The Bomb Vessel (2 page)

Dungarth smiled. ‘You wouldn't sail on a frigate or a line of battleship?'

Drinkwater grinned with relief. ‘I'd sail in a bath-tub if it mounted a carronade, but I fear I lack the youth for a frigate or the polish for a battleship. An unrated vessel would at least give me an opportunity.'

Dungarth looked shrewdly at Drinkwater. It was a pity such a promising officer had not yet received a commander's commission. He recognised Drinkwater's desire for an unrated ship as a symptom of his dilemma. He wanted his own vessel, a lieutenant's command. It offered him his only real chance to distinguish himself. But passed-over lieutenants grew old in charge of transports, cutters and gun-brigs, involved in the tedious routines of convoy escort or murderous little skirmishes unknown to the public. Drinkwater seemed to have all the makings of such a man. There was a touch of grey at the temples of the mop of brown hair that was scraped back from the high forehead into a queue. His left eyelid bore powder burns like random ink-spots and the dead tissue of an old scar ran down his left cheek. It was the face of a man accustomed to hard duty and disappointment. Dungarth, occupied with the business of prosecuting an increasingly unpopular war, recognised its talents were wasted in Petersfield.

The rum arrived. ‘You are a fish out of water, Nathaniel. What would you say to a gun-brig?' He watched for reaction in the grey eyes of the younger man. They kindled immediately, banishing the rigidity of the face and reminding Dungarth of the eager midshipman Drinkwater had once been.

‘I'd say that I would be eternally in your debt, my lord.'

Dungarth swallowed his kill-devil and waved Drinkwater's gratitude aside.

‘I make no promises, but you'll have heard of the
Freya
affair, eh? The Danes have had their ruffled feathers smoothed, but the
Tsar has taken offence at the force of Lord Whitworth's embassy to Copenhagen to sort the matter out. He resented the entry of British men of war into the Baltic. I tell you this in confidence Nathaniel, recalling you to your assurances when you served aboard
Kestrel
 . . .'

Drinkwater nodded, feeling his pulse quicken. ‘I understand, my lord.'

‘Vaubois has surrendered Malta to us. Pitt is of the opinion that Mahon is a sufficient base for the Mediterranean but many of us do not agree. We will hold Malta.' Dungarth raised a significant eyebrow. ‘The Tsar covets the island, so too does Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies, but Tsar Paul is Grand Master of the Order of St John and his claim has a specious validity. At the present moment the Coalition against France threatens to burst like a rotten apple: Austria has not fired a shot since her defeat at Marengo in April. In short the Tsar has it in his power to break the whole alliance with ease. He is unstable enough to put his wounded pride before political sense.' He paused to toss off the rum. ‘You will recollect at our last
contre-temps
with His Imperial Majesty, he offered to settle the differences between our two nations in single combat with the King!' Dungarth laughed. ‘This time he has settled for merely confiscating all British property in Russia.'

Drinkwater's eyes widened in comprehension.

‘I see you follow me,' went on Dungarth. ‘For a change we are remarkably well informed of developments both at St Petersburg and at Copenhagen.' He smiled with an ironic touch of self-congratulation. ‘Despite the massive subsidies being paid him the Tsar feigns solicitude for Denmark. A predatory concern, but that is the Danes' affair. To be specific, my dear fellow, the pertinent consequence of this lunatic's phobia is to revive the old Armed Neutrality of the Baltic States, moribund since the American War. The combination is already known to us and means the northern allies have an overwhelming force available for operations in concert with the French and Batavian fleets in the North Sea. I have no idea how to reconcile mad Paul with First Consul Bonaparte, but they are said to have a secret understanding. After your own experiences with the Dutch I have no need to conjure to your imagination the consequences of such a combined fleet upon our doorstep.'

Drinkwater shook his head. ‘Indeed not.'

‘So whatever the outcome . . .' A knock at the door was accompanied
by an announcement that the fresh horses had been put-to. Dungarth picked up his hat. ‘Whatever the outcome we must strike with pre-emptive swiftness.' He held out his hand. ‘Good-bye, Nathaniel. You may rely on my finding something for you.'

‘I am most grateful, my lord. And for the confidences.' He stood, lost in thought as the carriage clattered out of the yard. Less than half an hour had passed since the same coach had soiled his clothes. Already he felt a mounting excitement. The Baltic was comparatively shallow; a theatre for small ships; a war for lieutenants in gun-brigs. His mind raced. He thought of his wife with guilty disloyalty, then of Louise Quilhampton, abandoned in the dress-shop with Elizabeth, whose son he had brought home from the Red Sea with an iron hook in place of his left hand.

Drinkwater's mind skipped to thoughts of James Quilhampton, Mr Q as he had been known to the officers of the brig
Hellebore
. He too was unemployed and eager for a new appointment.

He picked up his hat and swore under his breath. There was also Charlotte Amelia, now nearly two years of age. Drinkwater would miss her sorely if he returned to duty. He thought of her bouncing upon Susan Tregembo's knee as they had left the house an hour earlier. And there was Tregembo, too, silently fretful on his own account at his master's idleness.

The old disease gnawed at him, tugging him two ways: Elizabeth and the trusting brown eyes of his daughter, the comforts and ease of domestic life. And against it the hard fulfilment of a sea-officer's duty. Always the tug of one when the other was to hand.

Elizabeth found him emerging from the Red Lion, noting both his dirtied clothes and the carriage drawing steadily up Sheet Hill.

‘Nathaniel?'

‘Eh? Ah. Yes, my dear?' Guilt drove him to over-played solicitude. ‘Did you satisfy your requirements, eh? Where is Louise?'

‘Taken offence, I shouldn't wonder. Nathaniel, you are cozening me. That coach . . .?'

‘Coach, my dear?'

‘Coach, Nathaniel, emblazoned three ravens sable upon a field azure, among other quarterings. Lord Dungarth's arms if I mistake not.' She slipped an arm through his while he smiled lopsidedly down at her. She was as lovely as when he had first seen
her in a vicarage garden in Falmouth years earlier. Her wide mouth mocked him gently.

‘I smell gunpowder, Nathaniel.'

‘You have disarmed me, madam.'

‘It is not very difficult,' she squeezed his arm, ‘you are a poor dissembler.'

He sighed. ‘That was Dungarth. It seems likely that we will shortly be at war with the Northern Powers.'

‘Russia?'

‘You are very perceptive.' He warmed to her and the conversation ran on like a single train of thought.

‘Oh, I am not as scatter-brained as some of my sex.'

‘And infinitely more beautiful.'

‘La, kind sir, I was not fishing for compliments, merely facts. But you should not judge Louise too harshly though she runs on so. She is a good soul and true friend, though I know you prefer the company of her son,' Elizabeth concluded with dry emphasis.

‘Mr Q's conversation is merely more to my liking, certainly . . .'

‘Pah!' interrupted Elizabeth, ‘he talks of nothing but your confounded profession. Come, sir, I still smell gunpowder, Nathaniel,' and added warningly, ‘do not tack ship.'

He took a deep breath and explained the gist of Dungarth's news without betraying the details.

‘So it is to be
Britannia contra mundum
,' she said at last.

‘Yes.'

Elizabeth was silent for a moment. ‘The country is weary of war, Nathaniel.'

‘Do not exempt me from that, but . . .' he bit his lip, annoyed that the last word had slipped out.

'
But
, Nathaniel,
but?
But while there is fighting to be done it cannot be brought to a satisfactory conclusion without my husband's indispensable presence, is that it?'

He looked sharply at her, aware that she had great reason for bitterness. But she hid it, as only she could, and resorted to a gentle mockery that veiled her inner feelings. ‘And Lord Dungarth promised you a ship?'

‘As I said, my dear, you are very perceptive.'

He did not notice the tears in her eyes, though she saw the anticipation in his.

‘Drinkwater!'

Drinkwater turned, caught urgently by the arm at the very moment of passing through the screen-wall of the Admiralty into the raucous bedlam of Whitehall. Recognition was hampered by the shoving that the two naval officers were subjected to, together with the haggard appearance of the newcomer.

‘Sam? Samuel Rogers, by all that's holy! Where the deuce did you spring from?'

‘I've spent the last two months haunting the bloody waiting room of their exalted Lordships, bribing those bastard clerks to put my name forward. It was as much as the scum could do to take their feet out of their chair-drawers in acknowledgement . . .' Rogers looked down. His clothes were rumpled and soiled, his stock grubby and it was clear that it was he, and not the notorious clerks, that were at fault.

‘I must have missed you when I tarried there this morning.' Drinkwater fell silent, embarrassed at his former shipmate's penury. All around them the noise of the crowds, the peddlers, hucksters, the groans of a loaded dray and the leathery creak of a carriage combined with the ostentatious commands of a sergeant of foot-guards to his platoon seemed to emphasise the silence between the two men.

‘You've a ship then,' Rogers blurted desperately. It was not a question. The man nodded towards the brown envelope tucked beneath Drinkwater's elbow.

Drinkwater feigned a laugh. ‘Hardly, I was promised a gun-brig but I've something called a bomb-tender. Named
Virago
.'

‘Your own command, eh?' Rogers snapped with a predatory eagerness, leaning forward so that Drinkwater smelt breath that betrayed an empty belly. Rogers seemed about to speak, then twisted his mouth in violent suppression. Drinkwater watched him master his temper, horrified at the sudden brightness in his eyes.

‘My dear fellow . . . come . . .' Taking Rogers's elbow, Drink-water steered him through the throng and turned him into the
first coffee house in the Strand. When he had called for refreshment he watched Rogers fall on a meat pie and turned an idea over in his mind, weighing the likely consequences of what he was about to say.

‘You cannot get a ship?'

Rogers shook his head, swallowing heavily and washing the last of the pie down with the small beer that Drinkwater had bought him. ‘I have no interest and the story of
Hellebore's
loss is too well known to recommend me.'

Drinkwater frowned. The brig's loss had been sufficiently circumstantial to have Rogers exonerated in all but a mild admonishment from the Court of Enquiry held at Mocha the previous year. Only those who knew him well realised that his intemperate nature could have contributed to the grounding on Daedalus Reef. Drinkwater himself had failed to detect the abnormal refraction that had made the reckoning in their latitude erroneous. Rogers had not been wholly to blame.

‘How was it so “well known”, Sam?'

Rogers shrugged, eyeing Drinkwater suspiciously. He had been a cantankerous shipmate, at odds with most of the officers including Drinkwater himself. It was clear that he still nursed grievances, although Drinkwater had felt they had patched up their differences by bringing home the
Antigone
.

‘You know well enough. Gossip, scuttlebutt, call it what you will. One man has the ear of another, he the ears of a dozen . . .'

‘Wait a minute Sam. Appleby was a gossip but he's in Australia. Griffiths is dead. I'll lay a sovereign to a farthing that the poison comes from Morris!' Rogers continued to look suspiciously at Drinkwater, suspecting him still, of buying the pie and beer to ease his own conscience. Drinkwater shook his head.

‘It was not me, Sam.' Drinkwater held the other's gaze till it finally fell. ‘Come, what d'you say to serving as my first lieutenant?'

Rogers's jaw dropped. Suddenly he averted his face and leaned forward to grasp Drinkwater's hand across the table. His mouth groped speechlessly for words and Drinkwater sought relief from his embarrassment in questions.

‘Brace up, brace up. You surely cannot be that desperate. Why your prize money . . . whatever happened to reduce you to this indigent state?'

Rogers mastered himself at last, shrugging with something of
his old arrogance. ‘The tables, a wench or two . . .' He trailed off, shamefaced and Drinkwater had no trouble in imagining the kind of debauch Samuel Rogers had indulged in with his prize money and two years celibacy to inflame his tempestuous nature. Drinkwater gave him a smile, recollecting Rogers's strenuous efforts in times of extreme difficulty, of his personal bravery and savage courage.