Jenour called huskily, “The corvette’s closing, sir!”
“I see her. Warn the starboard battery, then pass the word to the marines in the tops. Nobody will board this ship!” He stared at Jenour and knew he was speaking wildly. “Nobody!”
Jenour tore his eyes away and called to a boatswain’s mate. But just for a few seconds he had seen a Bolitho he had not known before. Like a man who faced destiny and accepted it. A man without fear; without hate and maybe without hope either. He saw Bolitho turn away from the drifting smoke and look towards his coxswain. The glance excluded everyone, so that the death and danger seemed almost incidental for that one precious moment. They smiled at each other, and before the guns opened fire once again Jenour tried to recall what he had seen in Bolitho’s expression as he had glanced at his friend. If it was anything, it was like an apology, he decided.
Bolitho had seen Jenour’s desperate gaze but forgot him as the guns thundered again and recoiled on their tackles. Like demons the crews flung themselves to their tasks of sponging out the smoking muzzles, before ramming home fresh charges and finally the black, evil-looking shot. Their naked backs were begrimed from powder smoke, sweat cutting pale lines through it in spite of the bitter wind and floating droplets of spray.
There was blood on the deck too, while here and there great blackened scores cut across the usually immaculate planking, where French balls had come smashing inboard. One of the larboard eighteen-pounders had been upended and a man lay dying beneath its massive weight, his skin burning under the overheated barrel. Others had been pulled aside to keep the deck clear for the small powder monkeys who scurried from gun to gun, not daring to look up as they dropped their charges and ran back for more.
Two corpses, so mutilated by flying metal that they were barely recognisable, were lifted momentarily above the nettings before being cast into the sea. Burial when it came was as ruthless as the death which had marked them down.
Bolitho took a telescope from its rack and stared at the other frigate until his eye throbbed. Like Truculent, she had been hit many times and her sails were shot through, some ripping apart to the pressure of the wind. Rigging, severed and untended, swayed from the yards like creeper, but her guns were still firing from every port, and Bolitho could feel some of the iron hitting the lower hull. In the rare pauses, while men fell about their work like demented souls in hell, he could hear the tell-tale sound of pumps, and almost expected to hear Poland’s incisive tones urging one of his lieutenants to bid them work all the harder.
The glass settled on the other frigate’s poop and he saw her captain staring back at him through his own telescope. He shifted it slightly and saw dead and dying men around the wheel, and knew that some of Williams’ double-shotted guns had reaped a terrible harvest.
But they must hurt her, slow her down before her guns could find some weakness in Truculent’s defences.
He lowered the glass and yelled to Williams, “Point your guns abaft her mainmast and fire on the uproll!”
His words were lost in another ragged barrage, but a petty officer heard them, and knuckled his forehead as he dashed through the smoke to tell the first lieutenant.
He saw Williams peer aft and nod, his teeth very white in his bronzed face. Did he see his real chance of promotion now Poland was dead, as his captain had once done? Or did he only see the nearness of death?
Pieces of gangway burst from the side and scattered ripped and singed hammocks across the deck like faceless puppets. Metal clanged from one of the guns and men fell kicking and writhing as its splinters pitched them down in their own blood. One, the young midshipman named Brown whom Bolitho had seen joking with the first lieutenant, was hurled almost to the opposite side, most of his face shot away.
Bolitho thought wildly of Falmouth. He had seen enough stones there. This young fourteen-year-old midshipman would probably have one too when the news reached England. Who died for the Honour of his King and Country. What would his loved ones think if they had seen the “honour” of his death?
“Again, on the uproll!” Bolitho reeled back from the rail while the guns roared out. Some spars fell from the Frenchman’s mizzen, and one of her topsails was reduced to floating ribbons. But the flag still flew, and the guns had not lost their fury.
Munro shouted, “She’s closing the range, Sir Richard!”
Bolitho nodded, and winced as a ball slammed through an open port and cut a marine in half while he stood guarding the mainhatch. He saw Midshipman Fellowes stuffing his fist into his mouth to prevent himself from retching or screaming at the sight—he could be blamed for neither.
Munro lowered his glass. “T’other frigate is still adrift, Sir Richard, but they’re cutting the wreckage clear.”
“Yes. If she rejoins the fight before we can cripple the—”
There was a loud crack behind him and he heard more splinters whine through the air and thud into woodwork. He felt something strike his left epaulette, and rip it away to toss it to the deck like a contemptuous challenge. A foot lower, and the iron splinter would have cut through his heart. He reached out as Munro reeled against the side, his hand under his coat. He was gasping as if he had been punched in the stomach, and when Bolitho tore his hand away he saw the bright red blood running from his white waistcoat and breeches, even as Allday caught him and lowered him to the deck.
Bolitho said, “Easy, I’ll have the surgeon attend you.”
The lieutenant stared up at the empty blue sky, his eyes very wide as if he could not believe what had happened.
He gasped, “No, sir! Please, no —” He gasped again as the pain increased and blood ran from one corner of his mouth. “I—I want to stay where I can see . . .”
Allday stood up and said gruffly, “Done for, Sir Richard. He’s shot through.”
Someone was calling for assistance, another screaming with pain as more shot hammered into the side and through the rigging. But Bolitho felt unable to move. It was all happening again. Hyperion and her last battle, even to holding the hand of a dying seaman who had asked “Why me?” as death had claimed him. Almost defiantly he stooped down and took Munro’s bloodied hand, and squeezed it until his eyes turned up to his. “Very well, Mr Munro. You stay with me.”
Allday sighed deeply. Munro’s eyes, which watched Bolitho so intently, were still and without understanding. Always the pain.
Hull, the sailing-master who had fought his own battle with wind and rudder throughout the fight, yelled hoarsely, “Corvette’s takin’ t’other frigate in tow, sir!”
Bolitho swung round and noticed that Jenour was still staring down at the dead lieutenant. Seeing himself perhaps? Or all of us?
“Why so?” He trained the glass, and wanted to cry out aloud as the roar of another disjointed broadside probed his brain like hot irons.
He found the two ships through the pall of drifting smoke and saw the boats in the water as a towline was passed across. There were flags on the corvette’s yards, and when Bolitho turned the glass towards the attacking ship he saw a signal still flying above the flash of her armament. She showed no sign of disengaging, so why was the other ship under tow? His reeling mind would make no sense of it. It refused to answer, even to function.
He heard Williams’ voice. “Ready to larboard! Easy, my lads!” It reminded him of Keen with his men in Hyperion, quietening them as will a rider with a nervous horse.
Bolitho saw the Frenchman’s yards begin to move, while more sails appeared above and below the punctured rags as if by magic.
Jenour cried with disbelief, “He’s going about!”
Bolitho cupped his hands. “Mr Williams! Rake his stern as he tacks!”
Allday sounded dazed. “He’s breaking off the fight. But why? He’s only got to hang on!”
There was a sudden stillness, broken only by the hoarse orders of the gun-captains and the thud of the pumps. From somewhere aloft, from lookout or marine in the fighting tops, nobody knew.
“Deck
below! Sail on th’ weather bow!”
The Frenchman was gathering way as she continued to turn until the pale sunlight lit up her shattered stern windows, where Williams’ carronade had scored the first strike for the price of a midshipman’s two guineas; and beneath, across her scarlet counter her name, L’Intrépide, was clear to see for the first time.
Bolitho said, “Aloft, Mr Lancer, as fast as you can. I want to know more of this newcomer!”
The lieutenant bobbed his head and dashed wild-eyed for the shrouds. He faltered only when Williams’ guns fired again and then he was up and climbing through the smoke as if the devil was at his heels.
Allday exclaimed, “By God, the bugger’s making more sail!”
Men stood back from their smoking guns, too stunned or crazed to know what was happening. Some of the wounded crawled about the torn decks, their cracked voices demanding answers when there were none to offer.
Bolitho shouted, “Stand to! She’s run out her stern chasers!” As he had watched his powerful enemy standing away, he had seen two ports in her mauled stern open to reveal the unfired muzzles pointing straight at Truculent even as the range began to open.
Williams yelled, “Ready on deck!”
As if he was totally unaware of the danger and the battle beneath him, Lieutenant Lancer shouted down in the sudden silence, “She’s making her number, sir!”
Allday whispered harshly, “Zest, by God—but too bloody late.”
But he was wrong. Even Lancer, struggling with his telescope and signal book from his precarious perch aloft, sounded confused.
“She’s Anemone, thirty-eight.” His voice seemed to shake. “Captain Bolitho.”
At that very moment L’Intrépide fired first one stern chaser then the other. A ball crashed into the quarterdeck and cut down two of the helmsmen, covering Hull with their blood before scything through the taffrail. The last ball struck the mizzen top and brought down a mass of broken woodwork and several blocks. It was a miracle that Lancer had not been hurled down to the deck.
Bolitho was more aware of falling than of feeling any pain. His mind was still grappling with Lancer’s report, hanging on although it was getting harder every second.
Hands were holding him with both anxiety and tenderness. He heard Allday rasp, “Easy, Cap’n!” What he had called him in the past. “A block struck you—”
Another voice and misty face now, the surgeon. Have I been lying here that long?
More probing fingers at the back of his skull; sounds of relief as he said, “No real damage, Sir Richard. Near thing though. A block like that could crack your head like a nut!”
Men were cheering; some seemed to be sobbing. Bolitho allowed Jenour and Allday to get him to his feet amidst the fallen debris from the last parting shot.
The pain was coming now, and Bolitho felt sick. He touched his hair and felt where he had taken a glancing blow. He rubbed his eyes and saw the dead Munro watching him with an intense stare.
Williams was yelling, “She’s an English frigate, lads! The day is won!”
Allday asked in a whisper, “Is something wrong, Sir Richard?”
Bolitho covered his left eye and waited for the fog of battle to leave his brain. Adam had come looking for him, and had saved them all.
He turned to Allday as his question seemed to penetrate. “There was a flash.”
“Flash, Sir Richard? I’m not sure I understands.”
“In my eye.” He removed his hand and made himself look towards the distant French ships as they withdrew from their near-victory. “I can’t see them properly.” He turned and stared at him. “My eye! That blow . . . it must have done something.”
Allday watched him wretchedly. Bolitho wanted him to tell him it would go away, that it would pass.
He said, “I’ll get a wet for you, sir. For me too, I reckon.” He reached out and almost gripped Bolitho’s arm as he would a mess-mate, an equal, but he did not. Instead he said heavily, “You stay put till I gets back, Sir Richard. There’s help a’comin’. Captain Adam’ll see us right, an’ that’s no error.” He looked at Jenour. “Keep by his side. For all our sakes, see?” Then he groped his way past the dead and dying, the upended guns and bloodstained planking.
It was their world and there was no escape. All the rest was a dream.
He heard a man cry out in private torment.
Always the pain.
14 HONOUR BOUND
“WELL NOW, that wasn’t too demanding, was it?” Sir Piers Blachford turned up his sleeves and rinsed his long, bony fingers in a basin of warm water which a servant had brought to the spacious, elegant room. He gave a dry smile. “Not for a seasoned warrior like you, eh?”
Bolitho leaned back in the tall chair and tried to relax his whole body, muscle by muscle. Outside the window the sky was already tinged with the gloom of evening, although it was only three in the afternoon. Rain pattered occasionally against the glass, and he could hear the splash of horses and carriage wheels in the street below.
He moved to touch his eye. It felt raw and inflamed after all the poking Blachford had given it. He had used some liquid too, which stung without mercy, so that he wanted to rub his eye until it bled.
Blachford glared at him severely. “Don’t touch it! Not yet anyway.” He wiped his hands on a towel and nodded to the servant. “Some coffee, I think.”
Bolitho declined. Catherine was downstairs somewhere in this high, silent house, waiting, worrying, hoping for news.
“I have to go. But first, can you tell me . . .”
Blachford regarded him curiously, but not without affection. “Still impatient? Remember what I told you aboard your Hyperion? How there might have been hope for the eye?”
Bolitho met his gaze. Remember? How could he forget? And this tall, stick-like man with spiky grey hair and the most pointed nose he had ever seen had been there with him, in the thick of it, until he had been forced to give the order to abandon ship.
Sir Piers Blachford was a senior and most respected member of the College of Surgeons. Despite the privations of a man-ofwar, he and some of his colleagues had volunteered to spread themselves throughout the squadrons of the fleet to try and discover measures to ease the suffering of those wounded in combat or cruelly injured in the demanding life of the common seaman. Resented at first as an intruder by some of Hyperion’s people, he had won the hearts of nearly all of them before he had left.
A man of boundless energy, he, although being some twenty years Bolitho’s senior, had explored the ship from forecastle to hold, and spoken with most of her company, and had, in the ship’s final battle, saved the lives of many.
Then, as now, he reminded Bolitho of a heron in the reeds near the house at Falmouth. Waiting patiently to strike.
Bolitho said abruptly, “I could not be spared then.”
He thought suddenly of the homecoming just two days ago after leaving the battered Truculent in the hands of the dockyard. Sir Charles Inskip had left for London with barely another word. Shocked by the grim events, or still smarting from Bolitho’s bitter words before the battle, he neither knew nor cared.
For long, long minutes he had held Catherine while she had allowed him to find his composure again in his own time. She had knelt at his feet, the firelight shining in her eyes while he had eventually described the short, savage engagement, of Anemone’s arrival when all time had run out. Of Poland’s despair and death, of those who had fallen because of the folly and treachery of others.
Only once had she touched on Captain Varian and the Zest. She had tightened her grip on his hands as he had answered quietly, “I want him dead.”
Eventually she had dragged out of him an admission about the falling block which had struck him a glancing blow on the head.
Even now, in this quiet, remote room above Albemarle Street, he could feel her compassion, her anxiety. While he had been at the Admiralty to complete his report to Admiral the Lord Godschale she had come here to see Blachford, t
o plead for his help in spite of his constantly full programme of interviews and operations.
Blachford had been joined in his probing examinations by a short, intense doctor by the name of Rudolf Braks. The latter had barely said a word but had assisted in the examination with an almost fanatical dedication. He had a thick guttural voice when he did eventually speak with Blachford, and Bolitho thought he might be German, or more likely a renegade Dutchman.
One thing was evident; they both knew a great deal about Nelson’s eye injury, and Bolitho imagined that, too, was included in the lengthy volumes of their report to the College of Surgeons.
Blachford sat down and thrust out his long, thin legs.
“I will discuss it further with my eminent colleague. It is more in his field than mine. But I shall need to make further tests. You will be in London for a while?”
Bolitho thought suddenly of Falmouth, with winter closing in from the grey waters below the headland. It was like a desperate need. He had expected to be killed, and had accepted it. Perhaps that was why he had managed to hold Truculent’s people together when they had nothing left to give.
“I was hoping to go home, Sir Piers.”
Blachford gave a brief smile. “A few more days, then. I understand that you have a new flagship to commission?” He did not elaborate on how he knew or why he was interested. But then he never did.
Bolitho thought of Admiral Godschale’s sympathy; his anger at what had happened. One cannot do everything oneself.
The admiral had probably already selected a flag-officer to replace him if the French plan to take Truculent had succeeded, or Bolitho had fallen in battle.
Bolitho replied, “A few more. Thank you for your help, and especially your courtesy to Lady Catherine.”
Blachford stood up, the heron again. “Had I been made of stone, and some insist that I am, I would have done what I could. I have never met another like her. I had thought that some of the tales of envy might be overplayed, but now I know differently!” He held out his bony hand. “I will send word.”
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