Badge of Glory (1982) (2 page)

Blackwood waited. Once again tradition had spoken. Always the captain of marines was referred to as major, but had anyone, he wondered, ever in the past confused him with a ship’s commanding officer?

‘The Flag has shifted.’

Blackwood felt a tinge of warning. Menzies had said nothing about that. A new admiral for the squadron. It should have been worth mentioning, surely.

‘The captain left word for you to see him as soon as you came off shore, sir.’

‘And what about my lieutenant?’

The officer-of-the-watch stared at him as if that was of no importance at all compared with the awesome responsibility of receiving a new admiral.

‘Mr Cleveland’s broken his leg.’ He flushed. ‘There was a party aboard
Swiftsure.
’

Blackwood controlled his features with an effort. The lieutenant need say no more. Parties in other ships were always Cleveland’s true weakness. After a few glasses he seemed to go wild. Now a broken leg had taken him from
Audacious
when he was really needed.

Blackwood said curtly, ‘I’ll see the captain.’

He nodded to Colour-Sergeant M’Crystal. Thank God he at least was here. To some people M’Crystal appeared frightening. He was tall and solidly built yet without an ounce of spare flesh on his frame. His scarlet coatee matching his face which, in spite of long service ashore and afloat, refused to tan and remained brick-red. Blackwood had known him since he had been commissioned at the age of eighteeen. M’Crystal
had not always been a sergeant, and his stripes had gone up and down with his misfortunes and his hasty temper. But Blackwood had seen the real worth of the man. In New Zealand, just four years back during the Maori War, he had watched M’Crystal rally a handful of marines when they had been outnumbered by ten to one.

‘What is it, Colour-Sergeant?’

M’Crystal ran his eyes over the youthful captain as if to reassure himself about something. It felt like an inspection.

He said in his thick voice, ‘You heard about Mr Cleveland, sir, in Haslar Hospital. Took a fall, he did.’ Without any change of expression he hurried on, ‘New admiral’s coming aboard tomorrow forenoon, sir. Full guard and ceremonial required, o’ course. Twenty new privates have joined today and Sarnt Quintin is settling ’em into the barracks right now. Private Doak is under arrest for drunkenness.’

‘I see.’ Blackwood waited. There was more to come. Anything short of mutiny would be accepted as normal routine by M’Crystal and his crony, Sergeant Quintin.

‘You’ve not seen the orders yet, sir?’ He did not wait. ‘The flag-officer to command this squadron is Sir James Ashley-Chute.’

‘Come aft to my quarters.’

Blackwood fell in step with the towering sergeant and together they ducked their heads beneath the poop and made for the companion ladder. It was strange he had just been remembering M’Crystal’s courage in New Zealand just four years ago. Vice-Admiral Sir James Ashley-Chute’s appointment to command the squadron would have roused a few memories for him also. No wonder Colonel Menzies had made no mention of it. To be in the same squadron was bad enough. In the same ship was far worse.

Blackwood could picture the ferocious fighting on North Island as if it had just happened. Blazing sun, choking clouds of dust and musket smoke as the army had fought to overthrow the well-defended Maori stronghold at Ruapekapeka. A contingent of seamen had been landed earlier to relieve
pressure on the troops. Ashley-Chute had been in overall charge of the operation, and had seemed determined that no matter what the army attempted, his men could and would do better. Things went badly wrong from the outset. Unused to fighting ashore, the blue-jackets soon got themselves separated from the soldiers and were hemmed in by hundreds of the battle-crazed Maoris. Blackwood felt a chill at his spine as he relived the sights and the terrifying yells of the attacking Maoris.

M’Crystal had been a corporal at the time, having lost his sergeant’s stripes after a brawl with a ship’s cook.

The major in command of the marines had requested permission to attack and relieve the beleaguered seamen. Ashley-Chute had sent back a curt refusal. The major had snapped angrily, ‘At least I
asked
him, dammit!’ Then, drawing his sword, he had yelled above the din, ‘Royal Marines will advance!
Fix bayonets!
’

There had been less than fifty marines, and twenty-five had fallen before the enemy had retreated and the stronghold had been taken. The naval commander had been grateful enough, but Ashley-Chute had sent an immediate summons for the major to report to him with an explanation for his actions.

Seeing Blackwood, then a lieutenant, he had snapped. ‘I sent for your commanding officer! Has he not the courage to face me?’

Blackwood had been shaking with fatigue and the delayed shock of the short, savage fight. It had taken all his strength to place his list of casualties on the admiral’s table.

‘The major is among the dead, sir.’

There had been no sign of remorse or pity, not even the satisfaction of knowing that the marines’ action had saved a terrible loss of life and almost certain defeat.

He had said coldly, ‘Just as well for him.’

M’Crystal was watching him grimly. ‘There was talk of you leaving the Corps, sir.’

Blackwood looked at him and smiled. There were no secrets in any ship or barracks.

‘It was
just
talk.’

M’Crystal beamed. ‘Good. I’ll pass the word, sir.’

Blackwood thrust open the door of his cabin and stepped into its familiar surroundings. There was no sign of a chest or case, and he could see his uniforms hanging in their canvas wardrobe, swaying very slowly as the great ship tugged at her cable.

Smithett, his personal attendant for two years, seemed to dominate the small cabin. He was almost as tall as M’Crystal, but whereas the colour-sergeant was fierce or joyful as the mood took him, Smithett was always the same. He was a dour, dull-faced man, with all his lines turning down. His eyes, his mouth, even his chin, seemed to be set in permanent disapproval. Fortunately, Blackwood had grown to understand him and to appreciate his many skills. Servant, orderly, Smithett could turn his hand to various things which were never mentioned in regulations. He had volunteered for the work of marine officer’s attendant, and when Blackwood had asked him why, Smithett had given as near as he dared to a shrug and had replied, ‘Knew yer father, sir.’ And that, apparently, was that.

Blackwood sat down on the edge of his cot.

‘You didn’t pack my gear then.’

Their eyes met.

Smithett said, ‘No point, sir. We’re sailin’ next week.’

Blackwood could feel his earlier resolve fading away. M’Crystal’s anxious scrutiny, Smithett’s positive belief that he would not quit the Corps and all that it stood for had a lot to do with it.

When he had faced his father on the first day of his leave he had expected a rebuke, even a show of contempt. Lieutenant-Colonel Eugene Blackwood would still be on active service if he had his way. But promotion was restricted, and in peacetime any officer who wanted an appointment was considered fortunate to gain one.

But his father had said, ‘I know you, Philip. You want action. You think that is all there is to being a marine. Action
and glory. There are many like you, men who forget that it is continuity of service and training which count. A month of war requires years of experience and leadership.’

Blackwood had tried to describe his feelings when he had seen his own commanding officer fall in the Maori War. It had seemed senseless for a man like him to die out there in a place nobody had ever heard of.

But as he had tried to explain he had felt the same inner uncertainty as when he had faced the colonel commandant. Perhaps his father was right. Action and glory, was that what he really wanted for himself?

He thought suddenly of his grandfather. What had Menzies said of him?
A great man.
Curiously, Blackwood had always felt closer to his grandfather than his father. As a boy he had grown up with the old man’s memories, had seen the pale eyes above the white whiskers light up from within as he had told and retold the stories of places and ships he had known. Names painted in history. The Nile. Copenhagen. Trafalgar. In memory it was always the same, with no gaps of fear or boredom in between. The old man had died in the same house where Blackwood had tried to persuade his father to see his point of view.

It might have been different if his mother was still alive, he thought. But she had died after a short fever, and Blackwood’s father had remarried the following year to a girl twenty years younger than himself.

Perhaps his father had been too worried about his own news to care much for his son’s uncertainty over his future.

He had eventually dropped his announcement with the forthrightness of a thirty-two-pound shot.

‘We’re selling Hawks Hill, Philip. Your mother, er, Claudia intends we should move to London. It’s her sort of world, y’see.’

Blackwood frowned as he thought about it. He felt Smithett running a brush over his shoulders, patting his coatee into place. Routine and order.

It was unthinkable to be leaving Hawks Hill and the estate
in Hampshire. His father obviously hated the idea but, as usual, would do anything for his wife. The colonel’s lady, as they called her in the village. They had never really accepted her, but then she had done little to encourage the ‘local bumpkins’, as she called them.

Blackwood said, ‘I am going to see the captain. Tomorrow we shall have to do something about getting another lieutenant sent to us.’

It was always easy to say ‘we’ and ‘us’ to Smithett. Rather as you might to a faithful dog. He never answered back, but could make his displeasure known in other ways when he felt like it.

He picked up his shako and left the cabin. For a moment longer he paused and glanced aft towards the great cabin and private quarters where the admiral would hold court. It would be even worse for the ship’s officers, he thought, unless they knew Ashley-Chute’s little ways.

With a sigh Blackwood ran lightly up the companion ladder and turned towards the shadowy confines of the poop. In the short while he had been in his cabin it had grown dark. Around and beneath him the great ship of the line groaned and murmured, her massive timbers and towering masts and rigging keeping up their constant chorus as they had since the day she had first slid into salt water.

The smells too were like part of himself. Paint and tar, cordage and damp canvas. The old navy. Blackwood stopped short within view of the scarlet-coated sentry outside the stern cabin. That too might be a reason. He did not
want
to stay with a navy which seemed content to remain old and unchanged. Young officers were volunteering to serve in the discomfort and dirt of the new steam vessels simply because they
were
new, and young like themselves.

The marine sentry’s heels came together with a snap, and the level stare beneath the man’s shako fixed on a point above Blackwood’s left epaulette.

Blackwood gave a grave smile. ‘Good evening, Rocke.’

‘Sar!’ Rocke shot a quick grin.

Blackwood rapped on the screen door, wondering if he would ever discover a way of knowing which of the Rocke twins he was speaking to. Even standing together in the same squad they were completely alike. Sergeant Quintin knew they changed duties to suit themselves, but had never been able to prove it. The twins came from Somerset, and their father had been a marine too.

It was so often like that. As one sergeant had said, ‘In the Corps we don’t recruit marines. We breeds ’em!’

The door opened and the captain’s clerk ushered Blackwood inside.

Blackwood walked aft and saw the glittering lights of the anchored ships through the great stern windows, distorted like fairy lanterns by the thick glass.

He was back. Whatever it was he had tried to fight was far stronger than he had imagined.

Captain John Ackworthy half rose from his chair and sank down again. He was a heavy man, with shaggy grey eyebrows and a face like tooled leather, criss-crossed with hundreds of tiny lines. Ackworthy was old for his rank, and had been at sea all his life from the age of twelve.
Audacious
would be his last command, and was certainly the biggest vessel he had ever served. With the previous admiral, who had been old like himself, he had felt content, and had accepted that he would never bridge the gulf to flag rank. When
Audacious
paid off, Captain Ackworthy would join all the other ancient mariners on the beach.

The swift change of events and the appointment of a new flag-officer in command had unsettled him considerably. There were four ships of the line in the squadron, and Ackworthy would willingly have taken command of the oldest and smallest to avoid having a vice-admiral’s flag flying at the fore, especially one with a reputation like Ashley-Chute’s.

He regarded the marine officer thoughtfully. Blackwood looked strained, and his jaw was set just a bit too tightly. Ackworthy had never really understood marines, but he had
liked Blackwood from their first meeting. He had removed his shako and his brown hair was surprisingly tousled, so that he looked even younger. He had clean-cut features and level grey-blue eyes. A reliable English face, but one you might never know in a thousand years, Ackworthy decided.

‘Sit you down, Major. I want to talk about tomorrow.’ He glanced meaningly at the deckhead as if he could pierce it with a glance and already see the vice-admiral’s flag breaking at the foremast truck.

Blackwood listened as Ackworthy rambled on about the admiral’s time of arrival at Portsmouth Point, the requirements for guard and band, the need for a perfect turn-out from captain to ship’s boy.

Did Captain Ackworthy know about Ashley-Chute’s nickname, he wondered?
Monkey.
Very apt too. Perhaps he had changed after four years. It seemed unlikely.

Blackwood had often wondered if there had been any official enquiry or action taken by the Admiralty over Ashley-Chute’s failure to recognize the danger to his landing parties at North Island on that terrible day. If so, it had been kept very quiet. But Ashley-Chute was still of the same rank, and for someone so ambitious it might be possible he had been quietly laid aside like Ackworthy. In which case he would be doubly determined to force his stamp on the squadron without delay.