The Shadow of the Eagle (3 page)

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, sir …’

‘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 and 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.’

‘I wish I could have shared more with you,’ he had replied kindly. He tossed the recollection aside as he heard quite clearly the query from the boat.

’
C’est Andromeda?’

‘The devil…’ He struck flint on steel and had lit a candle when the tap came at the door. Midshipman Paine’s disembodied features appeared round the door.

‘Captain, sir?’

‘I’m awake, Mr Paine, and aware we have a French boat alongside.’

‘Aye sir, and a military officer asking to see you, sir.’

Drinkwater frowned. ‘To see me? You imply he asked by my name.’

‘Asked for Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, sir, very particularly. Mr Marlowe said I was to emphasize that, sir.’

‘Very well, I assume the officer at least was British.’

‘Oh no, sir, Mr Marlowe said to tell you he had a lot of plumes on his shako and Mr Marlowe judged him to be either a Russian or a Frenchman.’

Drinkwater was dragging a comb through his hair while this exchange was in progress. It was not in his nature to bait midshipmen, but Drinkwater knew, though the cockpit thought he did not, that Paine had acquired the nickname ‘Tom’ on account of having the surname of the English revolutionary. He was a solemn but rather prolix lad.

‘And what did you make him out to be, Mr Paine?’

‘Well, he does have a fantastic shako, sir, but his voice is … well, I mean his accent is …’

‘Is what, Mr Paine?’ enquired Drinkwater, pulling on the full dress coat that he had disencumbered himself of when he had returned from the flagship. ‘Pray do not keep me in suspense.’

‘Well it’s English, sir.’

‘English?’

‘But Mr Marlowe says the shako ain’t English, sir …’

But Drinkwater was not listening, he was seized by the sudden thought his visitor might be his own brother who had long been a cavalry officer in the Russian service who had now come to pay him a nocturnal visit. He was certain Edward would be serving on the staff of General Vorontzoff who, Drinkwater had heard, was already in Paris. He swallowed the curse that almost escaped his lips and, doubling his queue, ordered the midshipman to bring the stranger down to the cabin. While he waited, Drinkwater lit more candles and washed his mouth out with a half-glass of wine.