Both torpedo boats were angling in towards the tall sides of the Weser.
“Put scrambling nets over the side,” Weitzman ordered.
“Sir,” the signalman called. “They are ordering that the crew should line the sides in full view…”
The old man walked unhurriedly from the port to the starboard side of his bridge, judging angles.
A yeoman handed him his hard hat.
Weitzman glanced thoughtfully at his Royal Navy guest, perhaps thinking of ordering him below and thinking better of it.
Then he turned to the bridge speaker.
“Stand by to execute surface action off both beams on my word.”
Peter Cowdrey-Singh heard this passed on and acknowledged.
The old man took one final look at the nearest torpedo boat, now only fifty yards off the port bow quarter of the Weser.
“Commence surface action… NOW!”
Chapter 43
Sunday 17th April
Viano do Castelo, Northern Portugal
At first Melody and Henrietta had been so preoccupied catching up with their sleep, indulging in the joy of being clean again, and not perishingly cold or hot, thirsty or starving, to just be together and safe with Pedro, that being secreted away from the World had been no hardship whatsoever. Not so for Albert Stanton but then he was a journalist with the story of a lifetime to tell; and every second he was cooped up in Portugal he was fretting about his scoop, not to mention being kept from the side of a certain Miss Daventry-Jones.
‘I intend to propose to her the minute I get back,’ he had confided, earnestly, to his companions. ‘I was a damned fool not doing the deed before I left for Paris!’
The hotel had found him a typewriter last night; he had been hammering away at it practically non-stop ever since, leaving the women completely to their own devices without feeling any obligation to cheer him up, or even to socialise.
Of the two women Melody was by far the more vexed not to know who or what exactly was keeping them waiting. The hotel might be a gilded cage but she had never been the sort of creature who like to have her wings clipped.
“We’re both still knocked about and sore from our adventures,” Henrietta soothed.
True, their feet were still a mess, and their numerous aches and pains only now beginning to subside. Although the Embassy in Lisbon had arranged for a stylist to come in to try to make their short, boyish hair a little more presentable, feminine, each still missed their previous luxuriant long locks and subconsciously twirled non-existent rebellious strands. One small mercy was that their nearly-bald patches had grown over, so they did not look quite like the scabrous harpies they were four weeks ago.
Oh, and the hotel had found a couple of nice, fashionably modest – this was small ‘c’ Catholic Portugal after all – dresses for them which actually fitted their slightly slimmer waists. That said, their feet were still so distressed that they both still found it more comfortable to go barefoot.
So, that morning, the women were enjoying tea as the sunshine streamed into their day room, listening contentedly to Pedro playing with the toys – a couple of old tin model cars and a set of knocked about building blocks the hotel manager’s wife had found – in their bedroom, when there was a quiet knock at the door.
Melody rose to her feet.
“Come in, please!”
Whereupon, the door not so much opened as nearly flew off its hinges as if blown asunder by the simmering anticipation of the handsome man in the day uniform of an officer of the Spanish Royal Household Cavalry, in an obviously high state of anxiety, who practically ran into the room.
And came to a skidding halt just in front of Melody.
“Alonso?” She asked, like an idiot, staring uncomprehendingly at the more than somewhat agitated, exiled Duke of Medina-Sidonia.
Behind her Henrietta was rising to her feet, a seraphic smile spreading across her face.
Pedro, curious about the commotion trotted around behind her, clung to her legs, peering cautiously at the newcomer.
“Melody!” The man breathed with a juddering sigh.
She reached up and touched her head, absent its former burning red mane.
He reached out to her; his right hand brushed her cheek.
Later, it was hard to say who initiated things.
All Melody knew was that she was in the man’s arms and he was kissing her – and she was kissing him back – with an all-devouring, insane passion. Neither party broke the clinch until they were turning blue from lack of air.
Oddly, they both felt a little silly afterwards.
And each looked to Henrietta, somehow ashamed.
As if they had left her out of something very important…
Melody beckoned her friend and lover to join them.
The man embraced Henrietta, planted a long, heartfelt kiss on her brow; and the Melody’s surprise, her partner, after a brief moment of hesitation, kissed him flush on the mouth.
Presently, the three of them were looking one to the others, as if trying to work out what it all meant.
Alonso knelt down, looked Pedro in the eye.
“We think he was the ward of the Cortes family in Navalperal de Tormes,” Henrietta explained, trying to read the intensity in Alonso’s eyes as he studied the boy. “We don’t even know how old he is, well, not within…”
“He is three years and seven months old in two days’ time,” she was informed.
Melody and Henrietta glanced askance on to the other.
The man looked up momentarily before re-fixing his attention on the boy still clinging to Henrietta’s leg.
“Mama?” Pedro asked, seeking reassurance.
Henrietta dropped to her knees and hugged him.
She met Alonso’s gaze.
“We’ve all become very close,” she explained, quirking a self-conscious smile. She kissed the boys head.
“I have a confession,” Alonso announced. “One that for the while I can only share with you.” He hesitated. “And, I regret, I truly regret, only with you.”
As everybody else was on the floor, at Pedro’s level, Melody descended, stiffly to her knees.
“You see,” Alonso explained, suddenly self-deprecating, “Pedro is the child of a high-born lady of my acquaintance.”
“Okay,” Melody murmured, still not seeing where this was going.
“This I know,” because two days after I learned of his birth, I lodged a letter of acknowledgment of paternity with my solicitors in London. “Pedro,” he smiled, “Your name is Pedro Alfonse Pérez de Guzmán, and you are the rightful heir to the Dukedom of Medina Sidonia.”
Melody and Henrietta were staring.
“This I swear by all things that are precious to me, because,” the man concluded, “I am your father.”
Author’s Endnote
‘Remember Brave Achilles’ is the fourth book in the New England Series set in an alternative America, two hundred years after the rebellion of the American colonies was crushed in 1776 when the Continental Army was destroyed at the battle of Long Island and its commander, George Washington was killed.
I hope you enjoyed it – or if you did not, sorry – but either way, thank you for reading and helping to keep the printed word alive. Remember, civilization depends on people like you.