A Shot Rolling Ship

by David Donachie

  It was another boy delivering a letter that gave him the idea, and reasonably familiar with the area in which he was walking he quickly found a coffee house on the edge of Smithfield market in which to sit and compose a note, paper and quill provided by the owner. A Penny Post man was engaged to deliver the note and Pearce, ensconced in a deep booth, sat on a cushioned bench, could think about food and, hard by the London meat market, he could not deny himself a succulent beefsteak. Warmth seeped through his body as the food and the heat of the room drove out the chill. He would have dearly liked to sleep a little, for he had left Pastor Lutyens’ manse well before dawn, but he dare not. Fortunately the coffee, as well as the continuous babble of those using the coffee house, helped to stave off that desire. There were papers to read, the latest edition of the Morning Post and the new Observer, and they had despatches from France telling of the latest moves in the National Assembly, plus a list of those newly proscribed by a revolution intent on eating its own.

  ‘You will look in vain, young fellow, for news of your father.’ The voice, deep and adult, was behind him, and Pearce felt a frisson of fear run through his body, which subsided quickly as he rationalised that anyone wanting to take him up would have just come and got him. ‘I decline to sit with you for reasons that require little explanation.’

  ‘Horne Tooke.’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘You are watched?’

  ‘Every waking hour, and I fear even during the hours of sleep. I observed as I entered that you were reading a newspaper. Hold it up so that your face is covered.’

  ‘You will do the same?’

  ‘No, young John. I have a better way. I talk to myself all the time when out of doors, in the street, sitting in a coffee house or tavern, anywhere I think I can be observed. Sometimes I even wave my arms as if engaged in heated argument. Those who watch me think me touched by madness, I’m sure, but they do not seek another body just because my lips are moving.’

  ‘Do you have news?’

  ‘It is not good news. Your father is in prison, put there I am told for his refusal to keep quiet about the activities of the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was denounced for an article he wrote in the National Assembly by a deputy called Fouché, a Jacobin, but he was not alone in the motion. Nor was your father the only one proscribed that day, though Tom Paine is still at liberty.’

  ‘He has been more circumspect, no doubt.’

  They had a lot in common, Paine and Adam Pearce, but they virulently disagreed about one thing. Paine saw the way the Revolution was going as a necessary catharsis on the way to a better life for all; John’s father, who had originally held the same view, now disagreed, and was vocal in his belief that it was nothing more than the acts of unprincipled men lusting after power.

  ‘Your note said you left him in poor health.’

  ‘Incarceration will not improve it.’

  ‘Turn the page of your newspaper,’ said Horne Tooke before continuing. ‘He still has friends, I’m sure. Perhaps they have done something for him, a private room, food and the like.’

  Pearce could have said that such things were of the past, that the prisons of Paris were now too full for private apartments and bought-in food. But it was the other dangers that concerned him most. ‘I was in Paris last September.’

  ‘Yes, a most deplorable event. It made life very difficult for those of us on the side of the Channel who seek to change things.’

  There was a temptation to say how much more difficult it had been for the victims of the September massacres, to put Horne Tooke’s discomfort in perspective, but he decided that using irony would not at this stage be helpful. Hundreds had been killed, their bloody heads paraded through the streets on pikes, slaughtered by self-appointed tribunals who had set up drum head courts in the prisons themselves. Few hauled before such arbitrary justice had managed to successfully plead innocence or have someone with power intercede to save their life. Most had been brutally murdered out of hand by madmen lusting after the blood of the rich. Only it was not the rich they were killing; certainly the odd aristocrat had been a victim, but the Revolution had, by that time, lost any reason. Some of the victims had been at the tearing down of the Bastille and things had continued, if not at the same pace, with the same result. A farce of a trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, with condemnation a near certainty, that followed incarceration and the daily thought that the next tumbrel to the guillotine would be yours.

  ‘There must still be people he can appeal to,’ the younger man insisted, ‘those with the power to get him released.’

  ‘Certainly such people exist. Danton, for one, might intercede and right now he is powerful and getting more so. Marat, we know, once admired your father’s writings, and he might be able to use the power of his paper to change minds.’

  That made Pearce wonder just how in touch Horne Tooke was; Danton had sanctioned the murderous storming of the Tuileries, and Marat, in his inflammatory writings, had encouraged the behaviour that led to it. He and Adam Pearce had fallen out months before and he doubted relations with Danton were much better. Both seemed set on a path to ever more bloodshed, not less, and if they were going to intervene, they would have done so to quash the imprisonment.

  ‘What are his chances of avoiding arrest if he comes back to England?’

  ‘Slim John, very slim. He would be required to publicly recant and that is something I doubt he would do.’ Pearce thought of Pastor Lutyens words, that old Adam would have to be silent. That would be hard enough to guarantee; to demand he deny his beliefs was to ask the impossible. ‘But, here we could certainly see him imprisoned in comfort. The Society has funds for just such a purpose. We could get him a private chamber and pay for any medical assistance he may require.’

  ‘If I could get him to Holland…’

  ‘Then the Society could support him there.’

  ‘You sure you could carry this?’

  The voice dropped to a deeper tone, adding sincerity to what Horne Tooke said. ‘Your father was a spiritual founder of the Corresponding Society, and he, along with Paine, was one of the leading lights whose beacon we followed. He is therefore a charge upon our conscience, and I assure you no voice would be raised to deny him what he needs. And we do have some influence in Paris. If you wish, I will raise the matter at the next meeting.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘If you have men watching the outside of your house, you will also have some inside the Society who are not what they seem.’

  Pearce could feel the resentment through the wood at his back as Horne Tooke swelled with indignation, and he spoke quickly to head it off, for he needed this man and all like him. Besides that, having lived in Paris and talked with those men who were now running the country, he knew just how much influence the London Corresponding Society had in the councils of the Revolution; precisely none. To men of action, who had toppled a King and removed his head, had torn apart the way a country was run and were struggling to put it together again, who were engaged in a war to the death with Austria and Prussia on the side of the forces of reaction, people who did nothing but talk were more derided than admired. Any intercession in that quarter from men derisively referred to as les bavardiers d’Angleterre might lead to his father being more tightly guarded than released.

  ‘I do not doubt your good offices, sir, nor those with whom you founded your movement, but it would be naïve of us both to assume that the government had not taken steps to find out what you are about, if only to gather evidence against you.’

  ‘We are careful, young man, very careful.’

  John Pearce put as much sincerity into his reply as he could, not only because it was necessary but because he meant it. ‘I do not doubt it, sir, but care is not always enough.’

  ‘Then what is to be done to aid him?’

  ‘I must go to Paris and get him released.’

  ‘I trust you jest.’

  ‘No.’

&nbs
p; ‘Then I count you as mad.’

  ‘Please understand, sir, that I have lived in that city. I know it well. I cannot be certain that I still have friends there, but I am sure there must still be some.’ What he said next was more to appease Horne Tooke than any belief that the man mentioned would aid him. ‘I have met George Danton on more than one occasion, and I have some hope that he will remember me.’

  ‘And Marat. He is riding the crest of a wave right now, having been arraigned by the National Assembly. The mob love him.’

  ‘Which is why I do not. Who is this Fouché you mentioned?’

  ‘An ex-seminarian, very nearly a priest. He is described as dry and humourless, but a fanatical Jacobin.’

  ‘Powerful?’

  ‘Was not particularly so, but who knows how the sands shift in Paris?’

  That was said with gloomy resignation, and it evoked some sympathy. Men like Horne Tooke were personally committed to change at some danger to themselves. What they would not countenance was violence to achieve their aims, convinced that such behaviour was un-English, foreign, French and Papist in inspiration even if the perpetrators denounced the Holy Trinity. They were upright Protestant burghers, who held in common with most of their countrymen that they lived under a vastly better system than those across the Channel had ever enjoyed, and had done so since the Great Revolution of 1688. They were patriotic at the same time as they sought to undermine the present way the country was governed, a paradox that made life very difficult indeed.

  ‘I will need help. Can I ask you for it?’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘My first task is to get to the coast, somewhere safe, and I will need funds, for alone I cannot use force to free my father and if I cannot persuade someone in power to help then I must resort to bribery.’

  ‘There is nowhere truly safe, but I suggest you head for Sandwich in Kent. There is a residual sympathy for Tom Paine there for he lived in the town, and Conway, the local vicar of the Church of St Peter’s is, I know, sympathetic to our aims.’

  ‘A radical clergyman?’ exclaimed Pearce, with a palpable degree of surprise. ‘That is unusual.’

  ‘He is singular certainly, though wise enough to hide his light under a bushel, for there are not many of his more prosperous parishioners who would appreciate his sentiments. I have an address you can go to there, and Sandwich has boats in abundance and easy access to the sea, while the hand of the Excise is, I am told, light.’

  Pearce had the feeling he might not be the first to use the suggested avenue of escape; Horne Tooke and his friends had helped others evade the clutches of government men; either that, or a route had been set up with the leaders of the Corresponding Society in mind, arrest for them being a constant possibility.

  ‘I must reluctantly ask again. Funds?’

  ‘That is one thing I am happy to say we are not short on. I will write to our friend in Sandwich, and enclose a draft upon which you may draw up to fifty guineas.’

  ‘Will there be that much money in a small seaside port?’

  ‘It is a smuggling town, John, and one of the things they smuggle most is gold. Our friend the vicar will provide you with the funds you need and arrange your passage across the Channel. You will, I assure you, find him most resourceful.’

  ‘This note might be intercepted.’

  Horne Tooke responded with an exasperated tone. ‘Do give us some credit, young Pearce, for knowing what we are about. We have a private code which we use in our letters. Myself, you will not see again, for to be observed once more in proximity to me might bring about that which you least desire.’

  ‘I might be followed.’

  ‘Aye. When it comes to the wherewithal to keep the lid on dissent, the government has a seemingly endless supply of men and money.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, and I hope, one day, I will be able to have my father say that to you face to face.’

  ‘Tell me, young John, this Navy garb you are wearing. How did that come about?’

  ‘It is a long story, sir. Too long for an occasion such as this.’

  ‘Perhaps another time?’

  ‘Providence willing.’

  ‘Wait till I have been gone ten minutes before you leave. I have pencilled a note for you to take with you and set it inside a copy of the Gentleman’s Magazine, which I will leave on my table. Goodbye and good luck.’

  The wood between them creaked again as Horne Tooke rose to leave. John Pearce folded his paper and slid out to take it back to the pile that sat on a central table, catching a quick sight of the man’s broad back as he exited through the door, and heard him very volubly talking to himself. Quickly he grabbed the magazine and followed him stopping just away from the window that stood to one side of the door. Over the rim of the Gentleman’s Magazine he watched the scene unfold as two men in heavy coats and big hats which obscured their faces detached themselves to follow him.

  He thought about what he had said; that there would be at least one spy in the organisation Horne Tooke headed. He hoped the older man would hold his tongue about their meeting, but had to acknowledge that there was no point in him worrying about it, for it was beyond his control. He must get to the Kent coast, and as quickly as he could. That meant another long walk to the Old Kent Road, to an inn where the coaches going to South East England made their first stop to change horses after Charing Cross.

  Rain began to fall as he walked, and he cursed it, for the short jacket he was wearing was not much to keep out the wet and the prospect he faced, of once more sitting on the top of a coach, was most unwelcome. On this occasion it was more than ever necessary, for the road went by way of the River Medway, and that debouched onto the Nore anchorage, the place where he had first been taken aboard HMS Brilliant. He recalled the mass of shipping, including 100-gun ships-of-the-line that filled the estuary, thus there was a good chance that some of the coach passengers would have connections to the Navy.

  A haberdashers shop at Blackfriars, close to the bridge across the Thames, was happy to sell him a cloak, disappointed, given the state of his other garments, that they could not oblige him with a whole new outfit, but his determination to bargain got him a scarf thrown in.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The cry that there was a ship in the offing did nothing to stop the flogging of Devenow, the ship’s bully. Ralph Barclay knew him of old, a man who harboured his grog for a true blow-out. He had got drunk and had started to fight, or rather, since he was a huge man with big fists, to beat up his messmates. The fact that he had a broken jaw, not properly mended, did nothing to inhibit either the drinking or the fighting. So Devenow had to have his Monday dozen, and since he was not much loved by the rest of the crew, the bosun’s mate was laying to with a will; Devenow’s back showed the scars of previous floggings, but no sound escaped from his mouth, though he bit hard on the leather strap placed there.

  ‘Punishment complete, sir.’

  ‘Cut him down, Mr Sykes,’ he said to the bosun, before adding wearily, ‘Let that be a lesson to you, Devenow. It is my earnest wish never to see you seized up to the grating again.’

  ‘Fat chance,’ said Bosun Sykes, under his breath.

  ‘Mr Lutyens, he is all yours.’

  Devenow went below to the sick bay, trailed by the surgeon, stiff in his gait, but without aid, determined to show all aboard that he could take his punishment as well as he took his drink, this while Henry Digby gave the orders that would get the deck cleaned up. Ralph Barclay took a telescope and trained it on the horizon.

  The vessel beating up towards the convoy was quickly identified as a warship, a frigate of much the same size as HMS Brilliant. Both Ralph Barclay and Davidge Gould were on the threatened side by the time she was hull up, staying in that station even when the pennant at the foremasthead identified her as a British warship under the command of a Vice Admiral of the White Squadron. With the convoy sailing majestically on, Ralph Barclay ordered Firefly back to her station, awaiting the arrival of the vesse
l which, going astern of him, came up smartly on to the wind and set a course to come alongside. The voice, once they were sailing in parallel, speaking through the trumpet, boomed over the intervening water.

  ‘Amethyst, Captain Blackstone at your service.’

  Ralph Barclay’s first thought was that this Blackstone was his junior; he knew every name on the captain’s list and how they stood in relation to him and it was comforting to know when he shouted out his ship and name that the other fellow would know that in a situation requiring a face to face meeting, it would be he who would be obliged to lower a boat.

  ‘I have orders, sir, from Admiral Hotham, who is presently anchored at Lisbon.’

  ‘I am under Admiralty orders, Captain Blackstone.’

  ‘I am aware of that, sir, but Admiral Hotham has sent me out expressly to meet escorted south bound convoys and assure those in command of King’s ships that between here and Gibraltar the seas are clear of any enemy vessels and are being heavily patrolled by our Spanish allies. Given his shortage of frigates and sloops, the admiral is somewhat blind to matters pertaining to the Mediterranean, where he is bound once his fleet is assembled. He therefore requests that you accede to his orders to leave your convoy and join him forthwith. Naturally written orders will be made out to cover you from any censure.’

  Ralph Barclay knew he did not have to accede to such a request; he was within his rights to refuse. Against that he and Davidge Gould would be joining that fleet as soon as he had delivered his convoy and it would be a bad idea to start off in bad odour with Admiral William Hotham, the present commander, who would probably take it very amiss that what he had asked for had not been granted. That would be doubly true if the eventual head of affairs became Admiral Lord Hood, presently the senior naval lord on the Board of Admiralty, but certain, from what he had heard before he weighed, to take over the Mediterranean command. That was someone with whom Ralph Barclay already had a strained relationship; to be in the black books of both the proposed commanding officer and his deputy was madness.