Second to None (3 page)

He coughed; he had swallowed a measure of rum without noticing that he had poured it. He sat down again and stared at the unopened ledgers. Above his head he could hear his wife Grace moving about. Unable to rest, unable even to deal with her usual duties as housekeeper, a position of which she was very proud. As he was.

He gripped the glass tightly with the one hand which was now able to do so much. Once he had believed he would be useless, just another piece of human flotsam left behind in this seemingly endless war. But Grace had nursed him through all of it. Now he found himself recalling the moment mostly at times like these, in the shadows, when it was easier to picture
the towering pyramids of sails, the lines of French ships, the deafening crash and roar of broadsides as the two fleets had joined in a bloody embrace. It had seemed to take all day for them to draw together, and all the while the sailors, especially the new ones, pressed men like himself, had been forced to watch the enemy's topsails rising like banners until they had filled the horizon. One officer had later described the awesome sight as resembling the armoured knights at Agincourt.

And all the while, aboard the frigate
Phalarope,
so puny she had seemed against that great line of battle, he had seen their young captain, Richard Bolitho, urging and encouraging, and once, before Ferguson himself had been smashed down, he had seen him kneel to hold the hand of a dying sailor. He had never forgotten his face on that terrible day, never would forget it.

And now he was the steward of this estate, its farm and its cottages, and all the characters who made it a good place to work. Many of them were former sailors, men who had served with Bolitho in so many ships and in every part of the world where the flag had been hoisted. He had seen many of them at the church today, for Sir Richard Bolitho was one of them, and Falmouth's most famous son. Son of a sailor, from generations of sea officers, and this house below Pendennis Castle was a part of their history.

Across the yard he could see lights now in some of the rooms, and imagined the line of portraits, including the painting of Sir Richard as the young captain he had known. His wife Cheney had commissioned it while Bolitho had been away with the fleet. Bolitho had never seen his wife again; she had been killed with their unborn child when her carriage had shed a wheel and overturned. Ferguson himself had carried her, seeking help when it was already too late. He smiled sadly, reminiscently.
And with only one arm
.

The Church of King Charles the Martyr, where the lives and deaths of other Bolithos were commemorated, had been filled to capacity, servants from the house, farm workers, strangers and friends pressed close together to pray and to remember.

He allowed his mind to dwell on the family pew near the pulpit. Richard Bolitho's younger sister Nancy, who had not yet come to terms with her own husband's death. Roxby, ‘the
King of Cornwall', would not be an easy man to lay aside. Next to her Catherine, Lady Somervell, tall and very erect, all in black, her face covered by a veil, and only the diamond pendant shaped like an opened fan which Bolitho had given her moving on her breast to betray her emotion.

And, beside her, Adam Bolitho, his eyes upon the altar, his chin lifted. Defiant. Determined. And, like the moment when he had come to the house after his uncle's death, and had read Catherine's note and clipped on the old family sword, so like the young, vanished sea officer who had grown up here in Falmouth.

There had been another officer with him, a lieutenant, but Ferguson had noticed only Adam Bolitho and the beautiful woman beside him.

It had reminded him painfully of the day in that same church when a memorial service had been conducted following the news that Sir Richard and his mistress had been lost in the wreck of the
Golden Plover
off the African coast. Many of the same people had been there, as well as Bolitho's wife. Ferguson could remember her look of utter disbelief when one of Adam's officers had burst in with the revelation that Bolitho and his companions were alive, and had been rescued against all odds. And when Lady Catherine's part had become known, how she had given hope and faith to the survivors in that open boat, she had been taken to their hearts. It had seemed to sweep aside the scandal, and the outrage which had been previously voiced at their liaison.

Together or alone, Ferguson could see them clearly. Catherine, her dark hair streaming unchecked in the wind while she walked on the cliff path, or paused by the stile where he had seen them once, as if to watch some approaching ship. Perhaps hoping . . .

Now there was no hope, and her man, her lover and the nation's hero, was buried at sea. Near his old
Hyperion,
where so many had died, men Ferguson had never forgotten. The same ship Adam had joined as a fourteen year old midshipman. Nancy, Lady Roxby, would be remembering that too, Adam in a captain's uniform, but to her still the boy who had walked from Penzance when his mother had died. The name ‘Bolitho'
written on a scrap of paper was all he had had. And now he was the last Bolitho.

There were to be other, grander ceremonies in the near future, in Plymouth, and then at Westminster Abbey, and he wondered if Lady Catherine would go to London and risk the prying eyes and the jealous tongues which had dogged her relationship with the nation's hero.

He heard a step in the yard and guessed it was Young Matthew, the senior coachman, making his rounds, visiting the horses, his dog Bosun puffing slowly behind him. Old now, the dog was partly deaf and had failing eyesight, but no stranger would ever pass him without his croaking bark.

Matthew had been in church also. Still called ‘young', but a married man now, he was another part of the family,
the little crew
as Sir Richard had called them.

Buried at sea. Perhaps it was better. No aftermath, no false display of grief. Or would there be?

He thought of the tablet on the wall of the church beneath the marble bust of Captain Julius Bolitho, who had fallen in battle in 1664.

It said it all, especially to those assembled in the old church in this place of seafarers, the navy and the coastguard, fishermen and sailors from the packets and traders which sailed on every tide throughout the year. The sea was their life. It was also the enemy.

He had sensed it when the church had resounded at the last to
The Sailors' Hymn
.

He had heard the bang of a solitary gun, like the one which had preceded the service, and seen Adam turn once to look at his first lieutenant. People had parted to allow the family to leave. Lady Catherine had reached out to touch Ferguson's sleeve as she had passed; he had seen the veil clinging to her face.

He went to the window again. The lights were still burning.
He would send one of the girls to deal with it, if Grace was too stricken to do it.

He thought of the shipwreck again. Adam had come to the house when Vice-Admiral Keen's young wife had been there; Keen, too, had been aboard the
Golden Plover
.

Zenoria, from the village of Zennor. He knew Allday had suspected something between them, and he himself had wondered what had happened that night. Then the girl lost her only child, her son by Keen, in an accident, and had thrown herself off the cliff at the notorious Trystan's Leap. He had been with Catherine Somervell when they had brought the small, broken body ashore.

Adam Bolitho had certainly changed in some way. Matured? He considered it. No, it went far deeper than that.

Something Allday had said stood out in his mind, like the epitaph.

They looked so right together
.

Captain Adam Bolitho sat in one of the high-backed chairs by the open hearth and half-listened to the occasional moan of the wind. It was freshening, south-easterly; they would have to keep their wits about them tomorrow when
Unrivalled
weighed anchor.

He shifted slightly in the chair, which with its twin was amongst the oldest furniture in the house. It was turned away from the dark windows, away from the sea.

He stared at the goblet of brandy on the table beside him, catching the candlelight which brought life to this room, the grave portraits, the paintings of unknown ships and forgotten battles.

How many Bolithos had sat here like this, he wondered, not knowing what the next horizon might bring, or if they would ever return?

His uncle must have thought it on that last day when he had left this house to join his flagship. Leaving Catherine outside where there was only darkness now, except for Ferguson's cottage. His lights would remain until the old house was asleep.

He had been surprised by Lieutenant Galbraith's request to join him at the church; he had never met Richard Bolitho
as far as Adam knew. But even in
Unrivalled
he had felt it. Something lost. Something shared.

He wondered if Catherine was able to sleep. He had pleaded with her to stay, but she had insisted on accompanying Nancy back to her house on the adjoining estate.

He stood, and looked at the stairway where she had said farewell. Without the veil she had looked strained and tired. And beautiful.

‘It would be a bad beginning – for you, Adam. If we stayed here together there would be food for rumour. I would spare you that!' She had spoken so forcefully that he had felt her pain, the anguish which she had tried to contain in the church and afterwards.

She had looked around this same room. Remembering. ‘You have your new ship, Adam, so this must be your new beginning. I shall watch over matters here in Falmouth. It is yours now.
Yours by right
.' Again, she had spoken as if to emphasise what she herself had already foreseen.

He walked abruptly to the big family Bible, on the table where it had always lain. He had gone through it several times; it contained the history of a seafaring family, a roll of honour.

He opened it at the page with great care, imagining the faces watching him, the portraits at his back and lining the stairway. A separate entry in the familiar, sweeping handwriting he had come to know, to love, in letters from his uncle, and in various log books and despatches when he had served him as a junior officer.

Perhaps this was what troubled Catherine, the subject of his rights and his inheritance. The date was that upon which his surname of Pascoe had been changed to Bolitho. His uncle had written,
To the memory of my brother Hugh, Adam's father, once lieutenant in His Britannic Majesty's Navy, who died on 7th May 1795
.

The Call of Duty was the Path to Glory
.

His father, who had brought disgrace to this family, and who had left his son illegitimate.

He closed the Bible and picked up a candlestick. The stair creaked as he passed the portrait of Captain James Bolitho, who had lost an arm in India.
My grandfather.
Bryan Ferguson
had shown him how, if you stood in the right place and the daylight favoured you, you could see where the artist had overpainted the arm with a pinned-up, empty sleeve after his return home.

The stair had protested that night when Zenoria had come down to find him weeping, unable to come to terms with the news that his uncle, Catherine, and Valentine Keen had been reported lost in the
Golden Plover.
And the madness which had followed; the love which he could not share. It was all contained, so much passion, so much grief, in this old house below Pendennis Castle.

He pushed open the door and hesitated as if someone was watching. As if she might still be here.

He strode across the room and opened the heavy curtains. There was a moon now, he could see the streaks of cloud passing swiftly across it like tattered banners.

He turned and looked at the room, the bed, the candlelight playing over the two portraits, one of his uncle as a young captain, in the outdated coat with its white lapels which his wife Cheney had liked so much, and one of Cheney on the same wall, restored by Catherine after Belinda had thrown it aside.

He held the candles closer to the third portrait, which Catherine had given to Richard after the
Golden Plover
disaster. Of herself, in the seamen's clothing with which she had covered her body in the boat she had shared with the despairing survivors. ‘The other Catherine', she had called it. The woman few had ever seen, he thought, apart from the man she had loved more than life itself. She must have paused here before leaving with Nancy; there was a smell of jasmine, like her skin when she had kissed him, had held him tightly as if unable or unwilling to break away.

He had taken her hand to his lips but she had shaken her head, and had looked into his face, as if afraid to lose something. He could still feel it like a physical force.

‘No, dear Adam. Just hold me.' She had lifted her chin. ‘Kiss me.'

He touched the bed, trying to keep the image at bay.
Kiss me.
Were they both so alone now that they needed reassurance? Was that the true reason for Catherine's departure on this terrible day?

He closed the door behind them and walked down the stairs. Some of the candles had gone, or had burned so low as to be useless, but those by the hearth had been replaced. One of the servant girls must have done it. He smiled. No secrets in this old house.

He swallowed some brandy and ran his fingers along the carvings above the fireplace. The family motto,
For My Country's Freedom,
worn smooth by many hands. Men leaving home. Men inspired by great deeds. Men in doubt, or afraid.

He sat down again.

The house, the reputation he must follow, the people who relied on him, it would all take time to accept or even understand.

And tomorrow he would be the captain again, all he had ever wanted.

He looked at the darkening stairs and imagined Bolitho coming down to face some new challenge, to accept a responsibility which might and did finally destroy him.