A Divided Command

Sleep was fitful at best; there had been little wind for days and even inside the solid stone walls of the fortress of Calvi the high summer heat was oppressive, made more so by the number of men who now shared the limited space. To begin with Midshipman Toby Burns had occupied the cell on his own but in the weeks since his own capture the numbers of prisoners had grown. Officers of the three services, two navy, the rest army, as well as one marine, victims of many failed assaults on the formidable walls, had fallen into enemy hands, till they now numbered two dozen souls. At least as officers they were above ground, not a fate gifted to the common soldiers who shared their captivity; they were in a foetid dungeon.

Added to the stifling humidity were the other things that disturbed them, apart from merely being crowded into too small a space: the active vermin that shared each lumpy straw palliasse as well as the floor on which they were laid, these added to the number of flying and biting insects that
seemed determined to feed on any exposed skin. Finally there were the rats, wary in daylight when the cell occupants were awake, bolder in the darkness of the night when the scrabbling of their tiny paws gave a fearful alert to their close presence.

For Toby Burns, when sleep was finally brought on by exhaustion, there was little respite, that being when he was exposed to the terror of his too vivid dreams. The things of which the youngster was frightened were legion and seemed to come to him in a tumbling panorama: shot and shell, naturally, to which he had been exposed too many times in his short naval career; the fear of drowning too, even if that had only nearly occurred once – yet still the memory haunted him. He would be struggling in the lashing waters that pounded the rocky shores of Brittany, sure he was about to die, until a strong adult hand grabbed him and hauled him on to the shore.

Then there would appear the disappointed faces of his parents, siblings and the people of his hometown, eager to castigate him for being less than an admirable representative of both their civic and family honour. How had they discovered he was not their acclaimed and much feted hero, but a liar and a coward?

Worst of all were the remembered faces of those he knew were out to get him maimed, killed or permanently locked up in prison. Admiral Hotham was very much of the former and allied to him was Toby’s uncle by marriage, Captain Ralph Barclay. Even his Aunt Emily, who had married Barclay and was kind in the flesh, became a termagant and an accuser in his heated nocturnal imaginings.

Worst of all was John Pearce, a man with nothing but
malice in his heart for a youth who had acted against him, not out of the same emotion but from the pressure applied to him by adults who hated a fellow they feared might be their nemesis.

At times they were naught but voices, soft in their reproval of his actions, but as the sweat ran off his body to soak the straw and his visions became more troubled, these chimeras would begin to shout, turning often into slavering beasts that seemed to want to tear at his naked flesh.

Flight was impossible; try as he might to escape, his legs would not obey the instructions of his mind and soon his whole body would feel as if it was trapped in some huge web of tangled ropes, unable to get away, while those who sought to devour him came ever closer, their voices of contempt rising to a crescendo.

‘For the love of God, Burns, will you stop that damned caterwauling?’

It was not the sound of the complaint that brought Toby back to soaked wakefulness but the boot that kicked him, with scant gentility, in the ribs. Eyes open he had no initial idea where he was; the beamed ceiling could have been his attic bedroom or his old school dormitory, body blows being nothing unusual in the latter. Just then the boom of a cannon came through the barred slit in the wall, which brought him back fully to reality and, with a turn of his head, the glaring face of the naval lieutenant who had so rudely awakened him.

‘Leave the poor lad alone.’

The response to that remonstrance was the harsh growl of an angry man and a dry throat. ‘I cannot abide the noise, damn it.’

‘Yet I do not hear you curse our fellows on the high ground for setting off their cannon.’

Sitting upright, the grey light of dawn was enough to show Toby the two men in dispute, one a naval lieutenant called Watson, the other, the fellow defending him, a major of infantry. This knowledge of identity and rank came from previous contact, for neither man was wearing uniform; indeed, the marine was without even a shirt, his bare and hairy torso gleaming with sweat. The navy man was clothed in his long shirt, a piece of linen that no longer showed the least trace of the white it had once been, so stained was it with perspiration and accumulated filth.

The lieutenant was unrepentant. ‘Gunfire hints at salvation from this hellhole, sir, but the moans and screams of this fellow seem as portents of hell. I felt I was trying to sleep in Bedlam.’

‘Forgive me, sir,’ Toby croaked, ‘for if I do disturb you, I am not aware of my doing so.’

‘Thank the Lord I do not have to share a berth with you, Burns. I feel pity for your fellow mids if you behave in a similar manner aboard ship.’

The infantry major, a Scotsman who went by the name of Buchanan, was not listening; he had stepped over the still recumbent Toby to look out of a slot in the stonework that had once facilitated the firing of arrows, talking over his shoulder.

‘Are you so fixated on your annoyance, sir, that you cannot register the fact that our French friends have not responded – in short, they have not returned fire as they normally do?’

‘Perhaps,’ Watson spat, ‘they are allowed a better level of rest than that which is afforded to us – in short, they are still asleep.’

The next sound was not of a single cannon, but a salvo coming from a whole multitude of muzzles, as the whole of the besieging batteries opened up as one. That was followed by the combined whistles of their flight, then the various sounds as they struck home; sharp cracks on immoveable stone, dull repeated thuds if they bounced along the hard ground, the breaking of timbers and tiles if something less solid than fortress walls stood in their path, that whole cacophony followed by silence, which brought forth a whisper from Major Buchanan.

‘And still the French are idle.’ He turned to look at Toby, a wide smile on an unshaved face made bright red by heat. ‘It would seem to me we are approaching a crisis in the action, young sir. Happen it will not be long before you do get to test your dreams again in that ship’s berth.’

The rattle of keys brought all the occupants of the cell, Toby included, to their feet as the door swung open to reveal a sergeant bearing a pail. If the food they were about to receive was of poor quality, it was still sustenance and there was no other, even if payment was proffered. Yet more welcome was the fellow who came next with the water bucket and ladle, who cursed away in French as he sought to get the prisoners to form an orderly queue for a much needed drink.

There was another bucket in the room, the one that was used throughout the day, as well as the hours of darkness, for the prisoners to relieve themselves, and given their numbers it was near to overflowing with piss, while several turds floated alarmingly close to the lip. The French sergeant, once he had dished out his gruel, looked at it meaningfully, for that which was needed did not constitute a duty that fell to a gaoler.

‘When you are done eating, Burns, empty the slops,’ Watson ordered.

Buchanan raised his head from the wooden plate from which he was trying to scrape the last morsels of too little food. ‘Have I not suggested it should be a duty shared? It is not the turn of Mr Burns, who was obliged, I recall, to carry it out yesterday.’

‘He’s the lowest in rank, sir, and so it should fall to him by right. This is not some Jacobin Republic.’

As Toby Burns made to move and obey his naval superior, Buchanan snapped at him to stay still.

‘I do believe I have the seniority here and if I cannot get my way by agreement then I must insist on an imposition of authority. We are all equally prisoners and thus we will all take turns at emptying the slops.’ He looked directly at Watson. ‘And you, sir, will take the duty this day.’

There was a moment when Watson looked set to challenge the instruction, for no naval officer took readily to being ordered about by a bullock, whatever his rank. Making sure his reluctance was obvious, Watson picked up the slops bucket, and to drive home that his servility was not misconstrued, he made sure, as he passed Buchanan, that a small amount of the yellow liquid spilt onto the major’s scuffed shoes.

‘Splendid,’ Buchanan cried, his broad face now alight; he was obviously determined not to be put out by such a deliberate and calculated insult. ‘The Romans used piss for the purpose of cleaning, so how can I object to being obliged to employ the same when I have no boot black to hand! No doubt it is as much a naval tradition to wallow in piss as it was to the ancients.’

What followed Watson out of the cell door was laughter, not the silent approval he had clearly hoped for from a group of mainly redcoats, he and Toby Burns being the only sailors.

‘Do you really think we are approaching a crisis, sir?’ asked Toby.

‘The French still do not respond, young fellow, which leads me to suspect they are short of both powder and shot. If they are low on that, it is safe, I think, to assume they will be short on other essentials, food especially, for they have the population of the town to feed as well as the garrison. If that is the case, then they have no choice but to parley for an honourable conclusion or face starvation.’

‘I do so hope you are correct, sir, for I have spent more time cooped up here than anyone.’

‘True,’ Buchanan replied; he had only arrived two days previously, having become isolated following an assault that had carried one of the major French outworks. ‘And I have to say I have found your nocturnal screams a bore, making me wonder what it is that so troubles you when you close your eyes?’

That had Toby floundering; he could hardly allude to his fear of death or mutilation in battle, that would never do, and nor did he want to mention anyone from his own family as the stuff of his nightmares. To allude to Admiral Hotham or even his Uncle Ralph, a full post captain well above three years in seniority, was to open a tub of worms best left sealed. So the name he mumbled was the only one that he could safely think to use.

‘There is a fellow called John Pearce, sir, he comes to me in the night and never fails to induce terror.’

‘He must be something of a monster, lad, to affect you so?’

‘Oh, he is that, sir,’ Toby replied with real venom, quite overlooking the fact that Pearce owned the hand that had once saved him from drowning. ‘A true Gorgon.’

The vessels of the Mediterranean Fleet stood at single anchor in the Bay of San Fiorenzo, proof of the sound nature of the sheltered haven as well as the depth of water beneath and surrounding their keels; they could swing 360 degrees on the tide without fear of grounding. From first rates to frigates they were well lit by the blazing sunshine and, after a sudden downpour that had left the air clean and dropped the temperature several degrees, they provided, at a distance, a stirring and impressive sight, even to one as jaundiced about such things as Lieutenant John Pearce.

That impression faded somewhat the closer he came to a proper view, for proximity showed that the loose sails now flapping and drying in the wind were far from the pristine canvas they had once been, no longer a smooth cream in colour, instead a dun and much stained brown, more than one showing evidence of repair, so that even to his untrained eye the wear caused by endless exposure to the elements was obvious.

The myriad miles of ropes and cables necessary to make up the rigging, despite the layers of tar used to protect them, would be likewise degraded, and closer still the scantlings of the warships showed where endless layers of black paint had been applied, only to crack and split from the effect of sun, wind and rain, leaving a pattern on their chequered hulls that reminded Pearce of the bark of a diseased tree. It was impossible not to wonder at what that paint, badly in need of being scraped off, was hiding.

‘I don’t think I ever realised, Mr Dorling, what people meant when they bemoaned the lack of a proper dockyard.’

The sailing master of
HMS Larcher
, for all he was young, managed to reply with all the mordant gloom of those of his elders who saw no joy anywhere when rating the state for sailing of any vessel in King George’s Navy: in doing so he replicated his captain’s ruminations.

‘What you can see won’t be the half of it, Capt’n. Don’t take much to imagine that there’s a rate of rotten timber in them scantlings and the hulls will be in a bad way too, after a year in the Med, copper-bottomed or no. Stands to reason, weed in warm water is a mite more apt to grow than it does close to home shores.’

‘Flag’s made our pennant, Your Honour,’ came the cry from the masthead. ‘Captain to repair aboard.’

That made the recipient smile: had Pearce observed the same message, run up on the halyards of
HMS Victory
, he would have, just to be sure there was no mistake and aware of the gaps in his own nautical knowledge, consulted the signal book. Not so the able seaman aloft, who was certainly no more advanced in years than he. No doubt the fellow had been at sea since he was a boy and that was a flag message he had observed fluttering too many times to have any doubts.

‘Acknowledge and prepare the signal gun, if you please.’

Addressed to no one in particular these instructions were obeyed without fuss or noise. These men knew their duties and had been a well-worked-up crew long before John Pearce took temporary command of the ship. If the lieutenant he replaced had imposed his will by a form of low-level brutality that made him disliked, he had commanded better seamen than he knew.

John Pearce, with his more benign manner, albeit he would not be played upon, was certain he had brought out the best in men who were willing and very capable, which was just as well, given he was a commander who often had to think hard before issuing any orders. It was moot how many times their skill had silently mitigated his ignorance, a subject about which the dignity of his position forbade him to enquire.