Pearce was not cut down, he was untied, and, aware that he was the object of much scrutiny he managed to walk to the companionway, stiff but upright, Ridley and Costello at either side holding him as if he was on the point of collapse. But Pearce was far from that, being released had restored his own faith in his ability to walk away from what had happened on his own two legs. Behind him he heard the orders given that got the men back to their duties, those on deck resuming the tasks they had been engaged in before the flogging, the watch off duty trailing down to the maindeck. Again the able and ordinary seamen who had either ignored or guyed him the past few days were looking at him directly with sympathy – one or two even smiled as he went further down to the surgeon’s quarters on the orlop.
‘Your shirt, mate,’ said Ridley. Then he grinned. ‘I should think old Barclay is seething by now, you not bein’ at all cut.’
‘No blood?’ asked Pearce, gingerly moving his shoulders, not far, for to do so brought a stinging sensation.
‘None, though your back be as red as a monkey’s arse.’
‘We laid into you hard, mind,’ said Costello. ‘Had to put up a show.’
Pearce eased himself on to a chest, and he sat there hunched over. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You wouldn’t, you being such a damned lubber,’ sneered Ridley, ‘and, I will add, as useless aboard ship as a whore without a hole.’
‘If you’d been caught off Deal,’ Costello added, ‘I doubt you’d be talking now, nor for a good week after.’
Pearce looked at the pair, both smiling, the quizzical expression on his face plain evidence that he was still confused. Ridley sat opposite him, and hunched forward, his voice quiet. ‘Not all cat o’ nine tails come the same, and, since it be a new one for each man to punish, it depends on who’s making ’em as to how much damage they do.’
‘Have you got it now?’ asked Costello.
‘I think so,’ Pearce replied, in a far from convincing tone.
‘Ain’t got a clue, Ridley,’ Costello responded. ‘Not a bloody inkling has he.’
‘We, or the Bosun hisself, makes up the cat,’ said Ridley, earnestly, ‘a new one for each flogging. And if’n we want to we can choose fresh hemp to make it, or go for a harder rope.’
‘And we can soak it an’ dry it,’ added Costello, ‘till it gets real nippy, and even treat it with a touch of pitch if we like. The one that does the damage is the thieves’ cat, ’cause that has knots in the tails, and is made for any grass-combing bugger who steals from his mates and is caught.’
‘What you just had,’ Ridley added, ‘was made special from hemp, and soft. Mind we blacked it up a bit to make it look like the proper article.’
‘It still hurt,’ Pearce protested. He nearly added something about the blow to his pride, but held back – these fellows would not care a hoot about that.
‘That ain’t pain, mate,’ Ridley scoffed. ‘Even a common cat would have had you hanging by the thumbs. But the feeling aboard was that old Barclay was coming it a bit high, that he can’t have his missus parading around the deck, her bein’ as pretty as she be, without she catches the odd eye, and bein’ she’s sociable, will be on the receiving end of the odd comment. That if he is goin’ to flog for that, then there is not a man aboard who won’t feel the gratin’ on his cheek at some time this commission.’
Costello’s voice had a lot of satisfaction in it. ‘That was our way of telling him, carry on, mate, but it won’t strike no fear.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ said Lutyens, appearing in the doorway.
Ridley was on his feet in a flash. ‘Now don’t you go spreading that round the wardroom, Mr Lutyens.’
The surgeon put his head to one side, not responding to Ridley’s worried expression. ‘You did not say so, Ridley, but you implied that the captain would have seen through your ruse?’
‘He would have, your honour, lest he be blind.’
‘Then I imagine that everyone in the wardroom will have observed the same.’
‘Some will, some are too callow,’ said Costello. ‘But if you say ’owt it will become a topic. If that happens it will get to Barclay’s ears at some point and he will have to come out and do something.’
‘At a cost to all and sundry,’ added Ridley.
Lutyens produced a quite singular smile. ‘You can scarce comprehend how much pleasure silence will give me, as I try to discern who has made the link and who has not. Nothing affords as much gratification as watching grown men sniff round a commonality that no one may voice. Now, if you will be so good as to leave me with my patient.’
Ridley asked his questions in a fading voice as they made their way out. ‘Is that bugger odd, Costello, or is it just me?’
‘No, mate, he’s as daft as a brush, and as creepy as a spider.’
Lutyens smiled at Pearce. ‘I see the men lack certain comprehensions.’
‘I hazard,’ Pearce replied, ‘that you might find them wiser than you think.’
‘I do hope so. Now please lie down so that I can examine your back. Ah! Very red indeed, and,’ as Pearce winced, ‘sore to the touch. I fear we have just observed a barbaric ritual, though there was an early Greek philosopher who held that humans had to be driven to goodness like a donkey to the plough.’
‘Heraclitus,’ Pearce replied, without thinking.
Lutyens’ voice rose in surprise. ‘You know the philosophers?’
‘No.’
Pearce was cursing himself for his lapse, especially with one as watchful as this surgeon. If he had had a fractured education, with little formal schooling, he had learnt much from a father who, having educated himself, took endless pains to teach his only son. John Pearce might know little formal Greek or Latin, but he had discussed a great deal of philosophy as Adam Pearce searched endlessly for the key to unlock the means to improve the lot of his fellow humans. Heraclitus was one of the villains of philosophical history, a misanthrope who had shown scant regard for his fellow man, cruel even by the standards of Ancient Greece. But whatever he knew and didn’t know was not something to share with this man, who was closer to authority than he was to those before the mast.
Lutyens’ voice bore within it a deep degree of irony. ‘You know nothing of philosophy yet name one of the more obscure in the pantheon. If you know of Heraclitus, you must also know of Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. I fancy I am not being told the truth, John Pearce.’
His patient shot him a look, and the surgeon responded by saying. ‘Your true name is no mystery on any part of the ship now.’ He followed that with a shout for some fresh water. ‘For I need,’ as he said to his patient, ‘to soak some dried comfrey that I will apply to your back. Do you know anything of medicinal herbs, Pearce?’ That was followed by a grunt, as he turned to open another chest, his voice going hollow as he knelt down to search through it. ‘And would you tell me if you did? You would probably gabble the Latin tag for Poison Ivy then deny you had any knowledge of what you just said.’
‘I don’t know anything,’ Pearce insisted.
Lutyens’ voice took on an injured tone. ‘It annoys me that you should take such an attitude.’
‘I can’t imagine why.’
‘It may surprise you to know that I have an abiding interest in my fellow-man.’
Pearce wanted to say that there was little shock in that statement; the way he crept about the ship, popping up in all sorts of odd places, was unnerving, only marginally less so than the cold way he seemed to examine anyone who caught his eye. Suddenly Lutyens’ fish-like face was right in front of Pearce’s, the surgeon squatting to speak to him.
‘And I have watched you more than most, as being part of a section of the crew in which I have an especially deep curiosity. You are a pressed man, taken against your will, and you are no sailor.’
‘I think I know that.’
‘Shall I tell you what I have observed, Pearce?’
It was painful to shrug, better to stay still, so Pearce’s pretence at an indifferent response had to be made with his eyebrows.
‘Water, your honour,’ said a voice.
‘Put it down and ask the sail maker if either he or one of his mates will attend upon me.’ The wooden bucket was right before Pearce’s eyes as Lutyens stood up, and he watched the surgeon dunk into it a large handful of dry, dark green leaves, pressing them down until they were submerged, his voice carrying on in that hurt tone.
‘What I have observed?’ Lutyens asked himself. ‘I will tell you, shall I, about your mess table. O’Hagan, the Irishman, I like, for he is a genial soul when not being practised upon and the fact that he has beaten the resident bully is to be applauded. The Taverner fellow I would be careful to trust, unlike Gherson who I would not trust at all. That name inclines me to believe he is of Huguenot stock, you know, and slimy in the extreme.’
The need to defend him as a messmate was automatic, and given what he truly thought of the man, quite convincing. ‘You damn him for his antecedents? Does merely being a descendant of a French Protestant who fled a Catholic massacre make him slimy? You might as well accuse King Louis and say he deserved to lose his head for it.’
Lutyens positively purred, like a man who had sprung a trap. ‘I wonder how many common seamen could conjure up a memory of St Bartholomew’s Night?’
Pearce had exposed himself again and he knew it. ‘Anyone who has knowledge of their religion.’
‘No, John Pearce, it is too long past. That massacre took place two hundred and fifty years ago, and even a pious religious memory would scarce include a knowledge of the Bourbon bloodline.’
‘Simpson, sailmaker’s mate, your honour. I was sent for.’
Pearce turned his head, even though to do so stretched the skin on his back. Simpson looked down at him and winked, another man who would have ignored him before the flogging.
‘Ah yes,’ Lutyens cried. ‘I require you to make me up a sort of apron, from very light canvas, one that fits on the back not the front of the person wearing it.’
‘The back,’ the sailmaker enquired, in a voice that implied, ‘I have been asked for some daft things in my time, but…’
‘Yes,’ Lutyens insisted, ‘it will need ties down the side, shall we venture to be nautical and call them reefs, the whole to act as a compress to keep in place what I am going to apply to this fellow’s back.’
‘Like a poultice, you mean, your honour?’
‘The very word, my man! How astoundingly apt. It would aid the efficacy of the thing if it was impermeable.’
‘What’s that mean?’ asked Simpson
‘Proof against water.’
‘I could lard it with some slush from the cook,’ the fellow replied. ‘Can I say you will pay the price?’
‘Make it so, Mr Simpson,’ said Lutyens in a happy tone. ‘A double-reefed affair, in the nautical vernacular, an invention which will no doubt be handed down to grateful posterity as a Lutyens.’
The sailmaker responded in a jocose tone of voice. ‘Since I be cutting and sowing the bugger, your honour, should it not be termed a Simpson?’ Lutyens barked a laugh, and Simpson added, ‘Be with you in half a glass, your honour.’
‘I would not have had to explain impermeable to you, John Pearce, would I now? Again you are silent but you fail to realise that from the very first, to me, you were singular, made so by the look in your eye.’
‘That was hatred.’
‘Hardly misplaced,’ the surgeon replied in a softer, almost regretful tone. ‘And I daresay you see me as an integral part of the abusive system. You do not reply to that, I observe, so I can take that as a yes.’
It wasn’t, but neither could Pearce honestly say no. To him all authority was suspect, even Lieutenant Digby, who had been as kindly as his fellow officers were harsh. Was he wrong about Lutyens? The exchange with Simpson had been as that between two shipmates who knew each other well. The sailmaker had evinced no fear of the surgeon as a superior being.
‘Perhaps I should not treat you,’ the surgeon sighed. ‘Perhaps in pain you would be a man less troublesome, for I mean to ask you some questions.’
‘Not much point, Mr Lutyens, in asking of a man who knows nothing.’
Lutyens knelt down again to look him in the eye. ‘You know that Captain Barclay only has licence to press men bred to the sea.’
Pearce wished he was upright, being tall enough to command the surgeon, perhaps to impose himself, for this talk was heading in an uncomfortable direction. ‘Knowing that made no odds.’
‘You know,’ Lutyens insisted, ‘that there are two ways to avoid even a press as illegal as the one that took you up. The first is an exemption from the Admiralty.’
‘Which I do not possess.’
‘Prevarication, sir,’ Lutyens spluttered, ‘and damned annoying for being so! The second reason, as you equally well know, is to claim that you are a gentleman and no seaman. How do you establish that you are such? Not by the contents of your purse but by the manner of your speech and the depth of your connections. No captain, even one as foolish as Barclay, would take up and hold an educated man, for to do so would see him in the dock himself as soon as a properly written letter arrived in the right quarter, one that would force the naval powers to act.’
A slow blink had to do service for the absence of a shrug. Pearce was thinking of his letter, hopefully winging its way to old John Wilkes, to set off a bomb under Barclay and his arrogance.
‘You can write,’ Lutyens continued, ‘and before you deny it the purser told me that your first request to him once he had issued you with your slops was for a quill, wax, ink and paper. What for? Not to make lists, so I surmise you wrote a letter. The question is, did you manage to get such a letter off the ship?’
Lutyens gave him a chance to respond, a chance that Pearce declined to take.
‘Had you made a protest to Barclay and established your status you would not be here now. But you did not – you refused even to give your proper name when you first came aboard and you would still be called John Truculence if one of your fellow pressed men had not let slip the name Pearce. You were singular from the very first; you show a defiance to the officers and the trained seamen that comes, to my mind, not from temper but from a feeling of superiority. You casually allude to Heraclitus and demonstrate that not only do you know that Henry of Navarre was Protestant but that he was the first Bourbon King of France and ancestor to the late King Louis. So I am wondering, John Pearce, why you do not wish to use that name, just as I am wondering what it is that prevents you from bearding Captain Barclay and establishing that for him to keep you aboard is to risk his whole career.’
‘Do you think that comfrey has soaked long enough?’
Lutyens smiled, seeming to imply that he now knew something that had hitherto been a mystery, then stood, moving towards another locked chest, opened by a large key, from which he extracted a brown stopped bottle. A small measure of the contents was poured into a glass etched with markings, the whole presented to Pearce to drink.
‘A combination of medicine ancient and modern, will set you up famously and, as the captain requested, in short order.’
Pearce sniffed it. ‘Laudanum?’
‘You know the tincture?’
Pearce had dosed his father with laudanum often, to ease the pain of an internal affliction that would respond to no other palliative, just as he knew of people who took it in daily doses. It would make him drowsy, perhaps even senseless, but he also reckoned that it would make him forget the stinging of his back, as well as his present situation. The thought of a degree of oblivion was a welcome one, a period when he would not recall that he was a pressed seaman, nor think of the way he had deserted his father in Paris, of an escape which was, for the present, impossible. Raising himself on one elbow, Pearce threw his head back and downed the contents.
‘Excellent,’ said Lutyens, almost purring with pleasure. ‘Once that has touched upon the vital spirit, for there is nothing like an opiate to bring such a thing to fruition, we can continue our conversation.’
The feeling of relief was immediate, a sensation spreading through his limbs that seemed able to relax each muscle in turn. The cold of the damp comfrey leaves being spread on his bruised back was soothing in itself, but Pearce knew that was not the root cause of his increasing comfort. A delicious numbness worked its way up from his kidneys to his shoulders, through his neck and into his head so that even his jaw seemed altered, though he had not thought it clenched. He could hear Lutyens singing softly, too low for any words to be discernible, yet soothing in the sound. Sleep seemed possible and that happy thought as he closed his eyes, brought a smile to his face.
‘So, John Pearce,’ Lutyens whispered in his ear, pencil poised over his notebook, ‘what of Plato?’
‘A foolish man, or so my father thought. The Republic is nothing less than a paean to the Spartans, who lived off the back of slavery…’
Lutyens interrupted gently, ‘Your father?’
That produced a frown, as though the question was difficult. After a lengthy pause the reply came. ‘Adam Pearce.’
The surgeon had been holding his breath, fearing he had gone too far too soon. ‘How silly of me. Is he not a friend to Tom Paine the radical pamphleteer?’
‘Friend no, but they share many of the same notions.’
‘What would they be?’
What followed was mumbled and far from coherent. Words were being dredged from Pearce’s mind that were not really his own, but those he had heard from his father’s lips; each person’s right to the fruits of his labours, an end to tithes both feudal and clerical, ramblings on the iniquities of Kings, courts, titles, prelates as well as the hereditary principle, and the manifest failure of those who removed monarchs to make any change to the lot of the common man. Lutyens only half listened, for he had heard it all before, had indeed debated such notions with his friends, as aware as any man that the world in which he existed was riddled with manifest imperfections. But that was not really what interested him, and he happily let his patient ramble only so that he would become comfortable in a confessional state.
It was for moments like this that Charles Lutyens had chosen the Navy and this ship. He knew himself to be over-qualified for such a lowly post, but that mattered not for the position was a means to an end. A surgeon he might be, but his interest lay not in the corporeal human body, with its mess of blood, tendons, tissues and bone, but in the brain, the cerebral part that controlled all those moving parts. He was enough of a student of Voltaire to scoff at any notion that the heart had any dominion over a man’s actions, sure as a rationalist that the head was the seat of all emotion. But it was not a surgical interest – he had trepanned enough cadavers in his training to be bored with the soapy mass of tissue contained in the skull. His fascination went deeper than the knife!
The Sick and Hurt Board of King George’s Navy had not enquired too deeply into his competence or his motives; there was a war on, fleets fitting out and no excess of qualified medical men queuing to serve in the King’s Navy, especially in the smaller vessels. Here was one not only willing but eager, a fellow who had powerful connections, which wended though his Lutheran pastor father all the way to a royal family who often worshipped at his church. Lutyens had asked for a frigate because big ships carried too many men for his purpose and were rarely in action. If they did not comprehend the reason for the request, the officials at the Sick and Hurt Board were too grateful for the offer of his services to refuse.
Already he had examined and made notes on those with whom he messed, the members of the wardroom; lieutenants Roscoe, Thrale and Digby in that order of seniority were satisfyingly different, as was the pun-obsessed marine officer, Holbrook. The Purser seemed a slippery cove, almost too true to type, while the Master, Mr Collins, was a worrier. The eight midshipmen and master’s mates who shared the overcrowded midshipman’s berth had eluded him somewhat, but all sorts of skulduggery was going on in that quarter, certainly bullying, perhaps theft, and quite possibly buggery. It was interesting to reflect that every wardroom officer had progressed from what they commonly referred to as ‘that damned filthy bearpit’. Thus he would be given a chance to probe the scars such surroundings created at the same time as he observed the long-term effects on those who had endured them.
The crew he was slowly getting to know – some because of the numerous cases of the pox aboard. Volunteers or the first takings of the Impress Service, men bred to the sea, would repay close study. What made such people volunteer for a duty that was by common repute so harsh? But men such as Pearce were like the philosopher’s stone; fellows forced to serve in the King’s Navy, brought aboard by a system universally condemned, but one that could not be sacrificed when Britain went to war, men who, when it came to the moment, were reputed to fight with as much tenacity as those who had come aboard of their own free will. From the whole he hoped to discern attitudes and motives that would be at the kernel of the investigations he was here to undertake.
Then there was the captain. Was he a mass of contradictions, or just a product of the service that had created him? Lutyens had learnt from those members of the crew with whom he had spoken that they saw nothing abnormal in the way Barclay behaved, though it had been obvious such an opinion had been dented by the flogging of Pearce. Watching intently as the cat swung, he had felt the discontent amongst the crew, men too wise to show it in their faces, for they did not want to join the victim at the grating. There was no doubt in Lutyens’ mind that Barclay was aware of the crew’s displeasure, yet it had no effect on his actions. And finally there were the intricacies of the captain’s marriage – a whole other area of enquiry that Lutyens had never anticipated.
By studying men in the enclosed setting of a ship of war, over an extended period, Charles Lutyens hoped to find many things. Could men be classified as type? Was there a measurable index of types? Why did men indulge in acts of cruelty and kindness, often both in the space of a few minutes? Why did they fight? What caused men to follow other mere mortals, for it had to be more than simple rank? What did leaders have that singled them out? He would make an enquiry into motives and actions, putting the whole together in a carefully written study. And perhaps he would acquire fame from passing on his observations on the truth of the human condition as it applied to the fighting seaman. But now, taking up his notebook and finding the passages that related to his present patient, he would, by gentle questioning, get to the truth about John Pearce.
Pearce was still talking as Lutyens read his notes, and in doing so found that he had scribbled more on this man than any other on the ship outside the wardroom; the fact that he had marked him at once as different from the rest of the pressed men, the singular reality of his observation that although older than Pearce he had felt to be a junior in his presence. Lutyens found himself slightly embarrassed to discover that he had described Pearce as attractive, which was surely a misnomer, and he searched for what he had really meant, a word to describe the way Pearce attracted men to him. He scored out attractive and replaced it with forceful. Then he renewed his questioning.
‘Born in?’
‘London.’
‘Mother?’
‘Dead.’
‘Brothers and sisters?’
‘None.’
‘School?’
‘By the score but never for long.’
‘Father?’
‘A good man, but fixated by the lot of his fellow man.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘With all my heart.’
Lutyens saw tears fill the corner of Pearce’s eyes and gentle prodding produced the information that the son felt he had failed his father, deserted him, allowed him to insist on flight for only one, too ready to accept the excuse that he was too ill to travel. That unlocked the thorny emotions of their relationship: mostly a difference of opinion over the way ideas translated into actions. This exposed another strong influence, the teachings in philosophy, rhetoric and law he had received from his tutor, the Abbé Morlant. His life in Paris had not all been dry study; there had been women too, numerous and varied in age and social station. John Pearce had received schooling in riding and fencing, the paradox being that his levelling father was determined his son would have the attributes of the gentlemen he so despised, his excuse being that he wanted these things for all men.
‘Your honour.’
Lutyens turned to see the sailmaker standing in the doorway, looking at Pearce’s leaf-covered back, a quizzical expression on his face, as the surgeon put a finger to his lips to ensure silence. Simpson held up his manufacture, pale brown canvas of a light texture, shining with the cook’s slush, and with the requisite ties hanging off.
‘You’ll need a hand to get it on, with him being dead weight by the look.’
Pearce was still rambling, fortunately in a voice so low that only an ear close by could pick it up. It was not that Lutyens mistrusted Simpson – he was wary of everyone. But let one word of what he was learning here get out and it would be all over the ship in a trice. And the look in Simpson’s eye, as he looked down on Pearce, was one of deep curiosity, which made Lutyens question if he was the only person aboard who harboured doubts about this patient.
‘Leave it. I will call for help when I need it.’
Simpson looked far from pleased, and even less so when the surgeon came out from his small cabin to ensure that he moved away. Then he went back to sit with John Pearce.
Ralph Barclay had on his desk a drawing of the observations the master had made, showing as notations what they knew regarding the depth of water and what hazards lay in their path in the way of rocks and sandbars. The information Collins had brought back with him only served to underline the folly of trying to take his ship into the estuary.
Thankfully Collins had not observed any preparations for a stout attempt to defend the place – a modicum of activity around the bastion, but nothing to suggest the place was being made ready to repulse an attack. Nothing untoward either aboard the vessels except the comings and goings between ship and shore. Barclay had to believe his enemy reckoned himself secure, so a boat attack under such circumstances stood a good chance of success. In a previous commission, with officers he trusted, he would most certainly have invited them to a conference to discuss the raid, that followed by a good dinner in which they would be free to air their opinions. Ralph Barclay could not bring himself to do that now. The plan was his, and his alone. He was, for once, aware of that sense of isolation that afflicted all captains – the obverse side of the privilege bestowed by rank.
It was doubly galling that the one person he should have been able to talk to, not in a tactical sense but merely as a sounding board, he could not. Emily would keep referring, obliquely but doggedly, to the incident that had taken place that morning on deck, and much as he did not wish to discuss the matter he was finally forced to respond – to tell her that in matters of discipline she was not allowed to even comment, never mind disagree. Her statement, that that being the case, she would say ‘nothing at all’, was denied any response by her huffy departure, followed by the immediate entrance of those who would be taking part in the raid.
‘Gentlemen, this will be a cutting out operation with boats.’
Ralph Barclay looked at each face in turn then, and saw nothing, neither approval not divergence of opinion. He had been about to explain his thinking, but such bland acceptance killed off the notion, and he confined himself to outlining the salient points of the defence and how he wished to confound them.
‘Mr Roscoe, your task is to cause a diversion by attacking that bastion, with Mr Thrale in support. I wish you to land where you will not be seen,’ Barclay jabbed at the rough-drawn map, indicating a small promontory on the western shore that would provide a degree of cover for Roscoe to land his men. ‘I have marked the spot here, which will allow you to get ashore unobserved. In the dark you should be able to get right up to the walls without alerting them. I want noise and confusion, our enemies thinking those guns the main object of our endeavour, that by taking the stronghold we intend to use the cannon against the Mercedes and render the position untenable, driving them from the anchorage. With luck they will rush to aid its defence. That will render my task of taking the ships easier, for once they depart I can board.’
‘Can the cannon on that bastion be brought to bear on the anchorage?’ asked Roscoe.
‘I would think it likely.’
‘Then, sir, does that not, in fact, present the best means of recapture?’
Barclay waved an impatient arm across the table. ‘Only if we could take and hold such a position, Mr Roscoe! That means taking on the town as well as the crew of the privateer, and quite possibly troops from the interior. I doubt we have the number to achieve that and we certainly do not have the time. No, it must be a diversion only, though I intend you should take with you the means to destroy the position, gunpowder to blast down the walls and spikes for the cannon. It would be an advantage to our nation to make it untenable for future use.’
‘Then would I be allowed to state my desire to lead the main assault, sir, that is the boat attack?’
‘Your zeal will be noted,’ Barclay said, ‘but I have given myself that duty.’
Roscoe gave him a cold look. It was Gould and Firefly all over again. Barclay knew he was taking to himself a duty that should have gone to his Premier. Ship’s captains generally stayed aboard and sent in an assault – giving their inferior officers a chance at distinction – they did not, themselves, lead them. But then not all faced possible disgrace, as did he.
‘All three boats will act in unison, and we will only part company once we are inside the arms of the estuary. Mr Collins has given half an hour before midnight as the hour of high tide. Your assault, Mr Roscoe, begins at midnight and provides the signal for mine. I intend to cut the ship’s cables and drift out of the anchorage on a falling tide.’
There were nods of agreement. The wind had shifted throughout the day, becoming more northerly and breaking up the cloud cover, so the possibility existed that it would be foul for an exit.
‘Mr Farmiloe will accompany me, Mr Craddock as senior midshipman to second you Mr Roscoe, Mr Burns to second Mr Thrale.’
It was annoying the way the boy Burns blanched at that; he almost seemed to shiver with dread, which was unbecoming for one related to him by marriage.
‘Mr Digby, you will stay aboard and command the ship with the assistance of Mr Collins. You will keep a sharp lookout for either ship coming out. If there is no lantern on either at the foremast they are still in the possession of the enemy and you may, as you see fit, engage them. Now I suggest we commit what the master has noted to memory, for we will begin and end this action in darkness.’
None present could be in any doubt that it was a desperate throw, but even if what they were about had been caused by their captain’s recklessness they were keen to go in. What it presented to these officers and the mids who would accompany them was priceless in a world with too many applicants chasing too few berths – any chance for glory was also a chance for promotion. Succeed, and every man would be lauded, fail and only Barclay would suffer ignominy.
Pearce slept throughout the day, a blissful eight continuous hours, his back coated with the soothing comfrey, for once not damned by the need to man his watch. Lutyens let him be, more taken with the paradox he was witnessing amongst the crew, one he alluded to when Pearce awoke, but only after he had enquired about his condition.
The patient eased his back, feeling the skin still tight, itching rather than stinging, and beneath the skin bones that carried a bearable ache. And he felt refreshed, almost like a different person, more alert after a slumber that went beyond the usual three and a half hours.
‘I can scarce credit that I was at that grating, let alone that it is only half a day past.’
‘Old remedies, Pearce,’ Lutyens insisted, ‘they never fail. Comfrey was known to the ancient world as a palliative, yet few medical men use it now. But go to the country and you will find the common village healer swears by it. Laudanum, too, comes from a natural source, a variety of poppy. I cannot think why there is such a desire in medicinal circles for innovation when we have to hand so many well-tried cures.’
Pearce was tempted to disagree but Lutyens had moved on to discuss the forthcoming attempt to cut out the Indiaman, openly perplexed by the attitude of the crew.
‘I cannot fathom it, Pearce,’ eyes alight as he hooted at the expression. ‘Salty is it not?’ Then he adopted a more serious tone. ‘It is plain that the crew are indifferent to Captain Barclay – there is no air of him having inspired them to attempt exemplary deeds. Yet what do I witness as preparations go ahead for this adventure: a heightened state, a glow in the eyes of many, impatience! They shake their heads at what has happened so far,’ the voice dropped to a conspiratorial tone, ‘I do believe they think Barclay a fool to have been so guyed by the Frenchman, even more of a fool to increase the stakes to try and win all on a throw. Yet they are afire to fight.’
Pearce wondered if he should reply, just as he wondered why this surgeon wished to engage him in conversation on such a topic. His recollection of the time since he had entered this sickbay was vague, but he had a nagging suspicion that he had talked a great deal, that he might have told Lutyens more about himself than he wished.
‘Come, John Pearce, you must, for all love, have an opinion.’
‘There are those who love nothing more than a scrap.’
Lutyens bowed, leaning forward towards his seated patient, his voice insistent.
‘Are you one of them, Pearce?’
‘I will fight if I have a reason to do so, but I have always thought it foolish to seek one out.’
‘My point! Surely a man must have a motive to wish to fight, to face death or disfigurement, especially for a cause that will not improve his life one jot. Or is the reasoning and need of another, or some notion of patriotism, sufficient?’
‘Perhaps it is the ship,’ Pearce said, for he had observed that the sailors aboard talked of it fondly. ‘They have a collective love of this vessel, of its reputation…’
‘I hazard, not enough,’ Lutyens interrupted, with an impatient scowl, which annoyed Pearce enough to produce a sharp response.
‘…Or perhaps the life they lead is so dire in its prospect that anything, including their own mortality, is forfeit in the name of excitement or some false notion that they are on the verge of a wealth that will bring them ease and comfort. Narrow horizons make men prey to all sorts of designs, and they usually find whatever sacrifice they endure is more for the benefit of another than themselves.’
‘That, I suspect, is precisely what Adam Pearce would say?’
Tempted to say, ‘Who?’ Pearce was stopped by the knowing look in the surgeon’s eye, more so when he added, ‘Laudanum eases more than pain.’
‘I have seen what it does, Mr Lutyens,’ Pearce said guardedly, and indeed having listened to his father’s ramblings under the influence of the opiate, he knew he might have performed likewise. ‘But I would be cautious about any revelations made. They are more likely to be invention than fact.’
Lutyens was amused. ‘Indeed?’
‘Am I free to go?’
‘You are if you can stand and walk.’
Pearce felt a deeper ache in his back as he pulled himself to his feet, yet felt better for being upright and so much taller than Lutyens. Sitting, he had considered himself at the man’s mercy. Looking down on him he felt less so.
‘I do agree with you,’ Lutyens purred, ‘regarding revelations made under the influence of laudanum. To pass them on would be very unwise. Besides, it is no one else’s business, is it?’
A slight nod was all Pearce would allow himself.
‘You ain’t never seen a man hacked about, have you lad?’ said Molly, with a heavy grimace. ‘Horrible it be, truly horrible.’
‘Blood everywhere,’ added his messmate, Foley, ‘with great dark gashes that the flies love to feed on. And the eyes, dead, like bits of glass.’
‘Cannon shot is worse, mind,’ Molly continued, ‘cut a man in half that will. Why I’ve seen men carried below in two bits, top bit screaming and the legs still twitching ten feet away on the deck.’
‘Carried below,’ cried Foley, ‘though they were scarce to last. Tossed them through a gunport then, we did, for there’s no ceremony in the midst of a sea fight. In warm water too, so it weren’t no burial they had but the makings of a meal for the sharks. Makes you wonder if it be part of God’s purpose, one of his creatures gifting sustenance to another.’
‘Leastways we won’t have splinters, Foley,’ said Molly, gravely, ‘’cause if there’s ’owt to turn your stomach it be a shard of wood slicing through flesh like a butcher’s hatchet.’
Cornelius Gherson had been terrified before sitting down but the words he was listening to made him shake even more. Selected with the rest of Number Twelve Mess to go ashore, Pearce excepted, he was searching desperately for a way out, because all he could envisage in his imagination was his body riddled with musket balls, pierced by endless pikes, slashed by dozens of cutlasses, or torn to shreds by a cannon shot. The thought that Pearce could escape such a fate merely by being the victim of a flogging made him furious. His dilemma was made doubly hard by the need to appear ardent, for all around him the crew of Brilliant was engaged in bloodcurdling threats against those they would meet this night. Molly, who had spotted his dread as easy as anyone with eyes, was having great fun stoking his fears.
‘Mind, not every man I ever served with was as hearty for a fight as this crew. Seen men run below when it gets too warm on deck.’
‘Must be hard to live with that, Molly,’ hissed Foley, ‘knowing that when it came to it, you ain’t got the liver for a scrap.’
‘Run below,’ said Gherson, with a wholly false laugh. ‘No one can do that tonight.’
‘Some will duck out for certain,’ Molly replied, ‘when the fur begins to fly. Being dark, no one will see.’
‘They say there are three parties going in,’ Gherson asked, his voice eager, ‘which one do you reckon will be the hottest?’
‘Roscoe’s, no doubt, with old Taffrail alongside him.’ Taffrail was Lieutenant Thrale’s nickname, due to him being as deaf as the posts that made up the stern rails. ‘Barclay’s gone and given hisself the easy part, I reckon.’
Molly had to think hard to make it sound convincing. But Gherson was a willing fool, quite capable of believing that the crew of the privateer, ‘would be ashore most like’; that Roscoe and Thrale were facing cannon behind stone, which ‘was a damn sight worse than wood’; that with a tide like the one in these parts, a cut hawser would see them sail out ‘as easy as kiss my hand.’
‘I want to take your place, Ben.’
Ben Walker fixed his messmate with those bright, bird-like eyes, examining Pearce’s face as he tried to figure out why he was being asked to stand aside, to let Pearce go in his place. He had been picked out as the one in their group most content to be at sea, yet surely with the wit to see what was in store for a goodly number of those going into action. Ben’s silence had marked him out for Pearce as a thinker, and in his experience such men were less ruled by the excitability common to the herd.
‘You ain’t fit for it,’ he drawled.
‘I’ll manage,’ Pearce insisted, more in hope than certainty.
‘I’m not afeart.’
‘No one says you are, Ben. But I have something to gain by going, and you do not.’
Ben Walker wanted an explanation – it was there in his expression, but Pearce had no intention of giving him one. Let his own mind work on what he might lose or gain; if that was insufficient, he would lean on young Rufus, then Gherson, who would certainly try to extract a money fee.
‘Trust me, Ben. Just like you I have secrets. I see it as no business of mine to pry into yours, but if you want to share confidences…’
Pearce left the rest up in the air, and was relieved when Ben said, ‘We’ve been put under that deaf old arse Thrale.’ Clearly revelation was not an avenue he wished to go down.
Neither Pearce nor Ben knew the details; they were confined to the officers and leading hands. But the outline of tonight’s business was common gossip. ‘I know, just as I know faces and names mean nothing. Thrale will be content if he has the number of men required, that is if he has the wit to count.’
Ben Walker looked at the deck planking, his head moving from side to side as he ruminated on what Pearce had asked. ‘Would what you are asking for be the act of a friend?
‘Yes, Ben, it would.’
‘I count you as a friend. The way you looked after Abel. Well.’
Pearce had to fix his face then, because that openly stated sentiment touched him deeply. ‘I am grateful for that.’
Walker nodded. ‘Then as a friend, and for Abel’s memory.’
Sea chests had been hauled out of the holds and opened so that those who needed shoes and coats could get at them. In the crush and confusion of forty men identifying their property no one had paid any attention to Pearce as he found the one that contained his possessions, taking out his half-length boots and his collarless coat. He felt immediately that the weight was wrong, and, plunging his hand into the inside pocket were he had left his purse, he discovered it to be empty. A silent curse was all he could employ – there was no time for speculation – his money was gone, and he had to be gone as well to avoid discovery.
‘You’re mad,’ whispered Michael O’Hagan, as, minutes later they queued on the moonlit upper deck for their weapons. ‘Mind, I never doubted that was true.’
Those were no words that a man in a trough of doubt wanted to hear – no money made what he contemplated even harder – so when Pearce emphatically replied it was as much to steel his own resolve as to answer the Irishman. ‘That Michael, is the coast of France.’
‘It might be the gates of Hell.’
‘Pearce?’ demanded Dysart, peering as he identified him. ‘What in the name o’ Christ are you doing here?’
‘You wouldn’t deny me the chance to fight would you?’
Dysart gave him an arch look. ‘I wouldna have thought this one yours.’
‘It’s in my blood,’ Pearce insisted.
Dysart had been given a length of linstock, which he began to wrap round his waist as Pearce elbowed his way to the pile of weapons, where he selected a tomahawk and a vicious short-bladed knife. Returning to join the two Celts, he added, ‘They know all about fighting Scots over yonder, and they hold us to be mad in battle. The French even have an expression for it, le furieux ecoissais.’
Dysart grinned, juggling the flints that would be used to spark the slow-match, before stowing them deep in his pocket. ‘Christ, Barclay will bust a gut if he finds oot a man he flogged in the morning was fit tae fight the same bluddy night.’
‘Then let’s hope it is something the surgeon cannot cure.’
‘Amen to that,’ Dysart replied, before adding. ‘Taverner, Dommet, get that wee barrel of gunpowder.’ Dysart then looked back at Pearce. ‘So you might no just be going for a mad battle?’
Pearce just put a finger to his lips, as the command came to get the boats over the side. There was a nervous moment when Lieutenant Digby spotted him, his raised eyebrows testimony to his surprise. The pair locked eyes, before Digby nodded, then looked away.
‘Where’s Corny?’ asked Rufus.
‘Gherson,’ Charlie Taverner snorted, probably hiding in the heads. ‘The way he was shitting himself it be just as well.’
‘Happen he’s learnt his lesson from the other night,’ said Rufus.
‘Don’t go wagering anything on that,’ Taverner replied, as he went over the side into the boat.
Stiffly, Pearce followed him down.
‘A trip around the bay,’ hooted Michael, as he came last, by his loud proclamation taking any curious eyes off Pearce. ‘Now, would we not have paid good money for such a treat, and here we are getting it for free. Sure, it’s a grand life.’