King, Ship, and Sword Page 5

  “Makes one dearly miss Pitt as Prime Minister,” Lewrie scoffed. “Even Henry Dundas as Secretary of State for War . . . the arrogant coxcomb!”

  They both took deep sips of their drinks, in silence for a bit, each wondering why the new administration had felt it necessary to end the war when England held the upper hand.

  “I’ve only de-commissioned one ship, long ago, Mister Harper, so I may be a tad rusty when it comes to the details,” Lewrie confessed. “Now the mustering-out of the crew is done . . . what?”

  “The boats come to fetch the hands off will ferry aboard an officer in charge,” Harper told him, shifting clubman fashion in his seat and crossing a leg. “Most-like, a deserving old tarpaulin man with no future prospects. He will bear orders and will read himself in as the ship’s new captain, relieving you. A full-pay retirement for some old fellow.”

  “Midshipman Furlow, sir!” his sentry shouted, rapping the deck with a musket butt.

  “Mister Farley’s duty, sir,” Furlow reported crisply, hat under his arm, “and he reports that a string of oared barges are making their way to us. Mister Farley also reports that the Purser is prepared to serve out the rum ration, and that the Bosun is standing by to pipe the ‘All Hands’ and the ‘Clear Decks and Up-Spirits,’ sir.”

  “Very well, Mister Furlow,” Lewrie said, finishing his coffee, and rising. “My compliments to Mister Farley, and I shall be on deck directly.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The red-painted rum keg had just emerged on deck, its colour, and the gilt-paint royal seal of the Crown, with the gilt letters spelling out KING GEORGE III and GOD BLESS HIM the only vivid sight on a bleak and grey winter’s day. Honoured much like the Ark of the Covenant was by the Israelites, it made its stately way forrud to the break of the forecastle before the belfry, past Able and Ordinary Seamen and Landsmen, ship’s servants and powder monkeys, petty officers and rated men, all of whom were now in a festive mood, eager to depart the ship and gruelling naval service . . . but just as eager to drink their last issue of rum to warm their short voyage to the docks.

  “Any debts left?” Lewrie cried out. “If there are, they are to be forgiven! Before we go our separate ways, Thermopylaes will splice the main-brace one last time!”

  That raised a great cheer.

  “I don’t know if we can trust the Corsican tyrant, Bonaparte, to keep the peace for long, lads,” he went on, “but if England does face a future conflict, I can’t imagine a surer way t’keep that snail-eatin’ bastard awake nights than for him to know that the men of Thermopylae are at sea, and that eager t’rip the guts out of the best his navy can send against us!

  “Wherever you light, you can be proud of what you accomplished here aboard Thermopylae,” Lewrie told them after another great cheer had subsided. “I’m proud of you, and proud that even for a short time I was permitted to be your captain. Don’t let the job—”

  “Three cheers fer Cap’m Lewrie, hip hip!” interrupted him.

  “A cup for you, sir?” Lt. Farley asked, for this once, the rum issue had made its way to the quarterdeck.

  “Aye,” Lewrie eagerly agreed.

  And once the ship’s crew had settled, Lewrie concluded, “Thank you kindly, men. I was about t’say, don’t let the jobbers cheat you. . . . Don’t spend it all the first night. . . . Make sure the doxy doesn’t have three hands and pick your pockets blind . . . and go see your kin before you let yourselves get crimped!

  “To Thermopylae . . . to you . . . and to us!” he shouted, lifting the wee brass rum cup to his lips and tossing its contents back whole.

  Don’t . . . cough! he chid himself, for the neat rum, with but a ha’porth of water to “grog” it this time, almost made his eyes water.

  “Dismiss the hands, Mister Farley,” Lewrie ordered, once he had control of his vocal chords again.

  “Aye aye, sir! Ship’s company . . . dismiss! Good luck and Godspeed to one and all!”

  Taking leave of his officers, warrants, and midshipmen was much more genteel; handshakes and doffings of hats, a brief jape or two to the “younkers,” and wishes for good fortune, promotion, another active sea commission soon, and hopes to serve together again someday.

  “My Jack-in-the Breadroom’s made arrangements for your cartage, sir,” Mr. Pridemore told Lewrie, “and there will be a good-sized barge alongside within the hour for all your dunnage.”

  “Might have to make it two barges, Mister Pridemore,” he had to confess. “The dockyard won’t accept the stoves, and thinks I must send them on to Captain Speaks at mine own expense.”

  “Oh, really, sir?” Pridemore said, brightening. “If that is so, sir, might I suggest that you leave all that to me, for I have Captain Speaks’s address, already, and made arrangements for most of his goods to be sent on to his home in Yorkshire months ago.”

  Just knew it’d be a long, long way off! Lewrie told himself.

  “In point of fact, sir,” Pridemore went on, “two of them would be more than welcome whilst we’re laid up in-ordinary this winter. If I . . . lease them from Captain Speaks for my comfort, and the comfort of my fellow ship-keepers, it goes without saying,” the Purser quickly added, “and, so long as we purchase our own coal, the dockyard people can have no objection, d’ye see, sir?”

  “That leaves me two t’haul off,” Lewrie glumly replied.

  “Well, not really, sir,” Mr. Pridemore schemed on, “not if Captain Speaks authorises me to sell them for him. So many warships laid up in-ordinary . . . so many shivering ship-keepers right here in Sheerness, or a quick sail up to the Chatham Ordinary? I’m certain their usefulness, and their rarity, shall allow me to turn a good profit, to the benefit of Captain Speaks, and myself, of course. All that is needful is for you to sign a chit consigning Captain Speaks’s property to me, and all’s aboveboard, so to speak.”

  “Really? That’d do it?” Lewrie marvelled, though there was the dread that Pridemore was a Purser, a skillful man of Business and Trade after all, and undertook nothing without a scheme to “get cheap, then sell dear.” Pursers were not called “Nip Cheeses” for nothing!

  “Do it admirably, sir,” Pridemore assured him. “And, whilst we are at it, I believe the Russian gentlemen gifted you with nigh half a bargeload of dainties and luxury goods? Should you wish to dispose of some of them, and save yourself the carting fee to the London market, where you are certain to be ‘scalped,’ I assure you, Captain, for I am a veteran, and a victim, of sharp practices in the city.”

  “Not a big market for Roosky vodka, Mister Pridemore,” Lewrie said, now sure that he might be being “scalped” on his own quarterdeck, “nor for caviar and pâté in Sheerness, I’d think, though. And, there is some of it I’d like to haul along home.”

  “But of course, sir!” Pridemore said with a little laugh, “for so would I. The bulk of it, though, I could purchase from you.”

  “With the bill of sale, though . . . ,” Lewrie said, reminded by the word bulk, as in “breaking bulk cargo”; unlawful for a warship to do aboard a ship made prize, and the penalty for landing captured goods. “There are the King’s Custom Duties to be paid. Do you undertake to pay them, once the goods are transferred to your possession, and note such in your bill of sale . . .”

  Did I just pinch his testicles? Lewrie had to wonder, to see a brief wince twitch Pridemore’s face.

  “But, of course, sir, it shall be as you say,” Pridemore agreed.

  “Let’s go below and sort it all out, then,” Lewrie suggested, “and have my clerk, Georges, draw up the paperwork, with copies to all before I depart.”

  Whew! Lewrie thought; once bitten, twice shy. Maybe with age wisdom does come. The last thing I need is another brush with the law over smuggled goods!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Admiralty in London was very crowded with so many ships being de-commissioned at once, so much so that it had been necessary to make an appointment for a set date and time to begin the process of turning in all
his ledgers, forms, logs, punishment books, and pay vouchers. Thankfully, a fortnight shy of Christmas, Lewrie met with the Second Secretary to Admiralty, William Marsden, not his nemesis, Sir Evan Nepean, and the whole thing was a fairly business-like and pleasant affair, not the ordeal Lewrie had expected.

  Well, there was a half-hour stint in the infamous Waiting Room on the ground level, but the tea cart was set up in the courtyard and doing a grand business, with its tea lads whipping round with hot pots, mugs, and sticky buns, right-active. Lewrie had even found a pew bench seat right off after but a single glare at a Midshipman, who’d gotten the hint and sprung from his place to accommodate a senior officer.

  Is he the same snot-drizzler I saw, the last time I was here? Lewrie asked himself, for the Midshipman bore a strong resemblance to the mouth-breather with whom he’d shared a bench in February. Damned if he ain’t! Lewrie marvelled with a faint grimace of distaste to see him snort back a two-inch worm of mucus, then gulp. Has he been here every day since? Lewrie wondered, shaking his head at the no-hope’s persistence at seeking a sea-berth, even as two-thirds of the Navy was being laid up. Don’t he know there’s a war . . . off? Lewrie japed.

  To make more room for Lewrie a Lieutenant shifted over a bit, a very tall and painfully thin young fellow with dark hair and eyes, and dressed in a shabby and worn uniform coat, with a very cheap brass-hilt small-sword on his hip. Must bash his brains out on ev’ry overhead beam, Lewrie thought; maybe one too many already? he further decided as the gawky “spindle-shanks” stared off into space, lips ajar, and damned near mumbled to himself with a gloomy, vacant expression on his phyz.

  “Good morning,” Lewrie said, to be polite—and to see if the fellow was truly addled. Will this’un drool? he thought.

  “Er ah, hem . . . good morning to you, sir,” the Lieutenant said with a grave formality, then returned to his dark study.

  “Captain Lewrie? Is Captain Lewrie present?” a minor clerk enquired from the foot of the grand staircase.

  “Here,” Lewrie answered, springing from the pew bench, giving the officer not another thought as he followed the young clerk abovestairs with his bound-together stack of books and papers.

  A pleasant ten-minute chat with Mr. Marsden, then Lewrie was passed on to a succession of underlings, from one cramped office to another, even right down to the damp basements where clerks would work on stools and makeshift plank passageways when the Thames flooded in Spring; to file his navigational observations, to hand over ledgers and charts, the final muster book to make official those crewmembers Discharged, Dead, or so injured that they were merely Discharged, and for what reason. Finally, long past his usual dinner hour, Lewrie saw the Councillor of the Cheque, where his final accounting was toted up, the last full-rate pay of a Post-Captain of a Fifth Rate was signed and handed over in full (an assortment of ten-, five-, and one-pound notes on the Bank of England, with only a few shillings and pence in real coin) and his whereabouts, should Admiralty have need of him, noted, thence placing him on half-pay for the near future—minus all the deductions for the aforesaid Chatham Chest and crippled pensioners, robbing him of the eight shillings per day of an active commission, reducing him to six shillings per day of half-pay, but really amounting only to a low three shillings!

  By then, with the money in his pockets, and his stack of books and such much reduced, and sure that he had seen almost all thirty of the employees who ran the entire Fleet, Lewrie made his adieus and trotted down the stairs to get his hat and cloak from the hall porter, looking over the Waiting Room in hopes he might espy at least one old shipmate before departing, someone who’d shared privations, dangers, and high cockalorums, if only to stave off the dread that there would be exceedingly dull times ahead, on his own, without such companionable “sheet anchors” linked to the bulk of his adult life.

  One’d think so, Lewrie thought as he took his time buckling on his sword belt, settling the heavy and enveloping boat-cloak upon his shoulders; an hundred ships o’ the line, an hundred frigates, sloops o’ war, and brig-sloops . . . less’n a thousand active Post-Captains, Commanders, not ten thousand Lieutenants . . . ye’d think I’d know one of ’em in here!

  Well, there were some he’d rather not encounter, this side of the gates of Hell; Francis Forrester, who’d made Post years before he had, the idle, well-connected bastard; that idle “grand tourist” Commander William Fillebrowne; that Captain Blaylock of the rosaceaed phyz back in the West Indies. . . . Come to think on’t, there were rather more than a few fellow Commission Sea Officers listed in Steel’s Original and Correct List of the Royal Navy who’d be more than happy to play-act the “Merry Andrew,” glad-hand him, then spit in his tea on the sly, or worse!

  There was the drooling, drizzling Midshipman; there was that gloomy, tall, and skeletal dark-haired Lieutenant, now taken to wringing his hands, and there were an hundred strangers. Fie on it!

  Lewrie clapped his cocked hat on his head and left, going out to the courtyard, feeling as he imagined an aging foxhound would when left in the run and pen whilst the younger, spryer dogs set out for a hunt . . . to be idly, lubberly, civilian-useless!

  “An’ there’s a proper sea-dog for ye, young ginn’l’men. Merry Christmas t’ye, Cap’um,” the old tiler bade him, doffing his own hat and making a clutch of Midshipmen round the tea cart turn to gawk and grin in polite confusion. “Merry Christmas, an’ a Happy New Year!”

  Christ, will he never retire? Lewrie wondered; or just drop the Hell dead? He’s been doorman here since I paid off the Shrike brig in ’83.

  “And a Merry Christmas t’you,” Lewrie answered back, with a doff of his own hat to the old fart, then in responding salute to the Mids as he trudged past for the curtain wall and the street beyond, looking for a hired carriage to bear him to the Strand, his last-minute holiday shopping, and an excellent, but late, dinner at a chop-house in Savoy Street, one introduced to him by his barrister during his legal troubles. Bad memories or not, their victuals were marvellous!

  Well, after his dinner, before shopping, he would have to drop by Coutts’ Bank to deposit his accumulated earnings, then call on his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, to settle his shore debts with notes-of-hand. Then, the day after. . . ?

  There would be no more reason to put off going home . . . home to Anglesgreen and the dubious welcome of his wife and dour, disapproving in-laws, all of whom held him in as much regard as a sack of dead barn rats! Lewrie would have thought “a sack of sheep-shit,” but . . . sheep-shit was worth something, as fertiliser!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was a long, slow, and muddy road from London through Guildford and on “sutherly” towards Portsmouth, before taking the turning to the Petersfield road. It was cold enough for the ruts to freeze in the nights, then turn to brittle slush by mid-day; to lean out of a coach window was a good way to have one’s face slimed by the shower of wet slop thrown up by the coach’s front wheels.

  The sky was completely overcast, the clouds low, and the winds held a hint of snow in the offing. Indeed, it had snowed sometime in the past two days, for the trees—the poor, bare trees—along the way cupped it in the fork of their branches, and the piles of leaves on the ground were half-smothered in white, as were the fallow pastures and fields last plowed into furrows in Spring. All the crops were harvested, now, the last good from them raked and reaped and gleaned, with only a hayrick here and there, topped with scrap tarpaulin to keep off the wet.

  Most of the feed livestock, Lewrie knew, would have been slaughtered by now, too—the beef, mutton, and pork salted, smoked, sugar-cured, or submerged in the large stone crocks filled with preserving lard. It was only the young and breeding beasts that remained in the pastures by the road, in the styes or pens within sight from the rumbling, jouncing coach, and the dray waggon that followed.

  “Fair lotta sheep, hereabout, ain’t they, sor?” Liam Desmond enquired with a quirky uplift of one corner of his mouth.

  “Thousands ’pon thous
ands of ’em,” Lewrie told him. “The comin’ thing in the North Downs, since before the American Revolution. We’ve about two hundred, last time I got an accounting.”

  “Nothin’ like good roast lamb, sor, sure there ain’t,” Desmond said with a chuckle. Liam Desmond no longer was garbed in a sailor’s “short clothing” but wore dark brown “ditto,” his coat and trousers of the same coloured broadcloth. He sported a buff-coloured waist-coat, a white linen shirt, even a white neck-stock, and, with triple-caped overcoat and a grey farmer’s hat, could almost be mistaken for a man of the squirearchy . . . one who rented his acres, not owned them, at least.

  “You’ll founder on lamb and mutton by Easter,” Lewrie said with a wry laugh, for by previous experience, in the country, he’d seen that particular dish on his table rather more than thrice a week. In spite of the risk to his complexion, Lewrie let down the window glass and took a quick peek “astern” to see how Patrick Furfy was doing with the dray waggon. Furfy and the waggoner, swathed to their eyebrows with upturned overcoat collars, wool scarves, and tugged-down hats, seemed to be having a grand natter, and he caught the tail-end of a joke that Furfy was telling, and his deep, hearty roar of laughter at its successful completion. Patrick Furfy loved a good joke or yarn but had a hard time relating them onwards, leaving out details that he had to jab in in the middle, and overall had but a limited stash of jokes he could reliably tell.

  “. . . loight th’ candle, help me foind me bliddy equipage, an’ we’ll coach outta this bitch’s quim, har har!”

  “That’d be Number Twenty-One, sor,” Desmond said with a grin, “and I thought he’d nivver git it right.” He tugged uncomfortably at his neck-stock and the enveloping folds of his overcoat, not used to such perhaps in his whole life in Ireland, then the Navy.