The Invasion Year

CHAPTER NINE

A few more celebratory glasses of Rhenish put paid to Lewrie’s plans for his late morning. In addition to the routine paperwork of a fighting ship, there was a new pile of directives from the Admiralty to be read through, initialed, filed away, or answered; he, and almost every Midshipman he had ever known from his early days, had been laid over a gun to “kiss the gunner’s daughter” for the sin of reading one’s personal mail, first, and neglecting Words From On High… even were those words corrected sailing directives for the safe navigation of the Yellow Sea, which 99 percent of the Royal Navy would never even get close to, much less transit. To his cats’ dismay, Lewrie and his clerk, James Faulkes, spent the rest of the Forenoon sorting it all out, and penning responses, too intent to play with them, shooing them off the day cabin desk and protecting Faulkes’s feathered quill pens.

The musicians had struck up “The Bowld Soldier Boy” at half past eleven, at Seven Bells, and the Purser, Mr. Cadbury, Marine Lieutenant Simcock, and the Purser’s Assistant/Clerk, Bewley (better known as the Jack-In-The-Breadroom), had escorted the painted rum cask on deck for the mid-day issue; Faulkes had gone antsy to miss it, forcing Lewrie to suspect that it was not just rejected love that had driven Faulkes to sea.

“Well, I think that should do it, Faulkes,” Lewrie said at last, as the very last reply was sanded to dry the ink, carefully folded and sealed, then addressed. “Sorry it took so long. You might visit the galley and see Mister Cooke… he’s always a pint of something hidden away. Did you miss the issue, he’ll allow you a nip.”

“Thank you, sir, and I shall,” Faulkes said, departing.

“Well, lads?” Lewrie invited to his cats, who sprang atop the desk to prowl, bow their backs, yawn, and stretch, then nuzzle at his hands. “You just can’t play with the pretty feathered pens, it isn’t-”

“Hands is being piped to Mess, sir,” Pettus, his cabin servant, said, cocking an ear to the silver calls on deck. “A glass of wine, sir?”

“Cold tea,” Lewrie decided. “I’ve done that, this morning.”

“Aye, Sir Alan, sir,” Pettus said with a tight, pleased grin.

“Hey?” Lewrie scowled back.

“Well…’tis all over the ship, sir,” Pettus told him. “Soon as your boat crew was dismissed, they were all bragging on it.”

“It’s not official ’til we get back to England, Pettus,” Lewrie pointed out to him. “ ’Til then… ‘Captain,’ or a plain ‘sir,’ will suit. And, for a long time after. Damned silliness,” he scoffed.

“Well, sir… I’ve served a vicar, and a bishop, but they don’t hold a candle to a Knight of the Bath,” Pettus said, almost sulking to be denied.

“You served a parcel o’ drunks at that inn in Portsmouth, ’fore you came away t’rejoin, too,” Lewrie said with a wry grin, “and, most-like one’r two o’ them were titled, so it don’t signify. Unless it’d look good on yer references, do ye ever wish t’leave my service.”

“Why would I wish to do that, sir?” Pettus rejoined, in merry takings. “Being a knight’s ‘man’ puts me a leg up over most other gentlemen’s servants.”

“Cap’m’s cook… SAH!” the Marine sentry bawled, smashing his musket butt and boots on the deck outside.

“Enter!” Lewrie called back, rising to go to the dining-coach, and his table. “Come on, catlin’s… tucker!”

Yeovill bustled in with a large, shallow wooden box-like tray, covered with a cloth. “Good mornin’ to you, Sir Alan! We’ve somethin’ special, to celebrate. And, somethin’ special for the cats, to boot!”

Dammit! Lewrie groused; This could get irksome, all this “Sir” shit… it’ll be bowin’ an’ scrapin’, next!

He would have fired off a bit of temper, a swivel-gun’s worth, perhaps, not an 18-pounder of “damn yer eyes!” but, when he beheld his dinner, he let it slide.

“All fresh from shore this mornin’, sir,” Yeovill boasted. “A parcel of shrimp, grilled in lemon and butter… drippy bacon salad, boiled field peas, and”-Yeovill pointed to each as he named them, revealing the best for last-“spicy jerked guinea fowl, sir! Oh, I’ve a mango custard for a sweet, too, sir… with vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cream.”

“Well now, this is a grand treat, Yeovill,” Lewrie agreed as he sat down. “Jerked, ye say? That’s…?”

“An island style of seasonin’, Sir Alan, sir!” Yeovill beamed. “Peppers and chilies, sweet spices, all together. Zestiest, tangiest saucin’ ever I put in my own mouth.”

“A white wine, sir?” Pettus suggested. “You’ve still most of a crate of sauvignon blanc.”

“Cool tea,” Lewrie reiterated. Long before in the West Indies, a neglected pot of tea, an unlit warming candle, had forced him to sip the rest; that, or toss it out the transom sash-windows and have his old cabin servant, Aspinall, brew up another. With lemon and sugar, it had proved refreshing, and Lewrie had had Aspinall make up half a gallon each morning, ’til the tropic sun was “below the yardarms” and he could switch to wine before his supper.

Yeovill had even laid aside some un-seasoned shrimp, de-tailed and peeled for the cats, along with strips of guinea fowl. Toulon and Chalky did not stand on seniority, naval or social, and dug into their bowls with gusto; Chalky had the odd tendency to purr while he ate!

And, after a few sampled bites from each dish, so did Lewrie!

After such a fine repast, it was even harder for Lewrie to keep his eyes open, but… there was personal mail to be read. He sorted it out into the most-likely agreeable, first, saving those from tradesmen and his least favourite kin for last.

His solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, assured him that he owed no debts, with a long column of double-entry incomes and out-goes to tailors, chandlers, cobblers, hatters, and grocers showing that all his notes-of-hand turned in by them to Mountjoy had been redeemed to the ha’pence.

There was profit, too, now deposited to his account at Coutts’ Bank. Admiralty Prize-Court had finally awarded him his two-eighths for the L’Uranie frigate that he’d taken in the South Atlantic… in 1798! She had not been “bought in” by the Navy right away, but laid up in-ordinary for survey and inspection, for years, before going into the graving docks, and the idle time had not been kind to her material condition. There had been another British two-decker “in sight” when she’d struck, so he only got ?1,250 for her, but still…

But, there was Captain Speaks, and his furious demands for his bloody Franklin-pattern coal stoves that he’d purchased with his own funds for HMS Thermopylae before he’d come down with pneumonia in the Baltic and North Sea Winter, and Lewrie had relieved him of command.

Thermopylae was now in the Bay of Bengal, and might be for the next five years; her Purser, who had offered to ship them off to good Captain Speaks, had not, and was still aboard her. Any letter Speaks sent in search of his ironmongery took six months to reach her, with no guarantee that the letter might not be eaten by termites or Indian ants at Calcutta or Bombay before Thermopylae returned to port after a four-month cruise-longer if she could re-victual in a foreign port-and even a prompt reply would take six more months to make its way back to England. Since Captain Speaks very much doubted if the frigate needed heating stoves in the East Indies, he was raving to discover where they might have been off-loaded! Did he not get satisfaction, he threatened legal action, had retained a serjeant to press his case in Common Pleas, and etc. amp; etc., liberally sprinkled with dire suspicions that Lewrie was up to his eyebrows in collusion with a crooked purser! He would not be brushed aside in such a brusque manner!

… the Value of the Stoves Captain Speaks estimates at ?35 each, and intends to seek a sum of ?140, plus his legal Expenses. Do please write me on this head, sir, at your earliest Convenience…

“Aw, shit!” Lewrie muttered, strongly considering his crock of aged American corn whisky for a moment. He didn’t know what Herbert Pridemore had done with the bloody stoves, but, Thermopylae had paid off in December of 1801, and they’d have been damned welcome for the Standing Officers, kiddies, and wives who would live aboard her whilst she was laid up in the Sheerness ordinary in Winter… of which the Purser, Mr. Pridemore, was a part! Perhaps he’d meant to ship them to the north of England, but had put it off ’til the Summer, and…

“Bugger ’em,” Lewrie growled. The cats woke from their naps on the starboard-side settee table, the large, round brass Hindoo tray that was so cool to sprawl on during a tropic afternoon. With no invitation to play forthcoming, they closed their eyes, again.

Next, a letter from his father, Sir Hugo.

His rented farm was gone. The two-storey house he and Caroline had built in 1789 for ?800, the brick-and-timber barn they’d erected to replace an ancient, tumble-down wattle-and-daub one with a roof of straw-bug- and rat-infested since the War of The Roses, most-like!-the storage towers for silage and grain, and the brick stables and coach house were now the property of his favourite brother-in-law, Major Burgess Chiswick, and his bride, Theadora; as were all his former livestock, except for a few favourite saddle horses and what crops had been reaped before the transfer of ownership.

“No more pig-shit… no more sheep-shit,” Lewrie muttered with a touch of glee. “Good.”

Less the payment of your last Quit-Rents, Phineas Chiswick, that six-toothed Miser!, offered a paltry ?1,000, as Recompence for all your Improvements. As your Agent in this matter, I insisted that we would take no less than ?2,000, and, since I learned that Phineas had valued the property at ?5,000 for the outright Sale of it to the Trenchers, who would be footing the Bill for their daughter’s Country Estate, forced him, at the last, to accept our Terms.

Since you delegated to me the negotiations whilst you were away at Sea, I subtracted a sum of ?200 as my Commission, and deposited the rest, ?1,800, to your account at Coutts’. Trust that my share will be spent joyfully, if not wisely, haw!

“And when did I agree t’ten percent, damn his eyes!” Lewrie fumed. Sir Hugo went on for several more pages. The Winter was a raw one, though the Thames had not frozen quite so solid as to allow the proper sort of Frost Fair. Zachariah Twigg had wintered at his rural estate, Spyglass Bungalow, in Hampstead, and had suffered several bouts with the ague. He was now fully retired from even his consulting work at the Foreign Office.

“Good!” Lewrie exclaimed loud enough to wake the cats, again. He’d been Twigg’s pet gun dog since 1784, getting roped into neck-or-nothing, harum-scarum deviltry overseas, time and again, and if that arrogant, top-lofty, and sneering old cut-throat had retired, Lewrie could look forward to a somewhat safer career, from now on.

Sir Hugo had heard from Lewrie’s sons, both now serving aboard their respective ships in the Navy. Hugh, his youngest, was a Midshipman aboard HMS Pegasus, under an old friend, Captain Thomas Charlton, a stolid, steady, and seasoned professional… though Charlton had a sly and puckish sense of humour, and a fond tolerance for the antics of Midshipmen. Hugh had taken to the sea like a cow to clover, and was having a grand time.

Sewallis, well… his oldest boy, and heir-apparent, had slyly amassed enough money to kit himself out, had forged a draft of one of Lewrie’s early letters to another old friend and compatriot, Captain Benjamin Rodgers, and had finagled himself a sea-berth aboard Aeneas, a two-decker ship of the line. His one brief letter to his “granther” told a soberer tale of his self-chosen naval career, so far, but… Sewallis had always been the serious one. He was learning all of the cautions, “all the ropes,” but said little of his fellow Midshipmen, confessing that times were hard on a “Johnny New Come” ’til he began to fit in. Sir Hugo suspected that he was coping main-well, but did not sound quite so joyful as Hugh. Had Lewrie gotten a letter from him, yet?

No, he had not, and there was not one in his latest pile. He expected that Sewallis would summon up the gumption to explain, sooner or later. That’ll prove damned int’restin’! Lewrie thought.

On a happier note, Lewrie’s former ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, now wed to Lewrie’s old First Officer, Commander Anthony Langlie, had been delivered of a lusty baby boy, whom she had named Charles August, to honour her late older cousin, Baron Charles Auguste de Crillart, a French Navy officer who had been Lewrie’s prisoner-on-parole in the Caribbean during the American Revolution, and Lewrie’s Royalist ally during the siege of Toulon, the both of them being blown sky-high in the old razee-turned-mortar battery, Zele, at the siege of Toulon. Charles had gotten his shrunken family aboard the captured frigate Radicale to flee when the port was taken by the French Republicans, avoiding the massacre of the Royalists, but had died when three French ships had chased her down on her way to Gibraltar. He had died not knowing that his younger brother and his mother had been slain, too, leaving Sophie his last, orphaned kin, and extracting a promise from Lewrie to see them safe with his dying breath.

Anthony Langlie and his brig-sloop Orpheus were, so Sophie told it, raising merry Hell in the Mediterranean, and had captured several merchant prizes!

London had been grandly entertaining that Winter, with several new plays and exhibits, Sir Hugo related; Daniel Wigmore’s Peripatetic Extravaganze had put on a Winter season cross the Thames in Southwark, and had staged their comic plays and farces in a rented hall in Drury Lane; the delightful bareback rider/crack bow shot/ingenue actress, Eudoxia Durschenko-the delectable Cossack minx that had been hot for Lewrie, Sir Hugo teased!-was now about the town in the company of Lord Percy Stangbourne, a dashing Buck-of-The-First-Head, rich as a Walpole, intimate of the Prince of Wales, and a Lieutenant-Colonel of his family’s home-raised Yeomanry Light Dragoons. They were both as horse-mad as if they were Cossacks, or Mongols!

“Good for her,” Lewrie muttered, though with a tinge of loss; had it not been for Eudoxia’s murderous, eye-patched expert marksman-lion tamer father, Arslan Artimovich, and his oath that the girl would die a virgin if he had to kill half the males in Great Britain, Lewrie might have given her a go.

There was a letter from his other brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick, who, with his long-suffering but sweet wife, Millicent, was now boarding his daughter, Charlotte, at their estate in Anglesgreen. Talk about cool and stand-offish! Governour’s letter was as formal as a boarding school proctor’s end-of-term summation on a student’s progress. Governour rated her on her ladylike deportment, her advancing skills at singing, at playing the harpsichord and violin, her “seat” and “bottom” when riding her horse-pony, and the courage she showed on open-country rides at trot, canter, lope, and gallop. Charlotte “played well with other girls,” though she did insist on having her way if not strictly reined back. Her table manners were exquisite for a girl her age, and she kept a scrupulously neat room, without the assistance of her maid, and she kept her clothes in good order.

Charlotte dearly missed her brothers, and did not understand why her father would so cruelly send Sewallis off to sea, when he was the eldest, who should have still been in school, preparing for a civilian career! She missed her old house, though she quite enjoyed to have her “uncle Burgess” and Theadora living there.

Worst of all, she would still weep when thinking of how much she missed her dear mother, Caroline, though the sunny days now out-numbered the glum ones. Charlotte had adored her Christmas presents from Sir Hugo, when he’d come down briefly from London.

Of missing her father, there was not one ward, at all. Though Lewrie had written her several times, there was no acknowledgement of her reading them, or receiving them, and… there was no letter from her to him enclosed.

The handwriting changed on the next page to Millicent’s finer and more graceful hand, giving him a perky recital of all that Burgess and Theadora were doing with his old house, what colours they chose to repaint the rooms, which pieces of furniture they had retained, and an inventory of what they’d been given, or purchased, and how they had re-arranged. His office-cum-library with its many French doors and windows was now such a delightful, such a splendid garden room, awash in potted or hanging ferns, exotic Indian flowers and palmettos from the Carolinas in America, and one magnificent palm tree so reminiscent of Burgess’s service with the East India Company army, and…!

Lewrie tossed it aside in disgust and sadness. As eager as he had been to flee the place, and escape Caroline’s ghost, to be shot of all the hurtful memories, it still irked that what had been his sheet-anchor was now turned so topsy-turvy. If there had been some way for the children to have stayed on there, when home from school…!

“First Off’cer, SAH!” his Marine sentry bellowed.

“Enter,” Lewrie glumly called back.

“My God, sir!” Lt. Westcott barged in, his hatchet face glowing with delight, and his usual brief flash-grin replaced with one that nigh-reached to his ears. “Captain Sir Alan Lewrie! Good God above, sir! Mister Spendlove and Merriman, both, told me of it, soon as I set foot on the gangway. My heartiest congratulations, sir!”

“Oh, don’t you start!” Lewrie gravelled back. “Blanding earned his, I didn’t, really, and I’ve no idea why I was included. It’s all so damned silly.”

“But, will you say the same at the shore supper, tonight, sir?” Westcott teased.

“What bloody shore supper?”

“Midshipman Bailey, of Modeste, SAH!” the Marine bellowed.

“That’ll be the invitation, I’d think,” Westcott said, chuckling. “Care to lay a wager on it, sir?”

“Enter!” Lewrie barked more forcefully, and a Midshipman from the flagship came in, hat under his arm, and bowing as if to a duke.

Christ, they are bowin’ an’ scrapin’! Lewrie sulkily thought.

“Captain Blanding’s respects, sir, and I am to extend to you an invitation… to you and all your officers an invitation, that is, to join Captain Blanding and his officers at a f… fete champetre, this evening at Two Bells of the Dog Watch,” the lad haltingly said, losing his rehearsed place several times. “It is to be held ashore, sir, at a… restaurante by name of The Rookery, and…”

“Any ladies allowed, lad?” Lt. Westcott asked, tongue-in-cheek.

“Ehm… I do not know, sir, no mention was made…” The Midshipman sneaked a peek at the written invitation to see whether ladies were to be included.

“The Rookery, Mister Bailey?” Lewrie asked. “I’m not familiar with it… why not ‘The Grapes’? They do naval parties just fine.”

And, The Grapes had been a dockside fixture, handily near the boat landings, since long before Lewrie’s Midshipman days; and, they were used to rowdy behaviour and vomit.

“I am not familiar with it myself, sir,” Midshipman Bailey confessed, looking as if he’d like to scuff his youthful shoe-toes together in embarrassment. “But the directions to it are here on the invitation, sir. Ehm… harbourside, further east along the High Street, a brick building with a courtyard, and a curtain wall before the entrances…’tis said the rear dining rooms offer a splendid harbour view.”

“God,” Lewrie breathed, knowing exactly where this Rookery was; he and Christopher Cashman, his friends, and some obliging doxies had celebrated his victory and survival after the Beauman duel, the breakfast turning into a high-spirited, drunken battle of flying food and rolls. And, long, long before, it had had another owner. In 1782, he had gone there, once, a shiny-new Lieutenant.

“Baltasar’s,” Lewrie suddenly recalled. “An emigre Frenchman’s fancy place… Baltasar’s. I know it.”

“Ehm… the invitation, sir. Sorry,” Midshipman Bailey said as he stepped forward and laid it on Lewrie’s desk, so timorously that he appeared to fear being bitten for being remiss; or, hesitant to approach a man newly exalted.

“Thankee, Mister Bailey… my deepest respects to good Captain Blanding, and inform him that I and my officers look forward to the… fete champetre with great delight. Also express my thanks for his kindness,” Lewrie told the lad.

“Aye aye, sir!” Bailey said, stepping back, all but clicking his heels or stamping shoes like a Marine, before turning to go. Once he was beyond the door, Lewrie turned to Westcott, giving him a wink and a looking-over.

“I’d think after a whole morning with your young lady, Mister Westcott, ye might wish t’give her a rest… give yourself one, too,” Lewrie teased. “All that, and supper, would be more than plenty.”

“ ’Twas an entrancing plentitude, sir, and thank you for asking,” Westcott replied, chuckling in reverie. “Mademoiselle du Plessis was her usual delightful self, yet, one always longs for just a bit more.”

Don’t we just, Lewrie thought, grinning tautly.

“I’d expect you’d change shirts before the supper, sir,” Lewrie said with mock sternness. “There seems to be some… reddish, coral-coloured powder on your collar. Rouge? Lip paste?”

“Coloured powder, sir,” Westcott was glad to inform him. “She… Mademoiselle Sylvie, dabs it on to, ah, enhance her breasts, specifically the areoli.”

That’s a new’un on me! Lewrie thought.

“Then it is indeed a pity that there’s no mention of invitin’ any ladies t’this celebration of ours, tonight,” Lewrie japed, referring to the paper Midshipman Bailey had left. “Just as well, I s’pose. She’d be bored t’tears with all the salty talk, then scared when the bread rolls and pudding start flyin’.”

“Well, that is a pity, sir,” Westcott said, looking a tad downcast; or very, very tired after his energetic morning.

“Besides, sir… why drag your Sylvie to such a tarry gatherin’, where ye’d have t’share her attentions with all the other young, un-married, and deprived Lieutenants?” Lewrie pointed out.

“To listen to their teeth grind, sir?” Lt. Westcott shot back with glee.

“Well… even if ladies were invited, the bulk of ’em’d be a pack o’ fubsy chick-a-biddies,” Lewrie said with a sigh. “And, there is the matter of whether Mademoiselle Sylvie would be suitable for our ‘dash it, bedad’ Captain Blanding. Acceptable to Chaplain Brundish, more to the point.”

“Always tomorrow, then… do you allow me more shore liberty, sir,” Westcott said, shrugging. “Or, perhaps tomorrow evening, after duties are done? Is The Rookery an elegant place, we could dine there.”

“An ‘all-night in,’ Mister Westcott?” Lewrie leered.

“Oh God, please, yes, sir!”

“Go, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered, with a laugh. “Wipe yerself down, and warn the others t’shine. Can’t let the repute of the ship down. Best kit, all that?”

“Aye aye, sir… going!” Westcott said, snapping to a loose sort of attention, and bowing his head before turning to depart, with a brief pause to ruffle the fur of the cats, who were napping like a pair of plum puddings atop the map board in the chart space; over the months, Toulon and Chalky had taken to him like a house afire.

Once alone, Lewrie had to dig at his crotch. He’d met the stunning Sylvie du Plessis once, and found himself “risible” at the recollection. And envious of Westcott’s hellish-good luck!

I’ve become a tarry-handed, sea-goin’ monk! he told himself.

So there he sat, vaguely listening to the sound of copulation and revelry on the gun-deck with the ship “Out of Discipline,” then recalling that Lt. Westcott (the lucky bastard!) had made an off-handed comment that Mademoiselle Sylvie was a “Venus On The Half-Shell” in private… if one changed the hair colour from blonde to brunette of the model for that painting by… some bloody Italian!

High culture was not Lewrie’s strong suit; he couldn’t recall which Renaissance Dago had done it! But, he’d always panted over it, and would have bought a copy… if his late wife would have allowed.

In point of fact, his last, brief intimacy had happened the night before he and Caroline had fled Paris, mid-Summer of 1802. And he had lived an ascetic existence since, afloat or ashore. A grieving widower who shouldn’t at Anglesgreen, then a Sea Officer who couldn’t in this sea-going monastery of a Royal Navy frigate!

I’m a man… a natural man, he thought; and it ain’t natural t’go without. I never have before, by God!

Suddenly, he found that he could entertain the idea of female company, again, yet… what sort? Jamaica was nigh-awash in “grass widows” whose husbands neglected them, but that would take entree to Kingston Society, and take too bloody long, to boot. Courtesans like Mister Westcott’s Sylvie? To take some woman like her “under his protection” would be expensive, and he’d be more-often at sea than in her company… almost as expensive as taking a second wife, with just as little sport resulting. Whores? Sadly, his last episode in London in his “half-pay” months following the trial, with no hope of gaining any new command, ever, had been depressing; poor little Irish Tess, who was so naive and hopeful… most-like his old friend Peter Rushton’s new mistress, if God was just; at least he had money, a title, and a stand-offish wife who had presented him with two sons, and had no desire to risk another pregnancy, so… have at, dear!

In point of fact, Lewrie was at that stage where he could almost squirt semen from his ears if he sneezed!

“I could ask Westcott if Sylvie has a friend,” he mused aloud. “Oh, God, no! That’ll never do! But… what will?”

It was a quandary.