A Divided Command

by David Donachie

  The way they ignored him was harder to take than if they had reacted with violence. With no alternative to feeling foolish, Pearce turned and left. But he heard Lipton call to his fellow diners in a voice so loud that he obviously wanted their visitor to hear.

  ‘Should any of you come across that piece of ordure in the street, you may feel free to belabour him with anything that comes to hand, though I forbid weapons that can mortally wound. Good God, how our regimental honour would be stained by the demise of such a fellow.’

  It took an effort to proceed straight to his rendezvous, the temptation to return to comfort Emily being great, and as he made his way his head was full of images in which he bloodily chastised those he had just left, both individually and collectively. Yet underlying that was the obvious truth that there was little he could do if they would not accept his challenge. Could he turn the tables on them and expose them to like ridicule?

  There was another point: the information he finally extracted from Emily had been that the insults to which she had been exposed were quite specific and not just a general reference to her being a woman of the brothel, for her husband and the abandonment of him had been mentioned. On consideration of that the only person he could think of from whom such information could have come was Digby, yet he struggled to believe that he, upright by habit, could be guilty.

  He was back on the quay now and a minor distraction was caused, with all the usual nonsense of signal gunnery, by the arrival of the very distinctive HMS Agamemnon, no doubt to take the place of the now departed Leander, and in her wake a couple of frigates and that produced another bit of reflection.

  He had to assume Nelson, in a vessel he knew was mainly manned by volunteers, to be a man who would grant his crew leave, so it promised to be a night full of incident ashore, and in cogitating on that he wondered if this was the right time to let the likes of Michael O’Hagan loose on Leghorn.

  It was too late to change that; his friends were awaiting him and no doubt wondering where in hell’s name he had got to. Turning his back on the sea he made his way out of the old part of town along one of the numerous canals that led to and surrounded the star-shaped fortress built earlier in the century in the style first established by Louis the Sun King’s favourite builder of defences, the Marquis de Vauban.

  Gravelines came to his mind again here, for the heat of the sun apart and the sense of much colour this gave to his surrounding, the two places were very similar, with the main point of defence located away from the shore along a series of narrow waterways leading to a deep moat. In the case of Leghorn the old fortress still stood on the seashore, but would not hold out against a determined assault by modern ship-based gunnery.

  The canals were there to narrow any assault and make it easier to repel but they had an added advantage in that, unlike the alleyways of the old town, full of drinking establishments and brothels which only differed in the degree to which they were disreputable, the air was better, for the open space of the waterways created a wide avenue through which it could easily blow. On top of that, few men of the sea, whether of the service or privately employed – Leghorn was home to a whole fleet of privateers as well as a revictualling base for the fleet – ventured this far into what was a more settled part of town.

  Thus the place he had chosen to meet his Pelicans was one used by locals and not by British sailors, who might have been called upon to remark on an officer sharing a wet with common seamen. But just in case, and for the heat as well as discretion, Pearce removed his hat and coat and carried them over his arm.

  Sat at a shaded table outside, he could see before he got close that the trio were subject to many a glance from the passers-by, no doubt wondering what fellows who normally came ashore to roger a woman and get drunk not far from the seashore were doing in such a quiet location; they were not alone.

  ‘You certainly picked a right spot here,’ Charlie Taverner moaned as his captain sat down, an apron-wearing servitor appearing immediately to take, as much by sign language as words, a new order. ‘There ain’t a sign of diversion in sight.’

  ‘You’ll get your chance for that, Charlie, when we have finished our wet. You must realise that I cannot do this in plain view and I very much want to.’

  Rufus, at one time too young to ever cast an opinion, spoke up; he had matured since that night he had been pressed, even if in his freckled face and ginger hair he still looked too young.

  ‘I might not have an hourglass, or for that matter a ship’s bell, but I reckon on the last score you are a good two strikes late.’

  ‘Which I will make up to you with as much drink as you wish to consume.’

  ‘It’s not where we want to be, John-boy.’

  ‘Michael, can it truly be said that it’s a place any of us want to be?’

  The wine arrived and was poured, in the case of the others into vessels that had been already emptied more than once. Pearce wondered as silence fell if they were thinking, as he was, of the place where they had first met? It had not been like this, where the shade was necessary for comfort. It had been a cold, windswept night and the Pelican had been a crowded, noise-filled tavern instead of a quiet backstreet affair, part of that clamour coming from folk placing bets on Michael’s ability to lift a table using only his teeth.

  He had been wildly and blindly drunk that night and he had tried to remove Pearce’s head with one of his massive fists, which was a strange way to begin a friendship. The others Pearce had met he recalled, the now departed Abel Scrivens and Ben Walker, lost to Barbary and slavery.

  They had been, like Charlie and Rufus, short on the means for a tankard of ale that night and Pearce gathered many another. It was smooth Charlie, who had the skills of a man who could live within or without the law, who had dunned – he would have said persuaded – John Pearce into buying them pots of ale, and as they talked it became clear that they did not reside here entirely out of choice.

  The Pelican Tavern lay within the Liberties of the Savoy, a stretch of land beside the River Thames, a one-time part of the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt and still part of the Royal Duchy of Lancaster, into which those on the run from writs various could take refuge, for no bailiff or tipstaff was allowed to exercise warrants of apprehension within its narrow confines, though that would not have served if the men pursuing John Pearce had followed him into the Pelican, for a King’s Bench Writ was a being of a different order altogether.

  He had sat with those he had met and mostly evaded their enquires about where he had come from and where he was going, learning a little of the life they lived, which was one of casual and itinerant employment as well as hot-bedding in a crowded rookery for the lack of the means to pay rent for a space of their own.

  Even if they did not list their various offences, it was clear each of his accidental drinking companions were in the Liberties for a good reason, unlike the very noisy Michael O’Hagan. He was a well-paid day labourer who could dig ditches at speed in a city where building was in boom, a man who could spend his wages freely and replace them the next day. He could also afford, and this piqued Charlie Taverner no end, to attract the affections of buxom Rosie, the lady serving their ale.

  Then Ralph Barclay had sent in his press gang and all their lives had been altered in that instant; the people with whom he had been drinking went, like him, from free men under a cloud to virtual prisoners of the King’s Navy and with no seeming redress. This was the case even if Barclay had broken the law.

  ‘I am bound to ask you what you want for the future?’ Pearce said to kill a silence that had lasted too long.

  ‘Christ, John!’ Charlie exclaimed, happy to be as familiar as he had once been when they had shared the lower deck. ‘Is that not decided?’

  ‘We volunteered, remember,’ Rufus added.

  ‘To save me,’ Pearce replied. ‘What I mean is that things have altered, as no doubt Michael has told you.’

  ‘He has told us we will not be heading straight back home a
s we thought.’

  ‘And what, Rufus, do you reckon to that and how do the crew of Larcher feel, for it shames me to say I do not know?’

  ‘You would if there was discontent, John,’ Charlie opined, before he smiled.

  Handsome in a fair way it changed his face, for he was a fellow who too often saw the dark side of anything and was wont to voice it. Originally Pearce had taken this amiss, struggling to get on terms with Charlie and the feeling had been mutual. But time and opportunity had led to tales of the Londoner’s early life and there was nothing there to bring cheer: no real parents, a street urchin who needed to steal to live, which made sense of his attitude – he had seen too many bad things to anticipate good.

  Rufus was different; an apprentice who had run away from the bond paid to his parents and an employer he saw as exploiting him, he was innocence personified, at one time no more than an echo of Charlie, who knew so much more than he about life and its vicissitudes. It had been a pleasure to watch him grow into his own man.

  ‘What I am saying, I suppose, is this. I have no notion of what is going to happen next and there is a very good chance I might be stripped of Larcher and ordered to serve in another ship.’

  ‘Will you, John-boy?’

  ‘I don’t know, Michael, I have other considerations now than just my own person.’

  ‘Hotham,’ declared Rufus as the others nodded.

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Christ, John,’ Charlie hooted, ‘we knew he was to get the command afore he did.’

  It was not true, but it was enough to lighten things and provide a shared laugh, that followed by a toast to the eavesdropping ability of tars before Pearce got solemn again.

  ‘But seriously, there’s no love lost between us and you and I know why. Added to what he thinks of me, he knows that you carry the truth about Barclay’s crimes and are victims of it, for it was he who suppressed your sworn affidavits. He will have the power, with Hood gone, to make your lives as well as mine a misery.’

  ‘And how, John-boy, do we avoid that?’

  ‘I can resign my position at any time, but as for you three – well, you can guess.’

  ‘Run.’ Pearce nodded when Charlie said that, but he was looking into faces seriously unconvinced and the same voice underlined the reason. ‘In a strange country where we don’t know the lingo.’

  ‘The harbour is full of privateers and you are all now prime hands.’

  ‘All of them likely to be boarded by the navy and searched for deserters,’ Rufus protested. ‘We would be strung up from the yardarm if caught and even service under Barclay weren’t as bad as that.’

  ‘Well, think on it,’ Pearce said, standing up, donning his coat and waving his hat. ‘I have kept you from your pleasures long enough.’

  ‘And you are eager to get to your own,’ said Charlie with a knowing grin.

  ‘There’s little to be had there at the moment, Charlie, for Emily is severely down and is even refusing to leave her lodgings.’

  The looks demanded an explanation, and if it was dragged out of him, they heard every part of his problem.

  ‘And all I can do is hope to find each one on his own and give them a sound beating, all except that fellow Walcott, who had the good sense to look troubled by the way his confrères behaved.’

  ‘You should have skewered Lipton through the belly not the arm, John-boy, as I said at the time.’

  ‘To which Charlie and I agree,’ Rufus added.

  That got a wry smile. ‘Then maybe it would be me that faced the rope, Rufus, for it might have been seen as foul murder.’

  ‘Strikes me,’ Charlie said, ‘that you have the means to put these swabs in their place without you raise your own hand, John. There’s not a man jack aboard Larcher that don’t think kindly on Mrs Barclay and would take it amiss to see her distressed.’

  ‘Set my crew upon them?’

  ‘That precise,’ Charlie replied, having picked up the tone of voice, which was one of distaste. ‘If they won’t grant you the means to teach a lesson, well …’

  ‘No!’ Pearce replied, emphatically. ‘I may wish them ill with every fibre of my being, but I will not sink to their level.’ He tapped his head. ‘The answer lies up here, lads, and in time it will come to me.’

  ‘We might happen across them this night.’

  Looking into Rufus’s eager face he saw what looked like the light of battle and on him it was risible. Charlie was no brawler either, but Michael was another matter and he was about to go out and very likely get seriously drunk, they all were, so it was to the Irishman that he addressed his injunction.

  ‘I ask you, if you encounter any of the men you saw in that glade, to stay well clear of them. This is my affair and I will deal with it.’

  Charlie Taverner’s reply was crisp. ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When he returned to rejoin Emily, John Pearce was surprised to find Matthew Dorling waiting for him and looking anxious. ‘We had a messenger from Agamemnon, Your Honour, and the commodore wishes you to attend upon him at your convenience.’

  The serious look on the young master’s face left his captain in no doubt that ‘at your convenience’ meant immediately.

  ‘Commodore? Is it still Nelson in command?’

  ‘He is, sir, and he has been given his pennant by Lord Hood, which means he has overall command of the frigates with which Old Aggie came in.’

  The King’s Navy was well known for its peremptory way of demanding that folk shift themselves; orders were usually accompanied by the addendum that anything one was commanded to do was to be carried out with all despatch and Pearce, when he had later examined that footnote, had soon come to the conclusion that it was rarely required, as useless as the other addition, which was that to delay was ever accompanied by the words ‘at your peril’.

  He could not obey the injunction without first determining if Emily was in a better frame of mind. Not that he would be able to say much to reassure her that it was safe to walk the streets of Leghorn without her being subjected to another bout of public humiliation, certainly not without him on her arm to offer a modicum of protection. Even that was in doubt after his encounter at the Pensione: if there were enough of those redcoats in a group he might find himself involved in fisticuffs with the odds against him.

  ‘You have a boat?’

  ‘Ready and waiting by the quayside, Your Honour.’

  ‘Oblige me, Mr Dorling, by going back to that and waiting. I promise I will not be too long.’

  That brought on a frown. ‘Am I allowed to advise, sir, that such a course would be unwise?’

  ‘You are,’ Pearce replied in a tone that was, while not unfriendly, decidedly firm, ‘but not more than that. I will be along presently, and think on this: Captain Nelson, commodore notwithstanding, is no martinet, so a delay of a few bells is unlikely to cause him upset.’

  The Emily he encountered once Dorling had been dismissed was no longer the tearful creature he had left earlier, that made obvious by the face she pulled when he admonished her to not go abroad alone. Yet Pearce missed it completely, so absorbed was he in what he thought was a good solution.

  ‘If I cannot be present myself, I will detail Michael to accompany you. I challenge anyone to insult you with him at your side.’

  ‘So I am to be trapped within these walls without I have an escort?’

  The pitch of that was unmistakable and it was picked up; it was one of admonishment and Pearce made matters worse by his slightly irate comment that he was only trying to protect her.

  ‘I refuse to be a prisoner, John, and I will not let those worms dictate the way I go about my day.’

  ‘What I suggest is only for a few days. They are soldiers on furlough and surely must soon return to their duties.’

  If Pearce had always admired Emily’s pluck – she had stood up to her bullying husband and risked everything by eloping with him – what followed was an indication of
the way their relationship had matured. Whereas before he had seen courage, he now observed stubbornness. Her face was closed up and determined and the look of which he was on the receiving end boded ill.

  ‘Sure they will depart, to no doubt be replaced by another set of ill-bred scoundrels!’

  ‘Emily, I am trying to look after you.’

  ‘And I am telling you, John Pearce, that I do not want your protection. If I have chosen a way of life that is less than perfect I will not make it more so by hiding my face from the outside world. Or would you have me enter a nunnery?’

  Her manner had turned bitter and he sought to mollify her. ‘You have a right to regret the life you have chosen—’

  ‘Right?’ she shouted, cutting right across him. ‘Am I to be told what I can and cannot do, that I am but a chattel, as I was as a wife?’

  It was now his turn to sound cross, given he felt he was being deliberately misunderstood. ‘That is not what I meant and you know it.’

  ‘Do I?’ Emily scoffed. ‘Sometimes I have no idea of what it is you mean. You think it is as nothing to lie to me and go and put your life at risk. Did it ever occur to you how I would feel if I was brought news of your death, stuck here in this Italian hellhole at the mercy of every wagging tongue that spoke English—’

  ‘Emily—’

  Pearce got no further; she was in a passion and was not prepared to listen to what she obviously saw as his excuses.

  ‘And who told the world of my estate, who made it common knowledge that I am a woman fallen from the required standard, laid so low in the public imagination that any Tom, Dick or Harry feels free to abuse me?’

  ‘I left you a letter …’

  ‘A letter!’

  ‘And everything I possessed, with a statement of my love for you.’

  The voice dropped now and he knew she was once more close to tears, which made him feel utterly useless.

  ‘That would have kept me warm, John, would it? Your dying protestations of love. How reassuring to be cast into outer darkness and have that as comfort.’