He saw the emotions chasing each other across the surgeon's face. How could a man allow himself to decay like this?
Trevenen asked, "How did you find him?"
Minchin looked into the distance, so far now beyond the cabin and the ship. The thundering roar and recoil of the old seventy-four's artillery, the unending stream of wounded and dying who had been dragged down to him on the orlop deck, the 'wings and limbs' tubs as the Jacks termed them overflowing with grisly relics of saw and knife. Arms, legs, pieces of men Minchin had once known, and all the while the deck had shivered to the fury of the battle above and around them.
"The finest man I ever met. A gentleman, but only in the true sense. I've seen him shed a tear when some poor lad lay dying. He was not too proud to stoop and hold his hand for his last minutes." He glared at the captain with sudden dislike. "Not like some!"
"Very commendable. But the punishment will be carried out at four bells this forenoon and you will attend it, sir. I have long discovered that authority and severity must often go hand in hand!"
He waited for the door to close after Minchin's shabby figure. The man was a fool. As soon as possible he would try to have him replaced, although surgeons with experience and the stomach for their butcher's work were difficult to find.
He touched the wine with his tongue. His hardest task would be to conceal and suppress the old animosity born when his father and Captain James Bolitho had become enemies. Trevenen came from Truro and he resented hearing Bolitho proclaimed Cornwall's greatest son. He frowned, his mouth setting in a thin line.
We shall see about that.
At exactly four bells the calls trilled between decks and along Valkyrie's gangways while the marines took up their station across the quarterdeck.
"All hands! All hands! Hands lay aft to witness punishment!"
The first lieutenant came to the cabin again but Trevenen said calmly, "I heard, Mr. Urquhart. This is a quiet ship and I intend it should remain so!"
Then he picked up the folder that contained the Articles of War, and after a slow scrutiny of his quarters walked out.
Unmoved? Urquhart sighed. It was not that. There was no sign of feeling at all.
Lady Catherine Somervell stood by the tall windows of the room they had shared for only one night. The windows opened on to a small balcony and faced south across Plymouth Sound. It looked as if it might remain fine for her journey to Falmouth. She felt a shiver run through her. Perhaps she should have returned to London, the city she had once known so well. In the same breath she knew she needed to go to the old grey house below Pendennis Castle. She could keep busy amongst people who, for the most part, kept to themselves and did not stare at her wherever she went. She would always be a foreigner in Cornwall; even Yovell was, and he came from no further than Devon. But they respected her now, and she found that it mattered. Most folk probably thought she was above it, that she was used to the gossip and the lies, but she was not. And the man she loved more than life itself, who was prepared to risk everything for her and because of her, would soon be gone. Back to that other world which she had shared for a while at the mercy of the sea's cruelty, and the danger which had drawn them even closer, if that were possible.
A carriage had been sent from the dockyard with some porters to carry Bolitho's chests and cases to the ship. The wine-cooler she had given him to replace the other that lay on the sea bed in his old Hyperion would remain at Falmouth until the future had made itself clear. It would be a ready reminder whenever she saw it. Something of his.
Allday had gone with Ozzard and Yovell to make sure that nothing was stolen in the dockyard on its way to the ship, as he had bluntly put it. The serious-faced flag lieutenant, Avery, was somewhere downstairs in this inn, The Golden Lion, the best in Plymouth.
She had said good-bye to Bolitho's little crew as he called them, but Allday had lingered to say his own piece.
"I'll take good care o' Sir Richard, m'lady. Have no fear o' that." He had seemed subdued, even sad.
She had said, "Is it harder this time?"
He had given her his steady stare. "Aye, it is. When we gets home again, will you come an' see us wed?"
She had almost broken at his use of the word home.
"Nothing will keep us away." She had hugged him. The true sailor with his special scent of rum, tobacco and tar: the smells of the sea. "And take care of yourself, John. You are very dear to me."
She had seen his surprise at her emotion, the easy use of his name. She could read his thoughts. The woman who had been married to the lowest and the highest, who had stripped naked to don a man's clothing while the ship had been bearing down on the reef, who had half-killed a mutineer with a Spanish comb: how could she feel like weaker souls?
She heard Bolitho coming in now from the adjoining room, patting his pockets as she had seen him do so many times.
He was watching her gravely, his uniform and gleaming epaulettes like a barrier between them. He was wearing the beautiful presentation sword, and she knew Allday had been entrusted with the old family blade.
When they had arrived they had stood by this same window and he had remarked, "They used to have a telescope mounted here so guests could see the shipping in the Sound." He had tried to make light of it but there was something in his voice, some indefinable sadness. "I expect some rogue stole it."
"Secrets?" she had said.
"I was leaving then. I was captain of Hyperion. So long ago, it seems now. Nearly fifteen years."
She had thought of the portrait of his first wife, Cheney, found dusty and forgotten where Belinda had hidden it. She had had it cleaned and replaced on the wall.
Bolitho had said quietly, "It was the last time I saw her. She died when I was at sea."
It had been a precious moment. She knew she would study the portrait again when she returned to Falmouth: the young bride who, but for a tragic accident, would have given him a child.
A servant appeared at the door. "Beggin' yer pardon, Sir Richard, but th' carriage is 'ere."
"Thank you." He faced her again and she saw the pain in his grey eyes.
"I wish you were coming with me but I shall go directly to the dockyard. It hurts me so much to part with you, to become entangled again with the affairs of others." He crossed to the open window and said softly, "In God's name, there is a crowd outside!"
Catherine watched his dismay. Why was he always so surprised that wherever he went people wanted to see him? To ordinary men and women he was their protection, the hero who stood between them and the hated enemy.
He said, "We must say good-bye, dearest Kate. It should be a tumbril out there, not a carriage."
They stood quite motionless in one another's arms, and they kissed, clinging to the last minutes.
She whispered, "I shall take the locket from you when you are with me again. Go down to them, Richard. I will watch from here."
"No. Not from up here." He forced a smile. "Come to the door. They will adore it."
She nodded, understanding. The window where the telescope had once been mounted was the last place where he had seen Cheney, when he had gone to join his ship.
"Very well. Afterwards I shall send for Matthew, and never fear, we will have a guard with us." She touched his mouth, her fingers very cool. A last contact. She thought of the night. Unable to love, each thinking of the dawn, of today. Now.
"I love you so much, darling Kate. I feel I am leaving so much of me behind."
Then they were on the staircase and Bolitho saw Avery standing below with the Golden Lion's landlord. The latter was all smiles at the attention his famous guest was attracting. He had probably spread the word himself.
Bolitho had noticed that Avery stood and walked with one shoulder slightly raised, because of the wound he had suffered when the schooner's men had struck to the French corvette. But the old tailor at Falmouth had done well, and Avery looked quite different in his new coat with its white lapels, his cocked hat bedecked with gleaming
gold lace. The tailors could stitch a uniform together in less than four days; with the comings and goings of sea officers they would work twenty-four hours a day if need be. Bolitho had thought more than once that they would make a fortune in London.
Avery doffed his hat to Catherine. "Good-bye, my lady."
She held out her hand and he put it to his lips.
She said, "We have had no time to become acquainted, Mr. Avery. We shall put that to rights when we meet again."
Avery replied awkwardly, "You are most kind, my lady."
It was obvious he had been badly hurt, far more than by his wound.
The landlord threw open the door and the roar of voices swept over them. People were cheering and calling out he knew not what in the confused din of excitement.
"You drum them Frenchies to perdition! Just like our own Drake!"
Another yelled, "God bless you, Dick, an' yer ladyship too!"
They fell strangely silent as Avery opened the carriage door with the crest of the fouled anchor on it. Bolitho looked at her and knew her mouth trembled, but only he would have seen it. Her fine dark eyes were very steady, too much so; but he knew that as far as she was concerned they were quite alone.
"Dearest of men." She could not continue. Even when they kissed there was absolute silence, as if the crowd were too awed, perhaps too sad to make a sound. When he climbed into the carriage beside Avery the whole street erupted in cheering. Civilian hats flew into the air, and two passing marines doffed their own in salute.
She watched the coachman touch the two horses with his whip and the wheels began to clatter across the cobbles. Even then they cheered, and small boys ran alongside the carriage until it gathered speed. All the while he kept his eyes on hers, locked together until the carriage had vanished around a corner. Not once had he glanced up at the window with the balcony, and she was deeply moved.
She returned to the room, and without going close to the window, watched the crowd disperse, the sound dying away like a receding tide.
Sophie was waiting for her, her eyes filling her face.
"I was that proud, me lady. All them people!"
She nodded, her hand pressed beneath her breast, afraid almost to breathe, unable to believe he had gone.
"They used to do it to poor Nelson." Then she said abruptly, Tell Matthew to fetch our things."
"All done, me lady." Sophie was puzzled. Lady Catherine should have been excited, or burst into tears. She did not understand that the tall, lovely woman with the dark hair and high cheekbones did not want to share it, not even with her.
Catherine said quietly, "Go down, Sophie. There is something I must do."
Alone she stood in the room and looked at the window where another woman had watched him go.
"May love always protect you." She spoke aloud, momentarily unconscious that what she had just said was part of the engraving on his locket.
She walked slowly down the same staircase, holding her skirt with one hand, her eyes looking directly ahead.
The landlord bowed to her. "God be with 'ee, m'lady!"
She smiled, and then froze as a carriage rolled to a halt behind the one with the Bolitho crest.
"What is it, m'lady?" Matthew made to take her arm, his round apple-face full of concern.
She stared at the other carriage as a figure climbed down.
The familiar frock coat and epaulettes, one hand reaching up for his lady's even as the inn servants ran to fetch their bags.
"It's nothing, Matthew." She shook her head as the street and the carriage misted over. She added with sudden despair, "Take me home."
As Matthew climbed up to his box and kicked off the brake, with the hard-faced guard sitting beside him, she turned at last and allowed herself to look up at their window. There were no ghosts; or were there? Was someone there, watching her depart, still waiting for the ship which had come too late?
Sophie was holding her hand, like a child. "Better now, me lady?"
She said, "Yes," suddenly glad the girl was with her for the long journey to Falmouth.
She attempted to reassure her. "If Allday were here I think I would ask him for a wet." But the remark only saddened her.
Don't leave me.. .
Lieutenant George Avery paused as Bolitho left his side and walked to the edge of one of the many dockyard basins. Ships being repaired, re-rigged, and in some cases new vessels still under construction: Plymouth was always a busy place, and the air was filled with the din of hammers and the scrape of saws. Teams of horses dragged miles of cordage towards a ship bereft of rigging, where more men waited to transform the apparent tangle of meaningless rope into a pattern of stays and shrouds: a thing of beauty to some, an endless tyranny to those who would eventually control it in every sort of sea and weather.
But Bolitho was looking at this one dock in particular. His old Hyperion had been berthed here after her terrible battle, when he had been her young captain. A proud ship which even the stains of death, the torn planking and smashed hull, could not destroy. They had made her into a stores hulk, like the one he saw now in this same dock. Nelson's words seemed to ring in his mind, when due to the shortages and the losses in the fleet Hyperion had been brought out of her humble role to be reborn, ready to stand once more in the line of battle which was her rightful place. When the choice of a new flagship had been Bolitho's, he had astounded many at the Admiralty by asking for his old command. Nelson had silenced the doubters by saying, "Give him any ship he wants!"
Hyperion had been old, but the little admiral's own choice for what was to be his last flagship, the Victory, had been forty years old when she had broken the enemy line at Trafalgar, and Nelson had paid the price for his courage.
Then, in this dockyard, Bolitho had been returning to an empty house, with nothing to believe in and nobody to care for. Now he had everything to sustain him: his lovely Catherine and a love he would never have believed possible.
Avery watched him curiously. "Sir?"
Bolitho looked at him. "Memories. I left an old ship here. But she came back to me. Until that day in October six days before Trafalgar. Some say we tilted the scales for Nelson... only Fate can be certain. I often think of it, and the fact that only my nephew ever met Nelson himself. I'm glad. It is something he'll never forget."
He thought suddenly of what Catherine had told him, how she had felt like a traitor. Only she had noticed it at first. Now others must never see it, or know that it must have been inevitable. The girl with the moonlit eyes, and the young captain. Perhaps that, too, was Fate.
He turned away. His new flag lieutenant probably thought him mad. He was very likely regretting his decision to leave the tired old Canopus at Chatham. They walked on, and some dockyard labourers who were hoisting a spar by tackle up the foremast of a frigate waved, and one shouted, "Good luck, Sir Richard! You burn them buggers!"
Bolitho raised his cocked hat and called, "You give us the ships, my lads! We'll do the rest!" They all laughed and nudged one another as if it was one huge jest.
But Avery saw Bolitho's face as he turned away from them. His eyes were bitter like his voice. "It is quite all right if you don't have to go out and do it!"
"I expect they meant well, Sir Richard."
Bolitho said coldly, "Is that what you think? Then I am sorry for you." Then he took Avery's arm and exclaimed, "That was unforgivable of me! It is not how I want it to be."
They reached the main jetty and Bolitho stood looking at the moored ships, the endless bustle of small harbour craft. His nerves were on edge. I need you, Kate. In her uncanny fashion she might hear his unspoken words. He could feel the sun burning into his back, her locket clinging to the damp skin beneath his shirt, one of the new ones she had bought for him. It helped to calm him in some way, and when he recalled how he had only owned one un darned pair of stockings as a youthful lieutenant, he almost smiled. Bless you, Kate... you heard me.
Avery said quietly, "Boat's coming, Sir Richard." He se
emed afraid to disturb his thoughts. He was not shy or so easy to read as Jenour had been: he was withdrawn, biding his time.
Bolitho faced the water as a smart gig appeared around a moored hulk and veered sharply towards the jetty, her oars rising and falling like white bones. He touched his eye and Avery said immediately, "Is there something I can do, Sir Richard?"
He said, "Something in my eye, I think." The lie came easily enough. But how long before Avery, like Jenour, realised the truth? "Who is in the boat?"
Avery seemed satisfied. "A lieutenant, sir."
It was strange not to have Allday beside him at this moment, critically measuring up the boat's crew and anything else that took his attention. He was not in the gig either.
Alexander Kent - Bolitho 20 Darkening Sea Page 10