The Flying Squadron (24 page)

‘In the Baltic?'

‘In America.'

‘Not a woman like Hortense Santhonax? A temptress? No, a siren?'

‘Not entirely, though I am not blameless in that quarter; more a feeling, an intuition.'

Dungarth's look changed to one of admiration and he slapped his good knee. ‘My dear fellow, I
knew
you were the man for the task after I'm gone. 'Tis the
feeling
you need for the game, to be sure, and you have it in abundance. You'll suffer for it, as I warrant you already have done–are doing, by the look of you, but 'tis an indispensable ingredient for the puppet-master.'

Drinkwater shook his head at the use of this phrase, ‘No, my Lord,' he said with firm formality, ‘not that.'

‘There is quite simply no one else,' Dungarth expostulated, waving this protest aside, ‘but there is a little time. I'm not called to answer for my sins just yet.'

‘You've heard news today, haven't you?' Drinkwater asked directly. ‘Is it from the Baltic?'

‘No, America. I've asked Moira to dinner tomorrow. He has correspondents in the southern states which in general are hostile to us but where he left a few friends. I think Vansittart's mission was, after all, a failure.'

Drinkwater went gloomily to bed. Elizabeth was reading one of Miss Austen's novels by candlelight, Drinkwater noticed, but closed it upon her finger and looked up at her husband who added his own candelabra to the one illuminating the bed. ‘May one ask what you two find to talk about?'

Drinkwater knew the question to be arch, that its bluntness hid a pent-up and justifiable curiosity. Elizabeth, with her talent for divination, had sensed from the very length and earnestness of the men's deliberations that something more than mere idle male gossip about politics was in the air. He knew too, with some relief, that she had concluded his own preoccupations were bound up with
these almost hermetic discussions.

He took off his coat and sat on the bed to kick off his shoes.

‘He knows himself to be dying, Bess, and is concerned for his life's work. Did I ever tell you he was once, when I knew him as the first lieutenant of the
Cyclops
, the most liberal of men? He was largely sympathetic with the American rebels at one time. His implacable hatred of the French derives from the mischief done to the body of his wife. She died in Florence shortly after the outbreak of the revolution. He was bringing her back through France when the revolutionaries, seeing the arms on his coach, tore the coffin open . . .'

‘How awful . . .'

‘You have seen Romney's portrait of her?'

‘Yes, yes. She was extraordinarily beautiful.' Elizabeth paused, looked down at her book and set it aside. ‘And . . . ?'

‘Dungarth has become', Drinkwater said with a sigh, ‘the Admiralty's chief intelligencer, the repository and digest of a thousand titbits and snippets, reports of facts and rumours; in short a puppet-master pulling strings across half Europe, even as far as the steppes of Asia . . .'

‘And you are to succeed him?'

Drinkwater looked at his wife full-face. ‘How the deuce . . . ?'

She shrugged. ‘I guessed. You have done nothing but closet yourselves and I know he is not a man to show prejudice to a woman merely because of her sex.'

Drinkwater nodded. ‘Of course, I am quite inadequate to the task,' he said earnestly, ‘but it appears no one else is fitter and I am slightly acquainted with something of the business, being known to agents in France and Russia . . .'

‘Spies, you mean,' Elizabeth said flatly and Drinkwater bridled at the implicit disapproval. He opened his mouth to explain, thought better of it and shifted tack.

‘Anyway, Dungarth has invited Lord Moira to dinner tomorrow. . . . ?'

‘And shall I be allowed to . . . ?'

‘Oh, come, Elizabeth,' Drinkwater said irritably, hooking a finger in his stock, ‘I like this whole situation no better than you . . .'

Elizabeth leaned forward and placed a finger on his lips.
‘Tell me who this Lord Moira is.'

‘Better I tell you who he was. The Yankees knew him as Lord Rawdon, and he gave them hell through the pine-barrens of Georgia and the Carolinas in the American War. Of late his occupations have been more sedentary. He went into politics alongside Fox and the Whig party in opposition, and is an intimate of the Prince Regent, being numbered among the Holland House set . . .'

Elizabeth seemed bucked by this piece of news. ‘Is he married?' she asked.

‘To the Countess of Loudoun, his equal in her own right. He is also considered to be a man of singular ugliness,' he added waspishly.

‘Oh,' said Elizabeth smiling, ‘how fascinating.'

General Francis Rawdon Hastings, Earl of Moira, proved far from ugly, though bushy black eyebrows, a pair of sharply observant eyes and a dark complexion marked his appearance as unfashionable. He was, moreover, a man of strong opinions and frank speech. His oft-quoted opinion as to the virtue of American women expressed while a young man serving in North America had brought him a degree of wholly unmerited notoriety. His more solid achievements included distinguishing himself at the Battle of Bunker Hill and later defeating Washington's most able general, Nathaniel Greene, in the long and hard-fought campaign of the Carolinas. Such talents might have marked him out for command in the peninsula but, like Tarleton vegetating in County Cork, he was out to grass, though talked of as the next governor-general of India.

‘Frank has news of a determined war-party in the Congress,' Dungarth said as he carved the beef with its oyster stuffing.

‘War
hawks
, they style themselves,' Moira said, sipping the glass of burgundy Dungarth's man Williams poured for him. ‘Your health, ma'am,' he added, inclining his head in Elizabeth's direction. ‘We shan't bore you with our political clap-trap?'

‘Mrs Drinkwater is better informed than most of your subalterns, Frank,' Dungarth said.

‘That ain't difficult,' replied Moira, smiling engagingly,
‘though I mean that as no slight to you, ma'am.'

‘And what are the designs of these hawks, my Lord; my husband tells me the Americans have no navy to speak of.'

‘Canada, ma'am, they covet Canada. They tried for it in the late rebellion and failed, they'll try for it again. As for their navy, I can't answer for it. I understand they've a deal of gunboats and such, much like the
radeaux
they had on Lake Champlain, I imagine, but as to a regular navy, well, I don't know.' Moira shrugged dismissively.

‘They've some fine ships,' said Dungarth, ‘but too few in commission and a fierce competition for them.'

‘And some determined men to command them,' Drinkwater agreed, thinking of Captain Stewart.

‘So,' said Moira, between mouthfuls, ‘we may have the upper hand at sea, but with half the army marching and counter-marching in Spain', Moira paused to allow his opinion of Wellesley's generalship to pervade the atmosphere of the dining-room, ‘and the other half aiding the civil power in the north, they have the advantage on land. I'm damned if I know what, begging your pardon, Mistress Drinkwater, will transpire if they do decide on war and advance on Canada.'

‘Is it that much a matter of chance, then?' Drinkwater asked. ‘I mean to say, will Madison blow like a weather-cock to the prevailing breeze?'

‘So my correspondents in the southern states write, and they, needless to say, are opposed to this madness. Everywhere they are surrounded by men intent upon it.' This gloomy assessment laid a silence on them. ‘I suppose we'll drum up sufficient ruffians to hold Canada. There are enough loyalists in New Brunswick to form a division, I daresay, and the Six Nations of Mohawks are more inclined to favour us than the perfidious Yankees. With the navy blockading the coast, I daresay things will turn out to our advantage in the end.'

‘If we can afford it,' put in Elizabeth shrewdly.

‘You
are
well informed, ma'am, my compliments.' Moira downed another glass of the burgundy. ‘The India trade will sustain us, though I don't doubt but it'll be a close-run thing.'

‘There is one matter we have not considered,' Drinkwater said, an uncomfortable thought striking him with a growing
foreboding. He realized that for months he had been subconsciously brooding on Stewart's last remarks. The American officer's allusion to the bluff-bowed British frigates was a criticism that had stuck in Drinkwater's craw if only for its very accuracy. The memory, thirty years old, of being prize-master aboard the Yankee privateer schooner
Algonquin
when a young midshipman had been all the evidence he needed to realize Stewart had been indiscreet; that, and the knowledge Stewart had himself commanded a schooner.

They were all looking at him expectantly.

‘The Americans will use privateers, my Lords, if it comes to war; scores of 'em, schooners mostly, manned with the most energetic young officers they can muster from their mercantile and naval stock . . .'

He was gratified by the exchange of appreciative looks between Moira and Dungarth. He sensed, in a moment of self-esteem, he had divined the passing of a test.

‘They will attack our trade wherever they are able, just as they did in the last war. Moreover, their success will tempt out the more active of the French commanders and corsairs who would not need to rely on the blockaded ports of Europe, but could shift their operations to American bases where there will be no dearth of support and sympathy, reviving the old alliance of '79 in the name of the twin republics . . .'

‘Do you have any more horrors for us, Captain?' Moira asked mockingly.

‘Do you want any more, my Lord?' Drinkwater asked seriously. ‘They will ambush the India trade, attack our fishing fleets and whalers, ravage the West Indies . . .'

‘And how do you know all this, Captain?' Moira asked drily.

‘It is what he would do in Madison's place, ain't it, Nathaniel?'

‘It is certainly what I would do if I were Secretary of Madison's navy, my Lords, and wanted to compensate for its weaknesses. When it cannot achieve something itself, the state encourages its more rapacious citizenry to do it on its behalf.'

‘And will it come to this?' Elizabeth asked. ‘You are all
talking as if the matter were a
fait accompli
.'

‘If Napoleon don't invade Russia, Elizabeth,' Dungarth said with solemn intimacy, ‘then he will surely not miss the opportunity to capitalize on a breach between London and Washington which he has for months now been so assiduously encouraging.' And then he snicked his fingers with such violence that the sudden noise made them jump and the candle-flames flickered, adding, as if it had just occurred to him, ‘By God! It's what he has been waiting for!'

And for a moment they stared at the puffy face of the once-handsome man, transfigured as it was by realization.

And so it proved, despite a stone-walling by the so-called doves. The hawks, roaring into the Congress chamber banging cuspidors, startled a tedious orator into sitting and conceding the floor. Thus provoked, Speaker Clay put the question which was carried almost two to one in favour of war with Great Britain. Later the Senate agreed and within two days the
National Intelligencer
of Washington, the
Freeman's Journal and Mercantile Advertiser
of Philadelphia and every other broadsheet in the United States repeated the text of the Act opening hostilities. Even the news that the British had finally set aside the infamous Orders-inCouncil, anxious to protect the American supplies vital to Wellington's advancing army, failed to stem the headlong dash to war. Madison's intention of issuing letters-of-marque and of general-reprisal against the goods, vessels and effects of the government and subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was quoted alongside the declaration.

‘America, having obtained her independence from Great Britain, is going to engage her old enemy to prove the young eagle is ready to supersede the old lion,' Drinkwater explained later to his children as they watched in silence while he ordered the packing of his sea-chest.

Within days Napoleon's
Grande Armée
began to cross the River Nieman and invade Russia. Half a million men, French, Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Württemburgers, Italians, Poles, marched, as Marshal Marmont was long afterwards to recall, ‘surrounded by a kind of radiance'.

‘Now we shall see, Nat,' said Dungarth, the warmth of final
achievement mixed with the excitement of a vast gamble, ‘what this clash of Titans will decide.'

For Captain and Mrs Drinkwater there were less euphoric considerations. He waited upon their Lordships at the Admiralty immediately and within two days had received his orders. Indeed, the presence of Captain Drinkwater in the capital was considered ‘most fortuitous'. While the focus of Dungarth's apprehensions lay to the east, Drinkwater shared Moira's concern for the outcome of events upon the Western Ocean and beyond. At the end of June the Drinkwaters returned home to Suffolk and their children. He was impatient, his heart beating at a faster pace.
Patrician
was to be hurried to sea again, her lack of men notwithstanding.

Drinkwater's last days at Gantley Hall were spent writing letters which Richard, his son, took into Woodbridge for the post. Drinkwater dismissed Richard's pleas to be rated captain's servant aboard the
Patrician
. Instead he roused Lieutenant Quilhampton from his connubial bliss, thundering upon his cottage door on a wet evening when the sun set behind yellow cloud.

‘My dear sir,' said Quilhampton, stepping backwards and beckoning Drinkwater indoors. ‘We heard you had gone up to town . . .'

‘You've heard of the outbreak of war with America?' Drinkwater snapped, cutting short his host's pleasantries.