Ebb tide nd-14

by Ричард Вудмен

  'Well, Vane, there are no more rockets going up ...'

  'No, sir.'

  'And that's all you saw?'

  'Aye. I didn't waste time coming down to take a look, remembering your orders, like.'

  'Quite right.' Drinkwater swept the desolate tumbling waters of the bay with his glass once more, then shut it with a snap. 'Well, 'tis possible she was farther out and may have got into Harwich.' He waved his glass to the southward.

  'Aye, Captain, that may well be the case.'

  Drinkwater remained a moment longer, his cloak flapping round him like a dark flag, and then he turned to Vane. 'Well, Harry, we've done our best. If any poor devil is out there, there's precious little we can do for 'em. Let's to bed!'

  'Right, Captain.'

  And with that the two men turned and stumped up the shingle beach towards the waiting trap, the stones crunching under their boots.

  Susan Tregembo woke them the next morning with the news. There had been a wreck in the night, a lugger, it was thought, though not much of her had been washed up and rumour said she had knocked her bottom out on the Cutler shoal in the dark, though how anyone knew this only compounded the mystery. This conjecture had been brought by Michael Howland who worked for Henry Vane and whom Vane had sent down on one of the plough horses to ride the tide-line between Shingle Street and Bawdsey soon after dawn.

  'Have they found any of the poor devils?' asked Drinkwater, sitting up in bed, eyeing the coffee pot that Susan seemed reluctant to settle in its usual station.

  'Yes, Captain, and there's a note for you.' She set the tray down and handed Drinkwater a folded paper. He reached for his spectacles and recognized Vane's rounded hand.

  Home Farm

  About 6

  Sir,

  I have had from my Lad Howland some Sad News that Four Bodies came Ashore between the Towers at Shingle Street. He is much Frighted, but I am gone to get Them. One he says is of a Woman. Will you send to the Justices or What ought I to Do?

  Y'r Serv't

  Hen. Vane.

  Having dismissed Susan with orders for his horse to be saddled, Drinkwater pulled on his breeches, dressed and drank his coffee. Twenty minutes later, after a quick breakfast, he was in the saddle, urging the horse past the gaunt ruins of the old priory which rose, ivy-covered, in the grounds to the rear of the Hall. He had no time for such antiquities this morning, for on horseback Drinkwater was as awkward as Vane in a drawing-room. He loathed riding, not merely because at his age the posture of sitting astride pained 'his rheumaticks' sorely, but because he had no expertise in the saddle. A passion for horses had killed his father, and his brother Edward had loved the damned beasts, but Nathaniel had disappointed his parent in having no natural aptitude for them, and an early fall had so knocked him about that his mother had insisted that Ned might ride because he enjoyed it, but Nat should not if he did not wish to. Nat had never wanted to since, but there had been a wild and tempestuous ride from Tilsit to Memel...

  'By God!' he muttered, bobbing up and down as his nag trotted and his hat threatened to go by the board, and remembering how Edouard Santhonax had tried to prevent Drinkwater bringing Patrician back from the Baltic with the news of the secret treaty between Tsar Alexander and Napoleon, and how he had fought Santhonax in the Dutch frigate Zaandam. 'That mad dash all ended here in Ho'sley Bay!'

  He had killed Santhonax in the fight, revenging himself upon the Frenchman who had so savagely mauled his shoulder ten years before in an alley in Sheerness. And he had thereby widowed Santhonax's wife, Hortense ...

  But enough of that. Such thoughts plagued younger men than himself, though he had seen Hortense a year ago when she had come to him like Nicodemus, by night. Damn the woman for a witch! She had inveigled out of him a pension on the grounds that she had performed a service to the British government. Drinkwater had been obliged to pay the thing himself. One day Elizabeth must find out and then there would be the devil to pay and no pitch hot enough, by God!

  He found Vane and his two men with a small cart from the farm. They had already loaded two of the bodies and were handling the third as Drinkwater approached. Drinkwater forced his horse down the shingle towards the breakers that still crashed with a mighty roar. But the wind had dropped, and although the air was full of the salty tang of spray, it was now no more than a strong breeze.

  A few pieces of black painted wood were strewn about the beach, and a large grating around which some small kegs had been quickly lashed told how the four had come ashore.

  'When Michael found 'em, they were all tied to that,' Vane explained, coming up to Drinkwater's horse and pointing to the extemporized life-saver.

  'They are all dead, I presume,' Drinkwater queried.

  'Come and see, Captain.'

  Drinkwater dismounted and Vane took his horse's reins as they walked across the shingle. The third body had just been put on to the cart and the men were returning for the fourth. By the feet, he could see it was that of a woman, though a shawl had been thrown over her face. Drinkwater bent and drew back the shroud.

  Underneath, the vacant face of Hortense Santhonax stared unseeing at the sky. She was as white as the lady in his dream.

  'Why do they have to come here?' Elizabeth asked, as she watched Vane's men carry the corpses into the lower barn.

  'We shall bury them in the priory,' Drinkwater said shortly, his face grim.

  'It is very sad ...'

  'I can only think they must have been trying to run into the Ore, though to do so in a south-easterly wind would have been sheer foolhardiness ...' He was thinking out loud and Elizabeth held her peace. If she was bewildered by her husband's idea of burying the victims of the storm within the grounds, his next remark astonished her.

  'I want the woman brought up to the house. Susan shall lay her out...'

  'But I have sent for old Mrs Farrell. She always ...'

  'No,' Drinkwater said sharply, 'Farrell may do the men, but Susan shall see to the woman.'

  'But why...?'

  'Because I say so.'

  Elizabeth looked sharply at her husband and was about to remonstrate when she caught sight of the expression on his face as he turned away. On rare occasions, he still considered himself upon a quarterdeck and she was usually quick to disabuse him of the idea, but there was something different about this.

  Elizabeth held her peace until the late morning, when the woman's body had been brought up to the Hall. Vane's men were busy sawing up planks for the coffins and Drinkwater was drafting a statement to send into Woodbridge after it had been attested to by Vane. Elizabeth went into the parlour where Susan was laying out the wretched woman.

  'Oh, ma'am, you didn't ought to ...'

  'It's all right, Susan, I'm no stranger to death. I had to do this for my father ...'

  Susan seemed about to say more but held her peace and worked at loosening the woman's clothes.

  'She was very beautiful,' Elizabeth remarked sadly.

  'But for this,' said Susan, lifting a heavy tress of hair which had once been a glorious auburn but which now contained strands of grey. She exposed the right side of the dead woman's head.

  'Dear God!' A coarse scar ran in heavy seams of fused flesh from under the profusion of hair, over the line of the jaw and down her neck. The right ear was missing. 'The poor woman.'

  'Looks like a burn,' said Susan, rolling a pledget into the mouth and forcing the jaw closed. 'Mistress, I have to move her to reach her lower parts.'

  'Let me help.'

  "Tisn't necessary, Mistress, really 'tisn't.'

  'It is quite all right...'

  Elizabeth sensed Susan's resentment at her interference. It was unlike the woman, with whom she had enjoyed a long and amicable relationship. Elizabeth began to sense something odd about the whole business and said, 'I wonder who she is? She is well dressed for travelling. This habit is exquisite ...'

  'Mistress, I...'

  'What on earth is the matter, Susan?'

&
nbsp; "Tis the Captain, Mistress ...'

  'The Captain?' quizzed Elizabeth, frowning. 'What on earth has he to do with this matter?'

  Susan shook her head and said, 'If you wish to help, Mistress, take her camisole off. 'Twill be there if 'tis anywhere.'

  'Susan! What in heaven's name are you talking about? What will be there?'

  'It would have been better had you not known, my dear.'

  Elizabeth spun round to see her husband standing just inside the parlour door. Both she and Susan sought to interpose themselves between Drinkwater and the pale form lying half exposed upon the table.

  'Well, Susan?' Drinkwater addressed the housekeeper.

  'Nothing yet, sir, but I haven't had time to ...'

  'Nathaniel, what is all this about?'

  'Who is all this about, my dear, would be more correct.'

  'You know her, do you not?' Elizabeth's question was suddenly sharply charged with horrible suspicions.

  'I do, yes. Or rather, I knew her. Once.'

  'Shall I go, sir?' Susan asked anxiously, aware of the gleam in her mistress's eyes.

  'That is not necessary,' Drinkwater said flatly. 'I have entrusted you to search her and you know enough to have your curiosity aroused. Such titillation only causes gossip. You would be prudent not to make too much of what you hear, and to speak about it only between yourselves.' He smiled, a thin, wan smile, so that Elizabeth's initial suspicion was at once confirmed. Yet she also felt strangely moved. There was much about the life her husband had led that she knew nothing of, but she sensed that if he had deceived her with this once lovely creature, there would have been more than common infidelity about it.

  'She is, or was until last night, a sort of spy,' Drinkwater began, addressing Elizabeth. 'She peddled information and acted as a go-between. Her presence aboard a wrecked lugger in Ho'sley Bay argues strongly that she intended coming here ...'

  'Here? To see you?' Elizabeth asked.

  'Yes.' Drinkwater sighed. 'It is a long and complicated story, but many, many years ago she was among a group of émigrés we rescued off a beach in western France. Some time afterwards, while resident in England, she turned her coat and married a dashing French officer named Edouard Santhonax. It was he who gave me the sword-cut in the shoulder.' Drinkwater touched the place, and Elizabeth opened her mouth in astonishment.

  'Later, he was sent out to the Red Sea where, by chance, I was party to the seizure of his frigate which I afterwards commanded ...'

  'The Melusine?' asked Elizabeth, recalling the sequence of her husband's ships.

  Drinkwater shook his head. 'No, it was some time after that...'

  'The Antigone?'

  Drinkwater nodded. 'But her husband and I were to cross paths again. It is odd, but I fought him not far ... no perhaps', he said wonderingly, 'on the very spot where she drowned. Just offshore here, some few miles off the Ness at Orford. I killed him in the fight...'

  'Then you made a widow of her.' Elizabeth looked at the face now bound up with a bandage.

  'Yes.'

  'That is terrible.'

  'I do not deny it. But had I not done so, there is little doubt but that he would have made a widow of you.'

  Elizabeth considered the matter. 'How very strange.'

  'That is not all.'

  'You mean you ...'

  'I have seen her since,' Drinkwater broke in, 'the last time less than a year ago, in April...'

  'Nathaniel!'

  'She came aboard Andromeda while we were anchored off Calais. She laid before me information concerning the intention of some French officers to liberate Napoleon after he was sent into exile.' He paused and gave a wry smile. 'It may sound extraordinary, but one might say the world owes the present peace, at least in part, to Hortense Santhonax ...'

  They looked at the corpse with a curious fascination, the silence broken suddenly by a faint escape of gas from the body which moved slightly, startling them.

  'Oh, Lord!' giggled Susan nervously, pressing a hand to her breast.

  Drinkwater's expression remained grim. 'Come, Susan, search the lining of her habit.'

  'Do you look for papers, Nathaniel?' Elizabeth asked.

  'It occurs to me that she might have been carrying them, yes.'

  'But the war is over.'

  Yet she intended to come here. Unless she came on her own account, she must have had a purpose.'

  'Why should she come upon her own account?'

  'My dear, this is neither the time nor the place ...'

  'Then let us discuss it elsewhere.' Elizabeth was suddenly brusque. 'Susan is busy and we should leave her to her task.'

  Drinkwater shrugged and let his wife hustle him out of the parlour and into the drawing-room.

  'Well, sir,' she said sharply, turning on him. 'You have something to tell me, I think. If she was coming here on her own account, and I cannot think, with the war over, that any other reason would move her, I wish to know it. Besides, you said just now that the last time you saw her was in April last. How many times had you seen her previous to that? Do you expect me to believe all this was related to Lord Dungarth's department? Tell me the truth, Nathaniel. And now, before you have a drink, sir.'

  'Sit down, Bess, and rest easy,' Drinkwater smiled and eased himself into a chair, leaning forward to rake the fire and throw some billets of wood on it. 'I met her before our encounter last April in the house of a Jew named Liepmann, near Hamburg, and yes, it was all in some way connected with Lord Dungarth and the business of his Secret Department. After his death it fell to me, as you know, to carry on some of his work. Hortense had moved in high places. It was said she was the mistress of Talleyrand, until the Prince of Benevento ousted her in favour of the Duchess of Courland. Did you see her scar? She was badly burned at the great ball given by the Austrian Ambassador in Paris on the occasion of the marriage of the Archduchess Marie-Louise to Napoleon. There was a fire, d'you see ...'

  'The poor woman.'

  'Yes, she was much to be pitied.'

  'And you pitied her?'

  'A little, yes.'

  'To the extent of ...' Elizabeth faltered.

  'Of what? Come, say it ... You cannot, eh?' Drinkwater was smiling and stood up, crossing the room to pour two glasses of madeira as he spoke. 'Yes, I pitied her but not as you imagine. It would not be true to say I did not consider lying with her, she was extraordinarily beautiful and possessed a very great power over men.' Drinkwater handed Elizabeth a glass. 'I shall tell you frankly that I once embraced her.'

  Drinkwater paused, sipping his wine as his wife held hers untouched, regarding him with a curious, suspended look, as if both fearful and eager to hear what he had to say.

  'I pitied her certainly, for when I saw her last, she was much reduced in her circumstances. She asked me to arrange a pension, but', he shrugged, 'it was impossible that any minister would listen to me and I did not possess the influence of John Devaux.'

  'So you made her a grant yourself of fifty pounds per annum.'

  'You know!'

  'I knew you were supporting someone. We have the wreckage of others here, Susan and Billie Cue ... I knew from an irregularity in our accounts that you had provided for someone else. It never occurred to me that it was a Frenchwoman.'

  Drinkwater sighed. 'I had not wished you to know, lest the explanation be too painful, but I give you my word that nothing beyond that embrace ever passed between us.'

  'Your bankers are indiscreet, Nathaniel,' Elizabeth said with a smile. 'But', she went on, her face sobering, 'she cannot surely have been coming here to see you about that, unless she wished for more. D'you think that was it?'

  Drinkwater shook his head emphatically. 'No. She would never have asked for more. She wanted the means to live quietly, that is all. No,' Drinkwater frowned, 'it is very odd, but I was thinking of her only last night, wondering how she was surviving under the restored Bourbons...'

  'She was your ghost?'

  Drinkwater nodded. 'Yes,
damned odd. She had, like almost all of her generation, sided with Bonaparte. Obscurity would have been best for her, but that may not have been possible for such a creature under the restored Bourbons. It strikes me therefore that there must have been two possible reasons for her coming here now. One might have been to solicit accommodation hereabouts, to appeal to our charity. The other, to bring me some intelligence.'

  'And to sell it, perhaps?'

  Drinkwater shrugged. 'Perhaps. Perhaps it was to do both, to sell the latter to gain the former. She would have been safe enough in England, heaven knows ...' He frowned. 'But...'

  'But?'

  'I don't know, but neither seems quite in keeping with so hazardous an undertaking as making passage in a lugger in such unpropitious circumstances ... And yet...'

  'Go on.'

  'It is just possible that news of sufficient importance might make the game worth the candle, and it would be entirely in keeping with her character to persuade the commander of an unemployed lugger-privateer to make the attempt.' He stood and refilled his glass.

  'I see.' Elizabeth held out her own glass. 'She was an uncommon woman.'

  Drinkwater nodded and poured more madeira. 'Not as uncommon as you, my darling, but remarkable, none the less.'

  'Then we had better let her turbulent spirit go, and put her earthly remains within the old sanctuary'

  Drinkwater bent and kissed his wife's head. 'I ought to see if Susan has found anything.'

  But all Susan had found were twenty golden sovereigns sewn into the lining of Hortense's skirt. Drinkwater gave five to Susan, three each to Vane's men who had helped recover the bodies, five to Vane for the elm boards and his own trouble, and the remaining four to the clergyman who buried her under the great flint arch of the ancient priory.

  In the days that followed, it occurred to Drinkwater that Hortense might have been motivated by some intrigue involving the delegates at the Congress of Vienna. But the idea of his being able to influence anything of such consequence was ridiculous. He was now no more than an ageing post-captain, superannuated on the half-pay of his rank, one of hundreds of such officers. The notion that he might cut any ice with the government was preposterous!