Alexander Kent - Command a King`s Ship

He sighed and picked up a small bell from the table.

'You go and arrange to move to the address I will give you. I have much to do, so you may as well enjoy yourself while you can.'

He shook the bell and a servant entered with Bolitho's cocked hat and sword. Winslade watched as the man buckled the sword deftly around his waist.

'Same old blade, eh?' He touched it with his fingers. It was very smooth and worn, and a good deal lighter than more modern swords.

Bolitho smiled. 'Aye, sir. My father gave it to me after…' 'I know. Forget about your brother, Bolitho.' He touched the hilt again. 'Your family have brought too much honour for many generations to be brought down by one man.'

He thrust out his hand. 'Take care. I daresay there are quite a few tongues wagging about your visit here today.'

Bolitho followed the servant into the corridor, his mind moving restlessly from one aspect of his visit to another. Madras, another continent, and that sounded like a mere beginning to whatever it was he was supposed to do.

Every mile sailed would have its separate challenge. He smiled quietly. And reward. He paused in the doorway and. stared at the bustling people and carriages. Open sea instead of noise and dirt. A ship, a living, vital being instead of dull, pretentious buildings.

A hand touched his arm, and he turned to see a young man in a shabby blue coat studying him anxiously.

'What is it?'

The man said quickly, 'I'm Chatterton, Captain. I was once second lieutenant in the Warrior, seventy-four.' He hesitated; watching Bolitho's grave face. 'I heard you were commissioning, sir, I was wondering…'

'I'm sorry, Mr. Chatterton. I have a full wardroom.'

'Yes, sir, I had guessed as much.' He swallowed. 'I could sign as master's mate perhaps?'

Bolitho shook his head. 'It is only seamen I lack, I'm afraid.'

He saw the disappointment clouding the man's face. The old Warrior had been in the thick of it. She was rarely absent from any battle, and men had spoken her name with pride. Now her second lieutenant was waiting like a beggar.

He said quietly, 'If I can help.' He thrust his hand into his pocket. 'Tide you over awhile.'

'Thank you, no, sir.' He forced a grin. 'Not yet anyway.' He pulled up his coat collar. As he walked away he called, 'Good luck, Captain!'

Bolitho watched him until he was out of sight. It might have been Herrick, he thought. Any of us.

His Majesty's frigate Undine tugged resentfully at her cable as a stiffening south-easterly wind ripped the Solent into a mass of vicious whitecaps.

Lieutenant Thomas Herrick turned up the collar of his heavy watchcoat and took another stroll across the quarterdeck, his eyess slitted against a mixture of rain and spray which made the taut rigging shine in the poor light like black glass.

Despite the weather there was still plenty of activity on deck and alongside in the pitching store boats and water lighters. Here and there on the gangways and right forward in the eyes of the ship the red coats of watchful marines made a pleasant change from the mixtures of dull grey elsewhere. The marines were supposed to ensure that the traffic in provisions and lastmoment equipment was one way, and none was escaping through an open port as barter for cheap drink or other favours with friends ashore.

Herrick grinned and stamped his feet on the wet planking. They had done a lot of work in the month since he had joined the ship. Others might curse the weather, the uncertainties offered by a long voyage, the prospect of hardship from sea and wind, but not he. The past year had been far more of a burden for him, and he was glad, no thankful, to be back aboard a King's ship. He had entered the Navy when he was still a few weeks short of twelve years old, and these last long months following the signing of peace with France and the recognition of American independence had been his first experience of being away from the one life he understood and trusted.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Herrick had nothing but his own resources to sustain him. He came of a poor family, his father being a clerk in their home town of Rochester in Kent. When lie had gone there after paying off the Phalarope and saying his farewell to Bolitho, he had discovered things to be even worse than he had expected. His father's health had deteriorated, and he seemed to be coughing his life away, day in, day out. Herrick's only sister was a cripple and incapable of doing much but help her mother about the house, so his homecoming was seen in rather different ways from his own sense of rejection. A friend of his father's employer had gained him an appointment as mate in a small brig which earned a living carrying general cargo up and down the east coast and occasionally across the channel to Holland. The owner was a miserly man who kept the brig so shorthanded that there were barely enough men to work ship, let along handle cargo, load lighters and keep the vessel in good repair.

When he had received Bolitho's letter, accompanied by his commission from the Admiralty charging him to report on board Undine, he had been almost too stunned to realise his good fortune. He had not seen Bolitho since that one last visit to his home in Falmouth, and perhaps deep inside he had believed that their friendship, which had strengthened in storm and under bloody broadsides, would be no match for peace.

Their worlds were, after all, too far apart. Bolitho's great stone house had seemed like a palace to Herrick. His background, his ancestry of seafaring officers, put him in a different sphere entirely. Herrick was the first in his family to go to sea, and that was the least of their differences.

But Bolitho had not changed. When they had met on this same quarterdeck a month ago he had known it with that first glance. It was still there, The quiet sadness, which could give way to something like boyish excitement in the twinkling of an eye.

Above all, Bolitho too was pleased to be back, keen to test himself and his new ship whenever a chance offered itself.

A midshipman scuttled over the deck and touched his hat.

'Cutter's returning, sir.'

He was small, pinched with cold. He had been aboard just three weeks.

'Thank you, Mr. Penn. That'll be some new hands, I hope.' He eyed the boy unsympathetically. 'Now smarten yourself, the captain may be returning today.'

He continued his pacing.

Bolitho had been in London for five days. It would be good to hear his news, to get the order to sail from this bitter Solent.

He watched the cutter lifting and plunging across the whitecaps, the oars moving sluggishly despite the efforts of the boat's coxswain. He saw the cocked hat of John Soames, the third lieutenant, in the sternsheets, and wondered if he had had any luck with recruits.

In the Phalarope Herrick had begun his commission as third lieutenant, rising to Bolitho's second-in-command as those above him died in combat. He wondered briefly if Soames was already thinking of his own prospects in the months ahead. He was a giant of a man and in his thirtieth year, three years older than Herrick, He had got his commission as lieutenant very late in life, and by a roundabout route, mostly, as far as Herrick could gather, in the merchant service and later as master's mate in a King's ship. Tough, self-taught, he was hard to know. A suspicious man.

Quite different from Villiers Davy, the second lieutenant. As his name suggested, he was of good family, with the money and proud looks to back up his quicksilver wit. Herrick was not sure of him either, but told himself that any dislike he might harbour was because Davy reminded him of an arrogant midshipman they had carried in Phalarope.

Feet thumped on deck and he turned to see Triphook, the purser, crouching through the drizzle, a bulky ledger under his coat.