‘It is all right, Davern.’
He listened to the regular crash of a gun salute and recalled that a new man-of-war was due to arrive from England.
He asked, ‘Is he a bad husband to you? If so . . .’
She stared at him and shook her head. ‘He is neither bad nor good. He is
interested
in me.’
Blackwood thought of his manner at the admiral superintendent’s reception. Cool and
interested.
She was right.
‘Anyway.’ She played with his hand, her skin warm against his fingers. ‘It must not be your concern.’ She looked away. ‘I wish I had had your courage when I most needed it. I know now you might have understood, have helped me. But I dared not risk it after what you did to save my life.’
She tore her hand away and walked to a low wall and stared at the overlapping white buildings and towers.
Across her shoulder she said huskily, ‘You never once asked, did you? You knew they’d raped me, but not once did your eyes ask
what was it like
?
What did they do to you?
’
She almost fell as he seized her and pulled her against him.
‘Oh, how I
wish
I’d died that day!’
Blackwood held her without speaking. He let it pour out of her unchecked, knowing it might help, understanding at last what she had been enduring ever since he had freed her.
And all this time she had lived with her secret, and now that she had told him it was too late.
He raised her chin very gently and brushed some hair from her eyes.
‘All I know is that I love you. To lose you now is unthinkable.’
He kept seeing her husband, questioning her, persisting about the details when he should have been helping her forget.
A nun, her hands thrust inside her wide sleeves, hurried along the path and then paused to peer at them.
‘Your husband has just come from the admiral’s residence, Mrs Hadley.’ She bobbed and added, ‘Good day to you, Captain Blackwood.’
Blackwood watched her as she vanished around the next bend.
‘Bless her. Our guardian angel.’
But she gripped his arm and said fiercely, ‘Go now. I have caused enough. I’ll not see your reputation in ruins too.’
He held her again and felt her tremble as they came together. It was like hanging to a thread when your life depended on it. A rough word or thoughtless move and it would all change to ashes.
‘Listen to me. I
want
you. Do you understand? I cannot face losing you.’ He slipped his hand around her waist and pulled her more tightly against his body. ‘We are meant for each other. Perhaps we were made to suffer before we could find this love.’
Very carefully and reluctantly he released her, watching her eyes, the way she was looking at him as she fought against her own reactions.
Then she said, ‘Please kiss me, Philip.’
He felt her arms wrap around his neck as they touched mouths and then kissed. Blackwood had no idea how long they stayed embraced or if anyone passed by on the path. Her mouth told him without words that it was a gesture of desperate hope and nothing more. A realization of something wonderful which would soon slip away.
She put her hands on his chest and said breathlessly, ‘You must go. Please.’ She dabbed her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘It can do no good.’
Blackwood had to force himself to stand away from her.
‘I will write to you. Somehow I shall –’
But she had already turned away and was hurrying after the nun.
Blackwood left the hospital enclosure by a side gate and walked towards the harbour. There were more people than usual on the move, he thought vaguely, probably going to see the ship just arrived from England.
News from home, old friends, orders for the future.
He glanced up at the fortress on the hill where the flag flapped limply in the glare. It was all there waiting for him. Fynmore, Harry, the Corps, routine and duty.
He turned and looked back at the hospital with its domed roof and shady trees. But my life is there, with her, and soon she will be gone.
On the harbour wall he saw the people who had come to watch the display of armed might, and most of all the big three-decker which was moving very slowly towards her anchorage.
She looked much like any of the other large men-of-war, except that she was steering into the wind, her sails loosely furled and her yards manned by some of her company. But the tall thin funnel just abaft her foremast and the tell-tale froth beneath her counter from her screw-propeller showed that she was something different. An admiral’s flag fluttered
from her mainmast truck, riding above the drifting smoke from the gun salute like a lance pendant.
Blackwood tried to get interested in the ship’s reason for coming and where she would go. But it eluded him, and he touched his mouth as if he expected to feel some trace of the girl still there.
They had shared a few precious moments together like conspirators. Could that really be an end to it?
He turned on his heel and strode quickly up the hill towards the battery, his step firm as if to mark his determination.
It was not over, nor would it be.
Harry Blackwood watched warily as Fynmore’s wife moved eagerly across the cabin. It was a small, ornate schooner which belonged to a local chandler whom Harry had befriended, the only safe place he had managed to find.
It was unnerving how things had changed. Julia Fynmore was enjoying her power over him and seemed totally reckless about the risks they were taking.
He pulled the small curtains aside and peered across the anchorage. Mostly local craft, but you could never be certain on an overcrowded island like Malta.
She glanced into the adjoining cabin and he heard her give a murmur of satisfaction. She turned and faced him like an excited child.
‘It’s lovely, Harry. Come here and hold me.’
Harry knew now to his cost there was not much childlike about the colonel’s wife.
He put his arms round her and felt her push herself against him. A far cry from the woman he had all but assaulted in Fynmore’s house in England.
He said, ‘We’ll have to be careful, Julia.’
He tried to gauge her reaction, what mad thing she might do if he attempted to finish their affair. She actually enjoyed playing with his emotions.
‘Oh, stuff!’ She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Nobody suspects anything. Rupert’s too busy anyway.’
Harry started as the boat tilted slightly and then relaxed again. It was one of those blank-faced deck-hands who lived aboard. Even they might tell someone about their master’s furtive visitors.
She began to unbutton his shirt and then kissed his chest.
‘Come along, Harry.’ She ran her hands over his skin and whispered, ‘I can’t wait.’
He tried again. ‘
Please
, Julia.’ He saw her mouth pout. ‘I’m not supposed to know, let alone tell anyone, but the whole Marine contingent is being taken aboard some of the ships here. God knows what we’re going to do or where we’re going.’
She shook her ringlets with impatience. ‘Oh that. I know all about it. It’s because of some silly rumour that the Russians are occupying Turkish territory. As if
that
matters!’
Harry stared at her. It had been only yesterday that he had learned about the new orders. The most surprising part had been that the powerful man-of-war which had dropped anchor in Grand Harbour had been wearing the flag of Admiral Sir James Ashley-Chute. Promoted at long last, and with a brand-new flagship, he was amongst them once more like a small typhoon.
Harry had never thought he would be glad to see the little admiral again. He did not care if the Russians, or even the Chinese, were the cause of the excitement. Anything was better than all the dreary months of inactivity and boredom. And with Fynmore’s demanding wife constantly marking down his movements it was a double reprieve.
‘Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose.’ He saw her growing impatience and added, ‘But we must be careful all the same.’
He stripped off his shirt and followed her to the adjoining cabin. He hated it, the way it had all changed, the ‘games’ she invented whenever they had managed to meet.
She turned and looked at him, her slim body swaying to the hull’s gentle motion.
‘What shall it be, Harry?’ Her tongue touched her upper lip. ‘You are the pirate and I shall be your prisoner again!’
He pushed her roughly on to the wide bunk and when she pretended to struggle he seized her throat and squeezed it. She had ruined everything, had probably known this would happen from that first meeting when he had been little more than a youth.
He realized that she was choking and that he had almost strangled her in his sudden anger. But to her it was just a part of her game, and when he eventually threw himself on top of her she was more eager than ever to return his demands of her.
The thought of getting away to another place, to rid himself of her clinging attention, gave him new strength, and when they fell apart, exhausted and panting, he even managed to smile.
The flagship’s spacious wardroom was packed with attentive officers as Admiral Sir James Ashley-Chute drew near to the end of his address.
On one side of the wardroom, and close to an open gun-port, Philip Blackwood listened to the misshapen little admiral and was fascinated by his vigour and his grasp of the newly arisen crisis in the Black Sea.
The admiral looked much older and if possible was even more bent, and yet showed the enthusiasm and keenness of a junior lieutenant.
Unaware of his half-brother’s predicament, Blackwood was also eager to be part of the fleet again, to keep busy until he could find Davern. She had left the island with her husband and would be in Cairo by now. He had thought that the memory of her voice, the touch of her hands in his would make the parting too painful to bear. Strangely, it had given him a strength of purpose, a determination that somehow they would be together again, no matter how formidable the obstacles.
The admiral said crisply, ‘The Russians are apparently determined to occupy more and more Turkish territory. The
warnings have been all too clear, and if they are prepared to wage war because of their greed, then, gentlemen, so be it.’
He had all their attention now. The slow, unruffled existence of fleet or garrison seemed to fade with the admiral’s words, and when Blackwood glanced quickly at some of the others he saw their excitement too. It was infectious, like the little man who dominated the wardroom.
The Navy was to send a small but impressive force into the Black Sea itself. The flag would be in
Tenacious
, the newest of her kind, and armed with one hundred and thirty-one guns. Blackwood had wondered since he had heard of Ashley-Chute’s arrival how he had managed to accept the use of coal and all it represented to him. In addition to the flagship there would be three steam-frigates and six gunboats. The lioness and her cubs. They might not win a war but they might discourage the Russians from causing one.
Ashley-Chute’s deep-set eyes moved over the assembled captains and senior officers until they came to rest on Fynmore.
He said, ‘I expect you will all have noticed a preponderance of scarlet among our ranks.’ That brought a few laughs, as he knew it would. ‘The marines will be divided among the ships under my flag and if need be will be put ashore in battalion strength. An independent force of infantry, well trained, and better armed . . .’ his gaze rested briefly on Blackwood, ‘. . . than they have been in the past.’
Major Brabazon, Fynmore’s second-in-command, whispered, ‘He almost sounds as if he likes us!’
But Fynmore’s back and shoulders remained like a ramrod, and Brabazon glanced past him and gave a weary shrug.
Blackwood smiled. It was never easy to get the colonel to share a joke at a superior officer’s expense. Always careful, never a loose word which might injure his prospects.
He liked Brabazon, a big, comfortable man, a marine’s marine who had done more than anyone to mould the recruits and old hands into a single force.
‘That will be all for the present, gentlemen.’ The admiral
nodded curtly to his flag-lieutenant. ‘Flags here will explain about appointments to the various ships and er, barracks.’ There was another chuckle. ‘Afterwards you will return to your commands and prepare the people for weighing on Thursday.’ He made to leave as they all stood up and added, ‘Captain Blackwood, come with me.’
Blackwood left his place, surprised at the curt order and aware of the watching eyes. Of Fynmore’s suspicion more than anything.
Doors opened and closed behind him and then he was in the admiral’s day-cabin, the anchored vessels shimmering in haze beyond the broad stern windows.
Ashley-Chute sat down on a bench seat and crossed his legs before saying, ‘You will be aboard
Tenacious
, of course.’
Blackwood took a glass of sherry from the cabin servant and wondered why he was here.
Ashley-Chute sipped his glass and sniffed. ‘God, what is the purser thinking of, hmm?’ He looked at Blackwood and said calmly, ‘I am sorry I could not do more for you. Had your wound been less serious I would have retained you under my command. But had it been worse you would not even be here, so you should be grateful.’ He gave what might have been a smile. ‘There’s going to be a fight. I can smell it. You’ll get your chance then, right enough.’ He glanced around the gleaming, white-painted cabin with obvious satisfaction. ‘I suppose one must make some concessions for progress, eh?’
Blackwood asked, ‘Is your son well, sir?’
Ashley-Chute glared. ‘I suppose so. He commands one of those stinking gunboats yonder. But it’s what he wanted, blast him.’
Then the admiral said abruptly, ‘Do you think your new contingent could fight ashore against trained troops? I want the truth now, not some sugary answer just to please me.’
‘I’m certain of it, sir. In Africa it was different –’
‘Africa was not
so
different, Blackwood. We were used as a means to an end. Perhaps that will be so in the Black Sea. To you the African campaign was a series of actions with no true
understanding of the main purpose.’ He did not conceal the bitterness in his voice. ‘I’m an old man, and it’s taken me a long while to understand the dishonesty of politicians.’