The King's Commission

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Godamercy, sir!” Cony said again. “Hit’s devilish the way them Dagoes treat people. We oughter feed ’em, sir. Give ’em water an’ some air. ’Tain’t Christian ta do otherwise, sir.”

  “Well, they don’t look exactly glad to see us, Cony.”

  “’Course they ain’t sir!” Cony burst out. “I ’spect they thinks we’re Dagoes, too, Mister Lewrie.”

  “Corporal?”

  “Sir!”

  “Fetch ’em up, one coffle at a time. Use those swivels and such if they get out of hand. Cony, break out a butt of water and see if there’s some food about,” Alan relented.

  The slaves were fresh from Dahomey or some other port on the Ivory Coast, for they cringed away from their liberators just as they had from their captors. They drank the water, ate the cold mush and stale bread as if it was manna from heaven, but stayed in a tight clutch of flesh away from the muskets of the Marines and sailors who kept an eye on them. Easy bantering from sympathetic English humors did nothing to reassure them, even if they could have understood the words.

  “Murray, take charge of the deck,” Alan told the bosun’s mate, and went below to search the captain’s quarters and those of the distinguished passenger, who was by now getting his ears roasted by Lieutenant Lilycrop for trying to bribe a Royal Navy officer.

  He gathered up all the papers he could find, not able to read a word of them, hoping Lilycrop or one of the warrants had some Spanish for later scanning. The captain’s quarters were spartan in the extreme, not from the usual sailor’s suspicion of anyone given to too many airs and comforts as was rife in the Royal Navy, but from poverty, he assumed. Even the captain’s wine cabinet could offer nothing better than a locally grown wine of dubious palate, and some fearsome rum. After one sip, he spat the mouthful on the canvas covered deck and put the bottle back in the rack.

  Don Thingummy’s cabins, though, were a different matter. Some attempt had been made to pack away valuables, for all the chests and trunks had been locked, and Alan was just about to search for a lever with which to pry the first of the locks and hasps off when the sound of gunfire erupted from the deck, forcing him to sprint back topsides.

  “What the hell happened?” he demanded, sword in hand.

  “This’un went for t’ corpr’l’s musket, sir.” Murray panted from excitement or sudden exertion. “They wuz beginnin’ t’ smile’n all, sir, an’ then, when we wuz gonna put ’em below once agin, this’n jumped us!”

  One of the slaves lay stretched out and dead on the planks, bleeding like a spilled wine keg, another keened and rocked with agony after being shot in the shoulder; the others tried to draw back from the casualties to the full extent of their leg chains.

  “Christ, what a muck-up!” Alan sighed, sheathing his sword. “Pop him over the side, then. Corporal, can you get the shackles undone? And see if anything can be done for the one wounded.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “I saw some keys in the captain’s quarters. Try there. And I also saw some rum. He might feel like a drop. Fetch that, too.”

  Cony knelt down next to the wounded slave and tried to staunch the flow of blood from the purple-plum entry wound, which was not bleeding all that badly. He gently pushed him down and rolled him a little so he could see the back, where the ball had exited high up.

  “Shot clean through, sir,” Cony said with a grin. “No ball in ’im ta fester, there’s a blessin’. Easy now, bucko, lay easy. Rum’s a’comin’, cure for damn near ever’thin’. You’ll be alright.”

  The corporal came back with a huge ring of keys and fiddled at the shackles until he found one that unlocked the dead man from the coffle. He then knelt at the feet of the wounded slave and undid his ankle shackles.

  “Stap me, sir!” Cony wailed in disappointment. “’E’s dead!”

  “Dead? Of that?” Alan asked, bewildered as the next man.

  “Guns is magic, sir,” Murray the bosun’s mate said softly. “If’n ’e wuz island born an’ used ta us’n, ’e’d a lived, but direck from ’is tribe not three month, if’n yer shot, yer killed, so ’e believed ’e wuz dead an’ that’s that.”

  “Jesus, they believe that?”

  “Aye, sir. Ask Andrews, sir, ’e were a slavey,” Murray insisted.

  Andrews was one of their West Indian hands, signed aboard as a volunteer, an almost white-skinned Negro, like one of Hugh Beauman’s favored bed-partners.

  Alan turned to look at him, and Andrews shrank away, after glaring at Murray with alarm. Alan thought there was more to his sudden fear, so he crossed the deck to stand beside him and speak softly.

  “Is it true they die so easily, Andrews?”

  “Aye, sah. Dey b’lieve a witch can put a curse on ’em an’ dey lays down an’ dies of it. First dey see o’ white men, dey learn about guns. Sometimes dey die o’ just bein’ shot at, sah. Just feel da bullet go pas’ an’ lay down an’ die,” Andrews informed him.

  “Poor bastard.”

  “Aye, sah, poor bastard. All of ’em.”

  “You were a slave?”

  “No sah, Mista Murray got it wrong, sah. Ah weren’t no slave!”

  “You’re a freeborn volunteer. But you must have talked with slaves to know what you know,” Alan pointed out.

  “Freeborn volunteer, sah,” Andrews insisted.

  “But not a sailor, eh? Before?”

  “I worked wit’ my father, sah, fishin’ sometimes.”

  Were you, indeed, Alan thought, skeptical of Andrews’ claims. The man had written his name instead of making his mark when he signed aboard; Alan had offered the book to him himself. If he was not a runaway servant, then Alan was a Turk in a turban.

  He was a well set-up young fellow, near an inch taller than Alan’s five feet nine, his skin the color of creamed coffee, and his eyes clear instead of clouded. A former house-servant run off for his own reasons? Alan wondered. Whatever his background was, he wanted to keep it quiet.

  “Well, you’re the Navy’s now, Andrews, whether you were a prince of Dahomey … or a runaway slave,” Alan said softly, so the others would not hear, and Andrews’ eyes pinched a bit at the last. “Don’t worry over it. Prime hands are hard enough to find—we’ll not be letting you go so easily.”

  “Aye, sir,” Andrews replied, letting out a pent-up breath and relaxing a little.

  “Mister Murray?”

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Andrews tells me he may be able to calm the slaves down a bit. Place him and Cony in charge of tending to them, if you please.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Andrews gave him a short grin as he went below to talk some gibberish language to the slaves to calm their fears. Between him and Cony, whose simple farm-raised gentleness and caring were already evident, Alan was sure that he had made the right decision.

  “Mister Murray?”

  “Sir?” the bosun’s mate said, coming to his side near the tiller.

  “How did you know about what black slaves believe?” Alan began. “It’s so incredible to me that people should die simply because they were shot at. He was barely hurt. That ball went in clean, maybe broke a bone, and exited high at the top of the shoulder.”

  “Served in the Indies a lot, sir,” Murray told him. “Seen lots o’ slaves turn up their toes fer a lot less, sir.”

  “I am grateful for your knowledge, Mister Murray. Never hurts to pick up a little lore from here and there, does it?” Alan cajoled.

  “Nossir, hit sure don’t, an’ thankee fer sayin’ so, sir.” Murray almost preened at having gained favorable comment from his first officer.

  “Well, with Cony and Andrews tending to them, they’ll go quiet from now on. Oh, about Andrews. Do you know if he was a former slave?”

  “Well, nossir, but hit’s been my experience ’at mosta the West Indian ’ands is, sir,” Murray said with a wink at the age-old practice.

  “Good sailor, is he?”

  “Nary a topman, sir, but ’e’ll do fer most d
uties, an’ good in a fight wif a cutlass, sir.”

  “Then we wouldn’t want to get him into trouble by announcing he’s a former slave. People might think he’s a runaway, whether he is or not, and he might be tempted to run. And with nigh on a third of the hands West Indians, it might stir up resentments,” Alan suggested.

  “Aye, sir, least said, soonest mended.”

  “Thank you, Mister Murray, that’ll do, I think.”

  Shrike put back in to Kingston a few days later, preceded by her prizes, the trading ketch Nuestra Señora de Compostela, and the Guarda Costa sloop San Ildefonso, which they had run across on their way seaward from the coast of Cuba. She had barely been repaired enough to hoist a jury-mast with her main boom serving as a vertical spar, and a tattered tops’l employed as a lugsail. She had fallen without a shot being fired, all resistance blown out of her earlier in the day.

  It made a proud sight, the small convoy of three ships rounding Morant Point, threading the Port Royal passage past the forts on the Palisades and into the harbor with the Ensign flying over the white and gold flags of Spain. As soon as all three ships had dropped anchor and begun to brail up their sails, Lieutenant Lilycrop took a boat over to the flagship, strutting like a peacock at his success.

  Alan was left to deal with the officials from the Prize Court, and the Dockyard Superintendent about repairs. The slaves from the trading ketch were removed, to be auctioned off at some time in the future, and they would fetch a good price, since the island of Jamaica was badly in need of prime slaves to support a wartime economy, and the supply from Africa had been cut to a trickle by Spanish and French privateers. After the recent slave revolt, unaffected slaves were doubly welcome.

  Admittedly, Alan suffered some qualms at seeing them led off, still in their original chains. He had not known any slaves in his former life in London—there they were more of a novelty or an affectation of the very rich, employed as house-servants and body-servants, with the mannerisms and voices of failed Etonians who had to work to keep body and soul together. There were a few slaves in the Carolinas he had met, the Hayley sisters’ maid Sookie, who had nearly been the death of him after he and the Chiswick brothers had escaped Yorktown, Caroline Chiswick’s “Mammy,” who was cook, nurse, housekeeper and more a family friend than a slave. And the West Indian hands and ship’s boys, who were mostly good-natured cheeky runts or diligent workers as good as any volunteer signed aboard back in England.

  “’Tain’t right, sir,” Cony commented once more, coming to the rail by his side as the huge harbor barge bearing the slaves got underway from Shrike’s gunwales, ironically being rowed by hired freeborn blacks.

  “No, it’s not right, poor bastards,” Alan agreed in a mutter.

  “They get took from their ’omes back in Africa, clapped inta irons an’ shipped ’cross the seas, an’ them that live gets sold like dray ’orses,” Cony lamented. “Worked ta death, sir, whipped ta death, and not a Christian ’and raised for ’em.”

  “And we capture them from the Dagoes so we can sell them for a good knock-down price,” Alan went on. “By damn, I love prize-money good as the next man, but I don’t know as how I’ll feel right taking money for them. The ketch, yes, and all her fittings and cargo, but not them.”

  “That’s the truth, it is, sir, an’ you’re a fine Christian for a’sayin’ it, sir,” Cony spat. “I been talkin’ ta Andrews, sir, an’ ’e says nigh on two hundred men and women’re crammed in front ta back an’ kept below for months on the Middle Passage. ’Tis a good voyage iffen only a quarter of ’em die, an’ contrary winds’ll end up a’killin’ ’alf.”

  “You’d think, with all the talents mankind has at his disposal, there’d be someone working on a machine to harvest sugar cane instead of causing so much misery. As if life isn’t misery enough already.”

  “God, wouldn’t that be grand, sir!” Cony beamed. “An’ I’ll lay ya odds, it’ll be an Englishman what does invent it, sir. Britons’ll never be no man’s slave, so why ’elp make other people our’n?”

  In the months during the siege of Yorktown, in their escape, and ever since Cony had become first his hammockman in the midshipmen’s mess and later his personal servant, it was only natural that Alan would become familiar with the young man. It was no longer an officer/common seaman relationship, nor was it strictly an employer/servant relationship, either. Cony had little education, no philosophical practice, but a strong sense of justice and decency, and had learned that in most instances, Lewrie was willing to give his opinions a fair hearing, which had encouraged the lad to speak out when he felt something strongly enough.

  Perhaps it was because they had shared misery together, or the familiarity had come from Alan having so few people he could relate to on a professional basis; his circle was limited to the captain and the other officers in the wardroom, and he had to be standoff-ish with those or suffer a loss of respect. Decorum demanded he stay aloof, and it was only with Lilycrop that he could let down his hair, him and Cony, though he had yet to ask Cony for an opinion or advice—that would be going too far, he thought. One could be seen, warts and all, by a servant of long standing (which was probably why people changed them so often, he thought) but an English gentleman was drilled from the cradle to not get too close to the help, and never allow his dignity to slip before the servants.

  A few warts were allowed, then, but if Cony really knew him for the rake-hell he was, he was sure Cony would lose his awe of him in short order.

  “What else did Andrews say?” Alan asked, still intrigued by the man.

  “Well, sir, ’e said back on the plantations, they beat ’em for almost anythin’,” Cony went on, now that he was bid to speak further. “Rice an’ beans, some truck they grow in their own time maybe, an’ now an’ agin some salt-meat …”

  “Most likely condemned naval stores, that,” Alan stuck in.

  “Aye, sir. An’ new clothes but once a year, after ever’thin’ else’s rotted off ’em.” Cony sighed. “Treat ’em like beasts, sir, an’ th’ way they abuse the women, sir, is somethin’ shameful. Ya know, sir, I can expect the practice o’ the Frogs an’ Dagoes. They’s just cruel ta the bone with ’orses an’ dogs an’ people, but sometime ’tis ’ard ta see Britons a’doin’ it here in the islands, or in the Colonies. Remember them escaped slaves what ’elped us build an’ man the battery at Yorktown? Like whipped puppies they were, sir, grateful for what little we could share with ’em. Come away ta us ta escape their masters, poor old things. Wonder what the Rebels did with ’em after Cornwallis surrendered?”

  “Same as today, most like,” Alan scowled. “Them they didn’t flog or hang for an example. Same they do with a runaway apprentice, hey?”

  “That’s differ’nt, sir,” Cony insisted. “A ’prentice made ’is own choice o’ master, made ’is contrack an’ give ’is bond-word. Nobody asked those poor buggers. An’ a ’arsh master deserves his ’prentices runnin’, long’s they don’t steal nothin’ when they go.”

  “Damme, Cony, you sound like one of those Leveling Rebels!”

  “Nossir!” Cony defended himself. “They wanta give ever’body, the unlettered an’ the poor the franchise, don’t they? An’ fer all their ’igh-tone’ talk o’ freedom, they still keep slaves ta toil for ’em sir. Seems ta me, iffen they mean all that guff, an’ don’t do away with slavery, they won’t ’ave much of a country. They may o’ been English once, sir, but livin’ so wild an’ rough musta addled ’em, an’ I couldn’t ’old with ’em now.”

  “Well, it didn’t affect the Chiswicks,” Alan said. “They’re still our sort.”

  “Oh, aye, them Chiswick lads ’ad their ’earts in the right place fer King George an’ all, sir, even if they were so fearsome. And you’ll pardon me fer sayin’ so, sir, but young Mistress Chiswick was fair took with you, sir. She was a real lady.” Cony blushed at his own daring.

  “And certain people of my acquaintance aren’t?” Alan frowned.

  “Not my pla
ce ta say, sir. Beg pardon, meant no disrespeck.”

  “The hell you didn’t, you sly-boots.” Alan laughed, even if his servant had come too close for comfort. “Off with you now, and keep an eye on Andrews for me, will you?”

  “Aye, sir, that I will. ’E’s a pretty good feller. An’ ’e was grateful ya didn’t pay ’eed ta what Mister Murray said about ’im, sir.”

  “So you think he ran from some slaver, too, Cony?”

  “Aye, sir, I thinks ’e did,” Cony almost whispered. “Not from the fields … mebbe a ’ouse servant’r such … ya know, sir, ’e can read and write? Now ain’t that a wonder! ’E never goes ashore ’cept h’it’s a workin’ party. Maybe ’e’s afeard o’ bein’ took back.”

  “Well, he’ll not be, you can tell him that for me,” Alan vowed.

  “Aye, sir,” Cony replied, looking mightily pleased.

  Once the main bustle was over, and the shore authorities took charge of their prizes, Shrike stayed at her anchor stowing fresh provisions, with Lewrie keeping a wary weather eye cocked on Henry Biggs the purser for any peculiarities in goods or bookkeeping.

  Lilycrop strutted about, pleased as punch with himself for taking so many prizes and burning so many more. Their captured Don Thingummy had related that Shrike was becoming feared from one end of the coast of Cuba to the other. And Adml. Sir Joshua Rowley, who took an eighth share of any prize his squadron captured, had made a pretty penny from Lilycrop’s new-found zeal, so he was most pleased with his junior officer. Which meant that Lilycrop was pleased with the world, and with his first lieutenant. Alan, however, did not know just how far that pleasure extended until one afternoon after Shrike had completed provisioning and placed the ship out of discipline so the whores and “wives” could come aboard. Alan had been primping for a run ashore. Even if he was persona non grata with the Beaumans and Mrs. Hillwood (who was reported to have gone inland to her husband’s plantations to ride out the scandal that had redounded to her total discredit in Society) there had to be a company of willing mutton ashore to choose from.