Lieutenant Massie looked around the crowded cabin, his swarthy features expressionless.
“All present, sir.”
Adam said, “Sit where you can, if you can.” It gave him more time to think, to assemble what he would say.
The cabin was full; even the junior warrant officers were present, some of them staring around as if they expected to discover something different in this most sacred part of their ship.
Adam could feel the hull moving heavily beneath him, but steadier now, the wind holding her over, all sounds muffled by distance.
He could picture Galbraith moving about the quarterdeck overhead, and recalled his face when he had outlined the possibilities of action, as he had to Lord Rhodes.
Now Galbraith was on watch, the only officer absent from the cabin.
The two Royal Marine officers, a bright patch of colour, the midshipmen in their own whispering group, and young Bellairs standing with Lieutenant Wynter and Cristie, the taciturn sailingmaster. The surgeon was present also, dwarfing the scrawny figure of Tregillis the purser. Despite the lack of space the other warrant officers, the backbone of any fighting ship, managed to keep apart. Stranace the gunner stood with his friend the carpenter, “Old Blane” as he was known, although he was not yet forty. Neither of them could work out a course or compass bearing on a chart, and like most professional sailors they were content to leave such matters to those trained for it. But lay them alongside an enemy ship and they would keep the guns firing, and repair the damage from every murderous broadside. And the master’s mates: they would keep the ship under command, knowing they were prime targets for any enemy marksman. The flag and the cause were incidental when it came to surviving the first deadly embrace.
He knew without looking that his clerk, Usher, was at the table, ready to record this rare meeting, with a handkerchief balled in one fist to muffle the cough which was slowly killing him.
The only missing face was that of George Avery. Even as Adam had outlined his convictions to Admiral Rhodes he had thought of Avery, as if he had been speaking for him.
So many times they had talked together, about his service with
Sir Richard, his friendship with Catherine. Galbraith had touched upon it too, only a few moments ago in this same cabin.
I think he knew he was going to die, sir. I think he had given up the will to live.
He glanced along the cabin’s side. The big eighteen-pounders were held firmly behind their sealed ports, but dragging at the stout breeching ropes with the sway of the deck. As if they were restless, eager.
But instead he saw Frobisher’s stern cabin, the great ship riding almost disdainfully across the broken water. Where his uncle had sat and dreamed; had believed, perhaps, that a hand was reaching out at last.
The surprising part had been the admiral’s frowning silence while he had explained the reason for his visit.
Avery again… How he had described their meeting with Mehmet Pasha, the Dey’s governor and commander- in-chief in Algiers. Face to face, with no ships to support them but for the smaller twenty-eight gun frigate Halcyon. She was out there now, riding out the same weather, with the same young captain who had served under James Tyacke as a midshipman, in this very sea at the Battle of the Nile.
Avery had forgotten nothing, and had filled a notebook with facts of every kind, from the barbarous cruelties he had witnessed, not so far from where they had cut out La Fortune, a thousand years ago, or so it felt, even to the names of ships moored there, and the Spanish mercenary, Captain Martinez, who had changed sides too many times for his own good. This command would be his last, one way or the other. Adam seemed to hear Lovatt’s despairing voice while he lay dying, here, just beyond the screen of his sleeping quarters. Where he had held the boy Napier circled in his arm, to make himself believe he was the son who had turned away from him.
He licked dry lips, aware of the silence, the intent, watching faces, barely able to accept that he had been talking to these men for several minutes. Even the shipboard noises seemed muted, so that the scrape of Usher’s pen seemed loud in the stillness.
He said, “I believe we shall fight. The main attack will be carried out by the flagship and Prince Rupert, and at the right moment by the bomb vessel Atlas. Perhaps this is merely a gesture, one worth risking ships and lives. It is not my place to judge.” He held the bitterness at bay, like an enemy. “ Unrivalled’s place will be up to wind’rd. Ours is the fastest vessel, and apart from the two liners the best armed.” He smiled, as he had done in the cutter to give his oarsmen heart for the return pull. “I do not need to add, the best ship! ”
Rhodes would have his way. The bombardment would be carried out without delay after yet another reported attack on helpless fishermen and the murder of their crews. It might make a fitting beginning to the admiral’s appointment.
He thought of the Dutch frigate again. Expedience, greed, who could say? The great minds who planned such transactions never had to face the brutal consequences of close action. Maybe the Dutch government had fresh plans for expansion overseas. They already held territories in the West and East Indies, so why not Africa, where rulers like the Dey could obstruct even the strongest moves of empire?
Such deals were left to men like Bazeley… his mind faltered for a second… and Sillitoe. He saw Lieutenant Wynter watching him fixedly. Or his father in the House of Commons and those like him.
“The Dutch frigate Triton, or whatever she may now be called, is a powerful vessel…”
He heard Rhodes again, his confidence and bluster returning like a strong squall.
“They would not dare! I could blow that ship out of the water!”
He continued, “I know not what to expect. I merely wanted to share it with you.” He paused, and saw O’Beirne glance around as if he expected to see a newcomer in the cabin. “For we are of one company.”
He had already seen the doubt on Massie’s dark countenance. He knew the chart, the notes in Cristie’s log, and now he knew
Unrivalled’s holding station, well up to windward. Rhodes could not have made it plainer.
“Be content to watch the flank for a change!”
Even the flag captain had warned him openly before he had climbed down to the pitching cutter.
“You’ve made an enemy there, Bolitho! You sail too close to the wind!”
He would, of course, deny any such remark at a court martial.
They were filing out of the cabin now, and Usher bowed his head in a fit of coughing.
O’Beirne was the last to leave, as Adam had known he would be. They faced one another, like two men meeting unexpectedly in a lane or on some busy street.
O’Beirne said, “I am glad I wear a sword only for the adornment, sir. I consider myself a fair man and a competent surgeon.” He tried to smile. “But command? I can only watch at a distance, and be thankful!”
The surgeon walked out into the daylight, and was surprised to see the planking steaming in the warm wind as if the very ship were burning. There was so much he had wanted to say, to share. And now it was too late. Before sailing from England he had met Frobisher’s previous surgeon, Paul Lefroy; they had known one another for years. He smiled sadly. Lefroy was completely bald now, his head like polished mahogany. A good doctor, and a firm friend. He had been with Sir Richard Bolitho when he had died. O’Beirne had pictured it in his friend’s words, just as he had seen some of it in his youthful captain’s face, and he glanced aft now as if he expected to see him.
Lefroy had said, “When he died, I felt I had lost a part of myself.”
He shook his head. For a ship’s surgeon, even after several glasses of rum, that was indeed something.
But for some reason the levity did not help. The image remained.
Napier, the captain’s servant, watched O’Beirne leave, and knew his captain would be alone, perhaps needing a drink, or simply to talk, as he did sometimes. Perhaps the captain did not understand what it meant to him. The boy who had wanted to go to sea, to become someone.
And now he was.
He touched his pocket and felt the broken watch, its guard punched in two by a musket ball, where the little mermaid had been engraved.
The captain had seemed surprised when he had asked if he could keep it, instead of pitching it outboard.
He turned as he heard the sound of a grindstone and the rasp of steel. The gunner was back, too, supervising the sharpening of cutlasses and the deadly boarding-axes.
He found that he could face it. Accept it.
He touched the broken watch again and smiled gravely. He was no longer alone.
