The Darkening Sea

by Alexander Kent

  The boat pulled clear and Unity became an anonymous shadow like the others. Another coincidence? Or had Beer kept him aboard so that Anemone would have no time to up anchor and go after him? He gave an unexpected smile. Just as well with such a new company.

  He asked, ‘What news, Mr Dunwoody?’

  The boy was smart and alert, an obvious choice for the important world of fleet signals. If the war dragged on he might be a lieutenant in a year. Dunwoody would be more than aware of that.

  ‘The boats brought ten more seamen on board, sir. They all have protection, as they are of the Honourable East India Company.’ The boy leaned forward to watch a passing fishing boat. ‘The first lieutenant says they are all prime seamen, sir.’

  They would be. John Company prided itself on its sailors. Good conditions, fair pay, and the ships were well-armed enough to drive off even a man-of-war. Everything the navy should be. Could be. These ten extra hands were a godsend. They had probably been drunk and had missed their ship’s departure.

  Adam asked, ‘Did they think we are sailing for England?’

  The boy frowned, recalling Lieutenant Martin’s wry smile, and repeated what he had said. ‘He told them we were, but that they would work ship until we got there.’

  Adam smiled in the darkness. Martin was learning fast.

  ‘Well, we are returning to England. Eventually!’

  He heard shouts from the big American frigate and thought about her impressive captain.

  And he knew my father. He glanced at the midshipman, afraid for an instant that he had spoken out loud. But the boy was peering across the glittering black water at Anemone’s riding light floating above it.

  ‘Boat ahoy!’

  The midshipman cupped his hands. ‘Anemone!’

  For his dead father or for his ship he did not know, but all Adam could feel was pride.

  Back aboard the big frigate men were spread out on the yards, while others worked steadily at the capstan as the cable grew tighter and steeper. The senior lieutenant watched his massive captain.

  He asked quietly, ‘That Cap’n Bolitho. He going to give us any trouble?’

  Beer smiled. ‘His uncle maybe, but not him, I think.’

  ‘Anchor’s aweigh, sir!’

  All else was forgotten as the ship heeled to the wind’s thrust. Free of the ground, away from the land to her proper element.

  Once clear of the anchorage the same lieutenant made his report to the quarterdeck.

  ‘Man the braces.’ Beer looked at the swinging compass. ‘We’ll alter course again in about ten minutes. Pass the word.’

  The lieutenant hesitated. ‘And you knew his father in the war, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’ He thought of the young captain’s grave features, driven by something he could barely suppress. How could he tell him the truth? It no longer mattered. The war, as his second-in-command had called it, was over long ago. ‘Yes, I knew him. He was a bastard – but that is between us alone.’

  The lieutenant strode away, surprised and yet pleased that his formidable captain had taken him into his confidence.

  By midnight under all plain sail, Unity was steering due south, with the ocean to herself.

  * * *

  8

  Friends and Enemies

  * * *

  A WEEK AFTER leaving Gibraltar the frigate Valkyrie and her consort anchored at Freetown in Sierra Leone. After a swift passage, the final day was the longest Bolitho could remember. Searing heat that drove the bare-backed seamen from one patch of shadow to the next, and a glare so fierce it was almost impossible to discern the dividing line between sea and sky.

  At one point the light airs deserted them completely, and Captain Trevenen immediately lowered boats to take the great frigate in tow in the search for a wind to carry them towards the unending span of green coastline.

  Bolitho knew from hard experience that the tides and currents and the perversity of the winds off these shores could make even the most experienced sailor lose his patience. It did not help Trevenen’s temper when Laertes, although only some two miles off the starboard quarter, filled her sails and began to overhaul the senior ship without difficulty.

  Monteith, the fifth lieutenant, clambered into the beakhead beneath the flat, listless jibs and with a speaking trumpet shouted to the three towing longboats.

  ‘Use your starters! Mr Gulliver, get them to put their backs into it!’ As if he could sense the anger around him he added hastily, ‘Captain’s orders!’

  Bolitho heard it from the cabin and saw Allday look up as he was giving a ritual polish to the old sword.

  It was like a furnace on deck. Out there in the unprotected boats it would be far worse. No boat could offer more than steerage way, especially with a ship as big as Valkyrie.

  He stared astern at the undulating swell, and at the sky which was without colour, as if it had been burned out of it.

  ‘Send for my flag lieutenant.’ He heard Ozzard leave the cabin. It had been a difficult passage. Valkyrie was not a proper flagship, and yet he was more than a passenger.

  He had lurched from his sleep one airless night, trapped in his cot as the nightmare came at him again. The hundred-mile reef, Golden Plover rearing on to its jagged spines with her masts torn from her, then the sea boiling around the wreck, the foam suddenly blood-red as the sharks drove in amongst the drowning seamen, most of whom had been too dazed and drunk to know what was happening.

  In the nightmare he had been trying to reach Catherine, but another held her, had been laughing as the sea had closed over him.

  It was the first time he had really got to know something of George Avery, his new flag lieutenant. He had woken to see him sitting near him in the cabin’s darkness, while the rudder-head had thudded dully like a funeral drum.

  ‘I heard you cry out, Sir Richard. I brought you something.’

  It had been brandy and he had drained it in two swallows, ashamed that Avery should see him like this. He had been shivering so badly that for one terrible instant he had believed the old fever was returning, the one which had all but killed him in the Great South Sea.

  Avery had said, ‘I thought it were better me than another.’ He had obviously been observing Trevenen very closely, something that made his apparent remoteness a lie.

  After some time Avery told him that he himself had been dogged by nightmares after losing his schooner to the French. As a prisoner of war, and badly wounded at that, he was more of a nuisance to his captors than a triumph. He had been held in a small village, and been visited by a local doctor who had done little to help him. It was not that the French had been cruel or full of hatred towards one of the enemy, but simply that they had believed his death was inevitable. And after the Terror, death no longer had much power to frighten them.

  Eventually, when he had begun to recover, some of the villagers had taken pity on him, and when he was released following the Peace of Amiens they had supplied him with warm clothing and fresh bread and cheese for the journey home.

  As Bolitho had regained his own composure and shared some of the brandy with this quiet-spoken lieutenant, Avery had told him of his distress when he had been court-martialled. Even aboard the old Canopus some of his fellow officers had shunned him, as if by a closer contact with him they might somehow become tainted, their own hopes of advancement dashed.

  Bolitho had heard of many lieutenants who had served in several campaigns, some with distinction, who had never been selected for promotion. Perhaps Avery would be one of those, and the little armed schooner Jolie had been the nearest he would ever come to a command of his own.

  Of Sillitoe he had said, ‘My mother was his sister. I think he felt obliged to do something for her memory. He did little enough when she needed him. Too proud, too stubborn … those were characteristics they shared.’

  ‘And your father?’

  He might have shrugged: it had been too dark to see.

  ‘He was at Copenhagen, Sir Richard, the first bat
tle. He was serving in the Ganges, seventy-four.’

  Bolitho had nodded. ‘I knew her well. Captain Fremantle.’

  Avery had said quietly, ‘I know there were many killed. My father was one.’

  The following day after he had been conferring with Yovell over some signals, Avery had spoken to him again. He had said suddenly, ‘When my uncle told me of this possible appointment I wanted to laugh. Or cry. With respect, Sir Richard, I could hardly imagine you accepting me no matter what you thought of my record, when so many dozens of lieutenants would kill for the chance!’

  Now, with the last order still hanging in the airless heat of the cabin, Bolitho reached for his coat but changed his mind. Nobody seemed to know much of Trevenen’s background, but it was more obvious than ever that he owed this command to Sir James Hamett-Parker. Why? A favour for some service in the past?

  He said curtly to Avery, ‘Please ask the Captain to come aft.’

  While he waited he continued his assessment of Trevenen. He was older than expected for a frigate captain, especially for a ship like this, which was the first of her kind.

  And there was a certain meanness about the man. He seemed to spend a lot of time going over the lists and books of ship’s stores and victuals with Tatlock, the anxious-looking purser. Like the matter of the dockyard paint for the figurehead. Trevenen was known to have made a lot of prize money from attacks on the enemy’s supply ships, so it was not lack of funds. A man who gave nothing away about his feelings, his hopes, even his background …

  The marine sentry bawled, ‘Captain, sir!’

  Trevenen entered, hat in hand, frowning slightly as he tried to see Bolitho after the blinding sunlight on deck.

  ‘I want you to belay that last order, Captain Trevenen. It can do nothing but harm. Apart from the sixth lieutenant, Mr Gulliver, who was a midshipman himself just a few months ago, the other midshipmen in the boats are too inexperienced to understand anything but the need to obey orders.’

  Trevenen regarded him calmly. ‘I have always regarded that as …’

  Bolitho held up his hand. ‘Hear me. I have not asked you here to discuss varying ideas of loyalty and discipline. I am telling you to belay that order. Further, I would wish you to impress upon your officers, through the first lieutenant, that petty bullying must not be tolerated. The man Jacobs, who died because of a second flogging a few days after the first, was being taunted by a midshipman who is no more than a child, and who acted like one!’

  He was angry. It went against everything he knew to interfere with his captain’s authority. If the situation developed into a full-scale operation against French privateers under skilled leadership, Trevenen as the flag captain would be in a vital role. Was this animosity then a continuation of the old family feud? Or could it be something less obvious, and if so more sinister?

  Either way, he had committed himself now.

  Trevenen said heavily, ‘I hope I know my duty, Sir Richard.’

  Bolitho looked at him, feeling his resentment like a blow. ‘For all our sakes, Captain, so do I!’

  As the door closed a ruler rolled from the desk and across the black and white painted canvas deck.

  Bolitho felt the hull shiver, the sudden clatter of blocks and halliards as the uncooperative wind ruffled the sea’s face and brought life to the empty sails.

  ‘Hands aloft there!’

  ‘Stand by to recover boats!’ A call shrilled and feet padded overhead.

  He leaned back in a chair and plucked the shirt from his chest. He felt the locket under his fingers and thought of Catherine in Falmouth, three thousand miles astern. When would her first letter catch up with him? He had suggested that she should write directly to Cape Town, but even then …

  Avery entered from the adjoining cabin and gazed at him searchingly, his tawny eyes bright in the reflected sunlight from the stern windows. He must know exactly what happened just now. Bolitho heard more shouts, the squeal of tackles as the boats were hoisted inboard once again. The boats’ crews might never know about his intervention. They were probably too worn out to care.

  He stood up as Ozzard came out of the sleeping cabin with a clean shirt.

  Avery asked, ‘Will there be a salute, Sir Richard?’

  Bolitho nodded. Feeling his way. ‘There is a captain in command of the anti-slavery patrol here. I think I know him.’ He smiled, despite the lingering anger at his conflict with Trevenen. There was usually a familiar face before very long in the family that was the navy.

  The deck tilted again and he said, ‘Make a signal to Laertes. Take station astern.’ He pulled on the clean shirt.

  Avery looked at him but said nothing, well aware that the order had been given to prevent Trevenen from being humiliated by the other ship’s superior performance.

  Ozzard held out the dress coat and waited patiently for Bolitho to slip his arms into it. He did so with a faint, rueful smile. He had seen the expression in Trevenen’s eyes when he had found his admiral in a crumpled shirt and little else. If they ever went into a fight, Trevenen at least would be dressed for the part, he thought.

  As Avery turned to leave Bolitho called, ‘Let me know if the brig Larne is at anchor.’

  He walked to the stern windows and winced as he rested his palms on the sill. It would be good if Tyacke were here. There were bitter memories in this place, but not where that bravest of men was concerned.

  On deck there seemed to be no air, and yet every sail was filling and slackening as if the ship herself were breathing. Laertes was already tacking obediently astern, her ensign and masthead pendant very bright against the misty backdrop.

  Allday stood near him, his hat tilted over his eyes, his thick arms folded across his chest.

  Some seamen were making the final lashings fast on the boats on the tier, although the whole drill would have to be repeated once the anchor was dropped. They were getting very brown-skinned, and some were cruelly burned by a climate and a life they were not yet used to.

  One young sailor had a red mark like a new scar on his shoulder, a cut from a starter while he had been pulling at his oar. He seemed to feel that someone was watching him, and turned to look over his bare shoulder toward the place where Bolitho stood at the quarterdeck rail. As their eyes met, Bolitho gave just the slightest nod.

  The sailor stared round as if afraid of being seen, then almost shyly gave a quick smile before turning back to his lashings.

  Allday murmured, ‘It’s a beginning.’ He missed nothing.

  Bolitho felt his eye stinging badly and turned away, in case Allday should see that too.

  The first bang of the salute echoed and re-echoed across the water from a small hillside battery, and gun for gun Valkyrie responded, fifteen in all for the man whose flag fluttered from the foremast truck. Allday watched Bolitho’s stiff shoulders and could guess what he was thinking. Few others would understand; could even begin to, he decided. All this, the salute, the honour and the power, and to him it meant nothing. Yet a frightened grin from an unknown, pressed landman had touched his heart. No wonder she loved him.

  ‘Hands aloft! Reef tops’ls! Stand by to take in the main course!’

  A lieutenant called, ‘Bosun! Move those men! Come along, Mr Jones!’

  But the barrel-chested boatswain shrugged and did nothing.

  Urquhart the first lieutenant touched his hat. ‘Guardboat in position, sir!’

  Trevenen stared past him, his hands gripped behind his back. ‘Stand by starboard anchor, if you please.’ He did not look at Bolitho. ‘Take in the driver and t’gan’sls. Prepare to come about.’

  Avery said, ‘No sign of Larne, Sir Richard.’

  ‘Man the braces!’

  Bolitho shaded his eyes and studied the scattered array of shipping. Large and small with a collection of moored vessels, obviously prizes, slavers brought here by captains like Tyacke.

  An elderly sixty-four was anchored close to the shore, the headquarters and accommodation ship for the
man who commanded the patrols and fought a private war against fever and sudden death.

  Despite the new laws against it slavery was still rampant. The risks the slavers took were greater, but so were the profits for the successful. Some of the ships in the trade were as well armed as the brigs and schooners that hunted for them. Most sea officers thought it was all a waste of time, except for those involved in the long-reaching patrols who were making huge sums in prize money. It should be left until the war was over and won, then they could be as pious as all those others who did not have to fight. The need for fighting ships, no matter how small, far outweighed the tongue-in-cheek display of humanity.

  ‘Lee braces there!’

  ‘Helm a-lee, sir!’

  Valkyrie pivotted round, and as her great anchor flung spray high over the beakhead she came slowly to rest on her cable. Trevenen glared up at the yards where men were fisting and lashing the furled sails into place.

  Bolitho said, ‘I should like the gig, Captain Trevenen. I intend to visit the captain yonder.’ He glanced around the quarterdeck. ‘The ship must have made a splendid sight as she came in.’

  There was no response, and Bolitho made for the companion-way. It was obvious that there would be none.

  Lieutenant Avery said, ‘Mr Guest, you may go below. I shall need you again shortly.’ He saw the midshipman’s face stiffen as the captain snapped, ‘I will give the orders here, Mister Avery, and I will trouble you not to interfere! Be content with your grace-and-favour appointment!’

  ‘I resent that, sir.’

  Trevenen gave a cold smile. ‘Do you indeed?’

  Avery stood his ground. ‘It is the only thing we have in common, sir.’

  The midshipman swallowed hard. ‘What shall I do, sir?’

  Trevenen swung away. ‘Do as he asks, and damn your impertinence!’

  Avery found that his hands were clenched so tightly that he was in pain.

  You damned, bloody fool. You vowed to control your feelings, to do nothing that might hurt you more …

  He saw Allday watching, just the hint of a smile in his eyes. The big man said quietly, ‘Right on the waterline, sir. Well done!’