but the careful stitching and repairs were evident. He had one hand on another man’s shoulder, and when she saw his eyes she knew that he was blind, although they were clear and bright. And motionless.
His companion murmured something, and he removed his cocked hat with a flourish. His grey hair and threadbare uniform did not belong to this moment; he was the young lieutenant again. And these were his men.
He held out his hand and for an instant she saw him falter, until she reached out to him and took it in hers.
“You are welcome here.” Very gently, he kissed her hand. Still no one spoke or moved. As if this vignette were caught in time, like these ragged, proud reminders who had come to honour her.
Then he said, “We all knew Sir Richard. Some of us served with or under him. He would have wished you to be so met today.”
She heard a step beside her and knew it was Sillitoe.
She murmured, “I thought… I thought…”
He slipped his hand beneath her elbow and said, “I know what you thought. What you were intended to think.”
Without looking above or beyond the watching figures, he knew that the great doors had opened.
He said, “Thank you, gentlemen. No admiral’s lady could ever have a braver guard of honour!”
There were smiles now, and one man reached out to touch Catherine’s gown, muttering something, beaming at her while tears streamed down his cheeks. She removed her black veil, and stared up the steps.
“I do not have the words, Lieutenant. But later…” But there was no grey-haired officer, or perhaps her eyes were too blurred to see. A ghost, then. Like those who lay with Richard.
“Take me in, please.”
She did not hear the stir of surprise that ran through that towering place like a sudden wind through dry leaves, nor see the admiration, or outrage, or the angry disappointment, as Sillitoe guided her to his pew, which otherwise would have been empty.
She gripped her left hand in her right, feeling the ring her lover had placed there on Zenoria Keen’s wedding day.
In the eyes of God, we are married.
She could not look ahead, and dared not think of what was past, that which she could never regain.
It was a proud day, for Richard, and for all those who had loved him.
And, only for this moment, they would be together.
It was just before dawn that the full force of the wind made itself known. Joshua Cristie, Unrivalled’s taciturn sailing-master, found no comfort in the fact that his predictions had proved right, for this was the enemy. Others might fear the cannon’s roar and the surgeon’s knife, but Cristie was a sailor to his fingertips, like most of his forebears, and saw the weather’s moods as his foes. As he gripped a stanchion to steady himself on the lurching deck he watched the sky, burning like molten copper, with long, dark clouds scudding beneath it as if they were already ashes.
They had shortened sail during the middle watch; he had heard the captain giving orders as he had hurried to the chartroom to collect his precious instruments.
The captain seemed well able to make his immediate demands understood. On the face of it, Unrivalled was a smart and disciplined ship. On the face of it. But Cristie knew that it was only on the surface. Until men were truly tested to the limit, they would not know. She was still a new ship, and like any other was only as strong as the men who served her, and the chain of command which directed them as surely as any rudder. Unless.
The captain was here now, his old seagoing coat flapping in the wind, the dark hair pressed against his face by the flying spray. Even that looked like droplets of copper in the strange light.
“Let her fall off a point, Mr Cristie! Steer south-west-by-south!”
More men ran across to halliards and braces, some only half-dressed after the urgent call for all hands.
Cristie shouted, “Still backing a piece, sir! She’ll not hold this close to the wind for much longer!”
The captain seemed to hang on to his words, then swung round to face him. Cristie tested the moment, as he would a sounding or a compass bearing.
“We could come about and run with it, sir.” He hesitated, his mind grappling with the crack and thunder of canvas, the drone of straining rigging. “Or we could lie to under close-reefed main tops’l!”
Galbraith was yelling for more hands, and a few anonymous figures were in the mizzen top, cutting away broken cordage.
Cristie heard the captain say, “No. We’ll hold as close as we can.” He was staring up at the swaying yards, the sickening motion making each plunge seem as if the ship were out of control.
But there were two more men on the big double-wheel, and as a solid curtain of spray burst over them and the quartermasters, they looked like survivors clinging to a capsizing wreck.
Adam Bolitho watched a party of seamen securing the hammock nettings. It was not vital. Seamen had slept in sodden hammocks before, and they would again. But it gave them a sense of purpose, kept them occupied when, even now, fear might be striding amongst them.
Unrivalled was leaning hard over, her lee bulwark almost awash, water spurting past the forward carronades and knocking men off their feet like skittles.
He held his breath, counting seconds as the bows dipped yet again, the hull quivering as it smashed into solid water, as if she had driven ashore.
He cupped his hands. “Fore t’gan’s’l’s carried away!” He saw Galbraith staring at him. “Leave it! Not worth risking lives!”
He watched the sail destroy itself, being ripped apart as if by giant, invisible hands until there were only shreds.
Men were clambering across the boat-tier now, urged on by the boatswain’s powerful bellow. If a boat came adrift it would run amok on the deck, maiming and killing if not secured.
He heard Partridge shout, “Make a bloody seaman of ye yet, damned if I don’t!”
Old Stranace would be down there too. Dragging himself from gun to gun, checking each breeching rope, making sure that his equipment was not being lost or damaged.
Adam shivered, and felt the icy water exploring his spine and buttocks. But it was not that. It was a wildness, an elation he had not felt since he had lost Anemone.
The ship’s backbone, the professionals. They never broke.
Midshipman Fielding was knocked sideways by a block swinging from a severed halliard. A seaman caught his arm and pulled him to his feet. Adam recognised the man as one of those due to be flogged. Today… He even saw the man grin. Like Jago. Amused. Contemptuous.
He seemed to hear John Allday’s voice, when they had served together. His summing up of a ship’s ability or otherwise.
Aft the most honour, mebbe, but forrard the better men!
He could see the horizon now, blurred with spray, writhing in the fierce light. Men’s faces, bodies soaked and bruised, some with nails torn out by the tormented canvas they had fisted and kicked into submission, their world confined to a dizzily swaying yard, their strength that of the men up there with them.
But was it worth it? To risk so much, everything, on a frail belief?
A boatswain’s mate ran past him, one arm out-thrust, his mouth a soundless hole as the wind’s fury increased to an insane scream. Adam thought he had seen something fall, probably from the maintopsail yard, hardly making a splash as it hit the sea and was swamped by the water surging back from the stem.
Not even a cry. The fall had probably killed him. But suppose he lived long enough to break surface and see his ship already fading into the storm?
It happened often enough, something which landsmen never considered when they saw a King’s ship passing proudly at a safe distance.
Midshipman Bellairs wiped his face with his sleeve and gasped, “It can’t go on!”
Cristie heard him, and exclaimed harshly, “Later on you’ll remember this, my lad! When you’re striding your own deck and making poor Jack’s life a bloody misery! Leastways I hope you’ll remember, for all our sakes!”
He watched the captain, his body angled to the quarterdeck, his voice carrying above the wild chorus of wind
