Victory

Otranto, eight thousand at this moment marching to join them, sixty miles only across the strait from where we sit. They are waiting for when Napoleon launches his assault on England and they will be released to seize back the Ionians and—’

‘Thank you, sir. You have made our position plain,’ Kydd said, bringing the conversation to a close. ‘We shall indeed step warily in these parts. Now, is there anything we can do for you, at all?’

Foresti sighed and indicated that his services as prize agent were always to be had and the safe custody of dispatches to Nelson on their departure would leave him more than satisfied.

‘Then I shall see you to the boat,’ Kydd said, rising, and added, ‘Sir, being as you are British consul, you may be saluted with eleven guns on going ashore, if you so desire.’

‘Save your powder, Captain. And remember – trust not a soul.’

‘Sir, may I name my officers . . .’ Noise and laughter filled the reception room. It was large and very hot with a vast fire at the end tended by ornately uniformed Cossacks; around the room ladies, dressed in a style not seen in London for an age, mingled in the greatest good humour.

Footmen in colourful sashes and headgear offered fine-cut glasses of a strange Russian potion called vodka. Kydd’s nervousness at representing his country formally melted away, his senses heightened by the rhythms from a trio of players energetically strumming on peculiar triangular instruments and the utterly alien odours wafting about.

‘Ze Ritter Kommodor Greig!’ Kydd turned to meet a powerfully built man, with a genial smile, who bowed with a click of the heels. This was the flag-officer of the Russian Ionian Squadron and Kydd hastened to return the compliment.

‘My name interests you?’ the man said teasingly. In politeness Kydd had not questioned why the senior Russian commander had perfect English and affected a Scottish name.

‘Er, yes.’

‘My father Samuil Karlovich, our most distinguished admiral under the Tsarina Catherine, came from Inverkeithing. A Royal Navy lieutenant in the service of the Tsar. We have many such to ornament our navy, sir.’

‘And we likewise, er, Kommodor. I had the honour to meet Captain Krusenstern as served at sea with us before he set forth to sail around the world in our Leander and Thames as was. Have you word at all?’

The talk eddied happily about him as the vodka was tossed back in the Russian way, and nearby he heard Howlett making hesitant talk with an impeccably dressed and decorated civilian. ‘Er, I’ve heard your Greeks can be an unruly parcel to rule. How do you—’

‘Ioannis Capodistrias. I’m Ionian but count myself Greek, sir, in this island which is nominally Turk, garrisoned by Russia and lately occupied by France. In the article of ruling therefore we naturally compromise on the laws and usages of Venice, which we do all accept.’

Kydd hid a smile and glanced to the aristocratic Curzon, languidly at home in surroundings such as these – ‘Yes, well, you have a new Tsar, I understand. Alexander? All hail to His Imperial Majesty, of course, and I’m privileged to claim your Count Nikita Panin as one of my closer friends. He and I—’

‘The graf Nikita Petrovich Panin, who was one of the assassins of His Imperial Majesty’s father, the Tsar Paul?’

‘Oh! Er, I had no idea—’

‘And who, nevertheless, is now Chancellor of the Russian Empire?’

Kydd looked about to see how Renzi was coping but couldn’t catch sight of him in the animated throng. He leaned forward politely to hear the laboured English of yet another young officer about to make acquaintance of one of the legendary Nelson’s captains.

Renzi was enthralled to be hearing about the life of a Dnieper Cossack in passionate French from a heavily bearded cavalryman and did not want to be distracted.

‘Sir, this is of the utmost importance!’ a man behind him whispered again, plucking at his sleeve. ‘You must hear me.’

The burly officer seemed not to notice and rumbled on, a faraway look in his eyes. Renzi threw an angry glare at the little man in thick spectacles but it did not deter him. Renzi rounded on him and demanded to know what it was that could not wait.

‘Sir – in private, if you understand,’ the man said, shifting uncomfortably.

Renzi weighed the loss of the intriguing conversation against the possibility that some problem was affecting their presence. ‘Very well, sir. One moment . . .’ He made his apologies to the officer and reluctantly followed the man out into the garden.

‘I do beg pardon for my intrusion, sir. Were it not a business so urgent . . .’

‘What is it you want, sir?’

‘I have heard you are the secretary of the English frigate?’

‘I am Renzi, the captain’s confidential secretary, sir.’

‘Then it is in you I must trust. I am Gospodin Mikhail Orlov, a merchant venturer of Odessa. I have interests in . . . these parts and—’

‘Sir, I fail to see how one of His Majesty’s ships of war can possibly be of service to one of – to yourself, Mr Orlov.’

‘You don’t? Then answer me this, Mr Renzi – your grand commander Nelson pines after timber and spars, tar and canvas, does he not?’

To one desperate to maintain a worn-out squadron at sea indefinitely in the worst of weathers, ‘pines’ would not be too strong a word, Renzi allowed without comment.