Ebb Tide (25 page)

'Sit still, damn it!' Drinkwater commanded sharply. Suddenly, some twenty yards from the thundering surf, the boat jerked. The line was not long enough. Then, after a few moments, the vessel fell violently into the trough of a wave, evidence that a further length had been bent aboard
Kestrel
and was being paid out. Now they entered the last and most dangerous phase of their uncomfortable transit.

Drinkwater leaned back and turned his head. 'Be ready, Jago.' He had to shout to make himself heard as the waves now peaked and fell in breakers all about them. Rising high, the boat suddenly dropped and Drinkwater anticipated a bone-jarring crash as the keel struck the sand, but the next second, at a steep angle and lurching to one side as she went, she seemed to climb like a rocket as a roller ran ashore under her.

'Now!'

Jago jerked the boat's painter with all his might and they felt the bow tugged round as those aboard
Kestrel
ceased paying out and belayed the long line. They shot up and down, the spray filling the air about them, their hands, gripping the gunwales, soaked by water splashing into the boat.

'Over you go!' Drinkwater shouted at Edward, who sat hunched and immobile in the stern. The violent movement of the boat almost threw them out of its own accord, then he was gone, suddenly leaping and turning all at the same moment, so that a few seconds later Drinkwater saw the dark shape of him floundering ashore against the pale sand and the final wash of the breakers as they surged exhausted up the beach.

Now it was his turn. He shipped the oars and moved aft, taking his weight and bracing himself with his hands on the gunwales. He crouched on the stern thwart, facing the beach. In fact he felt his muscles cracking with the effort; he was too damned old for this sort of thing! In fact he was a bloody fool! He looked up. Edward was standing not thirty yards away, watching the boat as it sawed at the painter and rose up and crashed down in the very midst of the breakers. Drinkwater cleared his head and concentrated, seeking a moment as the boat descended when he should not have too much water beneath him. Sensing the time was right, he jumped over the stern, landed heavily up to his knees in water and ran forward as fast as he could, almost toppling as he went. He felt his brother grab him and he paused, panting.

'Damn you and your confounded Baroness,' he gasped without rancour. Edward chuckled and both men turned and watched for Jago to follow. 'You managed that very well,' Drinkwater said.

'It is just as well that I learned a few Cossack riding tricks,' Edward muttered shortly. 'Ah, here he comes.' Jago was caught by an incoming breaker which washed up around him, soaking him to the waist, but now they were ashore, their bundles dry and none of them much the worse for the experience.

'It'll be a damned sight more difficult leaving,' Drinkwater remarked, as they turned and walked directly up the wide slope of the beach. Half way up the sand they stopped and stood in a group. Drinkwater reckoned that with the night-glass, Frey would be able to see that they had made it and, sure enough, the boat was suddenly gone, plucked back to
Kestrel
by the long line. Before they struck inland Drinkwater took a last look seaward. He could just make out the dark shape where the cutter's scandalized mainsail stood out against the sky. The tide was making and had two hours yet to rise.

'Come on,' he said, and turned inland. They needed to find the coast road and a landmark to which they could return and which would lead them back to the right part of the vast beach which ran for miles, from Calais to Ostend and beyond, to Breskens and the great estuary of the Schelde, away to the east-north-east.

They found some pollarded willows which would serve their purpose, then Edward went ahead to discover the road. He said something in French which Jago repeated to Drinkwater. 'He says, sir, that it is as well he is an officer of light cavalry. An officer of light cavalry has to have an eye for the country.'

'I see,' said Drinkwater as, after employing this instinct for a few moments, Edward led them towards the track. Soon afterwards, with the sea lying to their right, they were tramping along the paved coast road in silence, with only the sound of the wind rustling the grass and brushwood in counterpoint to the deeper thunder of the surf on the shore.

They walked thus for about an hour. A few cows in meadows to the left of the
chaussée
looked up at them and lowed in mild surprise, but they might otherwise have been traversing an uninhabited country. Finally, however, they came upon a cluster of low buildings which revealed themselves as a small village strung out along the road and through which they walked as quietly as possible. They had almost succeeded when, at the far end, they disturbed a dog which began to bark insistently, straining at the extremity of its retaining chain. As they hurried on, the dog was joined by a clamorous honking of alarmed geese.

Ahead of him, Drinkwater heard Edward swear in French, then a window went up and behind him, with commendable presence of mind, Jago shouted something. It cannot have been very complimentary, for the disturbed villager yelled a reply to which Edward quickly responded. The riposte made the window slam with a bang. Drinkwater forbore to enquire the nature of the exchange and hurried on. Once clear of the village the deserted
chaussée
stretched ahead of them again until it disappeared in a low stand of trees.

When they were well away from the village, Edward turned and made a remark to Jago. The seaman laughed and Drinkwater recognized Jago's response of
'Merci, M'sieur'.
They were the only words he had been able to interpret for himself.

'What did you say to that fellow, Jago?' Drinkwater asked.

'Only that he should strangle his fucking dog before I did, beggin' yer pardon, sir. Then he said honest folk should be in bed and the Colonel replied that honest folk should be marching to join the Emperor's eagles, not lying in bed next to their fat wives.'

'That was well done,' Drinkwater said admiringly. Such an exchange was scarcely going to arouse suspicions that foreigners were abroad.

'There is a turning somewhere ahead,' Edward said quietly in English. 'I am relying upon our finding it, for it leads directly to the farm we want, though it may still be some way off, for I never went east of it before.'

They marched on in silence and less than half an hour later discovered the turning, no more than a track joining the paved road. However, if Drinkwater had anticipated that the location of the track would bring them near their goal, he was mistaken, for they seemed to tramp inland for miles over slowly rising ground. Drinkwater began to tire. Like most seamen, while he could do without sleep for many hours and endure conditions of extreme discomfort, walking was anathema to him. The sodden state of his boots and stockings, the chafing of wet trousers and the chill of the spring night only compounded his discomfort, and already blisters were forming on his feet. Added to these multiple inconveniences, Edward set a fast pace, moving with such heartening confidence that, though Drinkwater was content to let him lead on, privately he cursed him. He began, too, to feel a mounting concern at the length of the return journey. The night was already far advanced and he fretted over the state of the tide and the conditions they would find on the beach when they returned to it.

At last, however, the shape of a building hardened ahead of them. As an enormous orange quarter moon lifted above a low bank of cloud to the east, they arrived on the outskirts of the farm within which the mysterious Baroness had taken refuge.

Edward left Drinkwater and Jago in the lee of a stone wall and proceeded alone to give notice of their arrival. As he vanished, another dog began to bark. The noise, unnaturally loud, seemed to ill the night with its alarum, but both men hunkered down and closed their eyes, speaking not a word but bearing their aches and pains in silence. It occurred to Drinkwater that he had got ashore almost dry-shod compared with Jago. The poor man must be in an extremity of discomfort.

'Are you all right, Jago?' he whispered.

'A little damp, sir, but nothing to moan about.'

'Very well,' Drinkwater replied, marvelling at the virtue of English understatement and settling himself to wait. He almost drifted off to sleep, but a few minutes later Edward returned and called them in. Drinkwater rose with excruciating pains in his legs and back. The warm sickly smell of cattle assailed them as they clambered over the wall and then passed through a gate in a second wall. Crossing a yard slimy with mud and cattle excrement, they entered the large kitchen of a low-ceilinged stone house. The room was warmed by a banked fire and dominated by a large, scrubbed table. Edward was speaking rapidly to an elderly man who wore a nightgown and a cap whose tassel bobbed as he nodded. Behind him, similarly attired, was a buxom woman pouring warm buttermilk into three stoneware mugs. To this she added a dash of spirits before shoving them across the table. Drinkwater muttered his formal
'Merci'
but Jago was more loquacious and the farmer's wife nodded appreciatively while her husband continued to engage Edward in what appeared to be a violent argument.

'A little bargaining and complaining, sir,' explained Jago over the rim of his steaming mug, divining Drinkwater's incomprehension. Suddenly the door behind them opened. The sharp inrush of cold night air was accompanied by the terrifying appearance of a large bearded figure, wrapped about in a coat and wearing oversize boots. Turning at this intrusion, Drinkwater's tired brain registered extreme alarm, and he was about to reach for a pistol when Edward's response persuaded him it was unnecessary.

'Ah, Khudoznik, there you are ...' Edward caught his brother's eye. 'My man Khudoznik. He is a Cossack.'

Drinkwater recognized the type, and the faint smell that came with him, from his time at Tilsit. 'You might have mentioned him,' Drinkwater retorted, looking at the Russian who stared back. Then they were distracted by the swish of skirts. The Baroness, a pretty but pale and frightened blonde woman with her two children, all in cloaks, appeared from the door guarding the stairs and seemed to fill the kitchen with a nervous fluster. She looked anxiously at the strangers, darted an even more suspicious glance at the silent Cossack and, though Edward stepped forward to embrace her and reassure her, continued to regard them all with deep concern.

Edward briefly indicated Drinkwater, referring to him as '
Le Capitaine Anglais'.
The woman half acknowledged Drinkwater's bow, then swung round and gabbled at Edward, but he was up to the occasion.

'Silence, Juliette!'
He turned to the children.
'Allons, mes petits!'Allons!
' He passed a handful of coin to the farmer and indicated the door. Drinkwater emerged into the stink of the yard once more. Five minutes later they were heading north along the track which was now bathed in pale moonlight.

Inevitably, the return journey took longer. Neither the Baroness nor her children were capable of moving at the speed of the four men. The girl whimpered incessantly until, without a word, Edward took her hand from her mother's and, clasping it in his own, led her on. After a few hundred yards she tripped over a flint in the track, pitched to her knees and began to wail.

Edward's palm covered her mouth as he picked her up. Whispering into her ear, he scarcely slackened his pace, giving the Baroness no time to commiserate with her unhappy daughter. The girl clung to his neck. The boy tramped doggedly on. Drinkwater had heard Edward say something encouraging to him in which the words
'soldat'
and
'marche'
were accompanied by 'mon
brave'.
After a while Jago fell in alongside the lad and, from time to time, spoke briefly in French. The boy responded, and Drinkwater judged from his tone of voice that the lad was not uninfluenced by the adventure of the night. He himself was left to offer the Baroness his arm. She accepted at first, but they had dropped somewhat behind when the girl fell and, having relinquished it in order to catch up, she did not seek his support again, politely declining further assistance. Despite this she made a greater effort to keep up, though Drinkwater thought she found the plodding presence of the Cossack at the rear of the little column intimidating.

Drinkwater now began to consider how on earth they were going to get the frightened trio and the Russian into the boat and soon decided that the method he had chosen would prove inadequate. He had mentioned this possibility to Frey who, with the change of tide, would have his own work cut out in remaining as near as possible to the landing place without dragging his anchor. The tide would be on the ebb now and, if they were much delayed, Frey might have to haul
Kestrel
off into deeper water. Drinkwater tried to console himself with the thought that they were making quite good progress, all things considered, though he wondered how long Edward could carry the girl. The wind had dropped a little too, he thought, and that was all to the good.

When they gained the
chaussée,
they turned right and, reaching the low stand of trees, they paused for a short break. Something seemed to be bothering Edward, for while the others caught their breath under the trees, he went out into the middle of the road, scuffing the dust with his right boot. Drinkwater pushed himself off from the tree trunk against which he had been leaning and approached his brother.

'Is something amiss?' he asked in a low voice.

'Yes,' said Edward, pointing at the ground. 'Since we were here last, some horses have passed through.'

'Cavalry horses?'

'Yes. Quite a lot of them too, I would say.'

'Going which way?'

'East. The wrong way for us.'

'God's bones!' Drinkwater considered the matter a moment. 'We shall be all right if we remain behind them, though, surely?'

'Let us hope so,' Edward responded grimly, 'but if I were you, I'd get your arms ready before we move off.'