Kydd stared at the chart, willing some winning idea to strike but none came. The coldness of defeat began closing in.
“Mr Gursten.” The officer hurried to his side. “This spit o’ land. What’s it like?”
“Ah, you will call it the ‘Vistula Spit’ on account of the ancient and debased natives by that name living there. It has very few settlements and stretches for fifty miles or more.”
“My meaning was, what is the nature of the ground thereabouts?”
“It’s still well wooded, for farming is hard in sand. I should say firm, suitable for troops on the march.”
“I see.” A glimmer of an answer was emerging. It would need much labour but there were hands to spare in the besieged army.
But first he had to see for himself.
His boat’s crew were by the jetty, Halgren’s bulk unmistakable. About them was a square of Prussian militia on guard. The subaltern screamed an order to bring them to quivering attention, then stamped about to salute him with his sword.
A few hours later Kydd’s boat under sail had passed out of the Frisches Haff entrance to the open sea and turned left down the coast, touching bottom at the right spot opposite von Hohenlau’s encampment out of sight across the lagoon.
Kydd trudged up the beach and found himself in a light wood, continuous for miles on both sides. Crossing to one tree he inspected it. A four-inch bole and, as was usual with Baltic timber, straight as a die. It would do.
He walked on into the wood. There was leaf litter but, underneath it, hard-packed sand. Further on, the trees thinned and there was the lagoon, and some few miles across he could see tents and banners, eddying wisps of cooking fires and what was probably a marching column.
Yes!
“I shall want to remove to Pillau to set up my headquarters,” he demanded on his return.
Soon he was installed on the top floor of a bastion in the Pillau Citadel, the star-shaped fort he’d seen. It commanded a formidable view down the length of the spit, a fine sight of the open sea to the right and the passage to Konigsberg to the left.
Gursten was set to produce a corps of runners, then was dispatched to make contact with General von Hohenlau, carrying a sheaf of written instructions for the resupply plan.
From Tyger Maynard, a master’s mate, was sent for to man the rudimentary signal mast, arriving with a determined Tysoe bearing Kydd’s necessaries and two wide-eyed ship’s boys for general duties.
Then it was down to work.
Eight coastal ships were selected and prepared. Cargo holds were cleared, dunnage battens laid and on the wharf the first stores appeared ready for loading, according to the priorities relayed back by Gursten.
And at the spit the pioneer battalions set to in earnest.
They fell on the timber, lopping down trees by the hundreds in a swathe from the sea to the lagoon. Some were fastened together as rafts, others laid to form a wooden road across the spit-and, astonishingly, they were ready!
Kydd was there when the first brig anchored in the offshore shallows.
Right away it started discharging into a waiting raft on one side, and when that was loaded, turned to another on the other side while the first was hauled ashore. Waiting carts took the stores across the spit and a raft was again loaded.
In the lagoon there were pairs of ship’s boats manned by well-muscled Prussian sailors with a line each to the raft and a continuous relay was set up that rapidly had stores in a satisfactory flow. On their return the rafts carried a different cargo-wounded men, some ominously still, others writhing in pain, but mercifully on their way to Konigsberg’s hospital.
Opposite the Prussian Army, they could not be touched by French guns and the flow of relief could go on unimpeded. Now there were only two things that could stop it: an enemy attack from the sea or the weather.
With Tyger’s sturdy silhouette to seaward, there was vanishingly little likelihood of the first, and with summer approaching its height, the balmy breezes threatened nothing more than cloudless radiance.
It could only be reckoned a success. A workmanlike solution to a military problem in the best traditions of the service … but Kydd felt restless. It had all been too easy, too straightforward.
He fell exhausted into his cot at the citadel and did not wake until morning. Reassured that all was as it should be, his apprehension eased. He had done it. The army was relieved and he had performed what had been asked of him-but then he realised that this was only the first part, the establishing of a resupply route. What had been requested was the guarding of same.
Dart and Stoat were still with him but their value lay in inshore defence against daring strikes by privateers and such. Tyger had to be there to provide an unanswerable deterrent against whatever else could be brought against them, such as a determined swarm of the vermin.
There was nothing for it but to remain until Tyger was relieved. That shouldn’t be long-his was a first-rank fighting frigate and the job could just as easily be done by a light frigate or ship-sloop. Three or four days to get word to Russell and, with a fair westerly, less to detach one of his force. If he was lucky, a week and he’d be on his way.
He should be making an appearance in Tyger but he’d been led to believe that an entertainment had been planned for this day in his honour and it would be churlish to absent himself. Besides, he knew Bray would be relishing his time in temporary command.
The reception at the Grand Palace was to be followed by an orchestral concert.
In his star and ribbon and full-dress uniform, Kydd cut an impressive figure as, with Gursten at his side, he entered the glittering room, remembering to render obeisance to King Friedrich Wilhelm, then award bows of recognition this way and that. In a short while he was surrounded by admiring officers and ladies and the evening swept on in a swirl of gaiety and noise.
Yet underlying the exhilaration and animation he could detect a darker element lurking. Not two score miles away Napoleon Bonaparte and his legions were lying in encampment. Nothing stood between them and that host but Bennigsen and the Russians.
CHAPTER 18
UNUSUALLY, KYDD WOKE LATE but didn’t hurry in his dressing. He’d return to Tyger some time after their dog-watch leisure-time and let the inevitable waiting paperwork slide to the next day. Meanwhile he and Dillon could walk off the previous night’s excesses in the old city with Gursten.
Konigsberg was an agreeable place and they spent some hours in leisurely exploration of the old Hohenzollern capital. However, when they returned they were urgently hustled to the war room.
“There have been developments-not good. Come!” Blucher snapped, stamping towards an inner room.
He slammed the door and pointed to a map. “Bonaparte-he manoeuvres to deceive us.”
Kydd looked down at the pencilled wavy line going to the southeast separating the two armies.
“We have spies. They say that in the rear, concealed from us, there have been large-scale movements across here by Davout and Soult. To the east!” Before Kydd could say anything, Blucher continued, “This means we’re to be outflanked. Bennigsen’s stand is for nothing. He must pull back and face about. His orders now no longer have meaning. Von Hohenlau’s role to stay in position and threaten Bonaparte’s rear is absurd and I won’t be bound by it.”
Blucher stood back, arms folded. He fixed Kydd with a steely glare. “His Imperial Majesty concurs that our forces must be restored to us. Von Kydd, I request you will take off Generalleutnant von Hohenlau, his men, stores, horses and guns.”