*The Untold Story*
**WARNING** Massive spoilers for 'Loyalty', the first of the 2003 Hornblower movies, which has not yet aired in all parts of the globe. If you want to avoid learning plot points, *Don't Read*. If you know the book 'Hornblower and the Hotspur' and want to know if this fic includes any major plot elements *not* in the book, then, Yes. It does. (There was one massive twist that couldn't be predicted from the book) If you want to avoid learning any plot details not in the books, *Don't Read*.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, nor most of the plot. They belong to the C. S. Forester estate and A&E Productions.
Explanation: 'Retribution' left a lot of unanswered questions, and 'Loyalty' created a lot more. This is just an attempt at answering some of them, which at the same time gets rid of 'Retribution''s most disliked feature......
*******************
Chapter One - Kingston
A strange world that of the Navy. A world of hard words and harder rules, governed by the iron Articles and the unwritten laws that are scarcely less stern. A world where we are taught to speak truth, yet schooled to deceive, expected to honour loyalty, but sacrifice any life if the service should demand. Virtue is praised, yet above all demands stands the reverence for seniority, no matter how rotten and corrupt. Hold your tongue, turn your eye and you'll be called a good man.
Outsiders might wonder why we accept it, this strange life that takes so much of value from us. Horatio would say: Duty. To me that's just a word - though I'd not tell him so. A dangerous word sometimes, the name of 'duty' can be used to justify many crimes. I think the Navy takes us young and moulds us in its shape. The cost is high, it's always high, but how can we count it when we've known no other values? This life is in our blood and bones and flesh, how can we seek change when it's too late to change ourselves? We play by Navy rules because they're all we know, have ever known. And some of us - including Horatio - play hard because we want to win. On their terms of course, because that's all there is.
I certainly thought I'd lost in a major way in Kingston. Not that I had regrets, but bitterness, quite a lot of that. It was hard, although unlike Horatio I'd always known there are some battles you just can't win. You can beat the French or the Spanish or even the Simpsons of this world, but you can't beat the Naval establishment, by their rules or anyone else's. So Kingston wasn't a great shock, but it was hard.
It ought to have been a surprise to find I wasn't dead, but at first I was just too ill and weak and in pain to think at all. Later I'd got past the time to feel surprised, but was very puzzled. I *remembered* dying, but this definitely didn't seem like any kind of afterlife - apart from anything else I was still wounded. It didn't seem like a prison either, although the door was kept locked, more like a small bedroom in someone's house. The only people I saw those first days were a doctor and one attendant whose names I never learned. They weren't disposed to answer questions, except for one.
Horatio was safe. The doctor did tell me that. Acquitted of all charges. Knowing that, well it wouldn't be quite true to say I didn't care what happened to me, but I'd expected to be dead anyway, and everything else I'd ever had to lose was gone already. And I was drained, utterly spent in mind as well as in body. I'd been under strain so long. That trial hadn't been an end I would have chosen, but it had been an end. Finding myself alive was almost an anticlimax. So I did what the doctor told me, didn't persist with questions that went unanswered, and waited.
Days passed, I felt myself grow stronger. Then one evening I heard the doctor speak to someone else after he passed out of the room, and a moment later Commodore Sir Edward Pellew came in.
Surprise doesn't begin to describe my reaction, although anyone else would have surprised me just as much. More important, I didn't know what to think about his appearance here. I only knew the bare outline of what had happened at the trial, but enough to know he'd done little to defend Horatio. That was not what I would have expected from the Captain I'd served under in the old days, but I could only assume he was sacrificing us all in the interests of his career. I'd had too much else on my mind to think very much about it anyway.
"What have you to say for yourself, Mr Kennedy?" was his opening line, barked in his best quarter deck manner.
Careful, careful, mustn't trust him an inch. "I have nothing to say, sir."
"Nothing to say? By your own confession you are guilty of the heinous crime of mutiny and you have nothing to say?"
"Nothing to add, if you prefer, sir."
"You stand by your previous statements, then?" He was still barking at me as though we were back on the deck of the Indy and I'd just committed some dereliction of duty.
"Entirely, sir." Head up, don't let him see you scared.
"You understand the consequences, do you? There's a rope round your neck, boy, and I can see to it that you do hang. No easy death from a convenient wound. Knowing that, is there nothing more you want to say? Do you think I don't know there was far more happened on Renown than was ever revealed in court?"
Why was he doing this? Was he trying to force an admission against Horatio? *Why?* "I have nothing more to say." I had to keep my voice very low to stop it shaking.
"You prefer a felon's end?"
"If I must." And that was truth. "But if that's what you intend for me - sir - why are you here alone?"
"Are you questioning my actions?" The bark was fiercer than ever, if I'd been standing I'd likely have taken a step back. As it was I had to draw the longest breath I could manage without too much pain.
"No. Merely enquiring." I had to pause, to be sure I was about to make reasonable sense, there was something here I didn't understand at all. "I don't know how I came here, or even where here is, but I'm pretty sure it's not official. If you've only just found out about it, if you meant to take me in custody you'd have a squad of marines." Unless he hoped to trick me into some further confession, but however much he'd changed for him to be trying to convict Horatio made no sense. There was nothing he could gain by that, not with one scrapegoat already present for slaughter. "And if you're behind this, and I can't think of many other men in a position to be behind it, you didn't go to all this trouble to see me swing."
He nodded, just once, as though I'd passed some test. Which I realised much later was exactly what I had done. He'd been pushing me to see how I held up, trapped and vulnerable and alone.
"This is a house I rented. As to why you're here, the answer is that you interfered with my plans."
"I don't understand."
"No. Of course you don't. Nevertheless you managed to prevent an objective I had gone to some lengths to achieve. However, I am well aware that no-one deserved to be convicted of mutiny because of the events that took place on Renown."
"If you know that then why, *why*..." The words choked me. If he knew that why hadn't he stood up for us more in court, why had he ever let things go so far?
"There was a reason." For a moment he spoke quite gently, but in the next sentence his tone was brisk again. "You did not deserve to die a convicted mutineer, even if you did bring it on yourself, and that is the first reason you are here. The second reason is that, although you have overset my plans quite badly, it is possible things may be salvaged.
"I need a man to undertake a certain mission. It's dirty work in some respects, difficult and certainly dangerous. It is also completely unofficial, for very good reasons. No senior officer, other than myself, will know anything about it. However, I give you my word it is in the best interests of our country."
I digested that. "Do you mean you want me to do this mission?" It seemed faintly unlikely. Despite being responsible for my commission he'd always seemed to regard me with a somewhat jaundiced eye. I could remember a time when that had hurt.
"You are the best available at the present time. In fact you are really the only possibility available." Well, that would keep me from getting conceited, especially as he was definitely looking jaundiced again. "I need a man whose disappearance will not be marked or commented on. That rules out any currently serving officer, and I know of no-one else remotely suitable. You are officially a dead man, very useful."
"So what is it, this unofficial mission?" At a guess some kind of spy- work, not a pleasing prospect. But why a secret from the Admiralty?
"It would not be well advised of me to tell you that unless I have your acceptance."
"Under the circumstances, do I really have a choice?"
"Oh yes," he said unexpectedly. "To use a pressed man on a business such as this would be most unwise. If you refuse then I will supply a sum of money and arrange a passage to somewhere you will not be recognised - one of our colonies perhaps. I must impress on you that this will be a tricky business, quite unlike anything in your previous experience and somewhat unsavoury. And with a decided risk of an unpleasant end." Well, that last at least was nothing new. "If you are successful, however, then I may be able to arrange full reinstatement."
Reinstatement. Into the Navy? Restoration of name, future, friendship? No. No, that couldn't be. I couldn't risk letting myself believe that that could be. "Reinstatement?" my voice whispered. "How?"
"That also I cannot explain at present."
Did I trust him? No. I would have called him a straight dealer once, but that would have been before the court martial. Anyway, I never wholly trusted anyone except Horatio. But what did I really have to lose? Only a life that had been stripped bare. What would I do with that life if I turned him down? Wear it out forever mourning my losses?
"You are fatigued." I'd not realised until he spoke again my eyes had closed. "You need not give the answer now."
"No. No, I mean -" I'd spoken a bit too hastily, my breath caught unsteadily and threatened to tip me into one of the agonising coughing fits that had only just grown less frequent. I tried to hold my breathing, biting hard on my lip until I felt it possible to risk letting a breath out. Breathing partly steadied, I was somewhat chagrined to find Pellew holding a glass of water to my mouth, but took some of it anyway.
"Thank you. Don't go. I'm- I'm all right." A few more steady breaths. Damn, but I hated being wounded. "I'll do it. On one condition. Tell Horatio. Tell him I'm alive."
"He knows." Once again that brief note of gentleness.
"He does?"
"Yes. I did not intend to tell him at first, but when the time came for him to leave Kingston, well, I had come to fear that not telling him might cause recent events to put a great strain on his performance of his duties. He visited here once, but you were unconscious at the time. Understand there can be no further contact between you. That would put both of you in grave danger, as well as your mission."
"I understand, sir. As long as he knows." Of all the hard things, that had been the hardest. Knowing the pain my end would cause him. Death in battle or from disease, that would be a hard blow, but an accepted hazard of the life we lead. But a death such as mine, well, if things had been reversed, to have seen him die disgraced, condemned, by the unjust spite of a vindictive tribunal, that would have crippled me. Horatio is stronger, of course, but he feels things deeply. It was terrible that the only way to save him was by dealing a hideous wound. Necessary, as amputation can be necessary, but none the easier for it.
Even Pellew must have understood a little of that if he'd told Horatio the truth. Or come to understand it.
But I mustn't dwell on that too long, or he would think I was overstrained and leave. The healing wound was throbbing with an insistent pain and my head felt like it had turned to lead, but I badly wanted to know exactly what it was I'd let myself in for. Another deep breath.
"Do I get to hear what I'm supposed to do now, sir?"
**WARNING** Massive spoilers for 'Loyalty', the first of the 2003 Hornblower movies, which has not yet aired in all parts of the globe. If you want to avoid learning plot points, *Don't Read*. If you know the book 'Hornblower and the Hotspur' and want to know if this fic includes any major plot elements *not* in the book, then, Yes. It does. (There was one massive twist that couldn't be predicted from the book) If you want to avoid learning any plot details not in the books, *Don't Read*.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, nor most of the plot. They belong to the C. S. Forester estate and A&E Productions.
Explanation: 'Retribution' left a lot of unanswered questions, and 'Loyalty' created a lot more. This is just an attempt at answering some of them, which at the same time gets rid of 'Retribution''s most disliked feature......
*******************
Chapter One - Kingston
A strange world that of the Navy. A world of hard words and harder rules, governed by the iron Articles and the unwritten laws that are scarcely less stern. A world where we are taught to speak truth, yet schooled to deceive, expected to honour loyalty, but sacrifice any life if the service should demand. Virtue is praised, yet above all demands stands the reverence for seniority, no matter how rotten and corrupt. Hold your tongue, turn your eye and you'll be called a good man.
Outsiders might wonder why we accept it, this strange life that takes so much of value from us. Horatio would say: Duty. To me that's just a word - though I'd not tell him so. A dangerous word sometimes, the name of 'duty' can be used to justify many crimes. I think the Navy takes us young and moulds us in its shape. The cost is high, it's always high, but how can we count it when we've known no other values? This life is in our blood and bones and flesh, how can we seek change when it's too late to change ourselves? We play by Navy rules because they're all we know, have ever known. And some of us - including Horatio - play hard because we want to win. On their terms of course, because that's all there is.
I certainly thought I'd lost in a major way in Kingston. Not that I had regrets, but bitterness, quite a lot of that. It was hard, although unlike Horatio I'd always known there are some battles you just can't win. You can beat the French or the Spanish or even the Simpsons of this world, but you can't beat the Naval establishment, by their rules or anyone else's. So Kingston wasn't a great shock, but it was hard.
It ought to have been a surprise to find I wasn't dead, but at first I was just too ill and weak and in pain to think at all. Later I'd got past the time to feel surprised, but was very puzzled. I *remembered* dying, but this definitely didn't seem like any kind of afterlife - apart from anything else I was still wounded. It didn't seem like a prison either, although the door was kept locked, more like a small bedroom in someone's house. The only people I saw those first days were a doctor and one attendant whose names I never learned. They weren't disposed to answer questions, except for one.
Horatio was safe. The doctor did tell me that. Acquitted of all charges. Knowing that, well it wouldn't be quite true to say I didn't care what happened to me, but I'd expected to be dead anyway, and everything else I'd ever had to lose was gone already. And I was drained, utterly spent in mind as well as in body. I'd been under strain so long. That trial hadn't been an end I would have chosen, but it had been an end. Finding myself alive was almost an anticlimax. So I did what the doctor told me, didn't persist with questions that went unanswered, and waited.
Days passed, I felt myself grow stronger. Then one evening I heard the doctor speak to someone else after he passed out of the room, and a moment later Commodore Sir Edward Pellew came in.
Surprise doesn't begin to describe my reaction, although anyone else would have surprised me just as much. More important, I didn't know what to think about his appearance here. I only knew the bare outline of what had happened at the trial, but enough to know he'd done little to defend Horatio. That was not what I would have expected from the Captain I'd served under in the old days, but I could only assume he was sacrificing us all in the interests of his career. I'd had too much else on my mind to think very much about it anyway.
"What have you to say for yourself, Mr Kennedy?" was his opening line, barked in his best quarter deck manner.
Careful, careful, mustn't trust him an inch. "I have nothing to say, sir."
"Nothing to say? By your own confession you are guilty of the heinous crime of mutiny and you have nothing to say?"
"Nothing to add, if you prefer, sir."
"You stand by your previous statements, then?" He was still barking at me as though we were back on the deck of the Indy and I'd just committed some dereliction of duty.
"Entirely, sir." Head up, don't let him see you scared.
"You understand the consequences, do you? There's a rope round your neck, boy, and I can see to it that you do hang. No easy death from a convenient wound. Knowing that, is there nothing more you want to say? Do you think I don't know there was far more happened on Renown than was ever revealed in court?"
Why was he doing this? Was he trying to force an admission against Horatio? *Why?* "I have nothing more to say." I had to keep my voice very low to stop it shaking.
"You prefer a felon's end?"
"If I must." And that was truth. "But if that's what you intend for me - sir - why are you here alone?"
"Are you questioning my actions?" The bark was fiercer than ever, if I'd been standing I'd likely have taken a step back. As it was I had to draw the longest breath I could manage without too much pain.
"No. Merely enquiring." I had to pause, to be sure I was about to make reasonable sense, there was something here I didn't understand at all. "I don't know how I came here, or even where here is, but I'm pretty sure it's not official. If you've only just found out about it, if you meant to take me in custody you'd have a squad of marines." Unless he hoped to trick me into some further confession, but however much he'd changed for him to be trying to convict Horatio made no sense. There was nothing he could gain by that, not with one scrapegoat already present for slaughter. "And if you're behind this, and I can't think of many other men in a position to be behind it, you didn't go to all this trouble to see me swing."
He nodded, just once, as though I'd passed some test. Which I realised much later was exactly what I had done. He'd been pushing me to see how I held up, trapped and vulnerable and alone.
"This is a house I rented. As to why you're here, the answer is that you interfered with my plans."
"I don't understand."
"No. Of course you don't. Nevertheless you managed to prevent an objective I had gone to some lengths to achieve. However, I am well aware that no-one deserved to be convicted of mutiny because of the events that took place on Renown."
"If you know that then why, *why*..." The words choked me. If he knew that why hadn't he stood up for us more in court, why had he ever let things go so far?
"There was a reason." For a moment he spoke quite gently, but in the next sentence his tone was brisk again. "You did not deserve to die a convicted mutineer, even if you did bring it on yourself, and that is the first reason you are here. The second reason is that, although you have overset my plans quite badly, it is possible things may be salvaged.
"I need a man to undertake a certain mission. It's dirty work in some respects, difficult and certainly dangerous. It is also completely unofficial, for very good reasons. No senior officer, other than myself, will know anything about it. However, I give you my word it is in the best interests of our country."
I digested that. "Do you mean you want me to do this mission?" It seemed faintly unlikely. Despite being responsible for my commission he'd always seemed to regard me with a somewhat jaundiced eye. I could remember a time when that had hurt.
"You are the best available at the present time. In fact you are really the only possibility available." Well, that would keep me from getting conceited, especially as he was definitely looking jaundiced again. "I need a man whose disappearance will not be marked or commented on. That rules out any currently serving officer, and I know of no-one else remotely suitable. You are officially a dead man, very useful."
"So what is it, this unofficial mission?" At a guess some kind of spy- work, not a pleasing prospect. But why a secret from the Admiralty?
"It would not be well advised of me to tell you that unless I have your acceptance."
"Under the circumstances, do I really have a choice?"
"Oh yes," he said unexpectedly. "To use a pressed man on a business such as this would be most unwise. If you refuse then I will supply a sum of money and arrange a passage to somewhere you will not be recognised - one of our colonies perhaps. I must impress on you that this will be a tricky business, quite unlike anything in your previous experience and somewhat unsavoury. And with a decided risk of an unpleasant end." Well, that last at least was nothing new. "If you are successful, however, then I may be able to arrange full reinstatement."
Reinstatement. Into the Navy? Restoration of name, future, friendship? No. No, that couldn't be. I couldn't risk letting myself believe that that could be. "Reinstatement?" my voice whispered. "How?"
"That also I cannot explain at present."
Did I trust him? No. I would have called him a straight dealer once, but that would have been before the court martial. Anyway, I never wholly trusted anyone except Horatio. But what did I really have to lose? Only a life that had been stripped bare. What would I do with that life if I turned him down? Wear it out forever mourning my losses?
"You are fatigued." I'd not realised until he spoke again my eyes had closed. "You need not give the answer now."
"No. No, I mean -" I'd spoken a bit too hastily, my breath caught unsteadily and threatened to tip me into one of the agonising coughing fits that had only just grown less frequent. I tried to hold my breathing, biting hard on my lip until I felt it possible to risk letting a breath out. Breathing partly steadied, I was somewhat chagrined to find Pellew holding a glass of water to my mouth, but took some of it anyway.
"Thank you. Don't go. I'm- I'm all right." A few more steady breaths. Damn, but I hated being wounded. "I'll do it. On one condition. Tell Horatio. Tell him I'm alive."
"He knows." Once again that brief note of gentleness.
"He does?"
"Yes. I did not intend to tell him at first, but when the time came for him to leave Kingston, well, I had come to fear that not telling him might cause recent events to put a great strain on his performance of his duties. He visited here once, but you were unconscious at the time. Understand there can be no further contact between you. That would put both of you in grave danger, as well as your mission."
"I understand, sir. As long as he knows." Of all the hard things, that had been the hardest. Knowing the pain my end would cause him. Death in battle or from disease, that would be a hard blow, but an accepted hazard of the life we lead. But a death such as mine, well, if things had been reversed, to have seen him die disgraced, condemned, by the unjust spite of a vindictive tribunal, that would have crippled me. Horatio is stronger, of course, but he feels things deeply. It was terrible that the only way to save him was by dealing a hideous wound. Necessary, as amputation can be necessary, but none the easier for it.
Even Pellew must have understood a little of that if he'd told Horatio the truth. Or come to understand it.
But I mustn't dwell on that too long, or he would think I was overstrained and leave. The healing wound was throbbing with an insistent pain and my head felt like it had turned to lead, but I badly wanted to know exactly what it was I'd let myself in for. Another deep breath.
"Do I get to hear what I'm supposed to do now, sir?"