Hervey 09 - Man Of War (29 page)

At first he had tried to lie to in the storm, with just enough canvas set to keep her head seven points from the wind so that they could enter the Malta Channel, where he hoped the storm would have blown itself out and he could hail a tender from Valetta. But even with the helm well over, she made too much leeway; and with insufficient sea room Peto decided instead to take in canvas, and on reefed topsails to run before the gale to leeward of the island.

During those three days of the storm, Peto saw next to nothing of Rebecca, whom he had confined to her quarters. He saw even less of the sailors’ women. When, the first night, he made his rounds with the carpenter, he had found their condition pitiable, and did not wish it upon his mind too much. He had never sailed with women before, in any weather, and their plight made him strangely uneasy. He wondered what the rest of the crew made of their distress. God forbid that any woman should be injured! And if ever it came to a fight . . .

When, however, on the fourth morning, the storm abated, Rebecca came onto the quarterdeck with every appearance of one who had actually enjoyed the experience. Her face showed no pallor, her hair shone, and her eyes sparkled. She blithely received the greetings of the midshipmen, who vied to have her attention, and sweetly returned hands’ smiles alike, they knuckling their foreheads as if she were another officer. And not only, Peto supposed, because she was their admiral’s daughter: such an appearance, after a storm of those proportions, spoke of a natural superiority that commanded, if not the obedience that was due to the youngest midshipman, a very good deal of respect nevertheless.

Rebecca glanced about with a certain surprise: nothing appeared to have been carried away in the blow. She looked skywards to see what the weather might bring next: here and there was wispy cloud, but otherwise the sun had the heavens to itself, the wind gentle in the canvas, the waves once more friendly. It was difficult to imagine how the sea could have been whipped up so malevolently.

‘Whereabouts are we now, Captain Peto?’ she asked when she saw he was no longer preoccupied with making sail.

‘Another day and we should have been blown right through the Gulf of Surt.’ He looked and sounded displeased.

Rebecca did not know where was the Gulf of Surt, but concluded that it was not convenient to their destination. ‘Shall we have to turn round?’

Peto looked at her in some bewilderment, and not merely for her unnautical turn of phrase. ‘Miss Codrington, with these airs it would take the better part of a week to beat back to Malta. Even as things go, we shall be altering sail every hour to tack north to the Ionian, where we suppose your father to be.’

‘So you will not be able to have that lovely water you spoke of?’

He sighed. He had given up his cherished notion of taking on water from the Arethusa spring three days ago. ‘No, the Portsmouth casks will have to see us through. But it is no matter.’ What in fact mattered to him now was close hauling clear of the shores of Cyrenaica, otherwise he would waste even more time gaining sea room by beating due west. That, and finding a ship Malta-bound (or one that he might press to sail there). He was surprised that Rebecca herself showed no dismay at the turn of events. ‘You need have no anxiety, though, Miss Codrington. There will be sloops aplenty running back and forth from your father’s squadron. We are sure to intercept one in a day or so.’ (He hoped he sounded convincing.) ‘I trust, incidentally, you were not too shaken about by the storm?’

Rebecca brightened. ‘Not in the least, Captain Peto. It was most exciting. I read three books and maintained my journal throughout.’

Peto rather wished he had made the enquiry a shade less presumptuously, recalling his own seasickness at her age. Later, indeed, he would learn from the marines that she had tended her maid throughout, who had been desperately seasick and in her cot since first
Rupert
began taking in canvas.

‘Capital, capital.’ He sounded almost mystified.

She smiled. ‘The food was a
little
unvarying.’

‘Ah, yes. I hope it was explained: there could be no galley fires in such heavy seas.’

‘It was perfectly explained, Captain Peto, thank you. But you would not think me so ungracious as to complain even if I had not known?’

Peto was quite startled. ‘No . . . no; of course I would not.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Miss Rebecca, I hope you will dine with me this evening. The food will be hot, I assure you.’

‘Thank you, Captain Peto. You are ever kind.’

‘I shall ask the master too, for it was he who worked the greater part these past three days.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘And one or two of the midshipmen.’

‘I shall look forward to it, Captain Peto. And now may I ask a particular favour?’

He smiled indulgently. ‘Indeed you may, and I shall be pleased to grant it if it is in my power.’

‘I should like to go below and see how are the women. I should have so liked to go before, but your orders were most explicit, and the sentry always looked very fierce.’

He found himself colouring slightly at the tease. ‘I am very glad to hear that my marines are capable of confining a vice admiral’s daughter; it gives me great confidence they will do their duty against the Turk.’

Rebecca smiled, acknowledging the teasing on both sides. ‘So I may go below, Captain?’

Peto sighed. ‘Miss Rebecca, some of the women are . . . how may I say it? Of not good character. I believe I owe it to your father, and your mother—’

‘Some I know are of easy virtue, Captain Peto, but they will likely have suffered the same as the virtuous.’

He reddened very decidedly, and cleared his throat noisily. ‘In that case, Miss Codrington – and you are of course right – I shall be content for you to visit the orlop . . . briefly. I shall have a lieutenant accompany you.’ He looked at his watch, though he did not need to know the time. ‘And if you will excuse me now, I must consult my charts.’ He touched his hat. ‘Until dinner, then, Miss Codrington.’

After a quarter of an hour in his cabin with charts and the sailing-master, Peto settled into his Madeira chair and felt in the left pocket for the papers placed there by his clerk. There were not many, and the briefest perusal told him that they could wait. Such procrastination was not his usual practice: he had ever been raised on the imperative of dealing promptly with any matter placed before him – certainly to do the work of the day
in
the day – but the work of the previous
three
days had been essentially on the quarterdeck; and, in any case, his clerk had scarcely been able to make an entry in the ledgers, so violent had the ship’s motion been. He had, too, a letter of his own to write, and if he delayed it at all he risked missing an opportunity, for they might at any moment, now that the storm was blown out, see a man-of-war or a merchantman working west for Malta.

He went to his writing table. He knew how he would begin; he had thought it over exhaustively in the long hours on the quarterdeck. He took a sheet of paper, unstopped the inkpot, picked up a pen and wrote
My Dearest Elizabeth
. Then he put down the pen and stared at the page. He smiled: he had done it! ‘My Dear Miss Hervey’ had been the earlier form (how could it have been other?). But now he knew different; now he was certain he could – must – write exactly as he felt. He picked up the pen again and wrote a flowing narrative of the storm, of how
Rupert
answered compared with
Nisus
and
Liffey
(
Liffey
, he informed her sadly, was being broken up even as he wrote), of how well pleased he was with his officers and warrant officers, what a spirited girl was the young Miss Rebecca Codrington, and how he was to beat upwind to find a ship to take her off, thence to sail into the Ionian to rendezvous with her father . . .

He wrote as if they were the oldest and easiest of friends. He had never written its like before. But then, as he was about to sign it, he had sudden misgivings. Did he make his true sentiments clear? He took up again where he thought he had finished:

My dearest Elizabeth, I am unused to expressing such thoughts, which fact I am joyously pleased to admit to you, and lest you should be in any doubt as to my feelings I enclose with this a page from a book of verse which I have long had in my sailing library, which I have long admired though yet been uncertain of its truth, until now when I do read it with, so to speak, the scales fallen from my eyes, though in its alluding to sword, horse and shield it is perhaps more properly the domain of your most excellent and gallant brother! For my part, it would read instead of oak and sail and gun, though these be neither so poetic nor chivalric. I would write of blustering wind or swallowing wave, and these words you will surely recognize from the poet’s other work of parting – of going beyond the seas, indeed, which would be the more appropriate were it not to speak so much of the Eternal . . .

He went to the quarter gallery to fetch his razor, took the book of verse from the trough next to his cot, and cut the page very neatly from his treasured
Lucasta
:

T
ELL
me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

He fastened it to the other sheets with blue tape, which he cut from his sea coat, and signed the letter
Your Devoted Sposino
.

Then he called for Flowerdew to chill thoroughly a case of champagne.

XIV
INFLUENCE

London, 7 May 1828

It was a warm afternoon when they returned to the United Service Club, where all the windows were thrown open and the noise of the streets intruded. Nevertheless, Hervey was able to hear well enough the discontented voices of a post-prandial knot of members at the further end of the smoking room. He and Fairbrother fell silent as they cocked their ears to the agitated conversation . . .

‘The Duke of Wellington will have nothing of it, I tell you!’

‘The duke will have no choice in the matter, for he’s sold out to those damned Canningites!’

‘He’ll never have truck with Emancipation: votes for Catholics? – Ireland’d be ungovernable!’

‘Ireland’ll be ungovernable
without
Emancipation!’

‘No need to worry about the Irish, sir! Peel and that constabulary of his have got them by the hip – stouthearted fellows!’

‘He’ll have a constabulary here, too; you mark my words!’

‘A police in London? Nonsense, sir!’

‘Well I for one would cheer him in it: a police would get our men off the streets at least.’

‘You’d rather see a police, and all the devil that goes with it, instead of honest men in red? Shame, sir! We fought Robespierre to have none of it, by gad!’

‘
I
don’t trust Huskisson. It’s
he
that’ll be the ruin of the country.
Free trade
– bah! He’d bankrupt every farmer on a principle.’

‘The fellah’s a bounder. So fat he couldn’t break into double time to save his life!’

‘It’s that damned little Lord Cupid who’ll see us ruined. Taking country seats in parliament and giving them instead to the cities! Was at Harrow with ’im, and I tell you, sir, Palmerston’d sell this country to the dogs!’

Fairbrother took a sip of his coffee, made to raise his newspaper, and leaned forward to speak confidentially. ‘The Duke of Wellington, I fancy, is in for another hard pounding!’

‘Oh yes, indeed,’ replied Hervey, sotto voce and with a ruing smile. ‘One must marvel at his sense of duty, laying aside military honours to enter into such a bear-pit!’

But Hervey’s concern was more for himself than the duke: with this degree of foment in the smoking room of the United Service, what was it in the street? At the first mention of Irishmen – tantamount to ‘revolution’ – the gallery at the court of inquiry would be filled with the braying mob, and the pages of every broadsheet and scandal rag alike would parade his name until he might wish it changed to Smith! He wished now, indeed, that he were still in Hounslow, ‘on the strength’, safe behind a barrack wall. Leave of convalescence and occasional light duties with his pen were rapidly palling.

‘Hervey! Well met, sir!’

He turned his head, to see Major-General Sir Francis Evans bearing down on them. He stood, and made a brisk bow. ‘Good afternoon, General.’

‘No need to get up, Hervey m’boy; this aint the Horse Guards,’ said Sir Francis. ‘Good day to you, sir,’ he added, nodding to Fairbrother, who was also on his feet.

The three sat.

‘Have just come from the Commons: a regular to-do, there is, over this business of the country seats. As hot a business as they come. Palmerston may yet burn his fingers.’