A Sea of Troubles (17 page)

That brought a long powder flash from the muzzle and another in the pan. Toby was crawling backwards as that was being repeated all around him, seeking to get deeper into the undergrowth so as to avoid what must surely follow, hand-to-hand fighting in the dark with bayonets, knives and clubs, combat at which he knew he would be useless. The forest was full of shouting, screaming and fusillades but he had no notion beyond that of what was happening and that went on for what seemed to his ears an age. Then it began to fade, the voices becoming, if not faint, more distant, the sound of discharged muskets
beginning to echo all around rather than close, and thankfully no more balls cracking overhead.

Silence was slow to descend and he lay there, feeling the rivulet of fluid running down his spine and wondering whether it was safe now to move. About to get to his knees he heard a rustling sound and that induced near panic, for this Corsica was a strange place and who knew what demons and bloodthirsty creatures resided in these forests? To stay still was to face whatever was making the noise; to move might mean pursuit but it was the lesser evil so, on hands and knees, Toby began a slow crawl, he thought back the way he came, reassured when the ground beneath him began to slope and the treetops opened just enough for him to see the star-filled sky.

That did not show him the butt of the musket that clouted him on the top of his head; lacking a hat it might have killed him. As it was he was too stunned to react when a voice spoke a rough command and a hand grabbed his collar and sought to drag him upright. That brought forth a squeal and got him a hard slap on the face and a demand for silence. The word might be the same but the pronunciation was not; the man holding him and now shaking him ferociously was French.

‘He could be out there wounded and in need of help, sir,’ Farmiloe insisted. ‘I do not ask that anyone else goes out, but I will.’

‘I must forbid it, young man,’ Walker responded.

‘And I too,’ Nelson added. ‘We raise a truce flag when daylight comes and ask to be allowed to recover our wounded, the same to be granted to the enemy.’

‘Do you think they will agree?’

‘It is common practice,’ Walker said, ‘but it will depend, Mr Farmiloe, on their having people to search for. If they have none they may decline.’

‘How long till daylight, sir?’

‘A couple of hours, which you know very well,’ Nelson insisted, ‘so I suggest that you would be better served getting some sleep than standing around fretting and that I must make into an order.’

‘Sir.’

‘He’s a brave young fellow,’ Walker whispered as soon as Farmiloe was out of earshot.

‘Aye, we ask a lot of our youngsters and in my experience they never let us down. The pity is you never got to spike the guns.’

‘I cannot believe that they were forewarned, sir, though it is possible that they saw what damage their cannon did this morning and therefore anticipated that we could not leave matters be. My impression, and I admit it is only that, was that the French were as surprised as were we when we made contact. One musket going off in panic is what began the exchange.’

‘Well, we came out of it relatively unscathed, did we not?’

‘More scratches from the undergrowth than wounds, sir.’

‘Then we are left to pray for the safety of Mr Burns.’

Sat on the cold stone floor the young man about to be the subject of their prayers was rubbing the top of his head, which was very sore and sticky with dried blood,
not forgetting his other aches and pains, for he had not been gently handled by his captors as they dragged him back up the hill to Fort Monteciusco. There had been a brief and pointless conversation with an officer who did not speak English, and in failing to get much response from a groggy non-French-endowed captive the officer had ordered, Toby presumed, that he be tossed into this cell, all rough stone walls and lit by a single piece of smelly tallow.

He had shed tears at first, but pain aside it soon occurred to the youngster that he was, in this cell, which was well below the parapet onto which he had been dragged, a lot safer than being in the redoubt with his fellow Britons, given the cannon that had been used to such effect was no doubt being prepared to do so again and he was presumably to the rear of it. Then there were the thoughts based on opinions from his own side. If the French could not sortie out from Calvi and if the outer British perimeter was held, lacking relief it was only a matter of time before they would be obliged to surrender.

If that happened he would be freed and surely the French would feed him in the meantime, though they might, and this was a worry, employ torture. Yet they had showed no desire to that yet and as he ruminated on the pros and cons of being a prisoner it occurred that he would be more likely to survive in a deep cell than out on the battle area. And incarcerated he could not study for his examination, which he dreaded. Being a captive had to give him an excuse to decline to take part.

At dawn, when the request was made for a truce to recover any wounded, the French were very decent; they
admitted they had as a prisoner a young officer and that although he was wounded it was superficial and he was not in any serious danger, though any notion that he should be paroled to return was declined. An English speaker was found to inform Toby Burns of this outcome and the youngster had to struggle to look crestfallen, though he was, in truth, pleased. Where he was, he felt, left him secure and safe for the first time since he had set foot aboard HMS
Brilliant
and come under the tutelage of Ralph Barclay.

‘It is, Sir Roger, a travesty and an insult to my professional standing and I demand to see Lord Howe to have the matter redressed.’

‘His Lordship has retired to Bath to take the waters.’

He’ll need a stiff brandy when I am finished with him, Barclay thought angrily, what was being thought upon in his head very obvious on his countenance, a fact which certainly registered with Admiral Curtis. The fog of war had cleared somewhat and it was now known for a fact that towards the closing stages of the 1st June battle that the elderly Howe, exhausted, had retired to his cabin to rest, leaving the quarterdeck of his flagship, and consequently direction of the battle, to his captain of the fleet, before whom Barclay was now sitting and demanding answers.

‘For a fleet commander he seems strangely reluctant to carry out his responsibilities.’

Sir Roger Curtis had very pronounced, black eyebrows, which moved up significantly at such a remark from what was a mere captain. ‘I will pass on to
His Lordship your opinion of his capabilities. I am sure he will appreciate it.’

‘You may also pass on that I, and I am not alone, demand that some kind of despatch be sent to support the original communication to the Government which gives full praise to those officers left out, and thereby diminished, and now see their reputation in question.’

‘Captains who were slow to obey orders?’

‘I complied with my orders with as much alacrity as circumstances dictated.’

Curtis sat forward. ‘I was on the deck of the flagship at Lord Howe’s side, Captain Barclay. It was I who ordered, on his instructions, that the requisite signals be sent aloft and I can tell you from where I stood you took a damned long time to get into action, when you were quite specifically directed to close with the enemy.’

‘Which I did as soon as it was prudent to do so.’

‘Damn you, sir,’ Curtis exploded. ‘It is not your place to be prudent, it is your duty to obey and do what you are told.’

Ralph Barclay refused to be cowed. ‘I waited to avoid being caught in the fire of the flagship, which would have done more damage to HMS
Semele
than that inflicted by the enemy. Or would you have my hands die under the balls of your cannon? The vessel I engaged, I would remind you, was so successfully handled that it sank. And since you are chucking around accusations of being slow, I am bound to ask why nothing was done to pursue the French fleet, which was beaten and vulnerable, which given Lord Howe was no longer directing the battle, must fall to your lack of strategic grasp.’

Curtis was on his feet before Ralph Barclay was finished. ‘This interview is at an end.’

Barclay stood too. ‘It may well be, Sir Roger, but I will tell you now that the matter about which I came to complain is still very much in play. It seems to me, sir, that you have heaped praise upon those who would fawn on you personally and damned by omission anyone with the audacity to stand up to you and identify your errors of judgement. Good day!’

‘The man’s arse is bruised with the act of being kissed! As for Howe, I suspect he is asleep somewhere, up to his neck in Bath salts and convinced he is a hero.’

That got nods around the groaning table ashore, where Ralph Barclay had convened a meeting of those officers who shared his concerns, including Captain Molloy, whose conduct had been deemed so shameful he was close to demanding a court martial to clear his name, an option also being considered by the senior man present, Rear Admiral Caldwell, who had shared the supervision of the centre squadron of Howe’s fleet, not that he had received recognition for it, and it was he who spoke.

‘How are we to reverse it, Barclay? The King esteems Howe and praises him to the skies, as if a man at home on a farm conversing with his trees knows anything about fighting at sea.’

‘Perhaps his great knowledge comes from his son, William,’ hooted Albemarle Bertie to general amusement; the Duke of Clarence might be a post captain but he was generally held to be a useless one and that was as nothing compared to his arrogance and condescension.

‘I had what I thought was a bright idea, that we set up a fund to pay for stories supporting our case. The written word will play harder on the Government than any amount of bleating by us. They are, after all, struggling to keep their majority in the house and if we can get some peers on our side …’

That did not need completion. ‘And I also suggest we pay for some cartoons to bring Curtis down a peg or two. With that great nose of his and those eyebrows he should be easy to caricature. In short, gentlemen, I think we should dig deep into our purse and subscribe to a campaign.’

Just outside the dining room door, Cornelius Gherson, who could clearly hear this suggestion being approved, swelled slightly, for it had been his notion. That Barclay did not credit him was not a consideration; positions reversed, he would not have ascribed it to his employer.

‘Then, gentlemen,’ Barclay said, standing and raising his glass. ‘I shall proceed to London to get the campaign under way. To our future recognition, I say, and damn those who would do us down.’

That got the room up and drinking deep.

The fellow who turned into Downing Street – a subsequent message from Dundas had been sent to tell him to attend there – had a lift in his step so jaunty that he would not have been angered to be hailed a sailor, and in truth John Pearce might even have broken into song. If not everything in his life was rosy then he could at least say that the most important aspect was; Emily Barclay was committed to him and from there all things were possible, though he asked her not to reply to her husband, telling him of her intentions, until the matter of Charlie and Rufus was resolved – any mention of his name would not aid matters.

Such a mood did not survive when he entered the door of the First Lord of the Treasury, to find a pair of weary-looking and bleary-eyed ministers. William Pitt and Henry Dundas were seeking, with a hair-of-the-dog bottle of claret and a copious breakfast of fish, fowl and red meat, to recover from a bruising session in Parliament
and the prior consumption of wine that had both preceded the night sitting and sustained them throughout the small hours.

‘We have another mission for you,’ Dundas said, through some heavy chewing.

‘Do you, indeed?’ That got a hearty nod. ‘Then I must disappoint you for I will be obliged to decline.’

It was William Pitt who responded, and softly. He did not have either the Dundas high colour or the brisk Caledonian way of expressing himself; called upon for a description Pearce would have said he had lazy eyes and an almost translucent pallor to his skin hinting at a lack of robust health. But he would also have been obliged to add that here was a fellow who had risen to the highest political office at the ridiculously young age of twenty-four and had held it through many a crisis for over ten years. That suggested remarkable powers of political guile and a strength of character not replicated in his physical appearance.

‘You feel you have the ability to do so, Lieutenant Pearce?’

Pearce chose to be flippant in his response. ‘Is not freedom of choice the right of every true-born Briton?’

‘Perhaps if we were to remind you of previous writs,’ Dundas responded.

‘Previous and, given my father is no longer with us, surely spent.’

‘Ah, spent,’ Pitt exclaimed, playing with the fish on his breakfast plate; he did not look like a trencherman. ‘You seem to have a talent for that, Pearce, given what you used of the funds entrusted to you.’

‘For which I have accounted.’

‘We want you to take a message to Lord Hood in the Mediterranean, as you did previously.’

Pearce looked at Dundas as he said that and found himself staring at the bottom of a glass in the process of being drained. ‘You make me sound like some kind of ever-at-the-ready post boy.’

Dundas replied, once he had swallowed his wine. ‘I would hate to flatter you by elevation, Pearce.’

‘I believe my father, even if he did not give credence to religion, often had occasion to tell you to go to hell.’

‘Your father—’

Dundas got no further than that; a held-up hand from Pitt was enough to stop him.

‘Please, Harry, let us not go there, to where you two will find nothing but dispute. Your father is no longer a trouble to the Government, for which I am grateful, while having said that I am bound to add he died in the most appalling fashion and we are sorry for it.’

‘I can believe you might be, sir.’

Dundas just shrugged at the obvious exclusion of himself as Pitt continued. ‘We are required to communicate with Lord Hood, as we did before, outside the normal channels; in short, to pass to him a letter that only he knows has been delivered.’

‘Send someone else.’

‘Someone we know we can trust?’

‘I’m not sure I am that person.’

‘We want to send you, and not on the mail packet this time but in a ship that you will command.’

‘Which,’ Dundas added, ‘has the advantage of
removing you from any chance of what you got up to in the Vendée becoming common knowledge.’

‘Is that what this is really about, for if it is, my lips are sealed?’

‘But not those of your one-time crew,’ said Pitt. ‘They could still set us a problem.’

Pearce was surprised, but he made the connection after a minimal pause. ‘You want me to take
Larcher
to the Med?’

‘Two birds with one stone, Pearce! You still have yet to turn in the temporary commission giving you command of HMS
Larcher
, and from what we can glean the fellow you replaced is about to go under the knife for whatever ailment it is he is suffering from, which implies at least a long convalescence.’

‘You see us,’ Pitt interjected, ‘in the midst of one war, when in fact we are mired in two and the second one is of such duration as to have no beginning or end, for it is politics. In order to pursue the actual conflict with France, Dundas and I spend days, and as in the case of the last twenty-four hours, many hours of the night, fighting a shadow political one to keep up the struggle.’

‘Do you believe,’ Dundas, demanded, ‘that we have to defeat the dark forces that exist across the channel?’

‘Of course I do, though given I am in the presence of a very dark force indeed, I take issue with the word “we”.’

‘You’re a serving naval officer.’

‘And you know just how I feel about that!’

‘So you intend to disappoint us?’

‘I have other plans.’

‘To do with the lady who is, like you, staying in
Nerot’s Hotel, perhaps the same one who was sharing your accommodation in Lymington?’

‘Have you been spying on me, Dundas?’

‘Don’t sound so shocked, Pearce, it’s what I do and the country is safer for it.’

Pitt stood and Pearce noticed that his pale cheeks had a touch of rouge. ‘I will leave this to you, Harry, if that is all right.’

‘Fine, Billy.’ As soon as Pitt had exited Dundas spoke again. ‘A delicate soul he is, not one to enjoy unpleasantness.’

‘Is that what I am about to experience?’

‘What did the man I send round to Nerot’s learn, eh? That the place has gossipy servants, but who does not? That you have an attachment to a certain Mrs Barclay, which on further enquiry turns out to be the wife of another naval officer. Promises to be messy, I suspect.’

‘You are wrong, Dundas, it is not messy, it is about to be the very opposite. Mrs Barclay has repudiated her marriage and hopes circumstances will allow her to live happily with me.’

‘True love is it?’ Dundas sneered.

‘Something that can be given to most people, although I doubt you are aware of it without the use of a mirror.’

‘Your father was wont to exercise his wit on me, laddie, and I would advise you to recall where it got him. A married woman running off with one sailor, and leaving behind to grieve another. Now that would make a tasty morsel for the morning papers, would it not?’

‘I told you she had to be kept out of it.’

‘So you did.’

‘And I would remind you,’ Pearce barked, ‘that I have all the details regarding my mission to the Vendée and so am in a position to retaliate should you break that requirement.’

‘Where you managed to pocket some substantial sums belonging to the Government.’ Dundas reached into a coat pocket and produced a document, which he made great show of opening and reading. ‘Here it is, specie to the value of a thousand guineas, signed for and dated by Lieutenant John Pearce on Buckler’s Hard.’

‘Monies for which I am prepared to account and I have a witness in the Count de Puisaye as to how the majority of it was employed.’

‘I wonder what the count would put first – you in Newgate for debt, since I don’t think you have a spare sum to make up the losses, or a promise from the Government to provide help for his rebellion? Still, you’d have Mrs Barclay to come and visit, which would be a comfort as well as food for a right good scandal.’

Dundas stood now, a wolfish grin on his rubicund face. ‘I will leave you to cogitate on that, Pearce. Help yourself to some wine if you need it, but know this. I am no a man to trifle with and if old Adam were here he would tell you that too. It’s a wee trip to the Mediterranean or …?’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you are lower than a snake?’

‘Every day, Pearce,’ Dundas replied from the open doorway, ‘and, laddie, it is water off a duck’s back.’

The mood of the earlier part of the day was gone now, to be replaced with gloomy reflection, for he had no doubt that Dundas would carry out his threat; he was not
a man to make such in idle fashion. There was a moment when he wondered what could be so important that it had to be carried by hand all the way to Lord Hood, but that was not a thought on which to linger; the paramount one was the public shaming of Emily, for there was a vast difference between the likes of the
Hampshire Chronicle
and the much more numerous papers printed in London.

She would become the butt of public disgrace, and that in newspapers that were distributed throughout the whole country, for if the people who printed them claimed high moral values they would sink to the gutter in a trice for a salacious story of marital infidelity. There would, no doubt, be some artist only too happy to do a very accurate pen and ink likeness and he would not put it past Dundas to distribute pamphlets so the chances of escaping ridicule wherever she went were slim.

The threat of Newgate he had to think was real; again, Dundas was not a bluffer and it would be his word against that of a minister in high office. Even if he talked of what he knew, the experience of the Government, which he had observed his father having to fight, was plain: when they decided to play dirty they did so very seriously indeed. Adam Pearce had never been able to get anything he wrote published in the newspapers, or make a case for his freedom of speech, the very simple reason being that men of power had no trouble making it plain to the editors and proprietors that there was a line they must tow if they wanted to be on good terms with Downing Street.

Oddly, Pearce suspected if he put the case to Emily, despite her fears, she would probably tell him to resist.
It was part of what made him love her, that part of her personality that he had first observed when she had stood up to her husband over punishing him and had then, when she found out that he was a both a tyrant and a liar, caused her to move from his cabin to Heinrich Lutyens’ hospital in Toulon. Emily Barclay had a rod of steel in her, added to an innate kindness to go with her outstanding beauty. In short, he was a lucky man and he would not do anything to see her unhappy, and if that meant acceding to the recent request, so be it.

Sailing to the Mediterranean was not all bad for by the time he arrived the high summer heat would have faded to something very pleasant. Toby Burns was there and so, as far as he knew, were the other people with whom Lucknor had corresponded. It was a chance for him to gather evidence of his own, facts which would further enhance his ability to silence Ralph Barclay and truly cow him, for he had in mind something he had not dared even mention to her, the notion of launching a parliamentary bill for divorce. That it was hard, going on impossible, to get such a dispensation was no reason not to try.

Turning his mind to the proposed mission he was not sure that an armed cutter like HMS
Larcher
, being cramped, was a vessel for such a long voyage. She had been built for inshore work and even the trip to the Ile de Noirmoutier had taxed her ability to carry enough stores to cover for unforeseen eventualities like being held back by foul weather. Mentally he began to calculate what would be required to facilitate a voyage to Gibraltar, where he would be able to revictual, then from there to
where the papers told him Hood was, off the northern tip of Corsica.

Lord, he thought, it is so cramped too, that tiny cabin, and that set off another train of thought. It was the sound of Pearce laughing that brought Dundas back and he looked as if he thought him deranged.

‘You have your post boy, Dundas, so prepare your communications and let me know when to collect them.’

‘I am curious to know what made you change your mind?’

‘Certainly you are, but you will never know and I suspect never guess. Now I bid you good day, I have other matters requiring my attention.’

A few miles away, in the City of London, Denby Carruthers was closeted with the Tolland brothers and demanding to know how they had got themselves into such a bind. If the explanation he received was not the entire truth, it was plain that they had put a private matter of retribution against this fellow called John Pearce ahead of what he saw as their duty, which was to get back to their trade and begin to repay his investment, a point he made forcibly.

‘I will not let it rest for all time, Mr Carruthers,’ Jahleel said, which had Franklin nodding too and vigorously. ‘I will have that fellow’s blood, but I see I must set it aside for a while until you and we are in profit and you know you have chosen well.’

‘Of course I must deduct the cost of your freedom from our first transaction.’ Seeing the elder Tolland’s eyes narrow, Carruthers added quickly, ‘Unless it imposes a
burden, in which case it can wait until payment does not sting.’

‘Fair enough, but one request, and I promise not to act on it without you being informed. We need an eye kept on the Pearce fellow and we need to know that when the time comes we can gift to him what he has coming his way.’

‘Which is?’

It was Franklin who ran a finger over his throat, then said, ‘And this time we will not stop to talk. The time for that is past.’

The alderman’s next words were tentative, for he had just been informed that the notion of committing murder was not one to trouble these two before him. It had not been something about which he had harboured much doubt but there was a great deal to be said for outright confirmation.

‘I do have in mind another way to settle that debt and perhaps even add to it a payment.’ Denby paused for a couple of seconds then added, ‘A substantial payment.’

‘How so?’

‘If I were to say that I have certain people who trouble me, as much as this Pearce fellow seems to trouble you, people whose removal would add to my contentment, I am wondering if I could engage your services to rid me of them?’