‘We took a prize, Mols,’ he said, ‘just before we got here. Handsome little French sloop, real fast, and not too badly knocked about. The Navy will buy her sure as a gun. My share of that might come in handy.’
‘That it might,’ she conceded, ‘but when you coming home, my lover. Sam needs his father, and I need my man.’
‘Oh Molly, my precious,’ he said, ‘I will not be home for many a long month. Word is that the barky is bound for somewhere right distant.’
The thought of his impending departure made her cling to him. Desire rose again in them both, pushing despair back till the morning. He rolled around her till he was uppermost in the hammock. The sides pressed in once more, holding them close in a pod of canvas. Her mass of red curly hair, the colour lost in the gloom, packed the top of the hammock like the stuffing of a pillow. His own uncut hair, freed from its pig tail, folded down in a soft blond curtain about them. He looked into her face and was transported back to the hillside above the village, the short grass warm in the sunshine, the surrounding gorse heavy with the drone of countless bees. He remembered her hair then, spread out in a halo of burnished copper and her eyes, green as the sea in a storm, calm and appraising. Above all he remembered the faint taste of buttermilk that still lingered on her fingers from her morning’s work in the dairy. She had changed little from that girl he had loved so much all those years ago. His lips found her willing mouth in the dark, and once more they were alone in a world of their own making.
Chapter 6
Biscay
The convoy left Plymouth the following afternoon and slipped down the Sound. The graceful frigate eased through the water, the green shores gliding past her as she gathered speed. In her wake lumbered the East Indiamen, filling the confined space of the deep water channel and slewing down to leeward as the stiff breeze pressed against their high sides.
Up on Plymouth Hoe, lost among the crowd, stood the slight figure of Molly Trevan, the tiny blond Sam by her side. Her mane of red hair was tamed now by the mop cap she wore. Inside she felt raw despair, wondering how a single night with her husband could possibly sustain her through the empty months to come. She pointed out the rows of top men strung in lines along the Agrius’s yards, unfurling the sails. She crouched down to her son’s level to explain that one of them was Adam, but the little boy looked away, distracted as a group of children chased a hoop down the path behind them. For him that was far more real than the father he had never met.
‘Are you alright, my dear?’ asked a kindly voice beside her. She rose and turned to see another woman, older than her, watching the ships’ departure. Her clothes looked expensive, and Molly instinctively twitched at her own dress. The image of the woman broke and blurred as the tears came at last.
‘Oh, oh,’ Molly wailed. ‘I am right sorry. What must you think of me? My Adam is on that ship, and I have little idea when I may see him again.’
‘Now there, my dear,’ said the woman, passing her an embroidered handkerchief. ‘There’s no need to despair. I am sure he will be back soon.’
‘No, that’s just it,’ cried Molly. ‘He reckons he will be away for months, perhaps longer. I have hardly seen him these many years, and now he has gone again.’ The lady put a supportive arm around Molly, and glanced down at Sam.
‘That little handsome boy yours?’ she asked. ‘What’s his name?’
‘This is our Sam,’ said Molly, smiling through her tears. ‘He has yet to meet his father, but he looks the very spit of him.’
‘Very pleased to meet with you, young Master Samuel,’ she said, with mock gravity. Sam blushed and hid behind his mother’s skirts. The woman returned her attention to Molly.
‘I can hear you’re a West Country girl, but not from Plymouth from your voice?’ she asked.
‘Oh no,’ said Molly. ‘I am from Cornwall, same as my Adam. I live with my mother in a cottage. Molly Trevan’s my name.’
‘Must be tough, Molly,’ said the woman. ‘Your man away for months, and a growing young child to feed.’
‘That’s right enough,’ agreed Molly. ‘What with the navy holding back Adam’s pay, and the Parish not paying their dues, it’s right hard some months to muddle through. This winter was proper bleak.’
‘I know how hard it can be for you navy wives,’ she said, her face full of sympathy. ‘Yet it doesn’t need to be that way, you know Molly? I help plenty of women just like you get through the lean times while their men are away. Fact is that a good looking girl like you can always make a little extra in a seafaring town like this.’
*****
Anne Follett also watched the frigate depart. She had considered doing so from Plymouth Hoe, but the wind was strong, and a warm fire crackled in the grate of her private room at the Crown Inn. The room had a fine bay window from which she was able to see the Agrius slide by as it cleared the last building on the opposite side of the street, and headed towards the open sea. Her husband was an obvious figure on the quarterdeck. His gold epaulettes glinted on his shoulders as he stood beside the tall figure of one of his lieutenants.
At least he now seemed sober, not like the reeling figure that had lurched into her room last night, back from his dinner on the Earl of Warwick. At first she had been offended that he had not organised for her to come too. If he had told his hosts that she was in Plymouth they would have been mortified at her absence. But when she had seen the state he was in she was relieved. He had tried to make clumsy love with her, his breath a reek of alcohol and smoke, but he predictably failed as the wine had bested him.
Her maid was packing away her clothes, ready for her return to the Follett’s large house in Nottinghamshire, a place full of silent rooms and empty corridors. She came to stand beside her mistress, drawn to the window by the panorama of moving ships.
‘Is that the master’s ship, madam?’ asked the maid.
‘Yes Kitty,’ she replied. ‘The warship over there that leads those three larger ones down the harbour.’
‘His looks very fine, but it is sad that he is leaving,’ said Kitty, following the Agrius’s progress. ‘I hope he will return to you soon.’
‘Do you child?’ asked Anne, her brown eyes devoid of emotion. ‘Well that is very kind, I am sure. For my part it is all the same to me if he were to sail off the edge of the world and never come home.’ Kitty stared at her mistress in surprise.
‘Oh don’t look so troubled, girl,’ she scoffed. ‘Do you imagine that we married for love, like a moon-struck couple in some ridiculous novel? The whole matter was organised to further the prospects of our families. It had far more to do with land than love. I barely knew Percy before we were wed. Perhaps if we had spent a little more time in each other’s society some regard might have grown, but he was constantly away in the navy. No, it is not very wonderful that our marriage should want for affection.’
‘But what of your son, madam?’ asked Kitty. ‘Did his arrival not change matters?’
‘A little, but he was barely out of the nursery when Percy insisted that the Navy should have him too,’ said Anne. Her eyes began to prickle at the mention of her son.
‘Enough of this foolish talk,’ she said, turning away from her maid. ‘Go downstairs Kitty, and see if the carriage is ready for me.’
Once Kitty had left, she allowed herself to think of her son again. She could picture John Follett now, the last time she had seen him. He had managed to look both strikingly handsome, and painfully young in his lieutenant’s uniform, with the same brown eyes that she saw every day in her boudoir mirror. He had been eager to depart, the chase outside packed with his sea chests, his ship waiting for him in Portsmouth, a new war just declared. A month later he was gone forever. She turned away from the window, and the view of the husband she would never love, and the tears began to flow at last.
‘My boy,’ she whispered. ‘My poor boy. What will I do now without you in my life?’
*****
The ships were out of sight of Plymouth, heading i
nto the blustery waters of the Channel. They beat into the strong westerly wind as it blew against the running tide. This threw up choppy rollers that crashed against the ship’s bows, sending occasional flurries of green water streaming over their decks. Once they had made sufficient westerly sea room, they were able to head south with the wind on their beam, towards Ushant at the western tip of Brittany and the Bay of Biscay beyond. The three bulky East Indiamen were formed in a line with the Earl of Warwick leading. They were almost as well spaced as warships, while the Agrius positioned herself out on the windward side of them, ready to spin round and with the wind behind her, dash down to intercept any attacker that might threaten the convoy.
None appeared, and the following day they passed the broken coastline of Brittany in pleasant spring weather. For once the visibility was clear enough for them to see the endless Atlantic rollers roaring in one after another to burst in columns of dazzling white against the reefs and cliffs of France. Further out to sea they could see the ships of the Inshore Squadron silhouetted against the horizon as they ploughed backwards and forwards across the same patch of water in their ceaseless blockade of the main French naval base at Brest.
They may not have seen the enemy that day, but watchers on those cliffs had seen them. The next morning, when they were level with the port of Lorient, a strange sail appeared on the horizon. It was a large French Chasse-Marée, long hulled and sleek, with huge brown fore-and-aft sails rigged on her twin masts. Built for speed and packed with money-hungry Frenchmen, she raced out from the coast, bent on capturing at least one of the fabulously wealthy East Indiamen as a prize.
This was exactly the situation that the Agrius had been sent here to prevent. The three company ships continued on their splendid way, their rails packed with passengers enjoying the thrill of the action. Meanwhile the frigate spent the whole day constantly manoeuvring to keep herself between the convoy and the enemy.
Each time the Chasse-Marée made a rush for one of the ships, she would find herself blocked by the Agrius with her long, menacing row of gun ports, and under their threat, would be forced to turn away. Time and again she tried to close with the East Indiamen, from ahead, from behind, beating up into the wind, rushing down on them with the wind behind and her sails goose-winged out on either side. Each time the frigate arrived just in time to block her final approach, to faint cheering from the watching passengers. Occasionally she got so close that the Agrius was able to let off a speculative broadside at long range with the hope of damaging this persistent foe, but without noticeable effect.
As the sun set at the end of a long, harrowing day of constant manoeuvre, they had left the French coast far behind. Clay was hoarse with shouting orders, and the crew drooped at their stations, exhausted by hours of sail trimming and changes of course. With darkness at hand and the wind strengthening, the Chasse-Marée finally gave up and headed off on the long journey back to the mainland. The sheep dog had kept the wolf at bay.
*****
The Bay of Biscay in March proved every bit as stormy as Clay had predicted. The day after the encounter with the Chasse-Marée, the wind began to strengthen, whipping the long Atlantic rollers higher and higher. By that night a full gale blew in from the open ocean and the convoy had to heave to, bows on to the howling wind. The Agrius was a very weatherly ship, built to be able to stay out on station in all conditions. With her top gallant masts struck down on deck and her storm canvas set, she could shoulder her way through the huge waves with relative ease.
The same could not be said of the East Indiamen. Their designers had had other criteria in mind when building them, like cavernous cargo holds and plentiful passenger accommodation. As Clay stood on the quarterdeck with water cascading off his oilskins, he watched their progress, heavy and lumbering in the storm. Often a gust would roll them over to one side, till they paid off and shook themselves upright again, water pouring from their scuppers. Waves crashed high against their tall hulls in splashes of white foam, that appeared for a moment before they were torn away by the wind. He wondered how Lydia was getting on in the madness of her rolling little cabin, if she was still enjoying the mariner’s life on board.
At night she filled his dreams. He lay in his wildly swinging cot, surrounded by a symphony of noise as the ship’s timbers groaned and creaked with each fresh impact on the outside of the hull. He tossed and turned, his mind full of images of her. He relived their evening together in Plymouth, treasured each fondly remembered smile and laugh. He saw her bright blue eyes, her creamy white shoulders, her slender figure, the scent of her perfume. The memory of her awoke a groaning, physical longing in him. He thought of her laughter, her teasing wit, and her conversation, so light and fun most of the time, yet deep and meaningful at times as well. He found himself returning time and again, not to the memory of her extraordinary beauty, but above all to that compassionate, almost tender final look. But with the weather as it was there was now no prospect of any visits between ships, no prospect of his seeing her again soon.
*****
‘All things considered, I think I preferred the bleeding North Sea,’ muttered Evans, as he tried to crouch down out of the worst of the wind under the weather side gangway. It was difficult for him. Other members of the watch already packed the dryer spaces between the double breached guns, leaving him with one arm and shoulder in the dry, the other prey to the streams of water cascading down from the sails and rigging. The occasional well directed jet found the gap between his oilskins and sou’wester.
It was a black night, the third since the gale had started, and every scrap of clothing Evans possessed was soaking wet. Although it was dark, the ferocity of the storm could be guessed at from the shriek of the wind through the frigate’s rigging. The sea around them rose and fell in huge jagged pyramids of flint and black, flecked with spume. A double bank of quartermasters at the wheel struggled with the Agrius as she pitched and rolled in the massive waves surging past them. Evans glanced up, and saw movement in the dark. A figure of one of the forecastle men, his clothes thrashing about him in the gale, struggled along the gangway opposite. He moved as if drunk, in short uncertain bursts, timed with the lulls in the motion of the ship, from one hand hold to the next as he made his way to the quarterdeck.
Evans nudged Rosso next to him, and pointed out the sailor on the gangway.
‘God help that poor fucker,’ he said loudly into his ear over the sound of the wind. Evans grinned down at Rosso, feeling the satisfaction of watching someone else having to do an unpleasant task from the relative shelter of the main deck. Rosso looked at the man’s unsteady progress and frowned.
‘Not sure that is good, Sam,’ he yelled back. ‘Might be something up farther forward.’
Rosso’s view proved prescient. A little while later the tall figure of Clay came staggering down the glistening main deck, the sailor at his heels.
‘Fletcher, bring six of your waisters up on to the forecastle and report to Mr Knight,’ he ordered, before pressing on to the front of the ship himself.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the petty officer, then reeled off six names, including Evans and Rosso, to follow him.
Evans climbed from the relative shelter of the main deck up on to the exposed forecastle. As his body rose above the level of the deck, the full force of the gale struck him hard in the chest, wrenching one hand free of the hand rope and almost twisting him off the ladder way. He struggled up onto the exposed deck and pulled himself upright using the rail, before turning to help the next man. Up here the motion of the ship was frightening. The bowsprit had a tiny scrap of storm jib set, and seemed bent on spiking the top of each huge wave as the ship slid down the previous one. Just in time the wave would lift the bows and the bowsprit would climb upwards, up, up till it pointed aloft like a long, upheld finger.
‘Are you all right?’ roared Rosso to Evans. Before the Londoner could answer, Fletcher waved them over to the starboard side, where most of the forecastle men were clustered. Above
the line of the rail, the curved fluke of one of the Agrius’s four anchors reared up over the group like a black claw against the dark sea beyond. With each successive wave it swung to and fro with a thunderous bump against the hull, more felt in the body than heard.
Knight, the boatswain and Clay stood to one side, both men clinging to the foremast shrouds while they decided what to do. Knight’s waist-length pig tail, his pride and joy, had broken free of his oilskins, and flew out like a rod, parallel with the deck as the wind tore at them.
‘It’s the second best bower, sir,’ bellowed Knight. ‘Some of them lashings have come loose, what with this sea running. She may rip loose altogether or worse she might batter the hull to pieces if we leave her.’ Clay looked over the side for a moment, and then back up at the iron fluke above them.
‘If I can bend a line around this fluke,’ he shouted, pointing upwards, ‘and can run it back around the bits over there, with most of the lads to take the weight, that will keep it tolerably still. You can organise a couple of the steadier forecastle men to go over the side on safety lines to renew the lashings. When you are ready, my men can lower her back into place by handsomely releasing the line.’
Knight considered each element of the plan with care, taking his time in spite of the howling gale all around them.
‘That’ll work, sir,’ he concluded. ‘I will send Hansen and Rogers over the side, and choose a pair of men to manage each safety line. You take the other hands; you will need them to bear the weight of that anchor.’
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