Pretenders War

By Martin Hilyard

It is Spring 1782. The Catholic Supremacy in England is coming to an end under the incompetent rule of Charles Edward Stuart, known widely as 'The Stuart Pretender' for the weakness and disasters of his reign. How did it come to this? When James II repulsed William of Orange's invasion in 1688 and then allied with the Sun King, Louis XIV, to invade and destroy the Dutch Republic, he ushered in a golden age, earning the title James The Great. The Catholic Church is restored, the Jesuits and monastic orders re-established, Protestantism and dissent suppressed. In war after war England's armies triumph to reach a pinnacle of power under his son, James III.
But then comes old age, illness and dissolution. When James III dies in 1766, England is at her lowest ebb, wracked by civil unrest and riot, rampant poverty and inequality, religious oppression. Abroad war is endless as mighty empires grapple with each other. Beneath the banners, little-known to the marching armies and powerful fleets, a shadow war also rages, a war of intrigue, spying and violent death. All across Europe, on every front where the great powers – France, Spain and England – confront each other, a vast network of agents fight a secret war, sometimes for their masters, often for themselves.
Saddled with debt, Lieutenant Randall Chastain of His Catholic Majesty's ship Audacity arrives on the Caribbean Station and sets out to obtain wealth by any means possible. But his activities soon attract the attention of traitors within the Navy intent on aiding King Carlos of Spain. Through siege, battle, rebellion and war he must enter this world of intrigue if he means to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Hilyard
• Release date: Aug 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005444860

Martin Hilyard

Martin Hilyard is the son of a Polish father conscripted into the German army and liberated during the Normandy landings. His father was an affectionate but distant and deeply religious man. Martin is an atheist but some of his earliest memories are of sonorous Latin chants, incense, the chime of quiet bells summoning the divine. He wrote poetry in school, science-fiction later, mostly (completely) for his own enjoyment.He went to India as a teenager: the Mughal palaces and imperial reminders of the Raj. The high Karakorams, the timelessness of Srinagar. The bustle and drama of Bombay. Then university, a fairly sterile time but he loved the histories he discovered of unfamiliar countries and unremembered times.He settled in Liverpool in the 1980s. There he learned that we can’t always change the world but in trying to the world may change us. He became interested in role-playing games, creating history-based sagas, realising how much he enjoyed shaping worlds then having his design overthrown by the characters that entered his world.Martin has returned to writing to share through story-telling something of what he believes. He has a charming, homely, loving partner and they live in a forever home in Liverpool. He is personable, engaging, serious, a thinker and listener, gets on well with people, works hard and likes to write quickly and fluently. He likes nothing better than conversation. So if you're ever in Liverpool, stand him a pint on a Saturday afternoon.

Book preview

Pretenders War

by

Martin Hilyard

Martin Hilyard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

© 2019

Chapter 1 – Flight

Second Lieutenant Randall Chastain stared appalled and unbelieving at the scene of destruction before him. Across nearly the whole of the horizon lay the remains of a once-proud English fleet. Great ships were sinking or burning, soon to slide beneath the azure waves. The money spent by His Majesty and the tens of thousands in plunder they had carried; all lost.

A few ships still fought on, surrounded by the victorious French. More had already surrendered, the royal flag of France streaming above their own. A few – a very few – were trying to flee, as his own ship, His Catholic Majesty's ship Audacity, was doing. But with pierced hulls and damaged yards they would not long escape the pursuing enemy. Not in the light airs of the Dominique Channel. Soon they too would fall victim to misfortune and greed.

He could hear the fires raging, the crashing of masts as they fell. The dull roar of the few cannon still firing, the screams of drowning seamen. But more than that, he could feel the searing heat of the flames even across the mile of sea between Audacity and what remained of the fleet.

Clapping a glass to his eye enabled him to pick out Ark Royal, grappled by two French ships and now with only a few guns firing. Its deck was a shambles of shattered spars and broken, dying men. And there, Relentless, a noble 74, listing to starboard; its lower tier of guns already below the sea and soon to capsize. He had a friend aboard the Royal Lion, Lieutenant Darcy, but if he lived it would be a miracle.

Randall could see blood streaking the sides of the Lion from its scuppers, and gun ports beaten in by the ferocity of the French attacks. Its mainmast was gone and a fire was burning near the bows. Men were trying to lower a boat, but even as he watched a broadside from the enemy shattered the boat and swept the men away.

Suddenly there was a flash, so bright he must shield his eyes. It was followed first by a vast noise and then a powerful wave of an even greater heat, causing those watching to step back from the taffrail. Rigging, timbers, things unrecognizable except as black dots flew with agonizing slowness across his vision. One of the fighting tops, the truck and part of the mast spiralled skywards. Then, as if pushed back by a mighty hand, they fell with awful majesty into the sea. A huge wave fountained up, stark against the blue-black sky.

My God, exclaimed someone, "that was Formidable! Poor Rodney".

'Rodney!', thought Randall scathingly, 'that money-grubbing swine!'

He continued to gaze morosely but with a growing anger at the continuing scene of devastation and defeat. Randall seethed as the 64 gun ship Grace of God lowered the white ensign to the cheers of the enemy. Through his glass he could clearly see French sailors still firing and thrusting pikes into surrendering and wounded men. The crew were paying the price of a king's drunken folly, his minister's indulgence of a king.

'All that money gone', Randall thought, furious. And with it, his hopes for the future.

Over the years, as he made his way in the Navy, Chastain had swallowed his pride and played the game, currying favour with fellow officers: gracefully losing at cards, flattering them, inviting them to fish on his father's estate or visit him when in town. And it had spoiled him, manured his contempt. For he found that he served a king, an admiralty and a Navy riddled with corruption and inured to defeat.

King Charles preferred revels and disastrous military adventures in Europe and the East Indies - often suggested by his mistresses - to building new ships or recruiting the foreign shipwrights and armourers that were so desperately needed. After a defeat like this, the few commissions given out would go to other men.

His anger and disappointment were interrupted by a cry from above. All who had eyes to see turned anxiously to the mizzentop.

Sails ho! cried the lookout, two enemy frigates on the starboard quarter, heading our way!

Damn your eyes, Roache, I'll have your skin for this roared Captain Seymour. All hands make sail! Make sail or its a French prison by nightfall!

In utter confusion and alarm, seamen ran to their positions, ready to haul, while others sprang into the shrouds to loose sails. Chastain and Charles Courtenay, the first lieutenant, ran to their own stations, beating a path with oaths and cudgels, pushing laggard seamen before them.

Slowly the sails rose and were set by sweating, anxious topmen. Audacity began to pick up speed and heeled to port as she beat against the wind. All eyes now turned first to the pursuing ships and then to the captain to gauge his mood. Randall took the moment to try to smooth his unruly hair and straighten his cravat, schooling his features to an impassive efficiency.

Captain Seymour, tall, gangling, darkly handsome, was of a Leicestershire family of gentles all. He paced back and forth along the windward rail of the quarterdeck, glancing first at the enemy coursing behind, then to the sky, as if seeking heavenly assistance. Time went by, the Captain barking orders to trim sail and start some precious water over the sides to lighten the ship. Then Providence intervened.

Just before the enemy frigates came within range with their bow chasers, a dark mass of cloud and rain swept down upon the three ships. Audacity just had time to take in sail and rejoice as the French frigates turned back before the squall reached them and a dark, shrieking hell engulfed the ship.

Gone to save their prizes no doubt, eh Chastain?

Lieutenant Courtenay loomed out of the lashing rain, long hair plastered to his head, but with a smile on his normally lugubrious face. How he had found the time to put on a watch coat Chastain could not fathom. His own cheaply-made uniform was suffering in the rain. The blue dye of the worn broadcloth coat was already ruining the white of his britches. No doubt Courtenay would be fit for salon and ballroom under that coat.

Now we may see England again.

Randall could not hide his satisfaction at the prospect. He had no reason to stay in the Caribbean; all he owned was here. The wealth he had acquired on St Eustatius and in Maracaibo rested not in some bank in St Johns. His letters of credit, good in New York and London, were even now nestling in the deep pockets of his uniform. England had been beaten and vengeful men wanted his blood. Why remain?

Aye, sir, he replied, wiping the rain from his eyes. But with none of the wealth we were promised. All our prize money was in the ships Admiral Rodney sent home last year, never to reach England.

That fleet, carrying £3,000,000 of plunder, had been mysteriously intercepted by the French and carried to Brest in triumph. Another black day for England's Navy.

"Formidable was carrying £30,000 in silver but that's gone as well. And perhaps some of your own?"

It might, laughed Courtenay uproariously, if I had not spent the lot or pledged it as security for my debts. All now at the bottom of the sea with the fleet. My creditors can go seek their pound of flesh in Davy Jones' Locker!

He clapped Randall on the shoulder and looked about, peering through the driving rain.

Who has the watch I wonder?

The captain I think, replied Randall, and I see Midshipman Franklin by his side. He will not leave the quarterdeck for some hours no doubt.

Come then, Chastain. Let us get out of the damned rain and these god-damned uniforms! Cards?

***

Released from duty, the starboard watch gathered below on the mess deck of Audacity. Here was where the crew ate, slept, fought and prayed. Matthew Makepeace and his mate, Jacob Varghese, were drinking small beer while smoking Trinidad leaf, well-pleased with the feel of the ship. They were heading home at last.

Makepeace was a taciturn man, a former ostler and pot boy for a tavern outside Cirencester, bred to the land. But he was in his forties now and had been at sea for almost twenty years. While a young man he had taken a shine to the tavern-keeper's daughter, with predictable consequences. Unwilling any longer to suffer the wry comments of his customers over a belly getting too big to conceal, the landlord had forced his daughter to cry rape. Makepeace was taken up. But he escaped hanging by volunteering for His Majesty's Navy just in time to join the Carnatic War being fought along the Mughal Shore.

Not that I would not be ashore right now, said Jacob. "There was a fille de joie at The Pearl on Antigua - and here he kissed his fingertips in universal admiration - who would stiffen even the Pope, excusing my English."

Excused mate, replied Matthew. Excused.

"But I was a sailor before that devil ship Colossus took me from home and family. And a sailor I remain, even if it is in foreign seas."

Jacob had been pressed out of a Genoese merchantman many years before. He was a black-haired, black-hearted devil but Matthew liked him. Wicked of temper, worse with a knife. He had a crooked nose and a battered, simple-seeming face. Hairy hands but no beard, a limp from a broken bone that never quite healed. Stupid men thought a cripple no match. But it was his hands that did the damage, with one knife or two. Jacob drew on his pipe, held the smoke in his lungs and breathed it out through his nose.

You never sailed the great oceans then? Matthew asked, though he already knew the truth of it. Never saw the Cape nor the Carribee till now, the far northern seas?

I never did, said Jacob, taking a swig of beer and grimacing. "But you never saw Genoa neither. Never drank wine during the festa dei fiore. Nor sat in the Piazza Raffaele seducing a beautiful girl. Saw dawn come up over the castello after making love to that girl."

Matthew eyed his mate admiringly and drew on his pipe, filling the cubby in which they sat with aromatic smoke. Caribbean women were all very well, he thought. And women for rent were very necessary. But he had touched in Spanish ports before the war. And though years had passed he could never quite forget olive skin, dark eyes under full lashes, tanned legs wrapped around his body. If afterwards she said una plata, senhor and taken what she thought fair from the coins upon the table, it changed nothing.

I never did, Matthew admitted, getting up to fetch down the roasting pan from its hook, while Jacob reached under the counter for the coffee beans.

Why, you make me not to miss old London Town at all, he grinned, and that would never do.

So where do we go? Jacob asked.

He was a brave enough sailor and had no love for the French, he being Genoese. But Matthew knew he also longed to see his home again and had often talked of deserting in some port where he could work his passage back.

Well, if I was an officer I would know for sure, Matthew said, lighting a small stove in the galley next door.

Word is we go to New York. Perhaps to fight the Frenchies. Maybe Antigua, the long ways around. If we do, why next we will storm the forts on Martinique and set up as kings.

I will not, Jacob replied, swirling the skillet to roast the beans evenly. We Genoese care nothing for kings. And I do not like the girls in Martinique. They file their teeth.

***

The next day Captain Henry Seymour sat on a bench from which he could look out of the stern windows of the great cabin, staring back in time and to different places.

His had been a noble family once. But they had fallen a long way in the last one hundred years. Fearing a Catholic monarch and alliance with France, his family had secretly sided with those plotting to bring 'Dutch William' to England and overthrow the Stuart house.

But when James II, 'the Great' as he was now called, had himself ridden post-haste to Portsmouth and ordered Roger Strickland, then Admiral of the Fleet and after Duke of Portsmouth, to put to sea and fall upon William of Orange's invasion fleet, he had consigned the Seymours to oblivion.

With the destruction of William's fleet and the mercenary army it had transported, many of the plotters had fled. But the Seymours had surrendered. They denied all, professed their loyalty, glad to keep their lands and heads if not their noble titles.

And for what? An enfeebled England, harried, beaten, over-shadowed by that colossus, France. Scotland and Ulster were lost, the Indian colonies under threat, the Americas in partial revolt. A Navy that could scarce put to sea without being beaten, as Rodney had been beaten. An army frittered away in colonial adventures. Europe, that was the true and only battlefield that mattered. And where his hope, England's hope, resided. Yet here he was on the other side of the Atlantic.

Seymour wondered once more about James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick. He was risking all for a man he had never met. Committing treason and sedition for a Stuart, albeit of an illegitimate line. But Stuart enough, his supporters hoped, to be acceptable to England when Charles III finally died.

Well, he had done his part: ensured that the treasure that Rodney had sent back to England from the Caribbean was captured by the French. Money that would be used to finance the invasion of England. And when that time came, the Seymours would regain their name and title at the hands of a grateful monarch.

He sighed, got up and went to the table, poured himself a glass of wine. He drank it off, wishing he had time for another. But he had heard four bells in the forenoon watch struck. It was time, and duty called.

He had ordered a Mass to be said for the souls of all those who had perished with Rodney, and all who had fallen into the hands of their enemies. The crew had risen even earlier than usual. Washed, shaved and barbered, dressed in their shore-going clothes, with Sunday-solemn faces. The marines lined the gangways, the guns were housed. The officers lined up with the captain as they waited for the priest to lead them in prayer.

Father Peabody was dressed in cassock, surplice and stole. A master's mate of uncommon piety for the Navy held an umbrella for him against unwelcome showers. The priest bowed to the great crucifix above the quarterdeck and turned to face the crew, beginning the introit: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

The seamen were gathered before him, each in his rightful watch. They uttered not a word but knelt, huddling together in the face of death and eternity.

Solemn words followed, echoed at intervals by the crew, from offertory to agnus dei: Domine, Jesu Christe, Rex gloriae, libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum de poenis inferni, et de profundo lacu: libera eas de ore leonis, ne absorbeat eas tartarus, ne cadant in obscurum. Lord Jesus Christ, King of Glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of Hell and the deep lake. Deliver them from the mouth of the Lion. Let not Hell swallow them up, nor let them fall into darkness.

I once believed in this, thought Chastain. That here was the binding glue that held the nation together. One realm, one God, one Navy. But the glue had dried and crumbled. Faith was dying. England was a country at war with itself as well as its old enemies, France and Spain.

New forces were arising. Forces led not by priests and the nobility but by factory owners and guildmasters, journeymen and apprentices. Women even, in an unsettling overthrow of established order. And beyond England's shores? War, intrigue, the corruption of the Church and the crumbling of Europe's empire of faith.

Peabody's sonorous chanting threatened to lull him into a different and unwanted mood. He straightened, taking control of himself. Mummery. Like bad sack, he thought. Dulling the mind of rich and poor alike.

Eventually it came to an end and he clapped hat to head even as the priest spoke the final words: Réquiem ætérnam dona eis Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat eis. Requiéscant in pace. Amen. Chastain looked around and noticed Captain Seymour staring at him, wondering. Let him, Chastain thought sourly. He is my captain, not my god.

The crew murmured their response and began to shuffle away, descending by the forward companionway to the mess deck below. The officers waited until the marines had joined them, the watch had been set and the ship's course confirmed by the captain to the officer of the watch. It was over. The dead were at rest.

***

Following the service, Randall lay back on his cot in the cubbyhole so amusingly dubbed his cabin and thought on all that had brought him to where he was. He knew himself to be the illegitimate child of a long-dead uncle, Bertrand. Younger than his brother Lucien, Bertrand had been sent to a seminary in France to be trained in holy orders. But he had fallen for a young woman of the town and fathered a nameless boy.

Expelled from the seminary, Bertrand had enlisted in a regiment recruiting for the Moravian War and never been heard of again. His mother, Trinette, had come with a letter begging charity, left the child and returned to France. She too had never been heard from again. Rumour said she had killed herself, gone looking for Bertrand, was some nameless whore in a house in Bordeaux, Lille, Strasbourg.

His father Lucien and his mother decided to adopt the boy, to name him Randall and have him baptised. He would have a name and a countenance, a family, and the world would hopefully never know the sin that had brought him into the world.

Randall knew nothing of this, not until he was thirteen years old and being sent to the Naval School. He was not told but read it in a letter his father had penned and his mother put in his dunnage. The shock when he read its contents, the hot tears and the shame that had surged in his breast had scarred him and he carried the scars still.

Far worse, he had not destroyed the letter. It had been found, read, shared with his classmates. Soon the whispers began, the sidelong looks, the high-hand and jeering comment, all puzzling to a studious provincial boy. The next two years were a hell on earth for that small boy. The mocking insults, the bullying, the friendships scorned, the bruising pranks and false accusations that had led to numerous whippings.

Hell indeed, until he had learned to fight. Not the swaggering youthful pugilism of his peers, gangling boys who wrestled more than they punched, but scientific fighting.

A retired prize-fighter had set up an academy in Plymouth, to train England's aristocratic youth in what was the latest craze. Fortunately his schoolmates had scorned to be taught by someone of low birth. Randall went. He expected nothing but found in the ring a discipline he had lacked and a cunning he did not know he had. He gained in strength, learned a different kind of dance. To bring feet, legs, body and arms into perfect harmony, to unleash the one blinding, redemptive strike. He lived for that moment, spent hours, days even, training, sparring, listening and watching, hardening his fists and steeling himself to pain.

It had taken another year for him to be left alone. His first victories over the swaggering bullies of the School had only brought retaliation: sudden assaults, gang attacks, knuckle-dusters. Such 'scientific boxing' as he had learnt was somehow cheating, un-English, the deceitful tricks of a sly foreigner.

But that training had been his salvation. Captain Petrie, of the St Joan of Pisa, had been visiting a nephew at the School, seen Randall fight and, satisfied that the boy knew enough of mathematics and what rope to haul, had invited Chastain to join his ship as a 'young gentleman'.

The four years he had spent on the Joan had been the making of him. There he had learned all he knew of seamanship and officering. He had become first a master's mate and then passed for a lieutenant in Gibraltar. As he had been adopted, the Navy Board could say little concerning his bastardy and Captain Petrie had many friends. But the Joan had no room for three lieutenants. So he must leave the ship when it returned to England. Found himself on the beach on half-pay with no prospects of any kind.

So in 1779, with rebellion in the colonies and a new war threatening, he had leapt at the chance to sail in Audacity, with the promise of much-needed money from its voyaging. His family had fallen on hard times, the fault of an improvident and unlucky father.

Lucien had received a modest though not-insignificant inheritance from Randall's grandfather and the family had lived well on its income. But these were dangerous times. His father had been a member of the Lay Order of The Visitation, a Benedictine offshoot. A friendly, helpful Order. But the beginning of a long struggle over the Stuart Succession and incautious statements had led to Lucien Chastain receiving an Omnes Revelare, a warrant for his arrest and interrogation, prompted by the rival Order of The Sepulchre, Franciscan fanatics. So immured, he could not watch over and protect the family's investments abroad, which withered and then broke.

The little influence they had left had eventually freed his father to retire to a quiet estate, always to be watched. The family had scraped together such money as they had or could borrow, and bought Chastain's commission. They would send their son half way round the world and hope he was forgotten. A dutiful son, he had vowed to pay back all that his adoptive father owed. But after, he would get wealth for himself and for the security it could bring. And what better way than service under Admiral Rodney in the Caribbean?

A long-time favourite of His Majesty Charles III, Rodney had been ordered to the Caribbean with a reinforcing fleet but had chosen instead to descend on the Dutch islands of St Eustatius and St Martin. The islands were a hotbed of illegal trading to the rebel colonies by ships of all nations, including England herself. Their harbours were bloated with the profits of a thousand illicit ventures, their warehouses stuffed with sugar, cotton and military stores of all kinds. Rodney invaded the islands, looting shops and banks, even the private houses of the merchants. He had impounded goods and stores, declared them forfeit then sold them back to their owners for gold.

Judas gold, he had sneered as he sat at his ease while the outraged merchants bickered with the fleet's pursers and commissary officers, but gold is gold.

Targetting the Jewish merchants who – in his mind - infested the islands of the Caribbean and were aiding His Majesty's rebellious subjects, he embarked on a campaign of extortion and pillage. Sailors had gleefully stripped Jews of their clothing to hunt for hidden treasure. Their graves were dug up, their synagogues despoiled. Few had objected and never in the hearing of the Admiral.

A job well done, leered the purser of the Audacity, rubbing his hands at the opportunity for enriching himself and his colleagues with anything that might stick to grasping hands.

The news of his rapacity had crossed the Atlantic, to the outrage of Parliament. In disgrace, and with demands from home for his recall that he could not ignore forever, Rodney had cobbled together a vague plan to blockade Guadeloupe and bring the French to battle. But he had stayed at sea too long and the annual storms had come early. Damaged, and short of all that was necessary to make good that damage, the fleet had not been fully restored to what passed for fighting trim before news of French reinforcements and a plan to seize Jamaica had reached his ears. Setting sail with what could sail, he had met the French in the Dominique Channel and paid the final price for all his follies.

Now Audacity was fleeing the scene of that defeat, trying to coax every ounce of speed from her sails, fighting rough seas and wind that threw great sheets of water across their starboard rails. Chastain had not been told where they were going. But on such a course they could not be making for Antigua, one of England's last Caribbean possessions, nor the Floridas. They could only be heading for New England or, ultimately, home waters. But why?

He had no time to think further on the matter. The weather was worsening and powerful winds were driving them to leeward. From above came the cry 'Reefs Ahoy' and the answering call of 'All hands, all hands'. He pulled on a griego and hurried once more to the main deck and into a maelstrom of warm, driving rain, groaning timbers and sails that threatened to split and tear loose.

Chapter 2 - Encounters

Hours later Randall had been towelled dry by his servant, his watch complete. Provided with a sleeping gown – no more was needed on such a warm night – he nursed a glass of port and thought about the year he had lived through. Sleep would not come as the ship slammed through the waves. They were heading north towards the coast of the Americas and a safe haven in Baltimore or beyond. Bermuda was denied them, for it was now held by the rebel League, a base for their cruisers and French privateers. Pray God we do not encounter such, he thought. They had an evil reputation for not taking prisoners.

To take his mind off such possibilities, he thought back to his time on St Eustatius and his meeting with Cornelia van Ridhout. He smiled ruefully and shook his head, all solemnity gone, washed away by half a bottle of Armagnac. Not his finest hour he had to admit. But the pleasure had been well worth a night's humiliation!

Just fifteen months ago he had been sitting at a quayside go-down in Oranjestad – Orange Town – on St Eustatius, a less-than-salubrious place and perhaps dangerous for a Royal Navy officer. But it was early in the occupation of the island and Admiral Rodney's oppressions had not yet turned the population against the fleet. The war against the colonies was going well. The French and Spanish had not troubled either Jamaica or Antigua. All was well with the world. A tankard of rum punch stood by his right hand but he had eyes and ears only for the scene before him.

Chastain was no brash young man. Rather he was moody and pugnacious by turns, alive to the slightest insult or reproof. His was a difficult place. His family was of the middling sort and provincial. Yet he served in a Navy that had long received aristocratic sons to serve in it, ever since the time of James the Great. They could afford arrogance and aloofness, he could not. Saddled with debt and with only his pay to keep him alive – late, if it ever came at all – smart uniforms and elegant clothes for entertaining were beyond his reach.

Nor could he cut a dash in any other way. He was not tall and because broad of chest seemed ill-proportioned, lumpish. Poorly-fitting uniforms did not help. His arms were long, hands roughened by dirty weather and bare knuckle fights. The hair on his head was a dirty brown, a wild mop that refused to be tamed. He rarely wore a wig and scorned the flowing locks or ponytails of his peers.

His eyes were thought hazel but were often veiled and unreadable. His gaze rarely excited a woman's emotions though he had a face that sometimes pleased the ladies, or so he had found at balls and routs. They seemed to like his rough, weather-beaten face, his air of dangerous pride. Yet in the caste-ridden society of a Catholic England, he must find entertainment and solace more often in bar and brothel than elegant ballrooms.

He was no stranger to bodily pleasures. A fellow cadet at the Naval School had taken him to one of the brothels of Portsmouth Point when they were both only fourteen. Before his father's penury, he had had an allowance and made the most of it, returning often when duty allowed and inclination called.

In such places he had learned much of how women were, their thoughts and dreams, that they too had ambition. Long used to the greater equality between man and wife, brother and sister in a French-descended house, he found talking with whores and their maids easy and learned much.

Yet while he was getting one form of education, he was denied another, of far more import. At first he had sought out refined company. But his lowly status and last year's clothes had repelled all when they did not amuse. He could not afford the sleek finery of his peers, had no rich estate that attracted young women of his age. So he had never learned to be easy with women above a certain degree and grew in anger at each new rebuff.

At formal affairs the walls of caste and place proved too hard to climb. So he began attending mass whenever he could, for young women went often and their keepers rarely. Though frequently accompanied by chaperones, neither seemed to mind the company of a moody yet ardent and intriguing young man with no designs on their virtue, either one. On such walks he had studied their ways: how they flirted and encouraged but also how a frown or the closing of a fan could signal displeasure or warning.

It did him little good with his classmates at the School. Adding to his bastardy and French descent, he gained a reputation for uncommon piety which he did not explain for fear of 'queering his pitch'. With his down-at-heel clothes and provincial ways, he suffered jeers and the adolescent pains that come from rejection. Fighting and winning had brought him vindication and respite. And he had come to relish the way he could knock a boy – and later a man – senseless, and leave him bloody and beaten.

Mind and eye returned to the sun-dappled bay, the bustle of the harbour walk. To left and right were other establishments being similarly patronised by commissioned officers and those with warrants from the Admiralty, the Sick and Hurt Board and half a dozen other agencies. Between them negroes offered mangos, bananas, paw-paws, nuts