“Nossir, I s’pose not.” Cony grimaced, after heaving a long, deep sigh of regret. “A’ready signed me name as a delegate. Leave-ticket’d not mean much do h’it go again’ us.”
“Will, for God’s sake, noooo!” Maggie wailed. “Come away!”
Cony went to her, to take her hands and lead her a little off to one side, gently trying to explain. “Swore me a Bible-oath, dear Maggie. Can’t rightly say I ever did afore. Man who’d break faith with ’at, well … ain’t much of a man atall.”
“They’ll hang you, sure as Fate … !” his wife shrilled, pale as death and like to faint with fear.
“Can’t slide off an’ let th’ lads down neither, darlin’ … not after ’ey made me one o’ their rep—Gawd, ain’t h’it a break-teeth word though—rep-re-sent-atives?”
“Then I’ll stay with you, Will … me and the boy!” Mrs. Cony shuddered, reaching down and finding a firm Country-English spunk to draw on. “God help us, Will, but no matter the folly you’ve got in, if yer that determined … then you must think yerself right. And if you think you’re right, then I’ll stand by you through thick an’ thin, same as we vowed … at our marryin’ Bible-oath!”
“Ah, ya can’t, Maggie,” Cony muttered sadly. “Committee said t’put all women ashore, out o’ harm’s way, so we could keep good order, proper Ship’s Discipline … so they don’ think us nothin’ but drunks an’ debauchers. Can’t make no exceptions, dear as I’d wish … Maggie, come ’ere a minute. Give me leave, Cap’um? ’fore ya takes ’em back ’ome for me?”
Lewrie saw it was no use and gravely nodded. Will and Maggie went aft towards the taffrails for a last few words of parting, while Lewrie retrieved his hat, then paced away towards the entry-port. And little Will, tears running down his face, aware his dad’d not be with him anytime soon—saw himself being cosseted and dandled on old Mr. Paschal’s knee, surrounded by some older petty officers and seamen who had children of their own, making a fuss over him, cooing, making faces to amuse him, though Will wailed inconsolably.
Lewrie felt a presence near him and turned to meet the sheepish gaze of Jester’s new Master Gunner, Mister Tuggle.
“You’re a hopeless pack of bloody fools, you know,” Lewrie said accusingly. “And do you get Will Cony court-martialed and hung aside you, then I swear t’Christ, I’ll dance on your grave!”
“I s’pose you may be right, sir,” Tuggle confessed, looking a bit lost and hopeless at that moment. “But the fat’s in the fire for sure, sir. There’s always a chance they’ll give us better’n half what we asked. Be satisfied with that … a bit more’n half, sir.”
“Is there much to this … from that London Corresponding Society?” Lewrie simply had to know. “Saw some tracts. Priestley, Place … some of that lot. Did they stir this up or did it … ?”
“You forgot Mister Thelwall and Mister Binns, sir, a heap of others,” Tuggle said, with a brief, weary smile. “I’d reckon ’least a quarter o’ the new hands—those Quota Men and United Irishmen … pressed Americans—have Thom Paine’s Rights of Man, Part the Second, damn’-near memorised by now, sir. No King, sir? No House of Lords, just Commons … annual Parliaments … fair wages, pensions, decent working hours, and conditions, sir? Right t’vote for any man making £6 a year, not £100, any who pay ‘scot and lot’? Lord, sir! Even gone so far as to preach on giving wimmen the vote, sir! Did ya ever hear such tripe, Commander Lewrie? Has nought t’do with the Fleet; ’tis nothing we wish! As to yer question, sir … though I ’spect we’ve a few LCS men aboard … wasn’t them started this. Seen none o’ their tracts. No one ashore stirred the fleet t’mutiny, either, sir. This come from the sailors themselves, sir; and did some of the wild-eyed, radical shite … beggin’ yer pardon, sir … come up, ’twas rejected by the delegates early on. We’re loyal men, sir,” Tuggle insisted. “Just want better rations … pay, a tad better treatment, sir … that’s all we demand. T’be treated like men, sir. We aren’t all drunken, brainless animals, sir, like most officers and th’ Admiralty think. We’ll do our duty for King and Country should we be called to … we’re still True Blue Hearts o’ Oak at bottom, sir.”
Lewrie opened his mouth to make a reply, but decided against a rebuttal; it could only come out an exasperated sneer, he suspected.
“I trust, Mister Tuggle, that you are sincere ’bout doing your duty should it come—should the French come,” Lewrie said, instead. “And with Will Cony so stubborn over this, I trust you’re all as sincere in your grievances too. I cannot wish you good fortune, you know it. Yet … for Will’s sake, if nothing else … I wish that I could.”
“For Will Cony’s sake then, Commander Lewrie, sir. For Will’s sake.” Mr. Tuggle grimly nodded, with only a tiny crinkle at the corners of his eyes.
All Lewrie could do after that was to go aft, to take charge of Bosun Cony’s family, and escort them off the ship, back to their carriage—and take them home, their quest a failure.
CHAPTER NINE
Lewrie was feeling particularly helpless, and hapless, after a few more days. No letter had come from Admiralty to offer employment, as he had smugly expected; it was spring planting season, about which he knew absolutely nothing, no matter his few idle half-pay years as a gentleman— tenant farmer before the war—that was Caroline’s bailiwick and none of his. He had been known to raise his hat, but nothing green!
His civilian suitings were once more hopelessly out of style as well, and to waste money updating his shore wardrobe at a time when the farm needed every pence in these tight times could appear selfish and “hen-headed” spendthrift, showing disloyalty to Caroline. Besides, he half-dreaded, to invest in civilian togs might signal a surrender or a willingness to remain ashore on half-pay for the rest of his life! The Fates, he superstitiously feared, took note of such accommodations.
Practically in a Dog Watch, he had been reduced from a powerful warship captain to a mere centurion, mouthing repetitions of his tribune-wife’s dictates to their hired labourers, without even half a clue to what they portended or a decent idea of what proper work such orders involved, or how such labour was to be carried out!
On top of that, the household was also feverishly engaged with the dreaded spring cleaning; and did he not wish to be “press-ganged” into moving furniture or emptying pantry shelves, a man still possessed of his higher faculties would make himself scarce, perhaps oversee the boiling of water, as one did for childbirth at best, and leaving the womenfolk to their “pagan” rites, rituals, and mysteries.
Simpler societies, such as the South Sea Islanders or the Seminole and Muskogee Indians he had dealt with in ’82, had solutions for menfolk and warriors in situations such as these, Lewrie recalled—the Long-House, where women were barred. London had its clubs. Lewrie, and Anglesgreen, had the public houses.
After a horseback tour of his acres, a word or two with the new foreman and his mates, Lewrie betook himself to the Old Ploughman tavern.
The pub was uncrowded in the morning hours of course; the real farmers who knew what they were about were out busily doing it. Even the more-gentlemanly Red Swan Inn that he rode past, where he was anathema as long as any Embleton still drew breath, only had a coach or two, a saddle horse or two, out front.
Lewrie handed his reins to the Ploughman’s newest boyish “daisy-kicker,” said hello to old Mr. Beakman and his spinster daughter (whom Will Cony had jilted years before, Lewrie recalled with a newfound sadness for his missing Bosun), ordered up a mug of light, sprightly new spring ale to steel himself for a look at the even more troubling world beyond, and called for the newspapers.
Mr. Beakman’s own Publican’s Advertiser was warmly supportive of the mutiny, and the seamen’s cause, but wisely shied away from seeming too “political”—unless it wished to be suppressed by the government, of course! Last evening’s London Courier, and the fresh-come morning Chronicle, were Whig papers and Fox-ite; they hardly even said that the mutiny was even a mutiny yet! Just the “disturbance
at Spithead” or … oh, Christ, Lewrie groaned! The Chronicle bore the disturbing tidings that the mutiny had now spread to the dozen line-of-battle ships based at Plymouth too! A list of ships that had raised the red flags was included. Hmmm, he puzzled; very few of the frigates were listed … yet. But that made sense; pay didn’t matter aboard frigates. It was all prize-money they were after, and frigates were more comfortable ships, with more room per hand, not so crowded … and a lot less dull a life than plodding aboard a “liner” or swinging at anchor waiting for the foe to come out and challenge them.
For a brief, hopeful time, the mutiny had appeared to be ended, just after he’d come back from Portsmouth. Parliament had been rumoured to be meeting, the House of Commons to debate a bill for supplementary funds that the Prime Minister and Councillor of The Exchequer—William Pitt the Younger—were drawing up to add to the annual Admiralty expenditures. “His Nobs,” King George, had been rumoured to have left off dunking and gambling at Bath and had seemed amenable to the general pardon the mutineers requested. Tory, pro-government dailies had hinted that crews were returning to full discipline, taking their exiled officers back aboard … .
A few days later though …
Pitt had spoken to the Commons, rambling through a speech that notably omitted any mention of Navy, Mutiny, Seamen, Pay, or even Water! The Whigs and Fox-ite factions had been on him like dogs on a butcher’s castoffs; questions had been raised, enquiries into the matter threatened. Elderly Admiral Lord Howe had had to rise to defend himself.
Howe had admitted that he had gotten anonymous copies of their demands weeks before but had been reassured by Sir Hugh Seymour, the Admiralty’s senior man at Portsmouth, that he’d seen no signs of mutinous assemblies, seen any grievance letters, and had thought that the copies Howe had gotten were the work of a malicious individual. Pitt and his First Lord of The Admiralty had been forced to admit that they had had inklings of mutiny—and had sat on it!
Following Pitt’s dreadful speech, the sailors had put officers ashore once more, re-hoisted the red flags, and re-rove the yard-ropes, sure they were being set up with false promises for another betrayal, soon to be winnowed and hung as Culloden’s ringleaders had been.
To make things worse, the Earl Spencer had told Commons that he had ordered completely new sets of weights and measures to be used for sailors’ rations—Admiralty could not redress that grievance until the new weights were available.
That, Lewrie scoffed, was a bald-faced admission that corruption and graft went from bottom to top, from ships’ pursers to the dockyard warehouses, from jobbers to the Victualling Board itself! That even civilian purveyors were being cheated when they put their goods on the Admiralty scales!
Panicked by the resurgence of the mutiny, Commons had elected to scrounge up an extra £900,000 for the Navy Estimate, and the King signed a pardon, but by then it was too little, too late!
“Not over yet, sir?” Beakman’s daughter enquired as she fetched him a top-up of spring ale.
“No, and God knows when it ever will be … thankee,” Lewrie told her.
“Poor Mizzuz Cony, not knowin’ …” the daughter said, with a tiny cluck of her tongue, before returning to the long, oak bar counter.
Never married after Will took up with Maggie, Lewrie speculated; gettin’ long-in-tooth and haggard. God, a publican’s daughter not taken yet, even did she look like the arse-end of a sheep? He rather doubted that Mistress Beakman had much real sympathy in her soul for Maggie Cony; spite and glee for a long-awaited comeuppance was more like it!
He turned to the Tory papers. Both The Times and the Gazette were incensed that the mutineers were demanding relief from tyrannical officers and mates too. How dare “common” seamen hope to dictate to the aristocracy, the squirearchy, their “betters” to decide who was capable, or suitable, to command them! Never in Hell, both papers were firm in saying, should HM government, Admiralty, or the landed gentry surrender their rights as honourable gentlemen; why, it violated that sacred principle of the gentleman-officer, the dignity of the Navy—the dignity of the monarch himself! Why, with times so parlous, and revolution run riot on the Continent, in America … !
Lewrie shoved The Times away in disgust. Right here, on this very village commons the day before, the local Yeomanry and Militia had drilled. As his father had said, to prepare them should they be called out to march to Portsmouth—just in case.
Would the mutineers turn their artillery on the shore, fire upon British troops, if their demands were not met? Would British soldiers fire upon British tars? Lewrie wondered with a frown; that was even a more disturbing question. For if that happened, all bets were off, and England might go the way of France, with blood in the streets and the aristocracy, the King and Queen—and serving officers! Lewrie queasily imagined—thrown out, thrown in gaol, even guillotined, just like it had come to the port of Toulon and his now-dead French Royalist compatriots in ’93. Would he and Caroline and the children end up as refugees in foreign lands as those Royalists had? Or dead, like Charles Auguste, Baron de Crillart, and all his kin but Sophie de Maubeuge?
Caroline had kin—Rebel kin—in the Cape Fear country, back in North Carolina. And Caroline and her parents and brothers had fled them too, become refugees in England. Had the American Chiwicks mellowed enough for a welcome, he wondered? But what joy was there in that—the United States had practically scrapped their navy once the Revolution was over, and what could he do, except … farm! Jesus!
There came a hellish din from abovestairs, the scrape and clang of something heavy and metallic, the “sloosh” of water, followed not a moment later by a trickle of water off the smoky overhead oak beams of the low-ceilinged public house’s common rooms.
“What the Devil?” Lewrie griped aloud, standing quickly to flee a positive flood of sudsy water leaking through the ancient floorboards above.
“Oh, so sorry, Squire Lewrie, but we’re doin’ spring cleaning,” Mistress Beakman gasped. “Per’aps you’d be safer on the side garden.”
“Thought I’d escaped spring cleaning,” he groused, rescuing his pile of newspapers and his wide-brimmed felt hat. “Might as well go home at this rate.”
“Sor-ry, Mizzus!” a woman wailed from abovestairs. “The kettle o’ wash water spilled. But it’s bringin’ up a power o’ grime! Will ya wish us t’start on the public rooms then?”
“Aye,” Mistress Beakman called aloft. “Will you not stay for the mail coach, then, Squire Lewrie Won’t be a half-hour, with every road dry so far this week, sir,” she prattled on. “Should’ve done the cleanin’ and moppin’ before the Muster Day, but … and wasn’t that the grand sight, sir. Your good wife and wee daughter turned out so fine and your ward, Miz Sophie, lookin’ so fresh and fetchin’ in that pale green chiffony gown, her new straw bonnet, and all … Aye, she’s rare wondrous t’see, sir … poor, motherless lass, bein’ French and so far from home. Still, Muster Day seemed t’cheer her … Squire Harry and his cavalry lads especial”—she breezed on, fanning her face, as if overcome with lust or excitement herself—” bouncin’ on her toes and clappin’ and cheerin’ so …”
Something was being said beyond idle chatter and “gush,” Lewrie suspected, and he raised a brow over it. As cattily delighted as she was over Will Cony’s “comeuppance,” and her rival Maggie’s sufferings for it at long last, Lewrie suspected that he was being slyly baited.
Will had been his “man”; and he was the interloper from rakish London who had shamed Harry, stolen his “intended” Caroline. Did she blame him for being jilted, and was she now suggesting that he would be getting a well-deserved “comeuppance” too?
“Fetch you a fresh mug in the side garden whilst ya wait for the mail coach t’come then, shall I, sir?” she chirped.
“Uhm, aye … I s’pose,” Lewrie allowed.
“Lord, as if I don’t have enough worries on my plate as it is!” Lewrie grumbled to himself as he betook himself out to the open-sided, covered garde
n porch and took a dry seat at a newish oak-slab table.
World’s goin’ t’Hell in a hand-basket, and even domesticity has its pitfalls, he decided. Oh, there’d been signs, right from Easter Church services. “Women!” he muttered under his breath.
They just won’t do the sensible thing. Offer sugar or salt and they’ll take salt, every time …’cause it’s sharper tasting. Bad man, oh, a baddd man—stay away, he wished he could simply order her. Or don’t, you silly chit; be a fool, if you wish.
He supposed Sophie was bored to tears by the poor choice of eligible bachelors in the neighbourhood. She was eighteen now, and her sap was rising; and girls that age began to think of which tree a nest could be built in … and how best to feather it. Sophie was penniless, without dowry or “dot” to offer, without personal paraphernalia to take with her, beyond what Caroline had sewed with her, and if she thought the Lewries would stand her marriage portion, she’d best have another think coming … especially if her choice was as abysmally unfortunate as the Honourable Harry Embleton!
“Maybe it’s simple youthful rebellion,” he grumbled. The ’tween years’ headstrong urge to kick over the traces, no matter how gentle or kind the traces? “Or maybe it’s because she’s French!” He smirked.
Oh, they were a perverse race, the Frogs. He could not imagine that she found Harry attractive—only another otter could be attracted to such a profile. He was an idiot … therefore controllable? Bosh!
Lewrie could not feature Sophie as being so guileful, so mercenary, so … scheming! Yet for no discernible reason, she suddenly had not seemed averse to being fawned at by that feckless fool, Harry. She had few opportunities outside Caroline’s sharp notice, but that didn’t signify. Caroline was sure that something was going on behind their backs, yet he feared speaking to her about it; speak too often and disparagingly about a swain, and young chits would—perversely!—run with glee to the very thing or person one warned them against!
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