With All Despatch Read Free Page A

from his box.
    The coach had been Bolitho’s idea. The thought of being taken ill on some part of the journey, perhaps on a crowded mail coach, had haunted him. This carriage was old, and had been built for his father. Well sprung, with the motion more like a boat on these roads than a vehicle, it was painted dark green, with the Bolitho crest on either door. The motto too, For My Country’s Freedom, picked out in gold scrollwork beneath.
    He thought of that motion now as the carriage rolled past the endless bank of shining trees and fields. In his pocket were his written orders, the wording so familiar to him, and yet, in these circumstances, so barren.
    To proceed to the Nore . The great River Medway, the towns which marked the miles to the Royal Dockyard at Chatham, and then on to the open sea.
    To command what? As far as he could discover he was under the local control of a Commodore Ralph Hoblyn. His name at least was familiar, and he had served with distinction in the Americas before being badly wounded at the decisive battle of the Chesapeake in ’ 81 . Another misfit perhaps?
    Ferguson yawned and then collected his wits.
    â€œMust be close to Rochester, sir?”
    Bolitho pulled his watch from his breeches and felt his jaw stiffen as he flicked open the guard. She had given him the watch to replace one lost in battle. Viola Raymond. He had tried to recapture her in his thoughts a million times. To hear her laugh, see the light dance in her eyes because of something he had said. Dear, lovely Viola. Sometimes in the night he would awake, sweating, calling her name, feeling her slip from his arms as she had on that terrible day in the open boat. She above all, who had shared the misery of what had appeared a hopeless passage under relentless sunlight, deprived of food and water with some of the men half-mad in their suffering. She had somehow sustained all of them, wearing his coat, bringing grins to their scorched faces and cracked lips. The Captain’s Lady, they called her.
    Then, on that final day, when Bolitho knew they had found Tempest again, she died without even a murmur. In the nightmares which had followed, one scene always stood out stark and terrible above all else. Allday, holding her slim body, and with a boat’s anchor tied about her waist, lowering her into the sea. Her figure, white in the dark water, fading and fading, then nothing. But for Allday, he would have gone mad. He was still unable to think of her without pain.
    He stared at the watch in his palm, the engraved inscription which he knew by heart.
“Conquered, on a couch alone I lie
Once in dream’s conceit you came to me
All dreams outstripped, if only thou wert nigh—”
    Bolitho said, “We shall see the Medway directly.”
    Something in the dullness of his voice made Ferguson watch him uneasily. The same dark, intelligent features, the eyes which could laugh or show compassion; and yet something was lost. Perhaps forever.
    Old Matthew called out to the leading post-boy and the carriage came slowly to a halt where the road met with the gradient of a shallow hill.
    Old Matthew disliked using post-boys when he had handled four horses, even six at a time, from the age of eighteen in the Bolitho service. But it was a long journey back to Falmouth, to the last inn where he would recover his own two pairs of chestnut horses, which he was said to love more than his wife.
    Bolitho heard Allday mutter, “Not here, matey. I can manage without his blessing!”
    The carriage moved forward again, the horses scraping their shoes on the damp ground and shaking their harness like sleigh bells.
    Bolitho lowered a window and saw the reason for his cox-swain’s agitation.
    They were at a dreary crossroads; a stone which read, To London, thirty miles shared the deserted place with a gibbet which swung slightly in the wet breeze.
    A tattered, eyeless thing hung in irons. It was hard to believe it might have