Betrayal

when he had recognised him. ‘My honour! Can I do you service, sir?’

‘I’ve a need for ornament in my cabin, Mr Serrano. I was thinking of, say, Table Mountain from another view. From Blaauwberg strand, perhaps? A capital sight indeed!’

‘Would thees be in nature of commission, sir, or th’ ready found?’ Serrano’s deep-set dark eyes were unsettling in their intensity.

‘Why, if you have something ready, of this size, perhaps.’ Kydd indicated a modest landscape.

The artist crossed the room and selected a painting. Kydd noted the short, stabbing strokes that contrasted with extravagant sweeps across the scene to arresting effect. ‘Er, yes, this will do. What is your price?’

In rixdollars it was little enough. ‘Um, do you enjoy to live in Cape Town, Mr Serrano, you coming from so far?’

‘Ees home to me, now.’ He wrapped the painting, drawing the string around it and cutting it off.

‘And here we are, both in the southern hemisphere – it must be autumn as well in Montevideo. Is it so cool and windy there?’

‘The same,’ he answered, without further comment. ‘Your painting.’

Kydd tried another tack: ‘You said before that the Spanish are making trouble for you. Does this mean you will never return to South America?’

His gaze piercing, Serrano replied slowly, ‘Not never. One day . . .’

‘Yes? Do you mean to say that if the Spanish are . . . overthrown in some way you will be able to return?’

‘How they be overthrown? By we? No es posible.’

‘Tell me – are there many as you, who would take joy should the Spanish be replaced by . . . others?’

‘Many – many! An unspeakable herd from all the town, all the country will give praise for thees! Old, young, ever’one – if they’s porteno, they want! Any give to them, they bless for ever and ever!’

‘Then it will not take much to start a rebellion to throw out the Spanish, I’m thinking.’

But Kydd saw that Serrano had retreated into himself. He turned to go, just catching as he left, a ferocious whisper: ‘One day – one day, these peegs will taste the people’s justice. Only then we be free.’

Kydd walked slowly back to the boat. There was no doubting the passion of the man. It seemed it would take little to spark a revolt, and in a town the size of Montevideo or Buenos Aires even a small proportion supporting a rebellion would start something near impossible to stop.

But there was still the question of Popham’s motives.

Was it credible that he was manipulating others for his own venal cupidity? In effect employing His Majesty’s armed forces for personal gain, to make a grab at the fabulous source of the Spanish silver before retiring with fame and wealth? All Kydd’s dealings with the man to date made him rebel at the thought – and as well, why was Popham taking such trouble to attend to the securing of a strong foothold and the opening of trading links? This didn’t sound like the action of a freebooter on a quick raid.

Yet Renzi had painted a very different picture, one of a man who took chances, was comfortable at the boundaries of moral conduct and dangerously plausible. Popham was intelligent and clever to a degree – were these merely tales told by lesser men against the gifted?

No: there was no going back – he would be loyal and supporting to the commodore until and unless he saw with his own eyes that Popham was unworthy of such. Resolved in his decision, he came aboard L’Aurore and energetically set about completing preparations.

When the expedition sailed, the sulky autumn wind had settled to a low, hard blow, keen and cold and directly from out of the west. It kicked up white caps that rode and seethed on a long swell that had made taking aboard last-minute stores and water a wearying and dangerous effort. Kydd’s experience in the region told him that there was every likelihood it would get worse before it got better.

There had been no question of riding it out until it improved. Apart from the risk of losing their opportunity, every hour they lay at anchor the troops would be consuming vital provisions and water. These would be needed in the thousands of extra miles occasioned by the northerly arc that their course demanded to fall in with the big driving winds of the open ocean.

‘Shorten sail when two miles to wind’d,’ Kydd ordered, feeling the lengthening restlessness of the deep Atlantic coming in. Detailed off as shepherd to keep a wary eye open, he took in the magnificent panorama under leaden skies of the audacious little force setting out on its voyage to destiny.

There were the two sixty-fours – the flagship Diadem with Raisonable and then the fifty-gun Diomede recently joined in line and forming the core of the fleet, with the cockle-shell Encounter gun-brig falling in astern. The transports sailed loosely on either side – only five compared to the many that had accompanied the Cape Town expedition but aboard were the doughty Highlanders of the 71st Regiment, who had made such a name for themselves at Blaauwberg. The frigate Leda was hull-down out to sea on distant watch, and Narcissus was manoeuvring to take up the rear when the fleet had properly formed up. Their own station would be to range far ahead and fall back the instant any enemy were sighted.

It was a magnificent undertaking – or insanity: a tiny force to set against the vastness of a whole continent, smaller by far even than the one that had so narrowly seized the Cape. But the circumstances were very different, Kydd reminded himself. Here they would be welcomed as liberators, the catalyst that would set Montevideo aflame with rebellion and end Spanish rule for ever.

That they had left before formal orders had been received was of concern, of course, but once word of their bold stroke reached Pitt, the prime minister who had steered England successfully through the worst that Bonaparte could do and who had originally agreed to the expedition, then it would be quickly made up with the Admiralty.

This was precisely what the exercise of sea-power was all about. Kydd’s heart lifted. ‘Sheet in – we’re off to war, Mr Kendall.’

L’Aurore responded with a will, and as the others came round ponderously to their course of north-west by north he went below to deal with the inevitable paperwork that the purser had laid out for him.

During the morning the wind had hardened and backed more to the south, the sure sign of a blow in these parts. After his customary turn around the decks at dawn Kydd stopped to peer out at the distant sails of the fleet. All were down to topsails and making heavy weather of it, tiny bursts of white appearing continually and the ships spread well apart. He felt a pricking of sympathy at what the soldiers must be enduring packed below, and then remembered they themselves had forty-five redcoats and a dour lieutenant squeezed on to their single mess-deck. But there was nothing he could do; they would all have to live with it.

He went to his cabin for breakfast. Renzi was at the stern windows, braced in a chair and reading the last newspaper obtained in Cape Town.

He looked up and offered, ‘Buenos dias, Senor.’

‘Er, I didn’t quite catch that, Nicholas.’

‘Oh – um, como es el clima. Vamos a tomar el desayuno?’

‘You’re vexing me with your classical lingo, you dog!’

‘Not at all. I’m learning the Castilian of Cervantes and Mendoza, that noble language of far Hesperia.’

‘As I said.’

Renzi sighed. ‘It is the Spanish, dear fellow, which you will have cause to require before long, I’d hazard.’

‘I suppose so – the prisoners, of course.’

‘Or worse.’

Kydd lifted his chin defiantly. ‘If you’re not to be warm in the cause then I’d thank you kindly to keep your opinions to yourself.’ He caught himself and then asked, ‘Er, but why . . . ?’

Renzi adopted a pained expression. ‘In all conscience there’s little enough I can offer to my friend at this time.’ Before Kydd could reply he added, ‘And then again, the acquiring of another Romance language is always to be applauded.’

This brought a grin from Kydd. ‘I thank you for the thought, m’ friend. It could be damned useful at the capitulation.’

‘Er, yes. So now you are safely to sea on this . . . crusade, shall you wish to know the latter adventures of Il Giramondo? I rather fancy I’m in a flow of sorts and am quite exercised to know if others do see it as I.’

‘Why, er, I’m rather pressed at the moment, old chap. I will when I can, never fear.’