‘Thank you, but no. I have to get under weigh without further delay’
‘Where are you bound?’
‘Down Channel to the westward,’ Drinkwater held out his hand.
Poulter shook it warmly then sniffed the wind. ‘You’ll have a beat of it, then.’
‘Unfortunately yes.’ Drinkwater was already half over the rail, casting a glance down at the boat bobbing below.
‘Well, it’s fair for the estuary’ said Poulter leaning over to watch him descend, the letters, one to Drinkwater’s prize agent, the other to Elizabeth, fluttering in his hand.
‘And I daresay the Brethren will be anxious to be off, eh, Mr Poulter?’ and grinning complicitly Drinkwater sat heavily in the gig’s stern-sheets and allowed Mr Dunn to ferry him back to his frigate.
CHAPTER 4
Out of Soundings
April 1814
The wind settled in the south-south-west, a steady breeze which wafted fluffy, lambs-wool clouds off the coast of France. Clear of Cap Blanc Nez, Birkbeck had the people haul the fore-tack down to the larboard bumkin, and the main-tack forward to the fore chains. The sheets of the fore and main courses were led aft and hauled taut. Andromeda carried sail to her topgallants and heeled to leeward, driving along with the ebb tide setting her south and west through the Dover Strait, and while her bowsprit lay upon a line of bearing with the South Foreland high lighthouse, the tide would set her clear of the English coast.
Periodically a patter of spray rose in a white cloud over her weather bow, hung an instant, then drove across the forecastle and waist, darkening the white planking. The sea still bore the chill of a cold winter, and set anyone in its path a-shiver, but the sunshine was warm and brought the promise of summer along with the faint scent of the land.
‘France smells all right,’ Drinkwater overhead Midshipman Dunn say, ‘but it don’t mean it is all right.’
This incontrovertible adolescent logic diverted Drinkwater’s attention from the frigate’s fabric, for she would stand her canvas well, to consider the plight of the muscle and brain that made her function.
Under any other circumstances, so fine a day with so fine a breeze would have had the hands as happy as children playing, but there was a petulance in Dunn’s voice that seemed to be evidence of a bickering between the young gentlemen. Further forward, Drinkwater watched the men coiling down the ropes and hanging them on the life-rails. From time to time one of them would look aft, and Drinkwater would catch the full gaze of the man before, seeing the eyes of the captain upon him, he would look quickly away.
Nearer to him, Birkbeck the sailing master checked the course for the twentieth time, nineteen of which had been unnecessary. Marlowe and Ashton were also on deck, conversing in a discreet tête-à-tête, except that their discretion was indiscreet enough to reveal the subject of their deliberations to be Captain Drinkwater himself, at whom they threw occasional, obvious and expectant glances.
Drinkwater knew very well what was on their minds; his dilemma was the extent to which he could explain where they were bound and why they had left the Royal Squadron. Why in fact they were headed, not for the River Medway to lay up their ship, but down Channel. It was a problem he had faced before, and often caused a lack of trust, particularly between a commander and a first lieutenant, but it was made far worse on this occasion because of the source of the intelligence which had precipitated this wild passage to the westward. How could he explain the rationale upon which his conclusions were based? How could he justify the conviction that had led him to obtain his orders? Moreover, he knew it was his conscience that spurred him to justify himself at all, not some obligation laid upon a post-captain in the Royal Navy based on moral grounds, or consideration for his ship’s company. In retrospect it all seemed like deception, and as the hours passed, Blackwood’s suspicions appeared more justifiable. But to set against this was the reflection that Blackwood had come round to support Drinkwater in the end, and what was the diversion of one frigate, if it could save the peace?
On the other hand, what was it to Blackwood, when all was said and done? The man was almost at the top of the post-captain’s list and was virtually beyond any recriminations if things miscarried. In such a light, even the support of Prince William Henry might prove a fickle thing, for His Royal Highness carried no weight at the Admiralty.
Drinkwater shoved the worrying thought aside. He would have to offer some explanation to the ship’s company, for the news that peace was concluded and the ship was to have laid up, was too well known to simply pass over it if he wanted his people to exert themselves. As matters stood, it was already common knowledge he had been aboard Impregnable earlier that morning; it was also known that even earlier a French staff-officer had come aboard and been in conversation with Captain Drinkwater for a long time. Most of the night, it was said in some quarters, which added spice to an even more scurrilous rumour that the captain’s nocturnal visitor had been a woman!
This was imagined as perfectly possible among the prurient midshipmen, but when it was later postulated in the wardroom, Lieutenant Marlowe pooh-poohed it as ridiculous.
‘D’you think I would not know a woman when she came aboard,’ Marlowe said dismissively. ‘A lot of Frenchmen do not have deep voices.’
This statement divided the wardroom officers into the credulous and the contemptuous, further disturbing the tranquillity of the ship.
‘Well, what d’you think, Frey?’ Ashton asked as he helped himself to a slice of cold ham. ‘You’ve sailed with the queer old bird before.’
Frey shrugged. ‘I really have no idea,’ he replied evasively.
‘But you must have!’
‘Why?’ Frey looked up from his own platter.
‘Well, I mean does our Drink-water,’ Marlowe laboured the name, thinking it witty, ‘make a habit of entertaining French whores?’
Frey casually helped himself to coffee. It was painful to hear Drinkwater spoken of in such terms by this crew of johnny-come-latelies, but Frey was too open a character to dissemble. Drinkwater had, he knew, been a party to some odd doings during the late war, but he did not wish to expatiate to his present company. Why should he? These men were not comrades in the true sense of the word; they were merely acquaintances, to be tolerated while the present short commission was got over. Nevertheless he was assailed by a growing sense of anticlimax in all this. Superficially the task of conveying the rightful king of France back to his realm had a comfortably conclusive feeling about it. It was like the end of a fairy story, with the kingdom bisected in favour of the parvenu hero, and the princess given in marriage to cement the plot. Except that that was not what had happened; the parvenu hero had lost, the princess was snatched back by her father and the kingdom was being returned to the ogre.
‘Well, Frey? It seems by your silence that you know damned well our Drinkie’s a famous libertine, eh?’ goaded Ashton.
‘What confounded nonsense!’ Frey protested. He did not like Ashton, seeing in the third lieutenant a manipulative and unpleasant character, but his introspection had delayed his response and he had left it too late to defend Drinkwater.
‘Tut, tut. Now we know why he never hoisted himself up the sides of a two-decker,’ said Marlowe pointedly and with such childish delight that a disappointed Frey concluded the man was either superficial, or of limited intelligence.
‘You know very well we were only attached to the Royal Squadron in honour of His Royal Highness,’ Frey said, trying to recover lost ground.
‘I suppose they had to leave Drinkwater in her,’ Hyde, the hitherto silent marine officer, put in, looking up briefly from his book. ‘After all he has just taken a Danish cruiser …’
‘I heard he was damned lucky to get away with that,’ said Ashton maliciously, ‘and I heard he took a fortune in specie.’
‘Is that true, Frey?’ asked Marlowe, provoking Hyde to abandon his book.
Frey finished his coffee and rose from the table as Andromeda hit
a wave and shuddered. An explosion of oaths from his brother officers revealed they had yet to acquire their sea-legs while his were perfectly serviceable.
‘I expect so, gentlemen. But if you’re so damnably curious, why don’t you ask him yourself.’ And clapping his hat upon his head, Lieutenant Frey left for the quarterdeck.
Later, Lieutenant Marlowe, having plucked up enough courage from the urgings of Lieutenant Ashton, took Frey’s advice. He began to cross the deck, colliding with Birkbeck beside the binnacle as he made his way upwards from the lee hance.
‘Steady, Mr Marlowe,’ Birkbeck growled, ‘in more ways than one.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’ asked Marlowe, reaching a hand out to support himself by the binnacle.
‘I mean,’ said Birkbeck in as quiet a voice as would carry above the low moan of the wind in the rigging and the surge and rush of the sea alongside, ‘I shouldn’t go a-bothering the captain just at the moment.
Marlowe looked askance at Birkbeck. The old man had been on deck since Andromeda had got under weigh, seeing her clear of the South Sand Head of the Goodwins and the Varne Bank. He had not been party to the speculation in the wardroom, so how did he know what was in Marlowe’s mind? Moreover, he was unshaven and his hair, what there was of it, hung down from the rim of his hat in an untidy and, to Marlowe, offensive manner. Marlowe concluded the ruddy faced old man was an insolent fool. Damn-it, the man was not fit for a quarterdeck!
‘I’ll trouble you to mind your own business, Mister Birkbeck, while I mind mine.’
Birkbeck shrugged. ‘Have it your own way, young shaver,’ he replied as Marlowe, flushed with the insolence, strove to reach Drinkwater.
The captain had lodged himself securely against the larboard mizen pinrail which, although on the windward side of the ship was, from the effect of the frigate’s tumblehome, the least windy place on the quarterdeck. He was staring forward, an abstracted look on his weatherbeaten features against which the line of a sword-scar showed livid.
Just as Lieutenant Marlowe reached the captain, Andromeda’s bow thumped into the advancing breast of a wave. She seemed to falter in mid-stride, kicked a little to starboard as the wave sought to divert her from her chosen track, then found her course again. But the sudden increase in heel caught the unsteady Marlowe off balance. To preserve his dignity and prevent himself from falling ignominiously, Marlowe’s hands reached out and scrabbled for the ropes belayed to the mizen pinrail. Instead they encountered Drinkwater’s arm.
‘What the … ?’
Drinkwater turned, feeling the young man’s vain attempt to seize him, then quickly reacted and seized Marlowe’s outstretched hand.
‘Come, sir, steady there! What the devil’s the matter?’
Marlowe regained his balance, but lost his aplomb. ‘I beg pardon, sir,’ he gabbled all in a breath, ‘but I wondered if you have any orders, sir.’
Had Drinkwater not been so dog-tired and had he not been almost asleep on his feet, he might have been in a better humour and laughed at the young officer’s discomfiture. Reluctant to leave the deck, yet content to abandon matters to Birkbeck’s competence, he had been languishing in the comfortable compromise of a reverie. As it was, only the helmsmen laughed surreptitiously, while Drinkwater showed a testy exasperation.
‘Mr Birkbeck?’ he called sharply.
‘Sir?’ Birkbeck came up the sloping deck with a practised, almost, Marlowe thought, insulting ease.
‘What orders d’you have?’
‘Why, sir, to keep her full-and-bye and make the best of our way down Channel.’
Drinkwater turned his gaze on Marlowe. ‘There, Mr Marlowe, does that satisfy you?’
‘Well, not really sir. I had hoped that you might confide in me, sir.’
‘Confide in you, sir? If you sought a confidence, should not you have been on deck earlier, Mr Marlowe, when we were getting under weigh? After all, you knew of our visitor last night.’
‘Well, sir, you did not condescend to inform me of anything consequent upon your visitor. As you know, under normal circumstances as first lieutenant I should not keep an anchor watch, but having done so since we were engaged upon a special duty, I had turned in and there was nothing in your night orders to suggest…’
‘That you had to forgo your breakfast, no, of course not; but you are first lieutenant of a frigate on active service.’
‘Active service, sir?’ Marlowe frowned, looking round at Birkbeck who caught his eye and turned away. ‘I do not think I quite understand, sir.’
‘I am very certain you do not understand, Mr Marlowe.’
‘But sir,’ Marlowe’s tone was increasingly desperate, ‘might I not be privy to … ?’
‘No sir, you may not. Not at this moment. If Lieutenant Colville was sent out of hearing while His Royal Highness’, Drinkwater invoked the pompous title with a degree of pleasure, sure that it would silence his tormentor, ‘gave me my orders, I do not think it appropriate that I confide in you, do you?’
Crestfallen and confused, Marlowe mumbled a submissive ‘No, sir.’
‘Very well, Mr Marlowe, then let’s hear no more of the matter until we are out of soundings.’
Marlowe’s mouth dropped open in foolish incredulity. ‘Out of soundings … ?’
Astonishment lent volume to Marlowe’s exclamation; Ashton caught it, downwind across the deck, and dropped his jaw in imitation of his senior; Birkbeck caught it and sighed an old man’s sigh; Midshipman Dunn caught it and his eyes brightened at the prospect of adventure, and the helmsmen caught it silently, mulling it over in their minds until, relieved of their duty, they would release it like a rat to run rumouring about the berth-deck.
As for Drinkwater, he felt ashamed of his peevishness; this was not how he had hoped to let his ship’s company know they were outward bound for the Atlantic Ocean, nor was it how he should have treated his first lieutenant. If he had not been so damned tired … He sighed and stared to windward. The comfortable mood eluded him. The little encounter with Marlowe upset him and left his mind a-whirl again.
As soon as Andromeda had cleared Dungeness, Drinkwater went below. He was exhausted and, removing his hat, coat and shoes, loosed his stock and tumbled into his swinging cot. He thought for a moment that even now he would be unable to sleep, for his mind was still a confusion of thoughts. The enormity of Hortense’s news, the possible consequences of it, the attention to the details of informing Elizabeth and making arrangements for his informant, the influencing of Prince William Henry and now the bother of his ship’s company and its officers, all tumbled about in his tired head. Each thought followed hard upon its progenitor, and always at the end of the spiral lay the black abyss of what if… ?
What if they missed the French ships? What if Hortense had lied? What if she told the truth and he miscalculated? What if the Tsar changed his mind? What if … ? What if … ? Slowly the thoughts detached themselves, broke up and shrank, slipping away from him so that only the blackness was there, a blackness into which he felt himself fall unresisting, an endless engulfment that seemed to shrink him to nothing, like a trumpet note fading.
Drinkwater woke with a start. Sweat poured from him and his garments were twisted about his body like a torque. He felt bound and breathless. Sweat dried clammily upon him and the latent heat of its evaporation chilled him. There was a dull ache in his jaw. Then he remembered: he had been drowning! He was wet from the sea; gasping from having been dragged beneath something monstrous, but beneath what?
And then the entire dream came back to him: the water, the strange ship, the noise of clanking chains, the white and ghostly figure that had reared above him: Hortense, pallid as a corpse, beautiful and yet ghastly, as though her whole face was riven by scars. Yet the scars were not marks, but the twists of serpents. It was Hortense, but it was also the Medusa which seemed to be borne as a figurehead on the bow of the strange and clattering ship. Then he was under water and lighting for his life as the noise reached a t
errifying crescendo from which he knew he must escape, or die.
As he lay mastering his terror, he recognized the old dream. Once, when he was an unhappy midshipman, it had come to him regularly, marking the miserable days of his existence aboard the frigate Cyclops. Since then it had visited him occasionally, as a presentient warning of some impending event. But now he felt no such alarm, as though this terror from his youth could only frighten him when he was weak and exhausted. It was just a visitation from the past; a relic. Old men feared death, not the wearying vicissitudes of misfortune. These, experience taught them, were to be confronted and mastered.
In the past, Hortense’s image had sometimes occupied the post of what he had come to call the ‘white lady’. Perhaps it was because she had again entered his life that the dream had come roaring out of his subconscious. As he lay there, staring up at the deck-head which glowed in the last reflections of daylight coming in through the stern windows, he mastered the lingering fear which was rapidly shrinking to apprehension. His thoughts ordered themselves slowly but surely, returning him to the state of conscious anxiety from which he had escaped in sleep.
Any analysis of his actions must be seen in the light of good faith. The orders the prompted prince had given him cleared his yard-arm as far as the Admiralty were concerned; all his best efforts must now be bent on reaching the Azores and lying in wait for the French ships. If allied warships brought the Emperor Napoleon to the islands before the French ships arrived, so much the better. Drinkwater would be able to persuade their commanders to remain in the vicinity. If, on the other hand, the French ships lay off the islands in waiting for their Emperor, he would attack them and while he could never guarantee success, he was confident he could sufficiently damage them to prevent them rescuing their prize and carrying out their confounded stratagem.
Then an uncomfortable thought struck him. While he had a full crew, most of which had successfully fought in the Vikkenfiord, his officers were largely inexperienced. It would not have mattered if all they had had to do was act as part of Prince William Henry’s Royal Squadron. But now, while his elderly frigate was painted to a nicety, she had not refilled her magazines and was woefully short of powder and ball. True, he had a stock of langridge, grape and musket balls, but there was no substitute for good iron shot. And if that were not enough, he was victualled for no more than a month, two at the most, and carried no spare spars. These thoughts brought him from his bed.
The Shadow of the Eagle Page 7