The blast of the boatswain's call pealed out the instant his head appeared above the level of the bulwark and Kydd gravely removed his hat and acknowledged the quarterdeck, then the small group who awaited him.
A young lieutenant stepped forward anxiously. "Sir, L'tenant McCallum, second o' Tenacious."
"Commander Kydd, Teazer," Kydd said crisply. "To visit th' first lieutenant."
Hesitantly McCallum replied, "Captain is ashore, sir, and the first lieutenant at the dockyard, but he'll be back aboard presently. Er, we'd be honoured if you'd accept the hospitality of the wardroom in the meantime."
One satisfaction deferred, then, but another pleasurably delayed. Renzi could be relied on to manage the niceties of a captain come to visit a lieutenant instead of the more usual summoning in the reverse direction.
"First l'tenant's sairvant, sir, an' would ye desire a wee drop?" It was not like Renzi to have a youngster with a Scottish brogue as manservant—he normally favoured a knowing and dour marine.
"No, thank ye," Kydd answered, and settled automatically into his old second lieutenant's chair, looking around the well-remembered intimacies of the first ship in which he had served as an officer. So many memories . . . When the servant had left he tiptoed self-consciously to the end cabin, larboard side, the most junior officer's. He guiltily pulled aside the curtain and peered in at the ludicrously tiny space that he had once considered the snug centre of his domestic world. The cunningly crafted writing desk was still there, a small gilded portrait of someone's young lady peering shyly at him from the bulkhead above it.
He let the curtain fall and feeling washed over him. From the anguish of those long-ago times to now, captain of his own ship. Could fortune bring more?
"Ahem. Sir?" A tall, stooped officer stood at the door looking mystified.
"Yes, L'tenant?" Kydd answered pleasantly.
"Well, er, sir," he said in embarrassment, "Edward Robbins, first lieutenant."
It took Kydd aback. "Oh, er, Mr Renzi is not y'r first—he's been moved on?"
"Oh, no, sir," said the officer. "I've only been in post these three weeks since Mr Renzi was landed with the fever. It's been a busy time keeping in with things."
"Fever?" Kydd said blankly, a cold presentiment creeping into him.
"Why, yes, sir—did you know Mr Renzi at all?"
"I did—do."
"Oh, I've sad news for you then, sir. Mr Renzi was taken of an ague, let me see, this month past off Toulon. The doctor exhausted his quinine and having only a few leeches remaining there was little that could be done."
"He is . . ." began Kydd, but could not finish.
"We sent him in a lugger—to here, sir, the Lazaretto, but our doctor told us then that he was not responding and we should be prepared." Seeing Kydd's stricken face, he finished lamely, "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, sir."
Icy cold with the fear of what he would shortly know, Kydd headed down the harbour past Bloody Island and to the landing place on the bleak-walled Lazaretto Island. The nervous boat's crew insisted on lying off while Kydd went in to enquire. It took him moments only to discover that Renzi was no longer there; apparently he should have gone to Isla del Rey, the round island up the harbour where the hospital and its records were.
"L'tenant Renzi of Tenacious," he insisted yet again, to the man at the door. This time it brought results: an intense, dark-featured Iberian appeared. "Yes?" he asked brusquely, wiping his hands on a towel. Kydd explained himself. "He lives still," the man grunted. Hope flooded back. "But not for long. If you wan' say goodbyes, come now."
The cloying, sickly smell of suffering humanity hit him like a wall, bringing back unbearable memories of his time in a yellow-fever hospital in the Caribbean. "Here," the Iberian said, with a gesture, and stood back cynically.
Kydd bent over the pitiable grey form. It was Renzi. "M' friend—" he said huskily, but a lump in his throat prevented him continuing.
"He c'n not hear you."
"May I know—the fever, is it—"
"Is not infecting. Th' fools on your ships know nothing."
"How—how long?"
"It is th' undulant fever—do you know this?"
"No," said Kydd, in a low voice.
"He has a week—a month. Who know? Then . . ."
"Is there any cure, at all?"
"No." The finality in his voice sounded like the slam of a door. Then he added, "Some believe th' change of air, but I cannot say."
The boat trip back to Teazer in the bright sunshine was a hard trial; all he wanted now was the solitude of his cabin to grapple with what he had seen. His dearest friend on his deathbed, a motionless grey form. So different from the man who had roped himself to Kydd when they cast themselves into the sea at the wreck of Artemis, who had been by his side at Acre with bloody sword as they defied Napoleon himself. More images came and Kydd bit his lip and endured until the boat finally reached Teazer.
After he had come aboard Dacres handed him a packet. The promised orders had arrived. But Kydd needed time to face what had happened. His particular friend, who had shared so many of the adventures that had formed him, and given him the chances that had led to this, the culmination of his life, was dying—and he could do nothing.
His fists balled while helplessness coursed through him. Then he took a deep breath to steady himself.
He took up his orders, now his only link with normality, the real world, and his duty. Life—naval life—had to go on, and if there was anything to which Renzi had scrupulously held, it was his duty.
The packet of orders was thin. Normally containing signals in profusion and pages of ancillary matters, this appeared to consist only of a single folded paper. He slit the seal and opened it out: it was curt, precise and to the point. Teazer was to sail for England with immediate effect. She was to proceed thence to Plymouth, the nearest big port. There, her commission would come to an end and she would be placed in ordinary, laid up, her masts, riggings, sails and guns removed. Her ship's company to disperse, her officers' commissions to terminate and her commander to become unemployed.
It was the end of everything.
CHAPTER 10
IT WAS NOT AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN, his return to the land of his birth. Still numb with shock at the way his fortunes had changed so precipitously, the sight of the sprawling promontory of the Lizard, bleak against the desolate cold grey autumn seas, left him sad and empty.
The disintegration of the life he had come to love so much had started almost immediately when the Maltese had refused to continue to England and had left the ship. He had let Bonnici go with them and the few others who preferred a Mediterranean sea life to the uncertainties of peacetime Britain, and sailed short-handed.
Some of Teazer's company were eager to return, those with families, loved ones, a future. Others were subdued, caught by the sudden alteration in their lives and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
The Eddystone lighthouse lay to starboard as they headed for Plymouth Sound and shaped course for the naval dockyard. There seemed to be so many more craft plying the coasts than Kydd remembered and each seemed bent on throwing herself across Teazer 's track.
The desolation Kydd felt had only one small glimmer of light: Renzi still clung to life. Kydd had seized on the one thing that he had heard might benefit his friend: a change of air. He had cleared out his great cabin, then stretchered Renzi aboard and set Tysoe to caring for him. The fever was still in full spate, coming in spiteful waves, and while Kydd sat with him there was no sign that Renzi understood what was going on.
Time passed in a series of final scenes: the growing definition of land to greens and blacks and the occasional scatter of village dwellings, passing Drake Island and the grandeur of Plymouth Hoe, then the concluding passage to larboard and around Devil's Point to the wider stretch of the Hamoaze.