A Flag of Truce (20 page)

Rafin stopped whispering and looked at Pearce for what seemed an age, building up the tension before he made his decision. ‘General Westermann cares nothing for your charges. You cannot fight the renegades in the marshes of the Vendée with ships. You may do with them what you wish. My soldiers will escort you back to your boat and you may tell your commanding officer that the sailors can be landed from noon.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Common seamen first, officers last.’

Having no idea why Rafin had said that, Pearce just nodded.

A couple of scruffy and disinterested National Guardsmen escorted Pearce and Michael back to their boat. Again Pearce looked at the shipping, noticing that a pair of the best-equipped vessels were now full of men, carrying out tasks that were commensurate with getting their vessels to sea. The decks were alive with crewmen and the rigging was full of men lashing on spars and sails, in total contrast to the way they had been moribund when he had come ashore.

‘Michael, you need a piss.’

‘I do?’

‘In the harbour and take your time.’

Without another question O’Hagan peeled off to the edge of the quay, in a way that had the most alert of their escorts twitching his musket, but seeing him undo the flap on his ducks and turning his back, the fellow just grinned, stopped and waited, indicating to his companion to do likewise. While Michael did a passable job of taking his time, Pearce was counting guns and the numbers of men, information which would be of great interest to Henry Digby.

The procession of dozens of boats, some from the ships themselves, others from the port, went back and forth all day, taking out batches of sailors, with Digby, watching from his own quarterdeck, once more blessing the weather, for though there was a swell, there were no breakers to make the task of entering the harbour difficult. With each boat went the ship’s stores, some to feed the sailors, other articles demanded by the soldiers to supply an army that seemed to lack most of the necessities of campaigning, despite the profusion of food that Pearce had seen that morning.

‘We shall be away from here tomorrow, Mr Pearce, with luck. Have you made the necessary preparations for the last act?

‘I have, sir, though I thought it too obvious to fetch them on deck. They can be seen from the higher elevation of the larger ships.’

The incendiary devices were down below, canvas pouches filled with tow and a charge of powder, which would be soaked in turpentine then set alight, the falls from the sails laying across them. Nothing went up like dry tarred rope, and soon the rigging would be well alight. The flames would have to work harder with the wood, but the deck was dry, as were the inner bulwarks, so Digby reckoned them to be ablaze quickly, and as he pointed out to Pearce, nothing consumed a vessel like fire.

‘Thank the Lord we stripped most of their powder out at Toulon. I would not want to be near four capital ships when their magazines went up.’

‘The General Westermann I mentioned has demanded what remains of that be carried ashore.’

‘He is welcome to it, Mr Pearce, it is little enough.’

‘I spoke with some of the local boatmen, sir, when I took in the first draft. They are not all rabid Jacobins, and I have been told about this revolt these soldiers are fighting.’

‘And?’ asked Digby, with the clear indication that it had nothing to do with him.

‘It seems a bloody affair, with no quarter being given on either side.’

‘You sound as if you regret that, Mr Pearce. The French are our enemies, so let them reduce their numbers by all means possible.’

‘I do believe those fighting in the marshes to the north are as one with the men of Toulon.’

‘I sense sympathy, do I not?’

‘I think these sailors we are putting ashore will soon be put against them.’

‘It is all very well such people saying they wish to restore a King to his throne and the papist church to its stolen property, but how much nuisance have we suffered from French kings and a clergy rich enough to subsidise their warlike ambitions?’

Digby had not heard, as Pearce had, the boatmen’s tales, of villages burnt, women ravished before being disembowelled, babies skewered on bayonets, men tortured over roaring fires. There was another side, of course, for those same sources had told him that no soldier of the revolution was safe from retribution. Many had been caught and treated in a like fashion, and the conflict had descended into a contest in butchery. The addition of so many men might just tip the balance against the rebellion, but when he made that point Digby dismissed it.

‘Most of them will run, Mr Pearce, for a French tar is no different to his British counterpart in that article. Devious, quick to take a chance, adept at avoiding detection. I doubt your General
Westermann will still command a fifth of those he expects to have before a day or two is out.’

‘Attention, Mariette,’
called a voice from a boat, which had all aboard aware of where it came from. Not one of the men they had escorted would ever refer to the ship by anything other than its French name. Pearce went to the side, to hear an invitation from Moreau that he, Digby and Mr Lutyens should come to dine that night with the officers of the French squadron, who would be going at last light.

‘Perhaps they mean to take us hostage, Mr Pearce.’

‘Not with Mr Neame manning our guns. I have told you, sir, he knows very well how to employ them.’

All the French officers, to the number of a dozen, had donned their best uniforms for the occasion, and the main cabin of
Apollon
, albeit that its stern lights were boarded over, had been cleared to set up a decent table. As they ate and drank, Pearce was left to wonder how they had managed to save such provisions and wines, but it transpired they had bought most of what was being consumed from the citizens of Algeciras and it was now time to see off the last of that provender. It could not be called a jolly affair, but, if you excused the glutton Forcet, it was polite. Most of those present had been
sous-officers
in the old royal navy, their increase in rank
coming from the decimation of that service by the flight of
émigré
senior officers. So they knew their manners, and the subject of what would happen to the ships was not discussed until Moreau was seeing them over the side, his words addressed to Pearce.

‘It is not something I wish to admit, but positions reversed I would be bound to follow the same course.’

‘Would it help, Captain Moreau, if I were to say there is not a man aboard HMS
Faron
who is looking forward to what must be done.’

‘Surely you mean
Mariette
, my friend,’ said Moreau with a grin, but it was an expression which came and went quickly as he patted his own bulwark. ‘We have a sentiment about ships, do we not? Foolish. We would see them blown to pieces in battle yet to surrender them…’

‘You will be ashore in an hour, monsieur,’ Pearce replied, to cover Moreau’s sad thoughts.

They kept to their best uniforms for the journey to the shore, with Pearce in the prow of the boat, his flag of truce prominent. Rafin was there waiting, with his military friends and his escort of
musket-bearing
, ill-disciplined National Guards, their bayonets glinting in the light of the sinking sun. He landed first and stood aside to let the others come ashore, introducing each one as he did so. Once
they were all landed, and as Pearce moved to say a last farewell, Rafin barked out an order.

‘Seize them!’

The officers were suddenly surrounded by sharp and pointed bayonets, in what must have been a prearranged instruction. Rafin’s pallid face was alight with fury, and he spat saliva through those drooping moustaches as he cursed them.

‘Traitors, scum, cowards, do you not think we do not know what you did? You surrendered your ships to the enemy. You have no honour and if I have my way you will soon have no heads to trouble you with notions of it.’

Pearce saw then, standing close by, a knot of French sailors, and he guessed they were the men who had tried to take the vessels off Marseilles. They had come ashore and denounced the four captains and their eight lieutenants, which in the France of the likes of Rafin was as good as a death sentence.

‘Monsieur, I protest,’ Pearce yelled over the cries of the same complaint from those arrested. ‘These men are your supporters.’

‘Citizen!’ screamed Rafin, in a voice that must have been heard on the other side of the harbour.

‘These men did their duty.’

‘They did not. They are rats, only they stayed aboard their ship instead of deserting them. Well, they are now going to the Hotel de Ville, and
tomorrow they will face me and my court of revolutionary justice. Let us hear them try and explain how they chose to surrender rather than die, chose to help you take back their ships when they should have been prepared to see them sunk.’

‘Five thousand men would have drowned.’

Rafin was in a passion, spitting venom in near incoherence. ‘What does the Revolution care if five thousand die, or fifty thousand? The world must be changed. Traitors like these cannot be left to think they can indulge in betrayal and live. Like the swine of Versailles and the scum who bled the poor, they will see what justice is.’

‘Citizen, I am begging you.’

Rafin suddenly laughed. ‘I have a notion to respect your truce flag for one more day, monsieur. Perhaps you would like to come ashore again tomorrow and witness the way Madame Guillotine deals with traitors.’

‘Mr Pearce, we cannot interfere in these matters. Much as I have sympathy for the officers we dined with this afternoon they are no longer our responsibility, and I am forced to remind you of what you told me regarding those vessels preparing for sea. We may very well out-gun them. However, they are numerous, we are not.’

Henry Digby must have been well aware he was fighting a losing battle; it was not only Pearce who profoundly disagreed with him but also Lutyens and Neame, though their protest was silent; the former said nothing, merely fixing his superior with a pained eye, and the latter was looking at the deck planking of his cabin in an attitude which indicated deep sorrow.

‘Besides, I would remind you of our need to get away from this shore as soon as possible. This weather cannot last.’

‘The men threatened are innocent, sir, you know that. Their death will be for the purpose of a gesture to satisfy the blood lust of that sod Rafin.’

‘So?’

‘So I think it behoves us to make some kind of gesture in response.’

‘For instance?’

‘Mr Neame,’ said Pearce.

The old master lifted his head slowly and looked at his captain, the reluctance to actually speak obvious, but Digby was looking at him in a way that brooked a response, so after a long hiatus it came. ‘When we first anchored, sir, them French warships each had over fifteen hundred souls aboard.’

‘I am aware of that, Mr Neame.’

‘Well, if’n you had placed a mark on her waterline before they was shipped ashore, you would see clear how much they has risen in the water.’ The first glimmer of what was coming appeared on Digby’s face, but he had the good grace to let Neame make his point. ‘And since they was cleared of cannon and shot at Toulon, and the crew took ashore what stores she still carried, I reckon that her draught is nothing like as much as it would be for a normal seventy-four in full commission. I would suggest they would need ballast before setting sail, for they are as high floating as a ship laid up in ordinary off Chatham
Dockyard. If the soundings I have for the entrance to La Rochelle are accurate, then there’s enough to sail them in or close to on a high tide. It be touch and go whether they’d actually make the harbour.’

There was no need to say the tide would begin to rise a couple of hours before dawn, and peak late morning, or that the rise and fall in Biscay was telling, especially at this time of year, some twenty feet, with a concomitant strong inflow towards the shore.

‘Girth, Mr Neame. I doubt a seventy-four would make it through those twin towers. What beam are we looking at, fifty feet?’

‘It would be a scrape and no error, but they might. See, sir, the French build their ships a might narrower than we do in England. If you have ever been aboard a capture, say like the old
Magnamine
, like I was as a lad, you will see it has had to be strengthened for the kind of service we put our vessels to, Atlantic gales, Channel storms and the like. Sure they are swift sailers, but they are not as seaworthy in a blow as our’n ’cause of that slim construction.’

‘You think one might actually get through?’

‘
Apollon
is the most likely, sir. I have had a look at her beam and it is of the margin of some
forty-five
foot, so she might just shave those towers. Worst that could happen is she would stick, which would render the port unusable.’

‘This is all very well, but that still does not give us any hope of interfering in the execution of…’ Digby paused then, not knowing what to call them. They were no longer their charges. It was Lutyens who filled in for him.

‘Our friends, sir?’

The reply was quite brusque. ‘Are they, Mr Lutyens? I cannot see that drunkard Forcet as that.’

‘I can see a delicious irony in the revolution removing the head of somebody like Captain Jacquelin, given his own dogged loyalty to the cause, but several of those we dined with were men of good character.’

Pearce spoke next. ‘In other circumstances, sir, I would see myself becoming close to Moreau and Garnier. I would also, even on the short acquaintance I have now, consider it a desertion to leave them to their fate.’

‘You are asking me to risk men’s lives, and for all I know this ship, for men who are, even if we would have it otherwise, our enemies.’

‘I am.’

Pearce was tempted to relate to Digby the sight and sound of a revolutionary decapitation; the square
en fête
, as though the death of some innocent soul was a cause for celebration; flags waving, crowds cheering, the occasional sight of unbridled licentiousness. The traders seeking to profit from it selling food and trinkets, such as
cockades made of dyed human hair from previous victims, model guillotines which children could take home to try out on a rat, or if they were as debased as some of the parents, on a household pet. The knock that disturbed his thoughts, as well as the entry, was peremptory, with Harbin’s freckled face suddenly lit by the cabin lanterns.

‘Boat coming alongside, sir, quiet like, and calling out the ship’s old French name when challenged.’

John Pearce was out of the cabin and on to the deck first, to find the men on watch standing by their loaded cannon, looking towards the low glow of gas lighting from the centre of La Rochelle. On a night with a lot of cloud cover, so no moon or stars, those ashore could not be trusted to stay put and Digby had set a watch to cover all eventualities. Barring his own cabin bulkheads, the ship was cleared for action, with deadlights shipped over the stern casements, every gun on both sides of the deck loaded with canister and run out, boarding nets rigged and men in the mainmast cap bearing primed and loaded muskets.

‘Mariette,’
a voice called softly, and Pearce replied just as quietly asking them to approach into the pool of light cast by the ship’s lanterns. They were not stupid these men in the boat; aware there must be a lookout ashore keeping an eye on this sloop, they rowed round to the weather side and came close, hidden by the ship’s bulk. Another call
from Pearce had them come alongside, with Digby issuing a sharp command to look lively in case it was some kind of trap, this while his premier carried on a conversation with someone in the boat, quiet words that to everyone else were nothing but murmurings.

‘Get him aboard, Mr Pearce,’ hissed Digby.

‘He won’t come aboard, sir, but what he has to say is interesting.’

‘Interesting to you,’ Digby growled, in a rare show of frustration.

Pearce let that go, instead resuming his conversation with the man bobbing up and down in the boat, which included the passing over of a piece of paper. Asked to wait, Pearce took that to Digby to show him.

‘Who are they?’

‘Men from
Apollon
and
Patriote
, sir, though they will give no names.’

‘We have no guarantee they came here without being seen.’

‘They did not come out from the port, and they have told me of a part of the town wall on the south quadrant, so much in disrepair, it has fallen down.’

‘Guards?’ Digby asked, before adding, ‘Not that I’m taken with any notion of going near it.’

‘There is a sentry detail there, but our man tells me that they are slack.’ Sensing that his captain remained unconvinced, Pearce went on. ‘I have seen
the calibre of the local National Guard, sir, and they are slovenly in the extreme, with weapons that are so ill maintained I wonder if they could fire, let alone with any accuracy.’

‘They don’t have to be accurate, Mr Pearce, they merely need to make a noise to raise a screaming mob.’

‘And if they are taken care of in such a way they cannot fire their weapons?’

‘Is that what they are promising?’

‘Only that, and I admire the honesty. They will help us to the breach in the wall and point out the guard detail, then it is up to us.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘They cannot do anything close to the town centre and especially the Hotel de Ville. The danger of recognition is too great and while they have a wish to see freed the men due to be condemned, they have no notion to take their place.’

‘Timings?’

‘We must go with them now, allow them to get us into La Rochelle, so we can be in a position to effect a rescue at around dawn. The Revolutionary Tribunal will not meet that early, very likely not till near ten of the clock, and the prisoners are incarcerated in a set of cells under the Hotel de Ville.’

‘And how will you get away?’

‘The harbour is full of boats.’

‘And the walls are well equipped with cannon.’

‘Perhaps you, sir, standing in, could distract them and Mr Neame’s notion might serve as well.’

‘It seems to me you are bent on this.’

That was the first crack in Digby’s inclination to do nothing, and John Pearce exploited it immediately. ‘I would only go ashore with men who had volunteered, and I would not dream of including anyone you deemed necessary to the safety of the ship.’

Digby began to pace, Pearce joining him with an anxious look over his shoulder lest the boatmen from La Rochelle depart. He was anxious to speak to them once more, to add to their plan an idea of his own.

‘How many men?’

‘Half a dozen. One of the mids if they wish, and me in command. At least if I suffer there will be no real loss to the King’s Navy.’

‘You seem to have a wish to continually risk your life, Mr Pearce.’

‘I thought, sir, that was a prerequisite for the role of a commissioned officer.’

‘Responsibility is another, sir!’

There was no doubting the tone of that; Digby was suffering a degree of pique. Not that he would necessarily go himself on such a harebrained adventure; the fact that he did not have the choice is what rankled, the needs of his command coming first.

‘Make your arrangements with the fellows in the boat, then come to the cabin and see if we can concoct some plan to aid you with the help of Mr Neame and Mr Sykes.’

Michael O’Hagan volunteering, once the case was explained to him, left little room for Rufus and Charlie to decline. Martin Dent was there in a flash, and he chided Dysart into putting himself forward by alluding to their previous adventures ashore. Costello, being of dark skin and hair colour, was more of an asset, Dysart being fair. Needless to say Midshipman Harbin was all for it.

‘Mr Harbin,’ said Pearce, ‘I appreciate your zeal, and I know that having you along would be a plus, yet I would not want to deny Mr Farmiloe the possibility of action, which I think might improve his own opinion of himself.’ The tall youngster looked at him with a steady gaze, as Pearce added, ‘It will not reflect badly on you, Mr Farmiloe, if you decline. There will be no record of it.’

‘Except in my memory, sir.’

‘Then let me once more outline the risks, for I would not want you along just for the sake of your pride. We are going ashore to a town that is in the hands of some of the bloodiest scoundrels the world has ever known. Should we fail, we might get quarter, for our captain has undertaken to bombard the port if any harm should come to us, but there is
no guarantee we will not be treated as spies.’

‘And if we succeed?’

‘Then, Mr Farmiloe, you will be able to hold your own at any dinner you attend in your future as a naval officer, for there will be no one at that board who has partaken of an adventure to match this.’

‘Then, sir, I would be grateful if you will include me in your party.’

‘Then get those white breeches off,’ Pearce said, as the other midshipman’s face collapsed, ‘and get into all dark clothes. I am sorry, Mr Harbin, I cannot take you both, but I would be obliged if you would command the boat that will take us ashore.’ Seeing the gleam that appeared in the boy’s eye then, he insisted – producing in doing so another gloomy look – ‘And you will return to the ship as soon as you have enough light to see.’

‘Sorry my old bones will be of no use to you, Mr Pearce,’ said Latimer. ‘Was a time I’d have been first at the gangway.’

‘I don’t doubt it, old friend.’

Blubber Booth cut in. ‘And I won’t volunteer for fear of the sight of me trying to run.’

‘You’ll never make a topman, Blubber, that’s for certain.’

Pearce turned to the rest of the party assembled on the deck, those who had already put themselves forward. Behind him he heard Latimer whisper to Blubber.

‘D’ye hear what he called me? Old friend, he said. That’s the sign of a right gent.’

‘Mr Sykes, wish us luck.’

‘Goes without saying, sir, and I hope Mr Neame and I can do our part.’

‘Just make sure, Sykes, that you do not leave yourselves exposed by delaying too long.’

‘I often thought about fishing you out of the water off Deal, your honour, whether it were right or wrong.’ Pearce had been swimming ashore, with the shingle of Deal beach in sight, seeking to desert, when a strong hand had grabbed him and hauled him into the boat. Sykes had been on the end of that hand, and this was the first time since it had been mentioned. ‘I reckon you would have been seen by the officer of the watch.’

‘As an attempt to get free, it was not the wisest. You felt it was right at the time, Mr Sykes, and that will do me.’

‘You might have got clean away.’

‘You didn’t believe that, did you?’

‘No. Even if you had not been spotted you were new pressed, with no idea of how to avoid the Deal crimps, of which there are any number, God rot them. Barclay would have had you flogged as soon as you were dragged back aboard.’

‘Then I should probably thank you.’

Sykes grinned. ‘That would be gilding it, Mr Pearce.’

The boat with the party of Frenchmen had stood off, sitting outside the lights of the ship, and were invisible from the deck until John Pearce and his party cast off. A voice called to them, and a single spark was struck from a set of flints to locate them, Pearce ordering his oarsmen to get them close. Once done, the Frenchmen tossed over a thin line, not to tow them in any way, but to ensure that in the pitch darkness they would stay in contact. There was the slightest trace of phosphorescence from the striking oars, but not enough to be seen from more than a few yards away.