With All Despatch

gravity could not contain.

Drew continued, 'You will know this tale of old, Bolitho. Too many captains, and not yet enough vessels to receive them. There are fleet transports and supply vessels, of course, but-'

Bolitho's eyes flashed. 'I am a frigate captain, Sir Marcus-'

The admiral raised one hand so that the frilled lace spilled over his cuff.

He corrected, 'Were a frigate captain, Bolitho.' He saw the pain cross his face, the deeper lines which seemed to sharpen his cheekbones. The fever might still lurk there. He said smoothly, 'And a fine one to all accounts.'

Bolitho leaned forward, one hand grasping the hilt of his old sword so tightly that the knuckles were as white as bones.

'I am recovered, Sir Marcus. In God's name, I thought when I was admitted-'

Drew stood up and crossed to the window again. He had no sense of command or victory now. If anything he felt ashamed.

He said, 'We need men, Bolitho. Seamen, those who can reef and steer, fight if need be.'

He turned briefly and saw Bolitho staring down at the old sword. Another part of the story, he thought. It had been in the family for generations. Had been intended for Bolitho's brother. His disgrace and treachery had killed their father as surely as any pistol ball.

'You are being appointed to the Nore. As captain-in-charge of some small craft.' He waved his hand vaguely. 'We have had many deserters from the Nore-they see smuggling as a more profitable profession. Some have even decamped to the Honourable East India Company, although I-'

Bolitho remarked coldly, 'John Company has a record of treating its people like men, Sir Marcus, not as some will use them.'

Drew turned and said sharply, 'It is all I can offer. Their Lordships believe you to be suitable for it. However-'

Bolitho stood up and held his sword tightly against his hip.

'I apologise, Sir Marcus. It is not of your doing.'

Drew swallowed hard. 'I do understand.' He tried to change the subject. 'You will have none of your past company with you from Tempest, of course. She came home well before you and is now in service with the Channel Fleet. Tempest, and before that the- Unicorn, I believe?'

Bolitho watched him in despair. Doing his best. He heard himself reply, 'Undine, sir.'

'Well, in any case-' It was almost over.

Bolitho said quietly, 'I shall have my coxswain. He is enough.'

Drew saw one of the gilt doorhandles drop; the clerk was right on cue.

Bolitho added, 'It is history now, maybe forgotten entirely. But one ship, my ship, was all His Britannic Majesty's navy had in the whole ocean to meet with and destroy Tuke.' He turned and appeared to be studying the great painting, hearing perhaps the true sounds of war, feeling the pain of a ship under fire. He continued, 'I fell that day. It was then that the fever rendered me helpless.' He faced Drew again and smiled. The smile did not touch his grey eyes. 'My coxswain killed Tuke. So you could say that he saved the islands all on his own-eh, Sir Marcus?'

Drew held out his hand. 'I wish you well. My clerk will attend your orders. Be patient, Bolitho-England will need all her sailors soon.' He frowned. 'Does that amuse you, sir?'

Bolitho took his cocked hat from the hovering clerk.

'I was thinking of my late father, Captain James as he was to all who knew him. He once said much the same words to me.'

'Oh, when was that?'

Bolitho withdrew, his mind already grappling with the brief outline of his commission.

'Before we lost America, sir.'

Drew stared at the closed door, first with fury and then unwillingly, with a slow grin.

So it was true after all. The man and the legend were one.

Captain Richard Bolitho opened his eyes with a start of alarm, surprise too, that he had fallen into a doze as the carriage rolled steadily along a deeply rutted track.

He looked through a side window and saw the various shades of green, bushes and trees, all glistening and heavy from another rainfall. Springtime in Kent, the Garden of England as it was called, but there seemed precious little sign of it.

He glanced at his companion, who was slumped awkwardly on the opposite seat. Bryan Ferguson, his steward, who did more than anyone to direct the affairs of the house and estate in Falmouth. He had lost an arm at the Battle of the Saintes. Like Allday, he had been a pressed man aboard Bolitho's ship Phalarope, and yet the events then had joined them together. Something unbreakable. He gave a sad smile. Few would guess that Ferguson had only one arm as he usually concealed the fact with his loose-fitting green coat. From one outthrust boot Bolitho saw the gleam of brass and guessed that Ferguson was carrying his favourite carriage pistol. To be on the safe side, as he put it.

God alone knew, the Kentish roads were deserted enough, perhaps too much so for highwaymen, footpads and the like.

Bolitho stretched and felt the ache in his bones. It was his constant dread that the fever might somehow return despite all that the surgeons had told him. He thought of the two years it had taken him to fight his way back to health, and finding the strength to relive it once again. Faces swam in misty memory, his sister Nancy, even her pompous husband the squire, 'The King of Cornwall' as he had been dubbed locally.

And Ferguson's wife who was the housekeeper in the great grey home below Pendennis Castle where so many Bolithos had begun life, and had left to follow the sea. Some had never returned. But above all Bolitho remembered his coxswain, Allday. He had never seemed to sleep, had been constantly close by, to help in the struggle against fever, to fetch and carry, and too often, Bolitho suspected, to accept his delirious bursts of anger.

Allday. Like an oak, a rock. Over the ten years since he had been brought aboard by the press gang in Cornwall their relationship had strengthened. Allday's deep understanding of the sea, his impudence when need be, had been like an anchor for Bolitho. A friend? That was too frail a description.

He could hear him now, talking with Old Matthew Corker the coachman, while Young Matthew occasionally joined in with his piping tones from the rear box. The boy was only fourteen, and the old coachman's grandson. He was the apple of his eye, and he had brought him up from a baby after his father had been lost at sea in one of the famous Falmouth packet-ships. Old Matthew had always hoped that the boy would eventually follow in his footsteps. He was getting on in years, and Bolitho knew he had missed the right road on several occasions on the long haul from Falmouth, where weeks ago this journey had had its beginning. The old man was more used to the local harbours and villages around Falmouth, and as he had followed the road to London, pausing at inn after inn to change horses and pick up fresh post-boys to ride them, he must have wondered when he would eventually step down from his box.

The coach had been Bolitho's idea. The thought of being taken ill on some part of the journey, perhaps on a crowded mail coach, had haunted him. This carriage was old, and had been built for his father. Well sprung, with the motion more like a boat on these roads than a vehicle, it was painted dark green, with the Bolitho crest on either door. The motto too, For My Country's Freedom, picked out in gold scrollwork beneath.

He thought of that motion now as the carriage rolled past the endless bank of shining trees and fields. In his pocket were his written orders, the wording so familiar to him, and yet, in these circumstances, so barren.

To proceed to the Nore. The great River Medway, the towns which marked the miles to the Royal Dockyard at Chatham, and then on to the open sea.

To command what? As far as he could discover he was under the local control of a Commodore Ralph Hoblyn. His name at least was familiar, and he had served with distinction in the Americas before being badly wounded at the decisive battle of the Chesapeake in '81. Another misfit perhaps?

Ferguson yawned and then collected his wits.