Command (42 page)

Julian Stockwin

both Cook and Furneaux had watered, but he had no need: the position was clear in his mind. Bligh was then serving as master under Cook and had remembered the location when he needed to water
Bounty
on his way to Tahiti. He had last cast anchor in this pretty bay as recently as 1792. The French were known to have followed Bligh, and Flinders had called here on his epic circumnavigation.

Kydd gazed at the sweep of land, then out to sea: at this point they were at the furthest extremity of Terra Australis. Any further would lead directly into the Great Southern Ocean; the long, heaving waves he saw now had last met land at Cape Horn and, touching New Zealand on the way, were bound there once again.

In truth, this place was the uttermost finality of the world.

If he stepped ashore now, he would be the only civilised being alive in the whole of the remote wilderness of Van Diemen’s Land. The thought grew sharper but instead of wonder it led to an overwhelming sense of loneliness, of a degree of isolation from humanity that beat in on his senses and made urgent the need to set course back to the world of men.

Kydd gave an involuntary shiver and then became aware of Renzi. The man was visibly near breaking. “T-Thomas,” he said, in a hollow voice, “if you would, might we—walk together?”

There was no need to explain: Renzi was asking for privacy to talk to his friend at last. “O’ course, Nicholas,” Kydd replied, with as much warmth as he could, and set the schooner to anchor as Captain Cook had, in the shelter of Fluted Cape, where a placid freshwater creek could be seen issuing down to the beach.

“Clear away th’ boat,” Kydd told Boyd, and they were rowed to the broad beach. “Carry on wi’ the watering, if y’ please,”

Kydd said, and he and Renzi were left alone to trudge along the beach. Nothing was said. As they paced, Renzi kept his eyes fixed on the hard-packed, discoloured sand, the hissing of their

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footsteps and harsh cries of unknown birds the only sounds. The dense, dark-green forest came right down to the water’s edge but a broad clearing began to open up, the result of some long-ago wild-fire.

“Shall we . . . ?” Sensing Renzi’s unspoken need to be out of sight of the others Kydd steered them off the beach and into the desolate place.

Away from the sea a sighing silence settled about them, the occasional snapping of undergrowth and their laboured breathing seeming curiously overloud. The terrain was coarse and undulating with blackened and fallen tree boles and they were soon out of sight of the ship; then, over a small rise, the woodland began again, even more densely than before.

Renzi came to a stop. His face had the pallor of death and his eyes were wells of misery. Kydd waited apprehensively. “Dear fellow,” Renzi began, in a dreadful caricature of his usual way of opening a philosophical discussion, “you—will know I am a man of reason,” he coughed twice and continued hoarsely, “and I have to tell you now, my friend, that I am—betrayed by my own logic.” His voice broke on the last words, tears brimming.

“Why? How c’n this be?” Kydd said softly. Renzi looked directly at him and Kydd was appalled by what he saw in his face.

“As I lay on my fever bed things were made plain to me. I shall not bore you with details—but I became aware that, for all the advantages of birth and intellect, my life is a waste. I can point to not a single achievement. Not one! Nothing!”

He covered his face and his shoulders began shaking. Kydd was shocked: this was worse than he had supposed and made little sense. “Why, Nicholas, t’ win the quarterdeck is an achievement that any might think—”

“No! There are coxcombs strutting the deck who owe it all to the accident of good breeding. This is no matter for pride. But
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you are a naval officer so above your station in life by right of striving and courage. You are now the captain of a ship! That is what any might call an achievement.”

Renzi’s chest heaved with emotion. “We will be at war with the French in months—with their arrogant posturing, there is nothing surer. You will be given a King’s ship and go on to win renown and honour. That is equally sure.” Irritably he waved aside Kydd’s protestations. “This is your nature and your achieving, and you must glory in it. But I—I do not have the fire in my blood that you have. I am contemplative and take my joy in the fruits of the intellect, in the purity of creation, in—in—” He broke off with muffled sobs. Then, with an effort, he rallied. “It seemed the logical course, to leave the old world and enter the new where I might wrest from nature—
ab initio—
a kingdom of the soil, a fine achievement to—to . . .”

“To what, Nicholas?” Kydd asked quietly.

“To lay before Cecilia.”

Defiantly Renzi looked up at Kydd, his hands working. “Cecilia

. . . who, I own before you this day, is dearer to me than I can possibly say to you. One whom I would dishonour were I to press my suit without I have achieved something worthy of her attention. And—and—I have failed! I have failed
her.
” His face distorted into a paroxysm of grief. He dropped hopelessly to his knees and broke into choking, tearing sobbing.

It was as if the world had turned upside down for Kydd to see Renzi, who had been so calm and staunch by his side through perils and adventures beyond counting, brought so low. Kydd’s heart went out to the tortured soul who was his friend but what could he do? Tentatively, his hand reached out—then his arm went to the shoulder until he was holding Renzi’s shaking body as the racking sobs took him. Renzi did not resist and Kydd held him until the storm had passed.

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“All—all is t-to hell and ruin in Marayong, and so I w-wanted to see if the sealing industry would answer instead, b-but when I saw the slaughter I thought that if Cecilia knew of it how she would d-despise any fortune won from the blood and lives of i-innocent animals and—and therefore I have n-nothing left to me!”

Cruel sobs shook his gaunt frame again and Kydd knew that the last months must have been a living hell for his friend. What Renzi needed now was the will to live, a future, hope that things could be different.

“Then you are free, brother,” Kydd tried brightly.

Renzi raised his head. “Wh-what did you say?”

“Forgive me talkin’ wry, I was never a taut hand wi’ words, but do ye not think that fate is a-calling you t’ tack about, make an offing fr’m what was?”

“Thomas, p-please—”

“Nicholas, you’ve tasted life t’ the full, been t’ places others c’n only dream on. You have a rare enough headpiece as can tangle with any—is it not th’ time to give a steer to the rest of us?

Can ye not bring order t’ the cosmos and tell we mortals how it will be with us?”

He lowered his voice. “Dear friend, can ye not remember those night watches? I can, an’ now I admit before ye that those yarns on the fo’c’sle I hold precious in m’ memory. Your destiny is never to be a slave o’ the soil—can ye not see it in you that a pen suits afore a plough?”

Renzi held still.

“I put it t’ ye, if you set to it heart and hand, you’d make a better fist of explaining this ragabash existence than all th’ philosophic gentlemen who’ve never passed beyond their own front door. Nicholas, this is y’r future. You shall write a book o’ sorts that settles it f’r good an’ all. This, dear chap,” Kydd brought out
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all the feeling he could muster, “is an achievement as no one of the ordinary sort can lay claim to, and therefore must be worthy o’ Cecilia’s notice.”

As with any brother, it was hard to conceive that his sister might be the one to evoke passion and turmoil in an otherwise admirable character but it had to be accepted. He waited apprehensively for a response.

Renzi drew himself up with a long, shuddering sigh. “Just so.”

He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and trumpeted into it.

“But it would be more apposite—in view of my fortune in the matter of travel—to consider, perhaps, a more ethnical approach.

Possibly a study of sorts, a comparing of the human experience—

of a response if you will, of the multitude of the tribes of man to the onrush of civilisation, a Rousseau of our time if I were to be so bold. It would have to be in volumes and—”

“As I thought as well,” Kydd said, in huge relief. “A great work. Worthy of a great mind.” Then, as furtive as a thief in the night, an idea sprang into being, a wonderful, incredible idea. “Nicholas,” he began innocently, “o’ course you shall have passage back t’ England in the
Castle
but what happens then?

Shall ye not have y’r voyages an’ adventures that will give you grist for y’r mill? It does cross m’ mind—that is, if’n you’re right about Gen’ral Buonaparte—that I’ll get m’ ship.” He paused significantly. “Now, if that happens as ye say, then there’ll be a need f’r the captain t’ have one by him whom he might confide in, one as knows how th’ world turns, c’n tell me why things are—an’ can be a true friend.”

Kydd hesitated, then went on, “So I’m offering—that whatever ship I’m in the post of captain’s secretary will always be there for y’r convenience, y’r guarantee that you’ll be able t’ hoist in y’r ethnical experiences wherever we might cast anchor th’

world over. Just a convenience, o’ course, y’r right t’ be aboard, we say.”

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The words tailed off. Renzi looked seaward, then slowly turned to Kydd with a half-smile. “It does seem that the conceit has some degree of merit. I’ll think on it.”

Author’s Note

In many ways
Command
is a watershed book in the Thomas Kydd series. My hero has actually achieved the majesty of his own quarterdeck, and his life will never be the same again. It may seem an improbable transformation of a young perruquier of Guildford, press-ganged into His Majesty’s Navy less than ten years before, but the historical record tells us that there
were
Thomas Kydds, not many admittedly, but enough to be tantalising to a writer’s imagination. Yet we have so few records of their odysseys—how they must have felt, what impelled them to the top.

What actually triggered this series were some statistics that I came across. It seems that in the bitter French wars at the end of the eighteenth century, there were, out of the hundreds of thousands of seamen in the Navy over that time, 120, who by their own courage, resolution and brute tenacity made the awe-inspiring journey from common seaman at the fo’c’sle to King’s officer on the quarterdeck. And of those 120, a total of 22 became captains of their own ship—and a miraculous 3, possibly 5, became admirals!

Some readers have asked if there was one of these men on whom I modelled Tom Kydd. The short answer is no, he is a com-posite of them all and a result of my author’s imagination. But in him there are certainly elements of those like William Mitchell,

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a seaman who survived being flogged around the fleet for deserting his ship over a woman—500 lashes—and later became an admiral; Bowen of the Glorious First of June, and still others—in
Victory
at Trafalgar her famous signal lieutenant, Pascoe, hailed from before the mast and the first lieutenant, Quilliam, was a pressed man, who like Kydd was promoted from the lower deck at the Battle of Camperdown.

The great age of fighting sail was a time of huge contrasts and often very hard conditions, admittedly, but at least in the Royal Navy then it was conceivable for a young man of talent and ambition to rise far above his station. I do remember my feelings when I became an officer, having begun my sea career on the lower deck. And sometimes I idly wonder, had I lived back then,
could I have been a Tom Kydd?

I owe a debt of gratitude to the many people I consulted in the process of writing this book. Space precludes mentioning them all but I would like to convey special thanks to Joseph Muscat of Malta, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of Mediterranean craft was invaluable when I was doing location research, and Captain Reuben Lanfranco, director of the Maritime Institute of Malta for his insights into his nation’s sea heritage; also to my Australian researcher Josef Hextall, half-way across the planet, who provided me with engrossing and detailed material on the early days of Australia. As always, my appreciation of their efforts must go to literary agent Carole Blake, marine artist Geoff Hunt RSMA, edi-torial director Carolyn Mays and assistant editor Alex Bonham.

Carolyn heads up a superb literary and creative team at Hodder

& Stoughton; my thanks to them all.

Last, I salute the contribution of my wife and literary partner, Kathy. Kydd and Renzi now seem so real to us both, and we look forward to bringing their adventures to you for many more books to come.

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