Cross of St George

by Kent, Alexander

  I would hold my fire and pray that the regular drills hold firm, if all else fails.

  Lieutenant Blythe called, “The enemy’s running out, sir!”

  Tyacke said, “Aye, and he’ll likely check each gun himself.”

  Bolitho saw Allday watching him. Even Tyacke had accepted Aherne, had given him body and personality. A man with so much hatred. Retribution. And yet if he crossed this very deck, I would not know him. Perhaps it was the best kind of enemy. Faceless.

  Once again, he looked at the sky and the searing reflections beneath it. Two ships with an entire ocean to witness their efforts to kill one another.

  He covered his undamaged eye and tested the other. His vision was blurred; he had come to accept that. But the colours remained true, and the enemy was close enough now to show her flag, and the commodore’s broad-pendant standing out in the wind like a great banner.

  Tyacke said, “Ready, Sir Richard.”

  “Very well, James.” So close, so private, as if they shared the deck only with ghosts. “For what we are about to receive …”

  Tyacke waved his fist, and the order echoed along the upper deck.

  “Open the ports! Run out!” And from the waist of the ship where the gunner’s mates were already passing out cutlasses and axes from the arms chest, Lieutenant Daubeny’s voice, very clear and determined.

  “Lay for the foremast, gun captains! And fire on the uproll!”

  The older hands were already crouching down, as yet unable to see their target.

  Tyacke yelled, “Put your helm down! Off heads’l sheets!”

  Indomitable began to turn, using the wind across her quarter to her best advantage. Round and further still, so that the other frigate appeared to be ensnared in the shrouds as Indomitable’s bowsprit passed over her, to hold her on the larboard side.

  The distance was falling away more quickly, and Bolitho saw the topmen darting amongst the thrashing sails like tiny puppets on invisible strings.

  The air quivered and then erupted in a drawn-out explosion, smoke billowing from the American’s guns which was then driven inboard and away across the water.

  It seemed to take an age, an eternity. When the broadside ploughed into Indomitable’s masts and rigging, it was as if the whole ship was bellowing in agony. Tiny vignettes stood out amidst the smoke and falling wreckage. A seaman torn apart by the jagged iron as it ripped through the piled hammocks, and hurled more men, screaming and kicking, to the opposite side. Midshipman Essex, stock-still, staring with horror at his white breeches, which were splashed with blood and pieces of human skin cut so finely that they could have been the work of a surgeon. Essex opened and closed his mouth but no sound came, until a running seaman punched his arm and yelled something, and ran on to help others who were hacking away fallen cordage.

  Avery stared up, ice-cold as the fore-topgallant mast splintered apart, stays and halliards flying like severed snakes, before thundering down and over the side. He wiped his eyes and looked again. It was suddenly important, personal. He saw the four scarlet figures in the top, peering up at the broken mast, but otherwise untouched.

  “A hand here!”

  Avery ran to help as York caught one of his master’s mates, who had been impaled on a splinter as big as his wrist.

  York stepped into his place, and muttered hoarsely, “Hold on, Nat!”

  Avery lowered the man to the deck. He would hear nothing ever again. When he was able to look up once more, Avery saw the American’s topgallant sails standing almost alongside. He knew it was impossible; she was still half a cable away.

  He heard Daubeny shout, “As you bear! Fire!”

  Down the ship’s side from the crouching lion to this place here on the quarterdeck, each gun belched fire and smoke while its crew threw themselves on tackles and handspikes to hasten the reloading. But not double-shotted this time. It would take too many precious minutes.

  A marine fell from the nettings without a word; there was not even a telltale scar on the deck planking to mark the shot.

  Bolitho said, “Walk with me, George. Those riflemen are too eager today.”

  “Run out! Ready! Fire!”

  There was a cracked cheer as the Retribution’s mizzen-mast swayed and toppled in its stays and shrouds, before falling with a crash that could be heard even above the merciless roar of cannon fire. York was holding a rag against his bloody cheek, although he had not felt the splinter which had opened it like a knife.

  He called, “Her steering’s adrift, sir!”

  Bolitho said sharply, “Helm down, James! Our only chance!”

  And then the enemy was here, no longer a distant picture of grace and cruel beauty. She was angled toward them, the water surging and spitting between the two hulls even as Indomitable’s long jib-boom and then her bowsprit rammed into the enemy’s shrouds like some giant tusk.

  The force of the impact splintered Indomitable’s main-yard, broken spars, torn rigging and wounded topmen falling on Hockenhull’s spread nets like so much rubbish.

  Tyacke shouted at his gun crews, “One more, lads! Hit ’em!”

  Then he staggered and clapped one hand to his thigh, his teeth bared against the pain. Midshipman Carleton ran to help him, but Tyacke gasped, “Pike! Give me a pike, damn you!”

  The midshipman thrust one towards him and stared at him, unable to move as Tyacke drove the pike into the deck and held himself upright, using it as a prop.

  Bolitho felt Allday move closer, Avery too, with a pistol suddenly in one hand. Across the debris and the wounded he saw Tyacke raise a hand to him, a gesture towards the fallen masts. A bridge, joining them with the enemy.

  The guns roared out and recoiled again, the crews leaping aside to pick up their cutlasses, staggering as though with a deadly fatigue while they clambered across to the other ship which had been forced alongside, Indomitable’s splintered jib-boom dangling beside the enemy’s figurehead.

  There was a bang from the swivel-gun in the foretop, and a hail of canister raked a group of American seamen even as they ran to repel boarders. The marines were gasping and cheering as they fired, reloaded, and then threw themselves on the hammocks to take aim again. And again. Above it all, Bolitho could hear Tyacke shouting orders and encouragement to his men. He would not give in to anything, not even the wound in his thigh. After what he had already suffered, it was an insult to think that he might.

  Lieutenant Protheroe was the first on Retribution’s gangway, and the first to fall to a musket which was fired into his body from only a few inches away. He fell, and was trapped between the two grinding hulls. Bolitho saw him drop, and remembered him as the youngster who had welcomed him aboard.

  He shouted, “To me, Indoms! To me, lads!”

  He was dragging himself across, above the choppy water, aware of flashing pistol fire and heavier calibre shot, and of Allday close behind, croaking, “Hold back, Sir Richard! We can’t fight the whole bloody ship!”

  Bolitho was finding it difficult to breathe, his lungs filled with smoke and the stench of death. Then he was aboard the other ship, saw Hockenhull, the squat boatswain, kill a man with his boarding-axe and manage to grin afterwards at Allday. He must have saved him from being struck down. In the terrible blood-red rage of battle, the consuming madness, Bolitho could still remember Allday’s son, and that Allday had blamed Hockenhull for posting him to the vulnerable quarterdeck, where he had died. Perhaps this would end that festering grievance.

  Avery dragged at his arm, and fired point-blank into a crouching figure that had appeared at their feet. Then he, too, staggered, and Bolitho imagined he had been hit.

  But Avery was shouting, trying to be heard above the shouts and cries and the clash of steel, blade to blade.

  Then Bolitho heard it also. He lurched against a wild-eyed marine, his bloodied bayonet already levelled for a second thrust, his mind still refusing to understand. Faint but certain. Someone was cheering, and for a chilling moment he imagined that the Ame
ricans had had more men than he had believed, that they had managed to board Indomitable in strength. Then Tyacke must be dead. They would not otherwise get past him.

  Avery gripped his arm. “D’ you hear, sir?” He was trembling, and almost incoherent. “It’s Reaper! She’s joined the squadron!”

  The explosion was sudden, and so close that Bolitho found himself flung bodily to the deck, his sword dangling from the knot around his wrist. It had felt like a searing wind, the dust and fragments from the blast like hot sand. Hands were pulling him to his feet; Allday, with his back turned, exposed to the enemy as he steadied him amongst the press of dazed and breathless men.

  Bolitho gasped, unable to speak, to reassure him, but the agony in his eye was making it impossible.

  He said, “Help me.”

  Allday seemed to understand, and tore his neckerchief from his throat and in two turns had tied it around Bolitho’s head, covering his injured eye.

  It was like being deaf, with men crawling or kneeling in utter silence beside the wounded, and peering into the faces of the dead.

  Retribution’s seamen were staring at them, bewildered, shocked, beaten. Their flag had fallen with the broken mizzen-mast, but they had not surrendered. They had simply ceased to fight.

  The explosion had been confined to the ship’s quarterdeck. A bursting cannon, carelessly loaded for a final desperate show of defiance, or perhaps a burning wad from one of Tyacke’s guns when they had fired that last broadside with muzzles almost overlapping those of the enemy. A small group of American officers were waiting near the shattered wheel, where helmsmen and others lay in the ugly attitudes of violent death.

  One lieutenant held out his sword, and instantly Allday’s cutlass and Avery’s pistol rose in unison.

  Bolitho touched the bandage across his eye, and was grateful for it. He said, “Where is your commodore?” He stared at the fallen mast, where men were still trapped in the tangled rigging like fish in a net. Reaper was closer, and the cheering was still going on; and he wished that he could see her.

  The lieutenant stooped, and uncovered the head and shoulders of his commodore.

  He handed his sword, hilt first, to Avery, and said, “Commodore Aherne, sir. He sometimes spoke of you.”

  Bolitho stared down at the face, angry and contorted, frozen at the instant of death. But a stranger.

  He looked beyond them, toward the open sea. Had Aherne heard the cheers, and recognized Reaper too?

  He turned inboard again. It was right, it was justice, that it should be Reaper. Now a witness to victory, and to folly.

  He looked around at the breathless, gasping men, the madness gone from them as they dragged the wounded and the dying away from the blood-stained chaos on deck, talking to one another, some without realizing that those who answered were the enemy.

  Through the clinging smoke he could see Tyacke facing him across the narrow strip of trapped water, still propped on his pike, with the surgeon on his knees applying a dressing. Tyacke raised one bloodied hand in salute. Perhaps to his ship. To the victor.

  Bolitho said, “Help me back to Indomitable.” It was impossible to smile. Had he really cried, To me, Indoms, only minutes ago?

  Allday took his arm and guided him, watching out for anything that might take him unaware. He had guessed what had happened, and now he was certain of it. He had seen too much to be shocked or awed by the sights on every hand: in his own way, despite the brutal ugliness of death everywhere, he was satisfied.

  Once again they had come through, and they were still together. It was more than enough.

  Bolitho hesitated, and looked around at the two embattled ships. Men had leaned over to touch his coat as he had passed; some had grinned and spoken his name; a few had openly wept, ashamed, perhaps, that they had survived when so many had fallen.

  Now they all fell silent to listen as he looked beyond them and saw Reaper’s topsails suddenly bright in the hard sunlight. He touched the locket beneath his stained shirt, and knew she was close to him.

  “It is a high price to pay, and we have paid it many times before. But we must not forget, for if we do, it will be at our peril!” He raised his head and stared up at his flag at the mainmast truck, so clean, and removed from the suffering and the hate.

  “Loyalty is like trust, and must surely reach in both directions.” He looked at the slow-moving topsails again. “But it is the greatest reward of all.”

  It was over.

  EPILOGUE

  THE CARRIAGE with the Bolitho crest on its doors, freshly washed that morning, came to a halt by the church. It was cold even for March, but Catherine Somervell did not notice it.

  Bryan Ferguson opened the door and lowered the step for her.

  “Why not wait in there, my lady? ’Tis warmer, to be sure.” He seemed concerned, anxious that something might go wrong even now. She took his hand and stepped down onto the cobbles, and glanced toward the waterfront.

  It was like any other day, and yet it was entirely different. Even the people seemed to be waiting, drawn together as was so often the way in seaports. A rumour, a message, a signal-gun, or a ship in distress. The people of Falmouth had seen it all before.

  She adjusted her long green cloak, and the fastening at the throat. She had dressed carefully, taken her time, even though every fibre of her body had screamed at her to leave the house without delay. It still did not seem possible that Richard was coming, that he was probably within a mile of Falmouth at this moment.

  She could recall the exact time when the letter had been brought by fast courier from Bethune at the Admiralty. She had already received one from Richard; it had touched on the battle, but he had avoided mentioning the many who had died. Bethune had told her that Indomitable was ordered to Plymouth, to be handed over to the care of carpenters and riggers there, eventually. But she was to be paid off upon arrival. A battered ship with her own memories and wounds, and like many of her company, she would wait now, and see if she was needed again.

  The church clock at King Charles the Martyr chimed very slowly. Noon. She had been deeply suspicious of Bethune’s written suggestion that she await Richard’s return in Falmouth, and briefly she had conjured up old or unknown enemies who, even at this last precious opportunity, would attempt to reunite Richard with his wife under some pretext or other.

  When she had composed herself and considered it, dismissing her fears, she knew the real reason. Indomitable was to be paid off in Plymouth, and Richard would be saying farewell to so many familiar faces. Others had already left, like shadows, carrying memories she could only imagine. He did not want her to see the ship now, but to remember her as she had been when she had climbed aboard, and they had cheered her for it, and Richard’s flag had broken out above all of them.

  He was alive; he was coming home. It was all that mattered. She had sensed that there were other matters, which Bethune had left unwritten. I am ready.

  To Ferguson she said, “I shall be all right. I shall know you are here.” She brushed a strand of dark hair from her eyes, and looked up at Young Matthew on his box, framed against the cold, pale sky. “Both of you.”

  There would be others here today. Unis, waiting for John All-day, although she had not yet seen her: this was a private moment for all who shared it. Perhaps it symbolized, more than anything, the elusive dream of peace, after so many years of sacrifice and separation. Bethune had said that the war was almost over. The allies had scored another crushing victory over Napoleon at Laon, and Wellington had captured Bordeaux: there was even talk of disbanding the local militia, the sea fencibles too. She thought with regret and affection of Lewis Roxby; how proud he would have been on this day. Nancy had visited her often: a sailor’s daughter as well as Richard’s sister, she was a great comfort to Catherine. And without Roxby’s presence filling every room at that great, empty house, it had helped her also. But she would stay away today. She understood, better than most.

  She walked on, towards the moore
d vessels in the harbour, the swaying masts and spars which were now so familiar to her. The smells, too, were a far cry from the slums of her childhood, or the elegant London she had shared with Richard. Fresh bread and fish, tar and oakum, and the salt of the ever-present sea.

  She saw people glance at her, some with curiosity, some familiarity, but without hostility. She would always be a stranger here, but never an intruder, and she was grateful for that.

  She saw one of the coastguards with his companion, the same pair who had been on the beach as the tide had receded, and she had taken Zenoria’s slight, broken body in her arms.

  He nodded and removed his hat to her. “Fine day, m’lady.”

  “I hope so, Tom.”

  She walked on, until she stood on the very edge of the jetty. And the war in North America? It took second place to most of these people, for whom France had been the enemy for so long. Too long.

  Samuel Whitbread, the wealthy and influential brewer, had thundered out in the House of Commons that the war with America should be ended without delay. He had reminded the honourable members of that other occasion when peace had been grudgingly signed after the War of Independence, and Pitt had then remarked, A defensive war can only end in inevitable defeat. She lifted her chin. So be it, then.

  She heard laughter and noisy voices, and turned to see a group of discharged sailors loitering, watching the harbour. The ones she had heard Allday scornfully denounce as old Jacks who refought their battles every day in the inns and ale-houses, until the parlour lanterns were swinging like those of a ship in Biscay.

  But they belonged here today: they were members of what Richard would call the family. One or two of them waved in acknowledgement, privileged to be part of his homecoming. She turned away. There was not one whole man amongst them.

  Someone exclaimed, “There she be, lads!”