By the Mast Divided (9 page)

As he wrote some of the lists of stores he was aware that they related to what he had taken aboard in the month, including this day, and what he had used, and took no account of what might have been abused or stolen in the meantime, or eaten by the rats that infested the holds. At times it seemed as though every man aboard his ship was a thief – and that took no account of the dockyard scullies, villains to a man – so great was the discrepancy between what HMS
Brilliant
should possess and what could be hauled out and counted. And the corollary to that was that every merchant captain and fisherman in the reaches of the Thames was a willing purchaser of purloined naval stores, and not just his. He suspected the carpenter of selling timber and nails, the caulker of trading pitch, his boatswain of filching lengths of cable and his gunner of degrading the quality of his powder. That the purser was dishonest went without saying, Ralph Barclay having never met an honest one.

The marine sentry knocked and opened the door on his command to admit Midshipman Burns, a slip of a boy of thirteen who was a relation to his wife. Burns was wearing, over some working nankeen trousers, a uniform coat far too big for him, which made him look even smaller than
his pint-sized three foot six inches. And he was plainly terrified. Though Barclay aimed a smile at the lad, it did nothing to stop him shaking, for Ralph Barclay was unaware how unnerving his smile could be.

‘The Premier,’ Burns piped in high, hymn-singing voice, ‘has sent me to inform you that your lady wife has put off from the shore.’

‘Thank you, Mr Burns.’

‘Sir,’ the boy replied, turning to leave, only to spin back again as his captain addressed him.

‘I have not had a chance to ask you, Mr Burns, if you are settling into your new berth?’

Burns looked confused. ‘Sir?’

‘Well, boy, are you?’

‘Yes, sir, I am sir,’ he stammered.

‘Good. Then be so good as to see a chair is prepared to hoist my wife and your cousin aboard, one with a stout pair of arms. I will not have her risk a soaking on a slippery gangway.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

‘Carry on, Mr Burns.’

The boy positively shot out of the door, making Ralph Barclay think back to his own days as a midshipman, to the filth and the humiliations, the hunger, the rat-hunts, the fights, both those he had won, and the shame and pain of those he had lost. Hard as it was it had served to make a man of him, which is what it would do to little Burns. No doubt, in his first week aboard, he was suffering from bullying and all sorts of other tribulations, but that was part of growing up to be a King’s officer. The family obligation required him to keep an eye on the boy, but it must of necessity be remote, for too keen an attention would single him out for ill-treatment – no midshipman endured more of that than one perceived as a captain’s favourite.

‘Shenton,’ he called, ‘my best coat and number one scraper.’

As the small wherry left the shelter of the projecting mole, Emily Barclay, still a bit flustered from the haste with which she had packed, noted that the water beyond was much more disturbed that that within and she pulled her hood around her head, suspecting that the wind would be stronger too. It made no difference that this was river water, disturbed only by that ruffling breeze – she feared that she would be seasick, knowing that if she were, it would disappoint her husband. After the words they had exchanged that morning Emily was determined not to succumb – or if she did, not to let it show. It would be a terrible thing to let him down twice in twenty-four hours. Thinking that, she put her
hand to her mouth, a gesture that was mistaken by one of the women rowing the boat, an ugly brute with hefty forearms and a hairy face, who nevertheless spoke in a kindly, deep voice.

‘Keep your eyes fixed on the ship, Miss, and that will help.’

‘Missus, if you please. I am wife to Captain Barclay.’

The second woman rowing, if anything even less prepossessing, spoke through the unlit clay pipe that had been clamped in her mouth since they set off. ‘You don’t look near old enough for that estate, lass, and I know, given the number of sailor’s wives I’ve ferried out for a bit of what cheers us sisters up. Not that all of them were wives mind.’ Emily Barclay flushed deep red at the allusion, thankful that her hood hid the fact, and that it served to muffle the coarse laughter that followed that sally. ‘Captain’s wife eh? Must be right comfortable for a bit of rumpy, the cabin of a ship, tho’ I confess to never having the pleasure of trying one.’

The confusion Emily felt then was also hidden by her hood. Though it was a private thought, never to be shared with anyone, she had found the consummation of her marriage both painful and uncomfortable. Nor had what had happened since led her to the pleasure some of her more worldly wise friends had promised. If conjugality was so disappointing on dry land, in a comfortable feather bed of proper dimension, what was it going to be like on board ship?

‘It would oblige me if you would keep your innuendoes to yourself,’ Emily said, with as much force as she could muster. ‘I will have you know that I am to sail with my husband, for the very good reason that we cannot bear the thought of being apart.’

‘What does innendo mean?’ asked the woman with the clay pipe.

‘’Nother boat approaching, Rach, that might foul our prow.’

Emily looked ahead, to observe two crowded boats speeding purposefully towards HMS
Brilliant
. But she was too busy thanking the lords of the sea for no feelings of sickness to give it more than a passing glance.

‘We got captain’s spouse aboard, Patsy, lass,’ she said, taking one hand off her oar to tap the brass-bound chest that filled the centre of the wherry, ‘and all her goods and chattels, looks like. Happen that there cutter will have to haul off and wait.’

‘Think she’ll be piped aboard, Rach, proper, like a captain would be?’

Emily pulled her hood closer to hide her face. She knew it was no true question, more a set up for another lubricious jibe.

‘Happen there’ll be a pipe a’waiting, Patsy, and a right stiff ’un at that.’

‘Smoke streaming out of the end I shouldn’t wonder.’

Coming back on to the deck of HMS
Brilliant
, Midshipman Toby Burns had to stop for a moment to try and recollect where it was he was now supposed to go. If he was unsure of that, he was certain of where he did not want to be and that was the midshipman’s berth, his off-watch home during daylight hours. The last week had shattered any illusions he had about the romance of serving on a King’s ship. The images he had of glorious combat and wonderful camaraderie with like-minded fellows who knew his worth had run foul of the truth – he was stuck in a filthy hovel too small for the half dozen occupants with the foulest people he had ever met in his life, longing to get back to the safety of his night-time berth in the gunner’s quarters where he could, at least, sleep in peace.

‘Mister Burns,’ said Henry Digby, third lieutenant of the ship. ‘What did the captain say?’

‘Say, sir?’

Digby produced a half smile. ‘I do believe Mr Roscoe sent you with a message?’

‘Oh, yes!’ Burns replied, for all the world as if he was dredging up a distant memory. ‘Captain Barclay has asked that a chair be prepared for his wife to hoist her aboard.’

‘Then do you not think, young man, that it would politic to pass that message on?’ The boy blinked and nodded. ‘And might I suggest that having told the Premier of the captain’s request, you immediately ask his permission to fetch an appropriate means of conveyance from the wardroom.’

It was hard not to chastise Burns for being so slow, but then Digby was not much given to that; he could recall his own first days aboard a ship with too much clarity. Not much bigger than this sprat before him, he had entered a world of dark and forbidding strangers, but he did have in his favour the fact that he was a scrapper, always ready to fight his corner. Looking at the pallid, plump face and flaccid eyes of this mid, he suspected Burns was not.

‘I should shift on that task, Mr Burns, for if you look towards the dockyard you will observe that Mrs Barclay’s boat has just come out from beyond the jetty.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ the boy replied, and shot forward to where Roscoe was supervising the slinging of a mainmast yard. The nod of approbation that Burns got for his suggestion, really Lieutenant Digby’s, raised his spirits somewhat, it being the first he could remember, and he shot off to get the chair, as instructed. There was purpose in his step, for he was on a mission, as he barged into the wardroom.

‘Hold up there, sir!’

Holbrook, the marine lieutenant, sitting cleaning a pair of
long-barrelled
pistols, looked extremely indignant, not difficult for a fellow of high colour and obvious conceit. Alone among the officers he had no duties to perform and he was enjoying the rare moment of peace that afforded him.

‘I’ve come for a chair, sir.’

‘A chair sir?’ Holbrook puffed, ‘I say you by your actions you have come for a barge. Charging in here without so much as a by your leave, sir. Where were you raised with such manners?’

‘No, sir, not a barge, sir,’ Burns insisted. ‘A chair for the captain’s wife, very like the one you are sat on.’

‘Damn it if you don’t want my seat?’

Burns hopped from foot to foot, aware that perhaps Holbrook was being jocular, practising upon him rather than being genuinely angry – but he could not be certain, and if anything plagued him it was that inability to tell a jest from a threat, and that mostly in the Mid’s berth. The senior midshipman, forty if he was a day and crabbed as hell, was forever being scarifying, just like this blasted marine. Were the allusions to what might become of him one dark night when the ship was far from shore and female company just a common tease or was there some truth in it? Was the steady disappearance of the contents of his chest, so lovingly and expensively packed by his dear mother – the mention of each missing item met by his messmates with innocent incomprehension – true theft, or part of his initiation?

‘Any seat will do, sir, provided it has arms.’

‘Then sir, I shall give you a plain chair and my pistols, will that do?’ Holbrook was looking at Burns, with his popped blue eyes wide open and his expression arch, but that did not last for it was obvious that his pun, rather a fine one he thought, had quite gone over this little idiot’s head, so he yelled out, ‘Steward, a captain’s chair for Mr Burns, on deck at the double.’

‘I will take it, since I was sent to fetch it, sir.’

‘As I suspected,’ Holbrook sniffed, shaking his head. ‘Brought up in a
sod-turf hovel. Well, here aboard ship we have servants, sir, and though you ain’t got much in the way of dignity you are supposed to be a young gentleman.’

The marine searched for another witticism that combined arms and chairs, which imposed a pause in which he appeared quite vacant, but somehow ‘cut to the chaise’ did not seem to fit the bill and he had to cover the flatness of the remark with a cough.

‘Servants serve, officers command, young man, which you must learn, and deuced quick! Return to the deck and your chair will be delivered to you.’

Back on deck Burns had the pleasure of saying to the First Lieutenant, ‘I have ordered a chair brought from the wardroom sir,’ which made him feel quite manly.

‘You were damned slow about it, Mr Burns,’ said Roscoe, deflating him.

‘Our boats will reach the wherry carrying your wife, sir.’

Henry Digby stood by the bulwark, telescope to his eye, even though both boats were in plain view. Everything about him seemed somehow pristine; the young face that was not yet required to shave regularly, the unblemished skin of a not unprepossessing countenance, the newness of his hat, coat and breeches.

‘Why was a boat not sent to fetch her?’

Digby stood erect to reply. ‘With respect sir, all our boats are in use, and we were not told of a time to expect her.’

‘Then tell Coyle to haul off and wait.’

‘Speaking trumpet, Mr Burns?’ said Digby. Pint-sized Burns hesitated, as though he had not heard the command. In fact he had, but had lost any notion of where the speaking trumpet might be. Digby chided him gently. ‘By the binnacle, young sir!’

The trumpet in his hand, Henry Digby delivered his orders with a force that must have been noted on shore. Emily Barclay only half-heard him, still pleased that she had not been seasick. By the time she was being helped into the chair that had been slung from a whip on the yardarm, all her fears of that part, detailed to her by a husband trying and failing to reassure her, had evaporated. On a tidal river, she had nothing to fear from her method of coming aboard.

‘Mrs Barclay,’ said Ralph, coming forward to lift her out of the chair, and speaking in a voice, gentle and kindly, the like of which few aboard had heard him use.

‘Captain Barclay,’ Emily replied, taking his proffered hand, before turning to nod towards her husband’s officers, all of whom she had previously met ashore.

‘Shall I order Coyle to come alongside, sir?’ said Digby.

‘My wife’s chest first, Mr Digby, then you may fetch our volunteers aboard. Mr Burns, be so good as to ask the surgeon…what’s his name?’

‘Mr Lutyens, sir.’

‘Ask him to come on deck.’

‘Mr Burns,’ said Emily, ‘you cannot go without greeting me, your own cousin, surely?’

Those who could see Ralph Barclay’s face, as Burns smiled and moved to take his cousin’s hand, froze in anticipation of the blast that was likely to follow. What they observed was a countenance in turmoil, as the captain’s desire not to correct his wife in public fought with the sight of one of his midshipmen disobeying a direct order.

‘You may greet your cousin, Mr Burns,’ Barclay growled, ‘then you will fetch the surgeon.’

Burns’ handshake was perfunctory in the extreme, and he shot off the deck as though a pack of hounds were after him, narrowly avoiding being crowned by the chest of his female cousin that was being dropped towards the deck.

As they lay off the ship the crew moved amongst the men they had pressed, quietly releasing them from their bonds. Pearce had noticed as they rowed downriver, that whenever he caught the eye of one of the sailors and glared at them, he had been gifted with a look that he could only describe as disinterested, as though, having completed their brutal act they had put that behind them, behaving now with an attitude that was totally at odds with their previous violence. As to his fellow captives, some were looking around them with an air that had about it a hint of optimism, and it occurred to Pearce that if they were denizens of the Liberties, living on the edge of the abyss of destitution or arrest, there would be one or two in this boat who might welcome the change. They would certainly take it in preference to the other alternative to freedom – a debtor’s gaol.

Rubbing his bloodless hands, Pearce sat up enough to see over the side of the boat, and with the prow pointing right towards a vessel, one of the dozens anchored within sight, he guessed it to be their destination. The ship lay low in the water, surrounded by boats of various sizes, all occupied in loading their cargoes onto the deck. Black from fresh paint,
he calculated her as not much more than a hundred feet long, broad on the waterline, narrower at deck level. Three-masted, with a long blue pennant flying in the middle, the tall sticks were crossed with poles he knew to be called yards, and they had on them tightly rolled canvas and men working on ropes. He reflected on that bit of knowledge – the name of a yard was something a young man learnt early when his father talked often about the iniquity of hanging.

‘What is it?’ asked the dark-haired fellow who had been pulled out of the Thames the night before, shivering in a long linen shirt that was still very damp.

‘Jesus, can you not see it’s a ship,’ said O’Hagan, a remark that earned him a glare that rendered that innocent looking face tetchy.

‘I do believe they are known by their guns,’ said Pearce, who had spent more time looking at the distance between boat and shore than at any of the anchored vessels. ‘And I can count twelve ports on this side, which means the same on the other.’

‘Small then,’ added O’Hagan. ‘I have heard they go as high as a hundred.’

‘Matters not,’ said the youth, with another shiver. ‘I shan’t be there long.’

‘Want a wager on that, mate?’ asked Kemp, who had heard every word.

There was petulance once more. ‘You cannot just take up whosoever you choose.’

‘Can’t we now?’ hooted Kemp. ‘Lest you have a certificate in your breeches, Admiralty signed, which says plain, and has not been ruined and the ink run by your dip in the river, that you is exempt by trade or profession, then you be looking at your new home.’

The young jaw moved but no sound emerged, because Cornelius Ghershon was thinking that, with the need to protest to someone with the power to get him released, he was somewhat short on candidates to provide the favour. The only people he could think of were friends to Alderman Denby Carruthers, the man who had set out to murder him by chucking him off London Bridge. If Carruthers ever found out that he had not drowned there was no certainty that he would not try again. Besides, he was bereft of clothes.

‘I shall have words with the captain,’ Ghershon said finally, though without much conviction.

‘Shouldn’t if I were you,’ said a light, wafting voice. ‘It would be a crying shame to have Barclay take the edge off such a pretty face.’

‘Aye, aye,’ crowed another sailor. ‘Molly’s picked him out already.’

‘Goin’ to show him golden bolt, Molly?’ called a third, which was immediately followed by one of the boat crew breaking into song.

‘Was in the aft hold where a sailor made bold, and showed me his ring a ding-ding.’

Half the crew took up the refrain. ‘You can call me Nancy it’s you that I fancy, and joy to you I will bring.’

‘Stow it you lot,’ yelled Coyle, ‘This is no time for chanting.’

Pearce, Michael O’Hagan and Cornelius Ghershon exchanged a look, in which it was clear that two of them understood the meaning of the song, while Ghershon seemingly did not. There was no time to explain as Coyle, in response to hail from the ship, added another shout ‘Bend to your oars,’ he cried, and all three found themselves falling over as the crew sent the boat lunging towards the ship. Pearce forgot about the sailor’s joshing – he was too aware of the pain as the blood began to fill limbs that had been starved by the ropes that had so recently been removed. But it was nowhere near as hurtful as the words Coyle shouted as the boat came alongside.

‘No need for bonds now, boys. You belong to King and Country as soon as you step on that there deck. So get off your arse and get up that there gangplank.’

‘Mind your cursing, Coyle,’ called Lieutenant Digby, who was leaning over the side. ‘There is a lady on deck.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied Coyle, touching his forelock, but Pearce noted that the respect in his voice was not mirrored on that bright red face.

Glancing at the others he had been taken up with, mostly bent and beaten in the very way they held themselves, Pearce determined he would not give Barclay, if the bastard was aboard, the satisfaction of seeing him in distress. Painful as it was, he used his hands to make less of a mess of his hair, retied the queue that had somehow survived the journey and employed his sleeve to wipe most of the accumulated grime off his face.

‘Getting yourself up for a parade?’ asked O’Hagan.

Kemp pushed both men on to the green, slippery, water-lashed platform at the base of the gangplank, admonishing them to ‘step aboard right foot to the fore, to save cursing the barky.’

Emily, about to exit the deck, turned when the first of the ‘volunteers’ shuffled through the gangway, each one rubbing his hands and wrists, and clearly in pain, a few eyes lifting in wonder, as she had herself, at the height of those great masts, seen close up, a sort of collective murmur seeming to envelop them. The third one in the group did not look up,
he looked aft to where she was standing, cloak half-open and hood now lowered in the lee of the poop, hair rustling in what breeze remained, and for no reason other than accident their eyes locked for a couple of seconds.