The Flying Squadron (17 page)

‘Whether or not you gennelmen trade shot for shot rather depends upon the efforts of Mr Vansittart here,' Shaw said, taking the diplomat's elbow familiarly, ‘and we have concluded all the necessary arrangements for you to proceed to Washington, Mr Vansittart. A schooner has just arrived this evening to convey you up to Baltimore
and I understand a chaise is at your disposal thereafter. I, for one, hope the news you bring for Mr Foster enables us to conclude a peaceful settlement of our dispute. Foster's a better man than either Jackson or Erskine were in the subtleties of representing the British government over here, so there's some hope!' Shaw raised his glass and was about to propose a toast to peace when Stewart snorted his objection. Shaw put out a placating hand as Stewart made to protest. ‘Oh sure, Charles,' he went on, ‘I understand your anger, Great Britain
has
undoubtedly acted the part of the bully and I'm sure Captain Drinkwater, being a fair-minded man, will acknowledge that his country's foreign policies have not always been honourable, whatever justification – mainly expedience, I guess – is advanced, but it don't mean we
have
to fight.'

‘Men were taken out of my own ship,' Stewart protested.

‘The
Stingray
?' queried Vansittart quickly.

‘No,' said Shaw, ‘Charles was master of a Baltimore schooner between naval appointments,' he explained. ‘We have more officers than ships . . .'

‘Naval
ships,' Stewart said with a heavy emphasis.

‘How many guns do your merchant ships mount?' Vansittart asked, anticipating the question forming at the same instant in Drinkwater's mind. Not for the first time, Drinkwater acknowledged the sharpness of Vansittart's intelligence. Yet he did not want Vansittart to overplay his hand. Such a rapid tattoo of queries might make Stewart clam up and, in his perceptive state, Drinkwater wanted the already mildly intoxicated young man to talk a great deal more. Perhaps he might, with advantage, stir this pot a little.

‘They make excellent privateers, Vansittart,' he said, ‘I recall during the last American war . . .'

Stewart, who had long since swallowed his third glass of rum, grinned. This British captain was not merely ancient, he was also cautious! ‘Cap'n Drinkwater is right,' he said with a hint of mimicry, ‘they make
excellent
privateers, and we could have 'em swarming like locusts over the ocean.' Stewart held up his free hand and snapped his fingers. ‘And a fig for your blockade! You'd have to convoy
everything
!'

‘Well, sir . . .' Vansittart began but was interrupted.

‘Gentlemen,' Arabella broke in, the yellow-coated servant at her shoulder, ‘dinner is served.'

They sat down to dine in the same room as they had used the previous evening, but now gravity not gaiety was the prevailing mood. Zebulon Shaw remained a gracious host and Vansittart a sociable guest but Stewart sank into a moody contemplation of the man who epitomized his conception of the enemy. As for Drinkwater, he did his best to contribute to the conversation and to maintain a somewhat pathetic contact with Arabella. He was largely unsuccessful, for Vansittart divided his easy attention between Shaw and his daughter-in-law.

Drinkwater could not afterwards recall what they had eaten. A spiced capon, he thought, though his abiding memory was a complex feeling of self-loathing, of irritation that Stewart's slowly increasing drunkenness was accompanied by the man's unceasing scrutiny, and of jealousy that Arabella should flirt so with Vansittart, a boy young enough to be her son.

He was in a foul mood when she rose and declared she would withdraw and leave them to their spirits and cigars. As she swept out with a smiling admonition to her father-in-law not to deprive her for too long of the society of so many gentlemen, Drinkwater felt bereft, unaware of a tender and pointed irony in her words.

‘This is a superb house,' Vansittart remarked as he drew on his cigar.

‘It was my father's conceit to build a castle, such as an English peer might have. He began in '76, three weeks after the declaration of independence, but', Shaw blew a fragrant cloud of tobacco smoke at the ceiling, ‘man proposes and God disposes.'

‘I don't follow . . .'

‘He was killed at the Battle of the Brandywine a year later,' Shaw explained. ‘Although a lieutenant in Wagonner's Virginia regiment in Scotch Willie Maxwell's brigade, he had been sent with a message to Wayne at Chadd's Ford where he stopped a Hessian ball. He died instantly . . .'

‘I am sorry to hear it, sir,' Vansittart replied.

Shaw shrugged. ‘Oh, I bear no ill-will, time heals all things and he died in good company.'

‘He died fighting the English,' slurred Stewart.

Shaw seemed embarrassed at the interruption and addressed Drinkwater. ‘You served at the time, Captain, did you not?'

‘Aye, sir. I served in Carolina – and lost friends there. It had become a filthy business by then. The circumstances of death were less glorious. There was a midshipman whose end was foul.'

‘How so?' Stewart put the decanter down and looked up. His intake of wine had been steady throughout the meal and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. A prurient curiosity blinked through his blurring eyes and Drinkwater wanted to wound the cocksure fool, to disabuse him of his misconceptions of war.

‘He was captured and mutilated, Captain Stewart,' Drinkwater said quietly.

‘I think we should join . . .' Shaw began, but Stewart ignored his host.

‘Whadya mean – mutilated?'

Vansittart half-rose, but his face was turned expectantly towards Drinkwater. The curiosity of the two younger men sent a sudden shudder of revulsion through Drinkwater. The one sought glory in war, the other thought of the business as a gigantic game in which whole divisions of men might be moved across continents as a matter of birth-right.

‘We found him with his own bollocks in his mouth, Captain Stewart.'

‘I am sorry about Charles,' Arabella said as they stood once more on the terrace.

‘It was nothing.'

‘For a moment I thought . . .'

‘That I would call him out?' Drinkwater chuckled, ‘God's bones, no . . . I am too old for that tomfoolery.'

‘I am glad to hear it.' She pressed his arm and they stood in silence. The moon was riding clear of a low bank of cloud and the stridulation of cicadas filled the air. In
the room behind them Stewart had fallen asleep; Vansittart and Shaw were deep in discussion.

‘I am sorry,' she said suddenly.

‘For what?'

‘I feel now that I should not have asked you to come this morning.'

‘My dear, what has passed between us has passed. We may or may not be judged, I don't know . . .'

‘Remorse will turn you against me.'

‘I can never be anything more to you than I was today, you know that. But I shall never be anything less.'

‘I marked you as a man of constancy.'

‘You must have faith in your intuition . . .'

‘Nathaniel, suppose there are consequences?'

A cold sensation wrapped itself about his heart. ‘Is it likely?'

‘It is not impossible,' she whispered fearfully.

‘I will give you an address in London. I will not abandon a child.' He paused. Pride cometh before a fall, he recalled. The modest competence, the acquisition of Gantley Hall, his wife and family – how he had jeopardized them by his casual dalliance with this woman. A riot in the blood, she had called it . . .

But looking at her he yearned to kiss her again.

‘Arabella . . .' She turned her face towards him when a movement at the end of the terrace caught his eye.

‘Who the devil . . . ?'

‘It's me, sir, Frey.'

Gently he detached himself from her, aware, even in that prescient moment when he knew something was wrong, how reluctant she was to let him go. ‘Mr Frey? What the devil do you here?'

‘Eight men have run, sir. Made off in the blue cutter left alongside from the watering party.'

‘God damn and blast it!'

‘What's to be done, sir?'

‘Quiet, boy!'

Midshipman Belchambers' whispered query was hissed into silence by the first lieutenant. Metcalfe fidgeted, clasping and unclasping his hands, then ran a crooked finger round the inside of his stock. He felt Frey's eyes upon him in the preternatural chiaroscuro of the moonlit quarterdeck and concluded that he did not like Frey: he and Captain Drinkwater were, what was it? Too close, yes, that was it, too close; the bonding of long service affronted Metcalfe's hierarchical sensibilities, disturbed him where it had no right to. He felt the silent reproach in Vansittart's presence among them, conceiving the young diplomat one of Drinkwater's party when, by all the social conventions and familial traditions, Metcalfe knew he should not be so constantly at Drinkwater's side. Belchambers was another, a lesser example of the first. He snapped the eager boy to cringing silence and faced aft, unaware of the irrationality of his train of thought, as apparently expectant as all the other officers ranged on deck, awaiting the reaction from the shadowy figure standing right aft at the taffrail.

Captain Drinkwater stared astern, towards the confluence of the Potomac with Chesapeake Bay wherein drained the waters of a dozen rivers. The moon rode high, clear of the clouds, apparently diminished in diameter due to its altitude, yet lending a weird clarity to the dismal scene. Captain Drinkwater had been lost in this
contemplation for almost ten minutes, while his officers waited on the quarterdeck and below them the ship seethed. Barely a man slept after the hue and cry had been raised and Metcalfe, Gordon, Frey, Moncrieff and his marines, with drawn swords and hand-held bayonets, had called the roll and scoured the ship.

‘For God's sake . . .' Metcalfe muttered, much louder than he intended. He met Vansittart's eyes and shrugged. ‘The buggers could be anywhere,' he said, as if Vansittart had asked him a question, ‘anywhere, damn them.'

‘Do you search for them tonight?'

Metcalfe jerked his head aft, but still Drinkwater remained motionless, his hands clasped behind his back, his head facing away from them. All decisions waited upon the captain's pleasure now he was back on board.

It had been in Drinkwater's mind to vent his temper upon those responsible for the desertions: Metcalfe as his own deputy, the officer of the watch and his subordinates, down to the marine sentries and the men in the guard-boat.

But he knew he would be guilty of a grave injustice if he did, and he was already guilty of so much that day that the prospect of adding to the woeful catalogue of folly appalled him.

Standing beneath the pale splendour of the moon he felt himself a victim of all the paradoxes visited upon mankind. And yet his sense of responsibility was too keen to submit to so cosy a justification; the harsh self-condemnation of his puritan soul rejected the libertine's absolution.

In the cool of the night his old wounds ached intrusively, the body sharing the hurt of the mind. Mentally and physically he gave himself no chance of surrender to passion, refused to acknowledge the mutual hunger in, and irresistible attraction between himself and Arabella. Perhaps, had he remained in Arabella's presence, he would not have judged himself so harshly, would have placed events in their perspective. But Frey had been the agent of fate and brought the news of providence's swift retribution.

‘Pride', he again and again recalled his mother saying,
‘always comes before a fall,' and now he remembered another saw she was fond of, a social pretension in its way, almost an aspiration: ‘Remember, you are not born to pleasure, Nathaniel, it is not for us. We are of the middling sort . . .'

He had heard the phrase recently and, in remembering, he confronted his own ineluctable culpability. Thurston had used it only that morning. A sudden anger burst in upon his brain. He should never have let Thurston have his head and spew his republican cant so readily! God, what a damned fool he had been to listen; to listen and to be half-convinced the fellow spoke something akin to the truth!

Well, he had his bellyful of the truth now, to be sure, he thought bitterly, victim of his own stupid, expansive weakness, a weakness doubtless induced by the bewitching prospect of a day in Mistress Shaw's company. God Almighty, he had been gulled by a damned whore!

And supposing he had left her pregnant, or worse, she had left
him
poxed . . . ?

He broke out in a cold sweat at the thought. Fate had an uncanny way of striking a man when his guard was down and it had certainly conspired to strike him today.

Forward the ship's bell tolled two. It was already tomorrow, one o'clock in the morning, two bells into the middle watch, almost the lowest, most debilitating hour of the night.