The King's Coat

by Dewey Lambdin

  Alan burped gently, appreciating the supper he had eaten; boiled horse, more fresh bread, a good and filling pease pudding and a raisin duff their temporary cook had created.

  He had opened a bottle of the French captain’s own wine and was slowly sipping at the last of it, a most pleasant red from a St. Emilion vintner. They were reefed down for the night, with the main course taken in and the forecourse at two reefs, two reefs in the tops’ls as well and fair weather at least until morning.

  Coin-silver lamps swayed over the desk at which he had dined, making the spacious cabin seem like a palace. There was a good carpet on the deck spread over painted canvas, the paneling was glossy white with much gold leaf and the furnishings were exquisitely carved and detailed. After a hammock it was going to be like sleeping in the Palace at Versailles, even if he was going to doss down on the settee, which was as wide and soft as any bed he had ever experienced.

  “This is what I should have … to be rich enough to have fine things around me, a whole house in London this nice, a place in the country with a good stable of horses and if I do have to be aboard ship, to have all this room and finery…”

  Which, of course, wasn’t going to happen, he realized. Treghues would come out of his rantings and remember that he hated Alan worse than cold boiled mutton, and he would be casting about for another ship, this time without Sir Onsley’s immediate influence. And there was always the possibility that he would be turned out of the Navy and sent home, or left to make his own way in the Indies. Ways could be found, reasons invented to ruin him, if Treghues really disliked him so much. Perhaps the best thing would be to go into another ship, where he could start fresh with no prejudice against him. Alan sat up and finished his wine, then walked out through the cabins for the quarterdeck, restless and worried.

  “Evenin’, Mister Lewrie,” Toliver said, knuckling his forehead.

  “Evening, Mister Toliver. Everyone dossed down?”

  “Aye, sir. Watch-and-watch ta Antigua’s gonna be a bitch, sir, but we’ll cope right enough.”

  “Seems calm enough for now. Call me just before midnight for me to relieve you. I’m going to turn in.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Alan went back aft. He blew out every lamp but one, shucked his clothes and found a clean linen sheet for a cover to make his bed. He also discovered the need to visit the quarter gallery.

  Privacy for his bowels was another luxury to which he was unaccustomed, having to share the beakhead roundhouse with the other inferior petty officers, or the open rail seats if he was caught short. But here, the French master had a cabinet much like a regular jakes back home in a round quarter-gallery right aft under the larboard taffrail lanterns, a spacious closet with a door he could shut, windows above the shoulder to provide a view of the sea, a small chest that held soft scrap-paper for cleanliness, a bucket of seawater for a steward to sluice down the seat and pipe which conveyed wastes overboard, even a small lamp if the former captain felt like reading.

  Lewrie leaned his head back wearily, watching the starlight play on the sea, felt the ship ride beneath him with a steady, reassuring motion. He bumped his head gently on the deal panel behind him, to the rock of the sea.

  It sounded hollow.

  He squirmed about and rapped on the walls to either side. Solid. But right behind the necessary, it sounded hollow.

  Once finished with his needs he fetched his dirk and began to thump with the pommel at the partition behind the seat. There was more quarter-gallery below him for the officer’s mess, set more forward than his but in the same turreted tower built into the side of the hull. His disposal chute would pass aft of their seats, partitioned off from view. Which meant that there was a room perhaps the size of the closet behind that hollow partition, above the wardroom “necessary.”

  He switched ends, probing between the deal planks with the point of his dirk, but with no success. He went back to the day cabin and lit another lamp to improve his vision.

  To the inboard side of the closet there was a tiny nick in the deal next to the day cabin bulkhead, a fault in the wood and in the paint. Alan inserted his blade there, pressed down on it. There was a faint click that could have been the lamp swinging. But when he pried with his blade, the deal gave a little. He pried more, and it looked as if it might hinge outboard, but he could not get it to move. Finally he leaned against it, and felt something give, like a latch letting go.

  The entire panel behind the jakes swung outboard, a square of perhaps three feet by three feet, its edges masked by the wainscoting. Inside was a stout lining of oak perhaps six inches thick. And in the space remaining there was an ironbound chest with a lock as large as a turnip hung on a hinged hasp.

  Lewrie took hold of the handles and pulled it forward. It was fascinatingly heavy and gave off a faint metallic rustle. Lewrie staggered out of the quarter-gallery with the chest until he could drop the burden on the transom settee.

  He rifled the desk and tried every key he found before discovering the one that fit the lock. There was a well-oiled clanking of the tumblers as the huge lock sprang open.

  It was nearly as delicious an emotion to raise that lid as it was to lift a woman’s skirt. Once inside, there was a wooden box on top that contained a fine set of dueling pistols, which he set aside. There were some letters, mostly personal from the late captain’s family, some orders from the firm of Mulraix et Fils but nothing of any import that he could discover with his poor command of French. There was, however, a folded bit of canvas … and then—there was gold.

  Bags of it, rolls of it, little wooden boxes full of it, with the amount and the denominations and nations of origin inked onto slips of paper tacked down to each parcel with wax or tied as labels to the bags.

  There were Spanish pistoles, Spanish dollars, French livres and louis d’or, Dutch guilders and Danish kroner. And there were sovereigns, golden guineas, two-guineas, bright-shining “yellowboys” in rolls and boxes and bags.

  It was too much to be the late captain’s working capital for the voyage. It was enough to purchase a dozen Indiamen!

  “Merciful God in Heaven,” Lewrie whispered in awe, letting some loose coins trickle through his fingers. He was not sure of the value of the foreign coins in comparison to the guineas, but it seemed like an awful lot … a most temptingly awful lot! But sadly it was a devilishly heavy and unconcealable lot. He left the gold and went forward to the doors to the quarterdeck, listening to see if anyone had discovered him in the midst of his temptation.

  The sight of all that gold made him open the master’s wine cabinet and pull out a bottle of brandy. He poured himself a large measure with shaky hands and went back to the chest.

  There was a paper inventory stuck at the back of the chest. Altogether it seemed as if there might be over £80,000 there if the foreign coin had the same value as the guineas.

  He let the heavy coins trickle through his hands again, and thought about it … damned hard.

  It’d have lain there, undiscovered, except for me, he reasoned. Not on the manifest, not listed when we turned the ship over to the Prize Court. Some surveyor or shipyard worker would have found it, if they’d have found it at all. And none of this squadron would ever see a penny of it, and some silver-buttoned whip jack or lard-arsed landsman would go home richer than a chicken-nabob …

  That settled in his mind, he counted up the number of inferior petty officers in Desperate, and in the squadron, that might share in this unbelievable bounty, and came up with roughly eighty men to share £10,000—£125 apiece. Fair wages, he decided, but not the financial security he was looking for.

  There was absolutely no way he could get that chest off the prize, and ashore. Three men couldn’t heft his sea-chest if he stored it in there. It would be years, perhaps, before he returned to England to pay off, and no way he could keep that much gold safely hidden for that long. No prize agent ashore could be trusted not to peek, and then questions would be raised as to where he had gotten so
much foreign coin, not to mention so many English guineas.

  Once a week for the last year and a half, first Captain Bales, then Lieutenant Kenyon, and now Commander Treghues had read the Articles out at Divisions, and by now Alan could almost quote Article Eight verbatim:

  “No person in or belonging to the Fleet shall take out of any Prize, or Ship seized for Prize, any Money, Plate or Goods, unless it shall be necessary for the better securing thereof, or for the necessary Use and Service of any of his Majesty’s Ships or Vessels of War, before the same be adjudged lawful Prize in some Admiralty Court; but the full and entire Account of the Whole, without Embezzlement, shall be brought in, and Judgment passed entirely upon the Whole without Fraud; upon pain that every Person offending herein shall forfeit or lose his Share of the Capture, and suffer such further Punishment as shall be imposed by a Court-Martial, or such Court of Admiralty, according to the Nature and Degree of the Offence.”

  That was pretty clear. If they catch me I’d be flogged around the fleet. Rodney would have me hung up in tar and chains until my bones fall apart. But …

  He got to his feet and went to peer up at the poop deck skylight. It was closed. He listened intently for any sound from above, scared someone like Toliver might have been peeking on him. He decided that all anyone could see from the best angle with the skylight shut was the forward edge of the desk, not as far back as the transom settee and that dirty, great chest. He went back aft and sat beside the chest, hefting several of the bags of gold coins. He took up a rouleau of coins in his fist and pondered on the possible repercussions.

  “Money is the root of all evil,” he recited, remembering his nursery school days, the catechism of good behavior that had been lashed into him at Harrow (and other schools). One hundred twenty-five pounds is nothing to turn your nose up at. But then … neither is this little rouleau of one-guinea pieces …

  That was £105 he held in his fist, equal his yearly allowance from Pilchard, and who knew how long that bequest would last. And this small box that held two hundred two-guinea coins was worth £420!

  He pawed through the contents, setting aside rouleaus and boxes of mostly two-guinea coins, quickly making up a sum of over £1,000.

  Call it a finder’s fee, he told himself, claiming a final roll of one-guinea coins. He rose and went to his sea-chest, which had been stored along the after bulkhead near the coach. Using his dirty shirt as a screen, he opened the chest, pawed down through his belongings to a secure depth, and stashed his find, emerging with a clean shirt that he made a great production of shaking out and inspecting for serviceability for the morning. He closed his chest and went aft, laying the shirt out on the desk.

  “This has to go,” he whispered, staring at the inventory list. He shredded it as he stepped out onto the stern gallery into the wind, fed the tiny pieces into the wake, hoping that they were too small to be legible if blown onto the poop deck or officer’s gallery below. Once back in the cabin he restowed the contents of the chest, still a mind-numbing mass of yellow metal. He checked carefully that there was no other accounting of the chest’s contents. He read all the business and personal letters, found no mention of the gold in any of them.

  Only then did he relock the chest and stagger back into the necessary closet with it, sliding it back into its niche and closing the secret panel on it with a wooden click of hidden latches.

  He slid the keys back into the desk, then had to search it all for any paper that might explain the presence of the gold.

  God, was it mentioned in those papers Railsford has? he suddenly asked himself. “If it was money for Rochambeau or Lafayette, DeGrasse would have mentioned it, might have given an accounting…”

  Alan had planned to “accidentally” discover the chest in the morning and take it over to Amphion, but now he was not sure. If he pretended to find it, and some of it turned up missing, he would be blamed for any shortage.

  In that case I should take more of the guineas, he told himself. What if no one ever finds it? Then nearly £78,000 goes to waste until this ship is scrapped or lost.

  No, it was too much of a risk to take more, especially foreign or large-denomination coins he could never explain. And he could not “discover” it.

  God, how awful, he thought. What a hellish dilemma I’ve put myself in. I should put those guineas back and hope for the best part of my legal share. But he didn’t, of course.

  * * *

  “Stand by, the anchor party,” Lewrie shouted as Ephegenie rounded up into the wind. Shorthanded as they were, they barely sailed farther into English Harbor than under the guns on the point, a single jib standing, and courses already brailed up, and only one tops’l set to draw wind. She was sluggish to turn, barely under steerage-way, but they were home-free.

  “Back your tops’l,” Lewrie ordered. “Keep her on the eye of the wind, quartermaster.”

  “No helm, sir,” the man said, idling the spokes of the wheel back and forth.

  “Let go.” The bower cable roared out the hawse and the anchor splashed into the harbor. “Let go braces and veer out a full cable.”

  “Done fine, sir,” Toliver said quietly in encouragement, and Alan felt a relief so great that it was almost like a sexual release. For a week he had been nervous as a cat, unable to sleep with the secret knowledge of the gold, unable to relax with the prize so poorly manned, afraid of making a mistake in managing the ship or losing her to a sudden squall. They had run into rising winds for two days, which had kept him wide awake and mostly on deck. They had run through rain and the threat of foul weather, until the skies had cleared and the Trades had settled down to balmy behavior once more.

  Now Ephegenie lay as still as a stone bridge in the lee of the capes, her anchor firm on the bottom, and a boat-full of dockyard men pulling strongly for them to take charge of her.

  “I never knew running a ship would be so hard,” Alan confessed to Toliver.

  “Shorthanded as we were, it was, sir,” Toliver said but with an assuring tone. “With a full crew, it’s all claret an’ prize money.”

  “We were fortunate.” Alan flinched. Did he know…?

  “Average sort o’ passage. But I reckon we’d have done just as good in a full gale, sir … Busy damned place, ain’t it?”

  “What Railsford carried to Hood must have stirred up the Fleet.”

  The harbor was working alive with rowing boats servicing the needs of the many warships anchored in the outer roads. There were several ships of the line that Alan knew had been based on St. Lucia to the south. There were three 3rd Rates in a row warping themselves out of the inner harbor up the row of pilings getting ready for sea, an entire fleet of fourteen sail-of-the-line, preparing for something.

  And here was a midshipman with twenty dockyard hands from the Admiralty Court. Were they there to arrest him for theft? The midshipman was elegantly turned out, his breeches and waistcoat and shirt as white as a hammockman could bleach them, his mien serious and superior, and Alan recognized himself from times before with a grin.

  “Who is in charge of the prize, may I ask?” the midshipman asked with a lofty accent.

  “I am,” Alan said firmly, almost swaggering in his stained and faded uniform. “I expect you want the manifests and ship’s papers. I have them aft.”

  “Very well,” the other man said. He was a full man, over twenty and possibly passed for lieutenant already, or an aristocratic coxcomb too stupid to pass it. “Much bother?”

  “Not after we took her.” Lewrie shrugged. “Hard fight.”

  Alan led him to the master’s cabins, made generous with the claret while the other midshipman went through the papers.

  “Has the Desperate frigate come in?” Alan asked casually. “Is she still here? I should like to rejoin my ship if possible.”

  “Yes, she’s here, farther up the roads,” the midshipman said as he mumbled his way through the French manifests. “If you would sign this I shall take possession of the prize for the Court of Ad
miralty and you may leave her. You may use my boat and crew to remove your people.”

  “Gladly.”

  “Much of a fight?” the other asked, trying not to sound too curious but itching to know, in spite of how much it might irk.

  “A company of line infantry from a French regiment … Soissonois. A full battery of artillerymen, plus her crew, of course. Hot work for a while, our captain wounded and already nearly forty hands short from other prizes,” Alan said with ease, as though it were an everyday occurrence. “There’re big doings up in the Americas. Might be a big land battle soon, and Hood seems to be getting ready to face DeGrasse, too.”

  The other midshipman by then was looking crushed to be a shore stallion, resentful of being denied the chance to live such a grand life.

  “Is that all you need from me?” Alan asked with a wave.

  “Yes … quite.”

  “Then I shall take my leave of you. I’d like a brace of hands to help with my chest, if you don’t mind.”

  “Certainly!” the other said through pursed lips.

  * * *

  It was a delight to climb through the entry port and doff his hat to Lieutenant Railsford, to see all the familiar faces back aboard, to see his chest safely swayed up with a stay-tackle and thump to the deck without spilling gold or jingling.

  “Welcome back aboard, Mister Lewrie,” Railsford said pleasantly. “How was your first real command?”

  “Hectic, sir. I don’t believe I slept a wink,” he confessed.

  “Good training for you. We’re going north as eyes for the Fleet. Hood himself received me. Already knew from Admiral Graves that something was up and was getting ready to sail for New York, but our news was welcome, nonetheless.”

  “Did we get all our people back, sir?” Alan asked as they went aft.

  “Yes, fortunately. We shall need them.”

  “And Commander Treghues?”