King's Captain

by Dewey Lambdin

  Lewrie turned to see many of his hands crossing themselves or standing gape-mouthed in awe … looking at him. There were whispers … soft, sibilant sighings and almost-words he strained to fathom that came on the fickle night wind.

  “Ah … hmm, then,” Lewrie finally managed to say, removing his hat to swipe at his hair, that felt clammy and suddenly cold on that night wind from a gush of funk-sweat.

  “Reckon he’s a goner, sir,” Lt. Wyman ventured to say, breaking the spell.

  “Very well, Mister Wyman. Let’s be about it then. Finish the ferrying, quick as you can, Andrews; then we must get underway. This wind is backing,” Lewrie ordered, clapping his hat back on and placing his hands square in the middle of his back. “Take the ship’s boats in tow for the nonce. Ready to make our offing, are you, Mister Winwood?”

  “Aye, sir, but … some of the people are saying the most blasphemous, un-Christian things, sir. Pagan sea-gods and vengeance …”

  “I’m sure ’tis nothing of the sort, Mister Winwood,” Lewrie said, sure he was lying through his teeth.

  “We should put a stop to it, sir, at once!” Winwood insisted, as prim as a slapped vicar. “The simple minds of your common sailor, and so many superstitious Irish aboard, why …”

  “Have we learned nothing, sir?” Lewrie asked him. “Our common sailors are nothing like simple or child-like; we just saw that at the Nore and Spithead. Do the people come to believe that Proteus had an odd birth, an air of mystery about her … a soul, if you will, what’s the harm in it? Perhaps they’ll serve her more chearly for that.”

  “From fear, Captain?” Winwood countered, nigh to scoffing.

  “For the ship, sir … if she demands it,” Lewrie allowed, turning to stroke Toulon, who was now washing himself as if he hadn’t one care in the world. “Pride, stubbornness … that’s more important among them than Navy, King, or Country … the ship, and their mates are paramount, if you get past all the patriotic cant. Shame of failing mates, good officers like Lieutenant Devereux for our Marines, that makes ’em toe up and stick it in a scrap. Discipline and fear of punishment … that only goes so far. But it doesn’t inspire them, Mister Winwood!”

  Winwood got cutty-eyed, seeing his point, but not liking it.

  “We’ll not encourage such moonshine, sir. But let ’em have a spindrift, and a sense of bein’ unique men servin’ a unique ship. In the long-run, it really doesn’t signify.”

  “Uhm … very good, sir.” Winwood surrendered, though dubious.

  Let him think what he likes, Lewrie thought, turning away to see to getting his ship underway. I begged God—and Lir—the both of ’em, to get her back. I promised Bales’s … Rolston’s heart’s blood for it. Whichever answered my prayer, well … that don’t signify either. As long as I have a proud ship!

  EPILOGUE

  Forsan et haec olim

  meninisse juvabit.

  Perhaps someday it will be pleasant

  to remember these things.

  —VIRGIL

  HMS Proteus lay peacefully at anchor in the port of Harwich, up the coast from the Nore. She was finished with provisioning, and her people were Out-Of-Discipline, after six rugged weeks at sea, off the Texel. Six weeks they’d bluffed with but a handful of ships to shut the door on the Dutch, with Admiral Duncan’s two or three liners anchored almost aground, right in the channel, and Proteus and a few other frigates or sloops further out, flurrying bogus signals to a pretended “fleet” under the Northern horizon. With battle expected daily, Lewrie had found his external bogeyman, the roweled Spanish spur that focused his crewmen on learning their trade as quick as they could. Now she was of passing professionalism—still with some raggedness about her, of course, but Lewrie reckoned that she’d just about do. So when she had been relieved by the Nore ships, the re-assembled North Sea Fleet, which had given up their mutiny not ten days after Proteus had escaped, everyone had been more than grateful for a spell in harbour.

  The skylights were open to cool his great-cabins as he worked, and he could hear the voice of Lieutenant Devereux drilling his Marines on the quarterdeck above him, the clomp of booted feet as they sweated through close-order under arms. Music drifted up from the berthing-deck where the hands idled with a new lot of temporary “wives.”

  “Down By The Sally Gardens,” he recognised, pausing in his writing, smiling to himself since he’d learned a thing or two himself, learned to play a few new airs on his battered, but straightened tin-whistle.

  “Boat ahoy!”

  “Aye, aye!”

  “Marines! By the left … quick-march!”

  Though the crew had settled into a trouble-free Navy routine—for the most part—summoning Marines to the entry-port boded ominous. That “Aye, aye!” might mean the presence of an officer in the approaching boat. Or it might be Thomas McCann, come back from his tar and chains! There was a stamp by the door, the rap of his sentry’s musket butt. “Midshipman Nicholas … SAH!”

  “Come.”

  “Captain, sir!” Little Mr. Nicholas burst out, flushed and excited, “the First Officer Mister Langlie’s respects, sir, and I am bid to inform you that we’ve a visitor arriving … a soldier! A real general, he appears, sir!”

  “Good, God,” Lewrie replied, with a frown, startled to his feet, and grasped for his coat that hung on the back of his chair.

  He only knew one general … his father! And what the Devil was he doing in Harwich? Lewrie feared the worst; there had been no fresh letters from Anglesgreen since he had taken Proteus over to Holland … whilst recent bumf from his solicitor, tailor, Coutts’s Bank, chandlers, and such had come aboard with Langlie and Devereux. Despite his own letters home, there’d been no replies, and he could explain that away only so long with the urgency of the spring planting season.

  He dashed out of his great-cabins, up the starboard ladder to the gangway and entry-port, as the Marines formed up and Lt. Langlie had Bosun Pendarves shrilling like a starved harpy on his silver call to assemble the crew. “Present! Ship’s comp’ny … off hats, face to starboard, and … salute!” Langlie bellowed.

  A cocked military hat loomed over the lip of the entry-port, the bosun’s calls tweetled a long, complicated trilling … gold lace then appeared. Damme, it is my father, Lewrie thought with a deeper frown.

  Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby got safely to the deck, almost spryly, gaily, and stepped inboard, grandly doffing his hat to one and all, with a condescending smile on his phyz, like a hero might at the theatre, cheered and clapped for his most recent exploit and basking in his glory from a loge-box before the curtain rose.

  “How-dy do, sir … Charmed, I’m certain, young sir … ,” Sir Hugo said, as officers and midshipmen were named to him. “Ah!” he finally cried, “there’s my son. Embrace me, lad … and give ye joy!” making Lewrie feel like a schoolboy just back from his first term at boarding school. And about as embarrassed.

  “What in the world are you doin’ here? What’s happening at home? You’d not come ’less there was something horrid …” Lewrie babbled as he suffered himself to be bear-hugged, bounced and dandled, thumped on the back so hard, for a moment he could conjure that someone had died and, left him a huge bundle; he could not imagine his father acting so “paternal,” else!

  “Patience, lad,” Sir Hugo muttered in his ear, “and all will be told. Everyone’s well. No worries on that score.” He released Lewrie at last, stepped back, and whinnied louder for everyone’s ear, “Why, I haven’t seen you in ages, and here you are, back safe … and famous, I am bound! I’m dry as dust too. Warmish summer, ain’t it. Good t’see me, too, eh wot?”

  “We can retire to my cabins,” Lewrie said, getting the hint. “This way … Father. Lookin’ fit and full o’ cream, as you always do. What about some champagne? Aspinall, break out some ‘bubbly.’”

  The drunken old fart! Lewrie thought.

  “Ah, capital, my boy … simply capital!”

  “Well, aren’t ye goin�
� to congratulate your pater, me boy?” Sir Hugo asked, once they were below and out of public view.

  “Uhm … for what, sir?” Lewrie had to ask, pouring him a glass and keeping his eyes fixed on his sire. It was an old habit—always know where his paws were, else he’d pick you cleaner than Sally Blue—and twice as neatly!

  Sir Hugo smirked as he reached up to tap his gaudy epaulets.

  “Major-General, me lad, just as I told ye, haw!” He beamed like a wellfed buzzard, “Thanks of Parliament too.”

  “Ah … congratulations,” Lewrie replied. “Just who’d you kill?”

  “Haw-haw!” Sir Hugo guffawed, tweaking at the fabric of his new and fashionably snug breeches, “No, for my duty suppressing your Nore mutiny. Arrived just after your ship scampered … under General Grey and Buckner’s replacement, Admiral Lord Keith.”

  “Keith Elphinstone, when I knew him at Toulon,” Alan supplied, handing his father a tall stem of champagne. “Balls of brass too.”

  “The very one,” Sir Hugo quite cheerfully agreed. “I brought our Yeomen Militia up t’London, got brigaded with some Kentish regiments, and got the brigade when the first’un fell off his charger … howlin’drunk. Man can’t handle his drink surely can’t handle his troops.”

  “First I’ve heard.” Lewrie found cause to snicker, despite continuing fears that a tragic shoe was about to be dropped. “Though that tipple was as important to the Army as gun-oil.”

  “Bit of a muddle for a while,” Sir Hugo preened on. “One damn’ regiment went surly on us near Woolwich … some others traipsed into camp with only half their muster. Rot, sir! Radical, Republican rot, worse’n ever I’d imagine in England! But we put it right, stiffened the Tilbury forts’ garrisons, reclaimed some ships that had mutinied … up the Thames … marched down to Sheerness and put spine in the town. Damme, though!” Sir Hugo wheezed in pleasing reverie, “missed the sight on the King’s birthday, Alan! Everyone firin’ th’ hundred-gun salute … mutineers, too, damn their eyes … made the ramparts at Garrison Point collapse! One gun would’ve done it, and thank God we never had t’cannonade the mutineers for real!”

  “But it’s over, now,” Lewrie said, sipping at his own champagne and feeling impatience to get past the “pleasantries.”

  “Almost. Some courts-martial still a’waitin’. Hellish docket, d’ye see. That Parker fellow went for the high jump. After that, we marched off for home. Got presented at court, my way back through the City, when the Thanks, and the promotion, came. ‘His Nobs’ the King, he thinks high of you … that letter you wrote him.”

  “He does?” Lewrie could only gasp.

  “Well, those whores of yours became, ah … ‘certain loyal and patriotic women of Sheerness,’ but … all in all, he thinks you’re th’ knacky sort. Never hurts … when he’s in his right mind, that is.”

  “Well, well … !” Lewrie had to gasp again and sit down.

  “Now … about personal doin’s …” Sir Hugo said, sobering and cocking his head at Aspinall, who was puttering and hovering.

  “Aspinall, do you go on deck, for a while. My father and I wish to chat private for a spell,” Lewrie bade, tensing once more.

  “Damme, never saw ye as a ship captain, Alan … in the Far East, the best ye had was a dog’s manger for quarters,” Sir Hugo said, as he peered about appreciatively, not innocently though—there was a tad too much of the smirk to his face for that. “Navy lives right well, I must say!”

  “‘A poor thing, but mine own,’” Lewrie quoted, shifting uneasily in his chair.

  “Fine, quiet … damn’ near stylish place t’put the leg over any willin’ mort, I’m bound.” Sir Hugo leered on. “Damme!”

  Toulon, attracted by Sir Hugo’s idly swinging, highly polished boot, had come to greet the new face; he leapt into Sir Hugo’s lap and swished his tail right-chearly, reaching up to bat at those glittery gold epaulets with their tantalising gilt cord tassels.

  “Nice, kitty …” Sir Hugo glowered. “Now, bugger off!”

  Damned near cross-eyed in perplexity, and with a tiny “ummph” of disappointment, Toulon did, though Sir Hugo hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “Father, what … ?”

  “Always were fonder o’ quim than yer av’rage feller, I recall,” Sir Hugo frowned, studying his son over the rim of his glass. “Mad for it, from yer first breeches.”

  “Right, so … ?” Lewrie attempted to bluff.

  Christ, who blabbed? was his panicky thought though; and just which “liaison” of mine was blabbed about? Did Sophie, that … !

  “Just after Caroline fetched Sophie and your kiddies back to home, there came this damn’ letter. Damn’ good hand, expensive paper … one o’ those catty things from ‘a concerned friend.’ Someone hates ye worse than Muhammadans hate roast pork!”

  “What the Devil d’ye mean, someone hates me?” Lewrie flummoxed. “Lots of people hate me, I’d expect … God knows why! Whatever did it say, then?”

  “The court takes note ye didn’t try t’deny it straightaway,” Sir Hugo quipped, looking coolly amused.

  “Well, how can I do that when you’ve yet to tell me what-the-bloody-Hell’s-in-it?” Lewrie snapped back.

  “It described, ah … yer ‘diversions’ in the Mediterranean. A certain sham Corsican countess, no more’n a common whore, named Phoebe Aretino?”

  “Oh!” Lewrie felt the need to gasp again. “Shit!”

  It was out at last! Lewrie had himself a deep draught, going icy inside.

  “Then, t’make matters worse, some Genoese mount, Claudia … however d’ye say it …” his father prompted, scowling.

  “Mastandrea,” Lewrie croaked, “Claudia Mastandrea, but she was secret government business, a French spy, and … !”

  “And you were ever the patriotic sort.” Sir Hugo felt the need to cackle. “Court also takes note ye know the lady in question. Knew, rather … biblically. And the worst part …”

  “Worst?” Alan sighed. “Jesus!”

  “Last year, when your ship was in the Adriatic,” Sir Hugo went on relentlessly, “you rescued some Greek piece, a widow once married to a Catholic Irish trader … in the fruit trade, it said?”

  “Currants,” Lewrie weakly supplied without thinking.

  “Right, then … sweet currant duff.” Sir Hugo sniffed, as if it was all a titanic jest. “Took her t’Lisbon ’board yer ship as a cabin guest … Saw more of her in Lisbon too, ’fore she took passage to her in-laws in Bristol. Yer nameless informer knew all that, her new address … and the fact that when the Widow Connor turned up on their doorstep, she was ‘ankled.’”

  “What!” Lewrie yelped, his features paling whey-ishly, and just about ready to tear his hair out in consternation. “What? Preg … no! We, I … that is, uhm … !”

  “Thought I taught ya th’ value o’ good cundums, Alan, me dear,” Sir Hugo sighed, worldly-wise, as if disappointed in him. “Venetian or Dago made, were they? Hard t’find at Lisbon? When I was hidin’ from creditors in Oporto, they surely were. Damn all Romish countries and their meddlin’ priests …”

  “P … pregnant?” Lewrie could only splutter. “Impossible, for I had three-dozen of Mother Green’s best, I assure …”

  God, he thought though; that first night, we didn’t! Too mad for it, right after I rescued her from the Serb pirates! One bloody, incautious night, just the once … ? That was simply too unjust!

  Despite his predicament, for a glad second or two, he recalled summersheen sweat and slippery bodies, going at it like stoats, quiet whimpers instead of wee screams, so her son could sleep through it in his hammock … God, at least four bouts or more!

  August, that’d been—Theoni had taken ship from Lisbon in October and wasn’t showing then! He caught himself counting the months on his fingers.

  “Fine thing t’master … mathematics,” his father commented, in a hellish-pleased humour, as if scoffing a cully who dared to be half the man that he was. “Mistress Connor was delivered
of a healthy boy, your informer says … Papist baptised, though. Alan James Connor, do ye see. Hellish coincidence … ain’t it.”

  “Dear Lord,” Lewrie said, topping up their glasses.

  “Bein’ in trade an’ all,” Sir Hugo sneered, “the Bristol branch of the Connors can add too, and knew there was no way their dead son could’ve quickened her, so … her new in-laws truckled her right out, soon as she bloomed. The damn’ foreign chit, and what can ye expect of Dago trash? Damme, the Connors must be rollin’in ‘chink’ t’have such touchy morals … never could afford ’em, me. But Mistress Connor has her dead husband’s half-share o’ th’ currant trade, plus a good claim on their share, with a wolfish lawyer. She lit in London, livin’ just as high as any righteous widow. Your ‘concerned friend’ knew her address there too. Looked her up on my way back to Anglesgreen, your dear wife bade me.”

  “You what?” Alan said with a wince, sure the game was up after all this time. At Caroline’s urging? “She did?” And did his father try to put his leg over? “How was she? How did she … ? Is he really?”

  “He has your eyes,” Sir Hugo cooed.

  It was true, then; after all these years, he’d sired a bastard … one he knew of, at any rate. One he had to own up to … well, there’d been Soft Rabbit up the Appalachicola, but he’d scampered long before she’d borne his git … on King’s business!

  “Fetchin’ wee lad,” Sir Hugo said, holding up the bottle to see if they’d need a replacement soon. “And I’ll give ya points, me son, for taste. A dev’lish-handsome woman is Mistress Theoni Connor. Those big amber eyes, almond-slanted and all, her chestnut hair? And still trim as a spinster lass, despite bearin’ two ‘gits.’”

  “So … what did you tell Caroline?” Lewrie enquired, crossing his fingers for luck; feeling the urge to cross his legs too!

  “Partways, the truth,” Sir Hugo replied, taping his noggin and looking especially sly.