Sillitoe snapped, “Must get through to St Paul ’s. I do not have to explain why, I trust.” He could feel the anger rising again; this was only the calm before the storm. He studied the officer coldly. “Fourteenth Light Dragoons. I know your agent, at Gray’s Inn, I believe?”
He saw the shot go home.
“A vehicle has lost a wheel, my lord. It could not have happened in a worse place. I have already had to turn back one carriage-a lady-”
“A lady?” It was Catherine. It had to be. He glanced at the shining helmets and restless horses, and said sharply, “I suggest you dismount those pretty warriors and remove the obstruction.”
“I-I am not certain. My orders-”
Sillitoe leaned back. “If you value your commission, Lieutenant.”
It took only minutes for the dragoons to drag the vehicle to one side, and for William to drive the length of the street.
Deliberate? An accident? Or was it what Richard Bolitho had always called Fate?
He thought of her. On foot, hemmed in by gaping, curious faces. He looked out again and saw St Paul ’s. Close to, it dominated everything, so that the silence was all the more impressive.
“Stop now!”
He knew William was against it, and was probably wishing the massive Guthrie was here with him, but he climbed down to calm the horses before they became troubled by the slow-moving crowds, and the unnatural silence.
What might they have done? Would they have dared to turn her back at the cathedral’s imposing entrance, on some paltry excuse, perhaps because there was no record of her invitation? Catherine, of all people. On this damnable day.
He quickened his pace, used to staring eyes and peering faces, beyond their reach, or so he believed now.
A hand plucked at his coat. “Would you buy some flowers to honour his memory, sir?”
Sillitoe thrust him aside with a curt, “Out of my way!”
Then he stopped, as if he had no control of his limbs. It explained the silence, the complete stillness, the like of which this place had never witnessed.
Catherine, too, stood quite still, and erect, surrounded by people and yet utterly detached from them.
Across the cathedral steps was an uneven rank of men. Sailors, or they had been before they had been cut down in battle. Men without arms, or hobbling on wooden stumps. Men with burned and scarred faces, victims of a hundred different battles and as many ships, but today joined as one. Sillitoe tried to reason with it, coldly, as was his habit. They were probably from the naval hospital at Greenwich and must have come upriver for this occasion, as if they had been drawn to it by the same power which had stopped him in his tracks. All wore scraps of uniform, some displayed tattoos on their arms; one, in a sea officer’s uniform, was wearing his sword.
Sillitoe wanted to go to her. Not to speak, but only to be beside her. But he did not move.
Catherine was aware of the silence; she had even seen the mounted dragoons ordered to remove the wrecked vehicle. But it was all somewhere else. Not here. Not now.
She stood, unmoving, watching the man in the officer’s uniform as he stepped slowly forward from the watching barrier of crippled sailors. The ones with wooden spars. Half-timbered Jacks, as Allday called them. She trembled. But he always said it without contempt, and without pity, for they were himself.
The officer was closer now, and she realised that his uniform was that of a lieutenant. Clean and well-pressed, but the careful stitching and repairs were evident. He had one hand on another man’s shoulder, and when she saw his eyes she knew that he was blind, although they were clear and bright. And motionless.
His companion murmured something, and he removed his cocked hat with a flourish. His grey hair and threadbare uniform did not belong to this moment; he was the young lieutenant again. And these were his men.
He held out his hand and for an instant she saw him falter, until she reached out to him and took it in hers.
“You are welcome here.” Very gently, he kissed her hand. Still no one spoke or moved. As if this vignette were caught in time, like these ragged, proud reminders who had come to honour her.
Then he said, “We all knew Sir Richard. Some of us served with or under him. He would have wished you to be so met today.”
She heard a step beside her and knew it was Sillitoe.
She murmured, “I thought… I thought…”
He slipped his hand beneath her elbow and said, “I know what you thought. What you were intended to think.”
Without looking above or beyond the watching figures, he knew that the great doors had opened.
He said, “Thank you, gentlemen. No admiral’s lady could ever have a braver guard of honour!”
There were smiles now, and one man reached out to touch Catherine’s gown, muttering something, beaming at her while tears streamed down his cheeks. She removed her black veil, and stared up the steps.
“I do not have the words, Lieutenant. But later…” But there was no grey-haired officer, or perhaps her eyes were too blurred to see. A ghost, then. Like those who lay with Richard.
“Take me in, please.”
She did not hear the stir of surprise that ran through that towering place like a sudden wind through dry leaves, nor see the admiration, or outrage, or the angry disappointment, as Sillitoe guided her to his pew, which otherwise would have been empty.
She gripped her left hand in her right, feeling the ring her lover had placed there on Zenoria Keen’s wedding day.
In the eyes of God, we are married.
She could not look ahead, and dared not think of what was past, that which she could never regain.
It was a proud day, for Richard, and for all those who had loved him.
And, only for this moment, they would be together.
It was just before dawn that the full force of the wind made itself known. Joshua Cristie, Unrivalled’s taciturn sailing-master, found no comfort in the fact that his predictions had proved right, for this was the enemy. Others might fear the cannon’s roar and the surgeon’s knife, but Cristie was a sailor to his fingertips, like most of his forebears, and saw the weather’s moods as his foes. As he gripped a stanchion to steady himself on the lurching deck he watched the sky, burning like molten copper, with long, dark clouds scudding beneath it as if they were already ashes.
They had shortened sail during the middle watch; he had heard the captain giving orders as he had hurried to the chartroom to collect his precious instruments.
The captain seemed well able to make his immediate demands understood. On the face of it, Unrivalled was a smart and disciplined ship. On the face of it. But Cristie knew that it was only on the surface. Until men were truly tested to the limit, they would not know. She was still a new ship, and like any other was only as strong as the men who served her, and the chain of command which directed them as surely as any rudder. Unless.
The captain was here now, his old seagoing coat flapping in the wind, the dark hair pressed against his face by the flying spray. Even that looked like droplets of copper in the strange light.
“Let her fall off a point, Mr Cristie! Steer south-west-by-south!”
More men ran across to halliards and braces, some only half-dressed after the urgent call for all hands.
Cristie shouted, “Still backing a piece, sir! She’ll not hold this close to the wind for much longer!”
The captain seemed to hang on to his words, then swung round to face him. Cristie tested the moment, as he would a sounding or a compass bearing.
“We could come about and run with it, sir.” He hesitated, his mind grappling with the crack and thunder of canvas, the drone of straining rigging. “Or we could lie to under close-reefed main tops’l!”
Galbraith was yelling for more hands, and a few anonymous figures were in the mizzen top, cutting away broken cordage.
Cristie heard the captain say, “No. We’ll hold as close as we can.” He was staring up at the swaying yards, the sickening motion making each plunge seem as if the ship were out of control.