‘What now?’ Mullender muttered, and sighed, scratching his head uncomprehendingly. He did not see, as Drinkwater saw, the faint discolourations where once the twin portraits of Elizabeth and his children had hung.
‘Sir, the Yankee has just gone over the side, if you hurry . . .’
They could hear the squealing of the pipes floating over the still water from the dark shape of the Stingray, her tall masts and yards black against the dark velvet of the night sky with its myriad stars. He could see nothing of the schooner beyond her. Metcalfe’s almost childish urgency irritated Drinkwater.
‘I don’t want to make a damned undignified race of it,’ he said curtly. ‘Let the bugger go ahead . . .’ Metcalfe opened his mouth to say something, but Drinkwater was in no mood now to bandy words with his first lieutenant. ‘Do you make sure the sentries present arms as he goes past. We are not at war with the United States, Mr Metcalfe, and I’ll see the courtesies extended while we are within American waters.’
Metcalfe’s mouth shut like a trap and he spun on his heel, but Moncrieff had already dealt with the matter. The American gig, a chuckle of phosphorescence at her cutwater, the faint flash of her oar blades rising and dipping, approached them in a curve to pass under the Patrician’s stern. The dim light of a lantern in her stern-sheets reflected upon the face of Captain Stewart and his attendant midshipman.
Moncrieff called the deck sentinels to attention. ‘Present arms!’ The American boat swept past, Stewart and the midshipman unmoving.
‘Insolent devil,’ said Moncrieff in a voice that must have been heard in the still darkness. ‘Shoulder arms!’
‘Are you ready, Vansittart?’ Drinkwater enquired as a grey shape joined them.
‘I am indeed, Captain Drinkwater.’
‘After you, then.’ Drinkwater gestured and Vansittart peered uncertainly over the side. Midshipman Belchambers looked up from the barge.
‘Just hold on to the man-ropes, sir, and lean back . . .’
He saw her first, in a full-skirted dress of watered green silk the origin of which was not Parisian. Her raven hair was up and a rope of Bahamian pearls wound round her slender neck. She looked remote, proper, Shaw’s daughter-in-law-cum-hostess and not the creature who . . .
‘Captain Drinkwater, good of you to come.’
‘Your servant, sir. May I present Mr Henry Vansittart . . . Mr Shaw.’
‘Mr Vansittart, you are very welcome. Captain Drinkwater, you have met my daughter-in-law. Mr Vansittart, may I present Mrs Arabella Shaw . . .’
Bows and curtsies were exchanged, Vansittart bent solicitously over Arabella’s hand and Drinkwater turned away. He found himself face to face with Master Commandant Stewart.
He had his sister’s features and the likeness shocked him. Yet there was nothing effeminate in the American officer’s handsome face, on the contrary, his dark features conveyed the immediate impression of a boldness and resolution which, as he confronted the Englishman, were unequivocally hostile. Drinkwater had the unnerving sensation that, despite his own superiority in years and rank, the American held himself in all respects the better man. A cooler head than Drinkwater possessed at that instant might have considered this impression as a consequence of underlying guilt on his own part and an overweening pride and youthful contempt on the American’s. At that moment, however, the impact was uncanny and overwhelming, and Drinkwater endeavoured to conceal his inner confusion with an over-elaborate greeting that the American attributed to condescension.
‘Captain Stewart, I presume. I am your servant, sir, and delighted to make your acquaintance.’
The younger man’s face split in a lupine grin. From the moment his topman reported the approach of the British frigate, Stewart had been both affronted by the British man-o’-war’s presence in American waters, and hoping for some means by which he, the most junior commander on the American Navy List, might personally tweak the tail of the arrogant British lion. Captain Drinkwater, a greying tarpaulin officer of no particular pretension, offered him a perfect target. Stewart would not have admitted fear of any British naval officer, but he nursed an awkwardness in the presence of those urbane and languid sprigs of good families he had once met in New York. Vansittart was so clearly an example of the class, if not the type. In needling Drinkwater he felt he opened a mine under British conceit, laid under so easy and foolish a target as Captain Drinkwater, the more readily to wound Vansittart. The prospect of this revenge for past humiliations, real or imagined, amused and stimulated him.
‘You presume a great deal, Captain. As for being my servant that’s fair enough, but your delight concerns me not at all . . .’ It was a gauche, clumsy and foolish speech, but made to Drinkwater in his present mood and made loud enough for all the company to hear, it had its desired effect, bolstering Stewart’s pride and leaving the witnesses nonplussed as they, in full expectation of a sharp-tongued response, left Captain Drinkwater to defend himself.
But Drinkwater blushed to his hair-roots, dropping his foolishly extended hand. Vansittart’s inward hiss of breath, of apprehension rather than outrage, broke the silence.
‘Gennelmen, a glass,’ Shaw drawled, motioning to a negro servant in a powdered wig and a ludicrous canary-yellow livery. He bore a salver upon which the touching rims of the glasses tinkled delicately.
‘I thought rum appropriate to the occasion,’ said Shaw, clearly practising a joke he had rehearsed earlier and which was now quite inappropriate to the occasion.
‘Indeed, ’ Vansittart waded in, ‘almost the vin du pays, what? Your health, ma’am, and yours, sir, and yours, Captain Stewart. That’s a fine ship you command, by the by.’
‘Indeed it is,’ replied Stewart, clearly enjoying himself and never taking his eyes off Drinkwater, ‘the match of any ship, even one of reputedly superior force.’
The sarcasm brought Drinkwater to himself. He mastered his discomfiture and met the younger man’s eyes. ‘Let us hope, Captain Stewart, the matter is not put to the test.’
‘It wouldn’t concern me one damn jot, Captain, were it to be put to the test tomorrow morning.’
‘Come, come, gennelmen,’ said Shaw, stepping between the two sea-officers and smiling nervously at Vansittart, ‘damn me, Vansittart, we will have our work cut out to keep such hotheads from tearing each other to pieces. ’Tis as well they put these fellows under orders, or what would become of the peace of the world?’
Drinkwater caught Arabella’s eye. Was it pity he saw there, or some understanding of his humiliation?
‘I think it you, Charles, who is the greater hothead,’ she scolded, half in jest. ‘I don’t believe Captain Drinkwater to be a man to underestimate his enemy.’
Was the remark taken as one of mere politeness, or an indiscretion of the most lamentably revealing nature? Drinkwater could not be sure how each of them perceived it, for his prime concern was to seize the lifeline she had flung him, to put the company at their ease, to detach himself from Stewart’s sarcastic goading.
‘I have held that as a guiding principle throughout my career, ma’am.’
‘You have seen a good deal of action, have you not, Captain?’ Vansittart rallied to him, equally eager to defuse the atmosphere, but painfully aware of Drinkwater’s lack of finesse in such circumstances.
‘I believe so,’ Drinkwater answered.
‘What – Frenchmen?’ put in Stewart, unwisely.
‘Some Frenchmen, yes, but Dutchmen, Russians – and Americans.’ He paused, feeling he had regained some credibility. ‘War is not a matter to be entered into lightly, no matter how excellent one’s ship, nor the fighting temper of one’s people.’
Stewart had swallowed his rum at a gulp and it emboldened him. ‘Oh, ship for ship, we’d lick you, Cap’n . . .’
Drinkwater experienced that sudden cool detachment he usually associated with the heat of action, after the period of fear before engagement and the manic rage with which a man worked up his courage and in which most men conque
red or perished in hand-to-hand slaughter. For him this remote and singular feeling lent him strength and an acuity of eye and nervous response which had carried him through a dozen fierce actions. He suddenly saw this boorish boy as being unworthy of his temper, and smiled.
‘Perhaps, ship for ship, you are quite right, Mr Master Commandant, but I beg you to consider how few ships you have and the inevitable outcome of a concentration of force upon this coast. A blockade, for instance; do you comprehend a blockade, Mister Stewart? No, I think not. Say twelve of the line cruising constantly off Sandy Hook, another dozen off the Delaware, another off the Virginia capes, with frigates patrolling in between, cutters and schooners maintaining communications between the squadrons, ships being relieved regularly, and water and wood being obtained with impunity from your empty and unguarded coastline . . . come, sir, that is not a happy prospect, you’ll allow?’
Drinkwater observed with a degree of pleasure how Stewart resented the use of his proper rank and Drinkwater’s pointed abandonment of his courtesy title. The added irony of begging his listener’s consideration was lost on Stewart in his inflamed state, for while Drinkwater spoke, he snapped his fingers and took another glass of rum.
‘You couldn’t do it,’ he said thickly when Drinkwater finished speaking, ‘your men wouldn’t stand for it . . .’
‘We’d still be damned foolish to put it to the test, Charles,’ temporized Shaw, ‘hell’s bells, you professional gennelmen are a pair of gamecocks to be sure. Arabella, my dear, we’d better fill their bellies with something less inflammatory than firewater . . .’
Vansittart laughed loudly and Mistress Shaw caught the manservant’s eye and addressed a few words to him.
‘Whether or not you gennelmen trade shot for shot rather depends upon the efforts of Mr Vansittart here,’ Shaw said, taking the diplomat’s elbow familiarly, ‘and we have concluded all the necessary arrangements for you to proceed to Washington, Mr Vansittart. A schooner has just arrived this evening to convey you up to Baltimore and I understand a chaise is at your disposal thereafter. I, for one, hope the news you bring for Mr Foster enables us to conclude a peaceful settlement of our dispute. Foster’s a better man than either Jackson or Erskine were in the subtleties of representing the British government over here, so there’s some hope!’ Shaw raised his glass and was about to propose a toast to peace when Stewart snorted his objection. Shaw put out a placating hand as Stewart made to protest. ‘Oh sure, Charles,’ he went on, ‘I understand your anger, Great Britain has undoubtedly acted the part of the bully and I’m sure Captain Drinkwater, being a fair-minded man, will acknowledge that his country’s foreign policies have not always been honourable, whatever justification – mainly expedience, I guess – is advanced, but it don’t mean we have to fight.’
‘Men were taken out of my own ship,’ Stewart protested.
‘The Stingray?’ queried Vansittart quickly.
‘No,’ said Shaw, ‘Charles was master of a Baltimore schooner between naval appointments,’ he explained. ‘We have more officers than ships . . .’
‘Naval ships,’ Stewart said with a heavy emphasis.
‘How many guns do your merchant ships mount?’ Vansittart asked, anticipating the question forming at the same instant in Drinkwater’s mind. Not for the first time, Drinkwater acknowledged the sharpness of Vansittart’s intelligence. Yet he did not want Vansittart to overplay his hand. Such a rapid tattoo of queries might make Stewart clam up and, in his perceptive state, Drinkwater wanted the already mildly intoxicated young man to talk a great deal more. Perhaps he might, with advantage, stir this pot a little.
‘They make excellent privateers, Vansittart,’ he said, ‘I recall during the last American war . . .’
Stewart, who had long since swallowed his third glass of rum, grinned. This British captain was not merely ancient, he was also cautious! ‘Cap’n Drinkwater is right,’ he said with a hint of mimicry, ‘they make excellent privateers, and we could have ’em swarming like locusts over the ocean.’ Stewart held up his free hand and snapped his fingers. ‘And a fig for your blockade! You’d have to convoy everything!’
‘Well, sir . . .’ Vansittart began but was interrupted.
‘Gentlemen,’ Arabella broke in, the yellow-coated servant at her shoulder, ‘dinner is served.’
They sat down to dine in the same room as they had used the previous evening, but now gravity not gaiety was the prevailing mood. Zebulon Shaw remained a gracious host and Vansittart a sociable guest but Stewart sank into a moody contemplation of the man who epitomized his conception of the enemy. As for Drinkwater, he did his best to contribute to the conversation and to maintain a somewhat pathetic contact with Arabella. He was largely unsuccessful, for Vansittart divided his easy attention between Shaw and his daughter-in-law.
Drinkwater could not afterwards recall what they had eaten. A spiced capon, he thought, though his abiding memory was a complex feeling of self-loathing, of irritation that Stewart’s slowly increasing drunkenness was accompanied by the man’s unceasing scrutiny, and of jealousy that Arabella should flirt so with Vansittart, a boy young enough to be her son.
He was in a foul mood when she rose and declared she would withdraw and leave them to their spirits and cigars. As she swept out with a smiling admonition to her father-in-law not to deprive her for too long of the society of so many gentlemen, Drinkwater felt bereft, unaware of a tender and pointed irony in her words.
‘This is a superb house,’ Vansittart remarked as he drew on his cigar.
‘It was my father’s conceit to build a castle, such as an English peer might have. He began in ’76, three weeks after the declaration of independence, but’, Shaw blew a fragrant cloud of tobacco smoke at the ceiling, ‘man proposes and God disposes.’
‘I don’t follow . . .’
‘He was killed at the Battle of the Brandywine a year later,’ Shaw explained. ‘Although a lieutenant in Wagonner’s Virginia regiment in Scotch Willie Maxwell’s brigade, he had been sent with a message to Wayne at Chadd’s Ford where he stopped a Hessian ball. He died instantly . . .’
‘I am sorry to hear it, sir,’ Vansittart replied.
Shaw shrugged. ‘Oh, I bear no ill-will, time heals all things and he died in good company.’
‘He died fighting the English,’ slurred Stewart.
Shaw seemed embarrassed at the interruption and addressed Drinkwater. ‘You served at the time, Captain, did you not?’
‘Aye, sir. I served in Carolina – and lost friends there. It had become a filthy business by then. The circumstances of death were less glorious. There was a midshipman whose end was foul.’
‘How so?’ Stewart put the decanter down and looked up. His intake of wine had been steady throughout the meal and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. A prurient curiosity blinked through his blurring eyes and Drinkwater wanted to wound the cocksure fool, to disabuse him of his misconceptions of war.
‘He was captured and mutilated, Captain Stewart,’ Drinkwater said quietly.
‘I think we should join . . .’ Shaw began, but Stewart ignored his host.
‘Whadya mean – mutilated?’
Vansittart half-rose, but his face was turned expectantly towards Drinkwater. The curiosity of the two younger men sent a sudden shudder of revulsion through Drinkwater. The one sought glory in war, the other thought of the business as a gigantic game in which whole divisions of men might be moved across continents as a matter of birth-right.
‘We found him with his own bollocks in his mouth, Captain Stewart.’
‘I am sorry about Charles,’ Arabella said as they stood once more on the terrace.
‘It was nothing.’
‘For a moment I thought . . .’
‘That I would call him out?’ Drinkwater chuckled, ‘God’s bones, no . . . I am too old for that tomfoolery.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ She pressed his arm and they stood in silence. The moon was riding clear of a low bank of cloud
and the stridulation of cicadas filled the air. In the room behind them Stewart had fallen asleep; Vansittart and Shaw were deep in discussion.
‘I am sorry,’ she said suddenly.
‘For what?’
‘I feel now that I should not have asked you to come this morning.’
‘My dear, what has passed between us has passed. We may or may not be judged, I don’t know . . .’
‘Remorse will turn you against me.’
‘I can never be anything more to you than I was today, you know that. But I shall never be anything less.’
‘I marked you as a man of constancy.’
‘You must have faith in your intuition . . .’
‘Nathaniel, suppose there are consequences?’
A cold sensation wrapped itself about his heart. ‘Is it likely?’
‘It is not impossible,’ she whispered fearfully.
‘I will give you an address in London. I will not abandon a child.’ He paused. Pride cometh before a fall, he recalled. The modest competence, the acquisition of Gantley Hall, his wife and family – how he had jeopardized them by his casual dalliance with this woman. A riot in the blood, she had called it . . .
But looking at her he yearned to kiss her again.
‘Arabella . . .’ She turned her face towards him when a movement at the end of the terrace caught his eye.
‘Who the devil . . . ?’
‘It’s me, sir, Frey.’
Gently he detached himself from her, aware, even in that prescient moment when he knew something was wrong, how reluctant she was to let him go. ‘Mr Frey? What the devil do you here?’
‘Eight men have run, sir. Made off in the blue cutter left alongside from the watering party.’
‘God damn and blast it!’
CHAPTER 9
September 1811
After the Fall
‘What’s to be done, sir?’
‘Quiet, boy!’
Midshipman Belchambers’ whispered query was hissed into silence by the first lieutenant. Metcalfe fidgeted, clasping and unclasping his hands, then ran a crooked finger round the inside of his stock. He felt Frey’s eyes upon him in the preternatural chiaroscuro of the moonlit quarterdeck and concluded that he did not like Frey: he and Captain Drinkwater were, what was it? Too close, yes, that was it, too close; the bonding of long service affronted Metcalfe’s hierarchical sensibilities, disturbed him where it had no right to. He felt the silent reproach in Vansittart’s presence among them, conceiving the young diplomat one of Drinkwater’s party when, by all the social conventions and familial traditions, Metcalfe knew he should not be so constantly at Drinkwater’s side. Belchambers was another, a lesser example of the first. He snapped the eager boy to cringing silence and faced aft, unaware of the irrationality of his train of thought, as apparently expectant as all the other officers ranged on deck, awaiting the reaction from the shadowy figure standing right aft at the taffrail.
The Flying Squadron Page 12