The Emperor's Gold

by Robert Wilton

  ‘If we’re lucky,’ Kinnaird went on as they reached the top of the stairs, ‘the dragoons will get bored and start a fight with the mob. A handy riot would do us nicely.’

  Again a shake of the head in the silence behind him.

  The foot of the stairs gave onto a corridor, lit only by a high window and the moon outside. Odd shapes loomed out of the gloom as they stalked forwards – a chair – a clock, unwound and dead.

  ‘Wait!’ Kinnaird felt a strong hand on his arm.

  He stopped. ‘More questions, Mr Roscarrock?’

  ‘Just one: if the crowd are still talking’ – he waved a hand towards the rattle of unhappy voices from the front of the building – ‘then who broke—’

  ‘Who broke the window?’ Kinnaird nodded in understanding. ‘Really very good, Roscarrock.’

  A shadow appeared on the wall at the end of the passage. Then it darkened and filled to the shape of a man – a man with a distinctive uniform helmet and the shimmer of a sword in the gloom. The sword was unsheathed. The passage was twenty paces long, and the shadowed figure began to stride those twenty paces towards them.

  He came silently, only a rustling cloak and the implacable pace of heavy boots on the boards.

  Kinnaird gave it one try: ‘We’re glad to see you here. Consider yourself under my authority, and—’ But he knew it was irrelevance, and as the dark figure bore down on them, now only ten paces and still the boots drumming forwards, Kinnaird reached into his coat and dragged something out. A squat pistol barrel flashed dull in the moonlight, but it was too slow and the vast shadow had seen the movement and now there were only five paces between them, and the shadow ducked sideways and accelerated and as the pistol flashed and cracked into the empty darkness the boot steps became thunder and the man was on them. The sword flashed high against the window and swooped down; Kinnaird gasped between a scream and a curse and fell clutching his arm, the useless pistol dropped to the floor, and now the shadow was a swooping vulture of death, six feet of trained killer with sword arm raised to strike once more and bulk carrying him unstoppably onwards.

  He stopped. The sabre was halfway down in a gauntleted arm and the body was still hurtling forwards when the sea-knife drove straight into its heart, and two bodies crashed together to the boards.

  The house was silent again.

  Kinnaird wrestled himself to his feet and dragged the assassin’s bulk off the man underneath it. He helped the other up, then ripped the sash from the corpse and began to bind his own bloodied arm.

  ‘What in hell is happening?’

  Kinnaird stopped his tight-lipped activity for a second and looked up. ‘He was trying to kill us, Mr Roscarrock. Get used to it.’

  ‘But that uniform: he was a—’

  ‘A dragoon. This’ll give McNamara a problem or two. Yes, Mr Roscarrock. A serving member of His Majesty’s cavalry. And you just killed him.’ Kinnaird’s vague form moved closer, and the skeletal face leered into the moonlight. ‘Desperate times, desperate men.’ Then he turned and walked softly away down the corridor.

  At the end, he turned back. ‘There will come a time when you can be you again – a moment perhaps when you must be you again. And you’ll know when. But not yet, eh Roscarrock?’

  Then he disappeared into the darkness.

  Bonaparte listened for five minutes to the recitation of Fouché’s scheming, sometimes looking over his shoulder to examine the dead face more intently, otherwise bent to the telescope. Finally, in the middle of another steady sentence, he yawned. Fouché finished the point and stopped.

  ‘All right, my friend,’ the Emperor said wearily. Then with reassurance, looking up at him: ‘All right.’

  ‘Your Excellency is content?’ Fouché began, and knew immediately that it was a misstep.

  ‘Content?’ In a second the Emperor was in front of him again, hand pulling at the buttons of his waistcoat. ‘No, Fouché, I’m not content!’ He pulled away towards the window, and Fouché had to move with him until the hand absent-mindedly released the waistcoat. ‘London is irrelevant! If I could put myself and a regiment of chasseurs on the beach at Dover I would control England in a week, with or without your agents. But between me and Dover is that small stretch of water out there, and that small stretch of water is infested with the Royal Navy. Whatever else is wrong with English society, even if their army ceased to exist tomorrow and every Irishman marched on London, it wouldn’t matter because we’d still be here on the wrong side of the sea and the English navy would still be in the way.’ He glanced to the window, staring balefully out at the sea, then turned back. ‘I don’t need your agents, Fouché, to tell me that the English navy is the finest in the world, while half of my sailors can’t take a bath without drowning.’

  Through the window, the English sails were on the horizon again, haunting him.

  ‘How many months have I waited here?’ he asked quietly. ‘I have the finest army on earth down on the beach there, and it’s going rotten with idleness and syphilis because my Admirals can’t give me the English Channel!’

  Fouché stepped closer behind his Master. ‘As Your Excellency will remember, we are almost in a position where that factor can be resolved.’

  Napoleon looked up and over his shoulder. ‘I’ve heard too many fantasies, Fouché. I have been betrayed by too many optimists. You truly believe that these arrangements of yours can neutralize the Royal Navy?’

  Still the voice was flat and cold. ‘I calculate it, Excellency. I know it.’

  The Emperor watched him, then straightened the wrenched waistcoat for him. He turned back to the sea. ‘It’s very simple, Fouché. If you give me the English Channel for twenty-four hours, Britain and her Empire are finished.’

  ENGLAND

  21st July 1805

  Tom Roscarrock entered London in the dazed silence of an early Sunday morning, before the bells had begun to shatter the mist and drag sleepers from Saturday night to brief piety. He had been a full week on the road. He’d come by roundabout ways, with feigned moves and odd digressions, and he’d come by diverse means, sometimes on horseback, many miles on foot, and once for a day’s stretch on a barge down the Thames. In Bristol he’d knocked out a vagrant sailor who’d been following him; in Wootton the Parson had stared across the tavern at him for a full hour before Roscarrock slipped quietly into the night; he used back windows and the hour before dawn for his departures.

  The vastness of London staggered him, but he eased into its anonymity with a kind of satisfaction. He walked the streets for four hours just to get used to their rhythm and bustle; the tempest of coaches and horses and squelching, cursing pedestrians revived the lightness of foot needed for a heaving deck in the unruly April Channel. Each glimpse of the crowd came at him like the murmur of a restive crew; the intentness at first bewildered and then amused him.

  He leant in a particular doorway on Whitehall for an exact hour, measured by the chimes of a church bell. An interval as long again, and then he spent an hour in the shove and din of a Soho tavern. Kinnaird had been pedantic in describing the routine, and he used a precise phrase given to him by the Scotsman when, another hour later, a man with a new coat and old broken shoes sat down next to him in a Fleet Street coffee house. The man – too young for the coat and the snatched coffee – said nothing more significant in return than a time and a different coffee house; then he slipped out into the street, looking for drier patches of ground on which to walk. At the time and the place, another unremarkable face – though had he remarked it in the tavern? – and five words in the doorway: ‘Seldon House. Eight. Servants’ door.’ The machine was comfortable in its efficiency, and it made him uneasy.

  He sauntered along the alley at the side of Seldon House and past its servants’ door some half an hour before eight, matching pace with the footmen who had delivered their Masters to the front door and now idled around to the back quarters of the townhouse to find something to drink. Fifteen minutes before eight, he ambled back down
the alley from the other direction and slipped into the darkened arch of a building opposite the door. He was nineteen again, stalking the streets of Falmouth, brittle and alert while the press gangs were at work.

  By the time the bells of the city confirmed the hour with each other, the servants’ door of Seldon House was deserted. The front of the building was stone, but this side was brown brick, irregular windows gleaming into the darkness. The alley – mud and stench and the weird sense of coming from a different and less civilized century than the fine streets it joined – was silent. As the last of the bells faded, Roscarrock tried to readjust his ears to the sensitivity his eyes had achieved.

  From his left came the dull tread of a horse, and the rattle of its bridle, and then its rasps of breath. He followed the percussion of hooves and bridle and the intermittent breaths as they neared, shifted his weight from one leg to the other, wondered again what he was waiting for.

  There was something wrong with the muddy pace of the hooves, some irregularity. He frowned, wondered at the effect of the arch on his hearing, and suddenly the irregular pace was a separate movement from the right, a pair of boots coming towards him.

  A moment later and he saw the boots, and a coat made grey in the gloom, and a battered hat. They slowed, five yards away in the middle of the alley, paced forwards cautiously, a hand reaching into a pocket. Then the horse filled his vision, a sudden black flank and cloaked rider slumped on top blocking out the lights of the house, and still plodding and rattling and rasping. The shadow jolted past, uncovering the lights of the house as it went.

  The boots, coat and hat were standing two yards away, staring straight towards him in the darkened arch, and from under the hat there came a faint chuckle.

  The hand was still at the pocket, and the man stepped towards the arch. Impulsively he scratched the back of his neck with his free hand. Then he said softly, ‘How long have you been in there?’

  Roscarrack kept silent. The darkness was still on his side.

  ‘You have the darkness, I have the pistol.’

  ‘I also have a better sense of timing, and perhaps a pistol of my own.’

  A shake of the head. ‘We’d have seen it before now.’

  Roscarrock saw a scratch of a neck from hours previously. ‘You were in the coffee house this afternoon.’

  ‘I was thirsty. I’ll let go the pistol if you step out of the darkness.’

  ‘After you.’

  Two hands spread in exaggerated openness, and Roscarrock took half a step out of his shadows. The grey face under the hat nodded, then said simply, ‘Jessel.’

  ‘Roscarrock.’

  The grey face considered this for a moment, then nodded again. ‘We had word of you.’ He turned and stepped to the back door of the house. Roscarrock moved after him. Jessel knocked twice, pulled the hat off and swept a hand through long fair hair. Under the lamp at the door his face flickered and shone. It was a mobile face, pale blue eyes and strong, sharp nose, and it snapped round and seemed to sniff at Roscarrock as if some extra trace of light or scent might be gleaned.

  ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘Meet the chief.’ Jessel released the ‘f’ with reluctance, and nodded at the house.

  The door groaned open, pulled with difficulty by a maid: short, plain, out of breath and resentful at being relegated to the back of the house.

  There was an instant of silence, and Roscarrock said, ‘Hell of a disguise.’

  Jessel chuckled again and handed a card to her. The door closed.

  It opened again a few minutes later, and they were in and shown to a small ante-hall, flagstones and whitewash.

  They waited in silence. Jessel idled around the room, picking up and examining odd items – a tankard, a book, a hat – as if considering whether they were worth stealing. Aware of Roscarrock’s scrutiny, Jessel eventually turned to look at him.

  ‘No questions, Roscarrock?’

  ‘Would you answer them?’

  The smile jumped back to Jessel’s face. ‘Probably not. Might pass the time, though.’

  His taciturnity had always been Simon Hillyard’s joke about him, through the long, companionable nights on the schooner. The meander of conversation, the certainties, the freedom, nagged at him now like a headache.

  The door latch snapped up with a crack that startled them both. His back to the door as it opened, Jessel grinned, swapped the grin for gravity with the same speed, and turned. He bowed his head slightly, and murmured, ‘My Lord.’

  Roscarrock’s eyes widened at the man who ducked under the lintel and then stood with raised jaw and cold eyes, irritated as if they had walked in on him. Good nutrition and senior rank never reached the far south-west of England, and even to the most worldly of Cornish sailors a man fully six and a half feet high, in the full and glistening uniform of an admiral of the Royal Navy, was striking in that plain room, a peacock in the heather, a lion at an alehouse table.

  The large head barked out a curt ‘Jessel’ of acknowledgement, but the gaze was on Roscarrock.

  ‘This is Roscarrock, My Lord.’ Then, muttered: ‘Admiral Lord Hugo Bellamy, Roscarrock.’

  Admiral Lord Hugo Bellamy gave the impression that he wasn’t sure why he was here, let alone why he should be interested in the silent man opposite him – as if his mind was forced at the same time to consider a great many men in a great many whitewashed rooms. ‘So –? Oh’ – and the eyes widened like some huge shark spotting prey – ‘you’re one of Kinnaird’s dredgings!’ Now the heavy head dropped down and up Roscarrock’s full height more critically. ‘What stone did he find you under, then? A prison or a parsonage? Not another deserter from the university or the regiment, I hope; I’ve too many of those. The soldiers are incapable of intellectual reasoning, and the clerks do too damned much of it.’ The large eyes were bloodshot, and they narrowed slightly as they read Roscarrock’s face. ‘That crazed old Scotsman will have had his reasons, no doubt.’

  It wasn’t exactly admiral’s uniform – Bellamy had taken the coat and ceremonial features of his naval costume and adapted them around fashionable evening dress. Every aspect of Lord Hugo Bellamy seemed outsized and held together under pressure, and the heavy features on top of the great trunk of a body, the strain with which the coat held in the chest, made the cold, thin voice more surprising. The words were measured out. The hands too were a surprise, pale and fine, and Roscarrock had the unlikely fancy that the Admiral was some kind of musician.

  Bellamy gave no suggestion of wishing to spend more time in the wrong part of the house than was absolutely necessary. ‘Let me tell you how desperate we are, Roscarrock.’ He spoke brisk and flat. ‘The nation is physically and emotionally on the brink of collapse. At any moment an Irish rebellion or a wave of popular protest at prices and politics could destabilize the country, and our Government is simply incapable of adequate response. Every week, the Comptrollerate-General uncovers new plots against the Cabinet or the King, any one of which would lead to anarchy. Parliament feels it, and the bankers feel it, and London is tottering. I sit in the highest councils of the state, Roscarrock, and it is not an impressive experience. We’re doomed, and they know it. A few miles away, watching I imagine in considerable amusement, Bonaparte is camped on the beaches of France with the greatest army since Caesar’s.’ The big shoulders lifted and rolled; this recitation of the challenges facing him was an act of physical exercise for the man.

  ‘Most of all, we are desperate because we depend on men like you: misfits, scoundrels and deceivers. I should take pride in leading the one organization on which our leaders rely, but I cannot because I know what that means about the rest of them. The Home Office network of intelligence and control is little more than the Magistrates – mediocrities increasingly hysterical and isolated among their restive populace. Our army, or that part of it not rotting in India, is small, corrupt and ill-disciplined. In any crisis, I expect the majority of the ranks to join the rioters. Our navy is stretched from the Indies t
o Egypt, and nowhere capable of a decisive action: the men are tired, bored and riven with scurvy; the ships are falling apart. Unless the Royalist resistance in France comes off the fence imminently, the Admiralty’s one faint hope is that they might have the opportunity to hamper Napoleon slightly when he decides to push his armada across the Channel, but even that will depend on a freak chance of wind and leadership. Is this penetrating?’

  Kinnaird’s words: English stability and French instability were the key. Roscarrock said softly: ‘You’re not at sea yourself, Admiral.’

  Bellamy’s eyes merely widened, while Jessel’s ballooned in a suddenly pale face. The Admiral frowned, but it was calculation rather than anger, and then a faint hard smile appeared on the face. ‘Your insubordination may be useful, Roscarrock, but only if it can escape your ignorance. I – you are some kind of sailor, perhaps?’

  ‘Only a little.’ He’d spent too long with Kinnaird: natural reserve had become unvarying caution.

  Bellamy hadn’t listened. ‘I am no kind of sailor whatever, Roscarrock, and I hope that your pride in the sordid traditions of our navy will overcome the shock. I cannot swim, I cannot sail, and I could not distinguish between a poop deck and a dose of the pox. When some of the most important men in the Kingdom chose to name me chief of the organization with the single best hope of preserving national stability and countering the threat from France – perhaps they did so on mere whim, Roscarrock, perhaps they knew one or two things that you do not – they saw fit to promote me admiral. The title is an irrelevance. There are technical men capable of manoeuvring ships at sea and throwing them against the French, and I wish them well of it. For myself, I will pass the time here in London trying to co-ordinate our national defence against Napoleon – if you, Roscarrock, with your expert knowledge of Admiralty strategy will permit me.’