Second to None

by Alexander Kent

  He slung the big telescope over his shoulder and strode forward to the main chains before gazing up again at the swaying crosstrees, where the lookout would be perched like a sea bird, uncaring, or indifferent to the other world far beneath his dangling legs.

  The others watched until Lieutenant Wynter exclaimed, ‘What ails him, Mr Cristie? How can he know anything more than the rest of us?’

  ‘The Cap’n don’t miss much, Mr Wynter.’ He gestured to the biscuit crumbs. ‘Your little pleasures, for instance!’

  A seaman murmured, ‘First lieutenant’s comin’ up, sir!’

  ‘Damn!’ Wynter stared at the captain’s slim figure, leaning back and outwards above the creaming water surging from the finely raked stem. Wynter was twenty-two years old and could remember the congratulations and the envy alike when he had been appointed to Unrivalled. The first of her class, the kind of frigate which had been denied them when they had needed them most in the war against the new American navy. With the fleet being cut down and officers as well as seamen being discharged or put on half-pay without any visible prospects, he had been fortunate. Like Galbraith, the senior, who seemed old for his rank when compared with most lieutenants; he must have seen this appointment as a last chance rather than a new beginning.

  A new ship, and commanded by one already proclaimed a brave and resourceful officer. The name alone was enough, part of the legend, and now of the mourning for the admiral who had inspired and shocked the nation.

  Wynter had been serving in an elderly third-rate when his appointment had been posted. He still had no idea why he had been selected. His father, a rising member of Parliament and one well known for his outspoken criticism of naval and military affairs, was certainly not behind it. Even when he had first gone to sea as a midshipman, his father had offered little encouragement.

  ‘A good regiment would have been preferable. I could have bought you a comfortable living where you would have served with gentlemen, not uncouth ruffians! Don’t come to me for pity when you lose an arm or a leg through some captain’s hunger for glory!’

  And Wynter had never been in a sea fight, mainly because the old seventy-four had been too slow to chase an enemy, and was often left far behind the rest of the squadron. She would doubtless be hulked, like so many of the other worn-out ships which had stood between England and her natural enemies for so many years. He saw Bellairs, the senior midshipman, in charge of Unrivalled’s signals and with any luck the next in line for lieutenant’s examination, talking to the sailing master, ready to muster his men if something unusual happened. Even he had seen action, several times if he was to be believed, when he had served with the Channel Fleet in a small thirty-two gun frigate.

  Wynter stared up at the captain again. He was almost there now, apparently untroubled by the height, and the unnerving shake and quiver of the masts under their great weight of spars and cordage.

  He knew something of Captain Adam Bolitho’s past. A command at twenty-three, and a list of successes against the Americans and the French, with prize money to show for it. Nobody spoke of the other matter, the disgrace to his family when his father had changed sides to command a privateer against his own country during the American War of Independence. But everybody knew about it. How must he feel? He turned away as a shaft of watery sunlight lanced into his eyes. How would I feel?

  He heard Cristie telling the first lieutenant about the masthead’s sighting. He did not hear any reply or comment, but Galbraith was like that. Easy to talk to in the wardroom, on matters relating to shipboard duties or the watch bill. Ready to give advice about the suitability of certain men for the various parts of ship. On a personal level, or when asked to offer an opinion about the course of the war or the reliability of the higher command, he would close up like a clam. Unlike some of the others. Captain Louis Bosanquet, the officer in charge of the ship’s Royal Marines, was the complete opposite. Like a steel blade to his men, he was outspoken about almost everything in the mess, especially when he had had too much to drink. His second-in-command, Lieutenant John Luxmore, on the other hand, went by the book, and seemed to live only for the drilling and betterment of his ‘bullocks’. O’Beirne, the surgeon from Galway, who knew more jokes than anyone Wynter had ever met, and Tregillis the purser were easy enough to share a mess with, no better or worse than men in any other ship of this size. The exception was Vivian Massie, the swarthy second lieutenant, who had seen plenty of action and did not bother to hide a driving ambition. Beyond that he could be withdrawn, almost secretive, as if any personal revelation might be considered weakness. Good in a battle, but a bad enemy, Wynter had decided.

  He stiffened as Galbraith joined him by the rail.

  Captain Bolitho had almost reached the crosstrees. But even he could make a mistake. If he slipped and fell, if he missed hitting a spar or the ship herself, the fall would knock him senseless. It would take far too long to heave to and lower a boat. He glanced at Galbraith’s strong profile. Then he would be in command. Perhaps only temporarily, but it would offer him the recognition he needed and must crave. It happened in battle, just as it had struck down the captain’s uncle. Dead men’s shoes. Nobody mentioned it, but it was on most people’s minds when it came to promotion.

  Wynter shaded his eyes and peered up again through the maze of rigging and flapping canvas.

  Why should the captain do it? Did he trust no one? He had heard Bosanquet remark once that he knew the captain no better than when he had stepped aboard. Galbraith had been present, and had answered, ‘I could say the same about you, sir!’ That had ended it. That time.

  A figure moved from the gundeck and paused, gazing at the sea. It was Jago, the captain’s coxswain, the only man aboard who had actually served with Adam Bolitho before. He had a lean, darkly tanned face and hair tied in a neat, old-fashioned queue, like the gunner’s mate he had been. A man with a past, he had been flogged in another ship, wrongly it was said, by a sadistic captain, and there was still a certain anger about him, a contained defiance. Wynter had seen him stripped and sluicing his body at the washdeck pump; the scars had been familiar enough, but Jago carried them differently, almost with pride. Bloody arrogance, Massie had called it.

  Whatever the truth of it, he would know their captain better than any of them. He had been with him when they had stormed a battery during an attack by the combined forces on the dockyards and principal buildings in Washington. Some claimed that raid was revenge for the American invasion of Canada and the attack on York; others said it was a final show of strength in a war no one could win.

  Luke Jago knew the officers on the quarterdeck were watching him and could make a fair bet as to their thoughts. He, too, was surprised to find himself here, in his new station, when all he had wanted was to quit the navy, with only bitterness in his soul.

  He could recall exactly when Captain Bolitho had asked him to be his coxswain; could remember his refusal. Bolitho was one of only a few officers Jago had ever liked or trusted, but his mind had been made up. Determined. Until that last battle, the deck raked by the enemy’s fire, men crying out and falling from aloft. When the commodore had pitched on to his side, already beyond aid. He knew the rumours like all the rest of them, that the commodore had been shot by somebody aboard their own ship, but he had heard no more about it. He gave a quick grin. He couldn’t even remember the bloody man’s name any more.

  Unlike the boy John Whitmarsh, the captain’s servant, who had survived when Anemone had gone down. He remembered him well enough. The smile faded. The Yankees had hanged Bolitho’s old coxswain for ensuring that Anemone would not live to become their prize.

  Captain Bolitho had taken a liking to the boy; maybe he had seen something of himself in him. He had wanted to sponsor him with his own money, so he could finish his education and wear the King’s coat some day. Jago could remember the boy showing him the dirk the captain had given him, probably the only gift he had ever received. Without a tremor in his voice, he had told Jago
that he wanted to stay with his captain. It was all he wanted, he said.

  He had watched Adam Bolitho’s face when he had told him Whitmarsh had been killed. A ball had shattered against one of the guns, and the iron splinter had ended his young life instantly; he had died without a trace of pain or terror.

  And the exact moment when he had made up his mind, or had it made up for him. He was still uncertain, unwilling to believe it was not his decision alone. They had shaken hands on it with the smoke still hanging in the air, when the enemy frigate had broken off the action. ‘A victory, sir,’ he had heard himself say. ‘Or as good as.’ He had thought himself mad then. Until they had buried their dead, including the boy John Whitmarsh, with the beautiful dirk still strapped to his side.

  One hundred and sixty feet above their heads and oblivious to their thoughts, Adam Bolitho eased himself into position and looked down at the ship, which seemed to pivot from side to side as if his perch in the crosstrees was motionless. He had never tired of the sight since he had made his first dash aloft as a midshipman in his uncle’s old Hyperion. Even when he had been mastheaded for some prank or indiscretion, he had always managed to marvel at what he saw. The ship, far beneath his shoes, the little blue and white shapes of the officers and master’s mates, the clusters of seamen and scarlet-coated marines. His ship, all one hundred and fifty feet of her, over a thousand tons of weapons, masts and spars, and the men to serve and fight her.

  His uncle had confided that he had always hated heights, had feared going aloft when his ship had made or reefed sails. Another lesson Adam had learned, that fear could be contained if it seemed more dangerous to reveal it.

  He glanced at his companion. A leathery face and a pair of the keenest eyes he had seen, like polished glass.

  He hesitated. ‘Sullivan, isn’t it?’

  The seaman showed his uneven teeth. ‘Thass me, sir.’ He smiled slightly as Adam unslung the telescope.

  ‘Where away?’ It was strange: despite his attempt to stay at arm’s length, the ship was closing in. A face he could barely recall. A typical Jack, some would say. Hard, rough, and, in their way, simple men.

  ‘Same bearin’, sir.’

  He steadied the glass, raising it very carefully as breaking crests leaped into view, magnified into small tidal waves in the powerful lens.

  He felt the spar quiver and shake against his body, mast upon mast, down to the ship’s keelson. He could remember the genuine pleasure and pride of the men who had built her when he had insisted they come aboard for her commissioning.

  And there she was, rising and dipping, her canvas dark against the scudding clouds.

  The lookout said, ‘Square-rigged at the fore, sir.’

  Adam nodded and waited for the glass to steady again. A brigantine, handling well in the offshore wind, almost bows-on. When he lowered the glass she seemed to drop away to a mere sliver of colour and movement. It never failed to surprise him that men like Sullivan, who would scorn a telescope, or trade it for a new knife or fresh clothing, or drink if it was offered, could still see and recognise another vessel when a landsman might not even notice it.

  ‘Local, d’ you think?’

  Sullivan watched him with sudden interest. ‘Spaniard, I’d say, sir. I seen ’em afore, as far to the south’rd as Good Hope. Handy little craft.’ He added doubtfully, ‘Rightly ‘andled, er course, sir!’

  Adam took another look. The master was right. They would never catch her with the wind against them. And why should they care? Lose more time and distance when tomorrow they should lie in the shadow of the Rock?

  It was like yesterday. He had been returning to Plymouth and it had been reported that a boat had been heading out to meet them. Not merely a boat: an admiral’s barge, the flag officer himself coming to tell him, to be the first to prepare him for the news of his uncle’s death. Vice-Admiral Valentine Keen. His uncle’s friend. He felt the same stab of guilt; he would never lose it. Zenoria’s husband. After her death he had married again. But like that moment alone in the silence of the house, he had thought only of Zenoria. What he had done.

  Keen had told him what he knew, the circumstances of Bolitho’s death and of his burial at sea. Nothing was definite, except that his flagship had engaged two frigates, manned by renegades and traitors who, with others, had aided Napoleon’s escape from Elba; he had marched on Paris almost before the allies had recovered from the shock.

  Bethune would know more of the details by now, where the frigates had taken refuge prior to their unexpected meeting with Frobisher, who was involved, how it had been planned. He found he was gripping the telescope so tightly that his knuckles were almost white. Spain was an ally now. And yet a Spaniard had been involved.

  He repeated quietly, ‘Spaniard, you say?’

  The man regarded him thoughtfully. Sir Richard Bolitho’s nephew. A fire-eater, they said. A fighter. Sullivan had been at sea on and off for most of his forty years, and had served several captains, but could not recall ever speaking to one. And this one had even known his name.

  ‘I’d wager a wet on it, sir.’

  A wet. What John Allday would say. Where was he now? How would he go on? The old dog without his master.

  Adam smiled. ‘A wager it is then. A wet you shall have!’ He seized a stay and began to slide towards the deck, heedless of the tar on his white breeches. Instinct? Or the need to prove something? When he reached the deck the others were waiting for him.

  ‘Sir?’ Galbraith, poised and guarded.

  ‘Spanish brigantine. He’s a damned good lookout.’

  Galbraith relaxed slowly. ‘Sullivan? The best, sir.’

  Adam did not hear him. ‘That vessel is following us.’ He looked at him directly. It was there. Doubt. Caution. Uncertainty. ‘I shall not forget that craft, Mr Galbraith.’

  Wynter leaned forward and said eagerly, ‘An enemy, sir?’

  ‘An assassin, I believe, Mr Wynter.’

  He swung away; Jago was holding his hat for him. ‘See that the wardroom mess provides a double tot for Sullivan when he is relieved.’

  They watched him walk to the companion way, as if, like the two midshipmen he had seen earlier, he did not have a care in the world.

  Midshipman Fielding stood examining the telescope which the captain had just returned to him. He would put it in the next letter to his parents, when he got round to it. How the captain had spoken to him. No longer a stranger . . . He smiled, pleased at the aptness of the phrase. That was it.

  He recalled the time he had gone to waken the captain when Lieutenant Wynter had been concerned about the wind. He had dared to touch his arm. It had been hot, as if the captain had had a fever. And he had called out something. A woman’s name.

  He would leave that out of the letter. It was private.

  But he wondered who the woman was.

  It was like sharing something. He thought of the captain’s easy confidence when he had slithered down to the deck like one of the topmen. Perhaps the others had not noticed it.

  He smiled again, pleased with himself. No longer a stranger.

  Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune walked to the quarter window of the great cabin and observed the activity of countless small craft in the shadow of the Rock. He had visited Gibraltar many times throughout his career, never thinking that one day his own flagship would be lying here, with himself at the peak of his profession. Although a frigate captain earlier in the war, he had been surprised and not a little dismayed to discover how his post at the Admiralty had softened him.

  He glanced at the dress coat with its heavy gold-laced epaulettes which hung on one of the chairs, the measure of the success which had brought him to this. He was one of the youngest flag officers on the Navy List. He had always told himself that he would not change, that he was no different from that young, untried captain in his first serious encounter with the enemy, with only his own skills and determination to sustain him.

  Or from the midshipman. He stared at the sha
dowed side of the Rock. Aboard the little sloop-of-war Sparrow, Richard Bolitho’s first command.

  He still could not come to terms with it. He could remember the signal being brought to his spacious rooms at the Admiralty, the writing blurring as he had read and understood that the impossible had happened: Napoleon had surrendered. Abdicated. It had ended. A release for so many, but for him like a great door being slammed shut.

  He stared around the cabin, the rippling reflections of water on the low deckhead. It had seemed so small, so cramped after his life in London. He had changed.

  He could hear the movement of the men on the upper deck, the creak of tackles as stores sent across from one of the supply vessels from England were hoisted inboard.

  His thoughts returned to Catherine Somervell, from whom they were never far away. That night at the reception at Castlereagh’s home, when Admiral Lord Rhodes had stunned the guests by calling Bolitho’s wife to join him and share the applause for her absent husband. When Bethune had begged to be allowed to escort Catherine to her Chelsea house, she had refused. She had been composed enough to consider him; there was enough scandal. Later he had heard of the attack at her home, a disgusting attempt to rape her by a Captain Oliphant, apparently a cousin of Rhodes. After that, things had moved quickly. Rhodes had not become First Lord as he had hoped and expected, and his cousin had not been heard of since.

  He looked at the heavy coat again. And I was ordered here. In command of a small group of frigates entrusted with patrol and search operations, too late to relieve Sir Richard Bolitho at Malta, nor even in England when the news of his death had broken. No wonder he had changed. He had once imagined himself comfortably, if not happily, married to a woman who suited his role and shared his ambitions. Now even their life together had been soured by those events, and he suspected his wife had been a willing partner in Rhodes’ attempt to humiliate and insult Catherine at that reception for Wellington.

  He crossed to the opposite quarter and shaded his eyes against the glare to gaze at the mainland. Spain. It was hard not to think of it as the enemy; in Algeciras there had always been eyes watching for the arrival of a new sail, with riders ready to gallop to the next post where the message could be relayed. Another ship from England. Where bound? For what purpose?