“Stronger and heavier?” Roberta asked, getting an idea to a problem that had nagged at her since they began the pursuit. How best could they board the other without being mown down by the soldiers’ carbines?
“Yes, My Lady.”
“Then when we see them we might dash out of our hiding place and ram; well let me be more specific. We lay alongside heavily and distract them from aiming their weapons.”
“I mus’ say I favours that idea,” Bloggins said.
“But I lead the borders,” Willis insisted. “For the honour of the Navy.”
“With that little cutlass?” the marine said scornfully.
“And a pistol,” Willlis amended.
Outside, the squalls continued but Farley had reported he could raise anchor to sail up the estuary whenever required. Inside, Lord Bond sat with van Aa in the Reaper’s great cabin as the marines brought Paine back.
He looked about. “He is another of your damned spies? Are there more?”
Lord Bond laughed. “Yes, I could produce more, but, if possible I wish to spare your feelings, Gideon . . . I may call you Gideon?”
“Call me what you like. What is this deal?”
“As you may have surmised, the diplomatic letters Ambassador Crawford sent you to Neuzen to find have already been found, and indeed, sent to Paris by Fouché’s message service. You do know of whom I speak, I suppose? The Duc d’Outrante?”
“I’m not a complete fool.”
“Ah, do not feel bad.” Bond put on a sympathetic expression. “Monsieur Fouché intimated to us that he would read the contents before delivering them—I need hardly mention that the copies we made have already been in the hands of the British government for almost a week.”
“Fouché told you what?”
“That he intended to read them. You see we are very well connected. I have a letter here from the Duke to an enemy of his, le Comte de la Marck, that I’d like you to deliver to an agent of the Count’s as you return up the Ghent-Neuzen canal.”
“I’m not a mail service. Why would I do that for you?”
“Because I suspect Ambassador Crawford would like to know that Napoleon’s own people are preparing for the worst when he launches his attempt upon Britain. The rest of the European nations will renew the war in his rear. I have the letter here, but it is sealed, of course.”
Paine wrinkled his nose. “You better read it to me.”
“Ah, that presents a problem. First, you have to agree not to make any threats against the young lady who was to deliver the letter.”
“I don’t get you.”
“She will be able to report the words Fouché used to her. It would be unwise for me to attempt to open the letter—Fouché’s security is very thorough.”
Paine stared at him for a long moment. “Who is this woman? I make no agreements unseen.”
Bond sighed. “Ah, I feared not. Perhaps we had better leave that letter to the last. I want to speak of what was in the letters aboard Reaper. It was a personal communication from President Madison to Mr. Crawford, about affairs of state.”
“Go on.”
“The President confided that the American government was on the brink of bankruptcy, and wanted the Ambassador to negotiate a loan of fifteen million dollars from Napoleon. I need hardly mention that France’s situation would make the possibility of such a loan very unlikely.”
Paine snorted. “There’s nothin’ new about the Government bein’ bankrupt. That’s been happenin’ for years.”
“Perhaps, but this time it has happened in the middle of a war. I assume you know that would put America in a difficult position; in that of trying to put off defeat by entering negotiations for a truce while the British government is aware of its desperate situation. The conditions imposed could be very onerous, unless they were started at once, before the money runs out. I would seriously urge Ambassador Crawford to initiate discussions with the British embassy in Switzerland.”
Paine regarded him calmly. “I don’t see things as that bad.”
“There is one other item in the letter that, knowing Lord Liverpool as I do, will incline him to exact the most severe penalties upon America that he can. Unless the American government can first offer a very generous inducement to soothe his wrath.”
“Soothe what wrath?”
“President Madison explores some non-pecuniary inducements for the loan. In one, he offers a number of American intelligence officers who are familiar with southeast England for service with the French invading force. I suppose you appreciate with what acrimony Americans would regard such an offer, if the parties were reversed.”
“I don’t believe he would do that.”
“I’m afraid he did, and Mr. Crawford can confirm that when you see him.”
Paine laughed. “I doubt Mr. Crawford would entrust me with any such information. He is inclined to use . . . but little inclined to reward.”
“So you are an agent of his? I suspected it—as did Fouché, who asked us to mention that he might justifiably investigate you as a suspected American spy.”
“I’m not. I just do things for him when it suits, in the expectation he will do things for me.”
“Such as informing you when your wife is committing adultery, and you can begin an action for divorce?”
“How the Hell do you know that?”
Bond laughed. “If you agree to cooperate with me in this proposal to initiate cease fire negotiations between our governments, I will answer your question. But you may want to know why I should be so interested in seeing our nations at peace.”
“I don’t deny it. Seems you have all the aces in this game. What do you get out of my part?”
“One more matter I have not yet mentioned. A countryman of yours, one Robert Fulton, has been in Antwerp building a new and very novel battleship that could swing the naval tide in France’s direction and make the invasion practical. He is very ill at the moment, my agent tells me, but if he recovers I would want the Ambassador to apply all pressure possible on him to return to America and cease in this scurrilous act.”
“One battleship doesn’t make a war.”
“Perhaps not, but if Napoleon is to order the invasion to begin, I believe that battleship will play a great part in his decision. And do not under-rate the present toll on the Royal Navy’s resources with the need to conduct the blockade of American ports as well as Europe’s. A cease fire in the American war would release much needed strength with which to oppose the French.”
“I see all that. But let’s go back to Fouché’s letter. Who is this woman?”
Lord Bond turned to van Aa. “Would you please go and tell Madame Timmins to come in?”
“I don’t know no Timmins.”
Lord Bond regarded him seriously. “I will judge you to be a gentleman, and not indulge in any coarse language or behaviour, when she arrives. Whatever she did, she did under orders.”
“This is that Frieherren bitch, isn’t it?”
“Watch your language,” Lord Bond ordered. “I will not tolerate my people to be abused.”
van Aa appeared in the doorway, with Elise just behind him. She entered and seated herself on a bench against the stern windows. She wore the same travelling skirt she had arrived in but the bag she had brought with her must have contained the finery she now displayed: jewelled combs and bows in her hair and a fine bolero jacket in velvet with designs in silver thread. Even Paine seemed to swallow some of his anger at the sight of her.
“Will you please tell Mister Paine what Fouché told you about the letter he gave you to deliver?”
Paine sat silently, but Elise glanced at him before starting. “I will return to you all the papers I took. I would return some of the money, but it is all spent.”
Paine stared at Lord Bond a moment before uttering a muttered expletive. “There was more than eighty francs in my pouch. I want it all repaid.”
Elise tossed her head and looked away from him. “There were seve
nty-six francs and some sous.”
“You may claim that amount as damages when you advance your claims against the prize court,” Bond told him before turning back to Elise. “Was the money spent on the expensive finery you are wearing?”
She laughed. “A little, but this was far more expensive than that. You will have to ask your wife to account for the rest.”
“Then that will be covered under the claim against the remainder of the sum I received for the auctioned tobacco. I left Lady Bond in Antwerp with some two thousand francs in gold Napoleons. When I see her next I will count what she has spent against the value of the tobacco.”
Elise chuckled. “I think she spent almost all the gold.”
“What? She spent a hundred guineas on clothes!”
Elise wore an unbelievably contrite face as she answered. “One does not receive an introduction to an Emperor in coarse linen. And don’t forget that she had to clothe both of us for the part.”
Both van Aa and Paine stared. “You met the Emperor?” van Aa asked.
“That we did, and sailed with him on his pyroscaphe. Lady Bond learned everything she came for.”
“Yes. We don’t need to tell the whole world our business,” Lord Bond grumbled. “Tell Gideon about the letter.”
“There will be a man called Henri waiting for canal barges at the second lock. He is there to identify some spies of ours that the Comte de la Marck would prefer dead. Alive, they could do him and his people great harm in their interrogation.”
“How do I recognize this Henri?” Paine asked.
Elise shrugged. “I just caught a glimpse of him. He is a cavalry officer and so wears a sabre. You will need to ask him if he knows where to find Monsieur LaGarde. This is the code signal the royalists use.”
“LaGarde . . . okay. I need my passport and more of my money.”
Bond answered. “You will undertake to convince Ambassador Crawford that he will be doing his country a great service if he begins negotiations with the British government before President Madison is forced to capitulate?”
Paine shrugged. “I have no love for this war. It has made it damn near impossible for me to run my business, and now I seem to have lost more than eight thousand dollars in tobacco to the Royal Navy. What did Fouché say about the letter?”
Elise looked at him squarely for the first time. “That there is an Austrian army within three days march of the frontier, a Russian army is poised to enter Saxony, and Prussia is only looking for a pretext to ally with them both. This was not a secret to me, my Dutch friends have reported as much. If Napoleon is defeated and King Louis claims the throne, he will need the existing government institutions to pledge loyalty and to keep the people fed so the revolutionaries do not try to rise again. Fouché points out that he is the only Chief of Police who can keep the public order. He pledges that his service has been to France, rather than to Napoleon, and he would readily pledge to serve France again under King Louis XVIII.”
Paine shook his head. “I don’t fancy his chances, but it doesn’t seem too dangerous to deliver this to the fellow called Henri.”
Lord Bond rose to his feet. “Then that is all settled. Here are forty gold Napoleons, your passport and Fouché’s letter—we will put you ashore right away.” He held out his hand, and with a slight hesitation, Paine took it. “Now we must up anchor and go to look for the sailing craft carrying our captured companions.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Action on the Water
As Roberta and those aboard Nederlander waited for the moment to raise anchor a brisk wind blew up from the landward side. “That’ll give us the power t’ sail out o’ here real suant-like,” Bloggins said. “Better’n that headwind yesterday.
“Aye,” Willis said with a smile. “Someone up there must a’ heard My Lady’s plan.”
Roberta smiled. “Yes, but now I have another one. If you are the commander of the boarding party should not you be checking your men and their weapons?”
“Aye aye, Your Ladyship.”
He set to work ensuring the small arms were properly loaded and primed while the men discussed what tactic they would follow to board the soldiers’ vessel.
“It seems to me that we must do as Lady Bond says,” van Ee said. “We use our momentum to rock the buertschip and knock the soldiers off their feet. Our advantage must then be continued by jumping immediately into their vessel.”
Everyone wore serious expressions at this, but they could not refute the wisdom. Roberta felt Lieutenant Farley’s amendment of Lord Bond’s earlier instructions, that sent to the Nederlander men who had prior experience with boarding, to the had been wise. The armed sailors and the marine seemed to endorse van Ee’s words most strongly.
They now had little to do but wait for their quarry to arrive.
She and Annie went into the little cabin to help the Dutch boys prepare some breakfast gruel for everyone and give them something to occupy themselves with other than brooding over the coming clash. She most fervently hoped they would take the soldiers completely by surprise and diminish any opposition from them.
When the weapons had been judged ready, Willis climbed the mast again to watch for the two vessels he had seen earlier leaving the anchorage. He was soon able to report that one of them was making all sail in a northerly direction, clearly on a course that would take it to the north bank of the estuary. A few minutes later he called again. “I see our buertschip a comin’ around the headland. ’Tis under all sail and making good speed on the wind.”
He climbed down to the deck. “I fear its course will take it nearer to the middle of the channel than close to us by the time it reaches here.”
“That don’t change our plan,” Bloggins said. “But I will steer sommat to windward from they until us gets closer.”
“Aye,” Willis agreed. “An’ we had best keep all the armed men from sight until we gets there.”
He climbed the mast yet again and when he judged the time a’right called down to those looking up at him. “Raise all sail. Stand by at the anchors.”
Then he came scrambling down.
The hoogaar became a scene of feverish activity. The main and foresail were sent up by the effort of the sailors and the marine. The Dutch cabin boys hauled on the anchor chains. Roberta and Annie went into the cabin out of the way. van Ee stood on the starboard rail holding on to the standing rigging for the earliest sight of their quarry. The sails breathed in a draft of fresh wind—and they were away.
As soon as he sighted the beurtschip van Ee signaled the bearing to Bloggins, standing at the tiller behind the top of the cabin, and bent into a crouch to take his own place beside the mast. “All men to the deck,” he ordered. “Only the cabin boys above the rail.”
That meant Roberta could see nothing as well, but she had the words of Bloggins as he stood to steer. “’Tis nigh on two cables distant, My Lady. But they’s sails is aback as they goes onto the port tack to come closer.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bloggins. Can the others hear you?”
“None too well, My Lady.”
Roberta bent her head to climb out of the cabin but still keep out of sight from the other vessel. “I will take post at the front of the cabin and keep the men apprised if you will call to me.”
“Dawn’t put yersel’ in danger, My Lady.”
Annie climbed halfway out of the doorway. “Let me do it, My Lady.”
Roberta remembered her braggadocio on the quay in Antwerp when she expressed her courage to Napoleon, and did not answer them. Willis smiled at her as she relayed the information from the tiller.
The messages were not all good. “Bloggins sees a dark squall of rain coming up the estuary,” was the first. The second was, “We are almost there.” And the third she kept to herself. The cabin boy Piet called to her as he stood on the starboard rail to tighten a clew. “I sees a ship coming around the headland, My Lady. It do look like the corvette.”
It was too late for them to chang
e their plan. Bloggins called to her, “Hold tight. We’re there,” and there was a crash and splintering of timbers as their starboard quarter smashed into the beurtschip’s port stern quarter.
The men all jumped to their feet but before they could climb the rail the beurtschip’s mains’l fell against them.
Feverishly they struggled to drag the torn sail free. Willis climbed onto the wreckage waving his cutlass. “Follow me, Lads.”
The others started to follow his example.
Before Willis could jump from one ship to the other a musket boomed from the vesse. He toppled backward and his cutlass fell free. He clutched at his sword-arm shoulder as he fell.
van Ee stopped to go to him.
“Leave me,” Willis cried. “Get aboard!”
Roberta stood and ran across the deck to Willis as a great commotion and shouting came from the other vessel. She ignored it, taking Willis’s head and shoulder in her arms, tearing a strip of cloth from her petticoat to make a bandage for him.
Lord Bond stood at the weather rail as Reaper eased out into the rain squalls and left Neuzen fading into the mists astern. He turned to speak with Lieutenant Farley standing beside the helmsman. “I am acutely aware that we were guided into Neuzen by that corvette when we arrived. The Westerschelde is not deep water and we could easily encounter a shoal that would see us high and dry.”
Farley smiled. “Well, My Lord, I haven’t been wasting my time since you left me here. I studied the course every passing vessel took for the last seven days to make a chart for Royal Naval purposes. I believe I can use that knowledge, even if imperfect, to safely sail eight or ten nautical miles in both directions.”
“You will place men in the bow to heave the lead?”
“Mister Dashwood will do so in short order, once he has ascertained that the marks of depth are accurate.”
Lord Bond smiled. “Capital show, carry on.”
His smile faded as he looked away. How would they locate the Nederlander in this weather—always assuming Elise’s information was correct. Anything could have happened to Roberta after Elise had dropped her and the maid beside the river. What if they had failed to find their way to the Nederlander? What if van Ee had upped anchor and left before they arrived?
Spies and Subterfuge Page 18