completely, as she trusted him. But what if… He thought of Tyacke’s silence and reticence, the reawakened pain that must be hidden. What if… Catherine needed to be loved, just as she needed to return love.
“If I spoke out of turn, Sir Richard…”
Bolitho said, “You did not. It is good to be reminded sometimes of things that truly matter, and those who are out of reach.”
Yovell was reassured, and glad that he had spoken out. As a civilian.
The other door opened and Ozzard padded into the cabin, a coffee pot in his hands.
“Is that the last of it, Ozzard?”
Ozzard glanced severely at the pot. “No, Sir Richard. Two weeks more, at most. After that…”
Avery returned to the cabin, and Bolitho saw him waiting while he took a cup from the tray, gauging the moment when the ship staggered through a confusion of broken crests. Ozzard had poured a cup for the flag lieutenant, almost grudgingly. What did he think about; what occupied his mind in all the months and years he had been at sea? A man who had obliterated his past, but, like Yovell, an educated one, who could read classical works, and had the handwriting of a scholar. It seemed as if he wanted no future, either.
Bolitho took the notes Avery had brought, and said, “One more day. We might fall in with a courier from Halifax. Rear Admiral Keen may have more news.”
Avery asked, “These American ships, sir-will they wish to challenge us?”
“Whatever they intend, George, I shall need every trick we can muster. Just as I will need all of my officers to be at their best, if fight we must.”
Avery glanced at Yovell, and lowered his voice. “You know about the captain’s letter, sir?”
“Yes. Now I do, and I appreciate and respect your feelings, and your reluctance to discuss it.” He paused. “However, James Tyacke is not only the captain of my flagship, he is the ship, no matter how he might dispute that!”
“Yes. I am sorry, Sir Richard. I thought-”
“Don’t be sorry. Loyalty comes in many guises.”
They looked at the door as the sentry called, “First lieutenant, sir! ”
Lieutenant John Daubeny stepped into the cabin, his slim figure angled in the entrance like that of a drunken sailor.
“The captain’s respects, Sir Richard. Taciturn has signalled. Sail in sight to the nor’-west.”
Avery remarked quietly, “She’ll have a hard beat to reach us, sir.”
“One of ours, you believe?”
Avery nodded. “Chivalrous. Must be her. She’d soon turn and run with the wind otherwise.”
Bolitho smiled unconsciously at his judgment. “I agree. My compliments to the captain, Mr Daubeny. Make a signal. General. To be repeated to all our ships. Close on Flag.”
He could see them, tiny dabs of colour as the flags broke from their yards, to be repeated to the next vessel even though she might barely be in sight. The chain of command, the overall responsibility. Daubeny waited, noting everything, to go in the next letter to his mother.
Bolitho glanced up at the skylight. Tyacke with his ship. A man alone, perhaps now more than ever.
“I shall come up at seven bells, Mr Daubeny.”
But the first lieutenant had gone, the signal already hoisted.
He touched the locket beneath his shirt.
Stay close, dear Kate. Don’t leave me.
They met with the 30-gun frigate Chivalrous in late afternoon, Indomitable and her consorts having made more sail to hasten the rendezvous. It would also ensure that Captain Isaac Lloyd could board the flagship with time to return to his own command before nightfall, or in case the wind freshened enough to prevent the use of a boat.
Lloyd was only twenty-eight but had the face of an older, more seasoned officer, with dark, steady eyes and pointed features that gave him the demeanour of a watchful fox. He used the chart in Bolitho’s cabin, his finger jabbing at the various positions which York had already estimated.
“Six of them all told. I could scarce believe my eyes, Sir Richard. Probably all frigates, including a couple of large ones.” He jabbed the chart again. “I signalled Weazle to make all haste to Halifax, but I fully expected the Yankees to try and put a stop to it.” He gave a short, barking laugh: a fox indeed, Bolitho thought. “It was as if we did not exist. They continued to the nor’-east, cool as you please. I decided to harry the rearmost one, so I set me royals and t’gallants and chased them. That changed things. A few signals were exchanged, and then the rearmost frigate opened fire with her chasers. I had to admit, Sir Richard, it was damn’ good shootin’.”
Bolitho sensed Tyacke beside him, listening, perhaps considering how he might have reacted in Lloyd’s shoes. Yovell was writing busily and did not raise his head. Avery was holding some of York ’s notes, although he was not reading, and his face was set in a frown.
Lloyd said, “It got a bit too warm, and I reduced sail. Not before that damn Yankee had brought down a spar and punched my forecourse full of holes. I thought that maybe he’d been ordered to fall back and engage Chivalrous. I would have accepted that, I think. But I says to meself, no, he don’t intend to fight, not now, anyways.”
Bolitho said, “Why?”
“Well, Sir Richard, he had all the time he needed, and he could see I had no other ship to support me. I knew he would have put his boats in the water, had he meant to show his mettle.” He grinned. “He may have carried more guns than my ship, but with all those boats stowed on deck we could have cut down half his men with their splinters in the first broadside!”
Tyacke roused himself from his silent contemplation and said abruptly, “Boats? How many?”
Lloyd shrugged, and glanced through the smeared windows as if to reassure himself that his ship was still riding under the Indomitable ’s lee.
“Double the usual amount, I’d say. My first lieutenant insisted that the next ship in the American’s line was likewise equipped.”
Avery said, “Moving to a new base?”
Tyacke said bluntly, “There is no other base, unless they take one of ours.” When Lloyd would have said something, Tyacke held up one hand. “I was thinking. Remembering, while you were speaking just now. When it was decided that the slave-trade was not quite respectable, unbefitting civilized powers, Their Lordships thought fit to send frigates to stamp it out. Faster, better-armed, trained companies, and yet…” He turned and looked directly at Bolitho. “They could never catch them. The slavers used small vessels, cruel, stinking hulls where men and women lived and died in their own filth, or were pitched to the sharks if a King’s ship happened to stumble on them.”
Bolitho remained silent, feeling it, sharing it. Tyacke was reliving his time in Larne. The slavers had come to fear him: the devil with half a face.
Tyacke continued in the same unemotional tone, “All along that damnable coast, where the rivers came out to the Atlantic, the Congo, the Niger and the Gaboon, the slavers would lie close inshore, where no man-of-war of any consequence would dare to venture. Which was why they evaded capture and their just deserts for so long.” He glanced at the young captain, who did not avoid his eyes. “I think you fell in with something you were not supposed to see.” He moved to the chart and laid his hand on it. “For once, I think our Mr York was wrong. Mistaken. They didn’t give chase, Captain Lloyd, because they could not. They dared not.” He looked at Bolitho. “Those boats, sir. So many of them. Not for picking up slaves like those cruel scum used to do, but to put an invading army ashore.”
Bolitho felt the shock and the truth of his words like a cup of icy water in his face.
“They’re carrying soldiers, as they did on the lakes, except that these are larger vessels, with something bigger in prospect at the end of it!”
He thought of the army captain who had survived the first attack on York, and of the reports which had filtered through with information of a second attack three months later. Perhaps Lake Erie had already fallen to the Americans? If so, the British army would be cut off, even from retreat. The young captain had described the Americans at York as being well-trained regulars.
Bolitho said, “If these ships entered the Bay of Fundy but turned north, and not towards Nova Scotia, they could disembark soldiers who could force their way inland, knowing that supplies and reinforcements would be waiting for
