The King's Privateer Read online

  “Belinda and Gerald’s mother,” Alan supplied.

  “Fetching enough in the beginning, ’fore she turned into this drab pudding.” Sir Hugo sighed. “Chicken-chested, thick as a farrier sergeant. Rather wrestled a publican than put the leg over her. Like climbing into bliss on the belly of a bear. And her two children were rotten from the start. Still, she was absolutely stiff with ‘chink,’ and there I was in Bath, trying to parley what little I had left into something to live on. Had to resign my commission, don’t ye know! An officer in the King’s Own, Knight of the Garter or not, can’t abscond with young heiresses. Not unless one’s successful, mind, then they make you colonel of the regiment and dine you in once a year. I made three thousand pounds selling up my commission, but it was going fast. No, I may be a bit harsh on poor Agnes. Drab she may have been, dull as ditch-water and graceful as a three legged dray-horse, but she was a kindly stick. Meant well. And then she died having our child, and the child died, too. And Elisabeth had died having you. And I got to brooding on what had happened to you.”

  “That was after you and your solicitor, Mister Pilchard, had forged that letter of permanent coverture over Agnes Cockspur’s estate,” Alan accused.

  “Aye, soon after that. Talented bugger, that Pilchard. What else was I to do? With Agnes in her grave, her even more ghastly sisters’d have gotten the estate and the money, and I’d be out on my bare arse again, stuck with two brats I’d never have wanted if they came with the crown of Prussia attached.”

  “So you heard I was still alive,” Alan pressed. “And you were, as you put it … brooding on me.”

  “The only real child I ever had, Alan. I found you and took you in because I swore I’d never marry again,” Sir Hugo told him. “Of course, I was just disreputable enough that the idea of me marrying into a really good family couldn’t be mentioned in polite Society. Pretty much the same thing, really.”

  “But you didn’t act like I was your only son.”

  “Like I said, I had to pretend to be caring for Agnes’ brood. For Society. To keep the sisters shut up. After all, if I didn’t have them to care for, a court would find it easier to take them away and award them to the sisters, and the money’d go with ’em. What did you want beyond what any other lad of your station got? My parents saw me at tea, perhaps at supper, once in the evening just before the governess tucked me in, and after that, it was a good public school somewhere far enough away so they wouldn’t be bothered, except when term ended.”

  “Why did you arrange for me to get caught in bed with Belinda? Why did you exile me into the Navy?” Alan demanded, though in a soft voice as he sat down cross-legged on his pillows once more.

  “The Lewrie money,” Sir Hugo muttered, barely inaudible.

  “And you were almost broke again, weren’t you. And you needed the money, so devilish bad!”

  After much hemming and hawwing, Sir Hugo could only nod his assent.

  “Goddamn you.” Alan slumped.

  “Alan … I am truly sorry,” Sir Hugo whispered. “Your father is a miserable bastard. I thought I was doing right by you, not letting you end up dead in that parish orphanage. Feeding you, clothing you, getting you a good education. You don’t know how many times I was proud of you. Of how many times you reminded me of me, even when you were up to your ears in pranks that backfired to my cost.”

  “Fine way of showing it,” Alan muttered back, staring down in his brandy and watching the candle flames dance in amber to the trembling of his fingers. “I thought you hated me.”

  “Alan, no! Never hated you!” Sir Hugo insisted, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe I didn’t show you. Or tell you. But I took you in out of guilt about Elisabeth. And about Agnes. I loved you, Alan. I love you still.”

  “Ah, right,” Alan tossed off.

  “If I seem too selfish, then that’s my curse. If I treated you standoff-ish, then that’s my loss,” Sir Hugo insisted. “And I’m still proud of you. You’ve made lieutenant in half the time most people could expect. Commanded a ship of your own for a while. Made a name for yourself by being brave and clever. I read every issue of the Marine Chronicle and the London papers, looking for news of you. ‘Came into The Downs this Sunday last, the Shrike brig, Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, commanding, to pay off at Deptford Hard, with a sum in excess of thirty thousand pounds prize money owing officers and men, from service with the Leeward Islands Squadron, most recently off Cape François under Admiral Sir Samuel Hood and Commodore Affleck.’ I memorized it. I cut it out and saved it. I can show you.”

  “Maybe you could; it don’t signify,” Alan replied bitterly. “Your idea of affection is hellish like indifference to me. Your idea of love I could trade for two dozen lashes and stand the better, sir.”

  “For better or worse, I am your father, Alan. I don’t expect you to ever love me. Or respect me, either. I’d admire if you could at least not despise me. Take what’s past like the fine young man you are and put it behind you. Behind us,” Sir Hugo implored. “I imagine that you’re the best of Elisabeth Lewrie, and the best of me, with all the rotten parts cut out, like an apple only half gone-over. Lot of pith left, even so. I’ll not ever expect us to be reconciled.”

  “That would take a power of doing. And longer than either of us have on this earth, I expect,” Alan answered.

  “Well, that’s the way of it, then,” Sir Hugo harrumphed, and wiped a tear from the corner of one eye. “Just do one thing for me.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t end up like me, will you, lad?”

  “I don’t know; I have a fair start on it.” Alan grimaced and found himself amused in spite of himself.

  “You take after me when it comes to the ladies, hey?” Sir Hugo teased.

  “In frequency, perhaps. Not … well, I haven’t cheated anyone. Not yet, anyway,” Alan allowed.

  “That Captain Bevan dropped me a line now and then about you. I know about the ladies in Jamaica,” Sir Hugo chuckled.

  “That’s not the half of it.”

  “I thought I’d offer you a treat,” Sir Hugo said, getting to his feet rather awkwardly. Part age and stiffness, Alan thought, and part being half-seas-over with drink. Sir Hugo clapped his hands and the narrow door in the purdah screen opened. Three girls entered the room, one dressed in a translucent saree, the other two in the bright gauzy skirts and tight satin jackets that left so little to the imagination, like the nautch-girls he’d seen in the bazaar earlier.

  “My word!” he breathed. They were unutterably lovely, every one of ’em! Kohl outlined eyes, shy smiles and bright teeth, complexions clear and smooth, and as brown as pecan shells or as golden as wheat.

  “This is Padmini,” Sir Hugo said, indicating the one in the saree, who stood no higher than Alan’s chin.

  “Namasté, sahib,” the girl whispered, though grinning with an impish expression.

  “A Bengali, she is, Alan. Once you’ve had a Bengali woman, you’re spoiled for anything else.” Sir Hugo chuckled. “Draupadi. She’s Rajput. And Apsara. Aptly named, too, for the playthings of Hindoo gods. Though I doubt she’s Hindoo. From up north in the Oudh, I think. Maybe from the foothills. A little tigress. All can do a dance that’ll set your blood to boiling. Like to see?”

  “I don’t know …” Alan sighed, feeling anything but lusty for once. All passion had been shouted or cried out of him. “Maybe some other time, sir.”

  Good Christ, is it me saying that?

  “Too late to be wandering the streets, even in the English cantonments, Alan. If nothing else, accept my offer of bed and breakfast.”

  Draupadi was stirring slowly to the beat of the madals from the courtyard, smiling with heavy-lidded eyes full of promise, her extremely long, straight dark hair swishing maddeningly as far down as her fingertips, and Alan watched it sway. He transferred his gaze to Apsara, she of the dark, frizzy-curly hair and the golden wheat skin, who gazed at him with such a welcoming, open-mouthed smile.

 
“Er … hmmm,” he pondered.

  “Come, Alan,” Sir Hugo demanded. “I know you of old, my dear son. What’s worse, you know me. I’d never cut my nose off to spite my face. Nor would I turn down such exquisite quim just because I bore a grudge against my host. And I doubt if you would, either.”

  “Ah …” Alan tried to reply.

  “I have a lot to make up to you for, Alan,” his father said, coming close to his side to speak privately. “Maybe I never can, like you suspect. I’d buy you that bloody trap and pony, if I thought you still wanted it. But right now, this is the best I have to offer. And it may be your last chance before you sail off out of my life again. Safer than some bazaari-randi,4 too, and won’t cost you tuppence.”

  “Hmmm,” Alan speculated at last, “don’t suppose your band knows ‘When First I Gazed in Chloe’s Eyes,’ would they?”

  “Hardly!” Sir Hugo barked out a short laugh.

  “Ah, well,” Alan finally allowed, sinking back to the carpet and reclining against one of those impossibly thick and round barrel-shaped pillows.

  With a crook of his finger, Sir Hugo summoned Padmini to join him. Alan crooked his own finger at Apsara, who beamed even wider, and seemed to slink to his side with the lithe grace of a panther, her patchouli and sandalwood scent enveloping him like her gauze chudder as she drew the headcloth about their faces to share a brief nuzzle before pouring him another full bumper of wine.

  “Apsara?” he said. “Alan.”

  “Ahk-lahn,” she breathed, taking a sip of his wine.

  “My God in Heaven.” He laughed with an anticipatory

  shudder of raw lust. “Mind you, Father,” he said over Apsara’s smooth young shoulder, “you have one bloody Hell of a lot to make up for, y’know.”

  “The evening’s young,” Sir Hugo replied softly. “My son.”

  And Draupadi began her dance, her ankle bangles jangling.

  III

  “Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum.”

  “To the farthest gulf of the rich East.”

  —TOWN MOTTO OF

  SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS

  Chapter 1

  Another watch with Percival, the second officer, Alan sighed as he mopped his brow. Another broiling forenoon on a deck holystoned to pristine whiteness that reflected back the heat of the sun, wondering if Percival ever felt the heat, ever grew faint and weak. Plenty of people drop dead of apoplexy back home, Alan thought; why not this bluff ginger bastard?

  Bad as their relationship had been compared to the easy acceptance he’d gained with the others in the wardroom, it had gotten a lot worse after the durbar at Sir Hugo’s house, to which even Choate the first officer had not been invited, and Alan had. Lewrie suspected Percival despised him in the beginning for rising so quickly in the Navy, and now most heartily despised him for being in the know, for being privy to secrets. For seeming so well-connected with the people who matter, here in the Far East, and back home with the Admiralty.

  Yesterday’s noon sights placed them exactly on the Equator, almost even with the Johore Straits, the normal passage, and by this noon, they would have made fifty leagues to the north farther on, even with fitful winds staggered almost to nothing by the heat at the Equator.

  With such a late start from Calcutta, they’d be lucky to make Canton or Macao by the start of the trading season. If they arrived too late, there might not be a member of the Co Hong who would agree to be their compradore in their legal trading. Mr. Wythy had worried there would be so many other ships anchored off Whampoa full of cotton and spices that the value of their goods, arriving so late, would not fetch a price good enough to defray expenses.

  All of which made Lewrie wonder once more if this whole thing hadn’t been dreamed up, this tale of piracy, to bilk the Foreign Office and the Admiralty out of a free ship and cheap goods to make Twigg and Wythy rich. If they cut up a pirate fleet or two in the process, it would make a grand report back home, but who couldn’t find some pirates to bash out here, he wondered? It’s not as if one had to go looking for them very hard. The whole ocean teemed with them like lice in a rented bed back home. Mr. Brainard the sailing master was an old China hand, along with Twigg and Wythy, in the “country trade” for years. Even Captain Ayscough had sailed in Asian waters in the last war. On the surface, it would make sense to hire their services on, but they all might be in combination to make a pile of money. Of course, Alan Lewrie had always been a suspicious and somewhat cynical observer of his fellow man. If the whole thing was so much twaddle, he hoped there would be some profit for others out of the venture. Such as himself.

  “Sail ho!” the main-mast lookout hailed. “Fine on the starboard bows!”

  “A little off the beaten track, surely,” Alan commented. “Most merchantmen would be farther west nearer the Malay coast, I’d think.”

  “Say ‘sir,’” Percival demanded softly.

  “Aye aye, sir,” Alan picked back with a bright smile.

  “Two sail! Both fine on the starboard bows!” the lookout added.

  “Boy, run and inform the captain,” Alan told one of the ship’s boys.

  “My decision to make, Mister Lewrie,” Percival huffed. “I am senior officer in this watch, and I’ll thank you to remember that.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Go aloft, Mister Lewrie. Report what you see. I want an experienced pair of eyes in the cross-trees,” Percival snickered.

  “Aye aye, sir,” Alan was forced to reply, much as he hated scaling the masts. He’d done enough of it as a midshipman, and had been damned glad to make his lieutenancy, which at least let him stay firmly rooted to a safe and solid deck most of the time. But he slung a heavy day-glass over his shoulder like a sporting gun, went to the windward shrouds and scampered up the ratlines. Out over the futtock shrouds that inclined outward to anchor the maintop platform and the deadeyes and shrouds that held the topmast erect, hanging by fingers and toes briefly. Then up the narrower set of stays to the cross-trees where the lookout perched on slender bracing slats of wood a fat pigeon would have cast a wary eye upon.

  “Where away, Hodge?” Alan asked the grizzled older man.

  “Three sail, now, Mister Lewrie,” the sailor replied, pointing forward. He cupped his work-worn hands round his eyes to shut out the blinding sun. “An’ I ain’t so sure they ain’t summat up t’larboard as well, sir. Jus’ a cloud, mebbe, sir.”

  “Cloud, Hell,” Alan puffed, trying to steady his shaking limbs to hold his telescope after that grueling climb. “Four sail to starboard, and perhaps two to larboard. Tell Mister Percival. You’ve better lungs than I.”

  While Hodge bawled his report down to the deck, Alan studied the view. They were passing between a sprinkling of small islands and islets between two larger land masses—Anambas to the west of their course, and a larger island of Natuna to the east’rd. There was a safe channel of at least one hundred miles width, but littered with these reefs and islets. Perfect lurking grounds for Malay or Borneo pirates, he thought. They’d try to catch ships passing to the west of Anambas after using the Johore Strait. ’Course, they could be fishermen, Alan thought.

  But, as they drew closer, hull-up over the horizon, Alan could see they were using the barest and crudest of sail rigs, and the froth about them was not a wake, but the working of many oars and paddles, far more oarsmen than any fisherman would take to sea. The hulls were blood red, winking with what he took to be gilt trim.

  “Hodge, inform the deck I believe they’re pirates.”

  Alan stepped out of the cross-trees, took hold of a backstay and wrapped his legs about it to let himself down to the quarterdeck hand over hand in seamanly fashion.

  “Half a dozen to starboard, three, possibly four to larboard, sir,” Alan told the captain. “Red hulls. Lots of paddlers or oarsmen.”

  “War praos,” Ayscough nodded grimly. “Mister Brainard?”

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Any hopes the wind will pick up?”

 
; “No, sir,” the sailing master informed him. “Not with this heat, not this far easterly of the usual track. We’ve everything cracked on now but the stun’sl booms, and not a fraction above seven knots do we make.”

  “I see,” Captain Ayscough grunted. “Then if we can’t outrun ’em, we’ll have to fight. Mister Choate, beat to Quarters!”

  “What is it, Alan?” Burgess Chiswick asked as he came on deck, drawn by the drumming and fifing of the ship’s small band. His lean, dark sepoys were struggling into their red coats below them on the gun deck, just below the quarterdeck nettings.

  “Pirates, Burgess. Maybe the ones we’ve been searching for.”

  “Subadar!” Burgess bawled, shouting for his senior native officer and clattering down to the gun deck.

  Telesto mounted a light battery of two twelve-pounders forward on the fo’c’sle as chase-guns, and another two right aft in the wardroom, one to either side of the rudder and transom post to deal with ships attempting to rake her from astern. There were six more twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck, three to each beam. Each gun took a crew of seven men to operate it efficiently in Naval usage, with a ship’s boy serving as powder-monkey to fetch and carry from the magazines for each one.

  Her main battery was on the upper gun deck; twenty eighteen-pounders which required nine men apiece. Even in the Royal Navy, both sides could not be fully manned at the same time, so there were only eleven men per gun to share between, which would require some nimble hopping back and forth if the pirates attacked from both sides at once: three men to load and charge each gun, and the rest milling about in the center of the gun deck to haul on the tackles to run the guns out and throw their weight on hand-spikes and crows to shift aim right or left while the gun-captain would adjust the elevation of the guns with the new rotating screws. All were, mercifully, equipped with flintlock igniters like a musket, instead of the older types that required a tin or goose-feather quill priming tube and a slow-match fire.