An Awkward Commission (16 page)

The big eyebrows went up. ‘Indeed. Might I enquire what took you there?’

It was with an air of defiance that Pearce answered. ‘My father took me there!’

‘Pearce,’ Hood said, his look uncertain, clearly seeking to make a connection in his mind. ‘Paris?’ That he did so was obvious by the sharp nod that followed. What was strange was the fact that he did not say anything more.

‘Mr Farmiloe, sir,’ said his secretary.

‘Show the boy in.’

Expecting more questions about Toulon, Farmiloe’s heart sank when he saw Pearce sitting at the admiral’s table, and the look the man gave him did nothing to ease his disquiet. If he had been a discomforting presence aboard HMS
Brilliant
, he was a damn sight more so now. In the intervening hour, he had had plenty of time to recall everything he knew about the fellow and the trouble he had caused, though they had had little direct contact.

‘Mr Farmiloe,’ said Hood. ‘This gentleman claims that he was illegally pressed into the Navy. He also says that you were present at the time. I wonder if you would care to shed any light on that?’

A boy would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to be unaware that what Barclay had done was not officially permitted. It had been a topic of discussion in the wardroom and that had filtered down to the gunroom, with much ribbing aimed at him about being hung, drawn and
quartered for being part of it. Well aware that the blame for transgressions had a way of spreading, the other topic of conversation had been the response to an accusation, so it was without hesitation that Farmiloe replied.

‘I was with Captain Barclay, sir, and obeying his orders.’

‘So you do not deny that Mr Pearce here was pressed?’

‘No, sir.’ Farmiloe paused then, trying to remember after all these months what it was Barclay had actually said on that night. He could recall the captain being in a foul temper, but then that was not unusual. ‘We were short on our complement and had orders to weigh. Captain Barclay made it plain that we needed hands, and that failure to get any would seriously compromise the ability of our ship to function. With the extra hands we were able to depart Sheerness the next morning.’

‘You are not aware that I saw Captain Barclay the very day this impressment is alleged to have taken place?’

It was with genuine shock that Farmiloe responded. ‘No, sir.’ Pearce merely looked inquisitive at the use of the word alleged.

‘The location of this was?’ Hood enquired.

‘The Thames, sir, above Blackfriars Bridge, where we expected to find at least some of those we took up were bred to the sea.’

‘But not all?’

‘There was no time to enquire, sir. Captain Barclay insisted we act quickly and take whosoever we could lay our hands on, albeit they were to be of the right age and fit enough to serve.’

‘Tell me, Mr Farmiloe,’ said Pearce, earning himself a dark look from Hood, who clearly felt he had no business interfering. ‘Do you know anything about the Liberties of the Savoy?’

‘No,’ Farmiloe replied, unable to add a “sir” to that.

‘They are in the part of London from which I was pressed.’

‘I don’t know London. That night was the only time I have been there.’

‘So you had no idea,’ demanded Hood, taking back the interrogation, ‘that the place from which you were taking these men had a protection under the auspices of the Duchy of Lancaster?’

‘No, sir, I did not.’

Again Pearce cut in. ‘But you found out subsequently, I suspect?’

Hood barked at him this time, his heavy eyebrows nearly joined above his nose. ‘Mr Pearce, please be so good as to leave this questioning to me. It makes no odds what people knew subsequently, all that matters is what they knew at the time.’

Farmiloe was looking at the deckbeams above his head, and Pearce, examining the boy, suddenly felt a tinge of sympathy for him. He was a midshipman; if his captain told him to do something there was no way a lad like this would question his orders. The real culprit was not present, and it was cruel to make Farmiloe suffer for the sins of Ralph Barclay.

‘Mr Farmiloe, I apologise to you. But please understand that the memory of that night, to me, is something that I cannot recall without anger. It is then hardly surprising that it can be misdirected.’

‘Thank you,’ Farmiloe said, genuinely relieved, for he was certain he was going to carry the kid for that night, certain that he would be sent home in disgrace.

‘Thank you, Mr Farmiloe,’ said Hood, going back to the letters on his desk. ‘That will be all.’

There was silence for a while, as he re-read some of Pitt’s
letter, his brow furrowing in a way that implied some of what he was reading was unpleasant. ‘So, Mr Pearce, you are in need of a place?’

‘I am in need of a solution to the problem we have just been discussing, sir. If I, and my companions already named, were illegally pressed, and are anxious to get release from service at sea, then you are in a position to grant that wish.’

‘I can do nothing until I have questioned Captain Barclay.’

‘Who is where?’

‘Off Toulon.’

‘Which is where the fleet is headed, is it not?’

Hood sat back in his chair, and when he spoke his voice was flat, though the words he used were as pointed as they could be. ‘It seems to me, young man, that you have a very unfortunate manner. I think my rank entitles me to a little more in the way of polite address.’

‘That would only be because you are used to the company of naval officers.’

That was nothing short of damned cheek, but Hood did not respond. His voice remained even. ‘Which you have been commissioned as. Whether such a thing is right or wrong it is nevertheless true.’

‘One of the advantages of not seeking advancement, Lord Hood, is the fact that I can talk as I wish.’

Hood sat forward then, and lifted Pitt’s letter. ‘It says here that Mr Pitt would be most obliged if I would consider you for a place. You may or may not know that I am part of his government, appointed to my naval office by the very same man who tells me he has a commitment to you. He makes it plain how much meeting that means to him, which makes his request a hard one to deny.’

Pearce nearly blurted out the truth; that such a thing had only been added as a desperate attempt to make sure he got
to where he was now, that if Hood acted as he should then such a request had no relevance. What stopped him he did not know, only that the admiral’s attitude perplexed him, and that it was better to keep to his chest what cards he had to play with, rather than squander them.

‘So,’ Hood continued, ‘I think in those circumstances a little less arrogance would be in your interest.’

‘Can I ask about your meeting with Captain Barclay prior to my being pressed?’

Hood smiled. ‘No, Lieutenant Pearce, you may not. Now please be so good as to depart, as I have more pressing business to attend to, dealing with our friends from Marseilles.’ Then he added, ‘I apologise for the play on words, it was unintentional.’

Midshipman Toby Burns was sitting on the south-facing part of the mainmast cap, digesting his dinner. He liked it up here when the flagship was sailing on a steady wind, with no one needing to trim sails and only the change of the lookouts plus the odd ship’s boy skylarking to disturb his peace. Most of his contemporaries liked to stay below, snug in their berth. Since he had never liked it there, nor had much regard for the company either on this ship or HMS
Brilliant
, he stayed out of the place as much as he could. The sun was shining, he was delightfully warm, with a welcome breeze this far aloft to ensure he was not baking in the late afternoon heat.

Aboard as a supernumerary, being carried as a passenger until he rejoined his own ship, he had no duties except to daily attend the schoolmaster’s lessons, something which the Premier of HMS
Victory
had insisted on as a cure for outright idleness. Earlier hints that he might undertake some duties, which would have relieved some of the ship’s designated midshipmen, had been politely declined, an attitude which would have produced an ill-reaction were it not that the fellow concerned was something of a hero.

The unexpected arrival of Midshipman Farmiloe had no seeming effect on that status, although to see him aboard the flagship was a shock. But it had served one purpose for, though there had been caution – he and Farmiloe had not
been close – there had been no outright reserve in the greeting, which confirmed how he was seen aboard the frigate; in short, he was still a hero in the places that mattered, the gunroom, wardroom and captain’s cabin. At one time he had worried that one or two of the common seamen might have a different opinion, but then he had reasoned that no one who mattered cared what they thought, or would listen to what they said.

It was therefore a great shock to look down at the quarterdeck, and realise that the fellow who had just emerged from the after companionway, and in raising his hat to the officer of the watch had revealed his face, was the one man who could blow that undeserved reputation out of the water and damn him as a useless coward. What the hell was Pearce doing in the uniform of a lieutenant, and clearly being greeted as such?

Burns got himself behind the mainmast double-quick, so that when John Pearce looked up all he saw was the flash of a disappearing blue coat and white ducks. Given permission to walk the forecastle, he made his way along the gangway that ran alongside the Spar Deck, to where he could contemplate in peace what had happened in the admiral’s cabin, not least the suspicion that despite the plain fact that he had established the illegality of Barclay’s actions, and the men he wanted released were part of the fleet, Hood had seemed disinclined to do anything about it. Above his head, Toby Burns slipped back to the front of the mainmast, well hidden by the thick oak, desperately trying to think what to do.

It was not just his status as a hero that was at risk; the way he had left Pearce and his friends had been seen by them as a stroke of downright duplicity, even if he was obeying his captain’s precise orders at the time. Pearce had made it plain that he would exact revenge for that, and in the imagination
of Toby Burns that took many forms, none of them pleasant. Suddenly that sun was not so warm and the boy shivered with fear. Seeing where his nemesis had gone, he made his way back to the deck by the shrouds, to use a backstay might attract attention, his mind concentrating on where he could hide. HMS
Victory
was a large and crowded vessel, yet he knew, long before he got back to it, that the safest place for him was in that part of the ship he liked least, the midshipmen’s berth.

‘Farmiloe!’ he whispered urgently, for they were not alone. ‘You’ll never guess who I have just seen.’

The other mid, stripped to the waist, did not look up as he ham-fistedly tried to repair a hole in the near-threadbare shirt he had exchanged prior to the admiral’s dinner. ‘Pearce.’

‘The very fellow. What the devil is he doing aboard?’

‘More to the point, what is he doing outranking us, Burns?’

The other midshipman, having pricked a finger for the third time, threw the shirt to one side and finally looked into the anxious face of Burns, wondering if any more spots had erupted since he had last seen him a couple of hours before. They had never really got on, although the acquaintance had not been of a long duration, weeks rather than months, for Burns had seemed a bit of a milksop aboard
Brilliant
, always moaning, dodging his duties and rather unfitted for a life at sea, slow to learn anything and even slower to apply what he had garnered. There was a certain amount of envy too; the fact that Captain Barclay, whose wife was the milksop’s aunt, had sent him away with a prize and a positive despatch that would do his future career no harm. This had not endeared Burns to any of the other mids or master’s mates aboard the frigate, in what was seen as a clear case of nepotism.

‘I fear he has come to see your uncle put in irons,’ Farmiloe added.

‘My uncle?’

‘Captain Barclay.’

Toby Burns was well aware of how his departure had been seen by his contemporaries, for he had been the youngest mid aboard; they had seen as corrupt what he had reckoned to be a reward for nearly losing his life, and if not that, at least a release from the misery of service. Going back to serve on HMS
Brilliant
was not something to which he was looking forward – service life was not as he had imagined it to be before enlisting – and he had tried to wriggle out of doing so with various claims of illness while at home. But the reasons that had seen him leaving home the first time, when he still harboured romantic notions of a naval career, still applied. His parents, having seen to his elder brothers, did not have the means to underwrite a career that went with their station in life. The Navy took aboard and educated its future officers for free, therefore Toby, the youngest in the family, must make his way in that profession.

‘He is not really a proper uncle, Farmiloe, I have told you that a dozen times.’

‘I fail to see how he is not, when he is wedded to your Aunt Emily, who is cousin to your father, though only the Good Lord knows how such a match came about.’

Toby Burns knew why; his grandparent’s substantial house was entailed to the distant Barclay relatives through a previous connection. Emily marrying the captain had secured tenure for the whole family, not least his own mother and father, who, by living with those relatives, could keep up the appearance of some social standing with little or no income.

‘What do you mean, putting Captain Barclay in irons?’

Farmiloe told him what had happened in Hood’s cabin, but he did not open up, did not trust Burns enough to say that he had known very well that what they were about
was illegal, and that had nothing to do with things called Liberties. The laws on impressment were strict, only men bred to the sea were to be taken up. It made no odds that the law was observed more in the breech, breaking it and being had up was serious, and he feared that he might be caught in the backwash of Barclay’s actions.

‘Anyway, Burns, you were with him when you went ashore, so you must have a better idea than I of how he got his rank.’

‘I didn’t go ashore with him or the others. They were pressed in soundings.’ Farmiloe looked at him then with marked curiosity, as Burns went a deep red, which made the numerous spots on his face flare. ‘I had orders from Captain Barclay that if such a thing were to occur, I was not to interfere.’

‘Pearce was pressed again?’

‘Have I not just said so?’

‘Then his being a lieutenant is doubly mysterious.’

‘I must stay out of his way, Farmiloe. I fear he will not remember me kindly.’

There was a terrible temptation for Farmiloe to say something like, ‘no one ever will, mate,’ but he bit his tongue. ‘Don’t look to me for aid, Burns. I don’t think he has any regard for me either. You seem to forget I was there the first time he was pressed.’

Sick of traversing the forecastle, tired of gnawing at his problems, he made his way down to the wardroom, entering a place so capacious it made the accommodation of a frigate look like a hutch. With eight lieutenants, the usual number of warrants and three marine officers it needed to be substantial, though it was clearly not roomy enough. The table set across the stern windows was near full, and as he entered, heads turned, and all eyes were upon him in
examination, that was until one officer spoke to an open door at the very stern, which brought forth another.

‘Mr Pearce, is it not?’ The nod got the introduction. ‘Ingolby, first of
Victory
. Allow me to welcome you to our quarters.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You will, of course, realise that we are cramped, so I have had your dunnage sent down to the orlop deck, where there is room in the sick-bay to accommodate you. That is for sleeping only, of course, you are at liberty to use this place as you wish.’

‘That is very kind of you.’

‘Can I offer you some refreshment?’

‘I think Lord Hood has seen to that, Mr Ingolby.’

‘Quite.’ Ingolby paused, looking not embarrassed exactly, but uncomfortable. ‘I fear, sir, that you will be inundated with questions regarding the
Valmy
, since your reputation precedes you.’

About to ask how, Pearce stopped; even he knew that on a ship it was near-impossible to keep anything secret. He had had the same problem aboard
Tartar
, the need to recount every detail of the action to satisfy the insatiable curiosity of naval officers who dreamed themselves of such an exploit.

‘I have impressed upon the wardroom not to hound you, for having received a
Gazette
with the mails, every one is agog for a first-hand view, though it does not exactly chime with what we have heard about you.’

‘Much praise, I suspect, of Captain Marchand?’

‘Why yes.’ Ingolby replied, before smiling, as though he guessed what Pearce was driving at; that the
Gazette
would have been taken from Marchand’s despatch and he was not a man to be modest or even truthful. ‘I have suggested perhaps that we wait until supper, where I hope you will join
us for cheese on toasted biscuit and some wine. Perhaps, until then, a tour of the ship?’

‘Thank you.’

The master allocated him one of his mates, he, in turn, seeking out the warranted officers, all men of some age and experience, who were only too happy to tell all. Pearce treated them with respect, for to have their posts on this vessel made them very senior people indeed. These were men who had spent a lifetime in the Navy, had worked their way up from one ship to the next, the number of guns rising with each move, their appointments made by the Navy Board, a body with whom they would readily communicate if they felt their pride or their professionalism to be in any way questioned or traduced.

In an hour of walking he learnt that HMS
Victory
was two hundred and twenty-six feet plus a bit long, figurehead to taffrail, just under fifty-two feet in beam at the widest point, carrying a total of 104 cannon, 44 twelve pounders, 28 twenty-four pounders, and on the lower gun deck 30 massive thirty-two pounders, plus a pair of sixty-eight pounder carronades, know as ‘smashers’ on the forecastle, the whole displacing three thousand five hundred tons and carrying a total complement of 850 souls. Veteran of a couple of battles and the relief of Gibraltar in 1782, she had served as a flagship to several admirals and was held to be one of the finest ships afloat in King George’s Navy. The last Pearce took with a pinch of salt; it was known, even he knew, that a ship’s standing officers never, ever, uttered anything but praise for the vessel on which they served.

He was back on the main deck, having been in the bowels of the ship amongst futtocks and hanging knees, when the party from Marseilles, having concluded their discussions with the admirals, were shown to the entry port, and he was able to bid farewell to men who seemed happier
than when they had last talked, buoyed by promises that Pearce suspected were more hopes than realities; that once the French fleet was either taken, destroyed or rendered ineffective, Hood would return to help them fight off the armies of the Jacobins.

While talking, he was being subjected to deep scrutiny by a pair of midshipmen crouched on the steps of a companionway, having raised their heads just enough to see him. But they had to move, as the bosun’s whistle sounded to call all hands on deck. Above their heads the signal was being raised on the mizzen mast, flags that told all ships to wear in succession, that order taking effect with a discharge from the signal gun, their destination Toulon.

‘Lieutenant Pearce,’ said a secretary, ‘Lord Hood has requested that you attend upon him.’

‘Sit down, Lieutenant Pearce.’ As he complied, Pearce was aware that Hood was using his rank, something he had studiously avoided in their earlier interview, and the realisation made him suspicious. ‘As you will observe, my secretary is staying with us to take notes on our conversation and I have asked the Captain of the Fleet, Rear Admiral Parker, to join us. I take it you have no objection?’

‘That would depend, sir, on the nature of our conversation.’

‘I can assure you it is in the nature of being official, Lieutenant.’ Pearce just nodded, besides, there was no alternative. ‘You sat with our recently departed French guests at dinner?’

Parker, sleek and well-fed, entered the cabin, and at a nod from Lord Hood sat at the table, as Pearce answered. ‘Have we not covered that fact, already?’

‘We have, and I daresay over the food and wine they told you as much as they told me in conference.’

‘That,’ Pearce insisted, ‘I would not know, since I was not present at your final conference.’

Glancing in his direction, he saw the look of surprise on Parker’s face – mere lieutenants did not talk back to flag officers in such a way – before Hood addressed his Fleet Captain, though he was still looking at Pearce. ‘You will find, Sir Hyde, that this young man has a unique way of responding to authority. It might be of benefit to us both if I point out to him that he will have no way of persuading me to grant him any favours if he continues in that vein.’