In the King`s Name

Interrupted, he said awkwardly, “The first lieutenant, sir!”

Morgan stood aside for Vincent to pass and shut the door behind him.

Vincent said, “I just left the surgeon, sir.” He touched a stain on his sleeve. “Lord has lost a deal of blood. Even now …” He broke off, and added bitterly, “After all we’ve been through!”

Adam sat down again. “Tell me, Mark. In your own time.”

Vincent stared unblinkingly up at the skylight. “Lord had been sent to the galley to fetch something-he doesn’t remember what. Instead, he found the man-Lamont-stealing meat, putting large pieces into a bag. He was using one of the cook’s own knives.” He looked across the cabin for the first time. “You could shave with one of them.”

Adam pictured the cook, Lynch, who had played his fiddle as Onward weighed anchor. Sharp knives meant less waste.

Vincent held up his right forearm and ran a finger down it. “He cut Lord from wrist to elbow. Somebody wrapped a shirt round it. Then the surgeon came.”

“And the one responsible-this man Lamont?”

“Joined us at Plymouth, just before we left. Transfer from a ship awaiting overhaul. Or demolition. Able seaman, ten years’ service. It was all rather vague.”

Adam watched the sea catching the sun again. A hard light, with no hint of warmth. “Lamont? Did you see him?”

Vincent looked past him as spray spattered across the glass. “I was off watch at the time, sir. But someone heard Lord scream. The bosun was the first to reach the galley, and he called the surgeon. Otherwise …” A pause, then, as if to emphasise it, “Aye, I questioned Lamont. The master-at-arms was also present. Lamont claimed it was self-defense. I cautioned him. I knew you would want to know all the details.”

“You did right, Mark. You can carry on with your routine until we learn something useful.”

Vincent picked up his hat. “I feel it was partly my fault, sir. I had no time to test Lamont’s worth when he was signed on.”

The door closed and Adam stood watching the sea once more. Prepared, or resigned, and with an overriding sense of disappointment. He gazed around the cabin where he still sometimes relived the last fight, the thunder and crash of cannon and the crack of muskets. Men calling out in pain or in rage, helping one another. Dying. All that, and yet the barrier between himself and Vincent remained, an unseen enemy.

He thought of Thomas Herrick, his uncle’s oldest and dearest friend, and his words on one occasion. Command is complete or worthless.

The door creaked. It was Morgan. “I thought you called, sir?”

Adam let his arms fall to his sides. Perhaps he had spoken aloud.

But he was ready.

The two midshipmen sat facing one another across the table. Around them their mess was quiet and deserted, although not for much longer: there had been a shrill of calls on deck, and a smell of food if they needed reminding. Midshipmen never did.

David Napier touched the bruise on the back of his hand, left by a rope clumsily dragged when they had been shifting one of the boats on deck. The salt air had made it sting like a burn. One of the new men had been too eager, or preoccupied.

Midshipman Huxley gestured with a spoon. “Put some grease on it.”

Napier smiled. “Won’t get any sympathy, will I?”

“If we lower the jolly-boat later, you’d better stand clear! You might lose the other one!”

Just words, but they were friends, and had been since they had joined Onward together on the same day, Napier recovering from injuries and the loss in action of his last ship, and Simon Huxley struggling to accept the suicide of his father following a court-martial, although he had been found not guilty and cleared of all blame. It was a quiet, unquestioning friendship neither ever tried to explain. They only knew that it mattered.

Dishes clattered nearby and somebody laughed. Huxley said, “I wonder if young Lord is going to come through it?”

It was on both their minds, and probably everybody else’s, maybe even on the man’s who had let the rope run out of control.

“Never saw a lot of him. But I know he went out of his way to make a cake for Jamie Walker’s thirteenth birthday!”

Huxley smiled. “On the day of the battle with Nautilus! I forget if we ever even tasted it!”

“What d’you think will happen about Lord?”

Huxley lowered his voice confidentially. “I’ve been looking it up. If the worst happens, there will be a court- martial. There was one at Portsmouth a few months ago. Someone was hanged.”

A chair scraped back and Midshipman Charles Hotham, the senior of the six-strong mess, sat down noisily and glared at the empty plates. “I should damned well think so, too! Don’t know what the fleet’s coming to, especially where meals are concerned!”

They laughed. It was the only way. Hotham was a clergyman’s son. So was Nelson, he always proclaimed.

John Radcliffe, the newest member of the mess, sat down muttering apologies for lateness. The others were on duty.

Hotham made a grand gesture to the hovering messman. “Glasses today, Peter! Today of all days, I think. Some of my wine.” He watched critically as it was being poured. “To our unfortunate shipmate!”

Napier hardly noticed the taste. It was suddenly easy to see Hotham like his father. All in black, even to the collar.

He glanced across at the scarred and sturdy desk they all shared when making their notes on navigation and seamanship, in anticipation of the day of the Board. And when composing letters that might eventually reach England. Cornwall, in his case. Would she even remember him, or care? She was an admiral’s daughter. The admiral’s daughter.

He reached for his glass, but Peter, the messman, was already refilling it. A dream, then. So be it. Elizabeth.

There were voices, very low, just outside the door, and a moment later the messman was back. “Surgeon’s still workin’, sir.”

Radcliffe stared at his wine, untouched, and the steaming tray. “Suppose …” Then he lurched to his feet and left the mess.

Huxley looked over at Napier with concern. There was no answer.

Adam Bolitho paused as though to regain his balance, although that was merely an excuse. It was pitch dark after the gloom of the quarterdeck, and strangely silent, so that the ship’s own sounds seemed unnaturally loud and intrusive. He had waited deliberately until after midnight when the watch had changed, and most of Onward‘s company were swinging in their hammocks and asleep. If they were lucky.

He touched the timber: it felt like ice, and the white paint looked very fresh in the faint glare of a light. This was pointless. Murray would be asleep too, after what he had been struggling to do all day, or still preparing his report. Despite all his brutal experience, the Scot was not the kind of man to dismiss it simply as his duty.

Here, even the smells were different. The hemp and tar, salt and canvas seemed miles away, and clean. Adam’s foot brushed against something and he heard someone gulp and mutter. It was a fold of the loose smock worn by one of Murray’s assistants, his “crew” as he called them, slumped in a trestle chair and already snoring again.

Even in the feeble glow, Adam could see the tell-tale stains. Too many memories. Even the confined smells. Oils of thyme and lavender and mint, and others less medicinal, more sinister. Alcohol, blood, sickness. And always the pain. The fear.

The door was not completely shut, in case of an emergency, and it swung easily under his hand, so that the light of a shuttered lantern seemed almost blinding. Nobody moved. One man was slouched in a canvas seat, a