An Ill Wind (9 page)

It was, as all his previous letters had been, a critique of the way things were being run by a man well past his prime, the obvious concomitant being that matters would have progressed better under his own hand. At no time did he mention the strained personal relations between himself and Hood, nor his manifest attempts
to modify his clearly stated orders: this was a more-in-sorrow-than-anger type of letter. Sanded and sealed, he held it in his hand for a moment, before calling for his steward to order up his barge.

‘I am going to call upon poor Captain Barclay, who is, I believe, bound for the shore hospital. Send for Mr Burns to accompany me.’

Poor Captain Barclay was seething and in pain; the man before him, Lieutenant Glaister, already lambasted for his manifest failures, sat stony faced and, in his case, it made him look barely alive. Glaister would, by a kindly observer, be called fine-boned; the less well disposed would describe him as skeletal, with his pronounced cheekbones, high forehead, delicate, if pronounced, nose, none of which was well defined by his pallid skin, wispy fair hair and pale eyebrows. He even spoke like a corpse, in his slow Highland way. Behind Glaister stood Cornelius Gherson, relieved that it was now the Scotsman getting it in the neck, not, as previously, him.

‘I might remind you,’ Barclay spat, doing just that, given he was repeating himself, ‘that we are in the very place where such as we gained from the Toulon arsenal might have been usefully disposed of.’

Slowly, Glaister looked at the bulkhead separating the convalescent space from the rest of Captain Sidey’s cabin, a silent plea for Barclay to lower his tone. Not a wealthy man – most of his pay was remitted to his father and his worthless Highland estate – he knew to
nearly the penny the value of that which he had seen tossed into the harbour at Toulon, but he also knew the penalty for discovery. What he had become engaged in was illegal and criminal but it stood a chance of turning a profit, and while his captain had command of the ship and all the responsibility, he was all for it.

But with Barclay wounded and him in temporary command of HMS
Brilliant
, he had become exposed. What if a new captain was appointed? It was a situation in which he would bear the brunt of any opprobrium and he was half sure that Barclay, personally threatened, would deny all knowledge of what the bulging holds of the frigate contained: stores stolen from the French warehouses with the contrivance of the fellows who worked there, payment being a promise to evacuate them in case Toulon was abandoned, not an undertaking ultimately fulfilled.

‘We would have had every privateer captain in Leghorn begging us for those supplies,’ Barclay whispered, at least taking cognisance of the dangers of being overheard, then wincing as he moved his arm. ‘A mint of money, Glaister, and all in hard coin.’

‘Have you heard yet what is to happen to the command of HMS
Brilliant
, sir?’

‘No.’

That was another cause for concern to the wounded man: Hotham had hinted at Ralph Barclay shifting to a ship-of-the-line, a seventy-four, but that had gone from being a promise to a possibility, the whole notion now complicated by his aching wound. There would be no
new command till he was fully recovered.

‘I wondered if we would be seeing a new commanding officer aboard,’ Glaister added.

Ralph Barclay tried hard not to sneer, but he failed. ‘You don’t hope for elevation yourself, Mr Glaister?’

‘I would not presume, sir, and besides it would require a strong recommendation.’

That induced silence: the most telling recommendation should come from Ralph Barclay and he knew he was being asked if he would put it forward. ‘I doubt my opinion would count for much, Mr Glaister.’

There was truth in that: Sir William Hotham might propose, but it was Samuel Hood who disposed, and a word from Ralph Barclay in that quarter was more likely to hinder any chance of a promotion for Glaister than aid it.

‘I could ask that, as of this moment, my command be maintained.’

‘But your wound, sir.’

‘It is the very devil at the moment, sir, but it will heal in time.’

‘Something we all hope for,’ said Gherson, with what he assumed was a sincere smile.

The whistling of bosun’s pipes and marine stamping made them all cock an ear: they knew the sound of the arrival of someone important, and it was only moments before the door burst open and Mr Ault, his face bright red, told them breathlessly that Admiral Sir William Hotham was coming aboard.

‘Out, both of you,’ Barclay insisted.

They were gone before Hotham was shown in, Toby Burns at his heels, looking more like a faithful dog than a human. Ralph Barclay wondered at the bandage on his head, held in place by his hat: the last time he had seen the little scoundrel had been on the assault in which he had been wounded – or, to be more accurate, he had not seen him, for Burns had disappeared between the British position and the French.

‘Captain Barclay,’ Hotham said, with a sympathetic frown, ‘I was of the opinion you were in the hospital and I am of the belief that is where you should be.’

‘I am reasonably comfortable here, sir, and Captain Sidey—’

‘Has duties to perform and we must get his ship away from the quay before half the crew desert to those damned privateers. I have arranged transport for you and it will be here shortly.’

‘Most kind, sir,’ Barclay lied.

‘Your wife is toiling away there, saint that she is.’ Hotham half turned. ‘I brought your nephew along to visit you both.’

‘I am sure Mrs Barclay greeted him most affectionately, sir.’

Toby Burns had to look at the deck then and the reply threw Hotham slightly: it had been impossible not to observe that the youngster’s aunt had been less than fulsome in her welcome.

‘Wish your uncle well, boy, then leave us.’

Aye, aye, sir,’ Burns replied. ‘I hope you are soon recovered, Uncle.’

There was no choice, given the company, but to accept that with seeming grace, but it was hard.

‘Well, Barclay,’ Hotham said, as Toby Burns exited, ‘you will be going home, and though the reason is a damned shame, you will at least see England.’

‘Home, sir? Can I not recover here?’

‘Captain Barclay, who knows what will happen here, with the French on the rampage? No, safer to go back to England, to fully recover your strength, then seek employment when you are fully fit.’

Ralph Barclay looked hard at Hotham then, wondering if he could change his mind, and guessing from the look of insincere concern he could not. ‘In which I hope I can count on your good offices, sir.’

That had to be said, even if, inside, Ralph Barclay was both seething and miserable.

Hotham laid a hand on Ralph Barclay’s good arm. ‘Of course, and to aid you I wish you to do me a service that cannot but enhance your prospects.’ Hotham pulled an oilskin pouch from his pocket, dropping his voice at the same time. ‘I have here a private letter for the Duke of Portland and I am charging you with its delivery. I need hardly say that the chance to introduce yourself to such a personage, and in the circumstances show him that you have my complete trust, will ensure that when you reapply for an appointment, given you will have his support, it will be to something of a plum.’

If the celebration of Christmas was muted for the other faiths, it was done by the papists of Livorno in a way to please Michael O’Hagan – who somehow found a priest with enough English to confess him – with a high mass at the Duomo, then a procession through the streets, the Catholic faithful, singing lustily, trailing their mitred and gloriously clad archbishop as he blessed all who knelt to him at the side of each thoroughfare he traversed. Then the divine took to a highly decorated barge, which conveyed him around the canals of the city, each quay crowded with worshippers, finally returning to his splendid palace.

Aboard each ship a more prosaic ceremony was the norm, indeed many of those celebrating the occasion would have disapproved mightily of what was taking place ashore. To the officers and men of the Mediterranean
fleet – all, apart from those of non-commissioned Irish stock, strong adherents of the Thirty-Nine Articles of their Protestant faith – the shore celebrations were superstitious nonsense and they would have laughed at the crowds of peasants prepared to abase themselves before their puffed-up prelate.

At the hospital, an Anglican divine, who had a church serving the British community of privateers, some of whom were as pious as they were bloodthirsty, came to say a special service for the wounded, and that was attended by the Barclays and Heinrich Lutyens, as well as a cynical Charlie Taverner – who would take salvation if it was going – and a more believing Rufus Dommet, who was, in truth, a simpler soul.

The whole thing left John Pearce at a stand, for if he was not vehement in his disbelief, nor was he prepared to put it aside for the sake of appearances: he would neither attend the colourful Catholic ceremonies or those of what was High Anglican, meaning that when it came to the signing, there was not a lot between them. He had to, in this, ignore Michael O’Hagan’s worries for his soul, normally expressed in shakes of the head and a crossing, but more vocal in the face of the most important day in the Christian calendar. He had even managed to disappoint Horatio Nelson by declining his invitation to join him aboard HMS
Agamemnon:
the price of a fine dinner was too high.

But that was only for one day: King George’s Navy loved to entertain, and so close to shore and a supply of
food that was, if high priced, fresh and available, with wine plentiful and cheap, they took advantage of it. On every vessel in the fleet, over the festive week, every captain vied to throw a memorable feast, where they drank heartily, that before having themselves boated ashore to enjoy the delights of the port city, and it had to be said their behaviour was often questionable. The midshipmen were the worst, forever getting into scrapes with the locals, with indigenous knives produced to face visiting dirks, until Hood, fearing murder, confined them to their ships, but the officers, enjoying the taverns and the entertainments they provided, were not much better.

John Pearce, unlike a high percentage of his fellow lieutenants and a fair number of captains, was not a man for whores, though he knew the difference between that estate and a courtesan of the kind he had come across in Paris: if their morality was not much dissimilar, their refinement and conversation was markedly dissimilar, the transaction being a cut above the merely carnal. But he took some amusement in observation, in seeing how the charming Italians fleeced with smiles their only too willing victims.

On one occasion, leaving behind his uniform and wearing borrowed civilian clothes, he went out with his true friends to the part of the port occupied by the privateers, noting that the taverns they frequented were more like the Pelican in the way the visiting mariners had turned them into little pieces of their homeland: if
the serving wenches had olive skin, they had the same shape as the Rosies of this world; the men who teased and bedded them liked their women buxom, this to go with ale specially brewed by the locals to keep their customers content.

Michael and Charlie drank copiously and, in eyeing the people around them, picked out those few they might trust, as against the many they would not, responding to the suspicious stares they received from some true ruffians with an air of impertinence. They also took the opportunity to buy some female company with alacrity. Rufus, alternately blushing and boasting, sat with John Pearce for an age until he was persuaded to an upstairs room by one of the girls, not knowing that it was Pearce who had prompted her to act. On rejoining them, he was the subject of much ribbing about ‘losing his cherry’, an accusation he vehemently denied, claiming, as all youth does, sexual conquests that were imagined.

Also available were the official entertainments, balls and masques arranged by the grand duke’s satraps for the visiting officers of an allied fleet, topped by performances at the opera and that strange activity, to most of the British officers, of ballet. If they found the highly formalised dance slightly bewildering, there was no shortage of lieutenants waiting for the female performers at the stage door, lithe girls who were happy to be escorted to whatever gathering had been arranged for the evening, these at more respectable venues where
food, wine and music were the staples; any other activity was kept discreet.

John Pearce had engaged with some of those dancers in stilted conversation, only to find that, outside the occupation they pursued, they had little or no conversation, something he had noted of the fraternity in Paris: dancers talked of dancing, singers chattered about the operas in which they performed, actors – in which this city was lacking – at least told witty tales against themselves or revelled in the humorous misfortunes of their peers. Livorno was not the centre of the grand ducal court, that being Florence, leaving him to despair of ever finding women of sophistication.

The grandest of the entertainments, thrown by an archbishop, was to prove him wrong. He was a man of secular tastes and he quite obviously and openly supported a mistress. It was at the end of Christmas week when he threw his masked ball, this to see in the new year of 1794, and he was wealthy enough to outdo the local magnates in splendour. His palace was illuminated outside by hundreds of lanterns, inside by a thousand candles, and it was clear the cream of Tuscan society found this a ball to attend. Hood and Hotham were both present – though never physically close – and, like the rest of their officers, in their best bib and tucker, but in the main they looked out of place, not in their dress but in their rather stiff manner: they did not intermingle.

Not for the first time as naval officer, John Pearce
found his facility in French his greatest advantage. The Gallic officers present were more at home in grand surroundings than their British counterparts, more inclined to engage with their Italian counterparts, so he sought out one he knew well, the Baron D’Imbert, and through him he was introduced to many of the leading citizens of Livorno, all of whom also spoke the international language of the world. And he met their companions, one of whom was the striking Contessa di Montenero.

He had spotted her a lot earlier and had noticed that her beauty, unlike most of her contemporaries, was unforced: high cheekbones, little powder to mask her luminous skin, smooth black eyebrows on a remarkably beautiful face and, even from a distance, a ready and entrancing smile that often turned to an appealing laugh. Her clothing had about it a simplicity many lacked, merely because she had no need to seek to exaggerate in her dress and head decoration what was natural. There were no plumes and no colourful turban, leaving her countenance and manner as the things that conveyed her personality to the room.

Naturally, with those attributes she had been surrounded by gallants, but Pearce knew how to be patient, as well as how, by an amused stare, to convey his interest from afar. She had turned more than once, having noticed that gaze, to see if it was still upon her, giving a slow swish of her fan that somehow conveyed no displeasure. He had waited until the Baron d’Imbert,
circulating the room and conversing, came into her orbit, before moving to join him.

Introduced and close he was pleased to see her skin was flawless and that her eyes danced when she was in receipt of a compliment. The hardest part following on from that was to get her away from the babbling suitors who surrounded her and that took a very deliberate showing of his back to them, done with such determination she laughed, displaying lovely teeth.

‘And how, Lieutenant, do you come to know the baron so well?’

‘I had to negotiate with him for the surrender of Toulon.’ Those black eyebrows went up a fraction and she could not help looking at his blue coat, with its lack of adornment denoting a lowly rank. ‘I have certain skills not vouchsafed to my superior officers.’

There were ways of saying those words and he was pleased to see she took them in the way he intended: not boasting, yet leaving in the air the question as to what those skills might be.

‘An accomplished emissary, then?’

‘I like to think, Contessa, that my talents extend beyond mere negotiation.’

‘You have talent, monsieur, for being very forward.’

‘I have found that little is gained by being overly cautious.’

‘Sometimes all is lost by being too bold.’

‘If I had any knowledge of what I might forfeit I would know whether prudence was a course to follow.’

‘Pearce.’

He knew the voice, it was unmistakable, and he cursed Horatio Nelson, because the look in the
contessa
’s eyes as he made that last remark, if they did not promise, hinted at a distinct possibility of pleasure. John Pearce sensed the mores of this part of the world were the same as those he had known in Paris: this woman might be married, and no doubt her husband was in the same ballroom, but he would very likely be about his own affairs leaving her to her own. Much as he wanted to ignore Nelson, and to keep holding the gaze of the woman before him, he was obliged to turn.

‘Allow me to name to you Madame Carlatti, from the opera,’ Nelson boomed, before dropping his voice into what was supposed to be a manly exchange, hinting at something salacious and underlining that while he was not drunk, he was close. ‘She has the most remarkable voice, which, sir, is not the least of her accomplishments.’

She also had the most remarkable bosom that would have been extraordinary had it not sat on a body that was in proportion. Madame Carlatti was in all respects a big woman, a head taller than her companion, with an overmade-up face, eyes outlined in kohl and thick red lips, the very antithesis of the well-proportioned
contessa
.

‘Do introduce me to this charming creature,’ Nelson added.

‘The Contessa di Montenero.’

The little captain took the
contessa
’s hand and kissed
it, in a rather sloppy fashion, adding some compliments in barely comprehensible French. In leaning down, Pearce was presented with a trio of nervous lieutenants standing several feet back, who were watching Horatio Nelson with concern.

‘I see you travel with some of your officers,’ Pearce said, hoping that he would go to join them.

‘Ah, my guardian angels,’ Nelson joked. ‘They worry for my soul, but I have told them more than once, a man is a bachelor east of Gibraltar.’

This amused Pearce, given Nelson, with his young face, blue eyes and bright blond hair looked so virtuous, almost angelic. ‘You are not concerned that Madame Carlatti will discover you are a married man?’

‘Doesn’t speak a word of English, you know, Pearce, which, while it has its advantages, can be damned awkward in a clinch. She speaks French, though, and since I have orders for Corsica I am thinking of asking her if she wants to come along.’

Pearce laughed out loud, which had the Italian opera singer looking at him suspiciously; the hint that he should pose the offer was too obvious. There was also the image of this pair having congress, this huge woman and Nelson.

‘Would Lord Hood approve?’

‘Shan’t tell him.’

The band, which had been silent for an hour, struck up again with a lively rondo. Nelson’s eyes lit up and he swung round to his painted paramour and made
all the signs requesting that they dance, which allowed Pearce to turn back to the contessa, only to find her once more surrounded by eager suitors.

‘Forgive me, sir.’ He turned back to face another lieutenant, one of those Nelson had called his guardian angels. ‘I know you to be Mr Pearce, and I wonder if I could count on your good offices?’

‘And you are?’

‘Lieutenant Hinton, sir, at your service, premier of HMS
Agamemnon
.’

‘Looking out for your captain?’

‘Trying to. He seems to esteem you, and we must get Captain Nelson away from here before he commits a public indiscretion.’

Pearce had dined with Nelson once, in company, off Tunis, and noted he was light-headed in the article of drink. ‘From what I have seen you need to keep him away from the punch bowl.’

‘I need to get him back to the ship.’

‘And his opera singer?’

‘What happens in his private quarters is his affair. What happens in public view could become the object of gossip.’

‘In letters home?’

‘The King’s Navy is a small world, Mr Pearce, and there are certain places where tales of misbehaviour would not play to his advantage.’

Especially with his wife, Pearce thought. ‘He wants to take her to Corsica, Mr Hinton.’

The eyebrows shot up. ‘Were it not a court martial offence I would sandbag him and set sail while he was still unconscious.’

‘Tell me, Mr Hinton, is this association with Madame Carlatti an aberration?’

‘It is not his first adventure, sir.’

‘And how do they end?’

‘With much remorse.’

‘Then I fear you will be wasting your time, sir: a man who displays remorse then goes on to commit the same sin is a lost cause.’

Pearce looked over to where the
contessa
stood, still surrounded, but she glanced in his direction at the same time and smiled, making him determined to end this conversation: the doings of Horatio Nelson and the effect it would have on his marriage were none of his affair, he had better fish to fry and he was sure that little persuasion would be required for him to make this a memorable night.