It would not help him, or anyone else, to know that Commodore Deighton had been killed by a single musket ball, but not one fired by an American weapon. It had entered the body from high up, at a steep angle. He peered at a wounded marine who was drinking some rum. It could rest.
He gestured with his knife. "Next!"
Adam looked at the boy's face. How he must have relived Anemone's death each time the drums had beaten to quarters.
We help each other. He covered his face again with the blanket. It was all that John Whitmarsh had ever wanted.
He climbed once more up to the smoky sunlight, and almost broke when he saw his lieutenants and warrant officers waiting to make their reports, and to ask for his instructions.
One figure blocked his way. It was Jago.
"Yes?" He could scarcely speak.
"I was thinkin', sir. That offer of yours, cox'n, weren't it?"
Adam faced him, but barely saw him. "You'll take it?"
Like the other time he had seized a lifeline.
Jago nodded, and held out his hand. "I'd want to shake on it, sir."
They shook hands in silence, men pausing in their work and perhaps forgetting their fear, merely to watch. To share it.
That evening, as predicted by Ritchie, they met with the remainder of the squadron and headed for the Bermudas, for orders. In Valkyrie's wake, the stitched canvas bundles drifted down and down into eternal darkness. One of them was the commodore.
And one was a boy who wore a fine dirk strapped to his side, for the last farewell.
10. A Ship of War
His Britannic Majesty's Ship Frobisher lay at her anchor, unmoving above the perfect twin of her reflection in the blazing sunlight. The ensign at her stern and the admiral's flag at the mainmast truck were equally motionless, and between decks, in spite of the awnings and wind sails the air was like an open kiln.
The crash of Malta 's noonday gun echoed across the water like an intrusion, but only a few gulls rose from their torpor, squawking in protest before settling down again.
In the great cabin Sir Richard Bolitho, coat less his ruffled shirt open almost to the waist, shaded his eyes to stare at the land, the craggy battlements where, occasionally, he could see a red coat moving slowly on patrol. He pitied the soldiers in their thick uniforms as they paced up and down in the heat.
Frobisher was a well-built ship, and the sounds which reached Bolitho's quarters were muffled and remote, as if they, too, were stifled by the heat. But in many ways he envied the life and movement from which he was separated, protected, as his secretary Yovell had once described it. Even here, right aft, he could catch the heady smell of rum, and imagine the ship's community of some six hundred seamen and Royal Marines preparing for their midday meal.
He sighed and sat at his table again, to the litter of signals and local correspondence awaiting collection. Since their arrival here in Grand Harbour, the ship had scarcely moved. Such inactivity was bad for any fighting ship, and for one with a company far from home, with no immediate prospect of discharge or action, the strain on discipline and routine was becoming evident.
He had received two letters from Catherine; they had arrived together in a courier brig from Plymouth. It was the shortest time they had ever been parted, and yet the uncertainty of the future and the strange, lingering sense of loss he felt seemed to make it worse.
She wrote of things she knew would please him, of the house and the estate. Of the garden, her garden, and the roses which gave her so much pleasure.
She touched on her feelings for him, but was careful not to trouble him with her own pain of separation.
There had been one ugly note; she had mentioned it in case he should hear it from someone else. There had been a riot in Bodmin, the county town, although he found it hard to imagine in that sort of community; a local regiment had been disbanded, and the men had mounted a protest to demand work after their service to their country.
If it had happened in Falmouth, Bolitho wondered what Lewis Roxby would have done. He might well have put some of the men to work on his own large estate, and encouraged other landowners to do the same. In Bodmin, a magistrate had read the Riot Act, and called out the dragoons from Truro.
She had told him that she was going to London to see the lawyers again.
She would think of him. Dearest of men… always.
He heard Ozzard's sharp voice from the pantry, and then Allday's. They were bickering about something, as usual. Without them and their concern over his welfare, he sometimes thought that the inactivity would drive him mad.
There were receptions, for him and his officers, and for visiting ships, old enemies who were now classed as allies. That would take a long, long time to accept.
He had seen little otherwise of the island itself, and although he had been offered facilities ashore with as many servants as he might need, he had remained in his flagship. As if it were a last link with the only life he knew and understood.
Malta was full of history, and as one senior officer had described it, 'the stronghold of Christianity'. When the French had been forced to withdraw because of the naval blockade, the Maltese had requested British protection, and a restoration of their rights and privileges. The island, small though it was, had once again become a stronghold. Now, with Napoleon's surrender and his incarceration on Elba, it was assumed by some that Malta would be allowed to resume its own self-government, not so different from that of the old Knights of Malta.
That same senior officer had laughed outright when Bolitho had suggested it. He had exclaimed, "Have you ever known the flag hauled down after a victory, Sir Richard? If a place is worth dying for, it's worth holding on to, in my opinion!"
He heard the marine sentry's heels click together, and then Ozzard hurrying to the outer screen door.
It was Captain Tyacke, his scarred face very deeply tanned above the whiteness of his shirt. He was so used to the heat and the sun of Africa that he scarcely noticed it.
"Officer-of-the-Guard has just brought a message, Sir Richard." He glanced around the cabin, made still more spacious by the removal of the eighteen- pounder guns which would otherwise have occupied even an admiral's quarters. They had been replaced by short wooden replicas, quakers as they were termed, so that, outwardly at least, the ship would appear fully armed.
Bolitho slit open the envelope. It bore a military seal on the outer flap. Another visitor… He said, "We shall have a major-general coming aboard during the dogs, James. His name is Valancy, although it does not give a reason for this honour."
"I shall deal with it, sir."
Bolitho looked at him, aware of the change in him; he had seen it develop during their passage into the Mediterranean, and these dragging weeks in harbour. Perhaps he had found the challenge of the new command stimulating; he had performed miracles with some of the inexperienced hands and the junior officers. But that was only a part of it.
We are so alike in many ways. He will share it with me, when he is ready.
Tyacke said, "Perhaps we shall be told something, sir."
"Soon, I trust." He stood up and walked to the quarter gallery and watched a small boat being pulled across the harbour. A boy and an old man; they did not even glance up as Frobisher's big shadow passed over them.
He said quietly, "If it does not happen, James, I shall write a suitable report to their lordships."
Tyacke watched him, the set of his shoulders, his hair still as black as the day they had first met. And later, when Bolitho had asked him to be his flag captain. Not ordered or demanded, as most flag officers would have done, as, indeed, they were entitled to do. He had asked. And had said, because I need you. No wonder they spoke of the legend, the charisma, but it was both and neither of them. It was the man himself.
Tyacke said, "If we can get to sea……"