Excluding every one else.
They 're together now. Nothing can harm them.
It had troubled him deeply.
There were sounds, voices, on the stairway: Tolan bringing his master's wine, or maybe something stronger. He felt his mouth crack into a grin.
'There'll be other ships.'
He realized that he had spoken aloud.
Just say the word, Cap’n.
'If you would wait in here, Captain… er… Bolitho.' The Admiralty porter held the door open. 'Should you require any assistance…' He did not finish it, but closed the door silently behind him.
Adam Bolitho stood a moment to get his bearings, or perhaps to prepare himself. After all the haste and uncertainty, this sudden stillness was unnerving. A table, three chairs, and one window: it was more like a cell than a waiting room.
Like most serving officers, he had not visited this, the seat of Admiralty, more than a few times throughout his whole career, and he had always been impressed by the orderly confusion and purpose. Clerks carrying files of papers, criss-crossing what were still to him a maze of corridors, opening and shutting doors. Some remained closed, even guarded, while strategic conferences were in session; others, partly opened, revealed the materials and tools of command. Huge wall charts and maps, instruments, rows of waiting chairs. It was hard to imagine the immense power, and control of the world's greatest navy, being wielded from within these walls.
He walked over to the table. On it was a precisely folded copy of The Times and beside it a goblet and carafe of water.
So quiet, as if the whole corridor were holding its breath.
He moved to the window, impatient now, refusing to acknowledge the strain and fatigue of mind and body. He should have known what it would do to him. The bitter aftermath of the action at San Jose, 'skirmish 'as one news sheet had dismissed it, and the long passage home. Plymouth and then Portsmouth. He rubbed his forehead. Mere days ago.
It seemed like a lifetime.
The window overlooked an enclosed courtyard, so near the opposite wall that you had to press your head against the glass to see it. The other wall had no windows. Storerooms of some kind? And above, trapped above the two walls, was the sky.
Grey, cold, hostile. He stepped back and looked around the room. A cell indeed.
A carriage had been sent to Bethune's house to collect him for the journey to and along Whitehall. He was met by a clerk who had murmured polite comments about the weather and the amount of traffic, which, he was told, often delayed important meetings if senior officers were trapped in it. The constant movement, the noise. Like a foreign country. Because I am the stranger here.
From there he had been handed over to the porter, a towering, heavy man in a smart tailed coat with gleaming buttons, whose buckled shoes had clicked down one passageway after another as he led the way. Like a ship of the line, with lesser craft parting to let them through.
There was one picture on this otherwise bare wall. A twodecker, firing a salute or at an unseen enemy. Old, and probably Dutch. His mind was clinging to the inconsequential detail. Holding on.
All those faces, names. Not even a full year since Athena had hoisted Bethune's vice-admiral's flag. And I became his flag captain. And now she was paid off, like all those other unwanted ships. Their work, and sometimes their sacrifice, would soon be forgotten.
He recalled the longer waiting room he had seen briefly in passing. So like those redundant ships that seemed to line the harbours or any available creek: a final resting place.
Officers, a few in uniform, waiting to see some one in authority. Need, desperation, a last chance to plead for a ship.
Any ship. Their only dread to be discarded, cast from the life they knew, and ending on the beach. A warning to all of them.
There were nine hundred captains on the Navy List, and not an admiral under sixty years of age.
Adam turned abruptly and saw his own reflection in the window. He was thirty-eight years old, or would be in four months.
What will you do? He realized that he had thrust one hand into his coat, the pocket where he carried her letters. The link, the need. And she was in Cornwall. Unless… He jerked his hand from his coat.
'If you would follow me, Captain Bolitho?'
He snatched up his hat from the table with its unread newspaper. He had not even heard the door open.
The porter peered around the room as if it were a habit.
Looking for what? He must have seen it all. The great victories and the defeats. The heroes and the failures.
He touched the old sword at his hip. Part of the Bolitho legend. He could almost hear his aunt reminding him of it when they had been looking at his portrait; he had been painted with a yellow rose pinned to his uniform coat. Lowenna's rose.
… He could see her now. Andromeda. He heard the door close.
Cornwall. It seemed ten thousand miles away.
There were fewer people in this corridor this time, or perhaps it was a different route. More doors. Two officers standing outside one of them. Just a glance, a flicker of eyes.
Nothing more. Waiting for promotion, or a court martial…
He cleared his mind of everything but this moment, and the man he was about to meet: John Grenville, still listed as captain, but here in Admiralty appointed secretary to the First Lord.
He remembered hearing Bethune refer to him as 'second only to God'.
The porter stopped and subjected him to another scrutiny, and said abruptly, 'My son was serving in Frobisher when Sir Richard was killed, sir. He often speaks of him whenever we meet. 'He nodded slowly. 'A fine gentleman.'
'Thank you. 'Somehow it steadied him, like some one reaching out. 'Let's be about it, shall we?'
After the cell-like waiting room, this one seemed enormous, occupying an entire corner of the building, with great windows opening on two walls. There were several tables, one of which held a folding map stand; another was piled with ledgers.
Captain John Grenville was sitting at a vast desk, his back to one of the windows, framed against the meagre light. He was small, slight, even fragile at first glance, and his hair was completely white, like a ceremonial wig.
'Do be seated, Captain Bolitho. 'He gestured to a chair directly opposite. 'You must be somewhat weary after your travel. Progress has cut communication time to a minimum, but the human body is still hostage to the speed of a good horse!'
He sat cautiously, every muscle recalling the journey from Portsmouth. During the endless halts to change horses or rest them, he had seen the new telegraph system, mounted on a chain of hills and prominent buildings between the roof above their heads to the final sighting-point on the church by Portsmouth dockyard. A signal could be transmitted the entire distance in some twenty minutes, when visibility was good. In less time than it would take a courier to saddle and mount.
The winter light was stronger, or his eyes were becoming used to it. He was aware, too, that they were not alone. Another figure almost hidden by a desk on the far side of the room stood up and half-bowed, the light glinting briefly on spectacles perched on his forehead. Like Daniel Yovell, he thought.
Grenville said, 'That is Mr. Crozier. He will not disturb us.'
He leaned forward in his chair and turned over the papers arranged before him in neat piles.
Adam forced himself to relax, muscle by muscle. There was no tiredness now, no despair. He was alert. On guard. And he was alone.
'I have, of course, read all the reports of the campaign conducted under Sir Graham Bethune's command. Their lordships are also informed of the operational control of the commodore, Antigua, 'one hand moved to his mouth, and there might have been a trace of sarcasm. 'Now rear-admiral, Antigua. It slipped my mind!'
Adam saw him clearly for the first time. A thin face, the cheekbones very prominent and the skin netted with
