Alexander Kent - Man of War

For both of us.

He said, "Perhaps not a frigate, sir. But a ship."

A goblet, chilled in readiness, was put into his hand.

Her name meant nothing to him. Probably an old two-decker, perhaps like the one where it had all begun for him. But a ship.

He touched the sword at his thigh.

He was not alone.

The coach jerked violently as the brake was applied and came to a swaying halt, the horses stamping on cobbles, very aware that their journey to Portsmouth was ended. Adam Bolitho eased forward on the seat, every muscle and bone offering a protest. He had only himself to blame; he had insisted on leaving his temporary lodgings the previous evening, at an hour when most people would have been thinking of a late supper or bed.

But the coachmen employed by the Admiralty were accustomed to it. Driving at night, the wheels dipping and grinding in deep ruts, or through rain-flooded stretches of the long Portsmouth Road, two stops to change horses, another to wait for a farm wagon to be moved after it had cast a wheel. They had paused at a small inn in a place called Liphook, to drink tea by candlelight before starting on the final leg of the journey.

He lowered the window and shivered as the bitter air fanned across his face. First light, or soon would be, and he felt like death.

He heard his companion twist round beside him and say cheerfully, "They're ready for us, it seems, sir! "

Lieutenant Francis Troubridge showed no trace of fatigue. A youthful, alert man, ever ready to answer Adam's many questions, he had displayed no resentment or surprise at the call for a coach ride through the night. As Vice-Admiral Bethune's flag lieutenant, the most recent of several to all accounts, it was something he probably took for granted.

Adam looked toward the tall gates, which were wide open.

Two Royal Marine orderlies were nearby with a porter's trolley, and an officer in a boat cloak was observing the coach without impatience.

Even that was hard to accept. On the roof of the Admiralty above Bethune's handsome room was the first link in a chain of telegraph stations which could pass a signal from London to the tower over the church of St. Thomas almost before a courier could find, saddle and mount a horse. News, good or bad, had always moved with the speed of the fastest rider. Not any more, and provided visibility was good the eight or so telegraph stations could send word well ahead of any traveller.

Adam climbed down on to hard ground, and felt it rise to meet him. Like a sailor too long in an open boat in a lively sea, he thought. He shivered again and tugged his own heavy cloak around him. He was tired, and throbbing from too much travel: Falmouth, Plymouth, London, and now Portsmouth.

He should have slept throughout the journey instead of trying to study his orders, or glean fragments of intelligence from his lively companion.

He had the feeling that the young lieutenant was watching him now, discovering something, for reasons of his own. He had certainly gone to a lot of trouble to find out about the officer put into his care. At one point, when they had stopped to change horses, Troubridge had remarked, "I was forgetting, sir. You were flag lieutenant yourself some years ago." Not a question; and Adam thought that he could have given the exact year when he had been his uncle's aide.

He saw that the other officer had thrown back his cloak to display the epaulettes of a post captain, like his own.

"Welcome, Bolitho! " His handshake was firm and hard. The dockyard captain, who probably knew more about ships and the demands of the fleet than any one.

They fell into step, while the marines began unloading chests and baggage from the carriage; they did not speak, nor so much as look at the new arrivals.

The dockyard captain was saying, "Athena is anchored, of course, but she's awaiting more ballast and stores. My clerk has left a full list for your attention." He shot him a quick glance. "Have you met up with Athena before?" A casual comment, but it was typical. In the 'family' of the navy it was common enough for a sailor to cross paths with the same ship throughout the years of his service at sea.

"No." He pictured the spidery writing, which he had read by the light of a small lantern while the coach had juddered and rolled through the darkness.

Built at Chatham in 1803, just two years before Trafalgar; not an old ship by naval standards. He had found that he was able to smile. Maybe Troubridge had seen that too. 1803, the year he had been given his first command, the little fourteen-gun brig Firefly. He had been just twenty-three years old.

Laid down and completed as a third-rate, a seventy-four gun ship of the line, Athena's role had changed several times, as had her station. She had served in the second American war and in the Mediterranean, in the Irish Sea, and then back to the Channel Fleet.

Now, out of nowhere, she was to be Sir Graham Bethune's flagship. Her artillery had been reduced from seventy-four to sixty-four, to allow more accommodation. No other reason was given.

Even Bethune had been vague about it. "We shall be working with our "allies", Adam. My flagship is not to be seen as a threat, more as an example." It had seemed to amuse him, although Adam suspected Bethune was almost as much in the dark as himself.

He said, "She has a full ship's company?"

The other captain smiled. "All but a few. But these days it's easier to find spare hands, with no war at the gates! "

Adam quickened his pace. Here there was activity, even at this ungodly hour. Heavy, horse-drawn wagons, filled with cordage and crates of every size. Dockyard workers being mustered for a new day's repairs, perhaps even building. Unlike the empty gun ports at Plymouth. Unlike Unrivalled.

The other captain said suddenly, "You'll be more used to a fifth-rate, Bolitho. Athena's a good ship, in structure and condition. The best Kentish oak maybe the last of it, from what I hear! "

They halted at the top of some stone stairs, and as if to a signal a boat began to pull away from a cluster of moored barges, the oars rising and falling with mist clinging to the blades like translucent weed.

Adam saw his own breath drifting away, hating the cold in his bones. Too long on the slave coast, or clawing up and down off the Algerian shoreline… It was neither. A new ship, and one already destined for some ill-defined task. The West Indies, with a vice-admiral's flag at the fore: probably Bethune's last appointment before he quit the navy to serve in some new capacity where there was no more war, no more danger. When they had stopped at Liphook to take tea Troubridge had mentioned his own father, an admiral at the end of his service, but now he had been given an important role in the growing ranks of the Honourable East India Company, where, no doubt, he would want his son to join him after this latest stepping-stone which might eventually lead to oblivion.

Easier to find spare hands. The dockyard captain's words seemed to hang in the air like his breath. Like many of Unrivalled'?" people, those who had cursed the unyielding discipline, or simply the petty-mindedness of those who should have known better in the close confines of a King's ship. Those same men might now be seeking a ship, any vessel which would give them back the only life they fully understood.

"There have been one or two accidents, of course, quite common when refitting, and when every one wants it done in half the time." He shrugged heavily. "Men lost overboard, two falling from aloft, another rigger too drunk to save himself in the dark. It happens."

Adam looked at him. "Her captain was relieved of his command. He faces a courtmartial, I'm told."

"Yes." They watched the boat come alongside, two young seamen leaping ashore to fend off the stairs.