The Corvette

settled back into the cushions, and vastly superior to the old stage-coaches.

The lady opposite returned his smile, removing her poke bonnet to do so and Drinkwater suffered sudden embarrassment as he realised that not only had he been grinning like a fool but his knees had been in intimate contact with those of the woman for some minutes.

'You are going to join your ship, Captain?' Her Edinburgh accent was unmistakable as was the coquettish expression on her face.

'Indeed, ma'am, I am.' He coughed and readjusted his position. The woman was about sixty and surely could not suppose…

'Catriona, my niece here,' the lady's glove patted the knee of a girl in grey and white sitting in the centre of the coach, 'has been visiting with me in London, Captain, at a charming villa in Lambeth. Do you live in London, Captain?'

Drinkwater looked at the girl, but the shadow of her bonnet fell across her face and the lights would not be lit until the next stop. As she boarded the coach he remembered her as tall and slim. He inclined his head civilly in her direction.

'No, ma'am, I live elsewhere.'

'May one ask where, sir?' Drinkwater sighed. It was clear the widow was determined to extract every detail and he disliked such personal revelations. He answered evasively. 'Hampshire, ma'am.'

'Ah, Hampshire, such a fashionable county'

As Mistress MacEwan rattled on he smiled and nodded, taking stock of the other passengers. To his left an uncomfortably large man in a snuff-coloured coat was dozing, or perhaps feigning to doze and thus avoid the widow's quizzing; while to his right a soberly dressed divine struggled to read a slim volume of sermons in the fast fading light. Drinkwater suspected he, like the corpulent squire, affected his occupation to avoid the necessity of conversation.

There was, however, no doubt about the condition of the sixth occupant of the swaying coach. He was sunk in a drunken stupor, snoring gracelessly and sliding further down in his seat.

'… And at the reception given by Lady Rochford, Catriona was fortunate enough to be presented to…'

The widow MacEwan's prattle was beginning to irritate him. The overwhelming power of her nonsense was apt to give the impression that all women were as ridiculously superficial. His thoughts turned to Elizabeth and their children and the brief note he had written to her explaining the swift necessity of his departure. Elizabeth would understand, but that did not help the welling sadness that filled his heart and he cursed the weakness acquired from a long convalescence at home.

'… And then the doctor advised the poor woman to apply poultices of green hemlock leaves to her breast and to consume as many millipedes as her stomach could take in a day and the tumour was much reduced and the lady restored to health. Is that not a remarkable story, Captain? You are a married man, sir?'

Drinkwater nodded wearily, aware that the clergyman next to him had let his book fall in his lap and his head droop forward.

'Of course, sir, I knew you were, you have the unmistakable stamp of a married man and a gallant officer. My husband always said…'

Drinkwater did not attend to the late Mr MacEwan's homespun wisdom. He had a sudden image of Richard standing naked after his fall in the Tilbrook while Susan Tregembo rubbed him dry.

'… But I assure you, Captain, it was not something to smile about. She died of smallpox within a month, leaving the child an orphan…' Catriona's knee was patted a second time.

'My apologies, ma'am, I was not smiling.'

Drinkwater felt the coach slow down and a few minutes later it stopped to change horses at Hatfield. 'Your indulgence ma'am, but forgive me.' He rose and flung open the coach door, going in search of the house of office and, having returned, shouted up to Quilhampton.

'Mr Q, we will exchange for a stage or two.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Quilhampton descended. The new horses were already being put to and the guard was consulting his stage-watch. 'Half-a-minute, gentlemen.'

'Your boat cloak, Mr Q.' Drinkwater took the heavy cloak and whirled it round his shoulders. He reached inside the coach for his hat.

'I beg your forgiveness ma'am, but I am a most unsociable companion. May I present Mr Quilhampton, an officer of proven courage now serving with me. Mr Q, Mrs MacEwan.' He ignored Quilhampton's open jaw and shoved him forward. 'Have a care for the instruments.'

'Oh!' he heard Mrs MacEwan say, 'Honoured I'm sure, but Captain, the night air will affect you to no good purpose, sir and may bring on a distemper.' The speech ended in a little squeal of horror and Drinkwater grinned as he hoisted himself up. Mrs MacEwan had discovered Mr Quilhampton's wooden hand.

'All aboard!' called the guard mounting the box and raising his horn. He jammed his tricorne down on his head as the coach leapt forward. The blast of the horn covered his laughter. They had been less than the permitted five minutes in changing their horses.

Above the racing coach the sky was bright with stars. A slim, crescent moon was rising. The mail was passing through the market-garden country north of Biggleswade and the horses were stretching out. He did not encourage his fellow outsiders to converse, indeed their deference to his rank made it clear that Mr Quilhampton had been telling tall stories. He was left alone with his thoughts and dismissed those of Elizabeth and the children to concentrate upon the future. He was pleased to be appointed to the Melusine even as a 'Job Captain', a stand-in. It was a stroke of good fortune, for she would be manned by volunteers having been in service throughout the peace. All her men would be thoroughgoing seamen. The officers, however, were likely to be different, probably place-seekers and time-servers. Influence and patronage had triumphed once again, even in the short period of the Peace of Amiens. Worthy officers of humble origins had been denied appointments. Melusine was unlikely to have avoided this blight. He knew nothing about Palgrave beyond the fact that he was a baronet and had been compelled to resign his command after being seriously wounded in a duel. In the sober judgement of Nathaniel Drinkwater those two facts spoke volumes.

He shivered and then cursed the widow MacEwan for her sagacity. The night air and the cold had found the knotted muscles in his shoulder. Holding fast with one hand he searched for the flask of brandy in his tail-pocket with the other. The coach swayed as the guard rose to pierce the night with his post-horn. As he swigged the fiery liquid Drinkwater was aware of a toll-keeper wrapped in a blanket as he threw wide his toll-gate to allow the mail through.

The glorious speed of the coach seemed to speak to him of all things British and he smiled at himself, amused that such considerations still had the power to move him. His grim experience off Boulogne and the brush with death that followed had shaken his faith in providence. The ache in his shoulder further reminded him that he was going to venture into Arctic waters where he would need all the fortitude he could muster. Command of the Melusine and her charges would be his first experience of truly independent responsibility and, in that mid-night hour, he began to feel the isolation of it.

He took another swig of brandy and remembered the melancholia he had suffered after the fever of his recovery had subsided. The 'blue-devils' were an old malady, endemic among sea-officers and induced by loneliness, responsibility and, some men maintained, the enforced chastity of the life. Drinkwater was acutely conscious that he owed his full recovery from these 'megrims' to the love of his wife and friends. This thought combined with the stimulation of the brandy to raise his spirits.

Tonight he was racing to join a ship beneath a cloudless sky at what surely must be twelve miles to the hour! His thoughts ran on in a more philosophic vein, recalling Dungarth's long speech on the ambitions of France and the defence of liberty. He might talk of freedom being the goal of British policies, but at this very moment the press was out in every British sea-port, enslaving Britons for service in her Navy with as savage a hand as her landowners had appropriated and enclosed the countryside through which he was passing. The complexities of human society bewildered and exasperated Drinkwater and while his ordered mind was repelled by the nameless perfidies of politics, he was aware of the conflict it mirrored in himself.

There were many in Britain and Europe who welcomed the new order of things that had emerged from the bloody excesses of the French Revolution. Bonaparte was the foremost of these, an example of the exasperation of youth and talent at the blind intractability of vested interest. Surely Dungarth had overplayed the real danger posed by Bonaparte alone? Yet he would sail in command of his 'corvette' to drive the tricolour of France from the high