Julian Stockwin - The Iberian Flame - Thomas Kydd 20

He walked amiably up to Kydd and spoke in French. ‘ Capitaine de vaisseau Jean-Yves Marceau,’ he offered, the eyes as Kydd remembered, cool and appraising. ‘Guest of sa majesté as a consequence of—’

‘Captain Sir Thomas Kydd, and the circumstances I do remember with the deepest of respect, sir,’ Kydd answered in French. So Marceau was a prisoner of war, and as an officer had no doubt given his parole to allow him this freedom. But an educated and polished gentleman of France in Tavistock?

Persephone regarded them curiously. ‘Oh, this is Lady Kydd, my wife. My dear, this is Captain Marceau whom I last met on the field of honour.’

The French captain lifted her gloved fingers to his lips. ‘ Enchanté , m’ lady.’

‘A singular place to meet you again, M’sieur le capitaine, if I might remark it,’ Kydd continued.

Marceau gave a small smile. ‘Having duly lodged my parole with your esteemed Transport Board I was assigned this town to reside, always within its boundaries, in something approaching comfort and refinement, here to wait out the present unpleasantness until it be over.’

‘A civilised arrangement, I’m persuaded,’ Kydd responded. Did captured English naval officers in France have the same privilege? But then a surge of compassion overtook him. This was a first rank sea officer, transported to captivity in the countryside of his enemy. Robbed of the graces and enlightenments of his patrimony, he was eking out his existence, probably of slender means and seldom to hear the language of his birth.

The man bowed, a glimmer of feeling briefly showing.

‘Yet a hard enough thing for an active gentleman,’ Kydd continued. ‘May you travel, sir, visit others at all?’

‘Should I stray further than the one-mile stone on any road away from Tavistock then I shall be made to exchange my present existence for that of the hulks,’ he replied evenly.

It was an imprisonment but of another kind, and Kydd impulsively warmed to the man – wryly recalling that it was his actions that had placed Marceau here.

An absurd thought surfaced and he found himself saying, ‘Then my invitation to your good self of a dinner evening at my manor must therefore be refused?’

Persephone looked at him sharply but he affected not to notice.

Marceau stiffened, then bowed deeply. ‘Your most gallant and obliging politeness to me is deeply appreciated, Sir Thomas, but in the circumstances I should look to be denied.’

‘I regret to hear this, sir.’

The Frenchman paused, looking at him directly. ‘Yet if I trespass further upon your good nature there is perhaps a means to that end.’

‘Say on, sir!’

‘The parole agent of this town may be approached and, for a particular occasion, has the power to grant licence, I’m told.’

Mr Nott was at first astonished, then gratified to make acquaintance of the famed frigate captain.

‘As your request is not unknown, Sir Thomas,’ he allowed, pulling down a well-thumbed book from the shelf above his desk, ‘but seldom granted, I fear.’

‘Why so, sir? I would have thought it a humane enough thing.’

‘Ah. Then you are not aware of the parlous state of affairs in the matter of the confining of prisoners of war in this kingdom.’

It cost Kydd nearly an hour’s listening to the man but it was a sobering and enlightening experience.

The arcane eighteenth-century practice of making such prisoners the responsibility of the Sick and Hurt Board of the Admiralty had been superseded by the equally obscure assigning of them to the Transport Board, known more to Kydd as the procurer of shipping for army expeditions. Captured enemy officers were offered parole or made to suffer incarceration in one of a number of prisons in Britain. Foremast hands had to endure the hulks or prison without the possibility of parole.

Kydd had shuddered at his first sight of the distant lines of hulks in the Hamoaze, and he remembered the Millbay prison louring across the bay from his previous lodging at Stonehouse.

Nott’s duties were to muster his charges regularly, to issue them weekly with the sum of one shilling and sixpence per diem in subsistence, and to handle private remittances, with all correspondence to go through him for censoring before it reached the post office. For their part the French found modest lodgings, which they undertook to return to by curfew, generally eight at night, and to refrain from activity that could be deemed in any way seditious.

He received little enough thanks, Nott complained, and there were increasing numbers absconding, breaking parole, and presumably finding their way back to their home country. It was a growing scandal, especially, as Kydd knew, it was a matter of a gentleman’s honour. The France of Napoleon was a different nation from that of earlier days.

‘Captain Marceau is still here,’ Kydd said pointedly.

‘How do you mean, sir?’

‘If he’d wanted to break his parole he’s had a year or more to do it. I fancy an evening entertainment will not see him inclined to run on its account.’

It cost Kydd a ten-guinea bond but Knowle Manor would know no less a personage than a French frigate captain as a guest to dinner.

Chapter 3

The evening was accounted a success from Marceau’s arrival and extravagant admiration of the oil painting in the hallway, portraying the sublimity of Iceland by an artist unknown to him, to the exquisite manners he displayed at table when good Devon mutton made its appearance, accompanied by a sauce whose piquancy had him exclaiming.

Afterwards, when the cloth was drawn and a very acceptable La Rochefoucauld cognac was produced, the atmosphere warmed further. A dry smile followed Marceau’s complimenting Kydd’s taste in brandy, both leaving unsaid that no doubt it had been a prize of war from a British cruiser on blockade of the region’s big seaports of Rochefort and La Rochelle.

‘Do you hail from those parts, sir?’ Kydd asked, refilling his guest’s glass.

‘Ah, no. Far from the sea. In Auvergne, the Haute-Loire, which is possibly further from the sea than any other quarter of France. Far famed for its divine cheeses – the Saint-Nectaire is of a particular fragrance.’

‘Then, sir, would it be impertinent of me to enquire as to how you heard the sea a-calling?’

‘Like your nation, Sir Thomas, we French are a maritime race at heart. In my youth the sagas of the Pacific explorers stirred my soul – Surville, Jean-François de Galaup, whom you will more probably know as the Comte de Lapérouse. These do still inspire. And yourself, pray?’

‘Oh, a small Surrey town, Guildford. And likewise, far from the sea’s siren call.’

‘And so …?’

‘Taken up as a common seaman and finding myself beguiled, sir.’

‘To reach this eminence? I confess to being lost in admiration at your achieving, sir.’

Kydd coloured. ‘A bitter thing it is that we must war against each other to find our true selves.’

‘As is my feeling too, sir,’ the Frenchman responded in a soft voice, lowering his eyes.

‘I – I do trust you are not overborne in your spirits, as we might say,’ Kydd said. ‘Your situation is not one deserving of a distinguished mariner, to pass his days on shore in idleness and despair.’

‘I bear my lot in patience, sir,’ Marceau said heavily. ‘Yet …’

‘Yes?’

‘Yet it bears upon my soul that I can do nothing for the men I had the honour to command, my ship’s company, who now lie miserably in prison for the monstrous crime of loyally following my orders.’

Kydd’s heart wrung with pity. This was an honourable captain, one who cared for his men yet could do nothing for them. He could hardly conceive of the pain it would cause him if he were in his place to know that, after a ferocious but losing battle, only a prison cell was the reward for each of Tyger ’s company who had fought for him – Stirk, Doud, the cheery captain of the foretop, the sturdy afterguard, the long-service fo’c’slemen – all left to rot their lives away, like any wretched criminal.