Then they walked away from him, too.
BOOK IV
Quid primum deserte querar?
Forlorn, what first shall I lament?
PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO,
AENID, U, 677
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Though it was after Easter, in the year of Our Lord 1803, there was still need of a fire in the hearth in the office/library with its many large windows and French doors overlooking the side yards and the gardens. It was a bright day, if still a cool one, so no candles or oil lamp was necessary for Alan Lewrie to read the latest letters that had come, or take pen, ink-pot, and stationery and reply to them. The only sound in the comfortably well-furnished room was the ticking of a mantel clock, and the occasional skritch of his steel-nib pen.
The house itself was quiet, far too quiet and yawningly empty to suit him, with the formal parlour and larger dining room furniture under protective sheeting, Sewallis's and Hugh's bed chambers abovestairs un-used now they were back at their school, and Charlotte the only child still residing at home… though of late she had spent the bulk of her time with his brother-in-law Governour Chiswick and his wife, Millicent, and their children at their estate.
Lewrie felt no need to break his fast, dine, or sup in the big dining room, no call to set foot in that wing of the house; there were no visitors calling who could not be received in the smaller breakfast room, or this office. His world had shrunk to the foyer, the landing and stairs, his office, the kitchens and pantry, and his and… their large bed-chamber. In point of fact, Lewrie preferred to pass most of his days outside, or somewhere else; the stables and barns, on a long ride daily over his 160 acres, or to town and the Olde Ploughman.
Lighting himself up to bed each night with a three-candle lamp, with the last bustling sounds from the kitchen and scullery over, he found that the house in which he once took so much pride felt more like a tomb an eldritch and eerie one. All winter and into the spring since he had brought Caroline home, the house at night let out odd wooden groans or ticks. Latched shutters rattled even in light winds, and there seemed an accusatory empty silence.
Reading in bed far into the night and partaking of perhaps a glass or two of brandy beyond his usual custom, he would look over to see her armoire and her vanity, empty of Caroline's clothing and things, and drawers in the vanity stripped to the last hair-curler or hat-pin, yet… they still stood in place, in what seemed to him to be mute condemnation.
The Plumbs' hired schooner had not sailed for Dover, but for Portsmouth, at Lewrie's request, to shorten Caroline's final journey to the Chiswick family plot in mossy old St. George's graveyard, in Angles-green, cutting a week off the time it would take to coach from Dover to Surrey.
In Portsmouth, one could also discover better carpenters who could fashion a finer coffin. There were more fabric shops for lining that coffin, and for a proper shroud, and professionals knowledgeable at the dismal death trade. And there would be perfume shops.
Lewrie had had no experience with shore funerals and the needs of the dead. When a sailor perished at sea, his corpse was washed by his messmates and the loblolly boys, sewn into a scrap-canvas shroud with rusty, pitted old round-shot at his feet to speed him to the ocean floor; a last stitch was taken through his nose to prove that he truly was gone. The sea-burial was done that very day, with the hands mustered, the way off the ship and her yards canted a'cock-bill; a service read from the Book of Common Prayer before the dead man was tipped off the mess table from beneath the flag, in brief honour.
In the heat of battle, sometimes the slain didn't even get that, and were passed out a lee gun-port so the sight of dead shipmates did not un-man or discourage the rest; then, only the names were read for their remembrance and honour.
There was no time for rot to set in.
Dear God, but that had been hard for Lewrie to bear! Despite a brief bustle of aid from the Plumbs, too damned many condolences and too much hand-wringing, "can you ever forgive us?" once too often, and watery, goose-berry-eyed speculations on what had gone wrong for the first time in hundreds of successful escapes, it was up to Lewrie to see her home, on his own. With the liberal use of a whole bottle of eau de cologne and nigh a bushel-basket of fresh-cut flowers in the coffin with her, he had set off with a dray waggon, riding beside the teamster, whilst the Plumbs had set off for London-thank God!-swearing that the news of Caroline's murder would set the nation afire, that they would speak to their friend, the Prince of Wales, etc. and etc., 'til he was heartily sick of the sight of them!
Travelling on the waggon seat, necessity though it was, made him cringe and burn with shame, though, for… how could he wish to bolt from a loved one, how could he do all the proper things if he wished that he had been the swift rider sent on ahead to alert the family and the vicar at St. George's and his sexton, who would dig the grave, instead of making the trip with a scented handkerchief pressed to his nose and fighting the continual urge to gag?
Once he was in Anglesgreen, others thankfully took charge, and Lewrie had been spared any more of the sorrowful details 'til the morning of the church service, and Caroline Chiswisk Lewrie's burial beside her parents, Sewallis Sr. and Charlotte. Even her old, hard-hearted and skin-flint uncle, Phineas Chiswick, had appeared to be moved to tears… or a convincing sham for family and village, for he'd never cared very much to be saddled with his distant North Carolina relatives who had fled at the end of the Revolution and had showed up on his doorstep destitute and with nowhere else to turn.
There was yet another cause to make Lewrie squirm, to this day; in church or at the graveside, he could not mourn her death so much as he grieved for how he had failed her, that he had not been man enough, or clever enough, to save her, and… that he had not been husband enough to make her life content and easy! He could easily conjure that what their vicar had said was ruefully true, in a sense; that Caroline was now at peace in Heaven… a welcome peace to be shot of him, at last!
As common as death was, how she, Caroline, had perished had outraged everyone, re-kindling the instinctive mistrust and hatred of the French to a white-hot blaze in Anglesgreen, for Caroline always had been quite popular with everyone… with the possible exceptions of Uncle Phineas and Sir Romney Embleton's son, Harry, who had courted her after a fashion before Lewrie had come along and swept her away, and had never forgiven either of them for refusing what he had desired.
Lewrie suspected that it had been Harry who had started a rumour that her death had been Lewrie's fault for dragging her over to France and enflaming Bonaparte's wrath by being his usual head-strong and reckless self-a malicious slur that, unfortunately, had found a fertile field with Uncle Phineas, his brother-in-law Governour Chiswick, who'd never been in favour of the match, and, sadly, through Governour, his own daughter, Charlotte.
Lewrie had thought it done after a week, and all that was left was to order her headstone, but… people learning of her funeral too late to attend coached to Anglesgreen to console him. Anthony Langlie, his former First Lieutenant in HMS Proteus, and his wife, Lewrie's former orphaned French ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, had come up from Kent to see him. His other, much more likable brother-in-law, Burgess Chiswick, and his new wife, Theadora, had come a week after, his letter to them having arrived late at the barracks of Burgess's regiment.
And there were so many letters, some coming months later as word crept its way from London papers to provincial papers in the far corners of Great Britain, or overseas, each new missive clawing at the scabs, to the point that he dreaded the arrival of a post rider or a mail coach.
Old shipmates like Commodore Nicely from his days in the West Indies, Commodore Ayscough and Captain Thomas Charlton; people from his Midshipman days like Captain Keith Ashburn, former officers aboard his various commands, like Ralph Knolles, D'arcy Gamble, Fox and Farley of HMS Thermopylae, former Sailing Masters and Mids, even one or two Pursers had written, and, despite Lewrie's urge to crumple the letters and toss them into the fireplace, he
'd kept them, pressed flat together in a shallow wood box… if only to save the home addresses after years with no correspondence for the lack of them.
His solicitor, his former barrister from his trial, his banker at Coutts', Zachariah Twigg and Matthew Mountjoy at the Foreign Office, even Jemmy Peel, still up to something shady for King and Country in the Germanies, had written. Eudoxia Durschenko had penned a sympathetic letter (her command of English much improved) just before the start of Daniel Wigmore's Peripatetic Extravaganza's first grand tour through Europe in years; Eudoxia was sure that the circus and theatrical troupe would score a smashing season. She said that her papa, Arslan Artimovitch, sent his condolences, but Lewrie thought it a kindly lie; the one-eyed old lion tamer hated him worse than Satan hated Holy Water!
Alan Lewrie sanded the last of his correspondence, then folded it and sealed it with wax. One last dip of the pen in the ink-well and the address was done. He looked up from his desk to a sideboard, on which rested a silver tray and several cut-glass decanters; one for brandy, one for claret, and one filled with Kentucky bourbon whisky. He glanced at the mantel clock. It lacked half an hour to noon. He shook his head, thinking that he'd done too much of that, of late, to fill the hours of solitary quiet… to stave off the feeling that he now resided in a mausoleum. Ring for a cup of coffee? No.
He gathered up his letters and went out into the foyer, on his way towards the back entrance past the kitchens, but paused, once there, looking into the parlour and dining room at the cloth-shrouded furniture. The heavy drapes had been taken down and beaten clean, and the lighter summer drapes now graced the windows, drawn back to let light in, and the shutters open for the day. For a brief moment, he considered selling up and moving on… to flee this house.
'Tween the wars, when it was built, it had been to her desires of what a proper home should be, when he'd paid off HMS Alacrity and settled in Anglesgreen. Caroline had made allowances for his need for that office/ study/library he'd just left, but the builder had deferred to her on almost everything else. She'd chosen the paint for all the rooms; she'd selected the new furniture and the fabrics for the new chairs and settees, the fabrics and colours to re-upholster their old pieces. They were Caroline's drapes, tablecloths, china pattern, and table ware, her collected knick-knacks and objets d'art, the paintings on the walls, of pastorals and Greco-Roman ruins, the portraits of the children and her kin; save for a couple of nautical prints and a portrait of Lewrie done way back when he was a Lieutenant on Antigua, there was little sign that he had ever lived there!
In point of fact, he ruefully thought, he had not lived there much. A few brief years from '89 to '93, and he was back at sea with active commissions, with barely six weeks at home between them. Last winter, before they'd gone to Paris, was the longest he'd spent under this roof in nigh twenty years!
Can't sell up, he realised; the children need their homeplace. Some roots, and a sense of place. Even if I… don't.
"Your pardon, sir, but you'll be havin' your dinner before you post your letters today?" the cook, Mrs. Gower, intruded on his musings as she bustled from the kitchen. "Steak and kidney pie!" she tempted.
"No, long as I'm to town, I'll get something at the Ploughman," he told her. "Does it keep, that might make a good supper, though."
"La, and I've a brace o' rabbits your man Furfy snared in the back-garden this mornin', sir," Mrs. Gower objected cheerfully. "And them skinned and all, and steepin' in an herb broth for your supper already."
"Well, don't let Phineas Chiswick know of em," Lewrie japed. Legally speaking, Lewrie rented his land as a tenant, not freeholding, and had no right to shoot, trap, or snare any game that strayed upon his property; those rabbits were Chiswick rabbits. Fish in the rills and creek, in the dammed-up stock pond, were Chiswick fish! "Rabbit does sound tasty, and we do have to… eat the evidence of Furfy's poaching. Let him and Desmond enjoy the pie."
One of the first things he'd done, once the first fortnight of mourning was over, was to dismiss that dour Mrs. Calder as housekeeper and semi-tyrant, with two month's wages. Caroline's maidservant had been let go, too, though with half a year's salary and her choice of Caroline's clothing, those that he had not donated to the church and the parish Winter charity, or let Governour's wife, Millicent, have.
Now his domestic staff was reduced to Mrs. Gower and her husband, who served as handyman, gardener, and doorman, should any caller ride up or knock. Little Charlotte still needed a maid-and-governess in one, and Mrs. Gower had need of a scullery maid and one maid-of-all-work to keep up with the cleaning, but, as for him, he felt no need for a manservant. He had Liam Desmond and Patrick Furfy, his former Cox'n and a sailor off his last three ships, to see to everything else about the stables, barns, the livestock, and the crops, with day labourers hired on as needed. It was not due to the expense of keeping a staff that he'd pared them down; it was rather that the presence of so many people bustling about the house, no matter how downcast or cheerful, rankled him!
Lewrie went on past the kitchens, still-room, and pantry, to the rear exit, and more of Caroline's handiwork. Her herb plots and her meticulously arranged flower garden, with the bricked terrace and the bricked walks through it, under the vine-covered pergola where wicker chairs and a settee sat ready for mid-morning contemplation or afternoon tea. A bit further out to the right there was another gathering of wood-slat furniture under the spreading oak boughs, which provided a splendid view of the fields and woods, the barn, stables, and stock-pens and paddocks.
"Aye, and there ye be, Cap'm," Liam Desmond called out as he led Anson, Lewrie's favourite horse, from the stable doors, saddled up and ready to go. "He's ready for ye, faith. Missed his mornin' ride, and that eager for a trot t'town, sure."
"Morning, Desmond… Furfy," he added to the good-natured side of beef who was Desmond's shadow. "Lashin's of steak and kidney pie for dinner, lads. And Furfy? We'll have your rabbits for supper, so the magistrate won't learn of it," he added with a wink as he took the reins. "Think we should bury the bones, once we're done with 'em?"
"Master Sewallis's dogs'd 'predate 'em more, sor," Furfy said, looking furtive over his misdeed. "They must be a goodly warren about, though, for s'many rabbits raidin' th' gardens, arrah, sor. Mebbe we… I should keep snares set?"
"Damnedest thing, Furfy," Lewrie said as he swung aboard. "At this moment, I think I've gone deaf! Couldn't hear a thing ye said."
"I meant t'say, sor…," Furfy began before Desmond poked him in the ribs. "Oh! Git yer meanin', sure, Cap'm Lewrie."
"Forget yer hat, sor?" Desmond pointed out.
"Oh. No threat o' rain, today, so…," Lewrie said, shrugging and peering at the sky. "I can live without. Later, lads." A flick of the reins, a cluck, and a press of his heels on Anson's flanks, and he was off round the house to the circular driveway and the gravelled lane down to the junction and the bridge at an easy trot, posting in the stirrups. Though the day was cool, the breeze felt good on his scalp, and the sunshine scintillating through the fully leafed trees was delightful.
And it struck him then that the only time he felt like japing or smiling was when he was astride a horse… away from there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Why Captain Lewrie!" Maggie Cony exclaimed as he entered the Olde Ploughman. "Just in time for the mail coach, and steak and kidney pie, t'boot! And look who's just arrived not a tick ago! My, but we must cut you a goodly portion and put some meat on your bones again."
"Hallo, son," Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, seated by himself at a table near a side window, cordially said, hoisting a mug of ale in invitation.
"Father," Lewrie replied, crossing the busy dining room to join him at his table, and plunk himself down in a wood chair. "I wondered whose carriage that was, out yonder. What brings you down from town? Alone?" he added in a softer voice, with a raised eyebrow. Though Sir Hugo was now of an age, and played a Publick Sham of upright respectability, the lascivious old rogue's penchant for doing "the nee
dful" with any courtesan, or mistress who would go "under his protection" still thrived quite nicely, and his fortune in Hindoo loot from his time in the East India Company Army assured him willing, even fetching, young things… some of whom fortunate enough to enjoy his offer of a fortnight of "hospitality" at his country estate, Dun Roman.
"Alone, aye, this time," Sir Hugo admitted with a shrug and a roll of his eyes, "though there's a delightful new one in London. As to my business here, why, I came to see you, lad. See how you're coping… speak of a few matters. Mistress Cony's right, ye know," his father added, reaching out to pluck Lewrie's coat and cocking his head in survey. "Ye have lost some weight. Several good feeds're what ye need. Seen the latest papers?"
"Ah, some," Lewrie replied as one of the waitresses brought him a brimming pint mug of the Ploughman's famed sale. "Thankee" for the waitress, who was a fetching brunette, and "What about the papers?" to his father. "Have I missed something or other?"
"Evidently," Sir Hugo drawled. "This business over Alexandria and Malta… the French ain't happy, and neither's our government."
"Bugger the French!" Lewrie snapped, which statement aroused a chorus of Amen and a few choicer curses from the public house's diners.
"Spoke with a few people at Horse Guards." Sir Hugo leaned over closer to impart his rumour in a guarded voice. "The general sense is that Pitt and his people-Windham, Grenville, and that crowd-and the King himself want the war t'start up again. The Prime Minister, Addington, is leanin' that way, and his cabinet, too. First week of March, the King said in his address that the militia should be called out, and ten thousand more men called to the Navy, hey?"
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