A Sea of Troubles (5 page)

There was little to see other than that for which the hamlet had been created by a long-dead Lord Montague; it was a site for shipbuilding set at the base of the New Forest, with enough water to float out empty hulls at high tide and an ample supply of suitable timber, long-matured oaks, near at hand from the forests planted eight hundred years before by William the Conqueror to facilitate his love of hunting. Boats had originally been built on the single hard that stood between two rows of red-brick cottages, these sitting at right angles to the River Beaulieu, literally rising from frame to hull outside the front doors of the resident workers, a practice that lapsed as vessels grew too large in size.

Now twin slipways rose out of the still waters, they containing the vessels presently under construction, one a sleek frigate, the other hull a much more bulky
seventy-four. The cottages remained, the homes of the workers and their families, creating a charming aspect given the open ground between them. There were more than a dozen trades accommodated in those cottages and many more workers came in from the surrounding countryside; shipwrights, ironworkers, caulkers, the sawyers with their ten-foot serrated blades used to cut the great planks from solid oak trunks. There were coopers and smiths, plumbers and riggers, all the way down to labourers and oakum boys. Over the intervening distance came the sound of hammers on wood and metal, while smoke rose lazily into the warm evening air from the pitch heaters and forges.

‘I got your dunnage ready, sir,’ said Michael O’Hagan, very quietly. ‘As well as that of the French lady and gent.’

That ‘sir’ made Pearce smile; if ever there was man not naturally a servant it was his friend and, in truth, it had been no more than a convenience; Michael was to be admired for his loyalty, his strength and his good sense but not his gentility. Pearce’s reply, made without turning round, was equally soft, though it was hardly necessary as the commands began to be issued as shouts by the various warrants that would see the armed cutter at anchor.

‘You’ll be able to go back to calling me John-boy as soon as we’re ashore, Michael.’

‘Sure, and won’t I be grateful for it, for I’m weary of the sound of my grovelling. Mind, I might have occasion to curse you an’ all, given you’ve become too fond of that blue coat of yours, as well as ordering folk about.’

There was no need to turn to note that the remark was intended to be humorous, it was in the deliberately
mordant tone. ‘Somehow, Michael, I don’t think any curses heading my way will be coming from you.’

‘There’s a rate of trouble awaiting, that’s for certain.’

‘I’m sure Emily will see sense once matters are explained,’ Pearce replied, more from hope than conviction; he was not about to be open on the subject of his doubts even with a close friend.

‘Weren’t her I was thinkin’ of. Your Frenchie might not go quiet.’

‘I’ve already told her that she’s …’

‘Not your squeeze,’ Michael said, filling in the gap Pearce had left by not quickly finishing the sentence. ‘She might have said that to you, but I see the look in her eye when your attention be elsewhere and you allow her the deck. It is not short of hope.’

‘You’re mistaken.’

Michael laughed softly. ‘Holy Mary, if I were you I’d be looking for an easier life, like puttin’ about and seeking out to tackle those French escorts we slipped by a few days past.’

That conversation and the aid of the wind had got them near abreast of the village so that the twin lines of cottages were in full view; so was the lack of anything beyond them, for behind the twin rows of red brick lay a flat landscape bereft of any distinguishing features barring a few fields and endless forest. Both Pearce’s passengers were on deck to observe the arrival.

‘Monsieur,’ called the Count de Puisaye in his own tongue, his face bearing a look of distaste as he gazed at the barren and open countryside now exposed. ‘Surely we are not to land here?’

‘We will do so,’ Pearce replied, speaking in the same language and including an equally distressed Amélie in the statement. ‘This is from where we set out and I am obliged to bring the vessel back to this anchorage.’

Obliged, Pearce thought sadly, because of the temporary nature of the command. For all I know, Rackham, the fellow who holds the post permanently, is fully recovered from whatever ailed him and, at this very moment, is gathering his own dunnage to come back aboard, where he can ply his flogging cat and keep going his various peculations, all spotted in the logs Pearce had studied when coming aboard.

‘But there is nothing here,’ Puisaye cried, employing a sweeping gesture accompanied by the kind of hurt tone, evidence of his personal vanity, which had already irritated his host since their first meeting. It was as if he was expecting a guard of honour as well as a delegation from St James’ Palace to be waiting in all their finery, so the reply was short of understanding; in fact it was downright brusque.

‘There is a road, monsieur, and one that will take you to where you need to go, just as soon as I can arrange transport.’ Then he turned to Michael. ‘We will need to take that strongbox ashore as well and find a way to get what’s left safe to London.’

‘Some of those hard-looking sods that delivered it would be handy. It would make a good day’s work for any thief who could get their hands on it.’

‘I fear, Michael, the task will fall to you and I.’

‘Then happen we’ll be travelling with loaded pistols.’

The item referred to had come to them in a sealed
coach with a strong escort, having originally held a sum of some thousand guineas, albeit the coins were from various countries such as doubloons and louis d’or, Dutch guilders, and even the not long minted American dollar. They had been provided in ten evenly filled bags by the Government, or more precisely by the prime minister’s right-hand man, Henry Dundas, the purpose to facilitate the rebellion in the Vendée if it was seen fit to disburse it. The strongbox now contained in value near four hundred pounds in gold coins.

Between them Pearce and Michael O’Hagan had carried six of the pouches into the marshes where the rebels resided and they had left the money there for the intended purpose, even if Pearce had serious doubts it would do any good. Given Dundas had said it had come from something called the contingency fund, Pearce reckoned it to be money that had to be kept from public view – such a fund had to have a secret purpose. He could not just hand it over to anyone, which meant the safe option of boating it to Portsmouth and putting it in the care of the Port Admiral was not available. Besides, since it was his personal responsibility, he had signed for it, so there was no choice but to keep the residue under his own care until it could be formally handed back and accounted for.

‘Come to think of it, I will have to raid one of the remaining bags to pay for a coach to London for our count as well as the strongbox itself. I’m damned if I’m going to facilitate the journey for either out of my own purse.’

‘And who, sir,’ Michael asked with a twinkle in his bright blue eyes, ‘is going to pay out for the lady?’

‘Dundas can pay for her as well,’ Pearce snapped, as he turned and entered his tiny cabin, Michael on his heels. ‘Now I need to go ashore and bespeak some kind of conveyance big enough to get our charges to Lymington.’

‘Are you sure that’s were you should take them?’

‘I have no choice, Michael,’ Pearce responded, as he unlocked the strongbox. ‘The coach that will get Puisaye to London goes from there.’

‘Sure, John-boy,’ Michael hissed, too softly to be overheard, ‘you’ve not thought it through. The coach passes and picks up at a few places on the way, an’ if my memory is right some of them ain’t much further off than Lymington.’

The response came when Pearce was standing up, a thick canvas bag in his hand, which he was unlacing to open: the prospect of getting Amélie away without Emily ever knowing he had brought her back. ‘Now why did I not think of that?’

‘Don’t you know, sir,’ Michael said in a louder voice, as well as one not short on irony, ‘that the donning of a blue coat, from what I have been able to see with my own eyes, does little for clear thinking or common sense?’

Heading back up the main New Forest road towards his home in Winchester, at a much more leisurely pace than that with which he had made the original journey, Admiral Sir Berkley Sumner was busy composing in his head the letter he would send to the Secretary to the Board of Admiralty. Sir Phillip Stephens was the person to whom he had despatched an enquiry regarding Lieutenant Raynesford, prompted by the appearance of the name in the social column of the
Hampshire Chronicle
as having recently arrived at the King’s Head in Lymington.

First he would acknowledge that his curiosity about serving naval officers was an indication of his deep interest in his profession (to others he was a nosy old soak). Then he would show appreciation for the man’s acuity, as well as the quite proper discretion he exercised in failing to include him in what was a covert undertaking. He would then tell Sir Phillip of how he had, by pure accident, come across and aided the secret scheme being undertaken by
the aforesaid Lieutenant Raynesford, indeed he would make the point that, thanks to his timely input he could modestly suggest that matters were on course for an improved conclusion.

This would back up what would inevitably follow, for he was much given to pestering Sir Phillip and the Board, a repeated request that, given he had proved his worth as a gallant and intelligent officer he be given his due in terms of employment at sea, or if that was not available, a shore command that went with his rank and abilities.

If the
Comte
de Puisaye had been troubled by the sheer lack of anything of prominence in the appearance of Buckler’s Hard, the same notion occurred to Jahleel Tolland when he actually got round to examining how he was going to accost John Pearce. He and his brother, when making enquiries, had not attracted more than the slight level of interest accorded to strangers, albeit Franklin’s scar being so obviously recent had aroused comment; the same could not be said for a group of eight armed and mounted men riding in to the place at a pace to send up clods of the greensward, and that was not aided by their appearance. They looked like what they were, a band of right hard cases, and in a spot full of toiling labourers they stuck out like a sore thumb.

Seeing they were being eyed by and pointed to by the locals and not with kind expressions, Jahleel ordered a swift about turn before they were a third of the way to the jetty, seeking by his expression to imply that somehow they had taken a wrong route and ended up not where they intended to be. They made their way back to the
point at which the road divided and took the turning back towards Lyndhurst, Jahleel calling a halt when they came to a wooded copse about half a mile distant, there to get out of sight and to formulate a new plan of action.

The Tolland gang thus missed an unescorted John Pearce coming ashore to seek a way of transporting his ‘guests’ out of the area and on to meet the northbound coach at Lyndhurst, not that he was given much more in the way of satisfaction. Buckler’s Hard was a place truly at the end of the line – there was no bridge across the river and little beyond it to attract outsiders not connected to the work being carried on or shooting the local wildfowl in the marshlands and forest that extended to the seashore.

The only visitors to the place tended to be naval surveyors or people in some way connected with the acquisition of the ships being built and they made straight for the home of the master builder, which stood some way outside the village on a higher elevation. Anyone else would be a carter delivering those things needed to build the hulls that were not available from the surrounding countryside, and there was a ramshackle inn in which they could stay, a place that also served as an alehouse for the workers who lived and worked on the hard.

Though amply provided with horseflesh and carts, these needed to move the heavier objects such as shaped timbers and forged metalwork from the workshops to the slipways, there was nothing of a more comfortable nature to be had, certainly no covered coaches, and not even a shay for hire. The only conveyance Pearce was offered was an open-topped cart normally used to carry bales of oakum and looking as if it had seen much better days;
two of the wheels appeared set to come adrift as soon as they hit a deep mud patch or, when it was dry, the kind of ruts he had been obliged to negotiate on first coming here.

That he declined for the very simple reason that such a humble conveyance would further serve to upset the
Comte
de Puisaye – and probably Amélie Labordière as well – so it came down to a quartet of the local New Forest ponies, which, if they were animals of no great height, would suffice. He also bespoke a carthorse and panniers to carry the luggage of the ongoing travellers, the whole, including harness and saddles, rented at what Pearce reckoned to be an exorbitant price and that took no account of the deposit the fellow required to ensure his property was returned in prime condition.

Having made his bargain, the stablekeeper, perhaps because he observed how piqued was this client at the cost, became much more sociable, extolling the virtues of his ponies, they being sturdy beasts and very suited to the area in which they lived regardless of season. Bred wild they were captured to either be trained or culled in order that the numbers remained sustainable, the best breeding stock kept and the rest sold on for work in tunnelling and mining where their size and strength was valuable.

‘I was a’telling the very same thing to that friend of yours.’

‘Friend?’

‘Aye, the fellow who came by a few days back asking for you.’

Pearce had never subscribed to the theory that humans had hackles that could rise at a sign of danger, but the way
the hair at the base of his neck behaved felt remarkably like that of a dog.

‘Looking for me?’

‘You is Lieutenant Pearce?’ That acknowledged the man continued. ‘He was asking when you would be making your berth in the river agin, not that I or any other could say fer certain.’

‘Did he give a name?’

That had the stablekeeper sucking his teeth and looking perplexed. ‘Don’t recall he did, sir.’

Working hard to control his voice, Pearce said, ‘Then you’d best tell me what he looked like.’

‘A lone, fresh scar on his left cheek, Michael, and when I asked about on the hard he was not alone, and from the description of the two together …’

‘Mother of God, how did they know where to find you?’

‘A question I have been gnawing on since the man mentioned that scar.’

‘Not much chance of the two of them being alone?’

Pearce did not respond immediately, he was wondering if discovery of him included knowledge of the whereabouts of Emily; if it did there was not much he could do about it, the only positive thought being that at least she had not booked into the King’s Head under the Barclay name, which should protect her.

‘None. Eight of them we faced in London and we would have to reckon the same here.’

‘Any notion of where they are now?’

Pearce shook his head then sat upright and slowly
looked around the anchorage, a place surrounded by ample woodland – there was a dense oak forest to the west on a slightly higher elevation – and his brow cleared somewhat. He was thinking that there had been no sign of any danger while he was renting those ponies, which led to an obvious conclusion: the Tollands were not in the village. If they had been, and with him alone, what he was doing now would be idle speculation for he would already be in their hands – all it needed was a pistol in the ribs and a demand he do as he was told.

How, then, did they intend to proceed in taking him for he had no doubt that was their aim? If not in the village it could only be on the road that led to both Lyndhurst and, by a detour, the quickest route to Lymington. But to do that they would need a clear sight of his departure, a point he made to the man sitting with him.

‘And if they have the ship under observation they will know when we depart.’

‘But not how many?’

‘The addition of Puisaye and Amélie will not aid us, Michael, quite the reverse.’

‘I was thinking the presence of others might give them pause.’

‘And what if it does not? Do you recall the words of the older brother when we overheard them talking, that he would have his money or my skin in place of it? That same fate could stretch to anyone who is with me if I’m caught, you included, and I would remind you, we on this ship are the only folk who know of our French pair. Think what it’s like out there – miles of deep forest, most
of which never feels the feet of man, and ask yourself what our combined fate could be?’

Both men fell silent for a moment as that thought struck home: they could just disappear.

‘What about seeking a parley, John-boy and telling them the truth of the matter, that you was robbed as much as were they?’

‘They would scarce believe that, given I still cannot credit what I fell for myself.’

No one likes to be reminded that they have been a fool, as had he, and it was near as uncomfortable now as it had been when he first realised just how easily he had fallen for the deception. A sharp fellow who called himself Arthur Winston – not his real name – had dangled before him what looked like a chance to make a great deal of money from the recovery of a contraband cargo, made up of items becoming more expensive by the day as the war failed to progress: bolts of silk and lace, barrels of brandy, fine French wines, perfumes, all the commodities so beloved by those with money to buy.

How much had his own stupidity contributed to his being drawn in to the scheme, how much had it been the prospect of being able to offer comfort to Emily Barclay without the need of anything from her husband rich with prize money? It mattered not; he had recruited his Pelicans then sailed to the Flanders port of Gravelines, seeking to recover ‘Winston’s’ ship and cargo, one for which he claimed to have already put up the money, to free it from a local who had refused to release it without a second massive payment. And he had succeeded, the only trouble being that it had never been ‘Winston’s’ ship
or his cargo; it had been the property of the Tollands, professional smugglers who very likely now sat athwart his route out of Buckler’s Hard, and if he had scant real acquaintance with them it had been enough to show they were murderous. They were also serious and clearly had connections – had they not pursued him first to Dover, then to London and now, amazingly, to here?

Still convinced that he had carried off a legitimate coup regarding the contraband, Pearce had sailed their ship into St Margaret’s Bay just north of Dover and beached it, so that too had been forfeit to the excise. It might be their legal property, but only a fool would reclaim a vessel just taken in the act of smuggling. The cargo? That had disappeared with John Pearce watching and helpless, immobilised by an injured foot, this as the bay filled with men come to make the arrests for which they had been tipped; at least he had been able to get Michael, Rufus and Charlie Taverner away along the tidal shore that led to Deal before they arrived to arrest him.

It was in the nature of things that the two friends reprised the whole affair in detail, being in search of a solution, an exchange that took place at the very prow of the ship and it was one designed not to be overheard because Pearce had made it plain to the rest of the crew that he wanted some private space to talk to his friend-cum-servant. He should have known better; if you could not keep a secret on a ship of the line – it was held as an absolute truth that Jack tar could hear a whisper through six inches of planking – the chances of doing so in a cramped armed cutter were zero. A ship’s crew were always agog to know what was being planned; captains
made decisions regarding their future, including matters of life and death, without so much as a by your leave and since they cared for it more than any officer it was as well to know what fate awaited them over the metaphorical horizon.

Not that all were privy to what was being discussed; the bosun, known to all as Birdy, slight of frame if well muscled, had slipped into the space below the prow under the bow chaser gun port, open on a warm day to let in to the ’tween deck air enough to dry out the timbers. Birdy learnt enough to make out that if nothing had been said that the crew should be concerned about, what he had overheard meant a threat to their temporary commander and soon, once he had extracted himself from his eavesdropping, that was disseminated.

It would be stretching things to say that the crew of HMS
Larcher
loved John Pearce – few of the lower deck loved any officer and the armed cutter had as well a small number of endemic malcontents who hated him just for his coat. But in the main they had come to esteem him, given the contrast with the real ship’s captain, a well-named tyrant. Unlike Rackham, Pearce was honest and fair-minded, given to smiling instead of scowling, polite when called upon to be so instead of in a state of constant ire at slights and failures real or imagined.

He had also shown real flair in a fight, as well as trust in the crew to perform to their best and had said how pleased he was when they did. Sailing through that armada of merchant ships without alerting them or their escorts had been skilful and much appreciated; if he had failed, the best his crew could have hoped for was
a French dungeon, with a watery grave a real possibility. Given that their opinion of him stood as it did, one of their number was elected to speak for them all.

‘A word, if you please, Captain?’

Half sat on the prow bulkhead and deep in conversation with Michael, Pearce had not noticed the approach, which had been made by a master who in such a small vessel, like the rest of the crew, worked barefoot.

‘Mr Dorling.’

Looking up into the man’s face, round and clean-skinned, he sensed that Dorling was worried, for his normally smooth forehead was slightly furrowed, while the eyes, small for the size of his head, were narrowed. A fellow who always appeared to Pearce as serious – hardly surprising given his responsibilities at such a young age – his temporary commander felt that underneath lay a personality much more inclined to humour than misery; in another life and at another time Dorling would have been a companion of sharp wit and scant respect.