Free A King's Cutter by Richard Woodman

see.’
    Brown nodded, his eyes cold slits that in such a rubicund face seemed quite ugly.
    â€˜And one was a, er, misanthrope, eh?’
    Griffiths and Drinkwater both nodded. ‘And was De Tocqueville with Barrallier?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Griffiths, ‘with a deal of specie too.’ Brown nodded and relapsed into thought during which Drinkwater heard him say musingly ‘Beaubigny . . .’
    At last he looked up, a slightly puzzled expression on his face as though the answer was important. ‘Was there a girl with them?’ he asked, ‘a girl with auburn hair?’
    â€˜That’s correct, sir,’ put in Drinkwater, ‘with her brother, Etienne.’
    Brown’s eyebrows rose. ‘So you know their names?’
    â€˜Aye sir, they were called Montholon.’ It seemed odd that Brown, a master of secrets should evince surprise at what was common gossip on Plymouth hard. ‘Barrallier told us, sir,’ continued Drinkwater, ‘it did not seem a matter for secrecy.’
    â€˜Ha!’ Brown threw back his head and laughed, a short, barkinglaugh like a fox. ‘Good for Barrallier,’ he said half for himself. ‘No ’tis no secret but I am surprised at the girl leaving . . .’ A silence fell over the three of them.
    Brown ruminated upon the pieces of a puzzle that were beginning to fit. He had not known that it had been
Kestrel
that had caused the furore off Carteret, but he had been fortuitously close to the row that had erupted in Paris and well knew how close as a cause of war the incident had become.
Childers
’s comparatively innocent act had been just what the war hawks needed, having stayed their hands a month or so earlier.
    The major closed his eyes, recalling some fascinating details. Capitaine de frégate Edouard Santhonax had been instrumental in checking the Convention’s belligerence. And apart from the previous night, the last time Brown had seen Santhonax, the handsome captain had had Hortense Montholon gracing his arm. She had not seemed like a woman fleeing from revolution.
    Lieutenant Griffiths watched his passenger, aware of mystery in the air and hunting back over the conversation to find its cause, while Drinkwater was disturbed by a vision of auburn hair and fine grey eyes.

Chapter Five
October–December 1793
Incident off Ushant
    In the weeks that followed Drinkwater almost forgot about the incident at Beaubigny, the rescue of Major Brown and the subsequent encounter with the
chasse marée
. Occasionally, on dark nights when the main cabin was lit by the swinging lantern, there appeared a ghost of disquieting beauty and auburn hair. And that half drowned sensation, as Tregembo hauled him through the breakers with the dead weight of the major threatening to drag them both to the bottom, emerged periodically to haunt half-awake hours trying to sleep. But they were mere shades, thrown off with full consciousness together with recollections of the swamps of Carolina and memories of Morris, the sodomite tyrant of
Cyclops
’s cockpit.
    The spectre of the fugitives of Beaubigny appeared once in more positive form, revived by Griffiths. It was only a brief item in an already yellowing newspaper concerned with the death of a French nobleman in the gutters of St James’s. Footpads were suspected as the gentleman’s purse was missing and he was known to have been lucky at the tables that evening. But the man’s name was De Tocqueville and Griffiths’s raised eyebrow over the lowered paper communicated to Drinkwater a suspicion of assassination.
    Such speculations were swept aside by duty. Already the Channel was full of French corsairs, from luggers to frigates, which commenced that war on trade at which they excelled. Into this mêlée of French commerce-raiders and British merchantmen, solitary British frigates dashed, noisily inadequate. Then on June 18th Pellew in
La