Authors: David Donachie
He could not think on that tag without recalling how they had come to wear it and also, despite the circumstances in which it had been gained, the way it represented a rebellion against the kind of authority he now represented. How odd it was in this glaring sunshine and just past midday heat, to imagine himself once more in a smoky London tavern on a freezing winter night, to forget his present rank and station and recall that he had been a civilian on the run from the law.
The thought that, Michael O’Hagan apart, he had fallen amongst thieves in the Pelican Tavern induced a slight smile; Charlie Taverner the street-hunting sharp, Rufus the runway apprentice, the wiser head, old Abel Scrivens, dead now, running from a ruinous debt. The last of the original Pelicans had been quiet, unlucky Ben Walker, thought to have been lost overboard but last seen as an emaciated slave, beyond rescue, toiling on the waterfront at Tangiers and also probably dead by now.
All, again excepting Michael, had been on their uppers and without the price of a wet, each one avoiding a writ of some kind, none of the magnitude facing John Pearce. Where they had encountered each other had protected them, the Liberties of the Savoy, a stretch of the Thames riverside from which the bailiffs were banned due to ancient
statute. He had hoped that it would protect him too but fate had decreed that the hand that he felt on his collar, as well as those of his fellow Pelicans, was not a King’s Bench Sheriff but the clasp of a hard-bitten tar, one of the press gang employed by Captain Ralph Barclay.
Right at that moment he felt the loneliness of being in command; he would have loved to talk to those he considered his friends at any time, more especially now, so as to find out how to counter what was troubling the crew. It was all very well sharing his cabin with Emily but she was not someone with whom he could discuss such matters and that was not the only subject best avoided.
The whole area of her husband and their own relationship, if it was not out of bounds, was fraught with difficulty, so much so that Pearce had to consider what he was going to say before he said it, lest blurting out some unpleasant reminder of her predicament he drive her towards a resolution he was determined to avoid. It was like walking barefoot on broken glass.
‘Sail Ho!’
‘Where away?’ was the automatic reply and one that drew him from his melancholy reflections, to withdraw a telescope from the bulkhead rack by his side, freeing his arm from its sling at the same time, just as it seemed every man below, including those off watch, found a reason to be on deck.
‘Dead astern, caught a flash of topsail.’
With some difficulty due to his constrained arm, he adjusted the glass and laid it across his splints in the required southerly direction. This was not carried out in any great hurry, given he had no great expectation of getting sight of
anything immediately; the man aloft could see things many miles further off than he.
‘Two sail, your honour,’ came as a near shriek.
That produced a knot in the Pearce gut, it being the same call that had come before his recent battle, one that he was just as quick to dismiss as mere fancy. But he did call aloft for early clarification; non-fighting ships sailing in company were rare and when they did it was not in pairs but in convoys of dozens. Where they friendly or not? Time stood still with no more information forthcoming, which was not a cause for concern either; it often did at sea.
‘Brigantines by their rig,’ came the eventual reply, from a voice that seemed to find a higher pitch.
Every eye on deck was suddenly trained on him, Pearce sure he could feel their concern and that had him say out loud just one word. ‘Impossible.’ How he longed to go aloft himself and make a judgement but he was one winged and that made it impracticable so, more for prevarication than purpose, he ordered the raising of the private signal that identifying his as a King’s ship would get a like response from a friendly and similarly designated vessel.
Surely they could not be the same pair he had fought before! Dorling had been off the deck when the first cry came but he was, like everyone else, there now, alternately looking through his own telescope mixed with worried glances aimed at his captain. What would happen was down to John Pearce who, as of this moment, was lacking in any idea of how to react. A gesture brought the master closer.
‘An appreciation if you please, Mr Dorling,’ he said quietly.
‘We struggled to contest with Barbary afore.’
‘I know that,’ Pearce replied. ‘Now I need to know if they are the same pair or even of the same ilk.’
This was imparted with scant patience; he did not need to be reminded that without the aid of Captain Fleming, who had put his own merchant vessel at great risk to aid him, they could not have survived the previous encounter. What was germane now was not what had gone before but what they presently faced. If these were the same two sea wolves, they each carried more weight of shot than
Larcher
added to which they would likely sail with more speed and the ability to manoeuvre, even damaged. As to numbers of men in close combat, given they were two and individually better manned, that spoke for itself.
Dorling had clearly decided on the worst case and that was reflected in the slightly desperate tone of his voice, added a look of downright scepticism that the man in command should think anything other than the worst.
‘Who else would they be, Capt’n? A pair of brigantines and on our very course, minded to put right where they failed afore?’ Then his voice took a slight note of panic. ‘If we seek to fight, we will be taken this time.’
The temptation to tell him to pull himself together had to be avoided; it would serve no purpose and he needed to know what his options were. ‘And if you are correct, can we run?’
‘Too early to say.’
Pearce lifted his bandaged arm and responded with cold disdain. ‘Which should tell you, Mr Dorling, that I need to know as soon as possible whether what you fear is truth or mere fancy.’
There was no need to add an instruction; Dorling knew
he was the only one who could get aloft to see what they faced and judge the chance they might have of escape. He made for the shrouds and began to climb, an act observed and not happily so by the crew. Even Bellam, the one-legged cook was there now, a man who rarely came up at sea except to chuck out his swill, his eyes fixed over the stern, which irritated Pearce.
‘Anyone not employed, get below until you are called to your duty.’ The response was slow, even when Pearce added in as kindly a tone as he could manage. ‘Please recall I have as much if not more to lose than you, now do as I have asked.’
The amount of murmuring that induced sounded, to his acute hearing, like a very active beehive and as it faded he was left with nothing but the disturbing facts. He had risked the lives of these men before and now, due to his insistence of departing Palermo, it might be he was doing so again and in much worse circumstances. The temptation to curse himself had to be put aside for it would do no good. It was a solution he required, not self-castigation.
‘Am I allowed on deck, John?’
That had Pearce turn to face one of his major concerns: what to do if it looked as if they were about to be boarded, for he would never just strike his flag and let
Larcher
be taken. That meant Barbary and slavery for any man taken; for a woman what would happen to her did not bear thinking about.
‘Best stay in my cabin for the moment.’
A swift nod saw her retreat, leaving Pearce to return to his thoughts; given there was nothing to report for what seemed an age, the sandglass needed to be turned and it ran again till half full, they went deep. Yet the silence from aloft
continued, allowing him to begin to see that as a positive: those ships could not be gaining on them at any great pace, which had him register once again the lack of a strong breeze, further evidenced by the slack and near to drooping flags aloft. Dorling called finally and looking to where he was perched and seeing, even at a distance, his unsmiling face, Pearce knew the news was not good.
‘If you have something to report, Mr Dorling, I would rather it was imparted with a degree of discretion.’
If the master’s broad face had looked unsmiling aloft, it was positively doom laden on deck and there was good reason that it was so. Astern of them, and they could not have avoided being likewise spotted and maybe even identified, were, he was sure, the very vessels that had inflicted the previous damage. He had stayed up there longer than necessary to be absolute certain, worse than that they seemed to be, as far as Dorling could tell, in a state of good repair, with all their masts and a full top hamper of sails.
‘Where in God’s name could that have been refitted so quickly?’ Pearce demanded, invoking in his case, a rare reference to the Almighty.
‘How many ports are there on the coast of Sicily?’
‘Any number, but not open to the Saracen!’
That archaic description got a raised eyebrow, as if Dorling did not know that was how the folk of Sicily still referred to an ancient enemy. ‘Money talks, Capt’n, even to a papist and how ever it were done, we are as like as not going to have to pay for it.’
John Pearce was disconcerted by the attitude of his master, whom he had always thought to have an optimistic streak, more so now than he had been in Palermo. British tars were, as a breed, a confident lot, often too much so for their own good, sure in their boastful way that they were worth ten times any Johnny foreigner when it came to a fight, be it on land or at sea. Against that he had never met a bunch of people more prone to superstition and he guessed it was that which was afflicting Dorling now, the feeling that somehow the fates had decided on retribution for some perceived sin and that it was imminent.
‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘we are required to examine the charts, Mr Dorling, don’t you?’
‘Sir.’
‘And a good pair of eyes aloft, I would suggest.’
The time it took the man to react and move to comply was annoying; some kind of torpor was now upon him making the reply was both slow and low. Yet the need
was obvious; over that gimcrack bowsprit lay Italy and a coastline full of ports, one to two large and well-defended, with fortresses and cannon to protect their harbours, which surely represented the only means by which they could escape. What was their position now and where lay the best chance of a safe berth?
They must establish the relative speed of the pursuit against their own so as to make some calculation of the odds of successfully evading capture based on the distance to shore, both factors Pearce felt he should not have any need to emphasise. Having told Dorling to join him in his cabin he went there to ask Emily if she could vacate it for the time being.
‘Are we are in danger, John?’ Getting in response a raised eyebrow she added, ‘I heard the cries from the masthead.’
The natural instinct was to say no, to minimise any notion of risk, but that would not wash with Emily so it was with a bit of a forced smile that he replied. ‘We may be in need of some providential assistance.’
‘It must be serious if you are relying on divine intervention.’
‘That is not what I meant,’ he replied, for that would stray too close to religion, a subject on which they fundamentally disagreed, ‘and please don’t engage with me. Right now I have no time for theological dispute.’
The appearance of Dorling, with his rolled-up charts, killed any chance of that and giving him a smile, Emily eased past the young master. Pearce wondered if she had noticed what he had observed; the smile had not been returned which, if it was worrying, had to be put to one side as the appropriate charts were laid out. Dorling had fetched
his logs as well as the slate bearing the latest information on course and speed.
They had to aid them a pair of chronometers, one set to Greenwich, the other to the local noon they had just established and if the instruments were far from new, they were, as far as Pearce could guess, accurate. Certainly the latter was so, having been regularly checked in Palermo harbour against the noonday gun. It took no great time in looking at maps, nor much use of the dividers, to form an obvious conclusion.
‘What would we lose by changing our course to due east?’ Pearce asked.
‘What wind we have is sou’ westerly.’
‘So it would be better over our beam?’
‘What there is of it?’
‘But we might gain a fraction of speed?’
‘As will those devils who have waited for us all this time.’
‘Mr Dorling,’ responded, in an exasperated tone, ‘we are not so much of a prize that two fellows who make their way in the world by thievery would take so much trouble. What happened, there being in the same patch of ocean as us, it mere coincidence.’
‘You really think that?’
The tone was larded with both pessimism and a lack of the required respect. Just as depressing was the way the master kept his eyes on the chart, refusing to engage with his superior, as if Dorling was wondering at him not being able to discern the obvious truth? This encounter was fated to happen and what would follow could not be avoided. Pearce was having none of it.
‘We will alter course and make the quickest landfall
open to us south of Naples. As to a final destination, that will have to wait. And, Mr Dorling, I think it best that I have possession of the key to the spirit store.’
Dorling’s head came up sharp enough then and there was at least a degree of hurt in his look. A wounded and otherwise occupied John Pearce had handed over to him the task of giving out the daily ration of grog, which Dorling had held on to given the captain was living ashore. It had been a mark of respect that it should be so and the man had carried out the duty properly. This task was not being withdrawn for any lack of faith in his honesty or ability, but for an absence of a different kind of trust. Worn on his waist, along with the keys to the cubicle that passed for his cabin, it was removed and handed over.
‘Please ask my servant to attend on me at once.’
The charts were slowly, indeed deliberately, rolled up as though by the action Dorling was trying to communicate something. What Pearce saw was a man in brooding mood and that had him speaking in a growling way that was at odds with the words.
‘If you have something you wish to impart to me, I hope you know that however unpleasant it may be you are free to do so?’
A violent shake of the head was all Pearce got before the master departed. As the cabin door closed, Pearce turned to look at one of the other artefacts that cramped the interior space, the padlocked rack of muskets and pistols over which he had sole control, the thought that they might be needed a disturbing one. He was still lost in that when O’Hagan entered and, since he could not stay in place without being
bent near double, sat down, to be subjected to a straight look from his friend and captain.
‘Michael, I want to know what is going on right now, what the feeling is below decks, and no beating around. I have a very strong feeling you know something and you’re not telling me.’
The response was not immediate and when it came was far from reassuring. ‘Jesus, can you not guess, John-boy?’
‘Is it Emily?’
‘Who else?’ O’Hagan replied, with a slow regretful shake of the head. ‘I thought it was all shite and would die out once we got to sea.’
‘Not now?’ There was no need to mention the vessels closing in on them.
‘There were a couple unhappy about having a woman aboard before we left Buckler’s Hard, no, even afore that, given you fetched that mistress of yours from France.’
‘One-time mistress,’ Pearce replied sharply, for he could recall that he had been afforded scant chance to refuse.
Michael kept his voice low, to tell that there were those who had harboured the superstition that a woman aboard presaged back luck from that very moment, doubly so when they set out on the subsequent voyage to the Med. But they had kept their thoughts close, nothing more than an occasional murmur, scoffed at in the main, seeing as how most of the crew thought they had struck good fortune.
Pearce was a better man to be in command than the fellow he had replaced, added to which, after that first mission to the Vendée and a skirmish off Portugal, he came across as lucky, another manifestation, albeit a reverse one, of their present superstitions. There was nothing to hang
any worries on until the day they had set off in pursuit of Emily, with all the consequences in death and damage that entailed, which had given the doomsayers meat on which to gnaw and the rest of the crew a cause to first wonder and then be swayed.
‘You staying off the ship didn’t help either, bein’ seen to be putting your pleasure afore your duty, which others were unhappy about. But it was the lads we lost and buried that gave the moaners the air to spread their talk of devilry, to say that it would never have happened without the curse of Mrs Barclay.’
‘And you let this nonsense pass?’
‘I told you they never sought to include me, John-boy, nor Charlie and Rufus and even I can’t fight them all. They doomsayers was free to say that as long as your lady and her siren ways was aboard
Larcher
it was only matter of time till Old Nick sought his due and one by one, our shipmates began to fall in with it.’
‘Siren ways?’
‘She has a sweet voice, does she not?’
‘Which I have seen much appreciated.’
‘It was, John-boy, but not as we sit here.’
‘And now they are a majority in this nonsense?’
‘Hard to know who the doubters are, since they stay quiet.’
‘Do you believe in devilry, Michael?’
That had the Irishman crossing himself hurriedly. ‘Jesus, you know I do.’
‘So I am bound to ask if you believe in this.’
‘As I am bound to be offended that you should.’
Pearce dropped his head onto pointed fingers so he
could think; Michael was aware that his friend required silence, the time to make sense of what he had been told, not that he was unable to guess as his thoughts. If there was the suspicion aboard that Emily was a curse then he, her lover, had not only given it credence but also, by his own behaviour, allowed it to fester.
If he had spent more time aboard he might have sensed things and perhaps would have been able to nip in the bud the Jonahs spreading foul gossip. But he had not and was now paying the price. The silence was held as both listened to the orders being issued, as well as the running of feet as the change of course was carried out.
‘It’s not the devil chasing us, Michael,’ Pearce said finally, ‘they are, at worst, Barbary pirates.’
‘Right at this moment there’s few on this barky who would be willing to lay a finger on the difference. The doomsayers were making ground afore, made even more on your resolve to sail when we was in no fit state to cast off, predicting tempests and the like with all of us drowning.’
‘While the sight of those sails,’ Pearce shrugged; it was not necessary to elaborate. ‘Who can I trust?’
‘The warrants, maybe, seeing them as a breed have a speck more sense than most.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Can’t say better than that an’ it would do you no good if I did.’
‘Dorling is one and I am not sure I would place much faith in him right now. Charlie and Rufus?’
That got a sharp nod from Michael and a grim smile, Pearce not even bothering to enquire further; the Pelicans would stay together as they had in the past. ‘Mind, it would
help to get Mrs Barclay out of plain sight, she on deck being something of a red rag right now.’
‘Make it so,’ Pearce said, grabbing his hat and standing up so abruptly that Michael winced, fearing for his crown on the low beams. But he had been aboard a long time now, had cracked his head too many times and so stopped before his hair made contact. ‘Be so good as to fetch her, Michael, while I go below.’
‘Is that a good notion?’
The smile was a grim one. ‘If there is a devil, then he is best faced.’
Emily was by the stern again, hands resting on the taffrail, looking aft, able to see when they rose on the swell the tip of the sails of an enemy that might be their nemesis, they too having changed course. He declined to call to her, leaving Michael to do as he had requested, making straight for the companionway that led below, aware that the act came as a surprise to the few men on deck.
As usual the smell of packed humanity and bilge, so very obvious when set against the clean tang of the sea, made his nostrils twitch but that was not the only thing that made an impression on him; what rose up was an almost palpable feeling of resentment made even more manifest as he met the looks of men who seemed to think his presence an intrusion. True, he rarely went below, except on Sundays for his weekly inspection after he had read the Articles of War, which under his command was what the men got in place of a biblical sermon, their captain being neither religious nor a hypocrite.
It took a real effort to meet every eye with a cold stare, especially bent over near double, for his height was against
him, even harder to try to discern the varying levels of anything that could range from mistrust to downright loathing. How had he let matters come to this, the feeling he had one of utter inadequacy? To traverse from the companionway to the manger was no great distance, the whole lower deck only a few paces more and it being crowded meant actual physical contact was unavoidable.
Normally the crew made every effort to get out of his way; not now so that if he was never actually jostled, then he was made aware that his passage was lacking in the kind of respect he had come to expect and was in truth, even if he felt something of a fraud in receipt of it, his due. Did they see his eye take in the spirit store, to make sure the padlock was in place and secure?
Pearce was thinking what to do about that, for it was a commonplace tale that faced with certain doom, especially drowning, sailors wanted to meet that fate utterly insensible from drink.
The safest way to secure against that was to put an armed man in front of the padlock, yet he was conscious of how that would look. It might so infuriate the men that it would produce the very reaction he was desperate to avoid and then he would be dealing with men too drunk to reason with. Three sheets to the wind, who knew what they would do and it was not beyond the bounds of his imagination to think of them casting Emily over the side and him with her.
It was a real relief to get back on deck and to walk to the now vacant stern, his gaze centred on the towed boats. Could he put Emily in the cutter with a stepped mast and sail to get her away? Pearce thought not, for that would require the crew to haul the boat alongside and empty it,
which would act as a signal of both his intentions and their fate; he would not be seeking to save his lady if he expected the ship to survive.
Added to which she would need men to sail it, who would they be and what would the remainder say to a couple of their shipmates being given a chance of life? Added to that, the only people he could trust her with were his Pelicans and the sight of Michael, Charlie and Rufus making for the cutter would cause a full-scale mutiny and a fully justifiable one at that.
He only had to lift his eyes to now see the topsails of the pursuit, but that brought some reassurance, for they were not gaining, as he feared they might. The Mediterranean day was short so they would have no chance of catching HMS
Larcher
before nightfall and that might give him a chance to humbug them and at least gain some extra advantage. Looking at the sky, it was still clear and showing no signs of clouding over, which he would need if he were to change course unobserved. The first thing Pearce must do is try and put a different interpretation of matters to the crew, which had him spin round and yell.