Lords of the Nile

by Jonathan Spencer

  ‘Spoken like a true rationalist, sir, safe in Montaigne’s tower,’ replied Hazzard. ‘Or perhaps in your fat little balloon, so full of hot air.’ Denon laughed – Ohoho! Another hit!

  He took a helping of mutton and truffade d’Aurillac. ‘I hear liberators are also required to shed blood once in a while. You had best be wary.’

  The interpreter translated and looked to Bonaparte, uncomfortable in yet another silence. But the Commander in Chief smiled.

  ‘It is a sacrifice.’

  ‘Really? Yours or theirs?’

  Jullien cleared his throat. Though well out of her depth, Madame Dutoit spoke up, eager to shine among the surrounding stars. ‘Tell me, “Captain”,’ she said with derision, ‘you seem quite happy in captivity. Are the English always so, when defeated?’

  She giggled victoriously and Jeanne mumbled, ‘Silly sow…’

  There was rising laughter and another ‘Ohoho!’ from Monge.

  Berthollet and Denon were clearly discomfited, as was young De Villiers, the delighted Jollois looking on, chin in hand, enthralled. But Jullien tried to save the moment.

  ‘We need not press the captain so,’ he suggested. ‘It is not the way of the gentleman to affront his guest.’

  ‘Nonsense, young Thomas,’ said Monge brusquely, ‘it is a matter of scientific discovery.’ Monge fixed Hazzard with a browbeating gaze. ‘Well, sir?’

  Hazzard lay down his knife and fork. He could feel Bonaparte’s eyes on him constantly. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin.

  ‘We English are a backward people,’ he admitted, watching the comtesse and Sarah and Madame Dutoit as Dazier interpreted for him. ‘We love our king, but despise his ministers. We love freedom, but bow to tradition. We are highly disciplined, but resent authority until it earns our respect. We deride the law, but loathe injustice.’ He took up his glass of Margaux as the interpreter caught up. ‘We can be an aggressive, dangerous people. Consequently, the English do not fear a war thrust upon them. On the contrary,’ he said, ‘the English enjoy it.’

  He drank.

  ‘Preposterous,’ said Monge, but his certainty wavered when he looked at Hazzard.

  ‘And defeat, Mrs Dutoit, merely lets us prepare for the only battle that truly matters.’

  The diners looked to Bonaparte. The young general nodded. ‘I admit I am puzzled, Captain,’ he said. ‘I fight all battles as I did my first. Much as Caesar, as we once discussed. Do please enlighten us. Which is the only battle that matters in a war?’

  There was an expectant hush as they waited. Hazzard reached for his wine. ‘Surely, the only battle that matters,’ said Hazzard, lifting his glass, ‘is the final one.’

  The diners looked to the mortified interpreter. He swallowed, his voice scarcely above a whisper. ‘L’ultime.’

  The table fell silent and all looked at Hazzard, but for Denon, who was thrilled and applauded, ‘Haha! Touché encore!’

  Bonaparte stared back at him, white-faced. Sarah writhed in anguish. Hazzard felt the comtesse take his hand under the tablecloth, squeezing it lightly, a gesture of support. He found himself shaking with quiet rage.

  ‘And how do you suppose that comes about if you lie in gaol?’ demanded Monge. ‘Ha, m’sieur. Ha!’

  Bonaparte continued to watch Hazzard. ‘I fear it is not possible to offend an Englishman, Citizen,’ announced Bonaparte. ‘Is that not so, Captain?’

  Hazzard declined to answer.

  Bonaparte continued. ‘You can make the attempt but three times. On the first, he will laugh with you – pretending he has not heard correctly. On the second, he will claim not to have understood – still to give you the benefit of doubt.’

  ‘And on the third?’ asked Monge, jocular and expectant.

  ‘On the third occasion,’ said Bonaparte, looking directly at Hazzard, ‘he will kill you.’

  All eyes turned to Hazzard, the laughter and smiles gone, the group suddenly aware of some hitherto undetected threat in their midst.

  Hazzard took another sip from his glass. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, then smiled suddenly, ‘though with such excellent cuisine, possibly not tonight.’

  * * *

  Jules-Yves Derrien did not dine at the general’s table that first night. Instead he waited for the Dog Watch, when most of the crew would be in their sweating galley, cooking and eating. He made his way to the middle gundeck and the cabin formerly of the unlamented muddied major of the 9th demi – the cabin of Isabelle Moreau-Lazare and the little Comédie whore, Jeanne Arnaud.

  He closed the door behind him. He could hear the voices above, in the wardroom, the murmurs and sudden laughter of the diners. He began his search. He first rifled through their valises, bags, shoes, hats, dresses, shifts, linings, belts, ribbons, stays, corsets and lacquered soap-boxes, everything. He then started on the bedding. Derrien was particularly skilled at the secret search, leaving no trace of the process, replacing every item just as he had found it, angling each separate piece meticulously – so the victim remained utterly unaware they had been exposed.

  He found a torn dress, discarded, and recognised it from that day – and stopped. His hand feeling the silk, he imagined her naked heat inside it, and held it to his nose and mouth, and inhaled, closing his eyes. Yes, there it was: the perfume from the dead Ablondi of Toulon, but also, far more intoxicating, it smelt of her.

  ‘Mon dieu…’

  He shivered in excitement at the thought of her a moment. He examined one of her wigs, a formal silver-grey, somewhat old-fashioned, and another in a silver-blonde – and then smiled.

  He hurried back to his own cabin, a forward storeroom near the junior officers – close to the stairs and the marines’ berths. He went in and slid the bolt he had fitted. His fingers trembled with anticipation.

  With extreme care he withdrew from his pocket several of the narrow tortoise-shell tubes he had found in the wig. They looked like hair-curlers. He inserted a finger in one of them, and poked out a thin sheet of notepaper he had seen rolled tight inside, and nearly laughed with a strange pride: her ingenuity. Of course he would order a search of her cabin for the sake of protocol, but now it would reveal nothing; he wanted to keep her from Masson and the others. He wanted her to himself.

  He unrolled the first sheet carefully, a personal letter, and read the salutations, skimming the contents, ‘I do hope dear Brigitte will be better soon…’ He sniffed at it. He smiled. With a small tinderbox he lit a candle on the desk. He held the letter high above the flame, slowly lowering it, waving it in circles over the heat. After a moment the page rattled and crisped slightly, drying, then darkened, and a light brown scorching began to spread. Before his eyes transverse lines written across the personal message began to appear in burnt lemon ink:

  9th demi in Gozo; no tropical cottons, wool coats in heat

  no army water bottles

  navy arguments Adms Brueys, Villeneuve and Blanquet du Chayla

  Vaubois i/c garrison Malta 4500 men

  Powder magazines Fort St Elmo flooded

  28’89’66 Red 14 34 59 3B

  He felt another shudder go through his body, a tremulous pleasure, flashes in his mind’s eye of the women in the dark waists of the ship, his sweating hands slipping on their skin in his pounding nocturnal frenzies, now as nothing compared to what lay before him. He had her, with evidence of an Admiralty cipher. With all of his victims he always sought more evidence, always more, for it was this that excited him most: not the violent consummation of power, but its potential, its sweet promise, and the terror it inspired.

  For he knew her now: the scented beauty of Bartelmi’s household; the desperate flight to Naples; the message from that courtesan slut, the comtesse de Boussard, of a new girl with the old comtesse de Biasi; all now made sense. And he knew Isabelle’s skill at subterfuge, her cunning to lie a-bed with Bonaparte, of all men. This would be his one hold over the general, over them all: she would be his, and his alone.

  His breathing gr
ew faster. Quickly he undid his buttons and tore off his coat, tugged the cravat from his throat, hauling the shirt over his head. He fell to his knees on the plank floor, his altar the desk, the candle and the letters his offering, her letters, one hand reaching, feeling for it under the mattress on his hammock, finding it, and withdrawing it slowly: the rawhide scourge he had used on Hazzard that first day.

  His breathing quickened. Lightly, just to test, he threw the frayed ends over his shoulder. He winced at the sting on his upper back. Then again, lower, his mouth and eyes opening wide with the unexpected pain and flood of warmth – then again, harder, and again, still harder, until his hand flashed rhythmically with the lash, Hazzard, as he punished himself for feeling such pleasure, for sensing her naked, Isabelle, vulnerable before him, in her scented slip, a bare breast exposed, Isabelle, her lips parting, smooth legs stretching on the cot behind her, harder, until he gasped – a paroxysm of pain and pleasure at his own sin, penance and absolution all at once, and he fell forward, whispering his own holy litany, ‘I am the Republic… I AM the Republic…’

  * * *

  When at last the party broke up, it had already gone four bells of the Mid Watch, and Hazzard guessed it was one or two in the morning. Jullien escorted Hazzard down the ornate carven staircase to the lower decks, the boards crammed with soldiers in bedrolls, while just above them the slung hammocks of sailors swayed in so many snoring cocoons.

  Jullien was drunk, and Hazzard was keeping him good company, the pair of them laughing at nothings, theatre, variety, satire. They stumbled in broken English and French until they reached the middle gundeck, the oldest friends. Hazzard liked him, and regretted what he must do to him, do to them all.

  Jullien escorted him to his cabin door. Intended for Jullien, it was aft, with access to the senior officers. A marine stood sentry, another sat at a folding table with a lantern, and rose hastily when he saw them arrive. Jullien took hold of Hazzard to steady himself. He spoke quietly, waving a finger at him non, non, shhh, then laughing and stifling more laughter, only to fall suddenly serious, a strange half-smile on his earnest face.

  ‘Think not too badly of us, mon ami,’ said Jullien at length. ‘When you go. N’oubliez… not to forget, that some of us, we loved the English poets…’

  Swaying with wine, Jullien offered his hand and Hazzard shook it, a Gallic custom, offered only grudgingly in Britain, thought Hazzard, a kindness he missed from France. ‘I think, mon vieux,’ slurred Hazzard, ‘I am going nowhere… for a very, very long time.’

  Jullien smiled again as he got him to the door. ‘Ohh, mon ami,’ said Jullien, shaking his head slowly from side to side, arm round his shoulder, ‘I think you will go, somehow.’ He sounded as if he would miss him. He glanced at the marine behind them, then said suddenly, almost angrily, in English under his breath, ‘I know it was you.’

  Hazzard stopped and stood dead still.

  Jullien added in a rush of French, ‘You saved a Maltese family from a madman throwing grenades in Sliema – then cut down four of the Alpha company of the 75th Invincibles with your sword, and two fusiliers of the 4th Légère. Mon dieu. I know this. You are savant, oui, but also chevalier, gallant soldat. Do not deny me this memory of your valour, mon ami.’

  Hazzard watched his flushed face. Jullien was shocked by the tale of Hazzard’s capture, fearful, bewildered that Hazzard had made nothing of it.

  ‘Army gossip,’ said Hazzard. ‘A trompe l’oeuil. Trick of the eye.’

  Jullien was disturbed by something, his self-conflict, his duty. ‘I know you live by honour…’ He made to move away, then clutched Hazzard by the hand again, ‘I beg this of you. Do nothing that would blacken our names, or your own. And remember my sadness, that we are enemies.’

  Jullien staggered back up the stairs, one of the marines following him with a lantern. Hazzard went into his cabin and fell onto the slung hammock, rocking violently, and began to snore. Disgusted, his guard banged the door shut.

  Hazzard opened his eyes and lay still, a dim light from the passage glowing under the door; he stared at the wall, his thoughts rushing. His twin mission, for what it was, was half complete. He had found Sarah – though she was by no means safe. But Lewis’s mission was still running: Stop the fleet, Captain. Find them, sink them, kill them.

  He was now faced with two priorities: to wrest Sarah from the ship, and to carry out Lewis’s orders. The sole objective that once had bound him to his duty to follow Lewis’s orders was his personal determination to destroy Derrien. When he had believed Bonaparte’s fleet had been yet another arbitrary threat from France, he had been prepared to pull Sarah from its threshing gears and get her out, and be done.

  But something new had come into play regarding the Admiralty’s command to intercept the fleet: he now knew the fleet was headed for Egypt.

  He wanted to stop it. He had to.

  He heard Sir John Acton’s arrogant remark once again, ‘It is a bold venture and will yield millions in revenue. Jolly good luck to ’em if it keeps ’em out of Naples.’

  Oh Lewis, you knew all along.

  I shall burn them all down. Yielding millions or not.

  He thought of Bonaparte, of the savants led by the forceful Monge and Berthollet. Were they unwitting pawns in Bonaparte’s grand scheme, he wondered, or implicated in the horrors to come – counting the dead, French and Egyptian, contorted in their incomprehensible agonies, the drifting sands becoming their shroud, the eager scientists and magician aeronauts making their notes for posterity: a natural consequence, m’sieur, all for their noble academic endeavour.

  If they had not grasped the true purpose of their venture, he pitied them, for it threatened their very lives. He thought of those young men, those thoughtless, excited, unprepared young men, who had seen nothing of war. Nothing. Yet they had signed on for the deadliest adventure of their careers.

  And Bonaparte, luring his devoted troops to follow him into the desert while he dreamt of becoming an Oriental potentate greater than Alexander – no doubt festooned in robes and tassels with a Grand Vizier in his fantastical Babylon. Do you know the Quran? I have such dreams, Mr Hazzard…

  Damn him and his bloody dreams.

  And part of him was envious. How he wished he too were a young De Villiers of seventeen, off to Egypt to record the wonders of the ancient world. Ten years ago he would have given his life to be part of such an expedition.

  And what was its intent: the savants aside, there was only one objective, or so the government of France believed, and without question that was India. Of all of them, Le Père had kept a quiet eye on him throughout the meal – Le Père, President of the Engineers. He and Hazzard both knew they were not going to Egypt to build bridges on the Nile or draw pictures. They were going to dig.

  Suez.

  And for that reason Hazzard would do it all, come Hell itself: get Sarah out, destroy Derrien, and set light to the brave new colony before it even landed – and damn Bonaparte’s dreams.

  He tugged out the note slipped into his sleeve by the comtesse de Biasi when he had first kissed her hand. She had proved more deft than his most light-fingered marine, Private Kite. It said ‘Orlop, 2am aft stair’.

  He would get but one chance. He did swift calculations. Barely eight knots, he thought, say seven – with the sail area of the Orient it should have been at least ten, but she was riding low, heavily laden, and had to move as slowly as the convoy, give it six to be safe – over how many hours, how many, and he reached for his watch but remembered, gone – everything was gone.

  It had been two bells when Jullien had talked of theatre, song, the Beggar’s Opera and Bartholomew Fair, in their broken lingua franca – they had wandered briefly into the fresh air. The Orient had weighed anchor before they had called the meridian, nearly four watches earlier – sixteen hours then, at six knots, subtract two hours to assemble fleet formation, six knots by fourteen hours, the constellation of Cygnus off the larboard bow.

  It could
be far enough. And near enough.

  Now.

  He took a draught of the water left in the jug and splashed his face. He turned to the corner for the espada ropera – he had not worn it at dinner but left it propped behind two stacked wine-casks in the cabin. It was gone. He looked behind the casks, if it had fallen. It had not.

  Stolen? By a common soldier?

  That was too tempting to believe. Derrien? No doubt Derrien would prefer him unarmed while aboard, but the ramifications stretched out before him, reaching to the obvious conclusion: he had been discovered.

  It was not enough to stop him.

  So be it.

  He opened the door. The marine at the table outside had time to frown and start rising from his seat before Hazzard gave him the heel of his hand into his chin. He fell heavily and Hazzard thought he might have killed him but he did not care, because he was thinking of Sarah now, and escape. He dropped him back onto his stool, his head slumped. From this point, there would be no return.

  There was light from above along the middle gundeck. Unlike British ships, they had closed only some of the hatches, leaving the midships grilles open for fresh air. Even so it grew hotter and more oppressive as he descended. He heard footsteps above and hurried.

  Using the 110-gun Ville de Paris as a guide, he located the aft staircases and went down to the lower gundeck on the port side. Glowing a luminescent white, bleached hammocks swayed against the mild roll of the ship. He listened and watched. Beyond a bulkhead further on came the yellow blaze of a lamp, shadows flitting. He ducked. It was a pair of marines doing their rounds. In the flashing shapes of the posts and beams he could make out the humped shapes of still more soldiers bunking on the deck in rows, between the cannons, the murmur of voices, the glow of a pipe here and there. The marines moved away, heading forward.

  He found the steps and slipped down into the deep silence of the Orlop, the final level just above the giant holds of the ship. At the bottom of the steps was a low door, but no guard to be seen: no marine, no soldier, and no sound. He opened the hatch slowly, fearful of creaking hinges, but there was nothing. He stepped down into a black, woollen deafness.