Paul gripped his pencil so hard it snapped. Charcoal flakes fluttered over his picture, smudging the lines. He wanted to gouge the man’s eyes out with the splintered end.

  His hand went to the bulge in his jacket, feeling the weight of the loaded pistol in the lining. He imagined blowing the butcher’s brains out. He forced himself to resist. He only had one bullet.

  The time was now. The judge had finished reading the sentence. He nodded to the executioner. Paul gripped the pistol, unfamiliar with its shape and complex mechanism.

  What am I going to do?

  The night before, when he had hatched his plan, he had plotted it so clearly. He would leap onto the scaffold, brandishing the pistol. The crowd would back away. He would cut his mother free, commandeer a horse, and ride all the way to the border to escape.

  But now he was here, the reality was all wrong. The crowd was too thick. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Paul had hung back: he was too far away. The ring of soldiers around the scaffold did not look as if they would be intimidated by one man with a pistol. They had seen so much killing, their attitude was as hard and sharp as the bayonets that gleamed on the ends of their muskets.

  His heart beating frantically, and close to panic, Paul pulled the pistol out of his coat. No one noticed. All eyes were directed at the scaffold.

  He cocked the gun. Even that seemed to take all his strength. The pistol was heavy; he held it with both hands. The crowd was tight around him. He hesitated.

  Stay alive. The words were so vivid in his head, he thought his mother must have spoken them from the scaffold. Do whatever you must, endure anything . . .

  Time froze. He felt his soul tearing in two inside him. Obey his mother, or save her? The shame he had carried ever since that day at the cottage swelled through him. His brothers would have known what to do. His finger tightened around the trigger, but it seemed to have rusted solid.

  He was still trying to decide when he heard the rattle and rumble of a falling blade, followed by an abrupt thud, terrible and complete.

  A sigh rose from the crowd as if a chasm had opened up in the earth. Constance’s head tumbled into the basket at the foot of the guillotine. Blood cascaded in gouts, splashing the faces of the nearby crowd. A few wisps of golden hair fluttered down like straw and settled in the lake of flowing blood. Soon they were soaked crimson red.

  The crowd moaned. Some ardent patriots raised huzzahs, but the cheers died as quickly as the prone figure, which jerked once or twice like a final insolent valedictory. No one relished the death of such a beautiful woman.

  Paul dropped the pistol and staggered back, as if an invisible cord that tethered him to the world had been cut and left him unmoored. His own mother, murdered, and he had stood fifty yards away and witnessed it all.

  A scream rose inside him. Paul felt it as a physical presence, a weight like a vast snake coiled in his chest. He tried to choke it back. If it emerged, he would draw attention to himself. People would wonder why he was mourning so passionately the death of an enemy of the people. They would find out who he was. If he was lucky, they would drag him to the Conciergerie to await trial. If not, the mob would tear him apart where he stood.

  Endure anything.

  The man in the butcher’s apron turned and stared at him.

  ‘Citizen?’ he said. ‘What the devil is wrong with you?’

  The scream rose through Paul’s lungs. He felt it pressing against his ribs.

  His legs buckled. Paul fell to his knees, bending double over the dirty cobbles. His mouth dropped open, and the scream was rushing up through his throat like a rat along a sewer. He gagged.

  No sound came out – only a flood of bile that spattered over the square and soaked his shirt front.

  Blood swam in front of his eyes. The butcher was upon him. A meaty hand took his elbow and hauled him to his feet. Another hand proffered him a dirty handkerchief. Paul wiped his lips and spat.

  ‘Your first time? I was the same. You will soon learn to enjoy the entertainment,’ said the butcher in a tone between glee and envy.

  Paul pulled away and scrabbled on the ground for his belongings. He found his sketch, but where was the pistol? He would place it in his mouth and blow his brains out.

  It had disappeared. But then he saw a small girl, her hair in pigtails and her smock stained with dirt, had picked it up. It was almost as big as she was. She held the barrel with both hands as she peered into it.

  ‘Give it to me,’ Paul croaked.

  He reached out. The girl regarded him with solemn eyes. Without a word, she turned on her bare feet and scurried away through the legs of the crowd, dragging the pistol behind her. You lived by your wits in Paris: the gun meant she would eat that night.

  Paul gazed at his drawing, his last image of his mother, and let out a cry. The picture was covered in his vomit, the paper soaked through. The image of Constance was a smudge of charcoal and blurred lines.

  The butcher looked over his shoulder.

  ‘She is ruined. A shame.’ He shrugged. ‘But with your talent, you can always make another.’

  The guards were already shoving the next victim up the steps of the guillotine. Constance’s death had unsettled the crowd: they needed another execution to calm them, to restore a sense of order.

  Paul held his hand over his mouth. He had nothing to say; he had survived. But the scream remained trapped inside him, echoing around his soul forever.

  CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, 1806.

  TWELVE YEARS LATER . . .

  A

  dmiral Sir Robert Courtney stood on the deck of his flagship, the Nestor, and felt the huge Cape rollers surge under the hull, the turbulence of cold Atlantic water meeting the heat of Africa. His body moved easily with the motion. He had been at sea since he was seventeen years old, starting as a common forecastle hand. Now he was a vice admiral of the Red, a knight of the realm, darling of the British press, and curse of any French captain unlucky enough to cross his path. He had accomplished a lot in the last thirty years.

  ‘It seems like yesterday when we started out together,’ said the man beside him, reading Rob’s thoughts as true as a compass. Angus MacNeil was a barrel-chested Scotsman who had sailed with Rob on his first voyage in the navy, and somehow contrived to follow him aboard every vessel he’d served on since. They had saved each other’s lives more times than either man could remember.

  Rob leaned on the rail, half listening as he stared out at the great flat-topped bulk of Table Mountain looming above the bay. He could almost smell its scent, though with the stiff onshore breeze he knew he must be imagining it. Africa was where he had been born, where he had lived all his youth until dreams of big ships and the promise of adventure lured him away. Now, nearly fifty, he felt a powerful urge to return, as if the dust of the continent had lodged in his bones and was at last beginning to stir. He had lobbied the Admiralty for this command for months. Now he was almost home.

  But the Lords of the Admiralty had not sent him halfway across the world for shore leave. He had work to do. He put the telescope to his one good eye and swept it over the bay with a practised motion until he found the fort. Its white walls sparkled in the sunlight, its five corners thrust outward like spear points.

  ‘My great-great-grandfather helped build those walls,’ said Rob. He searched out the open parade ground on the shore below the castle walls. ‘And his father was executed there by the Dutch.’

  ‘Then you’ve a debt to pay,’ said Angus. He swept his arm across the horizon, where the full line of Rob’s fleet spread over nearly ten miles of ocean: four ships of the line, two frigates and a dozen transports, with several thousand Highland troops quartered aboard. ‘And the men to give it back to Holland with interest.’

  ‘It is not Holland any more. It is the Batavian Republic,’ Rob reproved him.

  The Batavian Republic had been formed after the downfall of the old Dutch Republic, when French revolutionary forces intervened in 1795.

  Angus spat over the side. ‘A turd by any other name. What’s the matter about all this change?’

  The world had been transformed out of all recognition since Rob first emerged from his isolated childhood in the African bush. He and Angus had cut their teeth fighting American revolutionaries, but that had been the prologue for the greater contest that had erupted ten years later, with the French revolution. First France had been sucked into the maelstrom, then Europe, and finally the world. For a time, it had looked as though France might drown in the bloodbath the revolution had unleashed. But as her cause looked lost, a charismatic soldier named Bonaparte had emerged from the chaos to redeem his country. In less than ten years, he had risen from cadet to general. In another five years, he was dictator. And five years after that, he had crowned himself emperor. Now, there was not a corner of the globe where France and Britain did not fight for mastery.

  That was why Rob was here. Cape Town was the key to the East, to the new British empire rising in India. Holland held the Cape, but the country had been overthrown. The Batavian Republic was a vassal state of France, with a chokehold on Britain’s most vital trade artery. And so the Cape had to be captured.

  Rob felt a touch on his arm – lighter than the breeze that plucked at his sleeves, but he knew it at once with a joy that had not dimmed in all these years. His wife, Phoebe, had come up beside him. He slipped an arm around her waist and hugged her to him.

  Many things had changed, but not his love for her, or her looks. Even when he met her, a teenage slave abused on an American plantation, she had had a calm self-possession beyond her years. Despite the terrible suffering endured at the hands of cruel slave masters all those years ago, age had made her more beautiful, a more perfect version of the young woman she had been. Her almond eyes were deep with love and wisdom; her soft face was kindness itself, while her golden-brown skin bore no trace of the storms she had weathered.

  Since Rob married Phoebe, they had not spent a night apart. The Admiralty frowned on officers bringing their wives aboard ships; sailors swore it brought bad luck. None of it swayed Rob. The war had kept him at sea almost continuously. If he had left her behind, he would hardly have seen her for three months in ten years. Life ashore was hard enough for any sailor’s wife; for Phoebe, living in a different country and with a different skin, it would have been intolerable.

  Whatever people might think, Rob’s extraordinary run of victories had quieted both punctilious admirals and superstitious sailors. He had become known as a lucky captain, and then a lucky admiral; his ships were never short of volunteers. And in the unique world of seamen, her race was irrelevant. Ships’ crews were made up of men from every country that had a coast: Scots, Irish, Cornishmen, Africans, Indian lascars, Chinamen, and stout men with strange tattoos from the islands of the South Seas. Anywhere in the world that British ships called, men came aboard and entered the Royal Navy’s bloodstream. Many men volunteered, eager for the pay, board and the chance to travel to exotic lands, but those who were press-ganged would arrive with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, and sporting a bruise or two. Rob knew how brutal the experience could be – he had been forced into service many moons ago, and understood the men’s fears.

  Now the crews loved Phoebe. She was their talisman, their Madonna and their mother. If Rob had tried to leave her ashore, they would have mutinied.

  Phoebe shivered in his embrace. Cape Town was not a happy memory for her.

  ‘The last time I was here, it was in the hold of a slave ship.’

  ‘Now you are Lady Courtney. And soon, slave ships will be a thing of the past. The Saints are planning a new bill to abolish the trade, and they are confident that this year at last they have the votes to pass it.’

  ‘The Saints’ was the nickname for a group of Members of Parliament who had spent twenty years fighting against slavery. Many of them were Rob’s friends, and he had been their enthusiastic champion. Of the considerable fortune in prize money he had amassed during his career, much of it had been dedicated to supporting their cause.

  ‘Imagine if we could turn our guns on those slavers.’

  ‘The French abolished slavery more than ten years ago,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Until Bonaparte brought it back,’ Rob reminded her. ‘Which is why – among many other reasons – it will give me great pleasure to seize Cape Town from him.’

  Phoebe studied the gleaming fort. ‘It looks heavily fortified and strongly built.’ Having been in so many battles, she had developed a captain’s eye for tactics. ‘Will you be able to manoeuvre the ship close enough to shore for it to be in range of your guns?’

  Rob kissed her. ‘Your assessment is astute. We cannot assault the castle directly. Fortunately, I have a plan.’

  He sought out his flag lieutenant, a terrier-like Welshman named Jones.

  ‘My compliments to the captain. Ask him to prepare my launch.’

  Jones saluted. Phoebe arched her eyebrows.

  ‘I hope you are not planning anything rash?’

  ‘As you rightly observed, I cannot get close enough to the shore in the flagship. I am transferring my flag aboard the Valiant.’

  ‘You are an admiral,’ Phoebe said, a note of concern in her voice. ‘Your job is to let younger men fight the battles, and win the glory.’

  Rob smiled. ‘I need to be present to tell them how much better I would have done it at their age. Besides, you know what the Valiant’s captain is like. Impetuous, headstrong and insubordinate. Who knows what he would do without a firm hand on his shoulder?’

  ‘He takes after his father,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘I think that is his mother’s side.’

  She let go of her hold on him.

  ‘If I told you to be careful, would it make any difference?’

  ‘If I said I will, would you believe me?’

  *

  Rob surveyed the landscape through a telescope as he sat with Angus in the rear of the launch approaching the sloop Valiant. Phoebe had been right: a direct assault on the castle would have been an invitation to disaster. They needed to find a different landing place. For a week, Rob’s ships had been making feints close to shore, testing the defences and leaving the Dutch guessing where the final assault would come. He knew from his intelligence that the Dutch had over three hundred guns mounted on shore batteries along the coast. He needed to land almost ten thousand men, and he would not send them ashore to be slaughtered.

  Rob had decided on landing on a site at Losperd’s Bay, some sixteen miles east of Cape Town. It was far enough from the castle that the Dutch could not reinforce the area quickly, and unprotected by any permanent batteries. The drawbacks were the strong current that swept the beach, and the high sand dunes screening the interior. If the Dutch brought up troops, the dunes would provide a natural defensive rampart. But as best Rob could tell, the place was deserted.

  He felt the familiar heat rising in his veins at the prospect of action. He knew it was unbecoming for an admiral. Phoebe was right about that, too. He should stay back, directing the fleet from a safe distance. But some impulse forced him onwards, his rational, strategic judgement giving way to the promise of the thrills he used to experience in his youth: the camaraderie, the shared purpose, the knife-edge between life and death. For a long time he had been missing the visceral excitement of battle, and he knew he had to answer its siren call. And he could never ask his men to face danger that he would not.

  The boat came alongside the sloop. For another admiral, a different captain might have rigged a boatswain’s chair to hoist the flag officer aboard safely. But Rob would rather fall in the sea and drown than be lugged aboard like livestock, and the Valiant’s captain knew that better than anyone.

  The red vice admiral’s pennant broke out from the masthead as Rob came on deck. The captain saluted crisply. Then, forgetting decorum, he stepped forward and embraced Rob warmly.

  ‘Father.’

  ‘It is good to see you, Adam.’

  Rob gripped his son’s shoulders and looked into his eyes – the same green eyes that had flickered open in Rob’s arms as he held a newborn baby on a stormy sea in the Bay of Biscay. He had grown into a fine young man, Rob thought. He was a true mix of his parents, with his mother’s irrepressibly curly hair, his father’s ready grin, and a light-brown complexion halfway between the two.

  Though their ships had been separated by only a few miles of ocean, they had barely seen each other on the voyage out. Before that, years would pass between their reunions. From the moment Adam took his warrant as midshipman, Rob had insisted he serve under other captains.

  ‘My son must earn his own place in the world, as I did,’ he had told Phoebe.

  He had known the charge of nepotism would hang over Adam’s career, however it progressed. He did not want to add any substance to it.

  But Rob had read avidly every letter from Adam. He had scoured the Naval Gazette for reports of his son, delighting in news of his exploits. He had watched with pride as Adam grew from a callow midshipman to a dashing lieutenant, and now a commander with his first ship. Only now had Rob used his rank to bring Adam into his squadron.

  It was the right time. Adam had African blood in him on both sides, but had not set foot on the continent in nearly twenty years. He should return to his ancestral home, to see his grandfather, his aunt and uncles and cousins.

  But first they had a battle to win.

  ‘Is everything prepared?’ Rob asked.

  Adam frowned. ‘General Beresford was unable to land his troops today because of the gale. He decided to move north with the bulk of his forces and land at Saldanha Bay.’

  ‘But that is a hundred miles away,’ Rob protested. ‘A hundred miles they will have to march back, across a waterless desert.’

  ‘He did not consider he could make a safe landing here.’

  As if to underscore Adam’s words, a wave slapped against the side of the ship, throwing a spume of spray over both men. At the east end of the bay, Rob could see the sea foaming around the rocks of the razor-sharp reef that protruded from the beach.