journey to his new prison. It had taken every ounce of his self-control and determination to endure the seven days, and he had thanked his hard upbringing in a King’s ship more than once as time seemed to stretch to an eternity.
His guards must have been hand-picked for their coarseness and brutality, and their ill-fitting uniforms only added to their air of menace.
Bolitho was made to strip naked while several of the guards searched him and removed every personal possession from his clothing. Not content with that, they’d removed his rear-admiral’s epaulettes and gilt buttons, presumably to be shared round as souvenirs. And all the while they had subjected him to every humiliation and insult. But Bolitho knew men as well as he understood ships, and had no illusions about his guards. They were seeking an excuse to kill him, and showed their disappointment when he remained silent and apparently calm.
Only once had his will almost cracked. One of the soldiers had dragged the locket from about his neck and had peered curiously at it for several moments. Bolitho had tried to appear unconcerned, even though he wanted to hurl himself at the man’s throat and throttle him before the others cut him down.
The guard had prised open the locket with his bayonet, and had blinked with astonishment as a lock of hair had blown across the floor and then out of the open door.
But the locket was gold, and he had seemed satisfied. He would never know what it had meant to Bolitho, the lock of Cheney’s hair which she had given him before he had left her for the last time.
Without a watch, or anyone to speak with, it was hard to mark the passing of time, even the pattern of events beyond the walls.
As he was led from the cell into the courtyard and saw the waiting carriage, he was grateful. If the new prison was worse, or he was about to face a firing-party instead of captivity, he was glad of an end to waiting.
Inside the darkened coach he found the others waiting for him. It was unexpected and moving for each one. As the carriage began to move and the mounted escort took station behind it, they clasped hands, barely able to speak as they examined each other’s faces in the chinks of sunlight through the shutters.
Bolitho said, “Your being here is my fault. Had I given my word you would have been sent home, soon perhaps. Now,” he shrugged, “you are as much a prisoner as I am.”
Allday seemed openly pleased, or was he relieved to find him still alive?
“By God, I’m fair glad to be rid of those scum, sir!” He held up his two fists like clubs. “Another few days o’ these mounseers an’ I’d have swung for ’em!”
Neale, propped between Browne and Allday, reached out and touched Bolitho’s hands. His head was heavily bandaged, and in the fleeting stabs of sunshine his face looked as pale as death.
He whispered, “Together. Now we’ll show them.”
Allday said gently, “He’s doing his best, sir.” He looked at Bolitho and gave a quick shake of the head. “Not changed a mite since he was a young gentleman, eh, sir?”
Browne said, “I was interrogated by two of the French officers, sir. They asked a lot about you. I heard them discussing you later, and I suspect they are worried.”
Bolitho nodded. “You did not let them know you speak and understand French?”
He saw Browne smile. He had almost forgotten about his flag-lieutenant’s other assets. A small thing, but in their favour.
Browne clung to a strap as the carriage gathered speed. “I heard some talk about more invasion craft being sent up to Lorient and Brest. Two types, I think. One is called a chaloupe de cannoniere, and the other is a smaller type, a peniche. They have been building them by the hundred, or so it sounds.”
Bolitho found he was able to relate this sparse information to his own predicament without despair. Perhaps the testing he had endured, alone in the cell, had given him the hatred he needed to think clearly, to plan how best to hit back.
He looked at Neale as he lolled against Allday’s protective arm. His shirt was open to the waist, and Bolitho could see the scratches on his skin where someone’s fingers had torn off the locket Neale always wore. It had contained a portrait of his mother, but they had seized it nonetheless. Poor, broken Neale. What was his mind grappling with now, he wondered, as the wheels clattered and bounced along the open road. Of his beloved Styx, of his home, or of his first lieutenant, the taciturn Mr Pickthorn, who had been an extension of his own command?
But for me, he would he safe in hospital.
Dozing, and reawakening as if fearful that their reunification might be just one more taunt and part of the nightmare, they sustained each other, and endured the heat of the shuttered coach without knowing where they were or where they were bound.
Several times the coach halted, horses were watered or changed, some bread and wine were thrust into the carriage without more than a swift glance from one of the escorts, and they were off again.
“If we are separated again we must try to keep contact somehow.” Bolitho heard a carriage clatter past in the opposite direction. A wide road then, not some winding lane. “I intend to escape, but we shall go together.” He felt them looking at him, could even sense their awakened hope. “If one of us falls or gets taken, the others must go on. Get the news to England somehow, tell them the truth of the French preparations and their new signals system.”
Allday grunted. “Together, sir. That’s what you said. If I have to carry all of you, begging yer pardon, sir, we’ll stay together, an’ England will have to wait a mite longer.”
Browne chuckled, a welcome sound when they might all be shot dead before another day had passed.
He said, “Keep your place, Allday. You’re an admiral’s servant, not his cox’n, remember?”
Allday grinned. “I’ll never live it down.”
Bolitho put his finger to his lips. “Quiet!”
He tried to loosen one of the shutters but only managed to move it very slightly. Watched by the others, he knelt down on the floor, ignoring the pain in his wounded thigh, and pressed his face to the shutter.
He said softly, “The sea. I can smell it.” He looked at them, as if he had just revealed some great miracle. To sailors it was just that. The sea.
They would be taken out of the carriage and shut away once more in some stinking prison. But it would not be the same, no matter what privation or suffering they had to face. How many men must have seen the sea as an enemy, a final barrier to freedom. But any sailor nursed it in his heart like a prayer. Just get me to the sea, and somehow I’ll reach home.
The carriage stopped, and a soldier opened the shutters to let in some air.
Bolitho sat very still, but his eyes were everywhere. There was no sign of water, but beyond a series of low, rounded hills he knew it was there.
On the other side of the road was a great stretch of bare, barren looking land, across which, in rolling clouds of thick dust, troops of mounted horsemen wheeled and reformed, the spectacle like part of that huge picture in the commandant’s room.
Browne said softly, “Like the escort, sir. French dragoons.”
Bolitho heard the blare of a trumpet and saw the sun gleam across black-plumed helmets and breast-plates as the horses changed formation and cantered into another wall of dust. Open country. Very suitable for training cavalry, perhaps for invasion. Also, they represented a real threat to anyone trying to escape from captivity. As a boy, Bolitho had often watched the local dragoons parading and exercising at Truro, near his home in Falmouth. Had seen them too hunting some smugglers who had broken away from the revenue men, their sabres glittering as they had galloped in pursuit across the moor.
The shutters were replaced and the coach jerked forward. Bolitho knew the act had been a warning, not an act of compassion. No words could have made it clearer. Those proud dragoons shouted it from the skies.
It was dusk by the time they finally alighted from the carriage, stiff and tired after the journey. The young officer in charge of the escort handed some papers to a blue-coated official, and with a curt nod to the prisoners turned on his heel, obviously glad to be rid of his charges.
Bolitho looked past the official, who was still examining the papers as if he was barely able to read, and looked at the squat building which was to be their new prison.
A high stone wall, windowless, with a central tower which was just visible through the shadows of the gates.
An old fort, a coastguard station, added to and altered over the years, it might have been anything.
The man in the blue coat looked at him and pointed to the gates. Some soldiers who had been watching the
