Winds of Folly (13 page)

‘She is in England I hope, by now. With my father.'

‘With your father? Damn me. Is that wise?'

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Nothing. Not a thing. Only that …' But whatever it was, he thought better of it. ‘So you have a mind to marriage too, then?'

‘We have not spoken of marriage.'

‘But you think on it.'

‘I suppose.'

‘Well, you cannot afford to wait too long. How old are you now?'

‘Twenty-eight next month.'

‘There you are then. You do not want to end up an old bachelor.'

‘Thomas, not ten minutes ago you were calling me the Grand Turk.'

‘Yes, well, there are women and women, you know. Find yourself an honest one and marry her, that is my advice to you.'

‘Thank you, Thomas, I shall bear it in mind.'

‘We all need someone to come home to, you know. And to think on when we are away. Look at Ulysses.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Do you know your classics?'

‘As well as you do, I expect.'

‘Well, you are half-American, and one has no idea what
they taught you at school.
If
you went to school.'

‘I was raised in Sussex, Thomas, and was taught at Charterhouse till I went to sea.'

‘No need to go all hoity-toity on me. Charterhouse, was it? So you know who Ulysses was?'

‘Yes, they did teach the
Odyssey
at Charterhouse, along with a few other things of no particular import, but what has Ulysses to do with it?'

‘I am about to tell you, if you will let me. He had his adventures, enough to fill a book, but he had an honest woman waiting for him at home, that is the point I am making. Penelope.' He frowned. ‘I think that was her name. Not the most romantic, I agree, but it might sound different in the Greek. Anyway, she was waiting for him. And he was hot to get back to her, for all it took him twenty years or so. That was what made it such a good story. Without that it would just be so much beating against the wind, fucking about with trollops and harpies and the like, do you see? There would have been no point to it. It gives the story a meaning.'

‘So you think marriage gives your life meaning?'

‘It does, sir, it does. A wife and a family and a fine estate on the south coast of England with a view of the sea. Same as your father has. Well, not that he has a wife, of course, given the situation with your mother, but we all know what she is like, and he still has the view. But that is what we are fighting for, Nat,' he added quickly, lest he had given offence. ‘That is what gives it point and meaning, do you see? Not that I wouldn't say no to a leg-over from time to time, same as Ulysses when it came his way, but it ain't the be all and end all.' He belched and reached out an arm. ‘Now you must excuse me for I had best be getting back to
Inconstant
. 'Tis all go, you know, we have another dance this evening. Do you want to come, or will you be playing Bach again on your flute?'

Nathan saw him over the side and retired thoughtfully to his quarters. Fremantle talked rubbish, of course, most of the time, but he had touched a raw nerve with his mention of marriage. Marriage, in Nathan's mind, was an essential ingredient of that English pastoral idyll he venerated, and yet …

Was venerated the word? Or was it just an idle fancy, a romantic illusion? Not even that. More a kind of … whim. A response to the shambles his parents had made of it. In reality, he could no more think of Sara living quietly in Sussex than he could his mother. Not after the life she had led. She was the daughter of an Italian countess and a Scottish soldier in the French Army. Her father's family name was Seton and he had been laird of some impoverished tract of the Highlands before his attachment to the Young Pretender obliged him to follow that most hopeless of lost causes into exile. But he had some claim to nobility and Sara had her mother's looks, so at the age of seventeen she was married to Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Turenne, one of the noblest families in France. It would have been counted a brilliant match had he not been a libertine and a profligate almost twenty years her senior. Then came the Revolution. The count had fled to the Royalist court in Germany and died there – of a fever of the blood – leaving Sara and her young son alone in Paris where Nathan had met her.

After the report of her death on the guillotine, Nathan had returned to England with her son, Alex, only to learn that she had escaped execution and joined the Royalist insurgents in the Vendée.

It was what had happened to her there over the next twelve months or so that gave Nathan cause for his present disquiet. It was strongly rumoured that she had become the lover of François de Charette, one of the most charismatic of the rebel
leaders. That she had fought by his side until she was taken captive and Charette was shot by a Revolutionary firing squad. Then Sara had been exposed to whatever torments were devised for female rebels in that most brutal of civil wars.

Some preparation for a life in Sussex. But perhaps after such experiences she was ready for it.

And when Nathan came home from the wars he could join her there. They could move in with his father and his mistress. Or wife as she might be by then. Help his father raise sheep. Or Nathan could build a house of his own with a view of the sea. Sara would have lots of children and Nathan would become a Justice of the Peace, maybe even stand for Parliament. Invest in government stock at 2 per cent, ride to hounds and drive to church every Sunday in a carriage.

And walk back through the graveyard, past the family tomb where he himself would be buried. Feel the coffin lid pressing down upon him, hear the earth rattling upon the lid …

He shook his head at his own perversity. What was he fighting for, if not for a continuation of the life his father had led, and
his
father before that? For most of Nathan's fellow officers it represented the very height of achievement. And as for death … All must die one day, either in their own homes, among family and friends, or sewn up in a canvas bag and tossed into the sea.

But it was the journey you lived for, not the ending of it, for all Fremantle's talk of Ulysses. Did you remember Ulysses for his life back in Ithaca? Was there a sequel, chronicling the life that awaited him upon his return? And if there was, would any bother to read it?

No. It was the journey. Long may it continue.

If only he did not miss Sara so much.

‘I will wait for you,' she had said, when she had left for England. ‘But come soon.'

He had not thought too much of that at the time. But he did now. There was a contradiction there, sure.
Come soon, for if you do not
…

The thought of her with another man was torture to him. But it was strangely, disturbingly stimulating, like an addiction to some dangerous drug. It had started in Paris when Imlay – Mary Wollstonecraft's lover – had told him that Sara was in the custom of posing naked for the students at Regnault's art school in the Rue St Honoré. Nathan doubted it was true, but it was an image he could not dismiss from his mind. It haunted him, tantalised him, drove him to distraction. Then he learned that she had become the lover of Charette – and that she was known to the rebel leader's men as
La Renarde
– the vixen.

These were the thoughts Nathan must carry with him every day of their separation, and every night.

He recalled the words of a song that was popular with some of the men on the lower decks. Not a sea shanty as such, for it had the wrong rhythm for capstan or cable. They sang it in their leisure moments, accompanied by the fiddle or the Jew's harp, and one of the men had told Nathan, rather shamefacedly, that it was a skipping song, popular among the street urchins of Liverpool.

Johnny Todd he took a notion

For to cross the ocean wide

And he left his true love behind him

Walking by the Liverpool tide.

The story continued much as one might have predicted, with the fair maiden meeting up with another sailor, marrying him and having his child. But it was the last verse that stayed in Nathan's memory. It had snagged on some barbed point of his
brain and stuck there, playing monotonously over and over and over again.

Now all you young men who go a-sailing

For to fight the foreign foe,

Don't you leave your love like Johnny,

Marry her before you go.

He could have married her. They could have been married by the Commodore, on the flagship, before she left for England. But he had let the opportunity pass. And might live to regret it.

He was disturbed in these sombre reflections by the stamp of the Marine sentry upon the deck and a discreet cough, both of which served to alert him to the presence of a visitor, there being no door to rap upon.

It was Mr Duncan. He removed his hat and stood just inside the flap of the tent as if to advance further might compromise him. Nathan was aware that he had been a disappointment to the first lieutenant of late and wished to make amends. ‘Mr Duncan,' he greeted him with a smile. ‘All well, I trust?'

‘Very well, thank you, sir.
Meleager
is signalling that the flagship is in sight. And the Commodore aboard.'

And the look in his eye said, That will cut your capers, my lad.

‘Thank you, Mr Duncan. I will be on deck directly.'

When the first lieutenant had gone, Nathan took one final look around his temporary quarters. Then he put on his coat and stepped out on to the quarterdeck. The flagship was in plain view now and she was not unaccompanied. In her wake came a frigate which Nathan recognised as the
Blanche
and in the further distance a couple of armed brigs, one of which, he thought, might be the
Bonne Aventure
. A puff of smoke
issued from the
Captain
's bow and the first gun of the salute echoed around the steep flanks of the harbour.

‘Be so good as to send for my coxswain and my steward,' he instructed Mr Lamb. And when the former had reported: ‘Strike the tent, Young, if you would, and have the furnishings packaged up and ready for transport.'

The coxswain hesitated a moment. ‘And shall I have them stowed in the orlop deck, sir?'

‘No. You are to have them loaded into the launch. And have my barge ready.' Then, turning to Gabriel who was hovering in the background and had overheard this exchange with interest, he said: ‘My compliments to Signora Correglia, and I would be obliged for the privilege of an interview – in my cabin.'

And so it was done. More easily than Nathan had imagined, though he could tell the Signora was not entirely convinced.

‘Without delay?' she repeated, looking doubtfully about her at her scattered belongings.

‘That was the signal from the Commodore,' Nathan insisted firmly.

‘And with all my company?'

‘I imagine the Commodore will be most anxious to be assured that you and all of your friends are in good health and spirits, and have suffered no alarm or discomfort.'

A condescending smile. ‘I will assure the
Commodoro
you have make the most excellent of host.'

Nathan bowed low. ‘It has been my pleasure,' he assured her.

He watched from the starboard rail as the barge left for the flagship, followed by the overloaded launch. The ladies waved tearfully. Nathan returned a dignified salute. He sighed. Gabriel gave him a sly look.

‘Open the stern windows,' Nathan instructed him. ‘Let us
get some damned air into the place, for it smells like a tart's boudoir down there. And take that smirk off your face. We are back to normal, I hope.'

But like the Signora he had his doubts. He awaited the Commodore's response with private trepidation. It was not long in coming.

‘Signal from the flagship,' Duncan reported before the barge was halfway back to the frigate. ‘Captain of
Unicorn
to report to the Commodore. Without delay.'

‘W
ell, sir, I am surprised you have the nerve to show your face here.' The Commodore sat rigid at his desk, a malign presence in the half-light, his good eye glaring.

Nathan returned a look of polite surprise. ‘I understood I was to report to the flagship
without delay
, sir.'

‘Aye, and had I been in your shoes, I'd have sought my coffin sooner.'

‘I hope I know my duty, sir.'

‘Your duty, sir, your
duty
? Is it your duty to send a parcel of whores to your commanding officer? Aye, and all their damned chattels, parrots and all.'

‘Whores, sir?' Nathan permitted his surprise to grow less polite. ‘I cannot think who—'

‘Do you have the face to deny it, sir? And a note of your respects, God damn it, to add insult to the injury.' He waved the offending item in the face that had been so brazenly presented before him.