“Deal with these, Grimes. My head is too full for much more at present.”
He felt the clerk’s eyes following him to the window, which looked across the small, sun-drenched courtyard.
The day had started badly with the guard-boat’s officer report-ing that Unrivalled ’s arrival meant more than simply the delivery of despatches or letters—there were visitors to accommodate and entertain. Bethune felt the same resentment returning as he heard a woman’s voice, and saw the gleam of colour from the opposite balcony. His flag lieutenant had insisted that that particular room was the obvious choice for guests who had come with the full blessing of the government and the lords of the Admiralty. He could hear Bazeley’s voice too, loud, demanding, authoritative. Full of himself.
He sighed, and walked back to the desk. There was a letter from his wife as well, asking about the possibility of joining him in Malta, or of his coming back to London. She made it sound like the only civilised place to live.
He glanced at Adam Bolitho’s report. Two more prizes. Surely their lordships would offer him extra ships now. There was proof enough that the activities of the Dey of Algiers and his equally unpredictable ally in Tunis required swifter, sharper measures. He almost smiled. It would also make an impressive spearhead for his return to another post in London.
Bethune enjoyed the company of women, and they his, but he had always been discreet. The prospect of his wife joining him in Malta made him realise just how far they had grown apart since her attempts to humiliate Catherine, perhaps even long before that. Of course, he thought bitterly, there were always the chil-dren . . .
He looked at the other window, thinking of Lieutenant Avery standing beside him, sharing it, remembering it. And now he was dead. The Happy Few were only ghosts, only memories.
Bazeley’s young wife would turn a few heads here when her presence became known. She had probably married the great man for his fortune, which, allegedly, was considerable, but if any of the young bloods from the local garrison got the wrong ideas, they had better watch out. He wondered how Adam had man-aged to resist her very obvious charm on the passage here from Gibraltar. He was reckless. But he was not a fool.
The flag lieutenant was back. “Captain Bouverie is here, Sir Graham.”
Bethune nodded. It was even harder to recall Onslow as he had been on that last night together, lying on his back, snoring
and drunk. But almost human.
“Very well.”
Onslow smiled, as always apologetic. “And Captain Bolitho is due shortly. His boat was reported a few minutes ago.”
Bethune turned away and looked across the courtyard.
“I will see them.” He added abruptly, “Separately.”
Onslow understood, or thought he did. He would do it by seniority.
Bethune was well aware of the peculiar rivalry between Adam Bolitho and Emlyn Bouverie of the frigate Matchless. They scarcely knew one another, and yet it had leaped into being. He thought of the successes his small squadron had achieved, despite, or perhaps even because of this personal conflict. It might even be used to greater advantage if he could enlarge his chain of com-mand here. He smiled again. He could never go back to being a mere captain, and he wondered why he had not noticed the change in himself before.
Adam Bolitho stood aside to allow two heavily laden donkeys to push their way through the narrow street. When he glanced up at the strip of blue sky overhead, it seemed the buildings were almost touching.
He had deliberately taken a longer route from the jetty where he had landed from the gig, perhaps for the exercise, maybe to think; his mind was only vaguely aware of the babble of voices around him. So many tongues, so many different nationalities crammed together in apparent harmony. Plenty of uniforms, too. The Union Flag was obviously here to stay.
There were stairs across this part of the street, and he felt the stabbing pain, when earlier he had all but forgotten it.
He paused to give himself time and heard the gentle tap of a hammer. Here the open-fronted shops were as varied as the passers-by. A man selling grain, another asleep beside a pile of gaudy carpets. He ducked beneath a canopy and saw a man sitting cross-legged at a low table. The sound was that of his hammer against a miniature anvil.
He looked up as Adam’s shadow fell across shallow baskets full of metal, probably Spanish silver like the chain on Cather-ine’s locket, and asked in faultless English, “Something for a lady, Captain? I have much to offer.”
Adam shook his head.
“I may return later . . .” He hesitated, and bent to examine a perfect replica of a sword. “What is this?”
The silversmith shrugged. “Not old, Captain. Made for a French officer who was here,” he gave a polite smile, “before you came. But never collected. The war, you understand.”
Adam picked up the sword, so small, but heavy for its size. A brooch, or a clasp of some kind. He smiled; he was being ridicu-lous, and he knew it.
The silversmith watched him calmly. “There is an inscription, very small. It must have been important. It says Destiny, Cap-tain.” He paused. “I have other pieces also.”
Adam turned it over in the palm of his hand. “You speak very good English.”
Again the shrug. “I learned in Bristol, many years ago!” He laughed, and several people who had paused to observe the transaction joined in.
Adam heard none of them. “Destiny.” Like the horizon which never got any nearer.
Somewhere a bell began to chime, and he clapped his hand to his empty watch pocket. He was late. Outwardly at least, Bethune was tolerant enough, but he was still a vice-admiral.
He said, “I would like to have it.” The silversmith watched him take out his purse, and when he was satisfied held up one hand.
“That is enough, Captain.” He smiled as Adam held it to the light. “If the lady declines it, sir, I will buy it back from you, at a consideration, of course.”
Adam returned to the sunlight a little dazed, amazed at his own foolish innocence.
He touched his hat to a Royal Marine sentry and walked into the courtyard.
An unknown French officer, and a silversmith from Bristol.
Then he saw her on the balcony, in the same gown she had been wearing when she had left Unrivalled. She was looking down at him, but she did not smile or wave to him.
He felt it again, like a challenge. Destiny. The horizon.
And he knew it was already too late for caution.
Adam was surprised by the warmth of Bethune’s welcome, as if he were genuinely pleased, relieved even, to see him.
“Sit here.” He gestured to a chair far from the reflected glare. “I saw you come through the gates just now—limping, I thought. I read the full report.” He glanced at the dour-faced clerk at the other table. “Most of it, in any case. I am glad it was nothing worse.”
“The shot struck my watch. Which is why I was late, sir.”
He saw Bethune look meaningly at his flag lieutenant. So they had noticed.
“You are here and you are safe, that’s the main thing. I am so damned short of vessels I am beginning to think that nobody cares in the Admiralty.” He laughed, and Adam saw the young officer again.
Bethune said, “We shall take wine in a moment. I would ask you to stay for a meal, but I have matters which require prompt action.” The easy smile again. “But you’ve heard all that before, eh? We all have!”
Adam realised for the first time that Bethune was adrift here in Malta. Perhaps high command was even lonelier than the life
of a captain.
“No matter, sir. I have to return to my ship. But thank you.”
Bethune walked to the window, one hand tapping against the flaking shutter.
“Captain Bouverie of Matchless was here.”
“I saw him briefly, sir.”
“Not a happy man, I fear. His ship badly requires an overhaul. She has been the longest out here, as far as I am aware.”
Adam thought of something he had heard Jago say. Like a man who’s found a penny but lost a guinea. It fitted Bouverie well.
And Adam did not need to be told. If Matchless was sent to a dockyard in England she might be paid off, laid up, her com-pany disbanded.
It could happen to me. To us.
He saw Bethune step back from the shutter, and knew he had been watching the balcony. Watching her. The revelation sur-prised him, and he began to see him in quite a different light, recalling that Catherine had spoken of him favourably in her let-ters. Rank had its privileges, and its drawbacks too, apparently.
Bethune said, “We have received information from what is judged to be a reliable source.” He waited for Adam to join him at the other table where Onslow had arranged a chart, weighed down with carved ivory figurines. “These islands to the south-west of Malta. Owned by nobody, claimed by many.” He tapped the chart. “Almost midway ’twixt here and the coast of Tunis. They are useless for trade or habitation except for a few fishermen, and not many of those, with the corsairs so active in these waters.”
He stood aside as Adam bent over the chart.
“I know them, sir, but at a distance. Dangerous shoals, not even safe for an anchorage. But small craft,” he looked up and saw Bethune nod, “they would find the islands useful.” There was a sudden silence, broken only by the scratching of the clerk’s pen.
Even the sounds of the street did not penetrate to this room.
“Some of the islands have high points of ground.” He touched the chart as if to confirm it. “When this one was last corrected, it stated that two of them could be three hundred feet or more above sea level.”
Bethune rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I believe the corsairs are sheltering their chebecs among these islands. The high ground rules out any kind of normal approach. A blind lookout would see our t’gallants before we got within five leagues of the place!”
“And the information is good, sir?”
Bethune glanced towards the window again, but seemed to change his mind.
“Two traders have been attacked in the past week, another is missing. A Sicilian vessel saw the chebecs—her master has given us some useful information over the years. Us and the French, of course!”
Adam said quietly, “My uncle always had the greatest respect for the chebecs, sir. His flagship Frobisher was attacked by some of them. Lieutenant Avery told me about it.”
They both looked at the empty chair, and Bethune said, “He saw what many of us missed.”
Adam walked a few paces. “A landing party. At night. Volunteers.”
“Royal Marines?”
“I think not, sir. They are fine fighters, but they are foot sol-diers at heart. This would require stealth, men used to working aloft in all weathers, sure-footed, eager.”
A door opened and he heard the clink of glasses. No wonder Bouverie had looked so depressed and so angry. His ship was too slow. By the time Matchless was restored to her proper trim it might be too late. For him.
Bethune said, “I can offer Halcyon in support. I cannot spare my flagship, and the rest of the squadron is deployed elsewhere.”
He banged the table with his fist. “God, I could find work for ten more frigates!”
Adam knew the other frigate, half Unrivalled ’s size, twenty-eight guns, with a youthful and zealous captain named Christie. The family again . . . Christie had been a midshipman under James Tyacke at the Nile. They had both been scarred, in differ-ent ways, on that terrible day.
Adam could feel Bethune watching him, perhaps seeing him-self already there, confronted by an operation which at the best of times could spell disaster. But if the corsairs were using the islands they could not have chosen a more effective lair. A thorn in the side; no. Far deeper than any thorn.
Hazardous or not, Captain Bouverie would perceive it as an act of favouritism. As I would. He felt the piece of silver inside his shirt, and wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.
He recalled a captain who had once said to him after a bitter hand-to-hand engagement, “You might have been killed, you young idiot! Did you ever pause to consider that?”
He straightened his back and took a goblet from the hover-ing servant.
“I think it can be done, sir.”
“I hoped you might say that.” Bethune could scarcely conceal his relief. “But no unnecessary risks.”
Adam smiled tightly. Bethune had never lost his ship, wit-nessed her agony, and that of her people who had trusted in him.
Perhaps it made it easier for him.
Onslow ventured, “The reception, Sir Graham?”
Bethune frowned at him. “It would be better if you weighed at first light. I will have your orders prepared immediately, Christie’s too.” He looked at the pile of documents awaiting his signature, and said abruptly, “Sir Lewis and Lady Bazeley, were they any trouble?”
“We had a fast enough passage, sir.”
Bethune looked at him and smiled. It was not what he had asked.
“There is a reception for them this evening. Short notice, but they are used to that in Malta. I am not.”
He walked with him to the door, while Onslow made a dis-play of folding the charts, probably in readiness for the next visitor.
Bethune said, “Captain Forbes will give you all the help he can. He has served in these waters for many years.” Then, at a complete tangent, “I am truly sorry that you cannot join us this evening. Everything must appear normal.” He paused, as if he had gone too far. “A king once said, if you tell your best friend a secret, it is no longer a secret!”
The mood did not last, and he said almost brusquely, “I will see you when you sign for your orders. No matter what I am doing, I want to be told.”
Adam descended the marble stairs, his mind already on the details of his mission. Total responsibility. He had heard it from his uncle several times. If you succeed, others will get the reward; if you fail, yours is the total responsibility.
He saw the flag captain’s stocky figure by the entrance. Ready to play his role.
Unrivalled had arrived that morning; tomorrow she would weigh and proceed to sea once more. And suddenly he knew he was not sorry to leave.
Leigh Galbraith stood by the hammock nettings and studied the boats alongside. One of them was Halcyon’s gig, her crew very smart in checkered shirts and tarred hats. He smiled. A ship shall be judged by her boats.
The other frigate’s captain had been down in the great cabin for more than an hour. Each seeing his own ship’s part in what lay ahead, the selection of men, and who would lead them.
A landing party. A raid, to flush out the corsairs so that the frigates could get amongst them before they could make good their escape.
He heard Lieutenant Massie, who had the watch, speaking sharply to a boatswain’s mate, a man not known for his quick response to anything beyond routine. Massie had little patience with anyone who could not keep up. He was a good gunnery offi-cer, one of the best Galbraith had known, but he was not a man for whom it was possible to feel any affection.
Massie joined him now, breathing hard. “A bloody block of wood, that man!” Galbraith glanced at the open skylight. Soon now. He heard Bolitho laugh. A small thing, but reassuring.
The captain had said to him while they had been waiting for Christie to arrive from Halcyon, “I want you to take charge of the landing party. I’ve a few suggestions which we can discuss later, but mostly it will be your initiative, and your decision when you get there.” His dark eyes had been intense. “Not a battle, Leigh. I need you as my senior lieutenant, not as a dead hero. But you are the obvious choice.” He had smiled. “The right choice.”
Massie said, “One man to be flogged, so why all the fuss?”
A seaman had been found in his mess, off duty and drunk. It seemed they had only just dropped anchor, and now they were leaving again . . . There will be danger. Aboard ship it was differ-ent. Faces and voices to sustain you, the strength of the timbers surrounding you.
Galbraith said, “A flogging helps no one at a time like this.”
“They’d laugh in your face without firm, strong discipline, and you know it!” Massie sounded triumphant when Galbraith did not respond. “They offer us scum to be made into seamen. Well, so be it!”
Galbraith stared at the other ships, their reflections less sharp now in a freshening breeze.
Massie seemed to read his thoughts, and said angrily, “I expect half of Malta knows what we are about! When we reach those damned islands the birds will have flown, and good riddance, I say!”
Is that what I was hoping? Galbraith thought suddenly of the gathering in the captain’s cabin when they had entertained Sir Lewis Bazeley and his young wife at supper. The wine, like the endless procession of tempting and distracting adventures with which Bazeley had dominated the conversation, disappearing bot-tle by bottle. Like most sea officers, Galbraith had little experience of fine wines. You took what was available, in a far different world from that described by Sir Lewis. But once or twice he had received the impression that Bazeley had not always known the luxury of good food and wine, or beautiful women. He was a hard man in more ways than Galbraith had yet fathomed.
Massie waved an arm towards the shore. “And a reception, no less! We should be there, after all we’ve achieved since we joined this damned squadron!”
Galbraith remembered most of all how the young woman had looked at the captain whenever he had answered one of Bazeley’s many questions. As if she were learning something. About him, perhaps . . .
He answered wearily, “Next time, maybe.”
Midshipman Cousens said, “The captain’s coming up, sir.”
Galbraith nodded, glad that the conversation had been inter-rupted, and that Massie would be quiet for a while.
“Man the side!”
The two captains stood together by the rail and waited for the gig to grapple alongside.
Christie turned and smiled at Galbraith. “My second lieu-tenant will be supporting you on this venture. Tom Colpoys—he’s an experienced officer, so you’ll have no complaint on that score!”
So easily said. As if neither of these young captains had a care or a doubt in the world.
The muskets slapped to the present, a sword sliced through the dusty air, the calls squealed, and moments later Christie’s gig pulled smartly out from Unrivalled ’s shadow.
Adam Bolitho swung on his heel. “A man for punishment, I understand?”
Galbraith watched his face as Massie reeled off the offences.
“Willis, you say?” Adam paced to the rail and back again. “Foretopman, starboard watch, correct?”
Massie seemed surprised. “Aye, sir.”
“First offence?”
Massie was out of his depth. “Of this kind, sir.”
Adam pointed towards the shimmering rooftops and battlements.
“Over yonder, a good many will be too drunk to stand tonight, Mr Massie. Officers, no less, so think on that too! They shall not be flogged and neither shall Willis. Give him a warning, this time.” He looked keenly at the lieutenant, as if searching for something. “And a warning for the one who brought him aft in the first place. Responsibility pulls in two directions. I’ll not have it used for working off old scores.”
Massie strode away, and Galbraith said, “I should have dealt with it, sir.” Massie had probably never been spoken to in that manner in his life. Few captains would have cared, in any case.
Adam said, “I shall be going ashore directly.” And smiled, at something Galbraith did not understand. “To sign for my des-tiny.” He looked along his command, and Galbraith wondered how he saw her. Only a captain could answer, and Bolitho would share that with nobody. Unless . . . “When I return offshore, you will join me in a glass.” The rare, infectious smile again. “Not claret, I think.”
Then the mood was gone, just as quickly, and he said, “The man Willis. His wife has died.” He paused, the memory stirring. “In Penzance.”
“I did not know, sir.”
“Why should you? But Massie is his lieutenant. He should have known, and cared enough to prevent this unnecessary affront.”
Bellairs was hurrying towards them, but he waited for the cap-tain to leave before he produced a list of items he had been told to muster for the proposed landing party.
Galbraith put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Later, but not now, my lad.” He shook the shoulder gently. “I wish you had been here just now. You’d have learned something which would have had your promotion board agog with admiration.” He thought of the captain’s expression, the dignity and the fire in the quiet voice. “About the true qualities which make a King’s offi-cer. I certainly did, believe me!”
He knew Bellairs was still gazing after him when he walked away to call the gig’s crew. And he was glad he had shared it with him.
Adam chose the same leisurely approach to Bethune’s house with-out truly knowing why. The narrow street was in deeper shadow now, and most of the stalls had been closed or abandoned for the night. He looked towards the low-canopied shop where he had spoken with the silversmith, but that, too, was deserted. As if he had imagined it.
He had left the gig at the jetty alone and had sensed Jago’s disapproval; he had even ventured to suggest that he should keep him company. The whole place is probably full of cut-throats an’ thieves. But he had remained with the boat’s crew when Adam had told him that there would not be a man left, hand-picked or not, when he returned.
Like that handshake; Jago had still come only halfway towards sharing his innermost thoughts.
But the old sword at his hip had been loosened in its scab-bard all the same.
There had been a couple of small boys begging, and a savage-looking guard dog, but otherwise his walk was undisturbed.
The air was cooler as evening lengthened the shadows, but not much. He thought without pleasure of the reception at Bethune’s headquarters, and imagined the press of sweating bodies, and the wine. Unrivalled would put to sea in the morning. He had to keep a clear head, to deal with any remaining problems before the two frigates were committed.
He turned the corner and saw the pale gates looming out of the dusk. Every window seemed to be ablaze with light. He could smell cooking, and felt his stomach contract. He had eaten noth-ing since breakfast; Jago probably knew about that, too.
He touched his hat to a sentry and strode into the courtyard, aware of vague shapes, murmured instructions, and the continu-ous clatter of dishes and glassware.
He recalled Bethune’s casual question about the passage from Gibraltar. Did he see his unwanted visitor as a burden, or a pos-sible stepping-stone to some new appointment? He was welcome to it. His was a world Adam had never known, and had repeat-edly told himself he would never willingly share.
There was music, hesitant at first, violins, seemingly at odds with one another and then suddenly sweeping through the courtyard in a single chord.
He stopped and listened as the music faded away, and some-body called out for attention. Short notice. Bethune had not approved of that, either.
“Why, Captain Bolitho, is it not? Standing alone and so thoughtful. You are very early!”
He turned and saw her in a curved entrance he had not noticed on his previous visit. In the deepening shadows her gown looked blue, perhaps chosen to match her eyes. Her dark hair was piled above her ears, Hilda’s work, he thought, and she was wearing earrings, shining like droplets of fire in the last sunlight.
He removed his hat and bowed.
“My lady, I am a visitor, not a guest. I shall be on my way as soon as I have met with Sir Graham or his aide.”
“Ah, I see. More duty, then?” She laughed and flicked open a small fan which had been dangling on a cord at her wrist. “I had thought we might see more of you.”
He joined her in the paved entrance and caught her perfume, her warmth. The same woman, and yet so different from the one he had held and restrained in her moment of nausea and despair.
“It seems you are well cared for, m’ lady.” He looked past her as the music began again. “I hope the reception is a great success.”
She took his arm, suddenly and deliberately, turning him towards the music, towards her, until they were only inches apart.
“I do not care a fig for the reception, Captain! I have seen so many, too many . . . I am concerned that you choose to blame me because of such . . .” She seemed angry that she could not find the word to express her displeasure.
“Necessities, m’ lady?”
“No, never that!” She calmed herself; he could feel her fingers gripping his arm, like the night Napier had brought him to her.
She said, “Walk with me. There is a view of the harbour on the other side.” Her fingers tightened as if to drive away his resis-tance. “Nobody will see us. Nobody will care.”
“I do not think you understand . . .”
She shook his arm again. “Oh, but I do, Captain! I am well aware of the rules, the etiquette of King’s officers. No talk of women in the mess. But a knowing nod and a quick wink betrays such chivalry!” She laughed, and the sound echoed in the curved archway. “Listen! D’ you hear that?”
They came out on to a paved parapet, beyond which Adam saw the sea, sunset already bronze on the water, the riding lights and small moving craft making patterns all their own.
The hidden orchestra was playing now, and the other sounds of preparation seemed to pause as if servants and orderlies had stopped to listen.
She said almost in a whisper, “It’s beautiful,” and turned to look at him. “Don’t you agree?”
He put his hand on hers and felt her tense. A woman one moment, a child the next. Or was he deluding himself yet again?
“As you have observed, my lady, I am somewhat aback when it comes to the finer points of etiquette.”
She did not respond, but said a moment later, as if she had not heard him, “A waltz. D’ you know that some people still claim it is too risqué, too bold, for public performance?”
He smiled. She was teasing him.
“I am thankful I am spared such hazards!”
She turned towards him again, and removed his hand from hers as if she was about to walk away. Then she took his hands once more, and stood looking at him, her head slightly on one side, deciding perhaps if she had already gone too far.
“Listen. Hear it now? Let it take charge of you.”
She placed his right hand on her waist, pressing it there, like the night when she had refused to release him.
“Now hold me, guide with your left hand, so.”
Adam tightened his grip and felt her move against him. Even in the uncertain light he could see the bare shoulders, the darker shadow between her breasts. His heart was pounding to match the madness, the pain of his longing. And madness it was. At any moment somebody would discover them; rumour could run faster than any wind. And jealousy could match and overwhelm any sense or caution.
But she was moving, taking him closer, and his feet were fol-lowing hers as if they had always been waiting for this moment.
She said, “You lead,” and leaned back on his arm, her eyes wide. “Then I shall yield.”
And laughed again. The music had stopped, like the slamming of a single door.
How long they stood in the same position was impossible to know. She did not move, even when he pressed harder against her thighs, until he could feel the heat of her body, her shocked awareness of what was happening.
Then, carefully, firmly, he held her away, gripping the naked shoulders until she was able to look at him again.
He said, “Now you know, my lady, this is no game for trick-sters. Bones mend, but not hearts. You would do well to remember that!”
She dragged her hand away and raised it as if to strike him, but shook her head when he seized her wrist. “It was not a game or a trick, not to me. I cannot explain . . .” She stared at him, her eyes shining with tears, and he felt her come against him again, without protest or amusement. He wanted to push her away, no matter what it might do to each or both of them.
Think what you are doing, of the consequences. Are you beyond rea-son because of a loss you could never have prevented, a happiness which was never yours to explore?
But there was no solution. Only the realisation that he wanted this woman, this girl, another man’s wife.
He heard himself say, “I must leave you. Now. I have to see the admiral.”
She nodded very slowly, as if the action was painful.
“I understand.” He felt her face against his chest, her mouth damp through his shirt. “You may despise me now, Captain Bolitho.”
He kissed her shoulder, felt her body tighten, shock, disbelief, it no longer mattered.
There were voices now, and laughter, someone announcing an arrival. She was fading into the shadows, moving away, but with one arm held out.
He followed her through the same low archway, and she said, “No, no—it was wrong of me!” She shook herself as if to free her body of something. “Go now, please go!”
He held her, kissing her shoulder again, lingeringly, and with a deep sensuality. There were more voices, closer. Someone look-ing for him, or for her.
He pressed the small silver sword into her hand and closed her fingers around it, then he walked through the archway and into the courtyard once more, his mind and body fighting every step, almost daring to hope she might run after him and prevent him from leaving. But all he heard was the sound of metal on stone. She had flung the little clasp away from her.
He saw Lieutenant Onslow peering out from the opposite doorway and felt something like relief.
“Captain Bolitho, sir! Sir Graham sends his compliments, but he is unable to receive you this evening. He is with Sir Lewis Bazeley, and before the guests arrived he thought—”
Adam touched his sleeve. “No matter. I will sign for my orders and leave.”
Onslow said lamely, “He wishes you every success, sir.”
Adam did not glance up at the balcony. She was there, and she would know that he knew it. Anything more would be insan-ity.
He followed the flag lieutenant into another room. While Onslow was taking out the written orders, Adam held out his hand and examined it. It should be shaking, but it was quite steady. He picked up the pen, and thought of Jago down there with the gig’s crew.
There were far more dangerous forces abroad this evening than cut-throats and thieves. Perhaps Jago had realised that also.
I wanted her. And she will know it.
He could hear her voice still. Then I shall yield.
The gig’s crew sat to attention when he appeared, and the bowman steadied the gunwale for him to step aboard. Jago took the tiller.
“Cast off!”
Captain Bolitho had said nothing. But he could smell per-fume, the same she had been using when they had carried her, almost insensible, below.
“Bear off forrard! Out oars!”
Jago smiled to himself. Get back to sea. Good thing all round.
“Give way all!”
Adam saw the riding light of his ship drawing nearer and sighed.
Destiny.
He closed the shutter and regained his seat beside the helms-man. By contrast it was even darker than ever now, and he could imagine the man enjoying his lieutenant’s uncertainty. He was Rist, one of Unrivalled ’s senior master’s mates, and the most experienced. The stars, which paved the sky from horizon to hori-zon, were already paler, but Rist navigated with the assurance of one who lived by them.
Galbraith watched the regular rise and fall of oars, not too fast, not enough to sap a man’s strength when he might need it most. Even they sounded particularly loud. He tried to dismiss it from his thoughts and concentrate. The cutter’s rowlocks were clogged with grease, the oar looms muffled with sackcloth; noth-ing had been left to chance.
He imagined their progress as a sea bird might have seen them, had there been any at this hour. Three cutters, each astern of the other, followed by a smaller boat which had been hoisted aboard Unrivalled under cover of darkness. Was it only two nights ago? It felt like a week since they had made that early morning departure from Malta.
It had been a quiet night when they had hoisted the other boat aboard, in spite of a steady breeze through the rigging and furled sails, quiet enough to hear the music carried across the har-bour from the big white building used by Vice-Admiral Bethune and his staff.
Galbraith had seen the captain by the quarterdeck rail, his hands resting on it as he watched the boat being manhandled into a position away from the others. His head had been turned towards the music, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.
Rist said quietly, “Not long now, sir.”
Galbraith failed to find comfort in his confidence. A point off-course and the boats might pass the poorly described and charted islet; and he was in command. When daylight came in a mere two hours’ time it would lay them bare, all secrecy would be gone, and the chebecs, if they were there, would make their escape.
There were thirty-five all told in the landing party, not an army, but any larger force would increase the risk and the danger of discovery. Captain Bolitho had decided to include some marines after all, only ten, and each man, as well as their own Sergeant Everett, was an expert shot. When Galbraith had car-ried out a final inspection of the party before they had disembarked he had noticed that even without their uniforms they managed to look smart and disciplined. The others could have been pirates, but all were trained and experienced hands. Even the foul-mouthed hard man, Campbell, was here in the boat. In a fight he would ask no quarter, nor offer any.
Halcyon’s second lieutenant, Tom Colpoys, was in the boat fur-thest astern. It would be his decision either to fight or to run if his leader encountered trouble.
Colpoys was a tough, surprisingly quiet-spoken man, old for his rank, and indeed the oldest man in the landing party. Gal-braith had been immediately aware of the respect he was shown by his own sailors, and of a calm assurance which could not have come easily to him. From the lower deck, he had probably served all kinds of officers before rising to that same rank.
It was good to know that he was second-in-command of what his young captain had called this “venture.”
Galbraith had taken part in several such raids throughout his varied service, but never in this sea. Here there was no running tide to cover your approach, no boom of surf to warn or guide your final decision to land.
He thought of the Algerine chebecs he had seen and had heard described by the old Jacks. They were laughed at by those who had never encountered them, as relics from a dead past, from the pharaohs to the rise of the slave trade. But those who had experience of them treated them with respect. Even their rig had improved over the years, so that they could outsail most of the smaller traders on which they preyed. Their long sweeps gave them a manoeuvrability which compensated for their lack of armament. A man-of-war, with a fully trained and disciplined company, but becalmed, could become a victim in minutes. A chebec could pull around the ship’s stern and fire point-blank with her one heavy cannon through the unprotected poop. And then the Algerines would board their victim, without either fear or mercy. It was said that the dead were the lucky ones, compared with the horrors which inevitably followed.
He saw Williams, one of Unrivalled ’s gunner’s mates, bending over the heavy bag he had brought with him. Another profes-sional, he had been entrusted with fuses, powder, and the combining of both into a floating inferno. Galbraith had seen him clambering over the small boat they had hoisted aboard, super-vising the placing and lashing of each deadly parcel. If anything could dislodge the chebecs, this miniature fireship would do it. If they were driven from shelter and forced into deeper water, even they would be no match for Unrivalled ’s speed and armament.
Galbraith wanted to wipe his face with his hand. “Ease the stroke—allow the others to see what we are about!”
He was surprised at the calmness of his own voice. At any moment a shot might shatter the stillness, another boat forge out from the invisible islet. Only the handful of marines had loaded muskets. Anything else would be madness. He himself had been in the middle of a raid when someone had tripped and fallen, exploding his musket and rousing the enemy.
It was no consolation now. He touched the hanger at his side and wondered if he would have time to load his pistol if the worst happened. And then he saw it. Not a shape, not an outline, but like a presence which must have been visible for a long time, and yet hidden, betrayed only by the missing stars which formed its backcloth.
He gripped Rist’s shoulder. “We’ll go in! Beach her!” After-wards he wondered how he had managed to grin. “If there is a poxy beach!”
Then he was scrambling through the boat, steadying himself on a shoulder here, an oarsman’s arm there. Men he knew, or thought he did, who would trust him, because there was no other choice.
“Boat your oars. Roundly, there!”
Galbraith heaved himself over and almost fell as the water surged around his thighs and boots, dragging at him, while the cutter plunged on towards the paler patch of land.
More men were over the side now, and one gasped aloud as he stumbled on hard sand or shingle. The boat grated noisily aground, men rocking and guiding the suddenly clumsy hull until it eventually came to rest.
Galbraith wiped spray from his mouth and eyes. Figures were hurrying away, like the spokes of a wheel, and he had to shake himself to recall the next details. But all he could think was that they had remembered what to do. Exactly as it had been out-lined to them on the frigate’s familiar deck. Yesterday . . . it was impossible.
Someone said hoarsely, “Next boat comin’ in, sir!”
Galbraith pointed. “Tell Mr Rist! Then go and help them to beach!”
And suddenly the small hump of beach was full of figures, men seizing their weapons, others making the boats secure, and the gunner’s mate, Williams, floundering almost chest-deep in water while he controlled the last boat in the procession.
Lieutenant Colpoys sounded satisfied. “They’ll lie easy enough here, sir.” He was peering up at the ridge of high ground. “The buggers would be down on us by now if they’d heard anything!”
“I’m going up to get my bearings, Tom.” Galbraith touched his arm. “Call me Leigh, if you like. Not sir, in this godforsaken place!”
He began to climb, Rist close on his heels, breathing heavily, more used to Unrivalled ’s quarterdeck than this kind of exercise.
Galbraith paused and dropped on one knee. He could see the extent of the ridge now, jutting up from nowhere. Like a cocked hat, one survey had described it. Darker now, because the stars had almost gone, and sharper in depth and outline as his eyes became accustomed to their barren surroundings.
Then he stood, as if someone had called to him. And there it was, the crude anchorage, with another, larger island beginning to be visible in the far distance. He swore under his breath. The one they should have landed on. Despite everything, he had mis-judged it.
He felt Rist beside him, watching, listening, wary.
Then he said, “Fires down yonder, sir!”
Galbraith stared until his eyes watered. Fires on the shore. For warmth, or for cooking? It did not matter. At a guess, they were exactly where his boats would have grated ashore. The rest did not bear thinking about.
Rist summed it up. “We was lucky, sir.”
Galbraith asked curtly, “First light?”
“Half an hour, sir. No cloud about.” He nodded to confirm it. “No longer.”
Galbraith turned his back on the flickering points of fire. It might be long enough. If it failed . . .
He quickened his pace, hearing Adam Bolitho’s voice. Mostly, it will be up to you.
And that was now.
He was not even breathless when he reached the beach. He had heard it said often enough that the British seaman could adapt to anything, given a little time, and it was true, he thought. Men stood in small groups, some quietly loading muskets, others checking the deadly array of weapons, cutlasses, dirks or boarding-axes, the latter always a favourite in a hand-to-hand fight. Colpoys strode to meet him, and listened intently as Gal-braith told him what he had seen, and the only possible location for an anchorage. Chebecs drew little water; they could lie close inshore without risk to their graceful hulls.
Colpoys held up his hand and said flatly, “Wind’s backed, si . . .” And grinned awkwardly. “It will help our ships.” He glanced at the one boat still afloat. “But it rules out sailing that directly amongst the Algerines. One mast and a scrap of sail— they’ll see it coming, cut their cables if necessary. No chance!”
Galbraith saw Rist nod, angry with himself for not noticing the slight change of wind.
He said, “But they’re there, Tom, I know it. Fires, too.” He pic-tured the other island, high ground like this. A lookout would be posted as a matter of course at first light, to warn of the approach of danger or a possible victim. It was so simple that he wanted to damn the eyes of everyone who had considered this plan at the beginning. Bethune perhaps, spurred on by some sharp reminder from the Admiralty? Whatever it was, it was too late now.
Colpoys said, “Not your fault, Leigh. Wrong time, wrong place, that’s all.”
Williams, the gunner’s mate, leaned towards them, his Welsh accent very pronounced.
“I’ve trimmed the fuses, sir. It’ll go up like a beacon, see?” If anything, he sounded dismayed that his fireship was not going to be used.
Colpoys said, “The wind. That’s all there is to it.”
Galbraith said, “Unless . . .” Stop now. Finish it. Pull out while you can.
He looked around at their faces, vague shapes in the linger-ing darkness. They had no choice at all.
“Unless we pull all the way. We could still do it. I doubt if they’ll have much of a watch on deck, as we would!”
Somebody chuckled. Another said, “Heathen, th’ lot of ’em!”
Galbraith licked his lips. His guts felt clenched, as if antici-pating the split second before the fatal impact of ball or blade.
“Three volunteers. I shall go myself.”
Colpoys did not question it or argue; he was already thinking ahead, reaching out to separate and to choose as shadowy figures pushed around him.
Two of Halcyon’s seamen, and Campbell, as somehow Gal-braith had known it would be.
Williams exclaimed, “I must be there, sir!”
Galbraith stared at the sky. Lighter still. And they might be seen before . . . He closed his mind, like slamming a hatch.
“Very well. Into the boat!” He paused and gripped Colpoys’ arm. “Take care of them, Tom. Tell my captain about it.”
He threw his coat into the boat and climbed down beside the carefully packed charges. A few voices pursued him but he could not hear them. Colpoys was wading with the others, pushing the boat away from the beach.
Four oars, and a hard, hard pull. He doubted if any of them could swim; few sailors could. For them, the sea was always the real enemy.
He lay back on the loom, his muscles cracking in protest. Williams took the tiller, a slowmatch by his foot shining like a solitary, evil eye.
Campbell said, “Nice an’ steady, lads! We don’t want to tire the officer, do we?”
Galbraith pulled steadily; he could not recall when he had last handled an oar. As a midshipman? Was he ever that?
Tell my captain about it. What had he meant? Because there was no one else who would care?
He thought of the girl he had hoped to marry, but he had been about to take up his first command, so the wedding had been postponed.
He closed his eyes and pressed his feet hard into the stretch-ers, sweat running down his back like ice water.
But she had not waited, and had married another. Why had he thought of her now?
And all for this. A moment’s madness, then oblivion. Like George Avery, matter-of-fact about some things, sensitive, even shy, about others. And the traitor Lovatt who had died in the captain’s cabin; perhaps he had had some purpose, even to the end . . .
Williams called softly, “Half a cable!”
Galbraith gasped, “Oars!”
The blades still, dripping into the dark water alongside. When he twisted round on the thwart, he saw what he thought at first was a single large vessel, but when he dashed the sweat from his eyes he realised there were two, chebecs, overlapping one another, masts and furled sails stark against the clear sky, rakish hulls still hidden in shadow.
He said, “We shall grapple the first one, and light the fuses.” He saw Williams nod, apparently untroubled now that he was here to do it. “Then we’ll swim for the land. Together.”
He paused, and Williams said gently, “Can’t swim, sir. Never thought to learn.”
One of the others murmured, “Me neither.”
Galbraith repeated, “Together. Take the bottom boards, we shall manage.” He looked at Campbell, and saw the evil, answering grin.
“I’d walk on water just to ’elp an officer, sir!”
The long bowsprit and ram-like beak-head swept over them, as if the chebec and not the boat was moving.
It was a miracle nobody had seen or challenged them.
Galbraith lurched to his feet and balanced the grapnel on his hand. Up and over. Now.
Even as the grapnel jagged into the vessel’s beak-head the stillness was broken by a wild shout. More like a fiend than some-thing human. Galbraith staggered and ducked as a musket exploded directly above him, the sickening crack of the shot slam-ming into flesh and bone so close that it must have passed within inches.
Someone was gasping, “Oh, dear God, help me! Oh, dear God, help me!” Over and over, until Campbell silenced him with a blow to the chin.
The fuse was alight, sparking along the boat, alive, deadly.
“Over, lads!” The water knocked the breath out of him but he could still think. No more shots. There was still time before the chebec’s crew discovered what was happening.
And then he was swimming strongly, Williams and the other man floundering and kicking between them. The wounded seaman had vanished.
Two shots echoed across the water, and then Galbraith heard a chorus of yells and screams. They must have realised that the bobbing boat under their bows was not merely a visitor.
It was madness, and he wanted to laugh even as he spat out water, trying to guess how far they had come, and if the Alger-ines had managed to stop the fuses. Then he gasped as his foot grated painfully between two sharp stones, and he realised that he had lost or kicked off his boots. He staggered into the shal-lows, one hand groping for his hanger, the other still clinging to the choking gunner’s mate.
Campbell was already on his feet, pulling the other seaman on to firm ground.
Galbraith wanted to tell them something, but saw Campbell’s eyes light up like the fires he had seen on the beach.
“Get down!” But it came out as a croak. Then the whole world exploded.
Adam Bolitho rested his hands on the quarterdeck rail and listened to the regular creak of rigging, the clatter of a block.
Otherwise it seemed unnaturally quiet, the ship forging into the deeper darkness, as if she was not under control.
He shivered; the rail was like ice. But it was not that and he knew it. He could see Unrivalled in his mind’s eye, ghosting along under topsails and forecourse; to set more canvas would deny them even a faint chance of surprise. He stared up at the main-topmast and thought he could see the masthead pendant licking out towards the lee bow. It would be plain for everyone to see when daylight finally parted sea from sky. To set the topgallants, the “skyscrapers,” would be a gift to any lookout.
He felt the twinge of doubt again. There might be nothing.
They had cleared for action as soon as they had cast off the boats. There had been no excitement, no cheering. It had been like watching men going to their deaths, pulling away into the darkness. Not just a captain’s decision. But mine.
He walked to the compass box again, the faces of the helms-men turning towards him like masks in the binnacle light.
One said, “Sou’-west-by-south, sir. Full an’ bye.”
“Very well.” He saw Cristie with a master’s mate. Their charts had been taken below; their part was done. The master was prob-ably thinking of his senior mate, Rist, who had gone with Galbraith and the others. Too valuable a man to lose. To throw away.
Suppose Galbraith had misjudged his approach. It was easy enough. It would give the enemy time to cut and run for it, if they were there . . . The slight shift of wind had been noted. Gal-braith might have ignored it.
He saw Lieutenant Massie’s dark shadow on the opposite side of the deck, standing in Galbraith’s place, but with his heart most likely with his gun crews. The eighteen-pounders were already loaded, double-shotted and with grape. It was inaccurate but dev-astating, and there would be little time to reload. If they were there.
He wondered briefly if Massie was still brooding over the rep-rimand he had been given. Resenting it, or taking it personally. What did one man matter in any case?
It was an argument Adam had heard many times. He could recall his uncle’s insistence that there had to be an alternative, beginning with the conditions under which men were forced to serve in times of war. Strange that Sir Lewis Bazeley had made the same point during that meal in the cabin. To impress the offi-cers, or had he really cared? He had drawn comparisons with the Honourable East India Company’s ships, where men were not ruled by the Articles of War, or subject to the moods and tem-per of a captain.
Adam had heard himself responding, very aware of the girl’s eyes, and her hand lying still on the table. The same hand which had later gripped his wrist like steel, refusing to release him.
“So what is the alternative for the captain of a King’s ship, Sir Lewis? Restrict their freedom to come and go, when they have none? Deny them their privileges, when they are afforded none? Cut their pay, when it is so meagre after the purser’s deductions that were it gone they would scarcely miss it?”
Bazeley had smiled without warmth. “So you favour the lash?”
Adam had seen her hand clench suddenly, as if she had been sharing it in some way.
He had answered, “The lash only brutalises the victim, and the man who administers it. But mostly, I think, the man who orders it to be carried out.”
He came out of his thoughts abruptly and stared at the mast-head. Colour. Not much, but it was there, the red and white of the long pendant, and even as he watched he saw the first touch of sunlight run down the topgallant mast like paint.
He took a telescope brusquely from Midshipman Cousens and strode to the shrouds, extending the glass as he moved. He rested it on the tightly packed hammocks and stared across the bow.
Land, fragments. As if they had been scattered by the gods.
He said, “Are the leadsmen ready, Mr Bellairs?”
“Aye, sir.”
Cristie said, “Closer inshore there’s some seven fathoms, sir.” He did not add, or so the notes state. He knew his captain needed no reminding. Seven fathoms. Unrivalled drew three.
Adam looked up at the gently bulging maintopsail. He could see most of it, the head in contrast with the foot, which was still in deep shadow. Not long now.
He steadied the glass once more and trained it slowly across the craggy humps of land. He could see the higher ground also, and that one small islet had a solitary pinnacle at its end, like something man-made.
“Bring her up a point. Steer sou’-west.” There was an edge to his voice but he could not help it. “Rouse the lookouts, Mr Wynter—they must be asleep up there!”
Suppose Galbraith had been taken by surprise and over-whelmed? Thirty-five men. He had not forgotten what Avery had told him about the barbarity of the Algerines towards their cap-tives.
He rested his forehead against the hammock nettings. So cool. Soon it would be a furnace here.
“Sou’-west, sir! Steady she goes!”
A quick glance at the topsails again. Steady enough. Braced close to the wind, such as it was.
He thought of Halcyon, in position by now on the other side of this miserable group of tiny islands. The trap was set. He touched his empty watch pocket and felt the pain again.
Somebody moved past him and he saw that it was Napier, his feet bare, as if to avoid being noticed.
Adam said, “We are cleared for action, Napier. You know your station. Go to it.”
He swung round and stared up again. Very soon now, and the whole ship would be in broad daylight. Or so it would feel.
He realised that the boy was still there. “Well?”
“I—I’m not afraid, sir. The others think I’m not to be trusted on deck!”
Adam stared at him, surprised that the simplicity could move him, even distract him at this moment.
“I understand. Stand with me, then.” He thought he saw Jago grin. “Madness is catching, it seems!”
“Deck there! Somethin’ flashin’ from the middle high ground!”
Adam licked his lips. The voice was Sullivan’s. Something flashing: it could only be one thing, early sunshine reflecting from a glass. A lookout. They were there.
Then came the explosion, which seemed to linger in a slow climax before rolling across the sea and sighing against the ship. Unrivalled seemed to quiver in its path.
“One craft under way, sir. ’Nother on fire!” Sullivan was barely able to contain his excitement, which was rare for him.
On the upper deck the gun crews were staring into the retreat-ing shadows or aft at the quarterdeck, trying to guess what was happening. A great pall of smoke had begun to rise, staining the clear, clean sky like something grotesque, obscene. There were more explosions, puny after the first, and smoke spreading still further as if to confirm the success of Galbraith’s attack.
But sails were moving, suddenly very bright and sharp in the new sunlight, and Adam had to force himself to see it as it really was. A vessel destroyed: impossible to guess how many had died to achieve that. But the explosion was on a different bearing, so that the alleged anchorage must also be wrongly charted.
Galbraith would stand no chance of getting away. Another chebec, perhaps two, were using the change of wind which had delayed his attack. They would escape. He steadied the glass again, ignoring everything but the tall triangles of sails, a flurry of foam as the chebec used her long sweeps to work around the blazing wreck, which was burned almost to the waterline.
Between and beyond was the gleam of water: the line of escape. And Halcyon would not be there to prevent it. He swallowed as a second set of sails moved from the smoke, like the fins of a marauding shark. They still had time for revenge. Galbraith’s boats would stand no chance, and even if his men broke and scat-tered ashore they would hunt them down and slaughter them. Revenge . . . I should have known that, only too well.
“We will come about, Mr Cristie! Steer nor’-east!”
They were staring at him, and he heard the reluctance in Cristie’s response.
“The channel, sir? We don’t even know if . . .” It was the clos-est he had ever come to open disagreement.
Adam swung on him, his dark eyes blazing. “Men, Mr Cristie! Remember? I’ll roast in hell before I leave Galbraith to die in their hands!”
He strode to the opposite side, ignoring the sudden bustle of seamen and marines as they ran to braces and halliards, as if they had been shaken from a trance.
The leadsmen were in position in the chains, one on either bow, their lines already loosely coiled, ready to heave.
Adam bit his lip. Like a blind man with his stick. There was not a minute more to measure the danger. There was no alternative.
He said, “Carry on! Put the helm down!” He saw Massie star-ing at him over the confusion of men already lying back on the braces, his face wild, that of a stranger.
Cristie stood near his helmsmen, one hand almost touching the spokes as the big double-wheel began to turn, and Unrivalled ’s figurehead gazed at what appeared to be an unbroken line of sun-scorched rocks.
Adam gripped the old sword and forced it against his hip, to steady himself. To remember.
His voice sounded quite level, as if someone else had spoken.
“Then get the hands aloft and shake out the t’gallants!”
He touched his face as the sun reached down between the flapping canvas, and did not see Bellairs pause to watch him.
Then he held out one hand, like someone quieting a nervous horse.
“Steady now! Steady!”
Trust.
Adam remained by the nettings and watched the shadows of Unrivalled ’s topgallants and topsails glide over a long strip of sand and rock, as if some phantom ship were in close company. Some of the gun crews and unemployed seamen were peering into the water, the more experienced to study the patches of weed, black in the weak sunlight, which seemed to line the side of the channel through the islands. They were bedded in rock, any one of which could turn the ship into a wreck.
As if to drive home their danger, the leadsman’s voice echoed aft from the chains. “By the mark ten!”
Adam watched the man hauling in his lead, his bare arm moving deftly, perhaps too engrossed to consider the peril beneath the keel.
Cristie said, “Narrows a bit here, sir.” It was the first time he had spoken since they had laid the ship on the new tack, and his way of reminding his captain that after this there would be less room to come about, even if that was still possible.
“Wreckage ahead, sir!” That was Midshipman Cousens, very calm, and aware of his new responsibilities now that Bellairs was promoted. Almost.
Adam leaned over to stare at the charred timbers as they parted across Unrivalled ’s stem. Galbraith’s people must have got right alongside the vessel to cause such complete devastation. Perhaps they had all been killed. Somehow he knew Galbraith had done it himself; he would never delegate, particularly when lives were at risk. And because I would expect it of him. It was like a taunt.
He could smell it, too. The boat must have exploded like a giant grenade; the fire had done the rest. There were corpses as well, pieces of men, lolling wearily in the frigate’s small wash.
“Deep six!”
If he went to the side he knew he would be able to see the ship’s great shadow on the seabed. He did not move. Men were watching him, seeing their own fate in him. Lieutenant Wynter was by the foremast, staring at another, larger island which appeared to be reaching out to snare them.
Adam said, “Let her fall off a point.” He saw Captain Bosan-quet with one of his corporals positioned by the boat tier. If she drove aground they would need every boat, perhaps to try and kedge her free again. But men in fear of their lives would see the boats as their only security, their link with the invisible Halcyon.
He looked at the masthead pendant again. How many times? Holding steady. If the wind backed again they would not weather the next island, with its headland jutting out like a giant horn. If, if, if.
He heard the big forecourse flap noisily, and felt the deck heel very slightly.
Jago muttered, “Just stow that, matey!” Adam had not realised that he was at his side.
“An’ a quarter six!”
Adam released his breath very slowly. Slightly deeper here. He had seen the splash of the lead hitting the water, but his mind had rejected it, as if afraid of what it might reveal.
“Deck there! Boats ahead! ” From his lofty perch Sullivan could very likely see over, if not beyond, the out-thrust headland, and on to the next leg of the channel.
Bosanquet snapped, “Put your men in position, Corporal!”
His best shots, although his chosen marksmen were with the landing party.
Adam said, “Over here, boy!” He swung Napier round like a puppet and pointed him towards the bows. Then he laid the tele-scope on his shoulder. “Breathe easily.” Surely the boy was not afraid of him? With the ship in real danger of being wrecked, perhaps overrun by Algerines, it was impossible. He steadied the shoulder, and said quietly, “This will show them, eh?”
He saw the leading cutter spring into focus, the oars rising and falling to a fast, desperate stroke. Another cutter was close astern, and the third appeared to be stopped, its oars in confu-sion. A man was hanging over the gunwale, others were trying to drag him from the looms. They had been fired on, the sound muf-fled by Unrivalled ’s shipboard noises. One officer, Halcyon’s second lieutenant, a seaman tying a bandage around his arm.
Even at this distance Adam could see Colpoys’ disbelief, when he turned and saw Unrivalled filling the channel.
And then he saw the chebec. She must have used her sweeps to cut past the wreckage and overhaul the three cutters. The great, triangular sails were filling, pushing the chebec over while her sweeps rose and froze in perfect unison. No wonder unarmed merchantmen were terrified of the Barbary pirates.
Adam gritted his teeth, and felt the boy stiffen as the leads-man’s chant came aft to remind them of their own peril.
“By th’ mark seven!”
He said sharply, “Stand to your guns, Mr Massie! Bow-chasers, then the smashers!”
He saw Massie look aloft. A split second only, but it said everything. If Unrivalled lost a spar, let alone a mast, they would never see open water again.
Adam rubbed his eye and laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder again. It was madness, but it reminded him of the instant she had raised her hand to strike him, and he had gripped her wrist with such force that it must have shocked her.
He said, “Still, now!” and winced as a bow-chaser banged out from the forecastle, the recoil jerking the planks even here at his feet.
He tried again, and then said, “Over yonder, boy. You look. Tell me.”
He thrust the long signals telescope into his hands, and tensed as another shot cracked out from forward. From a corner of his eye he saw one of the cutters passing abeam, suddenly dark in Unrivalled ’s shadow, men standing to yell and cheer when moments earlier they had been facing death.
There were more shots now, heavy muskets, and the sharper, answering crack of the marines’ weapons.
He felt something thud into the packed hammocks, heard the screech of metal as a ball ricocheted from one of the quarterdeck nine-pounders. Men were crouching, peering through open ports, waiting for the first sight of the chebec, waiting for the order as they had been taught, had had hammered into them day after day.
But Adam did not move an inch. He could not. He had to know.
Then Napier said in a remarkably steady voice, “It’s them, sir! On the headland! Four of them!” The significance of what he had said seemed to reach him and he twisted round, the telescope for-gotten. “Mr Galbraith is safe, sir!”
Then Massie’s whistle shrilled and the first great carronade lurched inboard on its slide, the noise matched only by the crash of its massive ball as it exploded into the chebec’s quarter. Tim-ber, spars, oars and fragments of men flew in all directions, but the chebec came on.
Massie gauged the range, his whistle to his lips. After one shot from the “smasher,” many men were too deaf to hear a shouted order.
The second carronade belched fire, and the ball must have exploded deep within the slender hull.
Adam called, “As you bear!” He gripped the boy’s shoulder. “I want them to know, to feel what it’s like!”
There was more firing in the far distance, like thunder on the hills: Halcyon in pursuit of the third chebec, her captain perhaps believing that his consort had been wrecked.
“By th’ mark . . .” The rest was lost in the crash of gunfire as Massie strode aft, pausing only to watch each eighteen-pounder fling itself inboard and pour a murderous charge into the stricken chebec. There were still a few figures waving weapons and firing across the littered water. Even when the final charge smashed into the capsizing hull Adam imagined he could still hear their demented fury.
“By the mark fifteen!”
Adam saw the lead splash down again, could picture the seabed suddenly sliding away into depths of darkness.
“We will heave-to directly, Mr Cristie.” He raised his voice; even that was an effort. “Mr Wynter, stand by to retrieve those boats. Inform the surgeon. I want him on deck when they come aboard.”
He stared at the headland, misty now with drifting smoke.
“I’ll take the gig, sir.” It was Jago. “Fetch Mr Galbraith.”
Adam said, “I’d be obliged.” He looked away as men hurried past him. “And, thank you.”
Jago hesitated by the ladder and looked over his shoulder. The captain was standing quite still as orders were shouted and, with her sails in disorder, his ship came slowly round into the wind.
He had kept his word. Jago could hear the boats pulling towards the ship, their crews exhausted but still able to cheer.
He heard the sailing-master say quietly to his mate, “Not a choice I would have cared to make, Mr Woodthorpe.”
Jago shook his head. Not yours to make, was it?
They were through.
Unrivalled had anchored that morning, with Halcyon entering harbour close astern. A moment of triumph, a lingering excite-ment after the short, savage encounter with the chebecs and the sheer pleasure of greeting a filthy but grinning Galbraith, his shirt scorched almost from his back, and his equally dirty but jubilant companions.
Adam had taken his report ashore, only to be told that Bethune was neither at his headquarters nor aboard his flagship Montrose. He had boarded one of the squadron’s brigs, and with Sir Lewis Bazeley had gone to examine potential sites for new defences in Malta and the offshore islands.
He had already noticed that the courier schooner Gertrude was in harbour, and she was preparing to weigh and make sail again by the time he had returned to Unrivalled. As was the way of fleet couriers.
He had been expecting a letter from Catherine, hoping for one. It was stupid of him and he knew it. She would be recov-ering from her loss, and would need time to decide what she must do in the immediate future and with the rest of her life. But he had hoped, all the same.
Instead, there had been this letter. The same neat, round hand-writing which had followed him from ship to ship, from despair to hope. Always warm, as she had been ever since that first day when he had arrived exhausted at the Roxby house after walking all the way from Penzance. From his mother’s deathbed.
Aunt Nancy, Richard Bolitho’s youngest sister, was the last person from whom he had been expecting to hear, and yet in his heart he knew there was none better suited to this task.
He walked to the stern windows and stared across at Halcyon, swinging to her cable and surrounded by harbour craft, with scar-let coats on her gangways to deter unwanted visitors. He had sent Captain Christie a copy of his report. Halcyon had done well, and between them they had lost only four men.
He looked at the letter again, as if his mind were refusing to lose itself in matters concerning the ship and the squadron. That other world seemed very close: rugged cliffs, treacherous rocks, and in contrast rolling hillside pastures and great, empty moors. A county which had produced many fine sailors, probably more than any other part of England. He could see Falmouth in his thoughts . . . the people, the quality of strength in its seamen and fisherfolk.
Where Belinda, whose hand had once rested on his cuff as he had led her up the aisle to marry Falmouth’s most famous son, had been killed. Thrown from a horse. Killed instantly, Nancy had written. And yet he could not come to terms with it. Perhaps he had never really known Belinda, or been close enough to under-stand what had destroyed his uncle’s marriage; she had always been beautiful, proud, but distant. She had been at the old house, and Adam could guess why, although the family lawyer had touched only in passing on it. Not wishing to trouble a King’s officer, fighting for his country’s rights.
And there was his cousin, Elizabeth. She would be about twelve or thirteen by now. She would stay with Nancy until things were “more settled.” Adam could almost hear her saying the words.
Nancy had also written to Catherine. The mare given to her by his uncle was now stabled at the Roxby house. Adam had known instantly that Belinda had been riding Tamara at the time of the accident.
The letter ended, “You must take good care of yourself, dear Adam. Here is your home, nobody can ever deny you that.”
The ink was smudged, and he knew she had been crying as she wrote, doubtless angry with herself for giving into it. A sailor’s daughter, and the sister of one of England’s finest sea officers, she had had plenty of experience of separation and despair. And now that her husband was dead she was alone once again. Elizabeth would be a blessing to her. He picked up the letter, and smiled. As you were to me.
Catherine was in London. He wondered if she was alone, and was surprised by how much it could hurt him. Absurd ...He glanced at the skylight, hearing voices, Jago’s carrying easily as he called out to the gig’s crew. Vivid memories: the leadsman’s chant, the closeness of danger on all sides, Massie and Wynter, and the boy who would rather risk death than take refuge below when the iron began to fly.
And he thought of Falmouth again. The house. The grave portraits, the sea always out there, waiting for the next Bolitho.
He turned almost guiltily as someone rapped at the door. It was Bellairs, who was assisting Wynter as officer of the watch.
“Yes?”
Bellairs glanced around the cabin. His examination was in orders, here in Malta. The next step, or the humiliation of failure.
“Mr Wynter’s respects, sir, and a new midshipman has come aboard to join.” He did not blink, although he must have been recalling his own time as a young gentleman.
“Ask Mr Galbraith . . .” He held up his hand. “No. I’ll see him now.”
Bellairs hurried away, mystified that his captain, who had just inflicted a crushing defeat on some Algerine pirates, should con-cern himself with such trivialities.
Adam walked to one of the eighteen-pounders which shared his quarters and touched the black breech. Remembering; how could he forget? Anxious, worried, even defiant because he had imagined that his first captain, his uncle, would find fault or cause to dismiss him on that day which was so important to him.
He heard the marine sentry say, “Go in, sir.” Guarded, yet to be proved. A midshipman was neither fish nor fowl.
He saw the newcomer standing by the screen door, his hat beneath his arm.
“Come over here where I can see you!” Again the assault of memory. They were the very words his uncle had used.
When he looked again, the youth was in the centre of the cabin, directly beneath the open skylight. Older than he had expected, about fifteen. With experience he could be very useful.
He took the envelope and slit it with the knife he had used earlier, feeling the midshipman’s eyes watching every move. As I did. All those years ago.
He was not new, but had been appointed from another frigate, the Vanoc, which had been temporarily paid off for a complete overhaul. His name was Richard Deighton. Adam raised his eyes, and saw the youth look away from him.
“Your captain speaks well of you.” A young, roundish face, dark brown hair. He would be fifteen next month, and was tall for his years. Serious features. Troubled.
The name was familiar. “Your father was a serving officer?” It was not a question. He could see it all more clearly than the chebecs of only three days ago.
The youth said, “Captain Henry Deighton.” No pride, no defiance.
That was it.
“Commodore Deighton hoisted his broad-pendant above my ship, Valkyrie, when I was with the Halifax squadron.” So easily said.
The midshipman clenched one fist against his breeches. “The rank of commodore was never confirmed, sir.”
“I see.” He walked around the table, hearing Jago’s voice again. He had been there too on that day when Commodore Deighton had been shot down, it was thought by a Yankee sharpshooter. Except that after the sea burial the surgeon, rather the worse for drink, had told Adam that the angle of entry and the wound were all wrong, and that Deighton had been killed by someone in Valkyrie’s own company.
The matter had ended there. Deighton had already been put over the side, with the boy John Whitmarsh and others.
But the faces always returned; there was no escape. The fam-ily, they called it.
“Did you ask for Unrivalled?”
The midshipman lifted his eyes again. “Aye, sir. I always hoped, wanted . . .” His voice trailed away.
Bellairs was back. “Gig’s alongside, sir.” He glanced at the new midshipman, but only briefly.
Adam said, “Take Mr Deighton into your charge, if you please. The first lieutenant will attend to the formalities.”
Then he smiled. “Welcome aboard, Mr Deighton. You are in good hands.”
As the door closed he took out the letter once more.
It was like seeing yourself again . . . something you should never forget.
He picked up his hat and went out into the sunshine.
Captain Victor Forbes leaned back in Bethune’s fine chair and raised a glass.
“I’m glad you chose to come ashore, Adam. I’ve been reading through your report, Christie’s too, and I’ve made a few notes for the vice-admiral to read on his return.”
Adam sat opposite him, the cognac and the easy use of his first name driving some of his doubts away. The flag captain was obviously making the most of Bethune’s absence, although it was apparent from the occasional pause in mid-sentence to listen that, like most serving captains, he was ill at ease away from his ship.
Forbes added, “I still believe that raids on known anchorages, though damn useful and good for our people’s morale, will never solve the whole problem. Like hornets, destroy the nest. Time enough later to catch the stragglers.”
Adam agreed and tried to recall how many glasses he had drunk as Forbes peered at the bottle and shook it against the fad-ing sunlight. “I’d have given anything to be there with you.” Then he grinned. “But with any luck Montrose will be a private ship again quite soon!”
“You’re leaving the squadron?”
Forbes shook his head. “No. But we are being reinforced by two third-rates, and about time too. Sir Graham Bethune will likely shift his flag to one of them. A damn nice fellow,” he grinned again, “for an admiral, that is. But I believe he is eager to leave, to get back to a stone frigate, the Admiralty again, most likely. I’ll not be sorry. Like you, I prefer to be free of flag offi-cers, good or bad.”
Adam recalled Bethune’s restlessness, his sense of displace-ment even in a world he had once known so well. And there was a wife to consider.
Forbes changed tack. “I hear that you’ve got a new midship-man, a replacement for the one who was killed. Deighton—I knew his father, y’ know. We were lieutenants together in the old Resolution for a year or so. Didn’t know him all that well, of course . . .” He hesitated and peered at Adam as though making a decision. “But when I read the account of your fight with the Yankee Defender, in the Gazette I think it was, I was a little sur-prised. He never really struck me as being in the death-or-glory mould, one who would fall in battle like that. His son must be proud of him.” He sat back and smiled. Like a cat, Adam thought, waiting to see which way the mouse would run.
“He was killed by a single shot. It is common enough.”
Forbes exclaimed, “Thoughtless of me! Your uncle . . . I should have kept my damn mouth shut.”
Adam shrugged, remembering when Keen had left Halifax to return to England for promotion and high command at Ply-mouth. And to marry again . . . Deighton was to remain as commodore in charge until otherwise decided. He could remem-ber Keen’s words to him, like a warning. Or a threat.
“Be patient with him. He is not like us. Not like you.”
He said, “How is Sir Graham getting along with his visitor?”
Forbes gave him the grin again, obviously glad of the change of subject.
“They both know about wine, anyway!”
Adam smiled. “Claret, of course.”
A servant appeared with another bottle but Forbes waved him away.
He said, “I shall be dining with the army tonight. Don’t want to let our end down!”
Adam prepared to depart. It had been a friendly, informal dis-cussion, but he had been a flag captain himself, and a flag lieutenant to his uncle. Both roles had taught him to sift fact from gossip, truth from rumour, and in this brief meeting he had learned that a new admiral was about to be appointed, and that Bethune would be leaving. The new flag would decide all future operations, as so ordered by the Admiralty. An aggressive demon-stration of sea power might deter the Dey from any further attacks on shipping, or from offering refuge to any pirate or turncoat who offered his services in return for sanctuary.
Forbes had made a point of not mentioning Lady Bolitho’s death, although it was no doubt common knowledge in a place like this. Adam himself had said nothing about it; it was private, if not personal. Belinda was dead. I never knew her. But was it so simple?
Forbes frowned as a shadow moved restlessly beneath the door.
“Not like a ship, Adam. Too many callers, always wanting things. I’d never make an admiral in a thousand years!”
Adam left, cynically amused. He could see Forbes as precisely that.
Outside he paused to study the copper sky. It was a fine, warm evening, and in England the summer was over. It would be the first Christmas without war. And without his uncle.
Forbes had also avoided mentioning Bazeley’s lovely young wife. He wondered if she had fared any better aboard the brig, with its cramped quarters and limited comforts. After an India-man and then Unrivalled, a brig would seem like a work-boat. Eyes watching her every move, men deprived of a woman’s touch, the sound of a woman’s voice.
He had told Jago to return to the ship, saying that he would take a duty boat from the jetty. He grinned in the shadows. He had been expecting Forbes to ask him to stay. Instead, he would return to his own, remote cabin.
Something moved in a doorway, and his hand was on the hilt of his sword in a second, unconsciously.
“Who is there?”
The action and strain had cost him more than he would have believed.
It was a woman. Not a beggar or a thief.
“Captain Bolitho. It is you!”
He turned in a patch of golden light and recognised Lady Bazeley’s companion.
“I did not know you were here, ma’am. I thought you would be with Sir Lewis and his lady.”
The woman stood very still, and he felt the intensity of her eyes, although her features remained hidden in shadow.
She said, “We did not go. Her ladyship was unwell. It seemed the safest thing to do.”
He heard footsteps, measured, precise, and relaxed again. It was the marine sentry at the gates, pacing his post, his mind doubtless far removed from this place.
The woman touched his arm, and then withdrew her hand just as quickly, like an unwilling conspirator.
“My lady would like to see you before you leave, sir. We saw you earlier in the day. And then you came back.” She hesitated. “It is safe, if you will allow me to lead.”
Adam looked back, but there was only silence. Forbes must have known that the women had stayed behind, but had made a point of not mentioning that either.
Was she really unwell, or was she merely bored, needing to be amused? At my expense.
He said, “Lead on, ma’am.” Perhaps she wanted to remind him of his awkward advances, his clumsiness. He thought of the leads-man’s cry. No bottom! What it had meant, after the risk he had taken for what Lovatt would have called a gesture, a conceit.
The woman walked swiftly ahead of him, untroubled by the rough paving where he guessed guns had stood in the past when Malta had been in constant fear of attack. Perhaps she was used to running errands for her mistress. He recognised the same para-pet as before, but knew it was at the opposite side of the rambling building, in shadow now, the old embrasures touched with colour from the melting light.
And the view was the same. When he had held her, and the invisible orchestra had offered its private gift of music. Ships anchored as before, some already displaying lights, topmasts cling-ing to the last copper glow, flags limp, barely moving.
And then he saw her, her gown pale against the dull stone, the fan open in her hand.
She said, “So you came, Captain. You honour us.”
He moved closer and took the hand she offered him.
“I thought you were away, m’ lady. Otherwise—”
“Ah, that word again.” She did not flinch as he kissed her hand. “I heard there was fighting. That you were fighting.”
It sounded like an accusation, but he said nothing. Nor did he release her hand.
She said in the same level tone, “But you are safe. I heard you laugh just now. Recognised it. Enjoying some of Sir Graham’s cognac in his absence, yes?”
He smiled. “Something like that. And you, I hear you were ill?”
She tossed her head, and he saw her hair fall loose across one shoulder.
“I am well enough, thank you.” She withdrew her hand slowly and deliberately, then turned slightly away, towards the ships and the harbour.
She said, “I was concerned, about you, for you. Is that so strange?”
“When we last met—”
She shook her head again. “No. Do not speak of it! There were so many things I wanted to say, to share, to explain. I could not even manage that unaided.”
There was a catch in her voice, more from anger than despair.
“I showed you arrogance when I wanted only to thank you for helping me as you did. There has been no word of it, so I knew you had said nothing.” She held up the fan to silence him. “Oth-ers would, and well you know it!”
He said, “Because I cared. I still do. You are another man’s wife, and I know what harm this might cause. To both of us.”
She did not seem to hear him. “I know that people talk behind my back. Giving myself to a much older man, because of power, because of wealth. I am not so young that I do not understand how they think.”
He said abruptly, “Walk with me.” He took her hand again, expecting her to resist, to turn on him, but she did neither. “Like old friends, you see?”
She held his arm and fell into step beside him. Only by the parapet could the sounds of the harbour and a nearby street reach them.
She said, “I spoke with your Captain Forbes. He told me of you and your family.” He felt her turn to look at him. “Your uncle. I knew some of it. I guessed some of it, too, when I heard you speak that night with such conviction, and when you were talk-ing with your men and did not know I was there.” He felt the pressure of her hand on his arm. “And then you helped me.”
“When you were sick.”
She laughed softly. “I was drunk, like some dockside slut!” She quickened her pace, and he could sense her mind moving, explor-ing it again. “He came to me that night, did you know? He is like that. He cannot believe that I need to be myself on occasion, a person—not some thing to arouse his passion!”
He said, “I think you should stop, m’ lady. I came here because I wanted to see you. Even if you had spat in my face, I would have come.”
She stopped by the parapet once more and stared at the anchored vessels. Almost to herself, she murmured, “Your world, Adam. Something I can never share.” She turned. “I did not marry from choice, or out of greed, for myself.”
Without realising what he was doing, he put his fingers to her lips.
“There is no need to tell me. I am not proud of some of the things I have done, or what I might have done, if my life had been different. So let this be a secret between us.”
Gently, firmly, she pulled his hand away.
“My father was a fine man, but when my mother died of fever he seemed to fall apart. Sir Lewis, as he now is, was his junior partner, a man of ambition. He was quick to come to his assis-tance.” She touched the buttons on his coat. “And he taught him how to enjoy himself again.” She laughed, a small, bitter sound on the still air. “Introduced him to others who would help to expand the business, the only thing he had left to care about. Gambling, drink . . . he would not listen to a word against Lewis. He could not see the ground opening beneath his feet. There were debts, broken contracts with government commissions, with the military as well as the navy. In the end,” she gave a little shrug, and Adam felt it like a blow, “prison was the only reality. We would have been left like beggars. My two brothers also work for the business. I was given little choice. No choice at all.”
He hardly dared to speak, afraid to break the moment.
“So he asked you to marry him, and then all the debts would be made good, and the business restored.”
“You know my husband,” she said. “What do you believe?”
“I believe I should go. Leave here without delay.” He felt her move as though she too would go, but he did not release her. “I know I have no right, and others would condemn me . . .”
She said softly, “But?” Only one word.
“That night, aboard my ship, I wanted you.” He pulled her closer, feeling her warmth, her nearness. Her awareness. “I still do.”
She leaned against him, her face in his shirt, perhaps giving herself time to recognise the danger, and the folly.
She said, “You have not been fed by the gallant Captain Forbes. I can at least do something about that.” She tried to laugh. “I can smell the cognac, so I was right about the pair of you!”
But when he held her again she was shivering.
“We will go inside . . . then you can tell me all about yourself.” She could not continue. “Come, now. Quickly. Banish all doubts!” She paused only to look at the harbour. “All that can wait, this once.”
Even though he had never set foot in the place before, he knew it was the same. Here Catherine had spent her last night with her Richard, in these rooms which Avery had found so difficult to describe, and of which Bethune had carefully avoided speak-ing, as if it was too painful even for him.
He walked to a window and eased the shutter aside very slightly and looked down into the courtyard, dark now but for the reflected glow from a copper dusk.
He heard the sentry at the gates stamp his feet, and the clink of metal as he shifted his musket, yawning at the dragging hours.
There were no lights in the windows opposite. Forbes had gone to dine with the army; the staff had probably been left to do as they pleased until Bethune’s return.
He felt his muscles contract. Voices now, very low, the sound of glasses. And when he closed the shutter and turned he saw her facing him from the other side of the room, her eyes very clear in the glow of candles which must have been arranged here earlier.
She said, “A little wine, Adam. It is as cool as can be expected. Some food can be sent for later.”
She watched him cross the room, and turned slightly so that the piece of silver at her breast shone suddenly like a flame. She wore a plain white gown which covered her from her throat to her feet, now bare on the marble floor.
He put his hands on her arms, and said, “You kept it. I thought you’d thrown it away.”
He touched the small silver sword and felt her stiffen as she answered, “I am wearing it for you. How could I not wear it?”
He lowered his mouth to her shoulder and kissed it, feeling the smoothness of her skin beneath the gown.
“The wine.” She pressed him away. “While it’s cool.”
He brought the glasses from the table and held one to her lips, and they looked at one another over the rims, all pretence gone, all reason scattered.
She did not resist or speak as he kissed her shoulder again, and each breast in turn until she gasped softly and put her arms around him, holding him there, her head moving from side to side as if she could no longer contain herself.
He stood, and held her at arm’s length, seeing the darker patches on the silk, where he had kissed and roused the points of her breasts.
There was a tall mirror on the wall and he turned her towards it, his hands around her waist, seeing the reflection of her eyes in the glass, then deliberately he unclipped the little sword, and opened and removed the gown. He looked over her shoulder, his face in her hair as he watched with her, as if they were on-lookers, strangers. Exploring her body, feeling every response like his own, until she twisted round in his grip and said, “Kiss me. Kiss me.”
He lifted her as he had the night aboard Unrivalled, holding her tightly as they kissed again. And again. He laid her on the broad bed and threw off his coat, and the old sword slid unno-ticed to a rug by his feet.
She propped herself on one elbow, and said, “No! Come to me now!”
He knelt beside her, his mind and reason gone as she strug-gled to free him from his clothes, pulling him down to kiss her mouth once more until they were breathless.
He gazed at her, hungry for her, the hair disordered across the pillows, the hands, suddenly strong, gripping his shoulders, one moment holding him away and then drawing him down to her body, her skin hot and damp as if with fever.
He felt her nails breaking his skin as he came against her, and she moved still further, arching her body until they were almost joined. Then she opened her eyes, and whispered, “I yield!” and gave a small, soft cry as he found and entered her.
It was like falling, or being carried along by an endless, unbroken wave.
Even when they lay exhausted she would not release him. They clung to one another, breathless, drained by the intensity of their congress, their need.
Hours later, after they had explored every intimacy, she sat on the bed, her knees drawn up to her chin as she watched him pulling on his breeches and shirt.
“A King’s officer. To everyone else but me.” She reached out impetuously and touched him again, held him, while he bent to kiss her. She had found and touched the old wound and had kissed the jagged scar, her passion roused again. No secrets, Adam . . .
When he looked again she was dressed in the thin robe, the silver clasp in place, as if the rest had been a wild dream.
A chapel bell was ringing tunelessly; someone was already awake. She opened the door, and he saw that fresh candles had been brought to light the stairs. Hilda, ensuring that nothing would go amiss.
He held her, feeling the supple limbs through the silk, want-ing her again in spite of the risks.
She said, “No regrets.” She was still looking after him when he reached the courtyard.
Her voice seemed to hang in the warm air. No regrets . . .
The guard at the gate was being changed, and a corporal was reading out the standing orders, too tired or too bored to see the naval officer striding past.
He paused in a deserted alley, which he thought was the one where he had purchased the little silver sword. He could still feel her, enclosing him, guiding him, taking him.
He thought he heard the creak of oars, the guard-boat, and quickened his pace.
But regrets? It was far too late for them now.
He stared at the date at the top of the page. 30TH September 1815. So much had happened, and yet at moments like these it was as if time had been frozen.
He thought of his conversation with Captain Forbes earlier in the evening he had ended in the room above the courtyard. That, too, was like a dream. But Forbes had been right in what he had told him, or rather what he had not told him. It had broken over the squadron just two days ago when Bethune had returned from his inspection of coastal defences with Sir Lewis Bazeley. It was no longer a rumour, but a fact. Bethune was leaving as soon as he was relieved. And that was today.
The two third-rates of which Forbes had also spoken had already been sighted by the lookout post ashore.
Adam laid down the pen and recalled his last meeting with Bethune, who had seemed pleased at the prospect of a new posi-tion at the Admiralty as assistant to the Third Sea Lord, with all the promise of advancement it would carry for him. But he had been on edge, evasive, although Adam had not known why. And then, with all the other captains and commanders of the squadron, he had partly understood the reason. The new flagship was Frobisher, which had been Richard Bolitho’s own, and now it was returning to Malta where so much had begun and ended.
The other arrival would be the eighty-gun Prince Rupert, which Adam had seen and boarded at Gibraltar. The big two-decker was no longer Rear-Admiral Marlow’s flagship, although Pym was still in command, and he had heard the flurry of spec-ulation as to why the new flag officer, a senior admiral, should hoist his flag over the smaller of the two ships.
He was convinced that Bethune, better than anyone, would know the answers. Lord Rhodes had been Controller at the Admiralty when Bethune had been there, and those who under-stood or were interested in such matters had been convinced that Rhodes had been put forward for First Lord, supported by no less than the Prince Regent. Then the appointment had been sus-pended, quashed, and now it was obvious that Rhodes had been given the Mediterranean station as an honourable demotion. Rhodes would not need reminding that Lord Collingwood, Nelson’s friend and his second-in-command at Trafalgar, had been given the same command. For some reason Collingwood had nei-ther been promoted to admiral nor allowed to return home, even though illness had forced him to apply many times for relief. He had died at sea, five long years after leading the Lee Division against the combined fleets of France and Spain.
And now Frobisher was here again. Different faces perhaps, but the same ship. New compared to most ships of the line, she would be about nine years old now, French-built, and taken as a prize on passage to Brest some five years back. He turned it over in his mind warily, like a hunter looking for traps. James Tyacke had been his uncle’s flag captain, and his predecessor had been a Captain Oliphant, a cousin of Lord Rhodes, a favour which per-haps had misfired. In one of her letters Catherine had mentioned meeting Rhodes just prior to the choice of flagship, and it had
Adam nodded. Not new flagship; Galbraith would know his captain’s thoughts about Frobisher, and how he would feel when he was summoned aboard for the first time. The memories, and the ghosts.
Galbraith said, “I have made certain that all hands will be properly turned out. Yards will be manned, and we will cheer-ship if necessary.” He smiled. “I understand that Admiral Lord Rhodes will expect it. Two or three of the older hands have served under him.”
Adam closed his log. That said it all. It was a long time since Rhodes had walked the deck of his own flagship; he would be looking for flaws, if only to prove he had forgotten nothing. Galbraith watched him impassively, recognising the signs.
“Our new lieutenant has settled into his rank quite well, sir. Though I fear Mr Bellairs will need a larger hat if he continues in this fashion!”
But there was no malice in the comment, and Adam knew he was as pleased as most of the others when Bellairs had returned from his promotional examination with his scrap of parchment, as the old timers called it. An extra lieutenant. That would not be tolerated, beneficial though it might be for running the ship.
Adam leaned back slightly. “There will be an opening in the squadron, or perhaps within the fleet before long.” He saw Gal-braith stiffen. It was the moment he had been hoping for, what every lieutenant dreamed of. “You held a command before you came to Unrivalled. Your experience and example did much to iron out the wrinkles, so to speak, before we were all put to the test. Perhaps we did not always agree about certain matters.” He smiled suddenly, the strain and the tension dropping away like the years. “But as your commanding officer I, of course, always have the advantage of being right!”
Galbraith said, “I am well content here, sir . . .”
Adam held up his hand. “Never say that. Never even think it. My uncle once described a command, especially a first one, as the most coveted gift. I have never forgotten it. Nor must you.”
They both looked at the glittering water beyond the anchored vessels astern as the first crash of cannon fire rolled across the harbour. The response, gun by gun, from the battery wall seemed even louder.
Adam said, “We’ll go up, shall we?”
He clipped on the old sword, then he said, “Mr Bellairs will have no sword as yet.” He gestured to his own curved hanger in its rack. “He may have that one if he chooses to wait until his parents do him the honour!”
He touched the sword at his hip. So many times. So many hands. And he was reminded of the note Catherine had written for him, and had left with the sword at Falmouth.
The sword outwore its scabbard. Wear it with pride, as he always wanted.
Frobisher was back. And he would know.
Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune winced as the Royal Marine guard of honour slammed to attention once more, a cloud of pipeclay floating over their leather hats like smoke while the band struck up a lively march. The ceremony was almost finished. Bethune could not recall how many he had witnessed or partici-pated in since he had entered the navy. Probably thousands. He tried to relax his muscles. Why, then, was he so disturbed, even agitated, when this was opening new doors to his own future?
He glanced at the man for whose benefit this ceremony had been mounted. His successor: to him it might seem the end of everything, rather than a fresh challenge.
Admiral Lord Rhodes was shaking hands with the governor’s representative, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Rhodes had been at the Admiralty when Bethune had been appointed there, and for a good many years before that, and they had met occasionally, but Bethune had never really known him. His elevation to First Lord had been taken for granted, until the day Sillitoe had burst unannounced into the office and had demanded to speak with Rhodes. Bethune had learned only then that he had been appointed the Prince Regent’s Inspector-General.
It had been Rhodes’ cousin, once Frobisher’s captain, who had attempted to rape Catherine. Because I allowed her to go home unescorted. He thought of Adam’s face when he had mentioned Rhodes’ particular interest in Sir Richard Bolitho’s flagship. He had been ashamed that he could conceal the full truth, but it would have helped no one, least of all Catherine, and he had to consider what old hatreds might do to his own future, as well as Adam’s.
But the much-used code of conduct failed to afford him any comfort. It seemed in this instance merely a device which placed expediency before honour and friendship.
He studied his successor once more. Rhodes was tall and heav-ily built, and had once been handsome. His face was dominated by a strong, beaked nose which made his eyes appear small by comparison, but the eyes, overshadowed though they were, missed nothing. The band was comprised of soldiers borrowed at short notice from the garrison commander, a friend of Captain Forbes; the frigates carried Royal Marine drummers and fifers but they had not yet paraded together. Rhodes had commented on the music, a military quick march, which he thought inappropriate.
The walls had been lined with people watching the ceremony, and Bethune had found himself wondering how long it would take news of Rhodes’ appointment to reach the Dey of Algiers.
He walked across the dusty jetty as the guard was dismissed and the onlookers began to disperse. He saw Sir Lewis Bazeley standing in the shade of a clump of sun-dried trees; how would he get along with Rhodes, if he stayed in Malta? An energetic man, eager, Bethune had thought, to impress on younger men what he could do, although Bethune could not imagine him hav-ing anything in common with the girl he had married. He had never known if Lady Bazeley had really been in ill health when she had declined to accompany them in the brig. He had thought about Adam’s presence here during that time, but Forbes had said nothing to him on the subject, and he was, after all, his flag captain.
And finally, he considered England, the grey skies and chill breezes of October. He smiled. It would be wonderful.
Rhodes strode over to join him. “Smart turn-out, Sir Graham. Standards—they count more than ever, eh?”
Bethune said, “I shall show you the temporary headquarters building, m’ lord. I have sent for a carriage.”
Rhodes grinned. “Not a bit of it, we’ll walk. I can see the great barn of a place from here!” He gestured to his flag lieutenant. “Tell the others!”
Bethune sighed. Another Bazeley, or so it seemed.
By the time they had gone halfway Rhodes was breathing heavily, and his face was blotched with sweat, but he had never stopped firing questions. About the six frigates in the squadron, and the expectations of getting more. About the many smaller craft, brigs, schooners and cutters which were the eyes and ears of the man whose flag flew in command.
They paused in deep, refreshing shadow while Rhodes turned to stare at the anchored men-of-war, shimmering in haze above their reflections.
“And Unrivalled ’s one of them, is she?” He looked at Bethune, his eyes like black olives. “Bolitho, what’s he like?”
“A good captain, m’ lord. Successful as well as experienced. What the navy is going to need more than ever now.”
“Ambitious, then?” He looked at the ships again. “He’s done well, I’ll give him that. Father a traitor, mother a whore. He’s done very well, I’d say!” He laughed and strode on.
Bethune contained his fury, at Rhodes and with himself. When he reached the Admiralty perhaps he could discover some way to transfer Adam. But not without Unrivalled. She was all he had.
Rhodes had stopped once more, his breathless retinue filling the street.
“And who is that, sir?”
Bethune saw a flash of colour on the balcony as Lady Bazeley withdrew into the shadows.
“Sir Lewis Bazeley’s wife, m’ lord. I explained—”
Rhodes grunted, “Women in their place, that’s one thing.” Again the short, barking laugh Bethune had often heard in Lon-don. “But I’ll not have them lifting their skirts to my staff!”
Bethune said nothing. But if it came to drawing a card, his own money would be on Bazeley rather than Rhodes.
And then he knew he was glad to be leaving Malta.
Luke Jago bowed his legs slightly and peered at Halcyon’s stout anchor cable to gauge the distance as the gig swept beneath her tapering jib-boom, then glanced at the stroke oar and over the heads of the crew, easing the tiller-bar until the flagship appeared to be pinioned on the stem-head. They were a good boat’s crew, and he would make certain they stayed that way.
He saw the captain’s bright epaulettes catch the sunlight as he leaned over to gaze at the anchored seventy-four.
Professional interest? It was more than that and Jago knew it.
Felt it. There were plenty of other boats arriving and leaving at God’s command.
Vice-Admiral Bethune at least had seemed human enough, and had obviously got on well with the captain. Now he had gone. Jago had seen Captain Bolitho and the first lieutenant watching the courier brig as she had made sail, with the vice-admiral her only passenger. Most senior officers would have expected something grander than a brig, he thought. Bethune must have been that eager to get away.
And now there was Lord Rhodes, a true bastard to all accounts. More trouble.
Jago looked at the midshipman sitting below him. The new one, Deighton. Very quiet, so far, not like his father had been. He wondered if the boy had any idea of the truth. Killed in action, for King and Country. His lip almost curled with contempt. Deighton had been scared rotten even before the ball had marked him down.
The flagship was towering over them now, masts and spars black against a clear blue sky. Every piece of canvas in place, paintwork shining like glass.
A ship, any ship, could look very different in the eyes of those who saw her. Jago knew from hard experience how it could be. To the terrified landsman, snatched from his daily life by the hated press-gang, the ship was a thing of overwhelming terror and threat, where only the strong and the cunning survived. To a midshipman boarding his first vessel she would appear awe-some, forbidding, but the light of excitement was already kindled, ready to be encouraged or snuffed out.
He looked at the captain’s shoulders, squared now as if to meet an adversary. To him, she would seem different again.
He saw him shade his eyes and raise his head, knew what he was looking for, and what it meant to him. Today. Now. The Cross of St George lifting and rippling from Frobisher’s mainmast truck: the admiral’s flag, where his uncle’s had been flying when they had shot him down.
He had died bravely, they said. Without complaint. Jago found he could accept it, especially when he looked at his own captain.
“Bows!” He did not even have to raise his voice. Other coxswains were here, watching, and there were several, grander launches with coloured canopies over their sternsheets.
Jago swore silently. He had almost misjudged the final approach to Frobisher’s main chains, where white-gloved sideboys were waiting to assist their betters to the entry port.
“Oars!” He counted seconds. “Up!”
The gig came to rest alongside perfectly. So you could crack an egg between them, as old coxswains boasted.
But it had been close. Jago had seen the canopied launches. It usually meant that women would be present, officers’ wives maybe, or those of the governor’s staff. But there was only one who trou-bled him, and he could see her now, half-naked, her gown soaked with spray and worse. And the captain holding her. Not scornful, or making a meal of it like some, most, would have done.
Adam got to his feet, one hand automatically adjusting his sword. For only an instant their eyes met, then Jago said formally, “We shall be waitin’, sir.”
Adam nodded, and looked at the midshipman. “Listen and learn, Mr Deighton. Your choice, remember?”
The midshipman removed his hat as Adam reached for the hand ropes. They heard the twitter of calls and the bark of com-mands, then he asked quietly, “You were there too, weren’t you? When my father . . .”
Jago answered sharply, “Aye, sir. A lot of us was there that day. Now take the tiller an’ cast off the gig, can you manage that?”
The youth dropped his lashes. It was as if Jago had told him what he had not dared to ask.
Above their heads, as the gig cast off to make way for another visitor, Adam replaced his hat and shook the hand of Frobisher’s captain, a lantern-jawed Scot named Duncan Ogilvie. He was well over six feet tall, and it was hard to imagine him living comfort-ably in any ship smaller than this.
“You must allow the admiral a few minutes to bid farewell to an early visitor.” He gestured vaguely with his head. “Commodore from the Dutch frigate yonder.”
Adam had watched her anchor and had felt the old uneasi-ness at the sight of her flag amongst the squadron’s ships. The flag of a once respected enemy, but an enemy for all that. It would take even stronger determination when the French ships began to appear. He turned to say something, but the other captain was already greeting a new arrival, and his eyes were moving swiftly beyond him to yet another boat heading for the chains.
Adam had been a flag captain twice, with his uncle and with Valentine Keen. It was never an easy appointment. To be Rhodes’ flag captain would be impossible.
A harassed lieutenant eventually found him and escorted him aft to the great cabin. Even with all the screens removed and furniture kept to a minimum, the whole of the admiral’s quarters was packed with uniforms, red and scarlet, and the blue and white of sea officers. And women. Bare shoulders, bold glances from the younger ones, something like disdain from the not so young.
The lieutenant called out Adam’s name and ship, and a marine orderly appeared as if by magic with a tray of glasses.
“Better take the red wine, sir. T’ other’s not much good.” Then, as an afterthought, he murmured, “Corporal Figg, sir. Me brother’s one o’ your Royals!” He hurried away, wine slopping unheeded over his sleeve.
Adam smiled. The family again.
“Ah, there you are, Bolitho!” It sounded like at last. Rhodes waited for him to push through the crowd, his head bowed between the deck beams. He was almost as tall as his flag captain.
Rhodes said loudly, “I don’t suppose you’ve had the pleasure of meeting Captain Bolitho? Commands one of my frigates.”
And there she was, smiling a little as she stepped from behind the admiral’s considerable bulk. She was all in blue, her hair piled above her ears, the luminous skin of throat and shoulders as he remembered.
She said, “On the contrary, Lord Rhodes, we know one another quite well,” and offered her hand deliberately, unaware or indifferent to the eyes upon them.
An officer was speaking urgently to the admiral, and Rhodes had turned away, obviously angered by the interruption.
As Adam raised the hand to his lips, she added softly, “I should have said, very well.”
They stood by the stern windows, watching their reflections in the thickened glass. They did not touch, but Adam could feel her as if she was pressed against him.
She said, “We shall be leaving Malta very soon.” She turned as if to follow another reflection, but the figure melted away and was lost in the throng.
Then she moved slightly, with one hand raised. “Look at me.”
Adam saw the little silver sword at her breast. There were so many things he wanted to say, needed to ask, but he could sense the urgency, the hopeless finality. Of a dream.
She said, “You look wonderful.” Her free hand moved and withdrew. As if she had been about to touch him, had forgotten where they were. “The bruise? Is it gone?”
Their eyes met, and he felt the irresistible thrill of danger as she murmured, “My mother said when I was a child and I hurt myself, I’ll kiss it better, Rozanne.” She looked away. “It was so beautiful, all of it.” Her lip quivered. “I shall not spoil it now.”
“You couldn’t spoil anything . . .” He lingered over the name. “Rozanne.”
He heard Rhodes’ voice again, and Bazeley’s, and their laugh-ter. She raised her chin, and said steadily, “You see, Captain, I love you!”
Bazeley said loudly, “Here she is!” and, as they turned, “Cap-tain Bolitho. More adventures, I hear!” He took his wife’s arm. “That’s a sailor’s life! Not for me, I’m afraid. I like to build things, not knock ’em down.”
Rhodes’ eyes were on Bazeley’s hand around her bare arm. “Sometimes we have to do one before we can afford the other, Sir Lewis!”
Bazeley grinned broadly. “There, what did I tell you?” He made a show of dragging out his watch. “I must make our excuses, m’ lord. I have to see some people.” He looked at Adam. “I wish you well.” He did not offer his hand, or remove it from her arm.
A lieutenant was waiting anxiously. “I have summoned your boat, Sir Lewis.”
Bazeley nodded, dismissing him. “Given the backing of Par-liament, we shall see Malta turned into a fortress. It makes me feel humble to be offered the task, huge though it is!”
They moved away into the crowd, but when Bazeley paused to speak with a senior army officer and clasp him ostentatiously around the shoulders, Rozanne turned and looked directly at Adam.
No words. Just the hand on the little silver sword, pressed against her breast. Nothing more was needed.
Rhodes was saying thickly, “If he’s humble, then I’m the bloody Iron Duke!”
Adam realised that Captain Forbes had joined him, and was holding two glasses, one of which he offered.
Forbes said, “Quite a gathering,” and sighed. “And ours is a private ship again, for better or worse.” Then he murmured, “I heard before you joined the squadron that you were not afraid to take a risk, if you considered it justified.” His eyes shifted to the admiral. “Now, I understand.”
When Adam looked again, she had gone.
Catherine Somervell turned away from the low stone wall and watched the coachman and groom adjusting the harness, and qui-eting the two horses which had just been led from the stables. A smart carriage, but it was strange not to see the familiar crest on its door. This one was Roxby’s. She smiled sadly, reminiscently. The King of Cornwall, as he had been known, affectionately for the most part, although not, perhaps, to those who had appeared before him in his capacity as magistrate.
She saw Roxby’s widow, Nancy, giving a parcel to the coach-man and emphasising something with a gesture. Food for the journey. Like Grace Ferguson at the old Bolitho house, Nancy always seemed to think she was not getting enough to eat.
She turned her back on the drive and the house and gazed at the nearest hillside. Smooth and green, and yet the sea lay just beyond it. Lying in wait . . .
She had stayed for a single night here with Richard’s youngest sister. Now she would return to Plymouth, where Sillitoe was waiting. She had had mixed emotions about meeting Valentine Keen again, but she need not have worried; he and his wife had made her more than welcome, and Sillitoe also. There had been no questions or hints, not even the revival of old memories. Keen would never change, and his second marriage was obviously a suc-cess. Gilia was exactly what he needed, and Catherine knew simply by talking to her that Keen was still unaware of Adam’s love for Zenoria.
Coming back to the old house below Pendennis Castle had been very hard for her. So many familiar faces, obviously delighted to see her again: Bryan and Grace, Young Matthew, so many of them. And one other. Daniel Yovell, Richard’s secretary, had moved back into his little cottage and Bryan Ferguson had signed him on as his deputy, with obvious relief. One of the little crew, as Richard used to call them. There had been no time to visit Fallowfield, and she still did not know if she was relieved or sad-dened by it. Seeing Allday again so soon might have been more than she could bear. With Keen and the others it was difficult enough; she thought Allday would have broken down her last defences.
Nancy joined her by the wall, wrapped in a thick shawl.
“There’ll be an early winter, I think.” Catherine felt the eyes on her, full of affection and anxiety. “If only you could stay a while longer. But if there’s anything you need, you have only to write and let me know.” She slipped an arm around her waist, like a young girl again. The girl who had been in love with a midship-man, the young Richard Bolitho’s best friend.
“We have many things to do before we sail for Spain, Nancy. I have so enjoyed being here with you.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
“You mustn’t worry about Tamara. She’ll be well exercised and cared for, until . . .” She broke off. “You know what I mean.”
Catherine said deliberately, “I am not living at Chelsea now, Nancy. I am staying at Lord Sillitoe’s house in Chiswick.” She had started; she could not stop. “I have never felt the same about the Chelsea house since that night.” She felt Nancy’s grip tighten around her waist. “Sometimes of late I have seen men watching the house, or imagined I have. Waiting for a chance to see that woman.”
Nancy asked softly, “Shall you marry this Sillitoe? It is obvi-ous to me that he adores you, and rightly so. Remember, I did not marry Roxby for love, but it grew to something even stronger. I still miss him.”
They turned away from the wall to face the carriage. It was time.
Catherine said, “He gave up his appointment to the Prince Regent because of me. I shall not destroy his life as well with another scandal.” She inclined her head, as if someone had spo-ken to her. “I shall tell you, you of all people.”
There were faces at the upper windows, servants looking out as that woman prepared to leave their ordered world. And Eliza-beth would be here tomorrow. Another challenge, for both of them. Nancy had sent her to Bodmin with her governess to arrange for some more appropriate clothing and to see something of the town.
Growing up fast, Nancy had said. A withdrawn, demure child who had been too long in the company of older people. She had told Catherine about the day following the girl’s arrival. It had been hard to tell how she had been affected by her mother’s untimely death, and even now she was still not sure.
But on that day Nancy had taken her down to one of the beaches where Catherine had so often walked with Richard. Some children had been standing in the shallows, hunting for shells, Nancy thought. Elizabeth had remarked on their bare feet. Had the children no shoes? Were they too poor to own them?
She had said, “My word, when I think what we used to do at her age!”
Catherine turned and embraced her with great feeling.
“I shall never forget your kindness, and your love. I have always known why Richard cared so much for you.”
The door was open, a gloved hand was held out to support her wrist, Nancy was crying, and suddenly the wheels were moving.
Out on to the road, which ran in the other direction to the old grey house. Where she had waited, and hoped, for the sound of his voice.
When she looked again, the hillside had moved out to hide the house and the small figure who was still waving.
She sat back against the soft leather and stared at the parcel wrapped in its spotless napkin. His old boat-cloak was folded beside it, which she had always worn when the wind was blow-ing coldly off the Bay. There were scissors in the pocket, and she had found one rose still alive and blooming in that familiar garden.
But she had been unable to cut it. And was glad. It was a part of her. It belonged there.
The last rose.
Unis Allday knotted the ties of a fresh apron behind her back and gave herself a critical glance in the parlour glass. The first cus-tomers would be arriving soon, most likely buyers and auctioneers on their way to market in Falmouth, and it would be busy at the Old Hyperion inn. She checked each item in her mind, as she did every day. Deliveries of meat and fowl, ale from the brewery.
She walked to the door of the Long Room. Rugs brushed clean of the mud from farm workers’ boots, shining mugs and fashionable glasses for the salesmen, and a fire burning in the grate even though it was only October.
A carter had told her that fishermen had reported heavy mist around Rosemullion Head. They were all talking of an early winter.
Little Kate was out walking with Nessa, the new servant at the inn, a tall, dark woman who rarely smiled but had drawn many an admiring glance nevertheless. Not least from Unis’s brother, the other John. She was younger than he, but Unis thought she would be good for him; it would be a new begin-ning for both of them. Nessa had fallen for a soldier from the garrison at Truro; it was a familiar enough tale. She had carried and lost his child, and her lover had been posted with unseemly haste to the West Indies.
Nessa’s parents were good chapel people, well known in Falmouth for their strict Christian beliefs. They had turned their daughter out of the house without hesitation.
Unis had taken her into the inn and she had settled down, perhaps grateful for Unis’s trust, and her own sturdy interpreta-tion of Christian charity.
The door from the stable yard swung open and John Allday strode into the parlour.
She knew instantly that something was wrong with him, her man, her love. She also thought she knew what it was.
Allday said heavily, “I just seen Toby the cooper’s mate. He told me Lady Catherine was up at the house. Yesterday, he said.” It sounded like an accusation.
She faced him; she had been right. “I did hear something about it.” She put a hand on his sleeve; it looked very small and neat on his massive arm.
“You never said?”
She regarded him calmly. “And well you knows why, John. You’re coming to terms with things. So let you think of her, too. Poor lamb, she’s got more’n enough to carry.”
Allday smiled fondly. Small, neat and pretty. His Unis. But woe betide anyone who tried to take advantage of her. She was strong. Stronger than me in many ways.
They walked to the window together. The place had been in debt when she had bought it. Now it was prospering and looked pleased with itself. One of the ostlers was doing his usual trick with a potato, making it disappear in mid-air and then holding out both tightly clenched fists and letting little Kate choose the one where it was hidden. The child was thinking about it now, her face screwed up with concentration, while Unis’s brother stood nearby, watching the dark-haired Nessa.
The child tapped a fist, and it was of course empty, and she screamed with delight and frustration. It never failed.
“We’ve done well, John.” And they were widening the lane across Greenacre Farm; coaches would be stopping here soon. People had laughed at old Perrow when the plan had been made public, but they would be laughing on the other sides of their faces before long. The wily squire would charge a toll for every coach that crossed his land.
Allday said, “You’ve done well, lass.”
It was there again, the old sense of loss. Like when he had told her about Captain Tyacke calling at Falmouth in his new command.
She heard her brother’s wooden leg thudding across the floor, and wondered what Nessa thought about that, or if she had even guessed his feelings for her.
He said, “Someone asking for you, John.”
Allday came out of his thoughts. “Me? Who is it?”
He grinned. “Didn’t offer, John.” He added, “Odd-looking cove. Knows you right enough.”
Allday opened the other door and stared past the fire. There were two people in the room already, a black dog snoozing between them.
For a moment he thought he was mistaken. The wrong sur-roundings. The wrong background.
Then he strode across the room and grasped the newcomer around his narrow shoulders.
“Tom! In God’s name, Tom Ozzard! Where in hell have you been hiding?”
“Oh, here and there. Up home in London, mostly.”
“Well, I’ll be double-damned! You skipped off the ship the minute we was paid off. Not a word out of you. What are you doing here?”
Ozzard had not changed in one way. He was as curt and abrupt as ever, the pointed features unsmiling.
He said, “Thought you’d have a corner where I could pipe down before moving on.”
Moving on. Up home in London. Ozzard had no home.
“Course you can stay, you old bugger!”
Unis observed this from the doorway, seeing all things which her beloved John did not see, or want to see. The split shoes, and the threadbare coat with its missing button, the fading hair tied back with a piece of worn ribbon. But this man was part of a world which she could only share at a distance, the life which had taken one husband and had given her another, this big, sham-bling man who was so glad to see one of its ghosts return. He had spoken often of Ozzard, Sir Richard’s personal servant. Like Ferguson, joined now by Yovell up at the house, he was part of the little crew.
She said gently, “I’ve some stew on the fire. Maybe you’ve not eaten yet.”
Ozzard stared at her with eyes which were almost hostile. “I haven’t come because I need anything!”
Allday said quietly, “Easy, Tom. You’re among friends here,” and frowned as voices echoed from the yard. The first of the road labourers were arriving.
Unis was aware of two things. That Ozzard was wary, even distrustful of women, and that her John’s pleasure was changing to distress.
She said, “Come into the parlour. That lot are too noisy for greeting old friends.”
Ozzard sat silently at the table, staring around the room until his eyes came to rest on the model of Hyperion in its place of honour.
Allday wanted to talk, if only to reassure him, but was afraid to break something so tentative, so fragile.
Unis was stirring the pot in the kitchen, but her mind was elsewhere.
She said over her shoulder, “Of course, you being used to Sir Richard an’ the likes of other naval gentlemen, you’ll know all
about wines an’ that like.”
Ozzard said suspiciously, “More than some, yes.”
“I was thinking. With the trade improving on this road, you could be a help to us. To me. There’s a room over the tack store. You’d be more’n welcome until you want to move on again.”
She sensed Allday’s pleasure and added casually, “I can’t vouch for the money though.”
She had to say something, she thought. Anything. She had noticed the torn cuffs and broken, dirty nails. But he was one of the men who had been with her John and Sir Richard in battles she dared not even begin to imagine.
She came over with the bowl and said, “Game stew. Get that inside you, an’ think about what I said.”
Ozzard bowed his head and blindly picked up the spoon. Then he broke.
“I’ve got nowhere else,” was all he said.
Much later, when they were alone together, and the inn was quiet until the new day, Allday held her in his arms and mur-mured, “How did you know, Unis love?”
She pulled his shaggy head down to her breast. “Cause I knows you, John Allday. An’ that’s no error!”
She could taste the rum in his kiss, and she was content.
With both of Unrivalled ’s capstans fully manned and every available seaman putting his weight on the bars, the cable was barely moving. Adam Bolitho stood by the quarterdeck rail, his hands clasped beneath his coat-tails, watching the strange light and the low, scudding clouds. The harbour walls, like the water-front buildings, seemed to glow with a dull yellow texture, and although it was morning it seemed more like sunset.
The wind had risen slightly, hot against his face, and he tasted grit between his teeth, as if they were already standing off some desert shore. He heard Midshipman Sandell shout impatiently, “Start that man! Put some weight on the bars there!”
And, instantly, Galbraith’s curt, “Belay that! The cable’s mov-ing at last!” He sounded impatient, frustrated, perhaps because of the time wasted here in Malta since Admiral Lord Rhodes had hoisted his flag, which had been followed by this sudden order to get the ships under way.
Clank. The iron pawl of the capstan dropped into position. Clank, and then the next one.
Someone said, “Flagship’s cable is shortening, sir!”
Galbraith retorted, “They have six hundred idle hands to play with!”
Adam looked forward where Massie was peering through the beak-head to watch the bar-taut cable. All of Unrivalled ’s ton-nage and the pressure of wind, set against muscle and sweat.
Clank. Clank. As if to a signal he heard the scrape of a violin and then the shantyman’s quavery voice. So many times. Leaving harbour. For the sailor the future was always unknown, like the next horizon.
When first I went to sea as a lad . . .
Heave, me bullies, heave!
A fine new knife was all I had!
Heave, me bullies, heave!
Adam relaxed slightly. To sea again. But this time under the Flag. The fleet’s apron strings, as he had heard other frigate cap-tains describe it.
And I’ve sailed for fifty years an’ three
Heave, lads, heave!
It was coming in faster now, the capstans turning like human wheels.
To the coasts of gold and ivory!
Midshipman Sandell hurried past, pointing out something to the new member, Midshipman Deighton.
He had heard Jago remark, “Look at ’im, will you? Cocking his chest like a half-pay admiral!”
Another memory. What Allday had often said to describe some upstart.
He thought of Admiral Rhodes’ hurried conference aboard the flagship. He had received news of another unwarranted attack on some innocent fishermen. A battery had fired on the vessels, and then chebecs had appeared as if from nowhere and had captured or massacred the luckless crews. One of the squadron’s armed schooners had been nearby and had attempted to offer assistance, only to be driven off herself. It had been a close thing, to all accounts.
Rhodes had been beside himself with anger. An example must be made, before the weather changed yet again. He would delay no longer; all available ships must be ready to sail.
The squadron had been reinforced by a bomb vessel named Atlas. She had sailed at first light with Matchless as escort.
Adam knew from experience that bomb vessels were difficult at the best of times, being clumsy and unhandy sailers. To use just one such craft without waiting for promised reinforcements would be asking for trouble, no matter how experienced her company might be.
At the captains’ conference aboard Frobisher he had said as much. Rhodes had turned on him instantly, as if he had been waiting for the chance.
“Of course, Captain Bolitho. I almost forgot! A frigate captain of your style and record would condemn the more controlled approach.”
Only Captain Bouverie of Matchless had laughed. The others had waited in silence.
Rhodes had continued, “No daring cutting-out, or some hand-to-hand skirmish with undisciplined renegades, so you consider this is not a useful undertaking!”
“I resent that, my lord.” The words had hung in the air, while Rhodes had made a point of studying one of his charts. “To break the Dey’s hold over the Algerine pirates, as he chooses to call them when it suits his purpose, a fleet action will be required.”
Rhodes had shrugged. “Knowledge is not necessarily wisdom, Captain Bolitho. I trust you will remember it.” He had looked pointedly at the others. “All of you.”
The shantyman’s reedy voice broke into his thoughts again.
And now at the end of a lucky life!
Massie yelled from the forecastle, “Anchor’s hove short, sir!”
Adam nodded, satisfied. “Loose the heads’ls!” He stared up at the braced yards. “Hands aloft and loose tops’ls!”
Midshipman Cousens, who had not lowered his telescope and was still watching the flagship, shouted, “Signal from Flag, sir! General ...Make haste! ”
Adam saw the wind feeling its way into the loosely brailed topsails. It was easy to contain your anger when the enemy was so obvious.
The shantyman ended with a flourish, “Well, still I’ve got that same old knife!”
“Anchor’s aweigh, sir!”
Adam walked to the opposite side to watch the land sliding away, as more men released from the capstan bars hurried to add their weight to the braces, to haul the yards round and capture the wind.
He took a telescope from its rack and trained it on the ancient battlements, and the gaping embrasures where cannon had once dominated the harbour. Where they had held one another. And had loved, impossible though it was to believe.
Galbraith had found him on deck during the morning watch, and had probably imagined he had risen early to see the bomb vessel and the weed-encrusted Matchless clearing the harbour.
Or had he guessed that he had been watching the third ship making an early departure, tall and somehow invulnerable with her spreading canvas. A merchantman, the Aranmore, bound for Southampton. Had she also been on deck to watch the anchored men-of-war, he wondered? Had she already forgotten, or locked it away, another hidden secret?
He said, “Take station on the Flag, Mr Galbraith, and lay her on the starboard tack once we are clear.” He tried to smile, to lighten it. “As ordered, remember?”
He paced to the compass box and back again. And then there was Catherine’s letter. Perhaps it would have been better to have sailed earlier, before the latest courier had anchored. My dear Adam . . .
What, after all, had he expected? She had nobody to care for her, to protect her from malicious gossip and worse.
He raised the glass again and waited for the image to focus on the first patch of windblown water. Frobisher. Much as she had been when she had quit Malta with his uncle’s flag at the main. He had felt it when he had walked her deck, sensed it in the watching faces, though few, if any, could have been aboard on that fatal day.
He lowered the glass and looked at his own ship, the seamen flaking down lines and securing halliards. In spite of everything, he had seen the bond grow and strengthen. They were one company.
Perhaps he was wrong about Rhodes, and a show of force was all that it needed. But in his heart he knew it was something else. Unsaid, like that which Bethune had left behind, as dangerous as Unrivalled ’s shadow on the seabed when they had entered the shallows.
He saw Napier coming aft with something on a covered tray. The boy who had trusted him enough to come and tell him of Lady Bazeley’s plight. He laid his palm briefly on the polished wood of the ladder where she had been lying helpless.
He should be able to accept it. Instead, he was behaving like some moonstruck youth.
He heard Cristie give a little cough, waiting to make his report, course to steer, estimated time of arrival. Then the purser would come: provisions and fresh water, and this time, no doubt with Forbes’ influence, some welcome casks of beer from the army.
“Signal from Flag, sir!” Midshipman Cousens sounded sub-dued. “Make more sail!”
“Acknowledge.” Adam turned away and saw Midshipman Deighton speaking with the newly-minted lieutenant, Bellairs. It gave him time to think, to recall Forbes’ words on board Frobisher. Not afraid to take a risk if you thought it justified.
He said, “Be patient, Mr Cousens. I fear you will be much in demand until we sight an enemy!”
Those around him laughed, and others who were out of earshot paused in their work as if to share it.
Adam looked through the great web of spars and rigging. Per-haps Rhodes was watching Unrivalled at this very moment.
Aloud he said, “I’ll see you damned, my lord! ”
Bellairs watched the captain walk to the companion-way and then gave his attention to the new midshipman again. It was hard to believe that he had been one himself, and so recently given his commission. It would make his parents in Bristol very proud.
The war was over, but for the navy the fighting was never very far away. Like this new challenge, the Algerine pirates. He found violent death more acceptable than the prospect of life as one of those he had seen left wounded and hopelessly crippled.
He touched the fine, curved hanger at his side. He had been astounded when the first lieutenant had told him of the captain’s offer.
He suddenly realised what Midshipman Deighton had been asking him about the ship and her young captain.
He said simply, “I’d follow him to the cannon’s mouth.”
He touched the hanger again and grinned. A King’s officer.
Midshipman Cousens lowered the big signals telescope and dashed
spray from his tanned features with his sleeve.
“Boat’s casting off from the flagship now, sir!”
Lieutenant Galbraith crossed to the nettings and stared at the lively, broken water, the crests dirty yellow in the strange glare. The weather had worsened almost as soon as they had left Malta, wind whipping the sea into serried ranks of angry waves, spray pouring from sails and rigging alike as if they were fighting through a tropical rainstorm. If the wind did not ease, the ships would be scattered overnight. As they had been last night, and they had struggled to reform to the admiral’s satisfaction.
As Cristie had often said, the Mediterranean could never be trusted, especially when you needed perfect conditions.
He saw the cutter staggering clear of Frobisher’s glistening side; it was a wonder that it had not capsized in its first crossing. To use the gig had been out of the question. A cutter was heav-ier and had the extra brawn to carry her through this kind of sea.
He had been both doubtful and anxious when Captain Bolitho had told him he was going across to the flagship to see Rhodes in person, after three signals to the admiral requesting an audi-ence. Each had been denied without explanation, as was any admiral’s right. But it was also the right of any captain to see his flag officer, if he was prepared to risk reprimand for wasting the great man’s time.
With his own coxswain at the tiller Bolitho had headed away, his boat-cloak black with spray before they had covered a few yards. It would not have been the first time a captain had been marooned aboard a flagship because of bad weather. Suppose it had happened now? The captain would have had to endure the sight of his own command hove-to under storm canvas, and another man’s voice at the quarterdeck rail. Mine.
He watched the cutter lifting, porpoising slightly before rid-ing the next trough of dark water, the oars rising and dipping, holding the hull under control. At other times he could scarcely see more than the bowed heads and shoulders of the boat’s crew, as if they were already going under.
Galbraith felt only relief. He had heard the rumours about Bolitho’s disagreement with the admiral at the last conference, the hostility and the sarcasm, as if Rhodes were trying to goad him into something which would be used against him. It was some-thing personal, and therefore dangerous, even to others who might be tempted to take sides in the matter.
The cutter plunged into a trough and then lifted her stem again like a leaping porpoise. Even without a glass he could see the grin on the captain’s face, stronger than any words or code of discipline. He had seen it at first hand in action, when these same men had doubted their own ability to fight and win, had seen how some of them had touched his arm when he had passed amongst them. The victors.
He called sharply, “Stand by to receive the captain!”
But the boatswain and his party were already there. Like himself, they had been waiting with their blocks and tackles, per-haps without even knowing why.
He saw a small figure in a plain blue coat, drenched through like the rest of them: Ritzen, the purser’s clerk. A quiet, thought-ful man, and an unlikely one to spark off a chain of events which might end in a court martial, or worse. But Ritzen was different from the others around him. He was Dutch, and had signed on with the King’s navy when he had been rescued by an English sloop after being washed overboard in a storm and left for dead by his own captain.
Ritzen had been ashore in Malta with Tregillis, the purser, buying fruit from local traders rather than spend a small fortune at the authorised suppliers. He had fallen in with some seamen from the Dutch frigate Triton which had called briefly at the island. Her captain, a commodore, had paid a visit to Lord Rhodes.
Galbraith could recall the moment exactly, after another long day of sail and gun drill, and a seemingly endless stream of sig-nals, mostly, it appeared, directed at Unrivalled.
Everyone knew it was wrong, unfair, but who would dare to say as much? Galbraith had gone to the great cabin, where he had found the captain in his chair, some letters open on his lap, and a goblet of cognac quivering beside him to each thud of the tiller head.
Despair, resignation, anger: it had been all and none of them.
After reporting the state of the ship and the preparations for station-keeping overnight, Galbraith had told him about the purser’s clerk. Ritzen had overheard that the Dutch frigate was on passage to Algiers, her sale already approved and encouraged by the Dutch government. It had been like seeing someone com-ing alive again, a door to freedom opening, when moments earlier there had been only a captive.
“I knew there was something strange when I heard it aboard Frobisher! ” Adam had gone from the chair to the salt-stained stern windows in two strides, the dark hair falling over his fore-head, the weight of command momentarily forgotten. “A commodore in charge of a single frigate! That alone should have told me, if nobody else was prepared to!”
Perhaps Rhodes had forgotten, or thought it no one else’s busi-ness. Maybe Bethune’s records had not been examined. Galbraith thought it unlikely, and when he had seen the light in the cap-tain’s eyes he knew it for certain.
“I shall see the admiral . . .” He must have seen the doubt in Galbraith’s face. To risk another confrontation, and all on the word of the purser’s clerk, seemed reckless if not downright dan-gerous. But there had been no such doubt in Bolitho’s voice. “Such intelligence is valuable beyond measure, Leigh! To any sea officer, time and distance are the true enemies. This man spoke out, and I intend that his words should be heard!”
He had stared at the leaping spectres of spray breaking across the thick glass, and it had been then that Galbraith had seen the locket on the table beside the goblet. The beautiful face and high cheekbones, the naked shoulders. He had never laid eyes on her, but he had known that it was Catherine Somervell. That woman, who had scorned society and won the hearts of the fleet, and of the nation.
Galbraith stood back from the dripping hammock nettings. He was soaked to the skin, but he had felt nothing. He suppressed a shiver, but it was not cold or fear. It was something far stronger.
“After you have secured the cutter, Mr Partridge, pass my compliments to the purser and have a double tot issued to the boat’s crew.” He saw the little clerk staring up at him. “And also for Ritzen.”
And, as suddenly as he had departed, the captain was here on the streaming deck with his gasping, triumphant oarsmen.
He shook his cocked hat and tossed it to his servant.
“All officers and warrant ranks aft in ten minutes, if you please.” The dark eyes were everywhere, even as he pushed the dripping hair from his face. “But I must speak first with you.”
Galbraith waited, remembering the moment when Bazeley’s wife had offered her hand to be kissed. The notion had touched him then: how right they had looked together. He had wanted to laugh at his own stupidity. Now, he was not so sure.
Then Adam spoke quietly, so softly that he could have been talking to himself. Or to the ship, Galbraith thought.
“I pray to God for a fair wind tomorrow.” He touched his lieu-tenant’s arm, and Galbraith knew the gesture was unconscious. “For then we must fight, and only He can help us.”
Lieutenant Massie looked around the crowded cabin, his swarthy
features expressionless.
“All present, sir.”
Adam said, “Sit where you can, if you can.” It gave him more time to think, to assemble what he would say.
The cabin was full; even the junior warrant officers were pre-sent, some of them staring around as if they expected to discover something different in this most sacred part of their ship.
Adam could feel the hull moving heavily beneath him, but steadier now, the wind holding her over, all sounds muffled by distance.
He could picture Galbraith moving about the quarterdeck overhead, and recalled his face when he had outlined the possi-bilities of action, as he had to Lord Rhodes.
Now Galbraith was on watch, the only officer absent from the cabin.
The two Royal Marine officers, a bright patch of colour, the midshipmen in their own whispering group, and young Bellairs standing with Lieutenant Wynter and Cristie, the taciturn sailing-master. The surgeon was present also, dwarfing the scrawny figure of Tregillis the purser. Despite the lack of space the other war-rant officers, the backbone of any fighting ship, managed to keep apart. Stranace the gunner stood with his friend the carpenter, “Old Blane” as he was known, although he was not yet forty. Nei-ther of them could work out a course or compass bearing on a chart, and like most professional sailors they were content to leave such matters to those trained for it. But lay them alongside an enemy ship and they would keep the guns firing, and repair the damage from every murderous broadside. And the master’s mates: they would keep the ship under command, knowing they were prime targets for any enemy marksman. The flag and the cause were incidental when it came to surviving the first deadly embrace.
He knew without looking that his clerk, Usher, was at the table, ready to record this rare meeting, with a handkerchief balled in one fist to muffle the cough which was slowly killing him.
The only missing face was that of George Avery. Even as Adam had outlined his convictions to Admiral Rhodes he had thought of Avery, as if he had been speaking for him.
So many times they had talked together, about his service with Sir Richard, his friendship with Catherine. Galbraith had touched upon it too, only a few moments ago in this same cabin.
I think he knew he was going to die, sir. I think he had given up the will to live.
He glanced along the cabin’s side. The big eighteen-pounders were held firmly behind their sealed ports, but dragging at the stout breeching ropes with the sway of the deck. As if they were restless, eager.
But instead he saw Frobisher’s stern cabin, the great ship rid-ing almost disdainfully across the broken water. Where his uncle had sat and dreamed; had believed, perhaps, that a hand was reaching out at last.
The surprising part had been the admiral’s frowning silence while he had explained the reason for his visit.
Avery again . . . How he had described their meeting with Mehmet Pasha, the Dey’s governor and commander-in-chief in Algiers. Face to face, with no ships to support them but for the smaller twenty-eight gun frigate Halcyon. She was out there now, riding out the same weather, with the same young captain who had served under James Tyacke as a midshipman, in this very sea at the Battle of the Nile.
Avery had forgotten nothing, and had filled a notebook with facts of every kind, from the barbarous cruelties he had witnessed, not so far from where they had cut out La Fortune, a thousand years ago, or so it felt, even to the names of ships moored there, and the Spanish mercenary, Captain Martinez, who had changed sides too many times for his own good. This command would be his last, one way or the other. Adam seemed to hear Lovatt’s despairing voice while he lay dying, here, just beyond the screen of his sleeping quarters. Where he had held the boy Napier cir-cled in his arm, to make himself believe he was the son who had turned away from him.
He licked dry lips, aware of the silence, the intent, watching faces, barely able to accept that he had been talking to these men for several minutes. Even the shipboard noises seemed muted, so that the scrape of Usher’s pen seemed loud in the stillness.
He said, “I believe we shall fight. The main attack will be car-ried out by the flagship and Prince Rupert, and at the right moment by the bomb vessel Atlas. Perhaps this is merely a ges-ture, one worth risking ships and lives. It is not my place to judge.” He held the bitterness at bay, like an enemy. “Unrivalled ’s place will be up to wind’rd. Ours is the fastest vessel, and apart from the two liners the best armed.” He smiled, as he had done in the cutter to give his oarsmen heart for the return pull. “I do not need to add, the best ship! ”
Rhodes would have his way. The bombardment would be car-ried out without delay after yet another reported attack on helpless fishermen and the murder of their crews. It might make a fitting beginning to the admiral’s appointment.
He thought of the Dutch frigate again. Expedience, greed, who could say? The great minds who planned such transactions never had to face the brutal consequences of close action. Maybe the Dutch government had fresh plans for expansion overseas. They already held territories in the West and East Indies, so why not Africa, where rulers like the Dey could obstruct even the strongest moves of empire?
Such deals were left to men like Bazeley . . . his mind faltered for a second . . . and Sillitoe. He saw Lieutenant Wynter watch-ing him fixedly. Or his father in the House of Commons and those like him.
“The Dutch frigate Triton, or whatever she may now be called, is a powerful vessel . . .”
He heard Rhodes again, his confidence and bluster returning like a strong squall.
“They would not dare! I could blow that ship out of the water!”
He continued, “I know not what to expect. I merely wanted to share it with you.” He paused, and saw O’Beirne glance around as if he expected to see a newcomer in the cabin. “For we are of one company.”
He had already seen the doubt on Massie’s dark countenance. He knew the chart, the notes in Cristie’s log, and now he knew Unrivalled ’s holding station, well up to windward. Rhodes could not have made it plainer.
“Be content to watch the flank for a change!”
Even the flag captain had warned him openly before he had climbed down to the pitching cutter.
“You’ve made an enemy there, Bolitho! You sail too close to the wind!”
He would, of course, deny any such remark at a court martial.
They were filing out of the cabin now, and Usher bowed his head in a fit of coughing.
O’Beirne was the last to leave, as Adam had known he would be. They faced one another, like two men meeting unexpectedly in a lane or on some busy street.
O’Beirne said, “I am glad I wear a sword only for the adorn-ment, sir. I consider myself a fair man and a competent surgeon.” He tried to smile. “But command? I can only watch at a distance, and be thankful!”
The surgeon walked out into the daylight, and was surprised to see the planking steaming in the warm wind as if the very ship were burning. There was so much he had wanted to say, to share. And now it was too late. Before sailing from England he had met Frobisher’s previous surgeon, Paul Lefroy; they had known one another for years. He smiled sadly. Lefroy was completely bald now, his head like polished mahogany. A good doctor, and a firm friend. He had been with Sir Richard Bolitho when he had died. O’Beirne had pictured it in his friend’s words, just as he had seen some of it in his youthful captain’s face, and he glanced aft now as if he expected to see him.
Lefroy had said, “When he died, I felt I had lost a part of myself.”
He shook his head. For a ship’s surgeon, even after several glasses of rum, that was indeed something.
But for some reason the levity did not help. The image remained.
Napier, the captain’s servant, watched O’Beirne leave, and knew his captain would be alone, perhaps needing a drink, or simply to talk, as he did sometimes. Perhaps the captain did not understand what it meant to him. The boy who had wanted to go to sea, to become someone.
And now he was.
He touched his pocket and felt the broken watch, its guard punched in two by a musket ball, where the little mermaid had been engraved.
The captain had seemed surprised when he had asked if he could keep it, instead of pitching it outboard.
He turned as he heard the sound of a grindstone and the rasp of steel. The gunner was back, too, supervising the sharpening of cutlasses and the deadly boarding-axes.
He found that he could face it. Accept it.
He touched the broken watch again and smiled gravely. He was no longer alone.
Joseph Sullivan, the seaman who had taken part in the Battle of Trafalgar and who was Unrivalled ’s most experienced lookout, paused in his climb to the crosstrees and glanced down at the ship. It took some men years to become used to the height from the deck, the quivering shrouds and treacherous rigging; some never did. Others were never afforded the chance. Falls were com-mon, and even if the unfortunate lookout fell into the sea it was unlikely that he would recover. If the ship hove-to in time.
Sullivan was completely at ease working aloft, and always had been. He looked briefly into the fighting-top he had just passed, where some Royal Marines were occupied with a swivel-gun and checking their arms and powder. Marines were always busy, he thought.
Sullivan took the weight on his bare soles, so hardened and calloused over the years that he scarcely felt the tarred ratlines, and linked an arm through the shrouds.
The ship had been up and about since before first light, as he had known she would be. He could still taste the rum on his tongue, the pork in his belly. It was a hard life, but he was as content as any true sailor could be.
He peered up at the black shrouds, the big maintopsail filling and emptying while the wind tried to make up its mind. No need to hurry. It was too dark to see more than a few yards. He shifted the knife which he carried across his spine like most sea-men, where it could not snare anything, but could be drawn in a second.
He smiled. Like the Jack in the shantyman’s song when they had weighed anchor, he thought. Sullivan had been in the navy for as long as he could remember. Good ships and foul ones. Fair captains and tyrants. Like the shanty. The old knife was about the only possession he still owned from those first days at sea.
He could smell smoke and grease and heard a splash along-side. The galley fire had been doused; the ship was cleared for action. He sighed. From what he had heard, Unrivalled would be well out of it when the guns started to roar. He thought of the captain’s face. He was feeling it. He grinned. A real goer, like his uncle to all accounts. But a man. Not afraid to stop and ask one of his men what he was doing, or how he felt. Rare, then.
He began the final climb, pleased that he was not breathless like some half his age. He saw the masthead pendant streaming away to leeward towards the larboard bow. Lifting, then curling again, undecided. He grinned again. Like the bloody admiral.
He reached his position in the crosstrees and hooked his leg around a stay. The wind was steady enough, from the north-east, but the bluster had gone out of it. That would mean that overnight the other ships would have drifted off their stations.
A bombardment, they said. He rubbed his chin doubtfully. It was to be hoped that the admiral knew what he was about. A two-decker made a fine target. It only needed some heated shot to upset the best-laid plans.
He shaded his eyes as the first sunlight played across the sails and braced yards; it was a view which never failed to stir him. People you knew, moving about the deck like ants, and other, iso-lated scarlet coats like those in the maintop. Marks of discipline, like the blue and white uniforms on the quarterdeck and down by the foremast at the first division of eighteen-pounders. His eyes crinkled as he recalled his captain climbing up to join him. No fuss, no swagger. He had just sat here with him. Not too many could say that.
He could see the coloured bunting scattered over the deck by the flag lockers. Signals to be made and answered, once Frobisher was in sight. He could see some of the others now, the bigger Prince Rupert, sails apparently limp and useless, and a frigate just off her starboard quarter. That would be Montrose, although she was well off station.
He felt the mast shiver, shrouds murmuring as the wind pressed into the topsails again. Unrivalled was standing well up to windward, while nearer the coast the whole squadron might become becalmed.
He stared beyond the larboard bow again, but the coast was still little more than a shapeless blur. There could be a mist, too.
He turned his head as a cloud of sea birds took off suddenly from the water and circled angrily over the ship. The spirits of dead Jacks, they said. Surely, he thought, they could find some-thing better to come back as?
He laughed and began to whistle softly to himself. Whistling was forbidden on board a man-of-war, because it could be mis-taken for the pipe of a boatswain’s call. They said. It was more likely because some old admiral in the past had said as much.
That was another part of it. The freedom. Up here, you were your own man. Experience taught you the shades and colours of the sea that governed your life. The depths and the shoals, the sandbars and the deeps. Like when young Captain Bolitho had taken her right through that narrow strait . . . Even Sullivan had felt uneasy about that.
He peered down again and saw one of the midshipmen train-ing his telescope, adjusting it for a new day. And he remembered the captain’s surprise, that time when he had proved his skill as a lookout.
He glanced at his arm, the tattoos of ships and places he could scarcely remember. They all swore that they hated it, but what else was there? Perhaps when Unrivalled eventually paid off . . . He shook his head, dismissing it. How many times had he said that?
He looked up again and the whistle died on his lips. For only a moment longer he held on to the view, the wheeling gulls, the pale deck far below, the men who were his companions from choice or otherwise.
He held one hand to his mouth, surprised that he had been caught out.
“Deck thar! Sail on th’ starboard bow!”
He was too old a hand to consider pride. He was, after all, a good lookout.
Adam Bolitho stared at the great span of hardening canvas, the masthead pendant reaching out towards the bow like a lance.
He said, “Make to Flag. Sail in sight to the west.” He paused long enough to see Midshipman Cousens and his signals party bending double to fasten the flags into order for hoisting, and caught sight of Bellairs turning from the rail, his eyes anxious, as if he were concerned that someone else was carrying out what had been his duty before his examination for lieutenant.
He forgot them as he raised a telescope and levelled it on the flagship. The other ships were badly scattered, and Frobisher’s yards seemed to be a mass of signals as Rhodes tried to muster his command.
It was not long before Cousens shouted, “Acknowledged, sir!” But it felt like an age. Then Cousens called again, “Disregard, Remain on station.”
Adam turned away. “God damn him!”
Galbraith joined him. “Shall I send Bellairs aloft, sir? Sullivan’s a good hand, but . . .”
Adam looked at him. “There is a ship, right enough, and we both know which one she is!”
He swung round again as a rocket exploded like a small star against the dusty shoreline. The bomb vessel was moving into position between the flagship and the old fortifications. Rhodes’ show of strength. Adam knew that anger was blunting his judg-ment, but he could not help it. If Algiers had any doubts before, they would be gone now.
Even if it was the Dutch frigate, one such ship could do lit-tle against Rhodes’ array of force.
He thought of the response to his signal. Like a slap in the face, which would soon be known to every man here today. It was cheap. And it was dangerous.
He saw Napier standing by the companion hatch and said, “Here, take my coat and hat.” He saw Galbraith open his mouth as if to protest, then close it again. Perhaps he was embarrassed to see his own captain making a fool of himself, or maybe he felt it as a slight on his ability that he had not been consulted.
If I am wrong, my friend, it is better for you to know nothing.
Jago was here too, but took his sword and tucked it under his arm without comment.
Adam strode to the shrouds, where he turned and looked back at Galbraith.
“Trust me.” That was all.
Then he was climbing the ratlines, his boots slipping on the taut cordage, his hands and arms grazed by rigging he did not even feel. As he drew level with the maintop the marines stared at him with surprise, then some of them grinned, and one even gave a cheeky wave. Perhaps the man whose brother was a cor-poral in the flagship.
On and on, higher and higher, until his heart was pounding at his ribs like a fist.
He took Sullivan’s hard hand for the last heave up on to the crosstrees, and gasped, “Where away?”
Sullivan pointed without hesitation, and might even have smiled as Adam dragged out the small telescope which could eas-ily be slung over one shoulder.
The light was still poor, high though he was above the tilting deck, but the other ship was a frigate right enough. Standing away, with all plain sail set and filling to the fresh north-easterly.
He swung the glass to larboard and studied the scattered ships. The two liners were on course again, Frobisher in the lead, with Matchless and Montrose standing well away on either quarter. And, far away, her masts and topsails shimmering in haze, was Halcyon, the admiral’s “eyes,” leading the squadron.
Then he saw the bomb vessel Atlas and found time to pity her commander as he sweated to work his ship into a position from which he could fire. From here it was all a sand-coloured blur, with only the slow-moving ships making sense. Adam had been aboard a bomb vessel during the campaign against the Ameri-cans, and Atlas seemed little improved. Bluff-bowed, and very heavily constructed for her hundred feet in length; bombs were always hard to handle. Apart from two immensely heavy mortars, they also carried a formidable armament of twenty-four pounder carronades as well as small weapons to fight off boarders. But the mortars were their reason for being. Each was thirteen inches in diameter and fired a massive shot, which, because of its high tra-jectory, would fall directly on top of its target before exploding.
Adam felt his own ship riding over again to the wind. They could keep their bomb vessels . . .
Sullivan said, almost patiently, “I reckon that when the light clears a bit we’ll see the other ship, sir.”
Adam allowed the glass to fall on to its sling and stared at him.
“I saw the frigate. Surely there’s no other.”
Sullivan gazed beyond his shoulder. “She’s there, sir. A big ’un.” He looked directly into his eyes. Not the captain, but a vis-itor to his world. “But I reckon you already knew that, sir?”
Adam gazed down at the deck. The upturned faces. Wait-ing . . .
“There could only be one. The merchantman that left Malta when Atlas sailed. Aranmore.”
Sullivan nodded slowly. “Might well be, sir.”
Adam reached across and touched his leg. “A prize indeed.”
He knew Sullivan was leaning over to watch him descend. Even the marines in the fighting-top remained quiet and unsmil-ing as he clambered down past the barricade and its swivel-gun, the daisy-cutter, as the sailors called them. Perhaps they saw it in his face, even as he felt it like a tightening grip around his heart.
Galbraith hurried to meet him, barely able to drag his eyes away from the tar-stained shirt and the blood soaking through one knee of his breeches.
“I think the frigate is chasing Aranmore, Leigh.” He leaned on the chart, his scarred hands taking the weight.
Galbraith said, “Suppose you’re wrong, sir?”
Cristie forced a grin, and said, “There was only one man who was never wrong, Mr Galbraith, an’ they crucified him!”
Adam lingered on the warning, and knew what it must have cost Galbraith to say it.
“But if I’m not? If the Algerines capture Aranmore,” he hesi-tated, loathing it, “it will make Lord Rhodes a laughing-stock.
The hostages could be used for bargaining, and so much for ‘a show of strength.’”
Galbraith nodded, understanding. Experience, instinct; he did not know how it came about. And he was ashamed that he was glad the choice was not his. Nor probably ever would be.
He watched the captain’s face as he beckoned to Midshipman Cousens. Outwardly calm again, his voice unhurried, thinking aloud while he held out one arm to allow his coxswain to clip the old sword into position.
“Make to Flag, Mr Cousens. Enemy in sight to the west, steer-ing west-by-south.” He saw Cristie acknowledge it. “In pursuit of ...” He smiled at the youth’s frowing features. “Spell it out. Aranmore.”
It took physical effort to take and raise the spare telescope. The next few hours would be vital. He heard the flags squeaking aloft and in his mind saw them breaking out at the yard and, across that mile or so of lively water, another signals midshipman like Cousens reading the signal, as someone else wrote it down on a slate.
Cousens’ brow was furrowed in concentration. “From Flag, sir. Acknowledged.” He sounded rather subdued. “Flag’s calling up Halcyon, sir.”
Adam snapped, “No use! Halcyon’s too far downwind—it will take her a whole watch to close with them!”
Cousens confirmed it. “Chase, sir.”
Galbraith was beside him again. “They might run for it when they see Halcyon, sir.” “I think not. The man in command will lose his head if he fails this time. And he will know it!”
He looked back at the signals party.
“Anything, Mr Cousens?”
Sullivan’s voice broke the spell, “Deck thar! Frigate’s opened fire, sir!”
He heard the distant thuds, bow-chasers, he thought, testing the range, hoping for a crippling shot.
Cousens shouted, “Signal Chase is still flying, sir!”
Adam walked to the compass, the helmsmen gazing past him as if he was invisible, the big double-wheel moving slightly this way or that, each sail filled and fighting the rudder.
He said, “Then acknowledge it, Mr Cousens.” And swung away, as if he might see in the boy’s eyes the folly of his own decision. “Get the hands aloft, Mr Galbraith! T’gallants and roy-als!” He grinned, the strain and doubt recoiling like beaten enemies. “The stuns’ls too, when we may!” He strode over to Cristie and his mates. “How so?”
“West-by-north, sir.” The master gave a wintry smile, as if the madness was infectious. “It’ll give ’er room to run down on the bugger!”
“Stand by, on the quarterdeck! Man the braces there!”
Another squall moaned through the stays and shrouds, and the canvas cracked as if it would tear itself from the yards as the helm went over.
“Flag is repeating our number, sir!” Cousens’ words were almost drowned by the distant reverberating crash of mortars. The bombardment had begun.
Galbraith shook his head. “Hoist another ensign, Mr Cousens,” and attempted to smile, to share what the captain was doing. “That will be duty enough for you today!”
He watched the seamen running from one task to the next, not one tripping over a gun tackle or snatching up the wrong line or halliard. All the training and the hard knocks had paid off. It was insanity, and he could feel it driving away his reserve and his concern at the captain’s deliberate misinterpretation of the admi-ral’s signal. He had even found time to note it and sign the log, so that no one else could be officially blamed.
Galbraith saw Napier handing his captain a clean shirt, laugh-ing at something he said as he pulled it over his unruly hair. The sunlight was stronger now, enough to shine briefly on the locket the captain was wearing, the one he had seen in the cabin with the letters.
He felt a sudden chill as the boy handed Captain Bolitho his coat, not the one he had been wearing when he had first appeared on deck, if he had ever left it, but the gold-laced dress uniform coat with the bright epaulettes. A ready target for any marksman. Madness again, but Galbraith could imagine him wearing no other this day.
“West-by-north, sir! Steady she goes!”
Adam looked along his ship, hearing the intermittent crash of gunfire. Halcyon was under fire already, long-range shots, like the ones laid on Aranmore.
He thought of Avery, his comments concerning the infamous Captain Martinez, and touched the locket beneath the clean shirt, and said aloud, “You were right, George, and nobody saw it. The face in the crowd.”
He turned to see the other ensign breaking to the wind, seem-ing to trail on the dark horizon as the ship heeled over, knowing that his mind must be empty now of everything which might weaken his resolve. But a memory of his uncle came, as he had seen him all those other times.
“So let’s be about it, then!”
Luke Jago stood by the mainmast’s great trunk and looked along the frigate’s main deck. So many times; different ships and in all weathers, but always the same pattern. The whole larboard bat-tery of eighteen-pounders had been run in, hauled up the tilting deck by their sweating crews, held in position by their taut tack-les and ready for loading. Each crew was standing by with the tools of their trade, rammers and sponges, handspikes and charges, while every gun captain had already selected a perfect ball from his shot garland for the first, perhaps vital broadside. Around and at the foot of every mast the boarding-pikes had been freed from their lashings, ready to snatch up and spit anyone brave or stu-pid enough to attempt to board them. The weapons chests were empty, and each man had armed himself with cutlass or axe with no more uncertainty than a farm-hand selecting a pitchfork.
He could sense the new midshipman watching him, breath-ing hard in his efforts to keep up with the captain’s coxswain. Jago had wondered why the captain had given him the task of nurs-ing Commodore Deighton’s son. One day he would be an officer like Massie or so many others he had known, quick to forget past favours, and the secret skills which only true seamen knew and could pass on.
He felt the deck jerk to the double crash of the bomb’s two mortars. Even at this distance, the ships were barely visible through the haze and dust, and yet the mortars’ recoil seemed to rebound from the very seabed.
He had heard some of the men joking about the captain’s reading of the flagship’s signal. They would be putting bets on it too, if he had made a serious mistake. He loosened the cutlass in his belt, swearing quietly. Captain Bolitho would be a marked man anyway, as far as the admiral was concerned.
He said to the midshipman, “You’ll be needed to pass mes-sages between the forrard guns, under Mr Massie,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the quarterdeck, “An’ the cap’n. And if he falls, to th’ next in command aft.”
He saw the boy blink, but he showed no fear. And he listened. He glanced at Midshipman Sandell by the empty boat tier, even now snapping at some luckless seaman. He’d be no bloody loss to anyone.
He said, “An’ remember, Mr Deighton, always walk, never run.
That only makes the lads jumpy.” He grinned at Deighton’s seri-ousness. “Stops you bein’ a target too!”
Then, seeing his expression, he touched the midshipman’s arm. “Forget I said that. It just came out.”
He stared at his own scarred hand on the boy’s sleeve. Let him think what he damn well likes. He’ll not care a straw for a common seaman. But it would not hold.
He said, “Now we’ll carry on aft.”
Deighton said, “It seems so empty without the boats on deck.”
“Never you mind them. We’ll pick ’em up afore sunset.”
Deighton said softly, “Do you believe that, really?”
Jago nodded to Campbell, who was leaning on a handspike near his gun. Like most of the crews he had stripped to the waist, his scarred back a living testimony to his strength. Jago sighed. Or stupidity. It was not long since he had done the same, his defi-ance of the authority which had wrongly punished him, leaving him scarred until the day he dropped.
The boy murmured, “I’ve never been in a real sea-fight before.”
Jago knew that Deighton had transferred from the old Vanoc, a frigate said to be so infested with rot that she was as ripe as a pear, with only her copper holding her together.
He looked up at the towering masts and their bulging pyra-mids of canvas. From down here, the topgallant masts appeared to be bending like whips to the mounting pressure.
It was there again. Pride. Something he had all but taken an oath against. But she was flying through the water, spray burst-ing through the beak-head and drenching the figurehead’s naked shoulders, a veritable sea nymph. He saw Halcyon, so much closer now, heeling over at a steep angle from Unrivalled ’s bow. A well-handled ship, he conceded. But no match for the big Dutchman.
And the lookouts had reported that the merchantman Aranmore was somewhere ahead. Victim or prize, it depended on which side you took.
Jago thought of the girl he had helped to carry below. He stared at the poop, the officers’ figures leaning over to the slop-ing deck as if they were nailed to it to hold them in position. And now she was out there with her bullyboy of a husband and God alone knew how many other important passengers. Jago had seen the captain’s face that night, and again when he had gone ashore to see her, even if he had not intended to meet her or it had been a complete accident. Jago thought otherwise. He shaded his eyes and saw the captain standing with one hand on the quar-terdeck rail. By that same ladder.
And why not? As smart as paint, she was. He smiled crookedly. And she knew it, what’s more.
The sound of cannon fire across the sea’s face, and for an instant Jago imagined that the wind had changed direction.
Sullivan’s voice cut through the boom of canvas and the groan of straining cordage. “Deck thar! Halcyon’s under fire!”
Jago ran to the side and stood on a gun truck to get a better view. Halcyon was as before, cutting through the water, her ensigns very white against the hazy sky, their scarlet crosses like blood. Then there was a sudden groan, and her fore-topmast and spars began to topple; the sea and wind muffled the sound, and yet he seemed to hear it clearly, the slithering tangle of masts and rig-ging, snapping cordage and torn canvas, and then the complete mass plunging over the lee bow, flinging up spectres of spray. There would be men there, too, some killed in the fall, others dragged over the side by broken shrouds and stays, dying even as he watched, while others ran to hack the debris away. There was never time for pity.
Within minutes the fallen fore-topmast was dragging Halcyon around like a giant sea anchor, and her guns were pointing impo-tently at open water.
“Stand by to wear ship!” That was the first lieutenant, voice dis-torted by his speaking-trumpet. “Pipe the hands to the braces!”
Jago waited, feeling the ship’s response to wind and rudder. The afterguard tramping past those same officers, hauling at the mizzen braces while Unrivalled altered course to windward, as close as she’d come, some of the sails already whipping and crack-ing in protest until more hands brought them under control.
Midshipman Deighton called, “What are we doing?”
Jago watched the tapering bowsprit and jib-boom, the enemy frigate clearly visible for the first time, as if sliding downwind to larboard. Captain Bolitho was going to try and overreach the enemy, to claw into the wind and then run down on them, much as he had heard the dour sailing-master describe.
But all he said was, “We’re going to fight. So be ready!” Then, together, they climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck.
Adam Bolitho looked only briefly at the scene on the quarter-deck. The marines, their boots skidding on the wet planking while they secured the braces again before snatching up their muskets and running back to their stations. Four men on the wheel now, one of Cristie’s mates adding his weight to the fight against wind and rudder.
He glanced up at the masthead pendant, almost hidden by the wildly cracking canvas. The wind was still steady, from the north-east, but from aft he could believe it was almost directly abeam. The ship lay hard over, and his eyes stung as a shaft of sunlight found them for the first time.
And the enemy was still firing at Halcyon. There was no smoke to betray the shots, the wind was too strong, but he could see the other frigate’s sails pockmarked with holes, and great, raw gashes along her engaged side; the enemy was trying to rid himself of one foe before dealing with the real threat from Unrivalled.He fought back the anger. Rhodes was so intent on humiliating him that he had been blind to the true danger. Dutch-built frigates were heavier, and could take a lot of punishment. Halcyon could not even close the range and hit back. He saw her main-topmast reel drunkenly now in a tangle of black cordage, like something trapped in a net, before crashing down across her gangway.
He took a telescope from its rack and trained it on the other frigate. Magnified in the powerful glass, he could see terrible damage, could feel her pain, and knew he was thinking of his beloved Anemone in her last fight against odds. When he had been badly wounded, and unable to prevent her colours being struck to the American.
He heard Cristie yell, “As close as she’ll come, sir! Nor’-westby-west!”
He realised that Midshipman Deighton was beside him at the rail, and said, “Take a good look, Mr Deighton. That is a ship to be proud of.” He lowered the glass, but not before he had seen the tiny threads of scarlet running down Halcyon’s tumblehome from the forward scuppers, as if the ship and not her people was bleeding to death. But an ensign was still flying, and from what he had heard of her captain another would be in readiness to bend on if it was shot away.
What sort of men were they about to fight?
He had heard one of the master’s mates ask Cristie the same question.
He had answered harshly, “The scum of a dozen waterfronts, gallows-bait the lot of ’em! But they’ll fight right enough. Pirates, deserters, mutineers, they’ve no choice left any more!”
More shots found their mark in Halcyon. Her steering had been carried away, or perhaps there were only dead men at her wheel now. She was drifting, but occasionally a single gun would fire at her attacker, despite the range.
Adam said, “You may load and run out now.” The gun cap-tains would know. Single shots this time; an overloaded eighteen-pounder would be useless. He watched the sea boiling away from the lee side, the one thing he had dreaded about hold-ing the wind-gage. Maximum elevation for the first broadside. And after that . . .
He found that he was holding the locket through his spray-soaked shirt. At least she was free of the worry and the strain at every separation.
And I have nobody to grieve for me.
“Sir!” It was Galbraith, reaching out as if to drag him from his sudden despair.
“What is it?”
Galbraith could not seem to find the words immediately. “Hal-cyon, sir! They’re cheering!” He fell silent, as if shocked at his own emotion. “Cheering us!”
Adam stared across the wind-torn water at the battered, defi-ant ship, and faintly, above the shipboard sounds and the squeal of gun trucks, he heard it. The hand reaching out again. The life-line.
He shouted, “As you bear, Mr Massie! On the uproll!”
It was too far, but the other frigate was changing tack. Prepar-ing to fight, and, if possible, to board on their own terms.
“Fire!”
Adam gripped young Deighton’s arm and felt him jump as if he had been shot.
“Go forrard to the carronades. Remind them not to fire until ordered!” He shook him gently. “Can you do that?”
Surprisingly, the youth smiled, for the first time.
“Aye, ready, sir!”
He hurried down the ladder and walked purposefully forward, not even faltering when, gun by gun, the larboard battery recoiled from their open ports. Adam heard muffled shouts and felt the impact of a heavy ball smashing into the side, and thought of O’Beirne below in his domain, his glittering instruments laid out with the same care as these gun captains took with theirs.
“Sponge out! Reload! Move yerself, that man!”
“Take in the courses, Mr Galbraith.” Adam leaned over the rail and saw the spare hands running to obey the call. With the big courses brailed up and loosely furled it was like being stripped naked, with the ship open from forecastle to taffrail.
And there was the enemy. In mid-tack, sails all in disarray, some ports empty, others with their guns already run out for the next encounter.
“Ready, sir!”
Every gun captain was staring aft with raised fist, the gun crews barely flinching as another mass of iron slammed into the lower hull. They were on a converging tack, like a great arrow-head painted on the sea. Two ships, all else unimportant, and even Halcyon’s brave defiance forgotten. The other ship was beginning to lean to the wind on the opposite tack, but just for a minute she would be bows-on, unable to lay a single gun on Unrivalled. A minute, maybe less.
Adam found that his sword was in his hand, and that he was standing away from the rail, and yet he remembered neither.
“As you bear, lads!” How could a minute last so long?
He thought he heard the far-off rumble of heavy guns. Rhodes was still bombarding the fortifications, as timeless as those ancient ramparts in Malta where the invisible orchestra had played for them and they had taken, one from the other. Without question.
The sword sliced down, like glass in the sunlight.
“Fire!”
Gun by gun, each hurling itself inboard to be manhandled and reloaded without a second to fumble or consider.
He saw holes appear in the other ship’s foresail and jib, and long fragments of gilded woodwork blasted from the ornate beak-head. But she was swinging through the wind; they would be alongside and mad for revenge. The boarding nets would merely delay the inevitable.
He heard Napier shout; it was more like a scream. “Foremast, sir!”
Adam had seen some of Unrivalled ’s shots cutting through the water beyond the target. It was too difficult for them to lay their guns with any hope of accuracy.
It was impossible, but the enemy’s whole foremast was going over the side, as if severed by some great, invisible axe.
Shots hammered into the deck and he saw two marines fall from the hammock nettings. He heard the bang of swivels from the tops and knew that Bosanquet’s men were following their orders, their marksmen already firing down into the mass of fig-ures scrambling through and over the fallen mast to reach the point of collision. But Bosanquet would never know. He lay with one immaculate leg bent under him, his face destroyed by a splin-tered ball which had come through one of the gunports.
Luxmore, his second-in-command, was already down there with his own party, bayonets gleaming in the smoky light, all mercy gone as the first boarders leaped wildly across the narrow gap of water only to be hacked down or impaled. Closer and closer, until Unrivalled ’s long jib-boom, its canvas in rags, was pointing directly at the enemy’s forecastle.
Adam sliced the air with his sword again. Had the carronade crews understood? Had Deighton managed to reach them or had he, too, been killed? But Deighton was here beside him, and he shook himself, feeling the despair falling away.
It was more a sensation than a sound; the carronades were almost touching the other ship when they belched smoke and lurched inboard on their slides.
Adam yelled, “To me, Unrivalleds!” Then he ran along the gangway, hearing the shots, feeling some of them crack into wood and metal and flesh. The nets hung in shreds, and the massed boarding party was blasted into a pile of bloody gruel.
Men were running to follow him, and he saw Campbell wield-ing a boarding-axe, hacking down anyone who tried to prevent Unrivalled ’s people from boarding.
And all the while, through the bang of muskets and the clash of steel in the hand-to-hand fighting, and the screams and pleas which went unheard in any language, he could think only of one fact which stood out above all else. Pirates, corsairs, mercenaries, the names by which the enemy were known meant nothing. Somehow he knew that the man who had offered shelter to the French frigates in the event of Napoleon’s escape from Elba was here in this ship. It was all that counted. Martinez, indirectly or otherwise, had killed Richard Bolitho, as surely as if he had aimed the weapon.
Someone lunged at him with a sword and he heard Jago shout, “Down you go, you bastard!” The man fell over some broken tim-ber to be crushed between the two hulls.
His arm felt like lead and throbbed with pain, and there was blood on his hand, his own or another’s he neither knew nor cared.
They were halfway along the unfamiliar deck, some of the enemy still putting up a fierce resistance, but many falling as his marines directed a swivel-gun from the ship’s gangway.
Massie was down, his hands like claws across his stomach as he fell. Adam saw Lieutenant Wynter stoop to help him, and Massie’s angry rejection, shaking his head as if to urge him back into the fight. Then the blood came and it did not stop. Massie had had his way, and had remained quite alone to the end.
He heard Galbraith shouting above the din, and saw more men climbing over the fallen rigging to join the first boarders and their own captain. There was cheering too, and he wondered how they could find the strength. He hacked a sword aside and felt the pain tear his muscles as the point grated against the man’s ribs before the blade found its mark, choking the scream before it had begun.
It seemed to take all his strength to tug it free. Somehow he had dragged himself up a ladder, where smaller groups of figures were locked in what he knew was the final resistance.
Jago gasped, “I can see smoke, sir! Fire below, by my guess!”
Adam gripped a stanchion and gulped at the air. “Get our wounded across to the ship! Leave nobody!”
Jago peered at him. How did he know it was over? Men were still fighting, or chasing some of the defenders, hacking them down.
Adam wiped his face with his sleeve and almost laughed. It was his best uniform, the one he had been wearing when he had gone to her room. Madness. A wild dream. He gripped his sword even more tightly, knowing that if he allowed himself to laugh he would be unable to stop it.
He heard someone gasp and swung round to see Napier on one knee, a wood splinter protruding from his thigh like a bloody quill.
“Here, my lad, you’re coming with me!” Then, as he bent to give the boy his arm, he saw Martinez, crouching behind a raised hatch, a pistol in one hand. It had to be him; but how could he be so sure? It was only a glimpse, too quick for him to see the dark eyes widen with shocked disbelief as he had stared first at the slim figure in a post-captain’s soiled coat, and then, instantly, at the old sword. Something like recognition, something he had never forgotten.
And it was too late. Adam could not reach him with his sword, and if Martinez fired now he would surely kill the boy he had lifted from this stained and fought-over planking.
Martinez said thickly, “Bo-lye-tho.” And took careful aim.
But the shot seemed louder, or came from a different bearing. It was the marine corporal Bloxham, Bosanquet’s crack shot. He stepped carefully over a corpse and kicked the unfired pistol across the deck.
He said, “’Ere, sir, I’ll take the lad from you,” and grinned, the strain slipping from his features. “But I’ll just reload old Bess ’ere first, to be on the safe side!”
Adam touched his arm, and walked across to look at the dead man. He heard the sudden wave of frantic cheering. The fight was over.
My men. And they had won the day, because of a trust which few could explain. Until the next time. Now he must go and face these same men, and share it with them before the pain of loss intruded.
He gazed along the disputed deck, with its bloody scars of battle. Soon only the dead and the poor wretches who had fled below would remain.
He saw his own ship angled away from the bows, suddenly clear in the fresh sunlight, her wounds hidden by drifting smoke, and only then did he know what had held him here. He looked down into the dead face, frozen at the instant of impact. As he had sworn to do.
Perhaps he had expected elation, or a sense of revenge. There was nothing.
He heard voices calling out and knew they would come to find him, interrupting this moment which he could share with only one.
He let his sword arm fall to his side and turned once more to look at his ship, and smiled a little, as if he had heard someone speak.
“Thank you, Uncle.”
The Most Coveted Gift.