Julian Stockwin - Betrayal

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The repossession of Buenos Aires has been stained with such deliberate acts of treachery and perfidy as are not to be instanced in the annals of history

Commodore Sir Home Riggs Popham,

HMS Diadem, Rio de la Plata, 1806

Dramatis Personae

(* Indicatesfictitious character)

*Thomas Kydd, captain of LAurore

*Nicholas Renzi, his friend and confidential secretary

LAurore, ships company

*Gilbey, first lieutenant

*Curzon, second lieutenant

*Bowden, third lieutenant

*Clinton, lieutenant of marines

*Owen, purser

*Oakley, boatswain

*Kendall, sailing master

*Searle, boy volunteer

*Dodd, marine sergeant

*Poulden, coxswain

*Stirk, gunners mate

*Collas, carpenters mate

*Legge, carpenter

*Doud, seaman

*Pearse, masters mate

*Cumby, boatswains mate

*Wong, seaman

*Saxton, signal masters mate

*Tysoe, Kydds valet

*Calloway, midshipman

Officers, other ships

Commodore Home Popham

Lieutenant Davies, Diadem

Captain Downman, Diadem

Captain Byng, Belliqueux

Captain Honyman, Leda

Captain Donnelly, Narcissus

Captain Audley, Ocean

Lieutenant Godwin, Encounter

*Lieutenant Garrick, Dolores

*Lieutenant Selby, Staunch

*Acting Lieutenant Hellard, Stalwart

Army

Captain Arbuthnot

Erskine, aide

General Lord Beresford

Major General Sir David Baird

Colonel Pack

Others

*Beekman, midshipman

*Bolt, petty officer

*Dougal, masters mate, Stalwart

*Ribeiro, Portuguese trader

*Geens, pest control

*Cuthbert Richardson, cocoa planter

*Ditler, ivory trader

*Scholes, passenger

Captain Waine, Elizabeth

*Hardiman, Justina

*Maycock, supercargo, Justina

Jed Russell, a.k.a. Crujido, senior pilot for the viceroyalty

Lord Grenville, prime minister

Charles Sidmouth, Lord Privy Seal

Charles Fox, foreign secretary

Viscount Howick, first lord of the Admiralty

Patton, governor of St Helena

Buenos Aires

His Excellency the Governor of Truxillo

The Virrey Diputado Quintana, deputy viceroy

*Don Baltasar, Hidalgo de Terrada, paramount leader of patriots

*Manuel Bustamente, patriot deputy

Martin Miguel de Guemes, cadet-lieutenant in Spanish Army

*Barreda, Pophams envoy

*Rodriquez Corazon, merchant and host at Kydds billet

*Dona Rafaela Callejo, lover of Vicente Serrano

Rafael de Sobramonte, viceroy over the viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata

Martin de Alzaga, wealthy merchant

Don Santiago Liniers, military leader

Colonel General Pueyrredon, commander of the gauchos

*Charcas, Hidalgo de Sarmiento, lieutenant and emissary of Pueyrredon

*Manuel Galvis, peon

*Vicente Serrano, artist and exiled student

In the dilapidated office Mr Owen looked up from his reckoning. Bananas at eighty reis the quintal seems a little excessive, Mr Ribeiro, he said slowly, mopping his brow. The humidity was formidable, the dull heat like a suffocating blanket, but the purser of a frigate of His Majestys Navy had his standards and he sweltered in coat and breeches.

Shrugging, the fat Portuguese trader leaned back in his chair. You think? I sell you green ones, not go rot, best in Mozambique.

Tugging at his clammy neckcloth and dismissively eyeing the hand of half-ripe fruit brought for his inspection, Owen looked pained. My captain wishes only to serve his worthy crew with a mort of sweetness in their diet, but if the price is beyond my allowance . . .

Then I help! I can find th red banana, very creamy, very cheap and for you-

No, no, Mr Ribeiro, the crew would think it sharp practice. Were you to vary your price to accommodate a larger order say, five quintals and payment in silver reals, then . . .

Nicholas Renzi, sitting to one side of the table, fanned himself with a palm leaf. The negotiations dragged on and his attention wandered. The doorway was jammed with wide-eyed children, fearful but entranced by this visitation from the outer world. Beyond, in the harsh sunlight, was the noisy ebb and flow of an African market town. The world of war with Napoleon Bonaparte might have been in another universe but it was precisely why he was here. Hove to off the river mouth and enjoying the fresh oceanic breezes was HMS LAurore, a thirty-two-gun frigate whose captain was his closest friend, Thomas Kydd.

As his confidential secretary, Renzi had an unquestioned right to come and go on ships business; in these last weeks he had often landed with the purser but not to lend his presence for business negotiations to secure fresh foodstuffs. He had every sympathy for the dry Welshman who, as a man of independent business aboard ship, had to balance his costs at supplying stores and necessaries with fairness at the point of issue yet leave himself with sufficient profit to weather financial storms. In the absence of an agent-victualler this meant making a deal with often unscrupulous local merchants that might well be repudiated later by an officious Admiralty functionary in faraway London.

The purser probably suspected but had never enquired the real reason why Renzi so often accompanied him: if there was one thing a scouting frigate needed from the shore even more than fresh victuals it was information. With an infinite number of directions to sail off in, even the tiniest whisper was better than nothing, and Renzi had personally witnessed the effectiveness of Admiral Lord Nelsons network of merchant intelligence in the Mediterranean before Trafalgar, overseen, it was rumoured, by his own secretary.

The current mission for LAurore was an important one. Only a few months before the British had taken Cape Town, the Dutch settlement at the tip of Africa at the Cape of Good Hope, to secure the all-important route to India. With slender military resources, it lay vulnerable to a vengeful counter-attack by the French, specifically by Admiral Marechal, who was known to be at sea with a battle squadron greatly outnumbering the few ships of the Royal Navy on station there.

LAurores orders were to follow the coast around the south of the continent and up the Indian Ocean side, stopping vessels, seeking word. As far north as Lourenco Marques, there had been not even a rumour, but Kydd had pressed on, if only to prove the French absent from the area. He knew that on the other side of Madagascar the French had strong island bases in a direct line from India, which could well be sheltering a battle group. Leda, the larger fellow frigate to LAurore, was sent to look into these, so LAurore had sailed on into the Mozambique channel, past hundreds of miles of the frightful remoteness of the dark continent to the foetid flatness of Quelimane, an ancient Arab slave market but now a lonely outpost of the Portuguese empire, itself dating from the daring voyage of Vasco da Gama in the 1490s.