Beneath the aurora nd-12

by Ричард Вудмен

  He poured two glasses and felt the wine hit his empty stomach. It was, he knew, unwise to take drink in such circumstances, but such was the state of his excitement and so intense was his desire to seize those small opportunities he saw before him that he shunned the path of reason. Something of Drinkwater's state of mind communicated itself to Quilhampton.

  The younger man had seen these moods of deliberate endeavour before and wondered then, as he wondered now, why he did not consider them reckless. He was certain that, in any other officer, he would have considered them so and was tempted, for an instant, to marvel at his own faith in Captain Drinkwater, but then fell victim to his professional obligation to listen and understand what was being said.

  At their meeting in Leith Road, Drinkwater had told James Quilhampton the background of their mission. Now he expatiated, rationalizing the cascade of ideas that had occurred to him in the turmoil of the night.

  'Something about the man Malaburn, the way he spoke to me, the coolness of his actions, bespoke purpose, James. Don't ask me how I know, one simply forms convictions about such things. He knew why Andromeda left Leith for Norwegian waters; he sprang a group of Yankee prisoners from Dartmoor and trepanned them to Leith to help him in the business of stopping us from thwarting the American rendezvous here in the Vikkenfiord. Suborning a carter who must have been a republican accomplice, and a host of republicans en route, to deliver and succour them is the work of no ordinary man. Then he bribes a boarding-house crimp and spirits them aboard a ship he knows to be short of men, or pretends to be, thereby arranging for their concealment at Leith. The master or mate of the Ada Louise must have been in his pocket and 'tis fairly certain they were in the plot, for they issued no slops to the new hands and merely put up with their presence until the press arrived.'

  'So they appeared to be brought aboard Andromeda in the usual manner?'

  'Yes, I imagine so. Tom Huke suggested the matter had been easy.'

  'Too damned easy,' Quilhampton said slowly. He paused, then went on, 'And this Malaburn knew about that Neapolitan business?'

  'Yes! I'm damned certain he did. He knew Leith was the point of departure ... Damn it, he must have known from the start, mark you!'

  'The devil!'

  'He planned to cause us to anchor and deliver us to the guns of the two American ships. Whether they are national men-o'-war or privateers matters little. Combined, they mount enough weight of metal to outgun us. Make no mistake about it, Mr Malaburn knew all about them, and us. He must have been overjoyed to see that Dane appear just as I thought we had beaten a timely retreat.'

  'You knew nothing of the fort, then?'

  Drinkwater shook his head. 'No. Nothing.'

  'Your escaping serious damage and towing through the passage must have been what persuaded him to hide, then.'

  'Yes. He had only the one chance with the men he had sprung from gaol. He could not confer much with them on board for fear of arousing suspicions and, when he appeared to have lost his opportunity, he sought to cause us maximum embarrassment. Between you and me, James, when we got clear of that confounded Dane, I was exhausted. I wanted Malaburn left until morning, but Huke ... well, no good will come of raking the matter over again.'

  'You risked him doing something desperate like setting fire to the ship,' Quilhampton said in defence of the dead Huke. 'I would probably have done what Huke did.'

  Drinkwater looked at his friend, but said nothing. 'Huke has dependants,' he heard Jameson saying, as a wave of weariness again swept over him.

  'But why take Huke? Why not just hide and lie low?' Quilhampton asked. 'He could, in all probability, have evaded capture and slipped overboard at any later opportunity.'

  Drinkwater sighed. 'He was desperate. He did not know what other opportunities might offer. I will pay him the compliment of saying he was a determined man. Huke's appearance was fortuitous; a bad blow for Malaburn. I don't suppose he meant to kill Huke, merely to wound him in the leg, to take him hostage. He could then negotiate with me…' Drinkwater frowned, still puzzling over those few brief words he had exchanged with Malaburn.

  'The one thing that makes no sense, James, or at least I can make no sense of it, is the fact that he knew me, knew my character well enough to know that if he extracted some form of parole, he thought I would honour it. That is uncanny.'

  'Perhaps you imagined it, sir.' Quilhampton's face was full of solicitude. 'I don't imagine holding a hostage binds one to a parole.'

  Drinkwater was touched. He managed a wan smile. 'Perhaps. Anyway it is too late now. I shall never know.' He refilled their glasses. 'Besides, we have other work to attend to.' They drank and Drinkwater added, 'I am glad you brought Frey with you.'

  'That was luck. I received a letter from him the very day I left Woodbridge. Catriona brought it to me as I was in the act of strapping my chest. I wrote to him and told him to come at once. It was just as well. The lieutenant in charge of Kestrel at Chatham had the energy of a wallowing pig. I had his bags packed too!'

  'Well,' Drinkwater cut in, a hint of impatience in his tone, 'he'll do splendidly in Kestrel. I want you aboard here, in command in my absence.'

  'Your absence, sir?'

  'You are the senior lieutenant and I must have a man here who knows my mind. I'm taking Kestrel back into the fiord under a flag of truce…'

  'But, sir, I can do that! It's my job!'

  'Of course you can do it, James, but I've already a good idea of what the lie of the land is in the Vikkenfiord, and there's no purpose in your taking risks, what with Catriona and the child…'

  'But, sir ...'

  'But me no buts, James, you've already shaken my confidence in you by admitting you'd have done as Tom Huke did...' Drinkwater smiled and Quilhampton shrugged resignedly.

  'If you insist'

  'I do. It occurs to me that the appearance of Kestrel might persuade our friends that we have been reinforced out here. I may be able to wring some advantage out of the situation. At the very least it will provide an opportunity for reconnaissance.'

  'Time spent in which is seldom wasted,' Quilhampton quoted with a grin. 'I had thought for a while that you intended to withdraw.'

  'I cannot with honour do that. Besides, we have an objective still to achieve, and Tom Huke to avenge.'

  'Welcome aboard, sir!'

  Lieutenant Frey touched the forecock of his bicorn hat and grinned broadly as Drinkwater scrambled up on to Kestrets low bulwark.

  'My dear Frey, how good to see you.' Drinkwater clambered stiffly down from the cutter's rail and shook Frey's hand.

  'You damn nearly left without me, sir,' the younger man said lightly, the joke concealing a sense of affront.

  'Not having my own command and occupying a rather difficult position at the Admiralty has left me somewhat bereft of influence,' Drinkwater conceded, and Frey caught a gentle reproach in his voice. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Drinkwater beat him to it. 'But I've made amends by giving you command for the day. Be so kind as to pass my gig astern under tow and, by the by, d'you have a sheet or a tablecloth on board?'

  'We boast a tablecloth, sir, but why ...?'

  'Hoist it at the lee tops'l yardarm and proceed into the Vikkenfiord. A flag of truce,' Drinkwater added by way of explanation at Frey's quizzical frown.

  'Aye, aye, sir.'

  Frey acknowledged the order and turned away to execute it. Drinkwater stared curiously about him. The cutter had not been new when he joined her at Tilbury in the winter of 1792 and she had undergone radical structural alterations some years later. She bore the marks of age and hurried restoration: scuffed timbers, peeling paintwork, worn ropes, patched sails and dull brass-work.

  'We've been attacking the binnacle with brick-dust and lamp-oil,' Frey said apologetically, 'but we were waist-deep in water on the passage and it's been a bit difficult…'

  'It don't signify,' Drinkwater said pensively, his hand rubbing the edge of the companionway to the after accommodation from
which, he noticed standing aside, the officers' table-cloth was being brought on deck by the steward. 'If you can manoeuvre under sail and fire your cannon at an enemy ...' He looked at Frey. 'I commanded her at Camperdown, you know.' He remembered being cold and sodden as they beat about the gatways behind the Haak Sand off the Texel in the days before the battle, while Admiral Duncan's fleet mutinied off Yarmouth. [See A King's Cutter.]

  'I didn't know that, sir.'

  'It was a long time ago.'

  He had known Frey for ten years; the lieutenant had been a midshipman aboard the sloop Melusine when he had last ventured north. The boy was a man now, growing grizzled in the sea service as this long war rumbled interminably on.

  'She still sails well?'

  'She leaks like a sieve. She had her keel and kelson pierced for centre-plates which make her claw up to windward like a witch, but the boxes let in water and she needs regular pumping.'

  'I recall them being fitted,' Drinkwater mused, then asked, 'Did you bring your paint-box?'

  'Never go anywhere without it, sir,' Frey said, waving an enthusiastic hand about him. On either side the steep, dark sides of the gorge closed about them, and beyond, its surface pale and cold, the fiord lay bordered by the dark forest. 'Imagine being here, amid this splendour, without the means to record it.'

  'I cannot', said Drinkwater ruefully, 'imagine what it must be like.'

  And he grinned as the shadow of the gorge fell across the deck, and they entered the Vikkenfiord.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Flag of Truce

  November 1813

  The twelve-gun cutter Kestrel ran up the Vikkenfiord with a quartering wind, her huge main boom guyed out to larboard, obscuring the lie of the land and the bluff upon which lay the guns of the Danish fort. Though the British ensign flew from the peak of her gaff, the white tablecloth flapped languidly in the eddies emptying from the leeward leech of the square topsail set above the hounds. Astern, Drinkwater's gig towed in their wake.

  The rain had passed and, though the threat of more lay banked up in engorged clouds beyond the mountains to the south and west, the sun blazed upon the blue waters of the fiord and the breeze set white-capped waves dancing across its surface. The low, black-hulled cutter raced downwind. She still sported two long 4-pounders forward, but her ten pop-gun 3-pounders had long ago been replaced by carronades. Frey had had these cleared away and now ordered the square topsail clewed up and furled. Kestrel would neither stay nor wear quickly with it still set, and Drinkwater wanted the little cruiser to be as handy as skill and artifice could make her, in case his enterprise collapsed.

  Leaving the management of the cutter to Frey, he walked forward and levelled his glass at the bluff, steadying it against a forward shroud. Above the embrasures of the fort, the colours of Denmark proclaimed Norway to be a possession of the Danish crown. Drinkwater could already see the masts of the American and Danish ships, lying at their anchors in the small bay beyond the bluff and under the protection of the fort's guns.

  As they drew closer, Drinkwater watched and waited for a response from these cannon. At two miles he saw nothing to indicate the sentries had seen the approaching cutter, then they were within cannon shot.

  Any signs, sir?' asked Frey, coming forward and screwing up his eyes.

  'Not a damned thing,' Drinkwater muttered, his glass remaining to his eye. 'Ah, wait...'

  For a moment he had thought the brief flash to have been the discharge of a cannon, but then the white of an extempore flag like their own appeared to hang down from a gun-embrasure, pressed by the wind against the grey stonework of the rampart.

  Drinkwater lowered his glass. 'I think we may stand on with a measure of confidence, Mr Frey.'

  'I'll heave to just off the point then.'

  'Yes, and get the boat alongside and the crew into it as fast as possible. I don't want them coming to us.'

  'Aye, aye, sir.'

  Drinkwater raised his glass again and swept the adjacent coast with care. 'Time spent in reconnaissance', he muttered to himself, quoting Quilhampton, 'is seldom wasted.'

  So engrossed was he in this task that the sudden righting of Kestrel's heeling deck and the shift of its motion to a gentle upward and downward undulation as she came head to wind took him by surprise. The headsails shook for a moment and then the jib was sheeted down hard and the staysail sheet was carried to windward as Frey hove his charge to on the starboard tack. The bluff, with its granite coping and the dark gun-embrasures, loomed above the cutter's curved taffrail, and on her port quarter where the gig was being quickly brought alongside, the bay beyond was filled with the three ships and its sheltered waters dotted with the oared boats Drinkwater had been so assiduously studying.

  Now he went aft, watched as a boathook adorned with a table-napkin was passed to the bowman and, gathering up his sword, eased a foot over the rail, stood awkwardly on the rubbing band, chose his moment and tumbled into the boat.

  Barking his shins he stumbled aft with considerable loss of dignity to take his seat beside Captain Pardoe's coxswain, Wells.

  'Carry on, cox'n. Make for the Danish ship!' 'Aye, aye, sir.'

  They pulled away from the cutter and were soon in the comparatively calmer waters of the bay. Drinkwater coughed to catch the attention of the labouring boat's crew. 'Keep your eyes in the boat, men. No remarks to any enemy boats that may come near and', he turned to the coxswain, 'lie off a little while I am aboard.' Aye, sir.'

  As they approached the Odin, Drinkwater threw back his boat-cloak to reveal the remaining perfect epaulette on his left shoulder. He wore the undress uniform he had worn in the action of the day before. The bullion on his right shoulder was wrecked beyond repair, though Frampton had done his best when he swabbed the blood from the coat. Drinkwater stared woodenly ahead, but allowed his eyes to rove over the scene. The Danes had made good most of the ravages of the action, reinstating the foremast just as Quilhampton was doing at that moment aboard Andromeda beyond the entrance to the fiord.

  Inshore of the Danish frigate the two American ships lay at anchor. They looked slightly less formidable upon closer inspection: privateers rather than frigates, though well armed. Between them and the Dane all the boats of the combined ships seemed to be waterborne, industriously plying to and fro. Many had stopped, their crews lying on their oars as they watched the bold approach of the enemy. They were quite obviously engaged in the business of transferring stands of arms, barrels of powder and the product of Continental arsenals destined for North America.

  'Boat 'hoy!'

  'Oars, cox'n.'

  'Oars!' ordered Wells and the gig's crew stopped pulling, holding their oar-looms horizontally as the gig gradually lost way some fifty or sixty yards from the bulk of the Odin's dark hull. Officers lined the quarterdeck while the faces of many curious onlookers, Danish sailors and marines, stared down at the approaching gig. Drinkwater stood up and doffed his hat.

  'Good morning, gentlemen. Do I have your permission to come aboard?'

  There was a brief consultation between the blue and gold figures. English, it appeared, was understood, but the matter seemed to be uncertain, so Drinkwater called out, 'I know you are transferring arms from your ship to the American vessels, gentlemen. I know also they came from France and travelled via Hamburg to Denmark. I think it will be to your advantage if I speak to your captain.'

  'One of these boats coming close, sir,' growled Wells, sitting beside him.

  'Take no notice,' Drinkwater muttered.

  The officers above them came to a conclusion. 'Ja. You come aboard!'

  'Lay her alongside.'

  'Aye, aye, sir.'

  Drinkwater ascended the frigate's tumblehome, reached the level of the rail, threw his leg over and descended to the deck. With no boats on her booms the frigate's waist was wide open and the contents of her gundeck and berth deck were exposed. The bundles of sabres and muskets, boxes, bales and barrels that she carried could not be disguised. They were b
eing hoisted out and lowered over the farther side where the boats of the combined ships were obviously loading them. His appearance had stopped the labour but, at a command, the watching men returned to work.

  A tall man with a blue, red-faced coat and cocked hat stepped forward. He wore hessian boots whose gold tassels caught the sunshine, and dragged what looked like a cavalry sabre on the deck behind him.

  'Kaptajn Dahlgaard of de Danske ship Odin. We haf met in battle, ja? I see you haf a wound.' Dahlgaard gestured to the large, dark scab on Drinkwater's cheek.

  'Indeed, sir, a scratch. I am Captain Drinkwater of His Britannic Majesty's frigate Andromeda, at your service.' Drinkwater shot a glance at the officers behind Dahlgaard. Most were wearing the blue and red of the Danish sea service. Two were not. They were wearing blue broadcloth and insolent grins. He knew them for Americans. 'And these gentlemen are from the United States, are they not?' he added, side-stepping Dahlgaard and executing an ironic half-bow at the American commanders. He was gratified to see them lose a little of their composure.

  He turned his heel on them and confronted Dahlgaard, addressing him so that the Americans could not hear.

  'Captain Dahlgaard, you have, I know, no reason to love my country and, from your actions yesterday, I judge you, as I judged your countrymen at Copenhagen in 1801, to be a brave and courageous officer, but I beg you to consider the consequences of what you are doing. These arms are to spread destruction in a country of peace-loving people ...' 'I haf my orders, Kaptajn. Please not to speak of this.' Drinkwater shrugged as though unconcerned. 'Very well, then it is necessary that I tell you my admiral will be happy to let your vessel pass, if you permit us to take the American ships as prizes.'