Havoc's Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  That opportunity, to circumvent his wife’s spite and hear from his boys once more, was almost cheering enough to mollify his earlier anger at how they had, and might have been, abused!

  Even more wondrous, his father further suggested that Caroline was now vulnerable. His final point was that too many things bore down upon her, her fear and shame that she had unwittingly exposed her sons to pain and bestiality, that she hadn’t been a Good Mother! Even more vexing had been her wrathful split with Sophie (her unallayed suspicions notwithstanding!), and…her elderly mother Charlotte’s health was failing.

  It all made, Sir Hugo slyly hinted, the perfect opportunity for him to write her, no matter that Caroline had said she’d burn anything that came with his name on it, unread.

  “There is no better time for a Wife to appreciate a Husband than when crushed by Adversity,” his father coyly nudged, “when the Weaker Sex, all at sixes and sevens, find need to lean upon her Stalwart Man with his innate inner Strength, and in the face of shared Adversities, ‘form square’ shoulder to shoulder in wholehearted Mutual Defence of their Children and their Welfare.

  “No matter how slender a Reed that husband be (and I think we both know how Irresolute and Inconstant we Willoughby/Lewrie men turn out to be, God help our trusting Womenfolk) it is their Nature to look to Men for aid. Dispirited as Caroline is this moment, do you intend a Reconciliation someday with your good wife, then strike whilst the iron is hot, using your utmost Subtlety! Nothing too abrupt or promising at first, mind. Cajole her, with no Recriminations for her Foolishness, with no sudden Vows or Wishes for Renewal. But then, I very much doubt that you are in need of advice when it comes to cossetting the Fairer Sex, ho!”

  “Oh yes, I do!” Lewrie bewilderedly confessed to his empty great-cabins, and his nettled cat. “Ev’ry man does. And did ye ever have any advice, why the Devil didn’t ye share it when I needed it?”

  He plumped down in his desk chair once more, exhausted by fear and anger, by outrage. How to pen that letter to Caroline, posing stern and capable, and “reliable and trustworthy,” he couldn’t even begin to conjure. It would be implausible to beg her forgiveness…and much too soon to do so, too. He could not chide her for a brainless chit for being gulled by the vicar’s advice, either.

  And when you came right down to it, did he wish to reconcile?

  Hmmm…

  He had to give that one a long think, turning his chair to face Caroline’s portrait hanging in the dining-coach; done back when she was a newlywed in the Bahamas in ’85 or ’86. Dewy fresh and pretty, with her features unlined, but for the natural merry folds below her eyes; long, silken light brown hair worn long and missish under a wide-brim straw bonnet…

  T’wasn’t all looks, or beauty, though…And damn being a sailorman! He was gone for a year or two, sometimes an entire three years’ commission, and people and things never were the same as they were when he left. Children sprouted taller, into the most amazing creatures, totally alien to who they’d been before, as strange to him as feathered savages in the Great South Seas. Wives…

  Had be been a landsman, even a tenant squire with even a modicum of ability to work a farm (or appear as if he even tried!) he knew things would have been different between them. There would have been no shock of rencontre, at the changes. They would not have mellowed apart, too “set in their ways” for coping with life as independent agents, but would have slowly, gradually adapted to each other, so that such changes never came as a security-shaking shock of recognition. They would have aged…together!

  And, most importantly, living cheek-to-jowl with a goodly wife, standing “watch and watch” with a woman so sweet and intelligent, and compatible as Caroline, it was good chances he’d never have strayed.

  Well, perhaps now and again, but ’twould’ve been rare. Really.

  Lewrie was certain that Caroline was still more than enough for him as a mate; hadn’t he deemed her perfect marriage material once he and she had re-met in England in ’84, long before they’d wed? Before that anonymous scribbler had exposed his overseas doings, hadn’t they proved their mutually pleasing compatibility after each separation and re-adjusted to each other, caught up? So happy and lighthearted, so easily sociable and teasing, so much of the same mind…wasn’t she the same spritely but serious, level-headed but adoring girl he’d wed?

  Reconcile? Aye, he did wish it!

  Could he shed Theoni Connor, though, and their bastard son? Almost completely, yes, though he did owe her an obligation. But, was a complete break called for, then so be it. Theoni was well-off in her own right, with no need of his financial support, or wish to bruit her boy Alan James Connor in genteel society as a bastard.

  He suspected, though, that as long as the war went on, and the Admiralty had need of him (despite their qualms), once reconciled, he would be right back at sea, years and thousands of miles gone, putting into strange…“harbours,” as all true sailors did, sooner or later.

  Could he actually amend his roguish ways?

  Sadly, he rather doubted it; or doubted such a vow surviving an entire year, unless he spent his time completely out of sight of land. He knew by then his own nature…and a lewd’un, it was, he was man enough to confess…to himself, at the least.

  He eyed the larger stack of letters, all from Theoni. No! His solicitor, and Caroline, now took precedence. He scooted his chair up to the desk and stretched for paper, quill, and inkwell.

  Mountjoy, then the boys, then lastly that vital epistle to Caroline. Well, to his father, thirdly, to give thanks for his ministrations and advice. Which thought gave him shivers! Caroline, last.

  “Gawd,” he said with a wondering sigh. “All this, and Choundas, too. Well, just thankee Jesus for all this bounty.”

  Book Two

  “En labor, en odiis caput insuperabile nostris!”

  “Lo! a heavy task!—this man whom

  no hate of mine can overcome!”

  —ARGONAUTICA, BOOK III, 510

  VALERIUS FLACCUS

  Chapter Eight

  Mister the Honourable Grenville Pelham, with Lewrie’s agreement, determined that the Proteus frigate, and Lewrie’s tender hide, would be safer did she sail for her hunting grounds at once, with Mr. Peel to accompany her, and Lewrie, so the “game” could be put afoot immediately…and someone sensible kept a chary eye on her captain, to prevent further folly!

  While Lewrie didn’t think he had much to fear from the Beaumans and their allies, still all a’bluster with rage over Ledyard’s demise, and the undying shame and dishonour attached to it (in court at least) there had been some disquieting rumours bandied about involving knives, clubs, and dark Kingston alleys. The principal witnesses to the affair were of too-good standing, embarrassingly alive…and demonstrably unbribable, yet someone had to pay, so…! Which rumours, sworn even as the dust was pattering upon Ledyard’s coffin in the churchyard, did, admittedly, force Lewrie to tug his neck-stock and gulp a time or two, and keep his head swivelling to see who was coming up on his off-side. The Beaumans always had been a crude and immoderate clan who never did anything by halves!

  God sakes, look at Lucy! had been Lewrie’s conclusion. Swiftly followed by I never get in much trouble at sea, then damme, but my men are goin’ stale, swinging idle at anchor so long, and finally by let’s get after that bastard Choundas, then, at once! He’s no more vicious than the Beaumans…and I can see him comin’ a long way off!

  So it was with A Glad Heart and filled with Righteous Duty that Lewrie ordered HMS Proteus to take in her kedge anchors, haul up close to her moor, unfurl tops’ls and jibs, and, on a fine and freshening slant of wind from off the distant Blue Mountains, stand out proudly past the Palisades, wreathed in the gunsmoke of her salutes to Admiral Sir Hyde Parker (perhaps with Staff Captain Sir Edward Charles eying them much as an owl might ogle an escaped tit-mouse, with shaken fist and a faint cry of “I’ll have ye, yet, ye bastard!”) to thread the reefs with a harbour pilot aboard, and make a j
oyful offing to the sparkling deeps! Where Captain Alan Lewrie, R.N., could savour the thought of…“Hah! Cheated Death, again!”

  Despite his previous experience in the Caribbean, Lewrie hadn’t known about the odd phenomenon of the sunset “green flash,” that brief eye-blink of time when the sun at last declined its last hot sliver under the horizon, and the final, glorious reds, oranges, pinks, and greys were interrupted. It had been Kit Cashman who’d told him of it, over their last goodbye supper, the last night in harbour.

  He had been pacing the windward bulwarks of the quarterdeck, as was a captain’s sole right when not below, but crossed to leeward with his fingers crossed, hoping that Cashman hadn’t been pulling his leg. Unblinking, he strained his eyes, looking directly into the sun’s ball. No, not this night, for Sol blinked out, yonder over New Spain to the West, leaving only the rapidly dulling colours of the usual tropic sunset that could, at sea, turn star-strewn black as quickly as a closed window shutter.

  If he had been cheated by Nature this night (or twitted by Kit’s tongue-in-cheek inventions), at least the early evening was cooler than the day, and the wind rushing cross the deck was a blessing. He pushed off the bulwark, clapped his hands in the small of his back, and paced to the double-wheel and compass binnacle, now lit by a whale-oil lanthorn flickering eerily upon the faces of the quartermaster and his mate now standing their “trick” at the helm. He craned his gaze upwards to the sails and rigging in the quickly failing last light, ascertaining that everything was just so, with nothing out of order or amiss; a peek up to “weather” for threats of storm clouds; a look down into the binnacle at the compass, where the pointer wavered near to East-Sou’east, Half East, as close to the steady Nor’east wind as Proteus could steer.

  And damn Pelham, Lewrie thought, frowning; sendin’ us to English Harbour, Antigua, first! Antigua lay nearly due East, demanding a hard passage “Full and By” nigh against the Trades, and days of short tacks to the Nor’west, did they get pushed too far down, alee, zig-zagging on a drunken snail’s track, short “boards” almost in the opposite direction before they could come about nearer to Cuba or Hispaniola and sail a “long board” on larboard tack, right on the eye of the wind, and something sure to go smash aloft, with so much pressure on the rigging. He now could barely make out the forms of spare yards, booms and light upper top-masts stowed along the gangways and on the boat-tier beams, but was sure that their number would be reduced by the time they anchored.

  Quartermaster Austen stood to the weather side of the helm, his Mate to the loo’rd, a larger man who braced his strength on the wheel spokes, his eyes on the sails aloft, whilst Austen kept his glued upon the compass. A big fellow, was the Quartermaster’s Mate, new-come off a Yankee smuggler taken on the north shore of St. Thomas in the Danish Virgins, where Proteus had done a little discreet “poaching.”

  Toby Jugg, for that was the improbable name he’d given when he reluctantly signed ship’s books as a ’pressed man, had originally been rated an Ordinary Seaman, but had quickly proven Able in the past few months, and had then “struck” for Quartermaster’s Mate. Big, hulking and dark-visaged, surly and noncommunicative, Jugg had only “volunteered” to qualify for the Joining Bounty to send to his woman and child on Barbados, far to the South. Odds were, Proteus would never be called upon to sail there, though, and if she did, Lewrie was sure the man would jump ship, and they’d never see him again. Or he would be forced to sic the island garrison on Jugg, who would fetch him back in chains to be bound to an upright hatch grating and given four-dozen lashes for desertion.

  “Not too heavy forrud, Mister Austen?” Lewrie asked the senior Quartermaster’s Mate. “Not crank?”

  “Erm…she’s fair-balanced, Cap’m,” Austen took a long time to adjudge. “Mebbe a tad light, forrud. But she tacks right-easy, sir.”

  “Watch her head close, then,” Lewrie said, transferring his gaze to the inscrutable Toby Jugg. “And nothing to loo’rd, it goes without sayin’, right, Jugg?”

  “Y’say so, sir,” Jugg growled, eyes locked on the main course.

  “Ahem…” Aspinall interrupted, “but yer supper’s ready fer servin’, sir.”

  “Aye, thankee, Aspinall,” Lewrie grunted, irked by Jugg’s coolness, which was just shy of dumb insubordination. “Carry on, then, men. Mister Catterall, I leave you the deck, and the watch. Evening, all.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the Second Officer piped up, after hovering in summoning distance the last ten minutes. He clapped his hands behind his back and short-strutted up to windward, filled with his importance. Quartermaster’s Mate Austen waited ’til he was out of earshot before he dared mutter from the lee corner of his mouth.

  “Jugg, ye bloody idiot,” Austen told his helm-mate. “The Cap’m ain’t nowhere bad as some, an’ better’n most. Keep up yer surly airs, though, an’ ye’ll push him t’flog ye, an’ take back yer ratin’.”

  “Sod ’im,” Jugg whispered back. “Sod all officers an’ captains.”

  “Sod ’im, who’s done right by ye?” Austen pointed out. “Ye toss yerself back t’Able Seaman, an’ there’s nought t’send yer ol’ woman an’ kid. Show willin’, why don’t ye? Don’t cost tuppence.”

  “But…” Jugg began to disagree, his face working sorrowfully, but any explanation or relenting was stopped by Lt. Catterall.

  “Minds on your duties, men…no talking, there,” he snapped.

  “Aye aye, sir,” they chorused.

  Mr. Peel of the Foreign Office’s Secret Branch simply knew too many secrets; it was impossible for Lewrie to follow his usual custom of dining in his officers, midshipmen and “gentlemen warrants” as long as Peel was aboard. Peel, as supercargo, had to be accommodated somewhere apart from casual conversations. There was always the risk that Peel talked in his sleep, or boasted immoderately in his cups.

  The only secure place where Peel could sling a bed-cot was here in Lewrie’s great-cabins, and they were already cramped enough. Aspinall’s little day-pantry had come down, and the chart-space had to shift aft into the day cabin, right against Lewrie’s bed space; and that bed space got crowded aft and in-board into his day cabin, which had moved Lewrie’s desk and chair, settee and guest chairs, portable storage chests and wine-cabinet over to larboard, nearer his quarter-gallery and his “seat of ease”—where Toulon’s tin-lined sand box also was located. Toulon, usually of the most garrulous and playful nature, had not taken all those changes kindly. Whilst he had the run of the entire ship, his master’s cabins were sacrosanct; or at least they should have been. The ram-cat had not taken well to Peel, either, usually dubiously on guard under the furniture when Peel was astir, his paws tucked under his chest, his eyes slit in Oriental wariness.

  “Evening, Mister Peel,” Lewrie said as he swept back the tails of his coat and sat himself down in the dining-coach.

  “Captain Lewrie,” Peel purred back, taking a place about halfway down on Lewrie’s left. “Am I given to understand that we’re having turtle soup tonight? Delightful.”

  “Green turtle, sir,” Aspinall supplied as he poured their wineglasses full, waving the neck briefly at the sideboard, where a tureen with the lid off fumed. “Small’un, but tender. Turtle steaks, too.”

  “Our cook, Gideon, is a wonder,” Lewrie boasted, discovering at least something to lighten his grumpy mood over being turfed from his own quarters, something with which to ease his careful formality.

  “Gideon Cook…how apt,” Peel said with a smirk as some soup was ladled into his bowl. “Your ship’s cook’s name, that is.”

  “Cooke with an E,” Lewrie corrected, as Toulon hopped up on the table by his right hand and sat like a statue, watching Aspinall’s every move; for sure enough, once Lewrie’s bowl had been filled, there was a smaller bowl for him, mostly fine-shredded and soft-boiled meat, with just a bit of broth. Toulon hunkered down possessively and tucked in, now and then glaring at Mr. Peel, did he gesture too wide or abruptly for the cat’s liking.

 
“His old master’s name, I presume?” Peel blandly commented, his spoon poised before his mouth to blow upon, his eyes averted.

  “Who knows?” Lewrie lied, tossing off a shrug of believable innocence. “Free to volunteer, at any rate.”

  “One may only hope, sir,” Peel cautioned. “Was he a runaway…the punishment for harbouring or succouring him is harsh. In point of fact, you seem to have a great many Blacks in your crew. Howes, Hoods? Brewsters, Sawyers, Carpenters…Basses and Whitbreads, and Nelsons? Or Groom. Old masters, or old trades? Oh, I forgot. ’Tis Groome with an E.” He gave Lewrie a questioning smirk. “But Bass, or…”

  “Quite a spell of yellow fever and malaria, earlier this year, Mister Peel,” Lewrie very cautiously stated, covering his lies with his napkin to his lips. “Was Proteus fortunate so many locals volunteered into her, well, I ain’t picky, ’long as I can work and fight my ship.”

  “Odd, though,” Peel drilled on, glass held pensively in hand. “That was just about the same time that a coincidental number of young male slaves fled the late Ledyard Beauman plantings near Portland Bight, was it not? One could wonder…”

  Got me by the nutmegs! Lewrie frantically thought, in dire need of a panicky “Yeek!” and did he try to bluster his way out of it, he would only make things worse for himself. Panic gave way, though, to anger at Peel and Pelham, knowing they’d hold this over him to ensure his cooperation…when they already had it, the bastards!

  “Most fortunate, aye,” Lewrie conceded, busying himself with a spoonful of soup, taking thinking time in stroking Toulon, who had put his food away and was cajoling for more.