“Not very hopeful,” the other man, the elder by a handful of years murmured, joining the Governor in comfortable chairs below the large portrait of a long dead predecessor, Lord John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore. Not for nothing had all subsequent Governors kept a portrait of John Murray, who as Governor of Virginia, having been forced to flee from Williamsburg after the burning of Norfolk by the rebels in January 1776, returned only after the destruction of the Revolutionary Continental Army on Long Island in the autumn of that year. Lord Dunmore’s experience in 1776 had served as a salutary lesson to all successor governors over the last two centuries.
The lesson that must never be forgotten was that: adversity came and went; but the Empire prevailed through thick and thin.
“It’s a bloody disgrace, that’s what it is!” Philip De L’Isle shook his head, forcing himself to get a grip of his ire.
“Lady Henrietta managed to get a call through to Government House while you were out,” Henry Rawlinson reported.
“Oh, damn,” his friend groaned, horribly guilty to have missed his daughter’s transatlantic call. “How did she sound?”
“As bright as bell. I think she plans to stay in Portugal a little while longer. Apparently, it is likely Miss Danson will be travelling to England soon.”
“Of course,” De L’Isle nodded. “Matthew,” he recollected, feeling a new pang of loss for an old friend no longer in this world, “always maintained that woman might have been made for intelligence work.” If anybody had been qualified to make that judgement it must, assuredly have been Matthew Harrison, the long-time Head of the soon to be defunct Colonial Security Service.
“Hen spoke of plans to adopt that young orphan boy that she and Miss Danson rescued in Spain.”
“Oh, surely an unmarried woman can’t do that?” Philip de L’Isle queried. Such a thing would certainly not be entertained in any of the East Coast Colonies.
“I didn’t like to delve into that. However, she seemed confident that she had everything under control.”
The proud father relaxed, chuckling under his breath.
Reluctantly, he turned his thoughts back to business.
“Henry, what am I supposed to make of what I’m being told about this Washington fellow down in,” he forgot where the damned man was from, scowled and tried very hard to remember.
“Trinity Crossing, Unincorporated North Texas,” his friend helped out.
“Yes, that must be the chap.”
“He was captured by the Spanish in the last unpleasantness down there. He met General Santa Anna while a prisoner of war. The two of them got on quite well, by all accounts. Anyway, had it not been for Washington, and his men’s heroics, some historians think we might have lost that war too. Or rather, certainly taken a lot longer to win it!”
“We haven’t lost this one yet, Henry!”
“No, of course not. Not yet.”
The Governor grinned ruefully.
“I gather he’s a man of around our own vintage?”
“Yes…”
Philip De L’Isle recollected how hidebound certain sections of the British Army had been in his time in uniform, and doubted an awful lot had changed in the intervening decades.
“Why on earth isn’t he in charge down there?” He couldn’t possibly have made a bigger mess of it than dear old Chinese Forsyth; I can’t think where London found him?” He had another thought. “Does anybody know what happened to Forsyth, by the way?”
Sir Henry Rawlinson recognised that this was an entirely rhetorical interrogative and held his peace other than to ruminatively shake his head.
“Washington?” The Governor of New England thought aloud. “Why does that name have such a familiar ring to it?”
His Chief of Staff looked up, meaningfully, at the portrait on the way.
Philip De L’Isle groaned anew.
“Oh… Yes, he was that rascal the Howe brothers finally cornered on Long Island, wasn’t he? What was it that bounder Isaac Fielding wrote about him? With the death of George Washington, the Revolution’s last best hope of survival died! Or something like that, what!”
His old friend chortled.
“Oh dear,” he rumbled, “we’ve been over here too long, Philip!”
“I’ll drink to that,” the Governor of New England smiled.
Not everything was lost; nobody was exhorting him to pack up his chattels and flee from Philadelphia. Unlike poor old John Murray, he still had a passable hand to play in this game. So, all things considered, he was not about to be run out of Government House like a whipped dog. Not quite yet, anyway.
The first time Philip De L’Isle had been briefed about the existence of Project Poseidon – by Cuthbert Collingwood on his appointment to Government House some three years ago – he had known that when news of the scandalous disregard for the Submarine Treaty finally broke that there would be repercussions for whoever had the misfortune to be in residence in Downing Street at the time.
Back in London, the Prime Minister, Sir Hector Hamilton had submitted his immediate resignation to the King on their return from Germany.
Poor old Hector had been the man in possession; axiomatically, he had had to fall on his sword. De L’Isle hoped, without much cause for optimism, that the cull would end there but doubted it. The Government would almost certainly fall; there would be a General Election and probably, sometime in the next few weeks, he would be reporting to a new Foreign and Colonial Secretary.
Given that he was one of only half-a-dozen men, the others were nearly all senior naval officers, ‘in on the great secret’, it seemed more likely that his days in Philadelphia were numbered.
I ought to feel a little more upset about that than I actually do…
However, the fact was that all things considered, right now, the idea of spending his declining years pottering around the De L’Isle family seat, Penshurst Place in Kent, bouncing his grandchildren on his knee, was positively seductive!
He shook his head.
“Washington,” he breathed wryly, “George Washington, indeed.” He snapped out of his reverie, coming to an abrupt and by any rational criteria, very nearly reckless decision of the type he had studiously avoided taking during his military and diplomatic career. “Right, if that nincompoop Forsyth doesn’t turn up again in the next forty-eight hours, we’ll tell London we want Washington put in charge down in Texas.”
Something like alarm flickered in Sir Henry Rawlinson’s rheumy eyes.
His whiskey glass might easily have fallen out of the numb fingers of his hand at that particular juncture.
“Is that wise, Philip?”
“I’m not sure wise comes into it. Dammit, Henry,” the Governor of the Commonwealth of New England sighed, “this isn’t India. We don’t have a ready-made British Officer corps in situ who have lived among and understand the people. It is high time we trusted a New Englander. I sometimes despair of London. Don’t they know their history? It was New Englanders like that fellow Sherman, you know the one, the chap with the funny Indian name, and Roger Lee’s great-great-great grandfather – I can never work out whether he was three or four times removed, not that it matters – who finally made the difference in France in the Great War. If we had learned the lessons of the last couple of wars with the Mexicans, which our military people have singularly failed to do, we wouldn’t be in this position now!”
The Governor’s friend had recovered his sangfroid, and nodded sagely but elected not to offer any comment.
The Governor of New England drained his glass.
“You and I know that this war has been coming for a long time, Henry. We both tried to warn the Prime Minister and the Foreign and Colonial Office, and we’ve talked ourselves blue in the face with the people at the War Office, and the bally Army Department,” Philip De L’Isle went on, his exasperation simmering just below the surface. “I know the King has always been on our side but time and again the needs of the Commonwealth of New England have been subordinated to those of the broader Empire. So, we are where we are, and now this trouble has blown up in Germany we aren’t going to get anywhere near everything we want or need. At sea, we know that Lord Collingwood will do what he can do. Operation East Wind is hopefully the start of the fight back, notwithstanding, I suspect that if the FCO didn’t have its hands full with the Berlin imbroglio they’d probably be trying their best to tie Cuthbert’s hands behind his back. That’s the trouble with Whitehall, they’re obsessed with organising the peace without a thought for fighting and winning the damned war first! Honestly, it’s ridiculous, here we are in a major war in the Americas and might soon be in another in Europe, and those fools in London are still behaving as if there’s nothing a little bit of gunboat diplomacy can’t solve!”