Almost done. An extra chapter for you today since I was late in updating over the weekend.


14th April 1816

The view from the window was magnificent.

Set high up in the hilly countryside, it had a good view over the harbour at its base and the village surrounding it. He could see the people milling about at the local market. It was a lovely place.

But he shouldn't be here.

On his first anniversary he should be at home, with Anne, enjoying the day together and celebrating the year they had spent as husband and wife.

He should not be stuck in the middle of no where, not knowing when he would return home. She must think him lost to her now, and how he longed to end the pain she must be suffering.

They had been residents here on the Azores Island of Santa Maria for nearly two months, and besides the first day or so when they had to convince their Portuguese captors that they where not French spies, things had gone well.

They had been put up by the Major of the small, but efficient infantry that patrolled the island, in a disused wing of his hillside manor house and allowed free roam of the island.

They had dismayed to here that the people of the island where not expecting a ship to visit them for several months, the waters around the island being very rough and temperamental at this time of year.

And if a ship did arrive, where was no guarantee that it would be heading towards the main shore of Europe. Santa Maria was a perfect stopping point of ships heading west to the coast of South America and Brazil where several thousand Portuguese natives had headed when Napoleon had invaded their country several years earlier. Where several thousand more where still travelling to each year.

Had they of been any closer to the main coast of Africa, he might have apprehended a ship and attempted to pilot himself across there. The only vessels the locals had however, where small fishing boats that they refused to take any further than the bay during the spring months.

With little else to do, Frederick had taken to writing everything down. He made several reports of the mission, the originals being lost when the ship went down, and of the events leading up to the sinking of the Aurora and his own journey afterwards.

He had written letters to his family and to Anne. He could not send them, but he needed to release what he wanted to tell them so writing was his only option.

His grasp of the Portuguese language increased in time and he often found himself in conversation with the locals about the history of the island and the struggles they had faced from pirates and corsairs. They had large amounts of contempt for the French, something Frederick found in common with them.

He often gathered a large crowd around him during the day, when they would ask him to recount the news of the last couple of months. Being so cut off from the outside world, they received news in bits and pieces. They cheered when he mentioned Napoleon's capture and exile to Elba, only to cry out in dismay at his escape.

The battle of Waterloo, which Frederick went into great detail about, fascinated them, though they could not quit grasp the amount of men who had taken part. There was perhaps a thousand of them in the small town, with several hundred more spread about the island. The idea of several hundred thousand men they just did not comprehend.

While he enjoyed enlightening them on the news from Europe and the wider world, it often left him thinking of home what was happening back there.

When he finally made it home, and he was determined he would, no matter how long it would take him, what news would they be telling him?

There where times when he woke in the middle of night, disorientated and unsure of where he was. There where times when he woke in a panic, covered in sweat and shaking from a dream he couldn't remember though it left him sick to his stomach, with an ache in his chest.

He berated and scolded himself in turn when he thought of Anne.

He knew she was unlikely to marry again, he had left her financially secure enough that she did not have too but if she believed him gone, then she deserved to be happy. He shuddered at the thought however, before becoming annoyed at himself for wishing her to be alone and miserable the rest of her life.

He suddenly straighten from his slouched position staring out the open window. Squinting, he held a hand up to cover his eyes from the sun.

There. Out on the horizon.

A ship.