The Flag of Freedom (11 page)

Nathan had been here for nigh on three months. At first he had been confined to his quarters in the Moorish castle, now used almost exclusively as a prison, but the
Lieutenant Governor – General O'Hara – had generously conceded him the freedom of the peninsula, at least between the hours of sunrise and sunset, in return for his parole.

There was little chance, in any case, of escape. From his perch on the highest point of the Rock, Nathan had a perfect view of the surrounding area – most of which was sea. The Bay of Gibraltar lay to the west, with the port of Algeciras, almost lost in the haze; the Alboran Sea to the east; and the Strait of Gibraltar to the south: very still for once and very blue, like shot silk under the crisp autumnal sky, and a distant smudge on the horizon that could be cloud – or Africa.

Where the swallows went.

To the north, much closer, was the great Spanish fortress of San Felipe, whose battlements and towers stretched across the mile or so of land joining the Rock to the mainland. A barrier of stone and iron, armed for war. Gibraltar had been in British hands now since 1704, and under an almost constant state of siege. But every attack had failed, broken on the guns and ramparts of the invincible Rock.

‘I expect you think we are all mad,' Nathan remarked to his solitary companion, who had found something of interest behind his ear and quite sensibly put it into his mouth. ‘Fighting to the death over a chunk of rock that you cannot even eat.'

There was no reply. His companion was not inclined to comment on the affairs of men, though his silence, accompanied by a certain look from under his heavy eyelids, could be eloquent at times. Although Nathan had twice
referred to him as ‘Johnny', and once, more formally, as ‘Sir John', he was, in fact, an ape. A Barbary ape from Africa. Mature, male, and usually morose, though he had his more amiable moments when there was food at his disposal.

Nathan had named him after the Admiral – Sir John Jervis – less on account of his temperament than his appearance, though in truth, it was not a resemblance that many others would have noted, and in any case, Sir John – the Admiral – had lately been ennobled and taken the title Earl St Vincent, after the battle he had won. But the ape had thus far made no complaint at the comparison. Or even to being called an ape when he was, in fact, a monkey or macaque.

This information, and indeed Nathan's recent knowledge of swallows and suchlike, had been imparted to him by his only other regular associate on the island, the garrison chaplain Dr Moll who was a keen naturalist and ornithologist and who was wont to accompany him on these walks, when not about his duties.

He had informed Nathan that the swallows, which had been landing on the Rock for some weeks past, had in all likelihood flown from England, and that contrary to general belief, it was their normal practice to winter in Africa, returning to more northerly shores in the spring.

Nathan had not previously given much consideration to the travel arrangements of the swallow, nor any other kind of bird, but he had watched them as a child, swooping across the skies over Sussex in pursuit of small insects, and he had noted their sudden disappearance at the end of the summer. He had supposed they hibernated, like bats,
possibly in barns or hollow trees, a belief widely shared by most country folk of his acquaintance, although old Abe Eldridge, who had been his main informant in such matters when he was a child, claimed that they spent the winter under water, either in the mud at the bottom of a pond or among the rocks off the Sussex coast. He based this theory on his observations as a shepherd on the Sussex Downs, having seen them diving into the sea many times, he said, and sometimes finding their bodies washed up on the shore during the months of autumn. And as if this were not enough, his view was shared by no less an authority than the Bishop of Chichester, who had suspended the creatures in a fish bowl by way of an experiment to see how long they could hold their breath, and had declared that they went into a kind of comatose state, very like hibernation, that could last some considerable time.

Dr Moll had ridiculed these suggestions. Far from spending the coldest months of the year at the bottom of the English Channel, or a pond, or even the Bishop's fish bowl, they headed for the tropics, he claimed, flying across France and Spain and choosing the shortest sea crossings, usually at the Straits of Dover and Gibraltar, until they reached Africa.

During his stay on the Rock, Dr Moll had watched great flocks of them as they arrived from the north in the early autumn, and then proceeded southward across the Strait, making the return journey in the months of April and May when the skies over England were once more filled with sunshine and insects, or at least insects.

‘But how do you know the birds come from England?' Nathan had challenged him, early in their acquaintance.

Well, of course, he didn't, the chaplain had confessed; it was purely hypothesis, though based on detailed records kept by naturalists in England, France and Spain during the years of peace. They had noted that every year, in early September, great flocks of birds, including swallows, could be seen heading out to sea across the Straits of Dover in the direction of France. And French naturalists had reported the arrival of similar flocks about an hour or so later in the Pas de Calais.

It was possible, of course, that the English birds dived into the sea and the French birds took their place, but informed opinion considered this unlikely. Nor did they stay in the region of Calais for more than a day or two. Usually they resumed their journey within a matter of hours – and were tracked by dedicated ornithologists across France and Spain to the Reverend Moll's own perch on the Rock of Gibraltar.

Unfortunately the chaplain had been unable to find reliable correspondents who could report on their safe arrival in Morocco, and chart their subsequent progress across the desert. But it was his belief that they continued flying south until they came to the more fertile regions of Central Africa where the vegetation – and the insect life – was more to their liking.

Nathan was not entirely convinced by this hypothesis, any more than he had as a child been convinced by Old Abe's. It seemed a preposterous notion that a small bird with a brain the size of half a walnut could navigate across 1,000 miles of land and sea when he himself, with all his advantages, was barely able to make the same journey with a compass and sextant and the best charts the
Admiralty could provide. And even then, as often as not, he got it wrong.

Another thought occurred to him, equally wonderful, though somewhat disturbing. He had always assumed that the swallows and other birds he saw in the skies of Sussex were English. As English as he was. And presumably that those on the other side of the English Channel were French, as committed as their human counterparts to ceaseless enmity. But if Dr Moll was right they were of a more international breed, flying freely across borders and making their homes wherever they pleased. How wonderful was that! What freedom! To flit about the globe and settle where you pleased, and give no thought to borders or the restrictions of language and custom and the horrors of war. And how fascinating to think that the very swallows he had seen in the skies of Gibraltar had been swoop ing over the fields and downs of Sussex only a few days previously. They might even have perched on the trees surrounding Windover House, his family home in Wilmington.

It was a pity they could not be trained to carry a letter.

Nathan had received scant news from home. Just one despatch from his mother, written on the occasion of his twenty-ninth birthday, on 1 August, and delivered a little over a fortnight ago. Her news was not entirely welcome, but then news imparted by his mother rarely was.

He took it out of his pocket now – his last surviving link with home – and opened it with care, for the folds were fragile with overuse.

It started promisingly enough. She had paid off most of her debts and was no longer troubled by the bailiffs. She
had even taken on an extra servant
to relieve the burden on poor old Izzy
and had quite reconciled herself to living in Soho,
which is not quite as deprived or as like to the Wilderness as I had first imagined
.

It might be imagined – and was no doubt stated in no uncertain terms by several of her acquaintance – that Lady Catherine Peake, having been born and bred in New York, and thus being no stranger to the Wilderness, had no business to be particular about living in Soho, or indeed any other area of London, deprived or otherwise. But she was the daughter of wealthy Huguenot immigrants who had made their fortune in trade, and for most of her life she had lived in the lap of luxury. At the time of her marriage to Nathan's father she was one of the most sought-after heiresses in New York, and the Peakes of Wilmington, though nowhere near as rich, were by no means poor. Nathan's father, though a mere sea Captain at the time of their meeting, was himself the proud possessor of some 3,000 acres of prime Sussex downland.

Unhappily, the marriage had not endured. It had foundered, Lady Catherine was fond of saying, upon the rocks of political incompatibility: she supported the rebellious American colonists while he did his best to repress them in the service of King George. Since when, he had retired from the sea and devoted himself to the rearing of sheep, whilst Nathan's mother gave her life to politics and fashion – which were not, apparently, so very far removed.

Indeed, for a time, Lady Catherine – or Kitty as she was known to her intimates – had run one of the most fashionable political salons in London, though tarnished in some eyes by its association with such degenerates as
the Prince of Wales and Charles James Fox and other members of His Majesty's Disloyal Opposition. But the war between France and the other great powers of Europe, and the inevitable disruption to commerce, had played havoc with the family fortune. Several of her father's ships had been seized by one or other of the warring parties on suspicion of running contraband, and to make matters worse, Lady Catherine's London bank had collapsed, and while this had not plunged her into absolute poverty, it had obliged certain economies of scale.

She had moved out of the house in St James's Park and into a smaller and far less fashionable residence in Soho Square with a dwindling band of servants and followers. But her debts had mounted. The last time Nathan had visited her she was under siege by the bailiffs and had retained just one servant – the redoubtable Izzy, whom she mentioned in her letter, and one follower – her friend Mrs Imlay, better known as Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the infamous treatise
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
, who had also fallen upon hard times.

Nathan had been obliged to come to their rescue, using the proceeds of a profitable cruise in the Mediterranean to pay off his mother's debts and providing sufficient funds to keep her, if not in her former splendour, at least off the streets. Lady Catherine, albeit reluctant to share in the profits of what she was pleased to call ‘piracy', had man aged to overcome these scruples to such an extent that Nathan was now rendered almost as penniless as she had been.

Although he tried not to resent this, he was somewhat irked to read of her continuing involvement in opposition politics.

For although Lady Catherine no longer mixed with the likes of Prince George and his friend Mr Fox, she continued to give comfort to those of the King's enemies as could bring themselves to venture into Soho. Among those who had enjoyed the benefits of her patronage – or Nathan's, as he thought in his crabbier moments – were such reprobates as Francis Place, Thomas Hardy, William Blake, the brewer Samuel Whitbread and the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, whenever they laid aside their verse and came to London in search of more practical nourishment.

Consequently, the greater part of his mother's letter was taken up with an account of the present grievances of these worthies and their vigorous if vain attempts to bring down His Majesty's Government.

London, she represented, was in a state of siege. Not, as Nathan might have imagined, by the French, or even the mutineers at the Nore, but by hired mercenaries in the pay of ‘the Scoundrel Pitt' and his ‘Devil's Cabinet', who were bent on suppressing the people's liberties and reducing them to the status of serfs or eunuchs, according to whichever condition the Satraps of Tyranny favoured at the time.

Using the excuse of imminent invasion by the French, His Majesty's Government had arrested many of Lady Catherine's friends and subjected the rest, including herself, to relentless persecution. They found themselves under constant surveillance by spies and informers, she told Nathan; their houses were raided, their confidential papers seized and their servants threatened and abused. They were already in fear of their lives because of the hysteria worked up by the popular press; now leaked
documents had revealed that, in the event of a French landing, all known critics of the government were to be rounded up and shot.

Nathan had read this intelligence with more scepticism than alarm, for he knew how much his mother valued her notoriety. But it was not reassuring to know that she was seen as a prom in ent critic of His Majesty's Government. Apart from his fears for her safety, it could not help his own tarnished reputation.

Indeed, there was little in the letter that could console him for his present misfortunes. And very little of what one might call the personal, until the final page.

Then it came.

He turned to it now, smoothing the creases and screwing up his eyes in the still bright, if ineffectual October sunshine.

I am sorry to rattle on so much about Politics, my dear, knowing of your Indifference to such matters, but now that Sara has moved in with Godwin and Mary, I have little else to distract me and indeed have become a veritable Hermit, alone with Izzy and nothing but the occasional bottle of gin to comfort me.

Sara. It was the only mention of her in the entire letter – and so casual a reference that Nathan was persuaded his mother must have written about her in an earlier missive which had failed to reach him. She must know what Sara meant to him, for even if Nathan had not troubled to inform her, Mary almost certainly would have.