Written for Flora_S for Yuletide 2009.

Disclaimer: Horatio Hornblower, as I write him, belongs to the pen of CS Forester. Additionally, I have made some use of C Northcote Parkinson's The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower. A certain borrowing from Patrick O'Brian should also be noted.

Captain Horatio Hornblower of HMS Lydia was confronted with a dilemma. Ordinarily, the various difficulties which arose before the captain of a frigate of the Royal Navy were satisfactorily addressed - resolved, even - during Hornblower's customary morning walk. The deck of the Lydia offered little room for such exercise, only a stretch twenty-one feet long on the weather side of the quarter deck which was sanded in accordance with naval tradition at first light and over which Hornblower was accustomed to pace for an hour before returning to breakfast in his cabin below. This routine, established already some few weeks, admitted a double benefit. It granted Hornblower a certain measure of exercise, for he had begun to fear that, where he had formerly been an active and athletic midshipman and lieutenant, now as he progressed up to increasingly sedentary ranks he was starting to grow just the slightest bit fat. He loathed this development not quite as much for the sake of vanity before they eyes of others, as for a personal grievance - a conviction that it marked a decline in himself. Additionally, this before-breakfast ritual provided a time for Hornblower to contemplate, uninterrupted, matters of ship management.

The past few November mornings, however, in addition to questions of fashioning the crew into proper seamen by means of gunnery drills and exercises aloft, had presented a new pair of considerations. Firstly, the time was approaching to open the secret orders given to him by the Lords of the Admiralty and not to be unsealed and read before 30˚N, 20˚W. Secondly, he had not yet properly spoken to his first lieutenant William Bush throughout the entire duration of this command. There had, of course, initially been the concern of fitting the ship for sea and then that of making sailors out of an unfortunate collection of men, most of them landlubbers or even criminals who had opted to serve time in His Majesty's Navy rather than his prisons.

Nonetheless, he and Bush were . . . friends, insofar as friendship between officers of differing ranks was possible. They had served together off and on for over six years, first as lieutenants in the West Indies, where they had shared several sorts of adventures, from Samaná to Kingston. They had been through peace in some degree together as well; Bush had lived those months of 1802-03 with his sisters in Chichester, but he and Hornblower had crossed paths when the former came into Portsmouth to draw his half pay. Hornblower would always be indebted to Bush for his friendship in that time - not monetarily, for he had refused the money which Bush had offered, but that the latter had even done so, had cared whether Hornblower fared well or ill, was a bright spot in those otherwise dark months. Afterward, when Hornblower's appointment to commander finally was confirmed as the interlude of peace drew to a close, Bush became his lieutenant on the Hotspur, and so they spent two years in the Channel Fleet. Their careers had parted ways after that and it had been another couple of years before they met again on this appointment.

Howbeit, no conversation of shared reminiscences and recent news had yet managed to take place. It would have to do so, though, and sooner rather than later. Hornblower was determined to maintain this tight hold on his accursed loquacity, and would not risk losing it by making the first of what might be expected to grow into a series of casual conversations with his first lieutenant. Over dinner, though, would be acceptable, but it must be soon, before he read those secret orders, lest his naturally garrulous disposition make some allusion to them. Whether the Lords of the Admiralty enjoined that the particulars of the mission reach no farther than the ship's captain until the very action itself necessitated that the rest of the crew learn of them, or else that the highest few of the officers might know, Hornblower would not admit even them to the secret; he would not have a repetition of that command in which his subordinates had grown accustomed to debating his orders whenever he gave them.

Eight bells in the morning watch rang. That was the end of Hornblower's hour of meditation, and he still had no solution to this problem, put off again and again while November crept steadily on. Hornblower crossed the deck to greet officer of the watch.

'Good morning, Mr. Bush.'

'Good morning, sir.'

The exchange was not as absurd as it sometimes seemed, for Bush had only just relieved Gerard and had not been on deck himself while the captain took his morning exercise. Hornblower looked over the traverse board which recorded the ship's course and the slate which bore the log castings for the preceding day, and from these he made the mental calculations to determine the likely position of the Lydia based upon yesterday's noontime sextant reading. This reckoning placed the ship still a few degrees each of latitude and longitude from the coordinates where her captain could open those sealed orders - three or four days more, five at the most.

'Ha-h'm,' Hornblower commented noncommittally, then felt ashamed of himself for this present indecision, and so he continued, 'Mr. Bush, I would be honored if you would join me for dinner today.'

Bush did not quite manage to keep the surprise from his face. 'With great pleasure, sir.' This evidently concluded the captain's business on deck for he went below shortly thereafter. Bush was not entirely used to Hornblower's somewhat abrupt changes of mood, and understood them still less, but he accepted them philosophically for the most part, and did not let them interfere in the performance of his duty.

Dinner began as a still rather distant affair, with conversation restrained to technical subjects: ways to trim the ship that might improve her sailing and the drills slowly but steadily turning the crew into trained sailors. Their times for setting all sail or between two broadsides were still lamentably laggard, Hornblower and Bush agreed, but they had shown marked improvement in the weeks since the Lydia had left England.

After the Madeira had been around two or three times, however, Hornblower brought himself to ask, 'How are your family - your sisters?'

Bush, just beginning his third glass, hardly checked before answering, 'They're quite well, thank you, sir. The oldest two are married. You might remember that Anne was engaged during the peace.' Hornblower nodded. He did not remember, but a nod here was nearly as versatile as 'ha-h'm' on deck. 'And the youngest, Emma, talks only about what sort of man she intends to marry.'

'And the third? Frances, was it not?' For Hornblower recalled that there had been four.

Bush shook his head in a bewildered manner that had nothing to do with consumption of alcohol. 'She says she won't marry. Says she'll stay in that cottage and tend the garden until she dies. But you, sir, how are your children?' It was a measure of how long it had been since they had spoken.

'Dead,' Hornblower answered, a trifle woodenly, but otherwise without much emotion. 'Within one day of each other, last December. It was the smallpox.'

'I'm sorry to hear that, sir' said Bush, taken aback. And he was sorry, however inadequately he could express it. He had never quite understood what prompted Hornblower to marry Maria, but he wholeheartedly wished the best for Hornblower, and it pained him to see his friend unhappy. 'And Mrs. Hornblower?' he ventured.

'Maria's well enough now. She was ill for weeks after their deaths - more from grief than anything else - but she was on the mend by March and is staying with her mother at present.' Hornblower, having evidently said enough upon this subject, inquired, 'What of Trafalgar? I missed the battle, but I read in the Gazette that you brought in a prize from it.' And with that, Bush was off on a reminiscence about the battle itself and Lord Nelson's orders beforehand, and ships captured or sunk until he was assigned a prize crew to sail the Cólquida home to England.

This lasted until the pudding, when Bush asked, 'But what about you, sir? I saw Captain Ford's letter about the Castilla but nothing else.' Bush, with no head for any language but English, made no attempt to render the ll in the Spanish ship's name as its native y sound. 'You weren't ashore for Trafalgar, surely?'

'I was in Spain at the time, and in the Mediterranean afterward, prior to the Castilla.'

'Spain? In the country itself?'

'Yes. It was something of a different mission. I only had it for being in the right place - or perhaps the wrong one - at the right time for two or three successive occasions. Most of the time I was traveling with a South American - a Count Miranda - but there were several other curious characters along the way. One I remember quite well was an odd little physician by the name of Joan Margall; at least, that was what we called him, though I don't suppose it was his real name. He was quite an enthusiast for plants and especially animals and, as often as not, chattered away about some bird or beetle.'

'That's civilians and Dons for you, sir,' said Bush, who was more than ready to expect any number of eccentricities in either, let alone the two combined.

'Quite likely,' Hornblower agreed, more for simplicity than for sharing the view himself. 'He spoke most of the Spanish languages perfectly fluently, but there was also something about him that might have been part Irish as well. His hair, certainly, had something of red to it, the one time I saw him without his wig; apparently some squirrel or mole or such thing had gone to sleep in it and Margall had been loathe to disturb the animal.'

Hornblower, whose garrulity had perhaps already run away a little too far, at least prevented himself from adding that Margall might have had something to do with Intelligence. In any case, that suspicion was derived in no small part from Hornblower's own mission as a secret agent of sorts at the time, the details of which he had thus far been careful to avoid imparting to Bush. By now the pudding was cleared, so Hornblower could reasonably propose a toast to the confusion of Bonaparte and the Dons. Bush, as aware as his captain of the sealed orders, suggested the success of their mission, whatever it was to be, which Hornblower accepted, and, more or less together, they proposed the future health of each other's families. They closed with the health of the King, which they drank standing, or rather on their feet and half stooped over.

Afterward, left alone in his cabin, Hornblower reflected that the dinner was not so bad as it might have been. He was determined, however, that nothing like it would happen again for the duration of the voyage. His natural talkativeness, once let loose, had led him too near to indiscretion of past events, and he would not risk the same for present or future ones. No, he would resume that restraint which he had resolved upon, and if friendship had to give way to the obligations of the service, then so be it. Still, that a friendship had survived them thus far was a sort of hope for whenever war should again come to an end.