Honour This Day

They had walked from the harbour at Falmouth and paused at the church which had become so much a part of the Bolitho family. Generations of them were remembered there, births and marriages, victories at sea and violent death also.

Allday had stayed near the big doors of the silent church on that summer's day and had listened with sadness and astonishment as Bolitho spoke her name. Cheney. Just her name; and yet it had told him so much. Allday still believed that when they reached the old grey stone house below Pendennis Castle it would all return to normal. The lovely Lady Belinda who m looks at least was so like the dead Cheney, would somehow make it right, would comfort Bolitho when she realised the extent of his hurt. Maybe heal the agony in his mind which he never mentioned, but which Allday recognised. Suppose the other eye was somehow wounded m battle* The fear of so many sailors and soldiers. Helpless. Unwanted. Ferguson, the estate's steward who had lost an arm at the Saintes what seemed like a million years back, his rosy-cheeked wife Grace the housekeeper, and all the other servants had been waiting to greet them. Laughter, cheers, and a lot of tears too. But Belinda and the child Elizabeth had not been there. Ferguson said that she had sent a letter to explain her absence. God knew it was common enough for a returning sailor to find his family ignorant of his whereabouts, but it could not have come at a worse moment or hit Bolitho so hard.

Even his young nephew Adam, who now held his own command of the brig Firefly, was not able to console him. He had been ordered back to take on supplies and fresh water.

Hyperion was real enough, though. Allday glared at the stroke oarsman as his blade feathered badly and threw spray over the gunwale. Bloody bargemen. They'd learn a thing or two if he had to teach every hand separately.

The old Hyperion was no stranger, but the people were. Was that what Bolitho wanted? Or what he needed? Allday still did not know.

If Keen had been flag captain – Allday's mouth softened. Or poor Inch even, things would seem less strange.

Captain Haven was a cold fish; even his own coxswain, a nuggety Welshman named Evans, had confided over a wet that his lord and master was without humour, and could not be reached.

Allday glanced again at Bolitho's shoulders. How unlike their own relationship. One ship after the other, different seas, but usually the same enemy. And always Bolitho had treated him as a friend, one of the family as he had once put it. It had been casually said, yet Allday had treasured the remark like a pot of gold.

It was funny if you thought about it. Some of his old messmates might even have jibed him had they not been too respectful of his fists. For Allday, like the one-armed Ferguson, had been pressed into the King's service and put aboard Bolitho's ship, the frigate Phalarope – hardly an ingredient for friendship. Allday had stayed with Bolitho ever since the Saintes when his old coxswain had been cut down.

Allday had been a sailor all his life, apart from a short period ashore when he had been a shepherd, of all things. He knew little of his birth and upbringing or even the exact whereabouts of his home. Now, as he grew older, it occasionally troubled him.

He studied Bolitho's hair, the queue tied at the nape of his neck which hung beneath his best gold-laced hat. It was jet-black, and in his appearance he remained youthful; he had sometimes been mistaken for young Adam's brother. Allday, as far as he knew, was the same age, forty-seven, but whereas he had filled out, and his thick brown hair had become streaked with grey, Bolitho never appeared to alter.

At peace he could be withdrawn and grave. But Allday knew most of his sides. A tiger in battle; a man moved almost to tears and despair when he had seen the havoc and agony after a sea-fight.

The guardboat was turning again to pass beneath the tapering jib-boom of a handsome schooner. Allday eased over the tiller and held his breath as fire probed the wound in his chest. That too rarely left his mind. The Spanish blade which had come from nowhere. Bolitho standing to protect him, then throwing down his sword to surrender and so spare his life.

The wound troubled him, and he often found it hard to straighten his shoulders without the pain lancing through him as a cruel reminder.

Bolitho had sometimes suggested that he should remain ashore, if only for a time. He no longer offered him a chance of complete freedom from the navy he had served so well; he knew it would injure Allday like a worse wound.

The barge pointed her stem towards the nearest jetty and Allday saw Bolitho's fingers fasten around the scabbard of the old sword between his knees. So many battles. So often they had marvelled that they had been spared once again when so many others had fallen.

'Bows!' He watched critically as the bowman withdrew his oar and rose with a boathook held ready to snatch for the jetty-chains. They looked smart enough, Allday conceded, in their tarred hats and fresh checkered shirts. But it needed more than paint to make a ship sail.

Allday himself was an imposing figure, although he was rarely aware of it unless he caught the eye of some girl or other, which was more often than he might admit. In his fine blue coat with the special gilt buttons Bolitho had presented to him, and his nankeen breeches, he looked every inch the Heart of Oak so popular in theatre and pleasure-garden performances.

The guardboat moved aside, the officer in charge rising to doff his hat while his oarsmen tossed their looms in salute.

With a start Allday realised that Bolitho had turned to look up at him, his hand momentarily above one eye as if to shield it from the glare. He said nothing, but there was a message in the glance, as if he had shouted it aloud. Like a plea; a recognition which excluded all others for those few seconds.

Allday was a simple man, but he remembered the look long after Bolitho had left the barge. It both worried and moved him.

As if he had shared something precious.

He saw some of the bargemen staring at him and roared, 'I've seen smarter Jacks thrown out of a brothel, but by God you'll do better next time, an' that's no error!'

Jenour stepped ashore and smiled as the solitary midshipman blushed with embarrassment at the coxswain's sudden outburst. The flag lieutenant had been with Bolitho just over a month, but already he was beginning to recognise the strange charisma of the man he served, his hero since he had been like that tongue-tied midshipman. Bolitho's voice scattered his thoughts.

'Come along, Mr Jenour. The barge can wait; the affairs of war will not.'

Jenour hid a grin. 'Aye, Sir Richard.' He thought of his parents in Hampshire, how they had shaken their heads when he had told them he intended to be Bolitho's aide one day.

Bolitho had seen the grin and felt the return of his sense of loss. He knew how the young lieutenant felt, how he had once been himself. In the navy's private world you found and hung on to friends with all your might. When they fell you lost something with them. Survival did not spare you the pain of their passing; it never could.

He stopped abruptly on the jetty stairs and thought of Hyperion's first lieutenant. Those gipsy good looks -of course. It had been Keverne he had recalled to mind. They were so alike. Charles Keverne, once his first lieutenant in Euryalus, who had been killed at Copenhagen as captain of his own ship.

'Are you all right, Sir Richard⁵'

'Damn you, yes¹' Bolitho swung round instantly and touched Jenour's cuff. 'Forgive me. Rank offers many privileges. Being foul-mannered is not one of them.'

He walked up the stairs while Jenour stared after him.

Yovell sighed as he sweated up the steep stone steps. The poor lieutenant had a lot to learn. It was to be hoped he had the time.

The long room seemed remarkably cool after the heat beyond the shaded windows.

Bolitho sat in a straight-backed chair and sipped a glass of hock, and marvelled that anything could stay so cold. Lieutenant Jenour and Yovell sat at a separate table, which was littered with files and folios of signals and reports. It was strange to consider that it had been in a more austere part of this same building that Bolitho had waited and fretted for the news of his first command.

The hock was good and very clear. He realised that his glass was already being refilled by a Negro servant and knew he had to be careful. Bolitho enjoyed a glass of wine but had found it easy to avoid the common pitfall in the