As the dismal hours succeeded one another, he resolved on the one course of action he had reserved for Lord Castlereagh alone, in the hope that this naval officer, whose grasp of diplomatic affairs seemed so inexplicably comprehensive, would favourably influence his request for an interview with the British Foreign Minister. Now, as Drinkwater hinted so forbiddingly at the hostility of his reception, Bardolini played his trump card and spoke out of the darkness.
'Captain Drinkwater, I believe you to be a man of honour. You are clearly a person of some influence, your knowledge of affairs of state makes that quite clear. It is possible you are a police agent... If that is so, I ask only that what I am about to confide in you, you report to your superiors…'
'I am not a police agent, Colonel. We have not yet adopted all your Continental fashions. I am what I told you.'
'Perhaps,' Bardolini acknowledged doubtfully, 'but your word, please, that what I tell you will be treated with the confidence it deserves and be passed to Lord Castlereagh himself.'
'Are you about to give me a pledge of your master's good faith?'
'Si.'
'Very well. You have my word.'
'You are at war with the Americans, are you not?'
'You know that very well.'
'I also know that there are men in America who would rule Canada, and Frenchmen in Canada who would welcome American assistance to separate them from your country, even if it meant joining the United States.'
'That is not a very great secret, Colonel.'
'No. But King Joachim wishes to make known to your government that the Americans have negotiated a secret treaty of mutual assistance with the Emperor Napoleon, a treaty which, in exchange for American attacks on British ships and a quantity of gold, guarantees a large shipment of arms, powder and shot. These are to be used for raising a revolution in Quebec. The Quebecois will join up with an American army marching north from New York next spring.'
'Go on, Colonel, you have my full attention.'
'During the winter bad weather, American ships will arrive in the waters of Norway
'Where in Norway?' Drinkwater cut in.
'A place called the Vikkenfiord.'
'Go on, Colonel.'
'Secretly, the arms and munitions will be taken to them by the Danes. The Americans will also stop supplying your army in the Iberian Peninsula. The Emperor believes that with rebellion in Canada, your government will no longer be able to support the Spanish insurrection, will withdraw Wellington's army and transport it to North America. Great Britain will retreat behind its traditional defence, the sea. It will not be able to expend its treasure on maintaining Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies in the field. Your country's alliance will die and the Emperor of Austria will accept King Joachim as the sovereign of Italy.'
But Drinkwater was no longer listening; he was thinking of Herr Liepmann's dispatch and the shipment of arms lying somewhere in Hamburg.
CHAPTER 3
Arrivals
There was a clever simplicity in Bardolini's revelations. Not only was their substance of crucial importance to the survival of Great Britain, but the plan was cunning in its construction, satisfying both political and economic needs. For while raising rebellion and absorbing Canada in the Union would placate the war-hawks in the American Congress, it would also compensate the United States' treasury for the loss of British gold now paid for the grain being sent to Wellington's army in Spain. For Britain herself, the loss of American supplies was more important than the saving to her exchequer. It was well known that the Americans were happy to export to both contending parties in the great war in Europe, and that they sold wheat to the British with whom they were themselves at war! But a greater irony existed if the arms they were to buy from the French were paid for with gold sent to the United States by Great Britain in the first place.
This vast and complex circulation wormed its way into Drinkwater's tired brain as the buffeted chaise passed Chelmsford and rumbled on towards London. He mused on the tortuous yet simple logic, aware from his own experience with Yankee privateers that American ambition was as resourceful as it was boundless. There was, moreover, an insidious and personal reflection in his train of thought. In all the weary months he had spent at the Admiralty's Secret Department, he had hoped for some news like Bardolini's. He had not the slightest doubt that the Neapolitan colonel had been delivered into his hands by Providence itself, nor that it was not Joachim Murat's secret overtures that were the most important feature of Bardolini's intelligence.
The fantastical image of Napoleon's great cavalry leader was a tragi-comic figure in Drinkwater's perception, a man raised to such heights of pomp and pride that violent descent could be its only consequence. The very weakness of the parvenu king's position, his desire to maintain friends on both sides of the fence, so that when he tumbled from it there would be waiting arms to save him, was too ridiculous to be treated seriously.
King Joachim's secret earnest of good faith, the revelation of the bargain struck between the French Emperor and the Americans, was clever enough, for it was invaluable to Great Britain, but its defeat, if the British chose to act, left King Joachim untouched and would hurt his brother-in-law enough to incline fate to favour the Allied cause. Nor was its betrayal a serious enough treachery to deprive Murat of his kingdom if Napoleon defeated his enemies in detail. The French Emperor was not a man to deprive the husband of his favourite sister of his crown for a mere peccadillo!
Nor could Drinkwater ignore the consequences of success for Napoleon himself. If the Emperor of the French did succeed in forcing the British to withdraw Wellington's army for service in America or Canada, such a move would not only remove the threat to southern France, it would also release battle-hardened troops under his most experienced marshals to reinforce the ranks of the green 'Marie-Louises' now opposing the combined might of Russia, Prussia and Austria.
As Drinkwater nursed an aching head and the beginnings of yet another quinsy, as he slipped in and out of conscious thought, nodding opposite the now sleeping Bardolini, his resolve hardened round the central thought that this was without doubt the event for which Lord Dungarth had named Nathaniel Drinkwater his successor in the Secret Department of the British Admiralty.
In his tired and half-conscious state, Drinkwater found nothing incongruous in attributing Dungarth with such prescience. The earl had possessed a keen and analytical brain and had been quite capable of sensing some innate ability in his ageing protégé. But for Drinkwater it was to prove a dangerously deluded piece of self-conceit.
Drinkwater was at his desk by three o'clock that afternoon. When they changed horses at Brentwood he had instructed the post boy to take them directly to his home in Lord North Street. Both he and Bardolini were jerked rudely awake when the chaise finally stopped outside the terraced house.
The place had been left to Drinkwater by Lord Dungarth with a pitifully small legacy for its upkeep and the continued maintenance of its staff. It was a modest house, the austere earl's only London establishment, which had become home for Drinkwater now that his new post detained him so much in the capital. Ideas of a convenient pied-à-terre for Captain and Mistress Drinkwater had proved impractical. Elizabeth, never entirely at ease in town, had almost conceded defeat, and contented herself with running the small Suffolk estate, while Drinkwater led his own miserable and unhappy existence dragging daily to Whitehall.
He had done nothing to the interior of the house and it remained as it had been when Dungarth occupied it. He had even ordered Williams, Dungarth's manservant, who had performed the joint offices of butler, valet and occasional secretary to the earl, to retain the black crêpe drapes over the full-length portrait of Dungarth's long-dead countess which hung above the fireplace in the withdrawing-room. The gesture had earned Williams's approval and the transfer of loyalty to Captain Drinkwater had thereafter been total.