Sword Of Honour by Alexander Kent

Author:Alexander Kent [Kent, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780099497769
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2007-04-02T14:30:00+00:00

Sword Of Honour

10

A Ship of War

His Britannic Majesty’s Ship Frobisher lay at her anchor, unmoving above the perfect twin of her reflection in the blazing sunlight. The ensign at her stern and the admiral’s flag at the mainmast truck were equally motionless, and between decks, in spite of the awnings and wind sails the air was like an open kiln.

The crash of Malta’s noonday gun echoed across the water like an intrusion, but only a few gulls rose from their torpor, squawking in protest before settling down again.

In the great cabin Sir Richard Bolitho, coat less his ruffled shirt open almost to the waist, shaded his eyes to stare at the land, the craggy battlements where, occasionally, he could see a red coat moving slowly on patrol. He pitied the soldiers in their thick uniforms as they paced up and down in the heat.

Frobisher was a well-built ship, and the sounds which reached Bolitho’s quarters were muffled and remote, as if they, too, were stifled by the heat. But in many ways he envied the life and movement from which he was separated, protected, as his secretary Yovell had once described it. Even here, right aft, he could catch the heady smell of rum, and imagine the ship’s community of some six hundred seamen and Royal Marines preparing for their midday meal.

He sighed and sat at his table again, to the litter of signals and local correspondence awaiting collection. Since their arrival here in Grand Harbour, the ship had scarcely moved. Such inactivity was bad for any fighting ship, and for one with a company far from home, with no immediate prospect of discharge or action, the strain on discipline and routine was becoming evident.

He had received two letters from Catherine; they had arrived together in a courier brig from Plymouth. It was the shortest time they had ever been parted, and yet the uncertainty of the future and the strange, lingering sense of loss he felt seemed to make it worse.

She wrote of things she knew would please him, of the house and the estate. Of the garden, her garden, and the roses which gave her so much pleasure.

She touched on her feelings for him, but was careful not to trouble him with her own pain of separation.

There had been one ugly note; she had mentioned it in case he should hear it from someone else. There had been a riot in Bodmin, the county town, although he found it hard to imagine in that sort of community; a local regiment had been disbanded, and the men had mounted a protest to demand work after their service to their country.

If it had happened in Falmouth, Bolitho wondered what Lewis Roxby would have done. He might well have put some of the men to work on his own large estate, and encouraged other landowners to do the same. In Bodmin, a magistrate had read the Riot Act, and called out the dragoons from Truro.

She had told him that she was going to London to see the lawyers again.

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