Second to None

1. A Hero Remembered

LIEUTENANT Leigh Galbraith strode aft along the frigate’s main deck and into the shadows of the poop. He was careful not to hurry, or to show any unusual concern which might create rumour amongst the groups of seamen and marines working at their various forenoon tasks.

Galbraith was tall and powerfully built, and had learned the hard way to accustom himself to low deckhead beams in one of His Britannic Majesty’s ships of war. He was Unrivalled’s first lieutenant, the one officer who was expected to maintain order and discipline as well as oversee the training of a new ship’s company. To assure his captain that she was in all respects an efficient unit of the fleet, even to assume command at any time should some disaster befall him.

The first lieutenant was twenty-nine years old, and had been in the navy since the tender age of twelve like many of his contemporaries. It was all he had known, all he had ever wanted, and when he had been promoted to acting commander and given a ship of his own he had thought himself the luckiest man alive. A senior officer had assured him that as soon as convenient he would take the next step, make the impossible leap to full captain, something which had once seemed like a dream.

He paused by an open gunport and leaned on one of the frigate’s thirty eighteen-pounders, and stared at the harbour and the other anchored ships. Carrick Roads, Falmouth, glittering in the May sunshine. He tried to contain the returning bitterness, the anger. He might have had a command like this fine ship. Could. Might. He felt the gun’s barrel warm under his fingers, as if it had been fired. Like all those other times. At Camperdown with Duncan, and at Copenhagen following Nelson’s flag. He had been commended for his coolness under fire, his ability to contain a dangerous situation when his ship was locked in battle with an enemy. His last captain had put his name forward for a command. That had been the brig Vixen, one of the fleet’s workhorses, expected with limited resources to perform the deeds of a frigate.

Just before he had been appointed to Unrivalled he had seen his old command lying like a neglected wreck, awaiting disposal or worse. The war with France was over, Napoleon had abdicated and been sent into exile on Elba. The impossible had happened, and with the conflict in North America being brought thankfully to a close by Britain and the United States alike, the prospect of peace was hard to accept. Galbraith was no different; he had never known anything but war. With ships being paid off, and men discharged with unseemly haste with neither prospects nor experience of anything but the sea, he was lucky to have this appointment. More than he deserved, some said behind his back.

He had been pulled around the ship an hour earlier in the jollyboat, to study the trim as she lay motionless above her own reflection. She had been in commission for five months, and with her rigging and shrouds blacked-down, each sail neatly furled to its yard, she was a perfect picture of the shipbuilder’s art. Even her figurehead, the naked body of a beautiful woman arched beneath the beak-head, hands clasped behind her head, breasts thrust out in a daring challenge, was breathtaking. Unrivalled was the first to carry that name on the Navy List, the first of the bigger frigates which had been hastily laid down to meet the American threat, which had cost them dearly in a war neither side could win. A war which was already becoming a part of history.

Galbraith plucked his uniform coat away from his chest and tried to push the resentment aside. He was lucky. The navy was all he knew, all he wanted. He must remember that at all times.

He heard the Royal Marine sentry’s heels click together as he approached the screen door to the aftermost cabins.

“First lieutenant, sir! ”

Galbraith gave him a nod, but the sentry’s eyes did not waver beneath the brim of his leather hat.

A servant opened the door and stood aside as Galbraith entered the captain’s quarters. Any man would be proud, honoured to have her. When Galbraith had stood watching with the assembled ship’s company and guests as the ship’s new captain, her first captain, had unrolled his commission to read himself in and so assume command, he had tried to banish all envy and accept the man he was to serve.

After five months, all the training and the drills, the struggle to recruit more landmen to fill the gaps once the pressed hands had been discharged, he realised that Captain Adam Bolitho was still a stranger. In a ship of the line it might be expected, especially with a new company, but in frigates and smaller vessels like his Vixen it was rare.

He watched him warily. Slim, hair so dark it could have been black, and when he turned away from the stern windows and the reflected green of the land, the same restlessness Galbraith had noticed at their first meeting. Like most sea officers, he knew a lot about the Bolitho family, Sir Richard in particular. The whole country did, or seemed to, and had been stunned by the news of his death in the Mediterranean. Killed by a marksman in the enemy’s rigging, the very day Napoleon had stepped ashore in France after escaping from Elba. The day peace had become another memory.

Of this man, Sir Richard Bolitho’s nephew, he had heard only tidbits, although nothing remained secret for long in the fleet. The best frigate captain, some said; brave to a point of recklessness, others described him. He had been given his first command, a brig like Galbraith’s, at the age of twenty-three; and later lost his frigate Anemone fighting a vastly superior American force. Taken prisoner, he had escaped, to become flag captain to the man who was now Flag Officer, Plymouth.

Adam was looking at him now, his dark eyes revealing strain, although he was making an effort to smile. A youthful, alert face, one which would be very attractive to women, Galbraith decided. And if some of the gossip was to be believed, that was also true. Galbraith said, “The gig is lowered, sir. The crew will be piped at four bells, unless…”

Adam Bolitho moved to the table and touched the sword which was lying there. Old in design, straight-bladed, and lighter than the new regulation blades. It was part of the legend, the Bolitho sword, worn by so many of the family. Worn by Richard Bolitho when he had been marked down by the enemy.

Galbraith glanced around the cabin, the eighteen-pounders intruding even here. When cleared for action from bow to stern Unrivalled could present a formidable broadside. He bit his lip. Even if they were so badly undermanned. There were cases of wine waiting to be unpacked and stowed; he had seen them swayed aboard earlier, and knew they had come from the Bolitho house here in Falmouth, which would be the captain’s property now. Somehow it did not seem to fit this youthful man with the bright epaulettes. He noticed, too, that the cases were marked with a London address, in St James’s Street.

Galbraith clenched his fist. He had been there once. When he had visited London, when his world had started to collapse.

Adam forced his mind into the present. “Thank you, Mr Galbraith. That will suit well.” He waited, saw the questions forming in the first lieutenant’s eyes. A good man, he thought, firm but not impatient with the new hands, and wary of the old Jacks who might seek favours from an unknown officer.

He could feel the ship moving very gently beneath his feet. Eager to move, to be free of the land. And what of me, her captain?

He had seen Galbraith looking at the wine; it was from Catherine. Despite all that had happened, her despair and sense of loss, she had remembered. Or had she been thinking of one who had gone?

“Is there something else?” He had not meant to sound impatient, but he seemed unable to control his tone. Galbraith had not apparently noticed. Or had he simply become accustomed to the moods of his new lord and master?

Galbraith said, “If it is not an imposition, sir, I was wondering…” He hesitated as Adam’s eyes settled coldly on him. Like someone watching the fall of shot, he thought.

Then Adam said, “I am sorry. Please tell me.”

“I should like to pay my respects, sir. For the ship.” He did not flinch as a voice on deck yelled obscenely at a passing bumboat to stand away. “And for myself.”

Adam dragged out the watch from his pocket and knew Galbraith had noticed it. It was heavy and old, and he could recall exactly the moment when he had seen it in the shop in Halifax. The ticking, chiming clocks all around him, and yet it had seemed a place of peace. Escape, so many times. At the change of duties on deck, reefing or making sail, altering course, or entering harbour after a successful landfall… The old watch which had once belonged to another “seafaring officer.” One thing had made it different, the little mermaid engraved on the case.

He said, “If you think we can both be spared from the ship?” It was not what he had meant to say. It was the mermaid which had distracted him, the girl’s face, so clear, as in the shop. Zenoria.

Then he said, “I would take it kindly, Mr Galbraith.” He looked at him steadily and thought he could see a momentary warmth, something he had tried not to encourage. “Impress on the others, extra vigilance. We are under orders. I don’t want any deserters now. We’d not have enough to work ship, let alone fight.”

“I shall deal with it, sir.” Galbraith moved towards the door. It was not much, but it was the closest they had yet been.

Adam Bolitho waited for the door to close, then walked to an open quarter window and stared down at the water rippling beneath the counter.

A beautiful ship. Working with the local squadron, he had felt the power of her. The fastest he had known. Soon the anonymous faces would become people, individuals, the strength and the weakness of any ship. But not too close. Not again. As if someone had whispered a warning.

He sighed and looked at the cases of wine. How would Catherine manage, what would she do without the man who had become her life?

He heard three bells chime faintly from the forecastle.

It was going to be hard, even harder than he had imagined. People watching him, as they had watched his beloved uncle, with love, hatred, admiration and envy, none of them ever far away.

He knew Galbraith’s background, and what had smashed his chance of promotion to the coveted post rank. It could happen to anybody. To me. He thought of Zenoria again, and of what he had done, but he felt no shame, only a deep sense of loss.

He was about to walk beneath the open skylight when he heard Galbraith’s voice.

“When the Pendennis battery fires one gun, you will dip the flag and ensign, Mr Massie, and all hands will face aft and uncover.”

Adam waited. It was like an intrusion, but he felt unable to move. Massie was the second lieutenant, a serious young man who held the appointment because his father was a vice-admiral. He was, as yet, an unknown quantity.

Massie said, “I wonder if Sir Richard’s lady will be there.”

He heard their feet move away. An innocent remark? And who did he mean? Catherine, or Belinda, Lady Bolitho?

And there would be spite to bring out the worst. Shortly after Unrivalled had commissioned, the news of Emma Hamilton’s death had been released. Nelson’s lover and inspiration and the nation’s darling, but she had been allowed to die alone in Calais, in poverty, abandoned by so-called friends and those who had been entrusted with her care.

The ship moved slightly to her cable and he saw his reflection in the thick glass.

Brokenly he said, “I’ll never forget, Uncle!”

But the ship moved again, and he was alone.

Bryan Ferguson, the Bolitho estate’s one-armed steward, stared at the two ledgers on his table. Both had remained unopened. It was late evening but through the window he could still see tall trees silhouetted against the sky, as if the day was reluctant to end. He stood up and walked to the cupboard, pausing as the creeper outside the window rustled slightly. A wind, freshening from the south-east at last, as some of the fishermen had said it would. After all that stillness. Ferguson opened the cupboard and took out a stone bottle and one glass. After all that sadness.

There was another glass in there, too, kept especially for the times when John Allday came over on some pretext or other from the little inn at Fallowfield on the Helford River. The Old Hyperion: even the name had a deeper significance this day.

It might be a while yet before John Allday came here. The Frobisher, Sir Richard Bolitho’s flagship, was coming home to be paid off. Or maybe not, now that Napoleon was in France on the rampage again. And it was only last year that the town had gone wild at the news: the allied armies were in Paris, Bonaparte was finished. Exile in Elba had not been enough; he had heard Lady Catherine say that it was like putting an eagle in an aviary. Others were of the opinion that Boney should have been hanged after all the misery and murder he had caused.

But Allday would not remain on board the ship where Sir Richard had fallen. Only when he was back, perhaps sitting here with a wet between those big hands, would they know the real story. Unis, his wife, who ran the Old Hyperion, often received letters from him, but Allday himself could not write, so his words came through George Avery, Bolitho’s flag lieutenant. Theirs was a rare and strange relationship within the rigid bounds of the navy, and Allday had once remarked that it seemed wrong that while the flag lieutenant read and wrote his letters for him, he never received any himself. And from the moment when the dreadful news had broken in Falmouth, Ferguson had known that Allday would never entrust that moment to anyone, or share it, or commit it to paper. He would tell them himself, in person. If he could.

He coughed; he had swallowed a measure of rum without noticing that he had poured it. He sat down again and stared at the unopened ledgers. Above his head he could hear his wife Grace moving about. Unable to rest, unable even to deal with her usual duties as housekeeper, a position of which she was very proud. As he was.

He gripped the glass tightly with the one hand which was now able to do so much. Once he had believed he would be useless, just another piece of human flotsam left behind in this seemingly endless war. But Grace had nursed him through all of it. Now he found himself recalling the moment mostly at times like these, in the shadows, when it was easier to picture the towering pyramids of sails, the lines of French ships, the deafening crash and roar of broadsides as the two fleets had joined in a bloody embrace. It had seemed to take all day for them to draw together, and all the while the sailors, especially the new ones, pressed men like himself, had been forced to watch the enemy’s topsails rising like banners until they had filled the horizon. One officer had later described the awesome sight as resembling the armoured knights at Agincourt.

And all the while, aboard the frigate Phalarope, so puny she had seemed against that great line of battle, he had seen their young captain, Richard Bolitho, urging and encouraging, and once, before Ferguson himself had been smashed down, he had seen him kneel to hold the hand of a dying sailor. He had never forgotten his face on that terrible day, never would forget it.

And now he was the steward of this estate, its farm and its cottages, and all the characters who made it a good place to work. Many of them were former sailors, men who had served with Bolitho in so many ships and in every part of the world where the flag had been hoisted. He had seen many of them at the church today, for Sir Richard Bolitho was one of them, and Falmouth ’s most famous son. Son of a sailor, from generations of sea officers, and this house below Pendennis Castle was a part of their history.

Across the yard he could see lights now in some of the rooms, and imagined the line of portraits, including the painting of Sir Richard as the young captain he had known. His wife Cheney had commissioned it while Bolitho had been away with the fleet. Bolitho had never seen his wife again; she had been killed with their unborn child when her carriage had shed a wheel and overturned. Ferguson himself had carried her, seeking help when it was already too late. He smiled sadly, reminiscently. And with only one arm.

The Church of King Charles the Martyr, where the lives and deaths of other Bolithos were commemorated, had been filled to capacity, servants from the house, farm workers, strangers and friends pressed close together to pray and to remember.

He allowed his mind to dwell on the family pew near the pulpit. Richard Bolitho’s younger sister Nancy, who had not yet come to terms with her own husband’s death. Roxby, “the King of Cornwall,” would not be an easy man to lay aside. Next to her Catherine, Lady Somervell, tall and very erect, all in black, her face covered by a veil, and only the diamond pendant shaped like an opened fan which Bolitho had given her moving on her breast to betray her emotion.

And, beside her, Adam Bolitho, his eyes upon the altar, his chin lifted. Defiant. Determined. And, like the moment when he had come to the house after his uncle’s death, and had read Catherine’s note and clipped on the old family sword, so like the young, vanished sea officer who had grown up here in Falmouth.

There had been another officer with him, a lieutenant, but Ferguson had noticed only Adam Bolitho and the beautiful woman beside him.

It had reminded him painfully of the day in that same church when a memorial service had been conducted following the news that Sir Richard and his mistress had been lost in the wreck of the Golden Plover off the African coast. Many of the same people had been there, as well as Bolitho’s wife. Ferguson could remember her look of utter disbelief when one of Adam’s officers had burst in with the revelation that Bolitho and his companions were alive, and had been rescued against all odds. And when Lady Catherine’s part had become known, how she had given hope and faith to the survivors in that open boat, she had been taken to their hearts. It had seemed to sweep aside the scandal, and the outrage which had been previously voiced at their liaison.

Together or alone, Ferguson could see them clearly. Catherine, her dark hair streaming unchecked in the wind while she walked on the cliff path, or paused by the stile where he had seen them once, as if to watch some approaching ship. Perhaps hoping…

Now there was no hope, and her man, her lover and the nation’s hero, was buried at sea. Near his old Hyperion, where so many had died, men Ferguson had never forgotten. The same ship Adam had joined as a fourteen-year-old midshipman. Nancy, Lady Roxby, would be remembering that too, Adam in a captain’s uniform, but to her still the boy who had walked from Penzance when his mother had died. The name “Bolitho” written on a scrap of paper was all he had had. And now he was the last Bolitho.

There were to be other, grander ceremonies in the near future, in Plymouth, and then at Westminster Abbey, and he wondered if Lady Catherine would go to London and risk the prying eyes and the jealous tongues which had dogged her relationship with the nation’s hero.

He heard a step in the yard and guessed it was Young Matthew, the senior coachman, making his rounds, visiting the horses, his dog Bosun puffing slowly behind him. Old now, the dog was partly deaf and had failing eyesight, but no stranger would ever pass him without his croaking bark.

Matthew had been in church also. Still called “young,” but a married man now, he was another part of the family, the little crew as Sir Richard had called them.

Buried at sea. Perhaps it was better. No aftermath, no false display of grief. Or would there be?

He thought of the tablet on the wall of the church beneath the marble bust of Captain Julius Bolitho, who had fallen in battle in 1664.

The spirits of their fathers

Shall start from every wave;

For the deck it was their field of fame,

And ocean was their grave.

It said it all, especially to those assembled in the old church in this place of seafarers, the navy and the coastguard, fishermen and sailors from the packets and traders which sailed on every tide throughout the year. The sea was their life. It was also the enemy.

He had sensed it when the church had resounded at the last to The Sailors’ Hymn.

He had heard the bang of a solitary gun, like the one which had preceded the service, and seen Adam turn once to look at his first lieutenant. People had parted to allow the family to leave. Lady Catherine had reached out to touch Ferguson ’s sleeve as she had passed; he had seen the veil clinging to her face.

He went to the window again. The lights were still burning. He would send one of the girls to deal with it, if Grace was too stricken to do it.

He thought of the shipwreck again. Adam had come to the house when Vice-Admiral Keen’s young wife had been there; Keen, too, had been aboard the Golden Plover.

Zenoria, from the village of Zennor. He knew Allday had suspected something between them, and he himself had wondered what had happened that night. Then the girl lost her only child, her son by Keen, in an accident, and had thrown herself off the cliff at the notorious Trystan’s Leap. He had been with Catherine Somervell when they had brought the small, broken body ashore.

Adam Bolitho had certainly changed in some way. Matured? He considered it. No, it went far deeper than that.

Something Allday had said stood out in his mind, like the epitaph.

They looked so right together.

Captain Adam Bolitho sat in one of the high-backed chairs by the open hearth and half-listened to the occasional moan of the wind. It was freshening, south-easterly; they would have to keep their wits about them tomorrow when Unrivalled weighed anchor.

He shifted slightly in the chair, which with its twin was amongst the oldest furniture in the house. It was turned away from the dark windows, away from the sea.

He stared at the goblet of brandy on the table beside him, catching the candlelight which brought life to this room, the grave portraits, the paintings of unknown ships and forgotten battles.

How many Bolithos had sat here like this, he wondered, not knowing what the next horizon might bring, or if they would ever return?

His uncle must have thought it on that last day when he had left this house to join his flagship. Leaving Catherine outside where there was only darkness now, except for Ferguson ’s cottage. His lights would remain until the old house was asleep.

He had been surprised by Lieutenant Galbraith’s request to join him at the church; he had never met Richard Bolitho as far as Adam knew. But even in Unrivalled he had felt it. Something lost. Something shared.

He wondered if Catherine was able to sleep. He had pleaded with her to stay, but she had insisted on accompanying Nancy back to her house on the adjoining estate.

He stood, and looked at the stairway where she had said farewell. Without the veil she had looked strained and tired. And beautiful.

“It would be a bad beginning-for you, Adam. If we stayed here together there would be food for rumour. I would spare you that!” She had spoken so forcefully that he had felt her pain, the anguish which she had tried to contain in the church and afterwards.

She had looked around this same room. Remembering. “You have your new ship, Adam, so this must be your new beginning. I shall watch over matters here in Falmouth. It is yours now. Yours by right.” Again, she had spoken as if to emphasise what she herself had already foreseen.

He walked abruptly to the big family Bible, on the table where it had always lain. He had gone through it several times; it contained the history of a seafaring family, a roll of honour.

He opened it at the page with great care, imagining the faces watching him, the portraits at his back and lining the stairway. A separate entry in the familiar, sweeping handwriting he had come to know, to love, in letters from his uncle, and in various log books and despatches when he had served him as a junior officer.

Perhaps this was what troubled Catherine, the subject of his rights and his inheritance. The date was that upon which his surname of Pascoe had been changed to Bolitho. His uncle had written, To the memory of my brother Hugh, Adam’s father, once lieutenant in His Britannic Majesty’s Navy, who died on 7TH May 1795.

The Call of Duty was the Path to Glory.

His father, who had brought disgrace to this family, and who had left his son illegitimate.

He closed the Bible and picked up a candlestick. The stair creaked as he passed the portrait of Captain James Bolitho, who had lost an arm in India. My grandfather. Bryan Ferguson had shown him how, if you stood in the right place and the daylight favoured you, you could see where the artist had overpainted the arm with a pinned-up, empty sleeve after his return home.

The stair had protested that night when Zenoria had come down to find him weeping, unable to come to terms with the news that his uncle, Catherine, and Valentine Keen had been reported lost in the Golden Plover. And the madness which had followed; the love which he could not share. It was all contained, so much passion, so much grief, in this old house below Pendennis Castle.

He pushed open the door and hesitated as if someone was watching. As if she might still be here.

He strode across the room and opened the heavy curtains. There was a moon now, he could see the streaks of cloud passing swiftly across it like tattered banners.

He turned and looked at the room, the bed, the candlelight playing over the two portraits, one of his uncle as a young captain, in the outdated coat with its white lapels which his wife Cheney had liked so much, and one of Cheney on the same wall, restored by Catherine after Belinda had thrown it aside.

He held the candles closer to the third portrait, which Catherine had given to Richard after the Golden Plover disaster. Of herself, in the seamen’s clothing with which she had covered her body in the boat she had shared with the despairing survivors. “The other Catherine,” she had called it. The woman few had ever seen, he thought, apart from the man she had loved more than life itself. She must have paused here before leaving with Nancy; there was a smell of jasmine, like her skin when she had kissed him, had held him tightly as if unable or unwilling to break away.

He had taken her hand to his lips but she had shaken her head, and had looked into his face, as if afraid to lose something. He could still feel it like a physical force.

“No, dear Adam. Just hold me.” She had lifted her chin. “Kiss me.”

He touched the bed, trying to keep the image at bay. Kiss me. Were they both so alone now that they needed reassurance? Was that the true reason for Catherine’s departure on this terrible day?

He closed the door behind them and walked down the stairs. Some of the candles had gone, or had burned so low as to be useless, but those by the hearth had been replaced. One of the servant girls must have done it. He smiled. No secrets in this old house.

He swallowed some brandy and ran his fingers along the carvings above the fireplace. The family motto, For My Country’s Freedom, worn smooth by many hands. Men leaving home. Men inspired by great deeds. Men in doubt, or afraid.

He sat down again.

The house, the reputation he must follow, the people who relied on him, it would all take time to accept or even understand.

And tomorrow he would be the captain again, all he had ever wanted.

He looked at the darkening stairs and imagined Bolitho coming down to face some new challenge, to accept a responsibility which might and did finally destroy him.

I would give everything I have just to hear your voice and take your hand again, Uncle.

But only the wind answered him.

The two riders had dismounted and stood partly sheltered by fallen rock, holding their horses’ heads, staring out at the whitecapped waters of Falmouth Bay.

“Reckon she’ll come, Tom?”

The senior coastguard tugged his hat more securely over his forehead. “Mister Ferguson seemed to think so. Wanted us to keep an eye open, just in case.”

The other man wanted to talk. “’Course, you knows her ladyship, Tom.”

“We’ve had a few words once or twice.” He would have smiled, but his heart was too heavy. His young companion meant well enough, and with a few years of service along these shores he might amount to something. Know Lady Catherine Somervell? How could he describe her? Even if he had wanted to?

He watched the great span of uneasy water, the serried ranks of short waves broken as if by some giant’s comb, while the wind tested its strength.

It was noon, or soon would be. When they had ridden up from town along the cliff path he had seen the small groups of people. It was uncanny, like some part of a Cornish myth, and there were plenty of those to choose from. A town, a port which lived off the sea, and had lost far too many of its sons to have no respect for the dangers.

Describe her? Like the time he had tried to prevent her from seeing the slight, battered corpse of the girl who had committed suicide from Trystan’s Leap. He had watched her hold the girl in her arms, unfasten her torn and soaking clothes to seek a scar, some identifying mark, when all features had been destroyed by the fall and the sea. On that little crescent of beach in the dropping tide after they had dragged her through the surf. It was something he would never forget, nor wanted to.

At length he said, “A beautiful lady.” He recalled what one of Ferguson ’s friends had said of her. “A sailor’s woman.”

He had been in the church with all the others, had seen her then, so upright, so proud. Describe her?

“Never too busy or too important to pass the time o’ day. Made you feel like you was somebody. Not like a few I could mention!”

His companion looked at him and thought he understood.

Then he said, “You was right, Tom. She’s comin’ now.”

Tom removed his hat and watched the solitary figure approaching.

“Say nothing. Not today.”

She was wearing the faded old boat-cloak she often used for these cliff top walks, and her hair was unfastened and blowing freely in the wind. She turned and faced the sea at the place where she often paused on her walks; the best view of all, the locals said.

The young coastguard said uneasily, “You don’t think she…”

Tom turned his head, his eye trained to every movement and mood of the sea and these approaches.

“No.” He saw the fine edge of the ship as she tacked around Pendennis Point and its brooding castle, close-hauled and hard over, clawing into the wind before standing towards St Anthony Head. She carried more canvas than might be expected, but he knew what the captain intended, to weather the headland and those frothing reefs before coming about to head into open waters for more sea room, with the wind as an ally.

A tight manoeuvre, well executed if Unrivalled was as shorthanded as was rumoured. Some might call it reckless. Tom recalled the dark, restless young captain in the church and all those other times. He had seen him grow from midshipman to this moment in his life, which must be the greatest challenge of all.

He saw the woman unfasten her shabby boat-cloak and stand unmoving in the blustery wind. Not in black, but in a dark green robe. Tom had seen her waiting on this same path for the first sign of another ship. So that he would see her, sense her welcome.

He watched the frigate heeling over and imagined the squeal of blocks and the bang of wild canvas as the yards were hauled round. He had seen it all so many times before. He was a simple man who did his duty, peace or war.

What ship did she see, he wondered. What moment was she sharing?

Catherine walked past the two horses but did not speak.

Don’t leave me!