Cross of St George

6. Bad Blood

STANDING LIKE a perfect model above her own reflection, His Britannic Majesty’s Ship Reaper would have held the eye of any casual onlooker, no less than a professional seaman. A 26-gun frigate, very typical of the breed which had entered the revolutionary war with France some twenty years earlier, Reaper retained the sleek lines and grace of those ships which, then as now, were always in short supply. To command such a ship was every young officer’s dream: to be free of the fleet’s apron strings and the whim of every admiral, his real chance to prove his ability, if necessary against impossible odds.

By today’s standards Reaper would appear small, not much bigger than a sloop-of-war, and certainly no match for the newer American frigates which had already proved their superiority in armament and endurance.

On this dazzling April day Reaper lay almost becalmed, her sails hanging with scarcely any movement, her masthead pendant lifeless. Ahead of her, on either bow, two of her longboats, their oars rising and falling like tired wings, attempted to hold her under command, to retain steerage-way until the wind returned.

She was almost at the end of her passage, twelve hundred miles from Kingston, Jamaica, which had already taken her nearly two weeks. At dusk the previous day they had crossed the thirtieth parallel, and tomorrow at first light, if the wind found them again, they would sight the colourful humps of the Bermudas.

Theirs was escort duty, the curse of every fast-moving man-of-war, necessary but tedious, retrimming sails and trying to keep station on their ponderous charges: a test of any captain’s forbearance. There was only one large merchantman to deliver to the Bermudas; the rest had been safely escorted to other ports in the Leeward Islands. The heavily-laden vessel, named Killarney, would eventually join a strongly defended convoy whose destination was England. Many a seaman had glanced at her motionless sails and felt envy and homesickness like a fever, merely by thinking about it.

Reaper’s only consort was a small, sturdy brig, Alfriston. Like so many of her hard-worked class, she had started life in the merchant service, until the demands of war had changed her role and her purpose. With the aid of a telescope she could just be seen, well astern of the merchantman, completely becalmed and sternon, like a helpless moth landed on the water.

But once rid of their slow-moving charge Reaper would be free, so why was she different from other frigates which had risen above all the setbacks and disasters of war to become legends?

Perhaps it was her silence. Despite the fact that she carried some one hundred and fifty officers, seamen and marines within her graceful hull, she seemed without life. Only the flap of empty canvas against her spars and shrouds, and the occasional creak of the rudder broke the unnatural stillness. Her decks were clean and, like her hull, freshly painted and well-maintained. Like the other ships which had fought on that September day in 1812, there was barely a mark to reveal the damage she had suffered. Her real damage went far deeper, like guilt. Like shame.

Aft by the quarterdeck rail Reaper’s captain stood with his arms folded, a stance he often took when he was thinking deeply. He was twenty-seven years old and already a post-captain, with a fair skin which seemed to defy the heat of the Caribbean or the sudden fury of the Atlantic. A serious face: he could have been described as handsome but for the thinness of his mouth. He was a man whom many would call fortunate, and well placed for the next phase of advancement. This had been Reaper’s first operational cruise after completing her repairs in Halifax, and it was his first time in command of her. A necessary step, but he knew full well why he had been appointed. Reaper’s previous captain, who had been old for his rank, a man of great experience who had left the more ordered world of the Honourable East India Company to return to service in the fleet, had fallen victim to the ruthlessness of war. Reaper had been raked at long range by the American’s massive guns, in what was believed to have been a single broadside, although few who were there could clearly remember what had happened. Reaper had been almost totally dismasted, her decks buried under fallen spars and rigging, her company torn apart. Most of her officers, including her gallant captain, had died instantly; where there had been order, there had been only chaos and terror. Amongst the upended guns and splintered decks somebody, whose identity was still unclear, had hauled down the colours. Nearby, the battle had continued until the American frigate Baltimore had drifted out of command, with many of her people either killed or wounded. Commodore Beer’s flagship Unity had been boarded and taken by Bolitho’s seamen and marines. A very close thing, but in a sea-fight there is only one victor.

Reaper could probably have done nothing more; she had already been passed by and left a drifting wreck. But to those who had fought and survived that day, she was remembered only as the ship which had surrendered while the fight had still raged around her. Their Lordships knew the value of even a small frigate at this decisive stage of the war, and a ship was only as strong as the man who commanded her. Haste, expediency, the need to forget, each had played a part, but even on this bright spring morning, with the sun burning down between the loosely flapping sails, the feeling was still here. Less than half of Reaper’s people were from her original company. Many had died in the battle; others had been too badly wounded to be of any further use. Even so, to the rest of the tightly-knit squadron, Reaper was like an outcast, and her shame was borne by all of them.

The captain came out of his thoughts and saw the first lieutenant making his way aft, pausing here and there to speak with the working parties. They had grown up in the same town, and had entered the navy as midshipmen at almost the same time. The first lieutenant was an experienced and intelligent officer, despite his youth. If he had one failing, it was his readiness to talk with the hands, even the new, untrained landmen, as if they were on equal terms, or as equal as anyone could be in a King’s ship. That would have to change. Reaper needed to be brought to her proper state of readiness and respect, no matter what it cost. His mouth twitched. There was another link. He had asked for, and obtained, the hand of the first lieutenant’s sister in marriage.

His next command would be decided… He broke off as the cry came from aloft. “Signal from Alfriston, sir!”

The captain snapped to one of the attentive midshipmen, “Take a glass up yourself and see what that fool is babbling about!”

The first lieutenant had joined him. “The lookout has no skill with flags, I’m afraid, sir.”

“He’d better mend his ways, damn him, or I’ll see his backbone at the gratings! It’s probably nothing, anyway.”

Somebody called a command and a few seamen ran smartly to the boat tier to execute it. The first lieutenant had grown accustomed to it. The silence, the instant obedience, everything carried out at the double. Try as he might, he could not accept it.

The captain said, “As soon as we receive orders and rid ourselves of Killarney, I shall want sail and gun drill every day, until we can cut the time it takes them to do every little thing. I’ll not stand for slackness. Not from any man!”

The first lieutenant watched his profile, but said nothing. Did it so change an officer who had already held a successful command? Might it change me?

This afternoon there would be the ritual of punishment. Two more floggings at the gangway, both severe, but one of which could have been avoided or reduced to some lesser penalty. The staccato roll of drums, the crack of the lash on a man’s naked back. Again and again, until it looked as if his body had been torn open by some crazed beast…

When he had voiced his opinion about extreme punishment, often at the instigation of some junior officer or midshipman, the captain had turned on him. “Popularity is a myth, a deceit! Obedience and discipline are all that count, to me and to my ship!”

Perhaps when they returned to Halifax, things might improve.

Almost without thinking, he said, “It seems likely that Sir Richard Bolitho will have hoisted his flag in Halifax again, sir.”

“Perhaps.” The captain seemed to consider it, sift it for some hidden meaning. “A flag officer of reputation. But it has to be said that any admiral is only as strong as his captains-and how they perform.”

The first lieutenant had never served with or under Sir Richard Bolitho, and yet, like the many he had spoken to, he felt as if he knew him personally.

The captain was smiling. “We shall see, sir. We shall see.”

The midshipman’s voice came shrilly from the masthead. “Signal from Alfriston, sir! Sail in sight to the nor’-west!” A small pause, as if the midshipman was frightened of the noise. “Brigantine, sir.”

The captain rubbed his hands briskly, one of his rare displays of emotion. “Not one of ours, unless the despatches are wrong.”

He swung round as the halliards and canvas came alive, the masthead pendant lifting as if suddenly awakened.

The first lieutenant exclaimed, “The master was right, sir! The wind is coming back!”

The captain nodded. “Recall the boats and have them hoisted. We are well upwind of friends and stranger alike. We’ll add another prize to our list, eh?” He shaded his eyes to watch the two boats casting off the tow lines and pulling back toward their ship. “Something for your sister’s dowry!”

The first lieutenant was surprised at the swift change of mood. It would certainly break the monotony of this snail’s pace.

He looked away as the captain added thoughtfully, “Bring forward the punishment by an hour. It will keep them occupied, and remind them of their duty.”

Calls trilled and men ran to hoist the two dripping boats up and over the gangway while others dashed up the ratlines in readiness to make more sail, even as the slack canvas flapped and then boomed out harder to the wind. The lieutenant watched the sea’s face, the black shadows of Reaper’s masts and sails blurring like ruffled fur while the hull heeled slightly, and then more firmly to the demands of wind and rudder.

The moment every frigate officer waits for. But the elation would not come.

Captain James Tyacke tucked his hat beneath his arm and waited for the marine sentry to admit him. For an instant, he saw a shadow through the screen door, and was amused. The ever vigilant Ozzard, keeping a watchful eye out for visitors to these quarters.

He found Bolitho seated at the table, some charts with written notes on them held down by two books bound in green leather, with heavily-gilded spines. Tyacke recognized them as some of the collection Lady Catherine Somervell had sent aboard for the admiral. Even here, thousands of miles from England, she was never far away from this restless, sensitive man.

“Ah, James!” He looked up and smiled warmly. “I was hoping that you would sup with me tonight, and leave your troubles to your lieutenants for a change.”

Tyacke looked past him at the unbroken panorama of the ocean, blue and grey, disturbed here and there by long, glassy swells. In his mind’s eye he saw them all, Indomitable in the centre, with the two frigates Virtue and Attacker some eight miles off either beam. At dusk they would draw closer to one another, but in this formation they could scan an imposing range from horizon to horizon. Tyacke could also visualize each captain, just as he knew Bolitho would feel the strength of every ship under his flag. Keeping well up to windward like a loyal terrier, the brig Marvel completed this small but effective flotilla.

Bolitho said, “I can see from your expression, James, that you had forgotten the significance of this day.”

“For the moment, Sir Richard.” There was a brief silence. “Two years ago, I took command of this ship.” He added quietly, as if it were something private, “The Old Indom.”

Bolitho waited for him to seat himself. It was like a signal: Ozzard was moving out of his pantry. The flag captain would be staying a while.

Tyacke said, “We’ve done a lot in that time.”

Bolitho looked at the leather-bound books, remembering her at Plymouth, in the coach when they had parted. “I sometimes wonder where it will end. Or even if we are achieving anything by waiting, always waiting, for the enemy to show his teeth.”

“It will come. I feel it. When I was in Larne,” for a moment he hesitated as if it was still too painful a memory to discuss, “the slavers had the whole ocean to pick and choose from. Every cargo of poor devils waiting to be shipped to the Indies and the Americas could be collected… or dropped overboard, if they were sighted by us or another patrol. But every so often…” He leaned forward in his chair, his scarred face suddenly clear and terrible in the reflected sunlight, “I knew, like you knew about Unity. That sixth sense, instinct, call it what you will.”

Bolitho could feel the strength of the man, his deep pride in what he could do. Not something to be taken for granted, not a form of conceit, but true and real, like the old sword on its rack. As he had known in September, when they had walked the deck together, splinters bursting from the planking as sharpshooters tried to mark them down, two men pacing up and down, making no attempt to conceal their ranks or their importance to those who depended upon them.

Avery, too, had walked with them that day. If he had any friend in this ship other than Bolitho himself, that friend was Tyacke. He wondered if he had confided his present preoccupation to him, and then knew he had not. Two men so different, and yet not dissimilar, each deeply reserved, driven in on himself. No, Avery would not have discussed it with Tyacke, particularly if it concerned a woman.

Unconsciously he had touched the volume of Shakespearean sonnets; she had chosen this edition with care because the print was clear, easy to read. So far away. Spring in the West Country. Wagtails on the beach where they had walked; swifts and jackdaws; the return of beauty and vitality to the countryside.

Tyacke watched him, not without affection. Maybe it was better to be alone, with no one to draw your heart, or break it. To know no pain. Then he recalled Bolitho’s woman boarding this ship, climbing the side like a sailor to the cheers of the men. It was not true. Just to have somebody, to know that she was there… He pushed the thoughts aside: for him, they were impossible.

“I’d best go up and see the afternoon gun drill, sir.” He stood, his head brushing the deck beams. He did not appear to notice, and Bolitho knew that after Larne, Indomitable must seem like a palace.

He said, “Until tonight, then.”

But Tyacke was staring at the screen door, one hand raised as if he was listening to something. They both heard measured steps, then the tap of the sentry’s musket as he called, “First lieutenant, sir! ”

Lieutenant John Daubeny stepped into the cabin, his cheeks flushed from the salt air.

Tyacke said, “I heard a call from the masthead. What is it?”

Bolitho felt the sudden tension. He had not heard the call himself. Tyacke had become part of the ship: he was the ship. In spite of his personal misgivings when he had been asked to command the flagship, they had become one.

Daubeny squinted his eyes, a habit of his when he was asked a direct or difficult question.

“Signal from Attacker, sir. Sail sighted to the nor’-west. A brig, one of ours.” He faltered under Tyacke’s intense gaze. “They are certain of it.”

Tyacke said curtly, “Keep me informed. Muster a good signals party, and tell Mr Carleton to be ready.”

“I have attended to it, sir.”

The door closed, and Bolitho said, “You have them well drilled, James. This newcomer-what d’ you make of her?”

“We’re not expecting a courier, sir. Not here. Not yet.” He was pondering aloud. “At the Bermudas, now, that would be different. A convoy is assembling there, or should be.”

Bolitho shared it, remembering how it felt. Wanting to be up there on deck, and yet aware that it might be regarded as a lack of confidence in his officers, or that they might take his presence for anxiety. He vividly recalled his own time in command, and today was no different. When the watches changed, or the hands were piped to shorten sail, his whole being protested that he should remain aloof, a man apart from the ship that served him.

The sentry called, “First lieutenant, sir! ”

Daubeny came back in, more flushed than ever. “She’s the Alfriston, sir, fourteen guns. Commander Borradaile…”

Bolitho said quickly, “I don’t know him, do I?”

Tyacke shook his head. “Alfriston joined the squadron while you were in England, sir.” Then, as an afterthought, “Borradaile’s a good hand. Came up the hard way.”

Bolitho was on his feet. “Signal Attacker, repeat Alfriston, close on Flag.” He glanced out through the thick glass. “I want him here before nightfall. I can’t waste another day.”

Daubeny’s face was quite untroubled now that he had shifted the responsibility to his superiors. He offered, “She should be with the Leeward escort, sir.” His confidence wilted under their combined attention. He added, almost humbly, “It was in orders, sir.”

Tyacke said, “So it was, Mr Daubeny. Now tell Mr Carleton to make the signal.”

Ozzard closed the door. “Concerning supper, Sir Richard-”

“It might be delayed.” He looked at Tyacke. “But we will take a glass now, I think.”

Tyacke sat again, his head still cocked to catch the muffled sounds from the world outside. The squeak of halliards, the voice of the signals midshipman penetratingly clear as he spelled out the signal to his men.

He said, “You think it’s bad, sir.” It was not a question.

Bolitho watched Ozzard approaching with his tray, his small figure angled against the movement of the deck without effort. The man without a past, or one so terrible that it clung to him like a graveyard spirit. So much a part of the little crew.

“I believe it may be our next move, James, albeit a foul one.”

They drank in silence.

Jacob Borradaile, the Alfriston’s commander, was not in the least what Bolitho had been expecting. He had been on deck to observe the brig’s smart performance as she had tacked this way and that, her bulging sails salmon-pink in the failing light as she had wasted no time in taking position under Indomitable ’s lee and sending a boat over the heavy swell.

Tyacke had remarked of Borradaile, a good hand. Came up the hard way. From him, there could be no higher praise.

As Tyacke escorted him aft into the cabin, Bolitho thought he had never seen such an untidy, awkward-looking figure. Although he must have been about the same age as Avery or Tyacke, he was like some gaunt caricature, with sprouting, badly cut hair and deep, hollow eyes; only the ill-fitting uniform revealed him to be a King’s officer. However, Bolitho, who had met every imaginable kind of man both junior and senior, was immediately impressed. He entered the cabin and took his outstretched hand without hesitation or any trace of awe. A firm grip, hard, like a true sailor’s.

Bolitho said, “You have urgent news.” He saw the man’s quick assessment of him, as he might examine a new recruit. “But first, will you take a glass with me?”

Borradaile sat in the chair Ozzard had carefully prepared in advance. “Thank ’ee, Sir Richard. Whatever you’re taking yourself will suit famously.”

Bolitho nodded to Ozzard. Borradaile had a faint Kentish accent, like his old friend Thomas Herrick.

He sat on the stern bench and studied his visitor. In his fist, the fine goblet looked like a thimble.

He said, “In your own words. I will see that you are returned to your ship before too long.”

Borradaile stared at a sealed gunport as if he expected to see the brig across the uneasy strip of water. Alfriston had been handled well, as if one man and not an entire trained company had been in charge. Tyacke would be thinking much the same, remembering his previous command.

Borradaile said, “It was Reaper, Sir Richard. A day out from Bermuda and she broke away to chase a stranger, a small vessel- brigantine, most likely. Alfriston was becalmed, sea like a mill pond, an’ our one remaining charge, a company ship called Killarney, was no better than we. But Reaper had the wind under her skirts and gave chase.”

Bolitho asked quietly, “Did that surprise you, so close to your destination?”

“I don’t think so.”

Bolitho said, “Man to man. This is important. To me, maybe to all of us.”

The hollow eyes settled on him. Bolitho could almost hear his mind working, weighing the rights and wrongs of something that might end in a court martial. Then he seemed almost visibly to make a decision.

“Reaper’s captain was new to the ship, his first proper patrol away from the squadron.”

“Did you know him?” Unfair maybe, but also perhaps vital.

“Of him, sir.” He paused. “Reaper had a reputation. Maybe he was eager to give her back something he thought she’d lost.”

The shipboard noises seemed to fade away as Borradaile related the hours that had decided Reaper’s fate.

“There were two frigates, sir. French-built, if I’m any judge, but wearing Yankee colours. They must have sent the brigantine as bait, an’ once Reaper changed tack to go after it, they showed themselves.” He ticked off the points on his bony fingers. “Reaper had run too far down to lee’ard to be able to claw back to her station. They must have been laughin’, it was so damned easy for them.”

Bolitho glanced at Tyacke; he was resting his chin on his hand, and his face was like stone.

Borradaile added, “I could do nothin’, sir. We’d barely picked up the wind again. All I could do was watch.”

Bolitho waited, afraid of breaking the picture in the man’s thoughts. It was not uncommon. A young captain eager for a prize, no matter how small, and eager too to prove something to his ship’s company. He knew of Reaper’s bitterness after the battle, when her brave captain, James Hamilton, had been killed in the first broadside. It was so easy to be distracted for the few seconds needed by a skilful and dangerous enemy. It nearly happened to me when I was so young…

Borradaile gave a great sigh. “Reaper came about as soon as her captain knew what had happened. I watched it all with a big signals glass-I felt I had to. It was madness, I thought. Reaper stood no chance, a little sixth-rate against two big ’uns, forty guns apiece was my guess. But what could he do? What would any of us do, I asked myself.”

“Did they engage immediately?”

Borradaile shook his head, his gaunt features suddenly saddened. “There were no shots fired. Not one. Reaper had run out some of her guns by then, but not all of ’em. It was then that the leading Yankee hoisted a white flag for parley and dropped a boat to go across to Reaper.”

Bolitho saw it all. Three ships, the others merely spectators.

“An hour, maybe more, maybe less, an’ the Reaper lowered her flag.” He spat it out angrily. “Without so much as a whimper!”

“Surrendered?” Tyacke leaned forward into the light. “Not even a fight?”

Alfriston ’s commander seemed to truly see him for the first time, and there was compassion in the hollow eyes as they noted the full extent of his injury. “It was mutiny,” he said.

The word hung in the damp air like something obscene, devastating.

“The next thing I knew was, a boat was sent from Reaper with some of the ‘loyal men.’” He turned to Bolitho again. “And her captain.”

Bolitho waited. It was bad, worse than he had believed possible.

Borradaile spoke very slowly. “Just before Reaper left her station to give chase there were men being flogged at the gangway. I could hardly believe it.” There was disgust and revulsion in his voice, from this, a man who had come up the hardest way of all, through the ranks, to achieve his own command. A man who must have seen every kind of suffering at sea, and brutality, too, in that demanding life below decks.

“Was he dead?”

“Not then, he weren’t, sir. The Yankee officers who had gone over to parley had invited Reaper’s people to join them. I heard from some of the men who were allowed away in the boat that it was the old cry of ‘dollars for shillings’-the chance of a new life, better paid and well treated under the Stars and Stripes.”

Bolitho thought of Adam’s Anemone. Some of her people had changed sides when the flag had come down. But this was different. It was not desertion, which was bad enough: it was mutiny.

“When they agreed, the Yankee told them they could punish their captain in the way they had suffered under his command. That’s what they were doing all that time. First a few of the hard men, an’ then it was like a madness. They seized him up and flogged him until he was in ribbons. Two hundred, three, who could say? Alfriston don’t rate a surgeon, but we did what we could for him, an’ his senior lieutenant who was stabbed when he tried to defend him. He’ll probably live, the poor devil. I’d not be in his shoes for a sack of gold!”

“And then?”

“They boarded the Killarney an’ stood away. I waited a while and then relaid my course for the Bermudas. I landed the survivors at Hamilton and made my report to the guard-ship. I was ordered to find an’ report to you, sir.” He glanced around the spacious cabin as if he had not noticed it before. “They could have taken Alfriston, too, if they’d a mind.”

Bolitho stood up and walked to the quarter gallery. He could just see the little brig’s dark silhouette, her topgallant yards still faintly pink in the dying light.

“No, Commander Borradaile. You had to be the witness, the proof that a mutiny broke out. Perhaps it was provoked, but it can never be condoned. We who command must always be aware of the dangers. And you are here. That is the other reason.”

Borradaile said, “To bring word to you, sir? That was my thought, also.”

Bolitho asked, “And the captain?”

“He died, sir, finally. Cursin’ and ravin’ to the end. His last words were, they’ll hang for it!”

“And so they will, if they are taken.” He crossed to the untidy figure and took his hand. “You have done well. I shall see that it is mentioned in my despatches.” He glanced at Tyacke. “I’d offer you promotion, but I think you’d damn me for it first! Keep your Alfriston.” In his heart, he knew that Borradaile was glad to be rid of the men sent from the surrendered frigate. The shame was still there, deeper now than ever. Like a rotten apple in a barrel, it was better to be free of them.

“See Commander Borradaile over the side, James.” He watched them leave, then returned to the quarter gallery and thrust open a window. The air was surprisingly cold, and helped to steady him.

Avery, who had been present and mute throughout the discussion, observed quietly, “A well-planned trap, a flag of truce, and mutiny provoked, if provocation were needed. And now, one of our ships under their flag.”

Bolitho faced him, his cheek wet with spray, like tears, cold tears.

“Speak out, man. Say what I know you are thinking!”

Avery lifted his shoulders in a very slight shrug. “Justice, revenge, call it what we will, but I think I understand now what you said about the face in the crowd. To lure you into a trap, to provoke you into some reckless realisation. It is you he wants.”

Bolitho listened to the trill of calls, as one captain paid his respects to another.

Avery, like Tyacke, probably shared the private conviction of the gaunt commander who had just departed: that Reaper’s captain had paid the just price of tyranny. He was not the first. Pray God he was the last.

He thought of the flag curling far above the deck and seemed to hear her voice. My admiral of England.

There was no doubt in his mind where the real responsibility would lie. Or the blame.