A Divided Command (7 page)

Walking the quayside under a floppy bonnet, very necessary to keep at bay the glare from an early morning sun, she was examining the endless tables full of the fruits of the sea, wondering if she should buy something to take back to her lodgings; would the woman who owned them be offended and if she was would it be obvious or disguised?

If her hometown of Frome was inland, it was yet provided with fresh fish, so Emily knew to look at the eyes, which would tell her how long the creature had been out of the sea. These examinations were, at each display, accompanied by a pitch from the vendor that the bella signorina must buy and the price would be special because of her beauty – or so she assumed, given they spoke a local Tuscan dialect incomprehensible even to their fellow Italians. If they comprehended her refusals in
Inglese
they were very adept at pretending they did not.

When it came to the heaped crustaceans, still alive and crawling over each other, their bodies shiny from the water with which they were periodically doused, she saw in the lobsters and crabs – and she admitted to herself it was fanciful – something of her own dilemmas: they were unsure of which way to go in an environment utterly alien to them; even those remaining still waved their claws in seeming despair.

‘Can I help you, Miss?’

The voice slightly startled her, first speaking English, being mixed, as it was, with yet more exhortations from the man selling the seafood. Then there was the appellation itself for she
was in truth a Mrs, not a Miss. In the act of turning to face the enquirer certain impressions emerged: the fellow must have been observing her to know she was entitled to be addressed as a young Englishwoman, and since she had removed her wedding band long ago it was possible to assume that the lack of that had added to the way he had addressed her.

‘These fellows will dun you as soon as look at you, I’m afraid.’

The bonnet Emily was wearing flopped to the sides, which did much to hide her face, so that it only became truly identifiable full on. The moment when that happened shocked both her and the speaker, he the first to react.

‘Mrs Barclay?’

‘Lieutenant Digby,’ she replied, certain the nervous tremor would be obvious in her voice.

His hat was in the air now and he could not help but look out to sea at the various British men-o’-war that lay in the offing, as well as numerous transport vessels. ‘Forgive me, madam, I did not know Captain Barclay was even in the Mediterranean.’

In an act of physical defensiveness Emily had crossed her hands over her stomach, left fingers hidden by right, so that when Digby’s eyes dropped the lack of a wedding band was hidden. Had he observed that before he spoke to her? She did not know, but Emily was aware that however it was phrased the mention of her husband was a question and one demanding an answer.

‘You are, I assume, here with a ship, Mr Digby?’

The deliberate prevarication worked, for he was obliged to reply. ‘I am,
HMS Leander
, here from San Fiorenzo to revictual.’

‘And how do you find service in her?’

That creased Digby’s features somewhat and Emily guessed why. Was she asking in comparison to his time of service with her husband? She must be aware that had been a less than wholly edifying experience for a newly employed lieutenant, not too long in that rank, nervous and unsure of his abilities, these not being traits that brought much sympathy from Ralph Barclay. When he did reply it was with something of a stammer.

‘Let us say that service aboard
HMS Brilliant
was easier.’

‘Pray, Lieutenant Digby, replace your hat. The sun.’

He had been unaware of his still raised hat and it was to his credit that, found looking foolish, he laughed. Thinking back to the times she had previously met Digby, Emily reckoned that this signalled improvement for he had struck her as too serious a fellow, especially when he had dined at her husband’s table; shy, nervous and seemingly terrified of making some gaffe. Then, of course, there was the man at whose table he was eating: Ralph Barclay tended to make many people anxious.

‘If your husband is here, Mrs Barclay, it would be only fitting that I pay him my compliments.’

There was no getting out of that enquiry, though she had looked into Digby’s eyes to seek to discern if it was as innocent a comment as he had made it sound.

‘He is not.’

‘Ah!’

The sound was singular, especially after the slight pause that preceded it, suggesting that if he were not here, then it would have been natural for her to have continued and said where he was. For Emily Barclay, and Digby could not
know this, meeting him had created for her a moment of truth.

Up till now she had never had to confront anyone who knew both John Pearce and Ralph Barclay, never had to admit to the true situation in which she found herself. If Leghorn was full of English sailors, and it was, they were strangers to her, and if that had led to admiring glances over the last few days, as well as deliberately flirtatious passing comments, it had not been taken to a point of proper conversation.

Finding that she was biting her lower lip, Emily immediately desisted and then, with a voice as strong as she could make it, issued what sounded like a declaration. ‘I must inform you, Mr Digby, that Captain Barclay and I no longer live under the same roof.’

That got another slowly delivered, ‘Ah!’ and she searched his frozen face to see if such a statement made sense. Had Digby thought them a mismatch aboard her husband’s frigate? Had any of the officers and mids thought that she, being half the age of their captain, closer to their years than his and given his character, reckoned it was a relationship doomed to be unhappy?

‘Would I be allowed to refer to that as unfortunate?’

That surprised her. ‘Why, pray?’

‘It is never a happy state of affairs when a man and his wife are …’

He could not find the word he wanted so she supplied it for him. ‘Incompatible?’

‘Unable to stay within the bounds of their vows, was what I was seeking to say. Do I take it you are alone here in Leghorn?’

How should she reply? Tell the truth, or would the God
in which she utterly believed forgive a lie to save her face and blushes? The sound of signal guns was no less rare in the roads of Leghorn than they were in the Bay of San Fiorenzo and the boom of that now had them both looking out to sea, over the tables of shiny fish, at the outline of the tiny ship coming in under topsails.

If it was an unknown quantity to Digby, it was not to Emily, who had sailed in
HMS Larcher
from England. It was one of the only two ships in the world she could have positively identified and the sight meant that there was no point to even thinking of lying.

‘No, Lieutenant Digby, I am not alone. A comrade of yours from a previous commission brought me here.’ That confused him until she added, ‘I believe you are very well acquainted with Lieutenant John Pearce.’

Digby went bright red then, for the implications were obvious. ‘Forgive me, Mrs … Madame, I must be about my duties.’

‘Lieutenant Digby,’ she said as he turned away, ‘I would be obliged if you would treat what I have just told you with some discretion.’

His reply was too indistinct to be easily heard.

There were two people at the wardroom table who were drinking too much: Toby Burns was one of them and it was moot, when they were called upon to speak, who made the greater exhibition of themselves, he or Horatio Nelson! In the case of the captain of
HMS Agamemnon
, the senior of the guests, it was partly due to the need he had to dull the continuing pain he felt from his wounded eye.

This, weeping slightly, was under regular attention from a large handkerchief. Yet there was another element to contend with: pure mischief on the part of his officers, Nelson being a well-known lightweight in the article of drink, a trait they acted upon for the enjoyment to be had from his behaviour. There was no lack of respect in this – to a man they esteemed him highly – but such tomfoolery was the very stuff of life to young men of high spirits engaged in a dangerous occupation.

Never one to overly mask his feelings, wine made him a trifle boastful, not for himself but for the British tar and
especially his ship. Nelson was eager to remind his inferiors that he knew what it was like to serve before the mast, having done so aboard a merchant vessel in his early youth, to let them know that he understood how an able seaman or topman thought, knew how to get the best out of them, which was why his sixty-four gun ship of the line was the best fighting vessel in the fleet.

‘Hear him, hear him,’ came the collective cry when his praise was extended to those present: they too were proud of their ship and their abilities.

Only when he began to praise his wife did the eyes of his fellow diners glaze over and not just because of the effusion with which he spoke of Fanny Nelson. To hear her described as a paragon, the very essence of marital rectitude and the bosom companion of his heart flew in the face of both his deeds and other statements he was wont to use after too frequent attention to the decanter. He had been heard to say more than once, ‘East of Gibraltar every man is a bachelor.’

Ashore, there was no plying of Nelson, quite the reverse, for in drink he was a worry; in the hothouse atmosphere of the kind of entertainments to which his rank got him invited, adulterous temptation was something he found hard to resist, his most recent fancy an amply bosomed Italian opera singer. There was no regard for his wife then and it was doubly dangerous in that he was often attended upon by his stepson Josiah Nesbit, serving aboard as a midshipman; who knew what the lad was telling his mother!

Toby Burns, the sole guest of that rank at the table, was being plied by Dick Farmiloe in order to get him to loosen up; he had seemed like a wound spring since he had been released and even if his one-time fellow mid thought he knew
the reasons, there seemed no need to avoid a celebration of his freedom. Farmiloe’s attention, which kept Toby’s glass well topped up, backfired when the youngster was called upon to recount the past heroics for which he was famed.

Normally, when it came to recounting the events in Brittany for which he had been much lauded, Toby could trot out a well-worn tale liberally sprinkled with the kind of becoming modesty that deflected repugnance. Excess wine altered that and induced a degree of boastfulness that many found embarrassing, Farmiloe most of all; only Nelson seemed to drink in his every word, rapt in his attention.

‘To find yourself ashore,’ Toby slurred, in conclusion, ‘with half a dozen seamen in a panic is terrifying, sir, given I was on my first ever voyage. But I soon took charge and began to formulate that which I must, a way to get us back to
HMS Brilliant
.’

‘Which you achieved with a brilliant stroke,’ Nelson hooted, looking around the table for approval of his telling pun.

‘Indeed it was,’ Toby responded with seeming glee, even if he had heard the same words ten dozen times, in being a jest too obvious for many to avoid.

‘Did you not have help?’ Dick Farmiloe asked, seeking to temper the swank, which he knew to be pure invention. ‘Some of the men you led aided quite substantially in the affair, did they not?’

‘Useless!’ That reply was spat out along with droplets of wine. ‘And a damn radical in one case, Dick, a true Jacobin.’ Toby’s voice dropped and his face took on a look of what he supposed was cunning; it made him look like a particularly dishonest horse vendor. ‘But I saw to him and no error. You know the fellow I speak of—’

The voice from the door interrupted to tell all assembled that
HMS Victory
was in sight, which made Nelson sit back in his chair; it also prevented a stony-faced Farmiloe from dishing the whole fiction of what Toby Burns had just imparted.

‘Gentlemen, I must resist any more of your hospitality, for Lord Hood will want me aboard to hear from my own lips about the fall of Calvi. And you, gentlemen, need to be about your duties.’

There was no mystery in his listeners as to what that meant: their commanding officer needed to sober up and they had to pretty the decks so that their ship would pass muster under Hood’s basilisk and very critical gaze. Every eye was upon Nelson as he said those words and they stayed there as he got unsteadily to his feet, his servant Frank Lepeé stepping forward to get close enough in case he stumbled.

This was even more amusing than anything that had happened at dinner. Lepeé drank like a fish and was often in need of a hand on his elbow himself and here was such an occasion, for the servant, with glazed eye and unsteady gait, had clearly been tippling hard in the wardroom pantry.

The pantomime that followed, as the pair staggered towards the doorway trying to measure the pitch and roll of the ship, meant no one was looking at Toby Burns, which was just as well given he had taken the news badly, so much so that, head in his hands, he had begun to cry. Those who passed his shaking shoulders reacted in different ways, some embarrassed, others patting his shoulder and issuing reassuring words. Farmiloe, having been first out the door, even before Nelson and Lepeé, had not noticed and would probably not have expressed sympathy if he had.

The last to pass him was the premier, who ended up utterly nonplussed by the reaction to his kindly delivered words, an even greater shuddering of the shoulders. ‘Never mind, lad, we’ll get a boat to fetch you back to
Britannia
before the next watch. Nothing like your own berth, eh?’

With all secure aboard
HMS Larcher
, John Pearce could prepare to go ashore, a list of his present stores in his hand, as well as what he needed to bring them up to requirement for what lay in the future. Where he would be going next he had no idea, for in his orders bringing him to Leghorn there had been no mention of what he should then do. They might be here for a while, which was a not unpleasant prospect given what was awaiting him.

‘Mr Dorling, I need you to work out a list for some shore leave – no more than eight hands at a time and none to spend a night out of the ship. I trust we have no one foolish enough to run.’

‘Not likely on a foreign shore, Capt’n.’

Pearce nodded, even if he knew that there were sailors in the fleet, though he doubted on
Larcher
, who would desert regardless of where they were. That was more the case on the larger ships; the intimacy of a smaller vessel meant the binding connections were more personal.

‘I will grant that once I have seen to the revictualling.’ Looking over the side at the dozens of boats that had surrounded the armed cutter almost before she had hove to and anchored, Pearce added, ‘The men may trade, but no women to come aboard. If the men want their pleasures they will be granted time to take them ashore.’

Pearce suspected that would somehow be circumvented
for he had no marines in his complement to prevent it, not that the lobsters were beyond the odd backhand bribe to allow what was every commanding officer’s right to ban, though many did not bother to do so. Often they took quite the opposite course, which flew in the face of Admiralty instructions.

A glance around the inner roads, just before he entered his cabin, showed just what a predicament it was; every warship had its quota of bumboats close by and there was a
seventy-four
not far off, with open ports, from which it was possible to hear the sound of fiddles and flutes, while he had no doubt the local whores had clambered through those openings to service the crew, even if there were guards set to stop them.

‘
Leander
,’ Michael said when Pearce alluded to the seventy-four and the sounds of merriment. ‘Sure it’s the devil ship. Me, Charlie and Rufus was put aboard her to come out here the first time.’

‘Not a happy time?’ Pearce replied, not without a strong stab of guilt, for that had been his fault.

‘Sure, the captain was never to be seen outside a foray on deck of a morning and the ship was run by that bastard Taberly, who I have told you of enough.’

It was rare for Michael O’Hagan to overly complain; he was a man who tended to take life as it came, but he had done so and very vocally about serving aboard
HMS Leander
. The aforementioned Taberly, premier of the ship, was a flogger and a gamer, who had put Michael to bare-knuckle fighting, bouts on which he had creamed off goodly sums, a small reward going to the man who had earned him his winnings. He felt no need to give away more: if Michael did not do Taberly’s bidding there was always the grating to help persuade him.

‘Then let us hope you do not run into him.’

‘We will be going ashore, John-boy?’

‘You will. I’ll arrange it, Michael, that you, Charlie and Rufus are ashore at the same time as myself. Then we can find somewhere quiet to share a drink without the need for any of you to go forelock touching.’

Even in his private space both Pearce and O’Hagan had spoken very softly; it was a truism that the average sailor could hear a whisper through ten inches of planking and generally knew what their officers were about to propose well before they gave out any orders. If the crew knew that there was a special bond between these Pelicans it was not something to be too blatant about; any hint of favouritism could lead to resentment in the confines of a ship and that was a problem, once it took hold, very hard to counter.

The response came in the same hushed way and with a hint of humour. ‘Sure I hope not too quiet, John-boy. We Pelicans are as minded to pleasure as any man aboard.’

‘Just as long as you get back by the last dogwatch, Michael.’

‘No problem there, as Jesus is my judge.’

That got O’Hagan a jaundiced look, for he was a man too fond of the bottle for the liking of his friend. Then there was his other habit of seeking to knock some poor soul’s block off his shoulders; when Michael was in drink, violence was never far off, which might have been acceptable without his massive size and considerable ability.

Pearce worried that one day O’Hagan would be so far gone he might maim or even kill someone, which past experience had shown was not beyond him, albeit in the act of near murder when he had been stone-cold sober and needing to defend himself.

‘Boat’s ready, Your Honour,’ Dorling called, ‘and Bellam requests that he go ashore with you, given the parlous state of your personal pantry.’

Tempted to point out, that with Emily Barclay in the town, he was more likely to eat ashore than aboard, Pearce held off. If there was a golden rule in the navy, regardless of your rank, it was never to upset the cook. Fishing in his purse, he pulled out several coins, more than enough to allow Bellam to purchase what he thought he needed. There was another truism Pearce was aware of: he would see no change and it would be a far from sober one-legged cook who came back on board.

There was a momentary distraction as a frigate that had been in their wake made to anchor, the calls to do so floating over the harbour from an officer using a speaking trumpet.
HMS Dolphin
had first been spotted well out to sea and Pearce knew it to be British after they had exchanged the private signal and their respective numbers.

He had assumed it to be on course for Leghorn and for the same reasons as he, and the only thing unusual now was the number of redcoat officers crowding its quarterdeck and poop as the crew went about their duties, which brought an aside from Dorling.

‘Bullocks gettin’ in the way, Your Honour, an’ it was ever thus.’

‘Not for long, Dorling; they will be as eager for the fleshpots as any of our lads.’

‘Best, then, they don’t frequent the same, for it will be knives out an’ no error.’

‘Let’s hope, as officers, they seek out a higher grade of establishment.’

For a second, before he stepped down into the boat
waiting to take him ashore, Pearce wondered about issuing an instruction to his crew to avoid any army officers if they encountered them; that he also put aside, for it would be a waste of breath and might have the reverse effect of what was intended. They might start to seek out those bullocks as a fitting target for a good brawl.

Emily he spied well before he made the quayside and his heart lifted at the sight of her, for she had changed out of her everyday clothing and bonnet; now she was dressed in fine clothing and under a parasol, with her long auburn hair pinned up showing a slender neck. Every one of her features was plain to see and heart-stoppingly beautiful they were. Facing forward Pearce declined to respond when she waved, for before him were several sets of rowers. He was damned if he was prepared to see them grinning at him, indeed he waited till the cutter swung round to tie up before merely lifting his hat.

As it was, Emily did not call to him, but to those very same oarsmen. ‘Gentlemen, it is good to see you again.’

That had them grinning all right, to the mind of John Pearce akin to baboons. Yet there was no disguising the pleasure they took in being acknowledged. In the voyage from England Emily had endeared herself to the whole crew, after one unfortunate incident, by her obvious lack of airs and graces as well as her consideration for the extra burden she placed on them by her mere presence. Added to that, she made their commander happy and a man in that state was a sight easier to deal with than a misery guts like the fellow John Pearce had replaced.