He looked at the nipper with the broken arm. ‘You, lad, run back and tell them we are coming and they must, at all costs, wait for us.’
Driffield delayed giving the orders that would see the camp struck; instead he watched as the stumbling patients made their way up the hill that blocked off the small fishing port from the neck of the peninsula, keeping his eye on them as they wended their way up the twisting path, waiting till Pearce and his party were well out of earshot. Then he called to his sergeant.
‘As soon as they can no longer see us, I want the shot moved and the cannon hauled over the powder store.’
‘Did I not hear the officer say they was to be left, sir?’
‘They are being left, sergeant. They are not being spiked or having their wheels smashed.’ The look that got was, to the marine officer’s mind, larded with potential insubordination, and his response was harsh. ‘We cannot expect a bluecoat to comprehend the loss of honour attendant on abandoning the guns to the enemy. I intend, when I rejoin my fellows, to be able to look them in the eye.’
‘We’ll not have time to do that and break the camp of all of our equipment.’
‘Equipment, sergeant, can be replaced. Honour, once lost, is gone for ever.’
Getting the wounded from the hospital into the boats, given their numbers, would have been a hellish task if it had not been for the sailors from HMS Hinslip. With that natural ability British tars had to overcome obstacles, they had ordered some spars brought ashore and jury-rigged a hoist so that the more serious could be lowered to lay across the gunnels of the ship’s boats. On Hinslip itself, another hoist was ready to haul them inboard, as steady as you like, so that excessive movement did not aggravate their wounds.
Emily Barclay was only made aware that her husband had come out of his fever when his time came. She found him, pale, obviously weak and looking wasted, trying to sit up in the bed, struggling with only one arm, an attempt he abandoned as she filled the doorway. Husband and wife looked at each other, neither wishing to be the first to speak. Only then did Emily notice that his eyes were red, as if from weeping; or perhaps it was a result of his fever.
‘There is a ship lying off the bay, a transport. We have to get you aboard.’
‘Where is Brilliant?’ Ralph Barclay demanded, struggling to sit up again.
‘I have no idea, husband,’ Emily replied, moving forward to restrain him. ‘There will be some orderlies here presently with a stretcher to carry you to the jetty.’
‘I can walk,’ he insisted, trying to get out of bed and failing.
‘You cannot, husband. You have had a fever, a bad one, after your…’
She could not finish it, so he did it for her, his face as pained as his stump must be. ‘The loss of my arm?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who took it off?’
‘Surgeon Lutyens.’
‘Did he try to save it?’
There was bitterness in the way that was spat out, and Ralph Barclay’s face bore an expression his wife had seen before, one which implied that the whole world was against him, implied that perhaps Lutyens had set to with knife and saw out of spite, not necessity.
‘You were carried in unconscious, Captain Barclay, and it was obvious to Heinrich—’
‘It is Heinrich now?’
‘It has been for some time,’ Emily snapped, her eyes flashing at the implication of over-familiarity. ‘I challenge you to stand over men in distress as well as poor souls who are dying and still hold to formalities.’
‘You were in a place you should not be. You should have been where you belonged.’
‘Captain Barclay,’ Emily said, in a tired voice, ‘I no longer know where I belong.’
Two orderlies appearing at the door stymied any response, one carrying the canvas stretcher, the other a pair of trestles that, at bed height, would ease the transfer of the patient. Once more Ralph Barclay struggled to stand on his own, the effort being too much, and it caused him to fall back on to the end of his stump, bringing from his throat, even if the contact was cushioned by the bedding, a loud wail of pain. Emily heard it in the corridor, on her way to the next patient.
Pearce was within sight of the hospital when he heard the dull explosion of Driffield’s powder, wondering what had taken him so long; the fellow was, by his calculation, cutting it fine. He would have been even more discomfited had he seen the remains of the redoubt. The earthwork was intact, but the cannon, dragged from their positions, were shattered, especially the wheels, while the barrels lay hither and thither amongst the tattered tents and scattered cooking implements that had once been their encampment, the whole scene of destruction observed from a safe distance by Driffield and his men.
They and their red coats were out of sight when the French, led by Colonel of Artillery Napoleon Buonaparte, crossed the top of the earthwork, to see before them the scene. Aware that the accusing eyes of his inferior officer were upon him, Buonaparte said, in an angry tone, ‘This Pearce has ensured that I will remember his name.’
It was a grubby Sir Sidney Smith who sat making his report to Admiral Lord Hood, black from head to foot, this caused by a combination of smoke, sheer scrabbling in the dirt, and the various substances from tar to expended powder to which he had been exposed. Aware that his mission had not been a complete success, he was trying to gauge how the older man was taking the news that many of the French capital ships were still intact, awaiting only rigging and sails, as well as crews, to be ready for sea.
‘This will not go down well in London, Sir Sidney,’ said Parker, the other officer present.
‘I am aware of that, sir, but my men did all that they were asked to do.’
‘Hardly that, sir,’ said Hood, softly.
‘In that, milord, I mean all that was possible. The Dons were tardy, when they were not downright unhelpful.’
The accusation of treachery hung in the air, the notion that the Spaniards had not pursued the policy of destruction of the French warships with the necessary zeal. It took no great imagination to discern why: Spain, in every conflict since the Armada, had been England’s enemy, often in alliance with Royal France. To have them, in this present war, as allies, had always felt odd, though up till now Hood could not have faulted the desire of their sailors to defeat the ogres of the Revolution.
If their soldiers had been less than wholly supportive, the senior Spanish naval officer had backed whatever plans Hood mooted to the hilt, deferring to him as the commander of the allied force because the British had the most powerful fleet. Yet a man would have had to be blind not to see such a policy did not always sit well with the more junior officers: they still saw Albion as the traditional enemy, smarted daily about the occupation of Gibraltar, now ninety years a British thorn in the pride of Spain.
‘I suspect they blew the two powder ships, milord,’ said Smith. ‘They did not want us to have them any more than the French.’
‘A couple of powder-filled frigates are neither here nor there, Sir Sidney,’ Parker responded, ‘but those ships of the line they failed to burn will come back to haunt us.’
‘They feared to make us too powerful,’ Hood snapped, causing both of his other officers to look at him. ‘We are strange bedfellows, you know that and so do they. The last thing they want is a British fleet in the Mediterranean so powerful that it would be unassailable by Spain alone.’
‘Are you saying they will desert the alliance, milord?’
‘I am saying they have taken precautions to ensure they are not at a disadvantage if they do. Sir Sidney, I require from you a despatch regarding your exploits of last night, to go with mine in due course back to London, where I daresay another nail will be manufactured from my words to seal my coffin.’
Sam Hood had never looked young, he was after all in his seventies, but he had, up till now, looked sprightly. He did not appear to be that now: he looked worn down with the cares of his command.
‘We must find another anchorage, Parker, and s
ince we still have French capital ships to contend with it will have to be one close enough to cover Toulon. Let’s send out some more sloops and frigates to see what they can find.’
‘Corsica, sir?’
‘Yes, Sardinia at a push.’
‘If you recall the despatch Lieutenant Pearce brought in during the summer, milord, he has noted the main ports, such as Calvi and Bastia, are held by strong garrisons.’
‘Then we might have to boot them out, Parker,’ Hood retorted, with some of his old fire. ‘You would do service in that, Sir Sidney, would you not?’
‘Happily, sir, as would every officer in your fleet.’
‘Right, Parker,’ Hood commanded. ‘Once all is settled signal the combined fleets to weigh for Leghorn.’
The hospital was empty now, and Heinrich Lutyens walked the rooms to ensure that nothing had been left behind, at the same time wondering what a fate had ensured he ended up here, doing that which he had sought to get away from in London, the exclusive practice of his profession. His sea chest was already aboard, but over his shoulder he had a satchel containing his notebooks and the ledger into which the hurried scribblings he had made these past nine months had been copied. Were they complete? Could he, from what he had already, compile that treatise he had set out to compose, an academic study of the stresses and strains of naval life on the human mind?
Idly he wondered if he would decline to serve on, and go back to what he had left behind, a highly successful and lucrative practice based on the twin facts that, not only was he highly thought of by his peers, but he was socially well connected, through his father, to the court of King George. Serving as a ship’s surgeon was beneath his standing, a post normally occupied by men little above the old station of barbers, but it had not been without pleasures.
The men he had studied on HMS Brilliant, including those pressed by Ralph Barclay, had provided him with much material – not least, because he was educated, John Pearce. And Lutyens had been in a proper battle, albeit below decks in the cockpit and out of sight of the action, had been taken prisoner when Ralph Barclay was forced to strike his colours, so he had that experience, though it had been a benign confinement, given he had taken on the task of looking after the wounded from that sea fight.
Wherever they were bound for now he still had charges who required treatment and he might be afforded further opportunities for study. After all, HMS Hinslip was a ship, another floating and confined world, where all the things that interested him would once more be on display: the interaction of humans with each other in a constrained wooden hull; fears, bravery perhaps, the disputes that happened with men living cheek by jowl in damp conditions and eating a diet so boring that their most common complaint was a compacted bowel. On top of that there was the relationship between Emily Barclay and her husband; how would that work out? Plus he still had close and observable John Pearce and his Pelicans. Yes, there was still much of interest.
‘Do you so enjoy being a prisoner that you fear to leave that estate?’
Heinrich Lutyens turned to face John Pearce, a haughty look on what had been described as a fish-like face, his fine nose in the air. ‘Given the lack of culture of the alternative, John, it has its attractions.’
‘Come,’ Pearce said, ‘the last boat is ready to cast off.’
They walked out and made for the jetty, past some very forlorn-looking locals, the fishermen, their wives and children who eked out a living in this tiny bay. They would fear what was coming, even if they had, being poor and ignorant folk, done nothing to deserve to suffer from revolutionary retribution.
‘Can we not, John—?’
‘No,’ John Pearce said, cutting right across Lutyens, his face clouding into anger. ‘I tried to persuade the captain to take them off with us, but he has strict orders from Hood. No civilians.’
‘Then may God bless them.’
‘As long as Doctor Guillotine does not.’
CHAPTER FIVE
The sight of smoking Toulon had long disappeared over the stern as HMS Hinslip cleaved her way through a heavy swell, under lowering clouds that threatened worse weather to come, surrounded by the overladen ships of the combined fleets, somehow the attitude of gloom making itself felt over the intervening sea. On the quarterdeck stood Captain Sidey, in his foul-weather gear, oilskin coat and hat, legs spread to cope with the motion of the ship, his square, weather-beaten face set and determined, eyes narrowed to keep out the flying spume.
John Pearce stood on the leeward side, his arm hooked round a stay, well away from the water shipping in over the weather beam. Here the heavily canted deck took the bulwarks close to the grey, foam-flecked waters of the angry Mediterranean. He was wondering what the future held, there being something about staring at the shifting seawater to invite introspection, for once they had landed at Leghorn he would be looking for the first vessel home.
He had, quite naturally, looked for HMS Brilliant, likely to be somewhere out there on the vast expanse of sea, but had gained no sight of the ship into which he had been originally pressed. It had been a long journey from Sheerness, full of incident: of initially seeking to avoid those with whom he had been taken up, only to become close to many of them; of being pressed not once but twice; of surviving being wrecked on a Breton shore; being raised more by malice than favour to the rank of midshipman, then, due to good fortune and the advice of better men, to success in battle and his present rank, that a gift from King George himself that ignored the requirement that a naval lieutenant must not only have six years sea time, but should face an examination by a panel of senior captains.
None of it would have come about if he had not ducked into the Pelican to avoid a pursuit determined to put him in prison: one sojourn in the Fleet as a youth, sent there with his father by a vengeful government seeking to shut up a radical voice, was enough to make anyone desperate to avoid repetition. Of course, not even that inadvertent slipping into the Thameside tavern would have occurred if he had not come back from Paris in the hope of getting lifted the warrant for sedition, outstanding against both him and his father, far from well and still in the French capital.
‘A penny for your thoughts.’
Pearce turned just in time to see Emily Barclay, in her hooded cloak, stagger, taken off guard by a suddenly much sharper tilt of the deck. Instinctively he held out a hand to stop her falling over, catching her wrist and pulling her towards him, only to find that she put out an equally determined hand, firm on his chest, to stop that resulting in more bodily contact.
‘Always give one hand for the boat, Mrs Barclay, I thought you would know that by now.’
It took no effort to get her wrist out of his hand, Pearce was not seeking to keep hold of it, and she did that which she should have done before, stretched out to secure herself with a grip on the hammock netting.
‘Thank you, Lieutenant Pearce, I fear I spent enough time ashore to forget.’ Aware that he was staring at her she looked quickly over the side. ‘It is all so grey, not what they tell us about the wine-dark sea.’
‘There are spots of brightness even in such a dull aspect as this.’
‘Do you know Homer?’ she asked, avoiding what was clearly a compliment.
‘I do, both the Iliad and the Odyssey and I have struggled to think what kind of wine the ancients drank that turned it the colour of seawater, whatever the state of the sunlight. I cannot countenance blue wine any more than grey.’
‘I think, sir, it was a poetic allusion.’
‘There are moments when poetry cannot do other than come to mind, for instance the presence of a beautiful woman must have inspired Homer to write of Helen.’
Her voice took on a sharper note and she looked into his smiling face. ‘Please, Lieutenant, can we put aside this gallantry?’
‘I shall if you will stop calling me Lieutenant.’
‘You are not, I hope, suggesting I use your given name?’
‘You do for Heinrich Lutyens.’
‘With whom I have shared experiences that…’ Emily Barclay stopped then, the words she was about to say too close to those she had used with her husband.
‘Perhaps, given that I have no duties and yours will ease as the wounded recover, we might get to know each other better. I have an impression that such a thing would not displease you.’
‘I must go below,’ she insisted, beginning to turn away, an act stopped by Pearce taking hold of her wrist again.
‘No. I have spoken too openly and I promise I will not cause you any more embarrassment.’
‘Why Lieutenant,’ Emily lied, seeking to look innocent, ‘I have no idea what you mean.’
Pearce grinned: she looked prettier than ever when she was dissimulating. ‘You asked what I was thinking about?’
‘You were, you must admit, in a brown study.’
‘I was thinking of the first time I saw you and how I got to be there.’ Seeing he had upset her again, he spoke quickly. ‘And since you are wearing the same hooded cloak you were wearing that day, it had brought back to mind even more unpleasant memories.’
‘My cloak?’
‘No, not that, but the circumstances in which it was observed. If you recall, your husband struck me a blow with his fist.’
Emily could remember that blow just as easily as John Pearce and she could also recall that she was the cause of it, or rather the fact that he had stared at her as he was brought aboard the ship and she had matched the look. ‘I am sorry he did that.’
‘Do not apologise for him.’
‘I didn’t.’
Both had spoken too abruptly and it rendered them silent, yet both had in mind the same image, albeit from different perspectives: he, in seeing a strikingly beautiful woman where it was least expected, acting out of habit, not sense, to make sure he had marked her out; she, observing the line of bedraggled pressed men, poor of appearance in the main – then he appeared, so obviously different in look and bearing, albeit he was followed by a giant she now knew to be the Irishman O’Hagan.
An Ill Wind Page 5
