Chapter 13
It was on the next day, Apollo's chariot burning up the sky and the decks of both ships crawling with men anxious to be on their way to adventure and battle that the Captain took his slow steps onto the quarterdeck and called all hands! The air was expectant as the sea of face looked up, questioning. Pellew sighed, he knew what he had to say would not be well received.
"Men!" He wasn't sure how quite best to begin, but he did know that there was no way to avoid it. For everyone's sake it had to be done. He looked for her Ladyship's face in the crowd but he could not see her; there were too many distractions, not least the expectant men waiting for him to continue. "You have won a great victory for your country. The Lucille-Mariette is a British prize of war and King George thanks you all for your loyal service for King and Country, as noble seaman of the greatest fighting force on Earth - The British Navy!" The men cheered at that, but rather half-heartedly. Even they knew government propaganda when they heard it, they knew this was not all the Captain wanted to say. Hundreds of pairs of eyes glinted with suspicion and the Captain finally delivered the message beneath the elaborate praise.
"We return to Portsmouth!" Mouths opened to protest all over the place and he could hear the beginnings of rebellious murmuring. He ploughed ahead regardless. "Yes, back to Portsmouth. She's is too great a prize to travel without an escort and full crew, and I would not want your comrades blood to have been spilt in vain should she be retaken! And she will be sailed home, and she shall be sold at a profit - a third of which goes to you, the brave hands that captured her!" The mouths closed at that and he knew he had retaken his audience. "Moreover we will re-supply so we can set-sail once more for Ushant within the week! Mr Chad, please take a quarter of the crew aboard the Lucille-Mariette and prepare to make sail. And, Mr Ekklestone, you shall do the same aboard the Indefatigable!"
As the sails flew up the masts and whistles hailed around him, Sir Edward's eyes finally picked her out in the teeming crowd; the unmistakable black curls spilled from beneath the midshipman's hat and the grey eyes that found his were warm with gratitude.
Indeed it was three days at full sail, with a full wind blowing across the stern that carried the two great ships in sight of the English coast. Her green rolling hills loomed high and lush through the damp mists and the gulls ahead seemed to be heralding their arrival. The ancient wooden docks of Portsmouth where they found mooring; the horizon covered with the battling spars, the leaning, twisted lodgings and the old clock tower that seemed etched straight from Lorna's memory. The whole ship lurched still as the great anchor fell into the sea pushing the water around it into breakers causing the ship to roll for a few moments until it rested still, moving gently on the calm sea.
Lorna had had those three days of sailing to prepare herself for this. No more fear or nervousness was left in her person as she sat in the stern of the ship's boat, beside the Captain, as it was rowed ashore by immense oarsman with muscles bulging beneath their shirts. Her eyes were focused on the course before her as she held the tiller in the crook of her elbow, pushing it gently to steer them on a course for the docks.
Even as she stood there, her feet barely on the weathered planking of Portsmouth's docks, she could see it. The Admiralty building, as it towered above the other buildings with its marble columns and steady stream of impressively rich dressed gentry flowing to and from its doors, easily stood out. Lorna didn't dare let herself think on her immediate future as, under the pretence of being the document bearer, she followed Pellew's brisk footsteps up the grand staircase to the heavy, brass-embossed double doors that were thrown open for entry.
The building was more impressive inside than out, and though Lorna had been used to extravagance and good-living from a tender age, she had only seen the squalid conditions of the midshipman's birth as a home for the past months. Seeing the marble and great paintings again truly brought home what she had given up. The stern gazes of past admiral's and Kings pierced her skull from all sides and it was all she could do to stare back up at them defiantly as she walked past.
It was in a brightly lit, panelled corridor that they waited - hats tucked under arms and sitting on worn green leather chairs. They didn't have to wait long, however. A portly gentlemen looking extremely pompous in a black tailcoat and white gloves, flitted out from a doorway, that had previously been hidden in the panneling. He managed to cast a disdainful eye over the slightly sodden appearance of both uniforms and the barely disguised patches on Lorna's. He gave a stiff bow from the waist to the Captain, reminding her oddly of an emu, as he stuck his bottom in the air and dipped his nose to the floor. He stood and indicated the open door he had appeared from.
***
Admiral Hood was a man who gave the distinct appearance of an overfed vampire. Sallow skinned and jowley, with blood shot eyes and the self-satisfied, predatory look of a large tom cat, knowing that he could send hundreds of men to their deaths on a whim or give them all knighthoods on another. He looked at them now as a cat would look at a frightened mouse it was holding between its claws, almost saying: You're life is in my hands.
He seemed about sixty or so in age and when he spoke it was almost a purr.
"You wanted to see me, Captain?" He walked leisurely over to the vast desk at the centre of the room and seated himself behind it with a groan as his rotund backside met the velvet seat cushion.
"Yes, my Lord. I considered it a matter of utmost… importance." Lorna heard him choosing his words delicately. The admiral brought the tips of his long fingers together and stared over the top of them with his piggy eyes.
"Well out with it sir! And how does it concern this scrawny young fellow?" And Lorna just stood in silence, silently praying that her plea would be accepted as Captain Sir Edward Pellew recounted the recent events of her life, and the situation she had placed them in. First she had seen the ancient Admiral's eyes slip to her jacket front, which still betrayed no signs of a bust, and then to her face. He then seemed to go an ashen grey as he heard of her lineage, and it was an outraged red that greeted the Captain's words that there was only one real option available if all parties' were to be satisfied. There was the vindication and good repute of the Navy on one hand and the good repute of a one of its more influential officers on the other. He was hardly a man to have his position dictated to him and now by a meagre midshipman and woman, no less! His small, reddened eyes had narrowed beneath their silver brows as he had glared in her direction, but she had returned his gaze with cool countenance and bowed low.
She left the great Admiralty building, six hours later than she had arrived, once again shadowing the Captain. But this time her step was confident and her head was held high, with a small brown parcel clutched in her hand. Lord Hood was not fool enough to have refused Pellew's offer, and now she was returning home with not even the slightest threat upon her name. The thought of what service she had traded in return for this liberty didn't even really cross her mind. There was no looking to the future, the present was all that counted. Danger was an easy price to pay for freedom.