Betrayal

The lights of Buenos Aires were visible miles to seaward, and as they crept in, there were soaring fireworks, gunshots and all the signs of a city very much awake. ‘Lie off for me, Poulden. Be sure if I’m not back an hour before first light to return immediately to L’Aurore. Is that clear?’

There was some mumbling, but Renzi was having nothing of it. ‘I say quit this place an hour before. No later. Compree?’

‘Aye,’ Poulden said grudgingly.

Renzi stepped into the punt and took the oars, looking shoreward to take bearings for the return.

The punt swayed dangerously. He looked round – Stirk was climbing in.

‘Shift y’ arse, I’m coming wi’ ye,’ he announced.

‘Toby, you can’t-’

‘Can’t I? Two reasons – y’ need a pair o’ peepers as’ll watch y’r stern, an’ blow me down, what’ll they say o’ the Billy Roarer that they lets orficers take th’ oars?’

He shouldered Renzi out of the way and shipped oars professionally. ‘Give way, sir?’

There was one spot that suggested itself as a place for landing. Below the fort, he remembered, was where the washerwomen plied their trade. There would be none there at this hour and Renzi conned the punt in, conscious that they would be under observation – but he also knew that this was the time when flounder fishermen were about in England, and might not the equivalent be abroad in Buenos Aires?

It seemed to work: there were the silhouettes of sentinels behind the parapets of the fort but they were taking no notice and the foreshore was deserted.

The punt nudged in to the muddy shore; they pulled it up beyond the tide line and prepared to set out.

‘Er, Toby – if you’d kindly allow me . . .’ He bent down, then came up suddenly to slop mud in his face. Stirk spluttered with indignation but Renzi inspected him critically. ‘Perhaps a little more. Just here possibly . . .’

Looking around, he found a pile of fishermen’s sacks waiting for the morning and helped himself to one, bulking it out with seaweed and thrusting it at Stirk. ‘Ready? Then follow me, my man.’

On the streets knots of revellers drifted by; figures laughed, brawled and argued. They took no notice of the woebegone merchant trudging along with his servant behind.

It was not far to the back street where he had discovered Serrano lived with his woman. Renzi had no real animosity towards the young man, who must have done as he had more out of ardent patriotism than perfidy, and he was the only possible lead to Kydd’s fate.

If, however, he suspected Serrano was aware of his friend’s whereabouts, he would have no qualms at all about doing what was needed to wrench the information from him. After his time with French royalist agents, he knew the ways.

‘Watch my back,’ he told Stirk. With a bent wire he prised open the door lock and stepped inside, ready for anything.

Serrano was there, alone, sitting moodily at a table with a single candle. He looked up in fright when Renzi appeared. ‘Santa Madre de Dios! How you find me?’

Renzi remained silent.

‘You assassinate me?’

‘That depends,’ Renzi said silkily, taking a seat opposite, his eyes drilling remorselessly into Serrano’s skull.

The artist looked up obstinately. His eyes were red. ‘It make no difference, not now . . .’

‘Oh? Tell me.’

Slowly it came out. Liniers was now revealed as a royalist; he had gone along with the revolutionary fervour but had cunningly diverted it into a movement to oust the British first. He had been joined by los patriotas to whom he’d given deliberately minor roles in the reconquista and, now in control, he had hardened his grip with a view to handing the whole back to the Spanish, with himself high in government.

That it was not yet so was mainly because the viceroy, Sobremonte, was still far inland where he had fled, but the fact remained that Don Baltasar and the Sociedad Patriotica were therefore neatly sidelined and destined to be once more hunted rebels in the resumed administration – they had been betrayed and the clock was being wound back.

‘Mr Renzi, I didn’t mean that Captain Keed is tricked. When they said I had to, I thought . . .’

Renzi let it hang, then leaned across and demanded, ‘I want to know what happened to him – and I want details.’

Serrano looked surprised. ‘Why, he were caught! His ship go on the mud.’

‘So he’s a prisoner!’ Relief washed over him in a flood.

‘Why, no. He sign parole so he in lodging but not the old. They are liking the English too much so he was move to another.’

‘Where?’

‘I say the captain is a good man, not many as him. I’m apologise for what I do, an’ ashamed for my country.’

‘Why do you say that?’

Serrano hung his head as he explained. The terms gained by Beresford were good: that in return for laying down their arms, there would be an immediate evacuation of the British, each man to undertake not to serve against the Spanish until the formalities of an exchange were completed, their passage back to England to be funded by the Spanish government.

Yet even with the terms ratified in writing it quickly became clear that the Spanish had no intention whatsoever of abiding by them. Carts had been rounded up and the brave soldiers were beginning to be marched away, far up- country. They would be followed by the officers. There would be no release.

The ultimate betrayal.

‘We don’t get t’ him, an’ main quick, he’s a gone goose! Where’s he at, y’ bugger?’ Renzi hadn’t noticed Stirk slip in but, given the circumstances, he couldn’t have phrased it better himself.

‘He’s not far. You write to say come, he see your writing an’ he come. I send a boy to bring him.’

On parole an officer was released on his word of honour to return and therefore had limited freedom to move about.

Prudently, Serrano disappeared, and twenty minutes later Kydd walked suspiciously into the room.

‘Hail, fellow – and well met!’ Renzi cried, moved beyond words to see his friend once more.

But instead of an effusive greeting Kydd said abruptly, ‘You, too, are taken, Nicholas – how’s this?’

‘Not at all, dear chap. We’re here to take you back.’

Kydd held his breath, then let it out slowly. ‘You’re on the loose in a captured city – I won’t ask how, but it won’t answer.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I can’t go back, and you know why. You and Stirk have risked it for nothing.’

‘You mean you’ve given parole.’

‘Indeed, as has General Beresford and we all. I would have thought it reasonable, given we’re to be shortly exchanged, according to the terms o’ capitulation.’

‘There’s a boat from L’Aurore lying off, waiting for us. We must move fast.’

‘You didn’t hear me. My parole is my word given, which on my honour will never be broken. Can you not see this? And how damn cruel it is, you tempting me like this.’

Renzi swallowed his irritation. ‘Dear fellow, I have to tell you the Spanish have broken the surrender terms and are marching all British away up-country as prisoners. Parole is meaningless in the face of such treachery.’

‘Where did you hear that? I can’t believe General Liniers to be so lost to honour he’d risk the world’s condemning. It’s nonsense . . . or is it that you’re spinning me a stretcher as will make me break my parole?’ he demanded, incredulous.

‘Not at all, dear friend. I hesitate to hurry you, but urgency dictates-’

‘No! They’ll only be moving the men to better quarters, I’d think. No, Nicholas, I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying. I’m duty-bound to stay, and that’s an end to it.’

The stalemate was suddenly broken when the bedroom door opened and Serrano came in, pale-faced but resolute.