Baltic Mission (4 page)

Lieutenant Quilhampton shook his head, sending the dewdrop flying. ‘Doing its damnedest to lift, sir, though I cannot depend on half cannon-shot at the moment. But a dead calm still and no sign of any merchantmen.'

‘And unlikely to be, Mr Q. They'll have snugged down and ridden out that gale like sensible fellows, if I don't mistake their temper.'

‘Rather an unusual convoy for a frigate of our force, sir, wouldn't you say?' put in Midshipman Lord Walmsley. ‘I mean two North-country brigs don't amount to much.'

‘I don't know, Mr Walmsley,' replied Drinkwater who from their earliest acquaintance had avoided the use of the young man's title on board, ‘their lading is almost as valuable as our own.'

‘May one ask what it is?'

‘One hundred and sixty thousand stand of arms, Mr Walmsley, together with powder and shot for sixty rounds a man.'

Drinkwater smiled at the whistles this intelligence provoked. ‘Come gentlemen, please be seated . . .'

They sat down noisily and Drinkwater regarded them with a certain amount of satisfaction. In addition to the three officers he had summoned earlier, James Quilhampton the third lieutenant, Mr Lallo the surgeon, and four of
Antigone
's midshipmen were present. Mr Fraser was absent on deck, pacing his atonement for failing to sight the captain's barge that forenoon, an atonement that was spiced by Rogers's passing of the instruction, leaving Fraser in no doubt of the first lieutenant's malicious triumph.

In the cabin Drinkwater paid closest attention to the midshipmen. Mr Quilhampton was an old friend and shipmate, Mr Lallo a surgeon of average ability. But the midshipmen were Drinkwater's own responsibility. It was his reputation they would carry with them when they were commissioned and served under other commanders. Their professional maturation was, therefore, of more than a mere passing interest. This was the more acutely so since most were protégés of another captain, inherited by Drinkwater upon his hurried appointment to the corvette
Melusine
during her eventful Greenland voyage. By now he had come to regard them as his own, and one in particular came under scrutiny, for he had both dismissed and reinstated Lord Walmsley.

Midshipmen Dutfield and Wickham were rated master's mates now and little Mr Frey was as active and intelligent as any eager youngster, but Lord Walmsley still engaged Drinkwater's speculation as, laughing and jesting with the others, he addressed himself to
the broth Mullender placed before them. A dominating, wilful and dissolute youth, Drinkwater had discerned some finer qualities in him during the sojourn in the Arctic. But the boy had abused his powers and Drinkwater had turned him out of the ship for a period, only taking him back when Walmsley had gone to considerable lengths to impress the captain of his remorse. There were still streaks of the old indolence, and touches of arrogance; but they were tempered by a growing ability and Drinkwater had every confidence in his passing for lieutenant at the next available Board.

Drinkwater pushed his soup plate away and hid a smile behind his napkin as he watched Walmsley, at the opposite end of the table, talking with a certain condescension to Mr Dutfield, some three years his junior.

‘A glass of wine with you, sir?' Sam Rogers leaned forward with exaggerated cordiality and Drinkwater nodded politely, raising his glass. The conversation swelled to a hubbub as Mullender brought from the little pantry the roast capons and placed them before the captain. The homely smell of the meat emphasised the luxury of this fog-enforced idleness and combined with the wine to induce a comfortable mellowness in Drinkwater. He felt for once positively justified in putting off until tomorrow the problems of duty. But Mr Mount was not of so relaxed a frame of mind.

‘Excuse me, sir,' put in the marine lieutenant, leaning forward, his scarlet coat a bright spot amidst the sober blue of the sea-officers, ‘but might I press you to elaborate on the news you gave us earlier?'

‘I did promise, did I not, Mr Mount?' said Drinkwater with a sigh.

‘You did, sir.'

Drinkwater accepted the carving irons from his coxswain Tregembo, assisting Mullender at the table. He sliced into the white meat of the fowl's breast.

‘It seems that a pitched battle was fought between considerable forces of French and Russians at a place near Königsberg called . . . Eylau, or some such . . . is that sufficient, Mr Rogers? Doubtless,' he continued, turning again to Mount, ‘it is noted upon your atlas.'

A chuckle ran round the table and Mount flushed to rival his coat. He had been greatly teased about his acquisition of a large Military Atlas, purporting to cover the whole of Europe, India, North America and the Cape of Good Hope to a standard ‘compatible with the contemplation, comprehension, verification and execution of military campaigns engaged in by the forces of His Majesty'. Armed with this
vade mecum
, Mount had bored the occupants of the gunroom rigid with
interminable explanations of the brilliance of Napoleon's campaign in Prussia the previous year. The double victory of Jena-Auerstadt, which in a single day had destroyed the Prussian military machine, had failed to impress anyone except James Quilhampton who had pored over the appropriate pages of the atlas out of pity for Mount and was rewarded by a conviction that the likelihood of a French defeat was remote. The completeness of the cavalry pursuit after Jena seemed to make little difference to the naval officers, though it had brought the French to the very shores of the Baltic Sea and reduced the Prussian army to a few impotent garrisons in beleaguered fortresses, and a small field force under a General Lestocq. Mount's admiration for the genius behind the campaign had led him to suffer a great deal of leg-pulling for his treasonable opinions.

‘And the outcome, sir?' persisted Mount. ‘You spoke of a check.'

‘Well, one does not like to grasp too eagerly at good news, since it has, in the past, so often proved false. But the Russians gave a good account of themselves, particularly as the French were reported to have been commanded by Napoleon himself.'

Drinkwater looked round their faces. There was not a man at the table whose imagination was not fired by the prospect of real defeat having been inflicted on the hitherto triumphant Grand Army and its legendary leader.

‘And the Russkies, sir. Who was in command of them?'

Drinkwater frowned. ‘To tell the truth, Mr Mount, I cannot recollect . . .'

‘Kamenskoi?'

‘No . . . no that was not it . . .'

‘Bennigsen?'

‘You have it, Mr Mount. General Bennigsen. What can you tell us of him?'

‘He is one of the German faction in the Russian service, sir, a Hanoverian by birth, something of a soldier of fortune.'

‘So your hero's taken a damned good drubbing at last, eh Mount?' said Lallo the surgeon. ‘ 'Tis about time his luck ran a little thin, I'm thinking.' Lallo turned to Drinkwater, manifesting a natural anxiety common to them all. ‘It
was
a victory, sir? For the Russians, I mean.'

‘The Swedes seemed positive that it was not a French one, Mr Lallo. It seems they were left exhausted upon the field, but the Russians only withdrew to prepare positions of defence . . .'

‘But if they had beat Boney, why should they want to prepare defences?'

‘I don't know, but the report seemed positive that Napoleon received a bloody nose.'

‘Let us hope it
is
true,' said Quilhampton fervently.

‘And not just wishful thinking,' slurred Rogers with the wisdom of the disenchanted.

‘Napoleon's the devil of a long way from home,' said Hill, laying down his knife and fork. ‘If he receives a second serious blow from the Russkies he might overreach himself.'

Drinkwater finished his own meat. The uncertainty of speculation had destroyed his euphoria. It was time he turned the intelligence to real account.

‘I believe he already has,' he said. ‘Those decrees he issued from Berlin last year establishing his Continental System will have little effect on us. Preventing the European mainland from trading with Great Britain will starve the European markets, while leaving us free to trade with the Indies or wherever else we wish. Providing the Royal Navy does its part in maintaining a close blockade of the coast, which is what the King's Orders in Council are designed to achieve. I daresay we shall make ourselves unpopular with the Americans, but that cannot be helped. Napoleon will get most of the blame and, the larger his empire becomes, the more people his policies will inconvenience.' He hoped he carried his point, aware that a note of pomposity had unwittingly crept into his voice.

‘So, gentlemen,' Drinkwater continued, after refilling his glass, ‘if the Royal Navy in general, and you in particular, do your duty, and the Russians stand firm, we may yet see the threat to our homes diminish. Let us hope this battle of Eylau is the high-water mark of Napoleon's ambition . . .'

‘Bravo, sir!'

‘Death to the French!'

‘I'll drink to that!' They were all eagerly holding their glasses aloft.

‘No, gentlemen,' Drinkwater said smiling, relieved that his lecturing tone had been overlooked, ‘I do not like xenophobic toasts, they tempt providence. Let us drink to our gallant allies the Russians.'

‘To the Russians!'

Drinkwater sat alone after the officers had gone. Smoke from Lallo's pipe still hung over the table from which the cloth had been drawn and replaced by Mount's atlas an hour before. He found the lingering aroma of the tobacco pleasant, and Tregembo had produced a remaining half-bottle of port for him.

He had watched the departure of his old coxswain with affection. They had been together for so long that the demarcations between master and servant had long since been eroded and they were capable of anticipating each other's wishes in the manner of man and wife. This uncomfortable thought made Drinkwater raise his eyes to the portraits of his wife and children on the forward bulkhead. The pale images of their faces were lit by the wasting candles on the table. He pledged them a silent toast and diverted his thoughts. It did not do to dwell on such things for he did not want a visitation of the blue devils, that misanthropic preoccupation of seamen. It was far better to consider the task in hand, though there was precious little comfort in that. Locked away beneath him lay one of the subsidies bound for the coffers of the Tsar with which the British Government propped up the war against Napoleon's French Empire. Eighty thousand pounds sterling was a prodigious sum for which to be held accountable.

He drew little comfort from the thought that the carriage of the specie would earn him a handsome sum, for he nursed private misgivings as to the inequity of the privilege. The worries over the elaborate precautions in which he was ordered to liaise with officials of the diplomatic corps, and the missing shipment of arms in the storm-separated brigs, only compounded his anxiety over the accuracy of the news from Varberg. There seemed no end to the war, and time was wearing away zeal. Many of his own people had been at sea for four years; his original draft of volunteers had been reduced by disease, injury and action, and augmented by those sweepings of the press, the quota-men, Lord Mayor's men and any unfortunate misfit the magistrates had decided would benefit from a spell in His Majesty's service.

Drinkwater emptied the bottle and swore to himself. He had lost six men by desertion at Sheerness and he knew his crew were unsettled. In all justice he could not blame them, but he could do little else beyond propitiating providence and praying the battle of Eylau would soon be followed by news of a greater victory for the armies of Tsar Alexander of Russia.

Occasional talks with Lord Dungarth, Director of the Admiralty's Secret Department, had kept Drinkwater better informed than most cruiser captains had a right to expect. Their long-standing friendship had given Drinkwater a unique insight into the complexities of British foreign policy in the long war against the victorious French. All the British were really capable of doing effectively was sealing the continent in a naval blockade. To encompass the destruction of the
Grand Army required a supply of men as great as that of France. ‘It is to Russia we must look, Nathaniel,' Dungarth had once said, ‘with her endless manpower supported by our subsidies, and the character of Tsar Alexander to spur her on.'

He had one of those subsidies beneath him at that moment; as for the character of Tsar Alexander, Drinkwater hoped he could be relied on. It was rumoured that he had connived at the assassination of his own sadistically insane father. Did such acquiescence demonstrate a conviction of moral superiority? Or was it evidence of a weakness in succumbing to the pressure of others?

Wondering thus, Captain Drinkwater rose, loosened his stock and began to undress.