life around them.
Allday had heard them talking about the man he served and loved as he loved none other. He had wondered what he had really been thinking as Truculent had ploughed through each long day. Something apart. Not their ship. He let his mind explore the thought, like fingers probing a raw wound. Not like the old Hyperion.
October 15th, less than four months ago. Was that all it was? In his heart he could still feel the crash and roar of those terrible broadsides, the screams and the madness, and then-The old pain lanced through his chest and he clutched it with his fist and gasped in great mouthfuls of air, waiting for it to ease. Another sea, a
different battle, but always a reminder of how entwined their lives had become. He could guess what the stiff- faced Poland thought. Men like him could never understand Richard Bolitho. Nor would they.
He massaged his chest and gave a little, private smile. Yes, they had seen and done so much together. ViceAdmiral Sir Richard Bolitho. Even their paths had been spliced by fate. Allday wiped the spray from his face and shook his long pigtail over his collar. Most folk probably believed that Bolitho wanted for nothing. His last exploits had swept the seaports and taverns of England. A ballad had been composed by Charles Dibdin or one of his fellows: 'How Hyperion Cleared the Way! ' The words of a dying sailor whose hand Bolitho had held on that awful sunlit day, although he had been needed in a hundred other places at once.
But only those who had shared it really knew. The power and the passion of the man behind the gold lace and gleaming epaulettes, who could lead his sailors, be they half-mad, half-deafened by the hellish roar of battle; who could make them cheer even in the face of the Devil and the moment of certain death.
And yet he was the same one who could turn up the noses of London society, and invite gossip in the coffee houses. Allday straightened and sighed. The pain did not return. Yet. They would all be surprised if they knew just how little Bolitho did have, he thought.
He heard Poland snap, 'A good man aloft, Mr Williams, if you please! '
Allday could almost feel pity for the first lieutenant, and hid a grin as he replied, 'Already done, sir. I sent a master's mate to the foremast when the watch came aft.'
Poland strode away from him and glared when he saw the viceadmiral's coxswain loitering.
'Only the Afterguard and my officers-' He shut his mouth and moved instead to the compass.
Allday stamped down the companion ladder and allowed the smells and sounds of the ship to greet him. Tar, paint, cordage and the sea. He heard the bark of orders, the squeal of braces and halliards through their blocks, the thud of dozens of bare feet as the men threw themselves against the tug of rudder and wind and the ship began to change tack.
At the door of the great cabin a Royal Marine sentry stood near a wildly spiralling lantern, his scarlet coat angled more steeply as the helm went hard over.
Allday gave him a nod as he thrust open the screen door. He rarely abused his privileges, but it made him proud to know he was able to come and go as he pleased. Something else to gall Captain Poland, he thought with a grim chuckle. He nearly collided with Ozzard, Bolitho's small, mole-like servant, as he scuttled away with some shirts to wash.
'How is he?'
Ozzard glanced aft. Beyond the sleeping quarters and Poland 's swaying cot the cabin was almost in darkness again, but for a single lantern.
He murmured, 'Not moved.' Then he was gone. Loyal, secretive, always there when he was needed. Allday believed Ozzard was still brooding about the October day when their old Hyperion had given up her last fight and gone down. Only Allday himself knew that it had been Ozzard's intention to stay and go with her to the seabed, with all the dead and some of the dying still on board. Another mystery. He wondered if Bolitho knew or guessed what had almost happened. To speculate why, was beyond him.
Then he saw Bolitho's pale figure framed by the broad stern windows. He was sitting with one knee drawn up on the bench seat, his shirt very white against the tumbling water beyond.
For some reason Allday was moved by what he saw. He had seen Bolitho like this in so many of the ships they had shared after that first meeting. So many mornings. So many years.
He said uncertainly, 'I'll fetch another lantern, Sir Richard.'
Bolitho turned his head, his grey eyes in dark shadow. 'It will be light enough soon, old friend.' Without noticing it he touched his left eyelid and added, 'We may sight land today.'
So calmly said, Allday thought, and yet his mind and heart must be so crammed with memories, good and rotten. But if there was bitterness he gave no hint of it in his voice.
Allday said, 'Reckon Cap'n Poland will cuss an' swear if there ain't, an' that's no error! '
Bolitho smiled and turned to watch the sea as it boiled from the rudder, as if some great fish was about to break surface in pursuit of the lively frigate.
He had always admired the dawn at sea. So many and such different waters, from the blue, placid depths of the Great South Sea to the raging grey wastes of the Western Ocean. Each unique, like the ships and men who challenged them.
He had expected, hoped even, that this day might bring some relief from his brooding thoughts. A fine, clean shirt, one of Allday's best shaves; it often gave a sense of well-being. But this time it eluded him.
He heard the shrill of calls again and could picture the orderly bustle on deck as the sails were sheeted home, the slackness shaken from braces and halliards. At heart he was perhaps still a frigate captain, as he had been when Allday had been brought aboard as a pressed man. Since then, so many leagues sailed, too many faces wiped away like chalk off a slate.
He saw the first hint of light on the crests, the spray leaping away on either quarter as the dawn began to roll down from the horizon.
Bolitho stood up and leaned his hands on the sill to stare more closely at the sea's face.
He recalled as if it were yesterday an admiral breaking the painful truth to him, when he had protested about the only appointment he could beg from the Admiralty after recovering from his terrible fever.
'You were a frigate captain, Bolitho…' Twelve years ago, maybe more.
Eventually he had been given the old Hyperion, and then probably only because of the bloody revolution in France and the war which had followed it, and which had raged almost without respite until this very day.
And yet Hyperion was the one ship which was to change his life. Many had doubted his judgment when he had pleaded for the old seventy-four as his last flagship. From captain to viceadmiral; it had seemed the right choice. The only choice.
She had gone down last October, leading Bolitho's squadron in the Mediterranean against a much more powerful force of Spanish ships under the command of an old enemy, Almirante Don Alberto Casares. It had been a desperate battle by any standards, and the outcome had never been certain from the first broadsides.
And yet, impossibly, they had beaten the Dons, and had even taken some prizes back to Gibraltar.
But the old Hyperion had given everything she had, and could offer no further resistance. She was thirty-three years old when the great ninety-gun San Mateo had poured the last broadside into her. Apart from a short period as a mastless stores hulk, she had sailed and fought in every sea where the flag was challenged. Some rot in her frames and timbers, deep down in her worn hull, undiscovered by any dockyard, had finally betrayed her.
In spite of everything Bolitho had witnessed and endured during a lifetime at sea, it was still too hard to accept that she was gone.
He had heard some say that but for his judgment in holding and defeating the Spanish squadron, the enemy would have joined with the Combined Fleet off Trafalgar. Then perhaps even brave Nelson could not have triumphed. Bolitho had not known how to react. More flattery? After Nelson's death he had been sickened to watch the same people who had hated him and despised him for his liaison with that Hamilton woman sing his praises the highest and lament his passing.
Like so many he had never met the little admiral who had raised the hearts of his sailors even in the squalor most of them endured on endless blockade duty or firing gun-to-gun with an enemy. Nelson had known his men, and given them the leadership they understood and needed.
He realised that Allday had padded from the cabin, and hated himself for bringing him out here on a mission which was probably fruitless.
Allday would not be moved. My English oak. Bolitho would only have hurt and insulted him if he had left him ashore at Falmouth. They had got this far together.
He touched his left eyelid and sighed. How would it torment him in the bright African sunlight?
