When he arrived at the white walls of the house he paused again, conscious of his heart against his ribs, of the realisation that he had no plan in mind. Perhaps she would not even see him?
He walked up the carriage-drive and entered the main door, which was open to tempt any sea-breeze into the house. A sleeping servant, curled in a tall wicker chair by the entrance, did not even stir as Bolitho passed.
He stood in the pillared hall, staring at the shadows, some heavy tapestry glowing in the light from two candelabra. It was very still, and there seemed to be no air at all.
Bolitho saw a handbell on a carved chest by another door and played with the idea of ringing it. In that last fight aboard the treasure-ship, death had been a close companion, but it was no stranger to him. He had felt no fear at all, not even afterwards. He gripped his sword tightly. Where was that courage now that he really needed it?
Maybe Glassport had been mistaken and she had gone from here, overland this time to St John’s. She had friends there. He recalled Jenour’s anxiety, Allday’s watchful silence as the barge had carried him to the jetty. Some Royal Marines on picket duty had scrambled into a semblance of attention as they realised that the vice-admiral had come ashore without a word of warning.
Allday had said, “I shall wait, Sir Richard.”
“No. I can call for a boat when I need one.”
Allday had watched him leave. Bolitho wondered what he thought about it. Probably much the same as Jenour.
“Who is that?”
Bolitho turned and saw her on the curved stairway, framed against another dark tapestry. She wore a loose, pale gown, and was standing very still, a hand on the rail, the other concealed in the gown.
Then she exclaimed, “You! I—I did not know—”
She made no move to come down and Bolitho walked slowly up the stairway towards her.
He said, “I have just heard. I believed you gone.” He paused with one foot on the next step, afraid she would turn away. “The Indiaman sailed without you.” He was careful not to mention Somervell by name. “I could not bear to think of you here. Alone.”
She turned and he realised that she was holding a pistol.
He said, “Give it to me.” He moved closer and held out his hand. “Please, Kate.”
He took it from her fingers and realised it was cocked, ready to fire. He said quietly, “You are safe now.”
She said, “Come to the drawing room.” She might have shivered. “There is more light.”
Bolitho followed her and waited for her to close the door behind them. It was a pleasant enough room, although nothing looked personal; it was occupied too often by visitors, strangers.
Bolitho laid the pistol on a table and watched her draw shutters across the window, where some moths were tapping against the glass, seeking the light.
She did not look at him. “Sit there, Richard.” She shook her head vaguely. “I was resting. I must do something to my hair.” Then she did turn to study him, a lingering, searching glance, as if she was seeking an answer to some unspoken question.
She said, “I knew he would not wait. He took his mission very seriously. Put it above all else. It was my fault. I knew the matter was so dear to him, so urgent once you had made the plan into reality. I should not have gone in the schooner.” She repeated slowly, “I knew he would not wait.”
“Why did you do it?”
She looked away and he saw her hand touch the handle on the other door, which was in deep shadow, away from the lights.
She replied, “I felt like it.”
“You might have been killed, and then—”
She swung round, only her eyes flashing in the shadows. “And then?”
She tossed her head with something like anger. “Did you ask yourself that question too when you went after the Ciudad de Sevilla? ” The ship’s name seemed to intrude like a person. It had rolled so easily off her tongue, a cruel reminder that she had been married to a Spaniard. She continued, “Someone of your value and rank, you of all people must have realised that you were taking a terrible risk? You knew that, I can see it on your face—must have known that any junior captain could have been sent, just as you once seized the ship I was aboard, when I first laid eyes on you!”
Bolitho was on his feet and for several seconds they stared at each other, both hurt and vulnerable because of it.
She said abruptly, “Do not leave.” Then she vanished through the other door although Bolitho did not even see it open and close.
What had he expected? He was a fool, and looking a worse one. He had harmed her enough, too much.
Her voice came from beyond. “I have put down my hair.” She waited until he faced the door. “It is not quite right yet. Yesterday and today I walked along the foreshore. The salt air is cruel to vain women.”
Bolitho watched the long, pale gown. In the deep shadows she appeared to be floating like a ghost.
She said, “You once gave me a ribbon for it, remember? I have tied it around my hair.” She shook her head so that one shoulder vanished in shadow, which Bolitho knew was her long dark hair.
“Do you see it, or had you forgotten that?”
He replied quietly. “Never. You liked green so much. I had to get it for you—” He broke off as she put out her arms and ran towards him. It seemed to happen in a second. One moment she was there, pale against the other door, and the next she was pressed against him, her voice muffled while she clutched his shoulders as if to control her sudden despair.
She exclaimed, “Look at me! In God’s name, Richard, I lied to you, don’t you see?”
Bolitho took her in his arms and pressed his cheek into her hair. It was not the ribbon he had bought in London from the old lady selling lace. This one was bright blue.
She ran her hand up to his neck and then laid it against his face. When she raised her eyes he saw that they were filled with emotion, pity.
She whispered, “I didn’t know, Richard. Then, before you sailed with the convoy, I—I heard something about it—how you—” She held his face between her hands now. “Oh, dearest of men, I had to be sure, to know!”
Bolitho pulled her closer so that he could hide his face above her shoulder. It must have been Allday. Only he would take the risk.
He heard her whisper, “How bad is it?”
He said, “I have grown used to it. Just sometimes it fails me. Like the moment you stood there in the shadows.” He tried to smile. “I was never able to outwit you.”
She leaned back in his arms and studied him. “And the time you came to the reception here, when you almost fell on the stair. I should have known, ought to have understood!”
He watched the emotions crossing her face. She was tall and he was very aware of her nearness, of the trick which had misfired.
He said, “I will leave if you wish.”
She slipped her hand through his arm. She was thinking aloud as they walked around the room, like lovers in a quiet park.
“There are people who must be able to help.”
He pressed her wrist to his side. “They say not.”
She turned him towards her. “We will go on trying. There is always hope.”
Bolitho said, “To know that you care so much means everything.” He half-expected her to stop him but she remained quite still, her hands in his, so that their linked shadows appeared to be dancing across the walls.
“Now that we are together I never want to lose you. It must sound like madness, the babbling of some besotted youth.” The words were flooding out of him and she seemed to know how he needed to speak. “I thought my life was in ruins, and knew that I had done a terrible harm to yours.” Then she made to speak but he shook her hands in his. “No, it is all true. I was in love with a ghost. The realisation ripped me apart. Someone suggested I had a death-wish.”
She nodded slowly. “I can guess who that was.” She met his gaze steadily, without fear. “Do you really understand what you are saying, Richard? How high t
he stakes may be?”
He nodded. “Even greater for you, Kate. I remember what you said about Nelson’s infatuation.”
She smiled for the first time. “To be called a whore is one thing; to be one is something very different.”
He gripped her hands even tighter. “There are so many things—”
She twisted from his grip. “They must wait.” Her eyes were very bright. “We cannot.”
He said quietly, “Call me what you did just now.”
“Dearest of men?” She pulled the ribbon from her hair and shook it loose across her shoulder. “Whatever I have been or done, Richard, you have always been that to me.” She looked at him searchingly. “Do you want me?”
He reached for her but she stepped away. “You have answered me.” She gestured towards the other door. “I need just a moment, alone. ”
Without her the room seemed alien and hostile. Bolitho removed his coat and sword, and as an afterthought slid the latch on the door. His glance fell on the pistol and he uncocked it, seeing her face when she had discovered him. Knowing that she would have fired at the first hint of danger.
Then he walked to the door and opened it, the shadows and the fears forgotten as he saw her sitting on the bed, her hair shining in the candlelight.
She smiled at him, her knees drawn up to her chin like a child.
“So the proud vice-admiral has gone, and my daring captain has come in his place.”
Bolitho sat beside her, and then eased her shoulders down onto the bed.
She wore a long robe of ivory silk, tied beneath her throat by a thin ribbon. She watched him, his eyes as they explored her body, remembering perhaps how it had once been.
Then she took his hand and pulled it to her breast, tightening his fingers until he thought he must hurt her.
She whispered, “Take me, Richard.” Then she shook her head very slowly. “I know what you fear now, but I tell you, it is not out of pity, it is from the love I have never given to another man.”
She thrust her hands out on either side like one crucified and watched as he untied the ribbon and began to remove the robe.
Bolitho could feel the blood rushing through his brain; while he too felt momentarily like an onlooker as he bared her breasts and her arms until she was naked to the waist.
He gasped, “Who did this to you?”
Her right shoulder was cruelly discoloured, one of the worst bruises he had ever seen.
But she reached up with one hand and dragged his mouth down to hers, her breathing as wild as his own.
She whispered, “A Brown Bess has a fearsome kick, like a mule!”
She must have been firing a musket when the pirates had attacked the schooner. Like the pistol.
The kiss was endless. It was like sharing everything in a moment. Clinging to it, never wanting it to finish, but unable to hold on for a minute longer.
He heard her cry out as he threw the robe on the floor, saw her fists clench as he touched her, then covered her in his hand as if to prolong the need they had for each other.
She watched him tear off his clothes and touched the scar on his shoulder, remembering that too, and the fever she had held at bay.
She said huskily, “I don’t care about afterward, Richard.”
He saw her looking at him as his shadow covered her like a cloak. She said something like ‘It’s been so long—” Then she arched her body and gave a sharp cry as he entered her, her fingers pulling at him, dragging him closer and deeper until they were one.
Later, as they lay spent in each other’s arms and watched the smoke standing up from the guttering candles, she said softly, “You needed love. My love.” He held her against him as she added, “Who cares about the tomorrows.”
He spoke into her hair. “We shall make them ours too.”
Down on the jetty Allday seated himself comfortably on a stone bollard and began to fill his new pipe with tobacco. He had sent the barge back to the ship.
Bolitho would not be needing it for a bit yet, he thought. The tobacco was rich, well dampened with rum for good measure. Allday had dismissed the barge but found that he wanted to remain ashore himself. Just in case.
He put down a stone bottle of rum on the jetty and puffed contentedly on his new clay.
Perhaps there was a God in Heaven after all. He glanced towards the darkened house with the white walls.
Only God knew how this little lot might end, but for the present, and that was all any poor Jack could hope for, things were looking better for Our Dick. He grinned and reached down for the bottle. An’ that’s no error.
GIBRALTAR 1805
11 THE LETTER
HIS BRITANNIC Majesty’s Ship Hyperion heeled only very slightly as she changed tack yet again, her tapering jib boom pointing almost due east.
Bolitho stood by the quarterdeck nettings and watched the great looming slab of Gibraltar rise above the larboard bow, misty-blue in the afternoon glare. It was mid-April.
Men moved purposefully about the decks, the lieutenants checking the set of each sail, conscious perhaps of this spectacular landfall. They had not touched land for six weeks, not since the squadron had quit English Harbour for the last time.
Bolitho took a telescope from the rack and trained it on the Rock. If the Spaniards ever succeeded in retaking this natural fortress, they could close the Mediterranean with the ease of slamming a giant door.
He focused the glass on the litter of shipping which seemed to rest at the foot of the Rock itself. More like a cluster of fallen moths than ships-of-war. It was only then that a newcomer could realise the size of it, the distance it still stood away from the slow-moving squadron.
He looked abeam. They were sailing as close as was prudently safe to the coast of Spain. Sunlight made diamond-bright reflections through the haze. He could imagine just how many telescopes were causing them as unseen eyes watched the small procession of ships. Where bound? For what purpose? Riders would be carrying intelligence to senior officers and lookout stations. The Dons could study the comings and goings with ease here at the narrowest part of the Strait of Gibraltar.
As if to give weight to his thoughts he heard Parris say to one of the midshipmen on the quarterdeck, “Take a good look, Mr Blessed. Yonder lies the enemy.”
Bolitho tucked his hands behind him and thought over the past four months, since his new squadron had finally assembled at Antigua. Since Catherine had taken passage for England. The parting had been harder than he had expected, and still hurt like a raw wound.
She had sent one letter in that time. A warm, passionate letter, part of herself. He was not to worry. They would meet again soon. There must be no scandal. She was, as usual, thinking of him.
Bolitho had written back, and had also sent a letter to Belinda. The secret would soon be out, if not already; it was right if not honourable that she should hear it from him.
He moved across the quarterdeck and saw the helmsmen drop their eyes as his glance passed over them. He climbed a poop ladder and raised the glass again to study the ships which followed astern. It had kept his mind busy enough while the squadron had worked up together, had got used to one another’s ways and peculiarities. There were four ships of the line, all third-rates which to an ignorant landsman would look exactly like Hyperion in the van. Apart from Obdurate, the others had been new to Bolitho’s standards, but watching them now he could feel pride instead of impatience.
Holding up to windward in the gentle north-westerly breeze he saw the little sloop-of-war Phaedra, sailing as near as she dared to the Spanish coast, Dunstan hoping possibly for a careless enemy trader to run under his guns.
Perhaps the most welcome addition was the thirty-six gun frigate Tybalt, which had arrived from England only just in time to join the squadron. She was commanded by a fiery Scot named Andrew McKee, who was more used to working independently. Bolitho understood the feeling even if he could not condone it. The life of any frigate captain was perhaps the most remote and m
onastic of all. In a crowded ship he remained alone beyond his cabin bulkhead, dining only occasionally with his officers, completely cut off from other ships and even the men he commanded. Bolitho smiled. Until now.
They had achieved little more in the Caribbean. A few indecisive attacks on enemy shipping and harbours, but after the reckless cutting-out of the treasure-ship from La Guaira all else seemed an anti-climax. As Glassport had said when the squadron had set sail for Gibraltar. After that, life would never be the same.
In more ways than one, Bolitho thought grimly.
It had been a strange feeling to quit Antigua. He had the lurking belief that he would never see the islands again. The Islands of Death, as the luckless army garrisons called them. Even Hyperion had not been immune from fever. Three seamen employed ashore had been taken ill, and had died with the dis-belief of animals at slaughter.
He stepped from the ladder as Haven crossed the deck to speak with Penhaligon the master.
The latter remarked confidently, “The wind stands fair, sir. We shall anchor at eight bells.”
Haven kept very much to himself, and apart from a few fits of almost insane anger, seemed content to leave matters to Parris. It was a tense and wary relationship, which must affect the whole wardroom. And yet the orders when they came by courier brig had been welcome. The storm was still brewing over Europe, with the antagonists watching and waiting for a campaign, even a single battle which might tip the balance.
The captured frigate Consort, renamed Intrépido, had slipped out of port unseen and unchecked. It was said that she too had left for Spain, to add her weight to His Catholic Majesty’s considerable navy. She would be a boost to public morale as well. A prize snatched from the English, who were as ever desperate for more frigates.
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