A King's Cutter nd-2

by Richard Woodman

  Villaret Joyeuse escaped from Brest at Christmas dogged by Warren and his frigates. In Portsmouth Kestrel lay in Haslar Creek alongside the Citoyenne Janine while they awaited the adjudication of the prize court. No decision was expected until the New Year and as the officers of the dockyard seemed little inclined to refit the cutter until then, Kestrel's people were removed into the receiving guardship, the Royal William. Drinkwater took leave and spent Christmas with Elizabeth. They were visited by Madoc Griffiths. The old man's obvious discomfiture ashore was as amusing as it was sad, but by the evening he was quite at ease with Elizabeth.

  At the end of the first week in January the prize court decided the two transports be sold off, the corvette purchased into the service and the lugger also brought into the navy. Griffiths was triumphant.

  'Trumped their ace, by damn, Mr Drinkwater. Hoist 'em with their own petards…' He read the judgement from a Portsmouth newspaper then grinned across the table, over the remnants of a plum duff, tapping the wine-stained newsprint.

  'I'm sorry, sir, I don't see how…'

  'How I hoist 'em? Well the frigate captains had an agreement to pool all prize money so that they shared an equal benefit from any one individual on detached duty. I, being a mere lieutenant, and Kestrel being a mere cutter, was neither consulted nor included. As a consequence, apart from the commodore's share, we will have exclusive rights to the condemned value of the Citoyenne Janine. You should do quite handsomely, indeed you should.'

  'Hence the insistence I took the prize over…?'

  'Exactly so.' Griffiths looked at his subordinate. He found little of his own satisfaction mirrored there, riled that this rather isolated moment of triumph should be blemished. In his annoyance he ascribed Drinkwater's lack of enthusiasm to base motives.

  'By damn, Mr Drinkwater, surely you're not suggesting that as I was sick you should receive the lion's share?' Griffiths's tone was angry and his face flushed. Drinkwater, preoccupied, was suddenly aware that he had unintentionally offended.

  'What's that, sir? Good God, no! Upon my honour sir…' Drinkwater came out of his reverie. 'No sir, I was wondering what became of those papers and charts I brought off her.'

  Griffiths frowned. 'I had them despatched to Lord Dungarth. Under the circumstances I ignored Warren. Why d'ye ask?'

  Drinkwater sighed. 'Well, sir, at first it was only a suspicion. The evidence is very circumstantial…' he faltered, confused.

  'Come on, bach, if there's something troubling you, you had better unburden yourself.'

  'Well among the papers was a private letter. I didn't pass it to you, I know I should have done, sir, and I don't know why I didn't but there was something about it that made me suspicious…'

  'In what way?' asked Griffiths in a quietly insistent voice.

  'I found it with a lock of hair, sir, auburn hair, I, er…' He began to feel foolish, suddenly the whole thing seemed ridiculously far fetched. 'Damn it, sir, I happen to think that the man who used the lugger, the man we're convinced is some kind of a French agent, is also connected with the red-haired woman we took off at Beaubigny'

  'That Hortense Montholon is in some kind of league with this Santhonax?'

  Drinkwater nodded.

  'And the letter?'

  Drinkwater coughed embarrassed. 'I have the letter here, sir. I took it home, my wife translated it. It was very much against her will, sir, but I insisted.'

  'And did it tell you anything, this letter?'

  'Only that the writer and this Santhonax are lovers.' Drinkwater swallowed as Griffiths raised an interrogative eyebrow. 'And that the letter had been written to inform the recipient that a certain mutual obstacle had died in London. The writer seemed anxious that the full implications of this were conveyed in the letter and that it, in some way, made a deal of difference…'

  'Who is the writer?' Griffiths asked quietly.

  Drinkwater scratched his scar. 'Just an initial, sir, "H.",' he concluded lamely.

  'Did you say are lovers?'

  Drinkwater frowned. 'Yes sir. The letter was dated quite recently, though not addressed.'

  'So that if you are right and they were from this woman who is now resident in England she and Santhonax are maintaining a correspondence at the very least?'

  'The letters suggested a closer relationship, sir.'

  Griffiths suppressed a smile. Having met Elizabeth he could imagine her explaining the contents of the letter in such terms. 'I see,' he said thoughtfully. After a pause he asked, 'What makes you so sure that this Miss "H" is the young woman we took off at Beaubigny and what is the significance of this "mutual obstacle"?'

  It was the question Drinkwater had been dreading but he was too far in now to retreat and he took encouragement from Griffiths's interest. 'I'm not sure, sir. It is a feeling I have had for some time… I mean, well as you know my French is poor, sir, limited to a few stock phrases, but at the back of my mind is the impression that she didn't want to come with us that night… that she was there on sufference. I remember her standing up in the boat as we came off the beach and the French opened fire. She shouted something, something like "don't shoot, I'm your friend, I'm your friend!"' He tried to recall the events of the night. 'It ain't much to go on, sir, we were all very tired after Beaubigny.' He paused, searching Griffiths's face for some sign of contemptuous disbelief. The old man seemed sunk in reflection. 'As for the "obstacle",' Drinkwater plunged on, 'I just had this conviction that it was De Tocqueville…' He cleared his throat and in a firmer voice said, 'To be honest, sir, it's all very circumstantial and I apologise about the letter.' Drinkwater found his palms were damp but he felt the relief of the confessional.

  Griffiths held his hand up. 'Don't apologise, bach, there may be something in what you say. When we mentioned the Montholons and Beaubigny to Major Brown something significant occurred to him. I don't know what it was but I am aware that this Captain Santhonax is not only an audacious officer but is highly placed enough to exert influence on French politics.' He paused. 'And I have often wondered why no action was ever taken after our broadside at Beaubigny. One can only assume that the matter was hushed up.' Griffiths lifted an eyebrow. 'Yet the French were damned touchy with Barlow and Childers a few weeks later…'

  'That thought had occurred to me, sir.'

  'Then we are of one mind, Mr Drinkwater,' said Griffiths closing the subject with a smile. Drinkwater relaxed, remembering Dungarth's words all those months ago. He began to see why Griffiths was regarded as a remarkable man. He doubted he could have told anyone else but the Welshman. The old lieutenant sat for a moment in silence, staring at the wine rings on the table cloth. Then he looked up. 'Do you return the letter to me, Mr Drinkwater. I'll inform his lordship of this. It may bear investigation.'

  Relieved, Drinkwater rose and went to his cabin, returning to pass the letter to Griffiths.

  'Thank you,' said the lieutenant, looking curiously at the thin plait of auburn hair. 'Well, Mr Drinkwater, out of your prize money I think you should purchase a new coat, your starboard shoulder tingle is well enough for sea service but won't do otherwise,' Griffiths indicated the repair he had effected to his coat. Elizabeth had already chid him for it. 'Take yourself to Morgan's, opposite the Fountain at number 85. You'll get yourself anything there, even another Dollond glass to replace that precious bauble you lost off Ushant…' They both laughed and Griffiths shouted at the mess-man, Merrick, to come and clear the table.

  Lieutenant Griffiths's expectations of stratagems from Sir Sydney's fertile brain were to have a drastic effect upon the fortunes of Kestrel though not in the manner the old man had had in mind. Sir Sydney had conceived the idea that a French-built lugger attached to the squadron would prove a great asset in deceiving the enemy, plundering coastal trade and gathering intelligence. Her commander would be his own nomination in the person of Lieutenant Richard White, and Kestrel, with her unmistakably English rig, would be free for other duties.

  Auguste Barrallier, now emplo
yed in the Royal Dockyard, arrived to authenticate the lugger's repairs and was affable to Drinkwater, watching progress from the adjacent cutter. Nathaniel did his best to disguise his pique when White arrived from Falmouth with a crew of volunteers from Warren's frigates. White, to his credit, made no attempts to lord over his old friend. He brought letters from Appleby and an air of breezy confidence that only a frigate cruising under an enterprising officer could engender. Appleby, it appeared, did not see eye to eye with this captain and White dismissed the surgeon with something like contempt. But Drinkwater was pleased when the lugger dropped out of sight behind Fort Blockhouse.

  Her replacement as Warren's despatch vessel left Kestrel languishing between the greenheart piles in Haslar Creek through the still, chill grey days of January when news came of war with the Dutch. February passed and then, almost immediately it seemed, the windy equinoctials of March were over. A start had been made on removing the scars of her late action. But it was half-hearted, desultory work, badly done and Griffiths despaired, falling sick and passing to the naval hospital. Jessup took to the bottle and even Drinkwater felt listless and dispirited, sympathising with the bosun and affecting to ignore his frequent lapses.

  Drinkwater's lassitude was due in part to a spiritual exhaustion after the action off the Île Vierge which combined with a helplessness consequent upon his conviction that a link existed between the mysterious Santhonax and Hortense Montholon. In sharing this suspicion with Griffiths, Drinkwater had sought to unravel it, imagining the old sea-officer might have some alchemical formula for divining such things. But this had proved foolish, and now, with Griffiths sick ashore and the authorities lacking interest in the cutter, Drinkwater felt oppressed by his helplessness, aground in a backwater of naval affairs that seemed to have no incoming tide to refloat his enthusiasm.

  To some extent Elizabeth was to blame. Their proximity to Drinkwater's home meant that he took what leave he could. With Griffiths ashore his presence aboard Kestrel two or three times a week was sufficient. And the seduction of almost uninterrupted domestic life was sweet indeed. To pay for this lack of vigilance Kestrel lost six men to desertion and Drinkwater longed for orders, torn between Elizabeth and the call of duty.

  Then, one sharp, bright April morning when the sun cracked over the roofs of Portsea with an expectant brilliance, a post captain came aboard, clambering over the rail from a dockyard boat unannounced, anonymous in plain clothes. He had with him a fashionably dressed and eccentric looking man who seemed familiar with the cutter.

  It was Tregembo who warned Drinkwater and he had only learned from the grinning crew of the dockyard skiff that the gentlemen were of some importance. Some considerable importance in fact. Suddenly guilty, and thanking providence that this morning he had happened to be on board, Drinkwater hurried on deck, but the strangers were nowhere to be seen. Then a seaman popped out of the hold.

  'Hey, sir, some bleeders down 'ere are poking about the bottom of the ship. One of 'em's a bleeding Frog unless I'm a Sumatran strumpet, sir…'

  Bursting with apologies Drinkwater flung himself below to make his introductions. The intruders were dimly visible peering into Kestrel's bilge having prised up a section of the ceiling.

  'Good morning, gentlemen, please accept my… good lord! M'sieur Barrallier is it not?'

  'Ah! My young friend, 'ullo. I have not come to build you your frigate, alas, but this is Captain Schank, and we have come to, how you say — modify — your fine cutter.'

  Drinkwater turned to the gentleman rising from his knees and brushing his breeches. Captain Schank waved aside his apologetic protestations and in five minutes repaired his morale and reinspired him.

  Later that day in Haslar Hospital Drinkwater explained to Griffiths.

  'What he does is this, sir. He reinforces the keel with cheeks, then he cuts slots like long mortices through which he drops these plates, centre plates he calls 'em. The idea's been used in America for some time, on a small scale, d'you see. Captain Schank saw them when he was master's mate but,' Drinkwater smiled ruefully, 'master's mates don't carry much weight in these matters.'

  Griffiths's brow wrinkled in concentration. 'Sort of midships lee-boards, is it?'

  'Aye, sir, that's it exactly,' replied Drinkwater nodding enthusiastically. 'Apparently you point up better to windward, haul your wind closer and reduce leeway significantly'

  'Wait,' interrupted Griffiths pondering, 'I recollect the name now. He built Trial like that in ninety or ninety-one. She and Kestrel were on the same lines. Yes, that's the man. Trial's fitted with three of these, er, centre plates…' They began discussing the advantages it would give Kestrel and then Griffiths asked 'If they are doing all this have you got wind of any likely orders for us?'

  Drinkwater grinned. 'Well, sir, nothing official, sir, but scuttlebutt has it that we're for the North Sea station, Admiral MacBride's squadron.'

  It seemed to Nathaniel as he left the hospital that the news might restore Griffiths's health more rapidly than the doctors' physic.

  The drawings spread over the cabin table slid to the deck from where the master shipwright recovered them, an expression of pained forbearance on his face. Captain Schank he knew and could tolerate, his post-rank was sufficiently awe-inspiring, but this younker who was no more than a master's mate: God preserve patient and professional craftsmen from the meddling of half-baked theorists.

  'But if, as you say, it is the depth that's effective, sir, and the cutter's to work in shallow water, then a vertically supported plate might be very dangerous.' Drinkwater's imagination was coping with a vision of Kestrel's extended keel digging into a sandbank, oversetting her and possibly splitting her keel. 'But if you had a bolt forward here,' he pointed to the plan, 'then it would hinge and could rise up into the casing without endangering the cutter.' He looked at the captain.

  'What d'you think Mr Atwood?' The master shipwright looked over the pencil marks, an expression of scepticism on his face.

  Drinkwater sighed with exasperation. Dockyard officers were beginning to rile him. 'Barrallier could do it, sir,' he said in a low voice. He thought he detected a half smile twitch Schank's face. Atwood's back stiffened. After a second or two of real attention to the plan he straightened up. 'It could be done, sir,' he ignored Drinkwater, 'but I don't want that Froggie whoremonger with his dancing master ways messing about with it…'

  A day later they were warped alongside the sheer hulk and the mast was removed. Then they were hauled out. The work went well and a week later Griffiths reappeared with a cheerful countenance and a lightness of step that betrayed neither his age nor his recent indisposition.

  He advised Drinkwater to air his best uniform coat, the new acquisition from Mr Morgan's 'We are invited to dine with Lord Dungarth, Mr Drinkwater, at the George… hey Merrick! God I'm getting old, why do the damned artificers always leave a job half finished, dismantling the companionways and leaving rickety ladders? Ah, Merrick, pass along my best uniform coat and air Mr Drinkwater's. Polish his best shoes and get some sharkskin for that damned murderous French skewer he calls a sword,' he turned to Drinkwater, all traces of fever absent from his face. 'I've a feeling there's more to tonight's meal than mere manners…' Drinkwater nodded, aware that Griffiths's instinct was usually uncannily accurate and glad to have the old man on board again.

  The George Inn at Portsmouth was traditionally the rendezvous of captains and admirals. Lieutenants like Griffiths patronised the Fountain, while master's mates and midshipmen made a bear pit of the Blue Posts, situated next to the coach office. There were, therefore, a number of raised eyes when, amidst an unseasonal swirl of rain and wind, Griffiths and Drinkwater entered the inn and the removal of their cloaks revealed them as an elderly lieutenant and what appeared to be a passed over mate.

  Their presence was explained by the appearance of Lord Dungarth who greeted them cordially. 'Ah, there you are gentlemen, pray be seated. Flip or stingo on such a wretched night? Well Madoc, what is it li
ke wiping the arses of frigate captains after your independence, eh?'

  Griffiths smiled ruefully. 'Well enough, my lord,' he said diplomatically. An elderly captain at the next table turned a deep puce with more than a hint of approaching apoplexy in it and muttered that the service was 'Going to the dogs.'

  Dungarth went on heedlessly, an old, familiar twinkle in his eye. 'And you Nathaniel, I heard you took that lugger single-handed. An exaggeration I suppose?'

  'Aye my lord, a considerable one I'm afraid.'

  Dungarth went on, 'I suppose the dockyard are prevaricating with your refit in the customary fashion, eh?'

  Griffiths nodded. 'Yes, my lord. I believe they consider us too insignificant a cruiser to take note of,' he said, a bright gleam in his eye and noting Dungarth cast significant glances at other officers in the room, several of whom Drinkwater recognised as dockyard superintendents.

  'Insignificant!' exclaimed his lordship. 'Indeed. Damned crowd of peculating jobbers, rotten to the core. The greatest treason is to be found in His Majesty's dockyards, from time to time they hang an arsonist to assure their lordships of their loyalty…' Dungarth distributed the glasses. 'Your health gentlemen. Yes, you remark me well, one day they will receive their just deserts. You remember the Royal George, Nathaniel, aye and you've good cause to… Well gentlemen if you feel recovered from this damnable weather I've a fine jugged hare and a saddle of mutton awaiting you.' They emptied their glasses and followed Dungarth to a private room. Drinkwater was aware that their exit appeared most welcome.

  Conversation remained light. Dungarth had dismissed his servants and they attended to themselves. As they finished the hare he announced 'I am expecting another guest before the night is out, but let the business of the evening wait upon his arrival, it is a long time since I set a t'gallant stuns'l even over a meal…'

  They were attacking the mutton when a knock at the door occurred.

  'Ah Brown, come and sit down, you know the company.'

  Major Brown, smoothing his hair and muttering that the night was foul and diabolical for early June, nodded to the two naval officers. 'Your servant, my lord, gentlemen.'