Winds of Folly (42 page)

‘Well,' she replied cautiously, ‘there are some fishermen that have been known to visit the island from time to time.'

He supposed them to be more smugglers than fishermen, but he had no objection to that. ‘Do you know any personally?' he enquired.

‘And what am
I
to do?' she insisted.

He repeated his invitation to her to come with him.

‘To Elba?' She looked at him as if he was mad.

‘Genoa?' he offered.

‘My mother is in Genoa,' she said. He gathered this was not in its favour. She considered a moment in silence. Then she said: ‘No, Elba is not for me. I will stay in Livorno.'

He waited expectantly, but when nothing was forthcoming he coughed politely and prompted her: ‘And the fishermen? Do you think something can be arranged?'

She sighed. ‘I suppose it is possible,' she conceded. ‘You had better wait here while I see what I can do.'

*

They sailed just before dark, heading southward about a mile out from the coast. It was very cold, with a bitter north-west wind and a hint of sleet in the air. No night to be out at sea in a small fishing boat. Nathan sat in the sternsheets, huddled up in the French Army greatcoat they had given him at the hospital; its last owner, he suspected, having died on them. He could not help wondering if it would not be a great deal easier for the crew if he were to die now. They could dump him overboard as soon as they were out of sight of land and head back to Livorno and their warm beds and wives. None of them spoke any French but the skipper had a smattering of English, and Nathan attempted to ingratiate himself with him at every opportunity. There was no obvious sign that it was working. Why did the Signor not go below, the man enquired. He would wake him before dawn when, if the wind held, they should be off the coast of Elba.

Nathan demurred at first. If they planned to cut his throat he thought he had a better chance of survival if he stayed awake, but by midnight he was nodding off anyway so he thought he might as well.

The only space below deck was for a small saloon and a galley, but at least it was out of the wind and there was a wooden shelf for the crew to sleep on if they were so minded. Nathan stretched himself out on it, pulling his greatcoat around him. Surprisingly he slept quite well and the skipper had to shake him awake. Nathan gathered they were approaching land.

He made his way up on deck to find the crew peering out over the leeward rail. They seemed nervous. It was still dark and it was raining – a dense drizzle that cut visibility down to a few yards. Nathan could see no sign of Elba, or anything else.

‘Where will you land me?' Nathan asked, but the skipper
shook his head with a frown. He seemed to be listening. Nathan listened too. Nothing at first. Nothing beside the normal sounds of the sea. The waves slapping against the side of the boat, the wind in the rigging, the creaking of the ropes. Then … He could not quite place it. Breakers? It sounded more like a gust of wind, yet the sails had fallen slack. He looked questioningly at the skipper – and then all at once he realised and turned to face the threat rushing down upon them, his mouth open in a shout of warning that never came.

The ghostly figure of a woman loomed out of the darkness. Mad, staring eyes in a white face, a gaping mouth and wild flowing hair. A great lance of a bowsprit pierced the air above Nathan's head, carrying away the sail and most of the mast as the great beak of a bow smashed down on them.

At the last moment he jumped. Not out, but up. It was pure instinct, the instant he saw that white face bearing down on him. He leaped on to the gunwale and then straight up at that ghoulish countenance, his outstretched hands clawing. He was falling back into the sea when his clutching hands encountered a rope and he held on to it, soaked in spray while the bows rose and fell, a dangling puppet carried before the onrushing ship. He tried to haul himself up towards that glaring figurehead, but he lacked the strength. He had been too long ill. There was a terrible pain in his chest: he thought it would split open, the blood gushing from the open wound. He glared back at the face of his oppressor. He thought it was the last face he would ever see. Then there were others beside it, even uglier, and a moment later hands were reaching down to him, hauling him up. Passing him back along the bowsprit and up over the heads where the hands, in normal times, were wont to relieve themselves. It was not a part of the ship with which he was at all familiar.

‘Thank you,' he gasped. ‘Thank you kindly. Thank you.'

‘Speakee English, do ye?' said one.

‘Frenchie, is 'ee?' said another.

‘I am English,' said Nathan. He sensed them staring at him, the white eyes in the dark faces. Harsh, grim features in the light from the belfry but he loved them all.

‘What's that, mate?'

‘Says as 'e's English.'

‘I
am
English,' he stated, more firmly now as the habit of command came back to him a little. ‘What ship is this?'

Inconstant
, they said. ‘And what's it to you, mate?'

Inconstant
. He laughed out loud, coughing.

‘All right, mate, it's not that funny.'

‘Is Captain Fremantle aboard?' Astonished silence. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to take me to Captain Fremantle.'

They took him to the officer of the watch.

‘Captain Nathaniel Peake.
Unicorn
,' he introduced himself formally.

‘The devil you are!'

‘You have just run down a fishing boat,' Nathan informed him coldly. ‘There will be men in the water.'

They fetched Fremantle up from below. ‘Good God, Peake,' he said after a moment to get used to the idea. ‘I thought you were dead.'

‘I very nearly was,' said Nathan. ‘And there are others soon will be if you do not come about and search for them.'

Fremantle gave the necessary order but he insisted Nathan come below. ‘Else we might as well have left you in the sea,' he said.

‘What in God's name happened to you?' he demanded when they were settled in his cabin. ‘And what are you doing in French Army uniform?'

Fremantle was not the most discreet of confidants. Nathan told him only that he had been taken prisoner in Venice,
escaped, and made his way overland to Leghorn disguised as a French officer. ‘I paid the fishermen to bring me here,' he said, ‘and I fear I have brought them to their deaths.'

He looked about the cabin. It was divided by hangings and there were certain telltale signs. ‘Have you got a woman here?' he said.

‘For God's sake, keep your voice down,' Fremantle rebuked him. Nathan had noticed he was speaking in scarce more than a whisper. ‘I'll have you know she is my wife.'

‘Your
wife
? Good God, Fremantle, when were you married?' Belatedly Nathan dropped his voice. ‘Who to?'

‘Betsey Wynne – you remember. That we took out of Leghorn. We were married a week ago in Naples.'

‘What were you doing in Naples?'

‘Nelson sent us.'

‘Nelson sent you?'
Nathan tried to make sense of this. ‘I thought Nelson was in Lisbon. I thought the fleet was ordered out of the Med.'

‘So it was – all except us – but he came back. The Admiral sent him to evacuate Elba. But the General ain't leaving, he says, not till he gets a proper order from the Duke of York, so Nelson sent us to Naples to fetch the Viceroy.'

Nathan stared at him in utter confusion.
The General, the Duke of York, the Viceroy
…
?

‘Look, I have been away for a long time,' he said. ‘I got a nasty crack on the head. Do you think you could take me through that again, a little more slowly.'

It took a while but he got there in the end.

General De Burgh was the officer commanding at Elba. He had 5,000 troops that had been evacuated from Corsica and a small squadron of frigates and sloops under Fremantle to protect them and maintain a loose blockade of Leghorn. They were the last British forces in the Med. But then the Admiralty
had sent orders to evacuate them. So Admiral Jervis had sent Nelson with two frigates, the
La Minerve
and the
Blanche
. They had arrived the day after Christmas, but General De Burgh refused to leave without a written order from his Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of York. Failing which, he would only take an order from the Viceroy of Corsica, Sir Gilbert Elliot. But the Viceroy was in Naples on diplomatic business. So Nelson had sent Fremantle to fetch him to Elba.

‘And while I was there, Betsey and I got married,' he finished with a smirk.

This made as much sense as anything else he had told him.

‘Congratulations,' said Nathan. ‘I am sorry I was not there.'

‘Well, we will drink a glass to it later,' declared Fremantle complacently.

‘So where is the Viceroy now?'

Fremantle jerked his head towards the bulkhead partition. ‘In my night cabin,' he said. ‘He is not the best of sailors, I am afraid. But we will be in Porto Ferraio within the hour.'

Nathan leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes with a sigh. It seemed that he had made it. After all this time. Then he opened them again.

‘And where is the
Unicorn
?' he asked.

‘The
Unicorn
?' Fremantle stared at him. ‘You mean you do not know?'

A knife twisted in Nathan's guts. ‘What do I not know?'

‘Oh, my dear fellow, I am so sorry,' said Fremantle. He looked stricken. ‘The
Unicorn
ran upon the Rock of Montecristo. In a gale in November. She went down with all hands.'

H
e pieced it together as best he could from the reports. The
Unicorn
had been on her way north from Naples, in company with the
Jean-Bart
and
Bonne Aventure
, when they ran into a powerful Spanish squadron: two ships of the line and three frigates under Vice-Admiral Moreno. It must have been their first action since coming into the war. There was a strong south-westerly wind and a heavy sea. A murky, ugly sky.

They ran to the north under all the sail they could carry, but the
Bonne Aventure
was soon in trouble.
Unicorn
hung back for her and exchanged shots with the leading Spaniards. It saved the brig but the
Unicorn
took some damage aloft. Tully, on the
Jean-Bart
, reported that he thought her spanker boom had gone. Then they lost her in the murk. The last they saw of her, she was running to the north-west with the Spaniards in hot pursuit, but they thought she would be safe enough. It was a Spanish newspaper that reported her as having run upon the Rock.

Nathan found it on the chart. Montecristo. The mountain
of Christ. The tip of a volcano, barely two-and-a-half miles across. Nothing there except a monastery. He could imagine it in a storm.

‘It would not have helped if her spanker had gone,' said Fremantle, thinking he might hold Duncan to blame.

But he did not blame Duncan.

‘It would not have helped that I stripped her of one-third of her crew,' he said, ‘for a prize.'

They left him alone with his grief. All those men who had been with him in the Caribbean. Duncan and Holroyd, McLeish, Whiteley, the midshipmen, Anson and Quinn, McIvor the purser and Mr Lloyd the carpenter, William Brown the master at arms, and Jacob Young, his coxswain, Mr Sweeney the sailmaker who had made him his tent; on and on it went, the grim toll. Tully, at least, had been spared aboard the
Jean-Bart
. Who else had been with him? Lamb, of course, thank God. Who else? Desperately he tried to remember, who had gone and who had stayed. The living and the dead.

And what of Gilbert Gabriel?

Something like panic gripped his chest. He felt short of breath. Not Gabriel. Had he rejoined the ship after their trip to Venice? Pray God he had not. He could not lose Gabriel. He felt a sob rise in his throat and it unleashed the tears.

Nelson came on board shortly after their arrival in Porto Ferraio.

‘I am sorry about the
Unicorn
,' he told Nathan, ‘but thank God you were spared.' He regarded him shrewdly. ‘You have been in the wars, I think.'

Nathan nodded, his face expressionless.

‘I am anxious to hear your report,' said Nelson briskly, ‘but I must first make myself known to the Viceroy.'

The Viceroy was still below; still suffering from the effects of seasickness, according to Fremantle. But it was to be
presumed that his stomach would settle a little in the sheltered waters of Porto Ferraio.

Despite his grief, Nathan agreed to join Fremantle and the other officers in the gunroom for breakfast.

‘What with my wife and her family, not to speak of Viceroys and their staff, my own quarters are somewhat crowded at present,' Fremantle confessed a little bleakly. Nathan wondered how he was finding marriage after so many happy years of bachelorhood – but now was not the time to ask. He told him that Signora Correglia sent her regards and had arranged his trip to Elba.