Man of War

by Alexander Kent

  Adam had seen Celeste mentioned several times, in despatches and once or twice in the Gazette. The fleet’s apron strings, but never in the vanguard of battle, amid the seeds of glory.

  The survivor was the Celeste’s acting master, a prime seaman named William Rose, who had come originally from the seaport of Hull. Not young, and he had served at sea most of his life, first in a merchantman, but mainly in the navy.

  Adam could still hear his hoarse voice, recounting vague fragments about himself. Up there in his own cabin hours ago, watching, listening. The surgeon had been doubtful; he had seen too many men go under. But Rose had great strength, and a determination to match it.

  Adam had known sailors plead to be left to die after being wounded in a sea fight, anything but be taken below to the dreaded orlop and the surgeon’s saw and knife. He himself had grown to hate the very smell of a sick bay, and the terrors it could hold, even for the bravest. Which was why he had told the surgeon to have Rose taken to his own quarters.

  He raised the goblet, and stared at it. It had been refilled; he had not even noticed.

  The Celeste had been on the same route as Athena, to Antigua; she had even sailed from Plymouth, two whole days before Athena had weighed. No wonder Bethune had become so agitated when he had been told the vessel’s name. She had sailed under his orders, confident that she would reach English Harbour far ahead of any two-decker.

  It was like hearing Rose speak again, one strong, rough hand grasped around his own. Describing it. Recalling it, piece by piece. He would occasionally stray from the exact sequence of things, speaking of Hull, and of his father, who had been a sailmaker. Then the hand had tightened, as he had described the sudden squall which had hit them without warning. I told the captain what I thought about it, but he wouldn’t listen. Knew it all, he did. Anyways, he was under strict orders to complete a fast passage. Adam had seen a tear at the corner of his eye; pain or despair, who could say? Y’see, our old Celeste could always do better than any other courier!

  And pride was there, too.

  They had lost the fore-topmast, and had been drifting to sea and wind while they had fought to carry out repairs. And then another sail had come in sight. A big barque, and she had stood off the disabled Celeste until they were close enough to exchange signals. A Yankee, she was. Our captain asked if she had a doctor on board, as one of our lads was badly injured by a falling spar.

  Adam stared through the salt-caked stern windows. No courier brig should ever heave-to or converse with a stranger. It had all been planned, although how and when was impossible to imagine at this stage.

  The barque had drawn closer to Celeste and all pretence had ended. He could still feel the grip around his fingers, losing its strength as Rose had gasped, They ran out their guns and fired into us at point-blank range, double-shotted by th’ feel of it. His voice had cracked with disbelief, reliving the moment. Our captain was the first to fall, damn his eyes! There had been another tear. But it weren’t his fault. They boarded us and cut down every man-jack they could find. The rest of us was driven below while the bastards ransacked the captain’s cabin.

  There had been a long pause, the silence broken only by Rose’s laboured breathing.

  Crawford had whispered, “Severe stab wounds. Poisoned, but I can do nothing. He’s going.”

  Rose had spoken once more, his voice easier, perhaps beyond pain.

  There was an explosion, sir. A magazine. Don’t remember any more. Until . . . He had stared suddenly at Adam. Tell ’em . . .

  It was over for the only survivor.

  He looked up as Bethune entered the cabin and stood, seeming to study him for several seconds.

  “So you see, Adam, it was no accidental skirmish. It was pre-arranged. Someone knew full well what Celeste was carrying: my orders and Admiralty instructions which were to be acted upon without delay. Her commander should have known, damn him!” The mood changed again, and he half smiled. “But you know what they say about the ones who command brigs, like frigates, eh? Faster than anything bigger. Bigger than anything faster!”

  He looked around the cabin, as if he were remembering something. “In a moment we shall have a meal together. Just the two of us. The ship can manage her own affairs, for a while, anyway.” He seemed to come to a decision. “I wanted this appointment, and I intend to make it succeed to good purpose, come what may.” He eyed him calmly. “I have no intention of becoming a scapegoat because of others at this point in my life. We are committed, Adam. Together—remember that!”

  Tolan and the two cabin servants pulled a screen aside to reveal a candlelit table and two chairs.

  Bethune was speaking to Tolan, smiling and gesturing. But his words still hung in the air.

  Like a threat.

  9 A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

  NANCY, Lady Roxby, leaned forward in her seat and reached up to tap the carriage window with her parasol.

  “This is far enough, Francis. You may wait here for us.” She did not turn to look at the girl beside her. “It will do us good to stretch our legs now that the rain has passed over.” Something to say, to break the tension. She looked across the lane, past the overgrown and untended shrubs, to the Old Glebe House, occasional home of Sir Gregory Montagu, the great painter. She rested her hand on the door. “If you change your mind, Lowenna, we can leave right now. Go back to Falmouth . . .” Then she turned to her companion, feeling her uncertainty, the sudden distress. “I just want you to be happy, with me.”

  Lowenna stared past her. All those months ago, but she could still feel it. The fire raging through the building, driven by the wind, roaring like something alive with a malignant will of its own.

  She climbed down from the landau and looked along the rutted lane. The wall where she had found Adam lying in his blood after being thrown from his horse, when his wound had burst open. And she had been the only one there to help him.

  She walked slowly toward the house. She could smell the charred timbers, wet and shining from the brief, heavy rain. Fallen bricks and masonry, broken glass glinting now in the returning sunlight. Exactly as she had last seen it. Avoided by people from the village; haunted, some said. Used by smugglers, others claimed.

  They had thought Montagu mad when he had bought it and converted it into a studio, several studios eventually, where he had worked and had trained others to follow his profession, spurred on by his fame and his genius. And now he was dead. Had begun to die that very day when the fire had broken out.

  The doors were open or hanging charred from their hinges. Sunlight played through a great hole in the roof, so that the old stairway seemed to come alive again as her shoes crackled on fragments and scattered ash.

  She knew Lady Roxby was following her. Wanting to help. And caring, as she had that time when they had first met, here in this house, when she had come to see Adam’s portrait.

  She heard a bird fluttering through the main studio, nesting perhaps. The same studio where Adam had stood looking at her. Andromeda . . . she felt it like pain. He was gone. The rest was like a dream . . . something she was terrified of losing.

  Why I came back here.

  She quickened her pace and came into the old garden. Overgrown, a wasteland, but the roses were still here, clustered by the wall, holding the sunshine, as fresh and yellow as they had been that day. Like the rose on his coat in the finished portrait.

  She stooped to pick one, twisting the stem, and saw blood on her finger. She could almost hear his voice.

  Nancy watched her, without speech or movement: the figure in the flowing blue-grey gown, a wide-brimmed straw hat hanging from her shoulders. Lowenna . . . “joy” in the old Cornish tongue. After what she had suffered, perhaps the fates were repaying what they owed this dark-eyed girl.

  She crossed the moss-covered cobbles. “Here, let me. I’m more used to it than you are.” She felt the girl stiffen, the old barrier rising between them, like those first meetings; it was her only defense. She added simply, �
�I’ve not much else to do these days, y’ see!”

  She felt the girl’s arms around her, the dark hair against her face.

  “Don’t ever say that, dear Nancy. You are always busy, always helping others. It’s why I love you so much.”

  They gathered roses in silence. Then Lowenna said, “We shall leave the rest. It is our place.”

  They walked slowly back to the lane, where Francis was fastening the two hoods, which he’d lowered in their absence. The landau’s hoods were made of greased leather, which had to be constantly rubbed with oil and blacking to keep them pliable and waterproof. Lowenna noticed that the coachman, excavalryman that he was, wore white gloves, without a single mark or smear.

  “Thought it would be nice an’ easy for the ride back, m’ lady.”

  Nancy smiled and touched his arm. “Where would I be without you?”

  Lowenna climbed up into the landau and tightened the ribbons of the hat beneath her chin. Nancy must have been lovely as a young girl. Now Roxby, her husband, “The King of Cornwall,” was dead. Lowenna recalled their first meeting, when Nancy had said openly that she had had two lovers in her life. Now she was nearly sixty, but the light was still there, in her eyes and in her manner.

  And she had not questioned her. Why had she come? How long might she stay? But this was the West Country and news rode a fast horse. Nancy knew all about her brief stay at the Plymouth boatbuilder’s house. She had asked once about the painting, and how it had survived the fire.

  Lowenna had told her that she had sent it out to Adam’s ship before he had sailed.

  Nancy had gripped both her hands and had looked straight into her eyes.

  “I will not ask if that was all you gave him, dear Lowenna. I can see it in your face.”

  No rebuke or warning. That was Nancy.

  The carriage clattered onto the main road, the horses glad to be on the move again, away from the lingering smell of fire. Past wild countryside made beautiful by great patterns of purple fox-glove, and wild roses amid the hedgerows and slate walls.

  At one point they passed parties of labourers clearing the way for a new road. Mostly young men, stripped to the waist, looking up as the carriage moved by. A sign of the times: men who such a short time ago had been in the uniforms of troopers or seamen. A new and unfamiliar life, but at least they had work to pay and feed them. Lowenna had seen too many of the other kind. Men along the pier or dock wall, watching the ships, even the lifeless ones. Like Adam’s Unrivalled. Staring and remembering. But never the bad times, the harsh discipline and the ever-present nearness of danger and death. Only the comradeship, something she had felt and understood, like love.

  “I have to go to Bodmin shortly.” Nancy reached out and folded the girl’s hand in her own. “The lawyers have arranged a meeting. Will you stay at the house until I come back? Longer, if you can.” She patted the hand as if to soothe it, like a startled creature. “I would not ask you to accompany me, my dear.”

  There would be too many bitter memories in Bodmin. Not least, members of her family who had turned their backs when she most needed their help and support. No smoke without fire. How could they even think it?

  “Lawyers? Is it trouble, Nancy?”

  “Always that, my dear.” She shrugged, glad that the hurdle was past. “But we do need them. Tenant farmers, repairs to cottages and barns . . . it never stops. I had hoped . . .”

  She did not continue.

  Lowenna remembered that she had two grown children, both of whom preferred London to Cornwall.

  Nancy shaded her eyes as the roof of her own house showed above the familiar bank of trees.

  “It’s Elizabeth, you see. She has her own governess, of course, but she’s growing up. Fast. Too fast, I think sometimes. She likes you. Admires you. I would feel less troubled if you were with her.”

  “I’ve little experience, but I shall do my best.”

  The grip tightened over her hand. “Just be yourself. It will be good for her.”

  Francis wheeled the horses through the gates, but heard them both laugh as Lowenna retorted, “For both of us!”

  A stable boy was already running to greet them, and Francis knew the exact moment when to apply the brake.

  But his mind was still back on the new road, and the men who had paused in their work to watch this fine carriage sweep past. Glad to have employment when so many had come back from the war to find nothing; envious, too, maybe, at the sight of the lovely girl in the straw hat.

  His boots hit the ground and he had the door open, and the step lowered without even noticing what he was doing.

  But of course you never forgot. On the right of the line, the spurs digging in, the sabres all coming down in one shimmering rank, then the piercing blare of the cornet. Charge! Of course you never forgot.

  “I shall be ready if you need me, m’ lady.”

  But Nancy was staring past him, as if she’d heard something.

  “Take the roses, Lowenna.”

  “What is it, Nancy?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure.” She climbed down carefully, one hand on her coachman’s arm. “Something has happened. If only Lewis were here . . .”

  It was the first time she had spoken her husband’s name.

  John Allday walked carefully across the parlour floor, avoiding the parts recently waxed and polished. A plank creaked under his heavy tread and he glanced down at it. Something he could fix himself, play his part in running the inn. Belonging, being useful. Like the handsome inn sign, the Old Hyperion; it had been swinging in the fresh breeze from the Helford River, and it had squeaked with each move. A touch of grease would fix it. He had been in the yard, watching his friend Bryan Ferguson moor his plump little pony Poppy where she would be comfortable during his visit. Allday frowned. The visits had been getting fewer over the months; this was his first since young Captain Adam had set sail yet again, in a different ship, a third-rate no less, with a vice-admiral’s flag above his head. As if he didn’t have enough troubles . . .

  He looked at his friend now, seated at one of the parlour tables, his head resting in his hand. Older, strained; it seemed to have happened so suddenly. Allday tried not to think of it too often. They were older. Thirty-five years ago they had been pressed together and put aboard the frigate Phalarope and taken off to war. Their captain had been Richard Bolitho. In Cornwall it was almost a legend. Ferguson had lost an arm at the Saintes, and had returned to Falmouth a sick man. His wife, Grace, had done everything to restore him, to give him back his confidence and his health, and he had become steward of the Bolitho estate, with the same Richard Bolitho who was to become a Knight of the Bath, and an admiral of England. And I was his coxswain. And his friend. He had called them and a few others “my little crew.” And now he was gone, with all those other misty faces.

  He put down two glasses and said, “Have your wet, Bryan, an’ tell me all the news. You’re becoming a stranger here.”

  Bryan looked up at him.

  “Sorry, old friend. I’m getting past it. Time moves at a faster pace these days.”

  Allday grinned, and said, “Bilge! The whole estate would fall apart without you.” He winked. “An’ your Grace, o’ course! All them good meals, a soft bed an’ servants to wait on you hand an’ foot—you should be on top o’ the world.”

  He sat down and looked around the parlour, the home Unis had made for them and their daughter Katie. The old life would never leave him, nor his desire for it, but he was grateful, and it troubled him to see his friend so dispirited.

  Ferguson said, “It used to be simpler . . . when he was alive. Now there are so many things . . . Grace does more than enough, and always has, as you well know, but there’s no hand on the helm, too many outsiders to deal with . . .” He listed them on his fingertips. “The tenants always need something, and the land does not bring in the returns it should. The new road won’t help, not us anyway. Sheep to be moved, new walls to be built when the slate can be
quarried. It takes me ten times as long to get around the estate and see every one.” He seemed to hesitate. “I’m too old for it, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Allday took a swallow of rum to give himself time. The estate, but more importantly the Bolitho house, had always been there. One Bolitho after another, every kind of ship and campaign you could think of. You didn’t question it; it was a part of their lives. Allday considered it. He lived with Unis here, in the little village of Fallowfield on the Helford River, not in Falmouth at all. But his heart was still there. The Admiral’s coxswain.

  He tried again. “What about Dan Yovell? He was helping with the books, an’ that. When he came ashore he said it was for the last time.”

  Ferguson smiled sadly.

  “What you once said, old friend, remember?”

  Allday slammed down the glass. “That was different. I was somebody in them days, an’ that’s no error!”

  Ferguson reached for his own glass, as if he’d only just seen it.

  “The times we’ve had together, old friend.” He drank slowly.

  There were voices in the adjoining Long Room, as it was known. Two salesmen had spent most of the morning in there. Ale, cognac, and some of Unis’s beef. Money to burn. He did not need to look at the clock. Some of the workers from the road would be arriving soon. They could eat like horses, but their money was good, as Unis had often reminded him.

  Dear Unis, so small and pretty; some of the customers got too stroppy when they had a few tankards of ale under their belts, and they thought it entitled them to take liberties with her.

  He sighed. They only tried it once with Unis.

  He said, “Young Cap’n Adam will be well on his way to the Indies by this time, eh, Bryan? Brings it back when I think on it. Not the same for him, with a vice-admiral breathing down his neck, I’ll wager!” He heard Unis’s voice outside. He had not even noticed the sound of the carrier’s cart coming into the yard. Unis had been into the market; he frowned; he could not recall what for. Then he swung round and exclaimed, “You’re not leaving, man? You only just came alongside!”