A Sea of Troubles (3 page)

Such thoughts recalled his last visit to Paris, a city much changed from that which he had enjoyed in the company of Amélie, and that dragged up, in turn, the memory of the last contact he had enjoyed with a parent known throughout England and Scotland as the Edinburgh Ranter. This soubriquet had been given him for his years of radical stump speeches and pamphleteering, all denouncing the privileges enjoyed by the monarchy, the Church, the aristocracy and the greedy mercantile class.

Adam Pearce had been hated by these pillars of the British Government for the way he stirred up discontent
and sometimes even riot; a marginal nuisance for most of his life, all that had changed with the fall of the Bastille and the revolution that swept France. Suddenly his activities and growing fame – he called for a similar overthrow in his homeland and the notion was welcomed by many – presaged a potent threat, so much so that Adam and his son had been imprisoned for a short spell in the Fleet. Set free Adam had not kept silent; he had taken up his cause again only to be forced to flee to France from a King’s Bench warrant for sedition, a crime which could be punished by hanging.

Initially welcomed in Paris as a famed supporter of republicanism, as well as a victim of reactionary justice, Adam Pearce had been feted and admired by the men then in power. But both that power and his welcome had begun to pall over each month; never one to hold back on what he saw as morally right, John’s father found that the people who had taken over the revolutionary government had no more love of his honesty than the ministers of King George; in a city increasingly febrile, that was dangerous; there were no warrants in France, just arbitrary and revolutionary justice.

John Pearce had returned to England to plead for that King’s Bench warrant to be set aside only to find himself being pursued by men intent on serving it and clapping him in gaol. On a cold winter night he had taken refuge in a crowded tavern hard by the River Thames, in a part of the city called the Liberties of the Savoy, much used by men avoiding the long arm of the law. Called The Pelican, it proved to be a poor choice in terms of safety; he had been illegally press-ganged into the King’s Navy by none
other than Emily’s husband, Captain Ralph Barclay of the frigate HMS
Brilliant
.

As much good fortune as bad had attended his service since that night: he had been cast ashore and nearly drowned in a cutting-out expedition, got he and his companions back to safety and obliged Ralph Barclay to release him and them from the navy only to be pressed for a second time on the way home. The commander of his new vessel had promoted him as a way to stifle a troublemaker; he had then found himself obliged to take command of the vessel in the first successful naval action of the war and was hailed for that as a hero, which resulted in Pearce being given his present rank by order of King George.

In the interim, in Paris, matters had gone from bad to worse for his father. The party of the Girondins, who took control of the Government, cooled towards him and sought to still his criticisms by disapproval. The Jacobins, who overthrew the Girondins and sent their political enemies to the guillotine, imprisoned Adam Pearce to silence him completely. Appraised of this his son hastened to rescue him, finding him too ill to give any attempt a chance of success. Knowing he was near to death, Adam substituted himself in place of another prisoner, a fact his son discovered too late; he was already in the tumbrel and on his way to the place of execution by then. John Pearce failed in the race to seek to save him, instead witnessing a decapitation by that same infernal device which had lopped off the heads of so many before him, accompanied by the screams of a bloodthirsty revolutionary mob.

Duty came along to chase away such gloomy
recollections, for over the prow lay the sandbanks that protected the entrance to the River Beaulieu and those he examined carefully. He must take cognisance of the state of the tide, for he would need it to be rising or at flood to take him, on a north-westerly breeze, up to his anchorage at Buckler’s Hard on what was a tidal waterway. Once there he would quit the ship and his temporary appointment. That brought its own feelings of regret; if he did not have much love for the navy, he had enjoyed being in command of the young men who manned this vessel.

As he looked along the deck at the hands that had been called up to their duty, he hoped they too had appreciated his being there, at least the majority, for the man he had replaced and who would return was a tyrant. There amongst them, chatting easily and causing the occasional ripple of laughter, was his good friend Michael who, if he came across as the jolly Irish giant, was a proper handful sober and could be fierce when inebriated.

On their first ever encounter, the same night when both had been taken up in the Pelican Tavern, Michael had been near blind drunk. Pearce had been obliged to duck a haymaker that, from such massive fists as the Irishman possessed, would have removed his head. Much water had flowed since that day when they and many others had been the victims of the press gang. For a small group, stuck together as messmates, the name of that tavern had given them their own soubriquet: they called themselves the Pelicans. Even if he was not truly a friend then, nor the cause of their subsequent troubles, John Pearce could not avoid feeling responsible for what had
become of them since that night: old Abel Scrivens had perished in his place; Ben Walker was now a slave to the Musselmen, if he was not expired too.

For them he could do nothing, but his primary task once ashore, Emily Barclay and potential complications notwithstanding, was to get out from under the thumb of Ralph Barclay the two remaining Pelicans, Charlie Taverner and Rufus Dommet, with whom he and Michael had been press-ganged. First he must bear up for the river entrance and, given he still held himself to be short on experience, being a naval lieutenant by good fortune rather than long experience, Pearce thought carefully before issuing the necessary orders.

‘Mister Dorling,’ he called, ‘prepare to shorten sail and, I think, given the wind is not favourable, we will need to employ sweeps to progress upriver.’

‘We could warp her up with boats, sir.’

‘No,’ Pearce replied with a smile, before taking off his blue coat. ‘That would burden a few men. With sweeps we will all share the task, myself included.’

‘Monsieur!’ the
Comte
de Puisaye exclaimed when, minutes later, he saw John Pearce grab the end of a sweep. ‘This is undignified for an officer.’

‘Dignity be damned,’ came the reply, in English, which made the crew chuckle.

Emily Barclay was sat on a stool, by a stream and under a wide-brimmed straw hat, at a place the Lymington locals called Batchley Copse. She had a brush in her hand, pigments on a trestle by her side, while behind her sat an elderly fellow, there to instruct her on the finer points of watercolour painting as she tried to capture the midsummer sunlight dappling on the water. Apart from walks and a nightly visit to Lymington harbour – there was some hope that John Pearce would come to anchor there rather than Buckler’s Hard – this was part of her daily routine, clement weather permitting, which it had been most days, though the ground was still damp from when it had poured.

Concentrating, the image she was trying to get on canvas took her mind off a sea of troubles that seemed to grow in difficulty the more she gnawed on them, not least what kind of future she could expect with the man who had so recently become her lover. It was true that when
her thoughts did turn to John Pearce and what they had enjoyed together, worries gave way to fond recall as well as a trace of a blush, for he had shown her what pleasure two people could enjoy when happily coupled.

But that did not last; such memories inevitably took her back to the previous experience of the same acts with her husband and they had been anything but pleasurable, having ranged from painful, through mind-numbing to, on one occasion, an act of downright brutality bordering on rape. This had shown her clearly that far from marrying a man of some stature and refinement she had become attached to a beast rather than a gentleman, and Ralph Barclay had become someone from whom she was determined to permanently separate.

As an act it had proved easy, she simply found somewhere to reside apart – but as a condition of living it was far from that. Emily knew only too well the world in which she lived and the mores of the society in which she had been raised: marriage was for life, a sacred trust, not something to be taken up and discarded on a whim. John Pearce might say and truly believe that society could go to damnation but it was not his reputation that would be shredded. Men were expected to be weak in the article of sexual temptation but no woman was allowed the same licence; to stray off the conjugal path was to be tarred as not much better than a whore.

It was impossible not to dwell on what their joint future might be and in truth that had barely been discussed, though they had the means to impose silence and acceptance on her husband. In their possession was a copy of the details of a court martial in which not only had
Ralph Barclay committed perjury, it provided evidence that he had induced or coerced others to lie as well, a document that could see him hanged. Now in command of a 74-gun ship of the line, he was presently at sea as part of the Channel Fleet and that was a position, his naval rank and responsibilities and his life notwithstanding, he would never let be put at risk; Ralph Barclay saw himself as defined by his rank as a senior post captain.

How foolish she had been at seventeen years of age, how easily she had allowed herself to be persuaded that a match to a man of such status was not to be missed. Only later had it occurred to Emily that the parental pressure, seemingly gentle but now perceived as persistent, had more to do with their comfort and happiness than her own. By marrying she had secured the continued possession of the home in which her mother and father lived and in which she had been raised, a dwelling entailed by inheritance to her soon-to-be husband. Had she refused him he might have taken his revenge on them by repossession, which would have seen the whole family on the streets.

‘Might I suggest, Mrs Raynesford,’ said her elderly instructor, ‘that a deeper green be applied to show the more heavily shaded leaves.’

The use of that name made her jerk and move the brush too rapidly, smearing part of the work, for if Raynesford was her maiden name, it was not her wedded one. She turned her head away so he could not see any trace of her deep blush, for it was inclined to induce both shame and guilt; in a moment of indecision and under pressure that was the name by which John Pearce had booked them into the King’s Head in Lymington as man and wife.

There was a sigh from behind her back. ‘Perhaps another tree branch, even if you cannot observe one, will rescue the work, which has a degree of promise.’

‘Yes,’ Emily said, biting her lower lip as she sought to concentrate on what was before her eyes rather than behind them.

Ralph Barclay was sitting on the sunlit quarterdeck of the Third Rate, HMS
Semele
, the round-backed captain’s chair lashed to ensure it stayed in place, watching as the crew worked hard to repair the battle damage she had so recently suffered. Underneath his uniform coat, left sleeve pinned to his chest because of his lack of an arm, he had been obliged to wear ducks instead of his normal breeches, making him feel improperly dressed. This was due to the wound in his thigh, sliced open by a musket ball in the encounter with the main French battle fleet, which had bled so copiously he had passed out. As a precaution against repetition, the leg was heavily bandaged.

Thus placed on his chair he was unable to see much of the rest of the Lord Howe’s command as it sailed up the Channel towards Plymouth in the company of those French warships that had been taken as prizes. If the fleet was abuzz with talk of the victory, and it would be if it were anything like HMS
Semele
, then a large part of the conversation would be about prize money, that much favoured wardroom and ’tween-decks topic. Even the great cabin was not immune to speculation and Ralph Barclay could happily contemplate his own booty, for a great fleet victory brought reward not just in terms
of glory but also in terms of wealth to the whole ship’s company, the captain most of all.

That would dominate every waking thought now the dead had been committed to the deep, the wounded were under the care of the surgeon and the last vestige of loss, the auctioning of the possessions of the deceased, had been completed. Ralph Barclay had engaged in endless calculations of the various forms of payment in which he would be entitled to have a share, the hulls of the prizes of course being the most valuable. But there was the value of the stores they carried, as well as the rigging, the canvas, head money for the captured sailors, gun money for the weapons, both cannon and muskets – his only worry that those who decided such things would not properly take into account the sinking of the
Vengeur du Peuple
, the vessel with which he had been heavily engaged and the enemy that had inflicted the damage now being repaired.

A seventy-four like
Semele
, she could not have been crewed by much less than six hundred men, yet from what he could tally only just over half that number had been taken off alive. Beresford, third lieutenant at the start of the encounter, now, due to the expiry of the pair above him, the first, had recounted to a recumbent commanding officer what had happened after he passed out. It was plain that attempts at rescue had been hampered by the fact that many of the crew of the dismasted French warship had perished because, having broken into the spirit room, they had been drunk. That did not alter their worth; representations must be made in writing to ensure such men or their money value was not ignored just because they had drowned.

‘Sir,’ said Lieutenant Beresford, approaching his captain. ‘The surgeon was wondering if you would be up to visiting the wounded. He is sure such a thing would lift their spirits.’

Spirits, Ralph Barclay thought, his face taking on a savage look; the only spirits those sods care about are the same ones that killed the Frogs aboard
Vengeur
. His next thought was that they were hardly likely to get any emotional lift from the sight of him either, for he was no soft-soul commander but a strict disciplinarian, a man who ran a taut ship and was as likely to flog a fellow as praise him. Yet it had to be, it was his duty.

Looking up at Beresford he saw how different the youngster appeared from the fellow he had been in his company prior to the contest, more sure of himself, and he could guess why. There would be promotions, especially for first lieutenants, even if they came to it by the death of their superiors. They would be entitled to become commanders and be given unrated ships, sloops and armed cutters of their own if they were lucky enough to have the influence to be granted a commission; even languishing on the beach that would mean prize money to spend, an increase in pay and a ready audience if they were called upon to regale their neighbours, not least the young daughters of the local gentry, with the story of the battle; many an advantageous match had been founded on less.

‘I will require aid, Mr Beresford,’ Barclay said, lifting his empty sleeve, ‘for I am a one-winged bird.’

‘Sir,’ the lieutenant replied, embarrassed, for he had not contemplated the need.

‘Add to which my wound—’

‘Of course.’

‘As you know, Devenow, the fellow I usually rely on, is one of those under the care of the surgeon.’

Beresford tried but failed to hide his distaste at the mention of that name; Devenow had acted as the captain’s servant, a task to which he was wholly unsuited, which had raised questions of probity in the wardroom. He was a nasty bully and a man inclined to drink himself insensible, having threatened many of the crew to acquire their grog; what his captain was doing relying on such a creature escaped almost the entire crew.

‘Perhaps we could ask Gherson?’

Ralph Barclay nearly spat out ‘That dammed coward!’ but he contained the temptation to abuse his clerk, for it would only diminish the man who chose to employ him, even if the accusation was palpably true. Gherson had tried to hide in the cable tier during the battle, needing to be hauled out by a midshipman and forced to stay in the place of danger; it was doubly galling that he had survived unscathed.

‘I shall fetch a pair of hands to help you, sir.’

It was unfortunate that the two closest and barely occupied were Charlie Taverner and Rufus Dommet. Poor Beresford could not know that, if they were now volunteers, these men had once been press-ganged by his captain from a tavern set in a place where such acts were illegal. It took some time for Ralph Barclay to both look at and acknowledge them but when he did so his thoughts of prize money and what he could buy with it evaporated.

‘Not that pair, damn you,’ Ralph Barclay cried, for even if he was looking at them he was thinking of that scoundrel John Pearce, with whom they were associated under that stupid Pelican soubriquet of theirs. ‘They would as like cast me down a companionway as help me.’

If Ralph Barclay had the right to fix the two men with a basilisk stare they did not have the freedom to respond in kind, for Charlie and Rufus were nought but common seamen, who lived at the mercy of such men as the ship’s captain. Dismissed, without once ever matching his stare, they knuckled their foreheads and turned away as Beresford called forward two other souls to help the invalid.

‘Chance gone begging there, Charlie,’ hissed Rufus, his freckled face alight.

‘Not half, mate,’ came the whispered reply from Taverner. ‘Nought would give me greater joy than to see that bastard take a tumble.’

‘As long as it did for him it would be sweet.’

‘Trouble is, Rufus, he knows who we are, an’ that can’t be to the good.’

‘You sayin’ he did not know we was aboard before?’

‘Can’t have done, Rufus, or I reckon we’d have stripes on our back by now.’

‘Happen when we make port, Charlie, John Pearce will be waiting there to take us off.’

‘Pray for it mate, for with Devenow and that bastard Gherson aboard as well, we’ve got three devil’s on our tails, not just the one.’

In the great cabin, Cornelius Gherson was working on the endless logs required by the Admiralty and Navy
Board that gave evidence of the proper running of one of His Majesty’s ships of war; every item of food, drink and stores consumed had to be listed and accounted for, while after a battle the repairs that required the use of canvas and rigging, ropes, pulleys and chains, as well as timber, nails, paint and even turpentine seemed to never end. This was a task for which he was well suited, though there was some sorrow that the various peculations he had carried out so far since HMS
Semele
had been commissioned would be required to be set aside.

The clerks who examined these logs had a fearsome and completely unjustified reputation for diligence; in truth they were as lax in the pursuance of their duties as any man who acted without too much supervision and was overpaid for their task, more interested in their privileges and the quality of their claret than their responsibilities. Most submitted logs got no more than a cursory examination, meaning that a certain amount could go missing without being spotted. A fleet action changed that and eagle eyes would scour the books for signs of sloppiness brought on by the euphoria of victory; those Admiralty clerks hated the notion that another might prosper.

Yet even as he added, subtracted and listed, Gherson’s thoughts were on other problems, not least his relationship with Ralph Barclay; never entirely sound, it was now much diminished by his recent behaviour. Worse, over the horizon lay not just the coast of England but also the lies he had told to get him out of a tight spot. Tasked to get the copy of the court martial papers that would damn his employer, he had not only failed to even find them, he
had assured Barclay that his mission had been successful and they had been destroyed by burning.

If he did not know where they were precisely, Gherson assumed they had to be in the possession of Emily Barclay and that presaged great trouble. That they could see his employer hanged if ever produced in a court of law was less of a consideration; Cornelius Gherson was only troubled by that thought in the sense that it would impede his own progress to where he wanted to be, clerk to an admiral either on a profitable station or in command of a fleet, a position from which could be extracted, by fair means or foul, a great deal of money. It might be time to seek another employer.