The Following Wind Page 9

James Hayter

  Rennie read the letter a second time, and was confirmed in his suspicion that there was something amiss in the way it concluded. Your very sincere friend struck a false note. He did not believe that James would naturally conclude in that way.

  ‘Why not say simply: In friendship ?’ Rennie asked himself aloud. ‘Or: ‘Sincerely. ?’ Then:

  ‘And is he also perhaps behind this young fellow Allbright? Else how could Allbright have known where to find me, hey?’ Then:

  ‘It is all highly dubious. It is all very suspicious indeed.’

  He sat on the edge of his bed, began to read the letter a third time, then put it aside.

  ‘Now then. Is he attempting to convey something between the lines? Has he been acting on the orders of others all along, hey? So that he may only let me know what is what by devious means?’

  Rennie took up the letter yet again. Sighed. Made a face. Drew in a great sniffing breath, and:

  ‘Damned nonsense, William Rennie! Do not permit yourself wantonly be consumed by such addled, piddling fancy! In course he is sincere! In course he is! He is your dearest friend, good God, and you are an untrusting, misconceiving, inward turning, blind bloody fool!’

  He folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

  ‘I will meet young Allbright, treat him kindly, and do what I can for him.’

  He patted his pocket.

  ‘But I will take James’s advice and go armed, by God.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HM frigate Expedient 36 heeled tall as she beat into the westerly wind, close hauled on the starboard tack. Her pennant streamed rippling from the mainmast trucktop, tacks and bowlines hummed taut on her angled sails, and her vangs stretched up taut to the mizzen gaff far above Captain Rennie’s head as he stood on the quarterdeck. Cold air streaming across the ship’s deck was for a lingering moments prism hued with misty spray. Heavier beads of spray, flung up over the bow and swept back, flew towards Rennie’s face. At the last instant he ducked his head. The top of his battered thwartwise hat caught the spray, and for the thousandth time soaked it up. The sea ran rippling cold along the wales and rushed seething aft. A pair of seabirds wheeled high above the wake. Away to the west great clouds loomed and massed on the horizon.

  Captain Rennie braced himself, feet apart, hands behind his back, as the bow dipped a little. The ship righted herself.

  ‘Mr. Considine!’

  Expedient’s stocky young first lieutenant approached, touching his hat. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Larboard tack, if y’please. We are boarding short today. And I will like to hear from Mr. Mace, presently.’

  ‘The carpenter, sir?’

  ‘Aye, Mr. Considine. I wish to know how much of the sea is getting into us, close hauled.’

  ‘Depth of water in the well. Aye-aye, sir.’

  Again he touched his hat, then turned forrard, raised his silver speaking trumpet and began to bellow orders. When the ship had duly come through the wind and was heeling on the larboard tack, he went below to find the carpenter.

  Rennie turned aft to the tafferel, looked at the line of the wake, brought his long glass from under his arm and focused on the Needles to the east. They would sail west a further half glass, wear ship, and return to their mooring number at Spithead.

  Expedient had come to Portsmouth a week ago, following instructions to do so direct from the Admiralty. The original plan had been for Expedient and Ventura to sail separately from Chatham and Portsmouth and make their way independently to their rendezvous at sea, far from England. A rendezvous that would only be revealed to Rennie and James Hayter when they had opened their sealed orders after sailing.

  All that had changed. There was now grave doubt that Ventura would be able to set sail at all. The damage to her timbers was far more extensive than had at first been realized, so extensive that she would be repairing in dry dock for at least two months, and possibly longer.

  The joint commission as conceived depended for its full realization on two ships.

  If both could not undertake the long voyage, if only one could weigh and make sail, then the venture was doomed. This was Captain Rennie’s understanding, made clear to him when he and James had spent that eventful afternoon at the Admiralty.

  He had waited at Chatham for his final sailing instructions, and waited; they had not come. Instead had come the urgent letter sending him forthwith to Ports-mouth, where he was given a mooring number and told to wait.

  His full complement of souls had been achieved just before he departed Chatham Dockyard, where he had taken in most of his stores, an entirely new double battery of eighteen pounder Blomefield pattern guns, and new carronades, but not yet his powder and shot. After much confusion and sometimes bad tempered exchange at Portsmouth, Rennie had succeeded in getting his powder and shot, a laden powder hoy coming alongside several days after Expedient’s arrival. His gunner Mr. Archibald was evidently well pleased with this achieve-ment. He had reported to Rennie in the day cabin:

  ‘It ain’t powder that has been back and forth months at sea and got damp, and then been reissued as restored, which I had feared after the trouble we was made to suffer when we first made our requests. No, sir. It is new powder, the very finest charcoal cylinder. We shall not want for full broadside fighting power this commission. And our shot is all new, in the bargain. No troublesome chipping and smoothing and blacking. If we was to go into action tomorrow, we should acquit ourself wonderful well, sir, we should indeed.’

  ‘Would we, Mr. Archibald?’ Lifting an eyebrow. ‘When we had no gunnery exercises before we left Chatham, none at all could we fire both batteries, and reload, in under half-a-glass? With untried crews? I doubt it, you know.’

  Rennie had not attempted to contact James. The Admiralty letter had carried an explicit warning against such a meeting. He had seen Ventura at a distance, in dry dock number three, on his various vexatious trips ashore with his gunner and first lieutenant to see about Expedient’s powder and shot but nothing more.

  He could not contact James, but Rennie did write to Sylvia and tell her where he was, that it was unlikely he would be able to come to her at Norfolk, and asking her to come to him instead at Portsmouth.

  And now, today, as he gave the order for Expedient to wear and return, with a storm gathering in the west, he was none the wiser as to the fate of the commission. He sniffed in a deep breath. There was one thing he could do, in

  addition to shaking the ship down, and determining the depth of water in her well. He could discover just how good or bad his gun crews actually were.

  Rennie waited until the ship was running before, the Needles in the distance ahead, and again summoned his first.

  ‘Mr. Considine!’

  ‘Sir?’ Attending.

  ‘We will beat to quarters, and clear the decks for action!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Captain Rennie had met Lieutenant Allbright at Chatham, following the young man’s request, and he had not gone pistol armed when he did. Nor had Rennie asked the young man how he knew where to find him. In fact Rennie welcomed him, and indicated he was willing to ask for him as one of his Marine officers in Expedient, because he liked him. However, to Rennie’s very considerable surprise Lieutenant Allbright had declined.

  ‘You see, sir, I wish to join your ship not as an officer at all, but as an ordinary seaman. Simply as an ordinary seaman.’

  ‘Ordinary seaman, Mr. Allbright?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I have no love for my present life as a Marine officer, forever and always made to serve ashore. It is a valueless and worthless life, in truth, and I--’

  ‘Mr. Allbright.’ Over him. ‘I think you do not know what you are saying.’

  ‘Sir ?’

  ‘The rating ordinary seaman ain’t bestowed on every man that goes to sea, you know. It must be earned. Hard earned, over long months and years. If you was to be put on my ship’s books simply as a hand new to the sea, it could only be as landman idler .


  ‘Idler? D’y’mean an idle man?’

  ‘Indeed no. An idler must toil diligent, according to the watchbills, like all of the people. But his duties are .they are harsh, Mr. Allbright. As a man unskilled in seamanship, he is given the least pleasant of shipboard work. Captain of the Brown, as an instance.’

  ‘Captain of the ?’

  ‘Scrubbing down the heads, Mr. Allbright.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It is a life wholly unsuited, I think, to a young man like yourself, that is used to well, to more comfortable circumstances.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Accordingly, my advice to you if you do still earnestly wish to go to sea is to so do at your present rank.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Mind you, your way would not be easy, even then. Shipboard life is always difficult, at first. But you could find your way, I think, you could make you way, which is why I am willing to help. On one condition.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You must give me your word that you will never again entertain notions of demeaning and debasing yourself. Idle notions, Mr. Allbright.’

  ‘Yes, sir I see.’

  ‘Well, now do you wish it, Mr. Allbright? Do you wish me to write the necessary letters, and ask for you as lieutenant of Marines?’

  Lieutenant Allbright lifted his head. ‘I am very sorry to have troubled you, Captain Rennie. My wish was my wish is to go to sea before the mast. So far as I am concerned, that is the only way ahead for me.’

  ‘Very well, Mr. Allbright.’ A sigh. ‘I too am very sorry, since I fear that I can be of no further service to you.’ A shrug.

  ‘Yes, sir. I quite understand.’

  Rennie peered at the young man, and: ‘Will you indulge me, Mr. Allbright, and relieve my curiosity?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Why d’y’wish to do this thing? Submit yourself to such lowly toil and adversity of life? You are an officer and a gentleman. Where in God’s name is your reward in this?’

  ‘I wish to test myself.’

  ‘Test yourself?’

  ‘I wish to discover whether or no I am the man my father will not allow me to be.’

  ‘Ohh. Hmm. Yes, I see.’ A moment, his head bowed, then, lifting his head: ‘Will you allow me to say one thing more?’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir.’ Politely.

  ‘You would test yourself equally well as an officer, you know. A lieutenant of Marines in one of His Majesty’s fighting ships is tested very thorough, day upon

  day, the whole of the commission, and his duties are very far from lowly. They are vital indeed to the keeping of order and discipline in the ship, to the fighting

  of the guns, to the maintenance of skilled musketry and swordsmanship, and the mastery of the tops by sharpshooters in close action. Further, he is one of the first fighting men to go ashore in landing parties, on hostile shores. His standing in the ship, as a commissioned officer, allows him his own cabin, and an honour-able place at the gunroom table. If you join me in Expedient, Mr. Allbright, you will never be idle, you will never be dull. You will be tested to the farthest limits of your abilities and endurance, in all weathers, including the fiercest storms you have ever known. You will be always wholly and vigorously alive, as the ship herself is alive, and every officer on her deck.’ Rennie held up a finger. ‘A final point for your consideration. A Marine officer is entitled by his rank to a share in any and all prizes took.’

  ‘I had not thought of prizes, sir.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Leave aside prizes, then. What did’y’make of the rest?’

  ‘You are indeed very eloquent, sir ’

  ‘Yes, yes, never mind my eloquence, neither. Was I persuading, Mr. Allbright?’

  ‘With great reluctance, sir I must say that you were not. I will call on my friend that commands a Revenue cutter, in the hope that he--’

  ‘The Revenue? The Board of Customs ain’t the Royal Navy, Mr. Allbright. Their damned little cutters chase smugglers. They are not ships of war. If you want real experience of the sea, in a fighting ship, the Royal Navy is your only choice.’

  Rennie felt himself growing angry, and stopped. He would never persuade Lieutenant Allbright by shouting at him. He sniffed in a breath, nodded, and:

  ‘Howsomever .I will not press you, Mr. Allbright. It is your decision entire. And whatever may be the outcome I wish you well.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘If by any chance .you should have a change of heart .I hope that you will call on me again.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Lieutenant Allbright had not called on him again, and Expedient’s contingent of

  Marines, with officers attached, had duly come aboard before the ship weighed at Chatham. And now, as he stood on his quarterdeck amid the hubbub of guncrews pre-paring, of mallets clattering as bulkheads were knocked down in his cabin below, of midshipmen and gun captains shouting instruction, of powder monkeys scurrying with cartridge, of boats being swung out on tackles from the skids to be towed aft, and the hiss of sand being strewn from buckets on the deck, Captain Rennie had more pressing things on his mind than the fate of young Mr. Allbright. In the immediate, the efficiency or otherwise of his ship as a fighting machine. And beyond the vexed question of Ventura.

  As Rennie waited for his first lieutenant to shout that the starboard battery was ready, waited with his hands clasped behind his back and his feet firm on the deck, he knew in his heart that the entire fate of the commission his entire future career now hung in the balance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When he thought of his dead son Rondo, James found it hard to believe that the boy had ever lived. He strove to remember his face, and could not. He strove to recall his voice, and could not. He could not recall a single detail of the boy’s appearance the colour of his eyes, the colour of his hair, his clothing, stockings, shoes. Little appeared in his mind’s eye save an absence the top of a stair, an empty passage, a closed door, all in shadow. James could recall a small bed scarcely bigger than a cot as it was carried out of Birch Cottage, their home at Winterborne Keep in Dorset before he inherited Merton. The boy had died of a fever, long since. James had not seen the corpse removed, only the bed. There was nothing left to him of the child as he had lived and breathed. Nothing.

  ‘Why not?’

  He had asked himself the question again and again, until his head swam with the effort of trying to resolve this bleakest of all mysteries.

  ‘He is gone, he is gone, long ago,’ he had told himself, again and again. ‘His life ended, and I must accept that was the end, altogether.’

  It was not the end, because although in his quiet agony he could not remember neither could he forget. It seemed to him that in being unable to recall his son as a living creature, an infant human being, he had lost a part of himself, a part of his core of his heart and soul and that this was his own doing somehow, his own fault, and therefore he must suffer.

  And now at Portsmouth these thoughts plagued him nearly incessantly, day and night, until he began to believe he might go mad. They made him taciturn, even morose, and Catherine, noticing his desolate stare one evening, grew anxious.

  ‘Are you in pain, my darling?’

  ‘Mm? No, no I am not.’ Slumped in his chair.

  ‘Your face you looked I thought perhaps the headache had returned.’

  ‘No, no, it has not.’ A moment, then seeing that his wife did not believe him, he added: ‘I am worried about my ship.’

  ‘In course, yes. In course you are worried.’

  ‘I cannot see how we may be able to weigh and make sail at all.’

  ‘Could not the commission be postponed?’

  ‘For a week or two, perhaps. For months? Nay, it is impossible.’

  Catherine looked at him closely. ‘Is that all that troubles you, my love ?’ Gently.

  James did not answer her at once. Presently he turned toward her, and:
>
  ‘D’you ever wish for another child?’

  ‘Oh .I .I don’t know.’ Taken aback. She recovered her composure. ‘Yes, I expect I do think of it, sometimes.’

  ‘You wish for it ?’ Looking at her intently.

  ‘I had not thought .I did not dare think of it, for a long time after Rondo after he was took from us ’

  ‘I think of him very frequent.’ He turned away from her, and stared blindly into a corner of the room. ‘That is .that is . Oh, God, I cannot see his face!’ Crying out. ‘I cannot see my own son’s face!’

  ‘My darling.’ Catherine, in alarm.

  ‘I do not know him! That was my own boy!’ He broke down, and wept.

  ‘Oh, my darling, my love.’ She came to him, and cradled his head.

  ‘What has become of me .?’ He turned into her, and clung to her.

  ‘Hush, my poor love, hush ’

  ‘I am not Sir James ’ Bitterly, sobbing. ‘It is all a sham everything in my life I have achieved nothing ’

  ‘If you are not Sir James ’ Catherine, gently. ‘ .then in course I am not Lady Hayter, neither.’

  This gave him pause, and he lifted his head to look at her, and dashed away his tears as if ashamed.

  ‘Not Lady Hayter ?’

  ‘We are both of us imposters.’ Fondly. ‘But we must keep it a secret.’

  ‘Aye ’ He found his kerchief, and blew his nose forcefully. ‘Aye, we must.’

  He sat quietly a moment. Presently he rose, and: ‘Forgive my foolish outburst, will you, my darling? I don’t know what has provoked it.’

  ‘You have been under very great strain.’ Simply. ‘And the injury to your head has made everything seem worse.’ A smile. ‘Are you better? Shall we dine?’

  ‘Aye, let us dine.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I I will not speak of such things again, I promise.’

  ‘Why not ?’

  ‘Eh?’ Looking at her.

  ‘We both of us lost a son. It hurt us both very deep. Why should not we speak of it, together? Nor should we be forever silent about the other .should we?’

  ‘The other?’