Baltic Mission nd-7

by Ричард Вудмен

  Baltic Mission

  ( Nathaniel Drinkwater - 7 )

  Ричард Вудмен

  The seventh book in the Nathaniel Drinkwater series.

  Written in 1988, Baltic Mission is an installment in Woodman's Nathaniel Drinkwater series. This episode finds the British sailor on a secret assignment for the crown while Napoleon continues to acquire real estate. Drinkwater is soon at odds with his crew and hamstrung by his drunken first mate.

  BALTIC MISSION

  Richard Woodman

  For Regine and Neil

  PART ONE

  The Ship

  'I was born on a battlefield - what are the lives of a million men to me?'

  Napoleon. Emperor of the French

  Eylau

  8 February 1807

  The horses of the two squadrons of Cossacks were labouring as they breasted the low ridge dominating the shallow valley and the frozen river behind them. They were almost blown by the speed of their recent charge and the violence of their clash with the enemy along the line of the river. As the officer at their head caught sight of the red roofs of the village of Schloditten, he threw up his bloodstained sabre, stood in his stirrups and ordered the fur-swathed cavalry to wheel their shaggy mounts. They reined in, faced about and halted as their officers trotted back to their posts.

  'Well done, my children!' the Russian officer called with patriarchal familiarity, smiling and nodding his clean-shaven face to the swarthy and bearded troopers who grinned back at him. The Cossack horses tossed their heads in a jingle of harness, edging their tails round into the biting northerly wind. Breath erupted in clouds from their distending nostrils and the snowflakes that were again beginning to fall melted on contact with their steaming flanks. Lowering their lances across their saddle-bows, the Cossacks exchanged ribaldries and remarks, incongruously cross­ing themselves as they called the unanswered names of men they had left behind them in the valley. A few bound each other's wounds, or ran their filthy hands gently down the shuddering legs of horses galled by the enemy. Most remained in their saddles, reaching under their sheepskins for flasks of vodka, or for carcasses of chickens that hung in festoons from their belts. Reaching his post at their head, the clean-shaven officer abandoned the dialect of the Don.

  'Hey, my friend! Come!' he called in French to another officer. Sheathing his sabre he fumbled in a pistol holster for a flask which he beckoned the other to share.

  'What does the esteemed representative of the staff think of today's work?' He held out the flask, his blue eyes intently observing him. 'We made short work of those French bastards, didn't we, eh?'

  The staff-officer grinned, but his eyes kept returning to the valley below them, into which they had charged twenty minutes earlier.

  'They were Lasalle's bastards, you know, Count. The best light cavalry in the Grand Army'

  'And we beat them, by Almighty God.' The count crossed himself piously and his companion raised a sardonic eyebrow at the practice.

  'We haven't finished the business yet,' he said, pointing to the southward, where the little town of Preussisch-Eylau lay engulfed in smoke. Only its church belfry showed above the pall as, house by house, it crumbled beneath the storm of shot from two massive Russian batteries close to its eastern outskirts. Beyond the town and spreading out over the gently rolling snow-covered countryside of East Prussia, the dark masses of the Grand Army of France and her allies attempted to roll up the Russian left wing.

  Four miles away to the north, just beyond the frozen river at the other extreme of the contending armies and immediately in front of the Cossacks, Lasalle's repulsed hussars were re-forming. Between them the bloody corpses of two dozen men were already stiffening like the trampled and frozen reeds of the river margin. To the south of the French cavalry, the dark swirl of Marshal Soult's Fourth Army Corps had been thrown back from their own assault upon the Russians. The Cossack commander slapped his thigh and laughed with satisfaction.

  'Ha! You see, my friend, they are beaten! And was it not us, the squadrons of Count Piotr Petrovich Kalitkin, that took the very orders of the great Napoleon himself from the hands of his courier? Eh? Well, wasn't it?'

  'Indeed, your Excellency,' said his companion with exaggerated courtesy, I think we may take a measure of credit for today' He returned the vodka flask amid an outburst of indignation.

  'Measure of credit! Measure of credit!' spluttered Kalitkin. 'As a result of us, Marshal Bernadotte never received his orders, and ...' he waved his gloved hand over the battlefield, 'is not here to support his Emperor.'

  The staff-officer nodded, his expression of amused irony altering to one of concern. It was quite true that Napoleon's courier had fallen into the Cossacks' hands at Lautenberg, but the staff-officer had a wider appreciation of events than Count Kalitkin.

  'You are quite right, Count, but Ney is not here either, and that worries me.'

  'Bah! You know too much and it makes you worry too much.'

  'That,' said the staff-officer, leveling a small telescope to the north where snow was falling thickly from a leaden sky, 'is my business, Count, and the reason for my attachment to your brilliant command.'

  'Ah, you and your damned reports. I know you are a spy; though whether you spy for Bennigsen on me, or for St Petersburg on Bennigsen, I have not yet determined.'

  The staff-officer lowered his telescope and grinned at the Count. 'You are too suspicious, Count, and too good a light-cavalryman to need a nursemaid.'

  'Bah!' repeated Kalitkin good naturedly, apparently unconcerned at the purpose of the staff-officer's attachment to his squadrons. 'You are an impudent rascal and I should have you whipped, but you would report me and I should be reduced to a troop again, damn you.'

  'If I were you, my dear Count,' said the staff-officer, staring again through his glass, I should forget about whipping me and send a patrol to find out who is approaching from the northward; if it's Ney we shall be outflanked.' He passed the glass to Kalitkin whose manner was immediately transformed.

  'I'll go myself.' He turned in his saddle. 'Hey! Khudoznik, stop doing that and mount up with your men!' A score of Cossacks fastened their saddle-bags and slung their lances, detaching themselves from the main body and forming a loose column. Kalitkin turned to the staff-officer. I shall leave the fate of Holy Russia in your hands and save Bennigsen's reputation again.' Kalitkin threw the vodka flask to his friend and kicked his horse to a trot. In a few moments he was no more than a blur in the swirling snow.

  The staff-officer edged his horse forward to catch a glimpse of the battlefield before more snow flurries obscured it. To his left a battery of 60 cannon kept up a ruthless fire into the re-forming battalions of Soult. Beyond, the orange flashes of a further 120 guns pounded Eylau; but in the far distance heavy columns of French infantry could be seen advancing to attack. For a while the snow curtained everything, even deadening the concussion of the guns, but when it cleared again the French attack seemed to have failed.

  Nearer at hand a greater drama was unfolding. About a mile away from the ridge a huge column of Russian infantry, grey-coated and with feet muffled in sacking, hurled themselves forward against the houses of Eylau. Six thousand peasant soldiers followed their officers with the obedience of small children and fought their way into the town like furies. Unseen by the distant Cossacks, Napoleon was driven from his post in the church belfry and only escaped by the self-sacrifice of his bodyguard. But the Cossacks observed his angry response to this insolent bravery; they shook up their horses' heads and grasped their lances, in case they were called upon to react to the great counterattack that burst out of the French position.

  The snow cleared completely, torn aside by the biting wind as swiftly as it ha
d come, and this lull was accompanied by a sudden brightening of the sky as Napoleon's brother-in-law, Marshal Murat, led forward more than ten thousand horsemen to burst through the Russian line. Wheeling in its rear and repeatedly breaking the centre, they sabred the indomitable gunners and cut up the devoted Russian infantry that had so recently threatened their Emperor. Behind Murat's cuirassiers and dragoons, Marshal Bessieres followed with the Horse Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, big men on huge black horses who trampled the remains of Bennigsen's frontal assault beneath their hooves. But the tide of cavalry had reached its limit. It was unsupported and ebbed inexorably back towards Eylau. The guns of the Russian centre were re-manned and began to pour shot into the enemy as they retreated. Then another curtain of snow closed over the mass of dying and mutilated men, so that their cries and groans were unheard.

  The staff-officer finished the flask of vodka and tucked it into the breast of his coat. He nodded companionably to a subaltern who rode up from the Cossack flank.

  'Well, young Repin, this is a bloody business, but a sweet revenge for Austerlitz, eh?'

  'Indeed, sir, it is.'

  'Count Kalitkin should rejoin us soon... ah, here he comes, if I'm not mistaken ...' Kalitkin rode up and reined in, his eyes gleaming with triumph, his horse steaming.

  'Well, my friend, I have done it again! I have found your Ney for you. Voila!' Kalitkin pointed behind him where some of Lasalle's hussars were moving out to form a screen behind which the head of a marching column could just be made out through the snow. 'And also I have found our valiant ally, or, at least, what remains of him...'

  'General Lestocq's Prussians?' asked the staff-officer sharply.

  'Exactly, my dear wiseacre. Lestocq and his Prussians, and we must move to the right and cover their march across our rear.' Kalitkin suddenly drew his sabre with a rasp and pointed it across the shallow valley. 'There! See, those French pigs are ahead of us! They will try and harry the Prussian flank ...'

  I told you they were the best light cavalry in the Grand Army.'

  'You go and tell Bennigsen that the squadrons of Piotr Kalitkin have saved Mother Russia again ... and if he gives me a division I will win the whole damned war ...' He stood in his stirrups and bawled an order. This time the whole mass of the Cossacks moved forward and the staff-officer wheeled his horse aside to let them pass. For a moment he remained alone on the ridge to watch. The trot changed to a canter and then to a gallop; the lance points were lowered, the pennons flickering like fire as the dark wave of horsemen swept over the frozen marshes bordering the river, and crashed into the ranks of the French hussars. The enemy swung to meet them, their breath steaming below their fierce moustaches and their hair braided into dreadlocks beneath their rakish shakos. The staff-officer pulled his horse round and spurred it towards the headquarters of the Russian army at Anklappen.

  Night fell early, the short winter afternoon expiring under heavy clouds and the smoke of battle. The French attack failed, largely due to the timely arrival of General Lestocq's Prussians and the late appearance of Ney: Napoleon had received the worst drubbing of his career, but Lasalle's hussars had had their revenge, and Kalitkin's Cossacks had been pushed back beyond the village of Schloditten, to bivouac and lick their wounds. It was past midnight when Kalitkin had posted his vedettes, rolled himself in his cloak and lain down in the snow. A few moments later he was roused as one of his men brought in a strange officer, wearing an unfamiliar uniform and raging furiously in a barbarous French at the Cossack trooper whose sabre point gleamed just below the prisoner's chin.

  Kalitkin sprang to his feet. 'Mother of God! What have you there, Khudoznik? A Frenchman?' Kalitkin addressed the prisoner in French: 'Are you a French officer?'

  'God damn it, no, sir!' the man exclaimed. 'Tell this ruffian to let me go! I am Colonel Wilson, a British Commissioner attached to General Bennigsen's headquarters. I was reconnoitering when this stinking louse picked me up. Who the devil are you?'

  Kalitkin ordered the Cossack Khudoznik to return to his post and introduced himself. 'I am Count Piotr Kalitkin commanding two squadrons of the Hetman's Don Cossacks. So, you are a spy of the British are you?' Kalitkin grinned and made room round the fire.

  'You Russians are a damnably suspicious lot,' said the mollified Wilson, rubbing his hands and extending them to the warmth of the fire.

  'But you have come to see we don't waste your precious English gold, eh?'

  'To liaise with the headquarters of the army, Count, not to spy.'

  'It is the same thing. Where are your English soldiers, Colonel, eh? Your gold is useful but it would have been better if some English soldiers could have helped us today, would it not? There would be fewer widows in Russia tomorrow.'

  'My dear Count,' replied Wilson with a note of tired exasperation creeping into his voice. 'I am plagued night and day with pleas for which I can offer no satisfaction until the ice in the Baltic thaws and His Majesty's ships can enter that sea. Until then we shall have to rely upon Russian valour.'

  'So, Colonel,' said Kalitkin, still grinning in the firelight, 'you are a courtier and a spy. I congratulate you!'

  'I hope,' said Wilson with a heavy sarcasm, 'that I am merely a diplomat.'

  A stir on the outskirts of the fire lit circle among the half-sleeping, half-freezing men caused both Kalitkin and the Englishman to turn.

  'And,' exclaimed Kalitkin triumphantly, 'here is another spy. Welcome back, my friend. I expected you to spend the night in a whore's bed at headquarters. Are there no women with General Bennigsen?'

  'Only pretty boys dressed as aides,' said the staff-officer emerging from the night, 'in accordance with the German fashion. Besides, I came back to bring you... this!' The staff-officer produced a bottle from the breast of his cloak with a magician's flourish.

  'Ah! Vodka! Next to a woman, the best consolation.' 'One can share it with more facility, certainly ... I see you have company.'

  As Kalitkin laughed, snatching the bottle and wrenching the cork from its neck, the staff-officer's expression of cynical levity vanished at the sight of the British uniform.

  'Yes, my friend,' explained Kalitkin after wiping his mouth, 'a spy like you. He is an English officer; a commissioner no less.'

  In the firelight the staff-officer's mouth set rigid, his eyes suddenly watchful. 'I am Colonel Wilson,' said the Englishman again, waving aside the vodka that Kalitkin companionably offered him after liberally helping himself, 'His Britannic Majesty's representative at the headquarters of His Imperial Majesty's army.'

  'Colonel Wilson...' the staff-officer muttered under his breath, his eyes probing the face of the English officer.

  'Count Kalitkin has introduced himself,' said Wilson, referring obliquely to Kalitkin's failure to introduce the staff-officer. 'Whom have I the honour of addressing?'

  The staff-officer hesitated, looked down and with a muddy boot kicked back a piece of wood that had been ejected from the heart of the fire by a small explosion of resin deep in its core.

  'Tell him, my friend,' said Kalitkin, swigging again at the vodka. 'Tell him who you are.'

  The staff-officer's obvious reticence combined with the scrutiny to which he had been subject to awaken suspicions in Wilson's mind. Kalitkin's flippant allusions to espionage had been initially attributed to the subconscious reaction to excessive centralisation that Wilson had encountered in his dealings with the Russians. Watching the staff-officer's face he was aware of a quickening interest in this man.

  'Come, sir,' he prompted, 'you have the advantage of me.'

  'I am Captain Ostroff, Colonel Wilson, aide-de-camp to Prince Vorontzoff and presently attached to Count Kalitkin's squadrons of the Hetman's Don Cossacks.'

  But Wilson paid little attention to the details of the staff-officer's status. What interested him far more was the way in which this Ostroff had pronounced Wilson's own name. For the first time since his secondment to the Russian army Wilson had heard his surname without the heavy, misplac
ed accent upon its second syllable. In a flash of intuition he realised he was talking to a fellow Englishman.

  'Your servant, Captain Ostroff,' he said, bowing a little from the waist and holding the other's eyes in a steady gaze. But Ostroff's expression did not alter, not even when a sharp crack at their feet ejected another sliver of wood from the bivouac fire.

  'How interesting,' went on Wilson with the smooth urbanity of the perfect diplomat, 'I have not had much opportunity to study the Russian tongue of your muzhiks, but if I am not mistaken, your name is the Russian word for ...'

  'Island,' snapped Ostroff suddenly and it was not the abruptness of the interruption that surprised Wilson but the fact that where he had been about to employ the French noun, Ostroff had chosen to head him off with a sideways glance at Kalitkin and the use of a definition in plain English.

  As the two men strolled with an affected nonchalance away from the recumbent Kalitkin and his bivouac, the Count lounged back on his sheepskin. 'Spies,' he muttered to himself, 'spies, the pair of them ...' and he stared up at the stars shining through the rents in the clouds, aware that their motion had become suddenly irregular.

  1

  The Kattegat

  March 1807

  His Britannic Majesty's 36-gun, 18-pounder frigate Antigone, commanded by Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, lay at anchor off the Swedish fortress of Varberg wrapped in a dense and clammy fog. Her decks were dark with the moisture of it; damp had condensed on the dull black barrels of her cannon, giving them an unnatural sheen, and her rigging was festooned with millions upon millions of tiny droplets like the autumn dew upon spiders' webs. Wraiths of fog streamed slowly across her deck, robbing the scarlet coats of her marine sentries of their brilliance and dulling all sounds.