Julian Stockwin - Artemis

'Then I shall not allude to it further,' Renzi said, in an affected voice.

Kydd felt a lump rising in his own throat, but knew that any display of emotion on his part would alienate Renzi. 'O' course,' he said.

They preserved silence the whole way back, finally reaching the schoolhouse. It was in darkness; the carriage must have long since passed them on the other road, and everyone would now be abed.

'There is a light in the kitchen,' Kydd said quietly. They climbed over the low garden fence and made their way to the back. A single candle lay on the kitchen table, and they entered, the door squeaking noisily. They tiptoed in, but they had been heard, and Cecilia appeared in a nightgown with a candle, her face alight with excitement. 'Thomas — Nicholas,' she whispered, as loudly as she could. 'You'll never guess what happened tonight.'

Renzi's face set like stone. Kydd frowned in bafflement. 'What is it, sis?' he asked.

'No - really, the most wonderful news!' she squealed.

Kydd snorted impatiently. 'What is it then, if we c'n ask?'

She pouted prettily. 'Then I won't tell you, you horrid man.'

There was a stirring next to Kydd. 'Do I take it that we must offer our felicitations?' Renzi said woodenly.

Cecilia stared at him. 'I — I don't know what you mean, Nicholas,' she said uncertainly.

'The young man — he and you . . .'

'Roger Partington, and you'd never conceive — tonight he confessed to me that it would make him the happiest man in the world if I could grant his dearest wish.'

She turned to Kydd, oblivious of the look on Renzi's face.

'Thomas, he wishes so much to be a teacher, a scholar, and wanted me to intercede with Father in this. But then I thought, why should he not take your place, dear brother, and then you can go back to sea?'

She watched, delighted, as her words rendered the two men equally thunderstruck. 'Well, Thomas, can you bear after all not to be a teacher? Shall you pine after the grammar, yearn for your figuring again?'

Kydd and Renzi stood frozen.

'I shall return presently,' Cecilia whispered, and swept up the stairs. In a few minutes she was back. At the stupid look on Kydd's face she threw her arms about his neck. 'You darling boy! You wonderful, silly brother — can you not see?' Handing him a brown paper parcel she said, 'I have saved your precious sailor rig for you. I hid it from Mother as I knew you would need it some day. You are a sailor, Tom, you're different from we land folks.' She lowered her eyes. 'Go with Nicholas, Tom, you must. And may God bless you and keep you, and bring you safely back to us.'

'God damn it!' Kydd exploded. He was sitting on the grass verge of the road, shaking out yet another stone from his shoe. It was wonderful to be back in his loose-swinging sailor's rig, but his feet were sore, they had not brought drink and the sun beat down on them.

Renzi looked up resentfully. 'If we had kept back just one . . .' he began, in an uncharacteristically morose tone.

'And if we had thought t' ask the other . . . !' Kydd snapped back. It was the fault of both and neither: in their plan to avoid the wounded looks of his mother they had, with Cecilia's reluctant connivance, sneaked out before dawn for the journey south.

Independently, they had emptied their pockets of their remaining money, leaving it as a peace-offering on the mantelpiece of the drawing room. The driver of the mail coach at the Angel had adequate experience of sailors and their prodigal habits ashore, and was scornful of their entreaties. The coach lurched off without them, down the high street and away with a splendid cracking of whips and deafening clatter of wheels on cobblestones. There was no way they could return home, not after Cecilia's generous but stricken farewell.

Kydd felt warm at the memory of her shyly producing his sea-clothes, sweet-smelling and neatly folded. He had stowed them in his sea-bag, together with the meaningful gift of an ingenious portable writing set: quills, ink-block and penknife in a polished wooden box.

Renzi softened too — there had been a kiss for them both, for him the moist warmth had been placed rather closer to his mouth than was customary, and her head had not been averted sufficiently to avoid his chaste return peck landing perilously close to her own parted lips. Goethe's Prometheus in the Hallstadt edition was her gift to him; its restless subjectivity was not altogether to his taste, but he would persevere for the sake of her kindness.

A bishop's carriage prepared to leave, and they gratefully accepted his patriotic offer. The kindly gentleman had taken them as far as Petworth, provided they rode outside and promised to behave themselves with sobriety and decorum.

They were now on foot, six miles beyond on Duncton Hill and half-way to their goal of Chichester and the coast. There, they hoped the busy coastwise roads would provide transport.

Renzi was only too aware that he was not as inured to walking as the country folk, who would quickly starve if they insisted on coaches wherever they went. On the road they met several who waved curiously at the exotic pair. He muttered under his breath, and humped his sea-bag once more, but a distant movement and dust haze on the winding road caught his eye. Some sort of empty hay wagon; there was a blotch of red in the front seat, unusual where faded fustian was more the rule.

Seeing Renzi pause, Kydd glanced back. 'You think . . . ?' he said.

'In our direction, and without a load,' Renzi replied.

Without discussion, they dropped their bundles and waited for the wagon to approach. The horses toiled listlessly up the hill, and it became clear that there were objects in the body of the wagon.

'That's a lobsterback!' Kydd burst out. As the wagon approached they saw that the marine was a guard for the press-gang, the objects in the wagon his luckless catch.

Kydd laughed. 'If we don't leg it smartly, we could fin' ourselves pressed.'

Renzi smiled wryly. They were in no danger — real deserters would be in disguise and heading away from the seaports.

They waved down the wagon. The marine was dusty and bored, and saw no reason why they should not share a ride to Portsmouth. They clambered gratefully into the wagon with their bundles, and found themselves a place among the dozen or so victims of the press, who were handcuffed to the outside rail.

There were two sailors also, members of the gang, comfortably wedged at the forward end, enjoying a bottle. They looked up in surprise as Kydd and Renzi boarded. 'Yo ho, shipmates, what cheer,' the older one said.

'Artemis? Kydd said briefly, swelling with pride.

The sailors sat up. 'No flam! Then ye'll need to clap on more sail, mates, should yer wanna be aboard afore she sails.'

'What?'

'She's sailin', mate — another of yer vy'ges with a bag o' gold fer yez all at the end,' the younger said enviously.

So her battle damage had been made good already; there must have been some ruffled feathers in the staid world of the dockyards. But would they make it in time?

'She out o' dock yet?' Kydd asked.

'Dunno — we're Diadems at Spithead, mate, how would we know?' The older man was short with them. Diadem was an old-fashioned and slow sixty-four-gun third rate, which could neither catch a frigate nor really keep the line of battle.

The bottle was passed over as the wagon ground off, and as Kydd took a pull at the liquor he noticed one or two resentful looks from the prisoners, who lolled pitifully, their hands clinking the iron cuffs that held them.

There was one young man of an age with himself, sitting miserably with his head back. He stared up into the summer sky with an expression that spoke of homesickness, fear and helplessness. Kydd's own dolorous journey as a pressed man was only a little more than six months before and so much had happened since — adventures that would have seemed terrifying if he had known of them beforehand.