He looked directly down the table. “And here we have Mr Edward Dillon, my pro tem confidential secretary following the elevation of Mr Renzi and about to take up his duties. Here’s to you, sir, and may your time in L’Aurore be a happy one!”
“Th-thank you, Sir Thomas. I’ll strive to win your approval.”
“And that’ll be a hard beat t’ windward, I’m thinking,” the sailing master, Kendall, muttered, addressing his glass.
“How so?” Clinton, the Royal Marine lieutenant, asked mildly.
“In course he’s a-following in Mr Renzi’s footsteps.”
“Ah. That I can see,” he answered, nodding wisely.
“Aye, and a rare hand, him, wi’ his learning an’ such.”
“Not forgetting his undoubted talents in the article of intelligence ashore,” Bowden added respectfully.
“Always to be relied on t’ tip us the griff on any foreign moil.”
“And a taut hand wi’ a blade an’ all.”
“Remember ’im in Corfu? Coming it the Russky, then gets the Frogs to hand over their papers?” Oakley chortled. “Heard they’s all a-tremble as he tells ’em to!”
“And there was Curacao,” Bowden said, in admiration. “And Marie-Galante. I don’t rightly know what he was about, but the admiral seemed mightily pleased at the end of it all.”
Dillon blinked nervously. “I-I really can’t say that-”
“Pay no mind to them, Mr Dillon,” Kydd said kindly. “Your duties will not include adventures such as Mr Renzi had, have no fear about that.”
The morning dawned cold and damp but the dark shapes of the convoy columns continued to lumber on ahead, a quick reckoning telling that none had strayed during the night. Familiar routine had the watch-on-deck about their duties and looking forward to their burgoo.
“Mr Calloway?”
“Sir?”
“You aren’t planning on making Mr Dillon’s day more confusing than it already is for him, are you?”
“What, me, sir?” the crestfallen young man answered.
“Yes, you, sir. I’ve a need for that gentleman’s services in the shortest possible time and it’s your job to see he takes inboard his nauticals at the gallop. None o’ your tricks with finding the key to the starboard watch or how to swing a sky hook, you rascal. Just show him the ship’s main particulars and have him speaking some sea lingo that makes sense. Compree?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“And our newest reefers?”
“A useless pair, sir, but they’ll shape up, or I’ll know the reason why.” Calloway had himself started sea life as a runaway waif and clearly had his views about mollycoddled young gentlemen.
“Piping the eye, homesick both. They’re together in Mr Bowden’s watch. I dare say he knows how to teach ’em their duty,” Calloway added.
Dillon arrived, clutching a large notebook and pencil, and wearing a suitably studious expression.
“This is master’s mate Calloway, Mr Dillon. He’s to teach you the essentials, which I trust you’ll absorb in quick time.”
“You’ll not find me wanting in application, Sir Thomas. Mr Calloway?”
Kydd found quickly that he did indeed have a call for a secretary-in fact, a sore need.
Barely into their voyage there were so many papers at his desk clamouring for his attention. In the course of things, Renzi would discreetly have sorted them for priority and importance before ever he saw them, flagging those needing thought and deliberation as opposed to the “requiring signature” rained on him by an officious ship’s clerk.
It was too much to expect of his new man at this stage, and as well there were confidential matters that he’d have to handle himself until there was sufficient trust. He was becoming acutely aware that the task, with its complexity and delicacy, was not one for a temporary jobbing secretary. He needed one who would grow into the job and see it as a long-term prospect.
Was Dillon the man to take it on? His talk of seeing the world might be satisfied in full by the time they reached Gibraltar and Kydd would have to look for another. With Dillon’s romantic notions it was not an impossible prospect.
Moodily, he gazed down the deck forward where the watch was bending on a fore-topgallant. A routine procedure, furling and sending down the old sail for repair first, it still required skill and timing. It was Brice in charge at the foot of the mast and Kydd stopped to watch.
The boatswain had immediate control of the men on the yard and Brice was standing impassive, letting Oakley and the topmen get on with it. This was a good sign, demonstrating his understanding of the intermeshing authority of petty officers and men, whose trusting interdependence could so easily be perturbed by interference from the outside.
Once, he had spotted a fouled clew-line block out of sight of the boatswain; with crisp, efficient orders he had dealt with it and returned authority to the boatswain immediately. The officer’s seamanship was faultless, no doubt the result of the close-quarter responsibilities he’d have encountered in his small brig in stormy waters. Given a good report from Bowden, he’d have him take full officer-of-the-watch duties earlier rather than later.
A hail from the masthead told of landfall.
Ushant. The strategic hinge point of France where ships for the Mediterranean and further south turned sharply left; those to the New World set out on the long beat into the broad Atlantic.
It was a point of convergence for ships of every nation leaving Europe or inward-bound from overseas to the great ports of the north-and therefore a prime target for privateers of all flags.
In a well-escorted convoy, they had little to fear from those vermin but such a concentration of wealth was a tempting prize. Any stragglers would be set upon without mercy and, as if knowing this, the convoy seemed to huddle even closer.
“Yes, Mr Dillon, that’s France, and on that little grey island are some of Napoleon’s finest, with cannon and muskets enough to fire into us and do us harm.”
The young man had come up and was staring across the sea with an intense fascination at the first foreign shore he had seen, and that of the enemy to boot.
The wind still in the north, it couldn’t have been fairer for the long stretch across the Bay of Biscay to Spain and around to Gibraltar.
The far-off grey island was momentarily hidden by the white of a line-squall of rain, and when it reappeared it was appreciably further along as they passed it.
Since those days long past when, in Teazer, these were home waters, Kydd had always felt unease at passing through this foremost hunting ground for sea predators anywhere in the world. The sooner they made the open sea of the deeply indented Bay of Biscay the better he’d like it.
It was not to be.
With the craggy island abeam, a trap was sprung. From the sheltered lobster-claw-shaped inlet of Lampaul Bay sail was sighted emerging-and more, still more-on a direct course to intercept.
Kydd snatched Curzon’s telescope and steadied on the sight. Still some five miles away but in a perfect situation were at least two corvettes and a cloud of lesser craft, possibly privateers, and any number of the inshore vessels the French were employing in ever-increasing numbers to take the war to the British.
It was well conceived: the same northeasterly that was bearing the convoy southward was being used against it, for as it passed the island the crowding hunters would fall in astern of it-to windward, where they could harry the slower merchantmen at will.
And two corvettes: these were ship-rigged, like a frigate, and although smaller, a pair together could take on one, certainly of lighter register like L’Aurore. And while the smashing match was going on, the pack of smaller craft would overwhelm the few escorts and it would be a massacre.
“To quarters, Mr Curzon.”
It was plain what had happened: while the convoy was assembling in Portsmouth someone had carelessly mentioned its destination in a waterfront tavern and French agents had picked up on it, giving them plenty of time to mount their ambush.
Dillon’s face was flushed with excitement. “They’re not our boats, then, Sir Thomas?”