For Our Liberty (26 page)

“Ben, it is a pleasure to see you as well. Still in one piece I see,” he said, obviously amused.

“No thanks to you, you bastard,” I replied. “It’s your fault I got embroiled in all this damn skulduggery.”

“Now Ben, not in front of the men. You would have to admit that the last few months have been more exciting than an enforced stay in Verdun with the rest of Bonaparte’s reluctant guests,” he said.
 

“I’ll admit nothing. You almost got me killed.” I really couldn’t quite comprehend that the man I had left on the streets of Paris to face the police on his own was the one who was going to take me back to France.

“True, but it had to be done,” he said without a hint of apology.

“Not to me.”

“Yes, I suppose I could have chosen someone who was less likely to survive and less likely to get the job done. Come, now stop your carping, we have a rendezvous to make.”

With that he led me to the quarterdeck and ceased to listen to my dark mutterings of treachery and revenge. I stood out of the way at the stern of the ship whilst Wright barked out a stream of orders that made absolutely no sense to me but the crew understood well enough. The small ship exploded into activity as ropes were pulled, sails were lowered and sailors dashed around the ship like rats. You must understand that then, as now, I knew little about sailing so do not expect the kind of nautical detail you would get in one Captain Maryat’s naval adventures. My knowledge of nautical terms begins and ends with splicing the main brace.

Wright was much as I had left him in Paris. He was still tall, dark and commanding. He was as much in charge on his ship as he was that morning on the streets. His long face and strong nose were emphasised by his cocked hat. His eyes shone in the setting sun and he came over to me as the little vessel slowly got underway.

“She may be one of the most inefficient vessels in the navy, but she is all mine. We’ll be off the French coast before you know it,” he said.

“Do you make this run often?” I asked.

“Yes, damn it. We’re as regular as the Dover packet used to be. I should be going to Paris in your stead not acting as a ferryman, but it is deemed that I am too well known, and besides Admiral Keith disapproves of his officers doing anything as underhand as spying.” Wright looked towards France with obvious regret and I ignored his implication that I was a second choice. A few months earlier I would have been glad not to be chosen at all but at that moment on the quarterdeck of the Vincejo I grudgingly admitted to myself that I was content enough to be there. Don’t mistake me, I wasn’t the kind of adventure-seeking madman that Wright was, but at least the waiting and preparation was over. The die had been cast.

Wright navigated the ship around the shoals of Goodwin Sands and out into the channel. The setting sun touched the horizon behind us. For all its ungainliness the Vincejo seemed to me to sail well enough. I paced the quarterdeck and looked her over with what I hoped looked like a professional eye. Her crew were the usual mix of broken old tars, resentful pressed men and young boys. From the name I guessed the Vincejo was a Spanish prize but all trace of its former owners had long been scrubbed from the decks. Her sixteen guns were short and portly eighteen pound carronades, arranged on either side like rows of sleeping fat friars. Those guns would do her little good less than a year later when she was cornered by the French in Quiberon Bay. She would become a prize of the French navy and her captain would be sent to Paris as a spy. John Wesley Wright was killed soon after Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, although the French tried to make it look like suicide.

I am sorry, dear reader, if my tale has begun to sound like the ramblings of an aged aunt who, at every family gathering lists even more distant relations who have expired from the least likely causes. The sad truth is that in 1803 we still had nearly twelve years of war before us and my acquaintances were increasingly drawn from those at the heart of the conflict and so fearfully few of them made it to the end and the slaughter at Waterloo.

I would like to lighten the mood with some amusing anecdotes of the short journey across the Channel but the truth is that once we hit the swell beyond the shelter of the Downs I spent most of the journey with my head over the side. I must have been sick because I even refused the offer of a tot of rum from a concerned Wright. He swore it would settle my stomach but the very thought just sent me dashing to the side and, of course, being a landsman I chose the windward side.

I eventually made it down below to a cabin long enough to change my shirt. Whilst I had my luggage open I checked through my meagre belongings. The Alien Office had furnished me with precious little in the way of equipment. All I had from them was a few blank passports, some sympathetic ink to write out my dispatches and a copy of the Gentleman’s Magazine from December 1802. This latter item was to act as a codebook. The said magazine, whilst not unfamiliar to me, is not one I subscribe to myself given that its subject matter rests too much on the cultivation of vegetables and prison reform for my tastes. All in all, my employer had given me enough equipment to ensure that I would be shot if caught. I had to supply everything else myself.

My clothes were few and hopefully discrete; breeches of black and bottle green, white shirts, a dark blue coat and cloak that was grey on one side and black on the other. My hat was the same one I had bought in Locks and my boots knee-length. Where possible I had favoured the French style in everything. In the pockets of the coat were a pair of small double-barrelled travelling pistols and tucked at the bottom of the valise was my old cavalry carbine and a few cartridges, for no good reason other than to make me feel safer. If I ever had to use it I knew I would likely be dead before the day was done. Contrary to what you might suppose, spies are not meant to shoot people. The last item that I checked before dashing back on deck was a sword-stick. It looked like a normal black cane but a twist of the top revealed a long slim blade that would probably snap the first time I used it but the cutler had been very enthusiastic about its merits and it was quite stylish.
 

Despite all this paraphernalia I did not feel ready for anything. As the night progressed and we got closer to France I again began to reflect upon my folly. You might consider, rightly, that it was a tad late for such doubts, and I would agree. I’m not sure if it was the thought of landing in France again, the import of my mission there, or the nebulous prospect of seeing Dominique that made me nervous. I suspect the latter. The Calvets had no part in my mission but I knew myself well enough that I would do all I could to see Dominique again. After all, I had a promise to keep.

I went back on deck and stood at the ready, as it were, but this time on the leeward side of the ship. The wind had fallen and the swell had abated to a gentle rolling that my stomach seemed able to cope with. The sun had long since departed but the moon had yet to rise. The little ship seemed ghost-like in the silver starlight. The crew were almost silent, the sails flapped weakly, the rigging rattled softly and only the occasional brief discussion between Wright and the helmsman disturbed the peace.

I thought hard about my mission, it seemed simple enough; all I had to do was deliver a letter, destroy some boats and hopefully spirit Fulton out of France. Quite why the Alien Office hadn’t asked me call upon General Bonaparte and persuade him to surrender as well I don’t know. Perhaps they were saving that Herculean task for my next mission. The parts that worried me most were the journey to and from the meeting with Fulton, for that I would be in the hands of others, little more than a package to be delivered, and since my previous experience of relying on the network of spies, traitors and agents in France had hardly been a success you can understand my concerns.
 

If this Fulton could convince the French to purchase his inventions then our fleet was at considerable risk. What defence could they have against floating mines or boats that could travel beneath the waves? It still seems remarkable to me that in an age in which so much industry has been revolutionised by machinery that we fought that long war against Napoleon in much the same way as our fathers had fought the war in America and as our Grandfathers had fought the Seven Years War before that. Hargreaves had his spinning jenny, Derby his blast furnace and Watt his steam engine but apart from Colonel Shrapnel’s artillery rounds, Baker’s rifle and Congreve’s ineffectual rockets precious little had changed on the battlefield for decades. Perhaps it was time that an inventor like Fulton challenged the supremacy of the wooden walls that protected our little island.

“It does not do to dwell on things in our profession, Ben,” Wright said as he came to stand by my side.

“You may be right, John. You may be right,” I replied, shaking myself from my thoughts and looking at Wright, the same wry smile on his face. “So, tell me what happened after we parted in Paris.”

“There is little enough to tell,” he said but gazed across the sea with a look that had a portion of pain or regret in it. “I and a friend escaped Paris with some of the confidential papers from the embassy and obtained passage back to England via some of the same people that you will meet tonight.”

“I’m sure there was more adventure to it than that?”

“If you are looking for adventure then I suggest that you go and discover some island in the South Seas. For us a good mission is a dull mission. Get in, do your duty and get out. That is all you have to do. If you find adventure then you have failed,” he said.
 

It was a fine speech but I didn’t believe a word of it. He had the look of a buccaneer about him, there was an almost piratical gleam in his eye as he looked towards the thin, dark strip that was France.

“Do you know of my mission?” I asked, my voice dropping self-consciously to a whisper.

“Yes, Commodore Smith briefed me,” Wright said, amused at my conspiratorial tone.

“He wanted you to go in my stead,” I said.

“I volunteered.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Brooke was correct. I am too well known. If I go to Paris again I fear I will not return.” He said, still gazing towards the French coast.
 

A cry came from somewhere high up in the rigging that a sail had been sighted and Wright started another stream of unintelligible orders. The fifty or so crew swarmed up from below to the steady roll of a Marine’s drum like ants leaving a nest. Within minutes the carronades were loaded and run out, sand scattered on the deck to stop it becoming slick with blood, and cutlasses and muskets stashed in barrels around the deck. Wright examined the vessel, only just visible above the horizon, through his night-glass.

“French fishing boat,” he said.

“Not dangerous then?” I asked.

“No, but best avoided all the same,” he said taking the telescope from his eye. “Two points to starboard if you please Connor,” he told the helmsman.

The Vincejo turned slowly away from the fishing boat. Wright issued another stream of orders to trim the sails but kept the crew at quarters.

“We’ll soon be nearing the French coast, Ben,” he said and passed word for my portmanteu to be brought up. My face must have betrayed my feelings. “You’ll be alright. I make this run all the time, everything usually goes like clockwork.”

“And unusually?”

“We’ve had our run-ins with the French, don’t get me wrong. But we’ve always got back home.”

I didn’t reply. I could see the dark shadow of France ahead of us.

“John, did Brooke tell you that there is a traitor in Paris.”

“Yes, but I suspected as much. I’ve survived in this business because I was lucky. That last time in Paris I felt my luck was running out. Too many things went awry. The French were ahead of us all the way.”

“I think the traitor is one of three men. Montaignac, Fauche or Duprez.”

“I know them all, but not well,” he said and I could see that he was thinking, judging each suspect.

“Who would you put your money on?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps Montaignac but I couldn’t tell you why. Brooke told me he has someone trying to catch them. If I were you I’d steer clear of all of them. Remember, it’s not your money you are wagering, it’s your life.”

With that sobering thought he left me to watch the coast as we got nearer and nearer. The moon was just a thin silver slither but the sky was largely cloudless so there was enough light to see some details. We passed well clear of a town with a harbour and then when there was nothing to see on shore apart from cliffs and a white line of surf beneath them we turned towards land. A red light glowed from the cliff top. Wright issued another stream of orders, not shouting this time but speaking quietly to the men around him. Figures darted around the decks and we slowly hove to. A green light was waved from the bow. A boat was lowered over the side and was filled by sailors and a few marines.

“Time to go, Ben,” said Wright.

“Thank you, Captain. Best of luck to you.”

“And to you, look me up when you return,” he said.

“I will.”
 

We shook hands and I climbed gingerly down the side of the ship. The planks were slick with slime and the ropes crusted with salt. There was almost no swell at all but still I nearly ended up in the sea. As it was I trod on a marine as I landed. The Lieutenant in charge grabbed me and forced me down into a seat before I capsized the boat.