‘I believe I’m ready now,’ Emma said, as she dismounted, breathing heavily from a long gallop. Greville gave her a shawl to wrap round her legs, lest she be observed from the house, walking towards the cottage, attired like a man.
‘Without Harry to witness it?’
‘Let it be a surprise.’
‘I would not want it to be a shock, Emma.’
The head groom was just as reluctant, knowing how much his master esteemed the animal. There was an Uppark race meeting due in a fortnight and if Montenegro wasn’t fit to ride it would be his back that would feel the lash. But head groom or not, he was just as subject to flattery and female wiles as his younger assistants. And he had no real notion of how this young filly stood with his master. Happen he would cause himself as much trouble by saying no as yes. So he consented to Emma being led on the morning exercise, though he would not countenance any notion that she should be on the animal when it turned for home.
‘For ’e’ll have you off, sure as ever it was, what with his reckoning on a stall and a bag of oats. Folks often enquire if ’orses be stupid, an’ I tell ’em, no error, that a horse is wise enough to know what it wants.’
There was mist on the Downs the day they set out. One of the grooms, named Caleb, had held Montenegro’s head while she mounted, had seen her pale slightly as she observed how far she had to fall. She had a mounted groom on either side, Caleb with a lead rope that would hold the monster back should he be tempted to take off. But on this morning the normally fiery animal was as benign as a lamb.
‘Reckon he’s taken to you, miss,’ said the head groom. ‘Horses often like girls more’n men, I’ve found.’
‘He may have a touch of the Minotaur in him,’ said Greville, from his place behind the stall door. ‘In which case he will eat out of your hand.’
The route was as familiar to the horses as it was to the grooms. Montenegro tugged at the bridle, but with no great passion since he knew that on the outward stretch of his exercise he would walk, then he would canter. Only when he turned for home, and was half-way back to his stall, would whichever groom rode him let have his head. Emma moved easily on his back, eyes watching the horse’s ears for the first sign of those temper vanes flattening.
Her thoughts were not entirely equine. Uppark Harry loomed large. She missed his laughter, his gaiety and, it had to be admitted, his body. But she also wanted to tell him that she would not suffer to be beaten so, which Greville had insisted she avoid. Yet for her own self-respect Emma had to do something.
‘I could do without the lead rope, with him being so docile.’
‘Don’t know ’bout that miss,’ said Caleb, shaking his tousled, blond hair.
‘Give me your hand,’ she said, transferring the reins, so they could hold them jointly. The lad obliged readily, it being something he had dreamed of, the chance to touch her, and the emotion that caused was transparent in his gaze. ‘See how I hold him in. He is easy with me.’
Caleb was treated to a dazzling smile as well. He hesitated for a second, then kicked his mount forward, lent down and untied the lead rope from Montenegro’s bridle. The horse didn’t pull away at this, he just maintained his steady trot.
‘Near to turning now miss,’ Caleb said, indicating the clearing ahead which was the furthest point of the daily ride.
‘Let me take him to the end.’
The boy couldn’t argue with the smile and the green eyes, nor could he fault the way that Emma, with a heavy haul on the reins, and a loud command, halted the animal. Caleb dismounted and held up his hands. ‘You just slip down now miss, and Caleb will catch you.’
Emma responded by kicking Montenegro into motion. The horse moved forward towards the line of trees and began to spin as she hauled hard on the right rein. His nostrils flared at the sight of the two grooms holding up their hands before him. They knew better than to shout. That would only spook the beast.
‘Stand aside, stable lads,’ she called, as she urged Montenegro forward.
The surge of energy as he took off was awesome, rendering futile Caleb’s attempt to snatch his bridle. Emma raised her hips from the saddle, transferring all her weight to the stirrups, wrists and reins over the animal’s neck. The path was clear and open, and hair and mane flying the pair raced across the Downs, cresting a hill that gave a view of the great house in the distance. The only sound she could hear, apart from the thud of the hooves was the wind whistling past her ears. Emma’s heart was racing with the exhilaration of riding at such speed.
After two full miles Montenegro was tiring, the foam from his mouth flecking his rider. He was sweating too. Slowly Emma began to rein him in, pleased to feel him check slightly as she did so. It took time, he was not one to be easily commanded, but eventually Montenegro slowed to a canter, then to a walk. It was on the back of a heavy breathing and sweating thoroughbred that Emma entered the stable block. Greville and Harry were there, the sound of hoofs on cobbles making them turn round, both their eyes opening wide with wonder.
Harry was looking at the state of his horse, the cloud of steam that rose and seemed to envelop his Emma. She brought Montenegro to a halt and spun him with ease to face her lover. His face was clear of the weal, as fresh and ruddy as it had always been. He was smiling hugely as a groom took the horse’s head and Emma slid into his arms.
‘By damn, Green Eyes, you will do. You will most certainly do.’
‘There, Harry,’ said Greville, with an element of pique in his voice. ‘I told you your damn beast was in safe hands.’
CHAPTER 24
1779
For a man like Frank Lepée, steward to the captain of HMS Hinchingbrooke, any change in his circumstances was unwelcome, none more so than the replacement of one master with another. He had watched his old commander over the side wondering if, when his replacement came aboard, he would be able to hold on to the best billet on the ship. The next captain might arrive with a servant in tow, which would mean a shift for Lepée to a hammock on the lower deck: back to poor food, no wine, hauling on a rope instead of the cork of a bottle.
It was an anxious steward who watched the barge pull out from the quayside of Port Royal harbour, oars steadily hitting the blue water as it wove its way through the anchored warships of the Jamaica squadron of the British West Indies fleet. Hinchingbrooke was berthed inside the great sweep of the bay, the bastion bristling with cannon off either beam, the white and red brick houses of Kingston dissected by the bowsprit, with the blue hills of Jamaica rising behind it.
The recently promoted Captain Horatio Nelson sat in the thwarts of the barge, though it was a while before Lepée caught sight of him, hidden behind the men rowing the boat. With the noonday sun high in the sky, the gold-edged tricorn uniform hat shaded his face, leaving only the impression of a slight individual, staring ahead, seemingly unconcerned.
Nothing was further from the truth. Nelson was in turmoil, half anxiety and half ecstasy. After only eighteen months on the station he was about to take command of a frigate, his first rated ship. Looking back his progress seemed seamless: the capture of the Torbay Lass, Waddle’s decision to declare himself unwell and go ashore rather than face a daily accusation of cowardice, facilitating Nelson’s elevation to first lieutenant. The joy of serving with Locker in that rank, harrying the enemy trade, taking capture after capture, had been huge. But even that paled when he was given command of a schooner, taking charge of a capture bought in to the service by the newly arrived admiral on the station, Sir Peter Parker.
Six months’ independence ended abruptly when Sir Peter, a friend and admirer of his uncle Maurice, took him into his own flagship as third lieutenant. There was no better station than the West Indies for rapid promotion: the climate and disease saw off more senior officers than enemy action. And the ships that became available went to those closest to the admiral. Within four months he had progressed from third to first lieutenant, and two months later he was appointed as master and commander to the sloop HMS B
adger.
He had enjoyed his six months in Badger, free at last to make his own decisions, to mould a crew in an image personal to him. While he could never be sure, Nelson hoped that the men had responded to his easy-going friendly manner, his way of treating them like human beings instead of cattle.
Opportunity was multiplied by the entry of the French into the American war, even more so when Spain was dragged in on Gallic coat tails. Together they had earned his ship and its commander an enviable reputation for activity and zeal that augured well for future promotion.
But the truth that nothing could be guaranteed came home to him the day he had learnt that his Uncle Maurice had died at Greenwich of a paralytic seizure. There was compensation in the will, from which he received a bequest of five hundred pounds, plus the assurance of the last words Maurice Suckling had said to his father, words that he had read several times.
Even in the crisis of his affliction his grip never faltered, and when he uttered these words he held my arm with the strength of a vice. ‘Never fear, Rector,’ he said, ‘you will live to see your Horace an admiral.’ Depend upon it, my son, those words have the ring of divine providence, coming as they do from a dying man. Take heart from that, and dedicate your prayers to his departed soul, and your mind and body to the memory of his reputation.
That stroke had taken from him his patron, and therefore the interest he relied on for advancement. Even with a good reputation he could not guarantee that he would be elevated any further than his present rank. No doubt Admiral Parker had given his word to Maurice Suckling that he would look after his nephew, but it was not a promise he was bound by. The question that nagged at Nelson, knowing that Sir Peter had other claimants to his good offices, was whether it still held.
The cry ‘Hinchingbrooke!’ from Giddings, the coxswain of his barge, induced a glow of pride in Nelson. A captain arriving aboard was always referred to by the name of his ship, which made him wonder now at the trepidation of his last interview with the Admiral. There had been the worrying wait while Sir Peter offered his condolences, praising Maurice Suckling for both his sea and land service. There followed a period of anxiety while the operations he had undertaken in the previous six months were dissected and examined, looking less noteworthy under scrutiny than they had at the time.
But finally Parker came to the crux of the interview, to pronounce that Lieutenant Horatio Nelson had earned promotion to post rank on merit. Master and commander was nought but a courtesy title, to be given and taken away at a superior’s whim. But to be made Post Captain was to have certainty in your life. Henceforth no junior officer could bypass him on the Captain’s list. The date of his promotion would guarantee, should he be able to gain service, that he would rise from command of a Sixth Rate frigate, through all the rates to a majestic 100-gun ship-of-the-line. And in time, should he survive and the Grim Reaper remove those above him, would see him, as his uncle had predicted, promoted to admiral.
Giddings guided the barge to touch the side of Hinchingbrooke as gently as a feather and Nelson stood up, stepped neatly over the side of the barge on to the gangplank. On deck he raised his hat, acknowledging his officers’ salutes as well as the line of marines behind them. To Frank Lepée he looked too young to be a post captain; slight of build, with blond hair and the soft features of a growing boy. Yet that he was, with eight years’ near continuous sea service at his back.
‘Good day to you, Mr Preece,’ said Nelson, to the first lieutenant he had inherited, a dour-looking Welshman with a face like unrisen dough. ‘Please muster the hands aft so that I may read myself in.’
The crew were not tardy in assembling, being as curious as Frank Lepée about their new captain. Horatio Nelson, his commission in his hand, gazed over the sea of faces that filled the space between the poop and the waist. His look commanded silence, and with a steady voice that hid his excitement, he began to read his orders.
‘By the powers vested in me by the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty, I am hereby instructed to take command of His Britannic Majesty’s ship, Hinchingbrooke.’ There was much more since those in power wished captain and crew to know their duties, including the reading of the Articles of War, which promised death by hanging the most common punishment, so these men before him breached such ordinances at their peril. But it ended eventually, and the hands were sent about their duties.
‘Pray join me in my cabin, Mr Preece.’
Frank Lepée set the silver jug of coffee on the desk. His new captain, of whom he was still a trifle cautious, responded with a polite, ‘Thank you,’ though he didn’t lift his head. The steward stepped back to examine him instead of leaving the cabin to return to his pantry. Nelson had only been aboard two days, yet already the ship had a different feel. His predecessor had been a distant figure to his men, sickly and a touch indolent, dependent on his steward, which had suited Lepée. This new fellow was too active, eager to meet the crew, to put names to faces and histories to those names; wives, children, the place they came from and how long they had served, even to talk to them about seamanship. Luckily, though, he had accepted Frank Lepée as his steward without a murmur.
The instructions to Lieutenant Preece on the running of the ship had been firm. Nelson disliked flogging as a punishment, the withdrawal of privileges was more to his taste. The men should be clean in their habits, which would be reflected in the state of the ship and their own health. The blind eye was to be employed, but anyone who stood out in terms of theft, gambling, violence or sodomy he wanted off the ship. Care was to be taken with the midshipmen: they were to be taught their trade assiduously and any form of bullying in the berth had to be stamped out forthwith.
Giddings had followed Nelson from Lowestoffe to Badger, likewise Bromwich, who was now in the mid’s berth, and both were questioned for information on the new captain. Giddings couldn’t praise him enough, especially for the way he had stood up to Waddle, who was cursed as a hard-case miserable sod and a bit shy when it came to action. He assured Lepée that Nelson was anything but shy, evidenced by the number of captures that had come in under either his own name or that of William Locker during the last eighteen months, every one of which Giddings listed.
‘He’ll line your pocket, mate,’ Giddings confided, ‘no error.’
While that appealed to Lepée, who loved money as much as he loved a drink, other habits and traits did not. Nelson was abstemious in the article of wine, not good news to a man who craved a regular tipple; it was easier to pilfer from an imbiber than a near teetotaller. The good news was that Nelson was the type to entertain his officers and midshipmen frequently.
Nelson scribbled away, writing letters home to his family; his father at Burnham Thorpe and his sister Susanna who had been in London working as a seamstress, but had decided to use her bequest from Maurice Suckling to buy out her bond and move back to Norfolk. His eldest brother Maurice was still at the Navy Office, though far from content, and Suckling had gone into trade in London using his own inheritance. They were both close to Anne, who was lace making in Ludgate Circus. Edmund was footloose and unsettled. Kitty, still at Burnham, he included in his letter to his father, with an addendum to be passed on to George at his school.
He was vaguely aware of his steward’s scrutiny and not sure how to respond. Accustomed to messmates and shared servants, he was less familiar with the notion of solitude and a steward all to himself. What enquiries he had made of the man had established that Lepée was of Huguenot stock, from a family of French Protestants that had been booted out of Catholic France a hundred years before. The man looked French with his shiny black hair swept forward, button nose, deep brown eyes and swarthy skin, but he was English through and through, and carried a dislike of the country of his ancestors even more rabid than that of his new master.
The Reverend Edmund Nelson had servants at home, Peter within and Peter without, as well as a parlourmaid, and since he had joined the Navy Horatio Nelson had been attended to by someone. But his r
elationship with Lepée would be different, more intimate, and that made him uncomfortable. He was aware that he was more likely to make some social gaffe than Lepée. Nelson did not know that his steward was working on this, making small alterations to his behaviour. Lepée had begun to remind him of lapses in his manners lest he embarrass himself, happy in the knowledge that he was getting on top of the man he would serve, which to his way of thinking was only right and proper.
The last thing Horatio Nelson wanted was to be stuck in harbour, and it wasn’t long before his wish for action was indulged. Plans had been afoot ever since Spain entered the war to carry off a landing on the Mosquito Coast, its object to harry the Spanish and to secure a bridgehead from which Britannia could create a passage across the Panama isthmus. From there they could begin to wrest control of Central America from those who had held it since the arrival of Columbus. It wasn’t just territory that London was after, but the wealth that flowed from the Spanish Main to the coffers of Madrid. Cut that off and Spain as an adversary would be crippled.
As a one-time merchant vessel, captured and converted to a Sixth Rate, the 28-gun frigate Hinchingbrooke was perfect for the task. With copious holds, there was ample space to bed troops. Nelson took aboard a hundred regulars from the 60th Foot. The accompanying transports carried volunteers from Jamaica, three hundred strong, a mixed bunch from Irish Volunteers to remittance men, some genuine in their desire to best the Dons, most more interested in carving out a life and land for themselves on enemy soil.
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