Havoc`s Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Well, you seem to have it all arranged," Lewrie said, surrendering to Fate; especially when it seemed he had so little choice, else: "My congratulations on a most knacky plan, sirs."

  "Well, thankee, Captain Lewrie," Pelham smirked, overcome by the required, befitting modesty of an Englishman accused of being too clever by half, no matter how well it secretly pleased him. "Not all my doing, but…"

  "Hopefully," Peel said, rising at last as if the tedious task was outlined well enough for even Lewrie to follow it, "this may make up for the fact that, since this war began in '93, we've lost untold millions of pounds, and over one hundred thousand men trying to take all the French 'Sugar Isles'… half of 'em dead and wasted, t'other half so fever-raddled they're unfit for future service. Damn 'em, all these tropic pest holes. Look so beguiling, but…"

  And Pitt and Dundas didn 't see that goin ' in? Lewrie cynically asked himself as he got to his feet as well. It ain't like the French could hold 'em if their fleet can't get t'sea. Better we'd blockaded 'em, let 'em rot on the vine, so the Frogs didn't get ha'pence o' good from 'em.

  But it didn't appear likely that the Prime Minister, nor the Secretary of State for War, would have asked him his opinion then, or would much care for his chary opinion of them now. No, they were too damned "brilliant," too full of themselves, just like their wee minion Pelham. He felt it would be an excruciatingly frustrating adventure.

  "Orders for me and my ship, then, sirs?" Lewrie asked.

  "As I earlier stated, Captain Lewrie," Pelham energetically said, shooting upright and resetting the cut of his cuffs and waist-coat, playing with the lapels of his coat to tug them fashionably snug across his shoulders and the back of his neck. "Raid, cruise, make a right nuisance of yourself versus Choundas's ships. I have arranged a roving, open brief for you with Admiral Parker, so… wherever, and whenever you and Mister Peel wish, or are led by the evidence you may discover. I am not squeamish as to the means you employ. So long as the end is attained," Pelham coldly stated.

  That sounded promising, even was he saddled with Peel as supercargo, a slab of "live lumber" who would surely, sooner or later, try to boss him about as if he were in actual command.

  "Oh… joy," Lewrie growled in a monotone, looking at Peel.

  "I promise I'll be gentle, captain, sir!" Peel chuckled, voice pitched high and virginally sing-song, drawing Lewrie's wry amusement.

  "And Choundas," Lewrie insisted, wary of oral instructions from such a man as Pelham. "What of him, for now? Do I just watch, stand aloof 'til we get what we want from his efforts, or…?"

  "As Mister Zachariah Twigg once instructed you, in the Mediterranean I believe it was, sir," Pelham intoned, high-nosed and for once in deadly earnest, "you are, sir, given opportunity, no matter how early or late in our plans, 'to kill him dead,' and put paid to his noxious existence."

  "Well, good God, why didn't ye just say so!" Lewrie exclaimed in great relief, forced to laugh out loud at such long-delayed end to such [a tortuous preamble. "Could've saved us all the palaver."

  "Guillaume Choundas, sir," Pelham piously declared, "is still possessed of such demonic cleverness that, despite his monstrous soul, and his ogreish appearance, he was not sent out here by his masters as an exile. Mister Twigg, and Captain Peel, both have stressed just how dangerous he remains. Most-like, does he fail out here, that's an end to his usefulness to them, but… we cannot take the risk of him popping up somewhere else, in future. His head on a platter might mean a knighthood to the one who fetches it. As Salome was rewarded when she brought King Herod the head of John the Baptist."

  "B'lieve she's the one demanded Saint John's head, after Herod saw her dance, sir," Mr. Peel corrected, coughing into his fist.

  "Quibble, quibble, quibble," Pelham groused, waving off petty, inconsequential facts, and laughing at his mistake. "It don't signify, Mister Peel. Lewrie gets my meaning."

  "Indeed I do, sir," Lewrie vowed, though irked by Pelham's iffy lure and mixed messages, as if he needed any further incentives to pursue Choundas, or was so venal as to fall for such a faithless promise.

  "Working together, again, after all this time, sir," Peel said, feigning fond reverie, making Lewrie stifle a lewd comment and a snort of sarcasm. They'd gotten on much like mating hedgehogs, really; testy and spiky. "What jolly times they were!"

  "Well, there you are, then!" Pelham concluded, pleased that their pairing, and their plot, was off on a good footing. Or so he blithely assumed. "Let us not waste a single hour."

  "Uhm… best let me avail myself of that 'Miss Taylor,' after all, Mister Pelham," Lewrie said, changing the subject before he broke out in peels of laughter at just how dense Pelham really was.

  "That horrid stuff, Captain Lewrie?" Pelham asked, aghast.

  Lewrie soaked his handkerchief from the decanter and began to sponge his hat. "I told you the Navy finds it useful."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "It was pleasant and delightful,

  one midsummer's morn,

  when the green fields and the meadows

  were buried in corn.

  The blackbirds and thrushes

  sang in every tree.

  And the larks they sang melodious

  at the dawning of the day …"

  It was a "Make and Mend" afternoon, following the noon meal for the hands. All stores had been laded, the aired sails, hung wind-less and slack, had been furled and gasketed, and an hour's small-arms drill had been performed. Now the crew of HMS Proteus could "caulk or yarn" and tend to their own devices, tailor their issue clothing, shave, wash, and scrub to be presentable at Sunday Divisions, play board games, have an on-decks smoke, do carvings or mere whittling whilst they nattered of this and that, nap or sing, as suited their too-brief freedom.

  "The sailor and his true love

  were out walking one day.

  Said the sailor to his true love,

  I am bound far away.

  I am bound for the Indies

  where the loud cannons roar,

  and I'm going to leave my Nancy,

  she 's the girl that I adore…

  And I'm going to leave my Nancy,

  and I'm going to leave my Nancy …"

  Even with the duck awnings rigged over the quarterdeck and the waist, it was too warm for chanteys, horn-pipes, or reels, so the hands sang a sad forebitter, with both fiddlers, a boy on the tin whistle, and Liam Desmond droning under them, with his uilleann pipes. Desmond was a cosmopolitan sort, for an Irishman; he'd play the English tunes as readily as any from his own sad island. And "Pleasant and Delightful" was as teary a ballad of love and loss and long partings as anyone could wish for. He was equally open to Allan Ramsey's version of "Auld Lang Syne" roared along with "Hey, Johnny Cope" to sneer at an English general who'd run from Bonnie Prince Charlie back in 1745, with the few Scots aboard, turn up a weepy, lugubrious version of some Welsh dirge, or wheeze out gay horn-pipes with equal ease. He was a treasure.

  Lewrie gratefully stripped out of his formal shore-going togs, completely pulled out those offending shirt-tails, and rolled up his sleeves above the elbows. With his neck-stock discarded and the front of his shirt undone, he called for a mug of cool tea from his steward, Aspinall, who brewed it by the half-gallon each dawn on the griddle in the galley; weak, admittedly, given the cost of good leaves, with lots of sugar (which in the Sugar Isles was nigh dirt-cheap) and a generous admixture of the rob of several lemons, also available for next to nothing. Let stand to cool before jugging, it made a fine thirst-quencher.

  Though Lewrie did suspect that, once jugged in his large pewter pitcher, his mid-morning libations might be part of the brew from the previous afternoon's. There were some days, such as today, when that decoction could almost stand on its hind legs and toddle.

  "Mister Padgett sorted yer paperwork, sir," Aspinall told him. "And there's letters, too, off that packet brig come in yesterday."

  "Ah, excellent!" Lewrie enthused, rubbing his hands with false gusto
at those tidings. For the last year, no letters from home were good news. And damme, but wasn't there a tidy pile of them, though, all thick and thumb-stained, the outer sheets whereupon the addresses were enscribed, the stamps affixed, and the wax seals poured, were now sepiaed with handling and sea transportation.

  No, his official correspondence always took precedence. It was safer that way. The personal could abide for a piece more, after the long passage that fetched them. Whatever new disaster, insult, or calumny they contained were at least five or six weeks old, and any reply to them would take even longer, no matter how scream-inducing.

  "Said the sailor to his true love,

  well I must be on my way.

  For the tops'ls they are hoisted,

  and the anchor's aweigh.

  Our warship stands waiting,

  for the next flowing tide,

  but if ev-ver I return, again,

  I would make you my bride…

  But if ever I return again,

  but if ever I return again. …"

  "In good voice, t'day, sir," Aspinall commented.

  "Did they choose something cheerful," Lewrie grumbled, "I s'pose so." He had to admit, though, that the chorus of rough seamen's voices did have a more-pleasing harmony than usual, detecting the shyly, hesitantly offered basses and near falsettos from his "liberated" ex-slave sailors. The tunes and words were new to them, almost alien, and their command of the King's English marginal, yet his Black sailors had an uncanny ear for harmony. Even their unaccompanied work songs he heard when riding past cane fields ashore had been spot-on, whatever tune it was they'd sung, sometimes hauntingly so.

  "Mister Motte, the Quartermaster, you can hear him there doin' the solo part, sir," Aspinall went on. "He says it come from the '60s, it did, when our Navy invaded Cuba in the Seven Years' War."

  "Umhmm," Lewrie said with a nod over his paperwork, a tad irked, and peering owlishly at Aspinall's interrupting maunderings.

  Aspinall took the cue, and ambled back into his day-pantry with a damp dish-clout in his hands. There to sing along under his breath, Just loud enough to make Lewrie twitch his lips and furl his brows.

  Damn his hobbies! Lewrie gravelled to himself; first 'twas rope work and sennet, now…

  "Then a ring from off her finger, she instant-lye drew, saying hake this, dearest William, and my heart will go, too'.. . "

  "Bloody hell," Lewrie muttered. "Aspinall?" he called.

  "Sir?" A small, chastened voice, that.

  "It's 'make and mend.' Do you wish t'join the hands up forrud and sing, 'tis your right. I'll have no need of you for a while."

  "Er, thankee, sir, and I'd admire it," Aspinall cried, hastening out of his pantry, and his apron, to dash forward to the door that led to the main deck, an ever-present notebook and pencil now in hand so he could jot down the words and annotate the tunes' notes. v

  "Hmmpfh," Lewrie sniffed, tetchily relieved. "Peace an' quiet. Ooff!"

  No sooner had Aspinall departed than Toulon, his stalwart black-and-white ram-cat, now grown to a muscular one-and-a-half stone, hopped into his lap.

  "Well, damme," Lewrie softly griped. "And why ain't you caulkin' the day away… the way your tribe's s'posed to, hmm? Missed me, did ye? There, there, ol' puss, yes, yer a good'un. Rroww?"

  Toulon braced himself on his hind legs to get right up against his face and rub cheeks and chin against him, play-nip at his chin and paw his collarbone for attention, grunt-mewing most-plaintive. It took a good ten minutes to cosset him, and then Toulon became a heavy, hot, and furry chest plaster which he had to stroke one-handed, and read his naval letters with the other. Toulon closed his eyes and couched his large head on forepaws high under Lewrie's jaws, all a'rumble and now a'bliss, his wee breath tickling at the hollow of his master's throat.

  "You're not going to sleep, there, d'ye know," Lewrie chid him.

  "Mmrrf." Damn' nigh petulant, and "I will if I've a mind."

  The official "bumf" done at last, Lewrie set the last enquiry aside and eyed the pile of personal letters. Padgett, his clerk, had already written up replies for him in answer to the business matters; they merely awaited his signature. Getting to the quill and inkwell, shifting Toulon, though, would be the very Devil after his two days of absence. Lewrie sidled in his chair, squirming and reaching out with his right hand to haul in a fat personal letter without waking Toulon, fingers scrabbling cross the desk…

  "Mmarr." You heartless bastard, the ram-cat fussed as he was deposed. He was suffered to arch, slit his eyes, yawn, and curl about in his master's lap as Lewrie at last got both hands free with which to break the seal on a missive from his father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, and unfold its several sheets. His, at least, were safe to read.

  "Does he displease, you can eat it later," Lewrie promised his cat, who was already eying the crinkly paper with some interest.

  "My dearest wastrel son," Sir Hugo's epistle began.

  "I must really be in trouble back home," Lewrie deduced. "Still, rather."

  "Greetings and Salutations to you, avidly gathering the flowers of the sea, far off in the Caribbean! I trust your Flowers, meaning to say, prize-moneys, blossom nicely, and that your Constitution, ever a Corinthian 'weed's' hardiness, continues to Thrive. Pardon, pray, any discontinuity to this letter, but, the most momentous News having just arrived, I needs must convey it straightaway as the first item of interest, my previous first page be hanged.

  "On the first day of August, your gallant Admiral Nelson hunted an elusive French Fleet to its lair in Aboukir Bay in Egypt, and in an action that spanned nigh eight hours, took, sank, or burned every damned one of them, their massive flagship L'Ocean, and their plucky Admiral de Brueys (or some such-like Frog spelling!) consumed in a Twinkling when she was blown to Atoms! All London, all Britain, is agog!"

  "Good Christ!" Lewrie breathed, in awe, in instant pleasure… and in a tiny bit of pique to be swinging at his anchors, or cruising fruitless upon a pretty but empty sea, and to have missed it! Nelson. The man had such hellish luck.

  Though details were scanty, his father waxed most rapturous on "what little he knew. The French had landed on Malta and had taken it from the decrepit and corrupt Knights of St. John, who had held it as their feudal fief since the Crusades, cutting the Mediterranean in two and giving the Frogs a base from which to oust Admiral Jervis from those seas for a second time. Ah!

  "That wee Frog you spoke of, that crude Corsican upstart by name of Napoleon Buenaparte (or some such) led their army. Why the Devil a French expedition went to Egypt, God only knows. It ain't like they'd march from there to Bengal. Had I been in command, it would have been Sardinia and Sicily, my next conquest, but the tiny bastard is French, ever an over-vaunting and gasconading Race, are they not; hence, as Unpredictable and Inexplicable as so many young misses!"

  "Yer grandfather's found himself a new dictionary, puss," Lewrie cynically confided to his cat.

  "Bless me, but were you in England at this time, and did but go out in Publick in uniform, you'd not be able to buy a drink for a fortnight, Alan," his father went on. "Nor would you suffer to set foot on the ground, for being 'chaired' as lustily as a Member 'pon Hustings at a by-election. And, I dare say, even your poor wife Caroline, so hotly set against all things Nautical, might (for a brief respite, mind!) be more Forgiving and Charitable towards you."

  "Hmmph," Lewrie muttered. "That'll be the day."

  The second page had a great deal crossed out, as though the news had interrupted earlier thoughts; and Sir Hugo too abstemious to waste a fresh sheet of highly taxed paper on his own son.

  His father had completed his London house, and was now ensconced on Panton Street, convenient to Drury Lane and the theatres, Covent Garden and the Haymarket, his haunts of old. And the comely women of the "commercial persuasion" should he get the itch. Hired an excellent man to run his acres at Anglesgreen; had taken on suitable house servants; had furnished the town house deuced well (if he did say so, him
self) at a reasonable expense, thankee, with the proper style suitable to a semi-retired general officer of some means-having made the recent acquaintance of Lewrie's erstwhile admirer, Sir Malcolm Shockley, Baronet, who had put him in the way of several new investment opportunities beyond his shares in East India Company, etc…

  "… though I must own that Lady Lucy, his wife, is a horrid coy Baggage, little better than a common strumpet," his father groused, at long distance. "Both times I've dined with them, both times I've dined them in in return, her slippered little toes have nigh stroked my boots Raw. What you saw in her, in your early days, I quite understand, and admire your Taste, in point of fact, for she is the most fetching Mort, but you may thank your lucky Stars you and she formed no permanent Congress, else you'd have worn her 'horns' since '84! Poor

  Shockley! So unobservant to her doings-as most men are, thank God, for I in my green youth (and you in yours, no error) both profitted from 'abandoned' women.

  "Hard though it may be for you to feature it, and hard as it is for me to admit, sorely tempted though I am to give her a Tumble, there is her Husband, a most decent Fellow, and the very idea of abusing his Trust and Hospitality quite rightly daunts me. Notwithstanding losing immense profits from our mutual Enterprises, d'ye see! Pecuniary fear of Loss is not my only motive, however. Besides, I've a new one, hired by the half-evening who bears a passing likeness to Lady Lucy, new-come from Leeds, of most fetching Aspect, and (or so I speculate) as ripely blessed, and of similar pleasingly round Dimensions, not above twenty, who avails when fantasies anent Lucy come upon me."

  "Oh, good for you, ye old beard-splitter," Lewrie groaned.

  His father had been round to see Theoni Connor and Lewrie's by-blow, Alan James Connor, too, reporting that he was now a pretty little lad of two, toddling and prattling. Theoni sent her love, o' course.