The Perils of Command (15 page)

‘You will move back to the Palazzo,’ her hostess said, firmly.

‘In a day or two, if you do not mind. I find the seashore peaceful and it aids me in contemplation, which, with what has happened today, I am much in need of.’

‘As you wish, but I would ask you to vacate it if the Chevalier wishes to go sea bathing.’

By the time Emily got back to the residence the sun was sinking in the west, while the sails of HMS
Semele
were no longer visible even from the hill behind the house. With a profound sense of relief mixed with confusion Emily went for an evening stroll along the strand, for the dilemma of what to do had not been resolved, the only option now removed that she should make up with her husband.

His outburst had shocked her. Emily had not been naïve enough to think that he was going to take the news calmly; she expected fury and if she put herself in her husband’s place that mood was justified. There had been a brief thought that he might relent from his first reaction but that was now laid to rest.

He had set sail but she could not believe the matter would end there. The man she had married was not of that stamp. If she ever set foot in England he would claim the child and there was nothing she could do to stop him, while she was
equally sure her family would disown her and decline to offer support.

So where would it all end? It was rumoured that Emma Hamilton had begun life as a roadside coal seller, or at least she had been that as a child. It was a sobering thought that having been born into better circumstances their roles might be reversed. Where Emma had risen, Emily might sink.

‘It’s getting dark, ma’am, perhaps best to go indoors.’

The quiet voice surprised Emily, so deep in contemplation she had no idea the Irishman was close by. ‘You followed me, Michael, even although I did not ask you?’

‘John-boy set me to look after you, and sure that I will do.’

‘The others?’

‘Charlie and Rufus have gone into the city.’

There was no requirement to ask what for and Emily did not do so; they would likely not return before the morning but she felt the need to acknowledge that Michael had done the right thing. Being stuck out here with her had not been an unalloyed joy.

‘I think we are safe now. You saw my husband’s ship sail off, did you not? If you too wish to go to Naples I cannot see how I could object.’

‘That ship is captained by the man who took me up from the Pelican Tavern, and John-boy with me. The sight of its sails disappearing might assure you, but I beg you will forgive me if it leaves me less at ease, so happen I will wait for another night.’

Emily hooked her arm into his. ‘You’re a good man, Michael.’

That got a grin from the huge Irishman. ‘Holy Mary,
there’s not many would agree with that.’

‘It is possible for the whole world to be wrong.’

‘Then I pray you will pay them no mind in the matter which troubles you.’

‘How I wish it could be so.’

‘Best step out or, like the wise men, we’ll need starlight to find the doorway.’

Aboard HMS
Semele
the party Ralph Barclay required was assembled. Palmer, as well as his other officers, had fallen for the story of naval deserters occupying a seaside house in the bay along from the ambassadorial residence, the tale embellished with the fact that Sir William Hamilton had let news of their presence slip out while being unaware of the consequences.

‘And, gentlemen, we have a duty, do we not, to redress this?’

The assent was unanimous; desertion was a crime to set every wearer of a blue coat on edge. It was frequent and dangerous enough to threaten – as was mutiny – the whole fabric of the fleet in which they served. Not one of their senior officers would forgive that every effort was not bent on recapture. Had not the navy sent a frigate all the way to the South Seas to fetch back for punishment the
Bounty
mutineers?

Excited faces seemed less animated when their captain told them he would personally lead the raid; they were not to be included, for it promised to be ferocious.

‘But I wish you to pick for me the hands I will take along. No milksops or men who will have sympathy. I want only those to whom what these swabs have done is hateful.’

In that there was no shortage; deserters were no more loved ’tween decks than they were on the quarterdeck, so Barclay was sure the men he would lead were willing and ready to employ violence.

‘You know, Gherson, I have not engaged in this since that night you were fished out of the Thames.’

‘Not for me a happy memory, sir.’

‘I daresay not. You know what I will miss? The presence of the swine Pearce. You cannot imagine how much I would love to break his skull.’

‘Afore you go breaking Pearce’s crown or chucking him overboard, have a think on it, lads.’

‘What, Cole? You was hard for it afore I spotted him. Is it cold feet you’re getting?’

‘It will be a cold body you will have, Fred Brewer, if you don’t have a care. What I is saying is this. It ain’t as easy as you are now getting worked up for. There be considerations.’

‘Like us being stuck aboard this barky,’ said Cephas Danvers.

‘Hit the spot, Cephas. Old Ironsides might be short on her due but she is still home to more’n seven hundred souls and where is the place where mischief can be done without some swab catching sight?’

‘It don’t answer either, Cole, for it leaves us aboard and there might be blood staining the deck, not handy with a bluecoat missing.’

That was responded to with a sly smile. ‘But what if we could use Pearce to get redress?’

‘Don’t follow,’ whispered Dan Holder.

‘Nowt new in that Dan, you bein’ the slow one.’

‘Let’s hear yer thinkin’, Cephas insisted.

‘Say we could get him to order up a boat crewed by us? Need a knife close to his vitals, mind.’

‘To get to where?’ Brewer complained, scouring the faces. ‘You’se has asked around as have I. The nearest spot is an island.’

‘So the place we goes to revictual is the only hope.’

‘An’ not much of one,’ Brewer protested.

It had been depressing for them all to hear where Italy lay. Never having been real deep sea sailors the wide oceans were a mystery. From fishing they had graduated to cross-Channel smuggling. They knew the waters between the Low Countries and Kent like the back of their hands, every shoal and sandbar; beyond that were dragons, even if it was common knowledge that places like America were a six-week sail away at best and sometimes a three-month voyage if the winds failed.

‘Let’s reckon we can do no better than this Leghorn place.’

‘And then?’ Cephas asked.

‘We do what we has to in order to eat.’

That did not need much expanding on; they would need to steal and maybe more to survive.

‘I want to get home,’ Dan Holder wailed, his round, pale face with its button for a nose and innocent-looking eyes making him look childlike.

‘Forget that,’ Cole spat, ‘as I heard tell, it’s as good as the moon fer us.’

‘Did they say how far?’ Holder whined.

‘Came up with a number that made no sense to me, so it would be a waste on you.’

Cephas Danvers knocked on the mess table. ‘Then best forgotten, but that is hard.’

‘When was it ever going to be easy?’

‘Never, Cole, but you has a notion, so what’s your plan?’

‘The barky has to go in to revictual and word is we are close to being in need. Anchored off Leghorn we take Pearce by surprise and get him to order up a means of getting ashore. No one is goin’ to query an officer needing a boat, are they?’

‘An’ if he lets on?’

‘Then he will bleed to death by the gangway, for I will knife him, for sure.’ Peabody leant forward and spoke eagerly. ‘We needs to convince him the only way he’ll live to tell the tale is to aid us.’

Dan Holder tapped the table his time, his eyes filled with hope. ‘Happen we could convince him we is not to blame for what the Tollands tried to do. Can we say we went along with them out of fear and we bear him no grudge personal?’

‘A point, Dan, an’ a good one. Might be you’re not so slow, truly.’

The talk went on and round but there was one fact that stood out starkly. They had no way of getting off the flagship without they had help of some sort and there was no one but John Pearce who could provide it.

Toby Burns hated being the sole lieutenant on the quarterdeck but that was ten times worse on the middle watch when it was dark anyway, made worse on this night by heavy overhead cloud and a wind that was coming in from the north-west, one to favour a ship departing Toulon.

He had been instructed to be on special guard, given the enemy ships of the line had come out en masse, two days previously, sixteen sail, to anchor in the great bight that formed the outer roads of Toulon, and they had their yards
crossed too, meaning they could weigh when they felt they had the right wind.

The information had already been sent by pinnace to Admiral Hotham, though it was as likely to be a feint as an attempt by the French fleet to get to sea, one that had been employed previously. What worried Burns was that in this Stygian darkness they could raise anchor and sail right past HMS
Brilliant
and he would have no knowledge of it. There were lookouts in place, as was customary, but their ears would be of more good at present than eyes.

The obvious fact that he could do nothing to stop them if they did sail out was not a point to raise Burns’ gloom: Taberly would skin him regardless, a thought which had him reprising the several schemes, all of them truly desperate, to get himself shifted to a commander more benign, not that he had any idea who that would be.

Nelson had the right reputation but the man was mad, always seeking a fight and ready to put both himself and his men in a position of maximum danger. Toby had been burdened with that before, first at Bastia, where Nelson had manned cannon so close to the walls that they stood as invites for the French to bombard. He had been just as hare-brained at Calvi, where a stupid scheme of a sortie had seen him captured and locked up in the citadel. The accommodation had been far from comfortable but it had been safe; the part occupied by captured enemies of the French was immune to cannon fire.

Such thoughts were the bane of his life at a time like this, when little happened unless they were called upon to reverse course, the creaking of the timbers only broken by the ringing of the half-hour bells, the calls of one man casting the log for speed, another for the depth under the keel, and
the scrape of the chalk on the slate as these figures, along with the course and the time, were recorded.

He would be relieved at four of the morning when it was still dark and the ship silent, so he could get some sleep, though that depended on the snores of the men who shared the wardroom, particularly the marine officer, whose trumpeting seemed to reverberate through the whole frigate due to his endemic overconsumption of wine.

‘Caught a sound, Mr Burns, hard off the larboard quarter.’

That soft call obliged Toby to move forward and cock an ear, while staring ahead into a vision of light spots dancing before his eyes.

‘Creaking timbers,’ the lookout hissed, ‘can you hear it, Your Honour?’

‘I can,’ Toby lied, for he could hear nothing.

The dilemma? Whether to rouse out Taberly who, if it turned out to be nothing, would flay him alive. Dare he send up a blue light without alerting the captain? That would tell him if what the man beside him claimed to hear was true or false. And what did creaking mean? It could be one ship and not a large one, or the precursor of the whole French fleet coming out, and their progress discovered, how would they react?

He had a vision then, of a whole triple row of run-out cannon on a hundred gunner, all of them pointing at him and the thought made him shudder, only to be made more terrifying when he recalled there were sixteen capital ships in the French fleet. One salvo from such a body of gunnery could reduce a frigate like
Brilliant
to matchwood and anyone on deck would stand little chance of survival.

‘There it goes again, Your Honour do you harken to it?’

Was that a note of impatience in the lookout’s tone, as
if he was wondering why this bluecoat was delaying and getting shirty because of it? Toby Burns was unsure, but he did know that if such a thing was suspected he should issue a reprimand. The fact that it might be imagined meant nothing; as a King’s Officer he was expected to behave in that fashion. Being wrong was better than being challenged.

‘I think I must call the captain,’ he said, which removed the obligation for a rebuke. ‘Keep those ears of yours pitched for more sounds.’

It was not the correct procedure that he wake the captain himself; there was a midshipman on watch with him whom he should despatch as a messenger. The marine sentry snapped to attention and shouldered his musket but he did not automatically open the door to the captain’s cabin.

‘Mr Taberly is abed, sir,’ he said.

‘Then rouse out one of his servants to wake him, he must be advised that we may be in proximity to some activity. I will wait till he has vacated his cot.’

Again that was not quite proper, but Burns was happier off the quarterdeck than on it. HMS
Brilliant
was not the only possessor of flares; the French had them, too, and if they knew the British frigate was close they might send one up as a precursor to a broadside; it was safer here.

It took time to rouse out Taberly, he being no slouch with the bottle himself. Eventually a knock from within signalled that the sentry could open the door and Burns was admitted to find his captain bleary-eyed and in his nightgown. He made his report, including the fact that he was unsure he heard anything, only to see the face close up.

‘You did not see fit to send up a light?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Or rouse out the hands?’

Toby felt his heart physically shrink for he suspected that, had he done either of those things independently, Taberly would be just as likely to roast him. As it was the captain brushed past him with scant courtesy plus a small shove to go on deck, where, with his gloomy lieutenant on his heels, he made for the lookout bent over the hammock nettings, a hand cupped to his ear.

‘Speak to me, man,’ he barked.

‘Faint sounds, Capt’n, but regular. I reckon we is not a cable’s length from some’at.’

Taberly hoicked up his nightgown and levered himself up likewise and put a cupped hand to an ear, a position he held for some time. Something, and it had to be a sound, made him jerk.

‘All hands, Mr Burns, but quiet as a mouse. Prepare a blue light, which will be fired as soon as we are cleared for action. And send someone to fetch my coat and breeches.’

For a drill normally carried out with excessive noise it was credit to the men aboard the frigate that they prepared for battle with a minimum of noise, which naturally took double the time. Taberly showed no patience for the need to be quiet and growled at all and sundry. By the time the last report was delivered he was fully dressed and in position. He had the master remove the right number of men from the guns to be ready to bring HMS
Brilliant
round on a reverse course as soon as the flare exploded.

The fuse was lit on the rocket and it fizzed for half a minute until it ignited the main powder, to send the canister shooting into the sky where, within a second, it burst to bathe the seascape in its ghostly light.

‘All hands to man the falls,’ Taberly yelled, as before him lay
a string of leviathans slowly sailing out of the Toulon bight. One of them was within that cable’s length the lookout had reckoned and soon its gun ports began to yaw open, which brought from Toby Burns an anguished cry. ‘For the love of Christ get us out of here.’

‘I believe, Mr Burns, your station is with the main deck cannon.’

‘Sir,’ the youngster acknowledged before hurrying off.

Taberly had inherited a good crew and for all his faults he was an efficient sea officer. The helm was down, the falls released and the frigate was coming round in a few grains of sand, being at the point of maximum danger when beam-on to the enemy. Toby Burns, behind the main deck battery, could not breathe. If he could not fully see the threat his imagination was enough to magnify what was already perilous.

It would not have aided him to know that every officer aboard, from Taberly down, was similarly afflicted. At such a range against such weight of shot the frigate was in mortal danger and once the falls were again sheeted home a silence fell as the crew who could observe awaited what they knew must come.

It did not; the nearest ship of the line sailed on, identified as the
Ca Ira
, its ports still open but with no cannon emerging and that held as the blue light faded and died, to leave them once more in pitch darkness. Taberly croaked a second change of course that would lay them parallel to the enemy, though with a widening gap.

‘We must wait till daylight, gentlemen,’ he said, to no one in particular, ‘and if what we have seen is confirmed we must make all sail for San Fiorenzo Bay and alert the fleet.’

HMS
Brilliant
was not alone on the station; there were
other frigates and they would have seen the flare and perhaps even the upper sails of the enemy. They would shadow the French and send off messages to Admiral Hotham regarding their course and speed while Taberly would be first to say they were definitely at sea and thus anticipate being the messenger carrying the kind of welcome news that was enhancing to a career.

If Admiral Sir William Hotham was troubled by the appearance of John Pearce he was obliged to put it to the back of his mind, for matters more pressing impinged. He had the news sent by pinnace from Toulon: the French had engaged in bluff before but would they finally actually weigh to tempt him to the battle he so desired? It was near time for HMS
Britannia
to make up her stores and he feared to be caught at that if they came out, so having checked with Hyde Parker he issued orders that the fleet should weigh for Leghorn in its entirety.

Pearce, having been given, though with scant grace, a berth in the wardroom, was sound asleep and dreaming of Emily, himself and a scampering babe outside a rose-covered cottage bathed in warm sunlight. The sound of the ship stirring put an end to that as the decks were scrubbed with sand and holystoned prior to being washed and flogged dry.

He was still lying flat when he realised what he was hearing was stamp and go. The flagship was in the process of raising anchor and by the time he was dressed and made the deck, Old Ironsides was taking up her position in the centre of the line, while the van under Sir Samuel Goodall was already heading out to the open sea.