A Hard, Cruel Shore Read online

  “Don’t want you t’freeze to death before you’ve signed ship’s books, Mister Chenery,” Lewrie told him, grinning.

  “Ehm … should I be armed as well, sir?” the lad asked, casting a glance at the brace of double-barrelled pistols in an open case by Lewrie’s side, and the pair of single-barrelled pistols in Pettus’s lap.

  “No, I think not, Mister Chenery,” Lewrie told him with a reassuring smile, “Pettus and I can deal with any highwayman we might encounter, though anyone up to mischief this early’d be a truly desperate thief.”

  “Who’d be out in the cold, this early, aye,” Pettus agreed.

  “Damn my eyes, you said ‘aye’ ’stead of ‘yes’, at last,” Lewrie joshed him.

  “Well, sir,” Pettus replied, “after hearing it said all this time, I’ve become accustomed. The Navy insists on ‘aye, sir’ or ‘aye aye, sir’,” Pettus said, leaning toward Chenery and tipping him a wink. “Oh, the strange words and terms you’ll hear, and have to learn, the customs you must follow! Why, you’ll be all ‘at sea’, hah hah!”

  “I didn’t know you were such a wag, Pettus,” Lewrie pretended to grump. “It must be the early hour. So sleepy that you’re giddy.”

  “Oh, it must be, sir!” Pettus agreed, most happily.

  So passed the first two hours before reaching a posting inn for a change of horses, a quick warm-up before a roaring fire, hot drinks, and a trip to the “necessary”; filling Mr. Chenery in on the most basic things that he should know about boarding ship, and what to do and how to carry himself once there, all of which at times made the newly gape.

  * * *

  “So, tell me about your family, Mister Chenery,” Lewrie asked of him once they were back on the road. “I believe you said that all of them were churchmen?”

  “Yes … aye, sir, sorry,” Chenery was happy to relate. “My uncle is in Holy Orders, and a Fellow at Oxford, though his interest is mostly in classical history. Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Carthagenians, and such. Ehm, there’s my older brother, Henry, who has the living of Saint Crispin’s at Windsor … visiting with him and his family is where I learned to swim and boat … then there’s my oldest sister, Portia, and her husband, who’s Rector of a parish in Hampstead, my sister, Miranda, and her husband, who’s the Rector of Saint James’s in Woolwich, and Jessica, of course. Father adores Shakespeare, d’ye see … which explains our names. The plays about King Henry the Fifth, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice.…” He shrugged.

  “Your sister Jessica really is quite the talented artist, and I was taken with what little I saw of her work,” Lewrie idly prompted. “So very realistic, even the fanciful illustrations she does. Even a hare leapin’ about was so realistic one could conjure that it could be touched, and it would take fright, or the sleepin’ kittens would wake up and stretch, haw!”

  “Aye, she’s very good,” Mr. Chenery agreed, though tilting his head and looking less than gladsome, “and, the last few years, she’s even managed to make a decent living from her art, though my father thinks it scandalous. Not the proper thing for a young lady to be doing, engaging in what amounts to … Trade.”

  “Oh, it’s good enough for Madame Pellatan to scratch out a living, but not your sister?” Lewrie posed.

  “Madame Bernice, well, sir,” young Chenery imparted with a moue, “she and her husband were well-renowned before they came away from France, and they catered to the aristocratic and wealthy, so it’s fine for her to continue working, but … it’s not what father would prefer for Jessica. He fears that the life, and the circles in which artists associate, are too … Bohemian and … barely a cut above actors and idle poseurs … jaded sinners and … seducers,” he concluded with a deep red blush. “He’d much rather see her married, but for our…” He clamped his mouth shut, fearing he’d revealed too much, and wakening Lewrie’s suspicions about the Chenery family’s finances.

  He’s too “skint” for a dowry, is he? Lewrie thought.

  “Ehm … is anyone feeling peckish?” Pettus asked, obviously famished himself, despite a rather hearty cold breakfast at Lewrie’s father’s house. “I forgot to mention that there are hard-boiled eggs, as well.”

  “Aye, I’d take one,” Lewrie told him, perking up and shifting his rump on the thinly padded seat, “by way of a beginning, at least. Care for something, Mister Chenery?”

  “Most kind of you, sir, and … aye, I will,” the lad replied with a boyish grin.

  “Your uncle’s at Oxford, is he?” Lewrie re-started his questioning as he cracked the shell of his egg and began to peel it. “I never have been there. Senior Fellow, is he?”

  “Aye, sir,” Chenery related, busy trying to find a place to discard his bits of egg shell, “Been there for years. We coached up a few times to visit Uncle Richard and his family, and Oxford is … nice, if a bit confusing. All the winding streets? He’s the eldest, of course, so he began his teaching post even before father took Holy Orders. I’ve a grand batch of cousins, though they are a touch … wild, so going there is quite fun, and … eye-opening.”

  Lewrie fell silent while he munched on his egg, pondering that fact. The Oxford uncle was eldest, so he would have inherited what wealth the Chenerys had, and Rev. Chenery in London would have had to find some career to sustain him.

  What’s the goin’ rate for a minister’s daughter? he wondered; It can’t be more than one hundred pounds per annum, even for a man with a good living! Maybe closer to fifty or sixty.

  Years ago, Lewrie had given his French ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, away to one of his former First Lieutenants, Anthony Langlie, and had supported her with an hundred guineas, or 105 pounds, thankfully matched by the Langlie family, but if he hadn’t been extremely fortunate when it came to prize-money, with several thousand pounds earning interest in the Three Percents, the girl might have had to get by on much less. Thinking of his un-married daughter, Charlotte, and his brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick, and his hints that she should be exposed to the marriage market of a London Season, and a dowry of at least an hundred pounds as well made his head ache. Which further made him think of his former lover, Lydia Stangbourne, Viscount Percy’s sister, and her dowry, of two thousand pounds a year. Damned if he would! Charlotte might get sixty pounds for her “dot”, only when she quit being a spiteful little bitch!

  Lewrie gave Midshipman Chenery a closer look as he joshed with Pettus; his dirk was definitely a used one, as his sea-chest had been, and the lad’s uniform coat and watch-coat could have been made from finer material. Two married daughters to support, a third unable to marry for a lack of a dowry, and earning her own small living with her artwork? It was a wonder that Rev. Chenery could afford meat on the table three days a week! It made Lewrie wonder if that Madame Bernice was a paying lodger, and not a guest, or even worse … that Jessica’s earnings went toward the family’s up-keep!

  “Romans and Phen … what-you-call-’ems?” Pettus asked, sounding astonished.

  “The ancient Phoenicians,” Midshipman Chenery was relating to Pettus, “the boldest seafarers in the ancient world. They sailed open-sea voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules, called at the Canary Islands, maybe the Azores, too, and might even have discovered America long before Columbus! If anyone tried to follow them out into the Atlantic, they’d turn and fight to the death to keep their secrets, Uncle Richard says. He’s examples of their copper wafers, like two triangles joined at the points, so they could stack them up and bind them with rope so they could carry them about, and that’s the same way that the Red Indians traded their copper! He and father think that the Phoenicians sailed to America, found copper deposits … copper was as important as iron or steel then … and brought it back home. Then, there are the Roman coins…”

  “Roman coins?” Lewrie blurted out, intrigued by the theory.

  “People in New England, in Massachusetts, now and then find old Roman coins washing up on the beaches, sir,” Chenery excitedly said, “and Uncle Richard got hold of a couple of them,
all dated round 380 A.D. or so, a silver sestercius, and a gold denarius.”

  “How the Devil did the Romans get there?” Lewrie objected.

  “Oh, they had big ships, sir,” Chenery said with a laugh. “Do recall Saint Peter who sailed to Rome on a ship with five hundred passengers. Now the intriguing thing is that both coins bear the head of Emperor Valentinus, a very young fellow, who was murdered by his mother and a Gothic general, round 383 A.D. Father, Uncle Richard, and their fellow antiquarians believe that Valentinus sent out ships to find him a refuge, knowing they were going to do him in, using the lore of those ancient Phoenicians, but he was killed before they found it and came and told him about it, maybe wrecked and never returned! I don’t know if they’ll ever really get round to looking into it properly, but they do try to raise funds for several lengthy expeditions, sir.”

  “Sounds like a very iffy proposal, to me,” Lewrie concluded, “and an expensive one, with no guarantees that it would ever result in anything.”

  A hellish expensive hobby, the Reverend Chenery has, Lewrie told himself; He’d do better bettin’ on horses, or Shove-Ha’penny! Even findin’ old books and such’d cost him dear. No wonder he’s so “skint”!

  “The Pillars of Hercules,” Pettus mused. “We’ve seen those. Gibraltar’s been our home port the last two years, and we’ve prowled round Ceuta, on the other side of the Straits almost as long.”

  “Oh, if we’re going back there, I can’t wait to write father and tell him all about it!” Chenery exclaimed.

  “No guarantees on that, either, Mister Chenery,” Lewrie told him. “It’ll be up to the Admiralty where we’ll go next. Perhaps they would find us useful in the Great South Seas.”

  He shrugged himself deeper into his boat cloak and drew his lap-robe higher on his chest, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes to take a little nap. The coach’s suspension straps rocked the coach body as restfully as a swinging hammock, and they were on a good stretch of decent road.

  Where are we goin’? he had to ask himself. He hoped that they’d send him back to Spain and Portugal where he had a nagging feeling that there was still some un-finished business with the French … back to Gibraltar and the Andalusian coast, or Lisbon, if the rumours about a fresh British Army presence in Portugal were true. He could see Maddalena, again, or move her to Lisbon.

  The coach’s motion, and his lack of sleep, lulled him to dream in fits and starts, but not about Maddalena Covilhā. No, the images that arose were of a slim and lovely Jessica Chenery, the way that she swiped her loose locks back from her forehead, and the long, slim, and talented fingers with which she did it; a bright smile …

  He jerked awake.

  Here, that’ll never do! he chid himself.

  BOOK TWO

  The dusky night rides down the sky,

  And ushers in the morn;

  The hounds all join in glorious cry,

  The huntsman winds his horn,

  And a-hunting we will go.

  —HENRY FIELDING (1707–54),

  “A-HUNTING WE WILL GO” (1734), STANZA 1

  CHAPTER NINE

  Their coach reached Portsmouth round seven that evening, long before the dockyard gates were closed for the night, and Lewrie, Pettus, and Midshipman Chenery took time to dine at the Fountains Inn before hiring a boat out to Sapphire, and their respective beds.

  After a hearty breakfast, Lewrie could take great satisfaction in strolling his quarterdeck, then forward along a sail-tending gangway as far as the forecastle so he could admire his new main mast and all its standing and running rigging, now set up as good as new, and all that mile of rope taut and geometrically perfect. There was even a new commissioning pendant aloft at the royal mast truck, streaming to the wind in lazy snake-tongue flickers.

  “Mister Posey’s done us proud, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, quite pleased after returning to the quarterdeck.

  “Indeed he has, sir,” the First Officer agreed, looking up in admiration, too. “As has Admiralty, to keep us in full commission. I wonder, though … have you given any thought to putting the ship Out of Discipline, now all the heavy work’s done, sir?”

  “All stores aboard?” Lewrie enquired.

  “Aye, sir, and the Bosun’s lockers, the Carpenter’s stores, and the holds are bung-full,” Lt. Westcott reported, then slyly added, “and our Augean Stable has been mucked out, too,” referring to the Midshipmens’ cockpit berthing space. Whilst Lewrie was in London, the quarters had been sluiced with sea water, scrubbed and holystoned, then scoured with vinegar, smoked with burning faggots of tobacco leaf, and re-painted to make it even a bit more liveable. Both men took glee in the relation of how the ship’s Mids had groused over being forced to purchase mugs, plates, bowls, new tablecloths, and glasses. Their mess boy, typically the filthiest “git” aboard, even dirtier than the “duck fucker” who tended the forecastle manger, had howled like a banshee when he was scrubbed clean for the first time in months!

  “Aye, then, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, after making up his mind, “hoist the Easy pendant and let the bum-boats come alongside at Noon. Warn the Surgeon and his mates t’do what they can t’spot any of the Polls who might be poxed. Bosun Terrell and his mates, and the Master at Arms and Ship’s Corporals are to keep their eyes peeled for smuggled spirits, too … and, I’d admire did you pass word for Midshipmen Holbrooke and Chenery to report to me in my cabins.”

  “I’ll see to it directly, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, touching the brim of his hat in salute. “Oh, by the way, sir … nice new hat you have,” he slyly teased. “Bicornes … all ‘the go’ these days. Maybe I should get one, too.”

  Lewrie’s answer to that was a scowl and a snort.

  * * *

  “Midshipmen Holbrooke an’ Chenery t’see th’ Cap’um, SAH!” the Marine sentry announced from without the cabin doors.

  “Enter!” Lewrie shouted back. The two lads came to stand in front of his desk in the day cabin, hats under their arms. “Gentlemen, did you enjoy your first night below?”

  Both of the lads seemed to shiver in dread of that experience, looked at each other, and swore that it had been fine, though Lewrie imagined that their introduction to the rough-and-tumble of the cockpit was more like shoving a stray dog into a pen full of hounds to be savaged.

  “Very well,” Lewrie went on with a faint smile of remembrance, “I wish you both to enter your names in the muster book, making your presence aboard, and your membership in the Navy, official. From now on, Admiralty will know to pay you the handsome sum of six pounds per annum, less the deductions for the Chatham Chest and Greenwich Hospital, and our Surgeon, Mister Snelling. That comes to one shilling a lunar month, twelve shillings a year. I suppose your relatives told you that there is no half-pay for Midshipmen should your current ship pay off and you’re unable t’gain another berth? Oops, too late, and as the old saying goes, ‘ye shouldn’t’ve joined if ye can’t take a joke’. So … it will be vital to your future careers to learn quick and take every opportunity to learn even more, everything that matters to the safe performance of your duties, as well as the proper handling of a ship, and … the management and safety of the ship’s people you will supervise.

  “I will not tolerate a brute or a bully who treats the hands as objects of derision,” Lewrie went on, turning stern. “I’ve seen it, and I detest it, and any sign of it will get you bent over the breech of a gun and thrashed by the Bosun or one of his Mates ’til you learn to treat our people decently. You must walk a fine line ’twixt keeping good order and being lax, playin’ ‘Popularity Dick’. That’ll get you despised, no matter if they laugh at your jokes. On the other hand, you’ll not let them take advantage of you, or show you even the least respect. You are considered ‘gentlemen in training’ by the Navy, and rank among the petty officers. Sapphire has ten of you, roughly in charge of about fifty hands each, though that will vary depending on the tasks at hand.

  “Are you both sure you still want to stay
on?” Lewrie asked as that sank in, cocking his head to one side with a wry expression. “Good. It ain’t all ‘claret and cruisin’ for you, it’s a damned dangerous profession you’ve entered, and a demanding one. I sincerely hope that you’re both up to it. Mister Faulkes?” Lewrie called to his clerk, “I’d admire did you tend to the paperwork regarding Midshipmen Chenery and Holbrooke, here. I believe that you young gentlemen also have some funds to be banked with Mister Faulkes?”

  “Aye, sir,” Chenery said, laying a slim wash-leather purse on the desk with his five pounds in coin.

  “Ehm, my uncle, Captain Niles, advised my father to bring only coins, sir?” Midshipman George Holbrooke tentatively said, producing a fatter purse. “I have twelve pounds, in all, sir … Mister Faulkes, and ehm…” Holbrooke dug into a breast pocket of his coat and drew out a sheet of paper which he laid beside his purse, turning shy.

  “What’s this?” Lewrie asked, picking it up and reading it.

  Midshipman Holbrooke was tall for thirteen years old, lean and spare, with light brown hair, green eyes, and freckles. He blushed as Lewrie read the letter and looked up at him.

  “Hmm, it appears that Mister Holbrooke has two years on ship’s books already, Mister Faulkes,” Lewrie said.

  “A friend of the family, of Captain Niles, sir,” Holbrooke stammered, “I was to join his ship next year, but he caught Yellow Fever in the West Indies last summer, and … I was told it counted, sir.”

  “Oh, it does,” Lewrie said with a sage nod.

  It was official, noted at Admiralty, a thing done for aspiring young lads, even if it was a humbug. Samuel Pepys long ago had laid down that no one could qualify for a Lieutenant’s commission if he was not “upwards of twenty” and had been on ship’s books for at least seven years, now in time of war reduced to six years. But, there were hundreds of hopefuls carried on ship’s books who never set foot on an oak deck ’til most of their useful schooling ashore was done, even more listed as Captain’s Servants pretending to be “Gentleman Volunteers” as young as eight, so they could have the requisite years at sea to speed their jump from Midshipman to Commission Sea Officer.