Hiraeth

By Billy Bodman

British spy-master, The Earl of Tredomen, has always used his political intrigues to enhance his personal finances. Now that the Richleigh family are united once more, and he is cash-rich as a consequence of the high-drama enacted in the ruins of Sebastopol at the climax of the Crimea war, he now has America as his main target where he is convinced that Civil War is a foregone conclusion. As a life-time defender of Britain, he knows that certain traitorous and insurgent groups are constantly plotting the downfall of his country and see America as a means of attaining their ambitions. He sees the Richleigh's, their goal set irrevocably on the gold-fields of California, as the perfect conduit for his plans. Joining the party is Lady Rhiannon, now romantically linked with Daniel Richleigh, who is partnering him in a major banking venture. Youngest son, Jonathan, is also with them, initially to track-down his sweetheart, who has been sent to relatives in America to prevent their union. Over the following months they experience political machinations, commercial shenanigans, an assassination and murderous activity, gaining life-long friends along the way but also crossing paths with past enemies who wish to thwart their objectives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Billy Bodman
• Release date: Jun 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005768614

Billy Bodman

Presently (pleasantly) retired and well divorced. 1 novel published to date, 'PAPER ROUND'), the content of which would lead you to believe that the Shades of Grey stuff was penned by Enid Blyton. Interested in having it republished as Ebook along with its sequel 'PAPER BOY'. If successful, there are 3 others to consider.2 novels brought out simultaneously- 'FARADAY'S EYES' and 'INTERREGNUM', both featuring on Amazon et el websites. Exciting, exotic, X-rated.Now have seven (7) novels on Smashwords submitted almost simultaneously, all of varying genres. 2 of them are sequels and a further sequel is being readied.March 2022. Published the paperback version of my latest Billy Bodman novel, 'RUNNER', which can be found on Amazon plus Barnes and Noble et al. June 2020, just published the sequel to 'RUNNER' entitled 'HIRAETH' which is Welsh for 'A longing for home'. Almost a 1000 pages all told, and the family have still not reached the gold-fields of California. A third act is on the cards.So, you'll never be bored with a BOD.

Book preview

Hiraeth

Billy Bodman

Copyright @ Billy Bodman

Published at Smashwords 2022

The Earl of Tredomen riffled the sheaf of papers he had been intently perusing for the last hour or so, pursed his lips and stared at the vaulted ceiling; Had it really all been pointless, this war, this Crimean War? Four weeks now since the Russians had vacated Sevastopol at the beginning of September and the town as a naval base, totally destroyed, much of it by the Russians themselves from the base at Severnaia to which they had strategically withdrawn. Not retreated, he had learned through the reports of The Times Correspondent Russell over the telegraph, but backed off as a tactic. Was that it, he wondered in dismay, all the colossal loss of life and destruction of property merely to prevent Russia maintaining a base in the Peninsular, which was certainly not the reason that sparked the conflagration? He had to concede that the whole exercise had been quite a setback for the Tsar’s ambitions, but a sledgehammer to crack a walnut? He had only been involved initially on the periphery of the situation, hardly thinking that a difference of opinion over who was responsible for the shrines and Holy places of the Christian church would prove to be no more than an irritation and some local difficulties at most. The only cause for concern that he could see, and he had made his views known when asked, was the friability of the Turks, of the slowly-disintegrating Ottoman Empire who feared Russians aims in the area. Well, Britain had their own concerns about Russian activity, seeing their movements in Afghanistan as a very fragile entrance into India and that would certainly be resisted. But it was sabre-rattling at best.

Then, Louis Napoleon in France, even though there was no rhyme or reason for it other than to make some sort of grand statement, made the decision to reinforce its claim as ‘guardian of the faith’, despite the fact that they had neglected the responsibility of caring for the Holiest places in Jerusalem and other places for years, upon which declaration Tsar Nicholas, much more belligerent a proposition than his predecessor, promptly claimed the right to be overall protector of all Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire. What, he supposed tiredly, could Stratford do other than advise the Turks to reject the decidedly spurious claim, but he knew he still should have gauged it as another calculated move in the game of international chess the Russians so loved to play, even though it was no longer in his remit. It was a self-appointed remit, of course, a dramatic shift away from the wide-ranging aims he favoured to one of concentrated focus that was approved without debate. His eyes were now firmly fixed on one direction only; across the stormy Atlantic Ocean. He been distracted as a consequence by the subtle political manoeuvres being enacted across all the various hot-spots of America that had to absorb his full-attention now that he was no longer in situ– the fastest ships he could locate, steamships mostly, chartered to carry the corresponding instructions flying back and forth in a constant stream - which also affected, in minor fashion, his own personal exigencies. His discrete plans to exploit the natural resources that his contracted surveyor on the West coast informed him had only been a mere scratching of the surface of his holdings meant he was in no position to spot those few vital moves ahead of the Russian game which was his forte.

The Turks of course, relying on the full support of the British and the French took the advice, but there is diplomacy and there is ‘thumbing a nose’. He could have advised a warning brief to Stratford, sent one of the new Civil Servants that had so recently been assigned to his office with ‘suggested’ instructions, but the moment had slipped. He, of course, would not be faulted, but his own sense of missing a trick gave him cause to castigate himself.

Irksome though he knew it would be, he told himself he would just have to discipline himself to focus his concentration on his main mission and leave the politics in other parts of the world to the relevant departments.

The Russian armies had wasted no time, immediately marching into the Danubian Principalities, administered as they were by Turkey, prompting the joint allied fleets to up anchor without hesitation and make for the Dardanelles.

The chess board was once more animated and he had not been a player.

He had unashamedly placed his trust in the known negotiating skills of Aberdeen, knowing that to give a little - at the Turkish expense it had to be acknowledged - would appease the Tsar’s appetite until something else cropped up further down the line to worry about. But, even with Austria’s help with diplomacy to reach the sort of compromise which he would have advised if consulted, the Russians refused point-blank to vacate.

By then of course, not believing that any kind of major conflagration was an imminent possibility, he had set in motion the chain of events that had seen his shipload of goods and the seed-corn finances he needed for his future ventures captured and securely locked up in the harbour of a city under siege.

There was some cause for optimism he told himself sagaciously, some real, tangible hope in the offing that the fates might be favouring him.

The last coded telegram from the Pinkerton man, Lincoln King – his Pinkerton man in reality once he had completed his mission in the Crimea - before he pragmatically departed well before the final battle and headed back home to New York, had mentioned within its official /unofficial observations about the Campaign, that Daniel had been furnished with every assistance in his goal of making his way into Sevastopol towards a contact with K after the Russian forces had effected a complete withdrawal, but also that the sailing yacht – the Earl of Bute’s prize racer, Velindre – had successfully positioned itself to clear the harbour well before sea-going movement became all but impossible, carrying further official (and secret) documentation meant for his and his Master’s eyes only, but no more than that. What was of more than a little interest was the coded information that Rufus had been noted spending some considerable time with certain members of Pelissiere’s Paris Office who had turned up unexpectantly on the Peninsular. What was not apparent was whether he was still in the Crimea or had got out earlier.

That might have more of a bearing on the situation in America than any other consideration and was definitely a cause for concern. Best to keep that snippet of knowledge under his hat, he decided. Palmerston or his successor would have no use for it.

He thought about Rufus Lord Daventry, bringing to mind all the details he had accumulated in the comprehensive dossier sitting in the drawer of his desk. He had told Daniel much about the history of the family, and Daniel had met him, crossed swords with him – literally - and taken the measure of the man in the manner of an astute observer of human behaviour. But he was a far more dangerous adversary than mere behaviour indicated. It was true that he had inherited his father’s intelligence, and was equally skilled in the sports-field, but while his father, Roger, was an unremitting adversary in the realm of politics Rufus appeared to have skipped a generation and reverted to the personal animosity of earlier Daventry’s. It was as though he had a well of hate in his character and needed to concentrate it on one specific focal point, rather than allowing the pressure to build until the vitriol exploded uncontrollably in all directions. Acknowledging your faults and then acting to lessen the impact instead of allowing the flaw to fester was, the Earl thought, a remarkable feat of self-will. He had his sharpened instincts to thank that, at some Mayoral banquet, he had intercepted a look across the dining tables that was filled with such pure malevolence – although just fleeting – that it had shaken him to the core of his being.

He knew it was not imagined, wasting no time in placing him on his list of ‘persons of interest’.

It was fortuitous that he taken that decision. The Earl of Tredomen had revealed a very dangerous person that, like his Catholic ancestors, was an implacable enemy of the British Government. The in-depth, comprehensive dossier of Rufus Daventry was as intimate a portrayal as any known adversary in his library of files. He had, for some time, been baffled by the character traits that were being intermittently exposed by his agents that were in sharp contrast to those of his father. The end-of-term reports he had purloined from Balliol showed little that he did not know, except for the jarring insertion on two separate occasions that intimated at ‘a complete lack of empathy’. That had him puzzled. Subtle interviews along the way with a couple of his University contemporaries – opposing factions in the academic hegemony – told of a bullying, arrogant personality, who was prone to sudden outbursts of savage behaviour for no apparent reason; he had come close to being sent down on two occasions. His closest friends – sycophantic to a fault – somehow learned to know when the tsunami of nastiness was close and avoided him where possible. He was humourless, one said - clearly a hapless victim - unless it was to laugh uproariously at someone’s (anyone’s) downfall, citing that one only had to observe him to understand the meaning of ‘schadenfreude’.

It was only later that he had cause to castigate himself for being remiss in his investigations. The dark spectre of the soul came not from the Daventry strain but from the Bordeaux French wine-making Dynasty, the Poincolets into which Lord Roger Daventry had made a substantial investment before marrying. A chance meeting with an old, retired, close business acquaintance of the Lord furnished him with the historic background of the Ancien Nobility. Every branch of the family was littered with members – the female side was prevalent – who displayed various degrees of un-natural behaviour from the weirdly eccentric to the out-of-this-world lunacy. The Duke’s first wife, a niece of Lord Raglan, had died giving birth to a second daughter some two years into the marriage. He had wasted no time in approaching his French connections and making a match with Catherine, the sixteen-years-old daughter of the patriarch, Baron Poincolet. She was a beguiling creature with just the right amount of haughty demeanour to give her appeal and, despite the age difference and foreign nationality, seemed perfectly content to accept the match. Within a year she had produced the heir he wanted; Rufus. Once in their West Glamorgan estate, the unsettling behaviour she displayed was put down to the pregnancy – she refused point blank to learn English having to rely on her multi-lingual companion/maid to interpret. – but the intermittent tantrums showed no sign of abating. It was, the servants said, as though she was two different people; light and dark, joyful and vindictive, kind and spitefully mean in unpredictable parts. Only the loving interaction with her baby tempered the vitriol to which she subjected her hapless half-sisters. They suffered the harshest cruelty, as though the girls were the interlopers and not she.

Business matter, as was his fashion, kept the Duke away for the most part, but when he did make the odd, fleeting reappearance he had no close confidante to advise him of the situation, and such was his doting regard for the woman who had given him a son no-one dared inform on her. Strangely, there were no more pregnancies, as though Catherine had poured so much of her being into delivering her boy that the productive spark within had dimmed to the point of being inert.

When Rufus was six, everything changed.

The Earl of Tredomen’s informer – Rawlinson the clothing Magnate - had been in a position to put the definitive seal on the characterisation, when the Duke took his wife and son on the journey to America in order to consolidate the Daventry plantations into a more coherent whole, and he took the opportunity to accompany them to seal as many orders as he could for the supply of cotton. Both daughters were sent off as arranged to a private college in Surrey, before being sent on to the Basle Finishing School, leaving the running of the estate in the hands of a close relative.

There were signs of un-settling mood changes on the voyage over, which His Lordship put down to mal de mer and excused the day-long frowns and petty disputes with the cabin crew. The Earl’s informer saw it differently, however, particularly when the Duke was elsewhere, and made note; she had a disarming smile that belied the slyly-engineered ‘accidents’ that saw a trolley of dishes being overturned resulting in a harsh tongue-lashing by the captain on a tearfully-protesting cabin boy and, worse, trapping a child’s hand in a door jamb and averring that a sudden draught down the corridor had slammed the door shut. These were not juvenile pranks; they were malicious and malevolent. The complicit glances and soothing comments in French – that were anything but - between Catherine and Rufus were all the conformation he needed to see evil at work.

By the time Rawlinson made the return journey a year or so later with substantial orders in the bag, he knew that she was out of control and Roger Lord Daventry knew it and accepted it.

How smart at seven or eight years of age was Rufus, then, the Earl had wondered, to know that to blindly associate himself so intimately was to tar him with the same brush as his mother? As they toured the plantations, Rawlinson (clearly a very astute observer), noticed that Rufus was paying obeisance to his father in a very subtle manner, taking every opportunity to join him as he meticulously navigated the thriving estates. They rode together, racing each other madly and assiduously practiced military skills, much to the glowering annoyance of Catherine. Rufus made sure, nonetheless, that he otherwise displayed devoted affection to her that could not be faulted in its sincerity.

But then, when the Earl decided that his son was sufficiently skilled in swordsmanship – he had a natural aptitude - he took him off to the fencing school of a Master Swordsman of his acquaintance, not too far distant in Philadelphia, for a week, in order to hone his obvious skills to the highest level.

Catherine, on the day they left and clearly simmering with barely-controllable pent up emotion, which her husband, now showing signs of a fierce anger at her continuous rancour, was unable to excuse, emerged screaming in French from the house as father and son got ready to ride off, scrabbling wildly at His Lordship’s stirrup-boots in a vain attempt to stop them leaving. With no hesitation, he had urged his mount forward, seemingly oblivious to his wife hanging on until her grip loosened and she dropped, sprawling in ungainly fashion in the dust. The Duke did not deign to give her even a glance, as though some course grass had momentarily got tangled in his horse’s hoof, and Rawlinson said that Rufus, while his face was set grimly as if frozen, stared straight ahead as he trotted after his father.

The Earl’s informer made the decision to wrap up his business deals with no hesitation, departing the estate so early the next morning that only the house servants saw him leave. As a consequence, to all intents and purposes, the Earl of Tredomen was left in the limbo of speculation. But there was no question that when Rufus returned to Britain with his father at year ten, there was no wife listed as a passenger. There was, however, no doubt that the son had inherited the mother’s unholy nature.

What was crystal clear, he concluded, was that the presence of Rufus in the Crimea was coincidental and had nothing to do with his animosity toward the Tredomen family, but he was unable to resist the opportunity to inflict as much financial carnage on the Earl’s vital commercial venture as he could. He had high-level contacts in both camps so could conceivably know of K and, more seriously, his identity. Much would hinge on whether he had become aware of Daniel’s presence and extrapolated the situation.

He had a fair idea what someone of Daniel’s strategic mind would concoct in order to accomplish the task – he had no worries on that score whatsoever – but there was the situation of his younger brother Jonathan to investigate which definitely complicated matters. He could see that there were too many imponderables to enable him to plan too far ahead which was far from ideal, although his overall strategy would hardly be affected by any exigencies, but his calculating mind had already prepared alternative scenarios whatever transpired.

The Earl’s capacity as non-attributable advisor to the Foreign Office as well as the powerful War Office – a family, a dynastic calling he liked to think - with all that kind of collated information to hand, gave him licence to warn his Masters of Russia’s expansionist policy years back, but his reports were merely noted and filed. Not even the top-secret Russian Maps of the Crimea that Jervis had located in Brussels along with the sensitive Austrian ones relating to Turkey and brought to him had been used. In fact, the hapless Raglan – now the late Lord Raglan - when rightly blamed for the wretched performance of the British Expeditionary Force, typically denied knowing anything about the layout of Sevastopol even though the Earl knew for a fact that he was in possession of a brand-new copy of the Russian map.

In any case, his overall purview had been of a more eclectic stand-point, supplying the Department with invaluable, strategic information garnered from any number of points of the globe, lodging his spies – embedding was a newer term – from Australia to Africa, India to Central America and, most importantly in his view, America itself where he conspired covertly with certain well-informed parties.

The Balkans was just one more potential trouble-spot on his agenda that a wary eye needed to be kept on; but no more than that.

The official documents he had just surveyed suggested nothing of any long-term goal or of any worthwhile objectives realised, but to his mind there was nothing to gain from either side continuing the fight, other than the blasted Turks who, with the possibility of allied troops occupying the peninsular for another awful winter, could pursue their interests elsewhere – Egypt he thought a likely goal - with impunity. The only reason there was any sort of will to continue the pursuit of the Russian army - the British public at large urged it most vociferously – was, in his opinion, simply down to the ignominious and embarrassing defeat at the Redan and the wish to prove that our red-coated troops were far better than they showed that day. Even the Queen herself felt the sense of humiliation, and pointedly told him so when accompanying Palmerston to one of their regular breakfast meetings which kept her up-dated on Foreign Affairs.

Tennyson’s mis-guided poem hadn’t helped either, he thought wearily, stirring up the public jingoism at the do or die charge. He wasn’t personally au fait with the detail, but as ever in these cases graphic and heroic fiction invariably stood in for truth. Nevertheless, General Simpson, unwilling to pursue the Russians as baldly and vehemently instructed from Whitehall, had finally been persuaded by Panmure to resign his post and Codrington, despite the abject failure at the Redan, given total command and told to advance over the Roadway and shift the Russians altogether.

The Earl had weighed up the options left to each country in the conflict and decided that only political negotiation would finalise things. Not, he told himself with a jaundiced view brought on by a life-times’ study of ambitious leaders, a definitive finalisation, but a mere strategic truce. Louis Napoleon for one was on decidedly shaky ground with the public, despite the joyful and widely-broadcast celebrations in Paris and beyond on the taking of the Malakhov objective, and would almost certainly be persuaded by Pellisiere – if his general modus operandi was anything to go by – to temper his ambitions to follow in the giant footsteps of Bonaparte and to settle for the taking and destruction of Sevastopol as a goal succeeded, while Tsar Alexander was now financially bust and not able to raise funds as easily as the British or the French and so was comprehensively stuck.

His part in it was done other than a final appraisal to his true Masters who, he recognised and approved of, now had control of more authoritative strings than a puppeteer – he would shortly take his place as an equal to the other three. A government within a government, he assimilated, but one not subject to public vote; keeping the politics out of politics he had once observed.

His own financially parlous situation that had plagued him for many months – the recent purchase of the near-bankrupt banking business in New York and elsewhere had been a high-wire transaction, although Lady Morganson’s contributions had been timely - had been relieved somewhat with two of the four ships that had set sail from Brazil some six months back arriving within days of each other carrying their cargoes of teak and a variety of other exotic wood, finding that the captains concurred with the observation that the other two carriers had been blown completely off course but were sure to have made sanctuary somewhere and arrive eventually. Repairs and a refit would see them eminently saleable so that was more vital cash to bank.

That, he told his wife when he was last home in North Wales, was the conclusion of his South American mercantile adventure, although prudence decreed he sustain an office in Rio, ostensibly as an import-export agency and still comfortably paying for itself, but in reality a base for his spying activities amongst the other comparable sites in places he deemed strategically important; it helped that he had been given carte blanche in this his area of expertise.

The Australian venture that had begun in Swansea with the dismantling and shipment of the complete iron-smelting operation would take some time to bear fruit – the last of the sections would hardly have arrived even yet - after the Staffordshire outfit had put it all back together again, and he would have been in favour of setting up a permanent base in Sydney except that his resources would not allow two simultaneous campaigns. He would get interim payments as negotiated, but could not take that into his current account.

If his contracted geologist, Hermann Becker – the Germans seemed to have a penchant, a specialist’s knack, for the discipline of accurately reading rock formations – was correct, there was at least as much gold to be mined (although more technically-difficult to reach) as had been taken from the surface deposits. The message from the Sacramento office confirmed that both of his remaining transport ships had already off-loaded much of the equipment necessary for the project ready to be transported to site. The sectors his agent had pragmatically leased out to the various prospecting types yielded, as he had been told, no particularly great amounts of the yellow metal, but sufficient to keep the prospect viable. It did mean that their presence, however, kept other claim-jumpers from trying their luck.

There had been little to report about the situation involving the California bank, other than it was still in business (as there was with the Chicago branch, the other one of the three), in which he and Rhiannon were in partnership, but only time would resolve that venture. The fact that she had so fortuitously entered the equation out of her relationship with Daniel almost seemed like the missing part to a complex jigsaw, and he could only see good coming out of it. It had been completely in his own interests, then, to put pressure on some of his landowning friends to make sure that the sale of Hafod went through as smoothly and speedily as possible, ensuring that the conditions laid down by her Ladyship, that no coal-mining operations were to blight the landscape, were met on every point. The fact that much of the property would be given over to housing was a pill she had to swallow, but it was a reasonable compromise; she made a promise, she told him vehemently, that she would never return to see the end results.

The sale of the imported timber and those other sundries but desirable imports the nouveau riche demanded had helped to replenish his depleted coffers somewhat, but it was only when Daniel returned safely – not if, when - that he would know for sure that solvency was no more an issue.

If all the pieces of the intricate puzzle he had concocted in that continent over the last few years came together as he envisaged, his dynastic legacy would once more be on solid footings. He bent his head once more and tried to envisage the route that the ‘borrowed’ clipper, ‘The Velindre’ would encounter, (he would purchase it outright from the Earl of Bute, whose consortium had commissioned a faster yacht in order to pit themselves against the favourites in the so-called Americas Cup, specifically for the American journey) taking into account, as one must, the vagaries of the multi-changeable weather systems that tried the expertise of every ships’ captain that ever sailed those waters.

Official papers ensured there would be no problems traversing the Black Sea from the Crimea – there would be no Russian fleet to bar the way – slipping through the Bosporus under the benign gaze of the Istanbul fortifications and into the Sea of Marmara. What could there be, he mused, skimming majestically over the waves of the Aegean, but the risk of piracy? But nothing could touch their vessel for speed and there would be no need to skirt any of the Greek islands that pitted those waters. He wondered about Kappa (he still used the code-name he’d been given), knowing that he would feel obligated to ensure that the Earl’s cargo of furs aboard the siege-blocked merchantman was not interfered with and appropriated, but guessing that he might have little choice in the matter and would have been obliged to clear off with Mr Torkington when he departed. As a precaution that spoke volumes for his pragmatic nature, he had requested by telegraph to the Van Cutsem concern in Paris to dispatch another agent, but all that depended on the resumption of trade in that troubled area. He could see it was not something to be resolved in the short term, but the Earl was not one to let slip his possessions lightly. In his mind’s eye, he traced the route the ship would sensibly pursue, staying close to the Greek mainland, although he could not see Athens being a port of call despite

Kappa’s nationality, keeping well clear of Crete and that part of the Mediterranean and head directly and with all sails aloft – an astonishing four hundred nautical miles in twenty-four hours was attainable he had been informed – for the Straits of Gibraltar.

He had no doubts they would refrain from making port there but continue on around the Spanish headland. That, he told himself finally, would be the safest and most opportune place to re-victual if need be - Cadiz perhaps might be a reasonable port for Kappa to disembark, which had some decent roads to Madrid enabling him to swiftly report to their base there - as there was little point in him continuing to Britain, but there would be no idle resting up until the wild Atlantic was braved and the English Channel sighted. There was absolutely no way for him to know until they arrived and that was that.

He wondered if they might make straight for Liverpool, believing him to be home in North Wales and, in a sudden flash of intuition - another of his strengths - concluded that it was precisely the port for which they would aim. London would be a trial merely navigating the Thames, and the southern English ports no use for his purposes. If they were very much longer, however – another week would be the limit – he would be forced to think if not the worst, then nothing he could view with optimism. Even then, a winter’s voyage across the Atlantic would not be ideal, although the seas were not necessarily too harsh. He resolved to leave the Capital the following morning, just taking those papers that concerned only his activities that he could evaluate at his leisure along with those intriguing despatches – the Lincoln King ones especially as they referred solely to America - that Daniel was transporting when they arrived.

Now that he had satisfied himself that his projected time-scale was reasonably feasible, and that his plans under the revised circumstances would be more or less back on track, America now filled his thoughts as he began to concentrate his mind on the machinations taking place in that vast continent and the shadowy part that he – his predecessors too - had long played in it. He decided to telegraph the American Consulate, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in Liverpool with whom he had such a productive relationship since his appointment by President Franklin to England almost two years back, which coincided so neatly with the favourable transfer of employment of Lincoln King from the Pinkerton Detective Agency who had arrived as the officially-nominated bodyguard for the Consul. It invariably paid dividends, he acknowledged once again, placing someone of well- regarded reputation - literary in this case as his novels were well-received - in appointments that needed advertising to the general public as this one did.

Again, he wondered whether or not he was doing the right thing in not handing out all the pieces of the jigsaw to his latest recruits. He had long since practiced the spy-master’s art of only passing on that which concerned each player in whatever game he happened to be playing, so that he was the sole beneficiary of the entire canvas, but this was a different scenario altogether. He knew in his heart, in his gut, he was just about doing what he thought was practical, (that in the long run his instincts were rarely inaccurate) but in this he was aware he could not employ the subtle chess-board moves that was his usual modus operandi.

What part of his brain, he wondered, prompted him to mention Allan Pinkerton to Daniel that time, and then later decide not to relate the connection with his father and the Chartist movement? Also, in instructing him to search out Lincoln King in the Crimea, some kind of introverted logic had advised him to give no background details.

He continued to mentally tick off the information that each man held in relation to his over-all plans and concluded that he had his reckoning right enough.

Lincoln King would only know he had to put Demetrius Karagoulis -K - in touch with Daniel, nothing more, surmising that he was employed by him, and Daniel would have no real reason to mention his quest for his brother Jonathan. How much information would Lincoln King see fit to pass on to Daniel with regard to his own connections to him? The Earl hazarded a guess that he would only say as much as was necessary. The only uncertainty would be if Daniel picked up on the fact that the Pinkerton Agency was involved and put his analytical mind to use.

Yes, he thought, the best thing to do was leave the cards to fall as they may, because in the not-so-distant future he would be virtually impotent to influence events on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

What he did need to do, he concluded, was send a letter by the diplomatic post via the US official cutter to Allan Pinkerton asking him to intercept Lincoln King on his return to New York and put him in the picture with regard to the forecast dates for the arrival at that Port of Daniel and his entourage.

He placed the papers in his briefcase, and pressed the desk buzzer for attention.

Charts, the most up-to-date from the Royal Navy’s cartographer, Mr Torkington had informed him with the relish redolent of an expert eye, themselves copied from the far more detailed ones of the American Navy - acknowledging the Earl of Tredomen’s hand in their availability to the voyage - almost the entire world measured and drawn to an exactness that was awe-inspiring. During the time it took for him to recuperate from his head wound after he had surprisingly slept solidly for a day and a half since boarding the clipper, The Velindre, and then ate like a wolverine followed by a recap on the series of lessons in Navigation, by a variety of means, of which he had already been the beneficiary while at Hafod under Mr Torkington’s tutorage, he and Daniel had been treated to an engrossing history of map-making from this re-born sailor.

Taking in the early days of Greek adventurers, through Mercator and his influence on the mathematics of it all that still lasted as a land guidance system as well as Ocean-going ones (the celestial one had been the most vivid as the skies had so far been better than a chalkboard with its flickering, twinkling canopy) and guiding them through the use of the sextant and ship’s chronometer as well as Mr Torkington’s own nautical almanac. Practice, he was sure, would see them both adept at finding their way almost anywhere on the globe, although it would take someone with a life-long experience in sailing to plot a course when none of the obvious signs were available. But it was one of those disciplines that he considered to be useful and not knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

The whole world laid out, he thought, even the vast emptiness of the Antarctic as accurately charted as was possible.

When he considered the initial journey he had made, in the opposite direction heading for the Crimean Peninsula, in the lurching, blundering and plodding troopship, the experience of flying the waves in this most elegant of ships was not to be compared; in the hands of someone less knowledgeable than Mr Torkington – his once Hafod-based tutor who, but for losing an arm in a ship-board accident would surely be taking high office in the Royal Navy by now - it would be a terrifying instead of exhilarating feeling. The vastly experienced, hand-picked crew conducted their duties with a clear love of the work and took great pleasure in initiating them – he more than his brother Daniel – in the intricacies of racing-speed sailing. It seemed to him that everyone on board had a sense of urgency about the task, even though working to different agendas. In fact, he surmised, if it wasn’t for Demetrius needing to make contact at some point along the European coast, they easily had sufficient food and water (courtesy of the British Army stores at Balaclava he was told) to get back without stopping at all. It seemed they had been given priority treatment there in anticipation of leaving tout suite, which he guessed but prudently did not seem fit to ask, had something to do with Daniel’s exploits for the Earl of Tredomen and the sealed bundle of papers he kept locked away in the cabin, although he had explained about the hefty bag of precious stones they had rescued from the stranded merchantman.

Chance had played a huge part in ensuring that he and Daniel had coincided in that frantic denouement on board the harbour-locked ‘Europa’, but what-if scenarios were exercises in futility that led nowhere and he refused to consider them.

His eyes, inexorable drawn to the vast, mosaic tapestry of the States of America, stared at the chart with something close to dismay.

Where could she be on this colossal stretch of land? How was he ever to find her with so many habitable places in which to be hidden away from him? It seemed now to him that the entire continent was inhabited to some degree or other – including the heart of the place - from all points of the compass.

Bethan, my Bethan, his anguished soul cried out, where are you?

He had quizzed each and every mariner on board about their personal knowledge of sailing so many seas, and had been daunted by the depth of information that surfaced. If his mind had not been able to conjugate the concept of vast distances while at Hafod, it was now even more overwhelmed by the reality of it all as the sailors told their tales. Even the shipboard voyage on the troopship had given him little awareness of the dimensions involved, as much of the time had been spent below decks and even that out in the open air had been more about perfecting the art of sharp-shooting, and even now, this flight across inter-connecting seas gave little indication with some kind of land mass invariably in sight.

No, it was the idea of nothingness stretching on and on without respite for something like weeks on end that fazed him utterly, although Mr Torkington (Captain Torkington!) explained to them in sober fashion that if they could somehow get used to accepting those interminable