Beyond the Reef

by Alexander Kent

  They were quite alone, and with three prize crews taking their captures back to Freetown they were short-handed. He trusted his men, but he never trusted what the sea might make them do.

  Tyacke waited for the new lookouts to climb aloft and then said, ‘Both watches, if you please, Paul. We’ll come about and steer sou’-east-by-south.’

  Ozanne stood his ground. He was older than Tyacke, and would never go any higher in the navy. But this suited him; and he found he wanted to comfort Tyacke in some way.

  ‘You done your best, sir. It’s God’s will – I believe that.’

  ‘Aye, mebbe.’ He was thinking of the girl he had been hoping to marry. He persistently told himself that no one could blame her for rejecting him when he went home with his terrible scars. But it still hurt him deeply, more than he could rightly understand. Was that God’s will, too? What would all these sunburned seamen think of him if they knew he still had her portrait in his sea-chest, and the gown he had once bought for her in Lisbon?

  He was suddenly angry with himself. ‘Stand by on deck!’

  Pitcairn the sailing master joined the first lieutenant by the wheel.

  ‘Takin’ it badly, is he?’

  ‘He’s … lost something. I’m not certain what.’

  ‘Off tacks and sheets! Stand by! Man the braces, lively there!’

  Men crouched and stooped over braces and halliards were suddenly changed into living statues as the distant crash of gunfire echoed across the reefs.

  ‘Belay that order!’ Tyacke snatched a telescope from the rack. ‘Get the t’gallants on her!’

  ‘Hands aloft!’ A master’s mate had to push one man bodily to the shrouds.

  Tyacke studied the sweeping green arm of the island as it began to dip down towards the eye-searing water.

  Another shot. He gritted his teeth. It might be anything. Come on, old lady, you can fly when it takes you thus!

  ‘Deck there! Sail on the lee bow! Brig, she is!’

  Tyacke shouted impatiently, ‘What other vessel?’

  The man, even at that height, sounded puzzled. ‘None, sir!’

  ‘They’ve sighted us, sir.’

  Tyacke gripped his hands behind him until the pain steadied him.

  ‘Clear away larboard battery! Stand fast all other hands!’

  Men stumbled from their various stations and ran to the seven guns of the larboard battery.

  Then, as the land fell completely away, Tyacke saw the other brig. He said almost in a whisper, ‘She’s the bloody Raven, by God.’

  Ozanne rubbed his hands. ‘We’ll dish that bugger up afore he knows it!’ He turned away and did not see Tyacke’s expression. ‘Run up the Colours! Mr Robyns, a shot across her snout, and the next into ’er belly if she fails to heave-to!’

  The forward gun lurched inboard and seconds later a ball splashed down some fifty feet beyond the Raven’s bowsprit.

  But Tyacke had shifted his glass, the slaver almost forgotten as he saw the low shape of the jolly-boat.

  ‘Raven’s shortening sail, sir!’

  Tyacke moved the glass with elaborate care on to the pitching boat and flapping sail.

  ‘It’s them. It can’t be, but it is.’ He turned to the lieutenant, his eyes shining. ‘God’s will, after all!’

  Ozanne shook his head. ‘I’ve been at sea too long. I just can’t take it in.’

  Tyacke tried to drag his mind from the picture in his powerful telescope.

  ‘Heave-to and send a boarding party across to the Raven.’ He heard the boat already being hoisted over the side, the clatter of weapons as the armed men clambered after it. ‘And Mr Robyns – don’t let them know how short-handed we are. Tell that bloody slaver that if he tries to rid himself of evidence, I’ll not wait till Freetown to see him dance!’

  Lieutenant Ozanne remarked, ‘So that is the famous Bolitho.’

  Tyacke watched the oars coming to life, the jolly-boat labouring round towards the drifting Larne.

  Ozanne observed, ‘Not many of them, sir.’ He glanced at Tyacke’s face, the tension and intensity in his uninjured profile. What was it, he wondered. Instinct? Somehow he knew it was more; much more. He shaded his eyes. ‘Who’s the young officer beside him, sir?’

  Tyacke turned toward him, and his hideous face split into a great grin of relief. ‘My God, Paul, you have been at sea too long!’ He handed him the glass. ‘Take a look – even you might recognise a woman after all this time!’ He touched his arm. ‘The admiral’s lady … and ours is the honour.’

  Someone called, ‘They’ve run up our flag over the Raven, sir!’ But Tyacke did not even hear. ‘Man the side, Paul. This is a day to remember.’

  * * *

  12

  Welcome …

  * * *

  LEWIS ROXBY, ‘THE King of Cornwall’, chose his moment with some care and then rose to his feet. It had been a magnificent dinner even by Roxby’s expansive standards – his kitchen was said to produce the finest food in the whole county, and this would be talked about for months. It was not a large gathering by any means – twenty people in all – but it was an affair to be proud of, he thought. The best silver was on display, and all the candles had been changed throughout the meal: no smoke or untidy guttering here.

  It was an event nobody had considered even remotely possible when they had all been gathered in the church at Falmouth. Now that was past, like a return from the dead.

  Roxby looked along the table and saw Bolitho sitting beside Nancy, and wondered what it had all been like, truly like. Adam was halfway down the table, his face impassive, almost withdrawn as he toyed with a glass of madeira. He seemed different, perhaps because of the second gleaming epaulette on his shoulder, the coveted post-rank which had been granted even as Bolitho and Lady Catherine had returned home to a tumultuous welcome. The square, the coaching road, even the lane that led up to the Bolitho house had been packed with cheering people.

  Roxby saw Lieutenant Stephen Jenour speaking quietly to his parents. The Jenours were very much in awe of the other guests, but the excellent meal and an endless procession of wines had done much to put them at their ease.

  Bolitho’s sister Felicity was also here, as was her son Miles who, Roxby noted, had splashed his shirt with red wine, like the victim of a duel.

  A fellow magistrate and local landowner whose fortune was second only to Roxby’s, Sir James Hallyburton and his lady, the port admiral from Plymouth, and a few other people who were useful business acquaintances rather than friends, completed the assembly.

  Roxby cleared his throat. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, friends all – we are here to welcome home a man who is very special to us for many different reasons.’ He saw Bolitho staring along the table, not at him, but at the woman who sat at his right hand. When Bolitho had brought her into the drawing-room where Roxby had begun the reception, with its tall glass doors still open to the gardens despite the nearness of autumn, there had been many gasps of surprise. In a dark green gown, her hair piled above her ears to reveal Bolitho’s gift of earrings, she was not as they had expected to see her after such an ordeal. Her neck and shoulders were bare, darkened so much by the scorching sun that she could have been from the South Americas, and her beauty seemed somehow more exotic, more defiantly unconventional. Roxby glanced down at her now, and saw the one revealing burn on her shoulder, as if she had been branded. She met his eyes, and he said quietly, ‘And we welcome you, Lady Catherine, and thank God for your safety. I thought this private gathering of friends would suit you far better than something grand, after all the travelling you have been forced to do since you reached Portsmouth, and then came west to us!’

  She bowed her head, so that her high cheekbones caught the light from the candles, and her voice was composed as she answered, ‘Your kindness means so much to us.’

  Then she allowed her mind to drift as Roxby continued with his well-prepared speech.

  It was still almost impossible to believe it was over, be
hind them. Separate incidents stood out more than others. Some she could not bear to think about. Perhaps most of all she recalled her shocked disbelief when the brig Larne had been sighted tacking around a necklace of reefs.

  And poor Tyacke trying to welcome her, his seamen cheering as they had been pulled up from the jolly-boat; the boat that had been their salvation and prison, where men had died, and others had clung to their simple faith that Bolitho would somehow get them to safety, even when everything suggested otherwise.

  Then, with exhaustion sweeping over her, she had felt her resistance give way because of Tyacke’s unexpected gift: a gown, badly creased from months, perhaps years, of being crammed into a chest, which she now knew he had carried with him ever since the girl he had wanted for his own had rejected him.

  He had muttered awkwardly, ‘You’re a mite taller than she was, m’lady, but –’

  She had gripped him in her arms and whispered, ‘It will suit very well, James Tyacke. I shall wear it with pride.’ And so it had been; the Portuguese gown he had bought for another woman had covered her bruised and burned body all the way to Freetown, where they had found a homeward-bound frigate about to weigh anchor.

  More memories. Bolitho. Her man shaking hands with the Larne’s officers, and then speaking alone with her commander, the devil with half a face. Then more cheers from the frigate’s company, and weeks later, entering Portsmouth at the head of a blustery south-westerly. The ramparts of the old port’s battery had been shining like silver in a sudden rain-squall even as they ran down on their anchorage. Afterwards the coaches, through more cheering crowds to London where Bolitho had seen Admiral Godschale, the news preceding them on the telegraph’s line of towers all the way from Portsmouth.

  They had paused at the small house on the river in Chelsea, where she had at last changed out of Tyacke’s gown into her own clothing. When Sophie had picked up the discarded gown and asked, ‘What about this, me lady?’ she had answered, ‘Take good care of it. One day I shall return it, and remind him of his kindness.’ Sophie had watched her without understanding. ‘Apart from Richard, he is the only man who has ever made me cry.’

  She glanced now along the table and saw him watching her. She touched the ring on her finger, the rubies and diamonds flashing in the chandeliers’ glittering light: a message to him from her. In response she saw him put his hand on his shirt where against his skin the locket was still in place, as it had been throughout those endless days and nights in the open boat.

  She had accompanied him to the Admiralty, but only when he had insisted. ‘We are one, Kate. I am heartily sick of pretence!’

  Godschale had appeared genuinely pleased to see her, and he had certainly noticed the ring, with which she considered Richard had married her in the little church at Zennor. Then while Bolitho had gone to discuss other matters, she had walked through the corridors of Admiralty to the carriage waiting for her by the steps.

  She realised now that Richard’s other sister Felicity was watching her with hostile eyes. An enemy, and she would always be so.

  Catherine thought instead of Richard, speaking to the men in the jolly-boat, hiding his disappointment when they had sighted land only to discover it was that cruel, deserted island. She remembered his face, feature by feature, when he had rallied them together with the promise of another island, water, and survival. No, she would never forget.

  She looked at Adam’s thoughtful profile and wondered if he had seen Zenoria, who had left with Keen’s sisters to be reunited with her husband in Hampshire.

  It was strange how everyone seemed to have changed … even the house, where they had been received with wild excitement by Ferguson and the others, and not without a few tears, either. Richard, in contrast, was able to accept it; he was used to being away at sea for far longer periods. But his reunion with Adam had been very moving, and only when she herself had embraced Adam had she seen the quiet desperation in his eyes. Vulnerable. Like Tyacke, who had lost something he would never regain. She looked away as Adam turned towards her. It might be safer not to dwell upon it.

  Roxby unintentionally put paid to all that.

  He beamed along the table, his forehead shining from exhilaration and good port.

  ‘My one regret is that Captain Valentine Keen and his lovely young bride are not with us tonight. I’ll lay odds there were some wet eyes when they came face to face, for it seemed everything was set against them.’ Catherine saw Adam’s fingers bunch into a tight fist as Roxby continued, ‘But a sailor has to have someone waiting for him when he returns from serving his King.’ He glanced fondly at his own two children, James and Helen. The latter had recently married a prosperous young lawyer; no risk of separation there, he thought. ‘So I am hoping that our gallant Captain Keen will soon know the joy –’ he winked towards his wife ‘ – and the challenge of raising a family!’

  That brought some laughter and banging on the table. Catherine knew Richard was watching her still. She was probably wrong, imagining it; and Richard must never know.

  Roxby became solemn. ‘I bid you all stand and raise a glass to Falmouth’s greatest son, and to the Lady Catherine, whose beauty is matched only by her courage!’

  They drank the toast and then made themselves comfortable again while the servants began to set plates of fruit compote at every place.

  Bolitho sighed. He had never had much of an appetite since he had been a midshipman. He smiled at the memory. Even ship’s rats fed on biscuit crumbs had sometimes been the young gentlemen’s lot … He looked at Catherine, wanting to be near her, touch her: this separation and interminable hilarity reminded him of the night they had met again at English Harbour, when her treacherous husband had given a dinner such as this for him. It had been torture; and he had seen all the dangers, and had disregarded them.

  He plucked at his waistcoat. He had returned home much thinner after their ordeal in the jolly-boat, but Lewis Roxby’s massive feast of fish, fowl, venison and a procession of other dishes was taking care of that.

  He thought over the extraordinary things Godschale had told him. He had asked what had happened to Captain Hector Gossage, Herrick’s flag-captain in the ill-fated convoy.

  Godschale had been pouring some wine, and had paused to wag a finger at him.

  ‘Rear-Admiral Gossage, if you please. He will also have a special pension when he is finally finished with the navy … at present he’s in charge of a mission seeking out timber for ship building. God knows there are few enough forests left in England suitable for the purpose.’ He had shaken his head. ‘In truth, it makes little sense.’

  Bolitho recalled the private discussion he had observed between the judge advocate and Sir Paul Sillitoe during Herrick’s court-martial. Am I so naïve that I cannot recognise a bribe? They had persuaded Gossage to give evidence clearing Herrick’s name, to say nothing of absolving the Admiralty of debts it would otherwise have had to pay.

  Other news. When Golden Plover had been reported lost, Godschale had hastily sent a replacement to the Cape of Good Hope. Yet another face: Rear-Admiral the Right Honourable Viscount Ingestre, who had been one of the three senior officers of the court-martial.

  Godschale had been in a jovial mood. ‘God’s teeth, Sir Richard, it does my heart good to see you and that lovely creature who came with you. Only think, man, if you had arrived a month or so later you could have attended a splendid memorial service in your own honour, here in London!’

  So Golden Plover’s loss had changed everything. Keen would not now be a commodore, and any role in the Portuguese campaign was out of the question. He had told Catherine most of it, while the carriage rolled along the embankment and into the peace of Chelsea. When it suited their lordships, he would hoist his flag again over Black Prince, which was still lying at Portsmouth. His flagship’s latest caprice seemed scarcely credible – could a ship so new, without memories, possess a will of her own as his old Hyperion had once done? She had left her moorings at the completion of her
repairs, with a new captain in command and an admiral yet to be selected, and had immediately collided with an old two-decker being used as a stores hulk. The two-decker had heeled over and sunk with her side still above water, and Black Prince had returned to her dock for further repairs. Her new captain was now faced with a court-martial. Fate. It had to be.

  Godschale studied him grimly. ‘It’ll be the Caribbean again if you accept, Sir Richard. I’d not blame you if you rejected it, after all you’ve endured.’

  Bolitho knew the admiral well enough to understand that he really meant the opposite.

  Catherine had listened to him in silence, her eyes moving over the passing scene, the river and the traders, the stray dogs and the soldiers with their women by the tavern.

  ‘I’ll not argue, my love. I know what you are. I have seen and shared that other life as few could ever do.’ She had faced him with sudden pride. ‘I love thee so …’

  He looked up from something Nancy was murmuring to him and heard his sister Felicity say, ‘To be alone in a boat with all those men, Lady Catherine. It must surely have presented certain … difficulties?’

  Catherine looked at her, her eyes flashing. ‘We did not serve tea every day, Mrs Vincent, and the privacy we can take for granted here was scarce. But we had other things to distract us.’

  ‘It is the opinion of some that you possess great beauty, Lady Catherine. I would have thought …’

  Roxby began to intervene as everyone else fell silent, but Catherine reached out and touched his arm. She said, ‘I think everyone here knows what you would have thought, Mrs Vincent.’ She saw Miles Vincent hide a snigger. ‘But out of respect for our hosts, and because of the love I bear the bravest, kindest man I have ever known, I will curb my tongue. But I must say, if it occurs again I shall be less than agreeable.’