A Sea of Troubles

by David Donachie

  Yet even as he added, subtracted and listed, Gherson’s thoughts were on other problems, not least his relationship with Ralph Barclay; never entirely sound, it was now much diminished by his recent behaviour. Worse, over the horizon lay not just the coast of England but also the lies he had told to get him out of a tight spot. Tasked to get the copy of the court martial papers that would damn his employer, he had not only failed to even find them, he had assured Barclay that his mission had been successful and they had been destroyed by burning.

  If he did not know where they were precisely, Gherson assumed they had to be in the possession of Emily Barclay and that presaged great trouble. That they could see his employer hanged if ever produced in a court of law was less of a consideration; Cornelius Gherson was only troubled by that thought in the sense that it would impede his own progress to where he wanted to be, clerk to an admiral either on a profitable station or in command of a fleet, a position from which could be extracted, by fair means or foul, a great deal of money. It might be time to seek another employer.

  He had done well so far, going from press-ganged sailor at the outbreak of war to his present position, which he could hope to hold, given Barclay needed his skills to ensure he made the most of what could be procured by a little light peculation and the care of his investments. It was even better considering he had ended up at sea after an attempt at murder by chucking him off London Bridge, brought about by previous thefts as well as the seduction of the young wife of his then employer, the city nabob called Alderman Denby Carruthers.

  He had survived the raging River Thames by dint of a strong hand on his shirt and ended up in the navy, obliged to mess alongside all those unfortunates taken from the Pelican Tavern. Still, for Gherson, in a life of continual ups and downs, its twin, good luck, had always followed misfortune, so he put aside matters of which time itself could only take care. He concentrated instead on ideas of how he could best extract personal profit from Ralph Barclay’s sudden acquisition of increased wealth.

  Alderman Denby Carruthers knew nothing about the construction of ships and was well aware that a devious seller would know how to use paint and putty to make look better some tub likely to leak through its timbers. No fool, he had engaged the services of an experienced old salt who was long past the age at which he desired to go to sea, a one-time ship’s master who had sailed merchant vessels on the triangular passage all of his seaborne life. Not that he was in search of a true blue-water boat; the vessel he had been tasked to buy, specifications given to him by the Tolland brothers, required a shallow draught added to decently copious holds and it also needed to be dry and weatherly. No point in loading it with valuable contraband only to have it ruined by the seepage of seawater.

  Even if he had never engaged in the illicit trade, Carruthers knew only too well that smuggling had ever been a profitable enterprise. That had only increased with a war going badly and that was doubly the case recently: the Duke of York had taken an army to Flanders, marched it to and fro only to begin to bring it home again, so he was now the butt of a wonderful ditty that had been composed on his return, a song that everyone was singing, much to the chagrin of his father, King George. Nor did it go down well at the Horse Guards building, the place from which the army was run.

  Indeed he was humming ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ as he paced the deck, waiting for his old sailor to come up from the bilges where he had claimed the smell alone would tell him half of what he needed to know. The Tollands had said they did their trade out of Gravelines on the Flanders coast, now in the hands of the armies of Revolutionary France. His worry that such a force would impede the trade had been set aside; even Jacobins needed to trade for gold and the smugglers brought in that commodity while taking away the fruits of the luxury French trades. That they had lost their previous vessel he knew, if he was not aware of how; it mattered little – they were in need of financing and he had the funds to support them and that was all he would do. They would take the risks and between them they could share the rewards.

  A very successful man of business he did not live a life without concerns, though none of that related to his business or his substantial wealth. His gremlins lay in the domestic sphere, for he now realised that it had been folly for a man of his age to marry a much younger bride, who had not only cuckolded him with the clerk he had once employed, but was now, he was certain, trying to make contact with the fellow again. That had him glaring at the River Thames, hard by which the vessel being examined was berthed, and it was as though that waterway had failed him. He had seen Cornelius Gherson, short of the fine clothing bought for him by Catherine Carruthers, his besotted paramour, chucked by two brawny helpers into the river at a point where the water flowed fast and deadly through the arches of London Bridge. How had the swine survived to come back and haunt him?

  Then the second plan he had hatched to take care of Gherson had failed and he could only console himself with the fact not every venture in which he had engaged returned a profit; that was the way of business. If anything, his scheme had added to his troubles by placing him in obligation to a low-life villain called Jonathan Codge, the man he had engaged to rid his world of Gherson; in fact he had sought to get shot of both of them in one fell swoop by dobbing them to the Bow Street Runners but somehow Codge had got out of that too, which left him having to buy the man off with a monthly stipend.

  Still, matters were in hand to solve all his problems and if not fully formed they soon would be; if he was short on the kind of hard bargains who would see to his needs, he was fortunate to be related by marriage to a man who did know where to find them. Edward Druce, as a successful prize agent, knew the kind of men who made up the London press gangs and they fitted the bill when it came to muscle. Not only would he rid himself of Codge but also something had to be done about his wife Catherine.

  He had forgiven her once, yet it would be folly to do so again – and then there was his new clerk: Gherson’s replacement, Isaac Lavery, seemed to have taken her side. Dismissal would serve for him, plus the word put around that he was light-fingered; such an accusation would see him in the workhouse, for no one would employ him after a city alderman, a man destined one day to be mayor, had trashed his probity. Such thoughts evaporated, for his white-haired sailor was coming up from below and it was time for business; time to work out, if all was well, a price. That was where Alderman Denby Carruthers was at his happiest; the thought of driving a hard bargain, given the other meaning of the expression on which he had just been cogitating, made him laugh for the first time in days.

  In the tangled web that had been created by an illegal act of pressing seamen from the Pelican Tavern there was one other person of consequence in the mix – even if he had not actually been present – and that was Emily Barclay’s nephew, Midshipman Toby Burns. He, a weak character, had been coerced by his uncle into lying at a court martial set up to examine the accusation made by John Pearce and his fellow Pelicans, all four of them sent off on a mission to the Bay of Biscay along with anyone else privy to the truth of the matter, leaving depositions detailing the facts of the case of illegal impressment.

  Toby Burns claimed in court to have been a member of the party who attacked the Pelicans when in fact he had been all the time aboard HMS Brilliant, berthed off Sheerness. His contribution to saving the skin of his uncle by marriage had been to take responsibility for getting the press gang ashore at the wrong part of the Thames riverside, which had provided enough leeway for a deliberately appointed and benign court to acquit.

  If the act of committing perjury had been uncomfortable, then the price paid could hardly have been said to be better. Toby Burns now saw himself in the clutches of people determined to do him harm, not least the man who had chosen the officers to sit in judgement at that court martial off Toulon, the same man who made sure that the Pelican depositions went unrecorded. He was the senior officer who had issued orders that sent away the hostile witnesses, those very same Pelicans, as well as
any member of Brilliant’s crew who could vouchsafe the truth.

  Sir William Hotham was a well-connected and very political admiral; he was also the second in command of the Mediterranean Fleet and he had protected Ralph Barclay because he was a client officer, a man who could be trusted to offer support in Hotham’s ongoing battle with his superior, Lord Hood. Toby’s reward for his lies had been a posting to HMS Britannia, Hotham’s flagship, where those who shared his rank saw him as much cosseted and granted opportunities to distinguish himself. The midshipman saw matters very differently: to his mind Hotham kept putting him in situations in which he stood a very high risk of being killed or maimed.

  These last weeks had been even more uncomfortable as each day he reached into his sea chest to reread the letter that had arrived from London with the fleet’s despatches. There, in plain ink, was the upshot of the whole affair, the intimation from a Grey’s Inn lawyer, a fellow called Lucknor, that the truth of the whole court-martial charade, as well as his part in it, was known. If the missive did not actually say that – indeed it was couched in a spirit of cool enquiry and requested a response – even a brain as slow as Toby’s own could, from the words used, extrapolate the true meaning.

  It was nothing more than a threat to dish him, which, if it had merely meant dismissal from the navy he would welcome. But a few seemingly disinterested enquiries of his own as to the penalty for perjury had elicited the probable outcome – it was a hanging offence – information which made him run a hand round his throat and did nothing for his ability to sleep at night; his dreams were nightmares and awake in the dark it was even worse, the whole compounded by the fact that he had no one to confide in, not being gifted with anyone he could really call a friend.

  Toby Burns could guess that the man at the centre of his troubles had to be John Pearce; the only other person who knew of his offence, apart from Hotham and Ralph Barclay, was his Aunt Emily and he could not believe that she would sacrifice him and disgrace the family in the process. Yet curse Pearce as he did and frequently, to do so provided no solution to his dilemma – what to say in reply to this Lucknor fellow.

  The sight of HMS Agamemnon, refitted at Gibraltar and rejoining the fleet after weeks of absence, provided a possible solution. Dick Farmiloe, a fellow mid aboard HMS Brilliant, who had truly been at the Pelican Tavern and had been part of that illegal press gang, was serving with Captain Nelson as an acting lieutenant. Could he be asked for advice, given he was a culprit in the original offence and therefore at some risk himself?

  The stiffening of those around him was a clear indication that Admiral Hotham had come on deck and Toby Burns likewise became erect while ensuring his hat was straight. Passed a telescope, Hotham raised it languidly to his eye and fixed the approaching sixty-four. If he admired her lines, and many did for she was the fastest ship of the line in the fleet, it was not that which brought forth the subsequent comment but the nature of the man who commanded her, a fellow whom the admiral despised.

  ‘Prepare, gentlemen,’ Hotham intoned to no one in particular, ‘to be treated to yet another boring account of Captain Nelson’s glittering destiny.’ The pitch of his voice changed perceptibly, became abrasive. ‘One day I look forward to putting the popinjay in his proper place, which for me would be a bumboat. Let him find a burial spot in Westminster Abbey from there, eh?’

  Everyone laughed, even if few agreed; the younger men admired Horatio Nelson, as much if not more than the ship he was lucky enough to command. Yet it was the nature of the service that when an admiral made a remark of that kind, then it was politic to seem to be seen to concur. Toby Burns did laugh with true heart, for he approved of the sentiment.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  On arrival back at the King’s Head, Emily Barclay was perplexed to see what appeared to be her trunk and valise outside the front entrance. The latter, a small case being near new and part of her trousseau, it was quite distinctive enough for there to be no mistake. So it was with a degree of deep curiosity that she thanked and dismissed her elderly limner-cum-instructor and watched him as he took off in his rickety single-horse hack, the easel she had used poking up from the rear.

  Carrying the work she had done that day, a single canvas, Emily came out of the dipping sunshine into the cool and dark interior, her eyes slowly adjusting to the change of light making it difficult to discern the nature of the two men standing there. That soon eased, allowing her to see the owner of the inn, as well as his concerned face, but her gaze was quickly transferred to the furious and florid countenance of the other fellow. He was a short and rather fat naval officer, bewigged under his tricorn hat and an admiral by the gold frogging that heavily adorned his coat. Added to that, he had a horsewhip coiled in his hand and that was twitching in such a way as to be a matter of some concern.

  ‘Madam!’ he cried, lifting the whip and pointing it at her, his eyes sinking to take in the hem of a dress made muddy by traversing the still wet fields. ‘Though I doubt the appellation to be the correct one, I demand to know who you are and under what pretext you dare to call yourself the wife of a naval officer, one, I might add, that does not exist.’

  The shock of the accusation seemed to pass through her body like that she received when two rubbed pieces of cloth produced an unpleasant effect and even on some occasions a spark. With a tremulous voice she made the only demand she could think of.

  ‘And who, sir, are you?’

  ‘He is Admiral Sir Berkley Sumner,’ the owner of the inn responded, wringing his hands and clearly worried. ‘A person of consequence in the county.’

  ‘That I am, just as I am here to expose you for what you are, as well as the lying scoundrel whom, I suspect, seeks to dun this poor innkeeper fellow out of his due. I will not use this horsewhip on a woman, God forbid I should stoop so low, but I have it in my hand to chastise the false Lieutenant Raynesford when he dares to appear, and I can tell you he will feel its weight up and down the entire High Street of the town. The reputation of the King’s Navy demands it!’

  Shocked as she was, Emily had been given those several seconds to think by the length of that tirade. The use of the Raynesford name and the accusation that it was false nailed at least part of the problem. If she knew her situation to be one of deep concern, she also knew that she had no choice but to go on the offensive, mixing truth with some very necessary lies.

  ‘How dare you, sir!’

  ‘What?’ the admiral responded, his already ruddy face going puce as he seemed to fill his rotund body with air, in the production of a reply he was given no time to make.

  ‘I am the wife of a serving naval officer, sir, and I expect to be treated with the courtesy that position carries.’

  ‘There is no Lieutenant Raynesford,’ the innkeeper said, ‘and between you and the man who uses that name you have brought my humble tavern into disgrace. Your names were mentioned in the Hampshire Chronicle as being a respectable couple. Now the word is out you ain’t and the town’s abuzz with it.’

  ‘I do believe my husband paid you a deal of money before he left, enough to cover his absence – enough, indeed, for over a month-long stay.’

  ‘He did, but—’

  ‘Then how can this old fool say he has set out to dun you when I have not been here that long?’

  The horsewhip was loosened then, the leather tip falling to the floor. ‘Old fool!’

  ‘I cannot think you anything else, sir, since you did not enquire if my husband had put my staying behind here on a bill to be later settled or paid well in advance.’

  ‘Bill be damned.’

  ‘Mind your tongue, sir! I will have you know I am not accustomed, nor will I tolerate even from my husband, such foul language in my presence.’

  That again was true; she had checked Ralph Barclay any number of times when he transgressed and John Pearce had not escaped censure either, though he had laughed off her sense of decorum as if it was nonsense.

  ‘Do not seek to divert me, madam. I contac
ted the Admiralty seeking to find out who this Raynesford was and the reply came back from the secretary himself that there was no one known to them of that name in the service. It therefore follows the man you call your husband is an impostor, which can have only one reason and if there is no criminality in his dealing with this fellow at my side, I am sure there is some somewhere, either now or in the future.’

  ‘I must ask you to leave, Mrs …’

  The confusion of the innkeeper’s face, added to the continued wringing of his hands, infuriated Emily. The man had been happy enough to take their money without enquiry as to their true status and now he was bleating about his loss of face. No doubt, with the fat little red-faced admiral shouting his mouth off, the whole town was abuzz with the fact that the King’s Head was home to a pair of adulterers, as if such a thing was uncommon, when such liaisons sustained half the inns in England. Yet that was a minor consideration: underlying everything was the precariousness of her position, for she had willingly given credence to that impression, willingly engaged in criminal conversation with John Pearce under a false name, and what would be the consequences of such an act? Somehow, in this place she must save face, or at least do enough to ensure her reputation until she could get away.

  She had no idea when Pearce would return, so to stay in Lymington, possibly for days if not weeks, as the butt of gossip and finger pointing from the prurient locals, was anathema. However, Emily was not prepared to be tossed out into the street like some common trollop. She and Pearce had lied when they came to this place and for now it was imperative that falsehood be not only maintained but also reinforced, so she manufactured a most imperious tone.