Love Under Fire Read online

  He rose and walked to the window.

  “The sun is rising. You will have to make up your mind, monsieur.”

  “Have the Captain brought here,” the Commodore snapped to a French seaman waiting in the doorway, a musket on his shoulder.

  Elvina listened, but she did not understand what was happening.

  She was well aware that Lord Wye had some plan, but she must wait for it to unfold, afraid in the meantime of doing something wrong.

  The Captain was brought to the cabin, his arms had been bound behind him and there was a sullen look of resignment on his face.

  Elvina caught the glance that passed between him and Lord Wye over the Frenchman’s head. Wordlessly Lord Wye had signalled something that the Captain understood.

  He agreed wholeheartedly that his men should help the French vessel tow the yacht into Harbour.

  “What time is full tide?” the Captain asked in English and Lord Wye translated it for him.

  “About six o’clock, perhaps a little later,” the Frenchman replied.

  “If we start to get her off then and take her slowly, there should be no mishaps,” Lord Wye said. “In the meantime my men can make any repairs that may be necessary. They have already reported a small leak in the bow.”

  “I can have it done immediately,” the Captain volunteered.

  “Perhaps, monsieur, you would deem it possible to release the Captain,” Lord Wye suggested gently. “And if the other men aboard are in irons, it would be a wise move to set them free. The sooner they get to work the better.”

  “Yes, yes,” the Frenchman agreed and gave the order.

  “And now another glass of wine, monsieur?” Lord Wye invited him. “I have a claret below that I should very much appreciate your opinion on. After all it comes from your country and I have been told it is the best the Bordeaux valley can produce, but I should value a connoisseur’s opinion on that.”

  The Steward brought more wine and the Frenchman became more genial.

  The sun was rising and Elvina had a great desire to see what lay outside.

  “Might I go and tidy myself?” she asked Lord Wye, wondering if she should add ‘Papa’ to her plea, but feeling that would be embarrassing.

  “I am sure Monsieur Bouvais will be only too pleased to let you go to your cabin, my dear,” Lord Wye replied in quite a paternal manner. “Perhaps it would be wise for you to have a little rest. You passed a sleepless night I am afraid.”

  “She can go,” the Frenchman said, raising his glass once more to his lips.

  “Thank you, monsieur.”

  Elvina curtseyed and went towards her cabin.

  Once inside she did not worry about her appearance, but ran to the porthole.

  It had stopped raining and the sun was shining hazily on the narrow strip of sea that lay between them and the small red-roofed town. There were only a few houses and the pointed spire of a Church.

  “My first visit to France!”

  Elvina said the words aloud despairingly and yet she knew that if they had come ashore South of St. Jean de Luz it would not have helped them much.

  San Sebastián was in the hands of the French, as was most of the Northern coast of Spain. They were prisoners, captured and with no chance of escape, and now the full horror of it swept over her so that she put her hands to her eyes and felt herself shiver.

  Napoleon Bonaparte had been the bogey of Europe for so long that she had grown up with tales of horror and terror, really believing all Frenchmen to be inhuman brutal monsters that no one could trust, least of all a woman.

  She was well aware why Lord Wye had introduced her as his daughter. She knew too, if the stories that were circulated in Lisbon were to be believed, that her youth would not save her.

  It had not saved the children in the parts of Portugal that the French had passed through, pillaging and destroying everything they found and raping every woman, old and young.

  “What will happen to us?” Elvina asked aloud, looking out at St. Jean de Luz.

  It looked so peaceful and quiet. Just a little French village. But she knew that Bayonne, only a few kilometres away up the coast, was one of the major bases of French troops.

  She washed her hands and face, tidied the cabin a little and, making quite sure that there was no possibility of anyone looking at her through the keyhole or through a crack in the walls, she readjusted the dispatches in her bodice, making them at once more comfortable and more secure.

  And then, because she knew that, even if she lay down, she would never sleep, she went back to the main cabin.

  The French Officer was still drinking, but in other parts of the ship there was the sound of hammering and men moving about and of work being done.

  “I wonder if my daughter might entertain you for a few minutes while I change my clothes?” Lord Wye asked. “They are wet and as you see, I am extremely dishevelled. I was just thinking of changing when you came aboard.”

  The Frenchman looked at him suspiciously.

  “Are you trying to escape me?” he asked.

  “It would be quite impossible, would it not?” Lord Wye smiled. “And I am leaving you my daughter as a hostage.”

  “Very well,” the Frenchman said ungraciously.

  “I will leave the door open if that is what you wish,” Lord Wye suggested.

  “No, no your daughter is here,” the Commodore replied.

  Elvina thought that he was being magnanimous, but as soon as the door was closed, he leaned forward across the table.

  “Is that man really your father?” he asked in French.

  Elvina, who spoke French as well as she spoke Portuguese, deliberately hesitated and then answered with an accent as noticeable as Lord Wye’s,

  “Mais oui! He is – my Papa. Did he not tell you so?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen years old – nearly fourteen,” Elvina replied.

  The Commodore seemed to believe this and sat back in his chair.

  “You are wise to leave Lisbon,” he said. “You ought to have brought your mother with you. Marshal Soult will drive the British into the sea and the Portuguese will be punished for harbouring them.”

  “Marshal Soult?” Elvina questioned, her eyebrows raised.

  “Yes, he has arrived at Bayonne. The Emperor sent him and now soon there will be no more fighting in Spain.”

  Elvina had heard of the Marshal and knew that he was one of Napoleon’s greatest Generals.

  “The Emperor must be very angry – about the victory at Vitoria,” she said timidly.

  “Angry! Of course he is not angry. It was not really a victory. We have not enough troops in Spain at the moment. They have been engaged on the Russian front. Now that Marshal Soult is here, that little upstart Army will soon be in retreat.”

  The Commodore seemed so cocksure that Elvina felt her spirits drop.

  “Voilà, but a little girl like you should not worry your head about war,” he added. “You should find other things to occupy your mind.”

  He leered at her across the table and poured himself another glass of wine and Elvina was thankful when a few minutes later Lord Wye returned.

  He had changed completely and he looked very resplendent in a coat as blue as the summer sea, white breeches, a high, snowy white cravat and boots polished until the whole cabin seemed reflected in them.

  He wore a ring on his finger and a jewelled fob hung from his vest pocket. He might just have been going for a walk down St. James’s Street or making a call on the Prince Regent at Carlton House.

  The Frenchman gaped at him, forgetting to drink in his astonishment at such elegance.

  Elvina sprang to her feet.

  “Oh, you have taken off the bandage!” she exclaimed.

  “I hoped you would tie me another one,” Lord Wye answered with a smile. “I am afraid the wound is still bleeding a trifle.”

  “I must bathe it too,” Elvina said. “It looks inflamed – I hope you do not
have a splinter in it.”

  “You must forgive these little domestic details, monsieur,” Lord Wye smiled. “My daughter fusses over me, I excuse her natural anxiety because her mother gave her such explicit instructions to look after me on the homeward voyage.”

  “You are a lucky man,” the Commodore replied. “Malheureusement, I am unmarried and have no one to look after me.”

  “That is indeed a tragedy,” Lord Wye commented.

  He turned to Elvina.

  “You will find clean bandages and a bowl which you can fill with water in my cabin, my dear.”

  “Oh, thank you –” Elvina replied. Then, feeling the Frenchman’s eyes on her, she added a little awkwardly, “ – Papa”.

  ‘There is some reason for his sending me into the cabin,’ she thought as she went towards the door. Once she was inside she realised what it was.

  There were indeed two bandages laid out on a table fixed against the wall, but when she picked them up she found underneath a purse heavy with money. She concealed the purse in the pocket of her petticoat.

  Then she picked up the basin and saw a piece of paper and another purse.

  “If you get the chance,” she read, “give this to the Captain.”

  The purse contained guineas, she thought, and hiding it in her hand beneath the basin, she went back into the cabin and laid the bandages down on the table.

  “I must have clean water for your wound,” she said. “Shall I go on deck and draw some from the water barrels?”

  “I think that would be wisest,” Lord Wye answered. “My head is throbbing and I am only hoping that it is not infected.”

  Without waiting for the Frenchman’s permission Elvina went through the door onto the deck. In one quick glance she saw the Captain standing by the broken mast, giving orders to a seaman.

  Two Frenchmen with cocked muskets were near him listening suspiciously it seemed to her to what he was saying, although it was doubtful if they could understand a word.

  Elvina walked across to him.

  “Oh, Captain. Lord Wye has asked me if you will fetch him some clean water from the water butts,” she said and thrust the basin into his arms.

  The Captain looked up in surprise and was just about to suggest that the seaman should take the basin when he felt Elvina’s hand underneath it. He took the purse from her automatically and she left the basin with him saying,

  “Please draw the water for me, I am not certain how to do it for myself.”

  Turning she smiled at the two French seamen to distract their attention from the Captain.

  “It is a lovely day, messieurs, is it not?” she asked in French.

  “Who taught you to speak our language?” one of them enquired.

  “Your countrymen in the prison camps of Lisbon,” Elvina replied. “I have often been there to visit them and I have written letters for those who were ill in hospital and unable to write home.”

  “Eh bien!” one of them answered. “Come here, ma petite, and give me a kiss.”

  He put out his hand towards her, but Elvina sidestepped adroitly.

  “I have work to do. Your Commodore will be angry if I am away too long.”

  She ran down the deck after the Captain who had reached the water butt and was filling the basin. She knew by now that the purse would be safe within his pocket.

  “Thank his Lordship,” he said in a low voice.

  She did not answer him, fearing that they might be overheard, but merely smiled, took the basin from him and went back to the cabin.

  The Frenchman was still talking somewhat expansively now about the brilliant Generalship of Marshal Soult and the victories he had won on other fronts.

  “How soon do you think he plans his attack?” Lord Wye asked.

  The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.

  “Today, tomorrow, yesterday! Marshal Soult is always in a hurry. He does not let the grass grow under his feet. Before you can say ‘allons-y’ he will be across the Pyrénées and then your long-nosed General Wellington will have to look out.”

  The day seemed to pass very slowly.

  After luncheon, while the Frenchman drank more wine and talked still more boastfully, Lord Wye suggested that the bandages on his head should be changed again.

  Under the basin Elvina found another package of money, this time a slightly bigger one, and on a piece of paper he had written,

  “For Mister Sanders and tell him to distribute three guineas to each of our men on board.”

  She tore up the paper and also the first message that Lord Wye had written into tiny pieces and threw them out of the porthole. Then she took her basin on deck. Fortunately Mister Sanders was by the deckhouse and she passed the package to him as she had done to the Captain.

  This time it was a little more difficult because she had to deliver the message and although she did not think that the Frenchmen who were near them could understand English, she did not dare take a chance.

  “His Lordship says give the men as much water as they wish,” she said at length indicating the water in the butt. “He suggests three pints for each.”

  Mister Sanders gave her a slight almost imperceptible wink and she knew that he understood.

  “Tell his Lordship it’ll be as he wishes,” he answered.

  The tide had turned and was coming in again. The breeze was freshening a little and the waves were slapping against the yacht.

  At last the French Commodore began to stir himself. He ordered the French seamen to get the towrope ready and to manoeuvre their ship into position.

  Lord Wye went on deck with him and offered all possible assistance.

  It was then that Elvina realised he was deliberately playing for time. The towrope that had been provided and which had lain waiting all the afternoon proved to be too short.

  Others were procured only to snap unaccountably as soon as any strain was put on them.

  The French Commodore began shouting instructions and the men in the ship shouted back.

  The Captain, peculiarly flustered it seemed to Elvina over a very small matter compared with what they had all been through last night, gave orders and countermanded them so that the men ran first in one direction, then in another and finally achieved nothing.

  ‘What is Lord Wye waiting for?’ she wondered.

  She looked out to sea and knew that any hope of rescue by an English ship was quite out of the question. The English might have a free passage in the Bay, but they were not so foolish as to come so far inshore.

  Besides what would be the point when the direct route from England lay off Cape Finisterre and down to Lisbon,

  Again and again something went wrong with the towrope. Again and again the yacht seemed about to float, the Frenchmen strained at their oars and nothing happened.

  Time passed. It was very hot, so hot that the Frenchmen, sweating and straining, began to curse and grow disagreeable.

  There was a fierce altercation between the Commodore and his second-in-command. Both grew crimson in the face as they gesticulated and threw their arms about

  “It is time for a rest,” Lord Wye suggested cheerfully. “Let’s splice the main brace for everyone. Come on, monsieur, join me in a tot of rum. It will do us all good.”

  The rum, and a very large ration of it, ladled out under a hot sun, made everyone seem to sweat the more. But still the yacht would not move.

  It was past seven o’clock and the sun was sinking before finally they achieved a small movement in her position.

  A cheer went up from the French ship.

  This time the towrope was holding and slowly, very slowly she was coming to starboard.

  “Row, curse you!” the Commodore shouted at them. “Row! Row!”

  By straining every muscle and every sinew the Frenchmen got her off the sandbank and out to sea.

  “They have done it! Congratulations, monsieur, a very fine piece of work!” Lord Wye exclaimed. “It was entirely due to your ideas and your organisation.
I do indeed congratulate you.”

  Elvina could not help but be amused to see how the Frenchman lapped up the flattery.

  “And now we must celebrate, monsieur,” Lord Wye went on. “You have done the impossible. You have saved my yacht. She is afloat and before we go onshore, another drink is obviously called for. There is no hurry now.”

  He raised his hands to his mouth,

  “Splice the main brace!” he shouted.

  The French seamen, who understood what this meant if they understood no other word of English, cheered heartily.

  “No, no, we will go into Harbour right away,” the Commodore expostulated.

  “You could not be so unkind when they have worked so hard,” Lord Wye said taking his arm. “Come back to the cabin and we will split a bottle of something really worth having.”

  He gave a signal to the Captain. Already another barrel of rum had been rolled up on deck and the Frenchmen had stopped rowing and were standing up shouting for it

  “Non! Non! Etes-vous fou?” the Commodore began.

  But he had drunk too much for too long and he was not used to the quality of the wine that Lord Wye had been plying him with.

  There was brandy on the cabin table, brandy so strong that he hiccoughed after a few sips.

  “Magnificent stuff!” Lord Wye said raising his glass as if to a toast.

  “Dites donc, we must get on. We must get into the Harbour!” the Commodore cried.

  At the same time he took a long drink of the cognac and then another.

  Lord Wye filled his glass again.

  “To your good fortune, monsieur, and may you find a beautiful woman to share it with.”

  The Frenchman rocked with laughter at that.

  “I can find lots of women to share my fortune,” he said. “Too many. What I want is a steady sensible wife with a big dowry.”

  “Ah! They are hard to come by,” Lord Wye answered.

  “Il n’y a plus à dire!” the Frenchman exclaimed. “But now Marshal Soult is arriving, we shall see some very beautiful women in Bayonne. Voilà une idée, my Lord, if you are imprisoned in Bayonne, you will be able to see them from the prison windows! It should amuse you, even though you cannot get any nearer.”