Hardly surprising then that the local horse-traders were as unscrupulous as their neighbours, people who, having no honesty themselves, reposed no trust in others. In a world where the animals they bought and sold were ubiquitous – nothing of weight could travel by road that did not require one or more horses – the space for underhand dealing was rife. When sold, mounts were doped, dyed a different colour, had any defects covered up by a variety of low tricks, all to extract an extra guinea or two.
‘Now you must understand, John-boy, that even a sailor off to sea would never sell his livery – his horse yes, but the harness no.’ Michael patted the saddle. ‘But this here is as fine a piece of leather as ever I’ve been sat on, as is your own, and the rest of the harness is the same.’
‘I do not know what you are driving at.’
‘We will come up against sharp practice. These be fine horses but be prepared to be told they are spavined and useless, to hear a list of faults as long as your arm. I will wager we will be offered a sum so low as to make an honest man laugh, and what will happen then? Our man will give a loud sniff and say if we throw in the livery he might consider a better price.’
‘You seem to know a great deal about the trade for all you say you do not.’
‘Have you any idea of how many men of that occupation are Irish and have I not been to the weekly markets at home and watched how they go about the business? If you can play the fool, I can play a part too.’
‘Which will be?’
‘Unreliable servant.’
‘The norm, then,’ Pearce opined.
That led to a long discussion of how they should act; Pearce had to pretend to be a Kentish officer going to a new ship, Michael his less than wholly trusted servant. The need to dispose of these fine mounts for a fellow off to sea for a voyage of unknown duration was, it was hoped, enough to close off too many questions, and if they came too thick then they could just walk away. The Irishman made it sound so easy, Pearce was less sanguine.
‘Shall we not invade France, just you and I, Michael, for I am sure it would be easier?’
In the end it was ridiculously easy and as simple as Michael said, for as luck would have it the Rochester market was in full weekly ferment. Mostly cattle and sheep, it was noisy with the sounds of livestock, lowing cows and bleating sheep, fowls of every description including cackling geese, and that was before you included the babble of trading humanity, buying and selling, with every transaction a shouted exchange and a slapping of spat-on hands; as a place to do an underhand trade it could not be bettered.
Horse dealers too were gathered in enough numbers to hope that one, sensing a trade as the pair led the horses slowly through the crowd, would approach them rather than the other way round. The man who obliged was a short fellow who appeared from seemingly nowhere out of a jostling mass, and if they had taken him to the playhouse at Sadler’s Wells he would have been on the stage in a flash, so much of a caricature was he, button-brown eyes, a snub nose and clothes so loud they were close to screaming.
‘Now there be a pair of true beauties,’ he said, his mouth under one ear, his brogue strong Irish. ‘By the Lord God in heaven, if you was lookin’ to sell, you’d find an honest buyer in Fergal Keegan.’
‘One of your fellow countrymen, Michael, I hazard,’ Pearce said, in a foppish tone, which would have been perfect if he had not blushed so.
‘Is that so?’ Keegan cried.
‘Sure, I am that, from near Ennis in Galway.’
The switch to Erse was immediate, and even if he was pretending to be vague John Pearce could not miss the look on the horse dealer’s face as he conversed with Michael in a tongue only these two Paddies understood; being from Lowland Scottish stock and never having ventured north of Perth, the language of the Gaels was a mystery to him.
His friend played his part, using his height and build to cut out Pearce from even a sight of what they were transacting, this while the horse dealer edged them away from where they had met to a corner where the angle of a warehouse partly cut them off from view, no doubt out of sight of any competition.
‘Why, Your Honour,’ Michael cried, ‘this fellow seems in a fair way to be an honest trader, who will give you a good price he tells me.’
‘He is supposed to tell me.’
‘I am curious, sir, as to your name and from where you come?’
‘Franklin is the name, my man,’ Pearce said, quickly, ‘and I hail from the manor of Lydden.’
‘Why I’m sure that is as fine a place as any in Kent County and the Franklins a fine upstanding family.’
Pearce replied, unsure if he was being guyed, ‘I am not here to discuss my antecedents.’
That got another exchange in the Erse between the two Irishmen, the tone of which told Pearce he was being tagged as a cussed stuck-up sod, albeit both men were smiling at him as if he was a paragon.
‘Your man here, Michael is it now, has told me of your predicament, about you being overdue aboard and is it not the work of the angels that had brought you to me.’ With that Keegan crossed himself. ‘Let me have a good look at what it is you want to sell.’
Given the man’s opening remark, what followed was pure comedy, so much so it was hard not to laugh. Fergal Keegan had a glum way of sucking in breath through his teeth, and an awkward cast of the eye when he looked up, which was supposed to allude to any number of faults in the two mares. The ribs were showing a mite too much for a truly fit animal, the fetlock and shanks hot to the touch, indeed there did not seem a part of the mares from poll to hoof that was not in some way slightly imperfect.
‘Well now, it just goes to show that a look is not enough,’ he said eventually. ‘What seems perfect from afar shows its faults by close inspection. I expect I could run, maybe, to twenty guineas.’
‘Each?’ Pearce snapped.
‘Lord no, twenty guineas the pair. Now I will grant that they look fine to an unpractised eye, sir, but if I was to list what was not right, sure we would be here all of the day.’
Ignorance only extended so far; to John Pearce’s reckoning they were forty-guinea horses in anyone’s money and possibly, if they did race well, worth a great deal more than that and the truth of the thoughts showed on his face.
‘Now I am a fair man, Lieutenant Franklin, and I will not say you could not do better, if you had the time, so it may be I can stretch to an extra five guineas since you are a kindly master I am told by one of my fellow countrymen.’
‘I will not be robbed, sir. Come, Michael, there will be other dealers here on market day.’
‘Hold, sir,’ Keegan cried, his hands up and near to actually pressing on Pearce’s breast, ‘you are too hasty.’
A burst of Erse from Michael resulted in a theatrical ponder from his countryman, leg thrust out, eyes cast down, finger on chin. ‘Would twenty guineas a mare be acceptable, sir?’
‘I would consider it.’
‘That would, of course, include the livery.’ Keegan, pushing for a conclusion, spat on his hand and held it out. Michael nodded and Pearce took it and shook on the deal. ‘If we can move close to, sir, I would not want the exchange witnessed.’
They were in a huddle for a whole minute of counting, as coins were carefully laid in Pearce’s hand. The sum paid, Keegan spoke to Michael again in the island tongue, nodded to Pearce and led the mares away into the crowd.
‘Do you think he knows they’re stolen?’
‘Sure, John-boy, it’s not a question of what he knows, but what he cares about.’
‘What did he say to you last?’
‘How to collect my fee of five guineas for telling him you were easy to dupe, which I am supposed to collect this night at a place called the Rose Tavern.’
‘And are you going to?’
‘Why would I bother, when I doubt he would be there?’
Heinrich Lutyens, the one-time surgeon of HMS Brilliant and John Pearce’s good friend, stared at the papers in his hand, for in doing so he avoided
looking at Emily Barclay, which served to hide his disappointment. The last time he had seen them had been aboard the ship bringing him and Emily, as well as many wounded seamen, home from the Mediterranean.
John Pearce, also aboard, had asked him to keep the papers safe by hiding them in his instrument chest; he felt they were unsafe in the tiny wardroom cabin he had been allotted, especially since the wounded Ralph Barclay was travelling home in the same vessel, albeit he had just lost an arm and was housed in different, better accommodation. Emily, refusing to share that with him, had berthed next to Lutyens on the orlop deck, acting, as she had on many occasions for him, as a nurse to the wounded for whom he was caring.
HMS Grampus, a vessel in serious need of a refit, had mysteriously caught fire, a nightmare to every man who sailed in wooden ships. In the mayhem that followed, while his personal possessions had been saved, that heavy instrument chest had required to be abandoned, as had the Grampus itself; they had watched her burn to the waterline before sinking beneath the waves, John Pearce being convinced that his valuable evidence had gone down with it.
That Emily should have taken them was surprising enough; that she had kept secret from John Pearce she had possession of them bordered on a level of artifice he thought her incapable of, yet it was understandable. The real hurt, which he was reluctant to admit, was that she had taken them from his own chest and had not seen fit to put them back into his hands, an act that could only have occurred because she knew they were there and what they contained.
‘Why give them to me now?’
‘I do not trust my husband not to send someone to rob me, which he would if he knew I had them in my rooms.’
He looked at her now, his fish-like face showing real distress. ‘And how am I going to explain their sudden reappearance to John?’
Emily was shocked. ‘You misunderstand, Heinrich, I will tell him how and why I have them.’
‘He may well suspect I colluded in your act, he may well wonder if I showed them to you after they were entrusted to me.’
‘Then if he does, I will inform him of his error, which was always the case from the first.’
‘Such calculation.’
Unused to his disapproval, Emily was wounded by it now. ‘That is not a word I expected to hear from your lips.’
Lutyens waved the loose sheaf of papers, which flapped, creating a draught of air that touched Emily’s face. ‘You must have read these prior to …’ There being no need to finish that statement, Emily nodded. ‘Which means you eavesdropped on the conversation John and I had about his leaving them with me and why.’
‘It was impossible not to, all that lay between our two berths was a canvas screen.’
The response was terse. ‘It is always possible not to eavesdrop.’
Such an admonition induced a long period of silence; he was clearly angry and Emily had little in her defence to deflect it. She was far from ashamed, though she knew she ought to be. Yet what she had done, an act that flew in the face of the way she had been raised, was just, to her, another indication of her desperation, though at the time it had been instinct which had informed her actions.
‘I admit it was wrong, Heinrich, and I beg your forgiveness, but I would like you to consider what feelings I had when I heard what was said. I acted on impulse not, as you seem to suspect, from calculation …’
‘And since?’
Her response was a whisper. ‘I kept them to protect myself as well as my position. I used them to persuade my husband to agree to that which I demanded of him.’
‘Which is somewhat less than admirable, given how important they are to a man you profess to care for.’
‘You are being cruel, which I did not think was in your nature.’
‘It is not, but I cannot keep these. You must take them away from here, for I want no part of what you have done.’
‘And where do you suggest I take them?’
‘Back to Studdert.’
‘Which would make me look foolish indeed.’
‘John has engaged a special pleader to prepare his case against Captain Barclay, take them to him.’
‘Who is he?’
‘That I do not know, but his prize agent, a fellow called Davidson, does. Ask him.’
‘Do you know where John has gone?’
‘He did not tell you?’
She shook her head. ‘All he said was that he was engaged upon an enterprise that would bring in such profit that I would not need any support from my husband.’
‘Then it seems,’ Lutyens snapped, ‘he reposes in me even less trust than do you, for he did not even bother to tell me he was going anywhere at all.’
It took great effort to hold back her tears, for she saw this man as a dear friend, but Emily was also determined not to let him see how much he had upset her. Part of her reasons for coming to him had been that faith, but there had also been the chance to talk, to ask advice, to seek to map out part of that future about which John Pearce appeared so confident and she so dreaded.
They were in the very room where, encouraged by Lutyens, they had finally admitted what he knew and they had sought to suppress, that they were deeply attracted to each other. How swiftly that had moved to a notion that they could live as a couple! The word ‘mistress’ terrified her, yet Pearce seemed so convinced that they could enjoy that estate, or live abroad as man and wife without anyone knowing of the deception. She wanted to test that with the only friend who might understand and give her untainted advice on how she should proceed.
‘Heinrich, you are the person I have most trust in.’
‘Not John?’
‘I will not hide from you, I cannot hide from you, that I have feelings for him, but I am not sure the kind of faith I have in you is something I can extend to him, he is too impetuous for that.’
‘He is certainly that.’ Lutyens threw up his hands and sighed. ‘You say he has gone off on some errand that fills him with elation, which leads me to suspect, given his nature, that it is not without risk.’
‘He implied to me that was not the case.’
‘John would.’
Alexander Davidson lived and carried out his business in Harpur Street, not far from her rooms in Jockey’s Fields, and was happy to take an unannounced visit from her; as a prize agent who lived above the shop, it was something to which he was accustomed from time-pressed naval officers. He had no idea where John Pearce was either, nor, it seemed, was he aware that he was sitting opposite the wife of the man against whom he was hoping to bring a case.
The name of Barclay had never been mentioned to him, only that Pearce required legal assistance, so he had happily named the special pleader who had been engaged to prepare a case against Emily’s husband, a fellow called Lucknor, to whom his client had gone as a recommendation from him.
‘But how,’ she asked, somewhat disingenuously, ‘can he proceed without evidence, which he has given me to understand he does not have?’
‘Lucknor tells me he has written some letters on Mr Pearce’s behalf to be sent out to the Mediterranean, asking for evidence. To a Lieutenant Digby Mr Pearce served under and a couple of midshipmen.’
‘Midshipmen?’
‘Yes. Both apparently served aboard HMS Brilliant.’ Davidson thought for a moment, seeking to recall the names. ‘Yes, one is called Farmiloe and the other Burns, Toby Burns; do you know of them?’
‘Only too well, Mr Davidson, the last named is my nephew.’
The dejected way she said that induced silence, but it did not last long.
‘Mr Davidson, I wonder if you would be prepared to hold on to some papers for Lieutenant Pearce? He left them with me but I reckon them to be better placed here.’
‘I can see no reason why not, but are they valuable?’
‘Not in any terms of money, but I’m sure they have a value to your client.’
‘Then,’ Davidson smiled, ‘he will have the use of my safe.’
When she left, Emily Barclay wa
s thinking about Toby Burns; if she did not know the contents of the letter that had been sent, she could guess at the questions it might pose. And she knew him only too well; would her nephew tell the truth or continue to lie?
CHAPTER FIVE
‘How’s the arm, Mr Burns?’ demanded Admiral Sir William Hotham.
He had just arrived by the entry port of his flagship, HMS Britannia, anchored in the bay called San Fiorenzo after the town at its base. Outside the entry port the sea was a sparkling blue, reflecting a sky of the same colour, while coming in off the land was a warm and pine-scented breeze; it was, after all, the springtime and the whole rugged island of Corsica was in bloom.
Hierarchy ensured the admiral had first to enquire after the commissioned officer on this particular duty and also he had been obliged to acknowledge the file of marines that always attended the departure or arrival of the second in command of the Mediterranean Fleet. But that done, no one could mistake the extra air of benign interest he took in the welfare of Toby Burns.
Much to the chagrin of his fellow midshipmen, all of whom sought the favour of so powerful a man, Hotham talked to the boy in the manner of a favourite uncle; the only person failing to see him in that way was the being so addressed. The question related to a slight wound Toby Burns had received while helping to haul a brace of naval cannon over the high mountainous Pass of Teghime to besiege Bastia in the company of a regiment of redcoats; the whole thing had been a fiasco, a short engagement leading to a hurried retreat.
‘Healing, sir,’ Toby Burns replied, careful to add as he touched the sling, ‘yet it still pains me somewhat.’
‘Then, young fellow, I require you to see the surgeon and, once he has examined you, tell him I want a full report on your condition, but that can wait until this tedious errand is complete, can it not?’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
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