smasher as it was known, recoiled on its slide, and where seamen had been massing, ready for a chance to board, there was only a blackened heap of remains, men and fragments of men, and one officer standing, apparently untouched, his sword dangling by his side, perhaps too shocked to move.
Dyer had rallied the gun crews and had brought more men from the disengaged side. Valkyrie shivered to another broadside, their own or the enemy's Adam did not know.
Somebody was yelling at him. 'The commodore's bin hit, sir! They've took 'im below!'
The other frigate, her hull pockmarked with holes and with great, livid scars in her timbers, was being carried past by the press of canvas. Shots still ripped across the broadening arrowhead of water between them, but the shooting was less controlled. He saw two men fall from the shrouds as the Royal Marines in the fighting tops kept up their fire. In his heart, he knew that the engagement was over, but his reason could not accept it. One enemy crippled, and unlikely to reach safety once the other ships in the squadron came upon her. And the other he could see her name now, in bright gold lettering across her counter, Defender was unwilling to continue.
He rubbed his ear; there was cheering too, which seemed very faint, although he knew it was here, in his own ship. The guns' roar had rendered him almost deaf. He saw men peering at him and grinning, teeth white in their smoke- blackened faces.
Dyer was here, shaking his arm. The lookout has sighted Reaper, sir! The enemy must have seen her, that's why they're standing away!' He looked stunned, unable to accept that he was alive when so many had fallen.
Reaper, of all ships. So right that it should be John Urquhart, coming to the aid of his old ship, where he had been treated so badly.
'Shorten sail, Mr. Dyer.' He wanted to smile, to give them something they could cling to when the final bloody bill was reckoned. 'Report damage and casualties.' He tried again. 'You did well. Very well.' He turned away, and did not see Dyer's expression. Pride; gratitude; affection.
He said, 'I must see the commodore. Take charge here.' He saw the man called Jago, a bare cutlass wedged through his belt.
'A victory, sir.' It seemed to have drained him. 'Or as good as.'
Adam shaded his eyes to watch the enemy frigate. Defender. They might still meet again. Her flag was flying as proudly as before. Defiant
He seemed to recall what Jago had said, and stared around.
'My servant! Whitmarsh! Where is he?'
Jago said, 'He's below, sir. I took 'im me self you bein' busy at the time.'
Adam faced him. Tell me.' It was almost as if he had known. But how could he?
Jago answered, 'Splinter. Didn't feel nothin'.'
'And you took him below?' He looked away, at the sea. So clean, he thought. So clean…… 'That was bravely done. I'll not forget.'
The orlop deck was crowded with wounded men, some fearful of what might happen, others lying quietly, beyond pain.
Minchin, his familiar apron covered with blood, peered at him as a man was dragged from his table and carried into the shadows.
He said thickly, The commodore's dead, sir.' He gestured to a covered shape by one massive timber and Adam saw the strange servant on his knees beside the corpse, rocking back and forth, moaning like a sick animal.
Minchin wiped some blood from his knife with a rag, and cut himself a slice of apple with it. 'Quite mad, that one!'
He chewed steadily as Adam turned down a blanket and looked at the dead boy's face. There was not a mark on him; he might have been asleep. Minchin knew that the iron splinter had hit him in the spine, and must have killed him outright. He had seen many terrible things in his butcher's work, men torn apart in the name of duty, who had believed even in extremity that a miracle could save them. At least the captain's servant had been spared that. But there was nothing he could say; there never was. And there were others waiting. He could barely taste the apple because of the rum, which helped him at times like these, but down here in this hellish, lightless place, it reminded him of somewhere. Someone… He gave a great sigh. Where was the point? And the captain had done what he could. For all of us.
It would not help him, or anyone else, to know that Commodore Deighton had been killed by a single musket ball, but not one fired by an American weapon. It had entered the body from high up, at a steep angle. He peered at a wounded marine who was drinking some rum. It could rest.
He gestured with his knife. 'Next!'
Adam looked at the boy's face. How he must have relived Anemone's death each time the drums had beaten to quarters.
We help each other. He covered his face again with the blanket. It was all that John Whitmarsh had ever wanted.
He climbed once more up to the smoky sunlight, and almost broke when he saw his lieutenants and warrant officers waiting to make their reports, and to ask for his instructions.
One figure blocked his way. It was Jago.
'Yes?' He could scarcely speak.
'I was thinkin', sir. That offer of yours, cox'n, weren't it?'
Adam faced him, but barely saw him. 'You'll take it?'
Like the other time he had seized a lifeline.
Jago nodded, and held out his hand. 'I'd want to shake on it, sir.'
They shook hands in silence, men pausing in their work and perhaps forgetting their fear, merely to watch. To share it.
That evening, as predicted by Ritchie, they met with the remainder of the squadron and headed for the Bermudas, for orders. In Valkyrie's wake, the stitched canvas bundles drifted down and down into eternal darkness. One of them was the commodore.
And one was a boy who wore a fine dirk strapped to his side, for the last farewell.
10. A Ship of War
His Britannic Majesty's Ship Frobisher lay at her anchor, unmoving above the perfect twin of her reflection in the blazing sunlight. The ensign at her stern and the admiral's flag at the mainmast truck were equally motionless, and between decks, in spite of the awnings and wind sails the air was like an open kiln.
The crash of Malta 's noonday gun echoed across the water like an intrusion, but only a few gulls rose from their torpor, squawking in protest before settling down again.
In the great cabin Sir Richard Bolitho, coat less his ruffled shirt open almost to the waist, shaded his eyes to stare at the land, the craggy battlements where, occasionally, he could see a red coat moving slowly on patrol. He pitied the soldiers in their thick uniforms as they paced up and down in the heat.
Frobisher was a well-built ship, and the sounds which reached Bolitho's quarters were muffled and remote, as if they, too, were stifled by the heat. But in many ways he envied the life and movement from which he was separated, protected, as his secretary Yovell had once described it. Even here, right aft, he could catch the heady smell of rum, and imagine the ship's community of some six hundred seamen and Royal Marines preparing for their midday meal.
He sighed and sat at his table again, to the litter of signals and local correspondence awaiting collection. Since their arrival here in Grand Harbour, the ship had scarcely moved. Such inactivity was bad for any fighting ship, and for one with a company far from home, with no immediate prospect of discharge or action, the strain on discipline and routine was becoming evident.
He had received two letters from Catherine; they had arrived together in a courier brig from Plymouth. It was the shortest time they had ever been parted, and yet the uncertainty of the future and the strange, lingering sense of loss he felt seemed to make it worse.
She wrote of things she knew would please him, of the house and the estate. Of the garden, her garden, and the roses which gave her so much pleasure.
