The cursed shore, p.1
The Cursed Shore, page 1
The Cursed Shore
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
PART TWO
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
HISTORICAL NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Author
Also by J. D. Davies
Copyright
Title Page
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
For Rowan
Far its rocky knoll descried
Saint Michael’s chapel cuts the sky.
I climbed; —beneath me, bright and wide,
Lay the lone coast of Brittany.
Bright in the sunset, weird and still,
It lay beside the Atlantic wave,
As if the wizard Merlin’s will
Yet charmed it from his forest grave.
Behind me on their grassy sweep,
Bearded with lichen, scrawled and gray,
The giant stones of Carnac sleep.
In the mild evening of the May…
And there across the watery way,
See, low above the tide at flood.
The sickle-sweep of Quiberou bay
Whose beach once ran with loyal blood!
He longed for it, —pressed on! — In vain.
At the Straits failed that spirit brave.
The South was parent of his pain,
The South is mistress of his grave.
Matthew Arnold, Stanzas Composed at Carnac
PROLOGUE
27 JUNE 1795
All around him, the dead giants of stone were stirring.
When he touched them, they still seemed no more than rocks. Unmoving, unseeing; the same they had been all his life. For hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives before his. But today, as the thick summer mist spun its cloak around them and around him, he would willingly swear an oath that the standing stones of Carnac were coming to life. They were becoming flesh and blood again, the giants rising from their graves. He tried to tell himself it was the mist, only the mist, creating the impression the stones were living, breathing, moving. It couldn’t be anything else, could it?
But even if the giants were coming to life, the game still had to be played. It still had to be won.
‘Unan, daou, tri, pevar, pemp…’ One, two, three, four, five…
‘…eizh warn ugent, nav warn ugent, tregont!’ Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
He opened his eyes, looked around to check that the nearest standing stones were not really sprouting limbs and tearing themselves out of the soil of Brittany, then shouted with all the force his ten-year-old lungs could muster, ‘Ready or not, here I come!’
Thierry Kervran ran toward the closest stones, checking behind each. There was no sign of his quarry, not even in the hollow under a stone that had been pulled down years before to clear a path for a horse and plough. He ran down one line of stones, then up another. The lines were much longer, but surely Vincent couldn’t have run any further during a count of thirty? Thierry zig-zagged through the stones, one part of him still hunting Vincent Radoux, the other evading any newly resurrected giants that might be pursuing him.
Vincent said they weren’t giants. He said they were King Arthur’s knights, turned to stone by Morgayne the Sorceress after the Battle of Camlann. But what did Vincent know? His father had been guillotined the autumn before last for being a traitor to the Republic, a royalist and a believer in the old religion, so perverse ideas ran in the Radoux family. Melanie scoffed at both of them, saying the stones were just stones. Sometimes he didn’t know why they still played with Melanie.
Thierry checked the ruined charcoal-burner’s hut on the far side of the furthest stones. Nothing. Vincent had vanished. What if a giant had risen up and swallowed him? Or, in the impossible event that Vincent’s theory about the stones was correct, what if Morgayne had snatched him away to her lair in the Forest of Broceliande?
Thierry stopped running, put his hands on his knees and tried to breathe more slowly. Perhaps if he stayed still and listened, he might hear Vincent’s mocking laughter in the distance, giving him a sense of where he was.
The mist seemed to be clearing slowly. There were glimpses of sunshine over to the east. And there were voices, very faint, very far away, from somewhere in the direction of Carnac village. Voices he recognised, calling his name.
‘Thierry! Thierry, where are you?’
Vincent calling out in Breton, Melanie in French. Melanie had disappeared somewhere before the game began. She was always doing that. Girls were very strange beasts, Thierry had decided on his last birthday.
‘You’ve spoiled the game!’ Thierry shouted as he ran toward them.
‘Forget your stupid game!’ bawled Melanie, her voice as commanding and unchallengeable as ever even though she was the same age as Vincent and Thierry. ‘Come and see this! Come and see what I’ve just seen!’
He could see his friends now, their outlines wraith-like in the mist. But before he reached them, they both turned and began to run toward the village.
‘See what?’ shouted Thierry as he struggled to keep up with them.
‘You just wait! It’ll be worth it!’
Melanie was easily outpacing the two boys. The only sister of five older brothers, children of a father who had been killed fighting for the Army of the North, she had grown up having to compete for every crumb and race for every prize. As he drew level with Vincent, Thierry glanced across to his friend.
‘What’s she seen that’s so important?’
‘Dunno, she didn’t say.’
‘Why do we always do what she tells us?’
Vincent shrugged.
‘She’s Melanie. Of course we do what she tells us.’
A familiar hill rose out of the mist ahead of them. Everyone in Carnac knew the hill wasn’t natural, and Vincent was convinced it covered the tomb of King Arthur himself. Melanie was already halfway up it, intent on reaching the small, ruined chapel that crowned its summit. In the olden time before the revolution, the time that the children could now barely remember, the time of priests and kings, it had been called the Chapel of Saint-Michel. The local sans-culottes tore it to pieces a couple of years earlier when the news of the sometime queen Marie Antoinette’s execution reached Carnac. Now it was an empty, roofless shell, but on a clear day it was possible to see far out to sea, all the way over to Belle-Île and beyond.
Melanie was leaning against the whitewashed wall of the chapel, grinning at her two breathless friends as they finally made the summit.
‘You’re snails,’ she said mockingly. ‘I should be the one they call up for the Army of Italy or the Marine Nationale in a few years’ time, not you two.’
Thierry ignored the barb.
‘So what have you brought us to see?’ he snapped.
She said nothing, but pointed to the south, toward the sea. The mist was clearing more rapidly over Quiberon than it was from the higher ground above Carnac, the ground where the ancient stones stood. Thierry took in the familiar sights – the impossibly thin strip of land that stretched out like a crooked finger far into the sea, the flat promontory of Quiberon at the end of it, the ramparts of Fort Sans-Culotte at Penthièvre with the large Tricolore flying from it. But today there was a new sight in the bay.
‘Sixty-five,’ said Vincent under his breath, ‘sixty-six—’
‘Sixty-nine or seventy,’ said Melanie. ‘I’ve already counted them. Nine warships, I think, the rest merchantmen.’
‘Transports,’ said Vincent. ‘See the boats pulling away from them, making for the beaches?’
‘What’s it mean?’ asked Thierry. ‘Is it the Lorient squadron, bringing in a new army against the Chouans and the Vendéeans?’
The children were silent for a few moments, staring hard at the spectacle out in the bay. But despite the lingering mist and the distance between them and the multitude of boats heading for the shore, they were able to make out the preponderant colour worn by the disembarking troops. It was certainly not blue, the uniform of the French Republic’s armies. It was red, a colour associated by every Frenchman, woman and child with one power alone. Then a slight breeze that would shortly dispel the last of the morning mist ruffled the grass on the summit of the great mound of Saint-Michel, the ensigns on a few of the ships in the bay began to stir, and Melanie pointed at a ship dist
‘No,’ she said, the matter no longer in doubt. ‘It’s the English. The English are invading France.’
PART ONE
FIVE MONTHS EARLIER
CHAPTER ONE
Lord Wilden stepped through his front door and immediately lost his balance. Only the exemplary reactions of Daniel, the new footman, in stretching out an arm that Wilden’s flailing hand managed to grasp saved him from an undignified landing upon his aristocratic arse. The blizzard, now several hours old, was in full spate once again, howling down Hill Street from the direction of Hyde Park. The ground beneath Wilden’s feet, where fresh snow concealed the previous day’s fall, now compacted into ice, was treacherous beyond measure. He thanked Daniel profusely, then once again considered the wisdom of his decisions not to command the saddling of his horse nor to order his coach brought round from the mews behind the house. He had more of a care for his servants than for himself, making him something of a rarity among the peerage of England, and he would not compel them to venture out on such a night as this. The truth was that if he could, he too would not have ventured through his door at all. He would much prefer to be seated before his fire, a glass of claret in his hand, reading the dispatches from the commanders of the fleet in the Mediterranean and his agents in Paris, Saint Petersburg, Madrid and elsewhere.
For sure, it was not a night to be walking the streets of Mayfair. Perhaps the only saving grace was that the snowstorm would also discourage the footpads, the ding coves and the scores of other criminal vermin who haunted the environs of Westminster. Nor would the harlots and strumpets be parading their wares in these conditions. So Wilden pulled his cloak tighter around him, pulled down his tricorn until it was very nearly over his eyes, bowed his head against the relentless snow, and set off to meet the man who had summoned him.
He skirted Shepherd Market, crossed Piccadilly – quieter than usual, for few Hackneys and even fewer lone riders were abroad – and made his way into Green Park, struggling with every step he took. The wind and the depth of the virgin snow made progress difficult, and the lights of the clubhouses adjacent to the park were tempting, but Wilden trudged his way onward. He would not do this for anyone else, except the king, he decided. Not for Earl Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, and his superior within that august department. Certainly not for the Prince of Wales, that worthless clodpole, nor for any of his scapegrace brothers. No, Edward Pardew, fifth Baron Wilden of Alveley Hall in the County of Shropshire, would not have placed one toe outside his warm if spartan rooms in Hill Street were it not for the two initials at the bottom of the short note that had arrived earlier that evening.
On toward Horse Guards, where candles burned in many of the windows and several unfortunate soldiers, presumably the men who had drawn the short straws, were engaged in the Sisyphean task of attempting to clear snow from the parade ground. A sentry on the gate leading to Whitehall challenged him, but a sergeant emerged from the warmth of the adjacent guardroom, reprimanded the guard for his impertinence, and saluted Wilden as he passed. Down Whitehall, and finally his destination was in sight. No challenge from the solitary sentry here, who came to attention immediately. Wilden smiled to himself. With his cloak pulled up and his hat pulled down, only a fraction of his face could be seen. Wilden could have been anyone, a swindler or even an assassin intent on murdering the occupant of the building he now entered. Somehow, he doubted that Monsieur Robespierre had been guarded so sketchily in his days of pomp and power before the guillotine took his head. But the single shivering sentry at the door of the most powerful man in the country was undoubtedly truer to the English way.
A footman helped him out of his cloak, took that garment and his hat, and gave him entirely superfluous directions. Wilden had been in the house often and knew the way. Several more footmen and a handful of scurrying clerks inclined their heads respectfully as he passed. The final one saw him approach down a narrow corridor, knocked on the door at its end, heard a response from within, and turned the handle to admit him.
Wilden stepped into a dark room lit by an impossibly small number of candles. Most of them were on or around the desk that faced him, behind which sat a slight, pale fellow in a black gown. The man seemed not to see Wilden, his attention still fixed on the paper before him.
Wilden coughed and addressed the man who had summoned him.
‘Prime Minister.’
William Pitt, first lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister of Great Britain and her empire, finally put down the paper, rubbed his eyes, and looked directly at his guest.
‘My lord. My apologies for bringing you out on such a night as this.’
‘A splendid excuse for a pleasant walk, Prime Minister.’
‘You walked? In this? From Mayfair? Good God, Ned, have you taken leave of your senses?’
‘It seemed the most efficient and expeditious way of responding to your summons.’
Pitt shook his head.
‘Sometimes I despair of you, Ned Wilden. Walking from Hill Street to Downing Street on such a night as this. Swimming in the Serpentine, I’m told, even at this time of year. For your health, or so you’re said to claim. Remember, my lord, we still have that wager in the Brooks’s betting book. The one that says I’ll outlive you, the sum to be paid from the loser’s estate by his executors.’
Pitt’s confidence in winning the wager seemed as unassailable as it had been the day it was made, despite the evidence to the contrary. For one thing, an almost empty decanter of port stood close to Pitt’s left hand. Wilden had it on good authority that the prime minister, plagued by ill health throughout his life, had once been advised by a doctor that a bottle of port a day would be a capital and infallible cure for his many ailments. Pitt was a highly intelligent man who had been admitted to the University of Cambridge when he was only thirteen, but his logic could sometimes go astonishingly awry. For instance, he extrapolated from that single doctor’s opinion that an even greater dosage of the medication in question could only have an even more beneficial effect, so the House of Commons was one of the very few places where the prime minister could be seen more than a few inches from the reassuring companionship of a bottle or two of the Kingdom of Portugal’s finest export.
Pitt made a gesture that Ned Wilden interpreted as an invitation to take one of the two uncomfortable chairs in front of the prime minister’s desk.
‘Excuse me a moment while I complete my perusal of the latest dispatches from Vienna,’ said Pitt, returning to the paper in his hand.
The clock in the corner of the room had one of the loudest ticks Wilden had ever heard. It was a gross and gaudy timepiece, out of kilter with both its surroundings and its owner, but it had been a present from the king on the tenth anniversary of Pitt’s taking office at the tender age of twenty-four, such a miraculous elevation being somewhat easier when one’s father had been prime minister before. Wilden thought the clock was probably a gesture of gratitude for sparing His Majesty the ordeal of selecting a new prime minister every few months, as had been the case during several intervals in his reign.
Wilden and Pitt had much in common. Both were relatively young men, the prime minister thirty-five and the lord of the Admiralty only a little younger. Both devoted themselves to their work with a singlemindedness unfashionable for their age. Neither had ever married. It would have been an exaggeration to say that they liked each other, but on the very rare occasions when Lord Wilden was ever in his cups, he sometimes thought of William Pitt as the brother he never had. But he knew the prime minister would never have allowed himself such a foolish, sentimental thought. Even so, perhaps in some way they were kindred spirits, and that was why the prime minister sometimes entrusted Wilden with secrets and tasks that he would not have dreamed of confiding to one of the jovial, red-faced, back-slapping fellows of the ton. Wilden already knew that this would be one of those occasions.
At length, Pitt put down the paper he had been reading and rubbed his eyes once again.
‘Damn Austrians,’ he sighed, ‘too many archdukes – can’t keep track of ’em all. But the emperor is steady, thank God. Unwavering. Steadfast. So, we have no worries on that score, Ned.’
Wilden knew that Pitt spent most of his waking hours trying to keep together the fragile coalition that opposed republican France. The Spanish were wavering – when were they not? – but everything hinged on the Austrians, who provided the bulk of the armies opposing the atheist French fanatics who had guillotined their king, queen, countless members of their nobility and so many others, innocents of all ranks and conditions. But the Emperor Francis had good reason to be unwavering and steadfast. After all, Marie Antoinette had been his sister.
