Picking up his hat Drinkwater left the cabin. Too tired to move suddenly Mackenzie stared after him. ‘Captain Drinkwater,’ he muttered, smiling to himself, ‘Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, by all that’s holy . . .’
In the dark and foetid stink of the orlop deck Drinkwater picked his way forward. Antigone listed over, and down here, deep in her belly, Drinkwater could hear the rush of the sea past her stout wooden sides. Here, where the midshipmen and master’s mates messed next to the marines above the hold, Lallo and his loblolly boys were plying their trade.
‘How are they?’ he asked, stepping into the circle of light above the struggling body of a seaman. Lallo did not look up but Skeete’s evil leer was diabolical in the bizarre play of the lantern. Drinkwater peered round in the darkness, searching for Tregembo, one hand on the low deck beam overhead. The prone seaman groaned pitifully, the sweat standing out on his body like glass beads. His screams were muted to agonised grunts as he bit on the leather pad Skeete had forced into his mouth. With a twist and a jerk Lallo withdrew his hand, red from a wound in the man’s thigh, and held a knife up to the dim light. The musket ball stuck on its point was intact. Lallo grunted his satisfaction as the man slipped into a merciful unconsciousness, and looked up at the captain.
‘Mostly gunshot wounds . . . at long range . . . spent . . .’
‘They came under fire getting out of the river. Where’s Tregembo?’
With a grunt, as of stiff muscles, Lallo got to his feet and, stepping over the body that Skeete and his mate were dragging to a corner of the tiny space, he led Drinkwater forward to where Tregembo lay, half propped against a futtock. Drinkwater knelt down. Tregembo’s shirt was torn aside and the white of the bandage showed in the mephitic gloom.
‘A sabre thrust to the bone,’ explained the surgeon. ‘It would have been easier to clean had it been a cut. It is too high to amputate.’
‘Amputate! God damn it, man, I sent particular word to you to ensure you debrided it.’
Lallo took the uncorked rum bottle that Skeete handed him and swigged from it.
‘I took your kind advice, sir,’ Lallo said with heavy irony, ‘but, as I have just said, the wound is a deep one. I have done my best but . . .’
‘Yes, yes, of course . . .’
Tregembo opened his eyes. He was already on the edge of fever, slipping in and out of semi-consciousness. He made an effort to focus his eyes on Drinkwater and began to speak, but the words were incomprehensible, and after a minute or two it was plain he was unaware ofhis surroundings. Drinkwater touched his arm. It was hot.
‘The prognosis?’ Drinkwater rose, stooping under the low deck-head.
Lallo shook his head. ‘Not good, sir. Uncertain at best.’
‘They spent a long time in the boat after the wounding.’
‘Too long . . .’ Lallo corked the rum bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Mr Lallo, I will risk the chance of offending you by saying that, when I was a prisoner aboard the Bucentaure, I observed a method of dressing a wound that was considered highly effective.’
‘A French method, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Humph!’
‘Soak a pledget in sea-water or camphorated wine and add a few drops of lead acetate. D’you have any lead acetate? Good. Bind the wound firmly with a linen bandage in which holes have been cut. Do not disturb the dressing but have the purulent matter which seeps through the holes wiped away. A compress of the same type is bound tightly over the first dressing and changed daily.’ Drinkwater looked at the men groaning at his feet. ‘Try it, Mr Lallo, as I have directed . . . and perhaps you will have less need of rum.’
He turned and made for the ladder, leaving Lallo and Skeete staring after him. On deck the fresh air was unbelievably sweet.
Mackenzie woke among unfamiliar surroundings. He tried to get out of the cot and found it difficult. When he got his feet on the deck Antigone heeled a little, the cot swayed outboard and in getting out he fell, sending the cot swinging further. Disencumbered of his weight the cot swung back, fetching Mackenzie a blow on the back of the head.
‘God!’ He got to his feet and stood unsteadily, feeling the bile stirring in his gullet. Casting desperately about he recalled the privy and reached the door to the quarter-gallery just in time. After a little while he felt better, and being a self-reliant and resourceful man he diverted his mind from his guts to the matter in hand. He carefully crossed the cabin and stood braced at Drinkwater’s table, staring down at the chart and the open pages of Mount’s Military Atlas. The latter attracted his interest and he swiftly forgot his seasickness.
‘By God, that’s providential,’ he murmured to himself. After a moment or two his curiosity and professional interest turned itself to Drinkwater’s desk. The left-hand of its two drawers was slightly open. Mackenzie pulled it out and lifted Drinkwater’s journal from it. He flicked the pages over and, on the page on which the neat script ceased, he noticed a strange entry in the margin. It consisted of a short word in Cyrillic script: NCAH.
‘So, I was right . . .’
‘What the devil d’you think you’re doing?’
Mackenzie looked up at Drinkwater standing in the doorway, his hat in his hand. He was quite unabashed.
‘Is this how you abuse my hospitality?’ Drinkwater advanced across the cabin, anger plain in his face. He confronted Mackenzie across the table; Mackenzie remained unruffled.
‘Where did you come across this?’ He pointed to the strange letters.
In his outrage Drinkwater had not seen exactly what Mackenzie had found. He had assumed the spy had been prying. Now the sudden emphasis Mackenzie put on those strangely exotic letters recalled to his mind his own, intensely personal reasons for having written them. He was briefly silent and then suddenly explosively angry.
‘God damn you, Mackenzie, you presume too much! That is a private journal! It has nothing to do with you!’
‘Be calm, Captain,’ Mackenzie said, continuing in a reasonable tone, ‘You are wrong, it has everything to do with me. What do these Russian letters mean? Do you know? Where did you learn them?’
‘What is that to you?’
‘Captain, don’t play games. You are out of your depth. This word and the hand that wrote it are known to me.’ He paused and looked up. ‘Do you know what these Cyrillic letters mean?’
Drinkwater sank back into the chair opposite to his usual one, the chair reserved for visitors to his cabin, so that their roles were again reversed. He shook his head.
‘If you transpose each of these letters with its Roman equivalent you spell the word island.’
Drinkwater shook his head. ‘I do not understand.’
‘If you then translate the word island back into Russian, you have the word Ostroff. It is a passably Russian-sounding name, isn’t it?’
Drinkwater shrugged, ‘I suppose so.’
‘Do you know who Ostroff is?’
‘I haven’t the remotest idea.’
‘Oh, come, Captain,’ Mackenzie remonstrated disbelievingly. ‘You went to the trouble of making a note of his name and in a book that was personally significant.’
‘Mr Mackenzie,’ Drinkwater said severely, ‘I do not know what you are implying, but you have obviously invaded my privacy!’
But Drinkwater’s anger was not entirely directed at Mackenzie, furious though he was at the man’s effrontery. There had been a reason why he had noted that incomprehensible Russian lettering down in his journal; and though he did not know who Ostroff was, he had his suspicions. He resolved to clear the matter up and settle the doubts that had been provoked by the sight of Nielsen’s dispatch.
‘Who the devil is this Ostroff then?’
Mackenzie smiled that tight, menacing smile, and Drinkwater sensed he knew more than he was saying. ‘A spy. An agent in the Russian army. And now perhaps you will trade one confidence for another. Where did you get these letters from? Are you in correspondenc
e with this man?’
Drinkwater’s heart was thumping. Mackenzie’s words closed the gap between speculation and certainty.
‘From a dispatch intercepted in the possession of a Danish merchantman which I stopped a week or two ago.’
‘What was the name of the ship?’
‘The Birthe of Grenaa, Captain . . .’
‘Nielsen?’ interrupted Mackenzie.
‘Yes. Frederic Nielsen.’
‘And what did you do with Nielsen and his dispatch?’
‘I let him go with it. I was satisfied that he and it were what they said they were.’
‘But you copied out the name by which the dispatch was signed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Drinkwater shrugged.
‘Captain, you say you were sure of the authenticity of a dispatch carried by a neutral and you let the vessel go. Yet you were not sure enough not to note down the signatory. Odd, don’t you think? Where was the dispatch bound?’
‘I do not think that a proper question to answer, Mackenzie. I am not sure I should be answering any of these questions. I am not sure I ought not to have you in irons . . .’
‘Captain,’ said Mackenzie in a suddenly menacing tone, ‘mine is a dangerous trade in which I trust no one. I am curious as to whom you thought this man was; why you copied out this signature. It is almost inconceivable that any obviously trusted servant of their Lordships of the Admiralty should behave traitorously . . .’
Drinkwater was on his feet and had leaned across the table. He spat the words through clenched teeth, beside himself with rage:
‘How dare you, you bastard! You have no right to come aboard here and make such accusations! Who the hell are you to accuse me of treason? Get out of my seat! You stand here and make your report to me, before I have this ship put about for The Sound and confine you in the bilboes!’
‘By God, Captain, I apologise . . . I see I have misjudged you.’ Mackenzie stood and confronted Drinkwater. ‘I think you have reassured me on that point at least . . .’
‘Have a care . . .’
‘Captain, you must hear me out. It is a matter of the utmost importance, I assure you. I know you have had previous contact with Lord Dungarth’s Secret Department; I assume from what you implied earlier that you have some freedom in the interpretation of your orders, perhaps from his Lordship. I also assume that you let Frederic Nielsen proceed because he had a dispatch addressed to Joseph Devlieghere at Antwerp . . . Ah, I see you find that reassuring . . . Tell me, Captain, did you ever know a man called Brown?’
‘I saw the Dutch hang him at Kijkduin.’
‘And do you think the Dutch were responsible?’
Drinkwater looked sharply at Mackenzie, but he did not answer.
‘Come, Captain, have you not come across a French agent named Edouard Santhonax?’
Drinkwater strode across the cabin, pulled out his sea-chest and from it drew a roll of frayed canvas. He unrolled it.
‘Identify this lady and I’ll believe you are who you say you are.’
‘Good God!’ Mackenzie stared at the cracking paint. The portrait showed a young woman with auburn hair piled upon her head. Pearls were entwined in the contrived negligence of her classical coiffure. Her creamy shoulders were bare and her breasts just visible beneath a wisp of gauze. Her grey eyes looked coolly out of the canvas and there was a hint of a smile about the corners of her lovely mouth. ‘Hortense Santhonax, by heaven!’
‘A celebrated beauty, as all Paris knows.’
‘Where the devil did you get it?’
Drinkwater nodded at the portrait of Elizabeth that had not been done with half as much skill as that of Madame Santhonax. ‘It used to hang there. This ship, Mr Mackenzie, was once commanded by Edouard Santhonax when she was captured in the Red Sea. I was one of the party who took her.’ He rolled up the portrait. ‘I kept it as a memento. You see, I rescued Madame Santhonax from a Jacobin mob in ninety-two . . . before she turned her coat. She was eventually taken back to France. I was on the beach with Lord Dungarth when we released her . . .’
‘And he didn’t shoot her,’ put in Mackenzie, shaking his head. ‘Yes, he has told me the story.’ He looked about him. ‘It’s incredible . . . this ship . . . you. Captain, I am sorry, I acted hastily. Please accept my apologies.’
‘Very well. It is of no matter. I think you have provided proof of your identity. We had better sink our differences in a glass of wine.’
‘That is a capital idea.’ Mackenzie smiled and, for the first time since meeting him, Drinkwater felt less menaced, more in control of the situation. He poured the two drinks and behind him he heard Mackenzie mutter ‘Incredible’ to himself.
‘This man Ostroff,’ said Drinkwater conversationally, seating himself in his proper place at last, ‘is he of importance to you?’
‘He will be invaluable if my hypothesis proves accurate.’
‘You mean if an armistice is concluded between Alexander and Napoleon?’
‘Yes. Whatever terms are agreed upon, they will clearly be prejudicial to Britain. Ostroff is the one man in a position to learn them. Now, with the loss of Königsberg, Ostroff’s communications are cut. The situation is serious but not fatal. We still have access to Memel, at least until the two Emperors meet, hence my request that you carry me there. You see, I am Ostroff’s post-boy. I forwarded his dispatch through Nielsen.’
‘You . . . you know him well then, this Ostroff?’ Drinkwater’s heart was thumping again; he felt foolishly vulnerable, although Mackenzie’s manner towards him had so drastically altered.
‘Oh yes, I know him, Captain Drinkwater. That is why I could not understand your attitude.’
‘I do not understand you.’
Mackenzie frowned. ‘You mean you really do not know who Ostroff is?’
‘No,’ he said, but he felt that his voice lacked conviction.
‘You share the same surname, Captain Drinkwater . . .’
The blood left Drinkwater’s face. So, he had been right! Despite the cipher, despite the years that had passed, he had recognised the hand that had penned Nielsen’s dispatch.
‘So Ostroff is my brother Edward,’ he said flatly.
‘It is a chain of the most remarkable coincidences, Captain,’ said Mackenzie.
‘Not at all,’ replied Drinkwater wearily, rising and fetching the decanter from its lodgement in the fiddle. ‘It is merely evidence of the workings of providence, Mr Mackenzie, which rules all our fates, including those of Napoleon and Alexander.’
10
June 1807
The Mad Enterprise
‘How did you discover the connection between us?’ Drinkwater asked at last, after the two men had sat in silence awhile. ‘I understood my brother to be living under a nom de guerre.’
‘Oh, it isn’t common knowledge, Captain Drinkwater; you need have no fear that more than a few men know about it. Dungarth does, of course, and Prince Vorontzoff, your brother’s employer and a man sympathetic to the alliance with Great Britain, knows him for an Englishman. But I think I am the only other man who knows his identity, excepting yourself, of course.’
‘But you have not said how you knew.’
‘It is quite simple. He told me once. He was sent to me from Hamburg. I introduced him to the elder Vorontzoff and, one night, shortly before I left St Petersburg, we got drunk . . . a Russian custom, you see,’ Mackenzie said and Drinkwater thought that Mackenzie had probably ensured Edward’s loose tongue by his own liberality. ‘He had reached a turning-point. A man does not put off the old life overnight and he seemed over-burdened with conscience. He made some thick allusions to drinking water. The joke was too heavy for wit and he was too drunk to jest, yet his persistence made me certain the words had some significance . . . but it was only when I learned your name from Lieutenant . . .’
‘Quilhampton.’
‘Just so, that I began to recall Ostroff’s drunken pun. Then, having had
my professional curiosity aroused, I felt it was necessary to,’ Mackenzie shrugged with an irresponsible smile, ‘to invade your privacy, I think you said. And my effrontery was rewarded; you had inscribed Ostroff’s Russian signature in your journal. Quod erat demonstrandum.’
‘I see.’ It was very strange, but Drinkwater felt an enormous weight lifted from him. Somehow he had known for years that he must atone for his own crime of aiding and abetting Edward’s escape from the gallows. It was easy to excuse his actions, to disguise his motives under the cant of reasons of state. The truth was that his own rectitude made him feel guilty. Edward was a man who drifted like a straw upon the tide and who, through some strange working of natural laws, managed to float to the surface in all circumstances. To Edward, and probably Mackenzie, his own misgivings would seem utterly foolish. But he knew himself to be of a different type, a man whose life had been dogged by set-backs, wounds and hardships. Perhaps the atonement would still come, but he could not deny the relief at Edward’s identity no longer being quite so hermetic a secret.
He looked at Mackenzie. A few moments earlier he had been ready to consign the man to the devil. Now they sat like old friends sipping their wine, bound by the common knowledge of Ostroff’s true identity. It occurred to Drinkwater that, yet again, Mackenzie had a superior hold over him; but he found the knowledge no longer made him angry.
‘I knew my brother to have found employment with Prince Vorontzoff, on account of his abilities with horses, but I do not fully understand how he serves you and Lord Dungarth.’
‘He is a brilliant horseman, I believe, and on account of this he formed a close friendship with Vorontzoff’s son. Good horsemen are much admired in Russia and the younger Vorontzoff, being appointed to the army in the field, got some sort of commission for Ostroff. That sort of thing is not difficult in the Tsar’s bureaucracy. Ostroff was at Austerlitz and attached to the Don Cossacks at Eylau, though what he has been up to lately I do not know. I was trying to make contact with him and Wilson when I was chased into Königsberg by those French dragoons.’
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