"God help your poor arse, you must be joking!" Lewrie gawped.
But he wasn't, of course.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Eager to show off his command, Christopher Cashman insisted that Lewrie accompany him a mile or two towards Spanish Town, to the encampment, and would not take no for an answer. After a quick row out to Proteus to see if orders had come aboard, or if members of the liberty party had created some havoc-the orders had not, and only a few of the hands had been returned "paralytic-drunk" by the shore provosts-Lewrie felt sanguine enough to go along.
"Kit" laid on a fine equipage, a silk-topped coach-and-four of gleaming wood and fragrant leather, bright coral-red wheel spokes that raised the faintest cloud of dust from the sandy track, and drawn by a team of matched roans of fairly impressive conformation; horses raised on Cash-man's lands, he was smugly informed.
There was a florid letter B on the doors, though, encircled by oak wreaths. "Well, o' course, Alan old son," Cashman crowed, "this is a Beauman coach. Nothin' but the best for their 'hired' colonel!"
The 15th West Indies Regiment was under canvas, their company tents pitched in neat streets, with duckboards between in case of rain and mud, laid out to mathematical perfection, as laid down in the infantry manuals. Across a wide parade ground, still "stobby" with sugar cane stubble (for a cane field it had been 'til lately) stood a giant green-and-white striped pavillion tent large enough to shelter them all if stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Assuming anyone would allow any of the 435 rankers inside, that is; it had been erected for a special occasion, and was now filled with preening officers from the island garrison, with uniformed visitors from both Army and Navy, and with civilians in their finest, come to watch a parade. The ground above the pavillion teemed with carriages just as sumptuous as the one in which Lewrie and Cashman arrived, with nodding teams of horses being tended by slave grooms, and a long roped row of saddled riding horses in the shade of the trees.
"Think of graduation day, Alan," Cashman said as a black coachman came to fold down the metal steps and open the door for them, "and all the beamin' parents come t'see their sprogs pass out into Life."
"And you took yourself into town, 'stead of sittin' on 'em like a broody hen?" Lewrie wondered as he alit. "Good God, I can see three generals from where I stand! A hellish risk, Kit."
"I know they can drill, Alan," Cashman confidently boasted, "so what's the point of actin' like I don't trust 'em? Have to, sooner or later, won't I? Let the officers find their feet, too, 'thout 'mother' standin' over 'em and makin' 'em so nervous they wouldn't trust their own arses with their farts. That's the problem with your typical Army regiments… either too rich and casual, hopin' to muddle through, or they're lashed, -drilled, and browbeat so bad, no one from majors down to corporals dare have a thought in their heads 'til a colonel puts it there. Same aboard yer ships, I expect… the way a captain can ruin a good ship, and make her officers spend all their time lookin' over a shoulder, too scared t'put a foot wrong."
"Well, there is that," Lewrie allowed.
"Not much to work with, I'll tell ya true," Cashman said as they strolled the short distance to the pavillion, and its wide, welcoming flies and awnings, "the dregs of the island, the scrapin's from Home regiments gone down from fevers… rich boy-officers, who had a mind t'soldier 'cause the uniform pleased the young ladies. Educated men who clerked, or finished their apprenticeships, but aren't from rich or even squire families-oh, a dense lot in the beginnin', but we set 'em straight. Sent 'em off on company marches and skirmish drill, all by themselves for two, three days, with no one t'wipe their arses for 'em. Shed a few, promoted a few, hang their pedigrees… and ya know I'd teach 'em t'shoot, Alan! By line, by platoon, by regimental volley… and in teams of four, two loadin' and watchin' whilst two deliver aimed fire out in the bushes. Nothin' like your classic set-piece battle, nossir, all flags and gallopers, and such."
"Like we were, in Spanish Florida," Lewrie said with a smile of reverie, twinging to what Cashman had been driving at, "fighting Red Indian fashion. Like Yankee Doodle skulkers, with rifles."
"Hunters," Cashman amended. " 'Cept here, we hunt men. Half the regiment'll be in skirmish order all the time, able to fall back upon the rest if they get in trouble. Can't parade battalion-front in three lines in a jungle. Saint Domingue ain't like Europe, all orderly and neat. Crops gone wild, grown horse-eye tall, wild shrubs grown back up as thick as dog-hair… aah, General Lazenby, and your lovely lady!"
Lewrie got introduced, then tipped Cashman the wink and wandered off to fetch himself a glass of something, leaving Kit to play host to his "guests." It didn't take long; a liveried slave in a white tie-wig produced a silver tray bearing long flutes of champagne-again iced-and Lewrie took a brace of them. It was a hot day for April, dash it all!
He then wandered, circulating and bowing, or doffing his hat to the other guests as he encountered them; as they encountered him, really. His was a new face in a rather insular society, he suspected (and forgave himself for the pun!) much like Anglesgreen of a Sunday, with nought but the usual neighbours to see 'til the London Season ended and absentee landowners came down to their properties, fetching along a raft of houseguests for a week or two in the country or the coach that brought the mails also brought in a clutch of passengers. Every day, folk would gather before the Olde Ploughman or the Red Swan Inn, just for a sight of them, even were they merely alighting for a shot at the "jakes," a quick half-pint of ale with a cold beef pie before "Whip Up And Away." And certainly, he smugly grinned to himself, the sight of two gold medals dangling on his chest didn't hurt when it came to a lure for the curious, either!
As men shook his hand with almost an admiring briskness, and the ladies curtsied or inclined their heads, with fans rustling faster in what he took for approval, he was pumped dry for information about the doings "at home" in England, the latest titillating scandals at Court, the prices of goods, the progress of the war. He also got a chance to enquire about people he had met in Jamaica in his early days.
"Mistress Margaret Haymer and her husband… name escapes me?"
"Dead, oh years ago, alas!"
"The Hillwoods?"
"Both passed over, unfortunatly."
"Feller who invited my commanding officer and several of us from the midshipmens' mess to a supper and ball once… Sir Richard Slade?"
"Joined the Great Majority in '86," was the shifty-eyed reply. "And good riddance, frankly. A back-gammoner, sir, d'ye get my…"
"Thought there was somethin' a tad… off about him, myself," Lewrie could say with a frown of pleasure. "A man o' the 'windward passage,' ey? Hid it well, he did, but… his house servants were a young bunch, and all boys. Well, well…"
"Alan Lewrie, is it you, sir?"
"Ma'am?" he replied, turning in the direction of the query. "I say! Mistress Beauman, a great pleasure after all these… after all this time." Years, ye gods! he chid himself, don't remind her of her years!
Cashman had the right of it; Anne Beauman had aged badly. Only her lively brown eyes reminded him of the lass she used to be. She had shriveled like one of those apple-headed dolls the Rebels made that he had seen in Charleston or Wilmington; stout as a salt-beef cask, as well. Though still done up in the best apparel money could buy-and Beaumans could afford the best-she more resembled a weary harridan who had not been blessed by Life, the sort of shop-woman one could see in London, out on a Sunday stroll since that was better than desponding up in an airless garret lodging.
"Congratulations, sir," she said as if recalling maidenly coos and styles. "Lucy wrote us, once she was safely back in England. But she told us you were merely a Commander, at the time."
"She and Sir Malcolm keep well, I trust, Mistress Anne?" "Oh, indeed! With you to thank for their lives." "I did nothing more than warn them to flee Venice and get home, before the French took the place, ma'am, nothing like…" Lewrie said with his brow creased in confusion, wondering what spindrift the minx had invented t
o improve her tale.
"Oh, but was there not some adventure at some island along the Dalmatian coast, with pirates and…?" Anne frowned in turn.
"We put in there for a bit, once she and Sir Malcolm took passage with us, but that was after we'd-"
"Ah, there ye be," a gruff voice interrupted; most thankfully, to Alan's lights-how did one disabuse someone of their kin's veracity?
"Ah!" Lewrie said, feigning joy. "Mister Hugh Beauman!"
He offered his hand, recalling that at one time this side of beef, this breeding bull-and his father-had threatened to thrash him in the streets of Kingston and finally had shown him the door, quite firmly assuring him he'd never darken their lives again! Surprisingly, Hugh Beauman took it and gave it a powerful shake of welcome; with a viselike, crunching squeeze, though-just to remind him of his "place!"
"Lewrie, ah de do!" Beauman bellowed. "Years, wot? All grown up, I see. Stap me, a Post-Captain now!"
"Last year, sir, after the battle of-"
"On yer own bottom. Have a frigate, I'd expect? Yes? Good!"
Like all the Beauman men, Lewrie sadly told himself; they talk in fragments… too busy for polite conversation. Prob'ly begrudge the time wasted, too! The father Beauman he'd dealt with had been the same way, when Lewrie was courting Lucy. For all their wealth, they were "chaw-bacon" with not a jot of ton or style; tenant-tramplin', fox-huntin', beer-swillin' country-puts-the very epitome of that newspaper artist Cruikshank's droll cartoons of "John Bull" as a testy, drink-veined tub of ale, with the temper of a rutting steer, a poorly educated "squire" to the soles of his top-boots!
"How'd ye get out here? What fetched ye?" Hugh Beauman asked, sounding a bit suspicious, even after all these years.
Lewrie was sorely tempted to answer, "By frigate, then by coach," but wisely forebore. Hugh Beauman, for all his business acumen, didn't have what one could call an "ear" for waggish wit.
"Colonel Cashman and I are old compatriots, sir. We met in town and dined together. He invited me to see his regiment."
"Ah, ah?" Hugh Beauman said as he took that in, still looking like a man offered a dubious deal. "Never heard that. Must ask, I s'pose."
"In Spanish Florida," Lewrie informed him, with a secretive grin.
"Covert doin's with Red Indians, during the last war, d'ye see. Neck-or-nothin' in places, it was. Doubt a man of us got away with a whole skin, once the Dons found us," he boasted, to discomfit Hugh Beauman.
"You've risen so quickly, Captain Lewrie," Anne Beauman quickly said, to fill the gaps-and no longer using his Christian name, Lewrie noted, as if to distance herself, or haul their converse back to a politer plane. "And been decorated twice. And is that a wedding ring that I see on your left hand? You must tell us all about it!"
"Ah!" her husband exclaimed, as a trumpet sang out. "Parade's on! Later, Lewrie. Come, dear."
" 'Til later, sir… ma'am," Lewrie said, doffing his hat, and bowing them away as they ploughed their way through the throng to the raised platform before the pavillion that would serve as the reviewing stand. Lewrie snagged himself another pair of champagnes, in relief, then drifted over to where he could see.
Sure enough, Ledyard Beauman made a splendid sight on a charger. The horse was a sleek dapple-grey, with the conformation of an Arabian, its saddlery and reins polished, its showy sheepskin pad as white as new- ' fallen mountain snow, and the stiff under-pad so large that it fell almost as low as the flashing silver-plate stirrups; blue, trimmed in real gilt embroidery border, real gilt-lace regimental badge, Roman numerals, and oak leaves. Even silver bit and chains!
Ledyard, however…
"Look! A uniform… wearin' a man!" some girl said in a very soft snicker behind her fan, before being shushed by the man at her side; it didn't do to sneer a Beauman… not and be heard!
Ledyard rode well enough, with his heels well down, as he cantered his charger out and drew his sword to take the salute of officers standing in a rigid row before the troops, now arrayed by companies on the far side of the field. The pace did put his hat-a cocked one as large as a ripe watermelon, all adrip with egret feathers and trimmed with gilt-lace cockade and vane-askew, though. Like leftover style from the '70s, Ledyard bought them too small to fit over his wigs! A hand that held his sword hilt snuck up to right it as he drew reins to return the salute, eliciting the faintest titter, despite the setting.
Always was a vain little cox-comb, Lewrie uncharitably thought.
After a bit of martial palaver, Ledyard spun his horse about on the off-hand foot, and walked it back to the front of the review stand. A small band of fifes and drums struck up "British Grenadiers," and at a command from Cashman, the first company on the right, the grenadier company, began to wheel about in lines four ranks deep.
"Shape main-well," a grudging commentator allowed.
For all the little that Lewrie knew of drill and marching, they did, indeed, seem to know what they were doing, as good or better than the Anglesgreen yeomanry that his father drilled on the village commons on Muster Days. For a mob of the usual drunks, failures, ne'er-do-wells, and no-hopers that armies tended to recruit, and given the smaller and "scummier" pool of volunteers to be found in the islands, they marched in straight lines, with no one staggering; all in step, and all their muskets sloped at the same exact angle.
They wore ankle-high shoes, well blacked, with tan cloth gaiters, or "spatterdashes," buttoned up to mid-thigh over dark tan breeches, not the usual white, with matching waistcoats beneath the usual red tunics, though Lewrie thought their red was more wine-red than scarlet; with buff turn-backs at the rear hems, and buff coat facings, trimmed with yellow-outlined buttonholes of red and blue. And their hats were not cocked hats, newfangled shakoes, or narrow-brim civilian hats, but were wide-brimmed, soft slouch hats, turned up on one side.
He grinned in recognition; hats like those had adorned the Loyalist Volunteer North Carolina regiment in which his future brothers-in-law, Burgess and Governour Chiswick, had served in the Revolution. He had discovered the practicality of slouch hats for keeping off both sun and rain at Yorktown, during the Franco-American siege.
Lewrie also suspected that hats like those were much easier to "sneak" through brush and jungle, making less noise, did Cashman really mean to "hunt men" on Saint Domingue in bushwhacking fashion, matching stealth-for-stealth with the rebel slave soldiers under L'Ouverture.
And their arms; a private soldier stood guard near the rope line by the reviewing stand, and Lewrie sidled over to study it and enquire, in a whisper, from the soldier's right-hand side.
"Fusil, sir… fifty-four-caliber ball," the man muttered back from the corner of his mouth, eyes still rigidly to the front. "They's acc'rate, they is. Colonel Cashman, 'e h'insisted on 'em."
"I would expect nothing less than the best from Colonel Cashman," Lewrie told him, making the soldier stiffen his back a bit more in his pride, and dare to grin, despite the solemnities.
More accurate than Brown Bess, aye, Lewrie thought. Iused one, and I liked it. More range than a plain musket, too. I still have one hangin' on the wall in…
He cringed, wondering how long it had taken Caroline to remove any sign that the smaller side parlour had once been his, and his alone. The captured swords, the ship model that his Jesters had made for him?
The regimental pipes, fife, and drum band struck up a tune, "The Black Bear," and swung out from the far right of the formed companies, with the King's Colour and the Regimental Colour party behind them, to troop the colours before the men, an ancient custom of recognition, so that they would know their colonel's place, and their own, in any battle's confusion. Once the band returned to its place, some orders of the day were posted by the adjutant, before the call came to "Pass In Review"… without the mass mutter of "Up yours, too" that sometimes could be heard from British troops on parade, Lewrie noted.
Company by company, the regiment marched past the reviewing stand, with Ledyard Beauman swiping his sword to his chin i
n salute to each; band, the grenadier company, then eight line companies, lastly the official light company of skirmishers, though Cashman had trained them all for skirmish order. Finally, a two-gun battery of light horse-drawn artillery pieces, no better than 4-pounders, trotted past, and it was done. The companies drew up at their starting points across that stubbly field, to the cheers and applause of the assembled guests.
"Men!" Ledyard cried, rising in his stirrups. "Men o' the Fifteenth West Indies!" It came out rather thin, and probably didn't carry far, not like a "quarterdeck" bellow, Lewrie could sneer, as he tipped his champagne glass to them. "Creditable showin', I say! Day or two more, and we're off to Saint Domingue! Bash those murderous rebels, haw! Colonel
Cashman, dismiss the troops, sir! And a tot of rum for all! All, d'ye hear, hey?"
' 'Talion…" Cashman said, in a proper baritone roar.
"Comp'ny!" the captains chorused the preparatory order.
'' 'Talion, right wheel to column of companies, at the halt!"
Ledyard Beauman did not wait for his troops to wheel about and march off to their tent lines; he tossed his reins, assuming that some orderly or groom would be there to take them, being the sort who went through life having things there when he needed them. He took several tries at stabbing the tip of his expensive "hundred guinea" sword into its elegantly trimmed scabbard before getting it right, then swung one leg over and sprang down… not without a rub at his fundament, from spending time in the saddle. Rather claw-like, that was.
Maybe his arse itches, Lewrie thought, draining one of his champagne flutes. Making an experiment, Lewrie tossed the glass over his shoulder, and was amazed to see a liveried servant catch it in mid-air.
Hell's Bells, it works! he marvelled.
As if those murderous rebel slaves on Saint Domingue had already been crushed, Ledyard was swarmed by his rich neighbours, hangers-on, toadies, and those who most-like owed him money or favours, and Lewrie had himself another covert sneer, then toddled off for a "reload" of champagne.
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