The Perils of Command (16 page)

Stood amidships he saw Hotham was on deck, as was only
fitting; he stared at him hoping for some eye contact, which was not forthcoming. Pearce was unaware that he too was under scrutiny by a quartet of men set to tidying the falls, coiling the loose ropes into neat loops.

‘Word is Leghorn,’ Cole Peabody hissed.

‘Then when we has a chance, we has to take it, for we’ll scarce get another.’

‘Fair,’ said Cephas. ‘But I wonder if yonder fellow will know our faces?’

Dan Holder was scathing. ‘How can he, seeing he only spied us proper once?’

‘Well I is going to get close so he can see me,’ Cole insisted, ‘and we must all do the like. If the sod can put a time and place to any one of us it will need a damned hard bit of thinking to get round it.’

It was a magnificent sight, the only difference to the paintings Pearce had seen being that the sails were dun-coloured from exposure not the near white employed by artists. An enquiry brought the information that the destination was Leghorn, which suited Pearce. He needed to beard Hotham, of course, but from the Tuscan port he could get a ship to Naples. Had Barclay got there and if he had what had occurred? There was little point in gnawing on that, he was too far off to affect matters but the image of raging Ralph Barclay did keep coming to mind.

‘Where in the name of the devil is Barclay?’

It was not John Pearce shouting that but the admiral; if his information was correct, then the enemy had been reinforced, at least six sail having come from Brest to even up the contest, and he needed
Semele
to be sure of parity. Their appearance had sent him into a near apoplexy for not only
had they passed Gibraltar without being intercepted, they had sailed on past the Spanish Fleet anchored at Minorca. It was a blessing that Admiral Sir Hyde Parker had arrived with several vessels to augment his own forces.

‘One day, if God wills it, we will end this farrago of being allied to the Dons and go back to what we should be doing, fighting them and stealing their plate ships.’

‘I hesitate to raise it, sir, but you do know that Lieutenant Pearce is here on board?’

‘He could be on the moon for me, Toomey.’

‘I can appreciate that present circumstances are not conducive to that particular problem …’

‘I have waited my whole life for this.’

‘And the whole fleet is sure of a victory that will raise you in the eyes of the country.’ It was the right thing to say; Hotham’s eyes positively gleamed at the words spoken. ‘But.’

‘But what?’ came the query, this after a long pause.

‘I fear that Captain Barclay has been less than honest with us.’

‘Go on.’

‘It seems that John Pearce has a copy of the transcript of his court martial and it is on that he intends to bring a case against him.’

The admiral looked as if he had been slapped and hard. He sat up straight, his features rigid, and Toomey knew that there was no need for further elucidation; Hotham got the drift and the ramifications without them being explained. Then he suddenly relaxed and smiled.

‘If we thump the French, Toomey, Pearce can go to hell.’

Ralph Barclay was not fool enough to think HMS
Semele
would escape observation from the shoreline; to achieve that would require he be so far out to sea as to preclude his aim. Instead, Mr Palmer would, once they parted company, sail in a circle for a rendezvous the following day while he and his ‘press gang’ were rowed to their destination at a distance that would allow a return in good time.

The great unsaid was left unspoken: what would happen if his wife was not at the house on the strand, for that would mean her being once more ensconced in the Palazzo Sessa? Gherson did consider posing the question but since he had wriggled out of going along he felt he would be wasting his breath.

Not that he failed to consider the consequences. Barclay was in such a passion that he might well invade the ambassador’s private residence and the repercussions of that did not bear thinking about. Hamilton might be in bad odour in high places for his marriage but he was the representative of His Majesty King George at a foreign
court and thus not a man to be trifled with.

These thoughts were rattling around his mind as the seventy-four heaved to and hauled in the cutter. First thing was to have it fitted with a stepped mast that would allow it to progress while not depending entirely on human muscle. Getting a one-armed captain into the boat was solved with the use of a whip from the yard and a chair, lowered with gentility. Gherson, watching, wondered how many men on the rope considered the option of letting go as Barclay was in the air and over water.

‘You have your orders, Mr Palmer.’

‘I have sir, and may I wish you good hunting.’

‘A worthy quarry, Mr Palmer, I do assure you.’

That brought a look of curiosity to the premier’s face but no words as the chair was lowered till the captain was safe in the boat and seated in the thwarts. The triangular sail was raised, the boom hauled round to take the wind with the cutter heeling and moving forward as it felt the force. Before the captain’s gaze there lay a sea of faces, those of the men chosen to accompany him; a less pleasant prospect could hardly be imagined.

He had checked with Devenow to ensure no milksops had been included and been reassured, but it was doubly certain under scrutiny; they were without doubt an assortment of real hard bargains, a dozen in number and collectively one of the ugliest groups of specimens he had ever clapped eyes on: scarred, many toothless and none given to smiling or a hint of humorous exchange.

With little to do, Ralph Barclay could continue his contemplation of what would happen if he was successful. His initial reaction had been, he had finally realised, intemperate.
Not that he wished to retract a single word but he knew that to behave in that fashion with his wife would not serve for several reasons.

If she stayed with him aboard HMS
Semele
, and he had no guarantee Hotham would approve of such an arrangement, she was with child and that would excite comment. How far was she gone he had no idea and lacked any of the kind of knowledge of domestic matters that would enlighten him. But he had observed her figure to be unchanged, so the pregnancy could not be of long duration.

If she was got ashore a few months before the birth, to have the child, he could time the announcement so that his fellow officers would reasonably assume him to be the father. But that was months away and much as he would have loved to have chained her up in the cable tier that could not happen either.

In days the whole fleet would know and with her burgeoning figure he might as well run up a signal on the mainmast to say he had been cuckolded and the child was not his own. The best solution might be to send her home, but that too was fraught with problems: if she had run off once then she might do so again, while his career needs precluded that he accompany her.

He could always fain illness, of course, yet was it wise to leave an area of conflict, and one in which he might be allowed to participate in a second fleet action, when it would soon become common knowledge that his wife had produced a child? That would appear soft and not allow him to be seen as he desired, as a hard-driving officer and a competent one.

At the seat of his concerns was the loss of face and the dent to his dignity. He needed to get his wedded wife back
to the family home and he could not go with her. There she could go to term, with his friends, neighbours and both families in a joyous state of an impending confinement, blind, he hoped, to the fact that he was not the father and that depended on her acquiescence in the deception. To get that far would require he behave in an exemplary fashion.

What happened subsequently would depend on how she behaved both before the birth and in the future, which presented a whole raft of possible situations but of one fact he was certain: Pearce’s bastard would not enjoy a happy existence regardless of what Emily wanted. He was the man of the house and his rights would be enforced.

He had been sitting, head tilted forward in contemplation, and when he raised his gaze it provided no comfort for there was no one along in whom he could confide. It gave him scant joy to think that even on board he only had one person with whom to discuss the scenarios running through his mind and that was Gherson. The feeling of loneliness was acute, but then he had lived with that ever since he had first commanded a ship of war.

The approach to land had been timed for dusk to avoid the risk of being spotted before they could get close to their destination, where it was assumed all would be abed. Once they had beached and got the cutter out of the water to sit on the sand, Barclay ordered that lanterns be lit by which they could illuminate their way. Two men were left as guards, both with loaded pistols that would act as a signal as well as a deterrent, and with Devenow on his left side, Barclay led his men inland, glad to be out of the boat and his gloomy ruminations. How much better to be active.

On the step outside the Hamilton bathing house Emily
Barclay had placed a chair and was, under the stars, deep in contemplations that unknown to her in some way mirrored those of her husband. The servant sent along by Emma Hamilton had fed her and Michael O’Hagan, which, given there was little to do was, for the Irishman, a precursor to sleep.

In her lap lay a book and on the table at her side a candle but attempts to read were constantly interrupted by her thoughts. These centred on a letter she might possibly send to her spouse. Various levels of apology were examined, some too grovelling for her to truly contemplate, yet Emily felt certain that at some time she must make an effort at a reconciliation.

Having never considered herself maternal, the advent of her pregnancy altered everything. She was no stranger to babies: in the company of her mother she had visited the poor when they were sick to offer comfort and had held in her arms many a grubby infant to dose them with the palliatives that had been fetched along. That was the duty of every right-thinking family of the standing of the Raynesfords, to not only give succour but to be seen to do so as an act of Christian charity.

Now her entire concentration was on that which she was carrying in her womb, even if the baby had yet to make itself felt with a first kick. There was terror as well as joyful anticipation; from those same visitations Emily knew childbirth to be fraught with risk but she sought to overcome that by her confidence in her own strength and health. As to survival once born, the good Lord would see to that.

There was a clock in the parlour that struck regularly to note the passage of time, little heeded until it struck ten
chimes. Looking at the book told Emily how little she had managed to read and the candle was beginning to gutter from being low as well as from an evening breeze. It was time for her to sleep even if she doubted that would come easily.

As she stood up, her eye was caught by a blink of light from along the strand. It was not a steady one of the kind that could be seen in various dwellings along the shore and something stirred inside her, perhaps the foetus, enough to make her concentrate. What appeared the second time was not one light but several, soon extinguished, and they dipped behind a hill. Blowing out her own candle Emily made her way through the lamplit parlour and up to the first level, to a window facing north-west.

It did not appear immediately but eventually there it was. A string of moving lights that could only be carried lanterns, given the unsteady way they flashed. The words of mistrust Michael O’Hagan had uttered regarding her husband rose to her mind and she dashed into the room he occupied to shake him awake.

As a man who had slept in hedgerows and under bridges in places far from refined he was one to come alert quickly. Following a whispered instruction he trailed Emily to the window to have pointed out to him that which she had observed, much closer now and without doubt heading in their direction.

‘My billy club will see to it,’ the Irishman said making to leave the room.

‘No!’ The firmness of the reply stopped O’Hagan in his tracks and he searched for a clue to embellish it on a face very much in shadow. ‘If that is my husband, then I beg you count the lanterns.’

‘Sure I have taken on numbers before.’

‘I see a dozen, Michael, or near it and if it is who we fear they have come for me, not you.’

‘To do murder, happen.’

‘You, possibly, if you seek to defend me, myself I reckon not.’

‘Holy Mary, that is not a wager I would take.’

‘It is I who must calculate and I will not have you killed to protect me when the odds mean it is impossible. If my husband has brought a party to take me up they will not be gentle types.’

‘You know I cannot leave you.’

‘You must. I want you to go to the Chevalier and tell him what has occurred, if indeed it does.’

‘It’s my turn to say no.’

‘Michael, my husband will have you slain without a thought and to no purpose.’

‘I was given a task by a man I hold dear and that I have to fulfil.’

The bobbing lights were very obvious now, so the time in which Michael could get clear was rapidly diminishing, while the glow from one lantern was adding flesh to a companion and two things were clear. The rolling gait by which they moved, which indicated sailors, added to the odd sight of the kind of coloured bandana common to the British tar, made doubt near impossible. Finally, the fact that the man at their head had only one arm engendered an ever more desperate tone to Emily’s pleading.

‘That Hamilton servant needs to up and away too. He is at risk as well, for merely witnessing. See Hamilton and then get to John and tell him that I have been taken. Only he can
alter that, and Michael, I think you know I am uncertain if I wish it to be so. But at least he will know what has happened.’

‘You seem sure he will not harm you, which I am not.’

The voice that replied lost all passion or urgency; if anything it was deflated.

‘Allow that I know the man to whom I am married. He will not be tempted to murder for the very simple reason that would deprive him of the chance to humiliate me at his pleasure.’

The sense of determination resurfaced quickly. ‘Now get going, Michael, and if John asks you may tell him that you did so at my express wish and that your departure suits my purpose. I no longer want or need your protection, but do say our child might. He will know the meaning.’

‘I have said before you will break his heart.’

‘That a person can live with, but a broken head can be an ending. I will not have you on my conscience.’

The Hamilton servant was a harder creature to rouse out than Michael O’Hagan, so woozy from sleep that it took an age to get him out of the door and running. A quick glance showed those lanterns so close it was hard to think he himself could do likewise. The Hamilton retainer was a slight fellow, and local he was not; his size alone would alert Barclay to his flight. Perhaps it would end in a chase and one he could not be sure of winning.

In the jumble of thoughts running through the Irishman’s mind, many of them deeply troubling, there was one that was paramount, for even he had come to reason that if he fought such odds he would lose. He had to get to Pearce. Barclay must know he was here and it mattered not as of now how he had found out that his
wife was too. They might not kill him but the very best he could hope for was a beating, to then be taken aboard Barclay’s ship and that was a far from comforting thought on its own.

There could be no doubt that what Michael was seeing was like a press gang. It had all the hallmarks to a man who, like many folk who shared his islands, had been raised to see the signs. His last words to Emily were that he intended to hide and he ran for the stairs, taking them three at a time while she walked out through the doorway to confront a body she could now hear talking, more growling really, in that way men do when bent on violence.

Michael O’Hagan was on the roof and able to hear the first words uttered by Ralph Barclay, a shout to halt the progress of his party and a demand that his wife, framed in the doorway by the oil lamps behind her, give herself up. The roof was flat, the only object upon it the rain cistern that the Chevalier used as a douche, which made the next remark by Barclay one to be concerned about.

‘I am told that Pearce’s Irish brute is with you.’

‘Not as we speak.’

‘He would not leave you.’

Emily managed a laugh. ‘Is he not a man, and are the fleshpots of Naples not within walking distance? I sent the servant lent to me by Lady Hamilton off as soon as I saw the lanterns. I am here alone now.’

‘I intend that you should come with me.’

‘How can I refuse such a kind invitation?’

Emily had adopted the wrong tone and she awaited the blast of fury that would follow her temerity; it did not come, instead he spoke softly.

‘I have no wish to harm you.’

‘I had no notion that you would.’ If it was less than the full truth, Emily thought it a better response than her previous one, not humble but not point scoring either. ‘Am I to be allowed to collect my possessions?’