Betrayal

He had not told Renzi about Pitt’s death and his increasing unease that they were sailing without Admiralty orders. By now the gunroom would be agog with the tale from Curzon of how their captain had cozened passage for the reinforcements and there would be considerable speculation as to why it had been necessary to go to such lengths.

Renzi hesitated, as though he was about to say something, then left quietly.

Kydd put down the sheaf of paper. Damn it all to blazes! This was the final act of what should be an historic occasion and it was turning into a nightmare. And if anything happened to Justina, most surely he’d be ruined financially – would he then be expected still to play his full part?

Mind full of worry, he picked up Renzi’s manuscript. Anything was better than being left alone with his thoughts. The paper was well used, crossings-out and tiny insertions everywhere, but in Renzi’s strong, educated hand it was easy to read. He focused on the first page, remembering with a sigh the awkward delivery the first time he had read it. He determined, however, to persevere for at least an hour.

Within minutes he was gripped. It was so different! The first scene was not the father’s study, it was the milking shed. And without any elaborate setting out, the action opened quickly with the hero, Jeremy, tiptoeing into the dark, playfully whispering for Jenny, the milkmaid, who finally emerged pouting from the shadows. It went on from there in startling detail until the closing act of the chapter when the doors were flung wide and they were discovered.

It was extraordinary! The flow was quite different as well – instead of a modest first-person telling it was now a confident invisible observer drily chronicling the vigorous adventurings of a young man learning about life. Kydd read on; the succeeding chapter in which Jeremy was rusticated to a country academy was unexpectedly pathetic and noble by turns, Renzi’s device of standing outside the character yet at the same time in intimate connection with thoughts and desires nothing short of masterly.

Kydd found himself a whisky, then settled back in anticipation. The passage of young Jeremy’s staunch defence of a younger in the face of bullying by a master had all the hallmarks of Renzi himself but his ultimate expulsion for whoring in town was not. Or was it? Just how much was this his friend and how much fiction?

‘Sir?’ It was the first lieutenant, leaning through the door.

‘Er, yes?’

‘The master-at-arms reports all lights out, an’ we’re full an’ bye on the larboard tack, course sou’-sou’-west, commodore in sight.’ Kydd realised that he’d not been up to take his accustomed turn about the upper deck before retiring, which must be puzzling the watch-on-deck.

‘Oh – er, thank you, Mr Gilbey,’ he said pleasantly, ‘and, um, goodnight to you.’

He turned back to the tale, spellbound.

The wasted years following, spent in idleness at the grand family estate under the eye of his noble and irascible father, were set out in unaffected detail; the growing emotional crisis resulting from their differences was temporarily resolved by his unexpected friendship with a certain other-worldly young man, a poet, whose wild and romantic leanings seemed to give so much point to existence.

The writing darkened, though, as it went on to describe how they set off together on a tour of the continent, vowing to live life to its fullest. The first scenes of debauchery and carnal excess were forthright and clear – Kydd could hardly believe what he was reading, still flowing as it did in the strong hand he knew so well.

Bemused, then astounded, Kydd read on until, with a pang, he realised that what he had of the manuscript had come to an end. He considered going to Renzi and waking him up, but of course he couldn’t. Instead he leaned back in admiration. Either this would be the wonder of the season or it would be howled off the streets for its wickedness.

He chortled, hearing the marine sentry outside the door stir uneasily.

Before a spanking north-east trade wind the little armada made good speed across the South Atlantic, the weather remaining kind if steadily dropping in temperature into the southern late autumn. The continental influence far to starboard was of a quite different quality from Africa at the same latitude. At five hundred miles off, Leda and L’Aurore were detached to range on ahead.

Kydd complied unhappily, for Justina had still not hauled into sight. His mind shied from the implication and took refuge in his duty, the satisfaction of shaking out sail and quitting the slow progress of the rest of the force.

They criss-crossed the sullen grey wastes for days without incident until they reached the parallel of the great estuary at which their instructions were to make rendezvous with Narcissus, sent on before to reconnoitre. Shaping course due west, the pair ran down the latitude of the River Plate until, astonishingly, even at seventy-five miles to seaward, discolouring of the monotonous grey-green seas became noticeable, strengthening until the entire character of the sea was changed.

By nightfall they were within the loom of the land but prudently lay to until morning for there was every possibility that Narcissus would have news of the return of the Spanish warships. At first light they resumed their course, and when a rumpled grey-blue rising on the starboard bow announced their landfall on South America, with it was the distant pale blur of sails – Narcissus on her beat across the wide estuary mouth.

The three ships lay together in the cross-swell and exchanged news. The captain of Narcissus blared out from his speaking trumpet that, to his knowledge, the Spanish Navy had not yet returned, that all was quiet but that navigation in the estuary was the very devil due to its uncertain and shifting shoals, mud-banks and terrifying squalls.

Kydd hailed back that the fleet was on its way and that all was well, while Honyman in Leda wanted to know if Ocean had been sighted.

Narcissus then spread sail for the open sea to find the commodore. She was replaced on station by Leda while Kydd, with the shallowest draught, was dispatched to penetrate deeper into the River Plate to make sure of the reconnaissance.

It was a fearful task: at nearly 150 miles across at the mouth to a mile or two at its inner end hundreds of miles away, every rutter, pilot and guide they could muster was unanimous in its warnings. The chief peril was the shallow and treacherous trending of the river, which made impossible any approach into the estuary by a sea-going vessel unless by the deeper channels, which wove among the notoriously shifting hard-packed banks. It was said a thousand ships had laid their bones in this bleak place.

The other threat was the weather. The southern bank of the River Plate was in effect the edge of the endless flat plains of the Pampas across which the wind could blast without check. The notorious pampero could become so strong as to kick up a sea potent enough to stop the river in its flow – one from the south-east was sufficient, incredibly, even to reverse the tide – and a hard blow coming from the north-west could virtually dry out the estuary.

Kydd and the master pored over the charts. The funnel-shaped estuary had on the north side the outlying port of Maldonado, with Montevideo fifty miles further in at the true entry to the River Plate. The river narrowed there from sixty miles to thirty, at which point the past Portuguese settlement of Colonia lay opposite Buenos Aires. Twenty miles further on, it ended abruptly in a maze of marshes.

The south side had, except for the capital, no settlements of note and was very low-lying, with cloying mud- flats that stretched for miles. And in the river there were two main sandbanks: the long Ortiz Bank in the middle, and the sinuous length of the Chico closer inshore towards Buenos Aires. Beyond there was nothing but un- navigable shallows.

In hostile waters, without local knowledge or a pilot, they stood in as grave danger as anywhere Kydd had known before. Their stowaway, Serrano, was apologetic: he knew nothing of the sea so their track was entirely their own decision.

‘We stand towards Montevideo, then keep in with the north,’ Kydd finally decided.

Narcissus, a heavy frigate with a draught to match, had been unable to look into this port, the most likely to harbour defending Spanish men-o’-war. It was an essential first step, of course, for this was the designated assault point for the expedition.

With Maldonado safely out of sight, well to the northward, L’Aurore set her prow to the west with doubled lookouts. The lowering grey skies were menacing and the captain and ship’s company were sombre. As they headed in, it was hard to believe they were sailing up a river for there was no land in sight and none expected: it was as if they were in the open ocean, but for the shorter wave-shape and tainted sea.