“And, here comes Prinny,” another muttered.
“His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales!” the major-domo cried.
Down the crowd went again in bows and curtsys, as a lesser fan-fare sounded.
“Be the Regent soon, you mark my words,” someone snidely hissed.
“God help us, then,” a woman whispered back. And, once the King and the Prince of Wales had passed them, and they could stand upright again, the same woman remarked, “The Prime Minister’s in no better condition. He’s played out.”
“Well, we’ve Lord Canning and Lord Castlereagh,” her companion pointed out. “And a pack of ninnies. The William Pitt government now consists of William, and Pitt, and the scribblers,” he japed.
Sir Hugo’s letter had expressed concerns that when William Pitt had returned to office, he’d refused to find a position in his ministry for Addington, whom he’d supplanted, and refused his own cousin and friend, Lord Grenville. Pitt had even angered the Navy by turning out Admiral Lord St. Vincent, “Old Jarvy,” as First Lord of the Admiralty, just as his campaign to root out corruption, malfeasance, graft, and double-dealing in the Victualling Board and HM Dockyards had begun to solve some of the long-standing problems. He’d replaced him with a man who could have cared less, Henry Viscount Melville, Lord “Business As Usual”! Government was run by an un-talented pack of nobodys.
“Looks a tad off his feed, don’t he?” Sir Hugo whispered with a raspy sarcasm. “Though Prinny’s bulkin’ up nicely, good as a prime steer.”
“Where’d ye find the wine?” Lewrie asked.
“For you, that’s for after,” his father rejoined. “No matter do I get squiffy, but you … you’re the trick-performin’ pony in this raree-show.”
“Why’d ye bring up our Harrow bomb-plot?” Lewrie further asked.
Long ago, Lewrie at a callow sixteen, and a clutch of his fellow rake-hells at Harrow had decided to emulate Guy Fawkes’s plot to blow up Parliament, and had obtained the materials with which to lash back at the school governor by blowing up his carriage house. They’d been caught right after, of course, Lewrie with the smouldering slow-match in his hands, and expelled. It was a feat to be dined out upon, but not a fact to be blurted out to a superior officer who might imagine that Lewrie still harboured pyrotechnical urges.
“Gawd, you’re clueless!” Sir Hugo said with a snort. “See how Miss Blanding was makin’ cow’s-eyes? Ye told me they were stayin’ in London t’find her a suitable match. Want t’be that poor bugger?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, they couldn’t…!” Lewrie objected.
“You’re better off than most they’ll find,” Sir Hugo sniggered. “And a bloody hero, t’boot, with a knighthood and a bank full o’ prize-money. Well, God help ’em with that project, and pity the poor fool saddled with her, soon as she pups an heir or two, and ends as round as her parents. Best they know your warts, right off.”
“Captain Lewrie … sir,” Strachan intruded with an impatient schoolmaster’s “vex” to his languid purr. “Might you find the time to join us, sir? All are in place but for you.”
“Oh … coming,” Lewrie replied, following the equerry to the middle of the carpet to join the others. He stood by Captain Blanding, took a deep breath to settle himself, and did some last-minute tugging at his shirt cuffs and the bottom of his waist-coat to settle them.
“A grand moment,” Blanding whispered to him, grinning like Puck. “A proud moment, nigh the finest in my life, Lewrie!” He was almost overcome with emotion and awe of the occasion. “Well,” he quibbled, “there was my wedding day, and the arrival of the children, but … to be so honoured!”
“And Rear-Admiral sure t’come, soon after, sir?” Lewrie hinted.
“Oh well, aye, but … to stand before His Majesty, our Soveriegn, to converse with him!” Blanding went on, looking as if he would keel over in a faint, or whirl like an Ottoman Dervish and snap his fingers in glee.
Thud-thud-thud from a ceremonial mace, and a richly toned voice was calling for Captain Stephen Blanding of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy to come forward. For a stout fellow, Blanding did most of that ritual well; deep bow atop the third rosette in the carpet from the dais, advance, stop, and bow again; it was the kneeling part that gave him a spot of bother.
A senior courtier stood by King George to hold an unrolled parchment for him to read from. “Captain Blanding … Captain Stephen Blanding … in honour of your stellar career as a Commission Sea Officer in our Royal Navy, and in grateful recognition of your splendid victory over a French squadron at the Battle of the Chandeleur Isles, we name thee Knight and Baronet,” the King intoned, stumbling a bit over the words as if he missed his spectacles. Down came the sword to tap Blanding on each shoulder, and it was done. There were some words exchanged that hardly anyone ten feet away could catch, then Captain Blanding was up and bowing and backing away for the last bow on the proper rosette, and he half-turned to Lewrie, gaping with joy and with actual tears in his eyes.
Like he just got healed by Jesus, Lewrie thought, finding this ceremony, and the most un-godlike appearance of the King, a bit of a let-down. Blanding might be reduced to a quaking aspic, but for himself, Lewrie could only chide himself for a cynic and a sham.
“Captain Alan Lewrie, of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy, will come forward!” the courtier intoned.
Third rosette; Nice carpet, Lewrie thought, looking down at it as he made his formal “leg”; I like the colours. Then it was head-up and stride forward, looking over both the King and the Prince of Wales.
A bit drifty, Lewrie thought of the former, noting how George III was turning his head about like a man looking for where he had left his hat; Bored t’death, was his thought of the Prince. Was he got up too early this mornin’, or do his nails really need a cleanin’?
The last bow, then the kneeling, and the lowering of his head, but … he really was a tad curious to witness what was about to come, so he looked up without thinking … hoping that King George would be a mite more careful with how he slung that sword about.
“Captain Alan Lew … Lewrie,” the King began, leaning to peer at the ornate document the courtier held out for him, “in honour of your stellar career as a Commission Sea Officer in our Royal Navy…”
Christ, can’t anybody pronounce it right? Lewrie thought with a wince; It ain’t like he’s a foreigner, is it?
“… grateful recognition of your inestimable part which led to victory over a French squadron at the Chandeleur Isles,” the King said in a firm voice, though leaning over to squint myopically at the parchment the courtier held, then leaned back to conclude his words. “We do now name thee Knight and Baronet,” he said, looking out over the hall, over Lewrie’s head.
“Ahem?” the courtier tried to correct.
What the bloody…? Lewrie gawped; How’s that? Did he just…?
King George looked down at Lewrie, then at the sword, with a bit of puzzlement, then tapped Lewrie once on each of his epaulets.
“Ahem?” from the courtier a little louder.
“Knight and Baronet,” King George III reiterated in a mutter, as if making a mental note to himself. “Knight and Baronet!” he said once more, as if that sounded better. He returned his placid gaze out to the crowd once more, grinning as if quite pleased with himself.
“I, ah … allow me to express my gratitude, sir … Your Majesty, mean t’say,” Lewrie managed to croak, sharing a glance with that courtier who was shaking his head, with his eyebrows up.
“What? Hey?” King George asked, looking back down at Lewrie as if he’d never seen him in his life, and how the Devil had he got there.
“Uh … that I’m proud and pleased to be so honoured, Your Majesty,” Lewrie tried again.
“Well, of course you are, young fellow, and well-deserving of it, too!” the King rejoined, beaming kindly; addled as an egg, Lewrie deemed him, but kindly! “Now, up you get!”
Lewrie rose to his feet, his mouth agape as he performed a departing
bow. Though his head was reeling, he managed to pace back with measured tread ’til he reached the third-from-the-dais rosette in the carpet, made a last “leg” with his hand on his breast, then half-turned to sidle into the larboard half of the crowd, looking for Sir Hugo and Captain Blanding. When he found them, safely deep in the second or third row of onlookers, he spread his arms wide and blared his eyes in a cock-headed grimace of “what the Hell just happened?” incredulity. He was in serious need of a stiff drink, something stronger than the wine that his father had discovered!
“Lewrie, did he say…?” Blanding asked, looking aghast.
“ ’Deed he did, sir,” Lewrie replied, shaking his head. “It must have stuck in his head from yours, and he did it by rote. I’m sure it was a mistake, soon t’be corrected.”
Blanding’s wife was looking huffy, as if Lewrie had both insulted the Sovereign and diminished the grandeur of her husband’s investiture. Chaplain Brundish and the new-minted Reverend Blanding frowned as if someone—like Lewrie—had run stark naked through church, whilst Miss Blanding was making cow-eyes, as if actually impressed.
“Pity it won’t stick,” Sir Hugo drawled, looking wryly amused.
“Where’d ye find the wine?” Lewrie asked him. “And do they have brandy?”
Now the King was conferring honours on the Cambridge don, this time reading much more closely and sticking to the script. A polite round of applause followed. The Foreign Office chap got his knighthood—and no more!—and all applauded again, the tepid sort of acknowledgement preferred in Society; too much enthusiasm was deemed crude and “common.” Once the last claps died, the string music began again, and people began to mingle, filling up the lane between. Trays of wine began to circulate, and Lewrie excused himself from the Blandings to beat up to a liveried servant with flutes of champagne, threading his way between people in his haste, nodding and smiling whenever one of them addressed him as “Sir Alan” in congratulations. He almost snagged a glass, but for the interruption of the senior courtier who’d first steered him to the side-chamber.
“A word, if I may, Sir Alan? May I be the first to address you as such?” he asked.
“About the, ah…?” Lewrie asked with a knowing smile.
“Exactly so, sir. If you would be so kind as to come this way?”
He was led to the same side-chamber, where Sir Harper Strachan, Baron Ludlow, stood grimacing and working his mouth from side to side in agitation, as if he wore badly-fitted dentures.
“Hah! There you are, sir!” Strachan snapped, stamping his cane on the floor like a school proctor about to thrash an unready student, as if the gaffe was Lewrie’s fault, and doing.
“Aye, here I am, milord,” Lewrie coolly answered, wondering if he actually was in some sort of trouble.
“We feared you would get away before being presented with your patent, and your decorations, Sir Alan,” the senior courtier said with an Oxonian drawl much like Strachan’s, but much more pleasantly, as if trying to defuse the situation … or defuse Strachan. “If you’d be so good as to remove your coat for a moment, Sir Alan?”
Lewrie had not noticed before that a long side-board bore several shallow rectangular boxes, one of which the courtier opened. “Your sash, Sir Alan,” he said, producing a wide bright blue strip of satin which he looped over Lewrie’s chest from right shoulder to left hip.
Christ, this is for real! Lewrie realised as he put his coat back on, and the courtier brought out the silver-and-cloisonné star, which he pinned to the left breast of Lewrie’s uniform coat.
“Most wear the sash under the coat, sir,” the courtier informed him, “though there are some who wish their coats to be doubled over and buttoned, then wear the sash outside the coat, beneath the right epaulet.”
“Risky for gravy stains,” was the first thing to pop into Alan Lewrie’s head.
“Oh, indeed, Sir Alan!” the courtier agreed, simpering happily.
“Grr,” or what sounded like it, from Strachan.
“The documents will have to follow along, later, Sir Alan,” the courtier went on. “They must be amended, do you see as will the preliminary work of the College of Heralds, to reflect your baronetcy.”
“Amended? Mean t’say the King’s slip’ll…?” Lewrie gaped.
“Sir Alan,” Strachan interjected, high-nosed and arch, though striving for pleasance. “His Majesty, the Crown, does not make slips, as you term them. His Majesty does not err.” That word sounded more like “Grrr” without the G. “And, should our Sovereign, ehm … get ahead of himself, then it is no error.”
“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie blurted, stunned. “Mean t’say I really did … the King really did make me a baronet, too?”
“That is the case, Sir Alan,” the courtier said, beaming.
“He did,” Strachan intoned, sounding imperious and angered.
“One must assume, Sir Alan, that His Majesty, on the spur of the moment, deemed your actions in the battle … the only noteworthy that occurred last year entire … so praiseworthy that he decided to name you Knight and Baronet in sign of royal gratitude,” the courtier conjectured with a hopeful note to his voice. “And, enfin, what’s done is done, and … to borrow the phrase from the Order of the Garter, Honi soit qui mal y pensé, what?”
Lewrie goggled at him, dredging through his poor abilities with French for a long second or two before he twigged to it. Shame on him who thinks evil of it! he understood, at last.
“Grr,” again from Strachan, who was a Knight of the Garter.
“Mine arse on a…,” Lewrie croaked.
I’m in through the scullery door … or the coal scuttle, Lewrie thought, whilst the courtier beamed and nodded and Strachan ground his teeth. He shook his head in dis-belief that the King, who should have been better off in Bedlam by this point, could announce his marriage to his horse like the Roman Emperor Caligula, and the sycophants in the royal court would find an excuse for it, and ain’t he the wag, though?
’Twixt the King, the shaky Prime Minister William Pitt, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s threatened invasion, England’s in a pretty pickle, he sadly thought; pretty much up Shit’s Creek!
“Now I think I really need a drink,” Lewrie told them.
There was a soft rap at the door, and a servant whispered that the rest of the honourees were assembled for their presentations. The senior courtier nodded and bade them be sent in.
With them, thankfully, came another servant with a silver tray of wine glasses, yet another with a magnum of champagne (a war with the French notwithstanding), so that Lewrie could snatch one and press the second servant to top him up while the others were receiving the marks of their new distinctions.
“Gentlemen, a glass with you all,” Sir Harper Strachan said at last as the champagne circulated and Lewrie got his second. “Congratulations and happy felicitations on this day!”
After the toast, they were free to re-enter the great hall and circulate with their families and friends. Captain Blanding stuck to Lewrie for a bit on their way out.
“Sir Stephen, sir,” Lewrie said with a wink and a nod, raising what was left of his champagne in toast.
“Sir Alan, haw!” Blanding responded in kind. “Ehm … did they set things right?” he enquired, leaning close and looking concerned.
“In a manner o’ speakin’, sir,” Lewrie told him. “It seems the Crown don’t make errors, else they’d have t’admit that His Majesty is soft in the head, again, so … it’ll stand, can you believe it.”
That froze Blanding dead in his tracks, with a stricken look on his phyz. “Well now, sir … that’s simply … ehm.” It seemed that Blanding did feel irked by Lewrie being elevated to his own level; as if his own investiture had been diminished, and robbed him of all the joy of it. He recovered well-enough to say, “Well now! Congratulations to you, Captain Lewrie.”
“And mine to you, sir,” Lewrie replied. “You, at least, more than earned it,” he confessed.
“Ah, ther
e’s the wife!” Blanding quickly said, looking away.
“And you must show her how well you look in sash and star, sir,” Lewrie said, looking for escape as much as Blanding.
“Aye, I shall. See you later, Sir Alan,” Blanding said.
“Sir Stephen,” Lewrie replied, tossing off a brief bow from the waist, and wondering if that promised celebration dinner and jaunt to Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s Cathedral was dead-off.
Once he found his father, Lewrie could not help giving him a toothy grin and saying, “I out-rank you, now. Do we ever dine out together, I’ll precede you to the table.”
“Mean t’say yer baronetcy’ll stand?” Sir Hugo gawped, then was taken with loud laughter, the place and the august company bedamned. “Good Christ, but he must be deeper in the Bedlam ‘Blue-Devils’ than anyone thought. Sir Romney Embleton probably won’t mind, but, damme, will young Harry throw a horse-killin’ fit, begad!”
“Yes, he will … won’t he?” Lewrie smirked, savouring how it would go down with that otter-chinned fool to have a second baronet in Anglesgreen when his father passed on, and he inherited the rank.
“I must write Sewallis at once, and tell him he’ll be a knight when I am gone,” Lewrie said. “Now, where’s some more champagne?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Now, how does a baronet conduct himself? Lewrie asked himself as he made a slow circuit of the hall with a fresh champagne in his hand, and an eye out for the nearest refills. And for the comely young women present … so long as it wasn’t the Blandings’ mort. Sir Hugo had strayed away in pursuit of the auburn-haired woman they’d spotted early on; he wished him joy of it, though he smugly thought that she’d not had eyes for that old rogue. It must be admitted that, now that he was knight and baronet, even a back-door variety, he began to enjoy the rare chance to preen. It wouldn’t last, of course; within a few days he would be back in dreary Sheerness, back aboard Reliant, and in the minutiae of ship-board life, and his sash and star stowed away at the bottom of a sea-chest. The hall was not so crowded with people, nor was it as candle-lit as it might be for an evening event, that it had grown oppressively warm, and someone must have thrown up the many sash-windows and opened some glassed double-doors to let in the cool day’s wind.
The Invasion Year Page 19