Under False Colours (2 page)

'My Lord ... ?' Drinkwater's embarrassment was compounded by incomprehension.

'The Prince of Wales, Nathaniel, the Prince of Wales; a somewhat portly adornment to the Court of St James.'

'I see, my Lord, I had not meant to ...'

'Sit down, my dear fellow, sit down.' Dungarth motioned to a second chair and regarded the drawn features, the shadowed eyes and the thin seam of the old sword cut down Drinkwater's hollow cheek. 'You are altered yourself; we can none of us escape the ravages of time.' He pointed to the Romney portrait: 'I sometimes think the dead are more fortunate. Now, come sir, a drink? Be a good fellow and help yourself, I find it confounded awkward.'

'Of course.' Drinkwater turned to the side table and filled two glasses.

'At least our imbroglio in the Peninsula has assured a regular supply of
oporto
,' Dungarth said, raising his glass and regarding Drinkwater over its rim, his hazel eyes as keen as they ever were. 'Your health, Nathaniel.'

'And yours, my Lord.'

'Ah, mine is pretty well done in, I fear, though the brain ain't as distempered as the belly, which brings me in an orotund way,' Dungarth chuckled, 'to my reasons for sending for you.' His lordship heaved his bulk upright. 'I'll come directly to the point, Nathaniel, and the point is Antwerp.

'We've forty thousand men on Walcheren investing Flushing; forty thousand men intended to take Antwerp, but bogged down under the command of that dilatory fellow Chatham.'

'The
late
earl,' Drinkwater joked bleakly, referring to Chatham's well-known indolence.

'You've heard the jest.' Dungarth smiled as he rang for his servant. 'Where are your traps? We'll have them brought round here. And William,' he said as he turned to his valet, 'send word to Mr Solomon that he is expected to dine with us tonight.'

'The point is,' Dungarth went on when the man had withdrawn, 'we are no nearer securing Antwerp than when we went to war over it back in 'ninety three, unless I am much mistaken. The expedition seems set to miscarry! We have expended millions on our allies and it has gained us nothing. We bungle affairs everywhere — I will not bore you with details, for their recounting does no one credit, but our fat prince is but a symptom of the disease ...'

Dungarth's tone of exasperation, even desperation, touched Drinkwater. He had sensed in the earl's voice a war weariness, and the fear that all his services were to come to nothing.

'Between us, Nathaniel, I am driven almost mad by blunders and folly. Furthermore, Canning holds the purse for my work at the Secret Department, and I fear to cross Canning at this delicate juncture.' Dungarth paused.

'And this delicate juncture touches me, my Lord?'

'Yes, most assuredly. D'you command a following on that frigate of yours? A lieutenant who can be trusted?'

'I have a lieutenant who is dependent upon me, and a midshipman with an acting commission whom I would see advanced.'

'You can depend upon the lieutenant, utterly?'

'I can depend upon them both.'

'Who are they?'

'Lieutenant Quilhampton ...'

'The cove with a wooden hand?'

'The same, my Lord, and a man recently displaced by my removal from the ship.'

'And the other?'

'Mr Frey, an able fellow, well enough used to doing his duty now.'

'How would they fare doing duty in a gun-brig on special service?'

'Admirably, I shouldn't wonder.'

Dungarth seemed to consider some secret design, then he looked up. 'Very well, since there seems no impediment ...'

'Ah,' Drinkwater broke in, 'there is one matter to be taken into account: Mr Quilhampton is anxious to marry. The affair has been deferred before and I doubt his
fiancee
will consent to further delay.'

Dungarth frowned. 'Then let him marry at once, or wait ...'

'Wait, my Lord, for how long?'

'How long is a rat's tail? Be assured this service will not last long. It must be accomplished before the ice forms in the Baltic —'

'The Baltic ... ?' Drinkwater interrupted, but a distant bell diverted Dungarth's attention.

'That will be Solomon, Nathaniel,' he said, ponderously drawing himself to his feet. 'He is to be trusted, despite appearances.'

Dungarth's man announced the visitor and Dungarth performed the introductions. 'My dear Solomon, may I present Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, lately arrived from the Pacific; Nathaniel, Mr Isaac Solomon, of Solomon and Dyer.'

'Y'r servant, Mr Solomon,' Drinkwater said, taking the Jew's hand. He wore the shawl and skull cap of Orthodoxy and had a fine-boned, palely handsome face framed by long, dark hair.

'Yours, Captain Drinkwater,' Solomon said, bowing slightly and regarding Drinkwater with an appraising eye.

'You will not refuse a slice or two of cold mutton, Isaac?' Wielding his crutch, Dungarth led them into an adjacent room and they settled before the earl resumed. 'What we propose,' Dungarth said, drawing Drinkwater into the web of intrigue and indicating that the mysterious Jew was party to the plot, 'is to send you to Russia.'

'To Russia!' Drinkwater frowned. ' 'Tis late in the year, my Lord ...' He began to protest but Dungarth leaned forward, his knife pointedly silencing the criticism.

'A single cargo, Nathaniel,' he began, then threw himself back in his creaking chair, 'but Isaac, you elucidate the matter.'

'I have no need to extol the effects of the blockade of the European coastline by our naval forces, Captain,' Solomon said in a low, cultured voice, 'it is our chief weapon. But to oppose it the Emperor Napoleon has proclaimed a "Continental System", an economic interdiction of any British imports upon the mainland of Europe and Russia. Such a declaration was first thought to have been the phantasm of a disordered mind; alas it has proved remarkably successful.'

Drinkwater watched the eloquent gestures of the Jew's hands, accurately guessing the man belonged to that international mercantile confraternity that overcame political boundaries and evaded belligerent obstacles whenever possible.

'Two years ago we took Helgoland, both as a listening post with its ear close to the old independent Hanse city of Hamburg, and as an entrepot for our trade ...'

'But a wider breach must be cut in Napoleon's wall of
douaniers
, Nathaniel,' Dungarth broke in suddenly, 'something that does more than merely discredit his policy but
destroys
it! A cargo to Russia, a cargo to Russia as one of many cargoes! Such a cargo, widely advertised in Paris, could not fail to sow seeds of mistrust between Napoleon and his vacillating ally, Tsar Alexander.'

'You seek, if I understand aright,' Drinkwater said, 'to detach the Russian Tsar from his present alliance and reunite him with Great Britain?'

'Exactly! And it is our only chance, Nathaniel, before we are ruined, our last chance.'

'And this cargo, my Lord, has something to do with me, and Lieutenant Quilhampton?'

'It does.'

'Well, what is this cargo?'

'A quantity of Northampton boots, Nathaniel.'

'
Boots
?' Drinkwater's astonishment was unfeigned.

Dungarth nodded, his face a mask of serious intent, adding, 'and yourself, of course, to be employed upon a most secret service.'

August 1809

Below him the jangle of the chandler's door bell recalled Drinkwater to the present. The stranger emerged, settling his tricorne hat on his head and holding it there against the wind. The man turned away with his coat tails flapping, leaving the alley to the sleet and a solitary mongrel, which urinated purposefully against the wall of the pie shop opposite. The grey overcast was drawing the day to a premature close, but still Drinkwater sat on, recalling the twilight of that dawn, eight days earlier, when at the end of a night of planning he had sat at Lord Dungarth's escritoire. Apart from the servants, Drinkwater had been alone in the house, Isaac Solomon having departed an hour earlier, his lordship following, bound in his coach for the Admiralty.

'Do you write to your proteges, Nathaniel,' he ordered, 'and I will have orders drawn up for the expeditious preparation of a gun-brig for your escort. Deliver your letters by seven and I will have them carried by Admiralty messenger.' He had been about to depart then added, as an afterthought, 'If you wish to leave word for your wife, I will have it sent after your departure. It would be best if few people know your whereabouts.'

Few people, Drinkwater ruminated savagely, would think of looking for him here, even if they knew him to be in London; and the fact that his Lordship's proposal fell in with his private desires did nothing to assuage his sense of guilt. To this was added an extreme distaste for his task. It was perfectly logical when expounded in Lord Dungarth's withdrawing room, but it was a far cry from his proper occupation, commanding one of His Britannic Majesty's ships of war.

'You will assume the character of a shipmaster of the merchant marine,' Dungarth had instructed. 'Here are a coat and
surtout
,' he had said as his servant brought the garments in, 'and a pair of hessian boots.'

Drinkwater regarded them now; they had once been elegant boots, a tassel adorning the scalloped tops of their dark green leather.

'I don't need more than one at a time, these days,' he recalled Dungarth joking with bitter irony. 'I'll have your sea kit shipped aboard Quilhampton's brig ...'

Drinkwater had slipped into Wapping feeling like a spy.

And he felt worse now, worn by the tedious days of idle waiting, trying to sustain his spirits with the assurances of Dungarth and Solomon that his part in lying low in Wapping was crucial to the success of the mission, but unable to stop worrying whether or not Elizabeth knew of
Patrician
's arrival home, or how Quilhampton, the matter of his marriage pressing, had viewed his secret orders.

But over and over again, as he waited interminably, it seemed, his thoughts came round to the secret service to which he was now irrevocably committed.

'Isaac has provided the capital and made arrangements for a large consignment of boots and greatcoats to be loaded aboard a barque lying in the Pool of London. To all outward appearances the whole transaction is a commercial one, a speculative venture that contents the manufacturers,' Dungarth had explained.

That much Drinkwater had guessed. Mr Solomon was clearly a cut above the Jewish usurers, slop-sellers and hawkers who supplied credit, cash and personal necessities to His Majesty's fleet. Solomon had alluded to a considerable illicit trade run through Helgoland and Hamburg, actively encouraged by Bourrienne, once Napoleon's private secretary, but then the Governor of Hamburg.

'M'sieur Bourrienne,' Solomon had explained, 'suffered from a sense of grievance at the loss of his influential position with the Emperor; his cooperation was not difficult to secure.' Solomon had smiled. 'And, of course, Captain, every cargo sold to Hamburg or Russia is of benefit to England ...'

Staring down into the rain-lashed ginnel, Drinkwater thought of the snatches of rumour and news he had gleaned in his brief period back on English soil. There were scandals in both the army and the navy, in addition to the fiasco that seemed inevitable at Walcheren. More disturbing were the riots in the north and the increasingly desperate need for markets for manufactured goods. Doubtless Solomon would profit privately from this venture, for Dungarth's remarks concerning Canning suggested his alliance with the Jew was a bold stroke, but if a trade could be opened with Russia, it might ameliorate the sufferings of the labouring poor as well as achieve the object Dungarth had in view.

But would a consignment of boots succeed in disrupting a solemn alliance between the two most powerful individuals on earth? True, there were a few other titbits. 'A few hundred stand of arms,' Dungarth had enthused, 'and a brace or two of horse pistols in the consignment, sufficient to equip a squadron or two of cavalry. Given the usual cupidity of the tier-rangers and the other waterside thieves, word of the nature of the consignment will become common knowledge along the Wapping waterfront.'

And that was the crux of the affair, that was why he, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater of the Royal Navy, was detached upon a secret service, why he occupied this squalid, rented room and played the character of a merchant shipmaster, perpetually drunk, cantankerous and misanthropic. Sadly, it was all too easy in his present state of mind.

'Among that waterside riff-raff, you have only to find Fagan,' Lord Dungarth had finally said, 'and spread this tittle-tattle to him. He's a man known to us, d'you see, Nathaniel, a courier who passes regularly between London and Paris carrying gossip and the odd, planted message. You have merely to indicate the value, content and destination of your cargo, for its departure to be reported to Paris. We are expecting Fagan daily; he keeps rooms above a pie shop in Wapping ...'

Drinkwater peered across the alley. It was almost dark. He struck flint on steel and coaxed a stump of candle into life.

'We want you to bait the eagle,' Dungarth had said as they rose to disperse, 'see that the Emperor takes the lure ...'

It was not quite that easy, of course, his instructions went much further. He had to ship with the cargo, to play the charade to the last scene, to see that it reached Russia safely.

Drinkwater stood stiffly and stretched. If Fagan did not arrive soon the enterprise would have to be scrapped. Perhaps he had already arrived, and was engaged elsewhere; how did one trust or predict the movements of a double agent?

Drinkwater threw himself on the narrow bed and considered Dungarth's warning of the burden of the war, his consuming conviction that only an alliance with Russia would break the stalemate between Great Britain's superiority at sea and France's hold on the continent of Europe.

Drinkwater remembered the Russian army in its bivouacs around Tilsit. The sheer size of that patient multitude was impressive and the cogent fact that the Tsar's ill-trained levies had inflicted upon Napoleon's veterans the near defeat of Eylau and the Pyrrhic victory of Friedland argued in favour of Dungarth's ambitious policy.