For My Country's Freedom (19 page)

And away to windward would be the little brig
Marvel.
Ready to run down on anything suspicious, to search coves and inlets where her larger consorts might lose their keels; to run errands, almost anything. Bolitho had often seen Tyacke watching her whenever she was close by. Still remembering.
Marvel
was very like his
Larne.

He saw Allday at the foot of the quarterdeck ladder. He had his head on one side, and was ignoring the rush of seamen to trim the yards again, urged on no doubt by the smell of breakfast.

Bolitho asked sharply, “What is it?”

Allday looked at him impassively. “Not certain, sir.”

“Deck there! Sail in sight to th' nor'-east!”

Tyacke glanced around until he found Midshipman Blythe. “Aloft with you, my lad, and take a glass!”

There was an edge to his voice and Bolitho saw him stare at the horizon, already glassy bright and searing.

“Prepare to make more sail, Mr Scarlett!”

Blythe had reached the mainmast crosstrees. “Sail to the nor'-east, sir!” Just the slightest hesitation. “Schooner, sir!”

Scarlett remarked, “Well, she's not running away.”

With
Indomitable
and the other two frigates hove-to, and the brig
Marvel
making sail to block the stranger's escape if she proved hostile, every available glass was trained despite the heavy, regular swell.

Midshipman Cleugh, Blythe's haughty assistant, called in his squeaky voice, “She's
Reynard,
sir!”

Scarlett said, “Courier. I wonder what she wants?”

Nobody answered.

Allday climbed silently up the ladder and stood at Bolitho's shoulder.

“I've got a feeling, sir. Something's wrong.”

It was almost an hour before the schooner was near enough to drop a boat. Her captain, a wild-eyed lieutenant named Tully, was taken down to the cabin where Bolitho was pretending to enjoy some of Ozzard's coffee.

“Well, Mr Tully, and what have you brought me?”

He watched as Avery opened the bag and then dragged out the sealed and weighted envelope.

But the schooner's young captain exclaimed, “It's war, sir! The Americans are already at the Canadian frontier . . .”

Bolitho took the despatches from Avery's hand. “Where are their ships?” One letter was from Captain Dawes in
Valkyrie.
He had taken his ships to sea as already arranged, and would await fresh orders as they had planned, it seemed so long ago.

He repeated, “But where are their ships?”

Dawes had written as a postscript,
Commodore Beer's squadron quit Sandy Hook during a storm.

He could almost hear the words.
A total responsibility.
But he felt nothing. It was what he had expected. Hoped, perhaps. To end it once and for all.

Tyacke, who had been waiting in silence, asked suddenly, “What is the date of origin, sir?”

Avery replied, “Ten days ago, sir.”

Bolitho stood up, aware of the silence in the ship, despite the heavy movement. Ten days, and they had been at war without knowing it.

He swung round. “The next convoy from Jamaica?”

Tyacke said, “Sailed. They'd not know either.”

Bolitho stared at the chair by the stern bench. Where Adam had sat with Catherine's letter. Where his heart had broken.

He asked, “What escort?” He saw Tyacke's face. He, too, had known that this was coming. But how could that be?

Avery said, “
Anemone,
sir. If they were not expecting . . .”

Bolitho interrupted him sharply. “Make a signal to
Zest
and
Reaper,
repeated
Marvel. Close on flagship and remain in company.
” He looked directly at Tyacke, excluding everyone else. “We shall lay a course for the Mona Passage.” He could recall it so clearly, that much-disputed channel to the west of Puerto Rico, where he and so many faces now lost had fought battles now forgotten by most people.

It was the obvious route for any Jamaica convoy. Heavily laden merchantmen would stand no chance against ships like the U.S.S.
Unity,
or men like Nathan Beer.

Unless the escort saw through the deception and turned to defend the convoy against overwhelming odds, as
Seraphis
had faced John Paul Jones's
Bonhomme Richard
in that other war against the same enemy.

It was just possible. That convoy had been saved.
Seraphis
had been beaten into submission.

He looked at Tyacke but in his heart, he saw only Adam.

“All the sail she can carry, James. I think we are sorely needed.”

But a voice seemed to echo back, mocking him.

Too late. Too late.

Richard Hudson, first lieutenant of the
38
-gun frigate
Anemone,
strode aft to the quarterdeck even as eight bells chimed out from the forecastle. He touched his forehead as a mark of respect to the second lieutenant, whom he was about to relieve. Like the other officers he wore only his shirt and breeches, and was hatless, and he could feel even the lightest garment plastered to his body like a second skin.

“The afternoon watch is aft, sir.”

The words were formal and timeless, the navy's custom from the Indian Ocean to the Arctic, if so ordered.

The other young lieutenant, the same age as himself, replied with equal precision, “The course remains at south-east by south, the wind has backed to about north by west.”

Around and below them, midshipmen and the duty watch took their stations while others filled in their time splicing and stitching, the endless tasks of maintaining a ship-of-war.

Hudson took a telescope from its rack and winced as he held it to his eye. It was as hot as a gun-barrel. For a moment or two he moved the glass across the drifting heat haze and the dark blue water until he found the shimmering pyramids of sail, the three big merchantmen which
Anemone
had been escorting from Port Royal, and would continue to escort until they had reached the Bermudas, where they would join a larger convoy for the Atlantic crossing.

Even the thought of England made Hudson lick his lips. Summer, yes, but it might be raining. Cool breezes, wet grass under foot. But it was not to be. He realised that the second lieutenant who had been in charge of the forenoon watch was still beside him. He wanted to talk, up here where he could not be heard. It made Hudson feel both guilty and disloyal. He was the first lieutenant, responsible only to the captain for the running and organisation of the ship and her company.

How could things have changed so much in less than a year? When his uncle, a retired vice-admiral, had obtained him the appointment in
Anemone
through a friend in the Admiralty, he had been overjoyed. Like most ambitious young officers he had yearned for a frigate, and to be second-in-command to such a famous captain had been like a dream coming true.

Captain Adam Bolitho was all that a frigate commander was supposed to be: dashing and reckless, but not one to risk lives for his own ends or glory. The fact that Bolitho's uncle, who commanded their important little squadron, was as celebrated and loved in the fleet as he was notorious in society ashore, gave the appointment an added relish. Or it had, until the day Adam Bolitho had returned to
Anemone
after his summons to the flagship at English Harbour. He had always been a hard worker, and had expected others to follow his example: often he carried out tasks normally done by common seamen, if only to prove to the landmen and others pressed against their will that he was not asking the impossible of them.

Now he was driving himself to and beyond the limit. Month by month they had patrolled as near to the American mainland as possible, unless other ships were in close company. They had stopped and searched ships of every flag and taken many deserters, and on several occasions had fired on neutral vessels which had showed no inclination to heave-to for inspection. A quarter of
Anemone
's total company were even now in captured prizes and making either for Antigua or Bermuda.

Even that seemed to give the captain no satisfaction, Hudson thought. He shunned the company of his officers, and only came on deck when required for sailing the ship, or in times of foul weather, which had been plentiful over the past months. Then, soaked to the skin, his black hair plastered to his face, looking more like a pirate than a King's officer, he had never budged until his ship was out of danger.

But he was curt, impatient now, an entirely different man from the one Hudson had first met in Plymouth.

Vicary, the second lieutenant, said, “I'll be glad when this convoy is out of our hands. Slow to sail, slow even to co-operate— sometimes I think these damned grocery captains take a delight in ignoring signals!” Hudson watched a fish leap and fall into the heaving water. He had found himself assessing even the most commonplace remarks for some secret significance.

Captain Bolitho was never brutal with punishment; otherwise, sailing with only the elderly brig
Woodpecker
in company he might well have expected serious trouble. Hudson had questioned some of the retaken deserters himself, and many had pleaded that they had run only because of unfair and in some cases horrific floggings for even minor offences. Now, returned to British ships but in the same war, their treatment would be gauged by their behaviour.

Hudson glanced at the men working on deck, some trying to remain in the shadows of the reefed topsails, or watching the marine sentry with his fixed bayonet on sweating guard over the fresh-water cask.

If only they could be free of the merchantmen and their painfully slow progress. Day in, day out, only the wind seemed to change: and there was precious little of that, too.

Hudson said, “
You
think that all this is a waste of time, do you, Philip?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. This is a drudge's work. Let them fend for themselves, I say! They are quick enough to squeal and appeal to higher authority if we take a few of their prime seamen to fill the gaps, but they bleat even louder when
they
are in danger themselves!”

Hudson thought of a verse he had once heard somewhere.
God and the Navy we adore, when danger threatens but not before!
Obviously nothing had changed.

Anemone
had been driven hard. A proper refit was inevitable. He tried not to hope too much. One of the ships awaiting their arrival at Bermuda had been out here for less time than
Anemone,
and she was going to sail home as an additional escort.
Home.
He almost gritted his teeth. Then he lifted the telescope again and moved it deliberately towards the distant sails. Further downwind the brig
Woodpecker
stood above the thick heat haze like a pair of feathers, so white against the pitiless sky.

He said, “Why don't you cut on down to the wardroom? It'll be a mite cooler if nothing else.” He lowered the glass and waited.
Here it comes.

Vicary said, “We've always got on well. I can't talk to anyone else. You know how things get twisted.”

“
Distorted,
you mean?” Vicary was
24,
a native of Sussex, fair-haired and blue-eyed with, Hudson thought, what his mother could have called
such an English face.
He contained a fond smile and retorted, “You know I cannot discuss the matter.” Even that felt like disloyalty.

“I appreciate that.” Vicary plucked at his stained shirt. “I just want to know
why.
What happened to change him? We deserve that much, surely?”

Hudson toyed with the idea of sending him below with a direct order. Instead he said, “Something very personal, perhaps. Not a death, or we'd have heard of it. His future is assured, provided he can stay alive, and I don't just mean in the line of battle.”

Vicary nodded, perhaps from satisfaction that their friendship was not in danger. “I did hear a few tales about a duel somewhere. Everyone knows it goes on, despite the law.”

Hudson thought of the captain's uncle as he had been when he had come aboard to meet the officers. Adam was so like him, exactly as Bolitho must have been at the same age. The hero, the man who was followed into battle with a kind of passion, as they had once followed Nelson. And yet unlike so many high-ranking and successful officers—
heroes—
Hudson had felt that Sir Richard Bolitho was a man without conceit, and one who truly cared for the men he inspired. It was more than charisma, as he had heard it described. When the admiral looked at you,
you
as an individual person, you could feel it run through your blood. And you knew in the same breath that you would follow him anywhere.