‘Aren’t you going to thank me?’
Ducos’ voice was sour with undisguised irony. ‘The Empire is most grateful to you. Captain Killick.’
‘Grateful enough to fetch me some copper sheeting?’ Killick’s French was excellent. ‘That was our agreement.’
‘I shall order some sent to you. Your ship is at Gujan, correct?’
‘Correct.’
Ducos had no intention of ordering copper sheeting sent to the Bassin d’Arcachon, but the American had to be humoured. The presence of the privateer captain had been most fortuitous for Ducos, but what happened to the American now was of no importance to an embattled France.
Cornelius Killick was the master of the Thuella, a New England schooner of sleek, fast lines. She had been built for one purpose alone; to evade the British blockade and, under Killick’s captaincy, the Thuella had become a thorn in the Royal Navy’s self-esteem. Whether as a cargo ship that evaded British patrols, or as a privateer that snapped up stragglers from British convoys, the schooner had led a charmed life until, at the beginning of January, as the Thuella stole from the mouth of the Gironde in a dawn mist, a British frigate had come from the silvered north and its bow-chasers had thumped nine-pounder balls into the Thuella’s transom.
The schooner, carrying a cargo of French twelve-pounder guns for the American Army, turned south. Her armament was no match for a frigate, nor could her speed save her in the light, mist-haunted airs. For three hours she was pounded. Shot after shot crashed into the stern and Killick knew that the British gunners were firing low to spring his planks and sink his beloved ship. But the Thuella had not sunk, and the mist was stirred by catspaws of wind, and the wind became a breeze and, even though damaged, the schooner had outrun her pursuer and taken refuge in the vast Bassin d’Arcachon. There, safe behind the guns of the Teste de Buch fort, the Thuella was beached for repairs.
The wounded Thuella needed copper, oak, and pitch. Day followed day and the supplies were promised, but never came. The American consul in Bordeaux pleaded on Cornelius Killick’s behalf, and the only answer had been the strange request, from Major Pierre Ducos, that the American take a chasse-marée south and investigate why the British collected such craft in St Jean de Luz. There was no French Navy to make the reconnaissance, and no French civilian crew, lured by British gold, could be trusted with the task, and so Killick had gone. Now, as he had promised, he had come to this lavish room in Bordeaux to give his report.
‘Would you have any opinion,’ Ducos now asked the tall American, ‘why the British are hiring chasse-marées?’
‘Perhaps they want a regatta?’ Killick laughed, saw that this Frenchman had no sense of humour at all, and sighed instead. ‘They plan to land on your coast, presumably.’
‘Or build a bridge?’
‘Where to? America? They’re filling the damned harbour with boats.’ Killick drew on his cigar. ‘And if they were going to make a bridge, Major, wouldn’t they take down the masts? Besides, where could they build it?’
Ducos unrolled a map and tapped the estuary of the Adour. ‘There?’
Cornelius Killick hid his impatience, remembering that the French had never understood the sea, which was why the British fleets now sailed with such impunity. ‘That estuary,’ the American said mildly, ‘has a tidefall of over fifteen feet, with currents as foul as rat-puke. If the British build a bridge there, Major, they’ll drown an army.’
Ducos supposed the American was right, but the Frenchman disliked being lectured by a ruffian from the New World. Major Ducos would have preferred confirmation from his own sources, but no reply had come to the letter that had been smuggled across the lines to the agent who served France in a British uniform. Ducos feared for that man’s safety, but the Frenchman’s pinched, scholarly face betrayed none of his worries as he interrogated the handsome American. ‘How many men,’ Ducos asked, ‘could a chasse-marée carry?’
‘A hundred. Perhaps more if the seas were calm.’
‘And they have forty. Enough for four thousand men.’ Ducos stared at the map on his table. ‘So where will they come, Captain?’
The American leaned over the table. Rain tapped on the window and a draught lifted a corner of the map that Killick weighted down with a candlestick. ‘The Adour, Arcachon, or the Gironde.’ He tapped each place as he spoke its name.
The map showed the Biscay coast of France. That coast was a sheer sweep, almost ruler straight, suggesting long beaches of wicked, tumbling surf. Yet the coast was broken by two river mouths and by the vast, almost landlocked Bassin d’Arcachon. And from Arcachon to Bordeaux, Ducos saw, it was a short march, and if the British could take Bordeaux they would cut off Marshal Soult’s army in the south. It was a bold idea, a risky idea, but on a map, in an office in winter, it seemed to Ducos a very feasible one. He moved the candle away and rolled the map into a tight tube. ‘You would be well advised, Captain Killick, to be many leagues from Arcachon if the British do make a landing there.’
‘Then send me some copper.’
‘It will be dispatched in the morning,’ Ducos said. ‘Good day to you, Captain, and my thanks.’
When the American was gone Ducos unrolled the map again. The questions still nagged at him. Was the display in St Jean de Luz’s harbour merely a charade to draw attention away from the east? Ducos cursed the man who had not replied to his letter, and wondered how much credence could be put on the words of an American adventurer. North or east, bridge or boats? Ducos was tempted to believe the American, but knowing an invasion was planned was useless unless the landing place was known. Yet one man might still tell him, and to know the answer would bring a victory, and France, in this bitter, wet winter of 1814, was in need of a victory.
‘Looking for us, sir?’ A midshipman in a tarred jacket stood at the top of weed-slimed watersteps on St Jean de Luz’s quay.
‘Are you the Vengeance?’ Sharpe looked apprehensively at the tiny boat, frail on the filth-littered water, that was to carry him to the Vengeance. Sharpe had received a sudden order, peremptory and harsh, that offered no explanations but merely demanded his immediate presence on the quay where a boat from His Majesty’s ship Vengeance would be waiting.
Four grinning oarsmen, doubtless hoping to see the Rifle officer slip on the steep stone stairs, waited in the gig. ‘The captain would have sent his barge, sir,’ the midshipman said in unconvincing apology, ‘but it’s being used for the other gentlemen.’
Sharpe stepped into the rocking gig. ‘What other gentlemen?’
‘No one confides in me, sir.’ The midshipman could scarce have been more than fourteen, but he gave his orders with a jaunty confidence as Major Sharpe crouched on the stern thwart and wondered which of the ships moored in the outer harbour was the Vengeance.
It seemed to be none of them, for the midshipman took his tiny craft out through the harbour entrance to buck and thump its bows in the tide-race over the sandbar. Ahead now, in the outer roads, a flotilla of naval craft was anchored. Amongst them, and towering over the other vessels like a behemoth, was a ship of the line. ‘Is that the Vengeance?’ Sharpe asked.
‘It is, sir. A 74, and as sweet a sailor as ever was.’
The midshipman’s enthusiasm seemed misplaced
