Cross of St George (11 page)

Unconsciously he had touched the volume of Shakespearean sonnets; she had chosen this edition with care because the print was clear, easy to read.
So far away.
Spring in the West Country. Wagtails on the beach where they had walked; swifts and jackdaws; the return of beauty and vitality to the countryside.

Tyacke watched him, not without affection. Maybe it was better to be alone, with no one to draw your heart, or break it. To know no pain. Then he recalled Bolitho's woman boarding this ship, climbing the side like a sailor to the cheers of the men. It was not true. Just to have somebody, to know that she was there … He pushed the thoughts aside: for him, they were impossible.

“I'd best go up and see the afternoon gun drill, sir.” He stood, his head brushing the deck beams. He did not appear to notice, and Bolitho knew that after
Larne
,
Indomitable
must seem like a palace.

He said, “Until tonight, then.”

But Tyacke was staring at the screen door, one hand raised as if he was listening to something. They both heard measured steps, then the tap of the sentry's musket as he called, “First lieutenant,
sir!
”

Lieutenant John Daubeny stepped into the cabin, his cheeks flushed from the salt air.

Tyacke said, “I heard a call from the masthead. What is it?”

Bolitho felt the sudden tension. He had not heard the call himself. Tyacke had become part of the ship: he
was
the ship. In spite of his personal misgivings when he had been asked to command the flagship, they had become one.

Daubeny squinted his eyes, a habit of his when he was asked a direct or difficult question.

“Signal from
Attacker,
sir. Sail sighted to the nor'-west. A brig, one of ours.” He faltered under Tyacke's intense gaze. “They are certain of it.”

Tyacke said curtly, “Keep me informed. Muster a good signals party, and tell Mr Carleton to be ready.”

“I have attended to it, sir.”

The door closed, and Bolitho said, “You have them well drilled, James. This newcomer—what d' you make of her?”

“We're not expecting a courier, sir. Not here. Not yet.” He was pondering aloud. “At the Bermudas, now, that would be different. A convoy is assembling there, or should be.”

Bolitho shared it, remembering how it felt. Wanting to be up there on deck, and yet aware that it might be regarded as a lack of confidence in his officers, or that they might take his presence for anxiety. He vividly recalled his own time in command, and today was no different. When the watches changed, or the hands were piped to shorten sail, his whole being protested that he should remain aloof, a man apart from the ship that served him.

The sentry called, “First lieutenant,
sir!
”

Daubeny came back in, more flushed than ever. “She's the
Alfriston,
sir, fourteen guns. Commander Borradaile …”

Bolitho said quickly, “I don't know him, do I?”

Tyacke shook his head. “
Alfriston
joined the squadron while you were in England, sir.” Then, as an afterthought, “Borradaile's a good hand. Came up the hard way.”

Bolitho was on his feet. “Signal
Attacker,
repeat
Alfriston, close on Flag.
” He glanced out through the thick glass. “I want him here before nightfall. I can't waste another day.”

Daubeny's face was quite untroubled now that he had shifted the responsibility to his superiors. He offered, “She should be with the Leeward escort, sir.” His confidence wilted under their combined attention. He added, almost humbly, “It was in orders, sir.”

Tyacke said, “So it was, Mr Daubeny. Now tell Mr Carleton to make the signal.”

Ozzard closed the door. “Concerning supper, Sir Richard—”

“It might be delayed.” He looked at Tyacke. “But we will take a glass now, I think.”

Tyacke sat again, his head still cocked to catch the muffled sounds from the world outside. The squeak of halliards, the voice of the signals midshipman penetratingly clear as he spelled out the signal to his men.

He said, “You think it's bad, sir.” It was not a question.

Bolitho watched Ozzard approaching with his tray, his small figure angled against the movement of the deck without effort. The man without a past, or one so terrible that it clung to him like a graveyard spirit. So much a part of the little crew.

“I believe it may be our next move, James, albeit a foul one.”

They drank in silence.

Jacob Borradaile, the
Alfriston
's commander, was not in the least what Bolitho had been expecting. He had been on deck to observe the brig's smart performance as she had tacked this way and that, her bulging sails salmon-pink in the failing light as she had wasted no time in taking position under
Indomitable
's lee and sending a boat over the heavy swell.

Tyacke had remarked of Borradaile,
a good hand. Came up the hard way.
From him, there could be no higher praise.

As Tyacke escorted him aft into the cabin, Bolitho thought he had never seen such an untidy, awkward-looking figure. Although he must have been about the same age as Avery or Tyacke, he was like some gaunt caricature, with sprouting, badlycut hair and deep, hollow eyes; only the ill-fitting uniform revealed him to be a King's officer. However, Bolitho, who had met every imaginable kind of man both junior and senior, was immediately impressed. He entered the cabin and took his outstretched hand without hesitation or any trace of awe. A firm grip, hard, like a true sailor's.

Bolitho said, “You have urgent news.” He saw the man's quick assessment of him, as he might examine a new recruit. “But first, will you take a glass with me?”

Borradaile sat in the chair Ozzard had carefully prepared in advance. “Thank 'ee, Sir Richard. Whatever you're taking yourself will suit famously.”

Bolitho nodded to Ozzard. Borradaile had a faint Kentish accent, like his old friend Thomas Herrick.

He sat on the stern bench and studied his visitor. In his fist, the fine goblet looked like a thimble.

He said, “In your own words. I will see that you are returned to your ship before too long.”

Borradaile stared at a sealed gunport as if he expected to see the brig across the uneasy strip of water.
Alfriston
had been handled well, as if one man and not an entire trained company had been in charge. Tyacke would be thinking much the same, remembering his previous command.

Borradaile said, “It was
Reaper,
Sir Richard. A day out from Bermuda and she broke away to chase a stranger, a small vessel— brigantine, most likely.
Alfriston
was becalmed, sea like a mill pond, an' our one remaining charge, a company ship called
Killarney,
was no better than we. But
Reaper
had the wind under her skirts and gave chase.”

Bolitho asked quietly, “Did that surprise you, so close to your destination?”

“I don't think so.”

Bolitho said, “Man to man. This is important. To me, maybe to all of us.”

The hollow eyes settled on him. Bolitho could almost hear his mind working, weighing the rights and wrongs of something that might end in a court martial. Then he seemed almost visibly to make a decision.

“
Reaper
's captain was new to the ship, his first proper patrol away from the squadron.”

“Did you know him?” Unfair maybe, but also perhaps vital.

“Of him, sir.” He paused. “
Reaper
had a reputation. Maybe he was eager to give her back something he thought she'd lost.”

The shipboard noises seemed to fade away as Borradaile related the hours that had decided
Reaper
's fate.

“There were two frigates, sir. French-built, if I'm any judge, but wearing Yankee colours. They must have sent the brigantine as bait, an' once
Reaper
changed tack to go after it, they showed themselves.” He ticked off the points on his bony fingers. “
Reaper
had run too far down to lee'ard to be able to claw back to her station. They must have been laughin', it was so damned easy for them.”

Bolitho glanced at Tyacke; he was resting his chin on his hand, and his face was like stone.

Borradaile added, “I could do nothin', sir. We'd barely picked up the wind again. All I could do was watch.”

Bolitho waited, afraid of breaking the picture in the man's thoughts. It was not uncommon. A young captain eager for a prize, no matter how small, and eager too to prove something to his ship's company. He knew of
Reaper
's bitterness after the battle, when her brave captain, James Hamilton, had been killed in the first broadside. It was so easy to be distracted for the few seconds needed by a skilful and dangerous enemy.
It nearly happened to me when I was so young …

Borradaile gave a great sigh. “
Reaper
came about as soon as her captain knew what had happened. I watched it all with a big signals glass—I felt I had to. It was madness, I thought.
Reaper
stood no chance, a little sixth-rate against two big 'uns, forty guns apiece was my guess. But what could he do? What would any of us do, I asked myself.”

“Did they engage immediately?”

Borradaile shook his head, his gaunt features suddenly saddened. “There were no shots fired. Not one.
Reaper
had run out some of her guns by then, but not all of 'em. It was then that the leading Yankee hoisted a white flag for parley and dropped a boat to go across to
Reaper
.”

Bolitho saw it all. Three ships, the others merely spectators.

“An hour, maybe more, maybe less, an' the
Reaper
lowered her flag.” He spat it out angrily. “Without so much as a whimper!”

“Surrendered?” Tyacke leaned forward into the light. “Not even a fight?”

Alfriston
's commander seemed to truly see him for the first time, and there was compassion in the hollow eyes as they noted the full extent of his injury. “It was mutiny,” he said.

The word hung in the damp air like something obscene, devastating.

“The next thing I knew was, a boat was sent from
Reaper
with some of the ‘loyal men.'” He turned to Bolitho again. “And her captain.”

Bolitho waited. It was bad, worse than he had believed possible.

Borradaile spoke very slowly. “Just before
Reaper
left her station to give chase there were men being flogged at the gangway. I could hardly believe it.” There was disgust and revulsion in his voice, from this, a man who had come up the hardest way of all, through the ranks, to achieve his own command. A man who must have seen every kind of suffering at sea, and brutality, too, in that demanding life below decks.

“Was he dead?”

“Not then, he weren't, sir. The Yankee officers who had gone over to parley had invited
Reaper
's people to join them. I heard from some of the men who were allowed away in the boat that it was the old cry of ‘dollars for shillings'—the chance of a new life, better paid and well treated under the Stars and Stripes.”

Bolitho thought of Adam's
Anemone
. Some of her people had changed sides when the flag had come down. But this was different. It was not desertion, which was bad enough: it was mutiny.

“When they agreed, the Yankee told them they could punish their captain in the way they had suffered under his command. That's what they were doing all that time. First a few of the hard men, an' then it was like a madness. They seized him up and flogged him until he was in ribbons. Two hundred, three, who could say?
Alfriston
don't rate a surgeon, but we did what we could for him, an' his senior lieutenant who was stabbed when he tried to defend him. He'll probably live, the poor devil. I'd not be in his shoes for a sack of gold!”

“And then?”

“They boarded the
Killarney
an' stood away. I waited a while and then relaid my course for the Bermudas. I landed the survivors at Hamilton and made my report to the guard-ship. I was ordered to find an' report to you, sir.” He glanced around the spacious cabin as if he had not noticed it before. “They could have taken
Alfriston,
too, if they'd a mind.”

Bolitho stood up and walked to the quarter gallery. He could just see the little brig's dark silhouette, her topgallant yards still faintly pink in the dying light.

“No, Commander Borradaile. You had to be the witness, the proof that a mutiny broke out. Perhaps it was provoked, but it can never be condoned. We who command must always be aware of the dangers. And you are here. That is the other reason.”

Borradaile said, “To bring word to you, sir? That was my thought, also.”

Bolitho asked, “And the captain?”

“He died, sir, finally. Cursin' and ravin' to the end. His last words were,
they'll hang for it!
”

“And so they will, if they are taken.” He crossed to the untidy figure and took his hand. “You have done well. I shall see that it is mentioned in my despatches.” He glanced at Tyacke. “I'd offer you promotion, but I think you'd damn me for it first! Keep your
Alfriston
.” In his heart, he knew that Borradaile was glad to be rid of the men sent from the surrendered frigate. The shame was still there, deeper now than ever. Like a rotten apple in a barrel, it was better to be free of them.

“See Commander Borradaile over the side, James.” He watched them leave, then returned to the quarter gallery and thrust open a window. The air was surprisingly cold, and helped to steady him.

Avery, who had been present and mute throughout the discussion, observed quietly, “A well-planned trap, a flag of truce, and mutiny provoked, if provocation were needed. And now, one of our ships under their flag.”

Bolitho faced him, his cheek wet with spray, like tears, cold tears.

“Speak out, man. Say what I know you are thinking!”