Invasion (7 page)

He held up one particular paper and intoned mildly, “You've had some adventuring since last we met.” His cold eyes rose to meet Kydd's.

“I've—that is to say, it's been interesting enough for me, sir.” The last time they had met was in the previous war when Keith had been forced to give Kydd orders to lay up
Teazer
and resign his command in the retrenchment following the announcement of peace—but he had also bestowed that precious captaincy in the first place.

“I'll have ye know, sir, that the Downs is a far different duty from what ye're used to.” He paused significantly. “No more than six leagues distant, Napoleon Bonaparte and his hordes lie in an encampment ready to lunge at us across the water. Our duty is plain, sir.”

“It must be!” Kydd responded strongly.

“Is it?” Keith said pugnaciously, leaning forward. “I will say this to you, Mr. Kydd. If any captain returns from sea with a prize at his tail without he has an explanation, I promise I will break him.”

“Sir.”

“In these perilous times the first duty of a sea officer is the ruin and destruction of the enemy forces, not the pursuit of private gain.” Keith leaned back slowly. “That said, there's everything in your record to encourage me to believe your service here will be a credit to the Royal Navy. When you return you may depend on an active employment.”

“When I return?”

“This is the most complex and fast-moving station in the realm. I will not have my commanders in any doubt about the strategics and dispositions of the situation in which they sail. You will this day take coach for London—the Admiralty—and within the span of a week acquaint yourself most thoroughly with the details of what faces us. Is this clear?”

“Er, yes, sir. My ship?”

“Your ship will relieve another here
pro tem
. Are ye in doubt of your premier, sir?”

“Mr. Hallum? No, sir,” Kydd said hastily. “A most reliable officer.”

“Your orders will be ready for your return. Good day to ye, Mr. Kydd.”

The capital was crowded, noisy and smelled as pungently of sea-coal smoke and local stenches as it always did, but Kydd was not of a mind to care. The hackney carriage creaked and swayed as it bore him towards the Admiralty Office in Whitehall, the jarvey swearing sulphurously at any who dared cross him while Kydd gazed from the grimy window.

He had left Renzi with Tysoe at the inn: he smiled to himself at the pathetic excuses Renzi had contrived at short notice to accompany him but was secretly pleased. It would not be all a duty visit and he had never before been with his friend in London.

They lurched from Cockspur Street into the broad reaches of Whitehall and came to a stop by the colonnaded screen of the Admiralty. Kydd paid off the jarvey and hastily pushed through the admiring throng outside and into the courtyard. He raised an arm in acknowledgement of the patriotic cries that rang out at the sight of his uniform and hurried inside.

Through the high portico the doorman showed him to the captains' room—but this time it was not as a penniless commander begging for a ship in the days of the last peace but as the captain of a front-line man-o'-war about to be informed of the grave strategic questions that faced his country. There were other commanders in the room; they looked at him enviously as the first lord's second secretary came down to spirit him away.

Earl St. Vincent was in the Board Room, seated at the long table beneath the legendary wind-gauge. A vast mass of papers was spread forth and he was flanked by several dour-looking men not in uniform. They did not rise or attempt to leave.

The first lord, however, got to his feet and returned Kydd's civil bow. “So your flag-officer wants ye to hoist aboard an understanding of our situation,” he said bleakly.

“Aye—er, yes, sir.”

“Right and proper, too,” St. Vincent growled, sitting again heavily. He had aged since Kydd had seen him before, his thick-set figure bowed and stiff. This was the man who had taken it upon himself to root out the gross inefficiency and corruption of the royal dockyards, standing alone against the powerful timber cartels. In a bluff and uncompromising sea-dog fashion he had faced down the political storm that resulted. “The Downs command—you'll be seeing as much action as ye'd wish, sir,” he said with a wintry smile. “As it's rightly said, ‘The frontier of Britain is the coastline of the enemy.' Do your duty, sir, and England need have no concern for its fate.”

An elegantly dressed post-captain appeared at the other door and waited diffidently.

“I've no time to attend to ye myself,” St. Vincent said, with an ironical glance at the seated figures. “Captain Boyd will see to the matter. Good fortune be with ye, Mr. Kydd.”

“Thank you, sir.” But the old earl had turned back to the grey men and he was dismissed.

“Boyd, late of
Bellona
. And . . . ?” He was a post-captain of one of Cornwallis's major ships-of-the-line and had probably been moved closer to the centre of power to acquire the necessary experience before elevation to flag rank.

“Kydd, brig-sloop
Teazer,
” Kydd said defensively at Boyd's languid and polished manner.

“Joining the Downs from where, Mr. Kydd?” the officer said distantly, as they walked together.

“The Channel Islands, for m' sins,” Kydd said, as lightly as he could.

Boyd raised one eyebrow. “A sea change of note,” he said drily. “You've seen active service, no doubt.”

“The Nile—and Acre following,” Kydd said, with a touch of defiance.

Boyd stopped. “Did you really, by God?” he said, suddenly respectful. The droll affectation fell away as he resumed walking. “Then you'll relish the Downs—no end to the sport to be had there.”

They entered a small office and a worried-looking lieutenant glanced up from his desk. “Do carry on, Dukes,” Boyd told him testily, then asked Kydd, “You have somewhere to stay?”

“The White Hart in Charles Street.”

Boyd nodded, then crossed to gaze out of the window. His office overlooked the vast parade-ground behind Horse Guards, the army headquarters further along. Distant screams of sergeants and the regular tramp of soldiers in formation drifted up in the warm sunshine. He turned back to Kydd. “The volunteers. Always at their marching up and down, I see. Now, Mr. Kydd, I rather think you'll need me to provide something a trifle more useful than I can at short notice. Shall we say tomorrow at ten?”

“At ten would be most civil in you, sir.”

“Oh, and it might be politic to present yourself at the Admiralty reception tonight,” Boyd added. “A Russian who thinks to mount some expedition that has our interest. Carriages at six—swords and decorations, I'm afraid.”

“No, sir. Mr. Renzi has not yet returned,” Tysoe informed him.

Kydd sighed and took an armchair. His friend could be anywhere in the vast, seething city, after some musty book or arranging to meet a savant—just when he needed reassurance before an important social occasion, both formal and diplomatic. Idly, he picked up the morning newspaper. A theatre scandal occupied all of three columns and trading figures for the stock exchange were neatly summarised on the right, but by far the majority of articles were in some way connected to the war.

One piece dealt at tedious length with a review by the Duke of York of the Medway militia battalions. A breathless editorial alerted the faithful readers to the dangers of a Baltic embargo on ship timber. Another item reported that the conveyance of a trade minister of Spain, said to be very soon an enemy state, had been set upon by a mob and lucky to escape with his life. The pretext had been a punitive increase on duty for imported Spanish wines. Hardly his fault, Kydd thought wryly.

He turned to the next page and stared in surprise at a detailed picture of a vast platform of heroic dimensions, fit to carry a regiment of men and horses and held aloft by a dozen fire balloons of the kind that the Montgolfier brothers had demonstrated before the French Revolution. In earnest words, the newspaper reiterated its promise to keep its readers informed of the plans of Napoleon Bonaparte to deploy such craft in great numbers for the invasion of Britain—ten thousand men and guns to cross the water as fast as a galloping horse, then descend from the skies in irresistible numbers, visiting upon Britain what the continent had already suffered.

It was pointed out gravely that if any would doubt it they had only to recall the historic first flight across the Channel by Jeffries and Blanchard, which had occurred all of twenty years before.

Kydd paused. He had no idea of the practicality of the scheme but if it were true then the Navy would be helpless to defend the shores as the giant platforms sailed across overhead to invade. It was a menace as unanswerable as that which he had heard from a garrulous army officer in the coach, that Bonaparte was employing his idle army in Boulogne to dig a tunnel under the Channel.

Kydd tried to dismiss a mental picture of battalions of crack grenadiers suddenly pouring out of the earth in the pretty countryside of Kent to overwhelm the local volunteers. Yet who could say it was impossible? At one wheelbarrow of earth from each man every twenty minutes, with a quarter of a million men, it would not take so very long to tunnel the eighteen miles. Bonaparte had been preparing his invasion now for more than a year; the tunnel might be nearing completion at that very moment.

“How's this, sir? As some might say, a brown study?” Renzi had returned unnoticed and came to sit in the other chair. “Here, old fellow, I have something for your diversion.” He slapped down a few garishly coloured prints.

Kydd picked up the top one, entitled, “A Correct View of the French Machine Intended to Convey Their Soldiers for the Invasion of England.” It was a gigantic raft and had what appeared to be windmills spaced along its sides. To give point to its size, troops of horses were galloping about its decks.

“Most ingenious,” Renzi murmured. “The mills may be turned into whatever direction the wind deigns to blow, and being in train each to a paddle-wheel, we have a means of locomotion for a vessel to enable it to proceed on any course it wishes. One may assume even directly into the wind's eye,” he added thoughtfully.

Kydd perused the next, a French print of a vessel,
La Terreur d'Albion,
of extraordinary length and with an obligatory Liberty cap in bloody red atop an enormous forward turret, and what seemed to be an iron skeleton flourishing the grim reaper's scythe on the after one. In gleeful detail a legend explained that the turrets were machinery towers, and inside a series of paddle-wheels would be powered by a great number of horses, whose combined strength would urge the craft to speeds unmatched by the noblest of English frigates.

Kydd's eyes met Renzi's in sombre reflection before he picked up the next. This was of a flat, lozenge-shaped raft fully seven hundred feet across with a central citadel and powered by a giant lateen sail on a swivel, itself five hundred feet long. It was soberly estimated to be capable of transporting thirty thousand troops. Other prints depicted man-carrying kites, unsinkable hide-covered cork boats and other bizarre contrivances.

“And today I heard of a weapon of terror that would chill the blood of any man,” Renzi said. “It is a species of clockwork balloon.”

“A what?”

“An automaton aloft,” Renzi said. “Set forth, it requires no man aboard to control it. A deadly craft of the skies which, when commanded by its mechanism, soullessly rains down fiery destruction on the cowering wretches beneath.”

“It . . . Surely they'd never . . .”

“I'm desolated to say that it appears to be true, my friend. At the Royal Society's rooms I was privileged to view an experimental French balloon captured only this last month. It is raised aloft not by the fire of Montgolfier but a cold miasma of Lavoisier's ‘hydrogen,' which, of course, will never need tending by man in order to retain its lifting powers.”

“Then . . .”

“Yes, dear fellow,” Renzi said quietly. “It would seem that very soon war will be visited on every creature promiscuously. Skill at arms will be of no account in this new—”

“It'll never happen,” Kydd retorted. “Can't you see? England would never stoop s' low as to use such, and for the French, why, they'd hold back for fear we'd pay 'em back in their own coin. No, they'd not dare.”

“Bonaparte is soon to be crowned the Emperor Napoleon but, mark me, he won't rest until he's master of the entire world.”

At Kydd's look of disbelief, Renzi continued darkly, “You don't understand the man. He holds his country in a vile subjection while he destroys and plunders, but the world sees only his glory. The France of Versailles and the Encyclopedists no longer exists, for inside the country . . .” He trailed off.

Kydd felt unsettled. “Strong words from a man o' letters, I'm persuaded,” he said, then added, “Where did you hear all this?”

Renzi gave a twisted smile before he spoke. “Dear fellow, I do believe I must trust you. May I have your word that nothing of what I'm about to tell you will go any further?”