An Awkward Commission

To Jim & Les Davies without whom this book would not have been written.

The square was full of people, the ground covered in a putrid mixture of human and animal ordure, laced with blood and white viscous entrails that sucked at his boots. Try as he might, John Pearce struggled to make headway through the solid crowd, ogres that turned their hideous faces towards him with a terrifying grin or a wide open mouth, each yelling a different, indistinct message. In that mire at his feet he had to step over couples publicly copulating, the women sewing together their cockades of red, white and blue as they ground out their carnal pleasure with obvious glee. In the background stood the outline of a heavy wooden scaffold, the floor set high so that it was visible to all the dregs of Paris. On that wooden frame stood the lethal guillotine, the silver blade, caught by shafts of strong sunlight, dropping with a deadly thud at regular intervals, to be raised again and again, dripping blood, the whole accompanied by a constant, funereal drum roll, interspersed with exultant cries at raised, detached heads.

The winged horse came from nowhere and soon he was mounted, above both crowd and scaffold, looking down on the sea of faces that filled the huge stone-built quadrangle of the Place de la Revolution, and all the while that rhythmic thud continued. Very obvious was the snaking line of scarecrow-like victims that ran all the way from the scaffold steps back to the River Seine and along the bank
of the sluggishly flowing river. There it broke up, one line extending across the Pont Neuf to the Conciergerie, stone walls ten-foot thick, grey and forbidding like a malignant womb, others to the prisons of Châtelet and La Force, each converging inmate waiting their turn to offer up their heads to the killing machine of the Revolution. Swooping down like Bellerophon astride Pegasus, he came face to face with his own father, moving along to his fate – not the man he had seen last, but the younger, healthy Adam Pearce who had raised him. He spoke, his deep, strong voice full of the passion for truth that had been his greatest asset, as well as the cause of his ultimate downfall.

For a brief moment John was a boy again, his hand warm in that of his only living parent, and the snaking line had gone. They seemed to be on a road of some kind, a brick
pavé
that led to a sparking citadel – all gleaming spires and snow-white walls – the very image of paradise shining in a never-reducing distance, perhaps the home he had never known, but always longed for. But that faded as the slow thud-thud-thud came again and he watched aghast as slowly and inexorably his father aged and withered, the hair going from black to grey, to white, the voice from power to a sickly wheeze, the body shrinking until he was reduced to a thin-haired and blood-drained head, held in the outstretched hand of a fat, leather-clad and grinning executioner, while behind and below him that vicious crowd screamed in a paroxysm of homicidal ecstasy.

It was the furious cry of a boatman that woke him, that and the summer sunlight streaming through an uncurtained window right onto his eyelids, though he had no knowledge of what was being shouted, only that fulsome curses were being employed. Pearce lay in the bed for a whole minute listening to that repeated thud before he could place it, and in doing so come to some knowledge of where he was.
The night before seemed as misty a memory as the horrible dream from which he had just surfaced; his dry mouth and leather tongue, plus the sour taste on his palate told him that he had been drunk, long before the lump of swollen flesh at the back of his throat gave him some idea of how much he had indulged in open-mouthed snoring. The thudding sound continued and it took time for him to realise it was that of a boat snubbing on the wooden jetty outside and below his window, striking the timbers each time it was lifted by a wave running into the deepest reaches of Portsmouth harbour.

Lifting himself to drink from a pitcher by his side, he groaned at the pain that seared through the top of his head, swallowing greedily to turn his tongue from fur to flesh, as some of what had happened the day before came back to him, that and all that had occurred these last few months: a whirlwind of the press gang, service at sea, storms, fighting the enemy less often than authority, and in doing so establishing the kind of friendships that a life of wanderings with his radical father had never allowed. What now of the confidence with which he had arrived in Portsmouth, sure in the knowledge that a promise he had made to the trio with whom he had been press-ganged months before would be fulfilled; that they would, like him, have the freedom to follow their own wishes rather than stay as enforced sailors in King George’s Navy? He recalled the look of sheer pleasure on the Midshipman’s face as he informed this fellow, attired now in the uniform of a lieutenant, that those he had come to free were no longer in the anchorage or aboard HMS
Centurion
, but had been shipped out on another vessel bound for the Mediterranean, condemned to continue to serve because he had dallied for a day or two longer than he should have in the arms of a beautiful, wealthy and indulgent woman.

Stood on the deck of the 50-gun warship, he looked on in dazed silence, at a loss to make sense of what had occurred,
as the carpenters worked away to repair the damage inflicted in the recent action, fitting new bulwarks and deck planking where they had been blown in or scarred by cannon fire, others pedalling fast-turning lathes, carving out the newel posts and uprights that would make up the replacement staircase rails. All around in the Spithead anchorage lay the might of Britain’s wooden walls, the great ships that were all that stood between tyranny and what the inhabitants of Albion took to be liberty.

All the while that midshipman stood there, silent but mocking, declining the idea that he might provide further explanation. The return journey across the anchorage seemed to add to that contempt, the hired wherry taking him past the damaged stern of
Valmy
, the 74-gun French ship that he, along with his companions, had helped to capture. Soon, no doubt, she too would be repaired, would be renamed under a British flag before being sent back to sea, there to challenge those vessels which had once been her consorts.

Ashore, Pearce had headed straight to a tavern crowded with soldiers, sailors and as many locals; dockyard mateys, costermongers, draymen and a sprinkling of fly types, ordering a flagon of French brandy and ‘damn the expense’, thus attracting attention to himself, for being now contraband, that was an expensive beverage. A
fellow-drinker
identified him as the hero of the recent action – he had seen him come ashore ten days before, the talk of a port that lived off the King’s Navy and loved a victory. That had led to bumper after bumper to celebrate the first true triumph of the latest French war, drinks consumed with relish by a man who had no desire to think, only to forget. Now he knew he was in a narrow bed, but not precisely where, knew he felt like death, but was wholly alive, knew that he still had on the breeches, silk stocking and silver-buckled shoes bought for him by the generous Lady Annabel Fitzherbert.

Sitting up, he could see his new coat, of dark blue, heavy broadcloth, was crumpled on the floor, along with his black silk naval hat. A quick feel of his purse told him it was still inside his breeches and still near-full, which led him to suspect that he had got very drunk on the coin and generosity of others, which was shaming. Head bent, Pearce reacted too sharply to the creaking door, and sent a shaft of pain through his temples, which meant the person who entered addressed a man with his eyes shut tight and his head in his hands.

‘There you are, sir, up an’ about at last. We had you down to sleep a month after the state you came to us in.’ The face, when he lifted his head and opened his eyes, was female, round, rosy-cheeked and affable, though the smile was without a single tooth, which gave the voice a lisping quality. ‘Now it strikes me, you bein’ the hero you are, that a proper breakfast is in order, that is after the necessary, of course.’

The ‘necessary’ turned out to be a herbal infusion of the inn-keeper’s own making, though there was a telling dose of alcohol in the brew, rough to be sure, Arrack most likely, given it burnt the back of his throat. He had to drink it straight down, for the maker of the potion stood before him, fists on a pair of hips so substantial that they would have stood comparison to a three-tun barrel. Her eyes were narrow and she seemed determined to ensure it went straight down to the seat of the problem for, as the landlady said, ‘Though the pain might be in your head, young sir, to be sure the seat of your malaise lies deep in the vital parts, in short, in your entrails, where the soul of man resides. The necessary, first, and perhaps a good evacuation, will see you renewed. Take my word for it, sir, for I have seen many a fellow in your condition and worse, my own late husband not least, in half a glass of sand you will be as right as rain
and tuckin’ into a fine beefsteak or two washed down with my own true porter, or I, Peg Bamber, am not the widow of a blue-water sailor.’

Peg Bamber had the right of it; not that a clearer head and a well-satisfied belly brought much in the way of true relief, for John Pearce was faced in clarity with the same dilemma which had plagued him these last months – how to get his mates, those men he called his fellow Pelicans, off the ship in which they had been sent to sea. Sitting in his shirtsleeves, looking out of the window by which he sat – for Peg insisted he eat in his room; ‘Why, young sir, to enter the taproom is to invite a return to the state in which you came upstairs this forenight’ – Pearce ran his eye over the bustling inner port. There were one or two vessels tied up to the shore, and over the nearest water a pair in dry dock, but the main part of the armada was some way out, with a stream of boats and hoys carrying people and supplies to and fro.

His friends, Michael O’Hagan, Charlie Taverner and young Rufus Dommet had been on that very water no more than five days before, no doubt anxiously looking over the ship’s rail for a sight of him come to rescue them. He had failed them, just as he had so recently failed his own father. As elements of that dream with which he had awoken came back to him, he began to talk in order to mask out the feelings it induced.

‘The name confuses, sir,’ lisped Peg Bamber, when he alluded to the problem of the Pelicans.

‘We were all press-ganged not five months past from a tavern. It was called the Pelican and stood by the banks of the River Thames.’

‘London, sir, a hateful place, I am told, where it ain’t safe to walk the streets.’

Pearce took another draw on the tankard of porter, sure he could feel in his gut the way it was doing him good,
sipping as he explained the illegality of what had happened that night, but leaving out the fact that he himself had been on the run from the law and a King’s Bench Warrant, and had only gone into the Pelican to escape pursuit and, if caught, imprisonment.

‘In seeking to secure ourselves against the malice of others, and as a badge of our shared misfortune, we adopted the name of Pelicans as a soubriquet.’

‘I have no notion of what a subrick is, sir, but I do know that pleading to me will get you not one whit forrard. The only authority that can gainsay your quandary is the Admiral himself.’

‘Howe.’

‘Why it’s as plain as the nose on your face,’ Peg insisted, lifting his plate and popping into her mouth the long slice of fat Pearce had trimmed from the edge of his beefsteak. ‘You must ask the Admiral to fetch them back. A fast pinnace will have no trouble coming up on a seventy-four, as long as her course is known, even a naval widow knows that.’

‘Admiral Lord Howe,’ said Pearce patiently, wondering if Peg really knew what she was talking about. He might consider himself no tarpaulin, but he did know that spotting another ship at sea, even if you had a fair notion of its course, was hit and miss at best, and in twenty-four hours, even at a medium rate of sailing, she could be a hundred miles down-Channel.

‘Black Dick Howe!’ Peg exclaimed, finally getting his drift. ‘Why, only God knows how a man can run a fleet of ships from Bath.’ Seeing the look on Pearce’s face, she added, ‘The crabbed old bugger has gone to take the waters, young sir, and no doubt to try and get his old bones a’fit for dalliance, which is fanciful in a man of his years, and all the while we are at risk of an enemy sailing in to burn and make devilment. It is to be hoped he can post-chaise back here
faster than the French can cross the waters, the idle dog.’

‘It was he who said the matter would be taken care of.’

‘Then let us hope he remembers, though I has to say it ain’t common in those of his advanced years. He’s not more’n a lick and a spit off seventy, the old goat. Happen you should try Admiral Graves, who does all the work for Black Dick and, if rumour has it right, suffers the brickbats for it not bein’ done quick enough.’

One of Peg’s girls came into the room holding his coat and hat, the former having been steamed and pressed, while his hat had been brushed to remove what Peg called half the mud of the alleys in which he had rolled. The conversation that ensued as he dressed himself established who and what Graves was – second-in-command of the Channel fleet, and an irascible man with much to be irascible about.

‘You will need to boat out to his ship to see him at all,’ Peg added, with a loud disapproving sniff. ‘He abides to the rule that it is sinful for anyone to sleep ashore, admiral to mid, which makes him the devil incarnate to folk who make their coin from accommodating and feeding the likes of your good self. Instead he fills the purses of bum-boat men and their floating harlots. Not that tars don’t need comfort, sir, but…’

Pearce stopped the indignant flow by agreeing with her, then established that Admiral Graves was aboard his flagship, HMS
Royal Sovereign
.

‘Shall I send a girl to bespeak you a boat?’

‘Please, and I will settle what I owe in case I do not return.’

‘A hearty bill, sir,’ Peg exclaimed, opening her mouth to show pink gums. ‘You treated the good folk of Portsmouth well this forenight, and paid for more sore heads than your own. I’ll grant you the cure
gratis
, as is only fittin’ for a hero, the second I have had under my roof his present war.’