For My Country's Freedom

by Alexander Kent

  Figures scampered to braces and halliards, while each lieutenant and midshipman checked his men, very aware of the two figures silhouetted against the paling sky by the quarterdeck rail.

  ‘Put the help down!’

  Bolitho could feel the quarterdeck rail quivering under his hand as the straining seamen let go the headsail sheets, so that the sails could lose the wind and yet not prevent the ship’s head from swinging.

  ‘Off tacks and sheets!’ Scarlett’s voice boomed through his speaking-trumpet even as the shadowy bows began to stagger into the eye of the wind.

  ‘Mains’l haul! Haul, lads! Put your bloody backs into it!’

  Hockenhull, the squat boatswain, sounded fierce but was grinning as the ship around and above him fought to answer the demands of sail and rudder.

  ‘Mains’l haul!’

  Bolitho watched the hands hauling at the braces to swing the great yards around, the sails in wild confusion until, with something like a roar, they refilled and the ship heeled right over, canvas taut and bulging, lines being turned expertly on to belaying pins, while the landmen tried to keep out of everybody’s way. Bolitho shaded his eyes and stared up again. Big though she was, and with a partly-trained company, Tyacke had brought the ship about to lay her on the opposite tack.

  The helmsman yelled, ‘Steady she goes, sir! West by north! By an’ large!’

  Even he sounded excited, and when Bolitho looked at York, the master, he was grinning hugely like a midshipman with a fresh apple pie.

  ‘Deck, there!’

  The masthead lookout, the man who saw everything before anyone else. Bolitho saw Tyacke’s brown hand tighten on the rail. If there was anything to see.

  ‘Sail, fine on the lee bow, sir!’

  Tyacke turned to the signals midshipman. ‘Aloft with you, Mr Blythe, and take a glass with you!’

  Bolitho said, ‘That was well done, Captain Tyacke.’ Together they watched the spray bursting over the beakhead. Tyacke said quietly, ‘Mr York was right about this ship.’

  ‘Deck there!’

  Tyacke smiled. ‘Already? He must have flown up there.’

  Blythe’s voice reached them again. ‘Barque, sir! She’s all aback!’

  Tyacke said contemptuously, ‘Trying to make a run for it, is he?’ He swung round. ‘Mr Scarlett, get the t’gallants on her and set the forecourse, driver too!’ When the first lieutenant hesitated, he snapped, ‘Lively it is, Mr Scarlett! I’ll not lose the bugger now!’

  Bolitho saw the flash of resentment in Scarlett’s eyes, but this was no time to consider a man’s hurt pride.

  Tyacke was beckoning to another midshipman, Craigie, the one who had sighted the stranger in the first place.

  ‘Find the gunner, Mr Craigie, and have him lay aft.’ He fumbled in his coat and Bolitho saw the gleam of gold. ‘You did well. Quite well.’

  The midshipman stared at the coin in his grubby palm. ‘Th-thank you, sir!’

  Tyacke’s voice pursued him forward to the main hatchway. ‘But next time you skylark on duty, the prize had better be worthwhile!’

  Several of the seamen who were hauling and coiling a confusion of halliards and tackles grinned.

  Bolitho smiled. If the barque proved to be useless it would no longer matter.

  They had just accomplished something, and they had done it as one company.

  Richard Bolitho opened his eyes and stared at the deckhead, his ears and mind taking in the sounds, the angle of a small shuttered lantern telling him instantly how Indomitable was behaving.

  But for the lantern the cabin was in complete darkness, the occasional grumbling clatter of the rudder-head the predominant sound. Not much wind then. Two or three times in the night his sailor’s instinct had awakened him, and as usual he had felt a sense of loss at not being up there with the watch on deck when the ship had changed tack yet again. He had never lost that feeling, and he had often wondered if other flag-officers still yearned for the more personal command of a captain.

  He lay with his hands behind his head looking into the darkness. It was hard to believe that Indomitable would reach Antigua tomorrow or, if the wind failed them again, the next day at the latest. Even now he knew that the small island of Barbuda was less than fifty miles to the north-west, part of the natural chain that formed the Leeward Islands.

  Tyacke could be well pleased with his fast passage. Three weeks from Falmouth, England, to Falmouth and English Harbour in Antigua; and they had been uneventful after the early excitement of sighting and boarding ‘Blythe’s barque’, as it had become known, only to discover that although she wore American colours she had been under charter to the British government, and had carried nothing more interesting than a mixed cargo of china clay and building materials for Port Royal in Jamaica.

  Scarlett had returned fuming with his boarding party. Because of the charter he had been unable to examine the company for British deserters, let alone search the vessel. Later they had sighted and stopped several vessels of various sizes and flags, but apart from a few deserters they had found very little to their advantage. It had seemed as though the whole ocean had become a desert, and every ship going about her business had somehow avoided them.

  There had been little to do but carry out regular sail and gun drills, and, as usual, inactivity had had its side-effects: outbursts of anger and violence on the lower deck, usually between the trained and experienced hands and the amateurs and landmen, whom they seemed to delight in provoking.

  The punishment book had made its first appearance and several floggings had been awarded. Bolitho had known and served in ships where floggings had been too commonplace to mention, because a wrong word had been taken for insolence, or a captain had cared little for his subordinates’ methods provided the end results were acceptable. But Bolitho knew Tyacke had felt it badly. After his little schooner Miranda and the brig Larne, with their tightly-knit companies, the ritual of punishment in a ship of Indomitable’s size had sickened him.

  Not that he had lost his determination or pride, and neither his wardroom nor the midshipmen were spared the edge of his tongue. At the boarding of one schooner Avery had accompanied the first lieutenant, and afterwards there had been open hostility from Scarlett, while Avery had withdrawn into apparent indifference and been loath to discuss the subject. Tyacke, in his own forceful fashion, had uncovered the bones of the matter.

  On board the schooner, Scarlett had admitted that it was almost impossible to discover the presence of deserters, or others taking an illegal passage to escape from the navy, as long as individual masters spoke up for them or provided false papers.

  Avery, who had been told to act only as an observer and not interfere with the first lieutenant’s procedures, had apparently answered that men should be stripped of their shirts for inspection without requesting permission from anybody. A sailor’s back, even if he had been flogged but once, would carry the scars of the cat to the grave. Distinctive naval tattoos were another definite way to identify a deep-water sailorman as a King’s seaman who had run.

  Scarlett had retorted sharply, ‘I’ll trouble you to keep your ideas to yourself, sir!’

  Avery had responded equally coldly, and when Tyacke had told him later, Bolitho had been well able to imagine him saying it.

  ‘You can go to hell for all I care!’

  Hard work, perverse winds and sometimes blistering heat, each had played a part. Men used to the English Channel and to North Sea blockade duties were resentful at being chased through every minute of a drill, while the newly-pressed hands made mistakes that brought scorn and humiliation in their wake.

  He closed his eyes, but sleep defied him. It would be dawn soon, and land was in sight, from the masthead at least, exciting many of their company who had never left England before in their lives.

  He thought of the dream which had pursued him, almost from the boarding of ‘Blythe’s barque’. He was not certain how many times it had returned since then, but he knew it had
never varied, and when he had woken only minutes ago, he had known somehow that the dream had awakened him. Even his heart had been pounding, something very rare for him unless the dreams had become nightmares, like the ones in which he had seen Catherine being carried away from him, her naked body and streaming hair, and her terror, making him call her name aloud before he had burst out of it.

  The dream was completely different. Always the same picture, the narrow waters of Carrick Roads in Falmouth, the murky hump of Pendennis Castle lying across the starboard bow of the ship flying an admiral’s flag: his flag – the knowledge of that had been quite definite, as it so often was in dreams. The squadron had been all around him, ready to weigh, or still shortening their cables. About to leave Falmouth, as he had done so many times.

  Without realising it he was out of his cot, his bare feet on the deck’s cool slope; and the sudden icy chill of recognition seemed to freeze his whole body, even though his brain told him that the cabin was as hot and humid as before.

  The ships of the squadron had all been his own. Undine, Sparrow and Phalarope, Black Prince and Hyperion. There had even been the topsail cutter Avenger, in which he had served under his brother Hugh.

  The realisation was unnerving, and he knew that the dream would return yet again. What did it mean? What had brought all those familiar ships to Falmouth, only to depart? And which one had he been on board at the time?

  He felt Indomitable shiver, the awakening rattle of rigging and blocks. A freshening breeze. There was the responding slap of bare feet overhead, brief orders to send the watch to braces and halliards and re-trim the great yards and contain the wind once more.

  He saw them in his mind: figures in the darkness, the helmsmen as they felt the spokes in their hands, their eyes peering aloft to seek out the shaking sail, or the small gauge nearby so that they could discover the wind’s true direction.

  Perhaps it would be better after Antigua, once he knew what awaited him. The total responsibility. For him there had been too much time to brood, to consider the various courses of action for which he would be praised or abused by the far-off Admiralty.

  He even wondered if Avery regretted having accepted this appointment, or if Tyacke had only changed his mind out of sympathy.

  He felt the deck lift and slide across a trough; she was moving again. He reached the main cabin and groped his way right aft to the tall windows. He managed to open one of the quarter shutters which, within hours, would be packed with blown salt-spray. No moon, but there were plenty of stars to make the ship’s wake sparkle.

  How would he feel at English Harbour, where he and Catherine had found each other again?

  She would be remembering it too. The house above the harbour; their love, which had driven even sanity to the winds.

  He felt the damp air around his body, and wondered what his seamen and marines would think if they saw him now, dressed only in a loose pair of white trousers, in case he was needed. I am playing the captain again.

  His thoughts returned to the barque. Her name was La Perla, and she was registered at Boston. His mind shied away from it. The enemy. Her master had denied that he had been deliberately following this ship. He smiled to himself. The old Indom, as the one-legged cook, Troughton, had called her. The master had insisted that he had every right in the world to be where he was; but he had obviously been surprised by Indomitable’s speed and agility, and like some others he had mistaken her for the ship-of-the-line she had once been.

  He touched the thick glass. What tales could she tell? How many hundreds of feet had trod these decks, what ambitions and failures had lived here?

  He heard whispers, and then a door opened. Somehow he knew it was Ozzard before he could smell the coffee.

  ‘Thought you were about, Sir Richard.’ His small figure seemed to glide down towards him as the helm went over yet again. ‘This’ll do you good.’

  Ozzard always knew. Perhaps he could rarely sleep himself.

  The coffee was excellent. He could see her again in the shop in St James’s Street, choosing the coffee with the care she showed for everything. For me.

  He found his watch secured to his sea-going coat, and held it against the shuttered lantern. So many memories, dearest Kate.

  There was about four hours’ difference between them. A spring morning in Falmouth, the air filled with birdsong and the hum of bees, and always, the salt tang of the sea. Perhaps she was out visiting Nancy and her husband, ‘the King of Cornwall’. Or perhaps she was changing after an early ride, standing by the tall cheval-glass, disrobing as he had seen her do, a prelude to love in that same room.

  He put the empty coffee-cup on the deck where it would be safe from any sudden gust, and climbed once more into his cot.

  He imagined that it was a little lighter in the adjoining great cabin, and recalled when she had come to him in the night on another occasion. Dazed with sleep he had gone to her, and had kissed her, but her lips had been like ice. And when he had called her name he had realised that, too, had been a dream.

  But even across the ocean he had heard her cry out, ‘Don’t leave me.’

  He closed his eyes and felt something like peace for the first time since Indomitable had weighed.

  The phantom squadron did not return.

  The small carriage rattled along a straight, well-kept road, the Hampshire countryside laid out in fresh square fields of green and yellow like part of a giant patchwork quilt. It was early still, but when she lowered the window Zenoria could hear the trilling evensong of thrushes, interrupted occasionally by the harsh croak of crows.

  They would reach Keen’s family home within half an hour and as always she thought with apprehension of the reception she would get from his sisters. She had visited the proposed new house at Plymouth three times, and on each occasion the lawyer Petrie had accompanied her. He was dozing now on the seat beside her; even he was finding the journeys and negotiations with the land agents in Plymouth more than tiring.

  She watched the passing fields and the darker patches of trees on the edge of the New Forest. In a day or so she would go with Petrie to London. Val’s father thought that a man in his position should have a town house as well. He had never meant to offend her, quite the opposite, but he made no secret of the fact that he believed women had no place in matters of property and business, and he probably thought that she had no idea at all of what might be expected of her. He had hinted of further promotion for Val, and every likelihood of a title; and once out of the navy a firm and prosperous place with him in the City.

  As she had wandered through room after room in the vastness of Boscawen House in Plymouth, her mind had been unable to accept it: the entire house and spacious gardens filled with servants and workers who would watch her every move, discuss her behind her back, perhaps laugh at her attempts to entertain her betters. She had lost her temper only once when Petrie had explained that there was really no need for her to tire herself with visiting the great empty house, or looking through deeds and past amendments. She had said sharply, ‘I would remind you that it will be my house too, Mr Petrie! I am also one of the family.’

  He had studied her, not unkindly, and had replied, ‘It will be a new and very different experience for you, Mrs Keen. There will be many who will envy you. If you will excuse my impertinence, you are a very fortunate young lady, married to one of England’s heroes who will, I know, do all he can to make your life a happy one.’

  She had felt suddenly weary of it. ‘I know, Mr Petrie. He is a good man, and I owe him much.’

  If Petrie knew what she meant, he had given no sign.

  If only she had had time to visit Catherine at Falmouth. She felt something like a hand on her heart.

  The day proposed for the London visit was the sixth of June. It was as if Adam were here with her. It had been on that day that she had kissed him, and he had given her some wild roses from beside the track. Where was Adam now? Had he joined his uncle, or would he be ordered to Val’
s squadron instead? The thought brought colour to her cheeks. Two who loved her, and yet neither could speak of it.

  She could remember his searching gaze at the port admiral’s supper in Plymouth. Could it really be two months ago?

  The hand on her arm, his expression so intense but tender, in the way she had never forgotten. I love you, Zenoria.

  The carriage slowed on the last rise before the final approach to the Keen estate and farmland. She heard the clink of metal as the guard unholstered his pistols. It was pleasant, peaceful countryside, so unlike the wild rocky coast of her Cornwall, but there were dangers here nevertheless. Deserters, living rough and stealing what they could, footpads, highwaymen; it was not a road on which to travel unprepared.

  Petrie stirred and adjusted his spectacles. ‘Ah, nearly home, I see.’

  She had not realised he was awake. ‘A tiring week, Mr Petrie, for us both.’

  He nodded sagely. ‘It is good of your husband’s family to allow me to stay in the house, Mrs Keen. It saves a good deal of time, money too.’

  ‘Yes.’ As I am allowed to stay here also.

  She turned to the window again so that he should not see her face. She could smell the flowers and the hedgerows, like perfume. But not Cornwall.

  She tried not to think of the last time Adam had come to this house. How she had berated him, blamed him for what had happened. Then, hating herself for the things she had said, she had run to the front door to call him back. But the road, this road, had been empty. Perhaps while she was in London she might see something he would like. A small present… No. It would be cruel, a temptation which she could never honour.

  The tall iron gates were open, and with sudden energy the two horses quickened their pace, and she saw a groom hurrying to meet them. Keen’s family’s country house was an awesome building, which never failed to overwhelm her.

  Petrie shifted his legs and said, ‘I see you have another visitor, my dear.’ He did not see her sudden anxiety: he was contemplating the supper they would provide for him.

  She said in a small voice, ‘Not a visitor.’