HMS Flirt could not come into Vado Bay without attracting attention and that was long before the firing of any signal gun. The sight of topsails in the offing, to a squadron of fighting vessels at anchor, guaranteed scrutiny, peace or war being irrelevant. Any number of people had used their spyglasses to identify her, few mystified regarding her name and class, least of all Passed Midshipman and Acting Lieutenant Toby Burns.
On the deck as the officer of the watch aboard HMS Brilliant, his only question was to wonder at who might be aboard. Indeed, he was so taken with his curiosity, it was some time before he realised he had failed in one of his standing duties, which had him growling at a midshipman ten years his senior.
‘Please inform the captain that HMS Flirt is making her number.’
Several factors initiated the reprimand he later got for his laxity. First was the amount of time between the sighting and the message being passed to Captain Taberly, established by the gap between delivery and the banging of the signal guns. Next was the person sent to relay the information, who could not help – and this was brought on by malevolence – but apologise for being late in its provision.
Tobias Garforth was a fellow in his mid twenties, who for years had failed to rise above the rank of midshipman. This showed in his attire: a badly worn and patched coat, down-at-heel shoes that had long lost both their buckles and their shine; a man who clung zealously to his position to avoid the alternative, which was to be cast ashore to fend for himself in the article of food and a place to lay his head.
Garforth had sat for lieutenant four times and failed to pass on every occasion, unknown to him by a serious margin and, Taberly apart, who knew his father, he lacked the interest to alter his situation, being singularly bereft in both high connections and the kind of flag rank patron who could ease his passage into paid service.
He was thus obliged to acknowledge an incompetent like Toby Burns as a superior, a fellow who had passed the examination, though he was yet to be confirmed by the Admiralty. Never once, his self-esteem being so high, could Garforth accept that he too was not in the first ranks of naval personnel when it came to ability.
He also heartily disliked Burns, a view shared by many members of a crew who knew him of old, so every time he was given an instruction it made his blood boil. Common gossip had it that Burns only got his step in rank through the personal attention given to him by Sir William Hotham and at an age that did not qualify, with many allusions being made to dubious motives.
Added to that, he had a reputation aboard the frigate that flew in the face of the heroic one in which he was shrouded and nothing he had done since coming back on board from HMS Britannia had altered that. The frigate HMS Brilliant had once been commanded by Ralph Barclay, his uncle by marriage. This was the ship in which he had first put to sea as an eager midshipman something over two years previously, a feeling of enthusiasm that had long since atrophied until a great deal of his being wished for nothing more than to be shot of the navy for good.
On deck, looking through his telescope at a sleek brig preparing to anchor, his heart sank at the sight of John Pearce on the quarterdeck. As he saw him lift his hat to Henry Digby, another old Brilliant hand, Burns felt a pang of envy as well. He was looking at a man who seemed to be in possession of all the things to which he aspired but lacked, not least his acknowledged and unquestioned bravery.
The last bell had been rung, which brought up from below the men coming on watch, those they were replacing glad to be off the deck for, at this time of year, the Mediterranean was no benign location wafting warm breezes. Autumn brought on rough seas and frequent gales, while if the wind was in any way northerly it also brought biting winds.
Burns handed over his duty to the next officer to have the deck and went below to the wardroom, with John Pearce at the very forefront of his mind. He had good cause to worry that the man could be his nemesis, all to do with a case for false impressment brought against his late uncle. Any hopes that such a problem would die with Ralph Barclay seemed misplaced, the worry for Burns being the pack of lies he had told at a gimcrack court martial to help get his uncle off the hook.
There were times when he reasoned that his having been coerced would save him, others when he imagined a black cloth on the head of a judge passing sentence on him for the capital crime of perjury. John Pearce had the means to bring that fate down upon him.
‘Grim of face as usual,’ cried the marine officer, as he entered the wardroom and made for the stove to remove his gloves and warm his hands. ‘You’re like a bad penny, Burns, to whom good cheer is alien.’
The remark had all those present look up from whatever they were about, to check the veracity of the statement. This had Toby altering his expression from the one caused by gloomy reflection to an insincere smile, but the result was as dispiriting as his mood; heads shook with dejection as they examined the latest addition to their assemblage.
‘I should leave the young man alone, McArdle, don’t you think? He is yet nervous in our company.’
That support came from the second lieutenant, Thomas Whitlow, who threw a look of sympathy in the direction of Burns, which began to lift his mood; the next words sent it down again for it was only an excuse for a reprimand.
‘And I would remind you of the conventions of our naval profession, from which the possession of a red coat and a captain’s commission does not excuse you.’
McArdle, who saw himself as jocose and spirited, was a constant offender against the rule that within the wardroom it was essential to be polite, it being an overfull space within which the same men could be cooped up as companions for months or even years. The habitués grew accustomed to each other’s foibles, but that did not exclude them causing exasperation, which had to be contained and disguised lest it break into the kind of open disagreement that could create a poisonous atmosphere.
Captain Leyton McArdle was a soldier by trade, red of face and brusque of manner, needing to be constantly reminded of his manners. He hailed from the Irish province of Ulster, was a rabid Protestant supporter of the Plantation and never shy of saying so, not that he was in much danger of offending a papist in these quarters: no one of that denomination could be an officer in any of the services of the British Crown.
‘What have I said but the plain truth, Mr Whitlow?’
‘I refer again to the concord of the wardroom. Some truths are better kept unspoken.’
The increase in the number of servants indicated it was approaching time for dinner and that required that folk move to allow the tables to be set up. When the time came to be served, Mr Glaister, the premier, came from his quarter cabin and took his place at the head, which was set upon the cover of the tiller, with the light from the casements behind him partially hiding the bony face that had earned him the soubriquet of ‘The Skeleton’.
As the most junior, Toby Burns took his seat at the opposite end and tried to partake of the conversation, difficult given his inner turmoil, which led to his being excluded, driving him even deeper into miserable reflection. He had seen John Pearce more than once in the last few months, but he had managed to avoid a meeting, something he dreaded because the last words he had said to him face-to-face were chilling.
This was none other than the promise of a duel as a reward for perceived chicanery, one Burns knew he could never win; indeed, he doubted he could even face the prospect, for death was sure to follow. Not for the first time in his life, as he fought to hold back shaming tears, he cursed a man who had brought him nothing but trouble.
At one time eating aboard HMS Flirt had been communal; including Grey there were only three officers, no surgeon, and she even lacked a purser at present, a duty that currently fell to Henry Digby. If never truly animated – the captain was not that way inclined – meals had been tranquil affairs, albeit certain subjects were skated round and it was not just Pearce’s relationship with Emily Barclay.
The one topic never raised was how he had come about his rank, it being held that King George had suffered a recurrence of his madness when he insisted that Midshipman Pearce, in showing outstanding courage and resource should, in the face of scant precedence, be promoted to lieutenant without being examined. This was something only those long in years could ever recall happening and that had been once, during the Seven Years’ War, to a midshipman of many years’ experience who might have passed for lieutenant anyway.
The monarch was not to be dissuaded so it became an act that, when it rippled through the service, caused deep resentment from aspiring midshipmen who saw themselves as more entitled, all the way up through lieutenants and captains to a whole raft of flag officers, both active and those termed ‘yellow’, which basically meant retired. The navy treasured their professionalism even if it was occasionally flouted; not for them purchase of a commission as it was in the army. If some folk got a step through their connections that was tolerable. It was not that any man should get it on a royal whim!
There was no reason to dwell on that or any other of his manifest problems as Pearce ate in solitude. Digby had invited Edward Grey to join him in his quarters, that being his prerogative, which was very obviously another public snub. Much more important were the reflections on an uncertain future, for the one mapped out to him by Emily Barclay did not appeal in the slightest, while satisfactory alternatives seemed in short supply.
Why could she not see the lack of attraction, to him, of a respectable life in a country town? John Pearce had enjoyed what could be termed a colourful childhood. He had also lived long enough in post-Revolutionary Paris to be a man who appreciated metropolitan life, albeit he knew himself to be endemically restless, no doubt a result of his upbringing with a father who was peripatetic and a dangerous radical to the men who ran Britain.
Adam Pearce, a one-time alumni of the University of Edinburgh, had formed in his youth and had gone on as an adult to promulgate views that in many ways mirrored those espoused by the leading lights of the French Revolution: universal suffrage, equality of the sexes, an end to monarchy and the depredations of the rich visited upon the poor. Unwelcome at home it had turned out to be equally so with the hypocrites of Paris.
Obliged with his son to flee to France in order to avoid a writ for seditious libel, a typical peace of judicial trickery from the government of William Pitt, Adam had found the ideals that had prompted the Revolution were being abused by those who had taken power in a way that caused him to speak out against their lack of virtue.
Such open outbursts had not gone down well. From being feted on arrival as a fellow thinker, the likes of Robespierre and his cohorts on the Committee of Public Safety had hauled Adam before a Revolutionary Tribunal, a court in which only one verdict was ever passed: guilty. To get the writ in Britain lifted so his father could return home from his Parisian incarceration brought John Pearce to the banks of the River Thames and the Pelican Tavern, and so subsequently to where he now sat.
In whirling, unsettled thoughts, he was soon mentally having the argument with Emily he had never in fact engaged in, partly he knew from fear of driving her into a position from which she would not withdraw. If he could be stubborn he knew her to be cut from an equally uncompromising mould. If she had been otherwise, how could she have defied her husband in the first place?
Pearce had no doubt Ralph Barclay regretted the day he ever thought to take his young and beautiful wife to sea. Emily had explained it as a desire to reduce domestic outgoings – after five years on the beach, Barclay was beset by too many creditors to leave a bride half his age alone and tempted in their hometown of Frome. Who knew what she might get up to? What bills might she run up? He thought he had wed a mouse; instead he got a tartar.
Her first rebellion had been aboard HMS Brilliant against the article of flogging, of which she strongly disapproved, this made obvious to a husband who saw it as essential to the proper running of a ship of war. It was also the case that she did not understand her husband expected her to respect his position as a post captain without question, which prior to their nuptials had been to him the sole reason for his existence, he having worked for twenty-five years to get there.
The difference in age had counted as well, Barclay doubling hers, added to which he had come to manhood in the rough element of a midshipman’s berth and up until his captaincy his experience of women had been bought and paid for. Emily knew only gentle if not overly well-endowed respectability in a parochial backwater. It was that to which she wished to return, taking John Pearce along, and the prospect made him recoil. He could imagine nothing worse than a sort of squire-like existence, mixing with folk who could barely see beyond their own town limits and, very often, hardly over the borders of the county in which they lived.
There would be local magnates, large and probably titled landowners, expecting deference if not outright subservience and he knew he could not abide such a life. There would too be a town full of petty prejudices, bigotry and gossip, hemmed in by endless provincial conventions. Whatever codes of behaviour existed, John Pearce would break them, for that was both in his nature and part of his inheritance.
Then there was his child, within a few months of being born and one he would be denied full access to until all the bonds of that kind of society had been met.
‘I may love you,’ he said quietly to himself, ‘but sometimes I do feel the need to damn you.’
Emily Barclay felt the blow and smiled, it being the sign of a healthy confinement, a child with the spirit to kick out strongly in her womb. Free now from tight garments, she had risen, breakfasted and dressed in a gown of loose cotton, before going back to the chest of papers that had belonged to her husband in an effort to make sense of them. Never having had to oversee even domestic accounts, she was somewhat at a loss and aware of her ignorance, with no real way of seeing how to alter it.
‘John would deal with this,’ she said quietly to herself, words followed by a hand on her stomach and a whispered, ‘Your dear Papa.’
It was said quietly even though, here in her small set of rented apartments, it would not be overheard and certainly not by anyone who spoke English. Caution ruled, for the true paternity must never be spoken of openly, regardless of how much she would have loved to acknowledge the man she had given her heart to as the father. For the sake of the coming child that could not be. How could she bring an infant into the world branded from birth with the taint of her adultery?
As she opened the folded pieces of parchment, listing investments, Emily sought to calculate how long it would be before she might receive a reply from London and Messrs Ommaney and Druce, her late husband’s prize agents. It was they who had handled his money and fought any disputed claims regarding prizes. The account book which had come with these papers indicated she was rich by her standards, but it seemed to her opaque as to their true value and she wished for clarification.
There were funds in three per cent government consols and that was both sound and to the good, but there also seemed to be many investments in such things as canals. She had sought, on first realising this, to recall her father’s conversations on such matters, sure he had named them as highly speculative, which could not be a proper use of funds, except in a limited manner.
That said, it seemed there was enough to provide that she, Pearce and their child, and in time children, could live in decent comfort, albeit the proprieties had to be observed. Certainly she was well set now; the same chest had yielded a large amount of coin, while the Leghorn pay office had provided more as that due to Captain Barclay up until the day he died.
The papers put away and the chest locked, Emily prepared to go out to take the air, donning a thick cloak to ward off the chill and carrying a parasol to ensure that not even a wintery sun should bring blemish to her delicate complexion. Her routine was a walk along one of the many canals that bisected the city, which avoided the busy harbour quay as well as any ribald comments from the labourers working there. They might speak in their own tongue, but gestures left no doubt as to their hopes, in sight of a comely woman yet to be burdened by a too obvious belly.
Her walk completed she would repair to the Naval Commissariat to see if any post had come in on the packet from Portsmouth, before going to the cemetery to lay some flowers at the bronze plaque raised in memory of Captain Ralph Barclay RN. If she had come to hate him in life, and had done everything in her power to avoid his company, her Christian duty required that she pray for him in death. It was also the case that it did no harm to be seen to be doing so.
There was a part of the environs of Livorno into which no one of respectable demeanour ever went: the section of the port occupied by privateers, many of them British. The men who manned these letters of marque were mainly ruffians, close to pirates in the minds of the Royal Navy, even if their captains often carried themselves with pretentions towards decency.
It was a close call that had her nearly bump into Cornelius Gherson, her late husband’s clerk, a man she despised even more than her spouse. He was on his way to the privateer’s harbour, which they shared with the local fishing fleet, and it was only the sight of her parasol that drew his eye enough for him to recognise her. He was swift to dart into a doorway in which she could pass without him being spotted, but he could watch her pass, albeit briefly, enough to stir in his breast the hankering he had always harboured when in her presence. Emily Barclay was a rare beauty and one he would have dearly loved to bed.
What also surfaced was the number of times he had been rebuffed in his overtures, a far less comfortable feeling and, to a man of his overweening vanity, a recollection that seriously rankled. He had been unaware that she was in Leghorn, but he was quick to surmise if she was out alone then she would be living in that estate. Such a conclusion began to revive a thought long buried: at one time he had contrived to have enough time alone with the bitch to teach her a lesson, to show her that he was man enough to make her scream with pain, before he would turn that to pleading pleasure.
Where was she staying? Was that swine Pearce with her? Could he find out and perhaps …? Gherson had to stop himself then, he had more pressing fish to fry. Having failed to find another captain to take him on as a clerk – they were a breed that tended to outlive fighting sailors – he needed to contrive some way to make a living. Never having been a stranger to illicit methods, he was on his way to mix with the kind of people he saw as being more of his ilk.
Privateers had one purpose and that was to make money, often illegally taking neutral vessels and sinking them once they had transferred the cargo instead of doing what their letters of marque said, helping to spoil the French ability to trade. Sometimes they put the crew ashore at a place from which it would take the poor creatures years to get home. On other occasions it was seen as more pressing to just kill them and let their remains go down with their vessel.
Gherson had survived in life through a winning way, no scruples and good looks. Some said he possessed a near feminine beauty, to others he presented the soul of corruption, but he was clever, if low cunning could be termed that. Surely, added to a head for figures, there must be opportunities in such a band of ne’er-do-wells. The means to exist was what was needed now; Emily Barclay could wait.