Bolitho 19 - Beyond the Reef (25 page)

Tojohns lay back on his oar and said between his teeth, “That bugger don’t need to!”

Catherine climbed on to a thwart and added her own strength to Yovell’s oar, her bare feet pressing hard on a stretcher.

There was another bang, and this time the ball ricocheted across the water like an enraged dolphin before hurling up a tall, thin waterspout. Cuppage was a big man, but he moved like lightning. Tossing his oar away, he vaulted into the bows and gripped Sophie with his arm around her neck, his other hand producing a cocked pistol, which he pressed against her face.

“Let her go!” Bolitho saw the girl staring aft at him, her eyes wide with terror. “What use is this, man?”

“Use?” Cuppage flinched as another ball ripped across the water. “I’ll tell you what! Yon brig’s master will want a word with you, or he’ll kill us all! It’d only take one ball!” He began to work his way along the boat, dragging the half-strangled girl with him.

Owen called, “I thought you was one of them, you bastard! Never saw you with the bosun’s party!”

Cuppage ignored him, his teeth bared with exertion. “One move, an’ she gets ‘er ‘ead blown off!”

Bolitho looked at him without emotion. He was beaten. Whether the slaver’s master accepted Cuppage’s story no longer mattered.

Aboard the brig they must have realised what was happening. She was shortening sail, tacking once more to remain well clear of the reef.

Allday said, “Changing sides again, matey?” He sounded very calm. “Well, don’t forget your little bag.”

Cuppage swung round and saw Ozzard holding the bag over the side.

Allday continued, “No gold, no hope—not for you, matey. They won’t believe your yarn and they’ll kill you with the rest of us!”

Cuppage yelled, “Give me that, you little scum!”

“Catch, then!” Ozzard flung it towards him and Cuppage gave a scream of fury as the bag flew past his outstretched hand and splashed into the sea.

Allday stopped in front of Catherine and spat out, “Don’t look.”

The knife flashed in the sunlight and Cuppage lolled against the gunwale, while Tojohns and Owen pulled the girl to safety.

Allday moved with surprising speed and reached Cuppage even as he fell gasping across the gunwale, and as he tugged his old knife from his back he exclaimed savagely, “Go and look for it, you bastard!”

Cuppage drifted away, his arms moving feebly until he vanished.

Keen said dully, “That was well done, Allday.” He stared at the brig, which was shortening sail yet again as she ran down on the drifting jolly-boat.

Allday looked at Bolitho and the woman beside him. “Too late. God damn that bloody mutineer. But for him …”

Bolitho glanced towards the lush, green island. So near, yet a million miles away.

But all he could hear was her voice. Don’t leave me.

He had failed.

Rarely had the Falmouth parish church of King Charles the Martyr seen so mixed and solemn a gathering. While the great organ played in the background the pews soon filled with people from all walks of life, from the governor of Pendennis Castle to lowly farm workers, their boots grubby and scraped from the fields on this early harvest. Many stood on the cobbles outside the church, watching out of curiosity, or to capture some private memory of the man whose life and service were to be honoured here today. Not some stranger, or mysterious hero of whom they had read or been told about, but one of their own sons.

The rector was very aware of the importance of the occasion. There would of course be a grander memorial service in London with all the pomp of traditional ceremony. But this was Sir Richard’s home, where his ancestors had come and gone, leaving only their historic records in stone along these same walls.

The whole county had been shocked by the news of Sir Richard Bolitho’s death and of the manner in which he had died. But there had always been hope, and the speculation which this man’s charisma had long encouraged. To fall in battle was one thing; to be lost at sea in some kind of accident was difficult for most of these people to accept.

The rector glanced at the fine marble bust of old Captain Julius Bolitho, who had fallen in 1664. The engraving seemed to fit the whole of this remarkable family, he thought.

The spirits of your fathers

Shall start from every wave;

For the deck it was their field of fame,

And ocean was their grave.

Today’s service seemed to have killed the last of their simple faith, and many of the ships in Carrick Road had half-masted their ensigns.

He saw Squire Lewis Roxby guiding his wife Nancy to the family pew. Roxby looked grim, watching over her with a tenderness he rarely showed either as a magistrate or as one of the wealthiest men in the county. This was another side to the King of Cornwall.

Captain Keen’s lovely young widow was seated between her husband’s sisters, who had come all the way from Hampshire. One of them would be thinking of her own husband, who had been killed at sea a year or so earlier.

There was a very distraught couple who had taken the coach from Southampton to be here. They were Lieutenant Stephen Jenour’s parents.

In another pew with members of the household and farm staff, Bryan Ferguson gripped his wife’s hand and stared fixedly at the high altar. He discovered that his wife had the true strength today, and was determined to get him through it as the faces crowded into his mind.

All the memories, the comings and goings from the old grey house. He had been a major part of it, and as steward of the estate he was very conscious of Bolitho’s trust in him. He wiped his eyes as he freed his only hand from her grip. Poor old John Allday. No more yarns, no more wets when he was home from sea.

He glanced across the aisle and recognised Lady Belinda with another woman, her oval face and autumn hair making the only colour against her sombre black. A few people bobbed to her—sympathy or respect, who could tell? Squire Roxby was receiving all of them in his great house afterwards. Afterwards. Even that made Ferguson bite his lip to steady himself.

Bolitho’s older sister was here too, severe and grey, while her son Miles, formerly a midshipman aboard Bolitho’s flagship Black Prince after having been dismissed from the Honourable East India Company’s service under some sort of cloud, was now gazing around as if he expected everyone to be admiring him. He had even been required to leave the King’s service, or as Keen had put it, face a court martial instead. Was he calculating how he might benefit from his uncle’s death?

And there were uniforms a-plenty. The port admiral from Plymouth, some officers of the Coastguard, even a few dragoons from the garrison at Truro.

Overhead the bell began to toll; it sounded faraway from within the body of the church. But on the hillsides and in the harbour, men and women would be listening to its finality.

Others arrived: Young Matthew the head coachman, Tom the revenue officer, even Vanzell the one-legged sailor who had once served Bolitho, and been instrumental in freeing Lady Catherine from that stinking jail to the north of London. It was rumoured that Lady Catherine’s husband had planned to have her falsely imprisoned and deported with the connivance of Bolitho’s wife. What was she thinking now as she whispered to her elegant companion? Pride in her late husband? Or more incensed by the victory death had granted her rival?

Whenever she turned from her friend to stare around the church, Ferguson had the impression that it was with contempt, and no kind of regret for the life she had left in this ancient seaport.

And in months, maybe sooner, the legalities would have to be settled. Squire Roxby had never made any secret of his readiness to take over the Bolitho estate and add it to his own. That would certainly preserve it for his wife and their two children, if nothing else. Belinda would want a settlement to compensate for the lavish life and fashionable house she enjoyed in London. Ferguson felt his wife gripping his hand again as the straight-backed, solitary figure of Captain Adam Bolitho strode up the aisle to take his place in his family pew.

Ferguson believed him the one man who would save the estate and the livelihood of all those who depended on it. Even that reminded him of Allday again. His pride at living there when he was not at sea. Like being one of the family, he had so often proclaimed.

He watched Captain Adam shaking hands with the rector. It was about to begin. A day they would all have cause to remember, and for such diverse reasons. He saw Keen’s young wife lean out towards Adam. He was to be posted next month, and had been so looking forward to seeing his uncle with the coveted second epaulette on his shoulder, when Bolitho had returned from his mission.

Ferguson had been troubled by Adam’s frequent visits to the house. But for his vehement insistence that Bolitho was still alive and somehow, even by a miracle, would return home, Ferguson might have suspected some unexpected liaison between him and Zenoria Keen.

The bell had stopped and a great silence had fallen over the church; the glittering colours of the tall windows were very bright in the noon sunlight.

The rector climbed into the old pulpit and surveyed the crowded pews. Not many young faces, he thought sadly. And with the war already reaching into Portugal and perhaps Spain, many more sons would leave home, never to return.

At the very back of the church, seated on two cushions so that she could see over the shoulders of those in front of her, the widow of Jonas Polin, one-time master’s mate in the Hyperion, was aware of the people all around her in this grand place, but could think only of the big, shambling man who had rescued her that day on the road. Now the admiral’s coxswain would never call on her at the Stag’s Head at Fallowfield. She had told herself not to be so stupid. But as the days had dragged past after the news had broken over the county, she had felt the loss even more. Like being cheated. She closed her eyes tightly as the rector began, “We are all very aware of why we are come here today …”

Ferguson stared blindly around him. And what of Catherine Somervell? Did nobody grieve for her? He saw her on the cliff walk, her face brown in the sun, her hair on the wind from the sea like a dark banner. He thought of what Allday and the others had told him, how she had risked her life to help Herrick’s dying wife. A thousand things; most of all what she had done for her Richard, as she called him. Dearest of men. Unlike so many, they had been together when death had marked them down. He half-listened to the drone of the rector’s voice, let it wash over him as he relived so many precious moments.

One man sat in an almost empty pew, shielded from the great mass of people by a pillar, his hooded eyes inscrutable while he paid his respects in his private fashion. Dressed all in grey, Sir Paul Sillitoe had arrived uninvited and unannounced, his beautiful carriage bringing many curious stares when he had reached the church.

Ferguson need not have worried on Catherine’s behalf. Sillitoe had driven all the way from London and, although he had greatly respected Bolitho, he was more shocked by his grief at the loss of Bolitho’s mistress, for reasons he could not define, even to himself.

The rector was saying, “We must never lose sight of the great service this fine local family has offered …” He broke off, aware from long experience that he no longer held the attention of the congregation.

There was a distant noise, and shouting, like a tavern turning out, and Roxby was glaring round, flushed and angry as he hissed, “These oafs! What are they thinking of?”

Everyone fell silent as Adam Bolitho stood up suddenly, and without even a customary bow to the altar strode quickly back down the aisle. He glanced at nobody, and as he passed Ferguson thought he looked as if he had no control over what he was doing. “In a trance,” he would later hear it described.

Adam reached the great, weathered doors and dragged them wide open so that the din flooded into the church, where everyone now was standing, their backs to the rector marooned in his pulpit.

The square was crammed, and a recently arrived mail coach was completely surrounded by a cheering, laughing mob. In the centre of it all two grinning sea officers on horseback, their mounts lathered in sweat from a hard ride, were being hailed like heroes.

Adam stood quite still as he recognised one of them as his own first lieutenant. He was trying to make himself heard above the noise, but Adam could not understand him.

A man he had never seen before ran up the church steps and seized his hands.

“They’m alive, Cap’n Adam, sir! Your officer’s brought word from Plymouth!”

The lieutenant managed to fight his way through, his hat knocked awry.

“All safe, sir! A bloody miracle, if you’ll pardon my saying so!”

Adam led him back into the church. He saw Zenoria with Keen’s sisters standing in the aisle, framed against the high altar. He asked quietly, “All my uncle’s party? Safe?”

He saw his lieutenant nod excitedly. “I knew my uncle could do it. The fairest of men … I shall tell the rector myself. Wait for me, please. You must come to the house.”

The lieutenant said to his companion, “Took it well, I thought, Aubrey?”

“He had more faith than I did.”

Adam reached the others and held out his hands. “They are all safe.” He saw Zenoria sobbing in the arms of one of Keen’s sisters, and beyond her Belinda, now strangely out of place in her sombre black.