‘Is that an offer you would be prepared to consider?’
If anything, Tobias, having gone back to his dinner, was now eating even more slowly, as though he was considering it. ‘I doubt you have the means, sir.’
‘Surely we cannot be talking of such a superior sum to cover the cost of two bounties?’
That got Pearce another direct look. ‘Oh, but we are talking of a very superior sum, sir, for you are asking me to risk my present commission as the impress officer for Dover, given to do what you request, if discovered, would open me up to a court martial and possible dismissal.’
It was only a toe in the water when Pearce responded, given he was unsure of his true financial state; it might be healthy, it might be dire. ‘I may go to a high payment, sir, for I value these men. I have a deal of prize money owing to me.’
‘You’d need a Spanish Plate ship, sir, for I doubt you have the faintest idea how lucrative my position is, given the men I command hunt the narrow neck of the English Channel, where pressing men is akin to netting sprats. Do you think I would consider such a post if it was not one that provided a healthy income?’
Tobias leant forward, more animated than previously. ‘My command provides more men for the King’s Navy than any other in creation and I enjoy the rewards while never having to set foot on a heaving deck, or risk my neck on the vile ocean that regularly renders me nauseous.’
He actually snorted then, through that slightly upturned nose. ‘No, sir, I would not accept payment in lieu of my bounty even if you could run to the sum, quite apart from the very simple fact that the men you mention are out of my hands, they are on their way at this very moment to the Nore.’
‘Already!’
‘I collect so many and have so little room to accommodate them, sir, that I am obliged to ship them out daily. If I did not, I would also be obligated to feed them at my own expense.’
‘John-boy, a word.’
Tobias looked over Pearce’s shoulder to where stood Michael O’Hagan, the captain’s face a picture of offence that anyone dressed in common garb should address an officer by his Christian name. Turning to look, Pearce saw real alarm in his friend’s face, and with a murmured excuse he stood and limped over to where they could speak without being overheard.
‘I was in the High Street and there’s a rate of people going around asking after you by name and rank, even describing your bandaged foot. It’s only by the grace of Jesus that you were not seen coming into this place.’
‘Who are they?’
‘From what I see they look like those rough coves we saw in that tavern in Gravelines a week past.’ That occasioned a sudden and unpleasant memory of a bunch of real hard bargains carousing in the Flanders port, professional smugglers to his mind, as well as the unfriendly glares they got as they entered the place. ‘Strikes me it might be the same fellows whose boat we pinched and if it is …’
There was no need to finish that; to run in with such a crew would be painful, even deadly, quite apart from which they would ask him questions to which he did not have the answers, like where was their cargo of valuable contraband.
‘How many?’
‘Too many to take on. I counted half a dozen and armed with swords, too, which we are not. I say we have got to get out of here and sharp.’
‘Maybe best if you go, for I can’t run with this foot.’
‘I have not been tempted to land my fist on you since the night we met, and that I do not recall for I was in drink, but I am minded to do so now. Go back to the table, talk to that captain, while I see if I can find a litter.’
‘We can’t go very far in that.’
‘We don’t need to go far, John-boy, sure we only need to get clear of the town limit.’
‘And then?’
‘We make for the first change of horses on the London road, I will find out where, and then we take the mail coach or any other passing on the morrow that gets us clear of this coast.’
‘Charlie and Rufus are already on the way to the receiving hulk. Can we just abandon them?’
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, we’re no good to them as dead men.’
‘You’re right,’ Pearce replied, looking back at Tobias clearing his plate. ‘But God only knows what I can say to this sod now, for I hate to leave them to stew.’
‘As of now they are safer than we are.’
Pearce limped back to the table, looking at the ditty bag he had, resting against his chair, which contained his few possessions, one of them being his unused shoe. Then he looked at his foot and he knew that the only way to get it on was to remove his bandage. Yet even if he did that, he wondered if he would be able to walk on the stitched cut without it reopening. Given the circumstances it had to be tried but it was not something to do in public.
‘Can you tell me, Captain Tobias, does this inn run to a place of easement?’
‘There is a privy out to the rear, sir,’ Tobias sniffed as if he was on the inside of the thing, ‘but it is not a standard I would be inclined to use.’
‘When one is caught by necessity, sir, standards are of the least concern.’
The look Pearce got then, from the very refined Captain Tobias, was one of utter disagreement.
CHAPTER TWO
At the same moment as Pearce tossed aside his bandage and gingerly eased his foot into first his stocking, then his shoe, Emily Barclay, to whom the letter he had so desired to intercept was addressed, was sitting in the office of her solicitor, waiting while he rummaged in his strongroom to fetch out the papers she had left in his care.
These consisted of a fair copy of the statements made in evidence at a court martial the previous year for illegal impressment, which had taken place in the great cabin of HMS Britannia, the 100-gun flagship of Admiral Sir William Hotham, anchored off the besieged city of Toulon, the person accused being her husband, Captain Ralph Barclay.
How long ago that seemed and how much had happened since, yet that paled when she considered what had come to pass since she had first clapped eyes on those pressed men from the Pelican Tavern, John Pearce being only one amongst many. He had come aboard her husband’s ship, HMS Brilliant, on a cold grey morning as the frigate lay off Sheerness.
Not long married – Emily Barclay herself had only just arrived on the deck – she did not know that to look with sympathy at the poor creatures, miserable and bearing the marks of their forced impressment, was the wrong thing to do. That she did so with sincerity was compounded by the way Pearce had then returned the look.
Neither meek nor defiant, his response had been openly admiring, quite ignoring both his circumstances and his surroundings, which had sent Ralph Barclay into a paroxysm of rage that his young wife should be so slighted. This saw the offender struck a heavy blow, and in a sense that had sealed the relationship; it seemed as if Pearce and her husband had been at loggerheads ever since.
‘Here you are, Mrs Barclay,’ said Studdert, emerging from the deep cupboard secured by a heavy door, a thick bundle in his hand. ‘Your papers.’
There was hesitation as he handed them to her, for to take them was to cross a sort of Rubicon, to nail her colours to the mast, as she had so nautically imagined it. The act would go a long way to seal her decision never to live again under the same roof as her husband, not for that first struck blow to a man with whom she now thought herself in love, but for all his subsequent actions, including those cruelties he had also visited upon her.
A man she had once seen as a person to admire – he was, after all, a thirty-seven-year-old post captain in the King’s Navy, she a mere seventeen and innocent – Emily now knew him to be a beast. He claimed his behaviour was brought on by his harsh upbringing and brutal naval apprenticeship, but it was in fact nothing less than his true nature.
Perhaps he could be forgiven for flogging the seamen under his command; that, cruel as it was to anyone with an ounce of Christianity, was within the tenets of the service of which he was a part, maybe he could ev
en be excused for his lies and evasions. But the way he had violently exercised what he insisted were his rights as a husband she could not abide.
The package was in her hand now, feeling heavy, and Studdert had been speaking, only she had not heard what he said, being so lost in reverie.
‘I was saying, Mrs Barclay, that my sole duty to you was to store and keep safe the papers you now hold. Unless you have some other duty for me to perform that will, if you wish, conclude our business.’
‘No!’ The lawyer’s head dipped to one side and it was clear by his look he was posing a question. ‘I may have other requirements, so I would be grateful if you would consent to be still retained.’
‘To undertake what, precisely?’
‘As of this moment I am not sure, but …’ She had to hesitate, there being nothing she could think of to say, only then to take refuge in the too obvious. ‘However, if you have a bill that requires to be satisfied …’
Studdert smiled, which did much to make more attractive his long, angular, rather anxious face. ‘It amounts to a trifle, Mrs Barclay, a modicum of time including this. It is not something I would press you for.’
Emily stuffed the thick bundle of papers into a bag she had brought along for the purpose. ‘I would not, however, want to be indebted to you a moment longer than necessary. Please send an account to my rooms at Jockey’s Fields.’
‘Very well,’ Studdert said, standing as she did, with, she thought, an odd look on his face. ‘Until we meet again.’
It was only when she was outside that Emily made some sense of that strange expression. Mr Studdert had surmised a great deal more than he was prepared to say about her relationship with John Pearce, a man he had met and declined so recently to represent because he acted for her.
The lawyer might have been surprised to know that he and his client had been, that very morning, the subject of discussion elsewhere. It had taken place in Brown’s Hotel, in the rooms of Captain Ralph Barclay, and had involved the necessity of getting back those very same papers which his wife had just stuffed into her bag, this discussed by her husband with Cornelius Gherson, the man he employed as his clerk.
A fortnight had passed since the confrontation, in the same hotel, between Emily and her much older spouse, in which she had informed him of her decision that they should lead separate lives, albeit that for the sake of propriety it should appear they were still man and wife. Society would not be fooled, but as long as certain decencies were observed they would not suffer condemnation for what was seen as a social crime.
Up until that moment when he had faced her, expecting to command her obedience as a husband had a right to do, Ralph Barclay had been in ignorance of the existence of those damning documents. Made aware, he had been presented with an ultimatum: if he did not agree to a separation, as well as provide the support Emily required to live a comfortable life, she would use them to dish him professionally and quite possibly bring upon his head a capital charge of perjury.
The tissue of lies he had caused to be uttered at his travesty of a court martial had come back to haunt him. He had persuaded others to lie; in the case of his wife’s nephew, the weasel Midshipman Toby Burns, he had employed coercion, all to prove that the charge against him, of illegally pressing men out of the Liberties of the Savoy, was false.
A place of refuge for those under threat of arrest, to enter the Liberties for that purpose was expressly forbidden by statute; that he had done so, he might claim, had been forced on him by his shortage of men to man his new frigate, a vessel already ordered to sea. Nevertheless it was, even to a naval court, a crime and it must be established that he was innocent.
With the contrivance of the second in command of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir William Hotham, he had had sent on detached service anyone who could counter his claims of blamelessness, the likes of John Pearce in particular, as well as a Lieutenant Digby and a midshipman called Farmiloe. The admiral had also ensured the court did not see the depositions which the other pressed men, the so-called Pelicans, had made, condemning him.
Emily had claimed to have a fair copy of that cooked-up evidence in her possession and, when challenged that all she had was in her own hand, she had proved the opposite to be the case. Only when he saw the original handwriting did Ralph Barclay realise that it was that of John Pearce, a man who would certainly use it to destroy him, threatening everything he had strived for; nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of retrieval.
‘Well,’ he demanded of Gherson, as soon as his clerk entered the room.
The slight smile he received in response led to him angrily waving the stump of his missing left arm, that lost at Toulon, for there were many things about the man that annoyed him, his assurance being one, as well as, to a man of dark countenance and bellicose nature, his absurdly good looks.
Gherson had curly fair hair which he took good care to keep barbered and a face that was close to girlish, so smooth was the skin, so full were the lips and so long were his eyelashes. Offended, he was wont to pout as well, but that which was really irritating now and had been for some time was that Barclay needed something done and he could not do it himself.
The Admiralty would have the original court martial record by now but it would take Holy Writ to get them to disclose it, they being always protective of their serving officers, so he was secure on that flank. That fair copy represented the threat and the solution to his problem; the only way he could feel protected was to get hold of it and destroy every page.
This required they be extracted from the lawyer’s office, which they were close to certain was where his wife had deposited them – not something the fellow was likely to agree to. That left only an illegal entry and theft, a felony which Gherson, in possession of the right contacts, had undertaken to arrange.
‘I have made enquiries to establish that certain parties whom I know of are still active, sir,’ Gherson said, ‘whilst it is also necessary to seek to find out how exposed they are to scrutiny. We must choose the right fellows to ensure that nothing comes back to endanger us.’
‘You’ve taken your damn sweet time about it, man!’
Accustomed to Ralph Barclay’s brusque manner, Gherson was not in the least offended, yet the time had arrived to proceed with an act he had drawn out for as long as he could, doing so for the very simple reason that it made his employer dependent on him. Not that Gherson thought he was ever otherwise; to his mind, and in an opinion shaped by a great deal of vanity, Ralph Barclay was a bit of a dud when it came to anything requiring brains or subterfuge.
True, he was a good sailor, a very competent seaman according to those who knew of such things – Gherson was glad to remain in ignorance – but once ashore, like so many naval officers, he was somewhat adrift. He was, however, destined to prosper, having just been given command of a new and powerful ship by the Admiralty, the 74-gun HMS Semele, entirely refitted down to her keel and presently sitting off Chatham Dockyard taking on both her stores and a crew.
The stores were not a problem; the entire needs of the ship, if they had not been pilfered, were sitting in a Chatham warehouse. A crew, with the war over a year old, might be more of a problem. Barclay, with Admiralty approval, had selected and written to those men he wanted as officers, telling them not to turn up for duty without they brought along a body of volunteers, and there was a receiving hulk in the Medway filling up with men, mostly pressed.
Somehow the vessel would be manned and got to sea, where opportunity was waiting for an enterprising commander interested in profit, which Barclay had proved to be. And as he rose in the service, to larger vessels and beyond, so would increase the opportunities to profit for his clerk, there being much room for peculation in the King’s Navy, more in a line-of-battle ship than in the lowly frigate his employer had originally commanded and in which Gherson had first encountered him.
In time, if he lived and there were dead men’s shoes to fill as well as the right level of political pat
ronage, Barclay would get his admiral’s flag and perhaps a command on a profitable station like the West Indies. Within such an office lay the route to a fortune for a sharp mind, and if his man fell by the wayside, either to death or disgrace, by that time Gherson, like the parasite he was, would be well enough connected in the service to move to another promising host.
‘I have identified the fellow I think can carry out the deed.’ Barclay’s head jerked then; it was as if he was about to enquire of the name, but no words emerged – best he did not know, and anyway, Gherson would not tell him. ‘Having done so, I feel, sir, I can now proceed to an approach, but I am anxious that you understand those points I raised with you originally.’
‘Damn it, Gherson, that lawyer has those papers and they must be got hold of, by fair means or foul, which I seem to recall you agreed to see done.’
Papers, Gherson thought, the location of which you would have had no idea, if I had not discerned that what your wife showed you was a copy in her own hand, inadmissible as evidence, no spouse being able to testify against her husband. You would not have known about the solicitor or seen Pearce’s handwriting had I not set your bully-boy servant to trailing her.
Even then it was a guess, not a certainty, that she had stored the originals with the solicitor. You seem to have forgotten that there was any doubt! Simple-minded as you are, you see a problem, then a solution and drive on by impatience rather than by any exercise of intellect.
He could think such thoughts, but he dare not utter them. ‘As long as you accept that payment will be stiff, sir?’ That got him a jaundiced look; his employer did not trust him, but then he worked for a man who did not really trust anyone. ‘As I have pointed out to you before, there is no profit in stealing papers. Whoever breaks into those offices will require that their efforts be rewarded, and handsomely, from your purse.’
Enemies at Every Turn Page 2