Betrayal (32 page)

Abruptly he stood up. ‘Hard times, but we have our duty.’

‘Y
ou are quite clear,
amado mio
, what we must do?’ Rafaela said, her voice breaking with intensity.

‘Of course,’ Serrano replied, although in his nervousness his hands were working together.

‘You will wait at Los Tres Reyes and I will bring the English captain to you. Now, don’t forget—’

‘
Mi rosa
, you do your part and I will do mine. I shall not fail Don Baltasar.’

They walked together in a wary silence through the shabby streets, then separated towards the centre. The city was unusually quiet and had an air of tension and dread that played on Serrano’s mind. He tried to tell himself that it was safer now: he was known where it counted as an agent of the patriots and need not fear them. But was it really true that they were in sacred alliance with the loyalists, whose hatred had seen him exiled?

Distant sounds of a military column marching came echoing through the streets. In a panic he hid in a side alley while the tramping feet went by – he had no idea how the British must regard him now. It was Rafaela’s job to feel for this before she brought Captain Kydd to the back room of the tavern. The column seemed endless: there must be many thousand troops in the city – and now they were his sworn enemy.

‘I say, for the ears of Captain Keed only!’ Rafaela snapped at the fortress guard. She stood there stubbornly until eventually an important-looking naval officer and a plainly dressed man descended.

‘
¿Señorita, qué quieres con el capitán?
’

Ignoring him she addressed the officer directly. ‘Doña Rafaela Callejo, an’ I have
información
for you, Captain Keed.’ He was a handsome man with a strong, open face that paradoxically allowed her fears to subside a little.

‘How do you know my name?’ he challenged.

She said nothing.

‘Very well, I’ll see her inside,’ Kydd told the translator, and led the way to his office.

‘Now, what is it you have to tell me, Miss Callejo?’

Rafaela adjusted her shawl. He looked directly at her, no play with the eyes or attempt to dominate or charm, and she felt a twinge of guilt at what she was about to do. ‘Sir, you know my lover. Vicente Serrano.’

‘I do,’ Kydd said cautiously. ‘He left my ship some time ago.’

‘Yes. To reach
los patriotas
. I am to tell you he was not in time for your attack and only now has arrive in Buenos Aires.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

‘You’re not angry wi’ him?’

Kydd shook his head. ‘No. We had to sail quickly. These things happen in war.’

‘Capitán, he wish to do more. To help King George against the Spanish so they can be throw from our country!’ She smiled winningly. ‘Sir, he is hiding, he frighten that someone will see him if he come to the fort.’

‘I understand.’

‘He know you, he trust you. Sir, will you see him at all?’

Serrano stood up when Kydd and Rafaela entered, his nervousness allayed by her smile.

‘Captain Keed! I, er . . .’ But all his imaginings for a suave line of questioning leading to secrets fled before the reality of facing the man he was about to betray.

‘You wanted to help us against the Spanish?’ Kydd prompted.

‘Er, yes, sir.’

‘Then I’m not at all sure what you can do unless first you tell us.’

‘I – um, then what is your problem, may I ask?’ Serrano blurted.

‘That must be finding victuals for the soldiers – bread and spirit, provisions. We’re in much need – but this is not something you can help us with, I fear, unless you know of secret stores or such,’ Kydd finished hopefully.

‘I will try. Thank you, sir – thank you!’ he spluttered, the excitement in him building while Rafaela looked on in bafflement.

‘And if you ever hear of mischief from the Spanish . . .’

‘Yes, yes. Goodbye, sir, goodbye!’

Blinking, Kydd allowed himself to be escorted outside by Rafaela, who hurried back afterwards.

‘What are you doing, you fool?’ she blazed. ‘Where are the secrets to tell Don Baltasar? You should have—’

Serrano gazed back with a saintly smile. ‘I have the biggest of all,
mi bella flor
,’ he said, challenging her with his eyes.

‘What is this big secret then?’ She pouted.

‘Only that I’m to tell General Liniers to order his soldiers to rest easy. There will be no battles, no mortal struggle with the English.’

‘What are you saying? This is lunatic, Vicente!’

‘Tonight I shall leave in the fishing boat and at dawn I shall be speaking to the general directly,’ he declared. ‘You shall wait for my return.’

Colonia del Sacramento was now overwhelmed by an armed encampment that extended far out into the country. As Serrano was escorted through it he was thrilled by the sight of legendary regiments, soldiers in blue with red sashes, drilling proudly, and countless volunteers in their tall shakos, with their muskets a-slope, led by officers in magnificently plumed headgear.

Over to the right the
blandengues
, the veteran frontier militia, had their distinctive poled tents in rows, and in the distance cavalry thundered in mock charges. These
blandengues
had just completed a forced march over the ninety miles from Montevideo to Colonia but showed no sign of it.

Serrano threw out his chest: he was not in a fine uniform but he knew he had tidings for the commander in chief that would affect every last one of them.

Approaching the headquarters tent, he saw Güemes talking to an officer and waved gaily. His friend looked back at him in astonishment and Serrano felt his gaze follow him into the tent.

Several distinguished-seeming officers stood over a desk where an older man in a severe black uniform, finished in gold and scarlet, was seated, writing.

‘Sir, an agent from Buenos Aires with news.’

‘Wait.’

The man finished scratching away, then thrust a paper at one of the officers before looking up at the intruder.

‘Don Santiago Liniers!’ whispered someone behind Serrano.

‘Sir. I have to report . . .’

‘Well?’ The voice was soft and calm.

Encouraged, Serrano went on, ‘Sir, there is no need for a battle, sir.’

There were gasps and a stifled giggle.

‘Go on.’

‘I, personally, have interviewed the
capitán de puerto
himself and have made discovery that the treacherous English are in dire want of any kind of provisions. I put it to you, sir, that it is only a matter of a short while and they will be starved out. If we are patient, they must soon surrender to us, and without a drop of our own blood shed.’

‘What do you know of military affairs?’ snarled one of the officers. ‘Leave us to—’

Serrano’s face burned.

‘No, no, Miguel, he means well. Tell me, what account of the present state of their stores can you give me? How many men are on rations? Where is it kept? Can they supply from the sea? These things I need to know for if we wait longer we must find more supply for our own army.

‘And the biggest question is, when will their reinforcements arrive? If you can tell me the answer to that it would be of the greatest service. As it is, I must go forward without delay on the assault, you see.’

A tall officer bent down and whispered to Liniers, who nodded and said, ‘There
is
an office you can perform for me, as it happens.’

‘Anything, sir!’

‘You’ll no doubt be aware that our naval forces at Colonia suffered in a recent reversal at arms. This has had the unfortunate effect of frustrating our strategy to cross the Río de la Plata and join with our brothers for the grand assault on Buenos Aires. I would not have them think we are unwilling and therefore I shall write a message of encouragement and patience, which I desire you shall take to them.’

‘Sir!’ said Serrano, stiffening to attention.

‘It will be to Colonel General Pueyrredón, commander of the Voluntarios Montados Bonaerense.’

‘The gauchos?’

‘Quite.’

‘We’ll stand on a little further, I believe,’ Acting Lieutenant Hellard said evenly, watching the three craft fleeing ahead of him, each not much smaller than his own and which, together, could overcome
Stalwart
,
the
sumaca
, if they chose – but they were at a crucial disadvantage: they faced the moral superiority of the famed Royal Navy that had the year before at Trafalgar crushed the best that Spain could send against it. These would never chance a confrontation.

The chill wind was getting stronger, tearing the tops from the waves – it gave speed to the more stoutly built
sumaca
but was threatening the odd assortment they were chasing: two
felucca
s whose soaring lateens could not easily be reefed and a
balandra
, a more European-styled cutter. All were clawing into the wind, the edges of their sails fluttering desperately, pale faces looking back on their implacable pursuer.

The heading could not be sustained. Up the River Plate to its end there was a maze of mud-flats and the blunt thirty-mile barrier of impenetrable marshes that separated the two shores. Sooner or later they must turn and face their fate or drive aground to be taken separately by
Stalwart
. Hellard grinned in anticipation and glanced at his crew, each with a cutlass and a brace of pistols: they didn’t need to be told what was in prospect.

Abruptly the lead
felucca
put her helm down and lay over on to the other tack, followed like wheeling starlings by the other two.

‘Ready about,’ Hellard ordered languidly, and
Stalwart
made to follow suit. In an instant the three ahead swung back to their original course, gaining nearly a hundred yards, but the end could not be long in doubt.

It was the
balandra
, marginally larger than the other two, that took the ground first. Almost comically slowing as the muddy seabed rose to brush her undersides she stopped, still under full sail. The other two pressed on.

Hellard ordered savagely, ‘Come to, a half-pistol-shot abeam.’

Then he snapped, ‘Ahoy there, the swivel. One round to wake him up!’

The shot was sent low over the little half-deck aft where the crew crouched. They ducked out of sight and he ordered, ‘Boarders away!’

In a well-practised move their boat was launched; with Hellard at the tiller and four men at the oars, they pulled strongly towards the
balandra
’s squared-off stern. Muskets banged from the deck-line but Hellard smiled cynically – in their inexperience they were firing much too early and the shots were going wide.

At the last minute he threw over his tiller and brought the boat in at an angle with a thump. With a roar a brawny seaman tossed his cutlass aboard and reached for a rope to heave himself in. Four crouched men rose to meet him – but Hellard’s ready-aimed pistol kicked in his hand and the first went down in a gurgle of blood. A seaman’s pistol behind him took the next with a bullet in the stomach and the man toppled forward, screaming, into the sea.

The third held his blade at point and retreated, pale and shaking. Hellard swung aboard and faced him with his sword, motioning for him to drop his weapon. The man was rigid with terror but kept his position, the tip of his crude cutlass wavering, his eyes black pits of fear. The lieutenant made a threatening gesture but the sailor kept up his weapon. A plunge overboard the other side was presumably the last making his escape.

It was butchery but there was no alternative: Hellard swept up his blade as though to slash down – the cutlass went up to protect and, with a sharp twist and stoop, Hellard was lunging inside, catching the man in the throat in a bloody spray. He fell to his knees, choking his life away.

Out ahead the two
felucca
s were making a broad circle, looking to an opportunity for revenge – Hellard and his party had little time.

In the cabin he found an oil lamp. He shouted down into the waist for the wreckers to stop smashing at the bottom of the vessel with broad-axe and maul, then dashed the lamp to the deck. It splintered and the oil caught in roiling flame.

As men tumbled into the boat to return to
Stalwart
the bowman leaned over and fished out a shapeless dripping black object. ‘So what’s this’n?’

‘Get on your oar!’ Hellard snarled at him in reply and they were away.

In the dim twilight, Serrano stood up to his knees in the sea, clutching his arms and shivering uncontrollably with cold and fright. It had taken hours for the blaze to be noticed from shore and a cautious fishing boat sent to investigate, but now it was coming and he would be back in blessed safety and warmth before long. It had been the worst experience he had ever had – the quick crossing abruptly interrupted by scenes of stark terror ended only by the plunge for his life over the side.

The desolate time standing in the mud was preferable to the alternative: being seized by the British and taken before their senior officer – Captain Kydd, who would quickly recognise his real position. And he could congratulate himself that even in all the horror he had thought to cast his precious dispatches overboard to prevent their capture.