A Sea of Troubles (2 page)

‘Take the wheel,’ he hissed to Dorling, making for the side as soon as the exchange was complete, hands cupped to his mouth and about to yell. For a split second he held his tongue, as it came to him that to call out in English was unwise, so he did so in French, demanding to know what the
sal cochon
was playing at. That his words had an effect was obvious; someone on the merchantman’s wheel was hauling hard on the rudder, this evidenced by the way the light from that lantern altered that which it was illuminating. Pearce, leaning over the side, was certain
that if he reached out he could touch the bowsprit rigging of the other ship; he could certainly hear the noise of the bow itself breasting into the swell, the slapping sound loud in his ears. Then a voice called back.

‘What in the name of Jesus does that mean?’

English, and with it an accent of some kind? Pearce decided to stick to French and informed the man on the other deck that he had nearly run them down.

The response was querulous. ‘Have you got anyone aboard who speaks a proper language, you Gallic booby? And might I enquire, if you do, what in the name of creation you are doing sailing in the middle of this damn convoy with no light showing?’

‘I speek a leetle English,’ Pearce replied.

‘Then get some lights aloft if you don’t want to be run down, monsure.’

It was the last word that nailed the speaker as a Jonathan. What was an American doing in a ship off the coast of France?

‘I pilot,’ Pearce replied, wondering if that would make sense; no ship in this convoy would risk the Loire sandbanks without one.

‘Well, monsure, you’re not much of one, I’d say, but if you want all this goddamn grain and barley we have fetched over three thousand miles of ocean, you better have a care where you lay a course.’

‘Grain and barley?’ called Pearce, too surprised to think.

‘Thousands of tons of it, friend, enough to feed the whole of France for a year and some left over.’

While they had been talking the voice had been fading
slightly, evidence that the merchant vessel was resuming a proper course, this while Pearce was trying and failing to calculate the kind of total cargo being borne by what ships he knew to be around him. Without another thought he raised himself up on to the bulwarks, then half climbed the lower shrouds and began to try and count the lanterns he could see, lit because the convoy was close to shore and clearly in no danger in the opinion of the man in charge of the escorts.

‘Michael,’ Pearce said, when he had jumped down and made his way back to the wheel. ‘Have you got out that tricolour?’

‘I have.’

‘Then get it bent on and our ensign down and out of sight. Mr Dorling, we need to change course once more and get back on to the original heading. I do not want to be enclosed by this lot when the sky gets light.’ That was followed by a sigh. ‘And if you are a praying man, beg for a bit of a decent wind and from the right quarter.’

That manoeuvre was carried out with more noise than previously; clearly his crew had heard the exchange and thought they had little to fear from an armada of Jonathans, indeed there were one or two willing to suggest that they press a few into the King’s Navy, given the high chance that many of them were deserters over the years and from that same body. Once on a new course and cursing the lack of that wind, Pearce steered by the light of those lanterns, sailing in line ahead, keeping HMS
Larcher
’s head equidistant between them. Being summertime the dawn came too early and they had not got clear by the time he could apply the standard naval
test and see a grey goose at a quarter-mile. What he could see, off the stern of the last convoy vessels, was a pair of frigates beating to and fro, while to windward there were visible the higher topmasts of a pair of ships of the line.

That he was not immediately spotted was, no doubt, due to their concentration being to seawards, the area from where danger could threaten. It would take time, perhaps more than a day, to feed those merchant ships even into such a wide estuary. The rest, stationary and waiting their turn, would be exceedingly vulnerable to anything coming in from the wide Atlantic like a squadron of British warships, which would certainly save him and
Larcher
. Such a thing was too much to hope for: all he had was that tricolour and the hope that being a small warship sailing along with closed gun ports, he would be seen as no threat.

It was a risk to sail close to one of those frigates, to seek to convey an expression of unconcern, which he added to by raising his hat, too far off to be seen to be British, wise that such an action was not taken too far; he did not want to get within anything like hailing range. Sam Kempshall, as ordered, had loaded the signal gun and in time-honoured fashion Pearce ordered that the distant flagship should be saluted, an act that received a reply in what was, on both ships, a total waste of powder.

‘Time to worm those cannon, Mr Kempshall, but I would beg you leave one of the chasers loaded.’

That took time – worming guns to get out the ball and the charges was a slow process, a period in which, even in light airs, the gap opened up substantially until any visible French warship was no more than hull upon the
horizon. When all was ready John Pearce called for the ship to heave to and presented to his enemies a broadside view.

‘Michael, put back out the ensign, if you please.’

The proper flag was bent onto the halyards and as it raced aloft and the tricolour came down, the temporary captain of HMS
Larcher
hauled on the lanyard that fired the flints of the three-pounder cannon. That he wasted a ball – it landed harmlessly in the sea – was of little consequence. The purpose was to alert those Frenchmen to what was happening, to let them see, as they trained their telescopes on what had taken their attention – the noise of a cannon fired and the billowing smoke that produced – that the vessel which had sailed so serenely past was one they would have done well to intercept. The nature of that convoy and what it might contain would soon be known in London.

‘Your guests are desirous of being allowed the deck, Captain.’

‘Make it so, Mr Dorling, and set us on a course for home.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

Jahleel Tolland had not endeared himself to the hard-working folk at Buckler’s Hard, but then, being a fellow of rough manner and impatient with it, he was not much given to being pleasant to any living soul; to his way of thinking these New Forest folk were too close-mouthed for their own good and a whip would not go amiss to get them to mind their manners and have them respond to his enquiries. Franklin Tolland had been found to be easier to deal with; indeed it was he who had elicited the replies to the questions the pair had come to ask.

Even if they had been previously supplied with information and from an unimpeachable source, such was the endemic mistrust of the Tolland brothers they needed to be certain of the facts. Yes, the armed cutter, HMS
Larcher
, had set out from Buckler’s Hard a week past and was expected to return to the River Beaulieu in short order, though only providence knew when. And
yes, the man in command was a lieutenant who went by the name Pearce, though they could not swear to his given name being John, for he had bedded down elsewhere and had not spent, if you added it all up, much more than an hour or two ashore in the vicinity.

To that was added a physical description, confirmation that the Tollands were in the proper place to lay by the heels the man they sought, and that had allowed them to mount their horses and return up the road to the town of Lyndhurst, where they had left the rest of their gang, each of whom, it was decided, would take it in daily turns to ride down to a point that overlooked the estuary of the River Beaulieu to catch the return of the ship.

To stay in Buckler’s Hard itself was difficult given the lack of accommodation in what was no more than a maritime shipyard inhabited by those involved in construction, impossible without they arouse suspicion as to their motives for being in a place few visited. The Tolland name would likely not be known to anyone locally but that could never be certain, and when you lived outside the law, as these smugglers did, it was best to never take a chance on it being recognised.

‘This Pearce bugger could be gone half a year,’ opined one of the band, a near-toothless and bent-nosed ruffian called Cole, this after four days of waiting, during one of which the rain had come down in buckets to depress any high spirits with which they had come to the place.

‘Never,’ Franklin Tolland replied. ‘We have it on good authority that he would be gone two weeks at best an’ it could be less.’

‘Weeks in which,’ Cole hissed through his gums, ‘we would see not a coin turned.’

‘Stow it,’ Jahleel growled. ‘When did you ever earn a crust that me and my brother did not provide?’

‘All I is saying, Jahleel, is that we are men of the sea wereselves.’

‘So?’

‘So we knows she is fickle, mate, an’ if what you say is true, this Pearce feller is set to go ashore over the water and that be hostile, so he might get himself killed. Besides that, goin’ there an’ comin’ back won’t be easy on a sea crawlin’ wi’ French ships of war. We could be here till doomsday.’

Jahleel Tolland looked round the tavern table and assembled faces to see if there was general agreement with Cole, hard to discern with few of the others present prepared to catch his eye; to a man they were in fear of him which was just the way he liked it.

‘Has you lost all recollect of what that bastard did? He stole our ship and our cargo from under our noses and damn near put us in the workhouse.’ A gnarled hand slammed down on the bare wood of the tabletop. ‘An’ that’s an act for which he has to pay and pay high. I want to see his bleached bones after he’s told us what we need to know.’

‘You mean to slit his gizzard?’ asked one of the gang quietly.

‘After he’s told us where to find the rest of his gang and I’ve made him scream for death in place of what I will do to his carcass.’ Jahleel Tolland produced a large knife and began to carve out marks on the tabletop.
‘Happen I’ll leave my name on him, afore I get to his throat.’

‘It might be a bad idea to do him in, brother.’

Jahleel looked at Franklin, making a point of aiming his gaze at the red and far from fully healed scar on his younger brother’s cheek, the result of a sword swipe given to him by the very same John Pearce. If the older brother was scarlet of face and, with his pockmarked cheeks, both intemperate and unprepossessing, Franklin was the opposite. He had always been a ladies’ man, a comely-looking cove and proud of it, to which he added the manners of speech and behaviour of what he considered himself to be, a gentleman. Now, none would look at him, male nor female, without first seeing the scar, which would class him as villainous.

‘And you with that face?’

‘We don’t want the law on our tail.’

‘Christ, we live outside the law.’

‘Smuggling is one thing, Jahleel, murder another.’

‘You goin’ soft, Franklin, for I don’t recall you bein’ shy of killing afore?’

Grunts of agreement greeted that comment; in a game where trust was unknown and acts of thieving and disloyalty common, Franklin Tolland had been as swift as the rest of the crew to take the life of anyone light-fingered, twice as much so when it was a sneak or a turncoat willing to dob them in to the excise for a cash reward.

‘Never, but if we do in one of our own kind in the act of shipping contraband, who’s to give a care? This Pearce might be as much of a scoundrel as any in our game but
he is King’s Navy too and that might get us a whole heap of trouble. They look after their own and the last thing we want is Jack tar seeking vengeance when we get back to our proper trade. We want them to pay us no heed so we can come and go without fuss.’

‘Then it has to be out of sight,’ Cole wheezed. ‘Happen we let him land, an’ take him when no soul is about. Plenty ground and soft round here to bury him in once you’se got what you want, then it be a mystery.’

‘Never,’ Jahleel spat. ‘That sod has slipped me four times now, so he’s getting taken up as soon as his feet touch soil.’

The door swung open and the eighth member of the gang bustled in. He had been doing his duty on the seashore by the hamlet of Lepe, which overlooked the deep-water approach to the winding River Beaulieu.

‘I think I sighted that cutter bearing up for the river.’

‘You sure?’ Franklin demanded.

‘Christ no, couldn’t see her transom even if she does bear a name, but she has a naval pennant, the right lines and has two bow chasers and four six-gun ports a side, which fits what I was told to watch for.’

‘Tide?’

‘On the rise, and she was getting her sweeps out, given the wind don’t favour her.’

Jahleel was already on his feet, his face even redder than normal with rising passion. ‘Get the horses saddled up, all of you. I want us to be well hidden afore he makes the final bend.’

That accomplished, they gathered outside and mounted up, being just about to set off and take the
road south when a shay came hurtling down the street, drawn by a single sweating horse. Sat under the canopy and being free with his long whip was an elderly fellow in the heavily braided uniform of a rear admiral, and if Jahleel Tolland had a high colour on his face he was well outdone by the sailor, who seemed able to match him in passion too.

‘Stand aside there, damn you to hell!’ the admiral cried, his protruding eyes raking the assembled horsemen who threatened to impede his progress. ‘I am on the King’s business.’

‘You’ll be on a funeral slab, you old bugger,’ Jahleel shouted after him, having been obliged to haul hard on his reins to get his mount out of the way, while the shay had gone through a deep puddle left over from the heavy day’s rain, an act which threw up a spray of mud-filled water.

‘Quiet,’ Franklin called, waving a hand to cool his brother’s passion, a sideways glance showing that the good citizens of Lyndhurst had stopped to stare. What followed was a quiet hiss. ‘We don’t want our faces remarked upon.’

‘Too late for you, Franklin, so let’s get going and sort out that bastard who marked you for life.’

Pearce, standing on the tiny quarterdeck of the armed cutter, realised that the positive mood in which he had allowed himself to wallow since clearing that grain convoy was fast evaporating and that had nothing to do with matters nautical. Perhaps it was to do with the weather, for after a day of heavy rain in which he had required his
oilskins it had turned sunny, which in itself seemed to mock his previous sanguine mood. Reality came home to roost as HMS
Larcher
sailed past the mouth of the Lymington, a river that took its name from the port to which it led. More tellingly, for his happiness as well as his future, Emily Barclay was there, waiting for him to return and this had forced him to revisit an unpalatable truth – to wonder how the person he loved would react to him arriving back from this short voyage bearing, as a passenger, a woman who had previously been his mistress?

Emily was somewhat prudish in an English county way. This had everything to do with her stable, parochial and provincial upbringing, which so contrasted with his own life of endless wandering in the company of his combative father, none more so than the formative years he had spent in Paris in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution. The city, eighteen months after the fall of the monarchy, had been exciting and vibrant then, full of optimism, an air of adventure, gossip, the discussion of radical ideas and of course, beautiful women.

Coming of age there, tall and slim, with a handsome, unblemished countenance, John Pearce had caught a come-hither look in more than one female eye. With the exuberance of youth and eager for experience he had taken full advantage of what was very obviously on offer, finally settling into a more serious liaison with Amélie Labordière, this with the full cognisance of her understanding husband; a rich man and no hypocrite, he had his own pleasures to pursue.

Emily had experienced nothing of that nature: from her parental home she had gone on to be trapped in a
loveless marriage to the odious Captain Ralph Barclay, a husband seventeen years her senior and a man Pearce saw as his mortal enemy. This was an encumbrance from which he was in the process of rescuing her, a task that had been fraught with many complications, not least Emily’s own disinclination to acknowledge their mutual attraction or to succumb to his advances.

Circumstances had favoured his suit, though she had only become his lover in the few days before his departure and he knew such a position left her, even if she sought to hide it, with a residue of deep Anglican guilt. He suspected she would not readily take to the unexpected presence of the aristocratic and Catholic Amélie, while he also assumed that any attempt by him to explain it away as pure coincidence stood a very strong chance of being treated as so much stuff.

Yet it was nothing more than happenstance; he had been charged by the Government to undertake a mission to the Vendée to assess the state of the revolt there – was it worth supporting or should it be left to wither? He had come across Amélie in the company of those who were fighting the Revolution on behalf of their region, their religion and their monarchy, the latter two concepts ones to which John Pearce could only take exception. Nor could his undertaking be said to be a success, this exemplified by the other person he was fetching back to England.

In the few days the
Comte
de Puisaye had been aboard, and for some days prior to that, the man had become a sore trial to John Pearce and he was now wondering if keeping him below when they were in some danger – in 
the same way he had confined Amélie to his cabin – had as much to do with the man’s insufferable nature as a need to ensure that any interference he might produce could have a negative effect. He had been raised by an extremely radical father to see the world as an inequitable place in need of change, where the fortunate few had an excess of money and land while many lived in poverty, where the twin pillars of the Church and the Crown ensured nothing was allowed to disturb the status quo. Good manners had obliged Pearce, many times, to bite his tongue.

Puisaye was an unreconstructed aristocrat whose sole wish was that life should return to that which it had been before the fall of King Louis. The
comte
could neither see nor accept that the world had changed, nor could he or his ilk seem to accept that they bore a great deal of the responsibility for what had befallen their class. If the guillotine was barbaric in the frequency with which it was now being employed, if the terror sweeping France was indiscriminate in whom it killed, the men who had occupied positions of power under the monarchy, by their indifference to the plight of the mass of their fellow countrymen, only had themselves to blame.

The count was likewise convinced that he and his fellow rebels in the Vendée held the key to the defeat of both the Jacobin Terror and the Revolution. All they required was that Albion support them with a massive injection of naval assets – warships of every size, regiments of infantry and batteries of artillery – plus several tons of gold to pay for their return to power. Given such aid they were convinced they could advance from their coastal
swamps to overcome the forces sent from Paris to defeat them. From what John Pearce had observed they were living in cloud cuckoo land.

Puisaye was less of a pressing personal concern than Amélie Labordière; the fellow could be passed on to William Pitt and Henry Dundas to be dealt with, and those two politicos as well as the government they led were welcome to him. Less cheering was that Amélie, in the few conversations he had allowed himself with her – any hint of intimacy had to be avoided – had made it plain that she too held the same opinions as Puisaye, which left him to wonder how his discomfort at her stated views had never surfaced during the months they had been lovers. The answer was, of course, obvious: ardent youthful lust and carnal engagement took precedence over any concern for politics of any hue. John Pearce was too busy enjoying himself, added to that the fact that he had been far from wholly convinced of his father’s opinions then and he still questioned some of the more outré notions now, not least the innate goodness of the human race.