The Price of Glory (40 page)

“Sail ho!” he cried again when the thunder had stopped rolling off the cliffs. “Three points off the starboard bow.”

Nathan's head jerked round and he stared in disbelief, as if there could be another vessel so reckless as to venture so close inshore on such a night. And then the lightning flashed again and he saw it, frozen in his mind's eye like an engraving, bearing down on them about two miles off the Rock of Monaco. And he knew her in an instant.

For she was the
Brutus
.

A
ND
NOW THE
RAIN
came: wind and driving rain straight off the mountains with chips of ice in it like splintered bone. Nathan felt them on his cheek as he stood at the weather rail, his feet braced on the steeply canting deck as the
Unicorn
took the wind on her quarter. It was in his mind to fight for sea room and then he could think of fighting the
Brutus
but with every flash of lightning he could see her bearing down on them, a white phantom off their weather bow, and closing fast. He looked back to the
Bonne Aventure
clinging to his stern and heeling hard over as she came round the point, so hard the gunports on her lee side were almost awash. And he froze at the rail as it came to him, heedless for a moment of the biting wind, remembering the last time he had met the razee off Capo Mele in seas far calmer than this. And yes, he thought, it could be done.

He looked once more to the
Brutus,
seeing only the white water at her bow and the ghost of a sail, but he could divine her captain's intention as clearly as if it were his own. He was planning to cross the
Unicorn
's stern, cutting between the frigate and the
Bonne Aventure,
and then he would come up on Nathan's lee and run alongside him, out into the open sea, savaging him time and again with the weight of that massive broadside. He would go for the
Unicorn
's rigging with chain shot and then when she was crippled, pound her with round shot and grape until she struck, or was swept, a dismasted hulk, back onto the rocks of Cap Martin.

“Mr. Perry!” The master came staggering up the sloping deck to him, holding on to his hat with one hand and his speaking trumpet with the other. Nathan brought his mouth to his ear and raised his voice: “Do you bring us two points into the wind, for I am going to try to pass him on his lee side.”

The master appeared so much like a gargoyle with his astonished expression and the rain streaming off his hat that Nathan clapped him on the shoulder, grinning. “Go to it, Mr. Perry, and when we have passed him I want you to fall off the wind and come back at him on the same side.”

Nathan left him to think about this, for indeed it needed thinking about, and sought out Mr. Duncan to tell him what he intended so that he might pass it on to the rest of the officers and they to the gun crews: he did not want any confusion once they were engaged and could not hear themselves think. Duncan appeared to take it in, when it had been explained to him twice, but Nathan could not help but wish that Tully was still first lieutenant for he would grasp a plan upon the instant and as often as not come up with an improvement.

They ran out the guns, and Nathan forced himself to wait calmly at the rail with his hands clasped behind his back while every atom of his being urged him to be helping heave them into position—and load and fire them too, for his nature was too impatient for this watching, waiting game.

A series of flashes rent the night sky like a rippling broadside and he saw the razee again, barely three or four cables lengths off his starboard bow, and so clearly now he could make out the head of Brutus, staring out at him with his white face, open-mouthed, wide-eyed in consternation—just as her captain might appear as he noted the
Unicorn
's altered course. But he still had time to fall off the wind. Nathan strained his eyes into the darkness, peering at that white crest at her bow, so close now, so very close. Would he? No. He was coming on, intent on his own plan to cross their stern. And the
Unicorn
was still coming round, taking the wind on her beam now and heeling hard over—Nathan prayed they did not take another gust—and finally he saw the razee's bow swing towards him as she saw her danger; but too late, much too late.

“Fire as you bear, Mr. Duncan!” Nathan roared as he braced himself at the rail. A seemingly endless wait, an unbearable wait, until the first gun fired—and he could have howled with frustration as he saw her bow still coming round, but they passed her so swiftly it was over in a matter of seconds, each gun firing so fast upon its neigh-bour it was impossible to tell them apart and then they were back in the dark, rushing upon the Rock of Monaco.

“Now, Mr. Perry!” bawled Nathan with all the breath of his being, but the sailing master had the speaking trumpet to his lips and the two helmsmen were heaving hard down upon the wheel, bringing their head out to sea; the hands that were not at the guns heaving at the braces and those that were racing across to the larboard side to heave out the ports. Already they were falling off the wind, further, further; Nathan felt the deck heel hard over as she took it on her larboard quarter. Another flash of lightning, tearing the black shroud of a sky, and he looked for the
Brutus
but could not see her. He could run if he wished, run for the open sea, but he felt a savage lust for battle, for he knew now that he had been right. The razee had fired back at them but only with the guns on her forecastle and quarterdeck. She was heeling much too far to leeward to fire those big 18-pounders on her main gundeck, or even to open the lower gun-ports. The inherent flaw in the design. And it would do for her yet.

The lightning came again and he saw her. And by God she had lost her foremast! It was down across her starboard side, held on by a tangle of rigging. The darkness again, blacker then ever, and then a sudden rippling flash of gunfire and he saw the little
Bonne Aventure
crossing her stern and raking her with her piddling broadside. Nathan's heart swelled with pride for Holroyd and his crew, but the brig was now directly in their path and it seemed impossible that they would not run upon her in the dark. He glimpsed Mr. Perry's anguished face turned to him imploringly, begging him to veer, but he was damned if he would lose his advantage.

They missed the brig by a whisker. Nathan saw Holroyd's face in the light of the stern lantern and he was grinning, the lunatic, as he brought his hand up to his hat.

And then they were through the gap and there was the razee again, her broken mast dragging her even further to leeward, and they poured another broadside into her as she lay there and Nathan yelled for the master to back the foretopsail and the mizzen, too, so they would not draw ahead of her, and they hit her again and again, firing with round shot now into her hull, double-shotted at point blank range. He thought of Nelson pounding the crippled
Ça Ira
—or Buonaparte, for that matter, bringing his cannon up to slaughter the defeated rabble on the steps of the Saint-Roch. But the
Brutus
was not yet defeated. She was still firing with the higher guns on her quarterdeck and forecastle—and the
Unicorn
was taking punishment. Nathan could see the dead and wounded all along the upper deck and Christ knows what it was like below for, unusually for a Frenchman, she was firing into the frigate's hull. But, of course, they could not raise the guns high enough to do much else. And they were firing from the tops, too, with swivel guns and small arms, concentrating their fire on the quarterdeck. Half the guns there were unmanned, the others reduced to two or three men but still swabbing, loading, ramming, hauling the guns with brute strength back up to the ports. Nathan longed more than ever to help them, if only to take his mind off the target he must make, walking his little fiefdom among the dead and the dying. He saw one of his 18-pounders smashed off its gun carriage, the crew reeling back from it, bloodied and broken. Two gunports smashed into one, the guns silent, the crews dead. But it was nothing to the punishment the
Brutus
was taking.

Nathan did not need the lightning now, for she was lit by the almost continuous discharge of the guns: her foremast a jagged stump cut off just below the top, her main topmast down across her waist and the blood running from her scuppers, staining that purple streak across her side where it showed just above the water line. But she was still firing, still running on under what sails she could carry, desperately trying to cut across his bow, to come down on his lee and bring her weather guns to bear … Or better still to board him, for she had the wind on her side, and if she could only have cut away that hopeless tangle of rigging, she might have achieved it, for Nathan was crowding her as closely as he dared, with just a narrow gap of water between them, pushing her into that other gap, that ever narrowing gap between the onrushing ships and the looming headland of Cap Martin.

“We must bear away, sir, we must bear away!” roared Perry in his ear, hatless now, the rain streaming down his face, mixed with blood from a gash high on his forehead.

And so finally they did. At the last possible minute. And Nathan watched dully as the
Brutus
fought to drag herself clear of the point, knowing she could never make it, not in the condition she was in, not even with the wind on her quarter. And he was right, for the next flash of lightning showed her running straight upon the rocks at the foot of Cap Martin and they heard the terrible sound she made as she died: the long, grinding groan as the rocks stove in her timbers and tore out her keel, even above the triumphant roaring of the waves and the keening of the wind, before the thunder rolled down from the mountains and drowned it out.

A
SHORE,
SIR?
” The first lieutenant stared at Nathan as if he had announced he was off on a brief excursion to the moon. “For a day or two?”

Nathan had been unable to resist this adjunct by way of a provocation.

“But …” Duncan looked from his captain to the curving shore, quiescent now and masked by a faint early morning mist. His brain strove to find a hidden clue, a hint of rational judgement in a proposition that appeared, on the surface, to be entirely unhinged. It failed. “But … it is French territory, sir.”

“I am aware of that, Mr. Duncan. Though the previous owners might dispute it.” Nathan was not quite sure where the Principality of Monaco ended and France began, though this was entirely beside the point since the French invasion had abolished any such distinction. “However I am compelled by a higher calling.” And then, taking pity on the man and lowering his voice, “I have certain orders, Mr. Duncan, that I regret I am unable to disclose to you for the present. If I am not back by tomorrow sunset …” He had better be precise or the poor man would be in an agony of indecision, “shall we say by the end of the last dog watch, then you must sail for the rendezvous. And I mean that, Mr. Duncan. There is to be no hanging on in the hope that we might materialise, like ghosts in the night. Eight bells in the last dog watch and you must crack on to Voltri, is that clear?”

“Very well, sir.”

The
Childe of Hale
had left a convenient amount of wreckage strewn along the beach to mark her last landing point. Matthew Flynn did not know the name of the monastery where the Grimaldis had been heading, but according to the map there was only one place it could be: the Abbey of Saint-Sépulcre in the foothills above Monaco.

Nathan took the Angel Gabriel with him and Michael Connor, his self-appointed bodyguard; also Lieutenant Whiteley and two of his marines, dressed in seamen's slops, for he did not want a gaggle of redcoats charging about the countryside. A casual observer might take them for hunters and if they ran into a French patrol it should give them a fighting chance.

They went ashore in the launch and clambered up a steep slope above the little beach. The storm had wrung the sweat from the air, leaving it dry and cold. The wind was now a gentle sigh among the pines and the sea calmer, coiling back in on itself, its claws sheathed. Nathan looked back on it when he paused for a breather, the creamy white foam round the lips of the bay and the two vessels riding peacefully at anchor, the
Unicorn
and her prize, their yards counter-braced and their sails hung out to dry.

Whiteley had the map spread out upon a rock. The monastery lay at the head of its own little valley about two miles inland and there was a road of sorts, or at least a track, leading up from the coast through the pines and scrub. Even over broken ground it should not take them much more than an hour or so to reach it. But they would have to cross the main coast road from Nice to Genoa which, as the marine officer pointed out, must be a major supply route for Buonaparte's army in the mountains. Nathan shrugged. It could not be helped: they could not wait until dark. He thrust his thumbs through the straps of his shoulder pack and led the way.

The coast road turned out to be an unsurfaced track, though considerably wider than the one they were following inland, and there was plenty of traffic upon it, even so early in the morning. They watched from the shelter of the pines as a squadron of dragoons went by and the dust had scarce settled before a large munitions convoy appeared with more than a dozen heavy wagons pulled by mules. Nathan was thinking it would have made a fine target for a raiding party from the ship when more cavalry came up in its rear. But after that the road seemed clear and he led his little troop across at the run and up into the pines on the far side.

Another stiff climb, bringing out the sweat even in the brisk mountain air, but then the track levelled out and followed a long ridge up to the head of the valley. And there at the far end was the monastery, shrouded in a faint haze of smoke or mist, above terraced slopes of citrus, olive and vine.