Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger - Alexander Kent

evidence will come to hand, but against them, and not the man we are after.'

Hugh Bolitho lay with his shoulders against the cutter's side, his eyes half closed as he said, `It seems we are in irons.'

The colonel picked up a goblet and filled it carefully before saying, `If you can discover the village, and some good, strong evidence, then you will have a case. Otherwise you may have to rely on Sir Henry's support at any court of enquiry. Cruel and unjust it may be, but you must think of yourselves now.'

Bolitho watched his brother, sharing his sense of defeat and injustice. If Vyvyan was to suspect what they were doing, he might already have put some further plan into motion to disgrace or implicate them.

Gloag, who had been invited to the little meeting because of his experience if not for his authority, said gruffly, `There be a 'undred such villages an' 'amlets within five miles of us, sir. It might take months.'

Hugh Bolitho said harshly, `By which time the word will have penetrated the admiral's ear and Avenger will have been sent elsewhere, no doubt with a new commander!'

De Crespigny nodded. `Likely so. I have served in the Army for a long while and I am still surprised by the ways of my superiors.'

Hugh Bolitho reached for a goblet and then changed his mind.

`I have made my written report for the admiral, and to the senior officer of Customs and Excise at.Penzance. Whiffin, my clerk-in-charge, is making the copies now. I have sent word to the relatives of the dead and arranged for the sale of their belongings within the vessel.' He spread his hands. `I feel at a loss as to what else to do.'

Bolitho looked at him closely, seeing him as a far different person from the confident, sometimes arrogant brother he had come to expect.

He said, `We must find the village. Before they move the muskets and any other booty they've seized by robbing or wrecking. There must be a clue. There has to be.'

De Crespigny sighed. `I agree. But if I send every man and horse under my command, I'd discover nothing. The thieves would go to earth like foxes, and Sir Henry would guess we were on to him. But "capturing" that wrecker and then exchanging him was a master-stroke. It would convince any jury, let alone a Cornish one.'

Dancer exclaimed, `Sir Henry Vyvyan told you he knew the prisoner and would catch up with him one day.'

De Crespigny shook his head. `If you are right about Sir Henry, he will have killed that man, or sent him far away where he can do no harm.'

But Hugh Bolitho snapped, `No, Mr Dancer has made the only sort of sense I have heard today.' He looked about the cabin as if to escape. 'Vyvyan is too clever, too shrewd to falsify something which could be checked. If we can find out who the man was, and where he came from, we may be on our way to success!' He seemed to come alive again. `It is all we have, for God's sake!'

Gloag nodded with approval. ''E'll be from one of Sir 'Enry's farms, I'll bet odds on it.'

Bolitho could feel the flicker of hope moving around the cabin, frail, but better than a minute earlier.

He said, `We'll send to the house. Ask Hardy. He used to work for Vyvyan before- he came to us.'

De Crespigny stared. `Your head gardener? I'd need a higher trust than that if I had so much in the balance!'

Hugh Bolitho smiled. `But with respect, sir, you do not. It is my career in the scales, and the good name of my family.'

Avenger rolled lazily at her cable, as if she too was eager to be at sea again, to play her part.

Bolitho asked, `Well? Shall we try?'

Bill Hardy was an old man whose touch with his plants and flowers was better than his fading eyesight. But he had lived all his life within ten square miles and knew a great deal about everyone. He kept to himself, and Bolitho suspected that his father had taken him on because he was sorry for him, or because Vyvyan had never tried to hide his admiration for and interest in Mrs Bolitho.

Hugh Bolitho said, `As soon as we can. Carefully though. An alarm now would be a disaster.'

Surprisingly, he allowed his brother and Dancer to return to the house with the mission. To keep it as simple as possible, or to avoid the risk of losing his temper, Bolitho was unsure.

As they hurried across the cobbled square Dancer said breathlessly, `I am beginning to feel free again! Whatever happens next, I think I am ready for it!'

Bolitho looked at him and smiled. They had been looking forward to Christmas together and facing one of Mrs Tremayne's fantastic dinners. But the immediate future, like the grey weather and hint of rain, was less encouraging than it had seemed in Avenger's cabin. It seemed likely they would be facing the table of a court of enquiry rather than Mrs Tremayne's.

Bolitho found his mother in the library writing a letter. One of the many to her husband. There must be a dozen or more at sea at any one time, he thought. Or lying under the seal of some port admiral awaiting his ship's arrival.

She listened to their idea and offered without hesitation. `I will speak with him.'

`Hugh said no.' Bolitho protested, `None of us want you implicated.'

She smiled. `I became implicated when I met your father.' She threw a shawl over her head and added quietly, `Old Hardy was to be transported to the colonies for stealing fish and food for his family. It had been a bad year, a poor harvest and much illness. In Falmouth alone we had some fifty people die of fever. Old Hardy lost his wife and child. His sacrifice, for he was a proud man, was for nothing.'

Bolitho nodded. Sir Henry Vyvyan could have saved him… But Hardy had made the additional mistake of stealing from him. It was another glimpse of his own father too. The stern, disciplined sea captain, who to please his wife had taken pity on the poor-sighted gardener and brought him here to Falmouth.

Dancer sat down and looked at the fire-place. `She never fails to amaze me, Dick. I feel I know her better than my own mother!'

She returned within a quarter-hour and sat down at the desk again as if nothing had happened.

`The man's name is Blount, Arthur Blount. He has been in trouble before with the revenue men, but this is the first time he has been taken. He's never in honest work for long, and when he is it is of little value. In and around farms, repairing walls, digging ditches. Nothing for any length of time.'

Bolitho thought of the dead informant, Portlock. Like the man Blount, a scavenger, getting what he could, where he could.

She added, `My advice is to return to your ship. I'll send word when I hear something.' She reached out and rested her hand on her son's shoulder, searching his face with her eyes as she said, `But take care. Vyvyan is a very powerful man. Had it been anyone but Martyn here, I might have disbelieved he could do all these terrible things.' She smiled sadly at the fair-haired midshipman and said, `But now that I know you, I am surprised I did not realize it for myself far earlier! He has links with the Americas and may well have further ambitions there. Force of arms? It is the way he has always lived, so why should he have changed now? It has taken a newcomer like Martyn to reveal him, that is all.'

The midshipmen made their way back to the anchored cutter, feeling the freshening edge to the wind, and noting that several of the smaller fishing boats had already returned to the shelter of Carrick, Roads.

Hugh Bolitho listened to their story, then said, `I have had a bellyful of waiting, but I can see no choice this time.'

Later, when it was dark, and the anchorage alive with tossing white crests, Bolitho heard the watch on deck challenge an approaching boat.

Dancer, who had been in charge of the anchorwatch, clattered down the ladder and struck his head against a deckhead beam without apparently noticing.

He said excitedly, `It's your mother, Dick!' To the cutter's commander he added in a more sober tone, `Mrs Bolitho, sir.'

She entered the cabin, her cloak and hair glistening with blown spray. If anything it made her look younger than ever.

She said, `Old Hardy knows the place, and so should I! You remember the terrible fever I was telling you about? There was some wild talk that it was a punishment for some witchcraft which was being performed in a tiny hamlet to the south of here. A mob dragged two poor women from their homes and burned them at the stake as witches. The wind, drunkenness, or just a mob getting out of hand, nobody really knew what happened, but the flames from the two pyres spread to the cottages, and soon the whole place was a furnace. When the military arrived, it was all over. But most of the people who lived in and around the hamlet believed it was powerful witchcraft which had destroyed their homes as punishment for what they had done to two of their own.' She shivered. `It is foolish of course, but simple folk live by simple laws.'

Hugh Bolitho let out a long breath. `And Blount defied the beliefs and made his home there.' He looked at Dancer. `And certain others shared his sanctuary, it seems.'

He stepped around his mother, shouting, `Pass the word for my clerk!' To the others he said, `I'll send a despatch to de Crespigny. We may need to search a big area.'

Dancer stared at him. `Are we going?'

Hugh Bolitho smiled grimly. `Aye. If it's another false lead, I need to know it before Vyvyan. And if it's true, I want to be in at the kill!' He lowered his voice and said to his mother, `You should not have come yourself. You have done enough.'

Whiffin bowed through the door, staring at the woman as if he could not believe his eyes.

`A letter to the commandant at Truro, Whiffin. Then we will need horses and some good men who can ride as well as fight.'

`I have partly dealt with that, Hugh.' His mother watched his surprise with amusement. `Horses, and three of our own men are on the jetty.'

Gloag said anxiously, `Bless you, ma'am, I've not been in a saddle since I were a little lad.'

Hugh Bolitho was already buckling on his sword.

`You stay here. This is a young man's game.'

Within half an hour the party had assembled on the jetty. Three farm labourers, Hugh and his midshipmen, and six sailors who had sworn they could ride as well as any gentlemen. The latter included the resourceful Robins.

Hugh Bolitho faced them through a growing downpour.

`Keep together, men, and be ready.'

He turned as another rider galloped away into the darkness with the letter for Colonel de Crespigny.

`And if we meet the devils, I want no revenge killings, no take this for cutting down our friends. It is justice we need now.' He wheeled his mount on the wet stones. `So be it V

Once clear of the town the horses had to slow their pace because of the rain and the treacherous, deeply rutted road. But before long they were met by a solitary horseman, a long musket resting across his saddle like an ancient warrior.

`This way, Mr Hugh, sir.' It was Pendrith, the gamekeeper. `I got wind of what you was about, sir.' He sounded as if he was grinning. `Thought you might need a good forester.'

They hurried on in silence. Just the wet drumming of hoofs, the deep panting of horses and riders alike, with an occasional jingle of stirrup or cutlass.

Bolitho thought of his ride with Dancer, when they had joined the witless boy at the cove, with the corpse of Tom Morgan, the revenue man. Was it only weeks and days ago? It seemed like months.

As they drew nearer the burned out village Bolitho remembered something about it. How his mother had scolded him when as a small child he had borrowed a pony and gone there alone but for a dog.

This night she had described the superstition as foolish. Then, she had not sounded quite of the same mind.

The horses milled together as Pendrith dismounted and said, "Alf a mile, sir, an' no more, at a guess. I think it best to go on foot.'

Hugh Bolitho jumped down. `Tether the horses. Detail two men to stand guard.' He drew his pistol and wiped it free of rain with his sleeve. `Lead on, Pendrith, I'm more used to the quarterdeck than chasing poachers!'

Bolitho noticed that some of the men chuckled at the remark. He was learning all the time.

Pendrith and one of the farm hands moved on ahead. There was no moon, but a diamond-shaped gap in the racing clouds gave a brief and eerie outline to a small, pointed roof.

Bolitho whispered to his friend, `They still build these little witch houses in some villages here. To guard the entrances from evil.'

Dancer shifted uncomfortably in" his borrowed clothing and hissed, `They didn't have much success in this place, Dick!'

Pendrith's untidy shape came bounding amongst them, and Bolitho imagined he was being chased, or that some of the legends were true after all.. But the gamekeeper said urgently, `There's a fire of sorts, sir! T'other side of the place!'

He turned, his face glowing red as a great tongue of flame soared skyward, the sparks whirling and carrying on the wind like a million spiteful fire-flies.

Several of the men cried out with fear, and even Bolitho who was used to tales of local witches and their covens, felt ice running up his spine.

Hugh Bolitho charged through the bushes, all caution thrown aside as he yelled, `They've fired a cottage! Lively, lads!'

When they reached the tiny cottage it was already blazing like an inferno. Great plumes of sparks swirled down amongst the smoke-blinded seamen, stinging them, trying to hold them at bay.

`Mr Dancer! Take two men and get around to the far side P

In the fast spreading flames, the crouching seamen and farm hands stood out clearly against the backcloth of trees and rain. Bolitho wrapped his neckcloth around his mouth and nose and kicked at the sagging door with all his strength. More flames and sparks seared his legs, as with a rumbling crash the remains of the thatched roof and timbers collapsed within the cottage.

Pendrith was bawling, `Come back, d'you hear, Master Richard! Ain't no use!'

Bolitho turned away and then saw his brother's face. He was staring at the flames, oblivious to the heat and the hissing sparks. In those few seconds it was all laid bare. His brother saw his own hopes and future burning with the cottage. Somebody had set it alight, no ordinary fire could burst out like this in the middle of a downpour. Equally quickly, he made up his mind.

He threw himself against the door again, shutting his mind to everything but the need to get inside. It toppled before him like a charred draw-bridge,

and as the smoke billowed aside he saw a man's body twisting and kicking amongst burning furniture and black fragments of fallen thatch.

It all swept through his mind as he ran forward, stooping to grip the man's shoulders and drag him back towards the door. The man was kicking like a madman, and above a gag his eyes rolled with agony and terror. He was trussed hand and foot, and Bolitho was as sickened by the stench as by the act of leaving a man to burn alive.

Voices came and went through the roar of flames like the souls of dead witches returning for a final curse.

Then others were seizing his arms, taking the load and pulling them both out into the torrential, beautiful rain.

Dancer came running through the glare and shouted, `It's the same place, Dick! I'm certain of it. The shape of the rear wall…' He stopped to stare at the struggling, seared man on the ground.

Pendrith knelt down on the mud and embers and asked hoarsely, ' 'Oo done this thing to you?'