The Bomb Vessel

by Richard Woodman

  Then Parker had returned with the news that Tsar Paul had been assassinated and that his son Alexander had succeeded to the throne and declared his friendship with Britain. It was news already three weeks old.

  So were the letters brought by Lynx, but nobody minded. The distribution of the mail had its usual effect. Men with letters ran off to sit in obscure corners or in the tops, painfully to spell out the ill-written scrawl of loved ones. Those without went off to sulk or affected indifference, according to their temperament. Saddest were the letters that arrived for the dead. There was one such for Easton, scented with lavender and superscribed in a delicate, feminine hand. It lay upon Drinkwater’s table waiting to be returned unopened with his condolences.

  There were three letters for Drinkwater. One was in Elizabeth’s hand and one in Richard White’s, but it was the third that he opened first.

  Dear Drinkwater,

  Your letters reached me safely and I desire that you wait upon me directly you return to London.

  Dungarth.

  It was frigidly brief and reawakened all Drinkwater’s doubts about his conduct over Edward. Jex’s death, though it had freed him from accusation from one quarter, had not released him entirely. It came as small consolation to learn that the Danish and Prussian troops had abandoned Hamburg.

  He had gone on deck and paced the poop for over an hour before remembering the other letters. When he had sufficiently calmed himself he returned below and picked up the next. It was from his old friend Richard White, now a post-captain and blockading Brest in a frigate.

  My Dear Nathaniel,

  We are still here, up and down the Goulet and in sight of the batteries at St Matthew. I am sick of the duty and the incessant wearing of men and ships, but I suppose you would say there was no help for it. So thinks the First Lord, and no-one is disposed to argue with him. I heard you had command of a tender and if you can make nothing of it I would welcome a head I can rely on here. Write and let me know if you wish to serve as my first lieutenant . . .

  Drinkwater laid the letter down. If he could contrive to get transferred to White’s ship directly, without the need to call upon Dungarth, he could serve for years on the Brest blockade. The affair of Edward Drinkwater would blow over. He picked up the third letter and opened it. Elizabeth had been right all along; he was no dissembler, he knew that he would have to face the music. Sighing, he began to read.

  My Dearest Nathaniel,

  Charlotte and 1 are well, although we miss you. I grow exceedingly rotund. Louise is a great solace and constantly asks if I have heard of James.

  We are starved of news from the Baltic and I wait daily to hear from you. Unrest in the country grows and there is uncertainty everywhere. We long for peace and I pray daily for your safe return, my dearest . . .

  Drinkwater waited in London’s ante-room, nervous and tense, the subject of Edward uppermost in his mind. There had been ample time for the authorities to make arrangements for his arrest, perhaps Otway himself had brought a warrant . . . Sweat prickled between his shoulder blades. The dapper little midshipman who had brought Parker’s summons had ‘requested’ he wore full uniform. Wondering if that insistence might not be sinister, he looked down at his coat and breeches.

  The uniform was mildewed from languishing in his closet and the lace had become green. Tregembo’s efforts prior to the battle had not been very successful and the smell of powder smoke was still detectable from the heavy cloth. Drinkwater felt exceedingly uncomfortable as he waited.

  Parker’s secretary appeared at last and called him into the great cabin. It was richly appointed; the furniture gleamed darkly, crystal decanters and silver candelabra glittered from the points of light that were reflected upwards from the sea through the stern windows and danced on the white-painted deckhead.

  ‘Ah, Drinkwater . . .’ the old man paused, apparently weighed down by responsibilities. ‘I am to be superseded you know . . .’ Drinkwater remained silent. ‘Do you think I did wrong?’

  ‘I sir??’ That Parker should consult him was ludicrous. He felt out of his depth, aware only of the need to be tactful. ‘Er, no, sir. Surely we have achieved the object of our enterprise.’

  Parker looked at him intently, then seemed to brighten a little. ‘It was not an easy task . . .’ he muttered, more to himself than to Drinkwater. It was clear from his next remark that Drinkwater’s acquaintance with his wife had allowed the friendless old man to speak freely.

  ‘My wife reminds me constantly of my duty towards you in her letters . . .’

  ‘Her ladyship is too kind, sir,’ Drinkwater flushed; this solicitude on the part of Lady Parker was becoming a trifle embarrassing. Nelson had jumped to the wrong conclusion; was Parker about to do the same? Were not elderly husbands supposed to suspect young wives of all manner of infidelities?

  ‘. . .’ And Lord Nelson is constantly complaining that I have failed to recognise your services both before and during the recent action. I believe you commanded Virago in the bombardment?’

  ‘That is so, sir,’ Drinkwater’s heart was thumping painfully. Parker’s nepotistic promotions after the battle of Copenhagen had aroused a storm of fury and it had taken all Nelson’s persuasive powers to have a small number of highly deserving officers given a step in rank.

  Parker picked up a paper and handed it to Drinkwater. ‘Perhaps they will leave an old man in peace now.’

  Drinkwater picked up the commission that made him Master and Commander.

  The celebratory dinner in Virago’s cabin was a noisy affair. Out of courtesy Drinkwater had invited Lord Nelson, but the new Commander-in-Chief had taken his battleships off to demonstrate British seapower before the guns of Carlscrona and Revel.

  The senior officer present was Captain Martin who did his best to hide his mortification at not being made post. He consoled himself by getting drunk. From some macabre source available in the aftermath of a bloody battle Rogers had acquired an old epaullette which they now presented to their commander.

  ‘ ’Tis a trifle tarnished, Drinkwater, but in keeping with the rest of your attire,’ said Martin as he banged a spoon against a glass and called for silence. ‘Gentlemen, I ask you to charge your glasses. To your swab, Drinkwater!’

  ‘Drinkwater’s swab!’ The glasses banged down on the table and Tregembo and the messman moved rapidly to fill them again. Drinkwater looked round the grinning faces. Rogers flushed and half-drunk; Quilhampton, smiling seraphically, slipping slowly down in his chair banging on the table the fine, new wooden hand that Willerton had fashioned for him. Lettsom dry and birdlike; Tumilty red-faced and busy getting roaring drunk.

  ‘An’ I suppose I’ll be having to call you “sir”, Nat’aniel,’ he shouted thickly, slapping Drinkwater’s back in an insubordinate way.

  ‘Sit down you damned Hibernian!’ shouted Rogers.

  ‘Take your damned fingers off me! An’ I’m standing to make a pretty speech, so I am . . .’ There were boos and shouts of ‘Sit down!’

  ‘I’ll sit down upon a single condition . . . that Mr Lettsom makes a bit o’ his versifying to mark the occasion.’

  ‘Aye! Make us an ode, Lettsom!’

  ‘Come, a verse!’

  Lettsom held up his hand for silence. He was forced to wait before he could make himself heard.

  At last he drew a paper from his pocket and struck a pose:

  ‘The town of Copenhagen lies

  Upon the Baltic shore

  And here were deeds of daring done

  ’Twere never seen before.

  ‘Bold Nelson led ’em, glass in hand

  Upon the Danes to spy,

  When Parker said “that’s quite enough”

  He quoth, “No, by my eye!”

  ‘The dead and dying lay in heaps

  The Danes they would not yield

  Until the bold Virago came

  Onto the bloody field.’

  Lettsom paused, drank off his glass while holding his hand up to s
till the embryonic cheer. Then he resumed:

  ‘Lord Nelson got the credit,

  And Parker got the blame,

  But ’twas the bold Virago

  That clinched old England’s fame.’

  He sat down amid a storm of cheering and stamping. Mr Quilhampton’s enthusiasm threatened to split his new hand until someone restrained him, at which point he gave up the struggle to retain consciousness and slid beneath the grubby tablecloth.

  Drinkwater sat clapping Lettsom’s dreadful muse.

  ‘Your verse is like Polonius’s advice, Mr Lettsom, the sweeter for its brevity,’ Drinkwater grinned at the surgeon as Tregembo put another bottle before each officer. ‘Mr Tumilty’s contribution, sir,’ he whispered in Drinkwater’s ear.

  ‘Ah, Tom, I salute you . . .’

  Tumilty stood up. ‘Captain Drinkwater . . .’ he began, enunciating the words carefully, then he slowly bent over and buried his head in the remains of the figgy duff.

  ‘What a very elegant bow,’ said Martin rising unsteadily to take his leave. Drinkwater saw him to his boat.

  ‘Good night Drinkwater.’

  Returning to the cabin Drinkwater found Rogers dragging Tumilty to Easton’s empty cot while Tregembo was carrying Quilhampton to bed. Martin had left and only Lettsom and Rogers sat down to finish a last bottle with Drinkwater.

  Tregembo cleared the table. ‘Take a couple of bottles, Tregembo, share ’em with the cook and the messman.’

  ‘Thank ’ee, zur. I told ’ee you’d be made this commission, zur.’ He grinned and left the cabin.

  Lettsom blew through his flute. ‘You, er, don’t seem too pleased about it all, if I might say so,’ said Lettsom.

  ‘Is it that man Waters that’s bothering you, sir?’ asked Rogers.

  Drinkwater looked from one to the other. There was a faint ringing in his ears and he was aware of a need to be careful of what he said.

  ‘And why should Waters bother me, gentlemen?’

  He saw Rogers shrug. ‘It seemed an odd business to be mixed up in,’ he said. Drinkwater fixed Rogers with a cold eye. Reluctantly he told the last lie.

  ‘What d’you think I got my swab for, Samuel, eh?’

  Lettsom drowned any reaction from Rogers in a shower of notes from his flute and launched into a lively air. He played for several minutes, until Rogers rose to go.

  When the first lieutenant had left them Lettsom lowered his flute, blew the spittle out of it and dismantled it, slipping it into his pocket.

  ‘I see you believe in providence, Mr Drinkwater . . .’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Only a man with some kind of faith would have done what you did . . .’

  ‘You speak in riddles, Mr Lettsom . . .’

  ‘Mr Jex confided in me, I’ve known all along about your brother.’

  ‘God’s bones,’ Drinkwater muttered as he felt a cold sensation sweep over him. He went deathly pale.

  ‘I’m an atheist, Mr Drinkwater. But you are protected by my Hippocratic oath.’ Lettsom smiled reassuringly.

  A week later Admiral Pole took command of the fleet. The Baltic States were quiescent and, like Lord Nelson, the bomb vessels were ordered to England.

  Chapter Twenty-One July 1801

  A Child of Fortune

  Commander Nathaniel Drinkwater knocked on the door of the elegant house in Lord North Street. Under his new full-dress coat with its single gleaming epaulette he was perspiring heavily. It was not the heat of the July evening that caused his discomfort but apprehension over the outcome of the forthcoming interview with Lord Dungarth.

  The door opened and a footman showed him into an anteroom off the hall. Turning his new cocked hat nervously in his hands he felt awkward and a little frightened as he stood in the centre of the waiting room. After a few minutes he heard voices in the hall following which the same footman led him through to a book-lined study and he was again left alone. He looked around him, reminded poignantly of the portrait of Hortense Santhonax for, above the Adam fireplace, the arresting likeness of an elegant blonde beauty gazed down at him. He stared at the painting for some time. He had never met Dungarth’s countess but the Romney portrait was said not to have done justice to her loveliness.

  ‘You never met my wife, Nathaniel?’ Drinkwater had not heard the door open and spun to face the earl. Dungarth was in court dress, his pumps noiseless upon the rich Indian carpet. Dungarth crossed the room and stood beside Drinkwater, looking up at the painting.

  ‘Do you know why I detest the French, Nathaniel?’

  ‘No my lord?’ Drinkwater recollected Dungarth had conceived a passionate hatred for Jacobinism which was at variance with his former Whiggish sympathies with the American rebels.

  ‘My wife died in Florence. I was bringing her body back through France in the summer of ’92. At Lyons the mob learnt I was an aristocrat and broke open the coffin . . .’ he turned to a side table. ‘A glass of oporto?’

  Drinkwater took the wine and sat down at Dungarth’s invitation. ‘We sometimes do uncharacteristic things for those close to us, and the consequences can last a lifetime.’

  Drinkwater’s mouth was very dry and he longed to swallow the wine at a gulp but he could not trust his hand to convey the glass to his lips without slopping it. He sat rigid, his coat stiff as a board and the silence that followed Dungarth’s speech seemed interminable. Drinkwater was no longer on his own quarterdeck. After the heady excitement of battle and promotion the remorseless process of English law was about to engulf him. The colour was draining from his face and he was feeling light-headed. An image of Elizabeth swam before his eyes, together with that of Charlotte Amelia and the yet unseen baby, little Richard Madoc.

  ‘Do you remember Etienne Montholon, Nathaniel?’ Dungarth suddenly said in a conversational tone. ‘The apparently wastrel brother of that bitch Hortense Santhonax?’

  Drinkwater swallowed and recovered himself. ‘Yes, my lord.’ His voice was a croak and he managed to swallow some of the port, grateful for its uncoiling warmth in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Well, it seems that he became so short of funds that he threw in his lot with his sister and that fox of a husband of hers. The emergence of the consulate in France is attracting the notice of many of the younger émigrés who thirst for a share in la gloire of the new France.’ Dungarth’s expression was cynical. ‘The rising star of Napoleon Bonaparte will recruit support from men like Montholon who seek a paymaster, and couples like the Santhonaxes who seek a vehicle for their ambition.’

  ‘So Etienne Montholon returned to France, my lord?’

  ‘Not at all. He remained in this country, leading his old life of gambling and squabbling, like all the émigré population. He served Bonaparte by acting as a clearing agent for information of fleet movements, mainly at Yarmouth in connection with the blockade of the Texel, but latterly watching Parker’s squadron. The intransigence of the Danish Government was largely due to knowledge of Parker’s dilatory prevarications and delays . . .’ Dungarth rose and refilled their glasses. ‘Etienne Montholon is dead now, he called himself Le Marquis De La Roche-Jagu and was killed by a jealous lover when in bed with his mistress at Newmarket . . .’

  The point of his lordship’s narrative struck Drinkwater like a blow. He felt his body a prey to the disorder of his mind which presented him with a bewildering succession of images: of Edward shivering on the bank of the River Yare, of Jex confronting him with the truth, of Edward walking ashore without looking back, of Jex’s drunken death. Faintly he heard Dungarth say, ‘By an odd coincidence the man suspected of the double murder had the same surname as yourself . . .’

  Drinkwater turned to look the earl in the face. An ironic smile twisted Dungarth’s mouth. ‘ ’Tis curious, is it not,’ he said, ‘how a man may flinch in perfect safety who would not deign to quail under a hail of shot?’

  I, er, I . . .’

  ‘You need a little more wine, Nathaniel . . .’ The glasses were
again refilled and Dungarth resumed his tale.

  ‘The suspect’s cloak was found on the bank of the River Yare and it was supposed he drowned himself in a fit of remorse. Odd, though, that he should do his country such a service, eh?’ Dungarth smiled. ‘As for the girl, a certain Pascale Vrignaud, she suffered the fate of many whores. Odd little story, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Drinkwater swallowed the third glass of port at a gulp.

  ‘I thought it would interest you,’ added Dungarth smiling. ‘You need give no further thought to the matter. Now, as to this fellow you feel may be of interest to me, whoever he is, I sent him from Hamburg with letters to Prince Vorontzoff in St Petersburg. The prince is a former ambassador to the Court of St James and has agreed to find him employment. Not unlike yourself, Nathaniel, this fellow Waters seems to be a child of fortune. Has a gambler’s luck, wouldn’t you say?’

  Drinkwater returned Dungarth’s grin. He felt no remorse for the death of Etienne Montholon, regretting that the man’s rescue from the Jacobins had cost the lives of two British seamen. He wondered if Hortense would ever learn the name of her brother’s executioner. It was a strange, small world. He saw the wheels of fate turning within each other and recalled Lettsom’s observations on providence. As for Pascale, Edward would have her upon his own conscience. But Edward had a gambler’s amorality as well as a gambler’s luck. Drinkwater smiled at the aptness of Dungarth’s last remark. The earl rose and refilled their glasses for the fourth time.

  ‘I must thank you for your efforts . . . on my behalf, my lord,’ said Drinkwater carefully, not wishing to break the delicate ice of ambiguity around the subject.

  ‘It only remains,’ replied Dungarth smiling, ‘to see whether this man Waters is to be of any real use to us.’