An Awkward Commission E-Book

David Donachie

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: John Pearce
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 495

Beschreibung

After a number of months, a whirlwind of the press gang, service at sea, wild storms, bitter battles with the enemy and a promotion, John Pearce finally finds himself free to follow his own wishes, rather than being forced to serve any longer in King George's Navy. The same does not apply for the trio of Pearce's closest friends who, with him as their leader, call themselves the Pelicans. Unaware of this, and arriving in Portsmouth, Pearce feels certain he can free his comrades. However, on arrival and seeking to liberate his fellow Pelicans, Pearce is informed that the trio have been shipped out on another vessel, condemned to service because of Pearce's over-indulgence in the arms of a woman. Still haunted by his father's execution at the guillotine, and his guilt at arriving too late in France to save him, Pearce is determined to keep to this vow of liberation. When help is refused from all higher powers and Pearce refuses to surrender, he embarks on an adventure to free his friends with or without aid.

Leseprobe

An Awkward Commission

DAVID DONACHIE

To Jim & Les Davies without whom this book would not have been written.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

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

AUTHOR’S NOTE

About the Author

By David Donachie

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

The square was full of people, the ground covered in a putrid mixture of human and animal ordure, laced with blood and white viscous entrails that sucked at his boots. Try as he might, John Pearce struggled to make headway through the solid crowd, ogres that turned their hideous faces towards him with a terrifying grin or a wide open mouth, each yelling a different, indistinct message. In that mire at his feet he had to step over couples publicly copulating, the women sewing together their cockades of red, white and blue as they ground out their carnal pleasure with obvious glee. In the background stood the outline of a heavy wooden scaffold, the floor set high so that it was visible to all the dregs of Paris. On that wooden frame stood the lethal guillotine, the silver blade, caught by shafts of strong sunlight, dropping with a deadly thud at regular intervals, to be raised again and again, dripping blood, the whole accompanied by a constant, funereal drum roll, interspersed with exultant cries at raised, detached heads.

The winged horse came from nowhere and soon he was mounted, above both crowd and scaffold, looking down on the sea of faces that filled the huge stone-built quadrangle of the Place de la Revolution, and all the while that rhythmic thud continued. Very obvious was the snaking line of scarecrow-like victims that ran all the way from the scaffold steps back to the River Seine and along the bank of the sluggishly flowing river. There it broke up, one line extending across the Pont Neuf to the Conciergerie, stone walls ten-foot thick, grey and forbidding like a malignant womb, others to the prisons of Châtelet and La Force, each converging inmate waiting their turn to offer up their heads to the killing machine of the Revolution. Swooping down like Bellerophon astride Pegasus, he came face to face with his own father, moving along to his fate – not the man he had seen last, but the younger, healthy Adam Pearce who had raised him. He spoke, his deep, strong voice full of the passion for truth that had been his greatest asset, as well as the cause of his ultimate downfall.

For a brief moment John was a boy again, his hand warm in that of his only living parent, and the snaking line had gone. They seemed to be on a road of some kind, a brick pavé that led to a sparking citadel – all gleaming spires and snow-white walls – the very image of paradise shining in a never-reducing distance, perhaps the home he had never known, but always longed for. But that faded as the slow thud-thud-thud came again and he watched aghast as slowly and inexorably his father aged and withered, the hair going from black to grey, to white, the voice from power to a sickly wheeze, the body shrinking until he was reduced to a thin-haired and blood-drained head, held in the outstretched hand of a fat, leather-clad and grinning executioner, while behind and below him that vicious crowd screamed in a paroxysm of homicidal ecstasy.

It was the furious cry of a boatman that woke him, that and the summer sunlight streaming through an uncurtained window right onto his eyelids, though he had no knowledge of what was being shouted, only that fulsome curses were being employed. Pearce lay in the bed for a whole minute listening to that repeated thud before he could place it, and in doing so come to some knowledge of where he was. The night before seemed as misty a memory as the horrible dream from which he had just surfaced; his dry mouth and leather tongue, plus the sour taste on his palate told him that he had been drunk, long before the lump of swollen flesh at the back of his throat gave him some idea of how much he had indulged in open-mouthed snoring. The thudding sound continued and it took time for him to realise it was that of a boat snubbing on the wooden jetty outside and below his window, striking the timbers each time it was lifted by a wave running into the deepest reaches of Portsmouth harbour.

Lifting himself to drink from a pitcher by his side, he groaned at the pain that seared through the top of his head, swallowing greedily to turn his tongue from fur to flesh, as some of what had happened the day before came back to him, that and all that had occurred these last few months: a whirlwind of the press gang, service at sea, storms, fighting the enemy less often than authority, and in doing so establishing the kind of friendships that a life of wanderings with his radical father had never allowed. What now of the confidence with which he had arrived in Portsmouth, sure in the knowledge that a promise he had made to the trio with whom he had been press-ganged months before would be fulfilled; that they would, like him, have the freedom to follow their own wishes rather than stay as enforced sailors in King George’s Navy? He recalled the look of sheer pleasure on the Midshipman’s face as he informed this fellow, attired now in the uniform of a lieutenant, that those he had come to free were no longer in the anchorage or aboard HMS Centurion, but had been shipped out on another vessel bound for the Mediterranean, condemned to continue to serve because he had dallied for a day or two longer than he should have in the arms of a beautiful, wealthy and indulgent woman.

Stood on the deck of the 50-gun warship, he looked on in dazed silence, at a loss to make sense of what had occurred, as the carpenters worked away to repair the damage inflicted in the recent action, fitting new bulwarks and deck planking where they had been blown in or scarred by cannon fire, others pedalling fast-turning lathes, carving out the newel posts and uprights that would make up the replacement staircase rails. All around in the Spithead anchorage lay the might of Britain’s wooden walls, the great ships that were all that stood between tyranny and what the inhabitants of Albion took to be liberty.

All the while that midshipman stood there, silent but mocking, declining the idea that he might provide further explanation. The return journey across the anchorage seemed to add to that contempt, the hired wherry taking him past the damaged stern of Valmy, the 74-gun French ship that he, along with his companions, had helped to capture. Soon, no doubt, she too would be repaired, would be renamed under a British flag before being sent back to sea, there to challenge those vessels which had once been her consorts.

Ashore, Pearce had headed straight to a tavern crowded with soldiers, sailors and as many locals; dockyard mateys, costermongers, draymen and a sprinkling of fly types, ordering a flagon of French brandy and ‘damn the expense’, thus attracting attention to himself, for being now contraband, that was an expensive beverage. A fellow-drinker identified him as the hero of the recent action – he had seen him come ashore ten days before, the talk of a port that lived off the King’s Navy and loved a victory. That had led to bumper after bumper to celebrate the first true triumph of the latest French war, drinks consumed with relish by a man who had no desire to think, only to forget. Now he knew he was in a narrow bed, but not precisely where, knew he felt like death, but was wholly alive, knew that he still had on the breeches, silk stocking and silver-buckled shoes bought for him by the generous Lady Annabel Fitzherbert.

Sitting up, he could see his new coat, of dark blue, heavy broadcloth, was crumpled on the floor, along with his black silk naval hat. A quick feel of his purse told him it was still inside his breeches and still near-full, which led him to suspect that he had got very drunk on the coin and generosity of others, which was shaming. Head bent, Pearce reacted too sharply to the creaking door, and sent a shaft of pain through his temples, which meant the person who entered addressed a man with his eyes shut tight and his head in his hands.

‘There you are, sir, up an’ about at last. We had you down to sleep a month after the state you came to us in.’ The face, when he lifted his head and opened his eyes, was female, round, rosy-cheeked and affable, though the smile was without a single tooth, which gave the voice a lisping quality. ‘Now it strikes me, you bein’ the hero you are, that a proper breakfast is in order, that is after the necessary, of course.’

The ‘necessary’ turned out to be a herbal infusion of the inn-keeper’s own making, though there was a telling dose of alcohol in the brew, rough to be sure, Arrack most likely, given it burnt the back of his throat. He had to drink it straight down, for the maker of the potion stood before him, fists on a pair of hips so substantial that they would have stood comparison to a three-tun barrel. Her eyes were narrow and she seemed determined to ensure it went straight down to the seat of the problem for, as the landlady said, ‘Though the pain might be in your head, young sir, to be sure the seat of your malaise lies deep in the vital parts, in short, in your entrails, where the soul of man resides. The necessary, first, and perhaps a good evacuation, will see you renewed. Take my word for it, sir, for I have seen many a fellow in your condition and worse, my own late husband not least, in half a glass of sand you will be as right as rain and tuckin’ into a fine beefsteak or two washed down with my own true porter, or I, Peg Bamber, am not the widow of a blue-water sailor.’

Peg Bamber had the right of it; not that a clearer head and a well-satisfied belly brought much in the way of true relief, for John Pearce was faced in clarity with the same dilemma which had plagued him these last months – how to get his mates, those men he called his fellow Pelicans, off the ship in which they had been sent to sea. Sitting in his shirtsleeves, looking out of the window by which he sat – for Peg insisted he eat in his room; ‘Why, young sir, to enter the taproom is to invite a return to the state in which you came upstairs this forenight’ – Pearce ran his eye over the bustling inner port. There were one or two vessels tied up to the shore, and over the nearest water a pair in dry dock, but the main part of the armada was some way out, with a stream of boats and hoys carrying people and supplies to and fro.

His friends, Michael O’Hagan, Charlie Taverner and young Rufus Dommet had been on that very water no more than five days before, no doubt anxiously looking over the ship’s rail for a sight of him come to rescue them. He had failed them, just as he had so recently failed his own father. As elements of that dream with which he had awoken came back to him, he began to talk in order to mask out the feelings it induced.

‘The name confuses, sir,’ lisped Peg Bamber, when he alluded to the problem of the Pelicans.

‘We were all press-ganged not five months past from a tavern. It was called the Pelican and stood by the banks of the River Thames.’

‘London, sir, a hateful place, I am told, where it ain’t safe to walk the streets.’

Pearce took another draw on the tankard of porter, sure he could feel in his gut the way it was doing him good, sipping as he explained the illegality of what had happened that night, but leaving out the fact that he himself had been on the run from the law and a King’s Bench Warrant, and had only gone into the Pelican to escape pursuit and, if caught, imprisonment.

‘In seeking to secure ourselves against the malice of others, and as a badge of our shared misfortune, we adopted the name of Pelicans as a soubriquet.’

‘I have no notion of what a subrick is, sir, but I do know that pleading to me will get you not one whit forrard. The only authority that can gainsay your quandary is the Admiral himself.’

‘Howe.’

‘Why it’s as plain as the nose on your face,’ Peg insisted, lifting his plate and popping into her mouth the long slice of fat Pearce had trimmed from the edge of his beefsteak. ‘You must ask the Admiral to fetch them back. A fast pinnace will have no trouble coming up on a seventy-four, as long as her course is known, even a naval widow knows that.’

‘Admiral Lord Howe,’ said Pearce patiently, wondering if Peg really knew what she was talking about. He might consider himself no tarpaulin, but he did know that spotting another ship at sea, even if you had a fair notion of its course, was hit and miss at best, and in twenty-four hours, even at a medium rate of sailing, she could be a hundred miles down-Channel.

‘Black Dick Howe!’ Peg exclaimed, finally getting his drift. ‘Why, only God knows how a man can run a fleet of ships from Bath.’ Seeing the look on Pearce’s face, she added, ‘The crabbed old bugger has gone to take the waters, young sir, and no doubt to try and get his old bones a’fit for dalliance, which is fanciful in a man of his years, and all the while we are at risk of an enemy sailing in to burn and make devilment. It is to be hoped he can post-chaise back here faster than the French can cross the waters, the idle dog.’

‘It was he who said the matter would be taken care of.’

‘Then let us hope he remembers, though I has to say it ain’t common in those of his advanced years. He’s not more’n a lick and a spit off seventy, the old goat. Happen you should try Admiral Graves, who does all the work for Black Dick and, if rumour has it right, suffers the brickbats for it not bein’ done quick enough.’

One of Peg’s girls came into the room holding his coat and hat, the former having been steamed and pressed, while his hat had been brushed to remove what Peg called half the mud of the alleys in which he had rolled. The conversation that ensued as he dressed himself established who and what Graves was – second-in-command of the Channel fleet, and an irascible man with much to be irascible about.

‘You will need to boat out to his ship to see him at all,’ Peg added, with a loud disapproving sniff. ‘He abides to the rule that it is sinful for anyone to sleep ashore, admiral to mid, which makes him the devil incarnate to folk who make their coin from accommodating and feeding the likes of your good self. Instead he fills the purses of bum-boat men and their floating harlots. Not that tars don’t need comfort, sir, but…’

Pearce stopped the indignant flow by agreeing with her, then established that Admiral Graves was aboard his flagship, HMS Royal Sovereign.

‘Shall I send a girl to bespeak you a boat?’

‘Please, and I will settle what I owe in case I do not return.’

‘A hearty bill, sir,’ Peg exclaimed, opening her mouth to show pink gums. ‘You treated the good folk of Portsmouth well this forenight, and paid for more sore heads than your own. I’ll grant you the cure gratis, as is only fittin’ for a hero, the second I have had under my roof his present war.’

‘The second?’ said Pearce, distracted by the thought of what might be a substantial bill, and the disturbing thought that he might not be able to meet it.

‘Why yes, sir. I had a lad even younger under my eaves a month or two back, a midshipman as brave as you, sir, to judge by his tale. Young Mr Burns, for that was his name, took a ship from right under the noses of Jean Crapaud, out of the very harbour in which it was berthed if you please, and brought her back to her home shore…’

Peg Bamber stopped, non-plussed by the look of deep anger in John Pearce’s face.

‘I know Mr Burns, Madame, and I can assure you were the truth of his tale to be known he would be whipped rather than lauded.’ Pearce, recalling the pasty face of Toby Burns, of the boy’s utter uselessness and the bland betrayal he had perpetrated on himself and the very men he had come to Portsmouth to rescue, had to fight not to add more than that bitter condemnation. But he had to stop; it was no concern of this woman that Burns was a lying little toad, even if he could not suppress his feelings entirely. His voice, when he spoke, carried the strain of a man holding an exceedingly unpleasant memory in check.

‘I thank you, Mrs Bamber, for your care and attention.’

The reply was a pretty curtsy, even in a woman of her size, and mouth closed and frame diminished, it was possible to see the quite comely girl she must have once been. But the eyes had a sudden glint, when she added, ‘I’ll see to your account, sir.’

Several guineas lighter, John Pearce left Peg Bamber’s, making his way to the shoreline of the Common Hard, where the boat Peg’s girl had engaged was waiting, drawn up on the shingle. It turned out to be a family concern, a conjugal affair, and once paid a shilling in advance for their trouble, the husband and wife saw it as part of their task to entertain their passenger with an unrelenting account of mutual frustration – about their abode, the job from which they made their living, even their intimacy – with each in turn looking to him at some point for support.

‘A pig-sty, sir, that is where I live.’

‘Then it be above your station, that’s fer certain,’ spat the wife, a thick-armed crone with an unlit clay pipe clamped in her teeth. She looked to be twice as strong as her spouse, who was weedy and wiry, with a pinched unhealthy face, albeit perfectly able to match her pace on the oar. ‘Just like the stick you are. Yer not fit to be a crossing-sweeper.’

‘I would have to sweep hard to clear your filth.’ A look to the passenger followed, his eyes searching for sympathy from his own gender. ‘An’ no warmth, sir, not a drop of it, just a cold shoulder.’

‘Would that you had something to warm a woman, you spavined dog…’

Pearce tried to shut out the sound of their bickering and looked away so that neither could engage him in their cause. That dream surfaced again, in all its horrible clarity, because these were the kind of folk for whom his father had argued passionately all his life. Adam Pearce had travelled the length and breadth of the country, his son in tow, trying to better the lot of the dispossessed. He would speak at the stump of whichever place they stopped to lambast the comfortable and extol the intrinsic worth of the poor, who only needed an education to be as fine as those who saw themselves as their betters. And John Pearce had, for he was too young to do otherwise, shared such opinions, even as he sought to avoid being robbed of the contents of his hat, usually copper, rarely silver, by the offspring of the very audience his father was addressing. Those sentiments had even survived a spell in the Fleet prison, for Adam Pearce had a carapace of social faith every bit as strong as that of the most committed adherent of religion.

It was not one his son now shared. Age and growing independence, added to what he had seen in Paris in the two and a bit years they had spent there, had cured him. Were the pair on the oars the same kind of canaille who had emerged from the eastern slums of Paris to ruin the Revolution – filthy specimens with brains that could encompass no other thought than greedy violence, the types who had torn down the Bastille stone by stone? And if that was a laudable event, joyously hailed even in Britain as an end to royal tyranny, what followed over the months and years became progressively less so. He had seen the likes of this pair covered from head to bare foot in fresh blood, running under flaming torches through the streets of Paris, bearing heads on pikes that they had hacked off from their dead victims, and screaming of how many more would die.

‘Name, sir?’ demanded the boatman. ‘We’s a-coming under Royal Sovereign’s counter.’

‘Pearce, John Pearce,’ he replied, looking up at the towering three-decker, and the mass of gilded carving that decorated her stern. Then he added a word that still sounded bizarre to his ears: ‘Lieutenant.’

Once alongside, the fellow called over his shoulder to the entry port, a dark hole in the ship’s side, framed by the climbing battens that would be needed to get aboard at sea. Here, they had fitted a long sloping gangway.

‘Lieutenant Pearce seeking permission to come aboard, your honour.’

‘Your honour?’ called a voice from the interior. ‘You ain’t talking to me, that’s fer certain.’ Two sailors emerged, boat-hooks at the ready, one taking the prow of the wherry to haul it in, the other more rigid to steady the approach of the stern. ‘Boat your oars, fellows, for if’n you scrape the paint it’ll be my guts.’

‘One of them’s a woman I reckon, Clem,’ said the other sailor.

‘You don’t say!’ Clem shouted, looking hard at the female in the boat, all wild grey hair and wrinkled skin. ‘Then make sure when I is soused and ashore, mate, that I stay well clear of her, for Old Nick hisself would blanch to be seen coupling with that.’

‘One of these days, husband, I might find a tar with enough to please a woman, but I doubt this be the one.’

‘I make you right there, Susie, my love,’ her husband replied, in the softest and most defensive of voices, making it clear that civility came to them only when they were faced with an external insult.

On what now seemed a steady platform, Pearce stood up, wondering at a life like theirs, in which the next meal had been probably uncertain since birth, but he was soon obliged to think more of his own immediate safety as the wherry was pulled in, nearly knocking him off-balance.

About to step onto the gangway, he stopped dead when the sailor called Clem cried out, ‘Right foot first, sir, where has you put your wits?’

He had to skip to get his right foot on the wooden platform first, and thus he avoided the opprobrium of condemning the whole ship to perdition through the act of ignoring a superstition. Up he went to enter the dim interior, to be greeted by a midshipman who raised his hat. Pearce did likewise, distracted as he glanced along the empty maindeck, then wondered at the look on the boy’s face as he put it back on. Quickly he raised it again, half-turning to salute the unseen quarterdeck, mentally kicking himself to remember the things that an officer was supposed to do on coming aboard.

‘I have come to see Admiral Graves.’

‘Have you indeed, sir,’ replied the boy. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No.’

The boy sighed. ‘Then I fear you are in for a long wait. Best bespeak the officer in charge of the anchor watch and see if he will allow you the use of the wardroom.’

‘Obliged.’

‘Follow me, sir.’

He was led across the gloomy deck to a wide stairway that led up to the quarterdeck. There they found the man presently in charge of the ship, likewise a lieutenant, in an unadorned blue working coat, who, on being introduced, immediately enquired as to the date of his commission. Admitting it to be only days old brought forth a puffed chest and the information that this man was his superior by three years. Only then did he ask his name, and a raised eyebrow went with the reply.

‘Pearce, of the Griffin? The fellow who was spoke of in the local journal only last week?’ Trying to look modest, Pearce nodded. ‘Damn you, Tait,’ the officer barked at the mid, ‘you best learn, you pint-sized blackguard, to execute proper introductions.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the boy, abashed, though clearly he was equally confused.

‘You will be.’ With Pearce, all condescension disappeared. ‘Allow me, sir, to shake your hand, for that was a worthy exploit, and it warms our cockles to look out over the taffrail and see the ship you helped to take. I would be less than honest, sir, if I did not tell you it stirs a little jealousy also, for we would all wish to have such luck.’

A vision of the bloodshed that had attended the capture floated into Pearce’s mind, which sat uneasily with the concept of luck.

‘The Admiral has much to attend to and a queue of supplicants, but I am sure your name will see you well up the list.’ There was a pause them, before the Lieutenant added, ‘But were you not a midshipman, sir?’

‘I was, sir, but the King, at his levee, saw fit to insist that I be promoted, hence the newness of my commission. The commander of HMS Griffin was made a post captain at the same time.’

Pearce did not add that the Earl of Chatham, First Lord of the Admiralty, had objected to his elevation only to be over-ruled by his own younger brother, the King’s absurdly young First Minister. He was later told by the lovely Lady Annabel that William Pitt was more concerned with the state of the monarch’s health and the maintenance of his government than the propriety of promoting a man who lacked any of the qualifications that the post demanded. In a parliament riven with competing ideas and policies, Pitt commanded a tenuous majority, which required constant manoeuvring to sustain. War with France was not universally popular, indeed there were those who would make peace on the morrow if they could just gain power. The ministry of Pitt was based on Tory support, but that was not unanimous, yet the opposition Whigs were no more united, some sections inclining to the government view that the Revolution must be contained, the majority of that faction lining up behind Pitt’s great rival, Charles James Fox, to challenge the government on every issue, from the war itself, to the prosecution of the conflict, egged on by the power-hungry heir to the throne.

Pitt’s party was the one favoured by King George, who could not be other than opposed to a radical polity in Paris which had executed his fellow monarch, King Louis of France, a few months previously. But George III had been declared mad just three years before – which had created a political crisis – and it was feared by all that the affliction which had rendered him unfit to govern would return. The Prince of Wales and his Whig supporters longed for such a thing, for in a declared Regency, with the King’s heir apparent as head of state, they, not Pitt’s Tories, would hold the power. To the King’s First Minister, indulging an unstable king with an inappropriate promotion was obviously a small price to pay for the security of office.

The advancement of Colbourne to the rank of post captain brought forth a gleam of near-avarice in Pearce’s fellow-officer. ‘Then I envy your Mr Colbourne, sir, his promotion, even more than I envy you.’

‘He lost an arm, and I do believe he has to face a court-martial.’

‘A formality, sir, nothing more.’ Clearly, to this fellow, the loss of a limb or a ship counted for less than Colbourne’s new rank. ‘What is that when you are made post? Why, a man on the captain’s list is a man made for life, with a flag on the horizon if the Good Lord spares you. I long for nothing more, sir, as I am sure you do too. Mr Tait, take Lieutenant Pearce to the wardroom as my guest, and tell the Steward that he is to waive the normal contribution we ask of visiting officers to our fund.’

Pearce was about to demure when the lieutenant added, ‘It is the bane of life on a flagship, sir, the law of hospitality. We are obliged to levy a charge, for we are called upon to feed all and sundry as they wait for their interview, which would devastate our private stores without recompense. But you, sir, are an exception, a worthy guest. Meanwhile, I will tell the Admiral’s clerk who’s come a’calling.’

To enter the wardroom of a vessel this size, a hundred guns or more, was a revelation to John Pearce. It could not be said to be spacious, yet compared to that allotted to the common seamen, or what he had experienced so far, it was luxury indeed, with a long table across the room and small screened-off cabins to either side. Three marine officers and another lieutenant were playing backgammon, while others, close to flickering candles or the five transom casements, read their books or wrote letters.

‘Forgive me, Mr Pearce, while I inform the Premier of your presence.’

Going to rear the boy rapped on a wooden door. There was another on the opposite side, a private space of proper cabins for the two most senior officers under the Captain. The disinterest with which he had been greeted on entering the wardroom, for visitors were so commonplace, evaporated as the First Lieutenant emerged from his quarters, a beaming smile on his face and a shout on his lips.

‘Steward, fetch the best claret, we have a fellow on board deserving of a toast.’

Named, they gathered round him, trying to feed him cup after cup of wine, but Pearce, obliged by the welcome to relate every detail of the recent action, stayed as abstemious as was possible, knowing that he needed a clear head for what was to come. More troubling was the technicality of the questions he was asked about courses, wind strength, gun calibres and the effect of various weights of shot on the lighter scantlings of a French ship, all of which he struggled to answer out of sheer ignorance.

He wanted to tell them that his entire time at sea would not amount to much more than five months – that he had read his books but not enough. Yet he knew that such disclosure would be unwelcome, so he tried his best to satisfy their curiosity, drawing the elements of the action on the wardroom table with a finger dipped in his wine. It was with some relief that he was finally dragged off to see the Admiral, with an invitation from the First Lieutenant to be their guest that afternoon at dinner. Young Tait was again obliged to guide him, this time past two marine sentries who stood at the door to the anteroom of the Admiral’s quarters, and once inside that, to introduce him to an officious-looking civilian at a desk.

‘Your business, sir?’

The voice was bored and dismissive, but that was as nothing to the look of utter disbelief on the fellow’s pasty face as Pearce replied. His voice had all the arrogance of the jobsworth, and when he spoke, it was icy. ‘You have come all this way to importune the effective commander of His Majesty’s Channel Fleet on the fate of a trio of ordinary seamen, indeed landsmen, who are, I must tell you, now sailing to be part of a fleet that will be commanded by another admiral, Lord Hood?’

‘They are not ordinary to me, sir. They are my closest friends.’

‘Then I wonder at your connections, sir, for it is uncommon for an officer to so term a sailor.’

‘Perhaps more of that would make the Navy a happier occupation! Lord Howe specifically alluded to their case, sir, in the most positive manner, and were he here I am sure he would oblige me by fulfilling the promise he made. I have no doubt that Admiral Graves would be only too keen to carry out the expressed wishes of the actual commanding officer.’

The look that got, as the clerk stood up to reveal a body shaped like a pear, no shoulders and a fat behind, was tantamount to a denial; in fact it implied that pigs might fly. ‘Wait here. I will ask Admiral Graves if he will see you.’

Half a minute passed before the man returned. ‘I am to show you through, though it is only your name that gains you an interview. Do not hold out any hope that the Admiral will oblige you.’

‘Then there is no purpose in going in,’ snapped Pearce, who, though restrained in his consumption of the wardroom claret, had drunk too much to suffer any hint of condescension.

‘None, except that it is in the shape of an order that you do so, one which the marines behind you would insist you obey.’

The Admiral sat at a round table, a slim man of some height, with a white wig over a long, greying face and a firm, jutting-out jaw. The table was covered in books and papers, all of them, from what Pearce could observe, official. He looked up at the man before him, standing to attention with his hat under his arm, with the quizzical expression of a less-than-pleased adult faced with a recalcitrant child.

‘I wanted to look you over for a second time, Pearce, for I was at the reception when you first came ashore.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I do not recall. There were so many senior officers present.’

‘I was happy to praise you then, but not now. I am here to tell you that your elevation to your present rank is nothing short of a disgrace. There cannot be a serving officer who knows the truth of your promotion who is not incensed by it. Six years’ sea time is six years, sir, and the position you hold demands it, as well as the knowledge a man gains in that period, something you ain’t got under your belt.’

‘Then you will be glad to know, sir, that I have no intention of applying for a place aboard a ship.’ That came out without thinking, and was acceptable, as well as being true. Had Pearce left it there he might have held some sway with the Admiral, but the devil was in him as it often was when faced with authority, and what sympathy he might have elicited went right out the casement windows as he added, ‘Nothing would induce me to serve in such a body. Your Navy, sir, is riddled with tyranny and open corruption and I can only suppose that those with the power to chastise the men who run the institution are afflicted with a kind of blindness. The trio I have alluded to were, like me, illegally pressed into the Navy by a blackguard called Barclay—’

‘Ralph Barclay?’

‘The very same.’

‘I know of Captain Barclay.’

‘Then you will know, sir, that he is not fit for the rank he holds. The man is a martinet of the worst kind and a liar to boot—’

He was interrupted by a snarl. ‘You will withdraw that remark, sir, for you are taking liberties with the name of a respected officer in the King’s Navy.’

‘If he, sir, is respected, it says little for those he serves with, or under.’

‘Get out.’

‘I demand you accede to the wishes of Lord Howe and do something to get those men back.’

‘You can demand all you like, Pearce, and I must warn you if you do not do as I say you will be demanding from the cable tier, and you will be in chains while you do so. Your friends can serve for a decade for all I care. I repeat my words: get out!’

As Pearce turned to go, the Admiral added his final insult. ‘And get off my flagship with the utmost speed, for you presence defiles the deck.’ Then he shouted, ‘Marines, escort this blackguard to the entry port.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘Mr Glaister’s compliments, sir. He believes we have a sight of the French coast, and judging by the skyline, despite the recent blow, he feels we will make a perfect landfall.’

‘Please inform Mr Glaister I will be on deck presently. And request him to signal HMS Firefly, although I daresay Captain Gould already knows.’

Crouched over the muster book of HMS Brilliant, Captain Barclay did not deign to look up at Midshipman Farmiloe, who, having delivered what he thought was a dramatic message deserving of attention, was obliged to turn about and leave the Captain’s cabin in a rather crestfallen manner, though he did elicit a nod and a smile from the Captain’s pretty young wife, busy at a piece of embroidery in which the name of the frigate was already completed. Several cushions with similar covers lay along the bench seats, giving, if not a feminine touch to the place, at least an atmosphere more gentle than that one would associate with such an austere commander as Ralph Barclay.

From above their heads came the sound of repairs, as they had, in the last twenty-four hours, come through a vicious and sudden squall of the type that plagued ships in the Mediterranean, the kind that threw vessels on their beam ends with scant warning, so forceful and unexpected was the wind. Ralph Barclay was now listing the damage, as well as the materials – timber, cordage and canvas – that was needed to make matters right, employing a small percentage of exaggeration that any examining clerk at the Navy Board would have to be eagle-eyed to spot. Given that he was personally responsible for everything of that nature on the ship, and could be obliged to pay from his own pocket for unjustified wastage, he was, in time-honoured fashion, taking the opportunity to create a handy excess.

Next came the muster book where he listed, alongside all the other things that pertained to the existence of his crew, the fact that two of them had broken limbs, and one a dislocation of the shoulder. The surgeon’s report lay by his hand, which told him one break was clean, the other not, and an estimate of how long each would be under medical care. It was a tedious duty that should have fallen to a clerk, but the then impecunious Captain Barclay had sailed from England without one, keeping for himself a proportion of the pay for the office. Running his finger down the list, of tobacco bought, clothing items deducted from pay, and the cost of treating their venereal afflictions, he came to the pencilled name of Ben Walker, lost overboard two weeks before. The time had come to use ink, and to discharge that sailor as D.D., dead in the execution of his duties, with the storm as an excuse. Keeping him on the muster for a few extra days made up for some of the depredations of the rats that infested the lower reaches below decks.

This was carried out with the connivance of the purser, who stood to gain more than the captain by a little judicious accounting, for it would transpire that the late Ben Walker had bought quite a quantity of tobacco in the last two weeks, the cost of which, since it was the Purser’s private venture, would go straight into his account. Provided their ledgers agreed, no one would spot a discrepancy, nor would an eyebrow be raised to the notion of a man lost at sea, given it was commonplace. For every man that the Navy lost in battle, they lost ten to shipwreck, accident and disease.

‘Is not Mr Farmiloe’s news of some importance, Captain Barclay?’

Ralph Barclay looked up and smiled, struck, not for the first time, by the picture of sheer loveliness Emily presented – one of perfect harmony with the life she lived. All awkwardness was now gone; the months at sea had inured her to whatever the elements or shipboard life could bring her way, and he was even pleased at what he called her fripperies – those bits of decoration she seemed determined to create in order to make more domestic their living quarters. Gone was the gauche and embarrassed seventeen-year-old girl who had come aboard at Sheerness, who in her ignorance had embarrassed both his purse and his authority: here was that creature grown to womanhood complete, though she had only added one year to her actual age. In short, she had become the perfect wife to a serving sea captain, and the twenty year gap between them – once a concern – seemed now to be irrelevant.

‘It is vital, my dear, and I would have been most put out had it not come, but it does not do to show too much zeal in these things, as I have told you before.’

Emily Barclay, even seated, managed an ironic bob. ‘The captain’s majesty?’

‘Precisely. I am no enemy to enthusiasm, in its place, but...’

Ralph Barclay followed that pause with a smile, for that was one of the things that Emily Barclay had not understood in the early days, the way a captain must be seen in the eyes of those under him; stern but fair, remote yet approachable, a balancing act between tolerance and punishment that was difficult to achieve and hard to maintain. He felt he had managed it, despite some initial hiccups, and he had been helped by some good fortune in the article of prizes which meant the crew could expect an addition to their pay, which always aided contentment. It was not pleasant to recall the way that his wife had challenged him over that fellow Pearce, who he had been forced to punish, and then been obliged to get rid of. She would not do that now, she would know better; that justice must sometimes gave way to authority.

‘Would you care to join me on deck, my dear?’

‘Is there anything to see, husband?’

‘I doubt it. Land will have been spotted from the masthead, and even in an hour, given the heat of the day, it will be no more than a smudge on the horizon.’

‘Then if you do not mind, husband, I will visit the men who suffered injury in yesterday’s storm.’

‘Of course,’ he replied, before calling to his steward. ‘Shenton, my hat.’

As he closed the muster book, Ralph Barclay promised himself that, at the first opportunity, he would employ a clerk to do the work that he had just completed. It would have to be someone who understood the meaning of discretion, as well as the need for certain reservations with the absolute facts; no captain could afford to tell the Admiralty and Navy Board everything, and a certain security lay in the fact that, though they claimed to be zealous, those clerks were, in fact, only too human. He had had to decline his wife’s offer to undertake the work, for he knew she, of all people, being so delightfully ingenuous, would not comprehend that particular requirement.

His officers removed their hats as he stepped onto the quarterdeck, each acknowledged by no more than a nod. First he looked at the slate, and the course that had been chalked on, knowing that the ship’s master, Mr Collins, a man of an extremely insecure temperament, would be made nervous by his action. His frigate, HMS Brilliant, with the sloop HMS Firefly in her wake, was making some four knots on a steady south-west breeze that was coming in nicely over her larboard quarter. He cast his glance upwards, to where, amongst the taut sails, the topmen were working, splicing ropes that had parted in the squall and re-roving blocks that had come apart from the falls. Forward, over the waist, the sailmaker and his assistants were sitting in a line repairing a damaged topsail, their long needles flying through the thick canvas, the whole of the work on deck and aloft overseen by Mr Sykes, the bosun. Here was another cause for satisfaction, a crew that, due to his constant training and stern attitude, had become efficient at their work, and warrant officers like Sykes, who had seemed uncertain at first, now relaxed and competent. They were not at the peak of perfection – that took years at sea to achieve – but they were nothing like the rabble with which he had put to sea.

Likewise, in his First Lieutenant, he had an officer who understood what was required of him; that the deck be spotless, the cannonballs in the rope garlands black and chipped free of rust, the cannon tight to the ship’s side, idle ropes perfectly coiled and the crew quiet and industrious, yet ready at a moment’s notice to go from peaceful sailing to fighting readiness. That had not been so when he had set off from Sheerness, but good fortune had attended the cruise of HMS Brilliant in that respect too, ridding him of subordinates inclined to be contentious, and replacing them with men who understood the need to obey.

‘Mr Glaister?’

The lanky Scotsman, with his thin, near skeletal face and startlingly blue eyes, replied to the implied question in a lilting, Highland tone. ‘Masthead reports that our landfall is mountainous, sir, which leads me to suspect that if we are not dead set for the Roads of Toulon, then we are not a hair’s-breadth off it.’

‘Then, Mr Collins, you need to be congratulated.’

The master took the compliment, even though he knew how much of a hand his captain had had in the plotting of the course. So did every officer aboard, but praise from Ralph Barclay was rare enough to be prized, even when it was not truly warranted.

‘Mr Glaister, I take it the work of repair will be completed before we can see the shore from the deck.’

‘I will make sure of it, sir.’

Ralph Barclay picked up a telescope and trained it on the distant shore, though it hardly made it any more clear. ‘Good, for if it is Toulon they will have lookouts on the mountain, and communications with the port, and some expectation of the imminent arrival of a reconnaissance vessel.’

‘You mean they might wish to chase us off, sir?’

‘It is what I would do, Mr Glaister, it is what I would do.’

Replacing the telescope in the rack, Ralph Barclay walked to the weather rail and began to pace up and down that space between the poop and the waist which all vacated, it being the preserve of the captain when he was on deck. His orders obliged him to reconnoitre the main enemy naval base and report back to Admiral Hotham and the fleet the state of readiness of the French capital ships in the port. If the commanding enemy admiral had any sense he would have frigates at sea to intercept such a mission. That they had raised the land without such a sighting implied that he had not. What did it mean? Was the Toulon fleet in the kind of disarray rumoured to have ruined French naval strength, with experienced officers fled from their posts for fear of the guillotine? Or was it a ruse?

‘Mr Glaister. Break out a tricolour flag and raise it to the masthead.’

‘Sir.’

‘And keep our own pennant ready to replace it in an instant. I would also like to shorten sail so that the repairs will be completed and the men will have had their dinner by the time the shore is hull up.’

‘Should we clear for action, sir?’

‘After the officer’s dinner, Mr Glaister. As you know, my wife goes to great trouble to help the cook prepare a memorable meal. It would not do to upset her.’

He looked at them all then, in a sweeping glance that had everyone avoiding his eye. There was not a man jack aboard, before and abaft the mast, who was not as jealous as hell of their uxorious captain and his lovely lady. To see her on deck, common enough in benign weather, was to induce feelings best left ashore, some mere nostalgia for hearth and home, others more carnal, that mixed with resentment that Barclay should be so favoured. He was so much his wife’s senior and did not reckon himself handsome or very attractive a person – something with which most of his crew, had he asked them, would have concurred, but he had her companionship in all respects in a way denied to the others aboard, if you discounted the Gunner’s wife, exasperating to men who had not been ashore for months. The satisfaction to be gained from the knowledge of their emotions was one of which he could never get enough, for Ralph Barclay reckoned that he had lived a life that owed him some recompense for miseries suffered, slights endured and ambitions thwarted. Now he was enjoying the feeling of justified redress, as he turned on his heel and left the quarterdeck, his parting words: ‘Mr Glaister, once you are sure all is in hand, please join me in my cabin. I need to hear your opinion on who amongst the ship’s corporals is to replace the Master-at-Arms. Mr Lutyens informs me he will be unable to fulfil his duties for some six weeks.

‘Mr Lutyens.’

Lutyens looked up from the large journal in which he was writing. Habit made him half-close it so that what was written could not be seen, silly really, for of all the people aboard this young lady would be the last person to pry; she was too well-mannered.

‘I came to see if our injured are comfortable.’

‘They will certainly be made more so by your presence, Madame. I fear they see in me a rough and indifferent mendicant.’

Emily waved away such a suggestion, in truth to cover a degree of embarrassment, for gossip from her husband’s officers, as well as the odd overheard remark from the men, had it that Lutyens was a touch insensitive in the article of pain, much given to applying herbal treatments which he supposed to be relieving, but failed to dull as much as the method which sailors knew and trusted, rum or laudanum. And she was slightly put out by the way he had so immediately shut his journal, as though whatever secrets he had could possibly interest her. For once, she decided to let him know her feelings, though she made a great effort to sound good-humoured.

‘I should sand your latest scribblings, sir, for if your finger slips from holding open the page they will be rendered unreadable.’

The feathery eyebrows on his rather fish-like face were raised at what was, regardless of the delivery, nothing short of a direct admonishment, something new from the Captain’s wife. That would be an interesting observation to add to what he had been writing, which was in the nature of the changes in the crew since the ship first weighed. The journal contained everything he had learnt since coming aboard, part of his study into the workings of a ship and the people who sailed it. Above his head, in a secure locker, were the notebooks which he had filled on a daily basis before transcribing his interpretations into this journal, which would, one day, be the basis of a treatise which would make his name in the circle of savants to which he aspired.

In future, those wishing to understand the strange nature of shipboard life and the people who lived it would read Heinrich Lutyens on the subject, and be informed on such diverse matters as reactions to impressment, arbitrary and accepted punishment, the relations between a certain type of officer and the men they led, the tensions that existed in the wardroom, where he ate daily, as well as in the living and sleeping quarters of the crew. Perhaps more interesting was the nature of warship captaincy, with the additional bonus that with his wife aboard, Captain Barclay had added the study of the conjugal relationship between people of very different backgrounds, ages and perceptions of the world in what was, to say the least, a peculiar setting.

‘Mr Coyle, who has the compounded leg fracture, is beyond that screen. I am sure he will welcome a visit.’

‘Is he in pain?’

‘Of course, and that will be increased if he moves in any way. The other fellow, with the broken arm, I sent to help the cook as even one arm is enough to throw wood into an oven. As you know, the Captain does not like men to be idle.’

It was indeed a strange world to a landsman, and despite his office Lutyens considered himself to be that, not least in the variety of souls that were contained within the confines of these wooden walls. Every vice was present, and each person was an individual to be studied for their tics and emotions, but more importantly for the subtle changes that emerged as the time spent in the confines of the ship grew. As Emily Barclay went through the screen, he did as she had suggested, opened his journal and sanded the half-dry ink. Then, reflecting on the changes in her, he went back over the observations he had made from the very first time they had met.

Such words as ‘shy’, and ‘tense’ leapt out at him, and he knew that at the time of writing they had been accurate. Then had come the day when she had stood up to her husband over what she saw as chastisement of an innocent man. From that day on, his observations had told of a changed woman.

‘Mam,’ said Coyle, seeking to ease himself up from the cot on which he lay, that made more awkward by an attempt to touch his forelock. He was a stocky fellow, with enough scars on his face to hint at a life of hardship.

‘Please do not bestir yourself, Mr Coyle. The surgeon was most adamant on that point. I have only come on behalf of my husband to see how you fare.’

Coyle kept his face bland then, as still as his bad leg, for the notion that Ralph Barclay cared two hoots for his welfare was sheer bollocks and he feared that might show. That his wife might was possible; he did not know her well enough to say though she appeared a kindly soul, but he knew his captain both by reputation and experience. If he was respected for being a hard horse, he was not loved, and he had shown on this voyage that he would flog any man who crossed him even if the offence fell outside the Articles of War.

‘I must confess to knowing very little of you, Mr Coyle, which is shameful given the time we have spent at sea. Now I have a chance to make amends. Would it be too much of a strain for you to tell me something of yourself?’

Again Coyle had to keep a straight face, for once his leg had been set in splints, and he had rested from a night of deep discomfort, he had suffered a long interrogation by the surgeon; where was he from, did he have any family, what had brought him into the Navy, where did he expect that such service would take him, all jotted down in one of those little notebooks that Lutyens was never without. Suspicious that the surgeon had the means to withhold relief from pain, Coyle had said more than he normally would to anyone. It was not that he was a secretive man, but life had taught him that it was best to keep what was personal to himself.

‘Not much to tell, Mam. I was a soldier afore I came to the Navy, which is why I has my rating.’ Seeing the look of curiosity, he added, ‘Master-at-Arms aboard ship is often an office filled by an ex-soldier, seeing as we know about weapons and their use, for there be precious few tars of my acquaintance who know bug— ’owt about them, which can be mortal should we get into a fight. Half of them I teach are more like to shoot their foot off than maim an enemy, and as for wielding a cutlass, why they’re more danger to their own.’

Emily Barclay had come below to comfort Coyle, to ask if he had any family, would he like her to pen a letter for him, always assuming he lacked the ability to write himself. The idea that came into her head then was sudden and thrilling.

‘Would you teach me to shoot, Mr Coyle?’

He stirred in surprise and pain flashed over his face. ‘You, Mam?’

‘Why not? I am told you will be laid up for some time, but you will be capable of some movement.’

‘Shooting muskets ain’t for ladies, Mam.’

‘Why ever not, Mr Coyle? Am I not aboard a fighting vessel?’

‘The very idea. Why, Captain Barclay would have my guts at the suggestion.’

‘Mr Coyle,’ Emily replied, with a look on her face that brooked no argument, ‘you must leave the feelings of Captain Barclay to me.’

It was late afternoon before HMS Brilliant