A Call To Arms by Allan Mallinson Read Free Book Online Page B

enter, for here was a place where the remembrance of English blood was as real as in the chapels-turned-dressing-posts he had seen too often in the ‘never-ending war’. At length he went inside, got to his knees and closed his eyes. A quarter of an hour he remained thus, his prayers a ramble of pleas for the living and the dead – and for himself above all, for he could not in his heart believe that Henrietta needed his oration, nor yet that the living had more need of divine help than he. In his mind’s eye he held the picture of Henrietta before him. It was a picture that no other had seen. Even in this most sacred place he had no scruple in conjuring the picture of passion which had transformed her face.
    And then when he could no longer bear it, he opened his eyes and fixed them instead on Alberti’s commanding allegory of persecution, so vivid a reredos, so prized a survivor of Bonaparte’s occupation, Father Gradwell had said. So vivid, indeed, as to overpower. Hervey transferred his gaze to the crucifix on the high altar, wanting all the strength it could give. But he was not practised enough, and tears began to flow, gently at first, and then almost with convulsions, so that he had to take out a handkerchief and clutch it to his eyes. He sat back and picked up one of the cards from the pew. On it were the names of the venerabili , for whom a Te Deum was sung periodically. Such ordinary names they were, so very English, unlikely-sounding martyrs: Ralph Sherwin, John Wall, Thomas Cottam, Edward James – too long a list to contemplate without wondering what guilt for their deaths remained.
    Perhaps he should not have come. He had wanted to see if a place of so much willing sacrifice might have some secret message, some hidden power to ease the pain which every day visited him no matter how determinedly he sought diversions. But there was no message, nor any power to dull the pain. Those who might know of these things – John Keble, Daniel Coates, his father even – had said that only time could ease, that a search for an opiate was at best futile and at worst destructive, and that what would see him through time was God, and his own strength of character.
    The trouble was that God did not come to his aid, and that his own strength looked increasingly ill-matched with the trial. Hervey closed his eyes once more, and sought the simplicity of St Mark. ‘Lord, I believe,’ he murmured. ‘Help thou mine unbelief.’

CHAPTER FOUR
     
THE FELLOWSHIP OF BLACK POWDER
     

    A week later
     
    When Commodore Peto arrived, Elizabeth recorded in her journal a distinct and immediate rise in her brother’s spirits. Shelley noted it too, and was at first discouraged that his own company had evidently been deficient. But Shelley could not – even if he had been so minded – hold any part of that against the commodore, whose direct manner and decidedly radical sentiments he found altogether engaging. Their company in the first days was delightful to each.
    The evening Peto arrived had been a private affair between the two old friends, however. Not even Elizabeth joined them for supper, for she knew her brother would only speak were she elsewhere.
    ‘Tell me, then,’ Peto had demanded when they took their table at his lodgings, the Albergo d’Inghilterra. ‘What was done with Towcester? For you were silent on the matter in your letters.’
    Perhaps most men would first have expressed sadness at the loss of a wife, even at the semi-orphaning of an infant, for the two had not met since the day of Hervey’s wedding; but Peto knew he didnot have to speak of it. Long days, weeks, months together in those close quarters of the frigate Nisus had made for an understanding between the two men, and mere sentiment would have been repugnant to them both.
    ‘I sent you the report in the London Gazette ,’ Hervey replied.
    ‘A very dry account. I want to know how things went.’
    The cameriere had come to the table again, and