only what they had wanted to see.
The flaw in the pattern of things, like a face in a crowd, there, but invisible.
All they had been able to see was Napoleon’s eventual defeat. After twenty years of war it had, at last, seemed like the impossible landfall. He knew that Tyacke had made no attempt to conceal his disgust at Peter Dawes’s handling of the squadron in his admiral’s absence. Maybe Dawes was another one, blind to everything but his own advancement: promotion, which might vanish like mist if the war should suddenly end.
Bolitho considered his visitors. Keen, contained but enthusiastic at his new appointment, desperately eager to leave the past behind, to overcome his loss. Only Adam seemed unable or unwilling to forget it.
He heard something rattle behind the pantry hatch, a subtle signal from Ozzard that he was still about, in case he was required.
And what of me? So bitter at being parted from the woman he loved that he had failed to heed the instinct gained all those years ago as a frigate captain.
Maybe it was destined to end like this. He had opened the screen door without realizing that he had moved, and the marine sentry was staring at him, transfixed. Their admiral, coatless despite the damp air between decks, who had only to raise a finger to have every man running to do his bidding. What was the matter with him?
Bolitho heard a murmur of voices from the wardroom. Perhaps Avery was there. Or James Tyacke, although he was probably working alone in his cabin. He never slept for more than an hour or two at a time. Surely there was someone he could talk to?
“Something wrong, Sir Richard?”
Bolitho let his arms fall to his sides. Allday was here, watching him, his shadow moving slowly back and forth across the new paintwork, his face devoid of surprise. As if he had known.
“I want to talk, old friend. It’s nothing… I’m not sure.” He turned to the ramrod sentry who was still staring at him, eyes popping, as if his collar was choking him. “At ease, Wilson. There is nothing to fear.”
The marine swallowed. “Yessir!” As he heard the door close he wiped his face with his sleeve. His sergeant would have given him hell just for doing that. But he had been with his squad in the maintop with the other marksmen when they had thundered alongside the enemy. Only for the moment, it meant nothing. He said aloud, “Knew me name! He knew me name!”
Ozzard had poured a tankard of rum and placed it on the table, not too close, in case Allday should take the liberty of thinking that he was his servant as well.
Allday sat on the bench seat and watched Bolitho moving restlessly about the cabin as if it were a cage.
“You remember the Saintes, old friend?”
Allday nodded. Bryan Ferguson had asked him the same thing, while they had been waiting for Bolitho and his lady to return from London.
“Aye, Sir Richard. I recalls it well.”
Bolitho ran his hand down the curved timbers as if to feel the life, the heartbeat of the ship.
“This old lady was there, although I don’t remember her, nor could I imagine what she might one day mean to me. Five years old, she was then.”
Allday saw him smile. Like someone speaking of an old comrade.
“So many miles, so many people, eh?” He turned, his face composed, even sad. “But, of course, we had another ship then. Phalarope.”
Allday sipped his rum, although he did not remember reaching for it. There had been many moments like this, before the proud admiral’s flags, the fame, and the bloody scandal. So many times. He watched him now, sharing it, very aware that he was one of the few that this man, this hero, could speak with so freely.
He would not be able to tell Unis about it, not until he was with her again. It would be out of the question to ask Lieutenant Avery to pen it for him. It would have to be later, at the right time, like the moment he had told her about his son’s death. He glanced up at the closed skylight. Just a few yards away.
Bolitho said, “Admiral Rodney broke the French line that day because the enemy’s frigates failed to discover his intentions. Our frigates did not fail.”
His eyes were distant, remembering not so much the battle between the two great fleets as the slowness of their embrace, and the slaughter which had followed. He had seen too many such encounters, and he had felt like some physical assault the hostility of those at the Admiralty when he had said that the line of battle was dead. It must have sounded like blasphemy. We’ll not see another Trafalgar, I am certain of it.
“It is every frigate captain’s main concern-his duty-to discover, to observe, and to act.”
Ozzard frowned as the door opened slightly, and Avery hesitated, uncertain why he had come.
“I’m sorry, Sir Richard. I heard… somebody said…”
Bolitho gestured to a chair. “This time you did not have too far to come. Not like riding from Portsmouth to London!”
Avery took a goblet from Ozzard. He looked dishevelled, as if he had been trying to sleep when some instinct had roused him.
Allday, in the shadows, nodded. That was better. More like it.
Bolitho glanced around at them, his grey eyes keen. “Captain Dawes did not see it, because there was nothing to see. He conserved the squadron’s strength, as I so ordered, and repaired the vessels that most needed it. It was like a well-ordered plan, beyond doubt or question.”
Avery said, “Do you believe that the outcome of the war is still undecided, sir?”
Bolitho smiled. “We have been fighting one enemy or another for years, for some a lifetime. But always, the French were in the vanguard. Always the French.”
Allday frowned. To him one mounseer was much like another. The old Jacks could sing and brag about it when they’d had a skinful of rum, but when it came down to it, it had always been “us” or “them.”
“I ain’t sure I follows, Sir Richard.”
“We are intent on defeating the French without further delay, so that we may bring naval reinforcements to these waters to contain the Americans. In turn, the Americans must break our line before that happens. I believe that the Royal Herald was destroyed by an unknown force of ships, American or French, maybe both, but under one leader, who will settle for nothing less than the destruction of our patrols and, if need be, our entire squadron.”
Captain James Tyacke was here now, his scarred face in shadow, his blue eyes fixed on Bolitho.
“In all the reports there is no mention of any American resentment at a new French presence, and yet we have missed or overlooked the most obvious fact, that war makes strange bedfellows. I believe that an American of great skill and determination is the single mind behind this venture. He has shown his hand. It is up to us to find and defeat him.” He looked at each of them in turn, conscious of the strength they had given him, and of their trust.
“The face in the crowd, my friends. It was there all the time, and no one saw it.”
Captain Adam Bolitho walked to the quarterdeck rail and watched the afternoon working parties, each separated by craft and skill, gathered around a portion of the main deck like stall holders: no wonder it was often called the market-place. Valkyrie was big for a frigate, and like Indomitable had begun life as a small third-rate, a ship of the line.
He had met all his officers both individually and as a wardroom at a first, informal meeting. Some, like John Urquhart, the first lieutenant, were of the original company, when Valkyrie had been commissioned and had hoisted his uncle’s flag, then a vice admiral’s, at the foremast truck. To all accounts she had been an unhappy ship, plagued with discontent and its inevitable companion of flogging at the gangway, until her last, famous battle, and the destruction of the notorious French squadron under Baratte. Her captain, Trevenen, had been proved a coward, so often the true nature of a tyrant, and had vanished overboard under mysterious circumstances.
Adam glanced up at Keen’s flag, whipping out stiffly from the mizzen. Here and here, men had died. His uncle had been injured, momentarily blinded in the undamaged eye, the battle lost until Rear-Admiral Herrick, who had been recovering from the amputation of his right arm, had burst on deck. Adam stared at the companion and the unmanned wheel. He could picture it as if he himself had been here. Lieutenant Urquhart had taken charge, and had proved what he could do. A quiet, serious officer, he would soon be given his own command if they were called to action.
He watched the working parties, knowing that every man jack was well aware of his presence. The new captain. Already known, because of his achievements in Anemone and because of the family name, and the admiral
