A Tradition of Victory Page 3

  Herrick turned quickly as the sentry shouted the arrival of the first lieutenant.

  “I am needed, sir.” He sounded wretched.

  Bolitho gripped his hand. “I am sorry I’ll not be here when your broad-pendant breaks. But if I have to go, I’d like to go with haste.”

  Wolfe appeared in the doorway. “Beg pardon, sir, but there’s a visitor coming aboard.” He was looking at Bolitho who felt his heart give a great leap. It fell just as quickly as Wolfe said flatly, “Your flag-lieutenant is here, sir.”

  Herrick exclaimed, “Browne?”

  Allday hid a grin. “Browne with an ‘e.’”

  “Send him aft.” Bolitho sat down again.

  Lieutenant the Honourable Oliver Browne had been thrust upon him as flag-lieutenant by Beauchamp. Instead of the empty-minded aide he had appeared at first meeting, Browne had proved himself invaluable as adviser to a newly appointed rear-admiral, and later as a friend. When the battered ships had returned from the Baltic, Bolitho had allowed Browne a choice. Return to his more civilized surroundings and duties in London, or resume as his flag-lieutenant.

  When Browne entered the cabin he looked unusually dishevelled and weary.

  Herrick and Wolfe hastily left the cabin, and Bolitho said,

  “This is unexpected.”

  The lieutenant sank down into a proffered chair, and as his cloak fell aside Bolitho saw the dark stains on his breeches, sweat and leather. He must have ridden like a madman.

  Browne said huskily, “Sir George Beauchamp died last night, sir. He completed his orders for your squadron and then …” He gave a shrug. “He was at his table with his maps and charts.” He shook his head. “I thought you should know, sir. Before you sail for Belle Ile.”

  Bolitho had learned never to question Browne’s knowledge of things which were supposed to be secret.

  “Ozzard. Make some fresh coffee for my flag-lieutenant.” He saw Browne’s tired features light up slightly. “If that is what you intend to be?”

  Browne released the cloak from his throat and shook himself.

  “Indeed, I was praying for that, sir. I wish nothing more than to get away from London, from the carrion!”

  Overhead, calls trilled and tackles creaked as more stores and equipment were hoisted up from the lighters alongside.

  But down in the cabin it was different. Very still, as Browne described how Beauchamp had died at his table, his signature barely dry on his last despatches.

  Browne said evenly, “I have brought those orders direct to you, sir. Had you sailed before I arrived here, it is likely they would never have been put aboard a courier brig and sent after you.”

  “You are saying that Sir George’s plan would have been cancelled?”

  Browne held a cup of coffee in both hands, his face thoughtful. “Postponed indefinitely. There are, I fear, too many in high places who can see nothing but a treaty with France. Not as the respite which Lord St Vincent and some of the others see it, but as a means to profit and exploit the plunder which an armistice will bring. Any attack on French harbours and shipping with peace so near would be seen by them as a handicap not an advantage.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  Bolitho looked past him at the two swords on the bulkhead.

  What did men such as Browne had described know of honour?

  Browne smiled. “I thought it was important you should know.

  With Sir George Beauchamp alive and in control of future events, your activities on the new station would have made no difference to your security, no matter what hornets’ nest you disturbed.” He looked at Bolitho steadily, his youthful face suddenly mature. “But with Sir George dead there is nobody to defend you if things go wrong. His record of achievements and service will give weight to your instructions and nobody will question them. But should you fail, it will be a scapegoat not a blameless commander who returns here.”

  Bolitho nodded. “Not for the first time.”

  Browne smiled. “After Copenhagen I can believe anything of you, sir, but I am uneasy about the risk this time. Your name is known and toasted from Falmouth to the ale houses of Whitechapel. And so is Nelson’s, but their lordships are not so impressed that they could not hurt him for his impudence at Copenhagen.”

  “Tell me.” Bolitho stared at the young lieutenant. His was another world. Intrigue and scheming, influence of fortune and family. No wonder Browne was glad to be quitting the land. The Benbow had given him a taste for excitement.

  Browne sounded bitter. “Nelson. Victor of the Nile, hero of Copenhagen, the public’s darling. And now, their lordships intend that he should be appointed to take charge of a new force of recruited landsmen to defend the Channel coast against possible invaders!” He spat out the words angrily. “A set of drunken, good-for-nothing rascals to all accounts! A fine reward for Our Nel!”

  Bolitho was appalled. He had heard plenty of gossip about Nelson’s contempt for authority, his incredible luck which had so far saved him when others might have expected ruin at a court martial. Browne was only trying to protect him. He had no chance at all if he failed to execute Beauchamp’s plan with complete success.

  Bolitho said quietly, “If you are coming with me, I intend to sail on the tide. Tell Allday what you need and he will have it sent over to Styx. Anything else you require will doubtless catch up with you later. With influential friends like yours, it should he easy to arrange.” He held out his hand. “Tell me. What are these orders?”

  Browne said, “The French have been gathering invasion craft along their northern ports for months, as you know, sir. By way of intelligence obtained from the Portuguese, it appears that many of the invasion craft are being built, armed and stored in harbours along the coastline of Biscay.” He smiled wryly. “Your new sector, sir. I did not always see eye to eye with Sir George, but he had style, sir, and this plan to destroy an invasion fleet before it can be moved to the Channel has his touch, the mark of the master!” He flushed. “I do beg your pardon, sir. But I still cannot accept he is dead.”

  Bolitho turned the heavy folder of instructions over in his hands. Beauchamp’s last strategy worked out to the final detail.

  All it needed was the man to translate it into action. Bolitho was moved to realize that Beauchamp must have considered him from the very beginning. There was no choice at all, and never had been.

  He said quietly, “I have another letter to write.”

  He looked around the cabin, the shimmering reflections of the sea along the white deckhead. To trade this for the dash and excitement of a small frigate, to set his collection of vessels against the stronghold of France itself was no mere gesture. Perhaps it was intended for him, like a part of fate. At the beginning of the war, as a very young captain, Bolitho had taken part in the ill-fated attack on Toulon, the attempt by the French royalists to overturn the revolution and reverse the course of history. They had made history well enough, Bolitho thought grimly, but it had ended in bloody disaster.

  Bolitho felt a chill at his spine. Maybe everything was decided by fate. Belinda may have thought he was coming back to Falmouth for several months, perhaps longer if peace was indeed signed. In fact, he stared through the stern windows at the anchored ships, she was being protected from further pain. He was not coming back. It had to happen one day. He touched his left thigh, expecting to feel the pain where the musket ball had cut him down. So soon after that? Not a respite, not even a warning.

  Bolitho said abruptly, “On second thoughts, I’ll not write a letter, I shall shift to Styx directly. Tell my cox’n, will you?”

  Alone at last, Bolitho sat on the bench below the windows and kneaded his eyes with his knuckles until the pain steadied him.

  Fate had been kind to him, had even allowed him the touch and the sight of love, something he would hold on to until it was decided even that should vanish.

  Herrick appeared in the doorway. “Boat’s alongside, sir.”

  By the entry port with its side party and scarlet-coated marines Bolitho paused and stared across at the rakish frigate. Her sails were already loosely brailed, and figures moved about her spars and ratlines like insects: impatient to be off, to seek the unreach-able horizon.

  Herrick said, “The squadron will be ready to proceed in weeks not months, sir. I’ll not be satisfied until Benbow’s under your orders again.”

  Bolitho smiled, the wind plucking at his coat as if to tug him away, and lifting the lock of hair to reveal the livid scar beneath.

  “If you should see her, Thomas …” He gripped his friend’s hand, unable to continue.

  Herrick returned the grasp firmly. “I’ll tell her, sir. You just take care of yourself. Lady Luck can’t be expected to solve everything!”

  They stood back from each other and allowed formality to separate them.

  As the Benbow’s barge pulled smartly away from the seventy-four’s tall side, Bolitho turned and raised his hand, but Herrick had already merged with the men around him and the ship which had meant so much to both of them.

  Bolitho climbed through the companionway and paused to gain his bearings as the frigate took another violent plunge beneath him. All day long it had been the same. Once clear of Plymouth Sound, the Styx had set every stitch of canvas to take full advantage of a stiffening north-easterly. Although Bolitho had remained

  for most of the day in the frigate’s cabin going carefully through his written orders and making notes for later use, he had been constantly reminded of the agility and the exuberance of a small ship.

  Captain Neale had used the friendly wind under his coat-tails to put his people through every kind of sail drill. All afternoon the decks had quivered to the slap and bang of bare feet, the urgent voices of petty officers and lieuten
ants rising above the din to create order out of chaos. Neale was no better off than any other captain. Many of his trained men had been promoted and moved to other vessels. The remaining skilled hands had been thinly spread amongst the new ones, some of whom were still so shocked at being snatched by the press or hauled from the comparative safety of the local jails that they were too terrified to venture up the madly vibrating ratlines without a few blows to encourage them.

  He saw Neale with his taciturn first lieutenant leaning at the weather side of the quarterdeck, their hair plastered across their faces, their eyes everywhere as they searched for flaws in the patterns of sail-handling and quickness to respond to orders. Later on such failings could lose lives, even the ship. Neale had grown well with his profession, although it was not difficult to see him as the thirteen-year-old midshipman Bolitho had once discovered under his command. He saw Bolitho and hurried to greet him.

  “I shall be shortening sail presently, sir!” He had to shout above the hiss and surge of sea alongside. “But we’ve made a good run today!”

  Bolitho walked to the nettings and held on firmly as the ship plunged forward and down, her tapering jib-boom slicing at the drifting spray like a lance. No wonder Adam yearned so much for a command of his own. As I once did. Bolitho looked up at the bulging canvas, the spread legs of some seamen working out along the swaying length of the main-yard. It was what he missed

  most. The ability to hold and tame the power of a ship like Styx, to match his skill with rudder and sail against her own wanton desire to be free.

  Neale watched him and asked, “I hope we are not disturbing you, sir?”

  Bolitho shook his head. It was a tonic, one to drive the anxieties away, to make nonsense of anything beyond here and now.

  “Deck there!” The masthead lookout’s voice was shredded by the wind. “Land on th’ weather bow!”

  Neale grinned impetuously and snatched a telescope from its rack by the wheel. He trained it over the nettings and then handed it to Bolitho.

  “There, sir. France.”

  Bolitho waited for the deck to lurch up again from a long line of white horses and then steadied the glass on the bearing.

  It was getting dark already, but not so much that he could not see the dull purple blur of land. Ushant, with Brest somewhere beyond. Names carved into the heart of any sailor who had sweated out the months in a blockading squadron.

  Soon they would alter course and run south-east, deeper and deeper into the Bay of Biscay. That was Neale’s problem, but it was nothing compared with the task he must order his ships to do.

  Within a week Beauchamp’s orders would have been acknowledged by the flag-officers concerned. Captains would be rousing their men, laying off courses to rendezvous with their new rear-admiral. A cross on a chart near Belle Ile. And within a month Bolitho would be expected to act, to catch the enemy off balance inside his own defences.

  Browne was obviously awed by his ability to discuss the proposed tactics as if success was already an accepted fact. But Browne had been appointed to his position of personal aide in London through his father’s influence, and knew little of the Navy’s harsh methods of training for command. Like most sea-officers, Bolitho had gone to his first ship at the age of twelve. Within a very short time he had been made to learn how to take charge of a longboat and discover an authority he had not known he had possessed.

  Laying out a great anchor for kedging, carrying passengers and stores between ship and land, and later leading a boat’s crew in hand-to-hand attacks against pirates and privateers, all had been part of a very thorough schooling for the young officer.

  Lieutenant, captain and now rear-admiral, Bolitho felt little different, but accepted that everything had been changed for him.

  Now it was not just a question of momentary courage or madness, the ability to risk life and limb rather than reveal fear to the men you led. Nor was it a case of obeying orders, no matter what was happening or how horrible were the scenes of hell around you. Now he must decide the destiny of others, who would live or die depended on his skill, his understanding of the rough facts at his disposal. And there were many more who might depend on that first judgement, even, as Beauchamp had made clear, the country itself.

  It was a harsh school, right enough, Bolitho thought. But a lot of good had come from it. The petty tyrants and bullies were fewer now, for braggarts had little to sustain them in the face of an enemy broadside. Adroit young leaders were emerging daily.

  He glanced at Neale’s profile. Men like him, who could rouse that vital loyalty when it was most needed.

  Apparently unaware of his superior’s scrutiny, Neale said, “We shall change tack at midnight, sir. Close-hauled, it’s likely to be a bit lively.”

  Bolitho smiled. Browne was already as sick as a dog in his borrowed cabin.

  “We should sight some of our ships tomorrow then.”

  “Aye, sir.” Neale turned as a young midshipman struggled across the spray-dashed planking and scribbled quickly on the slate by the wheel. “Oh, this is Mr Kilburne, sir, my signals midshipman.”

  The youth, aged about sixteen, froze solid and stared at Bolitho as if he was having a seizure.

  Bolitho smiled. “I am pleased to meet you.”

  As the midshipman still seemed unable to move, Neale added,

  “Mr Kilburne has a question for you, sir.”

  Bolitho grinned. “Don’t play with the boy, Neale. Is your memory so short?” He turned to the midshipman. “What is it?”

  Kilburne, astonished that he was still alive after being brought face-to-face with his admiral, a young one or not, stammered,

  “W—well, sir, we were all so excited when we were told about your coming aboard …”

  By all he probably meant the ship’s three other midshipmen, Bolitho thought.

  Kilburne added, “Is it true, sir, that the first frigate you commanded was the Phalarope? ”

  Neale said abruptly, “That’s enough, Mr Kilburne!” He turned apologetically to Bolitho. “I am sorry, sir. I thought the idiot was going to ask you something different.”

  Bolitho could feel the sudden tension. “What is it, Mr Kilburne? I am still all attention.”

  Kilburne said wretchedly, “I was correcting the signals book, sir.” He darted a frightened glance at his captain, wondering what had suddenly changed everything into a nightmare. “Phalarope is joining the squadron, sir. Captain Emes.”

  Bolitho tightened his hold of the nettings, his mind wrestling with Kilburne’s words.

  Surely he was wrong. But how could he be? There had been nothing published about a new vessel named Phalarope. He looked at Neale. And he had just been remembering him aboard that very ship. It was unnerving.

  Neale said awkwardly, “I was surprised too, sir. But I didn’t

  want to dampen your first night aboard. My officers were looking forward to having you as their honoured guest, although the fare is hardly a banquet.”

  Bolitho nodded. “I shall be honoured, Captain Neale.” But his mind still clung to the Phalarope. She must be all of twenty-five years old by now. She had been about six years old when he had taken command of her at Spithead. A ship cursed by cruelty and despair, whose people had been so abused by her previous captain they were ripe for mutiny.

  He could remember it all. The topsails and pendants of the French fleet rising above the horizon like mounted knights about to charge. The Battle of the Saintes it was called, and when it had ended in victory Phalarope had been a barely-floating wreck.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Neale was looking at him anxiously, his own ship momentarily forgotten.

  Bolitho said quietly, “She’s too old for this kind of work. I thought she was finished. The honourable way, not left to rot as a prison hulk or storeship in some dismal harbour.” The Navy was desperately short of frigates, but surely not that desperate?

  Neale said helpfully, “I did hear she had been fitting out in Ireland, sir. But I imagined it was for use as guard-ship or accom-modation vessel.”

  Bolitho stared out at the advancing lines of jagged whitecaps.