Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 8.3

-vii-

                  A primrose sun collapsing in vast splinters onto silvered turquoise. The cry of vendors on the quay competing with the gulls. The intense whiteness of walls broken by drifting oval shadows, as parasols block off the blaze of light. These islands are their own magical worlds, wonderful to visit – but you wouldn’t want to live there.

                  They sail for Halifax at dawn, but through seas which grow ever rougher as the little packet heads north into the unquiet grey Atlantic. To calm her, he reads to Julie from Mr. Daniel Defoe’s Essay on Projects, another of the books he’d purchased at Boston. He had read this author’s Robinson Crusoe as a child, and greatly enjoyed it; yet  never before has he encountered Mr. Defoe’s innovative ideas regarding the education of women and the poor, as well as his thoughts on a more equitable restructuring of society. ‘It strikes me,’ he says, ‘that any man capable of thought arrives at similar conclusions.’ He’s surprised to find himself inadvertently included in this category; the arrogance makes him blush, since he can’t see a way to correct it. 

                    Julie too finds the ideas exciting, and they are discussed engagingly for hours. They have never done this before. He had assumed she took no interest in such matters. Women never seem to. He mentions this.

                     ‘It’s my upbringing,’ she says shyly. ‘I was taught never to interfere in the business of men. Charles-Louis forbade me to do it with him. He kept his world far from mine.’

                “Indeed, he did. But not your real husband,” he assures her. ‘My sisters are the same, though. I took it for granted that women were this way. But why? Women live in the world, just like men. Why should they not discuss its exigencies and perplexities?’

              ‘You tell me,’ she says. ‘It’s men that forbid it. Why?’

              ‘Everything comes down to education in the end, doesn’t it?’ he says, the thought sometimes overwhelming in its constant presence, its importuning and nagging to be heard, to have something done about it.

                  The ship is being tossed around like a tennis ball now; and the winds have become so strong that Captain George has ordered all of his sail drawn up. Dinner cannot be served under such conditions, so they eat bread and ham in their cabin. Sleep is similarly impossible. Fearing Julie might be tossed from her bunk, he lies next to her on the outside edge as a bulwark. He often sees himself as a bulwark, a sturdy one too.

                  It is around three in the morning that she suddenly sits up, clutching her belly.                     “Oh!” is all she says, clambering to her feet, and grabbing at the timbers for support. A small puddle has formed on the boards beneath her feet. “The baby,” she tells him quietly, almost nonchalantly. “The baby is coming. It’s coming now…” 

                  He makes her sit, rushing out to wake Potts, thrown from side to side in the narrow passage as he goes. The surgeon is still wide awake, and, on hearing the news, is suddenly all business, all efficiency. He demands hot water and clean sheets, saying Julie will have to be tied onto the dining cabin’s table.“I need to work at waist height,” he explains. “Bunks are either too low or too high.”

                Awoken by the hubbub, Weatherall joins them, helping the prince assist Julie into the adjacent dining cabin.

              “This is not going to be easy,” Lieutenant-Doctor Potts states calmly. “One of you will have to hold me fast as I work.”

                Weatherall volunteers, now uncharacteristically obedient to the surgeon’s every command.

                “I’ll need sawdust on the floor,” says Potts, “and a keg of rum.”

                “Rum!” Edward is horrified.

              “To clean my instruments and hands, not to drink,” explains the doctor, exasperated now by any questions.

                Julie is tied by cords around her chest and told to grip the sides of the dining table, which is securely fixed to the floor and now covered with a pile of fresh sheets. She winces and groans with spasms of pain, as the ocean beneath them rolls and heaves violently in unhelpful empathy. Hot water is brought in a large metal jug, its steaming contents spilling with every lurch of the vessel. All around them the wind whines and screams like a choir of Furies. Weatherall lashes himself to two struts on opposite walls, the better to steady Potts, whose waist he grips tightly with powerful hands. Sawdust now covers the floor, and Potts places his instruments, unrolled from a canvas case, into a slopping basin filled with dark rum. Having washed his hands, he now rubs the liquor up his bare arms. Everyone is trying to stay balanced by shifting weight from leg to leg, but the storm-battered waves are too unpredictable for this to be of much use. People slip and grip every few seconds. The packet pitches to starboard, then sometimes further to starboard, leaving them momentarily horizontal, before slamming back to the port side with a shrill exclamation of squealing wood. Occasionally, waves so prodigiously vast smash into one side or the other with such force that the jolting shocks send anything not secured clattering down all around them. The doctor’s instruments are scattered in this way, and he’s forced to clean them all again with rum. Julie’s screams become more frequent, blending into the wind’s malign howling, and the incessant groans and squeaks of timbers shifting in their joints and commissures with the relentless pitching. There are loud cracks and crashes sounding from near and far, as items break loose from hooks or shelves. Lashed to the table, her face become one huge maw, bawling, bellowing, spewing spittle, Julie is stretched upon the rack, put to the question. The scene is infernal, pandemonium; and he dearly wishes he could leave the surgeon to his task; but his assistance as an anchor and a voice of reassurance is indispensable, no matter how unanchored and unreassured he feels himself.

                   Weatherall discreetly looks away as Potts gently hauls up Julie’s nightgown, palpating her swollen abdomen as it is heaved from side to side like a storm-tossed buoy. When the Roebuck hurtles down into a gulley between two mountainous waves, cracking onto water hard as iron, she wails out in an animal pain, a primal kind of terror nothing can assuage. She’s a lost soul in the Valley of the Shadow, he thinks, growing increasingly worried now.

                  “I shall have to turn the baby’s head into her birth channel,” Potts informs everyone, taking out an instrument resembling coal tongs with a concave spatula on the end of both arms.

              “What?” asks the prince, filled with dread by the surgeon’s alien words.

                Potts ignores him, wiping rum from this alarming utensil with a steaming cloth. Then, steadied by Weatherall’s strong arms, he inserts it into Julie with gentle, meticulous care. She rolls to and fro beneath his levering arms, which now must roll with her. ‘Hold fast,’ he tells Weatherall, who tries to anticipate the next pitch before it comes. 

                She gasps ceaselessly, and cries out in torment, as Potts maneuvers his instrument laboriously, taking some twenty minutes before telling everyone that he’s now turning the baby’s head into the correct position. Julie’s face is a glossy pink sheen of strain, pain, perspiration and saliva, her knuckles white, fingernails torn from clutching onto the table. The prince takes one poor clawing hand, which she clamps onto his with a vice-like grip, while pushing with breathless force, squeezing as hard as possible, pushing and, all the while, shrieking in a forlorn voice, a voice he thinks is surely summoning death here, not life. He needs to grasp frantically at roof beams with one hand to steady himself, as the vessel is thrown even more frequently from one colossal wave crest to another, often plunging down vertiginously between them, walls of water streaming up on either side of the aft windows. His fingers are porcupined with splinters, torn and bleeding, the nails, like Julie’s, ripped from their cuticles. Yet the only pain he feels is her pain, the pain in her flushed eyes, as she pushes and clenches and pushes, going purple in the face. He body seems to have become a machine that pushes and squeezes, pushes and screams, until it appears about to burst apart from the effort. The crazily swinging oil lamps; the night and storm beyond their black windows; the clenching and howling, the gasps for air and respite are all there is. It begins to feel eternal, an unending darkness, terror and torture from which there is no escape, no cure, no respite.  The passage from womb to tomb is a dark one, a painful one, foreshortened here to a quintessence, distilled almost to nothing at all. We’re born; we die. That’s the whole story. But is it? Unlikely, he thinks, even in this grotto of agony. Hope is always in the box – if you haven’t lost that box. 

                  It is on the cusp of a translucent, milky dawn that Potts finally pulls out a bloody little body from the exhausted Julie, who gives a great resounding sigh of ultimate relief. It does not seem possible, just as he’d thought after Eduard’s birth, that a new life could come into the world by such cruel and hideous means, such an unforgiving torment of body and mind. Ripping out a heart would be easier than it had been maneuvering, coaxing and dragging this moist, bedraggled, scarcely human thing into life. With a sudden effervescent alarm, he realises that the baby is not moving or crying. After all this, is it dead? He’s about to question Potts, when the surgeon holds up this limp, dripping creature by its fat heels, slapping it firmly on the back. Instantly, there comes a tiny, choking splutter, followed by a lusty yell of furious indignation, as the poor raw thing sways in its new and hostile world like beef on a Smithfield porter’s hook.

          “Congratulations, Highness,” says Potts, as diffidently as if the prince had just won a game of whist, “you have a fine, healthy baby boy.” He cuts the long, worm-like cord, the lifeline, placing it, along with a fat, oozing bloody clod, into a bucket on the stained sawdust floor. Then, with great delicacy, using one hand, he recovers Julie’s legs with her gore-stained gown. She smiles uncontrollably, reaching out for the tiny life Potts still cradles in one arm. Yet she’s unable to sit up on account of the ropes around her chest. The tempest has begun to abate out on a ghastly steel ocean, as if subdued by this miracle of life. 

                 They untie Julie, helping her back to the bunk in her own cabin, where she can finally hold her baby,  who has by now been cleaned and swaddled by Potts, using a torn sheet for this purpose. Prince Edward thanks him and Weatherall from the bottom of his heart, before he’s left alone with his wife and son. My wife and my son: how strange and yet how familiar the words seem. Well, he thinks, they are familiar, aren’t they? He realises how infrequently his thoughts turn to little Eduard. Such thoughts are yet another thing he can’t afford.

                  Everyone is drained, exhausted, yet happy. They’re like survivors fetched up from a shipwreck and now safe ashore, wrapped in blankets, drinking hot cocoa.

              “That was one inordinately heroic effort, sir,” he can hear Weatherall telling the surgeon, as they walk off. “I salute you for it and apologize for our previous differences.”

                “Vive la difference!” This must be the surgeon’s only phrase of French – not that he understands its actual meaning.

              Weatherall rarely has trouble admitting he’s wrong. At least, he doesn’t when he’s convinced he actually is wrong.

                Without any objections from the prince, Julie decides the baby boy will be named ‘Jean de Mestre’, this being one of her numerous ancestral titles. “Jean” was her late father’s name. Edward looks into the startled inquisitive eyes of Jean de Mestre; but the more he looks, the more the baby’s huge head seems to be misshapen. This deformity corrects itself over the following weeks and is, according to Dr. Potts, fairly normal in births where ‘forceps’ have had to be deployed.

                “Four sets of what?” the prince asks in his ignorance.

              “Forceps,”  corrects Potts. “From the same root as ‘forced’, I imagine. Even if an initial deformity is a fairly common consequence, I think it is still preferable to the death of a mother or child… or both — wouldn’t you agree, sire?”

            “Ah. Yes. Of course, I would.” 

                    It’s inappropriate, he feels, to bring up the subject of who they should entrust with the baby for adoption; yet it is, surprisingly enough, Julie herself who raises the issue.

                    “Should we turn back and give him to my mother? She’d take great care of him; and a child would restore to her life some real meaning and purpose…”

                “I can scarcely believe my ears,’ he says, looking at her with his mouth hanging open. “I should sooner throw him overboard. You cannot be serious! That spiteful old hag! Never, never, never! He’d be better off dead or sold into slavery.”

                This long-suppressed outburst receives, curiously, no reaction. He is at least expecting to be told his own parents are no better – which is true. But, no. Nothing. Except: “Then can we keep him? We are married, after all…”

              ‘Not in England we’re not.’

              “So poor Jean is just your bastard after all?” she says, looking away sadly and reproachfully.

              “Don’t call him that,” he says tenderly, stroking the baby’s soft, yet still distorted head. “To me he is my son. He will be well looked after, I promise you.”

              “By who?” she demands, drawing the baby away from him, away from the monster. “We can’t ask the Salaberrys again. That’s too great an imposition.”

              “No,” he says, “not Louis. I have someone else in mind. But in the meantime, we shall keep him ourselves. Perhaps for as long as we are at Halifax.”

                She brightens, smiling and saying, “Really? I can really keep my baby this time?”

                The monster has been tamed. “As long as we are discreet about it,” he tells her, “I don’t see why not. Yes, why not?”

-viii-

                     Night. The endless black ocean that can terrify our dreams or be their source, he thinks, gazing into its swelling immensity. ‘Captain George told me some interesting Halifacts,’ says Weatherall, as they lean over the quarterdeck rail framed by a star-strewn horizon.

                      ‘Yes?’ he says. ‘The climate never improves?’

                     ‘Worse. First there was gossip about the Wentworths. She apparently sees numerous other men; he doesn’t mind. But this is because he does the same thing himself – with other women of course. More interesting, though,’ Weatherall goes on, turning to look at him, at the prince, ‘is a story about the Maroons…’

                     ‘The what?’

                     ‘They’re freed slaves from Jamaica. Oddly enough, they helped us put down a slave rebellion on the island. Evidently, there was talk of founding a negro empire in the Caribbean… or rather the slaves were talking about it. So, we awarded some of these Maroons semi-autonomous regions of their own and, to protect the rest from retribution, we sent them to Halifax… with a sizeable sum of money to settle them properly. Well,’ he hisses and sighs, ‘the rumour is that Wentworth kept this money for himself, and the poor devils are now in a terrible state there…’

                    The prince interrupts: ‘Aren’t a lot of slaves coming up from America too? I’ve heard this…’

                     ‘Yes,’ says Weatherall, ‘our attitude is that anyone who reaches Canada is a free man. Slavery’s day will soon be over – or so many in London are saying. But we can’t have them mistreated when they reach us, can we? The Maroons were allies, after all…’

                      ‘No,’ he says, buttoning his tunic against a stiff northerly wind. ‘We certainly can’t. I disapprove of the slaves some of our people keep too. It’s a midden, Halifax, isn’t it?’

                       ‘It just needs leadership, I’d say…’

                       ‘And leadership it shall get,’ says the prince resolutely. 

                   Neither of them is aware of just how many slaves are still being kept by Canadians. Francois Baby, who Edward met at Quebec, for example, has dozens of them in his various homes, and will continue to do so, despite Lord Simcoe’s ban. Like other bans, this only affects the slave trade, not slavery per se. Those who own slaves do not need to purchase more anyway – they breed them.

                       Upon landing at Halifax by night, the timing deliberate, he sends Julie and her baby by closed carriage up to the house, accompanied by Dr. Potts. Then Weatherall and he travel towards the same destination, squeezing into an open caliche, but taking a more circuitous route. Their carriage soon encounters the large quantity of roots and boulders littering city roads. These hazards have made the most popular forms of local transport either horseback or foot, this latter form known as ‘Shank’s Pony’. They haven’t seen this wretched part of town before. Now the prince wants to take a closer look at it and its denizens, which is the reason for their irregular route. 

                  Although they already know the quayside is a warren of taverns and brothels, Barrack Street proves to be far worse. Beggars, pimps, cutpurses and peddlers of cheap trash are everywhere; yet they’re vastly outnumbered by drunken soldiery staggering about, begrimed, their uniforms in shocking disarray. These men are engaged in brawls, dicing, or in lewd behaviour with the half-dressed harlots, who lean in doorways or alleys on every side. There are muscular negroes everywhere too. These are the Maroons, and they behave with far more self-respect than the soldiery, even though they too promote or facilitate all manner of illicit activities.

                “My God!” mutters Weatherall, gazing agog at these passing scenes. ‘This makes Gibraltar look like the Ursuline Convent…”

                  The task ahead of him appears, yet again, daunting indeed. It makes war seem a doddle. “Yes. Dreadful!’ he says. ‘There are going to be some very big changes here. Some very, very big changes indeed…” 

                      The place is a pit of depravity, almost mythical in its sheer profusion of vice. One glimpse is enough.

                  As soon as they arrive at the house on Citadel Hill, he instructs Weatherall to arrange a meeting with the city’s senior military officers for noon the following day. He then writes to Robert Wood at Quebec, telling him his services are indispensable after all, and he should hasten to Halifax with all speed, bringing Chloe, his wife, with him. The prince offers Wood triple his usual stipend and current doorkeeper’s wages, adding that he’ll also purchase for the Woods a house of their own. The letter is sent by an army courier reputed to be capable of reaching Quebec, weather permitting, within a week. He gives this man ten guineas for Wood, to cover costs and inconveniences, promising the courier a guinea for himself if Wood arrives in Halifax before the end of August.

                Overhearing this exchange, Julie cautions him to be less lavish in his spending. “With Louis de Salaberry’s assistance,” she tells him somewhat sharply, “and the sale of our possessions at Montmorency, along with those in the St. Louis Street house, I have managed to settle nearly all your debts there.”

                “I see. Well, I shall be incurring many more here,” he says, annoyed that she would thus interfere in his affairs – much as he appreciates it. He recalls their conversation about Defoe’s book, regretting his own ingrained views about a woman’s role. He tries to backtrack his reaction, but she is already sweeping from the room, head held high. An upbringing is hard to shake off.

                    The following morning, he receives another invitation to dinner with the Wentworths. This time he declines, citing army business. But he’s soon to learn that ‘army business’ is music to the governor’s ears. An increase in military activity means an increase in funds from London, a golden tide running first through Wentworth’s own hands, where much of it tends to stick. 

-ix-

                     Founded in 1749, Halifax enjoyed a period of prosperity during the French presence on Cape Breton Island, in Quebec and elsewhere. Its superb harbour was essential for the movement of troops and materiel. After the Battle of the Plains, a decade later, the city had entered a precipitous decline, which was only halted by the American war, when its utility to the military once again became vital, and English money once more poured in. Since the alleged peace, ten years earlier, another rapid decline had set in, aggravated, as we have observed, by the loss of much, if not most trade to newly-independent Boston. There is now such a shortage of cash that Nova Scotia has begun to print its own scrip, worth only seventy percent of face value when it first reached the banks. War has thus come to be regarded as a barometer of Haligonian economic weather; and the prince’s sudden presence as Commander-in-Chief is widely viewed by locals as presaging both a new war, and its concomitant influx of gold. Yet everyone has ceased to notice the spectacularly vile state into which the past lean decade has thrown their community. They’re similarly oblivious to the steep costs which will be entailed in repairing this damage, extending, as it does, across the entire social panoply, from healing moral turpitude to resurrecting buildings, forts, institutions, bridges and roads. The place badly needs a shock of awakening to its own squalid reality – and such a shock is on its way. Ah, yes.

                     The meeting with seven senior military officers at their headquarters does not go well. To open it, Weatherall and Prince Edward recount their experiences on Barrack Street and elsewhere.

            ‘How,’ he asks, ‘has discipline deteriorated to such a despicable level?’

                  It is the old problem. “The men are idle, Your Highness,” explains an untidy major named Godfrey. “They have nothing to occupy their time, and no prospect of any action. So, they drink, gamble, course hares, breed fighting cocks, and the like…”  It’s all too, too familiar.

                  “Have you not heard of a war with France, Major?” he inquires in a flinty tone. “Are you under the impression that your crumbling fortifications will prove adequate to repel a French attack?”

                  Major Godfrey shifts uncomfortably in his seat, shrugging before replying, “We’re told the war will be over soon, sire, and that any attack is unlikely.”

                What do you do with such men? “And who told you this?” he asks.

                “It’s just the general opinion.”

                “And do your six fellow officers share this ‘general’ opinion?” he says, looking at the other faces. To a man, they refuse to meet his gaze, offering neither confirmation or denial. “Yes. I see,” he continues. “Is anyone here aware that Halifax is the most important, safest and, indeed, now the sole British seaport in North America?”                  Everyone nods, murmuring their assent. He smashes his fist down on the table, making the officers jump, as he shouts, “Then there is no excuse for your dereliction of duty! I ought to strip you all of your ranks and order courts-martial!” He berates them further, complaining about their own sloppiness of dress and ill-kempt appearance. He makes it painfully clear that this new broom intends to sweep their Augean stables spotlessly clean, from boots to barracks. Then and there, he orders a daily drill and inspection at five in the morning, without fail, fair or foul. Any man not reporting, or not meeting the standards of appearance required, will be subject to the maximum punishment as defined by the army code. Short of death, no excuse will acceptable for any lapse. “Drill and inspection will be under the charge of Captain Weatherall here,” he tells them, “until he deems the men ready for, and worthy of my own review. His standards, I might add, are apt to be still more exacting than my own. As it is, gentlemen, you disgust me! I hope I have made myself clear? Now get to work! Dismissed!” He fancies his glare resembles that of General Grey. It doesn’t have the same effect with blue eyes, though.

                  The officers stand, saluting in a desultory fashion, before backing untidily from the room with a range of expressions on their flushed and foolish faces from fear to confusion.

                  “I think they got that message,” says Weatherall, pulling on his white gloves.

              “Would you like a promotion?” Edward asks his captain. “Any rank you like, Fred…”

                “I’m happy as I am,” Weatherall replies, simply and humbly. “It’s authority that commands, not rank. My authority was conveyed to those wretches beyond any doubt. And I shall enjoy using it. By God, I shall!”

                  He tells Weatherall that he wants to concentrate on rebuilding the port’s fortifications, and thus will rely upon him to turn a rabble of drunken slobs and sloppy idlers back into the army they’re supposed to be.

                  “As always,” Weatherall says, “the honour is all mine… and the opportunity golden indeed.”

                “Good stuff, Fred. Because rebuilding those ruins is going to be a major enterprise, requiring all the time I can spare.” But he’s glad to have something other than drills and inspections to occupy his time here.

                  Robert Wood arrives on September 5th, with his French wife, Chloe. The prince has purchased a fine little house for them, and they’re delighted with everything about the place, from the well-tended garden and sea views, to the cozy rooms, with their furnishings selected by Julie. He’s overjoyed to be reunited with Wood, who’s happy with the new arrangement too, as keen, diligent and cheerful as ever. 

                Informing him of the current work-load, and the deplorable condition of this city, he tells Wood that his first mission is to discover as much as he’s able regarding recent events here, particularly gossip of any kind concerning the Wentworths. He knows he can rely upon Wood’s uncanny ability to chivvy out memories, anecdotes and trumours from the most diverse elements in any society.

                    Within a few days, Wood seeks him out while he’s alone surveying the remnants of a cliff top redoubt. Wood has quite a tale to tell, one he’s also not a little embarrassed about telling. 

                 “It concerns your brother, Prince William, sire, the Duke of Clarence,” Wood says hesitantly, red-cheeked and panting, “and I be not certain you will wish to hear it…”

                  ‘Nothing about Clarence can shock me, Robert,’ he says, although he’s wrong about this. ‘Don’t varnish the truth in any degree…’ 

                     He now learns that, from 1787 to 1791, his brother Bill had been a frequent visitor to Halifax in one or other of his ships, gaining a solid reputation for stupendously debauched and drunken behaviour. On one such visit, a fourteen-year-old midshipman had sailed the ship into port, because Bill and his senior officers were too drunk to walk the quarterdeck. This was during Governor Parr’s time. An eye-witness to one of Bill’s revels had told Wood that he’d seen the prince drink 28 bumpers of champagne and claret in toasts, following this with 14 bottles of Bourbon ale. At another party, 63 bottles of wine were consumed by Bill and a handful of officers. During that evening too, Bill had thrown his wig away, sung bawdy songs and hooted with mad laughter. Then he’d demanded a tour of the port’s finest brothels, in which he delighted in watching Sapphic displays performed by the girls – often several at a time. He threw money around as if it were rubbish. During one of these visits, Bill encountered Frances Wentworth, whose husband, then still minus his baronetcy, had been appointed ‘Keeper of the King’s Woods’ — a transparent sinecure. John Wentworth had been a New Hampshire Loyalist, evidently descended from one of the Pilgrim Fathers; he was considered to be a cunning civil servant, consumed by ambition. Clarence and Frances had a widely-known and torrid love affair, which ended when he sailed away. But Frances Wentworth was not so easily shrugged off. In 1791, Wood had been told, she visited England, where she sought out Bill who, although living with Mrs. Jordan by then, happily resumed his former passion as well. This was done so openly that the details were street gossip all over town. The couple had, on the Queen’s birthday of all days, ‘tried the length’ of a sofa the duke had purchased for Frances. By the time she returned to Halifax, and doubtless through Bill’s agency, her husband had become Sir John, Baronet, and was also appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the province, since Parr had died. She was, of course, now Lady Frances. Christ, thinks Edward, is this why I’ve been sent here, to drown in the family shame?

                   There are two schools of thought regarding the subject of Wentworth’s toleration of his wife’s dalliances, Wood next explains. One says it’s because, with them, she’s able to assist greatly in his promotions; the other believes her adultery gives him licence to pursue his own infidelities. It is, however, the general opinion that, as we’ve heard previously, brother Bill’s conduct had set the tone for behaviour among the city’s upper classes. Many of these people have no experience beyond the isolated province, so they genuinely believe this kind of behaviour is proper for all high society — although it’s still nonetheless considered reprehensible if practised by the poorer classes. A division had also grown up between the old land-owning British and Scotch plutocracy and the ambitious arriviste Loyalists, who were represented by the new governor. Many people feel that Wentworth unduly favours Loyalists with high positions, as well as in greasing their business dealings. One such dealing is the excise tax levied on imported rum from the West Indies, a source of revenue which, it’s thought, can only grow exponentially after Prince Edward’s conquest of the French islands. This trade is almost entirely controlled by a few Loyalists, all of them considered to be Wentworth’s creatures, and all suspected of raking in still greater profits by smuggling kegs into New England.  Lastly, Wood reports, Wentworth had developed a very bad relationship with the prince’s predecessor, General Ogilvy. This was evidently, the result of a dispute over money from London, or the lack of it, as well as revenues from the excise tax. Each man accused the other of pocketing funds desperately needed by the city and the army. Most citizens believed Ogilvy was in the right and innocent. Few original settlers trusted their new governor, whose lavish mode of living reeks of corruption. Yet he’s also considered shrewd in his political maneuvers, especially the strong alliances forged with powerful and influential men. Such men make sure London hears of his brilliant leadership, and that cheering crowds can always be relied on to attend his public appearances. Almost everyone feels he will turn cartwheels to win the prince’s friendship and will fawn over him at the slightest opportunity. For there is little doubt that Prince Edward is now the real power in both city and province. As usual, they all assume he has the King’s ear, and cracks a commanding whip in Parliament. Edward feels his life is a treadmill, eternally trudging over and over the same ground with no possibility of escape.

               “I be sorry to bring you such vexing news,” says Robert Wood, staring down thoughtfully at the faded grass beneath his feet.

                “Not at all, my friend,” the prince assures him. “This information will prove invaluable to me. As for Prince William, it’s nothing I haven’t heard before – although the precise quantities of liquor consumed are something of a revelation. Previous accounts have always stated ‘a lot’, but now I know what ‘a lot’ actually means — and it is indeed a lot.” He smiles, patting Wood on the back for a job well done, and then telling him to take a week’s holiday, move in properly and show his wife her new environs. But the crapulous ghost of Bill jeers at Edward from crumbling battlements, shrieking with crazed mirth.

                Now, however, he feels ready to accept one of the Wentworths’ unending invitations to dinner; and he spends some considerable time in thinking out an appropriate strategy for terminating their reign of perpetual Saturnalia. Yet it must be done without making himself look like a killjoy in the process. 

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 8.2

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                     The harbour is not very busy these days, even the skirling gulls deprived by the steep drop in trade. So, he’s delighted to discover that Captain Rupert George and his packet, the Roebuck, sit at anchor there. Immediately, the prince sends word commissioning him to take Julie, himself and Captain Weatherall back to Martinique. He also orders a navy surgeon, Lieutenant-Doctor Potts, to accompany them, for Julie’s sake. ‘We don’t want to risk an early birth, do we?’ he says, glad to be taking her away from public scrutiny in her condition. 

                     They set sail the following day, enjoying fair winds and exceptionally smooth sailing all the way back into turquoise. There’s not even a hint of any French vessels, which, although he’d wanted to witness Captain George’s seamanship and gunnery again, is quite for the best.

                  Apart from the holes in walls and roads, all signs of war have vanished and, as it will, life goes on. They land at Port Royale’s curving harbour just after he’s pointed out to Julie the unimpressive ruins of Fort Edward. She gives him the distinct impression she regards all this renaming of forts as mere male conceit, just more army nonsense. 

                 ‘Besides those rather unhealthy-looking English troops,’ she says, ‘the city’s much as I remember it, my love. Ownership won’t change this island, no matter who the owner is…’ Using the local patois, she proceeds to hire a carriage and two for the journey to Trois Islets.

                  “I thought there were no horses on the island?” he says, recalling the arduous march from Lacoste.

                  “Whoever told you that?” she says, laughing at the foolishness of such an idea.

                  He looks over at Weatherall scornfully. The captain simply shrugs, saying, ‘Why would the enemy assist us with transport?’

                  “We can never make it through the jungle in this little gig,” the prince then protests. “I know this island, remember?”

                  “Not as well as I know it, though, it seems,” Julie replies, a faintly smug smile forming on her rosy lips.

                    Leaving the city, their comfortable, airy conveyance takes them along a wall leading to the rear, where Edward’s assault had taken place, yet veering off along a well-cleared dirt road no one had noticed when it might have served them well. General Grey’s wretched map was certainly unaware of it, as it was of many other features useful to the island traveller. 

                  “Our intelligence of this place seems to have been… somewhat deficient,” comments Weatherall, tremendously amused by the ease of their current journey.

                    Even the climate feels more benign now, its heat ameliorated by a pleasantly fresh and fragrant breeze wafting over them. As it will do in this climate, the time passes drowsily. 

                  “There’s the pool where Rose and I used to bathe!” Julie suddenly cries, after some two hours of easy travel through a profusely exotic landscape. She points excitedly    off to the right at a small waterfall spilling into a pond amid palm groves. “Oh, I wonder who’s left in the old house now,” she says, more to herself than to her companions.  She doesn’t have to wonder long, however. As they clatter over a cobblestoned drive leading up to a handsome, if rather decayed plantation mansion surrounded by ill-kept gardens, dried-up fountains, and crumbling masonry, an elegant old lady, dressed in fine, loose black linen, emerges into the courtyard, shading her eyes from the glaring sun to see who is approaching. It’s obvious that unexpected visitors are as rare as snowflakes here.

                 “Maman!” Julie shrieks, holding a hand over her mouth in amazement, and then telling everyone, rather unnecessarily, “It’s my mother!”

                    It is indeed the Comtesse de Montgenet, come to her peaceful island estates to escape the riots and murder back in France. She is astounded by the appearance of her daughter, who is very obviously, very flamboyantly pregnant, as she leaps from the carriage to embrace her awkwardly. The old lady is also blatantly suspicious of the British uniforms accompanying her lost child, visibly recoiling as the three men step down.

                    It takes Julie several minutes to explain matters and reassure her mother who, very tentatively, allows Prince Edward to bow and kiss her withered hand. 

                  “Leave us for a while,” Julie urges. “The servants will get you refreshments inside.” She calls out orders to some sloppily-clad negroes now peering curiously from the main doorway, goading Edward towards them. She then takes her mother by the arm into a covered veranda on the mansion’s far side.

                    These servants shyly usher the men into a cool, shady hall, hung with paintings so badly damaged by the climate that it’s nearly impossible to discern what they’re about. One is a landscape whose land has escaped, curling down out of sight, leaving only clouds, a cloudscape. Another is the portrait of a man with no face, apart from the trace of a long, pinched nose. From here they’re taken into a dining room so dark they obliged to grope their way to seats. Eventually, a negro hauls open one recalcitrant shutter, which squeaks horribly, shedding a dazzling ray of mote-filled light onto surfaces so covered in a yellowish-grey dust they could well be fashioned entirely from sand. In broken French, the visitors are told to wait and take their ease.

                   “The old place seems to have gone a tad to seed,” Weatherall observes good-humouredly.

                    “If I have to work here,” announces the surgeon, Lieutenant-Doctor Potts, “there’s going to be an awful lot of cleaning beforehand, Your Highness.” These are the first words he’s spoken – besides ‘kindly pass the salt…’ – since leaving Halifax.

                  “Well,” says the prince, “let’s hope you don’t have to work here. But, if that eventuality does arise, I’m sure we can make at least one room acceptable to you.”

                    Potts looks doubtful. 

                    “It’s only a birthing, man!” Weatherall declaims, taking exception to Potts’ fussiness, “not an amputation. Why make such a palaver over nothing?”

                    Potts scowls. At this point, two servants reappear, each carrying a silver tray weathered brown with age. On one stands a greasy china jug and three blurred wine glasses; on the other is a plate of crisp fried plantain slices. An elderly negro, his hair white as lambs’ wool, pours a greyish opaque liquid    into the filthy glasses; it is flecked with chalky fragments. Both servants bow in a simulation of formality and, bare-footed, lazily slap across flagstones out of the room.

                    “What in blazes is this?” demands Weatherall, holding his glass up to the shaft of brilliant light thrusting through  one unshuttered window.

                    The prince sips from his glass, feeling sure he knows what it will contain. “Coconut water,” he says, drinking more of it, and then crunching a few of the plantain slices, which prove hard as coins.

                  “Said to be beneficial for the liver,” Potts comments, squinting closely at his glass without touching it. “But not in glasses this grubby.”

                  “How can Madame’s mother live like this?” Weatherall asks, expecting no answer.

                    Neither man touches the refreshments. Fearing he might break a tooth, the prince avoids eating more banana slices; yet he drinks two glasses of the coconut water, watched suspiciously by Potts, who’s clearly trying to restrain himself from making another derisory comment.

                   “You know how old people are,” the prince tells Weatherall. “They cease to notice things that once would have greatly provoked them.”

                  “Not all old people, Highness,” adds Potts, knowledgeably, polishing silver eyeglasses with his cravat. “Some can even grow obsessively fastidious.”

                  “Don’t contradict His Royal Highness!” snaps Weatherall, glad to vent his spleen on someone. “You never do that, man! Not in my presence, you don’t – not unless you want to be thrashed…”

                  “Then I am very sorry, sire,” the surgeon says meekly, bowing his head in Prince Edward’s direction, probably to hide the less humble thought in his eyes.

                  “No matter, sirs,” says the prince, annoyed by the hostile tone this conversation keeps acquiring.

                    Julie then enters like fresh air, with her mother, the comtesse, in tow; but the old woman is less fresh, more like an ambulatory miasma. The conversation proceeds in French, a language with which, it soon becomes apparent, Dr. Potts is not familiar.

                “Which one is this prince of yours?” asks the mother grumpily, clutching her loose black gown to her corrugated neck, as if cold.

                    Julie introduces him once again. They had all stood upon the women’s entrance, thus he bows formally, reaching for the comtesse’s hand to kiss again; but she keeps both hands on the fabric of her gown, leaving him somewhat embarrassed, his futile arm outstretched like an empty flagstaff. Behind the old lady, Julie rolls her eyes at him, at Edward, conveying a weary frustration. It’s clear their private tete-a-tete has not gone well.

                “And who are these men?” the comtesse demands, glaring over at Weatherall and Potts.

                    Edward introduces them, telling Potts in English that he ought to bow.

                “You’re very young and yet already losing your hair,” the comtesse tells him in a tone of reprimand. “You won’t have any left in five years, you know?”

                    He agrees with her, lamenting the situation.

                  “You wish to marry my daughter?” she next asks, as if the idea is ludicrous.

                  “I do, Madame.”

                  “A little late, is it not? In her condition!” She glances deprecatingly over at Julie’s belly.

                  “It was not possible until her husband’s death, Madame,” he says. It is a mistake to bring this up now.

                “And you first came here to kill him, did you?” says the comtesse, her voice dead leaves in the wind.

                  “Certainly not, Madame. I had no idea he was even on the island…” The prince smooths down his uniform, feeling uneasy.

                  “He came here to see me just a week before you English arrived,” she says, making ‘English’ a pejorative. “He was a sweet boy, very kind, also a relative, my sister’s son. But he was, alas, a sodomite — did you know that?”

                  “I did. Your daughter told me.” By now he’s feeling very uncomfortable in this old lady’s presence, and he starts to perspire liberally – which never adds to his comfort.

                “But that is no reason to kill him,” she goes on, wagging an admonitory finger at him. “In France we simply look the other way. Besides, I hear tell you English are all sodomites.”

                  “That is hardly true, Madame. But, like you, in good society we accept their predilections and ignore them.”

                “But you did not ignore poor Charles-Louis, did you? You killed him!”

                  The prince looks beseechingly at Julie, who takes her mother’s arm. “I’ve told you, Maman,” she says, quietly yet urgently, “it was during a battle, and Edward had nothing to do with it. His forces were nowhere near Charles-Louis’ position.”   His letter to her had stated as much.

                “These men and their endless wars,” declaims the comtesse in scowling disgust. “They are all little boys who never grow up, merely exchanging toy guns for real ones. I know why you came here,” she tells him, again wagging the bony finger. “You don’t fool me with your courtly manners and obsequious speech!”

                “Madame?” He’s beginning to hate this spiteful old crone.

                “You came for our sugar, and that’s all you really came for. But you’ll not have mine! No, my fine sir, you’ll have to kill me too before you get my sugar!”

                  “I am here to marry your daughter, Madame, not to steal your sugar,” he tells her in a sterner tone. “And that is the sole reason I am here; that, and to show Julie her childhood home. I am sorry this has upset you so much…”

                “Upset me!” shrieks the vengeful old woman, her voice now a mere rustle. “You can’t upset me. When you’ve watched your whole family go under the guillotine, their eyes still wide with terror when their heads are in the bloody basket, their eyes still alive there, not much upsets you anymore. When you’ve had your own head placed on the block, with the dripping blade above, and then been released, spared for no clear reason – no, not much in life upsets you anymore. Let alone a pusillanimous, balding minor princeling, whose father’s known as ‘Mad Georgie’, and has exiled him in the wilds of New France – yet another land stolen from us! You could not upset me if you jumped naked into my bed tonight!” 

                  That’s not very likely to happen, he thinks.

                  “Maman, please!” Julie begs her mother.

                  “You want to get married, get married. I don’t care,” announces the comtesse, turning slowly to leave the room and calling out as she goes, “Dinner is served at eight o’clock. I don’t wait a minute longer…”

                “That went well,” says Weatherall.

                  It goes downhill from here on. But in the meantime, Julie is given some strange news by her old nurse, Fantine, who says, ‘You miss you friend, Rose. She ‘ere from ’89 to ’90, yes she is…’

                     ‘Rosie was here?’ Julie’s puzzled.

                    ‘She right ;ere, missy…’

                   ‘But doing what?’

                  ‘Doin’ trouble, from what I hears…’

                     ‘Trouble?’

                     ‘She ‘ave likkle baby, so they says…’

                       ‘Rose had a baby? Was Monsieur de Beauharnais here too?’

                     ‘No,   

missy…’

                      ‘Oh…’

                     ‘They says she leaves dee baby wid lady in Royale, missy – dat be all I knows…’

                      Dinner is so bad that Edward storms off to his room in the middle of it, rather than listen to the malicious old comtesse denigrating him, his father, England and Julie.

                  “You see that cave,” says Julie, the next morning, pointing to a hollow in the cliff face bordering her estate’s southernmost limits. “That’s where the old witch told Rose she would one day be greater than a queen in France… How foolish we were to believe in such nonsense! Instead she became a widow, full of grief, penniless, with two children to support. Or is it three? Like my mother, Rosie also narrowly escaped the guillotine. Very narrowly. Her last letter was so…so sad….” Her voice fades. It has been clear that her memories of this place are not its current reality for her. You can never go back to find a lost magic. It isn’t there. You dreamed it in the dream of your past, where magic dwells because youth is there too. That is the real story.

                  ‘What’s your mother going to be like at church?’ he asks. 

                  They have arranged for a small ceremony in the little chapel at Trois Islets, where the priest will be marrying ‘Colonel Thomas Armstrong’ and ‘Madame Julie de St. Laurent, a widow’. The secrecy is crucial. He can’t risk his real name appearing in the register — but that register will be destroyed when the volcano erupts.

                  ‘I doubt if she’ll come,’ says Julie. ‘It’ll be better that way.’

                ‘Yes. It will definitely be better that way,’ he agrees

                The last thing the comtesse had said to him, after ridiculing his father’s insanity, was, ‘Madness runs in families, you know, boy. I hope you don’t run it into mine…’

                  Julie is right. They don’t see her mother all morning. As they’re preparing to leave for the church, Julie comes downstairs, resplendent in a simple gown as blue as her eyes, gorgeously-coloured flowers in her hair, and a small veil. She announces that her mother claims to be sick and would not leave her bed.

                  “I cannot say I’m disappointed,” he says. “She must know how offensive she’s been?”

                  “She wouldn’t care,” Julie says. “I think we ought to leave for Port Royale as soon as the ceremony is over.”

              “Motion seconded,” Weatherall states, as formally as he can manage.

                Julie alone could make this decision, hard as it probably is for her. Impossible as she is, the comtesse doesn’t have many years left; and a mother is always a mother, your creator — no matter what she does to unmake you. 

                    The little Roman Catholic chapel of Trois Islets is sparsely equipped, with mildewed walls and damp, rotting pews; yet the place has an aura of sanctity about it all the same. The weather-beaten old priest too performs his Latin rite with appropriate solemnity, making Julie feel genuinely married in the eyes of God – which is, after all, the whole point of this exercise. They will not be married in anyone else’s eyes. When he places the ring on her finger, over the pale ghost of an indentation left by her former wedding band, he too has the glowing inner sense of performing a profoundly sacred act. Altar candles seem to burn brighter, and incense gives off an other-worldly fragrance. Perhaps, he thinks, it’s the fragrance of a world where his father’s Royal Marriages and Settlement Acts count for nothing?

                  ‘Mrs. Armstrong,’ says Prince Edward, as they walk out under a dazzling canopy of white sunlight.

                     ‘Mr. Prince,’ she says, squeezing his arm. She’s no longer a mistress. But he’s still a prince, an English prince – and one who has just broken an English law.

                  In Port Royale, he feels obliged to ask if she wishes to see her late husband’s grave.

                “No, my dearest,” she says, to his great surprise. “It is enough to know he now rests in peace, and that you did everything possible to make sure of that. For me, it says much about you – although not much I didn’t already know. Why else would I be standing here?’ 

                Lack of a feasible alternative? he thinks, ashamed at the irritating little voice thinking it.

                By nightfall, they’re back on board the Roebuck, where Captain George, unaware of the visit’s true purpose, seems puzzled by the festive atmosphere enveloping his passengers, and at Edward’s call for a very special dinner to be served, with champagne, if it’s at all possible to find some. To everyone’s delight, it is possible, and toasts are proposed  late into the night, toasts to love and to happiness. He wonders if Julie thinks about her mother back in that lonely, disintegrating house, with nothing to celebrate but her own loneliness and disintegration, and no one to berate but her drowsy servants. But, he wonders, is she any worse off than my mother?

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 8.1

CHAPTER EIGHT

Clockwork

Nova Scotia, Martinique and Halifax: May 1794 – November 1798

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          Like a thin northern sun, news leaks onto the decks from passing vessels of various nationalities, received with a mixture of scorn and dubiety. The war with France is not much, not yet, although American neutrality seems guaranteed. They’ve sent an envoy, John Jay, to London for a discussion of the terms. The Terror is over in France, with Robespierre and the other butchers sent to their own guillotine. An atmosphere of maniacal frivolity apparently grips Paris, with a “gilded youth” walking the boulevards in outrageous clothes and hairstyles, some of the women bare-breasted.  The city now has six hundred dance halls, one of them throwing balls to which only relatives of those gone under the dripping blade are invited, women wearing the ghastly symbol of a thin blood-red ribbon around the neck. A Directoire now governs the country, made up of lawyers, bankers, merchants, contractors and men of substance, none of them possessed of any real military experience. With Prussians and Austrians on their borders, the French army is in disarray, leaderless, and more preoccupied with quelling riots in the cities than defending the country from invasion. The new rulers are more intent on making themselves fortunes through monumental corruption. Prices are soaring, and there is no work. Such a shambling nation does not justify much involvement from the British Army, and it does not receive much. Yet the French Navy is in tolerable shape, having been spared some of the purges of aristocratic officers that so afflicted the land forces. Thus, much of the war will proceed initially at sea. As he hears from a merchantman out of Bristol, Prince Edward is one of this conflict’s earliest heroes, and his victories are much celebrated – all the more so, because there have been some dispiriting disasters. 

                In London the mood is grim; no one knows where this spirit of revolution is headed. You hear one thing one day and another thing the next. Nothing is certain; and uncertainty breeds restlessness, along with fear.

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              A weeping sky above you is joined in a chorus of gloom by an even sadder land now rising up in the west. ‘Not an edifying prospect,’ he says, eyeing the shoreline.

                  ‘No,’ says Weatherall, ‘it’s not…’

                  Without incident, and over water nearly as calm as a millpond, H.M.S Blanche arrives at Halifax on May 21st, in drizzling rain, to be greeted formally by the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, Sir John Wentworth, along with cannon-fire and a regimental band – musicians ‘of horrifying ineptitude,’ as the prince describes them. 

              The city is laid out down the slope of Citadel Hill in a tedious grid of wooden houses, most of them painted yellow or white. Upon this hill, between two churches, stands the governor’s box-like mansion. Some rudimentary fortifications are also visible, many of them little more than crumbling ruins. Recalling the debate in Weatherall’s Halifax newspaper, he decides that those who believe Haligonian defenses against a French attack are inadequate are unquestionably correct – indeed those disputing this must be blind or in league with the enemy. What remain of the dilapidated old structures are mostly collapsed towers, overgrown trenches, and disintegrating redoubts, most of this inutile rubble left over from the American war. Even a modest fleet of warships would be able to take the harbour and city without much trouble at all. 

               ‘And,’ he says, ‘this is the only seaport in Canada!’ 

                The whole settlement of Halifax has also fallen into a state of dismal poverty and shameful disrepair, since the former prosperity, derived from once being the principal port in North America, has now gravitated south to Boston.

              Governor Wentworth, in his late forties, wears a white wig which hangs down at the sides like a spaniel’s ears. His large, smiling brown eyes belie the stern expression formed by a prominent nose and thin pursed lips. To Prince Edward’s surprise, his handshake is a masonic grip, though one denoting a low degree. It is thus astonishing to learn he’s Grand Master of the city’s lodge. He’d been Governor of New Hampshire before the rebellion drove him north. In his gold vest, smart black tailcoat, with a lace cravat and cuffs, he proves an amiable enough fellow, immediately announcing that he’d intended to give the prince a tour of Halifax, but the uncooperative weather has postponed this delight until a later date. ‘It’s been raining here all year, or so it seems, Highness,’ he says. “I imagine you’d prefer to take some relaxation instead, anyways?” A curious syntax can slip out of him at times. The governor now orders his carriage to take Edward up mud roads ruined by tree stumps and jutting rocks to a residence near his own. “Where,” he adds rather grandly, “several letters already await your royal attention.” Unlike Lord Dorchester, Wentworth is pleased and flattered to have royalty in town.

                The prince is preoccupied with the thought of these letters, hardly bothering to examine the comfortably-furnished little house provided him before asking one of its small staff in attendance for his mail.

                 ‘Ah, no – nothing…’ The thought is voiced. To his bitter disappointment, there is no word from Julie. ‘Sawyer,’ he says immediately, ‘find out if Robert Wood ever reached the city; and, if he did, did he then travel to Quebec – double-quick!’ 

                  Sawyer, the sharpshooter no more, runs. The answer, when it comes an hour later, proves to be inconclusive. But the prince has by now opened his  letters. One is from his old Geneva friend, William Villette, informing him of a vote of thanks offered to Prince Edward by both Houses of Parliament, as well as in the Irish House. Villette points out that he’s the first of King George’s offspring to be thus officially commended for heroism in war. For anything at all, in fact. Congratulations. Then Villette warns him of rumours that this honour has made his two elder brothers, the Prince of Wales and, particularly, the Duke of York, angry and jealous. Far from being commended for his valorous service, York, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, Bishop of Osnaburg, has instead been publically reprimanded for his miserable failure in holding Dunkirk, as well as for other military catastrophes in Holland. He’s bitter and resentful at the best of times, so now it’s worse. He curses his younger brother in public. This bodes ill for Prince Edward’s hopes of leading a regiment in Europe, or of obtaining a more important posting anywhere else. The Duke of York, he thinks, will make sure I’m kept well away from any combat, away from the slightest possibility of a new triumph. His malevolent, conniving personality was plain to see in London. The prince doesn’t doubt it will be busily at work now. Another letter is from the Baron de Vincy, offering his own congratulations on the prince’s victories in the West Indies. Vincy then goes on to detail the chaotic events in France. It has now become his firm belief that, if republicanism were to spread across the continent, efforts to educate the rich and powerful will be more vital than those to educate the poor, since the upper classes are in greater need of it. Properly schooled, such people could benefit a country far better in the short term. Teaching the masses to read, Vincy surmises, would only make them more susceptible to propaganda in the press, which is mostly financed by self-interested plutocrats to promote their own aims. The semi-literate poor act from instinct and sentiment, he writes, not from reason, thus they tend to believe any calumny or slander, unable to discern between truth and falsehood. What, the prince wonders, has so changed his mind? It had been Vincy’s stated conviction that coups d’etat can only be staged effectively by a handful of men who understand the mechanisms of governance and are able to manipulate public opinion for their own purposes. The masses who were the face of France’s Revolution have failed to create a government — and so have the cynical thugs following them into power. The prince wonders if this failure has made Vincy pessimistic. Does he seriously think that an educated oligarchy would run the country any better? It seems ridiculous. Yet he is aware of how poorly educated England’s aristocracy is. ‘My brothers are literate,’ he tells Weatherall. ‘They can read and write. They can read, but they don’t, except for papers or periodicals – nothing too long or too taxing. They have no grasp of politics, philosophy or economics, except where these intersect their own interests…’

              ‘In that they’re not unique,’ Weatherall remarks. 

                The prince is not going to assume his official post here for two months, or so he learns. ‘Christ,’ he says, ‘I can’t sit in Halifax twiddling my thumbs until August, can I?’ He’s restless and anxious to work. ‘Sawyer,’ he says, ‘write a letter to Lord Dorchester on my behalf, requesting the Fusiliers be sent here to join us. They’ll at least keep us busy, won’t they?’ He leans back, staring at the ceiling, recalling how intractable the Fusiliers were. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘they’ll occupy the time.’ Hours of idleness drag for him. Impatient for a reply from Quebec, and fraught with worry over Julie’s lack of communication, he suggests another activity to his suite of officers: ‘We’ll make a  tour of the province, getting to know the lay of the land. If I’m to protect and serve the place, I should know it, shouldn’t I? It will be educational, won’t it?’

              Educational? Perhaps,’ says Weatherall dubiously.

                ‘I don’t see why not,’ says Captain Sawyer.

              ‘No, you never do, Sawyer, do you?’ Weatherall tells him. Some people just rub you the wrong way. It can be merely the sound of their voice, or just the way they walk, but it raises your hackles.

-iii-

                     “I was great friends with your brother, Prince William,” says Lady Frances Wentworth, the governor’s wife. She says this the moment she first meets Prince Edward, before a dinner at Government Hall. She’s an attractive if slightly vulgar woman, with glossy black hair in ringlets, and sparkling hazel eyes. Her crimson silk gown is cut a little too low; her jewelry is a little excessive. “And,’ she goes on, ‘I sincerely hope to be still greater friends with Your Royal Highness…” Oh no, he thinks. Not brother Bill’s Canadian misadventures again! But yes. Lady Frances’ eyes glint amber in the lambent candlelight, a slow fire inside them. 

                   The prince has of course by now learned of the Duke of Clarence’s several visits to Halifax, which took place just after his embarrassing sojourn at Quebec. Bill’s propensity for drunken and lascivious misbehaviour had not let up here. Why would it? Indeed, it has earned him an insulting nickname: ‘Coconut’, on account of his reddish hair. It is always a bad sign when Bill removes his wig. Without saying as much in so many words, Lady Frances makes it clear that she had enjoyed an intimate relationship with Clarence. 

                 The prince is appalled by her presumption of his own character and her lack of propriety — in the presence of her husband too. Yet he’s courteous: ‘Madame, you will find I am most unlike my brother…’

                  ‘I can’t wait,’ she says, ‘to find out what you’re like…’  

                    As he will discover, under the Wentworths, supposedly in order to counteract the city’s steady and shabby decline, an atmosphere of licentiousness and frivolity has been encouraged among members of what passes for high society here. As in Paris, it is perhaps a natural response to social collapse. It seems that brother Bill’s behaviour was taken as a benchmark for conduct of the upper classes, there being no other example to follow. The degree of informality and the ubiquity of drunkenness, during the course of this evening’s dinner, is disturbing to the prince.

                   ‘What are we going to do with this place?’ says Governor Wentworth, trying to keep the ears of his wig out of his soup.

                   ‘We?’ says the prince, elevating an eyebrow.

                   ‘You and me…’

                    ‘I see,’ he says sternly. ‘Improve it – or so I imagine…’

                   ‘It sure can use that, Highness – it sure can use that.’ Wentworth looks around at his guests and laughs heartily. Guffaws of inebriated agreement sound. 

                When Prince Edward unveils his plan to tour the province, Governor Wentworth objects in the strongest possible terms: ‘Jesu Christ, no!’ he says. ‘You got bloodthirsty savages out there. You got American border raids. You don’t want to go there, Highness – nope, you definitely don’t…’

                  ‘Nonsense,’ says the prince, giving Wentworth a hard stare. ‘How can you govern a place and be afraid to tour it? My posting demands of me just such a detailed knowledge of the territory as I now intend to gain.’

                ‘You got disease; you got flies…’

                  Prince Edward waves these spluttering objections aside, telling the governor, ‘I need from you a schooner to be readied, along with a small escort of troops, and some fine Canadian horses. And I need all these in time for a dawn departure tomorrow. I trust you can comply?’

                     ‘Well, yes, of course. But where the hell are you planning to go…Highness?’ 

                     ‘Ah, I wish to sail south for St.John’s. I hear the scenery in those parts is exceedingly lovely.’

                    ‘So do we,’ says Lady Frances. ‘So do we – don’t we, John?’

                   ‘You might, dear…’ It seems the Wentworths don’t have the most agreeable of relationships, yet they seem to toy with, rather than to antagonize one another.

-iv-

                      With Weatherall, Sawyer, and a few select soldiers from the local garrison, he sails in the forenoon to St. John’s, principal city of New Brunswick, an ill-defined province on the American border. After being courteously entertained by a nominal governor, Lord Chipman, they sail on up-river to a point where their captain announces he can proceed no further on account of a deadly torrent some half-mile ahead. The prince orders him to continue, however: ‘I should like to see this torrent for myself,’ he says, as ever eager to witness marvels of nature.

                    ‘As you wish, Highness, but…’ But large rocks soon make further progress unwise.

                      ‘Drop anchor, Captain,’ he orders, ‘and allow my own captains, myself, and the escort ashore with our horses…’

                        The horses seem to have enjoyed their voyage, now peering curiously at the passing scenery and the gushing rapids, ears swivelling, tails twitching, their big hoofs stepping delicately over stones and roots. But the men do not enjoy themselves as much. The prince’s horse soon proves skittish too, afraid of fallen trees and rushing water. Julie is on his mind; and the torrent, once they reach it, merely reminds him of Montmorency, the fairly happy home he may never see again. As he will always do when unsettled or oppressed by dark thoughts, he pushes himself harder — and others are pushed with him. They press on into the dense bush for no clear purpose. They’re greeted warmly by a settlement of Micmac Indians, but problems of translation mar his efforts to inquire into their culture and beliefs. These people always impress him, though, and he remarks on the tidiness of their camp, its respect for nature, compared with ugliness and squalor in the white men’s Halifax. On the spot, he makes a firm decision: ‘Captain Sawyer,’ he says, ‘make a note: I intend to press for Louis de Salaberry to be assigned the post of Minister for Indian Affairs. He’ll ensure that the King’s treaties and accords of fundamental rights are enacted swiftly, granted equitably and in perpetuity.’

                      ‘How do we grant lands to people who don’t believe land can be owned, sir?’ asks Captain Rogers.

                       ‘They see themselves as stewards and guardians,’ replies the prince.

                        ‘But we’re giving them deeds of ownership, sir,’ objects the captain.

                       ‘Because we think we own it, Rogers,’ he says, smiling. ‘It’s a paradox – like everything…’ He turns to Weatherall and says, ‘The future for these people will doubtless grow more tenuous as more settlers arrive, will it not?’

                    ‘Indeed,’ his friend agrees. ‘They’ll need to have lands granted under full protection of the Law — while it’s still possible…’

                      ‘Yes. Still possible. Well, they’ll have to think they own it too, won’t they?’

                  Setting off again, they ride for a few days pointlessly through tangled forests, ripped by thorns and beset with flies, some as large as bumble bees, all voracious for blood, sweet human blood. Their nights are still worse, wrapped in blankets on the mossy earth, attracting whining vampire galaxies. In a lonely clearing, they encounter a Jesuit missionary dwelling in a rude hut, his black robe in tatters, his beard prodigious. He’s come to convert the savages but is having precious little success.

               ‘Possibly they need no converting?’ says the prince.

                  ‘What will become of them if I turn away?’ the priest replies.

                  ‘Yes. But even the Good Samaritan could have been mistaken, couldn’t he?’

                    ‘Our Lord did not think so…’

                  ‘What is it,’ he later asks Weatherall, ‘that makes us so convinced we are right?’

              ‘Obduracy?’

                   They continue on their weary way, until, exhausted by the unending sameness of this tangled landscape and the lack of any sights of interest, heart-sick over Julie, he finally suggests a return to the waiting schooner. It has been a miserably futile journey, something he is not happy about, something that doesn’t augur well for his stay here, which seems to open itself up before him like the dark maw of some mythical monster blocking his path.

-v-

                     Spring approaches, still dripping, still grey. By mid-June, he’s back in Halifax, where a note from Robert Wood awaits him. Julie had sailed for England upon receiving his letter from Martinique, thinking he’d be sure to head there himself after the victorious island campaign. As soon as he’d heard from Lord Dorchester about Edward’s new posting, however, Wood wrote to tell her of the prince’s current whereabouts. Consequently, he learns, she should be arriving by packet at Halifax any day now.

                  ‘Ah, no,’ the prince sighs. ‘Listen to this, Fred. ‘Wood wants to leave my service and remain with his wife in Quebec. She wishes to stay close to her family and friends there…’

                      ‘Sad. A sad loss,’ says Weatherall. ‘Good man, Wood…’

                     ‘Yes. Indeed… But I can’t deny him, can I?  Oh, and listen to this…’ He’s opened another letter by now, this one from Lord Dorchester. ‘Damn! He says he needs our Fusiliers to remain there. Ah… yet he can permit me to have the regimental band They’re even now sailing down the St. Lawrence in a warship, he says. They ought to arrive here soon. Well, Fred, at least there’ll be decent music…’

                    ‘Indeed,’ says Weatherall. But there is somehow something less than joyous about this news.

                      ‘Can you post a man down at the harbour,’ he says, ‘to report back on any vessels coming from England…’

                       On the third day, a mail packet carrying Julie arrives safely at the quayside. It’s an awkward meeting. She’s now heavily pregnant and behaves like a stranger, exchanging mere formalities with him. He’s worried her feelings have changed. He’s worried she blames him for her husband’s death. He frets and worries until they reach the house. He has dismissed his suite and the servants for a day. Her aloofness disturbs him. She barely speaks a word in the carriage, nor will she meet his gaze. He fears increasingly what she might have to say when she starts to say it.

                 “Oh, my dearest,” she says, when they’re finally alone, “I thought I would never see you again!” She falls into his strong arms, sobbing; and he spends a half-hour stroking her head, soothing, reassuring, and eventually calming her. Their relationship always seems so tenuous – perhaps because it is so tenuous, he thinks. She’d been anxious about their meeting too. She feared he would now be headed for England alone to marry a German princess. Then she looks up with tear-blurred sapphire eyes, saying, “Did you really mean what you wrote to me in Mr. Wood’s letter?”

                “That you’re now free to marry me? Yes, of course I meant it. You’re a widow. It will be morganatic, of course — and in secret. But in the eyes of your Church and God it will be valid. If my brother George can do it, why can’t I?”

                  “So happy, Edward,’ she says. ‘I’m so very happy…now.” 

                  “And,” he says, “I’ve decided the ceremony should be performed at Martinique, so you can once more see your old Trois Islets home, and…”  He trails off, thinking better of mentioning Charles-Louis de Fortisson’s grave at such a time.

                  “The estate is still ours, is it?” she asks, with a searching look. “Or have the British taken all French property?”

                  ‘No, no. The inhabitants have not been molested,’ he assures her. ‘We’ve just taken the forts…’

                  “But our baby is due within a couple of months,” she reminds him, proudly patting her swollen belly.

                  “Then we must leave as soon as possible, mustn’t we?’ he tells her. ‘We don’t want to add another royal bastard to the litter….”

                  After much tenderness and many protestations of her love, she begins to tell him of her brief time in England, producing an envelope full of clippings taken from newspapers and journals there. Ordering a guard outside to make inquiries regarding vessels currently in port, he sets about reading avidly.

                    His brother Frederick, Duke of York, has married a duchess he’s so far still a stranger to. Earlier, a secret committee has been obliged to nullify the marriage of his younger brother, Prince Augustus, to a Lady Augusta Murray who, a few weeks before the inquiry, had borne him a child, a son. All London is now evidently agog, claims the Times, awaiting the birth of a child to his brother Bill, Duke of Clarence, and his celebrated mistress, the actress Mrs. Dorothea Jordan. Though a bastard, this expected baby’s crib and accessories, it’s reported, are already festooned with royal insignia. A clipping dated later announces that couriers have been sent to all the courts of Europe, proclaiming the birth of a son to the Duke of Clarence, this son to be named ‘George’, with the Prince of Wales standing as godfather.

                 ‘Ridiculous!’ Edward exclaims. ‘As if an illegitimate child could possibly be heir to the throne…’ It is, however, the first offspring of any senior royal prince. “And I’m supposed to remain the model of rectitude in the face of this!” He’s astounded by such an open thwarting of his father’s will. ‘How is the King taking this news? Not well at all, I’ll wager…’

                  “I found London to be in turmoil,” Julie tells him, “shocked to the core by naval losses and the defeat of allied armies. The only bright spot was your victory in the West Indies, which was celebrated wildly. I think all those royal shenanigans were reported in a vain attempt to distract the mob from this war and their other grievances.”

                    One newspaper, The Morning Post, deplores Admiral Lord Howe’s inability to tackle the French fleet which, it says, ‘now rides triumphant over our favourite element’. The St. James’ Chronicle even prints a satirical verse on the subject:

You know how, in some strange way

Somebody lost us once in America;

You know Howe.

Somehow, too, by some delay,

Somebody too let the French fleet

Slip away. You know Howe.

                Dreadful poesy, he thinks. Things change so swiftly, though; for, a few days after this, The Times is trumpeting ‘IMPORTANT NAVAL VICTORY’, citing the capture of six French ships of the line by the same Admiral Howe, without the loss of a single British vessel. His disreputable brother Bill, now Chief of the Admiralty, was so overjoyed by news of this victory that he jumped straight into his carriage, heading for Covent Garden Theatre, where he stopped the performance in progress to march out on stage and announce Howe’s triumph to the audience. The orchestra immediately struck up Rule Britannia, and God Save the King, with the crowd cheering maniacally, yelling for encore after encore. Julie says the whole city went crazy with delight, which increased to fever pitch when, as he reads in another cutting from the Times, a report of Admiral Hood’s success in capturing the port of Bastia in Corsica was released.

                  “Lights burned in every window,” Julie recounts, “and even the London poor burnt rushes. Yet this was not enough for the mob. They started smashing any window not showing a light. They almost destroyed the home of Lord Stanhope, who, it seems, was away in the country at this time. I saw a note attached to one door,” she continues, “reading ‘Gone to bed – 2.a.m – please kindly ring the bell if you wish me to light another candle’.”

                  A clipping from some days after this states that glaziers have been kept busy night and day since the revels; and that Quakers, fearing for their own windows, had posted bills all over the city explaining that their failure to light candles is owing to religious beliefs forbidding celebration of any event involving bloodshed. When Howe’s fleet brought the captured French ships into Spithead harbour, he further reads, Vauxhall Gardens prepared for a gala celebration, with food, refreshments and fireworks laid on for crowds expected to number in the thousands. The London coffee shops have even raised eight thousand pounds for widows of those men lost during the great sea battles. Many society women arrived at the Vauxhall gala dressed as admirals. Most annoying of all, however, is to read of the King and Queen’s visit to Portsmouth, in order to inspect the fleet, and to present Admiral Howe with a diamond-hilted sword. I’d be lucky to receive a wooden spoon for my trouble, he thinks. The same paper notes curiously that some of the captured French captains wore the white Bourbon cockade in their hats. ‘Odd. Now why would that be?’ he says.

                  “I went to see your brother’s Mrs. Jordan on stage,” Julie then relates brightly, looking pleased by his interest in her news from home. “She gave a benefit performance for widows and orphans of the war. She had a bad cold, so her voice was cracked and hoarse; but the audience still applauded rapturously.” 

                It was around this time that Julie had received the letter informing her of his arrival at Halifax; so she set sail immediately, her packet chased for three days by a French privateer. “Thanks be to God,” she sighs, leaning her head on his broad shoulder, “we arrived safely.”

                        She does not raise the subject of her husband’s death, so he decides not to mention it or the man’s funeral at all – or not until a much later date. 

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 7.4

-xi-

                 A strange kind of calm descends like grace over the carnage, sanctifying the useless sacrifice.       Later, when a suitable lodging has been found for him in the port, he sits down at a warped, dusty table to write Julie a letter explaining what has happened, whose body he’d found. It is not an easy letter to write. She loved Charles-Louis like a brother. He doesn’t want to sound like a hypocrite, like a Joseph Surface – because he’s not too upset by Fortisson’s demise. How could he be? He tries a casual tone: You’ll never guess who I found  here  among the dead… God, no! It should read more like a letter of condolence, more sorry for her than for her late husband. Or should it read more like a report? Should he add an uplifting note? But what? He suddenly has a very good idea of what – a very, very good idea. Several drafts later, he folds one, addresses it and seals it. Then he writes out an official pass for Robert Wood, authorising any British vessel to assist in carrying him to Halifax. Summoning Wood, he explains the task: as swiftly as possible, get this into Julie’s hands – and into hers alone. Wood is to leave first thing in the morning on a frigate bound for Boston. From there he’ll take the mail packet, or whatever the first vessel leaving for Halifax proves to be. ‘Row a bumboat if necessary,’ he says, ‘but get there double-quick, eh?’ 

                   He’s in no mood for celebrating, so he keeps away from the night’s festivities, which are noisy and rambunctious indeed. Half-dressed soldiers guzzle kegs of rum, hauling out the contents of warehouses into the street, strutting about in the hats of French officers, and thrusting at bollards with fine new swords. He sees one man, wearing lace ruffles on his bare arms, a red sash across his hairy chest, beating a drum with a silver ladle, until the drum-skin cracks open and the ladle falls through. Two reeling men are attempting to go at it with a mulatto prostitute they’ve pressed up against the sea-wall. They keep slipping over, tearing at her clothes to break their fall. Another fellow sits with his face pressed into a large sack of sugar, eating it hungrily like a horse. Men howl out shanties and ribald ballads in tuneless voices: a captain’s name is Kendrick; he’s evidently got a bent prick — and knows what to do with it too… Such is the celebration he avoids. Such are those rare moments of booty and bestiality these men live for – and sometimes die for. Sad. Here comes the pestering thought again: If only they were educated…

                   “It’s nothing,” Weatherall keeps saying, lying on his cot in the hospital tent, waving his bandaged hand. “It’s nothing compared with those poor bastards.” He’s pointing to an area aglow with oil lamps. Standing in bloody sawdust, at still more bloody ad hoc tables, surgeons are grimly busy sawing the limbs off men, many of who groan horribly through the wooden pegs they bite on when the pain hits. Some are begging for laudanum, rum, wine, a bullet, anything to mitigate the agony for a while – or forever. The insistent soft grating of hacksaws carving through bone is hideous, when you can hear it over the screams. He orders an equerry to make sure these men have as much rum or wine as they want, since it’ll be as close to celebrating their victory as they’ll get tonight. Maybe ever. Laudanum, the real vanquisher of pain, is in short supply and reserved for officers. Wrong, he thinks. Very wrong.

                  General Grey has allowed his men to loot the French warehouses, forbidding them, however, in the strictest possible terms, from bothering any of Port Royale’s citizens. The prince has therefore had little choice but to allow his Grenadiers the same privilege, and similar restrictions. With all the rum, and all the violence inebriation unleashes, the local inhabitants are far from safe. The entire city is now a madhouse of drunken men, armed to the teeth and intent on taking whatever they want, in pleasures, treasures, and their savage idea of fun. War, he will come to see, is the greatest of all crimes, because it gives licence to all other crimes, from murder, through rape, robbery, and arson, to petty theft, assault, and even counterfeiting. It is the crime in which all crime flourishes. We should cease and desist this barbarism, he will come to believe — but we cannot, for no one else will. The most powerful nations must be the first to lay down their arms, but the brave monarch who’ll order such an act has not yet been born. Did the French deserve this carnage? Yes, he thinks. Their aggression and piracy on the high seas could not go unanswered. But our answer was not without taint. We replied with greed not justice. The demand for sugar back in Europe knows no bounds, and whoever can supply that demand gets rich. We answered piracy with another form of piracy — that’s what we did. The cause creates the effect, which creates a new cause and another effect. The wheel keeps spinning, and no one can get off until the end, when the wheel lies fractured and the world stops turning.

-xii-

                  The luncheon meeting consists of General Grey, two of his most senior officers, Dundas and Campbell, as well as Weatherall and Prince Edward. Sawyer had been invited, but no one could find him. Grey’s plan for St. Lucia, it transpires, is similar in form to the strategy deployed at Martinique. They’ll disembark near Marigot des Ruseaux, on the north-west coast, proceeding by land to the French bastion of Morne du Fortunee, which will then suffer a three-pronged attack, by Grey’s forces, along with those of Dundas and Campbell, and then Prince Edward’s own, all assisted by a naval bombardment from Admiral Jervis and his warships.

                  “Any questions, gentlemen?” Grey inquires, smoothing out his map and sweeping some fried fish off the Caribbean Sea.

                  General Dundas announces disconsolately that many of his men are beginning to suffer fevers from the heat, as well as ulcerous infections caused by insect bites on their ankles. Some have had feet amputated. “I do not expect the most efficient performance from them,” he warns, a weary look on his weathered face.

                 “Any man genuinely too ill to fight,” says Grey, looking around the table with his green stare, “shall be kept behind. But this will not include those who over-indulged themselves last night. Is that understood?” Everyone nods.

                 “What do we expect in the way of French strength there, sir?” asks Weatherall. His hand is heavily bandaged, with wooden  splints in the cloth, and it now resembles a foot.

               “Less than yesterday,” replies Grey, “but highly concentrated and, since they cannot expect assistance from outside forces, probably fiercer and more desperate. In war, it’s always a mistake to underestimate your enemy, gentlemen. I trust no one here will make that mistake…” 

                 This maxim is spooned out during the first week at any military school, so everyone here knows it well. You’d be surprised how often the mistake is made by highly experienced officers, though. Battles are all different, so nothing you learn in school ever really applies fully to any of them.

                  There are no further questions; thus, without more ado, Grey dismisses everyone. Then he calls them back. ‘Good luck, gentlemen,’ he says.

                   An island appears in sea as green as grass, as green as General Grey’s eyes. The place is far smaller than Martinique, but not dissimilar in appearance. All these islands look more or less the same. ‘There she is,’ says General Grey, ‘Helen…’

                  ‘Helen, sir?’ the prince says.

                  ‘I call her Helen,’ Grey is not forthcoming.

                 ‘Ah. You do?’

                  ‘Yes,’ Grey confirms, enjoying himself. ‘You know, Helen of Troy?’

                    ‘I’m not following you, sir… This is St. Lucia, isn’t it?’

                   ‘Of course it bloody is, Major-General. It’s just that, over the last hundred and fifty odd years, we’ve taken it from the French, and they’ve taken it back again so many times that I call the place Helen – see?’

                    ‘Ah. Yes…’

                    ‘I don’t,’ says Weatherall, screwing up his face.

                   ‘It’s more mythtification, Fred,’ he says.  ‘I’ll explain later…’

                 ‘You do that, Major-General,’ says Grey. ‘My favourite pirate, Francois le Clerc, was the first European here, I believe. They called him Jambe de Bois – you can imagine why…’ He is already surveying the island through his spyglass, which he then passes to the prince. “No redoubts,” he comments. “Indeed, not much sign of anything — which of course means nothing. Here we come, Helen!”

                 The prince sees a few brown fishermen mending nets on the beach. One of them suddenly points in their direction. The others then look up, now seeing the imposing fleet through a steamy haze. But they soon return to their work, unperturbed. Perhaps they care as little for the French presence on their island as the citizens of Port Royale?

                 “We should reach Marigot within a half-hour,” Grey says, his face set in its stern commander’s mask. He’s suddenly all business. “With this wind, we’ve made good time,’ he says. ‘But the landing will be rough. Prepare your men to march immediately on Fort Fortunee — or whatever the hell they call it. With any luck, we’ll soon make it Fort Misfortunee, eh?’ He laughs, a professional chuckle concealing the trepidation always preceding an action. ‘I just hope the damn rain holds off until we’re ashore… And, Major-General?” he says, turning back as he walks off. “The best to you and your men. I am expecting another victory…”

                   “Yes. And you shall have it, sir,” the prince tells him, although by now Grey is already twenty feet away.

                  As predicted, the landing is very rough indeed, and they’re forced to jump from the dinghy into waist-high water, the drag of an ebb-tide making the beach impossible for oarsmen to attain. His Grenadiers help the field guns land, using ropes to haul up the boats carrying them onto sand. Storm clouds, which have been gathering overhead, now appear to be blown away from the island by strong southerly winds. They’re mercifully spared the chaotic disruption of tropical rain, yet a massively dark night still comes on rapidly, as they march along stony beaches toward the French garrison. He wonders if General Grey will postpone the attack until first light. 

                The answer arrives immediately, in the form of cannon-fire from Admiral Jervis’ fleet, which had continued sailing on to Fort Fortunee after the marines were put ashore. The bombardment is heavy and continuous, eliciting an unexpectedly formidable response from the French. He sees several fires break out on various British ships, and now orders his men to double their pace. By the time they’re all lined up a few hundred yards from the fort, it is only the light from cannon-fire that enables Sawyer’s marksmen to aim at their targets. It also enables the prince to observe there are no gates on his side of the fort. Disappointing. However, the structure of this garrison seems far less sound than that of Fort Royale. It’s fashioned from mud-brick on a rock or coral foundation. Thus, he orders his gunners to aim for the line of brick just above this base. They fire off two rounds in quick succession, and a section of the wall instantly collapses like sand. It seems they have the element of surprise with them, since the French pickets scramble off the wall to form a scrappy line behind the gaping hole. A fire is burning somewhere inside the fortress, so Sawyer’s men are now able to pick off targets more easily. Sawyer has been suffering an horripilating hangover from the previous night’s celebrations, which explains his non-appearance at the luncheon. It also explains why this day is becoming fantastically hellish for him. Ordering two more rounds from his field guns, the prince brings down a larger section of wall, and then immediately leads a charge. 

               Clambering over the piles of shattered brickwork is more arduous than he’d anticipated, with heavy fire coming from within the walls. Screaming their spine-chilling war cries, the Grenadiers are relentless, and they’re soon inside the fort, fighting in close combat with sword and bayonet. The moonless night, combined with scattered flames and a drifting pall of sulphurous smoke, make this spectacle a scene from Dante, another Circle of the Damned. As he urges the men on, and calls for Sawyer’s rifles to kneel, aiming carefully to fire at any French uniforms left, an officer of the garrison comes flying with a sabre to engage him. The officer is clearly a skilled swordsman too. They thrust, parry, give or gain ground for some ten minutes, until Edward slashes open the man’s tunic, causing him to trip backwards over a burning spar. He now lies spread-eagled and helpless, a look of terrified appeal in darkened eyes. The prince is about to drive his weapon into the Frenchman’s chest, but instead he just holds its point there, looking down at the man. “Votre nom?” he asks, as if they’re meeting at a club or in the mess. His name is Colonel de St. Cloud, Commander of the fort. ‘Ah? Now. If you wish to live, sir,’ he tells St. Cloud, ‘you will order an immediate surrender. Is that understood?’

                    It is. The commander instantly shouts out his orders and then formally presents Edward with a rather plain sword. Unfortunately, though, his orders cannot be heard by most soldiers. Intense fighting continues over on General Grey’s side of the bastion; and many of the prince’s own soldiers are still engaged in savage battles back around more distant areas of the fort. He now takes Colonel St. Cloud at sword-point to shout his commands at these disparate groups. Even then, men engaged in brutal struggles with any weapon that comes to hand carry on stabbing and slashing, mesmerized by death’s proximity. When the lust for blood is high, men are mere animals in a jungle, he thinks, fixated by instinct on a mutual doom. But, soon enough, most of the French are throwing down their arms and sitting in the sooty wreckage of their fortress, not a few of them with a look of relief on their blackened faces. Surrender is usually preferable to an uneasy death. 

                With an ensign, he runs to a flagpole still standing on the seaward side, telling the man to strike French colours and run up the Union Jack. Once achieved, this action, the snapping British flag, causes an instant cessation of Jervis’ bombardment, and draws a resounding cheer from all the British forces, both those within and those still outside the fort. Even the flag seems enthusiastic, wriggling briskly in a lively southern breeze.

                  General Grey then orders an immediate assessment of their losses, walking over to Edward. “An excess of zeal again, Major-General?” he says, the corners of his mouth trembling faintly. “Yet this victory is indubitably yours, sir. Rename the place as you will.”

                  Edward has little choice in this naming matter, however, declaring the ill-fortuned Fort Fortunee to be known henceforth as ‘Fort Charlotte’. His mother will be pleased – an unimaginable state for her, admittedly — which ought to mean his father should be doubly pleased, having his own Fort George, as well as one for his queen; and both these tributes largely thanks to the son he loathes and deems worthless. But ‘pleased’ is not a sentiment Edward associates with him either. You can’t even imagine how it would look on his ruddy face. The prince has half a mind to rename the place ‘Fort Julie’, but he knows this would cause even more trouble for General Grey than it would for him.

                  When it’s reported back to the general that British deaths in the conflict number nil, although the French have lost hundreds, another roar of delight goes up from the troops. 

                “Well, Major-General,” Grey tells him, the green eyes glinting dangerously in light from several fires, “I can hardly reprimand you for that, can I now?” 

                “It always comes down to a bit of luck in the end, sir, doesn’t it?” 

                  “It does for the lucky,” Grey says, surveying the destruction around them, and perhaps wondering how ‘luck’ could be involved in it.           “True enough,” he continues, “true enough, I suppose; yet one never wants to rely upon it. I knew a ‘Lucky Tom’ once, whose luck ran out completely when he most needed it. The Fates are fickle. Give me skill and overwhelming strength any day, and then Luck can come in, if she wishes… but as a mercenary.”

                   The prince takes this opportunity to plead that Colonel de St. Cloud be spared the humiliation of being taken prisoner, and instead be returned to France. 

                   Grey assesses Edward, as well as the plea, finally agreeing to it. “It’s soldierly,” he says. “After all, his speedy capitulation probably saved us some lives. Have his men bury their dead, Major-General, and then order yours to be ready at dawn to sail for Guadeloupe. We’ll leave a small force here, as before, to watch the place.”

                    “Ah. Guadeloupe. How many more French islands are there here, sir?”

                     “Oh,” Grey says, walking away, “a few more. Nothing very serious, though.” He turns back abruptly to ask, “Why, Major-General, are you getting tired of war already?”

                   The prince returns by dinghy to Grey’s ship, the Zebra, and, after a light dinner of flying-fish pie and coconut tart, he settles down to write the King a letter requesting that, since he’s now proved his mettle as a commander in the field, he might return to England and take up command of a regiment in preparation for the war in Europe – which will surely intensify in the wake of these actions in the West Indies. Will this letter be ignored like all the others? Will it? The old disconsolate thoughts return. Does the past ever leave us alone in the present?

-xiii-

                  The air is fevered, laced with a distemper exhaled by hot damp ground. But there are turquoise waters alive with jewelled denizens; and there is a high sun, with intent and muscle in its blazing mien. Guadeloupe is really two interlinked islands, Grand-Terre and Basse-Terre. General Grey attacks the former first. The landscape here is largely one of rolling hills and broad, flat plains. It’s more Europe than the Caribbean. But this time the attack does not go so smoothly. To begin with, many of the men are extremely sick with yellow fever, and most also suffer from horribly infected insect bites. By this stage, they’re also poorly clad and shod, making the heat and humidity still more of a torment. Such enthusiasm as there is wanes fast, particularly since no rich city awaits them to be plundered when the day is won. Their problems begin before they have landed at Grovier Bay, when the fleet comes under heavy bombardment from a hidden shore battery, making it impossible to get close enough to land their troops. The fleet’s cannon respond in kind but, unable to see the French battery clearly, they can do little or nothing to stop the constant fire from it.

                    Showing extraordinary bravery, expert seamanship and exceptional gunnery, Vice-Admiral Garlies, a man Prince Edward hasn’t met, swiftly maneuvers his little 14-gun frigate out of the fleet to slip broadside along the shoreline, close enough for his gunners to utterly demolish the French battery, without his own vessel taking a single shot. The battery gunners simply did not see him coming before it was too late to readjust their guns in response. Without orders from Admiral Jervis, Garlies had taken this action on his own initiative, sure of his talents and the skill of his own gunners. It is one of the most courageous acts in this war. Yet it elicits little comment, and no commendations. The prince suspects forever after that Admiral Jervis deliberately downplayed the incident, since he couldn’t take any credit for it himself. Great men, as he will learn, are often not so great at close range.

                   Grey orders their attack on the fort to commence at dawn, telling his own men to remove the flintlocks from their muskets and use only bayonets; this, with its silence and stealth, will add to what Grey believes to be the element of surprise crucial in taking this particular garrison. Edward concurs. Since his own forces are to arrive only when the actual fighting has begun, the restriction of firepower – which earns the general the nickname ‘no-flint Grey’ – is not imposed upon them.

                    Proceeding along a sandy bush path very slowly, he orders a charge only when he hears the first gunshots cracking out ahead. Approaching the sturdy fortress, however, his men come under heavy fire from its embrasures, as well as from a sniper squadron hidden behind palm groves outside. The Grenadiers escape much of this fire by dodging into thick foliage on the seaward side. Nonetheless, many fall and Sawyer’s marksmen are unable to do much damage, owing to the narrowness of crenellations atop the wall. The prince orders ladders assembled and placed against the wall, sending a small force over to climb them under cover of Sawyer’s fire. Unfortunately, the ladders are not long enough to reach up to the battlements, and many men die in this first brave attempt to scale them. Some even hoist others up on their shoulders to reach the top, but French bayonets and rifle butts turn the valiant effort into a bloody rout. After an hour of unimaginably fierce fighting on both sides of the fort, some of his Grenadiers, using grappling irons, are finally able to penetrate the wall, several of them soon fighting the French on top there, and others hauling up their comrades by rope. The prince himself is one of these, clambering into the fort with a sabre gripped in his teeth. Dundas and Campbell now have troops inside too, after battering down the main gates with large field cannon. Badly outnumbered, French soldiers still fight on with determined ferocity, making barricades from wine barrels, and even hastily digging shallow trenches in which to fire at British troops from relative safety. They don’t stand a chance, he thinks, nonetheless admiring the courage and grit entailed. The recklessness of the French commander appalls him, however. The man’s vanity or pride is unremitting, sending so many of his men into what is now undoubtedly their certain doom.

                   Three thousand are dead before this obdurate leader finally waves a white flag from the security of his inner tower, and a pointless slaughter is mercifully over. British losses are very high too, though not remotely comparable with those of the enemy. French bodies lie everywhere, sometimes piled upon one another, like beefsteaks in Smithfield Market. There are awful groans and screams from men mangled, mutilated or torn apart, yet still somehow alive. One man, who staggers in little circles holding his own severed arm out before him, calls balefully for someone to help him reattach it. Others just writhe in bloody slime, their faces sick with terror. Jaws have been shattered, hanging askew, teeth dangling on fleshy threads like pearls. Eyeballs hang down on cheeks suspended by yellowed sinew. Men bleed out in pulsing torrents, feeding viscous crimson pools in the sand. Skulls have been blown open and some men now touch their own rippling brains with expressions of awe. A man with no hands keeps trying to unbutton his tunic, but only soaks it black with blood, sighing irritably at his continued failure. Nearby, a sergeant attempts to replace yards of slime-silvered intestine in a greasy cavity that is his own abdomen, carefully wiping off dirt from the glossy-pink coils as he labours with them in his life’s last futile act.

                   And this is a victory? General Grey is not happy with the day at all, extending no courtesies to the fort’s commander, nor to any other senior French officers, and forbidding all celebrations. He announces instead, in his snarling speech, that they’ll proceed on to Basse-Terre Island before first light. A wail of dismay goes up from almost every British and Irish soldier, receiving only Grey’s defiant green glare in return. 

                 The indifferent sun rises higher in a cloudless sky, along with suffocating wet heat and the sickly-sweet stench of death. Glory and honour pale in comparison with their cost. The war goes on: Dulce et decorum est …? No, there’s nothing sweet or decorous about it.

-xiv-

                    Time hangs back in sluggish rebuke to days spent at inglorious work. No carrot of plenty is dangled before the men. They have no reason to trudge on through the heat, disease and death. But they do it anyway, because it’s what they do; it’s all they know how to do. It takes nearly three weeks before the two conjoined islands are completely subdued and incontestably under British control. Basse-Terre has been a more difficult terrain, a more usual one here, with dense jungle, excessively populated by venomous snakes, its volcanic mountains making progress hard and sulphurous. Scattered outposts of French infantry have fought on tenaciously for many days, unaware of their comrades’ surrender, since there is no longer any communication-line. Their unpredictable sniper attacks cost us many more lives, serving no clear purpose. It is, ultimately, a victorious campaign, but there’s a hint of defeat about it too. 

                 Sickness grows rampant now, and General Dundas dies from yellow fever, along with many thousands of men. The rest of the lower ranks are gaunt, jaundiced, wasted, their clothes in tatters, their skin riddled with outcrops of angry carbuncles, and the occasional plateaux of suppurating sores. It’s an army of the lost, the damned. After a victory, he thinks, there are no enemies, only men. 

               “Grey cannot possibly think of driving us any further,” Weatherall says, his hand by now greatly improved, but the rest of him worn and sallow.

                  “Christ. No. Indeed, no, or so I trust,” Prince Edward tells him, drinking refreshing water from the musty interior of a green coconut. “I don’t feel I can go on any further myself either. Surely, we’ve done enough here? The islands are ours, aren’t they?” He rums fingers through his matted hair, sighing at his shadow twisting on the sea wall there. They are sitting in the sand on a lengthy deserted beach, listening to the percussive rhythm of waves clawing their way up to land. The only other sound is a bitter wail from sea-birds lamenting hunger, inhumanity, the war, the world. Life. It is only when the fighting is over that you notice the toll it has taken, the damage done deep inside of you. His head aches; his bones ache; his heart aches.

                  “Letter from King George for His Royal Highness,” pipes a little voice behind them.

                   They both turn to find a midshipman, a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen, holding out a yellowed document, uncertain which one of them it’s for.

                  “Sit down, lad,” the prince tells him, taking the letter from his trembling hands. “Tell us your name, sir.”

                    The boy sits uneasily, his face flushing as he replies, “Midshipman Thomas Galsworthy, sir.”

                  “Yes. And how long have you been at sea, Thomas?” he says, offering him a green coconut.

                   “Two years this June coming, if you please, sir,” the boy says, unsure of what to do with the coconut.

                      Prince Edward shows him how to bore two holes in the top with a penknife, urging him to try the liquid inside. It’s said to be very restorative. Like the sea. “Ah. And how have you enjoyed war on the oceans, Thomas?”

                   “Very exciting, sir,” the lad answers, suddenly looking sad and pensive. “Except for losing my dearest friend, Mr. Mitchell, sir.”

                   “No. Sad. You were fellow midshipmen?”

                 “We were, sir; and friends since we were small children too…” He drinks from the coconut, somewhat tentatively. 

                   “How did he die?” the prince asks, shifting to get a better look at the boy.  It’s sad that such a young chap should have already experienced grief and loss in war.

                    “A French privateer brought down our mainsail on his head, sir.” Thomas sighs, a weary, careworn, a very old sigh, adding, “He was a long time dying, sir; and I sat with him up to the end, because of the pain, you see?”

                   “Ah, dear. How old were you when this happened, Thomas?”

                    “Eleven years and three months, sir.”

                  “Young. And was your father in the Service? Was that why you joined?”

                   “He was a rear-admiral, sir; retired on account of wounds received at Toulon. I wanted to make him proud of me.”

                 “Yes. Well. I’m sure he is, my lad, I’m sure he is.” He thinks of his own little boy, who will never wish to make him proud. That will go to Louis de Salaberry, the pride.

                   “Did you know, sir,” Thomas says, glancing up mournfully, “that when you gets buried at sea they sews you up in your hammock, and puts the last stitch through your nose… to make sure you’re really dead?”

                    “No! Who told you that?” He’s outraged that anyone would scare the lad so. 

                   “I saw it with my own eyes, sir,” he assures the prince. “I didn’t like the needle going through Mr. Mitchell’s nose. It made me cry like a baby, because we’d had such plans for our lives…such wonderful plans…” His voice trails off, lost in its memories, its sorrows — as happens to us all at times.

                   “Now, now. Ah, dear. I understand, I understand…” But he doesn’t understand – not at all he doesn’t.                    “Now you’d better run along, Thomas,’ he says. ‘Did you enjoy the coconut milk?”

                   “It has a different taste, sir,” Thomas replies dubiously, rising to leave. “Not unpleasant, though…”

                     “Yes. But not pleasant, either, I suspect. Thank you for the letter, Thomas; and I trust that, when we next meet, I shall be calling you ‘Admiral Galsworthy’.”

                      The boy merely smiles, a woeful little smile; and then he trots off over the hot sands, his sun-bleached hair flying out behind him in golden curls.

                    “When are you going to open that damned letter?” Weatherall asks, annoyed by the exchange with Thomas. His life is bound up with the prince’s now. He needs to know what’s in that letter from the King.

                     “Dear, dear. That’s too young to send anyone into war,” he says, turning over the letter in his hands to examine its seal.

                    “There’s no right age to send men into war,” Weatherall mumbles, impatient beyond measure now. “Take Sawyer, for instance…”

                     It is the King’s seal all right, and it hasn’t even been scanned by other eyes yet, as most significant-looking mail usually is. He pries open the letter with his penknife, reading the brief, scratchy paragraph. The King’s handwriting deteriorates by the year; and his signature keeps ballooning into something resembling a sketch of two puffy clouds. Rage and indignation build. Fury emerges. It ends with the prince hurling this paper up into a brisk, salty wind. The weighty seal makes it plop immediately into fulvous sands a yard away. This too is infuriating, an emblem of his entire relationship with the King, with his father – plop!

                    “Good news at last, I observe,” says Weatherall, bowing his head with a long exhalation of breath, as if in mourning for the prince, or for himself. “Better tell me the worst,” he adds, “especially since it will be my worst, too…”

                    “Christ, Fred! No, no, no. I’m to be Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Nova Scotia – Nova Scotia! We’re to leave for Halifax forthwith, on the frigate H.M.S Blanche.”

                  “God! Is he mad — Halifax?”

                   “Ah. Well, yes, Fred, he is mad… You know, that newspaper you read in Boston, on the Roebuck? That was as close to Halifax as I ever wanted to get…’

                  ‘Me too…’

                     ‘The war is in Europe,’ sighs the prince, ‘and he’s sending me to Canada again. I should have trained to be a lumberjack or a tanner, not a soldier!’ 

                    “Ha! I wish to God that I were going to Canada,” says General Grey, when they go to take their leave. “I’m beginning to despise these wretched islands. They’re killing my men more efficiently than the French ever did, for heaven’s sake!” He looks Edward in the eye as he adds, “I shall be sorry to lose you, Major-General. You are a superb commander. The men respect you too. They love you. That, sir, is worth an excess of its weight in gold braid. I have written to Parliament of your vital role in this campaign, stating my high opinion of you. My praise is not often heard; but I’m sure you’ve noticed that…” The prince is about to say something, but Grey stops him with a huge red hand, saying, ‘Uh-uh, Major-General, do not feel obliged to kiss my arse…’

-xv-

                 General Grey went on to lose half of his 90,000- strong army to yellow fever. Guadeloupe and Martinique were retaken by the French a few years later, with the summary executions of nearly a thousand French royalists living on the islands, which became, once more, bases for French privateers attacking our merchant fleets. Prince Edward’s exploits there, and the lives lost of fifty thousand men, were thus utterly pointless, as the prince will soon come to realize.

                  On the HMS Blanche’s quarterdeck, two figures stand deep in conversation, as their vessel slides north from the turquoise into the slate-grey, from the humid heat and thundering rain into the dank chill and incessant drizzle. ‘Your life is never anything like the tale you would write for it, is it?’ says one man to the other.

                  ‘Call no man happy ‘til he’s dead,’ his companion replies, as a northerly gale howls, beating at sails and rigging, forcing them back to their cabin.

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 7.3

-viii-

                      There are few sights more beautiful than hundreds of men moving off to war in strict formation, all their trust, indeed their very lives, now placed in the hands of commanding officers, whose sole function from here on is to exude ineluctable confidence, invulnerable strength, and a potent sense of absolute control, no matter how chaotic or uncontrollable things may become in the heat of battle. Leadership is all. Even a flicker of hesitancy or weakness will sap the spirit of several hundred men, who would otherwise have willingly given their lives without hesitation, if so commanded. Weatherall and he salute as their troops pass by, metal gleaming, webbing glowing white in the mellow lemon sunlight, pride welling up in many a heart –alongside apprehension.

                “Marvelous!” 

                “Never fails to move one,” says Weatherall. Then, in a less enthusiastic tone, he adds, “But the un-marvelous part is that we now have to march into that steaming greenhouse thicket with them…”

                   “We do? Where’s our transport?” He now notices that no horses are visible anywhere.

                     “On the end of your legs,” says Weatherall, pointing at Edward’s boots. “No horse could navigate that bush, even if we had one.”

                    “God. Well. Do us good to experience what our men go through, won’t it?’

                    “No?’ suggests Weatherall. ‘Let’s see how much good it’s done us by nightfall…” 

                      A path through the pullulating foliage has already been cleared for some miles, yet nonetheless it is still tortuously hard going for the gun crews, dragging their heavy weapons on wheels that stick at every root, stone and in every rut.

               ‘Christ!’ yells Weatherall. ‘The earth’s like a wet feather bed…’ 

                 He and the prince slowly move up to the head of a straggling snake of red uniforms over a mile in length. It’s a lame symbol of leadership, to be literally at the head of your men. The gunners are in trouble and call for more assistance. Soon each field gun has twenty men pulling it along with ropes. The heat and humidity gradually become sheer torment. The deeper they progress into the sweating jungle the more insect life joins in on their miseries, buzzing, creeping, biting and stinging. It nears the unbearable. Should we turn back? As such a pathetic thought crosses his torpid mind, they come across the extraordinary sight of Captain Sawyer, perched atop a jutting monolith, ordering a line of infantrymen to fire at a selection of colourful kerchiefs pinned to various tree trunks some two hundred yards distant. He behaves like a Mongol warlord, scolding a few marksmen harshly, even striking some with a stick, and praising a few others effusively.

                “Any man who fails to hit his target three times in a row,” he now yells, “will only waste bullets and powder. That man will therefore have to make do with his bayonet alone. He does not even deserve a weapon. He is useless to me! Aim and fire at will!” 

               Rifles crack in no especial sequence, the noise startling birds, which caw and trill angrily in protest, flapping away through the glossy greenery. When firing has ceased, Sawyer leaps down from his edifice and strides off to inspect the targets, shouting back his findings.

                “One, two and three, excellent!” he hollers, pointing at holes in the first three cloths. “Four, get out of my sight, immediately! You can throw stones at the enemy just as ineffectually as you can fire at them. Five, passable; six, a near miss; seven, superb! Eight, are you blind? Give your weapon to someone capable of using it, man!” And so it goes on. When Sawyer returns from the targets, noticing Prince Edward’s presence for the first time, the prince calls him over.

                   “Captain Sawyer. Are you not being a little too hard on these men?”

                  “No, sir,” he replies obdurately. “Simply putting Captain George’s theories into practice, sir. A man who cannot hit his target is a man  powder and shot are wasted on. I am weeding out the wastrels, scouring off the dross. I will have only crack marksmen in my line at Port Royale…”

                     The prince looks over at Weatherall, who says, “How many rifles do you propose to have in that line?” 

                   “If I have fifty no powder or shot will be squandered on,” Sawyer replies, something wild and whirling in his eyes, “then I shall be more content than I would having another hundred men who can’t shoot their own feet without hitting someone else’s. For every bullet fired, I want a Frenchie dead – and I’m going to count them out carefully, of that you can be very, very certain.” His certainty is frightening.

                  Weatherall now looks over at the prince, who says, “Ah. Well, Sawyer, it seems to be a sound enough strategy. Carry on, I suppose. But now your men ought to join ours. There will be plenty of time for further practice along the way.”

                   “Maybe you can serve as the next target, Sawyer,” Weatherall mutters under his breath.

                ‘Well. Is he mad, Fred?’

                   ‘One of us is…’ 

                    Before long, on ground as soggy as the air above it, they reach the end of the cleared path, where the prince now summons men with machetes and shovels to begin hacking and digging out a way forward. Taking this opportunity to convey some instruction to his own gunners, he calls for the ten field cannon to be dragged into line, pointing out a large tree stump some two hundred yards away, in a relatively open patch of land. “The stump. That’s your target, gentlemen. But, antecedent to firing, let me tell you how to succeed in hitting a target before any powder is wasted.” He demonstrates some simple geometry, using a stick to draw in the mud and an arc of small leaves to denote the flight of cannonballs. There are ways of assessing distance and optimizing trajectories; there are ways of pinpointing targets with triangulation. There is no wind-effect here to concern them. The men listen most intently. At length, he tells the first gun to fire. When the loader has trouble ramming in his ball, the prince calls out to one of the supply-sergeants for a bucket of hog fat, urging every gunner to line his barrel and coat his shot with the grease. Of course, he has no idea whether this will help. The Prussians did not anticipate gunnery in such a climate, therefore it wasn’t taught in the academy. But, fortunately, the hog fat does help, the balls now slipping inside more easily, as his reputation for artillery genius rises still higher among those who know no better. 

                      After careful adjustments, the first gun fires, even though its powder has been declared damp. Through wreathes of billowing blue smoke, he sees the tree stump has now disintegrated into a mess of scattered fragments. “Excellent gunnery,” he tells number one, as surprised by their success as they are. But now he lacks targets, soon deciding a grove of leaning palms will do, and assigning one to each gunner in order.

                   Following his instructions almost slavishly, each gunner estimates, calculates and adjusts punctiliously before firing. The result astounds everyone: all but two guns hit their assigned trees, felling them; and one of the delinquent two had a ball that jammed in the barrel, causing an explosion cracking it apart, injuring a loader with flying shards. The useless weapon is abandoned where it lies in pieces; and they all continue their sweltering, slow progress along the newly-cleared path, resting only when cutters and diggers require more time to work on ahead.

                 Occasionally, they hear the ruthless new Sawyer supervising more target practice, berating more often than he praises – but let him be. The heat is atrocious. They’re blinded by perspiration and plagued with insect life keen to guzzle their sweat, or perhaps bathe in it. 

                Presently, he and Weatherall remove their soaking wool tunics. “God. That’s better. Just as long as we look like an army again before reaching Port Royale…” He shouts an order that all men can remove their coats until they near the enemy. A loud cheer goes up, echoing far down the line, eventually fading out of earshot as it flies into the steaming jungle. Something needs to be done about army dress worn in extremes of climate. He wishes his brothers could experience and understand such conditions. The Prince of Wales even insists on having a four-poster feather bed in his tent, when he’s suffering as a colonel with troops on maneuvers in the wilds of Hampshire. Meanwhile, the Duke of York is drinking and whoring his way through Europe, unaware that he’d lost the battle for Dunkirk until an aide shook him out of his brothel stupor so he could flee the city with his soldiers — or what remained of them.

Shafts of white-hot sunlight illumine the variegated layers of gigantic greenery through which they trudge on wet and leaden feet. Everywhere, they see exquisitely-formed flowers in a bewildering range of subtle hues, some growing high up on the actual trunks of trees. Often too there are quarto-sized butterflies, more brilliantly-coloured and strangely-shaped than you would believe possible. They float, bejeweled birds of the lower air, pausing briefly on each rare bloom before taking slow wing again, in a bouncing rhythm, as if conducting a pastoral symphony with their wings. The beauty is overwhelming – but so is the strain of this trek. The sky darkens ominously, and everyone knows what is coming. Beauty is only one side of nature’s coin. The air turns blue-black, and rain slams down through fronds, vines and branches, battering on leaves the size of tables, the accumulating water then tilting these glossy basins and pouring off in drenching streams. No one escapes these sudden torrents. What was taken initially for shelter proves to be a trap, unleashing rain by the bucket-full.  Nature too seems to be a lesson from military academy.

                    Before the sun once more asserts his rule over an azure vailt, they’re all as wet as swimmers. The jungle now emanates a sickly greenish vapour which heats up the world, until men faint away, or feel they’re being boiled in cheesecloth like puddings. By nightfall, according to his map, they’ve made fairly decent progress, and are now only about five miles from their destination. It is difficult to imagine a city exists somewhere out there, though, somewhere beyond the bunched trees, outsized leaves, dangling vines, creepers, somewhere beyond the vegetable profusion — if there is a somewhere beyond this. Ordering the men to clear a broad swath of land at the base of a small, grassy mountain – labelled on the rough map as ‘small grassy mountain’ – he decides to make camp for the night, sending a few scouts out to reconnoitre the way ahead, and glimpse, if possible, the fortifications of Port Royale. 

                   “God. My feet are throbbing. Where are these sugar cane plantations anyway?” he asks Weatherall. “They must be somewhere, since Madame Julie grew up on one. But where?” The thought of her hurts even worse than the rest of his body.

                  Weatherall’s only response is a drain-like snore. The day had not ended in its promised battle, yet the following one certainly will. Sleep comes as a mercy to aching limbs and minds wound so tightly they might explode at any moment. A dreamless sleep is heaven’s benison.

-ix-

                      The dream is only of a grey and hazy landscape, a stifling miasma in which you’ve been wandering for years with no clear gaol in mind, no destination at all. 

               The scouts had returned an hour before dawn and are still sleeping. Robert Wood said he’d convey their news to the prince so they could get a little more kip.

                    “Ah. You did. And?” Is it, he wonders blearily, really a world of green fog they’ve scouted out, these scouts?

                   “The way ahead be easier,” says Wood. “The jungle become less dense, they says, because of sugar-cane plantations; but there be many poisonous snakes, so they says. The Port’s rear wall be having riflemen always stationed above it, ‘specially around the large pair of wood gates, which be kept locked, they says, ‘cept when tradesmen or soldiers leaves or enters the city.” Wood scratches his head, and then he continues: “A platoon of soldiers regularly patrols the exterior, often searching the forest edges, they says, as well as ‘long a little path leading to the nearby fort. They be very thorough, according to the scouts; and they appears to be ‘specting an attack, they does. They’s always present when the riflemen above changes watch, I be told. They exits and re-enters through those main gates, they does, and they’s probably quartered just inside them. That’s what the scouts says, sire…”

                    “Good. Is that all?” 

                   “Yes, sire.”

                   “Good work! Ask Captain Sawyer to come here, would you?”

                  “I think he’s got his men at target practice already — a mile or so distant, he be,” Wood says.

                  “Ah. Send someone to tell him to come the moment practice is over then — all right?”

                “Sire,” replies Wood, departing.

                  The prince and Weatherall discuss strategy in the light of the scouts’ report, deciding to line up the field guns about two hundred yards back in the jungle, then fire on the city gates just as the patrolling soldiers are emerging. Sawyer’s sharpshooters will then simultaneously take out any pickets stationed above; and then the main force will charge into the town, engaging all opposition in street fighting.

                 “I hate that,” Weatherall says, hissing through his teeth. “Especially in an unfamiliar place. We have no idea where the enemy may be hiding. We could end up like fish in a barrel.”

                   “Yes,’ he says. ‘Fish. It’s my bet they will only have men stationed at the rear gates and around the port itself. Those are the only two areas open to attack. Why would they bother to have any forces stationed within the city? Fort Royale is right next door, so they have to feel somewhat secure in that.”

                   “Why?” asks Weatherall, knitting his brows, while attempting to smooth the slab of unruly hair on his head. He’s only just got out of bed.

                  “Why? Because they almost certainly would assume any assault must begin with the Fort, not the city. They won’t expect both at once – if, that is, General Grey has taken Fort Bourbon and will be ready to move his men into position around Fort Royale.”

                 “A very big ‘if’,” Weatherall protests. He recalls erroneous assumptions made during other battles. He likes precision planning, not guesswork. They argue back and forth about contingency plans, and the city’s likely layout, while at the same time shaving and dressing. He’s checking the powder in his pistols and pouch for damp, when Captain Sawyer arrives, out of breath and spattered with mud. The pupils in his eyes are so dilated that the corneas look entirely black. “Yes. Sawyer. How’s the sharpshooting going?”

                     “Superbly, sir,” he replies, wringing his hands with delight, and looking quite unhinged. “I have nearly a hundred men who can all hit a coconut at two hundred paces without fail.”

                   “Hmm. How about a man at three hundred?”

                   “I can virtually guarantee a hundred men down with a hundred shots,” he says, a white crust lining his cracked lips.

                   “Why on earth are you in such a state?” Weatherall demands, looking Sawyer over with disgust. ‘You can’t lead men into battle looking like that.’

                   “Muddy out there,” Sawyer tells him, adding, “Not all of us feel we can lie abed on such a day…”

                  “Sarcasm won’t serve you well with me,” Weatherall says, but rather serenely. “And your marksmen won’t serve any purpose at all unless you inform them of the battle plan, will they? Would you like to know of what that plan will consist? Because that was what His Royal Highness and I were working on while abed.”

                   Sawyer nods, suddenly looking more humble. The plan is outlined for him, with an emphasis on his role in it. “I can do that,” is all he says, as if the task were hilariously simple. The prince gives Weatherall a weary and worried look.

                    By noon they’re within a mile of Port Royale’s rear fortifications, and back in their baking red tunics. Edward orders absolute silence from the men, sending a scout ahead to signal when patrolling French soldiers have returned into the city. Fortunately, they’ve come across an old logging path, lined by cacti, colourful lizards enjoying the early sun, and it’s now not necessary to clear any more bush. At the scout’s sign, some fifteen minutes later, they drag field guns into place, side by side, eight of them aimed at the gates, one at a parapet above that provides too much cover for any pickets stationed on it to be easily targeted by Sawyer’s snipers. He tells Sawyer to position his men in a line off to the left, and closer to the wall, each of them selecting, in order, a sentry to shoot — and to shoot at the very same moment Sawyer hears the prince’s command for field cannon to open fire. 

                Ordering the rest of his men into a wedge formation, he addresses them in hushed tones. “Today is St. Patrick’s Day,” he says, the message passed from one man to others behind him, “and thus the British will do their duty for the Irish, and the Irish will fight for their saint! I trust your powder is dry, your bayonets are sharp, and your courage is monolithic. God bless you all!” He notices looks of surprise on many an anxious face. Then he tells captains Mandelkau and Larkin that, once inside the city gates, they will lead their men, respectively, to the left and rightmost streets, while he, Prince Edward, leads a central force. They will meet up, as swiftly as proves possible, down at the quayside. He now watches the gates intently through a spyglass, examining the movement of sentries above for any signs of alarm. Everything appears to be normal, although the wall is nonetheless very heavily defended.

                  After a tense half-hour or so, he sees the metal bar locking the gates lifted from within, and he gives the order to fire as soon as the weighty doors begin to creak open. Sawyer’s men, true to his promise, fell every visible rifleman above; and the field guns blow the gates into swirling splinters, downing many of the guards behind them, as well as toppling the parapet above, along with its hidden pickets.

                Instantly, he orders the charge, leading it with a sabre in one hand and a pistol in the other. He feels a curious sense of invulnerability, as if nothing can harm him. In less than two minutes, they’re inside the city, where total chaos reigns. The remainder of the French guard are attempting to form a firing line across what appears to be a broad central street; but many have lost their weapons during the bombardment and are armed now with swords alone. Firing comes at the Grenadiers from a few pickets left above, a ball of shot passing so close to his face he can feel its wind. But he’s not in the least concerned. He hadn’t imagined war would be like this – so calm and concentrated. As further ordered, Sawyer’s men now fan out within the prince’s own forces, shooting at any French uniforms they see above, while the prince leads a concerted charge at the line of guards, hacking and slashing with his sabre. The Grenadiers, emitting blood-curdling screams, make short work of any French resistance, using their bayonets as soon as they’re close enough to do so. The greasy cobblestones are now piled with bodies and awash in blood. He fires his pistol merely to put two Frenchmen out of their death agonies, reloading before ordering the push west down to the port. 

               At his side, Weatherall says, “I’ve had harder fights… I hope you’re right about defences within the city – if you are it’ll be a short day’s work…” He’s flushed with the thrill of battle. It is, after all, the real high point of any real soldier’s life.

                   The place has now become disconcertingly silent, not a bird singing, not a face appearing at any window; and nothing remotely like a distant movement of heavy troops. Ordering the men to move quietly and with extreme caution, Prince Edward proceeds down the wide central thoroughfare, as Captain Mandelkau takes his force into a smaller street to the left, and Larkin leads his down a similar passage on the right.

                    Before long, without seeing a soul, let alone meeting with any resistance, the three forces join up on the quayside, where a small and terrified French battalion is attempting to turn their cannon, which are pointing out to sea, whence any attack had clearly always been expected to come. Sawyer’s marksmen take out every gunner in sight with one remarkable volley, as the remainder of French soldiers, upon seeing the size of Prince Edward’s force now massed along the docks, simply throw down their weapons and run towards safety in the adjacent fort. He orders a ceasefire, not wishing his soldiers to shoot any man in the back; and then he has them all line up in battle formation, while Weatherall and he inspect warehouses and other buildings along the waterfront. These soldiers obey his every command instantly and without hesitation – for this is war, not inaction. These are not idle men at all; these are men with booty in sight to bolster their penny per week wages; these are men with incentive.

                 Citizens have now begun to emerge tremulously into the narrow side streets, looking around at dead or vanishing Frenchmen. Some of these inhabitants are negroes, many wearing the padlocked iron collar of slaves; others are mulattos, of various hues and features. All begin, unexpectedly, to look decidedly cheerful, shaking hands with his men, or patting them on the back.

                   “Thank you, sir,” says an elderly woman, dressed in an inordinately colourful frock, her French accented with Creole. “Those men was a damn nuisance.”

                   “Oh? How so?” His excellent French disarms the lady, who presumably now wonders if this is just another French army.

                    “Well,” she replies, a little cautiously, “my daughter she had started acting up with them.”

                   “I see. Acting up? And how old is your daughter?” 

                    “She forty-six, sir,” says the woman, frowning. “But you knows how these soldiers have no respect for girlhood…”

                  “Yes, indeed,’ he assures her. ‘I shall make certain my own men will all display the utmost respect.”

                   “I’s grateful, soldier. And ask them not to steal our property while you’s at it, huh? Dreadful thieves, those soldiers is. Dreadful!” She nods in confirmation of this, sniffing noisily, then spitting lustily.

                  Weatherall and he discover the quayside warehouses are crammed full with  army provisions: much food, wine, rum, even powder, shot and weapons. 

               “There goes the forts’ supply-line. Place guards at each of these storehouses and question the locals about any other caches they may know of. I think also that a word of thanks is due to Sawyer, is it not?’ he says. ‘Without his assiduous training exercises, we should not have been able to pull off this assault without considerable loss of life. As it is, I believe we have just a few wounded, and none seriously.”

                   “Zeal or insanity,” replies Weatherall, “it works, and that’s what counts in war – it’s all that counts…”

-x-

                  War is like walking around in a dense fog. You never know who you’ll run into. You never know what will happen next. You never know. Just then, a mighty                                                                                                                                                                            roar of cannon-fire arises from the north, followed by the crack of many rifles. “God! That’s Grey!” he says, excitement flooding through his glowing veins. “He must be attacking from the far side. We’ll come at them now from this one. And look at that, Fred!” He points out to sea, where Admiral Jervis’ fleet has speedily sailed into view and is already lining up broadside in an arc around the seaward face of Fort Royale. There is no time to lose. He orders the field guns dragged along a narrow, palm-lined path leading to the fort’s southern gates, telling Sawyer, Mandelkau, and Larkin that the strategy will be similar to that  used on the city. “But this won’t be so easy,” he says. Then he addresses a few rousing words to the men, concluding with, “For Ireland, St. Patrick, and King George!”

                     A resounding cheer goes up, and they march north, drums beating, boots crunching in time on the gravelly grey sand. How different men in action are — they’re a joy to lead!

                      He remembers his thoughts on the night before leaving Lacoste. It is not death and extinction he thinks of now. It’s glory and honour. If only his father could see this! 

                 Fort Royale is heavily defended indeed, although most of its cannon, like those at the port, are directed out to sea, where Jervis’ magisterial fleet is already beginning to fire off broadsides. Initially, there are no pickets atop the southern wall, every man deployed in fending off Grey’s attack from the north. There is the glorious roar of distant guns, sounding like the growl of great lions. But as soon as Prince Edward’s encroaching forces are spotted, numerous riflemen rush into position, along with gunners using swivelling nine-pounders with grapeshot. These guns open fire immediately, but in a haphazard fashion. Sawyer’s snipers have more trouble hitting their targets here. The pickets crouch behind awkward embrasures; yet, all the same, the sharpshooters manage to keep French rifles and cannon from aiming accurately, while the prince has his own field guns lined up to fire upon gates which prove far sturdier than those of the city. It takes all nine guns three rounds before one gate cracks apart, two-thirds of it falling inwards away from the hinged section. “Well. That will have to do us,” he tells Weatherall, ordering the charge. “Are you scared?” he asks Captain Mandelkau, who’s ready to run beside him.

                   “Yes, sir. A little” Mandelkau replies.

                  “Then you’re a brave man indeed, Captain…”

                 Under a screaming blizzard of incessant gunfire, with pistol and sabre as before, he leads the Grenadiers across a few hundred yards of sandy ground, and then through the narrow opening they’ve just blasted in one gate. He sees men falling on all sides, but it only makes him more determined than ever to take this fort, exacting revenge for his losses. One of these losses, sadly, is Captain Mandelkau, crumpled in a bloody heap by a cluster of large cacti. The prince still feels that nothing can touch him, though, nothing at all can do him any harm. He feels invincible, almost immortal. But there’s little time to wonder about such feelings. Time is never on your side in a battle. 

                       Inside the fort, Sawyer’s men have better luck shooting pickets stationed up on the battlements; although everyone comes under steady fire, most of it originating from the windows and doorways of low barracks buildings positioned around a central keep resembling another smaller fort within the main one. He orders the field guns dragged inside, since there are now few pickets left to fire down on their crews. The small cannon are lined up behind a low, makeshift defense, fashioned from rubble and the gate’s debris. The nine-pounders take down barrack walls one by one, exposing their occupants to the Grenadiers’ rifle fire. Then, without warning, his left flank comes under attack from a French line rushing out of nowhere. He orders his main force to launch a fierce and highly-concentrated counter-attack, soon engaging the French soldiers in hand-to-hand combat with swords and bayonets. The French captain, seeing his men overwhelmed and surely doomed, eventually waves a white kerchief from someone’s bayonet, ordering his soldiers to throw down their weapons. The prince tells a group of his Grenadiers to gather up the guns and keep watch over these defeated men, as their captain solemnly presents him with his rusty, blood-stained sword. Without saying a word, the man sits down in the dust alongside his wounded, dead and demoralized troops. The prince feels unconscionably sorry for this man. But he returns to the fray, leading a fresh assault on the barracks buildings. There is no time to think. Decisions seem to come by themselves, automatically. 

                    By this time, the great British fleet’s pounding of the main seaward wall has caused sections of it to collapse, spilling men and cannon down onto rubble in the square. His forces soon have many other dispirited Frenchmen raising their hands in surrender. He surveys the scene, the carnage, and, through gun-smoke and clouds of stinging dust, he can just make out Grey’s force, engaged in furious fighting around the north side of the central keep. He now orders his soldiers to concentrate their efforts on this side of the building, the south side. He has the field gunners blast away much of its crenellation-work, making it easier for Sawyer’s marksmen to pick off anyone firing down on them. A whistling in the air and some shot tears a hole in his tunic sleeve yet leaves him unscathed. He knew it would — he knew it somehow. Weatherall is not so fortunate, however, a ball smashing into his left hand, which bleeds profusely. The prince tells his friend to retire from the struggle and seek treatment; but Weatherall, the veteran warrior, simply wraps a neckerchief around the wound, and then fights on, indifferent to the pain. 

                After another half-hour of intense combat, with French troops appearing from the least-expected places, and grapeshot screaming out from weapons in the keep’s lower gun slits, the prince hears, quite suddenly, a tremendous cheer coming from Grey’s side. Looking up through wreathes of smoke to its crumbling battlements, he sees the inner fortress has run up a white flag on its splintered pole. Is it finally over? Have we won? Every gun has fallen silent. Even the blue plates of smoke lie still, ethereal ledges in the air. Blackened faces slick with sweat smile. The fort is theirs; the day is won. The prince experiences a tinge of disappointment. He has never in his life felt so alive. A raging infinite fire courses through his veins. He was made for this work, he thinks, made to lead men to glory. He suddenly knows it beyond a doubt. But now it’s all over? First comes exultation, but it will soon be followed by something else, something less glorious.

                    General Grey himself appears in stately triumph, calling for the Comte de Rochembau, commander of the garrison, to emerge from his safety in order to surrender formally. The comte, covered in dust and soot, his wig gone, a sombre expression on his noble face, duly comes out, bowing low as he presents Grey with a gorgeous sword. There’s filigree work on the guard and gilt inlay down the runnels. No one has ever fought with this weapon.

                   In excellent French, Grey tells the comte, “Your men are now my prisoners; but, for you, I shall authorize safe passage to the United States – yet,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “– only if you give me your word of honour that you will never again fight for the French military.”

                       Faint signs of relief twitching across his careworn face, the comte readily agrees to these generous terms, promising devoutly that he’ll never serve in any French army during the remainder of his life. He will keep this promise too.

                  Grey then walks over to where Prince Edward stands. “I want to see you, in private and now, Major-General,” he says sternly. “Where can we go?” 

                     The prince indicates a deserted barracks with a gaping hole in one wall. “Yes. That’s probably about as private as we can be here,” he tells the general anxiously, his spirits a little deflated by Grey’s ominous tone.

                     Inside the ruined structure, where a few dead Frenchmen lie in filth and gore, Grey turns on him angrily. “What on earth do you mean by risking your life so brazenly?” he demands, prodding Edward in the chest with a powerful spatulate finger. “A royal prince is supposed to remain behind the lines, not lead them. What were you thinking, sir?”

                    Edward is surprised by this outburst, replying in a faltering voice, “Oh. W-well. I’m deeply sorry, sir. But I was trained to set the men an example…in Germany…where I was trained…” It’s like being berated by his father. He clutches at the hem of his tunic.

                   “Have you any idea of the trouble I’d be in if anything had happened to you?” Grey barks, sounding as if a terrible penalty is on its way. His fury then abates as quickly as it had erupted, and he now smiles, saying, “It was damn brave stuff, all the same, Major-General, and indeed helped enormously to carry the day. So, I can hardly complain in any real sense, can I? I shall make sure London hears of your heroism and leadership here today.”

                   “Thank you, sir…” He’s overjoyed at the prospect of the King and Parliament hearing of this victory. It’ll certainly make a change from hearing of his debauchery and debts.

                  ‘By the way,’ says Grey, ‘I’ve already renamed Fort Bourbon ‘Fort George’, for His Majesty’s glory. But as a small tribute to valour – which I breathe like air – I shall now rename Fort Royale ‘Fort Edward’ – howzat?” 

                 ‘Well. Ah. Should it not be ‘Fort Grey’, sir?’

               “Don’t kiss my arse, Major-General,’ he snaps. ‘Besides, there’s a thousand French forts in these isles. Maybe I’ll rename ‘em all ‘Grey’, eh? All of ‘em, hmm?’

                    ‘Well…’ says the prince.

                   “Tonight, we shall celebrate,” the general says briskly. “Tomorrow we sail south to take St. Lucia.” He spins around in his usual abrupt manner and strides off. Then he turns back, his piercing green eyes seeking Prince Edward’s. “Damn fine gunnery, Major-General – damn fine. Where’d you learn that?”

                  ‘Oh. Picked it up here and there, sir…’

                 ‘Hmm. I should send my artillery officers here and there…’ With this, he paces off rapidly past the wreckage, misery and havoc they’ve wreaked today.

                  The prince now seeks out Weatherall, ordering him to get medical attention for his hand immediately. Then he gathers the Grenadiers together, congratulating them on their victory and saying that, before they all start to celebrate, it behooves them to bury fallen comrades; and then, with the help of prisoners, to make sure the French dead are also properly laid to rest. 

                  After this, he walks slowly and respectfully among the many still, silent and broken bodies strewn over smashed brickwork or in the bloody sand throughout this ruined compound. May their souls find peace, he thinks, for want of a better thought. Everything in this world has its other side, doesn’t it? The elation of victory is followed by this: the reality of victory. The dead, dying, wounded and crippled. Men you don’t know, so you can’t hate them. Men with wives and lovers and lives – lives now irreparably changed. Lives wrecked or gone. And all for what? Some bricks and mortar on the far side of this world? Some sugar? Money in fact. Is it worth the price? But then he comes to a dead man he does know, knows all too well.  Dressed in the torn and blood-stained uniform of a French artillery colonel, a gaping wound in his twisted neck still oozing and of great interest to flies, is Charles-Louis, the Baron de Fortisson, Julie’s husband. He must have been blown off the battlements above, where he was commanding his gunners. At least it was Admiral Jervis or General Grey’s men who killed him, not his, not the prince’s. He’ll have to console Julie with this – not that it will be much consolation. Despite the awful wounds, Charles-Louis’ countenance seems oddly peaceful, most unlike the tormented expression habitually worn when Prince Edward had last known the man. At least he got to lead his regiment again. At least he got to return to his beloved home. Briefly. A wild thought now flickers across his mind: could the King have known Fortisson would be here? Had Edward been posted here to kill him, to cause a rift in his illicit relationship? No, it’s too far-fetched. His father could not have gathered up such information…or could he? No. Almost certainly not. But the coincidence is striking, all the same. What did Weatherall say about coincidences in war? He now wants to locate Trois Islets, where Julie had lived, and have Fortisson buried there. This quixotic gesture would take too much time, however. They sail at dawn for St. Lucia. So, he orders some of his men to have Charles-Louis buried in Port Royale’s churchyard, with a priest to perform last rites, and a small choir to chant the De Profundis. He gives a sergeant some coins to pay for this, and to have a stone carved with Fortisson’s name. On a scrap of paper, he writes out in French: Charles-Louis, Baron de Fortisson, 1756-1794, Artillery Colonel, Killed While Heroically Defending This City. ‘These exact words,’ he tells the sergeant. ‘And I will find out if this is not done correctly…’ He looks down at Charles-Louis. His body is there, but he is not. Something vital is now missing. His soul perhaps, which cannot die? And, he tells himself, Julie is no longer married. She’s a widow.

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 8.2

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                     The harbour is not very busy these days, even the skirling gulls deprived by the steep drop in trade. So, he’s delighted to discover that Captain Rupert George and his packet, the Roebuck, sit at anchor there. Immediately, the prince sends word commissioning him to take Julie, himself and Captain Weatherall back to Martinique. He also orders a navy surgeon, Lieutenant-Doctor Potts, to accompany them, for Julie’s sake. ‘We don’t want to risk an early birth, do we?’ he says, glad to be taking her away from public scrutiny in her condition. 

                     They set sail the following day, enjoying fair winds and exceptionally smooth sailing all the way back into turquoise. There’s not even a hint of any French vessels, which, although he’d wanted to witness Captain George’s seamanship and gunnery again, is quite for the best.

                  Apart from the holes in walls and roads, all signs of war have vanished and, as it will, life goes on. They land at Port Royale’s curving harbour just after he’s pointed out to Julie the unimpressive ruins of Fort Edward. She gives him the distinct impression she regards all this renaming of forts as mere male conceit, just more army nonsense. 

                 ‘Besides those rather unhealthy-looking English troops,’ she says, ‘the city’s much as I remember it, my love. Ownership won’t change this island, no matter who the owner is…’ Using the local patois, she proceeds to hire a carriage and two for the journey to Trois Islets.

                  “I thought there were no horses on the island?” he says, recalling the arduous march from Lacoste.

                  “Whoever told you that?” she says, laughing at the foolishness of such an idea.

                  He looks over at Weatherall scornfully. The captain simply shrugs, saying, ‘Why would the enemy assist us with transport?’

                  “We can never make it through the jungle in this little gig,” the prince then protests. “I know this island, remember?”

                  “Not as well as I know it, though, it seems,” Julie replies, a faintly smug smile forming on her rosy lips.

                    Leaving the city, their comfortable, airy conveyance takes them along a wall leading to the rear, where Edward’s assault had taken place, yet veering off along a well-cleared dirt road no one had noticed when it might have served them well. General Grey’s wretched map was certainly unaware of it, as it was of many other features useful to the island traveller. 

                  “Our intelligence of this place seems to have been… somewhat deficient,” comments Weatherall, tremendously amused by the ease of their current journey.

                    Even the climate feels more benign now, its heat ameliorated by a pleasantly fresh and fragrant breeze wafting over them. As it will do in this climate, the time passes drowsily. 

                  “There’s the pool where Rose and I used to bathe!” Julie suddenly cries, after some two hours of easy travel through a profusely exotic landscape. She points excitedly    off to the right at a small waterfall spilling into a pond amid palm groves. “Oh, I wonder who’s left in the old house now,” she says, more to herself than to her companions.  She doesn’t have to wonder long, however. As they clatter over a cobblestoned drive leading up to a handsome, if rather decayed plantation mansion surrounded by ill-kept gardens, dried-up fountains, and crumbling masonry, an elegant old lady, dressed in fine, loose black linen, emerges into the courtyard, shading her eyes from the glaring sun to see who is approaching. It’s obvious that unexpected visitors are as rare as snowflakes here.

                 “Maman!” Julie shrieks, holding a hand over her mouth in amazement, and then telling everyone, rather unnecessarily, “It’s my mother!”

                    It is indeed the Comtesse de Montgenet, come to her peaceful island estates to escape the riots and murder back in France. She is astounded by the appearance of her daughter, who is very obviously, very flamboyantly pregnant, as she leaps from the carriage to embrace her awkwardly. The old lady is also blatantly suspicious of the British uniforms accompanying her lost child, visibly recoiling as the three men step down.

                    It takes Julie several minutes to explain matters and reassure her mother who, very tentatively, allows Prince Edward to bow and kiss her withered hand. 

                  “Leave us for a while,” Julie urges. “The servants will get you refreshments inside.” She calls out orders to some sloppily-clad negroes now peering curiously from the main doorway, goading Edward towards them. She then takes her mother by the arm into a covered veranda on the mansion’s far side.

                    These servants shyly usher the men into a cool, shady hall, hung with paintings so badly damaged by the climate that it’s nearly impossible to discern what they’re about. One is a landscape whose land has escaped, curling down out of sight, leaving only clouds, a cloudscape. Another is the portrait of a man with no face, apart from the trace of a long, pinched nose. From here they’re taken into a dining room so dark they obliged to grope their way to seats. Eventually, a negro hauls open one recalcitrant shutter, which squeaks horribly, shedding a dazzling ray of mote-filled light onto surfaces so covered in a yellowish-grey dust they could well be fashioned entirely from sand. In broken French, the visitors are told to wait and take their ease.

                   “The old place seems to have gone a tad to seed,” Weatherall observes good-humouredly.

                    “If I have to work here,” announces the surgeon, Lieutenant-Doctor Potts, “there’s going to be an awful lot of cleaning beforehand, Your Highness.” These are the first words he’s spoken – besides ‘kindly pass the salt…’ – since leaving Halifax.

                  “Well,” says the prince, “let’s hope you don’t have to work here. But, if that eventuality does arise, I’m sure we can make at least one room acceptable to you.”

                    Potts looks doubtful. 

                    “It’s only a birthing, man!” Weatherall declaims, taking exception to Potts’ fussiness, “not an amputation. Why make such a palaver over nothing?”

                    Potts scowls. At this point, two servants reappear, each carrying a silver tray weathered brown with age. On one stands a greasy china jug and three blurred wine glasses; on the other is a plate of crisp fried plantain slices. An elderly negro, his hair white as lambs’ wool, pours a greyish opaque liquid    into the filthy glasses; it is flecked with chalky fragments. Both servants bow in a simulation of formality and, bare-footed, lazily slap across flagstones out of the room.

                    “What in blazes is this?” demands Weatherall, holding his glass up to the shaft of brilliant light thrusting through  one unshuttered window.

                    The prince sips from his glass, feeling sure he knows what it will contain. “Coconut water,” he says, drinking more of it, and then crunching a few of the plantain slices, which prove hard as coins.

                  “Said to be beneficial for the liver,” Potts comments, squinting closely at his glass without touching it. “But not in glasses this grubby.”

                  “How can Madame’s mother live like this?” Weatherall asks, expecting no answer.

                    Neither man touches the refreshments. Fearing he might break a tooth, the prince avoids eating more banana slices; yet he drinks two glasses of the coconut water, watched suspiciously by Potts, who’s clearly trying to restrain himself from making another derisory comment.

                   “You know how old people are,” the prince tells Weatherall. “They cease to notice things that once would have greatly provoked them.”

                  “Not all old people, Highness,” adds Potts, knowledgeably, polishing silver eyeglasses with his cravat. “Some can even grow obsessively fastidious.”

                  “Don’t contradict His Royal Highness!” snaps Weatherall, glad to vent his spleen on someone. “You never do that, man! Not in my presence, you don’t – not unless you want to be thrashed…”

                  “Then I am very sorry, sire,” the surgeon says meekly, bowing his head in Prince Edward’s direction, probably to hide the less humble thought in his eyes.

                  “No matter, sirs,” says the prince, annoyed by the hostile tone this conversation keeps acquiring.

                    Julie then enters like fresh air, with her mother, the comtesse, in tow; but the old woman is less fresh, more like an ambulatory miasma. The conversation proceeds in French, a language with which, it soon becomes apparent, Dr. Potts is not familiar.

                “Which one is this prince of yours?” asks the mother grumpily, clutching her loose black gown to her corrugated neck, as if cold.

                    Julie introduces him once again. They had all stood upon the women’s entrance, thus he bows formally, reaching for the comtesse’s hand to kiss again; but she keeps both hands on the fabric of her gown, leaving him somewhat embarrassed, his futile arm outstretched like an empty flagstaff. Behind the old lady, Julie rolls her eyes at him, at Edward, conveying a weary frustration. It’s clear their private tete-a-tete has not gone well.

                “And who are these men?” the comtesse demands, glaring over at Weatherall and Potts.

                    Edward introduces them, telling Potts in English that he ought to bow.

                “You’re very young and yet already losing your hair,” the comtesse tells him in a tone of reprimand. “You won’t have any left in five years, you know?”

                    He agrees with her, lamenting the situation.

                  “You wish to marry my daughter?” she next asks, as if the idea is ludicrous.

                  “I do, Madame.”

                  “A little late, is it not? In her condition!” She glances deprecatingly over at Julie’s belly.

                  “It was not possible until her husband’s death, Madame,” he says. It is a mistake to bring this up now.

                “And you first came here to kill him, did you?” says the comtesse, her voice dead leaves in the wind.

                  “Certainly not, Madame. I had no idea he was even on the island…” The prince smooths down his uniform, feeling uneasy.

                  “He came here to see me just a week before you English arrived,” she says, making ‘English’ a pejorative. “He was a sweet boy, very kind, also a relative, my sister’s son. But he was, alas, a sodomite — did you know that?”

                  “I did. Your daughter told me.” By now he’s feeling very uncomfortable in this old lady’s presence, and he starts to perspire liberally – which never adds to his comfort.

                “But that is no reason to kill him,” she goes on, wagging an admonitory finger at him. “In France we simply look the other way. Besides, I hear tell you English are all sodomites.”

                  “That is hardly true, Madame. But, like you, in good society we accept their predilections and ignore them.”

                “But you did not ignore poor Charles-Louis, did you? You killed him!”

                  The prince looks beseechingly at Julie, who takes her mother’s arm. “I’ve told you, Maman,” she says, quietly yet urgently, “it was during a battle, and Edward had nothing to do with it. His forces were nowhere near Charles-Louis’ position.”   His letter to her had stated as much.

                “These men and their endless wars,” declaims the comtesse in scowling disgust. “They are all little boys who never grow up, merely exchanging toy guns for real ones. I know why you came here,” she tells him, again wagging the bony finger. “You don’t fool me with your courtly manners and obsequious speech!”

                “Madame?” He’s beginning to hate this spiteful old crone.

                “You came for our sugar, and that’s all you really came for. But you’ll not have mine! No, my fine sir, you’ll have to kill me too before you get my sugar!”

                  “I am here to marry your daughter, Madame, not to steal your sugar,” he tells her in a sterner tone. “And that is the sole reason I am here; that, and to show Julie her childhood home. I am sorry this has upset you so much…”

                “Upset me!” shrieks the vengeful old woman, her voice now a mere rustle. “You can’t upset me. When you’ve watched your whole family go under the guillotine, their eyes still wide with terror when their heads are in the bloody basket, their eyes still alive there, not much upsets you anymore. When you’ve had your own head placed on the block, with the dripping blade above, and then been released, spared for no clear reason – no, not much in life upsets you anymore. Let alone a pusillanimous, balding minor princeling, whose father’s known as ‘Mad Georgie’, and has exiled him in the wilds of New France – yet another land stolen from us! You could not upset me if you jumped naked into my bed tonight!” 

                  That’s not very likely to happen, he thinks.

                  “Maman, please!” Julie begs her mother.

                  “You want to get married, get married. I don’t care,” announces the comtesse, turning slowly to leave the room and calling out as she goes, “Dinner is served at eight o’clock. I don’t wait a minute longer…”

                “That went well,” says Weatherall.

                  It goes downhill from here on. But in the meantime, Julie is given some strange news by her old nurse, Fantine, who says, ‘You miss you friend, Rose. She ‘ere from ’89 to ’90, yes she is…’

                     ‘Rosie was here?’ Julie’s puzzled.

                    ‘She right ;ere, missy…’

                   ‘But doing what?’

                  ‘Doin’ trouble, from what I hears…’

                     ‘Trouble?’

                     ‘She ‘ave likkle baby, so they says…’

                       ‘Rose had a baby? Was Monsieur de Beauharnais here too?’

                     ‘No,   

missy…’

                      ‘Oh…’

                     ‘They says she leaves dee baby wid lady in Royale, missy – dat be all I knows…’

                      Dinner is so bad that Edward storms off to his room in the middle of it, rather than listen to the malicious old comtesse denigrating him, his father, England and Julie.

                  “You see that cave,” says Julie, the next morning, pointing to a hollow in the cliff face bordering her estate’s southernmost limits. “That’s where the old witch told Rose she would one day be greater than a queen in France… How foolish we were to believe in such nonsense! Instead she became a widow, full of grief, penniless, with two children to support. Or is it three? Like my mother, Rosie also narrowly escaped the guillotine. Very narrowly. Her last letter was so…so sad….” Her voice fades. It has been clear that her memories of this place are not its current reality for her. You can never go back to find a lost magic. It isn’t there. You dreamed it in the dream of your past, where magic dwells because youth is there too. That is the real story.

                  ‘What’s your mother going to be like at church?’ he asks. 

                  They have arranged for a small ceremony in the little chapel at Trois Islets, where the priest will be marrying ‘Colonel Thomas Armstrong’ and ‘Madame Julie de St. Laurent, a widow’. The secrecy is crucial. He can’t risk his real name appearing in the register — but that register will be destroyed when the volcano erupts.

                  ‘I doubt if she’ll come,’ says Julie. ‘It’ll be better that way.’

                ‘Yes. It will definitely be better that way,’ he agrees

                The last thing the comtesse had said to him, after ridiculing his father’s insanity, was, ‘Madness runs in families, you know, boy. I hope you don’t run it into mine…’

                  Julie is right. They don’t see her mother all morning. As they’re preparing to leave for the church, Julie comes downstairs, resplendent in a simple gown as blue as her eyes, gorgeously-coloured flowers in her hair, and a small veil. She announces that her mother claims to be sick and would not leave her bed.

                  “I cannot say I’m disappointed,” he says. “She must know how offensive she’s been?”

                  “She wouldn’t care,” Julie says. “I think we ought to leave for Port Royale as soon as the ceremony is over.”

              “Motion seconded,” Weatherall states, as formally as he can manage.

                Julie alone could make this decision, hard as it probably is for her. Impossible as she is, the comtesse doesn’t have many years left; and a mother is always a mother, your creator — no matter what she does to unmake you. 

                    The little Roman Catholic chapel of Trois Islets is sparsely equipped, with mildewed walls and damp, rotting pews; yet the place has an aura of sanctity about it all the same. The weather-beaten old priest too performs his Latin rite with appropriate solemnity, making Julie feel genuinely married in the eyes of God – which is, after all, the whole point of this exercise. They will not be married in anyone else’s eyes. When he places the ring on her finger, over the pale ghost of an indentation left by her former wedding band, he too has the glowing inner sense of performing a profoundly sacred act. Altar candles seem to burn brighter, and incense gives off an other-worldly fragrance. Perhaps, he thinks, it’s the fragrance of a world where his father’s Royal Marriages and Settlement Acts count for nothing?

                  ‘Mrs. Armstrong,’ says Prince Edward, as they walk out under a dazzling canopy of white sunlight.

                     ‘Mr. Prince,’ she says, squeezing his arm. She’s no longer a mistress. But he’s still a prince, an English prince – and one who has just broken an English law.

                  In Port Royale, he feels obliged to ask if she wishes to see her late husband’s grave.

                “No, my dearest,” she says, to his great surprise. “It is enough to know he now rests in peace, and that you did everything possible to make sure of that. For me, it says much about you – although not much I didn’t already know. Why else would I be standing here?’ 

                Lack of a feasible alternative? he thinks, ashamed at the irritating little voice thinking it.

                By nightfall, they’re back on board the Roebuck, where Captain George, unaware of the visit’s true purpose, seems puzzled by the festive atmosphere enveloping his passengers, and at Edward’s call for a very special dinner to be served, with champagne, if it’s at all possible to find some. To everyone’s delight, it is possible, and toasts are proposed  late into the night, toasts to love and to happiness. He wonders if Julie thinks about her mother back in that lonely, disintegrating house, with nothing to celebrate but her own loneliness and disintegration, and no one to berate but her drowsy servants. But, he wonders, is she any worse off than my mother?

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 7.2

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                Warm moisture on the breeze. The land of winter s left far behind. Why is the sky so blue here? They need no map to tell them, a week later, that they’ve reached the Caribbean Sea. The air is different, fragrant and soft; the water is a translucent turquoise. It’s often so clear you can see shoals of brilliantly-coloured fish darting to and fro in dense formations like animate jewelry. 

            ‘Islands everywhere,’ says Weatherall, mopping his brow as he peers into the haze. These men are completely unaccustomed to such a climate, and their clothing is most unsuited to it.

                 ‘Yes. Everywhere. Over seven hundred islands here, Fred…’

                 ‘Seven hundred! Who owns ‘em all?’

                 ‘Well. We own some,’ says the prince. ‘And then there’s the Spanish, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and of course the French, though not for much longer in their case – the lease is up…’ 

                   The reefs are treacherous, and it takes great skill for Captain George to navigate the Roebuck safely around them. He has a man leaning over the bows gazing down into the sea for signs of imminent danger. Periodically this man yells a warning and the packet veers sharply to port or starboard.

            “You see that island ahead?” Captain George asks Prince Edward the next day, as they approach a mountainous and densely-forested land mass rising green through aquamarine. At intervals, flocks of multicolored birds fly up and whirl in dizzy circles above the trees. Against the intensely blue sky they resemble something made from rainbows.

              “Marvellous. Yes. I do, Captain. And?” The prince is dripping with sweat, his shirt soaked. He thinks of Julie telling him that rain always comes here, and if it’s too hot you can swim. Ha, he thinks, swim! He looks down into the crystal waters, wondering what it’s like to swim. 

                “That’s your destination,” George announces. “That’s Martinico — or, to you, Martinique!”

                They’ve run up British colours by now, so the captain is steering a course far from the shoreline, to avoid any possibility of French battery fire from hidden redoubts. With the spyglass, Edward studies this island as they glide past its coast, a bobbing phantom presence. The beaches are mostly broad, composed of fine white sand. Between the azure sky, the viridian forest and the turquoise water, this white sand creates a landscape of brilliant colour in four distinct bands.

            ‘Ah. Beautiful. Mr. Gainsborough would love this.’ He also sees through the glass a few crude fortifications built back from the beach in the shelter of trees and bush. Soldiers in shirtsleeves loll nearby in the shade of palms. The packet’s Union Jack scarcely attracts anyone’s attention, though – which seems strange in a war.

                  He’s enormously excited to see, before long, the great British fleet, colours flying limply in a torpid breeze. Many ships are now anchored off the shores of Lacoste, where the sand looks blacker, since it consists largely of  volcanic ash. The flagship of Admiral Jervis, the Boyne, bobs prominently in midst of all these vessels, with the commander’s personal flag flying just below the King’s standard and the Cross of St. George. 

             “What a magnificent sight!” says Weatherall. 

              Even Sawyer, back in his own washed breeches, seems moved by this panorama of British naval strength and splendour. “At last, sir,” he says, “we’re back amongst our own.”

                “We are,’ says the prince. ‘Yes. Do not forget your promise…”

                “I will not, sir. But I feel far more confident now. I think it was being without any means of defense that got to me. I’m used to living with our regiment – it’s really all I’ve ever known. Without them, it’s as if I’ve lost my arms and legs.”

                “You’ll lose more than that if you turn into a big girl at the first gunshot here,” Weatherall tells him sternly.  

                   Bidding a fond and grateful farewell to Captain George, Prince Edward, with his two officers, climb into a dinghy headed for shore, leaving his man, Robert Wood, to supervise transport of their baggage – half of which is books. 

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                     Air has a damp weight here; it wraps itself around you like a hot wet blanket; it carries an odour too, a pungent smell of ripe fruit and damp loam. The grey beach, along with a large area of cleared forest behind it, swarms with red-coated soldiers, a group of who haul Prince Edward’s dinghy up onto dark pitted sand. Smouldering fires send up black coils like rope. Drums and bugles start up in formal salute, the music hanging there in the haze, almost physical, crotchets, quavers and minims made from curling smoke suspended in the glistening air. From out of a large green tent, pitched back in the clearing, strides a tall, imperious figure. He’s in his late forties, bare-headed, with closely-cropped iron-grey hair, much gold shining on his immaculate red and blue uniform. The prince and his men, alas, are not so finely attired. They bought clothes in Boston, but British army uniforms were not available there, for obvious reasons – not that they would have worn such a provocation in America. Although they’ve been cleaned and repaired, the clothes they wore continuously for a month are still in terrible shape. With his high standards, the prince is mortified.

              “I am General Grey,” the man tells him in a voice unaccustomed to being questioned. “Welcome to Martinique, Highness. We’ve been expecting you for over a month now.”  Is this a reproach?

               Edward explains the vicissitudes and travails of his journey, the devastating loss of his suite, the tardiness of their ship, the miserable lot of it. As he relates these woes, he’s beginning to sound like a regimental whiner, and so he stops mid-sentence. 

             Grey seems uninterested in any of it, his green eagle eyes looking Edward up and down critically as he says: “We have many uniforms to spare.” He makes it sound as if he’s overburdened by uniforms. “And as many weapons as you can carry.” He calls over an aide, telling the man to prepare tents for these new arrivals and provide them with appropriate uniforms, as well as other items of clothing. ‘Two captains and a major-general,’ he says. ‘Lay them out a selection of weapons too.’

             ‘ Yessir!’ The aide runs off, fast too; and then General Grey invites the prince to join him in his tent. Weatherall and Sawyer are pointedly excluded from this invitation.

               The green tent is comfortably furnished, with armchairs, tables, a small desk, and a large bed; yet it is clearly a place of business not relaxation. Maps are strewn across every available surface or pinned to boards propped up on easels; a pile of correspondence sits in a wooden box above the chipped writing desk where, resting on buckled heat-blasted veneers, a letter is still in progress, the quill lying over it, with a blot forming beneath the nib.

               “I know you dislike the formality of royal titles,” Grey tells him, the words tumbling out like stones. “So, with your permission, I shall address you solely as ‘Major-General’.”

                 “Yes. That would be my preference too, sir.” Does he doubt my military capabilities? He can’t decide yet whether I’m going to be a nuisance or an asset. Nor can I. He’s not an easy man to please, Grey – that much is certain.

                  Without further ado, the general launches into a rapid-fire account of the current situation. He has seven thousand men, as well as naval support from Admiral Jervis. Some troops have landed with General Dundas at one end of the island; others, with General Campbell, are at the other end. The two forces have been working their way towards each other, taking out all the French encampments they can find, along with any redoubts encountered on the way. All that now prevents the two forces from meeting up are the major forts of Bourbon and Royale, as well as the city between them. Under command of a Comte de Rochembau, the French are exceptionally well-prepared for our attack, fortifying most of the coastline with new redoubts, and making the fortresses of their main garrisons seemingly impregnable. Prince Edward’s task, Grey informs him, sounding like a tutor assigning some quotidian essay, is to lead a regiment, consisting mainly of Grenadiers, and to take the city of Port Royale, while Grey’s own forces take Fort Bourbon. If he succeeds in it, the prince’s action will open the way to Fort Royale, as well as cutting off its supply-line. “Any questions?” asks the general, not even breathless after the thirty-minute monologue he’s just delivered in fifteen minutes. He’s obviously not fond of questions.

                   “Just one question, sir: When do we start?” 

                   “First light tomorrow,” Grey says. “All right with you, Major-General?”

                   “Perfectly fine, yes, sir.”

                    Grey then shows the prince a crude map with his route marked on it, pointing out areas that are either dangerous, since some redoubts near them still house snipers, or else dense with jungle which will need clearing in order to drag field guns through it. The route arcs around Fort Bourbon and will bring Edward to the rear of Port Royale, the city, which is protected by a high wall manned by French pickets, and regularly patrolled outside by infantry platoons. “Take it,” says Grey, rolling up the map and slamming it into the prince’s hand like a cane. It makes him recall with dread the canings and whippings ordered by his father – as punishment for nothing, for trifles. 

               Once he was caught red-handed mimicking a tutor’s voice. When the King was informed of this, he came to where Edward was having supper with his younger brothers. King George dragged him from the chair by his hair and had one of the royal footmen cane him, with everyone looking on in horror. His father never whipped or caned himself. He just watched. He watched.  Is General Grey going to be a feared father-figure? He suits the role admirably. 

                “Now I suggest you locate your tent,’ the general tells him, ‘and enjoy some sea-bathing before the luxury of a fresh uniform and a modest dinner. Then relax, for God’s sake, Major-General. Tomorrow will be a very long and exceeding hard day. I can guarantee you that — although little else is certain in this damnable hothouse.” He salutes by way of dismissal, and, after returning the salute, the prince is about to walk away when he’s called back. “By the way,” Grey says, his predatory eyes even greener under the green canvas, “I neglected to mention that I need you here, sir, and am grateful to have you here. Finally. I’m relying heavily on your efforts, and I trust this reliance is not going to be misplaced?”

                    “No, sir. I have waited for this opportunity years now, and you shall not be disappointed in me.” The prince ardently hopes this will be the case, since Grey is not someone you want to disappoint.

                   “Good,” says the general, turning back to his desk, and then adding, “I loathe disappointments.” He makes it sound as if he’s correcting the impression you might have that he loves disappointments.

The scratching of a pen tells Edward that he’s now been definitely, definitively dismissed. 

                     An equerry shows him to his tent, which is nothing like as grand as Grey’s. But here are the new uniforms and some weapons, lying on a narrow cot. He thinks: Grey. His grey hair. The grey beach. A world of grey, amid the island’s untrammeled riot of colour.

                    As he’s undressing for his bath in the sea, rain comes clattering down like pig-shot on his canvas roof. He looks outside, finding the perfect blue sky now mossy-black, with great fat clouds lugubriously jostling one another in the middle air. More grey. But he’s never seen anything like this deluge. Thick silver ropes of water spear into earth and sand like the slings, arrows and javelins of Marathon. Soldiers run in all directions; fires are doused; every tent becomes a thumping drum, pounded out of time by ghostly silver hands. A fresh and fragrant smell now permeates the former sticky fetor. The whole spectacle delights him infinitely. Since he’s ready to plunge into the waves, he sees no reason to be concerned about getting wet on his way to the sea. Thus, wearing only underlinen, he pads out across the pocked sands, showered pleasantly by heavy streams of warm rain, before wading into pale corrugations of even warmer frothing surf. It’s like a bath. It’s also the first time he’s ever ventured into any sea anywhere. You wouldn’t do this in England, and even if you did you certainly wouldn’t do it in March. Once in twenty years it might be warm enough     around late July to dip your toes in. People do it. The King does it. He believes it’s restorative – and, he thinks, that man does need restoring. Edward sits on soft sand, soft grey sand, and he’s rocked by gentle waves tickling his belly. This is as near swimming as he will get; but he can at least see its attractions. If he lived here, he thinks, he might even try it. He washes in the salty water and feels himself somewhat restored. Perhaps the King has a point? He shudders, clutching sand with his fingers. The rain stops. The plump blue-black clouds vanish as if erased from the sky’s vast slate. A self-satisfied sun reclines on his striated bed in the reddening west. Parrots flap dizzily from the dripping green jungle, a smudge of colour across the plateau of steam rising from sodden ground, squawking as they fly in gyres above the great glazed leaves. The air heats up. Soldiers scuttle back onto the dented beach, laying out tunics to dry, and relighting drenched fires with fresh dry wood. So, this is where my dear Julie spent her childhood, is it? A paradise, an Eden – or it would be but for the clinging humidity and the guns of hidden Frenchmen.

                    As he’s dressing, Weatherall comes to the tent wearing his own new uniform and sweating profusely. “Have you ever seen rain like that?” he asks, his face an uncomfortable shade of raw salmon.’

                   The prince informs him of a meeting to be convened that evening. “It will be yourself, Fred,’ he says, ‘Sawyer, and two captains from the Grenadiers. Seek out the two most senior men and bring them, along with Sawyer, to dine with us here at seven o’clock. All right?’ 

                 ‘Why should it not be?’ Weatherall hastens away. 

                     Why should it not be? The prince lays on his cot, going over the plans for tomorrow in his head. This is it, he thinks; this is me leading men into war. It’s not a simulation, not a strategy on the blackboard. This is the thing itself. He remembers Captain Rupert George’s gunnery advice. He too will give his gunners some lessons in mathematics, in simple geometry, as well as some practice with targets. There’ll be plenty of time for this during their march towards Port Royale — if you can march through a jungle, that is. 

              Insects whirr, buzz, whine and scrape. The wet heat rises and falls in oppressive clouds, befuddling layers of hot mist. There is no breeze now. Everything is too still. Night falls swiftly in the tropics, as a glutted sun slips from view behind the grand British fleet, whose rolled sails, fluttering banners and pennants burn in the dying red light. The stars are brighter, closer and more numerous here. The constellations are in unfamiliar positions:  Orion’s diamond-studded belt is now directly overhead; and the Plough’s pointing haft is low in the north-west. There are also many patterned studs of light he’s never even seen before. The whole night sky becomes a colossal marquee of twinkling gems, a pageant laid on for…for who? The Great Architect’s handiwork, he thinks, all staged for us, frail creatures made in his image. The Great Spirit’s work? Those Indians, their lands once all legend, now all lost. A Creator. What a thought. What? A unifying force of consciousness, pervading all things, but also infinitely removed from them. You can’t take it in, can you? The real nature of it is beyond any mind’s grasp. And a soul never dies, because it is never born – do we understand that? How curious the mind, the mind that can’t grasp this. We all need a sense of wonder, he thinks, when we peer into the mystery of things.

-vi-

                      A dinner table and six camp chairs are set outside his tent under heaven’s twinkling canopy, and a meal is served by General Grey’s own cook. Weatherall introduces him, Prince Edward, to the Grenadier captains he’s found, Mandelkau and Larkin. The former was born in England of Prussian heritage, a strong-looking man in his thirties, with lank black hair, and a broad, oily face in which are set hard brown eyes, and lips well-used to smiling. Larkin is older, tall and fair-haired, an Irishman with a strained narrow face and darting blue eyes. The four of them are joined by Captain Sawyer, who now appears calmer and back in control of himself. Robert Wood arrives last, a model of cheerful equanimity, as always. The other uninvited guests are every insect on the island, a twitching, swooping, crawling, darting, wriggling nightmare – but one you swiftly adjust to. You also soon discover these creatures cannot abide the smoke from your brazier. The men dine on a fried local fish, immense and oval. This is followed by roasted wild hog, served with slices of a large fried banana, which is not sweet and tastes more like potato. There is little conversation at first, except of trivial things. Then the prince proposes a toast with the glasses of port that have now become a standard at British tables, since access to French wines has been cut off, first by the Revolution, and now by war. Sugary and rich as port is – one glass will do — men regularly drink bottles of it. And they pay for this; they suffer for it. “To our success,’ he says, ‘our King, and our beloved country.” He barely takes a drop, though, fearing a bilious attack in the jungle. That would ruin his hopes of establishing leadership, wouldn’t it? He next begins to explain the objectives they’re all hoping to achieve the following day, unrolling General Grey’s wrinkled map to point out the route south, along with its suspected hazards.

                   “There’s still a French garrison at Pointe Pierre,” says Captain Mandelkau, indicating the spot with a knife, his eyes boring into it as if they’d crush this garrison all by themselves. “Should we avoid it, or engage them on the way?”

                   Edward is not sure of the answer to this; so, he excuses himself and walks over to Grey’s tent. 

               The general’s eating at his desk while writing yet another letter at great speed. “Yes?” he says, without looking up from either task.

               The prince relates his problem, asking the same question Mandelkau has asked.

                 “Leave Pointe Pierre to me,” says Grey, without a moment’s hesitation. “You avoid the place, all right? Anything else?”

                     “No, sir.”

                      Edward turns to leave, but the general calls him back, turning in his chair now to look at him, the candlelight a wild sparkle in his emerald eyes. “By the way, Major-General,” he says, still chewing his pork, “if I don’t see you in the morning, good luck for tomorrow, eh?”

                 “Yes. And the same to you, sir.” 

                   “I trust we shall next meet up at Fort Royale,” Grey says, little trace of doubt in his voice, “when the Comte de Rochembau has presented me with his sword.”

                   “His sword. Yes. I’m confident of our success, sir.” 

                   “As am I.”

                     Returning to his own dinner, he informs everyone that their orders are to avoid Pointe Pierre.

                    “That will mean a lot more jungle to clear,” says Captain Larkin, as if he would be clearing it himself.

                  “Well. Then the earlier we start the better. We leave at first light, gentlemen.”

                   ‘Good night, sir.’ It is a chorus, as shapes melt away into the night. 

                  “You feel Sawyer is up to it?” he asks Weatherall, when they’re sitting alone in the tent. He’s peeling off his sopping wet tunic.

                 “I must admit I do,” Weatherall replies, almost happily. “He seems much changed now he’s back with an army.”

                 “I agree, I agree. Well, now we’d both better get some rest, since I’m not sure when the chance of a decent night’s sleep will come again.” Weatherall goes to leave, but, like General Grey, Edward calls him back. “And, Fred, I’m glad I shall have you at my side tomorrow. I will be in sore need of your experience and advice. Have a good night, my friend. This is it: war.”

                    “Yes, war. I shall see you at dawn,” Weatherall says.

                     It is too hot to lie under the covers, so the prince sprawls on top, harassed by insect armies and the streams of sweat that sting his eyes. His thoughts turn in upon themselves. This is going to be his first test of leadership, and his first taste of combat. All those lonely years at Luneberg, at Hanover. The fierce training. Will he measure up to it? Or will he panic and crack like Sawyer? Thank God for Weatherall, with his military instincts, with his extensive experience in warfare; with his wise counsel. Without him, well… And he’ll be facing the very real possibility of his own death for the first time. To die, to sleep… et cetera. You can’t have a thought without the Bard getting in there first, can you? But even Shakespeare can’t grasp the idea of extinction, can he? The imagination cannot imagine its own non-existence. When life ends, does the soul simply dissolve into Divinity, like rain on the ocean? Perhaps. What will that be like? Will I still be there to know? Or will I continue on my way as a separate identity, seeking a new body for the eternal drive towards wisdom. Which is what? Is it Truth? What is Truth? Pilate asks Jesus that, but our Lord doesn’t answer. Why not? Why no answer to this crucial question? Will all of this become clear tomorrow? It seems to him now as if his whole life has been leading up to this coming day, the day when he’ll finally know what is and what is not. He thinks of Joseph Draper, at the moment of death. What thoughts were in his poor head? Did it all set him on a straighter course? I’d have received less criticism if I’d had him shot. But I couldn’t execute a man for stupidity, could I? Education hovers over him, a celestial citadel of learning awaiting students. Will I live to pursue that? He wonders if he’s any kind of real soldier. Or will he only be fit to command toy troops and breadcrumb armies? These are flesh and blood men, men for who he alone is responsible. Ah. Out there is the Inevitable, his unalterable fate. Would it do any good to know what the Inevitable has in store? Yet, if it could be changed, it would not be the Inevitable, would it? Everything is in that which is written – this is what the Saracens are supposed to say. The actions and consequences of tomorrow are already decided – is that it? And it may have been decided that he shall no longer exist; that nothing in his life, as it is, will matter in the least anymore. It will be as if that life had never happened. His parents, his brothers and sisters, even dear Julie, they’ll all continue on their own ways in a world that knows him not, and perhaps never knew him. The land from whence no traveller returns all but promises this total erasure, doesn’t it? People claim to be able to contact the dead, but they’re all liars, their ‘dead’ only speaking in platitudes. No, the Great Mystery gives no reassurances, does it? Tomorrow he may simply fall into a deep, eternal sleep; or he may look upon the face of God. He must merely do his duty to the best of his ability, with no regard for the outcome — just as Wilkins’ Hindu holy book advises. One’s fate cannot be avoided, no matter what one does; for it is one’s fate. Yes. Fate. Life. And what is life really for?

                   Such thoughts, recorded in his journal, terrify, confuse, yet finally steel him for the most uncertain future he’s ever faced. It is the Battle of Kurukshetra, the great reckoning. The unknown land of sleep admits him at its border… But from this bourn most travellers do seem to return.

-vii-

                    He’s walking down a city street with another man, someone he knows well but doesn’t recognize. There is a purpose to this walk, an urgent one, but he cannot quite recall what that purpose is supposed to be. Hideous faces leer at him from the shadows of alleyways and in darkened tunnels that lead off on all sides, heading… where? He turns to his companion to ask the significance of these horrible faces, but the man is gone, and he is alone in fearfully unknown surroundings, on his way to a place he cannot remember. How to get out of here? He sits up with a start on the cot, leaking sweat from every pore. Robert Wood’s cheery voice sounds in the humid dark, offering the usual coffee, and the unusual news that Captain Sawyer is already making his infantry division engage in target practice, some half-mile back in the forest.

                  “He’s like his old self,” says Wood, “except, er… he be different…”

                  “Ah? I see. Don’t tell Captain Weatherall. He’s not gone mad, has he, Sawyer?” The dream feels like black cobwebs he must claw aside in order to see clearly. 

                    “Can a man go mad with zeal, sire? ‘Sawyer asks. ‘The men respond well. You knows how they craves leadership when a battle be looming. He’s definitely leading them…”

                     I don’t in fact know, he thinks. “Leading them? And we’re talking about the same Sawyer — our Sawyer?” 

                   “The very same, sire… but with new breeches.”

                   ‘New? Ah. Well, I’m going to take a brief dip in the sea,’ he says.

                    The quiet of dawn seems cooler and fresher, with its faint blue-grey light seeping through ochre canvas, and the sea out there hoarsely calling to him. The water is an embrace, an embrace from the great globe itself, from life. The salts in the water invigorate, they rouse like Dr. Gizl’s cure, chasing out humours from their hidey-holes in the meshwork of his flesh and bones. Behind him, behind the island, a golden radiance floods up to stain the black sky and conceal its pulsing gems behind the backdrop of a new day. Perhaps the last one?

                    He soon joins Weatherall, who has a thousand Grenadiers and Light Infantry assembled in formation on the beach. Many of these men are Irish. They cheer his arrival — he, their commander. They seem on the whole to be far smarter and better disciplined than his troublesome Fusiliers. Having delivered a brief speech of inspiration and encouragement, he outlines their route and ultimate goals, concluding by asking the gunners to step forward and identify themselves. He has ten field cannon, so he’s expecting twenty men to appear; but instead there are thirty, their custom being, apparently, two loaders for each gunner. ‘Now. Have,’ says the prince, ‘have any of you men ever studied the mathematics of gunnery?’ No one even understands the question. ‘I see,’ he says. ‘Well, it’s my intention to make time for instruction in this science, as well as  some practice of it along the way to Port Royale – where we’ll want to see some superlative gunnery….’ How is this going down?  The men look at one another questioningly, and then they begin to applaud and cheer. He wonders why such news should be greeted so enthusiastically – not that he minds enthusiasm in these men. He asks the fellow nearest him.

                 “We wants to practice, sire,” he replies, in a thick Belfast brogue, “but we’s always told ‘no’. None’s understood dat a climate like dis’un affects your powder, an’ da heat can even swell your barrel an’ shot, so’s your gun is likely t’explode up on you, ‘stead of firin’, you see what I’m sayin’? You’s da first to unnerstan’ dis, an’ we ‘preciate dat in yous…”

                His Major-General has not before heard of such problems but is glad to hear of them now. The gunners are dismissed, and he orders the drummers to beat a lively march. ‘To Port Royale!’ he cries. ‘To victory!’

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 7.1

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Price

French West  Indies: March – May 1794

-i-

            The smells of Boston cooking and keeping warm are all-pervasive, bourn across its harbour in the soft embrace of a frolicsome west wind. You can hear voices clearly at times too; they’re bounced over from shore to ship on water harder than a misanthrope’s heart. A news crier stationed at dockside bollards over by the main slipway sounds no more thanfew yards away, even the shrill whistle of this lad’s asthmatic chest is auduble: ‘Senate open to public!’ he yells. ‘First-hand account of the hearings! Read all ‘bout it! New invention patented! Eli Whitney gets patent for his cotton gin! ‘nother ‘merican first! Get it all here!’ An aside to fictional passers-by is a popular part of his act: ‘No, lady, ya cain’t drink cotton gin, dontcha know? ‘Read it all!’  Other voices fade in and out, as if wind and water are their editors too, selecting only the necessary words to blend it for a desired effect: ‘Listen to me, Bud! (Fi dollar she aks me) I told the guy (Yeah, sh’ain’t comin’ back) he better keep off my patch or (Caught ‘em meself this morn) ‘cept the consequences (scratch ‘er thievin’ eyes out I will). He weren’t payin’ ‘tention, were he? (Got eight wagons headed west…) Had no choice, did I? Went at ‘im with me pinkin’ shears, didn’ I? (After she was done, ya mean?) Worra fuckin’ mess!’ But some stories don’t require a conclusion. Besides, the prince tells himself, this great tone poem called Boston may well never end at all, its choir of thousands, after singing all and anything, discover another movement subtitled “Something More” – tempo: allegro – and it contains everything there is, was or ever can be; so it cannot end, because the final note is also the piece’s rousing chord, that vast humming verbum dei opening this a cappella symphony, which is circular or spherical, its end a new beginning. Once you join this choir, you can never  leave it; each voice is vital to the whole. Besides, the music will devour you. But unlike the circling serpent – whose goal, were it ever achieved – would be his own destruction, the Boston Poem just gets larger, stronger, longer, more graceful and far more intelligent..  

               Anyone who has spent serious time at sea – weeks or months – can never forget the sights, sounds and smells. They summon up both happy memories and morbid fears; for the oceans are vast and a man is small, his little life as frail and imperilled as a ship in a black storm out on the deep. 

              He boards the little Roebuck on Saturday, 5th of March, greeted with considerable pomp and ceremony by Captain Rupert George, a strong-looking man of middle years, with long fair hair tied behind by a black silk ribbon. He stands saluting with his small crew of twenty-eight souls, as the prince is piped on deck by four midshipmen in their early teens. Weatherall and he are to share the captain’s own stately little cabin at the aft. From its sloping, salt-encrusted windows they have a fine view of the city. Many lights soon begin to sparkle there, as a proud red sun sets behind crowded buildings, painting the western horizon in blood, which slowly deepens into a purple dome, within which the watchful eyes of stars start to blink down at a darkening world. 

Since they’re not to sail until the following day, he writes a final letter to Julie, assuring her that all is well: We are at last on board our ship, and will soon be on our way to meet General Sir Charles Grey in the West Indies. He laments the unexpectedly lengthy time this process has already taken, keeping him away from her for far too long. He promises to contact her again as soon as it’s possible to do so. He knows the letter will be carried by ship to Halifax, then by dogsled overland, wondering if she could possibly receive it inside a month. He certainly expects no reply. 

               Marvelling at the crates containing books he’d bought on shore, which are causing sailors no end of trouble to haul on board, Captain George gives the prince a tour of their tiny vessel. The packet is immaculately maintained, yet it seems too small even to accommodate comfortably its own three masts. The nine-pounder cannon on either side look barely larger than shotguns; and the quarters below are claustrophobically cramped, including those for George’s three officers, now given over to the captain himself, Sawyer and Wood. Their presence here has clearly caused some considerable disruption, so Prince Edward asks why the promised frigate had not come in Roebuck’s place.

          “It was felt, Your Highness,” George replies, smiling warmly, “that a smaller vessel would be safer, more innocuous…”

            “I hardly think, Captain, that we shall be safer in this if we encounter a French man-o’war, shall we?”

          “Why not, sire? She’s bluff of bow, weatherly and swift – very swift if handled correctly. She could easily outrun any larger craft, and she won’t attract much attention.” His affection for this little ship verges upon the romantic; yet his confidence in her, along with an unshakeable faith in his own skill, exudes reassurance – and reassurance is badly required.

            “Indeed. I appreciate the logic,” says Edward, “but I wouldn’t fancy our chances in combat armed merely with those six little guns.” They both look over at the nine-pounders chained to Roebuck’s deck on either side, although the prince now notices there are three empty ports in each of  the rails.

          “I’ll show Your Highness something about those guns, something that might change your mind,’ says Captain George. ‘But we shall have to wait until we’re out at sea tomorrow.” He reveals no more of what this demonstration might entail, his tight little smirk suggesting he knows how frustrating such mysteriousness can be.

               ‘Well, sir,’ says the prince, ‘I do greatly enjoy a mystery. I shall await the morrow with bated breath then…’

            He does indeed enjoy a mystery; and that evening he begins reading The Necromancer, one of those newly-arrived books. The Boston bookseller had sold Edward a number of novels that he’d claimed to be now creating a literary frenzy back in London. If not exactly frenzied, the prince is nonetheless eager to discover the secret of this story’s haunted castle, with its tenebrous dungeons of walking dead, and its intrepid hero. Perhaps he’s too intrepid? One of the main characters is a baron, who has in his charge an English prince. Edward finds it hard to picture Baron Wangenheim prying open coffins in a ruined crypt – unless of course their contents were roast suckling pig and fine claret, rather than ill-humoured phantoms wrapped in mildewed grave shrouds. Prying open letters was more Wangenheim’s forte. But the prince is a voracious reader; a book a day on average, and the widest range of subject matter.

          Weatherall lies on his bunk reading a week-old Halifax newspaper, his mouth open in a gesture midway between amusement and disgust, occasionally emitting faint sighs of dismay. He keeps shifting positions, loosening the ties of his shirt, and then unbuckling his belt. Tossing The Necromancer aside, the prince asks him about news from Canada.

            “Well,” says Weatherall, “the only item I’d term ‘news’ is that General Grey has, evidently, already made a beachhead at Martinique…”

            “Christ, no,’ the prince groans. ‘Damnation! Are we going to miss this war altogether? What a farrago!”

            “I wouldn’t say that, sire – I mean, Edward – since resistance is apparently fierce, and the French fort has thus far proved impregnable.”

              “Oh? Good. What else?”

              “Of Grey, rien,” Weatherall replies. “But Cecilia Butler is to marry Charles Forrager-Belstrap, and…’ 

            “Enough!” Edward yells, frustrated beyond measure by the paucity of information, information that might conceivably hold his life in the balance. ‘There must be a better way, a faster way of gathering news,’ he says. ‘There’s no more about the war?’

                “Except that, according to this author, the city’s defenses may or may not be dubious, no. Nothing.”

          “God,’ he says. ‘How do we communicate over vast distances? What ways are there?’

             ‘Pigeons?’ Weatherall suggests. ‘Smoke signals by day, bonfires at night? Didn’t the Greeks have a chap who just ran like the wind with a message in his hand?’

            ‘I think it was in his mind, Fred, not his hand. But he dropped dead the moment he arrived – that’s no good.’ He screws up his face as if in agony. ‘Christ!’ he says. ‘It’s all so primitive. ‘Think of a perfect way, not one involving runners, birds or bonfires – something modern!’

             ‘Telepathy?’ suggests Weatherall.

              ‘Yes,’ the prince says. ‘Yes, telepathy – but it’s surely open to abuse?’

             ‘So are pigeons, but we still use them…’

            ‘True. But they just die or lose their sense of direction,’ he says. ‘What could go wrong with minds a thousand miles apart sharing thoughts… Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’ 

             Over a tolerable dinner of pickled herring and roast lamb, in the packet’s cozy closet of a dining cabin, the prince asks Captain George if he has any more news of General Grey than the newspaper.

          “My orders state that he’ll await your arrival, sire,” says the captain, as if reading it from a document. “It seems he’s in bad need of a second commander to conduct pincer attacks on the French garrisons. I gather the forts are far better-defended than was expected; and although Grey has taken Lacoste, massing troops there, he will not proceed against the main garrisons until you arrive to lead one of the regiments. Alas, I know no details beyond those given in my orders.”

            “Thank you, Captain,’ he says, concentration now in his blue eyes. ‘Then we must sail with all haste tomorrow, in case the general has made himself vulnerable to a counter-attack from his rear… which will become more likely the longer he waits there on the shore, will it not?” He has no idea how vulnerable Grey’s position is, of course. It is speed he suddenly wants, the speed that will quell an anticipation bubbling up in his chest like champagne. He spends much time studying new maps he had purchased onshore. The cities. The harbours. The reefs. Elevations. As always, his mind is there before his body. Is that, he wonders, a form of telepathy? The coming days or weeks will also determine his whole future, his fate, or so he thinks. They can’t come soon enough. He’s been training for this moment for nearly a decade, and the thought of it is almost unbearable without the fact of it.

-ii-

                Gulls circling, their desolate lament the ocean’s only music, apart from the slapping rhythm and plash of waves. All hands are on deck, busy with the dozens of tasks involving rope, rigging and canvas. As they sail off south, past Boston’s dry docks, he’s astounded by the number of large vessels under construction there, borrowing the captain’s perspective glass to obtain a better view.

            “Blood of Christ!’ he gasps. ‘Take a look at that, Fred.” He hands Weatherall the glass. “Tell me those aren’t all men-o’war they’re building.”

              Weatherall adjusts focus. “I believe you’re right,” he says, carefully scanning the shipyards.

            “Interesting,’ says the prince. ‘Are the Americans planning to enter this war after all? Or are they working on commissions from the French? It must be one or the other, no?”

            “Or both?”

            “Yes,” the prince says, musing over the songs he’d heard in that Boston theatre. “Or both.”

          He and Weatherall return to their cabin, where they ponder new facts, noticing through the broad rear windows that a heavy, cloying mist has now enveloped the ship, as it heads out into open sea. The effect is like ballooning through low cloud: the silence, the plunging pit in your stomach as you rise and fall, rise and fall. They must have fallen asleep, lulled by this foggy fantasia, for they both awake suddenly to the sound of a drum beating the men to quarters. In alarm, still buttoning their tunics, they rush out onto the quarterdeck, where Captain George is questioning one of his young midshipmen.

            “What is it, Mr. Blake?” he asks the boy.

            “Sighting in heavy mist, sir,” replies Blake, a tousle-headed lad of around twelve. “Two points off starboard, sir.”

            “What kind of vessel?” asks the captain, somewhat irritably.

              “Difficult to say, sir,” the boy replies. “I only caught a brief glimpse of her.”

              “Did you see it, Mr. Lynch?” George asks the other midshipman, who’s also on watch with Blake.

              “No, sir,” answers Lynch, a rather nervous, freckled fellow, a tad older than the other boy.

              The captain raises his telescope and begins surveying wafting vapours off the starboard bow, saying to Blake, “You did the right and proper thing, sir. One cannot be too careful.” He means ordering the beating to quarters.

                Weatherall and Prince Edward strain their eyes to look through the blanketing layers, seeing nothing. Then, without warning, great dabs of red and orange illuminate the distant skyline, soon followed by the muffled boom of cannon-fire. “Everyone get down!” shouts the captain, crouching well below the starboard rail himself.

                 They follow suit, hearing the shrill whine of cannonballs, and then a series of great splashes, as the shots plop  mere yards away into a turbid ocean. Captain George cautiously peers into his spyglass over the rail, calling out, “French privateer, man-o’war. Big one too. She has the weather gauge,” he tells the prince, before shouting, “Raise all the sail, boys, and double-quick!”

                 “The?’ says Prince Edward. ‘What’s a ‘weather gauge’?” 

                 “Advantage,” George replies obscurely, handing Edward his telescope before pacing off to supervise the frantic scurrying-up of rigging, the strained hauling on ropes, and the hurried dropping of sails now in  progress above them.

              He looks into the spyglass, making out the vague shape of a large warship apparently attempting to circle the packet before releasing another broadside. The instrument is then handed to Weatherall, who uses it only briefly before voicing his fears.

                “We haven’t a hope in hell of fighting off that!” he says.

              The prince keeps his own counsel, astonished by the number and shape of expansive, billowing sails the little packet now possesses, including smaller ones extending from the bows ten feet out above disturbed green waves.

              “Set a course sou’-sou’west, Mr. Williams,” the captain yells to his boson. “Then zig-zag like lightning along it.”

              The packet takes off more rapidly than you would have imagined possible, soon, by her sheer speed, preventing the enemy vessel from making the intended circling maneuver. The privateer then fires around fifteen cannon out of pure frustration, or so it seems. The whistling balls fall far short this time, however, their plashes, plops and splashes barely audible now. 

              Before long they’ve conclusively outrun the warship, which is no longer even visible, enveloped once more by distance and drifting vapours. “That’s seamanship, by God!” Weatherall exclaims, as the captain comes over. “That, sir, is seamanship!”

              “I told you she was swift,” says Captain George, “and swift she is.” 

              “Yes. Indeed,’ the prince agrees. ‘Excellent work. How many of these privateers are out here, do you think?” he inquires, his spirits high after this almost miraculous escape.

              “Hard to say,” George replies, smoothing back dangling strands of yellow hair. “They’re only interested in prizes, but they will go after anything flying a British flag.” He muses a while, before going on, “I think, with Your Highness’ permission, that we’d be safer striking the Union Jack and flying instead a Yankee flag — of which I happen to possess a serviceable example.”

              “Ah?’ he says. ‘Well, much as the shame appalls me, you’re the ship’s master, not I, and you must do whatever you think best.” He wonders if George really imagines he’d object.

              “Thank you, sire,” Captain George says, breathing a sigh of relief. “Our safety is my prime concern; and we shall, of course, be flying our own colours before we reach Admiral Jervis and the fleet.”

              “Yes, quite so,” Edward says. “That would be essential for our dignity, wouldn’t it, Captain?” He smiles guilelessly: no stickler for naval protocol.

              “Fine man,” Weatherall comments, when the captain has gone. “We’re in good hands here.”

              ‘Yes,’ the prince says. ‘I did have my doubts about this ship, but he’s right about her speed…’ 

                   Just then, Robert Wood appears, worry etched upon his brow. ‘Captain Sawyer be sick, sire,” he announces, sounding more dismayed than concerned.

              “Of course he is,” Weatherall says, stamping a foot with equine impatience. “And I’m so sick too – of him.” Sawyer’s behaviour has been antagonizing him for weeks now. He’s a compassionate man when compassion is warranted; but he’s come to regard Sawyer as the regiment’s bawler, the man who makes a fuss about every little thing. He’d been billeted with such a man during the American war, and it nearly cost him his life. Sawyer reminds him of that man, and the memory pumps blood into his head that seems to be leaking out from his flushed eyes.

              ‘Calmly,’ says the prince. ‘Keep your temper, Fre – Captain Weatherall…’ After correcting himself he wonders why he’d bothered to keep up formality just for Wood.

                They go below, where young Captain Sawyer is lying on his bunk looking very pale and smelling very awful indeed. He has, they soon notice, befouled his breeches.

                 “Ugh!’ the prince snorts, his lip curling. ‘What is it, Sawyer?”

              “When the cannonballs flew,” says Weatherall intolerantly, “so did his bowels, I’ll wager…”

                “No,” Sawyer protests, a bloom of colour returning to his ashen cheeks, “it was the food, and the motion, and the…”

                “The fear?” suggests Weatherall, cutting him off.

                “Fear? What fear?” asks Sawyer, summoning up as much offended innocence as he’s able to find in himself.

                “In your case,” Weatherall says, already amused by the jest he’s about to make, “it must have been a beating to hind quarters…” He laughs his raucous soldier’s laugh, pointing at the efflorescent umber stain on Sawyer’s white breeches, while holding his large nose in exaggerated revulsion. Then he says, “For heaven’s sake, man, change out of those vile rags and wash them — or, better still, toss them overboard, along with your mattress and sheets.”

                “My guts are in turmoil,” Sawyer complains, “and I feel like puking…”

                “I think we all feel like that,” says Weatherall, abruptly leaving the cabin, receding sounds of mock retching accompanying him.

                “Yes,’ the prince says. ‘Well. Clean yourself up, then report to me. In that order. Wood will assist you… if he so chooses. ”

                ‘ ‘course I will, sire,” says Wood. “I shall do whatever I can…”

                ‘Good man, Robert,’ he says. ‘You’ve a stronger stomach than I…’ He leaves the cabin sucking in fresh air like a drowning man. “Do you really think he was sick with fear?” he asks Weatherall, back in their cabin.

                “Indeed,” Weatherall replies. “I’ve seen the symptoms all too often.”

                “Have you? Ah. Then what’s he going to be like leading men into battle, Fred?”

                “It’s not predictable. When men are fighting for their lives, fear often vanishes. Valour can even emerge. It does emerge. I’ve long since concluded that fear is designed to keep one away from danger; but when the danger is clear and present, fear is no longer of any use; other qualities essential for self-preservation take its place. I’ve seen men I deemed spineless weaklings engage in acts of amazing bravery, of extraordinary courage and valour. And this during battles which turned formerly brave men into simpering Nancy-boys. So, there’s no telling…”

                “Yes? All the same,” he says, “you must admit it’s worrying.”

                “I won’t deny it,” Weatherall says, adding, with his habitual delicacy of spirit, “But every man deserves the benefit of doubt, no matter how unfounded it may prove to be.”

                “I suppose,’ says the prince hesitantly, ‘I suppose you’re right; and it’s not as if we now have much choice in the matter anyway, is it?”

                  “We could always throw him to the sharks,” says Weatherall, his smile a sunbeam.

                  ‘Fred,’ he says, gripped by a more troubling thought he’s not sure how to express, ‘do you think God wants us to be here – I mean, on our way to war?’

                    ‘They say if you wish to know where God wants you to be,’ says Weatherall, ‘look at your feet…’ Then he picks up the copy of Charles Wilkins’ 1785 translation of the Bhagavad Gita, which Edward had purchased in Boston, asking, “What on earth’s this?” 

                  “That? Yes. It’s a Hindu holy book,” the prince tells him, “and apparently the first writings ever translated from the ancient Sanskrit language of India. I thought it might be, ah… interesting – since India will soon be ours…”

                Weatherall begins to leaf through the uncut pages, while Edward returns to The Necromancer, willing to endure its plodding convolutions in order to find out the nature of its annoying mystery. This is the only reason to carry on reading, and he finds it aggravating, tempted to skip to the end.

                  “You’re right,” says Weatherall, after some fifteen minutes, tapping the Bhagavad Gita with the back of his hand.

              “Right? What?”

              “It is interesting. Sawyer ought to read it,” Weatherall says, quite serious now. “It starts on the eve of a great battle, with this famed warrior – Arthur, or something – reluctant to fight, since the opposing army consists largely of relatives and old friends. But his charioteer turns out to be some kind of god –  name of Krisam or something – who tells him to do his duty and fight, since the enemy are all fated to die, thus they will die anyway, whether he takes part in the war or not. Then it gets stranger, because this god, Krisam, claims the human soul is never born and thus cannot die. So, Arthur can’t really kill anyone, even if he kills them…”

                “What a curious idea.” The prince is now eager to look at this book himself. “Quite a good justification of war, though…”

                “And murder, I’d say,” says Weatherall. ‘It’s all predetermined, so kill anyone you like… if you can…’

                  “Yes. I see. But is this ‘Arthur’ fellow merely a coward?”

                “No, I think not. He just feels that if he wins this war he loses it, because so many close to him will die as a result. It keeps going on about his strong arm, so you assume he’s a competent archer… or has been. He whines on about preferring to lose the battle than win at such a cost; but the god sets him all right.” Weatherall yawns, adding, “I thought we were going to get straight into the battle, but now this charioteer god is delivering a sermon, replete with incomprehensible ideas about something called ‘yog’, or ‘yug’, and the need to act with no concern for the consequences of your actions. It loses me here, I must admit. What’s the point of doing anything if you don’t care about the result?”

                “Ah. Well. I’d have to read it myself…but you’re right: why would one do anything at all without regard for the outcome? I’ve heard, from East India Company men, that the Hindu faith is hopelessly tangled and makes little rational sense. They have thousands of gods too, so this ‘Krisam’ may well be a minor one… like Pan, or some such Greek. The gods of Olympus were so feeble that humans even stormed their fortress at one point.”

                “Really?” says Weatherall. “I’m afraid the Greek myths always mythtified me at school.”

                “Yes, indeed… and so the gods contemplated wiping out our race; but then they realised, if they did this, there’d be no one to make sacrifices or worship them — which is, we assume, their raison d’etre. The plan was thus abandoned. But the Greeks never really respected their gods in the way we do our one – some of us. I think it was Achilles who said to Zeus, ‘You’re all-powerful, and I’m merely a helpless mortal. Do what you like to me. I don’t care. I won’t be impressed’.”

                “I confess it’s exceeding hard to believe in God when you’ve been on a battlefield,” Weatherall says ruefully, and then he seems aggrieved at this confession.

                “Is it?’ says Prince Edward. ‘Really? Then I’m in for a test of faith as well as of leadership, am I?” 

                “There is no test of a man in life like war. It reveals his quintessence, the reality behind the posturing. None who return are unchanged by what they’ve seen, what they’ve done, what they’ve learned about themselves. Some are all the better for it; others are broken husks.”

                ‘Are they?’ he says. Which will I be? he thinks. Which will I be?

-iii-

                The rush and slap of water. Wind whispering in the sails to creak timbers. Minutes later, a drum beats to quarters again. They wrestle on their coats and run back out onto the quarterdeck.

           “Enemy frigates ten points off starboard,” Captain George informs them, but as casually as if he’d just sighted a school of dolphin. “Here.” He passes his spyglass.

                  Since the mist has lifted, the prince can quite plainly see a fleet of seven French frigates some two miles away. They are turning toward the little packet, led by a huge man-o’war under full sail. “So much for your Yankee flag,” he says, wondering if privateers simply attack anything, or anything that isn’t from the country providing their piracy licence.

                “Now I’m going to show you something I promised yesterday,” says the captain, immensely pleased at the thought. “Albeit under somewhat different conditions than I’d intended.” He takes the wheel himself now, shouting out, “Port cannon to starboard! Gunners to your stations, please, and prepare to engage. I want full sail too, and sharp-shooters into position!”

                The three port-side cannon are immediately dragged across the deck to the empty gun ports in the starboard rail, and then chained into position, as the port flaps are pulled open. Captain George turns the packet in a wide arc, coming up so swiftly behind the lead French vessel that she has no time to respond. The ocean rolls and swells violently below, as if trying to shrug both vessels off its back. When they’re broadside starboard at the warship’s rear, in a blind spot for her guns, Captain George orders his sharp-shooters to fire at anyone on deck. A volley of shots rings out, and Edward sees men fall like skittles on the French main deck. 

               “Gunners, prepare to fire!” yells George. “I want only masts and the rudder. Aim! Fire!” All six of the little cannon blast away at once, the men instantly reloading, scarcely visible within curling clouds of blue smoke. An eerily silent pause; then all three of the privateer’s tall masts slowly bend, as if in wind, and then suddenly snap, falling away completely, crashing with all their sail, ropes and a tangle of  rigging into the churning sea. It’s impressive gunnery, since the ship’s pitching must make aiming difficult. Havoc breaks out around the wheel on the French quarterdeck.

             “Masts and rudder gone, sir,” announces the head gunnerformally, in the tone of a parliamentary report.

                “Excellent work!” the captain hollers back. “Now I want three guns on the quarterdeck, and the others trying for her powder magazines. Aim and fire at will. Then, Boson, we run like smoke-and-oakum – got it?” He turns to the prince, saying, “No sense in pushing our luck,” as the nine-pounders fire, this time in a brief sequence.

                The French quarterdeck is lost in a blizzard of splinters; and then a monstrous explosion blows a ragged hole twenty feet wide in the vessel’s port side.

            “Wheel gone!” states the chief gunner. “And one magazine hit. The others must be below their water-line, sir.”

                “Adieu, mes amis,” the captain shouts into dense grey smoke now occluding the French ship entirely. 

                   With the other six vessels now fast bearing down on them, George next spins the packet’s wheel himself, shouting instructions in one gigantic polysyllable. 

              The tiny vessel takes off like a racehorse, heading south at such a pace that the privateers are soon merely a funnel of pulsing smoke in the far distance. The glittering green and silver ocean is once more their only country.

                “God! That’s the finest gunnery I’ve ever seen. Simply remarkable,” Weatherall tells Captain George.  “Not to mention, yet again, the seamanship. My God! The seamanship!” He turns to Prince Edward, his face aglow with martial romance, saying, “Did you see that, Highness? Not a shot or ball wasted. Extraordinary!”

                ‘Ah, yes.’

                “The secret’s not size,” explains Captain George, “but accuracy; and that is all mathematics. I’ve personally trained my gunners in this science, with trajectories, wind effects, precisely-estimated arcs of distance, and so on. It’s just basic geometry, if truth be told. Long as we can avoid their broadsides, we can cripple any vessel – the bigger the better. Without rudder and mast they’re helpless, like a turtle on its back. The sharp-shooters just add a little confusion to the mixture; but even they are trained to hit targets, not merely to fire wildly — which is how the enemy generally fights. The wonder is that no artillery commander in France has worked out this simple technique for himself. Their cannon and rifles fire as if the gunners’ eyes are closed. If they manage to do some damage, it’s purely luck… or else sheer fire-power. But, as you can see, we’ve got to disappear double-quick — we’re no match in a conventional sea battle. Hit and run, that’s us…””

                When they’re back in the cabin, Sawyer appears, wearing a pair of worn breeches far too big for him and now tied at the waist with a length of rope. He is once again pale, visibly trembling. “You wanted to see me, sir?” he says, his voice like someone else’s voice. A child’s voice, or a girl’s voice.

                “Yes. Indeed. Come in, Sawyer,” says the prince, asking Weatherall to excuse them for ten minutes. “These adventures have badly scared you, Sawyer, I believe,” he says. “Am I right?”

                “No, sir,” Sawyer replies, staring at his feet. “It’s the food, the rolling of the ship, the…”

                The prince interrupts him: “Yes, yes; we’ve heard all that. Now be honest with me. Were you scared or not?”

                Sawyer clutches at his baggy breeches, an inner struggle obviously in progress. Finally, he says, “A little, Highness. Yes.”

                “I’d say ‘a lot’, Sawyer. What are we going to do with you at Martinique, if this little scuffle has you befouling yourself?”

                “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t seen combat before.”

                “It’s a little late to realise you don’t like it now, isn’t it? What do you propose to do about it when we fight with General Grey?”

                “I will pull myself together, sir,” he whimpers. “I swear I will.”

                “And if you cannot?”

                “I don’t know, sir,” he says sincerely. “I’m sorry to let you down. I am so sorry…”

                  “Listen, Sawyer; I have no desire to put a man into situations he cannot endure. If you feel, once we reach Lacoste, that you will not be able to lead men into battle, you must inform me. Other lives are at stake, remember. If such is the case, I’ll arrange for you to remain with some task on board one of the ships of the line. Do you understand?”

                  “I do, sir. And thank you.”

                  “No need. Just promise me you’ll inform me. Without fail.”

                  “I promise, sir. I will tell you if I’m not up to my duty. And I am so sorry this has happened. I had no idea…” His face is sallow, wan and very sorry.

                “I know you didn’t, Sawyer. This sort of thing is not uncommon, and it often turns itself around. We shall take care of it, one way or the other. Will you now be able to rest easier?”

                “Yes, sir. Thank you so very much.” He suddenly looks so very young indeed.

                “Just my duty as your commander. All right, Sawyer, dismissed. And tell Captain Weatherall to return, if you please.”

                Sawyer shuffles out, his breeches flapping like curtains suddenly assaulted by the wind. Weatherall comes bounding back in. “Well?” he says. “Eight hundred lashes is it?”

                “No, Fred. The man has never seen action before. He’s scared… and he’s very remorseful. Very. I told him we’d manage the situation. But I don’t want him leading men in that condition.” The prince hasn’t seen combat either, and this now makes him think, gives him pause.

                “Then what to do with him?’ asks Weatherall. ‘He’s a millstone…” Hard on the outside, he’s soft as moss on the inside, and the two states often war with one another.

                “Well,’ says the prince, feeling the throb of his own tender heart. ‘He can peel potatoes or scrub decks for one of the fleet ships – it matters little what he does. I just don’t want him putting lives at risk if he knows he’s not up to snuff. You think I was soft on him, don’t you, Fred?’

                “Why would such a man take an army commission if he’s frightened by loud noises?” Weatherall grumbles, sitting with a crash onto his bunk, where he emits a curious hissing sound.

                “No, no. Let it be,’ says the prince, seating himself in an elbow chair near the window. ‘You said yourself that these things often turn around.”

                “Did I say ‘often’? Because I meant ‘occasionally’.”

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 6.2

-iii-

          His diary records that he himself did not have a good night, tossing, twisting, turning this way and that on a damp, lumpy mattress, worrying about money and the additional two thousand pounds the loss of his suite now adds to the debt mountain, the fiscal Olympus. He worries too about Julie, about the fate of their next child, and how she’s coping with the thought of another wrenching heartbreak. He also worries about his reception at Boston, the place where revolt’s original fuse was lit. It will be no use pretending to be Colonel Armstrong there. His cover is well and truly blown. Hostility to England will surely run far deeper there than it does in sleepy Burlington, which had seen little, if any fighting for an independence it has evidently only just acquired for itself from the other colonies. Or states. The thought of having to wear the same shirt and linen for another week or more repels him as he pulls them on for day two. It could be worse, he thinks; I might only have my army uniform to wear here. You’re probably better off naked in Boston than reminding them of all those battles, all the bloodshed, Englishmen fighting Englishmen. Terrible. That was really the end of the Civil Wars, wasn’t it, we Cavaliers having a last go at Roundheads on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean?  Yes, the American war was a finale of that test of civil strength between the Mildly Religious and the Severely Religious. Oliver Cromwell’s instinct for emigrating to this new world was correct enough, just a century and a half too early. 

        Outside, in the pre-dawn murk, snow blows down the street in spears, pelting his cheeks with wet splotches like iced spittle. The promised carriage is unlike any in his experience, more closely resembling a wooden ice-fishing hut on huge wheels. The horses – an unknown breed, with feet the size of soup tureens – look sturdy enough, their breath now layers of drifting cloud around curiously small heads. At least he and his companions will be sitting inside the odd contraption, he thinks. He’s right about this; but they’ll be sitting in the dark, unless they want to freeze by opening the wooden flaps. There’s no glass on these windows.

          The journey to Boston is hard, cold and uncomfortable. How long will it take? He has a ship to catch. Will an English vessel wait long or even wait at all for them in a Yankee port? 

        The roads are terrible; the weather is atrocious; the coach is unbearable, a rattletrap with no springs. But it’s all they’ve got here and they endure it. As happens with people journeying together in cramped quarters, some personalities clash and others meld, enhancing one another. Captain Sawyer proves to be a whiner, constantly irritating Captain Weatherall with unnecessary complaints and unwanted, puerile comments. With Weatherall and the prince it is very different. Very. Delighting in Weatherall’s company, his humour and sagacity, the prince tells his captain to call him ‘Edward’ in private. Never ‘Ed’ or ‘Eddie’, though. “Ah,’ he says. ‘Do you know what my siblings call me?”

          “Some pet name, perhaps?” replies the captain.

        “No, Fred. They call me ‘Joseph Surface’.”

        Weatherall is surprised. “The Sheridan character?” he says.

      “Exactly.”

      “But why?”

         “Because my unconcealed concealed relationship with dear Madame Julie makes me a hypocrite, I imagine. My brothers disgrace the family openly with their mistresses and countless bastards. I don’t choose that path.”

          “My understanding of the play,’ says Weatherall, ‘which may not be great – I’m not a literary man – is that the Joseph Surface character emerges as anything but a hypocrite.”

        “Really? We’ll buy a copy in Boston — if ever we get there — and then study it together at sea.’ 

           He decides to ask Gutter, an innkeeper at whose hostelry they stay for the night, if anyone in the vicinity might be able to communicate with their coachman – because they can’t seem to do it.

        “I can, your majestic,” Gutter replies, adding that  both he and the coachman are of Swedish origin; although Gutter’s been here since he was two, whereas the coachman could well have disembarked last week.

        “I see,’ says the prince. ‘Could you then tell him we need to reach Boston within a week. It’s utterly vital.”

        There follows an unnecessarily lengthy conversation between the two men, resulting in Gutter saying the following: “He says no.”

        “Oh? It seemed to me that he said a good deal more than no.”

        “He says no.”

        “Yes. And does that take five minutes to say in Swedish?”

          “No.”

        “Ah. It did appear to take a fairly long time…”

        “I ask about his family,” says Guttter, “and his home town in Sweden.”

        “Ah, so you know him?”

        “No, we meet for the first time now.”

           “I see,’. ‘Did he say exactly how long it may take to reach Boston?”

          “No,” says Gutter, with remarkable precision.

        “Ah. Would you be so kind as to ask him now?” There follows another dialogue of at least ten minutes. “Well?” says the prince.

        “He says impossible to say,” Gutter replies, adding, “Because of the weather.”

        “I see. Better to know that you don’t know, I suppose, than to not know that you don’t know…”

          ‘Pardon me, princeship?’

          Their coachman, now named Sven, proves resourceful and considerate; and they grow fond of him. 

            ‘Which is just as well,’ the prince says, ‘for we might be in his company many days yet…’ A mighty smash beneath them, and the rattletrap leaves the road for a moment, returning with a thud to hammer on over ice-ruts, fallen branches and even the remains of other rattletraps. Outside, whenever they peek, a white blanket is unfolded endlessly in all directions.

        ‘Vermont!’ scoffs Weatherall. ‘When are these mountains ever green?’

        Captain Sawyer is tempted to say something about evergreen trees, but he thinks wiser of it, having been tongue-lashed enough already.

-v-

          Aching in every joint, unwashed and smelling like it, nearly a month after leaving Burlington, they are finally driven by Sven the coachman up the winding track to a hill from whose summit they can see Boston. The city reminds Prince Edward of Bristol, or some such other busy little English seaport. They clatter over cobbled lanes straight down to the harbour, supposed site of the infamous Tea Party. Has a frigate arrived from Halifax?’ No. At least it isn’t there. Had it left when they failed to show up within the allotted time? The consensus, delivered by a trio of grizzled harbour officials, is that no such vessel has yet arrived this year. The prince will later learn that the man sent by Lord Dorchester to Halifax, for the purpose of commissioning his ship, had been obliged to travel overland, since the St. Lawrence was frozen. Having lost his dog-sled to highwaymen, he was left only with snow-shoes, which get heavier the deeper the snow becomes. Understandably, this mode of travel had taken the man a good deal longer than the absurdly unrealistic six days Dorchester scheduled for the whole journey. The Governor-General had never been to Halifax, although he still spoke about the place disparagingly. Consequently, the promised frigate did not even set sail until the prince had been in Boston for a week. Out of a misplaced nautical optimism, they take rooms at the Aulde Bilge Inn, situated right on the cobbled quayside.

        “Is it true thou art the son of King George?” a man asks, without any formal preamble.

        “Yes, indeed, it is true, sir.” He’s very wary in this city, but still unfailingly polite.

        “And how does thy daddy do?” the man inquires.

      “Do? Very fine, thank you,” he says.

      “Why did he start that plaguey quarrel with us?” asks the man, chewing on the stem of an unlit corncob pipe.

      “The quarrel? Well,’ he says. ‘One never knows how such things will turn out, does one? But in this case, it seems all’s well that ends well, no?”

      “If he hadn’t started that damned quarrel, he’d be king here still,” the man states in a tender tone, before turning on his worn heels to march off. No point in using an alias here, he thinks, no point at all.

          Another man accosts the prince, who begins to enjoy these encounters, since they’re amiable enough, and his wariness soon dissipates. This one is Jeb. He’d once been a ship’s doctor, before discovering the sight of blood made him swoon. After fainting part way through the amputation of a leg, he resolved to specialise in hydrotherapy back on land, where he further discovered his real talent lay in treating hypochondria. “You has an imaginary ailment,” explains Doctor Jeb, “and I gives you an imaginary cure, see? Everyone’s happy, and there ain’t a drop of blood in sight.”

          ‘Ah. Yes. It is a fortunate man indeed who finds his true calling in life…’ Although, judging byJeb’s crumpled, jaundiced appearance, it seems unlikely that hypochondria has yet reached anything like epidemic proportions in Boston.  

        Weatherall and he spend hours analysing the role of Joseph Surface in School for Scandal, his actions and the development of his character, only to conclude that they require a further reading of the play, since neither of them can recall much about the story as it  unfolds in the second half.

             “I could barely keep myself awake,” confesses  Weatherall. “The sound of my own voice began to make my brain go numb.”

        “It must have been numbing my brain too,” he says in jest, before admitting that he has also lost track of the plot.

      “Perhaps that bookseller was right,” Weatherall suggests. “The play is too silly for such men as we to endure.”

        “No. I seem to recall enjoying it at Drury Lane — or was it the Haymarket? But I was of course only fourteen or fifteen at the time. I thought it was supposed to be silly, though – that much I do remember. And Sheridan is a great friend of my brother George, so we were rather obliged to enthuse about the performance…”

        “Your brother seems to have collected a curious assortment of friends, hasn’t he?” 

        “Indeed. That’s an understatement. But are they really friends, I wonder, or just hangers-on, who either require the reflected glory for vanity, or else it’s for an influence to serve their own ends. I don’t think George has any real friends – not that he cares. Like Narcissus, his own reflection will always be his one true and abiding love…”

        “Poor fellow,” says Weatherall.

        “Oh, don’t waste your pity on him, Fred. He wouldn’t even understand what it was. It would drown in the ocean of his own boundless self-pity.” He has not shared such intimate thoughts before with anyone except Julie.

          His presence in the city being no secret, Prince Edward soon receives many invitations from Boston society hostesses and sees no reason not to accept at least some of them. But which ones? He chooses one delivered by a liveried negro boy in a white wig, and now heads off with his suite by hired carriage in newly-purchased evening dress to the Kettle residence, whose address is on their imposing invitation. The ride is longer than expected, and conversation roams from topic to topic.   

           “A woman in town told me,” Robert Wood confides, “that the Bible be the most popular book in America. She say the second most popular be Peter Pindar…”

        ‘Christ!’ he says. ‘That’s just sad…’

          ‘What,’ says Weatherall, ‘the Bible or Peter Pindar?’

          ‘Well,’ says the prince, ‘I suppose it’s both really, isn’t it? You don’t read either of them for fun, do you?’

          ‘I don’t read either of them at all,’ Weatherall tells him.

          ‘Then God will smite you,’ says Captain Sawyer. ‘You have to read the Good Book… don’t you?’ He regrets saying this immediately.

          ‘I wouldn’t talk about smiting, if I were you, Sawyer,’ growls Weatherall. ‘The temptation is irresistible…’

        For some reason – pride or prejudice, perhaps? – he’s pictured the Kettles’ house as a modest redbrick dwelling on a street full of similar homes, and not far from the city’s centre, where people now gawp at them, and children run alongside the carriage yelling halloos at its passengers.. Instead, however, they find themselves driving beyond the urban density, until they reach a broad avenue on which driveways to invisible houses are about a mile apart. The avenue climbs steeply, and it’s only when they’ve reached its summit that the driver turns off onto a wide gravel track, whose tall wrought-iron gates are open. They proceed up it a half-mile before they’re able to see what more nearly resembles a Roman temple than a house, with a dozen tall Doric columns rising upwards along a stone veranda, reached by a marble staircase thirty feet wide. 

          As they pull up beside these steps, the veranda above suddenly swarms with people. Men all wear white tie and tails; women are clad in a variety of gorgeously-coloured silk gowns, sparkling with jewels, their hair the meticulous work of hours, curled, stacked or braided, and decorated with glittering pins and aigrettes. 

             “Goodness! Not exactly what I was expecting,” he says under his breath, as the driver unfolds the carriage steps and they all climb out. The crowd on this porch immediately begins to cheer or applaud, and a woman wearing a ballooning gown of peach silk, embroidered in turquoise satin stars, with a necklace of rubies the size of quail eggs, comes down to greet them, towing an elegant grey-haired man in her wake. It is obvious she doesn’t know which of them is her guest of honour, and so he, the prince, makes it easy for her: “Charming. Have I the honour of greeting my hosts? I am Prince Edward of England.” He bows in the most formal manner. He can see the Kettles are nervous and unsure how they ought to act. No one in America seems to know this, he finds.

        “The honour is all ours, Prince,” says the man, extending his hand. “I’m Zachariah Kettle — most folks call me ‘Zack’.”

            The ladies particularly are enthralled by his presence in the ballroom. One even swoons to the floor with delight after their dance, causing great concern. 

              Giving a different perspective on the event, Robert Wood later reports the following exchange he’d overheard that evening:“How does it feel to have your wife dance with a Prince of England?” one man had asked another.

             “Better ask the Prince how it would feel to have my boot up his arse,” the other man had replied indignantly. 

               From numerous gentlemen with who he converses come invitations to many more dinners and balls, every one of which he accepts, but only on condition that his ship does not arrive before the proposed event. The conversations are rather trite, rather trivial, however, steering well clear of the recent hostilities, the treatment of Indians, and the push west to seize land to which the colonists have no right. What these Boston nabobs want to discuss is money, trade, crop failure, and the folly of abolishing slavery. Deploying his secret masonic grip, the prince has found that many men he’s introduced to are brothers in the Craft. They are a far cry from the Baron de Vincy, though, and have some rather warped ideas about brotherhood. He’s asked to be a house guest by some thirty people, and he receives one useful recommendation for a better hotel than the Aulde Bilge — which shocks those he gives it to as his address. It is an odd kind of aristocracy, he finds, one based entirely on money, not tradition or breeding. He even meets a man named “Duke”. 

        The following few weeks are thus filled by such dinners and balls. There is a play too, during which the revolutionary songs, Yankee Doodle and Ca Ira are played with pride — and, perhaps, prejudice. But not, he thinks, with malice. Yet by their financial obsessions and endless talk of who’s just made a killing in cotton, a million here, another million there, these people bore him. There seems to be no solidity about them. They walk on air, or on money, which seems to be as plentiful here as air. It is a wearisome way of spending your time, he decides. His socialising, however, does much to promote better relations between America and Great Britain. Newspapers, which had initially been hostile to his appearance in the city, change their tunes dramatically, some saying it’s a pity he can’t lengthen his stay here, since his good nature and polite manner have done so much to change attitudes toward the British monarchy. This may even help heal the wounds caused by our war and start to bridge the gulf between our two nations. The press openly deplores the fact that their Lieutenant-Governor, Samuel Adams, gave Prince Edward no official recognition during his visit. You can be certain that he sends these articles back to his father; just as you can be equally certain the King doesn’t bother to read them. 

                During this unplanned sojourn at Boston, the prince has even formed a more favourable opinion of the rebel colonies — the Bastanais, as Quebecois call them – and he feels their union could well choose to proceed in the right direction, creating an entirely new society. The ruling class may not be egalitarian in spirit, but the ordinary people certainly are. Perhaps this is because wealth is, theoretically at least, a door open to everyone — just as politics is.   This egalitarian spirit is clearly what the French aimed to achieve – aimed to achieve but failed miserably. It is here that he’s told the French aristocrats have returned, some of them. The new American aristocracy is not like the old, however, because money lacks manners, lacks grace. It is all elbows out and join in the fray, winner take all. He perceives two hierarchies forming here: one is based on money, which is simple enough; but the other is based on achievement in other fields, a meritocracy that creates an echelon of experts, men whose views are all the same and thus dictate a status quo of thought and ideas. Such men have formed the bedrock of thinking in crucial areas, like economics and foreign policy. The masses can understand money, but they are increasingly alienated from professional and academic circles, people whose expansively liberated views seem to be at loggerheads with the humdrum realities of labour and survival. Edward wonders if this will be the nation’s downfall. After all, everyone can’t be rich, can they? If they were, no one would be rich. But if the national wealth isn’t shared, it won’t be national or wealth, will it? It will create a society no different in its essence from feudal France. Or feudal England. And if intellectuals can’t grasp the day-to-day vicissitudes of the average man, then intellectual concerns will become inimical to the general good. It will require an heroic effort for the United States to succeed, he thinks, yet it is not beyond the bounds of possibility. Already, or so he’s told, most people work for themselves; only a tiny percentage of the economy is derived from rent or other non-productive sources; most of it comes from actual production, of crops or manufactures. George Washington’s bank is founded on a debit-free system. The new currency, the dollar – not yet in wide circulation – is backed by reserves of gold, which will spare it fluctuations of value in international markets. All of this seems highly promising in his eyes — although the Bank of England views it suspiciously and will force it to change. Prince Edward wishes he had a debit-free system of his own. Or just a system. The only real darkness he sees here are the issues of slavery, the treatment of Indians, and the illegal yet relentless drive west, into what we believe are British territories. These stretch from Ohio on into the unknown interior and beyond, all the way to Spanish lands. If another conflict erupts between us, it will surely be over territory.

                ‘Wars usually are,’ he tells Zack Kettle, on a stroll through this gentleman’s gardens. ‘Yet with our common language and a European heritage,’ he says, ‘I can envisage this new nation becoming our closest friend and ally. Once differences are resolved, of course, and when hostilities are renounced forever.’

               Kettle seems to approve of this. The prince’s former thoughts of invasion now seem crude and outdated. They’re vastly inferior to a path of reconciliation and amity, leading to mutual benefits which would be potentially limitless in scope.

               ‘There is,’ says Kettle, ‘no reason why the United States shouldn’t acquire a tropical empire extending down through Central and South America, is there?’ The prince has no response. ‘With Britain’s help,’ Kettle goes on, ‘she could do just that.’ Fifty years later, when England is contemplating backing the Confederacy in America’s Civil War, this dream of a tropical empire will nearly be realised too.

-vi-

            The frost gives way to chill moisture; the harbour begins to fill with smaller craft, the fishermen who have just begun their year, and crews from the islands finally able to venture once again onto the cruel Atlantic. As enlightening as his stay has been, he’s glad when their little six-gun packet from Halifax, the Roebuck at last arrives at Boston’s quayside. It is not the larger frigate he had expected, but his suite of companions can still sail off to war, taking with them all the inevitable uncertainties such a venture must entail. Boston soon has no more reality than a curious dream, the kind that devours itself, along with the dreamer. 

                 He grew to manhood thinking of these people, these Americans, as the enemy, as traitors; but they turn out to be just like any other people. He wonders what it is that makes an ally or an enemy. Peace dispenses with both, he decides. But am I in the business of peace as a soldier?

          ‘An ally won’t shoot at you, usually?’ Weatherall suggests.

            ‘Ah. Is that all?’

            ‘And Mars aligns with Venus….’

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 6.1

CHAPTER  SIX

Yankee Doodles

The United States of America: Winter 1794

-i-

        When you get what you’ve always wanted, why is it never what you want? For a long time now he’s been wanting to test his leadership skills by taking men into combat; but, promoted to major-general and posted to war in the West Indies, all he can say is, ‘Ah, Christ! My father, my father, my father!’ He’s concerned that this posting is really the King’s way of separating him from Julie. But the order to travel alone through America makes him wonder if his father actually hopes to separate him from life itself. Julie is afraid he won’t return, leaving her very much alone in a strange land with no means of support. They’re walking along the little track leading to the falls on an afternoon of static, milky light, one of those times when the world grows so quiet you can believe it is listening to you.

          ‘You’ll be going to Martinique,’ she says.

            ‘What?’

            ‘Where I grew up. It’s one of the French sugar islands…’

            ‘Ah…’

            ‘If you’re there, can you see if our old house still stands?’

          ‘Of course. I’m taking Robert with me – to hell with His Majesty’s orders – and if there’s news I’ll send him back with it…’

          ‘It’s not that simple,’ she says. ‘I think my mother might be there, you see? The last I heard from her in ’89 was that she intended to flee the upheavals in Paris and head to the island…’

          ‘Then I shall go personally and present myself,’ he says, straightening up in anticipation of this moment.

          ‘No, no,’ she tells him in distinct alarm. ‘Never do that! Maman has a… a problem with Englishmen…’

          ‘But I’m your Englishman…’

          ‘That would be even worse. Just get someone to ascertain how things are there, at Trois Islets…’

              ‘There are three islands?’ he says, puzzled.

            ‘It’s the name of the village, silly…’

            ‘I ought to meet your mother,’ he tells her reflectively. ‘It’s only polite. I’m sure I can win her over…’

            ‘Well, I’m sure you can’t – please don’t even think of doing it, Edward.’ She gives him a hard look. ‘Promise me you won’t…’

          When word of his imminent departure reaches the citizens of Quebec, various public declarations are made on his behalf and delivered to the Chateau de St. Louis. There follows one of them:

          “The amiable qualities of benevolence and attention manifested by Your Royal Highness toward the relief and protection of our fellow citizens in the hour of need, as well as your condescension and urbanity to all who have had occasion to approach Your Royal Highness, have invariably claimed their admiration and gratitude…”

        Another one is still more gratifying to him:

         “ The Roman Catholic Clergy of Quebec, protected by the best of Kings, comes to bring Your Royal Highness a testimonial of their affliction at the coming departure, which will deprive the Province of so kind a Prince, the social virtues of which make you the object of general love; the activity of military vigilance, by which you have strengthened the confidence of the subjects, assure you of the gratitude of all and sundry. We are assured by your goodness that you will deign to receive our best wishes for your health and the success of your arms…”

          These are representative of testimonials he will receive from the citizenry wherever he serves. Is there a note of reproof or condemnation here? No. Those are only found in documents penned by the men seeking to undermine and ruin him. 

            It is Lord Dorchester who shows him these letters, commenting that Catholic clergy obviously fear he’ll be replaced by someone less tolerant. Having just returned from England with Lady Maria, his young wife, Dorchester is once more Canada’s Governor-General, although he is inching back into the role slowly, just as General Clarke, much relieved to shed the burden, is inching out. Lady Dorchester seems less haughty, and she is dressed in the new looser style now favoured in London, with artificial flowers in her hair instead of jewels or feathers. Has her sojourn driven home the folly of their pompous little court here?  This return also throws another coincidence in the prince’s face.

               ‘I cannot help but notice,’ he tells Dorchester, installed in his office at the Chateau, ‘that we seem fated never to occupy the same space together for very long. Is it not strange?’

          ‘Strange?’ says Dorchester, tasting this word as if for the first time. ‘I cannot see why it should be strange. There are no certainties in government service – but I need hardly tell you that…’

          The prince’s last official act at Quebec is to write a farewell to the citizens: “Nothing can flatter me more than to learn from you that my conduct in this Province has gained your friendship. Be assured that, though I go with cheerfulness to my post, assigned by the King, my father, I shall not leave Quebec without carrying with me the marks of friendship and consideration I have experienced here…” It is curious that these documents, all of them, are not taken into consideration by those swayed from listening to polemics of the men condemning him.

                  Christmas at the Salaberrys – perhaps a last Christmas, who knows? War is one vast unknowing. In the drawing room is a large fir tree decorated with burning tapers, hung with strings of raisins and almonds, which the children will later devour. The children are now with their new brother, baby Eduard, who giggles himself purple as they tickle his porky feet. Branches of spruce are suspended over doorways and windows, beyond which snow falls in frozen tears, sliding down the panes in zig-zagging smudges. Memories of that first Christmas in the little house by the Rhone. Inevitable memories cascading out the mind’s storehouse, which is crammed to the rafters with them. When love goes in… But he and Julie are both determined not to let the sadness now hanging over their heads mar a joyful time, no matter that this season brings with it little in the way of joy for either of them.

        When Julie and Souris are playing with the over-excited children and their chortling chubby brother, Salaberry says, “I hear the negro slaves on those islands have been encouraged by some of the seigneurs there to join in a counter-revolution. They’ve been promised freedom in return…” He and the prince are now in the library, its rows of mahogany shelves redolent of beeswax and musty books.

          ‘Have they really? I hadn’t heard. That heady brew, freedom…’ Where, he wonders, does this man obtain his information?

            “I’m simply suggesting your task there may be easier than expected,” says Salaberry.

          “And have your sources told you of the supposedly non-existent French navy’s strength? Or that their army is thought by some to be a million strong?” He thinks: Why am I sounding hostile? Louis is only trying to cheer me up a notch.

        “Thought to be,” says Salaberry, lighting a cigar. “War is nothing if not a rumour-mill shrouded in fog. And who will train or lead this million-strong army? Those butchers know how to overthrow a government, but they don’t know how to run one. A talent for murder does not mean military competence, does it?”

        “Not usually, no – but sometimes. Ivan the Terrible? Ghengis Khan? Vlad the Impaler? Listen, Louis,” he says, leaning across the table in order to lower his voice, “we both know that in a war nothing is certain – indeed you more than I know it. There is no way of telling what this attack on the islands will bring. I think you know what I’m saying…”

        “That you may not return?”

        “It’s possible, my friend; and, if I do survive the islands, this conflict may then send me straight to Europe. That’s the real battlefield after all. Who knows how long it may last?” He rests on his forepaws, eyebrows raised, feeling curiously manly with the very manly seigneur.

        “Not long, I suspect,’ answers Salaberry. ‘The Terror, as they are terming it, is, I hear, creating a strong royalist sentiment in the country. Many want an end to the Republic and a king back on the throne…”

        “What king?”

        “The Dauphin’s still too young. He’ll need a regent. So it’ll be the one in exile, Comte de Provence. The eighteenth Louis, as I believe he now calls himself.”

        “I think not, Louis. The republicans will fight on. It’s a war of ideas…”

        “They have more ideas than armies; and they have no generals to lead them. It takes far longer to have meaningless debates than it does to fire a gun. They can’t talk themselves out of this…”

        “Don’t underestimate the force of ideas as weapons in this war. Millions will die for their beliefs. I was there, Louis – I saw it. It will not be over as soon as we might all wish it to be.” It occurs to him that he is now someone who knows things, whose opinions are valid. Perhaps we do grow up, after all? Just a little.

        “I think,” Salaberry says, shifting in his chair while blowing a cloud of smoke upwards at the twinkling chandelier, “that you are asking us to look after Julie in your absence.”

        “Ah. Well…”

        Salaberry waves aside whatever he imagines Edward is about to reply, telling him, “That goes without saying, mon vieux. She will stay here with us, if she wishes; or her Souris will take the children and stay with her at Haldimand. Do not worry on that account; my friend, she will be well taken care of, I promise you. In war one has more pressing concerns — such as winning it.”

        “Yes. Such as staying alive too. I am so very…’ A distant shriek of laughter from the children. Wind shakes the windows. Clods of snow congregate on ledges like glittering cuckoo-spit. He continues on a different tack: “But your experience of war was of defending your home and country. This war is not the same. It is as much a battle of ideas as it is about opposing a clear and present danger. The Dutch and Austrians already understand the need to resist republicanism as both idea and danger. England will follow suit. We just won’t admit it. We don’t want to give the ideas or the danger any credibility. We prefer offense to defense. It makes us feel strong. This proposed attempt to seize the islands serves neither purpose, though, Louis, not to counter an ideology or to neutralize a threat. That’s my view. It’s more or less just simple piracy…”

        “I wouldn’t say that, Edward. It serves the purpose of depriving French coffers of the prodigious income from sugar; and that, in turn, means less money to pay and supply a million soldiers — no matter that most of them by now are probably accustomed to the rigours of starvation. Has a decent meal been served in France these last five years? If you want a measure of the revolutionary government’s understanding of military matters you only need to look at the guillotining of General de Beauharnais – for the crime of failing to hold a city, for cowardice…”

          “Really? De Beauharnais? I heard he was killed in action…” He recalls Julie’s letter from her friend Rose, who’s now the general’s widow.

        “The action of retreating in order to save those men he still had left alive –I don’t call that cowardice. I call it an appropriate and standard strategy under the circumstances, wouldn’t you agree?”

      When lawyers start commanding armies, thinks the prince, you cannot expect familiarity with any handbooks of prescribed military strategy. “Yes. True enough,” he says, wondering how two such dramatically different accounts of Beauharnais’ death could coexist. But he changes the subject back to his immediate concerns. “What do you think of my orders to travel overland to Boston?”

        “It makes sense,” Salaberry says circumspectly, slowly rotating the cigar between his bluish lips, “if only because the river will soon be ice-bound. But I hear the Americans are promising neutrality in this conflict; so I wouldn’t be too concerned about travel through New England. Not too concerned. They can’t afford to alienate London this time; the talk there is all of resuming trade ties with Great Britain. They’re traders, Edward, not warriors. The Bastanais think only of profits; and wars are generally very unprofitable. If they could find a way to make money from wars, they’d be keener to fight them; but as it stands, a conflict just interferes with commerce, so no one wants it. Besides, in her current state, France is of little use to them. Politics in Philadelphia – and everywhere really — are about economies, not ideals. Ideals are free – you can’t buy or sell them – which to the average American means they’re worthless. All the same,” he adds, throwing Edward a penetrating stare, “if I were you I’d ignore the order to travel alone. I don’t understand the reasoning there. Take a few good officers with you… just in case.”

        “Yes. In case. I am taking my man anyway. You think more? I’m supposed to make the journey incognito. Do you wonder if the King has been deliberately misinformed?”

            ‘Misinformation is the sister of rumour in war,” Salaberry replies. “Besides, they will know precisely who you are, even if you’re wearing a petticoat, lip paint and stack heels. Yankee spies are everywhere here, especially in Montreal, which might as well be in the so-called United States for all the loyalty to Canada I find there. It’s shameful. They’re even openly printing propaganda, pamphlets  urging us to rise up against the King. Don’t trust anyone or anything there — but act as if you do.” They go on to talk of the prince’s debts and of the King’s failure to keep his promise to settle them. Salaberry simply tells him that with this dour evidence of his current standing with the King he has the more reason to achieve a resounding success in the West Indies. “You’ll be surprised at what a difference a great victory makes in a man’s life,’ he says.

        “Victory? Yes, but I’m afraid very little about the King could surprise me now.”

        ‘A father’s relationship with sons is complicated,’ says Salaberry. ‘You have to exper….’ He says no more, realizing he’s said too much, and that Edward’s lost son is just several yards away. How complicated is that relationship?

          The year of grace 1794 comes at them with such speed that, as he drinks a toast to it, he is forced to wonder: Why the haste?  He eyes Julie’s belly warily, wondering who there is to be born in the late summer to come? Seeing his broken reflection in a mirror’s bevelled edge, the thought is: Am I even to be alive when another year comes this way? That’s the real question here, is it not?

-iii-

                 He leaves a few days later, at dawn on a morning of bone-chilling, chest-stabbing cold under the colossal stadium of a smoky-turquoise sky. With him are Robert Wood and the captains Weatherall and Sawyer. They’re travelling on two sleds, each pulled by a pair of fine Canadian geldings, and piled high with their equipment – tents, maps, saddles, swords, uniforms, muskets, a thousand books, along with some of the last cases of good French wine left in Quebec. The horses have been fitted with spiked shoes, to facilitate their progress across a frozen landscape and on the iced river’s smooth murky surface, which sways and undulates beneath them, a reminder of its darker purpose. Monsignor d’Hubert experienced that purpose, floating down there, grey, his bloated face ghastly in the wavering torchlight. 

            They stay overnight in Montreal, where he registers at the inn as Colonel Armstrong; and they set off again at first light, the day feeling warmer, low black clouds presaging snow, which indeed soon begins to fall as a hail of ice pellets that sting the flesh like a blast of birdshot. Turning south off the St. Lawrence, onto the Champlain River, they head towards Lake Champlain and the American border. The lake is still less smooth than the fractured river had been, and their sleds bump over divots and even hillocks of ice, often leaving the surface altogether and then crashing down on the other side with a force that makes the horses whinny in fright. They’re about half way down the long narrow lake when, after one such tremendous bump, the lead sled, containing the prince and Robert Wood, cracks open a broad sheet of ice around a foot thick. It collides with their runners, and then the sled bucks vertically, falling through a black trapdoor into the freezing water now exposed below them. Wood and he manage to throw themselves clear, but their sled disappears under black water framed by the jagged hole, dragging the terrified horses down with it. Unable to steer clear of this calamity in time, the second sled slithers in lashing zig-zags and then also plunges into the dark water, with Weatherall and Sawyer making a narrow escape by similarly throwing themselves off. Legs furiously pumping, the frantic horses frenziedly try to hook galloping hoofs on ledges to regain the surface and the light; but the weight of their sinking loads gradually and inexorably pulls them down, palpitating nostrils sending out smoke signals of a mute equine agony. Shouting at one another in panic, the four men attempt to cut harness straps and bridles, but this is impossible without a sharp blade, and such blades are stored in a chest of weapons now drowning in water so cold it burns. One horse remains with its forelegs battering uselessly against an ice ledge; there is a dreadful plea in its wide bulging eyes; its froth-corrupted tongue steams in frosted air, yellowed incisors bared; and then the great noble head bows in exhausted resignation, slowly dragged down into an endless watery night, where the Helvetian king’s mutilated daughters eagerly await a new voice to join their chorus of pain. One last screaming, flubbering whinny, and it is over. The suffering animal’s terror grips Prince Edward’s tender heart. 

        The four of them, bruised but not broken, stare down into a liquid universe of black torment, its rolling surface reflecting the fat black-bellied clouds above, along with the funnels of snow now twisting down onto a glaring white world. His whole suite – over two thousand pounds’ worth of equipment – has gone, probably settling in lakebed mud even as they speak, settling into an eternal deep-umber liquid night, starless, frozen, forever gone. They possess only the clothes in which they now stand and, fortunately, the stash of winking gold coins he has safe in his pouch.

            “What a fucking unmitigated disaster!” says Captain Sawyer usefully.

          “Yes.Well, worse things can happen in a war,” he tells everyone. “We must press on to Burlington all the same. There’s no turning back. A ship will be waiting at Boston…”

        “It will be hard going, sir,” observes the pink-cheeked, sandy-haired Sawyer, as if this fact might have escaped everyone else.

          “A statement of the obvious is hardly ever helpful, Captain,’ he says. ‘I suggest we just keep walking. There’s nothing to be done about it…”

        Walk they do, and relatively easily too, because their course south down the narrow lake is at least easy to follow. An ice-cold northerly wind punches at their faces; old footprints in the snow; the silence deep below squealing plates of opaque milky ice that shift imperceptibly with every footfall; woodsmoke spiralling up in blue tendrils on the southern horizon, as dinners are cooked in the homes of countrymen who were our enemies but are now our friends again – or so they claim. The three soldiers look about with professionally-trained eyes in search of snipers; only Robert Wood looks ahead, effervescently eager to see for himself the new nation everyone’s talking about. All four of them wonder if they’ve crossed the border, which a map now sodden with frozen water somewhere deep beneath their feet showed as a dotted grey line sawing Lake Champlain in half east to west. The frontier seemed cartographically fair here at least, dividing up the lake in equal portions. But what is an inch long on a map is really miles of freezing landscape, blindingly white, and a lake mostly invisible beneath its crystalline shroud – mostly. There is nothing and no one to indicate that you’ve entered the United States of America. Because, thinks the prince, they’re hoping to move this border north soon, maybe all the way north to the Arctic Circle – maybe east, west and south too, as the entire world becomes mesmerized by American democracy and history ends? This, he tells himself consolingly is the masonic vision of a world-future based upon egalitarian ideals, the same ideals that made autocratic rulers tremble on their golden thrones, uttering self-serving threats and warnings of a conspiracy afoot to subourn the great globe itself. Of course, he thinks, no mention is made about unnumbered benefits accruing to the masses when oligarchs are overthrown, is it? Do those tyrants expect their subjects to share misgivings about the kind of future in which only the tyrant loses and everyone else gains? Does my father?

               Finally reaching the southernmost shore, after an hour or so on sliding feet cruelly pinched by the bitter cold, they approach a lonely snowbound farmhouse, lights burning inside on a gloomy late afternoon in a Vermont winter. Initially scaring the inhabitants, they eventually persuade a densely-bearded farmer, with an offer of coin, to drive them in his hay-wain to the little town of Burlington. There, they find themselves a small inn for the freezing night that’s already falling down around them like a collapsing black tent.

        Seated at a table in the tiny wood-walled dining room, a brisk fire snapping in its grate, they all drink hot grog to thaw out their frozen bones, recounting the perilous lake adventure in a better humour, such as often accompanies dangers recalled in safety.

                “I take it as a good omen, Highness,” says Captain Weatherall, his boot soles smoking in front of the flames. “Our survival must mean that luck is on your side for our expedition with General Grey…” It was a mistake to use Edward’s royal title, for the prince is travelling under an assumed name. The innkeeper has heard the word ‘Highness’. It makes his ears prick up. The prince is supposed to be ‘Colonel Armstrong’ here. When the innkeeper has returned to his kitchen, Edward points out Weatherall’s error, to the captain’s great chagrin.

              “I’m sorry, Highness,” he says, and then, flushing scarlet to the roots of his hair, he apologizes further for compounding his mistake. The whole table bursts out laughing – the laughter of relief, not of mirth or malice, the laughter of a danger, not perhaps averted but shelved for now.

          “Well. No matter, sir,’ he says in consolation. ‘I’ve never been able successfully to conceal my identity for long. I suspect the present moment shall be no different. At Geneva I was known as ‘the English prince who calls himself Comte de Hoya’.” They laugh again. He adds, “I didn’t even know where ‘Hoya’ was…” More general merriment, more vast relief. Their travails have formed a bond, as shared travails will do in men. They’re soon served a fine country meal of stewed boar in a cranberry-oxtail sauce. Before they start on a large apple pie with custard, the innkeeper, now bowing formally, brings the prince a hastily-written note:

        “Sir, dictated by the principles of common civility and politeness, and possibly urged by an unwarrantable anxiety to have an interview with Your Royal Highness, in behalf of the most respectable gentlemen of this place, we have to request you to appoint an hour commencing after six p.m., on account of business of the court, which will be most agreeable to you to receive that respectful attention due to your rank, and you may be assured that, although in a strange country, that protection is equally at your command with the greatest subject in the United States, we are, with the greatest respect, your most obedient servants,

Elnathan Keyes,

John Bishop,

William Prentice.”

            He passes the note around, and it’s read with great interest, if not amazement.

          “You see,’ he says. ‘One can hardly say there’s a note of hostility in this note, can one?”

            “Perhaps a note of poor handwriting and grammar,” says Captain Weatherall, eliciting more chuckles.

        “Perhaps,’ he says. ‘Still, it warrants a civil response, I suggest.” 

             At his dictation, Weatherall then drafts the following reply, and conveys it forthwith to the gentlemen in question:

        “Gentlemen, I am commanded by His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, to return to you His best thanks for your polite attention, and at the same time to say that, if half-past six o’clock this evening will be a convenient hour to you, He shall esteem Himself much flattered by having the pleasure of seeing you. I have the honour to remain, with great respect, your most obedient humble servant,

Fred. August. Weatherall.”

          Frederick Augustus Weatherall, with him since Gibraltar, has by now come to be regarded as something more than just an aide, and their relationship is growing ever less formal. It is gradually becoming the friendship it will be and will remain for a quarter-century. Weatherall had once fought against the rebel colonists at Boston and Brandywine, among other conflicts. In the prince’s mischievous eyes, he’s thus the ideal man to dispatch with this reply to the good gentleman of Burlington. They won’t know of his history, of course. The alleged peace may have lasted for nearly a decade, yet it will not hold. It is not holding. So why not have a little fun with men who may be shooting at you next week? 

        “They knew we was coming,” says Robert Wood, who’s been making inquiries of the inn’s staff. ‘Contact between here and Quebec be fairly constant, it be, which mean they’s fully aware of the great regard in which Your Highness be held there – a good sign, or so I’s believin’. I think their interest be entirely benign — merely curiosity, or so’s I’d say…”

        “All the same,” Sawyer remarks, his child-like face now a map of contoured concern, “His Highness would make a fine prisoner, commanding a weighty ransom. Our watchword ought still to be one of caution.”

        “Yes,’ says the prince. ‘Perchance. We shall see. It’s difficult to picture His Majesty paying out a farthing to rebels who’ve already cost the Exchequer a fortune, not to mention the English lives and properties lost…”

        “You would make a handsome prize, Highness,” Sawyer continues. “Of that there is no doubt.”

        “Yes. Handsome, I grant you; but only the fourth prize, which is hardly any prize at all, no matter what the contest…” 

              Laughter. Conviviality. “Could we fight our way out of here,” asks Wood innocently, “if the need arose?”

        “Well, you couldn’t,” says Sawyer, unfairly referring to the fact that Wood is not a soldier.

          “No, no,’ the prince sternly tells Sawyer. ‘Anyone in my service would defend me with his life. Of that I have small doubt; and Wood most definitely would. Just because you’re a sawyer, Sawyer, I wish you would not carve at my Wood. Besides, defending me in such a case would entail surrender, not fighting. Surely you learned that at military academy? When the odds are insurmountable, the only viable strategy is retreat or surrender. It’s not heroism to consign your men to certain death – unless of course their families, homes and country are at stake…”

        “I take your point, sir,” says the flushed Sawyer.

        Wood enjoys puns so much that he’s still smirking minutes latter, trying to hide his mouth behind a stained piece of napery, embarrassed by Sawyer’s embarrassment – which is typical of his generous nature.

          “Ah. They do say, Mr. Wood,’ the prince says, ‘that he who would pun would pick a pocket. I would guard my pockets if I were Wood.”

            Just then, Weatherall hastens back into the inn, frosted and shivering. “They’ll be here in ten minutes,” he announces, his back to the fire, coat-tails parted to let the warmth suffuse him.

          “Good,’ says the prince. ‘And?”

        “They are, I would surmise,” says Weatherall, teeth still chattering, “elderly gentlemen, quite dignified, and… utterly harmless. Very friendly in fact.”

        “I see. Any at Boston or Brandywine? There you would not have found them so harmless or quite so friendly, I imagine.”

          “Naturally, Highness, I did not ask; but from their appearance I doubt if any would know one end of a rifle from the other.”

        “No. But neither would we, in our current condition. For we have no such weapons…”

        “There’s that,” Weatherall says, smiling slyly as he points to a device displayed on a wall above the fireplace. It looks more like an old black trumpet grafted onto a rifle butt.

        “Ah. The blunderbuss – I believe that’s what they’re called. Indeed. Yes. They’ll fire a handful of pins, screws, nails, gravel – anything at all! That one could well be the very thing with which Joshua brought down the walls of Jericho. Now all we need to bring down the walls of Burlington is powder, shot, and about five thousand troops.”

          Amid the ensuing laughter, the three worthies of this city are shown into the dining room and introduced by Captain Weatherall. Elthanan Keyes, their obvious chief, proves to be a dusty man in his seventies, with what resembles an apron of long white hair tied around the back of an otherwise bald and blotchy pink head. John Bishop is somewhat younger, immensely fat, with a wig so black and glossy it could be made of molasses. The contrast between it and his pallid skin ages him excessively, which is presumably not its purpose. The third man, William Prentice, is painfully thin, walks with a cane he might well have cut down himself yesterday, and he wears the clothes of a cleric or judge. His eyes, a misty grey, have sunken so far back into his head that, along with very prominent cheekbones, he seems recently exhumed. The prince tells his two captains to leave, requesting Robert Wood to stay, since the guests may require some service. It is clear the three men have no idea how they ought to behave, shuffling from side to side uneasily, and bowing low each time Edward looks over at them.

           “Now. Please take a seat, gentlemen,’ he says. ‘I’m most honoured by your visit.”

        They do sit, yet they sit as if chairs are unfamiliar to them. They look as if they’d prefer to kneel or even prostrate themselves.

          “It’s we who be honoured, Your Princeship,” Keyes ventures to say, after an uncomfortable silence, his hands gripped so tightly the knuckles are milk-white. “And we comes to offer you our humble respects, and to wish for the health of your father, the King.”

          Not your king anymore, though, he thinks. But he says, “That’s most kind, most kind indeed.”

        “And, Prince,” adds Bishop, his immense stomach causing his watch fob to collide with the table, “we wish to know if there is any service of hospitality our poor town can provide you during your stay with us.”

        “Well. Don’t call me Prince,” Edward tells him without rancour. “It sounds like a dog.” There is such an aura of embarrassment and shame around the table that you can feel its heat, so he adds more genially, “Here we meet as friends, so please call me ‘Edward’, or by my rank of ‘Major-General’.”

          This so elevates the mood that the cadaverous Prentice is moved to say, “We all regret the hostilities between our two nations so greatly, don’t you know, that we wish to demonstrate the extent of this regret by offering…um… you any service you may require.” He sounds like Andre Necker weaving his pecuniary web.

        “Yes. Very kind. What I most require is your solemn assurance that your country will remain neutral in this current war with France.”

        He receives such avowals, and of such heartfelt intensity too, although he knows full well that these men have as much influence as he himself does over their young nation’s foreign policies being crafted down there in Philadelphias. Their genuineness and sincerity manage somehow to elicit from him the account of his recent misfortunes on Lake Champlain, and the consequent need for some provisions and an efficient form of transportation to Boston. A guarantee of safe conduct would be comforting too but requesting that would insult them.

            Keyes promises to arrange a carriage and four horses ready to depart for Boston at dawn. “If, that is,” he adds, “your… you would not deign to remain a few days more with us here?” Strands of his long white hair are now darker and clotted together by the tea into which they repeatedly fall as he leans over to horde his cup.

        Prince Edward says his orders forbid any further delay; but their kindness will ever leave him with the fondest memories possible of their town. Feeling himself among reasonable and decent men, he then raises the subject of incursions into Indian lands west of New England. This has concerned him greatly ever since Lord Simcoe’s briefing. It now raises looks of puzzled incomprehension on all three faces.

          “Lands?” says Prentice, shaking the skull of his head very slowly, the word sounding alien. “They have no lands.”

        “Well. Yes. But they believe they do have them…’

        “Where be their deeds to such lands?” Bishop demands, his watch chain clattering. “They be all savages and deserve only the right to be civilized by us – and that’s all their rights…”

        The prince attempts to explain Indian beliefs and ways, at least as he understands them; yet he can see this attempt is as futile as trying to explain colours to the blind.“ Now, His Majesty has promised all his subjects justice and fair treatment. And that includes the original inhabitants of this vast land, to all of who he plans to accord treaties guaranteeing in perpetuity lands of their own.”

          “His Majesty,” says Keyes, as deferentially as is possible given his topic, “may do what he wishes with his own lands, but,” he sighs under the weight of his words, “with all due respect, he cannot expect us to do what he likes with our land, can he now, Prin… sire?”

        “That is true,” Prentice throws in for no apparent reason, still shaking his skull, a macabre light deep inside his bone eye sockets.

        “Let us see. The thirteen colonies are your lands,’ says the prince, more eager to hear their views on this issue than to impress on them his own. “There’s surely no claim to Louisiana, Florida or anywhere further west of New England?”

          “What you calls ‘colonies’ be now states,” Bishop interjects, hugely impressed with himself of a sudden. “And we here in Vermont became the fourteenth state to join the great union some three year back, we did…”

          Prince Edward is only aware that ‘Vermont’ had been territory in dispute between New Hampshire and New York back in the days of British rule. He now asks the men if appropriation of lands will continue unabated.

        “Possession is virtually all of the Law,” Prentice tells him, sounding most judicial and prescriptive in his decision. ‘We occupy it, we own it. A part of New England used be some colony of the Swedish empire – it ain’t any more, is it?’

        “Ah, the Swedish Empire? So, are you saying your plan is to populate the entire continent with European settlers?” He’s blunt, but he’s still more keen to hear the answers than to offend the answerers. He says, “Will you then claim ownership under what can only be termed spurious laws; and, if so, what is to become of the Indians?”

        “Them! They’ll have to adapt to our ways, won’t they?” says Bishop, shifting his immense bulk until his chair barks in protest. “Or accept the consequences.”

        “Yes,’ says the prince. ‘Consequences. Those being what exactly?”

          “If a murderous savage wants war,” says Prentice before his colleague can reply, “then war is what he’ll get… with his bow and arrow against our cannon and rifle.”

        “I see,’ he says to this. ‘Is the plan then to kill them all?”

        “That will be up to them, won’t it?” replies Prentice, looking more and more like the Angel of Death.

        “Yes, yes. I see. Well, gentlemen, it has been most enlightening to hear your points of view, and most gratifying to receive your kind hospitality; but I am afraid I must beg your leave now, for it has been a long and taxing day.” He now sees all too clearly what’s afoot down here in the rebel colonies – all too clearly.

        Keyes assures him that a carriage will be waiting at dawn, and, displaying considerably less courtesy than they had entered with, the three worthies bid their farewells and leave in a huddle.

           The captains are already sleeping soundly in their rooms, so he asks Wood to pay the innkeeper, who will probably be asleep when they depart. Minutes later, Wood is back.

             “The innkeeper says them three gentleman has settled our bill,” he says breathlessly, holding out a stack of coins. “We owes nothing, so he says.”

        “Oh? Kind. It’s a pity they can’t be so generous to those far more deserving than we. Good night, good Robert.”