The Perils of Command (14 page)

The door to the cabin opened and Hotham stood framed within it, his stocky body silhouetted by the stronger light. That was so dominant that his face, and thus his expression, was in shadow. There was no way to tell what he was thinking by sight, only by supposition. The vision was brief; the door was slammed shut.

‘The cat is amongst the pigeons, Mr Toomey,’ Pearce hooted, with manufactured glee. ‘Your admiral is at a stand, sir, and I have no doubt where that places you. Shall I enter and tell him that his client officer has kept from him just how threatened he truly is, that as soon as I get hold of Toby Burns and intimidate him with the prospect of the rope the game is over?’

‘You shall not enter, sir,’ Toomey spat, indicating the marine sentry with his head. ‘And that fellow there will prevent it on my command that he do so.’

‘It matters not. Hotham will see me or see himself damned.’

‘He will not!’

‘We shall soon discover who has the right of it, Mr Toomey. Meanwhile I will take a turn around the deck while you contemplate the less-than-rosy future that awaits you.’ The pause was well timed for effect. ‘Or is that no future at all?’

Well before he reached the companionway leading to the upper deck John Pearce was almost purring with satisfaction. He was sure he had played his hand well, while the exposure of that transcript had proved explosive, merely by its existence but also because quite clearly Barclay had
not let it be known. The old saw about there being no honour amongst thieves came to mind and in his reflections he played out an ever-increasing number of pleasurable scenarios as the men he considered responsible for that mission to the Gulf of Ambracia sought to deflect blame away from their own actions.

Lost in such thoughts he paid no attention to the seaman passing by on his way back from the heads, even when the man stopped for a split second to stare at him. By the time Pearce responded the man was moving again, making for the companionway that would take him below, so he was just a figure and a receding one at that.

Fred Brewer hurried to his mess table, beginning with a cold glare that shifted two of his messmates he did not consider should hear what he had to say. If they moved slowly they were soon out of earshot and an eager look and a crooked finger from Brewer soon got the heads of his fellow smugglers close to his own.

‘You is never goin’ to believe what my eyes have just seen, mates.’

‘You havin’ been to the heads, Fred, we might not want to.’

‘You’re wrong, Cole, well wrong, for on my way back I spied an officer on deck.’

‘Christ, a miracle.’

‘Scoff you might, all of you, but you will not when I tell you his name.’

‘Cut the shallying, Fred. If you got anything to impart get on with it.’

Fred was determined to enjoy his moment. ‘Tall fellow, well set and good to look at if you like that sort of caper.
Looking well pleased with hisself an’ smiling away as I passed him by.’

‘I can feel my fist a’twitchin’, Fred,’ growled Cephas Danvers.

‘It will do a rate more’n that, Cephas, when I tell you what I clapped eyes on.’

‘I’ll poke the buggers out if you don’t speak out.’

‘There I was a-crossing the deck, breathing a bit of fresh by coming that route and the cove I espied was none other than that snake in the grass John Pearce.’

Cornelius Gherson knew the interview had not gone well just by the expression on Ralph Barclay’s face. That said he was surprised to be viciously barked at when he enquired as to the details. His employer did not see him pout, not that he would have cared that the man felt slighted; had he not been a vital part of the whole affair ever since Emily Barclay had enforced the original separation?

He had guided the captain with good advice, even if much of it had either been scoffed at or ignored. Stomping along behind him as they made their way from the village of Posillipo towards the centre of Naples he reprised with bitter resentment the acts he had undertaken, more than one of which had put him at serious risk and left him questioning why he allowed himself to become so engaged.

He needed to hang on to Barclay’s coat-tails in order to prosper, but prior to drawing that conclusion he had been motivated by the way Emily Barclay had treated him, as he acted as her husband’s messenger, with a degree of contempt that had made Gherson want to slap her hard. His approach
having gone wrong and with her husband desperate to recover the court martial papers, he had acceded to Barclay’s request and engaged the services of some of his old acquaintances from his past criminal life.

Naval service might reckoned a rough trade but it was milk and honey compared to the underbelly of London, where a man’s life would count for no more than the possession of a soiled linen handkerchief. To exist in such a milieu required guile, wits and sometimes sheer braggadocio of the kind that gave opponents pause.

Gherson had gone from childhood to manhood in the face of an almost permanent danger from a community that saw murdered bodies daily dragged from the River Thames to be sold – if they remained unidentified, and they rarely were – to the surgeons at St Bartholomew’s for dissection without much being cared for in the way in which these victims had met their end.

To help Barclay – really for his own sake, though he would not admit to it – Gherson had engaged the services of one of the most villainous sods in a world peopled by such creatures. Jonathan Codge was such a conniving bastard not even Satan would have been able to collar him. Gherson himself had come close to being one of the numerous poor dupes Codge dobbed in to the Bow Street Runners in order to save his own skin.

‘Sir,’ he gasped, for Barclay was setting a pace that matched his mood. ‘I hazard you are going to ask me to once more advise you. How can I do that when I have no idea of the outcome of your meeting?’

The captain stopped so abruptly Gherson had to halt swiftly to avoid a collision. ‘I need no advice, hear me. I
require action not words and, by damn, if Devenow is not by the quayside when we get there he will find that any flogging he has had till this day was as a kiss from a buttercup.’

The response that surfaced, to say the allusion was quite poetic, as well as something he would welcome, given his loathing of Devenow, had to be bitten back. Besides, Barclay was moving again and still venting his spleen, forcing his clerk to hurry to keep up.

‘I want that harlot aboard my ship before the sun goes down and if it lacks gentility to get her there, so be it. I have a good mind to confine her to the cable tier as well. I doubt she would much like the rats nibbling at her toes, though they might decline to contaminate themselves, for even rats must have—’

The word Barclay was seeking would not come to him, which had him cursing in a near incomprehensible manner, while his more knowledgeable clerk thought it unwise to advise a choice. From what the captain was saying things had gone from bad to worse, leaving an abduction his preferred option. Having seen the building she occupied, indeed if she had returned there, Gherson set his mind to planning how to get to it and fulfil such a task which would include ten minutes alone with the victim.

A full hour of trudging left Barclay’s blue coat rendered near grey with dust and Gherson exhausted. The captain’s face was that, too, only the streaks of running sweat creating any sight of the red and furious countenance below. The diatribe had shifted from bile to self-pity and had included for Gherson some acknowledgment, grudging but profound, that his advice in the past had been sound. If Barclay did not go so far, alas, to cast himself as a fool for ignoring it, he
did label himself that for ever becoming wedded to such an ingrate.

Devenow was sat on a bollard and behind and below him was the barge, fully crewed by men inured to waiting and to refusing, even if it was reluctantly, the invitations from the local whores who had gathered to tease them into stepping ashore for a bout of pleasure. The servant standing stopped the oarsmen crouching and his bellow sent the trollops away.

Their captain was approaching and he would have them smart even if his mood was a good one. Devenow was the first to realise it was as black as the pit of hell and a sharp word to look lively rendered the barge crew rigid. The man might be despised, and he returned their feelings in full measure but if the captain’s mood were so dire he felt the need to let on, then it must be dark indeed.

‘Don’t just stand there, oaf, get aboard.’

‘Look at the state of your coat, Your Honour,’ Devenow protested; if he was useless as a servant that did not dent his attempts to appear as one.

The glare that got had the brute moving at catlike speed and he jumped into the boat with such disregard the coxswain swore at him for near capsizing them, a complaint that received a raised single finger in response, while the words Barclay spoke to Gherson were quietly delivered once Devenow was out of hearing.

‘I wish to look at the place you found this morning, so will row to the Hamilton residence, then along the coastline.’

‘Sir.’

Barclay dropped down with an equal disregard for the safety of the cutter, his good arm taken by Devenow, but that occasioned no rebuke. The coxswain glared at Gherson
to warn him to be careful, which was stupid; surely he knew the clerk to be excessively cautious of his person.

Barclay growled his commands as soon as the oarsmen could dip their sticks and the cutter fairly raced away from the quayside only to veer sharply right once they were clear of the anchored shipping. All aboard were curious but inured to naval life and the vagaries of officers too wise to even hint at their wonder. They stared blank-faced as they hauled and lifted, an attitude maintained when they were ordered to ease off.

The route from the Palazzo Sessa touched the shoreline at several points and Barclay sat in silence studying it until they opened the bay in which lay the place occupied by Emily. Gherson was wise enough to whisper to his employer, indicating what he should be looking at, the small house and the adjoining countryside examined in a long silence that had the clerk worried.

He was looking at Barclay’s face and the range of emotions that swept across it, which spoke of anger, disappointment and most of all self-pity, none of which was of much use. He employed a slight cough to break the spell.

Barclay did not respond for several seconds, then came a nod and the sharp command. ‘Coxswain, HMS
Semele
.’

The order was obeyed instantly, the cutter fairly racing towards the seventy-four. There, the ship’s officers and marines were lined up to receive their commanding officer with all due ceremony, only to find themselves ignored. Barclay ran up the gangway and right past the receiving line without so much as a nod, Devenow forced to trot to keep up.

In the cabin he tried to remove the dust-covered coat with
gentility as Barclay did his best to fling it off and he made his way to his desk, demanding quill and paper. Once that was delivered by Gherson, whatever was intended was quickly composed before being untidily sanded and handed to his clerk, who in the meantime had fetched wax, a seal and a lantern with a lit candle.

That applied, Barclay handed it over. ‘Take this to Hamilton.’

‘Am I allowed to enquire what it contains, sir?’

‘It is a demand that he send my wife aboard immediately and I have reminded him, not that he requires it, that the laws of our country oblige him to respond in the correct manner.’

If Barclay was grinding his teeth as he spoke, and still clearly in a foul state of mind, Gherson was all crafty consideration, he having a very shrewd idea of what Barclay planned to do. ‘He will not take kindly to such a tone, sir.’

‘Do you think I give a damn about that?’

‘You may do as you wish, sir, but I am obliged to say that alerting the ambassador to your continued intention to have your wife join you, which this note will achieve, is a bad idea and it may lead to her being moved to somewhere other than that beach residence, out of your reach and unknown to us. I take it that you are determined that when you sail from Naples she will be on board?’

‘Bound and gagged if need be. The ungrateful sow will be lucky if she does not feel the whip.’

It had always been a struggle to get Ralph Barclay to think clearly when he was angry, and as a man too often in that state, doubly so. He could fight his ship and command his crew with seeming ease and mental clarity, yet a single female
and her refusal to obey rendered him partially blind.

‘If it were me, sir—’

‘Damn your presumption, Gherson!’

‘I would sail away and make a very public display of doing so.’

‘Without her?’

The notion was so shocking to him it quieted his mood and that allowed Gherson to continue. ‘The Hamiltons and your wife might be on their guard for some kind of response, even perhaps a violent one, but if we sail away—’

‘That will be lowered,’ Barclay interjected.

‘It may be that your wife will return to the Palazzo Sessa because she feels safe; perhaps she will choose to remain in that seashore residence until she is certain that you have departed, for she has no idea we have knowledge of it. If my thinking is correct, sir, you have already discerned that the strand on which that residence sits is highly suitable for the landing from one of our ship’s boats of a party of seamen.’

‘True, Gherson, and if Hamilton declines his duty that is something I now look forward to leading personally, even if it ends up in that damned Palazzo.’

‘That, perhaps, would also be unwise,’ Gherson protested as the dream he had been harbouring came under threat.

‘I cannot see why, man, there will no longer be a requirement for subterfuge.’

‘The ship’s officers, sir?’

‘I will employ the gambit I proposed earlier, regarding a party of deserters so that the men I lead will have no idea of the real purpose.’

Barclay had gone from bile through bemusement to a sense of purpose and now his face, still streaked with the
dust of Naples, was close to being animate with enthusiasm. Gherson saw beyond what he had just said to a fact his employer would be reluctant to acknowledge. His mode of command required that he construct an excuse; there would be no body of hands aboard willing, out of loyalty, to aid him if they knew the truth.

‘Then I can only wish you joy, sir,’ Gherson lied.

‘You can do more than that, Gherson, you can come along. Why would I deprive you of the opportunity you were so keen previously to undertake?’

There was no relating the real reason but Gherson felt somewhat more secure now that Barclay had calmed down, enough to re-ask the question to which he had not received an answer. Barclay fell silent, his chin dropping onto his chest and he thought about the reply.

‘I tell you this because it will be nigh on impossible to keep hidden over time, but relate this to anyone else without it has already become obvious and it will not be threats that I issue, but a scarring so profound you will never forget it.’

Said quietly, Gherson took that warning much more seriously than the bellicose raging to which he was accustomed. ‘Sir.’

‘Pearce has got her with child.’

The captain sat in silent contemplation while his clerk reflected on that, mentally damning John Pearce for taking something Gherson had set his mind on.

‘But I see your suggestion as a sound one. Now send for Mr Palmer so that I can give him orders to weigh.’

The departure of HMS
Semele
was carried out with the accustomed banging of signal guns, the sound and smoke of
which were observed from the balcony of the Palazzo Sessa.

‘Well, Emily, it seems you have prevailed.’

‘Have I? Why, then, do I not feel content?’

‘I know you are troubled but it may be I can advise you, for I have been where you are now.’

Emma Hamilton took her arm and led her back inside, away from the sight of her husband’s ship crowding on sail to leave behind it the Bay of Naples. Once seated, Emily listened as she was told the tale of a girl, young, foolish and besotted, left with a child by a lover who declined to accept he was the father.

‘You do not face that, for which you should be very grateful.’

‘You had the child?’

‘I did and left it with my grandmother.’

‘Who raised no objections?’ Emily asked.

‘I suspect you think your family would not do likewise?’

‘I am near to certain the disgrace would come close to killing my parents.’

‘Which only goes to establish how different are our backgrounds. Though it is never openly spoken of, no one in my home village of Ness will have any doubts as to who is the mother. But as to disgrace? Let us say it is too common to be scandalous.’

‘And you care for her?’

‘Sir William’s nephew took responsibility for the monies required for raising her and her education.’

‘That was kind.’

‘Not entirely, but it was generous.’ Emma Hamilton had never cast down her eyes in Emily’s presence but she did so now. ‘He did it because he thought himself the father.’

Emily did not dare state the obvious; if he thought that he must have had grounds. Perhaps all those rumours had some foundation, perhaps Emma Hamilton had been a— Emily checked herself; she would not allow the word ‘whore’ to be attached to someone who had been so sympathetic.

‘I am sorry.’