The Shadow of the Eagle (6 page)

She swayed and Drinkwater stooped forward and gently held her by her arms. He was unconvinced, but her hands were on his arms too, and her body touched his, light as a feather, and then with more weight.

‘Do not underestimate the risk I have run to tell you these things,’ she breathed, and added as he remained silent, holding her, ‘They are like boys, Nathaniel, these conspirators; they would set the world alight again. Is that what you want? Do you not most desire to go home to your wife and children?’

‘That is an odd question to ask at a moment like this,’ he said, ‘or are we two in sudden accord?’ He smiled, the twist in his mouth conveying an intense sadness to her, though he spoke to encourage her. ‘Come, Hortense, courage. You have lost none of your beauty …’

‘I have lost an ear!’ Her tone was petulant, as though she could betray her world for this disfigurement, and she lowered her face. ‘And I am tired of conspiracy and intrigue.’

‘Then it makes us the more equal,’ Drinkwater said again. It occurred to him that she had received some unbearable humiliation. ‘Suppose this plan of Talleyrand’s and the Tsar’s worked; suppose Napoleon Bonaparte, sent to exile in the Azores, was sprung from his prison and spirited across the Atlantic; suppose your brother commanded a division of trappers and mountain men in the army of New France, eh? Wouldn’t you want to be a part of that? A great lady of Quebec, or Montreal, or even Louisbourg if it was rebuilt? Yet you expect me to believe you would hazard all that against a pension of forty pounds per year?’

He was looking down at her hair, the scent of which rose from its auburn profusion. She raised her face and stared up at him. Her yielding body had become rigid.

‘I have nothing, nothing!’ She hissed, desperation in her tone. ‘Why should I come here, tonight, eh?’ She pulled away from him, holding him at arm’s length as she might have remonstrated with the son she had never had. ‘Why should I not sit in Paris and wait for an invitation to become
La Reine de Louisbourg,
eh?’ She threw the tide at him in French like striking him with a gauntlet. ‘I do not owe you anything, and if I come to trade this information it is not to betray France, or my brother …’

‘What of Talleyrand?’ Drinkwater snapped. ‘What of Napoleon?’

‘Why is it you English men are so
stupid?’
she spat back. ‘I am old! It is known what I have been! It is known what I am now! Why is it impossible for men to understand, eh? You never come to terms with the inevitable, do you? Only the clever, men like Napoleon and Talleyrand, can rise above these petty considerations. It is said in Paris that, despite everything, Napoleon could have rallied the army south of the Loire, but he did nothing. Instead he abdicated in the sure and certain knowledge that only a chapter of his life was over, but not the whole history. He is a Corsican, not a Frenchman. And he believes in fate, just like you.’ Hortense paused, to let the point sink in. ‘Napoleon has abandoned France just as he abandoned her before and set off for India. Then, when he found his grand design more difficult that he thought, he abandoned his army in Egypt and returned to France. When Admiral Villeneuve failed him at Trafalgar, he abandoned the invasion of England; when he was confronted with difficulties in Spain, he abandoned the war to his marshals; when he was foiled by the Russians, he abandoned his army in the snow … Why should he change now? Is fate going to give him another opportunity in Europe?’

‘No,’ Drinkwater said slowly.

‘Certainly, I am being selfish. Perhaps this is a betrayal; perhaps this is saving many lives, perhaps …’ she shrugged and moved slightly closer to him again, lowering her voice, ‘this is fate, Nathaniel.’

And she pushed against him unashamed, her head bowed unexpectantly, their roles reversed, as though she was now the child and he the parent. His arms went instinctively around her and though he felt the soft roundness of her breasts it was pity, not lust, which rose and overwhelmed him.

‘I think we are both too old,’ he murmured into the darkness of the shadows beyond her shoulders, and gently stroked her hair. She seemed to shudder, like a small and terrified animal. ‘Shall you want a passage to England?’

She pulled back and looked up at him. ‘Where could I go in England?’

He shrugged. Suddenly the reaction of his wife to the arrival of a strange, mysterious and beautiful woman claiming refuge, seemed unlikely to be sympathetic.

‘Perhaps one day …’

‘Peut-être, 
Nathaniel. We shall see … I have told you everything…’

‘I shall see you leave tonight with some money. There will be a ready market for English gold in Calais. I shall also ensure provision is made for you.’

‘Is that possible?’

He thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘Yes, I can arrange matters…’

Her relief was pathetic. The fear left her and he felt her whole body transformed. Lust pricked him as she embraced him once more.

‘Hortense …’

And then he found himself kissing her as he wished he had kissed her twenty years earlier.

CHAPTER 3 
A Clear Yard-arm

April 1814

‘The eastern sky was lighter by the moment as Drinkwater paced the quarterdeck. The boat had long since vanished in the direction of the Calais breakwater, the Bourbon cockade deceptively jaunty, visible like a rabbit’s scut as Hortense bobbed away.

He thought again of the warmth of her body against his and the prickle of lust still galled him. She had been compliant in that moment of mutual weakness, for they both drew back after a moment, almost ashamed, as though their long acquaintance had been supportable only as long as it was above the carnal.

‘I am sorry,’ he had muttered, even while he still held her, ‘but I…’

‘I am not a drab, Nathaniel.’ There were tears in her eyes again, and it was clear she thought his impropriety had been motivated by that presumption.

‘Hortense,’ he had protested, ‘I did not … I meant no … Damnation I have been bewitched by you for years. Did you not know it? Had I not a wife and children, I should have long ago …’ He had broken off, seeing the pathetic declaration make her smile.

‘Ah, Nathaniel, how,’ she had paused, ‘how
damnably
English.’

‘Do not taunt me. Upon occasions, you have made my life wretched. You have resided in my soul as a dark angel. Tonight you are dispossessed of all the diabolism with which my imagination had invested you. For that I am grateful.’

They had let each other go.

‘They you will see that I am provided for?’

‘You know I will.’

‘Yes… Yes I did. To that extent your superstitions were correct.’ She smiled again.

‘You are returning to Paris?’ Seeing her nod, he had gone on, ‘There is a bookseller in the rue de la Seine whose name is Michel. There, in a month, you will find a draft against a London bank. I shall make it out in the name Hortense de Montholon. Should anything go awry, you may send a message through the Jew Liepmann in Hamburg.’

‘You are doing this yourself aren’t you? This is nothing to do with the British government, is it?’

‘Hortense, the British government will not give Nelson’s mistress a pension; why should they do anything for you? I know of you and thanks to the fortune of war, I have the means to make a little money available for you.’

‘You are very kind, Nathaniel. Had life been different, perhaps …’

‘Perhaps, perhaps; perhaps in happier times we shall meet again. Let us cage Bonaparte, m’dear, before any of us ordinary mortals think of our own pleasure.’

Hortense had smiled at the remark and, as he held her cloak out for her, she said over her shoulder, ‘You and I are no ordinary mortals, Nathaniel.’

He had merely grunted. To so much as acknowledge by the merest acquiescence any agreement with this
braggadocio
seemed to him, filled as he was with apprehension at her news, to be tempting providence most grievously.

Now he was left to his thoughts and they were in a turmoil. He found it difficult to clear his mind of the image of her. On deck, in the chill of the dawn, it was almost possible to believe it had all been a dream, a bilious consequence of dining too well at the royal table. Was that event any more real, he wondered? And then from his breast the faintest, lingering scent of her rose to his nostrils.

Yet the appearance of the curious ‘French officer’ had far greater importance than the temptation of Nathaniel Drinkwater. He was in little doubt of the truth of her asseveration. Drinkwater had only the sketchiest notions of the military position of the French army at the end of March, but he had gleaned enough in recent days to know that Napoleon’s energies seemed little diminished. He had fought a vigorous campaign in the defence of France, only to be overwhelmed by superior numbers against which even his military genius was incapable of resistance. Finally, it was widely rumoured, it had been the defection of members of the marshalate in defence of their own interests which had prompted the Emperor’s abdication.

Under the circumstances, Napoleon was an unlikely candidate for a quiescent exile. And across the Atlantic raged a savage war, a repeat of the struggle from which had emerged the independent United States of America. Drinkwater had cause to remember details of that terrible conflict; as a young midshipman he had tramped through the Carolina swamps and pine barrens and had seen atrocities committed on the bodies of the dead.
^[7]
More recently, he had been involved in the last diplomatic mission intended to prevent a breach between London and Washington, and he knew of the efforts which the young republic was prepared to make to discomfit her old imperial enemy.
^[8]

Nor had his foiling of that effort settled the matter. Yankee ambition was like the Hydra; cut one head off and another appeared. Within a few months of destroying a powerful squadron of American privateers, Drinkwater had been made aware of an attempt by the French to supply the Americans with a quantity of arms. The desperate battle fought in the waters of Norway beneath the aurora may have prevented that fateful juncture, but it may not have been the only one; perhaps others, unbeknown to the British Admiralty’s Secret Department which Drinkwater had so briefly headed, had taken place successfully. It seemed quite impossible that his individual efforts had entirely eliminated any such conjunction. In short, it seemed entirely likely that some arms had crossed the Atlantic and that Napoleon and devoted members of his Imperial Guard would follow.

In fact, Drinkwater concluded, it was not merely likely, it was a damned certainty! And then the memory of Hortense mimicking his English expletive flooded his memory so that he turned growling upon his heel and came face to face with Lieutenant Marlowe.

‘What in damnation … ?’

‘Begging your pardon, sir …’

‘God’s bones, what is it?’

‘The French officer, sir …’

‘Well, sir, what of the French officer?’

‘Are there any orders consequent upon the French officer’s visit, sir?’

‘Orders? What orders are you expecting Mr Marlowe, eh?’

‘I am about to be relieved, sir, and under the circumstances, in company with the Royal Yacht, sir, and His Royal Highness …’

Suddenly, just as Drinkwater was about to silence this locquacious young popinjay, the ludicrous pomposity of Prince William’s title struck him. Overtired and overwrought he might be, distracted by the weight of Hortense’s intelligence as much as that of her voluptuous body, he found the term ‘Highness’ so great a fatuity that he burst out laughing. And at the same time, as he thought of the coarse, rubicund and farting Clarence, he discovered the answer to the question that had been lurking insolubly in his semi-conscious.

‘Indeed, Mr Marlowe, you do right to be expectant. The truth is I have been mulling over the best course of action to take as a consequence of that officer’s visit, and now I’m happy to say you have acted very properly, sir.’

‘Well, I’m glad of that, sir.’

‘And so am I.’

‘And the orders, sir … ?’

Drinkwater looked at the young lieutenant’s face. The sun was just rising and the light caught Marlowe’s lean features in strong relief. He was a pleasant looking, pale fellow, with a dark beard, and the stubble was almost purple along his jaw. ‘What d’you know of, er, His Royal Highness’s habits, Mr Marlowe. I saw you hob-nobbin’ with a couple of the
Impregnable
‘s, officers last night. One of them was the Prince’s flag-luff, wasn’t he? What I mean is, did either of the young blades tell you what o’clock the Prince rises?’

Marlowe was somewhat taken aback by his commander’s perception. ‘I know Bob Colville, sir, but I don’t recall our discussing His Royal Highness’s habits beyond the fact that he enjoys a bumper or two.’

‘Or three, I daresay, but that don’t serve.’ Drinkwater mused for a moment, then added expansively, ‘What I need to know, Mr Marlowe, is what is the earliest time I might see the Prince?’

‘In a good humour I daresay too,’ added Marlowe, smiling, extrapolating Drinkwater’s intentions.

‘To be frank, Mr Marlowe,’ Drinkwater added, a tone of asperity creeping into his voice, ‘I don’t much care in what humour His Royal Highness is, just so long as he is sufficiently awake to understand what I wish to communicate to him.’ Marlowe’s look of astonishment at this apparent
lèse-majesté
further irritated Drinkwater who was conscious that he had confided too much in his untried subordinate. ‘Have my gig ready in an hour, and pass word for my servant.’

As he shaved, Drinkwater turned over the idea he had. It seemed to have formed instantaneously whilst he had been importuned by Marlowe. The young officer had seen little service of an active nature, although his references spoke of several months on blockade duty off Brest. Still, that did not equate with a similar number of weeks in a frigate in a forward position or an independent cruise, though that was not poor Marlowe’s fault. Drinkwater wondered if what he was currently meditating would appeal to Marlowe, whose career, at this onset of peace, seemed upon the brink of termination with no opportunity for him to distinguish himself. Perhaps it would not matter to the well-connected Marlowe, but it might to others, for quite different reasons.