New England 04 - Remember Brave Achilles, page 8
Melody suddenly sat up with an electric angst.
Henrietta groaned.
“Wake up!” Melody whispered urgently, rolling away and rising to her feet.
Belatedly, she realised that what had awakened her was the sound of the bolt to the door of the outbuilding being quietly clicked home.
They had been locked in.
“What…”
“We have to get out of here, now!”
Chapter 8
Saturday 8th April
Government House, Philadelphia
The sixty-one-year-old Governor of the Crown Colonies of the Commonwealth of New England, Edward Philip Cornwallis Sidney, 7th Viscount De L'Isle, found himself in the blissful interregnum between two of that afternoon’s scheduled meetings, interviews and ‘standing conferences’ when his Chief of Staff, Major General Sir Henry Rawlinson – an old soldier who, due to the current emergency, had resumed the usage of his military rank – entered his office and approached wearing an unusually thoughtful expression.
“Forgive me,” he apologised. “Miss Daventry-Jones has called again. This time she has taken the liberty of presenting herself at the door of Government House.”
The Governor of New England’s frown mellowed in a moment.
“Refresh my memory please, Henry?”
“She is affianced, or as good as, to that fellow Stanton, of the Manhattan Globe, who seems to have got himself lost in Spain…”
“Yes, of course.” Among the rumours flashing around the New England press were several improbable stories of private and official – that is, mounted by London – attempts to rescue British and colonial citizens caught up in the civil war raging in parts of the Iberian Peninsula. De L’Isle did not discount the possibility, indeed, the probability that the British Government might have set in train any number of ‘rescue missions’, including one searching for his daughter and her companion, Melody Danson; unfortunately, thus far, he had heard nothing from Spain other than the unlikely gossip that Albert Stanton might, in some way have been involved in just such an adventure.
He glanced at the clock.
There were a few minutes before the C-in-C- Atlantic Fleet, Lord Collingwood was due at Government House.
“Wheel the young lady in please, Henry.”
De L’Isle’s right-hand man blinked, hesitated.
The Governor of the Commonwealth of New England quirked a rueful grimace.
“Look, if she’s got the pluck to come all the way down to Philadelphia to knock on my door, the least I can do is give the young lady the time of day.”
Sir Henry Rawlinson nodded.
To actually be ushered into the presence of the Governor of the Commonwealth was pretty much the last thing Maud Daventry-Jones had anticipated.
De L’Isle welcomed her with a paternal smile and adroitly ushered her towards the comfortable chairs arranged away from his broad, gleaming pro-consul’s desk, beneath a recently hung portrait of the King and Queen. Previously, there had been a rather dusty, gloriously executed, somewhat uninspiring daubing of one of his venerable, nineteenth century predecessors.
“Thank you for seeing me, Your Excellency!” The diminutive, prim young woman blurted.
De L’Isle tried to put her at her ease.
“Sir is quite sufficient, Miss Daventry-Jones,” he pointed out gently. “I gather that you are concerned for the safety of a Mr Albert Stanton?”
“Yes, we’ve heard nothing since the telegram he sent to me from Paris. He was over their talking to the movie people about the film rights to Abe and Kate Lincoln’s story…”
The young woman realised that this was too much information; if this was to be an abbreviated meeting there was no time to be wasted.
“Sorry, I know you have so much else on your plate, sir.”
De L’Isle shook his head, tried not to be as frightening as imperial viceroys could, so easily, and inadvertently be.
“It happens that through the offices of my staff, my daughter, Henrietta, and former detective Inspector Danson’s most concise reports, that I heard a full accounting, with I must say, much interest, of the remarkable adventures of the Lincoln-Fieldings.”
Suddenly he was thinking about the dreadful reports he was receiving from the Caribbean: the fighting on Jamaica, the sinking of HMS Achilles in the Windward Passage, the bombing raids on the Turks and Caicos, the attack from the sea and the air on the telegraph station at Matthew Town on Great Inagua, and that morning, of the radio intercept intelligence indicating that this island had been invaded by Cuban Marines under cover of a massive naval bombardment.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a heavy heart. “I have heard no firm news about Mr Stanton, or of my daughter’s situation since the coup began in Madrid last month. All I can tell you, in the greatest confidence, is that I am led to believe that the Secret Intelligence Service has mounted several operations to rescue ‘our’ people from the fighting, one of which may have involved Mr Stanton’s courageous voluntary participation.”
“I know I am being selfish,” Maud Daventry-Jones sniffed, on the verge of a flood of tears. “But I was counting the days to when Albert was returning to New York and…”
The Governor reached across and took the young woman’s left hand, squeezing it reassuringly.
“The moment I hear anything,” he murmured, as if the wall had ears and he was speaking out of turn, “I, or in my absence, my office, will let you know. That I promise.”
Philip De L’Isle relinquished his careful grip, sat back.
“I know it is easy for me to say, as an old soldier,” he guffawed paternally, “but at times like this the best thing one can do is carry on as normal. One cannot help thinking the worst; nevertheless, one should always hope for the best. You must be comforted by the knowledge that by all accounts, Mr Stanton is acknowledged to be a most resourceful fellow, as I know my daughter, Henrietta and her companion, Miss Danson, most certainly are, also.”
This said, knowing that Admiral Lord Collingwood was a ferociously punctual man, the Governor rose to his feet.
Maud, in her anxiety, jumped up.
“So, you and I must keep our chins up, what?” Philip De L’Isle ascertained.
“Yes, yes, I will, I promise…”
The Governor of New England tried not to be too stern.
“At about this time of the afternoon I usually take tea with my wife, Lady Diana, in her first-floor rooms, Miss Daventry-Jones. Regrettably, I have engagements scheduled,” he smiled a wan half-smile, “from now until Judgement Day, it seems sometimes. Might I persuade you to do me the great service of keeping my wife company in my absence this afternoon?”
Maud’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
“I’d… I’d, be honoured, sir.”
De L’Isle knew full well that his wife would effortlessly do a much better job of temporarily soothing the young woman’s worst fears than he. Diana would soon have Miss Daventry-Jones gossiping about New York society, the latest fashions and probably, laughing about her part in Leonora Coolidge’s most remarkable campaign of civil disobedience and mainly pacific protest to right the wrongs of her Colony’s initial response to the Empire Day atrocities.
Admiral Lord Cuthbert Collingwood was shown into the Governor’s presence as the young woman scuttled out. The C-in-C of the Atlantic Fleet nodded fatherly indulgence at Maud as she passed, and raised a curious eyebrow to the Governor.
His friend grimaced, shook his head.
“Her young man is tied up in that damned fool scheme to rescue Hen from the Mountains of Madrid,” De L’Isle explained. “Understandably, she got so fed up ringing Government House everyday and getting nowhere – there’s not a lot we can tell her, in all honesty – that she summoned up the pluck to travel down to Philadelphia. The least I could do was find five minutes in my diary for her.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Collingwood concurred. He sighed: “I’m afraid I received more bad news just before I came over from Admiralty House.”
Admiralty House, was something of an anachronism in the modern age. Originally, built back in the early nineteenth century, the New England analogue of its mother institution in Whitehall, London, the majority of its functions had transferred from its impressive, neo-classical portals in Philadelphia to Norfolk by the time of the Great War. Nowadays, it was simply the residence of the Superintendent – customarily a rear admiral – of the Admiralty Dockyards of Philadelphia, and accommodated senior officers visiting the city.
Collingwood was presently splitting his time between Norfolk and Philadelphia – more the former – as the present crisis deepened. The days when the men who commanded the great fleets of the Empire were purely naval-military men were long-past, and Collingwood wanted, and expected to be at the heart of the decision-making process at the locus of colonial governance.
The Governor had asked him to brief him on the naval situation ahead of the full Chiefs of Staff meeting he had called for six o’clock that evening.
“Wasn’t that the young lady who was responsible for inciting so much trouble in New York last year?” Cuthbert Collingwood queried, dryly.
“Yes, she and Sir Max Coolidge’s girl were at the heart of it. I suggested young Miss Daventry-Jones takes tea with Diana.”
The C-in-C Atlantic Fleet chuckled heartily.
Both men knew that Lady Diana would hugely enjoy the company of such a renowned ‘feminist’ trouble-maker, albeit one who had quietly stepped back into relative anonymity once the most egregious injustices – against the three Fielding brothers - of the immediate post-Empire Day outrages had been well and truly righted last year.
A Royal Marine steward entered the room bearing a tea tray.
The two men sat down beneath the regal portrait.
The royal couple had sat for the picture just a week after the atrocities in New York, two years ago. Thinking about it a flicker of pain creased the Governor’s face: Henrietta had spent every hour of every day, it had seemed at the time, making sure that the King and Queen’s – Uncle Bertie’s and Aunt Ellie’s – stay and engagements in Pennsylvania went as smoothly as was humanly possible.
The King had suggested, only half-joking, how he and the Queen would love it if Henrietta had been free to accompany them for the rest of their North American progress. It had been said half in jest because His Majesty knew only too well how De L’Isle, and more importantly, his wife, relied on their precociously capable youngest daughter. But for Diana’s illness, De L’Isle would almost certainly have put the King’s suggestion to Henrietta but knowing she would be torn by such a choice, he and his monarch had determined to keep the thought to themselves.
Besides, Henrietta had her own life to lead, a thing emphasised by the fact that when later, the mission to Spain had been in the offing; it was an enterprise which had caught his youngest daughter’s imagination. Notwithstanding that De L’Isle, and to a lesser extent, his wife, were anything but blind to the inherent dangers of their daughter’s obvious infatuation with Melody Danson – herself, a quite remarkable woman – they had known better, or at least they thought they had known better at the time than to risk placing any obstacles in Henrietta’s path.
Of course, if they had known then what they know now they would have locked their little girl away in a monastery!
Hindsight being the one perfect science…
“No news is not bad news,” Cuthbert Collingwood observed sympathetically.
“Where are we with the Achilles?” The Governor of New England asked, raising his tea cup to his lips.
Things were really bad when a man could not rely on a good cup of Darjeeling to sooth his angst.
“We still have no idea if there were any survivors, sir,” Collingwood reiterated. “However, since we met yesterday the RNAS flew one of its Albatross high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft along a mission track which overflew eastern Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, Port-au-Prince, Santo Domingo and western Hispaniola.”
The London Aircraft Company had a long history of designing lightweight, high-performance aircraft, and for ‘thinking outside the box’, innovating regardless of Air Ministry or Royal Air Force requirements or operational specifications. The R1-Albatross had the potential to be the LAC’s most revolutionary product yet, seemingly so far ahead of its rivals that it had very nearly created a new genus of aircraft.
Although still powered by twin turboprops – Derby-Royce Wyverns rated at over 2,500 horse power – by constructing eighty percent of the airframe from wood to minimise weight, the Albatross was capable of flying at nearly four hundred miles per hour in level flight at altitudes of up to forty thousand feet. Basically, it was as fast or faster than any propeller driven aircraft in service in any air force anywhere, and higher-flying than practically any other aircraft.
The LAC had already prototyped a bomber version of the Albatross capable of carrying a two-thousand-ton payload on raids against targets up to a thousand miles away.
There were precisely three pre-production R1-Albatrosses in New England, in Florida undergoing operational evaluation and proving trials with the RNAS at the St John’s River Experimental Establishment. The Albatross was so secret that any reference to a ‘super plane’ being test flown was embargoed, and such reports which had leaked into the public domain had instantly been quashed as ‘imaginary sightings’, written off derisively as ‘unidentified flying objects’, with witnesses who claimed to have seen one of the marvels in the flesh, cavalierly dismissed as ‘delusional’.
“We don’t think the Cubans or the others even knew the Albatross was there,” Cuthbert Collingwood chortled. “Anyway, we photographed the harbours of Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo Bay, and the port of Santo Domingo. What I’m being told is that the two big cruisers that ambushed the Achilles are holed up back at Guantanamo Bay, along with at least one destroyer and a large merchantman, which we think is probably the Weser. At least one of the big cruisers appears to be leaking bunker oil.”
“Why haven’t the beggars made themselves scarce?” De L’Isle asked quietly.
His companion became grim.
“Frankly, if they want to skulk away in Guantanamo Boy that’s fine by me. In any event, the more I think about it the more I’m convinced that Achilles wouldn’t have gone down without one Hell of a fight. Those two big beasts we photographed this morning might well still be licking their wounds!”
“I see… Where are we with Jamaica?”
“There is heavy fighting ongoing in the streets of Kingston. Elsewhere, we still hold about two-thirds of the island. Problematically, the enemy is landing fresh troops more or less at will now. Worse, they’ve landed medium artillery on the north coast.”
Collingwood carried on.
“We know Matthew Town on Great Inagua Island was attacked this morning and that there are significant enemy forces ashore as I speak. We only had a small garrison, eighteen Marines supported by about thirty militiamen on the island. This can only be the Triple Alliance laying the foundations for an island-hopping campaign against the Bahamas, or setting up a staging post for an invasion of southern Florida.” He pursed his lips. “You must give me a free hand to interdict these operations, sir!”
De L’Isle shook his head.
“If it was up to me, I would be sorely tempted to give you a free hand Cuthbert,” he confessed. “It is not. Moreover, as strange as it may sound, I can see good reasons for staying our hand a little longer. When we hit back, we must do it with as much weight as possible, presently, our forces are not yet all in position and we’d be feeding ships and aircraft into the fray piecemeal. In any event, that is academic. London is adamant. The eyes of the World are on us and more importantly, I thoroughly understand the primacy of sleepwalking into an avoidable general war with the German Empire.”
For all that Cuthbert Collingwood might appreciate the big picture, he had equally pressing local operational imperatives.
“I ordered HMS Devonshire and her screening destroyers to put to sea at noon. The Armada de Nuevo Granada seems to be putting to sea en masse from its bases at Vera Cruz and Corpus Christi. They seem to be organising their fleet into two distinct types of fighting column: firstly, the older ships, including vessels we’d derisively dismiss as ‘ironclads’, slow, coal-fired but some of them carrying medium calibre, five- to nine-inch rifles; and secondly, modern oil-fired turbine-power ships with if not contemporary, then 1950s or newer fire control and communications systems. The latter are at least ten or so knots faster than the former, although there are only a handful of small cruisers in the mix.”
“I saw a report saying the Cubans and the Dominicans may have brought their big-gun-ships out of reserve?” The Governor of New England prompted.
“Yes, fourteen-thousand-ton cruiser hulls mounting up to eight twelve-inch guns in four twin turrets. The oldest of those ships would have been launched in the late 1920s!” Collingwood shook his head. “They are relatively slow boats, coal-fired, with old-fashioned nineteenth century reciprocating engines. Hardly any armour protection…”
“But packing quite a hefty punch, nonetheless?”
“True,” the admiral conceded. He hesitated. “We are going to get pilloried when it transpires that the Triple Alliance has been quietly mobilising everything, and I do mean everything, to hand without us apparently noticing anything amiss.”
“Yes, but then we are dealing with quintessentially secret, closed societies run, especially on Santo Domingo and Cuba by theocratic regimes which make it hard, if not impossible, for outsiders to know what is actually going on inside them. I’m also cognisant that strictures preventing close surveillance of our likely enemies’ coasts, the pre-hostilities prohibition of reconnaissance over-flights and the disinclination of the people of New England to fund the Colonial Security Service other than at a bare subsistence level, have all been contributory factors in our apparent blindness.” Philip De L’Isle had finished his tea. China clinked as he put down his cup and saucer. “I’m sure that when future historians come to rake over our mistakes, they will note that in many ways, it has been our policy to turn a blind eye to German mischief in the Indies, without which our foes would almost certainly not have been so emboldened. That said, who among us could have envisaged that the so-called Vera Cruz Squadron, would so swiftly be at the heart of an unambiguous assault on the Empire.”
