‘The luck didn’t extend to catching hold of one,’ added Dundas, showing great interest in the food on his plate. ‘Unfortunate, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Very,’ replied General Buttafuco, small and portly, who sat two places away on Hood’s left, a remark which produced little more than a grunt from the Corsican commander, General Francisco Arena, who sat on Hood’s right as the guest of honour. He was taller than his companions, but not by a great deal, and much paler of skin, his face pock-marked with the ravages of early smallpox.
Dundas turned to Arena, his voice still hearty and amused, as though he was discussing the pursuit of some game. ‘Still, I daresay he has an inkling of whom to blame. Might like to arrange for the marines to take revenge. Long memories, they have, in my experience, isn’t that right, Admiral?’
‘Hurrump,’ was the sole reply, as Hood hid his face, as well as his embarrassment, in his glass.
Markham fought to avoid eye-contact with his fellow diners, all of whom were now staring at him. It was Arena who saved him any further discomfort, by suddenly raising his glass.
‘Then I propose a toast that Lieutenant Markham will find very acceptable,’ he exclaimed. ‘Death to the French!’
That was a sentiment both host and guests were obliged to endorse. Even Markham found himself murmuring the incantation, while at the same time wondering if Arena’s injunction was genuine or contrived. When conversation started again it was stilted and full of surreptitious looks, in his direction as well as at the Corsican generals. Grimaldi had turned to his left, to engage in conversation one of Hood’s flag captains. Was he eager to regale him with tales of Corsican pluck, or reluctant to look Markham in the eye? Buttafuco was likewise engaged with his neighbour, while Arena had embroiled Admiral Hood in a discussion regarding future operations, leaving Dundas to his food.
Markham was left free to look around the table, since the diner on his left, a lieutenant-colonel of the Foot Guards, had shifted his seat, so that his back was mostly to Markham, making it perfectly plain that he had no intention of engaging such a pariah in any kind of discourse. So the rest of Markham’s meal passed in almost total silence, as he considered the kind of devious mind that could make him so easily a scapegoat, as well as the possible outcome.
Had the Corsicans played right into Dundas’s hands by not asking if Markham had seen anything, surely the obvious question of anyone free from guilt? Yet Arena’s way of killing off the speculation could be genuine, the act of an experienced officer who knew that picking over the dead bones of closed campaigns would help no one. Against that, neither Buttafuco nor Grimaldi had looked very comfortable raising their glasses. So, the subject had been killed. But there was no way of knowing if the method of its termination provided any hint as to what had happened.
But, reluctant as Markham was to make the admission, it underlined the point that Hanger had touched on, which was this; that if one of the senior officers had taken enemy gold, the rest must at least suspect it had happened, even if they could not be sure enough to accuse. The French should never have got through to Bastia, and would not have done so had the Corsican army been prepared. The absence of their generals should have made no difference. If it did, not to alert their British allies to this fact, nor apologise, openly and sincerely, rendered them all suspect.
Slowly, as the conversation became more animated, Markham could return, uninterrupted, to his previous study. He applied as much attention to Lizzie Gordon’s mannerisms as he did to a piece of battleground terrain. Each gesture was noted, every flick of an eye and finger registered. It was, to the student, a pleasant task. He had a high regard for women, especially but not exclusively the beautiful members of that sex. The dinner wound its way through the various courses, wine flowed, and finally, just before the port came round, Lizzie stood up with the few other ladies, and with a bow to acknowledge the complimentary words of the admiral, left the room. It was easy, once he passed the port to Grimaldi, to leave his place, and since no one inquired his reasons, he offered none.
He found her on the quarterdeck, wrapped in a cloak, staring out over the now crowded anchorage. The early evening air was crisp and chilly, with the sun too low in the west to give off any heat. Stars were just visible over the eastern mountains, and where the snow still lay it picked up the pink glow of the sunset. Markham stood behind her for what seemed like an age, willing her to turn round, wondering if such a message, his deep attraction, could be transmitted through the air.
She half turned to lift up the hood of her cloak, and he wasn’t sure if the shudder, when she saw him, was genuine or false.
‘The hood suits you,’ he said, smiling, ‘especially the way it frames your face.’
‘You must not pay me compliments, Lieutenant. My husband has forbidden it.’
‘Neither God nor the Devil could not stop me doing that.’
‘I’m sure you are right,’ she snapped. ‘Just as I am told that you’re fairly free with their distribution.’
Markham moved slightly closer, but stopped when he saw her shoulders go rigid with apprehension. ‘I cannot deny that I have complimented other women. Beautiful as you are, madam, you do not have a monopoly on such sentiments.’
‘It didn’t feel that way over dinner, Lieutenant Markham.’
‘Would you care to tell me what it did feel like?’
‘No sir, I would not,’ she replied sharply. ‘Now be so good as to leave this deck. Should my husband come up from below, and find us conversing, he would be exceedingly vexed.’
‘He is jealous?’
‘I rather think his attitude to you personally is more telling than the commonplace of jealousy.’
‘I’m curious.’
‘Regarding what?’ she responded suspiciously.
‘How do you find the married estate?’
She smiled then, a hard, fixed look. ‘Blissful.’
‘Do you refer to the emotional or the conjugal part?’
That made her angry again. ‘If I was inclined to discuss such things, which I am not, sir, you would be the last person I would confide in.’
‘The very last?’ he inquired, his voice full of mock disappointment.
‘Yes!’
‘How reassured that makes me feel.’ She span round to glare at him, even more annoyed by the smile on his lips. ‘There is nothing worse than to be invisible to a woman you find attractive. Even outright hate is better than indifference.’
‘You mistake your position, sir. Indifference, as far as you are concerned, is my overriding emotion.’
‘I had you down as a more accomplished liar.’
‘How dare you?’
Markham moved closer still, hemming her in so that she would have to use physical force to dislodge him. ‘You have no notion of what I would dare, madam. There are no walls built that I wouldn’t scale to be alone with you.’
‘Lieutenant!’
‘You have married a man for his wealth, for which I cannot fault you. But you must know there is more to a full life than mere comfort. I don’t profess to know you well, but I am sure of this: you cannot truly love a man like Hanger.’
The slight pant in her voice robbed her words of the force she intended. ‘You seem very certain.’
Markham took two paces backwards, which surprised her, a feeling which was enhanced by his next words. ‘I must apologise.’
‘Apologise,’ she responded, aware, judging by the blush that tinged her cheeks, that such a reply was foolish.
‘If I were to say that I was overcome with your beauty, that I have acted impetuously and rudely because of it, you would scoff at me.’
‘I most certainly would,’ she said, her voice regaining some confidence.
‘Yet it is true, ma’am. And I must warn you the sensation is not fleeting. Had circumstances permitted in Toulon …’
She interrupted abruptly, the twin furrows of anger back on her forehead. ‘I seem to remember that you were otherwise eng
aged in Toulon, Lieutenant.’
Markham continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And now we are here in Corsica. I have no idea of where my duty will take me. But if I stay in close proximity to you, I will not desist from bringing myself to your notice, at every turn, regardless of what Colonel Hanger thinks.’
‘And who, sir, do you think will pay the price for that?’
‘Perhaps you will. I have known your husband longer than you, madam, and I have no doubt that his love of a horsewhip is as great now as it ever was. He took it to me with relish, then followed it with the butt of a musket. Had he not been drunk, I might have died from his endeavours.’
‘You must not speak of this.’
‘If I cannot engage your attention any other way, then I must choose the path of showing you what a monster you have wed. And believe me, ma’am, that is what you have done.’
Markham was gone before she could reply, heading down the companionway, and back towards the warmth and fume-filled air of the admiral’s cabin. Lanester was outside it, pacing to and fro, smoking an evil-smelling cheroot. He stopped when he saw Markham, and looked at him in a singular way. All he got for that was a smile and a nod as the marine slid past him, entered the cabin and retook his seat. Dundas was halfway down the table, talking to Hanger. Grimaldi, who had moved close to talk to Nelson, Buttafuco and Arena, detached himself, and came back to his original place, now beaming, his small bright eyes fixed on Markham.
‘Lieutenant.’
‘I must apologise, sir, for General Dundas’s previous remarks.’
‘Admiral Hood has done enough of that, Lieutenant, never fear, and gone to the trouble of explaining why they were made. But that is past. Now that we have a chance to talk, you must allow me to congratulate you. Had we not been alerted by your prompt action, the French might have got clear without the need to fire a shot. Tell me what it was that engaged your attention, and made you so suspicious?’
Markham explained about the French torches, plus the lack of any noises of damage repair after a long and effective bombardment.
‘And forward piquets, General, rarely make any sound, even to let their friends to their rear know they are safe. There was just enough noise to induce curiosity.’
‘Curiosity! And that caused you to fire off some flares?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when they went off, you must have seen something?’
Grimaldi wasn’t looking at him, but over his shoulder, as if the answer to that question was academic. Behind him, the buzz of conversation had diminished. He had no idea how many people were listening, half suspecting that it numbered nearly everyone in the cabin. If Hood had apologised, then he would have implied that Dundas was exaggerating, no doubt hinting at the general’s motives. Whatever, his duty was plain.
‘A few indistinct figures who ran as soon as they saw the trail of the rocket.’
The eyes were on him now, black and intense, and there was just a trace of strain in Grimaldi’s voice. ‘Indistinct?’
‘Mere silhouettes, General.’ Markham held the stare, wondering if he’d been believed, aware of the increase in noise as people reanimated their exchanges. Grimaldi smiled suddenly, though as was fitting it had a grim quality.
‘What a pity. A few moments earlier and you might have confounded the whole plan.’
‘For the men who died in their foxholes, sir, it was more than a pity. Rather a tragedy, I think.’
Chapter ten
The arguments between the services regarding future operations took on an increasingly bitter tone over the following week. Claiming he was unable to supply his forces, General Dundas had withdrawn them to within three miles of San Fiorenzo. Hood had protested with his usual lack of tact, only to be told that if he wanted to freeze in the Colla di Teghima he was welcome to go and do so, but that the army would not.
Dundas continued to insist that a land assault on Bastia was impossible for the same reasons. The soldiers lacked the means to supply their troops over four miles of mountain road, let alone nine, and that took no account of the lack of any confidence he expressed regarding his Corsican allies. Not surprisingly, relations which had been strained after the French departure had cooled even more after Hood’s dinner. There wasn’t an officer present, from either side, who was unaware of how the occasion had been used to cause embarrassment.
The admiral finally attempted to pull rank, claiming to be the senior officer on the station, and therefore the man with the power of decision. Such a prerogative was tenuous at best, but having made it, Hood managed to remove the last vestige of polite intercourse between the two services. He so offended Sir David Dundas by some of his remarks that the general decided to relinquish his command and go home. General d’Aubent wasn’t, as far as the Navy was concerned, much more tractable. He positively exploded when he found that the wily old admiral had been talking to his subordinate officers behind his back, trying to get them to agree to operations in which he, like Dundas, had already declined to participate.
Nelson was afire with alternative plans, determined that, with the Corsicans already holding the landward approach to Bastia, the one-time French capital city should be taken from the sea. In this he ran straight up against General d’Aubent, who had no more faith than his predecessor in the estimates given by the Corsicans of enemy troop strength. He had even less in the prospect of a landing followed by a siege, without enough troops to guarantee a swift surrender, and accused Nelson of whoring after glory.
This led to more bad blood, which for the sake of the national interest had to be overcome. Compromise was necessary, even if, as everyone knew, when it was struck it would be, like all such things, unsatisfactory. D’Aubent point blank refused to provide troops, but he could not stop the marines from taking part. Nelson persuaded Hood to let him try. But once ashore he would need artillery and engineering officers, and even that small token the army was unwilling to provide.
To stall matters, d’Aubent agreed to have another look at a land assault, and various officers were sent off to reconnoitre the ground. In such a confused situation, gossip became frenzied, which is how Markham and his men heard of the ever more fanciful plans. That set them, in a semi-jocular way, wailing for another officer, since their own was far too junior to participate in staff conferences, and so bring them back hard information which they could flaunt.
Markham hardly noticed the jokes, being rather preoccupied. First, he’d been informed that, due to his disinclination to apologise, plus de Lisle’s insistence, a court martial would be convened within the week, with Admiral Hood using the occasion to see through a string of complaints that had festered in the fleet since before Toulon. The greatest problem Markham had was in finding an officer, who should by rights come from his own ship, willing to defend him.
To the specific charge, he had little choice but to plead guilty, since he had no intention of allowing Bernard to lie. And that course held another attraction: it would prevent anyone, under the guise of an assessment of his character, from bringing up what had happened in the past. He’d had to face a court after the Battle of Guilford, to explain his actions, a daunting ordeal for a fifteen-year-old. He’d been acquitted, but since the matter had been heard in New York, by officers who had close links to his father, no one believed that the verdict was anything other than pre-determined.
Distraction came from working hard the men under his command. In Toulon, he and Rannoch had gone to great lengths to improve their musketry. Yet in the weeks before the Corsican landings, de Lisle had scoffed at any notion that Markham might maintain their standards by regular practice. The folly of that had been shown only too well during the recent landing, and now it was very possible that renewed action was imminent. He also had the Seahorses to consider, since he had no idea if they would remain under his command.
Training was put in hand, a set of gravel pits outside the town serving as firing butts. As before, his sergeant took the main load, being so much better a
t musketry, and the teaching of it, than his officer. But they marched out every morning, passing the small knot of Corsican soldiers who’d appeared outside their billet, for a mile-long march to their temporary range.
The other issue which occupied his thoughts was Lizzie Gordon. Perhaps in a more bustling location he might have been able to put her out of his mind. But not in San Fiorenzo. It was so small, really an overgrown fishing port. The locals were very clannish, excessively protective of their womenfolk, and pious in a simple way. If there was a brothel in San Fiorenzo, not one of the marines and soldiers had been able to find it. The more sophisticated occupations pursued by officers, which included cards, music and dancing as well as fornication, were totally absent, the nearest place where such pleasures could be found being a day’s sailing away in Leghorn. Naturally, when the wind blew fair, leave was assiduously sought by every officer who was convinced he could be spared from duty.
Markham lacked the means to take full advantage of Leghorn, even if he had the inclination. Besides, a man who was having difficulties in producing a defendant’s friend would have even more trouble in finding officers willing to share their pleasures with him. The Italian mainland held few attractions if, in going there, he would be subjected to even more condescension than he received on the island.
Recalling, too frequently for his own peace of mind, what had happened aboard Victory, he felt confident that his pursuit of Lizzie Gordon would not be a complete waste of time. Whether it would turn out, in the end, the way he desired was another matter, the thrill of the chase being sufficient at this moment to keep him content. Not that he had much notion of how to go about it. If he saw her at all, it was in passing, and always with her husband. But Markham knew that to fret was a waste of energy. Opportunity would present itself if the fates allowed.
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