“Not’ing!”
“Nothing?”
“Well, some fool move by St Petersburg. They order troop into Moldavia, ’at’s all.”
“Ah. Now I understand. You Russians, it seems, have taken Ottoman possessions in the Balkans by force, expecting no reaction from Constantinople to a rather pointed expansion of the Tsar’s empire at their expense. It seems they’ve been rather forgetful in omitting to inform you of their intentions.”
Italinski glowered, then pointedly turned to bark orders at some uniformed flunkeys.
“My cabin?” Louis suggested smoothly, to Arbuthnot, leaving the Russians to sort themselves out.
Kydd hesitated, then went with them.
“Now, sir, we have a problem,” Louis said immediately. “If we’re seen to be sheltering these Russians it will only inflame the mob and I would not reject the possibility that it becomes a focus for their anger, which will then be directed at us.”
“Do you think I have not thought of this?” Arbuthnot said scornfully. “The solution is obvious.”
“Sir?”
“You will set sail immediately with the Russians on board.”
“A wise course,” Louis said in relief. “Captain Kydd, are you ready to sail?”
“The frigate is not involved. It will not sail.”
“Not … sail? It’s your decision, Ambassador, but in all frankness I cannot-”
“In your profession you’re not expected to understand the finer points of diplomacy, Admiral. This is a capital opportunity to remonstrate with the Sublime Porte in a strongly worded note to the effect that this unrest only points to an urgent need for a realignment of interests and so forth.”
He drew himself up. “And it may have slipped your mind that there are British residents, merchants, commercial agents, those who so loyally assist in the Black Sea trade, all gazing upon us in trust that we will not desert them. I will not, sir!”
Kydd picked up a certain shrillness in the tone. If this man was misreading the signs, they were all in the most deadly peril.
Canopus sailed under cover of dark, and in the morning L’Aurore lay alone to her moorings.
A pale sun revealed sullen knots of people ashore, the flicker of a fire here and there indicating their intent to stay. Set against the backdrop of the Oriental splendour of grand palaces and domes, the air of menace was unnerving.
Arbuthnot kept to his cabin until the afternoon, when he appeared with an elaborately sealed document. “I desire this be landed at the Topkapi Steps and signed for by the grand vizier.”
“You’re asking I risk a boat’s crew to-”
“They will not be troubled by the palace functionaries there, Captain. Please do as I request,” he snapped.
An eerie unreality hung about the anchorage but at least the mob was beginning to break up and disperse, either through boredom or a cooling.
Night came. Kydd was taking no chances and posted double lookouts and hung lanthorns in the rigging.
The hours passed.
A little before midnight there was a faint cry in the darkness. Alerted, the watch-on-deck stood to and saw a boat come into the pool of light from the lanthorns. A man stood up in the thwarts and asked in a quavering voice if the ambassador was still aboard.
“Wake Mr Arbuthnot,” Kydd said, when he was told. “There’s something afoot.”
They reached the deck together. “One to come aboard, Mr Curzon.”
A bent figure painfully made his way up the side.
“Why, it’s Mr Dunn,” Arbuthnot said, in astonishment. “This is very irregular! What brings you here?”
“Oh, Your Excellency, sir, dire news.”
“Go on.”
“My man-whom I trust with my life-comes to me with dreadful tidings.” The merchant’s hands writhed together as he tried to find the words.
“He knows of a dreadful plot, Excellency, one that chills my blood, so it does!”
“Please be more specific if you will, Mr Dunn.”
“Sultan Selim plans to take all Englishmen hostage at once against what he’s been told by the Frenchmen is a return of Nelson’s fleet to take revenge upon their dishonouring.”
“What are you talking about, ‘dishonouring?’”
The whites of the man’s eyes stood out in the half-light.
“I beg your excellency’s pardon, but your retiring to this ship was cried up by the French as fear and-and faintness, this being what they say, not me.”
“And?”
“They say your big ship ran away from just a few Turkish ruffians and-”
“Enough! This is insupportable. That craven Sebastiani and his devilish plots touch on my honour. I will not allow that by any wight.”
Dunn continued, “Excellency, my people are fearful of their fate. If the sultan seizes them they may well suffer the same as the Wallachian hospodar. Hostage, and put to torture to bring a quick yielding by others.”
Arbuthnot snorted with contempt and shot an angry glance at Kydd. “You see, Captain? If you’d shown more backbone when …” He stopped, breathing hard. “I’m feeling ill. I’m going to my cabin.”
Kydd was left standing with an astonished Dunn.
“What shall we do?” he stammered. “Your common Turk is not nice in his manners when roused.”
“Sir, to be truthful I cannot think what to advise.”
The boat disappeared into the night, leaving Kydd to try to make sense of what was happening.
One thing was certain: it were better that L’Aurore prepared herself for any eventuality.
She went to single anchor, and sail was held to a spun-yarn for a rapid move to sea. Guns were awkwardly loaded inboard out of sight but not run out-every second one with canister. Lieutenant Clinton posted his marines in two watches the length of the vessel, and arms chests were brought up for use in repelling boarders.
Apart from this, there was little else he could do, given that the dangers they faced were all but unknown.
The first of the terrified refugees began arriving within an hour or two of Dunn’s departure. They babbled of wild rumours, troops marching in the streets, looting of warehouses and desperate panic as fear spread.
Before daybreak it had turned to a flood-merchants, clerks, families, hapless servants, all turning to the only safety they could see: L’Aurore.
It was hopeless. The gun-deck was crowded with sobbing, desperate humanity; there could be no working the guns, no defences. More climbed up until every clear space was crammed with people-there had to be an end to it.
As dawn turned to morning the tide of incomers had ebbed but Kydd was left with few options.
“Wake the ambassador and tell him we’ve a decision to make.”
The midshipman quickly returned with a message that Arbuthnot was too ill to consider discussions. He refused the offer of a naval surgeon to attend on him.
Kydd knew very well what that meant, but it was a release: he could make the decisions alone.
If even half of what was being rumoured was true they were in mortal danger. He had no right to risk his ship and all aboard simply to maintain the fiction of a British deterrent. If it meant that watchers ashore would take it as a fleeing, so be it.
“Hands to unmoor ship! Get us under way, Mr Kendall.”
Bowden pointed at the moored ships-of-the-line. “Sir …”
There were crew running down the decks and disappearing below and other activity at the capstans. Manning the guns and warping around? It could be quite innocent-or the first step in a coup.
L’Aurore’s anchor cable was coming in slowly, impeded by the crowded decks. “Mr Curzon, get those lubbers flatting in at the jib. I mean to cut the cable and cast to starboard.”
It was the last degradation but L’Aurore had to make the open sea before the cataclysm closed in. The carpenter took his broad-axe forward and, with several blows, parted the anchor cable, which plashed with a finality into the Bosporus.
“Let loose!”
With a fair wind L’Aurore stood away for the Dardanelles and freedom.
CHAPTER 6