‘I don’t like them words, Gherson, for to rush, well that is the way to Tyburn.’
‘But you’re too clever for that, Codge.’
‘Happen we both are, mate.’
Charing Cross was its usual bustling midday self; the place where coaches left and arrived from all over the country, even the mail ones prior to going on to a central clearing house. If John Pearce had been silent on the journey, he was obliged to shout loud to get him and Michael a hack that would take them to Nerot’s Hotel, where he had retained a room.
Even if he could bring himself to request anything of Ralph Barclay, which was near to impossible, he knew the bugger would take great delight in refusing. He had been gnawing at it, thinking of one scheme after another, overnight and on the journey, only to discard them as useless.
The only one that had any chance of success was if he could come up with a swap in numbers of seamen so favourable that even Barclay would be a fool to refuse. Yet that required him to have a ship and a crew, something in which he was singularly lacking and also unlikely to attain. His low hopes were raised on arrival at Nerot’s, where he was handed a request from William Pitt that he call at Downing Street at his earliest convenience.
‘He’s got a damn cheek, Michael,’ Pearce asserted, as once in his room he read it out loud. ‘The last time I spoke with him it was as if I was some long-lost son, he was going to do so much for me and he had business of a very pressing nature. Then what? – nothing; time and again, you recall, I knocked at his door only to be told he had no desire to see me and now, at my earliest convenience, by damn!’
‘So you will refuse him?’
‘God no, he’s the King’s first minister, you do not refuse someone like him however arrogantly he behaves. Besides, the matter discussed before hinted at a return to the Mediterranean, which I was interested in, given I might be able to get another copy of Barclay’s court martial record. But now the case is altered – if he wants a favour so do I, and that would be that Charlie and Rufus are shifted out from under Barclay’s thumb.’
‘And you think he will oblige you?’
‘He will, if he wants something badly enough, Michael.’ He started to strap on his sword, but not his pistol holster – he could not take that into Pitt’s presence without being taken for an assassin. ‘I shall go to see him, but I wonder if you would do me a favour and go to Jockey’s Fields and tell Mrs Barclay I am back in town. Discreetly, mind, for her landlady is much given to nosiness.’
Progress for Jahleel and Franklin Tolland had been slow indeed, riding as they had been two to a horse, with numerous changes and even more frequent rests and walks. Being in a strange place, they hardly knew London, Franklin having only visited it occasionally to seek funding with which to purchase contraband. It was necessary for them to ask for directions, requests in which they found just how disinclined the locals were to aid a stranger; Jahleel was left frothing often, on more than one occasion needing to be restrained from doing violence.
Their route took them through the heart of the City, a place of such bustle that no man could be anything other than overawed by the size and the activity, not to mention the prosperity, which sat so close to stinking poverty – there were beggars everywhere, it seemed, as well as people lying dead or drunk in the streets. Not that making a way was easy, for Londoners were no more inclined to yield a passage to anyone than they were to give friendly directions.
If the scales of justice atop the Old Bailey registered as they passed it, no one in what was a crew of long-practising criminals voiced any thoughts. Finally sure they were close to the destination of Pearce’s letter, it was time to find a place with stabling as well as the means to eat and drink, both available at the Cittie of Yorke, where underneath its dark oak beams, even though it had been endlessly discussed, time had to be taken as to how the matter was to be approached.
‘Bargin’ in won’t do, Jahleel,’ Franklin insisted, ‘for he be like a fox, this Pearce, and if we start him who knows where the chase will take us in a place this size.’
‘Might make for the docks and cross the water,’ opined one of the gang.
Jahleel Tolland was a bad-tempered man, who often let that get the better of his judgement, but he was not a complete fool, and tankard to his mouth he nodded slowly before dropping it and speaking.
‘That letter we were told of was sent to a lady and she was married and of a different name, while it seems he is sweet on her, which tells me it might not be where he lays his own head.’
‘Pity we could not have seen what was wrote inside,’ Franklin replied.
‘I would have got to see it if you’d let me,’ Jahleel growled, his eyes ranging round the men assembled, who concentrated on their ale or food rather than contest the assertion; their leader was not a man to dispute with.
‘Not without violence and that would have had us running from a hue and cry, brother. You can’t touch the mail without the law will be on you.’
‘So,’ Jahleel said after a think. ‘We keep an eye on the place an’ wait for him to show, is that what you reckon?’
‘Either that or we enter the house of this Barclay woman and hole up there, which I don’t fancy, us not knowing the person or the way things lay.’
‘Then we’d best go an’ have a look-see at what’s what,’ Jahleel said with a grimace of anticipation, the eyes ranging around his men again. ‘Eat up, an’ be quick. We’ll get our horses proper stabled and then go a’hunting.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘You took your damn time in responding, Pearce,’ cried Henry Dundas, William Pitt’s staunch political ally and, many said, the man who fixed his votes in Parliament and kept him in power.
‘I believe I came here to see the First Lord of the Treasury.’
‘Had you turned up as you were requested to you might have done so, but you have missed him, he has gone down to Walmer Castle.’
‘When?’
‘Three days past, as if it matters.’
Pearce was not stupid enough to blurt out what he was thinking; he had read the maps and studied the charts of the East Kent coast –Walmer was hard by Deal and in the same judicial jurisdiction as Sandwich. Not only had he passed him on the way to Dover, but also he had missed a chance to engage with a man who was very strong against smuggling and might know something of what he needed to find the locals who had helped to humbug him.
‘Then perhaps I should proceed there and talk with him.’
‘It was I who generated that note, you will deal with me.’
Eyes locked, the pair stared at each other, for if they shared a nationality they shared little else. As the man who controlled the Scottish vote in the House of Commons, Henry Dundas was a real power in the land and, if Pearce’s late father Adam was to be believed, also one of the most corrupt men ever to enter government.
That Dundas had hated Adam Pearce was a given; a radical speaker and pamphleteer known as the Edinburgh Ranter, he and Dundas had known each other well and never once agreed about anything, both part of that enlightened and well-educated class of Scots who had benefited from a good education at Kirk school and a university not dedicated, as were Oxford and Cambridge, to producing pompous clerics.
Dundas had applied his education to becoming an advocate, then to naked self-aggrandisement and the acquisition of wealth; Adam Pearce to pointing out how fraudulent was a system in which a few had so much while the great majority of folk possessed so little.
Travelling the country with son John in tow – Adam Pearce was a widower – he had stopped wherever a crowd would gather to listen in order to harangue them about the injustices of the world in which they lived: a gimcrack monarchy mired in scandal, rotten borough elections to Parliament, votes for forty-shilling freeholders easily bribed or coerced by landed magnates, none for the ordinary citizen and especially the fairer sex.
A thorn before the French Revolution, that cataclysmic monarchical overthrow had raised Adam Pearce to
national prominence. Now his speeches drew crowds in the several hundreds, his pamphlets which excoriated the rich and powerful sold in their thousands. He had become a menace and it was Dundas who had moved to have him and his son jailed for inciting public disorder.
A short stay in the Fleet Prison had followed, until Adam’s radical friends got them free. Unabashed, the Edinburgh Ranter had redoubled his attacks on the state and those who ran it and that body reacted with a writ for sedition, a potential death sentence if brought before a corrupt judge and there were any number of those. Adam and John Pearce had been obliged to flee to revolutionary France, where a well-known radical was initially welcome.
‘I would prefer not to deal with you,’ Pearce said, making no effort to keep his dislike either out of his voice or his gaze.
‘You have not heard what is proposed.’
‘Anything put forward by you is not likely to be to my benefit.’
‘You are as stupid as your father, boy.’
‘Which tempts me to ask what you would prefer to meet me with, Dundas, swords or pistols?’
‘Would it mollify your overweening pride, Pearce, if I said I was speaking for William?’ About to say no, he was given no chance, Dundas just kept talking. ‘We need to know what is happening in the Vendée, so we require someone to take a vessel to that area, get ashore and find out.’
‘A vessel?’
The uncertain way Pearce responded brought forth a truly sarcastic response, typical of a politician like Dundas. ‘Yes, you know, a ship, one of those things that travels on water, as your father thought he could do on foot.’
Dundas could not know what Pearce was thinking of: with a ship and a crew he might be able to do something about Charlie and Rufus.
‘I thought you wanted me to go back out to Lord Hood?’ he asked, more to prevaricate and give himself time to think than for any real purpose.
‘That will very likely follow, though his position and actions have become mired in politics. But you speak French like a native, you know about the Revolution and, though it pains me to say this given your parentage, you know how to keep your mouth shut.’
‘And why would I need to do that?’
Dundas did not speak; a man who played his cards close to his chest by habit, he was not the kind to freely give away information – indeed, the fact that the fate of Lord Hood was even mentioned to be mired was unusually open. That was all to do with Hotham and his political support from the Duke of Portland, of course, the latter commanding a bloc of votes in Parliament, which was needed by Pitt to keep the war going.
‘Let us just say it is an investigation that I would not want talked about in any old coffee house or tavern. I have been pressed by some very vocal French émigrés to support the rebels there and if they are still fighting it might be a good place to offer assistance.’
‘Toulon was better.’
Pearce said that, unsure if it was true, but it riled Dundas and that was enough. He had sent what soldiers Britain had available to the West Indies when Lord Hood had begged for them to be sent to support him at Toulon; there was a lively debate still in the navy as to whether one was better than the other, given that to do both was impossible for a country without a standing army.
‘That is by the by, I have this commission for you if you wish to accept it.’
He needed to say yes; even if it was a very long shot the fate of Charlie and Rufus demanded it, but Pearce was damned if he was just going to acquiesce to this man right away, his pride would not permit it.
‘What kind of ship?’
‘I do not know, I would have to ask the Admiralty what is available.’
‘And who is to command it?’
‘Again—’
Pearce did not let him finish and it was with some pleasure, though he knew he could not push too far, that he could push at all.
‘I will assume we are not talking about a frigate, but more of a lieutenant’s command, so I have to be given both the ship and the authority. I will not have what I must do subject to the approval of another.’
‘You have some damned effrontery, Pearce.’
Had Dundas insisted, he would have backed off, but what he had, which the man wanted, was his discretion; John Pearce was not loved in the King’s Navy – the way he had been promoted to his present rank by the express command of King George had created deep resentment amongst many officers and to that was added his disdain for their conventions. He was therefore unlikely to gossip, as another given the commission might do.
There were, too, deep waters here; Dundas, and possibly Pitt, wanted this task carried out without alerting either their political friends or their more vociferous enemies, many of whom were totally against the war with France. That provided the other reason for employing him; it was telling that even as powerful as he was, when it came to a task like the one outlined, Dundas had very few options, though Pearce was not so conceited as to think that, had there been an alternative, he would have been asked.
‘I may need funds when I am ashore.’
That Dundas understood completely – he was a man who thought bribery an advantageous avenue to achieving his aims. ‘I will draw upon the contingency fund to provide you with more than enough.’
‘I am, as you know, at Nerot’s Hotel. Please let me know when you have satisfied my other demands.’
‘So you will do what I ask?’
‘If everything is to my satisfaction, yes. Now I bid you good day, sir.’
It was a happy Pearce who exited the room, but he would have been less so if he had heard what Dundas said after the door was closed.
‘One day, Master Pearce, you will pay for your arrogance, possibly just as your father did, with your damned head.’
‘All the arrangements are in place, sir,’ said Gherson. ‘The men I have engaged will break into the offices of Mrs Barclay’s attorney and clean out all his documents tonight. I will meet them at another location, where I can look for what we seek. Only when I have those court martial papers will I pay.’
Expecting hard bargaining with Codge, it had in the end been easier than anticipated and, happy with the conclusion, on the way back, Gherson had dropped into a Covent Garden brothel for a quick rut with a doxy, for in passing near the Carruthers house once more he had felt so primed by memory of the lady of the house that he required release.
‘How much?’
‘Thirty guineas is the price I agreed.’
Hovering around Ralph Barclay’s mind was a pun about thirty pieces of silver, but he could not quite nail it. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, I want Devenow along.’ That got Gherson a keen look. ‘These are rough fellows and I may require protection.’
His employer was tempted to point out that would be because he would be carrying more gold than he would be paying out, but that was better left unsaid. It was also best left unmentioned, though it was worthy of a quiet smile, that if his rough fellows wanted to beat on him then Devenow would be more likely to join in than interfere.
That his two closest aides should despise each other suited Barclay well – there was no chance of them ever combining to dun him, albeit Gherson was about that now. Still, for what would be gained – the ability to put his wife firmly in her place – it was worth it.
That took the smile off his face; there would be a reckoning and a painful one for her. He had it in his mind to give her a severe whipping so she would never again doubt to whom she owed her loyalty. He would have her as well, as was his right as her husband, at his will and any time he so chose in future.
There would be no more gentility in his household, for it had proved with her to be a mistake. Her spirit had to be broken, just as sometimes at sea the same trait in a troublesome hand required to be crushed by a regular kiss of the grating.
‘I am happy to see you, Michael,’ said Emily, as she entered the parlour of the house owned by her landlady Mrs Fletcher. ‘Would you care to sit?’
Th
e Irishman shook his head, for he felt awkward, which for him was unusual. Really it was the parlour in which he stood, overfurnished and very feminine, with its cushions and comfortable settles. Besides, he did not know the lady well and could probably count on one hand the words they had exchanged, so different were their paths even on each crowded ship as they had shared.
Emily Barclay was likewise at a loss, for all she knew that this large man before her holding his hat in his ham-like fists was someone on whom John Pearce relied and a person he trusted absolutely. She wanted to ask about the letter she had received but somehow it felt wrong to do so, for he might know nothing about it.
‘I just came to deliver a message, ma’am, from John-boy, to let you know he is back in London.’ That got a raised eyebrow; the question as to why he had not come himself was immediate. ‘He had a communication from Mr Pitt seeking his attendance at Downing Street and said to tell you he will come on here right after.’
‘No!’ The speed of her response shocked him. ‘You must intercept him and tell him that is not wise.’
Emily spread her hands and silently rotated her head to indicate the house, which had Michael nodding in slow understanding – Mrs Fletcher, her landlady, was both curious and prudish – while Emily racked her brains. She did not want to go to Nerot’s Hotel, that was too public a place and the notion of going to John’s rooms even worse. Really there was only the house of Heinrich Lutyens where they could meet without risking comment.
It was only on exiting that Michael realised he would have to keep an eye on the door. Jockey’s Fields was a narrow street, one carriage wide at best with houses to only one side, while the other consisted of a long unbroken brick wall too high to see over but with a tall building standing not far back from the far side.
Unable to stand outside the house – if it had not been stated, he knew that Mrs Barclay feared disgrace – he took up station some twenty yards up, leaning against the bricks with a view of the whole street, feeling very exposed.
Enemies at Every Turn Page 9