The Admiral's Daughter (18 page)

Seeing her suitably impressed, he changed tack. “An' above the riggin' house we have the sail loft. Ye'll know how important this is when I say that we carried more'n four acres o' sail, and if y' stop t' think that we needs so much spare canvas, an' ropes wear s' fast, and multiply this by the hundreds o' ships we keep at sea . . .”

A broad canal crossed their path, running a quarter of a mile straight into the interior of the dockyard. Fortunately it was spanned by a swivelling footbridge. “This is th' Camber. Right up there we have th' boat pond an' it's also where
Teazer
hoisted aboard her fit of anchors. An' I think I c'n find ye somethin' there tolerably divertin'.”

They turned left towards a stone building a good hundred yards square, bristling like a porcupine with multitudes of tall chimneys. A muffled cacophony of clanking, screeches and deep thumping strengthened as they neared the fitful yellow glare at the glassless windows.

“The smithy,” Cecilia pronounced, seeing an expanse of adjacent open ground covered with hundreds of finished anchors, each set upright and painted black against rust.

“Aye, the blacksmith's shop. But let's take a peek inside.” It was a scene from the
Inferno:
hundreds of men at work on fifty huge forges in an atrocious clamour, white-hot metal showering sparks into the smoky gloom, the dismal clanking of the bellows chains and pale faces darting about with red-hot objects.

“Shall we see th' hammer forge, Cec?” Kydd shouted in her ear. “Hercules, they call it, an' it takes thirty men to—”

It seemed that his sister would be happy to defer this pleasure to another time, and instead was content to hear that the shop contributed an amazing number of metal objects to be found about a ship-of-war, and that when it was time for anchor-forging the men demanded large quantities of strong ale in place of their usual gallon of small beer, such were the hideous conditions.

The wonders of the dockyard seemed endless. At the mast house Cecilia admired a 120-foot mainmast for a first-rate man-o'-war being shaped from a number of separate pieces to form a single spar ten feet round before it was rolled into the mast pond with a thunderous splash.

At the rope-walk she saw yarns ravelled in the upper storey ready to be laid up together into strands below, and these then twisted mechanically against each other to form the rope. “A sizeable hundred-fathom cable takes three thousand yarns,” Kydd explained, as she watched.

After the acrid pungency of the pitch house, where she was told about the difference between the two tars to be found aboard ship—one was asphaltum from Trinidad used for caulking deck seams and the other, quite different, derived from fragrant pine-tree resin from the Baltic and was used for tarring rope—she confessed, “Dear Thomas, I'm faint with impressions. Do let us find somewhere to sit down and refresh.”

It was a little disappointing—there was the wonderful sea stench to be experienced only in the burning of old barnacled timbers to recover the copper and, of course, the whole south corner where so many noble ships lay building on the stocks. And the Bunker's Hill battery, which had a most curious brass gun from Paris . . . But perhaps it would be better to leave some sights for another time.

They walked slowly back to the gate. Cecilia wore a dazed look, and Kydd asked, “Did you enjoy th' party at all?”

“I did—very much, thank you, Thomas,” she roused herself to say.

“The guests seemed t' have a good time,” Kydd said proudly. “Did ye notice the admiral's daughter? Persephone's her name,” he added casually. “So good in her t' come.”

“Oh, yes. It was surprising, I suppose.”

“Well, she was invited b' another lady but, Cec, I think she's interested in me. She asked about
Teazer
an' if she suited me . . . Well, anyway, I thought she was.”

“Dear brother! Hers is a notable family and she's certain to have a whole train of admirers of quite another sort to ourselves.”

“But—”

“Thomas, she's a very nice person, I can tell, but please don't mistake her politeness for anything else, I beg.”

“Miss Lockwood?” Kydd advanced into the upper room of the premises where he had been told she was waiting.

“Why, Mr Kydd! You're very prompt, you know—I'd only just arrived.” She wore flowers in her hair, which complemented her gay morning dress. The only other in the room was an unctuous proprietor, who hovered discreetly. “What do you think?”

Kydd advanced to inspect the oil. It was a robust piece, a first-rate vessel of another age with bellying sails and two sloops on an opposing course. The man scuttled up and said quickly, “Ah, Samuel Scott,
A First Rate Shortening Sail—
time of the second George.”

He was cast a withering look and retreated.

“Mr Kydd?”

This was not a time for hasty opinions and Kydd took his time. “A fine painting,” he began, aware from the discreet price tag that the artist was no mere dauber. “It is th' commander-in-chief, as we c'n see from the union at the main, an' if I'm not mistaken there is the gentleman himself in the stern gallery with another.”

She peered closer, unavoidably bringing her face close enough to his that he could sense her warmth. “Ha—hm,” he continued, trying to marshal his thoughts. “However, here I find a puzzle. The name is
Shortening Sail
but I see th' sheets are well in, an' the buntlines o' the main course are bein' overhauled. If there are no men on th' yard takin' in sail it speaks t' me more of loosin' sail, setting 'em abroad.”

“Mr Scott was well known as a marine artist, a friend to Mr Hogarth. Could it be that he's amiss in his nauticals, do you think?” Persephone asked.

Kydd swallowed. “Miss Lockwood, if ye'll observe the sea—it has no form, all up an' down as it were. Real sea t' this height always has a wind across it an' you can tell from th' waves its direction, an' this must be th' same as the set o' the sails.”

She waited for Kydd to continue. “We have here our boats a-swim, which is tellin' us th' seas are not s' great. So why then do we not see t'gallants set in any o' the ships? And y'r sloops—at sea we do not fly our union at the fore or th' ensign at the staff. This is reserved f'r when we take up our moorin's, and—”

“Bravo!” she applauded. “I
was
right to ask your assistance, Mr Kydd. We shall have no further dealings with this artist.”

She threw a look at the proprietor, who hurried back. “I can see we have a client of discrimination,” he said, avoiding Kydd's eye. “Therefore I will allow you to inspect this Pocock,” he said importantly, unlacing a folio. “A watercolour.
Le Juste and the Invincible.
Should this be more to your taste, do you think?”

He drew it out and gave it to Persephone, who handed it pointedly to Kydd. It was of quite another quality, a spirited interchange between two ships-of-the-line, the leeward Frenchman nearly hidden in clouds of powder-smoke. The liveliness and colour of the sea, a deep Atlantic green, was faultless. “The Glorious First of June, of course,” the man added smoothly, seeing Kydd's admiration.

“You were present at that, were you not, Mr Kydd?” Persephone put in, to the proprietor's evident chagrin.

But Kydd had been a shipwrecked seaman at the time, held in a hulk at Portsmouth. “Er, not at that action,” he answered shortly.

“Neither was Papa,” she replied stoutly. “Yet I do believe you were in another battle besides the Nile.”

“Aye—that was Camperdown,” he said.

“Do you have any oil of Camperdown?” she enquired.

Kydd felt relief: the price of the Pocock was alarming.

“A Whitcombe, perhaps?” the man offered.

Camperdown had been a defining moment for Kydd. Soon after the nightmare of the mutiny at the Nore he had found escape in the blood-lust of the battle, the hardest-fought encounter the Royal Navy had met with during the war. It was there that he had won his battlefield commission to lieutenant.

His eyes focused again; his battle quarters had been on the gun deck and the fight had been an invisible and savage chaos outside, away from his sight and knowledge. However, from what he had heard about the engagement afterwards, it was not hard to piece together the point of view of the painting.

“Yes. In the middle this is Admiral Duncan in
Venerable
right enough, drubbing the Dutchy de Winter in
Fryhide
here. Y' sees th' signal, number five? It means t' engage more closely.” It had been such a near-run battle, with men who had been in open mutiny so soon before. Raw memories were coming to life. “There's
Monarch—
that's Rear Admiral Onslow who gave me m' step. His family is fr'm near Guildford . . .”

Sensing his charged mood Persephone asked softly, “Is
this
sea to your satisfaction?”

“It's—it's a fine sea,” Kydd said quietly. “Short 'n' steep, as ye'd expect in the shallow water they has off the Texel.”

“Then this will be the one. I'll take it.” The proprietor hurried off with it, leaving them alone.

Persephone turned to him with a warm smile. “So, now I have my painting. That was kind.” She moved to a bench against the opposite wall. “Do let's rest here for a moment,” she said, sitting down gracefully. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to join her.

“Tell me, Mr Kydd, if you'll forgive the impertinence, I cannot help but observe that you look the very figure of a mariner. Would you tell me, what
was
it that first called you to the sea?”

Kydd hesitated: any information she would have been able to find about his past would only have covered his service as an officer and he was free to say anything he wished. “I was a pressed man.”

She blinked in surprise. “Were you really?”

“Aye. It was only at Camperdown I was given th' quarterdeck.” He looked steadily at her, but saw only a dawning understanding.

“Yet you took to the sea—as though you were born to it.”

“The sea is—a different world, way of living. An'—an' it's excitin' in a way th' land can never be.”

“Exciting?”

“Th' feel of a deck under y'r feet when the bow meets th' open sea—always y'r ship curtsies to Neptune an' then she's alive an' never still. You feel, er, um . . .” he finished lamely.

“No! Do go on!”

But Kydd kept his silence: he wasn't about to make a fool of himself before a lady of her quality, and in any event she would discover the full truth of his origins sooner or later.

“Then I must take it that the sea's mystery is not for the female sex,” she said teasingly, then subsided. “Mr Kydd, do, please, forgive my curiosity, but there are so many experiences denied to a woman and my nature is not one to bear this easily.”

She looked away for a moment, then turned to ask, in level tones, “If you are a sailor and have a—a
tendre
for ships, what is your feeling when you fire off your great cannons into another, which contains sailors like you?”

Was she trying to provoke him? She must know it was his duty as a naval officer . . . Or was she trying to reach him in some way?

“Well, in course, we see this as th' foe who brings an item o' war forward as we're obliged t' remove, like a piece at chess, an' we fire at it until it is removed.”

“And when you are looking down a musket-barrel at another human being?” She regarded him gravely.

The proprietor bustled up with the parcelled work. “I have it ready, your ladyship, if you—”

“I shall be down presently,” she said evenly.

They were left alone once more and she looked at him expectantly.

“I fire on th' uniform, not th' man,” Kydd responded.

“Your sword. You stand before a man you would pierce with it. Does it not cross your mind that—”

“I have killed a man—several. That I'm here today before ye is because I did.” What was this about?

She smiled softly. “I was right. You are different. Is it because you won your place in the world the hard way? Your naval officer of the usual sort would be telling me of duty and honour, but you see through the superficialities to the hard matter without adornment.”

Rising to her feet she straightened her skirt and, in a businesslike voice, went on, “You are an interesting man, Mr Kydd. Perhaps we may continue this conversation on another occasion. Do you ride?”

The man from London stood up briskly, strode to the centre of the room and looked about. “Smuggling! If there are any among you who still thinks to puff up smuggling as the stuff of romance, then, sir, I will take the most forceful issue with you. It's a pernicious and abiding folderol that conceals the most frightful consequences to the nation.”