With the Midshipmen, 18th May

"Aye," Slater agreed. Too, if the Frogs were desperate for such supplies, it was only fair to take and use such supplies for their own army.

"Do you think we'll actually come across any smugglers?"

Chandos shrugged. The juniors were always enthusiastic for action. "I'm not sure how we'll know," he said frankly. "We don't have time to search every ship trading along this coast, and they could be any size. But if any of them try to run from us, we'll teach them a lesson!"

That was certainly true. "A frigate's better for running down smugglers than a second-rate, sure," Slater said. He wasn't sorry to be away from Barfleur at all!

"The excisemen use - cutters, I think - much smaller than frigates, anyway. I think they're even faster than frigates, but not nearly so well armed. We will do very well, I think." Peter spared a brief thought for the horses, and then wondered what they'd do with their French passenger, if they had to fight a French ship while he was on board. Chained in the hold, probably...

Once Chandos had left, and Fletcher had challenged Slater to a game of cards, Peter attempted to return to his studies. But the words refused to make any sense, and the diagrams needed more explanation. Eventually he closed the book, marking his place with the letter he had written that afternoon, placed book and letter in his sea chest. "I'm just ..." he said with the right touch of embarrassment, and left the berth. As he climbed up, he passed the wardroom, with its drone of conversation and clink of cutlery. It would be quieter on deck, although here too was the buzz of conversation. People talking to their friends. He shrugged his jacket round him and carried on.

Slater had bidden Chandos a good evening when the elder middie had departed to join the dinner in the wardroom, and promptly accepted Fletcher's challenge to cards. The other middie in the berth, Yates, seemed content to delve back into his studies, so Fletcher and Slater did not disturb him.

Yet when Yates offered an unfinished comment to excuse himself from the berth, Slater felt guilty for ignoring the other lad. He was new to the ship, but that was no accounting for being rude. "Come on," he said to Fletcher as he laid down his cards. "What about a walk around topside?"

Fletcher nodded eagerly.

...and looked up to ask Peter if he would like to join them - but too late he'd seen that Yates had already gone.

Simon frowned. He may not have been considered the brightest spark in the midshipmen's berth, nor the one who ever had anything helpful to say, but he tended to notice things sometimes. Recently he had noticed that Peter had been looking down, had not been talking to the sailors as he had before, had grown less cheerful and a lot more quiet - and now this departure, just another thing he had noticed, made him worry.

"Sorry, I've..." He struggled to think of an excuse to follow Peter and not offend Slater (who he'd only just challenged to a game of cards). "I've... I need the head!"

And with that he leapt up from his seat, gave Slater a perfunctory bow and rushed out of the berth like a boy who knew what business he needed to attend to. Once away from the berth he stopped, looking around and saw Yates' shoe disappear up the companionway up on deck. He followed, using both his hands and feet to climb the steps for speed's sake (looking a lot like a little monkey) and reached topside.

"Peter?" He called to a familiar blue shape standing by the starboard rail.

Peter was watching the white water lifting against the side of the ship, curling over and then falling back to be lifted again, until - if he leaned out he could see it - it fell behind the ship, its long wake as straight as the path the moon made. Fletcher's voice made him lift his head, and he carefully raised his hand to wipe away the spray before turning to face the boy, a smile already forming.

"Fletcher!" he said. "Has Slater already found out that you're a dab hand at the cards, and refuse to play any more?"

"Not yet," Fletcher said, walking up to the rail and peering over - he had to go onto tiptoes to see anything clearly - down at the waves. "I told him I had to go to the head. What were you looking at?"

"The water. It's always worth it, even at night. You can come up here and look into the water and forget about everything else." Peter turned back to lean on the rail next to Fletcher. "I didn't realize just how crowded a ship would be. Even more crowded than home."

Fletcher shrugged. He didn't really know what a crowded home was like - his grandfather's house had been a rather empty one - but the closest he could think of a comparison was like a school; a big school all self contained with the teachers, the masters, the older boys and the yonger boys all mixed in together - except you didn't have any playing fields and you couldn't raid the kitchens.

"It is that," he said instead, as he was sure Peter would make fun of such an idea. "Sometimes it's horrible, when you want to be alone and find quiet, but you can't really; there's always somebody talking that you can hear through the next bulkhead."

He figited a little, looking at Peter with an indicisive expression on his face.

"Are you alright, Peter?" he asked quietly, hoping that no one would hear him.

Well. Slater didn't move when Fletcher too offered a hasty excuse and hurried from the berth. That was odd. He felt uncomfortably excluded and not a little confused. Had he done or said something untoward? He certainly hadn't thought he had been impolite at all.

Sighing, Slater swept up the cards and shuffled them back into a single deck. Mister Fletcher wouldn't be pleased if his cards came to be scattered around the berth, he thought. Of course, he wasn't about to go prying into Fletcher's dunnage, so he couldn't stow the cards away properly. Better to leave them neatly on the table.

Then he retrieved his hat and ventured topside, thinking he might do well to observe the crew at work.

"Oh, yes," said Peter. "Just, sometimes, I wish I was at home." He had thought of leaving the ship in Lisbon, but a passage back to England would have cost too much, and the ship was short-handed, and ... He now realised that perhaps his uncle had not been happy during his short time at sea. He had found himself writing the same sort of things as he had read in his uncle's letters - cheerful reassurances that everything was wonderful, he had friends and was learning so much and spent any time to be spared from working and study in high-minded conversation with his fellow midshipmen.

He stilled the slight quiver in his voice and said, to cover it: "I do miss my family sometimes. That's it, I suppose."

"I suppose." Fletcher heard the quaver in Yates' voice and became slightly more worried. "It does get lonely; but then I never really had anyone at home to miss, not like your brothers and sisters."

He searched for something else to say.

"Only I was worried," he admitted, having not come up with anything. "You've been quiet a lot lately, and that's not like you. You haven't been talking much to anybody; not the men, nor the lieutenants, nor any of us - not since the battle."

He risked a telling off and leaned on the rail heaving a sigh, staring out at the sky. He had not spoken much to Peter in the past, but seeing as it was bothe their first voyage he somehow felt that Yates was the one he could speak with easiest.

"I miss Julian," he said suddenly. "I haven't told anybody, because I don't know if you're supposed to say that sort of thing. But I do."

"Yes," said Peter, rather relieved. "I miss Julian. He ... It is for real, battle, isn't it? And during it, I shot a man. Dead, I mean, with a pistol. But you can't really talk about it to anyone. I think you are meant to miss your shipmates, and be sorry they're dead, and then get on with life. Killing Frenchmen is what we do - there's no point in being upset about it. And the ship had to be repaired, and brought into Lisbon, and then ..."

He shrugged. "I wrote home about it, and there was so much I couldn't say - I had to make it sound interesting, and not really dangerous at all, or Mama would worry; only I couldn't sound too off-hand about killing people, because Papa would think that it was unChristian. He's all right about having to fight, of course, but you shouldn't exult in it."

Fletcher nodded.

"They always make it sound like a game, don't they? Or at least, that's what grandfather always did. When he talked about battles they always seemed so straightforward, with clear actions where the ship would turn this way, the cannons would fire at this point, and the crews would rush at each other in exactly this way and victory seemed so simple... But it's not clear, is it? At least, I don't think it's clear. It was all noise and smoke and I couldn't see a thing. I think I killed a Frenchman, stabbed him with my dirk, but I'm still not certain."

He thought again of Julian Dunnock, of his pale body in the orlop before he'd been sewn into his hammock. He'd cried at his funeral; he'd tried hard not to, but he couldn't help it.

"And it wasn't a game for Julian," he said sadly. He turned his brown eyes on Yates. "But we can talk about him, can't we? We may not be meant to, but no one can stop us talking if we don't want to."

"I think we are meant to talk about him," said Peter uncertainly. "But about what he did, not ... not about the way he died, and how much we miss him. Julian - he knew it wasn't a game. He'd lost friends - in battle or just in accidents. Do you remember his stories about how they'd gone round the Horn - he'd mention someone - David Bell, I remember - and then quite offhand say: 'He went over board the day we crossed the 53rd parallel.'"

He looked down at little Fletcher and said: "We'll be like that - we'll talk about how we took the Victorieuse, and remember Julian. It's just not easy at first."

Fletcher nodded again.

"He always told good stories," he said, brightening a little now he remembered Dunnock would tell the berth stories often in the evenings, despite Kinsella's yawns and Chandos' complaining that he'd heard it before. "Though I don't think I believe that one where he said he met a mermaid, and she gave him her comb in exchange for a kiss. So we'll tell stories about Julian?"

Peter nodded. "And we'll tell his stories, and pretend they are about us - the one about the mermaid you should tell, since no one would believe she'd given me a comb!"

Fletcher's brow creased in thought.

"Should we do that? They are his stories after all - and besides, I don't think anybody would believe me either, and your hair looks more in need of a comb than mine."

"That's because you use the comb she gave you... And I don't think that one is meant to be believed, not exactly. Which is why it's all right to tell it. Julian may have got it from someone himself, since it definitely didn't happen as he told it. But the others - about going round the Horn - it would be wrong to pretend that was us." He grinned. "With our enormous experience on ships. No one would believe us, and they'd say we were lying, not just telling a tale. I think." He thought for a moment and added. "That's how it would work at home. If Martin told us how he had seen the Headless Horseman - and it had chased him until the moon came out ... We'd shiver and pretend to believe it. But if he said he'd spent all day learning Latin, we'd say he was lying."

Fletcher thought it over, then nodded.

"Perhaps it might be alright then," he said. He smiled. "I could find a comb, next time we're in port, so I could show it to the others if they say I'm lying. That'll confuse them!"

Peter smiled. It was a fine line between telling a tale, with yourself written in, like the best ghost stories, and lying. What were his letters home: lies or tales? There hadn't been much invention in them - more omission and a bit of embellishment. He had told them how they had taken the Victorieuse, but it was a strangely bloodless victory, which somehow suggested that the French had surrendered almost as soon as the two ships had touched. He had glossed over the broken arm - "hurt" and "bandaged" had covered that without actually lying. And never a mention of what troubled him.

So now he lifted his eyes from the sea to the smiling face of young Fletcher, who had made him feel old from the start. "That's right, Simon. But make sure it's a fancy one - like the Spanish ladies wear in their hair. That would much more like a mermaid's comb."

"Oh, I will," Fletcher nodded earnestly. "And If I can't find one, or afford one, I could ask the carpenter for some gold paint and paint one and glue sea shells to it! That'll look like a mermaid's comb for certain."

He turned to look at the sea again, his eyes searching the water as he thought about mermaids and their accoutrements; combs, mirrors, necklaces...

"Who do you write to at home?" he asked all of a sudden. "Do you write to your brothers and sisters?"

"I write to my Mama," Peter said. "But she will let everyone read it. Which means of course that I can't tell her everything..." He let Fletcher imagine what bits he was leaving out. "I could write to my brothers - I could tell them much more, about the battle.... But if the letters arrived when they were at home, everyone else would want to read it anyway. So I might as well just write to Mama. Who do you write to?"