Alexander Kent - For My Country’s Freedom

Bethune asked, "Is that why you want Indomitable for your flagship?"

Bolitho looked at him and forgot all the others. "Yes. She was cut down from a third-rate to carry the very artillery I would need. She is and always has been a fast sailer."

Bethune smiled but his eyes were on the others.

"She was re-built and re-rated because of the operations at Mauritius, gentlemen. Unfortunately Sir Richard dished up the French before we could send Indomitable out there!"

There was a wave of cheering and stamping.

When he looked at Bethune again, Bolitho saw the triumph in his eyes. So long ago when they had boarded the enemy from his little Sparrow, he had seen that same expression. All or nothing.

The Controller held up one plump hand. "Are they your only reasons, Sir Richard?"

"Yes, my lord." He pictured the great fireplace at Falmouth,

the family crest worn away by time and many hands. Where his father had spoken of his hopes and his fears for his youngest son, when he had first gone to sea. "For my country’s freedom." He glanced at Avery and saw what might have been emotion. "And my freedom from then on."

Bethune smiled with relief. A near thing. He might have been unseated at the Admiralty when he had scarcely begun. And Bolitho? He would probably have refused any other appointment.

He said, "I will give you everything I can, Sir Richard."

Bolitho looked at him keenly, and afterwards Bethune thought he had been pierced through by those clear grey eyes.

"I have everything, Graham. And I want it to last."

Bethune stared after him. He called me by name. As he had sometimes done in Sparrow.

Avery went to look for his hat and almost ran into his uncle, who was speaking with a tall and very dignified soldier. He did not introduce his nephew, but remarked noncommittally "It went well, I thought?"

Avery watched him. Sillitoe was not interested in his opinion. Eventually Sillitoe touched his arm, nothing more, but it was a kinder gesture than he had ever been offered before.

"I have to tell you, George." The cold eyes searched his face. "Your sister died in Dorchester. It wasn’t unexpected, but still…" He sighed. "I shall deal with it. I have never felt that her husband is in the right calling." He walked away to where his tall companion was waiting impatiently by the steps.

Bolitho joined him. "Is something wrong?"

But all Avery said was, "It was that day. The last time I saw her." He seemed to shake himself and said, "I’ll be glad to get back to sea, sir." He was staring at the groups of people breaking up and heading for club or coffee-house, but all he saw was his sister Ethel in her drab clothing. Now she would never meet Lady Catherine.

He walked to the big doors and added, "It will be cleaner."

Lieutenant Paul Ozanne, the burly, red-faced Channel Islander, held open the cabin door and looked aft to where Tyacke was sitting at his table, exactly as he had left him. How many times had he opened this door, at sea or at anchor, to report the sighting of a suspected slaver, or perhaps an enemy sail? Tyacke always seemed to know anyway, even before the masthead lookout.

He noticed that Tyacke’s brass-bound sea-chest had gone, and despite what he had been told privately, it saddened him.

Tyacke had explained that when he left the ship Ozanne was to be promoted to commander and given Larne in his place. Ozanne could still not believe the swiftness of events, or what it would mean to him.

Tyacke had said, "You deserve it, I’d have no other. You ought to have been promoted long ago-I know no better seaman or navigator." His tone had hardened. "But there are those in authority, and my guess is that there always will be, who consider a man not fit for high rank if he has soiled his hands with honest work!"

The news had gone through the little brig like a flame. Ozanne had seen it on their faces. Surprise, but certainly relief too. Larne was too intimate, and her people had been together longer than most, for some new broom to come amongst them.

Tyacke looked up from the bare table, his face in shadow.

Ozanne said, "They’re waiting, sir."

Tyacke nodded heavily. "Your commission is here…"

"Will you wait, sir?" He already knew the answer.

"No. I wish you well, I daresay we shall meet again. It is the way of things." He became impatient. "Have them come in."

Larne’s officers filed into the cabin and found places to sit. On chairs and on the stern bench seat: when the door was wedged shut the cabin was packed tight. Larne was well blessed with both officers and master’s mates. She had taken many prizes, slavers

and smugglers alike, and had always carried extra experienced men to sail their captures to the nearest friendly harbour.

There was plenty of cognac, and Ozanne recalled the day when Sir Richard Bolitho had come aboard, and later his flag-lieutenant. He had rarely seen his commander the worse for drink. Now he knew why it had happened, or one of the reasons, anyway.

Tyacke said, "Help yourselves." They had no choice in such a crowded cabin. He watched them without expression. Flemyng and Robyns the lieutenants, Manley Pitcair the sailing-master and Andrew Livett the young surgeon, who accepted his miserly pay so that he could study tropical medicines and fevers. He had had plenty of experience on the slave coasts. The master’s mates, bronzed and reliable. But no midshipmen. That would all change like everything else when he joined Indomitable, Bolitho’s proposed flagship. She lay some two hundred yards distant but Tyacke, typically, had not gone to see her. He would begin after he had read himself in, and not before.

Everything would be different. Indomitable would carry a Royal Marine contingent like all men-of-war from sixth-rates upwards. Tyacke had not served alongside the Royals since the Majestic. He touched his scarred face and thought of Bolitho’s eye, the way he had seen him rub it when he had been thinking of something else. I should have guessed. He looked round the cabin, so small and low-beamed, but after his first and only other command, the schooner Miranda, it had seemed like a palace. He had first met Bolitho in Miranda, when he had accepted all the discomfort and shared quarters without complaint. When she had been destroyed by a French frigate he had given him Larne without hesitation. The bond, broken only by distance and the demands of duty, had strengthened from then on. He thought of Avery’s visit, his anger and despair. I should have guessed.

He cleared his throat and every face looked aft.

"Today I shall leave this command to Mr Ozanne. It is hard to describe my feelings." He twisted round in his chair and glanced through the thick stern windows. So many times. The thump of the rudder-post, the frothing sea rolling away from beneath the counter. So many times. God, I shall miss you, girl!

But he said, "I have requested that Robert Gallaway be promoted to acting-lieutenant until it can be confirmed." He saw the master’s mate staring round with surprise and pleasure while his friends thumped him on the back. He would leave Ozanne to select a replacement for Gallaway. It would probably be his first duty. A pleasant way to begin a commission. The others were not even troubled by meeting his gaze. That, too, would be different in another ship. What had he expected? That he would be permitted to keep sailing the deep-water trade routes like a phantom? Now he would be out in the open for all to see.

He took a swallow from his goblet. He would stay at an inn Pitcair had told him about. Small, no questions asked. He smiled sadly. When he received his next allotment of prize-money he could buy land of his own.