By the Mast Divided (35 page)

‘Pray I have the courage to resist this, when I have power to command it.’

Digby said these words over and over in his mind. He could not speak them, for to do so would diminish him in the eyes of his fellow officers. It was not a thought he had often, when he dreamt of promotion and command. But along with the pleasurable anticipation of privacy, of the space of his own cabin, of the power of decision in battle, lay this: punishment was held by the more enlightened to make a good man bad and a bad man worse. That he would have to order it, if only to contain the endemic drunks who took the flogging as part of the whole, hard bargains who would take a dozen without complaint, did not ease his mind.

This was different. Pearce was no hard case who had spent a life at sea and could walk straight from the cat to his duty. What would it do to him? Would he become a menace like Devenow, a bully who was as lazy as he was vindictive? Henry Digby hoped that he would not, just as he hoped he would, in the future, have the courage with such men to hand out punishment that was deserved, and the wisdom to eschew it when it was not.

Time had stopped for Pearce, for he was now feeling pain. Not what he thought he would feel, but no part of his back had escaped the twenty lashes he had endured. The pressure was kept up by switching the bosun’s mates after the first dozen – Ridley was flogging him now. And while he was no believer in God he prayed for a release from this. His thighs ached from the need to hold up his body, his jaw clamped on that leather strap from the need to deny Barclay the satisfaction of seeing him fold, 
and he could feel the pressure increasing on his wrists as he fought to maintain his upright position.

Ralph Barclay knew he had been humbugged, but he could no more show the fact than say anything. Seething inside, he had to maintain on his face the austere indifference of the commander who could observe pain without emotion, the same pose he would assume in battle when shot, shell and splinters were flying round his ears. But it was hard, made more so by the way he could not prevent himself from glancing in the direction of his wife. He could remain aloof from his own frustration, he could remain remote from the feelings of the men who stood on this deck, but he could not maintain indifference with Emily. That was impossible, even though he knew just how much it weakened him in his own estimation.

‘Twenty-four sir,’ said the Bosun, stepping forward to take the cat ‘o nine tails from Ridley.

Lost in that last thought, Ralph Barclay had to drag himself back to the present, before turning to the surgeon. ‘Very well, cut him down. Mr Lutyens I hand him over to your care. I would see him well and back at his duties with some despatch. Carry on, Mr Roscoe.’

Then he looked at the deck, and the tarpaulin that had been spread to catch the blood. After a normal flogging he would have added the need to clean that up. He did not have to do that now – there wasn’t any.

‘Humbugged,’ he said under his breath, before looking up towards his wife, who probably thought she had witnessed the real thing. ‘I think, Mrs Barclay, that you would be best off the deck, as it is about to be cleaned.’

As Emily obliged, without looking at him, he added, ‘Mr Roscoe, send in the cutter to bring off Mr Collins.’

Pearce was not cut down, he was untied, and, aware that he was the object of much scrutiny he managed to walk to the companionway, stiff but upright, Ridley and Costello at either side holding him as if he was on the point of collapse. But Pearce was far from that, being released had restored his own faith in his ability to walk away from what had happened on his own two legs. Behind him he heard the orders given that got the men back to their duties, those on deck resuming the tasks they had been engaged in before the flogging, the watch off duty trailing down to the maindeck. Again the able and ordinary seamen who had either ignored or guyed him the past few days were looking at him directly with sympathy – one or two even smiled as he went further down to the surgeon’s quarters on the orlop.

‘Your shirt, mate,’ said Ridley. Then he grinned. ‘I should think old Barclay is seething by now, you not bein’ at all cut.’

‘No blood?’ asked Pearce, gingerly moving his shoulders, not far, for to do so brought a stinging sensation.

‘None, though your back be as red as a monkey’s arse.’

‘We laid into you hard, mind,’ said Costello. ‘Had to put up a show.’

Pearce eased himself on to a chest, and he sat there hunched over. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You wouldn’t, you being such a damned lubber,’ sneered Ridley, ‘and, I will add, as useless aboard ship as a whore without a hole.’

‘If you’d been caught off Deal,’ Costello added, ‘I doubt you’d be talking now, nor for a good week after.’

Pearce looked at the pair, both smiling, the quizzical expression on his face plain evidence that he was still confused. Ridley sat opposite him, and hunched forward, his voice quiet. ‘Not all cat o’ nine tails come the same, and, since it be a new one for each man to punish, it depends on who’s making ’em as to how much damage they do.’

‘Have you got it now?’ asked Costello.

‘I think so,’ Pearce replied, in a far from convincing tone.

‘Ain’t got a clue, Ridley,’ Costello responded. ‘Not a bloody inkling has he.’

‘We, or the Bosun hisself, makes up the cat,’ said Ridley, earnestly,
‘a new one for each flogging. And if’n we want to we can choose fresh hemp to make it, or go for a harder rope.’

‘And we can soak it an’ dry it,’ added Costello, ‘till it gets real nippy, and even treat it with a touch of pitch if we like. The one that does the damage is the thieves’ cat, ’cause that has knots in the tails, and is made for any grass-combing bugger who steals from his mates and is caught.’

‘What you just had,’ Ridley added, ‘was made special from hemp, and soft. Mind we blacked it up a bit to make it look like the proper article.’

‘It still hurt,’ Pearce protested. He nearly added something about the blow to his pride, but held back – these fellows would not care a hoot about that.

‘That ain’t pain, mate,’ Ridley scoffed. ‘Even a common cat would have had you hanging by the thumbs. But the feeling aboard was that old Barclay was coming it a bit high, that he can’t have his missus parading around the deck, her bein’ as pretty as she be, without she catches the odd eye, and bein’ she’s sociable, will be on the receiving end of the odd comment. That if he is goin’ to flog for that, then there is not a man aboard who won’t feel the gratin’ on his cheek at some time this commission.’

Costello’s voice had a lot of satisfaction in it. ‘That was our way of telling him, carry on, mate, but it won’t strike no fear.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Lutyens, appearing in the doorway.

Ridley was on his feet in a flash. ‘Now don’t you go spreading that round the wardroom, Mr Lutyens.’

The surgeon put his head to one side, not responding to Ridley’s worried expression. ‘You did not say so, Ridley, but you implied that the captain would have seen through your ruse?’

‘He would have, your honour, lest he be blind.’

‘Then I imagine that everyone in the wardroom will have observed the same.’

‘Some will, some are too callow,’ said Costello. ‘But if you say ’owt it will become a topic. If that happens it will get to Barclay’s ears at some point and he will have to come out and do something.’

‘At a cost to all and sundry,’ added Ridley.

Lutyens produced a quite singular smile. ‘You can scarce comprehend how much pleasure silence will give me, as I try to discern who has made the link and who has not. Nothing affords as much gratification as watching grown men sniff round a commonality that no one may voice. Now, if you will be so good as to leave me with my patient.’

Ridley asked his questions in a fading voice as they made their way 
out. ‘Is that bugger odd, Costello, or is it just me?’

‘No, mate, he’s as daft as a brush, and as creepy as a spider.’

Lutyens smiled at Pearce. ‘I see the men lack certain comprehensions.’

‘I hazard,’ Pearce replied, ‘that you might find them wiser than you think.’

‘I do hope so. Now please lie down so that I can examine your back. Ah! Very red indeed, and,’ as Pearce winced, ‘sore to the touch. I fear we have just observed a barbaric ritual, though there was an early Greek philosopher who held that humans had to be driven to goodness like a donkey to the plough.’

‘Heraclitus,’ Pearce replied, without thinking.

Lutyens’ voice rose in surprise. ‘You know the philosophers?’

‘No.’

Pearce was cursing himself for his lapse, especially with one as watchful as this surgeon. If he had had a fractured education, with little formal schooling, he had learnt much from a father who, having educated himself, took endless pains to teach his only son. John Pearce might know little formal Greek or Latin, but he had discussed a great deal of philosophy as Adam Pearce searched endlessly for the key to unlock the means to improve the lot of his fellow humans. Heraclitus was one of the villains of philosophical history, a misanthrope who had shown scant regard for his fellow man, cruel even by the standards of Ancient Greece. But whatever he knew and didn’t know was not something to share with this man, who was closer to authority than he was to those before the mast.

Lutyens’ voice bore within it a deep degree of irony. ‘You know nothing of philosophy yet name one of the more obscure in the pantheon. If you know of Heraclitus, you must also know of Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. I fancy I am not being told the truth, John Pearce.’

His patient shot him a look, and the surgeon responded by saying. ‘Your true name is no mystery on any part of the ship now.’ He followed that with a shout for some fresh water. ‘For I need,’ as he said to his patient, ‘to soak some dried comfrey that I will apply to your back. Do you know anything of medicinal herbs, Pearce?’ That was followed by a grunt, as he turned to open another chest, his voice going hollow as he knelt down to search through it. ‘And would you tell me if you did? You would probably gabble the Latin tag for Poison Ivy then deny you had any knowledge of what you just said.’

‘I don’t know anything,’ Pearce insisted. 

Lutyens’ voice took on an injured tone. ‘It annoys me that you should take such an attitude.’

‘I can’t imagine why.’

‘It may surprise you to know that I have an abiding interest in my fellow-man.’

Pearce wanted to say that there was little shock in that statement; the way he crept about the ship, popping up in all sorts of odd places, was unnerving, only marginally less so than the cold way he seemed to examine anyone who caught his eye. Suddenly Lutyens’ fish-like face was right in front of Pearce’s, the surgeon squatting to speak to him.

‘And I have watched you more than most, as being part of a section of the crew in which I have an especially deep curiosity. You are a pressed man, taken against your will, and you are no sailor.’

‘I think I know that.’

‘Shall I tell you what I have observed, Pearce?’

It was painful to shrug, better to stay still, so Pearce’s pretence at an indifferent response had to be made with his eyebrows.

‘Water, your honour,’ said a voice.

‘Put it down and ask the sail maker if either he or one of his mates will attend upon me.’ The wooden bucket was right before Pearce’s eyes as Lutyens stood up, and he watched the surgeon dunk into it a large handful of dry, dark green leaves, pressing them down until they were submerged, his voice carrying on in that hurt tone.

‘What I have observed?’ Lutyens asked himself. ‘I will tell you, shall I, about your mess table. O’Hagan, the Irishman, I like, for he is a genial soul when not being practised upon and the fact that he has beaten the resident bully is to be applauded. The Taverner fellow I would be careful to trust, unlike Gherson who I would not trust at all. That name inclines me to believe he is of Huguenot stock, you know, and slimy in the extreme.’

The need to defend him as a messmate was automatic, and given what he truly thought of the man, quite convincing. ‘You damn him for his antecedents? Does merely being a descendant of a French Protestant who fled a Catholic massacre make him slimy? You might as well accuse King Louis and say he deserved to lose his head for it.’

Lutyens positively purred, like a man who had sprung a trap. ‘I wonder how many common seamen could conjure up a memory of St Bartholomew’s Night?’

Pearce had exposed himself again and he knew it. ‘Anyone who has knowledge of their religion.’ 

‘No, John Pearce, it is too long past. That massacre took place two hundred and fifty years ago, and even a pious religious memory would scarce include a knowledge of the Bourbon bloodline.’

‘Simpson, sailmaker’s mate, your honour. I was sent for.’

Pearce turned his head, even though to do so stretched the skin on his back. Simpson looked down at him and winked, another man who would have ignored him before the flogging.

‘Ah yes,’ Lutyens cried. ‘I require you to make me up a sort of apron, from very light canvas, one that fits on the back not the front of the person wearing it.’

‘The back,’ the sailmaker enquired, in a voice that implied, ‘I have been asked for some daft things in my time, but…’

‘Yes,’ Lutyens insisted, ‘it will need ties down the side, shall we venture to be nautical and call them reefs, the whole to act as a compress to keep in place what I am going to apply to this fellow’s back.’

‘Like a poultice, you mean, your honour?’

‘The very word, my man! How astoundingly apt. It would aid the efficacy of the thing if it was impermeable.’

‘What’s that mean?’ asked Simpson

‘Proof against water.’

‘I could lard it with some slush from the cook,’ the fellow replied. ‘Can I say you will pay the price?’

‘Make it so, Mr Simpson,’ said Lutyens in a happy tone. ‘A
double-reefed
affair, in the nautical vernacular, an invention which will no doubt be handed down to grateful posterity as a Lutyens.’

The sailmaker responded in a jocose tone of voice. ‘Since I be cutting and sowing the bugger, your honour, should it not be termed a Simpson?’ Lutyens barked a laugh, and Simpson added, ‘Be with you in half a glass, your honour.’

‘I would not have had to explain impermeable to you, John Pearce, would I now? Again you are silent but you fail to realise that from the very first, to me, you were singular, made so by the look in your eye.’

‘That was hatred.’

‘Hardly misplaced,’ the surgeon replied in a softer, almost regretful tone. ‘And I daresay you see me as an integral part of the abusive system. You do not reply to that, I observe, so I can take that as a yes.’

It wasn’t, but neither could Pearce honestly say no. To him all authority was suspect, even Lieutenant Digby, who had been as kindly as his fellow officers were harsh. Was he wrong about Lutyens? The exchange with Simpson had been as that between two shipmates who 
knew each other well. The sailmaker had evinced no fear of the surgeon as a superior being.

‘Perhaps I should not treat you,’ the surgeon sighed. ‘Perhaps in pain you would be a man less troublesome, for I mean to ask you some questions.’

‘Not much point, Mr Lutyens, in asking of a man who knows nothing.’

Lutyens knelt down again to look him in the eye. ‘You know that Captain Barclay only has licence to press men bred to the sea.’

Pearce wished he was upright, being tall enough to command the surgeon, perhaps to impose himself, for this talk was heading in an uncomfortable direction. ‘Knowing that made no odds.’

‘You know,’ Lutyens insisted, ‘that there are two ways to avoid even a press as illegal as the one that took you up. The first is an exemption from the Admiralty.’

‘Which I do not possess.’

‘Prevarication, sir,’ Lutyens spluttered, ‘and damned annoying for being so! The second reason, as you equally well know, is to claim that you are a gentleman and no seaman. How do you establish that you are such? Not by the contents of your purse but by the manner of your speech and the depth of your connections. No captain, even one as foolish as Barclay, would take up and hold an educated man, for to do so would see him in the dock himself as soon as a properly written letter arrived in the right quarter, one that would force the naval powers to act.’

A slow blink had to do service for the absence of a shrug. Pearce was thinking of his letter, hopefully winging its way to old John Wilkes, to set off a bomb under Barclay and his arrogance.

‘You can write,’ Lutyens continued, ‘and before you deny it the purser told me that your first request to him once he had issued you with your slops was for a quill, wax, ink and paper. What for? Not to make lists, so I surmise you wrote a letter. The question is, did you manage to get such a letter off the ship?’

Lutyens gave him a chance to respond, a chance that Pearce declined to take.

‘Had you made a protest to Barclay and established your status you would not be here now. But you did not – you refused even to give your proper name when you first came aboard and you would still be called John Truculence if one of your fellow pressed men had not let slip the name Pearce. You were singular from the very first; you show a defiance to the officers and the trained seamen that comes, to my mind, not from temper but from a feeling of superiority. You casually allude to Heraclitus 
and demonstrate that not only do you know that Henry of Navarre was Protestant but that he was the first Bourbon King of France and ancestor to the late King Louis. So I am wondering, John Pearce, why you do not wish to use that name, just as I am wondering what it is that prevents you from bearding Captain Barclay and establishing that for him to keep you aboard is to risk his whole career.’