Julian Stockwin - The Admiral's Daughter

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theADMIRAL'S

daughter

THE KYDD SEA ADVENTURES, BY JULIAN STOCKWIN

Kydd

Artemis

Seaflower

Mutiny

Quarterdeck

Tenacious

Command

The Admiral's Daughter

The Privateer's Revenge

JULIAN STOCKWIN

the ADMIRAL'S

daughter

A KYDDSEA ADVENTURE

MCBOOKS PRESS, INC.

ITHACA, NEW YORK

www.mcbooks.com

Published by McBooks Press 2007

Published simultaneously in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton Copyright © 2007 Julian Stockwin

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

Cover painting by Geoff Hunt

Dust jacket and interior design by Panda Musgrove

The hardcover edition of this book was cataloged by the Library of Congress as:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stockwin, Julian. The admiral's daughter : a Kydd sea adventure / by Julian Stockwin. p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59013-143-5 (alk. paper)

1. Kydd, Thomas (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History, Naval—18th century—Fiction. 3. Seafaring life—Fiction. 4. Sailors—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6119.T66A36 2007 823'.92—dc22

2007013183

Visit the McBooks Press website at www.mcbooks.com. Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

YE GENTLEMEN OF ENGLAND THAT LIVE AT HOME AT EASE, AH! LITTLE DO YOU THINK UPON THE DANGERS OF THE SEAS.

—Martyn Parker ca. 1635

the ADMIRAL'S

daughter

CHAPTER 1

NICHOLAS RENZI NODDED to the man sharing with him the warmth of the log fire at the Angel posting-house and regarding his deep tan with suspicion. It was not an attribute often seen in England after a hard winter. Renzi was newly returned from tumultuous experiences on the other side of the world that had left him questioning his reason. He had sailed to New South Wales as a free settler, determined to forge a new life there, but it was not to be. And now, in just a little while, he would see Cecilia . . .

The ship that had brought him home had docked three days ago and, having signed off on the voyage, he and Thomas Kydd had made for Guildford. It had been cowardly of him, Renzi acknowledged, to have asked his friend to arrive first to prepare his sister for their sudden reappearance. Cecilia had nursed him through a deadly fever and touched his heart, but such was his respect for her that he had vowed to achieve something in the world before he made his feelings known to her, and had left without a word.

He had laboured long and hard to try to create an Arcadia of his small landholding for Cecilia, in that raw land. Eventually Kydd had rescued him: he had suggested that Renzi make use of his education by devoting himself to the elucidation of natural philosophy from a new standpoint. Where Rousseau and his peers had pontificated from the comforts of rarefied academia, Renzi's studies would be rooted in the harsh reality of the wider world, which he had encountered at first hand in places as varied as the Caribbean and the vast South Seas, the sylvan quiet of Wiltshire and the alien starkness of Terra Australis.

He would distil his observations and experiences into a series of volumes on the extraordinary variety of human response to the imperatives of hunger and aggression, religion and security—all the threats and challenges that were the lot of man on earth . . . That would be an achievement indeed to lay before Cecilia and, it must be confessed, it was a prospect most congenial to himself.

This he would owe to Kydd, who had said he would employ his friend as secretary aboard whichever ship Kydd might captain.

For Renzi, performing this role—more of a clerk than anything— was a small price to pay for the freedom it bestowed on him; he had learned the tricks in Spanish Town long ago and knew that his duties would not be onerous. He had never set store by the petty vanities of rank and was glad to withdraw discreetly from the hurly-burly of tasking and discipline to be found on deck. Above all, he and Kydd, old friends, would continue to adventure together . . .

A boy brought the other man's pot of flip, beer spiked with rum, and looked doubtfully at Renzi, who shook his head and stared into the fire. It was all very well to have found for himself an agreeable position but the wider world was now filled with menace: the recently concluded hostilities had ended with the worst possible consequences. Prime Minister William Pitt had been replaced by Henry Addington, whose panicked response to the spiralling cost of the Revolutionary War was to trade away all of England's hard-won conquests round the world for peace at any price. And Napoleon Bonaparte, now squarely atop the pyramid of power in France, was energetically accruing the means to succeed in his greater goal: world dominance.

The King had recently delivered an unprecedented personal message to Parliament. In tones of bleak urgency, he had pointed to the First Consul's naked aggression since the peace—his occupation of Switzerland, his annexation of Savoy and more: there was little doubt now that Addington's gamble of appeasement had failed, and that England must brace herself to renew the struggle against the most powerful military force the world had ever seen.

Kydd, an experienced and distinguished naval officer, would not languish in unemployment for long and Renzi felt a stab of concern: might his friend be prevented from keeping his word on their arrangement?

He glanced at his pocket watch, his thoughts now on his imminent meeting. Cecilia's image had gone with him in his mind's eye on his long journey and stayed with him to be burnished and cherished: soon he would face its reality. He drew a long breath.

Kydd's mother handled the capacious muff of kangaroo skin dubiously; its warm, fox-red fur divided pleasingly to an underlying soft dark grey—but might not other ladies disdain it as an inferior substitute for fine pine marten?

"T' catch 'em boundin' along, Ma, it's so divertin' t' see! They hop—like this!" To the consternation of the house-maid, Kydd performed a creditable imitation of a kangaroo's leap.

"Do behave y'self, son," his mother scolded, but today Kydd could do little wrong. "Have y' not given thought, dear," she continued, in quite another tone, "that now you've achieved so much an' all it might be a prime time t' think about settlin' down? Take a pretty wife an' sport wi' y'r little ones—I saw some fine cottages on the Godalming road as might suit . . ." But her son was clearly not in the mood to listen.

The commotion of his arrival began to subside a little as the rest of the knick-knacks expected from a voyage of ten thousand miles were distributed. His father, now completely blind, felt the lustrous polish of a Cape walking-stick fashioned from walrus bone and exotic wood as Kydd presented Cecilia with a little box, which contained a single rock. "That, sis, y' may not buy, even in London f'r a thousan' guineas!" he said impressively.