Relentless Pursuit

by Alexander Kent

  “They are all experienced, sir.” He felt unreasonably irritated. With himself for sounding so defensive.

  Herrick said, “I know your record. The Algiers affair, and your fight with the renegade frigate, did you credit. But you chose to ignore your admiral’s signals, to interpret them as you thought fit. As a result you carried out the rescue of a valuable merchant ship, and more to the point some very important passengers. As hostages, at best they could have brought disaster to any future bargaining with the Dey of Algiers.”

  “I did what I thought was right, sir.”

  Herrick glanced at the door. “You were lucky. You would not find me quite so understanding.”

  The door opened an inch but Herrick said sharply, “Wait!” It closed.

  Then he walked across the room, one shoulder hunched unconsciously, like so many veterans Adam had seen in the seaports of England.

  He said quietly, “I did not intend our meeting to be like this.” He held up his hand. “No, hear me. Perhaps I am alone too much. I did not mean to speak of it—not here, not now. But you will know, more than anyone, what your uncle meant to me. He never forgot, and neither shall I. Like all great men, and he was a great man, although he’d be the last to admit it, he made enemies, far more cunning and treacherous than those who use powder and shot for one cause or another. So be warned. Hatred, like love, never dies.” Then, suddenly, he thrust out his remaining hand.

  “I’d ask for no better captain.” He smiled. “Adam.”

  It was the saddest thing Adam had seen for a long time.

  He left the darkened room without even noticing the vague figures who were waiting their turn for an audience.

  Like a stranger. It would have been far better if he was. He paused by another window and touched the old sword at his hip. Herrick had once told him how he had returned to Falmouth with Bolitho, and had been present when Captain James Bolitho had given this sword to his son. A captain and his first lieutenant . . .

  What had happened to that tough, stubborn young man?

  Commodore Arthur Turnbull came out of another doorway and stood gazing at him. Adam guessed he had been waiting for this moment.

  “Rough, was it?”

  Adam regarded him calmly. “He was frank with me, sir.”

  Turnbull might have smiled. “That says a lot, Bolitho.” He glanced towards the other door, where the lieutenant was already poised with another list.

  “Then I shall be equally frank. Rear-Admiral Herrick is here to advise us. But never forget, I command.”

  Adam listened to his shoes tapping unhurriedly back along the passageway, self-assured and confident.

  He picked up his hat from the table and jammed it on to his unruly hair. And ruthless.

  He saw Jago by the entrance, and the same two sentries as before. Only the shadows had moved.

  What would John Allday have said, had he heard Herrick just now?

  Then he saw Unrivalled, swinging at her cable, a shipbuilder’s dream. People changed, ships did not.

  And for that, he was suddenly grateful.

  Adam lay back in the deep chair and listened to that other world beyond the white-painted screen, with its ever-present sentry.

  It was evening, another of the changes of colour and texture which seemed common in Freetown. An intense ochre sky, crossed with long ragged banners of dark cloud, moving even as he watched. Cristie had said there was a better chance of a favourable wind. Coming soon. Tomorrow perhaps, when Unrivalled weighed and left harbour.

  Through the thick glass of the stern windows he could see the riding lights of other moored vessels, growing brighter in the shadows. Tomorrow, then.

  Perhaps Cristie was right in his prediction. He thought of Tyacke’s Kestrel; it had taken her hours just to work clear of the anchorage, and at one time boats had been lowered to offer a tow and give her steerage-way. Outside the approaches she had remained motionless, or so it seemed, as if becalmed. It must have been a test for every man aboard, especially James Tyacke. Commodore Turnbull had sailed earlier, without his broad-pendant flying above the graceful topsail schooner Paradox. Adam had wondered how her company felt about the deaths of their fellow seamen. Galbraith had told him he had heard that another officer had already been appointed to replace the dead Finlay. It would be even harder for him, on his first passage amongst strangers.

  Adam glanced at the folder on his lap: facts and figures, and three possible locations where slavers might be expected to rendezvous. Much of the intelligence had been gleaned from trading vessels, as well as the hard-worked brigs and schooners of the patrol flotilla, and he knew from frustrating experience that most of it was pure speculation. He thought of Herrick again. He had often spoken of his faith in Lady Luck. It was hard to believe now.

  He picked up the letter, and turned it over in his hands. Well travelled, it must have left Cornwall about the same time as Unrivalled had quit Penzance.

  He had already read it twice. He had been able to picture his Aunt Nancy writing it, pouting every so often as he had seen her do when composing a letter. Nancy . . . he could never think of her as Lady Roxby, as the crest on the notepaper proclaimed.

  She never allowed him to forget that she was always there, in surroundings he knew so well, thinking of him. Much in the same way as she had written to her brother Richard.

  She was alone now, in that other house on the estate adjoining the Bolitho land. Her husband, known affectionately or otherwise as the King of Cornwall, had died suddenly. A man who had lived a full and boisterous life, and enjoyed it to excess, he had been a local magistrate, and more than a few had paid with their lives after appearing before him. He had helped to raise the local militia, at a time when England daily expected and feared a French invasion, and he had had an eye for women, but Adam had never forgotten that he had been the first to go to Catherine’s aid when she had cradled Zenoria’s broken body in her arms.

  And the other Nancy, who had greeted him like her own son when he had walked all the way from Penzance after his mother had died. He knew Roxby had had doubts about his identity. Nancy had changed that, too.

  She had written about the child Elizabeth, your cousin. He had never thought of her as that. He smiled. And hardly a child; she must be all of fourteen years old, or would be in June. The same month as his own birthday . . . Elizabeth was Nancy’s ward, and there could be none better. She would give her the love and care she needed. But Nancy was sharp too, and missed nothing. The girl would be in good hands.

  She had written of her last visit to the Bolitho house; it must have been shortly after his own brief stop in Falmouth. She had taken Elizabeth with her, and had shown her the family portraits. Adam wondered how she had explained the painting of Catherine.

  It is a tradition in the family that each shall have a portrait. It would be right and proper for you to have yours beside the others. As if sensing his reluctance, she had added, For my sake, if for no other reason.

  She had enclosed a small piece of notepaper, with Elizabeth’s writing beneath a drawing of a beach, and a sail far out at sea. There was also the figure of a girl, back turned, obviously watching the distant ship.

  The handwriting was well-formed and strangely mature.

  My dear Cousin,

  I would so like to meet you. This is a picture of your ship.

  Coming home.

  It was signed Elizabeth.

  Adam folded it, and was oddly moved by it. She was well cared for; Nancy and her lawyers would see to that. Otherwise, she had lost everything.

  He thought of the little drawing again. It was uncanny: so many women had waited for the first sight of a homeward-bound ship, or prayed whenever one had departed.

  Nancy would understand. She came of a family of sailors, and as a young girl she had been in love with a midshipman who had been Richard’s best friend in his first years as a “young gentleman.” She had come to love Roxby, but he knew she had never forgotten the young man who had visi
ted Falmouth, and had been taken from her.

  He looked at her letter again.

  Catherine called upon me. She was visiting Vice-Admiral Keen and his wife at Boscawen House. I hope and pray she may discover some future happiness. My heart went with her.

  He looked up. Napier was watching him from the pantry door.

  “Yes?” Then he waved the letter, softening it. “You did not warrant that sharp welcome.”

  Napier rubbed one foot over the other.

  “Are you not eating, sir?”

  Adam stood up, and watched a boat pulling beneath Unrivalled’s counter. The guard-boat. Their own. Galbraith had not questioned the need for secrecy, nor would he.

  He folded the letter. So Keen had known about Catherine’s visit too. He confronted it. With Sillitoe; it had to be. She needed someone.

  He stared at the closed skylight. The cabin was like an oven, but the lanterns would draw insects like bees to honey. And they stung. He sighed. A far cry from Nancy’s Falmouth.

  He realized that Napier was still staring at him.

  “Some sliced pork, David, you know the way I . . .”

  The boy nodded gravely. “Fine-sliced, fried pale brown with biscuit crumbs.” He gave a rare grin. “With black treacle!”

  He hurried away.

  Adam opened the skylight a few inches and heard the hum of voices, men passing the off-watch hours on deck, seeing the sights, enjoying the breeze, no matter how feeble. A violin, too. Not the shantyman this time, but well played, one of those sad melodies beloved by sailors.

  Something stung his wrist and he closed the skylight abruptly. He heard Napier leaving for the galley, no doubt mystified that his captain should eat such spartan food when he could enjoy better fare ashore.

  He had begun a letter to his aunt and would finish it tonight before he turned in. And tomorrow they would stand out to sea again. Like those converging lines on Cristie’s charts. Meeting where, and for what?

  He crossed to the inner screen to study the old sword hanging in its place, catching the lantern light. Napier took care of that also.

  He had often thought about the sword, long before it had come to him. In so many of those portraits . . .

  He smiled sadly. And it would have been given to my father.

  He recalled Herrick’s words, his bitterness. Hatred, like love, never dies.

  He saw the goblet on his desk, the cognac, where Napier always placed it.

  It was a warning.

  Frank Rist, master’s mate, closed the chartroom door and made his way to the companion ladder. He had examined the charts that Cristie would require a day or so out of Freetown. It was never necessary, but Cristie always expected it. Nothing left to chance. Rist had taken the opportunity to test the new magnifying glass the boy Ede had made for him. It was amazing, he thought. From a few oddments, he had explained. Oddments. It looked as if it had been made in a top-quality instrument shop, and somehow he knew that Ede had wanted to do it for him. Need would be a better word for it. As if it was his way of holding on to something, and not to beg favours as some might expect. A quiet, almost gentle youth, who certainly did not belong in these rough, brutal surroundings which only a seasoned Jack would recognise as offering comradeship.

  It was hard to think of Ede as dangerous, although Rist had heard that he had been seized and charged for wounding his employer with a pair of scissors. Attempted murder, they said. Somebody had spoken up for him, and a lesser charge suggested, and it had not been opposed by the victim, which was strange. But young or not, he would have hanged otherwise.

  He was good with his hands; Rist had even seen Joseph Sullivan allow him to fix some tiny fitting on his model of Spartiate. And Rist knew that Sullivan, an otherwise calm and easy-going man, would have beaten anyone senseless who dared to touch his work.

  He rested on a gun and stared across the harbour, all in deep shadow now. A few boats still on the move, but most of them had given up trying to get alongside Unrivalled. It was not unknown for women to be smuggled on board, through gun ports, even up the anchor cable itself, to remain undiscovered but well used until the morning watch. But not Unrivalled. Marines at entry port and beakhead, on the gangways and out in a guard-boat. Just to be sure.

  They were going to sea for a purpose. Anything was better than rotting in harbour.

  He had thought a lot about the boarding party which had been slaughtered. Men like those here on deck, yarning and passing the time. After a meal of salt beef from the cask, hard biscuit, all washed down with some of the purser’s coarse red wine, Black Strap, the sailors called it. They were in the mood for gossip, and outrage over the cold-blooded murders. And now, they did not even have the prize Albatroz to pass bets on.

  Rist watched the lights ashore and found himself wondering again if there were people there who knew about the proposed mission, which would begin tomorrow. He tried to laugh it off. If so, it’s more than we do! But it would not come.

  He had never forgotten the risks in the trade. When they had boarded Albatroz with the high-and-mighty Lieutenant Varlo, he had been tensed up hard, and ready. And once aboard he had made sure that two of the swivel guns were loaded and primed, and trained inboard. At the first hint of danger, a daisy-cutter could have swept the decks as clean as a parson’s plate.

  Somebody must have got slack, over-confident. The appearance of the second vessel had tipped the balance. He had heard some of the hands exclaim, “There was no need to kill our lads! They could’ve let ’em run for it!”

  Rist knew differently. There would be every need to kill them.

  It was when they had arrived in Freetown and the boarding party had been relieved by a military guard from the barracks that it had happened. The big, hard-faced master, Cousens, had called out, “You’ll never hold on to us!” Then, as Varlo was climbing into the jolly-boat, he had added sharply, “I knows you from somewhere, don’t I?” And he had smiled, sneered. “Don’t worry, matey, it’ll come to me, then we’ll see!”

  It was unlikely. But it was not impossible. All those years, some he could scarcely remember, others he still tried to forget. It was just possible.

  “You have the watch, I believe?”

  Rist knew it was Varlo. You couldn’t help knowing.

  “Sir?”

  “Time for Rounds. Send for a bosun’s mate and ship’s corporal.”

  Never a please, or offer of thanks. He could smell the drink on his breath too. Maybe he would fall down a ladder and break his poxy neck.

  Albatroz had sailed. They would probably never lay eyes on her again.

  He turned as two more figures appeared by the companion-way. One was the first lieutenant; the other was Hawkins, the ship’s newest and youngest midshipman.

  Varlo said, “I’m about to carry out Rounds, Mr Galbraith.”

  Rist relaxed, muscle by muscle, glad of the interruption. The evening ritual of Rounds, when the lieutenant on duty would inspect all aspects of cleanliness, security and safety. Mess-deck to magazines, defaulters, if any, to be inspected also or given extra work.

  Galbraith said, “Hands will be called two hours early. Both watches will be fed before the boats are hoisted. Weigh anchor at eight bells.”

  Rist could almost feel their exchange of glances. No love lost there.

  Galbraith continued in a more informal fashion, “And, Mr Hawkins—first time doing Rounds, I hear?” The boy stammered something, and Galbraith said, “Just remember, when you are on the mess-deck it is a part of ship, but it is also their home . So show respect, as I’m sure you would elsewhere!”

  Rist kept his face straight. For Varlo’s benefit, he thought. The boy was too young to know anything.

  Galbraith watched the little group move away, and soon he could hear the shrill twitter of the call, and imagined men in their messes, at their scrubbed tables, loose gear stowed away, illegal bottles of hoarded rum well hidden from the officer’s prying eye.

  Men who would fight and
if necessary kill when ordered. Die too, if the cards played a false hand. Tough and hardened men like Isaac Dias, the gun captain who could measure the fall of each shot with accuracy, although he could neither read nor write. And Sullivan, who had been at Trafalgar, and Campbell who seemed to cherish the scars on his back like battle honours. And youngsters like Napier, the captain’s servant, somehow untainted by the violence and crude language around him. He wondered if Adam Bolitho realized what he had done for the boy. It went far beyond hero worship. Or the youth he had seen talking to Rist, who now had work he understood and could usefully do in the chart room. In some ways, an escape from the past which must still haunt him.

  He frowned. And Rist himself. He had probably worked more closely with him than anyone. Except the captain . . .

  But Rist was still a stranger despite their mutual respect.

  He leaned back on his heels and peered up at the masthead, the pendant barely visible against the banks of stars and patches of cloud.

  But he could feel it. The ship beneath his feet. The shrouds and running rigging, the blocks clicking and rattling quietly in the offshore breeze. And breeze was all it amounted to.

  Tomorrow might change everything. He thought of Varlo. A man he would never know, and he realised it was mostly his own fault. He was the first lieutenant. Mess-deck or wardroom, hero or villain, he was supposed to be able to assess each man’s value, as well as his weakness.

  Varlo had been a flag officer’s aide. He should have had his life and career at his feet. Something had gone badly wrong. It was said that another officer had died because of it. A fight, a duel, an accident? Perhaps even the captain did not know.

  Varlo’s admiral had obviously thought enough of him to arrange his appointment to Unrivalled, at a time when such chances were almost impossible to come by. Or perhaps, and he knew he was being unfair again, perhaps the admiral had done it to rid himself of any possible embarrassment?

  He recalled the captain’s return on board after his visit to the headquarters building, just over there across the black water. Rear-Admiral Herrick . . . Galbraith had scarcely heard of him. Except that he had known Sir Richard Bolitho, and had once faced a court martial for misconduct and neglect of duty.