A Flag of Truce Page 7

  ‘Gun captains, load with canister and double charges, depress your elevation, then you too retire from the point of danger behind the screen of the bullocks. Mr Harbin, you and I will take over the lanyards.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Robertshaw, I want the men with sledgehammers standing by and two more of those metal spikes.’

  That got a touch of the forelock and an, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘And get everything on to those carts and set them alight.’

  Pearce got himself and Harbin as far away from the guns as he could, which was just as well because the French finally got the range and powder charge right and a ball took one of them on the muzzle, sending it flying with a ringing sound and cracking the cast-iron casing of the barrel.

  ‘Mr Harbin, you are now redundant, sir. Get back.’

  Pearce was watching the column of soldiers advance. It was an untidy formation, no doubt made more so by the uneven ground. A glance behind him showed the carts beginning to burn, Harbin disobeying his orders and holding a spike, looking like a dwarf beside the man with the sledgehammer, and in the hollow his sailors were running for dear life. Dilnot’s men were strung out in a line, muskets at the ready, waiting for him.

  His judgement of range was pure guesswork. He might have discussed ballistics with HMS Weazel’s miser of a gunner, but he was still an ignoramus in that department, so as the column reached the halfway point between his position and their own, he pulled the lanyard more in hope than in anger. The cannon actually jumped clear of the ground as the double charge went off, spewing hundreds of metal balls in the direction of the French troops and the damage it did was immense. The man in charge of the assault, a fellow with his hat on his sword and a tricolour sash round the waist of his black coat, took the eye of the salvo, hit with so many balls that he was tossed about like a rag doll. The effect behind him was equally telling, as men fell, were blown back, or dropped to the side.

  ‘Harbin,’ Pearce said as calmly as he could. ‘The spike.’

  The boy rushed forward to a cannon now on his side, the crouched giant with him, and calmly placed the point in the touch hole, this as another French ball ploughed up the earth no more than a dozen feet distant. The clang of the two blows was an unspoken signal to Dilnot, who though his enemies were at long range for musketry, opened up to let them know that the action was ongoing. Rushing past the blazing carts, and remembering they still had on them barrels of powder, Pearce cursed himself for forgetting that too. If they went off now, he, Harbin and the hammer-wielding sailor would be blown to perdition.

  The powder had the good grace to wait until they were clear, finally exploding in a deafening roar when they retired behind the men of the 11th Foot, who were firing, reloading, moving back ten paces and firing again, as the remnant of that column came on to contest the ground, they too stopping to deliver volleys of musketry, and since the range was closing, those musket balls were whizzing past their ears.

  ‘Mr Dilnot, undignified as it may appear, I think it is time to run.’

  ‘After you, sir,’

  Pearce nodded and obliged; it was only when he had gone twenty yards and he glanced back that he saw Dilnot had not moved. His men were running like the sailors, but the army lieutenant stood with his pistol in his hand, which he discharged as soon as he thought the range close enough. Then he took out his sword and waited. The shouts Pearce aimed at him may have been heard, but they were ignored, and he had to flee himself or face the oncoming horde of bayonets. It was afterwards that he heard how Dilnot had charged those same weapons, his sword waving, until he fell on their sharp points, gaining for himself what he obviously intended from the outset, a hero’s death.

  ‘Well, I canna say I am sorry, laddie,’ Elphinstone said as he read Pearce’s report. ‘The man had disgraced himself, and now he is redeemed by his action.’

  ‘His foolish action, sir.’

  ‘Don’t go traducing military glory, Pearce. It’s what we all live for.’

  ‘Dilnot died for it.’

  ‘He saved his name.’

  ‘Is his name that important?’

  Elphinstone leant forward to emphasise his words. ‘It obviously was to him and when his family hear how he died they will be proud of him and that is something. Better I think than being snubbed in the mess by his fellow officers refusing to talk to him.’

  Realising he was wasting his time, Pearce said, ‘I’m sorry we lost the guns, sir.’

  ‘Who cares about them!’ Elphinstone barked happily. ‘They were French, laddie. The mair of them we lose the better.’

  Chapter Six

  Sitting in the thwarts of her morning transportation, Emily Barclay kept looking intently at Martin Dent as he worked the oars, dying to question him about his terming her nephew a toad, continually forced to look quickly away if he lifted his head. His quick excuses had done nothing to divert her curiosity; she might be a captain’s wife with the station and honour that carried, but she was not yet nineteen years of age, and childhood jibes were not so distant that she could not recall their meaning. Toad was in no way a jocular, genial term; it was an appellation designed to wound and to call into question a person’s character. She had in her time, though she would blush to admit it now, used the expression herself.

  Emily had brought up the subject of that action in Brittany at dinner the day before, much to the chagrin of her husband, who hated to be reminded that he had lost the vessel in the first place, humbugged by a clever adversary, even less that, in an attempt to regain the Lady Harrington he had personally failed, suffering many casualties. Indeed, he had been close to despair, looking for ways to explain to authority, first of all how he had lost a ship from the convoy he was tasked to escort, and secondly why, in the face of standing orders not to do so, he had abandoned the rest of his charges to try and remedy the situation. Toby, sensing his captain’s discomfort, sought to change the subject: his aunt insisted he tell his tale.

  She had heard the story before, of course. Toby had regaled her with it right after the event; the landing in the wrong place that had seen the cutter wrecked and the commanding lieutenant drowned, the way her nephew had taken charge and formulated a bold plan to get the remnants of his party back to HMS Brilliant. How, outnumbered and out-gunned, he and the brave men he had led retook the merchant ship from under the noses of her French captors. Given that he must have told the tale many times since, it should have come out well rehearsed, which made surprising the stumbling explanation he now offered, until she realised it was the added presence of his captain which was causing the boy to falter, and it had nothing to do with uncomfortable recollection.

  The look she saw was one of scepticism, as though her husband knew what he was hearing was not the truth, while the interjections he made to clear up the odd point engendered in the youngster an air of deep discomfort, making him wriggle inside his clothing as though his entire skin itched. Instead of clearing up any doubts, her enquiry had only served to increase them, which left her with an even stronger desire to find out the truth. She could not ask Martin Dent for an explanation; that was impossible given their differing stations. It was well into the morning, when sharing a cup of coffee with Lutyens, a person so close they were now on first-name terms, that she posed to him the question.

  ‘I cannot fathom why you are asking me, Emily. The merest hint of recollection will remind you that I was not present. Both you and I were treating the wounded from the other boats.’

  ‘It is just that, having heard Martin Dent tell the tale, and having had my nephew reprise his version, I seem to see so many discrepancies as to make me wonder at who is being truthful.’

  ‘Battles, according to those I have questioned, are confusing affairs. After our ship was taken, I embarked on a quest to find out the truth of the action and I have to say that not one account agreed with another.’

  Emily Barclay waved an impatient hand. ‘It is not just the action itself of which I speak, but
of that which happened before. According to Martin, once they found themselves stranded ashore, John Pearce was the prime mover in organising them. In his telling, Pearce formulated the plan to retake the Lady Harrington and oversaw the execution, yet if you hear my nephew Toby’s account, all the decisions, however much he seems to wish to be modest, were made by him. Certainly my husband treated him as a hero when he came back aboard. If he did not think him so, he surely would not have given him the task of taking that very same vessel back to England?’

  A surgeon on board a King’s ship heard much that was not vouchsafed to commissioned officers, and that was doubly so in the case of someone like Lutyens, originally termed by the crew ‘a right Nosy Parker’. Forever eavesdropping on the crew’s conversations, or watching men at their duties – never without one of his little notebooks to hand – he observed more than most. At first he had engendered much distrust, but the men soon found that nothing he saw or heard went to the ears of authority, so slowly they had begun to trust him, and with that trust, as he treated the cuts, abrasions and the occasional broken bone which were a daily part of shipboard life, there came a degree of disclosure.

  To begin with, the mess that termed themselves the Pelicans had not been popular with the crew; pressed seamen rarely were, but their very collective defensiveness had singled them out for disdain. The first crack had been made by the Irishman, O’Hagan, fighting and beating the ship’s bully-boy fair and square, the next when Ralph Barclay had overstepped the mark to punish John Pearce for merely admiring his wife. She had shown her displeasure at her husband’s actions and the crew had done so too, in a way that left the captain of the frigate no way of even acknowledging their act of defiance.

  From that, the Pelicans gained a degree of acceptance, and to have brought out a ship so recently captured, when Ralph Barclay’s own attempt to do the same had so signally failed, could only enhance that regard, so many were sorry to see them go, bound for England and freedom. After their departure the surgeon, treating the sailor Dysart for his broken arm and a head wound, was regaled with the true story of what happened in the estuary of the River Trieux by someone who had witnessed it, which differed substantially from what had been claimed by Emily’s nephew, and seemingly accepted as truth by his captain.

  Toby Burns was seen by the crew as a useless little turd long before that action; nervous of authority as well as any notion of making a decision, the type that would see a man flogged rather than own up to an error, so it had come as no surprise to the crew of HMS Brilliant that he had demonstrated precisely those qualities when he found himself stranded on the French shore, nominally, because of his midshipman rank, the man in charge. Given a chance to prove himself as a naval officer he had failed abysmally, displaying craven cowardice rather than leadership, a vacuum that John Pearce had more than adequately filled.

  Many members of the crew suspected Ralph Barclay must know more of the truth than he had ever let slip, and if he did, it rendered inexplicable his subsequent actions. Not one of the tars, much as they disliked the man, thought their captain a fool; he must, despite the boy’s fairy tales, be able to see him as clearly as any common seaman. They did know he had been given cause to hate John Pearce and speculation suggested he had taken the opportunity to rid himself of a man he saw as a pest, one he might not be able to tame, as well as one around whom discontent could fester. Toby Burns must have been given command of the Lady Harrington because he was a nephew by marriage, not for any competence or lies about personal bravery. Or did Ralph Barclay want rid of him too?

  But there was one certain fact; having listened to all these truths and theories in confidence, that was something that had to be respected. ‘My dear Emily, I cannot see why you are troubling yourself with something which happened months ago.’

  Now it was her turn to avoid disclosure; not even to someone she saw as a close friend would she say that, on the truth might hinge her attitude to her husband and her marriage. It might also impact on the way she saw a blood relative, for if, indeed, Toby Burns was a toad, then she might have no choice but to treat him as such.

  ‘I am a woman, Heinrich.’

  ‘Explanation enough, my dear Emily,’ cried Lutyens happily, determined to change the subject. ‘Now do you think we can do a round of our patients.’

  ‘As you requested, sir,’ said Ralph Barclay, ‘the copies of my muster books since I weighed from Sheerness.’

  Copies they had to be; every three months the logs and books of a serving vessel were sent off to the Admiralty and the Navy Board to be perused by penny-pinching clerks, men who earned more in a wage than serving officers. It was a wise captain who kept duplicates of everything, for when disputes arose about stores consumed or condemned, ropes and spars used, even the quantity of nails employed in repairs, which they did with depressing regularity, an officer needed the protection of his own accounts to argue his corner.

  ‘Good,’ said Hotham. ‘Now please be so good as to sit with my second-secretary and identify those on the list you see as both knowledgeable and reliable.’

  As yet unaware of what Hotham had in mind, he could do nothing but comply, and as he went through the crew of HMS Brilliant, he put a small mark against those who had any knowledge of the impressment which had taken place at the Pelican, and another if he felt he could call on them for support. When pressing, a captain tended to use men who were able to obey orders, however unpleasant, and he was aided by the fact that he had, thanks to Admiral Hotham, at Lisbon, managed a complete change of junior officers. Midshipman Farmiloe was a worry; he would not see where his true interests lay if questioned, so he put a tick against his name. Toby Burns? The boy had not been present, but he was so deep in his uncle’s debt he would answer as he was instructed.

  Devenow, a huge, beetle-browed bully who was a follower of his, would say whatever he could to help his captain. Kemp, the rat-faced creature whom he knew hated Pearce, also got a double mark and he put a question mark against one of the men he had taken aboard that night, though not from the Pelican, a slippery fellow called Gherson, whom, he had been told, was not at all a friend to those he messed with. Having completed his task, he went back to face Hotham, who had a quick glance at the book.

  ‘It is enough, I fancy, though I see here the name of one of your original lieutenants, Henry Digby.’

  ‘I lost him at Lisbon, sir, if you recall.’

  Hotham looked at him from under questioning eyebrows, but he did not point out that Barclay had lost his two other lieutenants in that action off Brittany, one dead, the other so badly wounded he had been shipped to a shore hospital.

  ‘But he is here in Toulon. I put him into HMS Weazel, then shipped him out before Benton sailed for Corsica to do work ashore.’

  Barclay’s smile was one of gratitude; Hotham had sent Pearce off in that ship to deflect his demands and he hoped he was looking to do the same again; the longer the matter could be delayed the less likelihood, in a service which scattered its personnel continuously, there would be to have the number of witnesses required in one place.

  ‘I daresay you are wondering, Barclay, what I have in mind?’

  ‘All I know, sir, is that whatever you intend, I will trust you to have a care for my reputation.’

  That piece of sycophancy was accepted by Hotham as his due and now it was his turn to smile. ‘I doubt I need to remind you of the case of Captain Bligh.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Or of Midshipman Thomas Hayward.’

  The connection was obvious. Hayward, one of the Bounty mutineers forcibly fetched back from Hawaii, had faced a court martial, but he had powerful support from his uncle, Admiral Palsey, and he had the ear of the Admiralty and some influence at court. There was little doubt the boy was guilty, and indeed he had been found so by the court, only to be pardoned by the king. It was generally acknowledged that had Bligh been present to give evidence it would have been so damning that Hayward would have hanged. So the powers that
be made sure Captain Bligh was at sea when the court martial took place, which allowed Hayward to escape his well-deserved fate, one faced by a trio of the ship’s lower ratings.

  ‘With Captain Benton gone,’ added Hotham, ‘I have a mind to see Mr Digby promoted into the command of that French capture. He was after all the Premier of HMS Weazel, albeit not aboard when she was taken.’

  ‘With respect, sir, his commission is not one of long standing. Will that not put out of joint several more deserving officers, not least some on your own flagship?’

  ‘You are right to point that out, Barclay, but I had in mind a temporary command on a particular service, the reason being that more experienced officers are required here at Toulon for the defence of the port. Since the duty is a tedious one, and there may well be hot action here, I think those officers you mentioned will be well satisfied with my decision. And, if we man that vessel from HMS Brilliant, plus the waifs and strays from Leander, she will have complement enough to do what is required.’

  ‘You are certain, sir, Lord Hood intends to buy her in?’

  Hotham’s face clouded at the interruption. ‘Lord Hood will do so if I request that he do so. And I shall!’

  ‘Forgive me, sir, in my enthusiasm…’ He left the sentence unfinished, because what Hotham intended was plain, merely adding, ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ shouted the coxswain to the quarterdeck of HMS Leander, identifying the captain of that vessel wished to come aboard. Having seen Ralph Barclay’s barge approach, Taberly, Officer of the Watch, had called for the half-dozen marines still aboard, and every available midshipman, to make their way to the entry port to greet him. The ship’s captain was informed, but he would not stir for an officer of less seniority than himself. Indeed the captain rarely stirred ever, content to leave his officers to run the ship and only come out at the sight of an enemy warship, problems, or defaulters. He was a man more concerned with his rare butterfly collection, and it was, in fact, unusual to find him aboard off a shore with so many species that were not native to England.