The Shadow of the Eagle Page 2

  ‘Indeed, indeed. Somerset, what…’

  Only Birkbeck the master and the second lieutenant, Frey, had been in the fight in the Vikkenfiord, and the prince had heard of neither. Drinkwater rather formed the impression that His Royal Highness thought both Marlowe and Lieutenant Ashton, who was known to one of the prince’s suite, had both covered themselves with glory in the capture of the Odin.

  Perhaps it had been sour grapes on his, Drinkwater’s part, perhaps it had galled him to be so ignored. He had said as much to the Impregnable‘s flag-captain Henry Blackwood. Years earlier, in September 1805, it had been Blackwood in the frigate Euryalus, who had relieved Drinkwater in the Antigone, from the inshore post off Cadiz. A letter in Blackwood’s own hand had ordered Drinkwater into Gibraltar and led ultimately to his capture and presence aboard the enemy flagship at Trafalgar.[1]

  ‘He is a harmless enough fellow,’ Blackwood said charitably. ‘When he was a midshipman, they used to call him “Pineapple Poll” on account of the shape of his head. Sometimes I’m damned if I think he is capable of a sensible thought, but then he’ll surprise you with a shrewd remark and you wonder if he ain’t fooling you all the time. The trouble is nobody says “boo” to him and he loves the sound of his own voice. He should have been given something useful to do instead of kicking his heels at Bushy Park with La Belle Jordan. He daren’t bungle this little adventure, but at the same time regards it as beneath his real dignity.’ Blackwood concluded with a chuckle.

  ‘That must make life difficult for you,’ Drinkwater had sympathized.

  Blackwood shrugged and smiled. ‘Oh, it won’t last long. The poor devil hasn’t been to sea for so long he scarce knows what to do, but when he makes his mind up to do something, he thinks he’s a second Nelson.’ Blackwood had laughed again, his face a curious mixture of exasperation and amusement.

  Next morning, the boats of the squadron, each commanded by a lieutenant, had brought off King Louis and his suite from Dover. The reverberations of the saluting cannon had bounced off the white cliffs and the ramparts of the grey castle as flame and clouds of smoke broke from the sides of the allied men-of-war. Simultaneously, the ramparts themselves had sparkled with the fire from a battery of huge 42-pounders, so that the thump and echo of their concussion danced in diminuendo between the wooden sides of the assembled ships. Bunting had fluttered gaily in the light breeze, augmented by the huge white standard which rose to the main truck of the Royal Sovereign as the king boarded her. Of imperturbable dignity, King Louis was of vast bulk and still suffering from an attack of gout. Too fat to climb the side, he had been hoisted aboard in a canvas sling, followed by the Duchesse d’Angoulême and other ladies. Meanwhile the seamen in the adjacent ships had manned the yards and cheered lustily, though more at the prospect of shortly being paid off, Drinkwater had suspected, than of respect for the royal personage.

  That was undoubtedly true of his own men; what of the French aboard the Polonais? After a generation of ferment and opportunity, what were their private feelings? Perhaps they would accept the return of the Bourbon tyranny as the price for peace. As for the Russians, well, who knew what the Russians thought?

  The thin rattle of snare drums and the braying of trumpets had floated over the water as the echoes of the guns died away. From the quarterdeck of Andromeda the impression given at a distance was of a seething, glittering ants’ nest, and Drinkwater had sensed a mood of envy suffusing his own young officers, as though their own presence on the distant yacht would have guaranteed their individual ambitions.

  As for himself, was it age that made him relieved that he had not had to pander to the king and his court? He had caught the eye of Lieutenant Frey, the only one of his commissioned officers with whom he had formerly served, and who had recently endured a court-martial from which he had been honourably acquitted. Perhaps the rueful look on Frey’s face had spoken for all the foiled aspirations of his young peers; the embarkation of the dropsical and gouty monarch marked the end of the war and thus terminated the gruesome opportunities war presented to them; perhaps, on the other hand, the sensitive Frey was regretting his late commander, James Quilhampton, could not share this moment. The thought pricked Drinkwater with so sharp a pang of conscience that something of it must have shown on his face, for Frey had crossed the deck smartly.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly, thank you, Mr Frey,’ Drinkwater had said as Marlowe and Ashton turned at the sudden movement. Dizzily, Drinkwater waved aside their concern.

  ‘I thought for a moment, sir,’ Frey had observed, lowering his voice, ‘you were unwell.’

  ‘No, no.’ Drinkwater had smiled at Frey. ‘I thought of Mr Q, Frey, and wished he were here to share this moment with us.’

  Drinkwater had regretted his confidence the instant he had uttered it, for the shadow had passed over Frey too, and he had shivered, as if it had suddenly turned cold. ‘Amen to that, sir.’

  For a moment both men had thought of the cutter Kestrel, the action she had fought off Norway, and the death of Lieutenant James Quilhampton. It had been the abandonment of her battered hulk for which Frey, as senior surviving officer, had stood trial.

  ‘Come,’ Drinkwater had remarked encouragingly, ‘let us not debar ourselves from some pleasure on this momentous occasion.’

  ‘I think we have already survived the momentous occasions,’ Frey said quietly, his eyes abstracted. ‘This has an air of hollow triumph.’

  Drinkwater had been moved by this perceptive remark, but his private emotions were cut short by Marlowe’s sudden comment that a signal was being run up the Impregnable‘s flag halliards and Birkbeck the master had then hove alongside him, muttering presumptuously that it was the signal to weigh.

  Now, in the late afternoon of 24 April, they were well within sight of Calais. To the southward the chalk lump of Cap Gris Nez jutted against the sky; closer the gentler, rounder and more pallid Cap Blanc Nez marked the point at which the French coast turned east, becoming flat and, apart from the church steeples and towers, featureless as it stretched away towards Dunquerque and the distant Netherlands. The little fishing village of Sangatte was almost abeam as the squadron breasted the first of the ebb tide and carried the breeze which had freshed during the day. An hour, an hour and a half at the most, would see them bringing up to their anchors in Calais Road.

  Drinkwater examined the roadstead ahead of them, then lowered his glass; he looked once more at the irregular formation of the squadron. It was, as Marlowe had said, a pretty sight.

  ‘Flag’s signalling, sir …’

  Drinkwater’s attention was diverted by the necessity of obeying the signals of His Royal Highness. As they came up towards Calais, the cannon of the squadron boomed out in yet another round of salutes, impressing upon the fishermen and townsfolk that the dangerous days of republican experiment and alternative, bourgeois monarchy, were dead.

  ‘Sir, may I formally present Captain Drinkwater?’

  Blackwood’s introduction had an ironic content, since he had met the Duke of Clarence the previous afternoon, but the scene in the great cabin was stiff with formality and Drinkwater made his obeisance with a well-footed bow. Apart from the Jason‘s captain, he was the last of the allied commanders to be presented. The prince appeared to notice him as an individual for the first time. Drinkwater was some four years the prince’s senior, his long grey-brown hair clubbed at the nape of his neck, the scarred cheek and faint blue powder burns on the lean face with its high forehead marking him as a seasoned officer.

  This seemed to surprise Prince William Henry, whose genial, full-lipped and rubicund, pop-eyed features broke into an affable grin as he studied the taller post-captain.

  ‘Well Drinkwater,’ he almost shouted, ‘what d’ye think of Andromeda?’

  ‘She’s a fine ship for her class, sir,’ Drinkwater remarked.

  ‘She’s good enough to have taken the Odin, ain’t she, eh what?’

  ‘Indeed, s
ir …’

  ‘Drinkwater … Drinkwater … Ah-hah! I have it! Ain’t you the fellow that took a Russian seventy-four in the Pacific?’

  ‘Captain Drinkwater makes a habit of taking superior ships, sir,’ Blackwood put in, bending to the royal ear and lowering his voice, ‘but it might be tactless to mention it this evening sir.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ boomed the prince, ‘I recall, ‘twas the Suvorov, what, what?’ Drinkwater caught Blackwood’s eye and saw the Impregnable‘s captain roll his eyes resignedly at the white painted deck-beam over his head. ‘Well, well, we’re allies now, eh, damn it. And now the war’s over, so ‘tis all history, eh what?’ The prince looked round beaming, as though he had just carried out a major diplomatic coup and Drinkwater was aware of two officers in the dark green full dress of Russian captains, standing stiffly, their bicorne hats tucked beneath their elbows.

  ‘But you didn’t do that in Andromeda, eh?’

  ‘No sir, the razee Patrician …’

  ‘So what the devil d’you do in the Andromeda, sir? Are you a jobber, or what?’

  Despite a supreme effort at self-control, Drinkwater felt himself colouring at the prince’s tactless imputation, unaware of the bristling of his fellow officers, manifested by a slight shuffling of feet and a stir as they waited for the presentations to cease and the conversation to become general.

  Mercifully, Captain Blackwood was equal to the occasion, ‘Captain Drinkwater is a most experienced cruiser commander, sir, he was off Cadiz with me, and Nelson had especially picked him for the Thunderer, but he could not get out from Gibraltar before the action.’

  ‘By God, Drinkwater, that was damned bad luck, what? Picked by Nelson, eh? Wish to God I’d been, instead of being left to rot on shore! By Heaven there’s no justice in the sea-service, damned if there is, eh, what?’

  The moment of embarrassment passed, the insult turned neatly by Blackwood without the need to reveal Drinkwater’s long association with special services, by way of an explanation why so senior a post-captain had yet to tread the quarterdeck of a line-of-battle ship, and why he commanded an obsolescent thirty-two gun frigate that should rightfully have been broken up. Drinkwater moved thankfully aside, leaving young Maude of Jason to His Royal Highness’s mercy. As he moved aside, the bubble broke and conversation rose about him like a tide. Perhaps, he thought, taking a glass from a silver tray borne by a pig-tailed and stripe-shirted steward, it had been simmering all the while.

  ‘We are neighbours at table, Captain Drinkwater,’ said an austere, hollow-eyed man in the plain blue coat with the red collar and cuffs of an Elder Brother of the Trinity House. ‘May I introduce myself? Captain Joseph Huddart, late of the Honorable Company’s service.’

  ‘Nathaniel Drinkwater …’ The two men shook hands and lapsed into small talk, moving eventually to sit amid the glittering silver and glass of the Duke of Clarence’s white-napered table. Drinkwater’s other neighbour was a Russian, the captain of the forty-four gun frigate Gremyashchi. He spoke a thick English. Try though he might, Drinkwater had difficulty understanding anything beyond three references to the Suvorov and these, he deduced, were far from complimentary. After a few moments, the Russian turned to his farther neighbour, the French captain of the Polonais who, after a few exchanges, leaned forward and asked Drinkwater in faltering English:

  ‘Capitaine Rakov, he ask if you are English officier who capture Russian ship Suvorov?’[2]

  Drinkwater looked from the French officer to the Russian. Rakov was watching him closely.

  ‘I am,’ he replied, holding the Russian’s gaze. Rakov muttered something, then turned pointedly away and settled to natter in French to the Russian on his left. Drinkwater fell into easy conversation with Huddart, whose bald head and wispy side drapes of hair hid an astute and enquiring mind. They talked of many things, discovering mutual acquaintances from Drinkwater’s brief period in China, his escort of a convoy of the Company’s East Indiamen and from his earlier service aboard Trinity House buoy yachts. In this vein the evening passed very pleasantly until at last, the prince, having called upon Blackwood to propose the first toast to his royal father, initiated a succession of these in which, at least so it seemed, every crowned head in Europe was thus honoured.

  Eventually His Royal Highness prevailed and made some general remarks about his sensibility to the honour of commanding an allied squadron at this happy time of peace, alluding to the restoration of legitimate monarchy in France. He related an anecdote of the king, whom he had escorted ashore earlier in the day.

  ‘His Majesty,’ said the prince, perspiration and the tears of emotion upon his florid cheek, ‘upon landing on the sacred soil of his native land, embraced the Duchess of Angoulême and said, “I hold again the crown of my ancestors; if it were of roses, I would place it upon your head; as it is of thorns”,’ and here the sweating prince waved his hand above his head,’ “it is for me to wear it.” Most moving gentlemen, most moving, what?’

  A murmur of loyal assent ran round the table.

  ‘It seems our Billy has learned a thing or two from La Belle Jordan, remarked Huddart drolly, referring to the prince’s former mistress who was also a renowned actress.

  ‘Well gentlemen,’ resumed their host, ‘the merchant and the mariner have now nothing other than the dangers of the elements to encounter, what? And so the prosperity of their pursuits is by consequence more probable, don’t you know. What! And therefore I propose a final toast to the sea-services!’

  Like the preceding bumpers, they drank this final one sitting down, their faces perspiring from the heat of the candles, the warmth of their conversation and wine. To Drinkwater, chatting amiably to Huddart in the full flush of drunken fellowship, the prospect of peace, of retirement from the demands of active service and all its alarums, risks and hazards, seemed as rosy as the face of Admiral of the Fleet, His Royal Highness, the Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence and Earl of Munster.

  And just as fulsome.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nicodemus

  25 April 1814

  Drinkwater could not sleep. He had dined too well and drunk too deeply; moreover he was of an age now that precluded enjoying a full night’s sleep and sometime late in the middle watch he irritably entered the starboard quarter-gallery and squatted inelegantly on the privy.

  The dark shapes of the anchored squadron were pin-pricked by points of light, where the poop lanterns glowed and ashore a pair of glims marked the entrance to Calais port. Beneath him Andromeda lifted to a low ground swell and this motion caused her ageing fabric to creak in a mild protest. She was worn out with service. After the pounding she had taken in the action with the Odin she would have been better employed as a hulk, or even broken up. It was ironic that now, at the conclusion of hostilities, and in recognition of her last service attending upon kings and princes, she was fully manned. It was a rare experience for Captain Drinkwater to command one of His Britannic Majesty’s cruisers which had a full complement, even after twenty years of war!

  He sighed, contemplating the passage of time and feeling not only the ache of his tired body, but a morbid apprehension at his own mortality. He thought often now of death, almost daily since the loss of his friend and sometime lieutenant, James Quilhampton. He felt James’s passing acutely and had assumed responsibility for the younger man’s widow and child, but the impact upon his own spirit had been severe. He held himself wholly to blame for Quilhampton’s death; it was an illogical conclusion. Nathaniel Drinkwater had murdered those whom events cast as enemies of his king and country without remorse, seeing in their deaths the workings of providence, but James’s death had been attributable to his following orders, orders that had been given by Nathaniel Drinkwater himself.

  ‘Damn the blue-devils,’ he muttered, banishing his gloomy thoughts. He was about to duck through the door into the cabin when he noticed the boat. It was a dark shape and attracted attention by the slight gleam of phosphorescence at its bow an
d the pallid flashes of the oar-strokes. He thought at first it was a guard-boat, but its movement lacked the casual actions of a bored crew. Moreover, it had curved under the stern of their nearest neighbour, the Jason, and was heading directly towards Andromeda. Something about the purposeful approach disturbed Drinkwater; his apprehension about death was displaced by something more immediate. Was this another of His Royal Highness’s ridiculous jokes? He could not imagine any other reason for the night’s tranquillity being disturbed now that His Most Christian Majesty had been landed upon his natal shore to claim the crown restored to him by the grace of Almighty God, the bayonets of the Tsar and the Royal Navy of Great Britian.

  From the greater vista of the stern window in the cabin, Drinkwater could see the boat holding unwaveringly to its course towards Andromeda.

  ‘Bound to be orders, confound it,’ he muttered, unaware that talking to himself was becoming habitual. ‘Damn and blast the man!’ he swore, pulling the night-shirt over his head and reaching for his breeches. Above his head he heard the faint sound of the marine sentry at the taffrail hail the approaching boat. He kicked his stockinged feet into the pumps he had worn aboard the Impregnable earlier that night and peered again through the stern windows. He could see the boat clearly now, the faint gleam of her gunwhale crossed by the moving oar looms. The synchronized swaying of her oarsmen chimed its rhythm with the surge of the phosphorescent bow-wave as the boat dipped and rose slightly under their impetus. He sensed as much as saw these resolved dynamics, a perception born of a lifetime at sea, subconscious in its impact on his intelligence. His conscious mind, compelled to wait for an explanation, briefly diverted itself by a recollection of his wife Elizabeth, whose wonder at first seeing phosphorescence in the breakers running up on the shingle strand of Hollesley Bay had given him a profound pleasure.

  ‘You must have seen so many wonders, Nathaniel,’ she had said, ‘while I have seen so very little of life.’