‘Mr Burns, to me and bring with you those you wish to form a boarding party. You are to take command of that damaged galley and prepare to get it back to Leghorn by whatever means you find appropriate.’
Astern, the boats, let loose to avoid their being damaged, manned by a couple of oarsmen each and full of livestock, were called in. On deck, the cannon had to be housed before those who would take possession of the prizes could arm themselves with their chosen weapon: a cutlass, knife or a club. Pulling towards the damaged galley, Toby Burns could not believe he was engaged in anything remotely close to reality.
He had dreamt of this sort of adventure as he made his way from his home in Somerset to Sheerness in Kent, there to join his ship, as well as his Uncle Ralph and Aunt Emily. He had been sure then of his glittering destiny; nothing since had remotely lived up to expectations.
Yet here he was now, in command of a boarding party and about to take possession of an enemy vessel. For once the pistol he held was in a hand that did not shake, nor did it bother him that there was a battle taking place behind his back. Broadside after broadside was being fired as HMS Inconstant battered the French corvette into submission.
Toby Burns was lost in his own world, mentally composing the letter home to his parents, one that would be passed to his relatives and the family acquaintances, and he sought to conjure up an image of how it would be received. For once it could consist of exploits real and welcome, not lies in which he had described with brio events in which he had been near rigid with terror.
The oars on the galley having been shipped, he found himself close to curious faces examining the approaching boat and the folk in it, fellows with an emaciated appearance.
‘Looks like we will have to care for a great number of prisoners, lads.’
‘Don’t he know they is prisoners already,’ Blubber Booth spat. ‘Lord alive, we’s freeing them.’
‘Belay the talking’, was Burns’ response, this as the fellow on the tiller hooked onto, below the open gangway, another boathook used to keep them clamped to the hull. There was a moment of confusion then, as Toby realised that with a pistol in his hand he would struggle to climb up the man ropes, his solution being to stuff it in his pocket, which got a joshing reprimand from Martin Dent.
‘Might be a notion to uncock that, your honour. If it goes off close to and aimed at your gonads, who’s to say what it will remove.’
He should have told Dent to be quiet. With his new-found confidence, it would have come out properly as a strongly-voiced command and not his customary croak. But the image of what he might suffer if he knocked the hammer and fired the pistol accidentally was enough to ensure he saw to that first. Then he grabbed the man ropes and got his feet on the slimy battens, slipping with one foot only to find sailors ready to save him a dipping by pushing his backside upwards.
He arrived on deck to find a scruffy-looking individual, in a less than impressive uniform, holding out his sword, flat on both hands, the crew gathered by the bulwark behind him. The convention, from one gentleman treating with another, was to refuse to accept but Toby was never going to pass up on such a trophy and he took it eagerly, even if he noted it did not appear to be a blade or hilt of any distinction.
He did know to give his name as well as that of his ship. But anything else seemed pointless given the enemy captain did not understand a word of English. Behind him the men he had led were clambering aboard, half their number quick to gather and drive below the enemy crew without either ceremony or instruction. The rest stayed close to Burns, who was taking no action, just staring at the captain.
‘Might be a notion to take him to his cabin, Mr Burns. There will be things there, paper and coin, that Captain Taberly will expect you to hand over.’
‘For a common seaman, Dent, you are both overfamiliar and too talkative.’
Dent had a lively countenance, a cocky manner as well as eyes that seemed to be able to dance. He did so now as he touched his forelock. ‘I best mind my P’s, your honour, with you being such a hero.’
How many times had he had that word thrown at him? Even if it was not said out loud, the accusation was in the looks he got from the crew of the frigate. He had stolen the glory gained by John Pearce and none would let him forget it. Normally crushed by that, he did not feel anything like the same now. Did he not have command of a captured vessel? Did he not have in his hand a surrendered sword? For him that wiped the slate.
He indicated to the Frenchman that he should lead the way to his cabin, following in his wake, while recalling his duty and ordering Dent to inspect the damage and report. That, added to the ‘Aye aye sir’, made him feel really good. He did not see, because it was behind his back, the ringed fingers and the waving wrist that told all what Dent thought of him.
Even if he had seen it, the effect would have faded as he entered the cabin, a goodly part of the whole of the ship and comfortably furnished, for this, and it might last for several days, would be his. It was with new confidence that he went back on deck to issue his order.
‘Take the captain to HMS Agamemnon. The commodore will wish to question him.’
When the fellow was led away, Toby Burns re-entered his quarters, to savour for the first time the joy of having a space he could call his own, one he did not have to share with anyone.
Moving the galley presented no problem; as had been pointed out, the rowers were not free men. A couple of them were captured British sailors, the rest criminals or those who had fallen foul of the Revolution. The promise of freedom was enough to have them row willingly to wherever the Royal Navy wanted to take them as long as it was not back to the rule of their previous slave-drivers, men who now took turns to ply the weighty oars themselves and suffer the blows for poor performance they had meted out to others.
Added to that, Toby Burns did not have much to do in the way of navigation, he was sailing in convoy with the second captured galley and the corvette, the only blow to his contentment the fact that the two brigs, HMS Flirt and HMS Troubadour, had been detached from the squadron as escorts.
That would mean when he reached Leghorn, John Pearce would be there too. It was necessary to ensure he avoided a meeting at all costs.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Emily Barclay would have scoffed had anyone intimated she was excited at the prospect of the forthcoming entertainment, now definitely planned for Friday, denying the fact that she did feel a thrill to be going for the first time in her life to what could be called a Grand Ball. The only shortcoming was her condition, which, with the conclusion of her term approaching, meant she would be unable to take full pleasure from the event.
Previous experience of dances and routs did not compare; the Assembly Rooms in Frome could not stand as significant against the grandeur of an Italian Archbishop’s Palace and its receiving-room-cum-ballroom. Already visited as an individual, she recalled its glittering chandeliers, fabulous statuary, as well as walls and a ceiling decorated with elaborate religious paintings by famous artists.
In addition, the main guest was Vice Admiral Sir John Jervis, which, with over half his fleet arriving in his wake, would mean a whole clutch of senior officers attending. The closest she had come to such a level of sophistication had been at a ball in Sheerness, where she had danced with several naval officers, one or two quite senior, though the real fun had come from the gaiety and dexterity of the younger attendees.
In doing so she had incurred the wrath of her husband – absent and pressing seamen – being exposed for the first time to the distaff side of his nature, hitherto solicitous if somewhat reserved. His new young wife had been berated for shaming him by her exuberance as reported to him and Emily had still not forgiven Horatio Nelson for being the source. It was he who had told Ralph Barclay how much she had enjoyed herself. Despite the view expressed by John Pearce that he was really a decent fellow, to her he was a sneak.
Her husband at that time had another cause to be angry: Emily had been drawn by other nav
al wives into an excess of spending at the ship’s chandlers as well as other tradesmen emporiums, women who had insisted her newly appointed captain would require the means to entertain both his officer and his peers, let alone his superiors. A strapped Ralph Barclay, seeing the cost and quantity of what she had purchased, had demanded the whole lot be returned.
Having spent several happy days in preparation, in the company of the Wynne girls and the Italian lady employed, through gestures, sign language and drawings, to do the more elaborate embroidery, the feeling of anticipation had grown to make her feel content, an emotion that had lately been in short supply. Emily was even able to abide Eugenia Wynne’s occasional vapours at the prospect of meeting some handsome naval officer, though equally likely to appear to near faint at the dread of being caught alone by some predatory Tuscan lothario.
‘If they are as ardent as the Venetians,’ she lamented, ‘who are ever in search of an alcove, I shall be shamed for eternity.’
‘You tested eternity quite often, I recall,’ Betsey remarked, which got her a stuck out sisterly tongue from her older sibling. ‘If you flutter your eyelashes at every man you see, you cannot be surprised that they sense encouragement and seek privacy.’
‘I have never encouraged an advance in my life,’ was stated by Eugenia, quite forcefully.
‘And never sought a compliment.’
That reply was larded with sarcasm and Emily, having watched them these last few days, had observed they competed with each other quite heartily and, very likely, for the same attention.
The sewing, stitching and company, really the supervision of much of the work, took Emily back to a less disturbed life, to the years before she was married and all the complications of that disastrous union. The activities happening in these rooms did not differ so very much from what had taken place at home prior to some important local event: parties, weddings, the ball after the county fair.
She and her friends commonly gathered in each other’s houses to make or mend, seeking to follow the latest fashions from London and Paris as sent down by the newspapers, while endlessly speculating on what they might encounter, for marriage was in all their minds, as it was in that of their calculating parents.
The last occasion had been before her nuptials. Recalling those days, Emily could now see what she did not really pick up then: the undertone of reserve her lifelong companions harboured regarding the prospect of her forthcoming marriage. Those friends had seemed enthusiastic, yet she now saw that differently, how they had disguised the undercurrents of reserve they felt, which unknown to them, mirrored some of her own.
The reasons were starkly apparent in recollection. Previous communal speculations had always centred round some handsome and surprising suitor, a youth hitherto ridiculed come to comely maturity or some thrilling visitor calling upon a neighbour. Captain Ralph Barclay was no Prince Charming; indeed, at twice Emily’s age, and with a rather spartan manner, he was a questionable catch.
The real push came from her parents, added to the feeling, general to her gender and the mores of her society, that to refuse a proposal carried with it real risk, for it rarely remained a secret. One man rebuffed made others cautious. To be seen as difficult and hard to please would never do; the longer a girl remained unattached, the greater the fear of eventual spinsterhood, a fate held to be worse than death in the fledgling female imagination.
Now, Emily, so close in age to be more like an elder sister than an aunt, had the Wynne girls asking her about the build-up to the occasion and the joy she must have felt. This brought back all the suppressed feelings she had experienced on that crisp winter day, for she had been no June bride, while the gap between the proposal and the event had been measured in weeks, not months. Ralph Barclay was in a hurry, war was looming and he had been told by the Admiralty he was on course to be given a frigate.
Nor was the ceremony the stuff of legend, for it seemed brief and hurried. If she was, and her mother and father were wont to stress this, marrying a man who had an entail on the house in which she had grown up, he was not in a position to splash out on any extravagant service. Five years on half pay had obliged Ralph Barclay to use all the wiles he had learnt at sea, to weave and bob, in order to stave off a raft of creditors, trades folk, shopkeepers and merchants who had been obliged to wait too long to have their bills settled.
‘I doubt I shall sleep tonight,’ Eugenia exclaimed, as usual throwing up her hands as if the prospect was life-threatening and putting a momentary check on Emily’s memories. ‘My heart is beating hard now, but in a near dream state I think it may burst.’
‘How fine you will look, sister,’ Betsey remarked, ‘with puffy eyes and drawn cheeks. Quite the belle of the ball.’
Now Eugenia was manufacturing alarm, which Emily, needle in hand, was determined to stave off, in order to avoid her collapsing once more into a chair, to demand that someone fetch the salts.
‘You will sleep and you will dream, Eugenia, and in those you will imagine great happiness and a blissful and sunny wedding to the most handsome man in the fleet.’
‘Do you think so, Emily?’
‘I know so,’ she lied; she already had the heart of that individual.
‘Because it happened to you?’
‘Of course,’ came another lie, accompanied by a smile denoting bliss.
She had not dreamt of happiness on the night before her wedding, nor had she enjoyed what followed and such thoughts took her back not to a church in winter, or the house Ralph Barclay shared with his sisters, but to Lymington in the New Forest and the night she and John Pearce had first become lovers. How sweet that had been, how pleasurable, how different from the rough and painful coupling when Ralph Barclay had taken his due as her new husband. That forced her to say to herself ‘Enough!’. There were matters at hand to be dealt with and they were not gifted with an excessive amount of time.
‘Now, I say, you must ply your needles, or we will not be worrying about puffy eyes, but loose threads.’
John Pearce could not avoid getting sight of Toby Burns, really quite close by, though communication was impossible besides being undesirable. Both were on their respective quarterdecks, he still and observant, Burns pacing about in the manner of a poseur, the French word applicable given that which appeared obvious, the showing away he was indulging in. He was forever strutting to some point by the bulwarks to raise his telescope, pull it out to its full extent and gaze at an empty seascape, as if there might be some threat in the offing and he was just the fellow to meet and deal with it.
‘Sure he’s Admiral Toby in his thinking, John-boy.’
This was Michael O’Hagan’s view, related as he stood over Pearce, razor in hand, scraping away the lather on his chin.
‘I hope I didn’t act like that on my first time in command.’
‘Jesus, you were given to causing grief by lording it,’ came the reply, the smile taking the sting out of the waved razor. That was before Michael cocked an ear and bent to his task again. ‘Can you hear it?’
‘How can I not?’ Pearce replied, as a series of muffled shouts came through the bulkheads.
‘I swear he gets louder by the day.’
‘Does shouting to God aid salvation, Michael?’
‘There are those who say so, but in Ireland we tend towards the quiet, lest the heathen English hear us and put a price on our prayers.’
‘So Digby is a heathen?’
‘He is, and a troubled one, but not for sure alone in that. Do you have a plan, John-boy, for when we raise Leghorn?’
‘Several, and one of them is to find “Admiral” Toby Burns and box his ears.’
‘The devil take you, you know that’s not what I meant.’
‘I shall call on Emily as an old acquaintance and a once junior officer of her late husband.’
‘With certain parties in port also? You might as well fly a set of flags.’
‘I can’t not call, can I?’
‘Even if it
might be wise to avoid it for her sake? Why not send a message, to meet somewhere where you will not be seen?’
‘The messenger?’
‘You have three fellows willing if Digby will let them ashore.’
The shaving finished, his chin washed and towelled, Pearce stood up. Michael lifted the bowl of hot water, preparing to take and dispose of it overboard while his ‘master’ pulled back the screen so he could exit without spilling, to find Ivor Conway on the other side, his hat immediately coming off his head.
‘Mr Dorling’s compliments and we have raised sight of the Leghorn lighthouse.’
‘You look worried. Why?’
‘Lookouts tell us the harbour is full of tall masts – warships, they reckon. Mr Dorling is sure it must be Sir John in Victory. Wants to know if there is to be extra prettying, for he will have a spyglass on us, for sure.’
‘Even if he does, he will be a happy man to see that we and our consorts have captures and thus will not be too fussy in his inspections. By the time we anchor he will have calculated his eighth share to the penny. I know Mr Dorling thinks he might find fault with us, for he has that reputation, but the French corvette will take his attention first. Have you informed the captain?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
Conway should have gone there first. Why he had not required no great intuition, given the man had taken to what his marine guards called ‘occasional raving’. If he had done that in the presence of authority he would have risked removal, but Pearce had seen him in such a situation in Nelson’s dining cabin and, if Digby had not seemed to take much pleasure from the event, he had done nothing to shame himself and nor had his behaviour manifested itself on deck. He was obviously capable of restraint in public.
‘Then I suggest you do so now. Captain Taberly will certainly be called upon to report to the flag and perhaps his junior commanders also. Mr Digby will want to ensure he is in his best bib and tucker for the occasion.’
‘They say Sir John is fond of the cat, sir.’
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