Conquest

the course of the battle. The two ships were far off, hull-down with only their upper rigging barely visible, an occasional mutter of thunder and slowly rising smoke a token of the continuing combat.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘But that’ll take us clear of the fight!’

‘We’re going back to investigate the brig. Are you questioning my orders, sir?’ The deck stilled as men stopped to listen.

Gilbey stepped back as if he’d been struck. ‘You’re – you’re leaving Leda to fight on alone?’

‘She’s perfectly capable of standing up to the Frenchy – we’ve got more important business. To find out what that brig’s about.’ There was now no one who was not agog to hear what was being said.

‘Sir, this is hard to take.’ His face grew pale and set. ‘Am I t’ understand you’re not resuming the engagement?’ he said thickly.

‘We’re not, and that’s an end to it, sir!’

Men took position behind Gilbey as he stubbornly continued, ‘Mr Kydd, there’s those who’d say you’re in a fair way of having to explain y’self before a court-martial should you take such an action.’

If Kydd was wrong, there was, of course, nothing more certain: the Articles of War were as strict and unbending on captains and commanders as they were on the common seaman. After court-martial, Admiral Byng of the Royal Navy had been shot on his own quarterdeck for irresolute conduct in the prosecution of an engagement, and what Kydd was intending was nothing less than the abandonment of the field of battle in the face of the enemy.

‘I said, are you questioning my orders, sir? If you are, you’ll face a court-martial yourself for direct disobedience, Mr Gilbey.’

He stared down his first lieutenant, who looked away, then drew himself up with wounded dignity. ‘Then, sir, I would be very much obliged should you log my objections to this course of action.’

‘Are you sure you wish to go on record?’ If Kydd was right about the brig it would go against Gilbey at the Admiralty, but if he was wrong . . .

‘Sir.’

Kydd nodded at Kendall, who looked uncomfortable but made a note in his notebook, then told him, ‘Clap on all sail, if you please – we’re going back to the brig.’

Curzon moved across beside him. ‘Mr Gilbey has a point, you know, sir,’ he muttered. ‘To quit the scene of action and—’

‘It’s not your decision, Mr Curzon. Obey my orders and your yardarm is clear,’ Kydd said cuttingly. He was conscious that Bowden stood apart, avoiding his eye. Was this because he shared the general opposition to his action, or that he did not want to be seen siding with his captain, trusting that there was a good explanation for his order?

It was essential they make the coast without delay. The brig would wait for the return of its escort to continue on its way, of that there was little doubt, but for how long? And if Africaine got away from Leda would it come back for its charge?

‘Rouse yourselves, y’ lubbardly crew!’ Kydd roared, at the men slowly moving in the tops.

It was the wrong thing to say: these men were keyed up for a fight and were resentful and sullen at the abandoning of their step-ashore mates in Leda. But Kydd could not shrink from what he believed was the right moral course.

He grimaced, his face hardening. That mystery brig had better reveal a world-shaking secret . . .

Chapter 12

‘Over the ridge only, Secretary,’ Stoll said encouragingly.

Renzi grunted testily. That was at least another mile ahead in this heated, iron-hued and barren landscape, and he was tired and saddle-sore after days on the trail.

Quickly moving inland from Stellenbosch, he’d crossed the mountains to descend on remote settlements without warning, then reached Swellendam, a pretty town set among forbidding mountains of the Langeberg range and the last that might be thought civilised. In other circumstances the grand scenery would have been diverting: colossal rock formations, black ramparts of mountains stretching away endlessly, but Renzi was not of a mind to take it in. There were still no tell-tale indications of undeclared movement of provisions hinting at the rapid gathering of a secret army.

After Swellendam, he’d insisted they press on into the fringes of settlement, shifting to horses and a small country wagon to make best time, in a fever of anxiety that he would be too late.

Stoll, not informed of the real purpose of the mission, no doubt thought him some form of administrative maniac. Arriving in small hamlets unannounced, he’d demand of the honoured but mystified landdrost or field cornet that he inspect their books that very minute – and then, refusing all hospitality, leave for the next.

It was now getting to the end of what was possible for he had travelled through the entire settled area of the colony without detecting anything suggestive of a concealed army. But nothing else fitted: if it was not to be a mass landing from seaward and the onslaught was to be within a month, there simply had to be an army building up in the interior.

Over the ridge there was no landdrost and comfortable drostdy, only an out-country farmhouse of the kind that took in weary travellers. It was the furthest he could think to go: beyond was the Great Karoo, a vast, sun-blasted and treeless upland wilderness inhabited only by nomadic Bushmen. The very edge of the frontier. If nothing turned up here, it had to be accepted that he had been wrong in his logic, for although there were Boers right out to Graaf Reinet, even Napoleon’s famed soldiers could never cover such distances over this kind of terrain. In that case he would simply drop down to the