The Admirals' Game

by David Donachie

  ‘Obliged,’ Digby replied, indicating the fellow should proceed, this while the cutter that had fetched them hauled clear of the shore.

  As they moved along the stone quay, their guard of honour, in no way threateningly, lined up on either side, and with the same level of correct order, proceeded to march, muskets at the slope. Being a port dating back to Roman times the alleyways leading off the quay were dark and narrow, but the buildings facing the sea were substantial and spoke of a degree of prosperity. The number of people idling about surprised Pearce until he reasoned that with a British sloop sitting off the coast, few of the fishing vessels had put to sea.

  The lieutenant, having indicated they had arrived by calling halt to the guard, led them up a set of stone steps into the cool hallway of the port captain’s headquarters, both men requiring a moment to adjust their eyes to the interior darkness after the strong outdoor sunlight, until they were invited to enter a well-lit room overlooking the harbour. The two French captains were there, in full dress, hats included, standing and waiting for these emissaries and as soon as they entered the room, the escorting lieutenant exited, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Messieurs,’ said the older of the two, speaking French, nothing on his lined and weathered face denoting either fear or caution. ‘Allow me to introduce to you Lieutenant Bertin who commands Vestale. I am Capitaine Foureaux of Bandine. I have reason to believe you carry a message to us from your superiors occupying Toulon.’

  It was Pearce who had to reply, introducing both himself and Digby before handing over the satchel. Foureaux took out the letters and examined the superscriptions, but he did not break the seals.

  ‘I think I can guess what these contain.’

  ‘It would be as well to read them, sir,’ Pearce replied, ‘then you will understand the true depth of the sentiments expressed.’

  Foureaux nodded, but he did not speak for a long while. Asking pardon, he began a whispered conversation with his colleague, and that became rather animated, hinting at a disagreement, which had Digby seeking a sotto voce explanation, which Pearce could not provide. Whatever, when it ended, Foureaux went to a desk and picked up a blunt-looking knife. He was just about to break the seal on the first letter when the sound came through the door of some kind of commotion, raised and demanding voices. Frozen, with his hand in mid-act, Foureaux was quick to hide the letter-opener, and it was obvious to Pearce, given the way the blood drained from his face, that the sight of the man who occupied the doorway, a burly and scarred individual in the uniform of the National Guard, was not one he welcomed.

  ‘I bring a message from the hôtel de ville,’ the man barked. ‘You and these two Englishmen are to attend there at once.’

  ‘A message from whom?’

  ‘Commissioner Barras.’

  Foureaux moved between Pearce and the doorway, the letters behind his back, waved in such an abrupt manner that there seemed little alternative but to take them. Digby was looking at his subordinate, wondering what was afoot, and left in ignorance by a man who still had no idea. But he did hear the French captain’s reply.

  ‘There is no need for such a summons, citizen. I was about to suggest that is where we must go.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ replied the messenger. ‘But I wouldn’t delay, Citizen Barras does not like to be kept waiting, and he’s the easy-going one.’

  ‘Who,’ Pearce asked, as the head disappeared, ‘is Citizen Barras?’

  He was talking to Foureaux’s back; he and Bertin were already making their way out of the door, though the voice floated back to him. ‘A man we must not keep waiting.’

  ‘Pearce?’

  ‘I would say, sir, that if we are allowed, we should immediately make our way back to HMS Faron.’

  ‘From your tone,’ Digby replied, ‘I think you do not see that as likely.’

  The same escort of marines awaited them on the quay, but this time they were headed by the burly national guardsman, who ordered them to take station around all four naval officers, before the whole party set off, eventually turning into a reasonably wide thoroughfare, which led towards the centre of the town. That soon opened out into the kind of open piazza so beloved by the ancients, dominated on one side by a cathedral, on the other by a large square-fronted edifice, with iron gates, flying on a flagpole the tricolour of the Revolution.

  Naturally, the sight of four naval officers, two in the dark-blue coats of King George’s Navy, added to the interest created by the mere presence of a British vessel in the bay, and this ensured a lively and curious crowd were there to dog their heels, making noisy, yet not threatening calls to be informed what was afoot. The escort was halted by the gateway and the quartet were led into the atrium of what had to be the hôtel de ville, to be greeted by a trio of men in high hats, black coats and breeches, shiny black boots, and the huge colourful red, white and blue sashes of the Revolution round their waist.

  Pearce knew what they were; he had met one of their number in La Rochelle, and it was not a sight to cheer him. Representatives on mission of the Committee of Public Safety, they were the emissaries of the body politic, made up of regicides, who now ran France. To a man they were smirking, as though bearing witness to some kind of theatrical farce, and he was also regretting the way he had edged Digby into coming ashore, for in dealing with people like these, his own trust in the protection provided by his truce flag was less than certain.

  ‘Please, Capitaine Foureaux, introduce our visitors.’

  The one who had spoken was, Pearce guessed, around forty, somewhat corpulent, with a face and manner that seemed too benign for the office he occupied. The other two, although very different, conformed to type, one a swarthy individual with a curved nose and black unblinking eyes, the other a young and pallid-looking fellow, tall and skinny, who looked, with his parchment skin, like a wrongly dressed priest.

  Foureaux obliged with the introductions, and unbidden, named the men of whom he was clearly in some trepidation. ‘Commissioner of the Army, Barras, representatives on mission, Messieurs Fréron and Robespierre.’

  That name made Pearce look closely; he knew of a Robespierre from his time in Paris, a dry and atheistic lawyer who was one of the stars of the Jacobin Club, as well as a radical proponent of outré ideas in the National Convention. He had become more than that now, he was the leading light of the Committee of Public Safety, so this fellow could not be him. Besides he was too young, but he must be, given it was not a common name, a relation of some kind, and that was a worrying thought.

  No one moved for half a minute, until the Frenchman called Barras held out his hand, forcing Pearce to hand over the letters which could well be their death warrant. He gave over the satchel as well, on the very good grounds that it would cease to be an encumbrance if he had to try and defend himself, though both he and Digby, as befitted the flag under which they operated, were unarmed.

  ‘Pearce?’

  Digby had given him a curious look, and a very slight gesture of the head to indicate the black-clad trio.

  ‘Say nothing, sir, just wait.’

  The seals on the letters were broken and the contents read in turn, with much nodding of the head and murmuring to each other. When they finished and looked at the two British officers, their faces had changed; from looking bland they now looked angry.

  ‘You have not read these, Capitaine Foureaux?’ asked Barras, without looking at that officer.

  ‘No.’

  The man smiled, which was chilling, not cheerful. ‘You would like the contents. Milord Hood offers you amnesty, while the traitor Trogoff invites you to take your frigates to Toulon. The third one is curious, it—’

  Robespierre butted in, which produced a look on the face of Barras that underlined the interruption was not welcome. That led Pearce to wonder if there was a competition for supremacy in this trio of probable regicides. If there was, could that help him and Digby?

  ‘It is from the Spaniard, Admiral Lángara,’ Robespierr
e spat, ‘and it is addressed to General Lapoype and the Army of Italy, instructing them, for their own good, to stay out of that country.’

  ‘The Revolution goes where it pleases,’ said Fréron, in a voice that made it sound like a mantra.

  ‘One wonders,’ Robespierre demanded, his voice as cold as the expression on his pallid face, ‘how this missive was supposed to be delivered. I cannot see it in the hands of a British officer being handed over to the general. Perhaps they felt so sure of you, Capitaine, or maybe it was you, Bertin, to deliver it for them. Indeed, it seems to me there is a conspiracy here.’

  ‘Did you have any communication with Toulon before these came?’ asked Barras, waving the letters.

  ‘None!’

  ‘That I find hard to believe,’ Robespierre said, with Fréron nodding at the statement.

  ‘I think,’ Barras insisted, ‘any examination of the motives of these two officers can wait. The question we must deal with now, is what to do with our two visitors.’

  ‘The guillotine can take care of that.’

  If Digby knew no French, he knew that word. Pearce felt rather than saw his body jerk.

  Barras turned to Robespierre, his face questioning. ‘But, Augustine, they have come under a flag of truce.’

  ‘They have come as spies,’ Robespierre spat. ‘And they should die like spies. Fréron?’

  For the first time the swarthy face of that representative lost the look of supreme confidence; clearly he detected a difference and did not want to have to decide on whom to support.

  ‘Augustine,’ Barras said again, in an avuncular way that elicited an angry glare from the subject. ‘You are young, and you are properly zealous, a good son of the Revolution. But listen to a man who has served as a soldier…’

  ‘I recall, Citizen,’ Robespierre replied in an icy tone, ‘that you were once happy to answer to the title of the Vicomte de Barras.’

  ‘We cannot help our birth as, no doubt, your brother will tell you. What we can help is our devotion to the cause. I have no doubt of yours, just as your brother, Maximilien, has no doubt of mine.’

  The response was loud, and accompanied by a pointing finger. ‘I don’t think he would hesitate to decapitate this pair.’

  ‘No.’

  That was sharp, and designed to brook no argument, causing Augustine Robespierre to suck in a lot of air to stop himself from replying with an explosive rejoinder.

  ‘A flag of truce,’ Barras insisted, ‘is as respected by the armies of the Revolution as it is by any other force.’

  ‘The notion is outmoded, monarchical.’

  ‘No, Augustine. Do you think we can execute these two officers without adding to the impression we are barbarians?’

  ‘Who would know?’ asked Fréron, obviously the junior partner in the trio.

  ‘The world would know,’ Barras replied in a weary tone, ‘and before the week is out. We are the Revolution, as is every citizen. Let us prove to the world that our cause will take life when the need is just, and show clemency where that is due.’

  Pearce was full of admiration for Digby, who must have, in some way, picked up the sense of the debate, without in any way being sure which way it was going. But he kept quiet, said nothing, just stood still with a look of utter insouciance on his face, as though those discussing their fate could do what they liked. It was an act, Pearce knew – for the very simple reason of his knowledge of his own fears – but, by God, it was a good one.

  ‘I will be interested,’ Robespierre said, his face slightly petulant, ‘in what my brother thinks when I write and tell him.’

  ‘Fréron,’ Barras growled, ‘let us gather a crowd to witness the perfidy of these English officers. It will do them good to see the face of their enemies. And now, Augustine, while our good friend is about that, I will educate you in the way to treat the officers of an enemy. Messieurs, I doubt you have breakfasted, so follow me.’

  Taken into an anteroom, there lay before them a table well set with food: fresh bread, local fish, figs and strong, hard sausage. The wine was young and rough, but pleasant nevertheless, as Barras conversed with Pearce in a way that allowed him to translate for Digby, all this while a pinch-faced Augustine Robespierre looked on, eating sparingly and drinking nothing. They learnt that Barras had been a soldier, had served in India at the defence of Pondicherry in the Second Mysore War.

  ‘We were, of course, treated with every courtesy by those who took the city, allowed to march out with our arms and provided with ships to bring us home.’ He looked at Robespierre then. ‘These are norms of behaviour, messieurs, are they not? War is barbarous enough without those who choose a career in arms descending to the level of the beast.’

  Pearce could only half listen to the growling between Barras and Robespierre, being too busy translating Barras’s story for Digby, but it seemed Barras was assuring the younger man he would be satisfied before the day was out.

  ‘I went back to India,’ Barras continued, ‘but it was soon obvious that the land was lost to France, so I returned and left the Army.’

  ‘Might I ask why, sir?’ said Pearce.

  ‘I believe, in your Army, monsieur, promotion is slow and expensive, but I can tell you it is rapid compared to an army where all appointments were decided at Versailles.’ The door opened and Fréron returned, to be greeted by a commissioner of the Army who had partaken of more wine than was necessary. He was now red-faced and almost jolly. ‘All is ready?’

  In receipt of a nod, he indicated that Pearce and Digby should precede him out of the door, where they were led to the entrance and out into a piazza now full to overflowing with people, all of whom bayed at them as soon as they saw their dark-blue coats. Digby actually stopped, and for the first time it seemed their predicament had got to him.

  ‘I do believe, sir,’ said Pearce, ‘that we will not be torn to pieces.’

  ‘You don’t sound certain.’

  ‘That would be because I am not, but I cannot believe a man who has just fed us and talked of his life as a soldier could let that happen.’

  ‘You, of all people, know what these people are capable of.’

  ‘I do,’ Pearce replied as the sound of shouted imprecations rose to a crescendo.

  For a moment he was back in the Place de la Révolution in Paris, and that image was conjoined with the face of his beloved father. The very same guard that had brought them here now formed a phalanx to get them though the throng, with hands reaching past the marines to try and grab at their clothing.

  ‘I know you are not an advocate of prayer, Pearce, but this might be a good time to consider it.’

  There was a dais at one end of the square, with a hot brazier in the middle, and they were led up on to that to face a mob screaming for their blood. Barras and the others joined them and he, as the senior, held up his hands to command silence. It was telling, the fear these people engendered; the crowd fell to a hush in seconds.

  ‘Citizens, you see before you the vanguard of the Revolution, and with them the despicable remnants of a society about to be swept into the cesspit of history. I call on Representative Augustine Robespierre to tell you all.’

  Huge cheers greeted the name, and again, as the new speaker commanded silence, he was swiftly obeyed. Now, on the pallid face, the most striking features were his eyes, which had in them the light of certainty, almost religious in its intensity, and Pearce was reminded how close so many of these revolutionary orators were to the kind of fanatics who went in for the more extreme forms of the priesthood. There was not a Jesuit born with more fire in his belly than this lot, and again he was taken back to an image of his father and the arguments they had had about the course of the Revolution, this as the son grew from an acolyte happy to accept his parent’s every idea, to an independent person able to deduce things for himself.

  It had given John Pearce no pleasure to see the way old Adam’s lifelong beliefs in the innate goodness of his fellow creatures wilted in the face of
the evidence. Man, released from monarchical bondage, would not rise to a new purity, but descend into a bestiality which seemed to know few bounds. And when Adam Pearce took issue with those who oversaw the carnage, who could not prevent a mob breaking into the prisons of Paris and tearing limb from limb some of the more aristocratic inmates, he found they disliked criticism as much, if not more, than King George of England and his ministers till, sick of his strictures, they put him in jail.

  Augustine Robespierre was heaping on them every sin ever committed by the fools who opposed reason, who stood in the way of the Rights of Man. He spoke, he insisted, for the entire French nation, who would not ever again have on their wrists the shackles of an old and dying system. Pearce listed for Digby the crimes of which they were accused, though in truth, many of the words in English were so close to those in French it was barely necessary.

  ‘We are villains, treacherous, duplicitous, and we aim to support those who would enslave the people. The brains in our heads are rotted with the maggots of reaction.’

  Then Robespierre held up the letters they had brought and told an intermittently strident crowd of their contents. Fists were shaken, blasphemies rained down on them and more than one of those they could see chopped a hand across their throat to give their opinion on how they should be rewarded. The letters, one by one, and to increased roars, were consigned to the flames, and their accuser was off again, working himself up into a frenzy in a way that began to worry Pearce. He knew enough about mobs to be aware how easily they could get out of hand, and he looked at Barras, now more somnolent than attentive, who seemed detached from the way Robespierre was using the crowd to take away from him the power of decision.

  ‘Monsieur Barras!’ he shouted, being too far away to kick the bugger awake. The shout, even in such an atmosphere, had the desired effect. Barras came back to life and after a few more words from Robespierre stepped forward and loudly proclaimed a series of hurrahs for the orator. The effect was to shut him up; he had to respond to the flattery of the approbation, and that way Barras quickly killed off his murderous intent.