The Flag of Freedom (39 page)

‘Either way it will sell thousands of copies,' she continued, ‘and I shall be rich.'

‘I thought you
were
rich,' he said, finding his voice. ‘I mean, I thought your father was.'

‘Oh, he is. Well, perhaps not quite so rich now he has had to pay all that money to get me back again. But I mean I will be rich on my own account. Not just an heiress.'

Nathan was feeling a little unsteady on his feet –
doubtless the effect of walking on a stable surface after so many weeks at sea – and they found somewhere to sit outside one of the coffee houses under the shade of a plane tree where, in the absence of anything stronger, they drank sherbet lemon and watched the world go by. It went by very slowly and did not seem to be doing very much in particular.

‘You would not think that we were at war,' remarked Nathan, after a period of reflective silence, forgetting for the moment that he was supposed to be an American and a neutral.

‘I am not at war,' she assured him. ‘And they are not.
We
are very much at peace, thank you.'

Sometimes she reminded him not of Sara but of his mother. He lapsed into a gloomy silence. It was Louisa who broke it.

‘Never mind,' she said, ‘you will probably not be at war forever.'

‘No,' he said. His gloom was unrelieved.

‘So what will you do when you are not?' she said.

He blew out his breath, his shoulders slumped. ‘I have no idea,' he said.

‘Well, never mind,' she said, patting his hand in motherly sympathy. ‘Perhaps you will marry an heiress.'

When they returned to the ship, Tully was waiting to greet them. Nathan could see by his expression that the news was bad.

‘I am truly sorry,' he said, ‘but Mr Lamb …'

Louisa let out a wail and they watched her stumble below.

‘He died in his sleep,' Tully murmured gently to Nathan, ‘a little while after you went ashore.'

Nathan felt the tears flood to his eyes. He stooped to pick up something that had dropped from Louisa's hands. It was the bag of pastries she had bought in the marketplace.

‘There is more news,' Tully told him. ‘A wine-brig just put in from Corfu and we exchanged news with the Captain. He says he came across a great battle fleet two days ago in the Ionian Sea, some fifty miles south-west of Zante. Thirteen ships of the line flying the British flag, sailing due east towards the Morea.'

N
athan shook his head in bemusement as he gazed down at the chart. A most excellent chart from William Heather's
Mediterranean Pilot
of 1795, it showed the Ionian Sea and its numerous islands, with the surrounding coastline of Italy and Greece. But no matter how long and how hard he looked at it, Nathan could think of no plausible reason for a British battle fleet to be heading towards the Morea – an obscure peninsula under Ottoman rule halfway between Sicily and the Turkish mainland.

The Greek Captain who had reported this phenomenon had permitted Tully to examine his ship's log where he had entered his own position at the time of the sighting – longitude 10° 30´ East, latitude 37° 5´ North which put them some 250 nautical miles to the north-west of Candia. But that was two days since. If the fleet had continued on
the same course, it would take them into the Gulf of Coron.

But why?

‘We are not at war with the Ottomans, are we?' Nathan mused aloud. ‘Have I missed something since we were in Tripoli?'

Neither Tully, O'Driscoll nor Cribb appeared to think he had. But Nathan could agonise over this all day and well into the night and still be none the wiser. ‘Are all the hands aboard?' he asked Tully, and when he was assured that they were: ‘Then make ready to sail. Mr Cribb, set us a course for the Gulf of Coron.'

He made his way to the upper deck, to make this decision known to Imlay. He anticipated strong opposition and strong opposition was what he got.

‘On no account,' Imlay protested. ‘What? In search of a fleet that may not exist? And even if it does, will be long gone by the time we get there.'

‘It is but a little out of our way,' Nathan argued reasonably. ‘And if the wind holds, we may be there by the day after tomorrow.'

‘And if they are not there?'

‘Then we will crack on to the Strait of Messina,' Nathan assured him, ‘and thence to Naples.'

For once the wind did not fail them and Nathan's prediction proved to be correct. Midway through the forenoon on the second day after leaving Candia they rounded Cape Matapan and saw the Gulf of Coron before them, shimmering in the fierce light of the summer sun.

And there, almost lost in the haze at the far side of the bay, was their phantom fleet.

‘Good God!' It seemed as if Nathan was the ghost, judging from the startled reaction to his appearance aboard the flagship. Even the boatswain's call was stunned into silence and Captain Berry fair goggled at him in astonishment.

‘What in the Devil's name are you doing here?' he demanded, having apparently decided that the Devil was a more appropriate invocation than the Almighty where Nathan was concerned. ‘And what is that damned flag you are flying? We had thought it was the Stars and Stripes, but I am told it is some kind of a snake.'

‘A rattlesnake. And it is the Flag of Freedom. I am surprised you did not know that,' Nathan replied tartly, for though Berry was now made Captain – and apparently Flag Captain at that – he had been a lieutenant when they had last met, and they were pretty much the same age. ‘As to what I am doing here,' he went on, ‘I could ask the same of you, Edward, for the French ain't here, you know, they are in Alexandria. And have been for the past three weeks.'

This caused even more of a sensation than his appearance and he was obliged to give a full account of himself.

When he had finished, Berry looked a trifle pale in the gills. ‘You had best tell this to the Admiral,' he said, ‘for we have been searching for them for the last two months and he is brought so low I fear for his sanity.'

‘The Admiral?' Nathan cocked a brow.

‘Why Nelson, of course.' Berry looked surprised but then took in Nathan's expression. ‘Did you not know?'

‘I heard a rumour to that effect but I had thought he was back in England nursing his wounds.'

‘He was.' Berry dropped his voice. ‘But then the First Lord sent him back to St Vincent in the
Vanguard
. And St Vincent sent him into the Med to sort out Bonaparte. We've been looking for him ever since.'

Nathan leaned on the rail and gazed down the long line of ships. Thirteen ships of the line, most of them 74s, and one small brig, all flying the blue ensign which he had assumed, when he first saw it, was the flag of Admiral St Vincent.

‘But what brought you to the Bay of Coron?' he persisted. ‘And where are all your frigates?'

Berry sighed. ‘I had better take you to the Admiral,' he said, ‘and he can tell you himself. But Peake …' he looked Nathan straight in the eye and lowered his voice ‘… you will find the Admiral greatly changed from when you last saw him. I fear he has had too many disappointments for the good of his health. He starts at any familiar sound – and his heart … Well, I am not a medical man, but the doctor says he must not be over-excited.' Nathan stared at him in astonishment. ‘Come, I will take you to him and you can tell him your news. But break it to him gently, if you will, and pray do not ask him where are all his frigates.'

Nelson was in his day cabin, where he had apparently been receiving medication, for the doctor was on the way out as the two Captains came in. Despite Berry's warning, Nathan was shocked by the Admiral's appearance. He seemed a decade older than when they had last met, though it was not much more than a year ago; his face was pale and gaunt, even his good eye seemed to have lost its lustre,
and the sleeve of his missing arm was pinned across his breast.

‘Look what the cat brought in,' declared Berry with a poor attempt at humour. ‘And wait till you hear what he has to tell you.'

Nelson regarded Nathan bleakly. For a moment there was no recognition in his face, then it lit up a little, but it was like the face of an old man clutching at a distant memory.

‘Why, Peake. The
Unicorn
, is it not? Have you brought me some frigates at last?'

Nathan's heart sank. The Admiral appeared to have lost his wits as well as his right arm. Before he could inform Nelson that the
Unicorn
had been lost to the French nearly two years ago, Berry went on: ‘He has brought you something better than frigates. Tell him,' he urged Nathan, but with a warning look.

In as flat a tone as he could contrive, Nathan recounted what he had seen off the coast of Alexandria. He tried to keep the slightest degree of excitement or urgency out of his voice, but to his alarm Nelson began to rub his forehead vigorously with the knuckles of his remaining hand.

‘When was this, you say?' He uttered the question through gritted teeth as if in an extremity of pain.

‘The evening of the thirtieth of June,' Nathan told him, and was even more alarmed when Nelson let out a howl like a wolf and beat his fist on the table with such violence it brought a cup crashing to the floor.

‘The thirtieth of June,' he repeated in a manic falsetto. ‘Do you hear this, Berry?
The thirtieth of June.'

Nathan threw a helpless glance at Berry and saw that he had his eyes closed and was swaying rather more than
the movement of the ship necessitated. He wondered if they had both gone mad.

‘I am sorry,' he said. ‘I did not mean it to distress you.'

‘Tell him, Berry,' commanded Nelson.

Berry opened his eyes. ‘We left Alexandria on the evening of the twenty-ninth,' he said flatly. ‘There was not a single French ship in sight.'

‘You were at Alexandria?' Nathan looked from one to the other, but neither replied. ‘But – the sea was filled with them. We counted over two hundred sail. I do not know how—' He was about to say ‘how you could have missed them' but caught himself up in time.

It was apparent, however, that his meaning was clear.

‘I suppose it was the khamsin,' he finished lamely. ‘You could scarce see your hand in front of your face.'

‘And yet
you
saw them, Captain,' Nelson pointed out. ‘Two hundred sail, you say?'

‘About that. Insofar as we could judge.'

‘I think your judgement is about two hundred short, would you not agree, Berry?' Nelson's tone was deceptively light. ‘There were four hundred at Malta. And we missed them there, too – by about the same distance.'

He let out something like a sob and covered his face with his hand.

Gradually, in fits and starts, the two men relayed a story of mishap and misunderstanding that almost had Nathan crying, let alone the Admiral.

Their troubles had begun back in May, off the coast of Sardinia, when they were beset by a severe storm – as bad a storm, Nelson said, as he had ever endured, even in the Caribbean. The squadron was scattered, each ship fighting
desperately for its own survival. The
Vanguard
was dismasted and left wallowing helplessly off the rugged coastline. Fortunately, as the storm abated, the
Alexander
managed to get a line aboard and tow her to the small island of San Pietro where, miraculously, the crew had her seaworthy again, with a jury rig, in a matter of days.

‘It would have taken a British dockyard months,' said Nelson with a mixture of pride and bitterness.

A secret rendezvous had been agreed before the squadron was scattered, but though the heavier ships had survived the storm, there was no sign of the four frigates.

‘We learned later that they had returned to Gibraltar,' Berry reported glumly.

They were left with only one small brig – the
Mutine
under Captain Hardy – to scout for them.