The moment he was gone Hornblower turned to Brown.
‘Take the barge back to the ship,’ he ordered. ‘Hurry. My compliments to Captain Bush, and I would like you to bring back Lieutenant von Bulow to me. One of the lieutenants of equal rank will have to accompany him. Hurry!’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
That was all that was necessary with Brown or Bush, thank God. A simple order brought simple yet intelligent obedience. Hornblower saluted Essen.
‘Would it be possible, Your Excellency,’ he asked, ‘to bring the Spanish troops over to this side of the river? I have a German prisoner whom I am going to return to the enemy, and I should like him to see the Spaniards with his own eyes first.’
Essen grinned with blubber lips.
‘I do my best not merely to comply with every one of your wishes, sir, but even to anticipate them. The last order I gave on the other side of the river was for the Spaniards to be brought over – they were the nearest formed troops and I intended to use them as garrison for the warehouses on the quay. I have no doubt they are there already. You would like them marched in this direction?’
‘If you would be so kind, sir.’
Hornblower was casually waiting for nothing in particular at the jetty when the boat touched at it, and Lieutenant von Bulow, of the Fifty-first Regiment of Prussian Infantry, stepped ashore under the escort of Mr Tooth and Brown and his men.
‘Ah, Lieutenant,’ said Hornblower.
Bulow saluted him stiffly, clearly puzzled at this new development, which had snatched him from his confinement aboard ship and dumped him at a moment’s notice in the ruined village.
‘There is an armistice at the moment,’ explained Hornblower, ‘between your army and ours. No, it is not peace – merely to clear the wounded from the breach. But I was going to take this opportunity of returning you to your friends.’
Bulow looked questions at him.
‘It will save much formality with cartels and flags of truce’ explained Hornblower. ‘At this moment you have merely to walk down the breach and join the men of your army. Naturally, you have not been properly exchanged, but you can, if you wish, give me your word that you will not serve against His Britannic Majesty nor against His Imperial Russian Majesty until an exchange has been effected.’
‘I give you my word,’ said Bulow, after a moment’s thought.
‘Excellent! Then perhaps I might give myself the pleasure of walking with you as far as the breach?’
As they left the jetty and began the brief walk through the ruins of the village Bulow was darting the quick glances of a professional soldier about him; he was perfectly entitled, under any military code, to take every advantage of carelessness on his enemy’s part. His professional curiosity would have led him to stare about him in any case. Hornblower made polite conversation as they strolled.
‘Your assault this morning – I daresay you heard the hubbub even on board? – was made by picked grenadiers, as far as I could judge by the uniforms. Most excellent troops – it is indeed a pity they suffered such loss of life. I trust that when you rejoin your friends you will convey to them my deepest condolences. But they had not a chance, of course.’
At the foot of the church tower there was a Spanish regiment, the men lying down in their ranks. At the sight of Hornblower the colonel called his men to their feet and saluted. Hornblower returned the salute, conscious as he did so that Bulow at his side had suddenly changed his gait; stealing a glance out of the tail of his eye he saw that Bulow was ponderously goose-stepping as long as the salutes were being exchanged. Yet it was very noticeable that even though Bulow’s formal training forced him into a goose-step at a moment of military courtesy, he had not failed to notice the troops. His eyes were bulging with unasked questions.
‘Spanish troops,’ said Hornblower, casually. ‘A division of Spaniards and Portuguese joined us from Bonaparte’s main army a little while ago. They fight well – in fact they were responsible for the final repulse of the last assault. It is interesting to notice how Bonaparte’s dupes are falling away from him now that the hollowness of his power is revealed.’
Billow’s astonished reply must either have been inarticulate or in German, for Hornblower could not understand it, but his tone conveyed his meaning well enough.
‘It goes without saying,’ said Hornblower casually, ‘that I would like to see the magnificent Prussian Army ranged among Bonaparte’s enemies and England’s allies, too. But naturally your King knows his own policy best – unless, of course, surrounded as he is by Bonaparte’s men, he is not free to choose.’
Bulow stared at him in amazement; Hornblower was putting forward a viewpoint which was quite new to him, but Hornblower still made himself talk with the utmost casualness, as if he were doing no more than making polite conversation.
‘That’s high politics,’ he said with a laugh and a wave of his hand. ‘But one day in the future we might look back on this conversation as prophetic. One cannot tell, can one? Some time when we meet as plenipotentiaries I will be able to remind you of this talk. And here we are at the breach. It irks me to have to say goodbye, at the same moment as it gives me pleasure to restore you to your friends. My heartiest good wishes, sir, for you for the future.’
Bulow saluted stiffly again, and then, as Hornblower held out his hand, shook hands with him. To the Prussian it was a remarkable occurrence, for a Commodore to condescend to shake hands with a mere subaltern. He picked his way down the breach, over the tortured earth where the stretcher-bearers still swarmed, like disturbed ants, gathering in the wounded. Hornblower watched him until he reached his own men, and then turned away. He was dreadfully tired, quite weak with fatigue, in fact, and he was angry at himself for his weakness. It was all he could do to walk back with dignity to the jetty, and he swayed as he sat in the sternsheets of his barge.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ asked Brown, solicitously.
‘Of course I am,’ snapped Hornblower, amazed at the man’s impertinence.
The question irritated him, and the irritation made him mount the ship’s side as fast as he could, and acknowledge merely coldly the salutes he received on the quarterdeck; down in his cabin his irritation persisted, and prevented him from obeying his first impulses to throw himself across his cot and relax. He paced about for a moment. For something to do he peered into the mirror. There was some excuse for Brown after all, and his foolish questions. The face he looked at was grimy with dust caked upon sweat, and there was a smear of blood over one cheekbone from a slight scratch. His uniform was filthy, with one epaulette awry. He looked like someone who had just emerged from the fury of a battle to the death.
He peered more closely. That face was lined and drawn, the eyes red-rimmed; with a sudden increase of attention he looked again, turning his head. On his temples his hair was quite white. Not merely did he look like someone fresh from battle; he looked like someone who had been under frightful strain for a long time. So he had, indeed, he realised, half wondering at himself. He had been bearing the burden of this horrible siege for months now. It had never occurred to him that his face, Hornblower’s face, would tell tales about him as other men’s faces told tales about them. He had striven all his life to restrain his features from revealing his feelings. There was something ironic and interesting about the fact that he could not prevent his hair from greying nor the grim lines from deepening about his mouth.
The desk under his feet was swaying, as if the ship were in the open sea, and yet even his veteran sea-legs had difficulty in keeping him upright, so that he had to hold on to the bracket before him. Only with extreme care could he let go his hold and pick his way to his cot, and fall across it, face downward.
XXIII
The new problem which Hornblower was debating as he walked his quarterdeck, while H.M.S. Nonsuch swung at anchor in Riga Bay, was one which he had long foreseen, but which lost none of its urgency for all that. Here was winter coming; there had been heavy frosts at night
for as far back as he could remember, and the last two days had brought flurries of snow, which had temporarily whitened the landscape and had left a few drifts which even now showed as white streaks on the northern faces of the dykes. The days were growing short and the nights long, and the brackish water of Riga Bay was covered with a thin scum of ice. If he stayed much longer his ships would be frozen in. Essen had assured him that for at least two more weeks he would be able to make his exit along a channel sawn in the ice by labourers whom Essen would supply, but Hornblower was not so sure. A northerly gale – and one might arise at any moment – could keep him windbound while at the same time it would freeze everything up and jam the narrow exit to the Bay, between Oesel and the mainland, with piled-up drift ice that neither saws nor even explosives could pierce. A squadron frozen in was a squadron immobilised until next spring; and a squadron frozen in was one which was a certain prey to the French if Riga should fall. Twenty years ago a Dutch squadron at Amsterdam had been captured by French hussars charging over the ice. What a thundering bulletin of triumph Bonaparte would make of it if a British squadron, under the notorious Commodore Hornblower, should fall into his hands in the same way! Hornblower turned in his stride a yard before he had reached the limit of his walk. Prudence dictated an immediate withdrawal.
The breeching of that carronade were frayed. When Bush noticed it someone was in for a bad quarter of an hour. And yet he could not withdraw. When he had mentioned the possibility Essen had shown positive dismay. If his men were to see the British ships go away they would be quite sure the place was doomed. They would lose heart completely. The British naval officer who had led the final charge at Daugavgriva had grown into a legendary figure in their minds, a mascot, a symbol of good luck. If he were to leave them that would be a proof, in the men’s minds, that he had lost hope. He could not possibly withdraw. He might compromise; he might send most of the squadron out and retain only a sloop and a gunboat; he might send everything out and remain himself, but to separate himself from his command was in direct violation of the Articles of War.
Here was a fool of a midshipman in his way dodging about in front of him as though bent on distracting him from his train of thought. It would be the masthead for him; God knew the commission had lasted long enough for every single person on board to have learned that the Commodore must not be distracted when he was walking the deck.
‘What the hell—?’ he bellowed at the blanching midshipman.
‘B-b-boat approaching, sir,’ stammered the youth. ‘M-Mr Hurst told me to tell you. He thinks the Governor’s on board.’
‘Why wasn’t I told before?’ said Hornblower. ‘Have you sent for Captain Bush, Mr Hurst? Call the guard!’
‘Aye aye, sir!’ said Hurst, and Hornblower saw Bush appear on the quarterdeck as the words left Hurst’s lips, and the marine guard was already forming up abaft the mizzen-mast.
Of course Hurst had done all these things without waiting for orders; roused abruptly from his reverie Hornblower had not had the sense to realise it. He strode to the side. The Governor was approaching in a big pulling-boat, which was steering towards them along the clear channel through the thin ice which the last eddies of the Dwina river still kept clear before they lost themselves in the Bay. As the Governor caught sight of him he sprang up into the sternsheets waving his cocked hat, he even tried to dance, precariously, both arms extended over his head, at imminent risk of falling overboard.
‘Something’s up, sir,’ said Bush at Hornblower’s side.
‘That looks like good news,’ said Hornblower.
The Governor arrived on the quarterdeck, hat still in hand. He flung his arms round Hornblower and hugged him, swinging his lean body up into the air so that his feet left the deck. Hornblower could imagine the grins that were being exchanged around him as he kicked in the air like a baby. The Governor put him down, clapped his hat on his head, and then seized first Hornblower’s hand and then Bush’s, and tried to dance a sort of ring-a-ring-of-roses with the two Englishmen. There was no more controlling him than one could control a bear.
‘What is the news, Your Excellency?’ asked Hornblower; Essen’s grip on his hand was painful.
‘Oh,’ said Essen, flinging the Englishman’s hands away so as to spread his arms again. ‘Bonaparte has started to retreat.’
‘Has he, by God!’ said Hornblower.
‘What does he say, sir?’ asked Bush, quite incapable of understanding Essen’s French, but Hornblower had no time for Bush, because the Governor was pouring out his news in a torrent of gutturals, drawing upon the vocabularies of half Europe for his words so that even Hornblower could hardly understand what he was saying.
‘He left Moscow five days back,’ roared Essen. ‘We beat him at Malo-Jaroslavetz. Beat him in a pitched battle, and now he’s running as hard as he can for Smolensk and Warsaw. And he won’t get there before the snows! He’ll be lucky if he gets there at all! Chichagov is marching hard to cut off his retreat at the Beresina. He’s ruined. They’re dying in thousands every night already! Nothing to eat, and winter’s here!’
Essen stamped grotesquely about the deck, more like a dancing bear than ever.
‘Please, sir, please. What does he say?’ asked Bush pathetically.
Hornblower translated to the best of his ability, the other quarterdeck officers eavesdropping shamelessly. As the wonderful nature of the good news dawned upon them they began to cheer; down on the maindeck they caught the infection, and all through the ship men were cheering and tossing their hats in the air, even though they hardly knew what they were cheering about, save for the hurried words that flew from lip to lip – ‘Boney’s beaten!’
‘We can get out of this bay before the ice comes, by God!’ said Bush, snapping his fingers; it was obvious that if he had not a wooden leg he would be dancing too.
Hornblower looked across at the mainland.
‘Macdonald’s shown no sign of retreating yet,’ he said. ‘If he had the Governor would have mentioned it.’
‘But don’t you think he’ll have to, sir?’ Bush’s expressive face showed anxiety now instead of joy. A moment before anything delightful had been possible – escape from Riga Bay, possibly even escape from this landlocked Baltic altogether, maybe even a return to England, but now Bush was back again to the cold reality that the siege of Riga was still going on.
‘He may have to retreat,’ said Hornblower, ‘but until then we stay here, unless I receive orders to the contrary.’
Essen caught sight of their sober faces and turned on them again. He slapped Bush on the back so that he staggered with the force of the blow; he snapped his fingers under Hornblower’s nose, and pirouetted with the grace of a performing seal. It was absurd that with all this going on, with Bush asking questions regarding the future, with Essen acting like a lunatic, and with the whole ship forgetting discipline in a mad outburst of cheering, Hornblower’s brain should be planning and thinking still, with that swift clarity and that fevered rapidity which he knew by now portended some new development. Bonaparte in retreat, Bonaparte beaten, meant a tremendous revulsion of feeling throughout Europe. All the world knew that Wellington was threatening France from the south; and now the Empire was in peril from the east. It would hardly be possible for Bonaparte’s shattered army to hold on to Poland once it had begun its retreat; the next campaign would see the allies on the frontiers of Prussia and Austria, and it was likely that both Prussia and Austria would in that case be glad to change sides. The King of Prussia was practically a prisoner in French hands, but the Prussian army – the greater part of the force now besieging Riga – could act as a free agent if it wished. The desertion of the Spaniards had shown them the way, and the pamphlets which he had had printed in Riga and distributed among the besiegers by Russian pedlars would not let them forget the lesson. Bulow would be able to bear witness to the truth of his assertions – Hornblower was glad he had set him free.
‘I am sending Diebitch out to beat up the be
siegers’ lines with a sally,’ Essen was saying. ‘I must see how they take this news. Would you care to accompany me, sir?’
‘Of course,’ said Hornblower, coming out abruptly from his dreaming. What with fatigue – he was always weary now – and rapid thinking and excitement he was still a little ‘mazy’, as they said of fuddled men in the village when he was a boy. He announced his departure to Bush.
‘You’re worn out, sir,’ protested Bush. ‘You’re no more than a shadow. Send someone else, sir. Send me. Send Duncan. You’ve done all that’s necessary, sir.’
‘I haven’t yet,’ said Hornblower, but he stooped so far as to risk delay by offering Essen refreshment, with the suggestion that they should drink a toast to celebrate this glorious news.
‘Thank you, no,’ said Essen, to Hornblower’s relief. ‘Diebitch will attack at dusk, and the days are short now.’
‘You’ll take your barge, sir, won’t you?’ persisted Bush.’ Take Brown.’
Bush was like a fussy parent with a venturesome child – like a hen with one chick. He was always nervous about entrusting his precious Hornblower to these unpredictable Russians; Hornblower grinned at Bush’s solicitude.
‘Anything to keep you happy,’ he said.
Hornblower’s barge followed the Governor’s pulling-boat along the channel through the ice; Hornblower sat with the Governor in the stern of the Russian boat. There was a chill wind blowing, and the skies were grey.
‘We shall have more snow,’ said Essen, looking up at the clouds. ‘God help the French.’
In the absence of any sunshine there was a mortal chill in the air. Hornblower thought of the French marching over the desolate plains of Russia, and was sorry for them. And the snow came indeed, that afternoon, sweeping over river and village, making white innocuous mounds of the battered parapets and the shattered guns and the graves which were scattered through the village. It was already prematurely dark when the ever-patient Russian grenadiers lined the trenches and then sallied forth upon the enemy’s lines. They were not more than half-way across no-man’s-land before the guns began to fire upon them, stabbing the falling snow with their bright orange flashes.
Admiral Hornblower Page 50