A Stormy Peace Read online

  A Stormy Peace

  David McDine

  © David McDine 2019

  David McDine has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  1 A Quiet Night at the Mermaid

  2 Revenge

  3 ‘Needlework’

  4 Sick Leave

  5 The Looker’s Hut

  6 Some Welcome Intelligence

  7 The Crooked Billet

  8 HMS Phryne

  9 Back to Sea

  10 A Fancy Dinner

  11 The Morning After

  12 Josiah Parkin’s Response

  13 The Captain’s Visit

  14 The Fog of Peace

  15 Portsmouth

  16 A Smuggling Run

  17 Messrs Adkins, Woolsack and Adkins

  18 A Ruthless Bastard

  19 Homeward Bound

  20 The Admiralty

  21 Happy Reunions

  22 Black Mac’s Threat

  23 A Sporting Challenge

  24 Travel Plans

  25 Visit from a ‘Faceless One’

  26 The Match

  27 A Plea for Help

  28 ‘Tools of his Trade’

  29 A Change of Plans

  30 The Deserted Village

  31 Dover

  32 The Woodhurst Militia

  33 Fellow Passengers

  34 ‘A Bit of Weather’

  35 Weapons and Tactics

  36 Green Around the Gills

  37 Calais

  38 Pinning Tails on Donkeys

  39 A Maiden in Distress

  40 Return to Old Haunts

  41 A Final Warning

  42 Paris

  43 The Gold Anchor

  44 Time Runs Out

  45 The Sea Monster

  46 The Battle of Woodhurst

  47 Versailles

  48 A Pencil Shortage

  49 An Encounter with Bonaparte

  50 Ghosts from the Past

  51 Fontainebleau

  52 Le Chateau de Pisseleu-aux-Bois

  53 Rendezvous at Sea

  54 Who Winks First

  55 ‘Beat to Quarters!’

  56 A Surprise for the Colonel

  Historical Note

  About the Author

  1

  A Quiet Night at the Mermaid

  Flickering candles stuck in wax-encrusted bottles gave off just enough light for Joe Maggs, landlord of the Mermaid Inn, to survey his little empire and keep an eye on tonight’s few customers.

  It was a large but cosy bar-room, with rickety chairs, upturned barrels as tables, and a few fly-blown pictures on the once white-washed walls, long stained brown by tobacco smoke.

  Like many a publican in the Channel ports, Maggs had once earned his living afloat. His left forearm bore a fading blue-inked tattoo featuring a ship of the line and his right — appropriately — a mermaid, also outlined in blue, with only her lips and nipples picked out in red, matching the crudely painted sign that swung outside.

  Which came first was known only to him, but while the one on the sign remained slim and seductive as the day she was painted, the tattooed version had grown fatter and more wrinkly over the years as the landlord himself increased in girth.

  He had the broken nose common to seaport landlords, acquired keeping order among over-indulging customers when they were in funds. He drank himself, though never to excess, preferring to squirrel his money away against the day when he would sell up.

  Maggs had been at the Mermaid for longer than any of his customers and his mind was beginning to turn to retirement, perhaps to the row of seaside cottages overlooking the harbour.

  Giving up the drudgery of running the pub was growing ever more appealing. It was a life many of his regulars imagined as a kind of paradise, with free drink on tap, a steady income and the pleasure of not having to roll off home to a scolding wife or mother at closing time. But the reality was quite different.

  The early shine had long since worn off. The daily routine involved cleaning and cellar work before the first thirsty customer crossed the threshold. And the rest of the day was spent serving a string of regulars, each of whom only stopped off for a wet or two to be replaced by a steady stream of others while the landlord himself remained ‘watch on, stop on’, as they called it in the navy.

  Then, into the evening, the pub was either dead — in which case he still had to hang about waiting for drinkers who might or might not appear — or he would be rushed off his feet with a rowdy room-full.

  All to be repeated the day after and the day after that, it seemed, ad infinitum.

  How sweet the prospect of giving it all up and spending his days idly fishing off the beach seemed, coupled with the pleasure of dropping into his old pub whenever he chose for a glass or two with his old cronies whenever it suited him.

  He had resigned himself to a quiet night tonight, but then two naval officers and a couple of fishermen had drifted in, followed by a stranger who had the rolling gait and whiff of the sea about him.

  So, Maggs reckoned, although there were only a few customers his takings would still make it worthwhile staying open.

  The two officers who had taken root at the table near the door ordered some of his best French wine, acquired free of charge from smugglers in payment for some favours he had been able to do for them.

  Lieutenant Anson, of the local Sea Fencibles, whom he liked, and the new divisional captain who also seemed to be a decent type, were clearly in celebratory mood and would no doubt order a second bottle: pure profit.

  The two fishermen, elbows on the bar counter and pewter tankards in their fists, were knocking back the ale and the stranger who had entered just after the officers was nursing a double rum served to him by Kitty, the young skivvy who did the washing up and cleaning.

  There was something vaguely familiar about the newcomer, but by the candlelight Maggs was unable to place him and turned his attention back to the fishermen’s talk of the day’s catch.

  *

  Over in the nearby Sea Fencible detachment building, Sam Fagg, lately foretop-man in one of His Majesty’s men-of-war and now game-legged boatswain of a bunch of — in his words — ‘ragged-arsed ’arbour rats’, was in contemplative mood.

  He leaned back in his chair, stuck his well-worn sea boots on the table, puffed at his evilly smoking clay pipe and gave the unit’s master at arms the benefit of his wisdom.

  ‘Y’know, Tom,’ he observed, ‘if this ’ere peace what they keep goin’ on abaht breaks aht, I fink I might give up the sea. Swallow the anchor, like.’

  Not one to jump to instant conclusions, his companion Tom Hoover fingered his ear and weighed the bosun’s comment carefully.

  There were indeed rumours of talks between the British and the French to end the war that had been raging across Europe and the world’s oceans for the past decade, but nothing firm.

  Having given the matter of peace some thought, Hoover, a smart marine sergeant who would never dream of putting his highly polished boots on any table, was sceptical of his mate’s stated intention to swallow the anchor. ‘Thought the sea’d already given you up, Sam, on account of that peg leg of yours.’

  ‘It ain’t a peg leg. A peg leg’s when they cuts it orf if it won’t work proper and starts goin’ sceptical. Then the pusser issues yer wiv a wooden one. That’s a peg leg.’

  Hoover raised his eyebrows. Although born in America, he hailed from a New England loyalist family and spoke the King’s English properly, albeit with what was usually mistaken for an East Anglian drawl. His correct use of the language came thanks to the custom at his childh
ood school for pupils to read words aloud together as one class — and to fix the meanings in their minds.

  Fagg, however, had learned his fractured version of the language as an urchin on the mean streets of the naval dockyard town of Chatham, where aitches were few and far between and if you weren’t sure of the correct word you came up with something that sounded like it — sceptical being a case in point.

  Noticing the marine’s wry grin, he protested. ‘Nah, yer know full well I still got both me legs, ’though I ’ave to hadmit the duff one ain’t no good fer friggin’ abaht in the riggin’ no more. Mind you,’ he touched his nose conspiratorially with his index finger, ‘I can still get it over, like, if ye get me drift.’

  Hoover, bought up as a good Baptist, got his drift sure enough, but chose to ignore the crude innuendo.

  ‘So, if you give up the sea or it gives you up, what d’you plan to do?’

  ‘Well, there’s runnin’ a pub. Always fancied that, I ’ave. I’d get free drink, see, an’ all the tarts would be round like flies on a cowpat.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be free — the drink, I mean. And before you start knocking it back, you’ll have to buy a pub in the first place, so how’re you going to do that?’

  The bosun considered. ‘Yeah, well, I see what yer mean, but the drink’d be only what I pay the brewers and as fer buying a pub, well, we got prize money coming our way, ain’t we, from that there privateer?’

  ‘Mebbe, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Right now, it’s pie in the sky.’

  ‘But if we do get it, quite a lot of money like, what’ll yer do with yours?’

  Hoover smiled. ‘Well, if there really is going to be peace between us and the French and the marines don’t want me anymore, why, I reckon I’ll find myself a wife and a place in the country, like a smallholding, and settle down to a nice peaceful life.’

  It was Fagg’s turn to grin knowingly. ‘And you got a gal in mind, ain’t yer?’

  It was no secret that Hoover fancied Sarah, daughter of Phineas Shrubb, the Baptist preacher, apothecary, and sometime surgeon’s mate in the navy who now looked after the Seagate detachment’s sick and hurt.

  The marine smiled but held his tongue. Sam Fagg and the rest of them would find out soon enough, subject to three ifs: if peace was declared and the service decided it no longer required his services; if the prize money for the detachment’s capture of the Normandy privateer materialised — and if the girl in question said ‘yes’. But these were big ifs.

  *

  Over in the Mermaid, Oliver Anson clinked glasses with his particular friend and now his divisional captain — Amos Armstrong — and they drank a quiet toast to the many brave men lost during the Boulogne fiasco.

  Ever since the raid, while convalescing, Anson had suffered a black depression, absorbed in his own gloomy thoughts and unable to talk about the operation to anyone — other than Armstrong — who had not been there and shared the experience with him.

  This even included his dear friend Josiah Parkin and niece Cassandra, who had cared for him and helped him pull through.

  The raid failed because Nelson hadn’t known that the crescent of ships defending Boulogne had been chained together and could not be cut out.

  And Anson, who had discovered this vital intelligence while on a secret mission in the Pas de Calais just before the attack, blamed himself for not ensuring that it got to the admiral.

  True, he had reported it to the chain of command — in his case the then divisional captain, the pompous, pumped-up Captain Arthur Veryan St Cleer Hoare. But only when it was too late did Anson discover that his report had got no further.

  Hoare had chosen not to inform Admiral Nelson because he did not want to appear lily-livered, an accusation he had instead levelled at his own ‘underling’ — Anson.

  But things had changed. Hoare’s fatal failing had evidently been uncovered, along with his pretence to have played a major part in the earlier capture of the privateer.

  Captain Hoare was now kicking his heels as resident naval officer in the Isles of Scilly, the furthest west the Admiralty could send him.

  And Armstrong had at last been released from his lonely signal station eyrie atop the Sussex Downs to replace the disgraced Hoare in command of all Sea Fencible detachments along the coast from the North Foreland to Beachy Head — including Anson’s Seagate unit.

  Now, in his cheerful company, Anson permitted himself to relax fully for the first time since Boulogne.

  He raised his glass again, this time to wish his friend joy of his promotion. True, it was not a sea command, but they would both be in the front line if the French invaded.

  However, that seemed an unlikely prospect at present and the only cloud on their joint horizon was all the talk of pending peace.

  Although a common toast among officers in the navy was to ‘a bloody war or a sickly season’, so that they could climb the promotion ladder in dead men’s shoes, it was invariably proposed tongue in cheek.

  No-one in their right mind could really wish for conflict or disease, but without them advancement in the navy was snail-like and no war at all meant laying up ships and casting sea officers up on the beach.

  Asked what he would do if peace did break out, Armstrong pondered. ‘There’s a role for me of course, managing the family estate.’

  His family, descended from the border reivers, the robber barons who in earlier centuries held sway over the country between England and Scotland, had an extensive estate in Northumberland.

  And his father, he had told Anson, was reduced to ‘being pushed around in a Bath chair by a sturdy maid’, so he would no doubt inherit in due course, and most likely sooner than later.

  Armstrong sighed at the thought of taking on the responsibility, when he would far sooner stay in the service. ‘Yes, I suppose it will come to that, but first I should like to travel to places we’ve been denied access to during this war.’

  ‘Like Paris? You were there before The Terror, I recall.’

  ‘Yes, my wise old father sent me there to learn the language — and certain other skills, of a romantic nature.’

  ‘And you’d like to return?’

  ‘Of course, mon vieux!’ He had addressed particular friends that way ever since his Paris days. ‘I’d love to find out what’s happened to the crowd I ran around with, mostly aristos of a sort. I fear many will have lost their heads to the guillotine, but you never know. And then there’s the girls... they may still be around.’

  He savoured the thought, but then remembered he had declared an interest in Anson’s sister Elizabeth, so quickly changed the subject, asking, apparently innocently: ‘But what about you, mon vieux? Will you enter the church like your father and brother?’

  Anson spluttered. ‘The only way I’ll enter the church is in a coffin. Religion’s one thing, but I can’t abide church politics. It sickens me, as does the tithe system where poor men are taxed so that the likes of my father and brother live lives of ease off the fat of the land and the sweat of other men’s brows.’

  Armstrong was startled by his friend’s vehemence. ‘I was only joking, mon vieux!’

  Anson shook his head and confided: ‘My father gave me an allowance when I joined the navy, y’know.’

  ‘Many an officer gets some sort of allowance from their family. I do myself, and some consider it essential to supplement our miniscule pay.’

  ‘But I took my father’s money without realising it came from the iniquitous tax forced on poor farmers and smallholders by the church. I know now — and I’ve stopped taking it.’

  ‘Is that part of the reason for breaking with your family?’

  ‘In part, yes, although the main reason was them trying to force me to marry Charlotte Brax.’

  ‘Of course,’ Armstrong nodded. He knew Anson had been cornered by the oafish local squire’s spoilt daughter, desperate for a suitable husband before, as her own father had put it, ‘she ran to fat like her mother’.

 
‘Anyway, we won’t go there. The fact is that since all that I’ve vowed to pay it back, every penny, and when I do, I intend to shame my father into using it for the poor of his parish.’

  Armstrong refilled their glasses. ‘Steady on, mon vieux. Precisely how do you intend to pay it back — certainly not out of your naval pay?’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing. That barely covers my living expenses. I even tried to sell my horse but thought better of it. No, don’t forget the detachment is expecting prize money. If that comes through, I’ll certainly be able to pay back at least some of the allowance.’

  Armstrong spread his hands in mock surrender. He well knew that when Anson had made his mind up about something he could not be shifted. It was a stubborn streak that occasionally defied logic.

  ‘Well, I know it’s the weevil nearest your biscuit right now, but let’s forget all that for a while and enjoy this very fine wine, no doubt courtesy of some of those free traders you have recruited into your detachment!’

  Anson grinned. He could name every one of his men who smuggled as a side-line, but there was no way he would ever finger any of them, telling himself, probably correctly, that the economy of half the county would collapse without their efforts.

  And anyway, whoever had heard of Kentish wine? Maybe in the distant future someone would start producing some that was drinkable, but for now — war or no war — France was the only ready source of it, and of the brandy English gentlemen consumed in such quantities after enormous dinners.

  As they chatted away amicably, sipping some of the wine in question, neither took notice of the short, thick-set man, with tattooed neck and a nose that had clearly been broken several times, who had come in after them and was now sitting in the corner nursing a double tot of rum.

  The landlord, who knew most of those who frequented the Mermaid, had not recognised this old salt with his coat collar turned up and floppy hat pulled down low obscuring his battered features. Indeed, from his rig he could be taken for just another piece of sea-faring human flotsam that inhabited the Channel ports.