The Following Wind Read online

  ‘I see, thank you. And did you by happenstance go there to Whitehall through Water Passage?’

  James felt his heart thud, but he remained outwardly calm. ‘Water Passage? Where is that?’

  ‘It is a lane leading down into Whitehall, sir.’

  ‘I do not know it.’

  ‘Leading off Northumberland Street, acrost the Strand from this hotel, sir.’

  ‘I do not know it. Why d’you ask me this?’

  ‘Thank you, I need not trouble you no more, Sir James for the moment. Goodnight to you. Goodnight, Lady Hayter. Now that the remains has been removed from your room, I will leave you to your rest.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When the sergeant and his constables had left, James went to Rennie’s room and knocked. There was no response, and when he tried the door it was not locked. He went in. The room was small, and James quickly saw that the bed had not been slept in. There was none of the usual evidence of occupation a hat on a chair, a pair of shoes beneath, a flask on the table. The room was bare. Rennie had gone.

  James returned to his own room, where he saw that a heavy rug had been placed over the bloodstain on the floor, and a jar of potpourri placed on a side table. He roused Catherine and said to her: ‘William has decamped. I think we must do the same.’

  ‘I have only just returned to bed. Surely we cannot leave without notice. Will not the sergeant wish--’

  Over her, James: ‘William I am certain has gone to Chatham. My duty is to return to Portsmouth, without delay. It is already first light. I will rouse Mrs. Peebles and settle our bill, and then we must away.’

  ‘How will we travel to Portsmouth so early? The mail coach does not depart until this evening.’

  ‘You forget, my love, I am now a rich man. We will hire a post chaise, and drive down.’

  ‘You are injured, James. Are you sure this will be the best course ?’

  Impatiently: ‘I am a sea officer under orders. The nation is at war. I cannot waste time.’ A moment, then: ‘I am very sorry to be in so much haste, when you have been through such an ordeal .’ A brief smile. ‘If you would like it, why not stay on in London for a few days, my darling?’

  ‘I will not stay on here alone.’ Catherine hastily threw off the covers and got out of bed. ‘I haven’t even my maid with me.’

  While Catherine dressed James went to settle the bill. There was a delay after-ward, when the servant sent to fetch the post chaise from the nearby livery stable had to wait while the chaise and horses were made ready. Mrs. Peebles, after the upsets of the night, was very doubtful that such an arrangement could be made at so early an hour. James waited anxiously with Catherine in Mrs. Peebles’ parlour until at last, at a quarter past eight o’clock, the post chaise came. Catherine was dismayed that the green liveried postillion, riding the nearside bay, was a youth of sixteen.

  ‘Can a mere boy be trusted to know the way?’ To James, in an anxious whisper. ‘It

  is a long journey, and I am fearful we shall become lost.’

  James asked the postillion very bluntly if he knew the way to Portsmouth, via the post inns, and received a confident response. ‘I do, sir, certainly.’ At half past eight they set off, clattering across the cobbles, and Mrs. Peebles breathed a sigh of relief.

  Her relief did not last. At nine o’clock the watch sergeant returned, wishing ‘again to speak to Sir James Hayter, if you please.’ When he was informed that the Hayters had already departed, the sergeant was greatly incensed. He had wished to ask Sir James a great many further questions, he complained. Why had not Mrs. Peebles caused him to remain?

  ‘Make him stay here, when he was very determined to go away? I am a poor widow woman, sergeant, that serves her guests and does their bidding. I cannot order them, nor re-quire them, to do nothing at all.’

  ‘Then it is a damned shame, Mrs. P.’ Pulling off his hat and slapping it against his leg. ‘A damned shame, when I desired him most partic’lar to re-main.’ He went to the door and peered out, as if to catch a glimpse of the departed couple, then returned to Mrs. Peebles. ‘What am I to say to the magistrate? Hey, madam?’

  ‘Why should you say anything, sergeant?’

  ‘A man has been shot dead! And the party that has done ain’t here no more!’

  ‘Shot, yes, and only what he deserved. But no murder has been done, sergeant.’ Mrs. Peebles, shaking her head. ‘In truth, murder was pre-vented, was it not?’

  ‘So you may say, madam. So you may say. But other things has occurred, and I am greatly vexed that Sir James has gone away without they was discussed.’

  ‘Erm have you ate your breakfast, sergeant?’

  ‘Breakfast, madam? I have not even drank a cup of tea, this morning. I have been up the whole of the night, and now I am back here.’

  ‘Then kindly allow me to pro-vide. Eggs, if you like, and tea, and toast and marmalade. Will you allow me?’

  ‘You are very kind, Mrs. P.’ Placated. ‘I will, thankee.’

  Neither of them noticed the gentleman in a dark coat standing just outside Mrs. Peebles’ door in Bedford Street. His dark hat shaded his face in the morning light, and his watchful eyes. After a few moments he moved away from the door, and turned into the Strand. Presently he reached Charing Cross, paused a moment, then turned the corner and walked down into Whitehall. As the post chaise reached the outskirts of London, and the smell of country air, James suddenly clutched at his hip, and:

  ‘My sword!’

  Catherine, half asleep beside him, roused herself.

  ‘What is the matter .?’

  ‘I have forgot my sword!’ He stared distractedly out of the window, then: ‘Nay, I know what has happened ’

  ‘Your sword ?’

  ‘It was William, in course.’

  ‘William ?’

  ‘It is nothing, it is nothing. It is all right.’

  They changed horses twice, at Guildford and Petersfield, and did not reach the Marine Hotel at Portsmouth until dusk. Catherine had slept nearly all the way. James had not slept at all.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  James and Catherine went up to their suite of rooms at once, called for hot water and refreshments, and James read an urgent note left for him by his first, Lieutenant Hallett, concerning the repair to Ventura. Catherine wished to call in a local doctor to examine James’s head, and prescribe physic. James had removed the bandage from his head, declared the wound the better for it, and his head, and refused even to consider medical help.

  ‘He will give me laudanum, or a damned blue pill or both when what I want is a good dinner and a glass of wine.’

  ‘You complained in the chaise of the headache, James, and I think--’

  ‘Headache is entirely natural in a man that has been struck on the head. The moment I have ate and drank, it will pass. I must make a reply to this note.’

  ‘Cannot that wait until you are rested?’

  ‘I am all right.’ Rising to go to the table under the window, the note in his hand.

  ‘I am quite all right.’

  ‘You do not look it, my darling.’ Concerned. ‘You are very pallid.’

  ‘It is nothing. It is simply the light on my face.’

  As he reached the table and put a hand on the back of the chair he staggered, clutched his head and gave a sudden gasping groan, and collapsed.

  Catherine’s cry of alarm brought both her maid and James’s manservant Hamble at a run. Hamble lifted James, arm and shoulder, and brought him carefully to the bed. The doctor was summoned.

  The doctor came. He was a man in late middle life, rather stout, his breath wheezing from the effort of climbing the stairs. He wore on an old fashioned wig, and there was powder on the shoulders of his green coat.

  ‘I have left my gig hhh-in the yard,’ he announced as he came into the room. ‘I do not like to leave it at the entrance. My mare grows fretful, and hhh-thus I grow fretful myself. Now then.’ He put down his bag on the chair by the bed, perched on the ed
ge which made the bed sag and peered at James.

  ‘What is your name, sir?’

  James looked at him dazedly, and: ‘Who the devil are you .?’

  ‘I am Doctor Nathaniel Webber. That ain’t of great cons-hhh-quence. More to the

  point, sir, is who you are.’

  ‘Lieutenant J. R. Hayter, RN. Am I wounded?’

  ‘Hm, I should say that you was, indeed.’ Peering. ‘There is a wound on your scalp.

  I will not ask how it was occasioned. That is no concern of mine.’

  The doctor called for light, a candle holder was brought and placed by the bed, and the doctor rummaged in his bag, and produced a jar of salve and a neat roll of bandage linen. He peered, wheezed, and applied the salve with neat little dabbing movements of his fingers. He bandaged James’s head.

  ‘He is not Lieutenant Hayter .’ whispered Catherine anxiously to the doctor.

  ‘That ain’t his name?’ Turning to her.

  ‘No no, that is his name. But he is Captain Hayter. He has forgot, somehow.’

  ‘Blow to the skull not uncommon.’ The doctor produced his silver cased watch, and felt the pulse in James’s neck. ‘Steady .steady .’ He put away his watch, then held up a finger before James’s face.

  ‘Now then, how many fingers d’y’see, sir?’

  ‘What? one finger .’

  ‘Good.’ He held up two fingers. ‘And now ?’

  ‘Two fingers, for God’s sake I want a glass of wine .’ Attempting to sit up.

  The doctor gently pushed him back down on the pillow. ‘Not tonight, m’dear sir, not tonight. Y’may take light victuals. Gruel, or broth. And toast. I recommend toast, moistened in the broth.’

  ‘Toast? Is it breakfast time ?’

  ‘It will be, sir, it will be tomorrow morning. Now then, I expect you thought I would bleed you, hey? Or make you swallow tincture? That is what physicians do, ain’t it? I am the exception. I never bleed unless the patient is near to death, and nothing else will answer. Nor do I prescribe laudanum unless undue excitement is present. You are neither near to death, nor agitated unwholesome. Therefore I will go away to my dinner, and leave ye to your rest.’ Easing himself off the bed, and taking up his bag.

  Catherine saw him to the door. Anxiously: ‘Will he remember that he is Captain Hayter? Will he be fully restored?’

  ‘By tomorrow morning, madam, unless I am much mistook. I will call again then.

  In the meanwhile, when he has ate something, he must sleep. Sleep and sleep, as

  many hours together as may be possible. Goodnight to you.’

  Broth and toast were ordered, but when they came twenty minutes later James was already asleep, and Catherine did not wake him.

  He slept until nine the following morning, when Lieutenant Hallett came to the Marine Hotel and urgently requested an interview.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Now that he was clearer in his mind about the task ahead daunting though it was Rennie had prudently put the more unpleasant aspects of his sojourn in London behind him, by leaving Mrs. Peebles’ hotel directly after returning from the Admiralty. Until they made rendezvous at sea, he and James would now proceed independently. Rennie had found and spent the night in another hotel in London, and knowing nothing of the intruder in the Hayters’ room and his violent end, had come down to Chatham on the long ferry next day, and spent the following night at a not very comfortable inn.

  Chatham was not a naval dockyard with which Rennie was familiar. His dealings with dockyards in previous commissions had been at Deptford, and Portsmouth. When he came in the morning to the dockyard gate, to see for himself what progress had been made in the large repair to Expedient, he found the yard both confusing and intimidating. The buildings were rather grand the gatehouse, the rope house and the storehouse with its clock tower and the ground occupied by the yard long and deep. Rennie had to ask directions more than once to find his way to his ship.

  A clerk hurrying across the cobbles, clutching a sheaf of lists, pointed a finger west and said:

  ‘Not this slipway, immediate. That is Nugent 38, building. Nor the dry dock beyond. That is Heracletus, coppering. She is at her mooring number in the river.’

  ‘Heracletus?’

  ‘Ffff-nay-Captain. Expedient. Or was you seeking another ship altogether?’

  ‘No no, Expedient.’

  ‘At her mooring number. Say to the ferryman number twenty.’

  ‘Number twenty, thankee.’

  The clerk hurried on, saying to himself with a shake of the head: ‘Sea officers .’

  Rennie had thought it appropriate to wear full dress, but was now regretting that decision. The day was already warm, and he was sweating.

  Rennie had never expected to see Expedient again, leave alone tread her quarterdeck again as her commander. When he caught sight of his ship a few minutes later he forgot his discomfort, forgot all distraction, and stared in wonder. She had been restored, lifted, made over entirely fresh and new. Her paintwork, her timbers, her copper, even her hammock cranes all glowed and gleamed as the dockyard artificers high aloft rove up the last of her rigging. Her

  guns and stores were not yet in her, and she was riding a little high, but that did not detract from the simple beauty of her lines as she eased on her mooring cables, sunlight glinting on the water.

  A tear formed in Rennie’s eye and fell on his cheek, and there was a lump in his throat.

  ‘By God .’ His breath catching a little. ‘By God, I am glad to see her again ’

  He recovered his composure, sniffed forcefully, and hailed the ferryman.

  In ten minutes he had been rowed out to the mooring number and now went aboard, climbing the starboard side steps with a sense of excitement. He strode aft on the quarterdeck to the tafferel, and turned to look forrard. The rigging artificers aloft ignored the figure far below. Rennie removed from his coat his official papers, and feeling slightly awkward since he was entirely alone on deck commissioned and took possession of his ship as her captain, in the King’s name, by reading the stilted formal words aloud.

  In truth he should have done so in the presence of the ship’s standing officers gunner, carpenter, boatswain, purser and cook but he did not know if they were aboard. As usual at the end of a ship’s commission, the surviving officers and people had dispersed when Expedient returned from her previous one. And because it then became nearly certain, given the ship’s parlous condition, that she would be broken up, her standing officers the only men who remained permanently part of any sound ship’s complement had followed them.

  ‘In course new men have been appointed by the Navy Board,’ Rennie said to himself as he thrust away the papers in his coat. ‘But I do not know them have not even seen their names on a list.’

  There were many other things Rennie did not know, or have at his disposal. He had his warrant of commission and his preliminary instructions, but his final instructions had not yet come to him, and would be sealed when they did. He did not know the names of his first, second and third lieutenants, his six midship-men, his captain of marines, his sailing master, or his ship’s doctor. All these men would come to him, he had been told during that long afternoon at the Admiralty, as would his people his full complement of two hundred and sixty souls. Now, as he surveyed his ship from the tafferel, it seemed unlikely that between today and a very few weeks ahead he could achieve it all. Gather his officers and people, take in a vast quantity and variety of stores for long foreign service, take in his guns, powder and shot, trim his ship, muster all his lists, books and accounts, sign everything off and declare his ship ready for the sea. It looked like an impossible task. But then it always did, at the beginning of a commission. He took a deep breath, stepped forrard to the wheel, and bellowed aloft:

  ‘You there, in the maintop! Where is the boatswain!’

  At the Marine Hotel James ate a hasty but hearty breakfast upstairs, then came down in his undress coat to the dingy small parlour, where
Lieutenant Hallett had been seated waiting in a hard chair, and trying to be patient, for above half-an-hour. From the doorway:

  ‘Mr. Hallett. What have you to tell me?’

  ‘Good morning, sir.’ Rising, his hat under his arm. ‘Erm it is not good news, I fear.’

  ‘Then it is bad news.’ Stepping into the room. ‘Well?’

  Mr. Hallett now saw his captain’s bandaged head. ‘I did not know you had been injured, sir.’

  ‘A mishap in London. It is nothing.’

  Lieutenant Hallett brought a chair for James. ‘Will you like to sit down, sir?’

  ‘No yes very well, I will. Thankee, Mr. Hallett.’ He sat down, and stiffly turned toward his lieutenant, who had remained standing. ‘Now.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Erm some considerable part of our copper, that we had thought was sound, must now be replaced, sir.’

  ‘But surely the copper sheathing was examined during the survey of repair, when she was put into dry dock?’

  ‘Yes sir, that is so. However, the Master Shipwright was poorly that day it was a mere two tide docking and the artificers assigned to assist him were evidently in dispute with him, and .and it is now apparent they failed in their obligation.’

  ‘Failed in their obligation, Mr. Hallett? They did not do their bloody work! They never examined her copper at all! Ain’t that what you mean?’

  Mr. Hallett cleared his throat. ‘I fear it is, sir.’

  ‘Then for Christ’s sake say so, in plain language.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Again he cleared his throat. ‘The copper sheathing on the greater part of the larboard bottom planking, aft of the mainmast, must be stripped and

  replaced. Erm and there is ’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘There is evidence that her timbers may have been damaged in addition, from the sheathing lifting away all of which must very probably have occurred during her last commission. Which, as we know, was in the West Indies, sir.’