A Flag of Truce (10 page)

In being so outspoken, Pearce realised that he was slightly affected by the drink he had consumed. Fortunately Lutyens was not offended, in fact responded with a thin smile.

‘I suspect you are trying to shock me, Pearce, but you are wasting your time. Recall my profession.’

The sudden commotion from across the room took the attention of both, but only Pearce moved, glad to see that finally some of his fellow lieutenants did likewise. It was dangerous getting between the two sets of belligerents, with the midshipmen wielding their dirks and the locals with knifes of all shapes and sizes. There were a lot of theatrical threats with those weapons, but Pearce knew it was only a matter of moments before one was used, and seriously, so he buffeted around the ear the first midshipman he came across, then
started to lay into the others, belabouring right and left and bellowing orders to belay. Harbin was on his knees, blood dripping from his head, Farmiloe standing above him, dirk out and pointed to protect the boy from further harm.

‘What happened, Farmiloe?’

‘A cut to the head, sir. One of those Frog swine sneaked up and slashed him.’

‘Get him out of here. Mr Lutyens is over yonder. Move.’

To the sound of a rondo from the orchestra, lieutenants were wrestling drunken mids, trying to get them away from their opponents, while adults dressed in everything from togas to Red Indian headdress were struggling to do the same to the local boys. To Pearce, only one thing worked, a sound punch, and he laid into his side with gusto. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Elphinstone laughing so heartily he was having to hold his sides, clearly enjoying the spectacle, and when some peace had finally been restored he went over to remonstrate, which got him a rebuke.

‘Have a care, laddie, you’re not rank enough to take me to task.’

‘I do think it could have been stopped, sir.’

‘Then you show your ignorance, Pearce. I was a mid once, and I canna think of a ball or amusement that did not end up in a spat with someone. I have had fights from Lisbon to Calcutta, with one or two
thrown in on the North American station before that war, and I have never served at home that a night in the taverns did not end in riot. Boys will be boys, and we canna expect them to stand up to roundshot and musket if they will no stand up for themselves at a bash like this. Now if I were you, I’d find some French fancy and ask her to dance.’

Pearce looked at the floor area set aside for dancing, not yet full, and the temptation to cross over and ask Emily Barclay to step out with him was strong. But her husband was close to her, and judging by the way he was leaning over and addressing her, he was not pleased.

‘You have embarrassed me in front of every officer in the room, Mrs Barclay.’

‘I have done no such thing,’ Emily pleaded. ‘Lieutenant Pearce approached me. What would you have me do, turn my back?’

‘Just that, which would tell all here that you hold him in the same regard as I do. The man is an impostor, a damned revolutionary and don’t you dare remonstrate with me for my language.’

‘Keep your voice down, husband. You are making a spectacle of yourself.’

Barclay hissed at her. ‘It is you who have made the spectacle!’

Emily lost her temper then, something she had never completely done with her husband, but she
was not going to stand still to be publicly accused of unbecoming behaviour. ‘I daresay you would like to punish me as you punished him, and with the same want of justice.’

‘I punished him to protect your honour, madam.’

‘Claptrap, sir. You punished him for your own pride. And tell me, sir, what instructions you gave to my nephew regarding Pearce and his companions when they sailed for England?’

‘Instructions?’

‘Yes, husband. I was in the cabin when you and Toby were conversing on the poop. What has that boy done, sir, on your orders, that makes him fear retribution from John Pearce?’

‘That is naval business and none of your concern. I think now, also, that it is time we returned to the ship.’

‘You return if you wish. I am staying awhile.’

‘Madam, you must obey me, I am your husband.’

‘Must I ask my nephew what it is he fears, and why?’

‘I forbid that.’

‘Then I can only assume it is because you dread what I might learn. Like the day you named someone in a King’s blue coat a traitor, yet I ran into John Pearce in that very same-coloured coat at the hospital, before any other officer in the fleet came ashore. I have to surmise they were one and the same person.’

‘Wrong,’ Barclay replied with a defensiveness that damned him. ‘It was a different fellow.’

‘Was it? I fear you have allowed your hatred of the man to cloud not only your judgement but your self-esteem. And I, as your wife, will obey only a man who shows me the courtesy of being open and honest, which you, sir, plainly are not.’

Fan waving violently, Emily moved away from her husband, who, looking after her, noticed that nearly every eye in the room was on him. The argument had not gone unnoticed and it was galling that in the looks he was getting, a good proportion had a trace of being thrilled. He strode across to where Elphinstone was supping another cup of punch.

‘Sir, I must tell you that I am ready to serve ashore as from this very moment.’

The Scotsman looked at him through bleary eyes that denoted his inebriation. ‘Have a cup of punch, Barclay. Carteaux and Lapoype can wait till morn.’

They might have been termed as useless or dangerous, but there was no mistaking the desire of those five thousand French sailors to get out of Toulon and back home to their Atlantic ports. They worked with gusto to get out the ship’s armament, no easy task since each cannon had to he hoisted out through its own gunport by a system of ropes, restraints and pulleys, in a complicity of knots that completely foxed John Pearce. Thankfully, his only task was an occasional one of necessary interpretation, and that was confined to the dozen officers, most of whom seemed a damn sight less Jacobin than he had been led to believe.

While the guns were being hauled out, another party was working on the capstan bars, to drag out of the lower reaches of the holds the nets full of round, chain and case shot, as well as the powder barrels from the gunner’s store, with just enough of
that commodity left for signalling. Out came muskets, pistols, pikes and boarding axes, cutlasses and knives, indeed anything that could be used as a weapon and he knew each man and his dunnage had been searched on coming aboard so not so much as a knife was going to be allowed.

The sail locker was stripped to the bare minimum thought to be required, with only jibs, courses and topsails left, no topgallants or kites, while every spare bit of timber from planking to spars had been removed, as well as the hundred items of standard stores every vessel carried. Every inch of space would be needed; with each vessel carrying over twice her normal complement, food had to be loaded that would keep them hale for the entire length of the voyage. Beef and pork in barrels, sacks of peas and biscuit, water and wine for a month, which was reckoned at the maximum. Hood had made it plain that no stores could be collected from Gibraltar; this outing was being paid for by the remains of the Bourbon Navy, not the Admiralty, for it was generally held throughout the fleet that his decision to gift the French Navy four sound ships would not be welcomed in London. That was trouble enough without added expense to the Navy Board.

Making his way aft when the work was complete, Pearce entered the main cabin, to find it crowded with the possessions of the officers, a knot
of the dozen lieutenants working out from copious lists the way they would man their watches. In his hand, Pearce had a copy of the Admiralty signal book, which he passed over to the most senior, a small stocky fellow who had earlier introduced himself as Gerard Moreau, who would command the lead vessel,
Apollon
, explaining that when they needed to contact
Faron
, this was the book they must use.

‘But, monsieur,’ Moreau replied in French, with a slightly mystified air, ‘none of us here speak English.’

‘Then, monsieur, you will have to use that one most.’

Pearce opened the book at the signal that requested another ship to come alongside, adding. ‘I doubt you will need much signalling anyway. Our course is to the Straits and, once through, to the Bay of Biscay.’

He also left a list of instructions; lanterns to be rigged and lit every night fore and aft, no boats to be launched without express permission, the speed of the whole to be dictated by Captain Digby, who in a lighter and better-equipped vessel should always have the legs of them. They must heave to if they encountered fog and use the signal guns to mark their position.

Moreau had a ready smile and a twinkle in his eyes as he responded. ‘I think you mistake our
purpose, monsieur. We have no plans to evade you, we merely wish to get home.’

‘I fear, monsieur, that my seniors have little faith in your intentions.’

Moreau smiled. ‘Perhaps we can convince you over a glass of wine?’

Pearce pulled a face. ‘I am afraid, Lieutenant Moreau, that I, along with all of the men who will escort you, have strict orders not to mix.’

‘Ah!’ Moreau replied, throwing up his hands in a very Gallic way. ‘They fear you will become Jacobins perhaps?’

‘Perhaps,’ Pearce replied.

Yet he smiled to ensure that Moreau knew such a notion was as absurd as the Frenchman supposed. Seeing that his attitude was creating ill-feeling – the others in the cabin were frowning seriously – he decided that his superiors could go hang. They saw things in a too black and white a fashion, always separating Frenchmen into virulent revolutionaries or the opposite. Pearce knew different: such Manichean simplicity did not exist; every shade of opinion existed. There would be, no doubt, aboard these four capital ships, some bloodthirsty radicals, but they would be few and unlikely to be much of an influence. In the main these were seamen wanting to return home, and that was a sentiment with which he could not disagree.

‘One glass, monsieur, to be amicable.’

L’amitié
required that to be several glasses, not one, and he got to know the names of the others who would command the vessels. Pasquale Garnier was the next senior lieutenant and he would command
Orion
. Hector Jacquelin, a less friendly fellow came next in line and would take charge of
Patriote
, the most junior, Forcet, having
Entreprenant
. The other eight lieutenants present would be the watch officers on each vessel, and they showed uncommon civility as they sorted out their needs, leaving Pearce thinking that they were employing a good method to achieve their ends. It was, on the whole, Jacquelin excepted, a very sociable atmosphere, one which was not appreciated when he went aboard his own ship to face Henry Digby.

‘You are supposed to have nothing to do with them, Mr Pearce, and here you come back on my deck with the odour of their wine on your breath.’

‘I took a glass to be friendly, sir, and I cannot find it in me to condemn them for their aim of getting home.’

‘And what about their politics?’ Digby demanded.

It was a sad reflection, Pearce thought, as he looked into the irritable face of his superior, that even one as intelligent as he seemed to be, could not get hold of the notion that Frenchmen were no different to Britons; they were just as fractious and
divided as any other race and that included his own. Like Scotsmen; to put any two of that race into private dispute was to garner three opinions.

‘We are to go alongside one of the store ships,’ Digby growled. ‘Lord Hood has sanctioned your notion of us carrying carronades. Oh, and that fellow, Lutyens, is to join us, since no French surgeon would agree to serve such Jacobins. Once we have those aboard, all we need is a wind.’

Shenton, at the door of his pantry, could hear the conversation in the main cabin, and though he wanted to intervene he was powerless to do so. Toby Burns, dining with his aunt, was on the rack, and much as he twisted and turned he was slowly being roasted. The truth was coming out as she, quietly but persistently, posed question after question and they had moved on from the retaking of the
Lady Harrington
, to what had happened subsequently.

‘I was told,’ the boy said, head lowered, ‘should a King’s ship seek to press Pearce and his companions from the
Lady Harrington
, provided they did not jeopardise the safety of the ship, I was not to interfere, it being legal for the Navy to do so.’

‘And it was my husband’s express order that you should act as you did?’ The positive reply was so soft as to be almost inaudible. ‘Then though I find
it hard to fathom, Toby, I cannot condemn you. It is too much that one as young as you should be given such a terrible amount of responsibility.’

That got a louder response. ‘I felt the responsibility keenly, Aunt Emily.’

Which engendered a sharp rejoinder. ‘Not keenly enough to decline to be treated as a hero.’

How distant that seemed to a now-crestfallen Toby Burns. If he had ever seriously harboured the thought that he had betrayed John Pearce it had quickly faded on his arrival back in England. With the war only weeks old, he had found himself feted as a typical chip off the old oak block of Albion. Never mind he was barely breeched, he was a tar to his toes, even at such a tender age capable of the prodigious deeds listed in Ralph Barclay’s despatch, which credited him with the leadership of the whole enterprise in the Trieux Estuary.

In Deal, at the Three Kings Hotel on the beach, every person in the dining room had stood to applaud as he entered, and the owners would not hear of him paying for his provender. He had suffered an interview with the First Lord of the Admiralty and going home to Frome he had been hoisted on the shoulders of boys with whom he had done his schooling, friends they said they were, even if he could not remember it being so, carried through the streets to cheers, only to come to his own home and find it full of the leading citizens of
the town waiting to greet him and shake his hand. And more than that, they demanded he tell his story.

He had not wanted to come back to sea, having found his first experience too harrowing for words; the filth of a midshipman’s berth, the foul language and downright thievery that was seen as the norm, that and the constant threat, which he never knew to be real or joshing, that he would keep happy the older boys if he cared to join them in some dark place. Nor did being on deck suit him, given he was not a commanding presence; quite the opposite, in his ill-fitting clothes made for someone expected to grow by the foot. He found his newly acquired Uncle Ralph to be a harsh and unpleasant man, the crew people of a type he had only ever hurried past in a street, and his Aunt Emily, who he had looked to for a softer touch, unwilling to cross her husband to ease his predicament.

But he was a hero; how could he not want to get back to that element which would provide him with more opportunity to garner glory for himself and England? Not even his mother, to whom he was closest, seemed to see the doubt in his eyes when his return to HMS
Brilliant
was broached, while his father positively glowed, seeming to quite forget that warships got into battles in which people on board were maimed or killed in the most ghastly fashion; he knew just how bad that could be, for the
sailors on his uncle’s frigate had taken foul delight in telling him so. And then there was that affair for which he was being praised; while he accepted the accolades, Toby Burns knew the truth, knew that he had acted in a cowardly fashion from the moment he was thrown up on to the Breton shore till the act of retaking the merchantman was complete, and he was deeply fearful that faced with the prospect of death or injury, he would once more behave in a less than impressive fashion.

‘I did my best to deflect the accolades, Aunt Emily, but I was overwhelmed by enthusiasm.’

I bet you were, you little shite, thought Shenton, who knew that it would not be the boy who would suffer for these revelations, but his captain, and he was right.

‘Toby,’ said Emily with a serious face. ‘I shall not mention this again, and I would request that if you are asked to describe the conversation of this dinner yourself, you decline to do so. And I think you should draw a veil also over the exploit for which you are praised.’

That was a hard request with which to accede; on the voyage out in HMS
Victory
he had more than once been the guest of the wardroom, and on one occasion had even dined in the company of Lord Hood. In the mid’s berth he had been treated with respect, the same on deck, and free from any duties, being a supernumerary, he had quite enjoyed the
experience of being at sea in what was, in truth, a cruise. Even if deep down he knew it to be misplaced, to be treated as a hero was exceedingly pleasant.

‘It would wound me to have to insist, Toby.’

‘I will do as you say, Aunt Emily.’

‘Thank you. And not a word of this conversation to Captain Barclay.’

‘He’ll hear it all right,’ Shenton said softly to himself. ‘Every bleedin’ word.’

He then entered the cabin and asked, with a large and insincere smile. ‘Is you ready for the cheese, Mrs Barclay?’

Emily nodded, then said, ‘Please ask if a boat can be ready after dinner to take me over to Mr Lutyens.’

‘Aye, aye, mam.’

‘I will be back in a few weeks at most, Emily,’ said Lutyens, aware that the news of his departure was not being well received.

‘Then I will have no one to talk to for that time.’

‘Your husband…’

‘Is no longer much aboard,’ Emily said quickly. ‘He is ashore working on the defences around Fort Mulgrave, and when he returns it is only to snatch a quick meal and sleep.’

‘If I read your tone aright, you have not repaired the breach that occurred at de Trogoff’s ball?’

‘No,’ Emily replied, then, in a rush, added, ‘Heinrich, can I confide in you?’

‘I hope you feel you are safe to do so.’

The story came tumbling out, every detail, and as he had done before, he pretended no knowledge of the truth. As Emily talked of her nephew, Lutyens’ mind went back to the original observations he had made and noted at the beginning of their voyage. He had watched Burns as he had everyone else: the boy was plainly not cut out for the life, always with a face either miserable or concerned, with no appearance of knowing what he was to do, or an ability to absorb his duties; quite certainly no capacity for bluff. Hardly surprising, then, he had acted the way he had. There was no condemnation from the surgeon; that was his purpose for being at sea, to find out how men, even boys, in the confines of a ship, exposed perhaps to harsh punishment, certainly to rough company, possible battle and death, would react. He had left a profitable practice and the prospects presented by a well-connected parent for this, and here was Emily Barclay, another object of observation, confiding her deepest worries to him. His hand itched to get it all down on paper, yet he also had to be pragmatic.

‘I must advise you, Emily, that no man is perfect. Your husband is acting, by his own lights, in a proper manner, and harsh as it may seem to you…’ He left the rest hanging in the air. ‘You must, I
think, find a way of healing this spat, for from what I have seen of Captain Barclay, I fear he is not equipped to do so.’

‘I find it hard to forgive him.’

‘No doubt, but forgive him is what you must do, because, if you do not, I fear that the rest of your married life will suffer.’