Ebb tide

The White Lady

The passing of the Vestal's paddles had thrust Drinkwater astern, tumbling him in the pitiless whirling of the water so that the pressure in his ears seemed like lances thrust into his skull, and the ache of his held breath had translated itself into a mighty agony in his lungs. Within the strange compass of this pain appeared to teem a plague of memories, each passing in such swift succession that they seemed agents of his destruction, tormenting him to stop holding his breath and let his lungs inhale ...

There was a vague lightening in the darkness and as it grew the memories faded. As his ribs faltered and could no longer contain the desire to breathe in, he struck upwards and the light was suddenly all about him. He was overwhelmed by it and gasped with the shock. The pain in his lungs seemed far worse now, as he broke the sea's surface and sucked in great gulps of air.

As mate of the Vestal, Mr Forester had run up from the boat-deck to the bridge the moment he heard the cries of alarm and knew something was wrong. Poulter turned from the bridge wing above the starboard sponson, his face ashen.

'I have run over the boat... The telegraph failed ... The engines could not answer ...' Poulter's voice barely carried over the noise of the wind and the thrashing of the paddles.

'I will clear away the other boat,' said Forester, casting a quick look in their wake where, for a brief second, he thought he could see something bobbing, but then the counter lifted and a wave intervened.

'I could not stop the ship ...', Poulter went on as Forester turned and saw Potts staring at the captain. It was clear neither man could quite believe what had just happened. Forester hesitated for a moment, then said, 'We must stop, sir. Stop and turn round.'

'Yes... Yes, of course.' Poulter made a visible effort to shake off the effects of shock and Forester moved swiftly to the charthouse and, quickly opening the log-slate, scribbled against the time: Telegraph failure. Unable to stop engines. Ran down port cutter.

Then he leapt for the bridge ladder, shouting orders as he went. 'Call away the starboard cutter!' he yelled. 'Boatswain, post a man in the foretop with orders to keep a lookout! We've run the port boat down!'

Notwithstanding the badly shaken Captain Poulter, Forester consoled himself with the thought that they had successfully rescued men from the water before. As for Captain Poulter, the Vestal's master pulled himself together with the need to react to the emergency. He quickly passed word that the men on the foredeck should remain as additional lookouts. Then he ordered a chain of men to pass his orders verbally to the first engineer. Having slowed his ship, Poulter began to turn her, to comb her wayward wake and relocate his lost boat, all the time hoping that the people in her had clung together and had not been the victims of Vestal's huge and lethal paddles.

Such arrangements took time to effect, but within fifteen minutes Poulter had brought his ship's head round and had closed the estimated location of the disaster. Calling down for dead slow speed, he scanned the sea ahead of the ship. Up at the base of the bowsprit and aloft in the rigging, his men were doing likewise. One of the men at the knightheads called out and pointed at the very instant he saw something himself. He was joined by the seaman in the foretop. Poulter focused on the object as Vestal neared it.

It was a dark, hard-edged shape, like a porpoise's fin, which he recognized instantly as a section of the boat, the bow he thought, where the gunwales and the stem were joined with a knee. Then he saw a head bobbing near it, and another... Poulter's spirits rose in proportion. It was always damnably difficult to see men in the water and, he thought, the men in the boat could not have been dispersed very much. If only Captain Drinkwater had not been so old and the boat had not run under the ship. Perhaps they would be lucky ...

Drinkwater was reduced to a terrified primal being, intent only on staying afloat and aware of the feebleness of his body. He was wounded and hurt, wracked with agonies whose location and origins were confused but which seemed in their combined burden to be preventing him from swimming. The realization overwhelmed him with anxiety. He had a strong desire to live, to see his wife and children again. He was shivering with cold, weighed down by his waterlogged clothes but, energized by the air he now drew raspingly into his lungs, he renewed his fight to live.

In terror he found he could no longer swim. His body seemed leaden, unable to obey the urgent impulses of his brain. He went under again, swallowing mouthfuls of water as he floundered, before panic brought him thrashing back to the surface, his arms flailing in a sudden reflexive flurry of energy. Then, quite suddenly, both ending the panic and bringing to his conscious mind a simultaneous sensation of sharp pain and a glorious relief, his right arm struck an oar. A second later he had the thing under his armpits and was hanging over it, gasping for breath and vomiting sea water and bile from a burning throat.

The sensation of relief was all too brief, swept aside by a more sobering, conscious and logical thought. They would never recover him. He was going to die and he recalled the presentient feeling of doom he had experienced when lost once before in a boat in an Arctic fog. It had been cold, bone-numbingly cold so that he had shivered uncontrollably then as he shivered now. He had no right to live, not any more. He was an old and wicked man. He had killed his friends and betrayed Elizabeth. He had lain with Arabella Stuart in that brief liaison that had drawn from him an intense but guilty passion. Why had Arabella so affected him and turned his head? Was it because it had always been turned since he had set eyes on Hortense, whose haunting beauty had plagued him throughout his life, an exciting alternative to Elizabeth's loyal constancy? And what was love? And why was it that what he had was not enough? Was it ever enough, or were men just wicked, inevitably, innately evil? But he had not loved Arabella, not as he loved Elizabeth. Their parting had not affected him beyond causing him a brief, if poignant regret. Yet his hunger for her at the time had been irresistible. Was that all? Was the sole purpose of their encounter nothing more than that? The waywardness of it struck at the certainties he had clung to all his life. Surely, surely...

And as he sucked the air into his aching lungs he recalled Elizabeth and tried to seize her image, as if holding it in his mind's eye would revive hope and lead him to understand what was happening to him. Were all men left to die and obliged to relinquish life in this terrible desolation? Was it not therefore better to be cut in two by an iron shot and to be snuffed out like a candle? And then he knew, and felt the conviction with the absolute certainty of profound insight. He had been tempted, and had succumbed to the flirtatious loveliness of the American beauty, because the remorse he had afterwards suffered had saved him from the greater, irreversible sin of insensate entanglement with Hortense.

It made sense with a simplicity directly attributable to providential intervention, and in the moment that he realized it, he felt a great burden lifting from him. This relief came with an easing of his breathing and the final eructation of his cramped and aching stomach. He raised his head as he lay wallowing over the oar, and looked up. He could see the ship again! She had turned round and grew larger as she came towards him. As she drew near, he could see a man up in the knightheads pointing ahead of the ship.

Drinkwater raised an arm and waved. He tried to shout, but nothing came from his mouth except a feeble croak. It would be all right! They could see him. He was not going to drown. He was redeemed, forgiven. He began to laugh with a feeble, manic sound through chattering teeth.

The forward lookouts aboard Vestal had not seen Captain Drinkwater. They had caught sight of two of the oarsmen and Captain Drew, who clung to the bow section of the port cutter in which was lashed an empty barricoe for added buoyancy. They lay some two hundred yards beyond Captain Drinkwater, who again passed unseen beneath the plunging bow of the Vestal.

Drinkwater looked up again. Vestal's bowsprit rose over him like a great lance. He saw the rigging supporting it, the twin shrouds, the white painted chain bobstay which angled down to the iron spike of the dolphin-striker that passed half a fathom above his head. Then came the white lady who, following the iron spike as the ship drove her bow into a wave, seemed to sweep down towards him with malevolent intent. A cold terror seized his heart as the ship breasted the wave and rose, lifting the figurehead so that the white lady seemed suddenly to fly above him higher and higher, retreating as she did in the dream.

Then the forefoot of the Vestal's bow thrust itself at him, striking the oar and wrenching it from his grasp. The foaming bow wave separated him from it and swept him down the ship's port side. He tried to shout again but suddenly the sponson threw its shadow and the paddle-wheel drove him down and he was fighting for his life with Edouard Santhonax in an alley in Sheerness, breathless after his run, and aware that he had allowed himself to be caught at a disadvantage, the consequences of which were as inevitable as they were dreadful. As the Frenchman's sword blade struck down in the molinello, he felt the thing bite into his shoulder with the same awful finality as he had experienced all those years ago.

Two paddle floats hit him in succession in passing and sent him deeper into the swirling depths of the turbulent sea. The roaring in his ears was the thunder of a great battle, the endless, ear-splitting concussion of hundreds of guns. It was inconceivable, terrible, awful. He glimpsed Camperdown and Copenhagen and Trafalgar. He glimpsed the darkness of a night action and saw, as he came near the surface in the swirling water of the paddle race, the pallid faces of the dead.

There were so many of them! Faces he had forgotten, faces of men he had never known though he had had a hand in their killing — of a French privateer officer, of a Danish captain called Dahlgaard, of an American named Tucker, of an anonymous officer of the French hussars, of Edouard Santhonax, of old Tregembo whom he had dispatched with a pistol shot, of James Quilhampton whose death he had mourned more than all the others. They seemed to mock him as he felt his body spin over and over, and the constriction in his breast seemed now to be worse than ever and somehow attached to the laughter of these fiends who trailed behind the white lady and struck with the cold, deep into his soul.

CHAPTER 6 Tales of the Dead

'Nathaniel, what is it?'

Elizabeth looked up from her needlework as she sat by the fire. Her husband was staring through the half-opened shutter, out across the lawn in front of Gantley Hall where, judging by the draught that whirled about her feet and the noise in the chimney, a biting easterly wind was blowing. The rising moon cast a pale glow on his face, a chilling contrast to the warm candle-light and the glow of the fire. She watched his abstracted profile over her spectacles for a moment, then bent to her work with a sigh. He was not with her in the warm security of their home; his restless spirit was still at sea and his poor, divided heart revealed itself in these long intervals of abstraction. Then she heard the chink of decanter on glass and the low gurgle of poured wine.

'You drink too much,' she said without looking up.

'Eh? What's that?'

'I said, you drink too much. That is the fourth glass you have had since dinner. It does not improve your conversation,' she added drily.

'You are becoming a scold,' he retorted.

She ignored the provocation and looked up at him. 'What is troubling you?'

'Troubling me? Why nothing, of course.'

'Why then are you looking out of that window as though expecting to see something? Is the garden full of ghosts?'

'How did you know?' he asked, and their eyes met.

'There is something troubling you, isn't there?'

He shook his head. 'Only the weather, my dear,' he said dismissively, closing the shutter and crossing the room to sit opposite her. He stretched his legs out towards the fire.

'And the ghosts?'

He sighed. 'Oh, at moments like this I recall Quilhampton ... And one or two others...'

'Why at moments like this?' she asked, lowering her needlepoint and looking at him directly over her spectacles. She saw him shrug.

'I don't know. They say old men forget, and 'tis largely true to be sure, but there are some memories one cannot erase. Nor perhaps should you when you have borne responsibility.'

Elizabeth smiled. 'It is the burden of that responsibility that prevents you from accepting things as they are, my dear,' she said gently. 'If, as you say you believe, Providence guides us in our lives, then Providence must bear the burden of what it creates. After all, you yourself are what you are only partly by your own making.'

Drinkwater smiled over his glass. 'Yes, you are right.' He leaned forward and patted her knee. 'You are always a fount of good sense, Elizabeth.'

'And you drink too much.'

'Do I?' Drinkwater looked at his empty glass. He placed it on an adjacent table. 'Perhaps I do. A little.'

'What o'clock is it?' Elizabeth asked.

Drinkwater lugged out his watch and consulted it. Almost ten,' he said, looking up at her. 'What is it?'

'Oh nothing. I was just thinking you have had that watch a long time.'

He gave a short laugh. 'Yes, so long that I forget it was your father's.'

'It was, I think, the only thing of any real value he had.'

'Except yourself,' he said.

'Thank you, kind sir.' Elizabeth stifled a yawn. 'I shall not linger tonight,' she said, laying down her work. 'Susan will have put the bedpan in an hour since.'

'Then I shall not make up the fire ...'

Drinkwater was interrupted by a loud and urgent knocking at the door. 'What the devil...?' Their eyes met.

'Were you expecting someone?' Elizabeth asked, a sudden suspicion kindled in her.

'No, not at all,' Drinkwater answered, shaking his head and rising stiffly. He hobbled awkwardly towards the hall door muttering about his 'damned rheumaticks'.

Elizabeth sat and listened. She heard the front door open and felt the sudden in-draught of cold air that sent the dying fire leaping into a brief, flaring activity. She heard, too, a man's insistent voice and her husband's lower response. Cold air ceased to run into the room and she heard the door close. The exchange of voices continued and then her husband came back into the room.

'What is it, Nathaniel?'

'There's a vessel in trouble in the bay. I have Mr Vane in the hall. He has his trap outside. I shall have to go and see what can be done.'

Elizabeth sighed. 'Very well. But please ask poor Mr Vane in for a glass while you put on something suitable for such a night.'

Drinkwater turned back to open the door and waved for the visitor to enter. 'Remiss of me, Vane, come in. My wife will look after you while I fetch a coat.'

'My boots, Captain ...'

'Oh, damn your boots, man. Come you in.'

'Thank you, sir.' Vane was a large man who always looked uncomfortable indoors, despite the quality of his coat and cravat. He entered the drawing-room with his customary awkwardness. 'Mistress Drinkwater.' He bowed his head, turning his low beaver in his hands.

'I should like to say it was pleasant to see you, Mr Vane, and in a sense it is,' Elizabeth said, as she rose smiling, 'but at this hour and in such circumstances ...'

'Aye, ma'am. There's a ship in trouble. I saw the rockets go off just as I was going up with Ruth and, as you know, the Captain likes to know...'

'Oh, yes,' Elizabeth said, handing a glass to her unexpected visitor, 'the Captain likes to know. Here, take this for your trouble.'

'I didn't ought to...'

'You may need it before the night's out.'

Vane's huge fist closed round the glass and he smiled shyly at his benefactress, for Elizabeth had established him as the tenant in Gantley Hall's only farm. Vane had been driven off land that his family had worked for years by an extension of the Enclosures Act. He had come to Elizabeth's notice while eking out a living as a groom in Woodbridge where, for a while, she and Louise Quilhampton, the dead James's mother, had run a small school. Louise had heard of his plight and the incumbent of Lower Ufford had stood as guarantor of his character when Elizabeth, in the absence of her husband at sea, had come to grips with the management of the small farm they had bought with the estate. She had liked his slow patience and the ability the man possessed to accomplish an enormous amount without apparent effort. It was in such stark contrast to her own erratic attempts to accomplish matters that she had regarded the arrival of Mr and Mrs Vane as providential, an opinion shared by her fatalistic husband. Vane was supported by his energetic wife. Ruth Vane was a plain woman of sound good sense who managed a brood of children with the same efficiency as her geese and hens. On his rare visits to Home Farm, 'The Captain' as Drinkwater was always referred to between them, voiced his approval. 'Mistress Vane runs as tight an establishment as the boatswain of a flag-ship, and that bear of a husband of hers puts me in mind of a lieutenant I once knew ...' Elizabeth smiled at him now.

'Please sit down. Do you know what manner of ship is in distress, Mr Vane?'

'No, ma'am. But I've the trap outside. We can soon run down to the shingle and take a look.'

A moment later Drinkwater re-entered the room in his hessian boots and cloak. He bore in his hands his cocked hat.

'You will need gloves, my dear.'

'I have them, and my glass.' Drinkwater patted his hip. 'Come, Vane. Let's be off.'

Vane put his glass down and a moment later Elizabeth stood alone in the room. She turned, made up the fire and resumed her needlework.

'Can't see a damned thing!'

Drinkwater spoke above the roar of the wind which blew directly onshore and was much stronger than he had anticipated. They stood on the low shingle escarpment which stretched away to the north-east and south-west in a pale crescent under the full moon, its successive ridges marking the recent high tides. The shallow indentation of Hollesley Bay, 'Ho'sley' to the local people, was an anchorage in westerly winds, but in the present south-easterly gale, washed as it was at this time in the moon's life by strong tides, it could become a deathtrap.

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

'No, sir.'

'And that's all you saw?'

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

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

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

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

'Right, Captain.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Come and see, Captain.'

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

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

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

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

'It is very sad ...'

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

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

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

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

'But why...?'

'Because I say so.'

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

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

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

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

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

'She was very beautiful,' Elizabeth remarked sadly.

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

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

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

'Let me help.'

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

'It is quite all right...'

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

'Mistress, I...'

'What on earth is the matter, Susan?'

"Tis the Captain, Mistress ...'

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

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

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

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

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

'Well, Susan?' Drinkwater addressed the housekeeper.

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

'Nathaniel, what is all this about?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Here? To see you?' Elizabeth asked.

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

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

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

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

'The Antigone?'

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

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

'Yes.'

'That is terrible.'

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

Elizabeth considered the matter. 'How very strange.'

'That is not all.'

'You mean you ...'

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

'Nathaniel!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But the war is over.'

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

'Why should she come upon her own account?'

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

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

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

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

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

'The poor woman.'

'Yes, she was much to be pitied.'

'And you pitied her?'

'A little, yes.'

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

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

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

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

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

'You know!'

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

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

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

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

'She was your ghost?'

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

'And to sell it, perhaps?'

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

'But?'

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

'Go on.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was, nevertheless, something that still troubled him, and it seemed to offer the most likely explanation for Hortense taking so great a risk as to try and contact him in such weather. And ten days later it was Elizabeth herself who confirmed his worst fears. Vane had just ridden in from Woodbridge and had seen the mail go through with the news being shouted from the box.

Napoleon had escaped from Elba on 26 February. Hortense's body had been washed ashore on the 21st.

CHAPTER 7 The Letter

Drinkwater, in common with every other superannuated officer in the British navy that spring, wrote to the Admiralty offering his services. He ended his letter with a postscriptum.

Drinkwater had acquired his cutter-yacht from a builder at Woodbridge who had laid her down as a 'speculation'. Drinkwater was certain this so-called speculation might have proved profitable had not the war ended the previous year and with it the immediate conditions favouring prosperous 'free trade'. Though in the event the peace was to prove but a temporary hiatus, the cessation of smuggling meant that the cutter was up for sale, and Captain Drinkwater's arrival in search of a pleasure yacht was regarded by the builders as providential. She was bought in the late summer of 1814 for the sum of seventy guineas, which amounted to the interest paid on some investments Drinkwater had made with the house of Solomon and Dyer. Drinkwater and his friend Lieutenant Frey had commissioned her in a short cruise out to the Sunk alarm vessel that autumn. Thereafter, they had contented themselves with a single pleasant jaunt upon the River Ore, entertaining their wives and making poor Harry Vane hopelessly sick, though they had ventured no further than the extremity of the river's bar.

Throughout the winter, the cutter had lain on a mooring in a creek which ran inland from the mouth of the Ore, a short ride from Gantley Hall. After his experience 'at sea', Vane refused to ship in her a second time, but he used her as a static gun-punt and, with the help of his cocker spaniel, loaded all their tables with succulent waterfowl for Christmas.

Notwithstanding the superstitious notion that to use the name again might bring bad luck, Drinkwater had named the cutter Kestrel as a tribute to his old friend James Quilhampton who, like Drinkwater himself years before, had commanded a man-o'-war cutter of the same name. Lieutenant Frey, who had served with both Drinkwater and Quilhampton, had acquiesced, for he had married Quilhampton's widow Catriona. Frey, reduced to genteel penury on a lieutenant's half-pay, now occupied himself as a portraitist and had within a short time earned himself a reputation in the locality, being much in demand and receiving commissions from officers of both the sea and land services, many of whom wanted their exploits at sea or in the peninsula recorded with their likenesses. He therefore executed battle scenes as well as formal portraits. As a consequence of his assiduous industry, he had a busy studio and had rescued both himself and his wife from the threat of poverty.

Despite this activity, Frey was not averse to joining Drinkwater in offering his own services to the Admiralty, and when Drinkwater received a letter requesting and requiring him to submit his cutter for survey at Harwich as soon as may be convenient, he sent word to Frey. Their Lordships had fallen in with Drinkwater's suggestion that, provided he gave his services as a volunteer, Lieutenant Frey should notionally command the cutter, which would be taken up for hire provided she satisfied the surveyor resident at the naval yard at Harwich.

Neither Catriona nor Elizabeth greeted the news with enthusiasm, but Drinkwater's explanation that he doubted Kestrel would do much more than act as tender to the transports slightly mollified his own wife. Catriona, having lost her first husband, was less easily consoled, for she had conceived the notion that she might as certainly lose her second husband as she had the first in a vessel of the same name. Poor Frey, who was devoted to her, was clearly torn between the prospect of playing a part in the new campaign with the inducement of professional preferment or of continuing his work as a provincial artist. However, during March, a string of sittings were cancelled due to the flood of army officers returning to the colours, and this recession in trade and the prospect of full pay overcame Catriona's misgivings with the potent argument, traditionally attractive to a MacEwan, of sound economic sense.

Drinkwater took on two unemployed seamen at his own expense and, having laid in some stores, wood and water, sailed from the Ore to arrive at Harwich on 6 April. He presented himself the following morning to the naval commissioner of transports at the Three Cups, a local public house, where his deposition that the vessel was newly built dispensed with the inconvenience of a survey. Captain Scanderbeg, the commissioner, though senior to Drinkwater, had previously been employed ashore and was too hard-pressed to make an issue of such matters.

'Sir,' he had agreed civilly, 'if you say she is new-built and sound, I shall not detain you. The documents for a demise charter will be prepared by this evening.'

At sunset on 7 April 1815, the yacht Kestrel became a hired cutter on government service. However, the matter of an armament proved more difficult until the eager Frey discovered eight swivel guns which had been taken out of a merchantman then undergoing repairs at the naval yard. With a little judicious lubrication of palms and throats, he inveigled four of the small pieces out of the hands of the vessel's master, along with a supply of powder and shot. More powder and some additional bird-shot were a matter of requisition, to be supplied by the artillery officer in the Harwich Redoubt, a place already known to Drinkwater.

'Were we here at any other time, in any other circumstances, Frey, we should have found our path strewn with every obstacle known to the ingenious mind of man, but this', Drinkwater gestured at the bustle of the port as they stood on Kestrel's deck, 'almost beggars belief!'

Harwich Harbour was largely a roadstead with no wharfage beyond the slips of the naval yard. The town, dominated by the spire of its church of St Nicholas, the patron of sailors, stood upon a small, low peninsula, surrounded by river, sea and saltmarsh, and commanded the entrance to the haven formed by the confluence of the rivers Stour and Orwell with the guns of its newly built redoubt. A notable battle had been fought in the town's narrow streets in 1803 when the Impress Service decided to round up the greater part of its male population for His Majesty's service. The local inhabitants were, however, versed almost to a man in the ways of the sea, and the over-eager regulating officers soon discovered that they had miscalculated and found themselves imprisoned with their prisoners, while the doughty wives of their victims waved their gutting knives in the streets outside. In fear of their lives, the press-gang eventually released their unwilling recruits and retreated with a few 'volunteers', men whose absence from the town meant they avoided unplanned matrimony or a summoning before the misnamed justices for the illegal acquisition of game. It was after this, known locally as 'the Battle of Harwich', that Scanderbeg had arrived to tighten up the public service.

Though for long a packet station, whose inn-keepers and publicans were notorious for fleecing travellers for the bare necessities of a night's lodging and whose civil officers understood that a certain necessary urgency might prevail in matters of official communication, the little town was unused to coping with the unprecedented military influx which now assailed it. Every inn and every lodging-house seemed stuffed with redcoats. Stands of arms littered the paved walkways of the narrow streets, horses were tethered in lines upon the green, and an ancillary village of canvas tents lay between the old gatehouse of Harwich and the adjacent twin town of Dovercourt. The remnants of the hospital, used for the accommodation of thousands of soldiers dying of the Walcheren fever but six years earlier, had been revived to harbour battalions of infantry, troops of cavalry and batteries of artillery.

The only consistent military organization obvious to a casual observer was a determined effort on the part of officers and men alike to assume attitudes of ease as close as possible to a source of liquor. True, the occasional horseman rode in from Colchester on a lathering horse, calling out for directions to the adjutant of a regiment of foot, or desiring to be directed immediately to the lodgings of Colonel So-and-so, but soon afterwards, a shrewd observer might have noted, the immediacy had gone out of the young aide's quest and he would be seen quaffing a glass or two, or attempting the intimate, if temporary, acquaintance of an absent fisherman's wife or daughter. And all this inactive activity was accompanied by a vast and querulous noise which spilled into the streets from open doors, and accompanied everyone abroad in the narrow lanes and narrower alleyways which divided up the town.

As for Colonel So-and-so, he had gone to ground in a room in the Three Cups or the Drum and Monkey, with or without a local moll, but assuredly clasping a bottle or two. The only industry clearly under weigh was that of the seamen, whom the soldiers had temporarily displaced from the role of the town's habitual drunks. These men laboured off the beach which flanked the eastern side of the town, ferrying a steady dribble of infantrymen and their equipment in flat lighters out to the transports waiting at anchor on the Shelf whose blue pendants lifted languidly in the light airs from the west.

'The army embarks,' intoned Frey, getting out his sketching block. 'Tis odd that the gentlemen who wish for their likenesses to be shown against great sieges never ask me to paint such confusion, yet it seems to be the means by which the army goes to war.'

'Indeed it is and I find it rather frightening,' Drinkwater added. 'Do you suppose the French proceed in the same way?'

'I suppose', Frey said, laughing, 'that they do it with a good deal more noise, better food and more humour ...'

'Why more humour?' Drinkwater asked, mildly puzzled.

'They must be more inured to it than our fellows,' Frey answered, with that simple logic which so characterized his level-headed good sense. 'If you do something idiotic many times, you must laugh at it in due course, surely?'

Drinkwater shrugged. 'It is a point of view I had not considered before. Perhaps you are right.'

'Men laugh in action, at the point of death, and men laugh on the gallows, so I suppose it is quite natural, some sort of reflex to ease the mind.'

'Or mask it from common sense,' Drinkwater added.

'Yes, probably. I confess I should not like to be landed on a foreign beach and march to meet an enemy who might kill me. At least if I die on a ship, I am among friends.'

'I suppose these lobsters consider their battalions constituted of friends.'

'I still pity them,' said Frey, finishing off his rapid sketch of the Harwich waterfront. He looked up at Drinkwater. 'Do we have any orders, sir?'

'Well, I have received nothing, Mr Frey, but as lieutenant-in-command, perhaps you should solicit some from the commissioner, Captain Scanderbeg. He has his office in the Three Cups, in Church Street, adjacent to the church.'

'There is one other thing, sir.'

'What is that?'

'We need a small-arms chest. You and I have our swords and I have a single pistol...'

'I have a brace of them, but certainly we have nothing for the men. Do you ask Scanderbeg.'

'Very well.' Frey picked up his hat and called for the boat.

Drinkwater was certain that the reopening of hostilities would in due course result in the speedy recommissioning of many frigates and ships-of-the-line and the resumption of the blockade of French ports. It was possible, though by no means probable, that he would be called upon to take command of one of the latter, but he could not sit idly at home while events on the Continent took so exciting a turn in the hope that Their Lordships might remember him. They knew where he was if they required him.

The news of Napoleon's escape had been accompanied by several wild rumours, not the least of which was his sudden death, but the appearance of the quondam Emperor at the head of his troops in Paris and that of Louis XVIII in Ghent put paid to all wishful thinking. The Bourbons had returned to France and behaved as though the Revolution had never occurred, and the French populace had welcomed their Emperor back again. Misgivings they might have had, but the lesser of two evils was clearly preferred. King Louis had wisely removed himself over the frontier.

The hurried reassembly of the Allied armies was put in hand. The delegates at Vienna declared Napoleon Bonaparte to be outside all laws, broke up their conferences, balls and assignations, and returned to their chancelleries, palaces or headquarters. Everywhere Europe was astir again, jerked out of its euphoric assumption of peace, for the devil rode out once more at the head of his legions. It was impossible for a man of Drinkwater's character and history to sit idly by while the world teetered on such uncertainties. Until such time as Their Lordships had a ship for him, the proximity of Gantley Hall to the natural harbour of Harwich compelled him to take part in the urgent movement of the army across to the Belgian coast. Serving as a volunteer was a time-honoured course of action, and placing Frey in command of Kestrel gave the younger man the chance, if the war dragged on, of attaining the rank of commander and perhaps post-captain, thus securing a comfortable living for the remainder of his days.

For Drinkwater, in the fifty-third year of his life, the status of volunteer aboard his own yacht was most congenial. Frey delighted in the notion of command, and Drinkwater could relax, as he did now, watching with some amusement the movement of the flat lighters shipping out the horses of a regiment of light dragoons. The seamen assigned to the duty clearly had some difficulty in making the troopers understand the necessity of the animals remaining tranquil on the short passage across the shallows to the transports, and even more in communicating this requirement to the horses themselves. A good deal of shouting seemed essential to the task, which made the horses more nervous, and Drinkwater saw two seamen knocked into the sea and one wretched horse go overboard, to swim wild-eyed in the frothing tide that ebbed to seaward, pursued by a boat whose coxswain failed to understand that the more he holloaed and whistled at it, the more determined the horse became to escape. Drinkwater had some sympathy with the poor beast when its hooves found the bottom and it dragged itself up the beach by the Angel Battery, to be caught at last by some infantrymen lounging about there.

Drinkwater was surrounded by such vignettes and totally absorbed in them, so that he started as Frey, returning in the yacht's boat, ran alongside, almost under his nose. He was even more astonished to see Elizabeth sitting in the stern alongside the lieutenant.

'Elizabeth! What on earth brings you here? Not bad news, I hope?'

He helped her over the side and kissed her, and as he did so, she whispered, 'I have something very private for you,' with such insistence and so significant a stare of her brown eyes, that he took alarm. 'How did you get here?' he asked, frowning.

'We lashed poor Billy Cue on the box of the barouche ... I left him at the Three Cups where a young woman promised to help him.' Poor Billy had had both legs shot off and, while immensely strong in the trunk and arms, was otherwise like a baby. Drinkwater had provided for him years earlier, and he had proved a useful member of the household, propelling himself about on a low board mounted on castors. Dismissing Billy from his thoughts, Drinkwater tried to gloss over Elizabeth's intrusion.

Turning to Frey he asked, 'Did you find any orders for us?'

'No, sir, but remarkably, I have been told that we are to receive a draft of six seamen and that we are to draw stores and victuals from the Victualling Board officers at the Duke's Head. And I am to bring off an arms chest. Apparently the Impress Service maintain extra arms here in the Redoubt, ever since there was some trouble with the local populace. I've the matter in hand.'

'Good Lord, Captain Scanderbeg has not been idle. We shall be remarkably tight then. See to it, if you please. I daresay orders will follow ...' But Elizabeth was plucking with annoying urgency at his sleeve. He turned and ushered her below.

'What the devil is it, Elizabeth?' he asked as soon as they were in the saloon. Putting her finger to her lips, she drew him aside into the small cabin Drinkwater had had partitioned off.

'Nathaniel, I have been out of my wits hoping you had not precipitately sailed off to glory,' she said hurriedly in a low, mocking tone. 'Something remarkable and rather macabre has occurred.'

'Go on,' he said with growing impatience, as she appeared to fumble with her riding habit.

'You recall that when we buried Hortense, we laid her out in her small clothes?'

'Yes.' Drinkwater frowned as Elizabeth held out a pair of fine kid gauntlets.

'After you had gone, a sheepish Susan came to see me, to say that she had not disposed of Hortense's outer garments but had cleaned them and put them aside. I suppose she had some idea of retaining them herself, for they were very fine, or of disposing of them at some pecuniary advantage ...'

'Yes, yes, I understand, but what has this ...?'

'Please be silent a moment,' Elizabeth retorted sharply. 'She had been considering what to do, I think, probably troubled by her conscience, and, in drawing these beautiful gloves through her hands thus,' Elizabeth demonstrated the abstracted action, running the long cuffs of soft grey leather through her fingers, 'she encountered a stiffness which aroused her curiosity.'

Elizabeth took one glove and turned the cuff. A satin lining of pale blue had been snipped open, revealing a secret hiding-place.

'And inside she found what? Nothing?' Drinkwater asked.

'On the contrary. She found this.' Elizabeth now drew from her breast, with something of the air of a conjuror, a tightly folded and sealed letter. 'It has your name upon it.'

Drinkwater took the letter and turned it over. It bore his name without title in a hand he did not know.

'In view of what you had told us both when Hortense was being laid out, Susan came to see me and made a clean breast of the matter. I made light of it, thanked her, and told her that of course she might have what she wished of Madame Santhonax's effects. I promised her the gloves when I returned. I brought them merely to make you understand why the letter took so long to find. I suppose it was fortunate that we did find it... Nathaniel, are you quite well?'

Drinkwater looked up. He had broken the seal of the letter and had read its contents. A cold fear clutched at his heart. On his face, now grown pale, beads of perspiration stood out. Before he had gathered his wits, he murmured, 'My God Bess, this could ruin us.'

Elizabeth frowned. 'What do you mean?' she asked, both her husband's fright and his ghastly expression alarming her. Drinkwater laid the letter down on the shelf formed by a stringer and reached inside a locker for a bottle and two glasses. Elizabeth picked up the letter and read it. Drinkwater filled the glasses and turned to hold one out to Elizabeth. 'I don't understand,' she said, looking up from the letter. 'What is there in this to so alarm you?'

'She would have explained, of course,' Drinkwater said, half to himself, 'that was her purpose in coming and in such circumstances.' He drank deeply, adding, 'the damned fool.'

'That is hardly fair ...'

'No, no,' he said, shaking his head, 'not her. Him.''

'Him? What him? Nathaniel, if you are going to speak of ruin, please don't use riddles ...'

Drinkwater shook himself out of his introspection. 'I am sorry, Bess, it's something of a shock. This', he took the letter gently from her unresisting hand and folded it, 'is from my brother Edward. You know a little of his circumstances. He left this country many, many years ago and, after some time, obtained a position along with many other foreigners in the Russian Army. I had some dealings with him during my service in the Baltic ...'

'Was he connected in some way with Lord Dungarth's Secret Department?'

'Yes, loosely. Certainly he sought to gain credit by assisting me and, by implication, Lord Dungarth. I suppose, from what this says,' he tapped the letter, 'he reached Paris when the Allies occupied the city last year. I would judge that there he met the ever-resourceful Hortense, and at some stage in what I deduce to be an affaire, he may have revealed his true identity' Drinkwater paused. 'Indeed,' he went on with a profound sigh, looking at Elizabeth directly, 'it seems only too probable that he revealed everything.'

'And that everything constitutes our ruin, I assume?'

'Yes.'

'But why?'

'Because when he left this country, he was wanted for murder.'

'Murder?' Elizabeth faltered, her face draining of colour and an edge entering her voice. 'And you, of course, being you, helped him escape.'

'I was a damned fool...'

'But she is dead and this letter ... I wish I had never opened the glove, but I thought it something important, that you should know of it and that ...' Elizabeth faltered, and then added with sudden conviction, 'It doesn't matter though, does it? The letter asks that you should go to Calais to meet the person who signs himself "O". You have merely to ignore it, to pretend it never arrived ... I mean, how are you so sure that it is from Edward?' And with that Elizabeth snatched the offending paper back and tore it swiftly into pieces. Drinkwater looked on with a chillingly wan smile.

'But it did arrive, Bess. You know it, I know it, Susan Tregembo knows it. Even Frey must be aware that something is up.'

'But you don't know it was from Edward. You are guessing, aren't you?' Elizabeth pressed. 'It is signed O. Of what significance is that?'

'Only that Edward's assumed name, the name by which Lord Dungarth knew him, was Ostroff. In Russian it means island, a small piece of land surrounded by a hostile sea.'

'You are certain?'

'I am as certain as I can be. In fact I think I recognize the hand now', he added, 'from the way my, no, our surname is formed.'

There was a brief silence as they regarded the fragments of paper littering the cabin deck. It was broken by Elizabeth. 'Well, you are surely not suggesting you go to Calais?'

'If my brother is in Calais now, then he is stranded there, a Russian officer in a French port which has become Bonapartist again. He might be murdered there, which would be retribution of a sort, but otherwise there is nothing to stop him crossing the Channel by hiring a boat or bribing a fisherman. If I can at least try to reach him, I may discover his intentions. Perhaps, after all these years, we have nothing to fear, but I cannot live the rest of my life knowing that I abandoned my brother, feckless devil though he is and possessing as he does the power to ruin us all.'

'And what shall you do if you do meet him? Shoot him?' Drinkwater laughed. 'Would you prefer I drowned him?' 'I wish to God you had never had anything to do with him ...' 'And what would you have done when your own kith and kin came to you in the extremity of desperation ...?'

Elizabeth bit her lower lip and shook her head. 'I don't know. But murder...'

'Well, I am not exculpating him,' Drinkwater said with a sigh, 'but he caught his mistress in bed with another man. You yourself found the merest suspicion of such conduct betwixt Hortense and myself a thing deeply disturbing. An intemperate man like Ned, in the high, indulgent passion of his youth, was scarcely to be expected to react other than as he did.'

Elizabeth considered the matter for a moment, then it seemed that she braced herself as she made up her mind. 'You shall go to Calais. And I shall come with you.'

'No. I shall go to Calais,' Drinkwater said with sudden decisiveness. 'Edward, through Hortense, knows where we reside. You shall go home and stand guard. If Edward comes to you, send Vane to leave word at the Three Cups in Harwich. The letter shall state that the mare has produced a fine black foal and you thought I should know. Remember that. Occupy Ned, and I will return as soon as possible. Mercifully, I can leave Frey in command and absent myself without occasioning any trouble. My only concern at this moment is to detach myself from this place. Come, we must go ashore at once. Take those damned gloves to Susan. I wish her joy of them. Let us lay this confounded ghost once and for all!' And taking his wife in his arms, he crushed her to him. 'Now, put on a happy smile and look as if you are pleased to see me while I escort you ashore.'

Having seen Elizabeth off, with a smiling Billie Cue lashed happily upon the box, Drinkwater ducked into the Three Cups. He had met Lieutenant Sparkman in its taproom some eighteen months before when Sparkman, an inspector of Sea-Fencibles, had reported the arrival of a strange Neapolitan officer on the Essex coast and lit a train of powder that had led to the fight with the Odin and the death of James Quilhampton in the Vikkenfiord. A woman bobbed in front of him, her stays open to reveal her breasts, offering him a drink. He did not remember Annie Davis, though she had delighted Sparkman all those months ago and, more recently, had put a smile on Billie Cue's face, though it had cost him a small fortune. Now Drinkwater swept past her and made for the back room where Captain Scanderbeg held court.

'Ah, Captain Drinkwater, pray do sit down.' Scanderbeg sat back in his chair and lifted a pewter mug interrogatively. A drink?' Drinkwater shook his head. 'Thank you, no.' Scanderbeg was in his shirt-sleeves, the table before him littered with papers, some of which had found their way unintentionally to the floor while others were more purposefully arranged in a wicker basket at his feet next to which was coiled a small spaniel. A ravaged quill pen stuck out of a large ink-well and a pen-knife lay beside them. 'I have ordered a small draft of men for you ...' 'So I hear and thank you for that, but it is not the cause of my visit. Captain Scanderbeg, I can see you are a busy and, if I mistake not, a harassed man ...'

'By God, sir, I have never known such a thing as this damnable embarkation. I was Regulating Captain here a year ago and was resurrected for the present emergency in this blasted incarnation.' Scanderbeg tapped his breast as though this revealed his change of status. 'I tell you, sir, governments know not what they do when they declare war with such alacrity! Would you believe that I had a pipsqueak captain of light dragoons in here this very forenoon complaining, complaining mark you, that my men, the seamen that is, were taking insufficient care of his blasted horses. When I asked to which ship they were assigned, the Adventure, Philarea or Salus, he said he did not know, so I asked which troop he meant, the first or second and so forth, that I might divine the men responsible. He said, "Oh, I don't mean troop horses, damme! I mean me own chargers, sir!" I asked how many of these festering chargers he had and he said four, two of which had cost him four hundred guineas. Four hundred guineas! God, sir, I hope the poxy French shoot the fucking things out from under his arse! I told him that if he had nothing better to do than complain, he had time enough to see to the matter himself and that a couple of hundred guineas to the tars embarking the cavalry mounts would see each of his damned chargers piggy-backed out on the backs of a score of mermaids! Bloody popinjay!'

Drinkwater could not help but grin at Scanderbeg's predicament, despite the urgency of his business, and wondered if the horse he had seen in the water earlier had been one of the importunate young dragoon officer's mounts.

'He threatened to report me to General Vandeleur,' Scanderbeg railled on, 'and I said he might do as he damned well pleased. When the regiment had all embarked, I discovered their field forge and farriers still sitting in the horse lines out by the barrack field. No one had passed word to them to mount up, or whatever the festering cavalry do when they want to move off! I tell you, Drinkwater, the French will make mince-meat of 'em! Thank God for the North Sea and the Channel. Aye and the navy!' And with that Scanderbeg tossed off the contents of his pot and slammed it down on the table. He shook his head and blew through his cheeks. 'I beg your pardon, Captain, but ...' he shrugged. 'What can I do for you?'

'I think, Captain Scanderbeg, 'tis more what I can do for you. I can relieve you of one anxiety at least.'

'That, sir, would be the first word of co-operation I have received a sennight since!' Scanderbeg brightened visibly. 'You are going to tell me you have some orders.'

'Indeed I am. How did you know?'

'Too long in the tooth, Captain Drinkwater, not to know that I would be the last to be told. Well?'

'I am pushing over to reconnoitre Calais and Boulogne. If the French have any of their corvettes ready for sea, they might wreak havoc among our transports...'

'By heaven, sir, you're right! Well, well, go to it, sir, and if there is anything further you require, I shall do my limited best.'

'Thank you. I hope your post don't become too irksome.'

'I could almost wish for a frigate with her bowsprit struck over the Black Rocks,' Scanderbeg riposted with a smile, and Drinkwater left with the impression of an indomitable man who would, despite the odds and to the discomfiture of many, get the army embarked in time.

Walking back down Church Street he encountered a troop of horse artillery. The five field-guns and single howitzer gleamed in the sunshine. The bay horses that pulled them were handsome in their harness, and the soldiers that rode postillion were sitting chatting, while the young officer commanding them, having made a few remarks to his bombardier, turned in his saddle, caught sight of Drinkwater and saluted.

'Good day, sir. Captain Mercer of G Troop Royal Horse Artillery, at your service. Are you perhaps the naval commissioner?'

Drinkwater returned the salute and shook his head. 'Alas, no, Captain Mercer, the officer you want is Captain Scanderbeg. He is quartered next to the church in the Three Cups.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Captain Mercer ...'

'Sir?'

'Make sure you don't leave anything behind ... the odd gun or limber, for example. I fancy your colleagues in the light cavalry have sorely tried his patience this morning.'

Mercer grinned. 'What would you expect of Vandeleur's brigade, sir?' he remarked.

'I have no idea, Captain, but a little more than they appear capable of, it seems. I just hope the French are as accommodating as Captain Scanderbeg. Good day to you.'

Drinkwater passed on, quite ridiculously light-headed. He had Scanderbeg to thank for bringing the problem of Edward into a more reasonable perspective. Moreover, he had released himself from any obligation to the commissioner. And he would be going to sea. Suddenly that, at least, was compensation enough. And with the thought buoying him up, he hailed the boat.

CHAPTER 8 Calais

The following morning proved foggy and while it delayed the transports from leaving port, the hired cutter Kestrel lay wallowing damply off the Head of the Falls, having slipped out of Harwich the previous evening. Hardly had Frey's men lugged the stores and arms chest aboard than Drinkwater passed orders to sail. Once her mainsail was hoisted, and provided the weather remained reasonable, she was an easy vessel to handle. Though Drinkwater and Frey stood watch and watch, it was possible to divide their crew into idlers, available throughout the daytime, with the pressed men in three watches. It was scarcely a punishing regime and, superficially at least, bore a resemblance to the yachting excursions Drinkwater and Frey had indolently planned during their winter evenings together.

Drinkwater's notion of reconnoitring Calais was a sound one; indeed he expected to encounter at least a gun-brig from Chatham keeping an eye on the port. More difficult would be penetrating the place, not an easy task for a British naval officer during so uncertain a political period, but the greatest problem he confronted lay in the means by which he might locate Edward. The letter had given him few clues, and Elizabeth had screwed it up and torn it into so many pieces that his attempt to reconstruct it proved futile. It did not matter. It was intended merely to validate Hortense's appearance. He recalled it as a simple enough message, to the effect that an old friend who was now very intimate with the bearer wished to be embarked at Calais and looked forward to renewing a close acquaintanceship. There were key words containing a hidden significance which Drinkwater, with his eye for such things combined with a conscientious anxiety, had soon noticed. The old friend gave away a little, but in truth there were few now left in the world who could claim an 'old' friendship with him. Besides, this relationship was emphasized by the words close acquaintanceship. As to intimacy with the bearer, Drinkwater did not need to read between the lines there: Hortense, though mutilated by boiling lead, had still been beautiful, and Ned was past fifty. The only real mystery was how the two had met, and he had no way of divining that fact without asking directly. Of one thing he was certain, Hortense had risked a great deal in her attempt to contact her benefactor. He recalled Lord Dungarth's prophetic remark when they had let her go years earlier, that they would save themselves a deal of trouble if they had shot her. Well, well, Drinkwater mused, they had not shot her, and their combined infirmity of purpose had led to his present predicament. The fact that brother Edward had become Hortense's lover was an exquisitely painful irony, he thought, turning his mind back to the problem of contacting a fugitive Russian officer in a hostile port.

It did not suit Drinkwater to leave matters to fall out as they might. That something would turn up was a maxim that in his experience rarely functioned, except for other people, of course. It seemed he had but two choices, to do the thing himself or to get someone else to do it, and neither recommended itself. He did not wish to go ashore and if he did, what could he achieve? He could hardly wander round Calais in his uniform and to do so in his civilian garb invited arrest and a firing squad. And even if he were to risk going ashore, he could scarcely knock on doors and ask, in his barbaric and imperfect French, if a Russian officer who was really an Englishman had been seen hanging about. The whole matter bordered on the preposterous!

The alternative was to contact a fishing-boat. French fishermen were no different from their English counterparts and would do anything for money. Fortunately he had sufficient funds with him and could buy access to the network of gossip that would exist among the drinking dens, cafés and bistros that these men frequented when ashore. The fishermen of the Dover Strait, irrespective of nationality, had been carrying odd persons back and forth across the Channel for a generation, and they would almost certainly know of anyone who was seeking a passage. Besides, by now Edward might well have bitten the bullet and arranged his own passage. In fact, it was more likely that he would turn up at Gantley Hall to alarm Elizabeth than that he would be standing obligingly on the beach at Calais. Too long a period had elapsed since Hortense had left in her lugger for an impatient man such as Edward to remain long in idle impotence.

For the whole of 10 April, Kestrel lay inert, washing up and down in the tide, her decks wet with the condensation that dripped from her sails and rigging. Drinkwater took the opportunity of calling his tiny crew aft. He had appointed his own two paid hands as boatswain and carpenter, and they had some notion of who they were working for, but the half-dozen pressed men had no idea.

'My lads,' Drinkwater began, looking over the smallest crew he had ever commanded, smaller even than that allocated to him when, as a midshipman, he had been sent away as prize-master of the Yankee schooner Algonquin. 'For those of you just shipped aboard, I am Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater. I am the owner of this cutter and she is on charter to the Government for special service. She is commanded by Lieutenant Frey here and he is acting under my orders, both of us being in His Majesty's service. Our orders in the first instance require us to take a look into Calais. Much will depend thereafter on what we discover. What I shall rely upon you for is a prompt and willing response to orders. That is all.'

He watched them disperse. The pressed men were quite clearly seamen and did not seem unduly resentful at their billet. Perhaps they were meditating desertion at the first opportunity. Oddly, Drinkwater did not find the thought particularly uncomfortable. At a pinch he and Frey could sail Kestrel home themselves.

On the morning of the 11th, a breeze sprang up out of the northwest quarter and, though it soon dropped again, there was sufficient to keep steerage way on the cutter as she ghosted south-east towards Calais. It was Drinkwater's first real passage in her and it was clear she had been built for speed, for with the quartering wind and her long boom guyed out to port, she ran down wind with ease. Frey seemed content to lean against the long tiller as the white wake ran out from under the counter, leaving Drinkwater to pace along the windward side, from the heavy sister-blocks of the lower running backstay to the starboard channel. The small swivel guns, one of which was mounted on either bow, with the second pair aft covering the cutter's short waist, pointed skywards. Their iron crutches could be lodged in the same holes drilled for belaying pins, and Drinkwater mentally selected three other positions which might prove useful if they ran into any trouble. Of one thing he was relatively certain: if there was any kind of wind, even a light air, he judged they had an excellent chance of out-running even a French chasse marée.

None the less, considerations of this kind were mere temporary distractions and, when the French coast hove in sight, Drinkwater realized he was no nearer a solution as to how to contact Edward than he had been when they had sailed. Contacting fishermen seemed the best option, though how he might guarantee that remained an unresolved problem. For some minutes he stood amidships, his glass steadied against the heavy shrouds, watching the low white cliffs fall away as the coast stretched eastwards towards Calais. A strong tide ran along the shore and it would carry them up to the jetties. Drinkwater decided to progress by degrees, and the first of these would be to determine the state of the port. He closed his Dollond glass with a snap, pocketed it and walked aft.

'Now, Mr Frey,' he said formally, looking upwards, 'we have British colours at the peak.'

'Aye, sir.'

'I mean to run up along the coast and approach Calais from the west. The tide will be in our favour and I want to push up between the jetties. Make as though you intend to enter the port. Load all the guns with well-wadded powder. No shot. Be prepared for the French to fire on us, but I want a demonstration made.'

'You're going to tempt anyone bold enough to try their luck against us, are you, sir?'

'I think we might have the legs of even a French corvette, don't you?' Drinkwater replied, dissembling with a grin.

'I'd be damned disappointed if we didn't, to be honest, sir,' Frey replied, smiling back.

'Very well. We will then haul off for the night and heave to offshore. Tomorrow morning we shall do the same again. After that I shall decide what further we can achieve.'

'Very well, sir, I understand.'

Drinkwater was tempted to say, 'No you don't', but confined his reaction to a confirming nod. 'I gather from the smell that you have found one among the pressed men capable of acting as cook,' Drinkwater remarked, sniffing appreciatively, for their table thus far had been unappealing.

Frey nodded. 'One of 'em volunteered, sir. Name of Jago.'

'Well that's fortunate. Let's hope we deserve such luck.'

It was early evening and the wind had steadied to a light breeze as they wore ship off Cap Blanc Nez and began to run along the coast towards the spires of Calais. The cutter heeled a little, slipping through the water with astonishing grace and speed. Had Drinkwater not been so preoccupied, he might have appreciated the sublimity of the moment, but he was denied that consolation, and it was left to Frey's sensibilities as he leaned against the tiller, his eye occasionally wandering upwards to the peak of the gaff where the large red ensign lifted in the breeze. The flooding tide added to their speed and this augmentation made them appear to scud along the shoreline, persuading Frey that the subject would make a delightful painting.

Drinkwater, for his part, watched the approaching port with unease. Just inshore and slightly ahead of Kestrel a pair of small luggers were running parallel with them, making for home. They appeared unconcerned by the proximity of the British cutter, so fluid was the political situation. Drinkwater wondered if they might not provide the contacts he required. He turned and walked aft.

'I assume the swivels are ready?' Drinkwater asked.

'Aye, sir. As you required.'

'Very well. Now edge down on those fishermen, Mr Frey, if you please. I want them to get a clear look at us.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Frey leaned on the tiller and Kestrel's bowsprit swung round as she turned a point to starboard, lining itself up on a church spire.

'Friendly waves to the Frogs now, lads, if you please,' Drinkwater said as they caught up with the rearmost lugger. The two French boats were trailed by screeching gulls who dipped and fought over the scraps of entrails lobbed overboard by the men industriously cleaning their catch before they reached port. The heavily treated brown canvas of their sails and the festoons of nets half-hanging over their rails gave them a raffish appearance, and the low sunlight flashed on the gutting knives and the silver skins of the fish as the fishermen worked with deft and practised ease. Aft, the skippers stood at their tillers, with a boy to trim the sheets, regarding the overtaking British cutter with little more than a mild curiosity as she surged alongside them.

Drinkwater stood beside the lower running backstay and raised his hat. Along the deck his crew waved. Impulsively the lad alongside the aftermost lugger responded, but the skipper merely jerked his head and those of the fishermen amidships who looked up did so only for a second, before bending to their task again.

'Happy-looking lot,' someone remarked as the first lugger dropped astern and they overtook the second. She was closer and Frey altered to port again to avoid actually running her down. Drinkwater read the name across her transom: Trois Freres. They received a similar reception from her. 'Very fraternal,' Frey remarked.

'Never mind, Mr Frey. Word of an insolent British cutter in the offing will circulate the waterfront before dark and they have at least saved us from the attentions of those gentlemen.'

Drinkwater indicated a small hill which overlooked the final approach to the entrance. It mounted a battery, and at least two officers, conspicuous in their bell-topped shakos, could be seen regarding them through telescopes.

'Stand by those swivels then,' Drinkwater said, and Frey called to his men to blow on their matches.

'I want you to tack in the very entrance and fire both guns to loo'ard as you do so.'

Frey called his men to stand by the sheets and runners. They were drawing close to the jetties now, and were being watched by at least one man who stood at the extremity of the seaward jetty beneath the lighthouse.

The stream of the tide bypassed the entrance itself but ran fast across it, swirling dangerously round the abutment of the seaward jetty now opening on their port bow. 'Watch the tidal set on that jetty, Mr Frey.'

'Aye sir, I have it...' Frey grunted with the effort.

'Ready about and down helm!' Frey called, and Kestrel turned on her heel and came up into the wind with a great shaking of her sails. The wind was getting up as the men ran away with the starboard runner falls and let fly those to port. The two crumps of the swivel guns echoed back from the wooden piles of the jetty, then Kestrel lay over on the starboard tack and stood to the westward. On Kestrel's port quarter the two French luggers sailed blithely into Calais and on her starboard beam the piles of the extremity of the seaward jetty suddenly loomed above them. Drinkwater looked up. The man was still there, staring at them, with the lighthouse rising behind him.

Drinkwater raised his hat again and, with a grin, called out 'Bonsoir, M'sieur!' But the man made no move of acknowledgement beyond spitting to leeward. 'An expectorating Bonapartist,' Drinkwater remarked, jamming his hat back on his head.

Frey gave a laugh of nervous relief. He had nearly been caught out by the tide carrying him against the jetty-head. Panache was one thing, but it had seemed for one anxious moment dangerously close to disaster!

As if to chastise them for their impudence, two shot plunged into the sea off their port beam. Looking astern, Frey and Drinkwater caught sight of the smoke dispersing from the muzzles of the cannon in the battery.

'Well, I think we have made our presence known, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater said.

They stood away to the north-west as darkness closed in and when they had hauled sufficiently offshore, Frey hove to. Leaving the deck to the boatswain, the two officers went below to dine.

'Well, I don't know what we will achieve tomorrow, but I think we should be off Blanc Nez again by about five o'clock ...'

'That will give us the tide in our favour again,' Frey added enthusiastically, sipping at his wine as Jago came in with a steaming suet pudding. 'By God, Jago, that looks good!' 'Bon appetit, they says hereabouts I think, sir.' Drinkwater looked up sharply. 'You don't speak French do you, Jago?'

'Mais oui, M'sieur. I speak it well enough to pass among the French without their suspecting I am English.'

'And how did you acquire that skill, may I ask?' 'Well, sir, 'tis how I learned to cook, too. You see, sir, I was a boy shippin' out of Maldon in ninety-eight with my old pa. We was, er, fishin' like,' he winked, looking at Drinkwater and then at Frey, 'if you gets my meanin', sir ...'

'You mean you were smuggling?' 'Good God, no sir. I was a mere lad ...' 'Then your father was smuggling.'

'Not quite, sir. We was actually fishing off the Kentish Knock when up comes this big cutter, flying British colours, and lies to just upwind and floats a boat down to us. Imagine our surprise when over the side comes this Frog officer, all beplumed and covered in gold. He wants the skipper, that's me dad, to take a packet into Maldon and to hand it over to a man at an address he gave him. I think he gave Pa some fancy passwords and such like. To make sure of it, he took me out of the boat and carried me off with him ...' Jago shrugged. 'Sommat happened to the boat, I remember she was leakin' awful and there was some bad weather blew up next day. Anyway there I was dumped on a small farm near Abbeville. The farmer was an invalid soldier and I learned the place was often used by strange men who were passin' back and forth across the Channel. They avoided bein' seen in Calais or Boulogne but weren't far away when the time came for 'em to ship out. That's how I speak French, sir.'

'Fascinating, Jago. You must have been released at the Peace then.'

'That's right, sir. One day I was put aboard the Dover packet with three golden sovereigns in me pocket and told to go home. Me old widdered mother thought me the answer to her prayers.'

'You seem to be the answer to ours,' Frey said, picking up knife and fork.

'Oh yes, sorry, sirs. Don't you let me spoil your suppers.'

'What an odd tale,' Frey said with his mouth full.

'Yes, indeed.'

They were off Blanc Nez at dawn, and to the southward, running up from Boulogne, was a brig-sloop. 'British or French, I wonder?' Drinkwater asked as he came on deck in answer to Frey's summons.

'It doesn't much matter, sir, since we don't have the signal book aboard. If you've no objection, I suggest we run straight up and keep ahead of him.'

'Very well. With the wind the way it is this morning, if he's French we can escape to windward,' Drinkwater replied, for the breeze had veered a point or two into the north-north-west. 'We should have the legs of him.'

A few moments later it was clear that the brig-sloop had seen them and had decided to give chase, for she was setting studding sails with a speed that bespoke British nationality. However, they were already running along the sandy shore to the west of Calais, impelled by the hurrying tide, the hands busy loading the swivels and joking amongst themselves. A few moments later, as the sun rose above a low bank of cloud over the fields of France, the red ensign went aloft once more.

This morning there were no fishing-boats to mask them, nor did the earliness of the hour render them invisible to the vigilant eyes of the French gunners. As they ranged up towards the entrance of Calais harbour, shot plunged into the sea around them, raising tall columns of water on either beam.

But the speed of the tide under them combined with the swiftness of the cutter to frustrate the French artillery. The nearest they got to hitting Kestrel was to soak her decks with water. There were some early morning net fishermen on the seaward jetty whose gear dropped over into the water, but they took scant notice of the British cutter. Years of war and blockade had inured them to such things and they were quite indifferent to the presence of a British ship so close to home.

When they had tacked off the breakwaters and stood back to the westwards, they found that the French gunners in the battery had shifted their attention to the brig-sloop. As they went about, the commander of the brig-sloop, seeing that the cutter was not French and running for shelter in to Calais, also tacked, frustrating the French gunners. Both vessels now stood clear of the coast, with Kestrel overhauling the brig.

Drinkwater closed his glass with a snap. 'Adder, mounting eighteen guns,' he announced. As they surged up under the brig's quarter, Drinkwater saw her young commander at the starboard hance raise his speaking-trumpet.

'Cutter, 'hoy, what ship? You are not answering the private signal!'

Frey looked at Drinkwater and Drinkwater said simply, 'You are in command, Mr Frey.'

Frey handed the tiller over to the boatswain and went to the rail, cupping his hands about his mouth.

'Hired cutter Kestrel, Lieutenant Frey commanding, under special orders. We have no signal books but I have Captain Drinkwater aboard,' Frey added, to avoid being taken under the sloop-commander's orders. 'Have you seen any French men-of-war?'

'Who d'ye say is on board?'

'Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater ...'

Ask him who his commander is,' Drinkwater prompted.

'... Who desires to know who commands the Adder.'

'I am John Wykeham. As to your question, there are three corvettes in Boulogne, but heave to, if you please, I have something to communicate to Captain Drinkwater.'

'You had better do as he asks, Mr Frey'

'Very well, Captain Wykeham. I shall come to the wind in your lee.'

Half an hour later the young Commander Wykeham clambered aboard Kestrel and looked curiously about him. Frey met him with a salute. The two men were of an age.

'May I introduce you to Captain Drinkwater, sir ...'

The two men shook hands. 'I thought I was to be the only cruiser on the station, sir,' Wykeham said.

'Is that what you came to say?' Drinkwater asked.

'Not at all, it is just that your presence is something of a surprise, sir. And, forgive me for saying so, but your cutter is somewhat lightly armed for so advanced a post.'

Drinkwater smiled. 'She is a private yacht, sir, on hire for Government service, but come below, Commander Wykeham, and let us discuss what troubles you over a glass.'

Once in the tiny cabin with charged glasses, Wykeham asked, 'Your special Government service, sir ...'

'Yes?'

'Does it have anything to do with a Russian officer?'

Drinkwater was quite unable to disguise his astonishment. After mastering his surprise he replied, 'Well, as a matter of fact, yes. Do you know of such a person?'

'I have a Russian officer on board. He came off to me by fishing-boat the day before yesterday. Speaks broken English, but excellent French, a language in which I have some ability. I gather he was caught in Paris by the return of Bonaparte and failed to get out in time. Cherchez la femme, I think. How did you know about him?'

'I had a message about him,' Drinkwater said obscurely, adding to mollify the obvious curiosity in the young commander's eyes, 'I have long had dealings of this sort with the enemy coast.'

'Ah, I see.'

Drinkwater smiled. 'I doubt whether you do, but your discretion does you credit. What is this fellow's name?'

'He claims to be a colonel, Colonel Ostroff. An officer of cossacks, or irregular horse. Is he your man?'

'I rather think he might be,' Drinkwater replied, his heart beating uncomfortably, 'but tell me something of the circumstances by which he made contact with you.'

Wykeham shrugged. 'I have been poking my nose in and out of Calais and Boulogne this past fortnight. My orders are to ensure no French men-o'-war escape to harry our shipping crossing to Ostend and if anything of force emerges either to engage or, if of superior force, to run across to Deal, make a signal to that effect, then chase until help arrives. Well, the evening before last, we were approached by a fishing-boat with which we had had some contact a few days earlier. Actually we paid good English gold for some langoustines, and I thought the avaricious buggers had come back for more, until, that is, they fished this Russkie lobster out of the hold. Green as grass he was,' Wykeham recollected, laughing. 'He asked for a passage to England, said he would pay his way and that he had been cut off in Paris and had only escaped to the coast by the skin of his teeth. Muttered something about bearing diplomatic papers.' Wykeham shrugged. 'I had no reason not to rescue the poor devil, so I took him aboard. He was anxious to be landed, but I told him he would have to wait. He was most indignant, but now fortunately you have arrived.'

'Well,' said Drinkwater, 'I can take him off your hands and leave the station to you.'

'That would be very satisfactory,' said Wykeham, rising, 'I shall send him over directly'

Drinkwater followed Wykeham on deck and stood apprehensively as the brig's boat bobbed back over the waves and ran alongside. Fishing out his glass he levelled it and watched a figure, dressed in a sober coat and beaver, clamber down into it, whereupon the boat shoved off and headed back towards them. Drinkwater's heart thumped uncomfortably in his breast. He had a dreadful feeling of chickens coming home to roost, and his knees knocked, making him foolishly vulnerable to an indiscretion. He made an effort to pull himself together, but found himself in the grip of a visceral terror he had never before experienced.

CHAPTER 9 Colonel Ostroff

Paralysis gripped Drinkwater as he watched the boat approach. He was robbed of the capacity to think, and stood like a loon, as though his brother's return automatically meant the ruin he had so greatly feared. He might, he thought afterwards, have acted in such a way as to bring ruin upon himself had not he recalled, quite inconsequentially to begin with, that this supposed stranger allegedly spoke poor English. He did, however, speak good French and that fact called for an interpreter. The presence of Jago would act as a brake upon any precipitate action the impetuous Edward might take. Drinkwater turned and called forward, 'Pass word for Jago to lay aft!'

Then he said to Frey, 'Send this man below with Jago, I'll interview him in the cabin. You may set course for Harwich.' 'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater hurried below, seated himself in the cabin and endeavoured to compose himself. A few moments later, with a clattering of feet on the narrow companionway, Jago led the newcomer into the cabin.

'Pray sit down, sir,' Drinkwater said coldly, waving to the bench settee that ran along the forward bulkhead as Jago rendered the invitation into French. Time had not been entirely kind to his brother and there was a moment when Drinkwater thought they might have got the wrong man. A wide scar ran across his cheek and bit deep into the left side of the nose. Unlike his elder brother, Edward seemed to have lost much hair.

'Ask him his name, Jago.' The exchange revealed the stranger to be Colonel the Count d'Ostroff, of the Guard Cossacks, lately in Paris on the staff of Prince Vorontzoff.

'He asks for a pail, sir. Feeling sick.'

'You'd better get one.'

The gloom of the cabin after the daylight on deck clearly caused 'Ostroff' some difficulty in seeing his interlocutor, but the moment Jago had gone, he leaned forward and peered into Drinkwater's face. 'It is Captain Drinkwater, isn't it?' he asked with a low urgency.

'I am Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, yes.'

'Don't you recognize me?' A touch of alarm infected the man's voice, which betrayed a trace of accent.

'Yes...'

'Nat, I must talk to you.' 'Ostroff' swallowed hard, his face pallid, his eyes intense.

'Help me at least by maintaining this fiction until we reach Harwich,' Drinkwater said coolly.

'No! You cannot leave the French coast...'

'I understand', Drinkwater said in a loud voice, overriding his brother as Jago and the bucket noisily descended the companionway, 'that you speak a little English.'

But the Colonel had no time to confirm or deny this. Instead he grabbed the bucket from Jago's hand and vomited copiously into it. As his head emerged he turned it to one side and, between gasps for breath, let out a stream of French. The only words Drinkwater recognized, and which seemed to be repeated with emphasis, were 'très important'.

'He says, sir, that it is very important that you do not leave the coast. He says there are three people ashore who must be taken aboard before they are killed.'

'Did he ask Commander Wykeham of the Adder to bring them off?' The question was relayed and the Colonel nodded his head. 'And what did Commander Wykeham say?'

Drinkwater waited. It was a foolish question, he realized, but Edward was equal to the occasion, even though he was suffering. 'He, that's Commander Wykeham, did not seem to understand, he says, sir. That's why he, the Colonel here ... Do I call him the Colonel or the Count, sir?'

'Let's stick to Colonel, Jago.'

'Very good, sir. Well, that's why the Colonel came across to us so obligingly, sir. Thought we'd be an easier touch.'

'Yes, thank you, Jago.' Drinkwater caught Edward's eye and sighed. 'Who are these three fugitives? Victims of the change of government?'

The Colonel nodded and set the bucket down beside him. 'I speak good English,' he said, looking at Jago, 'I can speak directly to your captain, thank you.'

Jago turned from one officer to the other with an astonished expression on his face. 'Well, God bless my soul,' Drinkwater said hurriedly. 'I think you may go then, Jago. I'm obliged for your help.'

'Will you be all right, sir?' asked Jago, looking suspiciously at the Colonel.

'I think even I can defend myself against a seasick man, Jago, thank you.'

Jago withdrew with an obvious and extravagant reluctance. As he disappeared, Drinkwater held up his hand. 'The rules of engagement', he said in a low voice, 'are that you call me "Captain" and I refer to you as "Colonel". Now, I have news for you, your mistress is dead.' Edward's mouth fell open, then he retched again, a pitiful picture of personal misery of the most intense kind. Drinkwater felt a sudden wave of sympathy for his visitor, that instinct of protection of the older for the younger. Averting his face, he pressed on. 'It is only by the greatest good fortune for you that she died almost on my doorstep, otherwise you would have had to consign yourself to the ministrations of Commander Wykeham ...'

'Mon Dieu ...La pauvre Hortense ... How did it...? I mean ...' Edward raised his unhappy, sweating face from the wooden bucket, all thoughts of Commander Wykeham far from his mind. A pathetic tear ran down his furrowed cheek and Drinkwater guessed he was near the end of his tether.

'You sent her off at a terrible risk...'

'No! It was she who insisted on sailing in that damned chasse marée; insisted it would be all right, that she could contact you ... The bloody skipper promised he knew the English coast like the back of his hand.'

'Well, that's as may be. The lugger was dashed to pieces upon a shoal,' Drinkwater persisted. 'Hortense was washed up dead on the beach not far from my home, between the Martello towers at Shingle Street. We found her the next morning. She has been buried... Well, never mind about that now. I am sorry, I had no idea you knew her.'

Edward shook his head and wiped his eyes. 'Damnation, Nat...'

'Stop that!' Drinkwater snapped, 'Don't let your damned guard down! Not yet!' He veered away from the personal. There would be time to rake over their respective lives later. 'These confounded fugitives, I have no wish to appear inhuman, but what the devil have they to do with me?'

'If the Bonapartists get hold of them they will probably be shot.'

Drinkwater sighed. 'A lot of people have been shot in the last twenty-odd years, Colonel. I had the dubious honour of escorting King Louis back to his country a year ago. It seems our labours were in vain. From what I hear, the Bourbons did little to endear themselves to their subjects and those who support them deserve little sympathy ...'

'These are not Bourbon courtiers, Captain,' Edward said, pulling himself together and speaking rapidly. 'They are the Baroness de Sarrasin and her two children, aged nine and ten. The Baroness was born into a liberal but impoverished noble family. She was very young during the worst excesses of the Revolution and, being a woman living in the remote countryside, escaped the worst. Later she married an officer in the army. He too was of noble blood, an émigré who returned when Napoleon invited the nobility back to France to join the army. He served Bonaparte with distinction and was created a Baron of the Empire, but last year he was on Marshal Marmont's staff and...' Edward shrugged.

'And?' Drinkwater prompted.

'You do not know what Marmont did?'

'Should I?'

'Marmont surrendered his entire Army Corps before Paris, precipitating the fall of Napoleon. The Baroness's husband was implicated in the capitulation and she is consequentially tainted as a result of his involvement. The loyalties of all members of the family have, as I believe you know, been confused and inconstant.'

'As I know?' Drinkwater queried with a frown. 'How should I know about this Baroness de Sarrasin and her family?'

'Since her husband's disgrace she has reverted to using her maiden name. The officer she married was named Montholon...'

Drinkwater frowned. 'Montholon! But that was Hortense's maiden name. So, he is Hortense's brother?'

'Was her brother. He was mysteriously killed while out riding soon after Napoleon reached Paris. The Baroness and her children were hidden by friends. You have to help her!'

'Have to? Is she your lifeline now?'

Edward shook his head. 'For God's sake,' he said, dropping his voice still further, 'I am neither an ingrate nor a monster. I have the chance to make some sort of reparation for the past. I need your help. If you cannot do it for me, pray do it for Hortense's sake. She said you were fond of her, that you had duelled with each other for years...'

'Did she?' Drinkwater said flatly. 'Duelled, eh? Is that how she put it? Well, I suppose 'tis as good a metaphor as any. Tell me how you met her. That strikes me as the oddest coincidence of all.'

'It is easily explained. Hortense was a friend of Madame Ney's. The Marshal had made something of a reputation in Russia and Prince Vorontzoff wished to meet him. I was on the Prince's staff and we attended one of Madame Ney's soirées...'

'Where you met Hortense, and thereafter matters took their natural course.' Drinkwater's tone was rueful.

'Quite so.'

'But how', Drinkwater went on, 'did you make the connection with me?'

'It was our intention to marry...'

'You and Hortense proposed to marry!'

Edward nodded. 'Yes. Does that surprise you?'

Drinkwater shook his head. 'No,' he said, giving a low, ironic laugh, 'no, not in the least. Pray continue.'

Edward shrugged. 'The war was over and I obtained my discharge from the Russian army. Paris was most congenial, and my long acquaintanceship and service with the Russian ton had taught me French. I thought in French and now hardly ever utter a word in English, though Prince Vorontozoff knew me to speak it and, as I was in his confidence, he occasionally conversed in it with me.'

'Did he know you to be an Englishman?'

Edward nodded. 'Yes, there are many foreign officers in the Russian service, though most are Germans. I gave out that I came from a family of merchants who had lived abroad for some time.'

'And by the time you met Hortense, you had proved yourself to the Russians.'

'It was difficult after Tilsit, but Prince Vorontzoff was wholly opposed to the alliance with Napoleon. He retired to the country and I went with him. He had Arab bloodstock and you will recall my interest in horses.'

Drinkwater nodded. 'But you have not told me how you linked Hortense with me.'

'Well, I wished to marry her and settle in Paris. I had provided for myself quite well.' Edward grinned. 'There were some rich pickings between Moscow and Paris, but that is by the by. Hortense struck me as being alone, despite her intimacy with Madame Ney. Baroness de Sarrasin was suspicious of her, due to the disgrace of her first husband, and it was clear she was the recipient of charity. The fall of Napoleon did not divide France, it fragmented the country. Many of the Marshals accepted the restoration of the Bourbons in return for the retention of their positions, titles and fortunes. Be that as it may, Hortense accepted me. In confidence, she told me she received a small competence from a source in England for services to the British government. I assumed this was to prove to me that her loyalties were sound. I also assumed she meant a pension and she might have lied, but she didn't, she said no, it was from a man she held in the highest esteem, though fate had made him an enemy. I thought, of course, that she had been this mysterious benefactor's mistress and that the enmity had grown up after some intimacy, but she denied this vehemently. Sheer curiosity led me to ask the name of her benefactor and sheer innocence led her to reply with our ... your surname.'

'God's bones, I had no idea...'

'You see, the fact that she was an intimate of the Neys, and I knew she was the widow of a disgraced officer, Edouard Santhonax, yet had a pension for services to Great Britain, led me to conclude that her past was as complex as my own, beset by divided loyalties and so forth.' Edward rubbed a hand over his sweating chin. 'I suppose it gave us something in common; we were both what used to be called, with disparagement, "adventurers".'

'So you told her you were my brother?' Drinkwater asked, frowning.

'Yes, eventually. When Napoleon escaped from Elba and Paris was in an uproar. Friendships that seemed to cement the new order of the restored Bourbons dissolved overnight. Everyone seemed compromised, some more than others. There will have been no shortage of informers to jostle the petitioners at Napoleon's new court. Ney rode south to bring back Bonaparte in an iron cage and promptly went over to his old master. As for me, I was now a Russian living in a city which was set fair to turn hostile, and Hortense was among the tainted. In addition the Baroness arrived, her husband dead, her own fortunes overturned. She was now in the same position as her once despised sister-in-law. Hortense was fond of her brother's children. She had had none of her own...'

'I never thought of her as a matron ...'

'She was not all ambition, you know, but she was brave and resourceful.'

'She suggested you contacted me, I suppose.'

Edward nodded. 'Yes. She regarded you as a person of some influence. I had no idea whether you were an admiral, but from our last meeting I recalled you were engaged in matters usually outside the competence of a common captain in the Royal Navy. Hortense knew that you and a certain peer were involved in clandestine activities, so naturally you seemed the only person we could turn to. This was as clear to me as to her, but over this fortuitous circumstance lay the foolish actions of my youth. I had compromised you fatally. I had to tell her we were related, and why I could not come directly. She was astonished, of course,' he said with a wan smile, 'and at first refused to believe that I could possibly be your brother. I think she thought the claim an extravagant attempt on my part to impress her, but she eventually saw the folly of that and I was able to persuade her by revealing the few facts I knew about you.' He sighed, then added, 'She knew you a long time ago, I gather.'

'I rescued her from the revolutionaries — oh, years ago — just as it appears I must do again with this Baroness of yours.'

'Nat...' Edward leaned forward, his face earnest, his voice very low. Grasping his brother's wrist he said, 'I have not forgotten the great debt I owe you for helping me escape the gallows...'

'You escaped justice, by God!'

'Maybe. But the rescue of the Baroness and her children is something in reparation.'

'A noble expiation', Drinkwater said with heavy irony, 'which you have already alluded to, but somewhat dependent upon the charity of your over-burdened kin.'

'And I have lost Hortense ...'

'Perhaps we have both lost her.'

Edward frowned. 'You were never her lover...'

'Is that a question or a statement? But no, I never was,' Drinkwater said hurriedly. He paused a moment, then asked, 'Hortense was not the only woman in your life. Have you not left a wife in Russia?'

Edward shook his head. 'A mistress, yes, in fact two, both married. But I am not the complete smell-smock you think me.'

Drinkwater smiled. '"Smell-smock", now there's an expression that betrays how long it is since you spoke English.' He sighed. 'Well, it is good to see you again. Our last meeting in Tilsit was, you will recall, dangerous enough...'

'Look, Nat...'

'For God's sake, do not relax your guard! Stop calling me that, or 'twill slip out!' Drinkwater snapped. 'I have a great deal...'

'I realize what you have done ... Look, I have no intention of being anything other than a Russian officer. I can arrive in England as a Russian officer protecting the Baroness. I can spend the rest of my life speaking French. I can retire as the Baroness's protector, if she wishes, and live somewhere quietly. God knows I've endured my own share of frozen bivouacs! This might not quite equate to your cumulative privations, but I do not think there is a soul alive who would recognize Ned Drinkwater, do you?'

Drinkwater looked at his brother. 'How did you get that?' he asked, indicating his own nose. 'A sabre cut?'

Edward nodded. 'On the field of Borodino. A cuirassier of the 9th Regiment, They carried the Raevsky redoubt at the point of the sword. It was my misfortune to have borne a message into the place about thirty seconds before they arrived!'

Drinkwater rose and drew out a bottle and glasses from the locker. 'You will not know that it was Hortense's husband who tried to frustrate my return from Tilsit with the intelligence you obtained for us.' 'That is not possible!' 'And I killed him,' Drinkwater added. 'Mon Dieu!' Edward sat back, clearly astonished. 'I think', Drinkwater said slowly, handing Edward a glass, 'that your services at Tilsit might buy you immunity for your crime.'

Edward shrugged. 'Perhaps, but I should not wish to put the matter to the test. It would still cloud your own reputation. Aiding and abetting...'

'Yes, yes,' Drinkwater interrupted testily, 'those two words haunt me to this day.' He tossed off his own glass and rose to stand swaying in the cabin as Kestrel stood out to sea.

'I can stay Russian,' Edward almost pleaded. Drinkwater paused and the two men stared at each other in the shadowy cabin. 'What damned curious lives we have led,' Edward added reflectively.

'What damned curious times we have lived through,' Drinkwater replied.

'D'you remember what Mother used to say?' 'No, what in particular?'

'That "a friend is a friend at all times, but a brother is born for adversity".'

'Am I supposed to find that consoling? If so I find it confoundedly cold comfort. We are about to stick our heads into a noose, Colonel. By demonstrating so conspicuously outside Calais last night and this morning, in order that somehow you should be made aware of our presence, we have alerted the authorities very effectively. Now we must turn back and make a landing. I presume this Baroness and her children are in Calais itself?'

'No, at a small farm outside. You will need to get ashore to the east of the port if you don't wish to pass through Calais itself.'

'I certainly have no wish to do that. On an open beach, in an onshore wind, with a single small boat. You certainly were born for adversity, Colonel.' And with that Drinkwater left his brother with the bottle, the bucket and his thoughts, making his way on deck to try to put his own in order.

CHAPTER 10 The Landing

Kestrel stood offshore until the coast of France had dropped over the horizon astern, then they altered course to the east-north-east and ran parallel with the shoreline before turning south again. Just as twilight occluded the day, they saw the faint glim of light at Calais and, allowing for the set of the tide, laid their course for a point some five miles east of the town. In the interim, Drinkwater had told Frey the bare essentials of the operation. The Russian officer, Colonel Ostroff, was responsible for aiding the escape of a French baroness and her two children. They were currently in a farmhouse outside Calais and a small party was to be landed on the beach that night. Frey's orders were to haul offshore and to wait. Ostroff had assured Drinkwater that they could reach the farmhouse, withdraw the fugitives and escape to the beach before daylight. The shore party was to consist of Drinkwater, Ostroff and Jago, for the latter's knowledge of the local dialect might prove useful.

Both Drinkwater and Frey knew that the operation hinged entirely upon their getting safely ashore and pulling the much larger party out again. It was one thing to land three men through the surf, men who might flounder ashore wet but in reasonable safety, but quite another to re-embark those three men after a night's march with the added encumbrance of a woman and two children. However, any alternative plan seemed too risky, and it was a business Drinkwater had some knowledge of. He therefore gave Frey careful instructions, and the entire crew of the cutter were made aware of the night's business.

As they ran in towards the coast again, they all ate a hearty meal of boiled ham, onions and carrots, accompanied by the last of the fresh bread. Ostroff and Drinkwater prepared a brace of pistols each which, with their swords, were neatly parcelled up with powder, ball and shot, and wrapped in oil-cloth. Drinkwater pulled grey trousers on over his boots but wore his old undress uniform coat and a plain bicorne hat. Ostroff remained in his dark civilian habit and Jago was loaned a blue coat.

There would be a quarter moon after midnight, though the night sky was cloudy and the blustery northerly breeze was chilly enough to drive people indoors after dark. The breeze would, however, also create a heavy surf on the beach, and Drinkwater tried to warn his brother of the problems they might encounter. It was an hour after dark before they finally closed with the coast, the boatswain plying the lead amidships. The proximity of the shore was announced by a steepening of the sea and the appearance of the pale strand with its fringe of rollers above which the spray smoked pallidly in the fitful starlight. Frey brought the cutter to, the boat was launched and the three men tumbled into it, Drinkwater amidships at the oars, Jago forward and Ostroff aft. Each man carried his oil-cloth bundle over his back on a line. The two oars were secured by lanyards so that they should not be lost, and in Jago's charge the boat's painter was secured to a long length of line flaked out on the cutter's deck, a line made up of several lengths which the cutter had provided and which included the unrove halliards from the main and jib topsails.

As soon as the boat had shoved off, Frey dropped the cutter's head-sails, scandalized her mainsail and let go her anchor, to hold Kestrel just long enough to let the boat, under the impetus of wind and sea, drift and be paddled towards the beach. Drinkwater gently back-watered, keeping the boat's head to sea, while Jago watched the line as the men on board Kestrel paid it out. The boat bobbed into the surf where it fell first one way and then the other, the drag on the line and a deft working of the oars by Drinkwater amidships keeping her from completely broaching to, though she rolled abominably and Edward shifted awkwardly, clearly unhappy with the violent motion and the occasional slop of water into her.

'Sit still, damn it!' Drinkwater commanded sharply. Suddenly, some twenty yards from the thundering surf, the boat jerked. The line was not long enough. Then, after a few moments, the vessel fell violently into the trough of a wave, evidence that a further length had been bent aboard Kestrel and was being paid out. Now they entered the last and most dangerous phase of their uncomfortable transit.

Drinkwater leaned back and turned his head. 'Be ready, Jago.' He had to shout to make himself heard as the waves now peaked and fell in breakers all about them. Rising high, the boat suddenly dropped and Drinkwater anticipated a bone-jarring crash as the keel struck the sand, but the next second, at a steep angle and lurching to one side as she went, she seemed to climb like a rocket as a roller ran ashore under her.

'Now!'

Jago jerked the boat's painter with all his might and they felt the bow tugged round as those aboard Kestrel ceased paying out and belayed the long line. They shot up and down, the spray filling the air about them, their hands, gripping the gunwales, soaked by water splashing into the boat.

'Over you go!' Drinkwater shouted at Edward, who sat hunched and immobile in the stern. The violent movement of the boat almost threw them out of its own accord, then he was gone, suddenly leaping and turning all at the same moment, so that a few seconds later Drinkwater saw the dark shape of him floundering ashore against the pale sand and the final wash of the breakers as they surged exhausted up the beach.

Now it was his turn. He shipped the oars and moved aft, taking his weight and bracing himself with his hands on the gunwales. He crouched on the stern thwart, facing the beach. In fact he felt his muscles cracking with the effort; he was too damned old for this sort of thing! In fact he was a bloody fool! He looked up. Edward was standing not thirty yards away, watching the boat as it sawed at the painter and rose up and crashed down in the very midst of the breakers. Drinkwater cleared his head and concentrated, seeking a moment as the boat descended when he should not have too much water beneath him. Sensing the time was right, he jumped over the stern, landed heavily up to his knees in water and ran forward as fast as he could, almost toppling as he went. He felt his brother grab him and he paused, panting.

'Damn you and your confounded Baroness,' he gasped without rancour. Edward chuckled and both men turned and watched for Jago to follow. 'You managed that very well,' Drinkwater said.

'It is just as well that I learned a few Cossack riding tricks,' Edward muttered shortly. 'Ah, here he comes.' Jago was caught by an incoming breaker which washed up around him, soaking him to the waist, but now they were ashore, their bundles dry and none of them much the worse for the experience.

'It'll be a damned sight more difficult leaving,' Drinkwater remarked, as they turned and walked directly up the wide slope of the beach. Half way up the sand they stopped and stood in a group. Drinkwater reckoned that with the night-glass, Frey would be able to see that they had made it and, sure enough, the boat was suddenly gone, plucked back to Kestrel by the long line. Before they struck inland Drinkwater took a last look seaward. He could just make out the dark shape where the cutter's scandalized mainsail stood out against the sky. The tide was making and had two hours yet to rise.

'Come on,' he said, and turned inland. They needed to find the coast road and a landmark to which they could return and which would lead them back to the right part of the vast beach which ran for miles, from Calais to Ostend and beyond, to Breskens and the great estuary of the Schelde, away to the east-north-east.

They found some pollarded willows which would serve their purpose, then Edward went ahead to discover the road. He said something in French which Jago repeated to Drinkwater. 'He says, sir, that it is as well he is an officer of light cavalry. An officer of light cavalry has to have an eye for the country.'

'I see,' said Drinkwater as, after employing this instinct for a few moments, Edward led them towards the track. Soon afterwards, with the sea lying to their right, they were tramping along the paved coast road in silence, with only the sound of the wind rustling the grass and brushwood in counterpoint to the deeper thunder of the surf on the shore.

They walked thus for about an hour. A few cows in meadows to the left of the chaussée looked up at them and lowed in mild surprise, but they might otherwise have been traversing an uninhabited country. Finally, however, they came upon a cluster of low buildings which revealed themselves as a small village strung out along the road and through which they walked as quietly as possible. They had almost succeeded when, at the far end, they disturbed a dog which began to bark insistently, straining at the extremity of its retaining chain. As they hurried on, the dog was joined by a clamorous honking of alarmed geese.

Ahead of him, Drinkwater heard Edward swear in French, then a window went up and behind him, with commendable presence of mind, Jago shouted something. It cannot have been very complimentary, for the disturbed villager yelled a reply to which Edward quickly responded. The riposte made the window slam with a bang. Drinkwater forbore to enquire the nature of the exchange and hurried on. Once clear of the village the deserted chaussée stretched ahead of them again until it disappeared in a low stand of trees.

When they were well away from the village, Edward turned and made a remark to Jago. The seaman laughed and Drinkwater recognized Jago's response of 'Merci, M'sieur'. They were the only words he had been able to interpret for himself.

'What did you say to that fellow, Jago?' Drinkwater asked.

'Only that he should strangle his fucking dog before I did, beggin' yer pardon, sir. Then he said honest folk should be in bed and the Colonel replied that honest folk should be marching to join the Emperor's eagles, not lying in bed next to their fat wives.'

'That was well done,' Drinkwater said admiringly. Such an exchange was scarcely going to arouse suspicions that foreigners were abroad.

'There is a turning somewhere ahead,' Edward said quietly in English. 'I am relying upon our finding it, for it leads directly to the farm we want, though it may still be some way off, for I never went east of it before.'

They marched on in silence and less than half an hour later discovered the turning, no more than a track joining the paved road. However, if Drinkwater had anticipated that the location of the track would bring them near their goal, he was mistaken, for they seemed to tramp inland for miles over slowly rising ground. Drinkwater began to tire. Like most seamen, while he could do without sleep for many hours and endure conditions of extreme discomfort, walking was anathema to him. The sodden state of his boots and stockings, the chafing of wet trousers and the chill of the spring night only compounded his discomfort, and already blisters were forming on his feet. Added to these multiple inconveniences, Edward set a fast pace, moving with such heartening confidence that, though Drinkwater was content to let him lead on, privately he cursed him. He began, too, to feel a mounting concern at the length of the return journey. The night was already far advanced and he fretted over the state of the tide and the conditions they would find on the beach when they returned to it.

At last, however, the shape of a building hardened ahead of them. As an enormous orange quarter moon lifted above a low bank of cloud to the east, they arrived on the outskirts of the farm within which the mysterious Baroness had taken refuge.

Edward left Drinkwater and Jago in the lee of a stone wall and proceeded alone to give notice of their arrival. As he vanished, another dog began to bark. The noise, unnaturally loud, seemed to ill the night with its alarum, but both men hunkered down and closed their eyes, speaking not a word but bearing their aches and pains in silence. It occurred to Drinkwater that he had got ashore almost dry-shod compared with Jago. The poor man must be in an extremity of discomfort.

'Are you all right, Jago?' he whispered.

'A little damp, sir, but nothing to moan about.'

'Very well,' Drinkwater replied, marvelling at the virtue of English understatement and settling himself to wait. He almost drifted off to sleep, but a few minutes later Edward returned and called them in. Drinkwater rose with excruciating pains in his legs and back. The warm sickly smell of cattle assailed them as they clambered over the wall and then passed through a gate in a second wall. Crossing a yard slimy with mud and cattle excrement, they entered the large kitchen of a low-ceilinged stone house. The room was warmed by a banked fire and dominated by a large, scrubbed table. Edward was speaking rapidly to an elderly man who wore a nightgown and a cap whose tassel bobbed as he nodded. Behind him, similarly attired, was a buxom woman pouring warm buttermilk into three stoneware mugs. To this she added a dash of spirits before shoving them across the table. Drinkwater muttered his formal 'Merci' but Jago was more loquacious and the farmer's wife nodded appreciatively while her husband continued to engage Edward in what appeared to be a violent argument.

'A little bargaining and complaining, sir,' explained Jago over the rim of his steaming mug, divining Drinkwater's incomprehension. Suddenly the door behind them opened. The sharp inrush of cold night air was accompanied by the terrifying appearance of a large bearded figure, wrapped about in a coat and wearing oversize boots. Turning at this intrusion, Drinkwater's tired brain registered extreme alarm, and he was about to reach for a pistol when Edward's response persuaded him it was unnecessary.

'Ah, Khudoznik, there you are ...' Edward caught his brother's eye. 'My man Khudoznik. He is a Cossack.'

Drinkwater recognized the type, and the faint smell that came with him, from his time at Tilsit. 'You might have mentioned him,' Drinkwater retorted, looking at the Russian who stared back. Then they were distracted by the swish of skirts. The Baroness, a pretty but pale and frightened blonde woman with her two children, all in cloaks, appeared from the door guarding the stairs and seemed to fill the kitchen with a nervous fluster. She looked anxiously at the strangers, darted an even more suspicious glance at the silent Cossack and, though Edward stepped forward to embrace her and reassure her, continued to regard them all with deep concern.

Edward briefly indicated Drinkwater, referring to him as 'Le Capitaine Anglais'. The woman half acknowledged Drinkwater's bow, then swung round and gabbled at Edward, but he was up to the occasion.

'Silence, Juliette!' He turned to the children. 'Allons, mes petits!'Allons!' He passed a handful of coin to the farmer and indicated the door. Drinkwater emerged into the stink of the yard once more. Five minutes later they were heading north along the track which was now bathed in pale moonlight.

Inevitably, the return journey took longer. Neither the Baroness nor her children were capable of moving at the speed of the four men. The girl whimpered incessantly until, without a word, Edward took her hand from her mother's and, clasping it in his own, led her on. After a few hundred yards she tripped over a flint in the track, pitched to her knees and began to wail.

Edward's palm covered her mouth as he picked her up. Whispering into her ear, he scarcely slackened his pace, giving the Baroness no time to commiserate with her unhappy daughter. The girl clung to his neck. The boy tramped doggedly on. Drinkwater had heard Edward say something encouraging to him in which the words 'soldat' and 'marche' were accompanied by 'mon brave'. After a while Jago fell in alongside the lad and, from time to time, spoke briefly in French. The boy responded, and Drinkwater judged from his tone of voice that the lad was not uninfluenced by the adventure of the night. He himself was left to offer the Baroness his arm. She accepted at first, but they had dropped somewhat behind when the girl fell and, having relinquished it in order to catch up, she did not seek his support again, politely declining further assistance. Despite this she made a greater effort to keep up, though Drinkwater thought she found the plodding presence of the Cossack at the rear of the little column intimidating.

Drinkwater now began to consider how on earth they were going to get the frightened trio and the Russian into the boat and soon decided that the method he had chosen would prove inadequate. He had mentioned this possibility to Frey who, with the change of tide, would have his own work cut out in remaining as near as possible to the landing place without dragging his anchor. The tide would be on the ebb now and, if they were much delayed, Frey might have to haul Kestrel off into deeper water. Drinkwater tried to console himself with the thought that they were making quite good progress, all things considered, though he wondered how long Edward could carry the girl. The wind had dropped a little too, he thought, and that was all to the good.

When they gained the chaussée, they turned right and, reaching the low stand of trees, they paused for a short break. Something seemed to be bothering Edward, for while the others caught their breath under the trees, he went out into the middle of the road, scuffing the dust with his right boot. Drinkwater pushed himself off from the tree trunk against which he had been leaning and approached his brother.

'Is something amiss?' he asked in a low voice.

'Yes,' said Edward, pointing at the ground. 'Since we were here last, some horses have passed through.'

'Cavalry horses?'

'Yes. Quite a lot of them too, I would say.'

'Going which way?'

'East. The wrong way for us.'

'God's bones!' Drinkwater considered the matter a moment. 'We shall be all right if we remain behind them, though, surely?'

'Let us hope so,' Edward responded grimly, 'but if I were you, I'd get your arms ready before we move off.'

'I'll tell Jago, but we don't want to alarm our friends.'

'They're alarmed already.'

'Your Cossack might prove useful. Is he armed?'

'He has a pistol.'

'How long has he been in your service?'

'Some seven years now. He attached himself to me after the battle of Eylau. Khudoznik is a nick-name meaning "artist". 'Tis a tribute to his abilities at foraging.'

'He will be quite unfamiliar with the sea, I imagine.'

'That, brother, is why I did not tell you of him before.'

CHAPTER 11 The Fugitives

Before they set off again, Edward warned them to walk at the edge of the chaussée in single file and to drop into the grass beside the road at his signal. If they hesitated, he emphasized, they would be lost. Drinkwater was aware that he impressed this point upon the Baroness and that she nodded in acknowledgement, her face clear in the moonlight.

Drinkwater looked up at the sky. The cloud had almost gone, leaving only low banks gathered on the horizon. 'Of all the damnedest luck,' he muttered to himself. Then they set off again.

It seemed to the anxious and weary Drinkwater that they marched in a dream. The ribbon of road, set for the most part along a raised eminence and flooded by moonlight, appeared to make them hugely conspicuous and quite unavoidable. Their gait was tired and they stumbled frequently, the Baroness immediately in front of Drinkwater falling full length at one point. He helped her up, but she shook him off and, as their eyes met, he could see by the line of her mouth that she was biting back tears of hurt, rage and humiliation.

They walked like automata, their brains numbed by fear and exhaustion. Robbed of all professional instinct ashore, Drinkwater had abdicated responsibility to Edward whose military experience was, he realized with something of a shock, clearly extensive. Watching their rear, his brother would also, from time to time, run on ahead on some private reconnaissance. Once he stopped them and they crouched in the grass, unaware of what had troubled their leader, but after a few terrifying minutes which woke them all from their personal catalepsies with thundering hearts, Edward waved them on again and they resumed the bone-wearying plod-plod of the march. In a curious sense the return appeared to be both longer and shorter than the outward journey. Though they seemed to have been traversing the high-road for half a lifetime, quite suddenly they were approaching the huddle of buildings that formed the farm on the outskirts of the village and where the exchange of repartee had amused them earlier. Matters seemed less risible now.

Looking anxiously ahead, with apprehensions about the geese and dog uppermost in their minds, they had almost forgotten their rear when the Cossack suddenly ran forward to join Edward. The two men abrupdy crouched down. At the peremptory wave of Edward's arm, the rest of the party dropped into the grass again, sliding down the shallow embankment into the damp shadows. Raising his head, Drinkwater caught a glimpse of his brother staring back the way they had come. Then he heard a whisper in French, loosely translated by Jago. 'Keep absolutely still, sir. There's someone coming up astern.'

As he lay down and closed his eyes, Drinkwater felt the beat of the horse's hooves through the ground. He remained motionless as the noise peaked. The regular snort of the horse, the jingle of harness and the clatter of accoutrements seemed almost on top of them. Then the odorous wind of the passing of man and beast swept over them and was gone. Drinkwater looked up. The single horseman had not noticed them.

Edward wormed his way back down the line to where Drinkwater lay. 'That was a hussar orderly,' he whispered. 'My guess is that he had orders for the body of horse which passed along this road earlier. They may be in the village ahead or they may have passed on, but we cannot take any chances. I am going forward to have a look. You remain here with Khudoznik.'

'Very well, but remember we do not have much time. The tide ...' But Edward was gone and Drinkwater felt a sudden deep misgiving. He turned and wriggled forward to warn the Baroness through Jago. 'Explain to her that our ship is not far away.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Jago did as he was bid, then came back to Drinkwater.

'Beg pardon, sir.' 'What is it?' 'The lady says, "nor is the dawn", sir.' 'No.'

They must all have slept or dozed. Drinkwater was vaguely aware of the girl and the Baroness moving away at one point. Realizing the personal nature of their intended isolation, he made no move to remonstrate. He was too stiff and chilled. The next thing he knew, it was growing light. Seized by a sudden alarm, he realized they could wait no longer. It was clear that the village was full of French cavalry and that, presumably, Edward had remained concealed somewhere to keep them under observation and watch for when they moved on. But suppose something had happened to Edward? Suppose he had been taken prisoner?

Drinkwater was now fully awake, his mind racing, his concern for Frey's predicament paramount. Edward was a plausible bugger, he spoke excellent French and would probably come to little harm. As for himself, the Baroness and her children, their soiled presence on a coastal road in northern France would be far less easily accounted for. As for the Cossack, what reasonable explanation would any French officer accept on his score? After all, Drinkwater himself wore a sword, had a pair of pistols stuck uncomfortably in his belt and wore the uniform coat of a British post-captain. Cautiously he wriggled up the slope. The road remained empty as far as he could see, but the roofs of the village seemed much nearer now and there were wisps of smoke rising above them. People were on the move, and whether they were villagers stoking their stoves or hussars lighting bivouac fires was immaterial. They effectively blocked Drinkwater's escape route.

Where the hell was Edward? Drinkwater cast aside the peevish reliance on his brother. Whatever had happened to him, it was clear , that Drinkwater himself must now take matters into his own hands. There was only one thing to do.

'Jago!' he hissed. There was a movement in the grass and the seaman's bleary-eyed face appeared, looked round and realized it was daylight. 'We are going to have to go down to the beach and walk along it, below the line of this road. There's no other way of getting round the village. The Colonel seems to have disappeared. Tell the Baroness to get ready to move. And be quick about it.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater rose to his feet and jerked his head at the Cossack. The man understood, looked round and peered in the direction of the village. Then he shook his head. Drinkwater shrugged with massive exaggeration, though it understated his irritation at finding himself saddled with the man. The Russian indicated the village and Drinkwater turned away. If the damned fool went into the village it might distract the French cavalry, but it might also precipitate a search for more odd characters wandering about the roads.

Drinkwater's head was just below the level of the chaussée. He raised it cautiously and stared north. The rough scrub gave way to sand dunes about half a mile away. They would have to move quickly, before the whole damned world and his wife were awake! 'Allons!' he said, breaking cover.

Despite the danger of leaving their place of concealment, he felt better once they began to move. Their cramped and chilled bodies protested at the demands of walking, but by degrees the activity proved beneficial. Low willows broke the landscape and periodic halts in their shadows revealed that they were free from pursuit. The first stop also revealed the lonely figure of Khudoznik following them. Once they had passed the dunes, Drinkwater considered they would be relatively safe and he tried to pick a route which would place an intervening dune between themselves and the village, regretting, in a brief and bitter moment of irony, that he did not have a light cavalry officer's eye for the country. He would have removed much anxiety from his mind had he done so, for in fact the village was already hidden behind a shallow rise, protected from the icy blasts off the North Sea. Obscured by this low undulation, they reached the dunes without being detected.

Their going slowed as they dragged through the fine sand and Drinkwater ordered a halt, turning back for fifty yards to see if he could observe anything of Edward. The line of the road formed the horizon and was clear against the lightening sky, hard-edged and quite empty. It promised to be a fine spring day and the air was already full of the multiple scents of the earth. Of Edward there was no sign but when he reached the others it was clear the Baroness was in a frenzy of anxiety.

'The lady wants to know where Colonel Ostroff is, sir. She says she won't move without him.'

'Tell the lady Colonel Ostroff is reconnoitring the enemy and that she is to come on with us.'

He waited while this exchange took place. It was clear from the Baroness's expression and attitude that she did not take orders from English sea-officers. Jago's interpretation confirmed this. 'She says, sir, that she wants to go back.'

'Very well.' Drinkwater passed the woman and scooped up the girl. 'Tell her,' he said over his shoulder as he strode away, 'she may do as she damned well pleases.' The girl writhed in his arms and a blow from her fist struck him across the nose just as her foot drove into his groin so sharply that he swore at her with ungallant ferocity. She froze in his arms, staring at him with such horror that he felt sick with hunger, pain and fear. He had no business to be here; he was too old for such quixotic adventures; such things were part of his youth. He stumbled on, fighting the nausea that her assault had caused. A few minutes later he had to pause again and looked back. Jago was following him with the Cossack. A hundred yards behind, the Baroness and her son had been arguing, but now they began to follow. Turning again, he stumbled on, the sand dragging at his feet. Then, looking up, he caught sight of the hard grey line of the sea-horizon.

'Now, Frey,' Drinkwater muttered as he paused and waited for the party to close ranks, 'it all depends upon you.'

As the expanse of sea opened before them, Drinkwater saw the cutter. Behind him he heard Jago telling the Baroness, for whom the sight of the limitless ocean was a profound shock, that their ship was in sight. So insubstantial a vessel as the little Kestrel scarcely mollified the poor woman, who had difficulty seeing it in the twilight. Reduced by anxiety and exertion, she fainted. As for the Russian, he stood staring uncomprehendingly at the seascape before him.

'Attendez-vous voire mère!' Drinkwater snapped at the young boy as he set the wailing and struggling girl down and turned to Jago. 'Get some brushwood, anything to make a fire to attract Lieutenant Frey's attention!'

The cutter was some four or five miles to the north-east of them, presumably lying offshore not far from the point at which they had been landed. It was clear Frey had had to get under weigh and had been unable to remain at anchor all night so close inshore, but Drinkwater had anticipated that. Although Kestrel was apparently some way off, the tide, ebbing along the coast to the westward, would help Frey reach them, and the distance along the coast which he would have to cover was not as far as it looked. If only they could make themselves seen, they had a reasonable chance yet. Fire without smoke was what they required, for it was a certainty that Frey would be on the look-out for them.

Ignoring the groans from the unfortunate Baroness, Drinkwater bent to the task of building a fire as Jago brought in driftwood and detritus from the last spring high-tide line. The Cossack, seeing what they were doing, turned from the sea and joined Jago in the hunt for fuel. As Drinkwater worked at building the pile of combustible material, splitting kindling and laying a trail of gunpowder from his pistols into the heart of it, he was aware of the boy standing beside him.

'M'sieur,' the lad demanded. 'M'sieur...'

Drinkwater looked up and then, cutting short the boy's protests about the honour of his mother, explained in his poor French, 'M'sieur, regardez le bateau.' He pointed at the distant cutter, then at the heap of wood before him. 'Je désire faire un feu, eh? Comprenez?' He turned again to the cutter and made the gesture of a telescope to his eye. 'Le bateau regarde la côte. Eh bum! Embarquez!' Drinkwater made a gesture that embraced them all.

The boy looked at him coldly.

Drinkwater inclined his head with a smile and reached for his pistol just as Jago arrived with more fuel. 'Explain to the boy', he said, as he went on building the fire, 'that I heartily esteem his mother, she is a brave and courageous woman and his sensibilities do him credit, but we have no time to argue and scant time for courtesies. Tell him also, that many, many years ago, I rescued his father from a French beach near Cherbourg and that he may trust me to do my utmost for him and his family. And, when you have done all that, tell him to convey this to his mother and sister and ask them to do exactly as I say in the next hour. Impress upon him that I require their absolute trust and obedience. And tell him that if he is not satisfied, I shall be happy to exchange pistol shots with him when we reach England.'

Drinkwater looked up at the boy and smiled as Jago rattled off his translation. The expression on the boy's face metamorphosed several times and then he drew himself up and gave a short bow before withdrawing towards his mother and sobbing sister.

'What is your name, my boy?' Drinkwater called in English, and Jago obligingly translated.

'Charles.'

'Well, Charles, bonne chance!' Bending to the powder trail, Drinkwater pronated his wrist so that the pan and frizzen of the pistol lay over the tiny black heap, and pulled the trigger. There was a crack and flash, then a flaring as the powder caught and carried the sputtering fire into the heart of the pyramid of wood. A moment later a wild crackling was accompanied by small but growing flames licking up through the pile,

'Don't let us down, Frey, don't let us down,' Drinkwater intoned, raising his eyes to the distant Kestrel.

The fire flared up wonderfully, throwing out a welcome heat that drew the Baroness and her daughter towards it. Jago kept them away from the seaward side as Drinkwater stared at the cutter for the first sign that they had seen the fire and knew it for the beacon it was. He walked down the beach, detaching himself from it in the hope that they might see his figure.

For a long time, it seemed, nothing happened. Kestrel lay with her bowsprit to the north-north-east, stemming the tide, hove to on the starboard tack and standing offshore slightly, trying to maintain station. It was the worst aspect from which to attract attention. The fire began to die down, though Jago revived it with more driftwood. It died down a second time and Drinkwater was about to give up when he saw Kestrel swing round and curtsey to the incoming sea as she tacked and paid right off the wind which had now veered more to the eastwards. He hardly dared hope for what he so earnestly desired, but a few moments later she was headed south-westwards and Drinkwater saw a red spot mount upwards to the peak of the gaff.

'British colours!' he muttered to himself, and then he turned and walked back up the beach to the huddle of fugitives, unable to conceal his satisfaction.

'They have seen us,' he announced. And as they watched, sunlight flooded the scene, toning the grey sea to a kindlier colour and chasing away the fears of the night.

CHAPTER 12 Escape

Drinkwater hurriedly kicked the fire out. 'Allons!' he said and began to lead off down the beach. The sight of Kestrel running along the coast towards them relieved him sufficiently to spare a thought for Edward. If his brother had encountered trouble, there was little he could do to help. If not, then Edward must by now, with the coming of the sunrise, have realized that the party could not lie alongside the high road and that Drinkwater would quite naturally gravitate towards the sea. In either case, Edward's salvation lay in his own hands. At the worst they could cruise offshore until, somehow, he re-established contact.

The five of them had reached the damp sand which marked the most recent high water and stood waiting patiently while Kestrel worked down towards them, looking increasingly substantial as she approached beyond the line of breakers. Drinkwater took Jago to one side as they assessed the size of the incoming waves.

'This isn't going to be easy, Jago.'

'No, sir.'

'They're frightened and they're hungry. Trying to get them to clamber into the boat is going to prove impossible, so I want you to take the girl and I'll take the Baroness. We will lift them over the gunwale and I want you to go off first. I'll follow with the boy. Don't come back for me. Stay aboard...'

'But sir...'

'Jago, you're a good fellow and you've done more than necessary tonight, but don't disobey orders.'

'Aye, aye, sir. 'Jago paused, then asked, 'What about that bearded fellow, sir? Who is he?'

'He's Colonel Ostroffs Cossack servant and God knows how we are going to get him into the boat. Perhaps we shall just put a line round him and drag him out to the yacht.' Drinkwater turned and looked along the beach. The vast expanse of strand stretched for miles and remained deserted. 'So far, so good,' he said, 'but I don't know how long our luck will last.'

'No, sir.'

'Now go and pick up the girl, for the boat's coming.'

Frey had not wasted time. He had towed the boat astern and now sent it in on its line, a single man at the oars as instructed, to work it inshore across the tide. Drinkwater ran back up the beach and saw a figure sitting at Kestrel's cross-trees. Watching the bobbing and rolling approach of the boat he waited until she was in the breakers and then flung up his hands and waved his arms frantically above his head. The figure in the cutter's rigging waved back and, somewhere out of sight of Drinkwater, beyond the curling wave-crests, they ceased paying out the fine and the boat jerked responsively. The tide had taken the thing down the coast a little but the wind was just sufficiently onshore to drive it into the shallows with a little assistance from the oarsman. Hurrying back to the waiting fugitives, Drinkwater nodded to Jago. The seaman turned to the boy and commanded him to stay put, then he scooped up the girl and began to wade into the sea.

'Madame, s'il votes plâit ...' and without further ceremony, Drinkwater lifted the Baroness and followed Jago, leaving the Cossack to shift for himself. At once a wave almost knocked him over. The woman screamed as she took the brunt of it, stiffening in his arms. The sudden shock of the cold water and the spasm of the Baroness caused him to stumble and he fought to keep his balance as he lugged the greater weight of her sodden clothing. The mangled muscles of his wounded shoulder cracked painfully, but he managed to keep his footing. Jago, ahead of him, was now up to his armpits in the water but was able to lift the terrified girl above his head and deliver her roughly into the keeping of the oarsman.

Drinkwater struggled forward, the water alternately washing him back and forth, tugging at his legs one second, then climbing his body to thrust at his chest. It swirled about his burden so that he half-floated, half-floundered, while the frightened woman clutched him and averted her face. Jago was splashing back towards him, giving him an arm as he shuffled, bracing himself as every successive wave washed up to him. Then he was in the breakers, close to the boat, and Jago and he had the woman between them. The boat seemed to come close, then a wave rolled in and the boat soared into the sky, Drinkwater felt the insupportable weight of the wave knock him over. He fell backwards, oddly cushioned by the water, but with the gasping Baroness fighting free and both of them lying in the receding wave, undignified in their extreme discomfiture as they fought for their footing.

Jago had also been knocked down, but the two men, soaked and now shivering, grabbed the Baroness and helped her to her feet. In the wake of the steep breaker, the sea fell away and in the brief lull Drinkwater was yelling: 'Now, Jago! Now!'

The two men struggled together, clasped their arms beneath the protesting woman's rump and hove her up. The boat loomed again, then fell and was suddenly, obligingly close to them, offering them an instant of opportunity. They pitched the woman in with a huge, unceremonious heave as the oarsman trimmed the craft. The Baroness cried out with the impact and the hurt, while a moment later Drinkwater was flat on his back, fighting for breath as he dashed the water from his eyes. Ten yards away the transom of the boat flew up into the air with Jago clinging to it, kicking with his feet.

The oarsman was pointing and shouting, but Drinkwater, struggling to his feet, waved for them to get out, shrieking the order and then turning to make his sodden way back to the shore and the others. Wiping his eyes, he hoped that the ordeal of the Baroness had not completely unnerved her son.

As he waded through the shallows, he saw the young boy watching the departing boat as the line from Kestrel plucked it out into deeper water. Alongside him, his face obscured by his beard, Khudoznik stared expressionlessly. Drinkwater tried to smile reassuringly, but the smile froze on his lips, for beyond the boy, a line of horsemen spread out across the sand.

They were some way off and Drinkwater spun round to try and gauge how long it would be before the boat came in again. It would take some time to get the Baroness and her daughter aboard Kestrel and perhaps they had not yet seen the approaching cavalry in their preoccupation. Kestrel was, after all, only a yacht and had but a handful of men as her crew who would be occupied in dispositions they had made on the assumption that this evacuation would take place in the dark, uninterrupted by the intervention of any enemy.

He ran a little way up the beach in an attempt to gain some elevation to see what was happening, but Kestrel's waterline remained out of sight behind the cresting breakers, though a dark cluster of men amidships could be seen actively engrossed in some task. He looked over his shoulder. The cavalry were quite distinct now, advancing at a gallop, and he felt the knot of panic wring his guts. His pistols were soaked and empty, his sword his only defence. He hurried back to the boy who, in turning to follow him, had seen the cavalry. So had the Russian.

'M'sieur, regardez!'

Drinkwater nodded at the boy. 'Where in the name of Hades is that boat?' he muttered, hurrying back. Suddenly he saw the transom on top of a wave and Jago's face above it waving the oars as he back-watered furiously.

'Come on, son!' Drinkwater cried, holding out his fist and splashing forward, waving at Khudoznik to follow. He felt the boy's hand take his and the two of them splashed forward, first up to their knees in the water and then, suddenly, to their waists, then their breasts.

Faint cries came from behind. Drinkwater thanked heaven for fine soft sand — horses could get through the stuff no quicker than humans — but his moment of congratulation was short-lived. Out of the corner of his eye Drinkwater could see that off to the right, half a dozen horsemen had ridden directly down to the firm wet sand and were thundering towards them at full gallop. Jago drifted closer and Drinkwater thrust the boy forward.

'Tell him to hold on, Jago! Don't try and get us aboard!'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

The boy understood. The two of them splashed and kicked and grasped the gunwale of the boat and then they succumbed to the feeling of being drawn through the water as the line was hauled in. After what seemed an eternity Drinkwater felt them bump alongside Kestrel. He called for a rope with a bowline to be dropped down and, passing his arm round the boy's waist, got him to put his head and shoulders through the bight as he spat water and kicked with his feet.

'Courage, mon brave!' he shouted in his ear. The boy was shivering uncontrollably but above him he could see the white face of his mother. Blood ran down her cheek from a gash on her forehead but she had extended her hand in a gesture of supplication and she wore an expression of such eloquent encouragement and bravery that Drinkwater fought back his emotions. 'Haul away!' he bellowed harshly as he waited his own turn, watching the boy's spindle shanks lifted out of the sea above his own bobbing head.

'Welcome back, sir,' Frey called down to him. 'Where's the Colonel?'

'We lost contact,' Drinkwater said, but then Frey looked away as the first ball flew overhead.

'Here, sir!' The bowline dropped alongside Drinkwater. He let go of the boat and struggled into the loop. The next second the line was cutting excruciatingly into his back and under his armpits as he was drawn high out of the sea. For a moment he stared at the cutter's wildly pitching deck and the great quadrilateral of her slatting mainsail, then as he descended he span slowly round. The beach looked suddenly very close and there in the surf was the Cossack Khudoznik running alongside a single horseman and pursued by a semi-circle of hussars.

One hussar had lost his shako and another was already dead on the sand. A second fell as Khudoznik ran in among the horse's legs, grabbed a boot and swiftly detached it from the stirrup, pitching the trooper off his horse which he then mounted with consummate agility. Alongside him the single horseman tossed aside his pistols and drew a sword. It was Edward.

A moment later Drinkwater was lowered to the deck.

'That's the Colonel, sir!' shouted Frey, pointing.

'I know!' Drinkwater turned to find Jago alongside. 'Get the Baroness and her brats below, Jago. Mr Frey, clear the left flank with one of the swivels. But Frey was already pointing the after port swivel, and its sharp bark sprayed the beach with small shot.

Drinkwater threw his legs over the cutter's rail and dropped back into the boat. The swivel had struck one of the hussars from the saddle and hit a horse. Miraculously it had left both Edward and Khudoznik unscathed, but the following shot from the forward swivel was less partial. Edward's horse foundered beneath him and he threw himself clear as it staggered and sank to its knees with a piercing whinny. Khudoznik had whipped the pistols from the saddle holsters and was laying about him when a second shot from the after gun drove the hussars back. By now a frantic Drinkwater, his teeth chattering, was paddling backstroke towards the beach, shouting at Edward.

'Run into the sea, Ned! For God's sake don't stay there!'

A hussar bolder than the others, an officer by the look of his fur shabraque, spurred forward, intent on sabring the fugitive, but Edward still had his sword and cut wildly with it so that the officer's horse reared. At the same moment Khudoznik drove his own mount directly at the attacker. Just as Edward avoided the low thrust made by the hussar officer under his mount's neck, horse and rider crashed to the sand under the impact of the Cossack's terrified horse. With its bit sawing into its mouth, it reared above the dismounted hussar and its wildly pawing hooves struck the unfortunate man.

Edward staggered back and saw for the first time that it was Khudoznik looming above him. He shouted at him in Russian, but the next second the Cossack lurched sideways as a carbine ball struck him in the side of the skull. Khudoznik slipped from the saddle and landed heavily on the wet sand. Edward took a single glance at him, then turned and ran into the sea.

No more than ten yards separated them now, then Drinkwater felt the boat strike the bottom with a jarring thud that made his own teeth snap together. Edward seemed to tower over him before the next wave passed under the boat and then he had his arms over the transom and Drinkwater was jerking the painter and saw it rise dripping from the water as the hands aboard Kestrel lay back on it. As they began to draw out through the surf followed by a few balls from the hussars' carbines, Drinkwater met his brother's eyes as Edward gasped for breath.

'Where the hell did you get to?' Drinkwater asked.

'The devil...' Edward retorted, but his explanation was cut short. Drinkwater felt the ball strike the boat through the body of his brother. Over Edward's shoulder, he saw a hussar lower his carbine and reload.

Now that the boat was clear of their field of fire, the swivels aboard Kestrel opened up again behind them, the shot buzzing past overhead as Drinkwater lunged aft to grab Edward.

'Hold on, Ned! Hold on!' A thick red stream ran astern of the boat.

'Too late, Nat. My back's shot through.' He looked up and Drinkwater saw the last flicker of the departing soul. 'No trouble ... to you now ...' he gasped as he relinquished his grasp upon the boat and upon life itself. Drinkwater tenaciously clung on to his brother as he was once more pulled alongside Kestrel. Ned was dead before they reached the cutter's side, but they dragged his body aboard and laid him in the scuppers.

'Are you all right, sir?' Frey asked as Drinkwater almost fell over Kestrel's low gunwale on to the deck, while a last carbine ball whined overhead.

'Yes, yes.' He looked down at Edward. The eyes were already glazed, opaque. 'Poor fellow', he sighed, as he bent down and closed the lids. Then he stood and looked at Frey. 'Do you get under weigh now, Mr Frey.'

'Those devils have given up now,' Frey said matter-of-factly, jerking his head at the shore. Drinkwater turned to see the hussars tugging their mounts' heads round and turning away. Several of the horses had bodies slung over their saddles. One, that of the Cossack nicknamed Khudoznik, lay exposed by the retreating tide.

'You need to dry yourself, sir,' Frey advised, 'you look blue with cold.'

'What's that? Oh... oh, yes, I suppose I am a trifle...' Drinkwater realized he was chilled to the marrow and quite done in. He stared again at Edward's body, reluctant to leave it. 'We'll take him home and bury him,' he said to Frey, as he moved on shaky legs towards the companionway.

'It's a long way from Russia,' Frey remarked. 'Yes. But perhaps that does not matter too much.'

CHAPTER 13 The Chase

'Out of the frying pan, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater said, lowering the glass. Astern of them, the sharply angled sail of a lugger broke the line of the horizon with a jagged irregularity as the French chasse marée came up, carrying the wind with her. Seven miles further north Kestrel experienced nothing more than a light breeze. 'Almost the only circumstances', Drinkwater muttered angrily, 'which could place us at a real disadvantage.'

Frey turned from his place by the tiller as Drinkwater looked aloft, but they had every stitch of canvas set and no amount of tweaking at the sheets would improve their speed. Drinkwater cast about him. 'They must have slipped past Adder. At any other time we might have expected a British cruiser in the offing but all we have in sight at the moment are a couple of fishermen...'

He raised his glass again. It was damnably uncanny. The lugger was carrying the wind with her, sweeping up from the south, and would be quite close before they felt the benefit of it themselves. He looked at Frey. A brief glance was enough to tell him that he was seething at their ill-fortune. He would be dog-tired now after a sleepless night, as were the rest of them, Drinkwater himself included. Poor Frey, Kestrel was a pathetic enough command; to lose her to the enemy like this would be a worse blow to his pride than the loss of the yacht to Drinkwater!

Perhaps there was something they might do, though. 'I'm going below for a few moments, Mr Frey.' 'Aye, aye, sir.'

In the cabin the Baroness and her daughter were fast asleep, wrapped in blankets while their outer garments dried in the rigging above. The boy Charles lay on the settee awake, his face pale with seasickness, his eyes huge and tired. Drinkwater smiled, trying to convey reassurance to the young lad. He smiled wanly back at him. 'That's the spirit,' Drinkwater said, helping himself to some cheese, biscuits and wine as he drew out a chart and studied it. 'Help yourself,' he offered, indicating the wine and biscuits and hoping the lad would remain below and not get wind of their pursuer.

After about ten minutes of plying dividers and rules, Drinkwater stuffed the chart away, pulled his hat down over his head and went up on deck. Striding aft he relieved Frey.

'Go and try to get some sleep, there's a good fellow. You need it and we may have work to do in an hour or two.'

'I don't give much for our chances, sir. At the very least he'll have twice our numbers, and we made enough of a display of ourselves outside Calais to call down the vengeance of heaven. I don't suppose the deaths of half a dozen cavalrymen endeared us to them either.'

'Very well put, Mr Frey. Now do as I ask while I try and devise a stratagem.'

'Do you think...?'

'Don't ask me.'

Reluctantly Frey handed over the tiller and the course. Drinkwater leaned his weight against the heavy wooden bar. 'I'm going to alter a little to the westwards. Now do you go below for an hour. I shall call you well before things get too lively. Stand half the men down too.'

Frey went forward and some of the men on deck drifted below. Kestrel was just feeling the wind picking up and began to slip through the water with increasing speed, as though she felt a tremor of fear at the approach of the large, three-masted lugger coming up astern.

Drinkwater steadied the cutter on her new course and settled himself to concentrate upon his task. The satisfactions in steering were profound. The sense of being in control of something almost living struck him and he recalled that he had forgotten so much of what had once been familiar as he had risen to the lonely peak of command. He made a resolution not to look astern for half an hour. It was difficult at first, but the glances of the others on deck, increasing in frequency and length, told him the lugger was gaining on them so that, when the thirty minutes had passed, he turned, expecting to see the lugger's bowsprit almost over their stern. Though she was still some way off, two miles distant perhaps, she was no longer alone.

Now he could see a second lugger behind her, five miles away or maybe more, but close enough to spell disaster if his half-germinated plan miscarried. He resolved to wait twenty minutes before he looked again and set himself to reworking the hurried and imperfect calculations he had made below.

He now discovered a greater anxiety, that of wishing to see the chart, to re-measure the distances and make the tidal estimates again. It was easy enough to make a silly error, to rely upon a misunderstanding only to find that the stratagem, which was shaky enough as it was, would misfire and carry them to disaster. And then, with a forceful irony, a thought struck him. Kestrel was his own property and he might do with her as he pleased. He would not have to answer at his peril and so was free of one constraint at least, thank heavens!

He began to stare ahead and study the surface of the sea, to try and discern the almost invisible signs of the shoals, where the tide ran in a different direction and at a slower speed. The mewing gulls had a good view of these natural seamarks and he looked up to see the herring gulls gliding alongside, their cruel yellow beaks and beady eyes evidence of their predatory instincts. But they were lazy hunters; he was looking for more active birds fishing on the edge of the bank ahead.

He saw the first tern almost immediately, flying along with a sprat or some small fry silver in its red beak, and then another diving to starboard of them, under the foot of the mainsail. He craned his neck and stared intently over the port bow. As he did so a man forward rose and peered ahead, aware of Drinkwater's concern. A moment later more terns could be seen and then his experienced eye made out the troubled water along the submarine ledge.

'Sommat ahead, sir, looks like a bank...'

'It's the Longsand! Take a cast of the lead.'

Alongside the rushing hull the sea ran dark and grey, dulled by the cloud sweeping up and over the blue of the sky. The sounding lead yielded seven fathoms and then suddenly it was only three and they passed through a strip of white foam, dead in the water like the cast from a mill race seen some few hundred yards downstream. As suddenly as it had appeared, the white filigree was gone and the water was brown and smooth, as though whale oil had been cast upon it. Drinkwater knew they were running over the Longsand Head. He counted the seconds as Kestrel raced on, her pace seemingly swifter through the dead water on top of the bank.

'By the mark, two!'

Drinkwater felt the keen thrill of exhilaration, his heart fluttering, the adrenalin pouring into his bloodstream. At any moment their keel might strike the sand, and at this speed the impact must toss the mast overboard, but he held on, pitching the risk against the result, until the man in the chains called out 'Three... By the deep four... By the mark five!' and they were over the bank and ahead of them they could just see the low stump of the brick tower daymark on the Naze of Essex. Drinkwater, his knees knocking uncomfortably, altered course a touch and looked astern. His plan had almost worked, but the big lugger had seen the trap just in time and bore away, to run north, round the extremity of the bank, losing ground to the escaping cutter. It was not so very remarkable, for the commander of so large a lugger would know these waters far better than Drinkwater, who was relying upon knowledge learned thirty years earlier in the buoy-yachts of the Trinity House. Nevertheless, they had increased their lead and every mile brought them nearer the English coast and the presence of a British man-o'-war out of Harwich to the north-west of them.

The wind had steadied now, a topsail breeze which, in the lee of the Longsand, drove Kestrel homewards with inspiriting speed. Drinkwater forgot his exhaustion in the joy of handling the little cutter and for a few moments scarcely thought about her pursuers until the anxious looks of the men on deck again drew his attention to them. He turned and looked over his shoulder.

The two enemy luggers were closer together now and were setting more sail, clear evidence that they were determined to overhaul Kestrel before she made it into Harwich harbour.

'They must know of the quality of our passengers,' he muttered grimly, for this was surely no mere retribution for the death of a handful of hussars or British insolence in the entrance to Calais. And then he recalled the man who had watched them from the extremity of the Calais jetty, and wondered who or what he was and whether he had anything to do with this determined pursuit.

Drinkwater had hoped that he might lure the larger of the two luggers over the Longsand so that she ran aground, and in doing so he had let Kestrel sag off to the west a little. With the flood tide now running into the Thames estuary from the north, he had to regain that deliberately sacrificed northing, sailing across the tide while the French luggers already had that advantage from their forced diversion round the seawards extremity of the shoal. There was, however, a further obstacle behind which he would feel safe. If he could hire the luggers on to the Stone Banks, to the east of the Naze, he could shoot north into Harwich through the Medusa Channel.

The idea filled him with fresh hope and he laid a course for the Sunk alarm vessel, lying to her great chain mooring and flying the red ensign of the Trinity House. She lay ahead, with her bow canted slightly across the tide under the influence of the strong southerly breeze. She was a fortuitous seamark and one which the Frenchmen might even attack if they were frustrated in their pursuit of Kestrel.

For another twenty minutes they ran on, the luggers still gaining slowly, though now heeled under a vast press of canvas. As the range closed, Drinkwater called the crew to their stations for action and Frey, blear-eyed and looking far worse than if he had never slept, staggered out on deck, followed by the boy Charles.

'Send the lad below,' Drinkwater began, but it was too late. The boy had seen the luggers and glimpsed the large tricolours, and his face betrayed his fear.

'It's to be a damned close-run thing, Frey. We might make it into the Medusa Channel, we might not, but I think you had better...'

'You keep the helm, sir, now you have it. I'll send two men aft to trim sheets, then I'll fight the ship,' and without another word Frey swung away to see to the loading of the swivels and the mustering of the men with their small arms.

Drinkwater leaned on the tiller and, as Jago and a man named Cornford came aft, he ordered a little weight taken in on the main-sheet. Kestrel dashed through the water and a gleam of sun came through the clouds to turn to silver the spray driving away from the lee bow, making a brief rainbow with its appearance. Looking astern, terns dipped unconcernedly in their wake, while a fulmar quartered the sea in a single swoop. The fulmar caught Drinkwater's eye, swept down and upwards, away across the dark, predatory shape of the luggers' sails, absorbed only in its ceaseless quest for food and quite unaware of the grim game of life and death being played by the men in the three vessels below.

The nearer and larger of the two luggers was driving a bow wave before her that rose almost under her gammon iron. Her sails were stiff as boards and, even at the distance of a mile, Drinkwater could see the three great yards which spread her sails bending under the strain. If only, he thought, if only one would carry away.

But they stood, as did the lighter topsail yards above them, and the Frenchman loomed ever larger as the distance between them shrank and their courses converged. Drinkwater stared forward again and saw the tall lantern mast of the Sunk alarm vessel also growing in size as they rapidly closed the distance. He was aiming Kestrel's bowsprit for the bow of the anchored vessel, hoping to draw his pursuer in close enough for him to lose his nerve and bear away again as the tide swept them down on to the alarm vessel. It was an old trick, learned, like so much else he had used recently, in the buoy-yachts a lifetime ago, to determine the position of the alarm vessel's anchor by sailing up-tide of her, when any prudent mariner would pass down-tide, under her stern.

Forward, Frey turned and stared aft, suddenly alert to the danger into which they stood. Seeing Drinkwater confidently aware of how close they were going to pass the alarm vessel, he relaxed and made some remark to the hands who looked aft and laughed. But Drinkwater was too tense even to notice. Every muscle he could command was strained with the business of holding Kestrel on her course without deviation, gauging the exact strength of the lateral shift of the racing hull under the influence of the tide, yet making allowances for the quartering sea which created a gentle see-sawing yaw. He could see the hull of the Sunk now and the men lining her rail as the three vessels closed, and at that moment, the first gun was fired. The shot passed across Kestrels deck, right under the boom and out over the port side, to be lost somewhere in the choppy seas on their port beam.

'God's bones!' Drinkwater blasphemed, as the wind of the shot's passing distracted him. The next second he was aware of a ragged cheer from the crew of the alarm vessel and the rash of a red hull and slimy green weed along a waterline that passed in a blur as the cutter dashed across the tide and was suddenly under the Sunk's high bow. Then there seemed a number of cries of alarm, of crashes and the thud of another gun, of a great rushing to starboard and more shots, of pistols and the starboard swivels all barking at once in a moment of packed incident in which he took no part, rooted as he was to the heavy tiller. All he saw as they tore past the alarm vessel was the great iron chain of the Sunk stretching down to the anchor in the seabed below them. Then they had run beyond the Sunk's bow and he relaxed, looking round to watch the strength of the tide as it bore them sideways and as the apparent motion made the alarm vessel seem to cross their own stern. He looked round for their nearer pursuer. She had been unable to pass up-tide of the alarm vessel and had been compelled to haul her wind and duck under the Sunk's stern. In doing so she had passed so close that she had exposed herself to one of the alarm vessel's carronades, mounted as a warning gun but loaded with an extempore charge of debris. The discharge of old nails and broken glass tore through the lugger's straining foresail as she bore up too much. As a consequence, her stern brushed the alarm vessel's hull and her mizen snagged it Her after rigging was torn away, dragging the whole mizen, mast, sail and yard with it. As she broke away from the Sunk, the lugger left white canvas fluttering from the stem of the alarm vessel and with it her tricoloured ensign. Of the second lugger, all that could be seen was the peak of her sails to the south-east as she reached across the wind, anxiously watching the fate of her consort.

'Harden in those sheets!' Drinkwater roared, pushing the tiller with all his might. 'Stand by to tack ship!'

Instantly Frey divined Drinkwater's intentions. 'Prepare those starboard swivels! Get those port swivels mounted over here!'

Kestrel dipped into the wind with a flogging of her sails and paid off on the other tack. Runners were set up and let go, the sheets shifted and slackened as Kestrel spun to port, swung off the wind and ran back towards her late tormentor. Confusion reigned on the deck of the chasse marée as Kestrel passed on the opposite tack, spattering her with small-arms fire and raking her with the swivels.

'Here, Jago!' Drinkwater tossed the seaman one of his pistols and Jago aimed and fired it into the throng of men struggling to bring their lugger under command again. Seeing the pitiful sight and the execution done to the lugger's decks, Drinkwater noted the mainsail had ripped badly so that she was almost immobilized.

'How I wish we had one decent gun,' be lamented to himself, but Frey had had all four swivels discharge into the enemy as they passed and the carnage was bad enough. The second lugger was a mile away now, and stood steadily south-eastwards. Drinkwater pursued her for a while and had the satisfaction of chasing her from the field before he turned back towards their erstwhile enemy. The larger chaste marée was a sorry sight, her mainsail down on deck. And though the main topsail was being hoisted and she might yet run off before the wind, it appeared she was hors de combat. Inspiration struck Drinkwater. 'Where's young Charles, Jago?'

Jago called out in French and Drinkwater saw the lad raise his head from beside the boat on her chocks amidships where he had been huddled, watching the action.

'Tell him to find out this fellow's name, Jago, and then ask if he surrenders.' Drinkwater raised his voice. The rest of you prepare to fire and to scandalize the mainsail and heave to.'

As they came dancing up under the overcast and pointed their little guns at the lugger, the boy called upon her to surrender. The response was a torrent of French at which the lad stiffened and Jago merely laughed.

'Well, damn you, what does the bugger say?' Drinkwater prompted Jago, who addressed a few words to Charles.

'Elle est la Mathilde Drouot de Calais, M'sieur. Le maître est mort, et...' The boy shrugged and looked appealingly at Jago.

'She's the Mathilde Drouot of Calais, sir, the master is killed and her mate says he is compelled to surrender to pig-butchers. He has had five men killed besides the master, and eight wounded. One is very bad and he asked if we had a surgeon.'

Drinkwater pulled a face. 'That is unfortunate, I had no idea the swivels were so effective ...'

Jago shook his head. 'I don't think it was our swivels, sir. I reckon it was the men on the alarm vessel firing broken glass bottles at 'em from a large-bore carronade mounted on the quarter.'

'I see. We may take the prize, but not the credit.'

'Aye, I reckon so, sir. 'Tis against the laws of war, the Frog yonder says, sir.'

Drinkwater ignored the objection. 'Tell the Mathilde Drouot to pitch all his ramrods overboard, then head for Harwich. Tell him to stay in close contact under my guns. If he tries to make a run for it, I shall sweep his decks with glass bottles myself. I think we have a few down below, don't we, Mr Frey?'

'A few, sir, but not many.'

'Then let us hope the matter is not put to the test, eh?

Captain Scanderbeg was somewhat ruffled to be woken early next morning by a lieutenant demanding accommodation for prisoners-of-war in the town bridewell.

'And who, sir, are you, pray?' he asked, emerging dishevelled from his chamber in the Three Cups.

'Lieutenant Frey, sir, of the hired cutter Kestrel. I have some twenty-seven prisoners and several need a surgeon, sir.'

Scanderbeg frowned. 'Kestrel she's Captain Drinkwater's yacht, ain't she?'

'Yes, sir, under my command. We fought an engagement off the Sunk yesterday afternoon and took a French National lugger, sir. We anchored last night on the southern end of the Shelf and...'

'And here you are disturbing me, lieutenant...'

'Frey, sir.'

Scanderbeg sighed, then said mildly, 'I recall you now. Well, damn you, sir, you shall wait until I have shaved and broken my fast and then perhaps we shall find somewhere for your confounded prisoners. Don't you know I have an army to embark?'

'So I see, sir,' said Frey politely, withdrawing. 'I do beg your pardon. I had no idea it took quite so long.'

Scanderbeg stared at the retreating young man, then he scratched his head and burst out laughing. 'By God, sir, neither did I!'