An Ill Wind Read online

  ‘In truth, you caught me when I was recalling what had brought me back from Paris.’

  ‘Which was?’ Emily asked, although she had a very good idea: her husband, in the first days of Pearce’s enforced service aboard HMS Brilliant, had intercepted a letter which he had sought to send to a famous radical politician in an attempt to gain his freedom. That, even coded and in French, had mentioned Paris and a sick parent and she, better at the language than her husband, had been reluctantly persuaded to translate it.

  ‘My father’s illness.’

  ‘What were you doing in Paris?’

  ‘Avoiding prison.’ That brought her head round to look at him directly. ‘My father and I fled to Paris to avoid a writ for sedition issued in the name of King George, a King’s Bench Warrant against what he had written about the exploitation of the people by the monarchy and the government.’

  ‘Your father was a Leveller?’ she asked, staring out to sea again.

  Pearce smiled, thinking that given her probable upbringing such a notion would be anathema. ‘He would have been proud to have been called that. Folk named him the Edinburgh Ranter and those who disliked his words and his works blackened him, but a kinder soul you have never met.’

  Now she had to look once more at Pearce: the way his voice had softened with remembered affection made it inevitable.

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Died bearing me. I was brought up by my father, and in a way that has made me feel different to other men.’

  ‘Hardly surprising given what you say of his opinions.’

  That being delivered with some pique, Pearce was tempted to rebuke her, to demand how she, no doubt the product of a comfortable upbringing, with food always on the table, could possibly comprehend what life was like for the majority of her fellow Britons; but that would be to drive her away, so he stuck to reminiscing.

  ‘I did not mean that. My father was a man who saw the whole of his country as his home and everyone in it as his brother. As soon as I was weaned he took me on his travels, the length and breadth of the whole nation. I saw more in a month than most of my fellow countrymen will see in their lifetime, and not just places, but people from the lowest to the highest.’

  ‘Highest? In the company of a radical?’

  ‘Not every wealthy man sees disputing with a radical thinker as a crime. I have had many a happy time in great houses, and if we were invited to stay for long enough, I even went to school, though that was generally less pleasant. But enough of me, tell me about you.’

  ‘There is nothing to tell that would match that which you seem to have enjoyed.’

  ‘Why did you marry your husband?’

  He should not have said it and he knew that, but he could not help himself. From the first time he had realised that Ralph Barclay and she were wed he had wondered at such an unlikely connection, a curiosity only reinforced as he had come to see his character and the way she opposed him: he was a callous man; she was a humane woman.

  ‘That, Lieutenant,’ she snapped as, one hand firmly on the netting, she turned to leave, a signal gun sounding as if to mark the movement, ‘is none of your business.’

  ‘All hands to wear ship.’

  Pearce knew that where he was standing he would be in the way as the sails were loosed and reset, but rather than follow Emily Barclay towards the quarterdeck he made his way forward, cursing himself and ignoring the water that, blasting over the bowsprit, covered him and soaked his legs.

  Captain Sidey had notified all who came aboard that his birthday was imminent and he clearly had a desire they should celebrate it. He had formed a choir aboard Hinslip, and given they were approaching the festive season, he was intent on their practising for the forthcoming Nativity as well as celebrating his name day; if he made an error it was inviting his passengers to join in, or at least one of them. The weather had moderated somewhat, the sky clearing as the wind swung away from the westerly towards the north, turning colder, so with the ship running steady, the seasonal songs were sung under what was slowly turning from bright blue into a starlit sky, loud enough to be heard by those ships sailing close enough in company. Sidey had a stentorian voice and was a hearty chorister, and it was soon apparent, given the quality of the rendition, that he had schooled his men, for they sang without books, knowing the words.

  ‘Heathen songs to my ears, Charlie,’ Michael whispered, ‘but there’s no doubting the skill.’

  Unlike Pearce, stood by the binnacle, book in hand, trying to sing along with the crew, the Pelicans had avoided the warbling, thankfully in the eyes of most of those they were messing with given they would have upset the harmony. Heinrich Lutyens was the problem: he seemed to be managing that without assistance, his high reedy voice was rarely in proper tune, leading Emily Barclay, standing by his side and singing sweetly, to occasionally and quite visibly wince.

  ‘I used to look forward to Yuletide,’ young Rufus said, in an equally soft tone. ‘There was always a fair in Litchfield and folk were generous to us youngsters.’ Then he shivered, it being far from warm. ‘Not sure I’m doin’ that now, sat here.’

  ‘It was a time for profit to me, lads, shamed as I am to admit it. This week in London it were full of visitors come for the season, easy marks most of ’em and with bulging purses to boot.’

  That got Charlie Taverner a look from Michael. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, Charlie, do you know what shame is, to be robbing folk at a holy time?’

  ‘You shamed yourself enough,’ Charlie hissed back, ‘holy time or nay, but you were too drunk to ever recall it.’

  ‘You were, Michael,’ Rufus said, more in sorrow. ‘Blind drunk.’

  ‘Seems a long time since I was in that state.’

  ‘Always ended with your wanting to fight some poor soul,’ Charlie complained. ‘With those damn great fists of yours.’

  ‘Did I ever get round to you?’

  ‘Never, mate, I was too nippy on my pins and you was too drunk.’

  ‘So I tried.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Now, would that be over your touching up sweet Rosie?’

  ‘I never did.’

  ‘Yes you did, Charlie,’ Rufus insisted, which got him a hard look for his honesty.

  ‘Can’t say I miss the Pelican much,’ Michael said. ‘Her excepted.’

  ‘Belay that noise, you lot,’ one of the sailors muttered. ‘We’s trying to sing.’

  It was Charlie who responded; he hated to be checked even if the fellow doing it was in the right. ‘You sound like a bunch of crows to me, mate.’

  ‘From what I hear of you, mate, rooks is more your style.’

  Charlie made to move forward, an act arrested with ease by Michael O’Hagan.

  ‘Damn cheek.’

  ‘There ain’t none of us saints, Charlie,’ Michael said.

  ‘No, Michael, or we would not have been stuck in the Liberties, wondering where the next fill of ale was coming from.’

  As the singing soared, the trio fell silent, each still thinking of that. The Pelican had not been a place of much joy to the likes of Charlie and Rufus or their mates, Abel Scrivens, now dead, and Ben Walker, captured by Barbary pirates and, as Pearce had discovered in Tunis, a slave of the Mussulmans. The quartet had eked out a precarious existence on the Thames riverbank, not too bad in summertime and damned near too deadly for the cold and starvation in winter, often reduced to hot bedding with others to just have a place to lay their head and never sure where the next meal was coming from.

  They were bound to the place by their past, each one subject of some warrant for crimes committed, locked in the Liberties of the Savoy where the writ of the tipstaffs did not run, free to roam only on the Sabbath. London and the teeming Strand was yards away at times, but they dare not step into that great thoroughfare or beyond for fear of being collared by the law on a weekday, Charlie least of all, he being a sharp who had worked nearby Covent Garden.

  Michael was one to come and go f
rom the Pelican as he pleased – he was a free man – his reasons for being there more to do with the aforementioned Rosie than anything other. An apple-cheeked serving wench of ample proportions, she had been Michael’s squeeze, due to his always having coin in his purse and a manner of emptying it often, given that, as a man who could seriously wield a shovel, there was always more to be earned in a city forever expanding.

  Charlie had hated him for his easy spending, but more for Rosie, on whom he had designs, thinking that he being a handsome cove, and he was that, was more appealing than the Irishman’s copper and silver. Rosie would have none of it: Michael O’Hagan paid for her favours and if Charlie wanted to share them, to which she was not averse, then he must shell out for them likewise.

  ‘I dreamt about us being pressed again last night,’ said Rufus, whose only crime was to have run from a bonded apprenticeship in the leather trade. ‘Woke up a’trembling.’

  ‘It would be Irish snores that would wake you, Rufus,’ Charlie whispered, ‘and they are loud enough to shiver the timbers.’

  Michael grinned at that: he was proud of his snoring, which was loud enough to drown out all the others doing likewise, each, with one watch on deck, in their twenty-eight inches of hammock space.

  ‘I don’t recall that night, as you know,’ he said.

  ‘You were so drunk you tried to belt Pearce when he told you to run,’ Charlie cackled, but that did not last, given it was not an occasion to remember fondly. ‘We should have spotted them tars eyeing the place.’

  ‘And young Martin.’

  The boy they were speaking of, Martin Dent, a growing lad now and a skilful topman on HMS Brilliant, had been a drummer boy then, in a red coat that stood out a mile even in that smoky, crowded place.

  ‘We was too busy dunning Pearce for ale,’ said Rufus.

  ‘I don’t recall you getting him to shell out for drink,’ Charlie snapped, adding a finger gesture to one of the captain’s choir. ‘That were me, mate.’

  ‘You got a silver tongue, Charlie, an’ no error.’

  ‘But now’t but air in his breeches,’ Michael scoffed.

  ‘When I’m dreaming,’ Rufus insisted, ‘I sees them tars burstin’ in with clubs the size of spars, with us runnin’ all ways to no purpose.’

  Not only had Barclay’s men rushed the tavern, they were outside the doors front and back, waiting to catch hold of anyone trying to run. All three of them, Abel Scrivens and Ben Walker too, had, with John Pearce and more than a dozen others, found themselves bruised and battered, trussed like chickens before being thrown into the boats and carried down the Thames to Sheerness.

  The singing of a hymn had reached a crescendo, the voices rising to a swelling sound that filled the gathering gloom, then stopping abruptly, to leave Captain Sidey beaming with pleasure, that is until he looked sideways to the surgeon.

  In a cut-down part of Sidey’s cabin, Ralph Barclay swung in his cot, aware that he was well enough now to have joined in the choral observance of Sidey’s birthday and just as aware of why he had declined. Every attempt he had made in the last few days to catch hold of his wife and ask her what she meant by saying she had no idea of where she belonged had been thwarted by her insistence that she carry out her nursing duties; she was avoiding him, of course, but there was little he could do about it in such a crowded ship without making obvious to all and sundry the depth of their rift.

  The decks below were lined with cots full of the seriously wounded, others were fit enough to use hammocks like the crew. Where he was accommodated was not spacious, and in cutting off part of his own cabin for a post captain – Sidey was an elderly lieutenant, he being a man without the interest or patronage necessary to see him elevated in rank – that too was much constrained. No one, it seemed, had seen anything untoward in Emily taking quarters elsewhere, in a screened-off cabin near that of Lutyens; they saw her as a nurse, not his wife, and, besides, he was an invalid.

  When it came to nursing, the one man he had remaining from his ship, the ruffian Devenow, was a better attendant: it was he who had helped Ralph Barclay take the air the day after they weighed from Toulon, he who had caught hold of his collar when, reaching out a hand to steady himself against the roll of the ship, he had stuck out a stump and nearly fallen to his knees. How had he managed to forget his missing arm when the pain was a constant, occasionally relieved with a dose of laudanum?

  How would being a one-winged bird affect his career? That he did not know, though there were plenty of precedents of officers having suffered amputations going on to serve their full term. He knew he must see Admiral Hotham, the only senior patron he could rely on, for the one constant in the King’s Navy, just as it was in normal life, was the need for the application of interest, the ability to call upon the intercession of a powerful patron to help secure advancement.

  ‘How you farin’, your honour?’

  Devenow, a big man with a brutish face, had entered without knocking, and Ralph Barclay was about to damn him for insolence only to check himself: he needed this fellow to care for him so there was no sense in making him sullen.

  ‘I am in pain. Perhaps Mr Lutyens will spare me a little more tincture.’

  ‘I’ll see to it right off, your honour.’

  ‘Did you take part in the singing, Devenow?’

  ‘Me, your honour, sing?’ the sailor replied, with a smile that showed the gaps in his teeth. ‘I only sing when I is full of grog, as you know. I’ll see to that laudanum.’

  How did I end up being cared for by the likes of him? Ralph Barclay thought, as the door closed, showing how little he understood Devenow, a man he had caused to be seized up for a flogging more than once. A fellow who hoarded his grog until he had enough to get insensibly drunk, and a bully to boot who stole the grog off his messmates, or caused them to hand it over without protest at the implied threat of a beating, he inevitably sought to use his fists on those sent to restrain him. Yet he held no grudge against his captain: in a mind not much given to notions of fairness, he saw it as Ralph Barclay’s right to regularly flog, in the same way as he saw it as his right to get habitually and stupidly inebriated.

  Needless to say, in the copious notes Heinrich Lutyens had made regarding the odd habits of the lower-deck ratings, Devenow and his ilk, for he was not alone, occupied several pages.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ralph Barclay’s desire not to attend Captain Sidey’s feast was thwarted by the need to use the whole of the great cabin to accommodate his guests: the temporary bulkheads erected to form the convalescent cabin had to be struck down so that all the leaves of the dining table could be put in place. Though not by any means a wealthy man, Sidey was determined on a good spread, raiding those stores he had acquired in Italy, for his duties prior to this one had taken him back and forth to Genoa. This allowed him to conjure up a substantial, if plain, meal and, of course, from that source the cheeses were excellent, while the wine was plentiful and of a better quality than the usual blackstrap served on a daily basis.

  There was no question but that Emily Barclay had to sit next to her husband: he required assistance to cut his meat, the ‘Roast Beef of Old England’ as it was termed, even if it was part of an Italian cow. As accompaniment there was a brace of chickens from the coop on the deck and part of an elderly sheep that provided mutton to feed them, the rest, in truth nearly the whole carcase, being given as a birthday treat for the ship’s crew.

  At the table, sat as far away as possible from the onearmed man, was John Pearce, given his greatest desire was to put a knife into Ralph Barclay, not into the overcooked fowl on his pewter plate. He had challenged the man to a duel once; if the law did not incarcerate him for his perjury he would do so again. That thought, surfacing as often as it did, was inclined to tempt him to glare, obliging him to take refuge in his goblet of wine.

  Lutyens was present, as was Lieutenant Driffield, who had scarce spoke a word to Pearce since coming aboard: their sole conversation had been to confi
rm that the orders the marine had been given had been carried out, that followed by the impression that the fellow was avoiding him, which Pearce assumed was because he was still smarting about surrendering the cannon to the enemy.

  Also attending were two army officers, their wounds of the kind to allow them to be present, as was HMS Hinslip’s premier, Mr Ault, a very new naval lieutenant who had a serious problem with his blush: no words of any kind could be addressed to him on any subject without his cheeks going a deep red, and that was also the case if Emily Barclay, the only lady present, caught his eye, not hard given he was totally smitten and looked at her from under his long, soft eyelashes with the mistaken impression that no one noticed. Sidey, using to the full his right as host to dominate the conversation, was regaling them with his previous service, naming captain after captain who had thought him an excellent subordinate.

  ‘As for fame, sirs, I served with Captain Arthur Philips and a finer seaman there never was, this being prior to his voyage to New South Wales, of course.’

  ‘A hellish journey, according to the accounts of those who returned,’ said Lutyens. ‘You do not see, Captain Sidey, anything to gainsay the sending of convicts to such a far-off location.’

  ‘Got to send them somewhere, Mr Lutyens. After we lost the Americas it was that or hang ’em.’

  ‘Which you are not in favour of?’ asked one of the army officers, the question slightly garbled by his wounded jaw. ‘Or so I sense by your tone.’

  ‘Ain’t me, sir, but the juries. They will not convict a felon if they fear he or she faces the rope, so the judges are reluctant to place on the black cap, and as for nippers…’

  ‘Would you hang a child, captain,’ asked Pearce, ‘for the theft of a loaf of bread when they are starving?’