A Sea of Troubles (9 page)

His face was wide and his skin showed a trace of a bloodline not wholly British, perhaps with a Caribbean influence, for all that his eyes were blue, only truly visible when he took them from their common drooping state to wide open and that came about at any mention of money. Not that the subject came up first, for Pearce, while he was willing that the Tolland gang should be pressed and trigger a bounty, also had certain favours he wished to request, all designed to fit a policy yet to be forwarded.

‘Prime hands, you say.’

‘They are that, Mr Moyle, and it would not surprise me to find that they were engaged in the smuggling trade.’

‘Then doubly welcome, sir. Would you care to make that assessment official?’

‘No, but perhaps you could question them and ascertain the nature of their occupation.’

‘There’s credit to be had, Mr Pearce, for fetching in such men, and not just from the navy. The Government might issue you a reward.’

‘Then, sir, let it be yours, for I am sure it will enhance your situation many times more than it will do so for my own.’ That was when Pearce had to pause and look Moyle right in the eye, aware that such a statement of generosity had shocked the fellow. ‘And for that perhaps you could do me a service in return?’

Moyle did not respond right away and the slight smile that came upon his face was far from reassuring; he looked to be a man too calculating to trust. ‘And what would that be?’

‘It is my intention to write to a certain post captain who has aboard his vessel two men I consider followers of mine.’

‘You fear he will not release them?’

Now it was Pearce’s turn to produce a wry smile. ‘I fear we are not what you could call friends. I had in mind to offer him in their place twice the number and if they were prime hands, which I fully suspect these fellows I have fetched along to be, it would be an odd commanding officer who would hold out against such an offer.’

‘You said eight volunteers in all.’

Pearce had to stop himself then; the navy called everyone they pressed a volunteer but it was pure smoke.

‘Yes. I am aware that when a demand comes in for hands, a man in your position is not always able to oblige a fellow officer, even as much as you may desire to do so.
I am very afraid that if these eight are sent together to one ship then that may be introducing onto the lower decks a nuisance capable of causing much dissent.’

Moyle knew what that meant: mutiny.

‘So in order that such a thing should be guarded against, that is if you are unable to hold them and meet my previous request, the eight men should be split into two fours and sent to different vessels, with the added fact that two of them are brothers and should be separated. You cannot mistake them: one you will see as a natural leader—’

‘He will not be that aboard my ship, sir,’ Moyle barked, ‘and if he tends to that, be so good as to point him out and I will see he receives special treatment to cool his spirit.’

‘I believe his given name to be Jahleel and I do think a little extra discipline might do him good. The other brother is younger and seeks to appear more cultured. He has a scar on his cheek and is easy to mark.

‘Be assured we shall take some rough sand to buff off his refinement.’

‘Then I am content.’

‘You are due a bounty, Mr Pearce,’ Moyle said, standing from the settle and walking to his deck, pausing on the way to catch his image in one of the many mirrors, which hinted to Pearce at an excess of vanity. ‘I will be happy to write the warrant that allows you to draw it from the Navy Board at your convenience.’

‘Mr Moyle, I discussed with those hands I have the honour to command and we felt that since taking these men up was in the nature of being fortuitous it was felt that any bounty should go to the Greenwich Chest.’ Pearce produced a false laugh. ‘For none of us knows when we might be in
need of a pension and with Haslar hard by it is also, in wartime, a place any one of us could end up with a wound.’

‘That, sir, is very noble, indeed!’ Moyle exclaimed, yet the look of cunning that crept into those narrowed eyes implied the opposite: that only a fool turns down a bounty. ‘Charitable indeed.’

‘Also,’ Pearce said, knowing he was at the crux, ‘it may well incline you towards my earlier request.’

That made Moyle sit down in his desk chair, very slowly, and it was clear his mind was working at pace and when he spoke he was obviously playing for time to continue whatever train of thought he was on. ‘Your earlier request?’

‘Yes, it is one that concerns me as you may have noticed. No officer likes to see his personal followers under the command of another and the officer in question is … how should I say … strict.’

‘Of course.’

That was followed by several seconds of silence, in which all that could be heard was the creaking of the old hulk as it rose and fell on the swell. Then Moyle spoke, in a voice meant to be friendly, which it was not, unlike the calculation, which was clear.

‘It occurs to me, sir, that if I enter these fellows as soon as they come aboard, I cannot keep them from any draft that is called for from a vessel short of hands and needing to get to sea, and that happens very frequently since every captain is short of hands.’

‘To do so would risk your position, sir.’

‘Sir, it would destroy it.’

‘I am aware of what is at stake.’

‘I have it!’ Moyle cried, leaving Pearce sure he was about to articulate a thought he had arrived at long before. ‘The trick is not to enter them right off, but to leave it to me to register them as volunteers when I hear from you regarding your followers.’

‘Sir, that is nothing short of brilliant, but can you carry it off?’

Moyle’s voice dropped, taking on an air of imparting a confidence. ‘I am very much my own master here, sir. The men I command fear me, as is only right, for I can ship them off to sea as easy as any of the men we hold. And as for higher authority, well, I never see them for one month to the next. I will hold these men in an unlogged capacity and await your instructions. How would that suit?’

‘It would suit me fine.’

The brow furrowed, again Pearce thought a bit theatrically.

‘One problem does present itself. When the time comes to enlist them I will have to do so under my own name.’

‘Yes.’

‘I am happy of course to do so.’

Happy, Pearce thought, to take the bounty yourself or assign it to some relative or friend for a commission: neither the Greenwich Chest nor Haslar would see a penny.

‘Sir,’ Pearce cried, standing up. ‘It is rare to have dealings with such an honest, and may I say perspicacious fellow. I give you my hand.’

‘And I, sir, am glad to take it.’ The grasp was firm, but Moyle would not look him in the eye lest it reveal his avarice. ‘Now, lead me to your volunteers, so I may see them aboard, checked for vermin and settled in cells.’

Ship visiting was not a prerogative much extended to midshipmen, added to which HMS
Agamemnon
, for the officers of Hotham’s flagship, was a destination it would be unwise to frequent, given the admiral’s known dislike of Commodore Nelson. Toby Burns suffered a few frustrating days in which he could see but not touch deliverance; like many people who form a notion untested against reality, the idea that Richard Farmiloe was his route to salvation grew from a possibility to an absolute certainty. In the end it was the reverse; Nelson came visiting and brought with him his acting lieutenant, more as a courtesy to the lad than necessity – when it came to the conference being held to discuss the attack on Calvi, as far as the navy was concerned it was captains and above only.

Given his acting rank, Farmiloe was invited to the wardroom, likewise barred to mids, and Toby had to wait until his erstwhile saviour had been wined and picked
clean of news from home – so much more available in Gibraltar – mostly about the progress of the war. The twin and mutually exclusive desires of his fellow lieutenants would be exposed: the men who occupied that section of the ship wished for the nation to be triumphant but they also hoped that if victory came it would not be too soon to allow them the chance of advancement and, of course, prize money. Eventually Farmiloe came up for air and Toby could accost him.

‘Gosh, Dick, it’s so good to see you.’

The effusiveness of that greeting threw Farmiloe somewhat, for if he had known Toby Burns since the outbreak of war he did not consider him to be a close friend, even if, both aboard HMS
Brilliant
and at the recent siege of Bastia, he had intervened to provide cover for his manifest shortcomings. At the latter they had manned a forward battery together, trading shots with a too close enemy, the recollection of which added another stream of terror to the Burns nightmares, not least that he should have been in receipt of a wound like the man originally given command.

‘How is Lieutenant Andrews?’

‘Fully recovered, Toby, which I daresay you could tell by the mere use of a long glass to rake our quarterdeck.’ The head gesture to
Agamemnon
, berthed within plain view, underlined the point. ‘How do you fare with all your afflictions?’

That made serious the Burns countenance; his health and well-being a matter of prime concern. Yet it also presented him with an opportunity to take matters all the way back to Sheerness.

‘I am in topping form, Dick, almost since the first time we met.’ The Burns face took on a wistful look now. ‘Do you recall that day when you first came aboard my uncle’s frigate?’

‘Hard to do so here, Toby, in “brilliant” sunshine.’

Farmiloe waited for the pun on the ship’s name to strike; he waited in vain, for his companion was more concerned with the low cloud and scudding rains of the Medway, immediately recalled and described. ‘And that was before the mids turned to unpleasant duties.’

Farmiloe laughed. ‘I seem to recall that we new mids found any duty we were asked to perform congenial.’

‘Some more than others, Dick. Do you recall, for instance, the night you went out pressing seamen?’

The change in Farmiloe’s posture, the stiffening, was palpable. ‘Not fondly.’

‘You regret it?’

‘I do, not that I hold any responsibility for the act, that falls to your Uncle Ralph.’

‘Who faced a court martial for it.’

‘And was acquitted, I seem to recall.’

There was a note in Farmiloe’s voice, faint but detectable, of something like disapproval, or was it latent amazement? He had been sent off to the Bay of Biscay with John Pearce and his Pelicans, under the command of Henry Digby, a former lieutenant aboard HMS
Brilliant
, in short all the people who could have blown the testimony given at the court martial out of the water.

‘Dick, I think I need to confide in you, but before I do, I would ask that you peruse this letter I received from
London, I think from a lawyer fellow acting on behalf of John Pearce.’

‘Named Lucknor?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I had a letter too, asking me about that night.’

‘They seek to embroil you?’

‘No. It merely asked for information and made it perfectly plain that I was in no danger, given my rank.’

‘Mine is, I think, less kindly meant. Will you read it?’

There was clear reluctance; Dick Farmiloe had been part of the gang doing the misdeed on that night and it had until recently been long buried at the back of his mind. He had not enjoyed having it dragged up by Lucknor’s letter. It took no genius to deduce who the lawyer was after and on whose behalf he was working. Added to that, and despite what the lawyer had intimated, if Ralph Barclay came a cropper others would get caught up in the backwash and he might be one of them.

‘Who do you think is behind it, Toby?’

‘Why, John Pearce of course, he means to dish my uncle come hell or high water.’

‘I reckon the same, but I apologised to Pearce for my part and I am glad I did so, for he turned out to be a very decent fellow and damned brave at that.’

‘Apologised?’

That was said so Toby Burns could cover for the hearing of an opinion at total odds with his own; Pearce decent and brave? The man was a menace. He did however press the letter on Farmiloe, who took it very reluctantly and read it very slowly. When Burns thought he had finished,
the point at which his eyes flicked back to the top of the page, it was time to speak.

‘Dick, I have something to tell you and, in part, it is a confession of my stupidity.’

The letter was waved. ‘I have no desire to be involved in this.’

‘But you are my friend, not in as deep as me, but involved nonetheless.’

Sensing Farmiloe trying to digest and rationalise that, Toby started speaking quickly, outlining how Hotham had arranged matters to ensure an acquittal.

‘Anyone who knew anything germane was sent away – you and Digby, for instance. The depositions that the Pelicans made and signed, Pearce included, written out by Hotham’s second clerk, were never introduced into the hearing. My uncle lied, so did his clerk Gherson and me – well, I was pressed by family obligation to come to the aid of Captain Barclay.’

That, ‘family obligation’, sounded so much better than the truth; Toby Burns had done as he was asked for a number of mixed emotions: downright terror of that uncle by marriage and what he could do as a post captain to a lowly midshipman. Added to that was a compete absence of backbone compounded by a visceral hatred of John Pearce. Toby Burns, very early on in HMS
Brilliant’s
commission, had received accolades for an act of conspicuous bravery; the man who truly deserved the plaudits was none other than the same John Pearce, acts which had earned him and his friends a reluctant discharge from Barclay, nothing short of a release from the navy.

Added to that was the fear that retribution would be visited upon him for obeying another instruction from his uncle; that should they, in the act of taking home a prize ship, encounter in soundings any vessel looking for hands, then the fact that the Pelicans had been released from the navy on the grounds of being landsmen need not be made plain. Toby Burns had remained silent when he could have spoken to save them from being pressed for a second time and, on many an occasion, he had uncomfortably reprised the threat that Pearce had made: that one day he would be made to pay.

‘And that letter indicates what I was called upon to say.’

‘Why were you called as a witness?’ Farmiloe demanded. ‘You never left the ship that night.’

‘No, but my uncle, as far as the hearing was concerned, had me in place of you. He persuaded me to say that I made a mistake and landed the press gang in the wrong part of the river, in the Liberties of the Savoy rather than just upriver of Blackfriars Bridge where anyone we found could have been taken legally. In short, the impressment became illegal by my faulty direction rather than any action by my Uncle Ralph.’

‘And they believed this?’

‘Dick, it was rigged from the start. Who do you think chose the captains to sit in judgement, the same man who suppressed those depositions?’

‘Hotham?’

Toby held a finger to his lips; that was not a name to mention out loud on the man’s own flagship, given the subject. ‘Trouble is, somehow my part in the farrago has
become known. The fellow who signed that might only hint at seeking information, but the questions he poses leaves me in no doubt of what he is fishing for.’

‘Evidence against your uncle?’

‘Damn my uncle, Dick,’ Burns quietly wailed, ‘he’s out to get me. I lied to the court, and is it a defence to say I was coerced?’

‘You want my advice?’

‘Do you know that you can hang for perjury and I was under oath?’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then tell the truth now.’ Seeing the shock on Toby’s face, Farmiloe spoke at a more rapid speed than hitherto. ‘Reply to this fellow as I did, tell him everything, the truth unvarnished, as I did and I am sure that such an admission will sit well with any court assembled to judge the case.’

‘Court? You think there will be one?’

A piping voice floated from the quarterdeck. ‘Mr Farmiloe, is that young Burns I see you with?’

‘It is, sir.’

Nelson lifted his hat. ‘Good day to you, Mr Burns, I hope I find you well.’

‘You do, sir,’ Burns replied, cursing the man for his intervention at this time; there was, however, the requirement of a reply. ‘And you, sir, how are you?’

‘Plagued as ever, Mr Burns. Farmiloe there will tell you, if there is an affliction in the air, and as you know that is full of such things, it finds Nelson first and most viciously. I swear I am naught but a medical bellwether for those with whom I serve.’

‘Until a cannon goes off in anger,’ Farmiloe whispered, a fond and, to Toby’s mind, a mistaken note of affection in his voice. ‘Then the cure is instant.’

‘I fear I must tear you apart, my young friends. Mr Farmiloe, it is time you called in my barge.’

That Richard Farmiloe then bent his head to talk earnestly to Toby Burns had every other officer on the quarterdeck of HMS
Britannia
– and the conference just concluded, there were many post captains – either nonplussed, or, in one or two cases, seething with fury. Commodore Nelson had issued a precise instruction to one of his officers, a very junior one by his appearance, who then saw fit to take his time in obeying; the only person not in the least put out was Nelson himself, which only underlined to many his main failing: he might be a tiger in a fight, but he was a booby when it came to discipline!

‘Write that letter, Toby, tell all and condemn yourself if need be, but do not spare anyone else either, whatever their rank.’ That was plain enough: if it meant dishing Hotham along with Ralph Barclay he should do so. ‘This is bound to come out if Pearce is pursuing matters and the only hope you have for your own neck is a confession.’

‘Damn Pearce,’ Toby said, tears pricking his eyes.

‘Damn your uncle if you must, but not John Pearce, for I am sure if he were here he would forgive you.’

No he would not, Toby thought, as his hand was grasped and shaken. Why is it that I am the only one who can see Pearce for the poltroon he is? As he was ruminating on that and his own endangered future, Dick Farmiloe was shouting that the commodore’s barge should make for
the entry port. Soon, with much whistling and stamping of marines, the ship began to empty of all these captains and their attendants but what emerged as gossip was not anything to cheer a midshipman who wished to avoid danger; the siege of Calvi was about to begin, indeed it would proceed as soon as Lord Hood signalled it should proceed.

Alongside fellow passengers who could not even talk to each other, lest it inadvertently include her, Emily Barclay was free to peer through the gap left in the coach door blind and take stock of the sunlit New Forest, a place to her of some attraction. Having made her statement about leaving, it had soon occurred to her that she had very few choices of where to go. The idea of going back to Frome was anathema, not least because it would require her to share her marital home with Ralph Barclay’s twittering sisters, all spinsters and destined to remain so. To them their brother was the very soul of probity, brave beyond peradventure and close to saintliness in his personal habits. To tell them the truth, that he was a bully as well as an endemically dishonest satyr, would bring Emily satisfaction but it would not be believed.

Nor could she return to her old family home, for to do so would send a message to the whole town that the marriage of one of their most potent citizens was not as it should be. Never mind the rumour mill, her parents would be aghast that their comfortable life would be threatened by her actions. They would not see her case even if it were explained; selfishness and the fear of gossip would combine to bring upon her pressure to make
amends with her husband, something she knew she could never do.

Nor did she have friends outside of her hometown and all of her relations lived in close proximity; from there, upon marriage, she had gone aboard her husband’s frigate and if she had met other naval wives none were more than an acquaintance. How distant that seemed and not only because of the dismal February-March weather. Unlike now, there had been no money to spare then – Ralph Barclay had been on half pay for five whole years and was plagued before departure and after the wedding with impatient creditors. Keeping his wife on the ship saved him the cost of leaving her at home where she would require to run the house and incur expense; his sisters were enough of a charge upon his purse without he should add to it.

If her new husband was not passionate there had been romance in that one act, for it had only come to her afterwards that it was brought on by dearth. When first mooted it had sounded different, for Emily was told very quickly by others that for a serving naval officer to have his wife aboard was against all the rules of the service and here was her new spouse flouting them for, she supposed, proximity to her. She had found out the true reason when, in the company of other wives, she had gone shopping in the Medway for the kind of stores a naval captain needed to hold up his head afloat. Ralph Barclay had gone wild when he saw what she had spent and most of her purchases had been returned forthwith.