A Sea of Troubles

by David Donachie

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A flurry of communications arrived in London in a very short time. Ralph Barclay’s demand that his wife return to her married state the first, and this from the solicitor to whom it was originally addressed but unopened and forwarded to her last known address at Nerot’s Hotel to await her anticipated return. There was one from Mr Studdert too, still trying to recover from a burglary in which every document he had stored in his strongroom had been stolen, which meant that wills had to be rewritten, copies of deeds and all sorts of other papers acquired, the sheer time taken merely to contact his clients and inform them leaving him a weary man. Added to that, to reassure his clients, Mrs Barclay included, and for future security, a cellar was being dug out under his office floor, which a steel trapdoor would cover, for he was not about to risk a repetition of the previous loss.

  Pearce had written to Nerot’s, bespeaking rooms for his whole party and, of course, to Henry Dundas, William Pitt’s right-hand man, though the letter was delayed in actual delivery due to it having to be paid for – in all departments of the state there was a reluctance to accept private letters for that reason; government correspondence was carried out on pre-franked sheets and only a certain level of government employee could sanction a delivery sixpence. It did eventually end up on the right desk and was then shown to a minister too busy to sort out his own mail.

  ‘Send to Nerot’s,’ Dundas, said. ‘I shall see Pearce and this …’ that required another perusal ‘… Comte de Puisaye tomorrow evening; Pearce first, then the Frenchman.’ The clerk responded with a quizzical expression, which had Dundas waving the communication. ‘This does not fill me with the feeling that we have on our hands something of which we can take advantage, but I need to get chapter and verse from the man who has seen the situation on the ground.’

  The letter from HMS York was the one to produce a string of curses, given Alderman Denby Carruthers had invested a great deal of money already in buying a ship with which the Tollands could resume smuggling; had he not done so he seriously questioned whether he would accede to their request. But having got in so deep, there was no choice but to sell the ship at a loss – everyone would know how short his ownership had been and would suspect he had discovered some flaw in the vessel he was trying to pass it on.

  ‘Portsmouth, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Lavery, or to be more precise, Gosport, which is across the water. You are to take with you this sum of money and pass it on to a Lieutenant Moyle, but only on his granting to you a pair of gentlemen wrongly taken up for the navy and to whom I owe a favour.’

  ‘Might I enquire what kind of favour, sir?’

  ‘No you cannot!’ Carruthers barked. ‘I have noted lately in you, Lavery, a tendency to ask questions that are outside your remit as my clerk.’

  Being far from the first flush of youth and with a pallid countenance made more pronounced by his bulbous, purple nose, Isaac Lavery did crestfallen well. ‘I seek only to be of full use to you, sir.’

  ‘I will decide what use you are to be and, while we are at it, I would ask you to stop running errands for my wife without informing me of where they take you.’

  ‘I felt it my duty to oblige her.’

  That got the man who had replaced Cornelius Gherson a cold look, for his master was wondering if the old booby really thought he could fool the man for whom he worked; Lavery was betraying him and was being used by Catherine Carruthers to find her one time paramour, with whom, no doubt, she would take up again if he were found. Odd that Denby Carruthers knew exactly where Gherson was, what he did and for whom. Captain Barclay was a client of his brother-in-law, a partner in the Prize Agency practice of Ommanney & Druce. There was temptation to enclose a sealed note to the Tollands asking them to see to Lavery and dump his cadaver somewhere on the way back, but on reflection it was not yet time to settle matters and, in truth, he did not know them well enough to be sure they would do his bidding.

  ‘In future, if my wife asks you to do something, you will come to me, tell me the task, and I will either approve its execution or not.’

  On the way to Portsmouth in the public coach, Lavery passed a private one moving in the opposite direction, a conveyance hired by John Pearce on government money to get him and his party to London. While there was a general air of calm aboard – the count continued to drone on about his glittering prospects – all travelling had their concerns, not least the man who had hired it and the woman he loved, for even if she had not referred to it since that private meeting, and being in company on their walk round Winchester, it was obvious that they would at some time have to talk and decide their future, shared or not.

  The only one who gave the impression of having no worries was Michael O’Hagan, though that was far from true; the last time he had been on the way to London, on foot with Charlie Taverner and Rufus Dommet, they had come across a poster telling the world that a fellow fitting his description, and he was quite singular in that, was wanted for theft and assault. Having no idea how close he was to the part of the country where that had been displayed he felt it wise to stay out of sight.

  ‘You’re not getting down, Michael?’ Pearce asked, as they stopped for a change of horses, the three others already gone into the parlour of the busy coaching inn.

  ‘Sure, I’m comfortable here, John-boy.’

  ‘Damned if I know how, brother – my posterior aches.’

  ‘You’ve not enough flesh on your arse and too much in your head.’

  ‘A drink, food?’ Pearce enquired, grinning.

  ‘Can wait.’

  ‘Michael, I cannot believe that of you. I have never known you turn down a tankard of ale.’

  ‘Happen I’m goin’ temperance.’

  ‘And the moon is cheese.’

  ‘Might be a tadge dangerous, John-boy, me being easy to recognise and in a part of the world where folks could be looking for me. Folks lookin’ to take up bounties are the types to frequent coaching inns.’

  ‘Sorry, never occurred to me.’

  Michael had recounted the adventure in getting from Portsmouth to London overland when they had met at the Pelican, and Pearce had heard with his own ears, from an impress gang, what had happened when the Irishman had nearly been taken up by a couple of low-life crimps on the Sussex shore. He had seen to them good an’ proper, but that had led to the poster offering a reward of twenty shillings for his arrest.

  ‘So send someone out with a tankard and some bread and a bit of that moon.’

  Pearce left Michael in the coach, to find when they all came out to get aboard again, on a warm sunny day, the blinds were pulled down. He was obliged to take back to the inn the tankard and plate his friend had used, and inside Michael stayed until they were safe in Nerot’s Hotel.

  Afforded a chance to be alone with Emily at last, Pearce went to her room and knocked – opened, he was not cheered by her attitude. ‘John, this is not fitting.’

  ‘It will have to do, Emily, so am I allowed to enter or shall we talk of matters personal with me in the hallway where the Lord knows who will overhear me?’

  The look of determination on his face left her in no doubt he was not to be deterred and she stepped aside to let him pass, where he went to the unlit fireplace, turned and faced her. Pearce nearly faltered then; even in her distress she was so damned beautiful, the auburn hair framing flawless skin, saving a few entrancing freckles, and those green eyes that could flash so enticingly when she was angry. At the moment they were expressionless, which had to be deliberate.

  ‘I cannot believe, Emily, that you are suggesting our attachment to each other should cease.’

  Her reaction was odd; it was as if that had never occurred to her. Seeming deflated she sat down in an armchair. ‘John, I do not know what I am suggesting for I am at a loss to know what to do. I have not had a chance to relate to you what happened in Lymington while you were gone and why I left prior to your return. I was about to do so in Winchester, but you did not allow
me time and the rest of the day was spent with our French companions.’

  ‘Then tell me now.’ Which she did, leaving Pearce dumbfounded. ‘I have no knowledge of this admiral of whom you speak and nor can I fathom how he knew you and I had lodged at the King’s Head.’

  ‘He did know because our arrival and names were printed in a local newspaper, and that indicates what things will be like in the future: we constantly on guard lest our unmarried state be revealed to everyone around us.’

  ‘Then let us not lie about it.’

  ‘What are you saying? That wherever we go I should expose myself to scandal?’

  ‘Only here, in a nation so prurient that such a thing is considered worth remarking on.’

  ‘Unlike France?’

  ‘Not so! London is full of folk having affairs and it is common knowledge that the King’s own sons are amongst the most active in that regard. Damn it, the Prince of Wales is openly living with a Catholic and rumours abound that they are secretly married. William, the so-called Sailor Prince, shares a home with a woman who has borne him half a dozen children.’

  ‘And this you approve of?’

  ‘Actually, yes, much as I see them as wastrels and a burden on the common man, let them do as they wish.’

  ‘And that is what you would want for us?’

  I want for us to be together.’

  ‘And I cannot see how that can be possible without my having to defend myself each and every day from the like of Sir Berkley Sumner and his horsewhip.’

  ‘Should I ever encounter him he will regret carrying one.’

  As her head dropped he moved swiftly, in what was not a large room, and he was forceful, pulling Emily Barclay to her feet and kissing her. She sought to resist at first, seeking to push him away, yet that effort faded and her body, while not going limp, ceased to be rigid. Pearce was on fire and he knew that he had it in his power to proceed as he desired, that Emily would not, could not put up any resistance. He was edging her towards the bed when the knock at the door broke the mood, not aided by his exclamation of ‘damnation’.

  They had to break contact, she had to go to open the door and there stood Didcot, the hotel servant who had been both a bane and a boon to John Pearce since the first occasion on which he took up residence.

  ‘Letters for you, Madame, two of ’em, which was left at the desk and should have been given over when you arrived, though you would wonder at some folk not doing their job proper.’ The open door also revealed John Pearce and that brought to the old fellow’s eye a salacious look, for he had watched this pair sparring before; he knew what Pearce was after just as he guessed what he was not getting. ‘Saving your presence, Lieutenant Pearce, will you be taking supper in your room?’

  The servant’s gleam sharpened when Emily, having looked at the addressee on the first one, showed the unopened letter to Pearce, for he had given both a good look over before delivery and he had a nose for these things: Captain Ralph Barclay RN. HMS Semele; Plymouth Roads, was whom it came from, no doubt a husband often away at sea. These two were thinking on the old diddle-me-de he had no doubt, which was one to tuck away, for there was money to be made from both silence and letting on if it came to ought, given one had to be from her husband and the other had come from a lawyer.

  ‘No!’ Pearce said coldly. ‘Shut the door, Emily.’

  ‘Emily is it he calls her now?’ Didcot said to himself as he lurched down the corridor. ‘It were Mrs Barclay in public afore. Happen they’re more hugger than I thought.’

  Inside the room Emily had cracked the seal on her husband’s letter, unfolded it, and as she read it her eyes widened. Finished it was handed to John Pearce who spotted very quickly what had caused her to react, a passage saying that she was no longer in a position to do him harm, this while she read the letter from Studdert.

  ‘What can he mean by that?’ Pearce asked. ‘That you have nothing more with which to threaten him?’

  Emily passed him the second letter, her eyes wide with what Pearce took to be wonder or surprise; it was only when he read it he knew it to be another reaction entirely, for the solicitor had only written to confirm that Emily had removed from him the single set of papers she had left in his care and there were no others, his apologies for any inconvenience, but he required to be sure in case copies must be acquired; he did not read on about the precautions being taken.

  ‘Burgled?’ Pearce said.

  ‘And everything in his strongroom taken to the last will and testament.’

  ‘Match it with that remark in your husband’s letter.’

  ‘Coincidence?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Too much of one. It seems there are no lengths to which your husband will not go.’

  ‘What am I to do?’

  That was asked in a spirit of enquiry, not with any sense of fear or despondency.

  ‘I think it is time you made your husband aware that not only will you refuse to return to the marital state, but that you have other plans, and if he chooses to keep pursuing you, you will embarrass him further.’

  ‘You and I?’

  Pearce nodded.

  ‘I might as well tell the world – place an announcement in The Times.’

  ‘Emily, we cannot keep hidden what we have.’

  ‘Have?’

  ‘Do you not trust my advice?’

  ‘I don’t know who or what to trust.’

  ‘I would start with your instincts, but, just in case, I have invited Heinrich Lutyens to dine with us this evening. I know you value his judgement and I ask that you allow him to exercise it.’

  ‘Would you abide by it if it were negative?’

  ‘No. Now come here and let us take up where we left off before that old goat Didcot knocked on the door.’

  Isaac Lavery was seasick in the wherry that took him from Portsmouth to the receiving hulk and given he lacked colour anyway that gave him a greenish hue. His stomach was still troubled as he enquired at the gate after Lieutenant Moyle, giving his own name but not the purpose. Nor, once he was admitted, was his state improved by being on a larger vessel, for if HMS York did not move much, she did react to the incoming swell to tug at her anchors. Entering the great cabin he found Moyle adjusting his stock in one of the many mirrors, an act which imposed a period of silence until he was fully satisfied.

  ‘Are you the person to whom the letter was addressed?’

  ‘No, sir, I am his clerk.’

  Moyle turned and pulled a face. ‘A fellow of means, then?’

  ‘Mr Carruthers is a man of business and a competent one.’

  ‘Rich?’

  Lavery did not care much for his employer; the man was a bully to him and treated his lovely young wife shamefully, so much so that she sought comfort with him, conversational comfort to be sure, nothing untoward. Yet Lavery had hopes that his ministrations of sympathy might proceed to something more tactile, for if, when Catherine Carruthers looked at him, she saw that bulbous nose on a lined face, enclosed by those big stuck-out ears, added to the age bags under watery eyes, he, if he cast a glance into one of the cabin mirrors, saw a fellow not so very long past his prime. But regard for the wife did not mean he was about to betray a trust with a total stranger, moreover a man to whom he had been instructed to pass what amounted to a ransom.

  ‘It would not be my position to answer such a question, sir.’

  ‘You have what was requested?’

  ‘Do you, sir, have the gentlemen in question?’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Moyle hooted. ‘I would not be after calling them that and nor will you when you see what the rats have done to them.’ The humour vanished and Moyle looked at Lavery hard. ‘Show me the payment.’

  Feeling decidedly queasy, and in any case not a brave man, Lavery nevertheless managed to hold the glare. ‘I believe in such matters it is common that both sides show their assets at the same time.’

  ‘You’re a clever bugger, are you?’

  ‘I doubt I am one and certain
I am not the other.’

  ‘Guard!’ Moyle yelled, happy that it made Lavery jump. The door was opened and the order given to fetch up the Tollands from below, as the lieutenant added, ‘Two smugglers for you to take away with you.’

  Lavery had to bite his tongue then, for the word ‘smugglers’ nearly had him blurt out that they could not be anything other than gentlemen. He was aware that not everything Denby Carruthers did was above board; he, like his city contemporaries, often sailed close to the wind to ensure a profit. Downright illegality had never occurred to him but if he was getting smugglers out of trouble, why would that be? If the information did not settle Lavery’s stomach, it did make him feel better; at last he might have something concrete on his employer.

  When they appeared Moyle could not be faulted for his description, for they had been provided with no means to shave or stay remotely clean and they smelt high, like a pair of workhouse wastrels, even to a man well used to the dung-filled streets of London. Lavery still refused Moyle his money until the chains were struck off, at which point he handed over that and the letter claiming a high enough status to allow for their release, this necessary to cover Moyle against any retribution. With no ceremony the three left the hulk and took to the waiting wherry, which cast off immediately.

  ‘Didn’t see fit to come to our aid hisself, then?’ Jahleel asked.

  Lavery just leant over the side and tried to vomit from a stomach that had been voided on the way out.

  ‘My dear, Emily, there is no such thing as untrammelled happiness, there are only degrees. Some days the world looks bright, the others it looks dark and forbidding and our souls are no different from one to the other.’

  Heinrich Lutyens raised his head as he finished that peroration on the nature of existence, and if seriousness of countenance could be a mark of conviction her friend had certainly told the truth. His upturned nose was raised and his fish-like eyes, if they were incapable of flashing, had a brightness to them that accentuated the translucent nature of his skin. Having finished dinner they had taken to a couch in the foyer, away from prying ears, where they could talk of what she needed to do in the future.