Brothers in Arms (27 page)

‘Nonsense. You’re just a little seasick. And God knows why! The water is like a mill pond.’

They were in twelve barges, long vessels of about thirty-five feet in length and ten wide.
Skutsjes
, the Dutch called them. They were powered by a single sail and a number of oars on either side. Fortunately for the flotilla a light wind had come up and the barges were now skimming the waters at around ten miles an hour. They were remarkably stable craft, even when fully laden, and the shallow draught ensured that they did not collide with the many obstacles that lurked just below the surface of the flood waters.

Each was capable of taking a half-company, and Steel had obviously taken his own half-company of Farquharson’s men. He looked across the water towards the remainder of the company and could see a few Grenadiers hanging over the edge. Most of the men, though, appeared to be content if not comfortable, clinging to whatever came to hand to steady themselves.

The naval officer he had met on shore, Captain Edmund Cassels, approached him. ‘Well, Captain Steel, we should espy the convoy soon. Shouldn’t be long. Your men all coping with being at sea?’

‘We’ve taken a few casualties.’ He pointed to the unfortunates at the side.

‘Funny, being afloat will take some men that way. Myself, I’ve never been troubled by it, which is just as well really. This is like a sailing pond. I’m used to three-masters. Glad to get this mission. Ah, that looks like our lads now.’

Steel followed his line of sight and on the far horizon picked out a number of sailing vessels approaching their own. Straining his eyes, he could see that from several of their mast-tops fluttered the Union flag. And somewhere there, with them, was Henrietta.

There must have been close on fifty vessels, Dutch barges like their own mostly, and as they closed he could see that they were laden with case after case of hemp-wrapped provisions. Slowly the two groups of boats approached each other until Steel was able to make out the figures on deck. There was a shout from the leading boat, and within seconds the captain of Steel’s barge had leapt aboard the other and was in conversation with its commander, who might have been his Doppelgänger, in both clothing and stature. Then together the two men stepped back onto the deck of the transport with an ease that Steel knew he could never have hoped to master.

Cassels said, ‘May I present Captain Hugh Cassels of the Royal Navy. Captain Jack Steel, commanding the escort.’

‘You’re brothers?’

‘Near identical twins, in fact. Yes. Extraordinary, isn’t it, that we should both pitch up in the Navy? And both of the same rank.’

His brother continued, ‘Commissioned in point of fact on the same day of the same month. Though Edmund’s the finest sailor I know.’

‘Hugh, you exaggerate. I’m no better than you.’

Hugh Cassels turned to Steel. ‘Captain Steel, a word with you. I intend to take the lead with the convoy. Follow on behind us, Captain, if you please. I think that will be the most effective way of getting on, and time is of the essence, as you are aware.’

Steel frowned. ‘If you will pardon me, sir, I would beg to differ. Such an arrangement goes against all the tenets of battle. Surely, if the French do come upon us they would be more deterred if you were flanked by the escort rather than if the escort were to follow on. That way if you were attacked they would have a chance of taking some of you off before we could reach you.’

‘Ye. I had thought of that, but it is a risk I’m willing to take in the interest of speed. Or would you have the provisions delayed further?’

Steel stiffened. ‘That is not my intention, Captain. I am merely concerned for your safety and that of the convoy. We shall follow your wishes. I have said my piece. I shall say no more on’t.’ He paused, only deflected from further argument by the knowledge that he had need of retaining the captain’s good favour. ‘I do believe, though, that you may be able to help me on another matter. You have with you, on one of the convoy transports, a young woman. She is my wife, Lady Henrietta Steel. I wonder if you might get word to her that I am arrived and shall shortly be escorting her back to dry land.’

‘Your wife, sir? Point of fact, I don’t think we have any civilians left aboard. We did certainly have a party of several ladies, and I dare say that among them may have been your wife. I do recall a lady of title. But they all diverted to Leffinghe before we met you, under their own escort. Yes, now I think on it, I do believe that she may have been with them.’

Steel shook his head. ‘You must be mistaken, Captain. My wife was under specific instruction to meet me with the convoy.’

Cassels was growing annoyed. ‘Sir, I cannot vouch for the actions of your wife. But I do know that we have no females travelling with us now, and those as we did have are in Leffinghe. It was felt to be more prudent by the officer and escort that was with them. That place is held by the Allies. I suggest you go to Leffinghe to find your wife, for she is surely there. She’ll be perfectly safe there, Captain Steel. Their escorting officer assured me of it. No Frenchies for miles, and all in good hands. Oficer of the Foot Guards, Captain. The very best.’

Steel, of course, could do nothing else but agree.

An hour passed and another. The convoy, now set on its course back to Gistel, made good time, much to Steel’s annoyance, proving Cassel’s brother right. But with the onset of evening a thin mist descended fast upon the barges, making it all but impossible to see beyond the vessel directly in front and obscuring those to port and starboard. The sailors, however, lit lanthorns and hung them from the masts, giving the impression of lights bobbing about to left and right.

Slaughter said, ‘I don’t like this, sir. Not at all. It’s like so many will-o’-the-wisps. Them that come to lead you astray. Unquiet souls.’

Steel laughed. ‘Jacob! Really I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so unnerved as on this expedition. They’re the lights of our own boats.’

‘You say what you like, sir. I tell you it’s not right. They keep coming and going and I swear there’s more there than there was.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

But Steel was still peering at the lights, trying to count them, when Edmund Cassels found him.

‘Pretty sight, ain’t it? Didn’t know we had so many boats.’

‘We don’t.’

As the words left Steel’s lips both men turned, their attention caught by a sudden orange glow that rose on the starboard bow. And such was their shared experience of war on land and sea that both knew to duck. A second later a whooshing sound announced the passing over their lowered heads of a round shot. It passed over the barge without effect.

Steel was the first to recover. ‘To arms. Stand to.’

This was what they had all feared. Slaughter had not been wrong about the lights. Whoever was attacking them had come up under cover of the mist, masquerading as other barges. Steel watched as the night around them was lit up with further flashes. Cannon shot came crashing in, and through the mist the noise of metal against wood testified that all the vessels had not been so lucky as their own. Their attackers seemed to be coming at them from all sides.

Steel yelled at the Grenadiers, who had assembled in two ranks, ‘Fix bayonets!’

Cassels set his men to the oars. ‘Row, for all you’re worth.’

Up ahead it seemed that battle had already been joined. Cries from the convoy revealed that the transports had been boarded. Steel swore.

Cassels shouted at the oarsmen, ‘Row, damn you.’

Steel joined him. ‘Can’t you get this thing to go any faster? We need to save the convoy, or what’s left of it.’

His words were drowned in a cacophony of shot and cries, and then the enemy were upon them. There was a sudden thud as the keel of the attacking vessel crashed into the hull of the barge. Seconds later the deck was filled with armed men.

Steel, standing behind the Grenadiers, gave the order: ‘Present. Fire.’

A volley crashed out and sent the first wave of attackers to the deck, killing and wounding a score of them in the confined space. He looked at them and knew their type at once. Pirates. Privateers at least, in French pay. He had met their like before, and knew their fury and the full extent of their brutality. They would give no quarter. They wore no single uniform but a collection of tatters and finery. Here was the coat of a French dragoon, over there that of a Dutch officer. One of the bigger men, dead now, was dressed in a captured British red coat. Steel had no time to stare, for the second wave was in. He knew he must meet them now on equal terms.

‘Bayonets. No quarter. Give no quarter.’

His men lunged, and steel pierced flesh as another ten pirates fell. Some of the Grenadiers who had already reloaded fired off at point-blank range. Steel saw one of the Frenchmen staggering, groping at a huge blackened wound that had taken away half his abdomen. More pirates leapt on to the deck of the barge, but there were fewer this time.

Not waiting to see if more were to come, Steel took his chance. ‘Come on, lads. Let’s finish them.’

With a cheer the half-company rushed towards the boarding party, followed by the sailors, and with Steel at their head, sword in hand. He brought the great blade hard down on the head of a stocky, dark-skinned attacker, cutting it clean in half. Stepping over the corpse he drew back the sword and, parrying a cutlass, riposted with a lunge towards his assailant’s chest. He felt the steel slide in slickly, and then withdrew it and spun round to face a man he had sensed was behind him. The fellow had a billhook, but before he could use it on Steel one of the Grenadiers had run the man through his side.

And then they were gone, as suddenly as they had come. Their ship, a long, low war galley, was slipping away from the side of the barge.

Cut off by the mist and the night Steel could only wonder how the others had fared. He turned to find Cassels.

‘Can you take us into the convoy?’

The captain yelled and his crew, back at the oars, struck out hard, and soon the ship was heading into the thick of the flotilla. Up ahead Steel could still hear gunfire, which suggested that the affair was not over. But as they approached it ceased, and at the same moment the mist began to lift and the moon revealed itself, lighting up a scene of devastation. It was hard at first to tell the one from the other, but after a while it became clear that the escort had managed to beat off the attackers with relatively little loss. The bulk of the carnage was made up of debris from the pirate ships and the convoy. A good half dozen of the transporters were damaged beyond repair; another six could be towed in. They had lost twenty grenadiers in the fight, mostly the hapless Danes, and the same number again of Cassels’s seamen.

As his men helped to throw the bodies of the dead overboard and move the precious cargo from the beleaguered vessels, Steel knew that it was now time to speak up. He found Hugh Cassels staring at a dead sailor.

‘We should find a mooring for the night.’

‘Impossible. We must head on. Time is everything –’

Steel cut him off. ‘Do you see what has happened here? We have lost men and matériel. They were playing with us, and if we go on they will come again. I command the escort here, sir, and I am now taking command. Our only course is to tie up, man a defensive line and wait for morning. Then at least we shall have a sporting chance.’

And as for myself, he thought, I can sit down and try to understand why the devil Henrietta should have taken herself off to Leffinghe.

Lying on a divan in the finest room that Leffinghe’s only inn had to offer, Henrietta Vaughan looked up into the eyes of the man she loved and sighed contentedly. How strange it was, she thought, that she could be in such physical danger, here on the very front line of a war, and yet feel so perfectly happy.

Of course, there would be a scandal. But after the tittle-tattle had died away and once she and Jack had divorced and she and Lachlan were married she knew that her father, pleased with a proper match, would settle on her the proper portion of his wealth which she had never had with Captain Steel.

Poor Jack, she thought. But she had always known that their marriage would never work. He was just not quite in her league – charming, brave and lovely, of course, but somehow not quite right.

Lachlan Maclean spoke with a contented sigh and immersed himself a little further in the bath of hot water that he had coaxed from the landlady. ‘I think that I shall sell m’ commission. I have concerns in London. Money matters. It will occupy all of my time. Save for you of course, my darling. I shall always make time for you.’

Henrietta smiled. ‘How clever of you to bring me here.’

‘You admit that I was right, then. It’s so very much more sensible to stay here with me than go on to Lille.’ He paused, thinking. ‘You’re quite decided about your husband? No second thoughts?’