A Shot Rolling Ship (12 page)

‘No.’

‘But…’

‘If you have men watching the outside of your house, you will also have some inside the Society who are not what they seem.’

Pearce could feel the resentment through the wood at his back as Horne Tooke swelled with indignation, and he spoke quickly to head it off, for he needed this man and all like him. Besides that, having lived in Paris and talked with those men who were now running the country, he knew just how much influence the London Corresponding Society had in the councils of the Revolution; precisely none. To men of action, who had toppled a King and removed his head, had torn apart the way a country was run and were struggling to put it together again, who were engaged in a war to the death with Austria and Prussia on the side of the forces of reaction, people who did nothing but talk were more derided than admired. Any intercession in that quarter from men derisively referred to as
les bavardiers d’Angleterre
might lead to his father being more tightly guarded than released.

‘I do not doubt your good offices, sir, nor those with whom you founded your movement, but it would be naïve of us both to assume that the government had not taken steps to find out what you are about, if only to gather evidence against you.’

‘We are careful, young man, very careful.’

John Pearce put as much sincerity into his reply as he could, not only because it was necessary but because he meant it. ‘I do not doubt it, sir, but care is not always enough.’

‘Then what is to be done to aid him?’

‘I must go to Paris and get him released.’

‘I trust you jest.’

‘No.’

‘Then I count you as mad.’

‘Please understand, sir, that I have lived in that city. I know it well. I cannot be certain that I still have friends there, but I am sure there must still be some.’ What he said next was more to appease Horne Tooke than any belief that the man mentioned would aid him. ‘I have met George Danton on more than one occasion, and I have some hope that he will remember me.’

‘And Marat. He is riding the crest of a wave right now, having been arraigned by the National Assembly. The mob love him.’

‘Which is why I do not. Who is this Fouché you mentioned?’

‘An ex-seminarian, very nearly a priest. He is described as dry and humourless, but a fanatical Jacobin.’

‘Powerful?’

‘Was not particularly so, but who knows how the sands shift in Paris?’

That was said with gloomy resignation, and it evoked some sympathy. Men like Horne Tooke were personally committed to change at some danger to themselves. What they would not countenance was violence to achieve their aims, convinced that such behaviour was un-English, foreign, French and Papist in inspiration even if the perpetrators denounced the Holy Trinity. They were
upright Protestant burghers, who held in common with most of their countrymen that they lived under a vastly better system than those across the Channel had ever enjoyed, and had done so since the Great Revolution of 1688. They were patriotic at the same time as they sought to undermine the present way the country was governed, a paradox that made life very difficult indeed.

‘I will need help. Can I ask you for it?’

‘Name it.’

‘My first task is to get to the coast, somewhere safe, and I will need funds, for alone I cannot use force to free my father and if I cannot persuade someone in power to help then I must resort to bribery.’

‘There is nowhere truly safe, but I suggest you head for Sandwich in Kent. There is a residual sympathy for Tom Paine there for he lived in the town, and Conway, the local vicar of the Church of St Peter’s is, I know, sympathetic to our aims.’

‘A radical clergyman?’ exclaimed Pearce, with a palpable degree of surprise. ‘That is unusual.’

‘He is singular certainly, though wise enough to hide his light under a bushel, for there are not many of his more prosperous parishioners who would appreciate his sentiments. I have an address you can go to there, and Sandwich has boats in abundance and easy access to the sea, while the hand of the Excise is, I am told, light.’

Pearce had the feeling he might not be the first to use the suggested avenue of escape; Horne Tooke and his friends had helped others evade the clutches of government men;
either that, or a route had been set up with the leaders of the Corresponding Society in mind, arrest for them being a constant possibility.

‘I must reluctantly ask again. Funds?’

‘That is one thing I am happy to say we are not short on. I will write to our friend in Sandwich, and enclose a draft upon which you may draw up to fifty guineas.’

‘Will there be that much money in a small seaside port?’

‘It is a smuggling town, John, and one of the things they smuggle most is gold. Our friend the vicar will provide you with the funds you need and arrange your passage across the Channel. You will, I assure you, find him most resourceful.’

‘This note might be intercepted.’

Horne Tooke responded with an exasperated tone. ‘Do give us some credit, young Pearce, for knowing what we are about. We have a private code which we use in our letters. Myself, you will not see again, for to be observed once more in proximity to me might bring about that which you least desire.’

‘I might be followed.’

‘Aye. When it comes to the wherewithal to keep the lid on dissent, the government has a seemingly endless supply of men and money.’

‘Thank you, sir, and I hope, one day, I will be able to have my father say that to you face to face.’

‘Tell me, young John, this Navy garb you are wearing. How did that come about?’

‘It is a long story, sir. Too long for an occasion such as this.’

‘Perhaps another time?’

‘Providence willing.’

‘Wait till I have been gone ten minutes before you leave. I have pencilled a note for you to take with you and set it inside a copy of the
Gentleman’s Magazine
, which I will leave on my table. Goodbye and good luck.’

The wood between them creaked again as Horne Tooke rose to leave. John Pearce folded his paper and slid out to take it back to the pile that sat on a central table, catching a quick sight of the man’s broad back as he exited through the door, and heard him very volubly talking to himself. Quickly he grabbed the magazine and followed him stopping just away from the window that stood to one side of the door. Over the rim of the
Gentleman’s Magazine
he watched the scene unfold as two men in heavy coats and big hats which obscured their faces detached themselves to follow him.

He thought about what he had said; that there would be at least one spy in the organisation Horne Tooke headed. He hoped the older man would hold his tongue about their meeting, but had to acknowledge that there was no point in him worrying about it, for it was beyond his control. He must get to the Kent coast, and as quickly as he could. That meant another long walk to the Old Kent Road, to an inn where the coaches going to South East England made their first stop to change horses after Charing Cross.

Rain began to fall as he walked, and he cursed it, for the short jacket he was wearing was not much to keep out the wet and the prospect he faced, of once more sitting on the top of a coach, was most unwelcome. On this occasion it was more than ever necessary, for the road went by way of the River Medway, and that debouched onto the Nore anchorage, the place where he had first been taken aboard HMS Brilliant. He recalled the mass of shipping, including 100-gun ships-of-the-line that filled the estuary, thus there was a good chance that some of the coach passengers would have connections to the Navy.

A haberdashers shop at Blackfriars, close to the bridge across the Thames, was happy to sell him a cloak, disappointed, given the state of his other garments, that they could not oblige him with a whole new outfit, but his determination to bargain got him a scarf thrown in.

The cry that there was a ship in the offing did nothing to stop the flogging of Devenow, the ship’s bully. Ralph Barclay knew him of old, a man who harboured his grog for a true blow-out. He had got drunk and had started to fight, or rather, since he was a huge man with big fists, to beat up his messmates. The fact that he had a broken jaw, not properly mended, did nothing to inhibit either the drinking or the fighting. So Devenow had to have his Monday dozen, and since he was not much loved by the rest of the crew, the bosun’s mate was laying to with a will; Devenow’s back showed the scars of previous floggings, but no sound escaped from his mouth, though he bit hard on the leather strap placed there.

‘Punishment complete, sir.’

‘Cut him down, Mr Sykes,’ he said to the bosun, before adding wearily, ‘Let that be a lesson to you, Devenow. It is 
my earnest wish never to see you seized up to the grating again.’

‘Fat chance,’ said Bosun Sykes, under his breath.

‘Mr Lutyens, he is all yours.’

Devenow went below to the sick bay, trailed by the surgeon, stiff in his gait, but without aid, determined to show all aboard that he could take his punishment as well as he took his drink, this while Henry Digby gave the orders that would get the deck cleaned up. Ralph Barclay took a telescope and trained it on the horizon.

The vessel beating up towards the convoy was quickly identified as a warship, a frigate of much the same size as HMS
Brilliant
. Both Ralph Barclay and Davidge Gould were on the threatened side by the time she was hull up, staying in that station even when the pennant at the foremasthead identified her as a British warship under the command of a Vice Admiral of the White Squadron. With the convoy sailing majestically on, Ralph Barclay ordered
Firefly
back to her station, awaiting the arrival of the vessel which, going astern of him, came up smartly on to the wind and set a course to come alongside. The voice, once they were sailing in parallel, speaking through the trumpet, boomed over the intervening water.

‘
Amethyst
, Captain Blackstone at your service.’

Ralph Barclay’s first thought was that this Blackstone was his junior; he knew every name on the captain’s list and how they stood in relation to him and it was comforting to know when he shouted out his ship and name that the other fellow would know that in a situation requiring a
face to face meeting, it would be he who would be obliged to lower a boat.

‘I have orders, sir, from Admiral Hotham, who is presently anchored at Lisbon.’

‘I am under Admiralty orders, Captain Blackstone.’

‘I am aware of that, sir, but Admiral Hotham has sent me out expressly to meet escorted south bound convoys and assure those in command of King’s ships that between here and Gibraltar the seas are clear of any enemy vessels and are being heavily patrolled by our Spanish allies. Given his shortage of frigates and sloops, the admiral is somewhat blind to matters pertaining to the Mediterranean, where he is bound once his fleet is assembled. He therefore requests that you accede to his orders to leave your convoy and join him forthwith. Naturally written orders will be made out to cover you from any censure.’

Ralph Barclay knew he did not have to accede to such a request; he was within his rights to refuse. Against that he and Davidge Gould would be joining that fleet as soon as he had delivered his convoy and it would be a bad idea to start off in bad odour with Admiral William Hotham, the present commander, who would probably take it very amiss that what he had asked for had not been granted. That would be doubly true if the eventual head of affairs became Admiral Lord Hood, presently the senior naval lord on the Board of Admiralty, but certain, from what he had heard before he weighed, to take over the Mediterranean command. That was someone with whom Ralph Barclay already had a strained relationship; to be in the black
books of both the proposed commanding officer and his deputy was madness.

‘I’m sure you understand the nature of the request, sir, and the service you would be doing the nation by agreeing.’

Raising his speaking trumpet, Ralph Barclay replied: ‘I am minded to agree, sir, but from your words am I to understand you wish to strip the convoy of all of its escorts?’

‘That is the admiral’s wish.’

It was damned uncomfortable having this shouted conversation, something everyone on both crowded decks could hear, for Ralph Barclay was forming a notion that would aid him in another way, namely the chance to detach himself from Davidge Gould and HMS
Firefly
. He could not be sure that the simultaneous examination of his and Gould’s logs would not set off an inquest into his recent behaviour but if he could stagger their joining, with Gould doing so after he had reached Gibraltar, that possibility would be diminished, if not actually killed off. And if Hotham wanted frigates and sloops in the Mediterranean, there was not much point in Gould raising the Rock then coming all the way back to Lisbon.

‘Captain Blackstone, you may have observed that we took a prize on the way south, a French barque. I am loath to leave the convoy entirely unprotected, so I will order Captain Davidge Gould, who has HMS
Firefly
, to stay with her, and I will set a course with said prize for Lisbon, once I have given the requisite orders.’

‘Admiral Hotham will be most grateful, sir, and may I wish you joy of your capture.’

‘You may, sir, you most certainly may.’ Then Ralph Barclay turned to the master, Collins, and ordered him to work out a course for Lisbon. ‘Mr Digby, signal to both escort vessels to close with
Brilliant
, if you please.’

Henry Digby was as happy as his captain, for what was being proposed offered the prospect of adventure. Convoying merchant vessels was dull, frustrating work, made doubly so by the cantankerous, nay downright perverse, behaviour of the people they were tasked to protect, the merchant captains.

‘Lisbon,’ said Lutyens, who had been invited to take coffee in the captain’s cabin by Emily Barclay. ‘I daresay we shall take some pleasure there.’

‘Dry land will be a pleasure.’

‘Amen to that.’

‘And,’ Emily added, carefully pouring a second cup for the little surgeon to avoid spillage due to the swell, ‘it will do Lieutenant Roscoe no end of good to be ashore and still, will it not?’

Lutyens smiled, for Emily was, he knew, teasing him. ‘I had not forgotten Mr Roscoe, Mrs Barclay, and you are right. And just so I am aware of what you are truly thinking, it will also do him good to be under the care of more competent medical practitioners.’

‘I thought no such thing,’ protested Emily, loudly.

‘What?’ asked her husband, entering the cabin and removing his hat.

‘Mr Lutyens was being unfair, husband.’

It was a very jovial Ralph Barclay who responded. ‘A flogging offence if you are involved, my dear.’

‘I merely alluded to the better care that Lieutenant Roscoe would receive in Lisbon, sir.’

‘No, sir,’ said Emily, jabbing his arm in a coquettish way that betrayed her youth. ‘You did not, sir, you made a most cruel allusion that I thought you incompetent.’

‘Then in the face of such dire punishment I must withdraw it, unreservedly.’

‘Coffee?’ asked Ralph Barclay, who followed that with an irritable look at Lutyens. The surgeon quite mistook it, not knowing that the captain was thinking that if he had removed one fly from the ointment of his career with the notion to detach Davidge Gould, then he still had one firmly stuck in his sick bay.

‘It was a jest, Captain Barclay.’

‘Of course,’ Barclay replied, aware that he was frowning. ‘Forgive me, I have many matters to consider.’

Complex, thought Lutyens, looking at Barclay’s slightly puffy, broken-veined face, now relaxed and smiling as he took the small coffee cup from his wife. His uniform coat gave him an air of command, but his fluctuating moods tended to diminish that. Her I can read, for she is all innocence, but her husband, that is a man with many strands to his being. If they anchored at Lisbon his workload would decrease – the wounded would be sent ashore and for the rest, the crew would be too busy trying to catch the pox for him to
worry about treating them. This would allow him time to collate the observations he had made so far on this voyage and begin, perhaps, to draw some conclusions. Not enough to begin to write a paper, but pointers to which way his research should proceed. The title of the eventual dissertation he had already decided upon:
An Enquiry into the Stresses of Life at Sea for the Seamen & Officers of His Majesty’s Navy and certain conclusions on the mental heath thereof.

‘Perhaps it should be officers and seamen.’

‘Sorry?’ enquired Emily.

Lutyens had spoken, inadvertently, out loud, a trait that he would have to watch. It would never do to let on that he was researching the crew of HMS
Brilliant
. All in all, his decision to join this vessel was working out to his advantage. With no way of knowing if the crew were typical, he had nevertheless observed the application of discipline and its limitations, had not only watched as men went into a fight but had dealt as a surgeon with the consequences. He had seen men pressed and the way they reacted to that, many of those who had come aboard at Sheerness now seemingly resigned to a life in the Navy, just as he had seen the strivings of the likes of John Pearce and his ilk to get off the ship. That last thought made him wonder where Pearce was now; ashore probably and using to full advantage the letter, he, Lutyens had written to help him in his cause.

That made him look at Emily Barclay because, although he could not be certain, he had felt that she had been
fascinated in some measure by John Pearce. Perhaps for the reason that he was so different from the run of the fellows her husband had pressed from that Thameside tavern; he had a bearing about him that made him stand out, yet there was always the chance that it was more than that. He would never know, for to ask would only offend, but it had added to his study the effect of a captain having his wife aboard, and the difference that presence made to the way that same captain went about his duties.

‘So I escape my flogging after all?’ joked Lutyens.

‘For the moment, sir. I would not wish to deny myself the right for eternity.’

‘Surely you would never flog the surgeon, husband?’

Ralph Barclay laughed, for he knew, as did Lutyens, that he had no right to do so. ‘You have my word, my dear, that he is safe.’

Lutyens, thinking of the man whose back he had just treated, said, ‘You would not extend that to the rest of the crew?’

It was a damned uncomfortable question to pose with his wife present, and Ralph Barclay had to fight to stop himself from saying so. There was a fundamental disagreement between him and Emily about shipboard punishment; she was horrified by it, he knew the need of it. Lutyens must have realised that it was a maladroit question too, for he flushed slightly.

‘I recall a little rhyme that covers my thinking on the matter, Mr Lutyens:

 ‘It is an interesting notion to see your men as plants.’

‘Believe me, sir,’ replied Ralph Barclay, looking at Lutyens but really speaking to his wife, ‘there are men aboard this vessel who would aspire to the sense innate in a plant, and fail to achieve it. Now, let us move on to more congenial topics, like Lisbon.’

They raised Cape de Roca just after dawn the following day, making a southing before coming up nor, nor east to enter the mouth of the Tagus. Hotham had anchored his fleet opposite the city, in the Pietade Cove – half a dozen line of battle ships, including the 64-gun
Agamemnon
– and it gave Ralph Barclay some pleasure to know that Horatio Nelson, who commanded her, would have his eye on the barque in his wake, with the red ensign above the French Tricolour, denoting that she was a prize. He hoped and prayed that Nelson, along with all the other ship’s captains, was deeply jealous.

Almost immediately he secured his anchorage, the flagship made his number and that required him to go aboard with his logs, his exit from the ship coinciding with that of the still comatose Lieutenant Roscoe, who was sent into a boat strapped to a piece of planking lowered from a whip on the yard. There was a moment when Ralph Barclay stepped through the entry port of
HMS
Britannia
, to be greeted by stamping marines and a flagship lieutenant with his hat raised, when he imagined himself coming aboard such a 100-gun vessel as its captain, and that was only a short step from the notion that one day he might be greeted as the commanding admiral. He was years away from such a rank, but this war might last and take a few of those ahead of him on the captains’ list out of commission. Ralph Barclay felt no guilt at contemplating the death or serious injury of his peers; he assumed they thought likewise. Each and every one was fired by ambition for rank and wealth, not necessarily in that order. In truth he was sure all of them would forgo the former for the latter any day. Better to be rich than merely gilded.

That he was kept waiting, after such a peremptory summons to come aboard, came as no surprise; admirals liked to keep captains waiting, it reinforced their sense of superiority. That he did not have to wait long, Ralph Barclay put down to his having taken a prize. Not that Hotham would make a penny out of it; being under Admiralty orders there was no flag officer grasping for an eighth share. Relieved by the admiral’s clerk of his books and papers, he was invited to sit opposite William Hotham, reprising, as he did so, what he knew of the man. Reasonably successful, Hotham was short, pink of face and good looking for his age, a sailor who had done quite well out of the American War, but that was only part of the reason he was here. The man had connections sufficient to make him hard to refuse and since he was not utterly incompetent he had
been gifted what was a most important post, albeit that he would soon be superseded by Lord Hood. There was a bowl of fruit on the table, mainly grapes, and one of nuts, evidence that one thing he had heard was true: that the man cared much for his belly.