In the King's Name (35 page)

At any moment
Onward
‘s bow-chasers would come to bear, then her carronades.

He tore his eyes away to look for the abandoned schooner. That, too, had been a ruse, without regard for their own lives. The schooner was heeling over toward him, her deck splintered. Another splash through the clinging smoke, and she was mastless.

Somebody cried out, near or far: he was beyond understanding. As if all the air had been forced, punched out of his lungs, or his ears were covered by unseen hands. How long? Maybe only a split second, and then came the explosion. He felt spray across his face as fragments hit the sea almost alongside. Something striking the deck with a shower of sparks. As his hearing returned he became aware of the shouts, and the clank of pumps, spilling water over the sun-dried planking.

The smaller schooner had vanished. Some of her remains were coming to the surface. They had misjudged
Onward
‘s change of direction. Even the schooner's crew had not escaped.

Vincent was waving, perhaps shouting to confirm his readiness. A drop of the hand, and a nine-pounder responded from the forecastle. The smoke was fanning away as one of the carronades shook the hull.

Julyan was shouting now, and Adam saw him gesture toward the big schooner. “They're cutting it fine, sir!” He stared down at his own arm, which was smeared with blood, then seemed to shrug casually. Adam had seen the gesture so often, in the chartroom when dealing with a problem which he usually managed to solve.

The big schooner had altered course again. If she drew closer to the other shore, she still might reach the open sea. They were still firing, and her upper deck seemed to be full of uniforms. The schooner was the transport. They were the main force, so far. And mutiny was a contagious disease. It could soon spread.

He winced as the second carronade fired its deadly charge across the other vessel's forecastle. He did not need a telescope to see the splinters flying, men scattering like rags under a full charge of grape.

“Helm, hard over!” Adam saw Squire turn from the compass box and nod. He was biting his lip.

But
Onward
was answering slowly. There was an extra helmsman at the wheel. One already lay dead near Squire's feet.

Squire saw Midshipman Huxley duck by the bulwark as more shots hammered into the deck. He caught his attention and called,
“Keep on the move!”
then swore under his breath as a splinter sprang from the deck within inches of his own foot.

Adam watched the great arrowhead of water between the two ships. In a few minutes they would be carried further apart. He picked up his sword, and heard some of the seamen calling out to one another. He felt a shot hit and ricochet from one of the eighteen-pounders. One of the crew, leaning on his rammer, did not move. He was still gazing aft at his captain.

More shouts, this time from the foremast. The upper yard, the royal, had been damaged or dislodged by the explosion, and some men were up there in the thick of it. The top-chains were holding, but even as he watched one of the tiny figures threw up his hands and fell.

Adam raised his sword and looked again toward the big schooner.

There was a lull in the gunfire, and many voices suddenly merging. There must be hundreds on board, outnumbering
Onward
‘s company at least two to one. Fists were raised, and he thought he saw the lens of a telescope flash in the smoky sunlight, either watching the sword or taking aim.

He shouted, “Full broadside! Together!” The sword was at his side, but he was gripping it with all his strength.

A moment later,
Onward
‘s entire broadside fired as one. Fourteen eighteen-pounders,
and anything else that can strike a match
, as the old gunners used to say. Like thunder, but no longer at any distance.

“First lieutenant wants you!
Now!
”

It was a call for the “speaking-trumpet,” and Adam saw young Huxley come to life and call out to a bosun's mate before running toward the larboard gangway.

A smoke-grimed face peered up from the deck. “Don't ye spoil that fine uniform,
sir!
”

Huxley glanced down and might have smiled, then he collapsed. Before any one could reach him, he was dead.

Midshipman Hotham saw him fall, but he was needed elsewhere. But still he hesitated, one hand in his pocket, feeling for the little crucifix he always kept there, which nobody else knew about. “Dear God, please receive the soul of Simon Huxley.” Now he was reunited with his father.

“Ready, sir!”

The next broadside was slowly, more patiently aimed.

For another moment, Adam thought that they were overhauling their enemy. Her foremast was down and, with its broken shrouds and rigging, was pointing toward them like a bridge. Hardly any part of her side seemed to have escaped cannon or small arms fire, and even without a glass the carnage on deck was terrible to see. Adam unclenched his fists. Even the scuppers were trailing patterns of blood. As if the schooner herself was bleeding to death.

And the angle of the remaining masts had changed.

Julyan exclaimed, “She's hard aground!” and then, looking over at Adam, “As soon as we can, sir.” He fell silent as the bosun crossed the quarterdeck, picking his way past the dead and the injured.

Drummond cleared his throat. He had been shouting and running from one emergency to another for what seemed hours, and there was a gash in his sleeve, a wound he could not remember receiving; another inch and he would have been dead.

He had Adam's attention now.

“They've run up a white flag, sir.”

“I'll need a boarding party. Then we will anchor.” And he saw Julyan nod, satisfied.

Jago was nearby, and Adam felt his lips crack when he tried to smile at him. This was no victory to be proud of. But few were.

Jago said only, “You'll be needin' the gig, Cap'n.”

“The governor must be informed.”

Jago peered around for some of his crew, if they were still alive.

Adam stood a moment, his hand resting on a jagged splinter. The anger returned and swept through him, and he welcomed the strength it gave him. “But first, I will go around
our ship.”

Vincent had come aft, eyes red-rimmed from smoke and strain, as two seamen were dragging the dead helmsman away from the wheel. “What if they renege on the truce, sir?”

Adam walked past him, touching his arm briefly as he did so. He could see Huxley's body, which had been moved to clear the gangway for the passage of messages. He knew Vincent was blaming himself, and that was why his question was doubly important.

He said quietly, “Then, every gun.
No quarter
.”

Midshipman David Napier sat in the cutter's sternsheets and tried not to listen to the regular creak of oars as they pulled away from the land. He could not recall when he had last been able to sleep, but he knew if he was offered the finest bed in the world right now, it would still be denied him.

The journey from shore to ship was much less in distance than when they had set off to meet the governor, but already it seemed very long. Tyacke was sitting beside him, and the same stroke oarsman faced him, eyes barely moving as he lay back on his loom for every stroke.

Napier could see
Onward
‘s masts and loosely furled sails directly ahead, and the flag, so vivid in the pale light. It was dawn. He glanced down at his hands, clenched so tightly that the knuckles were white beneath the tanned skin. This would pass. It had to.

It was seeing the flag that brought it all back to him. As if it had just happened. Stark and brutal.

He had hoisted the ensign on the flagmast where he had seen the dead mutineer when
Onward
had made her appearance and engaged a small vessel which had proved to be the decoy. He had climbed on to the roof of a low outbuilding to watch the frigate pass the main anchorage.

Something had made him turn, some sound or sense of warning. Even as he had turned there had been two shots, so close they could have been a single blast. He had lost his balance and fallen, but not before he had seen the sprawled body of the governor's servant, a black youth around his own age. He had tried to warn him but had been unable to shout, because he had no tongue. He had been killed by the ball intended for Napier. The second shot had cut down the attacker, whose scarlet scarf spoke for itself.

The governor had been there almost immediately. On his knees, holding the boy's hands in his, calling him “Trusty.”

Napier shifted on the hard thwart and kept his eyes on the frigate. He could see some of the damage now, the scars and the gaps in the rigging. Men were already working aloft, fresh canvas overlapping, flapping in the offshore breeze. He had heard the hammering and other sounds during the night, his mind flooding with images of the faces he knew.

He had twisted his leg when he fell. It had saved his life. But he was already struggling to overcome it, as he had before. Like the moment when he had been about to climb into the cutter and the ginger-haired Corporal Price, still hatless, had tried to assist him.

He had done enough, but when Adam had tried to make Price climb aboard ahead of Napier he had declined.

“You know what they say about us Royals, sir? The first to land …”

Napier had finished it for him. “And the last to leave!” Somehow, they had both managed to laugh.

Tyacke was shading his eyes and looking toward the ship, although there was no fierce sunlight at this hour. He said, “When we get back to Freetown, I'll soon have her looking as smart as paint again.”

Napier watched the masts rising above them, faces on the gangway, and peering down from the yards as the cutter came alongside. He recognised most of them, even at a distance. But he did not see the one he expected, and somehow, he must have known.

Tyacke was patting his pockets. “I'll be sending
Onward
home after this. Not before time!”

David Napier straightened his hat and watched the oars being tossed, side-boys already waiting to receive the cutter alongside. The captain was at the entry port, his hand raised.

Napier stood up carefully, and waited for the flag captain to leave the boat ahead of him.

Going home
. Now it had a new and precious meaning.

I
T WAS AROUND NOON
when H.M. Schooner
Druid
entered Falmouth and finally moored alongside, after her short passage from Plymouth.

A few hours, but to Adam Bolitho it had seemed endless. He had hoped to hire a carriage, if only to lessen the formality after leaving
Onward
in the dockyard, as he had on his previous return. But he had been warned that the roads might be treacherous, even impassable, as there was snow in the West Country.
Snow
. After the long haul from Freetown, it seemed unbelievable.

The schooner's master had told him more than once that his command, one of the fleet's hard-worked couriers, covered more sea-miles per year than any proud ship of the line. Especially, he added,
these days
.

Adam dismissed it, stepping ashore. The frozen ground seemed to move beneath his feet, and every impression seemed blurred and dreamlike. At least in a vehicle he could have slept. Or would he?

So many memories.

Freetown. But before that, the sea burials. Voices, faces he had come to know. And they him. “The bill,” as Vincent termed it. Twelve killed, most by musket fire. Two more had died later, despite Murray's unfailing attention. Most of the other casualties should recover. But they would not soon forget that brief ferocity, or their escape from their intended fate.

Small, stark images had stayed with him, even aboard the little

Druid
with her talkative master and her own sounds and busy routine. In Freetown when some extra hands had come aboard to help remove or replace damaged rigging and had been gazing around at the damage, he had heard Monteith exclaim, “We showed them!”

Midshipman Hotham had turned his back, in contempt or disgust. At any other time Monteith would have reacted very differently, but he had hurried below without a word.

And
Onward
was once again in the hands of the dockyard. There had been no serious damage to her hull, and most of the standing and running rigging had been put to rights at Freetown.

He stood breathing the cold air, his mind lingering on the one moment, above all, that he would never forget. Neither would Captain James Tyacke. The flag lieutenant had hardly been able to contain his excitement and delight when he had announced to both of them that Rear-Admiral Langley had sailed for England, having been suddenly recalled. Adam remembered Ballantyne's terse summing-up at their first meeting.
Promotion or oblivion
.

Tyacke's expression had become one of utter disbelief when the lieutenant had pointed to the rear-admiral's flag. It was now Tyacke's own.

Adam halted and looked back along the jetty. The schooner's crew were already taking on stores, and perhaps new passengers. Napier was looking eagerly toward the town, but caught his eye and gave him a smile. Recovering. Still recalling the last moments, the handshakes, embarrassed grins, or blunt relief at being alive.

Each time, it was always different. For the survivors.

He turned back and saw her standing near the carriage he had known would be here. She was wearing a full-length cloak, her head covered by a fleecy hood, which fell back as she ran toward him.

Young Matthew turned away to calm the horses, and was able to yawn hugely without showing it. They had been waiting here since dawn, or so it felt, and his feet were frozen, but this made it all worthwhile.

Adam held her tightly, but felt her flinch as something shrieked from the harbour. Had he turned, he would have seen clouds of vapour rising like smoke from one of the new and experimental paddle-steamers.