The Stuart Sapphire E-Book

Alanna Knight

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Tam Eildor
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 370

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

In August 1811, George, Prince of Wales and the Prince Regent is horrified to find his mistress Sarah, Marchioness of Creeve dead in his bed, strangled by the string of pearls around her neck. The Prince realises what a scandal could come out of a dead married woman (not to mention his younger brother's mistress) so he has Tam Eildor, masquerading as a Scottish lawyer, investigate the murder. Tam's investigation is interrupted by an attempt on his life - and the Prince's discovery that the Stuart Sapphire has gone missing. Tam's search for the killer and the thief puts his life in danger. Amidst a cast of royally quirky, entertaining, and psychologically complex characters, Tam needs to figure out his purpose in the Prince Regent's service, find the killer thief, and get home before time does away with Tam's memory of home, or someone does away with Tam.

Leseprobe

The Stuart Sapphire

ALANNA KNIGHT

Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

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

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Epilogue

About the Author

By Alanna Knight

Copyright

Acknowledgements

In the third of Tam Eildor’s time-quests through history, the following books have provided invaluable sources of information.

The Prince and his Pleasures by Andrew Barlow; The Encyclopedia of Brighton by Timothy Carder; Prince of Pleasure by Saul David; The Regency Underworld by Donald A Low; Maria Fitzherbert: the Secret Wife of George IV by James Munson; George IV, The Grand Entertainment by Stephen Parissien; Caroline and Charlotte by Alison Plowden; A Prince’s Passion: The Life of the Royal Pavilion by Jessica Rutherford.

My grateful thanks to son Kevin and daughter-in-law Patricia for their tireless guided tours of Brighton and Lewes and boundless enthusiasm for my many visits. My love to them and to Chloe, Julia and Woody, as always.

For David Shelley

Chapter One

Voices…

It was their voices, the stink of their breath and sweat that aroused him. He had made contact.

‘Boots – by God. Look at them. New!’

‘And see the shirt on him, that’s fine linen.’

‘And the breeches. Leather – we’ll have those off him.’

A coarse laugh. ‘He’ll not need them where he’s going.’

Was he dead? Had he died in transit, was that it? But rough hands dragging off his boots – he felt that. He was alive, the stench all around him was real enough. His face in semi-darkness did not interest them and he opened his eyes cautiously.

Screams and moans issuing from somewhere below. A moving floor – the creak of wooden timbers…

That other smell – the sea. He was on a ship!

Something had gone seriously wrong with his time-quest.

The men were cursing, trying to drag him upright to remove his clothes.

Wherever he was in time and place now made little difference. He had to escape and what his captors didn’t realise was that Tam Eildor from the twenty-third century could move much more swiftly than any man alive in the year 1811. Future science had conquered both time and space, and with space went gravity and weightlessness.

On his feet in one bound, before his captors could regain their balance, he cracked their two astonished heads together. Before they fell, moaning and cursing, he was off leaping away, thankful that they hadn’t got him below decks in this accursed ship.

He ran, considering his escape route. To his certain knowledge this was the first time he had been aboard a ship at sea. In less dangerous circumstances he might have relished this as an exciting new prospect to explore.

Pausing in his flight, he considered the gently swaying masts above his head. Devoid of sails, it didn’t look as if this particular ship had been at sea for a very long time and the deck, with its air of neglect, of dirt and decaying timbers, confirmed his suspicions.

Cautiously he leaned over the rusting ship’s rail. In the gathering darkness pinpoints of light indicated landfall. This massive ship, with no sails, was at anchor and Tam was relieved to see that the distant shore was within swimming distance.

Behind him the swaying deck was still deserted. His captors obviously had not yet regained their equilibrium, but he could still hear the screams and moans from below, his stomach retching at the stench as he realised the appalling truth of his present circumstances.

Something had indeed gone awry with his time-quest. By some serious miscalculation he had landed in what was obviously the right period but in the wrong place. Instead of Regency Brighton, his destination, he was marooned offshore somewhere along the English south coast on a particularly unpleasant vessel. At a guess, transportation accommodation for convicts about to be shipped off to the Colonies or Van Diemen’s Land.

He moved swiftly, taking great care around the ship’s rail. He was sad about the boots, but should he have to swim for it, he would be better without them. Far below there was a heavy cable leading to the submerged anchor, and attached to it a jolly-boat – presumably to ferry the jailers across to the delights awaiting behind those far-off shore lights.

That would do for him too, he decided as angry voices and scurrying footsteps indicated that his captors had recovered their senses and raised the alarm.

Not a moment to lose. He was about to swing over the side using the cable to reach the boat when he noticed a small figure crouched nearby.

A child’s face looked up at him, a terrified face, boy or girl, he didn’t know which. An instant of recognition and then it was gone.

‘Please help me, sir. Don’t leave me here. They’ll kill me.’

A language he understood and with relief he recognised that if this child was a captive then his calculations were right and that distant hump of greyness was the English coast.

The footsteps were nearer now, the shouts angry.

‘Come along, then,’ he said.

A twelve-year-old boy in breeches, a coarse shirt many sizes too large for him, an unruly mop of fair curls. He stood up, trembling.

Tam pointed. ‘See that boat down there. That’s where we’re heading.’

The boy shuddered, drew back from the rail. ‘I cannot – I cannot swim.’

The voices were too close for comfort. In another moment they would be seen. He didn’t care to dwell on what the captors would do then.

Tam made an impatient gesture. ‘Hang on to me. I’m going to jump.’

‘No!’

‘All right. Stay and be killed.’

No time now for the niceties of a tidy descent via the cable. And with a stifled moan he took for assent, Tam seized his feather-light human burden and jumped into the water.

They emerged gasping for breath, several yards away from the ship, swaying massively at anchor, and with the boy still clinging to his neck. Tam reached the side of the boat that hid them from the view of the men who were now searching for them, staring over the side of the ship’s rail far above their heads.

At his side, the boy was crying softly. Tam whispered, ‘Be quiet and keep your head down. Hang on while I swim round and get the line loose. We’ll be safe soon.’ (That was a lie, but he could do without a snivelling child on his hands at the moment.)

Fortunately the thick rope didn’t look as if it would be too difficult to untie. He swam back to the boy.

‘Is it all right? We’ll get away – won’t we?’

All that Tam could reply was, ‘I hope so,’ reassurance he was far from feeling.

The boy sighed and was about to climb into the boat.

‘No,’ said Tam. ‘We must wait—’

‘Wait?’ wailed the lad. ‘I’m freezing.’

‘Better be freezing than dead,’ was the grim reply. ‘We must wait until it’s completely dark.’

‘Why? When will that be?’

‘An interesting question.’ Even as he said the words, Tam would have given much to know the time of day and whether the heavy black sky above their heads heralded growing darkness or an approaching storm.

‘If they see the boat drifting away, they’ll know we’re on it,’ he continued patiently. ‘Then we’ll either be recaptured or shot. Which would you prefer?’

A stifled sob was the only response.

Carefully Tam scanned the ship’s rail high above them. The faces gone, he would take a chance that their captors were now extending their search to the far side of the ship.

‘Very well. You can get aboard. You’re small, so you can hide under that tarpaulin.’

‘But—’

Tam’s patience was running out. ‘Stop arguing and do as I say.’

The boy scrambled into the boat, and stared down at Tam. ‘What about you? Where are you going? You’re not going to leave me here, are you?’

Tam wished with all his heart that he could do just that. It was going to be hard enough to escape even with the dark sky indicating nightfall and trusting that the missing jolly-boat would not be spotted until morning.

He could have managed it on his own, but with a terrified child to deal with the odds were against him. ‘I’ll be close at hand,’ he said. ‘Right here.’

‘In the water. You’ll freeze.’

Tam decided not to argue, aware that once inside the boat he would be trapped. In the water, he could swim, still have a chance and sniffing the air was encouraging. At least he had landed at the right season.

The water was still warm, suggesting the close of what had been a hot summer’s day on land. He was quite comfortable and he obviously didn’t have the boy’s problems with feeling the cold.

Taking his bearings, he was thankful there was no moon. If his calculations were right, it might soon be completely dark, safe to steer the boat towards the shore.

And while they waited he had better think out very carefully his next move and what had gone wrong. As excellent as the maps of the past were in his own century, they had not taken into account some form of coastal erosion, and that the Brighton shoreline had vanished under a mile of sea, or whatever was the nautical measure.

While he was deciding on his next move, the scenario changed dramatically, confirming his worst fears: that the blackness above them was not only approaching all-concealing night but something less welcome and considerably more dangerous. Heavy raindrops and the distant rumble of thunder hinted that the ship was in the path of a rapidly approaching storm.

The sea recognised the signs with a sudden respectful heaving and swirling of waves in what had been millpond smooth around them.

‘You had better come aboard.’ The small white face peered at him from under the tarpaulin. ‘You’re getting very wet,’ was the added somewhat obvious comment.

Tam looked upwards as lightning snarled across the sky, throwing briefly into tremulous life the massive ship, its timbers creaking above their heads, sending up spray and agitating the surrounding area. Now clinging on to the jolly-boat brought the added danger of being dashed against the ship’s side.

Again he glanced upwards. The ship’s rail seemed deserted. No doubt their captors, or whatever guards normally patrolled, had taken refuge from the storm and were now below decks.

He decided to take the boy’s advice.

Shivering, he scrambled aboard, under the tarpaulin held by the boy who said, rather triumphantly, ‘You’re the one who’s freezing now. See that jacket on the bench – too big for me. You should put it on.’

And Tam was aware for the first time that he was cold, more from the icy rain than from the sea.

He could just make out the braid of some kind of naval uniform. It smelt of sweat but not too badly, he thought, as he struggled into it, wondering as he did so why it had been left in this small boat. No doubt stolen with some felonious intent, perhaps to sell to a French spy.

‘Are we going now?’ asked the boy plaintively as the ship swayed ominously above them.

‘Going where?’

‘You said we’d row away, escape when it got dark,’ was the reproachful whisper.

‘Dark, yes, but I hadn’t bargained for a storm.’

‘They wouldn’t see us in this. We’d be safe,’ said the boy encouragingly.

‘Are you quite mad?’ demanded Tam. ‘We’ll have to wait until this blows over. And can you handle an oar?’

The boy thought for a moment. ‘I – think so.’

‘And I hope so. Because it’ll need both of us to reach the shore.’

If the child was afraid, he now had it under control. Just as well, thought Tam, as deciding on his next move became increasingly difficult by the minute. A certain confusion of thought occurred which he recognised again as the requirements of the time-quest: that present memory links with his own century faded quite swiftly once contact was made with his chosen time period.

Soon the last vestiges of his familiar world would disappear, abandoning him to the past world he had chosen to visit, taking nothing with him apart from the clothes he was wearing. His only contact was a tiny microchip inside his wrist, the last emergency.

Suddenly he was curious about the child so silent at his side, and above the noise of the storm he asked: ‘What were you doing up there – on the ship?’

The boy sighed and turned his head towards the once handsome man o’war, battle-scarred and proud, that had in antiquity sunk so low.

‘It’s one of the hulks, a convict ship,’ was the whispered reply. ‘You know—’

‘I don’t – you tell me!’

‘We’re waiting to be transported to the Colonies.’

‘And what had you done to deserve such a fate?’

‘I – I stole some bread. I was starving.’

The present situation was now becoming clear. In the course of his fascination with the past, Tam had read about the dreaded prison hulks without the least intimation of the horror of finding himself on one.

The few minutes he had spent above decks was enough of that experience to reassure him that however off-course the judgement of his landing, at least he was in the right century.

A period when London’s criminal population seriously threatened to outnumber its law-abiding citizens and with no police force yet invented to deal with crime, prisons were overcrowded, murderers mixed indiscriminately with unfortunate men and women incarcerated for small debts. And children, like the lad before him – for stealing a loaf of bread.

England did not believe in prisons. What England wanted was to rid itself of the problem by sending overseas any who escaped the gallows. The dumping grounds were originally the plantations of Virginia and the other American colonies. During the War of Independence all available ships were otherwise occupied and someone came up with the plan to imprison convicts awaiting transportation – to Botany Bay or that dreaded place of no return, Norfolk Island – in the hulks of two old ships moored in the Thames, where wrong-doers could be gainfully employed cleansing the river by raising sand, soil and gravel ‘for the benefit of navigation’.

The idea immediately caught on of converting ships no longer seaworthy in to crude prisons, which cost far less than building new ones, and this idea became so popular that it extended beyond London to mooring places off the south coast where these hulks were also convenient for housing French soldiers and sailors who were prisoners of war.

Conditions were unspeakably horrific, with unwashed men and women packed together very closely on three decks, breathing putrid air. At night, the hatches were screwed down and the convicts left in darkness. New arrivals were stripped of their clothes and any other possessions before being thrown down in to the hellhole, as the lowest deck was known. In due course, if they survived death by jailfever, they progressed to the middle deck with its sickly and diseased occupants. Then at last to the upper deck, for either transportation or to await and pray for the unlikely miracle of a reprieve.

And that, Tam decided, was where he and the lad came in. The fact that the jailers were stripping him of his clothes meant that he was recognised as a newcomer to be speedily assigned to the lowest deck. The lad too must have been awaiting their grim attentions.

He was about to ask his unwelcome companion for confirmation of this fact, when he realised that the storm had lessened, the sea no longer boiled around them with waves like the giant white fingers of some angry sea-god.

‘I think it is time to make a move. Ready?’ And so saying, Tam, after a cautious look at the still empty ship’s rail, inched forward and, after some anxious moments, managed to undo the heavy rope linking boat to ship.

Pushing aside the tarpaulin he nodded towards one of the oars. ‘Take it.’

‘I’ll try,’ was the uncertain reply. ‘It’s very heavy.’

‘That will be all right once we are moving, the sea will keep it afloat,’ said Tam with a confidence he was far from feeling.

The departing storm had left not the inky darkness but the steely twilight of a long summer evening in which they would be clearly visible, an added danger to their escape, thought Tam, should any decide to stroll on the deck.

However, a glimpse of candlelight from an upper-deck cabin window brought faint sounds of drunken laughter, indicating that the jailers were off duty and too busy with their noisy leisure to notice any sounds from beyond the ship.

Tam looked at the boy struggling with the oar. ‘Steer away. We’ll be safe soon. What’s your name, lad?’

‘Jem, sir. Is it far?’

Tam thought it would be easy, rowing steadily towards the shore. But distance was deceptive, those white cliffs further away than he had imagined.

‘Is it far?’ the boy shouted again.

A difficult question to answer. Even as he thought of a plausible statement that would not reduce his companion’s spirits – or his somewhat ineffectual rowing, the boy screamed and dropped the oar.

Tam saw it floating away and cursed him steadily.

‘Why did you let it go? What did you do that for?’

‘My hands – they’re sore. Look at my blisters.’

Tam had no desire to see his wounds; he could have cheerfully added to them by strangling him, but instead he was considering a more urgent problem: how the prevailing offshore wind might help them reach land with only one oar.

Suddenly, like some miracle of prayers answered, the horizon was no longer deserted as the dark shape of an approaching ship loomed into view.

A three-masted frigate was heading rapidly in their direction.

The boy stood up, regardless of the effect on the balance of the boat, and yelled:

‘Help! Help!’

‘Sit down, you idiot. They can’t hear you. And you’ll have us in the sea. Do as I say.’

The boy sat down wearily, nursing his hands and sobbing quietly.

‘Stop that – when they get nearer, then you can start shouting and they’ll see us and hear us.’

Tam was not, however, totally confident about that either and wished he had something, a lantern, any kind of light to show the ship bearing down on them where they were.

It was certainly gaining on them, moving very rapidly, and a feeling of horror added to their danger. This was no longer a frigate homeward bound but a crippled and dying vessel, masts dangling, sails ripped. What concerned him most was that although the tide and the prevailing wind were driving it towards the shore – and them – the crash of breaking timbers indicated that it was also sinking rapidly.

Chapter Two

Thanks to the deft use of his telescope by the captain of a small merchant vessel on its way along the Channel, the fishermen of Brighton had been alerted to the plight of a Scottish frigate, the Royal Stuart, adrift and heading landwards.

This promising drama had succeeded in summoning George, Prince of Wales, newly created Prince Regent in his mad father George III’s sad decline, from the arms of his latest conquest, Sarah, Marchioness of Creeve, presently sated and asleep in his bed.

Attired in one of his more spectacular naval uniforms, chosen at random, he had joined other spectators in the fading light of a summer evening where a canopy had been hastily erected on the promenade to protect the royal viewers from the townsfolk’s vulgar gaze.

This measure also offered protection from the thieves who inhabited Brighton’s ever-growing underworld which, like fleas on a dog, had now settled happily in the area surrounding the Marine Pavilion.

A royal court meant royal pickings and twilight was their friend, with enough illumination to assist cutpurses in such an audience of eager spectators, yet enough dusk to make sure they slipped away unobserved. For all knew the price of capture, the gibbets chain-rattling their burdens on high ground above the town, a grisly testament to the cost of failure.

As for the royal courtiers, the solemn sight of a sinking ship had already ensured a brisk trade of their own. Bets on how long it would take the ship to sink beneath the waves, and whether there would be any survivors and most of all how many might be expected to reach the shore alive. An entertainment that was considerably more exciting than watching fowls or animals tearing each other to pieces, or even the bloodier, brutal human boxing matches. True, the latter had a certain secret appeal to many of the court ladies as a more stimulating experience than the daily boredom of gown-fittings and Court gossip.

Here was novelty indeed, a new kind of entertainment with many human lives in hazard, and an air of excitement prevailed as, for those addicts to gambling on anything and everything, there was already a clerk seated in his carriage busily taking promissory notes.

Amongst the more fervent, the prince had challenged George ‘Beau’ Brummell: ‘100 guineas against the ship sinking within the next half hour.’

The response: ‘Give you 200 guineas against any survivors.’

His Royal Highness’s sporting tastes were not shared by his fifteen-year-old daughter Princess Charlotte, stammering protests at his side.

‘I – I – Do you think Papa, co – consider – such – m – m – matters?’

Prince George regarded his only legitimate offspring, heiress to the throne of England, with distaste. Aware that he had never liked her from the very day she was born, repulsed by the sight of ‘an immense girl’ and remarking before witnesses who had long memories: ‘We would have hoped for a son.’

And that was it, the fact that gnawed at his guts through the passing years, the gross unfairness that even the power of Divine Right of kings did not extend to producing a son – and securing the future dynasty of England.

Wearily he turned his back on Charlotte, seeing a parade of all the women he had slept with since he was a lad of sixteen. The latest and very voluptuous Sarah Creeve was also mistress of his younger brother Frederick, Duke of York, which gave the affair a certain extra titillation. Last seen and heard snoring as he crept out and looking less like the ‘Kitten’ (so-called for her slanting green eyes) than a fat tabby cat, with a passion for jewels to enhance her nakedness.

He sighed. Even the poorest peasant was welcome to his favours, his proud boast that satisfaction of his lust merely required a tolerably pretty woman with full breasts: ‘a bright wench and clean straw.’

It was unfair that Fate had been so grossly unkind. Considering that his scattered seed could have populated a small town with a multitude of largely unacknowledged (but still eternally clamouring) fine, healthy sons, on more than one occasion he regarded Charlotte closely.

He would have liked to prove that she had not sprung from his loins. God only knew how many lovers his wretched Princess Caroline of Wales had taken to her bed in the sixteen years since their marriage. But seeing the girl’s face reflected beside his own in the mirror left him in no doubt over her legitimacy. She was unmistakably his daughter.

The miraculous product of an arranged marriage, hideous to him, and from only two copulations with his unsanitary foul-smelling bride. The first on their wedding night heavily reinforced with wine. Rising from the floor where he had slept as dawn crept through the window of their bridal chamber, he had slipped between the sheets and performed his dynastic duty. And again with equal reluctance some days later when this most unlikely princess had been spawned.

After her birth he could have, should have, tried again, fought back his nausea for his bride’s unwashed body: ‘fore and hind parts indescribably filthy,’ he whispered to his intimates. And although his manhood could normally be guaranteed to rise to the occasion, ready and eager when required, even fortified by large quantities of stimulants, it remained limp and flaccid in his lawful marriage bed with his lawful or, as he most frequently referred to her, his ‘awful’ wife.

Charlotte was clutching his arm, stammering her protests, whining that she was cold, she wished to go indoors. He signalled to her governess whose curtsey did not quite conceal a look of disapproval.

He watched them head back towards the Pavilion and sighed deeply. He must marry the girl off without delay. There were plenty of royal families in Europe hovering in the wings anxious and eager to negotiate an alliance with the future Queen of England.

An arranged marriage to a royal prince, such as William of Orange, had a certain appeal to the Prince Regent. Candidly he cared not to whom, and refused to listen to Charlotte’s protests that she did not want to marry for years and years and, when the time came, that she would choose her own husband. Her future, such a small matter of whether she would be happy or not, did not concern him, his only reason for the hustle was the hope of male issue. The nearest he would ever get to securing the throne for a grandson of his own dynasty.

‘It’s sinking, Sire. Only minutes now…’

‘It’s going down…’

A panic-stricken rush to the clerk’s carriage with hands eagerly waving promissory notes ensued. The prince rewarded, to his gleeful satisfaction, with a baleful glance from Brummell who had just lost 100 guineas, gave permission for a return to the Pavilion.

Back to bed? His thoughts returned with little enthusiasm as he remembered how early morning light could render exceeding tawdry the naked, bejewelled body of Sarah Creeve eagerly awaiting his return.

He sighed deeply, in sore need of a devotion less demanding as from the direction of Steine House, home of Mrs Fitzherbert, candles gleamed in the upstairs window. Maria Fitzherbert, commoner and Roman Catholic, twice widowed, whom he had married secretly in 1785 and whom he still regarded as his legal wife with undying affection, although not with undying faithfulness. Maria had never reproached him, always aware that a dynastic royal marriage was inevitable, and she pretended, at least, to understand that gratification of lust had little to do with impeding the course of his true love.

Another glance towards that inviting candlelit window and with a whisper to his equerry, a cloak thrown over his uniform, he could still hear the cheers for the lost ship echoing as his carriage headed across the Steine.

‘It’s going down,’ shrieked the boy.

It was indeed. Tam shouted: ‘Hang on, whatever you do.’

A mile offshore and Tam, aware of the deadly danger, was using the one remaining oar to steer their tiny boat out of the path of the sinking ship.

They were too close. If it hit them they were doomed. They would go under with it. And avoiding that, as it sank the swell in its wake would break their frail craft like matchwood and carry them to the bottom of the sea.

Where was its crew? Dead or drowned, for its deck seemed deserted of all life. Then with an almighty tearing sound, the groan of a dying giant, sails ripping, a shriek of timbers, the masts were ripped from their moorings.

Tam and the boy hung on grimly as the wreck vanished beneath the waves. Seized as if in some sea-monster’s relentless fist, helpless, they watched as an enormous wave sped towards them, lifting the boat, heaving them up into the air, holding them on its crest before hurling them back down again into the sea.

Gasping for breath, Tam surfaced first, looked for the boy. Saw a white face, a thin arm and grabbed it.

‘Hold on!’

A piece of mast, strong and sturdy, surfaced and drifted by.

‘Seize it!’

As the boy did so, Tam’s worst fears were realised.

That boiling frothy sea in the momentum of the ship’s last moments had carried them further away from the distant shore, where pinpoints of light were now barely visible.

There was only one solution. He pointed. ‘Swim for it! You can swim, I take it.’

He wasn’t sure whether the answer was yes or no, so he shouted: ‘Hang on to the spar, it’ll carry you in. It’s not far off.’

‘Look! There’s another ship!’ shouted the boy.

Turning his face from the shore, Tam saw a small cutter rocking across the waves towards the spot where the ship had gone down.

‘We’re saved!’ And the boy so saying began to wave and shout for help.

Tam could see figures on board, leaning over, watching. They certainly seemed to be looking in their direction.

A fishing boat – what a piece of luck, he decided as it turned towards them.

‘We’re saved,’ the boy sobbed. As the cutter loomed above him, Tam realised that while he would be glad to have seen the lad to safety, the more dominant part of his mind demanded, what next?

After having helped him escape from the dreaded hulk and transportation, and the worse fate of near drowning, once they were set ashore on dry land together, would conscience allow him to abandon this youngster without a qualm to take his own chances of survival? Ruefully, Tam decided that Jem had already displayed all the symptoms of being totally unable to survive an uncertain future.

At the same time, the very last thing he wanted or needed on his time-quest was having a scared young lad hanging on to him. Such were his thoughts as the men, huddled in cloaks, leaned over and held out an oar for the boy to seize.

As they pulled him aboard he laughed. ‘Thank you, sirs, thank you. You saved our lives.’ Dripping wet, the boy did not forget his manners. Turning, he looked down anxiously at Tam, who, pushing aside the spar, seized upon the oar and waiting to be heaved aboard, held out his hand.

His hand was ignored.

‘Only the boy. Not him – he’s a law officer. See the uniform.’

‘Push him back into the sea.’

‘We’ll do more than that.’

A coarse laugh. ‘Aye, make a good job of it – one less to cope with.’

And the oar that was to be his lifeline, now struck out at him. Instinctively he ducked as violent contact was made with the side of his head. His sudden agony darkened the sky and a deadly flash of insight brought too late the realisation that their rescuers were not fishermen.

They were smugglers, carrion searching the seas for anything of value drifting from the wreckage.

His last thought as he sank beneath the waves, eager to swallow him once again, was that the uniform jacket labelling him as an excise officer was to be his shroud.

Chapter Three

At five o’clock in the morning two anonymous black carriages left the royal stables and crossed the short distance to Steine House. The door opened and a corpulent well-muffled anonymous-looking gentleman descended the steps and entered the first carriage which headed towards a secluded part of the seashore.

A journey of great discretion, although few were about in Brighton at such an early hour. But such was the rule on those occasions when the Prince Regent visited Maria Fitzherbert and stayed the night at Steine House.

A rule which caused some suppressed merriment and cynical remarks in the royal household. However, even the fact that they were never in the slightest danger of being taken unawares by Princess Caroline, resident permanently in London since the royal separation, a strong sense of morality and discretion prevented Mrs Fitzherbert from sleeping under the ornate roof of the Marine Pavilion with the prince whom she piously regarded as her legal husband in the eyes of God.

The prince emerged into a bright morning and at the seashore, apart from a few pieces of floating debris littering an otherwise delightfully calm sea, nothing remained of yesterday’s violent storm or the wreck of the Royal Stuart.

At the water’s edge the prince’s bathing machine waited, a wooden changing-room on wheels to be drawn into the water by a patient horse. Distinguished by the imperial crown on its roof, once inside, its royal occupant was quickly divested of his outer garments and assisted into a lavishly striped bathing costume by his attendant, a heavily built, moustached gentleman with a permanent frown of anxiety and exceedingly strong arms – the marks of his trade and needed on more than one occasion to rescue nervous gentlemen sea-bathers from disaster.

Jack, son of ‘Smoaker’ Miles, the prince’s favourite bathing assistant, honoured by being regularly received at the Marine Pavilion and having a racehorse and a race named after him, stayed close to his royal charge who resembled a young whale as he floated, gasping and puffing and blowing, and thoroughly enjoying this almost daily health-giving routine, the remarkable discovery of Dr Richard Russell.

The learned physician from Lewes had successfully established the future of the fishing village of Brighthelmstone as a spa, and put Brighton on the map, via his learned ‘Dissertation on the Use of Sea-water in the Affection of the Glands’.

In due course this had fallen into royal hands and on a visit to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, young Prince George had been enthusiastically advised that as well as being drinkable, the waters had other benefits, and that daily sea-bathing would work exceedingly well as a cure for his tiresome swollen neck glands. Glands which he hid under the high starched neckcloths which had set the fashion and become de rigueur in high society.

No longer floating but being dipped vigorously in and out of the water as was the custom by Jack Miles, the prince was secure in the knowledge that there were no other bathers in the vicinity. Not only did Brighton seem to be his alone, but even the sea was Canute-like at his command.

But not for long. Today was different.

An upsurge in the calm waters, waves where there should have been none, and Jack Miles, alarmed, had his royal charge immediately upright as an interloper was washed into this peaceful scene.

A man’s body had been spotted a few yards away on a raft floating shoreward and heading fast in the direction of the bathing machine.

To the prince’s anxious enquiry, Miles replied: ‘From that shipwreck, Your Royal Highness, a dead ’un, I expect.’ And hastily assisting the now flustered, thoroughly irritated prince out of the water, Miles added soothing statements that this would be taken care of.

The incident had already been spotted by onlookers from the second closed carriage, by servants filling in the time with a game of cards and the prince’s physician, who accompanied these morning outings in case of accident. They were already rushing down towards the shoreline when the raft, propelled by a particularly large breaker, reached the pebbled beach in unison with the prince’s bathing machine.

Consumed as he was by anger and frustration at having his daily routine cut short by this human flotsam, the prince was overcome with curiosity and excitement.

If this was indeed a survivor then George Brummell owed him 200 guineas and, poking his head out of the machine, he asked: ‘Is he dead?’

The men bending over the body moved slightly aside to allow the prince a heartening glimpse of a uniform jacket. Definitely from the ship.

In answer to his query, a moment’s hesitation, then his physician stood up, bowed. ‘He is still alive, Your Royal Highness—’ a shake of his head. ‘But barely so. Considering that he must have been in the water, exposed to the elements for several hours – if he lives, it will be quite miraculous.’ A sigh and another shake of the head indicated that he thought this miracle highly unlikely.

A survivor. The prince beamed. But there was no time to be wasted. The 200 guineas were almost in his purse, but aware of Brummell’s untrustworthy nature – indeed, he had been more than a little trying of late – he realised that this survivor, whose life hung by a thread, must be taken at once to the Pavilion and delivered to Brummell as evidence that he had won their bet.

The order was given and Tam Eildor, more dead than alive, was carried into the closed carriage and transported across the short distance into the royal residence.

His sopping uniform jacket was replaced by a thick blanket and, restored to full consciousness by some foul-tasting liquid being forced down his throat, the events of the night after he had been struck over the side of his head by the smuggler’s oar were hazy indeed.

He shared the physician’s belief in a miracle that he had survived but, as a drowning man clutches at straws, so had Tam in similar condition grasped at a floating board from the wreckage of the Royal Stuart.

Once a cabin door from the doomed ship, it did admirable service as a raft.

Pulling himself aboard, he had tried paddling with his arms, but the effort was too much for him. He collapsed from pain and exhaustion, his fatal mismanaged time-quest over as well as his life, or so he thought when the emergency microchip in his wrist had failed to respond.

His rescue and arrival at the Pavilion were similarly hazy but he recognised with gratitude that even in his weakened condition he was no longer aimlessly adrift in a merciless sea, but alive and on dry land. And unless there were further dangers lurking, rapid recuperation might reasonably be expected.

He looked around cautiously and found his surroundings remarkably opulent. This was undoubtedly the Marine Pavilion, a neoclassical mansion, bearing not the slightest resemblance to the original somewhat dilapidated farmhouse belonging to Thomas Kemp, MP for Lewes. In 1796, aware that the Prince of Wales was searching for a permanent residence in Brighton, Kemp leased it to him on condition that he would rebuild it. Henry Holland, the royal architect, was commissioned, and completion resulted in a large mortgage which the prince urgently required to raise an annuity for Mrs Fitzherbert. Difficult to imagine anything as commonplace as cows, sheep and geese amid such splendour, Tam thought, as a flunkey summoned him with the words:

‘His Royal Highness the Prince Regent wishes to see you as soon as you feel able. Your name, sir?’

A short while later, hastily clad in a borrowed shirt, breeches and shoes, apparently from the servants’ wardrobe, which fitted tolerably well, he was escorted into the breakfast room where Prince George, attired in the quilted banyan or Eastern dressing gown made popular in the eighteenth century, was poised before the table, about to break his fast. Such was his custom returning from sea-bathing, and before going to his wardrobe to be dressed in one of his many uniforms appropriate to the events of the day.

Introduced by the lofty flunkey, a regal hand gestured Tam to be seated. Judging by the number of chafing dishes he realised that this daily routine was likely to take some time.

A servant hovered by his chair and after a courtly bow and a murmured thanks to his royal host, Tam needed no second invitation to address himself to the said array of covers and, unaware of the real reason for his presence, namely 200 guineas, the payment of a gambling debt, he was puzzled to know why he should have been honoured by this informal meal with the future King of England.

True, the circumstances of his rescue were dramatic, but was the prince given to impulses of picking up shipwrecked mariners and bringing them to the Pavilion? Was an almost childish impulse the solution to this little mystery?

Surreptitiously glancing at the royal diner whose frame overflowed the chair, he considered the face emerging from the high neckcloth above several chins, and suddenly Tam could see exactly what the forty-nine-year-old Prince Regent had looked like in childhood. The now corpulent frame and overblown features were a clear indication of the solemn warning (that had gone unheeded): “What are follies at twenty are vices at forty.” But from a lifetime devoted to wine, women and sundry debaucheries, there remained the ghost of a once handsome infant. Curls now vanished had been replaced by large quantities of false hair, but the tendency for merry laughter lurked in the pouched eyes while pouting, petulant lips hinted at grim determination to have his own way from a very early age.

Tam shrugged, unlikely to ever know the answer to this particular mystery, and, hard-pressed to remember exactly when he had last eaten anything, the prospect before him was enticing. Roasts of pork, beef and lamb jostled with pigeons, quail and a display of kidneys, liver and a further array of colourful but anonymous side dishes. Nor had the prince’s appetite for sweetmeats been forgotten. All in all a meal future centuries would regard as a celebration feast rather than an everyday repast.

Tam was heartily glad that the prince now applied himself solidly to the gargantuan task of satisfying his royal appetite in comparative silence, broken only by sounds of munching, crunching and the odd belch and fart, from which Tam realised that the consumption of food was a single-minded event, a solemn ritual from which his presence, apart from an occasional glance in his direction, seemed to have been forgotten.

But he had misjudged his host. Prince George was shrewder than Tam imagined and already those casual glances were making a rapid assessment of this guest at his table.

There seemed little doubt, judging by the rescued man’s hearty appetite, that his survival was guaranteed. However, he must be kept here in the Pavilion for a few hours or until Brummell chose to reappear. That 200 guineas must not be allowed to slip through the royal fingers by being unable to produce evidence in the person of the young man who sat opposite.

A very personable young man indeed, this Mr Eildor. He was tall, above six foot, and enviably slender, about thirty years old with fine features that hinted at a class above the peasant. As if to confirm this, his teeth were excellent, which suggested a good lifestyle, a fine diet. It was a matter of regret to the prince who was fastidious in his bodily, if not his moral, habits, that so many otherwise beautiful young men and women were ruined by decaying teeth and bad breath as soon as they opened their mouths.

Another firm glance made note of a pale complexion at odds with what he would have expected as a sailor’s weather-beaten countenance. A well-shaped mouth and firm chin, thick black hair. The prince’s once youthful pride in his own natural curls had set the fashion for men to wear their own hair, with wigs abandoned, thanks to a tax on hair powder (usually made of flour). However, ear-length hair, short and straight, seemed a strange choice among seagoing men, who normally wore their hair ponytailed.

Perhaps fashions were different in Scotland. He must ask Mr Eildor about such matters. This very personable young man’s most remarkable feature was undoubtedly his eyes. The prince had not seen their like before, their colour dark but indefinable and of such a strange quality, so luminous in their depths.

At last a word to a passing servant. Tam heard the word: ‘Brummell’ and then with a final belch, the prince leaning back in his throne-like chair, and regarding Tam benignly said: ‘Well, sir, tell us about your ship?’

A difficult question but in the slight pause, the prince said: ‘The Royal Stuart, was it not?’

Tam agreed eagerly and the prince continued: ‘A Scotch ship?’

Tam agreed once more, thinking quickly, wondering how all this might give him a lead into some plausible account of his appearance in Brighton.

‘It would seem that you have been exceedingly