A King's Cutter

Chapter Three A Curtain Rising

December 1792-February 1793 

The incident at Beaubigny had ended Kestrel's clandestine operations. Temporarily unemployed the cutter rolled in the swell that reached round Penlee Point to rock her at her anchor in Cawsand Bay.

Perspiring in his airless cabin Drinkwater sat twirling the cheap goosequill in his long fingers. Condensation hung from the deck-head, generated by the over-stoked stove in Griffiths's cabin next door. Drinkwater was fighting a losing battle against drowsiness. With an effort he forced himself to read over what he had written in his journal.

It was a matter of amazement to me that M. De Tocqueville survived my butchery. His debility was occasioned by loss of blood due to a severe grazing of the axillary artery which fortunately did not rupture entirely. The pectoral muscle was badly torn by the angle of entry of the ball but it seems we had the only chip of bone out of him. If it does not yet putrefy he will live.

He had been mildly interested in the medical details for it had been an old friend who had looked over his rudimentary surgery. Mr Appleby, appointed surgeon to the frigate Diamond then fitting in the Hamoaze, had been ordered aboard Kestrel to check the wounded. He had been complimentary about Nathaniel's unschooled suturing but had not let him escape without a lecture on the count's injuries.

Drinkwater smiled at the recollection. It had been an odd passage home. Of all the refugees Kestrel had brought out of France that last quartet had left an indelible impression. The feverish nobleman muttering incoherently in his delirium and the attentively ineffectual young Etienne Montholon were a contrast to their fellow travellers. The garrulous and enthusiastic Barrallier was a lively and amusing companion who let no detail of Kestrel escape his criticism or admiration. He seemed to cut himself off from the others, turning his back on France, as if desperate to be seen as anglophile in all things. Markedly different from the men, Hortense remained aloof; cold and contemptuous in the isolation of her sex. Her beauty caused a whispering, wondering admiration among the hands and a vague disquiet among the officers with whom she was briefly accommodated.

Drinkwater was not alone in his relief at their disembarkation at Plymouth with their specie and the folio of plans, but they left in their wake a sense of unease. Like many of his contemporaries who had served in the American War, Drinkwater found a wry amusement in the visitation of republican revolution on the French. Many of those who had served under Rochambeau and La Fayette, men who had drawn the iron ring around Cornwallis at Yorktown and professed admiration for liberty, now ran like rats before the Jacobin terriers.

But there was also a strand of sympathy for the revolution in Nathaniel's heart, born of a sympathy for the oppressed awakened years earlier on the stinking orlop of Cyclops. He could not entirely condemn the principles of revolution, though he baulked at the method. Despite the sanctuary given the emigres, Englishmen of liberal principles and many naval officers of independent mind saw with eyes uncluttered by party interest. Drinkwater was no pocketed Whig nor heedless Tory adherent and he had precious little 'interest' to tie him to principles of dubious propriety.

He lay down his pen and snapped the cap on his inkwell, transferring himself to the cot. He picked up the creased newspaper that Griffiths had left him. The print danced in front of his eyes. In the light of recent events Mr Pitt's promises of peace and prosperity rang false. The letters marched like a thousand tiny black men: an army. He closed his eyes. War and the possibility of war were all that people talked of, paying scant attention to Mr Pitt's protestations.

It was odd that there had not been trouble over the Beaubigny affair since it seemed that only a pretext was wanted, a spark to fire the dry tinder of international relations. And it was not just the Jacobins who were eager for war. He had had dinner with Appleby and Richard White two nights earlier. White was already a lieutenant with five year's seniority and the air of a post-captain. His standing was high enough to command an appointment as second lieutenant on Sir Sydney[1] Smith's crack frigate Diamond. He had drunk to the prospects of 'glorious war' with a still boyish enthusiasm which had made Appleby curl his lip.

The dinner had been only a qualified success. Revived friendships had a quality of regret about them. White had become an urbane young man, possessed of disproportionate self-confidence so that Drinkwater had difficulty in recognising the frightened boy who had once sobbed in the blackness of Cyclops's cockpit. Appleby too, had changed. The years had not been kind to him. The once portly surgeon had the loose flesh of penury, something of the old buoyancy was missing, eroded by years of loneliness and hard living, but beneath the ravages of time there were glimpses of the old Appleby, pedagoguish, prolix but astute as ever.

'Bound to be war,' he had said in answer to Drinkwater's worried questioning, while White eagerly agreed. 'And it will be a collision of mighty forces which England will be hard put to defeat. Oh, you can scoff, Mr White, but you siblings that thirst for glory chase moonbeams.'

'He's still a boy,' Appleby had muttered when the lieutenant had gone to relieve himself. 'But God help his men when he's made post, which will not be long if this war comes soon. I hope their lordships give him a tolerant, experienced and understanding first lieutenant.'

'He's certainly changed,' agreed Drinkwater, 'it seems he's been spoiled.'

'Promotion too rapid, cully. It works for a few, but not all.'

No, the dinner had not been a success.

Yet it was not entirely the bickering of his old friends that had failed to make it so. It was the approach of war that stirred unease in Nathaniel. The faint, inescapable thrill of coming excitement mixed with the fear he had already felt on the beach at Beaubigny caused his pulse to race, even now.

If war came was this tiny cutter the place to be? What chance had he of promotion? He must not think of competing with White, that was impossible. In any case Kestrel was a fine little ship.

Providence had brought him here and he must submit to his fate. It had not been entirely unkind to him so far. He contemplated the shelf of books, his own journals and the notebooks left him by Mr Blackmore, late sailing master of Cyclops. He had been touched by that bequest. The mahogany box containing his quadrant was lashed in a corner and his Dollond glass nestled in the pocket of his coat, hung on the door peg with the French sword. A collection of purchases, gifts and loot; the sum total of his possessions. Not much after thirty years of existence. Then his eye fell on the watercolour of the Algonquin off St Mawes, painted for him by his wife.

A knock at the door recalled him to the present. 'What is it?'

'Boat, zur.'

He threw his legs over the rim of the cot. 'Lieutenant Griffiths?'

'Aye zur.'

'Very well, I'll be up directly' He slipped into his shoes and drew on the plain blue coat. Opening the door he jammed his hat on his head and leapt for the ladder, clearing the companionway with a bound and sucking gratefully at the raw, frosty air.

Griffiths brought orders from the port admiral. That afternoon Kestrel took the tide into the Barn Pool and warped alongside the mast hulk Chichester. The following morning the dockyard officials came aboard and consulted Griffiths. By the time the hands were piped to dinner Kestrel's standing rigging had been sent down and by nightfall her lower mast had been drawn out of her by the hulk's sheers. Next day the carpenters were busy altering her carlings to take the new mast.

'We're to fit a longer topmast,' Griffiths explained, 'to set a square t'gallant above the topsail, see.' He swallowed the madeira and looked at Drinkwater. 'I don't think we'll be playing cat and mouse again, bach, not after that episode at Beaubigny. We're going to look a regular man o'war cutter when the artificers have finished, and become a bloody nursemaid to the fleet. Now, to other matters. The clerk of the cheque