Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars by Jay Worrall

experience with it. During his time on her, Argonaut had not been involved in any naval battles or even the capture of commercial shipping. He tried to calculate the one-quarter share that was the ship’s captain’s due in his head, couldn’t get it exactly, but knew that it was a very large sum.
    “No, no,” Mr. Edwards spoke, reading his thoughts. “I’ve already done the division. That is the amount that would go to you personally.”
    “Oh,” Charles answered, unable to pull his eyes off the string of digits. “It’s a great deal of money.”
    “The fortunes of war,” Mr. Edwards responded affably, then spent some time explaining how the Admiralty court functioned, what his role as an agent was, his fees, the bewildering array of banking and investment options that Charles had before him, and the services Mr. Edwards’s firm could offer in those areas. In the end Charles signed a contract naming Thaddeus Edwards as his sole agent and received in turn a check for two thousand pounds—roughly ten years’ salary for a junior naval commander—as an advance on the sums he would receive from the court. Charles left the Threadneedle Street house with manufacturing companies, toll-road and canal-building projects, land acquisition, insurance, shipping and trade, and an assortment of other opportunities tumbling between his ears.
    A final visit to the Admiralty confirmed his promotion to commander and that he would be given the Louisa. She would be ready for sea at the Plymouth Naval Yards around the end of April or early May. His orders would be delivered when appropriate. The next day, Attwater in tow, he boarded the post coach for Chester and home.
     
    THE LARGE COACH bounced and swayed unmercifully as its six horses pounded along the ancient Roman road that was now the King’s Highway between Birmingham and Chester. Charles sat facing forward next to the starboard window, opposite the fitfully snoring form of his steward. They had changed horses in Whitechurch and soon crossed from Shropshire into his native Cheshire at the village of Grindley Brook. The passing scene of small hamlets, patchwork fields surrounded by ancient hedgerows, extensive woods, and pasture for dairy cattle grew increasingly familiar as the coach rattled onward. When the heights of Brown Knowl came into view, and Bolesworth Castle beyond, his sense of anticipation grew with every turn in the road. He was almost home. It had been six years since he had last seen his father (Charles’s mother had died when he was eleven, which was one of the reasons he had been sent to sea at the age of twelve), or his brothers or sisters, or slept in his own bed. He wondered if anything had changed in his absence, if his father had made any improvements to the property, or if there might be any other significant transformations in the community. He especially looked forward to seeing his father again and seeing the pride in his face when he told him he had been made commander and would have his own ship.
    Late in the afternoon the coach changed horses at the crossroads at Bruxton, the last change before the final run into Chester. Two miles beyond Bruxton, Charles called for the coachman to halt at the hamlet of Handly, where he and Attwater descended and had their luggage passed down.
    Charles looked up and down the high road, acutely disappointed as the coach clattered away. His first day in London he had written of his arrival in England and plans to come home, and he’d expected his father, or someone from home, to meet the coach. He searched the nearly empty street and the few half-timbered, thatch-roofed cottages crowded close on either side, but saw no one he recognized. There was a small horse-drawn farm cart plodding along in his direction, with a well-dressed if unfamiliar young woman on its front bench. That was all. Charles briefly wondered what such a woman was doing in such a shabby cart, then dismissed the thought and searched up and