Sword of Honour

6. Know Your Enemy

Lieutenant George Avery felt the warmth of the noon sun across his shoulders, and walked to the quarterdeck nettings to obtain a better view of the Rock. There were vessels of every description anchored, to take on stores or to await new orders, and around and amongst them boats under sail or oars bustled in endless activity. The towering mass of Gibraltar dwarfed them all, watchful, eternal, a guardian of the gateway to the Mediterranean.

Frobisher's slow approach, the crash and echo of gun salutes, and the brisk exchange of signals were part of the tradition, and once anchored, the ship's company were soon hurrying to other duties, lowering boats and spreading awnings. As during the passage out from England, they were left little time to ponder on their first landfall.

Ten days since the Isle of Wight had vanished astern, not a fast passage by any means, but deliberately planned to exercise the whole company, sails, guns, lowering and recovering boats, until Captain Tyacke was satisfied. If satisfied he was. Hate him, curse him, it made no difference, because every one from seasoned seaman to ship's boy knew that Tyacke never spared himself, nor shied away from anything he demanded of others.

On occasion, he had ordered lieutenants and senior warrant officers to stand down, to be replaced by subordinates, or anyone Tyacke thought should discover the true responsibility of his rank or station. They had skirted Brest and the French coast and entered the Bay of Biscay, unpredictable as ever'

despite the shades of spring, passing close even to Lorient, where Frobisher had been launched.

Then the coast of Portugal, like dark blue smoke in the morning light; into bright sunshine, where, although driven hard, Avery had sensed a change in the company, had seen men pause to grin at one another. To respond.

In the wardroom he had seen it and heard it, too. But as the flag lieutenant he was never part of any company, and that suited him. Until they knew him better, other officers might imagine that he was the admiral's ear, Tyacke's too, ready to pass on their more outspoken opinions. These were divided on Tyacke's ruthless insistence upon drills. Some protested that it was pointless, as there was little likelihood now of action. Others took the view that, as flagship, it was a matter of pride.

Avery had noticed that Kellett, the deceptively mild-mannered first lieutenant, was rarely drawn into these heated discussions. Only once, he had turned suddenly on a junior lieutenant and had said, "I fully realise that you likely speak more out of drink than conviction, Mr. Wodehouse, but do so again in my presence and I'll take you aft myself!" It had been quietly said, but the wretched Wodehouse had cringed as if he had just received a torrent of obscenities.

Avery realised that one of the midshipmen was waiting to catch his eye.

"Yes, Mr. Wilmot?"

"Signal from Halcyon, sir. Have despatches on board." He pointed helpfully over the nettings. "Yonder, sir. Halcyon, twenty-eight, Captain Christie."

"Very well." Avery smiled. That was quickly done. I shall inform the captain." He saw the youth glance across at the lithe frigate. She was small, by modern standards, but still the dream of most young officers.

Maybe even this midshipman, with one foot on the bottom rung.

Tyacke strode across the deck, his head turned to give some instructions to a master's mate.

He saw Avery, and said, "Halcyon, eh? Left Portsmouth three days after us. She'll be joining Sir Richard's command at Malta." He glanced at the midshipman. "Make to Halcyon. Deliver despatches on board."

Avery watched the midshipman scurry away to his signals party, where the flags were all ready to bend on to the halliards.

"Mr. Midshipman Wilmot is a brighter one than some. Didn't wait to be told."

But Avery had seen the midshipman drop his eyes from Tyacke's face. How could he ever come to terms with it?

Tyacke turned as the flags shot up to the yard and broke to the offshore breeze. "We might hear some news." He smiled wryly. "Or it may be a recall!"

Avery said, "Do you know Malta well, sir?"

Tyacke said, "Look at those damned boats!" His arm shot out and he called, "Mr. Pennington? You are the officer-of-the-watch, I assume?"

The lieutenant swallowed hard. "I saw the boats, sir."

"Well, tell them to stand away. I'll not have the flagship trading with scum like that! I don't care what they're trying to sell!" He turned away. "Drop a round shot through the first one that tries to come alongside!"

Avery sighed. Tyacke would not be drawn about the past. We make a fine pair.

A seaman who was intently polishing the spokes of the big double wheel glanced across at him and said, "The admiral's comin' up, sir."

Pleased, Avery acknowledged it. It was another beginning.

Bolitho walked over to join him. "I have just heard about Halcyon." He shaded his eyes and stared across the busy anchorage. "Which is she?"

Avery pointed her out. He thought Bolitho looked rested and untroubled, although he knew he had been working with Yovell almost every day since they had left Spithead. Instructions, details of ships and their captains, a thousand things which Avery could only guess at.

He had seen him pacing the deck at night under the stars, or standing with his open shirt rippling in the wind when the hands were turned up to take in a reef, or to change tack on the run south. Thinking of his Catherine, perhaps. Holding on, while the leagues rolled away from Frobisher's great rudder.

Perhaps he did not need sleep like other men. Or was it denied him?

"Strange to be here." Bolitho touched his eye and massaged it slowly. "I was out here after the revolution, when the royalists hoped to raise a counter-action at Toulon. It was doomed from the conception, George. So much waste."

He stared across at the opposite side: the coast of Spain, almost swallowed in heat-haze. Another memory. Algeciras. He could remember someone pointing to it and saying, "Look. Yonder lies the enemy." But the face eluded him.

Avery wanted to speak, but after Tyacke's abruptness he was afraid to break the moment, which like all the others had become a part of his life. A part of him.

He asked, "You will know what to expect, sir?"

Bolitho did not seem to hear. "All that time ago, George. But later when I was here as flag captain in Euryalus, I can see it so clearly. The old Navarra being attacked by Barbary pirates. People smile when you mention them now, but they're as dangerous as they ever were. They'll not be tamed simply because we say so."

"Navarra, sir? What was she?"

Bolitho looked at him. "Just an old ship. She had no place in any line of battle. No prize court would have parted with a handful of gold for her." He smiled, as if he was reaching out. "Catherine was on board that ship with her husband. Where we met. Where we found and lost one another." He paused. "Until Antigua."

Avery tried to imagine it, Catherine as she must have been; like Golden Plover, which Tyacke had described in one of these rare moments of intimacy.

Bolitho looked round as a seaman called, "Boat's cast off from Halcyon, sir!" Then he said, "I've seen so many victories and failures in this sea, but nothing could outshine that meeting."

Tyacke appeared, and said sharply, "If you're mistaken, Mr. Pennington.."

The second lieutenant stood firm. "No, sir, the boat carries Halcyon's captain!"

Tyacke glared at him. Then man the side, if you please." He saw Bolitho and touched his hat. "From England, sir. Got here ahead of us." Then he relaxed slightly. "Hardly surprising!"

Avery watched them. From England. Maybe new orders for Bolitho. And letters? It was too soon. He thought of Allday; he might want one written for him before they weighed.

The marines fell into two ranks at the entry port, and Tyacke waited to greet the visitor. Routine.

The calls trilled, the salutes were exchanged, hats raised to the quarterdeck, the flag.

Captain Christie said, "Despatches, sir, and some personal mail." He was a tall, serious-faced officer, probably in his late twenties, his gleaming epaulettes marking him out as a post-captain. War or no war, he had been posted, and he had his own ship.

Bolitho said, "Come aft and take a glass."

Avery followed them, knowing that the young captain had been unprepared for this invitation from the admiral.

They all sat down in the spacious cabin, and Ozzard appeared silently with his tray.

Christie said, "It is an honour to be serving under your flag, Sir Richard. In these uncertain times one cannot be sure what……"

He turned as Tyacke said quietly, "Do I know you, sir?"

Christie took a goblet and almost spilled the wine. But his eyes were level enough.

"I know you, sir."

Bolitho knew it was difficult for some reason, as difficult as it was important.

Christie said, "Majestic, sir."

Just the name. The ship where it had happened. A ghost from the past.

Tyacke did not speak but studied Christie, trying to put the pieces together. As he had so many times, until it had almost driven him insane.

Christie said to Bolitho, "I was a midshipman in Majestic, Sir Richard. My first ship, and I had barely been aboard her for more than a couple of months." He looked around, as if searching for something. "When Lord Nelson led us to Aboukir Bay." He hesitated. "To the Nile."

Tyacke said slowly, "I remember you."

Christie continued, "We were amongst the French fleet in no time at all, and were locked with the big eighty-gun liner, Tonnant. Broadside after broadside." His voice was contained and unemotional, which made his description all the more vivid and terrible. "Dead and dying lay everywhere. I was too junior to have a proper station and I was kept running messages from the quarterdeck to the guns." He stared at the misted goblet. "Our captain was killed, people I knew were being torn to pieces, calling for help when there was none to be given. I – I almost broke that day. I was carrying a message to the lower gundeck, and I was terrified that the ship would be blown apart before I could find somewhere to hide. All the training meant nothing. I wanted to hide. To escape." Again, he hesitated. "And then

Outside, Avery could hear another boat being ordered to stand away, someone laughing. But only this was real.

Christie said, "The lieutenant in charge of the forrard division of guns called to me, Sir Richard. He put his hand on my shoulder and shook me back and forth until I was calm again."

Avery saw Tyacke nod, his blue eyes distant, unseeing.

"He said to me, "Walk, boy. Walk. To these poor devils you are a King's officer, but today you are the captain's voice, so use it clearly and show them what you can do."

Avery thought of the midshipman called Wilmot. How Christie must have been.

Christie said, "You sent me aft. Then the French broadside found us again. But for you I would have died with all the others. I told my father about it, and he tried to write to you. I wrote to you myself, but heard nothing." He looked directly at Bolitho. "It is wrong of me to speak of things so personal, but they have always meant so much to me, ever since that day. It made me a man, and I hope a better one."

He stood up and said, "I shall return to my ship now, Sir Richard. It has been an honour." He raised his hand as Tyacke made to follow. "No, sir, I shall see myself over the side." Then he smiled. Relief, gratitude, surprise, it was all there. "In the fleet they always spoke of The Happy Few. Now I understand."

Behind the pantry hatch Allday put down his rum, his 'wet', and considered what he had heard.

In the navy you had to expect it. Faces from the past, like old wounds, were not easily forgotten. Always the pain. But they were safe now. And yet, why was he so uneasy? He wanted to ask Lieutenant Avery to write a letter to Unis for him. But not about this. It was something he could not talk about through another man's pen.

Ozzard came back, frowning.

Allday tried to shrug it off. "Did I ever tell you about the time when me an' Sir Richard was fighting them Barbary pirates, Tom?"

"Yes." He relented slightly, and Allday thought he had felt it, too. "But spin it again, if you like."

"The sea's face is fair enough today."

The two women stood side by side by the old stile at the beginning of the cliff path and looked out across Falmouth Bay. The surface of the sea was unbroken, but heaving gently in the sunlight, as if it were breathing.

Catherine glanced at her companion, Richard's youngest sister, Nancy. She was looking better than expected. In life, her husband Lewis had been too large to ignore; in death, perhaps his strength was still her support.

Catherine ran her palm over the stile, the step and beams polished by countless hands and feet. How many had paused there to rest and reflect, as she had often done? She looked along the winding cliff path, hardly used nowadays. She rarely walked there, and certainly never alone, not since Zenoria's fall from Trystan's Leap.

Nancy said gently, "Never fear, you'll have a letter soon from him."

"I know. He never forgets. It is like hearing his voice." She brushed some hair from her eyes. "Tell me, Nancy. How are your affairs progressing?"

Nancy smiled at the change of subject. This tall, beautiful woman had become dear to her, had helped her through the grief of Lewis's final days and immediately after his death. A woman known and admired, envied and hated, who, with her brother, had defied every convention to proclaim their love. The hero and his lady. Lewis, too, had always admired her, and had made no secret of it. He had always had an eye for women. She stopped her thoughts, like closing a door.

The lawyers from London are still at the house. Lewis's affairs were in good order, despite what I may say were his occasional extravagances. They will arrange for someone to manage the estate, at least until the children become involved." She shook her head. "Children. Hardly that any more!"

They turned away from the stile. Catherine could remember him holding her beside it, the need of one for the other, after a reunion, or before another separation.

She said, Two weeks since he left. It will be three soon. I try to see his ship in my mind, where she is, what they may be doing." She shrugged. The Mediterranean… where we first met. Did you know that, Nancy?"

She shook her head. "Only that you lost one another soon afterwards. That he did tell me." She smiled, as though remembering. To think what he has become, in the navy, and to this country, and he remains uncertain of himself in many ways." She added with sudden emphasis, "I'll be thankful when he comes home." She touched Catherine's arm. "And stays here."

They turned towards the gentle slope which led down to the old grey house and its attendant cottages, so that the headland seemed to screen them from the murmur of the sea, its constant presence.

It would seem different to Nancy, daughter of a sailor, from a family of sailors, sister of Falmouth 's most famous son and England 's naval hero. Born and raised here with these people of the sea around her, the courageous fishermen who ventured out in all weathers to supply the tables of manor house and cottage alike. The coasters and the famous Falmouth packet ships, who sailed with the tide in peace or war. Nancy had grown up with them and their tradition.

She felt Nancy hesitate as she saw the carriage waiting in the stable yard. Perhaps their meeting and walk together had made her forget, if only for a moment. But now she would be driven back to that huge house with its folly, another of Lewis's little indulgences.

How empty it must seem now. I count the days and weeks. But-Nancy will never have even a letter to sustain her.

Nancy said, "You have a visitor."

Catherine stared past the carriage, aware of her painful heartbeat. There was no other vehicle, no horse to denote some courier, or messenger from Plymouth. But she could see somebody inside the estate office, in dark clothing, his back towards her, and she heard Ferguson 's sudden laugh. Perhaps he had sensed her return and was trying to reassure her. What would she do without him and without Grace? The link with Bolitho's earlier life, which she could never share.

Nancy said, "I'll wait a moment. Just to be sure."

Her protective caution made Catherine grip her arm.

"I am always safe, dear Nancy!"

Then, as she walked into the yard, the man with Ferguson turned and faced her. Uncertain, anxious, but, as ever, determined.

She quickened her pace. "Rear-Admiral Herrick! I had no idea you were in Cornwall, or in England, for that matter. I am pleased to see you." She half turned, ashamed that she had offered her right hand when Herrick's pinned-up sleeve should have reminded her. She said, This is Lady Roxby, Richard's sister."

Herrick bowed stiffly. "We met but briefly, ma'am. Some years ago."

Nancy smiled at him. "We met seldom, but through my brother you have always been a part of us."

She allowed her coachman to help her into the carriage. "Please call and see me again, Catherine. Soon." She glanced briefly at Herrick. Like an unspoken question.

Catherine took Herrick into the house. Someone she should know so well, and yet he was still a stranger.

"Please be seated, and I shall fetch you something cool. Some wine, perhaps?"

He sat down carefully and looked around the room. "Some ginger beer if you have it, my lady. Or cider."

She regarded him steadily. "No titles today. I am Catherine let it be so."

Grace Ferguson peered in at them. "Why, 'tis Rear-Admiral Herrick! I scarce recognised you without your fine uniform!"

Catherine turned. She herself had not truly noticed. Perhaps it had been the surprise, or relief that he was not some courier bearing the news she dreaded.

Herrick said awkwardly, "I am still of that rank, in name, in any case." He waited for the housekeeper to leave them, and added, "I am sent to Cornwall by their lordships."

She watched him, his struggle to share something with her. He was not attempting to be secretive or superior, like other men she had known; he was simply unused to confiding his thoughts to any one. Perhaps only with his beloved wife Dulcie had he ever been able to do so.

His blue eyes were as clear as ever, but his hair was completely grey, and there were sharp lines at the corners of his mouth which deepened, she thought with pain, when he sat, or, as now, when he leaned forward to accept the proffered glass. Richard had told her some of it, how Herrick had been captured and had had his hand savagely smashed, to destroy forever his ability to 'lift a sword for the King'. When he had been rescued, they had discovered that the wound had already succumbed to gangrene. The ship's surgeon had taken off his arm.

Most of all she remembered Bolitho's pride, his love for this stubborn, unyielding, courageous man. She sat opposite him and watched him drink the ginger beer.

She said, "Richard is at sea."

He nodded. "I know, my… Catherine. I heard something of it. I guessed the rest."

She waited. If she spoke now, Herrick would lose his sudden confidence. Or perhaps it was trust.

"I will never get another sea appointment. I did think I would be put out to grass, especially after the Reaper affair." He looked around again. "I have always remembered this place, and this room. I walked up from the town just now, as I did all those years ago. I was here when Richard's father was still alive, when he gave him the old sword. Over yonder, by the library door. And again, when we came back from the Indies… Richard's father was dead by then."

She turned involuntarily as if she would see them, saw only Captain James Bolitho's unsmiling portrait. He, too, had lost an arm.

"I have been in Plymouth. I am appointed to the revenue service here." He smiled briefly, and she saw him as he must once have been. "So dress uniform is hardly appropriate for such a popular and respected commission."

She thought of Nancy again; she had often mentioned the folklore of local smugglers, the 'gentlemen', as Tom the coast guard had called them. Richard had always spoken harshly of them, and of their brutal trade.

"Will it suit you, Thomas?"

She saw him flinch at the use of his name, as she had known he would.

"I needed to do something. The sea is my life. Unlike Richard, I have nothing else now." He leaned forward and added, "There is a lot to be done. New boats there are four cutters building at Plymouth, and I must find men who can be trusted to perform what is sometimes a dangerous duty. The country is desperate for revenue, and free trade in the dark of night cannot be allowed to flourish unchecked."

It was there, as Richard had described it to her. The grasp, the enthusiasm; once Herrick established a grip on something, he would never let go.

"Where are you staying, Thomas? There is plenty of room here, if you wish……"

He put down his glass. "No, I am settled at the inn. It is easier for the coach. Besides

She nodded, careful not to smile. "Besides, Thomas. What a span that word must carry."

Herrick studied her gravely. "I shall be back and forth. If you need me, I will be easy to find." He stood slowly, and she sensed the pain of the amputation, like so many she had seen in the streets.

"Will you not stay a while, Thomas?"

He glanced through to the library, as if to reassure himself. "Another time, I would be honoured. Proud." He turned away, as if unable to speak otherwise. "When I lost Dulcie I was blind to everything, to that which I owed Richard, and above all else to you, for staying with her when she was beyond aid." Then he faced her again, his eyes very clear. "Blind. But not any more. You risked everything for Dulcie, and so for me. I shall not lose my way in self-pity again."

He took her hand and kissed it with great care, and without pretence.

He took his hat from one of the servant girls and said, almost abruptly, "You met Lord Rhodes, I believe?"

She had her hand to her breast without knowing it. She nodded. Herrick turned his hat over in his own, strong hand. Like Ferguson, he had become used to it, if ever any man could.

"A close friend of Hamett-Parker." His mouth hardened. "The president at my court martial."

She followed him out into the sunlight, and he added, "I do not trust that man. Not one inch." Then he took her hand in his again, and smiled. "But Richard once taught me well enough. Know your enemy, he said. But never reveal that knowledge!"

She watched him stride out along the track, stooped, troubled by his injury more than he would allow anyone to guess, and, out of uniform, almost shabby.

She raised her hand as he turned to look back. But at that moment, he was a giant.

James Tyacke paused outside the chart room to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then made his way beneath the poop to the quarterdeck. The ship was still strange to him, and any vessel under cover of darkness was always a threat to the unwary.

He looked up at the sky beyond the topsails, at the millions of faint stars from horizon to horizon, and the merest sliver of a moon which showed itself only occasionally on the restless water.

He saw the dark shapes of the watch on deck, the third lieutenant, Tollemache, who was officer-of-the-watch, conferring quietly with another shadow, a master's mate.

He moved to the compass box and glanced at the card: south-east-by-east, the ship moving easily but slowly under reduced canvas. According to the chart, they were some fifty miles to the south-west of the Sicilian coast. To any landsman this would seem like an ocean, an endless, open waste, but Tyacke could feel the difference, and smell it. The nearness of land, with the shores of Africa somewhere across the opposite beam. The Mediterranean was like no other sea, and always the land seemed ready to surprise or ensnare you.

Tomorrow they would sight Malta: the end of the passage. It was still too early to judge if his exercise and drills had left their mark on the ship's company. The officers remained wary of him, like Tollemache, who was standing the middle watch only a few feet away. Uneasy, perhaps, at his captain's presence, which he might interpret as a lack of trust in his ability.

Three weeks since they had weighed anchor at Spithead. Faces, names, pride and resentment. Typical enough in any company with a new captain, and an admiral's flag at the masthead.

His thoughts had repeatedly returned to Halcyon's captain, Christie, the way this sea and the past kept returning. When he had taken command of Indomitable there had been another such recurrence, in the person of a one-legged ship's cook. The very day he had read himself in, the man, like a spectre, had brought it all back. Majestic, and Christie coming out with it, despite Bolitho's presence. And the cook, who as a young seaman in Tyacke's division had been smashed down by the same broadside which had left Tyacke for dead.

Would it never leave him? Sometimes, like tonight, it haunted him, so that he was unable to sleep.

He moved to the quarterdeck rail and saw the helmsman's eyes in the dim compass light as he turned to observe him.

Christie, at least, had gained something from it. It made me a man. Simple, genuine sincerity. So why not me?

He glanced around again as two seamen paused to take the slack out of some halliards before making them fast again.

Did this ship have any memories? Perhaps she was not old enough. It was difficult to imagine French voices and orders being uttered where his own men now stood.

A midshipman was writing on his slate, pencil squeaking, recording something for the log; Tyacke could see his white patches clearly in the darkness. Like Christie must have been… He walked impatiently to the empty nettings, angry with himself, with what he must regard as a weakness. It was none of those things which defied him to sleep, which put an edge to his voice when he had known he was asking, expecting, too much from people who had been allowed to run down, as Allday would have put it.

He had sworn to himself that it was over and done with. His anguish, his shame and his resentment had been like a defence. He had even told himself that, once out of England, it would fall back into place, into the mist of time and memory.

But it had not gone away, and his practical mind could not accept it.

He turned from the nettings and said, "I've made a note in the log, Mr. Tollemache. When the morning watch is aft, you can set the fore course We may sight local shipping at first light, and I shall want enough agility to avoid it."

He felt the lieutenant staring after him as he made his way to the poop. Outside his cabin he looked aft to where the sentry stood in a pool of light, as if he had never moved. There was a faint glow beneath the screen door. Could Bolitho not sleep, either?

With his cabin door closed behind him, he unshuttered the lanterns and looked at the cot beyond the screen, and then at the cupboard where he kept his brandy, one of the bottles which Catherine Somervell had sent aboard for him, as she had before in Indomitable. Who else would have thought of it? Would have cared?

Eventually he sat down, his head in his hands, his ears only half-aware of the shipboard sounds, the unending chorus in any living vessel.

Then he straightened his back and pulled some writing paper from a drawer. Surprisingly he felt quite calm, unnervingly so. Like the moment of decision, before going into battle, or at the first sight of the enemy's masts and sails spanning the horizon. An awareness, simply because there was no choice, perhaps never had been.

How long he sat there, the pen gripped in his hand, he could not remember.

And then, as if driven by another force, he began to write.

Dear Marion… When Lieutenant Kellett strode aft to muster the morning watch, Tyacke was still writing.

Then, at dawn, he went on deck and examined the log. He was the captain again.

Eight bells had just chimed from the forecastle belfry when Richard Bolitho came on deck, and crossed to the weather side while Frobisher settled down on the final leg of her approach. His mouth was still tingling to the coffee Ozzard had prepared while Allday had been shaving him. Something which had become a routine, as much a part of the ship's own procedure.

He shaded his eyes and stared along the length of the upper deck. Malta seemed so small, so insignificant on any chart, and yet from here it reached out on either bow as if snared in the tarred shrouds and standing rigging, a sprawling mass of sandstone. They were still too far away to distinguish houses and fortifications, or the batteries which guarded the anchorage, and made Malta the most formidable obstacle to any hostile fleet or squadron which might attempt to slip through the strait between Sicily and the coast of North Africa.

This was an island fought over, occupied and reoccupied, it was said as far back as 800 BC, when the Phoenicians had arrived. Sicilians, Arabs, all had left their mark upon architecture, religion and trade.

He felt a trickle of sweat run down his spine; his fresh shirt would be like a rag within the hour, and he envied the bare-backed seamen, skins already sunburned, as they dashed up and down the ratlines in response to the shouted orders from the quarterdeck.

Some of the unemployed men stared at passing craft, brightly coloured fishing boats with bat-like sails. Most of them had an eye painted on the bow, the eye of Osiris, believed to enable the boat to see where it was going and so avoid danger. A few of the occupants waved as the black and buff seventy-four passed, but not many. Men-of-war, large and small, had become commonplace to these people throughout a war they had never truly understood.

Bolitho moved slightly into the shade of the mizzen topsail, and winced as a reflected shaft of sunlight pricked his injured eye. He saw Tyacke speaking to Tregidgo, the sailing master. They were probably satisfied with their calculations, and their arrival at the estimated time. The master was competent, Tyacke had told him, an old hand, four years in Frobisher and ten as a master before that. Tyacke had also said that he was not an easy man to know.

Bolitho had spoken to him only once, a fellow Cornishman, but with entirely different beginnings. Tregidgo had been the first of his family to go to sea; the others were all tin miners, Cousin Jacks, as they were called in Cornwall. He had not waited to be taken by a press gang, but had walked into Redruth and volunteered. It must have been a hard climb to his present rank, Bolitho thought.

He saw Allday moving around the boat tier, his face set in a frown of concentration. The barge had been painted green at his instruction, but it was impossible to know if Allday was pleased with it.

Lieutenant A very joined him. "My first visit here, sir."

Bolitho said, "I doubt if you'll find much time to explore."

They looked up as more men clambered out along the topsail yards, like monkeys against the pale sky.

Bolitho had seen the date in the ship's log: the sixth of June, 1814. Adam's birthday. He thought of the war he had left behind in those disputed American waters, the risks and dangers to Adam; afraid that his despair and bitterness at Zenoria's death might make him reckless, and too eager for a fight with the enemy which had destroyed the only other thing he had loved, the frigate Anemone. He knew what it was like, how grief could blunt even the most experienced captain's judgement; he had suffered it himself, at a time when he believed he had nothing to live for. A death wish, someone had called it.

If only Adam were here. Another in his position would use his influence as admiral to arrange such a transfer, but it would be seen as favouritism, and Adam would decline for that very reason.

Tyacke said. Take in your courses, Mr. Kellett, and have the marines mustered aft."

He never seemed to raise his voice, but they were coming to know their captain, and aspire to his standards, even if they could not understand why he drove himself so hard.

Allday had come aft. but was careful to keep his distance. Thinking, perhaps, of the child who would be even more grown up when he eventually reached home again.

Bolitho bit his lip. June. His own daughter. Elizabeth, would be twelve years old this month.

I do not know her.

More shouted commands, and the way going off the ship as she moved steadily towards the land and the gleaming expanse of anchorage. The gunner was on deck speaking with Gage, the fourth lieutenant, making sure that each gun would fire exactly on time when the salutes began. A few men looked towards the quarterdeck where the admiral and his aide stood side by side, apparently beyond the reach of doubt, or any ordinary concerns.

Bolitho smiled to himself, and Avery saw the smile and found comfort in it, without knowing why.

There was a Spanish frigate anchored nearby, some of her company mustered on deck to dip her ensign in respect as the ship with the admiral's flag moved abeam.

Bolitho tried to accept it. They were enemies no longer. He thought of Catherine's words, when they had first met. It was as though she had just spoken them aloud. Men are made for war, and you are no exception. But it was not a reminder. It was a warning.