The Admirals' Game (19 page)

Looking at his host as the conversation moved on to something they called the Mortella Tower, Pearce wondered if he, too, felt he was subject to some of the same brickbats. Being related to the c-in-c would mean that no one would grant him the slightest degree of competence to justify his blue pennant; many would assert that such a promotion would come from his being related to Hood. Pearce could not help conjuring up, when he thought of naval officers in the mass, an image of bickering fishwives, and it was while he was ruminating on that he was caught out by a question from Linzee.

‘I believe, Mr Pearce, you sailed round Corsica prior to my attempt to subdue the forces on the Northern Cape. Did you observe any such towers? I believe there is more than one of similar design.'

‘Forgive me, sir, I…'

‘Was in cloud cuckoo land,' hooted Nelson, blue eyes
alight, in a way which demonstrated quite clearly he was inebriated.

‘If you had seen one, sir,' Linzee added, with a mere flicker of a frown at Nelson, ‘you would know of what I speak. I am certain if you had attacked one you would share the view that they are formidable.'

‘Damned hard to damage with round shot,' added Hallowell, ‘being circular in their construction. Shot skims off if it don't hit dead true, and the damn places are built so well even a ball smack on the face of the stonework does little damage. Cost us sixty men wounded and dead when we tried to subdue it.'

Linzee's gloomy face suddenly became animated by a degree of fury. ‘Which we would have succeeded in doing had the Corsicans kept their part of the bargain. That tower needed to be attacked from land at the same time as we engaged the guns from seaward, but where in Creation was the so-called Corsican Army? That damned old flanneler Paoli, in his letters, promised much and delivered absolutely nothing, leaving us exposed.'

‘Pasquale Paoli?' Pearce asked.

‘That's him.'

Linzee had responded with such venom that Pearce declined to say what had been on his lips, to mention that he knew a bit about Paoli. He had heard the story of the hero of the Corsican resistance to French rule by his father's friend, James Boswell, the biographer of Doctor Johnson. He had only been a child, but the Laird of Auchinleck had made Paoli sound admirable;
noble of countenance and modest in his manner and thanks to Boswell's writings, lionised by London society. He was clearly not seen in that light at this board so it was again fortunate that the talk had moved on, and his opinion was not sought. Hallowell was describing in more detail the assault on the Mortella Tower, until with an almost abrupt gesture Linzee brought matters round to the problem he presently faced: how to deal with that ‘damned rogue', the Bey of Tunis.

Linzee had tried to get the Bey to impound the French vessels, both warships and merchantmen, something the ruler of Tunis was reluctant to do, for the very good reason that such an action would make him an enemy of France. Thinking on it as the conversation bounced back and forth, listening to the points made, and being less partisan than his fellow diners, Pearce could understand what the fellow was thinking.

The British he would see as a temporary presence in this part of the world; the French, in contrast, were permanent northern neighbours, distant only by a few days sailing. At present Britannia was struggling to contain the Revolution; if they failed, retribution would fall on anyone who aided them. At the same time the British were presently close by with a powerful fleet, one which, if so employed, could make life very difficult for the lord of a trading port; hence his preference for neutrality.

‘The fellow's no more than a successful Cretan pirate,' Linzee said, loudly, ‘but he has enough influence at
Constantinople to get and keep his office.'

‘You know my view, sir,' said Nelson, who now became animated enough to seemingly overcome his inebriation. ‘We should act with decision.'

‘Which, Captain Nelson, will surely add to our enemies at a time when we are seeking allies.'

The formality of that response, which was a hint to Nelson that the view he had just expounded was unwelcome, went right over the man's head.

‘The Bey, sir, cannot be said to be our friend.'

‘Lord Hood would wish, if he cannot be that, for him to be kept from becoming an ally of France.'

‘Even if they cut off the king's head?'

‘You were present, Captain Nelson, when the Bey reminded us that we had at one time done the same.'

‘You know I esteem our Lord Hood, but he is not here, sir. We are, and I believe bold action will carry the day. We should board and take those French frigates, secure the Smyrna convoy as prizes and bribe the Bey with half the profits from the sale of what they are carrying.'

‘I have said it before, Captain Nelson, that my orders are quite specific, and they have been reinforced by the dispatches brought to me by Captain Digby. The problem is not simply here. Attack the ships in the bay and we may well set the whole Mussulman world of the Mediterranean against us. Constantinople will not take kindly to us being high-handed. Might I remind you we are talking of the very people who, in the
religious connection, hold the land within twelve miles of Gibraltar.'

‘But—'

Nelson got no further, as Linzee cut him off with the words, ‘I think I have made the position clear, Captain.'

Nelson actually produced a pout that took years off him, making him, with his unlined skin and blond, untidy hair, look quite youthful.

‘I defer to you, sir. I know the decision is not an easy one.'

‘Thank you, Captain,' Linzee replied, probably well aware that the words did not match the feelings, which was very evident in Nelson's expression. ‘Whatever, we must go ashore again on the morrow, and see if we can get him to change his mind.'

Pearce had quite deliberately kept the letters until he could get Nelson on his own; it was no business of anyone else if he was communicating with the Hamiltons. He might be open about the connection, but it was his prerogative to be discreet if he wished.

‘Why, thank you, Mr Pearce.' Nelson took the letters and caressed the seals, very obviously pleased. ‘You met the ambassador?'

‘I did, sir, a most elegant gentleman.'

‘Oh, he's more than that, Mr Pearce. The fellow has a sharp brain, and that goes double for Lady Hamilton.'

There was a look in the little captain's eye then, a
gleam, that tempted Pearce to say more. With him still feeling the effects of the wine he had consumed he might reveal that his admiration for the lady extended to more than her brain. Just as he decided against it, the matter being none of his concern, Nelson went on.

‘You have no idea how kind she was to my stepson, Josiah. The lad knows nothing of the world, Mr Pearce, locked away as he has been, when not at school, in Norfolk. To a young man who sees a trip to the King's Lynn feast or the Aylsham Assembly as exciting, I fear the city of Naples overwhelmed him somewhat, but Lady Hamilton put him at his ease.'

Pearce could not resist the question. ‘And how old is your stepson, sir?'

‘Fourteen years,' Nelson replied.

A reply which had John Pearce cursing himself for the fact that his mind was working in the same manner as that for which he had earlier castigated Henry Digby.

‘Might I ask you, sir, your views on flogging?'

Nelson blinked but that soon changed to a pensive look. ‘I subscribe to the saying, Mr Pearce, that it makes a good man bad, and a bad man even worse, but I cannot see how we can run a ship without the use of it. Personally, I seek to avoid the use of the cat, but I have had many occasions when it was so warranted as to leave me no option. Why do you ask?'

‘We have one to perform on board HMS
Faron
, and it is to be given to a man I personally esteem.'

That earned him a pat on the back, one of some
sympathy, as Nelson replied, holding up the letters, ‘With the rank goes the duty.'

When Pearce nodded at that, his sadness plain, Nelson added, ‘I would be obliged if you would visit me to take back with you my replies. I believe you are to return to Naples.'

‘I am, sir.'

‘Then I envy you.' As John Pearce turned to leave, his action must have triggered a recollection in Nelson's mind, for he gave a little cry. ‘I have it. I see you now, not in the uniform you are wearing but in a seaman's ducks. In the English Channel was it not?'

There was little choice but to acknowledge the truth.

‘I told you, sir, I never forget a face.'

‘Then, sir, you may well be interested to know how I came to be there.'

The ritual of a flogging was a time-honoured affair, yet the level of brutality attendant upon that was a matter of how the captain ran his ship. It could be rendered bloody and harsh, the way favoured by the likes of Ralph Barclay, or it could be made to be an act indulged more in sorrow than in anger. Looking at Digby, prior to Michael O'Hagan being brought up on deck, Pearce could see him as a man less assured than he had been the previous evening. Then, bolstered with wine and his seat at the commodore's table, he had been full of confidence, with nary a thought to this, the other part of his responsibilities.

Now that the time had come to actually proceed with the punishment, he had a distinct pallor around the gills, one which hinted to Pearce that his superior was a novice when it came to something of this nature. In their month
long voyage to La Rochelle and back, the cat had never appeared, and though he knew Digby had witnessed his own flogging on board HMS
Brilliant
, it was not ordered or overseen by him. Given that thought, and in revenge for having to explain his supposed heroics, Pearce could not help a little dig.

‘I am unsure of the procedures, sir. I hope you will advise me if I seem to be going astray.'

‘What?'

Caught off guard, trapped in his own thoughts, Digby replied with a satisfying degree of fluster, and it took him a few seconds to digest what Pearce had said. Then he produced words that made his premier feel like a scrub for baiting him.

‘I will not make a pretence of enjoying this, Mr Pearce, but I fear it must be done. Fail to act and the effect on the crew could be ruinous.'

‘So it is, as the old sage, Voltaire, said in his book
Candide: “pour encourager les autres
”.'

Digby actually blanched at that. Voltaire had used that expression thirty-five years previously to describe the judicial murder, the execution by firing squad, on his own quarterdeck, of Admiral Byng. The act, as well as the words, had resonated through the service, and was reckoned to have had a telling effect on the conduct of naval officers ever since: no one wanted such a disgrace or anything like that as a fate; better to die in action, however ill-judged, than face such an end.

‘Whatever it is, Mr Pearce, it is deserved. My
standing orders for the ship were quite specific.'

‘Yes, sir,' Pearce replied, for Digby spoke the unvarnished truth.

Every officer taking command of a ship added to the Articles of War, which governed the behaviour of sailors, his own personal conditions for the way the ship should be run, and no women had been one of them, read out to the crew on the day Henry Digby took up his duties. It had been promulgated, Pearce suspected, to keep off his new ship the whores of Toulon, numerous in a naval port and growing more so by the day in a besieged town awash with desperate refugees. But it had also been applied at Gibraltar, though mitigated for the frantic by the allowance of some shore leave. From Gibraltar there was nowhere to run; Spain would send a man back if they did not kill him and no one was fool enough to desert to the only other landmass, the North African shore.

‘I would not want you to think, Mr Pearce, that my orders were occasioned by excessive prudery.'

Digby was clearly referring to their earlier conversations on the subject of Lady Hamilton, seeking to point out that whatever his personal inclinations, he was in no way trying to play the preacher of abstinence, but the words had reminded Pearce of a duty he was required to perform.

‘On completion of this unpleasant affair, sir, can I have your permission to go aboard
Agamemnon
?'

‘For?'

‘Captain Nelson wishes me to take back to Naples his replies to the letters from Sir William and Lady Hamilton.'

‘I should do that after you have seen to some fresh provisions for the ship, Mr Pearce.'

‘Is that not a duty you would require to undertake yourself, sir?'

It was a fair question; lacking a purser on board, the captain was responsible for the victualling of the ship, as well as the mass of bookkeeping that entailed. Given the care required to balance those books it was risky to allow anyone else to take part in either purchase or distribution. When Digby responded, it was with a definite puff of the chest and, for him, a sound enough reason.

‘I would do it if I was not otherwise engaged. Commodore Linzee wishes me to accompany him to meet with the Bey of Tunis, so as I can convey, with some force, Lord Hood's latest thoughts.'

Pearce thought that was gilding it; Digby had no idea of Hood's thoughts, earliest or latest. If anyone did it was he, but that would not be a tactful thing to say to a man stuffed with pride at his invitation to take part in the mission.

‘You may wish to know, Mr Pearce,' Digby added, chest puffing out a bit more, ‘since you wish to go aboard HMS
Agamemnon
, that the commodore has decided not to include Captain Nelson in his embassy. He feels, no doubt, that he might lack the necessary diplomacy. Now, let us be about this business, for I
am not blessed with much in the way of time.'

The ship did run to a drummer, a slip of a boy in a red coat, who reminded Pearce very much of his first sight of Martin Dent, sent into the Pelican by Barclay to spy out the land. The rattle of the lad's sticks on the skin brought the whole crew up on deck, Neame and Harbin included. A couple of the bosun's mates rigged the grating to the poop rail, this after another had laid out a piece of canvas to keep pristine the deck planking. Michael, his hands chained together, was fetched from below by the bosun, blinking as he came out of the 'tween decks' darkness into the morning sunlight. When his eyes adjusted he had the good grace not to look at Pearce, but to concentrate his attention on Henry Digby, who proceeded to tell him against which statutes he had transgressed. Having done that he turned to his premier.

‘Mr Pearce, this man is rated as your servant, and since there is no doubt of his guilt in the matter, it falls to you to list any circumstances which you feel may mitigate the sentence I must apply.'

It was just another part of the ritual; Pearce, though he could not beg for any leniency for the actual offence, insisted that Michael was a good hand, attentive to his duty, a man who would always be at the forefront of any undertaking, regardless of how unpleasant, and certainly in the article of fighting, calling on Digby to recall that he must have seen evidence of this himself. While he was talking, Charlie Taverner, who had got to the front of the
assembled crew, turned round to look into the numerous sets of eyes, trying to discern who it was who had left Michael exposed.

He found what he thought would be his culprits, not in their steady stare but in the way many would not return his look. The crew of the ship had been made up of drafts from several vessels for that trip to Biscay and back but the time that voyage took, and the hazards faced, should have moulded them into a bunch at ease with each other; that it had not done so entirely was obvious by what was now taking place.

‘Well, O'Hagan, you have heard the charge against you, and the fulsome praise of Mr Pearce. Do you have anything to say in your own defence?' Michael just shook his large square head, while keeping his jaw stiff. ‘Then I have no option but to pay you out with a dozen of the cat. Bosun, seize him up.'

The bosun was no fool; the captain might use such an expression but he was not about to make an enemy of a bruiser like Michael for no purpose. The Irishman was not so much seized up as led to the grating, his hands unlocked and his shirt removed without the least hint of aggression. Recalling his own experience, John Pearce wondered if Michael was to be likewise treated, and he looked hard at the cat as it was removed from the red baize bag to see of what it was made.

The main rope looked solid enough, and there was no hint of softness in the tails. The truth that it was a proper instrument of punishment came when the bosun,
spreading his feet to get the right balance, struck the first blow, the sound of it thwacking against the bare flesh making him start, and Digby too. A great red weal appeared immediately, and that was added to by another with the second blow, though it was clear by the way the man administering the lash adjusted his footing, he was taking care not to strike on flesh already damaged.

No sound came from Michael, nothing more than a stiffening of those wide shoulders. Unable to see his face, Pearce had no idea if that was registering pain, or how hard his friend was biting on the leather strap in his mouth. But he did see, when he turned, by the looks on their faces, there was anger in the crew, though they were careful not to direct it in a place where an officer could follow their gaze. That told him the culprits who had left him to be discovered would suffer, and not at the hands of Michael O'Hagan.

It was after the sixth blow that Digby suddenly stepped forward, his hand held out. ‘Belay, that will be enough.'

The bosun, in the act of preparing to swing, looked at his captain, perplexed, perhaps noticing how pale was the man's face.

‘I am minded to show mercy,' Digby added, which brought a murmur of assent from the crew, ‘and freely admit that, given the offence, my original sentence was too harsh. Take him down and see to his back.' As soon as Michael was untied he pushed away those set to support him, turned to face the crew, and gave them his
widest smile, only nodding as Digby added, ‘I hope this will learn you your lesson, fellow. I do not wish to see you at the grating again.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Pearce said softly.

Digby's reply was near a whisper. ‘I did it for my own sake, Mr Pearce, not for yours.' There was a near shake of the body as he pulled himself together, and his tone became loud and brisk. ‘You will find a list of things we might purchase, along with the means to do so, on my table. Now be so good as to call up my boat. You may drop me at the flag and then make your way ashore'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

John Pearce had found himself, many times, in thick crowds, but never one as dense as now and, even with a couple of trusty hands to ensure he was not robbed, he felt insecure and kept a firm hand on his purse as well as the hilt of his sword. The quayside had been thick with humanity, but the markets were worse by far, and added to that were the cries of the vendors and the protests of their customers at the prices being quoted. Even now, when it would be cold and wet at home, it was hot here, and he had a momentary wish that he could exchange his uniform for the loose garments favoured by the locals.

His one advantage lay in his height; he could see over the heads of the crowd and pick those stalls he wished to call on. His major disadvantage was in the lack of the language – though he suspected the locals knew more than they let on – which became a handicap all the
greater when it came to arguing about price. The whole area, a series of narrow alleys in between buildings that seemed to be constructed of mud, was lined with
cave-like
emporiums and street stalls covered with awnings to keep out the sun.

They had a series of ever changing smells the like of which he had never experienced: the high odour of too ripe fruit – some of which on seeing them he could not name – the heady smell of spices, the aroma of meat and fish being cooked on charcoal burners, the sharp tang of lemons, the whiff of the hookah pipes and the scented tobacco they contained, the whole overlaid with the reek of mangy dogs, ordure, human sweat and the high-pitched cries of the vendors.

Bargaining was lengthy and complex, made more so by endless misunderstandings, which made him wish he had availed himself of whoever it was who represented British vessels calling at Tunis. He had no desire to convey what he purchased to the boat himself, and that involved alterations to what he had agreed, which included endless arm waving and shouting, but after two hours of haggling, exhausted by the effort, he was back on the quayside, ready to call in the cutter when his goods arrived, and he had found a space where he could rest his weary legs on a stone bollard.

Along the quay there were dozens of vessels loading and unloading – Tunis being a great trading port – and looking at the fellows doing the carting of the cargoes he had little doubt, given their emaciated appearance and air of misery,
that they were slaves. After a while, with a certain degree of guilt, he stood up and insisted that his two escorting hands, in turns, take the weight off their feet, an offer which was greeted with ill-disguised surprise. That led Pearce to think of his Pelicans who, away from authority, would not have been shy to tell him they needed rest as much as he, but he had left Charlie and Rufus behind – Michael not being an option – so as to allay some of the feelings of the crew regarding favouritism.

He began to pace up and down, in an increasing number of steps, looking at the great gate in the city wall, with the teeth of a portcullis showing at the top, wondering how long it would take for his purchases to arrive. That brought him close to a moving line of dust-coated creatures, bent when they were carrying sacks towards and up a gangplank, stumbling when they returned for their next load. An overseer with a whip stood to one side, his rasping voice calling for effort, his hand twitching to tell his charges that he had a whip and he would use it.

Pearce stopped to watch, wondering what the
anti-slavery
campaigners of the British Isles would make of such a sight. Vexed by the Atlantic trade, this would displease them just as much, for here was every race represented including Nubians. Was it not on a journey to Egypt that William Wilberforce was first converted to the cause of the Testonites? Was it such a sight as John Pearce was witnessing now that persuaded him of the evils of human bondage?

He only became aware that one of the overworked creatures had stopped and was staring at him because the weary workers following and not looking bumped into him, that bringing a shout from the overseer. Pearce found himself looking into a heavily bearded face, bronzed where the sun had not actually burnt off the skin, and a pair of bird-like brown eyes that seemed familiar. It was in the act of trying to place the memory they triggered that the fellow spoke his name.