find it in herself to disapprove of it.
The questions that burned in her mind were who had brought them and did Michael Robb know. Was that, even in part, the cause of his concern at her being here?
She did not believe it. Intelligence told her it was possible, instinct denied it without consideration.
The old man himself, so peacefully asleep in the afternoon sun, undoubtedly must know who had brought them, but would he know they might be stolen? He might guess, but she thought it unlikely. She would not ask him. There was no decision to make. The question did not arise that she should pursue it. She sat down and waited patiently until he should awaken, then she would make him tea again, with a little more honey. It would be a good idea to bring him a further supply, to make up for what she had drunk herself.
He awoke greatly refreshed and delighted to find her still there. He started to talk straightaway, not even waiting while she served tea and brought it for them both.
'You asked about my sailing days,' he said cheerfully. 'Well, o’ course the greatest o’ them was the battle, weren’t it!' He looked at her expectantly, his eyes bright.
'The battle?' she asked, turning around to face him.
'C’mon, girl! There’s only one battle for a sailor—only one battle for England—really for England, like!'
She smiled at him. 'Oh ... you mean Trafalgar?'
' ’Course, I mean Trafalgar! You’re teasin’ me, aren’t you? You’ve gotta be.'
'You were at Trafalgar! Really?' She was impressed, and she allowed it to show in her voice and her eyes.
'Surely I was. Never forget that if I live to be a hundred— which I won’t. Great day that was ... an’ terrible, too. I reckon there’s bin none other like it, nor won’t be again.'
She poured the water onto the tea. 'What ship were you on?'
'Why, the Victory, o’ course.' He said it with pride in his voice so sharp and clear that for a moment she could hear in it the young man he had been over half a century before, when England had been on the brink of invasion by Napoleon’s armies and nothing stood between them and conquest except the wooden walls of the British fleet—and the skill and bravado of Horatio Nelson and the men who sailed with him. She felt a stirring of the same pride in herself, a shiver of excitement and knowledge of the cost, because she, too, had seen battle and knew its reality as well as its dream.
She brought the tea over to him and offered him a cup. He took it, and his eyes met hers over the rim.
'I was there,' he said softly. 'I remember that morning like it were yesterday. First signal come in about six. That was on the nineteenth of October. Enemy had their tops’1 yards hoisted. Least that’s what we heard later. Then they were coming out o’ port under sail. Half past nine and bright light over the sea when we heard it on the Victory.' He shook his head. 'All day we tacked and veered around toward Gibraltar, but we never saw ’em. Visibility was poor—you got to understand that. Weather gettin’ worse all the time. Under closereefed topsails, we were, an’ too close to Cadiz.'
She nodded, sipping her tea, not interrupting.
'Admiral gave the signal to wear and come northwest, back to our first position. Next day, that was, you see?'
'Yes, I see. I know the battle was on the twenty-first.'
He nodded again, appreciation in his face. 'By dawn o’ the twenty-first the admiral had it exactly right. Twenty-one miles north by west o’ Cape Trafalgar, we were, and to windward o’ the enemy.' His eyes were smiling, shining blue, like the sea that historic day. 'I can smell the salt in the air,' he said softly, screwing up his face as if the glare of the water blinded him still. 'Ordered us into two columns and make full sail.'
She did not speak.
He was smiling, his tea forgotten. 'Made a notch on me gun, I did, like the man next to me. He was an Irishman, I remember. The admiral came around to all of us. He asked what we were doin’. The Irishman told him we were making a mark for another victory, like all the others, just in case he fell in the battle. Nelson laughed an’ said as he would make notches enough in the enemy’s ships.
'About eleven in the morning the admiral went below to pray, and wrote in his diary, as we learned afterwards. Then he came up to be with us all. That was when he had the signal run up.' He smiled and shook his head as if some thought consumed him. 'He was going to say ’Nelson confides,’ but Lieutenant Pascoe told him that ’expects’ was in the Popham code, an’ he didn’t have to spell it out letter by letter. So what he sent was ’England expects that every man will do his duty.’ ' He gave a little shrug, looking at her to make sure she knew how those words had become immortal. He saw it in her face, and was satisfied.
'I don’t really know what happened in the lee column,' he went on, still looking at her, but his eyes already sea blue and far away, his inner vision filled with the great ships, sails billowing in the wind, high up masts that scraped the sky, coming around to face the enemy, men at the ready, muscles taut, silent by their guns, the decks behind them painted red, not to show the blood when the slaughter began.
She could see in his eyes and the curve of his lips the memory of a sharper light than this English summer, the pitch of the deck as the ship hit the waves, the waiting, and then the roar and slam of cannon fire, the smell of saltpeter, the sting of smoke in the eyes and nose.
'You can’t imagine the noise,' he said so softly it was almost a whisper. 'Make them train engines they got now sound like silence. Gunner, I was, an’ a good one. Nobody knows how many broadsides we fired that day. But it was about half past one that the admiral was hit. Pacing the quarterdeck, he was. With the captain—Captain Hardy.' He screwed up his face. 'There was some idiots as says he was paradin’ with a chest full o’ medals. They haven’t been in a sea battle! Anyway, when he was at sea he never dressed like that. Shabby, he was, wore an ordinary blue jacket, like anyone else. He wore sequin copies of his orders, but if you ever spent time at sea, you’d know they tarnish in a matter o’ days:’ He shook his head in denial again. 'And you couldn’t hardly see anybody to make ’em out clear during a battle. Smoke everywhere. Could miss your own mother not a dozen feet from you.' He stopped for a few minutes to catch his breath.
Hester thought of offering him more tea, fresh and hot, but she could see that memory was more important, so she sat and waited.
