The shadow of the eagle

their presence in the Impregnable's great cabin.

Both officers bowed as the prince stepped from his night cabin, his red cheeks still shining from the ministrations of the razor and his shoulders shaking the heavy bullion epaulettes upon his shoulders.

'So sorry to keep you gentlemen,' the prince greeted them. 'Pray join me to break your fasts,' he added, waving to a table laid with splendidly fresh white linen and a selection of hot dishes. 'The kedgeree is devilish good ...'

Drinkwater caught Blackwood's eye as he swept his coat-tails aside and sat down. Lieutenant Colville sat next to Drinkwater, a small scribbling tablet and pencil neatly laid beside him.

'Now sir,' the Prince boomed across the table as he spooned the kedgeree onto his plate, 'what's all this urgent nonsense about, eh?' He fixed his popping eyes on Drinkwater and began to shovel the fish and rice into his mouth with a mechanical regularity. 'Surely we all did our duty yesterday, eh what?'

'Your Royal Highness, this is a matter of some delicacy ...' Drinkwater turned and looked pointedly at Lieutenant Colville. 'The matter I have to discuss with you is confidential.'

The Royal Brow contracted and, with a small explosion of rice grains, His Royal Highness enquired bluntly, 'What's the matter with Lieutenant Colville?'

'Well, nothing, Your Royal Highness,' Drinkwater replied, smiling coldly at the flag-lieutenant whose expression was as outraged as he dared in the presence of two senior captains and an admiral who was also the king's son. 'Except that he is only Lieutenant Colville, sir, and therefore cannot, I beg your pardon sir, but must not be a party to what I have to say'

There was a moment's stunned silence. The prince bent forward, fork and spoon poised over the partly ravaged though still substantial pile of food, and looked uncertainly from Drinkwater to Blackwood. Drinkwater noticed again the deference he paid to Blackwood, as though the captain's good opinion mattered.

'If I might say, sir,' Blackwood chipped in quickly, 'Captain Drinkwater's news is properly for the ears of Government ...' The word was encapitalized in a significant emphasis by the flag-captain and Drinkwater stifled a grin.

'Oh... Oh, quite! Quite!' Further rice grains were ejaculated from the Royal Mouth. 'Well Colville, off you go! Off you go! Go and take breakfast in the wardroom!'

There was pointed resentment in the scraping of Colville's chair and he bestowed a look of pure contempt upon Captain Drinkwater as he stooped beneath the deck-beams and left the cabin.

'Well Drinkwater, what's all this nonsense about... ? Oh damn-and-hell-blast-it, Blackwood, be a good fellow and pass a bottle ...'

As Colville had risen so had Blackwood, crossing the cabin to close the door communicating with the adjacent pantry and waving out the servant who stood discreetly out of sight but within calling. The Prince's command came as he returned and Blackwood lifted an uncorked bottle of claret from the fiddles atop the sideboard.

'Sir, you are aware of my former duties in connection with the Secret Department, are you not?'

'Yes, yes. Barrow told me all about you, so did Sir Joseph Yorke and Blackwood here did the same. Your stock's pretty damned high, so get on with it, eh? There's a good fellow'

'Very well, sir. Last night I received intelligence directly from a source well known to me ...'

'D'you mean a spy?'

'No, I do not. From a person who has had intimate connections with Talleyrand and', Drinkwater paused just long enough to encourage the prince to look up from his emptying plate, 'Napoleon Bonaparte...'

Prince William Henry choked violently and snatched up the glass Blackwood had just filled with claret. Calming himself he wiped his mouth and face with a napkin and rumbled, 'Bonaparte, d'ye say? Go on, sir, pray do go on.'

'This person's attachment to Bonaparte has been severed ...'

'Ah yes! Didn't I tell you, Blackwood, they'd all come crawling on their damned bellies to save what they've made in the Corsican's service! Didn't I say as much, Blackwood? Didn't I, damn it, eh?'

'You did, sir.'

'Aye. And I said as much to King Louis and the Duchesse d'Angoulême. Told 'em not to trust any damned Bonapartist, well, well.'

'The point is, sir,' Drinkwater broke in, seizing the brief pause in His Royal Highness's self-congratulation, 'we shall have to trust what this person said, because if we don't, we shall rue it.'

Drinkwater had expected further interjections by the prince, but he seemed content to listen and commanded Drinkwater impatiently to 'go on, do go on'.

'I have information that a plot has been matured in Paris that, consequent upon the Emperor Napoleon abdicating ...'

'Emperor? Emperor, sir? The man is no more than a damned general, General Bonaparte!'

'General Bonaparte, Your Royal Highness, was elected Emperor of the French by plebiscite; he is moreover married to an Austrian Arch-duchess and is therefore still related to the Emperor of Austria. Whatever title he held and whatever title we ascribe to him now matters little, but I lay emphasis upon the point now to', Drinkwater was about to say 'remind,' but the look in the prince's narrowing eyes, made him change his mind. His sleepless night made him over bold and he came quickly to his senses, 'to acquaint Your Royal Highness of the significance of what Bonaparte has relinquished by his instrument of abdication.'

'He was beaten damn it, Drinkwater! Eh, what?'

'Militarily yes, sir, but his ambition is unbeaten, for he abdicated not in favour of King Louis, but his own son. Moreover, his genius is undiminished.'

'Very well, very well, but what is this to us? He is to be exiled, under guard, locked up as nearly as maybe, what. Yet you come here blathering of plots.'

'Would that it were blathering, sir. The fact is a considerable number of his officers are roaming about disaffected and dissatisfied with the turn events have taken. As we sit here a number are already at sea on passage to rescue their Imperial Master in order to spirit him across the Atlantic to Canada.'

'Canada?' The Royal Brow furrowed again.

'To operate with Yankee support, raise the Québecois, and re­establish Napoleon's dynasty in Canada with a second empire in the Americas.'

'It ain't possible ... is it?' The prince wiped his mouth and threw down his napkin. His eyes swivelled in Blackwood's direction. 'Well Blackwood? What the devil do you think?'

'Well sir,' Blackwood began, 'I must confess I have my doubts.' Drinkwater's heart sank. 'But I'm afraid 'tis not at all impossible, sir, and I share Captain Drinkwater's apprehensions in the strongest manner. An extension of the war in North America under such circumstances with every disaffected Bonapartist taking passage to join the reconstituted eagles on the St Lawrence will cause us no end of havoc. To be candid, sir, we could not withstand a determined onslaught and might lose the whole of the North Americas. I doubt your Royal Father would greet that news with much joy, sir.'

Blackwood's reference to King George III, languishing in Windsor, mentally affected by the ravages of porphyria, was masterly and had the prince nodding agreement.

'There are other factors, sir,' Drinkwater added. 'It is not only the Canadian French in Quebec that should concern us, but the old Acadian families who now live in Nova Scotia would happily revert to a French state, even a Bonapartist one. Moreover, if you consider the matter a stage further, can you not see that it would be no wild conjecture for King Louis to reunite his divided country and wipe out the past five and twenty years by reaching an accommodation with Bonaparte across the Atlantic ...'

'My God, Drinkwater,' Blackwood muttered, 'that is an appalling prospect...'

'I wish it were all; regrettably my information is that Tsar Alexander is not against this scheme and that can mean only that having accepted our gold to keep his armies in the field, he would discomfit us and assume the leadership of Europe.'

'But is all this possible, what?' The prince's pop-eyed face bore the impact of the political possibilities. Drinkwater was reminded of Blackwood's charitable judgement of the previous night and in that moment he could see the prince as a simple and good, if misguided, man. He was clearly having trouble grasping the complexities of the conspiracy.

'The matter can brook no delay, sir,' he said. 'I am asking only for the despatch of my single frigate, and I