Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (31 page)

And on through the
piano nobile
– the saloon, the statue gallery (whose pieces were clad for much warmer climes, or not at all, though Mrs Gedge showed no concern), the long library, the dining room … Paintings, furniture, sculpture of every sort, the bounty of the Grand Tour brought back to the northern shore of the county of the Iceni – they who had once burned the Romans out of Colchester, St Albans and even London.

An hour they walked and looked and questioned and remarked, and Hervey began truly to imagine how his friend could be content in the mere proximity of such a place as this, even in a house ‘good only for a curate’ – if extended to more gentlemanlike proportions …

But for Peto himself, even in the midst of Palladian splendour and the Green State Bedroom, came the call of the sea. ‘We must sheer away,’ he pronounced suddenly, recalling Hervey from his close contemplation of a particularly vivid oil of
Jupiter Caressing Juno
. ‘We must see Blakeney with daylight aplenty – the harbour there, my new boat, the church and all. But before we go, the great wall of the kitchen garden – I would have you see that. I would wish your opinion.’

Hervey counted himself no greater gardener than he was a builder, but was perfectly content to humour his friend. They therefore gave thanks, and generous coin, to Mrs Gedge, and went by way of the servants’ hall to the gardens.

‘See! See!’ cried Peto, as they rounded the corner.

But Hervey was at a loss to perceive anything but a wall – admittedly a very high wall, higher perhaps than he’d seen. ‘What is it that I’m to look for?’

‘
There
, Hervey! Mark that edifice.’

He looked at the object of his friend’s enthusiasm with some puzzlement. ‘As serviceable a wall as ever I saw.’

‘Ah, but not merely a wall,’ said Peto, warming to his subject ever more keenly. ‘In the summer a veritable cornucopia – pears, apples, succulents of all sorts. You mark its thickness?’

Hervey was perhaps used to seeing a wall as first and foremost an obstacle to surmount – to breach, preferably, or to scale. Peto’s, or rather, Holkham’s, was a full twenty feet – as high as those at Badajoz (what an escalade that had been), and at Bhurtpore, whose breach he’d climbed through when the sappers had done their job of tunnelling and exploding. But a wall for
fruit
…

‘It is a wall of walls, I grant you. Enough to make Joshua himself tremble.’

‘You see, Hervey, were we to come here in spring there would be half a dozen and more columns of smoke, like so many engines getting up steam – like Chatham yard. All from the stoves fitted to the wall as soon as the first fruits appear, just like an antique Roman floor, to keep them from the frosts. And this wall I shall build in my own garden, or rather, a smaller of its type – a frigate to a first-rate. And Miss Codrington shall have fruit as early and often as any in this fair county!’

Hervey smiled. His old friend’s fervour was that of a man half his years – the fervour he himself could still, occasionally, recall. Was it apt, engendered by a fascination with a girl less than half his age (‘fascination’ was, no doubt, unfair; ‘gratitude’, perhaps)? Who should say? Was it transient? Who
could
say?

‘Miss Rebecca Codrington is the most fortunate of young ladies.’

‘And I of men, Hervey.’

Peto had no ship, perhaps no true prospect of a port-admiralcy either – just a folio of builder’s plans, and, of course, the devotion of a fine woman (yes, she might be called ‘woman’, to judge by her mind and air), and the wish to please her in so delightful a way. Contentment enough. More than enough. What strange things could be wrought by shot and shell.

‘Not so pretty as on a summer’s day, I grant you,’ said the contented captain as they bowled along with fresh horses; ‘but infinitely more diverting. A gale such as this – and, mark my words, a gale it is – will be driving some curious shipping for haven at Blakeney.’

‘Because it is blowing onshore?’

‘Exactly so. The harbour’s the best on the coast, a good retreat in a heavy sea. She’ll take vessels of four or five hundred tons – and the easiest to find on account of the church. You can see it as far as the Dudgeon light, eight leagues off.’

‘But in this weather may it be seen so clearly?’

‘No, a master who has his book of sailing directions – and there should be none without – can set his course at the light south sou’west half-south till he sees the tower, and then if he brings it to bear sou’west by south can run in that direction till the buoys. There’s a hillock half a mile to sou’ward of the harbour which you can see a full three leagues off: if he keeps the church open to the north-west of it half a cable’s length he’ll be carried to the outer buoy.’

‘Well,’ said Hervey, in a voice of some awe, ‘I’ve little idea of what you speak, but it sounds most scientific.’

Peto waved his hand as if to say that was but half the story. ‘Blakeney’s a bar harbour, you see, and though she’s buoyed the sands shift. A stranger’ll be disinclined to try, though in a strong gale it’ll always be prudent to run for it rather than hazard being driven on shore. They hoist a flag on the church as a signal when you may run for it if the boats can’t be got off – the pilot boats – and there’ll be a full nine feet over the bar.’

‘And there’ll be ships running for harbour in this weather?’

‘Indeed – unless they’re big enough to stand well out in the first place. It’s the coasters from the Tyne chiefly that come across from the Humber and don’t have the sea space to round the point at Cromer. Even the steamers.’

‘How fascinating,’ said Hervey, and meaning it. ‘I hadn’t quite appreciated the full hazard of a lee shore. But what is a ship of five hundred tons?’

‘
Nisus
was a thousand.’

‘Ah.’

‘
Nisus
could stand out to sea in any weather. A frigate’ll weather a hurricane.’

‘And your boat?’

‘
Boats
, Hervey: we have two, for the time being at least – an old Lukin unimmergible that’s done us well for nigh on twenty years, but Cromer’s lately bought a new and bigger boat, and we’ve taken their old one, a most seaworthy Greathead. Ten oars and broad-beamed – she can take off a dozen comfortably.’

‘Greathead?’

‘The builder, South Shields man.’

Hervey would have shown an interest in his friend’s new ‘command’ come what may, but the matter – like any touching on innovations among men of action – was genuinely intriguing. ‘What is it that makes the boat so serviceable, besides her broad beam?’

‘Do you know the Norway yawl?’

Hervey had to admit he didn’t.

‘The Greathead’s built along the same lines – curved keel, but rising even more fore and aft, so even when she’s inundated amidships a good third at either end’s out of the water, so she can still make headway without foundering. An’ she’s steered by an oar not a rudder, so she can be rowed either direction, and the curve makes her easy to steer about her centre, a God-send when you’re trying to take off crew from a wreck.’

‘And she was first at Cromer?’

‘Aye, but they’ve now a bigger boat. They have to reach further out than Blakeney.’

Peto’s regard for the new Blakeney boat proved extensive – her sides cased in cork four-inch thick, copper plating securing the fenders, seven hundredweight unladen – so much buoyancy, such superiority over the former craft …

Hervey took careful note, such as he could, and on that coasting road, with the horses’ ears pricked to the coming force and noise, with Corporal Wakefield bent so much in the saddle that his cheek brushed the leader’s mane, and Peto thrilling to the elements that had given
Nisus
and then
Prince Rupert
their power and their glory, he began to smile. The sea air, even as tempestuous as this, was so evident a tonic that all Miss Rebecca Codrington – Lady Peto as would be – need do for the perfect happiness of her adoring captain was to eat the fruit of his forcing wall and to accompany him on a daily drive to pay homage to Neptune. Admiralcy was not essential to his old friend’s self-esteem and contentment. Not for him the ambition that drove the lonelier man. Only the companionship – the love – of a good woman, to reciprocate and increase, and in a place the spirit was at ease:
Happy the man, whose wish and care / A few paternal acres bound, / Content to breathe his native air / In his own ground
…

Boom!

Peto started, like an old hunter to the horn. ‘Maroons!’

The lookout’s urgent summons – even above the wind. Then again, like a thunder-crack.

‘A ship in trouble?’

‘For certain! Two rockets to summon the Blakeney crew.’ He leaned out of the window. ‘Corporal, make haste, if you will!’

Wakefield let slip the rein, and kicked. They’d just crossed the Stiffkey, not three miles to the town, and he’d hardly worked the Holkham pair at all. Now he could really ask of them – if not a canter on a road he didn’t know, and one so rutted, but a flying trot, almost as good as.

And how they flew! In ten minutes he was turning onto the harbour road.

Peto could hardly contain himself. ‘Damme, all this time and I’ve never yet seen a boat put out!’

Hervey counted himself fortunate indeed.

‘There! There she is. ’Pon my word, she was got away sharply.’

The Blakeney boat was stationed at the furthest point of the sand spit that enclosed the harbour, with some sort of runway that got her into the water without horsepower. There was a perpetual lookout from a cottage on the sandbank (sand spit, all but) with a watch three miles east and west, at whose signal the Blakeney fishermen would rush to their boats and thence to the point of the spit to man the Greathead. There’d been an unpleasant business of late, Peto said, though before his time, when the boatmen had been laggardly, wanting to stay their hand till a master actually called for salvage, when they could claim their nine-tenths (one master, seeing the boat so close, had decided to risk running the bar, and afterwards claimed he’d only asked for pilotage). ‘But I put a stop to all of that, for it’s but a short step to wrecking.’

Wakefield pulled up on the hard, and Peto was half out in an instant, grabbing a hand-hold for the roof.

‘Have a care!’ cried Hervey, hastening to help.

But Peto was atop the chaise in no time, glass in hand, nimble as the cripple at Bethesda.

‘Can you see the distress?’ called Hervey (there was no safe space for two of them).

‘I see her tops … two – no, she’s beam-on:
three
masts! What the devil’s she doing putting in?’

‘Is she too big?’ shouted Hervey, for he’d seen the flag on the church tower.

‘The point is she’s big enough to stand out to sea,’ bellowed Peto. ‘She must’ve sprung a leak or some such.’ He began clambering down.

‘Shall we drive to the bank?’

‘Can’t – not with the tide in. Besides, there’s no use watching. If she’s in such trouble as to run for it and miss the bar they’ll need to take off crew and all and pretty quick. And if she’s as many passengers as she’s built for …’

He beckoned furiously to the watching men on the harbour wall. ‘Come on, you landlubbers! Look lively!’

‘What do you intend?’ Hervey was still shouting, the wind relentless.

‘To get yonder boat into the water!’

Hervey saw a tarpaulin thirty yards away, supposing it was the Lukin coble.

The half-dozen men, two of them little more than boys, broke into a sort of double – as if they couldn’t help themselves, for all their quarrelsome independence.

‘Now, my good lads,’ began Peto, with a look that
won
as much as commanded, ‘we must get our old boat in the water and be ready to take off the crew and all from the new one, for they’ll have to make more than one rescue if yon barque’s sailing full-laden.’

No one questioned his right to call on them – Hervey supposed they must know exactly who he was – but the sheer force of his command and assurance seemed effortlessly to propel them to the task. In no time at all the tarpaulin was unlashed and the rollers laid out.

‘Good men! Capital!’

There were only a dozen yards to run to the water, but the boat was no seven-hundredweight, and even Hervey saw they wouldn’t shift it by their own muscle alone.

Peto was ahead of him. ‘Corporal, will you lend your horsepower?’

‘Aye, sir!’

They sprang into action like ostlers to a mail coach. Hervey helped unhitch the traces and run the two in tandem to the front of the coble. One of the ‘volunteers’ had got the hauling ropes ready, which Wakefield hitched to the wheeler’s collar, while Hervey struggled to steady the leader.

‘Now then, listen to me,’ rasped Wakefield to the volunteers, so uncharacteristically assertive that Hervey looked twice. ‘You pull on those ropes to take up the slack – right? And then I’ll lead these on to take the strain – right? And you’ll keep on the ropes till we’re in the water an’ I tells you to let go – right? And no noise. I don’t want them being started behind.’

They all nodded eagerly. Had Wakefield been in uniform he couldn’t have made a greater impression.

But who was to man the oars?

Now it was Peto’s turn. ‘Hold hard for the moment, if you will, Corporal. Now, well done, lads, well done. Now, when we’re in the water, who’s coming with me?’

Hervey winced.
With
him? Surely he didn’t intend …

‘Yes, my lads, I’ll be in yon boat. I’ve commanded many a one in my time – as well y’know. We needn’t go beyond the bar – safe water, just a bit of a pull against the wind. Now, who’s with me?’

It seemed that most of them were. Whether because of the compelling power of Sir Laughton Peto’s celebrity and disposition, or the prospect of a share in the salvage, Hervey couldn’t suppose. It mattered not at that moment.

‘Capital! Now, as her bow begins to lift, all hands aboard!’ He turned to Wakefield. ‘Ready?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Then haul away!’

She moved easily – thank God – and the horses were no more shy of the water than the road. Wakefield and then Hervey pulled themselves astride as they splashed into the breakers.