An Awkward Commission (2 page)

‘The second?’ said Pearce, distracted by the thought of what might be a substantial bill, and the disturbing thought that he might not be able to meet it.

‘Why yes, sir. I had a lad even younger under my eaves a month or two back, a midshipman as brave as you, sir, to judge by his tale. Young Mr Burns, for that was his name, took a ship from right under the noses of Jean Crapaud, out of the very harbour in which it was berthed if you please, and brought her back to her home shore…’

Peg Bamber stopped, non-plussed by the look of deep anger in John Pearce’s face.

‘I know Mr Burns, Madame, and I can assure you were the truth of his tale to be known he would be whipped rather than lauded.’ Pearce, recalling the pasty face of Toby Burns, of the boy’s utter uselessness and the bland betrayal he had perpetrated on himself and the very men he had come to Portsmouth to rescue, had to fight not to add more than that bitter condemnation. But he had to stop; it was no concern of this woman that Burns was a lying little toad, even if he could not suppress his feelings entirely. His voice, when he spoke, carried the strain of a man holding an exceedingly unpleasant memory in check.

‘I thank you, Mrs Bamber, for your care and attention.’

The reply was a pretty curtsy, even in a woman of her size, and mouth closed and frame diminished, it was possible to see the quite comely girl she must have once been. But the eyes had a sudden glint, when she added, ‘I’ll see to your account, sir.’

Several guineas lighter, John Pearce left Peg Bamber’s, making his way to the shoreline of the Common Hard, where the boat Peg’s girl had engaged was waiting, drawn up on the shingle. It turned out to be a family concern, a conjugal affair, and once paid a shilling in advance for their
trouble, the husband and wife saw it as part of their task to entertain their passenger with an unrelenting account of mutual frustration – about their abode, the job from which they made their living, even their intimacy – with each in turn looking to him at some point for support.

‘A pig-sty, sir, that is where I live.’

‘Then it be above your station, that’s fer certain,’ spat the wife, a thick-armed crone with an unlit clay pipe clamped in her teeth. She looked to be twice as strong as her spouse, who was weedy and wiry, with a pinched unhealthy face, albeit perfectly able to match her pace on the oar. ‘Just like the stick you are. Yer not fit to be a crossing-sweeper.’

‘I would have to sweep hard to clear your filth.’ A look to the passenger followed, his eyes searching for sympathy from his own gender. ‘An’ no warmth, sir, not a drop of it, just a cold shoulder.’

‘Would that you had something to warm a woman, you spavined dog…’

Pearce tried to shut out the sound of their bickering and looked away so that neither could engage him in their cause. That dream surfaced again, in all its horrible clarity, because these were the kind of folk for whom his father had argued passionately all his life. Adam Pearce had travelled the length and breadth of the country, his son in tow, trying to better the lot of the dispossessed. He would speak at the stump of whichever place they stopped to lambast the comfortable and extol the intrinsic worth of the poor, who only needed an education to be as fine as those who saw themselves as their betters. And John Pearce had, for he was too young to do otherwise, shared such opinions, even as he sought to avoid being robbed of the contents of his hat, usually copper, rarely silver, by the offspring of the very audience his father was addressing. Those sentiments had even survived a spell in the Fleet prison, for Adam Pearce had a carapace of
social faith every bit as strong as that of the most committed adherent of religion.

It was not one his son now shared. Age and growing independence, added to what he had seen in Paris in the two and a bit years they had spent there, had cured him. Were the pair on the oars the same kind of
canaille
who had emerged from the eastern slums of Paris to ruin the Revolution – filthy specimens with brains that could encompass no other thought than greedy violence, the types who had torn down the Bastille stone by stone? And if that was a laudable event, joyously hailed even in Britain as an end to royal tyranny, what followed over the months and years became progressively less so. He had seen the likes of this pair covered from head to bare foot in fresh blood, running under flaming torches through the streets of Paris, bearing heads on pikes that they had hacked off from their dead victims, and screaming of how many more would die.

‘Name, sir?’ demanded the boatman. ‘We’s a-coming under
Royal Sovereign
’s counter.’

‘Pearce, John Pearce,’ he replied, looking up at the towering three-decker, and the mass of gilded carving that decorated her stern. Then he added a word that still sounded bizarre to his ears: ‘Lieutenant.’

Once alongside, the fellow called over his shoulder to the entry port, a dark hole in the ship’s side, framed by the climbing battens that would be needed to get aboard at sea. Here, they had fitted a long sloping gangway.

‘Lieutenant Pearce seeking permission to come aboard, your honour.’

‘Your honour?’ called a voice from the interior. ‘You ain’t talking to me, that’s fer certain.’ Two sailors emerged, boat-hooks at the ready, one taking the prow of the wherry to haul it in, the other more rigid to steady the approach of
the stern. ‘Boat your oars, fellows, for if’n you scrape the paint it’ll be my guts.’

‘One of them’s a woman I reckon, Clem,’ said the other sailor.

‘You don’t say!’ Clem shouted, looking hard at the female in the boat, all wild grey hair and wrinkled skin. ‘Then make sure when I is soused and ashore, mate, that I stay well clear of her, for Old Nick hisself would blanch to be seen coupling with that.’

‘One of these days, husband, I might find a tar with enough to please a woman, but I doubt this be the one.’

‘I make you right there, Susie, my love,’ her husband replied, in the softest and most defensive of voices, making it clear that civility came to them only when they were faced with an external insult.

On what now seemed a steady platform, Pearce stood up, wondering at a life like theirs, in which the next meal had been probably uncertain since birth, but he was soon obliged to think more of his own immediate safety as the wherry was pulled in, nearly knocking him off-balance.

About to step onto the gangway, he stopped dead when the sailor called Clem cried out, ‘Right foot first, sir, where has you put your wits?’

He had to skip to get his right foot on the wooden platform first, and thus he avoided the opprobrium of condemning the whole ship to perdition through the act of ignoring a superstition. Up he went to enter the dim interior, to be greeted by a midshipman who raised his hat. Pearce did likewise, distracted as he glanced along the empty maindeck, then wondered at the look on the boy’s face as he put it back on. Quickly he raised it again, half-turning to salute the unseen quarterdeck, mentally kicking himself to remember the things that an officer was supposed to do on coming aboard.

‘I have come to see Admiral Graves.’

‘Have you indeed, sir,’ replied the boy. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No.’

The boy sighed. ‘Then I fear you are in for a long wait. Best bespeak the officer in charge of the anchor watch and see if he will allow you the use of the wardroom.’

‘Obliged.’

‘Follow me, sir.’

He was led across the gloomy deck to a wide stairway that led up to the quarterdeck. There they found the man presently in charge of the ship, likewise a lieutenant, in an unadorned blue working coat, who, on being introduced, immediately enquired as to the date of his commission. Admitting it to be only days old brought forth a puffed chest and the information that this man was his superior by three years. Only then did he ask his name, and a raised eyebrow went with the reply.

‘Pearce, of the
Griffin
? The fellow who was spoke of in the local journal only last week?’ Trying to look modest, Pearce nodded. ‘Damn you, Tait,’ the officer barked at the mid, ‘you best learn, you pint-sized blackguard, to execute proper introductions.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the boy, abashed, though clearly he was equally confused.

‘You will be.’ With Pearce, all condescension disappeared. ‘Allow me, sir, to shake your hand, for that was a worthy exploit, and it warms our cockles to look out over the taffrail and see the ship you helped to take. I would be less than honest, sir, if I did not tell you it stirs a little jealousy also, for we would all wish to have such luck.’

A vision of the bloodshed that had attended the capture floated into Pearce’s mind, which sat uneasily with the concept of luck.

‘The Admiral has much to attend to and a queue of supplicants, but I am sure your name will see you well up the list.’ There was a pause them, before the Lieutenant added, ‘But were you not a midshipman, sir?’

‘I was, sir, but the King, at his levee, saw fit to insist that I be promoted, hence the newness of my commission. The commander of HMS
Griffin
was made a post captain at the same time.’

Pearce did not add that the Earl of Chatham, First Lord of the Admiralty, had objected to his elevation only to be over-ruled by his own younger brother, the King’s absurdly young First Minister. He was later told by the lovely Lady Annabel that William Pitt was more concerned with the state of the monarch’s health and the maintenance of his government than the propriety of promoting a man who lacked any of the qualifications that the post demanded. In a parliament riven with competing ideas and policies, Pitt commanded a tenuous majority, which required constant manoeuvring to sustain. War with France was not universally popular, indeed there were those who would make peace on the morrow if they could just gain power. The ministry of Pitt was based on Tory support, but that was not unanimous, yet the opposition Whigs were no more united, some sections inclining to the government view that the Revolution must be contained, the majority of that faction lining up behind Pitt’s great rival, Charles James Fox, to challenge the government on every issue, from the war itself, to the prosecution of the conflict, egged on by the power-hungry heir to the throne.

Pitt’s party was the one favoured by King George, who could not be other than opposed to a radical polity in Paris which had executed his fellow monarch, King Louis of France, a few months previously. But George III had been declared mad just three years before – which had created a political
crisis – and it was feared by all that the affliction which had rendered him unfit to govern would return. The Prince of Wales and his Whig supporters longed for such a thing, for in a declared Regency, with the King’s heir apparent as head of state, they, not Pitt’s Tories, would hold the power. To the King’s First Minister, indulging an unstable king with an inappropriate promotion was obviously a small price to pay for the security of office.

The advancement of Colbourne to the rank of post captain brought forth a gleam of near-avarice in Pearce’s fellow-officer. ‘Then I envy your Mr Colbourne, sir, his promotion, even more than I envy you.’

‘He lost an arm, and I do believe he has to face a
court-martial
.’

‘A formality, sir, nothing more.’ Clearly, to this fellow, the loss of a limb or a ship counted for less than Colbourne’s new rank. ‘What is that when you are made post? Why, a man on the captain’s list is a man made for life, with a flag on the horizon if the Good Lord spares you. I long for nothing more, sir, as I am sure you do too. Mr Tait, take Lieutenant Pearce to the wardroom as my guest, and tell the Steward that he is to waive the normal contribution we ask of visiting officers to our fund.’

Pearce was about to demure when the lieutenant added, ‘It is the bane of life on a flagship, sir, the law of hospitality. We are obliged to levy a charge, for we are called upon to feed all and sundry as they wait for their interview, which would devastate our private stores without recompense. But you, sir, are an exception, a worthy guest. Meanwhile, I will tell the Admiral’s clerk who’s come a’calling.’

To enter the wardroom of a vessel this size, a hundred guns or more, was a revelation to John Pearce. It could not be said to be spacious, yet compared to that allotted to the common seamen, or what he had experienced so far, it was
luxury indeed, with a long table across the room and small screened-off cabins to either side. Three marine officers and another lieutenant were playing backgammon, while others, close to flickering candles or the five transom casements, read their books or wrote letters.

‘Forgive me, Mr Pearce, while I inform the Premier of your presence.’

Going to rear the boy rapped on a wooden door. There was another on the opposite side, a private space of proper cabins for the two most senior officers under the Captain. The disinterest with which he had been greeted on entering the wardroom, for visitors were so commonplace, evaporated as the First Lieutenant emerged from his quarters, a beaming smile on his face and a shout on his lips.

‘Steward, fetch the best claret, we have a fellow on board deserving of a toast.’

Named, they gathered round him, trying to feed him cup after cup of wine, but Pearce, obliged by the welcome to relate every detail of the recent action, stayed as abstemious as was possible, knowing that he needed a clear head for what was to come. More troubling was the technicality of the questions he was asked about courses, wind strength, gun calibres and the effect of various weights of shot on the lighter scantlings of a French ship, all of which he struggled to answer out of sheer ignorance.

He wanted to tell them that his entire time at sea would not amount to much more than five months – that he had read his books but not enough. Yet he knew that such disclosure would be unwelcome, so he tried his best to satisfy their curiosity, drawing the elements of the action on the wardroom table with a finger dipped in his wine. It was with some relief that he was finally dragged off to see the Admiral, with an invitation from the First Lieutenant to be their guest that afternoon at dinner. Young Tait was again
obliged to guide him, this time past two marine sentries who stood at the door to the anteroom of the Admiral’s quarters, and once inside that, to introduce him to an officious-looking civilian at a desk.