Heart of Oak (7 page)

He could feel her hand on his arm, very still, like a small creature, listening, waiting.

He said, “We’ll walk to the end of the jetty now that we’ve come this far.” Suppose they all stood firm. To prove something, take some cheap revenge.

“Everything in order, Captain Bolitho?”

Adam had not even seen them approach. Two uniforms, gilt buttons; one was wearing a sword. Authority, from the revenue cutter he had seen earlier when they had reached the waterfront.

“Thank you, yes.” He touched his hat and saw the other man respond. He felt her fingers tighten on his arm as he added, “We are amongst friends here.”

They walked on, the way suddenly cleared. Nothing was said; there was only a smile or a brief nod of recognition here and there, and once a hand reached out as they passed.

“I shall not forget that, Adam.” She turned and looked at the moored vessels, and the brig, which was under more sail and leaning slightly on a new tack. “And neither will they.”

Together they paused to look up the slope toward the town. The square tower of the church was just visible above the surrounding roofs.

Adam thought of the imposing curate and said, half to himself, “God and the Navy we adore.”

She pressed his arm.

“I cannot wait. Is that so wrong?”

They walked back along the jetty. The onlookers had vanished.

Absent friends.

David Napier walked steadily toward the house, his feet avoiding the loose cobbles by instinct; they were already familiar, after so short a time. He paused, noting the wind’s direction as sunlight lanced off the Father Tyme weathervane. He had walked as far as the little coastguard cottage where a dog always rushed out to bark at him, and there had been no more pain in his leg. He had not even been out of breath. He had seen a few people on his way, most of whom he had come to recognize, or thought he did. It was wrong to pretend, deceive himself, but he could not help it. While he lived here, it was his home. His life.

It could have been so much worse.
But every day it was getting better. He raised his foot and took his weight on it. Surely by now…

“I ’eard tell you was up an’ about when the cock crowed, young David. You’m missing walking that deck, my son!”

Old Jeb Trinnick was standing at an open stable door, a mug of something gripped in his hand. Tall and fierce-looking, with only one eye, he would take no arguments from any one. But this morning his habitual grimace seemed to be a smile.

A boy called something and he turned away, scowling now. “Never gets a bloody minute!”

Napier smiled. Jeb Trinnick would have it no other way, from what he had seen and heard. Perhaps it was the best way. When you were trying to forget, afraid of what might lie in wait. Crying out in the night, even here, where there was nothing to fear.

Our secret.

He had never known any one like her. Lowenna meant “joy” in the old Cornish tongue.

What must it be like? Really like? When they were together…

He looked up toward the windows of the estate office. Yovell never probed or asked questions, and might even be called secretive, but he cared enough about those he worked for. He could almost hear him saying it.
Otherwise, my boy, I wouldn’t be here.

It was warm in the office, but not the oven it had been when Jago had been acting the barber. The cat was back in its usual place, and Yovell was at his desk.

“Ah, here he is. Mister Midshipman Napier in person!” He said it lightly, but Napier was staring at the man with him, a courier, booted and spurred and dressed in a heavy riding coat. He must have ridden up to the house from the main road. “He has a letter for you.” He peered over the spectacles at the courier. “And Mrs Ferguson will no doubt give
you
something to keep out the cold.”

The courier grinned at Napier. “I’d take kindly to that,” and walked to the door, spurs jingling, his duty done.

“A letter—for me?” He tried again. “Is it—my mother?”

Yovell said kindly, “Sit you down. It might be a mistake.” He slid the letter across the desk, his hand resting on it, as if to give him time. “But it’s addressed to you right enough.”

Napier took the letter and the knife he had always seen Yovell use, here and aboard
Unrivalled.
So long ago. There were several addresses and directions, all scored out, the final one reading
In the care of Captain Adam Bolitho, Falmouth.

Yovell said, “Open it, David.” His spectacles had slipped, but he did nothing to adjust them. “I shall be here.” He did not elaborate.

Napier slit open the envelope and pulled out the letter. His mind barely kept pace with the meaningless details, the lines of copperplate script and the remains of a broken seal. Like drops of blood. His hands were steady, but his mouth was completely dry.

Napier moved the letter; it was shaking, blurred. Tiny, unreal sounds intruded. A horse on the cobbles, a man whistling, breaking off in a fit of coughing. His eyes fell to the foot of the page.

“Drink this.” Yovell had come around the desk and was leaning over him.

Napier sipped at the glass and coughed, and felt Yovell’s hand on his shoulder. A latch clicked and he heard him snap, “Not now! Find somebody else!”

Perhaps that did more than anything to steady him. But his vision was still blurred. Like drowning. He said, “I didn’t even know his name. He was Boyce, that was all I knew.”

Yovell’s hand moved slightly. “You are doing well.” He raised the glass again. “And his father is a rear-admiral, no less.”

Napier hardly heard him. “We never shared anything aboard
Audacity.
There were six of us in the gunroom. There was always trouble…” He halted, shocked that all he could recall was hate. He touched his leg, without realizing that his hand had moved. The ship heeling over, explosions muffled and terrible as the sea burst into the hull. The screams, wild and unreal, others trying to cheer as
Athena
surged past, all her guns firing. Then the emptiness, drifting fragments, boats too far away to help. And through and above the smoke, sunlight touching the crest of a hill. Too far, too late. It was all he had.

He saw that Yovell was gazing at him, behind the desk once more.

“You’ve had quite a load to carry on your back, young David.” He gestured to the letter. “Some I heard, some I guessed. And you, I know.” He gave his owlish smile. “The rest can wait. But for the courier’s untimely visit, you might never have received this. Not for a while, in any case.”

Napier said, “I wondered why…” and saw Yovell’s irritation as more shouts came from the stables, and then Jeb Trinnick’s harsher tone brought an instant silence.

Yovell folded the letter and pushed it discreetly across the desk. Then he said, “It seems impossible to keep a secret in this place. The courier brought word to Captain Bolitho. It was his main purpose in coming, otherwise…” He unlocked a drawer and dragged it out until it was pressed against his stomach. “We will talk again soon. Together we shall think of a suitable response to Rear-Admiral Boyce.”

Napier saw the long, buff-coloured envelope, another, unbroken red seal. He heard himself ask, “Is he recalled?”

Yovell seemed preoccupied, patting his pockets. “I do not expect
you
to betray a confidence.” He peered around for his hat. “That was unfair, and uncalled for…Stay a while, if you wish. This, I fear, must not wait. Damn their eyes!”

Napier watched him in an awed silence. Mild enough, but from Yovell it matched a hardened seaman’s crudest oath.

The door slammed and there was silence. Napier folded the letter slowly and replaced it in the torn envelope.
He was a bully, a coward, and a liar.
Aloud or to himself, he neither knew nor cared. He thought of the dark-eyed girl who had tried to drive away those same bitter memories.

Our secret.
Now she would be separated from the man who was her life. He thrust the letter into his coat.

Our captain.
Nothing else mattered.

She sat in one of the high-backed, matching chairs, her hands clasped in her lap, only her eyes moving as Adam Bolitho strode restlessly about the study. The fire in the grate had all but died, but the door was closed; they would not be disturbed. Her cloak was still lying across the old chest by the window, where she had thrown it when they had arrived back from the harbour.

She had been expecting it, dreading it, but surely not so soon?

She said only, “When?” and saw him twist the envelope in his hand. “Is it a ship?”

He turned toward her, with the same expression she had seen when Yovell had brought the letter. And before that, when they had walked from the stable yard and the eyes had watched them pass. He had known then.

He took her hands in his and stooped to kiss her hair. “I am required to report to Plymouth.” He looked away, fighting it.
“Again.”
A piece of charred wood fell amongst the ashes and he saw her eyes reflect the leaping flame. He thought of the letter, complete with its stamp and seal of Admiralty. It was not a command.
Upon receipt of these orders
, or
to proceed with all despatch.
Curt and to the point. You became used to such brevity; you were not expected to like it. This was unreal; he could see him, hear his voice. John Grenville, still listed as captain, secretary to the First Lord. Second only to God. Like another world, and yet he remembered him better than many he had known for years.

“I am ordered to attend a meeting with certain senior officers. Captain Grenville apologizes for the abruptness of this summons.” He saw the question in her eyes. “That was stupid of me, Lowenna. You do not know him. He is already at Plymouth…his last active duty, to all accounts.” He was making no sense, and he gripped her hands as she rose from the chair. “I wanted anything but this!”

She waited, giving herself time. This was their life, or would be.

“Down by the harbour, Adam, I told you I wanted to share it, be a part of it.” She put her arms around his shoulders. “A part of
you.
”

They walked to the old chest, and Adam lifted her cloak so that she could read its carved inscription, the motto of the Bolitho family.
For My Country’s Freedom.

She murmured, “Remember the curate, Adam. The second part. ‘When danger threatens, but not before.’” She paused. “And I’m prepared for that too, God help me, if need be.”

There were voices, perhaps guests. He said, “We must tell my aunt.”

She had seen that look in his eyes when the little brig had been getting under way. The captain. A man apart.

He walked to the door, pausing once to glance back at the room, the books and the paintings. The past. He heard Grenville’s voice again.
Be patient. A ship will come.

She slipped her hand around his wrist, and the gold lace on his sleeve. “I am ready.”

But as he held open the door, she touched her breast. It was as if her heart had stopped.

T
HE CLERK HELD OPEN THE HEAVY DOOR
with one hand while he snatched a coat from a chair with the other.

“If you would wait here a moment, sir. I was told to conduct you directly you were announced.”

Adam Bolitho walked into the spacious room; it was as if nothing had changed. The same paintings, the great windows with their sweeping views across Plymouth Sound, and the narrow balcony where only the determined would brave the cold easterly wind. It only needed Valentine Keen, that youthful admiral, to make an appearance and the clock would turn right back to the year when Adam had taken command of
Unrivalled.

“I will inform Sir John of your arrival.”

Adam turned abruptly, but the door was closed. He must have misheard, or the clerk was wrong.
Sir
John Grenville? He looked toward the table near the door, at the candle burning beside a pile of envelopes, the wax and official stamp ready for use. Documents of some importance…The clerk was not likely to have made a mistake.

Restlessly he walked to one of the windows and touched the glass. He could feel it quivering to the thrust of the wind, the chill of the March forenoon. Not that you would know it inside the massive walls of Boscawen House, the admiral’s residence. Even the candleflame was unflickering. He gazed out at the Sound and the open sea beyond, blue-grey like a shark, waiting, and found himself stretching to drive away the knots of tension, the ache of travel in the last two days. Bad roads and sleeplessness, even when Young Matthew had stopped at some forgettable inn in the middle of nowhere. Why should it be like this? It was his life, the only one he knew. He looked at the candle again: fresh, and only recently lit. Even the clerk had been caught unprepared, and tried to hide his heavy coat from view.

He moved slowly toward a mirror behind the big desk, where he had once seen Gilia, Keen’s wife, primp for a moment before hurrying away to deal with one of their many visitors; pushed some loose hair from his forehead and tugged at his crushed neckcloth, his eyes pitiless, as if he were assessing some unreliable subordinate.

It had been different this time because of Lowenna, and because they had wanted it so.

He touched his lip; it felt bruised from the force and the pain of their last embrace. There was no mark.

He made himself return to the window, his back painfully straight. There was an expensive telescope mounted on a brass tripod beside the heavy curtains. When a man-of-war was about to make the final approach, and the guns boomed out in salute to the flag above this building, the admiral would be able to watch every change of tack or manoeuvre to the last moment. And every captain would know it…