The Only Victor (24 page)

“Boat's ready, Sir Richard.”

Bolitho nodded to the Officer-of-the-Guard. “How sets the tide?”

The man's face looked paler in the gloom, or was it imagination? He replied, “It'll be on the ebb in two hours, Sir Richard.”

“Good.” It would mean a quick start. But who was the one chosen to give him the information he needed? He relented slightly. “You keep a good watch, Lieutenant. It is just as well in this port!”

Then he was down into the boat with unexpected familiarity; even the lieutenant who had been sent in charge of the gig he recognised instantly.

“I'll wager you never expected to see me again so soon, Mr Munro?”

Jenour watched it all; as he had tried to describe it to his parents. The way
Truculent
's young second lieutenant responded with such obvious pleasure. Had it been daylight Jenour was certain he would have been blushing. Just small points, but Bolitho never seemed to forget, nor did he overlook the importance which these brief contacts he had with his men might carry for them when they most needed them later on.

Jenour shivered despite his warm cloak. It was exactly like one of his old storybooks. A secret mission. Jenour was not so naive that he did not see past the excitement to the danger and death which might lie in store. He had witnessed plenty of it since he had joined Bolitho; was still surprised that he had not cracked because of it. Perhaps later? He pushed it aside and said, “I see her, Sir Richard!”

Bolitho swung round and turned up the collar of his cloak as the spray from the oars spat over the gunwale and stung the tiredness from his mind.

He could guess what Jenour was thinking. But the mission, whatever it was, could already be common gossip on messdecks and in wardrooms alike.

He saw the frigate's spiralling masts cut across the clouds to tower over them, heard the ship's own noises moving out to receive them. Shouted commands carried away by the breeze which might soon be a strong south-westerly wind, the creak of tackles and the urgent shrill of calls. Men feeling their way about the decks or high above them on the treacherous yards and ratlines, slippery with spray; no place for the unskilled. But there were some of the latter, Bolitho thought. A man was calling out in fear, his pleas cut short by a blow. Captain Poland must have put a press gang ashore somewhere away from the port, or else the local flag officer had sent him a few landsmen from the guardship. For them the long, hard lesson was about to begin.

He thought again of Catherine, all that they had done together, all that they had given each other, and still there had not been enough time. He had not found the necklace he wanted for her lovely throat, nor had they been to visit the surgeon, Sir Piers Blachford. He had thought several times of his daughter Elizabeth, who would be four years old. The last occasion when he had seen her was when he had had his first confrontation with Belinda—she had passed him by with barely a glance. Not like a child at all. A doll in silks, a possession. But it would all have to wait.

“Boat ahoy?”
Figures jostled around the light at the frigate's entry port.

Before the gig's coxswain could reply to the age-old challenge, Allday cupped his big hands and yelled,
“Flag! Truculent!”

Bolitho pictured the tension on board. They might have been waiting and wondering for hours. Nobody could have known when his carriage would arrive or even when he had left London. But he had no doubts at all that Captain Poland would have kept every man alert and ready to receive him, if it had taken him another full day!

The gig's bowman managed to hook on to the main chains, while others did their best to control the boat's pitching and swaying as it felt the surge of the current alongside.

Bolitho reached the entry port and saw Poland and his officers waiting to be presented, even at this unearthly hour. As he had expected, they were all smartly dressed for his arrival.

He took Poland's hand and said, “I see that I must congratulate you, Captain.”

Poland smiled modestly as the swaying lantern threw a glow across his matching pair of epaulettes.

He said, “And I must
thank
you, Sir Richard. I cannot say how grateful I was to be told that my posting had been confirmed as a result of your report.”

Bolitho paused to watch the gig being hoisted up and over the nettings, then manhandled down on to the boat-tier with the others. A sense of urgency and mystery he had known often enough as a young frigate captain.

He said, “It will be a mite different from the shores of Africa.”

Poland hesitated, sifting it through as if to seek out any possible traps. Then he admitted, “I know our eventual landfall, Sir Richard, but in God's name I know nought else.”

Bolitho touched his arm and felt it stiffen. Poor Poland; like so many before him he had imagined that to gain the coveted rank of post-captain was to be beyond the reach of uncertainty, a summit from which nobody could topple you. Bolitho smiled to himself. He was learning otherwise. Like the epaulettes, the responsibility was also doubled.
As I discovered for myself many times.

Poland glanced quickly at his hovering first lieutenant. “Have the capstan fully manned, Mr Williams. We shall sail on the tide, or I shall need to know about it!”

To Bolitho he added, “If you will come aft, Sir Richard, there is a gentleman who is taking passage with us.”

While the ship came alive with the noise of getting under way, Bolitho entered the stern cabin, which he had come to know so well in his solitude. The first thing he saw was a curly wig which stood on its rest by an open chest; the second was the man who walked unsteadily from the shadows by the stern window, his legs as yet unused to the uncomfortable motion of a ship eager to tear free from the ground.

He was older, or appeared so, perhaps more stooped in the light of the spiralling lanterns. Sixty at a guess, his head almost bald so that his old-fashioned queue hung down over his collar like a rope's end.

He put his head on one side and regarded Bolitho like a quizzical bird. “It's a long while, Sir Richard, and many miles since we last met.”

Bolitho clasped both his hands in his own.

“Of course I remember. Charles Inskip! You guided me when I strained our country's diplomacy—that was in Copenhagen too!” They studied one another, their hands still gripped together as the memories flooded back. Bolitho had been sent to Denmark to help parley with the Danes after Napoleon had demanded that they hand over their fleet to his French admirals. The failure then to reach an agreement had led to the Battle of Copenhagen, when Nelson had defied his admiral's order to discontinue the action, and had forced the attack alone. The memories were flooding back. Keen had been there in his own command. Herrick had been Bolitho's flag captain in
Benbow,
which was now his own flagship. Such was fate and the ways of the navy.

It had been a bloody battle between nations who had nothing against one another but for their fear of the French obtaining the upper hand over them both.

Inskip gave a small smile. “Like you, Sir Richard, I, too, am honoured.
Sir
Charles, by His Majesty's gracious consent.”

They both laughed and Bolitho said, “An unnerving experience!” He did not add that the King had forgotten his name at the moment of knighting him.

More cries echoed from the deck above, and then the thrashing thunder of freed canvas. They could not hear the cry of
“Anchor's aweigh!”
but Bolitho braced his legs and felt
Truculent
respond like a released stallion, free of the halter, and responsible only to her captain's skills.

Inskip was watching him thoughtfully. “You still miss it, don't you? Being up there with the people, pitting your wits against the sea? I saw it in your eyes, as I did six years back in Copenhagen.”

He moved carefully to a chair as a servant entered with some glasses on a tray.

“Well, we are returning there, Sir Richard.” He sighed and patted his side pockets. “In one I carry a promise, in t'other a threat. But sit you down and I'll tell you what we are about—” He broke off and covered his mouth as the deck reeled over to the thrust of the helm. “I fear I have been too long in the comforts of London. My damned stomach defies me yet!”

Bolitho watched the servant's expressionless face—one of Inskip's men—as he poured the wine with some difficulty.

But he was thinking of Catherine and the London she had given him.
Enchantment.
Not at all like the one Inskip was already regretting leaving astern.

He leaned forward and felt her fan press against his thigh. “I am all attention, Sir Charles, though what part I can play is still beyond me.”

Inskip held his glass up to the light and gave a nod of satisfaction. He was probably one of the most senior government officials employed on Scandinavian affairs, but at this moment he looked more like a village schoolmaster.

He said, “Nelson is gone, alas, but the Danes know you. It is little enough, but when I explain further you will see we have no room for choices. There are sensible men in Copenhagen, but there are many who will see the value of
compromise,
another word for surrender, with Napoleon's army at the frontier.”

Bolitho glanced down at the gold lace on his sleeve. He was back.

Bolitho stood on the weather side of
Truculent
's quarterdeck and strained his eyes through the first grey light of morning. Around him the ship reeled and plunged to a lively quarter-sea, spray and sometimes great surges of water dashing over the decks or breaking through the rigging where spluttering, cursing seamen fought to keep everything taut and free.

Captain Poland lurched up the slippery planking towards him, a tarpaulin coat flapping about him and running with water.

He shouted above the din, “We should sight the narrows when daylight finds us, Sir Richard!” His eyes were red-rimmed with strain and lack of sleep, and his normally cool composure was less evident.

It had been a long, hard passage from Dover for him, Bolitho thought. No empty expanse of ocean with kind skies and prevailing winds, and Table Mountain as a mark of achievement at the end of it.
Truculent
had thrashed through the Channel and then north-east across the North Sea towards the coast of Denmark. They had sighted very little except for an English schooner and a small frigate which exchanged recognition signals before vanishing into a violent rain squall. It needed constant care with the navigation, especially when they altered course through the Skagerrak, then finally south, so closehauled that the lee gun-ports had been awash for most of the time. It was not merely cold; it was bitter, and Bolitho was constantly reminded of the last great battle against the Danes at Copenhagen, with Nelson's flag shifted to the
Elephant,
a smaller seventy-four than his proper flagship, so that he could pass through the narrows close inshore and so avoid the enemy batteries until the final embrace.

Bolitho thought too of Browne's apt quotation for his own captains:
We Happy Few.
To think of it now only saddened him. So many had gone, returning only in memory at times like this while
Truculent
completed that very same passage. Captain Keverne of
Indomitable,
Rowley Peel and his fine frigate
Relentless,
Veitch in the little
Lookout,
and so many others. More were to fall from Browne's “Few” in the following months and years. Firm friends like dear Francis Inch, and the courageous John Neale who had once been a midshipman in Bolitho's
Phalarope,
only to die a captain when they had been taken prisoner by the French after the loss of his frigate
Styx.
Bolitho and Allday had done all they could to save him and ease his agony; but he had joined all the others where nothing further could hurt him.

Bolitho shivered inside his boat-cloak and said, “A difficult passage, Captain.” He saw the red-rimmed eyes watching him guardedly, probably seeking out some sort of criticism in his remark. Then he pictured Catherine as he had last seen her. She would be wondering while she waited. It might be longer than he had promised. By the time
Truculent
's anchor splashed down it would have taken them a full week to reach their goal. He added, “I'm going below. Call me if you sight anything useful.”

Poland let out a sigh as Bolitho disappeared down the companion hatch. He called sharply, “Mr Williams! Change the lookouts, if you please. When they sight land I want to know about it!”

The first lieutenant touched his dripping hat. No matter how worried the captain was he usually managed to find time for a little stab of sharp encouragement.

Below the quarterdeck it seemed suddenly quiet after the beat and bluster of the biting wind and spray. Bolitho made his way aft, past the sentry and into the cabin. Everything was damp and cold, and the bench seats below the stern windows were bloomed with moisture as if they had been left out on deck.