Teazer raised the distant blue of the conical peak of Mount Toro, then shaped course for the south-east of the island and the grand cliff-sided harbour of Port Mahon. Passing the ruined fortress of San Felipe at the entrance to larboard, they entered the port.
The entire Mediterranean fleet was at anchor in the three-milelong stretch of water. These ships, their sombre lines marked by ceaseless sea-keeping, the gloss and varnish long since gone from their sturdy sides but their appearance still neat and Spartan, had kept faithful watch on Toulon over the long months to make it impossible for Bonaparte to impose his will on the world. And now they were withdrawn, idle and without purpose. It was as if the world had gone mad.
As they passed by the massive ships-of-the-line, Kydd tried to make out Tenacious but could not find her: there were just too many vessels. Teazer’s anchor fell from her bows and Kydd reappeared on deck in full-dress uniform with white gloves and sword to call on the Commander-in-Chief.
He mounted the side steps of Foudroyant with mixed feelings: as a victorious captain he could be certain of a warm welcome, but in these circumstances who knew what lay ahead? After he was piped aboard he was ushered respectfully into the admiral’s presence. In the vast great cabin there were three other officers who, to Kydd’s surprise, did not make their excuses.
Keith looked up, his face drawn and tired. “Ah, Mr Kydd. Joy of your encounter with La Fouine, of course. Your actions were in the best traditions of the service and do you much credit.” He shook Kydd’s hand vigorously but was clearly distracted. “In more tranquil times you should most certainly be my guest at dinner, but I do beg forgiveness in this instance and hope to receive you at another time.” His legendary chilliness melted into something akin to melancholy as he added, “But, then, these are not normal times and I can promise nothing.”
He paused, staring into space for long moments, then seemed to focus again. “I have this hour received Admiralty instructions. Your orders are being prepared, Commander, and will be delivered by hand to your vessel by evening gun.”
Kydd murmured something, but Keith cut him short. “You will be desirous of returning to your ship. Pray do not delay on my account.” As he turned to go, Kydd felt Keith’s hand on his arm. The flinty eyes bored straight into his. “Please believe, Mr Kydd, I would wish you well for your future.”
Kydd went down the side to the strident squeal of the boatswain’s pipe and into his boat. What did this mean? Was Keith conveying more than approval of his recent triumph? Perhaps he was to be accounted as an admiral’s favourite.
As they made their way back to Teazer a chance veering of the wind direction had the great ships swinging to their anchors, and past two 74s he saw at last the familiar shape of the ship he had spent so much of his sea life aboard, HMS Tenacious.
“Stretch out f’r that sixty-four,” he ordered Poulden.
“Aye aye, sir,” his new coxswain replied.
As they approached Tenacious she seemed dowdy and downcast; she was well ordered, but in small things she wasn’t the fine old warhorse he remembered. In places the gingerbread— the gilded carved adornments round her stern and beakhead—no longer gleamed with the lustre of gold leaf and had been economically painted over in yellow. The rosin finish between the wales of her side was now a dull black and her ensign seemed limp and drab.
But for Kydd this was a moment long coming. The first satisfaction—to be well savoured—would be in encountering Rowley once more. How would he find it in him to utter the words of civility due to a fellow captain?
Poulden answered the hail from Tenacious with a bellowed “Teazer!” indicating that not only was a naval officer to board but that this one was a captain of a King’s ship. They approached slowly to give the ceremonial side party time to assemble and to warn Tenacious’s captain to stand by to receive.
Mounting the side steps Kydd saw with a jet of warmth all the familiar marks left by countless encounters with the sea and malice of the enemy still there.
The blast of the boatswain’s call pealed out the instant his head appeared above the level of the bulwark and Kydd gravely removed his hat and acknowledged the quarterdeck, then the small group who awaited him.
A young lieutenant stepped forward anxiously. “Sir, L’tenant McCallum, second o’ Tenacious.”
“Commander Kydd, Teazer,” Kydd said crisply. “To visit th’ first lieutenant.”
Hesitantly McCallum replied, “Captain is ashore, sir, and the first lieutenant at the dockyard, but he’ll be back aboard presently. Er, we’d be honoured if you’d accept the hospitality of the wardroom in the meantime.”
One satisfaction deferred, then, but another pleasurably delayed. Renzi could be relied on to manage the niceties of a captain come to visit a lieutenant instead of the more usual summoning in the reverse direction.
“First l’tenant’s sairvant, sir, an’ would ye desire a wee drop?” It was not like Renzi to have a youngster with a Scottish brogue as manservant—he normally favoured a knowing and dour marine.
“No, thank ye,” Kydd answered, and settled automatically into his old second lieutenant’s chair, looking around the well-remembered intimacies of the first ship in which he had served as an officer. So many memories . . . When the servant had left he tiptoed self-consciously to the end cabin, larboard side, the most junior officer’s. He guiltily pulled aside the curtain and peered in at the ludicrously tiny space that he had once considered the snug centre of his domestic world. The cunningly crafted writing desk was still there, a small gilded portrait of someone’s young lady peering shyly at him from the bulkhead above it.
He let the curtain fall and feeling washed over him. From the anguish of those long-ago times to now, captain of his own ship. Could fortune bring more?
“Ahem. Sir?” A tall, stooped officer stood at the door looking mystified.
“Yes, L’tenant?” Kydd answered pleasantly.
“Well, er, sir,” he said in embarrassment, “Edward Robbins, first lieutenant.”
It took Kydd aback. “Oh, er, Mr Renzi is not y’r first—he’s been moved on?”
“Oh, no, sir,” said the officer. “I’ve only been in post these three weeks since Mr Renzi was landed with the fever. It’s been a busy time keeping in with things.”
“Fever?” Kydd said blankly, a cold presentiment creeping into him.
“Why, yes, sir—did you know Mr Renzi at all?”
“I did—do.”
“Oh, I’ve sad news for you then, sir. Mr Renzi was taken of an ague, let me see, this month past off Toulon. The doctor exhausted his quinine and having only a few leeches remaining there was little that could be done.”
“He is . . .” began Kydd, but could not finish.
“We sent him in a lugger—to here, sir, the Lazaretto, but our doctor told us then that he was not responding and we should be prepared.” Seeing Kydd’s stricken face, he finished lamely, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, sir.”
Icy cold with the fear of what he would shortly know, Kydd headed down the harbour past Bloody Island and to the landing place on the bleak-walled Lazaretto Island. The nervous boat’s crew insisted on lying off while Kydd went in to enquire. It took him moments only to discover that Renzi was no longer there; apparently he should have gone to Isla del Rey, the round island up the harbour where the hospital and its records were.
“L’tenant Renzi of Tenacious,” he insisted yet again, to the man at the door. This time it brought results: an intense, dark-featured Iberian appeared. “Yes?” he asked brusquely, wiping his hands on a towel. Kydd explained himself. “He lives still,” the man grunted. Hope flooded back. “But not for long. If you wan’ say goodbyes, come now.”
The cloying, sickly smell of suffering humanity hit him like a wall, bringing back unbearable memories of his time in a yellow-fever hospital in the Caribbean. “Here,” the Iberian said, with a gesture, and stood back cynically.
Kydd bent over the pitiable grey form. It
was Renzi. “M’ friend—” he said huskily, but a lump in his throat prevented him continuing.
“He c’n not hear you.”
“May I know—the fever, is it—”
“Is not infecting. Th’ fools on your ships know nothing.”
“How—how long?”
“It is th’ undulant fever—do you know this?”
“No,” said Kydd, in a low voice.
“He has a week—a month. Who know? Then . . .”
“Is there any cure, at all?”
“No.” The finality in his voice sounded like the slam of a door. Then he added, “Some believe th’ change of air, but I cannot say.”
The boat trip back to Teazer in the bright sunshine was a hard trial; all he wanted now was the solitude of his cabin to grapple with what he had seen. His dearest friend on his deathbed, a motionless grey form. So different from the man who had roped himself to Kydd when they cast themselves into the sea at the wreck of Artemis, who had been by his side at Acre with bloody sword as they defied Napoleon himself. More images came and Kydd bit his lip and endured until the boat finally reached Teazer.
After he had come aboard Dacres handed him a packet. The promised orders had arrived. But Kydd needed time to face what had happened. His particular friend, who had shared so many of the adventures that had formed him, and given him the chances that had led to this, the culmination of his life, was dying—and he could do nothing.
His fists balled while helplessness coursed through him. Then he took a deep breath to steady himself.
He took up his orders, now his only link with normality, the real world, and his duty. Life—naval life—had to go on, and if there was anything to which Renzi had scrupulously held, it was his duty.
The packet of orders was thin. Normally containing signals in profusion and pages of ancillary matters, this appeared to consist only of a single folded paper. He slit the seal and opened it out: it was curt, precise and to the point. Teazer was to sail for England with immediate effect. She was to proceed thence to Plymouth, the nearest big port. There, her commission would come to an end and she would be placed in ordinary, laid up, her masts, riggings, sails and guns removed. Her ship’s company to disperse, her officers’ commissions to terminate and her commander to become unemployed.
It was the end of everything.
CHAPTER 10
IT WAS NOT AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN, his return to the land of his birth. Still numb with shock at the way his fortunes had changed so precipitously, the sight of the sprawling promontory of the Lizard, bleak against the desolate cold grey autumn seas, left him sad and empty.
The disintegration of the life he had come to love so much had started almost immediately when the Maltese had refused to continue to England and had left the ship. He had let Bonnici go with them and the few others who preferred a Mediterranean sea life to the uncertainties of peacetime Britain, and sailed short-handed.
Some of Teazer’s company were eager to return, those with families, loved ones, a future. Others were subdued, caught by the sudden alteration in their lives and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
The Eddystone lighthouse lay to starboard as they headed for Plymouth Sound and shaped course for the naval dockyard. There seemed to be so many more craft plying the coasts than Kydd remembered and each seemed bent on throwing herself across Teazer’s track.
The desolation Kydd felt had only one small glimmer of light: Renzi still clung to life. Kydd had seized on the one thing that he had heard might benefit his friend: a change of air. He had cleared out his great cabin, then stretchered Renzi aboard and set Tysoe to caring for him. The fever was still in full spate, coming in spiteful waves, and while Kydd sat with him there was no sign that Renzi understood what was going on.
Time passed in a series of final scenes: the growing definition of land to greens and blacks and the occasional scatter of village dwellings, passing Drake Island and the grandeur of Plymouth Hoe, then the concluding passage to larboard and around Devil’s Point to the wider stretch of the Hamoaze.
The vast Admiralty dockyard was located along the east side of the Tamar River; for the best part of a mile the shore was pierced with graving docks and lined with ordnance wharves, quays and jetties without counting. And inland, as far as the eye could see, there were long stone buildings and chimneys, storehouses and smith’s shops, sail lofts and mast houses in endless industrial display.
But Kydd had no eyes for these wonders. Even the impressive sight of ships-of-the-line in stately rows and the heart-catching sadness of the long file of little ships secured head to tail in mid-channel in ordinary did not divert him. There was one last service he could do for Renzi: his poor racked body, tightly wrapped against the late autumn misery, was landed and taken to the naval hospital at Stonehouse.
In the days that followed Kydd himself suffered: HMS Teazer had reached the end of her sea service and, by degrees, was rendered a shell fit to join the melancholy line of others at the trots. As they were de-stored, the ship’s company was paid off and departed until, in an unnatural, echoing solitude, there was left only the purser, his clerk and the standing officers, who would remain until the ship was sold or disposed of—the boatswain, carpenter, gunner and cook.
Kydd tried to spend as much time as he could with Renzi; the prognosis was not good and he was visibly weakening, still in a febrile delirium. Then the day came when Ellicott laid out the last papers for his attention, and he signed away for ever his life at sea.
With an hour until the dockyard boat made its round Kydd had nothing to do but wander the forlorn husk of his ship. Empty space where once victorious carronades had roared out their defiance, over there a beautifully worked patch in the deck where once an iron-bound block had fallen from aloft. And on her bow the laughing maiden in white . . . Not trusting himself to keep a countenance, Kydd turned abruptly and went below.
The mess deck, now a deserted hollow space, still carried the same wafting odours of humanity and cooking it had always had and, leaving the boatswain to his rummaging, he passed for the last time into his cabin. The panels were bare but he had left the table and other furniture, for what use were they to him on land? His bedplace no longer contained his few possessions: they were on deck, ready to be taken ashore.
A lump came to his throat.
A soft knock and a low murmur interrupted his thoughts. “Sir.” It was the boatswain, cradling something. “Sprits’l, sir. Thought ye’d like t’ know he’s going to be looked after, like, no need t’ worry y’self on his account.”
“Th-thank ye, Mr Purchet. I know he’s in th’ best o’ hands . . .”
The boatswain left just in time: for the first time since his youth Kydd knew the hot gush of tears that would not end.
The solid, hard and hateful land was finally under his feet for good. Kydd knew what his first move would be, but little after that. He had no alternative than to return home to Guildford—but under very different circumstances from those he had dreamed of out in the bright Mediterranean. Now there was nothing of that life but memories.
His uniform was stowed with his baggage and his fighting sword. He needed to get used to the soft clinging of civilian garb—and even more quickly to the mysteries of shore ways.
Thinking of this final removal from the sea world now upon him brought a catch to his throat. And what would happen to Renzi? He might have only days, or perhaps the fever would break long enough for them to talk together for the last time.
There was only one thing possible: he would take Renzi with him and his mother would care for him. For one so ill there was only one way and that was to go by coach, which would probably mean the hire of the entire vehicle. Having lavished so much attention on Teazer Kydd’s means were now severely stretched, but he could not desert his friend.
The long and tedious journey tried Kydd sorely. The eternal grinding of wheels and soul-destroying inactivity were not best suited to his mood. Renzi was as comfortable as he could m
ake him, suspended in a naval cot across the seats, but the swaying and jolting were remorseless. If he did not survive the journey, Kydd had argued to himself, then it would be the same as if he had remained in a hospital bed to die. At least there were no wounds to hurt his friend and work open.
It took two days even with the turnpikes to reach Surrey and Guildford. The wartime years had been kind to the quiet township and little had changed. It seemed so small, tidy, placid. But he had changed: the places and scenes that had seemed so significant in his memories had receded into the picturesque tranquillity of a pretty market town.
They reached the river Wey, clattered over the old bridge and began the steep climb up the high street, past the little shops and taverns. It was as he remembered, but overlying it all was a detachment that put him over and above these scenes. Since last he had been here in these untroubled old lanes he had been at the grand and horrifying scenes of the Nile with Nelson, had stood with bloody sword at the gates of Acre—and been captain of a man-o’-war. What kind of person did that make him in the context of this gentle existence?
Under the splendid clock at the Guild Hall, then up towards School Lane. His heart beat faster for he was returning home— the only one he had now. The horses made the level, then continued the last hundred yards to the schoolhouse. Kydd was touched to see that the flag hoisted proudly over all was the blue ensign of Admiral Keith’s Mediterranean squadron, no doubt strictly observed by Boatswain Perrott. It was quiet in the schoolrooms and he guessed that it was holidays.
“Here an’ wait, if y’ please,” Kydd instructed the coachman, when they reached the small gate to the school. He descended, stretched his cramped limbs and made his way to the school cottage. He hesitated for a moment before he knocked: in the time he had been away on the high seas almost anything could have happened to the family. His father had not been so spry then and . . . He braced himself and knocked firmly. Holding his breath, he waited.
The door opened. “Th’ Kydd residence. An’ what’s y’ business, sir?” A young maid whom Kydd did not recognise was looking at him suspiciously.
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