Ebb tide

'I am pushing over to reconnoitre Calais and Boulogne. If the French have any of their corvettes ready for sea, they might wreak havoc among our transports...'

'By heaven, sir, you're right! Well, well, go to it, sir, and if there is anything further you require, I shall do my limited best.'

'Thank you. I hope your post don't become too irksome.'

'I could almost wish for a frigate with her bowsprit struck over the Black Rocks,' Scanderbeg riposted with a smile, and Drinkwater left with the impression of an indomitable man who would, despite the odds and to the discomfiture of many, get the army embarked in time.

Walking back down Church Street he encountered a troop of horse artillery. The five field-guns and single howitzer gleamed in the sunshine. The bay horses that pulled them were handsome in their harness, and the soldiers that rode postillion were sitting chatting, while the young officer commanding them, having made a few remarks to his bombardier, turned in his saddle, caught sight of Drinkwater and saluted.

'Good day, sir. Captain Mercer of G Troop Royal Horse Artillery, at your service. Are you perhaps the naval commissioner?'

Drinkwater returned the salute and shook his head. 'Alas, no, Captain Mercer, the officer you want is Captain Scanderbeg. He is quartered next to the church in the Three Cups.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Captain Mercer ...'

'Sir?'

'Make sure you don't leave anything behind ... the odd gun or limber, for example. I fancy your colleagues in the light cavalry have sorely tried his patience this morning.'

Mercer grinned. 'What would you expect of Vandeleur's brigade, sir?' he remarked.

'I have no idea, Captain, but a little more than they appear capable of, it seems. I just hope the French are as accommodating as Captain Scanderbeg. Good day to you.'

Drinkwater passed on, quite ridiculously light-headed. He had Scanderbeg to thank for bringing the problem of Edward into a more reasonable perspective. Moreover, he had released himself from any obligation to the commissioner. And he would be going to sea. Suddenly that, at least, was compensation enough. And with the thought buoying him up, he hailed the boat.

CHAPTER 8 Calais

April 1815

The following morning proved foggy and while it delayed the transports from leaving port, the hired cutter Kestrel lay wallowing damply off the Head of the Falls, having slipped out of Harwich the previous evening. Hardly had Frey's men lugged the stores and arms chest aboard than Drinkwater passed orders to sail. Once her mainsail was hoisted, and provided the weather remained reasonable, she was an easy vessel to handle. Though Drinkwater and Frey stood watch and watch, it was possible to divide their crew into idlers, available throughout the daytime, with the pressed men in three watches. It was scarcely a punishing regime and, superficially at least, bore a resemblance to the yachting excursions Drinkwater and Frey had indolently planned during their winter evenings together.

Drinkwater's notion of reconnoitring Calais was a sound one; indeed he expected to encounter at least a gun-brig from Chatham keeping an eye on the port. More difficult would be penetrating the place, not an easy task for a British naval officer during so uncertain a political period, but the greatest problem he confronted lay in the means by which he might locate Edward. The letter had given him few clues, and Elizabeth had screwed it up and torn it into so many pieces that his attempt to reconstruct it proved futile. It did not matter. It was intended merely to validate Hortense's appearance. He recalled it as a simple enough message, to the effect that an old friend who was now very intimate with the bearer wished to be embarked at Calais and looked forward to renewing a close acquaintanceship. There were key words containing a hidden significance which Drinkwater, with his eye for such things combined with a conscientious anxiety, had soon noticed. The old friend gave away a little, but in truth there were few now left in the world who could claim an 'old' friendship with him. Besides, this relationship was emphasized by the words close acquaintanceship. As to intimacy with the bearer, Drinkwater did not need to read between the lines there: Hortense, though mutilated by boiling lead, had still been beautiful, and Ned was past fifty. The only real mystery was how the two had met, and he had no way of divining that fact without asking directly. Of one thing he was certain, Hortense had risked a great deal in her attempt to contact her benefactor. He recalled Lord Dungarth's prophetic remark when they had let her go years earlier, that they would save themselves a deal of trouble if they had shot her. Well, well, Drinkwater mused, they had not shot her, and their combined infirmity of purpose had led to his present predicament. The fact that brother Edward had become Hortense's lover was an exquisitely painful irony, he thought, turning his mind back to the problem of contacting a fugitive Russian officer in a hostile port.

It did not suit Drinkwater to leave matters to fall out as they might. That something would turn up was a maxim that in his experience rarely functioned, except for other people, of course. It seemed he had but two choices, to do the thing himself or to get someone else to do it, and neither recommended itself. He did not wish to go ashore and if he did, what could he achieve? He could hardly wander round Calais in his uniform and to do so in his civilian garb invited arrest and a firing squad. And even if he were to risk going ashore, he could scarcely knock on doors and ask, in his barbaric and imperfect French, if a Russian officer who was really an Englishman had been seen hanging about. The whole matter bordered on the preposterous!

The alternative was to contact a fishing-boat. French fishermen were no different from their English counterparts and would do anything for money. Fortunately he had sufficient funds with him and could buy access to the network of gossip that would exist among the drinking dens, cafés and bistros that these men frequented when ashore. The fishermen of the Dover Strait, irrespective of nationality, had been carrying odd persons back and forth across the Channel for a generation, and they would almost certainly know of anyone who was seeking a passage. Besides, by now Edward might well have bitten the bullet and arranged his own passage. In fact, it was more likely that he would turn up at Gantley Hall to alarm Elizabeth than that he would be standing obligingly on the beach at Calais. Too long a period had elapsed since Hortense had left in her lugger for an impatient man such as Edward to remain long in idle impotence.

For the whole of 10 April, Kestrel lay inert, washing up and down in the tide, her decks wet with the condensation that dripped from her sails and rigging. Drinkwater took the opportunity of calling his tiny crew aft. He had appointed his own two paid hands as boatswain and carpenter, and they had some notion of who they were working for, but the half-dozen pressed men had no idea.

'My lads,' Drinkwater began, looking over the smallest crew he had ever commanded, smaller even than that allocated to him when, as a midshipman, he had been sent away as prize-master of the Yankee schooner Algonquin. 'For those of you just shipped aboard, I am Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater. I am the owner of this cutter and she is on charter to the Government for special service. She is commanded by Lieutenant Frey here and he is acting under my orders, both of us being in His Majesty's service. Our orders in the first instance require us to take a look into Calais. Much will depend thereafter on what we discover. What I shall rely upon you for is a prompt and willing response to orders. That is all.'

He watched them disperse. The pressed men were quite clearly seamen and did not seem unduly resentful at their billet. Perhaps they were meditating desertion at the first opportunity. Oddly, Drinkwater did not find the thought particularly uncomfortable. At a pinch he and Frey could sail Kestrel home themselves.

On the morning of the 11th, a breeze sprang up out of the northwest quarter and, though it soon dropped again, there was sufficient to keep steerage way on the cutter as she ghosted south-east towards Calais. It was Drinkwater's first real passage in her and it was clear she had been built for speed, for with the quartering wind and her long boom guyed out to port, she ran down wind with ease. Frey seemed content to lean against the long tiller