By the Mast Divided (37 page)

‘I would think it likely.’

‘Then, sir, does that not, in fact, present the best means of recapture?’

Barclay waved an impatient arm across the table. ‘Only if we could 
take and hold such a position, Mr Roscoe! That means taking on the town as well as the crew of the privateer, and quite possibly troops from the interior. I doubt we have the number to achieve that and we certainly do not have the time. No, it must be a diversion only, though I intend you should take with you the means to destroy the position, gunpowder to blast down the walls and spikes for the cannon. It would be an advantage to our nation to make it untenable for future use.’

‘Then would I be allowed to state my desire to lead the main assault, sir, that is the boat attack?’

‘Your zeal will be noted,’ Barclay said, ‘but I have given myself that duty.’

Roscoe gave him a cold look. It was Gould and
Firefly
all over again. Barclay knew he was taking to himself a duty that should have gone to his Premier. Ship’s captains generally stayed aboard and sent in an assault – giving their inferior officers a chance at distinction – they did not, themselves, lead them. But then not all faced possible disgrace, as did he.

‘All three boats will act in unison, and we will only part company once we are inside the arms of the estuary. Mr Collins has given half an hour before midnight as the hour of high tide. Your assault, Mr Roscoe, begins at midnight and provides the signal for mine. I intend to cut the ship’s cables and drift out of the anchorage on a falling tide.’

There were nods of agreement. The wind had shifted throughout the day, becoming more northerly and breaking up the cloud cover, so the possibility existed that it would be foul for an exit.

‘Mr Farmiloe will accompany me, Mr Craddock as senior midshipman to second you Mr Roscoe, Mr Burns to second Mr Thrale.’

It was annoying the way the boy Burns blanched at that; he almost seemed to shiver with dread, which was unbecoming for one related to him by marriage.

‘Mr Digby, you will stay aboard and command the ship with the assistance of Mr Collins. You will keep a sharp lookout for either ship coming out. If there is no lantern on either at the foremast they are still in the possession of the enemy and you may, as you see fit, engage them. Now I suggest we commit what the master has noted to memory, for we will begin and end this action in darkness.’

None present could be in any doubt that it was a desperate throw, but even if what they were about had been caused by their captain’s recklessness they were keen to go in. What it presented to these officers and the mids who would accompany them was priceless in a world with 
too many applicants chasing too few berths – any chance for glory was also a chance for promotion. Succeed, and every man would be lauded, fail and only Barclay would suffer ignominy.

Pearce slept throughout the day, a blissful eight continuous hours, his back coated with the soothing comfrey, for once not damned by the need to man his watch. Lutyens let him be, more taken with the paradox he was witnessing amongst the crew, one he alluded to when Pearce awoke, but only after he had enquired about his condition.

The patient eased his back, feeling the skin still tight, itching rather than stinging, and beneath the skin bones that carried a bearable ache. And he felt refreshed, almost like a different person, more alert after a slumber that went beyond the usual three and a half hours.

‘I can scarce credit that I was at that grating, let alone that it is only half a day past.’

‘Old remedies, Pearce,’ Lutyens insisted, ‘they never fail. Comfrey was known to the ancient world as a palliative, yet few medical men use it now. But go to the country and you will find the common village healer swears by it. Laudanum, too, comes from a natural source, a variety of poppy. I cannot think why there is such a desire in medicinal circles for innovation when we have to hand so many well-tried cures.’

Pearce was tempted to disagree but Lutyens had moved on to discuss the forthcoming attempt to cut out the Indiaman, openly perplexed by the attitude of the crew.

‘I cannot fathom it, Pearce,’ eyes alight as he hooted at the expression. ‘Salty is it not?’ Then he adopted a more serious tone. ‘It is plain that the crew are indifferent to Captain Barclay – there is no air of him having inspired them to attempt exemplary deeds. Yet what do I witness as preparations go ahead for this adventure: a heightened state, a glow in the eyes of many, impatience! They shake their heads at what has happened so far,’ the voice dropped to a conspiratorial tone, ‘I do believe they think Barclay a fool to have been so guyed by the Frenchman, even more of a fool to increase the stakes to try and win all on a throw. Yet they are afire to fight.’

Pearce wondered if he should reply, just as he wondered why this surgeon wished to engage him in conversation on such a topic. His recollection of the time since he had entered this sickbay was vague, but he had a nagging suspicion that he had talked a great deal, that he might have told Lutyens more about himself than he wished.

‘Come, John Pearce, you must, for all love, have an opinion.’

‘There are those who love nothing more than a scrap.’

Lutyens bowed, leaning forward towards his seated patient, his voice insistent.

‘Are you one of them, Pearce?’

‘I will fight if I have a reason to do so, but I have always thought it foolish to seek one out.’

‘My point! Surely a man must have a motive to wish to fight, to face death or disfigurement, especially for a cause that will not improve his life one jot. Or is the reasoning and need of another, or some notion of patriotism, sufficient?’

‘Perhaps it is the ship,’ Pearce said, for he had observed that the sailors aboard talked of it fondly. ‘They have a collective love of this vessel, of its reputation…’

‘I hazard, not enough,’ Lutyens interrupted, with an impatient scowl, which annoyed Pearce enough to produce a sharp response.

‘…Or perhaps the life they lead is so dire in its prospect that anything, including their own mortality, is forfeit in the name of excitement or some false notion that they are on the verge of a wealth that will bring them ease and comfort. Narrow horizons make men prey to all sorts of designs, and they usually find whatever sacrifice they endure is more for the benefit of another than themselves.’

‘That, I suspect, is precisely what Adam Pearce would say?’

Tempted to say, ‘Who?’ Pearce was stopped by the knowing look in the surgeon’s eye, more so when he added, ‘Laudanum eases more than pain.’

‘I have seen what it does, Mr Lutyens,’ Pearce said guardedly, and indeed having listened to his father’s ramblings under the influence of the opiate, he knew he might have performed likewise. ‘But I would be cautious about any revelations made. They are more likely to be invention than fact.’

Lutyens was amused. ‘Indeed?’

‘Am I free to go?’

‘You are if you can stand and walk.’

Pearce felt a deeper ache in his back as he pulled himself to his feet, yet felt better for being upright and so much taller than Lutyens. Sitting, he had considered himself at the man’s mercy. Looking down on him he felt less so.

‘I do agree with you,’ Lutyens purred, ‘regarding revelations made under the influence of laudanum. To pass them on would be very unwise. Besides, it is no one else’s business, is it?’

A slight nod was all Pearce would allow himself.

‘You ain’t never seen a man hacked about, have you lad?’ said Molly, with a heavy grimace. ‘Horrible it be, truly horrible.’

‘Blood everywhere,’ added his messmate, Foley, ‘with great dark gashes that the flies love to feed on. And the eyes, dead, like bits of glass.’

‘Cannon shot is worse, mind,’ Molly continued, ‘cut a man in half that will. Why I’ve seen men carried below in two bits, top bit screaming and the legs still twitching ten feet away on the deck.’

‘Carried below,’ cried Foley, ‘though they were scarce to last. Tossed them through a gunport then, we did, for there’s no ceremony in the midst of a sea fight. In warm water too, so it weren’t no burial they had but the makings of a meal for the sharks. Makes you wonder if it be part of God’s purpose, one of his creatures gifting sustenance to another.’

‘Leastways we won’t have splinters, Foley,’ said Molly, gravely, ‘’cause if there’s ’owt to turn your stomach it be a shard of wood slicing through flesh like a butcher’s hatchet.’

Cornelius Gherson had been terrified before sitting down but the words he was listening to made him shake even more. Selected with the rest of Number Twelve Mess to go ashore, Pearce excepted, he was searching desperately for a way out, because all he could envisage in his imagination was his body riddled with musket balls, pierced by endless pikes, slashed by dozens of cutlasses, or torn to shreds by a cannon shot. The thought that Pearce could escape such a fate merely by being the victim of a flogging made him furious. His dilemma was made doubly hard by the need to appear ardent, for all around him the crew of
Brilliant
was engaged in bloodcurdling threats against those they would meet this night. Molly, who had spotted his dread as easy as anyone with eyes, was having great fun stoking his fears.

‘Mind, not every man I ever served with was as hearty for a fight as this crew. Seen men run below when it gets too warm on deck.’

‘Must be hard to live with that, Molly,’ hissed Foley, ‘knowing that when it came to it, you ain’t got the liver for a scrap.’

‘Run below,’ said Gherson, with a wholly false laugh. ‘No one can do that tonight.’

‘Some will duck out for certain,’ Molly replied, ‘when the fur begins to fly. Being dark, no one will see.’

‘They say there are three parties going in,’ Gherson asked, his voice eager, ‘which one do you reckon will be the hottest?’

‘Roscoe’s, no doubt, with old Taffrail alongside him.’ Taffrail was Lieutenant Thrale’s nickname, due to him being as deaf as the posts that made up the stern rails. ‘Barclay’s gone and given hisself the easy part, I reckon.’ 

‘How so?’

Molly had to think hard to make it sound convincing. But Gherson was a willing fool, quite capable of believing that the crew of the privateer, ‘would be ashore most like’; that Roscoe and Thrale were facing cannon behind stone, which ‘was a damn sight worse than wood’; that with a tide like the one in these parts, a cut hawser would see them sail out ‘as easy as kiss my hand.’

‘I want to take your place, Ben.’

Ben Walker fixed his messmate with those bright, bird-like eyes, examining Pearce’s face as he tried to figure out why he was being asked to stand aside, to let Pearce go in his place. He had been picked out as the one in their group most content to be at sea, yet surely with the wit to see what was in store for a goodly number of those going into action. Ben’s silence had marked him out for Pearce as a thinker, and in his experience such men were less ruled by the excitability common to the herd.

‘You ain’t fit for it,’ he drawled.

‘I’ll manage,’ Pearce insisted, more in hope than certainty.

‘I’m not afeart.’

‘No one says you are, Ben. But I have something to gain by going, and you do not.’

Ben Walker wanted an explanation – it was there in his expression, but Pearce had no intention of giving him one. Let his own mind work on what he might lose or gain; if that was insufficient, he would lean on young Rufus, then Gherson, who would certainly try to extract a money fee.

‘Trust me, Ben. Just like you I have secrets. I see it as no business of mine to pry into yours, but if you want to share confidences…’

Pearce left the rest up in the air, and was relieved when Ben said, ‘We’ve been put under that deaf old arse Thrale.’ Clearly revelation was not an avenue he wished to go down.

Neither Pearce nor Ben knew the details; they were confined to the officers and leading hands. But the outline of tonight’s business was common gossip. ‘I know, just as I know faces and names mean nothing. Thrale will be content if he has the number of men required, that is if he has the wit to count.’

Ben Walker looked at the deck planking, his head moving from side to side as he ruminated on what Pearce had asked. ‘Would what you are asking for be the act of a friend?

‘Yes, Ben, it would.’ 

‘I count you as a friend. The way you looked after Abel. Well.’

Pearce had to fix his face then, because that openly stated sentiment touched him deeply. ‘I am grateful for that.’

Walker nodded. ‘Then as a friend, and for Abel’s memory.’

Sea chests had been hauled out of the holds and opened so that those who needed shoes and coats could get at them. In the crush and confusion of forty men identifying their property no one had paid any attention to Pearce as he found the one that contained his possessions, taking out his half-length boots and his collarless coat. He felt immediately that the weight was wrong, and, plunging his hand into the inside pocket were he had left his purse, he discovered it to be empty. A silent curse was all he could employ – there was no time for speculation – his money was gone, and he had to be gone as well to avoid discovery.

‘You’re mad,’ whispered Michael O’Hagan, as, minutes later they queued on the moonlit upper deck for their weapons. ‘Mind, I never doubted that was true.’

Those were no words that a man in a trough of doubt wanted to hear – no money made what he contemplated even harder – so when Pearce emphatically replied it was as much to steel his own resolve as to answer the Irishman. ‘That Michael, is the coast of France.’

‘It might be the gates of Hell.’

‘Pearce?’ demanded Dysart, peering as he identified him. ‘What in the name o’ Christ are you doing here?’

‘You wouldn’t deny me the chance to fight would you?’

Dysart gave him an arch look. ‘I wouldna have thought this one yours.’

‘It’s in my blood,’ Pearce insisted.

Dysart had been given a length of linstock, which he began to wrap round his waist as Pearce elbowed his way to the pile of weapons, where he selected a tomahawk and a vicious short-bladed knife. Returning to join the two Celts, he added, ‘They know all about fighting Scots over yonder, and they hold us to be mad in battle. The French even have an expression for it,
le furieux ecoissais
.’