Ричард Вудмен - Beneath the aurora

'I'll try.'

'Lock your door,' Drinkwater said with a laugh.

When Frey had gone, Drinkwater poured another glass and sat again, to stare into the dying fire as the candles burned low. It was already long past midnight and he would confront Mr Barrow later that day. Finally, after about an hour, he rose, went into the hall and opened the front door. In the street a cold rain fell in torrents; peering out into the hissing darkness, Drinkwater smiled to himself. Turning back into the house he left the door ajar and went quietly upstairs.

Outside Templeton's room he drew a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. He stepped inside; rain beat upon the uncurtained window and he could faintly see Templeton, still dressed, lying upon the bed.

'Captain Drinkwater ...?' Templeton's voice faltered uncertainly. 'Captain Drinkwater, is that you?'

It suddenly struck Drinkwater that Templeton expected to be executed for his crime of treason, murdered perhaps by Drinkwater himself as Bardolini had been assassinated. Instead, he stood motionless and silent beside the open door.

'I tried to get myself killed in the boarding of the Odin ,' Templeton said desperately.

'I know,' Drinkwater replied quietly.

'What... what do you intend to do?'

'Nothing,' Drinkwater murmured, stepping aside from the doorway, 'now be gone.'

Upon the frozen Thames in the Pool of London, between London Bridge and the Tower, there had been a great frost fair for some six weeks. Tents containing circus curiosities and human freaks had been set up, stalls selling everything from patent nostrums and articles of cheap haberdashery to roasted chestnuts were laid out in regular 'streets'. Open spaces were cleared for skating and the populace displayed every scale of talent from the inept to the expert. An émigré fencing master gave lessons with epee or foil to ambitious counting-house clerks, while rustics exercised at single-stick. Bloods rode their hacks on the ice, caracoling their slithering mounts in extravagant daring for the admiring benefit of credulous belles. Fashion rubbed shoulders with the indigent upon the slippery surface, and many a dainty lady lost her dignity with her footing, to the merciless merriment of her acknowledged inferiors.

Whores and pick-pockets abounded, preying on the foolish. Silly young blades were helped to their feet and simultaneously deprived of their purses.

Good ales were served from barrels set upon stands on the ice, whole sheep were spit-roasted and consumed with the relish that only cold weather can endow. London was entranced, captivated by the spectacle.

On the night of 25 January, the night Templeton was released, the warmth of an approaching depression brought heavy rain. This raised freshets in the Thames valley to the west of the capital. The following day the thaw set the frozen river in sudden motion. Tents and stalls were swept away, along with their customers and the curious promenaders whom even six weeks' revelry could not deter.

In the days that followed, far downstream, amid the samphire bordering the salt-marshes of the Kent and Essex shores, the bloated bodies of the drowned washed ashore.

Among them was the unrecognizable corpse of Templeton. He had been quite drunk when the ice melted.

In 1813 Norway was a possession of King Frederick of Denmark, and occasional raids on its coast were made by British cruisers operating in northern waters.

As a result of the second expedition against Copenhagen in 1807, the Danish navy had been very largely destroyed by the British, though a fleet of gun-vessels and one or two men-of-war remained in commission, along with a large and effective fleet of Danish privateers. Subsequent actions between the British and the Danes became notorious for their ferocity.

The Danes also lost the island of Helgoland which, at the entrance of the Elbe, became a forward observation post for the British, and an entrepot for British goods destined for the Continent to break the embargo imposed by Napoleon (a fact I have used as the basis for Under False Colours ). The island remained in British hands for a century.

After the French Emperor's disastrous Russian campaign, the loyalty of his marshalate was severely shaken. Several of these men, who owed their fortunes to Napoleon, made overtures to the Allies. One, Marshal Bernadotte, became heir presumptive to the Swedish crown and, as a result of his joining the Allied camp, was later ceded Norway, afterwards becoming king of the entire Scandinavian peninsula.

Less successfully, Joachim Murat, King of Naples and Marshal of France, 'the most complete vulgarian and poseur', according to Carola Oman, but an inspired if vainglorious leader of cavalry, opened a secret communication with the

British government in the autumn of 1813 with a view to retaining his throne in the event of the fall of his brother-in-law, Napoleon. His rival, the Bourbon King Ferdinand of the 'Two Sicilies', retained the insular portion of his dual kingdom under British protection. Murat's overtures resulted in a treaty with London signed on 11 January 1814. It availed him little; he was shot by his 'subjects' in the following year, and the odious Ferdinand returned to his palace in Naples.

The ambivalent posture of the Americans in their brief war with Great Britain was at odds with their singleminded ambitions towards Canada. Thirty thousand Loyalists had settled in New Brunswick after the War of Independence, a living reproach to the claims of the patriot party, and it was the avowed aim of the war-hawks in Congress to assimilate these and simultaneously liberate the French Canadians from the yoke of British tyranny, to the considerable advantage of the United States.

Between the new and the old worlds lay the Atlantic Ocean, dominated by the Royal Navy which, despite receiving a bloody nose from the young United States' Navy, was by 1813 reasserting its paramountcy. Nevertheless, American privateers continued to operate with impunity and the British were equally equivocal in their attitude to American trade, particularly when it affected the supply of Wellington's army in the Iberian peninsula.

Napoleon, moreover, took an interest in American affairs (his youngest brother Jerome married an American and their grandson was later Secretary of the US Navy, though the lady herself was later repudiated in favour of a Württemburg princess). Napoleon had sold Louisiana and the Mississippi valley as far west as the Rockies to the United States in 1803 with the prescient remark that the Americans would 'fight the English again'. His secret diplomacy thereafter applied pressure to bring about this highly desirable state of affairs.

With Britain contributing 124,000 muskets, 18.5 million cartridges, 34,500 swords, 218 cannon, 176,600 pairs of boots, 150,000 uniforms and an additional 187,000 yards of uniform cloth to the Allied armies for the Leipzig campaign, a similar arrangement between the French and the Americans in exchange for wheat does not seem improbable.

That knowledge of such a deal should form the 'guarantee' of Joachim Murat's good faith and a pledge of his suitability for a throne forms the basis of this story.

Both the British and the American governments were quite indifferent to the fate of merchant seamen, and those Amer­icans lodged in Dartmoor remained incarcerated until long after the signing of the Peace of Ghent ended the war. On 6 April 1815 a riot broke out which left seven American prison­ers dead and fifty-four wounded. It is believed that among the dead were a handful that had earlier escaped and been recaptured.