by Iain Gale
His brother continued, ‘Commissioned in point of fact on the same day of the same month. Though Edmund’s the finest sailor I know.’
‘Hugh, you exaggerate. I’m no better than you.’
Hugh Cassels turned to Steel. ‘Captain Steel, a word with you. I intend to take the lead with the convoy. Follow on behind us, Captain, if you please. I think that will be the most effective way of getting on, and time is of the essence, as you are aware.’
Steel frowned. ‘If you will pardon me, sir, I would beg to differ. Such an arrangement goes against all the tenets of battle. Surely, if the French do come upon us they would be more deterred if you were flanked by the escort rather than if the escort were to follow on. That way if you were attacked they would have a chance of taking some of you off before we could reach you.’
‘Ye. I had thought of that, but it is a risk I’m willing to take in the interest of speed. Or would you have the provisions delayed further?’
Steel stiffened. ‘That is not my intention, Captain. I am merely concerned for your safety and that of the convoy. We shall follow your wishes. I have said my piece. I shall say no more on’t.’ He paused, only deflected from further argument by the knowledge that he had need of retaining the captain’s good favour. ‘I do believe, though, that you may be able to help me on another matter. You have with you, on one of the convoy transports, a young woman. She is my wife, Lady Henrietta Steel. I wonder if you might get word to her that I am arrived and shall shortly be escorting her back to dry land.’
‘Your wife, sir? Point of fact, I don’t think we have any civilians left aboard. We did certainly have a party of several ladies, and I dare say that among them may have been your wife. I do recall a lady of title. But they all diverted to Leffinghe before we met you, under their own escort. Yes, now I think on it, I do believe that she may have been with them.’
Steel shook his head. ‘You must be mistaken, Captain. My wife was under specific instruction to meet me with the convoy.’
Cassels was growing annoyed. ‘Sir, I cannot vouch for the actions of your wife. But I do know that we have no females travelling with us now, and those as we did have are in Leffinghe. It was felt to be more prudent by the officer and escort that was with them. That place is held by the Allies. I suggest you go to Leffinghe to find your wife, for she is surely there. She’ll be perfectly safe there, Captain Steel. Their escorting officer assured me of it. No Frenchies for miles, and all in good hands. Oficer of the Foot Guards, Captain. The very best.’
Steel, of course, could do nothing else but agree.
An hour passed and another. The convoy, now set on its course back to Gistel, made good time, much to Steel’s annoyance, proving Cassel’s brother right. But with the onset of evening a thin mist descended fast upon the barges, making it all but impossible to see beyond the vessel directly in front and obscuring those to port and starboard. The sailors, however, lit lanthorns and hung them from the masts, giving the impression of lights bobbing about to left and right.
Slaughter said, ‘I don’t like this, sir. Not at all. It’s like so many will-o’-the-wisps. Them that come to lead you astray. Unquiet souls.’
Steel laughed. ‘Jacob! Really I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so unnerved as on this expedition. They’re the lights of our own boats.’
‘You say what you like, sir. I tell you it’s not right. They keep coming and going and I swear there’s more there than there was.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
But Steel was still peering at the lights, trying to count them, when Edmund Cassels found him.
‘Pretty sight, ain’t it? Didn’t know we had so many boats.’
‘We don’t.’
As the words left Steel’s lips both men turned, their attention caught by a sudden orange glow that rose on the starboard bow. And such was their shared experience of war on land and sea that both knew to duck. A second later a whooshing sound announced the passing over their lowered heads of a round shot. It passed over the barge without effect.
Steel was the first to recover. ‘To arms. Stand to.’
This was what they had all feared. Slaughter had not been wrong about the lights. Whoever was attacking them had come up under cover of the mist, masquerading as other barges. Steel watched as the night around them was lit up with further flashes. Cannon shot came crashing in, and through the mist the noise of metal against wood testified that all the vessels had not been so lucky as their own. Their attackers seemed to be coming at them from all sides.
Steel yelled at the Grenadiers, who had assembled in two ranks, ‘Fix bayonets!’
Cassels set his men to the oars. ‘Row, for all you’re worth.’
Up ahead it seemed that battle had already been joined. Cries from the convoy revealed that the transports had been boarded. Steel swore.
Cassels shouted at the oarsmen, ‘Row, damn you.’
Steel joined him. ‘Can’t you get this thing to go any faster? We need to save the convoy, or what’s left of it.’
His words were drowned in a cacophony of shot and cries, and then the enemy were upon them. There was a sudden thud as the keel of the attacking vessel crashed into the hull of the barge. Seconds later the deck was filled with armed men.
Steel, standing behind the Grenadiers, gave the order: ‘Present. Fire.’
A volley crashed out and sent the first wave of attackers to the deck, killing and wounding a score of them in the confined space. He looked at them and knew their type at once. Pirates. Privateers at least, in French pay. He had met their like before, and knew their fury and the full extent of their brutality. They would give no quarter. They wore no single uniform but a collection of tatters and finery. Here was the coat of a French dragoon, over there that of a Dutch officer. One of the bigger men, dead now, was dressed in a captured British red coat. Steel had no time to stare, for the second wave was in. He knew he must meet them now on equal terms.
‘Bayonets. No quarter. Give no quarter.’
His men lunged, and steel pierced flesh as another ten pirates fell. Some of the Grenadiers who had already reloaded fired off at point-blank range. Steel saw one of the Frenchmen staggering, groping at a huge blackened wound that had taken away half his abdomen. More pirates leapt on to the deck of the barge, but there were fewer this time.
Not waiting to see if more were to come, Steel took his chance. ‘Come on, lads. Let’s finish them.’
With a cheer the half-company rushed towards the boarding party, followed by the sailors, and with Steel at their head, sword in hand. He brought the great blade hard down on the head of a stocky, dark-skinned attacker, cutting it clean in half. Stepping over the corpse he drew back the sword and, parrying a cutlass, riposted with a lunge towards his assailant’s chest. He felt the steel slide in slickly, and then withdrew it and spun round to face a man he had sensed was behind him. The fellow had a billhook, but before he could use it on Steel one of the Grenadiers had run the man through his side.
And then they were gone, as suddenly as they had come. Their ship, a long, low war galley, was slipping away from the side of the barge.
Cut off by the mist and the night Steel could only wonder how the others had fared. He turned to find Cassels.
‘Can you take us into the convoy?’
The captain yelled and his crew, back at the oars, struck out hard, and soon the ship was heading into the thick of the flotilla. Up ahead Steel could still hear gunfire, which suggested that the affair was not over. But as they approached it ceased, and at the same moment the mist began to lift and the moon revealed itself, lighting up a scene of devastation. It was hard at first to tell the one from the other, but after a while it became clear that the escort had managed to beat off the attackers with relatively little loss. The bulk of the carnage was made up of debris from the pirate ships and the convoy. A good half dozen of the transporters were damaged beyond repair; another six could be towed in. They had lost twenty grenadiers in the fight, m
ostly the hapless Danes, and the same number again of Cassels’s seamen.
As his men helped to throw the bodies of the dead overboard and move the precious cargo from the beleaguered vessels, Steel knew that it was now time to speak up. He found Hugh Cassels staring at a dead sailor.
‘We should find a mooring for the night.’
‘Impossible. We must head on. Time is everything –’
Steel cut him off. ‘Do you see what has happened here? We have lost men and matériel. They were playing with us, and if we go on they will come again. I command the escort here, sir, and I am now taking command. Our only course is to tie up, man a defensive line and wait for morning. Then at least we shall have a sporting chance.’
And as for myself, he thought, I can sit down and try to understand why the devil Henrietta should have taken herself off to Leffinghe.
Lying on a divan in the finest room that Leffinghe’s only inn had to offer, Henrietta Vaughan looked up into the eyes of the man she loved and sighed contentedly. How strange it was, she thought, that she could be in such physical danger, here on the very front line of a war, and yet feel so perfectly happy.
Of course, there would be a scandal. But after the tittle-tattle had died away and once she and Jack had divorced and she and Lachlan were married she knew that her father, pleased with a proper match, would settle on her the proper portion of his wealth which she had never had with Captain Steel.
Poor Jack, she thought. But she had always known that their marriage would never work. He was just not quite in her league – charming, brave and lovely, of course, but somehow not quite right.
Lachlan Maclean spoke with a contented sigh and immersed himself a little further in the bath of hot water that he had coaxed from the landlady. ‘I think that I shall sell m’ commission. I have concerns in London. Money matters. It will occupy all of my time. Save for you of course, my darling. I shall always make time for you.’
Henrietta smiled. ‘How clever of you to bring me here.’
‘You admit that I was right, then. It’s so very much more sensible to stay here with me than go on to Lille.’ He paused, thinking. ‘You’re quite decided about your husband? No second thoughts?’
‘None. How could there be? It was so clever of you to find me in Brussels and gather me up.’
‘No more than any man would do for the prettiest girl alive, who seemed to have lost her way.’
‘Yes. I had lost my way, hadn’t I? For longer than you know, I think. And you were so kind … and so very generous.’
She stretched out her arm and admired the two sapphire and diamond bracelets that now adorned it.
‘As I said, no more than any man would do.’
‘But you are not just any man, are you?’
‘As you keep on telling me, my love. I cannot think why.’
‘Then come here and I’ll show you.’
He did not need to be asked twice, and as she felt his body against hers, his breath hot and sweet against her lips, Henrietta realized that there was something deliciously wicked about doing this with one of Jack’s comrades and felt a frisson she had not known before. And then the guns began.
SIXTEEN
It was not until the following morning that the convoy reached Gistel. As Steel had ordered, they had found a quiet, makeshift mooring, tethered to the tops of the trees of a submerged copse, and he corralled the supply vessels inside a loose circle of barges manned by the grenadiers who had taken turns of the watch by platoon. As he had predicted, the privateers had not returned, and starting out at dawn for the south the convoy had made good time.
The little town was not quite as they had left it. The waters still lapped around the northernmost houses and had not yet reached the centre, but there was a sense of agitation. It did not take him long to discover why.
‘Leffinghe is besieged? Surely not. It’s no more than ten miles from here. Surely we would be aware of such a state of affairs? It may, I grant you, have been raided by the same privateers who attacked our convoy yesterday evening. But surely, Major, the French do not have a force of sufficient size or the transports to ferry them to Leffinghe?’
He was standing with his back to the fireplace in a large first-floor room of the town hall which had been commandeered by the Allied commander in the area, a jovial major of the Buffs by the name of Meddowes.
‘I’m afraid they do, Captain Steel. We have no reason to doubt the news. It came to me from a most reliable source. The officer arrived here this morning, direct from Leffinghe. They have, he says, a battery that maintains a constant fire upon the place from a nearby hill. Part of the town has been set afire, and God knows the fate of the poor inhabitants. But they are holding out. I have sent to the Duke for reinforcements.’ He paused. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. When I told the officer who brought the news that you were escorting the convoy he embraced me. Most odd behaviour. It seems that he knows you. He was most anxious to see you on your arrival.’
So it was that within the hour Steel was sitting in the town’s most opulent tavern, sharing a bottle of its finest claret with Captain James Simpson.
Simpson smiled. ‘So you see, dear boy, here I am. Safe and sound, in good health and as keen as mustard.’
‘Well, thank God you are. I was certain you’d be taken.’
‘I told you before, my dear chap, it takes more than your usual crapaud français to snare James Simpson. And now it is my turn to be the hunter.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that I want blood, Steel. I’ve tasted it and it has whetted my appetite. I mean to finish the job.’
‘Finish the job?’
‘Disposing of Malbec and his whore. Oh, I neglected to tell you, didn’t I?’
He delved into his waistcoat pocket and pulled something out, then holding his hand out to Steel he slowly folded back his fingers. There in his palm lay a piece of jewellery, a gold chain from which was suspended a single, brilliant emerald.
Steel gasped. ‘Good God. You killed her.’
‘Well observed, dear chap. Most satisfactory, and a fitting end for such a woman. I told you, dear boy. Matter of honour. Loss of a dear friend and so on. She had to atone for her actions, and that she did, in full.’
‘How did you manage it?’
‘With great ease, actually. Far less trouble than I’d thought. After your escape they were in quite a flap, blaming each other. Charpentier was questioned but escaped with his life, though only thanks to the intervention of the King. Malbec led a search for you. Scoured all Paris. And in the meantime the Marquise sat in her apartments in the Place Royale and waited for news. That is where I found her.’
Steel grew cold. ‘How did you do it?’
‘Oh, I was merciful. By her standards, at least. Although I did make her sweat a little. There’s nothing like the anticipation of an event to bring out the heat. I’m sure that you know that.’
‘Only too well. Go on.’
‘I waited until the house was abed and then I entered through an upper window. D’you know, Steel, if I hadn’t been a soldier I think I’d have made a very good picklock. So there I was, staring down at her in her bed, a vision of nipples and lace. Exquisite creature. Shame about her character.’
Steel nodded, remembering.
‘I placed my hand over her mouth and woke her. Imagine the look of terror in her eyes when she saw me. Of course the bitch tried to bite me, but I soon put a stop to that. Then I gagged her with one of her own silk stockings and bound her hands behind her. My God, she struggled! But a few sharp jabs with my knife and she soon stopped that. And then, d’you know, her expression turned from anger to terror. She was afraid. And that Steel, although I am ashamed to admit it, made me the happiest man alive. I wanted her to know fear, so I kept her like that for a good four hours. Of course I talked to her all the while, telling her what I was going to do to her, how exactly I intended to kill her. In the most minute of detail. And from time to time I would give her just the mos
t subtle of cuts with my knife. Ever so thin. Just wherever it took my fancy. On the arm or on the thigh. Or anywhere really. Tiny, tiny cuts. But I think it was the words that affected her most vividly, rather than the cuts and the sight of all that blood. Interesting, don’t you think, how tiny cuts can call forth so much blood? At one point I was sure she was going to faint. Well, of course, I wasn’t having any of that. You know there’s nothing like a pitcher of ice-cold water to waken a girl, eh? So I went on with the detail and her eyes grew wider and wider and finally she began to shake with terror.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘Shake, dammit! By that time the dawn was coming up, so then I took her other stocking and wound it around and around her beautiful little neck and pulled it very very tight. And then, puff, she was gone. Snuffed out. But just to make absolutely certain I slit her throat from ear to pretty ear. But not before retrieving this.’
Again he held out the pendant, before putting it away again in his pocket. Steel felt drained by the account. He took a long drink.
‘It was well done, Simpson. But tell me, why the devil are you here? Has the Duke no further use for his spies?’
‘Alas, it is I for whom the spies have no use. My face is too well known, you see, my cover blown quite asunder. Of course, Gabriel was drowned. The Kaiser’s work. But there are others still in Paris who know me. In fact that is why I came to Leffinghe. Had to leave France by boat. Only way, dear boy. Patrols everywhere. So up the coast to Ostend I go. And I may tell you that I stank of fish for days.’ He sniffed at his coat. ‘Tell me that I do not now.’
Steel laughed and shook his head. ‘No, Simpson, you do not stink. At least not of fish.’
Simpson smiled and went on. ‘Well, when I heard the convoy was off to Lille I managed to contrive passage for myself. And when the party detached to Leffinghe, suffice it to say that a certain Jack tar among the crew had taken my fancy and that he just happened to be among the sailors ordered off with them.’ He frowned. ‘So, as you see, I have returned to the front. A soldier once again, dear boy. I march to the sound of the guns. “Lillibulero” is my anthem, Mars my patron saint. It was all that I could do not to stay and fight at Leffinghe.’