They heard the crash of the knocker, enough to wake the street.
The door was partly open, more voices, angry this time, one harsher than all the others.
”So I’m a trifle late, man! What is that to you? Just do as you’re damn well told by your betters and be sharp about it!”
The door opened wider, and there was more laughter. Then silence again, and the street was empty.
Adam said, ”I am going inside.” Suppose I am wrong? ”Stay here.”
He was on the road, the horses turning their heads to watch him.
Without looking, he knew that Troubridge was following him,
while Jago had moved away to their left, almost as if he had changed his mind.
Troubridge said, ”I think you should consider .. .”
Adam had already seized the knocker. ”I must find out,” and the crash froze Troubridge into silence.
The door opened a few inches; Adam heard voices, muffled, deep inside the building.
”What do you want The shadowy figure seemed to glide backwards, the door opening completely, the voice suddenly changed, all hostility gone.
Instead he said brokenly, ”Thank God. You got the message!”
The door had closed behind them; the high-ceilinged entrance was lit by only two candles and Adam could see the stains on the floor, the lighter patches on the walls where pictures had once hung, like a travesty of Bethune’s room at the Admiralty.
He swung round and stared with disbelief. His first visit to the Old Glebe House; being met by the dour-faced figure, who had looked more like a priest than a servant. This same man.
Adam seized his arm; it felt like a bone through his coat.
”Tell me what is happening. Take your time.” He tried to keep the urgency out of his voice, willing the other man to stay calm.
The house was suddenly silent, and very still. He could hear Troubridge’s breathing, fast, unsteady. Or was it his own?
The other man said slowly, ”Sir Gregory died, sir. He lost the will to live. His injury, after the fire .. . but for her I’m not sure what .. .”
Somewhere above them a door banged open and there were more shouts and laughter, one of them a woman’s voice, hysterical. The door slammed and there was silence again. The late arrivals had reached their destination.
Adam’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the feeble lighting. When he leaned forward he could just discern a spiral staircase rising overhead, a gilt banister, lit here and there by candle sconces, or perhaps an open door. An even larger house than it had seemed. He thought of Troubridge’s comment. Gaming rooms. Brothels.
He seized the servant’s arm again. ”She is still up there?”
”First landing, sir. She was just about to leave when .. .”
The scream broke the stillness, locking mind and movement, making thought impossible.
He was running up the stairs, heedless of uneven and torn carpet snaring his shoes, guided only by the scream although it had ended as abruptly. There was a sudden crash, like some one falling, and the sound of breaking glass. On the landing above, more doors had opened and voices made an insane chorus, like the climax to a nightmare.
Adam saw the gleam of light under a door and flung his shoulder against it. After the dark stairway the glare almost blinded him, but he took it in at a glance. Like the moment of close action. The first fall of shot. The carnage, and the wild disbelief that you had lived through it.
A studio, the same soiled and paint-daubed sheets, mock pillars and classical busts, one crowned with real laurels. And a long couch like the one he had seen at the Old Glebe House, where Lowenna had sat for Montagu’s most promising students.
A tall looking-glass which he had seen used to direct light on to a subject lay in fragments, and a man was clutching a bloodied sheet to his face even as he tried to stagger to his feet.
Adam said, ”Stay where you are!” He did not raise his voice, or did not think he had, but the other man fell back against the couch as if he had struck him. Some one about his own age, and vaguely familiar; he did not know or care. If he had moved, he would have killed him.
The girl stood facing him, quite still, as if posing for an artist. Only the painful thrust of her breast made a lie of her composure. She had one hand to her shoulder, where there was a tear in her gown which would become a bruise on the bare skin. In the other she was holding a brass candlestick.
She said quietly, ”Adam.” She repeated his name as if she believed she were mistaken. ”How did you knowT
The man on the couch exclaimed, ”She might have killed me!” He broke off and cringed as she raised the candlestick again.
But she tossed it under one of the sheets and said, ”I was leaving. He tried to stop me. Then he tried to .. .”
She would have fallen if Adam had not seized her, held her, soothed her with words he scarcely understood, and did not remember. Behind him he heard the soft click of a pistol being uncocked. Troubridge had been ready.
He stroked her back, holding her without looking at her, feeling the resistance, the nearness of a complete breakdown. Remembering the secrets Montagu had told him, and what Nancy had discovered for herself. The nightmare, the brutal, lusting figures. The suffering and the shame.
He held his cheek close to the long, silky hair, his voice low, so that no one else existed.
”I wrote to you, Lowenna. I wanted you to know, to believe .. .”
For a moment he thought she had not heard, but felt her nod very slowly, her dark hair clinging to his face.
”I dared not. I was not sure. About myself. What I might do. It did not seem fair to you. To us .. .”
The man on the couch stirred, his shoes scraping on broken glass. Adam heard Troubridge say, almost gently, ”Easy, now, be still, eh?” The hammer clicked again and there was silence. Even the sounds from the other rooms had faded or gone completely.
He said quietly, ”I only heard about the fire when I returned to Falmouth.” He held her more closely as she began to shiver. ”I’ll take you where you’ll be safe.”
”I have some friends, not far from here.” She winced as the man shouted, ”Whores!”
She said, ”Of your making. As you would have used me!”
Then she stood back a little, his hands still around her waist, and added, ”This is Sir Gregory’s nephew. I think you may have seen him at one time.”
Calmly said, but he could feel through his hands what it was costing her.
”I had my belongings packed, ready to go.” She shook her head, trying to shut it out. ”He said terrible things, taunted me, tried .. .” She shut her eyes. ”I wanted to stop him .. . kill him.”
A tall, painted screen shuddered to one side and Jago appeared in the room.
He said, ”Found another door, Cap’n. Thought it might be a bolt-hole.” He reached out casually and gripped the other man by the arm. ”Stay anchored, matey. I don’t like surprises, especially from your sort of filth.” He did not even raise his voice. He did not need to.
Adam guided her to the empty fireplace, suddenly conscious of the cold. Hating the place, the smell of paint and oil.
She was gazing at him, her eyes unmoving, like the moment he had first seen her. On that day, Montagu’s nephew had just arrived, and the bearded painter had taken him through another room to avoid a meeting. But for that...
”Take this.” He undipped his cloak and folded it around her. ”I have a carriage downstairs.”
She had not heard him. She said, ”Sir Gregory’s house is locked up until legal matters have been settled. His brother is a lawyer, you see.”
Adam did not see, but he could well imagine the complications Montagu’s sudden death would create. And Lowenna would be completely alone.
Troubridge said, ”I know a place where she can stay a while, sir. There must be some one .. .”
She had turned to study him, as if she had not realized any one else was there, and attempted to smile. But the nightm
are was returning.
Instead, she looked very directly at Adam’s face, as if to memorize each detail, as Montagu might have done before starting to paint.
She nodded again, very slowly.
”Walk with me.”
Like that day in the garden, or that other day, when she had given him the rose.
Then, with her arm through his, she left the deserted studio, her head erect, her hair falling around her shoulders, even darker as they moved out on to the landing.
Troubridge followed, the pistol still dangling from his hand. He had learned a lot today in a very short while. About his captain, and about himself.
He heard Jago slam the door, and thought he called something to the man who still sat on the studio couch, the bloodied sheet pressed to his face.
Things could have gone very wrong. He might have been killed, or been forced to kill some one else. It would have meant ruin, and shame for his father, the admiral. And I was not afraid. Not once.
He also noticed that neither the captain nor the lovely woman wrapped in the boat cloak once looked back.
He thought of her voice when she had said, walk with me. All he could feel was envy.
5
A Last Resort
”Oars!”
One more pull, and then the cutter’s twelve blades rose, dripping from the murky water, to rest motionless on either beam like spread wings. It was bright and cold, the oarsmen’s breath combined like steam as the cutter lost way, rocking gently in the current.
Adam Bolitho stood in the stern sheets and watched the moored two-decker rising above him, the newly gilded beak head and bowsprit swing across the boat as if Athena, and not the cutter, was moving.
The figurehead, too, was freshly painted, the eyes set in a grey stare, the face beneath the plumed helmet handsome rather than beautiful, as the Greek myths would have insisted.
He sensed that the others were watching him. Stirling, the first lieutenant, slumped by the coxswain, breathing heavily, and the midshipman in charge, one hand almost touching the tiller bar as if he were afraid the coxswain might make a mistake in front of their captain. Sitting more comfortably on the opposite side was Fraser the sailing master, his bright blue eyes missing nothing as the current carried them slowly into Athena’s shadow.
They had already circled the ship twice, Stirling occasionally indicating the recent work carried out by dockyard people or the ship’s own company. Factual and to the point, but seldom offering an opinion.
Fraser, on the other hand, had rarely stopped talking about the ship. His ship, how she would behave at sea now that some of the ballast had been moved aft to make her stand more trim
‘in the deep water’, as he put it. It should have been obvious to the dockyard, and also to Stirling, he thought. With half her twenty-four pounders removed, replaced now by painted wooden ‘quakers’, Athena’s ability to sail close to the wind might have been seriously impaired.
Fraser said, ”She looks right, sir! Feels it too, I’ll wager!” A fellow Cornishman, and from Penzance, where Adam had first drawn breath, he did not care to hide his enthusiasm, or his eagerness to get to sea again. ”A fine sailer, sir! Close-hauled, even under storm stays’ is she can hold her own with a frigate, beggin’ your pardon, sir!”
Stirling had remained silent.
He shaded his eyes and looked across at the battery and the town beyond. They would be leaving Portsmouth within the week, and there were still important matters to be checked, and if necessary questioned. Changed .. . like this forenoon. A seaman was to be punished for insubordination, insolence to an officer.
Adam had seen more floggings than he could recall, some deserved, some not, and more usually brought about by the qualities of the officer involved. He had even witnessed a flogging around the fleet, the most barbarous display that could be instigated by the Articles of War, every captain’s guide and final defense. The prisoner had been taken from ship to ship, to receive so many lashes at each one, while all hands were mustered to watch, and to take warning. Bound as if crucified to a capstan bar across the boat used for punishment, the flogging was carried out to the beat of the Rogue’s March, a portion of the total lashes awarded at each rated ship. No longer human, just a torn, bloodied thing, the blackened flesh burned by the lash, the bones laid bare. Very few lived through such brutal punishment.
Only once had Jago spoken of his own unjust flogging. Almost as if the humiliation were worse than the agony.
It was never a comfortable thing to carry out in harbour, surrounded by other ships and watching eyes.
If an officer tried to be popular he would lose respect. If he used any pretext to enforce his will, he was not fit to hold his commission.
It was a captain’s final decision.
He said, ”Return alongside, if you please.” He could not remember the midshipman’s name. But next time .. .
Perhaps if he had not remained for an extra day in London, it would not have happened. He was angry just thinking about it. Athena’s punishment book told its own story: too many punishments awarded for the most trivial reasons. Two dozen for skylarking on deck after being reprimanded by a warrant officer. Drunk and disorderly when sharing hoarded rum for somebody’s birthday or a rare promotion, three dozen lashes.
The last captain, Ritchie, had apparently never questioned the cause, rather than the actual deed. Three years in command, but he had left no impression, no example others could copy or avoid. And now he was under arrest, awaiting a court-martial. With his quarters emptied and repainted, it was as if he had never been aboard.
He looked up at the starboard gangway and saw some seamen busy splicing, new hands who had volunteered to one of the recruiting parties. Almost unheard of a year ago.
Stirling said, ”You’ve not forgotten the man for punishment, sir?”
Adam saw the stroke oarsman’s eyes flicker quickly between them even as he laid back on his loom. Ready gossip for the mess deck
The Captain didn’t give a damn!
Adam nodded toward the new hands as they passed abeam.
”I hope they won’t, either, Mr. Stirling.”
A few faces had already made their mark, but the majority were still strangers.
Athena would be putting into Plymouth. He had confronted that. But he knew he had not accepted it.
He had told Lowenna as much as he could. The ship was under confidential orders, but her going to Plymouth had been in the Times for all to see. Troubridge had found him a copy to show him the item about Sir Gregory Montagu.
Adam had tried to make her accept his aunt’s open invitation, and her friendship, and go to Cornwall, and wait there until he could visit her. He felt the familiar despair. And why should she? Athena might be away for months. Years, if their lordships thought it necessary, or prudent.
In the end they had been together for less than an hour, at the house where she had friends, in a part of London called Whitechapel. A house which was owned by the most formidable woman he had ever seen. And she was quite adamant.
”You’ll stay where you are, Lieutenant, or whatever post you hold, and you will behave yourself.” She had stood with her brawny arms folded. ”Or I shall know the reason, sir!”
He had embraced Lowenna, while Troubridge and Jago had carried in her few pieces of baggage.
Then she had followed him to the door and had gripped his hands in hers.
”Take your cloak, Adam.”
She had watched him while he released her hands to unfasten the cloak.
”I love you, Lowenna. I have to see you. To tell you, to share .. He got no further.
She had smiled, but he had seen that she was trembling, and not because he had removed the cloak.
She had touched his lips, with fingers like ice.
”I want to love you.” She had stepped back into the hall light, and raised one hand to her own lips. She might have said something more, but the door was shut, the others already in the coach.
Stirling was on his feet, his hat doffed as Adam began to climb. The boat’s crew, oars tossed, stared fixedly astern, the water running down the looms and over their legs.
Adam glanced down at the midshipman. Vicary. That was his name.
Even if she visited Nancy, he might not see her. Vice-Admiral Bethune was hoisting his flag in Plymouth. Because it was convenient? Or was there another, private reason? Troubridge did not know, or would not say. Adam remembered his voice. You can trust me. And the sound of his pistol being cocked in that terrible room. He knew Troubridge better than that now.
The calls shrilled, and a lieutenant stepped forward to greet him. Stirling was climbing up behind him, treading heavily as he raised his hat to the quarterdeck, and the flag.
Their eyes met. Strangers.
”Very well, Mr. Stirling. Pipe all hands.”
He walked to the hammock nettings and looked across at the other ships lying nearby.
Plymouth. They might see Unrivalled, if ... He swung round and faced the keen breeze as the boatswain’s mates ran between decks, their Spithead Nightingales reaching out like extensions of the figure by the nettings.
”All hands! All hands lay aft to witness punishment!”
He watched the seamen scrambling through hatchways and clawing down from their work high above the decks.
The master-at-arms, Scollay, his mates and the ship’s corporal, the boatswain Henry Mudge, with the hated red baize bag which contained the ‘cat’, and the prisoner, a young seaman named Hudson. Lastly, George Crawford the surgeon.
There was silence, and Adam looked steadily at the crowded figures and faces, all waiting for him to read the words of his authority. His power. He saw a solitary gull circling around the Union flag, the spirit of some old Jack. He cleared his throat and began to read.
Once he paused as the shadow of a sail passed swiftly across the quarterdeck, a lugger loaded with casks of salted beef or pork making its way to another anchored two-decker. Some of the lugger’s seamen were staring at Athena’s crowded upper deck, understanding exactly what was happening. Getting a checkered shirt at the gangway, as the old hands called it.
Alexander Kent - Bolitho 26 Page 8