Blown Off Course (2 page)

As he was about to leave the room, Stephens delivered a parting shot. ‘And please remember, Lieutenant, to bring with you the requisite fees for these protections.’

Which left him asking, as he exited the gate of the Admiralty building in a foul temper, recalling, as he did, the way he had been obliged to pay even for the letters granting him his lieutenant’s rank, if there was anything the navy did that was not accompanied by a demand for a fee.

In coming to the Pelican Tavern Pearce had, perforce, to enter the Liberties of the Savoy, that strip by the River Thames where many of the writs that constituted the law of the land did not run. In doing so he had passed many a sharp eye and had been studied with care, looks that belonged to men who made their living from taking up miscreants with writs against their name. Most for debt, many were for minor crimes, like those of Charlie Taverner, who had worked as a sharp in the nearby areas to the north, the Strand and Covent Garden, preying on and duping the innocent or the foolish.

Outrageous schemes promising fabulous returns, forged lottery tickets, fake watch auctions and a bit of dipping had been Charlie’s stock-in-trade. Rufus Dommet, an innocent sort of fellow who looked younger even than his tender years, had run from an onerous apprentice bond, a crime in the eyes of an unforgiving law. This was the place where he had first met them
and that pair, barring the Sabbath, if Pitt reneged on his commitment, would still be at risk of arrest outside the confines of the Liberties, protections or not.

Once inside and divested of his boat cloak, home to roaring fires and a healthy fug of pipe smoke, he sought out and parked himself in the same seat as the one at which he had first met them, ordering some
much-needed
food and a tankard of warming metheglin. This gave him, from the very back of the room, as it had on that foul and windy night, a good view of the door through which he had entered.

Pearce had been on the run himself then, from the King’s Bench warrant so recently alluded to by Phillip Stephens, as well as the powerful bailiffs employed by the courts to execute such writs and apprehend the putative villain. His crime – in truth, that of his father – had been called sedition, a much more serious transgression than the offences common in the Liberties, one that could end at Tyburn if those who hated radical writings were inclined to press matters to an execution.

From this very perch he had watched Michael O’Hagan lift a hefty pine bench using nothing but his teeth – an indication, if his height and bulk were insufficient, of his massive natural strength. The giant Irishman had been mightily drunk before his feat and even more so afterwards – if he had been sober there was not a press gang in the world could have taken him up without he felled most of those trying. Eyes ranging over the room, Pearce took in the door by the serving hatch through which he had tried to escape, only to run into those set there to catch their fleeing quarry, which
brought about his first encounter with Captain Ralph Barclay, the man he now saw as his mortal enemy.

‘Such a ferocious stare, sir, I would not want to be the object of your ruminations.’

Pearce looked up at the man who stood before him, into a winning smile in an amiable, handsome face, immediately relaxing his own compressed features. ‘I was lost in recollection, sir.’

‘Then damned unpleasant they must have been, Lieutenant.’

‘I was recalling the night a press gang burst into this very room and carted off all of the able-bodied men, myself included.’

‘That was but a year past was it not?’ the stranger said, his eye running over the uniform coat with an air of deep curiosity.

‘Then you know of it?’

‘Sir, it has been the talk of the place ever since, almost the first subject to which I was made aware when I moved my place of business to a set of chambers close by and began to come to the Pelican for refreshment. Allow me to name myself: Arthur Winston, and you, sir, are …?

‘John Pearce.’

‘And you were pressed that night?’

‘I was.’

‘An act which is illegal in this part of the metropolis?’

That made Pearce smile, so unaccustomed was he to that misconduct being acknowledged. The Liberties of the Savoy came under the legal jurisdiction of the
Duchy of Lancaster, they being the boundaries of the long-gone Savoy Palace, which had been home to John of Gaunt, third son of the King Edward who won at Crécy, progenitor of the bloodline which had produced in his grandson, Henry, the more famous victor of Agincourt. For several centuries, because of its exempt status outside the control of the Royal Courts, it had provided sanctuary for the less salubrious citizens of London and Westminster. One of the statutes of the Liberties, well frequented by Thames watermen, was that it was against the law to seek to press seamen from within its confines.

Seeing agreement in Pearce’s expression, Winston added, in a sombre tone, ‘But I suspect you are familiar with that to an uncomfortable degree.’ He leant forward to see into Pearce’s near empty tankard. ‘Would you permit me to purchase you a refill, sir?’

A look of suspicion crossed Pearce’s face; he could not help it, for life since childhood, traversing the whole of the kingdom in the company of his radical father, had attuned him to distrust unwarranted and too spontaneous generosity, often the precursor to an attempt at chicanery. Yet it disappeared as fast as it surfaced: what possible harm could there be in taking a tankard from this fellow?

‘I confess a purpose, sir,’ Winston said, his face solemn. ‘I am agog to hear of what happened to you and how, in the name of creation, after so short a time, you can be wearing what I assume is a uniform coat of a rank to which you are entitled.’

Avoiding a direct answer, being guarded about the
story of his elevation to a lieutenant’s rank, Pearce grinned, invited the fellow to sit down and accepted the invitation to drink, this time a tankard of porter. Perhaps it was the fact that he was nothing to do with the King’s Navy, or even that he was an habitué of the Pelican and thus something of a soul mate to his friends, stuck in Portsmouth, awaiting their protections.

As the serving wench, called over with her jug to provide the necessary, came towards them, Pearce, seeing the depth and extent of her visible bosom, as well as the width of her hips, was reminded of Rosie, another fulsome girl first seen on that ill-fated night, one who had enjoyed the favours of Michael O’Hagan while simultaneously fuelling the jealousies of Charlie Taverner. When he mentioned this other wench’s likeness to Rosie, his new companion reacted with disbelief, the look on his face one which implied he thought an association between them somewhat unlikely.

‘She was an acquaintance of yours, sir?’

‘I confess I really did not know her, Rosie being of neither a shape or personality to attract me, but she was at one time the paramour of a friend.’

‘And the possessor of the most overwhelming bosom this side of Tartary.’

‘The friend in question was Michael O’Hagan and he was pressed at the same time as me.’

‘Then sadly, if he still carries a torch for Rosie, he will find his bird flown.’

‘A fact he mentioned with some regret.’

‘Aye, a farmer came in some months past from Covent Garden market, apparently, with gold in his hand and
love in his heart for a wench with such massive udders and he carted her off, no doubt to milk her. I think it was the former, the gold, which swayed your wench, for my information is that he was not overtly handsome.’

Charlie Taverner had also harboured designs of Rosie and he was handsome, but that had availed him little, which made sense of Winston’s observation. ‘I reckon you are correct, sir: she was also the object of affection to another friend who lacked the means to engage her interest.’

‘So, sir,’ Winston said, now sat beside Pearce and his eyes full of hope. ‘Am I to be favoured with a telling of your tale, or are the memories too painful to recount?’

‘There is a great deal to tell.’

Winston waved his tankard, full and foaming. ‘I have no pressing engagements.’

John Pearce, as he responded, felt required to mention the fact that he was a stranger to the Pelican himself, having only recently returned from Paris, which had Winston’s eyebrows twitching with interest, and that required an excuse be found for why such a thing was so – he had no intention of telling a man unknown to him he had been on the run. So he concocted a tale of seeking out a French acquaintance in trouble, hinting at a woman without actually saying so, which led Winston to allude to the danger of a Briton looking for anything in such a dangerous setting as a city in the grip of the bloody revolution.

Pearce deflected that by admitting to a soft heart, which protected him from exposure and went on quickly to change a subject replete with untruths and in danger
of spinning out of control. This he did by recounting the first suspicions he had that something was amiss in the Pelican, aroused by a group of tars, accompanied by a red-coated drummer boy, who had come in after him and had, to his mind, acted strangely.

‘They barely drank, Mr Winston, and made no display, which for blue-water sailors is singular indeed, so I began to suspect something might be afoot, but before I could act upon my misgivings the whole press gang burst in, clubs waving. I made for the side door you observed me glaring towards, narrowly avoiding a clout from our Irish friend, only to find a bastard called Ralph Barclay and more tars in possession of the alleyway.’

‘You put up a fight, for I am told there was mayhem?’

‘I very nearly got clear, sir, but they possessed numbers and there were simply too many with whom to contest, so, once bound, I was done for – and I was not alone, of course: those I had been conversing with previously were taken as well. You may have heard of them too: an old wiseacre called Abel Scrivens, sadly now deceased, and another very likely also gone to meet his Maker, a West Countryman called Ben Walker. He was taken by Barbary pirates and the last I saw of him was as a wharfside slave in Tunis.’

The memory of that made Pearce pinch the top of his nose, his eyes shutting at the same time. Abel Scrivens had died in place of him, less than a week into that first voyage, while circumstances had forced him to leave Ben Walker to his fate and the memory of that, mixed with a tinge of self-pity, never failed to make him slightly lachrymose.

Winston was all apology. ‘Sir, I am distressing you, it is clear.’

‘It is hard to recall them without sorrow, for if those two men resided here for crimes or misdemeanours, they did not deserve what came their way. But two of the others with whom I became companions are at present safe aboard a ship anchored off Portsmouth, very likely now joined by a third.’

Pearce paused then, wondering whether to mention Pitt and his promises, but he decided that would sound to fantastic to a stranger. Yet it provided a concomitant resolution; if he did not hear from Downing Street he would have to act as if the promises made were not going to happen.

‘Tomorrow I go, first to the Admiralty to pick up for them protections, then down to Hampshire to bring them to safety. Not only will they be released from naval service, but also they will have no fear of press gangs or the crimps that line the Portsmouth road.

‘And these fellows are?’

‘O’Hagan, the aforementioned Charlie Taverner and a young lad called Rufus Dommet.’ Pearce raised his tankard, Arthur Winston following suit. ‘We called ourselves the Pelicans, a soubriquet that bound us as one. Here’s to them and to my joy that I may once again share with them a tankard in their old haunt.’

‘You must go ashore,’ insisted the master of HMS
Fury
. ‘Matters have altered and it has to be so.’

He said these words while looking up into the face of a less-than-enamoured Michael O’Hagan, newly
back on board. Behind the master stood the purser, a thin stick of a fellow, as well as a pair of the other warrants permanently attached to the damaged frigate, the gunner and the carpenter. Clearly they saw safety in numbers when it came to dealing with the Pelicans, one of whom was still unhappy at a change of the original plan to travel with John Pearce, while not being made any more confident by the news Michael brought.

‘You say he’ll be here on the morrow, Michael,’ Charlie had said, ‘an’ maybe he will if ’n a pretty face don’t take his fancy.’

Charlie Taverner was reminding them the same fellow had left them high and dry once before while he pleasured himself with a high-born lady, which delayed his return from London to fetch them off another vessel, an error that saw all three of them shipped off to the Mediterranean from the very Spithead anchorage in which the were now anchored.

The merchant ship from which they had been rescued, the
Guiscard
, had been taken in by the surveyors to be valued and examined as to the legitimacy of it being a prize, the seamen with whom they had boarded her, being long-serving naval volunteers, had been happy to go with her and, once on shore, to either contact their old captain in the hope of future employment or to sign on in another ship of war.

Charlie and Rufus, debarred from going ashore themselves – they could not just hang about in the dockyard without being attached to a vessel and there had been nowhere else for them to reside. Since the dock at which the frigate would be fitted with new
masts was occupied, another plea from Pearce to the captain for them to be allowed to stay aboard, to save money and avoid risk, had seemed the best solution.

‘Captain Warren said we was free to stay aboard this barky until Mr Pearce returned.’

Turning to Charlie Taverner, who had mouthed that complaint, the master had his reply ready.

‘His commission was over yesterday and he has gone, which you have seen for yourself, but that is not the nub. This ship is to be warped in for inspection at first light tomorrow, which I admit we did not expect, and even if your officer comes he will be too late to save you, and I am bound to enquire if there is a risk he will be delayed?’

‘Who knows?’ added the gloomy carpenter, not in the least interested in the looks of doubt exchanged by the Pelicans. ‘She might be condemned. Her timbers are in a state after years in the Indies and what she suffered in that hurricano we went through damaged more’n just the masts.’

‘Please God she goes to the breakers and we get a better berth,’ mouthed the gunner. ‘I reckon I’m at least due a fourth rate for the years I’ve put in.’