The King's Coat

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Better I had left you in your squalor than claim you as mine in the parish register.” Sir Hugo busied himself pouring another morning brandy. “It’s all a formality to spare us your presence in future. That’s it. Now sign the damned thing and be quick about it before I lose my patience and summon the watch and to hell with the Willoughby name…”

  Alan quickly read to the bottom of the long page, noting that his father was still to be his guardian, though he was banished. Much like what some of Alan’s wilder friends had faced: exile and frigid relations. Much like living under the old fart’s roof!

  “And what do I do after I sign? Have you arranged that, too?”

  “Overseas would be best.”

  “Who pays my way? And what do I do once I get there?”

  “Pilchard?” Sir Hugo snapped, turning his back on things.

  “To make your disappearance from society credible, and without throwing any light on this despicable incident, we could not have you transported, or ’prenticed, without comment being made.”

  “Thank bloody Christ for that, anyway. And I’m to go as a gentleman?” Alan pressed, uneasy still.

  “Yes, but as a Lewrie, not a Willoughby,” the solicitor told him.

  Right, it’s the army for me. This is going to cost him dear. An ensign’s commission must go for at least four hundred pounds nowadays, even in a poor regiment. To buy my colors and my kit will have to cost nigh a thousand pounds …

  That meant most likely that he would soon be in the American colonies, facing constant danger from Red Indians and lawless Rebels. But there was a chance he could prosper; he could ride well, he could fence (he’d already dueled once and won handily) and he was a crack shot at game. With one hundred guineas in addition to his army pay he could get by, barely. Certainly, they would not choose a fashionable regiment for him, so he would not have to worry about high mess bills. Besides, there were damned few fashionable regiments fighting the war; they were still parading and wenching at home. As a soldier, a gentleman ensign, he could still carouse with a pack of young bucks as much as he pleased.

  “Very well,” he said carefully. “If you foot the bill for my kit and my commission.” He was delighted to see the involuntary responses from both his father and Pilchard. What a discovering little slyboots I am to see to the heart of it, he told himself.

  “Oh, we shall indeed,” his father agreed.

  Alan leaned over the desk and took the proferred quill from Pilchard’s outstretched hand. He signed his name to the document and stood back up, waiting while Pilchard sanded the wet ink and glared at him in a prissy, satisfied way. When Sir Hugo smiled broadly, Alan was filled with a sudden foreboding.

  “Well, I wish to express my gratitude for all you’ve done for me, Father. Up ’til now, mind.”

  “Piss on your thanks, boy.”

  “Need me anymore? No? Well, I shall go pack then.”

  “That has been done for you.” Sir Hugo told him. “You’ll not spend another hour under my roof.”

  “You will surely give time to gather a few keepsakes—”

  “That has been done as well. Including your hidden money. I am sure there won’t be a dry eye in Drury Lane when word gets out you’ve gone. Your wastrel friends will think you all brave and noble. Quite unlike you, but we have to maintain appearances. You were born a low bastard in a knocking shop, but thankfully you’re no longer my bastard to worry about. Once you leave here, you’re welcome to go to hell in your own way.”

  “As are you, Father. And what regiment am I due for?”

  “Regiment? Oh, yes. Morton, have that Captain Bevan come up, would you?”

  The mysterious guest that Alan had seen by the parlor fireplace entered the room a moment later, no longer tented by his dark blue cape.

  The stranger wore white breeches and waistcoat, a dark blue coat with white turnbacks at cuff and collar, trimmed heavily in gold, with gold buttons that bore fouled anchors.

  “The Navy.” Alan was suddenly aware of what waited for him. “Sweet Jesus, no! Not the bloody Navy. I’d … I’d sooner go to Ireland. Even Bedlam—”

  “I am so pleased by your reaction. Captain Bevan shall take you to Portsmouth, where you shall enter the King’s service as a midshipman, a gentleman volunteer. He shall supervise the purchase of your kit, and see you into a suitable vessel.”

  “You are now under King’s Regulations and the Articles of War, boy,” Captain Bevan told him. “Desertion from my custody is a hanging offense. To prevent that I have brought my coxswain with me.”

  That petty officer stood in the doorway, a solid block of lowbrowed elephantine muscle with a devilish black expression on his face. He wore a brace of imposing pistols in the waistband of his loose striped sailor’s trousers, and a heavy cutlass hung on a baldric over his shoulder. His hands dangled loose, near enough to draw his personal choice at a moment’s notice, and while he might appear slow to make up his mind just which instrument he preferred under a particular circumstance, once committed he appeared altogether competent.

  “And you call me a bastard?” Alan shook his head. Damn ’em all to hell, they’ll sit on me all the way to Portsmouth. Probably some chink in it for them, too. I am so well and truly … fucked. Ah, well, nothing for it but to go game …

  “Father, it’s farewell, then.” Alan said manfully. “And you have my most sincere wish that you rot in hell as soon as possible.”

  Morton took him by the arms again, and began to hustle him into the tender custody of the Navy.

  “Give my regards to Belinda, too,” Alan called out. “Have you not tried her already, you’ll find her a right short-heeled wench, and a most obliging sort of girl.”

  Alan saw a look cross his father’s face and had to laugh in spite of the circumstances. “By God, I believe you already have.”

  “Shameless. Come on, you,” Captain Bevan ordered.

  “I’ll pay you all back, you know,” Alan threatened as the coxswain took charge of him at the door with huge hard hands. “You, and Belinda, and Gerald, and that pettifogger Pilchard, and your brainless helpmeet Morton.”

  Gerald was waiting at the base of the stairs, pleased with the world. “Do us all proud at sea, won’t you, Alan dear? Don’t bother to write, though.”

  “My brother, Captain Bevan,” Alan said by way of a hasty introduction. “Sews his own dresses and, what’s the naval term … he goes in for the windward passage? God rot you too, Gerald. I hope to see you in the stocks for buggery one day, you poxy sodomite.”

  There was no servant present in the front hall, just a valise and his cloak and hat awaiting him, a much too small tricorne trimmed in white lace and adorned with a long feather. It was jammed onto his head, but without his usual tall, oversize wig it came off once they were in the street.

  “Have you no shame?” Bevan demanded. “Comport yourself quietly into the coach, for your own sake, if not for your poor family’s.”

  “Then have your trained bear let go of me.”

  He shrugged himself into his coat and cloak, picked up his fallen hat and entered the coach. The coxswain got in and sat across from him.

  “My name’s Bell,” the man announced in a deep rumble.

  “Do you really believe I give a damn what your name is?”

  “Give me an excuse ta cut yer nutmegs awrf, boy. Ya sing small wi’ me an’ sit quiet er ya won’t live ta sign aboard a ship.”

  “Take your choice, young ’un,” Captain Bevan said, seating himself next to his coxswain and sweeping back his cloak to reveal a pair of small pistols in his waistcoat. “Go a gentleman, or suffer the consequences.”

  “I shall keep that in mind, thank you, Captain Bevan,” Alan replied archly, wrapping his cloak closer about him. Even a windy and wet January morning could not explain the sudden coldness he felt as their coach rattled off to rendezvous with the “Dilly” for Portsmouth.

  Chapter 1

  A sullen, icy wind blew across the King’s Sta
irs in the city of Portsmouth as Midshipman Alan Lewrie waited for the boat to fetch him out to his ship, the sixty-four-gun 3rd Rate Ariadne. Many naval vessels tossed and gyrated on the heaving grey green harbor waters, and Alan swallowed hard, and became a touch ill just watching them. He was also still in a mild form of shock over his fall from grace, and his sudden banishment. From one moment of being a buck of the first head and caterwauling with his friends all over London, chasing women, eating and drinking his fill, gambling and playing, and with little thought for the morrow, to this seaborne exile was just too hellish a wrench.

  The trip down had been rough; bad roads and bad company, with both Bell and Bevan eyeing him like hawks. Even a bath and a shave at the inn had not revived his spirits. There had been no chance to escape. To listen to Bevan, it wasn’t that bad a fate to go to sea, and over the past few days, the terror of it had slipped away. He would be a midshipman, not a common sailor, a junior petty officer with authority, carried on the ship’s books as a gentleman, berthed with others of his kind, with servants and stewards to care for his clothing and his table.

  Bevan had told him about prize money, and how some ships’ crews had become rich beyond measure, and how midshipmen took a larger share; of how fellows much like himself had gone on to fame and fortune and had set themselves up as great men once they came home.

  And during the process of buying his kit, Alan had reveled in a form of revenge on Sir Hugo. Bevan had a letter of credit from his father—he did not strike Alan as the sort one would trust with a full purse—and since it wasn’t Bevan’s money, they ended as confederates in spending it properly. Six full uniforms, three of them the best the town could boast, more silk and linen shirts than anyone could need, silk and cotton stockings, breeches and working rig slop trousers, personal stores of extra fine biscuit, jam, tea, paper, and the proper set of books, such as the latest edition of Falconer’s Marine Dictionary.

  Alan was sure that even a royal bastard could not make a finer showing, and secretly, he thought he looked especially handsome in the uniform, even if it was on the plain side. There had been a saucy dark-haired chambermaid at the inn that had thought so, too, his last evening ashore. After a dinner that had filled him to bursting, two bottles of claret and several brandies, he had gone to his room to discover her ready to turn his bed down for the evening and fetch a warming pan. When he suggested she warm it instead, she was out of her sack and stays in a heartbeat. Thankfully, Bell relented and stood guard on the door, and not in the room with him, showing some mercy to him on his last free night. He had no civilian clothing anymore, so he could not have run away. Like a condemned man, he had eaten a hearty meal, and had bulled her all over the room until the sky was grey.

  Both Bell and Bevan had been tactfully silent after he had washed up and joined them for breakfast, much like executioners who had the good grace not to crack jokes at the wrong time. The girl’s send-off, all the drink, and little sleep had damned near killed him, and a cold breakfast had almost finished the job … and still gave notice of trying.

  “I am in no shape to do this,” he said to Bell, who took no notice. And there was the boat from his ship, approaching fast.

  “Here, you,” Bell said behind him to a waiting bargee. “Help the gemmun with his chest.”

  The sense of shock was gone, also the hope of escape, and Alan’s passing interest in prize money and uniforms and little revenge faded as reality approached. Here was the end of one life and the beginning of another that felt much like penal servitude. Had he not heard or read somewhere that the Navy was like a prison, in which one had the chance to drown?

  “Bell, I have money,” he said, turning to the coxswain.

  “Tuppence’ll do for the bargee, sir.”

  “No, I mean…” Lewrie hinted, tipping a wink.

  “Best do it like a man.” Bell scowled. “Sir.”

  Alan shrugged and tramped down to the boat at the foot of the stairs. One man held it to shore with a boat hook while eight more sat with their oars held aloft like lances. There was a boy by the tiller, a midshipman of perhaps fifteen.

  “Hurry it up, will you?” he called. “Our first lieutenant’s watching. Well, get in the goddamned boat. We won’t bite you … yet.”

  Alan stumbled across the gunwale and sat in the boat at the stern by the boy who had addressed him, while two of the oarsmen took hold of his chest and placed it in the bottom of the boat with a loud thump. Alan flipped a coin to the waiting bargee.

  “Shove off, bowman,” the boy at the tiller said. “Out oars. Backwater, larboard … give us some way, starboard.”

  Alan looked up at Bell, who spat in the water as he waved him a sardonic farewell. Alan sighed and turned to look at the men in the boat with him. The nearest oarsmen were both tanned a dark brown, with skin as wrinkled as a discarded pair of gloves. They also sported impressive scars which stood out like chalk marks on their arms and faces.

  “Give way all,” the boy called. “Stroke, damn yer eyes, or I’ll see someone’s back laid open for shirking.”

  That could cheer me up, Alan told himself; not like a hanging but possibly entertaining.

  He turned to look at the tillerman of his version of Charon’s Ferry and marked him down for a brutal little git of a type he was familiar with from Harrow (and sundry other schools from which he had been expelled), a right bastard made even worse with power over fags and new boys. At least once he was aboard ship, he would have the same power, as if he had been made prefect over a whole shipload of fags. But the men in the boat didn’t look like the pink-cheeked little victims he had bullied in the past. Neither did they look like the popular illustrations of Jolly Jacks and True Blue Hearts of Oak. In fact, they resembled more last session’s dock at the Assizes, surly, uncouth and dangerous brutes, the gutter sweepings from the worst parts of the city, cutthroats and cutpurses he normally wouldn’t give way for, unless they were the pimps he knew. These men looked like the sort who would do him in for a little light entertainment. And that brought him full-circle to the dicey situation in his belly.

  “God, it can’t be sick already,” the tiller boy crowed.

  “Oh, hold your tongue,” Alan snapped, making sure to keep his own mouth as tightly sealed as possible.

  “So that’s the way you’ll be, milord,” the boy said with a cruel laugh. “Well, you’ll sing a different tune when we’re at sea, that I promise you. I said row, you damned sluggards.”

  Within minutes, they were close to Ariadne and steering for its starboard side. It seemed immense to Alan’s eyes, much like a country house on a large estate. Unfortunately, a country house that seemed to bob and roll with a life of its own. The bowman grappled them to the side with his boat hook by the mainmast chains.

  “Up you go, my booby,” the boy said.

  “Up there? How?” Lewrie gawped.

  “Jump onto the battens, grab hold of the man-ropes, and climb to the entry port.”

  Alan perceived a ladder of sorts, made of wooden strips set into the hull much like a set of shelves, with red baize-covered rope strung through the outer ends to make a most shallow sort of banister rail. This led upwards from the waterline, following the broad curve of the hull along the tumble-home to an ornate open gate cut into the ship’s side, very far overhead.

  “Can’t they drop a chair or something?” Alan asked. God, I’ll be killed if I try to climb that. I’ll bet this is some kind of nautical humbug they pull on the newlies.

  “You in the boat. Get a move on,” a voice shouted down through a brass speaking trumpet which appeared over the rail, then withdrew.

  Alan realized there was nothing for it but to go. He got to his feet shakily as the boat rocked and rolled and bumped against the heaving ship hellish-lively, which made him swoon. He was also not a swimmer and feared the grey water. A seaman offered a hand and shoulder to steady him as he put a foot on the gunwale of the boat. He waited for the two craft to get in harmony, then leaped for the ladde
r. But his foot pushed the gunwale down and the ship rolled to starboard as he fought madly for a grip on the sodden man-ropes and slick battens. Clinging in terror, he was dunked chest-deep in the freezing water and screeched an obscenity, also catching a solid whack in his back from the side of the rowing boat. As the ship rolled back upright, Alan scrambled for his very life, and arrived through the entry port with his teeth chattering. There was a hearty general round of laughter at his arrival which didn’t do his composure much good, either.

  “Well?” a person who appeared to be some sort of officer demanded, hands on his hips and his chin out almost in Alan’s face.

  “Sorry about that. Must have misjudged my timing,” Alan said. “Is there a place I could change? It’s devilish cold.”

  “You’ll doff your hat to me.” The officer was within an inch of his nose, “you’ll say sir to me, and report yourself aboard this ship properly, or I’ll shove your ignorant arse back for the fish to gawk at, you simple fucking farmer!”

  Alan stared at him for a second, shocked to his core that anyone could yell at him in such a manner, and with such filthy language! Not that he was above using it himself, and prided himself on being a true Englishman when occasion demanded harsh words. But to be the recipient was much like his recent cold bath. His lips trembled as he desperately tried to remember what Captain Bevan had instructed him to say.

  “M … mid … midshipman Alan Lewrie,” he finally said. “Come aboard to join, sir.” He raised and doffed the cocked hat he wore.

  “You are a young one, ain’t you, now,” the officer said. “What a cod’s-head. You’ll never shit a seaman’s turd.”

  “Is that required?” Alan stammered, instantly regretting it.

  The officer stared at him with eyes as blared as a first-saddled colt, unable to believe what he had heard. “Bosun. A round dozen of yer best for this idiot.”

  “I believe, Mister Harm, that if the midshipman has just come aboard to join, then he is not on ship’s books, and is not yet subject to punishment,” another officer said after stifling his laughter.