SIR WILFRED LAFARGUE waited while Spicer, his clerk, gathered up a bulky file of documents, and then folded his hands on the empty desk.

“I foresee several problems, perhaps serious ones, arising in the near future. But insurmountable? I think not.”

Normally, such a comment would leave a client hopeful, if not entirely satisfied. But Lafargue, as a lawyer and the senior part-ner of this prestigious firm which bore his name, was conscious only of its lack of substance.

He knew it was because of his visitor, standing now by the far window in this vast office. It was Lafargue’s favourite view of the City of London, and the dome of St Paul’s, a constant reminder of its power and influence.

Lafargue was always in command; from the moment the tall doors were opened to admit a client, potential or familiar, his routine never varied. There was a chair directly opposite this imposing desk, forcing the client to face the full light of the win-dows, more like a victim than one who would eventually be charged a fee which might make him blanch and reconsider before returning. Except that they always did return.

But this one was different. He had known Sillitoe for a good many years; Baron Sillitoe of Chiswick, as he now was. The Prince Regent’s Inspector-General, and a man of formidable connections long before that. Feared, hated, but never ignored. Those who did regretted it dearly.

Sillitoe was a man of moods, and this again unsettled Lafar-gue; it broke the pattern of things and was disconcerting. Restless, unable to remain still for more than a few minutes, he seemed disturbed by something which had not yet been revealed.

Lafargue, as usual, was expensively dressed, his coat and breeches cut by one of London’s leading tailors, but the clothing could not completely disguise the signs of good living which made him appear older than his fifty-eight years. Sillitoe on the other hand had never changed; he was lean, hard, as if anything super-fluous or wasteful had long since been honed away. A good horseman, he was said to exercise regularly, his secretary panting beside him while he outlined one or another of his schemes. He was also a swordsman of repute. For Lafargue it made the com-parison even more difficult to accept. Sillitoe was the same age as himself.

Sillitoe was motionless, watching something below, perhaps the carriages wending their way towards Fleet Street, perhaps merely waiting for something. Lafargue saw that the doors were once more closed; Spicer had departed. As senior clerk he was invaluable, and although he appeared to be very dull he never missed the slightest nuance or inflection. Even here, at Lincoln’s Inn, which Lafargue considered the very centre of English law, there were some things which should and must remain private. This conversation was one of them.

He said, “I have studied all the deeds available. Sir Richard’s nephew Adam Bolitho, once known as Pascoe, is deemed the legal heir to the Bolitho estate and adjoining properties as listed . . .” He stopped, frowning, as Sillitoe said, “Get on with it, man.” He had not raised his voice.

Lafargue swallowed hard. “However, Sir Richard’s widow and dependant, the daughter, will have some rights in the matter. They are supported by the trust instituted by Sir Richard. It may well be that Lady Bolitho will want to install herself at Falmouth where she did, in fact, enjoy a conjugal residency at one time.”

Sillitoe rubbed his forehead. What was the point? Why had he come? Lafargue was a celebrated lawyer. Otherwise neither of us would be here. He controlled his impatience. Lafargue would act when the time came. If it did . . .

He looked across at the other buildings, the small green expanses of parks and quiet squares, and saw St Paul’s. Where the nation, or a select few, would gather to pay homage to a hero. Some with genuine grief, others there only to be seen and admired. Sillitoe had never understood why any sane man would volunteer to spend his life at sea. To him, a ship was only a nec-essary form of transport. Like being caged, unable to move or act for himself. But he had accepted that others had different views, his nephew George Avery among them.

When they had last met he had offered him a position, one both important and, in time, lucrative. Sillitoe never threw money to the winds without proof of ability, and his nephew was a mere lieutenant, who had been passed over for promotion after being taken prisoner by the French; he had been freed only to face a court martial for losing his ship.

Any other man would have jumped at the opportunity, or at least shown some gratitude. Instead, Avery had returned to his appointment as Sir Richard Bolitho’s flag lieutenant, and must have been with him when he had been killed.

He said flatly, “And what of Viscountess Somervell?” He did not turn from the window, although he heard the intake of breath. Another lawyer’s ploy.

“In the eyes of the law, she has no rights. Had they been at liberty to marry . . .”

“And the people? What will they say? The woman who inspired their hero, who displayed courage when most would fall back in despair? What of her part?”

He knew Lafargue would think he was referring to Cather-ine’s bravery and strength in the open boat after the shipwreck; he was intended to. But Sillitoe was seeing something very dif-ferent, something which had preyed on his mind and had never released him since he and his men had burst into the house by the river. Bruised and bleeding, stripped naked and with her wrists tied cruelly behind her back, she had fought her attacker. Sillitoe had held her against his body and covered her with a sheet or curtain, he could not remember what it had been or the exact order of things. His men beating her attacker, dragging him down the stairs, and then those moments alone with her, her head against his shoulder, her hair beautiful in disarray.

A nightmare. And he had wanted her. Then and there.

“The people? Who listens to the people? ” Lafargue was regain-ing his self-control. His old arrogance.

Sillitoe turned his back on the city, his face in shadow.

“In France they listened. Eventually!”

Lafargue watched him, sensing the bitterness, the anger. And something else. He recalled Catherine Somervell coming here to consult him, at Sillitoe’s suggestion, on a matter of purchasing the lease of a building where Bolitho’s estranged wife lived, at her husband’s expense. Belinda Bolitho had been horrified to discover that her home was owned by the woman she most hated. A woman scorned.

Lafargue’s eyes sharpened professionally. No, there was far more to it than that. He watched Sillitoe, dressed all in grey as was his habit, move swiftly to the opposite side of the room. He had the ear of the Prince Regent, and when the King, drifting in madness, eventually died, who could say to what heights he might not rise?

Lady Somervell . . . he had thought of her as Catherine just now, which showed that he was unusually overwrought . . . was the key. Lafargue remembered her entering this room. She had walked straight towards him, her eyes never leaving his. To call her beau-tiful was an understatement. But a symbol could be soiled, and envy and spite were well known to Lafargue in the world of law.

They had praised Nelson to the skies, and those who had cried out the loudest had been the biggest hypocrites. A dead hero was safe, and could be remembered without anxiety or inconvenience.

Edward Berry, Nelson’s favourite flag captain, had once quoted,

God and the navy we adore, when danger threatens but not before.

Napoleon was said to be in retreat; it might soon be over. Not like the last time. Truly over . . .

How soon after that would those same people turn on the woman who had defied society and protocol for the man she loved?

He ventured, “If Lady Somervell were to remarry . . . Her husband was killed in a duel, I understand.”

Sillitoe sat down abruptly. Everyone knew about Somervell, a gambler and a waster who had used much of Catherine’s money to extricate himself from debt. A man who had plotted with Bolitho’s wife to have his mistress imprisoned and transported as a common thief. One of Bolitho’s officers had called him out and had mortally wounded him. He had paid for it with his own life.

I would have killed him myself.

How much did Lafargue really know?

He would know, for instance, that the post of Inspector-General had once been Viscount Somervell’s. Another bitter twist.

“I think it unlikely.” He tugged out his watch. “I must leave now.”

Lafargue asked, too casually, “And how goes the war?”

Sillitoe glanced around the room. “I shall see the Prince Regent this afternoon. He is more concerned with the army than the fleet at this moment. As well he might be.”

Lafargue stood. He felt unusually drained and could not explain it. He said, “I have received an invitation to the memor-ial service at St Paul’s. The cathedral will be crowded to the full, I have no doubt.”

It was a question. Sillitoe said, “I shall be there.”

“And Lady Somervell?”

Sillitoe saw the double doors open silently. Perhaps there was a hidden bell, some sort of secret signal.

“She has been invited.” Their eyes met. “Privately.”

It told Lafargue nothing. He took his hat from the clerk, and sighed. It told him everything.

Unis Allday walked slowly around the small parlour, making cer-tain that everything was as it should be. She knew she had already done it several times, but she could not help it. Beyond the open door she could hear voices, the only two customers at the Old Hyperion inn. Auctioneers from the sound of them, on their way to Falmouth for tomorrow’s market.

Everything looked neat. There was a smell of freshly baked bread, and new casks of ale on their trestles, each with its own clean towel. She paused, and with her hands on her hips stared at her reflection in the looking-glass. She did not smile, but exam-ined every feature as she would a new girl applying for work in the kitchen.

She shivered, staring at herself. As he would see her. His friend Bryan Ferguson had brought the news. The man-of-war Frobisher which had taken her man away from her last year was at Plymouth. John Allday was back, and coming home. She looked around the parlour again. Coming home. She allowed her mind to explore it. Never to leave her.

She could hear her brother, also named John, chopping wood for the kitchen. She had told him not to, with only one leg, but he was doing it for her. Allowing her this time to be alone.

She walked through the outer parlour. The auctioneers were still there but one was counting out money, and their horses were already at the door. She walked past them into the afternoon sun-shine. Almost June, the summer of 1815. Where had it all gone, and so quickly?

She gazed down the empty road, the hedgerows rippling slightly under the breeze off Falmouth Bay, campion and foxglove splashing colour against the many shades of green. She turned and looked at the inn. She could not have done it without her brother. He had lost his leg in the line while serving with the Thirty-First regiment of foot, the Old Huntingtonshires. If it had been her, she thought, she would have given up. Now, freshly painted, the inn sign with the ship which had become so impor-tant in their lives was moving restlessly, as if the old Hyperion was remembering also.

Unis was well acquainted with the ways of the sea, its demands and its cruelties. Her first husband had been a master’s mate in that same old ship and had died aboard her, like so many others. John Allday had burst into her life not far from here, when she had been attacked by two footpads while on her way to this very inn.

Big, shambling, but there was no man like him. As he had dealt with her attackers she had realised that he was in pain; he was suffering from an old wound, which she knew now had been a sword-thrust to the chest. She had seen the scar many times. She wiped her eyes. He was coming home. Bryan Ferguson had said it would be today or tomorrow. She knew it was today. How could she? But she knew.

The two auctioneers were leaving, heaving themselves into their saddles, well filled with rabbit pie and the vegetables she grew behind the inn. They waved to her, and cantered away.

She was small, pretty and neat, but customers did not take lib-erties with her. Not more than once.

She smiled. Anyway, she was a foreigner, from over the bor-der in Devon, the fishing port of Brixham where she had been born and had lived until her man had been reported killed. Dis-charged dead, the navy termed it.

She pushed some hair from her eyes and looked at the hill-side, which was alive with young lambs either grazing or frolicking in the pale sunshine. Foreigner maybe, but she would be in no other place.

Bryan Ferguson had warned her, or had tried to; her brother had also done his best. It would be difficult, most of all for John Allday. She thought of that last visit, when Bryan had brought the news that Sir Richard Bolitho was ordered to sea again. Even Unis had been angry; he had been back in England no time at all. The house below Pendennis was empty now, except for the Fergusons and the servants.

She recalled the young Captain Bolitho at the church. So erect, brave in his dress uniform, with the old sword at his hip which had been pointed out to her. All that was left of the man they were remembering.

And Lady Catherine. She had come here to the inn whenever she had wanted a friend, and Unis ventured to call herself that, when Sir Richard was away at sea. She had been in the parlour that night Squire Roxby had died, and had gone from here to comfort his widow. A family, but it was more than that. In the room where John had finally found himself able to tell her about his son John Bankart, who had died in battle, how he had car-ried him himself, and had put him over the side for his burial.

She glanced at the narrow stairway. And together they had had Kate. That would be different this time, too. She nodded firmly. From now on. She had seen the hurt on the strong, weath-ered features when he had returned from sea, and his own child had run from him to Unis’s brother.

Little Kate was upstairs now in the beautiful cot John had made for her. Like the toys, and the perfect ship models; his big, clumsy-looking hands could perform miracles.

Her brother had said, “When I got back from the war, a pin missing and all, I was grateful. I was thankful to be spared, crip-pled or not. When things were bad I remembered, or tried to, all those lines of men. Friends I’d known, lying out in the field, bleeding to death, calling out with nobody to hear. Waiting to die, quickly, to be spared the crows and the scum who rob the likes of poor soldiers after a battle. What I hated most was pity, well meant or otherwise. All I had left was my pride.” He had looked at the old tattoo on his arm and had managed to smile. “Even in the old bloody regiment!”

Unis knew what John’s standing as the admiral’s coxswain had meant to him. How he had belonged. That was what he had said, right here, just before he had left. Not merely the personal coxswain of England’s most famous sailor, but his friend. And he had been there. Bryan Ferguson had told them about it after Adam Bolitho’s return, and he had heard it from the admiral at Plymouth. John had been at Richard Bolitho’s side when he had been shot down.

Horses’ hooves and the rattle of wheels startled her from her thoughts, but the sounds went on, and were lost around the curve of the road.

She stared at the hand pressed under her heart. Was it fear? John was safe. He would never go back to sea. She knew he and Bryan Ferguson had discussed it, talked about the point at which a man was reckoned too old to fight for King and country. It was like a red rag to a bull for John Allday.

She thought of his letters; how she had waited for them, yearned for them. And had often wondered about the officer who had written them on John’s behalf. George Avery was a good man, and had stayed at the Old Hyperion. She had often thought of him reading her letters aloud to John, a little like having let-ters from home for himself, although John had told her he never received any.

How long would it take? What would he do? He had often said he would never become just another old Jack, yarning and “swinging the lamp.”

But it would be hard, perhaps for all of them. Bryan Fergu-son had told her that he and her John had been pressed together here in Cornwall, and taken to a King’s ship in Falmouth. Bolitho’s ship. What had grown from that unlikely meeting was stronger than any rock.

Here on the edge of the little village of Fallowfield, it was not like Brixham or Falmouth. Farm workers and passing tradesmen were more common than men of the sea. But there would still be talk. Everyone knew the Bolitho family. And Catherine was in London, they said. There would be more ceremonies there; how could she endure it? There was gossip enough in any town or village. How much worse it must be in the city.

She heard her brother descending the stairs, the regular thump of his wooden leg. His spar, John Allday called it.

“Little Kate’s fast asleep.” He limped towards her. “Still think-ing on it, Unis love? We’ll make it right for him, see?”

“Thank you for that, John. I don’t know what I’d have done—” She looked into his face and froze, unable to move. She whis-pered, “Oh, dear God, make my man happy again!”

The sound of Bryan Ferguson’s pony and trap seemed louder than it had ever been.

She tugged at her skirt and pushed some hair from her face again.

“I can’t! I can’t!”

Nobody moved, nobody spoke. He was suddenly just there, filling the entrance, his hat in one hand, his hair shaggy against the sunlight.

She tried to speak, but instead he held out his arms, as though unable to come forward. Her brother remembered it for a long time afterwards. John Allday, who had rescued and won his only sister, was in the room, as if he had never been away.

He was wearing the fine blue coat with the gilt buttons bear-ing the Bolitho crest, which had been made especially for him, and nankeen breeches and buckled shoes. The landsman’s ideal of the English sailor, the Heart of Oak. So easily said by those who had not shared the horrors of close action at sea or on land.

John Allday held her close against him, but gently, as he would a child or some small animal, and touched her hair, her ears, her cheek, afraid he might hurt her in some way, unable to let go.

He thought he heard a door close, very quietly. They were alone. Even his best friend Bryan was silent, out there with his fat little pony named Poppy.

“You’re a picture, Unis.” He tilted her chin with the same care. “I’ve thought about this moment for a long time.”

She asked, “The officer, Mister Avery?”

Allday shook his head. “Stayed with the ship. Thought he was needed.” He held her away from him, his big hands cupping her shoulders, his eyes moving over her, as if he was only now realising what had happened.

She stood quite still, feeling the strength, the warmth of his hard hands. So strong and yet so unsure, so wistful.

“You’re here. That’s all I care about. I’ve missed you so much, even when I tried to be with you over the miles . . .” She broke off. She was not reaching him even now.

Suddenly he took her hand in his, and led her like a young girl to the nook where his model, his first gift to her, was care-fully mounted.

“I was there, y’ see. All the while. Comin’ home, we was. We’d got the orders. I never seen such a change in the man.” He looked at her with something like anguish. “Comin’ home. What we both wanted.”

They sat down on a scrubbed wooden bench, side by side, like strangers. But he held her hand, and spoke so quietly that she had to put her head against his arm to hear him.

“He often asked about you an’ little Kate.” The sound of the child’s name seemed to unsteady him. “Is she safe? An’ well?”

She nodded, afraid of breaking the spell. “You’ll see.”

He smiled, something faraway. Perhaps another memory.

He said, “He knew, y’ see. When we went up on deck. He knew. I felt it.”

She heard her brother by the door, and thought she saw Bryan Ferguson’s shadow motionless in a shaft of light. Sharing it. As they had every right.

She found she was gripping his hand more tightly, and said, “I want you as my man again, John Allday. I’ll give you the love you need. I’ll help you!”

When he turned his face to hers there was no pain, no despair.

He said, “I was with him to the end, love. Just like we always was, from the first broadside at the Saintes.”

He seemed to realise that they were no longer alone. “I held him.” He nodded slowly. Seeing it. Confronting it. “He said, easy, old friend. Just to me, like he always did. No grief. We always knew.” He looked at her and smiled, perhaps truly aware of her for the first time. “Then he died, an’ I was still holdin’ him.”

She stood up and put her arms around him, sharing his loss, feeling such love for this one man.

She murmured, “Let it go, John. Later we shall lie together. It’s all that matters now.”

Allday held her for several minutes.

Then he said, “Get the others, eh?”

She shook him gently, embracing him, her heart too full for words.

A life was gone. Hers was complete.

Brush . . . brush . . . brush . . .

Catherine, Lady Somervell, sat facing the tilted oval mirror, her hand rising and falling without conscious thought, her long hair spilling over one shoulder. In the candlelight it looked almost black, like silk, but she did not notice.

The hour was late and beyond the windows the evening had darkened, the Thames revealed only by the light of an occasional lantern, a wherryman, or some sailor on his way to one of the riverside taverns.

But here in the Walk, there were very few people, and the air was heavy, as if with storm. She saw the candles beside the mir-ror shiver and stared at the reflection of the bed behind her. There were far too many candles in the room; they were probably the cause of the stuffiness. But there were always too many, had been since that night of raw terror. In this room. On that bed. She had overcome it. But it had never left her.

She continued to brush her hair, pausing only at the sound of a fast-moving carriage. But it did not slow or stop.

She thought of the housekeeper, Mrs Tate, who was some-where downstairs. Even she had changed her way of life since that night, when she had been visiting her sister in Shoreditch as had been her habit. Now she never left the house unattended, and watched over her with a tenderness Catherine had never sus-pected. And she had never once mentioned it. Her own thoughts had been too full, too chaotic in those first weeks after the attack. Even then it had been like witnessing the horrific violation of someone else, not herself. A stranger.

Except on nights like these. Warm, even clammy, the thin gown clinging to her body like another skin, despite the bath she had taken before coming upstairs.

She hesitated, and then pulled open a drawer deliberately and took out the fan. Richard had given it to her after his ship had called at Madeira. So long ago.

She looked at the diamond pendant which hung low on her breast. It, too, was shaped like a fan. So that she would not for-get, he had said. The pendant the intruder had turned over in his fingers while she had been helpless, her wrists pinioned behind her. She looked involuntarily at the nearest window. He had used the cord. He had struck her, so that she had almost lost her senses, when she had called him a thief. Outraged, like a mad-man. And then he had begun to torment her, to strip her there, on that bed.

She touched her breast and felt her heart beating against her hand. But not like then, or all those other times, when the mem-ory had returned.

And afterwards . . . The word seemed quite separate from her other thoughts. Sillitoe and his men had burst into the room, and he had held her, protected her while her attacker had been dragged away. It had been like a sudden calm after a terrible storm.

She thought of Malta, her brief visit in an Indiaman, which had been on government business and bound for Naples. Sillitoe had arranged for her to be landed at Malta, even though she knew he would once have done anything to keep her from Richard, and he had made no attempt to gain any advantage either on the passage out or on the journey back to England. If anything, he had been withdrawn, perhaps at last understanding what it had cost her to leave the man she loved behind in Malta.

Forever.

She had seen him only twice since Richard’s death. He had offered his condolences, and assured her of his readiness to help in any way he could. As with the lawyer, Lafargue, he had under-stood immediately her concern for Adam. He had been correct in every way, and had made it his business to begin enquiries of his own.

Catherine thought she understood men, had learned much out of necessity. But after Richard, how could she survive? Where would be the point?

She recalled the exact moment when they had been reunited, at English Harbour over ten years ago. She had been married to Somervell, the King’s Inspector-General.

Dazed and yet on guard because of the unexpectedness of the meeting, and the danger she had known it would offer. Telling him he needed love, as the desert craves for rain.

Or was I speaking of myself? My own desires?

And now he is dead.

And tomorrow, another challenge. All those staring eyes. Not those of the men who had stood with him and had faced death a hundred times, or the women who had loved and welcomed them when they had returned home. Without limbs. Without sight. Without hope.

No. They would be the faces and the eyes she had seen that evening at the celebration of Wellington’s victory. Rhodes, who had been championed as the new First Lord of the Admiralty. Richard’s wife, bowing to applause she would never earn or deserve. And the unsmiling wife of Graham Bethune. Unsmiling until the moment of insult, as if she had been a part of it. All enemies.

She had turned her back on them. Had come here, half blind with anger and humiliation. She stood up quickly and stared at the bed. And he was waiting for me.

Tomorrow, then. The bells would toll, the drums echo through the empty streets. They would be remembering her Richard, her dearest of men, but they would be looking at her. At me.

And what would they see? The woman who had inspired a hero? The woman who had endured a shipwreck, and fought the danger and misery so that they might all hope to live, when most of them had already accepted a lingering death. The woman who had loved him. Loved him.

Or would they see only a whore?

She faced the mirror again and unfastened her gown, so that it fell and was held until she released it and stood naked, the hair warm against her spine.

As the desert craves for rain.

She sat again and recovered the brush. She heard a step on the stairs, quick and light. It would be Melwyn, her maid and companion. Cornish, from St Austell, a fair girl with an elusive, elfin prettiness. She was fifteen.

She stared unwaveringly at the mirror. Fifteen. As I was when I was with child. When my world began to change. Richard had known of that; Sillitoe also knew.

She heard a tap at the door and pulled the gown up to her shoulders. Melwyn entered the room and closed the door.

“You’ve not eaten, m’ lady.” She stood her ground, quietly determined. “Tesn’t right. Cook thought . . .”

She stood quite still as Catherine twisted round to look at her. Then she said simply, “You’m so beautiful, m’ lady. You must take more care. Tomorrow d’ be so important, and I can’t be with you. No room for servants . . .”

Catherine clasped her round the shoulders and pressed her face into the fair hair. Richard’s sister had told her that Melwyn meant honey-fair in the old Cornish tongue.

“You’re no mere servant, Melwyn.” She embraced her again. “Tomorrow, then.”

The girl said, “Sir Richard will expect it.”

Catherine nodded very slowly. She had nearly given in, bro-ken down, unable to go through with it. She lifted her chin, felt the anger giving way to pride.

She said, “He will, indeed,” and smiled at a memory the girl would never know or understand. “So let’s be about it, then!”

CAPTAIN Adam Bolitho ran lightly up the companion ladder and paused as the bright sunshine momentarily dazzled him. He glanced around the quarterdeck, fitting names to faces, noting what each man was doing.

Lieutenant Vivian Massie had the afternoon watch, and seemed surprised by his appearance on deck. Midshipman Bellairs was working with his signals party, observing each man to see if he was quick to recognise every flag, folded in its locker or not. It was hard enough with other ships in company, but alone, with no chance to regularly send and receive signals, there was always a danger that mistakes born out of boredom would be made.

Four bells had just chimed from the forecastle. He looked up at the masthead pendant, whipping out half-heartedly in a wind which barely filled the sails. He walked to the compass box. East-by-south. He could feel the eyes of the helmsmen on him, while a master’s mate made a business of examining a midshipman’s slate. All as usual. And yet . . .

“I heard a hail from the masthead, Mr Massie?”

“Aye, sir.” He gestured vaguely towards the starboard bow. “Driftwood.”

Adam frowned and looked at the master’s log book. Eight hundred miles since leaving Gibraltar, in just under five days. The ship was a good sailer despite these unreliable winds, conditions which might be expected in the Mediterranean.

No sight of land. They could be alone on some vast, uncharted ocean. The sun was hot but not oppressively so, and he had seen a few burns and blisters amongst the seamen.

“Who is the lookout?”

He did not turn, but guessed Massie was surprised by what seemed so trivial a question.

He did not recognise the name.

“Send Sullivan,” he said.

The master’s mate said, “He’s off watch below, sir.”

Adam stared at the chart. Unlike those in the chartroom, it was stained and well used; there was even a dark ring of some-thing where a watchkeeper had carelessly left a mug.

“Send him.” He traced the coastline with his fingers. Fifty miles or so to the south lay Algiers. Dangerous, hostile, and lit-tle known except by those unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of Algerine pirates.

He saw the seaman Sullivan hurrying to the main shrouds, his bare feet hooking over the hard ratlines. His soles were like leather, unlike some of the landsmen, who could scarcely hobble after a few hours working aloft, although even they were improv-ing. He heard Partridge, the ship’s barrel-chested boatswain, call out something, and saw Sullivan’s brown face split into a grin.

He knew that Cristie, the master, had arrived on deck. That was not unusual. He checked his log at least twice in every watch. His entire world was the wind and the currents, the tides and the soundings; he could probably discover the exact condition of the seabed merely by arming the lead with tallow and smelling the fragment hauled up from the bottom. Without his breed of mariner a ship was blind, could fall a victim to any reef or sand-bar. Charts were never enough. To men like Cristie, they never would be, either.

Adam shaded his eyes and peered up at the mainmast again.

“Deck, there!”

Adam waited, picturing Sullivan’s bright, clear eyes, like those of a much younger man peering through a mask.

“Wreckage off the starboard bow!”

He heard Massie say irritably, “Could have been there for months!”

Nobody answered, and he sensed that they were all looking at their captain.

He turned to the sailing-master. “What do you think, Mr Cristie?”

Cristie shrugged. “Aye. In this sea it could have been drifting hereabouts for quite a while.”

He was no doubt thinking, why? To investigate some useless wreckage would mean changing tack, and in this uncertain wind it might take half a day to resume their course.

The master’s mate said, “Here’s Sullivan, sir.”

Sullivan walked from the shrouds, gazing around the quarter-deck as if he had never seen it before.

“Well, Sullivan? A fool’s errand this time?”

Surprisingly, the man did not respond. He said, “Somethin’s wrong, sir.” He looked directly at his captain for the first time. Then he nodded, more certain, knowing that the captain would not dismiss his beliefs, his sailor’s instinct.

He seemed to make up his mind. “Gulls, sir, circlin’ over the wreckage.”

Adam heard the midshipman of the watch suppress a snigger, and the master’s mate’s angry rebuke.

A shadow fell across the compass box. It was Galbraith, the first lieutenant.

“Trouble, sir? I heard what he said.”

Gulls on the water meant pickings. Circling low above it meant they were afraid to go nearer. He thought of the boy John Whitmarsh, who had been found alive after Anemone had gone down.

“Call all hands, Mr Galbraith. We shall heave-to and lower the gig.” He heard the brief, almost curt orders being translated into trilling calls and the responding rush of feet. What’s the bloody captain want this time?

He raised his voice slightly. “Mr Bellairs, take charge of the gig.” He turned to watch the hands rushing to halliards and braces. “Good experience for your examination!” He saw the mid-shipman touch his hat and smile. Was it so easy?

He saw Jago by the nettings and beckoned him across. “Go with him. A weather eye.”

Jago shrugged. “Aye, sir.”

Galbraith watched the sails thundering in disorder as Unri-valled lurched unsteadily into the wind.

He said, “I would have gone, sir. Mr Bellairs is not very expe-rienced.”

Adam looked at him. “And he never will be, if he is protected from such duties.”

Galbraith hurried to the rail as the gig was swayed up and over the gangway.

Did he take it as a slight because one so junior had been sent? Or as a lack of trust, because of what had happened in his past?

Adam turned aside, angry that such things could still touch him.

“Gig’s away, sir!”

The boat was pulling strongly from the side, oars rising and cutting into the water as one. A good boat’s crew. He could see Jago hunched by the tiller, remembered shaking hands with him on that littered deck after the American had broken off the action. And John Whitmarsh lay dead on the orlop.

“Glass, Mr Cousens!” He reached out and took the telescope, not noticing that the name had come to him without effort.

The gig loomed into view, up and down so that sometimes she appeared to be foundering. No wonder the frigate was rolling so badly. He thought of Cristie’s comment. In this sea.

He saw the oars rise and stay motionless, a man standing in the bows with a boat-hook. Jago was on his feet too, but steadying the tiller-bar as if he was calming the boat and the movement. The hard man, and a true sailor, who hated officers and detested the navy. But he was still here. With me.

Bellairs was trying to keep his footing, and was staring astern at Unrivalled. He held up his arms and crossed them.

Massie grunted, “He’s found something.”

Cristie barely spared him a glance. “Somebody, more like.”

Adam lowered the glass. They were pulling a body from the sea, the bowman fending off the surrounding wreckage with his boat-hook. Midshipman Bellairs, who would sit for lieutenant when the admiral so ordered, was hanging over the gunwale vom-iting, with Jago holding his belt, setting the oars in motion again as if all else was secondary.

“Fetch the surgeon.”

“Done, sir.”

“Extra hands on the tackles, Mr Partridge!” The boatswain was not grinning now.

He thought again of Whitmarsh, the twelve year old who had been “volunteered” by a so-called uncle. He had told him how he had drifted from the sinking frigate, holding his friend’s hand, unaware that the other boy had been dead for some while.

He turned to speak to Sullivan but he had gone. He handed the telescope to the midshipman of the watch; he did not need to look again to know the gulls were swooping down once more, their screams lost in distance. The spirits of dead sailors, the old Jacks called them. Scavengers fitted them better, he thought. He heard O’Beirne giving instructions to two of his loblolly boys. A good surgeon, or another butcher? You might never know until it was too late.

Adam walked to the side, two marines springing out of his way to allow him to pass. The gig was almost here, and he noticed that Bellairs was on his feet again.

Why should it matter? We all had to learn. But it did matter.

A block squeaked, and he knew Partridge’s mates were low-ering a canvas cradle to hoist the survivor inboard. It would probably finish him, if he was not dead already.

Other men were running now to guide the cradle over the gangway, clear of the boat tier.

Adam said, “Secure the gig and get the ship under way, if you please. Take over, Mr Galbraith.” He did not see the sudden light in Galbraith’s eyes, but he knew it was there. He was being given the ship. Trusted.

The surgeon was on his knees, sleeves rolled up, his red face squinting with concentration. Large and heavy though he was, he had the small hands and wrists of a very much younger person.

“I cannot move him far, sir.”

To the sickbay, the orlop. There was no time.

“Carry him aft, to my quarters. More room for you.”

He leaned over and looked at the man they had pulled from the sea. From death.

One bare arm showed a faint tattoo. The other was like raw meat, a bone protruding through the blackened flesh. He was so badly burned it was a marvel he had lived this long. A fire, then. Every sailor’s most dreaded enemy.

Someone held out a knife. “’E were carryin’ this, sir! English, right enough.”

O’Beirne was cutting away the scorched rags from the body. He murmured, “Very bad, sir. I’m afraid . . .” He gripped the man’s uninjured wrist as his mouth moved, as if even that were agonising.

Perhaps it was the sound of the ship coming about, her sails refilling, slapping and banging as the great yards were braced hard round, or the sense of men around him again. A sailor’s world. His mouth opened very slightly.

“’Ere, matey.” A tarred hand with a mug of water pushed through the crouching onlookers, but O’Beirne shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

“Not yet, lad.”

Jago was here, on his knees opposite the surgeon, lowering his dark head until it seemed to be touching the man’s blistered face.

He murmured, “He’s here, mate. Right here with us.” He looked up at Adam. “Askin’ for the Captain. You, sir . . .” He broke off and lowered his face again. “Ship’s name, sir.” He held the man’s bare shoulder. “Try again, mate!”

Then he said harshly, “No good, sir. He’s goin.””

Adam knelt and took the man’s hand. Even that was badly burned, but he would not feel it now.

As his shadow fell across the man’s face he saw the eyes open. For the first time, as if only they lived. What did he see, he won-dered. Someone in a grubby shirt, unfastened, and without the coat and the gold lace of authority. Hardly a captain . . .

He said quietly, “I command here. You are safe now.”

It was a lie; he could feel his life draining away like sand in an hourglass, and even the unwavering eyes knew it.

He was using all his strength. The eyes moved suddenly to the shrouds and running rigging overhead.

Who was he? What did he remember? What was his ship? It was no use. He heard Bellairs say, “There were four others, sir. All burned. Tied together. He must have been the last one left alive . . .” He could not continue. Adam felt the man’s hand tighten very slightly in his. He watched his mouth, saw it form-ing a word, a name.

O’Beirne said, “Fortune, sir.”

Someone else said, “Probably a trader. They was English any-way, poor devils!”

But the hand was moving again. Agitated. Desperate.

Adam leaned closer, until his face was only inches from the dying man’s. He could smell his agony, his despair, but he did not release his hand.

“Tell me, what is it? ”

Then, with great care, he lowered the hand to the deck. The sand had run out. It was as if only one thing had kept him alive, long enough. For what? Revenge?

He rose and stood for a few moments looking down at the dead man. An unknown sailor. Then he looked around at their intent faces. Troubled, curious, some openly distressed. It was per-haps the closest he had been to them since he had taken command.

He said, “Not ‘fortune.’ He got it out, though.” The man’s eyes were still open, as if he were alive, and listening. “It was La For-tune. A Frenchman who sank his ship.”

Jago said, “Shall I have him put over, sir?”

He was still on his knees, and glanced at Adam’s hand as it rested briefly on his shoulder.

“No. We shall bury him during the last dog watch. It is the least we can do.”

He saw Bellairs, deathly pale despite his sunburn, and said, “That was well done, Mr Bellairs. I shall enter it in your report. It will do you no harm.”

Bellairs tried to smile but his mouth would not move.

“That man, sir—”

But the deck was empty, and the sailmaker’s crew would soon be stitching up the nameless sailor for his last journey on earth.

“I intend to find out. And when I do, I shall see that he does not leave us unavenged!”

The sun stood high in a clear sky, so that the reflected glare from the anchorage was almost a physical presence. Unrivalled, with all sails clewed up except topsails and jib, seemed to be gliding towards the sprawled panorama of battlements and sand-coloured buildings, her stem hardly causing a ripple.

Adam Bolitho raised a telescope and examined the other ves-sels anchored nearby. Montrose, the forty-two gun frigate which Sir Graham Bethune had chosen for his flagship, was surrounded by boats and lighters. She had left Gibraltar two days ahead of Unrivalled, but from the activity of storing and watering ship it seemed she had arrived in Malta only today, more evidence of their own fast passage despite the contrary winds.

Adam was still not sure what he thought of Bethune’s deci-sion to sail separately. In company they might have exercised together, anything to break the day-to-day routine.

He did not know the vice-admiral very well, although what he had seen of him he had liked, and had trusted. He had been a frigate captain himself, and a successful one, and in Adam’s book that rated very high. Against that, he had spent several years employed ashore, latterly at the Admiralty. Something I could never do. It might make an officer over cautious, more aware of the risks and the perils of responsibility in a sea command. He had even heard Forbes, Montrose’s captain, question the need for such cau-tion. It was unlike the man to criticise his admiral, but they had all had too much to drink.

He moved the glass further and saw three other frigates anchored in line, flags barely moving, windsails rigged to provide a suggestion of air in the crowded quarters between decks.

Not a large force, something else which would weigh heav-ily on Bethune’s mind. With Napoleon at large on the French mainland again, no one could predict the direction the conflict might take. The French might drive north to the Channel ports, and seize ships and men to attack and delay vital supplies for Wellington’s armies. And what of the old enemies? There would still be some who were prepared and eager to renew their alle-giance to the arrogant Corsican.

“Guard-boat, sir!”

Adam shifted the glass, and beyond the motionless launch saw other buildings which appeared to merge with the wall of the nearest battery.

Catherine had been here. For a few days, before she had been forced to take passage back to England.

The last time, the last place she had seen his uncle. He tried to turn aside from the thought. The last time they had been lovers.

Cristie called, “Ready, sir!”

Adam walked to the rail and stared along the length of his command. The anchor swaying slightly to the small movement, ready to let go, men at halliards and braces, petty officers staring aft to the quarterdeck. To their captain. He saw Galbraith on the opposite side, a speaking-trumpet in his hands, but his eyes were on Wynter, the third lieutenant, who was up forward with the anchor party. Galbraith had intended to take charge himself, and Adam had been surprised by this discovery, more so because he had not noticed it earlier. A strong, capable officer, but he could not or would not delegate, as in the matter of Bellairs and the wreckage, the pathetic corpses, the screaming gulls.

He said, “Carry on, Mr Galbraith!”

“Lee braces, there! Hands wear ship!”

“Tops’l sheets! Tops’l clew lines!”

Galbraith’s voice pursued the seamen as they hauled and stamped in unison on the sun-dried planking, waiting to belay each snaking line of cordage.

“Helm a’lee!”

Adam stood very still, watching the land pass slowly across the bowsprit and the proud figurehead.

“Let go!” Galbraith nodded curtly and the great anchor hit the water, flinging spray over the bustling seamen.

The Jack broke from the bows almost immediately, and he saw Midshipman Bellairs turn to smile at one of his signals party. But he had not forgotten the man they had plucked from the sea, only to surrender him again. Adam had seen the boy when they had cleared lower deck for the ceremony. Even the wind had dropped.

It had been strangely moving for new hands and old Jacks alike. Most of them had seen men they knew, and had shared their meagre resources with in one messdeck or another, pitched outboard like so much rubbish after a battle. But for some rea-son the burial of this unknown sailor had been different.

He had known Galbraith was watching him as he had read from the worn and salt-stained prayer book. He smiled. His aunt Nancy had given it to him before he had joined Hyperion.

Take good care of it, Adam. It will take good care of you.

It was the only thing he still possessed from that day, a life-time ago.

He looked up now at the monkey-like figures of seamen secur-ing sails, and freeing the boat tackles. How long this time? What orders? His mind refused to submit. And what of a ship named La Fortune?

The dying man might have been mistaken, his reeling mind betraying him, clinging perhaps to a memory which, like him, was now dead.

But suppose? There had been many French ships at sea when Napoleon had abdicated. The two frigates which had engaged Frobisher on the day of his uncle’s death had not come from nowhere.

“Orders, sir?”

“Post sentries, Mr Galbraith. I don’t want any unlawful visi-tors. And have a boat prepared for the purser—he’ll need to go ashore to look for fruit.”

Even a man-of-war invited attention when she lay at anchor. With gunports left open to afford some relief to men off watch, there was easy access for dealers and women, too, given half a chance. He smiled again, privately. Especially a man-of-war.

A boatswain’s mate called, “Guard-boat coming alongside, sir!”

Galbraith seemed to come abruptly out of his habitual reserve.

“Letters from home, maybe, sir? We might learn what’s happening!”

Adam glanced at him, this Galbraith who was still unknown to him.

“Passenger on board, sir!” He thought Bellairs sounded disap-pointed. “A lieutenant, sir!”

Adam walked to the entry port, and saw the officer in ques-tion shaking hands with the Royal Marine lieutenant who was in charge of the boat. A tall man, dark hair streaked with grey. Adam clenched his fist without realising it. It had to come. But not now, not like this. He was unprepared. Vulnerable. Perhaps Bethune had been trying to warn him at Gibraltar.

Galbraith said uncertainly, “I do not recognise him, sir.”

“Why should you?” He touched his arm, aware of the sharp sarcasm. “Forgive me. My rank does not afford me a licence to insult you.” He stared at the entry port. “He is—was—my uncle’s flag lieutenant. And friend.”

Then he walked to meet his visitor, and all he could feel was envy.

Lieutenant George Avery seated himself in a high-backed chair and watched as the cabin servant placed two goblets of wine on a table. The chair felt hard, unused, like the ship herself.

Strange how it became with ships, he thought. In a King’s ship you always expected to see a familiar face, catch a name you had once known. The navy was a family, some said; you were always a part of it.

He had been introduced to the senior lieutenant, a powerfully built man with an honest face and a firm handshake. But he was a stranger.

He studied the captain. He had been prepared for this meet-ing, although he guessed Adam Bolitho had been disconcerted by it.

But it was not that. He observed him now, in profile as he wrote briefly on a pad for a small, sickly-looking man who must be a clerk.

They had met several times, and Avery had always remem-bered his quick, observant approach to his work and the people he met, in retrospect always youthful, always restless. Like a young colt, Richard Bolitho had once said.

The resemblance was there, to the portraits in the house in Falmouth. And, above all, to the man he had served, and had loved.

We are about the same age, but whereas he has his career and his future ahead like a beacon, I have nothing. Adam Bolitho and his uncle had been kept apart far more than they had been together, and yet, in his mind, Avery had always thought of one as being in the mould of the other. It was not so. Adam had changed in some way, matured as was inevitable for any man of his rank and responsibility. But it went far deeper. He was guarded, withdrawn. Perhaps still unable or unwilling to accept that the cloak, the guardian presence, was gone, that there was not even a shadow.

Adam was looking at him now, holding out the goblet.

“You will like this.”

But he was not telling him; he was asking him to share some-thing.

Avery held up the goblet, and thought of the wines she had sent aboard for Richard Bolitho.

“I am told that you saw Lady Somervell when you were in England, sir? Before you sailed.”

“Aye. She was concerned that I would not care enough to order some wine for myself!” Then he did smile, and, only briefly, he was the young, headstrong officer Avery had first met.

Avery said, “She never forgets,” and the smile faded. Like sun-light dying even as you watched, he thought.

“We were at Falmouth ...I pray to God she is able to come to terms with this terrible loss.” He changed tack swiftly, in the manner Avery remembered. “And what of you? Shall you remain here in Malta?”

Avery put down the goblet. It was empty, and he could taste the wine on his lips, but he did not recall drinking it.

“I am able to elaborate on the information already to hand, sir.” He hesitated. “Sir Richard had cause to meet Mehmet Pasha, the man who commands and governs in Algiers. I was with him, and was privileged to share the intelligence we gained there. If I may be of help?”

He moved his shoulder and Adam saw him wince: the old wound which had brought him down and had cost him his ship. We have so much in common. He had seen his own flag cut down in surrender when, like Avery, he had been too badly wounded to resist. And he also had been a prisoner of war, before making his escape. A court martial had cleared and had praised him. The verdict could just as easily have destroyed him.

He said, “I would be grateful. Sir Graham Bethune has very little on which to proceed.”

Above and around them the anchored frigate was alive with shipboard sounds, and once during their conversation he got up and closed the cabin skylight against them. As if, for these moments, he wanted to share it with nobody else.

Avery spoke evenly and without any obvious emotion, but Adam understood what it was costing, and what it meant to him.

At last, here was someone who had been there. Had seen what had happened.

Avery said simply, “I saw him fall.” The tawny eyes were dis-tant. He almost smiled. “Allday was with me.”

Adam nodded, but dared not speak or interrupt. For Avery’s sake, but mostly for his own.

Avery was looking at the sloping stern windows, and the anchored ships beyond.

“He was the bravest and the most compassionate man I ever served, ever knew. When I was pulled out to your ship just now, I almost asked to be taken ashore. But I had to come. Not out of duty or respect—they are mere words. Not even because it was your right to be told. Above all, I thought I would feel resent-ment, because you are here and he is not. I now know that I did the right thing. He spoke of you often, even on the day he fell. He was proud of you, of what you had become. More like a son, he said.”

Adam said, quietly, “Did he suffer?”

Avery shook his head.

“I think not. He spoke to Allday. I could not hear what he said, and I had not the heart to question him afterwards.”

Afterwards.

Avery’s eyes moved to the table, and the envelope which was addressed to Vice-Admiral Bethune.

“I shall take it to him when I leave, sir.”

Duty, so often used as an escape from tragedy. Adam had learned it the hard way, better than most.

He said, “You could return later. We might sup together. Nobody else.” He felt like a hypocrite, but was glad when Avery declined. “Tomorrow, then. There will be a conference, I believe?”

Avery glanced down, and almost unconsciously plucked a soli-tary gold thread from his coat. Where he had once worn a twist of gold lace to distinguish him as an admiral’s flag lieutenant.

Bethune would already have one of his own, as Valentine Keen had had at Halifax. There could be resentment.

Avery said, “If you so requested, I should be pleased . . .” He smiled again, faintly, as though his mind were somewhere else. “Honoured to accompany you. I can still stand a fair watch, and I have nothing to go home for as yet.”

Adam recalled that Avery was the nephew of Sillitoe, that man of power whose name was rarely out of the news-sheets. Another nephew. Another coincidence.

He held out his hand. “I’m glad you came. I’ll not forget.”

Avery took a small package from his pocket and unwrapped it with great care.

The locket. He had seen his uncle wearing it whenever he had been on deck with his shirt unfastened. As I do. He took it and held it to the sunlight, the perfect likeness, Catherine’s bare shoul-ders and high cheekbones. He was about to turn it over to examine the inscription when he saw the broken clasp and severed chain. As clean a cut as if done by a knife. His fingers closed tightly upon it. No knife. The marksman’s shot must have done it.

Avery was watching him.

“I have been unable to find a local craftsman with skill enough to repair it. I would have sent it to her . . . Now, I think it bet-ter that you should be the one, sir.”

They faced one another, and Adam understood. In his way Avery had been in love with her also. Now that she needed help, there was no one.

“Thank you for saying that. Perhaps I shall be able to return it myself.”

Avery picked up his hat, knowing he would do nothing of the kind. Suddenly he was pleased at what he had done. He looked at Adam, and for a fleeting moment he saw the other face. He smiled. Like a good flag lieutenant.

Galbraith was at the entry port when they came on deck, and saw them shake hands, as if each was reluctant to break the con-tact. He noticed, too, that the visitor paused and glanced almost involuntarily at the mainmast truck, as if he still expected to see a flag there.

In his cabin once more, Adam took out the locket and read the inscription, and her voice seemed to speak to him as it did whenever he received a letter from her.

May Fate always guide you.

May love always protect you.

She must have remembered those words when she had watched Unrivalled standing out into Falmouth Bay. As she would always look for the ship which would never come.

He turned as Galbraith appeared by the open screen door.

“Concerning tomorrow, sir?”

It was the only way. Perhaps Galbraith understood, and in time might share it.

“Take a glass with me first, eh?”

He slipped the locket into his pocket, out of sight. But the voice still persisted.

“There is something we must discuss, before I meet the vice-admiral tomorrow. You see, I have a plan . . .”

It was a new beginning for all of them.

LIEUTENANT Leigh Galbraith strode across the quarterdeck and reported, “The watch is aft, sir!” Like his unerring steps over and past ringbolts and other obstacles, it was part of an unchanging routine at sea. He even touched his hat to the shadowy shape of Lieutenant Massie, whom he was about to relieve.

It was still quite dark, but when his eyes eventually became accustomed he would see the approach of dawn in the fading stars, the hardening of the horizon. Massie stifled a yawn.

“West-by-south, sir.” He stared up at the pale outlines of the sails, filling only occasionally with the wind across the starboard quarter.

Galbraith glanced at the helmsmen, eyes flickering in the shaded light from the compass. Other shapes were moving into position: the morning watch, when the ship would come alive again.

Galbraith looked at the tiny glow from the cabin skylight. Was the captain awake, or was it a ploy to keep the watch on its toes?

He thought of Captain Bolitho’s return from his meeting with the vice-admiral. Galbraith had no idea what had been said, but the captain had come back on board barely able to conceal his anger.

Galbraith tried to dismiss it. At first light they would sight and resume contact with another frigate, Matchless of forty-two guns. She had been in the Mediterranean for three years attached to one squadron or another, and would therefore be very familiar with shipping movements and the lurking danger of pirates. Corsairs.

Matchless was commanded by a senior post-captain named Emlyn Bouverie, a man who came from a proud naval family, and was thought likely for promotion to flag rank in the near future. Galbraith did not know him, but those who did apparently heartily disliked him. Not a tyrant or martinet like some he had known, but a perfectionist, who was quick to reprimand or pun-ish anyone who fell below his own high standards.

He said, “You are relieved, sir.” He lifted the canvas hood from the master’s chart table and peered at the log with the aid of a tiny lantern. They would sight land before noon, according to Cristie. He had never known him to be wrong.

He steadied the light with care. The coast of North Africa: to most sailors a place of mystery and strange superstitions, and best avoided.

He studied Cristie’s fine handwriting. 6TH June, 1815. What would this day bring?

Captain Bolitho had called his officers and those of senior warrant rank together in his cabin. Galbraith straightened his back and glanced at the skylight again. Remembering it.

The captain had described the mission. A visit to Algiers, to investigate. Their intentions were peaceful, but guns’ crews would exercise twice a day all the same. It was said that Algiers was pro-tected by some six hundred guns. It would not be much of a contest if the worst happened.

The captain had looked at their faces and had said, “There was a French frigate named La Fortune in the Western Mediter-ranean before Napoleon’s surrender. Others too, and it is known that the Dey of Algiers and the Bey of Tunis have offered sanc-tuary to such men-of-war in exchange for their services. The prisons are still filled with Christians, people snatched from passing vessels, and held on no more serious charge than their religious beliefs. Torture, slavery, and open acts of aggression against merchantmen sailing under our protection—the list is endless. With our ‘allies’ . . .” he had made no effort to conceal his contempt “. . . we had a chance to put paid to this piracy once and for all. Now with Napoleon at the head of his armies again, the Dey in particular may use our predicament to gain even more control of these waters, and beyond.”

Somebody, Galbraith had thought Captain Bosanquet of the Royal Marines, had asked about the sailor they had rescued and later buried at sea.

Captain Bolitho had answered shortly, “Probably one of many.” And again something like bitterness had crept into his voice.

“Which is why Captain Bouverie intends to make a peaceful approach. Vice-Admiral Bethune’s squadron is hard pressed as it is. He sees no alternative.”

Bouverie was the senior captain, as he reminded them often enough by hoisting signals at every opportunity. Galbraith half-smiled. He would make a good admiral one day.

The master’s mate of the watch said softly, “Cabin light’s out, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr Woodthorpe. I am glad you are awake!” He saw the man’s teeth in the dimness.

How would it be this time? He thought of the moment when they had shared wine together; it had shown him another side of Adam Bolitho. He had even touched on his early days at sea as a midshipman, and had spoken of his uncle, his first captain. Opening out, demonstrating a warmth which Galbraith had not suspected.

After his visit to the flagship, he had shut that same door. At first Galbraith thought that he had expected some priority, a pref-erence because of his famous surname, and had resented Bouverie’s slower, more cautious approach. But Adam Bolitho was a post-captain of some fame, and had not come by it easily. He would be used to Bouveries in the navy’s tight world.

It was deeper than that. Driving him, like some unstoppable force. Something personal.

Like the brigantine, which might or might not be following Unrivalled. Twice on this passage they had sighted an unknown sail. The lookouts had not been certain; even the impressive Sul-livan could not swear to it. But Captain Bolitho had no such doubts. When he had signalled Bouverie for permission to break company and give chase, the request had been denied with a curt negative.

Galbraith had heard him exclaim, “This is a ship of war! I’m no grocery captain, damn his eyes!”

Galbraith recognised the light step now, and heard his pass-ing comment to the master’s mate. Then he saw the open shirt, rippling in the soft wind, and remembered the savage scar he had seen above his ribs when he had found him shaving in his cabin. He was lucky to be alive.

Bolitho had seen his eyes, and said, “They made a good job of it!” And had grinned, and only for a second or so Galbraith had seen the youth override the experience and the memories.

A good job. Galbraith had heard the surgeon mention that when Adam Bolitho had been captured, more dead than alive, he had been operated on by the American ship’s surgeon, who had in fact been French.

“Good morning, Mr Galbraith. Everything is as it was, I see?” He was looking up at the topsails. “I could make her fly if I got the word!”

Pride? It was stronger than that. It was more like love.

He moved to the compass box and nodded to the helmsmen, and their eyes followed him further still, to the canvas-covered table.

“We shall exercise the main battery during the forenoon, Mr Galbraith.”

Galbraith smiled. That would go round the ship like a fast fuse. But it had to be said that the gun crews were improving.

“And call the hands a quarter-hour earlier. I expect a smart ship today. And I want our people properly fed, not making do with muck!”

Another side. Captain Bolitho had already disrated the cook for wasting food and careless preparation. Many captains would not have cared.

He was holding the same little lamp, but did not seem to be looking at the chart, and Galbraith heard him say quietly, “June sixth. I had all but forgot!”

“May I share it, sir?”

For a moment he thought he had gone too far. But Adam merely looked at him, his face hidden in shadow.

“I was thinking of some wild roses, and a lady.” He turned away, as if afraid of what he might disclose. “On my birthday.” Then, abruptly, “The wind! By God, the wind! ”

It was as though the ship had sensed his change of mood. Blocks and halliards rattled, and then above their heads the main-topsail boomed like a drum.

Adam said, “Belay my last order! Call all hands directly!” He gripped Galbraith’s arm as if to emphasise the importance of what he was saying. “We shall sight land today! Don’t you see, if we are being followed it’s their last chance to outreach us!”

Galbraith knew it was pointless to question his sudden excite-ment. At first light they should be changing tack to take station on Matchless again. There was not a shred of evidence that the occasional sightings of a far-off sail were significant, or connected in any way. But the impetuous grip on his arm seemed to cast all doubt to the rising wind.

He swung round. “Pipe all hands, Mr Woodthorpe! And send for the master, fast as you can!”

He turned back to the indistinct outline. “Captain Bouverie may not approve, sir.”

Adam Bolitho said quietly, “But Captain Bouverie is not yet in sight, is he?”

Men rushed out of the shadows, some still dazed by sleep, staring around at the flapping canvas and straining rigging until order and discipline took command.

The master, feet bare, stumped across the sloping deck, muttering, “Is there no peace?” Then he saw the captain. “New course, sir?”

“We will wear ship, Mr Cristie! As close to the wind as she’ll come!”

Calls shrilled and men scrambled aloft, the perils of working in darkness no longer a threat now to most of them. Blocks squealed, and someone stumbled over a snaking line, which was slithering across the damp planking as if it were truly alive.

But she was answering, from the instant that the big double-wheel was hauled over.

Galbraith gripped a backstay and felt the deck tilting still fur-ther. In the darkness everything was wilder, louder, as if the ship were responding to her captain’s recklessness. He dashed spray from his face and saw pale stars spiralling around the masthead pendant. It was all but dawn. He looked towards the captain. Suppose the sea was empty? And there was no other vessel? He thought of Bouverie, what might happen, and knew, without understanding why, that this was a contest.

Unrivalled completed her turn, water rushing down the lee scuppers as the sails refilled on the opposite tack, the jib crack-ing loudly, as close to the wind as she could hold.

Cristie shouted, “Steady as she goes, sir! East-by-south!”

Afterwards, Galbraith thought it was the only time he had ever heard the master either impressed or surprised.

“Make fast! Belay!”

Men ran to obey each command; to any landsman it would appear a single, confused tangle of canvas and straining cordage.

Adam Bolitho gripped the rail and said, “Now she flies! Feel her!”

Galbraith turned, but shook his head and did not speak. The captain was quite alone with his ship.

“Hands aloft, Mr Lomax! Get the t’gallants on her and put more men on the main course! They’re like a pack of old women today!”

Lieutenant George Avery stood beneath the mizzen-mast, where the marines of the afterguard had been mustered for nearly an hour. He had heard a few whispered curses when the galley fire had been doused before some of the watchkeepers had man-aged to snatch a quick meal.

He felt out of place aboard Matchless, alien. Everything worked smoothly enough, as might be expected in a frigate which had been in commission for over three years. But he had sensed a lack of the companionship he himself had come to recognise and accept. Every move, each change of tack or direction, seemed to flow from one man. No chain of command as Avery knew it, but a single man.

He could see him now, feet apart, hand on his hip, a square figure in the strengthening daylight. He considered the word; it described Captain Emlyn Bouverie exactly. Even when the ship heeled to a change of tack, Bouverie remained like a rock. His hands were square too, strong and hard, like the man.

Bouverie said, “Attend the lookouts, Mr Foster, you should know my orders by now!” His voice always carried without any apparent effort, and Avery had never seen him deign to use a speaking-trumpet, even in the one patch of wind they had encountered after leaving Malta.

He heard a lieutenant yelling out names, and thought he knew why. Soon now Unrivalled would be sighted, provided Adam Bolitho had kept on station as instructed. He recalled the meet-ing aboard the flagship. Bouverie had vetoed the suggestion that Avery should sail with Unrivalled instead of “the senior officer’s ship,” and Bethune had concurred. Looking back, Avery still won-dered if it was because he had truly agreed, or if he had simply needed to demonstrate that no favouritism would be shown Sir Richard Bolitho’s nephew.

He gazed aloft as the topgallant sails broke free from their yards and filled to the wind, the topmen spread out on either side, all aware of their captain’s standards.

Pride, jealousy? It was difficult to have one without the other. Matchless had been in these waters for more than three years, and despite her coppered hull was heavy with weed and marine growths. Unrivalled had been forced to shorten sail several times during the day to remain on station, while at night they must be almost hove-to. He could imagine Adam Bolitho’s frustration and impatience. And yet I hardly know him. That was the strangest part. Like handing over the locket. When I wanted it for myself.

He realised that Bouverie had joined him by the mizzen. He could move swiftly when it suited him.

“Bored, Mr Avery? This may seem a mite tame after your last appointment!”

Avery said, “I feel like a passenger, sir.”

“Well spoken! But I cannot disrupt the running of my com-mand with a wrong note, eh?”

He laughed. In fact, Bouverie laughed frequently, but it rarely reached his eyes.

“All secure, sir!” Somebody scuttled past; nobody walked in Matchless.

Bouverie nodded. “I’ve read the notes and observations on your last visit to Algiers. Could be useful.” He broke off and shouted, “Take that man’s name, Mr Munro! I’ll have no damned laggards this day!”

That man. After three years in commission, a captain should have known the name of every soul aboard.

Again, the ambush of memory. How Richard Bolitho had impressed upon his officers the importance of remembering men’s names. It is often all they can call their own.

He turned, startled, as Bouverie said, “You must miss the admiral,” as if he had been reading his thoughts.

“I do indeed, sir.”

“I never met him. Although I too was at Copenhagen, in Amazon, Captain Riou. My first stint as a lieutenant. A real blood-ing, I can tell you!” He laughed again, but nobody turned from his duties to watch or listen. Not in Matchless.

Bouverie’s arm jerked out once more. “Another pull on the weather forebrace and belay! Far too slow!”

He changed, just as suddenly. “Did you have much to do with Lady Somervell? Turn a man’s heart to water with a glance, I’m told. A true beauty—caused more than a few ripples in her time!”

“A woman of courage also, sir.”

Bouverie was studying him in the gloom. Avery could feel it, like the stare of a prosecuting officer at a court martial. As he could feel his own rising resentment.

Bouverie swayed back on his heels. “If you say so. I’d have thought—” He broke off and almost lost his balance. “What the hell was that?”

Someone shouted, “Gunfire, sir!”

Bouverie swallowed hard. “Clod!” He strode to the opposite side. “Mr Lomax! Where away?”

Avery licked his lips, tasting the brine. A single shot. It could only mean one thing, a signal to heave-to. He stared at the hori-zon until his eyes throbbed. Every morning since leaving Malta it had been like this. As soon as Unrivalled was sighted Bouverie would make a signal, as if he was always trying to catch them out. Without looking he knew that the first signal of the day was already bent on, ready to soar up to the yard, when most ships would have been content to remain in close company. He shiv-ered, from more than the rising wind, recalling Adam Bolitho’s impatience at the meeting when doubts had been voiced about the brigantine. Only some ridiculous obsession, something to command attention, to impress. Not any more.

He heard the first lieutenant say, “Unrivalled must be off her station, sir!”

“I know that, God damn it! We are to alter course when . . .”

He turned towards Avery. “Well, what do you think? Or do ‘pas

sengers’ have no opinions?”

Avery felt very calm.

“I believe Unrivalled has found something useful, sir.”

“Oh, very diplomatic, sir! And what of Captain Adam Bolitho? Does he truly believe he is above obeying orders, and beyond the discipline that binds the rest of us?”

An inner voice warned him, take care. Another insisted, you have nothing more to lose.

He said, “I was with Sir Richard Bolitho at Algiers, sir. Things have changed since then. If we attempt to enter without permis-sion . . .” He glanced round, seeing the first touch of gold spill over the horizon. The moment he had always loved. But that, too, was past. “This ship will be destroyed. Your ship, sir, will be blasted apart before you can come about. I have seen the anchorage, and the citadel, and some of the fanatics who control those guns.”

“I have faced worse!”

Avery relaxed. He had always been able to recognise bluster.

“Then you will know the consequences, sir.”

Bouverie stared at him. “God damn you for your imperti-nence!” Then, surprisingly, he grinned. “But bravely said, for all that!” He looked at the clearing sky as a voice yelled, “Sail on the starboard quarter!” The merest pause. “Two sail, sir!”

Bouverie nodded slowly. “A prize, then.”

The first lieutenant climbed down from the shrouds with a telescope.

“She’s a brigantine, sir.”

Avery looked at his hands. They were quite still, and warm in the first frail sunlight. They felt as if they were shaking.

Bouverie was saying, “No, not that signal, Mr Adams.” He took a glass from the signals midshipman and steadied it with care. He was studying Unrivalled ’s topsails, like pink shells in the clear light, although the sun had not yet revealed itself.

“When she is on station again, make Captain repair on board.”

Avery turned away. How many times would Adam Bolitho read that signal with different eyes from other men? When his uncle had called him to his flagship to tell him of the death of Zenoria Keen. We Happy Few . . . It had been their secret.

Bouverie said, “Breakfast, I think. Then we shall hear what our gallant Captain Bolitho has to say.” The good humour seemed even more volatile than his usual mood. “I hope it pleases me!”

But, out of habit or memory, Avery was watching the signals party bending on the flags.

Bouverie sat squarely in a broad leather chair, hands gripping the arms as if to restrain himself.

He said, “Now, Captain Bolitho. In your own words, of course. Share your discoveries with me, eh?” He glanced towards his table where Avery was sitting with a leather satchel and some charts, while beside him the ship’s clerk was poised with his quill at the ready. “For both our sakes, I think some record of this conversa-tion should be kept. Sir Graham Bethune will expect it.”

Adam Bolitho walked to the stern windows and stared at his own ship, her sheer lines and shining hull distorted in the weath-ered glass. Hard to believe that it had all happened so quickly, and yet it was exactly as he had imagined when he had ordered Unrivalled ’s change of course. They had all thought him mad. They were probably right.

He could recall the calm, professional eye of old Stranace, the ship’s gunner, when he had explained what he required. Stranace was more used to the deadly quiet of the magazine and powder store, but like most of his breed he had never forgotten his trade, or how to lay and train an eighteen-pounder.

It must have taken the brigantine’s people completely by sur-prise. Day in, day out, following the two frigates, knowing almost to the minute when they would reduce sail for the night, then to see one of the quarry suddenly looming out of the last, lingering darkness with every sail set, on a converging tack with no room for manoeuvre and no time to run . . .

One shot, the first Unrivalled had fired in anger.

Adam had watched the splash, the succession of jagged fins of spray as the ball had skipped across the water no more than a boat’s length from her bows. He had touched the gunner’s shoul-der; it had felt like iron itself. No words were needed. It was a perfect shot, and the brigantine, now seen to be named Rosario, had hove-to, her sails in confusion in the wind which had changed everything.

He heard the quill scratching across the paper and realised he had been describing it. He looked again and saw the brigantine’s outline, more like a blurred shadow than reality. Unrivalled had put down two boats, and they had done well, he thought, with the lively sea, and their movements hampered by their weapons. Jago had been with him. Amused, but deadly when one of Rosario’s crew had raised a pistol as the boarders had flung their grapnels and swarmed aboard. He had not even seen Jago move, his blade rising and falling with the speed of light. Then the scream, and the severed hand like a glove on the deck.

Lieutenant Wynter had been in the second boat, and with his own party had put the crew under guard. After Jago’s example there was no further resistance.

Rosario was Portuguese but had been chartered repeatedly, at one time by the English squadron at Gibraltar. The master, a dirty, unshaven little man, seemed to speak no English, although he pro-duced some charts to prove his lawful occasions. The charts, like Rosario, were almost too filthy to examine. As Cristie later remarked, “By guess an’ by God, that’s how these heathen navi-gate!”

A sense of failure then; he had sensed it in the restlessness of the boarding party, the apparent confidence of Rosario’s master.

Until Wynter, perhaps the least experienced officer in the ship, had commented on the brigantine’s armament, six swivel-guns mounted aft and near the hold. And the smell . . .

Adam had ordered the hatches to be broached. Only one cargo had a stench like that, and they found the chains and the man-acles where slaves could be packed out of sight, to exist, if they could, in terror and their own filth until they were shipped to a suitable market. There had been blood on one set of irons, and Adam guessed that the wretched prisoner had been pitched over-board.

He had seen Wynter’s eyes widening with shocked surprise when he had said coldly, “A slaver then. Worthless to me. Fetch a halter and run this bugger up to the main-yard, as an example to others!”

Wynter’s expression had changed to admiring comprehension when the vessel’s master had thrown himself at Adam’s feet, plead-ing and sobbing in rough but completely adequate English.

“I thought he might remember!”

Confident and less gentle, they had continued their search. There was a safe, and the gibbering master was even able to pro-duce a key.

Adam turned now as Avery opened the satchel.

“Rosario had no papers as such. That alone makes her a prize.” He smiled faintly. “For the moment.”

Avery laid out the contents of the satchel. A bill of lading, Spanish. A delivery of oil to some garrison, Portuguese. A log book, crudely marked with dates and what could be estimated positions. Some shadowed Unrivalled.

Bouverie said abruptly, “Many such men are paid to spy and inform their masters of ship movements, theirs and ours.” He gave the characteristic nod. “But I’ll give you this, Bolitho. You did not imagine it!”

Adam felt the sudden surge of excitement. The first time since ...He said, “And there is a letter. I do not speak French, but I recognise it well enough.”

Avery was holding it. “For the captain of the frigate La Fortune.” He gave a grave smile. “I learned my French the hard way. As their prisoner.”

Bouverie rubbed his chin. “So she is in Algiers. Under a great battery, you say.”

Adam said, “The bait in the trap, sir. They will not expect us to ignore it.”

It was as if some invisible bonds had been cut. Bouverie almost sprang out of the chair.

“Out of the question! Even if we hold Rosamund—”

Avery heard himself correcting gently, “Rosario, sir,” and cursed himself. Always the good flag lieutenant . . .

Adam persisted, “No, sir, we use her. To spring the trap. They know we are trailing our cloaks, and they will be expecting the brigantine. I am sure she is a regular visitor there.”

He was aware of the tawny eyes on him, Avery watching but not seeing him. As if he were somewhere else . . . He was sud-denly deeply moved. With my uncle.

“Rosario appears to be an agile vessel, sir. It would seem only fair if we were to ‘chase’ her into Algiers?”

Bouverie swallowed. “A cutting-out expedition? I’m not at all certain—” Then he nodded again, vigorously. “It might work, it’s daring enough. Foolhardy, some will say.”

Adam returned to the stern windows. One of the Rosario’s crew had told him that they had often carried female slaves, some very young girls. The master had delighted in abusing them.

He thought of Zenoria, her back laid open by a whip. Keen had rescued her, and she had married him. Not out of love. Out of gratitude.

The mark of Satan, she had called it.

He heard himself say, “Time is short, sir. We cannot delay.”

“The authority for such an act, which might provoke another outbreak of war . . .”

“Is yours, sir.”

Why should it matter? Bouverie would not be the first or the last officer to await a decision from a higher authority. But it did matter. It had to.

He said, “I can take Rosario. I am short-handed, but we could share the burden between us. Then so would the laurels be equally divided.”

He saw the shot go home. Like one of old Stranace’s.

“We’ll do it. I’ll send you some good hands within the hour.” Bouverie was thinking fast, like a flood-gate bursting open. “Will you take the Rosario’s master with you, in case? . . .”

Adam picked up his hat and saw blood on his sleeve. Jago’s cutlass.

“I shall take him. Later, I shall see him hang.” He looked at Avery. “By the authority vested in me!”

Adam Bolitho lowered his telescope and moved into the shadow of the brigantine’s foresail. There would be hundreds of eyes watching from the shore. One mistake would be enough to betray them.

Bang.

He saw a waterspout burst from the sea. Close. But was it near enough to deceive their audience?

He had seen Matchless leaning over as she had changed tack for her final approach, and he had seen the citadel, all and more than Avery had described. It looked as if it had been there for centuries, since time began. Avery had told him about a secret, cave-like entrance to which they had been taken in a large galley. You could lose an army trying to storm such a place. Or a fleet.

He glanced at the Rosario’s master. Once aboard and in com-mand of his own vessel again, he seemed to have grown in stature, as if all the pathetic pleading and whimpering for his life had been forgotten. Slumped by the bulwark, Jago sat with both legs out-thrust, his eyes never leaving the man’s face.

Nothing was certain. The master had intended to hoist some sort of recognition signal as they had tacked closer to the protec-tive headland. Adam had said, “No. They will know Rosario. They will not expect a signal when she is being chased by an enemy!”

Somebody had even laughed.

He turned to look at the swivel-guns, all loaded and primed. And the hatch covers. He could imagine the extra seamen and marines crammed in the holds, listening to the occasional bang of Matchless’s bow-chaser, sweating it out. Captain Bosanquet was down there with them, apparently more concerned with the state of his uniform in the filthy hold than the prospect of being dead within the next hour.

He stepped into the shadow again and held his breath, and carefully raised his glass and trained it on the citadel, and the main wall which Avery had remembered so clearly. A movement. He watched, hardly daring to blink. Guns, an entire line of them, thrusting their muzzles through the embrasures, the menace undi-minished by distance. He could almost hear their iron trucks squeaking over the worn stone.

He felt the hull shiver. Whatever else he was, Rosario’s mas-ter knew these waters well. They were in the shallows now, heading for the anchorage. Avery was right. He felt almost light-headed. Right. The great guns would not depress enough to endanger the brigantine. Like the batteries he had seen at Hali-fax, carefully sited on the mainland and on a small island in the harbour, so that no enemy ship could slip past them undetected.

But here there was no island.

He saw the first gun fire and recoil, smoke writhing above the old walls like a ragged spectre. Then, one by one, the others fol-lowed. The sound seemed to be all around them, like an unending echo. Probably bronzed guns. They were just as deadly to a wooden hull.

He thought of Unrivalled outside, somewhere around the headland and still out of sight. Galbraith and Cristie, and all the others who despite his own attempts to remain detached were no longer strangers to him.

Could he never accept it? Like the moment when Galbraith had picked men for the Rosario’s raiding party. It had been diffi-cult for him; almost everybody, even the green hands, had volunteered. Madness, then. What would Galbraith be thinking now? Feeling pride at having been left in command? Or seeing a chance of permanent promotion if things went badly wrong?

A seaman called, “One o’ them galleys headin’ this way, sir! Starboard bow!”

Matchless was firing again, a broadside this time; it was impos-sible to tell where the shots were falling. There were more local vessels in evidence. Lateen sails and elderly schooners, with dhows etched against the water like bats.

He felt his mouth go dry as splashes burst around Matchless’s bows. Close. Too damned close. He bit his lip and scrambled to the opposite side.

When he lifted his head again, it was all he could do to stop himself from shouting aloud.

Directly across the larboard bow, and framed against the citadel’s high walls, was the frigate. He tried to take it in, to hold it in his mind, like all those other times. The range and the bear-ing, the point of embrace. To see the frigate lying at her anchor, brailed-up sails filling and emptying in the offshore wind the only suggestion of movement, was unnerving. Unreal.

He cleared his throat. “Ready about! Warn all hands, Mr Wynter!”

He groped for the short, curved fighting sword and loosened it. He could hear Jago’s voice in his thoughts. “Take the old one, sir. The sword!”

And his own reply. Like somebody else. “When I’ve earned it!”

The Rosario’s ragged seamen were hauling on halliards and braces, their bare feet gripping the deck like claws, without feel-ing.

It only needed one of them to shout, to signal. He found his fingers clenched on the hilt of the hanger. They must not be taken. There would be no quarter. No pity.

He moved around the mast and watched the helmsman putting down the wheel, one of Unrivalled ’s topmen at his side, a dirk in his fist.

“Matchless ’as gone about, sir!” The man breathed out noisily. “They’re best off out o’ this little lot!”

Adam stared at the frigate. Old but well maintained, her name, La Fortune, in faded gilt lettering across her counter. Thirty guns at a guess. A giant to the local craft on which she preyed in the name of France. There were faces along her gangway and poop, but no muzzles were run out. Adam felt his body trembling. Why should they be? Those great guns had seen off the impudent intruder. He could hear some of them cheering, laughing. Not too many of them, however; the rest were probably ashore, evi-dence of their security here.

Rosario’s master jumped away from the helmsman and cupped his hands, staring wild-eyed as the frigate’s masts towered over them. The dirk drove into his side and he fell without even a murmur.

Even at the end he must have realised that nothing Adam could do would match the horror his new masters would have unleashed on those who betrayed them.

It was already too late. With the helm hard over and the dis-tance falling away, Rosario’s bowsprit mounted the frigate’s quarter like a tusk and splintered into fragments, cordage and flapping canvas shielding Wynter’s boarding party as they swarmed up and over the side.

Adam drew his hanger and waved it.

“At ’em, lads!” Hatches were bursting open and men ran, half blinded by the sunlight, carried forward by their companions, rea-son already forgotten.

Adam grasped a dangling line and dragged himself over the frigate’s rail, slipping and almost falling between the two hulls.

An unknown voice rasped, “Don’t leave us now, sir!” And laughed, a terrible sound. Matched only by the scarlet-coated marines, somehow holding formation, bayonets like ice in the sun’s glare, Captain Bosanquet shouting, “Together, Marines! Together!”

Adam noticed that his face was the colour of his fine tunic.

A horn or trumpet had added its mournful call to the din of shouting, the clash of steel, the screams of men being hacked down.

The boarding party needed no urging. Beyond the smoke and the scattering sailing craft was open water. The sea. All they had. All that mattered.

Adam stopped in his tracks as a young lieutenant blocked his way. He was probably the only officer left aboard.

“Surrender!” It had never left him. Not at moments like this. “Surrender, damn your eyes!”

The lieutenant lowered his sword but drew a pistol from inside his coat. He was actually grinning, grinning while he took aim, already beyond reach.

Jago lunged forward but halted beside Adam as the French officer coughed and staggered against the gangway. There was a boarding-axe embedded in his back.

Adam stared up at the masthead pendant. The wind was still with them.

“Hands aloft! Loose tops’ls!”

How could they hope to do it? To cut out a ship from a pro-tected harbour?

“Cut the cable!” He wiped his mouth and tasted blood on his hand, but could recall no contest. Men were surrendering, others were being thrown over the side, dead or alive it did not matter.

La Fortune was free of the ground, her hull already moving as the first topsails and a jib steadied her against the thrust of wind, the demands of her rudder.

Guns were firing, but La Fortune moved on, untouched by the battery which could not be brought to bear.

He saw the Rosario drifting away, an oared galley already attempting to grapple her.

Wynter was shouting, “She’s answering, sir!” Not so blank and self-contained now, but wild-eyed, dangerous. His father the member of Parliament would scarcely have recognised him.

Jago said, “Lost three men, sir. Another’ll go afore long.”

He winced as iron hammered against the hull, grape or can-ister from Rosario’s swivels, and licked his parched lips. A Froggie ship. There would be wine on board. He turned to mention it to the captain.

Adam was watching a Royal Marine hoist a White Ensign to the frigate’s gaff. Without surprise that they had done it. That they had survived.

But he said, “For you, Uncle! For you!”

ADAM BOLITHO closed his small log book and leaned his elbows on the cabin table. For a moment he watched the dying light, the shadows moving evenly across the checkered deck as Unri-valled tilted to a steady wind across the quarter. A fine sunset, the thick glass and the cabin skylight the colour of bronze.

He massaged his eyes and tried to thrust aside the lingering disappointment, and accept what he had perceived as unfairness. Not to himself, but to the ship.

They had done what many would have considered foolhardy, and, having cut out a valuable prize from under the noses of the Dey’s defenders, they had joined the other ships outside the port in an atmosphere of triumph and excitement.

Now Unrivalled sailed alone. At any other time Adam would have welcomed this, the independence beloved of frigate captains.

But he had sensed the resentment when Captain Bouverie had decided to return to Malta with the captured La Fortune, and, as senior officer, to reap the praise and the lion’s share of any reward which might be forthcoming. From what Adam had managed to glean from the French frigate’s log, it seemed that her captain had been employed along the North African coast, snatching up or destroying local shipping with little or no opposition. The cir-cumstances of war must have changed his role to that of a mercenary, under French colours now that Napoleon was back in Europe, but living off whichever ally found his services most use-ful when there was no other choice.

Adam had known nothing but war all his life, and even while he had been at sea he had been well aware of the constant threat of invasion. He thought of La Fortune’s captain and others like him. How would I feel, if England was overrun by a ruthless enemy? Would I continue to fight? And for what?

He felt the rudder shudder beneath the counter. The glass was steady, but Cristie insisted that the wind which had given them Rosario and their one chance to cut out the frigate was the fore-runner of stronger gusts. It was not unknown in the Mediterranean, even in June.

Two of the cutting-out party who had died of their wounds had been from Unrivalled, and they had been buried immediately.

But it was another source of grievance, and then open protest, now that the prize had disappeared with Matchless. There had been an outbreak of violence in one of the messes, and a petty officer had been threatened when he had intervened. So there would be two men for punishment tomorrow.

Adam disliked the grim ritual of flogging. It too often broke a man who might have made something of himself had he been properly guided. He recalled Galbraith’s words to the midship-man. Inspired. The hard man would only become harder and more unruly. But until there was an alternative . . .

He frowned as the cabin servant entered and walked down the tilting deck towards him. One of the ship’s boys, his name was Napier, and he had been trained originally to serve the officers in the wardroom. He took his duties very seriously and wore an habitual expression of set determination.

Galbraith had made the choice himself, no doubt wondering why a post-captain did not have a servant of his own.

Click . . . click . . . click. Napier wore ill-fitting shoes for this new employment, probably bought from one of the traders who hung around the King’s ships, and the sound grated on Adam’s nerves.

“Napier!” He saw the youth stiffen, and changed his mind. “No matter. Fetch me some of that wine.” He curbed his impa-tience, knowing he himself was at fault. What is the matter with me? The boy he was going to sponsor for midshipman, the boy he had been trying to fashion in his own image, if he was honest enough to admit it, was dead.

Napier hurried away, pleased to be doing something. Click . . . click . . . click. He thought of the state of the French frigate’s stores. La Fortune had been down to her last resources when she had been seized, her powder and shot, salted meat, and even the cheese the Frenchmen took as a part of life almost finished.

He recalled Jago’s remarks about wine, and smiled. There had indeed been plenty of that, under lock and key until Bosanquet of the Royal Marines had shattered it with a well-aimed pistol shot.

Napier brought the bottle and a glass and placed them with great care beside the log book.

Adam could feel the eyes on him as he poured a glass. The Captain. Who lived in this fine cabin and was oblivious to the cramped conditions and brutal humour of the messdecks. Who wanted for nothing.

The wine was cool, and he imagined Catherine selecting it for him. Who else would care about such things? He would eke it out. Like the memory: hold on to it.

The glass almost broke in his fingers as he exclaimed, “Hell’s teeth, boy!” He saw Napier cringe, and said urgently, “No! Not you!” Like calming a frightened animal; he was ashamed that it was always so easy. For the Captain.

He said evenly, “Tell the sentry to fetch the first lieutenant, will you?”

Napier twisted his hands together, staring at the glass.

“Did I do somethin’ wrong, sir?”

Adam shook his head.

“A bad lookout is the one who sees only what he expects to see, or what others have told him to expect.” He raised his voice. “Sentry!” When the marine thrust his head around the screen door he said, “My compliments to the first lieutenant, and would you ask him to come aft.” He looked back at the boy. “Today, I am that bad lookout!”

Napier said slowly, “I see, sir.”

Adam smiled. “I think not, but fetch another bottle, will you?”

It was probably only a flaw in his memory. Something to cover his anger at Bouverie’s arrogant but justified action over the prize.

And what of La Fortune? Were there still people who did not know or believe that ships had souls? She was not a new vessel, and must have seen action often enough against the flag which the marine had hoisted at her peak. Now she would probably be sold, most likely to the Dutch government. Another old enemy. Several prizes had already been disposed of in that manner, and yet, as the vice-admiral himself had pointed out, the fleet was as short of frigates as ever.

Galbraith entered the cabin, his eyes taking in the wine, and the anxious servant.

“Sir?”

“Be seated. Some wine?”

He saw the first lieutenant relax slightly.

“The Frenchman we took—she was short of everything, espe-cially powder and shot.”

Galbraith took time to pick up and examine the glass. “We were saying as much earlier, sir.”

So they had been discussing it in the wardroom, and most of all, he had no doubt, the prize-money which might eventually be shared out.

“And yet there was a letter, which Lieutenant Avery trans-lated.” Remembering his bitterness. “To La Fortune’s captain. Supposedly from a lady.” He noted the immediate interest, and then the doubt. “I can see you think as I did.” He grinned rue-fully. “Eventually!”

Galbraith said, “It seems strange that anyone would be able to send a letter to a ship whose whereabouts were largely unknown.”

Adam nodded, his skin ice-cold in spite of the cabin’s warmth.

“To promise the delivery of the one thing they did not need. Wine!”

Galbraith stared past him. “Daniel . . . I mean, Mr Wynter made a note of the dates in Rosario’s log, sir.”

“Did he indeed? We may have cause to thank him for his dedication.”

He was on his feet, his shadow angled across the white-painted timbers, as if the hull was leaning hard over.

“My orders are to remain on this station and to await instruc-tions. That I must do. But we shall be seen to be here. There are those who might believe that Matchless has gone to obtain assis-tance, and that time is now more precious than ever.”

Galbraith watched him, seeing the changing emotions, could almost feel him thinking aloud.

He ventured, “They are expecting supplies, above all powder and shot. If there are other ships sheltering in Algiers . . .”

Adam paused and touched his shoulder. “And they still have La Fortune’s captain to help matters along, remember?”

“And we are alone, sir.”

Adam nodded slowly, seeing the chart in his mind. “The Cor-sican tyrant once said, ‘Wherever wood can swim, there I am sure to find this flag of England.’” The mood left him as quickly. “The truest words he ever spoke.” He realised for the first time that the servant, Napier, had been in the cabin the whole time, and was already refilling the glasses. With the wine from St James’s Street in London. He said, “We have no choice.”

He walked to the stern windows, but there was only a fine line to separate sky from sea. Almost dark. My birthday.

He thought of her, whom he had loved and had lost, and when he looked at the old sword hanging from its rack, reflect-ing the lantern light, he thought of another who had helped him and was rarely out of his thoughts. Neither had been his to lose in the first place.

He said suddenly, “How did it feel today, having a command of your own again?”

Galbraith did not appear to hesitate.

“Like me, sir, I think the ship felt uneasy without her captain.”

Their eyes met, and held. The barrier was down.

There was nothing else. For either of them.

The carriage with its perfectly matched greys wheeled sharply into the drive and halted at the foot of the steps. Sillitoe jumped down with barely a glance at his coachman.

“Change the horses, man! Quick as you can!”

He knew he was allowing his agitation to show itself, but he was powerless against it. He left the carriage door open, the watery sunlight playing on its crest. Baron Sillitoe of Chiswick.

A servant was sweeping the steps but removed the broom and averted his eyes as Sillitoe ran past him and threw open the double doors before anyone could be there to greet him.

He was late. Too late. And all because he had been delayed by the Prime Minister: some errand for the Prince Regent. It could have waited. Should have waited.

He saw his minute secretary, Marlow, coming towards him from the library. A man who knew all his master’s moods but had remained loyal to him, perhaps because of rather than in spite of them, Marlow recognised his displeasure now, and that there was no point in attempting to appease him.

“She is not here, m’ lord.”

Sillitoe stared up and around the bare, elegant staircase. There were few paintings, although the portrait of his father, the slaver, was a notable exception, and fewer objets d’art. Spartan, some called it. It suited him.

“Lady Somervell was to wait here for me! I told you exactly what I intended—” He stopped abruptly; he was wasting more time. “Tell me.”

He felt empty, shocked that it had been so simple to deceive him. It had to be the case. No one else would dare, dare even to consider it.

Marlow said, “Lady Somervell was here, m’ lord.” He glanced at the open library door, seeing her in his mind. All in black but so beautiful, so contained. “I tried to make her comfortable, but as time passed she became . . . troubled.”

Sillitoe waited, controlling his impatience, and surprised by Marlow’s concern. He had never thought of his small, mild-man-nered secretary as anything but an efficient and trustworthy extension of his own machinations.

Another door opened soundlessly and Guthrie, his valet, stood watching him, his battered features wary. More like a prizefighter than a servant, as were most of the men entrusted with Sillitoe’s affairs.

“She wanted a carriage, m’ lord. I told her there would be great crowds. Difficulties. But she insisted, and I knew you would expect me to act in your absence. I hope I did right, m’ lord?”

Sillitoe walked past him and stared at the river, the boats, the moored barges. Passengers and crews alike always pointed to this mansion on the bank of the Thames. Known to so many, truly known by none of them.

“You did right, Marlow.” He heard horses stamping on flag-stones, his coachman speaking to each by name.

He considered his anger as he would a physical opponent, along the length of a keen blade or beyond the muzzle of a duelling pistol.

He was the Prince Regent’s Inspector-General, and his friend and confidential adviser. On most matters. On expenditure, the manipulations of both army and naval staffs, even on the subject of women. And when the King finally died, still imprisoned in his all-consuming madness, he could expect an even greater authority. Above all, the Prince Regent was his friend.

He attempted to look at it coldly, logically, as was his way with all obstacles. The Prince, “Prinny,” knew better than most the dangers of envy and spite. He was quick to see it among those closest to him, and would do what he could to preserve what he called “a visible stability.” Perhaps he had already tried to warn him what might become of that stability, if his inspector-general were to lose his wits to a woman who had openly scorned and defied that same society for the man she loved.

And I did not realise. He could even accept that. But to believe that the future King had betrayed him, had given him a mission merely to keep him away and safe from slander and ridicule, was beyond belief. Even as he knew it was true. It was the only expla-nation.

Marlow coughed quietly. “The horses have been changed, m’ lord. Shall I tell William to stand down now?”

Sillitoe regarded him calmly. So Marlow knew too, or guessed.

He thought of Catherine, in this house or around the river’s sweeping bend in Chelsea. Of the night he had burst in with Guthrie and the others and had saved her. Saved her. It was stark in his mind, like blood under the guillotine during the Terror.

He thought of Bethune’s stupid, conniving wife, and Rhodes, who had expected to be created First Lord of the Admiralty. Of Richard Bolitho’s wife; of so many who would be there today. Not to honour a dead hero, but to see Catherine shamed. Destroyed.

Now he could only wonder why he had hesitated.

He said curtly, “I am ready.” He brushed past his valet without seeing the cloak which was to conceal his identity. “That fellow from the Times, the one who wrote so well of Nelson . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Laurence, yes?”

Marlow nodded, off guard only for a moment.

“I remember him, m’ lord.”

“Find him. Today. I don’t care how, or what it costs. I believe I am owed a favour or two.”

Marlow walked to the entrance and watched Sillitoe climb into the carriage. He could see the mud spattered on the side, evidence of a hard drive. No wonder the horses had been changed.

The carriage was already wheeling round, heading for the fine gates on which the Prince Regent himself had once commented.

He shook his head, recalling without effort the grand display of Nelson’s procession and funeral. A vast armada of boats which had escorted the coffin by barge, from Greenwich to Whitehall, and from the Admiralty to St Paul’s. A procession so long that it reached its destination before the rear had started to move.

Today there would be no body, no procession, but, like the man, it would be long remembered.

And only this morning he had heard that the end of the war was imminent. No longer merely a hope, a prayer. Could one final battle destroy so monstrous, so immortal an influence? He smiled to himself, sadly. Strange that on a day like this it seemed almost secondary.

Sillitoe pressed himself into a corner of the carriage and listened to the changing sound of the iron-shod wheels as the horses entered yet another narrow street. Grey stone buildings, blank windows, the offices of bankers and lawyers, of wealthy merchants whose trade reached across the world. The hub, as Sir Wilfred Lafargue liked to call it. The coachman, William, knew this part of London, and had managed to avoid the main roads, most of which had been filled with aimless crowds, so different from its usual bustle and purpose. For this was Sunday, and around St Paul’s it would be even worse. He felt for his watch but decided against it. Half an hour at the most. But for the delay with the Prime Minister, he would have had ample time in hand, no matter what.

He leaned forward and tapped the roof with his sword.

“What is it now? Why are we slowing down, man?”

William hung over the side of his perch.

“Street’s blocked, m’ lord!” He sounded apprehensive; he had already had a taste of Sillitoe’s temper on the drive to Chiswick House.

Sillitoe jerked a strap and lowered the window. So narrow here. Like a cavern. The smell of horses and soot . . .

He could see a mass of people, and what appeared to be a carriage. There were soldiers, too, and one, a helmeted officer, was already trotting towards them. Young, but lacking neither intelli-gence nor experience, his eyes moved swiftly to take in Sillitoe’s clothing and the bright sash of the order across his chest, and then the coat of arms on the door.

“The way is blocked, sir!”

William glared down at him.

“My lord!”

The officer exclaimed, “I beg your pardon, my lord, I did not know . . .”

Sillitoe snapped, “Must get through to St Paul’s. I do not have to explain why, I trust.” He could feel the anger rising again; this was only the calm before the storm. He studied the officer coldly. “Fourteenth Light Dragoons. I know your agent, at Gray’s Inn, I believe?”

He saw the shot go home.

“A vehicle has lost a wheel, my lord. It could not have hap-pened in a worse place. I have already had to turn back one carriage—a lady—”

“A lady?” It was Catherine. It had to be. He glanced at the shining helmets and restless horses, and said sharply, “I suggest you dismount those pretty warriors and remove the obstruction.”

“I—I am not certain. My orders—”

Sillitoe leaned back. “If you value your commission, Lieutenant.”

It took only minutes for the dragoons to drag the vehicle to one side, and for William to drive the length of the street.

Deliberate? An accident? Or was it what Richard Bolitho had always called Fate?

He thought of her. On foot, hemmed in by gaping, curious faces. He looked out again and saw St Paul’s. Close to, it domi-nated everything, so that the silence was all the more impressive.

“Stop now!”

He knew William was against it, and was probably wishing the massive Guthrie was here with him, but he climbed down to calm the horses before they became troubled by the slow-moving crowds, and the unnatural silence.

What might they have done? Would they have dared to turn her back at the cathedral’s imposing entrance, on some paltry excuse, perhaps because there was no record of her invitation? Catherine, of all people. On this damnable day.

He quickened his pace, used to staring eyes and peering faces, beyond their reach, or so he believed now.

A hand plucked at his coat. “Would you buy some flowers to honour his memory, sir?”

Sillitoe thrust him aside with a curt, “Out of my way!”

Then he stopped, as if he had no control of his limbs. It explained the silence, the complete stillness, the like of which this place had never witnessed.

Catherine, too, stood quite still, and erect, surrounded by people and yet utterly detached from them.

Across the cathedral steps was an uneven rank of men. Sailors, or they had been before they had been cut down in battle. Men without arms, or hobbling on wooden stumps. Men with burned and scarred faces, victims of a hundred different battles and as many ships, but today joined as one. Sillitoe tried to reason with it, coldly, as was his habit. They were probably from the naval hospital at Greenwich and must have come upriver for this occa-sion, as if they had been drawn to it by the same power which had stopped him in his tracks. All wore scraps of uniform, some displayed tattoos on their arms; one, in a sea officer’s uniform, was wearing his sword.

Sillitoe wanted to go to her. Not to speak, but only to be beside her. But he did not move.

Catherine was aware of the silence; she had even seen the mounted dragoons ordered to remove the wrecked vehicle. But it was all somewhere else. Not here. Not now.

She stood, unmoving, watching the man in the officer’s uni-form as he stepped slowly forward from the watching barrier of crippled sailors. The ones with wooden spars. Half-timbered Jacks, as Allday called them. She trembled. But he always said it without contempt, and without pity, for they were himself.

The officer was closer now, and she realised that his uniform was that of a lieutenant. Clean and well-pressed, but the careful stitching and repairs were evident. He had one hand on another man’s shoulder, and when she saw his eyes she knew that he was blind, although they were clear and bright. And motionless.

His companion murmured something, and he removed his cocked hat with a flourish. His grey hair and threadbare uniform did not belong to this moment; he was the young lieutenant again. And these were his men.

He held out his hand and for an instant she saw him falter, until she reached out to him and took it in hers.

“You are welcome here.” Very gently, he kissed her hand. Still no one spoke or moved. As if this vignette were caught in time, like these ragged, proud reminders who had come to honour her.

Then he said, “We all knew Sir Richard. Some of us served with or under him. He would have wished you to be so met today.”

She heard a step beside her and knew it was Sillitoe.

She murmured, “I thought . . . I thought . . .”

He slipped his hand beneath her elbow and said, “I know what you thought. What you were intended to think.”

Without looking above or beyond the watching figures, he knew that the great doors had opened.

He said, “Thank you, gentlemen. No admiral’s lady could ever have a braver guard of honour!”

There were smiles now, and one man reached out to touch Catherine’s gown, muttering something, beaming at her while tears streamed down his cheeks. She removed her black veil, and stared up the steps.

“I do not have the words, Lieutenant. But later . . .” But there was no grey-haired officer, or perhaps her eyes were too blurred to see. A ghost, then. Like those who lay with Richard.

“Take me in, please.”

She did not hear the stir of surprise that ran through that tow-ering place like a sudden wind through dry leaves, nor see the admiration, or outrage, or the angry disappointment, as Sillitoe guided her to his pew, which otherwise would have been empty.

She gripped her left hand in her right, feeling the ring her lover had placed there on Zenoria Keen’s wedding day.

In the eyes of God, we are married.

She could not look ahead, and dared not think of what was past, that which she could never regain.

It was a proud day, for Richard, and for all those who had loved him.

And, only for this moment, they would be together.

It was just before dawn that the full force of the wind made itself known. Joshua Cristie, Unrivalled ’s taciturn sailing-master, found no comfort in the fact that his predictions had proved right, for this was the enemy. Others might fear the cannon’s roar and the surgeon’s knife, but Cristie was a sailor to his fingertips, like most of his forebears, and saw the weather’s moods as his foes. As he gripped a stanchion to steady himself on the lurching deck he watched the sky, burning like molten copper, with long, dark clouds scudding beneath it as if they were already ashes.

They had shortened sail during the middle watch; he had heard the captain giving orders as he had hurried to the chart-room to collect his precious instruments.

The captain seemed well able to make his immediate demands understood. On the face of it, Unrivalled was a smart and disci-plined ship. On the face of it. But Cristie knew that it was only on the surface. Until men were truly tested to the limit, they would not know. She was still a new ship, and like any other was only as strong as the men who served her, and the chain of com-mand which directed them as surely as any rudder. Unless.

The captain was here now, his old seagoing coat flapping in the wind, the dark hair pressed against his face by the flying spray. Even that looked like droplets of copper in the strange light.

“Let her fall off a point, Mr Cristie! Steer south-west-by-south!”

More men ran across to halliards and braces, some only half-dressed after the urgent call for all hands.

Cristie shouted, “Still backing a piece, sir! She’ll not hold this close to the wind for much longer!”

The captain seemed to hang on to his words, then swung round to face him. Cristie tested the moment, as he would a sounding or a compass bearing.

“We could come about and run with it, sir.” He hesitated, his mind grappling with the crack and thunder of canvas, the drone of straining rigging. “Or we could lie to under close-reefed main tops’l!”

Galbraith was yelling for more hands, and a few anonymous figures were in the mizzen top, cutting away broken cordage.

Cristie heard the captain say, “No. We’ll hold as close as we can.” He was staring up at the swaying yards, the sickening motion making each plunge seem as if the ship were out of control.

But there were two more men on the big double-wheel, and as a solid curtain of spray burst over them and the quartermas-ters, they looked like survivors clinging to a capsizing wreck.

Adam Bolitho watched a party of seamen securing the ham-mock nettings. It was not vital. Seamen had slept in sodden hammocks before, and they would again. But it gave them a sense of purpose, kept them occupied when, even now, fear might be striding amongst them.

Unrivalled was leaning hard over, her lee bulwark almost awash, water spurting past the forward carronades and knocking men off their feet like skittles.

He held his breath, counting seconds as the bows dipped yet again, the hull quivering as it smashed into solid water, as if she had driven ashore.

He cupped his hands. “Fore t’gan’s’l’s carried away!” He saw Galbraith staring at him. “Leave it! Not worth risking lives!”

He watched the sail destroy itself, being ripped apart as if by giant, invisible hands until there were only shreds.

Men were clambering across the boat-tier now, urged on by the boatswain’s powerful bellow. If a boat came adrift it would run amok on the deck, maiming and killing if not secured.

He heard Partridge shout, “Make a bloody seaman of ye yet, damned if I don’t!”

Old Stranace would be down there too. Dragging himself from gun to gun, checking each breeching rope, making sure that his equipment was not being lost or damaged.

Adam shivered, and felt the icy water exploring his spine and buttocks. But it was not that. It was a wildness, an elation he had not felt since he had lost Anemone.

The ship’s backbone, the professionals. They never broke.

Midshipman Fielding was knocked sideways by a block swing-ing from a severed halliard. A seaman caught his arm and pulled him to his feet. Adam recognised the man as one of those due to be flogged. Today ...He even saw the man grin. Like Jago. Amused. Contemptuous.

He seemed to hear John Allday’s voice, when they had served together. His summing up of a ship’s ability or otherwise.

Aft the most honour, mebbe, but forrard the better men!

He could see the horizon now, blurred with spray, writhing in the fierce light. Men’s faces, bodies soaked and bruised, some with nails torn out by the tormented canvas they had fisted and kicked into submission, their world confined to a dizzily swaying yard, their strength that of the men up there with them.

But was it worth it? To risk so much, everything, on a frail belief?

A boatswain’s mate ran past him, one arm out-thrust, his mouth a soundless hole as the wind’s fury increased to an insane scream. Adam thought he had seen something fall, probably from the maintopsail yard, hardly making a splash as it hit the sea and was swamped by the water surging back from the stem.

Not even a cry. The fall had probably killed him. But suppose he lived long enough to break surface and see his ship already fading into the storm?

It happened often enough, something which landsmen never considered when they saw a King’s ship passing proudly at a safe distance.

Midshipman Bellairs wiped his face with his sleeve and gasped, “It can’t go on!”

Cristie heard him, and exclaimed harshly, “Later on you’ll remember this, my lad! When you’re striding your own deck and making poor Jack’s life a bloody misery! Leastways I hope you’ll remember, for all our sakes!”

He watched the captain, his body angled to the quarterdeck, his voice carrying above the wild chorus of wind and sea.

“It’s what you want to be, right?” He liked Bellairs; he would make a good officer, given the chance. He glanced at the captain again. And the example. Cristie had seen the best and the worst of them in his day. His own family had grown up in Tynemouth, in the next street to Collingwood, Nelson’s friend and second-in-command at Trafalgar.

He heard Lieutenant Massie say, “I’ll not answer for the jib if we try to come about!”

Cristie nudged the midshipman and repeated, “Remember it, see!”

He moved away as the captain strode towards him.

“What say you, Mr Cristie? Do you think me mad to drive her so?”

Cristie did not know if Bellairs was listening, nor did he care. It was nothing he could mark on his chart, or record in the log. And nobody else would understand. The captain, the one who drove himself and everybody else, who had not hesitated to lead his own men on a cutting-out raid which had seemed an almost certain disaster, had asked him. Not told him, as was every cap-tain’s right.

He heard himself say, “There’s your answer, sir!” He watched his face as he looked at the widening bank of blue sky as it spread from horizon to horizon. The wind had lessened, so that the rat-tle of broken rigging and the flapping tails of torn canvas intruded for the first time. Soon the sun would show above the retreating cloud, and steam would rise from these wet, treacherous decks.

Men were pausing to draw breath, to peer around for mess-mates or for a special friend, as they might after action. Two of the younger midshipmen were actually grinning at one another and shaking hands with a kind of jubilant triumph.

Adam saw all and none of it. He was staring up, at the first lookout to risk the perilous climb aloft.

“Deck there! Sail on th’ weather bow!”

He turned to Cristie and said quietly, “And there, my friend, lies the enemy.”

LIEUTENANT Galbraith pivoted round on his heels and stared up

to the quarterdeck rail, eyes slitted against the first hard sunshine.

“Ship cleared for action, sir!”

Adam did not take out his watch; he had no need to. From the moment the small marine drummer boys had begun the stac-cato rattle of beating to quarters, he had watched the ship come alive again, the savage wind almost forgotten. Only fragments of canvas and snapped cordage, flapping “Irish pennants,” as the old hands called them, gave any hint of the storm which had passed as quickly as it had found them.

Seven o’clock in the morning: six bells had just chimed from the forecastle. It was all routine, normal, and yet so different.

Adam had stood by the rail, feeling the ship preparing for whatever challenge she might meet within the next few hours. Screens torn down, hutch-like cabins folded away and stowed in the holds with furniture and all unnecessary personal belongings. A bad moment, when some might pause to reflect that their own-ers might not need them after this day was past.

It had taken ten minutes to clear the ship from bow to stern. Even his cabin, the largest he had ever occupied and a place which still lacked personality, was open, so that gun crews and powder monkeys could move unhindered if the shot began to fly.

The galley fire had been doused at the beginning of the storm, and there had been no time to relight it. Men fought better on a full belly, especially when they had already been contesting wind and sea for most of the night.

He stared along the main deck, at the gun crews standing by their charges, the long eighteen-pounders which made up the bulk of Unrivalled ’s artillery. Most of them were stripped to the waist, new hands and landsmen following the example of the sea-soned men who had seen and done it all before. Any clothing was precious to a working sailor, and costly to replace out of his meagre pay. Fabric also attracted gangrene, and hampered treat-ment should a man be wounded.

Adam thought he could smell the rum even from the quar-terdeck. The purser had been quietly outraged by the extra issue he had ordered, a double tot for every man, as if the cost would be extracted from his own pocket.

But it had bridged the gap, and would do no harm at all.

Six seamen to each gun, including its captain, but hauling the heavy cannon up a tilting deck if the ship was to leeward of an enemy would require many more. An experienced crew should be able to fire a shot every ninety seconds, at the outset of battle in any case, although Adam had known some gun captains prepared and ready to fire three shots every two minutes. It had been so in Hyperion, an exceptional ship: a legend, like her captain.

He smiled, but did not see Galbraith’s quick answering grin.

The ship was moving steadily and, apparently, unhurriedly, with courses and staysails clewed up or furled. It seemed to open up the sea on either beam, and Adam had seen several of the unemployed seamen clambering up to seek out the enemy. To watch and prepare themselves as best they could. He considered it. The enemy. There were two of them, one large, a cut-down man-of-war by her appearance, the other smaller, a brig.

It was still so peaceful. So full of quiet menace.

Who were they? What had prompted their mission to Algiers?

He saw Lieutenant Massie by the foremast, ready to direct the opening shots, his own little group of midshipmen, messengers and petty officers waiting to pass his orders, and to close their eyes and ears to all else around them.

He turned away from the rail and saw the Royal Marines sta-tioned across the deck, scarlet ranks moving evenly to the ship’s motion. Cristie, and Lieutenant Wynter, Midshipman Bellairs and his signals party, the helmsmen and master’s mates. A cen-tre. The ship’s brain. He glanced at the tightly packed hammock nettings, slight protection for such a prize target.

He raised his eyes and saw more marines in the fighting-tops. He had always thought of it when facing an action at sea. The marksmen, one of whom he knew had been a poacher before enlisting, not out of patriotism but rather to avoid prison or deportation. They were all first-class shots.

He looked at the horizon again, the tiny patches of sails against the hard blue line. He would think even more of it now, since Avery had described those final moments, so quietly, so inti-mately. He bit his lip, controlling it. All these men, good and bad, would be looking to him. Aft, the most honour. He touched the old sword at his hip, remembering the note she had left with it. For me. He had seen Jago’s searching glance when he had come on deck. The old sword, the bright epaulettes. What had he thought? Arrogance, or vanity?

Jago was climbing the quarterdeck ladder now, his dark eyes barely moving, but missing nothing. A man he might never know, but one he did not want to lose.

Jago joined him by the rail and stood with his arms folded, as if to show his contempt for some of those watching. Like Lieutenant Massie, or the sulky midshipman named Sandell. Sandell, as he insisted on being called.

Jago said, “The first ship, sir. Old Creagh thinks he knows her.”

So casually spoken. Testing me?

The face formed in his mind. Creagh was one of the boatswain’s mates, and would have been carrying out a flogging if Unrivalled had turned back instead of forcing her passage into the teeth of the storm. A lot of people might be thinking that, and cursing their captain for his stubborn refusal to give way.

“One of Mr Partridge’s mates.” He did not see Jago’s quiet smile, although he sensed it.

“He swears she’s the Tetrarch. Served in her some years back.”

Adam nodded. Like a family. Like the men who served them, there were bad ships too.

Tetrarch was a fourth-rate, one of a rare breed now virtually erased from the Navy List. Classed as ships of the line, they had been rendered obsolete by the mounting savagery and improved gunnery of this everlasting war. The fourth-rate was neither one thing nor the other, not fast enough to serve as a frigate, and, mounting less than sixty guns, no match for the battering she must withstand in the line of battle. Ship to ship. Gun to gun.

Tetrarch had been caught off Ushant some three years ago. Attacked and captured by two French frigates, she had not been heard of since.

Now she was back. And she was here.

Jago said, “Cut down, she is.” He rubbed his chin, a rasping sound like an armourer’s iron. “But still, she could give a fair account of herself. And with that other little bugger in company.”

Adam tried to put himself in the enemy’s position, assessing the distant vessels as if he were looking down on them. Like impersonal markers on an admiral’s chart. The brig would be sac-rificed first. She had to be, if the bigger ship was indeed loaded with supplies and powder for others still sheltering in Algiers, enjoying what Bethune had called the Dey’s one-sided neutrality. After losing La Fortune to such a calculated trick, they would be doubly eager to even the score.

On a converging tack, both close-hauled, but the enemy would have the wind’s advantage. And there was not enough time to replace the fore-topgallant sail.

Galbraith had joined him, his face full of questions.

Adam asked, “How long, d’ you think?”

Galbraith looked up at the masthead pendant, flapping and drooping. How could the wind have change so completely?

He answered, “An hour. No more.” He hesitated. “She has the wind-gage, sir.”

“It’s the little terrier which concerns me. We shortened sail in time last night. But our lady will be hard put to lift her skirts in a hurry!” He studied the set of each sail, the yards braced round. The wind would decide it. “I want to hit them before they can do too much damage.”

The men at the quarterdeck nine-pounders glanced at one another. Too much damage. Not just timber and cordage, but flesh and blood.

Adam walked to the compass box and back again. “Our best shots must be all about today, Mr Galbraith.” He smiled suddenly. “A guinea for the man who marks down the captain. Theirs, not ours!”

Some of those same men actually laughed aloud. Captain Bou-verie would not approve of such slack behaviour aboard Matchless.

He turned aside. “Be watchful of powder. The decks will soon be bone dry. One spark . . .” He did not need to continue.

He took a glass and held it to his eye; it was already warm against his skin.

Three ships, drawing together as if by invisible warps. Soon to be close, real, deadly.

I must not fail. Must not.

But his voice sounded flat and without emotion, betraying nothing of his thoughts.

“Load in ten minutes, Mr Galbraith. But do not run out. Let the people take their time. Gunnery is God today!”

If I fall. He had his hand on his pocket and could feel the locket there, carefully wrapped. Who would care?

He thought suddenly of the old house, empty now, except for the portraits. Waiting.

They would care.

It was time.

Galbraith glanced quickly at his captain and then leaned over the quarterdeck rail.

The final scrutiny. There was always the chance of a flaw in the rigid pattern of battle.

Decks sanded, particularly around each gun, to prevent men from slipping in the madness of action on blown spray or blood. Nets had been spread above the deck to protect the gun crews and sail-handling parties from falling debris, and impede any enemy reckless enough to try and board them.

The gunner and his mates had already gone to the magazine to prepare and issue charges to the powder monkeys, most of whom were mere boys. With no experience to plague them, they were less concerned than some of the older hands, who would look for reassurance at familiar faces around them, every man very aware of the two pyramids of sail, so much nearer now, although seemingly motionless on the glistening water.

Galbraith shouted, “All guns load!”

Each eighteen-pounder was an island, its crew oblivious to the rest. Just as during the constant drills when they had roundly cursed every officer from the captain downwards, they were test-ing the training tackles, casting off the heavy breeching ropes, freeing the guns for loading. That too was a routine, a ritual, the bulky charge taken by the assistant loader from the breathless powder monkey, to be eased into the waiting muzzle and tamped home by the loader. No mistakes. Two sharp knocks to bed it in, and a wad tamped in to secure it.

Experienced gun captains had already selected their shots from the garlands, holding each ball, weighing it, feeling it, making sure it was a perfect shape, for the opening roar of battle.

It had all been done deliberately and without haste, and Gal-braith knew why the captain had ordered them to take their time, for this first attempt at least. Now there was a stillness, each crew grouped around its gun, every captain staring aft at the blue and white figures of discipline and authority. As familiar as the guns which were their reason for being, in the company of which they greeted every dawn, and which were constant reminders of a ship’s hard comradeship.

And yet despite the toughness of such men, Galbraith knew the other side of the coin. Like the seaman who had been lost overboard, without even a cry. Later there would be a sale of his few possessions, before the mast, as they called it, and messmates and others who had barely known him would dip into their purses and pay exorbitant prices so that money could be sent to a wife or mother somewhere in that other world.

He turned and looked at his captain, speaking quietly with the master, gesturing occasionally as if to emphasise something. He gazed at the oncoming vessels. The moment of embrace. There would be more possessions to bargain for if today turned sour on them.

He blinked as a shaft of sunlight glanced down between the braced yards. The smaller vessel had tacked, widening the dis-tance from her consort. The terrier, the captain had called her. Ready to dart in and snap at Unrivalled ’s vulnerable stern and quarter. One shot could do it: a vital spar, or worse, damage to the rudder and steering gear would end the fight before Unri-valled had bared her teeth. He looked at the captain again. He would know. His first command had been a brig. He had been twenty-three, someone had said. He would know . . .

The enemy had the advantage of the wind, and yet Captain Adam Bolitho showed no sign of anxiety.

“We will load both broadsides and engage first at full range, gun by gun. Tell the second lieutenant to sight each one himself. We will then luff, and if the wind is kind to us we can rake the enemy with the other full broadside.”

Galbraith dragged his mind back to the present. Extra hands at the foremast ready to set the big forecourse, until now brailed up like the others. With the fore-topgallant sail missing, they would need every cupful of wind when they came about. And even then . . .

Adam called, “Open the ports!”

He imagined the port lids lifting along either beam, could see the water creaming past the lee side. Unrivalled was leaning over, and she would lean still further when they set the forecourse. He had guessed what Galbraith was thinking. If the wind deserted them now, the enemy ships could divide and outmanoeuvre him. He touched his pocket again. If not, the long eighteen-pounders on the weather side, at full elevation, would outrange the others. He smiled. So easily said . . .

Cristie had told him something about the Tetrarch which he had not known. She had been in a state of near mutiny when she had been attacked by the French frigates. Another bad captain, he thought, like Reaper, in which the company had mutinied against their captain’s inhuman treatment and had joined together to flog him to death. Reaper was back with the fleet now, com-manded by a good officer, a friend of Adam’s, but he doubted that she would ever entirely cleanse herself of the stigma.

And Tetrarch might be the same. Her armament had been reduced in order to allow for more hold space, but she could give a good account of herself.

He looked up at the black, vibrating shrouds, the soft under-belly of the maintopsail, seeing it in his mind even now. Anemone torn apart by the American’s heavy artillery. Men falling and dying. Because of me.

He squared his shoulders, and felt his shirt drag against the ragged scar where the iron splinter had cut him down.

It was enough.

He said, “Run out!”

Every spare man, even the Royal Marines were on the tack-les, hauling the guns up the tilting deck to thrust their black muzzles through the ports. The enemy was faceless, unknown. But it would be madness to show Unrivalled ’s shortage of hands from the outset. After that . . .

There were a few hoarse cheers as the crouching gun crews saw the enemy angled across each port, and he heard Lieutenant Massie’s sharp response.

“Keep silent, you deadheads! Stand to your guns! I’ll have none of it!”

Adam walked to the rail and watched the nearest vessel, the brig. Like his old Firefly. Well handled, leaning over while she changed tack. Probably steering south-east. He thought of Cristie. By guess and by God. He measured the range, surprised still that he could do it without hesitation. The Tetrarch had taken in her fore and main courses and was preparing to await her chance, poised across the starboard bow as if nothing could prevent a col-lision.

There was a dull bang, and seconds later a hole appeared in the maintopsail. A sighting shot. He clenched his fists. Not yet, not yet. Another shot came from somewhere, sharper, one of the brig’s bow-chasers probably. He saw the feathers of spray dart from wave to wave, like flying fish. Still short.

“Forecourse, Mr Galbraith!” He strode to the opposite side. “Lay for the mainmast, Mr Massie! On the uproll!”

The enemy might be expecting a ragged broadside, and be waiting for a chance to close the range before Unrivalled could reload.

Adam heard Massie yell, “Ready! Fire!”

He kept his eyes fixed on the other ship. Massie was manag-ing on his own, pausing at each breech, one hand on the gun captain’s shoulder, the trigger-line taut, ready, the target framed in the open port like a painting come to life.

“Fire!”

Gun by gun, the full length of Unrivalled ’s spray-dashed hull, each one hurling itself inboard on its tackles to be seized, sponged out and reloaded, the men racing one another to run out again, whilst on the opposite side the crews waited their turn, with only the empty sea to distract them from the regular crash of gunfire.

Someone gave a wild cheer.

“Thar goes ’er main-topmast! B’ Jesus, look at ’er, mates!”

But the other ship was firing now, iron hammering into Unri-valled ’s lower hull, a stray ball slamming through a port and breaking into splinters.

Adam tore his eyes from the spouting orange tongues of fire, feeling the blows beneath his feet like wounds to his own body. Men were down, one rolling across the deck, kicking and cough-ing blood, another crouched against a gun, fingers interlaced across his stomach, his final scream dying as he was dragged aside and the gun run up to its port again.

Galbraith yelled, “He’s standing off, sir!” He flinched as a powder monkey spun round, his leg severed by another haphaz-ard shot. Adam saw another run and snatch up the fallen charge, eyes terrified, and averted from someone who had probably been his friend.

He turned. “Wouldn’t you? If you were full to the gills with powder and shot?” He shut them from his mind. “Stand by on the quarterdeck!” There was smoke everywhere, choking, sting-ing, blinding.

He could no longer see the other ship; the forecourse was filled to the wind, blotting out the enemy’s intentions.

“Put the helm down!” He dashed his wrist across his eyes and thought he saw the ship’s head already answering the helm, swing-ing bowsprit and flapping jib across the wind.

“Helm’s a’ lee, sir!”

Adam heard someone cry out and knew a ball had missed him by inches.

Come on! Come on! If Unrivalled was caught aback across the eye of the wind she would be helpless, doomed. He felt the deck planking jump again and knew the ship had been hit.

“Off tacks and sheets!” He walked level with the quarterdeck rail, his hand brushing against the smooth woodwork. Without see-ing, he knew the forward sails were writhing in confusion, spilling the wind, allowing the bows to swing still further, unhampered.

“Fores’l haul! Haul, lads!”

One man slipped on blood and another dragged him to his feet. Neither spoke, nor looked at one another.

She was answering. Adam gripped the rail, and felt her stand-ing into the opposite tack, sails filling and booming, the yards being hauled round until to an onlooker they would appear almost fore-and-aft.

“Hold her! Steer east-by-south!” Adam glanced swiftly at Cristie. Only a second, but it was enough to see a wild satisfac-tion. The pride might come later.

“Starboard battery!” Massie was there now, his sword in the air, his face a mask of concentration as he watched the brig swing-ing away, caught and unprepared for Unrivalled ’s change of tack.

“Fire!”

It must have been like an avalanche, an avalanche of iron. When the whirling smoke, swept aside by the wind, laid bare the other vessel it was hard to recognise her, almost mastless, her shattered stumps and rigging dragging outboard like weed. She was a wreck.

Adam took a telescope from Midshipman Fielding, and felt the youth’s hand shaking. Or is it mine?

“Again, Mr Cristie! Man the braces and stand by to wear ship!” He tried to calm himself and steady the glass.

The terrier was dead. The real target could never outpace them.

“All loaded, sir!”

He watched the other ship. Saw the scars left by Unrivalled ’s first controlled broadside, the holes punched in her darkly tanned canvas.

Galbraith called, “Ready, sir!” He sounded hoarse.

“Bring her about and lay her on the starboard tack.” He glanced up at the forecourse, at scorched holes which had not been there earlier. Earlier? On my birthday.

Galbraith’s voice again. “We could call on him to strike, sir.”

“No. I know what that feels like. We will open fire when we are in position.” The smile would not come. “The wind will not help him now.” He saw Midshipman Bellairs watching him fixedly, and said, “Signal the brig to lie to. We will board her presently.”

Bellairs beckoned to his signals party. “A prize, sir?” Like Gal-braith he sounded parched, as if he could scarcely speak.

“No. A trophy, Mr Bellairs.” He looked at Galbraith. “Bring her about and take in the t’gallants. We shall commence firing.” He measured the distance again. “A mile, would you say? Close enough. Then we will see.”

He watched the sudden activity on deck, the shadows swing-ing across the flapping sails while the frigate continued to turn, the grim faces of the nearest gun crews.

It was neither a contest nor a game, and they must know it.

He saw Massie pointing with his sword and passing his orders, the words lost in the din of canvas and tackles.

Unless that flag came down, it would be murder.

Using the wind across his quarter to best advantage, Tetrarch ’s captain had decided to wear ship, not to close the range but to outmanoeuvre and avoid Unrivalled ’s challenge.

Adam observed it all in silence, able to ignore the bark of commands, the sudden protesting bang of canvas as his ship came as close to the wind as she could manage.

He raised his telescope again and trained it on the other ves-sel as she began to come about; he could even discern her figurehead, scarred and rendered almost shapeless by time and weather, but once a proud Roman governor with a garland of lau-rel around his head. Her captain might try to elude his adversary until nightfall. But there was little chance of that. It would only prolong the inevitable. He stared at the other ship’s outline, short-ening, the masts overlapping while she continued to turn.

He could sense Galbraith and some of the others watching him, all probably full of their own ideas and solutions.

If they came too close and the other ship caught fire, her lethal cargo could destroy all of them. Adam had done it himself. Jago had been there then, also.

He said sharply, “Stand by to starboard as before, Mr Massie! Gun by gun!”

He wiped his eye and looked again. The enemy was bows-on, and in the powerful lens it looked as if her bowsprit would parry with Unrivalled ’s jib-boom.

“As you bear!”

He saw the Tetrarch ’s canvas billow and fill, the bright Tri-colour showing itself briefly beyond the braced driver. What did the flag mean to those men, he wondered? A symbol of some-thing which might already have been defeated.

He thought of Frobisher, the cruel twist of fate which had brought her and her admiral to an unplanned rendezvous with two such ships as this one.

“Fire!” He watched the first shots tearing through the enemy’s forecourse and topsails, and felt although he could not hear the sickening crash of falling spars and rigging.

Like Anemone ...

But she continued to turn, exposing her broadside and the bright flashes from her most forward guns. Some hit Unrivalled ’s hull, others hurled waterspouts over the side, where gun crews were working like fiends to sponge out and reload.

He heard Lieutenant Luxmore of the Royal Marines yelling a name as one of his marksmen in the maintop fired his Brown Bess at the enemy without waiting for the order. At this range, it was like throwing a pike at a church steeple. The madness. No one could completely contain it.

There was a wild cheer as with tired dignity Tetrarch ’s fore-topmast appeared to stagger, held upright only by the rigging. Adam watched, unable to blink, as the mast seemed to gain con-trol, tearing shrouds and running rigging alike as if the stout cordage were made of mere twine, the sails adding to the confu-sion and destruction until the entire mast with upper spars and reeling foretop spilled down into the smoke.

Only a part of his mind recorded the shouts from the gun captains, yelling like men possessed as each eighteen-pounder slammed against its open port. Ready to fire.

He moved the glass very slightly. There was a thin plume of smoke from the main deck of the other ship. Any fire was dan-gerous, in a fight or otherwise, but with holds full of gunpowder it was certain death. He glanced at Unrivalled ’s upper yards and the whipping masthead pendant.

“Fall off a point!”

He saw Massie staring aft towards him, his sword already half raised.

There was no room for doubt, less for compassion. Because that captain could be me.

Tetrarch was still turning, her bows dragging at the mass of fallen spars and cordage. There were men too, struggling in the water, calling for help which would never come.

The next slow broadside would finish her. At almost full range, high-angled to the rise of the deck, it would smash through the remaining masts and canvas before Tetrarch ’s main battery could be brought to bear.

“As you bear!” It was not even his own voice. He thought he saw the sun lance from Massie’s upraised blade, and somehow knew that the gun crews on the larboard side had left their sta-tions to watch, their own danger forgotten.

He stiffened and steadied the glass again. This time, he knew it was his own hand shaking.

“Belay that order!”

There was too much smoke, but certain things stood out as clearly as if the enemy had been alongside.

The forward guns were unmanned, and there were figures running across the ship’s poop and half deck, apparently out of control. For an instant he imagined that the fire had taken con-trol, and the ship’s company were making a frantic attempt to escape the imminent explosion.

And then he saw it. The French flag, the only patch of colour on that broken ship, was falling, seemingly quite slowly, until somebody hacked the halliards apart so that it drifted across the water like a dying sea bird.

Cristie grunted, “Sensible man, I’d say!”

Someone else said harshly, “A lucky one too, God damn his eyes!”

Tetrarch was falling downwind, her main course and mizzen already being brailed up, as if to confirm her submission.

Adam raised the glass again. There were small groups of men standing around the decks; others, dead or wounded it was impos-sible to tell, lay unheeded by the abandoned guns.

Midshipman Bellairs called, “White flag, sir!” Even he seemed unable to grasp what was happening, even less that he was a part of it.

“Heave-to, if you please!” Adam lowered the glass. He had seen someone on that other deck watching him. With despair, hate; he needed no reminding. “Take the quarter-boat, Mr Gal-braith, and pick your boarding party. If you find it safe for us to come alongside, then signal me. At any sign of treachery, you know what to do.”

Their eyes held. Know what to do. Unrivalled would fire that final broadside. Any boarding party would be butchered.

Galbraith said steadily, “I shall be ready, sir!”

“A close thing.”

“We would have run them down, sir. The way you handled her . . .”

Adam touched his sleeve. “Not that, Leigh. I wanted them dead.”

Galbraith turned away, beckoning urgently to one of his petty officers. Even when the quarter-boat had been warped alongside and men were clambering down the frigate’s tumblehome, he was still reliving it.

The Captain had called him by his first name, like an old and trusted friend. But more, he remembered and was disturbed by the look of pain on the dark features. Anguish, as if he had almost betrayed something. Or someone.

“Bear off forrard! Give way all!”

They were dipping and rising over the choppy water, the boat’s stem already clattering through drifting flotsam and lolling corpses. Galbraith shaded his eyes to look up at the other vessel, huge now as they pulled past her bows, seeing the damage which Unrivalled ’s guns had inflicted.

“Marines, take the poop! Creagh, put your party below!” He saw the boatswain’s mate nod, his weather-beaten face unusually grim. He was the man who had first recognised Tetrarch, and per-haps remembered the blackest moment in her life, when she had been surrendered to the enemy.

Sergeant Everett of the marines called, “Watch yer back, sir! I’d not trust a one of ’em!”

Galbraith thought of the captain again. It might have been us. Then he lurched to his feet, one hand on the shoulder of an oars-man in this overcrowded boat, his mind empty of everything but the grapnel thudding into the scarred timbers and the hull grat-ing alongside.

“With me, lads!”

Within a second he might be dead, or floating out there with the other corpses.

And then he was up and over the first gunport lid, tearing his leg on something jagged but feeling nothing.

There were more people on deck than he had expected. For the most part ragged and outwardly undisciplined, the sweepings of a dozen countries, renegades and deserters, and yet ...He stared around, taking in the discarded weapons, the sprawled shapes of men killed by Unrivalled ’s slow and accurate fire. It would need more than greed or some obscure cause to weld this rabble into one company, to stand and fight a King’s ship which for all they knew might have been expecting support from other men-of-war.

He thought of the hand on his sleeve, and pointed with his hanger.

“Where is your captain?” He could not recall having drawn the blade as he had scrambled aboard.

A man stepped or was pushed towards him. An officer of sorts, his uniform coat without facings or rank.

He said huskily, “He is dying.” He spread his hands. “We pulled down the flag. It was necessary!”

One of Creagh’s seamen shouted, “Fire’s out!” He glared at the silent figures below the poop as if he would have cut each one down himself. “Lantern, sir! Knocked over!”

The ship was safe. Galbraith said, “Run up our flag.” He glanced at Unrivalled, moving so slowly, the guns like black teeth along her side. Then he looked up at the squad of Royal Marines with their bayoneted muskets. They had even managed to depress a swivel-gun towards the listless men who were now their prison-ers. A blast of canister shot would deter any last-minute resistance.

Sergeant Everett called, “Captain’s up here, sir!”

Galbraith sheathed his hanger. It would be useless in any case if some hothead tried to retake the ship. The groups of men parted to allow him through, and he saw defeat in their strained features. The will to fight was gone, if it had ever been there. Apathy, despair, fear, the face of surrender and all it represented.

Tetrarch ’s captain was not what he had expected. Propped between one of his officers and a pale-faced youth, he was at a guess about Galbraith’s age. He had fair hair, tied in an old-style queue, and there was blood on his waistcoat, which the officer was attempting to staunch.

Galbraith said, “M’sieur, I must tell you . . .”

The eyes opened and stared up at him, a clear hazel. The breathing was sharp and painful.

“No formalities, Lieutenant. I speak English.” He coughed, and blood ran over the other man’s fingers. “I suppose I am Eng-lish. So strange, that it should come to this.”

Galbraith stared around. “Surgeon?”

“None. So many shortages.”

“I will take you to my ship. Can you manage that?”

What did it matter? A renegade Englishman; there was a slight accent, possibly American. Perhaps one of the original pri-vateers. And yet he did not seem old enough. He stood up; he was wasting time.

“Rig a bosun’s chair. You, Corporal Sykes, attend this officer’s wound.” He saw the doubt in the marine’s eyes. “It is important!”

Creagh shouted, “’Nother boat shovin’ off, sir!”

Galbraith nodded. Captain Bolitho had seen or guessed what was happening. A prize crew, then. And there was still the dis-masted brig to deal with. He needed to act quickly, to organise his boarding party, to have the prisoners searched for concealed

weapons.

But something made him ask, “What is your name, Captain?”

He lay back against the others, his eyes quite calm despite the pain.

“Lovatt.” He attempted to smile. “Roddie—Lovatt.”

“Bosun’s chair rigged, sir!”

Galbraith said, “We have a good surgeon. What is the nature of your wound?”

He could hear the other boat hooking on, voices shouting to one another, thankful that reinforcements had arrived. All danger forgotten, perhaps until the night watches, when there would be thoughts for all men.

Lovatt did not conceal his contempt as he said bitterly, “A pis-tol ball. From one of my gallant sailors yonder. When I refused to haul down the flag.”

Galbraith put his hand on the shoulder of the boy, who had not left the wounded man.

“Go with the others!”

His mind was full. An English captain who was probably an American; a ship which had been handed to the enemy after a mutiny; and a French flag.

The boy tried to free himself and Lovatt said quietly, “Please, Lieutenant. Paul is my son.”

Two seamen carried him to the hastily rigged boatswain’s chair. Once, Lovatt cried out, the sound torn from him, and reached for his son’s hand. His eyes moved to the newly hoisted flag at the peak, the White Ensign, so fresh, so clean above the pain and the smell of death.

He whispered, “Your flag now, Lieutenant.”

Galbraith signalled to the waiting boat’s crew and saw Mid-shipman Bellairs peering up at him. He would learn another lesson today.

Lovatt was muttering, “Flags, Lieutenant . . . We are all mer-cenaries in war.”

Galbraith saw blood on the deck and realised it was his own, from the leg he had cut when climbing aboard.

The chair was being hoisted and then swayed out over the gangway.

He said, “Go with him, boy. Lively now!”

Creagh joined him by the side as the chair was lowered into the boat, where Bellairs was waiting to receive it.

“Found this, sir.” He held out a sword. “Th’ cap’n’s, they says.”

Galbraith took it and felt the drying blood adhering to his fingers. A sword. All that was left of a man. Something to be handed on. He thought of the old Bolitho blade, which today his captain had worn. Or forgotten.

He studied the hilt. One of the early patterns, with a five-ball design, which had been so resented by sea officers when it had been introduced as the first regulation sword. Most officers had preferred their own choice of blade.

Deliberately, he half-drew it from its leather scabbard and read the engraving. He could even picture the establishment, in the Strand in London, the same sword-cutlers from whom he had obtained the hanger at his hip.

He stared across at his own ship, and at the boat rising and dipping in the swell on its errand of mercy.

Better he had been killed, he thought. A King’s officer who had become a traitor: if he lived through this, he might soon wish otherwise.

He sighed. Wounded to be dealt with, dead to be put over. And a meal of sorts. After that . . . He felt his dried lips crack into a smile.

He was alive, and they had won the day. It was enough. It had to be.

DENIS O’BEIRNE, Unrivalled ’s surgeon, climbed wearily up the quarterdeck ladder and paused to recover his breath. The sea was calmer, the sun very low on the horizon.

The ship’s company was still hard at work. There were men high in the yards, splicing a few remaining breakages, and on the main deck the sailmaker and his crew were sitting cross-legged like so many tailors, their palms and needles moving in unison, ensuring that not a scrap of canvas would be wasted. Apart from the unusual disorder, it was hard to believe that the ship had exchanged fire on this same day, that men had died. Not many, but enough in a small, self-contained company.

O’Beirne had served in the navy for twelve years, mostly in larger vessels, ships of the line, always teeming with humanity, overcrowded and, to a man of his temperament, oppressive. Block-ade duty in all weathers, men forced aloft in a screaming gale, only to be recalled to set more sail if the weather changed in their favour. Bad food, crude conditions; he had often wondered how the sailors endured it.

A frigate was something else. Lively, independent if her cap-tain was ambitious and able to free himself from the fleet’s apron strings, and imbued with a sense of companionship which was entirely different. He had observed it with his usual interest, seen it deepen in the few months since Unrivalled had commissioned on that bitterly cold day at Plymouth, and the ship’s first captain had read himself in.

As surgeon he was privileged to share the wardroom with the officers, and during that period he had learned more about his companions than they probably knew. He had always been a good listener, a man who enjoyed sharing the lives of others without becoming a part of them.

A surgeon was classed as a warrant officer, his status some-where between sailing-master and purser. A craftsman rather than a gentleman. Or as one old sawbones had commented, neither profitable, comfortable, nor respectable.

In recent years the Sick and Hurt Office had worked diligently to improve the naval surgeon’s lot, and to bring them into line with army medical officers. Either way, O’Beirne could not imag-ine himself doing anything else.

He was entitled to one of the hutch-like cabins allotted to the lieutenants, but preferred his own company in the sickbay below the waterline. His world. Those who visited him voluntarily came in awe; others who were carried to him, like those he had left on the orlop deck, or had seen being put over the side in a hasty burial, had no choice.

He glanced around the quarterdeck. Here, in this place of authority and purpose, the roles were reversed.

Unrivalled was rolling steeply despite the sea’s calmer face, lying to as she had for the entire day, with the battered Tetrarch under her lee, the air alive with hammers and squealing blocks as the boarding party had used every trick and skill known to sea-men to erect a jury-rig, enough for Tetrarch to get under way again, and be escorted to Malta.

The little brig had capsized and vanished even before many of her wounded could be ferried to safety. He had heard few regrets from anyone, and even the loss of potential prize-money had seemed insignificant.

Two ships, and the sun already low above its reflection. He saw the captain staring up at their new fore-topgallant sail, while Cristie, the master, pointed out something where the topmen were still working.

O’Beirne thought of his latest charge, Tetrarch ’s captain. He had borne up well, considering the angle of the pistol shot and a great loss of blood. The ball had been fired point-blank, and his waistcoat had been singed and stained with powder smoke. Only one thing had saved his life: he had been wearing one of the out-dated crossbelts which some officers had still been using when O’Beirne had first gone to sea. It had a heavy buckle, like a small horseshoe. The ball had been deflected by it, and had broken in half.

They had stripped him naked and the loblolly boys had held him spread-eagled on the makeshift table, already ingrained with the blood of those who had gone before him.

O’Beirne could shut his ears and concentrate on the work in hand, but his mind was still able to record the inert shapes which lay in the shadows, or propped against the frigate’s curved tim-bers. There had been no time to separate or distinguish the living from the dead. He had become accustomed to it, but still liked to believe he had not become hardened by it. He remembered the powder monkey who had lost a leg: it had been a challenge not to watch his face, his eyes so filled with terror as the knife had made its first incision. He had died on the table before the saw could complete the necessary surgery.

O’Beirne had seen his surgeon’s mate scribble in a dog-eared log book. The powder monkey had been ten years old.

O’Beirne came from a large family, seven boys and three girls. Three brothers had entered the Church, two had donned the King’s coat in a local regiment of foot, another had gone to sea in a packet ship. His sisters had married honest farmers and were raising families of their own. The brother who had gone to sea was no more; neither were the two who had “gone for a soldier.”

He smiled to himself. There was something to be said for the Church after all.

He realised that the captain was looking at him. He seemed clear-eyed and attentive while he listened to what Cristie had to say, and yet O’Beirne knew he had been on deck or close to it since dawn.

Adam walked away from the rail and stared down at the sail-maker’s crew.

“What is it?”

“The captain, sir.” He hesitated as the dark eyes met his. “Cap-tain Lovatt.”

“The prisoner, you mean. Is he dead?”

O’Beirne shook his head. “I’ve done what I could, sir. There is some internal bleeding, but the wound may heal, given time.”

He had not considered the man a prisoner, or anything but a wounded survivor. He had fainted several times, but had man-aged to smile when he had finally come to his senses. O’Beirne had prevented him from moving his arms, telling him it might aggravate the inner wound, but they all did it, usually after they had been rendered incapable of thought or protest by liberal help-ings of rum. Just to make certain their arms were still there, and not pitched into the limbs and wings tub like so much condemned meat.

He saw a muscle tighten in the captain’s jaw. Not impatience, but strain. Something he was determined to conceal.

He said, “He asked about you, sir, while I was dressing the wound. I told him, of course. It helps to keep their minds busy.”

“If that is all . . .” He turned away, and then back abruptly. “I am sorry. You are probably more tired than all the rest of us!”

O’Beirne observed him thoughtfully. It was there again, a kind of youthful uncertainty, so at odds with his role as captain, of this ship and all their destinies.

He knew Lieutenant Wynter and a master’s mate were trying to catch the captain’s eye; the list of questions and demands seemed endless.

He said, “He knew your name, sir.”

Adam looked at him sharply.

“Because of my uncle, no doubt.”

“Because of your father, sir.”

Adam returned to the rail and pressed both palms upon it, feeling the ship’s life pulsating through the warm woodwork. Shivering, every stay and shroud, halliard and brace, extensions of himself. Like hearing his first sailing-master in Hyperion, so many years ago. An equal strain on all parts and you can’t do better.

And now it was back. Was there no escape? No answers to all those unspoken questions?

Midshipman Bellairs called, “Signal from Tetrarch, sir! Ready to proceed!”

He stared across the water, purple now with shadow, and saw the other ship angled across the dying sunlight, pale patches of new canvas marking the extent of Galbraith’s efforts.

“Thank you, Mr Bellairs. Acknowledge.” He looked at the portly surgeon without seeing him. “Make to Mr Galbraith, With fair winds. Good luck.” Then, aware of the lengthening shadows, “Roundly does it!”

O’Beirne was surprised, that this youthful man should take the time to send a personal message when he had so many urgent matters demanding his attention, and more so that he himself could be moved by it.

Adam was very conscious of the scrutiny, and moved away from it to the rail again and stood watching the greasy smoke ris-ing from the galley funnel. The working parties were fewer, and some of the old hands were loitering, looking on as Tetrarch tested her jury-rig for the first time.

Men had died this day, and others lay in fear of living. But there was a smell of pitch and tar in the air, spunyarn and paint, Unrivalled shaking off the barbs of war, and her first sea-fight.

“I shall get the ship under way.” He saw the surgeon turn, and knew he thought his visit had been in vain. “After that, I shall come below and see the prisoner, if that is what you desire.”

Calls shrilled and men ran once more to halliards and braces: the sailors’ way, exhausted one minute, all energy the next.

O’Beirne lowered himself carefully down the steep ladder, his mind lingering on the captain’s last remark.

Half aloud, he said, “What you need, more like, if I’m any judge.”

But it was lost in the hiss and boom of canvas as Unrivalled once again responded to those who served her.

They faced one another, the moment intensified by the stillness of O’Beirne’s sickbay below the waterline. Adam Bolitho seated himself in the surgeon’s big leather chair, which seemed to dom-inate this private place like a throne.

He looked at the other man, who was propped in a kind of trestle, one of O’Beirne’s own inventions. It helped to ease the breathing, and lessened the risk of the lung filling with blood.

Two captains. He could not think of them as victor and van-quished. We are only two men.

Lovatt was not what he had expected. A strong but sensitive face, with hair as fair as Valentine Keen’s. The hands, too, were well shaped, one clenching and unclenching against the throb-bing pain of his wound, the other resting as if untroubled against the curved timbers of the hull.

Lovatt spoke first.

“A fine ship, Captain. You must be proud to have her.” He gazed at the nearest frame. “Grown, not cut by saw. Natural strength, rare enough in these hard times.”

Adam nodded. It was indeed rare, with most of the oak forests hacked down over the years to supply the demands of the fleet.

He thought of Galbraith’s hastily written message, and said, “What did you hope to achieve?”

Lovatt almost shrugged. “I obey orders. Like you, Captain. Like all of us.” The fist opened and closed again as if he had no control over it. “You will know that I was expecting to be met, to be escorted the remainder of the passage to Algiers.”

Adam said quietly, “La Fortune was taken. She is a prize, like Tetrarch.” Half his mind was still with the scene he had left on deck. A lively breeze, a steadier motion with the wind almost across the taffrail. A soldier’s wind, the old hands called it. It would help Galbraith’s jury-rig, and it allowed Unrivalled to hold up to windward in case they required assistance.

He glanced around O’Beirne’s domain, at the piles of well-thumbed books, the cupboards, and racks of bottles and jars clinking occasionally with the vibration of the rudder-head.

The smell here was different too. Potions and powders, rum and pain. Adam hated the world of medicine and what it could do to a man, even the bravest, under knife and saw. The price of victory. He looked at his companion again. And defeat.

“You asked to see me?” He curbed his impatience. His was the need.

Lovatt regarded him with calm eyes.

“My father fought alongside yours in the struggle for inde-pendence. They knew one another, although I did not know about you, the son.”

Adam wanted to leave, but something compelled him to remain. “But you were a King’s officer.”

“When I am handed over to the right authority I shall be con-demned as one. No matter—my son is all I have now. He will forget.”

Adam heard boots scrape outside the door. A marine sentry. O’Beirne was taking no chances. On either of us.

Lovatt was saying, “I left America and returned to England, to Canterbury, where I was born. I had an uncle who sponsored my entry as midshipman. The rest is past history.”

“Tell me about Tetrarch.”

“I was third lieutenant in her . . . a long time ago. She was a fourth-rate then, but past her best. There was bad feeling ’twixt the captain and the senior lieutenant, and the people suffered because of it. When I spoke up on their behalf I discovered I had stepped into a trap. Because of my father, an Englishman on the wrong side, I was left in no doubt as to how my future would be destroyed. Even the second lieutenant, whom I had thought a friend, saw me as a threat to his own advancement.” He gave a sad smile. “Not unknown to you perhaps, sir?”

Midshipman Fielding peered around the door. “Mr Wynter’s respects, sir, and he wishes to take in another reef.” His eyes were fixed on Lovatt.

“I shall come up.” Adam turned back, and saw something like desperation in the hazel eyes.

“There was no mutiny. They simply refused to stand to their guns. I agreed to remain aboard until their case had been put to the French.” The eyes were distant now. “Most of them were exchanged, I believe. I was branded a traitor. But an American privateer came into Brest . . . Until then I had been a trusted prisoner of the French navy. On parole, on my honour.” It seemed to amuse him. “And I had met a girl there. Paul is our son.”

Adam stood, his hair brushing the deckhead. “And now you are a prisoner again. Did you think your mention of my father could buy you privilege? If so, then you do not know me.” It was time to go. Now.

Lovatt sank back against the trestle. “I knew your name, what it has come to mean to sailors of all flags. My wife is dead. There is only Paul. I was planning to obtain passage to England. Instead, I was given command of Tetrarch.” He shook his head. “That damned, wretched ship. I should have forced you to fire on us. Finished it!”

The deck moved slightly. They would all be up there waiting for him. The chain of command.

Adam stopped, his hand on the door. “Canterbury? You have people there still?”

Lovatt nodded. The effort of conversation was taking its toll.

“Good friends. They will care for Paul.” He looked away, and Adam saw the despair in his clenched fist. “But he will come to hate me, I think.”

“He is still your son.”

Again the faint smile. “Be content, Captain. You have your ship.”

O’Beirne filled the doorway, his eyes everywhere.

Adam said, “I have finished here.” He regarded Lovatt coldly. The enemy, no matter which flag he served or for what reason.

But he said, “I shall do what I can.”

O’Beirne opened a cupboard and took out a bottle of brandy, which he had been saving for some special occasion although he had not known what. He recalled the even, Cornish voice as the captain had spoken a simple prayer before the corpses were put over the side. Most of the dead were unknown. Protestant, Catholic, pagan or Jew, it made no difference to them now.

He found two glasses and held them up to the light of the gently spiralling lantern to see if they were clean, and noticed the dried blood, like paint, on his cuff.

Lovatt cleared his throat, and said, “I believe he meant it.”

O’Beirne pushed a glass towards him. “Here—kill or cure. Then you must rest.”

He lingered over the glass. Some special occasion . . . He saw the brandy tilting with the rhythm of the sea, and imagined Cap-tain Bolitho with his men, watching the stars, holding station on this man’s ship.

He said, “Of course he meant it.” But Lovatt had fallen into an exhausted sleep.

From somewhere aft he heard the sound of a fiddle, probably in the junior warrant officers’ mess. Badly played, and out of tune.

To Denis O’Beirne, ship’s surgeon, it was the most beautiful sound he had heard for a long time.

Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune walked across the tiled floor and stood by one of the tall windows, careful to remain in the shadows, but feeling the heat of the noon sun like something physical. He shaded his eyes to stare at the anchored ships, his ships, knowing what made each distinct from the others, just as he now knew the faces and characters of each of his captains, from his bluff flag captain Forbes in Montrose, out there now with her awnings and windsails shimmering in the harsh glare, to the young but experienced Christie in the smaller twenty-eight gun Halcyon. It was something he could now accept, as he had come to accept the responsibility of his rank, one of the youngest flag officers on the Navy List.

The sense of loss was still there, as strong as ever, and if any-thing he felt even more impatient, conscious of a certain disappointment which was new to him.

Whenever he was at sea in Montrose he felt this same rest-lessness. He had confided to Sir Richard Bolitho more than once his discomfort at commanding, but not being in command, of his own flagship. Each change of watch or unexpected trill of a bosun’s call, any sound or movement would find him alert, ready to go on deck and deal with every kind of incident. To leave it to oth-ers, to wait for the respectful knock on the screen door, had been almost unbearable.

Bethune had grasped at the chance of a seagoing appointment, having imagined that the corridors of the Admiralty were not for him.

He had been wrong, but it was hard to come to terms with it.

He watched the small boats pulling around the captured French frigate, La Fortune. A prize indeed. It had been a risk, and he had seen Adam Bolitho’s face clearly in his mind as he had read the report. But a risk skilfully undertaken. If their lordships required any further proof that the Dey of Algiers was intent on even more dangerous escapades, this was it.

He recalled Bouverie’s description of the cutting-out expedi-tion. It was wrong to take sides, and Bethune had always despised senior officers who did so, but Bouverie had given the impression that the capture of the frigate had been entirely his own idea.

He turned his back on the grand harbour and its crumbling backdrop of ancient fortifications, and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dimness of this room which was a part of his official headquarters. Once owned by a wealthy merchant, it was almost palatial. There was even a fountain in the small courtyard, and a balcony. In this house was the room where Catherine Somervell had made her final visit to her beloved Richard.

Bethune had ordered that it be kept locked, and could guess what his staff thought about it. He had visited the room only once. So still, so quiet, and yet when he had thrown open the shutters the din and turmoil of Malta seemed to swamp the place. It was uncanny.

There was a bell on a table. He had only to ring it and a ser-vant would appear. Wine, perhaps? Or something stronger? He almost smiled. That was not like him, either; he had seen the results of over-indulgence only too often at the Admiralty.

He walked to another window. When he thought of his wife in England, and of their two young children, he could feel only guilt. Because he had been glad to leave, or because he had not trusted his own feelings for Richard Bolitho’s mistress? It seemed absurd out here. He turned as someone tapped on the door.

Or was it?

It was his flag lieutenant, Charles Onslow. Young, eager, atten-tive. And dull, so dull. He was a distant cousin, and the appointment had been a favour to his wife.

Onslow stood just inside the door, his hat beneath his arm, his youthful features set in a half-smile.

“I am sorry to interrupt you, Sir Graham.” He usually prefaced any remark to Bethune with an apology, not like the Onslow he had heard barking at his subordinates. Favour or not, he would be rid of him.

“I welcome it!” Bethune stared at the heavy dress coat which was hanging carelessly on the back of a chair. So many officers envied him, and looked to him in hope of their own advancement.

I do not belong here.

“What is it?”

“A report from the lookout, Sir Graham. Unrivalled has been sighted. She will enter harbour in late afternoon if the wind prevails.”

Bethune dragged his thoughts into the present. Unrivalled had quit her station. Adam must have had good reason. If not . . .

Onslow added helpfully, “She has a ship in company. A prize.”

Another from Algiers, perhaps, although it seemed unlikely. He was reminded of Richard Bolitho’s insistence that, unpopular though it might be with some senior officers, the bare bones of the written Fighting Instructions were no substitute for a cap-tain’s initiative.

Always provided that the end justified the methods.

“You may signal Unrivalled when she enters harbour, Captain repair here when convenient.”

Onslow frowned; perhaps he thought it too leisurely. Slack.

He was turning in the doorway. “I all but forgot, Sir Graham.” He dropped his eyes. “A lieutenant named Avery desires an audi-ence with you.”

Bethune plucked his shirt from his ribs. “How long has he been waiting?”

“The secretary brought word an hour back. I was dealing with signals at the time. It was an unusual request, I thought.”

He was enjoying it. He, more than any, would know that Avery had been flag lieutenant to Sir Richard Bolitho. He would also know that Avery had volunteered to remain at Malta to offer his assistance and the experience he had gained when he had vis-ited the lion’s den, Algiers.

“Ask him to come up. I shall apologise to him myself.”

It was almost worth it to see the rebuke go home like the sounding-shot before a broadside.

He made to pick up his heavy coat but decided against it.

He heard Avery in the corridor; he had come to recognise the uneven, dragging step.

Avery paused and gazed almost uncertainly around the room, like so many sea officers out of place on dry land. He would have to get used to it, Bethune thought.

He offered his hand, smiling.

“I regret the delay. It was unnecessary.” He gestured to the envelope on the table. “Your orders. You are free to leave Malta, and take passage in the next available vessel. Go home. You have done more than enough here.” He saw the tawny eyes come finally into focus, as if Avery’s mind had been elsewhere.

“Thank you, Sir Graham. I was ready to leave.” The eyes searched him. “I came to see you because . . .” He hesitated.

Bethune tensed, anticipating it. Avery would know this place. The room. Where there was now only silence.

Avery said, almost abruptly, “I heard that Unrivalled has been sighted. With a prize.”

Bethune did not question how he knew, although he himself had only just been told. It was something beyond explanation: the way of sailors, he had heard an old admiral call it.

He said, “Forgive me. I spoke of home. It was thoughtless.”

Avery regarded him without emotion, vaguely surprised that he should remember, let alone care. He had no home. He had lived at Falmouth. As Allday had put it often enough, “like one of the family.” Now there was no family.

He shrugged. “I might be needed here. I have a presentiment about this prize, something Captain Bolitho and I discussed. He is a shrewd man—his uncle would be proud of him.”

Bethune said gently, “And of you, I think.” He swung round as another tap came from the door. “Come!”

It was Onslow again, his eyes moving quickly from the enve-lope on the table to his admiral’s dishevelled appearance, coatless in the presence of a junior officer. He avoided looking at Avery completely.

“I beg your pardon, Sir Graham. Another report from the lookout. The schooner Gertrude has been sighted.”

Bethune spread his hands. “We are busy, it seems!” Then he turned on his flag lieutenant, his mind suddenly clear. “Gertrude? She is not due for several days, surely, wind or no wind. Send a messenger to the lookout immediately.”

Onslow added unhappily, “And Captain Bouverie of Matchless is here, Sir Graham.”

Avery said, “I shall leave, sir.”

Bethune held out his hand.

“Sup with me tonight. Here.” He knew Avery disliked Bou-verie, mainly, he suspected, because he had brought him back to Malta with the French frigate, when Avery would have preferred Adam’s company. The same bond which held them all together. He allowed himself to explore the thought. And Catherine, who has touched us all.

Avery smiled. “I would relish that, sir.” And meant it.

Bethune watched him leave, and heard the uneven step retreat-ing. There were many things to deal with: Unrivalled ’s unexpected return, and the early arrival of the courier schooner Gertrude. Despatches. Letters from England, orders for the ships and men under his command. It could all wait. He would ask Adam to join them, and, out of courtesy, his flag captain as well. Show no favouritism . . .

There would be others here tonight. He looked across at the empty balcony and the sealed shutters. Invisible, perhaps, but they

would be very close.

He realised that Onslow was still there.

“I will see Captain Bouverie now. After that, I shall discuss the wine for this evening.” He pulled on the heavy coat with its bright epaulettes and silver stars. It seemed to make a difference to everyone else around him, but he was the same man underneath.

Poor Onslow; it was not entirely his fault. He caught him at the half-open door.

“You are invited too, of course.”

For once, Onslow was unable to control his pleasure. Bethune hoped he would not regret the impulse.

He thought of Avery, wanting to leave this place, but afraid of the life he might find waiting for him.

He smiled to himself and faced the door, ready to perform.

Catherine had visited him once at the Admiralty, privately, if not actually in secret. She had removed her glove so that he could kiss her hand. The knowledge hit him like a fist. Adam, George Avery, and one of the youngest flag officers on the Navy List . . . they were all in love with her.

The night was warm, but a soft breeze from the sea had driven away the day’s clinging humidity.

Three officers stood side by side at an open window, watch-ing the lights, boats bobbing like fireflies on the dark water. There were a few pale stars, and from the narrow streets they could hear singing and cheering. Earlier there had been a raucous ringing of bells, until some drunken sailors had been chased out of the church.

Captain Forbes had made his excuses and had remained in his ship, the captured Tetrarch needing his full attention. She looked larger in harbour against the sloops and brigs, and her valuable cargo of powder, shot and supplies, to say nothing of the vessel herself, would fetch a substantial reward in the prize court.

But even that seemed secondary, especially in this cool room with its banks of flickering candles.

It had been a boisterous meal, interspersed with countless toasts and good wishes for absent friends. Lieutenant Onslow had been fast asleep for most of it, and even the servants had been surprised by the amount of wine he had swallowed before sliding on to the floor.

The little schooner Gertrude had carried overwhelming news: the British and allied armies under the Duke of Wellington had met and fought Napoleon at a place called Waterloo. When Gertrude had weighed anchor to carry her despatches around the fleet there had been little more information than that, except that there had been horrific casualties in a battle fought in mud and thunderstorms, and victory had more than once hung in the bal-ance. But it had been reported that the French army was in retreat. To Paris perhaps, although even as they waited there might still be a reverse in fortune.

But out there in the harbour aboard ships of every size and type men were cheering, men who had known nothing but war and sacrifice. Bethune remembered that day in London when the news of Napoleon’s defeat had been brought to the Admiralty; he himself had been the one to interrupt the First Lord’s conference and announce it. Fourteen months ago, almost to the day. And since then, the chain of events which had freed the tyrant from Elba, and had set his feet once more on the march for Paris . . .

He glanced at Adam’s profile, knowing that he was remem-bering also. When England’s hero, their beloved friend, had fallen to the enemy’s marksman.

Tomorrow he must draft new orders to his captains and com-manders, for no matter how the war was waged ashore the requirements for this squadron, like the whole fleet, were unchanged. To show the flag, to protect, to fight, and if need be, to intimidate, and maintain mastery of the sea which had been won with so much blood.

Adam felt the scrutiny but kept his eyes on the dark harbour, and the place where he knew Unrivalled was lying. Thinking of them all . . . Galbraith, quietly proud one moment, openly emo-tional the next. The imposing surgeon, O’Beirne, forgetting himself and capering in a little jig to the shantyman’s fiddle. And the others, faces he had come to know. Faces he had once attempted to hold at a distance.

And the prisoner, Roddie Lovatt, delirious, but reaching out for his son, speaking in both English and French with equal intensity. Adam had seen the boy, and had recalled Lovatt’s words to him. If there had been any name for the expression on the face of one so young, it could only be hatred.

A servant had brought yet another tray of filled glasses, one of which he placed carefully with the rest where Onslow still lay snoring loudly.

Bethune called, “To our special friends! They will live forever!”

Adam felt the locket in his pocket, and shared the moment. And the guilt.

The three glasses clinked together and a voice said, “To Catherine!”

Across the darkened courtyard Bethune thought he heard her laugh.