Beneath the Aurora Read online

  BENEATH THE AURORA

  Mariner’s Library Fiction Classics

  STERLING HAYDEN

  Voyage: A Novel of 1896

  BJORN LARSSON

  The Celtic Ring

  SAM LLEWELLYN

  The Shadow in the Sands

  RICHARD WOODMAN

  The Darkening Sea

  Endangered Species

  Wager

  The Nathaniel Drinkwater Novels

  (in chronological order):

  An Eye of the Fleet

  A King’s Cutter

  A Brig of War

  The Bomb Vessel

  The Corvette

  1805

  Baltic Mission

  In Distant Waters

  A Private Revenge

  Under False Colours

  The Flying Squadron

  Beneath the Aurora

  The Shadow of the Eagle

  Ebb Tide

  BENEATH THE AURORA

  Richard Woodman

  This edition published 2001

  by Sheridan House Inc.

  145 Palisade Street

  Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522

  www.sheridanhouse.com

  Copyright © 1995 by Richard Woodman

  First published in Great Britain 1995 by

  John Murray (Publishers) Ltd

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Sheridan House.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Woodman, Richard, 1944-

  Beneath the Aurora: a Nathaniel Drinkwater novel/

  Richard Woodman

  p.cm. —(Mariner's library fiction classics)

  ISBN 1-57409-102-6 (alk. paper)

  1. Drinkwater, Nathaniel (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

  2. Great Britain—History, Naval—19th century—Fiction.

  3. Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815—Fiction.

  4. Norway—Fiction.

  I. Title. II. Series

  PR6073.0618 B46 2001

  823’ .914—dc21

  2001034837

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 1-57409-102-6

  For Rozelle and Dick Raynes

  and their ships

  Martha McGilda and Roskilde

  Contents

  PART ONE: A DISTANT TREACHERY

  A Person of Some Importance

  1 A Lucky Chance

  2 A Secret from the South

  3 Arrivals

  4 Departures

  PART TWO: A PORTION OF MADNESS

  5 A Most Prejudicial Circumstance

  6 Typhus

  7 Utsira

  8 A Bird of Ill-omen

  9 The Wings of Nemesis

  10 Friends and Enemies

  11 The Enemy Within

  12 The Flag of Truce

  13 Failure

  14 A Measure of Success

  15 The Fortune of War

  16 To the Victor, the Spoils

  17 The Return

  The Frost Fair

  Author’s Note

  PART ONE

  A Distant Treachery

  ‘We may pick up a Marshal or two,

  but nothing worth a damn.’

  WELLINGTON

  A Person of Some Importance

  September 1813

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘This is different,’ Clarke said darkly, ‘ ’e ain’t French, ’e’s Italian.’

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

  ‘Are you now,’ said Sparkman ‘and what proof . . . ?’

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

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

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

  ‘Signor, please, these men . . .’

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

  ‘At Flushing. I was told take a passenger . . .’

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

  ‘A man has to feed his family, Sparkman, and these are hard times . . .’

  ‘Never mind your damned excuses. Who approached you?’

  ‘A man who has arranged this kind of business before.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Aye, and avoid the gallows by it!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Aye, sir, ’tis a bad night, and . . .’

  ‘Be so good as to stand aside!’ Sparkman exploded.

  ‘What about payment for the room?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Captain Clarke, Mr Sparkman.’

  ‘Damn you for an insolent dog, Clarke . . .’

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER 1

  September 1813

  A Lucky Chance

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