Blown Off Course (21 page)

There had been a bit of lift and drop from the run of the sea, but very little. That increased now as they went over the middle of the sandbar and hit a wave. There were, Pearce knew from his study of the charts, channels through the Goodwin Sands – not many, but the main ones, and those which concerned him, lay to the north
and south, the latter being the route he would take to close St Margaret’s Bay. These were waters constantly sounded, for the sands did shift, and the charts he had, the latest from the Admiralty, were very recent, yet he could not but worry and consider it would be a damn nuisance if he misread them and went aground.

Once they were in deep water half the oars were raised, which occasioned a degree of curiosity, but he reckoned they would only employ all twenty-four again either close to shore or if danger threatened for, even with a decent wind, he doubted there was a ship afloat that could run down a galley like this if it was going flat out. They were making good speed, with the fellow behind him, he assumed, counting off time by a method of his own, before he issued an order for the rowers to switch, those with their oars already working not lifting them until the others were in the water and working so there was no loss of momentum.

‘How do you fare, Arthur?’

‘Not well, John, not well, but I think my stomach might hold.’

It was dark now, with not much in the way of a moon and enough wispy cloud in the sky to make the stars indistinct. Wondering how they held their course with such assurance, Pearce craned to look and saw, at the feet of the man acting as coxswain, a half-shaded lantern, while in his hand, hanging from a thin leather strap, was a piece of fish-shaped metal which wavered very slightly. That being magnetic, it gave him true north, which was, as a method of navigation, primitive but effective.

There was no way of knowing how long the journey took: Pearce would not have been able to see the face of his watch, but its time passed quickly, and given there were two forts at the mouth of the River Aa, they had enough lights showing to guide them into the beach below the estuary, the galley grounding on soft sand. Their landing was carried out in silence, no greeting or well-wishing followed and, as soon as they were all ashore the boat was pushed back out to sea, to disappear into the gloom of the night.

‘Thank God that is over,’ came the heartfelt voice of Arthur Winston, as the clouds parted slightly to allow some starlight. ‘What do we do now, John?’

‘Wait for daylight, Arthur, there’s no point in stumbling around in the dark. Let us go inshore and see if we can find some place to rest, and I would suggest, since we are unaware of what we face, that some sleep might be in order.’

‘Now that we are back on dry land and my fears are at rest, perhaps I can get to know our companions properly.’

The introductions were reprised and as they began to walk over the soft sand it soon transpired that Charlie Taverner had managed to separate Arthur Winston a little, and he was softly beginning to tell his tale of past misfortunes and potential rewards.

‘Can’t help himself,’ whispered Rufus, ‘as soon as he smells a bulging purse he is off.’

‘Happen
he’ll
become a victim if this comes off,’ Pearce replied. ‘Charlie dunned.’

‘Now that,’ Michael added, ‘I cannot wait to see.’

Dropping back, for Pearce had no notion to let Charlie just continue, his proximity brought the tale to a halt. What light there was, and it was slight, showed a dark mass ahead of them, which turned out to be a long wall running inland from the sea, perhaps part of the defences. It made no odds, for it was not manned and it gave them all, wrapped in cloaks, a place against which to lean and rest, with Pearce insisting that any temptation to keep talking should cease: sleep was more important.

‘Do we need to set a guard?’ asked Winston.

‘We shall take turns, Arthur.’ He had to peer hard to see the hands of his watch, ‘but you may slumber in peace.’

It was a group of cold, stiff souls, thick cloaks notwithstanding, who woke with the first hint of daylight, Pearce being the least so, having taken the last watch himself. Fearing he would nod off, he had taken to pacing up and down as all the things for and against what they were about fought a battle in his mind. Yet at the base of it was a chance of freedom from the kind of life he had always led, which had only ever occasionally been secure, and then never for long.

His father had shown an annoying indifference to money, pleased when he had some, able to act with equanimity when there was none, while his son had enjoyed the periods of comfort more than those of deprivation, especially the period immediately after the fall of the Bastille, when Adam Pearce’s pamphlets had sold in their thousands; likewise in Paris, following on from their flight, at a time where there were still men of means eager to pay to hear a famous radical speaker.

A fear of dearth was not, he knew, an estate in which he was singular: even men of substantial means worried that, by some stroke of misfortune, they might lose what they had and fall into the hellish pit of poverty, and he knew, for he had even got his father to acknowledge the fact, that such insecurity often coloured their attitude to those less fortunate, the very visible poor who stood as a constant reminder of what they might face if their means of existence evaporated.

There is nothing like a dark night and no company to provide an excuse for introspection, and John Pearce was no different from the rest of humanity, having as he did, on his mind, not only the task before him but the possible benefits of a successful outcome as well as the potential for failure. He might be unable to get aboard Winston’s boat and sail it out to sea, he might misread his course, for if he was wiser in the ways of the sea than he had been when pressed, he knew the gaps in his knowledge were too large for comfort, and no great imagination was required to conjure up a vision of a foul storm, for which the seas in which he would be sailing were notorious, one that could send him and his friends to perdition.

Time and again he conjured up an image of the voyage back to the English shore, sometimes an easy progress, at others storm-tossed, yet more with the vessel stuck on a Goodwins sandbank. The worst vision was of him and his companions in chains on the deck of a Revenue cutter, and when that recurred, which it did too often, he had to shake his head to clear it and replace such gloom with a more positive thought, often with
the face of Emily Barclay, though that, initially a happy contemplation, soon led on to potential complications, for a liaison of the type he envisaged was not without problems. Thus, when the first light tinged the eastern sky it was more than welcome, for with the rising sun came things to do and an end to imaginings.

Emily Barclay was a victim of troubled dreams in which her husband had her in his power, and in this it was he as a slavering, ravenous beast of a man, worse than the kind who had so cruelly taken what he considered to be his marital due in the cabin of HMS
Brilliant
, the final act in a long strand of misbehaviour which had led to the conviction she could no longer live with him. The vision, which made her wake with a start, was of a grinning Ralph Barclay eating the papers she had left with Studdert, but she knew that was absurd. Having woken, sleep would not come back as her mind flitted between the faces of John Pearce, her hated husband and a mob of indistinct people pointing at her for her moral laxity.

Had she seen her husband then, she would have been more comforted, for Ralph Barclay did not sleep at all, pacing up and down his hotel room wondering if Gherson’s suggestion was one he should pursue – that he knew of some villains residing in the eastern rookeries of the City of London, who might, for a fee, break into that attorney’s office and steal what they both suspected lay there. What were the risks of success, what were the possibilities of failure, but more pertinent, what could be the consequences of discovery?

Naturally he would never know the names of the felons, just as they would never be given his name. But in doing what was suggested he was putting himself further into the hands of a man he was not sure he could forever trust. There might come a time when Gherson knew so much of his affairs that he would become a threat. Gnawing on that, Ralph Barclay treated it as a problem to be dealt with when the time came, his usual solution to such matters.

He deliberately turned his mind to the needs of his forthcoming command, not least his shortage of hands. He had written to those he wished to take on as lieutenants, admonishing them not to turn up without a decent band of followers, and if they could not provide enough of those, to get out in whatever locality they were presently based and press more. The pity was he would not have that bastard John Pearce on his muster roll: if Ralph Barclay took any pleasure from his ruminations, it was of the notion of having Pearce up at the grating, and that happy thought took him off to his slumbers as the first hint of dawn touched the sky.

There was, naturally, a curfew in Gravelines, with the town gates closed and secured at dusk, to be reopened at dawn, so there was no choice but to wait until full daylight to enter. Pearce left his companions eating bread and cheese, for he had other matters to see to – an examination of the long, straight canal that led from the walls and the watergate to the sea. In darkness, he had seen lantern-lit fishing boats heading out on the
height of the tide. Now the first trading ship, with more following, was making its way slowly down the channel – not under sail, but poled so that it could not deviate from a sudden gust of wind and run aground in what had to be the shallows, these indicated by the boats resting on mud by the canal bank, one or two of which had begun to cant over as the tide dropped.

Also of interest was some of the detritus of the town, and the speed at which it floated by, which showed the flow of the current, indicating it was of a strength, combined with the tidal fall, to take a boat out to deep water without too much trouble. Pearce would need the same kind of conditions and he watched with deep interest as the crew of the first vessel went to work with purpose, setting just enough canvas, their fore course and outer jib, to get them out through the sandbanks on either beam under sail, an action repeated by those in its wake.

Daylight showed the formidable, reddish walls of Gravelines topped by the higher buildings, a number of church spires which testified to a deep devotion in a populace, while outside those walls stood angled bastions, water-bound outworks backed by deep earth; properly garrisoned even now, it would need to be invested and cut off from land and sea to be starved out. The misfortune of Gravelines was to be part of that cockpit of land in constant dispute, the scene of endless battles between their overlords fighting the ancient enemy, royalist France.

The town had a sleepy appearance as lazy trails of smoke rose in the morning sky, looking more of a place
the world had forgotten than what it had once been, a point of strategic importance on the French border. The two shoreline forts were in a poor state of repair, parts of the land walls more gaps than defences, others needing to be supported by timber baulks, deep green where the waters lapped them at high tide. Beyond, lay shiny mudflats capped on the shoreline with gently banked sand, while behind that the Flemish landscape was flat and barren in appearance.

Most important was the lack of any discernible challenge from the forts as those trading ships eased by. Satisfied that exit seemed possible, he gathered up his party, making his way towards the first of the many bridges that crossed the canals and outworks which encompassed the main walls. All the vessels, barges and square-riggers were tied up on the outer quays below those bridges, nothing was berthed on the fortress side and Pearce was tempted to ask if Winston’s was one of them, but he decided against it: if he had not been told already, he would not be told now.

There was no impediment to entry; the watch set by the town gate were more interested in personal comfort – the gatehouse had a roaring fire – than scrutinising those who came and went. Arthur Winston, on Pearce’s instructions, had covered his lower face with his comforter – they dare not risk him being recognised – and they quickly found themselves in a wide street, with Winston leading them to a quiet tavern where he required them to stay until he had established how the land lay.

‘Forgive me, John, but I must ensure we have not come on a fool’s errand.’

Pearce took that for what it was, misleading if not a barefaced untruth: Winston wanted to make sure his ship was where he expected it to be and perhaps make a final judgement as to the wisdom of what he was about. He might even seek out the man attempting to cheat him and try to come to an arrangement, something that Pearce had kept at the back of his mind as a possibility; when it came to unknowns, that had always been one of them.

‘Why in the name of all that’s holy,’ Charlie opined, as he sipped a wheat beer, ‘did I not meet your Mr Winston when I was working the Strand? Ripe meat ain’t in it.’

‘You would have taken him, would you?’ Pearce asked.

‘As easy as kiss my hand, mate. I had him going last night an’ that was without the aid of a drop of wine. Cat an’ mouse it was.’

‘Cat and rat,’ said Rufus, which got him a friendly swipe, easily ducked.

‘I am in need of a wander,’ Pearce declared, standing up. ‘I can’t just sit here.’

‘Suits me,’ Charlie replied. ‘Never be outdoors when you can be in.’

‘Michael?’

‘I’m with you John-boy, sure, my arse is itchy too.’

Pearce looked at Rufus. ‘You stay here with Charlie. If Winston comes back tell him I am looking out for any threats to us getting clear.’

‘He won’t believe that, will he?’ Charlie said.

Pearce smiled. ‘No, he will think I followed him.’

‘Which would not have been a bad notion.’

‘Except he would have expected it,’ Pearce replied.

He was aware of the number of questions in what Charlie was saying, as well as the way he was looking at him, and it was not just he who had them: they all did, and they were the same ones the trio had posed when he had first outlined the proposition. He was also aware that when it came to definitive answers he did not have any – it all came down to how he felt, and that was a combination of things made up of suppositions and needs.

‘We are here on Winston’s purse and he has provided the means to get us home again, should matters not work out, while the chance exists to make a real killing – not like your fantasy Charlie.’ That got a frown – if he knew it was a fairy tale, he did not like it being referred to as such. ‘Besides, having got this far, surely we must see the thing played out.’

‘What do we really say if Mr Winston comes back afore you?’ asked Rufus.

Pearce grinned. ‘Tell him Charlie has a scheme to make him rich, but also tell him I have gone nowhere near the quays.’

He and Michael departed, Pearce suspecting his other friends did not understand: if Winston was annoyed to find him not where he should be there was nothing he could do about it – the man of business could not achieve what he came to do without the Pelicans. It was nothing to do with liking or respect now, for if Pearce had a degree of the former for Winston he was not much given to respecting anyone, if you left out
those who had shared his misfortunes or proved, like Heinrich Lutyens, to be the kind of friends he could turn to when in need. The man he respected most was with him, drinking in everything he saw and storing it away in his mind.

The town had been laid out to make capture difficult even if the walls were breached, the only broad avenues running to north and south, the roads that crossed them east to west narrow enough to canalise any advance. Every group of buildings seemed to be laid out as a copy of the exterior bastions, designed to act as barriers to an invader’s progress, and the high church spires were not just devotional but prime places from which to observe and aid the defence, all of that explained by Pearce before they got to the heart of the town and the walls of the citadel into which the defenders could retreat for a final stand.

Acting as the centre of Gravelines, before the fortress lay a large open esplanade where the town became bustling, with various markets purveying meat and vegetables, as well as all the trades that such a place needed to be self-sufficient. Groups of fellows, obviously in drink, were making merry around the edges, their raucous shouting getting them hard looks from the traders and their customers. Pearce ignored them; he was more interested in the walled citadel, for if there were any authority to pose danger to their enterprise it would be here. There was also a long set of buildings, obviously barracks, which lay along one side of a quadrangle within which troops could parade, as well as being a fire zone which would expose an attacker as
he tried to cross to overcome the citadel walls.

Uniformed sentries, desultory in their manner, guarded the ramp to the citadel and their clothing was white, indicating they were either Austrian or Dutch; oddly, there was no flag showing anywhere to enlighten Pearce. Reassuringly there was also no sense of coming and going which would attend upon a well-manned fortress, more importantly from those exterior barracks, where any garrison not under threat would be housed. Pearce even took a quick gander inside one of the doorways before continuing on his way, not forgetting to keep Michael abreast of what he was observing.

‘Empty barrack blocks, so there can only be a small number of troops here, and if they lack numbers they may well lack curiosity.’

‘Listen, John-boy,’ Michael said, cutting off the flow of information.

Exiting the esplanade into one of the narrow streets that fed it they had just passed another tavern, one set back from the road with an open courtyard to the front, and both had heard the sound of singing. It was Michael, stopping him talking, that allowed Pearce to hear what the Irishman had already picked up.