Bolitho’s older sister was here too, severe and grey, while her son Miles, formerly a midshipman aboard Bolitho’s flagship Black Prince after having been dismissed from the Honourable East India Company’s service under some sort of cloud, was now gazing around as if he expected everyone to be admiring him. He had even been required to leave the King’s service, or as Keen had put it, face a court martial instead. Was he calculating how he might benefit from his uncle’s death?
And there were uniforms a-plenty. The port admiral from Plymouth, some officers of the Coastguard, even a few dragoons from the garrison at Truro.
Overhead the bell began to toll; it sounded faraway from within the body of the church. But on the hillsides and in the harbour, men and women would be listening to its finality.
Others arrived: Young Matthew the head coachman, Tom the revenue officer, even Vanzell the one-legged sailor who had once served Bolitho, and been instrumental in freeing Lady Catherine from that stinking jail to the north of London. It was rumoured that Lady Catherine’s husband had planned to have her falsely imprisoned and deported with the connivance of Bolitho’s wife. What was she thinking now as she whispered to her elegant companion? Pride in her late husband? Or more incensed by the victory death had granted her rival?
Whenever she turned from her friend to stare around the church, Ferguson had the impression that it was with contempt, and no kind of regret for the life she had left in this ancient seaport.
And in months, maybe sooner, the legalities would have to be settled. Squire Roxby had never made any secret of his readiness to take over the Bolitho estate and add it to his own. That would certainly preserve it for his wife and their two children, if nothing else. Belinda would want a settlement to compensate for the lavish life and fashionable house she enjoyed in London. Ferguson felt his wife gripping his hand again as the straight-backed, solitary figure of Captain Adam Bolitho strode up the aisle to take his place in his family pew.
Ferguson believed him the one man who would save the estate and the livelihood of all those who depended on it. Even that reminded him of Allday again. His pride at living there when he was not at sea. Like being one of the family, he had so often proclaimed.
He watched Captain Adam shaking hands with the rector. It was about to begin. A day they would all have cause to remember, and for such diverse reasons. He saw Keen’s young wife lean out towards Adam. He was to be posted next month, and had been so looking forward to seeing his uncle with the coveted second epaulette on his shoulder, when Bolitho had returned from his mission.
Ferguson had been troubled by Adam’s frequent visits to the house. But for his vehement insistence that Bolitho was still alive and somehow, even by a miracle, would return home, Ferguson might have suspected some unexpected liaison between him and Zenoria Keen.
The bell had stopped and a great silence had fallen over the church; the glittering colours of the tall windows were very bright in the noon sunlight.
The rector climbed into the old pulpit and surveyed the crowded pews. Not many young faces, he thought sadly. And with the war already reaching into Portugal and perhaps Spain, many more sons would leave home, never to return.
At the very back of the church, seated on two cushions so that she could see over the shoulders of those in front of her, the widow of Jonas Polin, one-time master’s mate in the Hyperion, was aware of the people all around her in this grand place, but could think only of the big, shambling man who had rescued her that day on the road. Now the admiral’s coxswain would never call on her at the Stag’s Head at Fallowfield. She had told herself not to be so stupid. But as the days had dragged past after the news had broken over the county, she had felt the loss even more. Like being cheated. She closed her eyes tightly as the rector began, “We are all very aware of why we are come here today . . .”
Ferguson stared blindly around him. And what of Catherine Somervell? Did nobody grieve for her? He saw her on the cliff walk, her face brown in the sun, her hair on the wind from the sea like a dark banner. He thought of what Allday and the others had told him, how she had risked her life to help Herrick’s dying wife. A thousand things; most of all what she had done for her Richard, as she called him. Dearest of men. Unlike so many, they had been together when death had marked them down. He half-listened to the drone of the rector’s voice, let it wash over him as he relived so many precious moments.
One man sat in an almost empty pew, shielded from the great mass of people by a pillar, his hooded eyes inscrutable while he paid his respects in his private fashion. Dressed all in grey, Sir Paul Sillitoe had arrived uninvited and unannounced, his beautiful carriage bringing many curious stares when he had reached the church.
Ferguson need not have worried on Catherine’s behalf. Sillitoe had driven all the way from London and, although he had greatly respected Bolitho, he was more shocked by his grief at the loss of Bolitho’s mistress, for reasons he could not define, even to himself.
The rector was saying, “We must never lose sight of the great service this fine local family has offered . . .” He broke off, aware from long experience that he no longer held the attention of the congregation.
There was a distant noise, and shouting, like a tavern turning out, and Roxby was glaring round, flushed and angry as he hissed, “These oafs! What are they thinking of?”
Everyone fell silent as Adam Bolitho stood up suddenly, and without even a customary bow to the altar strode quickly back down the aisle. He glanced at nobody, and as he passed Ferguson thought he looked as if he had no control over what he was doing. “In a trance,” he would later hear it described.
Adam reached the great, weathered doors and dragged them wide open so that the din flooded into the church, where everyone now was standing, their backs to the rector marooned in his pulpit.
The square was crammed, and a recently arrived mail coach was completely surrounded by a cheering, laughing mob. In the centre of it all two grinning sea officers on horseback, their mounts lathered in sweat from a hard ride, were being hailed like heroes.
Adam stood quite still as he recognised one of them as his own first lieutenant. He was trying to make himself heard above the noise, but Adam could not understand him.
A man he had never seen before ran up the church steps and seized his hands.
“They’m alive, Cap’n Adam, sir! Your officer’s brought word from Plymouth!”
The lieutenant managed to fight his way through, his hat knocked awry.
“All safe, sir! A bloody miracle, if you’ll pardon my saying so!”
Adam led him back into the church. He saw Zenoria with Keen’s sisters standing in the aisle, framed against the high altar. He asked quietly, “All my uncle’s party? Safe?”
He saw his lieutenant nod excitedly. “I knew my uncle could do it. The fairest of men . . . I shall tell the rector myself. Wait for me, please. You must come to the house.”
The lieutenant said to his companion, “Took it well, I thought, Aubrey?”
“He had more faith than I did.”
Adam reached the others and held out his hands. “They are all safe.” He saw Zenoria sobbing in the arms of one of Keen’s sisters, and beyond her Belinda, now strangely out of place in her sombre black.
At the rear of the church Sir Paul Sillitoe picked up his hat and then turned as he saw the woman who had been just behind him. She was crying now, but not with grief.
He asked kindly, “Someone very dear to you, is he?”
She curtsied and wiped her eyes. “Just a man, sir.”
Sillitoe thought of Adam’s expression when he had reentered the church, of the sudden ache in his own heart when the news had broken over them like a great, unstoppable wave.
He smiled at her. “We are all just men, my dear. It is better not to forget that sometimes.”
He walked out into the jostling, noisy square and heard the peal of bells following him.
He thought of their first encounter at one of Godschale’s
ridiculous receptions. Like no other woman he had ever met. But at this moment in Falmouth his own words to her were uppermost in his mind. She had protested that Bolitho was being ordered back to immediate duty after all he had suffered, and suggested angrily that some other flag officer be sent instead. Sillitoe seemed to hear himself, in memory. Fine leaders—they have the confidence of the whole fleet. But Sir Richard Bolitho holds their hearts.
He looked round for his carriage, at these simple, ordinary people who were a far cry from those he knew and directed.
Aloud he said, “As you, my dear Catherine, hold mine.”
His Britannic Majesty’s brig Larne of fourteen guns rolled untidily in a steep offshore swell, sailing so close to the wind that to any landsman her yards would appear to be braced almost fore-and-aft. The island lay enticingly abeam, its greenness shimmering in heat-haze, the nearest beaches pure white in the sunshine. But like an evil barrier between the island and the sturdy brig lay the protective reef, showing itself every so often in violent spurts of broken spray.
Right aft in Larne’s stern cabin her captain lay sprawled on the bench seat beneath the open windows, so that the quarterwind stirred the stale air and gave his naked body a suggestion of refreshment. Commander James Tyacke was staring up at the dancing reflections that played across the low deckhead. The cabin was like a miniature of the stern cabin in a frigate, but to Tyacke it still seemed spacious. He had previously commanded the armed schooner Miranda and had taken part in the recapture of Cape Town, and it had been then that he had first served alongside Richard Bolitho. Tyacke had never held much respect for senior officers, but Bolitho had changed many of his views. When Miranda had been sunk by a French frigate and her crew left to die, Tyacke, who had already lost so much, had felt that he had nothing more to live for.
That was something else Bolitho had done to give him back his dignity and his pride: he had asked him to command the Larne.
Ordered to the newly formed anti-slavery patrols, Tyacke imagined that he had at last found the best life still had to offer him. Independent, free of the fleet’s apron strings and the whims of any admiral who chose to accost him, the role had suited him very well.
Larne was well-found and manned by some excellent seamen. And as for the wardroom, if you could rate it as such, Tyacke had three lieutenants and a sailing-master and rarest of all, a fully-qualified doctor who had accepted the poor rewards of service as a ship’s surgeon in order to enhance his knowledge of tropical diseases. Dealing with slaves and slavers alike, he was getting plenty of experience.
Larne even boasted five masters’ mates, although there were only two aboard at present, the others having been sent away as prize-masters in some of Tyacke’s captures.
And then, without any sort of warning, the news had hit him like a mailed fist. They had met with a courier schooner and Tyacke had learned of Bolitho’s loss at sea.
He knew them all: Valentine Keen, Allday, who had tried to help him, and of course Catherine Somervell. Tyacke had last spoken to her at Keen’s wedding at the start of the year. He had never forgotten her, or the way she had conversed with him so directly, and looked at him without flinching. Tyacke stood up abruptly and walked to the mirror above his sea-chest. He was thirty-one years old, tall and well built, and his left profile was strong, with the grave good looks which might catch any woman’s glance. But the other side . . . he touched it and felt only disgust. The Arab slavers called him the devil with half a face. Only the eye lived in it. A miracle, everyone told him. It could have been so much worse. But could it? Half his face burned away and he had no idea how it had happened. His world had exploded at the Nile, while all those about him had been killed. It could have been worse . . .
But Bolitho had somehow put him together again. A viceadmiral, one of England’s heroes even if he had outraged many of his contemporaries, who had taken passage in Tyacke’s tiny Miranda and never once complained at the discomfort, Bolitho had got to know him as a man, not as a victim, and had taken the trouble to care.
He turned away and walked aft to the open windows again. Ten days ago, while they had been searching for a well-known slaver who was said to be in the area, the lookouts had sighted a drifting longboat, the cutter from the Golden Plover. Andrew Livett, Larne’s surgeon, had earned his keep that day. The survivors had been almost finished, mostly because the cutter’s water supply had been inadequate, and they had been in too much of a hurry abandoning the wreck to replenish it.
Tyacke had sat, face in shadow, in this cabin and listened to the senior survivor, Luke Britton the boatswain, describing the mutiny, the sudden change of fortune while Bolitho had turned the tables on the men who had betrayed their master.
He had told of the jolly-boat entering the reef itself, while his own cutter, loaded as it was with some twenty hands, had been carried away to the other side. Tyacke had pictured it as the man blurted out each item of tragedy: the mutineers’ boat being smashed by falling spars, the sharks gorging on the floundering, screaming sailors.
All plans to capture the slaver, the notorious Raven, had gone. Instead, Tyacke had laid a new course in a giant triangle to search along the reef and look for signs of life on the small, scattered islands, or perhaps even smoke signals, which might indicate that some of the party had survived. There had been nothing, and Tyacke had been forced to admit what his first lieutenant, a Channel Islander named Paul Ozanne, had believed from the beginning. A fruitless search; and with two women on board, what hope could there be?
And now Larne was herself dangerously short of water and the fruit which any King’s ship needed to prevent scurvy in these sweltering waters.
He half-listened to the chant of his two leadsmen in the chains, watching out for the reefs while their best lookouts manned both mastheads for an hour at a time, before the glare rendered them useless.
What more can I do?
His people would not let him down; he knew that now. At first he had found this new command and her different company hard to know, but eventually he had won them over, just as he had done in his beloved Miranda. However, if anyone else discovered that he had abandoned his hunt for the Raven, they might be less understanding.
There was a tap at the screen door and Gallaway, one of the master’s mates, peered in at him.
“What is it?” He tried to keep the despair and grief out of his voice.
“The master sends ’is respects, sir. It will be time to wear ship in about ’alf an hour.” He showed no surprise at seeing his captain naked, nor did he drop his eyes when Tyacke looked directly at him. Not any more.
So it was over. When Larne came about he would have to take her to Freetown to receive new orders, to replenish stores and water supply. All the rest was a memory: one he would never lose, like the wound on his face.
“I’ll come up.” Tyacke pulled on a shirt and breeches and glanced at the cupboard where the thirteen-year-old cabin boy kept his rum and brandy. He rejected the idea. His men had to manage; so would he. Even that reminded him of Bolitho. Leadership by example, by a trust which he had insisted went both ways.
On deck it was scorching, and his shoes stuck to the tarred deck-seams. But the wind, as hot as if it blew across a desert, was strong enough. A glance at the compass, a critical examination of the yards and flapping canvas as his ship heeled over to the closehauled sails, then he looked along the deck. Both watches were assembling in readiness to change tack. A few raw youngsters but mostly seamen, glad to get away from the harsh discipline of the fleet, or some tyrannical captain. He smiled sadly. And no midshipmen, none. There was no room on anti-slavery work for untrained, would-be admirals.
The first lieutenant was watching him, his face troubled. He knew about Tyacke and the vice-admiral. A powerful relationship, although Tyacke could rarely be drawn to speak of it. But Larne could not stand away from the land for much longer; they were on halved rations as it was. In the same breath, Ozanne knew that if his captain required it he and t
he others would drive the brig to eternity. Ozanne himself was no stranger to risk, or to dedication: he had once been the master of a lugger running out of St Peter Port in Guernsey, but French men-of-war and privateers had made trade impossible for such small craft, and he had gone into the navy, becoming a master’s mate, and eventually a lieutenant.
Tyacke did not notice his scrutiny. He was shading his eyes to study the nearest island. Nothing. He tried not to think of the sharks Golden Plover’s boatswain had described. Better that than to be taken by natives or Arab slavers, especially the two women. He wondered who the other one was—surely not Keen’s young wife?
He said, “Change the lookouts, Paul. I’d anchor inshore despite the danger and send a watering party over. But it would take more time.”
Ozanne pondered on it. What did the captain mean, “more time?” Did he still intend to carry on with the search? Some of the men would soon be getting worried, he thought. They had seen the state of the survivors from the cutter. One had already died, and another had gone since they had been snatched from the sea.
They were quite alone, and with three prize crews taking their captures back to Freetown they were short-handed. He trusted his men, but he never trusted what the sea might make them do.
Tyacke waited for the new lookouts to climb aloft and then said, “Both watches, if you please, Paul. We’ll come about and steer sou’-east-by-south.”
Ozanne stood his ground. He was older than Tyacke, and would never go any higher in the navy. But this suited him; and he found he wanted to comfort Tyacke in some way.
“You done your best, sir. It’s God’s will—I believe that.”
“Aye, mebbe.” He was thinking of the girl he had been hoping to marry. He persistently told himself that no one could blame her for rejecting him when he went home with his terrible scars. But it still hurt him deeply, more than he could rightly understand. Was that God’s will, too? What would all these sunburned seamen think of him if they knew he still had her portrait in his sea-chest, and the gown he had once bought for her in Lisbon?
Beyond the Reef Page 19
