In Distant Waters nd-8

by Richard Woodman

  In Distant Waters

  ( Nathaniel Drinkwater - 8 )

  Richard Woodman

  The eighth book in the Nathaniel Drinkwater series.

  The capture of a Spanish frigate augurs well for Drinkwater, but he has disturbed a hornets' nest of colonial intrigue. The Spanish are eager to humiliate him and he finds himself in solitary confinement and his ship a prize of the enemy.

  In Distant Waters

  Richard Woodman

  For my brother, Oliver

  PART ONE

  Low Water

  "It is very difficult for history to get at the real facts. Luckily they are more often objects of curiosity than truly important. There are so many facts!"

  Napoleon

  The Deserter

  Although he had been waiting for it, the knock at his cabin door made him start. An unnaturally expectant silence had fallen upon the ship following the noisy tumult of reaction to the pipes and calls for 'all hands'. Beyond the cabin windows the spring ebbtide and the westerly gale churned the yeasty water of the Great Nore and tore its surface into long streaks of dirty spume. Patrician snubbed her cable in the tideway, her fabric creaking and groaning to the interplay of the elements.

  Somehow these noises, the working of the rudder stock in its trunking below him, the rattle of the window sashes, the whine of the wind seeking gaps in the closed gun-ports and the thrum of it aloft acting upon the great sounding box of the stilled hull, exploited the strange silence of her company and permeated the very air he breathed with a sinister foreboding.

  Beyond the vibrating windows the shapes of the ships in company faded and reappeared in his field of view as squalls swept dismal curtains of rain across the anchorage. At least the weather prevented a close mustering of the squadron's boats about Patrician; she could do her dirty work in a measure of privacy.

  The knock, simultaneously nervous and stridently impatient, came again.

  Captain Drinkwater stood and picked up the paper at which he had been staring. He felt the hilt of his sword tap his hip as he reached with his other hand for the cockaded hat. His chair scraped on the decking with a jarring squeal.

  'Come in!'

  Midshipman Frey appeared in the opened doorway. He too was in full dress, the white collar patches bright on the dark blue cloth of a new uniform to fit his suddenly grown frame. Above the collar his face was pale with apprehension.

  'First lieutenant's compliments, sir, and the ship's company's mustered to witness… punishment.' Frey choked on the last word, registering its inadequacy.

  Drinkwater sighed. He could delay the matter no longer.

  'Very well, Mr Frey. Thank you.'

  The boy bobbed out and Drinkwater followed, ducking under the deck beams. Out on the gun deck he raised two fingers to the forecock of his firmly seated hat as the marine sentry saluted, and emerged a few seconds later onto the quarterdeck. The wind tore at him from a lowering sky that seemed scarcely a fathom above the mastheads. In his right hand the piece of paper suddenly fluttered, drawing attention to itself.

  'Ship's company mustered to witness punishment, sir.' Lieutenant Fraser, his Scots burr muted by the solemnity of the occasion, made his formal report as first lieutenant. Looking round the deck Drinkwater sensed the awe with which this moment was touched. It was one thing to kill a man in the equal heat of battle, but quite another to cut short his life with this cold and ruthless act that ended the judicial process. Like Fraser, Drinkwater sought refuge in the euphemistic naval formulae under which personal feelings could be hidden, and hated himself for his cowardice.

  He met Fraser's eyes. 'Very well.'

  He walked forward to stand beside the binnacle and looked steadily around the ship. She was much larger than his last command, but the same faces stared back at him, an old company that was growing tired of war, augmented by a draft from the Nore guardship to bring his crew up to complement. Well, almost…

  They spilled across the upper deck, perched up on the larboard hammock nettings and across the launch and longboat hoisted on the booms to accommodate them. Only the starboard gangway was uncluttered, occupied by a detail of a dozen men, the ship's most persistent petty offenders against cleanliness and propriety. They stood with downcast eyes in contemplation of their melancholy duty, for the rope they held ran up to the starboard fore-yardarm and back on deck to terminate in a noose.

  Beyond the people massed amidships, Drinkwater could see the anxious face of Midshipman Wickham supervising the men closed up round the heavy carronade on the fo'c's'le. He stared alertly aft, awaiting the signal. Behind Drinkwater, dominating the men in the waist with their muskets and fixed bayonets, the scarlet ranks of the Patrician's forty marines stood rigid, bright against the monotone of the morning. In front of them, still wearing the bandages of his recent wound and with his hanger drawn, Lieutenant Mount stood at his post. His gorget was the only glint of brilliance on the quarterdeck. Alongside Mount, tense with expectancy, his drum a-cock and twin sticks held down the seams of his breeches, was the diminutive figure of the marine drummer.

  Close about the captain in a ragged semi-circle were the commissioned and warrant officers, wearing their swords and the full-dress uniform prescribed for their ranks. Above them all the white ensign snapped out, jerking the slender larch staff as the gale moaned through the recently tautened rigging.

  'Bring up the prisoner!'

  A ripple of expectancy ran through the assembly amidships. Led by the new and lugubrious figure of the chaplain and escorted by Sergeant Blixoe of the marines, the wretched man was brought on deck. As he emerged, Midshipman Frey hoisted the yellow flag to the masthead, Drinkwater nodded, and Wickham fired the fo'c's'le carronade. The short, shocking bark of the 42-pounder thudded out. A brief, acrid stench of powdersmoke whipped aft and Drinkwater saw the prisoner blench at the gun's report. Despite the liberal dose of rum he had been given, the poor fellow was shaking, though his tied hands drew back his shoulders and conferred upon him a spurious dignity.

  Clearing his throat, Drinkwater raised the crackling paper and began to read.

  'To Nathaniel Drinkwater, Esquire, Captain in the Royal Navy, commanding His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician at the Great Nore…

  Whereas, Thomas Stanham, Able Seaman, late of His Majesty's Ship Antigone, hath been examined by a Court-Martial on charges of desertion…'

  Stanham had drawn himself up, perhaps, in his extremity, feeling some cold comfort from the tacit sympathies of his old messmates around him. Drinkwater knew enough of the man's history not to feel grave misgivings as to the natural justice of the present proceedings together with a profound sense of regret that Stanham had been tried and sentenced with no one to plead for him. His crime was that of having deserted Drinkwater's last command, HMS Antigone, just prior to her departure to the Baltic in the spring. A topman of no more than twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, Stanham had been driven to this desperate course of action by lack of shore-leave and a well-meant letter from a neighbour living near his home in Norwich. According to this informant, Stanham's wife had been 'carrying-on' in her husband's prolonged absence. In company with another Norfolk man Stanham had deserted, slipping ashore from a bum-boat when a marine sentry was distracted. Had he shortly thereafter returned to his duty, Drinkwater would have taken a lenient view of the matter and treated Stanham as a mere 'straggler'. Such things were best dealt with within the ship and the cat-o'-nine tails was a swift justiciar and powerful deterrent. But the enforced and hurried transfer of his entire company from the shattered Antigone to the Patrician had necessitated the submission of all her books to the Admiralty and the Navy Office.

  Drinkwater was sick at heart at the circumstances tha
t had conspired to set Stanham before his shipmates in these last few moments of his life. Antigone had returned from the Baltic with the most momentous secret of the entire war. In order to preserve the source of this news, no one connected with the ship was allowed leave, a proscription that included Drinkwater himself. But the Antigone had suffered mortal damage to her hull when the Dutch cruiser Zaandam had exploded alongside her. As a result she had been condemned and her remaining company transferred to the razee Patrician, just then commissioning as a heavy frigate at Sheerness. The tedious and often protracted business of closing a ship's books had been specially expedited on the express instructions of John Barrow, the all-powerful Second Secretary of the Admiralty. Behind this obfuscation, Drinkwater knew, loomed the figures of George Canning, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord Castlereagh, the Secretary for War. Even Lord Dungarth, the Director of the Admiralty's Secret Department, had apparently condoned Barrow's severity and expedition. It only added to Drinkwater's present mortification to consider his own personal interest in this cloak of secrecy.* (* See Baltic Mission.)

  But there were other agencies at work conniving against the unfortunate Stanham. Even as the Admiralty clerks examined Antigone's books and discovered the rubric R against the name of Thomas Stanham, a letter arrived at Whitehall appraising Their Lordships that acting upon information laid before them, the Norwich magistrates had apprehended Thomas Stanham, a deserter from His Majesty's Service. There was not the slightest doubt to contest the information, affidavits had been sworn accordingly by reliable persons and, to compound the matter, the said Stanham had caused an affray in resisting arrest in which he had maliciously caused one of the constables to be gravely wounded. The magistrates desired to know Their Lordships' pleasure.

  Drinkwater knew the scuttlebutt well enough: Stanham had been betrayed by the man who had made him a cuckold. He read on, pitching his voice against the gale.

  'Whereas it has been enacted under the several laws relating to the sea-service…'

  Quite apart from the necessity to get the former Antigones to sea, the Admiralty were increasingly worried about desertions from the ships of the Royal Navy. The long war with the French Empire was dragging on. Russia was no longer an ally, the Prussian military machine perfected by Frederick the Great had been smashed in a single day by Napoleon at Jena and Davout at Auerstadt, while Austrian defiance seemed likely to be the next object of Napoleon's indefatigable attention. It suited Their Lordships to visit the utmost extremity of the Articles of War upon the wronged Stanham, and no plea in mitigation had been allowed.

  '… Every person in or belonging to the Fleet, who shall desert, or entice others to desert, shall suffer Death…'

  Drinkwater paused to look up again. That phrase 'in or belonging to the Fleet' bound Stanham like an iron shackle. It ran contrary to the common, canting notions of liberty so cherished by rubicund Englishmen up and down the shires. His eyes met those of the prisoner. Stanham stopped shaking at that terrible final word and his gaze held something else, something unnerving. Drinkwater hurried on.

  'And the court hath adjudged the said Thomas Stanham to suffer death by being hanged by the neck at the yardarm. You are hereby required and directed to see the said sentence of death carried into execution upon the body of the said Thomas Stanham.'

  There followed the languid flourish of the presiding admiral's signature. Drinkwater lowered the paper and crushed it in his fist.

  'Do you wish to say anything, Stanham?'

  Again their eyes met, the gulf between them immense. Stanham nodded and coughed to clear his throat.

  'Good luck to me shipmates, sir, and God save the King!'

  The sudden upward modulation of Stanham's homely Norfolk voice struck Drinkwater as having been the accent of the late, lamented Lord Nelson. He nodded at Stanham as a low rumbling came from the hands.

  'Silence there!' Fraser's voice cut nervously through the wind.

  'Master-at-Arms! Do your duty!'

  Behind Drinkwater there was a snicker of accoutrements at a low order from Mount. The marines' muskets came to the port, forty thumbs resting upon forty firelock hammers. The drummer hitched his snare-drum, brought his sticks up to the chin and then down, to beat the long roll as the master-at-arms led Stanham to the starboard gangway. With a lugubrious expression that Drinkwater found revolting the chaplain brought up the rear. The shamefaced hanging party moved aside to let the grim procession pass.

  A short ladder had been set against the rail and the hammock nettings removed just abaft the forechains. Stanham was halted at the foot of the ladder and the chaplain moved closer. While the master-at-arms drew the noose down over Stanham's head and settled the knot beneath his left ear, Drinkwater watched the chaplain bend forward, his lips moving above the open prayer-book, a thin strand of hair streaming out from his almost bald head. Even at a distance Drinkwater felt the inappropriateness of another stilted formula being deployed. He saw Stanham shake his head vigorously. The chaplain stepped back and nodded, an expression of exasperation on his gaunt face. Drinkwater found his revulsion increase at this untimely meanness.

  A dark cotton bag was pulled down over the prisoner's head. Stanham's face was extinguished like a candle and a gasp ran through the ship. There was a muffled thump as a small midshipman fainted. No one moved to his assistance; it was Mr Belchambers's third day in the Royal Navy.

  Stanham was guided up onto the rail. Beyond the lonely figure Drinkwater could see the rigging of the neighbouring ships dark with their men, piped to witness the example of Their Lordships' remorseless justice being carried out on board Patrician.

  Drinkwater nodded his head and Wickham saw the signal. The report of the carronade rolled across the water, the brief white puff of smoke alerting the other ships of the solemnity of the moment. Again the sharp stench of powder-smoke stung their nostrils and Drinkwater caught a glimpse of the flaming wadding as it disintegrated in the wind. Beside him the marine drummer stopped his ruffle.

  'Prisoner made ready, sir.'

  With the gale blowing aft the master-at-arms's voice carried with unnatural loudness. He had done his duty; it extended thus far. To launch Stanham into eternity waited for Drinkwater's own command.

  'Mr Comley!' Drinkwater's voice rasped with a sudden, unbidden harshness.

  'Sir?' The boatswain stood with his rattan beside the hanging party.

  Drinkwater could no longer take refuge in formulae, his honest nature revolted against it. To instruct Comley's party to 'carry out the sentence' would have smacked of cowardice to his puritan soul. The awful implications of power were for his shoulders alone, it was to him that the death warrant had been addressed. In this was some small atonement for his own part in this grisly necessity.

  'Hang the prisoner!'

  The hanging party moved as though spurred by the vehemence in Drinkwater's voice There was no time for thought, no cause for apprehension to the watching Mount, ready to coerce the party with his muskets.

  Comley's men leaned to Stanham's sudden weight as his body rose jerking to the starboard fore-yardarm.

  Amidships another man fainted as all watched in terrible fascination.

  Stanham kicked with his legs, tightening the noose with every desperate movement in his muscles, arching his back as he fought vainly for air. He was a strong man with a powerful neck that resisted the snapping of the spinal cord and the separation of the vertebrae that would bring a quick, merciful end.

  Drinkwater found himself willing the man to stop, to submit to the Admiralty's omnipotent will and die quietly as an example to others, but Stanham was not going to oblige. The dark tangle of his blood-choked brain was roaring with the anger of betrayal, of treachery and injustice. The dark shape of his body set against the rolling scud seemed possessed of a protest from beyond the grave. Drinkwater cursed the Norwich informer, cursed John Barrow and his lack of compassion and cursed himself for bringing back such a secret from Russia that men still died for it.

/>   Gradually asphyxia subdued the spasms. Stanham had given up the ghost. It seemed that a collective sigh, audible above the wind and the responding hiss of the sea, came from the Patrician's assembled company.

  'Eight bells, sir.'

  'Make it so and pipe the hands to dinner.'

  The yellow flag fluttered down from the masthead as the four double rings of the bell tolled the hour of noon. Pipes twittered amidships and the men began to move below. Faintly similar noises could be heard from other ships. The rumble of voices grew as the men glanced upwards in passing forward.

  'Another good man bin stabbed by the Bridport dagger, 'en…'

  'No good'll come of it… 'tis bad luck…'

  The mutter was drowned by the crash of the marines' boots as Mount dismissed his guard and reposted his sentries. Frey was bending over the swooning midshipman. Mr Belchambers was not yet thirteen years of age and his name was sonorously inappropriate for so small and insubstantial a figure. It was odd, Drinkwater thought, that men like Stanham had to be hanged while there seemed no lack of foolish boys to come and play at being men.

  'We shall get under weigh the instant the wind eases, Mr Fraser,' Drinkwater growled as he turned below. 'I received my orders by the same despatch-boat as brought this…'

  He held up the crumpled piece of paper.

  'Very well, sir… and him, sir?' Fraser's eyes jerked aloft.

  'Leave him for an hour… but no more, Mr Fraser, no more, I pray you.'

  Above their heads Stanham's body turned slowly in the wind. Dark stains spread across his clothing and it was subject to the most humiliating ignominy of all; his cuckolded member was engorged with his stilled blood.

  Chapter One

  Cape Horn

  December 1807