Beneath the aurora

A Person of Some Importance

Lieutenant Sparkman eased off the second of his mud-spattered boots with a relieved grunt, and kicked it beside its companion. Leaning back in the chair he wriggled his toes, picked up the tankard beside him and gulped the hot rum flip with greedy satisfaction. The heat of the fire drew steam from the neglected boots and a faintly distasteful aroma from his own feet. The woollen stockings were damp, damned near as damp as the Essex salt-marsh alongside which he had ridden that afternoon. Boots were no attire for a sea-officer, he reflected, though he had heard hessians were increasingly fashionable among the young blades that inhabited His Majesty's quarterdecks nowadays. But as an Inspector of Fencibles, Sparkman was no longer what might, with justice, be called a 'sea-officer'. His sore arse testified to the time he spent in the saddle and he promptly set the thought aside. He avoided disquieting recollections, having learnt the wisdom of jettisoning them before they took root and corroded a man's good temper.

True he had been disappointed in his expectations in the naval service, but he had little to complain about since swallowing the anchor. After all, the path of duty was not arduous: the Red Lion at Kirby-le-Soken was a comfortable enough house and the landlord a convivial fellow, having once been at sea himself. They would doubtless share a glass or two before the night was out. Sparkman stretched himself again and swallowed more rum; he should reach Harwich before noon next day, which was time enough; he had no intention of starting early, for the weather had turned foul and there was little improvement expected. He half cocked an ear at the wind blustering against the Red Lion's sturdy walls and the faint rattling of tiles above his head. Periodically the fire sizzled and smoked as, through some vagary of the chimney, a spatter of rain was driven down against the updraught.

He wriggled his toes again, content: in Harwich there was a chambermaid in the Three Cups who was worth the effort, despite the weather, for Annie Davis had taken a shine to him on a previous visit and would share his bed for a florin.

The easterly gale which had begun that morning threatened to blow for a week, a wind which, despite its ferocity, would once have had every Tom, Dick and Harry on the coast fearing invasion. Those days were over, thank heaven. The French were on the defensive now, hard pressed by Great Britain's Continental allies. News had arrived of the check administered by the Emperor Napoleon to Schwarzenburg's Austrians; but the two Prussian armies had achieved success. One under Blucher, had surprised Marshal Macdonald on the Katzbach River and had routed him with the loss of 20,000 Frenchmen and over 100 cannon; while the second, commanded by von Bülow, had caught Marshal Oudinot south of Potsdam, and had defeated him at Gross Beeren. Moreover, all the while, knocking at the back door of France Lord Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army steadily advanced across the Pyrenees out of Spain.

Sparkman yawned and cast a glance at the dank leather satchels hung across the back of the room's other chair, dripping darkly over the floorboards. He thought of the report he should have been writing on the sea defences along the coast of the Wallet. It seemed a rather small and trivial task, set against this vast ebb and flow of soldiers marching and counter-marching across war-weary Europe.

Well, so be it. To the devil with his report! He would write it when he arrived at Harwich, after he had had a look at the redoubt there (and taken his pleasure on the plump but enthusiastic body of Annie Davis). The Martello towers from Point Clear to Clacton were sound enough, even if their garrisons were tucked up in Weeley barracks, a good hour or two's march from their posts.

'There's a manned battery at Chevaux-de-Frise Point,' Sparkman muttered to himself, easing his conscience, 'and no damned radeaux will put to sea without the free-trade fraternity knowing about it, never mind an invasion fleet'

The wind boomed in the chimney and rattled the small window, emphasizing the drowsy snugness of his room under the thatch. He recalled an old woman who had passed the time of day with him in a lane that morning. Pointing to the proliferation of wayside berries, she had croaked that it would be a hard winter; perhaps the crone had been right. He continued to toast his feet and look forward to a chat with the landlord, a beef pie and clean sheets all in due time, teasing himself with anticipation at parting Annie's white thighs.

He was dozing when the landlord burst in. An uncivil clatter of boots followed him on the wooden stair. It was clear his host's abrupt entry had precious little social about it.

'Mr Sparkman, sir, Cap'n Clarke is here demanding to speak with you.'

For a moment the tired Sparkman was confused, the rum having drugged him. He woke fully to an ill-tempered resentment, irritated that men such as Clarke should call themselves 'Captain'. The upstart was no more than Master of a smuggling lugger.

'I don't know a Captain Clarke ...' he began, and then Clarke himself was crowding into the room, with two ruffianly seamen in tarpaulins and a fantastically bewhiskered and cloaked officer whose moustaches curled extravagantly beneath a long nose. The quartet were soaked, their clothes running with water, which rapidly darkened the floor, mixing with the mud from their boots.

'Oh, yes you do, Sparkman,' Clarke said grinning, 'we need no introductions. But I have brought someone you haven't met yet.' Clarke drew off his low beaver and threw out an arm with a mock theatrical gesture. 'Colonel ...'

The grotesque apparition threw back his cloak with a flourish that showered Sparkman with water, to reveal a scarlet plastron fronting a white tunic laced with silver.

'Colonel Bardolini, Captain,' the stranger announced in good English, shrugging himself free of the restraining seamen and flicking his extended wrist at Clarke in dismissal. 'I am come on an embassy to the English government. You are a naval officer, yes?'

'Rummest cargo I ever lifted, Mr Sparkman,' Clarke put in, ignoring the foreign officer.

'I daresay he paid you well,' retorted Sparkman, who had recovered something of his wits at this damp invasion. With wry amusement he observed that this Bardolini shared his own opinion of Clarke. 'You were ever one to drive a hard bargain,' he added obliquely, referring to a past transaction over some bottles of genever.

'This is different,' Clarke said darkly, "e ain't French, 'e's Italian.'

'I am Neapolitan,' said Bardolini, firing his sentences like shot. 'I am in the service of King Joachim. I have papers for your government. I am a person of some importance.'

'Are you now,' said Sparkman 'and what proof...?'

But Bardolini had anticipated resistance and whipped a heavily sealed paper from the ample cuff of his white leather gauntlet.

'My passport.' He held the document out. 'I have plenipotentiary powers,' he declared impressively.

Sparkman had only the vaguest understanding of the Neapolitan's claim, but a respect for the panoply of administrative office bade him be cautious. He slit the seal and with a crackle opened the paper.

'Signor, please, these men ...'

Sparkman looked up and nodded to the smuggler. 'Tell your men to be off, Clarke,' he ordered and then, as the seamen retreated, clumping down the stairs, he asked, 'Where did you pick this fellow up?'

'At Flushing. I was told take a passenger ...'

'Told?' Sparkman asked. 'By whom?' and, seeing Clarke's hesitation, 'Come on, Clarke, you've no need to haver. If I read you aright, you've brought live cargo over before, have you not?'

'A man has to feed his family, Sparkman, and these are hard times…'

'Never mind your damned excuses. Who approached you?'

'A man who has arranged this kind of business before.'

'Very well. And what were you contracted to do with this fine gentleman?' Sparkman indicated the Neapolitan who was about to speak. 'A moment, sir,' Sparkman cut him short. 'Go on, Clarke.'

'To deliver him to a government officer. When I heard you had been inspecting the coast...'

'You were damned lucky I was about, then, and that it wasn't an Exciseman or a Riding Officer you bumped into.'

'I wouldn't call it luck, Sparkman,' Clarke countered darkly, alluding to the intelligence system the so-called 'free-traders' possessed.

'I suppose you'd have left him to walk the Gunfleet Sands until the tide covered him?'

'I usually do what I'm told in these circumstances, Sparkman ...'

'Aye, and avoid the gallows by it!'

'I'd advise you to do the same, Sparkman. The gentlemen at Colchester are in my pocket too,' Clarke said, his grin sinister with implication.

'Why you impertinent ...' The reference to the army officers of the local garrison irritated him.

'Are you a naval officer?' Bardolini snapped, breaking into the row fomenting between the two men, which it was clear he understood perfectly. 'You have my passport. Please be good enough to read it.'

Sparkman turned his attention on the colonel. He was about to retort, but the gleam in Bardolini's eye persuaded him otherwise. He shrugged and looked at the paper the Neapolitan held out. It was in French and English, that much he could see, but his sight was poor and with only the light of the fire he could make out little more than the formula 'allow to pass without let or hindrance, the bearer, Colonel Umberto Bardolini of the Neapolitan Service on a mission to the Court of St James's'. There was a string of legal mumbojumbo in which the words 'plenipotentiary... authorized to act on behalf of ... is of my mind and fully conversant with my innermost thoughts', seemed sufficiently portentous to confirm Lieutenant Sparkman in the wisdom of his caution. At the bottom, above another seal, was a scrawl that may or may not have spelled out the name 'Joachim', but in fact used the Italian form 'Giacomo'.

Sparkman looked up at the bristling moustaches. 'Colonel, my apologies. Welcome to Great Britain.' He held out his hand, but Bardolini ignored it and bowed stiffly from the waist.

Sparkman was aware of Clarke grinning diabolically in the firelight at this slight.

'Who are you?' Bardolini asked peremptorily and for the third time.

'Shall I get you some vittals, Lieutenant Sparkman?' put in the landlord who had remained silent until a commercial opportunity offered.

'No, damn you,' Sparkman snapped, 'tell your boy I want my horse again, and get me another for this fellow to ride.' He handed the passport back to Bardolini. 'I am Lieutenant Sparkman of His Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy, Colonel.' Then he sat and pulled on his boots.

'What are you going to do with him?' asked Clarke.

'I shan't be taking any chances, God rot you,' said Sparkman, standing and stamping his feet into the boots, then casting about the room for his belongings, muttering about the lack of candles.

'D'you wish for a candle, sir?' enquired the landlord. 'It will take but a moment...'

'I want a quiet evening before the fire,' Sparkman muttered through clenched teeth.

'Aye, sir, 'tis a bad night, and…'

'Be so good as to stand aside!' Sparkman exploded.

'What about payment for the room?'

Bardolini shuffled round as Sparkman seized his damp cloak from the bed and drew it about his shoulders. The wet collar rasped against his neck, reminding him of the weather outside and the comfort he was forsaking. He threw the landlord a handful of silver.

'You will take me to see the General Officer commanding at Colchester?' the Neapolitan asked, obviously well-informed.

'No, sir, 'tis too far. I will take you to Harwich for tonight. Tomorrow we will see about Colchester.' Sparkman turned on Clarke who barred his exit. 'You must have had a bad passage, Clarke.'

Clarke grinned and jerked his head at Bardolini, at the same time holding out his hand and preventing anyone from leaving the room. 'He certainly did.'

With an extravagant sigh, Bardolini drew a purse from his belt. Sparkman heard the chink of coin as he passed it to the smuggler.

'I wish you good-night, gentlemen,' said Clarke, standing aside and bowing with an ironic exaggeration.

Sparkman threw the wet satchel over his shoulder and picked up a pair of pistol holsters. 'Be so kind as to bring my baggage, landlord,' he ordered, nodding at his portmanteau, then he stepped forward, through the slime his visitors had left by the door.

As he passed, Clarke muttered sarcastically, 'I took his pistols while he was vomiting over the rail. He won't give you too much trouble.'

'I am much obliged to you, Clarke,' Sparkman retorted with equal incivility.

'Captain Clarke, Mr Sparkman.'

'Damn you for an insolent dog, Clarke…'

Clarke laughed and held up the jingling purse under Sparkman's nose. 'There's more than you make in a year in here, Sparkman…'

'God help England when money purchases rank, Clarke! You're a dog and always will be a dog, and no amount of gold, no, nor putting your betters in your pocket, can make you a gentleman! Come, Colonel.'

'What pretty notions you do have, Sparkman,' Clarke called after them, laughing as they clattered down the stairs.

Sparkman had to put his shoulder to the outer door as a gust of wind eddied round the yard. Rain lashed him in the twilight as Bardolini emerged, attempting to put a crazy, square-topped shako on to his head. Then Sparkman was struggling with his reluctant horse and taking the reins from a wretched little stable-boy. Satchel, portmanteau and saddle-bags were finally settled on the fractious animal and then Sparkman hoisted himself aloft.

Bardolini was already mounted, smoothing his curvetting horse's neck with a gloved and practised hand. The sight irritated Sparkman; but for this effete Italian he might, at that moment, be tucking into a beef pie.

'Come on, then, damn you!' he roared and put spurs to his tired horse, which jerked him forward into the rain and wind.

CHAPTER 1 A Lucky Chance

Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater read the paragraph for the fourth time, aware that he had not understood a word of it. The handwriting was crabbed, the spelling idiosyncratic and the ink smudged. He began again. The lines forming the words seemed to uncoil from the paper into a thin trail of smoke. He was aware he had fallen asleep, his mind dulled with a torpor he found difficult to shake off.

'God's bones,' he muttered, tossing the paper on to the pile which covered the green baize on the desk-top and standing up with such violence than his chair overturned and, for a moment, he had to clutch at the desk to stop himself from falling.

The dizziness passed, but left his brow clammy with sweat. He ran a forefinger round his neck, tugging at the constriction of his stock, swearing beneath his breath with forceful eloquence. He went to the window and leaned his head upon the cool glass. The sash vibrated slightly to the gale blowing outside, and rain fell upon the glass panes with a patter which occasionally grew to a vicious tattoo in the gusts. It was almost dark and he told himself it was the dusk which had brought on his tiredness, nothing more.

He turned and, leaning against the shutter, stared back into the room. It was small, containing the baize-covered desk, his chair and a wicker basket which stood on a square of carpet to keep his feet from the draught that blew between the wide deal floorboards. The window was flanked on one side by a tall cabinet whose glazed doors covered shelves of guard books, on the other by a low chest whose upper surface was a plane table. It had a trough for pencil and dividers, beneath which a series of shallow drawers contained several folios of charts. On its top was a long wooden box containing a single deep and narrow drawer.

The only other article of furniture in the room was a small, rickety, half-moon table set against the wall beside the door. Upon it were a pair of decanters, a biscuit barrel and four glasses. One contained a residual teaspoonful of madeira.

On the wall opposite the window, above the grate and mantelpiece, hung a gilt-framed canvas depicting a moonlit frigate action. It had been commissioned by Drinkwater and painted by the ageing Nicholas Pocock, whose house in Great George Street was hard by Storey's Gate into St James's Park. The painting showed the frigate Patrician overhauling and engaging the French National frigate Sybille and Drinkwater had described the canvas to his wife Elizabeth as 'a last vanity, m'dear. I shan't fight again, now that I've swallowed the anchor.'

The recollection made him turn to the window again, and stare down into the darkening street. Despite the weather, Whitehall was full of the evening's traffic: a foot patrol of guardsmen, a pair of doxies in a doorway cozening the grenadiers, whose bearskins lost their military air in the rain, a dog pissing against a porter's rest, and a handful of pathetic loiterers huddling out of the rain in the sparse and inadequate clothing of the indigent. Carriages came and went across his field of view, but he saw none of this. It depressed him; after the broad sweep of the distant horizon seen from the pristine standpoint of a frigate's quarterdeck, the horse turds and grime of Whitehall were a mockery.

He turned and, as abruptly as he had risen, closed the shutters against the night. Then he righted his capsized Windsor chair and sat in it. Picking up the paper he twisted round, held it to the flickering firelight and began to read out loud, as if by annunciating the ill-written words he would keep himself awake enough to assimilate their content.

'Sir, further to my communications of December last and May of this year, in which there was little of an unusual nature to report, it is now common knowledge here ...' Drinkwater had forgotten the origin of the paper and looked at the heading. 'Ah, yes,' he murmured, 'from Helgoland ... last month, no, July…'

He read on, 'that a considerable quantity of arms for equipping troops have lately arrived in Hamburg and in expectation of their shipment, have been placed in a ware­house which is guarded by ...'

There was a knock at the door and Drinkwater paused. 'Enter,' he called.

A slim, pinch-faced man with prematurely thinning hair appeared. He wore a black, waisted and high-collared coat. The points of his shirt poked up either side of his face, and a tight cravat in dark, watered silk frothed beneath a sharp, blue chin. The figure was elegant and, though daylight would have betrayed the threadbare nature of his dress, the candelabra he bore only enhanced the ascetic architecture of his skull.

'Ah, Templeton, about time you brought candles.'

'My apologies, Captain, I was delayed in the copy room ...'

'Scuttlebutt, I suppose.'

'I wish it were only gossip, sir, but I fear the worst.' Templeton's words were so full of foreboding that Drinkwater was compelled to look up. Templeton's head was bent askew in such a way that, though he stood, his eyes must of necessity look under his brow so that his whole demeanour bespoke grave concern.

'Which touches me, Mr Templeton?'

'Indeed, sir, I fear so.' A brief smirk passed across Templeton's features, the merest hint of satisfaction at having conveyed the full import of his meaning with such admirable economy. It would have passed a less intuitive man than Drinkwater unnoticed.

'Is this a secret of state, or merely one which is denied the Secret Department, Mr Templeton?' Drinkwater asked with heavy irony.

'The latter, Captain Drinkwater,' Templeton replied, the corners of his thin mouth creeping outwards in a smile, hinting at the possession of superior knowledge.

'Well, then, I am waiting. What is this gossip in the clerks' office?'

'I am afraid, sir, 'tis said this department is to be discontinued.'

A feeling of something akin to relief flooded through Drinkwater. There were times in a man's life when to submit to the inevitable meant avoiding disagreeable concomitances. He could never have explained to Elizabeth how constricted his soul was, cooped up in this tiny Admiralty office. He had accepted his appointment, half out of loyalty to his late predecessor, Lord Dungarth, half out of a sense of necessity.

This necessity was harder to define, exposing as it did the infirmities of his character. A believer in Providence, he knew his posting to this obscure office was only partly the result of Dungarth's dying wish. Fate had consigned him to it in expiation of his unfaithfulness to his wife, for his affaire with the Widow Shaw. [See The Flying Squadron.]

Now Templeton, his obsequious but able cipher clerk, a man steeped in the clandestine doings of the Secret Department, who possessed encyclopaedic knowledge of the letters pasted in the guard books resting behind the glass doors of the cabinet, brought him release from this imprisonment.

'I see you are shocked, Captain Drinkwater.'

'I am certainly surprised,' Drinkwater dissimulated. 'Upon what logic is this based?'

'Cost, I believe,' Templeton replied and added, rolling his eyes with lugubrious emphasis and pointing his right index finger upwards, though Drinkwater knew nothing but the attics were there, 'and a certain feeling among those whose business it is to attend to such matters, that our continued existence is no longer necessary.'

'The war is not yet over, Templeton.'

'I entirely agree, sir.'

Drinkwater realized Templeton awaited his reply as a matter of some importance. Indeed the clerk had confided in Drinkwater in order to rouse him to a defence of the Secret Department, not so much to contribute to ending the war by its continued existence, but to preserve Templeton's unique position within the Admiralty's bureaucratic hierarchy. Templeton was not the first to assume, quite wrongly, that Nathaniel Drinkwater was a man of influence. How else had he inherited this post of Head of the Secret Department?

How indeed? It was a conundrum which obsessed Drinkwater himself. He knew no more than that he had received a letter signed by the Second Secretary to the Board of Admiralty, John Barrow, appointing him, and a visit from the Earl of Moira explaining that it had been the dying wish of Lord Dungarth that Drinkwater should take over the office.

'Johnnie said you were the only man capable of doin' the job, Captain, the only man with the nous. He was emphatic upon the point, wanted me to tell you about a bookseller fellow in Paris, and a Madame de Santon, or some such, but he slipped away, poor devil. He was in a deuce of a lot of pain at the end, despite the paregoric.'

Moira had given him the key to the desk at which he now sat, striving for some temporizing reaction to Templeton's news.

'Barrow has not mentioned the matter...'

'It was only decided at Board this morning ...'

'You're damned quick with your intelligence,' Drinkwater snapped sharply. 'So much for the confidentiality of the copy room!'

'I believe Mr Barrow wished it to be known, sir, in this roundabout way.'

'How obligin' of him,' Drinkwater muttered, knowing that in the past he had once crossed the Second Secretary and done himself no favour thereby. 'You had better pour us both a glass, Templeton.'

Drinkwater rose, aware that he had still not thoroughly read the dispatch from Helgoland. He moved towards the little half-moon table where the clerk poured the rich madeira. He caught sight of himself reflected in the glass doors of the cabinet. The bottle-green coat did not suit him, and was at odd variance with his old-fashioned queue with its clump of black ribbon nestling at the nape of his neck. He looked a damn fool!

Templeton handed him die glass. 'What are we to do, Templeton?' he asked. 'D'you have any bright ideas? If they want for money, we've no means of raisin' revenue, and if they want value for what little they allow us, how in heaven's name do we give it to 'em?'

He was half-hearted in his complaint, but Templeton did not seem to notice. The truth was, the intelligence reports processed by the two of them contained little of significance now that the naval war on the coast of Europe was reduced to the tedious matter of blockade. There were the lists of Yankee ships slipping in and out of French ports, but as many were doing the same in Spain and the British were purchasing the supplies they brought to keep Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army in the field. As for the matter of their own funds, Drinkwater had learned that Dungarth had himself under­written most of the department's expenses, squandering his modest inheritance to the distress of his Irish tenants. His own finances would not extend so far.

In so far as the Secret Department had achieved anything recently, Drinkwater could recollect only his pressing the Board to increase the strength of the blockade on the eastern coast of the United States. He had written an appreciation of the matter born out of his own experience of Yankee privateers rather than the coded missives of spies.

'We appear to be redundant, Mr Templeton,' he said with an air of finality.

'I fear that may well be the case, Captain Drinkwater,' Templeton said, sipping his wine unhappily.

You will retain a position within the Admiralty, surely.'

'Oh, I daresay, sir, but not one of such gravity, sir, not one with such, er, such opportunities.'

The emphasis on the last word reminded Drinkwater of the vital perquisites of office among these black-garbed jobbers. There were expenses to be written off, bribes to be paid and spies to be funded. Everything was reduced to money and everyone had their price, women as well as men.

He thought of Moira's 'Madame de Santon, or some such'. Drinkwater knew her better as Hortense Santhonax, née Montholon. Dungarth's key had revealed his secret dossier on Hortense and the small pension she received to keep open communications with the Emperor Napoleon's former Foreign Minister, Talleyrand. He concentrated on the present. There was Liepmann in Hamburg, Van Ouden in Flushing and Vlieghere at Antwerp.

'Well, Templeton, what have we received recently? There was the letter from Carlscrona reporting eleven of the line in ordinary ...'

'From the Master of the Lady Erskine, sir.'

'Quite so ...'

'And the message from Antwerp about the current state of new building there, four ships and a frigate. A routine report, to be sure, but one which demonstrates the continuing ability and determination of the French and their allies to build men o' war.'

'Yes, and the encrypted dispatch from Helgoland spoke of arms being stored at Hamburg. There does not seem much of significance in that.'

'No, no,' Templeton agreed quickly, 'Hamburg is a French fortress. Cavalry remounts, recruits, stores and so forth are all assembled there. The French Army Corps in North Germany draw their reinforcements from the Hamburg depot'

'And yet Liepmann thought it worth letting them know in Helgoland,' Drinkwater reflected, adding, 'Liepmann is in our pay, not that of the Foreign Office.'

'You have great faith in Herr Liepmann, sir,' said Templeton obliquely, knowing that Drinkwater had once met the Jewish merchant.

'It would not surprise me if these arms are locked away in one of our Hebrew friend's warehouses, Templeton. If so, he has probably learned of their purpose. Don't you think it odd they may be secured in a warehouse, rather than in the possession of the French military authorities?'

'That is mere conjecture,' Templeton said dismissively.

'True.' Drinkwater was content to leave the matter there. He knew Templeton set great store by the intelligence from Antwerp. It was a regular dispatch, a long message in the cipher it was Templeton's peculiar skill to disentangle and he had a proprietorial air towards it.

But Templeton had become wary of his new master. The ageing post captain with his outmoded queue, lopsided shoulders and thin sword scar down his left cheek was a contrast after the huge, dropsical bulk of the one-legged Lord Dungarth. But, Templeton had come to learn, both had an uncanny knack of nosing out the obscure from the obfusc. The talent made Templeton nervous.

'Your meaning is unclear, sir,' Templeton prompted.

'Mmm? You mean the significance of my conjecture is unclear?' Drinkwater asked wryly.

'Exactly so.'

'Well, you are right. It is only conjecture, but Liepmann finds it necessary to tell us a quantity of arms has arrived at Hamburg. There is nothing unusual in that, we conclude, except that Herr Liepmann knows of it. Now I'll warrant that there is nothin' significant in replacement equipment arriving in Hamburg in the normal run of things, eh? Nor would one expect Liepmann to know of it. But Liepmann does know, and considers it worth lettin' us know.'

'But if the fact was of real significance then surely he would have amplified the matter. The message is in cipher. If these arms, whatever they consist of, are in his own warehouses, he would have given us more details. I don't see it signifies anything.'

'You have a point, Templeton. Perhaps my assumption was foolish. But suppose they are in the custody of a friend, an associate. Liepmann perhaps smells a rat. He sends us the information thinking it may be a piece of a larger puzzle.'

'Well, it isn't.'

'You are not convinced.' Drinkwater's tone was flat, a statement, not a question. He shrugged, drained his glass and sighed. 'So be it. Come, it is gettin' late. It is time you went home.'

Templeton put his empty glass down on the half-moon table. 'Good-night, sir,' he said, but he seemed reluctant to leave.

'Good-night.' Drinkwater turned to his desk, gathering the scattered papers, waiting for Templeton to go. When the clerk had finally gone, he locked them away. He turned then to the shutters and opened them. Throughout his interview with Templeton he had been aware of their faint but persistent rattle.

He peered again through the window. For a moment, the full moon appeared from behind flying cloud and he thought of the strong spring tides its influence would produce and the ferocious seas which would be running in the Channel.

'God help sailors on a night like this,' he muttered to himself in a pious incantation. The brilliant moonlight and a clatter below briefly attracted his attention. He caught a glimpse of a horseman turning in off the street and entering through Nash's screen wall, his mount striking sparks off the wet cobbles. Messengers were something of a rarity nowadays, he reflected, so sophisticated had the semaphore telegraph system become. It was capable of transmitting news with great speed from the standard on the Admiralty roof, along half a dozen arteries to the great seaports of Britain, even to such exposed outposts as Yarmouth Road, on the coast of East Anglia. He wondered idly where the rider's dispatches originated, then dismissed the thought and closed the shutters.

Drinkwater succumbed to the temptation to pour another glass and sat again, turning his chair so that it faced the dying fire. He was in no mood to return to a house empty of all except its staff. Bending, he stoked the fire into a final flaring, listening awhile to the boom of the gale across the massed chimney pots on the roof above while the tiny flames licked round the glowing coals, then subsided into a dull, ruby coruscation.

He brooded on his predicament. He was supposed to be a puppet-master, pulling strings at the extremities of which several score of agents danced, ceaselessly gleaning information for the British Admiralty. Templeton, his confidential cipher clerk, decoded their messages and entered their dispatches in the guard books. He was a genius of sorts, a man whose mind could disinter a hidden fact, cross-refer it to some other seemingly unrelated circumstance and draw a thread of logic from the process. Except, of course, when he disagreed, as at present. Then he could be monstrously stubborn. Drinkwater sometimes marvelled at the obscure man's abilities, quite oblivious of his own part in these deliberations and the confidence his personal imprimatur gave Templeton. He was more likely to see himself as a fish out of water, an ageing and foppish extravagant in his bottle-green coat and his increasingly affected mode of speaking. It seemed to him that he had reached this point in his life without quite knowing how he had got there, carried, like a piece of wood on the tide, into some shallow backwater and left grounded in a creek.

He had fondly supposed that he would see something of his wife, but Elizabeth and the children were almost a hundred miles away, in Suffolk, while he vegetated in the capital, choking on smoke and falling victim to the blue devils and every quinsy and ague coughed over him by London's denizens! Moira had implied he might mastermind a coup, insisting Dungarth knew him capable of executing some brilliant feat. But while Drinkwater had pored in fascination over the papers pasted in the guard books, prompted by a natural curiosity concerning the fate of Madame Santhonax, whose husband Drinkwater had killed in action, he had come to realize all such opportunities seemed to reside firmly in the past, and the distant past at that. [See Baltic Mission.]

His present duties seemed to entail nothing more than reading endless reports and dispatches, many of no apparent meaning, still less of significance, until he dozed over them, half asleep with inertia.

'God's bones,' he had snapped at Templeton one morning, 'what am I to make of this catalogue of stupefying facts? If they conceal some great truth then it passes over my head.'

'Patience, sir,' Templeton had soothed, 'gold is never found in great quantities.'

'Damn you for your philosophical cant, Templeton! Did Lord Dungarth never venture abroad, eh? Send himself on some mission to rouse his blood?'

'Yes, sir, indeed he did, and lost a leg if you recall, when his carriage was mined by Bonaparte's police.'

'You are altogether too reasonable for your own good, Templeton. If you were on my quarterdeck I should mast-head you for your impudence.'

'You are not on your quarterdeck, Captain Drinkwater,' Templeton had replied coolly, with that fastidious detachment which could either annoy or amuse Drinkwater.

'More's the damned pity,' Drinkwater had flung back, irritated on this occasion and aware that here, in the Admiralty, he was bereft of the trappings of pomp he had become so used to. It reduced the bottle-green coat to the uniform of a kind of servitude and his clipped speech to a pompous mannerism acquired at sea through the isolation of command. Neither consideration brought him much comfort, for the one reminded him of what he had relinquished, the other of what he had become.

Nevertheless, Drinkwater mused, leaning back in his chair and staring into the fire's dying embers, it seemed enough for Templeton methodically to unscramble the reports of spies while Drinkwater himself ached for something useful to do, instead of this tedious seeking of windmills to tilt at.

He was fast asleep when Templeton knocked on the door and he woke with a start as the clerk urgently shook his shoulder. Templeton's thin visage hung over him like a spectre.

'Captain Drinkwater, sir, wake up!'

'What the devil ...?' Drinkwater's heart pounded with alarm, for there was something wild in Templeton's eye.

'I have just received a message from Harwich, sir. Sent up post-haste by a Lieutenant Sparkman.'

'Who the devil is he?' Drinkwater asked testily, his eye catching sight of a folded paper in Templeton's hand.

'An Inspector of Fencibles…'

'Well?'

'He is holding a prisoner there, sir, a man claiming to be a colonel in the service of the King of Naples.'

'The King of Naples? Marshal Murat?'

'The same ...'

'Let me see, damn it!' Drinkwater shot out his hand, took the hurriedly offered note and read:

Sir, I have the Honour to Acquaint Their Lordships that I am just Arrived at Harwich and have in My Custody a Man just lately Arrived upon the Coast and claiming to be a Colonel Bardolini, in the Service of the King of Naples and Invested with Special Powers. I have Lodged him in the Redoubt here and Await your Instructions at the Three Cups Inn.

Sparkman, Lieutenant and Inspector of Sea Fencibles

Drinkwater turned the letter over and read the superscription with a frown.

'This is addressed to the Secretary…'

'Mr Croker is at Downing Street, Captain Drinkwater, and Mr Barrow is paying his respects to Mr Murray, the publisher.'

A wry and rather mischievous expression crossed Templeton's face. 'And it is getting rather late.' Templeton paused. 'I was alone in the copy room when the messenger was brought in...' The clerk let the sentence hang unfinished between them.

'A coup de hasard, is it, Mr Templeton?'

'Better than the coup de grâce for the Department, sir.'

'Perhaps.' Drinkwater paused. 'What d'you think it means? I recollect it was Murat's men who approached Colonel ... damn me, what was his name ...?'

'Colonel Coffin, sir, he was commanding Ponza and received overtures from Naples to Lord William Bentinck at Palermo,' said Templeton, already moving across the room to the long wooden box on the table from which he pulled an equally long drawer. It contained a well-thumbed card index and Templeton's thin fingers manipulated the contents with practised ease. After a moment he drew out a small, white rectangle covered with his own meticulous script. Holding it up to the candles he read aloud: 'Joachim Murat, born Lot 1767, trooper 1787, commissioned 1792, Italy, Egypt, assisted Bonaparte in his coup d'état, commanded Consular Guard, fought at Marengo and in operations against King Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies…'

'Whom he has now despoiled of half his kingdom,' put in Drinkwater, 'and not in the manner of a fairy tale.'

'No, indeed,' Templeton coughed and resumed the card's details. 'Marshal of France 1804, occupied Vienna 1805, Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves 1808, Jena, Eylau, Madrid, King of Naples 1808. Commanded cavalry of Grande Armee in Russia, succeeded Bonaparte as C-in-C. Married to Caroline Bonaparte ...' Templeton paused, continuing to read in silence for a moment. Then he looked up, smiling.

'In addition to the communication opened with Coffin and Lord William, we have several references to him from captains of men-of-war off the Calabrian coast.'

Drinkwater knew that the card index, with its potted biographies, was but an index to the volumes of guard books, and the references to which Templeton referred were intelligence reports concerning Marshal Murat, husband of Caroline Bonaparte and puppet King of Naples.

'I think we have an emissary of the Emperor's brother-in-law on our hands, sir.'

'Then it is a coup de main, is it not, Templeton?' Drinkwater jested, but his clerk wanted none of the pun. 'The question is, does he act on his own or Bonaparte's behalf?'

'Captain Drinkwater,' Templeton said in an urgent whisper as if he feared the very walls would betray him, 'if Mr Croker had received that letter he would pass it to the Foreign Secretary.'

'What letter?' asked Drinkwater, letting the missive go. It fluttered from his hand, slid sideways into the draught drawn into the chimney, hovered a moment above the glowing coals, then began to sink, shrivelling, charring and then touching down in a little upsurge of yellow flame before it turned to black ash, with a curl of grey smoke, and subsided among the clinkers in the grate. Drinkwater looked up, expecting outrage at this high-handed action, but was disappointed to see Templeton's face bore a look of such inscrutability that it crossed Drinkwater's mind that the clerk was pleased.

'I shall go to Harwich, Mr Templeton.'

'Tonight, sir?'

'Of course. Be so kind as to pass word for a chaise and let Williams know my portmanteau is to be made ready…'

'At once, at once…'

Templeton scuttled from the room and Drinkwater had the impression that he was actually running along the corridor outside. 'A rum fellow,' Drinkwater muttered, dismissively.

He rose from his chair, poured himself another glass of wine and took it to the window. He opened the shutters again. The moon had vanished and the night was black. Rain still drove on the panes, and the gusting wind rattled the sash incessantly.

'What a deuced dreadful night to go a-travelling,' he muttered to himself, but the window reflected a lop-sided grin above the rim of the wine glass.

CHAPTER 2 A Secret from the South

Lieutenant Sparkman dozed over the mulled wine, one booted leg stretched out on the wooden settle. Curled at his feet lay a brindled mongrel cur of menacing size. Periodically it came to frantic life, a hind leg vigorously clawing at a hidden flea, before it subsided again.

Having discommoded himself of the Neapolitan officer, he had not had much sleep in the arms of the energetic Annie. He was no longer a young man and the excesses of the night dissuaded him from taking too much of an interest in his report. He felt as weary that morning in the empty tap-room of the Three Cups at Harwich as he had at the Red Lion at Kirby-le-Soken the previous evening. He looked up as the latch of the door lifted and Annie, smiling at him above her unlaced stays and white breasts, led a stranger into the room.

'Tell your master that I want new horses in three hours and a dinner in two,' the stranger said, turning his back on Sparkman as he took off his tricorn and a heavy cloak and threw them on a wooden chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. The newcomer wore a suit of bottle-green which sat awkwardly on asymetrical shoulders down which fell his hair in an old-fashioned queue set off with a black ribbon.

'New horses, sir, an' a dinner, aye, sir ...' Annie bobbed and pouted at the newcomer and Sparkman felt a mean resentment at the intrusion, at the bossing of Annie Davis, at the little whore's attitude.

'Put some more coal on the fire,' Sparkman commanded, 'and get me a pipe and baccy while you're about it.'

Annie flashed him a quick, pleading look which spoke of obligations and priorities not purchased with his single florin.

'A glass of black-strap, if you please,' said the stranger, re­engaging Annie's attention, and she curtsied again, to Sparkman's intense irritation. But before he could add to the catalogue of Annie's chores, the man turned.

He was about fifty with a high forehead from which his grey-brown hair was drawn back severely. His face was lined and weatherbeaten, though a faint, pallid sword scar ran down his left cheek. His mouth, circumscribed by deep furrows, was expressive of contempt as he regarded the dishevelled Sparkman from stern grey eyes.

Sparkman's irritation withered under the stranger's scrutiny. He felt uncomfortably conscious of his dirty neck linen and the mud-stained boot outstretched on the settle seat. He lowered his eyes, raised the tankard to his lips. The fellow had no business with him and could go to the devil!

Drinkwater stared at the slovenly figure, noting the blue coat of naval undress uniform.

'Lieutenant Sparkman?'

Sparkman coughed with surprise, spluttering into his mulled wine in an infuriating indignity which he disguised in anger. 'And who the deuce wants to know?'

'You are Lieutenant Sparkman, Inspector of Sea Fencibles, are you not?' Drinkwater persisted coolly, drawing a paper from his breast pocket and shaking it so that the heavy seal fell, and unfolded it for Sparkman to read.

'I am Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, from the Admiralty, Mr Sparkman. You wrote to their Lordships about a Colonel Bardolini.'

Sparkman's mouth fell open; he put his tankard down, wiped his hands upon his stained breeches and took Drinkwater's identification paper, looking at Drinkwater as he sat up straight.

'I beg pardon, sir ...' He read the pass and handed it back. 'I beg pardon, sir, I had no idea ... I wasn't expectin' ...'

'No matter, Mr Sparkman, no matter.' Captain Drinkwater took the paper, refolded it and tucked it inside his coat.

'Where is this fellow Bardolini? In the Redoubt, I think you said.'

'Yes, sir, I thought it best…'

Annie Davis came back into the room with a glass of black­strap on a tray. 'Here you'm be, sir.'

'Obliged.' Drinkwater swallowed hard. 'No doubt you did think it for the best, Mr Sparkman, but I doubt Colonel Bardolini will be of so sanguine an opinion. Does he speak English?'

'Yes, very well.'

'Good. Where is this Redoubt?'

'You passed it, sir, just before you came to the main gate…'

'Ah yes, the glacis, I recollect it. Shall we go then?' Drinkwater tossed off the glass and swept up his cloak and hat. 'A dinner in two hours, my girl, and no later; a hot meat pie will do very well.'

Apart from its flagstaff, the Redoubt was as well hidden from sight as from cannon shot, nestling below a glacis which rose fifty feet above the level of the country. This slope terminated on the edge of a vertical counterscarp, and the brick bulk of the circular fort rose on the far side of a wide ditch. This was crossed by a drawbridge which led directly to the rampart, which was pierced by embrasures each housing a huge, black 24-pounder. Under the iron arch with its empty sconce, which marked the inconspicuous gateway to this military wonder, they were challenged halfheartedly by a blue-coated artilleryman on sentry duty. He had spied them walking out through the town's main gate and he had summoned a lieutenant who hurried up to greet them. For the second time in an hour, Drinkwater produced his identification.

Your servant, sir,' the artillery officer said with a good deal more savoir-faire than Sparkman had mustered, handing back the paper. 'Lieutenant Patmore, sir, at your service. I've made the Italian officer as comfortable as possible, sir ...' Patmore paused and shot a look at Sparkman, 'but I'm afraid he's frightfully touchy about his honour.'

Drinkwater regarded Sparkman and raised an eyebrow. 'You may announce me, Mr Sparkman. Lead on, Mr Patmore.'

They turned left and for a moment Drinkwater caught a glimpse of the open sea to the south-east, then the opposing salient of Landguard Point with its much older fortification, a shingle distal which formed a breakwater to the Harwich Shelf whereon a dozen merchantmen, collier brigs for the most part, rode out the last of the gale. To the north the River Orwell disappeared beyond a pair of Martello towers, winding through woodland to the port of Ipswich. Somewhere, beyond those tree-tops, lay Gantley Hall beneath the roof of which dwelt his wife Elizabeth, his children Amelia and Richard, and all his worldly desires.

Closer, behind the roofs of Harwich itself, the River Stour stretched westward to Manningtree, where he had had his final change of horses prior to traversing its banks that very forenoon.

'Your batteries command the harbour very well, Mr Patmore. Have you been stationed here long?'

'I came with the guns, sir, from Woolwich, three years ago.'

They passed a stiffly rigid bombardier and two gunners, then turned suddenly, out of the wind and down through a stepped tunnel, descending rapidly to the level of the bottom of the dry moat, emerging within the wall's circumference on to a parade ground almost ninety feet across. Walking quickly round its edge they passed a number of wooden doors, some open, betraying a kitchen, a guardroom and the garrison's quarters, then stopped beside one which Sparkman unlocked.

Inside the casemate, wooden stalls formed the fort's prison, and at the opening of the door the inmate of the nearer leapt to his feet and Drinkwater saw the blazing dark eyes and fierce moustaches of the Neapolitan officer.

'This is an outrage! I demand you release me at once! I am invested with plenipotentiary powers by King Joachim Napoleon of Naples! An insult to me is an insult to the King my master! You have taken my sword and with my sword my honour! I wish to be taken to London ...'

As this tirade burst upon them, Drinkwater turned to Patmore and, putting up a hand to the artillery officer's ear, asked, 'Do you have a room I could use? Somewhere you could serve some bread and meat, and perhaps a conciliatory bottle?'

Patmore nodded.

'Would you oblige me by attending to the matter?'

'Of course, sir. I advised Sparkman against this line of conduct.'

'Leave the matter to me, Mr Patmore.'

'Of course, sir. If you'll excuse me ...' Patmore turned away, obviously glad to be out of the embarrassing din which echoed about the chamber.

'I give myself up to you, Signor Sparkman, in honour, in friendship, in trust. I have plenipotentiary powers…'

'Will you hold your damned tongue!' Sparkman cried, his efforts to expostulate having failed under Bardolini's verbal barrage. Bardolini grew quiet, seeing Drinkwater properly for the first time as he moved away from the door and ceased to be in silhouette to a man who had spent fifteen hours in the dark.

'This is Captain Drinkwater, Colonel, from London…'

'A captain,' Bardolini sneered, 'a captain? I am a colonel in the light cavalry of the Royal Life Guard! Am I to be met by a captain?'

'I am a captain in His Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy, Colonel Bardolini,' Drinkwater said, stepping forward and edging Sparkman to one side. 'I believe us to be equal in rank, sir,' he added with a hint of sarcasm which, he noted, was lost on Bardolini. 'Do you release our guest, Mr Sparkman.'

'I, er, I don't have the key, sir. Mr Patmore ...'

'Then run and get it,' Drinkwater snapped. As soon as they were alone, he turned to Bardolini. 'I beg you to forgive the inconvenience to which you have been put, Colonel. You must appreciate the dangers of accepting everyone arriving from Europe at face value. Our orders are quite specific and to men of Lieutenant Sparkman's stamp, essential. D'you understand?'

'What is stamp?'

'Character ...'

'Ah, si. Not so clever, eh?'

'Indeed, yes.' Drinkwater smiled. The untruthful but reassuring little collusion between two senior officers mollified Bardolini, and then Sparkman was back with a key and they led the Neapolitan out into a watery sunshine which showed the breaking up of the scud and foretold a shift in the wind. On the far side of the parade, Patmore stood beside an open door and Drinkwater began to walk towards him.

Behind him Bardolini stopped and looked up at the circle of sky above them, stretching ostentatiously. He ran a finger round his stock, then put on the hat which he had tucked under his arm. Drinkwater was amazed at the splendour of the man. He wore the tight kurtka deriving from the Polish lancers of the Grande Armée, a white jacket with a scarlet plastron and silver epaulettes. His long cavalry overalls were scarlet, trimmed with twin rows of silver lace, while his headdress also echoed the Polish fashion, a czapka with its peak and tall, square top, braided with silver and magnificendy plumed in white. Colonel Bardolini was turned out in la grande tenue of parade dress and wanted only a shave to complete the impression of military perfection.

'Come, Colonel. I have ordered some meat and wine for you, and if you wish we can send for hot water for you to shave…'

'Good!' snapped Bardolini and crossed the parade.

Patmore led them into another casemate which served as the officers' mess. It was simply furnished with a table, chairs, a sideboard and some plate. Another artillery lieutenant lounged over a glass and bottle, already well down the latter for his welcome was heartily indulgent.

'Please sit down, gentlemen. Henry Courtney à votre service. Here, sir,' he said to Bardolini, 'your breakfast.' A gunner in shirt-sleeves brought in a platter of sliced meat and bread. Courtney poured wine into a second glass. Bardolini hesitated, then sat and fell ravenously upon the plate.

'Mr Courtney,' Drinkwater said as Bardolini devoured the food, 'would you do me the courtesy of allowing me a few moments of privacy with our guest?'

'Oh, I say, I've not finished ...'

'Harry!'

Courtney turned and caught the severe look in Patmore's eye. 'Oh, very well,' he said unconvincingly, and rose with a certain display of languid condescension, 'as you wish.'

Drinkwater helped himself to a glass of wine as the door closed. The shirt-sleeved gunner looked in and Drinkwater dismissed him, closing the door behind him. Then he walked back to the table, drew the identification paper from his breast yet again and laid it before Bardolini. The Neapolitan read it, still chewing vigorously. Then he stopped and looked up.

'My own papers, they are with my sword and sabretache! I do not have them!'

'Calm yourself, my dear Colonel,' Drinkwater said and sat down opposite Bardolini. 'We can attend to the formalities on our way back to London. At the moment I wish only to know the purpose of your visit.'

'I have plenipotentiary powers, Captain. They are, with respect to yourself, for the ears of King George's ministers. I have a letter of introduction to Lord Castlereagh ...'

'You speak excellent English, Colonel, where did you learn?' Drinkwater adroitly changed the subject.

'I worked for many years in the counting-house of an English merchant in Napoli. He taught it to all his clerks.'

'You were a clerk then, once upon a time?'

'But a republican always,' Bardolini flared.

"Yet you represent a king, and seek the ministers of a king. That is curious, is it not?'

'King Joachim is a soldier. He is a republican at heart, himself the son of an inn-keeper. He is a benevolent monarch, one who wishes to unite Italy and be a new Julius Caesar.'

'I thought Caesar refused a crown ...'

'King Joachim is not a king as you understand it, Captain. Believe me, I lived under the rule of that despot Ferdinand and his Austrian bitch. They are filth, perhaps as mad as they say your own king is, but certainly filth, not worthy to eat the shit that ran out of the sewers of their own palazzo.'

'And yet I have to ask what King Joachim would say to the mad King George's ministers?'

'I cannot tell you.'

'I cannot take you to London.'

'You would not dare to refuse!' Bardolini's eyes blazed.

'Colonel, the ocean is wide, deep and cold. The men who have seen you today will have forgotten you in a month. Why do you think I have come here today? Do you think I myself do not have special powers, eh?' Drinkwater paused, letting his words sink in. 'Come, sir, telling me what you have come here for is likely to have little effect on matters if I am a man of no account. On the other hand, going forward to London on my recommendation will ensure your mission is swiftly accomplished.'

Bardolini remained silent.

'Let me guess, then. You are here in order to open secret negotiations to preserve the throne of Naples in the name of King Joachim Napoleon. You speak very good English and have plenipotentiary powers in case it becomes possible, in the course of your discussions, to conclude a formal accommodation, or even a full treaty of alliance, in which the British government guarantee Naples for the King your master who, though he remains a Marshal of France and Grand Admiral of the Empire, lost his French citizenship on succeeding to the crown of Naples.' Drinkwater paused, aware that he had Bardolini's full attention.

'You have, moreover, a difficult game to play because, on the one hand, King Joachim does not want his brother-in-law, the Emperor Napoleon, to know of this action. Nor does he wish the Austrians to learn of it, for while they may well toy with King Joachim, his desire to unite the Italian republicans and then the whole peninsula is inimical to their own interests. Moreover, it will cause deep offence to King Ferdinand, whose wife, Queen Maria Carolina, is not only the sister of the late Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, but was also born an Austrian archduchess and whose husband, though ruling still in Sicily, has been deprived of the Italian portion of his kingdom by conquest. King Ferdinand regards your King Joachim as an usurper.

'Nevertheless, Prince Cariati at Vienna is assiduously pressing King Joachim's suit to the Austrian ministry. So your master must play a double game, for the Emperor Napoleon works to detach the Austrian Emperor from his alliance with us, thinking his own new wife, the Empress Marie-Louise, yet another Austrian archduchess, possesses influence to succeed in this endeavour, being daughter to the Emperor Francis himself.'

Drinkwater paused. Bardolini had ceased chewing and his jaw lay unpleasandy open so that half-masticated food was exposed upon his tongue. Drinkwater poured another glass of wine and looked away.

'Now, Colonel, do you have anything to add to this?'

Bardolini shut his mouth, chewed rapidly and swallowed prematurely. He lunged at his glass and gulped at the claret, wiping his mouth on the scarlet turn-back of his cuff.

'Sympatico, Captain, we are of one mind!'

'Perhaps. But King George's ministers will be less easy to oblige than you imagine, Colonel. Consider. Your master has already communicated with us through his Minister of Police, the Duke of Campochiaro, who sent one of his agents, a certain Signor Cerculi, to discuss with Colonel Coffin at Ponza matters of trade and an easement of the naval blockade of Calabria. Is that not true? And after these negotiations had been concluded, Cerculi let it be known that King Joachim and his brother-in-law had fallen out, indeed, that they were frequently at odds. King Joachim wants to rule in his own name and Napoleon wants him as no more than a tributary-king, a puppet — a marionette. Is this not so?'

'How do you know all this?' Bardolini looked genuinely puzzled.

'Because', Drinkwater said, leaning forward and lowering his voice, 'Colonel Coffin reported the matter back to the Sicilian court at Palermo, and from there it was passed to London.'

Such a torrent of detail clearly surprised Bardolini. He was astonished at the knowledge possessed by this strange Englishman. He did not know that Coffin had regaled the British frigate captain with the whole story and he, bored with the tedium of blockade, had confided all the details to his routine report of proceedings. This, in turn, had crossed Drinkwater's desk within two months, at the same time that the confidential diplomatic dispatch from Sicily had reached the office of the Foreign Secretary.

'But therein lies our dilemma, Colonel,' Drinkwater continued relentlessly. 'King Ferdinand has been assured that the British government wants to see the King of the Two Sicilies restored to his rightful place in his palace at Naples. How, then, can His Britannic Majesty's government take King Joachim seriously?'

It was, Drinkwater thought wryly, a fair question. Napoleon Bonaparte, having driven Ferdinand across the Strait of Messina, placed his brother Joseph on the vacant throne at Naples, leaving Ferdinand and Maria Carolina to vegetate under British protection at Palermo. Then, when he deceived the King of Spain and took him prisoner, Napoleon transferred Joseph to Madrid, installing him as king there, and sent Marshal Murat to Naples as King Joachim. It was rather a tawdry and expedient proceeding.

'Ferdinand is not important. He fled in English ships to Palermo. You support him there, without English ships he is powerless. Your government can abandon Ferdinand. Lord William Bentinck, your former minister at Palermo, has already been recalled by Lord Casdereagh.'

'But what has King Joachim to offer us in exchange for our protection? Can he guarantee that, if we maintain the dignity of his throne, the people of Naples, let alone of the whole of Italy, will acknowledge him as king?'

'Si! Yes! He is most popular! Without your ships, Ferdinand would be lost and Sicily would join all of Italy. Would that not be better for England? To have a friendly power in the Mediterranean? You would like a naval port at Livorno, or La Spezia.'

'Perhaps. Are you empowered to offer us a naval port?'

Bardolini shrugged again and looked about him. 'This is not the place ...'

Drinkwater grinned. 'You may have to content yourself with such a place, Colonel,' he said dryly, 'you are in my hands now,' and his expression and tone of voice, strained by tiredness, appeared to Bardolini to be full of menace.

In fact Drinkwater was disappointed. The Neapolitan had nothing to offer. Joachim Murat was hedging his bets fantastically. It would be an act of humanity to send tins candy-stick officer back to Flushing by the first available boat, but perhaps he would play the charade for just a little longer.

'Well, Colonel,' he said with an air of finality, stirring as though to rise and call Patmore and Sparkman, 'is King Joachim to be trusted? He is married to Caroline Bonaparte, the Emperor's sister. If he commits himself to coming over to the Allied cause like Bernadotte, his position must be unassailable. He courts Austria, which has her own deep interest in Tuscany and the Papal States, and would rather an accommodation with Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies than the adventurer and parvenu King Joachim…'

'Captain! You should not call him that! He is brave, and true! And devoted to his people and the Rights of Man!'

The sincerity of Bardolini's florid passion was genuine, though he had looked angry at Drinkwater's reference to Bernadotte. They were getting nowhere. For all the confidence of his exposition, Drinkwater was exhausted. The overnight journey jolting in a chaise, turning over and over in his mind the likely outcome of this queer meeting; the memorizing of the notes he had scribbled from a quick rereading of the guard books; the rehearsal of facts; the guessing at motives and the building in his own mind of a convincing, watertight reason for this singular, strange invasion, had left him weary. He had wanted to rage at the imbecile Sparkman, so obviously raddled by a night of dissolution, yet the lieutenant's inhumane treatment of Bardolini had left the man indignant for his own honour, and unguarded about his master's.

Drinkwater mustered his wits for one last argument. The drink had made him dopey and he forced himself to his feet, leaning forward for emphasis, his hands spread on the table before him. Again he managed a thin smile at Bardolini.

'There is one last point that we must consider, Colonel Bardolini. Where is the King of Naples now?'

The question caught Bardolini off guard. 'He is at Dresden.'

'With his Emperor?'

'With the Emperor of the French, yes.'

'As a Marshal of France, commanding the cavalry of the Grande Armée.'

Bardolini nodded, frowning.

Yet he must be on the winning side, must he not? And to preserve his integrity it must never be known that he treated with the other. Is that not so?'

You are an intelligent man, Captain. The King is married to the Emperor's sister. They correspond. There could be no absolute secrets between them…'

'No!' snapped Drinkwater with sudden vehemence. 'Bonaparte is a cynic; he will overlook base ingratitude, even treason if it serves his purpose, but do you think the Emperor Francis of Austria will be so tolerant? He is not so republican a king.'

Bardolini shrugged, missing the sarcasm. 'The Emperor Francis will bow if England is in alliance with the King of Napoli. A man who will declare war on the husband of his daughter will do anything.'

The cogency of the argument was impressive; and Bardolini's diplomatic ability was clear. Drinkwater fought to retain control of the dialogue.

'But, Colonel Bardolini, even as we speak Marshal Murat is in the field alongside his imperial brother-in-law. At least Bernadotte has repudiated his former master and is at the head of his Swedish troops and in command of an Allied army. His victory over his old friend Marshal Oudinot at Gross Beeren can hardly be called equivocating. Moreover, Colonel, on the sixth of this month, this same ci-devant republican soldier of France beat another old friend, Michel Ney, at Dennewitz. You did not know that, eh?' Drinkwater paused to let the import of the news sink in, then added, 'but your master has no such earnest of good faith to offer from his head­quarters at Dresden, does he, eh? He behaves as he is, a tributary king, a puppy fawning on the hand that feeds him.'

Drinkwater finished his diatribe. Tiredness lent a menace to his final words and Bardolini was visibly upset by the torrent of logic poured upon him by this apparently scornful Englishman. He remained silent as Drinkwater straightened up, contemplating the evaporation of his hopes.

'Come, sir. We will summon your sword and sabretache. You shall accompany me to an inn where my chaise will be ready. You may shave there while I eat. I can promise you nothing, but we will proceed to London.'

Bardolini looked relieved as he stood and reached for his ornate czapka.

'By the way, Colonel, we do not need an Italian port as long as we have Malta. Besides, how long could we trust a king who was married to a Bonaparte princess, eh? Tell me that if you can.'

Suddenly, in the ill-lit casemate, the beplumed Neapolitan looked ridiculously crestfallen.

The wind, which had veered in the night and brought a cold forenoon of bright sunshine, backed against the sun as it westered, so that the sky clouded and it began to rain long before they reached Colchester. Drinkwater was tempted to stop and spend the night there, but the steak-and-kidney pie Annie Davis had served him at the Three Cups put him into a doze so that inertia dissuaded him from making a decision and the chaise rumbled on westward.

He had no thought now but to disencumber himself of Bardolini as soon as they reached London, and when he woke briefly as they changed horses he felt only an intense irritation that he could not have turned north at Manningtree, crossed the Stour and taken the Ipswich road towards Gantley Hall and his wife Elizabeth's bed.

The recent weather had turned the road into a quagmire. Every rut had become a ditch, the horses were muddied to their bellies and the wheels spun arcs of filth behind them. The chaise lurched over this morass and bucked and rocked in the gusts of wind, the rain drummed on the hood and he heard Bardolini cursing, though whether it was the weather or his predicament that most discommoded the Neapolitan, Drinkwater neither knew nor cared. At about eleven that night it stopped raining. On the open road the going improved and they reached Kelvedon before midnight. Both men got out to stretch their legs and visit the necessary at the post-house. A draught of flip restored Drinkwater to a lucid state of mind. The stimulus of the alcohol and the irregular motion of the chaise when they drove forward again continued to make sleep impossible. Bardolini, sitting opposite, was equally unable to doze off and in the intermittent moonlight that peeped from behind the torn and ragged cumulus, Drinkwater was aware of the fierce glitter of the Neapolitan officer's eyes.

Initially Drinkwater expected sudden attack, an instinctive if illogical fear of treacherous assault. But then he realized Bardolini was caught in a reverie and his eyes merely sought the future. Or perhaps the past, Drinkwater mused, which might be full of disappointments, but was at least inhabited by certainties. As he had found so often at sea, the light doze he had enjoyed earlier had restored him, and he felt an indulgence towards his fellow-traveller.

'Colonel,' he said, as they passed through a patch of brilliant moonlight and he could see Bardolini's face in stark tones, 'I do not hold out much hope for your mission. Entre nous, the idea of a republican king is something of a contradiction in terms. Your reception in London is not likely to be, what do you say? Sympatico?'

'I have plenipotentiary powers, Captain. I am on diplomatic service. I expect the normal courtesies…'

'I do not wish to alarm you unduly, Colonel, but I am not aware that we recognize the government of King Joachim. Only your uniform prevents your arrest as a spy. That, and my company.'

'But you will take me to Lord Castlereagh, Captain?' Bardolini asked with a plaintive anxiety.

'I will send word to the Foreign Secretary that you are in London, but ...' Drinkwater left the conjunction hanging in the darkness that now engulfed the two men. The unspoken clause was ominous and, unknown to Drinkwater, had the effect on the Neapolitan of causing him to come to a decision.

Upon landing in England, Colonel Bardolini had expected to be quickly picked up by the police, to be whisked to London with the Napoleonic thoroughness by which such things were managed in the French Empire and those states under its influence. He had not expected to stumble upon the discreditable Sparkman and then be locked up like a common criminal. Protestations about his honour, his plenipotentiary status and offers of his parole had fallen upon deaf ears. Now Drinkwater's assertions clothed this outrage with a chilling logic. The English were, just as he had been led to believe, barbarians.

Notwithstanding these considerations, Bardolini had not anticipated this strange English naval officer would possess such a commanding knowledge of the situation in Napoli; it was uncanny. Indeed, such was the extent of the captain's familiarity with the plight of his master, King Joachim, that Bardolini suspected treachery. His imprisonment was consonant with such a hypothesis and he believed he was, even now, on his way to a more secure incarceration.

The only thing which Bardolini had expected was the violence of the sea passage and the weather which now assailed the chaise and deterred him from any rash ideas of escape. Not that he had abandoned them altogether; he carried a stiletto inside his right boot, but to reach it beneath his tight cavalry­man's overalls was well-nigh impossible, and his sword was secured to his portmanteau. Besides, there were other considerations. Though he spoke English well, he could hardly melt inconspicuously into the countryside! Besides, if he stole a horse, he would only be returned the faster to the shores of that damnable sea.

As the dismal hours succeeded one another, he resolved on the one course of action he had reserved for Lord Castlereagh alone, in the hope that this naval officer, whose grasp of diplomatic affairs seemed so inexplicably comprehensive, would favourably influence his request for an interview with the British Foreign Minister. Now, as Drinkwater hinted so forbiddingly at the hostility of his reception, Bardolini played his trump card and spoke out of the darkness.

'Captain Drinkwater, I believe you to be a man of honour. You are clearly a person of some influence, your knowledge of affairs of state makes that quite clear. It is possible you are a police agent... If that is so, I ask only that what I am about to confide in you, you report to your superiors…'

'I am not a police agent, Colonel. We have not yet adopted all your Continental fashions. I am what I told you.'

'Perhaps,' Bardolini acknowledged doubtfully, 'but your word, please, that what I tell you will be treated with the confidence it deserves and be passed to Lord Castlereagh himself.'

'Are you about to give me a pledge of your master's good faith?'

'Si.'

'Very well. You have my word.'

'You are at war with the Americans, are you not?'

'You know that very well.'

'I also know that there are men in America who would rule Canada, and Frenchmen in Canada who would welcome American assistance to separate them from your country, even if it meant joining the United States.'

'That is not a very great secret, Colonel.'

'No. But King Joachim wishes to make known to your government that the Americans have negotiated a secret treaty of mutual assistance with the Emperor Napoleon, a treaty which, in exchange for American attacks on British ships and a quantity of gold, guarantees a large shipment of arms, powder and shot. These are to be used for raising a revolution in Quebec. The Quebecois will join up with an American army marching north from New York next spring.'

'Go on, Colonel, you have my full attention.'

'During the winter bad weather, American ships will arrive in the waters of Norway

'Where in Norway?' Drinkwater cut in.

'A place called the Vikkenfiord.'

'Go on, Colonel.'

'Secretly, the arms and munitions will be taken to them by the Danes. The Americans will also stop supplying your army in the Iberian Peninsula. The Emperor believes that with rebellion in Canada, your government will no longer be able to support the Spanish insurrection, will withdraw Wellington's army and transport it to North America. Great Britain will retreat behind its traditional defence, the sea. It will not be able to expend its treasure on maintaining Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies in the field. Your country's alliance will die and the Emperor of Austria will accept King Joachim as the sovereign of Italy.'

But Drinkwater was no longer listening; he was thinking of Herr Liepmann's dispatch and the shipment of arms lying somewhere in Hamburg.

CHAPTER 3 Arrivals

There was a clever simplicity in Bardolini's revelations. Not only was their substance of crucial importance to the survival of Great Britain, but the plan was cunning in its construction, satisfying both political and economic needs. For while raising rebellion and absorbing Canada in the Union would placate the war-hawks in the American Congress, it would also compensate the United States' treasury for the loss of British gold now paid for the grain being sent to Wellington's army in Spain. For Britain herself, the loss of American supplies was more important than the saving to her exchequer. It was well known that the Americans were happy to export to both contending parties in the great war in Europe, and that they sold wheat to the British with whom they were themselves at war! But a greater irony existed if the arms they were to buy from the French were paid for with gold sent to the United States by Great Britain in the first place.

This vast and complex circulation wormed its way into Drinkwater's tired brain as the buffeted chaise passed Chelmsford and rumbled on towards London. He mused on the tortuous yet simple logic, aware from his own experience with Yankee privateers that American ambition was as resourceful as it was boundless. There was, moreover, an insidious and personal reflection in his train of thought. In all the weary months he had spent at the Admiralty's Secret Department, he had hoped for some news like Bardolini's. He had not the slightest doubt that the Neapolitan colonel had been delivered into his hands by Providence itself, nor that it was not Joachim Murat's secret overtures that were the most important feature of Bardolini's intelligence.

The fantastical image of Napoleon's great cavalry leader was a tragi-comic figure in Drinkwater's perception, a man raised to such heights of pomp and pride that violent descent could be its only consequence. The very weakness of the parvenu king's position, his desire to maintain friends on both sides of the fence, so that when he tumbled from it there would be waiting arms to save him, was too ridiculous to be treated seriously.

King Joachim's secret earnest of good faith, the revelation of the bargain struck between the French Emperor and the Americans, was clever enough, for it was invaluable to Great Britain, but its defeat, if the British chose to act, left King Joachim untouched and would hurt his brother-in-law enough to incline fate to favour the Allied cause. Nor was its betrayal a serious enough treachery to deprive Murat of his kingdom if Napoleon defeated his enemies in detail. The French Emperor was not a man to deprive the husband of his favourite sister of his crown for a mere peccadillo!

Nor could Drinkwater ignore the consequences of success for Napoleon himself. If the Emperor of the French did succeed in forcing the British to withdraw Wellington's army for service in America or Canada, such a move would not only remove the threat to southern France, it would also release battle-hardened troops under his most experienced marshals to reinforce the ranks of the green 'Marie-Louises' now opposing the combined might of Russia, Prussia and Austria.

As Drinkwater nursed an aching head and the beginnings of yet another quinsy, as he slipped in and out of conscious thought, nodding opposite the now sleeping Bardolini, his resolve hardened round the central thought that this was without doubt the event for which Lord Dungarth had named Nathaniel Drinkwater his successor in the Secret Department of the British Admiralty.

In his tired and half-conscious state, Drinkwater found nothing incongruous in attributing Dungarth with such prescience. The earl had possessed a keen and analytical brain and had been quite capable of sensing some innate ability in his ageing protégé. But for Drinkwater it was to prove a dangerously deluded piece of self-conceit.

Drinkwater was at his desk by three o'clock that afternoon. When they changed horses at Brentwood he had instructed the post boy to take them directly to his home in Lord North Street. Both he and Bardolini were jerked rudely awake when the chaise finally stopped outside the terraced house.

The place had been left to Drinkwater by Lord Dungarth with a pitifully small legacy for its upkeep and the continued maintenance of its staff. It was a modest house, the austere earl's only London establishment, which had become home for Drinkwater now that his new post detained him so much in the capital. Ideas of a convenient pied-à-terre for Captain and Mistress Drinkwater had proved impractical. Elizabeth, never entirely at ease in town, had almost conceded defeat, and contented herself with running the small Suffolk estate, while Drinkwater led his own miserable and unhappy existence dragging daily to Whitehall.

He had done nothing to the interior of the house and it remained as it had been when Dungarth occupied it. He had even ordered Williams, Dungarth's manservant, who had performed the joint offices of butler, valet and occasional secretary to the earl, to retain the black crêpe drapes over the full-length portrait of Dungarth's long-dead countess which hung above the fireplace in the withdrawing-room. The gesture had earned Williams's approval and the transfer of loyalty to Captain Drinkwater had thereafter been total.

'He's very like his Lordship in many ways,' Williams had confided to his common-law wife who, as cook and house­keeper, formed the remainder of the staff.

'Yes, he's a gennelman all right,' she agreed.

'Not quite in the same way as Lord John was,' Williams added, his notion of the finer distinctions of society more acute than that of his spouse, his terminology uttered with an unassailable familiarity, 'but inclining that way, to be sure.'

'To be sure,' agreed his wife docilely, aware that her own status was as much a matter of delicate uncertainty as Captain Drinkwater's, and always anxious to avoid the slightest disturbance to her husband's tranquillity of mind which, he had long ago assured her, was of the utmost importance in their relationship.

Williams now met Drinkwater and took his instructions. The strange colonel was to be given every comfort; a meal, a bath and, if he wished, an immediate bed after his long and tedious journey.

Williams's long service had conditioned him to odd arrivals and departures. He was well aware of the nature of the business of his employers, past and present, and the moustachioed figure was but one of a succession of ill-assorted 'guests' that he had accommodated. Having instructed Williams, Drinkwater turned to Bardolini.

'My dear Colonel, please accept my hospitality without my presence. Williams here will see to your wants. You must, as we say, make yourself at home.' He smiled at Bardolini who, as he removed his cloak, looked round with an air of curiosity, then gravely bowed a courtly acknowledgement. He looked every inch the plenipotentiary in his scarlet, white and silver.

'Thank you, Captain.'

'I shall leave you for a matter of a few hours. We will dine together tonight, when I hope to have news for you. In the meantime I will announce your arrival.'

'You wish to see my accreditation?' asked Bardolini, recovering his dangling sabretache on its silver-laced straps.

'Indeed, I do.'

'I am trusting you, Captain, with my life,' Bardolini said solemnly, handing over the heavily sealed paper which Drinkwater opened and scanned briefly.

'It is not misplaced, I assure you,' said Drinkwater, turning to Williams. 'See Colonel Bardolini wants for nothing, if you please, Williams. I shall be back for dinner at eight.'

Thus Captain Drinkwater was at the Admiralty before the clock at the Horse Guards struck three hours after noon.

Templeton met him as the Admiralty porter stirred himself from his chair.

'Good to have you return, sir,' said Templeton with a curtness that drew Drinkwater's attention to the fixed and unhappy expression on his face. 'Shall we go up directly?'

'As you please, Templeton,' said Drinkwater, somewhat nonplussed by his clerk's obvious discomfiture.

'What the devil's the matter?' Drinkwater asked, the moment they were inside his room. They had met but one other clerk upon the stairs and he had drawn aside with an unusual display of deference as Templeton had sped past, so that Drinkwater became alarmed at what news had broken in his absence.

'Barrow is the matter, sir. He has closed us down without further ado and in your absence. The matter is most improper.' Templeton fidgeted with an unhappy agitation, his face pale and anxious. 'The guard books are to be transferred to the Second Secretary's office, sir, and I,' Templeton's voice cracked with emotion, 'I am to be returned to the general copy room.'

It was not the worst fate that could befall an Englishman, Drinkwater thought, Templeton could be press-ganged, but he forbore from pointing this out. Nevertheless, it was clear that this humiliation had hurt the clerk, for news of the projected closure had come as no surprise. The thought sowed a seed in Drinkwater's over-stimulated brain but, for the moment, he confined himself to a sympathetic concern.

'My dear fellow, that is bad news, but don't despair, perhaps ...'

Templeton shook his head. 'I have remonstrated with Barrow, sir. He is adamant that our activities can be subsumed by his own office and that my own personal expertise is of little consequence.' Templeton paused to master his bitterness, adding, with a touch of venom, 'I think he is jealous of our independence.'

'I shouldn't wonder,' Drinkwater temporized, pondering on how best to further matters in so far as Bardolini's news was concerned.

'I assured him that, notwithstanding our lack of recent progress, there were indications that matters of importance would shortly come to a head and that your own absence testified to this.' Templeton fell ominously silent. There was obviously an element of deep and significant drama, at least as far as Templeton was concerned, in this exchange.

'What did Mr Barrow say to that?' Drinkwater prompted with a tolerant patience he was far from feeling.

'He said', Templeton began with an evasive air, as if he found the admission distasteful, 'that it did not seem to much matter these days whether you were in or out, sir, but that on balance your achievements in the past had proved rather more effective in the public service when you were out, preferably at sea, sir.'

Drinkwater suppressed an outburst of laughter with a snort that Templeton construed as indignation. In all justice Drinkwater could not find much flaw in Barrow's decision, given that Barrow knew nothing of the events of the last two days, but in consideration of Templeton's feelings, he kept his face straight.

'It is my fault, I'm afraid, Barrow has never liked me ...'

'I find it difficult to see why, sir.'

'Thank you, but we disagreed some years ago and I think he has seen my installation here as something to be terminated when the opportunity arose. I do not believe he wanted the department to outlive Lord Dungarth. Anyway, I think it is no matter now

'Oh, yes ... forgive me, Captain Drinkwater, I have been so unseated by this unpleasant matter

'Of course, Templeton, of course. I take it you do not wish to return to the copy room?'

'The loss of emolument, sir ...' Templeton looked aghast.

'How attached are you to my person, Templeton? Sufficient to go a-voyaging?'

'To sea, sir?' Templeton asked incredulously.

'That is the purpose of Admiralty,' Drinkwater replied drily.

'Well yes, sir, I understand, but my widowed mother…' Templeton was deathly pale.

'Never mind, then,' Drinkwater said brusquely, 'go at once and inform Mr Barrow of my return and my desire to speak with Mr Croker. Then, if you please, find out for me the ships and vessels currently at anchor in roadsteads on the east coast, from the Downs to Leith. A list of guardships and convoy escorts, that sort of thing, do you understand?'

'Perfectly.' The clerk's voice was not above a whisper.

'Good, then bring that to me, wherever I am in the building.'

Barrow received Drinkwater in his spacious office. Neither man had alluded to their disagreement some six years earlier. [See Baltic Mission.] Indeed Drinkwater supposed Barrow had long ago forgotten about it, for it was Drinkwater himself who had been the more angered by their unfortunate encounter. Nevertheless, since his posting to the Secret Department, memory of the matter had disinclined Drinkwater to force his presence on the Second Secretary and he had preferred to rely upon written memoranda to communicate with the Board.

'Pray sit down, Captain Drinkwater. Mr Croker has taken his seat in the House today and I have therefore taken the liberty of asking you to see me. I think I know why you wish to speak with the First Secretary and I apologize for the manner in which you learned of our decision to incorporate Lord Dungarth's old office with my own. I am sure you can see the logic ...'

'I perfecdy understand the logic, Mr Barrow,' Drinkwater broke in, 'and it is not what I have come to discuss with either Mr Croker or yourself.'

'Oh, I see, then what may I ask ...?'

'Templeton is somewhat anxious about his future as, I admit, I am for my own.'

Barrow was immediately deceived by Drinkwater's opening. He was used to self-seeking, whether it was that of clerks or sea-officers, but it was crucial to Drinkwater that he should know whether or not the Admiralty had any plans for himself.

'We thought perhaps some furlough; you have not had the opportunity to spend much time on your estate, nor to enjoy the society of your wife and family.'

'You have no plans for me to have a ship?'

'Not immediately, Captain, no. There are Edwardes and Milne both clamouring for release from the American blockade, and when Green returns from the West Indies…'

'I am not anxious for a seventy-four.'

'No, quite, blockade is a confoundedly tedious business, I'm told.' Barrow smiled. 'Since you're too old for a frigate,' he added with a laugh, 'it looks as if your Suffolk acres will have to serve you for a quarterdeck.'

Drinkwater ignored the mockery and changed the subject. 'I have been away, Mr Barrow, and I desire you to communicate a matter of some importance to the Foreign Secretary directly.'

'And what is that?' Barrow asked with unfeigned surprise.

'I have, in my custody, a Colonel Bardolini of the household cavalry of King Joachim of Naples. The King, if that is what he is, wishes to secure a guarantee from His Britannic Majesty's government that, irrespective of the fate of the Emperor of the French, Joachim Napoleon will remain King of Naples.'

'But King Ferdinand ...'

'I have explained all the ramifications attaching to the matter,' Drinkwater said wearily, drawing from his breast pocket Bardolini's diplomatic accreditation and laying it on the desk before Barrow. 'Moreover, I am of the opinion that King Joachim is a reed awaiting the stronger breeze. Nevertheless, Bardolini has been invested with plenipotentiary powers and sent here on a mission to the Court of St James's.'

Barrow leaned forward and drew the document towards him. 'Murat,' he murmured, reading the paper, 'well, well.'

'There is another matter, Mr Barrow,' Drinkwater began, but he was interrupted by a knock at the door.

'Come,' Barrow called, without looking up from Bardolini's paper.

Templeton approached across the carpet and held out a sheet of paper. Drinkwater took it and stared at it. Templeton had written: The Downs, The Nore, Ho'sley Bay, Yarmouth, The Humber, Tyne, Leith, and under each the names of one or two ships.

'What is that? What do you want, Templeton?' Barrow looked up, frowning at the intrusion.

'My fault, Mr Barrow,' Drinkwater put in quickly, 'I asked Templeton to bring me a list of ships in the ports of the east coast...'

'What on earth for ...?'

'Thank you, Templeton, kindly wait for me in my room.'

'Very well, sir.' Reluctance was in every step of the clerk's retreat.

'Captain, if you please, explain ...'

'Of course, Mr Barrow, of course. There is another matter arising out of this approach from Marshal Murat…'

'I presume this other matter touches us ... I mean their Lordships, rather than the Foreign Secretary?'

'You are an astute man, Mr Barrow.'

Drinkwater explained, repeating Bardolini's revelation and adding the corroborative evidence from Herr Liepmann at Hamburg sent through the British-held island of Helgoland. When he had finished, Barrow was silent for a moment. 'I recollect', he said gravely, 'your report on the destruction of the American privateers, and the concomitant matters you raised.' Barrow frowned, deep in thought. 'You are uniquely placed to understand the importance of this intelligence, are you not?'

'Hence this paper, Mr Barrow.'

'The paper?' Barrow frowned again, but this time with incomprehension.

'I want two things, Mr Barrow ...'

'You want... ?'

'You give my office a brief stay of execution and you give me', he looked down at the paper Templeton had brought to where his thumb lay adjacent to the note Leith, 'the frigate Andromeda.'

'But I ...'

'Come, come, I have been here long enough to know Lord Melville will put his name to anything you recommend, as will Mr Croker…'

Barrow grunted, fell silent, then said, 'But is one frigate enough, Captain? You had a flying squadron at your disposal before.'

'Another thing I have learned is that we have few enough ships to protect our own trade, Mr Barrow. How many can you spare me? The cutter Kestrel used to be at Lord Dungarth's disposal, but she has long since…'

'No, no, you may have her, if you wish, as a tender or dispatch vessel.'

'And I may write my own orders?'

'You may draft your own orders, Captain,' said Barrow smiling, 'and you may retain Templeton to do it...'

'I was thinking of taking him to sea.'

'A capital idea.'

'I think their Lordships might permit me the luxury of a secretary.'

'I think they might be persuaded.' Relief at having the problem of Templeton so neatly resolved delighted Barrow.

Drinkwater rose. 'What of Bardolini? He is safe enough with me for a few days and I shall want a week to make my preparations, but after that he will be an encumbrance.'

'Give me a day or two, Captain Drinkwater, and I will let you know — by, say, Thursday?'

Drinkwater nodded. 'What d'you think Castlereagh will do?'

'I would imagine almost anything to string Murat along and prevent him giving his wholehearted support to Bonaparte.'

'So we will send Bardolini back with a diplomatic humbug?'

'It is not for me to say, but I would imagine so.'

'Poor fellow.'

' C'est la guerre, n 'est-cepas? You may send him to Helgoland in the Kestrel. He may then be landed near Hamburg and rejoin his master at Dresden.'

Drinkwater nodded. 'Very well. I shall hear from you by Thursday?'

'Of course.'

Whether or not Barrow recalled their past disagreement, Drinkwater had forgotten it as he left the room.

Templeton was not in his room when Drinkwater returned to it, and he sat and contemplated the papers on his desk. A dozen dispatches and reports had come in in his absence, an unusual amount for two days and ironic in the light of the imminent demise of his office. The sheets were neatly minuted in Templeton's impeccable script and, where necessary, additional sheets of paper were pinned to the originals, decryptions of enciphered text.

He riffled through them. They were tediously routine: a deciphered message from a Chouan agent in Brittany recounting the numbers of French warships in Brest which would serve merely to corroborate the sightings of the blockading frigates off Ushant; a report from St Helier in the Channel Islands about a small convoy which would have reached its destination by now; and a report from Exeter concerning the escape of a score of American prisoners-of-war from a working detail sent out from Dartmoor prison.

Templeton entered the room at that moment. 'I'm sorry, sir, I...'

Drinkwater waved aside the man's apology. 'No matter. How do we come to receive this? This is a matter for the civil authorities.' He indicated the report concerning the American prisoners.

'They were seamen, sir, and therefore we were notified. We usually inform the Regulating Captains ...'

'And they try and pick them up for service in our own fleet, eh?'

'I believe so, sir. They are more productive serving His Majesty at sea, rather than being detained at His Majesty's pleasure ashore!'

'A vicious habit, Templeton, which don't make the life of a sea-officer at all comfortable, and a pretty extremity to be driven to.' Drinkwater pulled himself up short. Templeton was not to blame for such matters, though it would do him good to see something of life's realities. 'Besides,' he added, 'they were not idle when they escaped, they were building dry-stone walls.'

'Yes, sir,' Templeton said resignedly, leaning forward and drawing a last letter to Drinkwater's attention. 'There is a post scriptum to the affair.'

Drinkwater took the letter and read it. 'So they melted into the countryside. Does the fact seem the least remarkable to you, Templeton? Wouldn't you have done the same?'

'It is customary to have a few reports of sightings.'

Drinkwater dropped the letter. 'Pass these to Mr Barrow's people. We have other work to do. Do you draft orders, in the usual form, to the officer commanding HMS Andromeda ...'

'He is not on board, sir, having been lately called to Parliament.. .'

'Then that is his damned bad luck, who is he?'

'Captain Pardoe. He is the Member for Eyesham.'

'Well, so much the better for Eyesham. An order for his replacement, my commission ... where is Kestrel?'

'Kestrel, sir? Er, she is a cutter…'

'I know what she is, I want to know where she is.'

'Laid up, I think,' said Templeton frowning, 'at Chatham, I believe.'

'Find out. Let me know. Now I shall write to my wife. We have less than a week before we leave London, Templeton.'

'We, sir?'

'Yes. You are appointed my secretary.'

Templeton stared blankly at Drinkwater and opened his mouth to protest. It had gone dry and he found it difficult to speak, managing only a little gasp before Drinkwater's glare dissuaded him from the matter and he fled. To lose all hope of elevation and suffer the ignominy of virtual demotion was enough for one day, but to be a pressed man as well was more than flesh and blood could stand. Templeton reeled out into the corridor dashing the tears from his eyes.

He left behind a chuckling Drinkwater who drew a clean sheet of paper towards him, picked up his pen and flipped open the inkwell.

My Darling Wife ... he began to write and, for a few moments, all thoughts of the war left him. As he finished the letter he looked up. It was almost dark and the unlit room allowed his eyes to focus on the deep blue of the cloudless evening sky. The first stars twinkled dimly, increasing in brilliance as he watched, marvelling.

He would soon see again not merely those four circum­scribed rectangles, but the entire, majestic firmament.

It was almost a cruelty to bring Elizabeth to London for a mere three days, but two in the society of Bardolini, who insisted on continually badgering his host for news, was a trial to Drinkwater for whom the wait, with little to do beyond a brief daily attendance at the Admiralty, was tedious enough.

Difficulties began to crowd him within an hour of his wife's arrival. Bardolini insisted upon paying her elaborate court, depriving her husband of even the chilliest formality of a greeting, but then a more serious arrival in the shape of the young Captain Pardoe threatened to upset Drinkwater's humour still further.

'I understand, sir, that it is largely upon your intervention that I have been deprived of my command,' Pardoe had expostulated on the doorstep.

'Whereas I understand the demands of party expect you in Westminster, sir, where, happily, you are,' Drinkwater replied coolly.

'Damn it, sir, by what right do you ...?'

'You are making a fool of yourself, Captain Pardoe, pray come inside ...' Pardoe was admitted and confronted with the uniformed splendour of Colonel Bardolini. Introductions were effected to both the Neapolitan and Elizabeth, hushing Pardoe. At an opportune moment, Drinkwater was able to draw him aside and whisper, 'Colonel Bardolini is an important diplomatic envoy. Your ship is wanted for a mission of some delicacy, such that an officer of my seniority must assume command. It was thought better all round by the ministry that you should take your seat, I believe you are warm in the government's cause, and I should take command.'

Drinkwater's dark dissimulation appeared to have a swiftly mollifying effect. 'I see,' said Pardoe. 'Of course, if that is the case, I am naturally happy to oblige.'

'We knew you would be, Pardoe,' Drinkwater smiled, hoping Pardoe connected all the insinuations and believed Andromeda to be bound for the Mediterranean.

'D'you care for some tea, Captain?' asked Elizabeth soothingly, and the awkward incident passed, dissolving into the inconsequential small-talk of the moment. Elizabeth delighted in talking to a man who seemed to be at the heart of affairs and Drinkwater unobtrusively observed the pleasure she took in the company of Pardoe and Bardolini.

When, at last, they were alone together in their bedroom and Elizabeth had unburdened herself of news of the farms and the well-being of family and tenantry, he asked, 'Have you seen James Quilhampton recently?'

'Yes. He was dandling his son on his knee,' Elizabeth said pointedly.

'But was anxious for employment?'

'He did not say.'

'Bess, I ...'

'You said you would not be going to sea again, not that it matters much since I think I would rather you were as sea than languishing in this gloomy place.'

'I thought you liked this house?'

'When it was Lord Dungarth's, I did; as your London establishment, I don't care for it at all.

'Johnnie died in this room, didn't he?' His wife's familiar reference to the dead Dungarth discomfited Drinkwater. She had been as fond of him as he of her, and the difference between the sexes had led to an easing of the formalities that bound her husband. He changed the subject.

'I have to go, Bess ...'

'I know, affairs of state,' she sighed, then resumed, 'though I wonder what important matters demand the presence of so obscure an officer as my husband.'

'Perhaps I am not so obscure,' he said, in a poor attempt to jest, or to boast.

'Try persuading me otherwise, Nathaniel.'

'There is Colonel Bardolini.'

'He is pathetic and rather frightened.'

'Frightened? Why do you say that?' Drinkwater asked with sudden interest.

Elizabeth shrugged. 'I don't know; he just gives that impression.'

'Well, he's safe enough here and, for the few days we have, you can look after him.'

'Thank you, kind sir,' she said. 'But you have changed the subject. I want to know more of this proposed voyage. I suppose you wish me to carry orders to James when I return in the same way that I carried your sea-kit up to London.'

'You rumble me damned easily, Elizabeth.'

'You shouldn't be so transparent. I suppose you cannot or will not confide in me.'

'It is not...'

'A woman's business, I know.'

'I was about to say, it is not easy to explain.'

'Try.'

And when he had finished Elizabeth said, 'I hate you going, my darling, but knowing why makes it bearable. I know I shall never have you to myself until this war is over and anything that brings peace nearer is to be welcomed. I can only pray that God will spare you.'

He bent and kissed her, but she yielded only a little, pushing him gently away. 'Must you take James? Catriona has waited so long for him and you summoned him before, then left her to bear the child alone.'

'Bess, you know James has no means of support beyond his half-pay; he yearns for a ship…'

You promised him his swab, Nathaniel, yet he remains on the lieutenants' list.'

'You know I recommended him, but…'

'The matter proved only your obscurity,' Elizabeth was quick to point out.

'Touché,' he muttered. 'Well, I can't guarantee him his swab, but I can put him in a good position to earn it. He can have the Kestrel, d'you remember her?'

'She's only a little cutter, isn't she?'

'Yes, but she provides him with an opportunity,' countered Drinkwater, increasingly desperate. You know too damned much about naval affairs, Elizabeth,' he said, rising from the bed and tearing testily at his stock.

And though they lay in each other's arms until dawn, they were unable to find the satisfaction true lovers expect of one another.

CHAPTER 4 Departures

On the last Thursday in September, Drinkwater rose before dawn. Elizabeth, as used to the regime of the byre as her husband was to that of a ship, was astir equally early. She was to leave for Gantley Hall after breakfast, though without orders for James Quilhampton who had been sent to Chatham the instant Drinkwater learned the cutter Kestrel was mastless.

'My dear, I have to go to the Admiralty. I shall have the coach brought round for you.'

'As you wish.'

Bardolini, in shirt and overalls, caught him on the landing as he prepared to leave.

'Captain, please, today ...'

'Colonel, today I promise. I told you not to expect a response until Thursday, and you shall have your answer today.'

'But I have yet to meet Lord Castlereagh ...'

'Lord Casdereagh has been informed of your arrival. Now do be a good fellow and be patient. I shall send for you before this evening, rest assured upon the matter.'

'This evening? But Captain…'

Drinkwater hurried on down the stairs and met Williams in the hall. 'Williams, be so kind as to send word for the coach. My wife's portmanteau is almost ready to come down.'

Elizabeth, in grey travelling dress and boots, her bonnet in her hand, joined him for coffee. He nodded at the sunlight streaming in through the window.

'Well, my dear, you should have a pleasant enough run. D'you have something to read?'

'You know I have trouble reading in a coach, Nathaniel.'

'I'm sorry. I had forgotten. You used to ...'

'We used to do a lot of things,' she said quietly, and the words stung him with reproach.

'The Colonel will have to break his fast alone this morning,' she continued. 'It is curious, but I always thought soldiers were early afoot.'

'I think not Neapolitan soldiers,' he said, smiling, grateful for the change of subject and the lifeline she had thrown him.

'He is a strange fellow, though well enough educated. He reads English books. I found him reading your copy of Prince Eugene's Memoirs yesterday, but he seemed distracted. Has he been out since his arrival?'

'I cautioned him not to venture far and not to be absent for more than half an hour. His uniform is somewhat distinctive, even when he wears a cloak.'

'At least he doesn't wear his hat.'

'No,' Drinkwater laughed, 'though there are so many foreign corps in our service today that I doubt one more fantastic uniform among so many peacocks will turn any heads. Have you seen what they have done to our light dragoons? They've turned them into hussars with pelisses and more frogging than ratlines on a first-rate's mainmast. How the poor devils are supposed to campaign, let alone fight in such ridiculous clothes, I'm damned if I know.'

Williams looked in to announce the coach.

'Well, my dear, looks like goodbye.' He stood as she dabbed at her lips with a napkin and rose, picking up her bonnet. He took it from her and kissed her. He felt her yield and stirred in reaction to her softness.

'Oh Bess, my darling, don't think too ill of me.'

'I should be used to you by now,' she murmured, but both knew it was the unfamiliar and uncertain future that lay between them.

At the Admiralty Drinkwater called upon Barrow and received the orders he had drafted. 'God speed and good fortune, Captain. Lord Castlereagh will receive Bardolini this evening.'

'Thank you, Mr Barrow.'

In his office he removed Pocock's painting and asked for a porter to take it to Lord North Street, then sent for Templeton.

'D'you have all your dunnage, Templeton?'

'I believe so, sir.' Templeton's tone was, Drinkwater thought, one of miserable and reluctant martyrdom.

You have done as I asked?'

'To the letter, sir.'

'Good. That is a sound principle.'

'The papers you were anxious about are secured in oilcloth in the corner.' Templeton pointed to a brown parcel secured with string and sealing wax.

'Very well, I shall take them myself.' Drinkwater looked round the room. The bookcase which had contained Templeton's meticulously maintained guard books was empty.

'This is a damnable place,' Drinkwater said curtly. Templeton sniffed disagreement. 'It is better to be pleased to leave a place than to mope over it,' Drinkwater added.

'It is a matter of opinion, sir,' Templeton grumbled.

Drinkwater grunted and picked up the parcel. 'Come, sir, let us begone.'

The clock at the Horse Guards was chiming eleven as he walked back to Lord North Street to take his final departure. Williams greeted him and Drinkwater asked that his sea-chest be made ready.

'Mrs Williams is ironing the last of the shirts, sir.'

'Very good. Where is the Colonel?'

'He left an hour ago, sir.'

'What, for a walk?'

'No, sir, a gentleman called for him. He seemed to be expected.'

Drinkwater frowned. 'Expected? What d'you mean?'

'The man said he had called for Colonel Bardolini. I asked him to come into the hall and wait. When I brought the Colonel into the hall, he asked the gentleman whether he had come from Lord Castlereagh. The gentleman said he had, and Bardolini left immediately.'

'You are quite certain it was Bardolini who mentioned Lord Castlereagh?'

'Positive upon the point, sir. I could not have been mistaken. If you'll forgive my saying so, sir, I could not...'

'No, no, of course not, Williams, I just need to be certain upon the matter.'

'Is something amiss, sir?'

Drinkwater shrugged. 'I'm not sure. Perhaps not... Come, I must gather the last of my traps together, or I shall leave something vital behind.' And so, in the pressing needs of the everyday, Drinkwater submerged a primitive foreboding.

At four in the afternoon an under-secretary on Lord Castlereagh's staff arrived in a barouche to convey Bardolini to his lordship's presence.

Drinkwater met the young man in the withdrawing-room. 'Is the Colonel not with his Lordship already?'

'Not that I am aware of,' said the under-secretary with a degree of hauteur. Drinkwater, in grubby shirt-sleeves as he finished preparing his sea-kit after so long in London, felt a spurt of anger along with a sense of alarm.

'But I understand one of his Lordship's flunkeys called for him this morning.'

'Mr Barrow was told that Colonel Bardolini would not be received before noon, very probably not before evening. His Lordship has rearranged his schedule to accommodate the Colonel, not to mention Captain, er, Drink ...'

'Drinkwater. I am Captain Drinkwater and I am obliged to his Lordship, but I fear the worst. It would appear that the Colonel has been carried off by an impostor.'

'An impostor? How is that?'

'Come, sir,' said Drinkwater sharply, 'there are French agents in London, are there not?'

'I really have no idea.'

'I am sure Lord Castlereagh is aware of their presence.'

'How very unfortunate,' said the under-secretary. 'I had better inform his Lordship.'

'A moment. I'd be obliged if you would take me to the Admiralty.'

Drinkwater was fortunate that Barrow had not yet left. 'This is a damnable business,' he concluded.

'I do not think Lord Castlereagh will trouble himself over­much, Captain.'

'No, probably not,' Drinkwater said, 'until Canada catches fire.'

Drinkwater returned to Lord North Street for the second time that day. He was in an ill humour and full of a sense of foreboding. He put this down to Bardolini's disappearance and Elizabeth's departure, and these circumstances undoubtedly made him nervously susceptible to a curious sensation of being followed. He could see no one in the gathering darkness and dismissed the idea as ludicrous.

But the moment he turned the corner he knew instinctively that something was wrong. He broke into a run and found his front door ajar. In the hall Williams was distraught; not half an hour earlier a carriage with drawn blinds had pulled up and a heavily cloaked figure had knocked at the door. Williams had opened it and had immediately been dashed aside. Thereafter two masked accomplices had appeared, forcing their way into the house and ransacking it.

'I thought it was the Colonel or yourself coming back, sir,' a shaken Williams confessed, his tranquillity of mind banished.

'Did you hear them speak?' Drinkwater asked, handing Williams a glass of wine.

'No, sir, but they weren't Frenchmen.'

'How d'you know?'

'I'd have smelled them, sir, no doubt about it. Besides, I think I heard one of them say something in English. He was quickly hushed up, but I am almost certain of it.'

'What did he say?'

'Oh, "nothing in here," something to that effect. They had just turned over the withdrawing-room.'

A faint wail came from below stairs. 'Did they molest your wife?'

'No, sir, but she is badly frightened. They were looking for papers ...'

'Were they, by God!'

'They broke into the strong-room.'

'They took everything?'

'Everything.'

Drinkwater closed his eyes. 'God's bones!' he blasphemed.

He waited upon Mr Barrow at nine the following morning. Curiously, the Second Secretary was not surprised to see him. 'You have heard, then?' he said, waving Drinkwater to a chair.

'Heard?'

'The body of your guest was found in an alley last evening. He had been severely beaten about the head and was unrecognizable but for the remnants of his uniform. Oddly enough I was with Murray last evening when Canning arrived with the news. It crossed my mind then that it might be our friend and I instituted enquiries.'

'You did not think to send me word…'

'Come, come, Captain, the man was an opportunist, like his master. He played for high stakes, and he lost. As for yourself, you would have insisted on viewing the corpse and drawing attention to your connection with the man.'

'Opportunist or not, he had placed himself under my protection.' Drinkwater remembered Elizabeth's assertion that Bardolini was a frightened man. 'Whoever killed Bardolini ransacked my house. I have spent half the night pacifying my housekeeper.'

'Did they, by heaven? D'you know why?'

'I think they were after papers. I have no idea what, apart from his accreditation, Bardolini carried. Whatever it was he did not take it to what he supposed to be a meeting with Lord Castlereagh.'

'Then they left empty-handed?' asked Barrow.

'More or less. I had some private papers…'

'Ahhh. How distressing for you ... Still, someone knew who he was and where he was in London.'

'That argues against your hope of keeping me out of the affair.'

'Damn it, yes,' Barrow frowned. 'And we must also assume they knew why he was here.'

'Exactiy so.'

'I should not delay in your own departure, Captain Drinkwater. Would you like me to pass word to the commander of the Kestrel to proceed? At least you have no need to divert to Helgoland now.'

'No. I'd be obliged if you would order Lieutenant Quilliampton to Leith without delay.'

'Consider it done.'

After the hectic activity of the past fortnight, there was a vast and wonderful pleasure in the day of the departure of HMS Andromeda from Leith Road that early October forenoon. The grey waters of the Firth of Forth were driven ahead of the ship by the fresh westerly breeze, quartered by fulmars and gannets whose colonies had whitened with their droppings the Bass Rock to the southward. Ahead of them lay the greener wedge of the Isle of May with its square stone light-tower and its antediluvian coal chauffer. To the north, clad in dying bracken, lay the dun coast of the ancient kingdom of Fife, a title whose pretentiousness reminded Drinkwater briefly of the sunburnt coast of Calabria and the compromised claims of the pretender to its tottering throne.

He had not realized how much he had missed the independence, even the solitariness, of command, or the sheer unalloyed pleasure of the thing. There was a purposeful simplicity in the way of life, for which, he admitted a little ruefully, his existence had fitted him at the expense of much else. It was, God knew, not the rollicking life of a sailor, or the seductiveness of sea-breezes that the British public thought all their ill-assorted and maltreated tars thrived upon.

If it had been, he would have enjoyed the passage north in the Leith packet which had stormed up the English coast from the Pool of London on the last dregs of the gale. As it was the heavily sparred and over-canvassed cutter with its crowded accommodation and puking passengers contained all the misery of seafaring. True, he had enjoyed the company of Captain McCrindle, a burly and bewhiskered Scot whose sole preoccupations were wind and tide, and who, when asked if he ever feared interception by a French corsair, had replied he would be verra much afeared, if there was the slightest chance of being overtaken by one!'

The old seaman's indignation made Drinkwater smile even now, but he threw the recollection aside as quickly as it had occurred for Lieutenant Mosse was claiming his attention.

'If you please, sir, she will lay a course clear of Fife Ness for the Bell Rock.'

'By all means, Mr Mosse, pray carry on.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater watched the young second lieutenant. He was something of a dandy, a sharp contrast to the first luff, a more seasoned man who, like James Quilhampton aboard the cutter Kestrel dancing in their wake, was of an age to be at least a commander, if not made post. Drinkwater had yet to make up his mind about Lieutenant Huke, though he appeared a most competent officer, for there seemed about him a withdrawn quality that concealed a suspicion which made Drinkwater feel uneasy.

As for the other officers, apart from the master, a middle-aged man named Birkbeck, he had seen little of them since coming aboard three days earlier.

The crew seemed willing enough, moving about their duties with quiet purpose and a minimum degree of starting from the bosun's mates. The boat's crew which had met him had been commanded by a dapper midshipman named Fisher who, if he was setting out to make a good impression upon his new captain, had succeeded.

He could have wished for a heavier frigate, his old Patrician, perhaps, or at least Antigone with her 18-pounders, but Andromeda handled well, and if she was not the fastest or most weatherly class of frigate possessed by the Royal Navy, the ageing thirty-six gun, 12-pounder ships were known for their endurance and sea-kindliness.

She bore along now, hurrying before the westerly wind and following sea, her weatherbeaten topgallants set above her deep topsails, the forecourse straining and flogging in its bunt and clewlines as it was lowered from the yards on the order 'Let fall!'

'Sheet home!'

The ungainly bulging canvas, constrained by the controlling ropes, was now tamed by the sheets which, with the tacks, were secured from its lower corners and transmitted its driving power to the speeding hull. With the low note of the quartering wind sounding in the taut stays, the frigate ran to the east-north-east.

A moment or two later the topmen, left aloft to make up the gaskets after overhauling the gear and ensuring the large sail was set without mishap, lowered themselves hand over hand to the deck by way of the backstays. Standing by the starboard hance, Drinkwater concluded that he had, like those simian jacks, fallen on his feet.

Evening found them passing the Bell Rock lighthouse, a marvel of modern engineering built as it was upon a tide-washed rock. The brilliance of its reflected light far outclassed the obsolete coal chauffer of the Isle of May, and Birkbeck confidently took his departure bearing from it when it bore well astern.

Having assured himself of the presence of Kestrel, Drinkwater went below. His quarters were small compared to those he had enjoyed on board Patrician, but admirably snug, he told himself, for a voyage to the Norwegian Sea with winter approaching. He settled in his cot with a degree of contentment that might have worried a less elated man. But that day of departure had been, in any case, a day of seduction; if Captain Drinkwater failed to notice any of the many faults that encumbered his command, it was because he had been too long ashore, too long kept from contact with the sea.

And the sea was too indifferent to the fates of men to keep him long in such a placid state of grace.