By the Mast Divided Read online

  By the Mast Divided

  DAVID DONACHIE

  Contents

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  About the Author

  By David Donachie

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Somethin’ll turn up, lads, something always does.’

  Charlie Taverner tipped back his battered tricorn hat then waved his tankard to add sincerity to the statement, aware that the jug in his hand was more than half-empty and there was no money for a refill. ‘How many times have we been in a spot and somethin’ has happened along to ease matters? Time and again, lads, and damn me if that ain’t the truth.’

  His cheery voice did not carry far in a crowded wharf-side tavern like the Pelican. Nor, judging by the expressions on the faces of his three companions, did it do much to lift their spirits, which made Charlie Taverner question – not for the first time – a fate that had bound him to them. Ben Walker, furthest from Charlie and never much given to talking, was staring fixedly into the smoke-filled room, lost, as he always seemed to be, in private thoughts and concerns that creased the forehead above his smooth oval face.

  Abel Scrivens, the oldest of the group, was slowly shaking his head at the folly of such cheerfulness, his hooded dark brown eyes sad in a tired, lined countenance made sharp-featured by years of dearth. Taverner reckoned Scrivens an awkward cove, but he had also to allow that Abel was no misery-guts – just a man who could see the world for what it was, for he had seen it the longest.

  Only Rufus Dommet looked as though he had any faith in the confident assertion. But then the red-haired freckle-faced youth, the bairn of the group, was such a simple fellow he would believe any statement made by the likes of Taverner – only three years his senior in age, but a dozen ahead in experience. Rufus would have been helpless in London without someone or other to mind out for his welfare, which his trio of companions did with varying degrees of tolerance. In truth, Taverner was working hard to sound hopeful in the face of the naked reality that was mirrored in the expression on old Abel’s face – the four of them were right on their uppers, and with no place to go for a good three hours. Their bed space was still occupied by those who had a turn in the tiny hovel that was all this quartet could call home, night-soil workers who would roam the streets of London lifting other people’s filth. In the crowded Liberties of the Savoy, the few streets and alleys bordering the Thames, any place to lay a weary head was at a premium, and hot-bedding was the order of the day. Two, sometimes three shifts of sleepers occupied the same small room, some sunk so low they were forced to share shoes and topcoats as well as a straw-filled, flea-ridden mattress.

  The casual riverside labour on which the four depended was slack at this time of year, with nothing but winter greens and root vegetables coming in for unloading on good days. A week of hard frost in the country had meant no produce for the nearby market at Covent Garden, and without work and a day’s pay they had little to live on. It was freezing outside, turning to night, and if they could not see a way to keep their tankards topped up, then the tight bastard who ran the Pelican would toss them out on their ears.

  ‘I hear they’re takin’ in volunteers for the army at Chelsea Barracks,’ said Walker, without looking at anyone in particular.

  ‘Now why in Christ’s name would you want to go fighting the French?’ demanded Charlie. ‘What has they ever done to you?’

  ‘They’s chopped off King Louis’ head,’ insisted Rufus, with an air so serious it seemed a personal affront.

  ‘Good luck to them, I say,’ Abel Scrivens growled.

  ‘That ain’t right,’ Rufus protested.

  ‘Why ever not?’ the older man demanded, eyes opening in surprise, for he had little love for anyone of means, soundly based on his having to deal with them. With age on his side and a placid manner, Abel Scrivens was the one who sorted out the work they undertook, the fee for their labour and the time they were given to complete the task – that followed by the inevitable haggle over payment.

  ‘They’re chopping the heads off all and sundry,’ the boy mumbled, now sounding uncertain, for he had learnt to be cautious when arguing with the older man. ‘An’ it stands to reason there will be good folks among them.’

  ‘Would that be the same good folks who pass along the Strand, not two streets distant from this very spot, and step over the bodies of those dying or forced to beg? Or would they be the same good folks who are forever trying to rob us of our dues once the work we’ve engaged for is done?’

  Scrivens shook his head in wonder at what he saw as the boy’s innocence. Charlie Taverner knew Abel would want to put young Rufus right, to let him know that the boy was a fool for his view of the world, but he also knew that Abel’s manner would add nothing in the way of cheer. Rufus, likewise, would resent being hectored, so Charlie, with another sweep of the tankard, adopted his usual ploy when dispute threatened the mood.

  ‘Talking of kings and the like, did I ever tell you about the occasion I got myself carried round London in a coach and four?’

  ‘Not above a dozen times,’ groaned Ben Walker, the lilt of his West Country drawl taking the sting out of the complaint, and since no one really wanted to dwell on their situation, or engage in an argument about whether it was right to kill folks, even if they were French dogs and rich with it, Charlie was allowed to retell an oft-repeated tale from his seemingly chained past.

  He had been a sharp, the best working Covent Garden he claimed, able to spot a country flat lost in the London maze quicker than most could blink. Ben, Rufus and Abel listened, each one selecting what they chose to believe, noting any exaggeration, for the storyteller was prone to embellishment. Charlie took them from the moment when he spotted his mark, a stranger to the city, young, gormless, with more of substance in his purse than his head, to when he persuaded him to empty that purse on clothes, suppers, hands of cards and willing whores, all at the whim of his well-heeled, but momentarily embarrassed friend, Handsome Charlie Taverner.

  ‘I say Chelsea,’ said Ben Walker, bird-like eyes again fixed on the middle distance, as Charlie concluded his tale with his hurried flight from a sword-waving dupe who knew he had been dunned. ‘This weather don’t look set to ease yet, and without Abel gets us some unloading we won’t even have the price of our four by four to sleep in. We’ll end up having a lie-down on the Savoy Steps with the beggars.’ Gloom clouded his features as he added, ‘With this cold we might as well just chuck ourselves in the river.’

  ‘We could sell our teeth,’ opined Rufus, who tended to propose that course when things looked bad, for, Abel apart, they were still young enough to have molars of value.

  ‘Cold means extra coal barges,’ insisted Charlie.

  ‘We ain’t sunk that low,’ Abel countered, for unloading coal was hard, poorly paid, and filthy work.

  ‘Chelsea means a shilling for our mark,’ Ben added, ‘a hot meal and a bed right after.’

  Charlie Taverner’s smile disappeared, as he demanded, ‘And what do you think there will be in droves within earshot of a trumpet sounding for recruitment?’

  Walker tried to look quest
ioning, but he knew as well as Charlie that every tipstaff from London and Westminster would have men there, waiting to take up the likes of those who normally feared to leave the Liberties of the Savoy, a sanctuary running by the side of the Thames, neither bound to Westminster or the City of London, where normal writ of debt and bondage did not run. Men of that ilk also patrolled the streets that enclosed this haven. Never mind Chelsea, just getting past them would require sharp wits.

  ‘Charlie ’as the right of it, Ben,’ said Abel. ‘It won’t be a bed in the barracks you’ll get, or a chance to bayonet to death some Johnnie Crapaud, like as not as poor as you. A square foot of a cell in the Marshalsea is what you’ll win, with the sound of the bailiff counting his fee for raking you in to send you to sleep.’

  ‘Is that worse’n what we have now?’ Ben demanded, his face red and his expression turning ugly. ‘Stuck in half a dozen streets and alleys with a river at our back and ten men to fight for every job? No women barring whores, not a blade of green grass in sight and air fit to choke on. It might suffice for you lot, but I need to walk out of here, I do.’

  ‘I say,’ Charlie insisted again, holding out hand to calm his angry companion. ‘Something will turn up.’

  The low iron-studded door, set in the far wall, opened then and a tall fellow entered. Dressed in a black coat with wide severe lapels, a high collar and a tall hat with a large buckle on the front, he stood still for a moment. It was telling that the four near-destitute creatures could look at such a common occurrence, the arrival of a stranger, with hope.

  The hot air hit John Pearce like a wall. Taking hold of the rusty metal latch, he shut the door behind him, thinking that he had run enough. He was tired and cold, and he knew that the vital spark that had kept him going since morning was ebbing away from exhaustion, hunger and thirst. Clouds of that cloying fug, the product of pipes and packed humanity, billowed out, dragged by the harsh east wind that whistled down the narrow, cobbled lane. It rose fast into the night air to curl round the swinging, creaking sign, painted with the huge-beaked bird that gave the place its name: the Pelican.

  He prayed that the escaping smoke would disperse – if the men still pursuing him observed it they would guess where he had taken refuge. Eyes stinging, he peered through a murk pierced by lanterns fixed to the bare brick walls and the flickering blaze of a large fire, as well as the guttering tallow candles that glowed on the rough hewn tables.

  What do they see? Pearce asked himself, as he stood for a moment on the landing by the door, his eyes ranging round the packed, low-ceilinged room. A felon on the run, or just some young fellow out for a revel?

  He felt like a felon, and suspected he looked like one, unshaven and tired enough to feel an ache under his eyes. His clothes, too, were those of one who had slept rough these last few nights, and walked many miles on muddy roads. Yet it was hard to tell if the occupants of the Pelican saw anything at all, for if anyone had heeded his entrance, they did not seem to be looking at him now. Nevertheless he deemed it prudent to move quickly from the door, to avoid drawing attention to himself – for this was a place where the locals would be much practised in observing a stranger and discerning if he presented a risk, or possibly a bounty.

  Pushing between the packed bench seats, looking into a mass of faces, he observed extremes that made flesh the satiric drawings of Hogarth and Rowlandson: outlandish dress, arch poses, jabbing fingers, open mouths, laughter, anger and despair, some who, even in a crowd, seemed to be alone, so intently did they stare at the table before them, while the odd creature, drunk or mad, would laugh for no reason at his passing. The chill that had seemed to reach his very marrow, part fear, part the cold of a windy February night, began to retreat in the face of a scene so ordinary, so familiar – one that as a boy he had observed in countless taverns throughout the length and breadth of England. As he wended his way to the rear, the odd pair of eyes lifted to catch his. But they did not linger, for this was not a place where souls were bared and friendship freely offered.

  What he would not give now for a friend to whom he could unburden himself, a sympathetic ear that might help him find a way through his difficulties, a voice that might do something to quell the ever-present sensation he harboured: that he was burdened with a task too great for his years and experience. Pearce felt a wave of loneliness begin to wash over him, and fought hard to control it, for such an emotion was the precursor to despair, and that he could not afford if he was to fulfil the undertaking he had come to England to perform. He forced himself back to the present, and the problem of where to sit.

  The seats lining the walls were as crowded as the tables that filled the well of the tavern, but Pearce took time to pick his spot. If there was another exit, he might need it without being gifted time to find it. The Liberties might provide shelter for those on the run from the writ of a City or Westminster magistrate, but he reckoned himself pursued by the enforcers of a King’s Bench warrant, and the men who served those, he knew from bitter memory, could collar their prey where they pleased.

  A curtained arch by the serving hatch clearly led to the back of the tavern. Surely there must also be a door to the outside that did not oblige anyone from that part of the building to make their way through the main tap room. He pushed his way into a space between two groups of men, engrossed in their own talk, in a place that allowed him, back to the wall, to keep his eyes on the main door. Then, elbows employed to increase the available room, he rested his back against the wall, and some of the tension that had sustained him since early that morning drained away.

  ‘Enough space you got there, friend?’ His neighbour’s expression was more arch than angry, for Pearce had forced him to move. ‘Have a care with your jostling.’

  Pearce sat up abruptly, tipping his hat, more to cover his face rather than as a mark of respect, and, after a mere five days in England during which he had been careful to avoid casual contact, avoided only by a whisker replying in French. What he did say in English sounded, to his ears, slightly foolish. ‘My apologies, good sir.’

  ‘Good sir!’ the fellow cried. A large circular motion with his tankard made sure his companions attended to his response to this arcane mode of address. ‘And a tip of that most singular billycock to go with the compliment. I’ll have you know, friend, that I ain’t so much knighted, as benighted.’

  Laughter greeted the pun, that and repetition as two of the jester’s companions tested the not very telling wit of the remark on their own tongues. Pearce wondered what this dim joker next to him would say if he found that his neighbour was the son of Adam Pearce, the radical orator and pamphleteer, a man had up in the past for inciting public disorder, who was once again under the proscription of the highest criminal court in the land charged with sedition, which in time of war equated very closely to treason. Would he cringe to be told that he was seated next to a fellow who had, for the last two years, lived in Paris, the crucible of the French Revolution? Would he care? What did any of these people in the Pelican, with their cheap gin, thin ale and tobacco know about universal suffrage, equality of the sexes, an end to the power of kings and the supremacy of the individual?

  Four years before, in ‘89, such ideas had been all the rage – the news from Paris had been hailed by British society as a bright new dawn. It was very different now. The French Revolution was no longer a beacon for freedom. Paris and all of France lay under the shadow of officially sanctioned murder, a tyranny based on the use of the guillotine, not only for aristocrats, but also for anyone deemed to be an enemy of the people, which included many of those who had overthrown the monarchy in the first place.

  Egged on by the likes of the Irish parliamentary firebrand Edmund Burke, the people of Britain damned the Revolution now, having watched it lurch into anarchy and war. When King Louis was beheaded for scheming against his fellow-countrymen, a nation that had lopped the head off King Charles Stuart in the previous century rose up in hypocritical disgust at such an act. Laws had been pas
sed to render anyone who spoke out for equality in King George’s dominions guilty of rebellion, and so cast as a criminal who must first be confined, then tried, and it was hoped by the more reactionary elements, executed. It was an irony too painful to contemplate that having left Paris under threat of incarceration, abandoning a father too sick to travel, John Pearce faced a similar threat in the country of his birth merely for being that man’s son.

  The feeling of irritation grew. Did his fellow drinkers care that, in the whole of the British Isles, the right of free assembly had been suspended, so that any group of more than four people gathered to talk could be deemed a combination inimical to the safety of the realm? He wondered if they even knew that William Pitt was their Prime Minister, for few here would be freeholders with the right to vote. They would know that Farmer George, tainted with madness, was their King, and that the enemy in the war just declared was France. But more than that, no; they were drunk on the illusion that they lived in a free country.

  Sensing his neighbour, who had turned to grin at him, recoil, Pearce removed the glare of suspicious hatred that such thoughts had brought to his face. He looked away to fix on the substantial female figure in a low cut dress who now approached, oblivious to the salacious catcalls of those trying to goose or pinch her behind. When she bobbed before him, Pearce was presented with an alarming depth of cleavage, surrounded by what seemed like an acre of pink, mottled flesh, then a pair of dark brown eyes that seemed, for a brief second, to examine some interest.

  ‘What, sir, will you partake of?’

  This was said in a lazy, drawling voice, one supposed to encourage the customer to spend money by holding out a promise of other delights. But the look did not match the seductive tone. This wench had hard eyes that had seen and endured too much to retain any amiability.

  ‘Rosie,’ cried the benighted one, leaning forward, leering down that cleavage. ‘Never mind this fellow. When are you goin’ to take care of me?’