‘I do not value such adventures. Canada, I find, has an… excess of colour, and what I saw of Gibraltar does not spark in me any great desire for sightseeing.’
‘Yet you have chosen the sea life?’
‘I feel a certain calling. At the same time, I will confess to you, sir, in a sense it weighs heavily.’
‘Oh?’
Peake turned to face him. ‘Nicholas – I think we might be accounted friends? Fellow believers? That is,’ he hastened to add, ‘in the essential rationality of the objective man when detached from corporeal encumbrances?’
‘I warm to Leibniz and his position before that of your Spinoza and his Deductions, Mr Peake.’
‘Quite so – we have discussed this before, as I recollect. No, sir, what I face might be considered a… dilemma of conscience.’
‘Ah! Bayle and the Sceptic position,’ Renzi said, with keen anticipation.
Peake winced. ‘Not as who should say, sir. I will be frank – in the lively trust in your discretion and the earnest hope that you will assist me in coming to a comfortable resolution.’
‘My discretion is assured, sir, but I cannot be sanguine about my suitability to aid you in a matter of churchly ethics.’
‘Never so, Renzi. Allow me to set forth the essentials. Since childhood I have been charmed by the rightness of nature: such nicety in the disposition of leaves on a stem, musculature in a cat, the flight of a swallow. In fine, Renzi, it is life’s vitality itself that, for me, is of all the world the greater worth.’
He looked closely at Renzi, then out to the immensity of the sea. ‘Here is the dilemma, my friend. I had an adequate living as curate in a peaceful village in Shropshire, and you may believe that for the quiet and reflective mind there are few occupations that can better that of a country parson.
‘When the revolution began in France I was puzzled. Then an émigré French family came to the village and I learned of the true situation while attending upon the matriarch, who had lost her mind at the experience.’ His voice strengthened. ‘This is the reason for the offer of my services to His Majesty – that in some way I was playing a part in the defending of my country against such unspeakable horrors.’
‘A noble part, Mr Peake,’ Renzi murmured.
‘But in my time on Tenacious I have learned much indeed. The sailors are rough fellows but in their way are as tender as babes to each other. And the midshipmen, scamps and rascals indeed, but I feel that they act as they do out of a need to retreat from martial horrors to the innocence of their so recently departed childhood.’
Renzi’s eyebrows went up, but he said nothing. Peake drew a deep breath and continued, ‘What I am saying is that I have been privileged to see a species of humanity, nauta innocentia, that perfectly displays the qualities of life-cherishing animation that I so value. So you may recognise the anguish I feel when the captain calls for practice with his cannon – “those mortal engines, whose rude throats could counterfeit the dread clamours of Jove!”
‘Renzi, my friend, please understand, it causes me the utmost pain when my unruly imagination pictures for me their purpose – the tearing apart of the sacred flesh of life and its utter and final extinction. Be they enemy of my country, I cannot prevent the betraying thought that even so they hold within them the same vital flame.
‘How can I bring myself to accede to my captain’s constant pressing to hurl unrelenting maledictions on the French in sermon and prayer when I find myself in such brotherly commune with their life-force? How can I hate an enemy when I understand only too well what it is to contain life within you? Whatever should I do? Nicholas – I’m torn. Help me do my duty.’
The beat west was tiring and dispiriting, long miles of vigilant ships but empty sea. A distance further than a complete Atlantic crossing, weeks turning to months – and still not even the wisp of a rumour of a vast French fleet.
South of Crete, with the ancient land of Greece left to starboard, they were traversing the width of the Ionian Sea and approaching where they had left with such hopes a long month before. There was now a pressing need for provisions and water. In these lonely and hostile seas the only possibility was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and of these the closer was Syracuse, on the eastern shores of Sicily.
The hard-run fleet, each ship with the blue ensign of Rear Admiral Nelson aloft, sighted the rugged pastel grey coast of Sicily at last and prepared to enter the ancient port. The sleepy town lay under the sun’s glare to starboard, mysterious ruins above scrubby cliffs to larboard. It was a difficult approach with troubled waters betraying rocky shoals extending menacingly into the bare half-mile of the intricate entrance.