Devil to Pay Read Online Free Page B

he suspected was a noble family. He liked Moncrieff, however, and envied him his resolute and carefree manner. What he could not understand was the choice of the Vicomte de Mortemart for a supposedly dangerous mission. That young man had seemed nervous, ill at ease, longing only to hear that the mission had been cancelled. He might feel the same himself but he had not, he hoped, allowed his feelings to become so obvious. That was something he had learnt as a midshipman or even before that at school. He paced the deck until it was almost daylight and then went below for breakfast in his cabin. This was his first command of anything larger than a ship’s boat and he resolved to make the most of it. He had at least the privilege of breakfasting alone.
    He now had the leisure to inspect the
Royalist
from stem to stern. She was a lovely craft built at Dover in 1778, originally called
Diligent
but renamed—obviously by the prince. She measured 151 tons, mounted ten 6-pounders and was established for a crew of 55. Her lines were beautiful, her mast raked at a dashing angle, her paintwork black and cream, her sails almost as white as when new. She had rather the look of a Post-Office packet—that hint of the thoroughbred—and her only fault, according to the boatswain, was a little too much weather helm. By the carpenter’s account she leaked hardly at all. Looking along her deck and seeing the guns exactly in line, he thrilled to realise that he was the captain. The paint had flaked off a hatch coaming and he told the carpenter to see to it. The jack had wrapped itself round the jackstaff and he sent a boy to unravel it. He examined the cutter’s trim from the other side of the harbour and made a mental note to look at her hull when the harbour dried out. The success of some future operation—and the survival of all his men—might depend upon what he did (or forgot) while the cutter was in harbour. There was much to do and all too little time, he suspected, in which to do it.
    The town church clock was striking twelve as Delancey entered D’Auvergne’s office overlooking the harbour. Bassett, Moncrieff and Mortemart were already there and D’Auvergne arrived soon afterwards, accompanied by a mousy and ill-dressed civilian he introduced as “Mr A.” Without ceremony he told the others to sit while he uncovered a map of France which was pinned to the wall. As contrasted with his role of the previous day he was now merely a captain in the navy, his manner that of an officer on duty.
    â€œWhat I have to tell you, gentlemen, is strictly secret, not to be revealed to any living soul outside this room. The French Republicans have an army of some twenty thousand men at St Malo, collected there for an attack, we believe, on Jersey. Lord Moira has nine thousand men here and as many again at Portsmouth, with a fleet of transports under Admiral Macbride. The French royalist forces north of the Loire—the men of the Resistance we might call them—are believed to number about fifty-five thousand, mostly in the vicinity of Angers. . . .” (He pointed to the area on the map). . . . “They would be in still greater strength if they had not been defeated last December at Saveney. Now, our enemies might expect us to reinforce the garrison at Jersey, remembering how that island nearly fell to the French during the last war. But the King’s ministers have decided, instead, on a bolder stroke— with, of course, His Majesty’s approval. Their plan is to capture Cherbourg with the help of the insurgents. Once that port is in our hands we can land there the cannon, the muskets, the powder and shot which the royalists need. Once their forces join ours, making (say) a hundred thousand in all, we shall be able to reconquer France and restore the monarchy. The success of this masterstroke—and it is nothing less—must depend in the first instance on us, on the men in this