A Treacherous Coast

by David Donachie

  Obliged with his son to flee to France in order to avoid a writ for seditious libel, a typical peace of judicial trickery from the government of William Pitt, Adam had found the ideals that had prompted the Revolution were being abused by those who had taken power in a way that caused him to speak out against their lack of virtue.

  Such open outbursts had not gone down well. From being feted on arrival as a fellow thinker, the likes of Robespierre and his cohorts on the Committee of Public Safety had hauled Adam before a Revolutionary Tribunal, a court in which only one verdict was ever passed: guilty. To get the writ in Britain lifted so his father could return home from his Parisian incarceration brought John Pearce to the banks of the River Thames and the Pelican Tavern, and so subsequently to where he now sat.

  In whirling, unsettled thoughts, he was soon mentally having the argument with Emily he had never in fact engaged in, partly he knew from fear of driving her into a position from which she would not withdraw. If he could be stubborn he knew her to be cut from an equally uncompromising mould. If she had been otherwise, how could she have defied her husband in the first place?

  Pearce had no doubt Ralph Barclay regretted the day he ever thought to take his young and beautiful wife to sea. Emily had explained it as a desire to reduce domestic outgoings – after five years on the beach, Barclay was beset by too many creditors to leave a bride half his age alone and tempted in their hometown of Frome. Who knew what she might get up to? What bills might she run up? He thought he had wed a mouse; instead he got a tartar.

  Her first rebellion had been aboard HMS Brilliant against the article of flogging, of which she strongly disapproved, this made obvious to a husband who saw it as essential to the proper running of a ship of war. It was also the case that she did not understand her husband expected her to respect his position as a post captain without question, which prior to their nuptials had been to him the sole reason for his existence, he having worked for twenty-five years to get there.

  The difference in age had counted as well, Barclay doubling hers, added to which he had come to manhood in the rough element of a midshipman’s berth and up until his captaincy his experience of women had been bought and paid for. Emily knew only gentle if not overly well-endowed respectability in a parochial backwater. It was that to which she wished to return, taking John Pearce along, and the prospect made him recoil. He could imagine nothing worse than a sort of squire-like existence, mixing with folk who could barely see beyond their own town limits and, very often, hardly over the borders of the county in which they lived.

  There would be local magnates, large and probably titled landowners, expecting deference if not outright subservience and he knew he could not abide such a life. There would too be a town full of petty prejudices, bigotry and gossip, hemmed in by endless provincial conventions. Whatever codes of behaviour existed, John Pearce would break them, for that was both in his nature and part of his inheritance.

  Then there was his child, within a few months of being born and one he would be denied full access to until all the bonds of that kind of society had been met.

  ‘I may love you,’ he said quietly to himself, ‘but sometimes I do feel the need to damn you.’

  Emily Barclay felt the blow and smiled, it being the sign of a healthy confinement, a child with the spirit to kick out strongly in her womb. Free now from tight garments, she had risen, breakfasted and dressed in a gown of loose cotton, before going back to the chest of papers that had belonged to her husband in an effort to make sense of them. Never having had to oversee even domestic accounts, she was somewhat at a loss and aware of her ignorance, with no real way of seeing how to alter it.

  ‘John would deal with this,’ she said quietly to herself, words followed by a hand on her stomach and a whispered, ‘Your dear Papa.’

  It was said quietly even though, here in her small set of rented apartments, it would not be overheard and certainly not by anyone who spoke English. Caution ruled, for the true paternity must never be spoken of openly, regardless of how much she would have loved to acknowledge the man she had given her heart to as the father. For the sake of the coming child that could not be. How could she bring an infant into the world branded from birth with the taint of her adultery?

  As she opened the folded pieces of parchment, listing investments, Emily sought to calculate how long it would be before she might receive a reply from London and Messrs Ommaney and Druce, her late husband’s prize agents. It was they who had handled his money and fought any disputed claims regarding prizes. The account book which had come with these papers indicated she was rich by her standards, but it seemed to her opaque as to their true value and she wished for clarification.

  There were funds in three per cent government consols and that was both sound and to the good, but there also seemed to be many investments in such things as canals. She had sought, on first realising this, to recall her father’s conversations on such matters, sure he had named them as highly speculative, which could not be a proper use of funds, except in a limited manner.

  That said, it seemed there was enough to provide that she, Pearce and their child, and in time children, could live in decent comfort, albeit the proprieties had to be observed. Certainly she was well set now; the same chest had yielded a large amount of coin, while the Leghorn pay office had provided more as that due to Captain Barclay up until the day he died.

  The papers put away and the chest locked, Emily prepared to go out to take the air, donning a thick cloak to ward off the chill and carrying a parasol to ensure that not even a wintery sun should bring blemish to her delicate complexion. Her routine was a walk along one of the many canals that bisected the city, which avoided the busy harbour quay as well as any ribald comments from the labourers working there. They might speak in their own tongue, but gestures left no doubt as to their hopes, in sight of a comely woman yet to be burdened by a too obvious belly.

  Her walk completed she would repair to the Naval Commissariat to see if any post had come in on the packet from Portsmouth, before going to the cemetery to lay some flowers at the bronze plaque raised in memory of Captain Ralph Barclay RN. If she had come to hate him in life, and had done everything in her power to avoid his company, her Christian duty required that she pray for him in death. It was also the case that it did no harm to be seen to be doing so.

  There was a part of the environs of Livorno into which no one of respectable demeanour ever went: the section of the port occupied by privateers, many of them British. The men who manned these letters of marque were mainly ruffians, close to pirates in the minds of the Royal Navy, even if their captains often carried themselves with pretentions towards decency.

  It was a close call that had her nearly bump into Cornelius Gherson, her late husband’s clerk, a man she despised even more than her spouse. He was on his way to the privateer’s harbour, which they shared with the local fishing fleet, and it was only the sight of her parasol that drew his eye enough for him to recognise her. He was swift to dart into a doorway in which she could pass without him being spotted, but he could watch her pass, albeit briefly, enough to stir in his breast the hankering he had always harboured when in her presence. Emily Barclay was a rare beauty and one he would have dearly loved to bed.

  What also surfaced was the number of times he had been rebuffed in his overtures, a far less comfortable feeling and, to a man of his overweening vanity, a recollection that seriously rankled. He had been unaware that she was in Leghorn, but he was quick to surmise if she was out alone then she would be living in that estate. Such a conclusion began to revive a thought long buried: at one time he had contrived to have enough time alone with the bitch to teach her a lesson, to show her that he was man enough to make her scream with pain, before he would turn that to pleading pleasure.

  Where was she staying? Was that swine Pearce with her? Could he find out and perhaps …? Gherson had to stop himself then, he had more pressing fish to fry. Having failed to find another captain to
take him on as a clerk – they were a breed that tended to outlive fighting sailors – he needed to contrive some way to make a living. Never having been a stranger to illicit methods, he was on his way to mix with the kind of people he saw as being more of his ilk.

  Privateers had one purpose and that was to make money, often illegally taking neutral vessels and sinking them once they had transferred the cargo instead of doing what their letters of marque said, helping to spoil the French ability to trade. Sometimes they put the crew ashore at a place from which it would take the poor creatures years to get home. On other occasions it was seen as more pressing to just kill them and let their remains go down with their vessel.

  Gherson had survived in life through a winning way, no scruples and good looks. Some said he possessed a near feminine beauty, to others he presented the soul of corruption, but he was clever, if low cunning could be termed that. Surely, added to a head for figures, there must be opportunities in such a band of ne’er-do-wells. The means to exist was what was needed now; Emily Barclay could wait.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Vado Bay was not an anchorage secure from hazard; indeed, Horatio Nelson had named it as basically too shallow in its arc to be of any use at all, given it would provide scant protection against serious storms. Yet it was the closest to the French forward positions and as such, assuming they employed spies, would underline that the squadron would be acting as support for the coalition armies. This might just give the forces of the Revolution pause, given the route by which they must march into Liguria often ran right along an easily bombarded seashore.

  The French still had a fleet in Toulon, which also meant the squadron was under threat from warships, even if they were under blockade, for if the wind favoured them they could get to sea despite the presence of their enemies. Thus the routine of the morning was as it would have been at sea: everyone on deck, officers especially, guns loaded and run out, with Henry Digby looking to the western arm of the bay, the area from which the enemy would approach, a duty being enacted on every other deck, until each captain could see, ‘A grey goose at a quarter-mile’.

  The order to ‘carry on Mr Pearce’ was curt.

  For HMS Flirt it was more than worming and housing the cannon, sanding, swabbing and flogging dry the decks and getting the men to breakfast. Prior to anything being done the brig had to be put to sea. John Pearce thought it a bit of Digby nonsense: they had been required to go through a rigmarole just so as to be seen doing so by the commodore. They could just as easily have plucked their anchor well before dawn.

  Sails raised, they passed slowly along the line of frigates, with Pearce denied raised hats from his contemporaries, who knew who would have the deck at such a time, and disdain lasted until they came abreast of HMS Agamemnon. From there the reaction was different, with Lieutenant Dick Farmiloe raising a speaking trumpet to wish them ‘Godspeed’ as a body, with a special personal greeting and hearty wave for the premier himself.

  ‘What in the name of all that is holy is going on, Mr Pearce?’

  ‘Exchanging pleasantries, sir, with our old shipmate, Mr Farmiloe.’

  He had answered over his shoulder, which was openly disrespectful and would be taken as such. If Pearce knew every eye was fixed on the tiny quarterdeck, he paid it no heed, keeping his gaze steady on the ship-of-the-line.

  ‘Then I require you to desist, and if I had any authority over Farmiloe I would tell him the same.’

  That did make Pearce turn, the expression on his face, a sort of knowing half-smile, one that could be construed as mockery. ‘Then I daresay, Mr Digby, he is mightily relieved to have to answer only to a mere commodore.’

  That left a man, hatless and coatless and with a napkin at his neck, searching for a response that would preserve his dignity, the turmoil of finding the means and the right words evident on his face. Pearce’s reply had carried enough to be overheard by half the men on deck and it was telling that once more all movement had ceased. They were in anticipation of an explosion; all they got was a barely audible hiss.

  ‘I have authority over you, sir, and by God I will see it exercised.’

  As Digby disappeared, Pearce began to softly sing a low rendition of ‘My Dear Peg’ and that had the crew begin to laugh, to which he was required to put a stop. Digby’s action in publicly checking him for something of which he should have no concern had been too much to bear. From now on he was determined to challenge the man, while at the same time wondering what had happened to the fellow he had known and had been on good terms with previously. A bit too upright certainly, but not as he was now.

  On their first voyage together, Digby had noted his lack of knowledge in the article of seamanship and set out to correct it, teaching Pearce a great deal, including in his instruction the very same Dick Farmiloe, then a midshipman, which had helped make Pearce feel he was not in receipt of special treatment. There had been disputes on their second voyage, that was true, all centred on his relationship with Emily Barclay and the way he seemed prepared to bend every rule of the service to get his own way.

  Such exasperation that Digby suffered had surely died before and during the action in the Gulf of Ambracia. The mood after that event was to bring to mind a completely different person – one grateful as well as seemingly humble – only to see that dramatically altered when he rejoined the fleet in San Fiorenzo Bay by the withdrawal of his promise to help bring to book Pearce’s enemies.

  Cruel words had been spoken certainly, regarding honesty and integrity, of a man putting his own perceived needs against those of his conscience. Was Digby, with his strong Christian faith, so suffused with guilt that he could alter so much and become like some form of martinet? Or was it, and this was more troubling, that he believed in the righteousness of his choice?

  ‘Do I not have your breakfast set out, your honour, an’ getting stone cold it is?’

  Pearce smiled both at the form of address and the way Michael made his non-attendance in his cabin sound like a rebuke. ‘I shall be with you presently.’

  ‘Soon would be better than presently, your honour. We are not basking in a supply of fresh food.’

  ‘Mr Conway, you have had your breakfast?’

  ‘I have, sir.’

  ‘Then I give you the deck.’

  ‘You lookin’ to pick a fight, John-boy?’

  These words came from O’Hagan as soon as Pearce was seated and his breakfast of eggs and bread, still fresh from the market of Leghorn, uncovered, which showed why Michael had come to fetch him, the yolks being close to congealed.

  ‘I doubt I have a choice.’

  ‘I can get you more cooked, we have it still.’

  Pearce shook his head and cut into the near-cold egg. ‘It’s a fitting repast for someone so insubordinate.’

  ‘Now you know I am no friend to bein’ bossed about—’

  That elicited a grin. ‘As you remind me every day.’

  ‘Our captain has it in for you, sure. I’m wondering in the name of Jesus why you put up with it.’

  Jesus always got a sign of the cross on O’Hagan’s breast and it did so now, along with a look in anticipation of a reply. Did Michael guess that he was part of the reason to decline, along with Charlie and Rufus? Would he believe the other partial truth, an avoidance of Leghorn and having to behave as though he and Emily were not lovers or even connected to each other in any way? Pearce was not certain himself, but one thing he did know: he would not succumb to Digby, regardless of what motivated his malice.

  ‘There will be no more putting up with it, Michael.’

  ‘Then I might as well pass it on, that what is bad now is about to get a mite worse.’

  ‘Tell the crew not to take sides, Michael. Myself I can look to, but I would scarce now put it past Digby to resort to the cat if he saw mass dissent.’

  ‘The man has changed that much?’

  ‘Who knows? I’m damn sure I don’t. Now oblige by seeing if you can get me some hot coffee.’
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br />   There was no sign of military activity once they passed the defence lines of both the coalition forces and the Army of Italy, not much more than the smoke from fires in those two entrenched locations. If it was war it had been put into abeyance, perhaps by the approach of winter, exhaustion or disinclination, and this had Pearce wondering at the nature of what they were about. Did Digby, unwilling to pass on information to him, have some mission to perform? He could not imagine Nelson, a man wedded to action, sending the brig on a cruise to no purpose.

  The shore, under a heavy sky threatening rain, was far from alluring. Where the rocky shore did come down to the sea it was high hills with cultivated terraces, opening enough to show little sandy bays, each with ramshackle dwellings on the high-tide mark as well as fishing boats pulled up onto the strand. They passed many of the same kind out at sea: small craft never manned by more than three bodies, some of which made a point of avoidance, others coming close to shout and wave, eager to sell their catch to folk who would pay much more than their fellow countrymen.

  Occasionally, Digby would come on deck to examine the shoreline and the hills, ordering more sea room when they passed the ancient coastal fort of Monte Carlo, tucked into and overlooking yet another mountain-backed bay. It flew a tricolour, evidence that the Grimaldi principality was now in French hands. A useless cannon boomed out from the ramparts to underline the possession, dropping a ball into the sea well short of the ship.

  ‘I require our colours to be struck, Mr Conway,’ Digby ordered. ‘You will find a tricolour in the flag locker. Please be so good as to raise it, which will save these peasants from wasting powder and shot.’

  The latter part of that sentence would normally have been taken as a jest, producing some kind of humoured reaction. Nothing came, which had Digby bark at his premier as he made his way back to his cabin.