Fletcher's Glorious 1st of June

by John Drake

  “Jacob!” says Sammy, “what is it?” He turned to the two Marines. “Get the bloody surgeon!” says he. “My mate’s havin’ a fit!”

  “No!” says I. “No, I’m not. Just let me think, Sammy.”

  “What is it, son?” says he peering at me anxiously. “Tell Sammy.”

  And then the light shone. It all dropped together. It still wasn’t perfect and a lot depended on how much credit I still had with Black Dick. But it was better than waiting for them to hang me.

  “You!” I cried in my best, hailing-the-masthead bellow, and half the lower deck jumped, never mind the two Marines I was yelling at. “Send word to the Admiral’s Clerk and tell him I wish to take advantage of his Lordship’s offer!”

  It worked a treat. Marines are only automatons, after all. Bawl at ‘em loud enough and they do as they’re told. Sammy leaned back and grinned. Then I lowered my voice to a whisper and we talked for another hour.

  At first light on the following day, 14th June, a boat cast off from Queen Charlotte and the four oarsmen pulled for Portsmouth Point. There was one passenger in the boat: Sammy Bone. After forty years’ unbroken service as a man-o’-war’s, Sammy was going ashore with a certificate of honourable discharge in his trug. The certificate was signed by Admiral Lord Howe himself.

  Also, Sammy was carrying bills signed by the Admiral’s clerk in the sum of three hundred pounds. One hundred was a pension for Sammy, discharged the Service as a favour to me, the rest was for Norris Polperro or his widow. All the money to be refunded to his Lordship by myself at such time as I was able. Black Dick was still on my side, thank God. So far, so good.

  *

  I was two days more aboard Queen Charlotte, for they didn’t come to get me until the afternoon of the fifteenth. Mr Smithers, Lieutenant Lloyd and his men came out in a launch with a dozen oarsmen, all of them armed with cutlass and pistol. Lloyd had his crew lined up waiting for me on the quarterdeck when I was brought up from below. They were a fine collection of slack-bellied, broken-nosed old toughs borrowed for the day from the Impress service, and Queen Charlotte’s tars viewed them with contempt. I was brought out with my two Marines behind me, all smart in a suit of clothes I’d begged off the Admiral’s Clerk. My face looked as if I’d gone fifty rounds with the boxing champion of all England, but I was a gentleman by my clothes.

  The same Lieutenant who’d spoken politely to me before was standing alongside Lieutenant Lloyd.

  “Ah!” says he as I approached. “Here’s your man, Mr Lloyd,” and he looked at me, and looked along the line of Lloyd’s dozen, armed as if for a boarding action. “Are you entirely sure you have taken sufficient precautions? Allow me five minutes and I could muster the starboard watch to strengthen your party.”

  There was laughter from those of Queen Charlotte’s people who heard this, but Lloyd just sneered, said nothing and produced a set of leg and wrist irons linked with a few feet of chain.

  “Of course!” said the other Lieutenant. “How wise! What a fine thing it is to see an expert go about his work.”

  But I was stunned to see the ironmongery.

  “Sir,” says I to the friendly Lieutenant, “I was firmly assured by his Lordship that there was no question of my being shackled. I am a gentleman and I demand to be treated as such.” I was sweating and trying to hold my knees from shaking, for fear of what might happen next. If I couldn’t get rid of those irons, I was finished.

  “And so you shall, sir!” said he. “Mr Lloyd, I will vouch for this gentleman’s honour.”

  “Mr Fletcher,” says he to me, “will you give me your word as a gentleman not to attempt escape?”

  “I will, sir, and I do,” says I.

  “Hm!” says Lloyd. “This ’er … gentleman is on a charge of mutiny and murder.”

  “Possibly,” says the other, “but you’d not chain a French officer when you took him in charge and you’ll not treat an Englishman less well than that!”

  “Aye!” came a murmur from Queen Charlotte’s people, and Lloyd’s men began to shuffle their feet and look shamefaced.

  Is it not bloody amazing what an appeal to unreason will do? If you look into what he was saying, it was rubbish. What did it matter if I was English, French or a Chinese washerman? If you ask me, Lloyd was right and all the rest wrong. I’ve been arrested dozens of times in my career and any arresting officer who’d had the slightest chance to look me over never came with less than six men at his back and some brought many more. I take it as a sort of compliment.

  None the less, the Lieutenant, whose name I never learned, got me out of a hanging in all probability, for Lloyd’s chains went back into a sack and were seen no more. And shortly after that Smithers appeared having duly signed receipt of my body and over the side we went. It reminded me strongly of being taken out of John Stark at Boston. Once again I was under arrest. But I got no cheers that time.

  I was good as gold as we headed for the shore, and the launch rode the big slow waves. Smithers and Lloyd chattered a bit, and I flapped my ears to catch what was going on. I had a pretty good idea of their plans already, for I’d pumped Black Dick’s clerk for all I was worth. Being the Admiral’s man in all things, and the Admiral being favourable to me, the clerk had talked freely, so I knew that a closed carriage would be waiting on shore to carry me off to prison. Smithers and Lloyd were bickering over my lack of chains. It seemed Smithers had final responsibility for bringing me in, and was piqued that he’d not been consulted. I thought I’d better intervene.

  “Gentlemen,” says I, “please rest assured that I have given my word and that I am bound in honour with chains more formidable than any that a smith could forge.”

  “See?” says Lloyd. “What did I tell you?”

  “Hmm,” says Smithers, peering at me with sharp little eyes. “I suppose no harm shall come of it.” He looked at the brawny arms of the twelve Impress men. “Yes,” says he, “I suppose so.”

  After that, I did my level best to behave like an English gentleman, suffering nobly under the blows of cruel fate. I worked so hard at it that when the launch ground its bows into the pebbles on Portsmouth Point, I was allowed to climb out and make my way with Lloyd’s men without anyone laying hands on me or sticking a pistol in my ribs. Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! Up the beach where generations of British seamen have passed before and will come after. And then there was the promised carriage.

  My heart began to thump. My moment was coming. Already the guard of a dozen was down to eleven. Someone had to stay with the launch or the dear little boys that lived along the shore (bless their innocent hearts) would’ve had the oars and fittings out of her before you could cry thief.

  When he came to the carriage there was a driver up on the box, room for one more beside him, and four inside. The rest of Lloyd’s band were dismissed, and marched off to whatever press-gang rendezvous he’d got them from in the first place.

  I climbed in and the carriage springs sagged under my weight, then swayed to and fro as the other three joined me: Lloyd and two of his men. I don’t know where Smithers went but it wasn’t with us. Unfortunately the two who came aboard with Lloyd were a couple of special toughs that I suppose he must have brought with him and not from the Impress service. Certainly the three of them knew one another, and the two tars were sharper and brighter by a long way than the old rogues we’d got rid of.

  The coach swayed again as the driver flicked his whip over the horses and we set off. I had learned that we were going to the new Hilsea Barracks, a few miles outside Portsmouth along the London Road. What I had in mind had to be done within the walls of the town itself, which meant I’d about ten minutes in which to act. So I looked at my three companions and made the final adjustments to my plans.

  Lloyd was sat beside me, on my left, with inches to spare between us since the coach was narrow inside and just had room for four. His two bruisers were sat opposite, in seaman’s rig, each with cutlass scabbard awkwardly stuck down the side of his left leg
, and a Sea-Service pistol clapped across his belly by its belt hook. Each pistol-butt sloped to its owner’s right, so he could seize it quicker. Lloyd was armed exactly as his men: cutlass on the left hip and a pistol in his belt. I had to admit they looked three likely lads for a fight.

  But in that nice, tight coach, they were all within reach of my arms, which is a very dangerous place to be for men who weren’t my size and weren’t anywhere near my strength. They weren’t expecting trouble, neither. Not properly, not as they would have been if I hadn’t been such a precious good boy and stepped out so neat and pretty in my clean, gentleman’s clothes. In any case, by God for England and St George, I’d given my word, hadn’t I?

  None the less, I admit that this was the weak part of my plan. But I offer a further piece of advice, which is this: sometimes, my boys, there just ain’t no clever way and you can’t creep in safely round the back, but must charge in the front way. And in that case there’s nothing for it but smash down the door and go at it just as hard and as fast as you can.

  I waited until we were going up Warbleton Street and the coach was stopped in the busy traffic, and I hit the man in front of me a mighty blow, just beneath the tip of the jaw. There was a fat wallop and the odds were only three to one. I spun round to my left, leapt on the other two and stretched my arms to gather them in. A split second’s fumbling, and my left hand caught Lloyd behind the neck, while the fingers of my right hand closed on the front of the third man’s collar. I heaved with all my strength, jerking the pair of them out of their seats and driving Lloyd’s forehead into the wide-open terrified mouth of the tar.

  Then I was wrenching open the door and tumbling out into the cobbled road. I stumbled and fell, but was up at once and darted through the carts and wagons and was in among the people going to and fro by a row of shops. A shout went up from the coach, then another. Two voices at least, but I forced myself to walk steadily away without looking back. Sammy told me that. Left to myself I’d have run, and so would have instantly identified myself as a villain and a runaway, and encouraged some bloody fool to tackle me. But walking briskly away in my new suit of clothes, I didn’t stand out any more from the crowd than my size makes inevitable.

  “Stop that man!” screamed a voice. “The big ‘un!” But I found a side street and turned sharp left and quickened my pace. I could see people looking about as a hue and cry developed around the corner, behind me, but aside from a porter with a side of beef on his shoulders, who looked at me queer then thought better of it as he saw the look in my eyes, nobody bothered me. Then there was a patter of feet and I knew someone was running after me and catching up fast.

  I couldn’t help but look back, and there was Lloyd with blood on his face and a naked blade in his hand. He was ten yards away and mad with anger. He was out to kill, not capture, and practised fighting man that he was, he skidded to a halt to get a good balance before taking a cut at me. He was on me so fast I had no time to do more than raise my arms against the murderous slash of the heavy blade.

  But then there was a sudden blur of movement from among the people around him and a vicious thud! And Lloyd went down with the iron hilt of his cutlass clattering out of his hand as he hit the flagstones, knocked out cold.

  “Come along o’ me!” says a voice at my side and Sammy Bone was taking me by the arm and leading me away. He was shoving something into his pocket. It was a neatly-sewn canvas cylinder about eighteen inches long, two or three inches wide, and packed with sand. A wrist-loop of plaited leather was worked into one end, all the better for it to be swung by. It had all the marks of Sammy’s careful handiwork.

  “Come on! Come on!” says Sammy. “Never mind them!” for folk were staring. “They won’t do nothing,” says he. And he was right. It was the beginning of my time as a fugitive from justice.

  31

  One reports, with an incredulity bordering upon the sundering to their roots of all one’s deepest convictions of that which is proper and polite, that the influence of La Belk S.C. has proved so overcomingly enormous as to persuade their Graces the LADIES OF THE COMMITTEE OF ALMACK’S to admit as a member, into that august temple of society, a certain individual whom La Belk Madame has, these past months, been leading about the town despite his known connections in the HEMP TRADE and his facilitation of the art of DANCING UPON AIR.

  (From “Lady D’Arcey’s Chatterbox”, a society column, which appeared in The Polite Monitor of 1st July 1794.)

  *

  “But why d’you think he’ll come after you?” said Slym.

  “I do not think, I know,” said Lady Sarah. “I’ve looked him in the eye and he’s that old bastard come to life again!”

  “Your husband?” said Slym.

  “Yes, him!” she said. “Once he’d fixed his mind on a thing, nothing could shift him. How else could such a creature make so much money from nothing? He was one of twelve children. A bare-arsed brat out of a miner’s hovel with an earth floor. He had none of this!” She waved her hand at her beautiful, exquisitely furnished salon, her favourite place in all the world. Her beautiful salon with the tall, graceful windows that looked out on Dulwich Square, with its private gardens and the most desirable houses in London.

  Slym picked up one of the newspapers that were cast on the sumptuous carpets. He peered at it, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sarah,” said he, “he escaped from custody in Portsmouth. The cove ...” he stopped and corrected himself quickly, for these days there were words that he was seeking to expunge from his vocabulary … “the fellow,” said he, “is a mariner, and all my experience tells me he’ll stay in Portsmouth among the things he knows. Why should he risk coming to London where he has nothing and knows nobody?”

  “No,” she said, “there are other considerations.” Her eyes flickered away from his for an instant. Slym noted the evasiveness and frowned.

  “Just what did you say to him when you were down below in that ship?” he questioned.

  “I’ve told you,” she said, “I provoked him into attacking me, and got him an excellent beating.”

  “Now where’s the value in that?” said he, irritated by the pettiness of the reply. “You’ve got the evidence to hang the man, you’ve got the Coignwood gold — or as good as — so why bother with spite?”

  “Because I am a spiteful person,” she said, with a self-satisfied sneer, “as all those soon learn who are foolish enough to do me ill!”

  “Bah!” said he, in disgust. “It won’t do, ma’am. Your drawing-room games don’t suit the case.” It was his turn to sneer. “Your little bitches’ secrets whispered behind another bitch’s back, to do her down!” He took her arm, and glared at her. “You’re playing a dangerous game and I’ll not be put off … So! What did you say to him? What were your words?”

  Lady Sarah looked at him thoughtfully. She had to be careful now, for the relationship was changing. She was still attracted to him, powerfully so, for he was the most virile and deadly man she had ever met. But she could never be faithful to a single man and the harmless little diversions she’d indulged in, since her triumphal return, would infuriate Mr Samuel Slym should he find out, and unfortunately there was no man in England more able to find out should he put his mind to the matter.

  Then there was Slym’s own attitude to herself. She was almost sure that he was in love with her — actually in love in the sense that poets, young girls and other mental-deficients understood the expression.

  In fact the only thing preventing her from embracing this incredible hypothesis was her underlying conviction that any such emotion, based as it was upon self-denial and the elevation of another’s advantage over one’s own, was simply impossible.

  None the less, Slym was living in her house, sharing her bed and supposing himself to be a gentleman. Since she could snuff out these pleasures whenever she chose, and since he must know that she could, they put the reins in her hand and the bit in his mouth. At least, they did so long as she was careful and did n
ot too obviously confront the infuriating scruples that he was beginning to display.

  So: careful she must be! For she needed him badly. Personal inclinations in the matter were temporary and changeable, as well she knew, but the need to place Sam Slym between herself and Jacob Fletcher was absolute. Lady Sarah’s salon was warm in the June sunshine flowing in through the big windows, but she shuddered at the thought of Jacob Fletcher.

  Try as she might, and stupid though she knew it to be, Fletcher’s likeness to his father was so great that she could not shake off the supernatural fear that Fletcher was Henry Coignwood returned from the grave to take vengeance for the hell she’d inflicted on him during their marriage. And then there was the shocking, animal energy of the man, leaping up from the deck, snapping his chains and seizing her with murder in his eyes.

  “Sarah!” said Slym, shaking her by the shoulder. “What did you say to him?” She thought quickly.

  “I told him we had Miss Booth,” she said.

  “And … ?” said he

  “And what?” said she.

  “You never stopped at that! What else?”

  “I said she was hostage for his good behaviour.”

  “Good behaviour?” said Slym, in patent disbelief. “Pig-shit, ma’am! If I know you, the least you threatened was to cut her throat!”

  “And what if I did?” she snapped.

  “What, ma’am?” said he, with the blood rising into his face, and the veins swelling. “Why! I’ll tell you what! You can do it without me, that’s what!”