen’s lovely young widow was seated between her husband’s sisters, who had come all the way from Hampshire. One of them would be thinking of her own husband, who had been killed at sea a year or so earlier.

There was a very distraught couple who had taken the coach from Southampton to be here. They were Lieutenant Stephen Jenour’s parents.

In another pew with members of the household and farm staff, Bryan Ferguson gripped his wife’s hand and stared fixedly at the high altar. He discovered that his wife had the true strength today, and was determined to get him through it as the faces crowded into his mind.

All the memories, the comings and goings from the old grey house. He had been a major part of it, and as steward of the estate he was very conscious of Bolitho’s trust in him. He wiped his eyes as he freed his only hand from her grip. Poor old John Allday. No more yarns, no more wets when he was home from sea.

He glanced across the aisle and recognised Lady Belinda with another woman, her oval face and autumn hair making the only colour against her sombre black. A few people bobbed to her—sympathy or respect, who could tell? Squire Roxby was receiving all of them in his great house afterwards. Afterwards. Even that made Ferguson bite his lip to steady himself.

Bolitho’s older sister was here too, severe and grey, while her son Miles, formerly a midshipman aboard Bolitho’s flagship Black Prince after having been dismissed from the Honourable East India Company’s service under some sort of cloud, was now gazing around as if he expected everyone to be admiring him. He had even been required to leave the King’s service, or as Keen had put it, face a court martial instead. Was he calculating how he might benefit from his uncle’s death?

And there were uniforms a-plenty. The port admiral from Plymouth, some officers of the Coastguard, even a few dragoons from the garrison at Truro.

Overhead the bell began to toll; it sounded faraway from within the body of the church. But on the hillsides and in the harbour, men and women would be listening to its finality.

Others arrived: Young Matthew the head coachman, Tom the revenue officer, even Vanzell the one-legged sailor who had once served Bolitho, and been instrumental in freeing Lady Catherine from that stinking jail to the north of London. It was rumoured that Lady Catherine’s husband had planned to have her falsely imprisoned and deported with the connivance of Bolitho’s wife. What was she thinking now as she whispered to her elegant companion? Pride in her late husband? Or more incensed by the victory death had granted her rival?

Whenever she turned from her friend to stare around the church, Ferguson had the impression that it was with contempt, and no kind of regret for the life she had left in this ancient seaport.

And in months, maybe sooner, the legalities would have to be settled. Squire Roxby had never made any secret of his readiness to take over the Bolitho estate and add it to his own. That would certainly preserve it for his wife and their two children, if nothing else. Belinda would want a settlement to compensate for the lavish life and fashionable house she enjoyed in London. Ferguson felt his wife gripping his hand again as the straight-backed, solitary figure of Captain Adam Bolitho strode up the aisle to take his place in his family pew.

Ferguson believed him the one man who would save the estate and the livelihood of all those who depended on it. Even that reminded him of Allday again. His pride at living there when he was not at sea. Like being one of the family, he had so often proclaimed.

He watched Captain Adam shaking hands with the rector. It was about to begin. A day they would all have cause to remember, and for such diverse reasons. He saw Keen’s young wife lean out towards Adam. He was to be posted next month, and had been so looking forward to seeing his uncle with the coveted second epaulette on his shoulder, when Bolitho had returned from his mission.

Ferguson had been troubled by Adam’s frequent visits to the house. But for his vehement insistence that Bolitho was still alive and somehow, even by a miracle, would return home, Ferguson might have suspected some unexpected liaison between him and Zenoria Keen.

The bell had stopped and a great silence had fallen over the church; the glittering colours of the tall windows were very bright in the noon sunlight.

The rector climbed into the old pulpit and surveyed the crowded pews. Not many young faces, he thought sadly. And with the war already reaching into Portugal and perhaps Spain, many more sons would leave home, never to return.

At the very back of the church, seated on two cushions so that she could see over the shoulders of those in front of her, the widow of Jonas Polin, one-time master’s mate in the Hyperion, was aware of the people all around her in this grand place, but could think only of the big, shambling man who had rescued her that day on the road. Now the admiral’s coxswain would never call on her at the Stag’s Head at Fallowfield. She had told herself not to be so stupid. But as the days had dragged past after the news had broken over the county, she had felt the loss even more. Like being cheated. She closed her eyes tightly as the rector began, “We are all very aware of why we are come here today …”

Ferguson stared blindly around him. And what of Catherine Somervell? Did nobody grieve for her? He saw her on the cliff walk, her face brown in the sun, her hair on the wind from the sea like a dark banner. He thought of what Allday and the others had told him, how she had risked her life to help Herrick’s dying wife. A thousand things; most of all what she had done for her Richard, as she called him. Dearest of men. Unlike so many, they had been together when death had marked them down. He half-listened to the drone of the rector’s voice, let it wash over him as he relived so many precious moments.

One man sat in an almost empty pew, shielded from the great mass of people by a pillar, his hooded eyes inscrutable while he paid his respects in his private fashion. Dressed all in grey, Sir Paul Sillitoe had arrived uninvited and unannounced, his beautiful carriage bringing many curious stares when he had reached the church.

Ferguson need not have worried on Catherine’s behalf. Sillitoe had driven all the way from London and, although he had greatly respected Bolitho, he was more shocked by his grief at the loss of Bolitho’s mistress, for reasons he could not define, even to himself.

The rector was saying, “We must never lose sight of the great service this fine local family has offered …” He broke off, aware from long experience that he no longer held the attention of the congregation.

There was a distant noise, and shouting, like a tavern turning out, and Roxby was glaring round, flushed and angry as he hissed, “These oafs! What are they thinking of?”

Everyone fell silent as Adam Bolitho stood up suddenly, and without even a customary bow to the altar strode quickly back down the aisle. He glanced at nobody, and as he passed Ferguson thought he looked as if he had no control over what he was doing. “In a trance,” he would later hear it described.

Adam reached the great, weathered doors and dragged them wide open so that the din flooded into the church, where everyone now was standing, their backs to the rector marooned in his pulpit.

The square was crammed, and a recently arrived mail coach was completely surrounded by a cheering, laughing mob. In the centre of it all two grinning sea officers on horseback, their mounts lathered in sweat from a hard ride, were being hailed like heroes.

Adam stood quite still as he recognised one of them as his own first lieutenant. He was trying to make himself heard above the noise, but Adam could not understand him.

A man he had never seen before ran up the church steps and seized his hands.

“They’m alive, Cap’n Adam, sir! Your officer’s brought word from Plymouth!”

The lieutenant managed to fight his way through, his hat knocked awry.

“All safe, sir! A bloody miracle, if you’ll pardon my saying so!”

Adam led him back into the church. He saw Zenoria with Keen’s sisters standing in the aisle, framed against the high altar. He asked quietly, “All my uncle’s party? Safe?”

He saw his lieutenant nod excitedly. “I knew my uncle could do it. The fairest of men … I shall tell the rector myself. Wait for me, please. You must come to the house.”

The lieutenant said to his companion, “Took it well, I thought, Aubrey?”

“He had more faith than I did.”

Adam reached the others and held out his hands. “They are all safe.” He saw Zenoria sobbing in the arms of one of Keen’s sisters, and beyond her Belinda, now strangely out of place in her sombre black.

At the rear of the church Sir Paul Sillitoe picked up his hat and then turned as he saw the woman who had been just behind him. She was crying now, but not with grief.

He asked kindly, “Someone very dear to you, is he?”

She curtsied and wiped her eyes. “Just a man, sir.”

Sillitoe thought of Adam’s expression when he had reentered the church, of the sudden ache in his own heart when the news had broken over them like a great, unstoppable wave.

He smiled at her. “We are all just men, my dear. It is better not to forget that sometimes.”

He walked out into the jostling, noisy square and heard the peal of bells following him.

He thought of their first encounter at one of Godschale’s ridiculous receptions. Like no other woman he had ever met. But at this moment in Falmouth his own words to her were uppermost in his mind. She had protested that Bolitho was being ordered back to immediate duty after all he had suffered, and suggested angrily that some other flag officer be sent instead. Sillitoe seemed to hear himself, in memory. Fine leaders—they have the confidence of the whole fleet. But Sir Richard Bolitho holds their hearts.

He looked round for his carriage, at these simple, ordinary people who were a far cry from those he knew and directed.

Aloud he said, “As you, my dear Catherine, hold mine.”

His Britannic Majesty’s brig Larne of fourteen guns rolled untidily in a steep offshore swell, sailing so close to the wind that to any landsman her yards would appear to be braced almost fore-and-aft. The island lay enticingly abeam, its greenness shimmering in heat-haze, the nearest beaches pure white in the sunshine. But like an evil barrier between the island and the sturdy brig lay the protective reef, showing itself every so often in violent spurts of broken spray.

Right aft in Larne’s stern cabin her captain lay sprawled on the bench seat beneath the open windows, so that the quarter-wind stirred the stale air and gave his naked body a suggestion of refreshment. Commander James Tyacke was staring up at the dancing reflections that played across the low deckhead. The cabin was like a miniature of the stern cabin in a frigate, but to Tyacke it still seemed spacious. He had previously commanded the armed schooner Miranda and had taken part in the recapture of Cape Town, and it had been then that he had first served alongside Richard Bolitho. Tyacke had never held much respect for senior officers, but Bolitho had changed many of his views. When Miranda had been sunk by a French frigate and her crew left to die, Tyacke, who had already lost so much, had felt that he had nothing more to live for.

That was something else Bolitho had done to give him back his dignity and his pride: he had asked him to command the Larne.

Ordered to the newly formed anti-slavery patrols, Tyacke imagined that he had at last found the best life still had to offer him. Independent, free of the fleet’s apron strings and the whims of any admiral who chose to accost him, the role had suited him very well.

Larne was well-found and manned by some excellent seamen. And as for the wardroom, if you could rate it as such, Tyacke had three lieutenants and a sailing-master and rarest of all, a fullyqualified doctor who had accepted the poor rewards of service as a ship’s surgeon in order to enhance his knowledge of tropical diseases. Dealing with slaves and slavers alike, he was getting plenty of experience.

Larne even boasted five masters’ mates, although there were only two aboard at present, the others having been sent away as prize-masters in some of Tyacke’s captures.

And then, without any sort of warning, the news had hit him like a mailed fist. They had met with a courier schooner and Tyacke had learned of Bolitho’s loss at sea.

He knew them all: Valentine Keen, Allday, who had tried to help him, and of course Catherine Somervell. Tyacke had last spoken to her at Keen’s wedding at the start of the year. He had never forgotten her, or the way she had conversed with him so directly, and looked at him without flinching. Tyacke stood up abruptly and walked to the mirror above his sea-chest. He was thirty-one years old, tall and well built, and his left profile was strong, with the grave good looks which might catch any woman’s glance. But the other side … he touched it and felt only disgust. The Arab slavers called him the devil with half a face. Only the eye lived in it. A miracle, everyone told him. It could have been so much worse. But could it? Half his face burned away and he had no idea how it had happened. His world had exploded at the Nile, while all those about him had been killed. It could have been worse …

But Bolitho had somehow put him together again. A vice-admiral, one of England’s heroes even if he had outraged many of his contemporaries, who had taken passage in Tyacke’s tiny Miranda and never once complained at the discomfort, Bolitho had got to know him as a man, not as a victim, and had taken the trouble to care.

He turned away and walked aft to the open windows again. Ten days ago, while they had been searching for a well-known slaver who was said to be in the area, the lookouts had sighted a drifting longboat, the cutter from the Golden Plover. Andrew Livett, Larne’s surgeon, had earned his keep that day. The survivors had been almost finished, mostly because the cutter’s water supply had been inadequate, and they had been in too much of a hurry abandoning the wreck to replenish it.

Tyacke had sat, face in shadow, in this cabin and listened to the senior survivor, Luke Britton the boatswain, describing the mutiny, the sudden change of fortune while Bolitho had turned the tables on the men who had betrayed their master.

He had told of the jolly-boat entering the reef itself, while his own cutter, loaded as it was with some twenty hands, had been carried away to the other side. Tyacke had pictured it as the man blurted out each item of tragedy: the mutineers’ boat being smashed by falling spars, the sharks gorging on the floundering, screaming sailors.

All plans to capture the slaver, the notorious Raven, had gone. Instead, Tyacke had laid a new course in a giant triangle to search along the reef and look for signs of life on the small, scattered islands, or perhaps even smoke signals, which might indicate that some of the party had survived. There had been nothing, and Tyacke had been forced to admit what his first lieutenant, a Channel Islander named Paul Ozanne, had believed from the beginning. A fruitless search; and with two women on board, what hope could there be?

And now Larne was herself dangerously short of water and the fruit which any King’s ship needed to prevent scurvy in these sweltering waters.

He half-listened to the chant of his two leadsmen in the chains, watching out for the reefs while their best lookouts manned both mastheads for an hour at a time, before the glare rendered them useless.

What more can I do?

His people would not let him down; he knew that now. At first he had found this new command and her different company hard to know, but eventually he had won them over, just as he had done in his beloved Miranda. However, if anyone else discovered that he had abandoned his hunt for the Raven, they might be less understanding.

There was a tap at the screen door and Gallaway, one of the master’s mates, peered in at him.

“What is it?” He tried to keep the despair and grief out of his voice.

“The master sends ‘is respects, sir. It will be time to wear ship in about ‘alf an hour.” He showed no surprise at seeing his captain naked, nor did he drop his eyes when Tyacke looked directly at him. Not any more.

So it was over. When Larne came about he would have to take her to Freetown to receive new orders, to replenish stores and water supply. All the rest was a memory: one he would never lose, like the wound on his face.

“I’ll come up.” Tyacke pulled on a shirt and breeches and glanced at the cupboard where the thirteen-year-old cabin boy kept his rum and brandy. He rejected the idea. His men had to manage; so would he. Even that reminded him of Bolitho. Leadership by example, by a trust which he had insisted went both ways.

On deck it was scorching, and his shoes stuck to the tarred deck-seams. But the wind, as hot as if it blew across a desert, was strong enough. A glance at the compass, a critical examination of the yards and flapping canvas as his ship heeled over to the close-hauled sails, then he looked along the deck. Both watches were assembling in readiness to change tack. A few raw youngsters but mostly seamen, glad to get away from the harsh discipline of the fleet, or some tyrannical captain. He smiled sadly. And no midshipmen, none. There was no room on anti-slavery work for untrained, would-be admirals.

The first lieutenant was watching him, his face troubled. He knew about Tyacke and the vice-admiral. A powerful relationship, although Tyacke could rarely be drawn to speak of it. But Larne could not stand away from the land for much longer; they were on halved rations as it was. In the same breath, Ozanne knew that if his captain required it he and the others would drive the brig to eternity. Ozanne himself was no stranger to risk, or to dedication: he had once been the master of a lugger running out of St Peter Port in Guernsey, but French men-of-war and privateers had made trade impossible for such small craft, and he had gone into the navy, becoming a master’s mate, and eventually a lieutenant.

Tyacke did not notice his scrutiny. He was shading his eyes to study the nearest island. Nothing. He tried not to think of the sharks Golden Plover’s boatswain had described. Better that than to be taken by natives or Arab slavers, especially the two women. He wondered who the other one was—surely not Keen’s young wife?

He said, “Change the lookouts, Paul. I’d anchor inshore despite the danger and send a watering party over. But it would take more time.”

Ozanne pondered on it. What did the captain mean, “more time?” Did he still intend to carry on with the search? Some of the men would soon be getting worried, he thought. They had seen the state of the survivors from the cutter. One had already died, and another had gone since they had been snatched from the sea.

They were quite alone, and with three prize crews taking their captures back to Freetown they were short-handed. He trusted his men, but he never trusted what the sea might make them do.

Tyacke waited for the new lookouts to climb aloft and then said, “Both watches, if you please, Paul. We’ll come about and steer sou’-east-by-south.”

Ozanne stood his ground. He was older than Tyacke, and would never go any higher in the navy. But this suited him; and he found he wanted to comfort Tyacke in some way.

“You done your best, sir. It’s God’s will—I believe that.”

“Aye, mebbe.” He was thinking of the girl he had been hoping to marry. He persistently told himself that no one could blame her for rejecting him when he went home with his terrible scars. But it still hurt him deeply, more than he could rightly understand. Was that God’s will, too? What would all these sunburned seamen think of him if they knew he still had her portrait in his sea-chest, and the gown he had once bought for her in Lisbon?

He was suddenly angry with himself. “Stand by on deck!”

Pitcairn the sailing-master joined the first lieutenant by the wheel.

“Takin’ it badly, is he?”

“He’s … lost something. I’m not certain what.”

“Off tacks and sheets! Stand by! Man the braces, lively there!”

Men crouched and stooped over braces and halliards were suddenly changed into living statues as the distant crash of gunfire echoed across the reefs.

“Belay that order!” Tyacke snatched a telescope from the rack. “Get the t’gallants on her!”

“Hands aloft!” A master’s mate had to push one man bodily to the shrouds.

Tyacke studied the sweeping green arm of the island as it began to dip down towards the eye-searing water.

Another shot. He gritted his teeth. It might be anything. Come on, old lady, you can fly when it takes you thus!

“Deck there! Sail on the lee bow! Brig, she is!”

Tyacke shouted impatiently, “What other vessel?”

The man, even at that height, sounded puzzled. “None, sir!”

“They’ve sighted us, sir.”

Tyacke gripped his hands behind him until the pain steadied him.

“Clear away larboard battery! Stand fast all other hands!”

Men stumbled from their various stations and ran to the seven guns of the larboard battery.

Then, as the land fell completely away, Tyacke saw the other brig. He said almost in a whisper, “She’s the bloody Raven, by God.”

Ozanne rubbed his hands. “We’ll dish that bugger up afore he knows it!” He turned away and did not see Tyacke’s expression. “Run up the Colours! Mr Robyns, a shot across her snout, and the next into ‘er belly if she fails to heave-to!”

The forward gun lurched inboard and seconds later a ball splashed down some fifty feet beyond the Raven’s bowsprit.

But Tyacke had shifted his glass, the slaver almost forgotten as he saw the low shape of the jolly-boat.

“Raven’s shortening sail, sir!”

Tyacke moved the glass with elaborate care on to the pitching boat and flapping sail.

“It’s them. It can’t be, but it is.” He turned to the lieutenant, his eyes shining. “God’s will, after all!”

Ozanne shook his head. “I’ve been at sea too long. I just can’t take it in.”

Tyacke tried to drag his mind from the picture in his powerful telescope.

“Heave-to and send a boarding party across to the Raven.” He heard the boat already being hoisted over the side, the clatter of weapons as the armed men clambered after it. “And Mr Robyns—don’t let them know how short-handed we are. Tell that bloody slaver that if he tries to rid himself of evidence, I’ll not wait till Freetown to see him dance!”

Lieutenant Ozanne remarked, “So that is the famous Bolitho.”

Tyacke watched the oars coming to life, the jolly-boat labouring round towards the drifting Larne.

Ozanne observed, “Not many of them, sir.” He glanced at Tyacke’s face, the tension and intensity in his uninjured profile. What was it, he wondered. Instinct? Somehow he knew it was more; much more. He shaded his eyes. “Who’s the young officer beside him, sir?”

Tyacke turned toward him, and his hideous face split into a great grin of relief. “My God, Paul, you have been at sea too long!” He handed him the glass. “Take a look—even you might recognise a woman after all this time!” He touched his arm. “The admiral’s lady … and ours is the honour.”

Someone called, “They’ve run up our flag over the Raven, sir!” But Tyacke did not even hear. “Man the side, Paul. This is a day to remember.”

12

WELCOME …

LEWIS ROXBY, “the King of Cornwall,” chose his moment with some care and then rose to his feet. It had been a magnificent dinner even by Roxby’s expansive standards—his kitchen was said to produce the finest food in the whole county, and this would be talked about for months. It was not a large gathering by any means—twenty people in all—but it was an affair to be proud of, he thought. The best silver was on display, and all the candles had been changed throughout the meal: no smoke or untidy guttering here.

It was an event nobody had considered even remotely possible when they had all been gathered in the church at Falmouth. Now that was past, like a return from the dead.

Roxby looked along the table and saw Bolitho sitting beside Nancy, and wondered what it had all been like, truly like. Adam was halfway down the table, his face impassive, almost withdrawn as he toyed with a glass of madeira. He seemed different, perhaps because of the second gleaming epaulette on his shoulder, the coveted post-rank which had been granted even as Bolitho and Lady Catherine had returned home to a tumultuous welcome. The square, the coaching road, even the lane that led up to the Bolitho house had been packed with cheering people.

Roxby saw Lieutenant Stephen Jenour speaking quietly to his parents. The Jenours were very much in awe of the other guests, but the excellent meal and an endless procession of wines had done much to put them at their ease.

Bolitho’s sister Felicity was also here, as was her son Miles who, Roxby noted, had splashed his shirt with red wine, like the victim of a duel.

A fellow magistrate and local landowner whose fortune was second only to Roxby’s, Sir James Hallyburton and his lady, the port admiral from Plymouth, and a few other people who were useful business acquaintances rather than friends, completed the assembly.

Roxby cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, friends all—we are here to welcome home a man who is very special to us for many different reasons.” He saw Bolitho staring along the table, not at him, but at the woman who sat at his right hand. When Bolitho had brought her into the drawing-room where Roxby had begun the reception, with its tall glass doors still open to the gardens despite the nearness of autumn, there had been many gasps of surprise. In a dark green gown, her hair piled above her ears to reveal Bolitho’s gift of earrings, she was not as they had expected to see her after such an ordeal. Her neck and shoulders were bare, darkened so much by the scorching sun that she could have been from the South Americas, and her beauty seemed somehow more exotic, more defiantly unconventional. Roxby glanced down at her now, and saw the one revealing burn on her shoulder, as if she had been branded. She met his eyes, and he said quietly, “And we welcome you, Lady Catherine, and thank God for your safety. I thought this private gathering of friends would suit you far better than something grand, after all the travelling you have been forced to do since you reached Portsmouth, and then came west to us!”

She bowed her head, so that her high cheekbones caught the light from the candles, and her voice was composed as she answered, “Your kindness means so much to us.”

Then she allowed her mind to drift as Roxby continued with his well-prepared speech.

It was still almost impossible to believe it was over, behind them. Separate incidents stood out more than others. Some she could not bear to think about. Perhaps most of all she recalled her shocked disbelief when the brig Larne had been sighted tacking around a necklace of reefs.

And poor Tyacke trying to welcome her, his seamen cheering as they had been pulled up from the jolly-boat; the boat that had been their salvation and prison, where men had died, and others had clung to their simple faith that Bolitho would somehow get them to safety, even when everything suggested otherwise.

Then, with exhaustion sweeping over her, she had felt her resistance give way because of Tyacke’s unexpected gift: a gown, badly creased from months, perhaps years, of being crammed into a chest, which she now knew he had carried with him ever since the girl he had wanted for his own had rejected him.

He had muttered awkwardly, “You’re a mite taller than she was, m’lady, but—”

She had gripped him in her arms and whispered, “It will suit very well, James Tyacke. I shall wear it with pride.” And so it had been; the Portuguese gown he had bought for another woman had covered her bruised and burned body all the way to Freetown, where they had found a homeward-bound frigate about to weigh anchor.

More memories. Bolitho. Her man shaking hands with the Larne’s officers, and then speaking alone with her commander, the devil with half a face. Then more cheers from the frigate’s company, and weeks later, entering Portsmouth at the head of a blustery south-westerly. The ramparts of the old port’s battery had been shining like silver in a sudden rain squall even as they ran down on their anchorage. Afterwards the coaches, through more cheering crowds to London where Bolitho had seen Admiral Godschale, the news preceding them on the telegraph’s line of towers all the way from Portsmouth.

They had paused at the small house on the river in Chelsea, where she had at last changed out of Tyacke’s gown into her own clothing. When Sophie had picked up the discarded gown and asked, “What about this, me lady?” she had answered, “Take good care of it. One day I shall return it, and remind him of his kindness.” Sophie had watched her without understanding. “Apart from Richard, he is the only man who has ever made me cry.”

She glanced now along the table and saw him watching her. She touched the ring on her finger, the rubies and diamonds flashing in the chandeliers’ glittering light: a message to him from her. In response she saw him put his hand on his shirt where against his skin the locket was still in place, as it had been throughout those endless days and nights in the open boat.

She had accompanied him to the Admiralty, but only when he had insisted. “We are one, Kate. I am heartily sick of pretence!”

Godschale had appeared genuinely pleased to see her, and he had certainly noticed the ring, with which she considered Richard had married her in the little church at Zennor. Then while Bolitho had gone to discuss other matters, she had walked through the corridors of Admiralty to the carriage waiting for her by the steps.

She realised now that Richard’s other sister Felicity was watching her with hostile eyes. An enemy, and she would always be so.

Catherine thought instead of Richard, speaking to the men in the jolly-boat, hiding his disappointment when they had sighted land only to discover it was that cruel, deserted island. She remembered his face, feature by feature, when he had rallied them together with the promise of another island, water, and survival. No, she would never forget.

She looked at Adam’s thoughtful profile and wondered if he had seen Zenoria, who had left with Keen’s sisters to be reunited with her husband in Hampshire.

It was strange how everyone seemed to have changed … even the house, where they had been received with wild excitement by Ferguson and the others, and not without a few tears, either. Richard, in contrast, was able to accept it; he was used to being away at sea for far longer periods. But his reunion with Adam had been very moving, and only when she herself had embraced Adam had she seen the quiet desperation in his eyes. Vulnerable. Like Tyacke, who had lost something he would never regain. She looked away as Adam turned towards her. It might be safer not to dwell upon it.

Roxby unintentionally put paid to all that.

He beamed along the table, his forehead shining from exhilaration and good port.

“My one regret is that Captain Valentine Keen and his lovely young bride are not with us tonight. I’ll lay odds there were some wet eyes when they came face to face, for it seemed everything was set against them.” Catherine saw Adam’s fingers bunch into a tight fist as Roxby continued, “But a sailor has to have someone waiting for him when he returns from serving his King.” He glanced fondly at his own two children, James and Helen. The latter had recently married a prosperous young lawyer; no risk of separation there, he thought. “So I am hoping that our gallant Captain Keen will soon know the joy—” he winked towards his wife—”and the challenge of raising a family!”

That brought some laughter and banging on the table. Catherine knew Richard was watching her still. She was probably wrong, imagining it; and Richard must never know.

Roxby became solemn. “I bid you all stand and raise a glass to Falmouth’s greatest son, and to the Lady Catherine, whose beauty is matched only by her courage!”

They drank the toast and then made themselves comfortable again while the servants began to set plates of fruit compote at every place.

Bolitho sighed. He had never had much of an appetite since he had been a midshipman. He smiled at the memory. Even ship’s rats fed on biscuit crumbs had sometimes been the young gentlemen’s lot … He looked at Catherine, wanting to be near her, touch her: this separation and interminable hilarity reminded him of the night they had met again at English Harbour, when her treacherous husband had given a dinner such as this for him. It had been torture; and he had seen all the dangers, and had disregarded them.

He plucked at his waistcoat. He had returned home much thinner after their ordeal in the jolly-boat, but Lewis Roxby’s massive feast of fish, fowl, venison and a procession of other dishes was taking care of that.

He thought over the extraordinary things Godschale had told him. He had asked what had happened to Captain Hector Gossage, Herrick’s flag captain in the ill-fated convoy.

Godschale had been pouring some wine, and had paused to wag a finger at him.

“RearAdmiral Gossage, if you please. He will also have a special pension when he is finally finished with the navy … at present he’s in charge of a mission seeking out timber for ship building. God knows there are few enough forests left in England suitable for the purpose.” He had shaken his head. “In truth, it makes little sense.”

Bolitho recalled the private discussion he had observed between the judge advocate and Sir Paul Sillitoe during Herrick’s court martial. Am I so naive that I cannot recognise a bribe? They had persuaded Gossage to give evidence clearing Herrick’s name, to say nothing of absolving the Admiralty of debts it would otherwise have had to pay.

Other news. When Golden Plover had been reported lost, Godschale had hastily sent a replacement to the Cape of Good Hope. Yet another face: RearAdmiral the Right Honourable Viscount Ingestre, who had been one of the three senior officers of the court martial.

Godschale had been in a jovial mood. “God’s teeth, Sir Richard, it does my heart good to see you and that lovely creature who came with you. Only think, man, if you had arrived a month or so later you could have attended a splendid memorial service in your own honour, here in London!”

So Golden Plover’s loss had changed everything. Keen would not now be a commodore, and any role in the Portuguese campaign was out of the question. He had told Catherine most of it, while the carriage rolled along the embankment and into the peace of Chelsea. When it suited their lordships, he would hoist his flag again over Black Prince, which was still lying at Portsmouth. His flagship’s latest caprice seemed scarcely credible —could a ship so new, without memories, possess a will of her own as his old Hyperion had once done? She had left her moorings at the completion of her repairs, with a new captain in command and an admiral yet to be selected, and had immediately collided with an old two-decker being used as a stores hulk. The two-decker had heeled over and sunk with her side still above water, and Black Prince had returned to her dock for further repairs. Her new captain was now faced with a court martial. Fate. It had to be.

Godschale studied him grimly. “It’ll be the Caribbean again if you accept, Sir Richard. I’d not blame you if you rejected it, after all you’ve endured.”

Bolitho knew the admiral well enough to understand that he really meant the opposite.

Catherine had listened to him in silence, her eyes moving over the passing scene, the river and the traders, the stray dogs and the soldiers with their women by the tavern.

“I’ll not argue, my love. I know what you are. I have seen and shared that other life as few could ever do.” She had faced him with sudden pride. “I love thee so …”

He looked up from something Nancy was murmuring to him and heard his sister Felicity say, “To be alone in a boat with all those men, Lady Catherine. It must surely have presented certain … difficulties?”

Catherine looked at her, her eyes flashing. “We did not serve tea every day, Mrs Vincent, and the privacy we can take for granted here was scarce. But we had other things to distract us.”

“It is the opinion of some that you possess great beauty, Lady Catherine. I would have thought …”

Roxby began to intervene as everyone else fell silent, but Catherine reached out and touched his arm. She said, “I think everyone here knows what you would have thought, Mrs Vincent.” She saw Miles Vincent hide a snigger. “But out of respect for our hosts, and because of the love I bear the bravest, kindest man I have ever known, I will curb my tongue. But I must say, if it occurs again I shall be less than agreeable.”

Felicity rose and a footman ran to hold her chair.

“I have a headache. Miles, give me your hand—”

Nancy said hotly, “She fills me with shame and disgust!”

But Bolitho was looking at the woman who had just declared her love for him, openly, without question, without shame.

Roxby said loudly into the silence, “I think some more port, eh?” He shook his head at his wife and sighed noisily with relief. “That was good of you, Lady Catherine. I did not want her to spoil this little affair for you.”

She laid her gloved hand on his. “Spoil it?” She threw back her head and gave her bubbling laugh. “When you have shared an ocean with blood-crazed sharks, even that embittered woman seems none too bad!”

Much later, as young Matthew drove the carriage along the narrow lanes and the fields gleamed in bright moonlight, Catherine opened both windows to it, so that her bare shoulders shone like silver.

“I never dreamed I would see this again, nor smell the richness of the land.”

“I am sorry about my sister—”

She swung round and put her fingers on his mouth. “Think only of what we did together. Even when we are separated, for so must we be, I will be with you as never before. Your ship and your men are a part of me too.” Then she asked tenderly, “How is your eye now?”

Bolitho glanced out at the moon. The misty circle was still around it. “It is much better.”

She leaned against him so that he could smell her perfume, her body.

“I am not convinced. But I shall write to that doctor again.” She hugged him, and gasped as he bent over and kissed her bare shoulder.

“But first, love me. It has been so long. Too long …”

Matthew, half dozing on his box, because the horses knew this road like their own stable, jerked awake as he heard their voices, their laughter and then the intimate silence. It was good to have them back, he thought. Complete again.

Allday had told him how she had stood beside Sir Richard and had faced the mutineers fearlessly, until they had won the day.

Matthew grinned, and knew that had it been lighter he might have been seen to be blushing.

With a woman like that, Sir Richard could conquer the whole world.

Bodmin, the county town of Cornwall, was filled with inns and post-houses, as well as cheap lodgings for the passengers of the many coaches that spread their routes eastward to Exeter and as far afield as London, north to Barnstaple and to the great ports of the West Country like Falmouth and Penzance. It was a plain old town, set on the fringes of the forbidding moor, which had long been the haunt of footpads and highwaymen, some of whom could be seen rotting in chains at the roadside as a warning to others.

The parlour of the Royal George was low-ceilinged and pleasant, little different from most other coaching inns where travellers could take a tankard of ale or something stronger to wash down the excellent cheese and cold cuts of meat while the horses were changed for the next leg of the journey to Plymouth.

Captain Adam Bolitho declined to offer his hat and cloak to an inn servant but found a high-backed seat away from the fire, retaining his outer clothing as a kind of protection against local curiosity. In any case he was not particularly warm, despite the body heat of the other passengers and, now, a blazing log fire. He had left Falmouth early, on the first available coach, his collar turned up and the clasp of his boat-cloak fastened to conceal his rank. His fellow passengers had been civilians, merchants mostly, and those who had managed to remain awake during the journey had been discussing the new possibilities they saw in trade with Portugal and later with Spain, as the war expanded. One of them had noticed Adam’s hat, which he had kept more or less discreetly beneath his cloak.

“A commander, eh, sir? One so young, too!”

Adam had said shortly, “Post captain.” He did not intend to be rude, nor to give offence, but those sort of people made him sick. To them, war was profit and loss in business, not broken bones and the roar of cannon fire.

The man had persisted, “When will it be over? Can nobody destroy this Bonaparte?”

Adam had replied, “We do our best, sir. I suggest that if more gold were put into sound shipbuilding, and less into the bellies of city merchants, it would be over much sooner.” The man had not troubled him again.

That particular passenger wasn’t here in the parlour, and Adam guessed, thankfully, that Bodmin was the end of his journey.

One of the maids gave him a quick curtsy. “Something for the cap’n?” She was young and saucy, and no stranger to the attention of lecherous passengers, he thought.

“Do you have brandy, my girl?”

She giggled. “Nay, zur—but to you, yes.” She hurried away and soon returned with a large goblet and some fresh cheese. “From the farm, zur.” She watched him curiously. “Be you in command of a King’s ship, zur?”

He glanced at her, the brandy hot on his tongue. “Aye. Anemone, frigate.” The brandy was excellent, no doubt run ashore by members of the Trade.

She said with a smile, “Tes an honour to serve you, zur.”

Adam nodded. And why not? He did not need to be in Plymouth as early as he had said. His first lieutenant would be enjoying his temporary command in his absence. The next coach would do. She recognised the uncertainty on his grave features and said, “Well, now, if you be a-passing of this way again …” She took his goblet to refill it. “My name be Sarah.”

She placed the goblet beside him and hurried away as the red-faced landlord bellowed out some demands from waiting passengers. It did not take long to change horses, and for the guard and coachman to down a few pints of cider or ale. Time was money.

Adam sank back against the tall chair and let the din of voices wash over him. The dinner; Lady Catherine’s sharp exchange with Aunt Felicity, who would never acknowledge him as her nephew. His uncle … His thoughts stopped there. It had been like finding a brother, after fearing him to be dead.

He was glad to be returning to Plymouth for orders: despatches for the Channel Fleet, patrols in the Bay of Biscay or around Brest to assess the enemy’s strength or intentions. Anything to keep him busy, his mind too full to allow any thought of Zenoria. In the same instant he knew he could not forget her, any more than he could stop himself remembering their love-making, her lithe body naked in his arms, her mouth like fire upon his. He had known several women, but none like Zenoria. Her fear had gone, and she had returned his passion as if it were all new and unspoiled, despite what she had endured.

He glanced at the goblet. Empty, and yet he had barely noticed it. When he looked again it was refilled. Perhaps he could sleep for the rest of the journey, and pray that the torment did not return.

Now she was with her husband, offering herself out of duty, out of guilt, but not out of love. It made him sick with jealousy even to think of them together. Keen touching her, brushing away her shyness, and possessing her as was his right.

He could not hate Valentine Keen. He had, in fact, always liked him, and knew that Keen felt as deeply towards his uncle as Adam himself did. Brave, fair, a decent man whom any woman would be proud to love. But not Zenoria. Adam sipped the brandy more carefully. He must be doubly careful in everything he did and said. If he were not, Valentine Keen would become a rival, an enemy.

I have no right. It is not merely a matter of honour, it is also the name of my family.

Horses clattered in the yard, and more voices announced the arrival of another coach; it would be the one that had left Falmouth this morning too, but which had travelled by way of Truro and outlying villages. The landlord’s face split into a fixed grin. “Mornin’, gentlemen! What’ll it be?” The girl named Sarah was there too, running her eye over the incoming faces.

Adam ignored them. What if he and Zenoria were brought together again? And if he persisted in avoiding her, would that not make it even more obvious? How would she behave? Submit, or tell her husband what had happened? That was unlikely. Better so, for all their sakes.

He would go outside and let the air clear his head until the coach was ready to proceed. He reached for his hat and then his hand poised, motionless, as he heard someone mention the name “Bolitho.”

Two men were standing by the fire, one a farmer by the look of his clothing—sturdy boots and heavy riding gloves. The other was plump and well-dressed, probably a merchant on his way to Exeter.

The latter was saying, “Such a commotion while I was staying in Falmouth—I was glad not to miss it. All the town turned out when Sir Richard Bolitho came back. I never knew that any man could inspire such affection.”

“I was there too. Often go for the market sales. Better ‘n some, as good as most.” He tilted his tankard and then said, “The Bolitho family’s famous thereabouts—or notorious, should I say?”

“Are they, by God? I’ve read something of their exploits in the Gazette, but nothing …”

His companion laughed. “Rules for some, but not for t’others, that’s what I say!” Their coach must have stopped at other inns longer than the Royal George. His voice was loud and slurred.

He continued, as if addressing the whole room. “Sleeping with another man’s wife, an’ talk of rape an’ worse. Well, you know what they say about rape, my friend—there’s usually two sides to it!”

Adam could feel the blood pounding in his brain, the man’s voice probing his mind like a hot knife. Who was he talking about? Catherine? Zenoria? Or was he even hinting about Adam’s own father, and his mother who had lived like a whore to raise the son Hugh Bolitho had not known about until it was too late?

He stood up and heard the girl ask, “Be you a-goin’, zur?”

“Directly—er, Sarah.” She was staring at him, unsure what was happening. He added, “A tankard, if you please. A large one.” She brought it, mystified, as Adam moved out of the shadows and to a hatch which opened on to the inn kitchen. A face peered out at him. “Zur?”

“Fill this with the filthiest scummy liquid you have.” He pointed at a large tub where a young girl was rinsing out the bedroom chamber pots. “That will do quite nicely.”

The man still gaped at him. “Oi don’t understand ‘ee, zur …” He hesitated, and then something in Adam’s face made him hurry away to the tub. Adam took the tankard and carried it towards the fire.

The landlord, polishing a jug, called out, “Plymouth Flier be ready to board, gentlemen!”

But nobody moved as Adam said, “I gather you were speaking of the Bolitho family in Falmouth.” His voice was very quiet and yet, in the silent parlour, it was like a clap of thunder.

“And what if I was?” The man swung on him. “Oh, I see you’re a gallant naval gentleman—I would expect the likes of you to disagree!”

Adam said, “Sir Richard Bolitho is a fine officer—a gentleman in the truest sense, which obviously you would never understand.”

He saw the bluster begin to fail.

“Now, just a minute—I’ve had enough of this!”

The landlord called, “I’ll have no trouble here, gentlemen!”

Adam did not drop his gaze from the other man. “No, landlord, not here. I am offering a drink to this loud-mouthed oaf.”

It took him off guard. “Drink?”

Adam said gently, “Yes. It is piss, like the foulness of your mouth!” He flung it into his face and tossed the tankard to one side. While the other man spluttered and choked he threw back his cloak and said, “May I introduce myself? Bolitho. Captain Adam Bolitho.”

The man stared at him wildly. “I’ll break your back, damn your bloody arrogance!”

“How much more must I insult you?” Adam struck him hard in the mouth, and said, “Swords or pistols, sir? The choice is here and now, before the next coach.”

The landlord said urgently, “You take it back, Seth. The young cap’n ‘ere d’have a reputation.”

The man seemed to shrink. “I didn’t know. It was just talk, y’see!”

“It nearly cost you your wretched life.” He glanced at the sweating landlord. “I beg your pardon for all this. I will make it worth your while.” There were gasps and a sudden, hurried grating of chairs as he produced a pistol and examined it, giving himself time. He knew he would have killed him. It was always there—lies about his family, several attempts to tarnish their honour, while the liars hid themselves in secret cowardice.

The man was practically in tears. “Please, Captain—I’d had too much to drink!”

Adam ignored him and turned towards a solitary brass candlestick where the flame was always kept burning for the tapers of customers wishing to light their pipes.

The crash of the shot brought shouts of alarm and screams from the kitchen. The flame had gone, but the candle was still intact. Before thrusting the pistol beneath his coat he asked quietly, “Who told you these things?”

A coach guard stood in the doorway, a blunderbuss in his hands, but even he fell back when he saw the gleaming epaulettes of a naval captain.

The man hung his head. “Some young blade, sir. I should’ve guessed he were a liar. But he said he was connected with the family.”

Adam knew instantly. “Named Miles Vincent? Yes?”

The man nodded unhappily. “In the market, it were.”

“Well. We shall just have to see, won’t we?” He walked from the silent parlour and paused only to put some coins in the landlord’s fist. “Forgive me.”

The landlord counted it at a glance: it was a large amount. The ball had smashed into the wood panelling. He smiled. He would leave it there, and perhaps put a little plate above it to tell its story for the benefit of customers.

The girl was waiting beside the coach, while passengers bustled past averting their faces, in case they too provoked some violence.

Adam took out a gold coin and said, “Live your life, Sarah. And don’t sell yourself cheap.” He slipped the coin between her breasts. “For a place that sells no brandy, you certainly know how to fire a man’s spirits!”

The coach was long out of sight and its horn almost lost in distance as it approached the narrow bridge and the road for Liskeard before anyone spoke in the inn parlour, where the pistol smoke hung near the low ceiling like some evil spirit.

The man protested, “How was I to know?” But nobody would look at him.

Then the landlord said, “By God, Seth, it was nearly your last hour!”

The girl Sarah plucked the coin from her bodice and gazed at it intently, remembering the touch of his fingers, the easy way he had addressed her. She had never been spoken to like that before. She would never forget. She carefully replaced the coin, and when she stared down the empty road her eyes were filled with tears.

“God keep you safe, young cap’n!”

The landlord ambled from the inn door and put his arm around her shoulders. “I knows, my dear. There’s not many d’ think much o’ they hereabouts, and what they risk every time they do leave harbour.” He gave her a squeeze. “I’d not care to fall afoul o’ that fiery young master!”

Aboard the Plymouth Flier Adam stared out of the dusty window at the passing countryside. Whenever he glanced at his travelling companions they were all either asleep or pretending to be. But sleep was denied him, and in the window’s reflection he seemed to see her face. The girl with the long, beautiful hair: the girl with moonlit eyes, as his uncle had once called her.

He had been a fool back there at the Royal George. Post-captain or not, he would have been ruined if he had killed the other man in a duel. It would have meant disgrace for his uncle yet again. Was it always to be so?

… Miles Vincent. Yes, it would be. Perhaps his mother had put him up to it. Adam doubted it: the motive was too obvious. Hate, envy, revenge … his fingers tightened around his sword and he saw a flicker of apprehension cross the face of the man opposite him.

He thought suddenly of his father. He had heard from an old sailing-master who had known Hugh that he had been violent and quick-tempered, ready to call any one out if the mood took him: the memory of him still hung over the old house at Falmouth like a storm-cloud. I will not make the mistake of following in his wake.

Watery sunlight played across the sea for the first time in this journey.

He thought of his Anemone, daughter of the wind. She would be his only love.

Bryan Ferguson sat at the kitchen table of his cottage and surveyed his friend, who was standing by the window. He wanted to smile, but knew it was far too important a moment for amusement.

Allday plucked at his best jacket, the one with the gilt buttons, which Bolitho had given him to mark him as his personal coxswain. Nankeen breeches and buckled shoes: he was every inch the landsman’s idea of the Jack Tar. But he seemed troubled, his deeply-sunburned features creased with uncertainty.

“Lucky I didn’t lose this on that damned Golden Plover.” He tried to grin. “Must have known there was something wrong with that little pot o’ paint!”

Ferguson said, “Look, John, just go and see the lady. If you don’t, others will. She’ll be a rare catch if she gets the Stag on its feet again.”

Allday said heavily, “An’ what have I got to offer? Who wants a sailor? I reckon she’d have had a bellyful o’ that after losing her man in Hyperion.”

Ferguson said nothing. It would either blow over, or this time it would be in earnest. Either way, it was so good to have Allday back again. He marvelled at the fact that Grace had never lost faith; she had earnestly believed that they would be saved.

Allday was still talking himself out of it.

“I’ve no money, just a bit put by, nothing for the likes of her …”

Ozzard came through the door. “You’d better make up your mind, matey. Young Matthew’s brought the cart round to drive you to Fallowfield.”

Allday peered at the looking glass on the kitchen wall and groaned. “I don’t know. I’ll make a fool of myself.”

Ferguson made up his mind. “I’ll tell you something, John. When you and Sir Richard were said to be lost, I went over to the Stag.”

Allday exclaimed, “You didn’t say nothing, for God’s sake?”

“No. Just had a stoup of ale.” He prolonged it. “Very good it was too, for a small inn.”

Allday glared at him. “Well, did you?”

Ferguson shook his head. “But I did see her. Done wonders for the place.”

Allday waited, knowing there was something else.

Ferguson said quietly, “I’ll tell you another thing. She came all the way into town just to be at the memorial service.” He grinned, the relief still evident on his face. “The one you missed!”

Allday picked up his hat. “I’ll go then.”

Ferguson punched his massive arm. “Hell, John, you sound as if you’re facing a broadside!”

Ozzard said, “Her ladyship is coming.”

Ferguson hurried to the door. “She’ll want to see the books. ‘Tis a fair tonic to have her here again.”

Ozzard waited for him to bustle away and then, secretively, laid a leather bag on the table. “Your half. Sounds as if it might come in useful.”

Allday opened the string and stared with disbelief at the glittering gold inside.

Ozzard said scornfully, “You didn’t think I’d throw good gold to the sharks, did you? I sometimes wonder about you, I do indeed.” He relented. “Lead pellets made just as much of a splash, or so I thought at the time.”

Allday looked at him gravely. “Anything I can ever do for you—but you knows that, don’t you, Tom?”

Ferguson came back, puzzled. “Lady Catherine wasn’t there.”

Ozzard shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Probably changed her mind. Women do, you know.”

Allday walked out into the pale sunlight and climbed into the little cart, the one used for collecting wine or fresh fish from the harbour. Young Matthew, too, took particular notice of Allday’s smart appearance, but like Ferguson he decided not to risk making any sort of joke.

When they reached the little inn, with the Helford River showing itself beyond the trees, Matthew said, “I’ll be back for you later.” He looked at him fondly, remembering what they had once seen and done together, the “other life” Lady Catherine had once wanted to learn about, which she had now so bravely shared.

“I’ve never seen you like this afore, John.”

Allday climbed down. “Hope you never do again.” He strode towards the inn and heard the cart clatter away before he could change his mind.

It was cool inside the door, a smell of freshness, the simple furniture scrubbed and decorated with wild flowers. There was a lively fire in the grate, and he guessed it would be getting cold earlier in the evenings so close to the river and the sea.

He tilted his head like an old dog as he caught the aroma of newly baked bread and something cooking in a pot.

At that moment she came through a low door and stopped dead when she saw him. With one hand she tried to wipe a smudge of flour from her cheek, while with the other she swept a loose lock of hair from her eyes.

“Oh, Mister Allday! I thought it was the man with the eggs! Seeing me like this—I must look an awful sight!”

He crossed the room carefully as if he were treading on something delicate. Then he put down his parcel on a serving table. “I brought you a present, Mrs Polin. I hope you like it.”

She unwrapped it slowly, and all the while he was able to watch her. An awful sight. She was the dearest woman he had ever laid eyes on.

Without looking up she said shyly, “My name’s Unis.” Then with a gasp of surprise she lifted out the model ship on which Allday had been working before leaving for the Cape of Good Hope.

He said nothing; but somehow she knew it was the old Hyperion.

“Is it really for me?” She stared at him, her eyes shining.

Then she reached out and took one big hand in both of hers.

“Thank you, John Allday.” Then she smiled at him. “Welcome home.”

13

… AND FAREWELL

JAMES SEDGEMORE, the Black Prince’s first lieutenant, paused in his endless pacing of the quarterdeck to take a telescope from the midshipman-of-the-watch. His face was reddened by the lively south-easterly wind, and he was very aware of the activity around him as the ship prepared to get under way. Lying to her anchor off Spithead, she was already responding, her masts and rigging shivering, while above the decks tiny figures swarmed like monkeys amongst the black tracery of shrouds and stays, halliards and ratlines.

Sedgemore trained the glass on the sallyport and saw Black Prince’s long green barge standing off the stairs, the oars pulling and backing to hold her clear of any damage in the choppy water. Tojohns, the captain’s coxswain, was in charge, and would make sure that everything was all right.

The whole ship was alive with rumour and speculation after some of the tales Tojohns had brought aboard with him. The shipwreck, a mutiny, man-eating sharks, and through it all, the admiral’s lady suffering and enduring with the rest of them.

A man gave a yelp of pain as a boatswain’s mate swung at him with his rope starter. It would be good to get the people out to some sea room, Sedgemore thought. The officers for the most part were as green as the bulk of the hands, half of whom had never set foot in a King’s ship before. They would soon learn, he thought grimly. He was not going to lose his chances of further promotion because of their ignorance or stupidity. He glanced at this same deck, where his predecessor had been cut in halves by a French ball. That was often how promotion came, and you never questioned it, in case the chance never offered itself again.

He thought too of his captain, so changed in manner from the time he had left the ship for some vague appointment in Cape Town: his temporary replacement had been swiftly removed after the ship’s unfortunate collision. That had been lucky for Sedgemore too. He himself had been ordered ashore with despatches for the port admiral, and was quite blameless.

It was good to have Captain Keen back. The other man had been so distant he had been impossible to know. Keen on the other hand had returned cheerful and confident, and apparently not even troubled too much by the large proportion of landmen and scum from the jails.

There had been one awkward moment however, when Black Prince had left her moorings and sailed through the narrow entrance of Portsmouth Harbour to anchor here off Spithead. The wind had been unusually strong, and Sedgemore had felt the hair rising on his neck as he watched the shallows beneath Portsmouth Point and its cluster of houses seemingly just a few yards clear. He had turned towards his captain, and had seen him smiling as men scampered to the braces, and extra hands had flung themselves on the great double-wheel. Looking back, Keen had shown a new, youthful recklessness, which had not been there when they had waited for RearAdmiral Herrick’s court martial to begin.

Surviving the perils of an open boat, or returning to a young wife—it was probably a bit of both.

More men ran to loosen belaying pins in readiness to free the halliards, so that nothing would stick in the heavy drift of spray when the anchor broke free.

Sedgemore smiled to himself. Yes, it would be good to go. Not Portugal but the West Indies, it appeared. Where he would be out of reach of his creditors until his fortune improved. Sedgemore was ambitious to a point of devotion. A command of his own, then post-rank; it was like a mapped-out road of his own fate. But his weakness was gambling, and a spell safely in the Indies would keep him out of trouble … until the next time. And Sir Richard Bolitho would soon be aboard again. Surely with his experience and leadership, there would be even better chances for advancement.

He saw Jenour appear momentarily on deck with Yovell before they vanished beneath the poop. Jenour, previously such a lively young officer, full of experiences with which he had sometimes entertained the wardroom, of all those who had come back from almost certain death, seemed subdued and unwilling to talk. However, Sedgemore knew nothing would remain a secret from anyone after a few weeks at sea.

The fourth lieutenant, Robert Whyham, who was officer-of-the-watch, said, “Barge is shoving off, sir!”

“I’ll tell the captain. Pipe the guard to the side.” He liked Whyham, who was the only lieutenant from the original wardroom, and had been promoted from sixth place in the past few months. He also envied him without really knowing the reason, except that Whyham had served under Captain Keen in a previous flagship, the French prize Argonaute. There had been glory in her great fight too. Sedgemore rarely allowed his mind to dwell on the harsher side of things.

He hesitated, a last look round: nothing adrift which he might be blamed for. “And tell that midshipman to go forrard and make certain the admiral’s flag is already bent-on and ready to break on the last order of the salute.”

Whyham touched his dripping hat. “Aye, sir.”

At least the reception would go smoothly; both of the Royal Marine officers were from the original detachment which now made up an eighth part of Black Prince’s eight hundred officers and men.

Lieutenant Sedgemore straightened the lapels on his coat and removed his hat as he reached the rigid marine sentry outside the captain’s screen door.

One day, I shall have something like this. For a terrible moment he imagined he had spoken aloud, but when he glanced at the sentry’s eyes he was thankful to see they were suitably blank.

He rapped on the door with his knuckles. “Captain, sir?”

The Black Prince’s captain stood directly below the skylight of his day cabin and looked through the spray-dappled glass. The sky was grey, the clouds fast-moving in the occasional gusts against the ship’s high tumblehome, which made itself felt in the very bowels of the hull. He glanced at Jenour, who was half-heartedly examining some papers Yovell had left for Keen’s signature. It was hard to see him in that open boat with his torn hands hauling on an oar; the blood in the bottom after Allday had amputated the Golden Plover’s master’s infected leg. Hard to picture himself either, for that matter.

He knew what was troubling Jenour, and said, “It had to happen eventually. You have been Sir Richard’s flag lieutenant longer than anyone. He likes you, and this is his way of rewarding you, as is only proper.”

Jenour came out of his dark thoughts. Bolitho had told him himself that after they had reached the West Indies, and at the first opportunity, he would appoint him in command of some suitable vessel. It was customary, and in his heart Jenour had known it was inevitable. But he did not want to leave the vice-admiral. He had become a part of this precious body, we happy few as poor Oliver Browne had once called it. There were very few of them left now, but that had never deterred him.

Keen took his silence for a persisting doubt and said, “Responsibility is not yours to toss away. It is a privilege, not a right, as I and others like me soon discovered. Once you were less certain.” He smiled. “Less mature, if you like. But your experience has grown with you, and it is needed more than ever. Look at this ship, Stephen. Boys and old men, volunteers and rascals. It is the way of things. Sir Richard is ordered to the Indies to command a squadron of fourteen sail of the line.” He gestured across the litter of papers. “So what have their lordships offered him? Six instead of fourteen, one frigate instead of the promised three. It never changes. Which is why your skills, like it or not, are sorely needed. Take the vice-admiral’s nephew, for instance. He too was once his flag lieutenant—now he is posted, and commands a fine frigate.”

Jenour could not compare himself with Adam Bolitho. He was so like his uncle, but had a touch of fire which came from elsewhere, probably his dead father.

Jenour sighed. “It was good of you to listen, sir.”

Keen watched him leave and began the routine of preparing himself for sea. Once the anchor was up and catted, he would not leave the quarterdeck until his ship was safely clear of the narrows and with the Needles well abeam. Then south-west into open waters, where his untried hands could find their skills, or lack of them, as the great ship bore down towards the Western Approaches.

Feet were moving everywhere, with the occasional shout, muffled by distance and the stoutness of the timbers, to tell of the activity and the tension of getting a man-of-war under sail. There would be other thoughts, too, apart from fear of heights above the swaying hull, or fighting out along the yards to learn the mysteries and terrors of making and reefing sails in half a gale. Thoughts of leaving home, perhaps never to return. Men snatched from the streets and lanes by press-gangs who had no time for heart or pity. That was a peculiar aspect of the character of seamen. For the most part those already in the King’s service, even the pressed men, saw no reason why others should not share their own fate.

He crossed to the larboard side and peered through the streaming glass of the quarter gallery. Blurred, like a painting left out in the rain: the dull grey of fortifications, and the cheerful red roofs beyond. He recalled bringing this ship through the narrow harbour entrance, how Julyan the sailing-master had exclaimed, “God, I thought we was going to take the veranda off the old Quebec Inn for a moment or two!”

Have I changed so much? Has she done that for me too?

After all, what had he really expected? He loved her; why had he been surprised that she could at last find it within herself to return it? Perhaps it was merely gratitude …

But it had been none of these things. For a long, long time she had stood pressed in his arms, sobbing quietly, murmuring into his chest.

Even then, he had doubted it.

They had sat by the fire in the rooms set aside for them in the great house in Hampshire. For all they knew, it might have been empty but for themselves. Then she had taken his hand and had led him to that adjoining room, where another fire made the shadows dance around them like rejoicing spectres. She had faced him, paces away, her eyes shining in the flames’ reflections, then very deliberately had let her gown fall to the floor. She had come to him, and together they had fallen on to the great bed. He had been in a daze as she had drawn his lips to her thrusting breasts, held his mouth to each nipple until he was roused to madness. But it was not to be so soon. She had stretched herself naked on the bed, so that her curving scar had been laid bare in the flickering firelight: he had never been permitted to see it so unashamedly revealed. She had looked at him over her bare shoulder and had whispered, “Take me as you will. I have the courage now.” Her voice had broken as he had gripped her body with both hands, “And the love you were denied.”

It had been like that until Keen had received his orders for Portsmouth: passion, exploration, discovery. The parting had been difficult, and left an ache in his heart he had never before experienced.

There was a tap at the outer door and he said, “Enter!” No wonder he had risked even this ship in a moment of remembered ecstasy.

Sedgemore glanced around the cabin, where important members of the court martial had taken refreshment during the various adjournments.

“Sir Richard Bolitho’s barge has just left the sallyport, sir.”

“Very well.” Keen looked at his watch. Another departure, but this time with hope, the knowledge that she would be waiting for him. He knew now why he had been so unmoved by the events in the jolly-boat. Because he had not cared if he had lived or died, and had nothing to lose.

“Fast current running, sir.”

Keen nodded, his thoughts lingering on those nights and sometimes, the days. She had introduced him to a desire and torment he had never known, to pleasures he had never imagined.

He said abruptly, “Yes. Put all spare hands on the capstan bars today. I want to break out the anchor as soon as possible.”

“I’ve already done that, sir.”

Keen smiled. You would. Given time, Sedgemore would become a good first lieutenant; he had already shown that. It was just as well, with all the raw hands at their disposal.

Sedgemore, he noted, was well turned-out to greet his admiral. His uniform coat had not been thrown together by some dockside Jew, but spoke of a good costly tailor. His sword, too, was expensive, its blade embossed and patterned in blue steel. It certainly did not come out of a lieutenant’s pay, and Keen knew that Sedgemore’s father was a humble saddler.

Keen brought his mind back to the ship’s business. “I see we have more than a fair share of squeakers amongst our young gentlemen.”

“Aye, sir. Two of the midshipmen are but twelve years old.”

Keen picked up his sword. “Well, watch them, Mr Sedgemore.”

“As if they were my own sons, sir!”

Keen eyed him calmly. “It was not what I meant. At that tender age they are often the cruellest bullies in the ship. I’ll not have the people harassed more than need be.”

He strode past him and glanced at the sentry. “How’s the wife, Tully?”

The marine brought his heels smartly together. “We’re expecting a third bairn, thank you, sir!” He was still beaming as Keen and his first lieutenant came into the watery grey daylight beyond the poop.

Sedgemore shook his head. He was learning a lot about his captain today. Had he been more perceptive he might have guessed where Keen had first gained his own experience.

Keen watched the green-painted barge, turning now to pass astern of a motionless yawl. Without the aid of a telescope he could see Bolitho hunched in his boat-cloak at the sternsheets, Allday beside him, and his own coxswain at the tiller. Remembering, yes. Perhaps him most of all. The lovely woman beside him, her body revealed by the soaking spray as she had taken her place in the crowded boat. The mutineers who had died, one at Allday’s hand, the other, if he had indeed been one of the mutineers, under the merciless agony of drinking seawater. There had been news of one other mutineer who had been taking refuge in the boatswain’s big cutter. He had been hanged at Freetown within hours of being marched ashore. Justice was always harder and faster the more sea miles you were from high authority.

Lady Catherine would have been here in Portsmouth, whatever Bolitho had said. She would be over yonder now, watching the lively barge, clinging to his image as she would soon have to hold on to his memory.

Keen smiled briefly to the senior Royal Marines officer, Major Bourchier, as he completed inspecting the guard of honour.

“Sorry to leave, Major?”

Bourchier puffed out his cheeks, which were almost the colour of his scarlet coat.

“No, sir, I’m ready for a spot of soldierin’, what?”

Little imagination, but in truth a good soldier, Keen thought. The only time he had seen him show any emotion had been aboard Herrick’s Benbow after the battle. The marines, the whole afterguard had been scattered like toy soldiers, their mingled blood marking them down for what they were. Perhaps he had seen himself there. What they all thought, at one time or another.

“Stand by aft! Royal Marines, ready!”

It seemed bitterly cold on Portsmouth Point, with a wet, blustery wind making the green barge shine like glass as its crew fought to hold station on the stairs.

Bolitho glanced past the weathered opening of the sallyport, through which he and so many others had gone before. This time it was so different. He put his arm around her shoulders, hating the moment of parting. He saw Allday on the stairs watching the boat, a sergeant of marines nearby keeping an eye on a squad of his men. Their duty was to see that Bolitho’s remaining minutes in England were undisturbed by curious onlookers. Not that there were many of those. This must surely be a foretaste of the winter, and the October gales.

Catherine brushed some wet hair from her face and gazed at him searchingly.

“You will take care, dearest of men?”

He held her. “You know I will. I have everything to live for—now.” He had begged her not to wait, but to go straight on to Falmouth. But he had known it would not happen.

She said, “When we were in that boat …” She hesitated, wanting to be anywhere but on this windswept street. “I knew I could face death with you beside me. Without you …” Again he heard the difficult pause. “You see, I am not so brave.”

On their way here, with Matthew guiding the carriage through the deep ruts, which would become a bog as soon as winter closed in, he had told her about his squadron: six sail of the line instead of fourteen, one frigate instead of three. Even with the addition of Black Prince, arguably one of the most powerful ships in the world, it was not much of a force for finally stamping out French power and possessions in the Caribbean. And all because Bonaparte had wanted to take Portugal and put his own son on the throne of Spain. The action had divided their forces yet again, so that the Danish ships seized to complement the fleet were still not enough.

He said, “I shall miss you with all my heart.” She said nothing and he knew she was finding it equally hard. Release her shoulders, step out on to the stairs and into the barge. It will be over.

He recalled how she had shown immediate dismay when he had told her that his solitary frigate was to be the old Tybalt, a ship he knew well, with a captain who would be worth his weight in gold when sniffing out the enemy’s strength in the Indies.

“Not Adam, then?” Was she so concerned for his safety that she wanted all those dearest around him?

He asked, “What shall you do?”

She was watching him intensely, desperately. “I shall help Ferguson—and maybe Zenoria will ask my advice in seeking a house of her own in Cornwall. I know that Valentine’s family still awes her …” Bolitho was not surprised. Lavish houses in London and in Hampshire, one brother a wealthy lawyer and the other who described himself simply as a “farmer”: he owned even more land than Roxby.

She turned in his arms and studied him again. “I have sent a few things over to the ship. To keep you well nourished—to remind you of me sometimes.”

He kissed her hair. It was wet from spray and perhaps drizzle. But it could have been tears.

“Take care of your eye.”

It was all she said. There might once have been hope, the surgeon had said yet again. Something might still come about. But he had left little doubt in their minds that it was now only a matter of time.

Bolitho heard the horses stamping on the cobbles, eager to go, as if they knew they were returning this time to their own warm stables in Falmouth.

He said, “I have arranged for some out-riders for the journey, Kate.”

She pulled off her glove and laid her hand on his cheek.

“Have you forgotten your tiger so soon? Have no fears for me, Richard. Just remember the house, waiting for you … D’you remember telling me to do that after the Golden Plover was lost, and our chances of survival were so small?”

He looked past her. “I will never forget.” There was silence, then she said, “If only we could have had more time.”

“What all sailors lament, my love.”

“And it will be your birthday in three days. I … so wanted to be with you.”

So she felt it too, he thought. Age; time; always the passing of time. It seemed so very precious now.

He walked her to the shelter of the wall. In his mind’s eye he could see his flagship already there in the Western Ocean. A great ship, sailing alone, but a mere speck on that vast expanse of hostile sea.

“I shall raise a glass to thee, Kate.”

Allday did not turn but called, “I think it’s time, Sir Richard. The tide’s on the turn an’ Tojohns is hard put to hold the barge steady.”

“Very well. Signal him alongside.” Then he turned away from the sea and held her tightly against his spray-spotted boat-cloak.

“I love thee so, Kate. My heart is splintered in the pain I feel at parting from you.”

They kissed for a long while, holding on to the moment and all the memories which had triumphed over danger, even death.

When she looked at him again there were real tears in her dark eyes.

“I cannot bear the thought of you being at English Harbour again without me. Where you came, and our love was freed for all time.”

Bolitho had already thought of that, but had hoped she had been spared the reminder.

He heard the oars being tossed and saw her eyes turn towards Allday who was standing beside the pitching barge, in which a youthful lieutenant was sitting, staring about him as if he had never been in charge of a boat before.

She called, “This is not the first time, Allday. But take care of him for me!”

Allday tried to smile. “We both got a lot to come back for, m’lady—leastways, I think I have!”

He watched them kiss, knowing what this parting was costing the man he served and loved beyond all others; then he climbed down into the barge and glared at the gaping lieutenant. “It’s customary for the officer to be ashore when the vice-admiral comes down, sir!” He saw Tojohns give a quick grin as the lieutenant jumped on to the pier and all but lost his cocked hat to the wind.

Allday said between his teeth, “Bloody hopeless, that’s what!”

Bolitho saw none of it. “Go now. Do not wait. You will catch cold up here.”

She released him very slowly, so that their fingertips were just touching when their arms were outstretched.

He said, “I have the locket.”

She answered as she always did. “I will take it off for you when we lie together again, my dearest man.”

Then, with the old sword swaying against his hip, Bolitho went down the stairs and touched his hat to the lieutenant and coxswain.

“I am ready.” He sat beside Allday, his boat-cloak turned up over his ears, his hat beneath it on his lap.

“Bear off! Give way all!”

The oars rose and fell, and with the tiller hard over the smart barge turned quickly away from the slime-covered, treacherous stairs.

In his aching mind the oars seemed to beat a steady rhythm, up, down, up, down, rising and falling like wings as each pull carried him further away from the shore.

Back to the life he had come to expect since he had gone to sea at the age of twelve. It will be your birthday in three days. He could still hear her voice on the wind. Later on, in the seclusion of his cabin, he would remember every hour of their time together. Their walks, the happiness of silence and understanding, the sudden and demanding love and hunger for one another which had left them breathless, and sometimes shy.

He shifted round to watch the land drifting away, the anchored black and buff hulls of several men-of-war swaying heavily to their cables. My world. But try as he might, he could not accept that there was nothing else. Perhaps in the privations of the Golden Plover’s jolly-boat there had been something to learn, even for him. The suffering which had brought a strange comradeship beyond rank and title, the loyalty which had kept Catherine and her maid safe in spite of the very real danger all around them.

Don’t leave me.

The master, Samuel Bezant, cursing those who had betrayed him; Tasker the mate, who had been a part of the plot. He wondered if she ever allowed her mind to return to her Spanish comb, and how she had used it on the traitor Jeff Lincoln. She must have been planning what she must do to save Jenour from being discovered even as Lincoln had been pawing at her body. And Tyacke, his horribly scarred face so full of pleasure and pride that it should be his own ship which had finally found and saved them.

He glanced around, imagining her voice across the frothing choppy water, almost expecting to see her. But the walls were nearly out of sight in the spray that hung like mist on a low shore.

Don’t leave me.

He stared ahead and saw each bargeman trying to avoid his gaze. Most of them at least would know him; but what of the others, and the small squadron assembling out there in the tropical heat and the fierce revolving storms that could tear the sticks out of any ship? They would have to learn. Like all those who had been left behind as a part of the price of admiralty.

Keen would be relieved to be sailing without any other consorts or responsibilities. It would give him time to train his people, to work them at sail and gun until they were a match for any ship which had been in commission far longer. It had been like seeing the old devil-may-care Keen again; it must have been a wonderful reunion for him with his girl with the moonlit eyes. The sailor and his mermaid.

He felt Allday stir. “There she is, Sir Richard.” He displayed neither enthusiasm nor regret. She was his ship. This was his lot.

Bolitho shaded his eyes and saw Allday give him a quick, worried glance. Black Prince seemed to tower above the nearest 74. There were tiny figures working on the yards and in the topmasts’ rigging; others moved along the gangways or waited in groups, no doubt being given more instructions by their lieutenants and warrant officers.

A ship to be proud of, but one without memory or tradition.

To settle his troubled thoughts Bolitho said quietly, “I am glad you have found your lady. I hope that all is well for the future.”

It was pointless to remind Allday that he was free to quit the sea whenever he chose. He had earned it as much as many, and more than most. And now with the recurring pains in his chest from the Spanish sword thrust, he ought to be given a chance to enjoy something of his life. But it was no use. He had tried before. Allday only got angry, or hurt, which was much worse in so big a man in every other way.

Allday replied, “She’s a fine little craft, Sir Richard. Can’t imagine what she ever saw in poor Jonas Polin!” He chuckled, “God rest his soul!” Neither saw the curious stares from some of the bargemen. A coxswain chatting with his flag officer was not an everyday sight in the King’s navy. Allday added, “We has an understanding, so to speak. I must keep my place, but she’ll entertain no other.” He frowned. “Well, summat like that.” He glanced at Bolitho uncertainly. In a few moments there would be too much to do, too many faces for his admiral to recognise and acknowledge. Not many of the former, he thought.

He said, “If anything was to happen, Sir Richard.” He spoke so quietly that his voice was almost drowned by the creak of oars and the surge of tide.

Bolitho laid his hand on the big man’s sleeve. “Speak no more of it, old friend. It is the same for us both.” He tried to smile. “The good die young, so there’s an end to it, eh?”

When he looked again Bolitho saw the jib-boom sweeping past as Tojohns steered the barge as close around the bows as he dared. The fierce-eyed figurehead loomed overhead: Edward, Prince of Wales and son of Edward III, in chain mail and black armour with a splash of colour, the fleur de lys and English lions on the surcoat. Menacing enough to strike at the heart of any enemy, as it had on that terrible morning when they had shattered the French ship that had reduced Herrick’s Benbow to a broken hulk.

Bolitho had the usual tense dryness in his throat as he saw the side-party waiting by the entry port, the blue and white of officers, the scarlet of the marines.

It often amused him when he thought of it at other times. Who would ever guess that he too might be nervous and unsure? It did not amuse him now.

“Bowman!”

Bolitho took out his hat and wedged it on to his head. Remembering her face, when he had rid himself of his queue in favour of the more modern haircut which Allday, who had the longest pigtail he had ever seen, had referred to as “a custom of the younger wardroom bloods!” But Kate had not chided him for it, nor laughed at his apprehension at being older than she.

Allday hissed, “Ready to come about, Sir Richard?” The ship stood high above them, the barge dipping and pitching as if to cast off the bowman’s attempt to hold on to the chains.

Their eyes met. “Ready, it is.” Bolitho moved the sword clear of his leg and reached out for the hand-ropes. It would only need one wrong step. And then, all at once or so it seemed, he was through the entry port and on to the comparative shelter of the gun deck.

The squeal of calls, the slap and bang of bayonetted muskets and the flash of the marine officer’s sword: it never failed to overwhelm him. And here was Keen hurrying to greet him, his youthful features all smiles.

“Welcome aboard, Sir Richard!”

They gripped hands and Bolitho said with a wry smile, “I am sorry you didn’t get your broad-pendant, Val. Fate was against it this time.”

Keen grinned. “It is unimportant, Sir Richard. Like poor Stephen Jenour, I am not eager for that moment!”

Bolitho nodded to the assembled officers, seeing their expressions of curiosity, of hope perhaps. They depended on him for the future; to them, he was their future, for better or worse.

“I shall go aft directly, Val. I know you are eager to weigh anchor.” He broke off and stared at a group of men who were being mustered by one of the lieutenants. “That man, Val—”

“Aye, sir. New hands. But the one you’re looking at is the selfsame William Owen, Golden Plover’s lookout on that unfortunate day.”

Bolitho said, “Put him ashore. He has a protection. And after what he did—”

But for his respect Keen would have laughed. “He volunteered, sir. ‘Thought we should keep together,’ were his words.” He watched Bolitho’s unmasked surprise. You don’t understand, do you? Not even now. Perhaps you never will.

He led the way aft, knowing that Bolitho was probably recalling the court martial, that bitter memory.

Inside the great cabin Ozzard and Jenour were waiting. Bolitho looked around. Her wine cabinet and cooler was already in position. It had been removed from the ship when he had been reported killed.

Ozzard said apologetically, “We’ve not got everything stowed yet, Sir Richard, but I’ve fresh coffee ready.” He glanced around, proud of what he had managed to achieve in so short a time. Bolitho noticed that he showed no regrets about leaving. After the shipwreck he could have been forgiven for remaining on hard, dry land.

There was an open chest on the black and white checkered deck, and inside he saw some neatly parcelled books. They were new, bound in fine green leather and beautifully tooled in gilt so delicate it might have been finished with a gold pen.

“What are these?”

Ozzard wound his hands into his apron. “From her ladyship, Sir Richard. Came out in the guard-boat.”

Keen saw his face and said quickly, “Come with me, Stephen.” To Ozzard he added, “You may bring Sir Richard some coffee.”

The doors closed and Bolitho heard the sentry put down his musket.

He got down on his knees and studied the collection: all the plays he had lost when Golden Plover had gone down. He took out one volume which lay apart from the rest. Shakespeare’s collected sonnets, the printing of which was very clear, obviously chosen with great care to ensure that he could read them easily.

He felt his heart lurch as he saw a ribbon marker closed between the pages: swiftly he opened the book and held it where it would catch the best light on this grey day.

It was her own message, to comfort him when the thought of ageing and separation sought to depress him.

It is the star to every wandering barque,

Whose worth’s unknown, altho’ his height be taken.

Then he seemed to find her reassurance.

Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks …

He got up, oblivious to the shouted commands from the deck, the squeal of tackles, the shiver of the capstan through every timber.

He went to the stern windows and hoisted one open, his face and chest instantly drenched in rain and spray.

Just once, he called her name, and across the tumbling water he heard her cry.

Don’t leave me.

14

BAD BLOOD

OZZARD waited for the deck to sway upright again before refilling his vice-admiral’s cup with fresh coffee.

It was the afternoon of the sixth day since leaving Spithead, and it seemed as if every contested mile of their passage so far had been dogged by foul weather and the inevitable stream of accidents. Captain Keen had been forced to up-anchor with the ship’s complement still fifty short, and with so many unskilled landmen aboard it was no wonder there had been injuries, and worse.

One man had vanished during a shrieking gale in the middle of the night, his cries unheard as he was swept over the side by a great white-bearded wave. Others had suffered cracked bones and torn hands, so that Coutts, the surgeon, had pleaded personally with Keen to reduce sail and ride out each storm under reefed canvas.

But day by day, bad weather or not, the drills continued, one mast racing the other to make or shorten sail, the rigging of safety nets over the upper gun deck to become used to doing it even in pitch darkness if required, so that the crews of the thirty-eight 12-pounders would not be crushed by falling spars and rigging should they be called to action.

Deck by deck, from the massive carronades in the bows to the middle and lower gun deck where the main armament of powerful thirty-two-pounders, or “long nines” as they were nicknamed, the men lived behind sealed ports as great seas boiled along the weather side, and flung solid sheets of water high up over the nettings.

Keen had shown his faith in his warrant officers and those specialists who were the backbone of any ship, and had been quick to display his confidence in them over matters of discipline. With a company so mixed, and with many completely inexperienced, tempers frayed and fists flew on several occasions. It led inevitably to the harsh and degrading spectacle of punishment, the lash laying a man’s back in cruel stripes while the rain spread the blood around the gratings, and the marine drummer boys beat out the time between each stroke.

Bolitho, more than any other, knew how Keen hated the use of flogging. But discipline had to be upheld, especially in a ship sailing alone, and each day standing deeper and deeper into the Atlantic.

Keen was equally unbending with his lieutenants and midshipmen. The former he would take aside and speak to in his quiet, contained fashion. If the officer was foolish enough to ignore his advice, the second interview was of a very different nature. James Cross, the sixth lieutenant who had accompanied the barge to ferry Bolitho from Portsmouth Point, was a case in point. He seemed eager enough, but at most duties he had displayed an incompetence which made even the most hardened petty officer groan.

Allday had been heard to comment, “He’ll be the death of someone afore long. Should’ve been strangled at birth!”

The midshipmen, for the most part, came from established naval families. To sail in the flagship under an officer so renowned, or notorious as some insisted, was a chance of advancement and promotion which could not be overlooked. It was strange that after so many years, victories and setbacks, bloody battles and the demanding rigours of blockade duty, there were many who still believed that the war would soon be over, especially now that English soldiers stood on enemy soil. For young officers hoping for a rewarding life in the King’s service, it might be a last chance of making a name for themselves before their lordships cut the fleet to the bone, and cast their sailors, from poop to forecastle, on the beach: such was a nation’s gratitude.

Ozzard opened the screen door and Keen stepped into the cabin, his cheeks glowing from the sharp northerly wind.

“Coffee, Val?”

Keen sat down, but his head was still tilted as if he was listening to the activity on the upper deck.

Then he took the coffee and sipped it gratefully. Bolitho watched him, thinking of Joseph Browne’s old shop in St James’s, to which Catherine had taken him during their visits to London, and where she must have arranged for all the fine coffee, cheeses and wine to be sent to the ship. Close by had been another shop, Lock’s the hatters. Bolitho had been reluctant for her to indulge in what he had believed extravagance when she had wanted to buy him a new gold-laced hat, to replace the one he had tossed to Julyan the sailing-master when they had sailed to meet the great San Mateo. She had insisted, reminding him, “Your hero purchased his hats here. Did he, I wonder, deprive his Emma of the pleasure of paying?”

Bolitho smiled at the memory. So many things found and enjoyed in that other London, which he had never known until she had shown him.

Keen said absently, “The master says we have logged some 860 miles, give or take. If the wind eases I’ll get more canvas on her. I am heartily sick of this!”

Bolitho looked at the salt-caked stern windows. Six days. It already felt a month or more. He had not kept his promise to raise a glass to Catherine on the night of his birthday. There had been a great gale, the one when they had lost a man outboard, and he had been on deck rather than endure the torment of listening and wondering. As the old heron-like surgeon, Sir Piers Blachford, had remarked, “In your heart you are still a captain, and you find it hard to delegate that task to others.”

Keen remarked, “I wonder what Zenoria is doing. To have thought her husband lost, and to recover him only to lose him again is sour medicine. I would gladly spare her it.”

Bolitho glanced at the books, one of which was lying open, as he had left it. Such good company. It was as though he read to her in the late watches of the night, and not merely to himself. When he closed his eyes he could see her so clearly, the candlelight playing around her throat and high cheekbones; could imagine the silk of her skin beneath his hands, her eager response. What would he feel when the ship anchored at English Harbour? She would be thinking about it, remembering the inevitability of it. Fate.

The sentry tapped his musket on the deck and shouted, “First lieutenant, sir!”

Keen grimaced. “Why do they bellow so much, I wonder? You would think we were in an open field.”

Ozzard opened the door, and Lieutenant Sedgemore stepped swiftly inside.

“I do beg your pardon, Sir Richard.”

Bolitho listened to gun trucks squealing somewhere. The middle gun deck most likely, the seamen gasping and slipping as they ran out the twenty-four-pounders, each action made more dangerous by the tilting obstinacy of the damp planking.

But Keen knew what he wanted, and would take no second-best.

Bolitho said, “If it is the ship’s business that cannot wait, my quarters are yours, Mr Sedgemore.”

The lieutenant looked at him uneasily, as if expecting another motive, or some new sarcasm.

“Er—thank you, Sir Richard.”

Bolitho hid a smile. I have obviously passed the test.

To Keen the first lieutenant explained, “The masthead reported a sail to the nor’-east during the morning watch, sir.”

Keen waited. “I know. I bid the midshipman insert the sighting in the log.”

Another flicker of surprise, as if Sedgemore had not expected his captain to concern himself with the ordinary deck-log.

Bolitho commented as he glanced around the spacious cabin, “This is no Hyperion, Val. I could hear almost everything from my quarters then!” They smiled briefly at one another, sharing the memory.

Sedgemore said, “She has just been sighted again, sir. Same bearing.”

Keen rubbed his chin. “Not much choice in this wind.” He looked at Bolitho. “Not another case of Golden Plover, surely, sir?”

Bolitho said, “If the stranger is an enemy he will keep his distance, and we are surely too slow to run him down. As for secrecy, I expect half of England knows what we are about, and our eventual landfall.”

Keen was thinking aloud, “Mr Julyan predicts a clear sky this afternoon—like Allday, I think he has an ear in the Almighty’s court. I’ll have our new ‘volunteer’ go aloft, with a glass if need be. Some eyes cannot be trusted.” He hesitated, suddenly uncertain. “I am a fool, Sir Richard. I meant no comparison.”

Bolitho touched his arm impetuously. “You are no fool, and you speak good sense.”

Keen said, “Secure the gun crews, Mr Sedgemore. We will exercise repel-boarders drill at six bells.”

Sedgemore backed out, his eyes everywhere until the door was shut.

“How is he progressing, Val?”

Keen watched him anxiously as he touched his left eye with his fingertips. He guessed that Bolitho did it unconsciously: the irritation was never far away. Like a threat.

“He is not yet quite ready to assume my command, sir, but it does no harm to allow him that belief!”

They laughed, the threat once more held at bay.

That same afternoon the northerly wind eased slightly, and the sea’s face showed some colour as the scudding clouds began to scatter. But when the sun eventually revealed itself it held no warmth, and the salt-hardened sails shone in the glare but gave off no tell-tale steam.

Bolitho went on deck and stood with Jenour by the quarterdeck rail, keeping out of the way as both watches of the hands were turned-to for making more sail as Keen had hoped. Keen was on the opposite side, looking aloft as the first topmen dashed quickly up the quivering ratlines—the captain, his own world revolving around him. Bolitho felt the old touch of envy, and wondered what Zenoria would say if she could see her husband now. His eyes squinting against the hard sunlight, wings of fair hair flapping from beneath his plain, seagoing hat, he was in command and controlling a dozen things at once.

The senior midshipman, a haughty youth named Houston, was beckoning to the seaman William Owen. Due for lieutenant’s examination at the first opportunity, Houston was very aware of Bolitho’s nearness.

He called importantly, “Wait!”

Allday was below the poop with Tojohns and said scornfully, “Look at him, cocking his chest like a half-pay admiral! He’ll be a proper little terror when he gets made up!”

Tojohns grinned. “If someone don’t stamp on him first!”

Keen looked round and smiled. “Ah, Owen! How are you finding life in a somewhat larger craft than your last, eh?”

Owen chuckled, the midshipman forgotten. “It’ll suit, sir. I just wish her ladyship was here to give some advice to the cook!”

Bolitho approved. Keen had shown the arrogant “young gentleman” that Owen was a man, not a dog.

Keen glanced across. “Shall he go aloft, Sir Richard? I’ll not make more sail until he has looked for our companion.”

Bolitho called, “Take the signal midshipman’s glass, Owen. You may scorn such things, but I think it will aid you.”

Another memory. In an elegant London shop selling navigational instruments, he had seen Catherine examine a telescope, and heard the establishment’s rotund owner explaining that it was the very latest and best of its kind. He had been very conscious of her inner battle while she touched the gleaming glass; then she had shaken her head, and Bolitho thought he knew why. She had been remembering Herrick, and the beautiful telescope which had been Dulcie’s last present to him. She wanted no part of it, nor any sort of comparison.

“Deck there!”

Bolitho shook himself. Owen had reached the main crosstrees while he had been day-dreaming.

“Sail to the nor’-east, sir!”

Bolitho looked at the cruising white crests. The wind was still easing; he had no difficulty in hearing Owen’s cry. Yesterday, even this morning, it would have been lost in the violence of wind and sea.

Bolitho said, “Fetch him down, Captain Keen. You are eager to make her lift her skirts, I’ll wager!”

Owen arrived on deck even as the great main course and foresail boomed and thundered in noisy disarray until the yards were hauled round to trap the wind, and make each sail harden like a steel breastplate.

“Well, Owen, what is she?”

Men who were not actually working at halliards and braces, or fighting their way out on the great yards to free more canvas, loitered nearby to listen.

Owen replied, “Frigate, Sir Richard. Not big—28 guns or thereabouts.” He returned the long telescope to Midshipman Houston.

“Thank you, sir.”

Houston almost snatched it, with such bad grace that Keen remarked, “Mr Sedgemore, I think a word during the last dog-watch would be useful.”

The first lieutenant paused in the tumult of chasing men to their proper stations, in one case stopping to thrust a loose line into a man’s grasp, and stared at him. His eyes flashed dangerously as they settled on the midshipman and he said sharply, “See me, Mr Houston, sir!”

Owen continued in the same unruffled tone, “She wears no colours, Sir Richard, but I’d say she’s a Dutchman. I’ve been close enough to some of them, too close sometimes.”

Jenour said, “Another enemy, then.” He sounded surprised. “I expected a Frog, Sir Richard.”

Bolitho kept his features impassive. Once Jenour would never have considered voicing his own opinion; he had always been so trusting, willing to leave judgement and assessment to those who were better experienced. He was ready now, mature enough to offer what he had learned to others. Bolitho knew he would miss him greatly.

“Sou’-west-by-west, sir! Full an’ bye!” Julyan the sailing-master was beaming at his mates and rubbing his beefy hands together. Once again, he had been proved right.

Keen shouted, “Secure and belay, Mr Sedgemore!” Loud enough for all those around him he added, “That was well done. Two minutes shorter this time!”

True or not, Bolitho saw some of the breathless seamen looking at each other and giving reluctant grins. It was a beginning.

He said, “Perhaps this fellow is under French orders. We have seen too much of that.” But he was thinking of the depleted squadron awaiting him in the Caribbean. They lacked frigates, and the French would know it. This was no Brittany coastline, or the cat-and-mouse encounters in the North Sea. Here there were countless islands, which would have to be patrolled and searched in case an enemy squadron was in hiding amongst them, and these waters abounded with craft of all kinds: Dutchmen and Spaniards, vessels from the South Americas, all ready to pass their intelligence to the French at Martinique and Guadeloupe. There were also the Americans, who had not forgotten their own fight for independence; they had to be handled with great care. They resented being stopped or examined as possible blockade-runners, and several serious complaints had been presented to the government in London by that young but ambitious nation.

Bolitho smiled as he recalled Lord Godschale’s warning. “We need tact as well as initiative, and someone who is known to these people.” Bolitho was not quite certain what he had implied by known, but he had never considered himself particularly tactful.

He said, “Thank you, Owen. I shall need you again presently.”

Keen watched the man knuckle his forehead and stride away to rejoin his division.

He said, “A valuable hand, that one, sir—I’ll rate him up to petty officer shortly. He makes many of our landmen look like bumpkins!”

The wind got up again as darkness closed in around the ship, but the motion was less violent and the hands were able to consume hot food, and an extra ration of rum to make the long day seem less miserable.

Outside the wardroom which stretched across Black Prince’s massive beam, and was situated directly beneath the admiral’s quarters, Lieutenant James Sedgemore sat more comfortably on a locker with a goblet of madeira in one hand as he completed his onslaught on the senior midshipman. The latter stood like a ramrod, moving only to the ponderous lift and fall of the great hull, and all the men, weapons and supplies crammed into it. He gestured to the open screen doors, where, in the wardroom, Houston could see the officers he observed every watch in their very different guises. Drinking, writing letters, playing cards, while they waited for the last meal of the day. A few of the lieutenants who were feared for their sense of order and discipline sat or lolled in their chairs while a mess-boy bustled amongst them with a jug of wine. The surgeon, usually so grave-faced, was roaring with laughter at something the Royal Marines major had told him. The purser, Julyan the sailing-master: the very company Houston wanted to join, if not here then in another ship. He felt much as Sedgemore about his own future, but at present Sedgemore was in no mood for sympathy. “I’ll not have you throwing your weight about in my ship, simply because a man dare not answer back—do you understand?”

Houston bit his lip. He had wanted the captain to notice him, but he had certainly never intended to bring all this down on his head.

“And do not try to get your own back, Mr Houston, or you will think that the horned god of hell has fallen on your miserable shoulders! On our last commission, after Copenhagen—something which even you will have heard about from the older hands—there was one such midshipman, who was a little tyrant. He loved to see the people suffer, as if they didn’t have enough to deal with. They feared him, despite his lowly rank, because he was Sir Richard’s nephew.” He gave a fierce grin. “Sir Richard packed him off the ship, an’ Captain Keen offered him a court martial unless he agreed to resign. So what chance d’you imagine you would have?”

“I—I’m sorry, sir. Really …”

Sedgemore clapped him on the shoulder as he had seen Bolitho do on occasions. “You are not, Mr Houston, but by God you will be, if it happens again. You will become known as the oldest midshipman in the fleet! Now be off with you. It ends here.”

The surgeon strolled past. “Busy, Mr Sedgemore?”

The first lieutenant grinned. “We all go through it.”

The surgeon made for the companion ladder. “Not I, sir.”

On the quarterdeck Houston, still smouldering, reported to the officer-of-the-watch for the extra duties Sedgemore had given him. The lieutenant was Thomas Joyce. He was the third most senior, and had seen close action even at the tender age of eleven in his first ship.

It was bitterly cold, with spray and rain falling from the straining canvas and rigging like arctic rain.

Joyce snapped, “Masthead, Mr Houston. A good lookout, if you please.”

Houston saw one of the helmsmen give a grin as his face showed briefly in the compass light. “But—but there will be nothing in sight, sir!”

“Then it will be easy for you, won’t it? Now up you go, or I’ll have the bosun liven your dancing for you!”

Lieutenant Joyce was not an unduly hard man. He sighed and glanced at the tilting compass, then forgot the luckless youth high above the windswept deck.

We all go through it.

Down one deck further aft Allday sat in Ozzard’s pantry and watched the little man slicing cheese for the cabin.

Ozzard asked testily, “What did you want to go and do a stupid thing like that for, John? I always thought you were a bit cracked!”

Allday smiled. What did he really care about it? He had told him that he had left his share of the gold with Unis Polin at the Stag’s Head. Just in case.

Ozzard continued, his knife flashing as a mark of his anger. “She could walk off with the lot! You see, I know you, John Allday—know you of old. A pretty face, a neat ankle, and you’re all aback! Anyway, you could have put it in the strongbox at the house.”

Allday filled his pipe carefully. “What’s the matter with you, Tom? Don’t you like women or summat?”

Ozzard swung round, his eyes flaming. It only made him look more brittle. “Don’t you ever say that to me again!”

They both realised that the door was open, and a young seaman who had been cleaning around the great cabin stood staring at them, his eyes shifting nervously from one to the other.

Allday roared, “Well? What do you want?”

“Th’—the vice-admiral needs you, Cox’n!”

Ozzard added sharply, “Be off with you!” The youth fled.

Ozzard laid down the knife and looked at his hand as if expecting to see it shaking.

He said hesitantly, “Sorry, John. Not your fault.” He would not look up.

Allday replied, “Tell me if you like. One day. It’ll go no further.” He shut the door behind him and walked beneath the massive beams towards the marine sentry outside the great cabin.

Whatever it was, it was tearing Ozzard apart. Had been, since … ? But he could not remember.

In his pantry Ozzard sat down and rested his head in his hands. In the Golden Plover’s last moments when he had been by the companion ladder, he had seen her framed against the stern windows. He had wanted to turn away, to hide in the shadows. But he had not. He had watched her stripping off her bloodstained clothing until she had been standing completely naked with the sea’s great panorama tumbling beyond her. There had been so much salt on the glass the windows had acted as a broad mirror, so that no part of her lovely body had been denied him.

But he had not seen Catherine until she had pulled on her borrowed breeches and shirt. He had seen only his young wife, as she must have looked when her lover had visited her.

He wrung his hands in despair. Why had none of his friends or neighbours told him? He could have stopped it, made her love him again as he had always believed she had. Why? The word hung in the air like a serpent.

The way she had looked at him on that hideous day in Wapping. Surprise, contempt even, then terror when she had seen the axe in his hand.

He said brokenly, “But I loved you! Can’t you see?”

But there was no one to answer him.

Lewis Roxby dismounted heavily and patted his horse as it was led away to the stables. The air was bitterly cold, and mist hovered above the nearest hillside like smoke. He noticed that someone had been breaking the ice on the horse troughs, a sure sign of a hard winter. He saw his groom watching him, his breath steaming.

Roxby said, “Nothing moving on the estate, Tom. Can’t even get the men working repairing the walls. Slate’s frozen solid.”

The groom nodded. “One o’ the cook’s possets will set you up, sir.”

Roxby blew his nose noisily and heard the sound echo around the yard like a rebuke. “Something a mite stronger for me, Tom!”

He thought of the two thieves he had sent to the gallows a few days back. Why did they never learn? England was at war—people had little enough of their own without some oaf stealing from them. One of the thieves had burst into tears, but when Roxby had ignored it he had poured curses on him until a dragoon had dragged him away to the cells. Ordinary folk had to be protected. Some said that hanging a man never stopped crime. But it certainly stopped the criminal in question.

“Hello, who’s this then?”

Roxby came out of his thoughts and turned to look at the great gates as a lively pony and trap clattered across the cobbles.

It was Bryan Ferguson, Bolitho’s steward. A rare visitor here indeed. Roxby felt vaguely irritated; the vision of that warming glass of brandy was already receding.

Ferguson swung himself down. Few people realised he had but one arm until he faced them.

“I beg your pardon, Squire, for coming like this unannounced.”

Roxby sensed something. “Bad news? Not Sir Richard?”

“No, sir.” He glanced awkwardly at the groom. “I got a bit worried, you see.”

The glance was not lost on Roxby. “Well, you’d better come inside, man. No sense in freezing out here.”

Ferguson followed him into the great house, seeing the paintings that adorned the walls, the thick rugs, the flickering fires through every open door. A very grand house with property to match, he thought. Very fitting for the King of Cornwall.

He was very nervous again, and he tried to reassure himself that he was doing the right thing. The only thing. There was nobody else to turn to. Lady Catherine had ridden to the other side of the estate to visit an injured farm worker and his family; she must not know of this latest trouble. He glanced around at the elegant furniture, the immense painting of Roxby’s father, the old squire, who in his day had fathered quite a few children around the county. At least Roxby stayed faithful to his wife, and was more interested in chasing game than women.

Roxby reached the fire and held out his hands. “Private, is it?”

Ferguson said unhappily, “I didn’t know who else to see, sir. I couldn’t even discuss it with Grace, my wife—she’d probably not believe me anyway. She thinks nothing but good of most people.”

Roxby nodded sagely. So it was serious. Ferguson had a lot of pride, in his work and in the family he served. It had cost him a lot to come here like this.

He said magnanimously, “Glass of madeira, perhaps?”

Ferguson stared as the squire offered him a chair by the fire.

“With respect, sir, I’d relish a tot of rum.”

Roxby tugged a silk bell-cord and smiled. “I’d all but forgotten you were a sailor too, at one time.”

Ferguson did not look at the footman who entered and went like a shadow. He stared into the flames. “Twentyfive years ago, sir. I came back home after I lost a wing at the Saintes.”

Roxby handed him a large glass of rum. Even the smell made his head swim. “Don’t know how you can swallow that stuff!” He eyed him over his own goblet of brandy. The latest batch. It was sometimes better not to know where it came from, especially if you were a magistrate.

“Now tell me what this is about. If it’s advice you want—” He felt rather flattered that Ferguson had come to confide in him.

“There’s been talk, sir, gossip if you like. But it’s dangerous, more so if it reaches the wrong ears. Someone has been spreading stories about Lady Catherine, and about Sir Richard’s family. Filthy talk, damned lies!”

Roxby waited patiently. The rum was working.

Ferguson added, “I heard it from a corn chandler. He saw an argument between Captain Adam and some farmer in Bodmin. Captain Adam called him out, but the other man backed down.”

Roxby had heard a few things about the youthful Adam Bolitho. He said, “Sensible. I’d likely have done the same!”

“And then—” he hesitated, “I heard someone saying things about her ladyship—entertaining men in the house, that kind of thing.”

Roxby eyed him bleakly. “Is it true?”

Ferguson was on his feet without realising it. “It’s a bloody lie, sir.”

“Easy—I had to know. I admire her greatly. Her courage has been an example to us all, and the love she bears my brother-in-law, well—it speaks for itself.”

Like a fine English ballad, he had thought privately, but he was incapable of voicing such a sentiment, particularly to another man.

Ferguson had slumped down again, and was staring at his empty glass. He had failed. It was all going wrong. He had only made things worse by losing his self-control.

Roxby remarked, “The point, really, is that you know who’s behind all this. Am I right?”

Ferguson looked at him in despair. When I tell him, he will shut his ears to me. An outsider was different. One of the family, no matter how indirectly, was another matter.

Roxby said, “I shall find out anyway, you know. I’d prefer to hear it from you. Now.”

Ferguson met his grim stare. “It was Miles Vincent, sir. I swear it.” He was not certain how Roxby would react. Polite disbelief, or open anger in order to protect Vincent’s mother, his wife’s sister.

He was astonished when Roxby held his breath until his face reddened even more, and then exploded, “Hell’s teeth, I knew that little maggot was involved!”

Ferguson swallowed hard. “You knew, sir?”

“Had to hear it from someone I could trust.” He was working himself into a rage. “By God, after all the family has tried to do for that ungrateful baggage and her son!” He controlled himself with a real effort. “Say nothing. It is our affair, and must go no further.”

“You have my word, sir.”

Roxby eyed him thoughtfully. “Should Sir Richard ever decide to leave Falmouth, I will always have a good appointment for you in my service.”

Ferguson found he could smile, albeit shakily. “I think it may be a long wait, sir.”

“Well spoken.” He gestured to the other door. “M’wife’s coming. I heard the carriage. Go now. I shall attend to this unseemly matter.”

As Ferguson reached the door he heard Roxby call after him, “Never question it. You did the right thing by coming to me.”

A few moments later Nancy entered the room, muffled to her eyes, her skin glowing from the cold.

“Whose is that nice little pony and trap, Lewis?”

“Bryan Ferguson’s, my dear. Estate business, nothing to trouble your pretty head about.” He pulled the bell-cord again and when the footman appeared he said calmly, “Find Beere, and send him to me.” He was Roxby’s head keeper, a dour, private man who lived alone in a small cottage on the edge of the estate.

As the door closed Nancy said, “What do you want him for? Such an odious man. He makes my skin creep.”

“My thoughts entirely, m’dear.” He poured another measure of brandy and thought of Ferguson’s quiet desperation. “Still, he has his uses.”

It was pitch dark when Ferguson’s smart little trap reached the Stag’s Head at Fallowfield. After the coast road, and the knife-edged wind off the bay, the parlour offered a welcome so warm that he could barely wait to throw off his heavy coat.

The place was empty but for an old man dozing by the fire, with a tankard on a stool beside him. At his feet a black and white sheepdog lay quite motionless. Only the dog’s eyes moved as they followed Ferguson across the flagged floor. Then they closed.

She came in from the kitchen and gave him a friendly smile. Allday was right; she was a trim little craft, and more in command since Ferguson had last seen her, when he had briefly introduced himself.

“Quiet tonight, Mr Ferguson. Something hot, or something strong?”

He smiled. He could not get Roxby out of his thoughts. How would he deal with it? Vincent’s mother lived in one of his houses; Roxby might add fuel to the fire by dragging her into it. Rumour had it that she was friendly with Bolitho’s wife; that might also ensure that the scandal would not die so quickly. Allday had told him about the son, and his short career as a midshipman. A real little tyrant, and cruel too.

She said, “You’re miles away.”

He tried to relax. He had wanted to get out, hide from the estate and the familiar faces who relied on him. He had met Lady Catherine after her visit to the injured worker, and during a general conversation she had mentioned Captain Adam. Just for an instant he had imagined she had heard about the incident in Bodmin. But how could she?

Instead, Catherine had asked if Adam had visited the house frequently during their absence. He had told her the truth, and why not? He was seeing too many devils when there were none.

He said, “Some of your pie, and a tankard of ale, if you please.”

He watched her bustling about and wondered if Allday would ever settle down. Then he saw the carved ship model in the adjoining room: Allday’s Hyperion. Then it must be serious. It made him strangely glad.

She put the tankard down on his table. “Aye, ‘tis quiet, right enough.” She shifted uneasily. “Did hear there’s some sort of meeting going on.”

Ferguson nodded. Probably a cock-fight, something he hated. But many enjoyed it, and large bets changed hands in the course of an evening’s sport.

Ferguson turned and looked at the dog. It was no longer asleep but staring fixedly at the door, its teeth bared in a small, menacing growl.

Unis Polin said, “Foxes, maybe.”

But Ferguson was on his feet, his heart suddenly pounding like a hammer.

“What is it?”

Ferguson clutched the table as if to prevent himself falling. It was all there, coming back: the moment when he had heard the feet. Except that it was no longer a brutal memory. It was now.

The old man reached down and touched his dog’s fur, quietening him.

He croaked, “There be a King’s ship in Carrick Road.”

The feet drew closer, marching and dragging.

Ferguson stared around as if he were trapped.

“My God, it’s the press.”

He wanted to run. Get away. Go back to Grace and the life he had come to value and enjoy.

The door banged open and a tall sea officer loomed out of the darkness, his body shrouded in a long boat-cloak glittering with drops of sleet or snow.

He saw the woman by the table and removed his hat with a flourish. For one so young, in his mid-twenties at a guess, his hair was streaked with grey.

“I beg pardon at this intrusion, ma’am.” His eyes moved quickly around the parlour, missing nothing. The comely woman, the one-armed man, the dog by the fire which was still glaring at him, and finally the old farmer. Nothing.

Unis Polin said, “There’s nobody here, sir.”

Ferguson sat down again. “She’s right.” He hesitated. “What ship?”

The other gave a bitter laugh. “She’s the Ipswich, 38.” He threw back his cloak, to reveal an empty sleeve pinned to his lieutenant’s coat. “It seems we’ve both been in the wars. But there’s no ship for me, my friend—just this stinking work, hunting men who will not serve their King!”

To the woman he added more calmly, “There is a place near here called Rose Barn, I believe?”

The old man leaned forward. “Tes ‘bout a mile further on this road.”

The lieutenant replaced his hat and as he opened the door Ferguson saw lanterns shining on uniforms and weapons. Over his shoulder he said, “It would be unwise to raise a warning.” He gave a tired smile. “But of course you know not what we are about, eh?”

The door closed, and all at once the silence was around them, like something physical.

Ferguson watched as she removed the pie from the table and replaced it with a piece that was piping-hot.

He said, “The press-gang must be heading for the fight you mentioned.”

The old farmer cackled. “They’ll get naught there, me dear. Men with protection, and soldiers from the garrison.”

Ferguson stared at him, his spine like ice. So this was Roxby’s way. He would know all the officers of the dreaded press, and the times and locations of cock-fights and other sport. He suddenly felt quite sick. They might catch a few, despite what the old farmer had said, just as they had taken him and Allday when the Phalarope had put a press-gang ashore. One thing was quite certain in his mind. Miles Vincent would be one of them.

“I must leave. I—I’m sorry about the pie …”

She watched him anxiously. “Another time then. I want you to tell me all about John Allday.”

The mention of the big man’s name seemed to strengthen him. He sat down again at the table and picked up a fork. He would stay, after all.

He glanced at the dog, but it was fast asleep. Outside the door there was only stillness.

He thought with sudden anger, And why not? We protect our own and those we love. Or we go down with the ship.

What else could he have done?

By morning it was snowing, and when Lewis Roxby walked into his stable yard he saw his head keeper, Beere, pause just long enough to give him a nod before he was swallowed up in a gust of swirling snow.

The frigate Ipswich had sailed before dawn, as was the navy’s way, and it was a long time before anyone realised that Miles Vincent’s bed had not been slept in.

15

FROM THE DEAD

LIEUTENANT Stephen Jenour handed his hat to Ozzard and then strode aft to the broad day-cabin where Bolitho was seated at a small table. The Black Prince was in the process of changing tack yet again, and as the sun moved slowly across the stern windows Jenour felt its heat through the smeared glass like an opening oven door.

Bolitho glanced up from his letter to Catherine. He had forgotten how many pages he had written so far, but it never seemed difficult to confide in her even when the distance between them mounted with each turn of the glass.

Jenour said, “Captain Keen’s respects, Sir Richard, and he wishes to inform you that Antigua is in sight to the south-west’rd.”

Bolitho laid down his pen. Seven weeks to cross an ocean and find their way to the Caribbean’s Leeward Islands. It was ironic that his old Hyperion had done the same passage in a month, and at exactly this time of year. Keen must be both relieved to have made the landfall and disappointed at the time taken, and the many shortcomings which had presented themselves in the ship’s company.

Perhaps the deceptive calm of bright sunshine and warmth on their hard-worked bodies might make amends. The Atlantic had been at its worst, at least in Bolitho’s experience, producing great surging gales, while men half-frozen on the yards fisted and fought icy canvas until their hands were torn and raw. The high winds had been perverse too, and the ship had been driven a hundred miles off-course when the wind direction had veered so suddenly that even Julyan the master had been astonished.

Gun drill had been out of the question for the latter part of their passage. It was all Keen could do to get his men fed and rested before the Western Ocean again released its ferocity.

It said much for Keen’s example and that of his more seasoned hands that they had not lost a spar or another man overboard.

“I’ll go up, Stephen.” He glanced at his unfinished letter, seeing Falmouth as it would be now. Much like the Atlantic: gales, rain and perhaps snow.

Catherine would be thinking of the ship, wondering where she was, if she had arrived safely. When she might be called to action. So many questions which only time could answer.

Jenour looked around the great cabin, a place he had come to know so well. During the passage from England he had been able to put the prospect of leaving Bolitho to one side. The gales, the deafening roar of the sea thundering over the hull and upper deck to make every footstep a separate hazard, and the gaunt faces of the people while they were chased and bullied from one task to the next, kept such thoughts at bay. Now it was different. Out there beyond the tapering jib-boom was English Harbour: order and authority, where each day might offer him the challenge of promotion. He thought of the first lieutenant, Sedgemore, some of the others too; they would give their blood for such an opportunity. A small command, with the blessing of a famous flag officer—who could wish for more? He had heard Bolitho refer to it as the most coveted gift.

Jenour thought also of his parents at Roxby’s dinner, when Bolitho had made it his business to have them feel at home with such illustrious people.

He saw him touching his eyelid as he did more and more frequently nowadays. That secret too had been entrusted to him. It was safe until Bolitho required it otherwise. But who else would be able to understand him and his ways when he himself was promoted out of this ship?

He had even shared in the conspiracy of Bolitho’s reunion with Lady Catherine, that too in Antigua.

“Why so thoughtful, Stephen?”

Jenour faced him and replied quietly, “I think you know, Sir Richard.”

Bolitho touched his eye again. He had noticed that Jenour rarely flushed when his private thoughts were revealed, not since the Golden Plover’s jolly-boat. A man then. But one who could still feel distress and show compassion for others.

Bolitho walked to the stern gallery and looked out at the undulating water, bank upon bank of it, as if worn out by all the anger it had expended to prevent their journey from being a fast one.

He said, “It has to be. That does not mean I do not care. It is the opposite, and I think you know that!”

They went on deck where Keen and some of his officers were studying the approaching island sprawled out on either bow, misty green, the hump of Monk’s Hill all but lost in haze.

Bolitho appreciated that even that was suspect. From flat calm to a raging storm, every captain worth his salt knew better than to trust these waters at this time of year.

Keen crossed the deck to join him, his shoes sticking to the tarred seams as he did so.

“Barely making way, sir.” They both looked up at the great spread of canvas, flapping in the hot breeze but hardly filling enough to move the ship. Buckets of salt water were being hauled up to men on the upper yards so that it could be poured on the sails to harden them, to make use of even a cupful of wind. The watch on deck was flaking down lines and securing halliards again after the last change of tack, their movements slow in the hot sunshine and lacking the brisk response to commands any captain would expect.

Bolitho took a telescope from the rack by the poop and trained it through the mesh of rigging until he found the nearest spur of land. He had had the crazed Captain Haven on that last visit. One so filled with suspicion and jealousy over his young wife that he had tried to kill the first lieutenant, whom he had believed responsible for his wife’s pregnancy. He had been proved wrong, but he had been held for attempted murder nonetheless.

An island of so many memories. He had been here in his first command, the little Sparrow, and again in his frigate Phalarope. He saw Allday watching him from the larboard gangway and their quick exchange of glances was like part of an enduring link. The battle of the Saintes; his previous coxswain Stockdale falling dead while trying to protect his back from enemy marksmen. Bryan Ferguson losing an arm, and Allday eventually taking over as his coxswain. Yes, there was plenty to remember here.

Keen said, “We shall be anchored by this afternoon, sir.” He frowned as the masthead pendant flicked out, the life draining from it. “I could lower the boats and take her in tow.” He was considering the dwindling possibilities.

Bolitho said, “I’d stay your hand with the boats, Val. Another hour more will make little difference now.” He glanced at the nearest seamen. “They look like old men!”

Keen smiled. “They will have to learn. If we are called to battle …” He shrugged. “But the sight of land is sometimes a tonic, sir.” He excused himself and went to join the sailing-master by the chart table.

Bolitho raised the glass again. Still too far away to discern any prominent landmarks, and certainly none of the houses beyond the dockyard. He could see her now as if it were today. Dazzled by the lights at the reception, he had almost fallen at her feet. But she had discovered his injury, inevitably, and had insisted that he seek advice and treatment from the best surgeons in London.

He touched his eyelid again, and felt the painful prick which seemed to come from right inside his eye. And yet sometimes he could see perfectly. At others he had felt utter despair, as Nelson must have done after his own eye had been wounded.

And this was the time when every experienced officer was needed, as he had explained both to Keen and Jenour. But for the failure of his mission to Cape Town and the resulting delay caused by the loss of the Golden Plover, where might they have been now? Keen a commodore and ready for the next step to flag rank. And but for Black Prince’s unfortunate collision at the completion of her refit, she might well be with the major part of the fleet supporting the army in Portugal or beyond. It was fate. This was where they were destined to be. But would it prove as useful as Godschale and his superiors seemed to think?

One thing stood out above all else. Bonaparte intended to divide his enemy’s forces at all cost. His failure to seize the Danish fleet had made him even more determined. Small groups of ships had been reported slipping through the English blockade, and many had headed for the Caribbean, perhaps to attack Jamaica or other islands under the English flag. That would certainly force their lordships to withdraw more urgently needed ships from blockade and military convoy duties.

It was possible that the sighting of the vessel described by the volunteer William Owen as “Dutch-built” was no more than another coincidence. Bolitho thought privately that it was more than that. One modest frigate sailing alone was more likely to be taking despatches to some senior officer. Reinforcements, in the shape of Black Prince, were on their way, but no sign of any other frigates. They would have gone for the stranger like terriers had there been any. And then there was the matter of Thomas Herrick, the man he had always believed his best friend. It was strange that Godschale had made a point of not mentioning him at their last meeting; nor had the admiral displayed any interest at what Bolitho might expect when they next met. For unless some other vessel had sailed ahead of Black Prince, Herrick would still believe him to be dead after the Golden Plover’s reported loss.

He shaded his eyes against the glare and watched the distant island, which appeared to have drawn no nearer.