King, Ship, and Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  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 ’preciate ’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 needful” 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?”

  “Must’ve missed that’un,” Lewrie said after a deep quaff of ale. And feeling a bit of hope. “But so many people were just sick of the war, the shortages and taxes . . .”

  “England ain’t one o’ those damned democracies, as mob-driven as ancient Greeks!” Sir Hugo hooted mirthlessly. “And thank God for that! Recall what that scribbler Edmund Burke wrote . . . that intercourse with the French is more terrible than fightin’ ’em? Give ’em leave and they’ll spread their revolutionary ideas everywhere. Uhm, ‘The spread of her doctrines . . . are the most dreadful of her arms’?” he quoted.

  “Missed that’un, too,” Lewrie replied, cocking his head at his sire. “Damme, when did you take up readin’ so much?”

  “I’m a retired gentleman o’ means,” Sir Hugo snickered back, “a fellow with the time for it . . .’mongst other, more pleasant things, o’ course. At any rate, Bonaparte and the Frogs ain’t happy, as I say. He evacuated Taranto, but we’re still in Alexandria and Malta, a year after we were s’posed t’turn ’em over to the Turks, and the French. We gave France back her West Indies colonies, and we got Trinidad and Ceylon, but lately . . .”

  “And the French are more than welcome to Saint Domingue,” Lewrie stuck in. “Toussaint L’Ouverture and his generals’re killin’ Frogs by the ship-load, even if the French did capture the old bugger and rout his men. They’re still givin’ General Leclerc fits in the jungles . . . ambushin’ anything smaller than a brigade. That and Yellow Jack—”

  “Of late, Addington’s added Holland and Switzerland to our objections,” Sir Hugo continued, “and Piedmont in Italy. Bonaparte’ll get Malta ten years from now, if he pulls his armies out and lets the Dutch and the Swiss alone, and Bonaparte can’t agree t’that. He’s dead set on riggin’ up all these damned republics, with his eyes on all of Europe, eventually. It’s comin’, Alan me son, it’s comin’, for sure.

  “And, if it’s as much joy t’you as it was t’me,” Sir Hugo added with a grin, “there’s word that General Leclerc, Bonaparte’s brother-in-law, died of a tropic fever on Saint Domingue. People also told me that there’s a General . . . or Marshal . . . Victor with a large army in Holland . . . Batavian Republic!” his father spat, “ready t’sail for the Indies. Perhaps Bonaparte will end up killin’ as many French soldiers as Henry Dundas did of ours when he was Secretary of State at War, ha!”

  “That’d be lovely,” Lewrie wolfishly agreed. Before, his hatred of the French was personal, limited to only a few individuals he’d met and opposed face-to-face. Now, though . . . it was “damn ’em all, root and branch,” with Napoleon Bonaparte at the top of his list.

  “Horse Guards rarely talks with the Admiralty,” Sir Hugo drolly said, “but there have been some discussions I’ve been made privy to . . . some folderol over increasing the size of the Royal Marines for duties at sea with the transfer of a battalion of foot to the Navy, doled out in platoons per each ship. Heard anything from the Navy yourself?”

  “About another active commission? No,” Lewrie had to tell him. “Dear as I wish it . . . give me something to do again.”

  “You very well may, soon,” his father attempted to assure him. The old rascal had risen to Major-General and the senior military officer to the Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey for a brief time during the Nore and Spithead naval mutinies, when for a time it had looked as if French Jacobin revolution would come to England, too, and he’d done the Crown yeoman service in 1797. Retired he might be, but he was still on the Army List, and he still had good connexions, so . . . perhaps he was not being kind. Not that Lewrie could remember too many instances in their spotty past when Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby had been kind! Only if it didn’t cost him tuppence! Lewrie not-so-fondly thought.

  “Another matter . . . ,” Sir Hugo said, after finishing his ale and waving for another. “Hugh’s nigh thirteen, now. If the war begins again, I might be able to wangle him his ‘set of colours’ with a good regiment . . . Ensign, first. Bit young for a Lieutenant . . . though, there are a fair number o’ twelve-year-old Captains, if their parents have enough ‘blunt’ to purchase their commissions. Can’t make Brigadier, or higher, if ye start late, ye know.”

  Lewrie delayed his answer by paying attention to his ale. They had spoken of this before, years ago, and after the funeral, before Hugh and Sewallis had had to return to their public school.

  “I want to kill Frenchmen, father,” Hugh had said in a shudder of barely controlled emotion, tears at the corner of his eyes. “If we ever fight them again, I wish to go to sea, like you, and kill as many of them as ever I may!”

  And even Sewallis, his usually subdued and quiet first-born, had evinced stony-hearted anger, had whispered “Amen to that!” and stated his desire to avenge his mother. “Blood for blood,” he’d whispered.

  “A good shot, a decent swordsman, and possessed of a splendid seat,” Sir Hugo reminded Lewrie. “Intelligent and daring is our Hugh. Active . . . a keen sportsman? Make a grand officer. Hmm?”

  “He wants t’be me,” Lewrie told the old rogue. “He’d prefer to be a Midshipman. When answering all those letters of condolence from my fellow captains and such, I requested they keep Hugh in mind, should they get a ship, in future. Thankee for the offer, but . . . his heart’s set on the Navy. So he can kill a shit-pot o’ Frogs, he said.”

  “Well then, I’ll say no more about it,” Sir Hugo said with a bit of a sigh. “Least Hugh’s future’s assured. And Sewallis’ll inherit, so more schoolin’s more suitable for him. University, perhaps?”

  “ ’Ere ye go, sirs!” the fetching new brunette waitress declared as she delivered two heaping plates of steak and kidney pie, and a new round of ale. There was fresh white bread, lashings of butter with it, mashed potatoes with spring peas, and, the girl promised, figgy-dowdy for sweets, after. “Any o’ ye gentlemen need anything, just call out!”

  “Public schools’re ruin enough for young lads,” Lewrie objected with a growl. “University’s a good deal worse.”

  After leaving the Olde Ploughman, Sir Hugo wished to go on out to his estate, and invited Lewrie to join him in his coach. Lewrie agreed to join him, but wished to exercise Anson, so he would ride by the coach instead, perhaps canter on ahead and meet him there.

  His father had sent letters on to alert his house staff to have everything ready for his arrival from London. As his coach rolled to a stop in front of the wide and deep front gallery of the low, rambling one-storey bungalow built in imitation of an East India Company cantonment, there was his butler, cook, estate agent, stableman and groom, a brace of gamekeepers, four maids-of-all-work, some ten-or twelve-year-old lads who would assist at anything from the barns to the kitchens, and Sir Hugo’s long-time Army orderly and manservant, the one-eyed old Sikh Trilochan Singh. Bows and curtsies, doffed hats, and wide smiles all round as the carriage box and boot were un-loaded, and the horses led off to the stables. Singh saluted and stamped boots, sepoy fashion.

  “Better than I thought, what hey, Singh?” Sir Hugo exclaimed in joy over his latest improvements. “Damme, but the flowerin’ bushes and such do make the place attractive.” There were even hanging baskets of some sort of flowers strung from the gallery’s overhead porch beams.

  The summer wicker or bamboo furniture had been set out on the gallery, along with a couple of rope hammocks, too; both of them large
enough to accommodate two people at a time.

  Plan t’strum a girl in one of ’em? Lewrie had to think, grinning as he had a mental picture of a full-moon romp in the nude, neighbours and house staff bedamned. Well, he is set in the middle of all these acres, he told himself; maybe he could pull it off with no one wiser.

  “Some o’ your cool tea, here on the gallery?” Sir Hugo suggested. “Must admit, it’s refreshin’, that notion o’ yours, so I took it up.”

  “Capital,” Lewrie agreed, taking a seat as the tea was ordered.

  “Ah, the country!” Sir Hugo said with a happy sigh, sprawling on a wicker settee and its canvas-covered padding, one booted leg atop a woven cane ottoman, with his neck-stock removed, his shirt collars open, and his coat off. “I’d love t’spend a whole fortnight, but I’ve business back in London. No more’n a week, this trip. Later on in the summer, well . . . might spend a whole two months! Clean air, refreshin’ breezes . . . good horses, and long, open fields, what?”

  “Absolutely,” Lewrie had to agree, more by rote than anything else. He got the feeling that there might be one more “shoe to drop.” His father was not one for small talk or idle invitations—unless he had a good reason for it.

  “Yours, when I’m gone, lad,” Sir Hugo reminded him as the cool tea arrived. Trilochan Singh must have been responsible for its brewing, for there were slices of lemon and a pot of light brown turbinado sugar from the first pressings, already ground fine. “All of it, lock, stock, and barrel. Ever, erm . . . ever given thought t’removing in here now? Mean t’say . . . if Hugh’s t’go for a sailor, and Sewallis is t’be away at school if you get a ship . . . well, it’s bags roomier than your place. Charlotte’s still lodgin’ with Governour and Millicent?”