“—was just a Lieutenant in the eighties,” Ballard continued. “Captain Speaks’s wife detests the bloody thing, and refuses to have it at the Wrestler’s Arms . . . the hotel where they’re lodging for him to recover.”
“I’d think the hotel would agree with her,” Lewrie commented.
“I’m a saucy rascal! Tweep!” the parrot cried. “Hello!”
“Go to the Devil, why don’t you?” Lewrie muttered.
“Oh, don’t encourage it, sir,” Ballard cautioned. “That only makes it worse.”
“What the Hell are we t’do with it, then, Arthur?” Lewrie asked.
“God only knows, sir. The gun-room don’t want it, though there are the Midshipmen . . . ,” Ballard replied, “but the Master’s Mates and Surgeon’s Mates who bunk with them might object. Strenuously.”
Captain Speaks had obviously doted on the bloody bird, for its cage was big enough for a frisky mastiff, with many rods and ladders, and even a spread of inch-thick tree limbs for exercise, with a ball on a twine, a small mirror, a bowl of seeds, a water dish, and a dry cuttlefish on which it could hone its beak; the whole thing was made of dulled brass rods soldered together, with a bright green painted canopy.
“Won’t last a Dog Watch, once my things are in, and the cats are free to roam,” Lewrie predicted, removing his boat-cloak and hat, and looking for a row of pegs on which to hang them. “Good God, that’s a Franklin stove!” he exclaimed as he spotted the squat metal monster in the semi-enclosed sleeping-space.
“We’ve spent the last year running the Baltic convoys,” Ballard explained, “and prowling the Dutch and German coasts, right into the Heligoland Bight. There are French and Dutch privateers working out of Christiana and Amsterdam. Captain Speaks bought several of them, for the gun-room, and the people’s quarters on the gun-deck. They’ve come in handy to take the chill off . . . when we can obtain coal. And that only during the day, when the wind and sea allow. The Victualling Board does not see the need to provide heat belowdecks in winter, and told us that supplying coal was our own business. Captain Speaks was thoughtful, but not so rich that he could purchase enough, all by himself, and it’s been rare that the officers and hands could chip in and afford a decent store, either, sir.”
“Meaning that I should, is that it, Arthur?” Lewrie asked.
“I would not presume to speculate, sir,” Ballard replied. “But I admit some coal would be welcome, so long as we’re firmly anchored. The harbour, and the North Sea, have been awfully raw this winter.”
Lewrie could agree with that. If the weather had seemed to moderate in London, the further east he’d come, closer to the sea, the wind had blown colder and colder, wetter and downright icy. Even here, belowdecks and out of the wind, he still felt an urge to shiver now and then. “Well, we’ll see, depending,” he allowed. He pulled out his pocket-watch and checked the time; half-past eight in the morning. To prove it, One Bell of the Forenoon Watch chimed, far forward at the belfry. And a glad sound that half-hour bell was to Lewrie, for time to be rung . . . aboard a ship once again.
“I’d expect I’ll be hard at it, past dinner, to get all my dunnage and bumf set up properly,” Lewrie announced. “But I would like you to sup with me tonight, Arthur. Shall we say seven?”
“Of course, sir,” Ballard responded with a solemn half-bow.
“Oh, shit,” Lewrie said. “I’ve no cook or steward, or personal victuals . . . live or not.”
“ ’Scuse me, Cap’m,” Furfy said as several sailors entered with chests and furniture. “Settee t’starb’d, same as ye like, sir?”
“Aye, Furfy, thankee,” Lewrie told him. “Any recommendations, Mister Ballard?” he asked, now that others were present, and the use of first names might be taken the wrong way by the hands.
“Well, sir . . . Captain Speaks took his manservant ashore with him, to help nurse him through his illness,” Ballard explained. “His wife insisted one of the cabin servants go, too. His cook is still aboard, though, a fellow named Nettles. He’s very good. Used to be at an Ipswich hotel before the Captain discovered him and hired him away. You’ve one cabin servant left, a lad named Whitsell, though he isn’t much. Only twelve, after all. You didn’t bring the usual entourage, sir? I’d have expected to see Will Cony with you.”
“He’s a Bosun into a Sixth Rate now,” Lewrie told his old compatriot. “Married to a woman in Anglesgreen. He and Maggie have two boys now. No, when I had to give up command of Savage, I could only take away three or four people, and one finally went back aboard her, and t’other, my prime man, had family need of Discharge. Since then, I lodged at a gentlemen’s club where I had no need to hire anyone on, and . . . quick as a wink, orders came to report aboard, instanter.”
“Aye, I heard, sir,” Ballard said, with a veiled look, as if he disapproved but would not say so, about Lewrie’s recent contretemps. “I do have a suggestion, sir, if I may?” he added, tilting his head to the chart-space, where there was more privacy. Once there, and with the first load of furnishings delivered and the work-party departing for a second load, Ballard continued. “There’s a young fellow who’s been aboard about a year, sir, who’s more suited to steward duties than ever he would be as a sailor. Last up the shrouds, last down, and damn all useless aloft. Too puny for pulley-hauley, as well. The Bosun and mast-captains, gun-captains, all despair of him. He’s named Pettus. A Pressed man, no matter he was never a seaman.”
“How well I know that fraud,” Lewrie said with a wry sigh.
“Indeed, sir. He claims he was a manservant to a bishop’s residence, at Brighton, before he was rounded up,” Ballard said. “Do you wish to see him, sir?”
“Round Seven Bells, aye,” Lewrie decided. “I should have enough of my cabins set up, by then. Beggars can’t be choosers, I s’pose. Ye have things t’see to, Arthur? Then I’ll not keep you, if you do.”
“Very well, sir,” Ballard replied, delivering another grave half-bow, and departing.
“Hello, you old bastard!” the parrot squawked, bobbing its head.
“Stop yer gob, ye bloody . . . pigeon,” Lewrie snapped.
“Give me the punch ladle, I’ll fath-om the bowl!” the bird responded, singing the old drinking tune right on key.
“Roast parrot on a bed of rice!” Lewrie shot back.
“Damn my eyes, damn my eyes!” the bird sing-songed.
“I’ll sic the cats on you if you don’t shut up,” Lewrie warned.
“I’m a good parrot, I am . . . tweep!”
“Christ on a crutch,” Lewrie muttered, “but you’re a nuisance.”
“Bloody nuisance!” the parrot uttered, making Lewrie whirl about to gawp in wonder. How smart was the damned thing? he wondered; And what’ll he blab next, if I say anything unguarded in here?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Landsman Pettus t’see th’ Captain . . . SAH!” the Marine sentry cried, banging the brass-bound butt of his musket on the deck.
“Enter,” Lewrie commanded, looking up from his desk, where he and Captain Speaks’s former clerk, a former solicitor’s clerk with the unfortunately chosen name of George Georges, were going over the ship’s myriad of forms and accounts, to assure that Lewrie was not accepting responsibility for a “pig in a poke.”
In came a young fellow in his early twenties, tall enough to have to duck under the overhead deck beams . . . barely. It was more a hunched-shoulder diffidence or wariness, Lewrie thought, noting how the fellow appeared on the lookout for a cuff, or a touch-up from the Bosun’s starter.
“You wished to see me, Captain sir?” Pettus said, looking fearful of committing some wrong without knowing.
“That’ll be all for a little while, Georges,” Lewrie told his new clerk. “Get some air on the gangway ’til I send for you again.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Flog the bugger!” the parrot squawked. “Trice him up!”
“I do not have a steward, Pettus,” Lewrie said, rising from the desk in the d
ay-cabin. “I came away at short notice, and your former captain’s man is ashore with him, and I’m loath to call him back aboard, as long as Captain Speaks is so ill and in need of him. Mister Ballard suggested your name.”
“Aye, sir?” Pettus said with a note of hope to his voice. He’d made an attempt to be as presentable as he would be at Sunday Divisions. His face was shaved, his thick thatch of light brown hair was combed, and his slop-trousers were mostly free of slush and tar smuts. He wore a chequered blue shirt, a printed red calico neckerchief, and a short sailor’s taped jacket that was a bit too short in the sleeves, and with some brass buttons replaced with plain black horn ones. His flat, tarred hat was in his hands before his waist, being turned round about in involuntary nervousness. Pettus looked lean and spry enough to make a topman, yet . . .
“You’ve served a gentleman before, I’m told?” Lewrie asked.
“I have, sir, aye!” Pettus eagerly replied, breaking out in an open grin. “In Brighton, sir, I was a footman to the diocese’s bishop, him and his family. Not his personal man, sir, but I was with them for six years . . . since I was fourteen, and first got my position. I did for his younger son, for a year or so, as well as waiting at-table. . . . There was a lot of entertaining, sir, so I know my way about. It was a grand place, sir.”
“Wardrobe? Laundry? Keep track of plates, and utensils and all that?”
“There were others who did that, sir,” Pettus admitted, seeming as if his hopes were suddenly dashed, then quickly spoke up once more. “I did keep the son’s wardrobe, sir, so he’d always have clean linen and pressed stocks, that everything was fresh and presentable, from the laundry maid. Blacked and buffed shoes, polished silver and such, for all the suppers, too! And, helped the scullery maids with the dishes, sir, before and after.”
“Read and write?” Lewrie asked, sitting on the edge of his desk.
“Yes, sir!” Pettus said, “I mean . . . aye, sir. My dad taught at a local school, ’til he died, and I had to find a position. Higher mathematics I never mastered, but I can keep a running account book, as good as anything. I’ve a little Latin, a dab of French, sir.”
“Why did you lose your position, then, Pettus?” Lewrie queried. “And, how the Devil did the Press get you?”
“Well, uhm, sir . . .” Pettus deflated, going all cutty-eyed as a bag of nails. “ ’Twas a proper house, the bishop’s manse, sir. Run on very moral lines, as I expect you can imagine. Even did the son that I did for have a secret wild streak.”
“Most vicars’ sons do, as I remember,” Lewrie said, thinking of several boys from Church families at his several public schools. Wild was a mild word for ’em, he thought with a private grin; And God bless a vicar’s daughter, too!
“He was mad for drink, sir, and someone had to go along to keep an eye on him, keep him out of trouble when he got cup-shot,” Pettus explained, the tarred hat going round and round more agitatedly. “And then there was a new maid-of-all-work that was hired on one summer for the season. I was . . . well, she was pretty as a bunch of flowers, sir, and she and I . . . struck up a liking. A strong liking. Just sixteen, she was, sir, and I’d a mind that, did I put enough aside, after a few years, the both of us might marry, sir, but . . .”
Oh dear, Lewrie thought; You poor, deluded young bastard.
“Well, sir . . . she and I went a bit ahead of ourselves, on our days off,” Pettus mournfully related. “If you get my meaning, sir? We ah . . . found some private places a good walk from town, or the glebe, and, ah . . . made love, sir, like we were already married. The son . . . found out about us. Saw us, when he went riding near where we . . . and the next time I had to go along to guard his drinking bouts, he japed me something awful about her. And it didn’t stop outside the house, sir. He started abusing me at home, too, making the worst slurs against Nan . . . the girl, sir, ’til I couldn’t take it any more. One last insult, the middle of the day, at table before his family, and I . . .
“I dumped the soup tureen on him, sir,” Pettus confessed in a meek voice, shrugging and looking down at his shoes. “Creamy pea soup, enough for twelve,” he added with a rueful laugh.
“I’m a saucy rascal!” the parrot commented.
“Well, that’s one way t’make an exit,” Lewrie said, picturing that scene with some relish. It would have been the sort of thing he would have done.
“The only problem, though, sir, was that he blabbed all about the girl, too, and got us both sacked,” Pettus said, returning to his misery. “Bishop’s wife said she wouldn’t stand for fornication in her house, and swore no respectable place would have either of us, not if we depended on her for a recommendation. Nan . . . she had to leave the parish, and try her luck in Chichester, and I haven’t gotten one word from her since.”
“And the Impress Service?” Lewrie asked.
“I had a little money laid by, so I could take cheap lodgings whilst I looked for new work, sir,” Pettus said. “I do think I got it in my head to go looking for Mister Edw—. . . the son, sir, and give him a proper thrashing for what he’d done, but . . . I was never much of a man for drink, sir, but I knew taverns and public houses would be where I could find him, and . . . I got as drunk as a lord by the time I’d made all the rounds, sir. It was a warm night, so I’d taken off my coat and hat somewhere, and on the way to one of the really low taverns, I ran into the Press party, and . . . in trousers and waist-coat, with no neck-stock, either, they took my garb for ‘short clothing,’ cried that I was a sailor, and jumped me. Woke up in the Press tender on the way to Portsmouth . . . into the receiving ship, and then aboard Thermopylae, sir.”
“Just damned bad luck, all round, Pettus,” Lewrie decided aloud. “Do you still drink? Steal?”
“Never stole anything in my life, sir!” Pettus declared, almost angrily at the suggestion. “As for drink, well . . . ,” he simmered down. “After being pressed, the rum issue is welcome. ’Tis all I can do to choke it down, sir, and give ‘sippers’ and ‘gulpers’ to the other lads, most of the time. That way, they don’t . . . bully me quite so badly. I admit it makes life aboard ship more bearable, sir, but I’m not a sot. Your spirits would be safe with me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“You understand that, serving me here in the cabins, you would hear things discussed that should not be blabbed to the other sailors,” Lewrie went on. “Mum’s the word about where we’re going, what the officers and I talk about.”
“Mum’s the word, sir, aye,” Pettus solemnly assured him.
“My last man, I allowed to berth in his pantry, yonder,” Lewrie said, pointing his chin towards the dog’s-box of a stores cabin that he had had the Carpenter, Mr. Lumsden, erect from spare partitions, in addition to the captain’s store room below on the orlop, and the lazarette stowage beneath the padded transom settee, right aft. “You would be responsible for the safekeeping of all my goods, strictly under lock and key ’til I need something. Feel like ‘striking’ as my steward and ‘man,’ Pettus?”
“I would, sir!” Pettus exclaimed, all but wagging his tail like a puppy in eagerness. “You’ll see, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“You’ll have to tolerate the cats,” Lewrie said with a smile as he decided to give Pettus a try. “Toulon, there, he’s the black-and-white’un. Chalky’s the other.”
“And, er . . . Captain Speaks’s parrot, too, sir?” Pettus asked.
“Bloody nuisance!” the bird chose to squawk.
“I may be fattenin’ him up for supper,” Lewrie said, scowling in the bird’s direction. “Shift your dunnage, once you’ve eat, and as soon as you do, my Cox’n, Desmond, will show you where my coffee beans and grinder are. And the pot.”
“Uhm, sir,” Pettus shyly said. “None of my business, sir, but . . . Mister Perry, Captain Speaks’s Cox’n, ah . . .”
“I’ll deal with that, but thankee for mentioning it to me,” he said. “Close to the Captain, is he, Pettus?”
“Been with him as long as the parro
t, I heard tell, sir,” Pettus replied.
“Maybe he could take the beast,” Lewrie said with a snort. “Or, wish t’go ashore to tend to Captain Speaks. That’ll be all, for now, Pettus. Report back by Two Bells of the next Watch.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
Well, that’s one problem solved, Lewrie thought, congratulating himself and considering sending to the galley for a plate of whatever the crew would be eating; As for Perry . . .
“Keel-haul the bastard!” the bird screeched. “Tha-wheep!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“. . . ’til we strike Soundings in the Channel of Old England . . . from Ushant to Scilly is twen-ty five leagues . . . tha-wheep!” the parrot sang within his cloth-covered cage, right aft—as far from the dining-coach as he could be placed.
“Bloody . . . !” Lewrie muttered under his breath.
“Let me out, for God’s sake . . . awrk!”
“You must admit, sir, he’s quite the remarkable vocabulary for a dumb beast,” Lt. Ballard commented with a wry smirk. “One might conjure that it’s intelligent. Or that the Hindoo concept of reincarnation is valid . . . that an ‘old soul’ came back as a bird.”
“T’be dredged in flour and pan-fried, does he keep that up,” Lewrie threatened, turning his head to scowl at the cage. Toulon and Chalky were seated below the cage, watching it sway gently, chittering and working their paws on the deck, their tails jerking. Turning back to Lt. Ballard, he asked, “Are you sure Captain Speaks’s wife is dead-set against having it ashore?”
“Adamantly, sir,” Ballard said with a grave expression and a pursing of his full lips.
“Well, I’m just as adamant that the bloody bird goes,” Lewrie grumbled as he cut himself a bite of ham. “Cold as it will be where we’re going, it’d be a wonder does the damned thing not freeze t’death. I s’pose the coal-burning stoves were Captain Speaks’s way of keeping it tropic-warm?”
“The cage was hung quite close to a stove, aye, sir,” Lt. Ballard replied as he delicately lifted a forkful of mashed potatoes and green peas to his mouth. “It is a wonder, indeed, that the bird has not succumbed to the cold and damp already . . . or, the loss of its master.”
The Baltic Gambit Page 21