Band of Brothers

Up another ladder and past one of the long messdecks. Scrubbed tables and benches between each pair of guns: home to the men who worked and fought the ship, and the guns were always here from the moment when the pipe called them to lash up and stow their hammocks, to Sunset and pipe down. The constant reminder that this was no safe dwelling but a man-of-war.

Dancer was close behind him, and Bolitho wondered if he remembered these surroundings as intensely after so many months. Like his own first ship, the noise and the smells, men always in close contact, cooking or stale food, damp clothing, damp everything. Most of the hands were at work, but there were still plenty of figures between decks, and he saw a glance here and there, casual or disinterested; it was hard to distinguish in the gloom. The gunports that lined either beam were sealed, a wise precaution against the January chill and the keen air from the Sound; as in Gorgon, only the galley fires provided any heat, and they would be kept as low as possible to avoid wasting fuel. The purser would make sure of that.

Another climb now, to the impressive expanse of the quarterdeck, where the day seemed startlingly clear and light. Bolitho stared up at the towering mizzen mast and spars, the furled sails, and the ensign he had seen from the launch this morning, still lifting and curling beyond the poop. About seven hours ago, and the ordeal had not even begun. They had talked about it often enough, been warned what to expect, even if they survived the selection process today. Being successful and actually receiving the coveted commission were often two very different matters. A sign of the times, with promotion only for the lucky, and the clouds of war as yet unknown to those of their own age and service.

A tall lieutenant was standing by the hammock nettings, a telescope trained on the shore, and a boatswain’s mate waiting close by. Apart from two seamen polishing the fittings around the compass box and the great double wheel by the poop ladders, the deck was deserted. After the confines of the world below, it seemed an almost sacred place.

Bolitho looked at the land. The hills were edged with copper. Hard to believe it would be dark before long. Perhaps the examination had been postponed. Cancelled.

‘So. The last two.’ The lieutenant had moved, and sounded impatient. ‘You know what to do.’ He hardly spared them a glance. ‘Get along with you.’ He was already striding to the quarterdeck rail, straightening his coat as he went.

Bolitho stared at the fresh gilt paintwork, the scrubbed gratings and perfectly flaked lines and halliards. The empty marines’ mess, the sound of oars alongside, no doubt at the ornate entry port. The admiral was about to go ashore, or visit another ship of the line in his command.

Their youthful guide quickened his pace past the wheel, and Bolitho saw that the two seamen were packing away their cleaning gear. Down another hatchway where the deck planking was covered with black-and-white chequered canvas, he could see that the hand ropes were smartly pipeclayed, and a marine sentry, or at least the lower half of one, was standing rigidly beside the screen doors of the great day and dining cabin. The admiral’s quarters.

‘Wait!’ Another screen loomed before them, freshly painted, like white glass in the light from the quarterdeck, similar to the one directly beneath them.

Dancer nudged him with his elbow.

‘The admiral’s on the prowl. And I thought it was all for us!’

He was even smiling.

A servant ushered them into a lobby, partitioned from the main cabin by more screens which could be hoisted and bolted to the deckhead if the ship was cleared for action. There were two or three comfortable chairs sharing the deck space with one of the after battery’s twelve-pounders.

The cabin servant studied them severely and pointed to a bench by a sealed port.

‘When you are called.’ He had the stiff, tired face of a man who had seen it all before. Their midshipman guide had vanished.

They sat, side by side. Almost soundless here, the highest part of the ship. There was a skylight almost directly above them and Bolitho could see the mizzen shrouds and part of a spar, the sky holding its light beyond. After all this time, nearly six years of his life in the navy, and he still had no head for heights. Even now, when the sails cracked and shook and the pipe shrilled All hands aloft! he had to force himself to respond.

‘When we get back to Gorgon, Dick… ’ Dancer was gazing at the screen door. ‘I have something hoarded away for this occasion.’

Nervous now, unsure? It went far deeper. He said lightly, ‘You’ll be fine, Martyn. Under full sail, remember?’

Dancer said in an odd voice, ‘You’ll never know,’ but the smile was back. ‘Bless you!’

‘Mister Midshipman Dancer?’

They were both on their feet, unconsciously, and the screen door was being held partly open by the cabin servant, as if he were guarding it.

There was no time for words; perhaps there were none to say. They touched hands, like two friends passing in the street, and Bolitho was alone.

He wanted to sit down, to gather his thoughts, perhaps in one of those comfortable chairs, as some act of defiance. Instead, he stood directly beneath the skylight and stared up at the mizzen shrouds and the empty sky, and very slowly, an inch at a time, made his mind and body relax, come to terms with this moment. They had even joked about it. Looked sometimes at the lieutenants and wondered if they had ever had qualms, and, in some cases, how they had passed. And again the face and the words of the seaman kept coming back. He should have stopped him there and then. They were all told often enough never to listen to gossip or condone it. In the crowded world of a man-of-war, it could end in face-to-face confrontation, insubordination, or worse.

He concentrated on the screen door. The great cabin was part of, but so completely separate from, this vast three-decker. Here the captain could entertain his particular friends and favoured subordinates, even the most junior if it suited him. Bolitho himself had been invited into the captain’s quarters aboard Gorgon on two occasions, once on the King’s birthday, when as the youngest present he had been required to give the Loyal Toast, and another to wait upon some female guests, and ensure that they did not stumble on the ladders between decks or entangle their gowns while entering or leaving the boats alongside.

He thought of Dancer again. Always so at ease with women, outwardly anyway. It was not something false, or done for effect; Bolitho had known plenty like that. Martyn Dancer was of a different breed, something he had noticed even when they had first met. His father was a wealthy, worldly man, of influence and authority, who had made it plain from the outset that he was opposed to his son’s choice of career. Throwing his wits to the wind, as he had put it more than once.

And he had seen it in his sister’s eyes when she and Martyn had talked and laughed together. And in the watchful glances from his mother.

He walked to the opposite end of the screened lobby and peered through to the big double wheel, at the scrubbed gratings where two or more helmsmen would stand when the ship was under way, and heeling over to her towering pyramid of canvas. Another grating was propped upright by the mizzen, probably to dry, but suddenly reminiscent of those far-off days in Manxman and the first flogging he had ever witnessed. It was something you had to accept, a necessary discipline. What else would deter the persistent offender?

Accept, perhaps, but Bolitho had never grown accustomed to it. And yet he had seen some of the older hands bare their backs and boast of their endurance of the cat, as if the terrible scars were something to be carried with pride.

He could still remember standing with the other midshipmen, the very first time he had heard the pipe, ‘All hands lay aft to witness punishment!’

He had found himself gripping the arm of another middy, his entire body shaking to every crack of the lash across the torn skin.

And that other stark and brutal memory, which never completely left him, months or even a year after that, when he had been face-to-face with an enemy, unskilled and desperate, and carried bodily by the stamping, cursing crush of boarders across the other vessel’s deck. Pirates, smugglers, rebels… they were the enemy. Cutlass, pike and boarding axe, their faces masks of hate and anger. Sailors he knew, or thought he knew, stabbing and hacking