In Northern Seas

by Philip K Allan

  ‘Jib and hands aloft, aye, sir,’ repeated Taylor. ‘I shall go forward to see it done.’

  ‘Here she comes, sir,’ reported Armstrong. ‘A touch over a mile astern and coming on bold enough. She has not varied her course or speed that I can tell. Fifty guineas says she has no notion we are here.’

  ‘How close do you think she will pass?’ asked Clay. Armstrong looked up from his night glass to judge the angle.

  ‘Within a cable, perhaps closer, sir,’ he reported. ‘Look, you can see light around an ill-fitting port lid, the lubbers.’ The American was right. An angle of shining gold thread marked where the glow of a lamp leaked into the night.

  ‘I fancy I can hear them now, too,’ said Clay. Armstrong held his head on one side and opened his mouth a little. The crack of an ice floe against the Liberté’s hull sounded across the water, then the swish of her wake, and the creak of rigging as the big frigate came closer. All around them the carronade crews rose to their feet, stretching their chilled limbs and groping in the dark for their equipment.

  ‘Corporal Edwards,’ said Macpherson from somewhere behind him. ‘Kindly make a tour of the men, and see they are all alert at their posts.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Clay moved towards the front of the quarterdeck rail. From the dark pool beneath him came the clink of equipment and the sound of the gun crews shifting in the dark.

  ‘Mr Blake!’ he called.

  ‘Here, sir!’ came the officer’s voice from the deep shadow around the main mast.

  ‘The enemy will shortly pass within a cable to larboard,’ he said. ‘Give them a broadside and then keep firing. I will endeavour to hold us on their beam.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ came the reply. ‘We are ready when you give the word.’

  Clay looked back at the enemy. Her mass of sail and rigging loomed up in the night, her hull a black space where she masked the ice flows. Her bowsprit was almost level with their stern.

  ‘How have they not marked us, sir?’ queried Armstrong, next to him. As if in response an urgent cry came from the Liberté’s masthead.

  ‘Set topsails, Mr Taylor!’ yelled Clay towards the forecastle. ‘Uncover the battle lanterns, Mr Blake.

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Warm light, like the glow from a fire, suffused the gun deck, spilling out over the sea in shards of orange through the open gun ports. In the aura of light, Clay could see the hands spread along the yard arms, wrestling with the furled canvas. The fore topsail was first to drop, and as it was sheeted home the Griffin began to move through the water. He returned his attention to the silhouette of the big French frigate a hundred yards off the beam. He could hear volleys of shouted orders, edged with panic at the apparition that had appeared beside them, and her ship’s bell started to peal in warning.

  ‘Open fire, if you please, Mr Blake,’ he called down.

  ‘Larboard side!’ roared the lieutenant. ‘Are you ready?’ A curved line of arms went up as each gun captain raised a fist aloft from his position crouched over his cannon. ‘Open fire!’

  In a lightning flash the night was swept away by the long tongues of flame that leaped from the frigate’s side. Clay saw a world of black and white. Black water, covered with startling white ice floes, black masts with bulging white sails, and the long black hull of the French ship with its white stripe, unbroken by a single open gun port. White columns of water towered up along her side, showers of splinters rose behind them. Then a wall of smoke boiled up, and the dark returned, deeper and blacker than before.

  ‘Not one darn shot in return, by God!’ exalted Armstrong ‘Not even a musket!’ He banged the rail with his fist in delight. The two officers were at the calm centre of swirling activity. Ship’s boys came running up from the magazine with fresh charges for the quarterdeck carronades. The marines who lined the spaces between the guns were busy spitting fresh bullets into their weapons and driving them home with their long ramrods. Clay had been so intent on watching his opponent that he only now realised the soldiers must have been firing all the time. The Griffin emerged from her bank of gun smoke, and he returned his attention to the enemy. The Liberté had moved a little ahead of her slower opponent, and the gap was widening all the time.

  ‘Set the topgallants, Mr Taylor,’ he yelled.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied the first lieutenant. Through the soles of Clay’s feet he felt the tremble of gun trucks on oak, as the first cannons to be reloaded were run out.

  ‘She had the look of a swift ship back in Copenhagen, sir,’ commented Armstrong beside him. ‘If she don’t care to stay and fight, I dare say she can show us a clean pair of heels.’

  ‘Not before we can land a few more blows,’ said Clay. ‘Up your helm a point, quartermaster. Give her the same again as you bear, Mr Blake.’

  ‘Point to windward, aye, sir,’ replied Old Amos at the wheel. The Griffin turned a little, losing some way, but bringing every gun into action. The Frenchman was still very close.

  ‘Open fire!’ yelled Blake. A burst of brilliant light rushed away towards the distant horizon, painting every thread of their opponent’s rigging in a tracery of gold, and the ship heeled away from the enemy as the cannon rushed back in board. The French ship’s hull was pockmarked with damage from the previous broadside, marring the smooth perfection. Her foretop yard had been shot through and hung down in festooned ruin. Clay saw a section of her rail vanish in a fan of fragments, and then it was dark again. Still there was no return fire, only shouted orders and the groans of the wounded. The dark shape continued to outpace her tormentor, despite her damage aloft, and her silhouette seemed to shrink in length.

  ‘She’s turning away, sir,’ said Armstrong. ‘Cutting and running.’

  ‘Another broadside, Mr Blake!’ roared Clay. ‘Get those cannons reloaded!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ replied the lieutenant. ‘Almost ready!’

  Their enemy looked quite different this time as she appeared in the light of the guns. She was stern on and growing ever more distant. Clay saw brilliant carved figures dressed in swirls of gold cloth, crowding around the run of glass windows across her stern and above them a huge tricolour, frozen in elegant folds before the light vanished once more.

  Then she was gone, dousing all her lights, and sailing away as fast as she could, chased by hoots of derision from the crew of the British ship. The sound of ice floes banging against her hull faded into the distance. The Griffin followed her for a few hours, but Clay was unwilling to charge through an ice field at night with the same recklessness abandon as their opponent. When dawn came, the frigate was alone once more, sailing over an empty sea.

  Chapter 10

  St. Petersburg

  The wide seas around the frigate had been narrowing steadily as they approached the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland, until at last they could go no further. Now a forested shore lay on both sides of them, close to the south and a more distant line on the horizon to the north. The grey walls of a fortress could be seen down near the shore, with cannon pointing towards them and a Russian flag fluttering over it. Ahead of them was a large fortified island, sitting in the centre of a narrow bay. Plenty of guns were on show here, as well as more Russian flags. Beyond the island the sea was covered by a thick sheet of ice, with a narrow channel of green water cut through it. Clay could see parties of men out on it, their heavy coats black against the white surface as they worked with long-handled axes and poles with hooked ends to widen the channel further. They were supervised by a few figures mounted on shaggy ponies. As he looked, Clay saw a sledge, pulled by three horses in a row, set off towards the shore, laden with slabs of ice. Apart from the grey stone walls of Kronstadt Island and the men working, there was no sign of any city.

  ‘Kindly heave to and anchor, Mr Taylor,’ ordered Clay.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘Bring her up into the wind! Anchor away!’

  The Griffin’s best bower dropped from the starboard cathead am
id an explosion of water. With a growling roar its cable, as thick as a man’s thigh, sped through the hawsehole. A cloud of hemp fragments spiralled like chaff in the spring air, until the rate slowed as the anchor touched bottom. The frigate backed gently away, paying out cable as it did so.

  ‘Holdfast!’ bellowed Hutchinson to the anchor party. He stood with the sole of one shoe resting on the enormous rope, sensing what was happening on the seabed seventy feet beneath him.

  ‘Another four fathoms of scope!’ he ordered, and more cable was paid out. ‘Easy there!’ The angle at which the rope emerged from the water tightened, accompanied by a symphony of creaks as the anchor’s fluke bit deep into the mud. ‘Make fast and belay all!’ he ordered. ‘She’s a-holding, sir!’

  ‘The boatswain reports that the anchor is holding, sir,’ repeated Taylor to the figure next to him, who would have needed ears of tin to have missed Hutchinson’s shout from the forecastle.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Taylor,’ said Clay. ‘Kindly get in sail and secure the ship.’ He turned to Vansittart. ‘We have arrived in St Petersburg, sir.’

  ‘Have we, indeed?’ queried the diplomat. ‘Then where, pray, is the city?’

  ‘I assure you it is close at hand, sir,’ said Clay. ‘It lies just beyond yonder ice field. The palaces and churches are quite clear from the masthead. No more than seven, perhaps eight miles away.’

  ‘From the masthead!’ exclaimed the diplomat. ‘Eight miles away! Can you come no closer? Surely this breeze will serve to sail up that channel cut in the ice?’

  ‘It may serve to bear us in, but it will be dead foul to bring us out again, sir,’ said Clay. ‘The safety of this ship is my concern. I have no intention of being caught in some narrow place, unable to manoeuvre, and dependent on the goodwill of Russians, who you tell me may presently be my enemies.’

  ‘Quite right, sir,’ agreed Taylor. ‘Remember what happened at the Texel back in ninety-five.’

  ‘And what did happen in ninety-five, Mr Taylor?’ demanded Vansittart.

  ‘Why, a Dutch squadron of warships was forced to surrender to French soldiers who came at them across the frozen sea,’ explained the lieutenant. ‘Imagine the disgrace! Bested by the bloody army!’

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed Clay. ‘I have already lost one of his majesty’s frigates this last twelve-month. I’ll be damned if I shall lose another.’

  ‘And how do you propose to get me ashore?’ asked Vansittart.

  ‘Oh, as for that, the longboat will be able to fetch you up that channel in no time, sir,’ said Clay. ‘Shall I order it launched?’

  Vansittart looked over the side at the water. Tendrils of chill mist clung to the surface, in spite of the bright sunshine, and a slab of ice drifted past in the current.

  ‘Of course, you will need to dress warm,’ added the captain.

  ‘Deck ho!’ yelled the lookout. ‘Launch be putting out from the island with Russian colours, and there be another one coming up yonder channel.’

  The Russian boat was the first to arrive. A well dressed naval lieutenant scrambled aboard to ask, in halting French, why a Royal Navy warship was anchored so close to his country’s capital. Once Clay had explained the diplomatic mission they were on, and confirmed that no one onboard was suffering from any infectious diseases, the lieutenant departed again with a smart bow. By the time he had left, the second boat was less than a mile away.

  ‘Deck there!’ called the masthead once more. ‘Strange to tell, sir, but I reckon that next launch be showing our flag.’ Clay focused on the boat, a large affair with two masts that was approaching swiftly. A tall man in a scarlet coat sat in the stern sheets. Clay passed his telescope across to Vansittart.

  ‘Tell me, do you recognise the gentlemen in regimentals?’ he asked.

  The diplomat studied the boat for a while. ‘By Jove, he’s stouter by a good few pounds since we last met!’ he exclaimed. ‘Doubtless been feasting upon diplomatic caviar and champagne, but that is Witless for certain.’ He lowered the telescope and took in the blank look on Clay and Taylor’s faces. ‘Lord Charles Whitworth, our ambassador to his Imperial Majesty Paul, Tsar of all the Russias,’ he translated. ‘Sound enough cove, but not the sharpest mind in the diplomatic pantheon.’

  ‘An ambassador!’ exclaimed Taylor, coming to life. ‘Then he rates as a vice-admiral! Side boys! Boatswain’s mates! Call out the marine guard! Run, boy! Find Mr Rudgewick, and tell him I shall need a salute to be fired.’

  The launch came alongside, and a man in the bow caught onto the frigate’s main chains with a boat hook. Lord Whitworth rose from his place, made his uncertain way to the steps built into the side of the frigate, and then climbed up to the entry port. He arrived just as the last marine was pushed into place by his sergeant, and the final pair of ship’s boys pulled on their white gloves.

  ‘Present arms!’ ordered Macpherson, who had been sound asleep in his cabin moments earlier. The marines went through the evolution of their salute well enough, and the boatswain’s calls twittered away as the ambassador stood rigidly to attention. If the boatswain’s mates were a little more breathless than usual, or some of the marines’ faces matched the scarlet of their tunics, Lord Whitworth gave no sign of having noticed. As the salute banged out from the bow of the Griffin, Clay took the opportunity to study his visitor. Whitworth was a large, middle-aged man, with a long face, brown curly hair that was growing thin on top, and thick ginger sideburns. When the echo of the final gun had faded, he stepped forward to shake his hand.

  ‘Welcome aboard, your lordship,’ he said. ‘My name is Alexander Clay, captain of this frigate.’

  ‘A pleasure, I am sure, Captain,’ said the ambassador, looking beyond him.

  ‘I believe you are already acquainted with the Honourable Nicholas Vansittart?’ said Clay, following his gaze.

  ‘Nicholas, my dear sir,’ said Whitworth, pushing forward to grasp his hand. ‘Thank God you’re arrived at last! I flew here the moment your ship was reported in the offing!’

  Clay exchanged glances with Vansittart. ‘Perhaps you gentlemen would like to join me below for a glass of Madeira,’ said Clay. ‘We can converse with a degree of freedom in my cabin. Do please follow me.’

  Once they were all settled, Vansittart turned to Whitworth.

  ‘Now then, old boy, do tell us what has been happening?’ he said. Whitworth pulled a handkerchief from out of his pocket and mopped his brow before replying.

  ‘Where do I start!’ he exclaimed. ‘St Petersburg has been in uproar for much of the winter! Tsarina Catherine was a hard enough piece, with all of her whoring and endless favourites, but at least you knew where you stood. But Tsar Paul is madder than a sack of hares! Bedlam ain’t in it, I tell you!’

  ‘Calm yourself, George, and tell us what he has done,’ said Vansittart.

  ‘The latest outrage? Why he has only confiscated every British ship lying in a Russian port, of which there are several hundred. He’s had all the crews rounded up, masters as well as men, and says he’ll march them off to Siberia, just as soon as the snow melts! Of course it was all that damned Frenchman’s doing, pouring poison against us into the tsar’s ear.’

  ‘The French ambassador?’ queried Vansittart.

  ‘Aye, Monsieur Barthélemy de Lesseps, the snake, with his tales of exotic travel from the far side of the world,’ confirmed Whitworth. ‘He has Paul feeding from his hand.’

  ‘Lesseps, my lord?’ queried Clay. ‘Why is that name familiar to me?’

  ‘Because he was the sole survivor of that French expedition to the Pacific, back before the war,’ said Vansittart. ‘The Frogs couldn’t stomach our Cook gaining all the distinction, so they sent off a brace of ships of their own under that La Perouse cove. Naturally, it ended very ill.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the ambassador. ‘He left them in the Orient to return overland with the maps and logs and whatnot, while the rest of them pressed on to see what we were about in New Holland. They vanished just a
fter leaving our colony in Botany Bay, so of course Napoleon says the perfidious English must be behind it, what?’ He drained his glass, and held it out for Harte to refill.

  ‘It would seem that the sooner I can meet with the tsar, the better,’ said Vansittart. ‘When can that be arranged?’

  ‘I have tried everything to get you an audience, Nicholas old chap,’ declared Whitworth. ‘But Mad Paul is adamant. He refuses to even see you.’

  ‘But I am the king’s representative!’

  ‘You could be the second coming of the Messiah, for all the tsar cares,’ declared Whitworth. ‘I tell you, the blighter won’t shift. He is quite set on war, and nothing will persuade him otherwise. God knows I’ve tried.’ Vansittart put down his drink, and laced his fingers into a steeple.

  ‘That is vexing,’ he said. ‘Have you considered a more, shall we say, delicate approach to the problem?’

  ‘What are you about, Nick?’ said the ambassador, his brows coming together.

  ‘Was his move against our commerce popular?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ said Whitworth. ‘Most at court are involved in it to some extent, and stand to lose a ruddy fortune if trade with Britain should stop.’

  ‘I see,’ said Vansittart, ‘and of course he was already disliked by the army, I collect?’

  ‘Paul just can’t stop himself,’ confirmed Whitworth. ‘The man’s a dashed simpleton! He grew up in that ghastly palace his mother kept him in, with nothing but Prussian toy soldiers to amuse him. So the moment he came to power, he gave all the plum jobs in the army to Kraut officers, and got them to change everything. Prussian uniforms, Prussian musketry drill, even getting the poor blighters to goose-step, for all love! On top of that, he seems to regard his household troops as no more than a box of giant toy soldiers for him to play with! He has them parading for him at all hours, whenever the fancy takes him.’