The Flying Squadron

by Richard Woodman

  ‘What’s he up to?’ A man in the plain blue of master’s mate asked Sundercombe after reporting the Sprite brought to her anchor.

  ‘Damned if I know,’ growled the lieutenant.

  Caldecott’s men pulled silently upstream for an hour before Drinkwater began to recognize features in the landscape that betokened the confluence of the Potomac with the Chesapeake. He ordered the tiller over and they inclined their course more to the westward, entering the Potomac itself, a grey swathe between the darker shadows of the wooded banks up which they worked their way.

  ‘Inshore now,’ he murmured at last, and Caldecott swung the boat’s head. ‘Easy now, lads.’

  The men no longer pulled, merely dipped their oar blades in the rhythm which had become almost hypnotic while the cutter carried her way. A roosting heron rose, startled, with a heavy flapping of its large wings. Drinkwater caught sight of the outline of Castle Point against the sky.

  ‘Here’s the place,’ whispered Drinkwater.

  ‘Oars,’ hissed Caldecot. ‘Toss oars. Boat your oars.’ The knock and rumble of the oars as they were stowed were terminated in the sharp crunch and lurch as the boat grounded. Drinkwater stood up. He could see the eastern wing of the house clearly now, pale in the darkness, the surrounding trees gathered like protective wood spirits guarding it against incursions like his own. Before him the lawns came to the water’s edge. He bent towards Caldecott’s ear.

  ‘Remember what I said.’

  ‘No fear of forgettin’, sir.’

  ‘Keep quiet, you men,’ he said in a low voice as he stepped from thwart to thwart. A moment later his boots landed on the gravel and he was ashore on enemy territory. He pulled his cloak closely round him and checked the seaman’s knife lodged in its sheath in the small of his back. Taking a backward glance at the boat, he began to walk boldly up towards the house.

  ‘Where’s ’e gone, Bill?’ someone asked.

  ‘For a fuck, I shouldn’t wonder, lucky bastard.’

  ‘Stow it,’ growled Caldecott, ‘or it’ll be you that’s fucked.’

  Immediately upon leaving the boat Drinkwater knew he had allowed himself insufficient time. The information he wanted had seemed vital in the security of Patrician’s cabin, vital to the scenario he had conjured out of Dungarth’s intelligence reports, Moira’s correspondence, the Admiralty’s fears and his own peculiar brand of intuition, guesswork and faith in providence. Others would call it luck, no doubt, but to Drinkwater it was the hunch upon which he gambled his reputation.

  Within minutes he reached the trees surrounding the stables forming the eastern wing of the house. He tried to recall where old Zebulon Shaw kept his hounds and thanked heaven for a windless night. He paused to catch his breath, looking back and seeing no sign of the boat or her crew tucked under the low river-bank. Noises came from the kitchen wing, a few bars of a song and the clatter of dishes, suggesting the servants were about late. He moved off, round the front of the house, traversing it in the shelter of the battlemented terrace until he reached the steps. Below the balustrade where he and Arabella had first traded the repartee which had had such fateful consequences, he stepped back and looked up at the façade.

  There were lights still burning behind the heavy, brocade curtains. He tried to recall the plan of the house, located the withdrawing room and moved cautiously on to the terrace. An attack of nerves made him look down at the deserted lawns and the glimmer of the Potomac, empty now, where once, an age ago it seemed, the Patrician and the Stingray had lain uneasily together.

  A fissure in the curtains revealed Shaw seated at an escritoire, his wig abandoned, the candlelight shining on his bald pate and a pen in his hand. A variety of papers were scattered on the small area of boards visible to Drinkwater.

  With a thumping heart he stepped back and looked up again at the black windows whose glazed panes stared out indifferently at the night. Her bedroom was on the first floor, one of the rooms he had seen lit the evening before he had dined at Castle Point. A drain-pipe led directly up beside the shallow balcony upon which tall casements opened. Throwing back his cloak Drinkwater drew a deep breath and began to climb.

  It was fortunate the house was not old, nor that the drain-pipe’s fastenings had been skimped, for he struggled manfully in his effort to be silent. The climb was no more than fifteen feet, yet it took all his strength to claw his way up the wall and get his footing on the balcony’s stone rail.

  He stopped to catch his breath again, ruminating on the ruinous effects of age and short-windedness, aware that here, this close to her, he could not stop the terrible pounding of his heart. He strained his ears, but could hear nothing beyond the curtains. Putting his hand behind his back he drew the seaman’s sheath knife, inserting the steel blade between the edges of the windows. With infinite care he located the latch and increased the pressure. To his relief it gave way easily, but he could afford no further delay, not knowing the noise its release had made within. He thrust aside the drapery and stepped inside the bedroom.

  She was not alone, but sitting before a mirror, bathed in golden candlelight while her maid brushed out her hair. The unexpected presence of another person surprised him, instantly putting him on his guard, and drove the carefully prepared speech from his head. The unexpected, however, made him cautious not reckless. He drew the door to behind him and faced the astonished pair.

  Both women had turned as he burst in. The maid, a white woman of uncertain years and not the negress Drinkwater might have thought likely had he anticipated her being there, dropped the hairbrush and squealed, putting her hands to her face as she backed away. Arabella, deathly pale, her face like wax, her eyes fixed upon the cloaked figure of the intruder, put out a hand to silence the frightened woman.

  ‘There is no cause for alarm,’ he said, a catch in his voice.

  With a slow majesty Arabella rose to her feet and confronted the intruder. Her recently removed dress lay across her bed and she wore a fine silk negligée over her chemise. Her disarray twisted Drinkwater’s gut with a tortuous spasm of desire and she caught this flickering regard of herself, sensed her mastery of his passion at the instant of knowing she might as easily lose it if he meditated rape.

  ‘You! What is it you want?’ Her voice trembled with emotion and the maid, pressed back against the wall, watched in terrified fascination, aware of a tension existing in the room extending beyond the mere fact of the stranger’s burglarous entry. She too recognized the man, though he did not know her.

  Drinkwater suppressed the goading of desire, aware she had divined the effect of her déshabillé, and annoyed by it. The reflection steadied him again, reminded him of his purpose, of the enormity of his gamble.

  ‘Only a word, ma’am. I shall not detain you long, nor do I offer you any harm.’ He shot a look at the maid. ‘Will she hold her tongue?’

  Arabella looked round at the quailing yet immobile figure. ‘Tell me something of your purpose,’ she said, addressing Drinkwater again.

  ‘To speak with you,’ he said simply, with a lover’s implication, gratified that she lowered her eyes, momentarily confused. She remained silent, struggling with his dramatic and violent appearance. Again she turned to her maid and, in a low voice, murmured something. Drinkwater recognized the language and his words arrested the woman’s trembling retreat towards the door.

  ‘She is French?’ he asked, his voice suddenly harsh.

  Arabella nodded. ‘Yes, but she can be trusted. She will say nothing about your being here.’

  Drinkwater fixed the woman with his most balefully intimidating glare. He was not unduly worried. He had Patrician’s red cutter’s crew of nine men within hail, men who would delight in rescuing him if it meant they might also make free with the contents of Castle Point while they were about it.

  ‘I am not alone,’ he warned, ‘there are others outside.’

  His stare made the poor woman cringe, her hand desperately reaching for the door-knob.

  �
�She understands, Nathaniel,’ Arabella insisted, lowering the tension between the three of them.

  ‘Very well.’

  Arabella nodded, the maid fled and they were alone in the perfumed intimacy of her boudoir.

  ‘Why have you come back?’ she whispered, her face contorted with anguish as she sat back upon the chair and her right hand drew the silk wrap defensively about her breast.

  ‘Are you in health, Arabella?’ he asked, keeping his distance, hardening his painfully thumping heart at her plight.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, seizing the proprieties he offered, ignoring the incongruity of their situation, ‘and you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he paused and she saw the struggle in his own face.

  ‘You have nothing to fear,’ she said more firmly, looking at him, ‘I miscarried in the second month.’

  She had conceived! The shock of it struck Drinkwater like a whiplash. It brought him no goatish pleasure, only an appalling regret and a piteous compassion which was out of kilter with his present purpose. ‘My dear . . .’ he made a move towards her, then stopped at the precise moment she held up her hand to arrest him.

  ‘No! It is over, and it is for the best!’

  He avoided her eyes. ‘Yes,’ he mumbled, ‘the war . . .’

  ‘I did not mean the war, Nathaniel, though that too is an impediment now.’ She paused, then added, ‘You found your wife well?’

  ‘Arabella,’ he protested, utterly confused, desperately hanging on to the reason for his unceremonious arrival. In his heart he had no real wish to revive their liaison and her continuing assumption piqued him.

  ‘No blame attaches to you,’ she said, sensing his mood, ‘but why have you come back?’

  He sighed, ashamed of himself now the moment of truth had come. ‘I need some information, Arabella, information I thought our former intimacy might entitle me at least to ask of you.’

  ‘You wish me to turn traitor?’ she enquired, that lilting, bantering tone on which they had first established their friendship back in her voice, ‘just as I once turned whore.’

  ‘No,’ he replied levelly, pleased he had at least anticipated this question. ‘I merely wish to know if the Stingray is at sea under your brother’s command. Such a question may easily be discovered from other sources; it is rumoured that a Yankee comes cheaper than Judas Iscariot.’

  She opened her mouth to protest and then a curiously reticent look crossed her face. Her eyes searched his for some clue, as though he had said something implicit and she was gauging the extent of his knowledge. Then, as soon as the expression appeared it had faded and he was mystified, almost uncertain whether or not he had read it aright, merely left staring at her singular beauty.

  ‘Why should you wish to know this? And why come all the way from England and up the Chesapeake if it may be bought from some fisherman for a few dollars?’

  ‘Because I wished for an excuse to see you,’ he replied, voicing a gallant half-truth, ‘and because it might stop your brother and I from trying to kill each other,’ he lied. He watched the words sink in, hoping she might recall the respective attitudes he and Stewart had professed when the possibility of war between their two countries had been discussed. He hoped, too, she might not begin to guess how large was the ocean and how unlikely they were to meet. Unless . . .

  ‘The Stingray, Captain Drinkwater, is undergoing repairs at the Washington Navy Yard,’ she said with a cool and dismissive air. ‘My brother is unemployed by the Navy Department . . . out of your reach . . .’

  He admired her quick intelligence, her guessing of his dissimulation, and was now only mildly offended at her assumption of motive.

  ‘Madam,’ he said with a wry smile that savaged her with its attractiveness, ‘I do not meditate any revenge, I assure you.’

  The formality had evaporated the passion between them. He was no longer a slave to their concupiscence; his imagination ran in a contrary direction.

  ‘He is at sea, though, ma’am, is he not?’

  She inclined her head. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘In a Baltimore clipper schooner . . .’ He flattened his tone, kept the interrogative out of his voice, made of the question a statement of fact and watched like a falcon the tiny reactive muscles about her lovely eyes.

  ‘You knew,’ she said before perceiving his trap and clenching her fist in her anger. ‘You . . . you . . .’ She stammered her outrage and he stepped forward and put a hand upon her shoulder. The white silk was warmed by the soft flesh beneath.

  ‘Arabella . . .’ She looked up, her eyes bright with fury. ‘I truly mean no harm to either of you, but I have my obligations as you have yours. Please do not be angry with me. The web we find ourselves caught in is not of our making.’

  She put her hand on his and it felt like a talon as it clawed at him. ‘Why do you help weave it, then? You men are all the same! Why, you knew all along,’ she whispered. Her fingers dug into the back of his hand, bearing it down upon her own shoulder as though she wanted to mutilate herself for her treachery. As he bent to kiss her hair the door was flung open with a crash of the handle upon the plaster.

  Drinkwater looked round. Zebulon Shaw stood in the doorway with a scatter gun levelled at Drinkwater’s belly. Behind him, the dull gleam of a musket barrel in his hands, was the dark presence of the negro groom and the pale face of the maid.

  ‘Take your hands off!’ Shaw roared.

  Shaw’s misreading of the situation in thinking the moment of anguished intimacy one of imminent violence, moved Drinkwater to fury. Arabella, too, reacted.

  ‘Father . . .’ she expostulated, but Drinkwater seized her shoulders, drew her to her feet, jerked her round and pulled her to him. Whipping the knife from his belt he held it to her neck, hissing a reassurance in her ear.

  He had no idea to what extent and in what detail the French maid had betrayed her mistress; he hoped she had acted protectively with some discretion, concerned only for Arabella’s safety in the presence of a man who, once her lover, was now at the very least an enemy. Whatever the niceties, he could, he realized, avoid compromising Arabella further while at the same time facilitating his escape. Zebulon Shaw’s next remark gave him grounds for thinking he had guessed right.

  ‘Drinkwater? Is it you? What in hell’s name d’you mean by . . . ?’

  ‘I wished to know the whereabouts of the USS Stingray, Mr Shaw, and if you’ll stand aside, I’ll trouble your home no further. I have armed men outside and I have no need to remind you we are at war.’

  Shaw’s tongue flicked out over dry lips and his face lost its resolute expression. Drinkwater pressed his advantage.

  ‘I apologize for my method,’ he went on, sensing Shaw’s indecision, ‘and it would distress me even more if I had to add mutilation or murder to a trifling burglary.’ As he spoke he moved the knife menacingly across Arabella’s white throat.

  ‘Damn you!’ Shaw growled, drawing back.

  ‘Very well, Mrs Shaw,’ Drinkwater said with a calm insolence, ‘precede me and no harm will come to you.’ He pressed her gently forward, passed into the passage and ran the gauntlet of Shaw and the negro, glaring at the maid as she held up a wildly flickering candelabra in a shaking hand. ‘No tricks, sir . . .’

  They were convinced by his show of bravado in which Arabella played her part submissively.

  ‘Go, sir,’ Shaw called after them, ‘go and be damned to you if this is how you treat our hospitality . . .’

  ‘Needs must, sir, when the devil drives,’ Drinkwater flung over his shoulder as they reached the head of the staircase. ‘Careful, m’dear,’ he muttered to Arabella as they descended to the darkened hall.

  Shaw and the negro covered their descent and Drinkwater was aware of open doors closing on their approach as inquisitive servants, roused by noises on the floor above, retreated before the sight of the cloaked intruder with their mistress a hostage. He paused at the main door and turned.

  ‘Remain here, Shaw. I shall take your daughter
-in-law a pistol shot from the house and release her. I trust you to wait here.’

  ‘Be damned, Captain . . .’

  ‘Do you agree?’

  Shaw grunted. ‘Under protest, yes, I agree.’

  ‘I bid you farewell, Mr Shaw, and I repeat my apologies that the harsh necessities of war compel me to this action. Perhaps in happier times . . .’

  He had the door open and thrust Arabella through, followed her and pulled the door to behind them, then seized her hand.

  ‘Beyond the trees,’ he ordered, walking quickly down the wide steps and across the gravel. ‘And hurry, I pray you. I do not want you to catch a fever. I am sorry for what has happened. No blame attaches to you and if your maid was at least loyal to you, then I think no great harm can have been done. Tell your father-in-law you confessed only that your brother no longer had command of the Stingray’.

  They reached the trees as he finished this monologue and he let go her wrist. She turned and faced him.

  ‘I am sorry we must part like this,’ he ran on, ‘as sorry as I was by the manner of our last parting.’

  ‘Sir,’ she said, drawing her breath with difficulty, ‘I should hate you for this humiliation, but I cannot pretend . . . no, it is no matter. It was guilt the last time, guilt and shame and the confusion of love, but it was better than this!’ She almost spat the last word at him. ‘God,’ her voice rose, exasperation and hurt charging it with a desperate vehemence, ‘had I not . . . damn you! Go, for God’s sake, go quickly.’

  ‘God bless you, Arabella.’

  ‘Go!’

  He turned and ran, not hearing her poor, strangled cry, wondering why on earth he had invoked the Deity. A moment later he cannoned into Caldecott.

  ‘Damn you, Caldecott – is the boat ready?’

  ‘Beg pardon. Aye, sir.’

  Drinkwater looked back. There was a brief flash of pale silk and then only the trees and their shadows stood between him and Castle Point.

  ‘Everything all right, sir?’

  In answer to Caldecott’s query the wild barking of dogs, the gleam of lanterns and shouts of men filled the night. Then came the sharp crack of a musket.