Winds of Folly (25 page)

‘So the Viceroy is aware of the situation?'

A mild inclination of the head. ‘Sir Gilbert has been
informed
of it. But he hears what he wishes to hear. The Viceroy is an idealist. A dreamer. He dreams of a united Italy. A bulwark against French expansion. He does not wish to hear, or believe, anything that would shatter this illusion. In this, he is very like the Venetians. If the late Admiral Dandolo tells him the Venetian fleet is the most formidable in the eastern Mediterranean, then that is what he will believe.'

‘But what of the English Ambassador in Venice? Surely he …'

‘Sir Richard Worsley. Yes, well, he is more of a realist, but he has his own – what is the expression – fish in the fire?' The Consul's English was not without its quirks. ‘Besides, I have
not heard from the Ambassador for several months. Not since the murder of Dandolo, in fact. And he does not reply to my despatches.'

‘Could he have been killed at the same time – and by the same people?'

‘No.' A firm shake of the head. ‘I would have heard.' Nathan considered.

‘You say there are three or four ships that could still take their place in the line of battle?'

‘About that number.' The Consul ticked them off on his fingers. ‘The
San Giorgio
, the
Vulcano
, the
Medea
, the
Vittoria
. Oh, and possibly the
Eolo
. All of seventy guns or more.'

‘And the ships under construction in the Arsenale …' Nathan saw the look on the Consul's face. ‘What?'

‘The Arsenale. The Wonder of the Age. The greatest shipyard, the greatest workforce, the greatest ships. Once upon a time. But now … ? Another illusion. I doubt there are more than a thousand men employed at the Arsenale, and most of them have never picked up a tool in anger.' He saw the disbelief on Nathan's face. ‘What you must understand is that in Venice places are given to men not according to their ability, but according to their means. Or their birthright. The son of a shipwright will follow him into the trade – after paying his dues – even though he serves no apprenticeship, has no skills at shipbuilding nor any inclination to learn them. He does not even go to work. He simply signs his name in a book and draws his pay.'

‘But I was told there are thirteen ships of the line on the stocks.'

‘True. So there are. And they have been on the stocks for several years. They were built with green oak from Istria. It was not allowed to weather. And what happens when you use green oak? It shrinks. The ships will remain on the stocks until they rot, or until someone strips them down to the keel and
builds them again from scratch, with weathered timber. But I will not see that day, nor will you.'

Nathan was silent for a moment. He did not doubt what the Consul had told him – and he had seen the evidence with his own eyes – but he was reluctant to accept that his mission was entirely futile. Besides, five ships of the line was still a formidable fighting force – in the right hands. Certainly, they must be prevented from falling into the hands of the French.

‘Who has been appointed in Dandolo's place? Do we know this?'

But before Signor Foresti could answer, there came a knock upon the door and a servant entered with a message for the Consul's private ear.

‘Forgive me,' he said. ‘There is something that requires my immediate attention. I will not be long.'

While he was gone Nathan returned to the balcony and resumed his study of the Venetian men-o'-war. He saw nothing to correct his first impression. Those ships would never put to sea, not in the state they were in. Judging from the amount of marine growth and rust on the anchor cables, they had not moved for many months.

The Consul was frowning on his return. ‘I have just had report that there is a French ship-of-war moored in Alipa Bay,' he said, ‘on the far side of the island.'

Nathan emerged from the realms of speculation to grapple with this new and alarming reality. If it
was
real.

‘You are sure she is French?'

‘My informant has just come from there. He has spoken to some fishermen who went out to her and
they
were sure of it. She is called the
Jean-Bart
and she is about the size of a frigate, he says.'

N
athan had but one thought – to return to his ship, and by the fastest route possible. But that meant taking the
Bonne Aventure
up through the Corfu Channel. For which he would need a pilot. And a wind.

There had been a light offshore breeze when he had landed, but it had fallen away to almost nothing. Even if he could find a pilot at such short notice, they would have to tow the brig in the boats – a distance of about twenty miles in the full heat of the afternoon. And there would almost certainly be strong currents running in the narrows between Corfu and the mainland.

‘I can find you a pilot,' the Consul assured him, ‘that is not a problem – but it will take six or seven hours to tow the brig to Kassiópi. Whereas we could ride across the island in three hours or less, take a look at this Frenchman and rejoin your ship before dark.'

‘Ride?' Nathan was so used to living and thinking on water it was often difficult to envisage an alternative form of transport, but he had been told that several possibilities existed and that other people found them quite convenient at times.

‘In the meantime we can send a courier overland to Kassiópi to warn your ship to be prepared,' the Consul pressed him. ‘If we set out now, we could reach Alipa by late afternoon.'

‘We?'

‘Yes, I will come with you,' Foresti said with a smile. ‘To show you the way.'

While their mounts were being saddled up, Nathan wrote a short note for Lieutenant Duncan apprising him of the situation and requesting him to bring the
Unicorn
westward along the coast ‘with all due speed'. This would depend upon the wind but they could meet her part-way, the Consul said, after they had seen what awaited them in Alipa Bay. He showed Nathan on the map. There was a road, of sorts, between Corfu Town and Paleokastritsa, which would give them a wide view of the bay and much of the surrounding coast. From there, a winding mule-track led to Sidari, on the north-west corner of the island, about six or seven miles west of where the
Unicorn
was presently moored.

It all looked very simple on a map. The reality, Nathan suspected, would be very different. He had spent much of his childhood in the saddle – or more often riding bareback across the South Downs – but he had been constantly at sea for over a year now and the prospect of trekking several hours on a pony was not an experience he anticipated with any degree of pleasure.

In the event it was much less of an ordeal than he had imagined. Their ponies were of a breed brought to the island by the Crusaders in the twelfth century, sure-footed and sturdy – and of a placid disposition. They needed to be, given the height and weight of the two men they were obliged to carry. Nathan had shed his uniform coat and wore a wide-brimmed straw hat against the sun, but the heat was intense and the flies
a constant distraction – and from the moment they left the town they were overwhelmed by a deafening chorus of cicadas that kept up their din for the entire journey. The Consul's ‘road' was little better than a mule-track winding through the undulating hillsides, and the ubiquitous olive groves soon gave way to a dense furze of golden thistle and other hardy shrubs, impregnated with the scent of wild mint and thyme. As they climbed they left the flies behind and encountered more attractive insects, at least on minor acquaintance, and a great variety of butterflies and flying beetles, and as they advanced deeper into the interior they saw remnants of the great oak forests that had once covered the islands, Spiridion informed him, before the Venetians cut them down for their fleets. They were on first-name terms now and the Consul proved an amiable travelling companion, pointing out various features of interest on the way. There were several picturesque villages down in the valleys with whitewashed houses nestling among pretty orchards of pomegranate, pear and fig, while on the craggy summits of the hills they espied ancient monasteries. Catholic for the most part, Spiridion explained, though most islanders were of Greek extraction and inclined to the Eastern Orthodox religion, if any. Most, he said, were happily pagan.

They had been travelling for almost two hours when they glimpsed the sea on the far side of the island, and an hour later they emerged on to a ridge looking down into the turquoise waters of Alipa Bay. And there, anchored off the far point, was their ship. Nathan knew at once that it was the corvette they had seen coming down to Naples.

He observed her for a while through Spiridion's glass. She was moored by the head and several of her boats were out in the bay, though they did not seem to be heading for the shore, or anywhere else that made any sense. After a few moments it dawned on him. He had spent his first years in the Navy on a
hydrographical vessel in the South Seas and had done more than his fair share of removing samples of the seabed from a small boat.

‘They are taking soundings,' he said.

‘Why would they do that?' Spiridion frowned.

There could only be one good reason that Nathan acknowledged, but he said nothing for the present. He was even more anxious now to rejoin the
Unicorn
, for if the corvette remained here overnight they had every chance of coming up with her by first light and she would not escape them as easily as she had in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

It was a little over twenty kilometres to Sidari, Spiridion declared, but they must first rest their ponies. There was a monastery nearby where he was known to the monks and they could give Nathan any information he needed about the coastline hereabouts. Besides, he added with a broad grin, they served an excellent wine.

And so they sat on a shaded terrace overlooking the bay while their horses were fed and watered. The monks brought them bread and olives and a tangy goat's cheese washed down with the wine Spiridion had recommended – a mellow white from their own vineyards infused with a resin of pine. They were Benedictines and the Prior was a Venetian who chatted amiably with them in a mixture of Latin and French, and Nathan continued their conversation privately while Spiridion went to see if their ponies were ready for the next stage of the journey.

‘You are planning a retreat?' the Consul quizzed him curiously when he returned.

‘One could do worse,' Nathan observed, for it was as peaceful and as lovely a setting as he had found anywhere on his travels, with its view across the vineyards and orchards to the sea. Such a place as Odysseus must have dreamed of, as he fought his way home from Troy.

As the afternoon merged into evening they resumed their journey, pushing their mounts hard now for Sidari. It was about the same distance as they had already travelled, but cooler now as the sun slipped down towards the sea and a slight breeze came up from the north-west – the prevailing wind, Spiridion declared confidently, which would carry them to Alipa Bay before dawn. The cicadas had ceased their frantic chorus and there was a pleasant scent of jasmine and stock in the air which Nathan might have appreciated more, had he not been so impatient to reach his destination before dark. But the sun was low on the horizon and their shadows long on the path ahead when they finally came in sight of the sea. And there was the
Unicorn
creeping along the coastline towards them under as great a spread of sail as its shortened masts would allow.

‘My plan is to cut her out,' Nathan informed his officers at a council of war in his cabin, ‘under cover of darkness.'

He had given this careful consideration on the ride over from the bay. He was not comfortable with the idea of engaging an enemy in the territorial waters of a neutral state, not if there was any means of avoiding it. It was possible that the corvette had permission from the Serene Republic to carry out a marine survey – she might even be doing it partly on their behalf – and he had been warned by the Viceroy of Corsica to do nothing to offend the Venetians or give them cause to take sides with the French.

‘We will hug the coast as far as the opposite headland,' he explained, ‘and then send in the ship's boats.'

Once aboard they would cut her cable and send topmen aloft to loose the sails, he said, and then they would steer her out to sea where the frigate would be waiting. But everything depended on them launching their attack in the hours of
darkness – and for that they needed the wind to keep up, at least until they reached Paleokastritsa on the opposite side of the bay.

‘You may rely on it for a few hours yet,' Spiridion assured them, ‘but it may drop a little before dawn.'

‘If it does, we will tow her out to sea,' said Nathan, ‘but we will need every man we can fit into the boats.'