Man of War Page 5

  “You will know, Graham, that there is no shortage of applicants.” He had let the words hang in the air. “But I would prefer you to take it.”

  Bethune was at the window again, looking down at the endless movement. People and the din of traffic, horses and iron-shod wheels. Another world, in which he would be a stranger; and someone else would be sitting here in this room.

  He liked the company of women, and they his. But a risk was a risk all the same. And in any case, he might retain this present position for months. He sighed. Years.

  He tugged down the front of his waistcoat and stared at his reflection in the rain-dappled glass, and thought of Richard Bolitho again. As if it were yesterday. His eyes as he had watched an oncoming enemy, the pain there when he considered the cost in lives. His decision, and a voice very level. So be it, then.

  There was a tap at the ornate doors, timed to the minute.

  “Well, Tolan?”

  “Captain Adam Bolitho is here, Sir Graham.”

  The shadow moved over the rich carpet, his face as Bethune remembered it. Like a younger version of Richard; even then, people had often taken them for brothers.

  The same firm handshake; the elusive smile. And something else, desperation. It would have been uppermost in his thoughts all the way from Cornwall. The journey would have taken almost five days, changing horses, sharing a carriage with strangers, and, all the time, wondering . . .

  Adam Bolitho had more than proved his worth, his skill, and his courage. The armchair strategists at the Admiralty had described him as reckless. But then, they would.

  He recalled his own uncertainty, which had made him write Trust me on the back of the orders to this dark, youthful man. I was like him. The frigate captain. That was then.

  To prolong this meeting which could be the start of many, or the last, would be insulting to both of them.

  He said, more abruptly than he had intended, “I have been given a new appointment, Adam, and I want you for my flag-captain.” He held up his hand as Adam seemed about to speak. “You have done a great deal, and you have won the approval of my senior officers, as well as the unstinting praise of Lord Exmouth. I, too, have seen you in action, which is why I want . . .” He reconsidered. “I need you as my flag-captain.”

  Adam realized that the elderly servant had dragged up a chair for him and vanished into an adjoining room.

  It was all he could do to put events into some kind of order. The endless journey, his arrival here at the Admiralty. Blank faces, and heads bowed to listen, as if he were speaking a foreign language.

  He looked up at the gilded ceiling as somewhere high in the roof a clock began to chime, and he was aware of birds flapping in alarm, although they must hear the same sound at every half-hour.

  He massaged his eyes and tried to clear his mind, but the images remained. He had told Young Matthew to take a different route into Plymouth, where he had been instructed to change carriages.

  He could see the words like blood. Never look back.

  With a telescope he had eventually found Unrivalled, not far from her previous anchorage. In a week she had changed almost beyond recognition, topmasts and standing rigging gone, her decks littered with discarded cordage and spars, crates and casks piled where the eighteen-pounders had once been ranged like marines at their sealed ports. The ports empty. Dead.

  Only the figurehead remained intact and unchanged. Head flung back, breasts out-thrust, proud and defiant. And, like the girl in the studio, helpless.

  Never look back. He should have known.

  Bethune was saying in his quiet, even voice, “You have been in commission for a long time without much rest, Adam. But time is not on my side. Your appointment will take effect as soon as convenient to Their Lordships.”

  Adam was on his feet, as if invisible hands were forcing him to leave.

  Instead he asked, equally quietly, “What ship, sir?”

  Bethune breathed out slowly, half-smiling. “She’s the Athena, 74. She is completing fitting-out at Portsmouth.” He glanced at the painting of the embattled ships, a flicker of regret crossing his features. “Not a frigate, I’m afraid.”

  Adam reached out and clasped his hand. Was it said so easily, the most important moment for any captain? He looked at Bethune and thought he understood.

  For both of us.

  He said, “Perhaps not a frigate, sir. But a ship.”

  A goblet, chilled in readiness, was put into his hand.

  Her name meant nothing to him. Probably an old two-decker, perhaps like the one where it had all begun for him. But a ship.

  He touched the sword at his thigh.

  He was not alone.

  3 ABSENT FRIENDS

  THE COACH jerked violently as the brake was applied and came to a swaying halt, the horses stamping on cobbles, very aware that their journey to Portsmouth was ended. Adam Bolitho eased forward on the seat, every muscle and bone offering a protest. He had only himself to blame; he had insisted on leaving his temporary lodgings the previous evening, at an hour when most people would have been thinking of a late supper or bed.

  But the coachmen employed by the Admiralty were accustomed to it. Driving at night, the wheels dipping and grinding in deep ruts, or through rain-flooded stretches of the long Portsmouth Road, two stops to change horses, another to wait for a farm wagon to be moved after it had cast a wheel. They had paused at a small inn in a place called Liphook, to drink tea by candlelight before starting on the final leg of the journey.

  He lowered the window and shivered as the bitter air fanned across his face. First light, or soon would be, and he felt like death.

  He heard his companion twist round beside him and say cheerfully, “They’re ready for us, it seems, sir!”

  Lieutenant Francis Troubridge showed no trace of fatigue. A youthful, alert man, ever ready to answer Adam’s many questions, he had displayed no resentment or surprise at the call for a coach ride through the night. As Vice-Admiral Bethune’s flag-lieutenant, the most recent of several to all accounts, it was something he probably took for granted.

  Adam looked toward the tall gates, which were wide open. Two Royal Marine orderlies were nearby with a porter’s trolley, and an officer in a boatcloak was observing the coach without impatience.

  Even that was hard to accept. On the roof of the Admiralty above Bethune’s handsome room was the first link in a chain of telegraph stations which could pass a signal from London to the tower over the church of St Thomas almost before a courier could find, saddle, and mount a horse. News, good or bad, had always moved with the speed of the fastest rider. Not any more, and provided visibility was good the eight or so telegraph stations could send word well ahead of any traveller.

  Adam climbed down on to hard ground, and felt it rise to meet him. Like a sailor too long in an open boat in a lively sea, he thought. He shivered again and tugged his own heavy cloak around him. He was tired, and throbbing from too much travel: Falmouth, Plymouth, London, and now Portsmouth.

  He should have slept throughout the journey instead of trying to study his orders, or glean fragments of intelligence from his lively companion.

  He had the feeling that the young lieutenant was watching him now, discovering something, for reasons of his own. He had certainly gone to a lot of trouble to find out about the officer put into his care. At one point, when they had stopped to change horses, Troubridge had remarked, “I was forgetting, sir. You were flag-lieutenant yourself some years ago.” Not a question; and Adam thought that he could have given the exact year when he had been his uncle’s aide.

  He saw that the other officer had thrown back his cloak to display the epaulettes of a post captain, like his own.

  “Welcome, Bolitho!” His handshake was firm and hard. The dockyard captain, who probably knew more about ships and the demands of the fleet than any one.

  They fell into step, while the marines began unloading chests and baggage from the carriage; they did not speak, nor so much
as look at the new arrivals.

  The dockyard captain was saying, “Athena is anchored, of course, but she’s awaiting more ballast and stores. My clerk has left a full list for your attention.” He shot him a quick glance. “Have you met up with Athena before?” A casual comment, but it was typical. In the “family” of the navy it was common enough for a sailor to cross paths with the same ship throughout the years of his service at sea.

  “No.” He pictured the spidery writing, which he had read by the light of a small lantern while the coach had juddered and rolled through the darkness.

  Built at Chatham in 1803 , just two years before Trafalgar; not an old ship by naval standards. He had found that he was able to smile. Maybe Troubridge had seen that too. 1803 , the year he had been given his first command, the little 14 -gun brig Firefly. He had been just twenty-three years old.

  Laid down and completed as a third-rate, a 74 -gun ship of the line, Athena’s role had changed several times, as had her station. She had served in the second American war and in the Mediterranean, in the Irish Sea, and then back to the Channel Fleet.

  Now, out of nowhere, she was to be Sir Graham Bethune’s flagship. Her artillery had been reduced from seventy four to sixty-four, to allow more accommodation. No other reason was given.

  Even Bethune had been vague about it. “We shall be working with our ‘allies,’ Adam. My flagship is not to be seen as a threat, more as an example.” It had seemed to amuse him, although Adam suspected Bethune was almost as much in the dark as himself.

  He said, “She has a full ship’s company?”

  The other captain smiled. “All but a few. But these days it’s easier to find spare hands, with no war at the gates!”

  Adam quickened his pace. Here there was activity, even at this ungodly hour. Heavy, horse-drawn wagons, filled with cordage and crates of every size. Dockyard workers being mustered for a new day’s repairs, perhaps even building. Unlike the empty gun-ports at Plymouth. Unlike Unrivalled.

  The other captain said suddenly, “You’ll be more used to a fifth-rate, Bolitho. Athena’s a good ship, in structure and condition. The best Kentish oak—maybe the last of it, from what I hear!”

  They halted at the top of some stone stairs, and as if to a signal a boat began to pull away from a cluster of moored barges, the oars rising and falling with mist clinging to the blades like translucent weed.

  Adam saw his own breath drifting away, hating the cold in his bones. Too long on the slave coast, or clawing up and down off the Algerian shoreline . . . It was neither. A new ship, and one already destined for some ill-defined task. The West Indies, with a vice-admiral’s flag at the fore: probably Bethune’s last appointment before he quit the navy to serve in some new capacity where there was no more war, no more danger. When they had stopped at Liphook to take tea, Troubridge had mentioned his own father, an admiral at the end of his service, but now he had been given an important role in the growing ranks of the Honourable East India Company, where, no doubt, he would want his son to join him after this latest stepping-stone which might eventually lead to oblivion.

  Easier to find spare hands. The dockyard captain’s words seemed to hang in the air like his breath. Like many of Unrivalled’s people, those who had cursed the unyielding discipline, or simply the petty-mindedness of those who should have known better in the close confines of a King’s ship. Those same men might now be seeking a ship, any vessel which would give them back the only life they fully understood.

  “There have been one or two accidents, of course, quite common when refitting, and when every one wants it done in half the time.” He shrugged heavily. “Men lost overboard, two falling from aloft, another rigger too drunk to save himself in the dark. It happens.”

  Adam looked at him. “Her captain was relieved of his command. He faces a court martial, I’m told.”

  “Yes.” They watched the boat come alongside, two young seamen leaping ashore to fend off the stairs.

  He found himself holding his breath. His uncle had warned him about joining a new ship, especially as her captain. They will be far more worried about you, Adam. But he thought of the old clerk at the Admiralty, who had lingered in Bethune’s room after the vice-admiral had gone to speak with one of his superiors.

  “Your uncle, Sir Richard, was a fine man, sir. A great man, given the chance.” He had stared at the door, as if afraid of something, and blurted out, “Take care, sir. Athena’s an unlucky ship!” He had scuttled away before Bethune had returned.

  A lieutenant, impeccably turned out, eyes fixed on a point above Adam’s left epaulette, raised his hat smartly and said, “Barclay, second lieutenant, sir, at your service!”

  An open face, but at this moment giving nothing away. One of many he would come to know, and know well if he had learned anything since Firefly, all those years ago.

  He looked around, almost expecting to see Napier hovering there in his blue coat and clicking shoes. Or Luke Jago, watchful and cynical, an eye on this boat’s crew for instance, already judging the ship. His ship. Troubridge was climbing into the boat, preceding Adam in the correct manner. The dockyard captain stepped back and touched his hat.

  Adam returned the salute and nodded to the lieutenant . . . he frowned, and the name came to him. Barclay.

  The boat’s crew, smartly dressed in matching shirts and tarred hats, faced aft, eyes unmoving, but fixed on the new captain. Wondering. Assessing. Adam stepped into the sternsheets, the old sword pressed hard against his hip.

  The ship, any ship, was only as good as her captain. No better. No worse.

  He sat down. So be it.

  “Cast off!”

  He tugged his hat more firmly on to his head as the boat pulled away from the jetty, and into a cold breeze which he was beyond feeling. At any other time it was easy to lose yourself in your thoughts, allow the boat’s crew and its routine carry on without you. This was different. Unlike Unrivalled, when he had commissioned her at Plymouth; he had been there when most of her company had arrived on board, while the builders and riggers were still putting the finishing touches to their new frigate. Or even Anemone, which had gone down after a bitter action against the Americans, and he had been wounded, and taken prisoner . . .

  He saw a guard-boat pulling between two moored transports, the oars tossed as a mark of respect, an officer standing in the sternsheets to raise his hat.

  Adam reached up to drop the boatcloak from his shoulders, so that both epaulettes could be seen. The guard-boat had known of his arrival; perhaps everybody did. Nothing remained confidential for very long in the “family.”

  The stroke oarsman’s eyes had moved for the first time to watch what he had done, his loom rising and falling steadily, unhurriedly as before.

  One of my men. What is he thinking at this very moment? Or young Troubridge, whose father had flown his own flag as an admiral; was he aware of the significance of this day and what it meant to the frigate captain at his side? The officer who had been singled out for praise for his behaviour at Algiers by Lord Exmouth himself?

  He tensed, the sword gripped between his knees, cold and discomfort forgotten. As if he were someone else. A spectator.

  Slowly at first, then more deliberately as the boat turned slightly into the first true daylight, the ship was already taking shape, her tracery of spars and black rigging rising above the indistinct shapes of other moored vessels. It might not have been Athena, but he knew that it was.

  The bowman had boated his oar and was standing, facing forward with his boathook, and Adam had not seen him move.

  The boat’s coxswain swung the tiller bar, but hesitated as the lieutenant held up his hand. Anxious, nervous of making the wrong impression on the new captain.

  Adam found that he could spare a thought for the man he was relieving, a man he did not know, had never met. Stephen Ritchie, a senior captain on the Navy List, who had commanded Athena for three years, in war and in peace, was now “awaiting the convenience of a court m
artial” as it had been euphemistically described in the Gazette. Troubridge had been sparse with his information, but Ritchie had evidently been in serious debt, not unusual in the navy, and had made the grave mistake of falsifying accounts to obtain further credit. He must have been in very deep trouble to take such risks. He was paying for it now.

  He glanced up as the bowsprit and long tapering jib-boom reached up and over the boat like a lance. The figurehead, clad in armour, was still hidden in shadow.

  Adam caught a slight movement above the beakhead, a face withdrawing, someone posted to give the first warning.

  It came immediately.

  “Boat ahoy!”

  The lieutenant was on his feet again, hands cupped.

  “Athena!” The waiting was over.

  Adam felt the ship rising over him, the fresh paint reflected on the sluggish current like white and black bars, with the gunports creating their own checkered pattern. Masts and standing rigging, hammock nettings all neatly packed and covered; they must have piped all hands long before dawn. As a midshipman he had done it himself, going without breakfast in order that some great man would find all to his liking when he stepped aboard.

  The boat was coming alongside, oars tossed and dripping, while the bowman and some figures clinging beneath the ship’s entry port eased the hull into the remaining shadows.

  Not much longer than Unrivalled, but she was a two-decker and seemed to tower above him like a cliff.

  He had crammed his mind with the basic details. Now they seemed to revolve in confusion. One hundred and sixty feet in length, and of one thousand four hundred tons. A frigate was always busy, always crowded. It was hard to accept that Athena, when fully manned, would carry five hundred souls: officers, seamen, and a contingent of Royal Marines for good measure.

  There was a sudden silence, or so it seemed. The lieutenant was facing him, pleased, worried, or merely relieved that his part was over; it was hard to tell.

  Adam looked up at the ship’s side, the tumblehome curving away to reveal the “stairs,” and the entry port which looked a cable’s length away. He was reminded of his visit to Lord Exmouth’s flag-ship Queen Charlotte at Plymouth, when the admiral, knowing he had been wounded, had ordered him to use a bosun’s chair as he left, and the sailors had cheered him for it. As Exmouth had said, “Pride is one thing, Bolitho, but conceit is an enemy!”