Man of War

by Alexander Kent

  Bethune relaxed slowly. In charge again. “Well, what happened?”

  They were picking up their hats, looking around the disturbed room; only the ornate clock had not been moved.

  Lancaster adjusted his dress coat and shrugged. “It was in the Times. The artist I intended fell down dead the other day.” He strode past the servant, adding, “Most inconsiderate, don’t you know!” He laughed.

  Troubridge waited. “Are you ready, sir?”

  But Adam scarcely heard him. He wanted to go closer to the portrait, but could not. Dared not.

  He did not need to examine the artist’s signature. It would be the same hand which had painted the empty sleeve on the portrait of Captain James Bolitho, and the portrait of Sir Richard. He was touching his lapel. And the yellow rose on mine.

  He thought suddenly of Athena’s wardroom, brightly lit by candles and shining with the mess silver. The faces, some sweating badly by the end of the evening, the loud laughter at some joke made by Tarrant, the young third lieutenant. A ponderous speech by Stirling. Looking back, it seemed more a homage to the previous captain than one of welcome.

  And the long journey from Portsmouth to the Admiralty, Jago sitting with him in the coach, more ill at ease than he could ever recall.

  Now here. And now this.

  Troubridge had moved and was facing him.

  “If I may help in any way, sir?” The admiral had already been dismissed from his thoughts. This, the present moment, was suddenly important, although he could not determine why.

  Adam said, “The artist he mentioned. Do you know his name?”

  “Yes, sir. He once did a portrait of my father. It was Montagu . . . Sir Gregory. It was very sudden, I believe, sir.”

  The Admiralty servant coughed politely and Troubridge said, “We must go, sir. The First Lord dislikes being delayed.”

  Their feet made the only sound in the long corridor. Occasionally they passed a window, where carriages in the distance and, once, a troop of dragoons, gave a touch of normality.

  She was in that house. Like Andromeda. Helpless and alone.

  The tall doors were just a few paces away: the room where the great news had broken. Trafalgar. Waterloo. And Algiers.

  Troubridge said suddenly, “You can trust me, sir.”

  Afterwards he knew he’d never be able to forget Captain Bolitho’s expression. His eyes. Nor want to.

  The great doors had opened as though to some signal, but Adam turned abruptly and gripped the flag-lieutenant’s arm as if nothing else mattered.

  “I am not sure I can trust myself!”

  The journey seemed endless, and Adam had lost count of the streets and squares, the gleam of water whenever the coach drove close to the river. It was late, and pitch dark, and yet there seemed to be people everywhere, and when he lowered a window he could hear the clatter of wheels and horses, smell woodsmoke and the occasional aroma of cooking whenever they passed yet another tavern. Did nobody ever sleep in the capital?

  The coachman showed no uncertainty, and Adam guessed he was used to these journeys with little notice or none at all; Troubridge had said as much. He was often employed by senior officers not wishing to draw attention to themselves. Troubridge had learned fast since his appointment as Bethune’s aide.

  Adam wished he knew what Jago was thinking, up there beside the coachman, probably wondering what had made him insist on joining them.

  Troubridge was thinking aloud.

  “Getting close.” He was peering through the opposite window. “That looks like the church.” He hesitated. “I was here once before.”

  Adam saw some glowing braziers beside the road, dark figures crowded around them for warmth and companionship. Coachmen, grooms, servants, it was hard to tell. Waiting for their masters to become tired or bored with whatever pastime or indulgence had brought them here.

  The houses were higher now, several storeys, some with windows lighted, chandeliers giving a hint of the district’s original luxury. Much as the solemn Bowles had described. Other houses were in total darkness, shutters closed, walls neglected and flaking in the carriage lanterns.

  Troubridge murmured, “Number Eighteen, sir. We’re passing it now.”

  Adam felt even more uneasy. Cheated. It was no different from all the others.

  Troubridge said doubtfully, “Looks deserted.” He leaned out of the window. “Some lights up there, sir.”

  The coachman said nothing, and had climbed down to attend to his horses.

  “What kind of people, I wonder . . .”

  Troubridge shrugged, and Adam thought he heard the clink of steel.

  “Gaming rooms.” Again the hesitation. “Brothels. I did hear that artists come here to earn their keep.”

  Jago was by the door, although he had made no sound. He said, “Someone comin’ now, sir.”

  A group of men, perhaps six in all, one calling back to a coachman, telling him to wait without fail. A loud, slurred voice. One used to being obeyed.

  They were going toward the house, Number Eighteen. One of them was laughing; another called, “Put it away, John, you can have all you want to drink inside!”

  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’m 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, m
aking 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 someone 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. Someone 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 know?”

  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 unclipped 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 someone . . .”

  She had turned to study him, as if she had not realized any one else was there, and attempted to smile. But the nightmare was returning.

  Instead, she looked 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 onto 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 someone 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 boatcloak 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 sternsheets and watched the moored two-decker rising above him, the newly gilded beakhead 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’ls 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 wasn’t 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 . . .