Julian Stockwin - The Iberian Flame - Thomas Kydd 20

‘There, my dear. My very own kitchen garden.’ Persephone beamed.

The morning sun was warm and picked out the neat rows of plants. They meant nothing to Kydd, but he smiled winningly and expressed his admiration. To his rescue came a distant memory of Quashee, a mess-cook whose flourishing of his ‘conweniences’ had been a legend in the flying Artemis on their round-the-world adventure.

‘You’ve planted an adequacy of calaminthy, of course,’ he said, in a lordly tone. ‘A sovereign physic in any situation.’

‘Calaminthy? I don’t think I have.’ She frowned uncertainly, in the process managing to wring his heart with her loveliness.

‘Oh, er, the common sort would know it as the basil, m’ dear.’

‘Basil?’ She shook her head. ‘But the rosemary is growing splendidly, and tonight you’ll taste it in Mrs Appleby’s venison ragout.’

The improvements she’d made were impressive. The garden was now tamed, the front of the manor with its red Tudor brick freed of the overgrown ivy, but with enough left to frame the darkened oak doors. The weathercock atop its tower was now proud and square and the lawn had been meticulously mown.

Kydd made acquaintance with Persephone’s new horse Bo’sun, the noble brown face, dark ears flicking, looking at him curiously. He knew his wife was an excellent rider and judge of horses but this beast was exceptionally handsome. A full chestnut of some fifteen hands and gleaming with condition, its lithe musculature spoke of effortless speed and endurance.

‘We’ll lease a mount for you while you’re home, Thomas,’ she made haste to assure him. A horse was an expensive article and another could not be justified when he was away at sea for so much of the time.

He beamed, looking forward to riding with her on the moors. ‘Yes, Seph. We’ll see to it directly.’

Workmen were still busy on the small buildings at the back: a charming summer house and a discreet garden shed where Mr Appleby was preparing his pot plants.

‘I want to talk to you about a pavilion, Thomas dear,’ she murmured, as they roamed arm-in-arm along the wilder southern fringes of their property. She pointed out a fine place for a small private shelter with a picnic view into the steep, wandering valley of the Tavy.

Back inside the house, a shy maid stood aside as Persephone asked him anxiously if he approved her choice of dinner service – a Spode setting of exquisite artistry and, to Kydd’s eyes, perfectly attuned to the bucolic placidity of Knowle Manor. Not the pompous gold-lined ornateness of Town but joyous limned English flowers and butterflies on delicately formed ivory porcelain. The selection of cutlery had been put aside until they could consult together on a trip to London.

Combe Tavy folk soon knew that the squire was back from his sea wanderings, and in the Pig and Whistle the one-eyed innkeeper, Jenkins, grinned from ear to ear as he served the alarming number of villagers who had found it convenient to rest from their labours.

Kydd heard from the soft-spoken old sheep-farmer, Davies, of the loss by braxy over the winter of three of his flock, which a long-winded account put down to their consuming grass while still frost-speckled. The beady-eyed thatcher, Jermyn, came in with a harrowing tale of a roof fire in the remote hamlet of Horrabridge that had had him trudging over the moors in wind and sleet of an unpleasantness that a gentleman like Kydd could never conceive.

After politely asking after him, others listened as he contributed a morsel concerning the perils of horse-riding on the hard sea-ice of Finland and the grievous conditions for reindeer looking for forage under snow that had lain undisturbed for four months. It left them bemused as they quaffed their moorland ale.

The days passed in a sweet warmth that Kydd could feel imperceptibly rooting him to the place. Curling up together in front of the fire, he and Persephone made comfortable decisions about their hearth and home, such as where the grand portrait of Knowle Manor she had painted should be hung.

But Kydd’s attempts to win over the sleek tabby, Rufus, who held sway over this his kingdom were forlorn.

‘One night during an awful storm he suddenly appeared as though it were his long-lost home,’ Persephone told him fondly, picking the cat up. ‘Licked himself all over for an hour in front of the fire and settled in. I hadn’t the heart to turn away the rascal.’ The creature accepted a twiggle of his ears, while continuing to stare at Kydd with striking lambent eyes. ‘He’ll be used to you by and by.’

Persephone didn’t press him for details of his adventuring but Kydd suspected that she was guessing at what he didn’t say so strove to round out the details. Coming from a naval family, she knew the sea cant and did not require tedious explanation. He found himself recounting a dramatic clawing off a lee-shore with the familiarity of a seasoned mariner and saw by her expression she understood perfectly.

‘I’m blessed beyond my deserving,’ he murmured to her, not for the first time.

Chapter 2

The morning was clear and warm when Kydd and Persephone set out for Tavistock across the moors, a score of miles distant. They took it at a brisk canter, spelling their horses at the Goodameavy stables, where Kydd had once despaired of her feelings for him.

It was Thursday, the pannier market was in full swing and Kydd let the bustle of the town envelop them. Tavistock was inland, between Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor. Surprisingly, the town’s most famous sons were all mariners. The chief was Sir Francis Drake, whose seat of Buckland Abbey was close by. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the colonist and explorer lost at sea, would have had his last memories of home as Kydd was seeing it, and Grenville of Revenge was suzerain of Buckland at the time of his famous last fight. His cousin Sir Walter Raleigh had grown up nearby, and many more had found their calling upon the sea from the towns and villages on the road to Plymouth.

Sir Thomas and Lady Kydd wandered together among the stalls and booths, the produce and crafts of Devonshire on exuberant show, the hoarse cries of the stallholders mingling with the babble of market-goers, jostling good-naturedly and enjoying the delights of the day. Folk were of all stations in life: smock-clad farm workers, beefy merchants, gentlemen and their ladies.

The thick, pleasing odours of country life eddied about them, and Kydd mused that he couldn’t be further from the stern reality of the war at sea. With a beautiful woman on his arm and the day theirs, he would be pressed to bring to mind a heaving deck, taut lines from aloft, the menacing dark blue-grey of an enemy coast on the bow … This was another place, another world.

‘Oh, how quaint!’ Persephone exclaimed, admiring a pinafore extravagantly interwoven with lacework of a previous age, unusual on such a garment. She fingered it reverently, the seller, a man, watching her silently.

Kydd’s gaze wandered. There were many more attractions and they could easily—

Standing motionless not more than a dozen yards away, a gentleman in plain but well-cut attire was regarding him gravely.

Kydd didn’t know the man … or did he? The distinguished greying hair, the direct, unflinching hard gaze, the stern, upright bearing … Like the master of a ship …

It couldn’t be, but it was: the defeated captain who had met him on the deck of the last of the three frigates Tyger had overcome in her epic combat in the southern Baltic the previous year. Preussen , yes – a French-manned Prussian and commanded by one Marceau.

After a moment of shock at the sudden clash of worlds, Kydd gave a polite bow of recognition, which was solemnly returned. Clearly the man was not on the run and neither was he closely escorted.