The Invasion Year Page 8

  Aye, I’m well-known, Lewrie miserably considered as he took a fresh glass of wine. He was a successful frigate captain. He was a rogue, a rake-hell, too, and known for that to some. The latter repute should have cancelled out any fame from the first, so who had put the idea of knighting him in the Sovereign’s ear?

  If he ever had an honest shot at knighthood, it should have come in 1797, when he’d had Proteus, and had fought an equally-matched enemy frigate in the South Atlantic, a two-hour broadside-to-broadside slug-fest in the midst of a howling gale, to save an East India Company trade homebound for England, but … the Earl Spencer had been First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, Sir Evan Nepean his First Secretary, and both of them knew of his peccadilloes with other women, so there had been no hope, then.

  Well, I do have allies, Lewrie told himself; sponsors, patrons, and influence. No one could hope to rise in English Society or a military or naval career without “interest,” not politics, or the Church, or trade, or…! There was his old school chum who’d been expelled at the same time as he had, Peter Rushton, now Lord Draywick, in Lords. In the Commons, there was William Wilberforce, Sir Samuel Whitbread, of the beer fortune, and many others of the progressive stripe; there was Sir Malcolm Shockley, married to Lucy Beauman, and in spite of her connexions to his old nemesis, friendly and supportive, too. Admiral the Earl St. Vincent? He was now First Lord of Admiralty, and he had always seemed well-disposed towards him, since the battle that had made him a peer; when Lewrie had been on half-pay, begging for a ship before the expedition sailed for the Baltic to swat the Russians, Swedes, and Danes under Parker and Nelson, it had been “Old Jarvy” who’d allowed him an interview, then surprised him with command of HMS Thermopylae and her solo scouting mission into the Baltic, before the Battle of Copenhagen!

  Lewrie suspected a reason even more distasteful: that somehow some agate-eyed manipulators in Secret Branch of the Foreign Office, people very much like Zachariah Twigg, found him useful to the Crown and to the Country, once more, and were even now playing up his name, and Caroline’s death, to enthuse the populace!

  Wonder if anyone ever refused one? Lewrie thought.

  At least his knighthood was for a legitimate reason, he could tell himself, perhaps for cumulative duty? They handed the damned things out to poets, playwrights, painters, town mayors when a new bridge or town hall was opened, for God’s sake! Brewers, iron barons, and wool-spinning tsars!

  Might as well go along with it, he decided; they won’t offer twice, and … won’t this put my father’s nose outta joint? Think o’ what Harry Embleton’ll make of it, or my brother-in-law Governour?

  “Wet him down, instanter!” Lt. Gilbraith was crying, calling for more wine. “Won’t be official ’til your presentations at Court, but, perhaps we could make a start at modest celebration, what?”

  “I believe we could, Jemmy,” Captain Blanding heartily agreed, lifting his glass in Lewrie’s direction. “Sir Alan?”

  “Sir Stephen!” Lewrie responded, though he lacked the twinkle that danced in Blanding’s eyes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A few more celebratory glasses of Rhenish put paid to Lewrie’s plans for his late morning. In addition to the routine paperwork of a fighting ship, there was a new pile of directives from the Admiralty to be read through, initialed, filed away, or answered; he, and almost every Midshipman he had ever known from his early days, had been laid over a gun to “kiss the gunner’s daughter” for the sin of reading one’s personal mail, first, and neglecting Words From On High … even were those words corrected sailing directives for the safe navigation of the Yellow Sea, which 99 percent of the Royal Navy would never even get close to, much less transit. To his cats’ dismay, Lewrie and his clerk, James Faulkes, spent the rest of the Forenoon sorting it all out, and penning responses, too intent to play with them, shooing them off the day cabin desk and protecting Faulkes’s feathered quill pens.

  The musicians had struck up “The Bowld Soldier Boy” at half past eleven, at Seven Bells, and the Purser, Mr. Cadbury, Marine Lieutenant Simcock, and the Purser’s Assistant/Clerk, Bewley (better known as the Jack-In-The-Breadroom), had escorted the painted rum cask on deck for the mid-day issue; Faulkes had gone antsy to miss it, forcing Lewrie to suspect that it was not just rejected love that had driven Faulkes to sea.

  “Well, I think that should do it, Faulkes,” Lewrie said at last, as the very last reply was sanded to dry the ink, carefully folded and sealed, then addressed. “Sorry it took so long. You might visit the galley and see Mister Cooke … he’s always a pint of something hidden away. Did you miss the issue, he’ll allow you a nip.”

  “Thank you, sir, and I shall,” Faulkes said, departing.

  “Well, lads?” Lewrie invited to his cats, who sprang atop the desk to prowl, bow their backs, yawn, and stretch, then nuzzle at his hands. “You just can’t play with the pretty feathered pens, it isn’t—”

  “Hands is being piped to Mess, sir,” Pettus, his cabin servant, said, cocking an ear to the silver calls on deck. “A glass of wine, sir?”

  “Cold tea,” Lewrie decided. “I’ve done that, this morning.”

  “Aye, Sir Alan, sir,” Pettus said with a tight, pleased grin.

  “Hey?” Lewrie scowled back.

  “Well…’tis all over the ship, sir,” Pettus told him. “Soon as your boat crew was dismissed, they were all bragging on it.”

  “It’s not official ’til we get back to England, Pettus,” Lewrie pointed out to him. “ ’Til then … ‘Captain,’ or a plain ‘sir,’ will suit. And, for a long time after. Damned silliness,” he scoffed.

  “Well, sir … I’ve served a vicar, and a bishop, but they don’t hold a candle to a Knight of the Bath,” Pettus said, almost sulking to be denied.

  “You served a parcel o’ drunks at that inn in Portsmouth, ’fore you came away t’rejoin, too,” Lewrie said with a wry grin, “and, most-like one’r two o’ them were titled, so it don’t signify. Unless it’d look good on yer references, do ye ever wish t’leave my service.”

  “Why would I wish to do that, sir?” Pettus rejoined, in merry takings. “Being a knight’s ‘man’ puts me a leg up over most other gentlemen’s servants.”

  “Cap’m’s cook … SAH!” the Marine sentry bawled, smashing his musket butt and boots on the deck outside.

  “Enter!” Lewrie called back, rising to go to the dining-coach, and his table. “Come on, catlin’s … tucker!”

  Yeovill bustled in with a large, shallow wooden box-like tray, covered with a cloth. “Good mornin’ to you, Sir Alan! We’ve somethin’ special, to celebrate. And, somethin’ special for the cats, to boot!”

  Dammit! Lewrie groused; This could get irksome, all this “Sir” shit … it’ll be bowin’ an’ scrapin’, next!

  He would have fired off a bit of temper, a swivel-gun’s worth, perhaps, not an 18-pounder of “damn yer eyes!” but, when he beheld his dinner, he let it slide.

  “All fresh from shore this mornin’, sir,” Yeovill boasted. “A parcel of shrimp, grilled in lemon and butter … drippy bacon salad, boiled field peas, and”—Yeovill pointed to each as he named them, revealing the best for last—“spicy jerked guinea fowl, sir! Oh, I’ve a mango custard for a sweet, too, sir … with vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cream.”

  “Well now, this is a grand treat, Yeovill,” Lewrie agreed as he sat down. “Jerked, ye say? That’s…?”

  “An island style of seasonin’, Sir Alan, sir!” Yeovill beamed. “Peppers and chilies, sweet spices, all together. Zestiest, tangiest saucin’ ever I put in my own mouth.”

  “A white wine, sir?” Pettus suggested. “You’ve still most of a crate of sauvignon blanc.”

  “Cool tea,” Lewrie reiterated. Long before in the West Indies, a neglected pot of tea, an unlit warming candle, had forced him to sip the rest; that, or toss it out the transom sash-windows and have his old cabin servant, Aspinall, brew up another. With lemon and sugar, it had proved refreshing, and Lew
rie had had Aspinall make up half a gallon each morning, ’til the tropic sun was “below the yardarms” and he could switch to wine before his supper.

  Yeovill had even laid aside some un-seasoned shrimp, de-tailed and peeled for the cats, along with strips of guinea fowl. Toulon and Chalky did not stand on seniority, naval or social, and dug into their bowls with gusto; Chalky had the odd tendency to purr while he ate!

  And, after a few sampled bites from each dish, so did Lewrie!

  * * *

  After such a fine repast, it was even harder for Lewrie to keep his eyes open, but … there was personal mail to be read. He sorted it out into the most-likely agreeable, first, saving those from tradesmen and his least favourite kin for last.

  His solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, assured him that he owed no debts, with a long column of double-entry incomes and out-goes to tailors, chandlers, cobblers, hatters, and grocers showing that all his notes-of-hand turned in by them to Mountjoy had been redeemed to the ha’pence.

  There was profit, too, now deposited to his account at Coutts’ Bank. Admiralty Prize-Court had finally awarded him his two-eighths for the L’Uranie frigate that he’d taken in the South Atlantic … in 1798! She had not been “bought in” by the Navy right away, but laid up in-ordinary for survey and inspection, for years, before going into the graving docks, and the idle time had not been kind to her material condition. There had been another British two-decker “in sight” when she’d struck, so he only got £1,250 for her, but still …

  But, there was Captain Speaks, and his furious demands for his bloody Franklin-pattern coal stoves that he’d purchased with his own funds for HMS Thermopylae before he’d come down with pneumonia in the Baltic and North Sea Winter, and Lewrie had relieved him of command.

  Thermopylae was now in the Bay of Bengal, and might be for the next five years; her Purser, who had offered to ship them off to good Captain Speaks, had not, and was still aboard her. Any letter Speaks sent in search of his ironmongery took six months to reach her, with no guarantee that the letter might not be eaten by termites or Indian ants at Calcutta or Bombay before Thermopylae returned to port after a four-month cruise—longer if she could re-victual in a foreign port—and even a prompt reply would take six more months to make its way back to England. Since Captain Speaks very much doubted if the frigate needed heating stoves in the East Indies, he was raving to discover where they might have been off-loaded! Did he not get satisfaction, he threatened legal action, had retained a serjeant to press his case in Common Pleas, and etc. & etc., liberally sprinkled with dire suspicions that Lewrie was up to his eyebrows in collusion with a crooked purser! He would not be brushed aside in such a brusque manner!

  … the Value of the Stoves Captain Speaks estimates at £35 each, and intends to seek a sum of £140, plus his legal Expenses. Do please write me on this head, sir, at your earliest Convenience …

  “Aw, shit!” Lewrie muttered, strongly considering his crock of aged American corn whisky for a moment. He didn’t know what Herbert Pridemore had done with the bloody stoves, but, Thermopylae had paid off in December of 1801, and they’d have been damned welcome for the Standing Officers, kiddies, and wives who would live aboard her whilst she was laid up in the Sheerness ordinary in Winter … of which the Purser, Mr. Pridemore, was a part! Perhaps he’d meant to ship them to the north of England, but had put it off ’til the Summer, and …

  “Bugger ’em,” Lewrie growled. The cats woke from their naps on the starboard-side settee table, the large, round brass Hindoo tray that was so cool to sprawl on during a tropic afternoon. With no invitation to play forthcoming, they closed their eyes, again.

  Next, a letter from his father, Sir Hugo.

  His rented farm was gone. The two-storey house he and Caroline had built in 1789 for £800, the brick-and-timber barn they’d erected to replace an ancient, tumble-down wattle-and-daub one with a roof of straw—bug- and rat-infested since the War of The Roses, most-like!—the storage towers for silage and grain, and the brick stables and coach house were now the property of his favourite brother-in-law, Major Burgess Chiswick, and his bride, Theadora; as were all his former livestock, except for a few favourite saddle horses and what crops had been reaped before the transfer of ownership.

  “No more pig-shit … no more sheep-shit,” Lewrie muttered with a touch of glee. “Good.”

  Less the payment of your last Quit-Rents, Phineas Chiswick, that six-toothed Miser!, offered a paltry £1,000, as Recompence for all your Improvements. As your Agent in this matter, I insisted that we would take no less than £2,000, and, since I learned that Phineas had valued the property at £5,000 for the outright Sale of it to the Trenchers, who would be footing the Bill for their daughter’s Country Estate, forced him, at the last, to accept our Terms.

  Since you delegated to me the negotiations whilst you were away at Sea, I subtracted a sum of £200 as my Commission, and deposited the rest, £1,800, to your account at Coutts’. Trust that my share will be spent joyfully, if not wisely, haw!

  “And when did I agree t’ten percent, damn his eyes!” Lewrie fumed. Sir Hugo went on for several more pages. The Winter was a raw one, though the Thames had not frozen quite so solid as to allow the proper sort of Frost Fair. Zachariah Twigg had wintered at his rural estate, Spyglass Bungalow, in Hampstead, and had suffered several bouts with the ague. He was now fully retired from even his consulting work at the Foreign Office.

  “Good!” Lewrie exclaimed loud enough to wake the cats, again. He’d been Twigg’s pet gun dog since 1784, getting roped into neck-or-nothing, harum-scarum deviltry overseas, time and again, and if that arrogant, top-lofty, and sneering old cut-throat had retired, Lewrie could look forward to a somewhat safer career, from now on.

  Sir Hugo had heard from Lewrie’s sons, both now serving aboard their respective ships in the Navy. Hugh, his youngest, was a Midshipman aboard HMS Pegasus, under an old friend, Captain Thomas Charlton, a stolid, steady, and seasoned professional … though Charlton had a sly and puckish sense of humour, and a fond tolerance for the antics of Midshipmen. Hugh had taken to the sea like a cow to clover, and was having a grand time.

  Sewallis, well … his oldest boy, and heir-apparent, had slyly amassed enough money to kit himself out, had forged a draft of one of Lewrie’s early letters to another old friend and compatriot, Captain Benjamin Rodgers, and had finagled himself a sea-berth aboard Aeneas, a two-decker ship of the line. His one brief letter to his “granther” told a soberer tale of his self-chosen naval career, so far, but … Sewallis had always been the serious one. He was learning all of the cautions, “all the ropes,” but said little of his fellow Midshipmen, confessing that times were hard on a “Johnny New Come” ’til he began to fit in. Sir Hugo suspected that he was coping main-well, but did not sound quite so joyful as Hugh. Had Lewrie gotten a letter from him, yet?

  No, he had not, and there was not one in his latest pile. He expected that Sewallis would summon up the gumption to explain, sooner or later. That’ll prove damned int’restin’! Lewrie thought.

  On a happier note, Lewrie’s former ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, now wed to Lewrie’s old First Officer, Commander Anthony Langlie, had been delivered of a lusty baby boy, whom she had named Charles August, to honour her late older cousin, Baron Charles Auguste de Crillart, a French Navy officer who had been Lewrie’s prisoner-on-parole in the Caribbean during the American Revolution, and Lewrie’s Royalist ally during the siege of Toulon, the both of them being blown sky-high in the old razee-turned-mortar battery, Zelé, at the siege of Toulon. Charles had gotten his shrunken family aboard the captured frigate Radicale to flee when the port was taken by the French Republicans, avoiding the massacre of the Royalists, but had died when three French ships had chased her down on her way to Gibraltar. He had died not knowing that his younger brother and his mother had been slain, too, leaving Sophie his last, orphaned kin, and extracting a promise from Lewrie to see them safe with his dying breath.

  Anthony Lan
glie and his brig-sloop Orpheus were, so Sophie told it, raising merry Hell in the Mediterranean, and had captured several merchant prizes!

  London had been grandly entertaining that Winter, with several new plays and exhibits, Sir Hugo related; Daniel Wigmore’s Peripatetic Extravaganze had put on a Winter season cross the Thames in Southwark, and had staged their comic plays and farces in a rented hall in Drury Lane; the delightful bareback rider/crack bow shot/ingenue actress, Eudoxia Durschenko—the delectable Cossack minx that had been hot for Lewrie, Sir Hugo teased!—was now about the town in the company of Lord Percy Stangbourne, a dashing Buck-of-The-First-Head, rich as a Walpole, intimate of the Prince of Wales, and a Lieutenant-Colonel of his family’s home-raised Yeomanry Light Dragoons. They were both as horse-mad as if they were Cossacks, or Mongols!

  “Good for her,” Lewrie muttered, though with a tinge of loss; had it not been for Eudoxia’s murderous, eye-patched expert marksman–lion tamer father, Arslan Artimovich, and his oath that the girl would die a virgin if he had to kill half the males in Great Britain, Lewrie might have given her a go.

  There was a letter from his other brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick, who, with his long-suffering but sweet wife, Millicent, was now boarding his daughter, Charlotte, at their estate in Anglesgreen. Talk about cool and stand-offish! Governour’s letter was as formal as a boarding school proctor’s end-of-term summation on a student’s progress. Governour rated her on her ladylike deportment, her advancing skills at singing, at playing the harpsichord and violin, her “seat” and “bottom” when riding her horse-pony, and the courage she showed on open-country rides at trot, canter, lope, and gallop. Charlotte “played well with other girls,” though she did insist on having her way if not strictly reined back. Her table manners were exquisite for a girl her age, and she kept a scrupulously neat room, without the assistance of her maid, and she kept her clothes in good order.