Blown Off Course (7 page)

‘Sure, he is not much loved in Ireland, brother.’

‘This old cove worked his time and took to farming, then fought the redskins when they was siding with the French, an’ he told us some of their wiles, for, as he said, you could never see the buggers in the forests. But there were locals who knew what to look for, and brushing away their trail was one of the signs, as were fresh broken twigs.’ Charlie suddenly waxed lyrical. ‘Often thought, when things weren’t too good, that I’d have liked to go to the Americas.’

‘Too late now,’ Michael said.

‘What about walking backwards?’ Rufus asked.

‘That were my own notion,’ Charlie replied. ‘Which is a handy one to use when you is seeking to break and enter over soft ground, like a vicar’s flower bed.’

‘Sharp, Charlie.’

‘Were it, Rufus? I don’t think it were that sharp. If’n I’d had my wits about me, I would have had us walking backwards as soon as we landed. Then those bastards in the guard boat would have rowed right on instead of stopping, thinkin’ we was just fisher folk going out on our common business.’

‘Now that, Charlie, is a sound notion.’ Charlie had to peer at Michael in the gloom to make out his smile. ‘Holy Mary, I have walked too many miles in my days to take pleasure in it, an’ being a tar for all this time has not endeared me. What better way to get to where we need to go than by boat?’

‘You have noticed, Michael, that we ain’t got one?’

‘There was boats along the shore, we saw them, and the master, who did that drawing, penned the
shoreline as well, all the way to the waters that lead up to London.’

‘With neither oars or the means to raise a sail in the buggers, if the folk that own them have a brain.’

‘Can we not steal those?’ asked Rufus. ‘Instead of shovels.’

Charlie laughed, the first sign of real humour the whole day. ‘You’se spent too much time in my company Rufus, you’se come to think like a felon. If we get back to the Liberties, I’ll send you out a-dipping along the Strand.’

‘There’ll be no fear,’ Rufus replied, with more force than he usually employed. ‘Was a time I would have worried, but not no more, mate.’

Michael was not finished. ‘The only thing we must have is some water. Sure, with that, we could sit here till things die down.’

‘I don’t know much about that drawing you’re on about Michael, but I do know it has to be a hell of a row all the way to the Thames, and that takes no account of weather.’

‘If we have to land, Charlie, and walk after all, at least it will be well away from these men now hunting our hides and the hue and cry they will set up.’

‘What about staying hidden?’ Rufus suggested.

‘And what if they sense we ain’t left the area and start a search of every hiding place, which I humbly put forward they will know like the back of their hands.’

‘You can be a miserable soul, Charlie Taverner.’

‘No, Rufus, I am a man who was raised to think how to avoid either the rope or the transport ship,
which is two risks I have faced all my life, an’ if I was that officer I would have men out hunting first light. We ain’t safe here, and even if it is pitch dark we has to move. We’ll try for your boat first, Michael, that being a good notion, but as sure as God made little apples we must be away from this place whatever way we can, and I am going to suggest that the best time to move is afore the light is gone complete, so that we can at least work out that we’s going in the right direction.’

‘Could we find some water to drink?’ asked Rufus.

‘First thing,’ Charlie replied, beginning to gather up his possessions. ‘Christ, I am dry as a witch’s tit.’

The last call John Pearce had made the previous evening had been to the home of Heinrich Lutyens, near St Bartholomew’s Hospital, to reacquaint himself with the one-time surgeon of HMS
Brilliant
, and see if any word had come from Downing Street, this being the address he had given. Faced with a negative response he could at least openly fulminate about the duplicity of politicians. An offer of accommodation he declined, but the invitation to stay to supper and share a beefsteak from nearby Smithfield Market was welcome. He was now nursing an after-dinner brandy and the subject had moved on, very naturally, to the potential to indict Ralph Barclay.

‘I think I might be damned by the loss of those papers, Heinrich.’ The look that engendered, a pursing of the lips and a piqued expression of the surgeon’s fish-like face, as well as a dilation of his pointed nose, had Pearce apologising immediately. ‘I bear you no
ill will for that. You only managed to rescue your sea chest and it was my idea to leave them in your care.’

‘And mine to hide them in my instrument chest.’

There was a moment then, when Pearce considered adding that it had been a wise precaution. On the night he and his fellow Pelicans went ashore in Gibraltar, someone, he was sure, had rifled the chest in his wardroom cabin and he doubted it could have been one-armed Ralph Barclay, more likely Gherson; it was that which had decided Pearce to leave the copy of the transcript of Ralph Barclay’s court martial with Lutyens, when he had only intended to have the surgeon care for them when he was off the ship for one night. But that was none of the host’s concern and something best kept to himself.

‘Did you ever find out how the fire started? It had to be carelessness on someone’s part.’

There was no denying that as a fact; if there was one overriding fear sailors had, it was of a fire at sea, something that could rapidly destroy a wooden ship, leaving those aboard no time to get off. Great care was taken with lanterns and stoves to ensure nothing could set the timbers alight and buckets of sand were liberally distributed around the vessel to douse anything accidental. The crew of HMS
Grampus
had been as assiduous in that as every other vessel, yet catch fire it did, and quickly, spreading until it consumed the whole vessel and forced the captain, in a very short time, to order it abandoned.

‘The culprit is still breathing,’ Lutyens added, ‘for every man aboard was brought safe back to England.’

Seeing speculation on that as a dead end – no one would admit to the guilt and, if it had not been discovered by now, it never would be, Pearce went back to his primary concern. ‘My first task is to find an attorney to handle my case.’

‘Does not this Davidson fellow have someone?’

‘That places too many eggs in one basket, friend, and the only people I know personally are my father’s old acquaintances in the London Corresponding Society.’

The reply was sharp. ‘They, I must tell you, are best avoided.’

‘That is unlike you, Heinrich.’

‘There are moves afoot to curb their activities, John.’

Lutyens made a great play of rising then to poke the fire, which allowed him to avoid the keen look he was getting from his guest. As the son of the pastor of the Lutheran Church in London he was connected to the court, Queen Charlotte being a regular visitor at that establishment, sometimes accompanied by the king, and if they could be dragooned into worship, the royal children as well. It was no secret that Farmer George hated the radicals who made up the various corresponding societies that had sprung up after the overthrow of King Louis, the London branch being the most numerous and vociferous, and in his antipathy he was fully supported by William Pitt.

To John Pearce it was typical of monarchy and those who served them: they saw every gathering of citizens at which free discussion was the aim as inimical to their security. His own father, Adam, had been more
outré
than most society participants, more outspoken in his
calls for universal suffrage and an end to the system of rotten boroughs, demanding votes for both sexes and all citizens in equal measures, as well as a curb on the constitutional power of the monarchy, if not its actual abolition, all underpinned by a more equable distribution of the nation’s wealth.

These ideas, penned in pamphlets, spoken of on innumerable platforms, were notions Adam Pearce, known as the Edinburgh Ranter, had actually been propounding for his whole life. But the Revolution in France had changed everything, including his father’s stature, first being welcomed by a nation that saw itself better governed than its continental neighbour, then causing fear as the excesses of the Parisian mob, egged on by fiery orators, had turned the bright new dawn into blood-soaked mayhem. That change in attitude had resulted in a short stay in prison for both son John and old Adam. They had been locked up and, after their release, given Adam had gone straight back to further writings and speech making, had been forced to flee to Paris to avoid that writ for sedition.

Lutyens took a particularly hearty poke at a log, sending up a shower of bright sparks. ‘The king is sure there are mobs who would wish to see the guillotine set up in the Horse Guards parade grounds, with him as the primary victim.’

‘Then he has no understanding of revolution and what causes it.’

Lutyens looked at Pearce then, and smiled. ‘And naturally, you do.’

Not sure if it was a question, Pearce declined to reply,
but had he done so he would have pointed out that, at its very simplest, it was not mobs of the poor that made revolt a success, but the break between those who sought to wield untrammelled power, and the desire for a say in matters of those with the means to finance their dreams of glory. King Charles had faced the axe over money, or a lack of it; so, in truth, had King Louis: both had lost their heads for hanging on to an outmoded concept of kingship in which they expected their every desire to be treated and provided for as if handed down from the Gospel.

Underlying those thoughts was the very potent truth that, in growing to manhood in Paris, John Pearce had begun to see that his father’s propositions, hitherto Holy Writ to a young lad, had within them serious flaws. They took no account of the base nature of the people Adam wished to enfranchise, this despite the observations both had made while incarcerated in the common cells of the Fleet. It was all very well for Adam Pearce to say that better education would produce a better polity: given the venal nature of those with education, like those firebrands in France, there was no evidence to suppose such an assertion to be true.

‘If Farmer George was wont to ask my advice I would tell him to surrender with grace that which he cannot keep, for not to do so risks having it taken away by forces, which, once unleashed, as events in France have shown, become uncontrollable.’

‘Not words he would receive kindly, John.’

‘Axe and guillotine blades are more cruel by far than a few home truths.’

Pearce was unsure where Lutyens stood on such matters. His own ultimate view had been formed in Paris when the bright promise of the overthrow of the monarchy had turned to bloody and uncontainable violence, a bloodbath that had, in the end, consumed his own father: Adam Pearce had discovered very quickly, having fled from the risk of arrest at home, that revolutionaries were no more inclined to tolerate dissent than monarchs or their minions, and had ended up in the prison of the Conciergerie because of it.

‘We must change a subject which is, of necessity, an unpleasant one for you.’

His friend had misunderstood Pearce’s allusion to instruments of beheading, but he was right. He had been a witness to his father’s death, having had to move heaven and earth to recover and properly bury his body, only succeeding with the aid of a sympathetic Revolutionary politician, Regis de Cambacérès. It was a very painful subject, and one which had him fingering the tin of Parisian earth he carried with him, taken from the churchyard of St Sulpice where old Adam was interred – how his father would have hated that as a resting place – he hated all churches, and that one was Catholic. One day, Pearce had vowed, he would be rescued from that cold grave and have his bones taken back to his native Edinburgh and more suitable ground.

‘A lawyer?’ Pearce asked.

Unbeknown to his guest, that put Lutyens on the horns of a dilemma: the only man he could truly recommend, he had also recommended to Emily Barclay. Would their paths cross?

‘Come along, Heinrich, you must know someone.’

Caught on the hop, Lutyens was forced to reply. ‘There is a fellow called Studdert.’

‘I’ll take his address, then,’ Pearce said, with soft interruption. ‘And then, for I am beat, I must be off to my hotel.’

‘Which is?’

‘Nerot’s in King Street.’

‘That, John Pearce,’ Lutyens joked, his face lighting up at his coming sally, ‘is the last address at which you should reside.’

It was not just a want of oars that made the finding of a suitable boat difficult on a strand of beach that stretched for miles: no owner was content to leave their possession beached without chaining to it a dog, so every approach over the noisy shingle – the craft were pulled up and away from the sand and the high-tide line – was met by first a growl, that followed by barking and, if further approach was attempted, by gnashing canine teeth, the din alone being enough to make the Pelicans sheer off and seek shelter back in the trees, eyes peeled to observe if anyone had reacted, not least if those out hunting them were within earshot.

The morning, since grey dawn, had been spent creeping along the shore with great care: scurrying from hideout to hideout, trying never to expose themselves to sight unless it was unavoidable and of necessity, they were making slow progress. They had at least found a dribble of a watercourse, which had allowed them to drink, thus relieving a raging thirst, but bringing on its
own annoyance in the very obvious fact that they had no means of taking any water with them, lacking, as they did, the means to carry it, which had them eying the grey skies wondering if it might rain.

‘It’s not just oars, Michael,’ Charlie said. ‘We must find a flagon or suchlike. ‘There’s no joy in being on salt water without we has summat fresh to drink.’

‘Maybe we’ll find some beer.’

‘Only if there is a God that loves us.’

‘He loves the likes of me, Charlie.’

‘Then only he knows why, Michael,’ Charlie sallied, only partly in jest, given they had a history of dispute, ‘for you are a cussed sod.’

The boat owners, those who had possession of both oars and water containers, lived inland in the cottages sparsely dotted about the coastal marshes, far enough away to justify the dogs and to give them some protection from the winds, which on this coast were ferocious, as well as an occasional heavy-tide surge that must overwhelm the shingle barrier. They must make their main living from the fish in the sea and on a day like this most would be out with their nets and lines. It took no great thought to work out the reasons why those who were not had such craft: there were pots by the boats and there would be more off the shore, buoyed on the surface, sitting on the seabed to catch crabs and lobsters, traps not worth visiting on a daily basis.

It was neglect that provided what they were seeking, a boat owner so uncaring of his guard animal that what greeted them when they crept towards it was not the
usual sounds but a faint whimpering. The beast lying within the thwarts, a collar and chain round its neck, turned out to be a sad-looking creature and not just in the weak, brown eyes. His coat was unkempt and showing sores, while the very visible ribs underneath spoke of a severe lack of nourishment, so much so that when Rufus proffered a bit of cheese it produced the first response that could be described as animated: the dog grabbed it and consumed it greedily.

‘Poor bugger is starving,’ Rufus said.

‘So will we be if’n you go giving it our grub,’ Charlie complained.

Michael was less troubled. ‘Sure, give the poor mite another bit, while I go look to see who might be the possessor of this creel.’

‘Whoever he is has little fear of Davy Jones,’ Charlie said, rubbing the strakes of peeling timber. ‘I reckon the only thing holding this in one piece is the varnish.’

‘She’s a sorry-looking bugger, sure enough, but it will hold three and float.’

‘Which we are preparing to row out on if we can find the sticks, Michael?’

‘I thought we agreed,’ the Irishman replied. ‘Water is safer than land.’

Charlie kicked the boat, but not too hard. ‘I’m not sure with this under my arse.’

‘Has to be in use, Charlie, there’s not a drop of water in the thing.’

Rufus, who had been patting the acquiescent dog, reached a bit further to touch the bottom board. ‘She’s damp, but that could be rain.’

‘An’ if she weren’t used, she’d be turned turtle.’

‘Unchain the dog, see where he leads.’

‘What if he barks?’ Rufus asked.

Charlie pulled a face. ‘He ain’t got the puff.’

There was truth in that: the animal had to be lifted out of the boat and even then there was no scamper in his gait, more the stiff-legged walk of a beast on its last legs. Once over the dunes and in a clump of trees they could see a tumbledown hovel, too broken to be called a cottage, which, even at a distance seemed to be held together by tarred canvas, not nails, with Michael of the opinion that a creature who let an abode fall into such disrepair was promising.

‘Best you two wait here,’ he said. ‘No sense in we three exposing ourselves. Anyone out hunting us and spotting one person, even with such a mangy dog, will reckon he belongs.’

If the Irishman had expected dispute he was not granted any: Charlie and Rufus were only too willing to stay as safe as they could and it did make sense. If there was a human in that hovel, then a bit of intimidation might be in order and when it came to that, O’Hagan, with his height and build, plus a face which, for all he was a smiling fellow normally, could look very ferocious, was just the man.