An Ill Wind Page 3

  Niven did not move until Hood added. ‘Do you know how to obey an order, boy?’

  Hood watched as the youngster approached the table in a wary fashion, amused by the way he gingerly opened the dish, but that diffidence did not survive the smell that greeted him. Hood had to actually suppress a laugh, as he saw Niven begin to stuff his mouth to the point where speech would have been impossible.

  ‘Never met a mid that weren’t starving,’ he said. The humour evaporated when he looked back at Hyde Parker, again waving the letter. ‘This is downright insubordination.’

  ‘I agree, milord, but it is an indication of how Admiral Hotham feels about the strength of his position.’

  Hood began to pace back and forth, evidence of his mood audible by the growling noise emanating from his throat. His political master, King George’s first minister, William Pitt, trying to hold together a fractious coalition, one that would wholeheartedly prosecute the war with revolutionary France, had warned him to be guarded with Hotham, who had friends amongst the faction known as the Portland Whigs. Indeed the leader of that group, the Duke of Portland, was a strong supporter of Hotham and would no doubt like to see him in command of the Mediterranean fleet.

  Hood was a Tory from his greying locks to his silver shoe buckles and had been a member of Pitt’s government, the senior naval lord on the Board of Admiralty, before the outbreak of hostilities. He hated Whigs and, of that entire breed, he hated the slimy Sir William Hotham the most. But he was hamstrung by instructions, which had come to him by a private and secret letter from Downing Street delivered to him by the man who had written the note he was holding, Lieutenant John Pearce. Abruptly he stopped both his pacing and his growling, to look at the signature appended to the message young Niven had brought him.

  ‘Ain’t Pearce charged with clearing the wounded from the hospital?’ Parker nodded, which received a knowing look from his superior. ‘And then he’s supposed to be on his way back to England?’

  ‘I believe, sir, the idea was that, with the evacuation complete, he would take passage on the first available ship with his companions, the men he calls the Pelicans.’

  Hood moved closer to Parker, looking over his shoulder to ensure the midshipman was still intent on filling his face, before speaking softly. ‘Would Hotham go to such lengths to dish one man, Parker, and interfere with my orders?’ Hood’s captain of the fleet declined to reply to that, though his look was significant. ‘Strikes me only London can deal with Hotham and it also strikes me that we have, taking passage home if we can get him off in time, the very fellow to go back to Billy Pitt with my concerns.’

  ‘Unofficially,’ said Parker.

  ‘You know I dare not damn the sod in my official communications, they are read to the cabinet. But a private letter…’ Hood stood slightly hunched thinking for a moment, before calling to Niven. ‘You, lad, what ship are you in?’

  ‘Windsor Castle, milord,’ Niven replied, wiping a greasy set of lips on his sleeve.

  ‘To which you should now proceed.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be. I have a chore for you. I daresay your captain will not mind if I borrow you for a bit. Parker, I need your help in this, you being better at the political game than ever I will be.’

  ‘I’m not sure I take that as a compliment, milord.’

  ‘It ain’t,’ hooted Hood, ‘it’s as close to damnation as it comes. We must get an order direct to HMS Hinslip to weigh for St Mandrier immediately, to supersede any instructions to the contrary. Then I need you to help me compose a true account of affairs in this command for our political master.’

  ‘Might I remind you, milord, you require Pearce to agree to both carry and see it delivered. He might refuse.’

  ‘Refuse!’ Hood barked, ‘I’ll see him keelhauled if he tries.’

  Niven, his belly full, sat on the footlockers that lay below the line of nine casement windows that ran the full width of HMS Victory’s stern, marvelling at the space and the accoutrements afforded to the high and mighty. A sleeping cabin and a personal privy, a public cabin and a private one that could be combined to entertain several dozen people, the room to walk about, good furniture and even paintings, which stood in contrast to his own meagre berth, a cubbyhole aboard HMS Windsor Castle, shared with a dozen of his fellow mids.

  He was enthralled: this was worth working for, worth risking life and limb to achieve, and it took no great leap of his tender imagination to see himself striding back and forth across the chequered canvas that lined the floor, as Lord Hood was doing now, dictating something to the fatter admiral. How grand it must be to have someone of such high rank to write your letters for you! When they had finished, Hood strode back and forth once more, handling without effort the swell of the ship, reading in his hand a letter of several pages, while Admiral Parker penned another. That finished, Niven was called for and handed the second missive.

  ‘You are to return to Lieutenant Pearce and give him this and tell him I beg he read it, which has an order that he attend on me as soon as possible and the reason therein. Now, having done that he may well say words to the effect that he is damned if he will. You will then pass to him this verbal message with my authority. If he refuses my request, I will haul him and his so-called Pelicans into the first ship I can find and send them off to the East Indies. Have you got that, boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Niven replied, nervously.

  ‘Then repeat it.’

  He had to be coached and he stumbled over the words several times, but eventually Hood was satisfied that he had the threat off pat.

  ‘Right, young fella, on your way back to St Mandrier and be assured I will inform your captain of your exemplary conduct. You’re a credit to the service.’

  Niven nearly made five foot as he stretched in gratitude.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Wrapped in his boat cloak, at least in dry breeches, Pearce led his party of Pelicans, Vulcans and barely ambulant men, two dozen in number, out of the tiny fishing port of St Mandrier, heading towards the neck of the peninsula, to the earthwork redoubt which had been thrown up to house the battery of four cannon facing the French counterpart on the mainland. The crossing of the wooded hill in between was hard going and required the likes of Devenow and Michael O’Hagan to assist some of the patients, but once the summit had been reached, things eased somewhat as they headed downhill, and on the flat and narrow spit the going was good.

  With him, to see them through the darkness and the wooded paths, he had brought flaming torches soaked in pitch, yet they had a double purpose: he hoped they would serve to tell the enemy, if they were gathering for an assault, that rather than being abandoned the redoubt was being reinforced. At all costs it had to be held till that transport arrived, and Pearce was acutely conscious it would be not only the likes of the Barclays who would face captivity if this bluff did not work: he and his friends would too.

  A party of marines under a Lieutenant Driffield manned the battery. Pearce, being naval, outranked the lobster, but there was no accepting responsibility when the fellow, with palpable relief, tried to pass on to him the supervision of the position. As Pearce was quick to point out, he was here to bluff, not to fight. Having climbed to the top of the earthwork and seen nothing but the fires of the French encampment, he had retreated back to ground level to enjoy the heat of the blazing bonfire that lit up the British position.

  ‘Give me the situation?’ he asked.

  ‘We have been here for months with practically no activity, but as of yesterday men have been filing into Les Sablettes.’ Seeing Pearce raise a flame-illuminated eyebrow at the name, Driffield explained. ‘That’s what the Crapauds called their position, which at least has the virtue of being a reference to its geographical name. This Buonaparte fellow everyone is talking about is much given to romance when it comes to christening his creations. He named one “The battery of men without fear”, in French, that heathen tongue, of course.’

&n
bsp; A fluent French speaker, John Pearce forbore to point out that to the men of Les Sablettes the heathens were defending this redoubt. ‘Your Buonaparte fellow is also much given to outflanking and suppressing our guns, Mr Driffield, which is why we are being obliged to abandon Toulon. Do you think they will attack soon?’

  ‘Only if they are mad, sir! It is flat open ground, narrow, with sea on both sides, and we have four cannon loaded with grape, which anyone leading them would reckon to be the case. No, they will either try to suppress us with shot and shell, to dismount our guns and break up the protective embankment, or they will gather boats and seek to get round behind us. You coming up, and the sight of your torches, may well give them pause.’

  ‘As long as they have no sight of the unfortunates bearing them.’

  Driffield pulled a face: even in the poor light he could see that several of those present were wounded men. Two, sat in front of the tents that housed his marines, were missing arms, while another, who had insisted on joining, had had a leg removed, though some time previously, since then becoming, with his wooden peg, a sort of orderly in the hospital.

  ‘What is the likelihood of boats?’ Pearce asked, aware that if they could outflank this battery they could very well go right on to the hospital jetty.

  ‘They will be cautious there, sir, for it is where we have all the advantage. The smallest of our warships could sink them and once they are out in the bay they would be sitting ducks.’

  ‘What preparations are there for disabling the guns?’

  ‘Spikes are ready and I have rigged lines to overturn the carriages, alongside sledgehammers to shatter the wheels. I would double- or triple-shot the barrels and seek to blast them, but that would endanger my own men. Besides, these are new cannon and have not been fired much, so they are still very sound.’

  ‘Good. I take it you have ample food?’

  ‘Only if we are not to be here too long.’

  ‘I don’t think we will be, Lieutenant Driffield. Either we will be hotfooting it back to the hospital or we will be hauling up a white flag. Let us get everyone fed and I, for one, could use some sleep.’

  ‘I have commandeered a fisherman’s hut, sir, which I am happy to share, and though it is not luxurious it is at least shelter.’

  ‘Pickets?’

  ‘Two hours on, four off and set for the night, sir, I will make sure they stay alert.’

  ‘Good,’ John Pearce replied, feeling, as he often did, like a military fraud: this marine would know more than him about both attack and defence, though he might match him in gunnery. That was because Driffield wanted to be in his chosen profession, one into which John Pearce had been forced. ‘We must be up at cock’s crow and get a look at their preparations.’

  ‘What is actually happening in Toulon, sir?’

  ‘Surely you have looked across the anchorage, Lieutenant, and seen for yourself.’

  The marine looked past Pearce to the distant flames engulfing much of the furthest part of the port, made more hellish by being reflected in the calm black sea. The arsenal and naval warehouses were located there, while individual fires were raging, flickering points of red and orange light, all along the harbour frontage, leaving Pearce, when he too chose to look, to wonder at the fate of all those people he had seen lining the quays.

  Just then, a huge explosion rent the air, sending up hundreds of feet into the night sky a sheet of bright flame as well as visible debris. Seconds later they felt the blast, much diminished, but at such a distance evidence of its stunning power.

  ‘What the devil was that?’ Driffield demanded.

  ‘There are a pair of French frigates in the harbour full of powder,’ Pearce said, knowing this from Sir Sidney Smith’s briefing. ‘We were supposed to sail them out and I doubt we have succeeded with at least one of them.’

  ‘We’re safer here, Mr Pearce, I reckon.’

  ‘Let’s hope you are right.’

  Tobias Sidey, captain of the fleet transport, HMS Hinslip, had seen the same explosion and, being closer to the seat of it, felt even more the blast. He weighed as soon as he got the order to do so, or to be more precise, two sets of orders telling him to do exactly the same thing, a verbal one from Lord Hood and another from Sir William Hotham, that being a normal written instruction. The message from Victory, however, left him in no doubt of the need for extreme haste. On a windless night, to obey such a command was a tall order: the sails, once dropped and sheeted home, hung limp, flapping occasionally as a slight zephyr did something to trouble the canvas.

  Toby Burns was standing off, on his way back to HMS Britannia, wondering if he should tell Admiral Hotham of the renewed orders from Lord Hood and deciding on silence, when Captain Sidey put his own boats in the water and began the wearisome task of towing his ungainly ship towards the St Mandrier Peninsula, a vessel he knew would be too deep of draught to enter the inlet in which the hospital jetty lay. Those same boats would be required to take off the people he was tasked to collect, and the whole could be at risk of fire from the enemy batteries if they had been pushed far enough forward.

  At the same time, Midshipman Niven was arriving at that very jetty, in search of Lieutenant John Pearce, only to be told that he would have to traverse the hills to the west in order to go and find him. Bolstered by the good opinion of the commander-in-chief and still feeling well fed, he set off with enthusiasm, soon plunging into the Stygian darkness of the wooded hillside, struggling to stay on the path and losing his way more than once.

  Emily Barclay sat by her husband’s bed, really that of Heinrich Lutyens, which he had first given to her when she left HMS Brilliant, a couchette she had passed on to her husband after his amputation, the ever-faithful Devenow carrying him from the operating table. He had been unconscious then, through a combination of laudanum and shock, but had since fallen victim to a dangerous fever. She was obliged to frequently mop his sweating brow and wipe off the excessive perspiration, caused by both his condition and the heat from the blazing fire in the grate. She was also called upon to press down hard on his remaining right arm to restrain him from time to time, as whatever deep dream he was experiencing made him wrestle with his demons.

  To be sitting here nursing this man was to induce in her a series of deeply ambivalent feelings. Captain Ralph Barclay, twenty years her senior, was her husband, but she had come to comprehend she had agreed to marry him as much to satisfy family needs as through any affection. Indeed, she knew now that the pressure from her parents as to the suitability of the match had probably weighed more heavily on her than she had realised at the time, flattered as she was by the attentions of such a person, a seeming man of the world, who had all the gravitas of his thirty-seven years and his senior naval rank.

  Ralph Barclay had not turned out to be a man of the world after all: he had proved both to be given to falsehood and to be a narrow-minded naval officer, a post captain of more than three years seniority and one who abided religiously by the codes of a profession known to be harsh. At home in Somerset he had seemed avuncular and wise, but once aboard his ship he had been exposed as a hard horse captain and one with whom she had come to dispute. What she saw as cruelty he saw as taut discipline, and more recently she had been given cause to question both his character and his probity, all of that overlaid by what appeared to be blatant and shameless avarice.

  While she had accepted on their wedding day her new husband was not rich, Emily had no idea of how pushed he was for funds, given he had no ship and the country was at peace. Ralph Barclay had been obliged for five whole years to live on half pay, a stipend that supported not only him, but also his two twittering, older sisters. Only slowly had she realised how much he had needed to avoid the pressing demands of the local tradesmen.

  Certainly the joy of getting a frigate at the outbreak of the war had been exciting, but she had watched with some trepidation how difficult it had been for him to pay for the very necessary things required to properly carry out his duties: the
food and wine to entertain, the new uniforms and items of basic furniture needed to turn his cabin into something approaching comfort. She also knew, now, he had taken her to sea with him, in truth a breach of regulations, though much ignored, in order to avoid the expense of maintaining his new wife in her own household.

  Even ignorant of the rules which governed the behaviour of naval officers, Emily Barclay was aware her husband had stretched them to and beyond their limits: she had seen the pressed men brought aboard at Sheerness, some bearing the effects of being taken by force, and had, out of loyalty, held her tongue when she heard them described as volunteers and averted her gaze when they were painfully struck with a starter, a short, knotted rope. The taking of a couple of prizes, one in a very questionable way, might have eased the financial concerns, but Ralph Barclay’s behaviour continued to trouble her, the whole coming to a head at his recent court martial.

  She had sat through that and had heard the lies uttered by not only him, but also her nephew, Midshipman Toby Burns. The likes of Devenow and her husband’s slimy clerk, Cornelius Gherson, uttering falsehoods, bothered her not for the fact that they were spoken, but more by the certain knowledge that it was her husband who had induced them to lie to support his case. All these thoughts piled in on her and swirled in her mind; what she did not have was a solution as to how they were going to affect her future.

  ‘My dear, you must get some sleep.’

  She had not heard the door open; in fact, she suspected she had drifted off into a reflective, if troubled doze, aided by the heat of the fire.

  ‘I will sleep here in the chair.’ Seeing Lutyens frown, she added, nodding to the bed, ‘He has to be restrained, as he is much troubled in his fever, hardly still. If he pulls out the ligature it may lead to an infection.’