Garlick led him through the parlour, past several tables at which people were eating – less smoky now because of that – then on to a separate dining room. After a discreet knock, he opened the door to reveal William Pit. He was sitting facing the entrance and lifted his head, made curious at the sight of a tall, uniformed officer at the owner’s back.
‘Saving your presence, sir, there is, as I told you, a senior naval captain a’staying here and he is anxious to make your acquaintance.’
Brazier wanted to curse the man; he had been well and truly humbugged, led to believe it was Pitt’s desire to meet with him when it was clearly not the case. This was made doubly embarrassing when a furrowed brow showed his surprise at this intrusion. Sat with his back to a window, overlooking the seashore, beside his plate lay a pile of papers, which he had probably been studying while he ate.
‘Sir, this interruption is not of my doing.’ If the King’s First Minister had looked confused before, he was doubly so now, especially since Garlick quickly and expertly slipped away, leaving him the sole occupant of the doorway. ‘I will, of course, leave you to your labours and food in peace.’
The lips, which tended to the downturn, lifted a fraction. ‘Am I to judge you are a victim of our overeager host?’
‘Perspicacious, sir. He assured me you wished to make my acquaintance.’
‘He is wedded to his incorrigible trade, but he has put you in a position of some mortification, so I feel it would be churlish merely to send you away. If you wish you may come and join me.’ Brazier’s eyes flicked to the pile of papers, a look perceived by Pitt. ‘You will rescue me from these confounded reports, sir, which are inclined, if I study them while eating, to badly affect my digestion.’
The desire to decline was strong, but the original reason for complying with Garlick was solid too.
‘Pray take a seat and I will send for a second goblet. That said, it might serve if we formally introduced ourselves.’
‘I well know who you are, sir.’
‘Aye, Garlick would have boasted of it.’
‘I would have without his swaggering. I saw you once at St James’s Palace, during a royal levee.’
The memory was of a salon full of men in uniform, either red or blue, so military, or functionaries in coats of many colours, with just as many ladies of rank and varying levels of age and beauty, from the seriously beautiful to the downright frightful, and all in awe of bustling King George. The monarch had looked to Brazier, even with all his stars and decorations, like quite an ordinary person, albeit one easily driven to barking at people.
‘I think you were being much put upon by a very agitated sovereign on the subject of the Prince of Wales, and he was far from discreet in his condemnations.’
‘A normal estate, sir, when it comes to his male children, none of whom meet his standards. Please, come in and take a chair …?’
‘Brazier, sir, Captain Edward Brazier.’
The look went quizzical only to turn to a non-committal smile, which led his visitor to conclude it had not registered. Why would it? There were too many officers of the Captain’s List for them to be at all familiar. Acceding to a hand gesture Brazier took a chair, this as Pitt rang a bell, with silence maintained for the few seconds it took for a servant to appear. He lifted the glass flagon by his side and peered to see what was within.
‘Another of the same and a goblet for my guest. Have you eaten, sir?’
The positive response was a lie. In truth it was a mite early for a man accustomed to having his dinner at the naval time: four bells in the afternoon watch and not, as civilians did, around noon. He could dine early, but to eat now would fix him to the table for perhaps too long. Brazier wanted to depart when it suited him, although a couple of glasses of wine from Garlick’s surprisingly good cellar would be happily consumed.
‘Are you here on duty, Captain?’
‘No, sir. I merely came to Deal on a visit.’
Another quizzical look led to a sketched explanation of his recent service, added to the fact that his frigate had just been paid off at Portsmouth. If it left hanging in the air the fact that he was now free of employment, no new ship being mentioned, it was not taken up.
‘Three years you say?’ Pitt enquired, as a second flagon and a goblet appeared, he then pouring for both of them from the old one, Brazier able to register it was then empty. ‘You must have been in Jamaica when Admiral Hassall died?’
‘I was, sir; a most unfortunate event.’
‘Sudden.’
‘Very. His valet saw him to bed a healthy man, but found him dead in the morning.’
‘I was informed of his demise by Admiral Lord Howe, in Cabinet. The despatch told us he expired from the bite of a venomous snake?’
Brazier had to hope that Pitt did not notice his very slight hesitation; he had to compose his reply as carefully considered, on a subject he would really like to have avoided.
‘That was the conclusion of the physicians. The bite marks on his jugular were obvious, while they insisted the contortions and discolouration of his countenance indicated, when they reported to me, they were correct in their conclusion.’
There seemed to be an element of morbid fascination in the next question. ‘You did not observe these effects on the cadaver yourself, then?’
‘I trusted the doctors to tell me the facts of the matter. I did, however, see him as he was being sewn in canvas, before he was placed on a board for burial at sea. That did not disguise his face, which proved he died a horrid and painful death. My task was to take over his duties, pending the arrival of his replacement. It was I who wrote home the despatch, regarding his passing, from which Lord Howe read.’
‘Onerous, Jamaica, in terms of the responsibility of command, I daresay.’
Brazier replied when he had supped some wine; Pitt had gulped and then refilled his empty glass to near the brim, his guest declining.
‘It’s a busy station, sir, as much in peace as in war, especially now the Americans are barred from trade with our colonies, not that they don’t try. Added to which the traffic from the Spanish Main brings the wolves in abundance and they are singularly far from particular in whom they attack. Our own merchant fleet is as much at their mercy as a Don, for any cargo will serve, given it is easy to sell on. We did our best to curtail that, sir, for the Spanish possessions can be lawless too. Or, shall I say, those who govern them are not given to interference as long as their own vessels are not involved.’
‘Nothing short of piracy, in other words, which the King’s Navy is surely tasked to prevent.’
‘We did have our successes, one or two of them striking.’
Pitt’s expression changed to one of sudden enlightenment, the gaze lifting a fraction, as if the answer to what had occurred to him lay above his head. ‘Brazier you say? You know I think I’ve smoked you out now, sir. Were you not the lucky fellow who took a Spanish ship carrying bullion, not long after poor Hassel expired?’
‘HMS Diomede was fortunate in that regard, sir, but entirely due to an excellent crew and a fine set of officers.’
‘While I was not, Captain. Your modesty does you credit, but we had strong representations that the vessel should be restored to Spain and not treated as a prize. The demand was declined, of course, but it did nothing to improve our relations with Madrid, not that they are ever happy as long as we hold Gibraltar.’
Fully expecting to be asked for details of the chase, battle and recapture of the Santa Clara, in which he would show as much humility as he had demonstrated a moment past, Brazier was surprised when Pitt changed the subject. It was one that threw his guest.
‘How does the navy take to the office of First Lord being filled by a soldier?’
‘We are here to serve, sir.’
That was an ingenuous reply: the navy was furious at the appointment of the Earl of Chatham to such a post, a fellow who had purchased a mere captaincy in the Foot Guards, which was stretching the term ‘soldier’ to the limit. It meant he had nothing apart from his title and his parentage to distinguish him. Pitt did not come across as much of a laughing man, but he did so now, his shoulders gently shaking in mirth.
‘I cannot believe you are in ignorance of the furore, sir, for I, the man who appointed him, am not.’
‘While I cannot believe we are bereft of an admiral with which to replace Lord Howe.’
Brazier was thinking that the Admiralty was run by a board made up mostly of sea officers; Chatham might chair it, but he would likely find his ability to get his way severely constrained. Pitt was thinking on another matter entirely, obvious by his following heated exclamation, one which missed by a sea mile Brazier’s point.
‘Damn me, you’re right about the numbers of flag officers. That is a pack that could do with a cull.’
The man opposite could not help but frown at both the tone and the sentiment; he would one day, if he lived long enough, hold flag rank and the reaction was noted.
‘If I offend a sensibility, Captain Brazier, I will forbear to apologise. The number of elderly admirals unemployed and drawing pay are a drain on the public purse, which is much strained already. You will have seen the 74’ fitting out here, I daresay?’
‘Impossible to miss a ship-of-the line laying just offshore.’
The tone of the response became too overly empathic, which led Brazier to wonder if Pitt was affected by his consumption of wine. He was well into his second flagon of a very good claret and his glass was never left empty.
‘Over thirty-six thousand pounds of the navy’s budget to pay for it, sir. And what will happen when she’s complete, now we are at peace? It will likely be laid up in ordinary, to sit in the Thames Estuary and give the rot a good chance to take hold.’
‘I suspect the keel was laid when we were at war, sir.’
‘Before I took office and under Lord North, it is true. Not that I could have stayed it, for the navy is a law unto itself, as my predecessor found. They will spend every penny granted them in their budgets, the estimates of which grow every year and are never constrained by any thoughts to the other requirements of the nation.’
‘Without our ships to protect us, Mr Pitt, we’d be at the mercy of our enemies and perhaps no nation at all. France is still a powerful enemy and so, as you have already mentioned, with Gibraltar in our possession, is Spain.’
He recognised Brazier’s touchiness and he held up a hand to acknowledge he had been somewhat rude. ‘You make a good point, but I sense waste and it irks me.’
Pitt sat back and dropped his chin in contemplation, which allowed Brazier to examine him more closely than hitherto – here, or previously at St James’s Palace. If his eyes spoke of high intelligence, the cast of the lower half of his face showed it as not designed by nature for mirth. He also had the pallid skin of an indoor man, the whole topped with swept-back hair and a rather indolent manner. It gave him the look of a person of no great account, a man about the town and, given his dress was of excellent quality, one of some means.
Nothing could be less apposite. Pitt was exceedingly young for his office, a mere twenty-four years of age when he became First Lord of the Treasury. By repute he was damned clever and very active, quite happy with his reputation as a miserly guardian of the Exchequer. He had inherited a startling national debt of near two hundred and thirty million in pounds sterling, this from the American War, and he was busy, with some success, seeking to pay it down.
It was imputed by his political enemies that, to the detriment of the nation and having raised taxes on imported goods, he hated to spend so much as a penny when a farthing might serve. His response, as reported – for he was a lively debater both inside and outside parliament – was to term them corrupt spendthrifts, many of whom had lined their own pockets from wartime contracts, while others had been openly sympathetic to the American rebels.
‘I hope that my elder brother, being a civilian, can constrain the excess, for he will not be swayed by sentiment or the pleading of admirals. I know it will be seen as nepotism and that does concern me, but King George is with me on this. There are many things we must get a grip on and the Navy Board, along with the Admiralty, are but two.’
The voice altered slightly to become less friendly, more pointed, while his look at Brazier was fixed. ‘He will, of course, not act in a high-handed fashion. My brother knows he will be required to take advice from his naval colleagues when it comes to appointments.’
‘Very wise, sir,’ Brazier replied, draining his goblet, to hide the fact he was somewhat put out by the tone; it implied he declined to intervene in such matters and this for a fellow not asking for any favour. He shifted in his seat preparatory to moving on. ‘Now, if you will forgive me, I have matters to attend to.’
‘You may know, Captain, I come to Walmer Castle for the sea air. Feel free to call while I’m in residence. My younger sister, Lady Eliot, is soon to arrive to take the air for her condition of pregnancy. She will do the honours at my table and is an avid seeker of new sources of conversation, of which the Kent coast has something of a dearth for me.’
‘That is kind of you, sir, though I fear I might bore her.’
‘Nonsense; having smoked your name, I can now recall it was worthy of a Gazette for Trincomalee, and in recounting that alone you will entertain her.’
‘I have no idea how long I will be in Deal, but if it is of length and time permits, I will certainly request permission to call.’
Once outside the private room, Brazier felt he had just played a bad hand, indeed he had been foolish: he should have jumped at the chance to visit Walmer Castle, for who could say where it could lead? When Pitt alluded to his elder brother Chatham seeking naval advice, he had reacted in the wrong way. He should have had a refill and talked of something else to kill the impression he was seeking an intercession on his behalf. That accepted, the offer to visit had seemed genuine.
Garlick, once more at his place, got a black look and a sharp instruction to deliver dinner to Brazier’s rooms at three of the clock.
Daniel Spafford was eating in his isolated farmhouse outside Worth, with him the man he held as his right hand. He and Daisy were again discussing the events of the morning, which had been a disappointment. The idea, a false one, that Spafford was ill enough to be at risk of dying, had been thought up by Trotter as a notion to appeal to their rival.
Being obsessed with his own health, forever intoning the doom-laden words that he reckoned to be not long for this world, Tulkington might fall for the notion that Spafford was in worse straits, as well as be attracted to the idea of seeing off competition in the long run. On reflection it could be seen as desperate from the start, a case of hope and need overcoming common sense.
‘I hope you has some other thought in that head of yours, Daisy,’ Spafford growled. Being in rude good health, he cut into his beefsteak with gusto, meat to be washed down with a tankard of porter, part of a jug brought to him from the local tavern. Speaking through a mouthful of both rendered his words indistinct. ‘I cannot abide that matters should rest as they are.’
‘I could just seek to knife him, Dan – be a pleasure to.’
‘What makes you reckon you’d get close? I wouldn’t let you within ten feet if I thought you might blade me, which is why it took you near a month to even get to talk to Hawker.’
Trotter’s thin frame swelled at those words for he was proud of his reputation, one that made most men cautious when he was close by. How often had he been asked the number of souls he had seen to perdition? The questioner would get nothing but a wolfish grin, along with an invitation to make up their own number, he saying he could not rightly recall. That was more of a scare than any figure.
Trotter and Spafford had known each other for over a quarter of a century, meeting as ship’s boys, sailing mates on the Baltic run where they had bonded to be something akin to brothers. The seal of friendship came when Daisy had, one dark night, knifed a huge brute of a bastard who was seeking to prey on Spafford, then a young and comely lad.
The two had just managed to toss his weighty bulk over the side into the German Sea and, being a bully to all aboard, few asked where he had gone, even with his blood staining the deck. Never mentioned was why Trotter had acted as he had, when he himself was suffering no oppression. But from then on he was never far from Dan Spafford’s side.
The move into smuggling had come naturally to a pair grown to be prime seamen and coming into their late twenties. This was at a time when, with a war on, sailing to the Baltic risked being taken by French or Dutch privateers, villains as like to slit your throat as take you for a prisoner. Spafford had been in receipt of a small windfall, enough money to put down for the hire of a lugger, the precursor to the two he now owned.
When England was at war normal trade was impossible, so the profits were high and the number of buyers abundant enough to allow for competition with Tulkington. Not any more; the coming of peace and the difficulty of contending with his rival’s smooth operation had, over three years, dented what had become a far-from-deep Spafford purse, this to the point where it was becoming bare.
To trade at all he now had to sell much lower to undercut the competition, and while the gang of a dozen souls he led were loyal, it was only because he had kept them sweet. Without support he could not operate at all, which meant, as of now, too much of what profit he made was going to them. In the presence of the only person with whom he could share his concerns, he was obliged to mull over what to do next.
Every leader needs an ear to which he can open up without concern, as well as a voice to warn him, one not afraid to speak openly, when he might be approaching shoal water. Daisy loved him and that had, from their early years, been his shield, not broken in any way by the disinclination of Spafford to oblige his cravings. The other protection was simple: Jaleel Trotter was not called Daisy for nothing. He was no leader of men, as well as no Hector with his fists or a sword, while being more dangerous to himself than others with a pistol. Dan Spafford had grown from that slight and put-upon lad, to become a rough-and-tumble bruiser no one would dare seek to bully.
‘You would have knifed him if you’d been in that carriage, Daisy, had you been there to hear him. Can’t think of a time when not havin’ a weapon hurt so much. He talked to me like I was shit on his shoe.’
‘He sees a gent when he passes a mirror glass.’
‘An’ I see a turd in fine cloth,’ Spafford spat, simultaneously stabbing at his meat as if it was his rival.
‘Yet one who can bear his costs and easy.’
The nod was a weary one, Tulkington being able to maintain his enterprise in a way Spafford could not. The sod had been at the game all his adult life, as had his father before him. Years of cross-Channel dealing meant he had contacts a bit of a johnny-come-lately could not match, as well as the use of larger vessels he seemed to have no need to own.
He also had something of a lock on the town of Deal as well as the charitable ear of those who held official office, many fellow Freemasons, men who had benefited over years from the Tulkington family’s largesse. If many of his contributions were to municipal causes and above board, there existed the gifts he and his father before him had made to men supposed to uphold the law, from loans at questionable rates or in some case outright bribes, which put them under his power.
Not that any real pressure was required when it came to trafficking contraband. Above anything else the Mayor and Jurats of Deal abhorred disturbance and, living cheek by jowl with easily aggrieved boatmen, violent demonstration and disturbance – which included house burning – was always on the horizon. The making of anything even close to a living was fraught with difficulty and nothing led to unrest quicker than scarcity of income, so smuggling and the monies generated and spread was reckoned a keeper of the peace.
A blind eye to the smuggling trade, from which, in some way, all drew benefit, was seen as good for the prosperity of the town, certainly for the tavern and alehouse owners, as well as the various trades that dealt in common commodities. It was all very well for the likes of William Pitt and a few moneyed souls in London to rail against it, but they would not suffer the consequences of interdiction. Unless they were prepared to provide an alternative way of fashioning a living, it was something, to the more prosperous folk of Deal, best left alone.
Tulkington himself also benefited from the clandestine income smuggling brought to the town. He owned several enterprises, which supplied both the anchorage and the inhabitants with necessary produce. Less open was the way he drew monies from other sources so he did not just depend on contraband to pay his more numerous hirelings, which he had and could maintain in numbers. Spafford was acutely aware that something had to be done to alter the present situation. It was the means that was lacking, given today’s attempt to delude him had failed.
‘We could link up with Romney Marsh,’ Daisy suggested, ‘they’ve no love for Tulkington and would aid us in seeing him off.’
‘How long would that last afore they were at our throats too?’ A bit of a sigh and a long chew on his beef. ‘But we can’t just go on as we are, Daisy. If we have to get hostile, let it be so, but it would aid us to be making some money when it happens and there’s only one place that can be got.’
‘Am I smoking this right, Dan?’
‘You are, Daisy. We’re going to have to lift and sell some of Tulkington’s own goods.’
‘How’s it to be done?’
‘By bein’ bold, brother; there’s no other way.’
‘You has to know he has a cargo due.’
‘Easy to sniff that, Daisy, and are we not at a good time of year for calm waters and long nights?’
It would not have pleased Dan Spafford to have any inkling of the thoughts of Henry Tulkington on the same matter. When he described the man he had met as a pest, it had been in the nature of a householder referring to a mouse, something easily solved by a terrier and, given he was in possession of such an article in John Hawker and the gang he led, not one of great concern.
Tulkington had always possessed the means to squash Spafford at any time of his choosing. Yet he had good grounds to allow him to trade, though not with complete freedom to challenge his supremacy. It was the same with the opportunist smuggling carried out by the boatmen on Deal beach; they too might sometimes think they were cocking a snook at a superior operation, when in reality they served, for his enterprises, a definite purpose.
Though by no means able to completely control the Revenue Service, Henry Tulkington had the resources to in some ways bend their activities. It was essential for his prosperity they had more than one target for their efforts. Without multiple potential culprits to chase, they would be obliged to concentrate on his activities, which operated on a much higher plane in both quantity and value.
It was necessary to ruminate on what Spafford had told him, to first ask himself if the supposed approach of his passing was true: a lie, it could be ignored. Yet if the man was truly on the point of expiry, what he had said about subsequent trouble had the merit of presaging trouble. Son Harry could not exercise control over his own bad habits, let alone the kind of ruffians his father led. It then followed that Spafford’s conclusion also had weight.
Nothing stimulated Preventative activity like bloodshed and at worst that would extend to the army being called in, as it had in the past, in cases like that of the Hawkhurst gang. Active thirty years past, his father had taken and passed on the lesson of their demise as a telling example. Too successful for their own good, they had not only allowed their smuggling operation to become obvious, their leaders had acted with no sense at all, resorting to bloodshed when the Revenue sought to curtail their activities. It had ended with many of the gang dead, either from a weapon or a rope, and their operations smashed.
The sprite of violence, once out of the bottle, was impossible to control, especially when folk were disturbed or harmed who should be left in peace. Never a man to act in haste, Henry Tulkington knew he might have to craft a solution. As yet, as a problem, it was not pressing; he had other concerns much closer to home to worry about.
While Edward Brazier was at his victuals, William Pitt was making his way from the Three Kings back to Walmer Castle, behind him a pair of musket-bearing soldiers, as well as a clerk carrying his papers. There were endless folk prepared to tell him this kind of perambulation was unwise, that he should travel by coach, even more prepared to spit at his passing, for he was singularly unpopular in these parts.
It upped the abuse, which tended to become highly vocal, when he forced himself to smile at the irate boatmen he passed, some of whom were owners of craft they had been obliged to build as a result of his actions. Pitt cared little for the fact that he was detested, even when informed he had been burnt in effigy in retaliation. He was unwavering in his wish to put a complete stopper, by hook or by crook, to their villainous trade, forever cogitating on ideas or actions that might bring that about.
Many would have wondered at his dilemma. He might be the King’s First Minister, but he did not enjoy untrammelled power, his actions dependent on supportive Houses of Parliament and the fragile coalition that made up the Cabinet. He could not call out the army without risking the kind of censure that might bring down his administration, and the navy were able to politely ignore his requests to intervene. The trail of influence and interest worked against an easy solution and many a Member of Parliament shared the common view that taxes were vile and smuggling contraband could never be stopped, so what was the point of trying?
There was another thought to occupy him, which was the name of the naval captain he had just met. It took him back to the Cabinet at Downing Street in which Admiral Lord Howe had informed those present of the death of Sir Lowell Hassel, the commanding admiral at Jamaica.
In itself, such a passing was not uncommon; the West Indies were a graveyard for Europeans, and sailors, – if they suffered less than soldiers – were not immune. Yet the manner of the expiry was odd. Even more troubling was the unsigned letter addressed to Howe which had come in the same packet as the Brazier despatch. It made the whole affair much more perplexing.
‘Oh yes, Edward Brazier,’ Pitt said to himself, in a non-carrying whisper, ‘I knew your name alright, as well as the responsibilities you took on after Hassel died. The question to which I do not have an answer is the reason the death occurred.
‘Was it as your despatch said or was it, as the anonymous letter implied, foul play?