Ebb Tide (20 page)

Though for long a packet station, whose inn-keepers and publicans were notorious for fleecing travellers for the bare necessities of a night's lodging and whose civil officers understood that a certain necessary urgency might prevail in matters of official communication, the little town was unused to coping with the unprecedented military influx which now assailed it. Every inn and every lodging-house seemed stuffed with redcoats. Stands of arms littered the paved walkways of the narrow streets, horses were tethered in lines upon the green, and an ancillary village of canvas tents lay between the old gatehouse of Harwich and the adjacent twin town of Dovercourt. The remnants of the hospital, used for the accommodation of thousands of soldiers dying of the Walcheren fever but six years earlier, had been revived to harbour battalions of infantry, troops of cavalry and batteries of artillery.

The only consistent military organization obvious to a casual observer was a determined effort on the part of officers and men alike to assume attitudes of ease as close as possible to a source of liquor. True, the occasional horseman rode in from Colchester on a lathering horse, calling out for directions to the adjutant of a regiment of foot, or desiring to be directed immediately to the lodgings of Colonel So-and-so, but soon afterwards, a shrewd observer might have noted, the immediacy had gone out of the young aide's quest and he would be seen quaffing a glass or two, or attempting the intimate, if temporary, acquaintance of an absent fisherman's wife or daughter. And all this inactive activity was accompanied by a vast and querulous noise which spilled into the streets from open doors, and accompanied everyone abroad in the narrow lanes and narrower alleyways which divided up the town.

As for Colonel So-and-so, he had gone to ground in a room in the Three Cups or the Drum and Monkey, with or without a local moll, but assuredly clasping a bottle or two. The only industry clearly under weigh was that of the seamen, whom the soldiers had temporarily displaced from the role of the town's habitual drunks. These men laboured off the beach which flanked the eastern side of the town, ferrying a steady dribble of infantrymen and their equipment in flat lighters out to the transports waiting at anchor on the Shelf whose blue pendants lifted languidly in the light airs from the west.

'The army embarks,' intoned Frey, getting out his sketching block. 'Tis odd that the gentlemen who wish for their likenesses to be shown against great sieges never ask me to paint such confusion, yet it seems to be the means by which the army goes to war.'

'Indeed it is and I find it rather frightening,' Drinkwater added. 'Do you suppose the French proceed in the same way?'

'I suppose', Frey said, laughing, 'that they do it with a good deal more noise, better food and more humour ...'

'Why more humour?' Drinkwater asked, mildly puzzled.

'They must be more inured to it than our fellows,' Frey answered, with that simple logic which so characterized his level-headed good sense. 'If you do something idiotic many times, you must laugh at it in due course, surely?'

Drinkwater shrugged. 'It is a point of view I had not considered before. Perhaps you are right.'

'Men laugh in action, at the point of death, and men laugh on the gallows, so I suppose it is quite natural, some sort of reflex to ease the mind.'

'Or mask it from common sense,' Drinkwater added.

'Yes, probably. I confess I should not like to be landed on a foreign beach and march to meet an enemy who might kill me. At least if I die on a ship, I am among friends.'

'I suppose these lobsters consider their battalions constituted of friends.'

'I still pity them,' said Frey, finishing off his rapid sketch of the Harwich waterfront. He looked up at Drinkwater. 'Do we have any orders, sir?'

'Well, I have received nothing, Mr Frey, but as lieutenant-in-command, perhaps you should solicit some from the commissioner, Captain Scanderbeg. He has his office in the Three Cups, in Church Street, adjacent to the church.'

'There is one other thing, sir.'

'What is that?'

'We need a small-arms chest. You and I have our swords and I have a single pistol...'

'I have a brace of them, but certainly we have nothing for the men. Do you ask Scanderbeg.'

'Very well.' Frey picked up his hat and called for the boat.

Drinkwater was certain that the reopening of hostilities would in due course result in the speedy recommissioning of many frigates and ships-of-the-line and the resumption of the blockade of French ports. It was possible, though by no means probable, that he would be called upon to take command of one of the latter, but he could not sit idly at home while events on the Continent took so exciting a turn in the hope that Their Lordships might remember him. They knew where he was if they required him.

The news of Napoleon's escape had been accompanied by several wild rumours, not the least of which was his sudden death, but the appearance of the quondam Emperor at the head of his troops in Paris and that of Louis XVIII in Ghent put paid to all wishful thinking. The Bourbons had returned to France and behaved as though the Revolution had never occurred, and the French populace had welcomed their Emperor back again. Misgivings they might have had, but the lesser of two evils was clearly preferred. King Louis had wisely removed himself over the frontier.

The hurried reassembly of the Allied armies was put in hand. The delegates at Vienna declared Napoleon Bonaparte to be outside all laws, broke up their conferences, balls and assignations, and returned to their chancelleries, palaces or headquarters. Everywhere Europe was astir again, jerked out of its euphoric assumption of peace, for the devil rode out once more at the head of his legions. It was impossible for a man of Drinkwater's character and history to sit idly by while the world teetered on such uncertainties. Until such time as Their Lordships had a ship for him, the proximity of Gantley Hall to the natural harbour of Harwich compelled him to take part in the urgent movement of the army across to the Belgian coast. Serving as a volunteer was a time-honoured course of action, and placing Frey in command of
Kestrel
gave the younger man the chance, if the war dragged on, of attaining the rank of commander and perhaps post-captain, thus securing a comfortable living for the remainder of his days.

For Drinkwater, in the fifty-third year of his life, the status of volunteer aboard his own yacht was most congenial. Frey delighted in the notion of command, and Drinkwater could relax, as he did now, watching with some amusement the movement of the flat lighters shipping out the horses of a regiment of light dragoons. The seamen assigned to the duty clearly had some difficulty in making the troopers understand the necessity of the animals remaining tranquil on the short passage across the shallows to the transports, and even more in communicating this requirement to the horses themselves. A good deal of shouting seemed essential to the task, which made the horses more nervous, and Drinkwater saw two seamen knocked into the sea and one wretched horse go overboard, to swim wild-eyed in the frothing tide that ebbed to seaward, pursued by a boat whose coxswain failed to understand that the more he holloaed and whistled at it, the more determined the horse became to escape. Drinkwater had some sympathy with the poor beast when its hooves found the bottom and it dragged itself up the beach by the Angel Battery, to be caught at last by some infantrymen lounging about there.

Drinkwater was surrounded by such vignettes and totally absorbed in them, so that he started as Frey, returning in the yacht's boat, ran alongside, almost under his nose. He was even more astonished to see Elizabeth sitting in the stern alongside the lieutenant.

'Elizabeth! What on earth brings you here? Not bad news, I hope?'

He helped her over the side and kissed her, and as he did so, she whispered, 'I have something very private for you,' with such insistence and so significant a stare of her brown eyes, that he took alarm. 'How did you get here?' he asked, frowning.

'We lashed poor Billy Cue on the box of the barouche ... I left him at the Three Cups where a young woman promised to help him.' Poor Billy had had both legs shot off and, while immensely strong in the trunk and arms, was otherwise like a baby. Drinkwater had provided for him years earlier, and he had proved a useful member of the household, propelling himself about on a low board mounted on castors. Dismissing Billy from his thoughts, Drinkwater tried to gloss over Elizabeth's intrusion.

Turning to Frey he asked, 'Did you find any orders for us?'

'No, sir, but remarkably, I have been told that we are to receive a draft of six seamen and that we are to draw stores and victuals from the Victualling Board officers at the Duke's Head. And I am to bring off an arms chest. Apparently the Impress Service maintain extra arms here in the Redoubt, ever since there was some trouble with the local populace. I've the matter in hand.'

'Good Lord, Captain Scanderbeg has not been idle. We shall be remarkably tight then. See to it, if you please. I daresay orders will follow ...' But Elizabeth was plucking with annoying urgency at his sleeve. He turned and ushered her below.

'What the devil is it, Elizabeth?' he asked as soon as they were in the saloon. Putting her finger to her lips, she drew him aside into the small cabin Drinkwater had had partitioned off.

'Nathaniel, I have been out of my wits hoping you had not precipitately sailed off to glory,' she said hurriedly in a low, mocking tone. 'Something remarkable and rather macabre has occurred.'

'Go on,' he said with growing impatience, as she appeared to fumble with her riding habit.

'You recall that when we buried Hortense, we laid her out in her small clothes?'

'Yes.' Drinkwater frowned as Elizabeth held out a pair of fine kid gauntlets.

'After you had gone, a sheepish Susan came to see me, to say that she had not disposed of Hortense's outer garments but had cleaned them and put them aside. I suppose she had some idea of retaining them herself, for they were very fine, or of disposing of them at some pecuniary advantage ...'

'Yes, yes, I understand, but what has this ...?'

'Please be silent a moment,' Elizabeth retorted sharply. 'She had been considering what to do, I think, probably troubled by her conscience, and, in drawing these beautiful gloves through her hands thus,' Elizabeth demonstrated the abstracted action, running the long cuffs of soft grey leather through her fingers, 'she encountered a stiffness which aroused her curiosity.'

Elizabeth took one glove and turned the cuff. A satin lining of pale blue had been snipped open, revealing a secret hiding-place.

'And inside she found what? Nothing?' Drinkwater asked.

'On the contrary. She found this.' Elizabeth now drew from her breast, with something of the air of a conjuror, a tightly folded and sealed letter. 'It has your name upon it.'

Drinkwater took the letter and turned it over. It bore his name without title in a hand he did not know.

'In view of what you had told us both when Hortense was being laid out, Susan came to see me and made a clean breast of the matter. I made light of it, thanked her, and told her that of course she might have what she wished of Madame Santhonax's effects. I promised her the gloves when I returned. I brought them merely to make you understand why the letter took so long to find. I suppose it was fortunate that we did find it... Nathaniel, are you quite well?'

Drinkwater looked up. He had broken the seal of the letter and had read its contents. A cold fear clutched at his heart. On his face, now grown pale, beads of perspiration stood out. Before he had gathered his wits, he murmured, 'My God Bess, this could ruin us.'

Elizabeth frowned. 'What do you mean?' she asked, both her husband's fright and his ghastly expression alarming her. Drinkwater laid the letter down on the shelf formed by a stringer and reached inside a locker for a bottle and two glasses. Elizabeth picked up the letter and read it. Drinkwater filled the glasses and turned to hold one out to Elizabeth. 'I don't understand,' she said, looking up from the letter. 'What is there in this to so alarm you?'

'She would have explained, of course,' Drinkwater said, half to himself, 'that was her purpose in coming and in such circumstances.' He drank deeply, adding, 'the damned fool.'

'That is hardly fair ...'

'No, no,' he said, shaking his head, 'not her.
Him.''

'Him? What
him?
Nathaniel, if you are going to speak of ruin, please don't use riddles ...'

Drinkwater shook himself out of his introspection. 'I am sorry, Bess, it's something of a shock. This', he took the letter gently from her unresisting hand and folded it, 'is from my brother Edward. You know a little of his circumstances. He left this country many, many years ago and, after some time, obtained a position along with many other foreigners in the Russian Army. I had some dealings with him during my service in the Baltic ...'

'Was he connected in some way with Lord Dungarth's Secret Department?'

'Yes, loosely. Certainly he sought to gain credit by assisting me and, by implication, Lord Dungarth. I suppose, from what this says,' he tapped the letter, 'he reached Paris when the Allies occupied the city last year. I would judge that there he met the ever-resourceful Hortense, and at some stage in what I deduce to be an
affaire,
he may have revealed his true identity' Drinkwater paused. 'Indeed,' he went on with a profound sigh, looking at Elizabeth directly, 'it seems only too probable that he revealed everything.'

'And that everything constitutes our ruin, I assume?'

'Yes.'

'But why?'

'Because when he left this country, he was wanted for murder.'

'Murder?' 
Elizabeth faltered, her face draining of colour and an edge entering her voice. 'And you, of course, being you, helped him escape.'

'I was a damned fool...'

'But she is dead and this letter ... I wish I had never opened the glove, but I thought it something important, that you should know of it and that ...' Elizabeth faltered, and then added with sudden conviction, 'It doesn't matter though, does it? The letter asks that you should go to Calais to meet the person who signs himself "O". You have merely to ignore it, to pretend it never arrived ... I mean, how are you so sure that it
is
from Edward?' And with that Elizabeth snatched the offending paper back and tore it swiftly into pieces. Drinkwater looked on with a chillingly wan smile.