The Flood-Tide (23 page)

Ismène was still waiting for him to finish his sentence, so he said, ‘Do you think I should volunteer to join the American army, like Lafayette? Meurice would recommend me for a commission, I'm sure. Perhaps he'd like to join me, and command the French volunteers in - what is the name of the place? New something? It would be a new experience for us both.'

‘Oh don't be absurd, Henri. If ever a man was
not
born to be a soldier, it is you. And talking of soldiers, I am reminded that the Comte de Vergennes asked Meurice if he thought you would be willing to do something with his house in Paris. It is badly in need of redecoration.'

‘I'm surprised he has time to think about such things,' Henri said cynically. 'The Ministry of Foreign Affairs must be better run than ministries usually are. And if he can afford my ideas, better paid too.'

‘And that is another thing, Henri. Vergennes spoke most delicately about the question of your services, and whether you would accept a present from him. I do think you ought to accept it, really I do. It would put him so far in your debt, that he might well use his influence for you at Court.’

Yes, Henri thought, it was a delicate point.
His
generosity in allowing Vergennes to 'pay' him for his services would put Vergennes in more obligation to him than if he did the work for nothing. It was interesting that Ismène obviously understood the point, though he doubted that she would have been able to explain it. But there was another consideration here, too. Henri was discovering that it cost money to keep two establishments, and that however thrifty and economical Madeleine was, she was a drain on his income that his income could not well stand. He liked to bring her things, too, bits of furniture and pretty china and new dresses. He stood in need of money - and since he used his 'employment' by the aristocracy as his excuse to be away from the house, it seemed logical to allow it to provide the money too.

‘Very well, Ismène,' he said. 'You may tell Meurice that he may indicate to Vergennes that I am willing to be approached, and will not be mortally offended by a present.’

Some time later he went home to tell Madelaine about Franklin and about his new commission from Vergennes. She had news for him, too, news that made him glad he had decided to accept Vergennes' money: she was expecting a baby.

*

The war had come suddenly close to Charles, bringing the rest of the world with it. With Philippe gone, and not to be expected back for at least three months, the burden of running the estate fell upon his shoulders, and he could no longer lose himself in his familiar and remote world of. biology. Instead of dealing with plants and insects, whose behaviour, though sometimes mysterious, was always predictable, he had to deal with people, who were devious and dishonest and violent and corrupt. Philippe had employees, agents and bailiffs and overseers who knew how the business was run and reported to Charles, but he had no doubt that they would cheat him if they could, and was on his guard, sifting their words and checking their work. In having to deal with these white servants, he became very much more appreciative of the Negro slaves, whose motivations were biologically simple, and whose honesty he would far sooner trust.

In addition to the annoyance of business, he had to suffer the intrusion of the Patriot Party. Having commandeered Philippe and his
bateau,
they seemed to consider his house theirs as well. There were party meetings once a month, sometimes more often, held in the drawing room of York House, because it was ‘so convenient'. The house was also used as a secondary headquarters and staging post for the army, for it was a convenient half-way house between Philadelphia and Yorktown. At all hours of the day and night, Charles and Eugenie had to expect the arrival of messengers wanting food and rest, or soldiers wanting a night's billet, or the wounded from skirmishes, being posted home by stages their indisposition could tolerate.

He and Eugenie were hostages for Philippe's good behaviour, he knew, but even had he been able to abandon Eugenie to her fate, he could never have got closer to the British army than a few yards from his door. They were watched all the time. The astonishing thing was that Eugenie did not seem to mind. With the early days of sickness over, she carried her pregnancy easily, and as she grew bigger, she seemed to grow also in grace and in spirits. She was more energetic than he had ever seen her, and whether she was feeding uncouth soldiers, nursing wounded men, or sitting and smiling graciously at the members of the meetings, she seemed to do it all with as much enthusiasm as any daughter of the revolution. He had never been able to discover whether she had managed that first invasion so well through ignorance or design, and he could not discover now what she felt about the situation. He had not been in the habit of talking with her since they married, and could not now begin.

But, forced as he was into the company of the revolutionaries, he began, through hearing more of their ideas, to change his own. Leaving aside their cant about equality and the 'natural justice' of the republic as against the monarchy, he could see that their plain design was to be their own masters, and he could not find that there was anything to be argued against it. They wanted to manage their own affairs, to have their own elective parliament, to decide upon their own taxation and expenditure, to trade freely with the world, and to expand as they would, without reference to any external power. And why shouldn't they? he found himself asking again and again. Loyalty to Britain, the mother-country? But by this stage of the country's development it could only be a political loyalty, and a political loyalty could only ever come poor second to economic necessity.

The Patriots were united in this desire for independence, but Charles discovered through listening and occasionally asking questions that they were united in very little else, and that there were as many internal fears and jealousies and mistrusts as in any group of men. Many doubted the wisdom of calling in the aid of France, for all General Washington's certainty about it. It was likely that Spain would ally with France, and when the British were defeated, many feared that the two Catholic powers would simply carve up America between them, and that the colonists would pass from the comparatively easy slavery to Britain into a slavery to Popish powers ten times as abject.

There was also hostility between the planters of the south and the traders of the north, who felt their interests conflicted and held each other in suspicion. There was fear on the part of the slave-owners that the New Englanders would try to abolish slavery. There was suspicion by the east coast dwellers of the western farmers, who never drank tea and felt the heel of Europe less firmly on their necks. And there was a great fear on the part of the Old Families, the American 'aristocracy', that independence from Britain would unleash the mob, and that a republican government would abolish wealth and privilege.

Despite all this, Charles found himself growing more sympathetic towards the Patriots as time went on, and resenting their presence in his life less. But he was still aware that he was under suspicion, and that if the British navy sailed into Chesapeake Bay, his position would be very delicate indeed.

CHAPTER NINE

 The
Ariadne's
three-year commission ended in March 1777, and she was sent home to Portsmouth; but the navy was desperately undermanned and short of ships, and as soon as she had paid-off she was recommissioned with all her officers, and the men had not one single day on shore to spend their accumulated pay or taste the joys of the Portsmouth grog shops and brothels. It was a delicate time, and there was almost mutiny, and five men had to be flogged before things were quiet again.
Ariadne
delivered despatches, collected letters for the fleet, revictualled, took on a dozen new hands, and sailed without delay.

Even the officers had seen nothing of their families. One of the lieutenants had a wife in Portsmouth, and she had sent a message by a shore boat that she was waiting on the dockside for him, but the most he had been able to do was to borrow a glass and look at her from the taffrail. For Thomas and William it was, of course, doubly impossible, their families being so far away, but there were at least letters. William was better pleased than Thomas, for he had no particular reason to want to go home, and his letters, from his mother and father and Edward, with a line from Father Ramsay, were full of news and more than he expected. His mother, he learnt, was well advanced in pregnancy and had been told not to ride any more until she was delivered, which made her feel frustrated. She was using up her energies on reorganizing the house. Papa had got her a housekeeper, Mrs Mappin, to ease the burden from her shoulders, and the two were at continued loggerheads over the way things should be done.

All this he learnt from his father's letter. From his mother's letter he learnt that his father was doing far too much, and wearing himself out, for as well as all his duties as a Justice of the Peace, he was on the boards of both the Turnpike Trust and the Canal Trust, was a governor of St Edward's School, and overseer of the Workhouse and Hospital, and was now determinedly trying to interest other landowners in growing potatoes. And that Persis was wonderfully fit, and was going to win everything at the York races, and another of Artembares' offspring was going to come second. All in all, he learnt that his father loved his mother, and that his mother loved his father and horses, and thus that all was well in his world, and he was satisfied.

Thomas was less happy. He had hoped, of course, to see Flora; he had longed to see his daughter Louisa, who was now two and a half, and walking and talking and delighting Rachel by promising to have curly hair, and who would not recognize her father if she saw him. That was the greatest sadness in the life of a sailor. But he was not entirely happy with Flora's letters. They were shorter than he would have liked, and never mentioned the child - it was Jemima's correspondence that told him about Louisa's progress - and contained a great deal about London and parties and very little about Flora herself, or her feelings for her husband. He was glad that she was enjoying herself, of course, and that she had been presented at Court, and that she was so friendly with the Countess of Chelmsford; but though he would not go quite as far as admitting he wished her back at Morland Place, he thought she might be sorrier that he was not sharing her pleasures.

However, there was no time for brooding.
Ariadne
sailed again for the West Indies and Thomas had the additional tasks of seeing the new hands settled in, ridding the ship of the vermin they brought aboard, and exercising the crew so hard that they had no time to think of their grievances. They made a quick passage to Kingston, delivered the letters, picked up despatches, and sailed to New York to join General Howe in his new thrust against Washington's army.

Howe had decided against marching the army across New Jersey, and instead planned to sail the men and horses round the coast to the Delaware River and as far up it as possible towards Philadelphia, General Washington's capital. Embarkation took place on 23 July, 15,000 men, staff officers, baggage and horses, all to be got on board somehow. Conditions below were terrible, even on the three-deckers, and the weather was inimically hot.
Ariadne
had her contingent to carry. William had grown used to conditions on board, enough to consider the available space adequate if not generous, but even he was amazed to see how many more men could be crammed into a wooden ship when necessary. The soldiers regarded the sailors with suspicion, the sailors regarded the soldiers with tolerant amusement. Many of them were seasick, even though the seas were blessedly calm, and exclaimed in amazement at the conditions the sailors accepted as normal. The sailors thought them effete, unused to hardship, unable to think for themselves. Even William, while he was doing his best to offer the hospitality of the gunroom to the colour sergeants, found himself thinking contemptuously that he would like to see
them
run aloft in the dead of night in a storm to reef the tops'ls.

The horses were less of a problem, once they had been swayed aboard and hobbled to the deck-rings. Watering them was a continuous job, for they were always thirsty, and could not, like the men, be expected to put up with it; and the first lieutenant cursed and almost wept at the dinginess of his once white decks, fearing he would never rid them of the stable taint. The horses seemed to adapt to the movement 'of the ship quite quickly, and there were few accidents. At least they were not seasick; and at least they did not bring vermin on board with them, as did the soldiers. Within hours of the embarkation, William found himself scratching, and it was not long before the men of his watch began reporting to him, with a mixture of shame and pique, that they had got fleas, or lice, or bedbugs. In the heat, and the crowded conditions, the pests bred exponentially, and there was no hope of tackling them until the soldiers were disembarked again.

‘It won't be for long,' he tried to comfort the sufferers. ‘A week or so and we'll have the soldiers off, and deal with it.

But it was not a week or so - it turned out to be more than a month. They hove to outside the mouth of the Delaware for some time, while every glass in the squadron was trained on the shores, and then the flagship signalled and they passed on down the coast. Howe had decided that the Delaware was too well-guarded to risk a landing. They were to sail instead up the Chesapeake Bay and land the men at the head of it.