On the other hand, what was it to Blackwood, when all was said and done? The man was almost at the top of the post-captain's list and was virtually beyond any recriminations if things miscarried. In such a light, even the support of Prince William Henry might prove a fickle thing, for His Royal Highness carried no weight at the Admiralty.
Drinkwater shoved the worrying thought aside. He would have to offer some explanation to the ship's company, for the news that peace was concluded and the ship was to have laid up, was too well known to simply pass over it if he wanted his people to exert themselves. As matters stood, it was already common knowledge he had been aboard Impregnable earlier that morning; it was also known that even earlier a French staff-officer had come aboard and been in conversation with Captain Drinkwater for a long time. Most of the night, it was said in some quarters, which added spice to an even more scurrilous rumour that the captain's nocturnal visitor had been a woman!
This was imagined as perfectly possible among the prurient midshipmen, but when it was later postulated in the wardroom, Lieutenant Marlowe pooh-poohed it as ridiculous.
'D'you think I would not know a woman when she came aboard,' Marlowe said dismissively. 'A lot of Frenchmen do not have deep voices.'
This statement divided the wardroom officers into the credulous and the contemptuous, further disturbing the tranquillity of the ship.
'Well, what d'you think, Frey?' Ashton asked as he helped himself to a slice of cold ham. 'You've sailed with the queer old bird before.'
Frey shrugged. 'I really have no idea,' he replied evasively.
'But you must have!'
'Why?' Frey looked up from his own platter.
'Well, I mean does our Drink-water,' Marlowe laboured the name, thinking it witty, 'make a habit of entertaining French whores?'
Frey casually helped himself to coffee. It was painful to hear Drinkwater spoken of in such terms by this crew of johnny-come-latelies, but Frey was too open a character to dissemble. Drinkwater had, he knew, been a party to some odd doings during the late war, but he did not wish to expatiate to his present company. Why should he? These men were not comrades in the true sense of the word; they were merely acquaintances, to be tolerated while the present short commission was got over. Nevertheless he was assailed by a growing sense of anticlimax in all this. Superficially the task of conveying the rightful king of France back to his realm had a comfortably conclusive feeling about it. It was like the end of a fairy story, with the kingdom bisected in favour of the parvenu hero, and the princess given in marriage to cement the plot. Except that that was not what had happened; the parvenu hero had lost, the princess was snatched back by her father and the kingdom was being returned to the ogre.
'Well, Frey? It seems by your silence that you know damned well our Drinkie's a famous libertine, eh?' goaded Ashton.
'What confounded nonsense!' Frey protested. He did not like Ashton, seeing in the third lieutenant a manipulative and unpleasant character, but his introspection had delayed his response and he had left it too late to defend Drinkwater.
'Tut, tut. Now we know why he never hoisted himself up the sides of a two-decker,' said Marlowe pointedly and with such childish delight that a disappointed Frey concluded the man was either superficial, or of limited intelligence.
'You know very well we were only attached to the Royal Squadron in honour of His Royal Highness,' Frey said, trying to recover lost ground.
'I suppose they had to leave Drinkwater in her,' Hyde, the hitherto silent marine officer, put in, looking up briefly from his book. 'After all he has just taken a Danish cruiser ...'
'I heard he was damned lucky to get away with that,' said Ashton maliciously, 'and I heard he took a fortune in specie.'
'Is that true, Frey?' asked Marlowe, provoking Hyde to abandon his book.
Frey finished his coffee and rose from the table as Andromeda hit a wave and shuddered. An explosion of oaths from his brother officers revealed they had yet to acquire their sea-legs while his were perfectly serviceable.
'I expect so, gentlemen. But if you're so damnably curious, why don't you ask him yourself.' And clapping his hat upon his head, Lieutenant Frey left for the quarterdeck.
Later, Lieutenant Marlowe, having plucked up enough courage from the urgings of Lieutenant Ashton, took Frey's advice. He began to cross the deck, colliding with Birkbeck beside the binnacle as he made his way upwards from the lee hance.
'Steady, Mr Marlowe,' Birkbeck growled, 'in more ways than one.'
'What d'you mean by that?' asked Marlowe, reaching a hand out to support himself by the binnacle.
'I mean,' said Birkbeck in as quiet a voice as would carry above the low moan of the wind in the rigging and the surge and rush of the sea alongside, 'I shouldn't go a-bothering the captain just at the moment.
Marlowe looked askance at Birkbeck. The old man had been on deck since Andromeda had got under weigh, seeing her clear of the South Sand Head of the Goodwins and the Varne Bank. He had not been party to the speculation in the wardroom, so how did he know what was in Marlowe's mind? Moreover, he was unshaven and his hair, what there was of it, hung down from the rim of his hat in an untidy and, to Marlowe, offensive manner. Marlowe concluded the ruddy faced old man was an insolent fool. Damn-it, the man was not fit for a quarterdeck!
'I'll trouble you to mind your own business, Mister Birkbeck, while I mind mine.'
Birkbeck shrugged. 'Have it your own way, young shaver,' he replied as Marlowe, flushed with the insolence, strove to reach Drinkwater.
The captain had lodged himself securely against the larboard mizen pinrail which, although on the windward side of the ship was, from the effect of the frigate's tumblehome, the least windy place on the quarterdeck. He was staring forward, an abstracted look on his weatherbeaten features against which the line of a sword-scar showed livid.
Just as Lieutenant Marlowe reached the captain, Andromeda's bow thumped into the advancing breast of a wave. She seemed to falter in mid-stride, kicked a little to starboard as the wave sought to divert her from her chosen track, then found her course again. But the sudden increase in heel caught the unsteady Marlowe off balance. To preserve his dignity and prevent himself from falling ignominiously, Marlowe's hands reached out and scrabbled for the ropes belayed to the mizen pinrail. Instead they encountered Drinkwater's arm.
'What the ... ?'
Drinkwater turned, feeling the young man's vain attempt to seize him, then quickly reacted and seized Marlowe's outstretched hand.
'Come, sir, steady there! What the devil's the matter?'
Marlowe regained his balance, but lost his aplomb. 'I beg pardon, sir,' he gabbled all in a breath, 'but I wondered if you have any orders, sir.'
Had Drinkwater not been so dog-tired and had he not been almost asleep on his feet, he might have been in a better humour and laughed at the young officer's discomfiture. Reluctant to leave the deck, yet content to abandon matters to Birkbeck's competence, he had been languishing in the comfortable compromise of a reverie. As it was, only the helmsmen laughed surreptitiously, while Drinkwater showed a testy exasperation.
'Mr Birkbeck?' he called sharply.
'Sir?' Birkbeck came up the sloping deck with a practised, almost, Marlowe thought, insulting ease.
'What orders d'you have?'
'Why, sir, to keep her full-and-bye and make the best of our way down Channel.'
Drinkwater turned his gaze on Marlowe. 'There, Mr Marlowe, does that satisfy you?'
'Well, not really sir. I had hoped that you might confide in me, sir.'
'Confide in you, sir? If you sought a confidence, should not you have been on deck earlier, Mr Marlowe, when we were getting under weigh? After all, you knew of our visitor last night.'
'Well, sir, you did not condescend to inform me of anything consequent upon your visitor. As you know, under normal circumstances as first lieutenant I should not keep an anchor watch, but having done so since we were engaged upon a special duty, I had tu
rned in and there was nothing in your night orders to suggest...'
'That you had to forgo your breakfast, no, of course not; but you are first lieutenant of a frigate on active service.'
'Active service, sir?' Marlowe frowned, looking round at Birkbeck who caught his eye and turned away. 'I do not think I quite understand, sir.'
'I am very certain you do not understand, Mr Marlowe.'
'But sir,' Marlowe's tone was increasingly desperate, 'might I not be privy to ... ?'
'No sir, you may not. Not at this moment. If Lieutenant Colville was sent out of hearing while His Royal Highness', Drinkwater invoked the pompous title with a degree of pleasure, sure that it would silence his tormentor, 'gave me my orders, I do not think it appropriate that I confide in you, do you?'
Crestfallen and confused, Marlowe mumbled a submissive 'No, sir.'
'Very well, Mr Marlowe, then let's hear no more of the matter until we are out of soundings.'
Marlowe's mouth dropped open in foolish incredulity. 'Out of soundings ... ?'
Astonishment lent volume to Marlowe's exclamation; Ashton caught it, downwind across the deck, and dropped his jaw in imitation of his senior; Birkbeck caught it and sighed an old man's sigh; Midshipman Dunn caught it and his eyes brightened at the prospect of adventure, and the helmsmen caught it silently, mulling it over in their minds until, relieved of their duty, they would release it like a rat to run rumouring about the berth-deck.
As for Drinkwater, he felt ashamed of his peevishness; this was not how he had hoped to let his ship's company know they were outward bound for the Atlantic Ocean, nor was it how he should have treated his first lieutenant. If he had not been so damned tired ... He sighed and stared to windward. The comfortable mood eluded him. The little encounter with Marlowe upset him and left his mind a-whirl again.
As soon as Andromeda had cleared Dungeness, Drinkwater went below. He was exhausted and, removing his hat, coat and shoes, loosed his stock and tumbled into his swinging cot. He thought for a moment that even now he would be unable to sleep, for his mind was still a confusion of thoughts. The enormity of Hortense's news, the possible consequences of it, the attention to the details of informing Elizabeth and making arrangements for his informant, the influencing of Prince William Henry and now the bother of his ship's company and its officers, all tumbled about in his tired head. Each thought followed hard upon its progenitor, and always at the end of the spiral lay the black abyss of what if... ?
What if they missed the French ships? What if Hortense had lied? What if she told the truth and he miscalculated? What if the Tsar changed his mind? What if ... ? What if ... ? Slowly the thoughts detached themselves, broke up and shrank, slipping away from him so that only the blackness was there, a blackness into which he felt himself fall unresisting, an endless engulfment that seemed to shrink him to nothing, like a trumpet note fading.
Drinkwater woke with a start. Sweat poured from him and his garments were twisted about his body like a torque. He felt bound and breathless. Sweat dried clammily upon him and the latent heat of its evaporation chilled him. There was a dull ache in his jaw. Then he remembered: he had been drowning! He was wet from the sea; gasping from having been dragged beneath something monstrous, but beneath what?
And then the entire dream came back to him: the water, the strange ship, the noise of clanking chains, the white and ghostly figure that had reared above him: Hortense, pallid as a corpse, beautiful and yet ghastly, as though her whole face was riven by scars. Yet the scars were not marks, but the twists of serpents. It was Hortense, but it was also the Medusa which seemed to be borne as a figurehead on the bow of the strange and clattering ship. Then he was under water and lighting for his life as the noise reached a terrifying crescendo from which he knew he must escape, or die.
As he lay mastering his terror, he recognized the old dream. Once, when he was an unhappy midshipman, it had come to him regularly, marking the miserable days of his existence aboard the frigate Cyclops. Since then it had visited him occasionally, as a presentient warning of some impending event. But now he felt no such alarm, as though this terror from his youth could only frighten him when he was weak and exhausted. It was just a visitation from the past; a relic. Old men feared death, not the wearying vicissitudes of misfortune. These, experience taught them, were to be confronted and mastered.
In the past, Hortense's image had sometimes occupied the post of what he had come to call the 'white lady'. Perhaps it was because she had again entered his life that the dream had come roaring out of his subconscious. As he lay there, staring up at the deck-head which glowed in the last reflections of daylight coming in through the stern windows, he mastered the lingering fear which was rapidly shrinking to apprehension. His thoughts ordered themselves slowly but surely, returning him to the state of conscious anxiety from which he had escaped in sleep.
Any analysis of his actions must be seen in the light of good faith. The orders the prompted prince had given him cleared his yard-arm as far as the Admiralty were concerned; all his best efforts must now be bent on reaching the Azores and lying in wait for the French ships. If allied warships brought the Emperor Napoleon to the islands before the French ships arrived, so much the better. Drinkwater would be able to persuade their commanders to remain in the vicinity. If, on the other hand, the French ships lay off the islands in waiting for their Emperor, he would attack them and while he could never guarantee success, he was confident he could sufficiently damage them to prevent them rescuing their prize and carrying out their confounded stratagem.
Then an uncomfortable thought struck him. While he had a full crew, most of which had successfully fought in the Vikkenfiord, his officers were largely inexperienced. It would not have mattered if all they had had to do was act as part of Prince William Henry's Royal Squadron. But now, while his elderly frigate was painted to a nicety, she had not refilled her magazines and was woefully short of powder and ball. True, he had a stock of langridge, grape and musket balls, but there was no substitute for good iron shot. And if that were not enough, he was victualled for no more than a month, two at the most, and carried no spare spars. These thoughts brought him from his bed.
The frigate was still close-hauled on the larboard tack, well heeled over to starboard, and the rush of water along her sides added its undertone to the monstrous creaking of the hull, the groan of the rudder stock below him and the faint tremulous shudder through the ship's fabric as she twitched and strained to the whim of wind and sea.
Drinkwater reached the quarter-gallery, eased himself and poured water into a basin. It slopped wildly as he scooped it up into his face and brushed his teeth. His servant Frampton had long-since abandoned the captain to his slumbers, and Drinkwater was glad of the lack of fossicking attention which he sometimes found intolerably vexing. He retied his stock, dragged a comb through his hair and clubbed his queue. Finally he eased his wounded shoulder into the comfortable broadcloth of his old, undress uniform coat, pulled his boat-cloak about his shoulders and, picking his hat from the hook beside the door, went on deck.
It was almost dark when he gained the quarterdeck. Low on the western horizon a dull orange break in the overcast showed the last of the daylight. Overhead the clouds seemed to boil above the mastheads in inky whorls, yet the wind was not cold, but mild.
Seeing the captain emerge on deck and stare aloft, the officer of the watch crossed the deck. It was Frey. 'Good evening, sir. Mr Birkbeck ordered the t'gallants struck an hour past, sir. He also had the main course clewed up.'
Drinkwater nodded then, realizing Frey could not see him properly, coughed and grunted his acknowledgement. 'Very well, Mr Frey. Thank you.'
Frey was about to withdraw and vacate the weather rail but Drinkwater said, 'A word with you, Mr Frey. There is something I wish to ask you.'
'Sir?'
'Have you any idea what we are up to?'
'No, sir.'
'What about scuttlebutt?' Even in the wind, Drinkwater hear
d Frey sigh. 'Come on, don't scruple. Tell me.'
'Scuttlebutt has it that we are off somewhere and that it is due to the, er, officer who came on board last night.'
It already seemed an age ago, yet it was not even twenty-four hours. Drinkwater cast aside the distraction. 'And what do they say about this officer then, Mr Frey?'
'Frankly, sir, they say it was a woman, at least, that is, the midshipmen do.'
'Tom Paine is an intelligent imp, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater replied, smiling. 'He noticed straight away'
'Then it was a woman?'
Drinkwater sighed. 'Yes, though you should not attach too much importance to the fact. I'm afraid she brought disturbing intelligence, Mr Frey, not entirely unconnected with that business in the Vikkenfiord.'
Drinkwater could sense Frey's reluctance at coming to terms with this news. 'Then it is not over yet, sir?'
'I fear not, my dear Frey, I fear not.'
A profound silence fell between them, if the deck of a frigate working to windward could provide such an environment. Then Frey said, 'I think you should tell Marlowe, sir. I do not think him a bad fellow, but he feels you do not trust him, and that cannot be good, sir.' Frey hesitated to voice his misgivings about Ashton. 'I don't wish to presume, sir.'
'No, no, you do quite right to presume, Mr Frey, quite right. I fear I used him ill. It was unforgivable.'
'He certainly took it badly, sir, if you'll forgive me for saying so, though I think Ashton made the situation worse.'
'Oh,' said Drinkwater sharply, 'in what way?'
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