*Veritas*

Forenote: The full text of Archie’s last letter to Horatio can be found in my story No Longer Mourn, and it would help if you have read that before reading this. It also references events from another of my stories, Hornblower at the Basque Roads.

WARNING: Contains m/m sexual molestation. Also contains much misery and guilt and really isn’t for people who worship the ground Admiral Hornblower walks on. Oh, and there’s a het relationship too, non-graphic.

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“‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.”

Francis Bacon

1828

1. Beginning

Lord Hornblower first noticed the boy properly when pacing the stiffness out of his legs on the quarter-deck. Normally the other officers took care to keep out of their admiral’s way as he roamed freely, taking no care to keep to a particular part of the wooden floor. His rank created an empty circle around him, unless he should chose to call a man over to walk and talk which he hardly ever did. Isolation was his natural habitat and the officers were quite ready to allow it. This one, however, must have let his mind wander, for Hornblower, turning sharply, cannoned straight into the young man before he even knew that he was there.

“Oh! I– I’m terribly sorry, sir!” The youth was mortified, and Hornblower took some pity.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “At ease, Lieutenant.” Nonetheless the boy stood desperately rigid as Hornblower made his way over to the furthest part of the quarter-deck. Did they dread him so much, his juniors? Perhaps it was just the power of his office that they feared. He put that reflection aside, as he put so many things aside these days. Yet he turned, and looked deliberately back to where the young lieutenant stood.

It was several years now since his eyes had first begun to give him trouble. The failure was unusual, for he could see perfectly well at very close quarters and equally well at long range, but between about six inches and sixteen feet he could see no details, only blurs and outlines. It was a handicap chiefly in the matter of recognising faces, and all the more unfortunate in that his tone-deafness meant he had never been very good at identifying men by voice. Probably many men had been offended by his failure to know them, but pride would not let him admit to the handicap. He could see to do his work, that was what counted.

At a distance he could make the boy out clearly. Not such a boy really, two- or three-and-twenty. White-blond hair, fine features, in that brief moment of collision he had seen the eyes were blue. A good-looking youth. Ingle, that was his name. Ralph Ingle, the newest officer aboard the flagship Achilles. Some sort of connection of Wilson’s. He had been introduced of course, but there were so many of these young officers.

The sudden, physical contact had jarred him more than he wanted to admit. It had been a long time since such a thing had happened, for men did not jostle admirals. He could still feel the pressure of the young man’s body flung so suddenly against his own.

Lord Hornblower did not chose to dwell on the reasons why that should haunt him so, for it would take him too deep into places he had long since abandoned.

*

The unsettled feeling lasted through the afternoon and he found it hard to concentrate, although the task was not greatly to his liking in any case. It had not been his choice to have his biography written, but an official series of Royal Naval Biographies was being produced listing, so it was intended, every prominent captain of the war against Bonaparte. Barbara was most unwilling that he should be left out and so eventually he had agreed to let the book be written and now was faced with the uncongenial task of checking the proofs. Reliving his own life was not a venture he embarked on readily.

He wished that the writer could have skipped over his early career entirely. What he now viewed as his true life had begun when he was given his first command of any length, the Hotspur. What had come before was no more than a prelude, lived through by a young man who was not himself, merely someone who had had to exist in order that Captain Hornblower should come into being. Although he bore a higher rank now ‘Captain Hornblower’, was still how he thought of himself, and perhaps always would be. An admiral was really no more than a captain who had evaded the grim reaper long enough and a lieutenant… well he really could not remember what being a lieutenant had been like.

Unfortunately the writer of the biography, a man with whom Hornblower had had as little to do as he possibly could, did not share those views. He had dwelt at length on the Indefatigable days, with marked tributes to the abilities of Captain Pellew. That was inevitable, no doubt, and perfectly fair. However a frown cut deep between Hornblower’s eyes as he read on. Certainly Pellew had been among the leading commanders of his generation, and he had learned much from the man, but was it necessary for the printed paragraphs to be quite so fulsome in their accolades to those early days of tutelage? Anyone would think he was some stray waif the captain had adopted, rather than a junior officer receiving the training any decent commander would offer his young men. And all that effusive prose about his own achievements gladdening his former captain’s heart! No doubt Pellew would rather see him do well than not, but this was absurd.

Perhaps Pellew himself, Lord Exmouth as he was these days, had had some hand in it. Of course he had no need to rest on others’ laurels but Hornblower’s marriage had linked him with a family who were amongst the highest in the land, perhaps Exmouth wished to claim a little linkage by association. It seemed a likely explanation enough, and really not worth making a fuss over, however much those purple paragraphs stuck in his throat. An image flickered briefly into his mind, the memory of a young midshipman, standing overawed before his captain, and the thought came to him that that boy would never have believed that lordly being would one day be pleased to boast of their connection. On its heels came a second reflection, that the memory which should have brought satisfaction in fact left a sour taste. Perhaps because he could not but believe the lustre to be due to the accident of a woman’s choice. The glitter came from Barbara and her family, not from him.

He turned his mind severely to the proofs again. The man had made much of that business with the fire-ships, and Hornblower frowned again, he would have preferred that particular incident to remain unexcavated. The fact was that young Midshipman Hornblower had been on the verge of failing his examination, and that rankled. Anyone could have accomplished that business with the ships. He had not deserved to pass.

With a short sigh Hornblower laid down the pages. Having to hold the print so close to his eyes was wearing, he knew that he needed a rest for hand and eye. Mind also, he could not concentrate for as long as had once been possible. It irked him, just as his poor sight and the odd twinges in his limbs irked him, and frightened him as well, with the grim knowledge of his body’s remorseless decay. Little more than fifty, yet in cold terms he knew the bulk of his life was spent. Sometimes he wondered if a clean battle death at the height of one’s powers was not better than the slow onset of old age.

He blanked his thoughts deliberately, resting his mind whilst going through the mechanical motions of sharpening his quill. There was plenty of light in the great cabin where he worked, pouring through the large stern windows, falling on the luxurious furnishings that had been purchased to impress crew and visitors alike, the physical signs of his success.

Testing the new point, he began scribbling on the blotter without looking down or putting any conscious thought into what he wrote. When he finally held the blotter up to judge the neatness of the words, he felt an unexpected jolt.

Home, he had written repeatedly. Home.

Absurd. What was he thinking of? Not the stiff house in London or echoing mansion at Smallbridge certainly. He had always thought of those as being more Barbara’s than his own. Was he thinking of the cold house where he had spent his childhood? He knew that he was not.

Home. This cabin was as close to a home as anything he’d known. What a silly thought to have had. Yet he knew there was a longing in his mind, a sense of wanting something that was apart from him.

Telling himself he was a fool he picked up the sheets again and bent his mind to the past. As soon as he did so an image shot into the forefront of his mind with such clarity that he gasped.

Fair sea seen from the mast top as the breeze ran past him, light and air and exhilaration and beside him laughter given aloud…

The glimpse faded but memory remained, he knew what he had seen.

Indefatigable…

And that was foolish too, of course. The old Indy had been a good ship, but that was all she was. Far less his than the vessels he had commanded. He had heard men got sentimental in later life, that must be all this silly thought had been. A rose-tinted memory of his first posting – for one could hardly count Justinian. He did not really want to be young again, although it would be nice if his body could recover its youthful abilities. But to relive the folly and naivety of his younger days – Good God, no!

In a worsened temper he returned to the proofs. The matter of his service on Renown was passed over fairly lightly. A fair amount of praise for Sawyer’s distinguished record, a laudatory account of the taking of the fort on San Domingo – how this fellow did exaggerate – then notice of his promotion to Commander. The court-martial was not mentioned, the man had some discretion. On the whole, a reasonable treatment.

The quiet entrance of his steward told him time was running on. The two of them had a satisfactory system worked out, and the man’s appearance now told Hornblower there was something he must remember. Ah, yes, the dinner at Lady Vandeleur’s. Normally his heart would have sunk at the prospect of a social engagement, but dinner with Phyllis Vandeleur was something to look forward to. He laid aside the proofs with pleasure.

*

Admiral Sir Julius Vandeleur had bought for himself a house within easy distance of the great dock of Portsmouth, had retired there and in the course of time had died there, and left the property to his widow. Lady Vandeleur had been more than happy to remain, for she was as much a part of the Navy as any woman could be, her father and both brothers had risen to the rank of post-captain and none of these men had had any reservations about discussing their lives in front of womenfolk, or even with them if they were as well-informed as Phyllis Anderton. Both father and husband had liked to entertain their fellows in the service and after the Admiral’s death Lady Vandeleur, now living with a sister, had seen no reason to stop inviting old friends or making new ones. An invitation to the admiral stationed at Portsmouth had rapidly followed Lord Hornblower’s appointment. To his own surprise Hornblower had enjoyed the dinner and had been pleased when other invitations followed. By now it was a regular occasion.

As he was ushered into the pleasant drawing room his hostess came swiftly forward to greet him, the welcome seeming so unforced he felt a flicker of pleasure. No-one ever seemed pleased to see him aboard ship, rather they reacted to their superior’s presence with apprehension. However willing he was to pay the penalties of high rank, still Phyllis Vandeleur’s welcome warmed him.

She was not forty yet, for Admiral Vandeleur had been much older than his wife. Since she always spoke of him with affection Hornblower assumed the marriage had been happy, but she had put off mourning sometime since and was wearing a gown of pale lilac which he thought must become her. Although Hornblower could not appreciate it at close quarters he knew she was a pretty woman, with soft brown hair and a still good complexion.

As Phyllis drew back he could see two other people in the room. One, a dark-haired figure in pale lemon, would certainly be her unmarried sister, Stella Anderton. The other appeared to be male. The invitation had said nothing of another guest and he was not altogether pleased, although this was not the first time such a thing had happened.

“I really don’t know if the two of you are acquainted,” Phyllis was saying with the ease of an accustomed hostess. “Admiral Lord Hornblower, Captain Peter Heywood.”

“We do have some acquaintance,” a masculine voice acknowledged easily. Hornblower realised that he was frowning again. Heywood. Not in Navy uniform, but then he was retired from active service of course. He’d been a perfectly good captain, not brilliant but capable and dedicated, and there was really no reason why Peter Heywood should not be visiting Phyllis Vandeleur.

“Some time ago,” his voice said coldly.

“Peter is a distant relative of Julius,” Phyllis said, her own tone easy still. “He is visiting in Portsmouth.”

“Sometimes I miss the sea-air,” said Heywood. “London is a fine place, but a man needs the salt in his lungs from time to time.”

“I daresay,” Hornblower replied.

*

Heywood made an excuse to depart soon after dinner. Whether he was truly in need of early sleep or not Hornblower did not honestly care. He was relieved to see the man leave, and hoped to have some quiet discussion with Phyllis. It seemed only polite, however, to express the hope that Heywood would soon recover from his present indisposition.

“From being frozen solid you mean?” Stella Anderton asked steadily.

Hornblower frowned. “I don’t take your meaning.”

“I think you made your feelings very plain over dinner.”

Phyllis interposed gracefully. “Indeed I felt there must be some old quarrel between you and Peter Heywood. It is no affair of mine, but I would have bidden him come another day if I had known you did not wish to meet.”

“There is no quarrel between us,” Hornblower said impatiently. “I barely know Heywood.”

“Then it must be his record you do not like,” Stella said coolly.

Hornblower would have thought his reasons easy enough to deduce. “I have nothing to say against Heywood’s performance of his duties. But I cannot approve of a convicted mutineer being on the list of post-captains.”

2. Containing

“Peter was pardoned,” Phyllis said quickly. “And it was all so long ago. He was just a boy.”

“Perfectly true, of course. But a pardon does not alter the fact of guilt. The conviction remains.”

“The court recommended mercy,” Stella pointed out. “He was not considered guilty of any act of mutiny. The law which condemns a man who stands inactive as much as one who takes up arms is generally thought harsh.”

“I’m not saying that he should have been hanged,” Hornblower said sharply. “But the law against a man standing neuter does serve a purpose. It is needed to ensure that all on board respect the authority of a captain thoroughly. A pardon, under the circumstances, I have no quarrel with. But to commission the man with such a conviction against his name, let alone allow him to make post! No, that I cannot approve. It sets a most regrettable example. And then there were the methods employed by his family in pursuit of both the pardon and the promotion.”

“Surely you do not blame them for defending him?” Phyllis asked.

“I most certainly do blame them for employing every means in their power to blacken the character of Captain Bligh. And the family of that scoundrel Christian were even more contemptible. They ought to have been hanging their heads in shame, not defaming one of His Majesty’s loyal officers in the defence of a man who was, unfortunately, entirely beyond reach of the punishment he had earned.”

“It was not known at that time that Fletcher Christian would never be brought to trial,” Phyllis said. “Do you not think it natural his family should have been partial?”

“Partiality!” Hornblower waved the word away. “That they should wish him to live is natural. I would understand an argument of insanity, the man may well have been unbalanced. And it was perfectly fair for Heywood’s family to stress his youth and confusion. But the means they adopted were more than an attack on Bligh. In assaulting his good name they attacked the bedrock of the Navy. Do you expect me to condone that?”

“What if the accusations were true?” said Stella.

“Oh, I daresay they were true, or most of them anyway. I daresay that Bligh was a savage man with his tongue, for that was the bulk of the tirades against him. I daresay he did insult officers and men unjustly. What of it? Did that release Christian and the rest from their duty? I have heard fools speak of Christian as though he were a martyr. Such talk is an offence.”

“You have a son, do you not, Admiral?” Stella Anderton asked.

“Yes, I have,” Hornblower replied, surprised at the switch of topic.

“If your son was to be at risk of hanging, because he had been given an unlucky posting, if his life was at stake, would you hold back the truth when it might save him? Would you let him die, rather than say a word against a commissioned officer, for the simple reason that he was a commissioned officer? Would you consider concealment of the truth more important than the life of a man who did not deserve to die, and that man your son?”

Hornblower opened his mouth, and then closed it again. At last he said, “I think we are wandering from the subject here. Bligh was a good officer, even if he was sharp-tongued. Ill-tempered tirades are no grounds for mutiny.”

“I am sure you are right in that,” Phyllis said peaceably. “Perhaps Fletcher Christian was a little unbalanced.”

“I am sorry if I was rude to your guest.” Hornblower said, in truth he had not intended his feelings to be so obvious.

“I daresay that Peter did not take it to heart. He probably thought you were simply in no mood to speak with a near stranger.” The reference to his unsociable nature was delicate enough for Hornblower to take no offence.

“Well, you may tell him so, if you chose,” Hornblower said. Making an attempt at more agreeable conversation he added, “Are there any further old faces in town at present?”

*

Despite the putting aside of the quarrel he ended up leaving earlier than he had expected, and returned to the ship in a mood of dissatisfaction even deeper than that in which he had left. Deeply restless and not wishing to attempt sleep just yet he glanced at the officer tending a salute, and squinted hard, trying to be sure of the man’s hair colour. Surely, yes, he was almost certain it was young Ingle.

“Would you walk with me a little, Lieutenant?” Although he phrased it as a question he knew no young officer would refuse.

They paced side-by-side, Ingle holding a proper silence and Hornblower wondering at the most unusual impulse that had led him to ask for the young man’s company tonight. What did he imagine that Ingle could lend him? He knew next to nothing about Ingle. Still, that at least could be remedied.

“You obtained your posting through the good offices of Captain Wilson, I believe.”

“Yes, sir, I was most fortunate in that regard.” That showed the young man had some intelligence. To gain a posting, to be granted a commission, when so many experienced men were stranded ashore on half pay, yes Ralph Ingle had been fortunate in his connections.

“What made you chose the Navy?” Hornblower demanded abruptly. It occurred to him that it had not been a clever choice in these days which had no sea-war or likelihood of one and the lines of promotion so thoroughly clogged.

“There is a tradition of sea-faring in our family, sir, and I confess I liked the idea of a life on the waves. Do you not love the sea, sir?”

The frankness of that last question, the sharp departure from the usual mealy-mouthed caution with which men spoke to their admiral, took Hornblower aback. He had no answer to the question, for the only answer that he could have made was a blunt ‘No’, and he did not want to deal such a snub to Ingle. He did not love the sea, he did not even like it, and he had no understanding of how men did or could.

“You like the sea, then,” he said instead, “What else do you like, Mr Ingle?”

“Sir?”

“How do you fill your leisure hours? Do you read?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is it that you like?”

“Well…” Ingle seemed briefly uncertain over the admiral’s eccentric line of talk, but he recovered quite fast. “I like a novel, sir, if it’s a good story. Scott writes well. And some of the poets. A good poem can sort of haunt you sometimes.”

“ ‘Let those who are in fortune with their stars, Of public honour and proud titles boast’.” Hornblower wondered at his own voice. Where the devil had that come from?

“Shakespeare, sir.” Ingle sounded pleased. “You like Shakespeare?”

“I- I have not read him for many years. I never could see much point in reading plays in text, but I used to like the sonnets.” Suddenly he was unnerved although by what exactly – surely not this boy – he could not have said. The need for escape came over him, and with a sharp “Good-night, Mr Ingle,” he retreated to his quarters.

*

The frail boat rocked savagely as the storm raged around them, he was blinded and deafened, sodden clothes a dead weight against his skin, and he could not match the violence of the raging water. He had been wrong, he knew, wrong to think they could come through, wrong to believe they could outride the shattering elements, and as the boat was dragged under by the waves and the freezing water closed about his eyes and mouth and lungs he could only think of how wrong he had been and how many other lives would pay.

He woke sharply, gasping. And was aware of warmth. Arms around him, a familiar, trusted body pressing close and knew deep thankfulness even as hands moved to sooth him, “It’s all right, Horatio, it’s all right.”

Yet the choking cold was still around him, and inside him, blocking all else, and he reached out clumsily, touching warm skin, seeking things he did not understand, and he felt the response in the other as a calloused hand stroked gently down his cheek and throat, drawing response from him in turn, no simple touch of comfort now, it was caresses he was given and sought to give in answer….

This time he really did wake up.

Sweat was drenching him, and he threw the covers heedlessly aside, even as his mind battled to absorb when he was and who he was. Not some lost and ignorant youngster deceived by an innocent face, but Admiral Hornblower, fully in control of himself, a man no-one would dream of subjecting to an unconscionable advance.

Not that anyone had in truth subjected the younger Hornblower to that either. He had been spared that much, thank heaven! And he could not imagine what had caused the depths of his mind to throw up such a nightmare so long after all danger had passed.

He had a grim feeling it would be futile trying to sleep again. So he surrendered, lit a couple of candles, put on his dressing gown, and reached for his proofs. Yet his hand stopped, before raising them to his face, and after a long period of thought he rose again, took an old book from one of his shelves, and allowed a single sheet of folded paper to fall from its pages.

He could have recalled the words without having to read, but for the first time in many years he brought the letter up near to his eyes. The paper was thin and worn now, the folds tearing, the ink faded. It was really amazing it had survived the years and vicissitudes. Hard to say even why he had kept it, unless because he had felt the need of proof, the need to be able to show himself it had been real, not a hallucination caused by strain and grief.

‘Horatio’

The single word, like a whisper from the past, shook him far more than he had expected. No-one had called him Horatio for many years, even his wife never used his given name. But he had never liked his name so what did it matter?

‘If you are reading this then I am not only dead but disgraced in the eyes of the world and the Navy’

He dropped his eyes from the page, conjuring up the old shock and disgust as though he was raising spirits. The sick horror he had felt at the stark confession in those pages, the revelation that the one close friendship of his life had been a sham, that the man he thought had stood by his side through so many years had never really existed.

It had been a day or so after the court martial concluded he had received the letter, and then he had put off reading it for many more, shrinking from the pain. His new command had been almost ready for sailing when he had finally summoned the courage to break the seal, and read the things which had made a mockery of so much.

The confession that the man he had trusted had been, of all depraved things, a sodomite. Worse, that what he had taken for friendship had been perverted lust, unnatural desire. The depth of his mistake, the completeness with which he had been betrayed, had shocked him to the core.

Yet afterwards he had been relieved to know the truth. It made things so much easier, freed him from grief and guilt. It meant that he could put that part of his life aside without hesitation, and that was what he had done. So really that letter had been a blessing to receive.

He made himself read the lines over, summoning the familiar revulsion. It was a good thing the man had died when he did, before he could taint the one he had so unscrupulously deceived any further. He should be thankful there had been no scandal of that kind. Really things had worked out for the best in Kingston. Justice had been done, by however roundabout a route. He had had a fortunate escape. It was all quite unimportant now.

So why could he not shake off the dream?

*

The next morning brought Hornblower a letter from his wife. Barbara could of course have taken a house in or near Portsmouth, as many naval wives did, but both knew she would have found it dull. London society was Barbara’s element, the world of the ton to which she belonged, and to be surrounded by only naval officers and their women would not have suited her at all. They had agreed there was really little point in her moving so short a distance, Portsmouth was quite near enough for regular visits in both directions. Somehow, though, there had been hardly any visits.

Barbara had guessed at his eyesight difficulties, although they had never been discussed between them, and she had written a large, clear hand with no crossing of the pages. Of course for her expense was no concern. Hornblower read the opening endearments with his usual mixture of feelings – really Barbara was getting almost as fulsome as Maria – and passed on to the meat of the letter.

Barbara wanted him to take enough leave to make a parliamentary appearance. Not that she put it in so many words, but her desire was clear enough. There was a good deal in the letter about the turbulence of the reformers and her brother Arthur’s desire for all right-thinking men to support the government line. In truth, as he was aware, Barbara would have liked him to turn from the sea to politics. She felt that, whilst an admiral’s command was a fine thing in war, there was not enough to it in peace-time and, now he had held such command more than once, he should place himself at the centre of affairs.

It had taken him many years to realise that Barbara relished being the wife of a man considered great, and the realisation had embarrassed him horribly. He was not a great man, merely a lucky one, he did not wish to be lionised and he did not like his wife preening herself in his undeserved reputation. The thought of immersing himself in London life, using his naval career as a justification to pontificate on politics, was not agreeable at all and he could not help but feel some resentment towards Barbara and more than a little disappointment at the knowledge that the chance to bask in reflected glory had been part of his appeal to her.

He still did not know his wife well enough to realise that the desire to push him to greater heights was by no means wholly selfish. Barbara wished him to have his due, truly believed he was wasted on peace-time command, held that he should be urged to fulfil his true potential. Her insight into him was not great enough to understand his real dislike of playing a public part.

However even apart from such concerns he had no desire to abandon his naval service. Peace-time command suited him, he was good at administration and found it far less of a strain than war. As for politics, he was by no means convinced that he wished to support Arthur Wellesley. If the changes proposed by the reformers, or at least the more extreme, seemed to him far too sweeping, he equally could not agree with the view clung to by Arthur and his reactionary circle that even moderate change would be the first step on the road to revolution. Nor did he essentially believe that a seaman had any business in politics.

Thinning his lips he read on. Barbara had her mother staying with her – another good reason not to come to London. Five minutes in the company of the Dowager Lady Mornington was invariably enough to make him quite regret his first mother-in-law.

His expression lightened, however, towards the end of the letter, as Barbara proudly recounted Richard’s cricketing success at Eton. He must write to the boy, unfortunately knowing what to say to his son was never easy. Much though he hated to admit it Richard was essentially a stupid boy and it was already clear the two would never have anything in common. Still if Richard was stupid he was also good-natured and sociable and those qualities, together with his sporting talent, his father’s money and his stepmother’s social connections, should see him through life easily enough.

At least he hoped they would. There was always the other, ugly, chance.

Would you consider concealment of the truth more important than the life of a man who did not deserve to die, and that man your son?

He sought to banish Stella Anderton’s sharp question instantly, not because he did not know the answer but because he did. However poor a father he had been, however little he was able to feel any intellectual kinship, yet Richard was flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood and the protective instinct was brutally strong. If he saw Richard’s life in danger, through no fault of the boy’s own, then he would fight with every weapon to his hand, fight without scruple or hesitation, without any heed to the wounds he might inflict. Even if there were some fault he might still do it, without heed to law or cost, because Richard was his son.

The knowledge frightened him. He did not believe in favouritism, even towards blood-kin. The principle of devotion to the service had ruled his life, to go against that service for anyone or anything was clean contrary to all upon which he had founded his existence. It was wrong that he should feel so strongly, wrong that he even consider sending his country to the devil to protect his son. And yet he knew that he would do it.

Grimly he reassured himself that the contingency was unlikely to arise. Richard’s progress through life seemed likely to be serene and untroubled. Nor did he have any intention of putting his son into the Navy. Richard would never master navigation, which Hornblower still considered essential to a sea-officer although there were captains enough who had gained promotion by influence and relied on their ship’s masters. Besides Barbara, like most aristocrats, considered the Navy a second-class service containing too many officers of vulgar origin. She wanted Richard in the Army, and he considered that where Richard was concerned her wishes should come first, since she had had by far the more active part in raising him. A good cavalry regiment should suit Richard well enough.

Even to himself Hornblower would not admit that he recoiled from the thought of seeing his son in a naval uniform, that he could not bear the prospect of Richard paying the kind of price that he had done.

Sighing briefly he postponed giving an answer to Barbara – she probably did not really expect that he would come to London. When they did meet again reunion would be passionate and happiness be theirs for a while, until the flaws in their marriage began to grate again. For all their mutual want they had not yet worked out a way of living together for any length of time.

Instead he sharpened his quill, dipped it in the ink, and began to write one of his stiff and formal letters to his son.

3. Dividing

A couple of days later Hornblower was faced with the necessity to give a dinner. This was a part of his official duties he did not enjoy at all, but it was also a part which was on occasion unavoidable. The issue in this case was the presence in harbour of Vice-Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm, complete with flagship. Malcolm had been appointed to the post of commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean – inspiring some envy in Hornblower – and courtesy demanded a dinner before he left.

At least holding the dinner on ship-board provided a good excuse to invite no women. There had been only a very few women that Hornblower had ever felt remotely comfortable with, and he always disliked dinners even more if they were present. Malcolm would, of course, bring his flag captain, and a specified number of lieutenants. Hornblower would invite Captain Wilson, who was his own flag, and some of the juniors. He took a little time to rack his brains over whether there was anyone else it might be well to ask, social kinships which many captains had at their fingertips were, and always had been, a painfully alien language to him.

After adding a couple more captains to the list he remembered Peter Heywood. Heywood and Malcolm were connected by marriage – dear God this everlasting web of insidious connection – and an invitation to Heywood, if he was still in town, might make amends for his earlier rudeness at Phyllis Vandeleur’s.

The dinner, when it arrived, went stiffly. Hornblower had only a slight acquaintance with Malcolm and he had never possessed the knack of making such affairs go with a swing. Malcolm, for his part, either could not or would not break the ice. The more junior officers sat uncomfortably quiet, unwilling to break the protocol which dictated their seniors should set the conversation. Hornblower had had a vague idea that Heywood might feel less constricted as he was no longer a serving officer, yet it was not until towards the end of dinner that he ventured a remark which at least freed the conversation from stiff convention.

“Do you anticipate that your posting may bring you into contact with Lord Cochrane, Admiral?”

“It is possible,” Malcolm replied. “Although Greek affairs are really outside my sphere of authority.”

“You are acquainted with him, I think,” ventured Captain Wilson. Hornblower’s flag officer was a stout, red-faced man, competent without being in any way remarkable and his remark seemed to be merely a request for information. Nevertheless there was a note of challenge in Malcolm’s reply.

“I consider him my friend.”

Hornblower suppressed a sound of irritation, wondering whether it was tactlessness or mischief making that had prompted Heywood to bring up Lord Cochrane. Hero or wretch, martyr or scoundrel, it was certain that no senior officer could fail to have an opinion of Cochrane. And few names were likely to divide opinion more sharply.

“What sort of a man is he?” The question came from the lower end of the table and Hornblower was almost certain it was young Ralph Ingle who had spoken. It had seemed only fair to Wilson to include his relative amongst the selection of juniors asked to dine.

“A brilliant one,” Malcolm said at once.

“A very clever man at sea,” Hornblower concurred. That much no-one could reasonably deny. He hoped Ingle would not bring up the Stock Exchange trial that had led to Cochrane’s ejection from the service, not least because he did not himself believe the man had been guilty. Cochrane was a fool, but not that kind of fool. However he was not about to criticise the operations of a British court of law, nor did he think such a troublemaker deserving of defence.

Ingle’s mind, however, was on naval matters. “That affair at the Basque Roads, sirs, do you think the fleet should have gone in?” Hornblower braced himself to utter a rebuke, he could not have that sort of talk from a junior officer. However the senior admiral had answered before he could do so.

“That depends on who you speak to, Lieutenant. You will get one answer from Lord Hornblower and a different one from me.”

Hornblower set his teeth. Both he and Malcolm had been at Basque Roads, and both had testified subsequently, but not to the same effect. “The matter was settled at court-martial,” he said grimly.

“A conclusion was reached,” Malcolm said. “I would not expect you to suggest the decision of a sea-court could ever be wrong.”

Hornblower’s hands were already clenched, now the nails dug into the palms. Most likely Malcolm was in truth speaking only of that wretched Basque Roads business, but there was always the doubt, the thorn in the side that Cochrane himself had planted long ago.

(Clear blue eyes looking scornfully down at him, as Cochrane exposed the rumours that swirled around Kingston, the suggestion that his first command had been a bribe, that he had bought his promotion with a fellow officer’s good name… And ever since scanning chance remarks for barbed meanings, wondering if the man he spoke to believed his silence had been for gain…)

Malcolm took advantage of his silence. “It may interest the officers, however, to hear another opinion. Frederick Maitland, when he had command of the Bellerophon raised the matter of the Basque Roads action with his most distinguished guest.” He spoke the words with care, creating absolute silence round the table. There was certainly not a man at the table who did not know to whom Malcolm referred. Frederick Maitland, when captaining the Bellerophon, had been the officer who took the final surrender of Napoleon Bonaparte.

“And?” Hornblower could not tell from whom the eager question came.

“Bonaparte,” Malcolm said deliberately, “was of the opinion that if Cochrane had been properly supported he would have taken every one of the French ships, for the fleet was in a panic and the men had no notion of defending themselves.”

“I would expect him to say that,” Hornblower snapped. “We all know Cochrane was a Bonapartist, no doubt the man himself knew it as well.” As an afterthought he added, “For that matter Maitland was a Bonapartist, too.”

The words fell sharply into the atmosphere around the table. To Hornblower the fact was incomprehensible, but it was true, there were British men, even serving officers, who had a genuine regard for Bonaparte and did not hesitate to praise him.

“Captain Maitland,” Malcolm replied sharply, “was an officer of undoubted loyalty, who handled an intensely difficult duty well.”

“I did not say otherwise,” Hornblower replied. In truth he did not think Maitland guilty of anything worse than indiscretion, that the man who had formerly held Bonaparte prisoner should have associated with the party arguing for his release from St Helena had been rash but nothing worse. Hornblower did not go so far as to think admiration for Bonaparte criminal, just painfully wrong-headed. Cochrane, on the other hand, had actually formed a scheme to liberate Bonaparte from custody and make him Emperor of South America, which he did consider criminal or at least lunatic. However that fact was not generally known and he was not at liberty to broadcast it. He could not denounce Cochrane for a traitor anymore than he could reasonably tell the truth about the man others believed him to have betrayed in Kingston.

Not that it was likely to be any use venturing criticism of Cochrane to Malcolm anyway. Damned cliques! He hated those webs of family connection and longstanding patronage from which he had been so long excluded, and hated them none the less now that his marriage to Barbara had placed him in the midst of one of the most powerful. And he sometimes thought Scots cliques were the worst. Cochrane, Malcolm, Maitland – Heywood was from the Isle of Man but no doubt it came to the same thing.

Wilson was trying to pour oil on the waters. “Now the war is long-ended surely we should not think too hardly of a man for wishing to judge Bonaparte dispassionately. He and we were all civilised men after all. He was our enemy, but we still retain more in common with him that with a bunch of African or South Sea savages.”

“True, no doubt,” said Heywood, “but is that really to the credit of him or us? Savages we may call them, but I have seen actions by civilised men, men, some of them, of education and breeding, far more barbarous than the way of life practised by many of those that we regard with such complacent superiority.”

“Come, come,” Wilson said impatiently, “I do not deny there are rotten eggs in our society, but these folk you speak of are a shiftless bunch, it is only the European who has real ideas of work, of improvement.”

“And yet,” said Heywood, “what is it that we strive for after all? What do any of us hope to achieve at the end of our lives but that which the South Sea natives that you speak of take for granted, which is to say ease and leisure and the right to please ourselves?”

“You may speak for yourself in that,” Hornblower replied, “but you do not speak for me. I do not find ease or leisure desirable commodities. Occupation, that is the thing. A man must keep busy, and he must always do his duty.”

“Duty, aye.” Heywood said. “But it is our society whose nature demands such hard service. It was Dr Johnson, was it not, who said that ‘as peace is the end of war so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy’? Yet those who we term savages have peace without war and leisure without first wearing themselves to exhaustion with labour.

“Still, I would by no means dispute the demands of duty, although I sometimes think the urge to serve a thing outside of oneself to be as selfish as any other. For does not every man desire to be able to look back as his life wears down and to know he has done as much as he can do to pay all debts?”

Debts, that was an odd way of putting it, though perhaps not so odd for a man with Heywood’s history. As for his remarks on savages, Hornblower wondered if he were the only person in the great cabin to remember that Heywood had spent many months on Tahiti after the Bounty mutiny, that he was rumoured to have South Seas tattoos covering his chest beneath his shirt.

“Indeed,” Malcolm said, “Every man should be prepared to face the full reckoning for all the deeds of his life. Without conscience, we are as beasts. Yet there is something to be said for leisure, for without it I doubt that man would ever achieve improvement in thought or in material circumstance.”

“If by improvement in thought you mean philosophy,” Hornblower said, “then I do not know that we would be so badly off without it. As for material invention, to which I take it you refer, they do say it is born of necessity.”

“There is too much of this inventiveness to my mind, sir,” Wilson put in. “This newfangled business of ships being driven by steam now. Never anything wrong with sail in my view.” Somewhat to Hornblower’s relief the talk from there went on naturally to whether the steam experiment would ever work, a matter on which the table was divided, but amicably so, with none of the danger that had hung around the previous line of talk. He himself kept aloof, attempting not to scowl. A pretty pass things were coming to when men of Malcolm’s seniority voiced such inflammatory views.

*

The following morning found Hornblower once again exercising his legs on the quarter-deck, and once again Ralph Ingle was standing watch. Without any conscious intention Hornblower found himself continually glancing over to the young man, taking every opportunity to study him from a distance.

He had a good carriage young Ingle, and an easy manner to him. Hornblower, so seldom at ease himself, had always found that an enviable thing. Ingle walked the deck with a spring to his step, evidently happy with what he did. Hornblower shook his head, made grim by the easy optimism of youth. Such an innocent boy, no idea of what life really was yet. Illusion would no doubt be stripped from him soon, but for now there was something appealing in his innocent happiness.

He was beautiful. The thought came suddenly. Hornblower had always loved beauty and had precious little opportunity to feed that love within his seaman’s life. A ship was a fair thing seen from a distance, but at sea in war the chances to appreciate that were few, when a sail was sighted a man would have other things to occupy him than dwelling on the sight. Most of a ship was not fair to those who lived upon her, although there was a certain pleasingness in the lines of captain’s quarters on the larger craft which had been one of the few small pleasures of his rise in rank. Otherwise he had had to rely on the occasional sky to feed his hunger. And sometimes, sometimes, he could see beauty in a living form….

Impatient with himself he called Ingle over. “I trust you did not find last night too tedious, Lieutenant. Unfortunately, if you wish to stay in the service, you must get used to these affairs.”

“Not tedious at all, sir,” Ingle replied, “It was most interesting.” Hornblower frowned, thinking that it might not have been a good thing to expose young Ingle to the kind of talk uttered by Heywood and Malcolm.

“You asked about Cochrane,” he said abruptly.

“Yes, sir?”

“What you must understand, Lieutenant, is that if you wish to serve in the Navy your dedication must be absolute. No matter how difficult you find it, no matter how high the cost, total devotion is the only way. If you do not like it, you must seek your future elsewhere. That is what Cochrane never understood. He was a very ingenious tactician and his personal courage unquestionable, but he did more harm to the service than he did good, because he never would realise that an officer should put the Navy first. He believed he could serve two masters, the service and his own political cause. Of course he could not. Do you hear me, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I hope so,” Hornblower said. It would be a pity if young Ingle was seduced by Radical talk. “Captain Heywood was right in one thing he said, a man needs to be able to look back at the end of his life and know that, in one thing at least, he has done well. I know that will seem a long way away to you at present, but it is never too early to consider such things.”

“The state of my soul you mean?”

“No, not that precisely.” It would not do to say he had stopped believing in religion long since. A naval officer must be an outward believer. “I am no theologian, Mr Ingle. What concerns me is being able to look back on one’s own life and find some peace. To stand face to face with oneself and be satisfied.”

The subject cut near to the bone. It was more than a dozen years now since, under arrest by Bonaparte’s soldiers, he had sat through what he had been certain at the time would be the last night of his life and found to his utter horror that there was no peace for him. He had known that he had nothing to be proud of in his dealings with others, that he had been a poor friend, a worse husband and a bringer of little that was good to those who had known him. But he had thought to find comfort in the knowledge of duty done. He had looked back over the long, hard service, and thought to find that, in this at least, he had been worthy. And there had been nothing for him. He had recited his long labour and the memories had been as snow in his hands: cold and insubstantial. He had looked back on his career and it had all been nothing.

It had not been until much later, when life had been restored to him after all, that he had found an explanation. For he had failed in his duty. He should have gone back to London, offered his services in the war still being fought in the west, not lingered on in France with Marie. He should certainly have returned at the first word of Bonaparte’s escape, rallied to his country’s cause. Instead he had stayed, for reasons that even now he did not consciously understand. He had deprived his country of his services at a crucial time, and it had been Marie who paid the price.

He had known then that his service in future must be unstinting, that the Navy must have all it could ask if he was ever to atone for the lapse. So he had chosen, but the flesh was weak and sometimes wavered. Once he had failed, when he placed Barbara before the Navy over the matter of Hudnutt’s escape in Kingston, but that at least had been a minor matter and by the time he had known the truth there had been nothing he could have done to recapture Hudnutt if he had wanted. His crime had been silence only, but he had worked himself the harder in atonement.

It seemed so very important that Ingle should grasp the truth. Yet the young man’s thoughts were still running elsewhere.

“You mean, sir, that a man should act without thought of reward other than a clear conscience? That we should work from a sense of what is right and not from ambition? ‘Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery sooth the dull cold ear of Death?’”.

“Gray,” Hornblower said. “A fine poet, but a civilian.” It must be a fair few years now since he had last read the ‘Elergy’, once a favourite work. ‘The paths of glory lead but to the grave…’ That was true enough, but it was not what he had meant. He despaired of finding a clearer way to put it into words. Where were the poets of Duty?

He paced on silently, still attempting to find a better explanation, until for no reason the knowledge of Ingle’s presence by his side shifted from being a mere fact to occupying the forefront of his mind. Suddenly the awareness of the young man was overwhelming, and he found himself retreating once again to his cabin, although from what he was escaping he could not consciously have said.

4. Evading

A fresh post that evening brought two letters. The first one he opened was from his son, and Hornblower frowned a little as he read over the few laboured lines. Richard’s spelling didn’t seem to be improving. Still, he had written conscientiously, if with an evident effort. It seemed that Eton was at least teaching Richard the respect properly due to his father.

Hornblower’s frown deepened. He had, in fact, proposed a private tutor for Richard, only to have it firmly borne in on him by several of Barbara’s relations that that would be coddling. Explaining why he did not wish to send his son to school was scarcely possible, so he had agreed on Eton, comforting himself with the reflection that it must surely be a better run place than that where he had spent his own youth.

He had not meant to truly recall that time, but the light in the great cabin seemed to dim around him and he was back in the stark dormitory, in the early night…. The night when boys would slip out of their own beds towards others, to talk and speculate and experiment. One or two would boast of kissing girls, but he had never been amongst them. It had all seemed so harmless, those first discoveries of fleshly pleasure, not quite innocent perhaps but no worse than taking apples from the orchard. No-one had warned him it was a step on a road to damnation, the early stages of a thing abhorrent to all right-thinking people.

And Admiral Hornblower was an entirely right thinking man. His younger self, however, had been so ignorant, not even understanding what sodomy was until he joined the Navy and being far too slow to connect it with those shivering, nameless pleasures of the night time dormitory. Well, he had learned, he had learned, and now he could look back on those times with proper disgust, coupled with gratitude that things had gone no further. Only some touching, a few shy kisses, but it was a disgrace his young soul had been corrupted even so far….

Surely it would not happen at Eton. And he should not be thinking on it. Such things were better not thought upon.

He laid Richard’s brief page aside and opened the second letter. This one might reasonably be categorised as semi-official, it came from John Barrow, the Admiralty Second Secretary, and was devoted chiefly to conveying naval information. Hornblower both liked and respected Barrow, a hard-working individual risen from undistinguished origins by dint of application and discretion. It would not be too much to say he saw in Barrow something of what he himself might have been if his path had lain outside the Navy.

For that reason the postscript came as all the more of a shock, like the crack of gunfire when one thought no enemy near. Barrow had heard of Hornblower’s meeting with his friend Peter Heywood and was glad to hear of it. Had Hornblower read Heywood’s naval biography? It incorporated a most interesting account of the Bounty affair by the late James Morrison that through the influence of Captain Bligh’s patrons had previously been suppressed.

Morrison. Hornblower’s hand dropped to the desk. He retained a vivid recollection of the lean, black-haired man with his proud carriage and educated speech. He’d never read Morrison’s manuscript, but had heard accounts of it before. And Barrow of all men to be commending Morrison.

Of course Barrow was a civilian, even if he was a life-long Admiralty servant, perhaps he should not expect Barrow to understand. But Heywood was not a civilian, and Hornblower’s prejudice against the man hardened. Still, there was nothing he could do about it, so he made himself raise the letter once again, and apply his attention to making notes on the earlier pages.

From there he moved on to some of the endless supplies of paperwork his job brought with it, until at last a headache of ferocious proportions forced him to pause for a time and drop his face down into his hands whilst turmoil struggled in his mind, memories of Malcolm and Maitland, Barrow’s words, Heywood and Morrison…. Was this truly where Duty led? To find himself an isolated, aging man, whose standards were dismissed by those who should have cherished them most?

Did they laugh at him, his officers? Mock him for an outmoded, antiquated fool? Had he spent his life shaping himself to a pattern that never really existed?

Ridiculous to build so much on nothing at all really. Ridiculous to have served happily for so many years and now…

No, not happily. Never that.

*

The faint light of a half-moon illuminated dorm, the soft pad of footsteps giving place to even softer breathing and he closed his eyes to drink in the better what he knew must follow. The hand sliding beneath the coverlets, brushing lightly against his stomach through the loose cloth of nightshirt and then moving down… and now he could hear the creak of timbers and knew he was lying in his narrow lieutenant’s cot… “Sssh,” soft though the whisper was he knew the voice and reached out eagerly, touching soft hair then the press of lips against his own silenced all words as the touching hand began to move with gentle but insistent purpose….

This time on waking he fairly bolted from the bed, made it to one of the long windows and flung open the catch, drinking in deep breaths of cold night air.

He had heard of sicknesses that lay dormant many years, only to return when least expected. But why this, why this? Was the infection he had received in his long ago innocence truly so severe?

*

There was no rest for him the rest of that night and no peace the following day as his mind refused to settle to any task and restlessness drove him to pace the quarter-deck with ferocious speed. That afternoon, with no thought in his head except escape, he was driven to order a boat and have himself rowed ashore. Once there he found himself headed, as though he had planned it all along, to Phyllis Vandeleur’s.

She met him warmly, any feeling of surprise quickly masked. Tea was ordered and they sat down together in the drawing-room. At first he merely sat and held his cup, inhaling the steam as though it had some healing property, but Phyllis sat quiet beside him, asking no questions, and suddenly he began to talk.

Morrison, he said, did she know Morrison’s account of the Bounty business? No, Phyllis said, although she seemed to have heard the name.

“Most likely, he was pardoned together with Heywood. Went down in the Blenheim, I think, but that was years later. He wrote an account, it circulated in manuscript. Attacked Bligh, I don’t know the details, but one who had read it told me it was just the usual sailors’ grumbles. But civilians don’t understand these things, some thought it put Bligh in a bad light.”

“Regrettable for Captain Bligh,” said Phyllis, “But why should you worry about one grumbling sailor?”

“I met him, years later. I wouldn’t have thought the man would ever be employed on one of His Majesty’s ships again. To be pardoned for mutiny and reply with an attack on his captain – there was a man who should have been banished forever from the service. Wouldn’t you have thought that? But I met him, and who do you think had given him employment? Not one of the firebrands like Cochrane. No, it was Admiral Pellew, Exmouth as he is now. Morrison was Master Gunner on the Tonnant during the blockade of Brest. I met him then. I couldn’t believe it when someone told me who he was.”

“Lord Exmouth was your first captain, was he not?” Phyllis said.

“Yes. Of all men I modelled myself on him. And I knew he was no friend to mutiny. I knew he could not abide criticism of His Majesty’s captains. I knew it, I’d seen myself the lengths to which he thought it right to go to protect such a man’s good name. And he, of all men, to employ Morrison. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t understand it. I’ve never felt so –”

So betrayed. But his throat cut off the speech before his tongue could say the words. Betrayed. If Kingston had not meant that a captain’s good name should be defended at any cost, any cost, then what in God’s name had it meant? He had accepted that fact, only to find the man who had brought him to that acceptance happily employing one of the most notorious shatterers of that rule.

But Phyllis knew nothing of Kingston, or if she had heard any of the rumours he did not wish to call them to her mind. And so he sat dumb, hands clenched in pain.

“”My brother Francis,” Phyllis said, “once called Edward Pellew a man who was so busy reckoning the price of things he never understood the value.”

“Perhaps,” Hornblower said, “Perhaps.” He screwed his eyes shut briefly. “Sometimes I think I’ve outlived my due time. And then I wonder, did that time ever really exist? Was there ever an age when men believed in Duty before all else? Was Honour ever really more than a name for self-seeking? I think back to all the old tales… Nelson, now, Nelson had much to say about Duty. But it didn’t stop him suing St Vincent in a squalid squabble over prize money. What did that do for the Navy’s reputation? And I think of the others … Orde issuing challenges over not getting the command he wanted. Harvey at the Basque Roads. Broughton. So many others. It almost puts me in charity with Cochrane, at least the trouble he made wasn’t for his own selfish interest.”

“Do the acts of others matter so much?” said Phyllis. “Is not the important thing that your own conscience should be clear?”

“But why does it mean so little? It ought to mean something. It ought to be a support, a consolation. Why do I get nothing from it?”

Why? Why? And why was he telling this to Phyllis Vandeleur now? It was quite unlike him to pour out his soul so. He did not realise that where pressure builds continuously on a dam, it is bound to burst one day.

“It’s all so empty,” he said hopelessly. “And I don’t know why.”

Phyllis said nothing, but her arm went round his shoulders and he leaned readily into her embrace. Then fire ignited in a moment, and he turned his face, moving down towards her blindly. Restraint lingered for a moment, telling him he must not abuse her kindness so, but Phyllis was leaning in towards him in return and when their lips met all thought was lost as he sought the only escape from himself he’d ever learned.

5. Recalling

For a few days he was almost happy. He worked at his duties with satisfaction and retired as often as he could to Phyllis’s arms, finding the shelter he craved within the tenderness she offered.

Neither of his wives had ever been tender. Maria had never imagined he might need it: to her he was an idol to be worshipped, not a suffering human to be cherished. Barbara was passionate, sometimes considerate, but never tender. Hornblower did not understand that his wife’s rearing by a cold and domineering woman had left her with no ability to show the tenderness she felt, nor could he have helped her if he had understood it.

Marie had been tender. But in these days he did not think of dead Marie. He thought of what he did with Phyllis as little as possible, but he retired to her bed at every chance and was glad to do so. For a little while his sleep was untroubled.

It was another letter from his wife that brought the first disruption. Initially it seemed very little different from the last. Barbara was still trying to persuade him back to London, with the between the lines suggestion that her brother might give him a ministry position. Hornblower snorted beneath his breath. Arthur Wellesley did not like him and made little secret of it. Arthur liked few men risen by merit, regarding them with deep suspicion as potential revolutionaries, and Hornblower’s mild dissent from some of his opinions had confirmed that view. In any case Arthur, although lacking in social graces himself, preferred his circle to be drawn from those who possessed them in abundance. Yet he was very fond of Barbara, on reflection it was possible he might offer a position for her sake.

Reading on he learned that the bad feeling between Arthur and the eldest brother, Richard, had reached new depths of late. Richard was apparently spreading some scandalous story that Barbara felt unable to pass on even in a private letter. Hornblower snorted again, he’d never really got to the bottom of what had turned two affectionate brothers into bitter enemies. Nor did he particularly wish to. Richard, the elder Richard, appeared to be quarrelling with everybody these days, but Hornblower had no patience with the vagaries of Barbara’s family. Most of them made no secret of their opinion that she had married sadly beneath her.

(Not all aristocrats were like that, his memory whispered. He remembered the Comte de Gracy, the old French aristocrat who should have been his enemy yet who had accepted him simply and affectionately. And from further back a cheerful voice describing its owner’s ancestors as ‘a set of deuced loose fishes, for the most part’…)

Well, he didn’t care about Barbara’s family’s feuds. Strange, how he’d once longed for siblings. These days he felt grateful to be an only child.

He read on. ‘I encountered Lord Exmouth in town the other day and he desired me to convey you his warmest affection. Truly, I am persuaded he has a most sincere regard for you and regret that you seem so reluctant to believe it…’

He lowered the paper and sighed. Barbara was too much of a sentimentalist. Exmouth saw him as a prize protégé, no more. And why should he see him as anything more? No, that was fair and reasonable, but Barbara liked to romanticise.

True, he’d romanticised himself once. He knew now his younger self had had an unformed, unspoken longing, a desire to make amends for his own father’s chill indifference by seeking approval elsewhere, from men whom he admired or even sometimes men he felt he should admire. Men old enough to have been a father to him. Long after he was adult he’d craved the approval of superiors for reasons which went well beyond the professional. Captain Pellew had been the first and foremost, but he had known since Kingston that had been a silly dream. He’d been one junior amongst many, useful but dispensable, not that he’d voiced it so clearly to himself for many years but he had known it, all the same. So Barbara’s silly notions hurt more than they should do, for they had been his own.

It was unimportant really, but there had been too many troubling moments of late, and his thoughts ran on. It had always been the same, with Exmouth and with others, always valued as an officer and only that. What was he, without his uniform? What man, in truth, had ever seen him as anything other than a prize officer, a source of victories a credit to the Navy and all who associated with it?

What a fraud it all was! None of them valued who he was, only what luck had brought him. Even William Bush, the only close friend he had ever had, even Bush had surely seen him first and foremost as an officer. Would Bush have thought twice of him if it were not for those ill-earned victories? He doubted it.

Perhaps there had been one exception. That chance-met Frenchman the Comte de Gracy had had no interest in his naval achievements, yet the Comte had liked him, respected him, and the regard of that good man had been sweeter than all the Gazette plaudits he had received. He had, in truth, been the last and best of Hornblower’s paternal figures, for all that Hornblower had been nearer to forty than thirty when they met. Yet how had that ended? In the end he had repaid the Comte as badly as he had repaid all those who showed any care for him. He had seduced his daughter-in-law and then brought her to her death. He had deprived that man he respected above all others of the only companion left to him in his loneliness. Racked with guilt he had had no contact with the Comte in the long years since, did not even know if he was still alive.

Disaster on disaster all his life. Only Exmouth still flourished like the green bay tree and if he knew what Hornblower brought to all who cared for him he would not attempt to pass himself off as one of their number.

Hornblower smote his hand abruptly against the desk, feeling the pain of old wounds once again. Dammit, why had he had to bring death to Bush? The war almost over, why had Fortune had to turn her evil face to the man who deserved so much better from her? Rationality told Hornblower it was not his fault; he had given the orders that was all, it was not his fault that things had gone so wrong. Yet there were times when rationality was of no help at all.

No funeral even, no chance to say farewell. Bush had been blown into nothingness, there had been no body to honour in death. Only the void, and the knowledge of his own continual unkindness to the man who had only sought to give him loyalty.

There had been no funeral for Archie either….

He had never known what had been done with the body. Shovelled into an unmarked, unconsecrated grave most likely. Or sold to the surgeons, if there were any in Kingston who wished to buy. He had not asked. At least they had not hanged the corpse as an example.

Should have been a sea-burial… he deserved that much. He was a brave man, whatever else he was. Not a hole in the ground, not like the oubliette….

He was being ridiculous he knew. Most men disliked sea-burials anyway. And Archie – Archie probably wouldn’t have cared at all what was done with his body. Archie had been ruthlessly unsentimental. But still the treacherous voice whispered … Should have been a sea-burial… I owed him that….

That letter…. Such a brave thing to write. And the hand was firm and strong, not the writing of a dying man. He had written the letter earlier, before he had received the dreadful wound. He had written it aboard Renown and that must mean he had resolved to take the blame, if blame there must be, before knowing he was quite likely doomed whatever happened.

Hornblower had seen as much when he first read the letter but he had put the thought aside. Yet still the knowledge lingered, and behind it another, deeper, certainty. He had known before he read the letter that he would not challenge the verdict of the court-martial. He would not attempt to clear Archie’s name, would not denounce the methods of the tribunal. Archie had been innocent of assaulting Sawyer, their final conversation had told the young Horatio that much. But even as he stretched out his hand to accept the offered command, he had known that he would let the dishonour stand.

For the good of the service, Sir Edward had told him in indirect words and he had believed that because what else was there to believe in? But it had been so hard. For the good of the service… but that was not an argument that Archie, in his shoes, would have given half a second’s heed. It’s an injustice, Horatio…. Not that Archie would have said that of his own disgrace. He had never been one to complain for himself. But he would have said it if the scapegoat had been another.

It was necessary. He had to believe that. Yet those days in Kingston he had doubted his own ability to accept it and stay sane. Doubted that he could bear to sail home on the renamed Gaditana of all ships, doubted that he could survive with the word Retribution forever in his ears. And then the letter….

He had read it again and again, until every phrase was branded in his mind. His first response had been denial, but surely no man would invent such a thing at such a time. He had to believe. He had learned to believe. And then, when he had ceased to deny, he had gone to look for Lt Bush and got drunk with him and called him William and told himself that here was a man he could rely on, a good, decent, straightforward man who would never pollute a friendship with distorted lust….

For the first time it occurred to him to wonder if that had been true. He had never known William Bush to court a woman or speak of lying with a whore. But then they had not really been on those sort of terms, even at the closest of times they hardly ever talked about anything but their shared profession. For all he knew Bush might have been a sailor with a girl in every port. He found himself hoping that there had been someone, at sometime…. He himself had done Bush no favour he knew, attempting to embrace him as a friend for no other reason than that he was there and he was not like Archie. Offering more than he had been able to give in the end, because much as he tried to give Bush real friendship it was not in him to truly open his soul spontaneously, and it was not in Bush to force his way past the barriers as Archie had done so well. Perhaps no-one could have done so by that time.

He shook his head, as though trying to clear the memory of Archie Kennedy from it. What business had he had, playing havoc with the young Horatio that way? And why must he remember it all now? Voyaging homewards he had made a conscious effort to block Archie Kennedy from his mind and memory. By the time the sloop reached England he had been largely successful, although the act of will had been a hard one. He had what he wanted, he had lost nothing of importance and even through the hard days of poverty that followed he had not allowed himself to grieve or to look back. He had schooled himself so well that meeting men who brought back memories of Kingston – Bush, Pellew, even Hammond – had brought no pang to him.

Over and done with and not worth remembering. He refused to remember. He picked Barbara’s letter up again and read on to the end. The conclusion was devoted chiefly to mundane matters to do with Smallbridge. Running an estate seemed to consist of a multitude of trivialities and it irked Hornblower that he always felt incompetent in these matters. He knew that Barbara took a good deal of the trouble off his shoulders but she did not like that he should play no part at all, and besides there were some things in which he must participate, if only by giving a signature. Sometimes he wondered if it had not been easier to be a junior lieutenant with just his pay.

*

From his stance on the quarter-deck it was easy to watch the young man. Hornblower did not wonder how his sight seemed restored, although he knew himself no younger; it was the flagship beneath his feet and rear-admiral’s uniform that clothed his body. He watched in unselfconscious admiration as the sun glinted on the bright, blond hair and drank in the natural grace with the well-made body moved. Then, turning at the end of a pace, the young man glanced over and Hornblower swung away, uneasy.

Lt Kennedy’s face, Lt Kennedy’s insouciant carriage…. He did not wonder how this should be for it seemed quite natural in his dream. Kennedy. Always that insolent look to him beneath the formal words and actions. Not a respectful man, not a reliable officer to look upon his admiral that way as though he saw and judged…. Not a man that Admiral Hornblower could like, not one that he could feel at ease around. He sensed too much scorn beneath that level gaze. A disaffected young man and likely to be trouble. And that thought, too, felt natural.

But he was beautiful…

6. Enduring

It was hardly surprising that the next time Hornblower’s promenade coincided with Lt Ingle’s watch he should find himself continually glancing over. A little, only a very little, imagination and he could see a different figure keeping watch, another young man with fair hair and a naturally graceful stance.

But truly Ralph Ingle was nothing like Archie Kennedy. So Lord Hornblower told himself as he tried to keep as much of the deck between himself and the younger man as was possible. All they had in common was youth and a certain outspokenness and even that had different roots. Ingle spoke things best unsaid because he had not yet learned better, Archie had done so because he would not learn better.

Ralph Ingle was essentially an innocent. Even the very young Horatio had never made the mistake of supposing Archie Kennedy was that. Ingle had none of Kennedy’s scars, and none of his innate, dangerous rebellion. He was truly virgin clay.

Not even so very alike in looks, Hornblower told himself, comparing memories of two sets of feature. Ingle was slimmer, his hair an even lighter shade of blonde, his features more regular and delicate. Classical perfection whereas Archie had been – something other. Youth and fair hair and eyes of blue. The service held many such and he was a foolish, aging man to be brooding on it now.

“Come walk with me, Lieutenant.” With the fancied resemblance denied there was no need to retreat from Ingle’s conversation.

*

“Will you be going to London?” Stella Anderton wanted to know.

“My work is here,” Hornblower replied stiffly.

“But you could surely travel to London to participate in the debates. Do you support Emancipation, Admiral?”

“I know little of such matters. They are best left to the politicians.”

“As our leading minister’s brother-in-law, he will surely want your support. Would you vote with the government on Emancipation?”

“If I am needed to do so,” Hornblower replied with truth. He had no objections to the proposed legislation, Wellington’s only concession towards liberalism. “But I think that unlikely.”

“And where do you stand on electoral reform?”

“I believe that is a matter better left to the men of government,” Hornblower snapped back, irritated. He did not like women involving themselves in politics, although his own wife was an incorrigible meddler. It was men’s work, although not for men like him.

“Come now, Admiral, the whole country has an opinion on reform. It’s no use simply hoping that the issue will go away.”

“Why should it concern you so?” Hornblower tried another tack. “Women do not vote.”

“Does that disqualify me from taking an interest in the governance of the country where I live? But in this case I am merely curious. Other people’s opinions interest me.”

Hornblower felt like telling Stella to mind her own business, but he could not do that in front of Phyllis, not when he was still hoping to get her alone after this pretence of taking tea.

“I dislike this revolutionary clamour,” he said, “There may be a case for some redistribution but the fundamental system is one which has served us well. Why upheave it?” He did not want to talk about this. He did not want to think about it. He wanted to get Phyllis alone with the curtains drawn and forget himself for a while.

He especially did not want to speak of anything which brought him near to the topic of Barbara in London.

*

“Stella can be a little overly persistent sometimes,” Phyllis said later.

“It’s hardly a wonder she’s never married,” Hornblower grumbled. Stella Anderton was a fairly pleasant looking woman, but what man would marry himself to a tongue like that?

But he did not want to disturb himself by thinking of Stella. He shifted position instead, rolling onto his back and wishing for the vigour to lose himself again in Phyllis’s body. He could not stay the night of course, nor did he wish to do so, for he had never been comfortable sleeping in the same bed with a woman, not even Barbara or lost Marie. But he did not think about other women now.

Phyllis was tracing something on his shoulder, the old white scar that recently had begun to ache in an annoying manner in cold weather. “What battle did you get this in? It looks very old.”

“No battle.” He hoped that would end the talk. After so many years of hard service it was ironic that this was the only real scar he bore, that the only serious wound he had ever received had come from his own side.

“It looks like a bullet wound.”

“It is.” Hornblower reluctantly surrendered, sure she would persist. “It was from a duel.”

“A duel? You?” Phyllis seemed astonished.

“It was a long time ago.” It was one of the many things he did not want to remember. For all the years that had passed he had never quite felt cleansed of Clayton’s blood. “Boys can be foolish,” he said lamely, hoping she would not press further. What could he say if she did? That it had been over a dispute at cards. He could hardly tell the truth….

…. Horatio doubted he would ever find his way successfully around Justinian. The ship was too big, he feared becoming lost every time he ventured below decks. Clayton or Archie would have helped him if they had been able but neither had been in sight when Eccleston dispatched him on this errand below decks and Horatio’s pride baulked at running to them like a child in any case.

The clutching hands seemed to come from nowhere, knocking him off balance before he could fully absorb the assault. In a moment he was flat against the bulk-head, one strong hand pinning his wrists behind him, digging cruelly into flesh still raw from his spell in the rigging. The other hand was on his throat, choking, making it impossible to cry out. Gagging, he smelled foul breath and unkempt carcass but worse was the sensation of a body which seemed all hard angles pressed far too near.

“I was bound to get you on your own eventually, Snotty,” the hated voice hissed in his ear. “You can’t hide from Jack forever.” As he spoke his lower body was grinding hard, rhythmically hard, against the young midshipman. Horatio tried desperately to twist free but he might as well have fought a steel cable and his feeble struggles only caused Simpson’s grip to tighten, the loathsome movements to become harder, more vicious.

“This is only a preliminary, Snotty. The real lesson will come later. I’m in no hurry. I’ll like to see you sweat.” The hand on Horatio’s wrists twisted savagely, he made a choked sound in his throat. “I’ll have you, my fine young navigator, and it will be sweet. I like the ones that fight. All the more fun in the eventual-” fingers dug hard into Horatio’s windpipe “-breaking.” Simpson whispered.

Horatio was not so naïve that he did not know what was happening or what the hissed threats meant. No longer struggling he willed himself to faint. He would have died if it meant escape. Suddenly his wrists were free, but he was still crushed against the wall. He was aware of Simpson pulling back a little, fumbling between them, and then the man made a sound he did not want to think on and the hand on his throat slacked at last. Just as he thought it was over the man leaned in and, horrifyingly, kissed him with brutal force. “I’ll have you begging, you little whore.” And them he was released and fell in a heap to the decking.

He remained there for he knew not how long, sobbing, scrubbing a hand again and again across his mouth. Then he stumbled back on deck, to receive a tongue-lashing from impatient Eccleston. And when, later that watch, Clayton spoke to him his answer was “Death. I was thinking on Death.”

He had told no-one, ever, the real reason for his challenge and he would not begin now.

*

Perhaps it was that his days were not so very busy, he could no longer fill every waking minute with Duty and sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Yet during his fretting, enforced, leisure times ashore he had not been so troubled. Or perhaps it was the combination of leisure and the sea-life, the rocking ship beneath him. Or perhaps it was none of these but simply and solely the passage of time which had worn the barriers thin. Why else would he remember things so long forgotten now?

It should not be this way. He had the things he had always wanted, the things that any man would want. He had been a success in his profession, he had rank and reputation and respect. His uniforms glittered with splendour and the best of commands were open to him. He had a beautiful, loving wife and marriage into one of the land’s highest families had taken him instantly to the heart of the Society which, for all his impatience with its flummeries, he craved recognition from. He had a son to follow him, and a fine boy, if hard to talk to. He had wealth and title, the fine house in London, the country estate, all the things man should aspire to.

How could it be a tragedy to get from life the things you always wanted?

He had gone back to Smallbridge, the quiet village where he had been the doctor’s ignored, ungainly son and he had fulfilled the dream he had sometimes allowed himself in childhood. The dream of returning with glory and riches and lording it over the local boys who had once sneered and tormented. He had come back to be Lord of the Manor, and he had disliked it within months. He felt certain the sneers were still there, only masked behind formal hypocrisy. All he had done was mark himself as the local boy who had ‘got above himself’, was ‘putting on airs’, he could hear the words in his head every time he passed through the village. He hadn’t told Barbara of course, she would think it foolish.

But that was a minor thing, a trivial source of dissatisfaction. He didn’t spend all that much time at Smallbridge. His boredom and irritation with the London social round that Barbara loved was unimportant too, or ought to be. A minor price to pay.

His life should be happy, it had everything a man should need for happiness. Yet if he was happy he would not be retreating to Phyllis Vandeleur.

7. Breaking

“What do you hope for in your career, Lieutenant?” Hornblower asked. He knew that other officers would be wondering why he had asked Ralph Ingle to dine with him. He didn’t care. There was a quality in Ingle that was worth cultivating and that was reason enough for him.

“I hardly know what to hope for, sir,” Ingle replied politely. “There are few sea wars at present, and I am not sure how well I would care for warfare in any event.”

“Then you are a wise man, Lieutenant,” Hornblower replied. “War is not a thing that any man should love. But it does make it easier to rise in our profession, much though I regret to acknowledge it.”

“I thought that I might be picked for one of the exploratory missions, sir,” Ingle said hesitantly. “But I know that they are not easy to gain places on.”

“No,” Hornblower acknowledged. Barrow’s pet projects were by no means easy to get a place upon, but they did allow a man to make a name for himself. “Are you sure that is what you want? They are not comfortable affairs.” Desert heat or Arctic cold, not attractive choices.

“I did not join the Navy in the expectation of comfort, sir.”

Hornblower found himself smiling, a rare event. “Well answered, Lieutenant.” He drained the glass which stood by his hand and a man discreetly refilled it. Normally he was abstemious when it came to drink, hating anything that risked loss of control, but tonight he felt reckless. “But I doubt that Captain Wilson could secure you a place.”

“No sir,” Ingle answered. “It was a thought only, sir.”

Despite the wine easing the constrictions within him Hornblower could not feel fully at ease until the business of eating was done and the steward told not to interrupt further. At last he could be confident of having Ingle to himself.

“You have not yet told me fully of your taste in poetry, Lt Ingle. You like Shakespeare, I think.”

“I like his poems, sir. Or some of them. The sonnets can be a little hard to understand at times. But the words are beautiful.”

Perhaps, Hornblower had sometimes thought, the words were best not easily understood. Such praise of beauty addressed to a man….

“Who else do you care for then? Do you like Pope?”

“Some of his works, sir.”

“As a classical stylist I believe he has few peers.” Hornblower said. “But I suppose he is considered old fashioned these days. Who is it you younger people prefer? That fellow Coleridge?”

“He has a way with words, sir. That Kubla Khan poem, a pity he never finished it. But the Mariner – I’m afraid he was no seaman.”

“No,” Hornblower agreed, pleased. “That he was not. Who do you like then? I hope you have no truck with Byron.”

“Well,” Ingle said, “some of his works are most indelicate of course. But I have read a few of his, um, more modest writings. He had a gift, I think.”

“But no restraint,” Hornblower said. “It was bound to end badly.”

“Badly, sir?” Ingle said softly. “I did not think that. He died working for a thing that he believed in. There are worse fates, surely.”

“It’s beyond my understanding why so many Britishers should concern themselves over the affairs of the Greeks.” The spectre of Cochrane flitted across Hornblower’s thought again. But he did not wish to quarrel with Ingle. He drained his glass and reached, a little clumsily, to pour himself another drink.

Ingle seemed a little abashed, but as Hornblower groped in vain for a way to continue their talk he said hesitantly. “But of modern writers I think Keats may be my favourite, sir. Have you read Endymion, sir?”

“I have not,” Hornblower said. “But perhaps I will. Keats at least was no revolutionary. Not like that atheist Shelley or the other fellow, Wordsworth.”

“But Wordsworth is no revolutionary these days, sir,” Ingle told him. “He has become quite conservative in his old age, I believe. Shelley wrote a poem on it.”

“Did he indeed?” It was a mechanical answer, not intended as a prompt. However Ingle responded, his voice lilting readily into quotation.

“Thy wert as a lone star whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar”

Hornblower shook his head, his mind working pictures despite his best resistance as Ingle’s voice continued.

“In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus having been, that thou should cease to be.”

Abruptly he rose and tramped to the windows. “Tell me some Keats, Mr Ingle.”

A brief pause, then the young voice lilted into life. “In a drear-nighted December,” but Hornblower did not hear more. The candle light, reflected in the nigh-dark glass, danced before his eyes, like the Northern lights reflected in a calm sea long ago as he stood watch on Indefatigable’s deck. He was aware of words, running like the sing of wind in rigging, but could no longer be sure of who it was that spoke or why.

“But were there ever any

Writhéd not at passed joy?

To know the change and feel it,

When there is none to heal it

Nor numbéd sense to steel it–…”

But he could no longer bear it, and his voice took up older words, all but forgotten words of lament and tribute.

“Fear no more the heat of the sun

Or the furious winter’s rages

Thou thy worldly task hast done

Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.”

“Sir?” A soft voice behind him. He did not truly hear the single word, only the concerned tone in which it was spoken. He turned carefully, a though in a world as fragile as glass, and saw, dream-like, the blur of fair hair in the candle-light and the glimmer of blue where the eyes looked back at him above the darker blue of a lieutenant’s plain coat. Nothing else, he saw nothing else.

Archie….

He did not speak, could not have spoken. But he reached out, felt his touch connect with solid flesh. He did not know who it was that he touched, but he knew who he wanted it to be.

One hand went up, to tangle in the soft hair, and he leaned forwards, finding warm lips and pressing his own against them.

And the tide of passion so long damned was greater than any storm, and nothing mattered, nothing in all the world mattered except that he had this at last, and he would make it up, he would make everything up, all the blindness and stupidity, all the hurt he had inflicted….

He felt the body against him twisting but only tightened his grip, this was right, he knew it was, this was what they both wanted….

Until an elbow drove hard into his stomach and the body against him jerked free and he heard something incoherent in a voice that was not Archie’s, and then blundering footsteps, retreating from him and the desperate slam of the door.

Then he knew where he was and when he was and horror took him. What had he done? What thing had he committed? Oh dear God forgive him, forgive him, for he had not meant to do the thing he had.

8. Deepening

The night seemed to last forever. He paced and paced until he thought he might collapse from sheer weariness, but there was no escape to be had there, no escape from what he had done, and what it had meant.

He had forced himself on another human being. On one of his junior officers, a boy whose welfare should have been safe in his care. He had pressed home unwanted advances. He had been no better than Jack Simpson.

He had very possibly ruined himself.

And he could not escape the knowledge forced upon him. Could not deny the desire that had lain behind his actions. Could not blame it on the wine, for in vino veritas. He had been consumed with desire from another man. He had shown his true colours as a sodomite.

A fancier of other boys perhaps…

Damn Simpson to Hell’s lowest circle, how could he have known?

A fancier of other boys…

The true picture was clear as day before him now. As when vague shapes seen on a foggy day suddenly became unmistakable as Portsmouth, now the truth about himself was too plain to be denied.

A fancier of other boys…

It had seemed so harmless, those first shy experiments back in the dormitory, just play and preparation, but had he ever had the image of a girl in his mind back in those days? Had not the play with other boys been the end in itself? Or could he really remember for certain after so much time? He could not be sure either of what he had felt when he first learned the meaning of sodomy, and understood that what he had done in those secret nights was the first step on a road condemned to the gallows by the Naval Articles. He knew that later he had accepted that such things were an abomination, because his superiors had told him so, but he could not remember how much it had been tangled with his determination to be a good officer and how much with the remembered horror of Simpson’s body molesting his. That he had never forgotten. That, he had told himself, was where those seemingly harmless nights would lead. To vileness in the dark. It had revolted him, and now he could not know how much of the revulsion he had himself induced.

But there were other things he remembered, and could not now push away. The brightness of Archie Kennedy’s smile and the beauty of his eyes. The way his blood had leapt in Archie’s presence, the way the world had seemed so full of life and colour whenever he was there. The warmth of Archie’s arms around him, that night on shore after Muzillac, drunk and wretched and clinging to his friend in the shabby inn bed that they shared…. Another memory long blocked, and dismissed with determinedly formed disgust as he asked himself what filthy advantages might have been taken while he was asleep. Now though, he was sure there had been none, he had slept the night through unmolested. For Archie had loved him selflessly.

A truth so plain now he felt certain he had always known and had denied the knowledge as unbearable, for only a selfless love could have produced that final letter.

That truth he had not suspected, before it was forced upon him. He had always felt certain that Archie was quite safe. Aye, safe. Safe for the young Horatio Hornblower to dote on, for he had been so sure that Archie would share, even exceed, his revulsion, that the unspoken history of Justinian and Jack Simpson would have left him utterly sickened towards relations between men, and so, unacknowledged, in the depths of his heart he had felt so certain this was safe.

….Side-by-side by the rail in shirtsleeves, their bodies touching easily. Face-to-face, responding to the laugh in Archie’s eyes, drinking in every angle of his face. Brushing against each other in the tiny cabin. Tracking every change of expression on that vivid face, and watching Archie do the same to him. All the shared, private, moments which felt like some delightful secret….

Admiral Hornblower closed his eyes, shaking his head against the pain of self-knowledge. It had been before him all the time and he had been wilfully blind. Desire, oh yes, desire, but not desire frustrated. Desire held at arms length, used always in delightful, tantalising dance, like the tight-rope walker he had once seen, always daring and never falling.

You were flirting with him…

Too true, although flirtation seemed too weak a word for something for something so passionate beneath the careful surface. Always the dance, never quite falling, the love affair lived out without acknowledgement, no words, no love-making, nothing that would bind. Pure delight.

But not so delightful for Archie…. Archie, wanting more and never reaching for it. Archie who knew so much about Horatio, but did not know that final thing. Archie, who had written that letter, choosing to make Horatio despise his memory….

Archie, who unlike all other British men that he had known, had not loved him for his hollow victories but only for himself. Who had seen so nearly all his hidden faults, and hadn’t cared a bit.

Archie had known.

He had known, if it came to condemnation, what Horatio would do. He had known Horatio would accept the verdict, continue to serve the Navy which had done this thing with all his might. Had known he would not put a dead friend’s reputation before what his superiors told him was his duty. He had fought and fought to shake the young Lt Hornblower’s blind dedication to his superiors, but he had known his victories would be fleeting. He had known his friend would turn from him at the last.

Had known Horatio would betray all he believed to be true, and he had sought only to cushion the pain of his betrayer. He had not reproached, not been bitter for himself or his broken ideals. He had known the pain that his own self-sacrifice would cost his friend and had sought the only way he could to block it. Had damned himself in Horatio’s eyes, rather than let him suffer grief and guilt.

And it had almost worked. Almost.

Archie had known Horatio so well, but he had not known of those stolen nights in the school dormitory, had not known that when Horatio spoke so vehemently against sodomy he was seeking to deny those memories, had not known that the person he sought most to convince was himself. He had not known that, and yet he had come so very close to cutting the chains, so close that for year after year Hornblower had honestly believed that he was free.

It was all clear now. One night, one foolish action, one moment when the longing of soul and body broke through all the carefully constructed barriers of the mind. All so clear now, and he wondered that it should not be possible to die just from the knowledge.

He had been whole with Archie. So simple, so easily overlooked. He had been whole with Archie, but Archie was gone, and Horatio had consigned his legacy to dust long since. He would never find his friend again.

9. Confronting

The formal report next morning that Captain Wilson wished for an interview was no surprise, and yet he was not prepared. How could a man prepare for such a confrontation?

Wilson would have to wait a while. It would make the man more hostile, but Hornblower had seen himself in the glass and knew that he looked a picture of guilt. He must have a chance to shave and wash and change his uniform. Nothing could be done about the deep shadows caused by lack of sleep, but he had at least to make himself presentable.

He seated himself behind the desk which he knew would give him a weight of authority for the coming confrontation. It was a totally wrong thing to do under the present circumstances and he knew it, but so many things were utterly wrong that one more seemed to make scant difference.

Finally he composed his hands, and told his steward to admit Wilson and then leave them.

Wilson was off-balance, angry and red-faced but still unsure of himself. Hornblower saw that and knew that he had weapons in hand.

“Well, captain, what is it,” he said brusquely.

“You know fine well, what it is, sir,” but Wilson’s voice held an uncertain note. “You know very well what it is that young Ingle’s told me. You know what it was last night that he came to me about!”

“I can only assure you, captain, that I do not,” Hornblower said coldly, even as his stomach churned. “I can say that Lt Ingle was somewhat the worse for drink last evening, but I am prepared to overlook anything he may have said in his cups.”

“Don’t you try to pass it off that way, sir,” Wilson’s voice was furious. “That boy didn’t make up the stuff that he said. He wouldn’t know how.”

“Captain Wilson, I must ask you to tell me in plain terms exactly what it is that you accuse me of.” He despised himself as he spoke the words, but that was no new feeling.

“Then I will say it, sir, though I wonder that you have no shame. In plain words. You laid sinful hands on him. You tried to corrupt him with filthy desires. You molested him.”

“Captain!” Hornblower tried to make his voice scandalised. “I would like to believe I had heard you incorrectly. Do I really understand that that young man has accused me of perversion?”

“Of trying to force yourself on him.”

Hornblower stood up, in the stance of outrage. “I wonder at you, Captain. Indeed I can barely accept you would believe such a story.”

“He wasn’t lying,” Wilson said.

“I would suggest he has lost his senses! Even if I were such a man, even were I the perverted being that you seem to think me, and Captain, words cannot express my offence that you should think it, even were I such a man as that, do you truly believe I could be so lost to my own position, to my sense of responsibility, to my reputation?”

“Maybe it’s not young Ingle that’s run mad,” Wilson said unpleasantly.

“Captain, I really cannot believe you even expect me to defend myself against this accusation. I refuse to do it. I will hear no more of this matter.”

“You will hear more of it,” Wilson said, “Willing or not.”

“I am confident that you and Lt Ingle will not be such fools as to press this matter. I assure you it will not be I who will suffer in the end.”

“Don’t you think to threaten me, sir!”

“If you wish to be a fool I cannot stop you,” Hornblower said coldly. “I hope for your sake Lt Ingle thinks better of this wild talk. I will hear no more. Unless you have other business to speak of you may go.”

“Don’t you think that you can end it that easily!” Wilson exclaimed.

“That was an order, Captain. You will leave.”

Wilson left, the door slamming in his wake.

Hornblower dropped back in his chair, limbs shaking. He felt hideously sick.

Wilson wasn’t going to give this up. And the horror of it was that Wilson was right.

But Hornblower must still make sure that Wilson lost. He had thought it all out in the night. The choice was stark. If he did not fight then he would face ruin. The world might wink at discreet sinning, but sodomitical advances towards an unwilling young officer was a scandal he could not survive. He might deserve it, he did deserve it, but what of Barbara and Richard. How could he inflict it on them? How could he give such reward to Barbara, who had married beneath her in her family’s despite, how could he blight his son’s young life so?

How could he bear to lose them? For lose he would. Barbara would forgive him for Phyllis, if it should come to her ears, as she had forgiven him for Marie. She would not forgive him Ingle, nor should she do so. And losing her, he would lose his son, even though Richard was no child of her body there was no doubt where his chief affections lay.

No! He could not bear that. He could not lose his son, the one thing in his life that was unstained, the one person he had not done wrong by. He could not lose his wife’s love, could not bear to be without it. Never since those long ago days as an unemployed lieutenant had he been without love, and he could not bear to starve for it again. Both his marriages had been made for love, not for love given but for love received, absorbed as a thirsting plant devours rain, fed on and needed even whilst he could not but feel the givers foolish.

He could not give it up.

Barbara and Richard or Wilson and Ingle. Wilson and Ingle had right and truth and justice on their side, and he would damn all that and fight it tooth and nail. No new departure there, but here he could not lie to himself, could not claim the thing he did was right. For the fight here was not for the service, even he could not deceive himself it was for the service.

He would not be damned for a sodomite in the eyes of the world and his family, he would not own to being a molester. There was no honour in this fight, but that did not matter for his honour was long dead.

He had faced that truth last night.

His honour had been sacrificed along with Archie Kennedy’s good name, everything he had done and been since that day in Kingston had been founded on a monstrous lie. Call it by what name he would, justify by whatever words of duty and patriotism, Kingston had been dishonour. It had been a foul act of injustice, a black and bloody act of cruelty, the cold-blooded covering of ineptitude by the taking of a life regardless of innocence or guilt.

The pure essence of everything that Archie Kennedy hated.

And he had not faced it. Had not had the courage to look, full on, at what he did. Had denied the horror to himself, even as his hand closed on the paper that spelt out his future. The command gained at the price of accepting one sickening lie.

And he had gone on, and gained the things that he had thought he’d always wanted and it had all been meaningless. Every triumph, every promotion, every moment of glory, all of it turning to ashes and wormwood in his mouth, and yet he had gone on, year in, year out, never facing the reasons for his own repulsion.

Never facing that he was serving an institution that deserved no loyalty, a thing rotten and corrupt, a service to which scruple was folly and the life of a good man insignificant.

There had been times when, in the privacy of dark and night, he had known the truth, only to block it from his soul. Aboard Hotspur, the night Pellew had heaped praise upon him for his skill in lying. In France, some of the dark nights after William Bush had died. Yes, he had known the truth in France, and fled from it into the arms of Marie. Rank and praise and even the war’s end had all been hollow and he had known their worthlessness in that time, known they were nothing; that Marie’s uncritical love and the regard of the one living man he truly respected, that those things mattered and the proud titles and public honours were nothing. Yet even there he had been doing wrong, betraying his wife and neglecting his son. And he had caused Marie’s death.

Faithful to no woman, loyal to no man, was that the sum of the life that Archie Kennedy had saved?

He had betrayed Archie.

He had betrayed him when he took the promotion in Kingston, rendering himself complicit in the very things that Archie loathed. He had continued to betray him with every year that passed, as he devoted his life to the service responsible for that obscenity of a trial; more, he had lent himself to injustice more than once over the years, not through indifference, but because only by convincing himself that the will of the Service must be right could he abide by what he had done and not done in Kingston. Having lent himself to foul injustice once, he must do so over and over, because to do otherwise would be to admit the depths of his own wrongness. To believe he had been right in Kingston he must repeat the act again and again. He must believe that the service came first, must come first, for nothing less could justify what that Kingston tribunal had done. The service must come first.

“What service, Hornblower?” The voice of Archie Kennedy’s cousin spoke scornfully in his memory. “The heartless fools who send good men out to be sacrificed? Or those who fight and die, in the front line?” .…

He knew what answer Archie would have made.

There had been exceptions, he argued in desperate mitigation. There had been times when he had averted the Navy’s wrath from trivial sinners. Doughty, Hudnutt…. But those matters had been minor, and it had been Barbara who had preserved Hudnutt’s life.

He had to face it. Since that day in Kingston he had set himself to be all that Archie Kennedy despised. He could not excuse himself by blaming Archie’s last letter, for the choice had been made before he read it, and knowing it had been made, knowing it had had nothing to do with that desperately courageous revelation, he had known, in his secret soul, that his life since that day had been a monument to pure injustice.

And Archie had known it would happen….

He had died knowing that the man for whom he sacrificed all he had left, perhaps his very life (for Hornblower had never had faith in Clive’s prognostications), that that man would turn away from all he valued. Had died knowing his legacy would be used against all he held most dear, that his brief, harsh life had served only to further the designs of those he loathed.

Dear God, what a dreadful death it must have been!

He had had wild thoughts, last night, of making some amends to Archie’s memory. But how could he, with a wife and child to consider; a wife, moreover, who could never understand his reasons. What did he imagine he could do? Reopen the question of Sawyer’s end? He felt in his soul that Archie would have seethed at the mere thought of being made a sop to Admiral Lord Hornblower’s bleak conscience.

Resign his position, begin again at his age? If it had been just himself…. But it was not.

His betrayal of Archie was long past redeeming. All that was left was to do what he could for the living, for Barbara and for Richard, and if that meant a further spitting upon all that Archie Kennedy held dear it must be so.

In the dark hours of self-knowledge another unacknowledged truth had come. That year on year, he had hoped for death, lived for death, and yet death had passed him by. Perhaps there was a divine form of justice to the world after all, for his punishment was not to be death. No, he was condemned to live on, alone, unable to confide in any other the things he could never again escape.

Worst of all was the knowledge that he had loved Archie….

Loved him simply and utterly and unreservedly. Loved him as he had never loved another and never would. For that ability to give his heart entirely and trust without reserve, that would never come to him again.

He had loved but once with a full heart and he could never find his love again.

Experience told him that the pain would lessen, that this suffering was too great to last. But for the present time he buried his face and wished with all his heart that it had been he, not Archie, who had taken that Spanish bullet on the deck of the Renown.

10. Ending

It was some weeks later that Lord Hornblower walked with a heavier pace than usual to the door of Phyllis Vandeleur. Ushered by a servant into the drawing room he was annoyed to find the woman awaiting him was not Phyllis, but Stella Anderton.

“My sister will be down presently,” Stella said coolly. “I considered that she was under no obligation to see you, but she chose to come.”

Hornblower did not reply. He could hardly claim to have behaved well towards Phyllis, and from her tone he was certain Stella knew about the affair, or at least suspected.

“A remarkably sudden decision, Admiral,” Stella remarked in the same cool tone.

“A necessary one,” Hornblower replied. He was not proposing to explain himself to Stella Anderton. However her next words surprised him.

“I can’t pretend to have been pleased by your visits, but my sister is not an ingénue.”

“What do you mean?” Hornblower asked against his better intentions.

“I mean you should not flatter yourself too much. There, I hear Phyllis coming. Good day, Admiral. And a pleasant journey.”

Hornblower stood silent after Phyllis replaced her sister in the room, glad for once of his inability to clearly see her face.

Phyllis said, with a hard note in her voice he had not heard before, “The port is full of gossip.”

“Most of it wildly exaggerated, I am sure.”

“It generally is. Well, the details of your quarrel with Captain Wilson do not concern me. But have you resigned your command because of him or because of myself?”

“Not because of you,” Hornblower said swiftly, “And not truly because of Wilson. I am sure gossip claims that it was, but in truth I resigned because it was time to leave. What happened between myself and Captain Wilson was only a part of that realisation.”

“Well, I’m glad it was not because of me at any rate,” Phyllis said. “It was hardly something there should be resignations over.”

“I can only offer my deepest regrets,” Hornblower said, all the more stiffly because he was sincere. “My conduct was unpardonable.”

“Don’t take it all upon yourself,” Phyllis said swiftly. “I was as responsible as you. I’ve been a widow too long, and Julius was ill some time before he died…. I missed having a man in my bed. I should not have taken one with a wife in London.” Hornblower winced, the subject of Barbara had never been broached between them before.

“Foolish of us both, was it not?” Phyllis said, her attempt at lightness not quite succeeding. “But it could have ended with a worse mess. Go back to London, with my good wishes. It may be better if we do not meet again.”

He got himself out of the house somehow, feeling oddly more humiliated than if Phyllis had wept.

Go back to London… There would be a welcome there. Barbara would be pleased that he was finally quitting the sea.

He had survived the incipient scandal as he had known he would, calling upon his authority, his cunning and a few – as few as possible – of the strings that he could pull. He had saved his career and ended two others, those of innocent men who only sought to justify their outrage. Wilson would never serve at sea again, and young Ralph Ingle had quit the service and gone to India. Hornblower could only hope life would treat the young man well in future, but he shuddered at the thought of the blow he must have dealt.

There could be no true cleansing of his conscience, but there could be penance, must be penance, and the only means of that was to do as another wished. As Barbara wished. His penance must be to end his naval life and become the man she wanted. Perhaps he could not have borne the sea longer in any event, not after Ingle, not after facing the truth of his career.

He would go back to London and take on the political career that Barbara wanted, support the brother-in-law who had never liked him, trade upon his sickening reputation. He would do all that because it was the only thing he could do for a person who cared for him, and his life had been a selfish one for long enough.

He was finished with the Navy, but he would never in this world be finished with what the Navy had made of him.

*

Admiral Lord Hornblower stood in his great cabin for the last time. Soon he would go upon the deck and see his flag hauled down, yet another of pompous ceremonies in which the Navy took delight.

The cabin was half stripped bare already, most of the smaller items gone packed for transport. The larger furniture would follow.

He lifted the old book from the table and took from it the folded, faded letter. Then he took a tin tray, laid the fragile sheet of paper upon the tray, and carefully set it alight. He watched as it burned, carefully turning the tray and touching the paper every now and then with the tip of his pen-knife to be sure the whole of the letter was consumed. When it had been reduced to frail ashes he opened one of the great windows, and, shielding the scraps from any slight breeze with his hands, carried the tray across and dropped both tray and ashes into the sea.

He watched for a little while, but soon there was nothing more to be seen. Lord Hornblower closed the window and quitted the cabin in silence.

**The End**

Author’s Endnotes: Peter Heywood and Pulteney Malcolm are historical characters and I have done my best to portray them accurately. James Morrison, John Barrow, Frederick Maitland and Thomas Cochrane existed also, and the information given about them here is true (and Morrison was indeed Master Gunner under Edward Pellew). Hornblower’s encounter with Cochrane is recounted in a previous story of mine, Hornblower at the Basque Roads. Phyllis Vandeleur, Stella Anderton, Ralph Ingle and Captain Wilson are my creations.

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