For My Country's Freedom

by Kent, Alexander

  FOR MY

  COUNTRY'S

  FREEDOM

  Selected Historical Fiction Published by McBooks Press

  BY ALEXANDER KENT

  The Complete Midshipman Bolitho

  Stand Into Danger

  In Gallant Company

  Sloop of War

  To Glory We Steer

  Command a King’s Ship

  Passage to Mutiny

  With All Despatch

  Form Line of Battle!

  Enemy in Sight!

  The Flag Captain

  Signal–Close Action!

  The Inshore Squadron

  A Tradition of Victory

  Success to the Brave

  Colours Aloft!

  Honour This Day

  The Only Victor

  Beyond the Reef

  The Darkening Sea

  For My Country’s Freedom

  Cross of St George

  Sword of Honour

  Second to None

  Relentless Pursuit

  Man of War

  Heart of Oak

  BY PHILIP MCCUTCHAN

  Halfhyde at the Bight of Benin

  Halfhyde’s Island

  Halfhyde and the Guns of Arrest

  Halfhyde to the Narrows

  Halfhyde for the Queen

  Halfhyde Ordered South

  Halfhyde on Zanatu

  BY JAMES L. NELSON

  The Only Life That Mattered

  BY DEWEY LAMBDIN

  The French Admiral

  The Gun Ketch

  A King’s Commander

  Jester’s Fortune

  BY BROOS CAMPBELL

  No Quarter

  War of Knives

  BY JULIAN STOCKWIN

  Kydd

  Artemis

  Seaflower

  Mutiny

  Quarterdeck

  Tenacious

  Command

  The Admiral’s Daughter

  BY DUDLEY POPE

  Ramage

  Ramage & The Drumbeat

  Ramage & The Freebooters

  Governor Ramage R.N.

  Ramage’s Prize

  Ramage & The Guillotine

  Ramage’s Diamond

  Ramage’s Mutiny

  Ramage & The Rebels

  The Ramage Touch

  Ramage’s Signal

  Ramage & The Renegades

  Ramage’s Devil

  Ramage’s Trial

  Ramage’s Challenge

  Ramage at Trafalgar

  Ramage & The Saracens

  Ramage & The Dido

  BY FREDERICK MARRYAT

  Frank Mildmay OR

  The Naval Officer

  Mr Midshipman Easy

  Newton Forster OR

  The Merchant Service

  BY V.A. STUART

  Victors and Lords

  The Sepoy Mutiny

  Massacre at Cawnpore

  The Cannons of Lucknow

  The Heroic Garrison

  The Valiant Sailors

  The Brave Captains

  Hazard’s Command

  Hazard of Huntress

  Hazard in Circassia

  Victory at Sebastopol

  Guns to the Far East

  Escape from Hell

  BY JOHN BIGGINS

  A Sailor of Austria

  The Emperor’s Coloured Coat

  The Two-Headed Eagle

  Tomorrow the World

  BY DOUGLAS W. JACOBSON

  Night of Flames

  BY JAMES DUFFY

  Sand of the Arena

  The Fight for Rome

  BY ALEXANDER FULLERTON

  Storm Force to Narvik

  Last Lift from Crete

  All the Drowning Seas

  A Share of Honour

  The Torch Bearers

  The Gatecrashers

  BY C.N. PARKINSON

  The Guernseyman

  Devil to Pay

  The Fireship

  So Near So Far

  Dead Reckoning

  The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower

  BY DOUGLAS REEMAN

  The Horizon

  Dust on the Sea

  Knife Edge

  Twelve Seconds to Live

  The White Guns

  A Prayer for the Ship

  For Valour

  BY DAVID DONACHIE

  The Devil’s Own Luck

  The Dying Trade

  A Hanging Matter

  An Element of Chance

  The Scent of Betrayal

  A Game of Bones

  On a Making Tide

  Tested by Fate

  Breaking the Line

  BY JAN NEEDLE

  A Fine Boy for Killing

  The Wicked Trade

  The Spithead Nymph

  Alexander Kent

  FOR MY COUNTRY’S FREEDOM

  the Bolitho novels: 21

  McBooks Press, Inc.

  www.mcbooks.com

  ITHACA, NY

  Published by McBooks Press 2000

  Copyright © 1995 by Highseas Authors Ltd.

  First published in the United Kingdom by William Heinemann Ltd. 1995

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any

  portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such

  permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc.,

  ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

  Cover painting by Geoffrey Huband.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kent, Alexander.

  For my country’s freedom / by Alexander Kent.

  p. cm. — (Richard Bolitho novels ; # 21)

  ISBN 0-935526-84-6 (alk. paper)

  1. Bolitho, Richard (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain, History, Naval— 19th century—Fiction. 3. Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 —Fiction I. Title

  PR6061.E63 F64 2000

  823’.914—dc21

  00-058625

  All McBooks Press publications can be ordered by calling toll-free:

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  Printed in the United States of America

  9 8 7

  For Kim

  With my love.

  The World is ours.

  Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn but flying,

  Still streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

  Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

  LORD BYRON, 1812

  PART I: 1811

  1 REGRETS

  LADY Catherine Somervell reined in the big mare and patted her neck with a gloved hand.

  “Not long now, Tamara. We’ll soon be home.”

  Then she sat very still and upright in the saddle, her dark eyes looking out across the sea. It was close to noon on this first day of March 1811 , and a strange misty vapour had already covered the track she had taken to visit John Allday and his new wife Unis. She could not believe that they had all been left alone for so long, untroubled by the Admiralty in London. Two and a half months, the longest time she and Richard Bolitho had ever spent together in their own home in Cornwall.

  She tossed the fur-lined hood from her head and the damp air brought more colour to her face. When she looked directly south, Rosemullion Head, which guarded the mouth of the Helford River, was also lost in mist, and it was only three miles distant. She was on the upper coastal track, much of the lower one having crumbled into the sea in the January storms.

&n
bsp; And yet there were signs of spring. Wagtails darting along the bank of the Helford River in their quaint diving, haphazard flight; jackdaws too, like companionable clerics on the stone walls. The ragged trees that crested the nearest hill were still leafless, their stooping branches shining from a sudden fall of rain. Nevertheless there were tiny brush strokes of yellow to mark the early daffodils that flourished there, despite the salt spray from the Channel and the Western Approaches.

  Catherine urged the mare forward again, her mind lingering on the past, clinging to the weeks of freedom they had enjoyed without restraint. After the first embrace, when Bolitho had returned from the Mauritius campaign and the destruction of Baratte’s privateers, she had worried that he might become restless because he was not involved with his ships and men, secretly troubled that the navy for which he had done and given so much was neglecting him.

  But the love they had reawakened upon their reunion was stronger than ever, if such things were possible. Walking and riding together in spite of the inclement weather, visiting the families on the estate and, when it could not be avoided, attending more splendid occasions at the grand house of Lewis Roxby, Richard’s brother-in-law and aptly nicknamed the King of Cornwall. The celebrations had marked Roxby’s unexpected acquisition of a knighthood. She smiled. There would be no holding him now . . .

  And what of worldly events? She had watched Richard for the usual signs of uneasiness, but there had been none. She thought of the passion and the delicate touches of love they had shared. There was nothing she did not know about her man any more.

  And much had changed. Sir Paul Sillitoe’s prediction had come true just a month ago. King George III had been declared insane and separated from all power and authority, and the Prince of Wales had become Regent until the day he would be crowned King. Some people had hinted uncharitably it was because of the Prince Regent’s influence that Roxby had been knighted. Although his new title had supposedly been bestowed in recognition of his patriotic work as a magistrate and as the founder of a local militia at the time of a feared French invasion, some claimed it was because the Regent was also the Duke of Cornwall, and he would be quick to perceive Roxby’s usefulness as an ally.

  She looked at the sea, no longer a rival as she had once feared. Her shoulder was still burned from the sun in the longboat after the loss of the Golden Plover on the hundred-mile reef. Could it be two years ago? She had suffered alongside the other survivors. But she and Richard had been together, and had shared it even to the threshold of death.

  There was no sun visible in the pale clouds, but the sea managed to hold its reflection, so that the undulating swell appeared to be lit from below as if by a giant lantern.

  She had left Richard in the house to complete some letters for the afternoon mail coach that left from the square in Falmouth. She knew that one was for the Admiralty: there were no secrets between them now. She had even explained her own visit to Whitechapel, and the aid she had accepted from Sillitoe.

  Bolitho had said quietly, “I never thought I would trust that man.”

  She had held him in her arms in their bed and whispered, “He helped me when there was no one else. But a rabbit should never turn its back on a fox.”

  Of the Admiralty letter he had said only, “Someone must have read my report on the Mauritius campaign, and the need for more frigates. But I can scarce believe that a wind of change has blown through those dusty corridors!”

  Another day he had been standing with her on the headland below Pendennis Castle, his eyes the same colour as the grey waters that moved endlessly, even to the horizon.

  She had asked, “Would you never accept high office at the Admiralty?”

  He had turned to look at her, his voice determined and compelling. “When it is time for me to quit the sea, Kate, it will be time to leave the navy, for good.” He had given his boyish smile, and the lines of strain had vanished. “Not that they would ask me, of all people.”

  She had heard herself say quietly, “Because of me, because of us—that is the real truth.”

  “It is not a price, Kate my darling, but a reward.”

  She thought, too, of young Adam Bolitho. His frigate Anemone was lying at Plymouth, in the dockyard after her long voyage from Mauritius by way of the Cape and Gibraltar. She had been so savaged in her final embrace with Baratte’s privateers that her pumps had been worked for every mile she was homeward bound.

  Adam was coming to Falmouth today. She heard the clock chime from the church of King Charles the Martyr, where Bolithos had been christened, married and laid to rest for generations. It would be good for Richard to have some time with his nephew. She doubted if he would raise the matter of Valentine Keen’s wife. Confrontation was not the way to deal with it.

  She considered Allday, when she had called at the little inn at Fallowfield, the Old Hyperion. A local painter had done the inn sign— the old lady down to the last gunport, as Allday had proclaimed proudly after his marriage, the week before Christmas. But his fresh-faced little wife Unis, herself no stranger to the Hyperion, in which her previous husband had died, had confided that Allday was deeply troubled, and fretting that Sir Richard might leave him ashore when he accepted his next appointment.

  She had spoken out of great affection for this big shambling sailor, not from jealousy that the navy would come between them. And she had shown pride too, acceptance of the rare bond that held vice-admiral and coxswain firmly together.

  Catherine had said, “I know. I must face it as you do. It is for our sakes that our men are out there, in constant risk from sea and cannon alike. For us. ” She was not sure she had convinced her.

  She smiled and tasted salt on her lips. Or myself either.

  The mare quickened her pace as she reached the new road which had been laid by some of Roxby’s French prisoners-of-war. Catherine suspected that it was due to their efforts that Roxby’s own house and gardens were always so immaculate. Like most other estates in the county, the Bolitho land was tended mostly by old men and cripples thrown on the beach by the navy they had served. Without an authorised protection any younger man would be snatched up by the ever-greedy press-gangs. Even the protection might not help on a dark night with a man-of-war tugging at her cable, and her captain not too eager to question his returning press.

  She saw the roof of the old grey house showing above the last fold in the hillside. Would Adam have any news? He would certainly notice how well his uncle looked. Exercise, good food and rest . . . Her mouth twitched. And love, which had left them breathless.

  She had often wondered if Adam resembled his father in any way. There was no portrait of Hugh in the house; and she guessed that Bolitho’s father had made certain of that after Hugh had disgraced himself and the family name. Not because of his gambling, the resulting debts from which had almost crippled the estate until Richard’s success as a frigate captain had brought prize-money to clear them. Hugh had even killed a fellow officer in a duel related to gambling.

  All that, their father could possibly have forgiven. But to desert the navy and fight on the side of the Americans in their war of independence: that had been beyond everything. She thought of all the grave-eyed portraits that lined the walls and the landing. They seemed to watch and assess her whenever she climbed the stairs. Surely they had not all been saints?

  A stable-lad took the bridle and Catherine said, “A good rub down, eh?” She saw another horse munching busily in the stables, and a blue and gold saddle-cloth. Adam was already here.

  She tossed her head and allowed her long dark hair to fall free on her shoulders.

  As she opened the double doors she saw them standing by the great log fire. They could have been brothers, black hair and the Bolitho features she saw repeated in the portraits, the faces she had studied while this house had become a home around her. Her eyes settled only briefly on the table, and the canvas envelope which bore the Admiralty’s fouled-anchor cipher. She had somehow known it would be there. It was
a shock, nonetheless.

  She smiled and held out her arms as Adam came to greet her. Richard would have seen her glance and her momentary dismay.

  There was the true enemy.

  Lieutenant George Avery stood at the window of his room and watched the bustling throngs of people and vehicles. It was market day in Dorchester: haggling over prices, country people coming in from the farms and villages to sell and buy. The taverns would be full by now.

  He walked to a plain looking-glass and studied his reflection as he might examine a fledgling midshipman.

  He was still surprised that he had decided to accept Sir Richard Bolitho’s invitation to remain as his flag-lieutenant. He had sworn often enough that if the offer of a command were made, no matter how small or lowly, he would snatch it. He was old for his rank; he would not see thirty again. He stared critically at the well-fitting uniform, with the twist of gold lace on the left shoulder to denote his appointment as Sir Richard Bolitho’s aide. Avery would never forget the day he had first met the famous admiral at his house in Falmouth. He had not expected Bolitho to accept him in the appointment, even though he was Sir Paul Sillitoe’s nephew, for he hardly knew his uncle and could not imagine why he had put forth his name for consideration.

  He still had nightmares about the experience which had almost cost him his life. As second-in-command of a small schooner, Jolie, formerly a French prize, he had been content, and excited by the dashing encounters with enemy traders. But his youthful captain, also a lieutenant, had become too confident, and taken too many risks. He could almost hear himself describing him to Bolitho during that first interview. I thought him reckless, Sir Richard. They had been surprised by a French corvette, which had swept around a headland and had raked them before they could stand away. The young captain had been cut in half in the first broadside, and moments later Avery had been struck down, badly wounded. Helplessly he had seen his men hauling down the ensign, the fight gone out of them in the overwhelming ferocity of the attack.

  As a prisoner-of-war Avery had endured agony and despair at the hands of the French surgeons. It was not that they had not cared or been indifferent to his suffering. Their lack of resources had been a direct result of the English blockade, an irony he often remembered.

  The brief Peace of Amiens, which had served only to allow the old enemies to lick their wounds and restore their ships and defences, had led to Avery’s early discharge, an exchange with one of the French prisoners. On his return to England there had been no congratulations or rewards for his past bravery. Instead he had faced a court martial. Eventually he had been found not guilty of cowardice or of hazarding the ship. But the little Jolie had struck her colours to the enemy so, wounded or not, he was reprimanded, and would have remained a lieutenant for the rest of his service.