The Iberian Flame

Chapter 15

At anchor, off Cadiz

Kydd reflected for a moment. This city, as his particular friend and former shipmate Nicholas Renzi, now Lord Farndon, would have reminded him, was a name that sprang from the pages of history, with the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Moors and Christopher Columbus. Here it was that Sir Francis Drake had singed the King of Spain’s beard, and the treasure ships of the Americas had poured out their golden cargoes. And where, over the centuries, so many officers of the Royal Navy had seen through their professional careers against the traditional maritime foe.

Cadiz lay now under Tyger’s lee, the long, low coast, with its distant jumble of white and terracotta buildings under the warm sun, set in a glittering turquoise sea, as unchanging as Kydd remembered from his first experience there many years before. And now he was joining the band of brothers who alone were halting Napoleon’s hunger for conquests at the very water’s edge.

Around him were the veterans of the southern blockade from the tense and dramatic days before Trafalgar, sail-o’-the-line that had seen admirals come and go, battles fought and won and now, after years of punishing service, ready for more. In recognition of their mastery of the seas there they were, lying peacefully at anchor across the enemy’s harbour mouth.

And the longest-serving of them all was ‘Old Cuddy’, Admiral Collingwood, in Ocean. At the height of the battle he’d taken the reins of command from the mortally wounded Nelson and since that time had never once been relieved or spared a homecoming to his beloved Sarah. It was said that no one of stature could be found to replace him in this, the most crucial diplomatic and strategic station, and therefore, bowing to duty, he remained aboard ship, his health slowly ebbing. Collingwood was fair, and just to a fault, and Kydd could not have asked for a more nobler commander-in-chief. He was gladdened when the signal was made for the traditional dinner, the fleet assembled as one.

It was a time for gossip, for newcomers to learn the eccentricities of a blockade squadron, old friends to meet again, fresh faces to take on character. And for all to make measure of each other.

Admiral Collingwood took his chair in the centre, with his subordinate admirals at either end of the cunningly extended table. ‘A right good welcome to you all, thou gentlemen of England,’ he said pleasantly. ‘As our little alarum is now concluded.’

The calm features and courteous manner were as Kydd recalled, but the face was exhausted, deeply lined, the eye sockets sagging at the corners. His sea-worn uniform seemed too big for him – a shrunken figure. This was a man who had tasted nothing but fatigue and tension for years beyond counting.

His words were met with a murmur of polite comment. Nothing had been lost as a consequence but it had been no occasion for congratulation: a powerful enemy battle-fleet had been at large for weeks on end in the politically charged Mediterranean.

‘Now, before we show appreciation of our dinner, for those who have not had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of my squadron commanders, allow me to introduce one and all.’

In the etiquette of the Royal Navy, it was never the prerogative of the junior to speak to a senior before he was addressed.

‘To my larboard is Vice Admiral Thornbrough, who in Royal Sovereign will be attending to Toulon. To my starboard is one who deserves general notice, for he’s my new-appointed commander of the Inshore Squadron, one whose flag in Conqueror is as equally new-hoisted. This is Rear Admiral Rowley, late of the Channel Squadron.’

Kydd had started in surprise when he’d first seen the man. Rowley was no stranger – he’d known him from his time on the lower deck when he himself had been shipped out to the Caribbean to avoid damning testimony being given against him. Later, as a lieutenant under his command in a ship-of-the-line off Toulon, Kydd had been cast out of his ship for trivial reasons. That it had been the means of his receiving his first ship as captain had been no thanks to Rowley.

There was the same hauteur, the patrician disdain – even if the cheeks were now flabby and the body rotund. And still the faultlessly cut uniform, the peep of lace at the cuff, the thinning but elaborately coiffed hair dyed to an improbable black.

As he nodded a greeting around the table there was no trace of recognition, and for that Kydd was thankful. He had no wish to acknowledge their earlier association. Far too much had passed for him to feel anything but contempt for the man.

‘I say, Sir T, weren’t you third of Tenacious in the last war?’ It was a fresh-faced, willowy officer to his right. ‘As did something right clever when we took Minorca?’

Kydd brightened. ‘A signalling scheme only, atop Mount Toro, but nothing as will stand against Captain Popham’s patent system, I’m persuaded.’

‘Not as I heard – oh, Hayward, fourth of Leviathan, as was there on the quarterdeck when your intelligence was sending Gen’ral Stuart into an apoplexy.’

‘And now?’

‘Owner of Vigilant frigate, on station these last eight months. Something of a bore. But then again I heard that our new Flags is out to make his mark, his service to this date being a mite south of conspicuous,’ he added, in an odd tone.

Kydd kept his silence. Rowley had no doubt used his influence to find himself a sea command as admiral when so many better men were languishing at a lesser elevation. And unless he was, God forbid, a fleet-attached frigate with all the tedium that that implied, he would be with the Inshore Squadron and under him.

‘Some years since I was on this station. Quiet, at all?’ he asked lightly.

‘Not as who should say. Now, with Boney taking Lisbon and all Portugal, we have the whole coast in arms against us. Makes it easier, o’ course – near every sail an enemy, as it were.’ He grinned, then in sudden respect added, ‘But nothing as could offer diversion to one of your talents, Sir T.’

That Collingwood was keeping the seas off Cadiz instead of Toulon or Sicily was a measure of how the commander-in-chief saw the importance of the largest port the Spanish possessed.

The dinner passed agreeably for Kydd, shadowed only by Rowley’s presence and that of Mason of Riposte – by his graceless manner their recent antagonism off Bornholt clearly not forgotten. Still, of the twenty or thirty present, there were just those two he didn’t warm to.

The cloth drawn, amiable groups formed for brandy and cigars and Kydd joined in the easy banter of those who knew each other from long acquaintance and whose yarns were received with as much acclamation as his own. But despite the camaraderie of the gathering one particular thought was unspoken. Who knew whether they would find themselves on blockade for many more years to come?