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

to crofters, small farmers, and herdsmen, who paid their rents in kind. It was an arrangement that had provided the Edgemont clan with a comfortable and largely unchanged living for centuries.
    “I don’t know,” Ellie said stoically. “When Father died, we found that there was no money, only debts, lots of debts. John inherited, of course. He had to sell things and cut costs to keep the land. I think he said that it had to do with the tenants leaving or something.”
    Presently the wagon clattered through the village of Tattenall in the failing light, with its dimly lit cottage windows and the welcome smell of wood cooking fires. A little past the old square-towered church and the market square, they turned up the drive toward Edgemont Hall. The house was brightly lighted on the ground floor, and John Edgemont, a large, florid man with a receding hairline, immediately came out to greet them. Charles thought his brother looked old, and his face was lined with care. The money problems he’d inherited from their father probably contributed to that. John embraced Charles with a great bear hug and then set him down. “I read about St. Vincent in the Gazette. I want to know everything,” he said warmly. “But not until you’ve had a chance to settle in.” Charles introduced Attwater, who said, “How d’you do, squire,” and bowed.
    At dinner, served by the lone remaining maid, the talk was about Charles’s years on the Argonaut, the places he had been, and the battle off Cape St. Vincent. He told and retold the story of his part in the battle and of his conversations afterward, especially with Nelson, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself. After the dishes were cleared he made his way upstairs to his old room, where Attwater helped him prepare for bed.
    “Have you eaten?” Charles asked.
    “Yes, sir, I had dinner in the kitchen.”
    “Have you found a place to sleep?”
    “Oh, yes, sir. There’s plenty of room in the servants’ quarters.” With that Attwater blew out the lamp and closed the door behind him.
     
    CHARLES FOUND HIMSELF awake before dawn the next morning. He dressed in rough civilian clothing that had been set aside for him, found an old broadcloth jacket, and slipped quietly from the house. The early light filtered shyly through low gray clouds as he walked soberly around the grounds, noting how the house and other buildings had fallen into disrepair. Inside the stable he found only the aging mare that had pulled them from Handley. Outside, he stopped to remember how foreign it had all seemed when his family first arrived from Philadelphia, and when he had played with his brothers in that large elm tree and how that path led to the pond where he had once built a raft that sank under him. And there was a hedgerow he and his father had spent a full day planting together; it was now overgrown and untended. They were largely warm memories of a pleasant time and place. Presently he turned from the house and started down the lane toward the village.
    Almost immediately he saw a figure emerge from a wood on the left. A bent, elderly man looked up and down the way, then froze on seeing Charles and quickly moved the limp forms of two hares behind his back.
    “Mornin’, governor,” the man said, bowing and lifting his hat apprehensively as Charles approached. One arm and its bounty remained mostly hidden.
    Charles thought he recognized the stooped figure as someone from his childhood and struggled to place him. “Good morning. Tate, isn’t it?”
    The man gave a toothless grin and nodded. “Ye remembered, sir. I doubted ye would. Ye wa’ only belt-high then.”
    Robert Tate had been in the employ of Charles’s father and managed the stables on the Edgemont estate. He had taught Charles to ride and a few other things besides, animal trapping being one of them. “Had a profitable morning?” he asked, nodding at the arm Tate still held behind his back.
    “Aye, fair to tolerable,” Tate