Pasha (17 page)

“Did he—”

“Dear Cecilia,” he broke in. “I don't know how to—to break this to you.”

“Nicholas?” she said uncertainly, her hand going to her mouth in concern.

“You know his work dealt with diplomatic matters of the highest degree of discretion?”

“Yes, but he never spoke of it.”

“He told me much, you may believe. Enough that I know now the frightful peril that England lies under at this moment.”

“Nicholas, why did he … ?”

“He knows me of old and has been told of Paris, Jersey and Curaçao. And since learning of my ennobling he has conceived that … that I am the one best placed to take up his work.”

“You—you mean to be like him, to go about the world and … and …” she said, breathless.

“That is what he desires me to do.”

“You mean to say, to be the new …” She laughed delightedly. “Oh, darling! This is wonderful news! No—it's marvellous! You've no idea how worried I've been that you'd be so discontented with a quiet life. This is just what you need.”

She hugged him.

“Then you're not … ?”

“Oh, sweetheart, I'm happy for you, can't you see?”

“Even if it means that I must embark immediately?”

“If it's an urgent matter there is no question—we must leave without delay.”

“Cecilia. My love. There is no ‘we.' I go alone. It's much too dangerous for you, believe me.”

“Nicholas—it has to be ‘we.' I'm a strong woman and I want to be by your side.”

“Sweetheart, this is no place for the woman I love so dearly. I will not—”

“The marchioness went everywhere it took her husband—why not me? Am I less than she? Are you saying—”

“No. I will not have it, Cecilia. I cannot have my attention diverted with worry and anxiety on your account.”

“You've forgotten, Nicholas, that as lady companion I went everywhere with them both. And that included some odious and frightening places, believe me.”

“Oh? You've never told me—”

“Because I've not wanted to worry you, darling. Look, we'll be just like them, together we'll—”

“No. And that's my last word on it, Cecilia.”

“T
HEY'RE OUT, SIR!”
Curzon said urgently. The first lieutenant's glass was on the opposite, northern, side of Bahia Cádiz.

L'Aurore
was alone, deep in the bay. She had gone in on reconnaissance to steal past the sheltering peninsula of Isla de León and look direct into the inner harbour.

It was a very risky manoeuvre, usually done in boats.

Nelson had gone down in legend for joining his boats' crews and in the brutal hacking to escape the swarming gunboats that always came out to contest such spying.

It rarely happened but there could be, as now, a combination favouring a ship to enter—nothing more than a light frigate, but no gunboats would dare approach her broadside.

Any variation in the weather could quickly spiral into disaster. It had to be a wind from the north: from the east, would be dead foul; from the west would embay and trap the intruder; and from the south would bring opposing frigates out from the port. And the timing of the tide was crucial: if the winds were slight an ingoing tide would set up an adverse current to the southeast while the ebb would see it press to the northwest.

It was an enterprise never encouraged by admirals as the sight of a helpless frigate being taken would shake morale
considerably—quite apart from the loss of strength to the fleet—and at the same time greatly raise that of the enemy. Only the most daring of captains would even consider it, but Kydd believed an accurate and timely account of all the assets facing them was worth the risk.

“Wind's turned fluky,” muttered the sailing master, eyeing the masthead vane. Without the steady north-northeasterly to rely on, they could find themselves perilously clawing their way out.

“A few more minutes only, Mr Kendall,” Kydd said, the big signal telescope steadied over a midshipman's shoulder as he, like all the officers, took careful note of what they could see on the inside of the peninsula, the great port complex of Puerto Cádiz. It was not only numbers they were after—they counted above thirty ships of size—but their readiness for sea. Sail bent on to the yard was a sure sign that a sally to seaward was in contemplation.

Midshipmen Clinch and Willock, too, were eagerly recording the observations.

“I make it eighteen o' the vermin,” Curzon rapped, his eyes on the gathering swarm at Rota, opposite. Each gunboat had a single cannon in the bows: taken together, enough fire-power to seriously challenge a frigate.

“They wouldn't dare!” grunted Kydd. Dillon, at his side, faithfully noted down everything of consequence that was said, whether he understood it or not.

“We'll be headed if'n the wind backs a point further, sir,” Kendall said, more strongly. The leading edge of every sail was now fluttering; if the wind got past the board-hard canvas it would instantly slap it flat aback and they'd be dead in the water or, worse, a dismasted hulk.

“Sir, I must protest!” he blurted. “We're at the five-fathom line and I can't answer should we have to stay about.”

“Very well. We shall wear ship. Now.”

“Sir, that'll put us damned close to the Vista Hermosa forts,” Curzon spluttered.

He was ignored.

“Hands to stations to wear ship!”

Agility was all. If the treacherous winds backed further they would be in serious trouble.

The order was given. The men on the helm spun the wheel. Others raced down the deck with the lines that swung the big yards in time with their falling off the wind, and going about the long way to take up on the other tack—a manoeuvre that needed much more sea-room than tacking through the eye of the wind.

It brought them within range of the forts.

A heavy thudding began, like the far-off slamming of giant doors. These were big guns in stone emplacements—and they had been sighted in properly along their firing sector.

The tearing sound of shot overhead was nerve-shredding.

The shocking passage of an invisible ball across the quarterdeck left the officers staggering with the buffeting. Others in the salvo ended in great white plumes around them, some skipping into the distance.

“Rather good practice that, the brutes,” said Bowden, rubbing his deafened ears.

But they were now headed for the safety of the open sea and the next shots were wide.

“Ease her, no need to risk our sticks.”

They won into clear water and Kydd shaped course for the anchorage to note up his findings.

Before he could go below there was a signal. “Sir—Flag, our pennant.”

Was the captain of
L'Aurore
to be chastised for hazarding his ship?

“Heave to in her lee, away my barge.”

The admiral was not at the ship's side to greet him and he followed the flag-lieutenant down to Collingwood's day cabin.

He was deep in murmured discussion with his flag-captain and Kydd waited apprehensively, rehearsing his defence.

“Thank you, we'll talk more about it later,” Collingwood told the officer, who left. He put the papers together slowly, his face careworn and lined.

“Sir Thomas, I would have you prepare your frigate for immediate service.”

“Aye aye, sir.” So it was nothing to do with his escapade.

“There's a deal of trouble brewing in the eastern Med and I need you to undertake a mission of quite some importance.”

“Sir?”

“I've disquieting intelligence that suggests the Turks are not as neutrally inclined as they should be, given their position. They've been listening to some French agitators and seem ready to shift sides. Arbuthnot, our ambassador in the Sublime Porte—that's what they call their Turkish court—seems to think it will come to a sorry situation imminently and he's crying to be taken off.

“I don't myself believe it will come to that, an evacuation, but he's a privy councillor, in thick with Wellesley and similar, and I don't want to be thought uncaring.

“You're the swiftest sail I have, Kydd. I want you to carry my instructions to Admiral Louis in Malta to do what he can to seem helpful.”

Malta had memories for Kydd. It was here that he had taken up his first command, the lovely little sloop
Teazer,
and the midshipman who alone had been present at her commissioning was here on this very quarterdeck as his second lieutenant—Bowden.

There were the massive forts so well remembered, St Elmo, Fort Tigné, and then it was Grand Harbour and the anchorage,
but he couldn't delay: the situation was urgent.

They passed within, all due honours paid, but apart from a pair of sloops in Rinella, there was no squadron in port.

Kydd lost no time in taking boat for the Lascaris Steps: if he didn't find the squadron soon, Collingwood's urgent instructions could not be delivered.

Then he was hurrying over the familiar black basalt slabs of the Grand Master's Palace and up the elliptical staircase to meet the governor.

Alexander Ball had been captain of his namesake
Alexander
before the great battle of the Nile, and his daring and dogged rescue of the dismasted
Vanguard
and Nelson, which Kydd had witnessed, had been a turning point of history. There was no question—if the fabled admiral had been lost at that point, there would have been no clash of fleets and Bonaparte would now be standing astride the world.

“Then how might I be of service, Sir Thomas?” Ball opened, clearly interested in what brought a dashing frigate to the more remote eastern Mediterranean.

“I've urgent instructions for Admiral Louis, sir,” Kydd said. “Do you have knowledge of his movements at all?”

“Pray do not alarm yourself, Captain. In this part of the world things seldom happen with any degree of rapidity. Have you any notion of what those instructions might contain?”

This was a senior naval officer and a civil governor who had every right to know what was happening. Kydd clutched to himself the gratifying knowledge that he was no longer a dutiful messenger carrying sealed dispatches. He was at a rank and respected enough to be a player in the wider drama, trusted with inside knowledge.

“Lord Collingwood was good enough to inform me, yes, sir. And they are …”

He briefly told of the worsening situation in the Turkish capital
and the desperate plea of the ambassador to be taken off.

“I had no idea it had got to such a pass—but I can't help you much to find Admiral Louis's squadron. Let's get out the charts and take a look at the rendezvous positions he's used in the last few months.”

It was an impossibly large area to cover: from Egypt in the south to the Aegean in the north, the ancient sea held so much of significance and threat that no single place thrust itself out over the others.

“If he's got wind of how things are deteriorating, he may wish to place himself athwart the only seaway to Constantinople. This is the strait of the Dardanelles and is damned narrow and chancy navigating. The rendezvous for that is here, at the island of Tenedos, just south of the entrance. I'd start there, if I were you.”

Standing south to avoid a blustering gregale,
L'Aurore
rounded Greece and headed for the northern Aegean.

It was sailing of the kind that Kydd disliked most: uncertainty, aimless searching, yet all to be done at breakneck speed with no promise of a happy ending. From daybreak to darkness, doubled lookouts, relieved every half-hour, and the same intensely fatiguing duty at night, straining for lights in the blackness.

They reached the Dardanelles and the island of Tenedos. Bare, straggling and all of five miles across, it lay just off the coast of Anatolia, providing a useful haven.

But it was empty of anything that flew a British flag.

Kydd brought his ship to anchor and retired to his cabin, tired and dismayed. A crisis was brewing and the ambassador thought it so bad he was apparently abandoning his post. The longer the delay, the worse things would get, and only
L'Aurore's
precious instructions would start in train a powerful squadron to the rescue.

He had to find Louis!
L'Aurore
was in the far north of the Aegean. If they were not here, by definition the squadron was in
the south. Or in the west off the Morea, Greece. Or even, damn it all, southwest off north Africa. He could go mad just thinking of the alternatives.

One of which was—do nothing. Stay at anchor until the squadron came upon them on its constant ranging around the eastern regions.

His nature shied from inactivity as a course of action, but what else could he do?

He threw down his pencilled notes in frustration and went on deck.

He gazed on Turkish Anatolia opposite—a dry, scrubby and nondescript coastline, looking as old as time. A light breeze blew from the land, darkling the sea in delicate feather-like fans.

He was not the only one staring at the shore: Dillon stood over the two new midshipmen, one of whom had a small telescope up.

Oh, to be as carefree as those two! Presumably this would not be their view …

On impulse he drew nearer.

Dillon was treating his duties as schoolmaster seriously. He had taken to carrying a rattan cane borrowed from the boatswain's mate and frowning at his charges on all possible occasions, which had raised a smile from more than one onlooker.

Kydd had let him loose on harmless paperwork after a week's apprenticeship under the ship's clerk, Goffin, and he had proved effortlessly able, even suggesting a novel system of filing. But it would inevitably be some time before he could be trusted with confidences.

For all that, the young man was keen and hadn't been dismayed by his small taste of action. Was he seeing the far parts of the world that he'd yearned for?