A Shot Rolling Ship

by David Donachie

  John had to put his head in his hands then, for what Cambacérès was asking was obvious; that while it might be possible, even easy, to identify the severed head, there was no way to match it to the body without some description of his father’s clothing. In his mind he saw him, standing to harangue the crowd, his look defiant, and there was a surge of pride mixed in with his other feelings as he replied.

  ‘A green silk coat, with lighter facings.’

  What Cambacérès said to his servant John Pearce did not hear. The man was gone, and he had another brandy in his hands without knowing how it got there. This time Cambacérès sat opposite him, in silence, just looking at him. ‘I think you are weary, my young friend. I suggest that until my man returns you should lie down.’

  The look John gave him then made him burst out laughing, and it was full of humour, not contrived and oddly appropriate, even to a grieving son. ‘You have a lot to learn, young Monsieur Pearce, about some of your fellow men, but you may rest knowing you will learn nothing today.’

  John Pearce had lain down knowing sleep would be impossible, so it was a surprise when the door opened and a servant bearing food and coffee entered, and he realised that it was nearly dark. He wondered where he was momentarily, until the events of the day came flooding back. He felt the bile rise in his throat, the feelings of hatred for this city, its inhabitants and the men who ruled France. What had his father done but question them? So what if he had taken the place of another, he had still been imprisoned, perhaps he would have lost his head anyway. There would soon be another exodus from Paris when word got round, this time of foreign sympathisers who had come to support the original Revolution.

  ‘The master’s compliments, Monsieur,’ said the servant, who had been patient. ‘He said to tell you that matters have been arranged, and that once you have partaken of this he will be waiting for you in the salon.’

  The brioche and coffee he wolfed down, yet, eager as he was to find out what matters had been arranged, he looked in the mirror to check his appearance, realising that his face was streaked with grime from earlier in the day, the rivulets where he had shed tears, now smudged tracks on his cheeks. There was a jug of water and a basin, so he washed that off and adjusted his garments to try and take out the creases that had come from sleeping fully clothed, wondering why he cared so much.

  Cambacérès, fully and elegantly dressed, was waiting for him. He looked keenly at him then nodded when he saw that, while still grieving, the face was also set with grim determination.

  ‘We have recovered your father’s body, and separated it…’ Now it was the Frenchman’s turn to stop abruptly, for that, in the circumstances, was a malapropism.

  ‘Thank you,’ Pearce replied, to relieve him of his embarrassment.

  ‘I have also arranged for it to be taken to be buried in the cemetery of the church of St Germain de Prés and I have a trap waiting to take us there now.’

  ‘Hallowed ground in a Catholic church. I’m not sure my father would approve.’

  ‘Let him argue with God should he ever get there, or the devil if he does not.’

  The trap was covered and once inside Cambacérès pulled down the blinds to ensure complete privacy. As they rattled across the cobbles, and took the bridge over the Seine, Cambacérès talked of the new committee, from which he had been excluded, which helped to take Pearce’s mind off the reason for being here.

  ‘We go on, because we cannot go back. King Louis had to die, for if he had not then the threat to those things we have gained would be lost. But the Queen, she, with her children and relatives should be sent back to Austria. I daresay in arguing that, I ensured I would not be asked to sit on Danton’s Committee of Public Safety.’

  ‘I am unclear what anyone has gained.’

  ‘Mayhem now, and it may get worse, but France will never again be under the untrammelled power of a King. After all, we have the example of your own country to follow.’

  ‘Where will it end.’

  ‘In peace and prosperity, my young friend, as it always does, but not soon. Like England we will probably have to find a man with a sword, a Cromwell to make the world respect us and leave us alone.’

  ‘England got a King back.’

  ‘Yes, but one subject to the power of the people.’

  ‘My father wanted more.’

  ‘Perhaps one day it will come, like America, but I doubt France is ready for such freedoms yet.’ The trap stopped, and Cambacérès pulled at the blind. ‘We must be discreet, as all the others are.’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘What is said and what is done are not the same thing. This night there will be funerals going on all over France, even many here in Paris, with non-juring priests carrying out the rituals by which the people were raised. It takes more than debates in an assembly and grand ideas to drive out the religion by which we were all raised.’

  ‘The zealots, the enraged ones?’

  ‘Will not come near, lest they find themselves hanging from a rope.’

  The church, which had suffered much from those zealots, was in darkness. Cambacérès led John past the altar and in to the presbytery, where a pinewood coffin stood on two trestles. The trouble the man had gone to was immense, for Adam Pearce lay with his hands folded across his chest, eyes closed, his neck wrapped in a scarf so that it appeared his head was still joined to his body, that he was still whole. His face was tranquil and in repose, waxy pale but somehow natural and if the shock of his decapitation had registered that had been made good by the men Cambacérès had engaged to see to the body. John went close and leaning over, a wave of sadness physically running though his body, kissed his father on the forehead, murmuring, not a prayer, just a goodbye. As the lid was screwed on his mind was full of images of the times he spent in his father’s company, of the travails, the laughs, the perils and the arguments.

  The grave was dug and ready, the body lowered into it by the light of a single lantern. John picked up a handful of earth and threw it on to the coffin lid, took another substantial clod and placed it in his pocket, then turned away as the men engaged to fill it in started shovelling.

  ‘Can I ask you Monsieur Cambacérès, why you have done all this?’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ he replied, looking at the shovelling gravediggers. There was, in his mode of speech, a wistful note, as if he was seeing his own tomb. ‘I hope that, should I share your father’s fate, someone will carry out a similar service for me.’

  ‘My father spoke of you once. He said you were a survivor.’

  ‘Let us hope he is right.’

  ‘Would you see a stone erected so that people will know he lies here?’

  ‘It will take time, but yes.’

  John went back to the graveside, now nearly full, and gave the diggers a coin apiece for their labours, then followed Cambacérès back to the trap.

  ‘You will stay at my house tomorrow. Then I will give you papers that will get you out of France, swiftly and in safety.’

  ‘I thought you had no power?’

  ‘I have the power to forge Danton’s signature, and I still have the seals to make it valid. If I date it yesterday, then the committee on which I served was still in existence.’

  Before retiring, with the promised laisser-passer safe in his coat pocket, Pearce had a servant fetch him quill, ink, wax and paper. He wrote his thanks to Cambacérès and left the note with most of the contents of his purse, to pay for a headstone and to reimburse a man whose kindness could not have come cheap, keeping for himself only what he thought he needed to pay for his passage to get back to England, something that was not a heavy expense, given that he could take a coach and then the cartel that ran, war or no war, between Calais and Dover. In another piece of paper, folded over into a package and sealed, he placed the earth he had taken from the graveside, in his mind’s eye imagining the day he would make that bastard Fouché choke on it. The packet in his pocket, he left the house as dawn broke, without alerting any of t
he occupants.

  He stopped at the Rue Etienne de Gres to collect his other possessions, and there was a moment, toying with the old battered pistol and the means to load it when he considered the idea of immediate revenge. Who to kill, and would one victim be payment enough or end the descent into chaos which Cambacérès saw coming? Even if he succeeded, all he would do would be to share his father’s fate. He wanted vengeance, but it had to be more satisfying than that.

  With no clear idea of how that might be achieved he made his way on foot to the Place de Valenciennes, the square from where the coaches to the North departed, with a last look at the Conciergerie on the way. Cambacérès signature and the florid seal of his now defunct committee got him through the Porte St Denis without difficulty, and John Pearce left Paris with heavy thoughts and much doubt, journeying across the northern part of France with a heart that grew harder with every league.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sunshine and Mediterranean warmth made working up the crew of HMS Brilliant so much easier. Stripped to the waist, they were not encumbered by clothing, and just out from port, still full of fresh food, Ralph Barclay could say they were happy. So was he; with a full complement of proper sailors, no outright troublemakers and a set of officers so eager to please him that all his previous problems seemed like a distant memory. Off his larboard side, sailing on a parallel course, lay HMS Firefly, Davidge Gould obeying his orders to exercise his guns, each vessel supplying a target for the other to aim at in dumb show. He would fire one broadside to keep the men happy, but that would come at the end of the exercise, just before they were piped to dinner and would send them away happy. To fire more meant accounting for his powder and shot, and he was disinclined to do that, since he would not know who would first examine his logs, a superior who approved of and lauded gunnery practice, or one that preferred a deck without the grooves drawn by much used cannon.

  He was without hat or coat, walking the deck with his watch in his hand, cajoling and encouraging his crew as they ran the guns in and out, in between going through a mime of loading. Some were quicker than others, all were quicker than Devenow; despite his strength the huge boneheaded bully was a sore trial on such occasions, being cack-handed and getting in the way of his fellows manhandling the twelve pounder. That he saw himself as a follower to Ralph Barclay, and had hurried to join HMS Brilliant as soon as he heard of his patron’s commission, was a trial that his captain just had to bear.

  He set the men to their task again, noticing that one of the maindeck cannon was run in, reloaded and run out much quicker than the others. He also noticed that one of the crew, and not the man in charge either, was urging on his companions to greater efforts.

  ‘That fellow in your division, Mr Mitcham, he is working with a will.’

  ‘Name of Walker, sir. I believe he declined a chance to go aboard that merchant vessel you sent back to England.’

  ‘One of my London volunteers?’

  Mitcham blinked; he had not been aboard long but he knew just how that section of the crew had ‘volunteered’. ‘Yes, sir. A good man and enthusiastic, I would say, a quick learner who has taken to his new life with gusto. He is working like a real blue-water man, and as you have seen he is keen to persuade the fellows on his gun crew, even his gun captain, that they could do better.’

  ‘Fetch him to me.’

  Ben Walker was close enough to the two men to have heard the entire exchange, but he made no move until he was ordered to do so. He did not like Ralph Barclay and, albeit that things had eased aboard since Lisbon, he still saw him as the tyrant so described by John Pearce. At moments like these he wished he had gone with them, stayed one of the Pelicans, because Ben hated to be out of the crowd, feared that he might be asked why he had chosen to reside in the Liberties of the Savoy from which he and his mates had been pressed. A man did not live in that part of London unless he had a secret. Ben’s fear of being singled out stemmed from the fact that he had a great deal to hide.

  ‘Walker?’

  Ben knuckled his forehead in the regulation manner, while Ralph Barclay saw before him a man of slight but wiry build, with bright bird-like eyes and something keen in his expression, an intimation of a degree of intelligence. It was very much part of his duties to spot such people, to separate them from the dull and hidebound herd who would make up most of a ship’s crew, and see if they could be brought to a higher pitch of usefulness.

  ‘You are rated landsman, at this time. Is that correct?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Mr Mitcham, I know he is a member of your division but, being of the build he is and eager, I wonder if he would not be better employed as a topman.’

  ‘I would say, sir, he would be an asset in that department.’

  Ben Walker was thinking they were talking about him as if he did not exist, and it made him angry.

  ‘In that case, Walker, I shall rate you able, and I will have you report to the Yeoman of the Sheets after we have finished this exercise. Carry on.’

  ‘Obliged, your honour.’

  Ralph Barclay was satisfied; he had done a good thing, rewarded effort and taken a man from one station to another where his skill would expand, and so would his usefulness to the ship. As he walked back to the quarterdeck he spied his marine drummer, a boy called Martin Dent, and noticed the eruption of spots of the lad’s face, that and the fact that he was growing out of his red coat. Time to transfer him as well and, seeing he was nimble, he could likewise go to the tops. No ship wishing to be called a crack frigate could have too many topmen.

  ‘Right, Mr Glaister,’ he called to his new Premier, ‘let us have one more go, and see if we can’t knock a few seconds off our time.’

  ‘You starts on the maincourse, what’ll give you plenty of practise, an’ I can see how you fare.’

  ‘Bugger that,’ said Martin, his voice a breaking croak. ‘I can get to the masthead quicker than any sod aboard.’

  The Yeoman of the Sheets, who had charge of the topmen, just grinned, for he knew the boy well. A sea-brat, Martin Dent had never really had a father, and outside the Navy never really had a home. He was cheeky, a bit of a tearaway, but liked by the crew and it seemed that the broken nose he had got just before they weighed had helped to make him look more like a man. But he needed to be put in his place if he was going to work aloft, where there was no room for skylarking, for that got folk killed.

  ‘Happen you can, Martin, but you’se an unruly bugger, so you will start where I say an’ do as you’re told. An’ you can look after Walker here. If he falls and spreads his guts on the deck, an’ the captain hauls me up, I can blame you.’

  The pair of new topmen eyed each other with deep suspicion. Martin had been part of the press gang that had raided the Pelican. John Pearce had broken his nose that night and the boy, seeking a settling of scores, had come close to maiming him more than once. Worse, in seeking out Pearce he had brought about the death of one of the friends Ben had worked and lived with; to say he did not trust him was to underestimate the dislike he felt. That the lad had behaved better later on, in fact had gone out of his way to be friendly, had not laid the ghost of his first transgression.

  ‘I ain’t no wet nurse,’ Martin growled.

  ‘You are what I tell you you are,’ said the Yeoman, ‘and you stay that till I tell you otherwise. Now get up them shrouds and let me see what you make of them.’

  Both ran for the shrouds, Martin besting Ben by a whisker. He also climbed quicker, but that did not bother Ben, for he watched his every move and swore to himself that soon he would beat that boy, and become the best topman on the ship. He had decided to stay for one reason; he had never found a better place to hide from his past than this. Compared to the Navy, the Liberties of the Savoy did not come close.

  ‘And who, Mr Glaister, first got you into the service?’

  The Premier, golden-haired and blue-eyed, rested his knife and fork, as if the moving of those and answering a question were mutua
lly exclusive actions. That was in the nature of the man; a West Highlands Scot, he was measured of speech, never hurried in his movements, but efficient in a quiet way. Sandy-haired, all skin and bone, with thin high cheekbones, he looked fragile enough to break, but had shown himself to be tougher than he looked, and pleasing to the man who had posed the question who hated to see laxity in the pace of any other; a slow sailor, when Glaister was on deck, could expect a knotted rope on his back.

  ‘Admiral Duncan, sir; though he was, of course, Captain Duncan then. My mother is a first cousin to his wife.’

  ‘Then he has seen to your career in the proper manner?’

  ‘He has shown me nothing but kindness, Captain Barclay. When I passed for Lieutenant, at a board he had the kindness to arrange, he got me a place with Captain Elphinstone. He, in turn, made representation to the captain of HMS Britannia, to get me a berth on the flagship.’

  Damned Scotsmen, thought Ralph Barclay. They’re like a second tribe of Israel, they get everywhere and feather each others nest! ‘Do you still write to Admiral Duncan?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘Then I hope you will mention your new berth.’

  ‘I will praise it, sir, and not only for the worth of the ship and its commander.’ Glaister nodded to Emily Barclay then, ‘but for the added benefit of the delightful company at table.’

  The table had become a daily affair, a proper dinner with at least one of the ship’s officers and mids invited to join them. Farmiloe, not unlike the Premier in looks and colouring, but better built, was at the far end, the space between his mouth and his plate something of a blur. The other officers were below, in the gun room, eating more common fare bulked out with their private stores.