Chapter Thirty-seven
The night became totally black and the road just a half-visible track as Lord Bond and Count Rostov galloped past scores of soldiers fleeing from the battlefield. They had not left the chateau of Brienne until Count Pahlen and his cavalry had attacked the poorly placed Young Guard in the open left flank of the French advance and the Field Marshal had been pleased to “teach them a lesson”. Then they had taken the south road toward St-Dizier to look for the Cossacks.
They soon passed the last of the scattered infantrymen and then had to ride slowly lest they should come across French troops on this road. The moon lowered itself into the trees and the only guidance they had were occasional glimpses of the stars between racing clouds.
“Do you think they came this far?” Bond asked. “When they saw the marching columns of the Young Guard, they surely turned away from the road and went south to look for allied units.”
Count Rostov shook his head. “They sent the two back to Brienne to report so they could remain in ‘no man’s land’ between the armies for a purpose.”
“They wanted to look for loot? Surely the whole allied army knows it is forbidden. The generals do not want to stir up the French citizenry against us.”
“Cossacks are Cossacks,” Rostov said. “That is why we are here to watch them.”
“Then we will never find them tonight,” Bond said. “We should go back before we blunder into a French cavalry screen.”
“You are probably correct, but it is a matter of pride for me.”
“How much is your pride worth? A French cavalry lance up your arse?”
Rostov drew rein. “You have a very persuasive manner of speech, my friend. What do you suggest?”
“We take the next road south that we find and see if we can rescue some poor lost infantry. We will come back tomorrow to find your Cossacks.”
The next road south soon turned into a cart track and led them through scattered farms and ploughed fields. They saw the trace of candlelight through a ragged curtain of a farmhouse and stopped for directions. The candle went out. Rostov dismounted and banged on the door. A heavy silence descended.
“If you had soldiers pounding on your house at midnight, would you open your door?” Bond said.
“I tire of your jokes, Englishman. If we do not have directions, we could ride around these fields all night.”
“Would you take directions from a frightened civilian who has been listening to cannons firing for hours?”
Rostov stomped back to his horse and climbed into the saddle. “So, what would you do?”
“I have been watching that bright star looking at us through the clouds and have decided it is directly south. If we keep following it, we will eventually reach the ridge where the Field Marshal wants to place his troops.”
“Hmmph. I hope you are correct.”
Bond hoped he was correct as well. He had never been much of a sailor at night, but he knew that following a southern star at night would gradually bend one’s course toward the southwest. That should be where they would find the rest of the army.
The plan did nothing toward improving their progress or the state of the track they followed, which alternated between forest and fields. It did reduce the volume of the Count’s grumbling but the night grew very cold for July. They stopped several times to fortify themselves from the very necessary flasks they carried.
Bond found it getting very difficult to keep his eyes open, but it didn’t much matter―he still didn’t know where they were but his horse seemed to have set its eye on the same star.
They had been riding for two or three hours when they had to dismount to urge their mounts over a water-filled ditch. Then they found a rutted road on the other side.
“We’re here,” Bond said.
“Where in Perdition is here?”
“It’s a road. A well-travelled road. An army has come this way.”
“Whose? Ours or Napoleon’s?”
The road had followed the ditch for a half mile when Bond saw some dark figures on the side of the ditch. One of the figures slid down into the ditch to hide. He spurred his horse over to them.
“Where is your officer?” Bond demanded in three languages.
Another of the dark figures moved. “Keep following the road,” he said in German.
“What unit are you?”
“Jägers with Count Pahlen. Who might you be?”
“Two staff officers. This is Count Nikolai Rostov―he has information for General von Osten-Sacken.”
“Who speaks Russian here?” the man called into the darkness.
No one answered for some time. At last one man said, “French. All Russian officers speak French.”
“Who speaks French here?” Bond asked.
“I do.” A man came out of the darkness doing up his greatcoat and buckling a cavalry sabre to his side. “Lieutenant Schmidt of Wassiltschikov’s cavalry corps. What does the Russian want?”
“Did the Cossacks come past here? They must rejoin General Sacken’s corps.”
“Lost them, did you? I would lay odds they have found a better billet.”
“They has likely found some warm mademoiselles for their comfort,” said another voice.
“Where we should be.”
Count Rostov slapped his reins in frustration. “Did you see the Cossacks?”
“Ach, scheisse, your Cossacks. Go and bother somebody else.”
“Osten-Sacken went the other road. The crossroads is a mile behind you. You are lost, Officers, Sirs.”
“Aren’t they always?” someone said, and everyone laughed.
Holmes got up and opened the door, a pistol in his hand. A man stood on the step in the dark. “It is you at last, Mr. Holmes. It is van Aa.”
“Come in, old chap―what . . . ? You are bleeding.”
van Aa stared at a bloodstained rag about his arm. “Ah, I cannot stop it. Some damned Royalist shot at me as I escaped from Antwerp.”
“You escaped? What is happening at Antwerp?”
“The Arenbergs and their Royalist allies have risen against Napoleon. Of course, they are also shooting at any Dutchman they see.”
Holmes helped the other to a chair in the middle of the room. “So, Napoleon has lost his steamship port and the yards?”
“I think not. He has French troops and sailors controlling the centre of the city. The Royalists have the countryside.”
Holmes went to the bottom of the stairs and called up. “Marie, bring some water and clean cloth. We have a man to tend to.”
van Aa looked about. “Who owns this house?”
“A Dutch patriot like you. His wife and children live upstairs. He helps man the fishing boat that keeps me in contact with the Royal Navy vessels offshore.”
“It is a damned hard road to this village. I had to stumble along a broken dyke.”
“The loyalists opened the sluices. The French at Flushing do not dare come here lest they open more and drown them all.”
“What do the English know of the war?”
“Very little it seems. They believe Napoleon has left for the frontier with the Imperial Guard, but the rest of the army and the barges are still at Boulogne.”
“So Napoleon’s invasion of England is no more?”
Holmes laughed. “I think they are waiting for a message from us to tell them that.”
Once Antiochus had left Dover harbour and started on a course for Boulogne, Roberta assembled her off-duty stokers and engine room artificers to instruct them in their duties. The duty shift were some of the Stephenson workmen and unassigned trainees for the spitefuls Elizabeth had selected for their move to Dover the day before.
“I believe you have all had some experience in other steamships, so all I mean to talk about now are the differences you will find in Antiochus. The steam pressure is a little higher because we use railway locomotive boilers that have higher stress tolerance.”
“Why is that, My Lady?” one of the men asked.
She smiled at him. Their enthusiasm was infectious. “Locomotive boilers have to work under rougher conditions in the open than steamship boilers cloistered as it were in the bowels of a ship. Anyone else have a question?”
She soon found there were many questions, some she answered and some she put off until she was speaking to those who needed the answers for their work. Everyone wanted to know if it was true that their captain had been a stoker.
“I would rather let Captain Worthington tell you himself, but yes. It is no secret that he was a leading stoker just five years ago. I hope you will take from that the possibility that you all may receive good advancement if you do your duties well.”
“What is this ‘condenser’ thing?” another asked.
“Ah, there is a story behind that. A year ago at a function in the Admiralty a gentleman asked me why steam engineers did not save the ‘steam’, as people call it, that railway locomotives blow out.”
They all laughed.
“Well. There was a good idea hidden in that question and I have put it into practice here. The water vapour may be too cold to act as steam, but it is a much purer water than the make-up water we put into the boilers. So on Antiochus we save as much vapour as we can in the condensers and use it again and again.”
Partway through her talk the voice pipe from the bridge whistled. “There is another new idea you will find useful,” she said as she lifted the whistle to answer.
“Engine room here; Chief Engineer.”
After a moment, she said, “Aye aye, Captain.” She set the whistle back. “I’m called to the bridge but you will find the shift engineer and other men are worth listening to until I return.”
When she reached the bridge, she found Worthington discussing their plans with the new officers a vessel as large as Antiochus was entitled to. Worthington had a “number two”, a lieutenant commander named Collins who came directly from duty on a seventy-four; Hardy, a first lieutenant who had gone through training aboard Spiteful for one of the new vessels still building at Clydebank; and a gunnery officer named Brown.
She looked astern to see that Spiteful under Lieutenant Copeland and Regent with Lieutenant Farley were keeping formation with one on each side of Antiochus.
“The last information Captain Hawke could give me was that the French ironclad could not be seen at Boulogne,” Worthington told her.
“He has just returned from the French side of the Channel?”
“That he has, My Lady,” Collins said.
“Do’st suppose the ironclad is steaming back to the Westerschelde for repairs, My Lady?” Worthington asked. “Could the fires Lieutenant Farley started in the stern have damaged an engine?”
“If it came close enough and hot enough, it probably could,” she answered. “But possibly the steering gear was damaged by the fires, and it must be a very complex arrangement inside that double hull.”
Chief Petty Officer Brown all but saluted before he spoke. “They says, My Lady, that you saw the ironclad when it was under construction. Are the engines close to the stern? Closer than the engines of a regular side-paddle ship?”
“Well, I did see it, but I only walked past as it was in the building dock. I would envisage that the engines are aligned in echelon inside the hulls for a neutral weight distribution, but I did not see which was the closest to the stern.”
“But for one reason or another it may be limping back under partial power or else partial steering,” Worthington said, looking into her eyes.
“You want to try to catch it,” she said with a smile. “Isn’t that outside the scope of our orders?”
He shrugged. “We can go as far as Calais.”
“If it left last night, steaming at five knots, say . . .”
He finished her thought. “It could be between Calais and Dunkerque.”
“Then we might make landfall off Calais,” Collins said.
“And if we see its smoke,” Brown said, “it would be regular practice for us to investigate.”
Worthington smiled. “I think you might go to the quartermasters and order a change of course, Mr. Hardy. Calais it is. Signaller, send to our flotilla ‘change course for Calais’.”