The King's Commission Read online

  But no, he realized. There was a gulf greater than rank between them now, some perception on David’s part that saw him as some older and more competent man. He didn’t feel old. He was barely nineteen. Looking back on his life, he wasn’t sure if he had ever been young and innocent, but by God he didn’t feel as old and competent as David implied. He was still groping for his own way in the Navy, and in life, still making stupid mistakes, floundering about in Society like a drowning man clutching at a floating spar, even if his finances and family background had finally been ascertained.

  Neither, he gathered with a smirk, was he the same incredibly callow seventeen-year-old that had crawled through Ariadne’s entry port soaking wet from a dunk in the Solent because he had no idea how to manage scaling man-ropes and battens up a ship’s side. He admitted to himself that he had made progress in skill and knowledge in the Navy, and had gotten a few glimmerings about Life, but was he not the same shameless Corinthian brothel-dandy and buck of the first head who could roister through London streets like a rutting ram-cat with no thought for the morrow except a vague wonderment about where he was going to awaken, and with whom?

  “Jesus, this fucking Navy is making a doddering fossil out of me!” he grumbled. “Let’s beat this damned de Grasse and have done with the whole humbug before—my God—before I start taking me seriously!”

  The bosun’s pipes began to cheep then to break his irreverent reveries. “All hands! All hands on deck! Prepare to anchor!”

  “Mister Lewrie, do ya take charge o’ the fo’c’sle!” Monk bellowed in a quarterdeck rasp that could have cut through a whole gale. “Clear hawse bucklers, seize up ta the best bower with the two-cable line, un prepare ta let go!”

  The next morning, de Grasse had at them again. During the night, Hood had ordered his ships to shift their anchorages, so that an unbroken line stood from the point below Frigate Bay. The van ship was about four miles sou’east of Basse Terre, so close inshore not even a sloop could have clawed inshore of her; she was also inside the point and shoal as further cover. Twelve more ships lay astern of her to the west-nor’west, a mile-and-a-quarter to a mile-and-a-half of line-of-battle ships with their artillery ready. The remaining six liners bent about to curve the last of the line to the north, with Admiral Hood’s 2nd Rate Barfleur at the apex of the bend. All ships had springs rigged on their anchor cables so they could shift their fire right or left as needed to take on a foe at extreme range as she approached, and swing with her to pour more deadly broadsides into her as long as she sailed past them.

  Desperate had upped her own anchors and gotten underway shortly after breakfast, and was now prowling behind the battle line like a caged wildcat, waiting for something to maul should she be given a chance, ready to pass messages, or bear down upon a crippled British vessel to render her assistance.

  The Trades were blowing well out of the sou’east, so an attempt to get round behind the line would involve hours of tacking close-hauled, and the ships drawn up en potence guarded that vital flank from the attempt. The French were presented with one hell of a quandary, and the English waited to see what brilliant maneuver the wily de Grasse would pull out of his gold-laced cocked hat.

  “Here they come, damn their blood,” Lieutenant Railsford finally spat, after a hail from the lookout at the main-mast crosstrees.

  The French fleet was strung out in a perfect order in single line-ahead, a cable’s length between ships, aimed like a spear at the head of Hood’s line. With implacable menace, they bore down as if they would crash through the anchored ships and smash them in the process. But the lead vessel drifted west, unable to bear close enough to the wind, and now aimed at the third ship in line. When within range, she turned west.

  Immediately, Hood’s ships returned fire upon her.

  “Bless my soul, will you look at that, now!” Treghues rejoiced, slapping his thighs. “Can you mark her, Mister Railsford?”

  “Pluton, looks like, sir, 3rd Rate, seventy-four guns.”

  Alan had access to a spare telescope and was standing on the bulwarks with an arm and a leg hooked through the mizzen shrouds for a better view. The French ship staggered as if she had just run aground, surrounded by a thin pall of dust and smoke as she was savaged by the fire of at least four British ships that had swung on their springs to direct their gunfire into her together.

  “I can see scantlings flying from her far side, sir!” Alan said. “They’re blowing her to flinders!”

  Pluton, if that was her as they surmised, passed down that long mile-and-a-half line, being taken under fire in order. And a cable behind her came a second ship, and a third, and a fourth, all taking the same terrible drubbing. Like sheep to the slaughter, the entire French line-of-battle followed that dreadful course, shooting high as was their usual practice, but doing little damage to ships at anchor, who couldn’t have cared less whether their rigging was cut up. The British followed their usual practice as well, aiming ’twixt wind and water to punch star-shaped holes into the hulls and gun decks, to kill men and make the wood splinters fly, scything down crews and dismounting guns.

  Desperate’s crew was jeering as the lead French man o’war turned away and staggered back toward the south, her masts sprung and rolling, and her hull ripped apart by high velocity iron.

  “Now damme,” Alan relished over the din, “this is more like it!”

  Desperate went about and worked her way to leeward, past the bend of the British line, for a better view of the proceedings, loafing along under reduced sail, away from the predictable thumping that the rest of the French fleet was suffering, to see what would transpire as they bore away. Which was nothing threatening, as they could see after half an hour. The French were making no more attempt to do anything offensive.

  “What do you think of Admiral Hood now, Mister Lewrie?” Railsford asked him, cocking one eyebrow in mirth.

  “Well, sir, after The Chesapeake, I thought he was the biggest poltroon in uniform, but he’s showing well today,” Alan answered.

  “If he’d been in charge then, we’d have never swung away. We’d have been in that anchorage among the Frogs, and cut them to pieces. Or we’d have winkled them out of their anchorage as we did yesterday, and put up such a wall of gunfire de Grasse would have shattered his fleet trying to reenter.”

  “And gobbled up their damned army, ’stead of them gobbling up ours, sir,” Alan concluded with a wolfish expression.

  “Not that we could have really won against the Americans, even after such a victory.”

  “Indeed, sir?” he said politely, thinking, Mine arse on a band-box!

  “Too few men, too big a country, too much hatred by then. Even if we could have bagged Washington and Rochambeau on the march down from New York, there’d be another Washington come out of the backwoods with another army.” Railsford shrugged. “But, we still come out of this Rebellion with Canada. And the important thing now is to beat the Frogs and Dagoes until they scream for mercy, so we’ll not have any more of these coalition wars for the rest of the century, if we do it proper.”

  “De Grasse isn’t as good as we touted him to be, is he, Mister Railsford?” Alan asked, feeling as though there had been an exorcism.

  “We gave him victory in The Chesapeake. He couldn’t help but show well there. To my mind, he’s an over-rated clown when up against the sort of admiral we have here today,” Railsford opined. “Lord North’s cousin, Graves, was a clown, appointed by petticoat influence. Hood is not, and. pray God we get him back in the Leewards, neither is Rodney.”

  “The captain once told me something similar, sir, about getting Hood and Rodney together, and sweeping the seas.”

  “I’d love to see that. Would you?”

  “Aye, sir, I would,” Alan said, realizing that it was so, half-pleased by the prospect, and half-startled that he cared anything more for the Navy than getting out of it with a whole skin.

  “Well now, if you were this de Grasse bugger, what would you be th
inking of about this time?” Railsford asked by way of instruction.

  “Well, sir, I’m French, so I’d go below and have me a good sulk. Maybe boot hell out of my servants for starters.” Alan chuckled. “Some good fortifying brandy. Then, I’d come back up and split my fleet. Half to attack the ships en potence, half to beat up past our line as far as Brimstone Hill. It’d take hours, but one could make east-nor’east. Then tack and fall back down on the anchorage. Hood would have to shift the van ships closest the shore to counter. If he did, I’d fight both halves of my fleet for a cross-fire, with us in the center.”

  Lieutenant Railsford studied him closely for a long moment, lips parted as though about to sneer, and Alan felt a total fool. Railsford had been an ally in the early days after he had come aboard Desperate, an ally even after Treghues had turned on him. From Railsford he had learned much more than he ever had from Treghues’ teaching sessions, for Treghues was more fond of his own voice and opinions than in imparting anything worthwhile to his charges. What improvements in his behavior and in his nautical lore he had learned for Railsford’s sake, and now he had most likely revealed himself a complete, incompetent idiot. Alan blushed and looked away with a shy grimace to show that he was not to be taken totally seriously.

  “God be thanked you wear our King’s coat and not that of their slack-jawed monarch,” Railsford finally commented. “Should this bastard try that, he’d have the Leeward Islands Squadron on a plate.”

  Fuck me, Alan exulted to himself, have I said something clever?

  “Indeed, sir?” he asked with as much false humility as he could muster at short notice.

  “I shall say some serious prayers for anyone foolish enough to cross your hawse should you ever hoist your broad pendant, Lewrie,” Lieutenant Railsford went on. “You think on a grand scale.”

  “For such a lowly, sir,” Alan stuck in, the humility now in full ooze. When called upon, and if given warning enough to be on his best behavior, he knew he could toady and suck up with the best.

  “That won’t last, not if you watch your helm,” Railsford told him with a grin. “Are you considering continuing your naval career?”

  “Well, sir, it may not be up to me.” Alan sighed. “If we beat de Grasse bad enough today, the war may be over soon. There was talk about a Peace Commission to parley with the Rebels, some guff about a meeting with all the belligerents to call it off soon. And what use is one more lowly midshipman out of thousands, when nine-tenths of the Navy would be laid up in-ordinary?”

  There, I said that right well. Not my bloody fault if they dump me, is it? he thought. Why just blurt out I’d rather be whoring around Seven Dials than put up with another day of this misery and deprivation? Come to think on it, either one’s just as dangerous.

  “What’s left, Mister Lewrie?” Railsford asked with a wry expression. “Trade? Not exactly the ton for a young man raised as a gentleman like yourself. Clerking for someone? You’re too honest for Parliament and too much a rogue for holy orders. Stick with what you do best, and believe it or not, young sir, what you do best is the Navy.”

  “Well, thankee kindly, Mister Railsford, sir,” Alan replied, glad to be complimented, and blushing a bit, genuinely this time.

  “Enough praise for the devil today.” Railsford sobered. “Else I shall expect your head to swell and burst.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Deck thar,” came a leather-lunged shout from the lookout aloft. “They’m be comin’ h’agin!”

  “Now we shall see if de Grasse has discovered something new to try on us,” Railsford snapped, turning back to the rail. “And I hope he does not commune with the same creative muse as you, Mister Lewrie.”

  Once more, after reeling off to the sou’west in a long curve, the French came back, their alignment and spacing in line-ahead perfect as they could make it.

  “Headed directly for us,” Treghues commented nearby as everyone crowded the larboard bulwarks of the quarterdeck. “Their turn-away took them down to leeward and beating back to try the line again did not work. They shall assay their luck against the ships en potence this time.”

  “What if they could get a slant of wind around the rear of this shorter line, sir?” Railsford asked. “The Trades are still out of the sou’east. Three points more would flank our dispositions.”

  “Mister Railsford, I would much admire if you do lay Desperate as close to the wind as you may and bring her to on the opposite tack,” Treghues said, standing slim, elegant and foursquare with his ornate personal telescope to his eye.

  “A 6th Rate to impede the path of a 2nd or 3rd Rate, sir?” Railsford asked, aghast that anyone could even countenance such an idea.

  “Not to match broadsides, no,” Treghues said, laughing easily, still intent on the sight of the enemy fleet. “But we should be able to deflect them. They cannot sail closer to the wind to avoid us or they’d be in irons and get shot to ribbons by the ships en potence. To bear away to avoid us would deny them precious minutes. It is an acceptable risk.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Railsford nodded in the hush that had fallen on the quarterdeck. A captain’s decisions could not be argued, and any unwillingness expressed volubly enough to try and counter a captain’s tactics could be construed as direct violations of several of the merciless Articles of War; cowardice in not being courageous enough to fight; insubordination; not doing everything in one’s power to ready a ship for a fight. They were all court-martial offenses and usually resulted in the offender being strung up from a yard-arm by the neck.

  I knew I should have gotten off when I had the chance, Alan thought shakily. I could be languishing in a Rebel prison right now, training rats close-order drill or something, on parole at the easiest. Maybe it would have been better to have been captured with the Army at Yorktown than to put up with this tripe-skulled clown!

  “Bosun, ready to wear ship!” Railsford bellowed. “Quartermaster, we shall put the helm up and bring her to on the starboard tack.”

  By the time they had finished their evolution, and Desperate rode cocked up into the wind once more, the French fleet was sliding up on them with the wind on their quarter. Pluton was no longer the van ship, having been pounded half to matchwood in the first attempt, and a new vessel presented herself as a target.

  Barfleur, the ninety-gunned 2nd Rate, opened fire first at the apex of the line, swinging about on her spring-lines to get off several hot broadsides at the same target, and the other ships en potence joined in as the French came within range. Clouds of smoke soared into the tropic skies, and artillery belched and thundered, spitting long red tongues of flame and sparks from burning wads into the smoke clouds. The view was blotted out once more; it might have been a gunnery exercise, as far as the men in Desperate could see. Even the masts of the French vessels disappeared, and the sun was eclipsed into dusk.

  “There, sir!” Railsford gasped, pointing out the shape emerging to the west of the worst powder smoke. A French 3rd Rate broke free from the pall, and everyone breathed out in relief to note she was not pointing her jib-boom at them any longer, but was hauling her wind to leeward to break away west, her best attempt rejected.

  “Hmmph,” Treghues snorted contemptuously. “Is that the best de Grasse can do, then? Not much heart put into this sally, was there?”

  “Signal, sir!” One of the new thirteen-year-old midshipmen piped from aft in a reedy voice. “Our number! From the flag! ‘Well done,’ sir!”

  “Ah,” Treghues preened. “Is it?” With little risk to themselves, they had finally done something to expunge part of that silent, faceless and therefore uncounterable cloud of disapproval. If Hood could take a moment to be magnanimous, perhaps even their squadron commander, Comdr. Sir George Sinclair could forgive them for losing him his nephew, one of their midshipmen who had not escaped with her that stormy night in the Chesapeake. It was all Treghues could do to not begin leaping about the deck and breaking into a horn-pipe of glee at that most welcome signal.
r />   “If that’s all the excitement for the day, gentlemen, we may haul our wind and come about on the larboard tack once more. Course due west. Make easy sail.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Lieutenant Railsford agreed.

  “We made ’em look pretty stupid, hey?” Mr. Monk chortled. “This de Grasse ain’t nothin’ like the ogre we made him out ta be.”

  “I want you all to witness that we have done something glorious in the last two days,” Treghues said, handing his sword to his servant Judkin before going below for a late dinner. “We bedazzled them out of their anchorage, and just shot the heart right out of them. Give us another week of steady breezes out of the sou’east and their troops ashore will be running low on rations. There’s no foraging here on an island as small as St. Kitts. There may be six thousand men in their army. A loss so large would be as disastrous to them as Saratoga or Yorktown was to us. Pray God, all of you, that this may come to pass, and our Merciful Savior shall vouchsafe English arms with a victory so grand we shall speak of it as Henry V did of St. Crispin’s Day!”

  The hands cheered to his ringing speech, but since Treghues’ patriotic fervor did not extend to “splicing the mainbrace” and trotting out a celebratory tot of rum, and he did not mention Agincourt by name, most of the unlettered could only scratch their heads and wonder what the fuss was about, except that Sam Hood had laid into the Frogs and given them a walloping.

  But barely had the ship been put about, the hands stood down from Quarters and the galley fires been lit than the lookouts summoned Treghues back to the deck.

  “Where away?” he asked.

  “There, sir.” Railsford pointed with his telescope held like a small-sword in his hand. “A despatch boat of some kind, fore’n’aft rigged, coming on close to the wind. And there’s a frigate out to leeward to support her. Mayhap a message from de Grasse to his troops ashore, sir?”