Bulkley put out a hand to steady himself as the deck tilted to the sudden pressure of wind and rudder. He would go to his sick-bay and have several long drinks. He had no wish to see the island as it fell astern in the dusk. It had given them fresh water, but had taken lives in exchange. Bolitho’s party at the pool had been massacred but for Stockdale and two others. Colpoys had reported that the savages who had attacked them were once slaves who had possibly escaped when on passage to an island plantation.
Seeing Bolitho and his men approaching, they had doubtless imagined they were there to hunt them down and award some brutal reprisal. When Destiny’s boats, roused by the pistol-shot from the beach and the sudden panic amongst the cutter’s crew, had reached the shore, those same slaves had run towards them. Nobody knew if they had realized Destiny was not a ‘blackbirder’ after all and were trying to make recompense. Colpoys had directed the swivel guns and musketoons which were mounted in each boat to rake the beach. When the smoke had drifted away there had been nobody alive to explain.
Bulkley paused at the top of the ladder and heard the clatter of blocks, the pad of bare feet as the seamen hauled at halliards and braces to set their ship on her true course.
To a man-of-war it was only an interlude. Something to be written up in her log. Until the next challenge, the next fight. He glanced aft at the swaying deckhead lantern and the red-coated sentry beneath it.
And yet, he decided, there had been a lot of worthwhile things, too.
11. Secrets
THE DAYS which immediately followed Bolitho’s return to the living were like parts of a dream. From the age of twelve, since he had first gone to sea as a midshipman, he had been used to the constant demands of a ship. Night or day, at any hour and under all conditions he had been ready to run with the others to whatever duty was ordered, and had been under no illusions as to the consequences if he failed to obey.
But as Destiny sailed slowly northwards through the Caribbean he was forced to accept his inactivity, to remain still and listen to the familiar sounds beyond the cabin or above his head.
The dream was made more than bearable by the presence of Aurora. Even the terrible pain which struck suddenly and without mercy she somehow held at bay, just as she saw through his pitiful attempts to hide it from her.
She would hold his hand or wipe his brow with a damp cloth. Sometimes when the agony probed his skull like a branding iron she put her arm beneath his shoulders and pressed her face to his chest, murmuring secret words into his body as if to still the torment.
He watched her whenever she was in a position where he could see her. While his strength held he described the shipboard sounds, the names of the sailors he knew, and how they worked together to make the ship a living thing.
He told her of his home in Falmouth, of his brother and sisters and the long Bolitho ancestry which was part of the sea itself.
She was always careful not to excite him with questions, and allowed him to talk as long as he felt like it. She fed him, but in such a fashion that he did not feel humiliated or like a helpless child.
Only when the matter of shaving arose was she unable to keep a straight face.
“But, dear Richard, you do not seem to need a shave!”
Bolitho flushed, knowing it was true, as he usually shaved but once a week.
She said, “I will do it for you.”
She used the razor with great care, watching each stroke, and occasionally glancing through the stern windows to see if the ship was on even keel.
Bolitho tried to relax, glad that she imagined his tenseness was out of fear of the razor. In fact, he was more than aware of her nearness, the pressure of her breast as she leaned over him, the exciting touch on his face and throat.
“There.” She stood back and studied him approvingly. “You look very…” she hunted through her vocabulary “… distinguished.”
Bolitho asked, “Could I see, please?” He saw the uncertainty. “Please.”
She took a mirror from the cabin chest and said, “You are strong. You will get over it.”
Bolitho stared at the face in the mirror. It was that of a stranger. The surgeon had sheared away his hair from the right temple, and the whole of his forehead from eyebrow to where the hair remained was black and purple with savage bruising. Bulkley had appeared content when he had removed the dressing and bandages, but to Bolitho’s eyes the length and depth of the scar, made more horrific by the black criss-cross of the surgeon’s stitches, was repellent.
He said quietly, “It must sicken you.”
She removed the mirror and said, “I am proud of you. Nothing could spoil you in my heart. I have stayed with you from that first moment when you were carried here. Have watched over you, so that I know your body like my own.” She met his gaze proudly. “That scar will remain, but it is one of honour, not of shame!”
Later she left his side in answer to a summons from Dumaresq.
The cabin servant, Macmillan, told Bolitho that Destiny was due to sight St Christopher’s on the following day, so it seemed likely that the captain was about to clarify Egmont’s statement and make certain he would stand by it.
The hunt for the missing bullion, or whatever form it had taken since Garrick’s seizure of it, seemed of no importance to Bolitho. He had had plenty of time to think about his future as he sweated in pain or had found recovery in her arms. Perhaps too much time.
The idea of her stepping ashore, to rejoin her husband in whatever new enterprise he dictated, and not to see her ever again, was unbearable.
To mark the progress of his recovery he had several visitors. Rhodes, beaming with pleasure to see him again, unabashed as ever as he said, “Makes you look like a real terror, Richard. That’ll get the doxies jumping when we reach port!” He was careful not to mention Aurora.
Palliser came too and made as close as he knew how to an apology.
“If I had sent a marine picket as Colpoys suggested, none of it would have happened.” He shrugged and glanced round the cabin, at the female attire draped near the windows after being washed by the maid. “But it apparently has its brighter aspects.”
Bulkley and Dumaresq’s clerk supervised the first walk away from the cabin. Bolitho felt the ship responding beneath his bare feet, but knew his weakness, the dizziness which never seemed far away, no matter how hard he tried to conceal it.
He cursed Spillane and his medical knowledge when he said, “Might be a severe fracture there, sir?”
Bulkley replied gruffly, “Nonsense. But still, it’s early days.”
Bolitho had expected to die, but with recovery apparently within his grasp it seemed unthinkable there was yet another course he might have to take. To be sent home in the next available ship, to be removed from the Navy List and not even retained on half-pay to give some hope of re-employment.
He wished he could have thanked Stockdale, but even his influence had so far failed to get him past the sentry at the door.
All the midshipmen, with the noticeable exception of Cowdroy, had been to visit him, and had stared at his terrible scar with a mixture of awe and commiseration. Jury had been quite unable to hide his admiration and had exclaimed, “To think that I cried like a baby over my pin-prick!”
It was late evening before she returned to the cabin, and he sensed the change in her, the listless way she arranged his pillow and made certain his water-jug was filled.
She said quietly, “I shall leave tomorrow, Richard. My husband has signed his name to the documents. It is done. Your captain has sworn that he will leave us to go as we please once he has seen the governor of St Christopher’s. After that, I do not know.”
Bolitho gripped her hand and tried not to think of Dumaresq’s other promise to the Heloise’s master before he had died. Had died from Bolitho’s own blade.
He said, “I may have to leave the ship, too.”
