by David McDine
Anson managed a chuckle and turned to Tom Marsh, who flicked his whip and ordered his pony: ‘Walk on.’
It was mid-afternoon by the time the pony and trap turned into the familiar gates of Ludden Hall.
Negotiating the long, curving driveway they passed the small willow-fringed lake where he had left the French royalist — Gérard Hurel — in hiding after his fake funeral on Dead Man’s Island, only for the wretched man to reveal himself to a passing gamekeeper by wishing him ‘Bonjour.’
Anson smiled at the recollection. The garrulous Hurel had been a pain to keep under wraps, but on their joint reconnaissance of Boulogne in preparation for Nelson’s raid he had proved heroic, invaluable — and an amusing, if sometimes infuriating companion.
Josiah Parkin, retired banker, avid antiquarian and naturalist, was in the rose terrace beside the house, magnifying glass in hand, attempting, so far unsuccessfully, to identify a curious hovering wasp-like insect, when he heard the crunch of iron-shod wheels on gravel.
Recognising Tom Marsh’s pony and trap, he hurried to the broad paved steps, fronting the iron-studded oak doors framed by imposing Doric columns, ready to meet his visitor.
‘Anson, my dear fellow! How very good to see you, although I must confess I had not expected you back quite so soon, knowing that you were anxious to get back to your Sea Fencible command after so long away. Do tell me all is well?’
Anson disembarked from the cart gingerly, favouring his injured right arm. He had chosen not to wear a sling but now wished he had.
Although he felt weak and depressed, Anson put on a brave face. ‘Indeed, sir. I had fully intended to remain there making sure training is going apace — and that the families of those lost and the wounded from the Boulogne raid are being looked after properly.’
‘And are they?’
‘Yes, thanks to my bosun, master at arms and Phineas Shrubb, the apothecary, who’s done wonders patching up the wounded. And they have the full support of my particular friend, Commander, now Captain, Amos Armstrong, who I’m delighted to say is my new divisional captain.’
‘Replacing that charlatan, Hoare?’
‘Yes, the not-so-gallant Captain Arthur Veryan St Cleer Hoare has evidently been unmasked, but is no doubt by now regaling the entire population of the Isles of Scilly with tales of his imaginary heroism.’
‘Scilly?’
‘Yes, it appears he could not be trusted with a sea-going command and evidently St Mary’s was the furthermost point their lordships at the Admiralty could think of to banish him to as resident naval officer.’
‘Hmm, the Scillies, a habitat favoured by the Dartford warbler, Sylvia undata, one of our rarest breeding birds, among a number of other species of interest. And your friend has replaced Hoare on the Kent coast?’
‘Indeed, and on promotion, I am pleased to say. But I am afraid Armstrong is the cause of my returning here so soon. There was a brush with a disgruntled former bosun: no more than a scuffle really, and I took a cut to my arm.’
‘Wounded again! After the injuries you suffered at Boulogne, Doctor Hawkins was adamant that you should take things easy for a good while.’
Anson smiled ruefully. ‘Armstrong is of the same mind and has banished me from my command for six weeks. Ridiculous, of course, but I had no option other than to obey. So here I am.’
‘Capital, capital! But I’m afraid you have missed Cassandra. Once you had returned to Seagate, she decided to go off to stay with her cousins. She will be sorry to have missed you, but will be back in a few weeks, so we may well have her company for the last part of your leave.’
Trying to hide his disappointment that he would not see her immediately, Anson merely nodded. Parkin’s butler-cum-coachman, Dodman, appeared and touched his forehead in salute to the visitor. ‘Good day to you, sir. Shall I take your bag?’
‘Yes, Dodman, kindly carry Lieutenant Anson’s dunnage up to his room. I’m afraid he is incapacitated once again.’
‘Blessed Frogs agin, was it, sir?’
‘No, actually this time it was one of ours who winged me — well, that is, a Scotsman.’
‘I’m not surprised, sir, they’re a heathen lot! I mind the time I met a Scotchman in —’
Parkin cut him short. ‘Thank you, Dodman. You can save that tale for some other time. Kindly take charge of Lieutenant Anson’s bag.’
Anson’s host appeared to notice for the first time how pale and tired his visitor looked. ‘Forgive me, dear boy. You look exhausted. Why don’t you refresh yourself and take a rest before we meet for dinner and catch up on each other’s news? I have a particularly fine natterjack toad to show you. Newly stuffed, of course.’
Tongue in cheek, Anson murmured, ‘A rare treat, indeed.’
But his host failed to notice the gentle sarcasm and called after his manservant: ‘Dodman! Inform cook that we will be two for dinner.’
5
The Looker’s Hut
Waking with a start, Billy MacIntyre wondered for a moment where the hell he was.
Then he heard sheep bleating outside and remembered. After the unsuccessful attempt to kill Anson, he had fled along the beach towards Dungeness.
He knew he needed to get as far away from Seagate as possible before the inevitable hue and cry got under way, and he had forced himself along until his legs ached from the effort of near wading along the loose shingle.
Realising that he could not keep up such a pace any longer, he had eventually had cut inland and — despite the thin moonlight — come perilously close to falling into several of the dykes that criss-crossed the Marsh before he had come across a small brick-built, tile-roofed 10-foot square hut and took shelter there.
Inside, in the dark, he had tripped over what proved to be a low truckle bed and lay down on it, panting and near exhaustion from the efforts of the past few hours.
Gradually his breathing had become more even and sleep soon overcame him.
Daylight was now seeping in through cracks in the hut’s old wooden door and the shutters of what appeared to be a glass-less window. There was a small open fire grate under a brick chimney breast, a pile of kindling and log-wood, tinder box, a tin mug and plate, and an old iron cooking pot. Leaning against one corner was a shepherd’s crook, and there was a pair of dagging shears hanging from a nail.
This must be what he knew the Marsh-men called a looker’s hut, one of the hundreds dotting the Marsh, and used by shepherds — known locally as lookers — tending to the flocks at lambing and shearing time and in bad weather.
Slowly he eased himself up off the bed and, still stiff from last night’s exertions, staggered to the door. Cudgel in his left hand, he worked the latch, opened the top of the stable-style door a few inches and peered out: nothing but grass, sheep and dykes.
The bleating that had woken him was coming from a lamb trapped in a nearby thorn bush. There was no sign of its mother.
Billy MacIntyre was suddenly conscious of how hungry he was. He had last eaten before going to the Mermaid — and that must be well over 12 hours ago.
He approached the bush cautiously, anxious not to startle the lamb into breaking free, and mouthing soothingly: ‘There, there, wee lamb. Come to Billy and ye’ll be just fine.’
At the last moment he flung himself on it and dragged the terrified creature from the bush. It struggled frantically, but there was no way its captor was going to let go of this meal ticket.
Looking around, all MacIntyre could see was the almost featureless land, devoid of trees and hedges and intersected with water-filled dykes. It was if he was the last man on earth. The only living creatures apart from himself and the doomed lamb were two herons standing sentinel along the dyke banks, a few seagulls passing overhead, and sheep — hundreds, maybe thousands, of sheep.
‘Och, well,’ he told himself, ‘this wee lassie will na be missed,’ — and he carried the wriggling, bleating lamb inside.
Half an hour later, the messily-butchered carcass was
simmering away in the pot perched on bricks in the fireplace. Having killed it with a blow from his cudgel, he would dearly have loved to be able to skin and dismember it with his knife. But that had been lost in the fracas at the Mermaid, so he had to do his clumsy butchery with the shears.
His chief fear now was that some-one would notice the smoke from his fire rising from the chimney, but with a westerly breeze scattering it he reckoned there was little chance of that.
Anyone who did spot it might well assume that the local looker was staying there, and if the man himself turned up and protested, well, MacIntyre had the wherewithal to silence him and dispose of the body in a dyke.
His hands covered in blood and grease from preparing the lamb for the pot, he looked the part of a crazed would-be murderer now, right enough, and would have scared the living daylights out of any unsuspecting caller who came across his temporary residence.
Jabbing the meat impatiently with the shears from time to time, he finally reckoned it was cooked enough to eat and set about it ravenously, drinking some of the boiled fatty water when it cooled.
For a man who had so recently escaped from the navy, found his way to Seagate, been in a desperate fight, spent half the night wading through shingle and negotiating the dykes in semi-darkness, it was a rare feast.
Satisfied at last, he made himself as comfortable as possible on the truckle bed and fell once more into a long, deep sleep.
6
Some Welcome Intelligence
Over morning coffee in the summerhouse, Anson and his host perused the newspapers brought by the carrier from Faversham.
Anson chose The Times, while Parkin leafed through the county newspaper, the Kentish Gazette, clucking occasionally at items of news.
One article in The Times jumped out at Anson. ‘Good grief! So the rumours are true. There’s a piece here about talks in London between Lord Hawkesbury and some Frenchman called Otto.
‘Hawkesbury, the secretary of state for foreign affairs?’
‘One and the same. And this Citizen Louis-Guillaume Otto is apparently the commissary for the exchange of prisoners.’
‘So their talks are about prisoner exchanges?’
‘No, according to this report they’ve been discussing preliminary articles between us and the French!’
‘Articles?’
‘Articles of peace.’
‘Great heavens! So, the war could soon be over?’
‘If we are to believe that, we’ll believe anything. But then there’s no doubt the war has reached stalemate. Both us and the French are pretty well exhausted and need to recuperate.’
‘Especially the French?’
‘Well, it certainly suits them to take a breather in the war at sea where we’re a constant thorn in their side, blockading their ports, taking their overseas possessions and whatnot.’
‘As a former banker I can tell you that our national debt has soared above £500 million, which is unprecedented — unimaginable a decade ago. Food prices have almost doubled and the newspapers are reporting riots in pretty well every major city, including London. No doubt it’s much the same in France, so it’s understandable that both sides want peace.’
Anson was sceptical. ‘Quite so, but I reckon any peace is likely to be of short duration. If it does happen, I doubt it will last. Bonaparte would merely use it to draw breath.’
‘Really?’
‘I believe so. Lifting our blockade would give the French the chance to get their ships to sea, move troops, import vital war materials that they lack and so forth.’
‘Until they’re ready to start it all up again?’
‘Precisely. I just hope that if these so-called articles of peace are signed, we don’t give away too much and do the normal thing that our politicians do the minute the guns fall silent...’
‘Run down the army and navy?’
‘Yes, ’twas ever thus. Some call it the peace dividend. I call it wanton folly.’
‘However, they’re calling these merely preliminary talks, are they not? In which case, knowing how slowly these things proceed, even a temporary peace could be a good way off.’
Tutting, Parkin returned to his perusal of the Kentish Gazette. ‘Here’s a thing. Your former ship, HMS Phryne, is reported to be in Chatham Dockyard completing some repairs and taking on stores before returning to duty in the Channel.’
Anson’s first thought was the naivety of the Admiralty in allowing such items to be published. Even in the frontline county of Kent the local newspapers were full of similar items about ship and troop movements. And it was a well-known fact that smugglers regularly took English newspapers across to France where no doubt much military and naval intelligence was extracted from them.
If he had had his way he would have dearly loved to return to Phryne after his escape from France following the St Valery raid, but his boots had been filled by someone else and he had been posted to command the Seagate Sea Fencibles instead.
He admitted: ‘I miss my old shipmates, but I suppose life doesn’t stand still and we have to play the cards we are dealt. At least being banished ashore has enabled me to see more of you, and...’
‘Cassandra?’
‘You have smoked me out, sir. Yes, and I plead guilty to feeling disappointed that she is away.’
‘I can assure you that she wouldn’t have given a thought to visiting her disagreeable cousins if she’d known you would be back here so soon. You care for her a lot, don’t you?’
‘I do, but I am also aware that it’s important to bide my time. I fear I have a pretty poor record as far as my brushes with the fair sex are concerned.’
Parkin smiled sympathetically.
‘Yes, we sailors come ashore and generally behave like idiots where women are concerned. It’s the lack of women at sea I suppose — apart from the odd gunner’s wife, who is usually built like a gorilla and certainly as hairy. And so, when Jack goes ashore he falls for the first female he sees, squanders his money and is left older, impecunious, but no wiser, ready to repeat the whole sorry process when next allowed ashore.’
‘But you surely don’t equate yourself with Jolly Jack Tar in that sense?’
Anson sighed. ‘I’m afraid my own few liaisons have been no more successful. You are aware of the Charlotte Brax affair. She was actively hunting for a husband and I foolishly allowed myself to take on the role of fox pursued by her, her ghastly father and my own parents and brother in full cry.’
‘Your reluctance to marry such a female out of lust and for money is very understandable, commendable even, but it’s a pity that it has led to a breach between you and your family.’
‘So be it. As you are also very well aware, I do have feelings for your niece, strong feelings, but as I said, after what happened regarding the Brax affair I am anxious not to rush my fences.’
Knowing that his young friend was no better at horsemanship than he was at handling husband-hunting females, Parkin smiled. ‘There’s little danger of that. You must know that she is extremely fond of you. We both are.’
‘Yes, fondness is all well and good in friendships and in both your cases it is most certainly reciprocated. The question I ask is at what point does that fondness become love? Between man and woman, I mean.’
‘Ah, that is a matter of complete mystery to an aged bachelor such as myself. What is love? A mixture of attraction, passion and friendship, or something more?’
‘I’m afraid I’m not qualified to answer that, sir. The first two were certainly present in my brief relationship with, well, you know who I mean... although on my side it was mostly the lust we foolish sailors so easily seem to succumb to when we step ashore. But there was never any friendship.’
‘And your feelings for my niece?’
‘Quite different. Attraction and friendship of course, but I already feel there is something more, something purer than my previous encounters with the fair sex. It would be good to spend more time with her — with you both, but...’
An idea was forming in his head. ‘You tell me that my old ship is in Chatham and I would dearly love to see my former shipmates and trade stories with them. A lot of water has passed under our bridges since I left them in somewhat of a hurry on the Normandy raid.’
‘And you would like to visit the ship while she’s at Chatham?’
Anson agreed: ‘I believe visiting them and perhaps staying on board for day or two while they are alongside would do me the world of good.’
Parkin nodded. ‘Why not, indeed! Dodson could take you in the carriage and I’ll give him the wherewithal to put up at a coaching inn so that you can spend a day or two with your friends. Who knows, by the time you return Cassandra might be here. There’s a limit to the amount of time she can put up with her cousins!’
And so it was decided. It took no time at all to put on his uniform and re-pack, and within the hour Dodman had brought the carriage round to the front steps ready for the off.
Parkin was clearly reluctant to see him leave again so soon, but wished him joy of re-visiting his old shipmates.
As he climbed aboard, he turned to shake Parkin’s hand but thought better of it when the stitches reminded him of his wound. Instead, he raised his hat with his left hand the old gentleman did the same.
And as Dodman flicked the horses into action Parkin cautioned: ‘Take care not to lose any more blood, my boy!’
Peering back out of the window, Anson smiled and nodded as the coach crunched down the driveway.
7
The Crooked Billet
Many hours after his lamb feast, Billy MacIntyre awoke with an urgent need to relieve himself.
He opened the shutters a few inches and peered out of the window. Over in the west the sun was setting but otherwise he could see nothing but grass, dykes — and sheep.
Outside, he answered the call of nature and contemplated his next move.
There was enough of the boiled meat left for a meal or two and there was no shortage of water on the Marsh, so he could hole up for a couple of days in the looker’s hut — as long as the shepherd didn’t make an appearance.
