The Iberian Flame

Chapter 44

Kydd needed some fresh air after his hard morning’s duel with the purser’s paperwork and stumped up the ladder to the quarterdeck. To his surprise, nearly all the officers and not a few seamen were gazing down the line of ships, all pretence at work fled.

‘How’s this, nothing to do, you villains?’ Kydd called, frowning. Hardly a face turned his way.

‘Mr Bowden, what does this mean?’ he demanded, irritated.

Reluctantly his second lieutenant lifted his gaze. ‘An Admiralty aviso,’ was his bald explanation. ‘Attending on the flagship.’

These fast, secure packets were only used when their lordships had need of ready information from their far-flung squadrons – or had dispatches so urgent that justified the speed and expense of one.

‘Us?’ asked Brice.

‘No, we’re not to be noticed,’ Bray said authoritatively. ‘He’s made his number with Collingwood, who thinks the matter so pressing he’s sent him on to his rear admiral without delay.’

It was Kydd’s conclusion too. And there could be only one thing so important that it needed acting on with such speed. He joined them in their anticipation, all eyes now on the flagship.

When the signal came, it wasn’t the summons Kydd had expected. Instead it was the peremptory three-flag hoist: ‘All captains attend on commander-in-chief.’

This was cause for an instant hubbub: was it the rarely experienced call to a council-of-war on the eve of battle?

In minutes Kydd reappeared in full-dress uniform, the quarterdeck falling silent as he took boat for Ocean, trying to keep a countenance under the hundreds of eyes on him as he left to learn their fate.

The great cabin of Collingwood’s flagship was crowded and Kydd had to join the other frigate captains in standing along the bulkhead. Already Collingwood was in his chair, as mute and unspeaking as a sphinx, his two admirals at either end of the table, both as clearly baffled as their humble captains.

The last officer squeezed in and the flag-captain announced, ‘All present, sir.’

Nothing could be read from Collingwood’s face, a granite rigidity.

Word from England it must be, but what? A refusal to be sucked into an Iberian war? A complete distrust of a clutch of rebels with no realistic prospects?

It would be disastrous for Britain’s reputation to be associated with a wild revolt that was contemptuously defeated, even worse to be dragged into an endless land war in which she was outnumbered ten or a hundred to one far from her shores. Realistically it couldn’t be-

‘Gentlemen,’ Collingwood said softly. The cabin fell suddenly still.

‘It’s peace.’

As this was digested there were sharply drawn breaths.

‘I have received dispatches from my lords of the Admiralty and from the foreign secretary, both in the same tenor.’

He looked about him, then went on flatly, as though reciting, ‘Hostilities against the kingdom of Spain are to cease with immediate effect, a state of amity now existing between us. Every practicable aid shall be furnished and Great Britain proceeds on the principle that any nation of Europe with a determination to oppose the common enemy becomes thereby our essential ally.’

In the stunned silence he beckoned over the flag-captain and whispered something. The officer nodded and left.

‘What this means to us – to the world – is of immeasurable consequence. I would have you in no doubt of that.’

The flag-captain returned, ushering in stewards with trays of glasses. ‘At this point I believe it meet and right we should raise a glass to our news.’

The usual toasts – ‘Confusion to Boney’, ‘Damnation to the Tyrant’ and the like – seemed in some way inadequate to the occasion and a strange pall descended on this group of veteran sea officers. Too much had happened, and now their traditional foe of centuries was that no longer.

‘What’s to become of us, sir?’ Puget of Goliath, greatly daring, asked.

Collingwood looked up, suddenly weary, and Kydd was shocked at how drawn he appeared. A great man – but of another age.

‘Ah, yes. I’ve given this some thought in the event it fell out as it has. The Inshore Squadron before Cadiz will be no more, of course. Portugal remains in French hands and will require our attentions still, as will occupied Spain, by which I mean the northern and Mediterranean coasts. Therefore I’ve a mind to create an Iberian command of three flags, the north, Lisbon and south. Ships-of-the-line will be redistributed among them but frigates will probably be on roving commissions a-twixt and a-tween as needs must.’

‘And yourself, sir?’

‘To Minorca, I believe, now the Dons are our friends. A fine dockyard, an even finer climate for my old bones – and within a day of Toulon.’

A babble of incredulous speculation arose, which Collingwood interrupted quietly: ‘I would have you now return to your ships and inform your people. From this point forward all due marks of respect will be given and returned to Spanish officers and ships at sea. Detailed orders will follow as soon as I can manage it. Good day, gentlemen.’

Kydd left in an air of unreality. Almost his entire career had been pitted against Spaniards in one form or another, but from this day forward they were to be accounted comrades.

His boat surged along, his coxswain silent with the gravity of the occasion. When Kydd mounted the side of Tyger, nearly her entire ship’s company was looking down at him.

Just as soon as he made the deck and answered his first lieutenant’s polite enquiry, his brusque order was ‘Clear lower deck! Hands to muster aft.’

Standing next to the wheel he waited while the sudden scramble for places subsided. Seamen were hanging from the rigging, cross-legged on hatch gratings, pressed together, agog for news. There were youngsters squatted on the deck in front, open-eyed with wonder, and the marines forgetting decorum in their need not to miss a thing. Behind him the officers and warrant officers shuffled their feet in their eagerness to hear.

‘Tygers!’ Kydd roared. Silence was instant. ‘I’ll tell you as I got it from the commander-in-chief. In one – it’s peace. As of this moment we’re to treat the Dons as friends, our allies, give ’em all the help they ask for in their struggle to throw out the Mongseers and get their country back. And we’ll be doing our part like true British sailors. I haven’t detailed orders yet but I believe we’ll not be lacking entertainment. When we-’

Bray detached himself and came over, nudging him. He gave a significant glance over to the flagship, which had just hoisted a general signal.

Kydd recognised it instantly, but frowned in mock impatience, seeking out Maynard. ‘Well, sir – important signal from Flag. What does it say, pray?’

The flustered signal master’s mate found his book and, glancing again at the hoist, chanted, ‘Brace, sir, and … main. Mainbrace. And-’

‘Acknowledge, then, you looby. And it’s “splice the mainbrace”, I believe.’

No sooner had the order been obeyed than an even greater satisfaction was granted them. In the same aviso had been a precious cargo – mail, in stout canvas post-bags, with the ship’s name stencilled prominently. The routine was always the same, the anticipation never less. And for the space of a few minutes Dillon was the most important man in His Majesty’s Ship Tyger.

Taking the coach as his headquarters he upended the first bag and began his duty. To one side the seamen’s growing pile of letters from home, the gunroom officers’ in another, ship’s official business to the purser and clerk and, finally, the captain’s personal mail.

Kydd knew better than to hurry him but eventually it was presented. Rather more a fat package than a letter, on the outside was his name in an infinitely dear bold hand.

He was able to retire to the privacy of his cabin to savour the moment but the common sailor must share his with his messmates. Kydd knew how it would be: each man would in that time be an island, unreachable, wrapped in his own warm thoughts as a loved one reached across the gulf of miles to touch him – and him alone – with sentiments that were private to them both.

The ship in an unnatural quiet, he made himself comfortable in his best armchair, reached for the package and opened it carefully and lovingly.

There was a letter, a long one, he noticed, with a warm thrill. But the bulk of the package was two newspapers, The Times and the Exeter Flying Post. As much to defer the pleasure of the letter he opened The Times.

It was alive with the ecstatic tidings from Iberia – the news from Cadiz had reached England well before and this was the response from an eager public. And it was as wholehearted and strident as any Kydd could remember seeing.

What a magnificent series of events is passing before us in Spain! I cannot describe to you the interest I feel in the Spanish cause. It exceeds anything except perhaps that which I felt in the first moments of the French Revolution. May the Spaniards obtain perfect liberty and raise the Goddess for the admiration of mankind from that abyss in which the French have left her!

He went on to read of the stirring and noble speeches from both benches in the Commons, Sheridan and Canning, the calls for immediate aid to the plucky Spaniards, the army vote increased.

Bemused, Kydd saw that nearly the entire newspaper was crowded with articles and opinions, all on the subject of Iberia and Bonaparte’s probable coming fate. Turning to the Post, he saw much of the same but also some hard-headed speculation. Barrelled pilchards and salted cod would be wanted in quantity in a newly opened trade, and Devon and Cornwall were well placed to supply them as of old. Spanish coast-wise trade, until now wiped from the seas by the navy, would require its multitude of brigs and barques replaced, a chance for the many tiny seaport slipyards in the south-west.

After a hurried perusal he had the papers sent to the gunroom and settled to his letter.

My very dear darling man! I’m before the fire, scratching away on this and you’re somewhere off the land that everyone’s talking about, having all the excitement. You’ll write everything down, won’t you, my love, just so we can curl up together and you can tell me?

In a daze of contentment he heard about progress on the herb garden, the bronze weather-cock, which she knew he’d be interested to learn had shown winds steady from the west all this last week, and the success of Farmer Davies at the county show in Widdecombe, notwithstanding the ill-fortune with his sheep earlier. Rufus the cat had taken to the chimney nook and was apparently adorable beyond words, while she herself was well advanced on a romantic portrayal of Tyger beset in a storm, and she prayed she had the ropes and sails all correct, this being her first cast at a sea piece.

A quiet knock intruded: it was Dillon. ‘Ah, sir. Sorry to disturb but the gunroom is holding a dinner tonight to make notice of the peace and are wondering if …?’

‘So kind in ’em. Of course I shall come. Delighted.’

The dreamlike air of unreality had not lifted when the officers came together in the hastily but splendidly decorated space. In an affected quiet they greeted one another, sat and toasted, and every so often could be seen staring into an unseeable distance, their minds and hearts somewhere out of this place, this time, to some personal encounter. An ordeal, a triumph, a loss, a tragedy.

Talk went on, but no one felt inclined to break into song or merriment. It didn’t seem right.

The mess broke up before midnight, not a few officers feeling the need for a solitary turn about the upper deck in the whispering summer night, wrapped in their own thoughts.

In the morning Bray briskly asked, ‘Sir – in the matter o’ liberty?’

‘Er, yes. Of course.’ It was only right and proper that, in making a friendly port, shore leave would be granted. That the said port had turned overnight from an enemy to an ally was no reason for age-old customs to be ignored, as long as the port authorities permitted the sending ashore of floods of red-blooded sailors, something not always welcomed. But the opening of the port to trade from now on was going to do this anyway, and gleeful scenes would soon return to the Cadiz waterfront north of the Trocadero.

Something of the delight of the liberty men transmitted itself to Kydd, and when Dillon suggested they step ashore themselves to see the sights of the ancient Phoenician city he readily agreed.

It was a pity that Renzi had left with Morla for England but his confidential secretary was more than equal to both the language and the navigating and he found himself contemplating the sight of the old Cadiz of the Carthaginians, Rome, the Moors and Francis Drake.

There were quantities of churches, merchant miradors that enabled them to spy ships inward-bound leagues out to sea – and on the seawall, antique round sentinel closets with conical roofs and arrow slits that must have been manned continuously for half a thousand years.

Crossing from one side of the peninsula to the other in the maze of alleyways, Kydd became conscious of a regular beat, an undercurrent of excitement, swelling crowds.

‘A procession!’

They hurried in its direction and saw a colourful, noisy parade marching along the sea-front road, raucously encouraged by spectators. The marchers were more military than religious and were being enthusiastically cheered on by a great crowd. ‘I thought as this would be a papist procession, carrying a statue or some such,’ Kydd remarked. ‘Is it for our welcome?’ he added, with a grin.

Dillon tugged the sleeve of one of the crowd, enquiring. The man pulled free irritably and snapped something, his eyes only for the procession.

‘Not us, I fear. It seems there’s just arrived news that the French lunge towards Cadiz to put down their rising has been defeated at a place called Bailen. No details, but this city is now safe – thanks to themselves only.’