The Shadow of the Eagle (13 page)

He had little doubt Marlowe, a man of good birth and social pretensions, was infected with an extreme consciousness of rank and position that coloured all his actions and prevented the slightest exercise of logical thought concerning what he would call his ‘inferiors’. There was a growing sensibility to it in the navy, an infection clearly caught from the army, or society generally, and something which Drinkwater heartily reprehended. Men stood out clearly in rank, without the need to resort to arrogance.

Drinkwater grunted irritably. Whatever the cause of Marlowe’s disagreeableness, the man was a damned lubber! In tune with this conclusion, Frampton came in to clear the table and Drinkwater leaned back in his chair, toying with the stem of his wine glass.

‘There’s some fine duff, sir.’

‘Thank you, no, Frampton.’

‘Very well, sir,’ Frampton sniffed.

‘Oh, damn it, Frampton, did you prepare it yourself?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Very well then, but only a small slice,’ Drinkwater compromised.

Frampton vanished, then brought in a golden pudding liberally covered with treacle. ‘God’s bones, Frampton, would you have me burst my damned breeches, eh?’

‘It’ll do you no harm, sir. You should keep your nerves well covered.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ Drinkwater commented drily. He picked up fork and spoon and was about to attack the duff when another thought occurred to him. ‘Frampton, would you ask the sentry to pass word for Mr Marlowe.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘You sent for me, sir?’

Marlowe swayed in the doorway, the flickering light of the bulkhead glim playing on his features, giving them a demonic cast which somehow emphasized the fact that he was drunk.

‘Pray sit down.’ Drinkwater considered dismissing him, thought better of it and watched his first lieutenant unsteadily cross the cabin and slump in the seat recently vacated by Kennedy. Drinkwater laid fork and spoon down on the plate, shoved it aside and dabbed his mouth with his napkin, dropping it on the table.

‘Please tell me what happened this afternoon, Mr Marlowe.’

‘Happened? Why, nothing happened. A damned fool fell from aloft, that’s what happened.’

‘The damned fool you speak of, Drinkwater said in a measured voice, ‘was an experienced topman. He had been on the ship since she commissioned, since he was a boy, in fact.’

Marlowe shrugged. ‘The ship was standing into danger and carrying too much canvas.’

‘What were you doing on deck? I thought it was Ashton’s watch.’

‘It was, but I wished Lieutenant Ashton to undertake another duty and relieved him.’

‘What other duty?’ Drinkwater pressed, though there was nothing very remarkable about the change of officers.

‘Oh, some modifications to the watch-bill.’

Drinkwater had the fleeting impression Marlowe was lying, but the man was cunning enough, and perhaps sober enough to think up an excuse. ‘We had the men in special divisions for the royal escort. In view of what you told me, I thought it best to rearrange matters.’

‘So you took over the deck in order for Lieutenant Ashton to act as your clerk.’

‘I took over the deck with the ship carrying too much canvas. Lieutenant Ashton was concerned about it.’

‘But neither of you thought fit to tell me.’

‘We thought you would know.’

‘So you think it was my fault?’ Drinkwater asked quietly. Marlowe shrugged again but held his tongue. ‘The fact is, Mr Marlowe, that if the ship was carrying too much canvas, it
was
my fault. Nevertheless, the fact does not exonerate you from the consequences of your own misjudgement. Why did you not complete the reefing before attempting to tack ship?”

‘The ship was standing into danger,’ Marlowe repeated.

‘It is a matter of opinion whether or not you had sufficient time to finish snugging the reef down. I’m inclined to believe you had left it too late. You could have taken in a reef earlier …’

‘I wanted some shelter from the land.’

‘Very well, but a more prudent officer would have tacked and then reefed while the ship lay in the lee of the Wight.’

‘A more prudent officer?’ Marlowe, emboldened by the drink, affected an expression of wounded pride. ‘It was because of my prudence that I took action.’

Drinkwater watched; the man was a fool and he himself was rapidly losing patience, but he had no wish to push Marlowe beyond propriety. Before the first lieutenant could say more Drinkwater stood up. The sudden movement seemed to curb Marlowe. He flinched and frowned.

‘Mr Marlowe,’ said Drinkwater moving round the table, ‘I do wish you to consider this matter. You are the worse for liquor. If one of those men forward, whom you affect to despise, should come on deck in the condition you are now in, I daresay you would have him flogged. Now, sir, do you retire to your cabin and reconsider the matter when you are sober.’

Marlowe looked up at his commander and shook his head. ‘Trouble with you, Captain Drinkwater,’ Marlowe began, levering himself to his feet, ‘is you think you know everything.’ Marlowe stood confronting Drinkwater. He swayed so close that Drinkwater could smell the rum on him.

‘Have a care, Mr Marlowe. Do please have a care.’ Marlowe stood unsteadily and for a moment Drinkwater thought he was going to raise his hand, but then he concluded a wave of nausea affected the lieutenant and he merely covered his mouth. Whatever his motive, Marlowe managed to stagger from the cabin, leaving Drinkwater alone. Drinkwater let his breath go in a long sigh. In his present circumstances, this was something he could well have done without.

Late morning found them still on the starboard tack, but their course lay more nearly west-south-west, for the wind had continued to veer and was now north-west by north. The thick weather that Drinkwater had predicted had run through during the night. Now the wind was lighter, no more than a fresh breeze. The topgallants had been set again, and
Andromeda
bowled along under an almost cloudless sky. If the tide did not play them up and they maintained no less than the nine knots they had logged at the last streaming, they would clear the Caskets and be free to stand out into the Atlantic before long.

Fulmars and the slender dark shapes of shearwaters swooped above the wake in long, shallow glides. The solitary fulmars rarely touched down into the sea, but the shearwaters would swim in gregarious rafts, lifting by common consent and skating away over the waves as the frigate drove down upon them, disturbing their tranquillity. Away to starboard, in line ahead, a dozen white gannets flew as though on some aerial patrol, graceful and purposeful, with their narrow, black-tipped wings.

‘I remember gannets like them having blue feet down in the South Pacific,’ Drinkwater remarked to Birkbeck as the two older men took the morning air on the weather side of the quarterdeck.

‘Aye, they call ‘em boobies, I believe,’ replied Birkbeck, ‘talking of which, you heard about young Marlowe last night?’

‘That he was drunk? Yes, I happened to send for him.’

‘It doesn’t help, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

“Twould be less of a problem if Ashton didn’t possess so much influence over him. I can’t make Ashton out. He’s a clever enough cove, which is something you cannot say for young Marlowe. The two of them shouldn’t be on the same ship, but…’ Birkbeck paused and shrugged, ‘oh, damn it, I don’t know.’

‘Go on, Mr Birkbeck.’

‘To be honest, sir, I ain’t sure there’s anything to add. It’s just that when the senior officer in the wardroom is weak, there is usually trouble. Someone tries to take over.’

‘Frey doesn’t cast himself in that role?’

‘Good Lord, no, sir. Poor fellow sensibly keeps himself to himself.’

‘And the marine officer, what’s his name? Hyde?’

Birkbeck chuckled and shook his head. ‘He’s impervious to any influence. An idle dog, if ever there was one, but amiable enough. No, I think there’s something personal between Ashton and Marlowe, though what it is, the devil alone knows.’

‘Do you know what experience Marlowe has had?’ Drinkwater asked. ‘He was singularly inept yesterday.’

‘I don’t think there’s much to tell, sir. Borne on the books as a servant, then midshipman in the Channel Fleet. Passed for lieutenant under the regulation age, took part in a boat expedition off Brest, his sole taste of action I shouldn’t wonder, and the rest of his time on the quarterdeck of a seventy-four, I think. He was invalided ashore for some reason,’ Birkbeck paused, ‘could have been drink, I suppose, then he came here.’

‘Rather as I thought.’

‘Well, I couldn’t vouch for the details, but the substance is about right.’

‘It must be somewhat tiresome for you in the wardroom.’

‘Frey and Hyde are pleasant enough, and Ashton and Marlowe are civil when they are separate; ‘tis together they begin to smell fishy.’

‘Fishy?’

Birkbeck shrugged again. ‘Just something I can smell.’

Drinkwater considered the matter as seven bells were struck, ‘I think it is time we buried our dead and I spoke to the people. We will pipe up spirits after that, and this afternoon exercise at the guns.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

By tonight, Birkbeck thought, the ship should settled down. He felt he could have put money on it if it were not for Mr Marlowe. And Mr Ashton.

They hove-to and buried the dead Watson at noon, when the ship’s day changed. The frigate, with her main-topsail and topgallant hacked against the mast and her courses up in their bunt and clewlines, dipped to the blue, white-capped seas that rolled down from the west. After Watson’s corpse, in its weighted canvas shroud, had slipped from beneath the red ensign and plummeted to the sea-bed, Drinkwater stationed himself at the forward end of the quarterdeck, his officers ranged about him, the red, white and black files of Hyde’s marines drawn up in rigid lines on either side, their backs to the hammock nettings.
Andromeda’s
midshipmen stood together in a pimply gaggle. Like his officers, they had all been sent aboard by their patrons, even sent by the captains of other ships, as though brief service in the vicinity of a prince of the House of Hanover would admit them to the company of the most august. It gave Drinkwater some grim amusement to consider what patrons and parents would say when it got out that instead of being returned to their comfortable berths after a cross-Channel jaunt, they were stretching out into the Atlantic. On the orders of His Royal Highness, of course!

Amidships, over the boats on the chocks in the waist, along the gangways and in the lower ratlines of the main and fore shrouds, the ship’s company waited to hear what he had to say, for scuttlebutt had been circulating since the previous day to the effect that the mystery which preoccupied them all would shortly be resolved.

At the conclusion of the short burial service Drinkwater closed the prayer book and nodded to Marlowe. The first lieutenant looked like death, his naturally pale and gaunt features now conveyed the impression of a skull, emphasized in its modelling by his dark beard, imperfectly shaved by his shaking hand. He had nicked himself in two places and still bled. At Drinkwater’s nod he ordered the ship’s company to don hats. Drinkwater watched carefully, the degree to which this movement achieved near simultaneity was the first indication as to how well his people thought of themselves as a crew. In the prevailing mood immediately following Watson’s burial, and in expectation of news from the captain, the result was promising, if not perfect. Drinkwater settled his own hat and stared about him. Every man-jack forward was staring back. He cleared his throat.

‘My lads,’ he began, using his best masthead-hailing voice, ‘the sad loss of Tom Watson is a consequence of the urgency of our situation. We are bound upon a most important service, one that will not, I hope, detain us at sea for more than a month, two at the most…’ He paused, gauging from the groundswell of the murmured reaction, how optimistically this news was received. ‘We are under the direct orders of Admiral-of-the-Fleet, His Royal Highness, Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence and Earl of Munster…’ Drinkwater rather despised himself for invoking all His Royal Highness’s grandiloquent titles. It was a deception, of course, an attempt to mislead, to shift the blame to the inscrutable powers of Admiralty and to defuse any speculation that their mission was no more than Drinkwater’s own reaction to a rumour brought aboard by a mysterious nocturnal visitor. The visitor could not escape mention.

‘We have been informed by special courier from Paris that after Bonaparte surrendered he intends to escape apprehension and avoid exile by crossing the Atlantic. Arrangements to accomplish this are already in motion. Now, it is not the intention of His Britannic Majesty’s government to allow the man who has disturbed the peace of Europe these last twenty years to make mischief in America or, for that matter, His Majesty’s possessions in Canada …’

To what extent all his men understood this, was unclear. But there were enough intelligent and perceptive souls among them to grasp the seriousness and importance of what he was telling them, to allow its weight to permeate the corporate intelligence of the crew in the next few days. He hoped its gravity would divert any doubts as to why the news from Paris arrived aboard
Andromeda,
rather than the
Impregnable
or the
Royal Sovereign.

‘It is our task to run down to a station off the Azores, to where Bonaparte is to be exiled, to guard the islands and to prevent any unauthorized vessels from releasing him. As you know we are only provisioned for a further two months and we shall have to be relieved by the end of that time. If we meet any man-of-war which does not comply with my instructions, we will engage him. If that happens, I shall expect you bold fellows to show the spirit you lately demonstrated in the fiords of Norway. To this end we shall prepare this ship for action. This afternoon we will exercise at the guns. That is all. God save the King!’

There was a moment’s silence, then Lieutenant Hyde stepped forward, doffed his hat and swept it above his head: ‘Three cheers for the ship, lads: Hip! Hip! Hip …!’