Dead Reckoning

Chapter One

TO THE INDIES

"IAM HAPPY to inform you, Captain Delancey, that you have been appointed to command the frigate Laura of 32 guns. She is refitting at Portsmouth but should be completed next month. Perhaps you know the ship?"

No, sir. I am honoured, however, by the Board’s confidence in me.

She is an old ship, the First Sea Lord here referred to a document, "though far from being the oldest. She is one of the Amazon-Class ships and was Thames-built in 1773, mounting twenty-six 12-pounders and a dozen 24-pounder carronades. She measures 684 tons, is established for a crew of 215 and is 126 feet 3 inches long on the gun-deck. Her recent service has been in the West Indies, from which station she was brought home for repair. She is a useful ship of her class, handles well and was last commanded by Captain Chastleton, who died last year at Bermuda. The Laura is to be stationed in the East Indies but is more immediately to sail on a particular service, forming part of a squadron under the command, as Commodore, of Sir Home Popham. He is presently in town and you will, no doubt, wish to call on him. Good-day, Captain, and I wish you every success."

Delancey made his bow and withdrew, going to collect the essential documents from the outer office. Then he was in Whitehall and walking slowly towards Charing Cross. The East Indies! The idea of it might seem attractive on a cold autumn day but there was much else to think about. It was the most distant station, remote enough to be forgotten, a place where fortunes were made by the fortunate, a place where many died and where others gained promotion. A few years back he would have welcomed the prospect of visiting the mysterious East. As a lieutenant or as a captain not yet posted, he would have seen it as a great opportunity but he felt now that the posting had come too late. He was already on the captain’s list, depending only on seniority for his further promotion. He already had a small estate and a modest independence. Above all, he was married. There were officers, he supposed, who would take their wives with them to India but he could never be one of them. To see Fiona losing her beauty, becoming sallow, suffering from dysentery, dying of fever—all this was unthinkable, a risk to which she should never be exposed. But the alternative was a long separation. How could a marriage last with the husband away for years? Marriages did survive that test, as he knew, and the more easily if there were children. But he and Fiona were still childless and he wondered if it was fair to desert her for as long as four or five years. Was it not asking too much of her? It would be long enough, good god, for him! But he had his profession, his frigate, his men to look after, his King’s enemies to fight. She would have only a house and garden, her friends to entertain, her dog to exercise, her letters to write. He had been married now for three years and he and Fiona were still deeply in love. He was still apt to wonder what he had done to earn such happiness. He could remember a time when his friends were telling him that his fortune was as good as made; that a match was possible which would bring him lands and wealth and the protection of a great family. He might have dined with admirals, made friends with ministers, picked his own 38-gun frigate and chosen his station. He had perversely rejected that prospect, if it really existed, and had married a young woman without relatives or estate, an actress who was not even legitimate, a girl with nothing to offer but outstanding beauty, strong character, and native intelligence. This, he had been told, was the end of his high prospects in the service. He would be employed, to be sure, while the war lasted but he would have only a mediocre ship (like the Laura, and he could picture her) packed off to a distant and fever-ridden station. There would be no knighthood for him, no Order of the Bath, no presentation to the Sovereign. He had no regrets on that score. Fiona meant more to him than any honour the world had to offer. He would make the same choice once more if the clock were to be put back, leading him to make the same decision again. And yet he would have liked, in a way, to have an assured and brilliant future. People might sneer at Fiona’s background and he supposed that they did, an actress, at one time, being thought little better than a prostitute, but he would have liked to see her take precedence of them all as Lady Delancey. More than that, she could play the part more gracefully than the majority of those who had been born to it.

Although moving in no glittering circle, Delancey and Fiona were no longer compelled to lodge at his old address in Albemarle Street. They were now the guests of Colonel Barrington, whose town house was on the west side of St James’s Square. A widower and now crippled with gout, the Colonel was little seen in society these days. He had, however, a wistful admiration for Fiona and a liking for Richard, they having been originally introduced to him by Delancey’s American cousins. The Colonel was always very ready to lend them his carriage, of which he himself made little use, and this allowed the Delanceys to appear with an air of affluence at the few functions to which they were invited. Delancey, as on this occasion, was happy to walk the short distance from the Admiralty to St James’s Square and would have thought it no hardship to walk from Westminster to St Paul’s. He was coming to realize, however, that no man of fashion would walk so far and that he might have to mend his ways. Or did it matter? Their stay in London must soon end. The result, moreover of his posting to the East Indies would be to confine poor Fiona to their home in Guernsey. She could not well appear in London without him and this would deprive her of much that she valued and not least the theatre. As a former actress she loved going to the play, so she and Delancey had been keen patrons of Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and both of the theatres in the Haymarket. Fiona’s idol was Mrs Siddons, whose provincial appearances, extending to Bath, would hardly bring her to St Peter Port in Guernsey. The more he thought about his immediate future, the more depressed did Delancey become. To refuse the command of the Laura would ruin his career in the service; to accept it might well ruin his marriage. Such were his gloomy thoughts as he paced along Pall Mall. Fiona would be waiting to hear the result of his visit to the Admiralty. How, for heaven’s sake, was he to tell her?

Fiona! The mere name had still, for him, a magical quality. She was very lovely but her beauty mattered less, perhaps, than her vitality. She could not enter a room without everyone turning towards her. She was normally smiling but with a special warmth for her friends and a bright-eyed touch of mischief on occasion and a look, as if sharing a secret, which she kept for children. She was not clever in the more obvious sense but she was always kind, so much so that Delancey had never known her speak ill of anyone. What was it that set her apart? Her way of doing or saying the unexpected? The way she danced where others seemed only to shuffle or plod? There was nobody in the world, he knew, who resembled her at all.

Delancey turned the corner into St James’s Square and was admitted by Colonel Barrington’s servant, who took care of his hat, cloak and sword. It was a splendidly proportioned hall panelled in white, floored in black-and-white chequered marble and with more than a hint of the East, with elephant tusks, a tigerskin rug by the fireplace, and a portrait of Warren Hastings (a copy of the Reynolds portrait) at the end of the stairs. Before he could go upstairs to the drawing-room, the old, white-haired, red-faced, and spectacled Colonel hobbled out of the library and asked him how he had fared with their Lordships.

"I am posted, sir, to the Laura, of 32 guns, a frigate destined for service in the East Indies."

Zounds, I hardly know whether to call this good news or ill. The frigate is a bigger ship than your last, to be sure, but—the East Indies! For your good lady this will come as a disaster. Can you not refuse the appointment?

"No, sir, not if I am to remain active in my profession. The Laura is bound, first of all, on a particular service. Were I to refuse this opportunity I should scarcely be offered another. It would be different for a man with independent means or with great parliamentary interest but, lacking either, I must take what I am given and make the best of it."

I see that and my hope must be that this voyage will make your fortune as many another fortune has been made in the East. We shall see you as a Nabob yet! But for how long will you be overseas?

Four years would be the average, sir, I fancy, but five or six years would be nothing out of the way.

S’death! Don’t say that to your good lady in as many words. Tell her, dammit, that the war will end in a year or two—as well it may—and that peace will lead to your recall.

They were standing in the hall and at this moment Fiona appeared from the first-floor drawing-room and stood at the head of the stairs.

Pray what is this conspiracy, gentlemen? Can I not be a party to it? Quickly—what is the news?

"I am to command the frigate Laura and go on a particular service; afterwards to the East Indies."

There was a moment of silence and then Fiona exclaimed:

See how well you are thought of! No secret expedition can sail without you! And once the business is concluded you will be chosen to bring home the dispatch. That’s how it will be!

She was so lovely, so eager, so young. Delancey was halfway up the stairs by now and Fiona was halfway down. She was in his arms, laughing and crying at the same time.

Depend on’t, I shan’t be away for long.

Of course not, my love . . . a few months at most!

Forgive us, Colonel. said Delancey, we have urgent matters to discuss.

They went to their room and Delancey did his best to comfort her. They both knew exactly what this posting could mean but neither would admit it. Each was thinking, although neither mentioned the name, of a Captain Jennings, an acquaintance they had made at Lady Hertford’s Ball. Jennings had been eight years on the East Indies station and had returned a man of some wealth, successful in prize-money, retiring from the service and becoming Member of Parliament for a pocket borough in Cornwall. But his India Stock and his Hampshire estate had been dearly bought, for he was a mere wreck of a man, sallow-faced, thin and trembling, the victim of hepatitis and malaria. For all practical purposes he was finished save as a silent vote in the government’s interest. Was this to be Delancey’s fate? He was a fine man, Fiona knew, healthy and vigorous, but the same could once have been said of Jennings.

From thinking of Jennings, Delancey went on to think of his own elder brother Michael, who had gone to the East Indies and had never come back. He was dead, most probably, there having been no news of him for years. How many went to the East and how few of them were seen again! In his arms that night, Fiona cried for a while and then resolved bravely to make the best of it.

When you have sailed, my love, I shall go back to Anneville. And do you know how I have it in mind to pass the long months until you return? I shall make ours the finest garden in the Channel Islands! Do you remember our reading together how Mr William Shenstone, the poet, laid out his gardens at the Leasowes? He was never a rich man but he so contrived matters that his gardens became famous and were visited by people from far and wide. When you come ashore I shall say ‘You are now the owner of a garden which has been painted by the best-known artists and described in verse by the most celebrated poets!’

And what shall I do for you in return? I cannot promise to bring you riches. All I can promise is to draw and paint the landscapes of Asia, collect and press the foreign flowers, and try to bring back with me all of the East that was worth going to see.

They were very close to each other during the following weeks, each clinging to a love which was so threatened, each knowing that their time was short, that the refitting of the Laura was inexorably nearing completion. They had soon to leave London, saying good-bye to Colonel Barrington and other friends and taking up temporary residence at the George in Portsmouth. Delancey had already secured the appointment of Nicholas Mather as his first lieutenant, with the Hon. Stephen Northmore as master’s mate, with Topley and Stock as midshipmen. From his last ship, the Vengeance (28), he had managed to bring a few men, including Luke Tanner, his coxswain, and John Teesdale, his steward. His other officers and men were strangers to him and had still to arrive; many on the lower deck had still, indeed, to be recruited. The Laura herself was out of dock but still being rigged, fitted, equipped, and stored. There could be no denying the ship’s age but Delancey knew that she would look well when painted and varnished. Fiona was insistent that Richard should have good cabin furniture with a carpet and curtains, with new and better cutlery, glass and plate. Under pressure from her, Richard had already acquired a new uniform in London and he was now made to buy a dozen more shirts and stockings and a new cocked hat. With a settee in his day cabin and decanters on his sideboard, he was beginning to look like the senior officer he had now become. As soon as she was in the ship Fiona found that all the men in sight had become her slaves; the carpenter and sailmaker to begin with, followed by Teesdale and his assistant Fuller, the gig’s crew and all the boys the ship could muster. Even workmen from the dockyard would make any excuse to be near her. The final result was a set of captain’s quarters such as Delancey had seen before but never possessed.

When the Laura dropped down to Spithead, Fiona insisted on sleeping aboard so as to discover what it was like. Look! she cried in the morning. "When we went to bed the Isle of Wight was here on this side, and now it has moved round over there! I find it all most confusing!" Mather, who was staying at the Star and Garter, came to dine with the Delanceys at the George. Over the port Fiona encouraged him until he was almost witty. Asked how he had managed to remain a bachelor, he explained that for a first lieutenant to marry would be a sort of bigamy, he being already married to his ship. Considering this idea, Fiona had to allow that Laura was at least a feminine name. She hated to think that he had once been married to Vengeance! Seeing Mather’s look of dumb admiration directed towards Fiona, Delancey could hardly picture him as the firm disciplinarian he knew him to be. He thought himself lucky, however, to have one key man on whom he could rely. The purser was at first the only other officer appointed, a colourless man called Arthur Finch but one who evidently knew his trade.

Delancey had met Sir Home Popham in London, calling on him as etiquette required. He was received with a cordiality which was also dismissive and he saw little of the Commodore, therefore, until he arrived at the George. As from that time Delancey began to realize that Sir Home was a most unusual character. He was known chiefly in the service as the inventor of the telegraphic signalling code which had just been adopted. By a little inquiry, however, Delancey established the fact that Popham had commanded an Austrian Indiaman, had served ashore under the Duke of York, and had been knighted by, of all people, the Emperor of Russia. He was active and clever, as most seamen had to admit, but some old and peevish officers questioned whether he was reliable. He impressed Delancey as very much a man of the world, moving easily among the great and regarded among them as an authority on matters scientific.

Glad to have you in my squadron, said Sir Home to Delancey. "I should like you to meet my other officers: Captain Donovan of the Diadem, the ship which wears my pennant, Captain Josias Rowley of the Raisonable, Captain Byng of the Belliqueux . . ." They all bowed to each other and the Commodore explained that the squadron would include four sail-of-the-line, a 50-gun ship, three frigates, a sloop, and a gun-brig. These would have to escort a fleet of transports, in which troops would be embarked, and there would also be a large convoy of merchantmen. They were to be joined presently by Major-General Sir David Baird, a fine soldier with long experience in India. Did Delancey know the General? Delancey did not, except of course by reputation. Sir Home went on:

When his name was mentioned to me by the Prime Minister I ventured to say that he could not have made a better choice. Now, like everyone else, you will be wanting to know the object of our expedition. Well, I must not tell you! No one is to know other than the General and myself. Security is all important and we count upon the effect of surprise. I hope, by the way, that your ship has been issued with signal flags of the latest pattern?

The supper party which followed was a pleasant occasion and Delancey gained a very solid respect for Josias Rowley, who seemed to be an admirable officer in every way. About Popham he could not quite make up his mind. He found himself guessing at the expedition’s object. With a Commodore and some obsolete 64-gun ships there could be no naval battle in prospect. No attempt was to be made, then, on enemy territories in Europe. But why a sepoy General? Then he remembered that Baird had served at the Cape of Good Hope in 1795 when it had been captured during the last war. It had been handed back to the Dutch as a result of the peace treaty and now the time had come to take it again. Baird and Popham knew the Cape already, so did Rowley and Byng. Yes, it would be the Cape, the ships and men being carefully chosen and the Laura added to the squadron as an afterthought, being destined for the East Indies after the Cape was in British hands. He thought it likely that the squadron and convoy would sail in separate divisions and reassemble somewhere on the way to the Cape. Would the Dutch put up much resistance? He hardly thought it possible. Given the choice between French and British control they would probably choose the latter, knowing pretty well what to expect.

When able to rejoin Fiona, Delancey told her that he had been well received by Sir Home Popham.

He sees himself as a great man, on a level with ministers and general officers. He is certainly clever, diligent, and attentive to the welfare of his own men. He does his best to prevent his seamen using bad language—I wonder with what success? I have been told that he is a Fellow of the Royal Society and I can well believe it. He was very civil to me.

So he should be, my love! He must have noticed how well you look in your new uniform, made this time by a fashionable London tailor.

He could look at nothing else, being consumed by jealousy. He would have done better, though, to see you in the gown that you are wearing. What stuff is it?

A sprigged muslin, dear—what else?

Some people would think it scarcely decent.

It is meant to be only barely decent.

On decency I insist. Remove the gown this instant! . . . How does it come off?

Very readily, my love. I’ll show you . . .

They were never more in love than at this time, aware as they must be that their time was short and that their separation might be long. There were moments when Delancey would mutter something about quitting the service but Fiona would not hear of it. She was the more cheerful of the two, doing her best to hearten him. He must remain, she insisted, the gallant captain she had fallen in love with—unless, indeed, he could return from the Indies as an Admiral.

You forget, love, that I not long since became a post-captain! It will be enough for me if I return from the Indies with both arms, both legs, and nothing essential lost.

"It will be enough for me if you return soon!"

When the Laura was nearly ready for sea, Delancey was given sealed orders. He was to escort a group of West Indiamen down Channel and break the seal on reaching a certain latitude. "To the West Indies? Fiona exclaimed, But that is surely to go the wrong way? No one has provided their Lordships with an atlas! Delancey had to explain that nearly all the outward-bound trade must set off in the same direction, separating only when the South Atlantic had been reached. There was little risk of interception because the French fleet which had been lately at sea was now back in Cadiz and blockaded there. There let it stay!" said Fiona but Delancey doubted whether it could stay there for long. The French ships could not be supplied at Cadiz and so would be forced to sea, where Lord Nelson would be waiting for them. There would be a battle and this should hasten the end of the war. On this note the two lovers parted, Fiona standing at the Sally Port and Delancey saluting her as his gig pulled away from the stair. She was still there, a forlorn figure, still waving, when the gig passed behind some anchored ships and was lost to view.

It’s dreadful, this part of it, ma’am, said a middle-aged woman, addressing Fiona. "My husband is boatswain of the Hercules and has been mostly at sea these twenty years. I am used to being without him but I never get used to this moment when the ship sails. I’ll feel better in a day or two. It’ll be the same with you, ma’am, you’ll see." Thus consoled, Fiona presently went on board the Guernsey packet and set off for the island which was now her home. She would not worry, she told herself, she would not grieve nor complain of loneliness. The more she was occupied the more quickly the time would pass. In a year or two—perhaps, for all she could tell, in a matter of months—the Laura would be back in Portsmouth. It was her cue—as they used to say on the stage—it was her cue to be very brave indeed. Back in Guernsey she laid ambitious plans before old Carré, her gardener, who advised her to hire some extra staff. So a boy called Pierre was recruited and was the target for much abuse from the cook and the indoor maids. By the time of Richard’s return, Fiona told herself, it would be a home and garden to be proud of.

On a cold and foggy day in November Fiona heard the church bells ringing in the distance and supposed that there must be tidings of victory. The servants heard rumours but more reliable news was brought later in the day by old, bronzed and white-haired Captain Savage. As soon as he was shown into the drawing room, he came out with it:

Good and bad news together, ma’am. The French and Spanish fleets have been all but destroyed in a battle off Cadiz but Lord Nelson was hit, shot by a musket-ball and died soon afterwards. No victory as complete was ever known, ma’am!

Thank God that Richard wasn’t there!

He would rather have been present, depend on’t, ma’am. But frigates play little part in a general engagement. He will gain more credit, I dare say, where he is. Have you heard from him yet?

No word yet, Captain Savage. He sailed as one of a squadron ‘on a particular service,’ under the command of Sir Home Popham. He could be at the North Pole and I none the wiser!

My guess would be that he is at the Cape of Good Hope. I heard some rumour of it and that would seem to be the most likely place. There were troops, you see, under General Baird, which could only mean that a landing was intended. We took the Cape before and gave it back to the Dutch. I fancy that we’ll take it again and decide, this time, to keep it.

"Let’s hope that we take it quickly and easily and that the Commodore sends the Laura home with his dispatch. But how sad about Lord Nelson! He was well liked and so much the hero! Poor Lady Nelson!"

Lady Nelson? Ah, yes—Lady Nelson, to be sure. A sad day for her and indeed for all of us.

But surely this victory should hasten the time when peace is made?

I dare say, ma’am. But you must remember that the Emperor Napoleon, as he calls himself these days, has still the upper hand in Europe. We have not defeated him on land.

Oh, dear, I suppose not. So you think the war will go on for many more years?

There was no resisting the appeal of the girl’s tearful eyes.

I expect Napoleon will tire of it and decide to live at peace with his neighbours.

Wouldn’t that be good news? He must see in the end that fighting does no good and that it is better to be friends.

Yes, to be sure. He’ll see reason before long, depend on’t. Then we’ll have Richard home again, he and many others who have been at sea for so many years. It would be good to be at peace again.

Then the newspapers came with Collingwood’s dispatch and all the details of ships taken and men killed or wounded. It was the end of February 1806 before news came of General Sir David Baird’s conquest of the Cape of Good Hope and there came soon afterwards two letters from Richard; one written from Madeira, the other written from Table Bay. The