Pasha

by Julian Stockwin

  “Sir, I must protest!” he blurted. “We’re at the five-fathom line and I can’t answer should we have to stay about.”

  “Very well. We shall wear ship. Now.”

  “Sir, that’ll put us damned close to the Vista Hermosa forts,” Curzon spluttered.

  He was ignored.

  “Hands to stations to wear ship!”

  Agility was all. If the treacherous winds backed further they would be in serious trouble.

  The order was given. The men on the helm spun the wheel. Others raced down the deck with the lines that swung the big yards in time with their falling off the wind, and going about the long way to take up on the other tack—a manoeuvre that needed much more sea-room than tacking through the eye of the wind.

  It brought them within range of the forts.

  A heavy thudding began, like the far-off slamming of giant doors. These were big guns in stone emplacements—and they had been sighted in properly along their firing sector.

  The tearing sound of shot overhead was nerve-shredding.

  The shocking passage of an invisible ball across the quarterdeck left the officers staggering with the buffeting. Others in the salvo ended in great white plumes around them, some skipping into the distance.

  “Rather good practice that, the brutes,” said Bowden, rubbing his deafened ears.

  But they were now headed for the safety of the open sea and the next shots were wide.

  “Ease her, no need to risk our sticks.”

  They won into clear water and Kydd shaped course for the anchorage to note up his findings.

  Before he could go below there was a signal. “Sir—Flag, our pennant.”

  Was the captain of L’Aurore to be chastised for hazarding his ship?

  “Heave to in her lee, away my barge.”

  The admiral was not at the ship’s side to greet him and he followed the flag-lieutenant down to Collingwood’s day cabin.

  He was deep in murmured discussion with his flag-captain and Kydd waited apprehensively, rehearsing his defence.

  “Thank you, we’ll talk more about it later,” Collingwood told the officer, who left. He put the papers together slowly, his face careworn and lined.

  “Sir Thomas, I would have you prepare your frigate for immediate service.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” So it was nothing to do with his escapade.

  “There’s a deal of trouble brewing in the eastern Med and I need you to undertake a mission of quite some importance.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’ve disquieting intelligence that suggests the Turks are not as neutrally inclined as they should be, given their position. They’ve been listening to some French agitators and seem ready to shift sides. Arbuthnot, our ambassador in the Sublime Porte—that’s what they call their Turkish court—seems to think it will come to a sorry situation imminently and he’s crying to be taken off.

  “I don’t myself believe it will come to that, an evacuation, but he’s a privy councillor, in thick with Wellesley and similar, and I don’t want to be thought uncaring.

  “You’re the swiftest sail I have, Kydd. I want you to carry my instructions to Admiral Louis in Malta to do what he can to seem helpful.”

  Malta had memories for Kydd. It was here that he had taken up his first command, the lovely little sloop Teazer, and the midshipman who alone had been present at her commissioning was here on this very quarterdeck as his second lieutenant—Bowden.

  There were the massive forts so well remembered, St Elmo, Fort Tigné, and then it was Grand Harbour and the anchorage, but he couldn’t delay: the situation was urgent.

  They passed within, all due honours paid, but apart from a pair of sloops in Rinella, there was no squadron in port.

  Kydd lost no time in taking boat for the Lascaris Steps: if he didn’t find the squadron soon, Collingwood’s urgent instructions could not be delivered.

  Then he was hurrying over the familiar black basalt slabs of the Grand Master’s Palace and up the elliptical staircase to meet the governor.

  Alexander Ball had been captain of his namesake Alexander before the great battle of the Nile, and his daring and dogged rescue of the dismasted Vanguard and Nelson, which Kydd had witnessed, had been a turning point of history. There was no question—if the fabled admiral had been lost at that point, there would have been no clash of fleets and Bonaparte would now be standing astride the world.

  “Then how might I be of service, Sir Thomas?” Ball opened, clearly interested in what brought a dashing frigate to the more remote eastern Mediterranean.

  “I’ve urgent instructions for Admiral Louis, sir,” Kydd said. “Do you have knowledge of his movements at all?”

  “Pray do not alarm yourself, Captain. In this part of the world things seldom happen with any degree of rapidity. Have you any notion of what those instructions might contain?”

  This was a senior naval officer and a civil governor who had every right to know what was happening. Kydd clutched to himself the gratifying knowledge that he was no longer a dutiful messenger carrying sealed dispatches. He was at a rank and respected enough to be a player in the wider drama, trusted with inside knowledge.

  “Lord Collingwood was good enough to inform me, yes, sir. And they are …”

  He briefly told of the worsening situation in the Turkish capital and the desperate plea of the ambassador to be taken off.

  “I had no idea it had got to such a pass—but I can’t help you much to find Admiral Louis’s squadron. Let’s get out the charts and take a look at the rendezvous positions he’s used in the last few months.”

  It was an impossibly large area to cover: from Egypt in the south to the Aegean in the north, the ancient sea held so much of significance and threat that no single place thrust itself out over the others.

  “If he’s got wind of how things are deteriorating, he may wish to place himself athwart the only seaway to Constantinople. This is the strait of the Dardanelles and is damned narrow and chancy navigating. The rendezvous for that is here, at the island of Tenedos, just south of the entrance. I’d start there, if I were you.”

  Standing south to avoid a blustering gregale, L’Aurore rounded Greece and headed for the northern Aegean.

  It was sailing of the kind that Kydd disliked most: uncertainty, aimless searching, yet all to be done at breakneck speed with no promise of a happy ending. From daybreak to darkness, doubled lookouts, relieved every half-hour, and the same intensely fatiguing duty at night, straining for lights in the blackness.

  They reached the Dardanelles and the island of Tenedos. Bare, straggling and all of five miles across, it lay just off the coast of Anatolia, providing a useful haven.

  But it was empty of anything that flew a British flag.

  Kydd brought his ship to anchor and retired to his cabin, tired and dismayed. A crisis was brewing and the ambassador thought it so bad he was apparently abandoning his post. The longer the delay, the worse things would get, and only L’Aurore’s precious instructions would start in train a powerful squadron to the rescue.

  He had to find Louis! L’Aurore was in the far north of the Aegean. If they were not here, by definition the squadron was in the south. Or in the west off the Morea, Greece. Or even, damn it all, southwest off north Africa. He could go mad just thinking of the alternatives.

  One of which was—do nothing. Stay at anchor until the squadron came upon them on its constant ranging around the eastern regions.

  His nature shied from inactivity as a course of action, but what else could he do?

  He threw down his pencilled notes in frustration and went on deck.

  He gazed on Turkish Anatolia opposite—a dry, scrubby and nondescript coastline, looking as old as time. A light breeze blew from the land, darkling the sea in delicate feather-like fans.

  He was not the only one staring at the shore: Dillon stood over the two new midshipmen, one of whom had a small telescope up.

  Oh, to be as carefree as those two! Presuma
bly this would not be their view …

  On impulse he drew nearer.

  Dillon was treating his duties as schoolmaster seriously. He had taken to carrying a rattan cane borrowed from the boatswain’s mate and frowning at his charges on all possible occasions, which had raised a smile from more than one onlooker.

  Kydd had let him loose on harmless paperwork after a week’s apprenticeship under the ship’s clerk, Goffin, and he had proved effortlessly able, even suggesting a novel system of filing. But it would inevitably be some time before he could be trusted with confidences.

  For all that, the young man was keen and hadn’t been dismayed by his small taste of action. Was he seeing the far parts of the world that he’d yearned for?

  “Now mark this, Mr Willock,” Dillon said, in gruff tones. “If I inform you that the river you see to the left is the Scamander, what does this tell you?”

  Kydd gave a small smile: Dillon must have sighted the ship’s charts to know that.

  “Oh, it’s a long one?” one boy hazarded.

  Even in the small weeks they had been at sea, the pair had bloomed, due in most part to his inspired idea to have that hardened old reprobate but first-class seaman Doud on hand as their “sea-daddy” just as, so long ago, the seamed old Bowyer had taken him under his wing.

  Doud had found them both in his watch and was at first disdainful and short, but their childish desire to deserve well of L’Aurore had melted him, and now there was none on the gun-deck who would dare make sport of his lads.

  To watch him teach the youngsters fine sennit or an intricately worked west-country whipping would have softened the hardest heart. His big, blunt seaman’s fingers would carefully tease the twine and rope, and the result would always be a perfection of neatness that challenged their little fingers. He would softly encourage, allow them to make their mistakes and never let impatience show.

  The result had been a rising confidence, a willingness to try more and a disarming glee at what they had accomplished, which was on occasion brought before their captain for grave praise.

  Before long he would allow Doud to get them aloft.

  “No, no, Mr Willock,” the schoolmaster said reprovingly. He pointed the cane sternly at the bare hillocks. “Regard! That … is the Troy of Helen and Paris, Achilles and Hector, is it not?”

  “It is?”

  Curzon turning to listen, raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  Ignoring him, Dillon glared at the hapless boy. “Scoundrel! You have not attended to your histories. In the dog-watch you’ll write out for me two hundred times:

  “Oh, sir! Do I have to?”

  “Which being meanly translated from the Homer is, ‘I carry two sorts of destiny towards the day of my death.’ You may choose which tongue it is you inscribe.”

  With new-found respect Curzon came over, too.

  “And now, Mr Clinch. You have the advantage, you know where we are. Pray tell us, then, what of this island, that we anchor in its shelter?”

  “Oh, well, it has a temple of sacrifices and similar?” the lad said hopefully.

  “For not knowing that this is the very island behind which the Greeks hid their ships while the Trojans hauled their wooden horse inside the city, you are under the same penalty, sir.”

  Kydd grinned. “I do believe we’re not to be spared an education even as Mr Renzi has left us, Mr Curzon.”

  In much improved humour he returned to his dilemma—and quite suddenly had the answer. Just as the Greeks had cut through an insoluble stalemate at Troy with a bold stroke, so would he.

  “Ask Mr Kendall to step down,” he said, and put his thoughts in order.

  “Sir?”

  “We’ve an urgent situation as won’t allow us to wait in idleness for Admiral Louis to join us. I’ve a mind to do something about it.”

  “Send out boats, sir?”

  “Not at all. I intend that L’Aurore shall pierce the Dardanelles and go to the rescue of the ambassador directly on our own.”

  “To Constantinople?” The master tried to hide his anxieties. “We’ve nary a chart as takes us past the Sigeum, and I’ve heard the currents inside are a sore trial. And as well—”

  “We find a pilot.”

  “Sir?” Pilots had legal obligations, duties of care, and in England were closely examined for competency by Trinity House. If there was an equivalent here, where the devil … ?

  “Mr Curzon will take a boat away and find one who knows his Dardanelles in the first town of size he comes to.”

  The first lieutenant was hesitant. “If the capital is in an uproar then what’ll we meet? No one who’s about to cross the grand sultan by conning a British man-o’-war up the strait.”

  “Constantinople is far away and they owe it nothing but taxes. You’ll offer honest silver, and I’d find it singular should any in these parts refuse coin for a simple passage up the strait.”

  “Not wishing to cry coward, Sir Thomas, but there’s one objection I feel I do have to voice.”

  “And what’s that, pray?”

  “I’ve not a word of the Turkish. How I’m to persuade some old fellow to our way of thinking without the lingo, I’m vexed to know, sir.”

  “Why, you’ve no need to. On board we happen to have a scholar of modern languages who I’m sure would bear you a hand.”

  Dillon was more than happy to take on the role.

  “Do I have to wear a cutlass?” he asked, and looked disappointed when it was explained that the entire boat’s crew would be going without weapons to forestall any accusation by the Turks of an armed incursion.

  “You’ve twenty-four hours,” Kydd told Curzon genially. “Then we’ll come and look for you.”

  They were back before nightfall with not one but two gentlemen, both sporting an elaborate turban and gown to the clear satisfaction of L’Aurore’s crew.

  “What’s this, then, Mr Curzon?”

  “My idea, sir,” he answered smugly. “We have one in the bows, one on the quarterdeck. If they’re in agreement on a helm order, we do it. If not, we can be sure one’s up to trickery.”

  “Well done, Mr Curzon. And you too, Mr Dillon. So you’ve studied the Turkish?”

  “Not really, sir. That’s a heathen tongue, by origin from Tamerlane and his ilk of Central Asia, who overran these lands not so many centuries ago.”

  “Then how … ?”

  “All in these parts know a species of barbarous Greek, which answered, Sir Thomas.”

  “Good work! Then we’ll not waste time any further. Hands to unmoor ship!”

  Kydd clutched to himself the thought that should get them through: his brazen entry would catch any hostile elements by surprise. Their speed would ensure they were well past before orders could arrive from Constantinople to stop them.

  But no captain ever relished putting his ship voluntarily into restricted waters and the Dardanelles was narrow and confined.

  A cleft of sea pointing to the northeast, it ran for forty miles or so of tight navigation, at times with opposite shores being less than a mile apart, then opened up into the internal Sea of Marmora, which narrowed again to the Bosporus at Constantinople. Beyond that were the Black Sea and Russia.

  It meant that any wind within three points either side of northeast would be dead foul—if this present northwesterly held, they were fair for the ancient city but if it changed, while they were deep within the passage, it would be a serious matter. Kydd’s experience and sea sense told him that the flood of fresh water from the Black Sea mixing with the salt water would create complex and baffling currents, which, if strong, could prevail against anything from sails in a light breeze.

  The biggest unknown was the Turkish fleet.

  It consisted of ships-of-the-line, frigates and many smaller types, any or all of which Kydd could find arrayed across his path.

  L’Aurore got under way for the entrance, slipping within two headlands not more than a couple of miles apart.

  The coast on th
e left was steep and forbidding, to the right more even and low, and when they closed in on both sides, here and there a pale-walled fortress could be made out.

  But wearing the colours of an ally they were not troubled and they made good time through the narrow waterway until they reached the Sea of Marmora, an open stretch of water.

  After an easy overnight sail a grey coastline appeared with the morning—the fabled Constantinople, a city of the Byzantines but now the capital of the great Ottoman sultan, Selim III, with his harem and all the mystery of an Oriental court.

  Kydd was well aware that he was taking his ship into a situation with not the slightest knowledge of what was going on. Should he proceed closed up at the guns in readiness or would that be construed a provocative act? Or should he play the part of a peaceable visitor and be defenceless?

  His “pilots” had not eased his mind with their insistence that both be dropped at one of the islands before Constantinople, and as the coast firmed, his anxiety grew.

  Dismayingly, there was no offshore multitude of merchant shipping in this chief port between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Had they fled an impending calamity?

  Nearer still the city took shape: sea-walls miles long were surmounted by hills thronged with white buildings, domes and lofty minarets, then the unmistakable form of the beautiful Hagia Sophia at the end of a peninsula to the left.

  A mile-wide channel, the famed Bosporus leading to Russia, separated the coast of Asia to the right from Europe to the left.

  Palaces and stately buildings amid parks and groves occupied most of the end of the peninsula and, with another noble grouping further along, made for one of the most dramatic and magnificent sights Kydd had ever seen.

  “Sir, where … ?” The master seemed subdued by the spectacular panorama.

  “We heave to for now, Mr Kendall. Two cables off should do it.”

  “A boat, sir?” Curzon asked.

  Kydd eyed the shoreline where excited activity was building at their arrival, whether in fear or outrage it was not possible to tell.

  “No, I’m sending nobody ashore in this.”

  “Then?”

  “We wait. I’ve yet to come across a port without it has its swarm of meddlesome officials. We’ll find out from them how the land lies.”