Under false colours

Dungarth had in view.

But would a consignment of boots succeed in disrupting a solemn alliance between the two most powerful individuals on earth? True, there were a few other titbits. 'A few hundred stand of arms,' Dungarth had enthused, 'and a brace or two of horse pistols in the consignment, sufficient to equip a squadron or two of cavalry. Given the usual cupidity of the tier-rangers and the other waterside thieves, word of the nature of the consignment will become common knowledge along the Wapping waterfront.'

And that was the crux of the affair, that was why he, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater of the Royal Navy, was detached upon a secret service, why he occupied this squalid, rented room and played the character of a merchant shipmaster, perpetually drunk, cantankerous and misanthropic. Sadly, it was all too easy in his present state of mind.

'Among that waterside riff-raff, you have only to find Fagan,' Lord Dungarth had finally said, 'and spread this tittle-tattle to him. He's a man known to us, d'you see, Nathaniel, a courier who passes regularly between London and Paris carrying gossip and the odd, planted message. You have merely to indicate the value, content and destination of your cargo, for its departure to be reported to Paris. We are expecting Fagan daily; he keeps rooms above a pie shop in Wapping ...'

Drinkwater peered across the alley. It was almost dark. He struck flint on steel and coaxed a stump of candle into life.

'We want you to bait the eagle,' Dungarth had said as they rose to disperse, 'see that the Emperor takes the lure ...'

It was not quite that easy, of course, his instructions went much further. He had to ship with the cargo, to play the charade to the last scene, to see that it reached Russia safely.

Drinkwater stood stiffly and stretched. If Fagan did not arrive soon the enterprise would have to be scrapped. Perhaps he had already arrived, and was engaged elsewhere; how did one trust or predict the movements of a double agent?

Drinkwater threw himself on the narrow bed and considered Dungarth's warning of the burden of the war, his consuming conviction that only an alliance with Russia would break the stalemate between Great Britain's superiority at sea and France's hold on the continent of Europe.

Drinkwater remembered the Russian army in its bivouacs around Tilsit. The sheer size of that patient multitude was impressive and the cogent fact that the Tsar's ill-trained levies had inflicted upon Napoleon's veterans the near defeat of Eylau and the Pyrrhic victory of Friedland argued in favour of Dungarth's ambitious policy.

'We must have Russia as a continental reinforcement,' Dungarth had reiterated with characteristically single-minded vehemence. 'Without her almost inexhaustible resources of manpower, there is nothing on earth to oppose France ...'

That was true. Prussia had long ago succumbed, Austria was beaten, Germans, Poles and Danes all bowed to the imperial will. Apart from the British, only the isolated Swedes and the erratic Spaniards defied Paris ...

'And it's such a fragile thing, Nathaniel,' Dungarth's voice echoed in Drinkwater's memory, 'this alliance between Alexander and Napoleon, so flimsy, based as it is upon a mutual regard by two vain and selfish men. The one is utterly unreliable, the other determined, wilful, but fickle ... we have only to interpose a doubt, the one about the other and ...'

He woke with a start, aware that he had dozed off. It was quite dark in the room, for the candle had gone out. From the alley came the noise of a few passers-by, seamen bound for the neighbouring knocking shop, he guessed, noting the rain had stopped. From within the house came the dull buzz of conversation and domestic activity. The ship's chandler had shut up his store to take his evening meal with his wife and mother-in-law. Later, when he had finished, he would come and attend to his uninvited guest. He was in the pay of the government, a gleaner of news who talked freely to masters and mates in want of necessaries for their ships, seamen requiring outfits and slops and all those associated with the huge volume of merchant trade which flourished despite Napoleon's Continental System.

The gin had left Drinkwater thirsty and with a foul taste in his mouth. He got up and peered into the jug. The stale smell revolted him and he found he was in want of the privy.

'God's bones,' he swore, putting off the distasteful moment and standing by the window scratching the bites of the vermin which infested his mattress. Overhead the cloud was shredding itself to leeward. 'Wind veered nor' west,' he muttered to himself. Neither the westerly gale nor the veering wind would allow a boat to slip across the Strait of Dover. Fagan would not come tonight, nor tomorrow. Not unless he was a man of uncommon energy and sailed from Cherbourg, or some other port well to the westward.

Drinkwater went back to the bed and, hands behind his head, stared up at the pale rectangle of the ceiling. Where were Quilhampton and Frey now? Had James Quilhampton caught the mail coach and raced to Edinburgh to marry Mistress MacEwan? Drinkwater had sent him a draught to be drawn on his own prize agent to finance the wedding; but there was the troublesome person of the girl's aunt and the matter of the banns.

And had Frey done as instructed, and seen the bulk of Captain Drinkwater's personal effects into safe- keeping aboard his gun-brig?

The thoughts chased themselves round and round Drinkwater's brain. He longed for a book to read, but Solomon's clerk had conducted him to the vacant room above Mr Davey's chandlery with such circumspection that Drinkwater, eager not to lose a moment and expecting the mysterious Fagan to appear within hours of his taking post, had not thought of it for himself. Mr Davey's store had yielded up a copy of Hamilton Moore, but Drinkwater had spent too many hours conning its diagrams of the celestial spheroid in his youth to derive much satisfaction from it now.

Lying still, the urge to defecate subsided. How long would he have to wait before he confronted Fagan? And how would he accomplish that most subtle of tasks, the giving away of the game in a manner calculated to inform without raising the slightest suspicion?

A scratching at the door roused him from his lethargy. He opened the door upon Mr Davey's rubicund face.

'A bite to eat, Cap'n?'

'Aye, thank you, Mr Davey, and I'd be obliged for a new candle.'

'Of course ... if you'll bide a moment ...'

Davey slipped away to return a few moments later. 'Here you are, sir. There's no news I'm afraid, Cap'n ...'

'And not likely to be with this wind,' Drinkwater said morosely as Davey struggled with flint and steel.

'I wouldn't say that, Cap'n. Mr Fagan has a way of poppin' up, as it were. Like jack-in-the-box, if you take my meaning-'

'D'you know him well, then?'

'Well enough, Cap'n,' replied Davey, coaxing the candle into life. 'He takes his lodging in the room yonder. When I gets word I tell the one-legged gennelman.'

'I see. And the customer you received late this afternoon? What was his business?'

Davey winked and tapped the side of his nose. 'A gennelman in a spot o' trouble, Cap'n Waters,' he said, using Drinkwater's assumed name. 'Word gets round, d'ye see, that I sell paregoric elixir ...' Davey enunciated the words with a certain proprietorial hauteur. 'He's afeared o' visiting a quack or a 'pothecary, but mostly o'Job's Dock.'

'Who's dock?' asked Drinkwater, biting into the gristle that seemed the chief constituent of the meat pie Davey had brought him.

'Job's Dock, Cap'n, the venereal ward at St Bartholomew's. He's got himself burnt, d'ye see ...'

'Yes, yes ...' Drinkwater was losing his appetite.

'I stock a supply for the benefit of the seamen ...'

'I understand, Mr Davey, though I did not know tincture of opium was effective against the pox.'

'Ah, but it clears the distemper of the mind, Cap'n, it relieves the conscience ...'

When a man has a bad conscience, Drinkwater thought, the most trivial remarks and events serve to remind him of it. Perhaps Davey's paregoric elixir would remove the distemper of his own mind. He visited the privy and turned instead to the replenished jug of gin. An hour later he fell asleep.

He had no idea how long he had slept when he felt himself being shaken violently.