Heart of Oak Read online

  Jago was hardened to sea warfare and its price. The long years of war with France and Spain were only a memory now, and they were at peace, although some might not see it that way. To the ordinary Jack, any man was an enemy if he was standing at the business end of a cannon, or holding his blade to your neck.

  But that passage to Antigua still haunted Jago’s mind.

  A calm sea and light winds, lower deck cleared, and all work suspended on spars and rigging alike.

  Jago had been in all kinds of fights, and had seen many familiar faces, some good, others bad, go over the side. But this was different. Her body stitched up in canvas, weighted with round shot, and covered with the flag. Our flag. Even some of the wounded had been on deck, crouching with their mates, or propped up against the hammock nettings to listen to the captain’s voice, speaking the familiar words which most of them knew by heart.

  And yet so different…

  Even the regular thump of the pumps, which had not stopped since the first crash of cannon fire, had been stilled.

  And Bethune, their vice-admiral, had stood facing the infamous Lord Sillitoe. A victim or a culprit; it remained undecided, and somehow unimportant at that time and place Jago had later seen recorded in the master’s log. The date and their position in the Caribbean when Catherine, Lady Somervell, was buried at sea.

  He remembered Adam Bolitho’s face when the grating had been raised, and they had heard the splash alongside. Sailors often thought about it, even joked about it on the messdeck. Not this time.

  At Antigua there had been new orders waiting. Sillitoe, a friend of the Prince Regent, it was said, had been handed over into the custody of the commodore there, who had been promoted to rear-admiral while Athena and her consorts had been under fire.

  Jago had kept close to his captain throughout the remainder of the campaign; if you could call it that, he thought darkly. Pulling his company together again, visiting the wounded, and often at odds with Bethune. The latter shouting and thumping the table and drinking beyond his capacity and his normal caution. Some said Bethune had been in love with Catherine Somervell. But Jago knew that she had loved only one man, Sir Richard Bolitho, who had been killed on the deck of his flagship following Napoleon’s escape from Elba. Jago had seen her in the old church at Falmouth, when all the flags had been at half-mast, and Unrivalled had fired a salute. It had been Richard’s name she had been calling when she had fallen dead. More like a greeting than a farewell, or so it seemed, looking back…

  Somewhere a clock chimed. Two horsemen were trotting unhurriedly past the house. Dragoons, by their cut, he thought. Officers. His mouth tightened. Nothing else to do.

  There was something else that still puzzled him. Athena had anchored at Plymouth only briefly before proceeding on to Portsmouth, which she had left less than a year ago. Bethune had insisted on breaking the passage, apparently to send some urgent despatches by courier.

  Even then, the captain had found time to speak to the men being discharged or put ashore to have their wounds treated. The lucky ones…

  And the boy, now a midshipman, who had somehow managed to swim ashore at San José after Audacity had exploded. His own captain had been killed, cut in half by a red-hot ball from the battery, but one of his lieutenants had seen fit to write a short report on David Napier’s courage and determination in supporting another midshipman and getting him to the beach, where the Royal Marines had found them. Only Napier had survived.

  Napier would be in Falmouth now. At the Bolitho house, with the green hills behind and the sea below. Something Jago had also shared in his own way.

  Captain Adam Bolitho was at the Admiralty right now, not all that far from this room. It was hard to fix your position, he thought, here in London anyway. It must be somewhere over and beyond those faceless houses. Bethune lived here when it suited him, and had used to ride across the park in a leisurely fashion to his offices.

  Athena was being paid off. Another victim, like Unrivalled after her battle at Algiers. He recalled the silent bundles being slipped over the side for that last journey, and controlled his anger. That was the way it was. The sea was all he knew. He stood up and faced the door. And all he wanted.

  But it was not one of the household staff, or even Lady Bethune, not that she would deign to meet him. It was George Tolan, Bethune’s servant, although the word didn’t do him justice. Always smart and alert in his distinctive blue coat, and obviously at ease with his lord and master. More like a companion or a bodyguard, with the bearing of a soldier or a marine. Jago had seen him in Athena’s cabin, pouring wine or something with more bite to it, holding the glass or goblet to study it beforehand. No fuss, not like some. And when the guns had belched fire from Athena’s ports and reeled inboard in recoil, he had seen the other Tolan, crouching but unafraid in the fury of battle.

  A good man to have beside you, but one you would never know.

  Tolan was glancing around the room now, and, Jago guessed, missing nothing. “I have told the kitchen to prepare a meal for you. A drink would not come amiss, I imagine, after all that bustle.”

  If he was disturbed or irritated by the long journey from Portsmouth, the storing and checking of Bethune’s personal gear at every stop along that endless road, he gave no sign of it. He probably knew Bethune better than any one.

  Jago shrugged. “No telling how long the Cap’n will be with their lordships.” He looked at the portrait on the wall. “I can’t fathom what there is to yarn about. It’s over. We done what we was ordered. That’s it!”

  “Not so simple this time, I think.”

  “Cap’n Bolitho had his last ship taken from him. Paid off. Now Athena—God, she’s only a few years old!”

  Tolan watched him. “Launched in 1803, I was told. Sounds old enough to me.”

  Jago exclaimed, “Good Kentish oak, too!” and broke off as if he had just heard the remark. “Not for a real ship. Hell’s teeth, Our Nel’s Victory was forty years old when she stood in the line at Trafalgar! They don’t know what they’re about, their bloody lordships!”

  Tolan seemed to be considering something. “You care about your captain, don’t you? Something deeper than duty, loyalty. You’re not a man who’s easily taken in. I like that.” He smiled with sudden warmth, like offering a handshake, Jago thought afterwards. Dropping his guard, something rare with him.

  Tolan said, “Now I will fetch that drink,” and looked up at the portrait. The young captain…“For both of us.”

  Jago stood at the window, grappling with the words, and what lay behind them. Deeper than duty, loyalty. It was not something he would ever consider, if he was being true to himself. After the flogging which had scarred his mind as well as his body, he had made himself shun even the slightest hint of friendship.

  Perhaps it was trust?

  The room was empty once more. He had not even heard Tolan close the door behind him.

  He was on Athena’s deck again, as if it were yesterday. Now. The seamen breaking ranks slowly, reluctant to return to their work. The empty grating by the gangway, the unfolded flag barely moving in the breeze, the canvas-wrapped body already on the seabed.

  But all he could see clearly was Adam Bolitho’s face as he had turned away from the side. Their eyes had met, and the words had been quietly spoken, almost an undertone. Excluding every one else. They’re together now. Nothing can harm them.

  It had troubled him deeply.

  There were sounds, voices, on the stairway: Tolan bringing his master’s wine, or maybe something stronger. He felt his mouth crack into a grin.

  “There’ll be other ships.”

  He realized that he had spoken aloud.

  Just say the word, Cap’n.

  “If you would wait in here, Captain…er…Bolitho.” The Admiralty porter held ths door open. “Should you require any assistance…” He did not finish it, but closed the door silently behind him.

  Adam Bolitho stood a moment to get his bearings, or perhaps to prepare
himself. After all the haste and uncertainty, this sudden stillness was unnerving. A table, three chairs and one window: it was more like a cell than a waiting room.

  Like most serving officers, he had not visited this, the seat of Admiralty, more than a few times throughout his whole career, and he had always been impressed by the orderly confusion and purpose. Clerks carrying files of papers, criss-crossing what were still to him a maze of corridors, opening and shutting doors. Some remained closed, even guarded, while strategic conferences were in session; others, partly opened, revealed the materials and tools of command. Huge wall charts and maps, instruments, rows of waiting chairs. It was hard to imagine the immense power, and control of the world’s greatest navy, being wielded from within these walls.

  He walked over to the table. On it was a precisely folded copy of The Times and beside it a goblet and carafe of water. So quiet, as if the whole corridor were holding its breath.

  He moved to the window, impatient now, refusing to acknowledge the strain and fatigue of mind and body. He should have known what it would do to him. The bitter aftermath of the action at San José, “skirmish” as one news sheet had dismissed it, and the long passage home. Plymouth and then Portsmouth. He rubbed his forehead. Mere days ago. It seemed like a lifetime.

  The window overlooked an enclosed courtyard, so near the opposite wall that you had to press your head against the glass to see it. The other wall had no windows. Storerooms of some kind? And above, trapped above the two walls, was the sky. Grey, cold, hostile. He stepped back and looked around the room. A cell indeed.

  A carriage had been sent to Bethune’s house to collect him for the journey to and along Whitehall. He was met by a clerk who had murmured polite comments about the weather and the amount of traffic, which, he was told, often delayed important meetings if senior officers were trapped in it. The constant movement, the noise. Like a foreign country. Because I am the stranger here.

  From there he had been handed over to the porter, a towering, heavy man in a smart tailed coat with gleaming buttons, whose buckled shoes had clicked down one passageway after another as he led the way. Like a ship of the line, with lesser craft parting to let them through.

  There was one picture on this otherwise bare wall. A two-decker, firing a salute or at an unseen enemy. Old, and probably Dutch. His mind was clinging to the inconsequential detail. Holding on.

  All those faces, names. Not even a full year since Athena had hoisted Bethune’s vice-admiral’s flag. And I became his flag captain. And now she was paid off, like all those other unwanted ships. Their work, and sometimes their sacrifice, would soon be forgotten.

  He recalled the longer waiting room he had seen briefly in passing. So like those redundant ships that seemed to line the harbours or any available creek: a final resting place.

  Officers, a few in uniform, waiting to see some one in authority. Need, desperation, a last chance to plead for a ship. Any ship. Their only dread to be discarded, cast from the life they knew, and ending on the beach. A warning to all of them.

  There were nine hundred captains on the Navy List, and not an admiral under sixty years of age.

  Adam turned abruptly and saw his own reflection in the window. He was thirty-eight years old, or would be in four months.

  What will you do?

  He realized that he had thrust one hand into his coat, the pocket where he carried her letters. The link, the need. And she was in Cornwall. Unless…He jerked his hand from his coat.

  “If you would follow me, Captain Bolitho?”

  He snatched up his hat from the table with its unread newspaper. He had not even heard the door open.

  The porter peered around the room as if it were a habit. Looking for what? He must have seen it all. The great victories and the defeats. The heroes and the failures.

  He touched the old sword at his hip. Part of the Bolitho legend. He could almost hear his aunt reminding him of it when they had been looking at his portrait; he had been painted with a yellow rose pinned to his uniform coat. Lowenna’s rose…He could see her now. Andromeda. He heard the door close. Cornwall. It seemed ten thousand miles away.

  There were fewer people in this corridor this time, or perhaps it was a different route. More doors. Two officers standing outside one of them. Just a glance, a flicker of eyes. Nothing more. Waiting for promotion, or a court martial…

  He cleared his mind of everything but this moment, and the man he was about to meet: John Grenville, still listed as captain, but here in Admiralty appointed secretary to the First Lord. He remembered hearing Bethune refer to him as “second only to God.”

  The porter stopped and subjected him to another scrutiny, and said abruptly, “My son was serving in Frobisher when Sir Richard was killed, sir. He often speaks of him whenever we meet.” He nodded slowly. “A fine gentleman.”

  “Thank you.” Somehow it steadied him, like some one reaching out. “Let’s be about it, shall we?”

  After the cell-like waiting room, this one seemed enormous, occupying an entire corner of the building, with great windows opening on two walls. There were several tables, one of which held a folding map stand; another was piled with ledgers.

  Captain John Grenville was sitting at a vast desk, his back to one of the windows, framed against the meagre light. He was small, slight, even fragile at first glance, and his hair was completely white, like a ceremonial wig.

  “Do be seated, Captain Bolitho.” He gestured to a chair directly opposite. “You must be somewhat weary after your travel. Progress has cut communication time to a minimum, but the human body is still hostage to the speed of a good horse!”

  He sat cautiously, every muscle recalling the journey from Portsmouth. During the endless halts to change horses or rest them, he had seen the new telegraph system, mounted on a chain of hills and prominent buildings between the roof above their heads to the final sighting-point on the church by Portsmouth dockyard. A signal could be transmitted the entire distance in some twenty minutes, when visibility was good. In less time than it would take a courier to saddle and mount.

  The winter light was stronger, or his eyes were becoming used to it. He was aware, too, that they were not alone. Another figure almost hidden by a desk on the far side of the room stood up and half-bowed, the light glinting briefly on spectacles perched on his forehead. Like Daniel Yovell, he thought.

  Grenville said, “That is Mr Crozier. He will not disturb us.” He leaned forward in his chair and turned over the papers arranged before him in neat piles.

  Adam forced himself to relax, muscle by muscle. There was no tiredness now, no despair. He was alert. On guard. And he was alone.

  “I have, of course, read all the reports of the campaign conducted under Sir Graham Bethune’s command. Their lordships are also informed of the operational control of the commodore, Antigua,” one hand moved to his mouth, and there might have been a trace of sarcasm. “Now rear-admiral, Antigua. It slipped my mind!”

  Adam saw him clearly for the first time. A thin face, the cheekbones very prominent and the skin netted with tiny wrinkles, perhaps the legacy of some serious fever early in his service. Keen-edged, like steel. Not a man who would make a mistake about somebody’s promotion. Especially at Antigua.

  “As flag captain, were you ever concerned that the conduct of operations might not be completely satisfactory?”

  So casually said. Adam felt the clerk’s close attention, and sensed his pen already poised.

  “I have submitted my own report, sir. Athena’s log will confirm the ship’s total involvement.”

  Surprisingly, Grenville laughed. “Well said, Bolitho, like a good flag captain!” He leaned back in his chair, the mood changing again. “You are not under oath, nor are you under suspicion for any cause or reason.” He held up one hand as if expecting an interruption; like his face, it was almost transparent. “We are well aware of your record as a King’s officer, both in command and while serving others. You are not on trial here, but w
e are dealing with diplomacy, something more nebulous than the cannon’s mouth, or the rights and wrongs of battle.”

  “No captain can be expected to contradict…” Adam broke off, and continued calmly, “Given all the circumstances, the vessels at our disposal, and the weather, I think we acted in the only way possible. Good men died that day at San José. Slavery is an evil and a brutal thing. But it is still highly rewarding for those who condone it.” He turned unconsciously toward the half-hidden desk. “And it costs lives, even if it is dismissed as a skirmish by those who apparently know otherwise!”

  The bony hand came up slowly. “Well said, Bolitho. I hope your ideals reach Parliament. Eventually.”

  He turned over more papers, and when he spoke again it was as if his thoughts had been rearranged with them. “Athena is paid off, and her people moved to other ships when suitable, or to continue their lives ashore. As is the way of the navy. Your first lieutenant has elected to remain with Athena until she is given over to other work,” a cold eye briefly across the desk, “or disposed of.”

  Adam said nothing, recalling the stern, unsmiling features of Stirling, the first lieutenant. Unmoved, unshaken even in the heat of battle. A man he had never understood. But was I to blame?

  Grenville stood up suddenly and walked to the nearest window. He wore a plain, perfectly cut blue coat, and it was easy to see him as a captain again. Over his shoulder he remarked, almost offhandedly, “You had Lady Somervell buried at sea. That was your decision, I believe?”

  Bethune must have told him, or the First Lord.

  Adam stared past him at the overcast sky. He could see them now, as if it had only just happened. Bethune and Sillitoe staring each other down. The hatred, and something that was stronger than both of them.

  He said, “She’s free now, sir.” He looked over at the clerk. The pens were still in their standish. Unused. He said quietly, “What of Sillitoe, sir?”

  Grenville’s shoulders lifted slightly. “Others, far higher than their lordships, will have the disposal of him. Be sure of that.” He turned and regarded him steadily. “And what of you, Bolitho? Do you have plans?”