King, Ship, and Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Sweet Jesus, no!” Lady Imogene was screaming.

  “ ’Em murd’rin’ Frog bashtits!” a sailor cursed while two men seized him by his arms and armpits and threw him into the boat, down onto the sole, with his legs atop a thwart.

  “Alan?” a faint, weak, and fearful cry, almost lost in the rale of the next wave breaking on the beach, a phantom voice.

  Go game! Lewrie told himself; make a brave face for her!

  Lewrie lifted a hand from the sole, dripping with seawater from the splashing of the chop, and swabbed his face, wondering when pain would come. His hands came away almost black in the false dawn light.

  What the Devil? If my head’s blown open, how am I still able t’see? he goggled. Oarsmen were sitting back down to back-water, some were poling off the sand, and he was getting trampled, so he grasped the next-aft thwart and rose to his knees.

  “We get her aboard quickly,” someone aft was saying, “we might save her . . . even with no surgeon aboard.”

  “Alan?” came that phantom cry again, weaker and more fearful.

  “What? Caroline? Good God!” he cried, scrambling aft to her. She lay on her back in an inch or two of seawater in the sole, head and shoulders in Lady Imogene’s lap. “No! No, no!”

  Her light-coloured blouse, so cheery that morning, was covered in large nigh-black stains that slowly spread, even as he crawled to her. Lady Imogene was pressing her shawl and bright kerchief to try and staunch the flood at its source, but there was so swift an out-welling that both cloths had turned almost completely dark, too!

  “Caroline!” Lewrie cried as he got to her and took her hands in his. A thin trickle of blood sprang from the corner of her mouth, and she coughed, spasming and gasping. Her eyes opened and she looked up at him, eyes wide for a moment, and her hands squeezed back, then lost their strength. She let out a long sigh, then lay very still.

  “Caroline?” Lewrie croaked, gathering her to his chest, knowing she was gone. “God damn them, God damn them!”

  The boat was now off the sands, one bank of oarsmen stroking ahead, the other still backing water to turn her bows out to sea, and the mate at the tiller was judging the best moment to put the helm over between incoming waves, so she would not be upset, spinning her in her own length before both sides of oarsmen could row together.

  “You bastards!” Lewrie howled, unaccustomed tears in his eyes. “You murderin’ bitch, Charité! You foul child-fucker, Choundas!” he raged, searching for the pistol he’d lost, but he’d dropped it when he’d lifted Caroline into the boat. “Any guns aboard? Any sort of gun!”

  “Aye, we’ve . . . ,” the mate said, jutting his chin towards a pair of muskets near him, intent on his steering.

  Lewrie snatched one up, jerked from the muzzle the cork used to keep out the damp, and tore off the greasy rag that sheltered the fire-lock and primed pan. He scrambled right aft to the transom, crowding the mate at the tiller, to kneel and drag the lock to half-cock, and check the powder in the pan and the tightness of the flint clasped in the dog’s jaws.

  The boat was rowing out now, swooping wildly as the incoming waves lifted her bows and the oarsmen dragged her through the troughs, making the stern soar upwards in turn. He braced one foot on the aft end of the sole boards and the vertical stub of the keel where it emerged. He had to try!

  “Lewrie, no, what matters, it will make no difference!” Plumb was cautioning him.

  He dashed a hand over his eyes once more, squinting away those tears; he had grim work to do. Then he’d weep. “Stop yer bloody gob!” he told Sir Pulteney.

  There were several French Chasseurs on the beach now, some of them tending to their fellows who had slid or tumbled there, none with a weapon at the ready, as if they realised that firing would be pointless. With them was a man in a dark suit and narrow-brimmed hat, and he held a weapon at high port-arms. Lewrie could conjure that spent powder smoke still fumed from its barrel, but . . . up above the beach, at the top of the scree slope stood that Major of Chasseurs, Charité de Guilleri, and that bastard Choundas, who was crowing and waving his cane in triumph.

  Seventy, eighty yards? Lewrie gaged it; shootin’ uphill, so if I take one of ’em . . . the man on the beach’s closer. Which? Who do I kill? Who deserves it most? Please, Jesus, help me shoot true, help me kill just one of ’em!

  “We are damned,” Major Clary whispered.

  “Fouché will be furious, oui,” Charité numbly agreed, “and the First Consul . . . ,” she trailed off, numb and drained and horrified by how badly her vengeance had gone amiss.

  “I speak of God and our souls, mademoiselle,” Clary said with a rasp of anger. “Mon Dieu, does he intend to shoot at us? Bon!” Clary said, sheathing his sword and standing to attention, chest offered as a target.

  “Is she dead, Lewrie?” Guillaume Choundas was cackling and huzzahing. “Do you suffer now, hawn hawn? Weep, lament! Suffer as I, vous fumier!”

  Charité suddenly felt ill, sick at her stomach and exhausted beyond imagining. Even her long desire to kill Lewrie was gone, flown away, and all she felt was deep sadness, and revulsion to be a part of the deed, and those with whom she had shared it, and at everything—they had failed.

  The boat was now over hundred mètres off shore, and there was nothing to stop it, short of a miracle. It was pitching and swooping wildly, yet Lewrie was still aiming at them? Charité took one step away from Denis Clary and squared her own shoulders to make herself an open target, and crossed herself for the first time in a long, cynical time, in expiation.

  There was a sudden tiny bloom of gunsmoke from the boat’s stern-sheets, whipped quickly away by the wind.

  “Stupid!” Choundas yelled seaward. “You always were a hopelessly stupid salaud, Lewrie! Mistaking muscle for brains! See your last hope dashed, and fear for my revenge! I will get you in the end. Suffer, and . . . Eee!”

  Thunk! as lead slammed into flesh and bone! Choundas reeled on his good leg for a moment, looking down at the blood spurting from his chest before toppling forward, turning a clumsy pirouette as he slid down to the beach in a shower of loosed gravel and flinty stones, going over and over, head then feet, before thudding to a stop at the foot of the slope in the deep sand, his cloak spread out like a shroud and his corpse resembling a pile of cast-off laundry.

  Major Clary let out a whoosh of relief, agog that anyone could kill with a smooth-bore musket at that range . . . and delighted that he had not been this Lewrie’s mark!

  “You see, mademoiselle, there is a judgmental God!” he said in wry delight, beginning to whoop with laughter for a moment. “We must thank Him for removing that thing from the earth. And pray that we’ve been allowed to live for a good reason.”

  “Denis?” Charité said, amazed herself, smiling and shuddering to be spared, as well. She reached out a hand to her amour. If Denis was now in good spirits, would he not wish to . . . ?

  “Non,” Major Clary told her with a sad shake of his head, that good humour vanishing as quickly as the gunsmoke. “I now bid you adieu, mademoiselle. Au revoir.” With that he turned and began to trudge back to the top of the cliff, summoning Chasseurs to help their injured comrades.

  Below on the beach, Matthieu Fourchette lifted his re-loaded musketoon to his shoulder, but gave it up as hopeless after a second of thought. He un-cocked it and handed it to one of the dazed soldiers. There would be Hell to pay when he reported this fiasco to Minister Fouché. They’d killed a woman yet let the others escape to England, where news of the entire pursuit, Napoleon’s involvement, and the murder would enflame British, perhaps world, outrage.

  Fourchette heaved a deep sigh, contemplating the utter ruin of his promising career, shrugging and shaking his head sorrowfully, as he turned to face the cliffs, wondering if he should cross over the frontier and lose himself in the Germanies.

  “What’s that?” he asked a woozy Chasseur, who was aiding one of his mates with a twisted ankle, as he spotted the bundle of clothing.

&n
bsp; “That’s that hideux fellow, sir,” the Chasseur told him, rather cheerfully. “Amazing, that shot. Be a trial . . . to get what’s left of him back to the top of the cliffs.”

  “Don’t bother,” Fourchette told the soldier. “Leave him here, and let the crabs and gulls have him.” And wondered if he could couch his report to place some of the blame for his failure on Choundas . . . well, a bit of it!

  He went past the corpse, struggling to make his way up through the loose scree slope.

  The Chasseurs, more practical and realistic, took a little time to loot Choundas’s pockets, though they found little of value; seventy francs, a poor watch, some cigarros, a flint tinder-box, and a decent pistol with all accoutrements. The ogre’s cane wasn’t even scratched, and it, at least, was of good quality.

  Then they walked away from him, too.

  BOOK IV

  Quid primum deserte querar?

  Forlorn, what first shall I lament?

  PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO,

  AENID, BOOK IV, 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.