Cross of St George Page 14

  Keeping in line abreast, Valkyrie’s boats pulled steadily toward the other frigate. Tension remained high. If Reaper’s captors decided to resist, they might still be able to make sail and escape, or attempt it.

  Adam looked over at the other boats. His captain of marines, Loftus, was very conspicuous in his scarlet tunic, an easy target for any marksman, nor would his own epaulettes have gone unnoticed. He found himself smiling slightly. Gulliver, the sixth lieutenant, glanced quickly at him, perhaps taking comfort in what he saw.

  He said, “This will even the score, sir!”

  He spoke like a veteran. He was about twenty years old.

  “Reaper, ahoy! We are coming aboard! Throw down your weapons!”

  Adam touched the pistol beneath his coat. This was the moment. Some hothead, a man with nothing to lose, might use it as a last chance. Boat by boat they went alongside, and he was conscious of a strange sense of loneliness with Valkyrie hidden by this pitching hull. No chances. But would Keen order his flagship to open fire with so many of his own men on board?

  It was uncanny. Like a dead ship. They scrambled up and over the gangway, weapons held ready, while from the opposite end of the vessel some of the marines were already swarming onto the forecastle. They had even swung round a swivel, and had trained it on the silent figures lining the gun deck.

  His men parted to let their captain through, seeing the ship through different eyes now that she had struck. The guns which had fired blindly into the open water moved restlessly, unloaded and abandoned, rammers and sponges lying where they had been dropped. Adam walked aft to the big double-wheel, where two of his men had taken control. The hostages, released and apparently unharmed, were grouped around the mizzen-mast, while along the gun deck the seamen seemed to have separated into two distinct groups, the mutineers and the American prize crew.

  There were two American lieutenants waiting for him.

  “Are there any more officers aboard?”

  The senior of the two shook his head. “The ship is yours Captain Bolitho.”

  Adam concealed his surprise. “Mr Gulliver, take your party and search the ship.” He added sharply as the lieutenant hurried away, “If anyone resists, kill him.”

  So they knew who he was. He said, “What were you hoping to do, Lieutenant?”

  The tall officer shrugged. “My name is Robert Neill, Captain. Reaper is a prize of war. They surrendered.”

  “And you are a prisoner of war. Your men, also.” He paused. “Captain Loftus, take charge of the others. You know what to do.” To Neill he said, “You offered British seamen a chance to mutiny. In fact, you and your captain incited it.”

  The man Neill sighed. “I have nothing to add.”

  He watched the two officers hand their swords to a marine. “You will be well treated.” He hesitated, hating the silence, the smell of fear. “As I was.”

  Then, with a nod to Loftus, he turned and walked toward the waiting hostages.

  One, a silver-haired man with an alert, youthful face, stepped forward, ignoring the raised bayonet of a marine.

  “My name is David St Clair.” He reached out his hand. “This is my daughter, Gilia. Your arrival was a miracle, sir. A miracle!”

  Adam glanced at the young woman. She was warmly dressed for travel, her eyes steady and defiant, as if this were the ordeal rather than its relief.

  He said, “I have little time, Mr St Clair. I am to transfer you to my ship, Valkyrie, before it becomes too dark.”

  St Clair stared at him. “I know that name!” He held his daughter’s arm. “Valentine Keen’s ship, you recall it!” But she was observing Valkyrie’s seamen and marines, as if sensing the friction between them and their prisoners.

  Adam said, “His flagship. I am his flag captain.”

  St Clair said smoothly, “Of course. He is promoted now.”

  Adam said, “How were you taken, sir?”

  “We were on passage in the schooner Crystal, out of Halifax, bound for the St Lawrence. Admiralty business.” He seemed to become aware of Adam’s impatience and continued, “These others are her crew. The woman is the master’s wife, who was aboard with him.”

  “I was told of your business here, sir. I thought it dangerous, at the time.” He glanced at the girl again. “I was proved right, it seems.”

  A boatswain’s mate was waiting, trying to catch his eye.

  “What is it, Laker?”

  The man seemed surprised that his new captain should know his name. “The two Yankee officers, sir …”

  “Send them over to the ship. Their own men, too. Lively now!”

  His eyes moved to the gangway where one of the guns was still abandoned on its tackles. There was a great stain on the planking, like black tar. It must be blood. Perhaps it marked the place where they had flogged their captain without mercy.

  He called, “And run up our colours!” It was a small enough gesture, amid so much shame.

  One of the American lieutenants paused with his escort. “Tell me one thing, Captain. Would you have fired, hostages or not?”

  Adam swung away. “Take them across.”

  St Clair’s daughter said quietly, “I wondered that myself, Captain.” She was shivering now, despite her warm clothing, the shock and realization of what had happened cutting away her reserve.

  St Clair put his arm around her, and said, “The guns were loaded and ready. At the last minute some of the men, her original people, I believe, fired them to show their intentions.”

  Adam said, “The American lieutenant, Neill, is probably asking himself the same question that he put to me.” He looked the girl directly in the eyes. “In war, there are few easy choices.”

  “Boat’s ready, sir!”

  “Have you any baggage to be taken across?”

  St Clair guided his daughter to the side, where a boatswain’s chair had been rigged for her.

  “None. There was no time. Afterwards, they destroyed the Crystal. There was an explosion of some kind.”

  Adam looked around the deserted deck, at his own men, who were waiting to get Reaper under way again. They would probably have preferred to send her to the bottom. And so would I.

  He walked to the side, and ensured that the girl was securely seated.

  “You will be more comfortable in the flagship, ma’am. We shall be returning to Halifax.”

  Some of Reaper’s original company, urged ungently by Loftus’s marines, were already being taken below, to be secured for the remainder of the passage.

  She murmured, “What will become of them?”

  Adam said curtly, “They will hang.”

  She studied him, as if searching his face for something. “Had they fired on your ship we would all be dead, is that not so?” When Adam remained silent, she persisted, “Surely that must be taken into consideration.”

  Adam turned suddenly. “That man! Come here!”

  The seaman, still wearing a crumpled, red-checkered shirt, came over immediately and knuckled his forehead. “Sir?”

  “I know you!”

  “Aye, Cap’n Bolitho. I was a maintopman in Anemone two years back. You put me ashore when I was took sick o’ fever.”

  Memory came, and with it the names of the past. “Ramsay, what in hell’s name happened, man?” He had forgotten the girl, who was listening intently, her father, the others, everything but this one, familiar face. There was no fear in it, but it was the face of a man already condemned, a man who had known the nearness of death in the past, and had accepted it.

  “It ain’t my place, Cap’n Bolitho. Not with you. That’s all over, done with.” He came to a decision, and very deliberately dragged his shirt over his head. Then he said, “No disrespect to you, miss. But for you, I think we would have fired.” Then he turned his back, allowing the fading sunlight to fall across his skin.

  Adam said, “Why?” He heard the girl give a strangled sob. It must seem far worse to her.

  The seaman named Ramsay had been so c
ruelly flogged that his body was barely human. Some of the torn flesh had not yet healed.

  He pulled his shirt on again. “Because he enjoyed it.”

  “I am sorry, Ramsay.” He touched his arm impulsively, knowing that Lieutenant Gulliver was watching him with disbelief. “I will do what I can for you.”

  When he looked again, the man was gone. There was no hope, and he would know it. And yet those few words had meant so much, to both of them.

  Gulliver said uneasily, “Ready, sir.”

  But before the boatswain’s chair was swung out to be lowered into the waiting boat, Adam said to St Clair’s daughter, “Sometimes, there are no choices whatsoever.”

  “Lower away! Easy, lads!”

  Then he straightened his back and turned to face the others. He was the captain again.

  8 TOO MUCH TO LOSE

  RICHARD BOLITHO leaned away from the bright sunshine that lanced through Indomitable’s cabin windows to rest his head against the chair’s high back. It was deep and comfortable, a bergère, which Catherine had sent on board when this ship had first hoisted his flag. Yovell, his secretary, sat at the table, while Lieutenant Avery stood by the stern bench watching two of the ship’s boats pulling back from the brig Alfriston, which had met up with them at dawn.

  Tyacke had made it his business to send across some fresh fruit. Having commanded a small brig himself, he would have appreciated its value to her hard-worked company.

  There had been a burst of cheering when Alfriston had hoveto to pass across her despatches, which was quickly quelled by officers on watch who had been very aware of their admiral’s open skylight, and perhaps the importance of the news Alfriston might have brought to him.

  Tyacke had come aft, bringing the heavy canvas satchel himself.

  When Bolitho asked about the cheering, he had replied impassively, “Reaper’s been retaken, Sir Richard.”

  He glanced now at the heavy pile of despatches on the table. The entire report of the search for, and capture of, Reaper was there, written in Keen’s own hand rather than that of a secretary. Did he lack confidence in his own actions, or in those who supported him, he wondered. It remained a private document, and yet, despite the seals and the secrecy, Indomitable’s people had known its contents, or had guessed what had happened. Such intuition was uncanny, but not unusual.

  He listened to the creak of tackles and the twitter of a bosun’s call as the next net full of stores was hoisted outboard before being lowered into a boat for Alfriston. It was difficult to look at the vast blue expanse of ocean beyond the windows. His eye was painful, and he had wanted to rub it, even though he had been warned against disturbing it. He must accept that it was getting worse.

  He tried to concentrate on Keen’s careful appraisal of Reaper’s discovery and capture. He had missed out nothing, even his own despair when he had seen the hostages paraded on her deck, a human barricade against Valkyrie’s guns. He had generously praised Adam’s part in it, and his handling of the captured sailors, American and mutineers alike.

  But his mind rebelled against the intrusion of duty. In the bag sent over with Keen’s despatch had been some letters, one from Catherine, the first since they had parted in Plymouth some three months ago. He had held it to his face, had seen Yovell’s discreet glance, had caught the faint reminder of her perfume.

  Avery said, “The last boat’s casting off, Sir Richard.” He sounded tense, on edge. Perhaps he, too, had been hoping for a letter, although Bolitho had never known him to receive one. Like Tyacke, his only world seemed to be here.

  Bolitho turned once more to Keen’s lengthy report, rereading the information concerning David St Clair and his daughter, who had been prisoners aboard Reaper. Taken from a schooner, but surely no accidental encounter? St Clair was under Admiralty contract, and Keen had mentioned that he had been intending to visit the naval dockyard at Kingston and also a shipbuilding site at York, where a 30-gun man-of-war was close to completion. The final work on the vessel had apparently been delayed by a dispute with the Provincial Marine, under whose control she would eventually be. St Clair, well used to dealing with bureaucracy, had been hoping to speed things to a satisfactory conclusion. Captains in the fleet might find it difficult to regard such a relatively small vessel as a matter of great importance, but as Keen had learned from St Clair, when in commission the new vessel would be the biggest and most powerful on the lakes. No American craft would be able to stand against her: the lakes would be held under the White Ensign. But should the Americans attack and seize her, completed or not, the effect would be disastrous. It would mean the end of Upper Canada as a British province. Just one ship; and the Americans would have known of her existence from the moment her keel had been laid. In the light of this, St Clair’s capture appeared even less of a casual misfortune. His mission had also been known: he had had to be removed. Bolitho thought of the savage gunfire, the pathetic wreckage of the Royal Herald. Or killed.

  He said to Yovell, “Have our bag sent over to Alfriston. She’ll be impatient to get under way again.” He thought of the brig’s gaunt commander, and wondered what his feelings had been when he had heard of Reaper’s capture, and that her only defiance had been fired deliberately into open water.

  Ozzard peered through the other door. “Captain’s coming, sir.”

  Tyacke entered and glanced at the littered papers on Bolitho’s table. Bolitho thought he was probably like Alfriston’s commander, eager to move.

  Without effort he could picture his ships on this great, empty ocean: two hundred miles south-west of the Bermudas, the other frigates Virtue and Attacker mere slivers of light on opposite horizons. Perhaps if they had not waited, the Americans would have attacked the assembled convoy, their powerful frigates destroying it or beating it into submission, no matter what the escorting men-of-war might have attempted.

  A mistake, a waste of time? Or had the Americans outguessed them yet again? The enemy’s intelligence sources were without parallel. To know about St Clair and to see his involvement as a direct threat to some greater plan matched the impudent way they had seized Reaper and turned the advantage into a shame, news of which would ring throughout the fleet in spite of, or even because of, the punishments which would be meted out to the men who had mutinied against their captain, and against the Crown.

  The convoy was well away, and would be standing out into the Atlantic. Their speed would be that of the slowest merchantman, a misery for the escorting frigates and brigs. But safe, in a few days’ time.

  Before they had left Bermuda, Avery had gone ashore to visit Reaper’s first lieutenant at a military hospital in Hamilton. Bolitho himself would have liked to have spoken to the Reaper’s only surviving officer, who had been with his captain until the incident’s macabre and brutal conclusion, but Reaper had been one of his own squadron. He could not become personally involved with men whose warrants he might be called upon to sign.

  Reaper’s captain had been a tyrant and a sadist, terms which Bolitho would never use without great consideration. He had been moved from another command to make Reaper into an efficient and reliable fighting ship once more, and to restore her reputation. But early in his tenure another side of his nature had revealed itself. Perhaps he had, in fact, been moved from that other command because of his own brutality. Any captain sailing alone had to keep the balance between discipline and tyranny firmly in his mind. Only the afterguard, with its thin ranks of Royal Marines, stood between him and open rebellion. And even if provoked, it could never be condoned.

  Tyacke said, “Orders, Sir Richard?”

  Bolitho turned away from the glare and saw that Yovell and Avery had left the cabin. It seemed a mutual awareness of his desire to confer privately with his flag captain: a loyalty which never failed to move him.

  “I want your views, James. Return to Halifax and discover what is happening? Or remain here, and so weaken our squadron?”

  Tyacke rubbed the scarred side of his face. He had seen
the letter handed to Bolitho and been surprised by his own envy. If only … He thought of the wine which Catherine Somervell had sent him, like the deep green leather chair in which Bolitho was sitting, her gifts, and her abiding presence in this cabin. With a woman like that …

  Bolitho asked, “What is it, James? You know me well enough to speak out.”

  Tyacke dismissed the thoughts, glad that they could not be known.

  “I believe the Yankees—” he smiled awkwardly, recalling Dawes, “the Americans will need to move very soon. Maybe they’ve already made a beginning. Rear-Admiral Keen’s information about the shipbuilder, this man St Clair, points to it. Once we have more ships, as Their Lordships say we will when Bonaparte is finally beaten, they’ll face a blockade of their entire coastline. Trade, supplies, ships, unable to move.” He paused, and seemed to come to a decision. “I’ve spoken to Isaac York, and he insists that this weather will hold.” Again he offered a small, attractive smile, which even his disfigurement could not diminish. “And my new purser assures me that we are well supplied for another month. The pips might squeak a bit, but we can manage.”

  “Remain on this patrol? Is that what you are telling me?”

  “Look, sir, if you were some high an’ mighty Yankee with good ships, albeit Frogs, at your disposal, what would you do?”

  Bolitho nodded, considering it. He could even see the unknown ships in his mind, as clearly as the hollow-eyed Commander Borradaile had seen them through his telescope. Big, well-armed, free of all authority but their own.

  “I’d take advantage of this south-westerly and go for the convoy, even at this stage. A long way, and a risk if you are facing the unknown. But I don’t think it is unknown to our man.”

  There were muffled cheers on deck, and he left the chair to walk to the stern windows. “There goes Alfriston, James.”

  Tyacke watched him, with affection and concern. Every time he thought he knew this man he found there was something more to learn. He noticed that Bolitho was shading his left eye, and saw the sadness and introspection in the profile against the light. Thinking of his letter in that same little brig, and the endless miles and transfers from ship to ship before Catherine Somervell would open and read it. Perhaps thinking, too, of his own independence as a very young commander, when each day was a challenge, but not a burden. A proud man, and a sensitive one, a man Tyacke had seen holding the hand of a dying enemy in Indomitable ’s last and greatest battle. Who had tried to comfort his coxswain when Allday’s son had been killed in that same fight. He cared, and those who knew him loved him for it. The others were content with the legend. And yet his would be the responsibility for sending Reaper’s seamen to choke from a yardarm. Tyacke had only known Reaper’s captain by reputation. It had been enough.