Colours Aloft! (34 page)

Bolitho heard Bouteiller yell, “Royal Marines,
still!
”

He could not see them but pictured the scarlet coats, no longer smartly pressed and clean, as they responded to their captain's command. Dazed, wild, even the fury within them was not enough to withstand their familiar discipline.

They stood or knelt along the opposite gangway, their muskets rising as one. A marine fell dead from the rank, but nobody flinched. Revenge would come later.

Bouteiller yelled,
“Fire!”

The musket balls crashed into the packed mass of boarders and, even as the living struggled free from the dead, the marines were already charging towards them, shouting and screaming like demons as they went in with their bayonets.

Bolitho slipped, but held on to the massive bowsprit, his feet kicking at the spritsail yard and shrouds while he stared with stunned disbelief at the deck below him,
Léopard
's forecastle. But for the lanyard around his wrist he would have lost his sword for ever.

There was more firing from that other existence beyond the smoke, ships locked together or surging towards the French rearadmiral's flag, Bolitho could not tell. A command flag was supposed to lead and direct. Now it had become a beacon, a guide for carnage. Men fought and struggled all around him; it was impossible to grasp direction or time. Bodies were sometimes pressing against him, with brief flashes of recognition as a wild face found his. Someone even managed to shout, “ 'Tis the admiral, lads!” Another yelled, “You keep with us, Dick!”

It was wild, terrifying, and yet the madness was like rich wine. Bolitho locked hilts with another lieutenant and was astonished that he found it so easy to disarm him with one twist of the wrist which tore the weapon from his hand. He would have left it at that as the yelling, panting seamen carried him along, but a marine paused and glared at the cowering officer. All he said was, “This is for Cap'n Inch!” The thrust carried the lieutenant to the rail, the point of the bayonet glinting red through the back of his coat.

Bolitho dashed his wrist across his face. It felt like a furnace and he was almost blinded by sweat.

He saw the gouged planks across the broad sweep of quarterdeck where Keen's grape had fired so blindly. Bodies lay scattered near the abandoned wheel, others ran to meet the rush of boarders, probably unable to accept what had happened.

A sailor darted under a bayonet and headed for Allday. He stared at the Frenchman and then lifted his cutlass. He almost laughed through his despair. It was so easy.

As he raised the blade and tightened his hold on the cutlass he suddenly cried out, the pain in his old wound burning through his chest, rendering him helpless, unable to move.

Bolitho was separated from him by an abandoned gun, but hurled himself towards him, his sword hitting out.

But Bankart leaped between them armed only with a belaying pin.

He screamed, “Get back! Don't you touch him!” He threw himself protectively against his father, sobbing with anger and fear as the Frenchman darted forward for the kill.

Bolitho felt the ball fan past his face, although his dazed mind did not record the sound of a shot.

He saw the Frenchman slide back and drop to the deck, his cutlass clattering beneath the feet of the crowd.

Bolitho saw Midshipman Sheaffe, his face white with strain, with Stayt's pistol still smoking in one hand, his puny dirk in the other.

Then he forgot him; even the fact that, with Allday about to be cut down, his son had found himself and the courage which he believed would never be his.

Bolitho saw Jobert by the poop ladder, saw him shouting to his officers, although the din, the mingled roar of victory and defeat, made it impossible to understand.

Lieutenant Paget, his coat sliced from shoulder to waist and cut about the face by wood splinters, waved his bloodied hanger to his men.

Bolitho stared through the smoke, now almost blind from it, or was it something worse? He could not even find the will to care any more.

Paget yelled, “
Get him!
Cut the bastard down!”

Bolitho found himself lurching through the jubilant seamen, some of whom were strangers from Herrick's ship.

It had to stop. The past could not repair anything; nor must it destroy.

He knocked a marine's musket aside with the flat of his sword. He heard Allday gasping behind him. He would die rather than leave him now.

Bolitho shouted,
“Strike, damn you!”

Jobert stared at him, his eyes shocked. He peered past Bolitho and must have sensed that only he was keeping him alive. There was a great wave of cheering and someone yelled, “There goes their flag, mates! We beat the buggers!”

The voices and faces swirled round, while the cornered Frenchmen in various parts of their ship began to throw down their weapons. But not Jobert. Almost disdainfully he drew his sword and tossed his hat to the deck.

Paget gasped, “Let me take him, Sir Richard!”

Bolitho gave him a quick glance. Paget, the man who had faced the odds of Camperdown, was no longer the calmly efficient first lieutenant. He wanted to kill Jobert.

Bolitho snapped, “Stand back.” He raised his sword and felt the raw tension in his wrist and forearm.

So it was a personal duel after all.

There was silence now, and only the groans and cries of the wounded seemed to intrude. Even the wind had dropped without anyone noticing it. Jobert's command flag flapped only slightly and in time with the bright Union Flag on the ship whose jibboom still impaled the shrouds.

The blades circled one another like wary serpents.

Bolitho watched Jobert's face, as dark as Stayt's. It was all there. He had been a prisoner before, and his flagship had been taken from him only to rise again and repeat the disgrace. The impossible had happened. Jobert was a professional officer, and did not have to look farther than the man who now faced him for the reason. A last chance to even the score, to give him the seeds of a victory even if he never lived to see it for more than minutes after Bolitho had fallen.

Jobert moved around the deck and even the English sailors fell back to give him room.

Paget pleaded desperately, “Can I take him?” He saw Bolitho's foot catch on some broken rigging, the way he staggered. Paget whispered, “Fetch Captain Keen, for God's sake!” The messenger scuttled away, but Paget knew he would be too late.

Then Jobert struck, lunged forward again and again, his foot stamping hard down as he advanced. He turned still farther and made Bolitho twist his head as the sunlight lanced down through the ragged sails and blinded him.

Was it imagination or did he see a quick flash of triumph in the French admiral's eyes? Did he know his weakness? The blades glanced together and the steel hissed as each fought to retain balance and the strength to hold the other at arm's length.

Clash—clash—clash,
the blades struck, parried and parted.

Midshipman Sheaffe stared wildly at Allday. “Stop him, can't you, man?”

Allday clutched his shirt against his burning wound and replied, “Get a marksman, lively now!”

Bolitho stepped carefully over some more rope. His arm throbbed with pain and he could barely see Jobert's intent face.
Why prove anything? He is beaten, finished. It is enough.

Jobert's blade moved like lightning, and when Bolitho swung his own to beat it aside he felt it pass through his coat below his armpit, the searing pain as the edge cut across his skin. Bolitho smashed his hilt down on Jobert's wrist so that they lurched together, chest to chest.

Bolitho could feel the strength going from his arm, the biting pain of the cut on his side like a branding iron. He could feel the man's breath on his face, see the strange darkness in his eyes. Everything else was lost in mist, and even when he heard Herrick's voice coming through the packed figures around him, it was like an intrusion.

He raised his arm and thrust at Jobert's chest with all of his remaining strength. Jobert staggered back against a quarterdeck cannon and then stared with horrified disbelief as the old sword flashed forward and struck him in the heart.

Bolitho almost fell as the sailors surged around him, cheering and sobbing like madmen.

He handed his sword to Allday and tried to smile at him, to reassure him, like those other times.

Herrick pushed his men aside and seized his arm.

“My God, Richard, he might have killed you!” He studied him anxiously. “If I'd been here I'd have shot him down!”

Bolitho touched the hole in his coat and felt the blood wet on his fingers.

The cheering dazed him, but they had every right to give vent to their feelings. What did they know or understand of strategy, or the need to defend two unknown merchantmen? Why should they obey, when the harvest was so savage, so cruel?

He looked down at Jobert and saw a seaman prise the sword from his outflung hand. Jobert's dark eyes were half open, as if he were still alive, listening, and watching his enemies.

“He wanted to die, Thomas. Don't you see that?” He turned and peered across to his own ship and saw Keen shading his eyes to look at him. Bolitho raised his arm in a tired salute. He was safe. It would have been the final blow had he fallen.

He felt Herrick's hand holding his arm as someone brought a dressing to staunch the blood.

“He lost the fight. He would not surrender his pride too.”

Bolitho made his way through his blackened and bleeding men. It did not seem real or possible. He looked up at the sky above the masts and lifeless sails.

He turned and looked at his friend and added quietly, “In his way, Jobert was a victor after all.”

Allday heard him and then put his arm around his son's shoulders. He had not the words, not now anyway.

Bankart glanced at his father's face and smiled.

Pride of friend or enemy did not need any words.

E
PILOGUE

I
T WAS
six months before Richard Bolitho returned to England. The stark memories of that last desperate battle were still clear in his mind, although at home they had been overtaken if not completely forgotten amidst other events.

For Bolitho and his little squadron it had been a costly victory in life and in other suffering. His ships too had taken great punishment and had been forced into the dockyards at Malta and Gibraltar.

The results of their triumph over Jobert's squadron had been as astonishing as they had been destructive. So badly crippled were most of the ships involved in the line of battle that two of the French seventy-fours had been able to steal away and avoid capture. None of Bolitho's vessels had been heavy enough or in such good repair that they could capture them. An undamaged frigate had also escaped. Jobert's big flagship, although seized, would be spared the shame of fighting again under her enemy's colours. A fire had broken out between decks which had killed many of her wounded, and it had taken every able hand, English and French to save her from complete destruction. She would probably end her days as a hulk or stores vessel.

They had succeeded in capturing all the rest although at one time Bolitho had feared that two at least would founder on passage to shelter.

He often thought of the familiar faces he would never see again. Most of all, Captain Inch, dying on his feet, inspired by some last thought that he had had to be with his friends. Captain Montresor who had fallen at the last moment even as the French flagship's colours had dipped into the gunsmoke. So many more. Needless to say, Houston of the
Icarus
had survived unscathed and complaining although his ship had been in the thick of the fighting from the first broadside. The two smallest vessels,
Rapid
and
Firefly,
had come through the onslaught with few casualties, although any one of those great French broadsides could have sunk them.

With the two brigs as her only companions,
Argonaute,
repaired if not recovered from the battle, sailed for England and arrived at Plymouth in June
1804.

Again, vivid pictures stood out in Bolitho's thoughts as he relived the moments which followed their arrival. The wild excitement, the flags and the gun salutes as
Argonaute
finally dropped anchor. There had been little wind and their progress up-Channel had been slow. Enough it seemed for the entire population to know of their return.

He remembered it so well. The exhilaration of the cheering people on the waterfront, much of which was soon to dissolve into empty sadness when they discovered that their loved ones would never return.

Admiral Sheaffe had been there in person. Bolitho had imagined he would have challenged the man, that he in turn might have revealed the jealousy which had made him use Keen as an instrument to hurt him. Instead the admiral had made a great display of greeting his son. That was a moment Bolitho knew he would never forget.

The admiral, watched by his aides and some personal friends, had put his hands on the midshipman's shoulders.

Bolitho had seen the youth's face. Perhaps he had recalled Stayt's last words, or the time when he had been almost left behind when
Supreme
had been in danger, and Bolitho had waited for him.

He had said in a steady voice, “I beg your pardon, sir. I do not know you!” Then, his eyes blind, he had hurried away.

Again, once ashore, when Keen had seen the girl running the last few yards along the cobbles, her long hair streaming behind her, Bolitho had felt both happiness and envy.

Oblivious to the onlookers and grinning sailors, Keen had held her against him, his face in her hair, barely able to speak.

Then she had looked at Bolitho, her eyes misty, and had said very softly, “
Thank
you.”

Bolitho was not sure what he had expected. For Belinda to be in Plymouth, waiting like Zenoria to learn the truth, to enjoy the reality of their survival.

The rest of the time it took to complete his affairs in Plymouth was blurred. He had taken passage in
Firefly
to Falmouth. One more brig arriving in Carrick Roads would excite little attention. Bolitho dreaded another hero's welcome, the noise, the curiosity of those who had not seen the true face of war.

So on this bright June morning he stood by the bulwark with Adam while the brig swung carelessly to her anchor. Home.

On either hand the green hillsides and moored vessels, the fields of various hues and colours which stretched inland in their own patterns. Houses and fishermen's cottages, and the grim grey bulk of Pendennis Castle which commanded the harbour entrance. Nothing had changed, and yet Bolitho had the feeling it would never be the same again.

Time to part again. Adam was under orders for Ireland with fresh despatches and no doubt more to collect. If nothing else it would make him an excellent navigator.

“Well, Uncle?” Adam watched him gravely, his eyes troubled. Bolitho saw Allday by the rail, peering down at the gig alongside. Allday must have guessed or felt Bolitho's mood of uncertainty. He had sent Bankart with Ozzard by coach with their chests and bags.

Until the next time.
Allday sensed that he needed to be alone on this particular day.

Bolitho said, “It will always be like this, Adam. Brief farewells, even shorter greetings.” He glanced around the neat deck. It was hard to believe that this vessel had been within a stone's throw of a powerful seventy-four and had survived.
Rapid
too, although Quarrell had pleaded for the borrowed guns to be removed. Their recoil had done more damage than the enemy.

Adam said, “I wish I could step ashore with you, Uncle.” Bolitho put his arm round his shoulders. “It will keep. I am glad for you.” He looked up at the impatient masthead pendant. “Your father would have been pleased, I know that.”

Then he strode to the side where the first lieutenant, his arm in a sling, stood with the boatswain's mates for a last farewell.

In the gig Allday watched Bolitho without speaking, saw him look astern once and wave back and forth to his nephew.

The brig was already shortening her cable and, once the gig had been hoisted, would be on her way. Allday found that he could watch her like a mere onlooker.

He thought of his son, on his way overland to the Bolitho house. Would he ever return to the sea? Surprisingly that decision no longer counted.
My son,
even thinking the words made him feel happy and grateful. He had saved his life, would have died for him but for the middy's pistol.

He glanced at Bolitho's impassive features and knew he was worried about his eyes. Lady Belinda would be up there at the house, fretting and waiting for him. That might make all the difference.

Tonight Allday would slip away to the inn. To see if the landlord's daughter was still as smart as paint.

They climbed onto the hot stones and Bolitho thanked the boat's coxswain and put two guineas in his hard hand.

The man gaped at him. “Us'll drink to
'e,
zur!”

They pulled away, one of them whistling cheerfully until they reached hearing distance of their ship.

Bolitho walked towards the town where he would take the narrow road to the house. He looked up and tried not to blink, to lose his balance as he had that day when he had faced Jobert for the last time.

He heard Allday's heavy tread behind him; it was a strange feeling. There were few people about. They were either in the fields or away fishing. Falmouth existed on earth and sea alike. He saw a weary woman carrying a huge basket of vegetables as she made her way towards a narrow lane.

She stopped and straightened her back and saw him. She smiled and attempted an awkward curtsy.

Bolitho called, “A fine morning, Mrs Noonan.”

She watched them until they turned the corner.

Poor woman, Bolitho thought. He recalled seeing her husband die violently aboard his
Lysander,
it seemed a thousand years back, and yet like yesterday.

A long shadow crossed the square and Bolitho looked up at the tower of the Church of King Charles the Martyr, where twice he had been married. He wanted to walk past, but felt unable to move. It was as if he was being held, then guided towards those familiar old doors. Allday followed him with something like relief. In his heart he had known this was why Bolitho had not taken the coach from Plymouth.

Bolitho walked uncertainly into the cool shadows of the church. It was empty, and yet so full of memories, and of hopes. He paused and looked at the fine windows beyond the altar and remembered that first time, the sunlight streaming through the door.

He felt his heart pound until he thought he would hear it. He must go, discover his feelings, explain to Belinda, learn to put right his mistakes.

Instead he walked to the wall where the Bolitho tablets stood out from all the others.

He reached up and touched the one which was slightly apart from the men.
Cheney Bolitho.

He knew Allday was in the main aisle, watching him, wanting to help when there was none to give.

Bolitho moved back very slowly to the altar and stood looking at it for several minutes.

This was the day of their marriage, when they had joined hands here. He spoke her name aloud, very quietly. Then he turned on his heel and walked down to where Allday waited for him.

Allday asked, “Home now, Sir Richard?”

Bolitho hesitated and then looked back at the small tablet.

“Aye, old friend.
It will always be that.
”