Under false colours

CHAPTER 15 Beauté du Diable

In the shock of encounter Drinkwater's mind was filled with suspicion. He felt again the overwhelming dead weight of a hostile providence with sickening desperation. Suddenly Castenada's obligingness and Liepmann's absence seemed harbingers of this entrapment. He regretted the sword bayonet cast aside in the box hedge and felt foolish in borrowed finery before this breathtakingly handsome woman.

She wore travelling clothes, a dark blue riding habit and scuffed boots, about her throat a grey silk cravat was secured with a jewelled pin that reflected the green of her eyes. Hat and cloak lay beside her chair and she held nothing more threatening than a glass of Rhenish hock.

'We have met before,', she said, tilting her head slightly to one side so that a heavy lock of auburn hair fell loose from the coils on her head. She spoke perfect English in a low and thrilling timbre.

'Indeed, Madame,' Drinkwater said guardedly, acutely aware that this woman possessed in abundance those qualities of grace and beauty for which men threw away their lives. He footed a bow, wondering at her motives.

'Will you take a glass of wine, sir?' Her cool courtliness was seductive and she turned aside, sure her offer would not be rejected.

The hock was refreshing. 'I am obliged, Madame, 'he said, maintaining a fragile formality despite his inward turmoil.

'You rescued me from the sans-culottes on the beach at Carteret, do you remember?' she went on, watching him over the rim of her glass, 'and you were with Lord Dungarth the night I was left ashore on the beach at Criel ...'(See A King's Cutter)

He did not respond. She had turned her coat by then, having met Edouard Santhonax and thrown her lot in with the Republicans. He let her lead the conversation to wherever it was going, wondering if she knew he had given her husband his death thrust.

'But that was a long time ago, when we were young and impetueux, was it not?'

She stepped closer to him so that he could smell the scent of her. She was undeniably lovely with a voluptuously mature beauty made more potent by the confidence of experience. He felt the male hunger stir him, mixed with something else: for years that damned portrait had symbolized for him the essence of a ruthless enemy, battening on the unsatisfied passions of his young manhood. Its power lay in both its imagery and association with her, a synthesis of wickedness, of desire denied, of lust ...

'It was no coincidence that you were with Marshal Davout, was it? No coincidence that my portrait had come into his possession?'

There was an edge in her voice now, keen enough to abort his concupiscent longing.

'You are deceived as to that, Madame,' he replied. 'It is true the portrait was once my property, but Marshal Davout acquired it from a British brig wrecked on the Jutland coast. I was not aboard the brig, Madame, you have my word on it.'

'Your word? And what reliance may I put on that? You are a British naval officer, you are in the territory of the French Empire and,' she looked him archly up and down, 'that is not a uniform, M'sieur Drinkwater.'

Oddly, he felt no apprehension at the unveiled threat, rather that cool resignation, that surrender to circumstances he had experienced in action after the fearful period of waiting was over. He knew they were nearing the crux of this strange encounter and the knowledge exhilarated him. He smiled. 'You remember my name.'

'As I remember Lord Dungarth's.' She turned away to refill her glass.

'You have met him, have you not,' probed Drinkwater, 'since the business on the beach at Criel?' He did not wait for a reply, but asked, watching her keenly, 'Did you have him blown up?'

She swung round angrily. 'No!'

'I must perforce believe you,' he said, unmoved by the violence of her denial, 'and you must believe me when I tell you it was indeed coincidence that we met in Marshal Davout's antechamber. As to your portrait, I acquired it many years ago when I captured the French National Frigate Antigone in the Red Sea. She was commanded by your husband, Edouard Santhonax. It was among my belongings aboard the Tracker when she was herself taken a fortnight or so past.'

'Why did you keep it for so long, M'sieur?' She seemed calmer, as though his explanation satisfied her, and extended her hand for his empty glass. He gave it her, but did not immediately relinquish his own hold.

'I was struck by your beauty, Madame. You had already made an impression upon me.'

She could not doubt his sincerity, but his serious tone betrayed no sudden flare of passion.

'A lasting impression?' she asked mockingly, her eyes sparkling and a smile playing about the corners of her lovely mouth.

'So it would seem, Madame, though your husband had a more palpable effect ...' He let the glass go.

'Your wounds?' she asked as she replenished the hock. She turned and held out the refilled glass. A coquettish gleam lingered in her eyes. 'Did you know I am a widow now?'

'Yes, Hortense,' he replied, his voice suddenly harsh, 'it was I who killed your husband.'

The words escaped him, driven by a subconscious desire to hurt her, to hide nothing from so bewitching a woman with whom this extraordinary intimacy existed.

Her face turned deathly pale, her eyes searched his face and her outstretched hand trembled. 'It is not possible,' she murmured in French. He took the glass and with his left hand steadied her, but she drew back, frowning. 'Mais non ... I'Empereur ...'

She seemed to be considering something, seeking the answer to some personal riddle. 'I was told he was lost in Poland ... then the disgrace ...'

'There was no disgrace, Madame. He was a man of uncommon zeal. He was killed at sea aboard the Dutch frigate Zaandam.'(See Baltic Mission)

'A Dutch frigate? I do not understand ...'

'Madame,' he said with sudden intensity, 'I had obtained some information of considerable importance to London. I believe it was acquired at your husband's expense. He was attempting to stop me reaching England ...'

She was no longer listening. It was as though he had struck her. Two spots of high colour appeared on her cheeks and her eyes blazed. 'Diable!'

If Drinkwater felt he had wrested the initiative from her he realized now he had made a misjudgement. She seemed suddenly to contract, not out of fear or weakness, but with the latent energy of a coiled spring.

'So, that is why ...!'

And then he saw that the hatred he had kindled was introspective, for when she spoke to him again her voice was flat, explicatory, rationalizing things to herself, but in English for his benefit.

'Then you also killed Hortense Santhonax, M'sieur Drinkwater, for my husband is numbered among criminals, a man disgraced in the service of the Emperor.'

'I can assure you,' he said quietly, 'your husband did his duty to the utmost. It was his death or mine; your widowhood or my own wife's.'

She sighed and shook off her abstraction. 'Since Edouard's disgrace I have received no pension, nor a sou of his due pay. I was abandoned by the Emperor, left destitute.'

'I believe the manner in which I harmed your husband was of very great importance to your Emperor,' Drinkwater said. He could not tell her the enormity of the secret he had brought home, that it was nothing less than the seduction of Tsar Alexander from his alliance with Great Britain and the intention of the two autocrats to partition Europe. Nor could he tell her it was that very alliance that his present mission sought to undermine. 'He was not alone in paying a price. I have not seen my wife since the event.'

She regained her composure and raised her glass. 'Do we drink to the misfortunes of war then?'

'It seems that we must, though I suspect your motives in doing so.'

'You thought I would denounce you to Davout and you do not trust me now?'

'I am not certain of anything, though in Hamburg you seemed to be under some constraint.'

'Le bon Dieudonne?'' she smiled beguilingly. 'He is a man, M'sieur Drinkwater, and like most men,' she went on, 'predictable. Perhaps now you understand why so loyal a servant of Napoleon Bonaparte as the Prince of Eckmühl wished to question me when my portrait was found on a British ship.'

'Then your presence in Hamburg ...'

'Was a coincidence as much as yours.' She seemed oddly relaxed. Could she so easily forgive the author of her downfall, or was she about to manipulate him as she intimated she had Dieudonne? Her next remark gave him no cause to think otherwise.

'Shall we sit down?'

Drinkwater's reply betrayed his unease. 'Where is our host?'

'Herr Liepmann?' she shrugged. 'I asked him to leave us alone for a few moments.' She had seated herself so that she was half turned towards him in the chair beside the fire. 'Pray sit. You have all the advantage standing, and that is unfair.'

'You forgive your enemies easily.'

She laughed. 'No. You are not my enemy, M'sieur Drinkwater, you are an agent of providence. Do you believe in providence?'

'Implicitly.' He sat himself opposite her. 'So why, when providence so neatly delivered me into your power, did you not denounce me in order to rehabilitate yourself with Davout and the Emperor? And why have you come here to Liepmann's house at Altona seeking this interview with me?'

'M'sieur Drinkwater, why have you come here? Or to Hamburg, eh? To sell boots to the French?' She laughed, a low chuckle that vibrated in her long throat. 'La, sir, it is common gossip in Hamburg, probably in Paris by now, that two British ships, cheated of a Russian market, sought their contemptible profit elsewhere.' She paused to sip her wine, then added, 'But that would not concern a naval officer, would it?'

'Quite so,' Drinkwater said, suppressing the satisfaction that the news gave him and ignoring the sarcasm in her voice.

'I will not press you for an explanation of your presence here,' she said after a pause, studying him. 'But you should know I did not make the attempt on Lord Dungarth's life. You must lay that at the feet of Fouche, or perhaps even the Emperor himself, who knows? But I have made his acquaintance, in France twice, and once in England.' She sighed. 'Edouard was my life; without him I would be an embittered emigrée living on charity in an English town. But he is dead and I must live; I have friends ...' She caught his eye and then looked quickly away. She was discomfitted and he recalled Dungarth alleging an intimacy with Talleyrand. 'They are powerful friends and I am here in Hamburg on their behalf...'

'Go on,' he prompted, for she seemed suddenly indecisive.

'Will you do a service for me?' she asked, looking him full in the face.

'If it does not compromise my honour.'

'Will you take a message to London, to Lord Dungarth?'

Drinkwater sat back in his chair. 'Is that the coincidence that brought you to Hamburg?'

'More, it is the coincidence that brought me here to Altona. Lord Dungarth informed me that the Jew Liepmann, a merchant of Hamburg, was in touch with the British agent on Helgoland.'

Drinkwater wanted to laugh. The tension in his belly seemed to unwind, tugging at his reactive responses.

'You are not laughing at me?'

'No, Madame,' said Drinkwater with an effort, leaning forward and holding out his glass. 'Is there a little more wine with which to toast this alliance of ours. 'Tis a pity too much lies between us to be friends.'

'You have a wife, M'sieur.' She had become serious again as she poured, paying him back in his own, barbed coin. He felt again the strong animal attraction of her. For a foolish moment he persuaded himself that it was, perhaps, not unrequited.

'Touché, Madame,' he murmured, dismissing the fancy as conceit. 'Yes, I will take your message, but after another matter has been attended to.'

'What is that?'

'The release of a British sea officer; he is badly wounded and has a lady awaiting news of him.'

'I know, Herr Liepmann has told me.'

'He was indiscreet ...'

'No, no, he knew I could help. He knows both you and I are dangerous; I think he would be pleased to see us both satisfied and gone.' She paused, adding, 'This is trés domestique, n'est-ce pas, M'sieur?'

Drinkwater looked at her across the fire, returning her conspiratorial smile.

'Very.'

'I think we should call the Jew now.'

She rose and he stood while she rang the bell-pull. Letting the braided cord fall she turned to him and took a step closer. Looking him full in the face she raised her hand and touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers.

'Providence, M'sieur Drinkwater, providence. Perhaps it has not yet finished with us.'

And reaching into the breast of her riding habit she drew out a scaled packet and handed it to him.

CHAPTER 16 The Burial Party

Long after she had gone and Liepmann had shown him to a small bedroom beneath the attic, Drinkwater sat by the open window, the quilt from the bed about his shoulders. It was impossible to sleep, for his wounded shoulder ached and his head spun with an endless train of thought.

The mood of intimacy had been broken after Liepmann's arrival. He came with news of the church bells ringing a tocsin to alert the countryside to the breakout from the hospital. They stood in silence to listen as the Jewish merchant drew aside the heavy brocade curtains and opened the tall French windows a little. Muffled by the falling snow, they could faintly hear men shouting and dogs barking.

'They go to the Elbe,' Liepmann said, closing the windows. He turned to Hortense and asked, 'You have told the Captain about the British officer, Madame?'

'Not yet.' She turned to Drinkwater. 'I knew of the ship wreck,' she said, 'and that my portrait was taken there. It was when I knew you were not a prisoner that I thought — that I decided to seek you out. As for the wounded officer from the wrecked ship, he was too ill to be questioned. M'sieur le marechal will have to be content with my own explanation. They said the Englishman was dying.'

Anxiety for Quilhampton must have been plain upon Drinkwater's tired face, for Liepmann added, 'Doctor Castenada is to travel to Hamburg tomorrow to return him to Altona.' The news brought Drinkwater little relief and Liepmann had his own worries. He drew a watch from his waistcoat pocket. 'Madame, it is late ...'

Hortense bent and retrieved her hat and cloak. Liepmann helped her.

'Do not concern yourself, Herr Liepmann,' she said in her perfect English, darting a glance at Drinkwater. 'A woman seeking an assignation may pass freely anywhere. À bientôt Captain Drinkwater.'

'Madame.' He bowed as she swept out, leaving him prey to misgivings as to her motives. He heard the faint crunch of her conveyance on the snow covered gravel and then Liepmann came back into the room.

'She drives herself?' he asked.

'Ja, she is dangerous, that one — but I think ...' he paused, 'she gave you papers for London?' Drinkwater nodded. 'Good. I can tell you that your two ships passed Brunsbuttel this morning.'

'Excellent,' said Drinkwater. 'Herr Liepmann, the British officer of whom we spoke earlier, he is a friend. I must get him out.'

The long-suffering Liepmann nodded slowly. 'We must talk ...'

He was dog-tired when they at last retired. He had eaten nothing since the thin burgoo Gilham had obtained for him that morning. The hock had left him with a headache but he could not compose his mind for sleep and sat at the open window listening to the distant sounds of the search parties fade.

The night yielded no secrets. The dying away of the shouting proved nothing. Drinkwater thought of Frey and his men drifting slowly downstream amid the ice-floes, desperately hoping they had evaded their pursuers on the river bank. He thought, too, of James Quilhampton lying delirious a few leagues away, and of Elizabeth alone in her distant bed. But again and again his thoughts returned to Hortense with a fierce mixture of desire and suspicion.

Outside the snow had stopped. A few stars appeared, and then the moon. By its light he turned over and over the sealed packet she had given him. Was it for London? Or was it a piece of incriminating evidence deliberately planted on him? And was the 'assignation' to which she claimed she was going, a meeting to denounce him, a British naval officer out of uniform in the house of a well-known Jewish merchant? Marshal Davout would delight in seizing a British spy caught red-handed in Hamburg whilst at the same time destroying the centre of the apparatus by which his master's Continental System was being cheated. In self-preservation Thiebault would corroborate the suspect Madame Santhonax's story and they could expect cavalry in Altona by dawn!

What had Hortense to lose? By so simple a denunciation she could secure the Emperor's gratitude; Santhonax's back­pay and her pension would be assured. He had not only confessed to having murdered her husband, but also provided her with a reasonable explanation which, made into a deposition before an advocate or a notary in Paris, would restore her husband's reputation at a stroke.

How could she not adopt such a course of action?

And yet ...

And yet he would still have rather spent that sleepless night in her bed than anywhere else on earth.

Drinkwater woke to the alarming jingle of harnesses. He had fallen asleep across the bed fully clothed, as he might have done at sea. He had left the window open and was chilled to the bone. On leaping up and staring from the window, his worst fears were realized. A troop of brass helmeted dragoons, their grey cloaks thrown back to reveal their green coats, stood about the drive holding their tossing horses' heads. Immediately below, where the tracks of Hortense's chaise could still be seen, Herr Liepmann stood talking to a beplumed officer. A maid emerged bearing a tray of steaming steins and was made much of by the cavalrymen.

At almost the same instant, or so it seemed, the manservant who had attended him the previous evening entered Drinkwater's room after a perfunctory knock. Balanced on one hand he too bore a tray, with the other, its index finger at his lips, he commanded Drinkwater to silence.

The aroma of coffee, bread and sausages filled the cold air and Drinkwater relaxed. The appearance of breakfast and the raised finger did not, he judged, signal betrayal. To divert himself from being caught at the window, and compelled by hunger, he settled to the welcome food.

From time to time he rose, cautiously peering down to the driveway and was finally rewarded by the sight of the troopers mounting up. A few moments later Liepmann entered the room.

'I have news.' He held up a note. 'M'sieur Thiebault writes to tell me that trade is to stop ... for a little while, you understand.' Liepmann smiled wryly.

'Thiebault sent the message by that officer of dragoons?'

'Lieutenant Boumeester is a Dutchman; they were Dutch dragoons. Their loyalty is, er, not good.' Liepmann shrugged. 'It is not only fat burghers who like to sugar their coffee, Captain. I have other news: Boumeester tells me more soldiers come to guard the hospital. Marshal Davout is angry.'

'So we do not have much time.'

'I go to Hamburg today. My carriage and Doctor Castenada's will —' Liepmann held out his hands, palms flat towards him and brought his finger tips together, seeking the English verb.

'They will meet?' offered Drinkwater.

'Ja, and I will speak. You must stay here. If I am not come back, do not worry. Go to the place we talk about last night.'

Drinkwater nodded, yawning. 'Your servants can be trusted?'

'They are paid by me, Captain. I will tell them what you need. Auf weidersehen.'

They shook hands. When Liepmann had left Drinkwater lay back on the bed. A moment later he was fast asleep.

It was almost dark when he awoke. The manservant was gently shaking him and indicating a tray of food, some rough, workman's clothes and a pile of furs. Drinkwater threw his legs out of the bed and rubbed his eyes. The manservant drew back a corner of the furs. A large horse pistol, a bag of balls and a flask of powder lay exposed. The weapon reminded Drinkwater with a shock of what the night held in store. He felt his heart thump as the lethargy of sleep was driven away.

'Herr Liepmann,' he asked, 'is he returned from Hamburg?'

'Eh?' The servant frowned and shrugged.

Drinkwater tried again. 'Herr Liepmann, is-he-come-from-Hamburg?'

'Ach! Nein, nein.' The servant shook his head, smiled and backed out.

After eating, Drinkwater changed his clothes. Over woollen undergarments he drew a coarse pair of trousers and a fisherman's smock. Two of the furs he rolled tightly and secured across one shoulder, the rest he bundled up with his cloak. Liepmann had provided a pair of sabots, but instead he drew on Dungarth's worn, green hessian boots, for they were comfortable and he had formed an attachment to them as a talisman. Pausing a moment, he shoved Liepmann's borrowed silk stockings in a pocket. Loading the pistol he stuck it in his belt. Then he picked up the sealed packet given him by Hortense. Perhaps after all he had misjudged her. Drawing a pillow-slip from the bed he improvised a bag and lanyard, pulled the latter over his head and tucked the bag inside his smock. Finally he pulled his queue from its ribbon and shook his tousled hair so that it fell about his unshaven cheeks.

By the time he had finished it was quite dark. He heard the curfew sounded at the hospital and made his way downstairs. The manservant was waiting for him and beckoned him to follow. The heat of the kitchen made Drinkwater sweat. Lantern light was reflected from rows of copper pans and a large joint of meat lay half butchered on a large scrubbed table. But apart from Drinkwater and the servant, the stone flagged room was empty, cleared of cooks and scullions by the trusted manservant who now handed Drinkwater a heavy leather satchel. A glance within revealed cheese, bread, wine, schnapps and sausage. A door from the kitchen led directly from the house and the servant lifted the latch for him.

Nodding gratefully, Drinkwater slipped out into the night; it was snowing again.

Lieutenant James Quilhampton drifted in and out of consciousness. The sound of hoof beats and the swaying of his narrow stretcher seemed to have accompanied half his lifetime. Periodically, familiar faces swam before him: his mother, Captain Drinkwater, young Frey, and Derrick the Quaker clerk he had inherited from Drinkwater. There were others too: Catriona MacEwan, elusive as always, and laughing at him as she ran perpetually away. He kept trying to follow her, but every time he tripped and fell, amid the terrible crashing of breakers and hideous thunder of cannon that made the abyss into which he descended shake in some mysterious way which he did not understand. Here they were waiting for him. The dark man with the saw and the knife whose kindly voice spoke in a foreign language and who thrust the knife into his arm so that he felt the white fire of amputation as he had done years ago during the bombardment of Kosseir.

When the man with the knife had finished another foreigner would appear. A man with spectacles and ice-cold eyes whose bald skull seemed too large for his shoulders and who took only a single look at him before uttering a curse. The bald man was God, of course, consigning him to the pit of hell, because Catriona was laughing at him and he fell again further and further, to where the dark man with the knife reappeared, pushing his hands into Quilhampton's very flesh. He knew the dark man was the devil and that he had been judged a great sinner.

Sometimes he heard himself shouting, for words echoed in his head and once another demon peered at him, a pale face with coiled hair that framed a face lit by the light from a lantern.

He felt better when the demon had withdrawn, cooler, as if he had been reprieved from the most extreme regions of hell, though the swaying rhythm of his body went on and on.

He must have slept, for when he was next aware of anything he was quite still, lying on his back in total darkness. There was a great throbbing in his left shoulder, as though all the pain of his punishment were being applied there. He found it difficult to breathe and, with growing consciousness, felt no longer the supine, indifferent acceptance of the feverish but the horror of the trapped. He tried to move: his right arm was pinned to his side. He raised his head: his forehead met obstruction. The sweat of fear, not hypothermia, broke from his body. The crisis of his amputation had passed but they had taken him for dead. He was in his coffin.

Drinkwater found the boat quite easily, where the road from Altona to Blankenese dipped down to the very bank of the Elbe and a shingle strand marked the ballast bed. It must have been here that Frey had first seen Liepmann's barge, for large stakes had been driven into the ground as mooring posts. The fisherman's punt was drawn up in the centre of the little beach, a light craft such as a wild-fowler or an eel-fisherman might have used. Inside was a quant and a pair of oars, and he found it fitted with nocks intended for the latter cut in the low coaming.

Ice had formed at the water's edge but he could make out the darker unfrozen water beyond the shallow bay. Carefully he stowed the satchel and the spare furs, his boots crunching on the shingle. Once he stood stock-still when a dog barked, but it was only a mongrel in the village close by. When he was satisfied with the boat he moved up the beach, wrapped himself in the cloak and settled down to wait. A low bank some five feet high gave him a little protection from the snow and he squatted down, drawing his knees up to his chin.

He had slept too well during the day to doze, and the time passed slowly. He took his mind off the cold and the pain in his shoulder by trying to calculate long multiplication sums in his head, forcing himself to go over the working until he was confident of the answer. Faintly, borne on the lightest of breezes, he heard the chimes of a distant clock and realized it was that of the Michaelskirche in Hamburg. For him to hear it so far downstream meant that the snow was easing. When he heard ten strike, as if by magic, the sky cleared. He got up and moved cautiously about to restore his circulation; it was getting colder.

Then he heard the stumbling feet and rasping breath of men carrying something. Drinkwater crouched until he could see them, four men bearing a coffin and a fifth bringing up the rear. His heart thumping, Drinkwater rose and showed himself.

Who the four men were he had no idea beyond knowing that Liepmann would pay them well for their work and their silence, but the fifth was Castenada, bag in hand. He came forward as the mysterious bearers lowered the coffin on to the shingle beside the punt.

'Captain ...?'

'All is quiet, Doctor.'

Both men bent anxiously over the coffin and Castenada began to lever up the lid. Drinkwater waited. He wanted to ask after Quilhampton's condition and, at the same time, to warn his friend to keep silent.

With a grunt, Castenada pulled the lid aside. In the starlight the pale blur of Quilhampton's face was suddenly revealed, his mouth agape as he fought for air.

Castenada swiftly produced a bottle of smelling salts from the bag he had brought with him. He handed it to Drinkwater.

'Under his nose!' he ordered and Drinkwater did as he was bid while the surgeon chafed his patient's cheeks. Quilhampton groaned and Castenada transferred his attention to Quilhampton's shoulder, feeling the heat of the wound through the dressing and the sleeve of his coat.

'It is God's will, Captain,' he said, 'he is past the crisis, but he will have suffered from the shock.' Castenada put a hand on Quilhampton's forehead and clicked his tongue. Quilhampton groaned again.

'James ... James, it is me, Drinkwater. D'you understand? You are among friends now, James. D'you understand?'

'Sir? Is that you?' Quilhampton raised his right hand and Drinkwater seized it, squeezing it harder than he had intended in the intensity of the moment.

'Yes, James, it's me. We're going for a boat ride. Be a good fellow and lie quiet.'

'Aye, aye, sir,' Quilhampton whispered, his fever-bright eyes searching the blur that he could not really believe was Drinkwater's face.

Drinkwater stood up. 'Come.' he said, motioning with his hand, 'into the boat.'

They lifted him as gently as they could, laying him on the furs Drinkwater had prepared and covering him with more furs and the blankets Castenada had packed in the coffin.

The four Germans helped Drinkwater drag the punt out over the ice, until it gave way and the boat floated.

'Danke,' he gasped, his breath coming out in clouds that were already freezing on the stubble about his mouth. He lifted one foot to steady the punt and half turned towards Castenada.

'Thank you, Doctor,' he hissed at the grey shape standing at the edge of the ice.

'Wait!' Castenada bent and picked up his bag and handed something to the four men. Then he was plunging awkwardly through the broken ice and, teetering uncertainly alongside Drinkwater, grabbed his arm for support.

'I come with you. He will not live without a doctor, not in this cold!'

Drinkwater looked doubtfully at the narrow punt, then patted Castenada.

'Very well! Get in!'

Drinkwater tried to steady the narrow punt as Castenada climbed clumsily aboard, but it rocked dangerously. When the surgeon had settled down Drinkwater followed, seating himself amidships on the single thwart and shipping the oars. He looked briefly ashore. The four men had already gone, taking the coffin with them. They would fill it with earth and it would be buried in the morning.

Leaning forward he could see in the stern Quilhampton's face. 'Shall we go home, Mr Q.?'

'If you please, sir,' came the uncertain, whispered reply.

Drinkwater turned his head and murmured over his shoulder, 'Are you ready, Doctor?'

'Adelante, señor!'

Drinkwater dipped his oars and pulled out into the stream, feeling the mighty tug of the great river. He could just make out the skyline broken by the roofs of Blankenese and the spire of its little kirk. Tugging at the oars he watched their bearing draw astern as the Elbe bore them towards the sea.

CHAPTER 17 Ice

At the first brightening of the sky Drinkwater sought shelter for the hours of daylight. Helped by the river's ebb they had dropped well downstream to where the Elbe widened, spreading itself among the shallows of shingle beds and islets towards its southern bank. Drinkwater pulled them up to a small reef of gravel which extended above the flood level far enough to support a sparse growth of low alder and willow bushes. Along the northern margin of this ait the stream ran deep enough to keep it ice-free, since a shallow bend in the main channel scoured its shore.

With his hands protected by the purloined stockings, Drinkwater was warm enough from the steady exertion of pulling and Quilhampton gallantly professed he felt warm enough, wrapped as he was in furs and blankets. Castenada was rigid with cold, so that, having run the punt aground, it was only with difficulty Drinkwater managed to assist first Quilhampton and then the Spanish surgeon into the shelter of the alder grove.

It was clear that the cramps of immobility as much as the cold were affecting Castenada, and watching him, Drinkwater concluded he suffered also from a heavy conscience; in his impetuous desire to assist Quilhampton he had abandoned his other charges.

Drinkwater busied himself gathering all the dry driftwood he could find, supplementing it with dead alder and willow branches. Paring a heap of kindling with the kitchen knife given him for cutting the sausage, and catching a spark from the horse pistol, he contrived to get a fire burning.

'This wood is dry enough not to make much smoke,' he observed, fanning the crackling flames as they flickered up through the sticks.

Quilhampton stared about them. 'The air is marvellously dry,' he said, and Drinkwater looked up from his task. The light easterly wind they had experienced during the night had died away. The sun was rising as a red ball and the Elbe reflected the perfect blue of a cloudless sky. The distant river banks seemed deserted as Drinkwater painstakingly surveyed them. He had no idea how far downstream they had dropped, but by the width of the river he guessed they had made good progress.

'If the weather stays this fair,' Quilhampton said as Castenada kneeled beside him to change his dressing, 'there will be little wind to worry us.'

'True,' said Drinkwater, and both sea officers looked at the low freeboard of the punt and thought of the long, exposed stretch off-shore, beyond Cuxhaven.

'Perhaps we can lay our hands on another boat,' said Drinkwater with feigned cheerfulness, though both knew the risks such a course of action entailed.

'I expect we could do something to make her more weatherly,' Quilhampton said, the perspiration breaking on his face as Castenada tried to draw the ligatures from his stump after sniffing the wound.

'Do you use the lead acetate dressing, Doctor?' Drinkwater asked, hardly able to bear the pain on Quilhampton's drawn features.

Castenada looked up. 'Ah, you know the French method, eh, Captain? The method of Larrey, yes?'

Drinkwater shrugged. 'It was shown me by a French surgeon on the Bucentaure during the action off Cape Trafalgar.'

Castenada frowned and rewound the bandage over Quilhampton's hot stump. 'The Bucentaure ... I thought ...' he motioned Drinkwater to help him draw on Quilhampton's coat again.

'She was French? Yes, she was. I was a prisoner.'

'Ahhh.' Castenada sat back on his haunches and stared unhappily at Drinkwater.

'Doctor, I understand something of what you are feeling. When we are a prisoner we dream of freedom: when we are free we mourn for those left behind. Is that not the case?'

'Si, si ... yes.'

'You should not judge yourself too harshly. Left to my tender ministrations, Mr Q. here would probably be dead by now.' Drinkwater leaned forward and patted Castenada's shoulder. 'You are an agent of providence,' he said, aware that he had borrowed the phrase from Hortense Santhonax.

Towards sunset on that short winter's day, the cooling air laid a low mist over the Elbe and Drinkwater determined on an early start. He had spent part of the day asleep, but having first eaten from the scanty stock of supplies provided by Liepmann, he had observed the build-up of ice about them, certain it would encroach further during the following night. Having taken the precaution of placing the largest stones he could find on the islet in the fire, he raked them out and with Castenada's help, succeeded in rolling them in a blanket and placing them in the punt between Quilhampton's legs.

'Insurance against freezing my assets, eh, sir?' joked Quilhampton as the boat bobbed with its forefoot still aground on the shingle beach.

After each gulping a slug of schnapps, Drinkwater and Castenada shoved off and clambered in, settling themselves for the long night ahead.

'Very well gentlemen,' Drinkwater said, leaning forward with his oar blades just above the water, 'are we ready to proceed towards England?'

'I am ready to go to España,' chuckled Castenada from the bow and Drinkwater exchanged glances of amusement with Quilhampton.

Drinkwater set himself an easy pace, knowing it was not difficult to row for many hours with a favourable current, but the cold attacked his legs at once, for they were not subject to the constant movement of his upper body. Quilhampton kicked his blankets aside below the extended furs and shared the warmth of the stones.

'I'm obliged to you, James.'

They could hear Castenada's teeth chattering and invited the surgeon to sample more schnapps until all that could be heard from the bow of the punt was a light snore.

'I'm sorry about your arm, James,' he said, tugging an oar clear of a pancake of ice that spun, ghostly, on the dark water.

'Having already lost half, the remainder don't come as so much of a shock,' Quilhampton jested feebly. They fell silent and Drinkwater knew Quilhampton was thinking of Catriona.

'How did you lose it?' he asked, seeking to divert his friend's tortured mind. 'I know it was in defence of the Tracker, but specifically?'

'Foolishness,' Quilhampton said, a grim chuckle in his voice. 'Like most precipitate acts, it was one of pure folly. I had engaged a big tow-headed Danish officer, hand-to-hand. The fellow had the reach of an octopus and I had to get inside his guard, and damned quickly. He came at me like the devil and thinking I had a subtle advantage, I put up my timber hand and parried his low thrust, at the same time twisting my trunk to extend my own sword. The fellow was quicker than I thought: he disengaged, cut under my false hand and ran his blade to the hilt, clean through my elbow.'

'What happened to him?' Drinkwater asked, curiously.

'He took Frey's sword at the end,' Quilhampton said miserably, relapsing into silence. After a while he too slept.

Drinkwater pulled steadily at the oars, looking over his shoulder from time to time. By now his night vision was acute and he could make out the odd feature on the nearer bank. At last he sensed the ebb ease, then the slack water and the first opposing thrust of the flood. He pulled closer to the shore, seeking the counter-current, determined not to seek a resting place until dawn.

The rhythmic exertion of his body lulled him and he allowed his mind to wander. He felt a surge of confidence in himself.

Now that the outcome depended solely upon his own efforts he felt a greater ease than he had enjoyed at the mercy of Thiebault and Liepmann, and even Captain Littlewood.

As for Hortense, he was certain now that she had not betrayed him. The papers that he felt stiff against his breast were genuine enough, and he recollected other facts to buttress her claims. He remembered Lord Dungarth telling him he had been in France twice, the same number of times Hortense had said she had met his lordship there. Moreover, Hortense had added that she had also seen Dungarth in England, a fact that might indicate she spoke the truth, for her English was flawless and she had lived there as an emigrée during the nineties.

It seemed that Dungarth had been right, all those years ago, in setting her free on the beach at Criel. If he had thought that having turned her coat once, she might do the same thing again, he had been proved correct.

Despite the desperation of their position, there were other considerations that gave him a ridiculous pleasure as he listened to the snores emanating from both ends of the punt. The squalid and shameful subterfuge he had embarked upon in Ma Hockley's whore-house in order to sow the seed in the informing ear of Mr Fagan, and the consequences of the Russian convoy and its near disastrous end on the island of Helgoland had at least achieved more than he had expected. The tale of British trade with Russia had been successfully carried to Custom House officers and a Prince-Marshal of the French Empire. That Hortense had joked about it was evidence enough that it would likely reach the ears of the Emperor Napoleon. He had, he thought, as he stared up at the star-spangled arch of the sky, every reason to be modestly pleased with himself...

The ice-floe was heavy and spun the punt round so that Drinkwater almost lost his starboard oar.

As he grabbed for it his arm was soaked to the elbow and the freezing water chilled him enough to make him gasp. A moment later the wildly rocking punt grounded and his passengers woke.

'God damn,' Drinkwater swore and easing a booted leg over the coaming, he tested the depth of the water. It took him twenty full, laborious minutes to work the punt back into navigable water, twenty minutes during which he discovered that Lord Dungarth's cast-off hessian boots, though of a fashionable style, let water damnably.

'I wonder,' he said in an attempt to restore the morale of his party after the incident, 'whether our Northampton manufactures are entirely waterproof?'

They holed up for the second day on a larger, lower islet than the first. It did not yield the same amount of dry wood and they spent a miserable day. Their only high spot was in getting Quilhampton on to his feet and making him dance about a little, supported between Drinkwater and Castenada.

'Who looks a damn fool now?' Drinkwater asked as, puffing and blowing, they eased the invalid back on to his furs. As the sun westered they plundered the diminishing stock of food in Liepmann's satchel.

As the time for departure approached, Drinkwater tried to search the river ahead, but he had no vantage point and, apart from discovering the main stream appeared to swing a little to the north-west, he gleaned little information.

They set out an hour before sunset. The ice in mid-river was more noticeable, and Drinkwater had frequent trouble with floes impeding the oars as he waited for the ebb tide. The punt bumped and spun violently at times, so that stifled grunts of pain came from Quilhampton. Castenada became increasingly silent as the desperation of their plight dawned upon his landsman's perception.

In the small hours they ran aground for the sixth or seventh time. Drinkwater got out and paddled, splashing round the punt, aware that as much ice as water lay underfoot.

It seemed colder than ever, the river running over a vast area of shallows which had frozen solid where pools had formed between the gravel ridges. Walking in a circle about the boat to the limit of the painter, Drinkwater discovered a section of shingle that rose two or three feet above the water. Returning lo the punt he ordered Castenada on to his feet and between them they manhandled first Quilhampton and then the punt out of immediate danger.

Casting about they discovered the ubiquitous supply of driftwood which proved sufficient to light a fire, though the effort expended with flint and steel tested Drinkwater's patience to the utmost.

'We must shield the fire glow from observation,' he said, indicating Castenada's cloak, 'I have no idea where we are, though the villages about Cuxhaven cannot be too far away now.'

In blankets, cloaks and furs they lay as close to the fire as they could. Shivering and miserable the three of them fell into a light sleep so that, after their exertions, dawn found them still unconscious.

The nightmare assailed Drinkwater shortly before dawn. It was an old dream, filled with the noise of clanking chains that might have been the sound of a ship's chain pump, or the fetters of the damned in hell. There was a woman's face in the dream, pallid and horrible, and she chanted dreadful words that he heard as clearly as if they were being whispered in his ear:

He could not make out whether or not it was the face of Hortense or Elizabeth, or some harpy come to warn him, but he woke to her scream and knew the dream for an old foreboding.

He was bathed in perspiration and felt a constriction in his throat presaging the onset of a quinsy.

The long scream dissolved into the unimagined reality of a distant trumpet note.

Drinkwater was on his feet in an instant, hobbling with cramp. He looked about them.

'God's bones!'

During the night they had become separated from the main stream of the river and he had pulled them unwittingly into an extensive area of shallows bordering the southern shore. The sand and gravel banks here gave way to marsh and reed bed, a landscape frozen solid, as was the water about them. Here were no comforting deep runs of moving water, instead the petrified glitter of acres of thick ice, of brittle, frosted reeds and ice-hardened, snow-covered samphire.

Beyond the marsh, not a mile away on rising ground that commanded a view of the river, stood a village, its church spire clearly visible. Drinkwater scanned the lie of the land further west. Roughly equidistant with the village a broad sweep of the Elbe ran inshore, separated from their present resting place by the ice.

Crouching low, his leg muscles tortured with the pain of cramp, he returned to the encampment.

'Wake up,' he hissed, shaking Castenada and Quilhampton. 'There are troops in a village not a mile away. Wake up!'

Drinkwater slung the satchel over Quilhampton's good shoulder and helped him to his feet. Then he and Castenada gathered up their coverings and the three of them hurried towards the punt. Stowing their belongings Drinkwater bent to the task.

'James, I want you to walk very slowly, testing the ice, ahead of us. Doctor, lift that damned bow ... the boat, man, the boat ...'

They broke the punt out of its bed of ice and began to slide it over the ice, negotiating the frozen reeds and finding the going easier as they moved away from the bank. They were within half a mile of open water when Quilhampton, tottering uncertainly, looked back. Drinkwater saw his jaw fall as he stared over their struggling shoulders. He turned his head, almost losing his footing on the ice.

'God's bones!'

'Dios!' Castenada crossed himself, an unconscious, instinctive gesture.

The cavalryman sat on his mount just below the village and watched them. Their suddenly increased exertion confirmed his suspicions. He wheeled his horse and cantered up the snow-covered incline, jerking the animal's head round again as he broke the skyline. Turning in his saddle, one hand on the rump of his horse, he appeared to be shouting to someone behind him, then he was facing them, and kicking his horse forward.

As he spurred towards them they saw the sunlight glint on the curved blade of his sabre.

CHAPTER 18 The Scharhorn

'James! Can you help?'

Quilhampton, pale from the effort of walking, nodded and took the painter in his right hand. Drinkwater motioned Castenada to the stern and fiddled with the toggled beckets that retained the quant pole alongside the coaming of the punt. Hefting it at its centre he pulled it clear and swung clumsily round, wheeling it as Castenada and Quilhampton ducked.

'Get moving!' he ordered, turning to face the horseman. In the wake of his struggling companions he backed along the scored ice with the painful slowness of retreat. The cavalryman was urging his nervous horse on to the ice. Somewhere behind him the shrill rapid notes of the alert cut through the bitter morning air. Letting one end of the long quant drop on to the ice, Drinkwater drew the pistol from his waistband, throwing his cloak back over his shoulders to leave his arms free.

The cavalryman had succeeded in getting his horse on to the ice and it skittered nervously, throwing up its reined-in head so that flecks of bloody foam flew from its mouth. Drinkwater waited, the advancing man clearly visible, the scarlet pelisse hooked to the neck, the overalls and the tall-plumed busby marking him as an officer of the horse chasseurs of the Imperial Guard. Drinkwater knew in his gut that it was Lieutenant Dieudonne.

At fifty paces Drinkwater lifted his pistol. The misfire clicked impotently in the clear air and he thrust the weapon back in his belt.

'Pox!'

He gripped the quant and lifted it across his body like a quarterstaff. The uneven weight of the thing made him unsteady on the ice and he slithered, recovering his balance with difficulty. He looked back. Quilhampton and Castenada seemed a long way away from him, but so did the water. With a dry mouth he confronted Dieudonne.

'Ah! Capitaine Boire l'eau, eh?' The man was grinning beneath the fierce moustaches as he kicked his reluctant mount forwards. The horse was angled in his approach, apprehensively rolling its eyes. Dieudonne's left hand held both reins tight and the poor beast's neck was arched by the restraint. Drinkwater saw Dieudonne was trying to pull the animal's head round in order to clear his sword arm for the line of attack.

Cautiously Drinkwater slid his feet forward. He knew he had one chance, and one only, for his weapon was too cumbersome to retrieve after a first thrust.

Dieudonne succeeded in getting the horse's head swung long before Drinkwater's improvised lance was within striking distance, but his cautious advance had closed the distance a little more than the Frenchman had reckoned on.

The charger, mouth foaming and teeth bared as it fretted on the bit, loomed over him. Drinkwater foreshortened his weapon and allowing himself to be carried by the inertia of its swing, flung himself forward, thrusting the lance not at Dieudonne, but at the animal's legs. At the same time Dieudonne leaned forward, cutting down over the crupper, the sabre whistling past Drinkwater's head as he slipped and fell headlong. The charger reared with a screeching neigh, lifting its front hooves clear of the ice.

For a moment it pawed the air in a furious attempt to keep its balance but its weight, bearing now on its hind legs, was too much for the ice. The sudden and ominous crack provided Drinkwater with the stimulus he needed to galvanize his aching muscles. As he rolled clear of the horse it reared still further. Caught off balance Dieudonne slipped sideways, lost his left stirrup and lurched towards Drinkwater. He attempted to recover his sword, which dangled from its martingale, but Drinkwater seized his wrist and pulled back with all his weight. With a crash, the ice gave way beneath the horse and it was plunging up and down, neighing frantically and tossing its head as the cold water struck its loins. The turmoil broke the ice further. Dieudonne floundered half in the water, desperately trying to keep in the saddle and recover the sword that had slipped from his wrist. Drinkwater retreated on to firm ice, then saw the chasseur's sabre lying between them, on the edge of the hole the plunging horse was enlarging every second in its terror. Drinkwater edged forward; with the toe of a hessian boot he caught the sabre and drew it from Dieudonne's reach.

'Sir! Sir!'

As he bent to pick up the gilt-mounted sabre, Quilhampton's voice impinged on his consciousness. He looked round. Castenada and Quilhampton had the punt poised on the ice-edge. Quilhampton was waving frantically for him to follow. Beyond Dieudonne's desperately struggling mount more men, on foot and carrying carbines or muskets, were advancing across the frozen salt marsh.

He looked again at Dieudonne. The man was up to his breast in water. The terrible shock of the cold was plain on his face.

'M'aider! M'aider, M'sieur, j'implore …!'

Drinkwater thrust the long quant pole across the hole. ' Votre amis attendez-vous,' he managed in his best French and turned away.

The ice grew dangerously thin at the water's edge, but Quilhampton and Castenada, by luck or foresight, had found a ridge of gravel and launched the punt from its farther limit.

'Get in!' Drinkwater gasped as he slipped and slithered towards them.

Quilhampton lay in the stern as he reached them. 'Give the Doctor your pistol!' he called and Drinkwater did as he was bid, tumbling into the punt and collapsing breathlessly on the single, centre thwart. He felt the punt lurch and roll as Castenada clambered in, the big horse pistol in one hand, the powder flask in the other. A musket ball buzzed past them, then another, and they heard the sharp cracks bite the still air.

'You have to row, sir,' Quilhampton was saying, rousing him. 'Neither I nor the Doctor can do it, sir! You have to row!'

Still gasping, Drinkwater realized that he had stupidly considered himself safe once he reached the boat, so great had been his concentration in dismounting Dieudonne.

He shipped the oars and spun the boat round. What he saw when he was facing the shore spurred him to sudden, back-breaking effort. Twenty or thirty dismounted hussars, some kneeling, some standing, were aiming their carbines at the retreating boat and he could see the innocent puffs of smoke as they fired, and then the skilful manipulation of cartridge and ramrod. Little spurts of water jumped up all round the boat and a section of the coaming disintegrated in a shower of splinters, one of which struck Castenada in the face. He let out a yelp and the punt was struck again while several balls leapfrogged across the river's surface like stones thrown by boys playing ducks and drakes.

Mercifully the tide was ebbing and swept them swiftly out of range. As he pulled away, Drinkwater could see a group of men go to the assistance of Lieutenant Dieudonne and the last he saw was his charger being hauled from the broken ice.

'Are we making water, James?' Drinkwater asked anxiously.

'No, I don't think so. We've one hole near the waterline, but we can plug that.'

'With what?'

'We'll try a piece of sausage, sir.'

And looking at his friend leaning outboard, his one good hand thrusting a long slice of Liepmann's wurst into a shot hole, he began to laugh with relief.

They ate the rest of the sausage by way of breakfast and Castenada dressed his own wound. He also expressed his anxiety about Quilhampton and the delay in drawing the ligatures from blood vessels, pointing to the high colour forming on the young man's cheeks.

'I'm all right, sir,' Quilhampton protested, 'never felt better.'

'You are light-headed, James, Doctor Castenada is right. You have lost a lot of blood and these present trials must be placing a strain upon you.'

'Fiddlesticks, sir, er, beggin' your pardon,' he added, and Drinkwater nodded silent agreement with Castenada. They did not have any time to lose.

The skirmish with Lieutenant Dieudonne had thoroughly alarmed Drinkwater, for Dieudonne had made a jest of his real name and it was impossible not to ascribe that knowledge to any source other than Hortense.

To divert his mind from the agony he felt in his arms and especially his shoulder, he tried to reason out her actions. Had she really betrayed him?

If she had done so immediately on her return to Hamburg, Dieudonne would have caught him napping in the bed at Liepmann's where, had she acted with malice aforethought, she could have had him bound and trussed as a spy.

Or had she given him time to get away and then denounced him, as though suddenly recollecting the identity of the man she had seen when brought before Davout? If so she played a bold game of double bluff.

To deceive the Marshal she could have pretended to fret and puzzle over the origin of that battered portrait. Having at last recognized the stranger in the Marshal's antechamber, what would be more natural than to seek an interview with him? She could then share her recollection and suggest the Englishman Drinkwater had come to Hamburg for almost any nefarious purpose she liked to fabricate!

Such an action would clear her own name and might restore her to the Emperor's favour and her husband's withheld pension.

Dieudonne catching up with them on the river bank was sheer bad luck, for Hortense had no way of knowing how long it took to drop a boat down the Elbe, while the fact that it was Dieudonne — an officer of an elite unit employed on missions of delicacy and daring — who was poking about the marshes east of Cuxhaven, argued strongly for the accuracy of Drinkwater's guesswork.

'Town ahead.' Quilhampton struggled into a sitting position, pointing. His words jerked Drinkwater back to the present. A single glance over his shoulder told him the place was Brunsbuttel, and the tortuously slow way in which features on the bank were passing them told its own tale: they would pass the town in broad daylight against a flood tide.

For a moment Drinkwater rested on his oars.

'Flood tide's away,' remarked Quilhampton.

'Aye.' Drinkwater thought for a moment, then said, 'That officer, I know who he is, James — no time to explain, but he wasn't just on the lookout for escaped prisoners like Frey and his men. He was looking for us. For me to be precise.' He began to tug on his oars again, inclining the bow of the punt inshore.

'I daresay the alarm's been raised on both banks, but word may not have reached Brunsbuttel yet that they are after three men in a duck punt. D'you see?'

'Because that scrap was on the south side of the river?'

'Si, si, that is right,' exclaimed Castenada from the bow.

'So we will pull boldly past Brunsbuttel and you, James, will lie down while you, Doctor, will wave if you see someone ashore taking an interest.'

'Wave, Captain, I do not understand ...'

'Like this,' snapped Quilhampton, waving his only hand with frantic exasperation.

'Ah, yes, I understand, wave,' and he tried it out so that, despite themselves, Drinkwater grinned and Quilhampton rolled his eyes to heaven.

There was less ice now, the salt inflow from the sea inhibiting its formation, although there were pancakes of the stuff to negotiate close to the shore.

Drinkwater pulled them boldly past the town. In the corner of a snow-covered field a group of cows stood expectantly while a girl tossed fodder for them. A pair of fishing boats lay out in the river half a cable's length apart, a gill net streamed between them. Their occupants looked up and watched the punt pull slowly past them. One of them shouted something and Castenada waved enthusiastically. The man shouted again and Castenada shouted back, revealing unguessed-at talents as a German speaker, for the fishermen laughed.

'What did you say?' Drinkwater asked anxiously.

'They ask where we go and I tell them to Helgoland for some food!'

'The truth is no deception, eh?' Drinkwater grunted, tugging at the oar looms. 'I did not know you spoke German.'

'In Altona it is of help to speak German and I speak already some English. When these men come from the English ship, I make my English better. I speak French too ...'

They were almost past Brunsbuttel when Drinkwater caught sight of the sentry. The bell-topped shako of a French line regiment was familiar to him by now. Perhaps he stared too long at the fellow, or perhaps the soldier had been attentive during his pre-duty briefing, but Drinkwater saw him straighten up and stare with interest at the boat.

'Hey! Arrête! Halte!' The sentry's voice carried clearly over the water, but Drinkwater pulled on as the man unslung his musket and aimed it at them. He seemed to have second thoughts, his head lifting, then lowering again as he sighted along the barrel. Just then an officer ran up and the man raised his gun barrel to point at the escaping punt. When he at last fired they were out of range and the ball plopped harmlessly into their wake.

'Dios!' said Castenada crossing himself.

'James,' asked Drinkwater when he was certain they were clear, 'about south-west of us, somewhere on the larboard bow, can you see the Kugel beacon at Cuxhaven?'

'I see it!' said Castenada, pointing ahead.

Quilhampton raised himself and nodded. He seemed flushed again. 'Yes, yes, it's there all right.' He slumped back amid the furs.

'Very well,' Drinkwater went on, suppressing his anxiety over Quilhampton's deteriorating condition. 'That is where they will intercept us. Dieudonne — that officer — is bound to raise the alarm there. There ain't a black-hulled Dutch cutter in sight, is there? She's a big Revenue Cruiser ...'

He stopped rowing and looked round himself, for Quilhampton appeared to be asleep. Castenada was staring at the horizon. 'I do not see any ships, Captain ...'

Drinkwater touched his arm and pointed anxiously at Quilhampton in the stern.

The doctor frowned and shook his head. 'He is not good.' Castenada made a move as though to rise and pass Drinkwater, but Drinkwater shook his head.

'No, no, Doctor, you will have us over ... listen, I think I may have an idea ...'

He rowed on, occasionally glancing over his shoulder. After a while Castenada asked, 'Where is this idea, Captain?'

'Ahead of us, Doctor, a secondary channel I recall from the chart, to the north of the Vogel Sand. We do not have to pass close to Cuxhaven and it is not many hours until dark now.'

'You would like more food?'

'Yes, and the last of that wine unless you want it for him,' he nodded at Quilhampton.

'No, it is better for you now. We are near the ocean, yes?'

'Yes.'

'And Helgoland is not far?'

'Far enough,' said Drinkwater grimly.

The end of the short winter's day came prematurely with an overcast that edged down from the north. Once the sun was obscured the leaden cheerlessness circumscribed their visible horizon. More snow began to fall. Their only consolation was that they were safe from pursuit, but this had its corollary in that they could see nothing.

The ebb came away at last and Drinkwater and his companions devoured the last of the food. All they had left was a mouthful of schnapps each, which they determined to preserve. The question of where their next meal was coming from no one mentioned.

Drinkwater was reasonably certain that they had entered the secondary channel north of the New Ground which led past the Vogel Sand, but beyond that he had no idea where they were in the darkness.

They had been nearly ten hours in the punt without being able to stretch their cramped limbs and this, combined with the cold, the aches of old wounds and general fearfulness reduced their spirits to rock bottom.

To make matters worse Quilhampton was sliding in and out of consciousness and relapsing into fever. Castenada was silent, a man of undoubted courage, thought Drinkwater, but nonetheless profoundly regretting his impetuous action in joining them.

For his own part Drinkwater was suffering from a severe quinsy, the chronic pain in his distorted shoulder and the debilitating effects of having plied the oars for three days. He had no real idea where they were and, worn out with worry and exertion, he dozed off.

He woke with Castenada shaking him. The punt was aground, the pale loom of a sand hummock seemed almost totally to surround them.

'It must be low water,' he muttered, dragging himself with difficulty from the seductive desire to sleep. He had a faint notion that to sleep was to be warm ...

'Is this Helgoland?' Castenada asked, and the ridiculous question finally dragged an unwilling Drinkwater back to his responsibilities.

'No ... no, it ain't Helgoland, though I'm damned if I know where it is.'

With a tremendous effort he drew back the furs over his legs and forced himself to crouch. The silk stockings he wore as gloves were barely adequate to keep the cold from paralysing his hands, but somehow he levered himself so that he could swing his feet over the side.

The hessian boots leaked immediately and the freezing sand gave beneath him. He knew that at the tideline, where the water still drained from the recently uncovered sand, it was not dense enough to support any weight. Higher up though, where the sand had dried, it would bear and he floundered as quickly as he could through the dragging quicksand, taking the painter with him. He found firmer footing and dragged the punt as high as he was able, until Castenada joined him and, with Quilhampton's weight in the stern, they got it higher still.

The bare sandbank yielded no fuel but the movement restored their circulation. The pain of returning feeling was intense, beyond imagination, so that they both crouched apart on the sand, sobbing uncontrollably until it eased and they were able to act together again.

'Dios,' muttered Castenada speaking for both of them. 'Never, not the pain of the stone, nor sear of the brand can compare with that!'

When they had recovered, Drinkwater said, 'We must leave Quilhampton his furs, Doctor, but you and I must give up two of ours.'

'I do not understand.'

'We have fifteen leagues yet to go, across the open sea. The boat is not suitable: she is too low. If there is any wind the water will come in ...'

'Ah, yes, I understand. You need furs to cover ...' Castenada made draping gestures over the well of the boat with his hands.

'Yes, like an Eskimo's kayak, then we have a good chance. You will have shelter underneath.'

They found a long eel-line stowed in the forepart of the boat and with this and the skilleting knife they fashioned covers and passed lashing beneath the hull. Despite the risk of incoming breakers, Drinkwater decided to brave the rising tide. He knew that the tides were neap and hoped the bank they had landed on might not cover at all. If it looked like doing so they might have to make a portage to its eastern side and launch from there. Besides, he thought to himself, accepting the cogent argument of the only certainty, he was lost and he needed daylight to get his bearings.

He was certain afterwards that had they spent that night in the Elbe, fire or no, they would have perished. Their bodily reserves were almost exhausted and the cold of a land frost would undoubtedly have killed them. As it was the surrounding sea mitigated the temperature and this helped sustain them until they faced another bleak dawn.

The tide was already rising and they had to drag the punt higher and higher several times. The eel-line did not part and they decided prudence dictated they launch on the side of the bank away from the incoming breakers. They were low enough, but both men were anxious to avoid getting wetter than was absolutely necessary.

At the first light Castenada peeled off Quilhampton's dressing and sniffed the stump. Drinkwater waited for his diagnosis. He knew the slightest whiff of putrefaction signalled Quilhampton's inevitable death. His heart beating, Drinkwater bent over the exposed wound, shielding it from the cold as Castenada tugged the ligatures. Quilhampton stirred, opened his eyes and grunted as Castenada, with an appreciative hiss, drew the ligatures cleanly.

'I think his fever is not so much from this,' said the surgeon, replacing the lead acetate dressing, 'as from this ...' He nodded about them. Quilhampton was asleep again. 'He is strong but,' Castenada clicked his tongue and shook his head, 'one more night ... I don't know.'

The wind came up with the sun, a northerly breeze that kicked up vicious little waves and produced the low grumble of surf on the shoal.

Drinkwater knew the advancing tide would shortly cover their retreat and told Castenada they would have to make a move. Crossing himself the Spaniard nodded. They pushed the punt into the water and, wet to the knees, struggled aboard. Immediately the difference in their circumstances was obvious. They were no longer borne on the smooth, dark bosom of the Elbe; now they faced the open sea. It was more difficult to row and they realized very soon that they would make little progress under oars.

Drinkwater caught a glimpse of a distant beacon. He was certain that it was not the Kugelbacke at Cuxhaven, but could not remember how many beacons there were in the outer estuary, and though he recalled some on Neuwerk he could see no sign of the island. The beacon lay to the southward of them, and it seemed that during the early part of the night, just before they had grounded again, the ebb had carried them through one of the gullies that cut into the Vogel Sand, so that they had travelled south instead of west.

All that grey forenoon Drinkwater kept the frail craft hove-to with the northerly wind on the starboard bow and the flood tide setting them back into the Elbe.

They were too low in the water to see anything beyond the wave caps lifting on a horizon less than two miles away. Once they saw a buoy and Drinkwater tried desperately to reach it so that they could secure to it and await the ebb but the strength of the tide was against him and he was compelled to give up and it was soon lost to view. Then, some time towards noon, the sky began to clear again and the wind backed into the north-west and freshened, cutting up a rough sea that threatened, with the turn of the tide in their favour, to get far worse.

Two hours later Drinkwater lost an oar. Stupidly he watched it drift away, unable to do anything about it. Castenada said nothing. He was prostrated with sea-sickness, vomiting helplessly over the fur cover so that the wind bore the sharp stench to even Drinkwater's stupefied senses.

The punt lay a-hull, rolling its way to windward and at the same time being blown south. Darkness found them aground again, no more than a few miles from their starting-off point, having made good a course of west-south-west.

Castenada and Drinkwater floundered carelessly ashore. Their only thought was for Quilhampton and it occurred to Drinkwater in a brief moment of lucidity that they were wasting their time: Quilhampton was going to die because they were incapable of saving him.

They sat shivering on the punt listening to the delirious ramblings of their charge whilst they shared the last of the schnapps.

'In the bull-fight,' Castenada said, 'they watch to see if the bull makes a good death.'

Drinkwater nodded sagely and said, 'Scharhorn ... this is the Scharhorn sand ...'

He was pleased with himself for remembering the chart, and grinned into the darkness.

'That is not a good name,' said Castenada.

Drinkwater never had any recollection of the succeeding hours until waking to the grim thunder of breakers. The noise reverberated through the very sand upon which he lay and it was perhaps this appeal to his seaman's instinct that roused him from a slumber intended by nature to be his last. But this may not have been the only cause of his awakening, for a large, predatory herring gull had already drawn blood from his cheek and his sudden movement sent the bird screeching into disgruntled flight.

He sat up. It took him several minutes to fathom out his whereabouts and how he came to be lying exposed on the Scharhorn Sand. He cast about him and spotted Castenada, some distance off, and Quilhampton lying as though dead in the punt. Just beyond his friend, the white mist of spume rising over incoming breakers finally goaded him to action. The sudden fear of drowning overcame the pain of movement. He got to his feet and began to hobble towards Castenada. He tried shouting, but his quinsy and the schnapps he had drunk before his collapse made his throat dry. He began to feel the first tortures of severe thirst.

And then he saw it: not half a furlong distant, rising from the sand on a framework of massive timbers, the Scharhorn beacon.

CHAPTER 19 Refuge, Rescue and Retribution

Acting Lieutenant Frey stood beside Lieutenant O'Neal on the heeling deck of the twelve-gun cutter Alert. From time to time he went forward, levelled a battered telescope and scanned the horizon. It was broken at two points: by the Vogel sand to the north and the Scharhorn to the south. Beyond the Scharhorn lay the low island of Neuwerk with its stone tower and beacons. The crew of the alarm vessel marking the entrance of the River Elbe — technically the enemy — waved cheerfully as the heavily sparred cutter with its huge gaff mainsail carried the wind and tide on her daily reconnaissance into the estuary. The deck-watch on the Alert waved back.

Frey walked aft again and shook his head.

'Nothing?' asked O'Neal in his Ulster accent.

'Nothing,' said Frey disconsolately.

'We'll take the tide up as far as Cuxhaven,' O'Neal said encouragingly.

The incoming tide had covered the Scharhorn Sand by the time Drinkwater had got Castenada and Quilhampton up on to the massive beacon. The heavy baulks of timber tapered to a platform halfway up, access being provided by a ladder so that during the summer months carpenters from Cuxhaven could repair the ravages of the winter gales. Above the platform the structure rose further, culminating in a vertical beam of oak about which, in the form of a vast cage, the distinctive topmark was constructed.

The effort of gaining the safety of the beacon cost them all dear. The three of them lay about the platform as though dead, and it was more than an hour before coherent thoughts began to stir Drinkwater's fuddled brain from the lethargy of relief at having found a refuge. He began to contemplate the bleak acceptance of eventual defeat. He knew death was now inevitable and thirst more than cold and exposure was to be its agent. They were still reasonably well provided for against the cold, having salvaged all the furs and blankets from the punt. Damp though they were, the furs provided a windbreak and some means of conserving their body heat. They were already thirsty and the task of dragging Quilhampton and their own unwilling bodies up the beacon made it worse.

It was not long before Drinkwater could think of nothing other than slaking his burning throat. His tongue began to feel thick and leathery, and his head ached. The more the desire for water increased, the more fidgety he found he became, fretting irritably, moving about and eventually standing up, clinging shakily to an upright and staring wildly round about them. He could see to the east the low island of Neuwerk with its tower and beacons, and beyond it the masts and yards of two or three anchored ships. Slowly, almost uncomprehendingly, he swung his red-rimmed eyes to the north.

The cutter was about two miles away, its mainsail boomed out as it ran east into the mouth of the Elbe. With despairing recognition he took it for the Dutch customs cruiser. Only after a few minutes did he realize the cutter had no lee boards, that the stem was ramrod straight, not curved, and the long running bowsprit was of an unmistakably English rig. He had been deceived! The foreshortened mainsail had given the impression of having the short narrow head of Dutch fashion, but this was no Netherlander, this was a British naval cutter, and now he could see the blue ensign at her peak as she passed on her way upstream toward Cuxhaven.

Hope beat again in his breast.

'They haven't gone up river yet, then,' said O'Neal, standing beside the two men leaning on the Alert's tiller and nodding at the three ships anchored in Neuwerk Road.

'No,' said Frey, 'and that bodes no good for Captain Drinkwater.'

It was common knowledge at Helgoland, now that Littlewood had brought back the Ocean and the Galliwasp and Frey and his men had arrived in a stolen sailing barge, that a grand deception had been carried out against the French. It had never been Drinkwater's intention that all the ships of the abandoned convoy should be used to deceive the enemy. Under the terms of the agreement with Thiebault, they were to have gone only as far as Neuwerk, there to await the release of Ocean and Galliwasp, a tempting surety for the good behaviour of the French.

Drinkwater's failure to appear; the complications arising from the appearance of Tracker's, survivors and unbeknown to Nicholas, Hamilton and Littlewood at Helgoland, the temporary interdiction on trade imposed by Thiebault as a result of Davout's arrival, meant that the ships had remained anchored off Neuwerk under enemy guns.

O'Neal studied them through his glass. 'The Yankee colours are all flying hauled close-up,' he observed, the precaution of having them fly their American colours on slack halliards having been adopted as a secret signal that things were not well on board.

A tiny puff of white smoke appeared on the island and a ball plunged into the sea two cables on their starboard bow. The ritual shot had been fired at them every time they sailed into the estuary, but providing the cutter's reconnoitring sorties did no more than establish the emptiness of the river, they were otherwise unopposed. After an hour when they were well within sight of the Kugel beacon and the lighthouse at Cuxhaven, O'Neal shook his head. 'Damn all!'

'Aye ...'

O'Neal raised his voice. 'Stand by to put about! Heads'l sheets there! Mainsheet! Bosun, stand by the running back-stays!' He waited for his crew to run to their stations, then ordered, 'Down helm.'

With a brief thunder of flogging canvas the Alert came round to larboard, passed her bowsprit through the wind and paid off on the starboard tack.

'Now she'll feel the wind,' said O'Neal as the course was steadied and the sheets were hove down hard. Regular showers of spray rose over the weather bow and O'Neal studied a shore transit he had noted.

'She's lee bowing it,' he remarked, 'ebb's away already.'

Drinkwater never took his eyes off the distant cutter and the moment he saw her turn he descended to the platform from the upper part of the beacon from which he had been watching her. Ignoring Castenada's half-witted protests Drinkwater gathered up the blankets. He wished he had the means of making a fire, but all thought of coaxing a spark from the sodden horse pistol lock was, he knew, a waste of time.

Laboriously climbing the beacon he sat and joined the blankets, corner to corner, then streamed the improvised flag from as high as he could reach, managing to catch a knotted corner of his extempore hoist in a crack in the timber topmark. The distress signal flew out to leeward, a stained patchwork of irregular shape.

Drinkwater leaned his hot and aching head on the weathered oak of the Scharhorn beacon, closed his eyes and hoped.

Frey saw the signal, staring at the beacon for a few seconds before he realized the distortion to its topmark. His heart skipped as he raised the glass and caught in its leaping lens the flutter of the blankets.

'D'ye see there?' he pointed. 'Distress signal! Port Beam!' 'Down helm! Luff her, haul the stays'l sheet a'weather!' O'Neal responded instantly to Frey's shout. 'Where away?' he asked, as soon as the Alert had come up into the wind, lost way and fallen off again, neatly hove-to and edging slowly to leeward.

'There, sir! On that damned beacon!'

'Very well. Get the stern boat away. You take her Frey, and mind the ebb o' the tide over that bank!'

Drinkwater saw the boat bobbing across the water towards the beacon. For a moment he stood stupidly inactive, his eyes misting with relief. With an effort he pulled himself together and stiffly descended again to the platform dragging the lowered blankets after him.

He tried waking the others but his throat was swollen and the noise he made was no more than an ineffectual croak. His head hurt and he found he could do little except watch the boat approach, his body wracked by shuddering sobs.

He had mastered his nervous reaction by the time Frey reached him, but it took him some time to recognize his former midshipman.

'Mr Frey? Is that you? You succeeded then, eh?' Drinkwater's voice was barely more than a whisper.

'Are you all right, sir?' Frey asked, his face showing deep concern at Captain Drinkwater's appearance. He waved for reinforcements from the boat and by degrees Quilhampton was lowered into it, bruised by further buffeting to his battered frame. Awkward and stumbling, Castenada and Drinkwater finally succeeded in getting aboard, and they began the journey back to the cutter.

The sea ran smooth over the bank, but where the retreating tide flowed into the channel a line of vicious little breakers briefly threatened them. At Frey's order the oarsmen doubled their efforts and they broke through the barrier to the open water beyond. Shortly afterwards they bumped alongside Alert's black tumble-home. Hands reached down and dragged Drinkwater and Castenada up on to the cutter's neatly ordered deck. A strange officer confronted Drinkwater, his hand to the forecock of his bicorne hat.

"Tis good to be seein' you at last, sir,' he said smiling. 'We've been beatin' up and down for days now, lookin' for you. O'Neal's the name, sir.'

'I'm very much obliged to you, Mr O'Neal, very much obliged,' Drinkwater croaked. 'Mr Quilhampton here needs a masthead whip to get him aboard ...'

Drinkwater could remember nothing after that, nothing at least beyond slaking his inordinate thirst and finally sinking into the sleep of utter exhaustion.

Lieutenant James Quilhampton woke to the sound of the wind. Above his head he could see exposed rafters and the underside of rattling tiles. The wind played among the cob­webs that strung about the rough, worm-eaten timbers, giving them a dolourous life of their own, an effect heightened by the leaping shadows thrown by a pair of candles that guttered somewhere in the room.

Quilhampton shifted his head. The 'walls were white­washed, or had been a long time ago. Now flakes of the distemper curled from the damp walls and patches of grey mould disfigured the crude attempt at disguising the stone masonry. He located the candles on a table at the foot of his narrow bed. A man was asleep at it, head on hands, his face turned away. A long queue lay over the arm upon which his head rested. The hair was dark brown, shot with grey, and tied with a black ribbon.

Quilhampton frowned. 'Sir? Is that you?'

Drinkwater stirred and looked up, his face gaunt, the old scar and the powder burns about his left eye prominent against the pale skin.

'Aye, it's me.' Drinkwater smiled, yawned, stretched and hauled himself to his feet. He kicked back his chair and came and stood beside Quilhampton.

'More to the point, James, is that you?'

'I'm sorry ...?' Quilhampton frowned.

'You've been talking a lot of drivel these last few days, I wondered — we all wondered — whether you were lost to us.'

'Where am I?' Quilhampton's eyes roved about the room again.

'Safe. You're on Helgoland, in the old Danish barracks ... No, no, don't fret yourself, they ain't Danish anymore. They're the property of His Majesty King George ...'

'King George ... yes, yes, of course, foolish of me.'

'And you ain't to worry about that court martial, my dear fellow. I've been taking sworn affidavits from Frey and your people.'

Quilhampton nodded. 'That's most kind of you, sir.' He managed a wan smile. 'It's a pity you made me write to Mistress MacEwan pressing my suit.'

'Why?'

'I'll have to write again ... she'll not want a man who hasn't —'

'I can't answer for Mistress MacEwan, James,' Drinkwater broke in, unwilling to allow his friend to subject himself to such morbid thoughts, 'but I'm damned if I'll have you considerin' such things until you're up and about. Castenada said if you got over the secondary fever, you had a fair chance of walking within a month. We'll make all our decisions then, eh?'

'You'll stay here for a month, sir?'

'Just at the moment, James. There's a March gale roaring its confounded head off out there, so we have precious little choice!'

Hearing the reassuring words, Quilhampton nodded and closed his eyes. He did not hear the note of impatience in Drinkwater's voice.

'I do not think I shall have any difficulty in persuading the Governor, my dear sir,' said Nicholas smiling at Drinkwater, 'none at all.'

'Very well. We need to conclude the matter, and as long as those three ships lie in limbo off Neuwerk ...'

'Quite so, quite so,' Nicholas eyed the glass and its contents before passing Drinkwater the glass of oporto. 'Despatched by the Marquis of Wellesley, Canning's replacement at the Foreign Department,' he said with evident satisfaction, 'doubtless a tribute to his brother's successes in the peninsula ...'

'And of his approbation at your, or am I permitted to say our, little achievement?' asked Drinkwater, raising the glass.

'Ah, sir, you mock me.'

'A little, perhaps.'

'Your good health, Captain.'

'And yours, Mr Nicholas.'

They sipped the port in unembarrassed silence, Drinkwater still studying the chart spread out before them, and in particular the Scharhorn Sand surrounding the island of Neuwerk. He wanted to return, to lay the ghosts of the Elbe that still haunted his dreams and to release the three transports from their anchorage under the French guns before Davout's proposed absence from Hamburg encouraged M. Thiebault to order them up the Elbe.

They were the ships that were to have stood surety for Thiebault's bond, the guarantee that he and Gilham and Littlewood would retire downstream, paid and unmolested. They and their crews had waited patiently until Drinkwater's release, expecting their 'recapture' daily, but a series of strong westerly winds and vicious gales had postponed the operation until the end of March.

'Of course you may not find things as easy as you assume, Captain,' Nicholas said guardedly.

'What d'you mean, sir?'

'While you were ill, two boats got off. One brought a secret despatch from Liepmann. He had it on good authority ...'

'Thiebault?' enquired Drinkwater quickly.

Nicholas shrugged. 'Presumably, but there were what he called inexplicable rumours of a rift between Paris and Petersburg that were of a sufficiently serious nature as to suggest war was being contemplated, at least in Paris.'

'Good Lord! Then we succeeded better than I imagined; but how does this affect the meditated attack?' He flipped the back of his hand on the chart.

'It is also reported, Captain, that reinforcements have arrived in Hamburg, to wit, Molitor's Division, about nine thousand strong. Cuxhaven has received a reinforcement, so has Brunsbuttel ...'

'The westerlies will have kept reinforcements from Neuwerk as surely as they have mewed us up here, I'm sure of it.'

'I trust you are correct, Captain, but I would be guilty of a dereliction of duty if I did not appraise you of the facts.' Nicholas held out the decanter. 'Another glass, and then we'll go and see Colonel Hamilton.'

'Very well, Mr O'Neal,' Drinkwater called to the dark figure looming expectantly at the Alert's taffrail, 'you may cast us off!'

The huge, quadrilateral mainsail of the cutter, black against the first light of the April dawn, began to diminish in size as the Alert drew away from the four boats she had been towing. They bobbed in her wake while their crews settled themselves at their pulling stations.

'Mr Browne?' Drinkwater called.

'All ready, sir,' replied the old harbour-master.

'Mr McCullock?'

'Ready, sir,' the transport officer called back.

'Mr Frey?'

'Ready, sir.'

'Line ahead, give way in order of sailing.' Drinkwater nodded to the midshipman beside him. 'Very well, Mr Martin, give way.'

'Give way toooo-gether!'

The oar looms came forward and then strong arms tugged at them; the blades bit the water, lifted clear, flew forward and dipped again. Soon the rhythmic knocking of the oars in the pins grew steady and hypnotic.

Involuntarily Drinkwater shivered. He would never again watch men pulling an oar without the return of that nightmare of pain and cold, of ceaseless leaning and pulling, leaning and pulling. He recalled very little detail of their flight down the Elbe, almost nothing of the desperate skirmish with Dieudonne on the ice or the struggle to get Quilhampton into the comparative shelter of the Scharhorn beacon. What was indelibly etched into his memory was his remorseless task at the oars, which culminated in his stupidly losing one and nearly rendering all their efforts useless.

He kept telling himself the nightmare was over now, that he had paid off the debt he owed fate and that he had received a private absolution in receiving Quilhampton back from the grave. But he could not throw off the final shadows of his megrims until he had released the three transports and all their people were safely back in an English anchorage.

He turned and looked astern. In the growing light he could see the other three boats. Two — McCullock's and Browne's — were the large harbour barges, one of which had welcomed them to Helgoland when Galliwasp had run on the reef, the third was the Alert's longboat and the fourth a boat supplied by the merchant traders, commanded by Frey and manned by the vengeful remnants of Tracker's crew. A handful of volunteers from the Royal Veterans commanded by Lieutenant Dowling were deployed among the boats.

Drinkwater led the column in Alerts longboat. Wrapped in his cloak, Drinkwater stared ahead, leaving the business of working inshore to Mr Midshipman Martin, a young protege of Lieutenant O'Neal's. He was aware of O'Neal's anger at being displaced from the chief command of the boat expedition, pleading that the matter was not properly the duty of a post-captain. But Drinkwater had silenced the Orangeman with a curt order that his talents were better employed standing off and on in support.

'You can run up the channel in our wake, Mr O'Neal, and blood your guns, provided you fire over our heads and distract the enemy from our intentions,' he said. Remembering this conversation he turned again. The big cutter had gone about and was now working round from the position at which she let go the boats and ran up towards Cuxhaven. O'Neal had brought her back downstream and would soon shift his sheets and scandalize his mainsail, ready to creep up in the wake of the boats, into the anchorage off Neuwerk.

'See 'em ahead, sir!'

The lookout reported the sighting from the longboat's bow in a low voice and Drinkwater nodded as Martin repeated the report.

He could see them himself now, their masts and yards clear against the pale yellow sky. They lay at anchor in line.

'Lay us alongside the headmost ship, Mr Martin if you please.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater felt a worm of fear writhe in his belly. He was almost glad to feel again the qualms that beset every man before action, the fear of death and loneliness, no matter what his situation, how exalted his rank, or how many of his confederates crowded about him. It was a familiar feeling and brought a curious, lop-sided contentment, infinitely preferable to the anxieties of a spy. He eased his shoulders under the cloak and plain, borrowed coat. He was still not in uniform, but there was no longer any doubt about who and what he was.

They were seen by an alert guard aboard the transport Anne, a French guard put aboard by order from Hamburg with the object of securing the defecting British ships against the moment when Marshal Davout either relaxed his embargo on trade or decided to inspect a distant corps. His shout stirred an already wakening anchorage and the bugler on Neuwerk, about to sound reveille, blew instead the sharp notes of the alarm.

'Put your backs into it!' roared Drinkwater, exhorting his men; they might yet arrive with some of the advantage of surprise. He swung round at Martin as the midshipman put his tiller over to take a wide sweep around the Anne. 'Keep straight on, damn it!'

They heeled as Martin corrected his course and pulled past the first of the anchored ships. A single musket ball struck the boat's gunwhale, but they were past before the sentry had a chance to reload.

There was more activity aboard the Hannah but she too was astern before damage could be done to them. The Delia lay ahead now, already swinging to the wind as the flood tide that had brought them reached the brief hiatus of high water.

Suddenly pinpoints of yellow fire sparkled along the Delia's rail. Musket balls struck the longboat and sent up the spurts of near misses all about them. In the centre of the boat a man was struck in the chest. He let go his oar and upset the stroke.

His convulsion of agony came with gasps of pain and with thrashing legs he fell from his thwart. There was a moment's confusion as his trailing oar was disentangled, then order was restored.

'A steady pull, lads,' called Drinkwater, relieved now the action had started. 'Five more good strokes and we'll be alongside.'

With the exception of the centre thwart where the mortally wounded man lay cradled in his mate's arms, the men plied their oars vigorously, knowing they had a few seconds before the French reloaded.

'Stand-by forrard!' shouted Midshipman Martin. 'Hook on!'

The Alert's longboat bumped against the side of the transport Delia.

'Boarders away!' Drinkwater bawled, standing in the wildly rocking boat as most of her crew leapt up and reached for the main chains. He heaved himself up with cracking arm muscles, kicked his feet until he found a foothold, then drew himself up on to the platform of the chainwhale. He saw the dull gleam of a bayonet, got one foot on to the Delia's rail and drew the hanger Hamilton had lent him. The infantry officer's weapon was light as a foil, but the clash with the heavy bayonet jarred him. He was clutching a shroud with his left hand and he let his body swing, absorbing the impact of the sentry's lunge. Disengaging his blade, he jabbed at the man's face. Instinctively the soldier drew back and Drinkwater flung himself over the rail and down on to the deck.

He was still weak from the ague he had succumbed to after the rigours of his escape and he landed awkwardly, his legs buckling beneath him, but others were about him now and the guard retreated aft, looking round for support from his confederates who were tumbling up from below in disordered dress. There were less than a dozen of them, but they were led by an officer, an elderly man with a bayonet scar sliced deep into his cheek. He gave a curt order and the muskets came up to the present.

'Charge!' Drinkwater bellowed, recovering his footing and running aft amid the fire of muskets and pistols. As his men came over the rail they discharged their firearms simultaneously with the enemy. There was a moment of flashes, cracks and buzzing, the cries of wounded men and then the two sides clashed together in hand-to-hand fighting.

The grizzled infantry lieutenant shuffled forward with the cautious confidence of the old warrior. He feinted with his heavy sword and Drinkwater felt the weight of it with a foolish, unnecessary parry. The Frenchman whipped his blade away, cut over Drinkwater's sword and lunged, at the same time slicing the blade of his weapon.

Had Drinkwater not held Hamilton's hanger his recovery would have been too late, but he was cool now, he had passed through the veil of fighting madness that had drawn from him the superfluous parry. He half turned, cannoned into another body, and in the second's respite had shortened his sword arm and jabbed the hanger with all his strength.

The French officer fell against him with a terrible gasp and Drinkwater recoiled, the man's body smell, mixed with the warm reek of blood, filling his nostrils. The French officer's sword clattered to the deck, the man dropped to his knees, then fell full length. Hamilton's hanger blade snapped off and Drinkwater was left stupidly holding the hilt and three inches of the forte.

Somebody lurched into him, he swung, confronted Martin and realized the thing was accomplished. The handful of Frenchmen remaining on their feet threw their muskets on the deck in token of surrender. Five of their fellow infantrymen lay dead or severely wounded, sprawled across the hatch and deck, and although one of their attackers writhed in noisy agony and three lay dead from their first volley, it was the death of their officer which persuaded them that further resistance was useless.

'Where are the crew?' Drinkwater snarled. 'Ou est les matelots Americaines?'' The Frenchmen pointed at the gratings covering the after hatchway.

'Get 'em out, Mr Martin!'

One of the sentries stepped forward and began to speak rapidly. Drinkwater could not understand a word but the meaning of the man's request was clear: to be left on Neuwerk, not taken prisoner.

'Put 'em under guard, Mr Martin!' He turned to the men scrambling out of the 'tween deck. 'Where's the master?'

'He's hostage ashore, sir.'

'God's bones! What about the mate?'

'Here, sir!'

'Get her under way. Cut your cable and make sail, the tide's just on the turn and the Alert cutter is in the offing! Mr Martin, get those prisoners in the boat, then —'

Drinkwater's order was lost in the boom of a cannon and a crash amidships where the ball struck home. Drinkwater ran to the rail, raised his hands and shouted at the adjacent vessel, 'Hannah ahoy! Have you taken the ship?'

'Aye, sir, an' we've eight prisoners!' That was Browne's voice.

'Send 'em over in your boat, d'ye hear?'

A second and third crash came from the battery ashore but Drinkwater doggedly continued his conversation. 'Have you word from the Anne?

'A moment, Cap'n!'

Browne turned away so that Drinkwater could not hear what he said, but a faint call from the farthest ship was, he thought, Frey's voice. It was almost full daylight now and he could see a man standing in the Anne's rigging.

'That you there, sir?' Browne too was visible at the Hannah's rail.

'Aye?'

'She's taken. They've eight men too.'

'Where's McCullock's boat?'

'Here sir, just come from the Anne to confirm Browne's report. We've the three o' them in the bag, sir.'

'Not yet we haven't. I'm not leavin' those Masters ashore. Do you pick up all the prisoners and follow me. All your men load their pieces. I'm going in to parley.' He turned and shouted orders at Martin then, seeing the mate of the Delia had a man hacking at the anchor cable with an axe and had the transport's main topsail in its clewlines he scrambled after Martin down into the longboat. A ball plunged into the water close to Browne's barge into which his prisoners were being forced and which still lay alongside the Hannah.

In the longboat, facing the downcast French guard from the Delia with musket and fixed bayonet, sat a private of the Royal Veterans.

'Be so kind as to lend me your ramrod,' Drinkwater requested, holding out his hand, fishing with the other beneath his own coat-tails. Drawing a white handkerchief from his pocket, Drinkwater knotted it about the private's ramrod.

Having gathered together the three boats loaded with the disarmed French, Drinkwater waved his improvised flag of truce and ordered Martin to pull inshore. From a low breast­work the flash and smoke of cannon fire continued, the scream of the shot passing overhead was followed by the thunder of the discharge rolling across the water. The noise of the shots hitting or falling short came from astern, only to be answered by the crack of Alert's light six-pounders.

Drinkwater turned in alarm. O'Neal had worked his little ship well into the anchorage and already the Anne had escaped past the cutter which was drawing up towards the Hannah and the Delia. Both vessels had hoisted their false, American colours, a shrewd though quite useless attempt to deter the artillerymen ashore. But Drinkwater had observed from the fall of O'Neal's shot that having mistaken their purpose, that zealous officer was directing his own cannon at the three boats pulling quickly towards the island.

'God's bones!' Drinkwater blasphemed, turning to Martin, 'Stand up, man, he might recognize you if he's looking, and wave this damned flag!'

The next moment the three boats were lost amongst a welter of splashes as shot from both sides plunged into the sea around them. An oar was shivered with an explosion of splinters and then, as if comprehension dawned simultaneously upon the opposing gunners, fire ceased and the boats emerged, miraculously unscathed, except for the loss of the single oar.

A few moments later, as with canvas flogging O'Neal tacked the Alert and stood slowly seaward again, Drinkwater's bout led close inshore.

'Here,' he said, seizing the flag of truce from the shaken Martin, 'I'll take that now.'

Drinkwater stood up and braced himself. 'Very well, Mr Martin, that'll do.'

'Oars!' ordered the midshipman. The tired seamen brought their oars horizontal and bent over the looms, leaning on their arms and gasping for breath. The other boats followed suit and the three of them glided closer to the beach. Drinkwater could see the shakoed heads of artillerymen above the island's defences.

'Messieurs,' Drinkwater cried in his appalling French, 'donnez moi les maitres des vaisseaux Americaines. J'ai votre soldats ... voire amis pour ...' he faltered, and added 'exchange!'

A discontented murmur rose momentarily among the pris­oners before Drinkwater snuffed it out with a harsh, 'Silence!' For a minute nothing happened, then an officer scrambled over the low parapet of the breastwork. They watched him walk, ungainly and bowlegged, through the sand of the fore­shore towards the tideline.

Drinkwater nodded at the man who had disclosed the whereabouts of the Delia's crew. 'Vous parlez, m'sieur ...' he commanded.

After a few moments of animated conversation between the two men, in which several other prisoners attempted to intervene until Martin suppressed them, the officer tramped back up the beach, leaning in through an embrasure. A further wait ensued. Looking seawards, Drinkwater saw that O'Neal had brought the Alert round and the cutter's large bowsprit again pointed at Neuwerk as she stood inshore once more.

'I hope Mr O'Neal has a man in the chains, Mr Martin,' Drinkwater observed, indicating the approaching cutter, 'we can't afford to have him aground now the tide's fallin'.'

Martin screwed up his eyes and stared at his ship. 'I can see a leadsman, sir.'

Drinkwater grunted. 'Your eyes are better than mine.' He turned his attention back to the beach; the artillery officer was returning. At the water's edge he stopped and nodded, the plume of his shako bobbing.

'D'accord ...'

'Run her ashore, Mr Martin,' Drinkwater said, sitting down as he saw the first of the British masters emerging through the embrasure. 'Not a bad morning's work, eh? Squares our account, in a manner of speakin'.'

CHAPTER 20 Outrageous Fortune

'So,' said Lord Dungarth, drawing the stoppers, 'we somewhat gilded the lily did we not? Oporto or Madeira?'

Drinkwater poured the bual and passed the decanters to Solomon. The Jew gracefully declined and returned them to their host.

'Insofar as my sojourn amongst the stews of Wapping was concerned,' said Drinkwater, pausing to sip the rich amber wine, 'yes.'

'It was essential to contact Fagan,' Dungarth said, 'though your interview with Marshal Davout clinched the matter. There was no harm in dissembling at the lowest level ...'

'It was without doubt the very nadir of my self-esteem, my Lord. I'd be obliged if future commissions were of a less clandestine nature. A ship, perhaps ...' Drinkwater deliberately left the sentence unfinished.

'A ship you shall have, my dear fellow, without a doubt, but first a month or two of the furlough you have undoubtedly earned by your exertions.'

'I shall hold you to that, my Lord, with Mr Solomon here as witness.'

They smiled and Dungarth sent the Madeira round again. 'I have taught you the business of intrigue too well.'

'It is not a type of service I warm to,' Drinkwater said pointedly. 'However, from what Nicholas reported was said at Hamburg, we succeeded.'

'Oh, you succeeded, Nathaniel, beyond my wildest hopes.' Dungarth's hazel eyes twinkled in the candlelight and it was clear he was withholding something. Drinkwater felt mildly irritated by his Lordship's condescension. He was not sure he had endured the ice of the Elbe to be toyed with, cat and mouse.

'May I enquire how, my Lord?' he asked drily. 'I presume from the papers Madame Santhonax ...'

'I shall come to those in a moment. But now we have heard your story there is much we have to relate to you. Pray be patient, my dear fellow.' Dungarth's arch tone was full of wry amusement and Drinkwater, made indulgent by a third glass of bual, submitted resignedly.

'Your chief and most immediate success,' Dungarth resumed, 'lies with Fagan. His office as a go-between was discovered by Napoleon and used to compromise Fouche. The ignoble Duke of Otranto, by his bold initiative in raising an army to confront us on the Scheldt, has ably demonstrated that the French Empire may easily be usurped. Alarmed, his Imperial Majesty, having discovered Fouche had sent an agent to London, took Draconian action. The agent was Fagan. He arrived here last week. Before the week was out Fouche had been dismissed!'

'A malicious and fitting move by the Emperor,' said Solomon raising his eyebrows and nodding slowly. 'Almost proof that Bonaparte knew it was Fagan who first reported a trade opening between London and St Petersburg.'

Dungarth barked a short laugh. 'An engaging fancy,' he said, 'and knowing Nathaniel has a misplaced belief in these things, there is something else I should tell him, something more closely concerning his person.'

'My Lord ...?'

'You mentioned the widow Santhonax ...' Dungarth said pausing, 'and Isaac says you spoke of her at his house, intimating she might be behind my, er, accident ...'

'Dux femina facti,' prompted Solomon.

'What of her, my Lord?' Drinkwater asked impatiently, suddenly uncomfortable at this mention of Hortense. 'I have related all that passed between us at Hamburg and Altona. Whether or not she finally informed on me, I have no way of knowing. Why else was Dieudonne so placed to intercept us?' He sighed. 'But I am also of the opinion that she gave me what she considered was time enough to make good my escape.'

'I incline to your conjoint theory, Nathaniel,' Dungarth said, suddenly serious, his bantering tone dismissed. 'It is almost certain that she now enjoys some measure of the Emperor's favour, perhaps because Napoleon has divorced Josephine and married the Austrian Archduchess Marie-Louise. Doubtless he wishes pliable Frenchwomen to surround the new Empress, for the beautiful widow has been appointed to the Empress's household.'

'No doubt Talleyrand approves of the arrangement,' Drinkwater observed, 'but what of the papers she passed to me? If we are correct she took an enormous risk. Were they false?'

'Not at all! She is a bold woman and clearly placed great reliance on your own character. In fact they were proposals from Talleyrand himself, concerning the future constitution and government of France, proposals that he wishes me to lay before the cabinet and M'sieur Le Comte de Provence, [Later Louis XVIII after the Bourbon restoration and at this time resident in England] on the assumption that the days of Napoleon are numbered ...'

'And that if Fouche can achieve what almost amounts to a coup d'etat, then others can too.' Drinkwater completed Dungarth's exposition.

Dungarth smiled. 'Yes. Either with an assassin's dagger or another campaign.'

'A Russian campaign, for instance,' added Solomon, drawing a folded and sealed paper from his breast.

It surprised Captain Drinkwater that St Peter's church was so full. The good people of Petersfield had certainly turned out en masse for the occasion. They shuffled and stared at him as he led Elizabeth and their children up the aisle.

Pausing to usher his children into the pew he cast his eyes over the congregation. Curious faces disappeared behind unstudied prayer books and mouths gossiped in whispers under the tilted brims of Sunday bonnets. He suppressed a smile. Many of the assembly had come out of devotion to his wife and her friend, Louise Quilhampton, whose efforts in starting a school for the children of the townsfolk and farm labourers had finally earned the formal approval of the Church of England.

Drinkwater nodded at the gentry settled on their rented benches and followed young Richard into the pew. A woman opposite in an extravagant hat smiled amiably at him and, after a moment, he recalled her as the bride's aunt with whom he had once shared a journey in a mail coach. Richard, the down of adolescence forming on his upper lip, wriggled beside him and he put a restraining hand on the boy's knee. His son looked up and smiled. He had forgotten Richard had Elizabeth's eyes. Beyond him, Charlotte Amelia was nudging her brother, handing him a hymn book in which she indicated the number of the first hymn.

'I know,' the boy whispered, picking up his own copy. Drinkwater looked over their heads and caught his wife's eye. She looked radiantly happy, smiling at him, her eyes misty.

He smiled back, his mind suddenly — disloyally — filled with a vision of Hortense looking at him in the intimacy of Herr Liepmann's withdrawing room. Was he the same man? Had that event really occurred? He could no longer be sure, knowing only that he had thought of her intermittently ever since the conversation at Lord Dungarth's when his lordship had imparted the knowledge that the widow Santhonax was a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Marie-Louise. Nor did circumstances allow him to forget her, for had not the newspapers made much of the fire at the Austrian Ambassador's grand ball? Held by Prince Schwarzenberg in honour of the Imperial wedding, the festivities had been ruined by a disastrous fire in which the prince had lost his sister-in-law and others had been killed or maimed.

He found himself unable to shake off the conviction that Hortense had had some part to play in the dreadful event.

He was rudely recalled to the present by the viols and the cello screeching and groaning at one another as the orchestra tuned up. Then the general muttering swelled and heads turned as the groom and best man marched in. A satisfied murmur greeted Quilhampton and Frey who were resplendent in the blue, white and gold of full dress and strode in step, the muted click of sword hangings accompanying their progress to the chancel. The left cuff of Quilhampton's dress coat was stitched across his breast. He exchanged glances with his mother, Louise, who sniffled worthily into a cambric handkerchief. Drinkwater thought of tying a white handkerchief to a ramrod and waving it above his head.

The rector made his appearance and slowly the noise from the congregation subsided as they waited for the bride.

Quilhampton looked back towards the porch and Drinkwater marked the pallor of his face. He still bore the marks of his ordeal and appeared as drawn as he had during his court martial. Mercifully, it had been a brief affair held aboard the Royal William at Portsmouth. Drinkwater had occupied his time on Helgoland in securing sworn statements about the handling of His Majesty's brig Tracker and had drawn up a defence for the judge-advocate to read to the court. He had prevailed too, upon Lord Dungarth, to minute the Admiralty to note on the court's papers that the brig had been employed upon a 'special service'.

Quilhampton's surrendered sword had been returned to him with the court's warmest approbation, but James's smile of relief had been wan, as though other matters weighed more heavily upon his mind. Perhaps it was the verdict of his bride he most dreaded, Drinkwater thought, watching him turn anxiously towards the porch.

Catriona MacEwan entered on the arm of her uncle. She was a tall, striking young woman with a mane of red-gold hair piled under her flat bonnet and a dusting of not unbecoming freckles over her nose. The necks of the congregation craned as one, and the sigh of satisfaction was audible as she caught sight of the thin, awkward man at the far end of the aisle and smiled.

The orchestra sawed its way into sudden life, joined by the congregation. 'Rejoice, the Lord is King ...' they boomed, 'Your Lord and King adore ...!'

'Dearly beloved,' the rector intoned, 'we are gathered together in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony ...'

'I hope they will be happy.'

'Yes.'

'They deserve it, after so long a time.'

'Yes.'

'It has been a long time for us too, my dear, far too long.'

'I know ... I ...' Drinkwater faltered, looking at Elizabeth as she sat on her side of the bed. She waited for him to finish his sentence, but he shook his head. He had been home a week but they were finding great difficulty in renewing their intimacy; both of them were guarded and uncertain, wrapped in their own diverse worlds and avoiding each other by pleading the unspoken excuse of preparations for Quilhampton's wedding. There was so much to say that Drinkwater felt the task quite beyond him.

'I keep thinking we are different people now.' she whispered, holding out her hand to him and drawing him down beside her.

'Yes, I know. So do I ...'

Perhaps that was a starting point; they had that much in common ...

He had to tell her, had to tell her everything; about all that had happened in the forests of Borneo; of his dark forebodings and the impossibility of seeing her when he had returned from the Indies; about the pathetic eagerness with which he had embraced Dungarth's secret mission and how it had misfired; how the Tracker was surrendered and Quilhampton lost his arm; of the whore Zenobia and the Jews, Liepmann and Solomon. He wanted to tell her of the meeting with Davout and the execution of Johannes; but most of all he wanted to tell her about Hortense ...

Long after they had found each other again he lay awake while Elizabeth slept beside him. He knew he could never share all of these things, that they were his own soul's burden and that he must bear them silently until his death.

Listening to his wife's gentle breathing, he thought perhaps it did not greatly matter. In time, providence balanced all accounts.

Tomorrow he could share with her what he knew would please her. It struck him as perversely ridiculous that he had delayed telling her, but the moment had never seemed right. Besides, it had taken him some time to grasp the significance of the contents of Isaac Solomon's document, the paper passed to him after dinner the night he and the Jewish merchant had dined with Lord Dungarth.

It was an outrageous quirk of fortune that the gold should have realized so much. Sold and shrewdly invested by Solomon in a mysterious speculation, it had realized almost three thousand pounds. He had become, if not a rich man, a person of some independence.

The strange parcel arrived by the hand of an Admiralty messenger. Drinkwater thought at first it was a chart and, for fear of upsetting Elizabeth with so early a receipt of orders, took it aside and opened it privately. The oiled wrapping peeled back to reveal a familiar roll of canvas, the edges of which were frayed. He recognized it instantly. With a beating heart he unrolled it. The paint crackled and flakes lifted from its abused surface.

Its appearance shocked him from a far greater disfigurement than mere neglect: down the side of the painted cheek, from ear to chin, the beautiful face was ruined by a deliberately applied brown stain.

With a shaking hand Drinkwater picked up a small sheet of paper that fell from the centre of the roll. It was in Lord Dungarth's hand and was undated.

My Dear Nathaniel,

The Enclosed comes from Paris via Fagan. It seems the Lady was Disfigured in the Fire at the Austrian Ambassador's Rout. He was Asked to Ensure you Received it.

Dungarth

Drinkwater stared at the smeared mark. It was dried blood.

'God's bones,' he whispered, placing the roll of canvas in the grate. Fetching flint and steel he lit a candle and, squatting down, applied the flame to the corner of the portrait. The oil locked in the paint ignited and crackled with a volley of tiny explosions as the flames licked up the frayed strands, laying a smear of soot over the poor, ruined face. Standing, Drinkwater watched it burn until only a charred heap of ash lay at his feet.