In the King's Name Read Free

to obey his last order.
    The pawls of the capstan were moving, clicking into place as more men added their weight to the bars. Someone slipped and fell sprawling; the deck was still treacherous with rain.
    But he heard a voice trying to raise a cheer as a fiddle scraped, and squealed into a familiar sailor’s shanty.
    There was a lass in Bristol town—
    heave, me bullies, heave!
    It was Lynch, the senior cook, eyes shut and one foot beating time to every clink of the capstan.
    Adam stared up at the yards, the topmen strung out like puppets against the hurrying clouds. The long masthead pendant gave some hint of the wind’s strength, and he could picture
Onward
‘s outline like a lithe shadow edging slowly toward the embedded anchor.
    â€œHeave
, me bullies,
heave!
”
    He heard Julyan, the sailing master, speaking to the quartermaster and his extra helmsman. Calm, unhurried, just loud enough to carry above the chorus of wind and rigging. One eye on the compass, another on his captain, whose ultimate responsibility this was.
    Adam remained by the quarterdeck rail, the ship and her company moving around him, but as if he were quite alone. Did you ever become so accustomed to this moment, or so confident, that it became merely routine?
    The capstan was moving more slowly, but steadily, and no more hands were called to add their weight to the bars. He could see their breath like steam blown away on the wind, and feel the air on his spraywet cheek like ice rime.
    He glanced forward again, and across the larboard bow. The two-decker was anchored apart from the other ships, her sealed gunports a chequered pattern shining in the strengthening light. There were lighters moored alongside, empty, like undertakers waiting for the last rites. How did the ship feel?
How would I feel?
    He looked away, but not before he had seen the powerful shape of Lieutenant James Squire at his station in the eyes of the ship, watching the incoming cable. A born seaman and navigator, and one of the most senior men aboard. He had come up from the lower deck, and had won respect and popularity the hard way. Two midshipmen stood nearby: David Napier and the latest addition to the berth, John Radcliffe, who was about to begin a day, good or bad, which would live in his memory—his first at sea in a King’s ship.
    Adam could recall his own. Only the faces seemed blurred or merged by time, save for a few.
    Jago murmured, “Morgan brought yer boatcloak, Cap’n.” He was standing by the packed hammock nettings, but hardly raised his voice.
    â€œStill got a lot to learn!” Then the familiar chuckle.
    The cabin servant had thought of everything that his captain, any captain, might require under any circumstances.
But he doesn’t know me yet. That I would freeze or be soaked to the skin rather than take cover on this day
.
    Adam glanced down and saw that Maddock, the gunner, had paused by one of the upper deck eighteen-pounders as if to speak with its gun captain. A careful man, perhaps still puzzled by the latest order from the admiral’s headquarters ashore.
    There will be no salutes fired today, until …
    Adam saw him look up, his hand resting on the gun’s wet breech, head half-turned. He was deaf in one ear, common enough in his trade, but quick enough to acknowledge Adam’s private signal from the quarterdeck.
    He had heard the first lieutenant brushing Maddock’s question aside, his mind too full of the business of getting
Onward
under way: “Sir John Grenville, Admiralty. Today’s his funeral. That’s why!” And Vincent had turned away to deal with another problem.
    Adam had last seen and shaken hands with Grenville in the very cabin beneath his feet. Both of them had known they would not meet again.
He gave me hope, when he gave me Onward
. And in his way, Grenville was sharing it today.
    Adam saw Squire move toward the cathead and gesture behind him, as if he could feel