Enemies at Every Turn

by David Donachie

  There was slight resistance brought on by shyness at that estate as he spun her round to face him, his lips coming down on to hers as he pulled her body close. He could smell her as much as she could smell him, and both were conscious of the tremors brought on by desire and touch as John Pearce’s lips moved down her neck to her breast, at which point he suddenly lifted her up in his arms.

  ‘I believe it is customary to carry the bride across the threshold.’

  Which he did, to gently deposit her on the top cover of the bed, where she lay, her hands hiding her nakedness as he removed his shirt. Then, seeing her embarrassment, he blew out the bedside candle, which left only the faint light from the parlour, not enough to show him entirely without clothing as, breeches removed, he lay down beside her.

  Emily Barclay’s only experience of sexual congress had been with her husband, a separate undressing and bashful entry into the bed followed by a swift grunting coupling, initially very painful, which conformed to the account from her mother of what she could expect. If the pain had not been repeated, every other facet had, more than once, and never could the act have been said to be pleasurable.

  This was so different, not least in the time John Pearce took to arouse in her feelings she had heard and speculated with her friends about, but had never before allowed herself to experience. His hands had only soft fingers and like his lips sought out every sensitive part of her body. As his leg slipped between hers, to push them open, she was not in the least inclined to resist.

  There was no weight in the body that then covered hers; nothing but a gentle nudge to ready her for contact, her gasp matching his as he entered her, and there was too, even if she was not aware of it, anticipation; this lovemaking had been promised for so long, days and weeks, that when it came her every sense was already massively heightened.

  Which was why, for the first time in her life, she knew what people meant when they whispered that there could be a pleasure so deep in the act that silence was impossible and screaming with delight not unknown.

  Even in an old and solid-walled building, such sounds carried and those servants who heard it nodded knowingly. The owner of the King’s Head was not one of them, for he was downstairs in his taproom sharing a drink with a regular customer, an old friend of a letter-writer who had another occupation part of his time, which was to report to the Hampshire Chronicle anything newsworthy that happened in isolated Lymington.

  On the morrow he would inform the editor of the arrival in the town, to take up residence in the King’s Head tavern, of Lieutenant RN and Mrs Raynesford, which would be reported in the social column. This would earn him a penny or two, as well as a free pot of ale for helping to tell the world outside the town that when folk came to stay in Lymington, this was the hostelry of choice.

  The week that followed was one of near-unalloyed bliss: long walks, shared and secret jokes, and much lovemaking that was not always confined to the hours of darkness, in which John Pearce’s still-shy bed partner was introduced to those variations which did not cause her to flinch. Her lover was in no hurry to cause such a reaction; in time, and he now knew he had that, she would be brought to experience every form of the art in which he himself had been schooled by an older, beautiful and experienced woman.

  Interruption did come from his visits to Buckler’s Hard to see if there was any sign of the money he was expecting, but there was no frustration in the delay for someone normally troubled by impatience. Pearce was happy and that feeling was passed on to the men he now commanded by his endemic good cheer, as well as his allowance of shore leave in turns which were appreciated even in such a backwater, not in the least dented by the gentle ribbing of Michael O’Hagan.

  Dundas’s money man arrived eventually, a silent dark-looking cove, accompanied by a party of armed men who would not depart the shore until he was present, delivering a heavy chest that had to be fetched aboard, and with many a curious look at that, by a whip from the main yard. Michael carried it to his cabin, where it was secured to the deck by battens, Pearce preparing to add a chain and padlock.

  The cabin was then cleared, the key was passed over, and the heavy bags of specie were extracted to be counted and signed for – Pearce did not trust Dundas one little bit when it came to coin and his fellow Scot did not trust him either, while it seemed the weather was part aware of the doubts in the transaction, for it was raining heavily and the wind was one to keep the cutter pinned in the Beaulieu River.

  As well as the funds, there was a packet of papers – the latest intelligence from France on matters in the Vendée, which Pearce put aside for later reading. Michael was tasked, once the delivery was complete and the carriers sent on their way, to keep an eye on the cabin while Pearce went ashore and took the hack back to Lymington, he having extracted a sum to cover his expenses so far, money which, added to that he still possessed, would keep Emily during his absence.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was with a less than light step that John Pearce had to leave his paramour and go about his business, for it was very obvious two days later in the morning light, the sky being clear and blue, that the wind, a steady northeasterly instead of the recent rain-bearing westerly, was favourable to his voyage. That they parted with regret was obvious, though he knew what he had set out to do, to show Emily Barclay that a part of marriage most women openly dreaded – thanks to old wives’ tales and perceived wisdom – was the very opposite in reality.

  He left her eating breakfast in their parlour, she wondering how to disport herself for the time John Pearce would be absent – as usual with any sea journey it would be a time of an unknown duration; money she had, he had left her well provided for, but she knew no one and was living under an assumed name, albeit her own given at birth.

  This time the coming aboard HMS Larcher was not to be delayed and the sight of the master and commander of the ship on the hard, signalling for a boat, was enough to get those aboard preparing the vessel to weigh – they too could read a wind – it being the intention to impress him with their alacrity. The decks had been sanded, swabbed and flogged dry at first light, the hands had consumed their breakfast and the crew were ready.

  ‘You may weigh as soon as you wish, Mr Dorling.’

  John Pearce was impressed at the immediacy of what followed; the pawl poles were already in place on the windlass and if the men looked idle they were merely playing a role, as he found out later from Michael O’Hagan, for they moved with speed to their stations to haul the vessel over its anchor and pluck it out of the river mud. Within minutes those same hands had moved to the oars in the ship’s two boats, taking up the strain on the cables already rigged to warp her downriver, aided by the falling tide.

  ‘Impressive,’ Pearce said quietly to Michael.

  ‘Sure, it’s only partly done of love for you, John-boy, more for loathing of the man you replaced.’

  ‘Rackham?’

  ‘Never, it is said, has a man so lived by his name. There are those here who are sure his maladies are their prayers answered or happen that he has gone to commune with Satan.’

  ‘I had a look at his logs.’

  ‘They won’t have read pretty from what has been said.’

  ‘If you were told about him, they must have asked about me?’

  ‘They did, and I told them you are a fair man, if not always a wise one.’

  There was a grin with that to take the sting out of the last opinion, not that Pearce would have disputed Michael’s description; if he was pleased to be seen as fair, he knew himself to often act foolishly – impetuous perhaps rather than stupid – and what surfaced then, as his thoughts turned to that from which he had just parted, was a truth he had suppressed.

  He would struggle to find the means to support Emily if his disputed prize cases were not settled. One was with a mother and widow in straightened circumstances whose husband had been his commander, suffering death immediately in the action in which the prize had been taken and, it had to be ac
knowledged, her claim had justification. The other dispute was very much less so: it lay with a clutch of French religious hypocrites, their lives saved by British tars, quite prepared to lie to achieve their ends, which was possession of a vessel not their own.

  Such thoughts had to be put aside as the tow came round the last bend before the estuary opened out on to the wide Solent. Pearce gave the orders to bring in the boats, which had to be done given there was insufficient crew to both warp the ship and raise sail. Once back aboard, the boats secured, he was again encouraged by the way the hands raced eagerly to their duties. Canvas was quickly set and the falls sheeted home, and with the steady breeze on their larboard beam, HMS Larcher eased out through the deep water channel.

  ‘Mr Dorling, a course to clear the Needles if you please?’

  Once settled on that, John Pearce went below to reread the ship’s log, and remind himself of what Lieutenant Rackham had been up to and what made him so unpopular.

  HMS Semele had exited the Thames Estuary ten days earlier and turned south to weather the South Foreland in a cacophony of noise as those tasked to work the ship up to efficiency, leading hands, officers petty and commissioned, laid into the ineptitude of the majority of a crew who could barely be trusted to haul on a rope without it had to be explained to them the benefit of coordinated stop and go as the best way to apply their body weight.

  For a fall to be laid tidy and coiled was achieved first by instruction, and when that failed, by the application of the starter. Then, once everyone thought a dolt was aware of the pain, the mere flicked threat of the knotted rope tended to be enough. Watching the way the poor souls were harried from pillar to post only reminded Charlie and Rufus of their own initiation into the ways of the navy, and while there was sympathy, there was also the knowledge of practical necessity.

  The ship was out in the English Channel, which was a stretch of water as potentially dangerous as any in creation, with no way of knowing if their journey through the narrows would be one of calm or screaming tempest. The last thing anyone aboard could afford was to be soft, for if it was the latter and the men did not go about their duties with proper application, it was not unknown for vessels to founder even within sight of the home shore.

  That men were sick was a given and it was not confined to landsmen; it affected every grade of those aboard, given the chops of the Channel, with short jabbing waves that created an uneven pitch and roll, were almost designed by the Creator to disturb a man’s stomach. Ralph Barclay had to have a care and keep Devenow close at all times, for he was apt to forget his missing arm and reach out a non-existent hand for purchase.

  The gun crews having been formed, it had been paramount to begin the act of teaching these folk to work the cannon, for battle was the primary task of the ship, sailing being simply to get her to where she could fight, and that extended to the nippers who carried the first cartridges from the master gunner’s prepared stock. The whole thing was done in dumbshow and timed, the order to clear for action going out three times a day regardless of what else was being carried out on deck or below.

  The great guns were freed from their lashings, hauled back for a pretence of loading, every act completed as much as possible as if for real, then hauled up through the opened ports for aiming, elevating and firing, by which time the gun captain, every one an experienced hand, was expected to have his flintlock attached and be standing with his lanyard extended awaiting the order to fire from his divisional officer.

  It began as lumbering chaos but that was only to be expected, that it did not improve at anything like the rate required less so – even if the ratio of landsmen was greater than that which was considered ideal – which led to a spate of injuries to several feet and one badly broken leg. This led to silent reproach from the commanding officer, which did not lessen the impact; he would not be vocal except in private, it being a bad notion to openly undermine the authority of his officers.

  As far as his premier was concerned, gunnery practice aside, Ralph Barclay spent an inordinate amount of time on deck; it was not pleasant to always be under the captain’s basilisk eye and that, in turn, was passed on to those who worked the ship in both verbal and physical abuse. Men were sent aloft even if the prospect of heights terrified them, for there could be no allowing for fear and it was necessary to sort out those who could stand the duty and those who were either rendered useless by dread, or so cack-handed as to pose a danger by their mere presence on the yards.

  Lieutenant Jackson was going hoarse from yelling and the ship’s master was likewise suffering when it came to sail drill. The premier had met Ralph Barclay before when he was a senior midshipman, he and Jackson having served together under Captain – later Admiral – Rodney, but, even if they had corresponded, he had not shared a deck with him for over a dozen years, certainly not since he had been made post, and was not to know that his superior’s presence was caused by anxiety; it looked to Jackson like a lack of confidence in his abilities.

  This was doubly galling given Barclay had written to ask him to serve and Jackson had been deeply grateful for the offer, having spent many years without a ship, his every pleading letter to the Admiralty receiving what most such missives did, a stock reply that there were many officers seeking places and only so many available, so while they were sure he was a deserving case, the Board was sorry to disappoint etc., etc.

  He should have recalled that his captain was a man sensitive to his pride and not much given to trusting his reputation to others till he was sure of them. The reason for his continual presence on the quarterdeck was the fear that something would go horribly wrong and he would not be there to correct it.

  Having only one arm worried him, and not just on the grounds he may fall over; he saw it as a stick with which those who would like to diminish him would beat him and to Ralph Barclay’s mind such people were numerous in the navy. The worst of his worries was that, with such a crew and short-handed with it, they would not be able to work up to any degree of efficiency and would appear like some lubberly dolt when he joined the fleet off Ushant.

  His C.-in-C., Admiral Earl Howe, was a man with whom Ralph Barclay had barely exchanged ten words during the American War and thus an unknown quantity, not that Black Dick was a sparkling conversationalist with anyone. He was known to be taciturn by nature, a hard man to get to know and a very difficult one from whom to extract praise.

  He would be surrounded by captains, most of whom owed their place to his influence, for he had been at one time both the political and naval First Lord, indeed he had held the office when Ralph Barclay was paid off from his pre-war commission due to cuts in the naval monies voted by Pitt’s new government. Such memories and anxieties preyed on nerves already shredded by events in his private life.

  His apprehensions were driven home by an early rigging of the grating, the man fetched up for the offence of abusing an officer in a bout of foul language, one not unknown with landsmen given to reactions which would not raise an eyebrow ashore. Later in the commission Ralph Barclay might have settled for a gagging, but an example had to be made, so it was a round dozen of a bare back turned to red mush; the crew now knew the rules and the consequences of transgression.

  The day the two Pelicans were picked out was considered a bad one by both, even if they were out of the narrows and life was easier on the longer ocean swell. The bully Devenow stuck so close to the captain he was easy to avoid; Gherson was the culprit, for having got his paperwork up to date and identified a few opportunities for profit, he had enjoyed a full night’s rest and was on the poop at first light when the deck was being cleaned.

  His face was a picture of insensitive superiority as he watched the men below, working on their knees, pushing the sanding blocks to take out marks on the planking. It was a task he had once had to endure himself and, where the likes of Charlie and Rufus would have evinced sympathy for those still so occupied, he was wont to sneer at their inability to change their station in life.

/>   They were members of the party flogging dry, moving aft for a second set of swings, the sweepers having cleared the fine sand, seeking to keep their faces hidden. They had seen him clear and were alarmed when a quick glance saw his eyes narrow, then a hand go to cut out the sun, that followed by a half-pointed finger, sharply withdrawn. Then he smiled and it was like that, as described later by Rufus, of a pageant snake he had once seen at the Lichfield Goose Fair, about to swallow a fair maiden whole to the roars of the crowd.

  ‘He’s got us, Charlie, I reckon.’

  ‘Don’t look up, don’t give the sod the satisfaction of seeing concern.’

  ‘What’s the wager he’ll be eyeing the watch lists afore long, and seeking us out at our mess table.’

  ‘If he does there’s nowt we can do, Rufus, and I, for one, will not seek to rile him.’

  ‘Doubt you need to, Charlie, he’s a man who hates long and easy.’

  Gherson sauntered up to their table while they were taking breakfast, having, as Rufus had suspected, found their station in the lists kept in the great cabin. That he did so with a smirk came as no surprise.

  ‘I thought I spied you two.’

  ‘Bound to,’ Charlie replied, flying right in the face of what he had said on deck. ‘All you had to do was to raise your head out of the seat of the privy.’

  ‘Still smells of shit, though,’ Rufus added, grinning at Charlie with a look that showed he was glad to hear the insult.

  ‘And who, for all love, would this fellow be?’ asked Davy, eyeing Gherson up and down.

  ‘An old acquaintance, mate, and one, for your own safety, I would scarce want to introduce you to.’