Fletcher's Glorious 1st of June

by John Drake

  On the other hand, I recalled that back home in England I was heir to a thousand times 5,000 miserable Yankee dollars (at a conservative estimate) and this fortune I’d been so bloody stupid as to walk away from. In summary, therefore, what in God’s good bloody name was I doing in Yankeeland at all? With the money that was mine in England I could be a merchant, an M.P., a Duke or a bloody Archbishop if I wanted, and above all I could chose not to be a bloody sailor!

  In a trice I was off the splinter-littered gun-deck and ducking through the broken timbers into Cooper’s day-cabin. Inside was a shambles of broken furniture, charts, scraps of Cooper’s fancy rugs, and the remains of a 300-guinea chronometer crunching in shards of glass and metal beneath my feet. I went straight through into the Great Cabin and shut the door behind me. The Great Cabin was largely untouched and I was alone in there, with nobody to see what I did.

  I went to Cooper’s desk and tugged at the drawer where his orders were kept. It was locked, so I hauled the whole thing up off its neat little ball-and-claw feet and smashed it down on the deck with all my might. Two or three vigorous repetitions of this treatment persuaded the drawer to see sense, and it broke open, spilling papers out across the deck. I dropped to my knees to rummage among them and found what I wanted, at once. A letter to Cooper with a heavy seal from the Yankee Department of War. As in the British Service it was enclosed in a tarred canvas wrapper with a grapeshot inside, to sink the secret orders if need be. I took the whole thing, closing the wrapper, and turned to the stern windows.

  (Now, as you will have gathered, I was not my usual calculating self at this moment. In fact I was worked up into a state of anger, and even today, when I think of that posturing, conniving little swab Cooper, it still raises my hackles. So I make no apology for the mad-brained, stupid thing I did next. But I do advise you youngsters against ever doing the like.) I had resolved to change ships in mid-ocean and I was leaving by the stern windows. But unfortunately, either they were not made to open or I was too thick-headed to find the catch. So I turned again to my friend the desk, and heaved it through Cooper’s leaded lights with their diamond-shaped panes of glass.

  Then I was up on to a chair and squeezing my bulk through the hole. Somebody came in at that moment, for I heard the discharge of a pistol and felt the wind of a bullet across my backside. But then I was tumbling head over heels into the cold, wet Atlantic.

  I came up spluttering, and fought to keep afloat much encumbered with my clothes and shoes. And it was cold. By George it was cold! I’d learned to swim in the rivers of West Africa with African maidens for playfellows — another of the little courtesies I’d enjoyed from Pareira Gomez’s African king — and there the water was as soft and warm as a mother’s breast. But the North Atlantic in April chilled your marrow and shrivelled your pecker. It was frightening too. The ship towered over me but was pulling away fast. In fact I came dangerously close to drowning myself, alone and quiet and unremarked. For everything depended on my catching hold of the boat that trailed behind Declaration like a calf behind a farmer’s cart.

  This was Cooper’s idea. Many ships had a life-preserver towed astern on a line for “overboards” to swim to before the ship ran on and left them. Cooper went one better and had his gig towed astern with lengths of netting hung over its sides for the convenience of those who might need to clamber in. And that’s what I was after. But the boat was coming on fast and I was low in the water. It was on me before I knew and only an instinctive grab at the looming black shape, just as it slid by, saved my life.

  My hands closed on the knotted ropes of the netting. My shoulders wrenched at the jerk of the boat’s pull as it dragged me along and then I was struggling to get myself into it. I don’t know if I’d have managed it, even then, for I was numbed with cold and I’d breathed a lungful of seawater as the boat’s motion swept a wave over my head. But somebody was helping me! A pair of strong arms was pulling me up and in. I caught the blur of a white face and a blue jacket as I rolled over the gunnel and collapsed, coughing violently into the bottom of the boat.

  There was a man in the boat already! He grinned at me and gabbled in some foreign tongue. He was a seaman, a lower-deck hand.

  A big man with black hair and side-whiskers. He pointed at Declaration and I took it that he was a genuine “overboard”, knocked into the sea during the action.

  I vaguely recollected him. His name was Brown or something that sounded like Brown. He was a Swede or a German or the like. There was a whole gun-crew of ‘em, but I know not what breed they were. I’ve neither the talent nor the inclination to classify foreigners by the noises they make.

  In any case, I had to act fast. A musket shot came from the stern of Declaration and something hit the boat with a fierce WHACK! Brown gaped at that.

  I lurched into the bow and cast off the tow-line. The boat lost way and wallowed in the waves. Bang! Another musket shot. Cooper must have guessed what I was up to. I looked back at Declaration’s stern. She had two gun-ports there, with 18-pounders behind them, and oh Christ! They were opening! I’d be blown to mincemeat with grapeshot if I didn’t get out of range fast.

  I seized the oars and clunked them into the rowlocks. I heaved mightily on the right oar — missed the ocean by inches, went arse-over-tit between the thwarts, struggled right up again and heaved once more. The boat spun round and I put the full weight of my strength into speeding the boat away on an exactly opposite course to Declaration’s.

  Over my shoulder I could see Phiandra’s yards above the waves, and occasionally her bows as she laboured onward in the hopeless attempt to catch Declaration. By looking back from time to time, I could keep the boat headed for Phiandra while my speed and Declaration’s speed took me out of cannon shot. But I’d forgotten Brown.

  “Jabber-jabber-jabber?” says he, and the look on his face was comical. He didn’t know what was happening. His ship was vanishing and I was puffing hard for the enemy. But he was used to treating me with respect — as an officer, in fact — so I suppose he was asking politely what we were doing.

  “Shut your bloody trap!” says I, by way of explanation. That silenced him for a bit, but he soon got nervous.

  “Jabber-jabber!” says he, turning nasty, and he did a lot of pointing and waving his arms, then he laid hands on the oars so I couldn’t row.

  I couldn’t have that, so I took a swing at him. But it’s hard fist-fighting when you’re sitting down in a plunging boat. So I missed.

  “so!” says he, the only word of his I understood, and he pulled his knife. He pointed to Dedaration and waved the blade under my nose. Obviously he wanted to go back to the ship.

  It was an impasse. I wasn’t going to turn the boat, but he wouldn’t let me row. We sat glaring at one another for a while, then … Boom! One of Declaration’s stern chasers fired. Luckily they’d not loaded grape or that would have been the end of us, for either by luck or judgement, the roundshot plunged into the sea within yards of us.

  wHoosH! Splatter-splatter-splash! Brown cringed and stared at the angry water. Since he was sat facing me, quite close, with knees spread apart, I took advantage of this lapse of concentration and kicked him in the walnuts with very great force indeed. He gasped in agony and collapsed forward like a folded clasp-knife. I shoved him backwards off his thwart and left him curled up in the bottom of the boat. I considered braining him with the wooden bailing-bucket but it wasn’t needed. I never had a squeak of trouble from him after that. It just goes to show that all men are amenable to reason, if only you can strike the right note.

  So I went back to my rowing and soon, as I looked over my shoulder, I could see figures looking at me from Phiandra’s quarterdeck and fo’c’sle. I was going home.

  19

  It is, ma’am, my firm belief from what the girl Booth has let slip, that some heavy guilt, of cause as yet unknown, lies over Mr Fletcher, awaiting only to be exploited in your cause.

  (From a letter of 20th September 1793 from Samuel Slym
to Lady Sarah Coignwood.)

  *

  Slym gritted his teeth and groaned with the effort of mastering his lust. He tried and failed, for the tableau acting out before him was beyond the strength of mortal man to resist.

  The two half-naked girls twined about each other like mating pythons, and the soft red-shaded lamplight glistened on the oils that they were kneading into each other’s flesh. The costumes were golden, feathered helmets in the Grecian style, with sandals bound up with thin leather thongs that wound all the way up to the rounded thighs. That and about half-a-yard each of transparent muslin masquerading as a Grecian princess’s chiton. Plump breasts slithered against each other and slim, sharp-nailed fingers clenched into swelling buttocks. One “princess” was voluptuous and golden-haired, the other slender and graceful with tiny exquisite features and huge brown eyes.

  Mrs Simpson had promised something special, and the honour of her house had been upheld.

  “The postures you will find most tasteful and exotic, sir!” she had said. “And our girls, while selected for youth and freshness, are none the less proficient in every accomplishment.” She smiled artfully and added, “If the gentleman’s taste so requires, my girls can, for instance, deliver every identical satisfaction to the experience of the first enjoyment of a pure virgin.”

  Slym swore fiercely under his breath as the tableau gathered speed. The slender one had the plump girl thrown on her back, pinned down by the wrists and was straddled across her on the couch heaving her rump up and down and round, against the wriggling pink body.

  Sam Slym was here in Portsmouth (Gosport in actual fact) on business. And when Slym was on business, nothing other than his client’s interests were pursued. No personal pleasures were indulged, however attractive they might be. That was his rule. And fixated, self-disciplined, ruthlessly polished creature that he was, he kept the rule unbroken. This was so even for normal clients, but for Lady Sarah Coignwood, who filled Slym’s mind with hopeless desires, there could be no possibility of his deviating from the path of duty. Even though he had no connection with Lady Sarah other than the professional, for Slym to indulge himself with another woman would be, to him, an adultery against his hopes and dreams.

  But, by God it was hard! They were kissing now, locked in each other’s arms, mouths pressed together, eyes closed, exploring each other’s mouths with their tongues. Slym dragged his eyes away and looked at the surroundings. The room was purpose-built. Heavily curtained to close out the daylight, fitted with a miniature theatrical stage with scenery, and with a row of half-a-dozen little opera-boxes in front of the stage, each carefully partitioned off from the others so that gentlemen could view the entertainment in private without being seen from the boxes on either side. Mrs Simpson’s was the best house in Portsmouth. Slym had seen better in London, but for the provinces it was impressive. Extremely expensive too.

  “The price, sir,” the old bawd had said, “includes dinner, an entertainment of five tableaux vivants, and your choice of young lady companion for the evening.” She’d smiled a hard-eyed smile out of a face still showing the remains of a past beauty. “It cannot be less, sir, not with the cost of ensuring both a constant supply of fresh young maids, and also of ensuring that only gentlemen shall be admitted.” Slym paid up without complaint. His client could afford it and she would be pleased with his rapid progress in finding a needle in a haystack.

  The ancient fortress-city of Portsmouth was the first naval seaport of the kingdom, and with its great guns and encircling ramparts it was the most powerful military position too. With England at war with her old enemy, Portsmouth was chock full of sailors, Marines, sea officers, docks, shipyards and all the bustling commerce of trades and professions required to support the enormous maritime effort required of the main base for the Channel Fleet, the nation’s shield against invasion. And not the least of the professions which sailormen looked upon as indispensable was that practised by Mrs Simpson. Although, of course, Mrs Simpson practised it at the very top end of the range.

  Three days in Portsmouth, by systematic patient enquiries and characteristic hard work, had brought Slym to Mrs Simp-son’s in Gosport, out on the road to the Haslar Hospital. It was a large, respectable seeming establishment, behind high railings with a porter at the gate to keep out the riff-raff. Mrs S. received new gentlemen in her parlour and served tea like a lady of fashion in a London salon. Slym went through the routine patiently, but he was after something specific which he chose not to mention to Madame. And so he was put to the trouble of sitting through three tableaux vivants before he saw what he wanted.

  “Can’t miss er, my ducky,” his informant had said, an overblown moll he’d questioned outside the Ship Tavern on Portsmouth Point. “Thin as a lath, she is, an’ a little face like a fairy. Lord knows how she done it, Mrs S. takes on’y fresh meat as a rule.”

  “How d’you know it’s her?” Slym had said. “There’s a thousand girls in Portsmouth.”

  “Huh!” said the doxie. “Not like her, there ain’t! Little madam, with her airs an’ graces!” She’d smiled and snuggled up to Slym. “What you want her for, my duck? On’y a shillin’ for a bit o’ real woman …”

  As the tableau reached its gasping climax, both girls moaned and squealed and contrived to lose what little cover there had been on their glowing bodies. Finally they lay panting in an artfully composed heap and a band of music, hidden somewhere out of sight, struck up a mysterious, eastern-sounding tune. Slym had to admit that the thing was well done, almost up to London standards.

  As the curtains fell across the little stage, Slym got up and left his box by a narrow door in the back. He found Mrs S. and made his choice for the evening.

  Five minutes later, Mrs Simpson showed Slym into a sumptuously appointed bedroom done out a la Turque with a canopy ceiling richly hung with silks, and decorated with gilt-framed pictures of reclining nudes in the diaphanous robes of harem odalisques. On a low Turkish table, intricately inlaid with mother-of-pearl, lay a folio volume of erotic prints to serve exactly as a menu would have done in a restaurant. The prints were beautifully executed, and although unsigned, the style was quite remarkably like that of Rowlandson, one of the foremost caricaturists of the age.

  On a sideboard awaited a cold supper with polished silver cutlery, cut crystal goblets and a choice of fine wines, bottled spa water and iced lemonade. On the huge, silk-draped bed, the covers were turned at one corner to reveal snowy linen within.

  Mrs S. smirked in professional pride at these thorough preparations, and Slym nodded too, for he liked to see a thing well done, and was impressed by the cleanliness of it all. In fact the two shared a moment of real rapport, and then she was gone and Slym was awaiting the lady he’d come to see.

  Mrs Simpson had warned that she would be a little while, since she would need to bathe and prepare herself after her performance with the scented oils. So Slym took a glass of lemonade and helped himself to a slice of excellent beef and some sort of chopped, mixed-up salad that he did not recognise but which tasted delicious.

  When she entered the room, she moved so softly that Slym heard no more than the click of the door. He turned in his chair with a fork halfway to his mouth and stared. She was dressed all in white, in a more elaborate version of her stage costume, which clung to her figure and draped full-length to the floor. One shoulder was bare and her slim, round arm bore a thin gold bracelet at the wrist. Her dark brown hair was drawn up in a way that accentuated the slenderness of her neck and the elfin beauty of her face.

  Slym’s own tastes inclined to more flesh in a woman, but she quite took his breath away for being so lovely in a childlike, vulnerable fashion with huge and glorious brown eyes and long sweeping lashes.

  Slym would have guessed her age at sixteen or seventeen. Certainly not much more, and she had such an innocent look about her that he could barely believe the things he’d just seen her doing with her companion.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” she said and
curtsied low, as if to a king. “What is your pleasure, for I am yours to command.” She dropped her eyes and briefly Slym’s duty fought with his inclinations. Duty won, as always with Slym, but the fight was a damn sight harder than usual.

  “Please sit down, my dear,” he said, and the two sat facing each other. She sat straight-backed with her hands in her lap and gazed at Slym with a faint, confident smile. She made him feel like a great clumsy ape she was so slim and elegant.

  “My pleasure is to talk,” said Slym. “So what’s your name, child?”

  “Katherine,” she said.

  “Ah!” he said. “Now listen to me, Katherine, I ain’t your normal line of client.” He noted the tiny shrug of the shoulders and the unwavering smile, which said, whatever you can think of, my dear sir, we’ve seen it before.

  “No,” he said, “you misunderstand me. I don’t mean that. The fact is I’m here in the service of a principal and not on my own behalf. So I’ll be wanting to talk, and no more. D’ye understand me, Katherine?”

  She nodded, and her expression did not change. “Now then, Katherine,” said Slym and made the effort to pull his features into a friendly smile. But the muscles for this purpose were atrophied through neglect, and all he achieved was a stiff, death’s-head grin. “‘Tis my belief that your full name is Katherine Booth — Kate Booth. Is that correct?”

  “What if it is?” she said, and her eyes narrowed.

  “Ah!” said he. “So that’s settled. Now, Kate, I am making enquiries in respect of one Jacob Fletcher …”

  Kate frowned and the fingers of her right hand tapped a tattoo on her thigh.

  “So,” said Slym, “you knew him.”

  “What if I did?” she said and Slym paused, wondering how to proceed. During their tete-a-tete in his Aldgate High Street office, Slym had learned from Salisbury that Kate Booth and

  Fletcher had been lovers. Where passions like that were involved, he would have to tread careful. One false word and the girl might slam shut and he certainly couldn’t apply the means that had unlocked Salisbury’s tongue. Not here anyway.