In the King`s Name

The next broadside was slowly, more patiently aimed.

For another moment, Adam thought that they were overhauling their enemy. Her foremast was down and, with its broken shrouds and rigging, was pointing toward them like a bridge. Hardly any part of her side seemed to have escaped cannon or small arms fire, and even without a glass the carnage on deck was terrible to see. Adam unclenched his fists. Even the scuppers were trailing patterns of blood. As if the schooner herself was bleeding to death.

And the angle of the remaining masts had changed.

Julyan exclaimed, “She’s hard aground!” and then, looking over at Adam, “As soon as we can, sir.” He fell silent as the bosun crossed the quarterdeck, picking his way past the dead and the injured.

Drummond cleared his throat. He had been shouting and running from one emergency to another for what seemed hours, and there was a gash in his sleeve, a wound he could not remember receiving; another inch and he would have been dead.

He had Adam’s attention now.

“They’ve run up a white flag, sir.”

“I’ll need a boarding party. Then we will anchor.” And he saw Julyan nod, satisfied.

Jago was nearby, and Adam felt his lips crack when he tried to smile at him. This was no victory to be proud of. But few were.

Jago said only, “You’ll be needin’ the gig, Cap’n.”

“The governor must be informed.”

Jago peered around for some of his crew, if they were still alive.

Adam stood a moment, his hand resting on a jagged splinter. The anger returned and swept through him, and he welcomed the strength it gave him. “But first, I will go around our ship.”

Vincent had come aft, eyes red-rimmed from smoke and strain, as two seamen were dragging the dead helmsman away from the wheel. “What if they renege on the truce, sir?”

Adam walked past him, touching his arm briefly as he did so. He could see Huxley’s body, which had been moved to clear the gangway for the passage of messages. He knew Vincent was blaming himself, and that was why his question was doubly important.

He said quietly, “Then, every gun. No quarter.”

Midshipman David Napier sat in the cutter’s sternsheets and tried not to listen to the regular creak of oars as they pulled away from the land. He could not recall when he had last been able to sleep, but he knew if he was offered the finest bed in the world right now, it would still be denied him.

The journey from shore to ship was much less in distance than when they had set off to meet the governor, but already it seemed very long. Tyacke was sitting beside him, and the same stroke oarsman faced him, eyes barely moving as he lay back on his loom for every stroke.

Napier could see Onward‘s masts and loosely furled sails directly ahead, and the flag, so vivid in the pale light. It was dawn. He glanced down at his hands, clenched so tightly that the knuckles were white beneath the tanned skin. This would pass. It had to.

It was seeing the flag that brought it all back to him. As if it had just happened. Stark and brutal.

He had hoisted the ensign on the flagmast where he had seen the dead mutineer when Onward had made her appearance and engaged a small vessel which had proved to be the decoy. He had climbed on to the roof of a low outbuilding to watch the frigate pass the main anchorage.

Something had made him turn, some sound or sense of warning. Even as he had turned there had been two shots, so close they could have been a single blast. He had lost his balance and fallen, but not before he had seen the sprawled body of the governor’s servant, a black youth around his own age. He had tried to warn him but had been unable to shout, because he had no tongue. He had been killed by the ball intended for Napier. The second shot had cut down the attacker, whose scarlet scarf spoke for itself.

The governor had been there almost immediately. On his knees, holding the boy’s hands in his, calling him “Trusty.”

Napier shifted on the hard thwart and kept his eyes on the frigate. He could see some of the damage now, the scars and the gaps in the rigging. Men were already working aloft, fresh canvas overlapping, flapping in the offshore breeze. He had heard the hammering and other sounds during the night, his mind flooding with images of the faces he knew.

He had twisted his leg when he fell. It had saved his life. But he was already struggling to overcome it, as he had before. Like the moment when he had been about to climb into the cutter and the ginger-haired Corporal Price, still hatless, had tried to assist him.

He had done enough, but when Adam had tried to make Price climb aboard ahead of Napier he had declined.

“You know what they say about us Royals, sir? The first to land …”

Napier had finished it for him. “And the last to leave!” Somehow, they had both managed to laugh.

Tyacke was shading his eyes and looking toward the ship, although there was no fierce sunlight at this hour. He said, “When we get back to Freetown, I’ll soon have her looking as smart as paint again.”

Napier watched the masts rising above them, faces on the gangway, and peering down from the yards as the cutter came alongside. He recognised most of them, even at a distance. But he did not see the one he expected, and somehow, he must have known.

Tyacke was patting his pockets. “I’ll be sending Onward home after this. Not before time!”

David Napier straightened his hat and watched the oars being tossed, side-boys already waiting to receive the cutter alongside. The captain was at the entry port, his hand raised.

Napier stood up carefully, and waited for the flag captain to leave the boat ahead of him.

Going home. Now it had a new and precious meaning.

EPILOGUE

IT WAS AROUND NOON when H.M. Schooner Druid entered Falmouth and finally moored alongside, after her short passage from Plymouth.

A few hours, but to Adam Bolitho it had seemed endless. He had hoped to hire a carriage, if only to lessen the formality after leaving Onward in the dockyard, as he had on his previous return. But he had been warned that the roads might be treacherous, even impassable, as there was snow in the West Country. Snow. After the long haul from Freetown, it seemed unbelievable.

The schooner’s master had told him more than once that his command, one of the fleet’s hard-worked couriers, covered more sea-miles per year than any proud ship of the line. Especially, he added, these days.

Adam dismissed it, stepping ashore. The frozen ground seemed to move beneath his feet, and every impression seemed blurred and dreamlike. At least in a vehicle he could have slept. Or would he?

So many memories.

Freetown. But before that, the sea burials. Voices, faces he had come to know. And they him. “The bill,” as Vincent termed it. Twelve killed, most by musket fire. Two more had died later, despite Murray’s unfailing attention. Most of the other casualties should recover. But they would not soon forget that brief ferocity, or their escape from their intended fate.

Small, stark images had stayed with him, even aboard the little

Druid with her talkative master and her own sounds and busy routine. In Freetown when some extra hands had come aboard to help remove or replace damaged rigging and had been gazing around at the damage, he had heard Monteith exclaim, “We showed them!”

Midshipman Hotham had turned his back, in contempt or disgust. At any other time Monteith would have reacted very differently, but he had hurried below without a word.

And Onward was once again in the hands of the dockyard. There had been no serious