Betrayal
Authors: Julian Stockwin
Table of Contents
Julian Stockwin
‘The repossession of Buenos Aires has been stained with such deliberate acts of treachery and perfidy as are not to be instanced in the annals of history’
Commodore Sir Home Riggs Popham,
HMS
Diadem,
Río de la Plata, 1806
(*
Indicates
fictitious character)
*Thomas Kydd, captain of
L’Aurore
*Nicholas Renzi, his friend and confidential secretary
, ship’s company
*Gilbey, first lieutenant
*Curzon, second lieutenant
*Bowden, third lieutenant
*Clinton, lieutenant of marines
*Owen, purser
*Oakley, boatswain
*Kendall, sailing master
*Searle, boy volunteer
*Dodd, marine sergeant
*Poulden, coxswain
*Stirk, gunner’s mate
*Collas, carpenter’s mate
*Legge, carpenter
*Doud, seaman
*Pearse, master’s mate
*Cumby, boatswain’s mate
*Wong, seaman
*Saxton, signal master’s mate
*Tysoe, Kydd’s valet
*Calloway, midshipman
Commodore Home Popham
Lieutenant Davies,
Diadem
Captain Downman,
Diadem
Captain Byng,
Belliqueux
Captain Honyman,
Leda
Captain Donnelly,
Narcissus
Captain Audley,
Ocean
Lieutenant Godwin,
Encounter
*Lieutenant Garrick,
Dolores
*Lieutenant Selby,
Staunch
*Acting Lieutenant Hellard,
Stalwart
Captain Arbuthnot
Erskine, aide
General Lord Beresford
Major General Sir David Baird
Colonel Pack
*Beekman, midshipman
*Bolt, petty officer
*Dougal, master’s mate,
Stalwart
*Ribeiro, Portuguese trader
*Geens, pest control
*Cuthbert Richardson, cocoa planter
*Ditler, ivory trader
*Scholes, passenger
Captain Waine,
Elizabeth
*Hardiman,
Justina
*Maycock, supercargo,
Justina
Jed Russell, a.k.a. Crujido, senior pilot for the viceroyalty
Lord Grenville, prime minister
Charles Sidmouth, Lord Privy Seal
Charles Fox, foreign secretary
Viscount Howick, first lord of the Admiralty
Patton, governor of St Helena
His Excellency the Governor of Truxillo
The Virrey Diputado Quintana, deputy viceroy
*Don Baltasar, Hidalgo de Terrada, paramount leader of patriots
*Manuel Bustamente, patriot deputy
Martín Miguel de Güemes, cadet-lieutenant in Spanish Army
*Barreda, Popham’s envoy
*Rodriquez Corazón, merchant and host at Kydd’s billet
*Dona Rafaela Callejo, lover of Vicente Serrano
Rafael de Sobramonte, viceroy over the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata
Martín de Álzaga, wealthy merchant
Don Santiago Liniers, military leader
Colonel General Pueyrredón, commander of the gauchos
*Charcas, Hidalgo de Sarmiento, lieutenant and emissary of Pueyrredón
*Manuel Galvis, peon
*Vicente Serrano, artist and exiled student
I
n the dilapidated office Mr Owen looked up from his reckoning. ‘Bananas at eighty
reis
the quintal seems a little excessive, Mr Ribeiro,’ he said slowly, mopping his brow. The humidity was formidable, the dull heat like a suffocating blanket, but the purser of a frigate of His Majesty’s Navy had his standards and he sweltered in coat and breeches.
Shrugging, the fat Portuguese trader leaned back in his chair. ‘You think? I sell you green ones, not go rot, best in Mozambique.’
Tugging at his clammy neckcloth and dismissively eyeing the hand of half-ripe fruit brought for his inspection, Owen looked pained. ‘My captain wishes only to serve his worthy crew with a mort of sweetness in their diet, but if the price is beyond my allowance . . .’
‘Then I help! I can find th’ red banana, very creamy, very cheap and for you—’
‘No, no, Mr Ribeiro, the crew would think it sharp practice. Were you to vary your price to accommodate a larger order – say, five quintals – and payment in silver
reals
, then . . .’
Nicholas Renzi, sitting to one side of the table, fanned himself with a palm leaf. The negotiations dragged on and his attention wandered. The doorway was jammed with wide-eyed children, fearful but entranced by this visitation from the outer world. Beyond, in the harsh sunlight, was the noisy ebb and flow of an African market town. The world of war with Napoleon Bonaparte might have been in another universe but it was precisely why he was here. Hove to off the river mouth and enjoying the fresh oceanic breezes was HMS
L’Aurore
, a thirty-two-gun frigate whose captain was his closest friend, Thomas Kydd.
As his confidential secretary, Renzi had an unquestioned right to come and go on ship’s business; in these last weeks he had often landed with the purser but not to lend his presence for business negotiations to secure fresh foodstuffs. He had every sympathy for the dry Welshman who, as a man of independent business aboard ship, had to balance his costs at supplying stores and necessaries with fairness at the point of issue yet leave himself with sufficient profit to weather financial storms. In the absence of an agent-victualler this meant making a deal with often unscrupulous local merchants that might well be repudiated later by an officious Admiralty functionary in faraway London.
The purser probably suspected but had never enquired the real reason why Renzi so often accompanied him: if there was one thing a scouting frigate needed from the shore even more than fresh victuals it was information. With an infinite number of directions to sail off in, even the tiniest whisper was better than nothing, and Renzi had personally witnessed the effectiveness of Admiral Lord Nelson’s network of merchant intelligence in the Mediterranean before Trafalgar, overseen, it was rumoured, by his own secretary.
The current mission for
L’Aurore
was an important one. Only a few months before the British had taken Cape Town, the Dutch settlement at the tip of Africa at the Cape of Good Hope, to secure the all-important route to India. With slender military resources, it lay vulnerable to a vengeful counter-attack by the French, specifically by Admiral Maréchal, who was known to be at sea with a battle squadron greatly outnumbering the few ships of the Royal Navy on station there.
L’Aurore
’s
orders were to follow the coast around the south of the continent and up the Indian Ocean side, stopping vessels, seeking word. As far north as Lourenço Marques, there had been not even a rumour, but Kydd had pressed on, if only to prove the French absent from the area. He knew that on the other side of Madagascar the French had strong island bases in a direct line from India, which could well be sheltering a battle group.
Leda
, the larger fellow frigate to
L’Aurore
, was sent to look into these, so
L’Aurore
had sailed on into the Mozambique channel, past hundreds of miles of the frightful remoteness of the dark continent to the foetid flatness of Quelimane, an ancient Arab slave market but now a lonely outpost of the Portuguese empire, itself dating from the daring voyage of Vasco da Gama in the 1490s.