Hood had proved a wily old fox, too well versed in naval politics actually to take the letter, knowing it for what it was, an attempt to blackmail him into releasing some hands. He also knew as well as Barclay that HMS Brilliant needed a complement of at least one hundred and forty men to both sail and fight; she was, if he was being told the truth, at present, forty short of that number. What did that matter, there were never enough men – the peacetime Navy had to expand ten times to accommodate the needs of war; the press-gangs had long since swept the country bare, and Sam Hood was not sitting with an officer he cared to indulge.
‘You may leave it on my desk, though I doubt I shall have time to read it,’ Hood had said, going back to his pile of letters, but his parting words had made Ralph Barclay wonder if he was a reader of minds. ‘I daresay you will man your ship somehow, though I would remind you of the very necessary statutes that exist to ensure that, should you go pressing, you only take up men qualified for service at sea.’
Those very words were rattling round Ralph Barclay’s mind as he came abreast of the Tower of London. He called to Midshipman Farmiloe, to draw his attention to pinpoints of light that dotted the bank and the green behind. ‘See yonder, Farmiloe, those camp fires?’
‘Sir.’
‘I daresay you have no knowledge of who they warm?’
‘None, sir.’
‘Sailors, Mr Farmiloe, that’s who. Prime seamen, every one a volunteer, come to the Tower as the place where the Impress Service is taking in recruits for the same Navy in which it is our honour to serve.’
Richard Farmiloe would have been wary of his captain whatever mood he was in – and that was not always easy to know. But the note of sarcasm in Ralph Barclay’s voice rendered him doubly cautious. The man was capricious, and what seemed like the sharing of a witticism one second, could turn to unbridled wrath the next. So he took refuge in being obtuse.
‘Why, that is amazing, sir.’
‘It’s a damned disgrace,’ Barclay spat.
A voice barked in the darkness. ‘Sheer off you fucking swab.’
‘Damn you, Hale! Do you want to see us in the river?’ Barclay shouted, at the sound of clashing oars.
This was aimed at his coxswain, Lemuel Hale, steering his boat. Distracted by the sight of those very same fires he had taken him so close to the wherry of a Thames waterman, leading to that shouted curse. Accustomed to such abuse, Hale merely made sure his eyes did not lock with those of his captain.
They were well past Tower Green and the sparkling camp-fires before Barclay returned to the subject. ‘They are held there at the express orders of Lord Hood. What do you say to that?’
‘Words fail me, sir,’ replied Farmiloe.
‘There’s much that fails you, boy,’ Barclay spat, ‘not least that empty head of yours. Does it not occur to you to enquire why?’
‘I would not presume, sir.’
‘I doubt you know the true meaning of the word presumption.’
Ralph Barclay finally arrived at the decision that he would be safer at sea than at anchor. None of the men at the Tower would be released until Hood had resolution of his dilemma. Even when the shackles were undone none of these men might be assigned to a ship bound for Mediterranean service. Even if they were, he did not stand high enough in the man’s estimation to be at the head of the queue.
‘I have done my duty, let others worry as to whether they have done theirs.’
His earlier concerns were not allayed – there would be hell to pay if he was caught with these pressed men, because not one of them was a sailor. Hood’s parting shot was still fresh enough in his mind to induce a chill that had nothing to do with the winter weather. He reassured himself with the thought that the punishment for the offence he had committed that night tended to fade with time. Once he was at sea with that convoy it could be years before he touched the English shore again, years in which the pressed men would be either dead or inured to life at sea. If there was one aboard who could survive and had the wit to bring a complaint against him, he had, in mitigation, that letter he had left with Hood, which stated that Captain Ralph Barclay, in order to properly serve his King and Country, now found himself in a position where desperate measures might have to be employed to get his ship to sea.
For all his determination to see things in a positive light, nagging doubts existed. His orders could be suddenly changed, he had known it happen before; by the time he got back to Sheerness that convoy duty could have evaporated and he could be stuck at anchor waiting for a new assignment with some of those men aboard clamouring for release. Even if he weighed immediately, the sea was a capricious element. Ships had been known to run aground before they ever cleared the Thames and the Channel was one of the worst stretches of water in creation, a place where vicious cross-seas or thudding westerly tempests made the prospect of losing some vital spar or mast a distinct possibility. Vessels were often forced by such mishaps to run for one of the southern Channel havens to undertake repairs.
Ralph Barclay forced himself to concentrate on the more enticing scenario; a quick clean break from the shore, a voyage blessed with good fortune that would take him to the Mediterranean and opportunity. And if, as he hoped, his service were successful, say a fleet action or some single ship success, well, what he had done this night would count for nothing. No one would bring before a court a naval captain who had proved his worth against his nation’s foes.
A tide going slack, a widening river and a cold east wind blowing up the estuary, slowed the progress of the longboat and cutter, so that the men on the oars were obliged to pull hard, though in a steady rhythm that belied the effort they were making. As the stars began to fade, the sky going from black to the palest shade of grey, Pearce looked at his fellow victims, heads lolling forward as his had done in the night, only to jerk upright at some shock. Then came incomprehension, as if they could not acknowledge their predicament; that followed by a look around the boat, as the truth became apparent once more in their bruised faces.
Naturally he picked out those he knew. Ginger Rufus looked like death, but that was in part due to the paleness of his complexion and the unformed nature of his features. Taverner’s face he could not see – though he was hatless he was crouched over – most obvious was the black blood that stained his blond hair above the ear. Walker, at the very front of the boat, he noted was alert, those bird-like eyes never still, as though he was searching for means to escape. It took the movement of another before he got sight of Scrivens, who, not young on first acquaintance, looked even more aged now.
He had seen faces like that before, and much worse in the Bridewell. Recollection of that stinking pit of a prison sent a deep shudder though his already chilled frame. There was little room in this boat but that could not compare with the need to share a barred basement cell, thirty feet square, with over a hundred souls, and the stink of human effluvia that created. Old men and women, some of quality, others the dross of the streets, lay cheek by jowl with bow-legged, ragged and skeletal young boys and girls whose only crime had been to steal food in an attempt to ward off starvation. Some were those close to death when they arrived, and others he had watched as they struggled to survive in the cold, damp and disease ridden, rat infested hell-hole.
Worse were those wedded to crime, the dregs of humanity who made it necessary for he and his father to take turns in sleeping, if a half-comatose state on a filthy stone-flagged floor, with only a minimum of straw – home to a whole race of biting insects – could be called that. Of both sexes, they would rob whoever they could of whatever little they had, even down to the clothes on their back if they could be removed with enough guile. Set up supposedly to meet the needs of justice, the Bridewell was a true den of iniquity with the venal warders the top of the pile of human ordure, men who made sure that anything of value – a watch, a ring, a good shirt or handkerchief – went first to them as payment for some small act of partiality. He recalled how hard he had run that day, how his
mind had worked to provide the right answers, ones that would keep him free from a return to that purgatory, only to find that fate in the end had played a cruel trick by delivering him into another.
Adverse luck had caused him to choose the Pelican, there was no point in looking for a deeper meaning, and there was some comfort in the fact that the men who had chased him all of the previous day would be hard put now to find him. But would anyone else in a world that seemed to have turned against him? As he ran through again and again the events of the last four years, of the highs and lows he had enjoyed, he had to ask himself again if anything his father had done in the time had been worthwhile.
‘What does it matter now?’ Pearce said out loud, in a voice so rasping that it told him he was in need of a drink of water.
‘I would be after saying, friend, that talking to yourself would be the first sign of madness, if what we were about was not mad enough itself. What in Christ’s name am I doing in a boat?’
The voice from the comatose body close to his, unmistakably Irish, was that of O’Hagan. And so was the face now that Pearce could look at it properly; big, round, coarse-skinned, with narrow eyes that could seem to be merry even in this dire situation, the whole topped with the black, tight and thick curly hair that had saved him from concussion. Gone was the belligerent drunk of the night before; this incarnation could even manage a smile in a situation that did not in the least deserve one.
‘Where in the name of Holy Mary are we?’
Pearce managed a grim smile. ‘In a boat, friend, as you say. We had the misfortune to run into a press-gang last night.’
It was clear by the confusion on O’Hagan’s face that he could not remember. He pulled himself up with some difficulty as his hands, like Pearce’s own, were tied, groaning as he did so, those bright eyes closing to pressed slits as he slowly shook his head. ‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary, the drink has done for me again. Not that I had enough to fell me, they must have put gin in my yard of ale, the bastards.’
Pearce looked down the boat to see if Charlie Taverner had heard the statement, one with which he would certainly not agree, but he looked to be either sleeping or still out from the effect of the blow he had received. Out of the corner of his eye, Pearce also saw Coyle, the little marine asleep across his lap, looking at them. He was seeing him for the first time in daylight, and he observed that their chief captor had a face so red and fiery, and so round, that except for the lack of a smile it would not have disgraced a Toby Jug. He was glaring at them now, as if by merely communicating they were fomenting rebellion. Pearce jerked his head slightly in warning as the Irishman reopened his eyes, but it was ignored.
‘O’Hagan, Michael, Patrick, Paul.’ The bound hands came up as if to propose a shake, and Pearce was treated to another bit of evidence, in a pair of huge, heavy-knuckled fists, that he was with a man who would have been hard to take up sober. But with his own hands tied behind his back he was in no position to take up the invitation of contact.
‘That’s a lot of names.’
‘It is in the Papist tradition, I suppose for fear that God or the saints might lose us.’
‘Which one do you go by?’
‘Michael.’ He grinned. ‘Or O’Hagan. Or “you damned bog trotter” if you prefer.’
‘We met last night, Michael, and I recall that you tried to knock my head off my shoulders.’
Those merry eyes showed disbelief at first, then, with the addition of a slight headshake, acknowledgement. ‘The drink, it is, for I am a lamb when not full of it. Your name?’
The reply ‘John Pearce’ came without thought, the next being that such openness was incautious. There had been a time, before he and his father fled to France, when the name of Adam Pearce had been on everyone’s lips. Having been absent two years he had no idea if that notoriety had faded. Charlie Taverner had certainly stirred at the mention, or was that just apprehension?
‘Ah! The simplicity of the English,’ O’Hagan exclaimed. ‘You never fear the deities will lose you.’
‘My father is Scottish.’
‘Of what faith?’
‘None that I, or he, would admit to.’
‘It is not possible to live without faith in Christ.’
Pearce smiled. ‘It is. Michael, believe me it is.’
‘Shut them up, Kemp,’ growled Coyle.
Kemp made his way unsteadily up the boat, timing his move to miss the rower’s actions, his decorated pigtail swinging behind him, causing groans and cries of muted anger as he stepped across the bodies that lay between him, Pearce and O’Hagan. When he reached them he leant over, his pointed rodent face as ugly as the whiff of his breath. As he leant forward the dewdrop of mucus, which seemed a permanent feature of what was a red-tipped and pinched nose, threatened to detach itself; but it did not – by some miracle it stayed affixed.
‘You two ain’t got the message, ’ave you?’ Kemp said, raising a cosh and giving them each in turn a none too gentle tap on the crown of their heads. ‘Coylie don’t want you a’talking, so that means, my hearty lads, that you will shut your gobs.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to be asking of a son of Erin.’
‘Don’t get bold, mate.’
‘Can I sing then?’
Pearce winced in sympathy as Kemp caught O’Hagan a heavier blow, one that caused an audible crack and made the Irishman duck away with his whole face screwed up. ‘You’ll sing enough when we get you aboard, Paddy, and to any tune we care to whistle. Now shut up, or else I’ll be forced to stuff your mouth with this here cosh.’
O’Hagan looked up, his eyes full of defiance. But he met those of Pearce, and acknowledged the shake of the head.
‘Sit down, Kemp,’ said Coyle, who had been given clear orders from his captain not to allow the pressed men to be seen by anyone, with the added warning that should that happen he would not be alone in facing the law. ‘We’s passing Gravesend. There’s Men o’ War set there. Anyone on a ship about here sees you and that pigtail swinging a cosh they won’t need much thinkin’ to get what we’s about. Remember this lot ain’t rightly ours till they is sworn in. Be just the thing for some other crew of bilge-water buggers to get a boat in the water an’ try and snaffle our goods.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Kemp, with a loud sniff and a deft use of the sleeve to clean the end of his nose, but the words were so soft only those next to him could hear it.
Pearce was one, and, looking up he could see the higher masts of half a dozen ships poking up into the morning sky. Gulls flew overhead, swooping down or swinging out of sight on the breeze, in a free manner that seemed to mock those confined in the boat.
‘How long till we raise the barky?’ asked Kemp.
‘Few hours yet, mate. Tide’s turned agin us,’ said Coyle, ‘an’ this sodding wind don’t aid us nowt.’
‘Captn’ll be well aboard before we, I reckon,’ Kemp opined, ‘which will not make him happy. Hope to Christ he didn’t get back to a charge to weigh, for there was a rumour flyin’ that the order was set to come from the Commodore to up anchor and make for Deal.’
‘There’s always a rumour on the wing, as you well know, mate, just as there’s bugger all or little that’ll make Ralph Barclay happy, ’cepting, happen, that pretty wife of his.’
‘Now there,’ said Kemp, with real feeling, ‘is a flower it would be nice to pluck. I saw her in the Sheerness yard when she came down first to look out to the ship, pretty as a picture.’
‘Happen you’ll get the chance, mate. Old Barclay ’tends to take her to sea with him. He’s even had a double cot shipped aboard for their comfort.’
‘Not too sure I like that idea,’ Kemp replied. ‘Women aboard a barky brings bad luck.’
‘It don’t matter a dollop of shit what you like, nor any soul else for that matter.’ The voice got harsh then as he growled at the crew of the boat, who were rowing but without much effort. ‘Get your soddin’ backs into them sticks.’
Coyle was not think
ing about women at sea and bad luck. He was thinking that Kemp was right; that Barclay had missed his chance to weigh till at least tomorrow. And that was no way to be carrying on when your ship was berthed right under the Commodore’s window if the order came to get cracking. There would be hell to pay and no pitch hot from that quarter, which would see Barclay properly hauled over. The captain was known to be a hard-horse commander – the type prepared to win the respect of his crew through fear if he had to – who cared little if he was loved or loathed, a man to pass that kind of raking on to another.
Someone would get it in the neck, for certain, and Coyle had no desire to be the one to bear the brunt of Ralph Barclay’s anger.
CHAPTER FOUR
The captain of HMS Brilliant made Sheerness well ahead of his longboat and cutter, landing just as the guns boomed out to announce dawn, and being sensible of the fact that he had been off the station without permission, he went to the Commodore’s office to cover his absence, only to find out from a clerk, and with a sinking heart, that an order had been posted the previous evening commanding him to weigh at first light, an instruction with which he was already too late to comply. His desire to depart immediately was quashed by the next comment that his superior, in need of some explanation as to why his orders had been ignored, wanted very much to see him. Gnawing on the forthcoming interview, he crossed a waiting room full of officers, here to demand stores, cordage and spars, or a plea to light a fire under the low thieving scullies that worked in the dockyard, taking station by the window that looked out over the anchorage, sparkling in the early morning light.
By the Mast Divided Page 6