The King's Coat

by Dewey Lambdin

  Thank bloody Christ, Alan thought wildly; that dozen of the best didn’t sound like a round of drinks!

  “Goddamn you, you’ll get your ass flayed raw before the day’s out, if I’ve any say in it,” the officer so appropriately named Harm said. “I’ve my eye on you from here on out, little man.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alan replied, galled to give this screeching parrot any sort of courtesy, but thinking it might mollify him.

  “That’s aye aye, sir,” Harm said, but sauntered off.

  “Sufferin’ Jesus,” Alan whispered sadly, still standing at a loose sort of attention and doffing his hat.

  “You are a bit old to be joining, aren’t you?” the second officer asked. “Why, you must be all of eighteen.”

  “S … seventeen, sir,” Alan said between chattering teeth.

  “What were your parents thinking of, to wait so late?”

  “My father … he did not agree with my choice, sir,” Alan said, thinking his reception could get worse if they knew his real reason for being there; or the fact that if he could get a good knockdown price, he would sell the ship for his freedom, and care less if the crew was carried off in a Turk’s galley.

  “Newlies usually go to the gun room, but you’re too old for that. Might be the orlop for you, with the older midshipmen.”

  “The … orlop,” Alan replied, trying the new word on for size. He peeked about the deck to see if he could spot one.

  “God’s teeth, what a prize booby you are. I cannot wait until Captain Bales sees his latest acquisition. You’ll need dry clothing. Mister Rolston?”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said the grinning imp who had ferried him out to the ship.

  “Show Mister Lewrie below to the gun room and see he gets into dry things. And the proper hat. Soon as you’re presentable, Lewrie, get back up to the quarterdeck and we’ll take you to the first lieutenant, Mister Swift, so you can be properly entered in ship’s books. By the way, I am Lieutenant Kenyon, the second officer.”

  “How do you do, sir,” Lewrie asked, offering a civilian hand.

  “Oh, God,” Kenyon said as Alan dropped his hand and doffed his hat once more. “Yes, I expect you shall be most entertaining for us. Now get below.”

  He allowed himself to be led below from the gangway to the waist of the ship while a pigtailed seaman named Fowles staggered along behind with his chest, suffering in silence. He staggered down a steep double set of stairs to the lower gun deck, a dank and dimly lit and groaning place full of guns, mess tables, stools, thick supporting beams and the columnlike masts. Glims in paper holders shed light on hundreds of men and doxies and quite a few children scampering about. It was more like a debtor’s prison than a ship. Rolston led him aft to an area which was screened off from the rest of the gun deck by half-partitions, and filled with chests and tables.

  “This is the gun room,” Rolston told him. “The master gunner Mister Tencher and his mates berth here, along with the junior midshipmen. You can stow your chest along one of the screens and it’ll be your seat. And you’ll sleep in a hammock, instead of your soft little feather bed. I trust it will be up to milord’s usual standards.”

  The smell of cooking grease, some foul egestion wafting aloft from the bilges, the fug of damp wool and unwashed bodies was fit to make him gag, but he forbore manfully. “It is not St. James’s,” Alan drawled acidly, turning to look Rolston up and down, “but good enough for some, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “You’ll not last long in this ship with your snotty damned City ways, Lewrie. Just you wait ’til—”

  His tirade was interrupted by the arrival of Fowles with the heavy sea chest. But as the ship groaned and creaked into another roll, Fowles staggered and performed a shaky dance to waddle past them, bump Rolston and crash to the deck atop the chest, almost on Rolston’s shoes.

  “You clumsy fool!” Rolston slapped the man on the arms and chest in anger. “You did that on purpose. I’ll see you on charge for it. Laying hands on an officer, for starters.”

  “Beg pardon, sir,” Fowles yelped. “Sorry, sir.”

  Alan saw real fear in the man, and was amazed that a grown man of nearly fourteen stone could be so bullied by a mere boy in a blue coat.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Lewrie said, wishing they would all go away and let him be as ill as he wished. “The ship rolled heavily.”

  “Thankee, sir,” Fowles said, knuckling his forehead gratefully, “I were clumsy, sir, but meant no harm, sir.”

  “That’s all, fellow. You may go,” Alan told him.

  Fowles ducked out like a shot, leaving Rolston blazing. “Goddamn you, Lewrie. Don’t interfere like that again, or I’ll make it hard on you.”

  “You,” Alan said. “Buss my blind cheeks, turkey cock. Pigeons could sit on your shoulder and eat seeds out of your arse, hop-o’-my-thumb. Now go push on a rope, or whatever, before I decide to hurt you.”

  They faced each other for a moment, one frailer boy whose voice had not broken completely, arms akimbo and chin out like Lieutenant Harm; the other broader shouldered and man-sized, coolly amused, yet at the same time threatening.

  Rolston was the one to finally give way. With a petulant noise he whirled about and fled the compartment, utterly frustrated. Once he was gone, Lewrie sank down onto the nearest sea chest and began to strip off his wet clothing. He unlocked his own and dug down for dry breeches and stockings, not forgetting to pack away his cocked hat in its japanned box and fetch out the boyish round hat he had hoped not to wear. Once dry and in fresh togs, he succumbed to misery, letting go a moan of despair and sickness. He clapped a hand to his mouth.

  “What the hell are you, then?” a drink-graveled voice asked. “A new midshipman? Should have known … look at yer chest, all on top an’ nothin’ handy. What’s yer name, boy?”

  “Lewrie,” Alan said, ready to spew. “What are you?”

  “Mister Tencher, Master Gunner. You’ll say sir to me, or I’ll have you kissin’ the gunner’s daughter before you’re a day older.”

  “You want me to kiss your daughter?” Alan wondered aloud. She must be a real dirty-puzzle if he meant it as a threat.

  “Are you that ignorant? I’ve a feelin’ you and the gunner’s daughter will be great friends right soon.”

  “Not right now, if you please. I’m feeling a bit ill at the moment, sir.”

  “You’ve a sense of humor, anyway. Sick, eh? Had your breakfast, then?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Alan mumbled, feeling his bile rise.

  “Biscuit n’ burgoo’ll fix you right up.” Tencher grinned.

  “Where might one … uh?”

  “Need to shit through your teeth? Try it in this bucket.”

  Once empty, Tencher had prescribed his own version of nostrum, a hot rum toddy and a turn about the decks in the frigid January air. Lewrie choked down the rum and staggered topside. He had to admit it worked; after an hour, no one gaped at his pallor any longer. He was ice-cold down to his bones, but the cold had a reviving effect, as did the occasional splash of salt spray that plumed off the wave tops and smacked him in the face. Once free of immediate distress, he began to take note of his surroundings, and it was awe-inspiring to see all the miles of rope that made up the maze of rigging coiled on the decks, on rails, all leading upward to the masts that swayed back and forth over his head; all the blocks and all the ordered clutter of the guns and their own ropes and blocks and tackles.

  It was all so overwhelming, so confusing, that he didn’t think he could ever even begin to discover what each did, much less become competent in the use of such a spider web. His physical unease became lost in his anxiety over how he had been received so far, and his nagging fear that not only was he stuck in the Navy for the duration of the war, but possibly for life. What career could he undertake after this? And if it was to be his career, he had a sneaking suspicion that most likely he would be a total, miserable failure at it!

  What a terrible, shitten life this is going t
o be, he brooded. And I’ve made such a terrible start on my first day.

  Suddenly he jerked to a halt in his perambulations about the deck. Had not Kenyon told him to come back right after he was dressed, to see the ship’s first lieutenant? And was that perhaps a whole hour or better ago? Oh, damn me, they’ll beat me crippled.

  He turned to dash aft toward the quarterdeck, where he had seen officers, but before he could, shrill whistles began to blow some sort of complicated warbling call, and the ship became alive with running men.

  That’s it, they’re going to hang me as soon as they catch me. He felt a tugging on his sleeve and looked down to behold a very young midshipman, a mere babe of about twelve.

  “You must be our newly,” the tiny apparition said. “I’m Beckett. Better get in line with us. Captain’s coming off-shore.”

  “So then what happens?” Alan asked, wondering for his safety, eager for a place to hide.

  “Get in line here with the rest of us, I told you.”

  “Down here, you. By height. Between me and Ashburn,” a very old-looking midshipman told him. He had to be twenty if he was a day. Alan shouldered between him and a very elegantly turned out midshipman, if such a thing was possible in their plain uniforms. The other boy was about eighteen, handsome, with grey eyes and a noble face.

  “I’m Keith Ashburn,” the youth whispered. “That’s Chapman, our senior.”

  “Alan Lewrie,” he said.

  Then there was no time for more talk, as all the officers turned up in their blue and gold and white, their swords glistening. There were Marines in red coats and white crossbelts, slapping their muskets about, their sergeants holding half-pikes, and two officers; one very young lieutenant with a baby face, and one very lean and dashing-looking captain of Marines who resembled a sheathed razor. Such members of the crew also appeared, that were not below out of discipline.

  “Boat ahoy,” someone called down to the gig, and the answering shout came back “Ariadne,” meaning that the captain was in the boat. After a few moments, the Marines presented their muskets and the officers presented swords while the bosun’s pipes shrilled some complicated lieder that Lewrie found most annoying.

  A bulky man in the uniform of a post-captain came slowly through the entry port and briefly doffed his hat to ship’s company.

  God, what a face, Alan thought; looks like a pit bull–dog I once lost money on.

  The captain of Ariadne was in his late forties, a gotch-bellied man with very thin and short legs. He wore his own hair, clubbed back into a massive grey queue, and his eyebrows seemed to have a life of their own and danced like bat’s wings in the breeze.

  “Dismiss the hands, Mister Swift,” the captain said.

  “Aye aye, sir. Ship’s company … on hats. Dismiss.”

  “You, there, the new midshipman. Come here,” Bales thundered.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You are Lewrie?”

  “I am, sir. Come aboard to join, sir.”

  “Then why have you not reported to me and you’ve already been inboard half the morning?” the first lieutenant, Swift, said. He was a reedy, thoroughly sour-looking man with a permanent scowl on his dark face.

  “I shall see you in my cabin directly, Mister Lewrie, after I have conferred with Mister Swift. Following that, you will not tarry about signing on board in a proper fashion.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alan replied crisply as he could, but secretly terrified that he was about to catch pluperfect hell.

  “And for God’s sake, Lewrie, the proper form is ‘aye aye, sir,’” Captain Bales said petulantly. “Try it, will you? Even the Marines do so!”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Alan said, turning red.

  The captain turned to go aft, but the first lieutenant took Alan by the arm and shook him like a first-term student. “Salute and show the captain respect, goddamn you.”

  Alan doffed his hat and threw in another one of those meaningless “aye aye, sirs,” ready to weep. After they had gone, and the other midshipmen who had witnessed his ignorance had finished laughing and had gone below, Alan turned and staggered to the rail to look out at the shore, which was rising and falling in a regular pace. Alongside the petulant anger of a spoiled young man who had been humiliated before his new peers like the merest toddler, he felt such a rush of self-pity that he could not control his face screwing up in a flushed grimace, or hold back for long the acid-hot tears that threatened to explode his eyes. How could he stand this? he wondered. How could he survive all the hateful abuse, the wicked laughter at his ignorance about a career he would never have chosen in a million years? How tempting that shore looked, where people safely ate and drank and slept snug at night with never a care for this sort of misery. He contemplated finding a way to run away from all this, no matter what the consequences. He thought of killing himself, his death flinging shame on his family forever. Besides, suicide was damned fashionable these days—everybody did it.

  But then, who would care if he died? A few of his friends, and a girl or two might sigh over his coffin, but most of London would most likely feel a sense of relief. That was no way to go.

  He shoved his hands in his breeches pockets to warm them, and leaned on the solid oak bulwark, growing angry and snuffling away his tears. There was no escape—this was his life now, and he would have to make the best of it he could, until he found a way to get out … and get even.

  “I’ll make you pay for this, you filthy old bastard,” he told the harbor waters. “I’ll find a way to break you, and Pilchard, and Belinda, and Gerald, and Morton, and even that damned vicar. I’ll make all you shits pay. You want me to die, let the Navy kill me for you, but I won’t do it. I’ll be back.”

  “Lewrie,” Lieutenant Kenyon said behind him, making him leap away from the railing and spin to face him.

  “Aye aye, sir,” Alan sniffled, stained with tears but his face hot with anger.

  “Young gentlemen do not ever lean on the railings. Nor do they ever put their hands in their pockets.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “You had better go aft to the captain’s cabins and be ready for your interview,” Kenyon said.

  “What can I do to avoid making even more of an ass of myself, sir?” Alan asked him. “Though I can’t imagine doing worse than now.”

  “Follow me,” Kenyon said. As they walked aft, he told him to be sure to salute, to remove his hat once in the cabin, to speak direct and not prose on, and to remember to salute before he left.

  Alan mopped his face with a handkerchief after they had passed the wheel and entered the passage under the poop deck that led to the captain’s quarters. Kenyon pointed out the first lieutenant’s cabin on one side, and the sailing master’s on the other. They stood by the ramrod straight Marine sentry by the captain’s door until the first lieutenant emerged.

  “Who be ye, sir?” the Marine asked.

  “Midshipman Lewrie, to report to the captain,” Kenyon said.

  “Midshipman Lewrie … SAH,” the sentry said at the top of his voice, crashing the butt of his musket on the deck.

  “Enter.”

  Alan stepped through the door into a large set of cabins that spanned the entire width of the ship. There was a dining room with some rather fine chairs, table and sideboard to his right, and a study to his left filled with charts and books and a large desk. Far aft, there was a day cabin and another large desk before the stern windows. Lewrie strode up to the desk, and his bulky captain seated behind it. He tried to keep his balance as the ship groaned and rolled and pitched with a life of its own. He came to a halt three paces from the desk, hat under his arm, and gulped down his alarm at the sight of the town swinging like a pendulum beyond the stern windows.

  “Midshipman Lewrie reporting, sir.”

  “Lewrie, my name is Bales.” The captain frowned, as though disappointed with his own name. “A Captain Bevan offered me your services as a midshipman. Ariadne is at present fitting out and so is shorthanded in prime s
eamen, warrants, idlers and waisters. And midshipmen.”

  Alan didn’t think a reply was in order, but he did nod.

  “To be expected in wartime,” Bales continued. “So, I looked on Captain Bevan’s offer quite favorably, to get such a well-recommended young man.”

  And I’ll bet someone slipped you some chink, as well, Lewrie thought. What’s place for, if you can’t make money out of it.

  “Then Captain Bevan hands me this letter from your family solicitor, a Mister Pilchard of London.” Bates gloomed.

  God rot the jackanapes. What sort of lying packet did he send? Oh God, did he mention Belinda?

  “He states that you have been sent to sea to make a man of you,” Bales said sourly, “that you have been a wastrel, a scamp and a rogue. So you will understand if I feel that I have been handed a pig in a poke?”

  “Yes … aye aye, sir,” Alan all but whimpered.

  “Well, I do not intend to allow you to be a bad bargain, for me or for this ship, or for the King, Lewrie,” Bales said. “Beggars can’t be choosers, especially in what’s becoming an unpopular war. We have to take what we can get, by the press gang if necessary, so consider yourself press-ganged if you like, but you’re mine now. This letter goes on to state that you were banished.”

  “Aye, sir,” Alan said, hoping the reason was unknown.

  “And that you had to leave … Society,” Bales said, making Society sound like an epithet. “Was it a duel?”

  “A young lady, sir,” Alan said, pretending contrite apology with perhaps the hint of an ill-starred affair.

  Damme, that sounded right good, he told himself; I said that devilish well! Pray God he eats it up like plum duff.

  “You may have noticed that we already have the dregs of the hulks and the debtor’s prisons. Perhaps next Assize will flesh us out, Lewrie. Now, we have you. You know nothing of the sea, do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’d much rather be rantipoling about and playing balum rancum with some whores, wouldn’t you?” Bales posed.

  “Well, frankly … yes, sir.”