In the King`s Name

2 CHAIN OF COMMAND

LIEUTENANT MARK VINCENT hesitated at the top of the ladder beneath the companion to give his eyes time to meet the glare on deck. After the sheltered chartroom, it was almost blinding.

The helmsman called, “Sou’ by west, sir! Steady as she goes!” Probably to warn Squire, who had just taken over the forenoon watch, that the first lieutenant had reappeared.

Squire was talking to a midshipman, Walker, who was writing on a slate, tongue protruding from one corner of his mouth in concentration.

Vincent waved and said, “Carry on.” He was merely a visitor.

He walked to the lee side of the quarterdeck and stared at the gleaming expanse of sea, empty as a desert, the horizon unbroken by cloud or shadow. He considered himself an experienced sailor, and never took the sea and its moods for granted. The last few days had tested those beliefs to the extreme. The weather had worsened as soon as they had cleared the Western Approaches and left the land astern. The wind had stayed in their favour, but had often been too strong to spread more canvas and run before it.

Four days of it: this was the fifth since Onward had weighed at Plymouth. He felt the planking beneath his shoes, quite dry now-on the quarterdeck at least. Some of the newly joined hands must have been wondering what had made them quit their homes in the first place. And not just the inexperienced. He had heard Julyan, the master, admit, “More than once on the fringe of Biscay, I thought we were going to lose our sticks!”

Vincent shaded his eyes and stared along the upper deck. Repairs were still being carried out. The sailmaker’s crew huddled below the starboard gangway, busily cutting and stitching a torn sail, while a gunner’s mate was testing the breeching on one of the eighteen-pounders. Splicing where necessary; then it would be checked again before another drill. Trust and blame went hand in hand.

He looked up at the taut spread of canvas; the captain had hinted that they would get the topgallant sails on her soon, probably during this watch. It was Bolitho’s decision. The nagging thought was always there. Suppose it was mine?

And how did Bolitho really feel about leaving the land so soon after the Nautilus mission, and, more importantly, his bride?

Vincent had remained with Onward while her repairs were being completed, in command, and so unable to attend the wedding at Falmouth. But he had heard enough about it, and the rest he could imagine. Lowenna was not someone you could easily forget.

“Ah, I thought I would find you here, Mark. Always busy, keeping us all afloat, eh?”

It was Murray, the surgeon, so light on his feet, like a dancer or a swordsman, although he was neither, as far as Vincent knew. Outwardly easy-going, and popular with most of the ship’s company, which was rare enough in his profession. For the most part surgeons were feared, even hated. Butchers…

Murray was smiling quizzically. “And if it’s not too late to say it, a very Happy New Year to you!” They solemnly shook hands. He had a grip like steel, Vincent thought.

Murray turned to gaze abeam, apparently untroubled by the hard sunlight. He had pale blue eyes, which seemed almost colourless in the glare, and his profile was narrow-featured with a prominent hooked nose.

“Where are we, Mark? I’m damned if I know.”

Vincent had to smile. Rapier-straight, that was Murray’s way. In the wardroom, and amidst the casual chatter and banter between various duties and watches, he would always come directly to the point.

But his attention had been diverted as a seaman hurried by, and the moment was past.

“How’s the knee, Slater?”

The man stopped as if startled, then he grinned. “Good as new, an’ thankee, sir!”

Murray walked to the companion. He had some notes to make, and in any case Vincent was already pointing out something to another working party, the first lieutenant once more.

He thought of the seaman to whom he had just spoken-Slater. Murray had always had a good memory for names, and was grateful for it. Some never seemed to acquire the ability, never bothered or did not care, but he knew from experience that it was often the only link they had. Slater had injured his knee in a fall during one of the sudden squalls off Biscay. It might have been a lot worse, and he might not have recovered.

Just a name. Even if you had to take off his leg.

Midshipman Huxley scuttled past him with a folded chart, doubtless on some mission to see the captain. Another two weeks before landfall, maybe more. Bolitho left nothing to chance.

Murray paused at the ladder and looked up as he heard feet thudding across the deck above. Probably a marine, he thought. Then someone shouted, “He’s just gone below!”

He waited, suddenly tense, and a pair of legs appeared on the ladder, blotting out the glare.

“Beg pardon, sir, there’s bin an accident in the galley! I was told-” He fell silent as Murray waved his hand.

“I’ll fetch my bag.”

It would only be a bruise or a burn. But just in case… He found that it amused him. He was more like the captain than he had believed.

Tobias Julyan, the sailing master, watched as the captain, who had been leaning over the chart table, straightened his back and jabbed his brass dividers into a piece of cork. It would prevent them sliding away into some hidden corner if Onward was hit by another fierce squall.

Adam said, “If the weather holds we should be able to fix our position.” A quick, impetuous grin. “And our progress, with more certainty.”

Julyan glanced around the small chartroom. A world apart. Without it, all the sweat and tears expended elsewhere would amount to nothing. No matter what the old Jacks liked to think. “This is the Atlantic, sir. I think she’s done us proud.”

“And so have you.” Adam dragged the heavy log book into a shaft of sunlight and did not see Julyan’s pleasure. He turned a page. The first day of the new year of 1819. It was a Friday. Strange that so many sailors, and not just the older ones, regarded Fridays as unlucky. He had never discovered why.

Luke Jago had reminded him this morning as he had been finishing his shave. “They said I was born on a Friday, so that should tell us somethin’!”

Jago seemed to live one day at a time. Always ready. Perhaps because he had no one and nothing to leave behind, or come home to. The sea and the navy were his life, until the next horizon.

Like the severed epaulette. Always ready.

Adam heard a tap, and the chartroom door opened a few inches. He thought it would be Vincent, impatient to begin making more sail. But Julyan said, “Your cox’n, sir.” He picked up some notes and pulled the door wide. “I shall be standing by, sir.”

The door closed behind him and Jago stood with his back against it.

Their eyes met, and Adam said quietly, “Trouble, Luke?”

“A short fuse if you asks me, Cap’n.” He scowled. “Someone a bit too handy with a blade. In the galley, of all places!”

Adam reached for his hat. “I’m going on deck.”

Jago watched him leave and swore silently.

Bloody Fridays!

Hugh Morgan, the cabin servant, heard the screen door slam shut and waited warily as the captain strode aft to the quarter. Morgan had served several captains, and Bolitho was the best so far. Old enough to have borne the full weight of responsibility, young enough to consider those less fortunate and still finding their way. But there were bad days, too. This was likely to be one of them, New Year or not.

“Can I fetch you something to eat, sir? You’ve touched nothing since they called all hands.”

Adam pushed himself away from the bench beneath the stern windows with their gleaming panorama of water, greyer now than blue.

He said, “I apologise. There was no need to bite your head off!” Then, “I’m expecting the first lieutenant directly. Maybe the surgeon, too. The meal can wait.” He tossed his hat onto a chair and asked abruptly, “How well d’you know Lord, one of the cook’s mates?”

“The one who was stabbed, sir?”

Adam sat down as if something had been cut. If Morgan knew, the whole ship would know.

Morgan watched the signs. It was bad all right. “Brian Lord. Good lad to all accounts. The cook speaks well of him. Not too well, of course!”

Adam smiled and felt his jaw crack. “You should be a politician.”

Morgan relaxed a little. “Too honest, sir!”

Adam looked astern again, at the regular array of a following sea, marked by the shiver and thud of the rudder. At any other time he would have been satisfied. Proud. Instead, he kept remembering the anger on Jago’s face; he knew the course of events better than any one. The man could have died but for Murray’s prompt action, and could still die. There had been blood everywhere.

The deck tilted suddenly and he saw Morgan pivot round to stare at the pantry door behind him. Someone must have lost his balance; there was an audible gasp and a sound of breaking glass.

Morgan waited for a few more seconds, and said, “Not one of my best goblets, I hope?”

The door swung open. The new mess boy was getting to his feet, some shards of glass in his hands.

Morgan said reprovingly, “There’s clumsy you are, boy, like an ox in a chapel!” He was dangerously calm, and his Welsh accent was more pronounced.

Adam reached out and took the boy’s arm. “Watch your step, my lad. The surgeon has enough to do just now.”

Morgan shook his head. “This is my new helper, sir. Chose him myself, too!” He nudged the broken glass delicately with his shoe. “I am not usually so mistaken.”

Adam said to the boy, “What’s your name?”

The boy looked from him to Morgan, who repeated, “Chose him myself, sir. From your own part of the world, see.”

The boy seemed to find his voice. “Tregenza, zur. Arthur Tregenza. From Truro, zur.”

His round, open face was a mass of freckles, which matched his ginger hair.

It was a small thing, Adam thought, not even worth his attention. Morgan would deal with it. But for some reason it was important. The boy’s first ship … And from Truro, only a dozen miles from the old grey house in Falmouth. Where she would be waiting, wondering …

Adam said, “You must tell me about yourself when we have more time. But take care until you know Onward‘s moods a little better. She can be a lively ship when she chooses!”

Morgan was looking meaningly at the screen door, and the boy retreated.

“We’ll leave you in peace, sir. Maybe you’ll care to eat later?”

“Thank you. I would appreciate that.”

Morgan was opening the door even as the Royal Marine sentry was lifting his musket to rap on the grating. Interrupted, he said awkwardly, “The first lieutenant, sir!”

Morgan stood aside for Vincent to pass and shut the door behind him.

Vincent said, “I just left the surgeon, sir.” He touched a stain on his sleeve. “Lord has lost a deal of blood. Even now …” He broke off, and added bitterly, “After all we’ve been through!”

Adam sat down again. “Tell me, Mark. In your own time.”

Vincent stared unblinkingly up at the skylight. “Lord had been sent to the galley to fetch something-he doesn’t remember what. Instead, he found the man-Lamont-stealing meat, putting large pieces into a bag. He was using one of the cook’s own knives.” He looked across the cabin for the first time. “You could shave with one of them.”

Adam pictured the cook, Lynch, who had played his fiddle as Onward weighed anchor. Sharp knives meant less waste.

Vincent held up his right forearm and ran a finger down it. “He cut Lord from wrist to elbow. Somebody wrapped a shirt round it. Then the surgeon came.”

“And the one responsible-this man Lamont?”

“Joined us at Plymouth, just before we left. Transfer from a ship awaiting overhaul. Or demolition. Able seaman, ten years’ service. It was all rather vague.”

Adam watched the sea catching the sun again. A hard light, with no hint of warmth. “Lamont? Did you see him?”

Vincent looked past him as spray spattered across the glass. “I was off watch at the time, sir. But someone heard Lord scream. The bosun was the first to reach the galley, and he called the surgeon. Otherwise …” A pause, then, as if to emphasise it, “Aye, I questioned Lamont. The master-at-arms was also present. Lamont claimed it was self-defense. I cautioned him. I knew you would want to know all the details.”

“You did right, Mark. You can carry on with your routine until we learn something useful.”

Vincent picked up his hat. “I feel it was partly my fault, sir. I had no time to test Lamont’s worth when he was signed on.”

The door closed and Adam stood watching the sea once more. Prepared, or resigned, and with an overriding sense of disappointment. He gazed around the cabin where he still sometimes relived the last fight, the thunder and crash of cannon and the crack of muskets. Men calling out in pain or in rage, helping one another. Dying. All that, and yet the barrier between himself and Vincent remained, an unseen enemy.

He thought of Thomas Herrick, his uncle’s oldest and dearest friend, and his words on one occasion. Command is complete or worthless.

The door creaked. It was Morgan. “I thought you called, sir?”

Adam let his arms fall to his sides. Perhaps he had spoken aloud.

But he was ready.

The two midshipmen sat facing one another across the table. Around them their mess was quiet and deserted, although not for much longer: there had been a shrill of calls on deck, and a smell of food if they needed reminding. Midshipmen never did.

David Napier touched the bruise on the back of his hand, left by a rope clumsily dragged when they had been shifting one of the boats on deck. The salt air had made it sting like a burn. One of the new men had been too eager, or preoccupied.

Midshipman Huxley gestured with a spoon. “Put some grease on it.”

Napier smiled. “Won’t get any sympathy, will I?”

“If we lower the jolly-boat later, you’d better stand clear! You might lose the other one!”

Just words, but they were friends, and had been since they had joined Onward together on the same day, Napier recovering from injuries and the loss in action of his last ship, and Simon Huxley struggling to accept the suicide of his father following a court-martial, although he had been found not guilty and cleared of all blame. It was a quiet, unquestioning friendship neither ever tried to explain. They only knew that it mattered.

Dishes clattered nearby and somebody laughed. Huxley said, “I wonder if young Lord is going to come through it?”

It was on both their minds, and probably everybody else’s, maybe even on the man’s who had let the rope run out of control.

“Never saw a lot of him. But I know he went out of his way to make a cake for Jamie Walker’s thirteenth birthday!”

Huxley smiled. “On the day of the battle with Nautilus! I forget if we ever even tasted it!”

“What d’you think will happen about Lord?”

Huxley lowered his voice confidentially. “I’ve been looking it up. If the worst happens, there will be a court-martial. There was one at Portsmouth a few months ago. Someone was hanged.”

A chair scraped back and Midshipman Charles Hotham, the senior of the six-strong mess, sat down noisily and glared at the empty plates. “I should damned well think so, too! Don’t know what the fleet’s coming to, especially where meals are concerned!”

They laughed. It was the only way. Hotham was a clergyman’s son. So was Nelson, he always proclaimed.

John Radcliffe, the newest member of the mess, sat down muttering apologies for lateness. The others were on duty.

Hotham made a grand gesture to the hovering messman. “Glasses today, Peter! Today of all days, I think. Some of my wine.” He watched critically as it was being poured. “To our unfortunate shipmate!”

Napier hardly noticed the taste. It was suddenly easy to see Hotham like his father. All in black, even to the collar.

He glanced across at the scarred and sturdy desk they all shared when making their notes on navigation and seamanship, in anticipation of the day of the Board. And when composing letters that might eventually reach England. Cornwall, in his case. Would she even remember him, or care? She was an admiral’s daughter. The admiral’s daughter.

He reached for his glass, but Peter, the messman, was already refilling it. A dream, then. So be it. Elizabeth.

There were voices, very low, just outside the door, and a moment later the messman was back. “Surgeon’s still workin’, sir.”

Radcliffe stared at his wine, untouched, and the steaming tray. “Suppose …” Then he lurched to his feet and left the mess.

Huxley looked over at Napier with concern. There was no answer.

Adam Bolitho paused as though to regain his balance, although that was merely an excuse. It was pitch dark after the gloom of the quarterdeck, and strangely silent, so that the ship’s own sounds seemed unnaturally loud and intrusive. He had waited deliberately until after midnight when the watch had changed, and most of Onward‘s company were swinging in their hammocks and asleep. If they were lucky.

He touched the timber: it felt like ice, and the white paint looked very fresh in the faint glare of a light. This was pointless. Murray would be asleep too, after what he had been struggling to do all day, or still preparing his report. Despite all his brutal experience, the Scot was not the kind of man to dismiss it simply as his duty.

Here, even the smells were different. The hemp and tar, salt and canvas seemed miles away, and clean. Adam’s foot brushed against something and he heard someone gulp and mutter. It was a fold of the loose smock worn by one of Murray’s assistants, his “crew” as he called them, slumped in a trestle chair and already snoring again.

Even in the feeble glow, Adam could see the tell-tale stains. Too many memories. Even the confined smells. Oils of thyme and lavender and mint, and others less medicinal, more sinister. Alcohol, blood, sickness. And always the pain. The fear.

The door was not completely shut, in case of an emergency, and it swung easily under his hand, so that the light of a shuttered lantern seemed almost blinding. Nobody moved. One man was slouched in a canvas seat, a partly folded bandage in his lap, his splinted leg propped on a chest: one of the seamen who had been injured off Biscay.

Murray was beside the cot, his back to the door, stooped, unmoving, the inert body lying in his shadow. He could have been asleep or dead. Adam looked down into the still face, younger than he remembered, eyes shut, skin as white as the sheet that partly covered his bare shoulders.

Then Murray spoke softly, without turning his head. “I knew you’d come. I felt it.” He moved his head slightly and Adam saw that he was dabbing Lord’s mouth with a rag, and with his other hand was gripping Lord’s free hand. The right arm was stiff with linen bandages and protected by what appeared to be weighted pillows. There were stained dressings on the deck, and more piled in a keg nearby.

Murray half-turned his hawkish profile and said quietly, “Pass me that jug, will you?” He bobbed his head with a little sarcastic smile. “If you please, sir?” He released the hand he had been holding and lowered it to the cot, and waited, motionless. Then he said, “Come on, laddie. Once again, eh?”

Adam almost held his breath. It was over. If I had kept away…

But the hand was moving. Hesitantly, slowly, then decisively toward Murray’s hairy, outthrust one. He grasped it and dabbed the man’s mouth again. “I am here, Brian. We are here.”

The voice was very faint. “Arm hurts.”

Murray’s tousled hair fell over his forehead. “At least you can feel it, thank God.” He lifted the sheet and listened to the heart before moistening the dry lips again. Adam could smell the brandy.

The surgeon was staring now at the glittering array of instruments nearby. “Not this time!”

As if he were speaking to himself, or to death.

Lieutenant Hector Monteith stood at the foot of the mizzen mast, and glared around at the seamen already mustered by the quarter-davits to lower the jolly-boat for towing astern.

“Take the strain! Turns for lowering!” His foot tapped impatiently as one man broke into a fit of coughing. “We don’t have the rest of the forenoon, Scully!” Then, “Lower away!”

The jolly-boat, maid of all work, gave a jerk and began to move, empty but for a man fore and aft to check the tackles. Always a lonely task at sea.

Monteith bawled, “Handsomely!” He moved to the side. “This is not a contest!” He saw the man in the boat’s bows hold up his fist. “Avast lowering!” The boat had settled on the water, lifting and falling easily on the frigate’s wash. “Recall those men.” He glanced along the rank of seamen on the quarterdeck and knew the first lieutenant was on the opposite gangway. Watching him. “And don’t forget! A boat towing astern could save a life!”

The seaman named Scully, who had coughed, muttered, “So long as it’s not yours!”

Luke Jago turned away from the boat tier where he had been changing the lashings on the gig. His gig. When they finally reached Freetown the captain would want the gig, no excuses. Jago had no complaints about that. A man-of-war was always judged by her boats. And that was how it should be.

He saw Monteith, hands on hips, overseeing the men mustered by the sloping davits. The watch had almost run its course, but Monteith would not dismiss them until the stroke of eight bells. He was the third lieutenant, and a junior one at that, with a face so youthful he might still have been a midshipman, but he had all the makings of a “hard-horse.” Suppose he ever gained a command of his own?

God help his ship’s company, Jago thought. He gripped the hammock nettings as the deck sloped suddenly and some loose tackle clattered against a hatch coaming.

On cue, Monteith snapped, “Stow that properly and in a seamanlike manner, Logan!”

The seaman answered just as sharply, “It’s Lawrence, sir,” but he hurried to obey.

Jago thought of Falmouth and the big grey house, and the girl on the captain’s arm at the church. All those people … an’ I was a guest. An’ more than that.

He had been recalling all the stories, yarns he had shared with John Allday, Sir Richard Bolitho’s old coxswain, who had been with the admiral when he had been shot down aboard his flagship, Frobisher, in 1815. Allday was landlord of the Old Hyperion inn and had a charming wife to warm his bed, and a daughter, too. Everything. But in many ways he was still the admiral’s coxswain, and his heart was aboard Frobisher. Even the fine model Allday had been making of their old ship remained unfinished, as if he was unwilling to break something between them, some link to the past.

Jago heard the shrill of a call and the cry, echoed below deck: “Up Spirits!” and murmured, “But stand fast, the Holy Ghost!” He had already caught the whiff of rum, even in this keen Atlantic air.

There were voices and he saw the first lieutenant stride across the quarterdeck, not to speak with Monteith but to attract the attention of an untidy figure in a linen smock, one of the surgeon’s crew. The man looked utterly drained and unsteady on his feet, and had doubtless been working in the sick-bay without sleep since the previous morning. “Jock” Murray, as he was known behind his back, never seemed to spare himself, nor those who shared his trade.

Jago was too far away to hear what was being said, but words were not necessary. He saw Vincent gesture to his right arm, and the other man’s drawn face clearing and breaking into a wan smile. Then his astonishment as Vincent reached out and clapped him across the shoulder. Some seamen were stopping nearby as if to share it, and one of them shouted to the working party near the quarter-davits, who were still waiting to be dismissed.

Only Monteith remained alone, and unaware that a man’s life had been saved.

Jago jumped down to the deck and took a couple of deep breaths. But the pain was still there, like a knot in his stomach. A tot of grog might help. Why did he always think that? It never had.

“Ah, here you are, Luke!”

It was Sergeant Fairfax, his uniform a vivid scarlet amidst the shrouds and canvas. They were friends and had served together in the past, although Jago could barely recall when or where.

Fairfax rubbed his chin, having reached a decision. “Thought you might drop into the barracks directly. I owe you a tot, I seem to remember. Maybe a couple?”

Jago touched his arm and saw the fresh pipeclay drift from his belt. “Later, mebbee, Tom. I’ll be with the cap’n.”

Fairfax knew him better than most. Except, maybe, Bolitho. He glanced over toward the cabin skylight. “So be it, matey!”

Below in the great cabin Adam Bolitho sat, his body at one with the motion of the ship, a following sea weaving reflections across the deckhead like lively serpents. Astern, and as far as any lookout could see, the ocean was theirs. Empty, not even a bird to give any hint of life but their own.

In the tall glass Morgan had placed by his elbow, the dark red wine was rising and falling so slowly, hardly at all. Morgan had retreated to his pantry again, and the door was partly closed, with not a clink or a rattle to disturb his captain; he had even sent his new recruit, Tregenza, to another part of the ship for the same reason.

Adam glanced at the chair which had been moved directly opposite this old bergere, where Gordon Murray had almost fallen asleep after painstakingly taking his captain through the procedure by which he had saved Lord’s life. It had been a very close thing. The blade had just missed severing the major artery and vein, both of which branched through the inside arm, and, had that happened, stitching the wound would have been impossible even in a hospital ashore.

Murray had stifled another yawn and apologised. “Even now, one cannot be certain. There is always the danger of infection …” But he had suddenly smiled. “However, I am confident that, given time, he’ll be back in his galley wielding those knives. He’s a strong lad. Courageous, too. I’m quite proud of him.”

Adam had watched him swallow wine. Some of it had dripped over his chin like blood.

“And we’re proud of you. When I first saw the wound …” Adam shook his head. “I’ll see that it goes in your report. We’re privileged to have you among us.”

He sipped his own wine now, but it seemed metallic on his tongue. He looked up, taken off guard as feet thudded across the deck overhead. In step. Marching. Marines.

Morgan had materialised like a ghost and was picking up the empty glass. “Later, sir, I shall-” He did not continue.

The door was open. It was Jago, wearing his best jacket, and with his hat squeezed under his arm. He looked at Adam’s uniform and then at the old sword which was lying across the table. “Ready when you are, Cap’n.”

Adam picked up the sword. Jago was waiting to fasten it to his belt, like others before him.

“You’ll never know …”

But the shrill of calls and hurrying feet stifled the rest.

“Clear lower deck! All hands! All hands lay aft to witness punishment!”

It was now.