The Royal Yacht had reached the Konig Wilhelm. The German band broke into the British National Anthem. Some of the elderly peers on board the Danube, well fortified with champagne by now, began to sing.
‘Send her victorious
Happy and Glorious!’
The Prince of Wales looked particularly pleased with the reception from his cousin’s fleet. He bowed stiffly to the party on the deck.
‘That fellow in the white suit, the one not in uniform, Rosebery, do you see him? That is Charles Harrison.’ Powerscourt pointed to the bridge of the Konig Wilhelm.
‘Is he, by God,’ said Rosebery. ‘He’s got well away. He’s back among his own people now. That’s German territory, that ship. British police have no jurisdiction on board there.’
The German band had moved on to ‘Rule Britannia’. The peers were singing heartily.
‘When Britain first, at heaven’s command,
Arose from out the azure main . . .’
Powerscourt was remembering the conversation with his old tutor in Cambridge. Had Brooke not said that the leader of the secret society was an officer in the German Navy? Perhaps he was the Captain of the Konig Wilhelm.
‘This was the charter of the land
And guardian angels sang this strain . . .’
And then Charles Harrison saw Powerscourt. The same look of astonishment passed across his face that had crossed Powerscourt’s a few minutes before. He scowled. He shook his fist at them across the water. He shouted something in between the verses.
Powerscourt thought it was ‘One day we’ll get even with you, you’ll see.’ Johnny Fitzgerald thought the parting message was slightly different: ‘One day we’ll send you to the bottom of the sea.’ With a final shake of his fist he disappeared below the decks of the Konig Wilhelm.
‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves . . .’ Some of the peers were stamping their feet on the deck as they bellowed out the chorus. ‘Britons never never never will be slaves.’
For a split second Powerscourt didn’t know what to do. He looked round suddenly to make sure Lady Lucy was safe. She was chatting happily to an elderly peer. Harrison was escaping back to Germany. He could never be brought to justice now for all his crimes. But then, Powerscourt realized, he had won. Harrison’s plans had been thwarted. The City of London had been saved. The Irish rifles had been intercepted. Lady Lucy was safe.
He waved back across the water, as if saying goodbye. Fitzgerald and Rosebery joined him in the salute as the Royal Yacht passed on to the end of the line and turned back towards Portsmouth. The Konig Wilhelm band had fallen silent. ‘Rule Britannia’ had finished.
‘I tell you one thing,’ said Rosebery cheerfully, looking at the contrast between the old German ship and the assembled might of the Royal Navy. ‘They say he wants to build a fleet to rival ours, that Tirpitz and the bloody Kaiser. Well, just look at the difference between what they’ve got and what we’ve got. It’s going to take them a bloody long time.’
Suddenly, in the midst of this vast Naval Review, Powerscourt and Lady Lucy found themselves completely alone on one side of the boat. The other passengers had gone to inspect the flagship of the Imperial Russian fleet on the other side of the Danube.
‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, in a voice she hadn’t heard for weeks, ‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘Yes, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy, her eyes sparkling brighter than the shine on the ship’s polished brass.
‘It’s just that with all this charging around and about,’ said Powerscourt, trying to sound grave and serious, ‘we’ve hardly had any time to ourselves at all.’
Around and behind them the vast display of naval pomp and arrogance, the cruisers, the destroyers, the battleships might have been in the Pacific Ocean rather than the peaceful waters of the Solent.
Lady Lucy teased him. ‘I do hope your shoulder’s better,’ she said with a mischievous smile.
‘I think it’s almost better now.’ Powerscourt removed the sling and put his left arm around Lady Lucy’s waist in a trial run. He held her tight.
‘What were you going to suggest, Francis?’ His wife gazed innocently up into her husband’s face.
‘Let’s go home, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt.
’Francis,’ Lady Lucy replied, ‘that would be delightful. I’m rather tired of hotels just at the moment. Let’s go home.’