A Flag of Truce

by David Donachie

  Neame looked disquieted. ‘It is a long way upriver, sir, and the wind you speak of could keep us in the Gironde for weeks.’ The master did not say that the French officers would be as reluctant to sail up to Bordeaux port for the same reason; they could be stuck there till spring.

  ‘Which is why I have discarded the notion, likewise Nantes. I would point out to you then what I have just said about a lee shore. If that is a threat to us for sailing in too far, then it is even more of that to a ship anchored in unprotected waters. I propose therefore to lead our charges to anchor off La Rochelle.’

  Pearce shrugged; he had heard of the place; no student of any history involving France could not know of it, given it was the last stronghold of the Protestant religion in the time of Cardinal Richelieu, and besieged because of it. But that was the limit of his knowledge.

  ‘Mr Neame, please confirm my thinking. Could a seventy-four be warped into the La Rochelle harbour?’

  ‘I’d have to consult my charts, sir, but I have a strong feeling it ain’t been used for capital ships since the time of the fourteenth Louis and that has more to do with the depth of water under the keel than the layout of the harbour. Seventy-fours would probably ground well before they reached. Given it is a port and its position, if it could be used it would be. It’s more a slaver’s home now, that and sugar of course, notwithstanding most of that fetches up in Nantes.’

  ‘I think you are forgetting privateers, Mr Neame.’

  ‘Them also, of course.’

  ‘So if our charges were anchored there, at this time of year—’

  ‘No French captain would think of such a thing, your honour, it would be asking for trouble.’

  ‘Without the crews needed to get them clear?’

  Lutyens eventually spoke up. ‘Would someone explain to me what you are talking about?’

  ‘With pleasure, Mr Lutyens,’ Digby replied. ‘We shall bypass Rochefort and the mouth of the Charente, and sail on to La Rochelle. There we will land the crews of all four vessels and hope for a rapid change in the weather, namely the onset of the autumn gales that plague the Biscay coast. Given warning of that we will immediately put to sea and leave the French ships in a situation where it is very possible, with nothing rigged to get to sea, they will be driven onto the shore and destroyed. We will therefore have completed our task and kept Lord Hood’s commitment, having landed the French radicals on their own soil in their own part of the world, but we will not have gifted our enemies four sound vessels that only require their cannon to be replaced to become as formidable as they were originally. How does that strike you, Mr Lutyens?’

  ‘As dishonest,’ Lutyens replied with a sparkle in his eye. He waited till Digby looked aggrieved before adding, ‘But very clever.’

  Pearce cut in. ‘I admit to not speaking from any knowledge, but is not the weather a fickle instrument on which to base a strategy? It could be some time before the elements oblige.’

  Digby nodded. ‘Then we will be in a bind, Mr Pearce, for I cannot believe our presence will go unnoticed. I would expect a warship, very possibly a frigate, to be sent from Rochefort to seek us out.’

  ‘Which we cannot fight with any hope of success.’

  Digby brightened, but there was a gallows quality to his humour. ‘There is always hope, Lieutenant Pearce, whatever the odds.’

  ‘I merely ask, sir, because a certain contingency has to be covered.’

  ‘Namely,’ Digby replied, ‘that we have to weigh in haste, and the crews ashore immediately return to their ships, or at least enough of them to raise sail?’

  ‘Is that not why we fetched along the carronades, sir?’ said Pearce.

  ‘The prospect of breaking a given commitment does not bother you, sir, I see.’

  The glint in Digby’s eye took the sting out of what could have been construed as base thinking, and Pearce realised what he had been about; the captain had reached the very same conclusion they were at now, but in having this discussion he had brought them all to a like assessment. Questioned later, he could rightly claim it was not his orders that made his inferiors act as they did, but their own inclinations.

  ‘Let us say, sir, that I am thinking like our enemy would think.’

  ‘I too have put myself in that position, Mr Pearce, and rest assured, when I state they shall not have those ships, I mean what I say. I’ll burn them to the waterline before I give them over.’

  The eyes had become like flints, a measure of Digby’s determination. ‘Not a word of this outside these cabin walls, and this discussion was never held. We need to get our Frenchmen aboard and oblige them to accede to our intentions.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘I would remind you, madam, that we are at war, and that I have duties to perform that are consistent with my rank and obligations. I cannot do so if I am under a cloud of accusation from the likes of that scoundrel Pearce.’

  Ralph Barclay was deliberately loud in his discourse; having decided to fight back he knew that he must force his wife into the kind of submission that, alone, would grant them the prospect of a happy future. The expectation of her behaviour continuing unchecked was not to be borne and he actually slapped the table as he added. ‘What was done was necessary!’

  Emily replied in a meek voice. ‘But was it true, husband?’

  ‘It was as true as it needed to be. Every officer who sat on that court has found himself at some time in the same boat as I. The nation needs sailors to man its ships, and if not enough come forward what are we to do? It is not a pleasant task, but it is a necessary one. If we are to be threatened every time someone feels aggrieved we might as well send the French an invite to invade England and march their rabble down Whitehall.’

  For the first time since the subject had been broached, she looked up at him. ‘I rather had the impression you took pleasure from it, pressing men to serve at sea, I mean.’

  ‘My dear,’ he insisted, ‘I hate it, but Hood left me no choice. I asked him, indeed begged him for hands, which he had in abundance, sitting on their ar…backsides at the Tower. Did he put the needs of his country before everything? No he did not. He put his own requirements first. I could do no other than take that as an example. If you do not accept such an explanation, then seek the opinions of my fellow officers. You can try Admiral Hotham if you like, he has asked us to dine aboard Britannia tonight.’

  Emily looked alarmed; the notion of a formal naval dinner was not a pleasant one. ‘Could I not plead an indisposition?’

  The table got another slap. ‘No, madam, you cannot. Anyone with enough spirit to get from ship to shore by themselves in a bought wherry can hardly plead ill-health twenty-four hours later. And, while we are on the subject, I will not have you defy me again. You put Glaister in an impossible position and that also will never happen again. Do I make myself clear!’

  ‘You do, husband, but now I wonder if it would have been better had I not sailed with you in the first place, better if I had stayed at home.’

  ‘Mrs Barclay…’

  Emily looked directly at him, which stopped him speaking, well aware of what was going on. He was her husband, she his wife. Socially, legally, and in the eyes of God she was bound to obey him, but that did not mean she was denied an opinion.

  ‘I mean only that I have seen a side of you that would have remained hidden had I not come aboard this ship. And do not think I am unaware that we live in a less than perfect world, do not suppose that I assume that what pertains on land must of necessity be any easier at sea, but something being necessary does not, of itself, make it right.’

  ‘I did not set out to disappoint you, madam.’

  ‘I know that, Captain Barclay,’ Emily replied, in a tone of voice that left him in no doubt that was precisely what he had done.

  ‘Please be so good as to see that my best uniform is ready for this evening.’

  Emily replied, ‘Of course,’ with the sure knowledge the task given was one normally performed by Shent
on. Her husband was asserting his will in an area in which it would be churlish of her to decline.

  Two people overheard the exchange. The closest, Shenton, was pleased by it; his job had just got easier and, who knows, he thought, the captain might send his bitch home. The second was seeing it in exactly the opposite light; a husband having trouble with his wife was, to Cornelius Gherson, like pitch perfect music.

  ‘I wonder, Mrs Barclay, if I could work in the cabin, by the light from the casements. It is so much easier than seeking to keep accounts by candlelight and I have a great deal of catching up to do.’

  Emily, in the act of writing home to her mother, was taken slightly unawares; Gherson had not knocked but entered unannounced. But then Shenton did that all the time while pretending he did not know how much it discomfited her.

  ‘I fear my eyes are not as strong as they should be.’

  The silence lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough for Emily to think that Gherson was being less than entirely honest. Not that she could swear to such a thing, only that his words were at odds with the cast of his features, as well as the look in his eye, which was direct enough to be unsettling. Fearing to speak, lest she convey her doubts as to his motives, she nodded and pointed her quill to the footlockers and the cushions she had embroidered with the ship’s name, then went, very obviously, back to her writing.

  It was hard to concentrate; the thread of her letter had been lost and it was impossible to ignore Gherson carefully laying out, then standing to study his ledgers on those cushions. Finally he went to the furthest point from her, where the bulkhead of the side cabin met the stern, and sat down, at an angle which had him almost directly facing the table at which she sat.

  ‘Please, Mrs Barclay, do say if I am disturbing you in any way. It would trouble me greatly if it were so.’

  Was that a strange choice of words? So ambiguous as to be beyond response. Emily came to the firm conclusion that she did not like the man. He had an oleaginous manner and an air of misplaced superiority. Added to that, she suspected his testimony at the court martial had been as tainted as all the others, which made him a willing liar. Fortunately, there was little prospect of her needing to have much contact with him.

  Had she been able to see inside Cornelius Gherson’s mind, she would have been less sanguine: to him, he had merely fired the opening salvo in a campaign of indeterminate duration. Seduction was an art at which he prided himself; he reckoned he could charm men out of the trees like birds, and women too, though they required a more delicate form of flattery. Tell a plain women she was beautiful, treat beauty in one who possessed it with indifference. As he scratched away with his quill, totting up the columns of figures for stores acquired and used, he allowed himself an occasional lift of the eye to look at Emily Barclay. How long would it take? That was an unknown but he knew the first bridge to be the hardest to cross; the idea that dalliance was possible. Once a woman had accepted the possibility of infidelity, the rest of the defence would crumble, slowly for sure, but inexorably. The pleasure it would bring to both parties could not be in doubt; how could an old goat like Ralph Barclay compete in the bedchamber with a young buck like him. Let her get used to his being present first, then he could move on to being familiar, then friendly, and finally a person to confide in.

  That delicious train of thought was interrupted as Shenton barged in with his usual lack of regard for proper behaviour. Emily had long since given up chastising him, because he paid no attention, and the time was long past when saying anything to her husband would have seen his servant put in his place. But it was telling the way he stopped dead, looking from her to Gherson, separated by the width of the cabin and the table at which she was writing, clear on his face the notion that something was going on which should not be.

  Odd, thought Emily, how that pleases me. And he is bound to tell my husband, which pleases me even more.

  For Ralph Barclay the prospect of Hotham’s dinner rose as the morning went by, anything was better than being out here trying to impede the progress of the French gunners as they tried to construct new battery positions. His was at Fort Mulgrave, a bastion thrown up and named after the military commander of the Toulon garrison. Right at this moment he was engaged in an artillery duel, against an opposite number who seemed willing to push his guns forward into extremely exposed positions, obviously content to take the casualties this caused. It was no joy to see approaching the redoubt that pint-sized pest, Horatio Nelson, fresh back from Naples.

  ‘Nelson,’ he said, deliberately concentrating on the use of his telescope to avoid direct eye contact.

  ‘Captain Barclay, it is so very good to see you again.’

  What is he about, Ralph Barclay thought; is he so dense that he cannot see I do not esteem him?

  He would not admit to a tinge of jealousy; Nelson was not far above him in the captain’s list, but he had been favoured by Lord Hood in a way that had been denied to him. It was all to do with Rodney of course. Hood hated that name even if the bearer was dead, buried and almost forgotten except by those who had admired him and prospered by their association. He could not see Nelson without recalling he was a client of Hood, who had held the power of appointment at the outbreak of this war as the senior Naval Sea Lord on the Board of Admiralty. Lord Chatham, William Pitt’s brother, who held the position of First Sea Lord, was an idle fool, often drunk, and never very active, which left Hood making all the important decisions. Nelson had got Agamemnon, a 64-gun ship-of-the-line; he had got the smallest class of frigate in the King’s Navy.

  That train of irritation was broken by a salvo from the nearest well-set French guns, a battery they had called Sablettes as it was near the sandy shoreline. It was obvious they were seeking to suppress any fire on another battery position even closer to the fort, which the French sappers were busy extending with anything that came to hand; broken wagons, baulks of timber of all shapes and sizes, plus mounds of freshly dug earth.

  ‘He is a bold fellow,’ Nelson said, shading his eyes as he looked out over the undulating landscape.

  ‘He may be a dead fellow soon, Nelson.’ With that Ralph Barclay gave orders for his naval gunners to train their cannon round on the men digging hard to raise that earthwork. ‘I want that mound knocked down, lads, and damned quick.’

  ‘No easy task, Captain Barclay,’ Nelson responded, in that high-pitched voice which so irritated many of his fellow officers. ‘Loose earth will do nought but absorb the balls and the range is too great for case shot to kill the sappers.’

  Why has this poltroon come here to tell me the obvious? Does he suspect I do not know?

  ‘What we really need is soldiers to go out and take the ground,’ Barclay said. ‘But we lack them, as you know. Every available man is employed.’

  ‘There is a draft on the way from Naples, sir, a substantial one. Perhaps when they are here we can sally out and undo the efforts of whoever commands yonder.’

  ‘I will believe that when I see the glint of their bayonets.’

  Another ball from Sablettes bounced in front of Fort Mulgrave, before sinking in to the glacis built before it.

  ‘Sir John Acton was most pressing in his commitment.’

  Ralph Barclay finally looked down at Nelson, noting, not for the first time the absurdly youthful countenance, the lack of inches, and those eyes so blue they were like sapphires, before he checked himself for thinking such poetic drivel. The man mentioned, Acton, was a power in the Kingdom of the Two Scillies, close to the Queen, Maria Carolina and rumoured to be her lover. The real ruler, her husband, King Ferdinand, was apparently a slobbering idiot whose only interests were hunting and fornication, so the task of running the country was left to his wife. As a daughter of the formidable Empress Maria Theresa of Austria her bloodline promised competence, not that it was guaranteed; her sister, Marie Antoinette, who many blamed for undermining the French monarchy, was at this every moment incarcerated in a Paris dungeon.

  Still, it
was remarkable that an Englishman should have achieved such a post in a foreign government, but not as extraordinary as the kingdom is which he served. Naples was by rumour the loosest and most corrupt place in creation where every wife had a lover, every husband one or more mistresses, a place where dishonesty was the norm not the exception. How could it be otherwise with such a sovereign?

  ‘You do not fear that Sir John Acton has gone native?’

  That remark coincided with the next shot from the French, which had a bigger charge or a ball that better fitted the barrel from which it was fired. It cleared the rampart and hit an empty wagon sitting at the rear of the battery, rendering it to matchwood. Barclay gave orders for the guns, now ready and aimed, to commence their counter-battery fire, and suddenly the two captains were engulfed in clouds of acrid smoke as the breeze, which aided the enemy fire, blew back the residue of their own weapons into their faces.

  ‘In what way, gone native?’ Nelson asked, once the smoke had cleared, and he had removed with a handkerchief some of the bits of burnt powder that had stuck to his cheeks.

  Barclay took time to reply, busy marking the fall of shot and ordering an increased elevation. ‘In making promises, Captain Nelson, that he has no intention of meeting?’

  ‘Sir William assures me he has not.’

  ‘Hamilton?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘You met him?

  ‘I did and a better representative of England’s needs could scarce be found. The man is tireless in his pursuit of our nation’s interests.’

  ‘What about his trollop?

  ‘Trollop?’ Nelson looked shocked, which made him look even younger than normal. ‘I do hope, Captain Barclay, you are not referring to his wife, the inestimable Lady Hamilton.’

  There was great temptation then to ask if Nelson had fallen for the lady’s charms. After all, if a woman who had whored in London could capture the heart and loins of an old and noble knight, a friend of King George when young and related to a Duke, this soft Norfolk fool would be like putty in her hands.