Ричард Вудмен - Beneath the aurora

Lieutenant Sparkman eased off the second of his mud-spattered boots with a relieved grunt, and kicked it beside its companion. Leaning back in the chair he wriggled his toes, picked up the tankard beside him and gulped the hot rum flip with greedy satisfaction. The heat of the fire drew steam from the neglected boots and a faintly distasteful aroma from his own feet. The woollen stockings were damp, damned near as damp as the Essex salt-marsh alongside which he had ridden that afternoon. Boots were no attire for a sea-officer, he reflected, though he had heard hessians were increasingly fashionable among the young blades that inhabited His Majesty's quarterdecks nowadays. But as an Inspector of Fencibles, Sparkman was no longer what might, with justice, be called a 'sea-officer'. His sore arse testified to the time he spent in the saddle and he promptly set the thought aside. He avoided disquieting recollections, having learnt the wisdom of jettisoning them before they took root and corroded a man's good temper.

True he had been disappointed in his expectations in the naval service, but he had little to complain about since swallowing the anchor. After all, the path of duty was not arduous: the Red Lion at Kirby-le-Soken was a comfortable enough house and the landlord a convivial fellow, having once been at sea himself. They would doubtless share a glass or two before the night was out. Sparkman stretched himself again and swallowed more rum; he should reach Harwich before noon next day, which was time enough; he had no intention of starting early, for the weather had turned foul and there was little improvement expected. He half cocked an ear at the wind blustering against the Red Lion's sturdy walls and the faint rattling of tiles above his head. Periodically the fire sizzled and smoked as, through some vagary of the chimney, a spatter of rain was driven down against the updraught.

He wriggled his toes again, content: in Harwich there was a chambermaid in the Three Cups who was worth the effort, despite the weather, for Annie Davis had taken a shine to him on a previous visit and would share his bed for a florin.

The easterly gale which had begun that morning threatened to blow for a week, a wind which, despite its ferocity, would once have had every Tom, Dick and Harry on the coast fearing invasion. Those days were over, thank heaven. The French were on the defensive now, hard pressed by Great Britain's Continental allies. News had arrived of the check administered by the Emperor Napoleon to Schwarzenburg's Austrians; but the two Prussian armies had achieved success. One under Blucher, had surprised Marshal Macdonald on the Katzbach River and had routed him with the loss of 20,000 Frenchmen and over 100 cannon; while the second, commanded by von Bülow, had caught Marshal Oudinot south of Potsdam, and had defeated him at Gross Beeren. Moreover, all the while, knocking at the back door of France Lord Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army steadily advanced across the Pyrenees out of Spain.

Sparkman yawned and cast a glance at the dank leather satchels hung across the back of the room's other chair, dripping darkly over the floorboards. He thought of the report he should have been writing on the sea defences along the coast of the Wallet. It seemed a rather small and trivial task, set against this vast ebb and flow of soldiers marching and counter-marching across war-weary Europe.

Well, so be it. To the devil with his report! He would write it when he arrived at Harwich, after he had had a look at the redoubt there (and taken his pleasure on the plump but enthusiastic body of Annie Davis). The Martello towers from Point Clear to Clacton were sound enough, even if their garrisons were tucked up in Weeley barracks, a good hour or two's march from their posts.

'There's a manned battery at Chevaux-de-Frise Point,' Sparkman muttered to himself, easing his conscience, 'and no damned radeaux will put to sea without the free-trade fraternity knowing about it, never mind an invasion fleet'

The wind boomed in the chimney and rattled the small window, emphasizing the drowsy snugness of his room under the thatch. He recalled an old woman who had passed the time of day with him in a lane that morning. Pointing to the proliferation of wayside berries, she had croaked that it would be a hard winter; perhaps the crone had been right. He continued to toast his feet and look forward to a chat with the landlord, a beef pie and clean sheets all in due time, teasing himself with anticipation at parting Annie's white thighs.

He was dozing when the landlord burst in. An uncivil clatter of boots followed him on the wooden stair. It was clear his host's abrupt entry had precious little social about it.

'Mr Sparkman, sir, Cap'n Clarke is here demanding to speak with you.'

For a moment the tired Sparkman was confused, the rum having drugged him. He woke fully to an ill-tempered resentment, irritated that men such as Clarke should call themselves 'Captain'. The upstart was no more than Master of a smuggling lugger.

'I don't know a Captain Clarke ...' he began, and then Clarke himself was crowding into the room, with two ruffianly seamen in tarpaulins and a fantastically bewhiskered and cloaked officer whose moustaches curled extravagantly beneath a long nose. The quartet were soaked, their clothes running with water, which rapidly darkened the floor, mixing with the mud from their boots.

'Oh, yes you do, Sparkman,' Clarke said grinning, 'we need no introductions. But I have brought someone you haven't met yet.' Clarke drew off his low beaver and threw out an arm with a mock theatrical gesture. 'Colonel ...'

The grotesque apparition threw back his cloak with a flourish that showered Sparkman with water, to reveal a scarlet plastron fronting a white tunic laced with silver.

'Colonel Bardolini, Captain,' the stranger announced in good English, shrugging himself free of the restraining seamen and flicking his extended wrist at Clarke in dismissal. 'I am come on an embassy to the English government. You are a naval officer, yes?'

'Rummest cargo I ever lifted, Mr Sparkman,' Clarke put in, ignoring the foreign officer.

'I daresay he paid you well,' retorted Sparkman, who had recovered something of his wits at this damp invasion. With wry amusement he observed that this Bardolini shared his own opinion of Clarke. 'You were ever one to drive a hard bargain,' he added obliquely, referring to a past transaction over some bottles of genever.

'This is different,' Clarke said darkly, "e ain't French, 'e's Italian.'

'I am Neapolitan,' said Bardolini, firing his sentences like shot. 'I am in the service of King Joachim. I have papers for your government. I am a person of some importance.'

'Are you now,' said Sparkman 'and what proof...?'

But Bardolini had anticipated resistance and whipped a heavily sealed paper from the ample cuff of his white leather gauntlet.

'My passport.' He held the document out. 'I have plenipotentiary powers,' he declared impressively.

Sparkman had only the vaguest understanding of the Neapolitan's claim, but a respect for the panoply of administrative office bade him be cautious. He slit the seal and with a crackle opened the paper.

'Signor, please, these men ...'

Sparkman looked up and nodded to the smuggler. 'Tell your men to be off, Clarke,' he ordered and then, as the seamen retreated, clumping down the stairs, he asked, 'Where did you pick this fellow up?'