‘DAMNED STUFF and nonsense,’ snapped the old man, looking directly at Harry Ludlow from under his thick grey eyebrows. ‘I can’t think what your father would say to hear you talk like this.’
‘Perhaps it would be better not to discuss it at all, sir.’
James Ludlow, Harry’s younger brother, looked at the two men and tried to suppress a smile. Both faces held expressions of politely masked displeasure. The older man sat at the head of the long table, set across the great cabin of the Victory, with the two brothers on his right and left. His dark blue coat was covered in sparkling decorations, with the red sash of the Order of the Bath across his snow-white waistcoat, evidence of his success, many years before, as a fighting sailor. And for all his years ashore, both at the Admiralty, in the House of Lords, and in attendance at the court of King George, Hood’s language had lost none of its salty flavour. He was a man accustomed to silencing opposition, be it on a quarterdeck or in an oak-panelled debating chamber.
Harry Ludlow, despite his regard for Admiral Hood’s age and reputation, did not enjoy being talked down to. He had spent too many years in command of his own ships to relish the tone of avuncular disapproval which had been an ongoing feature of their voyage aboard the flagship.
‘I will discuss at my table any matter I please.’ Hood, perhaps being a mite sharper in his response than was strictly polite, tried to stare Harry down.
‘Then you will very likely find yourself dining alone,’ snapped Harry, returning the stare, and the tone of the admiral’s observation, in full measure.
Hood’s face started to show real anger, the mouth hardening, his nostrils flaring, and the eyebrows seeming to thicken as they joined above his nose. But he suddenly leaned back in his chair and laughed out loud. He was a tall man, with a long raw-boned face, a big nose, and a high red colouring, set off by his thick grey eyebrows. Handsome in his youth, he’d aged well, seeming much younger than his years. Yet he had the kind of hearty, heaving laugh that with his ruddy complexion made one wonder for his health.
‘You always were a gamecock, Harry, even as a nipper. I recall your father tellin’ me how often he had to stretch you across a gun and thrash you.’
He dropped his voice to a clearly audible whisper.
‘None of this lot would dare talk back to me. They agree with everything I say, sane or stupid. It makes for a dull voyage.’ He looked down the long dining table at the assembled officers, senior captains amongst them. None even dared to catch his eye.
Hood sat back in his chair, the bony red face adopting an air of polite enquiry as he turned to his left to address his other civilian guest.
‘What about you, young James. Do you share the Ludlow family temper? Or are you more of your mother’s sort?’
‘I do think, my lord, that the last person to cast an opinion on their demeanour should be oneself. After all, if it manifests itself as a high opinion, it’s self-aggrandisement, and if a poor one, it’s likely to be false modesty.’
The thick eyebrows twitched as Hood looked at James. He saw before him a slim, fair-haired young man with a lively, handsome face, elegantly dressed, perfectly at ease. Neither exalted company nor an elegant setting would dent James Ludlow’s self-assurance. He was a man at home in graceful society, a well-known artist, sought after for his portraits. He was also known to have a sharp tongue, and mercurial temper. A man well able to look after himself. Yet it was not the bulldog temperament of his elder brother. The likeness in the two was evident. But with Harry there was a girth that was lacking in James, plus a physical presence, a life-long sailor’s colouring and want of refinement.
Hood adopted a mildly disapproving air, though the bright blue eyes, twinkling merrily, belied the effect. ‘No, I think not. You’re not like Harry at all. I don’t see your father in you, as I do in him. Tell the truth, you seem like a bit of a cold fish to me, James Ludlow.’
His guest held the old man’s eye, unblinking. ‘And I dare say that you imagine yourself as a jovial old cove, full of wit and bluff charm.’
There was a second’s silence. It was Harry Ludlow who was now suppressing a laugh. James had a wry grin on his face now, but everyone else stared at their plates, anticipating, indeed wanting, the coming blast.
‘Insolent swab. Whole damned family the same,’ said Hood gently, his face relaxing into a wistful smile.
The cloth had been drawn, and the port was making its rounds. Pender sat in the pantry with Hood’s steward, eating as well as those they had just served. It would be a foolish servant who didn’t instruct the cook to prepare enough food, with a respectable quantity left over. Likewise with the wine. Having sipped fine clarets and burgundies, they were now treating themselves to a rich plum duff, and a fair quantity of an excellent Marsala.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Crane, the admiral’s steward, through a mouthful of food. He was as tall as his master, but thin as a rake, stooped from years in cramped quarters. He moved in a very fastidious way, his bony fingers elegantly and methodically wielding a knife and fork. The long doleful face was dominated by a large pointed nose, surmounted by sunken eyes. As he bent slightly to his food, he reminded Pender of a heron feeding in a marsh.
‘Then I’d be obliged if you’d fill me in.’ Pender lacked the refinement of the other man. He had a tendency to stab at his food with his knife, the fork poised useless in the other hand. But then he’d only recently had the chance to become acquainted with such surroundings, whereas Crane had been doing the job, afloat and ashore, for decades.
The old servant popped a morsel into his mouth. ‘Thick as thieves they was, and always looking to advance each other’s chances of a plum.’
Pender was fascinated by the background of the Ludlow family. He’d picked up bits here and there about the two brothers who now employed him, from things they’d said, and from general lower-deck gossip. But Crane’s memory could hark back to before James was born, to the friendship of Hood and their father, Admiral Sir Thomas Ludlow.
‘There was a good case against that bastard he challenged,’ Crane continued, munching steadily. ‘Evidence that he had provoked young Harry Ludlow to a duel. If he’d saw fit to apologise to the court, your master would still be a serving officer. Still, the sod got his comeuppance in the end, eh?’
Crane’s calm manner, and his stuck-up air of superiority, offended Pender. ‘He damn near did for both of them second time round. It was touch and go, I can tell you.’
The other man sniffed loudly. ‘So you say.’
It was obvious Crane believed he was exaggerating. What a pleasure it would be to tell the parchment-skinned bugger how wrong he was. To tell him the unvarnished truth about life aboard the Magnanime and the actions, never mind the preferences, of the ship’s premier, Bentley. The despicable way that the Ludlows’ ship had been sunk. Of how that old feud with the Magnanime’s captain had seemingly led to murder. Or the accusations laid against James, with evidence so strong that he was set to hang, for certain. Crane wouldn’t eat so steadily, nor look down his nose with such deliberate scorn, if he informed him of the assistance that he himself had rendered. But Pender bit his tongue. Such a tale might require him to explain his background as well, to say where he acquired certain skills that helped Harry Ludlow prove his brother’s innocence. A thief, especially a good one, does not go boasting, unless he’s determined to hang himself.
Crane missed the look in Pender’s eye. He thought the youngster cocky, mistaking his assured air for bravado. And lacking a sense of humour himself, he couldn’t fathom the jokey way Pender went about his duties. To Crane, the lad was no proper servant. He was wrong about most things regarding his fellow-diner, but not about that. Just a few weeks before Pender had been a common seaman.
‘It is sort of insultin’, you know, Harry. I am not the only one who stood ready to help you. Indeed others spoke out, risking a rebuff on your behalf. Not only did you damn yourself out of your own mouth, but you threw our offers of assistance back into our faces.’
Not even the eminent Lord Hood would have wanted to utter such words in the presence of others. He was seated on the row of velvet-covered locker-tops by the sternlight of the Victory’s main cabin, still wearing his wig, but down to his shirtsleeves on this warm Mediterranean evening. The sun, sinking in the west, streamed through the seven windows that stretched across the rear of the great cabin, its rays flashing off the silver and the highly polished furniture. James sat in a captain’s chair halfway across the room, hidden from view, his brow furrowed as he concentrated on the sketch pad balanced on his crossed knees.
‘Reinstatement is not something I can ask for,’ said Harry, his eyes fixed on the straight white line of the flagship’s wake, which stretched into the distance across the smooth blue sea.
‘Damn me, you won’t get it if you don’t. I should have insisted in sitting on that court martial myself.’ He gave Harry a glare that had made the most senior officers in the navy tremble. ‘I’d like to have seen you refuse to apologise to me.’
Harry allowed himself a slight smile. ‘I seem to recall that you were rather busy.’
Hood, second in command to Admiral Rodney, had just assisted his superior to rout the French fleet under the Comte de Grasse. The Battle of the Saintes had left both Rodney and Hood with other preoccupations. The trial of a junior officer for challenging his superior to a duel, expressly forbidden by the Articles of War, could hardly have distracted the attention of someone in that position, regardless of the nature of their relationship.
‘All you have to do is apologise. Even now. Then we can petition the king.’
Hood’s head snapped round angrily as Harry said an emphatic ‘no.’
James looked round the side of his sketch pad. ‘I dare say that Harry has in mind the fact that he will have to behave like all the other officers aboard, and forgo the pleasure of insulting you if he dons a king’s uniform again …’
Hood opened his mouth to reply but James, his head now back behind the pad, cut him off. ‘And I would be obliged if you would keep your head still. The hope is that this sketch will form the basis of a portrait. If you keep bobbing about it will end up like a Gillray cartoon.’
Hood, his thick grey eyebrows quivering, glared at the back of the pad. ‘All I’m saying is this, James. That if your brother had good cause not to reapply for his commission, I would esteem it a kindness to be told. After all, the man he challenged is now dead, and in circumstances which cannot harm your case.’
‘Will that become public?’ asked Harry.
‘Lord, no,’ said Hood emphatically. Then his face darkened. ‘It’s bound to get about in the service, of course.’
‘Then I don’t see how it can help,’ said Harry. He left out that regaining a commission in such circumstances might be equally demeaning.
‘I can’t abide pessimism in you, Harry. It’s positively unnatural in a man of your stripe.’ Hood paused, his ruddy face assuming a look of concentration as he marshalled his thoughts.
‘So I must blacken his memory.’
‘What’s the matter with that? You couldn’t abide the fellow when he was alive. Damn it, man, you put a bullet in Carter and sacrificed your commission rather than retract. All you’ll be saying is that he was as bad a first lieutenant as he was a commander. That puts the offence of your challenging him to a duel in a different light. Believe me, if you can get the Court to see him in bad odour, then you are as good as back in the navy. Take my word for it. That bunch of gossiping arrivistes that surround the king love nothing more than a reputation to blacken.’
There was appreciable bitterness in his last words. Hood himself had just been involved in conflict with those very forces, a battle he’d lost. ‘King’s mad of course, so a lot depends on the Prince of Wales. If you can stop him whoring for a moment, you might catch his ear.’
‘That, my dear Admiral, is lèse-majesté,’ said James, with deliberate irony, poking his head round the pad again.
That brought a flush to Hood’s already ruddy cheeks. ‘If you can find anyone with less majesty than that family, I’ll be surprised. Royalty! They’re not fit to be yeoman farmers.’
‘Especially ‘Black Dick’ Howe?’ James raised an amused eyebrow.
‘Don’t bait me, you young brat. But it may be that the king gets his habit of talking to trees from trying to converse with his bastard cousin. Are you acquainted with Lord Howe, Harry?’
‘I was introduced once.’ Harry smiled. ‘He didn’t say much.’
‘He never does. Talking to him is like talking to this.’ He rapped his knuckles on the wooden bulkhead, and frowned, then sniffed dismissively. ‘Corruption, pure and simple.’
Lord Howe had pipped Hood, then serving as the senior naval Lord of the Admiralty, to the command of the Channel Fleet. Hood knew, as did anyone with tactical sense, that in this new war with Revolutionary France the Mediterranean was a sideshow. The real naval battles would take place closer to home. That was where the true glory lay.
Harry couldn’t resist a little baiting himself, after the drubbing he received for his intransigence. ‘I have heard that he is a competent commander.’
‘He damned well better be,’ snapped Hood, with a gratifyingly apoplectic response. ‘Or His Britannic Majesty, Cousin George, the third of that name, may find himself in deep water! He might find himself living next door to his French cousins in exile, or back in Hanover where the brood was sired.’
There was a great deal more in this vein, with a good deal of arm waving, as Hood vented his spleen on those who’d thwarted his ambitions. James, having surrendered any hope that his subject would remain still, used the gamut of expressions to effect a goodly number of less than flattering sketches, including one with the mad King George, portly and goggle-eyed, addressing the admiral, drawn in the guise of a furious oak tree. Harry was merely pleased that the conversation had moved on from his concerns to those of their host.
It had been good fortune for them that their father’s old friend had put into Gibraltar before they left. They’d been forced to stay longer than they would have wished, called upon by the navy to participate in the investigations which had followed their arrival. Everyone had been shocked at their tale, but instead of being grateful to them for exposing wrongdoing, most naval officers had tended to cold-shoulder them. For one, they did not much favour privateers. Worse than that, as a breed they were painfully sensitive about their collective and personal honour. Harry’s actions might have exposed serious wrongdoing, as well as solved more than one outright crime. But he had brought the entire service into disrepute in the process.
And the Ludlows had not raised their standing when it emerged that they’d brought ashore a fair quantity of gold, the proceeds of an action against a French merchantman, who had, in turn, taken it off a Spanish ship. No one aboard the Magnanime had even had an inkling of its existence, supposing, when Harry regaled them with the tale, that the specie had been shipped home in one of his previous captures. Nor did he or James let on once they were ashore. The agent of this further piece of approbation was the banker whose offer of purchase Harry declined. Gold in Gibraltar took its price from Spain, a country which offered notoriously low value when trading bullion. So the brothers elected to ship it home. Offended, the banker breached his normal rules of discretion.
In a small place like Gibraltar, word got round quickly. To have taken a quantity of gold was bad enough. To be a ‘damned’ privateer was worse. To be wealthy enough to delay before turning it into ready coin enraged certain people further. It was then easy for such types to cloak both envy and dislike in the mantle of their love of the service. Most had kept their distance, reserving their unflattering remarks for each other, rather than aiming them at the Ludlows. But a few of the naval officers were less restrained, especially when drink and braggadocio had loosened both their manners and their tongues. The challenge which Clere engineered was inevitable.
They had been seeking to book a passage home to England, always assuming that Harry survived the impending encounter with Captain Clere, when the Victory, at the head of ten sail of the line, had been sighted from the top of the Rock weathering Algiceras Bay. All thoughts of business, deadly or dull, were put into abeyance as everyone went down to welcome the fleet. Hood welcomed Harry and James aboard like his own sons. To the subsequent chagrin of his officers, he offered them a passage to Genoa, from where they could take the land route home through Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. Harry had demurred, preferring a sea passage. But James, fired by memories of his Grand Tour, and the thoughts of the artistic splendours of Italy and Vienna, had prevailed.
Hood’s regard for the Ludlow brothers forced a certain amount of official respect from the Victory’s officers. But their disapproval, once they’d been fully apprised of recent happenings, was never far from the surface. And Harry had not raised himself in the general estimation by his unorthodox humiliation of Clere. Finally losing his temper one day, he asked James loudly, in the hearing of all the officers on the quarterdeck, how they would have stood if he’d just killed the bastard.
To the general relief, it would be a short voyage. Hood was making for Toulon, to reinforce the ships already there, Spanish and English, blockading the great French Mediterranean port. But, unless the situation had changed in the meantime, he’d be forced to victual his ships at Genoa, and Harry and James would transfer to whichever ship was next due to take on stores.