The Only Victor (43 page)

Cazalet bellowed,
“Loose tops'ls!”
A few paces aft. “Stand by, the Afterguard!”

Black Prince
seemed to tilt her lower gunports close to the black water as the cry came drifting aft.

“
Anchor's aweigh,
sir!”

Bolitho gripped the tarred nettings and tried to massage his eye.

Jenour asked in a whisper, “May I help, Sir Richard?”

He cringed as Bolitho swung on him, and waited for the stinging retort.

But Bolitho said only, “I am losing my sight, Stephen. Can you keep a secret so precious to me?”

Overcome, Jenour could barely answer, but nodded vigorously, and did not even notice a boat pulling frantically from under the black figurehead while the ship continued to swing round.

Bolitho said,
“They must not know.”
He gripped his arm until Jenour winced with the pain. “You are a dear friend, Stephen. Now there are other friends out there who need us.”

Keen strode towards them. “She answers well, sir!” He glanced from one to the other, and knew what had happened. “Shall I send for the surgeon?”

Bolitho shook his head. Maybe it would pass; perhaps when daylight found them, it would be clear again.

“No, Val . . . too many know already. Follow
Larne
's stern-light and put your best leadsmen in the chains.”

Allday materialised from the darkness, holding out a cup. “Here, Sir Richard.”

Bolitho swallowed it and felt the black coffee, with a mixture of rum and something else, steady his insides so that he could think again.

“That was more than welcome, old friend.” He handed him the cup and thought of Inskip. “I am over it now.”

But when he looked at the burning city again, the mist was still there.

19
T
RUE COLOURS

W
ITH HER
great yards braced so hard round that to a landsman they might appear to lie fore-and-aft,
Black Prince
steered as close-hauled to the wind as was possible. For most of the previous night they had clawed their way up the narrow Sound from Copenhagen, pursued all the while by the continuous thunder of the bombardment.

Somehow
Nicator
had held station on the flagship, but for
Black Prince,
a powerful three-decker, it had been a trial of nerves as well as skill. Urgent voices had passed each sounding aft from the leadsmen in the forechains, and at one time Bolitho had sensed that only a few feet lay between the ship's great keel and disaster.

Dawn had found them heading out into the Kattegat, still comparatively shallow, but after the Sound it felt like the Western Ocean. Later, when Bolitho watched the pink glow on the choppy water, he knew that darkness would be upon them early that night. A glance at the masthead pendant assured him that the wind was holding steady, north-east. It would help them tomorrow, but had he waited until daylight as Gambier had suggested, the wind's sudden veer would have bottled them up in harbour. He thought of Herrick for the hundredth time.
Lady Luck.

Keen crossed the deck and touched his hat, his handsome features raw from a full day on deck in chill wind.

“Any further orders before nightfall, sir?”

They looked at one another, like friends across a common garden wall at the close of an ordinary day.

“It will be tomorrow, Val. Or not at all. You know what these supply convoys are like, the speed of the slowest vessel in it, necessary for mutual protection. Rear-Admiral Herrick's convoy apparently numbers some twenty ships, so if there
was
a battle, some of the fastest must surely have reached the Skagerrak at least by now?” He forced a smile. “I realise you think me morbid, even mad. Herrick will probably doff his hat to us at first light tomorrow, and sail past full of noble contentment!”

Keen watched him, the man he had come to know so well.

“May I ask something, sir?” He glanced round as the calls twittered in the endless daily life of a man-of-war:
Last dogwatchmen to supper!

“Ask away.” He saw the gulls pausing to rest on the pink water like flower petals and thought of the dead Captain Poland, who had seen nothing but the path to duty.

“If you were in Rear-Admiral Herrick's position, what would
you
do, if an enemy second—or even first-rate as it now appears— and other vessels hove in sight?”

Bolitho looked away. “I would scatter the convoy.” He looked at him again, his eyes dark in the strange glare. “Then I would engage the enemy. A waste of time . . . who knows? But some might survive.”

Keen hesitated. “But you do not think
he
would order them to break formation, sir?”

Bolitho took his arm and guided him a few paces past the big double-wheel, where Julyan the tall sailing-master was speaking to his mates in his deep rumbling tones.
Worth his weight in gold,
Keen had claimed several times; he had certainly proved his skin with wind, tide and rudder when they had struggled up the Sound.

“I am concerned, Val. If the enemy is searching for his ships, he will see it as something . . .” He groped for the word but saw only Herrick's stubborn eyes.

“A personal thing, sir?”

“Aye, that's about the strength of it.”

A sickly smell of pork came from the galley funnel and Bolitho said, “After both watches have eaten, have the ship cleared for action. But keep the galley in use until the last. More warm bellies than steel have won battles in the past, Val!”

Keen gazed along the broad length of his command, seeing it probably already enmeshed in the chaos and destruction of close-action.

“I agree.” He added suddenly, “Your Mr Tyacke could be right about the largest Frenchman, but then precious few know about
Black Prince
as yet—she is far too new.”

The officer-of-the-watch glanced at Keen and cleared his throat impressively.

“A chill, Mr Sedgemore?” Keen grinned with easy humour. “You wish to have the watch relieved?”

They both turned, startled, as Bolitho interrupted sharply,
“What did you say?”

He stared at Keen's bewilderment. “About
Black Prince
's unknown strength?”

“Well, I simply thought—”

“And I did
not.
” Bolitho glanced up at the ensign curling above his head. “You have a good sailmaker?”

The watch was changing, but they stood quite alone in the midst of its quiet disorder.

“Aye, sir.”

“Then please ask him to lay aft.” He watched the soft light of a northern dusk. “This needs to be quick. I must pass word to Captain Huxley before we adopt night-stations!”

Keen sent a midshipman off at the double. Bolitho would explain. Perhaps when he had decided for himself what he intended.

Black Prince
's sailmaker's name was Fudge. He was so like the many of his profession that he might have been cut from the same bolt of canvas. Bushy grey hair and sprouting eyebrows, and the familiar leather jerkin which was hung about with tools, thread, needles and, of course, a palm or two.

“This is he, sir.”

They all looked at him in silence. Keen, the officer-of-the-watch, midshipmen and master's mates.

Fudge blinked his watery eyes.

“Aye, sir?”

Bolitho asked, “Can you make me a Danish ensign, Fudge— full-scale, not some trifling boat-pendant?”

The man nodded slowly, visualising his stocks, neatly stored in one of the holds.

He answered, “Foreign, then, Sir Richard?”

Lieutenant Sedgemore opened his mouth to add a sharp comment of his own, but Keen's glance left it unspoken.

Bolitho said, “Foreign. White cross on red ground, with two tails like a commodore's broad-pendant.”

Fudge said, “I was in
Elephant
with Nelson at Copenhagen, Sir Richard.” The bent back and stiffness of his trade seemed to fall away as he glanced around at the silent watchkeepers. “I
knows
what a Danish flag look like, sir!”

Bolitho smiled. “So be it. When can you provide it for me?”

Fudge showed his uneven teeth, surprised at being asked.

“No more'n a couple o' days, Sir Richard!”

“This is very important, Fudge. Can I have it by dawn?”

Fudge studied him feature by feature, as if to find an answer to something.

“I'll begin now, Sir Richard.” He looked around at the seamen and Royal Marines, as if they were of some inferior race. “Leave it to me!”

As Fudge bustled away Keen asked quietly, “Some deception, sir?”

“Aye, mebbee.” He rubbed his hands together as if they were cold. “A favour, Val.” He glanced at the shimmering reflection on the water, the first hint of sunset. He held his hand over his left eye and said, “I would like to walk through your ship with you, if I may?”

It was like sighting a signal from a far-off frigate. An end to speculation.
It was tomorrow.

Keen said, “Of course, sir.”

“But first, please signal
Larne
to close on us. I shall have a written instruction for your old ship, Val—there will be no time later on.
Larne
can then haul up to windward. If the French do come, they will surely recognise Tyacke's brig and may decide to stand away. Whatever that French ship is,
I want her.
”

“I see, sir.” He beckoned to Jenour. “A signal for you!”

It was a short note, which Bolitho wrote in his own hand while Yovell waited in the pink glow, ready to apply the seal before putting it into an oilskin bag for
Nicator
's captain.

Then he said to Keen, “It is fair that you should know a part of what I wrote. Should I fall, you will assume command; and if
Black Prince
is overwhelmed, Captain Huxley is to take
Nicator
out of the fight and return to Admiral Gambier.” He watched Keen gravely. “Did I forget anything?”

“I think not, sir.”

Later, as the last dogwatchmen were finishing their evening meal, Bolitho and Keen, accompanied by the ship's junior lieutenant and, of course, Allday, went slowly along each deck and down every companion ladder into the very bowels of the ship.

Many of the startled seamen at their mess tables started to rise at the unheralded tour, but each time Bolitho waved them down.

He paused to speak to some of them and was surprised at the way they crowded around him. To see what he was like? To assess their own chances of survival; who could tell?

Pressed men and volunteers, hands from other ships, dialects which told their own stories. Men from Devon and Hampshire, Kent and Yorkshire, “foreigners” too, as Fudge would describe any one from north of the border.

And of course a man from Falmouth, who said awkwardly before his grinning messmates, “O' course 'ee won't know me, Sir Richard—name o' Tregorran.”

“But I knew your father. The blacksmith near the church.” For a brief instant he laid his hand on the man's shoulder while his mind sped on wings back to Falmouth. The man Tregorran stared at the two lines of gold lace on Bolitho's sleeve as if he had been mesmerised.

“He was a good man.” The mood left him. “Let's hope we'll all be back home soon after this, lads!”

The overcrowded messdeck was stuffy now with the gunports sealed to contain the familiar smells of tar, bilge and sweat; a place where no tall man could stand upright, where their lives began and too often ended.

He climbed up the last of the companion ladders and some of the men stood to cheer, their voices following him, deck by deck, like other men he had known and commanded over the years; waiting perhaps for him to join them in that other world.

Allday saw his face and knew exactly what he was thinking. Roughknots, thieves and villains, alongside the innocent and the damned. England's last hope.
Only
hope—that was what he was thinking right now.

A midshipman's grubby breeches caught the lamplight on the ladder and there was a quick, whispered conversation, before the lieutenant who had accompanied the unorthodox tour said, “Mr Jenour's respects, sir!” He was looking at Keen but was very aware of his vice-admiral. “The signal-bag has been passed to
Nicator
.”

He licked his lips as Bolitho remarked, “All or nothing.” Then he said, “You are Lieutenant Whyham, are you not?” He saw the youthful officer nod uncertainly. “I thought as much, but did not wish to lose the use of memory!” He smiled, as if this were a casual meeting ashore. “One of my midshipmen in
Argonaute
four years ago, correct?”

The lieutenant was still staring after him as Bolitho and Keen climbed into the cooler air of the upper deck. After the sealed messes it tasted like wine.

Keen said, uncertainly, “Will you sup with me tonight, sir? Before they pull the ship apart and clear for action?”

Bolitho looked at him calmly, still moved by the warmth of those simple men who had nothing but his word to hold onto.

“I would relish that, Val.”

Keen removed his hat and pushed his fingers through his fair hair. Bolitho half-smiled. The midshipman again, or perhaps the lieutenant in the Great South Sea.

“What you said in your instructions to
Nicator
's captain. It makes one realise, but not accept, how narrow that margin is. Now when I think I have everything I ever wanted . . .” He did not go on. He did not need to. It was as if Allday had just repeated what he had said before.
“An' then you dies . . .”

Keen could have been speaking for both of them.

At the very first hint of life in the sky
Black Prince
seemed to come slowly into her own. Like men from forgotten sea-fights and long-lost wrecks, her seamen and marines emerged from the darkness of gundeck, orlop or hold, quitting that last pretence of privacy and peace which is the need of all men before a battle.

Bolitho stood on the quarterdeck's weather side and listened to the awakening thud of bare feet and the clink of weapons around and below him. Keen had done his work well: not a pipe given, no beat of drum to inflame the heart and mind of some poor soul who might imagine it was his last memory on earth.

It was as if the great ship herself was coming alive, her company of eight hundred sailors and sea-soldiers merely incidental.