Second to None

Prologue

THE MIDSHIPMAN stood beneath the cabin skylight, his body accepting the heavy motion of the ship around him. After the cramped quarters of the midshipmen’s berth of the frigate in which he had taken passage from Plymouth, this powerful man-of-war seemed like a rock, and the great stern cabin a palace by comparison.

It was the anticipation which had sustained him when everything else seemed lost. Hope, despair, even fear had been ready companions until this moment.

The shipboard sounds were muffled, distant, voices far off and without meaning or purpose. Someone had warned him that joining a ship already in commission was always hard; there would be no friends or familiar faces to ease the jolts and scrapes. And this was to be his first ship.

It was still impossible to accept that he was here. He moved his head slightly and watched the cabin’s other occupant, who was sitting behind a desk, the document the midshipman had carried so carefully inside his coat to avoid spray from the boat’s oars turned towards the light of the sloping stern windows, and their glittering panorama of sea and sky.

The captain. The one man upon whom he had placed so much hope-a man he had never met before. His whole body was as taut as a signal halliard, his mouth like dust. It might be nothing. A cruel disappointment, the end of everything.

He realised with a start that the captain was looking at him, had asked him something. His age?

“Fourteen, sir.” It did not even sound like his own voice. He saw the captain’s eyes for the first time, more grey than blue, not unlike the sea beyond the spray-dappled windows.

There were other voices, nearer now. There was no more time.

Almost desperately he thrust his hand into his coat again, and held out the letter which he had guarded and nursed all the way from Falmouth.

“This is for you, sir. I was told to give it to no one else.”

He watched the captain slit open the envelope, his expression suddenly guarded. What was he thinking? He wished he had torn it up without even reading it himself.

He saw the captain’s sun-browned hand tighten suddenly on the letter, so that it shivered in the reflected light. Anger, disapproval, emotion? He no longer knew what to expect. He thought of his mother, only minutes before she had died, thrusting a crumpled paper into his hands. How long ago? Weeks, months? It was like yesterday. An address in Falmouth, some twenty miles from Penzance where they had lived. He had walked all the way, his mother’s note his only strength, his guide.

He heard the captain fold the letter and put it in his pocket. Again, the searching look, but there was no hostility. If anything, there was sadness.

“Your father, boy. What do you know of him?”

The midshipman faltered, off guard, but when he answered he sensed the change. “He was a King’s officer, sir. He was killed by a runaway horse in America.” He could see his mother in those final moments, holding out her arms to embrace him and then to push him away, before either of them broke down. He continued in the same quiet tone, “My mother often described him to me. When she was dying she told me to make my way to Falmouth and seek your family, sir. I-I know my mother never married him, sir. I have always known, but…”

He broke off, unable to continue but very aware that the captain was on his feet, one hand on his arm, his face suddenly close, the face of the man, perhaps as few others ever saw him.

Captain Richard Bolitho said gently, “As you must know, your father was my brother.”

It was becoming blurred. The tap at the door. Someone with a message for the captain.

Adam Bolitho awoke, his body tensed like a spring as he felt the uncertain grip on his arm. It came to him with the stark clarity of a pistol shot. The ship’s motion was more unsteady, the sea noises intruding while his practised ear assessed each in turn.

In the dim glow of a shaded lantern he could see the swaying figure beside his cot, the white patches of a midshipman. He groaned and tried to thrust the dream from his mind.

He swung his legs to the deck, his feet searching for his Hessian boots in this still unfamiliar cabin.

“What is it, Mr Fielding?” He had even managed to remember the young midshipman’s name. He almost smiled. Fielding was fourteen. The same age as the midshipman in the dream which refused to leave him.

“Mr Wynter’s respects, sir, but the wind is freshening and he thought…”

Adam Bolitho touched his arm and groped for his faded seagoing coat.

“He did right to call me. I’d rather lose an hour’s sleep than lose my ship. I shall come up directly!” The boy fled.

He stood up and adjusted to the motion of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Unrivalled. My ship. What his beloved uncle had described as “the most coveted gift.”

And it should have been his greatest prize. A ship so new that the paint had been scarcely dry when he had read himself in, a frigate of the finest design, fast and powerful. He glanced at the dark stern windows, as if he were still in the old Hyperion’s great cabin, his life suddenly changed. And by one man.

He touched his pockets without even noticing it, ensuring that he had all he needed. He would go on deck, where the officer-of-the-watch would be anxiously waiting to gauge his mood, more nervous at the prospect of disturbing his captain than at the threat of the wind.

He knew it was mostly his own fault; he had remained apart and aloof from his officers since taking command. It must not, could not continue.

He turned away from the stern windows. The rest was just a dream. His uncle was dead, and only the ship was reality. And he, Captain Adam Bolitho, was quite alone.