A Sea of Troubles (4 page)

He had done well so far, going from press-ganged sailor at the outbreak of war to his present position, which he could hope to hold, given Barclay needed his skills to ensure he made the most of what could be procured by a little light peculation and the care of his investments. It was even better considering he had ended up at sea after an attempt at murder by chucking him off London Bridge, brought about by previous thefts as well as the seduction of the young wife of his then employer, the city nabob called Alderman Denby Carruthers.

He had survived the raging River Thames by dint of a strong hand on his shirt and ended up in the navy, obliged to mess alongside all those unfortunates taken from the Pelican Tavern. Still, for Gherson, in a life of continual ups and downs, its twin, good luck, had always followed misfortune, so he put aside matters of which time itself could only take care. He concentrated
instead on ideas of how he could best extract personal profit from Ralph Barclay’s sudden acquisition of increased wealth.

Alderman Denby Carruthers knew nothing about the construction of ships and was well aware that a devious seller would know how to use paint and putty to make look better some tub likely to leak through its timbers. No fool, he had engaged the services of an experienced old salt who was long past the age at which he desired to go to sea, a one-time ship’s master who had sailed merchant vessels on the triangular passage all of his seaborne life. Not that he was in search of a true blue-water boat; the vessel he had been tasked to buy, specifications given to him by the Tolland brothers, required a shallow draught added to decently copious holds and it also needed to be dry and weatherly. No point in loading it with valuable contraband only to have it ruined by the seepage of seawater.

Even if he had never engaged in the illicit trade, Carruthers knew only too well that smuggling had ever been a profitable enterprise. That had only increased with a war going badly and that was doubly the case recently: the Duke of York had taken an army to Flanders, marched it to and fro only to begin to bring it home again, so he was now the butt of a wonderful ditty that had been composed on his return, a song that everyone was singing, much to the chagrin of his father, King George. Nor did it go down well at the Horse Guards building, the place from which the army was run.

Indeed he was humming ‘The Grand Old Duke of
York’ as he paced the deck, waiting for his old sailor to come up from the bilges where he had claimed the smell alone would tell him half of what he needed to know. The Tollands had said they did their trade out of Gravelines on the Flanders coast, now in the hands of the armies of Revolutionary France. His worry that such a force would impede the trade had been set aside; even Jacobins needed to trade for gold and the smugglers brought in that commodity while taking away the fruits of the luxury French trades. That they had lost their previous vessel he knew, if he was not aware of how; it mattered little – they were in need of financing and he had the funds to support them and that was all he would do. They would take the risks and between them they could share the rewards.

A very successful man of business he did not live a life without concerns, though none of that related to his business or his substantial wealth. His gremlins lay in the domestic sphere, for he now realised that it had been folly for a man of his age to marry a much younger bride, who had not only cuckolded him with the clerk he had once employed, but was now, he was certain, trying to make contact with the fellow again. That had him glaring at the River Thames, hard by which the vessel being examined was berthed, and it was as though that waterway had failed him. He had seen Cornelius Gherson, short of the fine clothing bought for him by Catherine Carruthers, his besotted paramour, chucked by two brawny helpers into the river at a point where the water flowed fast and deadly through the arches of London Bridge. How had the swine survived to come back and haunt him?

Then the second plan he had hatched to take care of
Gherson had failed and he could only console himself with the fact not every venture in which he had engaged returned a profit; that was the way of business. If anything, his scheme had added to his troubles by placing him in obligation to a low-life villain called Jonathan Codge, the man he had engaged to rid his world of Gherson; in fact he had sought to get shot of both of them in one fell swoop by dobbing them to the Bow Street Runners but somehow Codge had got out of that too, which left him having to buy the man off with a monthly stipend.

Still, matters were in hand to solve all his problems and if not fully formed they soon would be; if he was short on the kind of hard bargains who would see to his needs, he was fortunate to be related by marriage to a man who did know where to find them. Edward Druce, as a successful prize agent, knew the kind of men who made up the London press gangs and they fitted the bill when it came to muscle. Not only would he rid himself of Codge but also something had to be done about his wife Catherine.

He had forgiven her once, yet it would be folly to do so again – and then there was his new clerk: Gherson’s replacement, Isaac Lavery, seemed to have taken her side. Dismissal would serve for him, plus the word put around that he was light-fingered; such an accusation would see him in the workhouse, for no one would employ him after a city alderman, a man destined one day to be mayor, had trashed his probity. Such thoughts evaporated, for his white-haired sailor was coming up from below and it was time for business; time to work out, if all was well, a price. That was where Alderman Denby Carruthers was
at his happiest; the thought of driving a hard bargain, given the other meaning of the expression on which he had just been cogitating, made him laugh for the first time in days.

In the tangled web that had been created by an illegal act of pressing seamen from the Pelican Tavern there was one other person of consequence in the mix – even if he had not actually been present – and that was Emily Barclay’s nephew, Midshipman Toby Burns. He, a weak character, had been coerced by his uncle into lying at a court martial set up to examine the accusation made by John Pearce and his fellow Pelicans, all four of them sent off on a mission to the Bay of Biscay along with anyone else privy to the truth of the matter, leaving depositions detailing the facts of the case of illegal impressment.

Toby Burns claimed in court to have been a member of the party who attacked the Pelicans when in fact he had been all the time aboard HMS
Brilliant
, berthed off Sheerness. His contribution to saving the skin of his uncle by marriage had been to take responsibility for getting the press gang ashore at the wrong part of the Thames riverside, which had provided enough leeway for a deliberately appointed and benign court to acquit.

If the act of committing perjury had been uncomfortable, then the price paid could hardly have been said to be better. Toby Burns now saw himself in the clutches of people determined to do him harm, not least the man who had chosen the officers to sit in judgement at that court martial off Toulon, the same man who made sure that the Pelican depositions went unrecorded. He
was the senior officer who had issued orders that sent away the hostile witnesses, those very same Pelicans, as well as any member of
Brilliant’
s
crew who could vouchsafe the truth.

Sir William Hotham was a well-connected and very political admiral; he was also the second in command of the Mediterranean Fleet and he had protected Ralph Barclay because he was a client officer, a man who could be trusted to offer support in Hotham’s ongoing battle with his superior, Lord Hood. Toby’s reward for his lies had been a posting to HMS
Britannia
, Hotham’s flagship, where those who shared his rank saw him as much cosseted and granted opportunities to distinguish himself. The midshipman saw matters very differently: to his mind Hotham kept putting him in situations in which he stood a very high risk of being killed or maimed.

These last weeks had been even more uncomfortable as each day he reached into his sea chest to reread the letter that had arrived from London with the fleet’s despatches. There, in plain ink, was the upshot of the whole affair, the intimation from a Grey’s Inn lawyer, a fellow called Lucknor, that the truth of the whole court-martial charade, as well as his part in it, was known. If the missive did not actually say that – indeed it was couched in a spirit of cool enquiry and requested a response – even a brain as slow as Toby’s own could, from the words used, extrapolate the true meaning.

It was nothing more than a threat to dish him, which, if it had merely meant dismissal from the navy he would welcome. But a few seemingly disinterested enquiries of his own as to the penalty for perjury had
elicited the probable outcome – it was a hanging offence – information which made him run a hand round his throat and did nothing for his ability to sleep at night; his dreams were nightmares and awake in the dark it was even worse, the whole compounded by the fact that he had no one to confide in, not being gifted with anyone he could really call a friend.

Toby Burns could guess that the man at the centre of his troubles had to be John Pearce; the only other person who knew of his offence, apart from Hotham and Ralph Barclay, was his Aunt Emily and he could not believe that she would sacrifice him and disgrace the family in the process. Yet curse Pearce as he did and frequently, to do so provided no solution to his dilemma – what to say in reply to this Lucknor fellow.

The sight of HMS
Agamemnon
, refitted at Gibraltar and rejoining the fleet after weeks of absence, provided a possible solution. Dick Farmiloe, a fellow mid aboard HMS
Brilliant
, who had truly been at the Pelican Tavern and had been part of that illegal press gang, was serving with Captain Nelson as an acting lieutenant. Could he be asked for advice, given he was a culprit in the original offence and therefore at some risk himself?

The stiffening of those around him was a clear indication that Admiral Hotham had come on deck and Toby Burns likewise became erect while ensuring his hat was straight. Passed a telescope, Hotham raised it languidly to his eye and fixed the approaching sixty-four. If he admired her lines, and many did for she was the fastest ship of the line in the fleet, it was not that which brought forth the subsequent comment but the nature
of the man who commanded her, a fellow whom the admiral despised.

‘Prepare, gentlemen,’ Hotham intoned to no one in particular, ‘to be treated to yet another boring account of Captain Nelson’s glittering destiny.’ The pitch of his voice changed perceptibly, became abrasive. ‘One day I look forward to putting the popinjay in his proper place, which for me would be a bumboat. Let him find a burial spot in Westminster Abbey from there, eh?’

Everyone laughed, even if few agreed; the younger men admired Horatio Nelson, as much if not more than the ship he was lucky enough to command. Yet it was the nature of the service that when an admiral made a remark of that kind, then it was politic to seem to be seen to concur. Toby Burns did laugh with true heart, for he approved of the sentiment.

On arrival back at the King’s Head, Emily Barclay was perplexed to see what appeared to be her trunk and valise outside the front entrance. The latter, a small case being near new and part of her trousseau, it was quite distinctive enough for there to be no mistake. So it was with a degree of deep curiosity that she thanked and dismissed her elderly limner-cum-instructor and watched him as he took off in his rickety single-horse hack, the easel she had used poking up from the rear.

Carrying the work she had done that day, a single canvas, Emily came out of the dipping sunshine into the cool and dark interior, her eyes slowly adjusting to the change of light making it difficult to discern the nature of the two men standing there. That soon eased, allowing her to see the owner of the inn, as well as his concerned face, but her gaze was quickly transferred to the furious and florid countenance of the other fellow. He was a short and rather fat naval officer, bewigged under his tricorn hat
and an admiral by the gold frogging that heavily adorned his coat. Added to that, he had a horsewhip coiled in his hand and that was twitching in such a way as to be a matter of some concern.

‘Madam!’ he cried, lifting the whip and pointing it at her, his eyes sinking to take in the hem of a dress made muddy by traversing the still wet fields. ‘Though I doubt the appellation to be the correct one, I demand to know who you are and under what pretext you dare to call yourself the wife of a naval officer, one, I might add, that does not exist.’

The shock of the accusation seemed to pass through her body like that she received when two rubbed pieces of cloth produced an unpleasant effect and even on some occasions a spark. With a tremulous voice she made the only demand she could think of.

‘And who, sir, are you?’

‘He is Admiral Sir Berkley Sumner,’ the owner of the inn responded, wringing his hands and clearly worried. ‘A person of consequence in the county.’

‘That I am, just as I am here to expose you for what you are, as well as the lying scoundrel whom, I suspect, seeks to dun this poor innkeeper fellow out of his due. I will not use this horsewhip on a woman, God forbid I should stoop so low, but I have it in my hand to chastise the false Lieutenant Raynesford when he dares to appear, and I can tell you he will feel its weight up and down the entire High Street of the town. The reputation of the King’s Navy demands it!’

Shocked as she was, Emily had been given those several seconds to think by the length of that tirade. The
use of the Raynesford name and the accusation that it was false nailed at least part of the problem. If she knew her situation to be one of deep concern, she also knew that she had no choice but to go on the offensive, mixing truth with some very necessary lies.

‘How dare you, sir!’

‘What?’ the admiral responded, his already ruddy face going puce as he seemed to fill his rotund body with air, in the production of a reply he was given no time to make.

‘I am the wife of a serving naval officer, sir, and I expect to be treated with the courtesy that position carries.’

‘There is no Lieutenant Raynesford,’ the innkeeper said, ‘and between you and the man who uses that name you have brought my humble tavern into disgrace. Your names were mentioned in the
Hampshire Chronicle
as being a respectable couple. Now the word is out you ain’t and the town’s abuzz with it.’

‘I do believe my husband paid you a deal of money before he left, enough to cover his absence – enough, indeed, for over a month-long stay.’

‘He did, but—’

‘Then how can this old fool say he has set out to dun you when I have not been here that long?’

The horsewhip was loosened then, the leather tip falling to the floor. ‘Old fool!’

‘I cannot think you anything else, sir, since you did not enquire if my husband had put my staying behind here on a bill to be later settled or paid well in advance.’

‘Bill be damned.’

‘Mind your tongue, sir! I will have you know I am not
accustomed, nor will I tolerate even from my husband, such foul language in my presence.’

That again was true; she had checked Ralph Barclay any number of times when he transgressed and John Pearce had not escaped censure either, though he had laughed off her sense of decorum as if it was nonsense.

‘Do not seek to divert me, madam. I contacted the Admiralty seeking to find out who this Raynesford was and the reply came back from the secretary himself that there was no one known to them of that name in the service. It therefore follows the man you call your husband is an impostor, which can have only one reason and if there is no criminality in his dealing with this fellow at my side, I am sure there is some somewhere, either now or in the future.’

‘I must ask you to leave, Mrs …’

The confusion of the innkeeper’s face, added to the continued wringing of his hands, infuriated Emily. The man had been happy enough to take their money without enquiry as to their true status and now he was bleating about his loss of face. No doubt, with the fat little red-faced admiral shouting his mouth off, the whole town was abuzz with the fact that the King’s Head was home to a pair of adulterers, as if such a thing was uncommon, when such liaisons sustained half the inns in England. Yet that was a minor consideration: underlying everything was the precariousness of her position, for she had willingly given credence to that impression, willingly engaged in criminal conversation with John Pearce under a false name, and what would be the consequences of such an act? Somehow, in this place she must save face,
or at least do enough to ensure her reputation until she could get away.

She had no idea when Pearce would return, so to stay in Lymington, possibly for days if not weeks, as the butt of gossip and finger pointing from the prurient locals, was anathema. However, Emily was not prepared to be tossed out into the street like some common trollop. She and Pearce had lied when they came to this place and for now it was imperative that falsehood be not only maintained but also reinforced, so she manufactured a most imperious tone.

‘Nothing, my man, would convince me to stay in your hovel a day longer than I require, but since you have been paid for my accommodation and food you will oblige me by fetching back inside my valise as well as my trunk and, as there is no coach out of Lymington until morning, you will have to put up with my presence for one more night.’

Throughout these irate exchanges her mind had been working on another level, seeking a way to deflect her accuser and she dredged up one card to play that might see this Admiral Sumner off. She knew the nature of the mission that Pearce was carrying out on behalf of the Government, just as she knew it was one shrouded in secrecy, for if he had told her what he was setting out to discover he had also sworn her to keep the information to herself, as well as why.

William Pitt ran a government permanently on the cusp of being outvoted, indeed he depended on the support of his political opponents to stay in office and pursue the war. These were men who would not take kindly to anything smacking of a diversion from what
they saw as the main effort and that was an expedition to the Caribbean to take the French sugar islands, this while many of the thinking classes in England harboured a deep suspicion of what was happening in the Vendée due to its openly Papist bent. Thus Pearce’s mission had to be kept from scrutiny, the very reason it had been financed by funds hidden from parliamentary examination.

Fixing her countenance in a stern and reproving expression, she turned to Sumner and went on the attack. ‘As to you, sir, I think it best you crawl back into whichever hole from which you have emerged, for you are in danger of being exposed as not only a fool but a danger to the nation.’

‘What?’

‘It did not occur to you to enquire where my husband is or what he is about?’

‘Why would it?’ Sumner sneered.

‘It should have. Do not be surprised, sir, to receive from the Admiralty an admonishment for poking your flabby nose in to matters which do not concern you, for endangering the safety of the nation and for risking the life and reputation of a gallant officer held in high regard by those whose task it is to run the country and prosecute the war with France.’

‘What stuff and nonsense is this?’

‘I admit my married name is not Raynesford and nor is it that of my husband.’

‘Ah-hah, the truth at last.’

It is, Emily thought, but not as you see it, though that allowed her to speak part of what she was saying with utter conviction.

‘But you would have been better wondering why a naval officer would choose to employ subterfuge by using a false name rather than jumping to a conclusion that it indicated illegality. My husband is, as of this moment, at sea in command of a King’s ship, sir, and I do not know that they are such fools at the Admiralty as to entrust a vessel to an impostor.’

‘What ship, by damn?’

‘I am not at liberty to tell you that and nor, if my husband were here, could he. Nor would he be able to enlighten you to the nature of the mission in which he is presently engaged, for that, sir, is a secret.’

For the first time Emily could see a crack in the admiral’s certainty; if he did not yet look troubled, he looked perplexed.

‘Secret?’

‘Just that! It is also vital to the security of Britannia, so I suggest it would serve you to depart and put from your mind what it is you have been about, for not to do so could see you in the Tower. The least I can offer you is not to inform the Admiralty of your foolish actions, though I cannot guarantee that my husband, once he has been appraised of your interference in matters which are none of your concern, will not pass on to the powers that be the fact that you have threatened to destroy what it is they are trying to achieve. What the consequences of that will be I cannot tell you, but possible disgrace looms and it will certainly find no favour at the Admiralty.’

Emily could not know how those last few words played on the mind of Sir Berkley Sumner. He was, to those who had known him throughout his naval career, a prize dolt
and, in terms of naval competence, a proper danger to those with whom he served. Having got to his captaincy through family connections rather than ability, from there he had, with age and seniority, though without a scintilla of sea time, risen to his admiral’s rank. Never likely to be entrusted with a command, Sumner was destined to be and remain a ‘yellow admiral’, the soubriquet for an officer who might carry the rank but would never raise his flag at sea.

These were opinions of which he was unaware and did not share: Sumner reckoned himself as a genius both in the art of command at sea and the tactics required to achieve a great victory over his nation’s enemies, sure that those now leading the fleets were inferior to him in all regards. Thus he bombarded the Admiralty with pleas for a position suited to the talents he held were his and lived in constant fury at the rebuffs he received, however politely they were couched. His face, now showing doubt, told Emily that she had struck home, that Sumner was wondering if he had inadvertently overreached himself.

‘The Tower,’ he said weakly.

‘Perhaps not that, sir, but certainly censure. I decline to mention the fate of Admiral Byng.’

No word could have hit home harder to a vainglorious fool; Byng had been shot by firing squad on his own quarterdeck for his failures off Minorca. But there was the matter of dignity, not to say the need to cover what might prove to have been a mistake.

‘Madam, I will not receive censure for doing my duty.’

‘I was rather referring to your exceeding it, sir.’

Sumner pulled himself up to his full, if insubstantial
height and again used the horsewhip to point at Emily, jabbing it to make his purpose plain. ‘I judge by your manner and facility of tongue that you are a lady of some intelligence. It may be you speak the truth. Have no doubt I will make enquiries regarding that—’

‘Do so, Admiral Sumner,’ Emily responded, cutting right across him again and forcing onto her face a knowing smile that did not lack a trace of pity; she did not feel as relaxed as she hoped she looked, for in her chest her heart was pounding, as it had been since she had come through the door. ‘I see you as a man who cares not one jot for the peril to which he may expose himself and perhaps it will be seen as such. Then again, perhaps it will not. What a sad end it will be to a long and no doubt distinguished career, in the service of His Majesty.’

That got a meaningless grunt, but it also got him brushing past her and out into the street. Emily did not turn to see him go, she looked hard at the innkeeper.

‘Be so good as to fetch my luggage and then, when you have done that, make sure that a place is booked for me on the morning coach. I shall, of course, eat in my rooms tonight, and as to payments made and reimbursement, I will leave my husband to deal with that on his return to England. Added to that you will observe the mud on the hem of my dress. I require that to be cleaned.’

The entirely made-up posture held until Emily was safe in her little parlour. Only then did the facade crack and tears begin to wet her pupils as she realised what a close call it had been. She had lied so convincingly and, looking around the rooms in which she and John Pearce had made love against all the laws of the land and holy
matrimony, it made her wonder just how much the standards by which she had been raised had been eroded, which was not a comfortable state of mind.

The use of the long oars, even with the tide to help, ensured that progress was slow, so it was late afternoon before Buckler’s Hard came into sight. HMS
Larcher
swept round the last bend in the river, a turn of ninety degrees that allowed the wind to play on what little sail Pearce had kept aloft and they assisted the forward movement. This relieved a weary crew to go about the duties required to get the armed cutter to a berth and obliged Pearce to put back on his heavy blue coat, for a boat had set off immediately they were sighted to lead them to the mid-river buoy to which they were to tie up.