Blown Off Course

by David Donachie

  Cornelius Gherson would have been less sanguine about where he stood and the thoughts he was reliving had he read the mind of Benjamin Druce, who knew that a man he thought long departed this world, was alive, well and parading around the streets of Westminster. If Gherson had seen in the prize agent’s enquiries a desire to establish his character, Druce had been more concerned to fix his true identity, not that he had been in much doubt. His wife’s brother had come to him previously in some distress and unsure what to do about his young wife’s infidelity when he discovered what was going on.

  A man of the world, Druce was no stranger himself to the more refined form of brothel. He had counselled against any act which might bring about disgrace to the family, such as exposing Catherine Carruthers – the ripples of such revelations could spread to unforeseen places. The cause of the problem lay with the young swine who had seduced her – remove that pestilence and the boil would be lanced, and given he dealt with the navy, and collected bounties on behalf of Impress Service officers, the finding of the men to do the deed required presented a minor problem.

  He had considered telling his brother-in-law of Gherson’s re-emergence, but what had previously been a cost-free bit of aid would not fall into the same category now: if no commitments had been made in their conversations, there had been a very clear understanding of where advantage lay for both parties, and in the information Druce held, he had a very useful lever on Barclay’s clerk, one that might produce great future benefits. The man would be going to sea soon, so matters were better left fallow.

  Sat once more in the Pelican Tavern, on his now-daily visit, John Pearce ruminated on his prospects, which did not look brilliant given the lack of a word from Pitt. Mind, he was accustomed to that – his fortunes seemed to be, and had been for a very long time, in a state of flux. He was aware that not being in the true sense a naval officer hampered him greatly – had he taken the normal route from midshipman to his present rank, he would very likely have served with dozens of people and met hundreds more, for the navy was a very social organisation: no two ships could be anchored in sight of each other without invitations flying across the intervening water.

  With such contacts it might have been possible to discreetly seek news of Michael, Charlie and Rufus, without in any way alerting those he did not want to, certainly in Portsmouth, which must act as the natural headquarters of the Impress Service. Not being a member of some kind of London club, places to which provincial news-sheets might be sent, left him in ignorance of any hue and cry, plus descriptions, which the local chronicles would publish.

  Then there was money, that perennial bugbear, which he was going through at a rate and doing so without any certain knowledge that more would be forthcoming: he had heard enough tales not to enjoy any certainty that matters would proceed smoothly. Thankfully, his captures were legitimate, a warship and an empty merchantman. Taking cargo vessels, especially neutrals, was fraught with peril, indeed, many a naval officer had found their supposed captures declared illegal, then faced the need to make the kind of reparations to the owners that induced bankruptcy.

  From his coat pocket he extracted and looked at Arthur Winston’s card – he had looked out for him in person but to no avail. The fellow did his business in the city, which was only to be expected, his place of work being not far off, hard by Blackfriars Bridge. Tempted as he was to call, he had to put it aside, given nothing could be done until he knew the whereabouts of his companions. Lucknor had sent the proposed letters off to the Mediterranean, carefully worded missives, which asked questions and invited replies that would in no way incriminate the correspondent.

  That, of course, did not apply to Toby Burns: he had been informed of what he faced if he continued to lie.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The further inland the Pelicans progressed, the safer they felt and, if they looked odd on a rainless day to be wearing loose-fitting, foul-weather tarpaulins, then it seemed not to trouble any soul they came across – mostly farm labour types who, if they looked at them with some misgivings, displayed only the natural reaction of any bumpkin to a strange face or a soul that might steal their labour and thus the bread from their mouths. They walked the said footpaths through fields and over stiles that had been in place for centuries, kept between one house of worship and another. Many of the churches, being part of multiple benefices served by a single vicar, were closed – those with open doors they avoided – though the graveyards provided a place to rest weary limbs.

  Charlie Taverner, if you left out being pressed into the navy, had never been out of London, so much had to be explained to him: every village was a parish, every parish had a church and, given there would have been at least a curate in olden times, hard by that would be a decent dwelling, and often the whole would be contained in the grounds of a substantial manor house, owned by some local worthy, who both lorded it over the neighbourhood and held the right to choose the divine who said Mass in what they saw as their private chapel, into which they would allow their tenants and workers for Sunday service.

  Very occasionally they would skirt round one of the truly great residences, huge mansions of red brick and grey stone, with stable blocks and coach houses attached, deer in the park and guards on the dovecotes. The homes of magnates, these places often sat in their own shallow valley, served by a tower set on a nearby high point, the sure indication of its presence long before the house itself came into view, with a circulating donkey on the ground floor, plodding wearily, drawing up from the well to a cistern so high every room in these near palaces could be supplied with running water. When encountered, they crossed any part they were obliged to with a weather eye kept out for stewards and gamekeepers, for the owners of such stately piles were jealous of their possessions, which extended beyond the sheep and cattle in their fields to the game in their woodlands as well as the fertiliser in those dovecotes.

  If they got close enough there would be farm buildings as well, some soundly built houses for the higher estate workers. There were cottages too, these for the people who tilled the soil and tended the livestock, and it was telling that Charlie, who rarely gave an impression of caring for another living soul, was incensed by the tumbledown and damp nature of the contrast when he spotted the many that were so badly maintained as to be near-uninhabitable.

  ‘You would be a leveller, Charlie?’

  Michael asked this as they passed a row of low stone buildings, with unpainted, broken-down doors, gaps where there might be windows, great holes in the roof thatch, that had got Charlie going: they were also being examined by a dozen near-naked children, covered in farmyard filth, who looked, with their stick-like legs and pot bellies, in great need of nourishment, while behind them lay a field full of fat sheep and beyond that another showing the first signs of growing wheat.

  ‘I’m beginning to see the sense of what Pearce’s old pa was about, mate,’ Charlie opined, ‘there bein’ those who has plenty and them that has nowt, though I confess I have seen worse in my own backyard than those poor mites we just passed.’

  ‘Then, Holy Mother of God, don’t cross to Ireland, Charlie, for there are sights there that will make you weep.’

  ‘Is it time to stop yet, Michael?’ Rufus asked. ‘Being at sea does not do much for your walking legs.’

  ‘We’re on an estate, Rufus. We will be chased off, maybe with a fowling piece, if we seek shelter here. We have to keep going until we are well away from any buildings and further yet if the woods we seek border a village.’

  That had already been explained: villagers poached, which meant that the lords of the manor, or the farmers who tenanted them, employed men to guard their game down to the last grey rabbit or fat pigeon, and, given poachers could be vicious – they were likely to be doing the deed for need rather than pleasure – those fellows were often armed.

  ‘I still say you should load those pistols, Michael.’

  There was an undertone in that: Charlie had suggested not only loading th
em but also sharing and Michael had refused both. ‘No, Charlie, for without a ball and powder they can’t be a threat; while loaded, given we are novices in the use of them, they could see us hung.’

  Walking on they came to a long, straight roadway wide enough to take a coach and, given the numerous ruts, it looked well used. With the sun on the dip and the road going in the direction they sought, with no one in sight and ample woodland cover on either side, it made sense to use it to make some easy mileage, though they stayed close to the forest edge. Twice they had to take deeper shelter, alerted by distant sounds, once for a carriage, the second time for a lone horseman with big saddlebags on what looked like a shire horse, so large was the animal in the flank, but given the fact that it was a good roadway there was surprisingly little traffic, which meant they were covering a lot of ground with minimal effort. It was Rufus who first alerted them to the bridge; he had spotted the slight hump in the road before the others and it looked as if the road continued straight beyond it and, more importantly, there was no sign of any dwellings nearby.

  ‘Maybe we should stop now,’ the youngster said, not without a certain note of pleading in his voice: if the road was easier than field, hedgerow and furrow, he was still wilting.

  Michael looked up at the sky to make a judgement, though there was little to see given the woods hemmed them in. The forest either side was not of the thick kind, the trees were various, with numerous bushes jostling for growth and the ground carpeted with leaf mould, fallen branches and the occasional rotting trunk, seemingly extensive and perfect for their needs, as had already been proved when they got out of sight quickly and easily.

  ‘Looks the same t’other side, Rufus, and the time it will take to get over the bridge is of no consequence. We’ll find a place to rest then.’

  Walking on, they saw the stone trough on their side, a place for horses to drink and maybe a spot where someone was employed to keep it topped up, which induced caution, though there was no indication of a soul about and the birds seemed lively in their singing. Above the trough, when they came close enough to see it, a fresh-looking poster had been tacked onto a tree and it was only natural to look at it.

  ‘Holy Christ!’ Michael swore.

  The drawing was not him absolutely, and he struggled with all the words excepting Irishman, which he knew only too well, while the written numbers the trio could, between them, decipher, but it did not take much in the way of sense to ask how many men of Ireland, of well over six foot in height and with girth to match, set over a square head bearing a mass of black curls, wearing ill-fitting clothing that was close enough to canvas, could be found walking the roads in these parts.

  ‘Theft and assault,’ said Charlie, those being words he knew only too well.

  Rufus was silly enough to add what he could read, albeit he traced it with his finger. ‘Is that a twenty shillings reward?’

  ‘Enough to keep a yokel for a year,’ Charlie answered.

  Michael was not listening: he was already heading for the bridge and the woods on the other side. There would be no easy progress now!

  HMS Semele was a mess, but that was only to be expected: a good half of her rotten timbers had been ripped out and replaced with fresh wood, as had her entire deck planking. Floating on the inner reaches of the River Medway now, just out of dry dock, she sat very high in the water, showing a great deal of her copper and Ralph Barclay was just in time to see her innards right down to the keel before they began to add ballast, and was thus happy to know that the hull looked very sound. Even with all his years at sea, he had never been in a ship that did not stink of bilge and rot, so it was a pleasant and unusual feeling to tour one which smelt only of freshly hewn wood and the caulking tar.

  ‘English oak in the main, sir,’ said the assistant shipwright, who had been deputed by the dockyard supervisor to show him around, trailed by a rather silent carpenter. ‘But with so much construction under way there is some Holstein timber and the knees are from the Adriatic.’

  The visitor nodded with understanding: every dockyard in the country was working flat-out to build new warships and there was only so much suitable oak growing in English forests, never, indeed enough, while he was also aware of how many tens of years a tree must be given before it could be of any use for shipbuilding. Added to that, when it came to shaped pieces of wood like the riders, as well as hanging and transom knees, single pieces of wood that had to be whole and the correct shape – so-called compass timber – Italy seemed the most fecund source. ‘Nothing much grows straight south of the Alps’ was an old naval joke.

  His greatest pleasure was to enter the area of the great cabin and admire the space – free of any bulkheads it seemed enormous, but already he was imagining the furniture and carpets with which he would make it habitable, this while Devenow, who had come with him, inspected the pantry. There was a pang then for Ralph Barclay and it was not just the idea of Devenow cooking and serving his food: the furnishing of his cabin should be a discussion between him and his wife, not that he wanted his quarters to look anything but manly, but women had a way with decoration, an eye for the little things which he knew he lacked.

  ‘When will she be ready for sea?’

  ‘Once the ballast is in, sir, she will be ready to take in her stores, much of which are those that were stripped out and warehoused when she went into dock.’

  ‘The rest?’

  The reply had a certain sour note. ‘Sir Charles Middleton’s innovations mean they are already allocated, sir. There will be no delay once an officer is commissioned to command her.’

  ‘I sense a degree of disapproval.’

  ‘And you are not mistaken, Captain Barclay. We have enough trouble with pilfering in the dockyard without having warehouses full of everything a ship requires sitting and waiting to be lifted by the thieving mitts of the population of Chatham. The walls of the dockyard require to be patrolled hourly and the gates watched in case they succumb to bribery. The people on the Navy Board do not understand the difficulties.’

  Middleton’s ‘innovations’, as the fellow called them, had been to create a way to ensure that every ship laid up in ordinary – most of the fleet in peacetime – could be quickly got to sea in the event of war. In past alarms months had gone by while stores were purchased and delivered, the ships sitting idle for want of such obvious things as the means to feed the crew. As comptroller of the Navy Board, Sir Charles had bought everything the fleet required in advance of need and had them tagged, warehoused and ready: spars, sails, barrels of pork, beef and peas, cables, rope for rigging, turpentine, nails, vinegar for cleaning, barrels of powder – just a few of the thousands of items needed to get a ship to sea in condition to take on the enemy.

  The discussions that followed for Ralph Barclay, with the rest of the warrants, were entirely satisfactory; he had under his feet as fine a seventy-four-gun ship as the navy possessed, albeit her guns were not yet loaded. All he needed now was a decent set of officers and a crew. For the former, his table back at Brown’s Hotel was full of requests for a place: word got round quickly in the service of his possible success and he seemed to have had submissions from every unemployed lieutenant in creation. For the latter, he would need to get busy: he would be provided with the basis of a crew, but HMS Semele required over six hundred souls to sail and fight. It was to be hoped the Impress Service was up to the task of finding them, for anyone who had a mind to volunteer had long since taken the bounty.

  Once back in London, he sent a letter to the Admiralty, which underlined his good health, as well as his desire to be commissioned into HMS Semele, and another, more obsequious, to the Duke of Portland requesting that he use his influence to secure the appointment. Then, in strong anticipation that he would soon have his ship, he began to riffle through the pile of applications. Word had also gone out regarding midshipmen, so he had letters from Somerset to attend to – the usual number from clergymen keen to find a place for their sons – as well as communica
tions from old shipmates, many no longer serving, asking that their offspring be considered; if he did not know most of the lieutenants, he could check for some notion of their competence. With the youngsters needed to fill his midshipmen’s berth, a captain was never sure what he was going to get. Had he not been landed with Toby Burns on his last commission!

  That Michael was thrown by that poster could not be in doubt, and in discussing it with his shipmates, after a fitful night’s sleep, it soon became obvious that the greater distance they could put between them and the deed the better. Hitherto, if it had not been dilatory, their progress had not been rushed, but that needed to change, which in turn increased the risk of arousing suspicion. Charlie and Rufus killed off at once the idea that they might split up: such a notion did little to lessen the risk to them while very much increasing it for Michael, though the Irishman wondered if their opinion was as much generated by fear as sympathy – if it came to a fight to get clear of trouble, then he was their best hope.

  Light and darkness told them they had been four days on the road, but that gave them no idea of how far they had travelled and how much further they still had to go. The weather, which had held good for that time and made at least their morning point of travel an easy decision, suddenly changed and the rain began to fall steadily and continually from a sky full of heavy clouds, which made direction-finding that bit more uncertain.