Sea of Grey

by Dewey Lambdin

  Lewrie also saw his two new Midshipmen, Mister David Burns, and Mister George Larkin, and he could not help but scowl at them. Burns was a pimply, dark-haired scarecrow, a mouth-breather who gulped quite often … else he’d have drowned in his own spittle. His family had left it late, and had only sent him to sea at fourteen; now, with one certified year at sea, he still gawped about as if just wakened from a trance, wondering where the Devil he was. He was blankly pleasant, a perpetual cypher whom Lewrie was sure had been hustled off to sea for the Navy to care for, for his “young but widowed” mother surely could not, or would not, and probably had promising prospects for remarriage if only she disposed of her hopeless “git.” It was an old story.

  Young George Larkin was most-like born an unwelcome bastard, an Anglo-Irish by-blow of a wealthy absentee landowner and some daughter of a poor tenant. He was stout, almost knobbly at elbows, knees, and shoulders, possessed of an unfortunate nose so “Irish pugged” that it was more swinish than anything else—he stood a fair chance from drowning did he look up at a driving rain—topped by an unruly shock of straw-coloured hair. Larkin, at least, had some wits about him, a cheerful mien, and an ever-eager anxiousness to please and perservere; quite unlike poor Mr. Burns, who tended to stare, gape, and gulp a lot, with his eyes only half focused on the task at hand. Larkin was poor as a church mouse, his uniform a seedy mélange of issue slop-clothing and the cheapest coat, waistcoat, and hat ever found in a trash pile, or looted from a corpse. He was sixteen, with three years of duty at sea, and was at least tarry-handed. Naturally, the crew had taken to the little ape, as they never would with Mr. Burns. They’d pity Burns and try to keep him from tripping over his own feet, but …

  Lewrie had conferred with Mr. Winwood and at his recommendation had promoted one of his Master’s Mates to make up the sixth midshipman that Proteus rated. Jemmy Merriam, now Mister James Merriam, was midtwenties and as salty as anyone could wish. Though it was hard to be a “gentleman-to-be” over former forecastle messmates, Merriam was, so far, coping. But, at the same time, Merriam was junior to everyone in the orlop cockpit, even to Burns, Larkin, and little Grace! And how he kept a straight face below with them in the off-duty hours, Lewrie had no idea.

  Try as he might, Sir Edward just couldn’t conjure up a replacement Lieutenant for them, so Mr. Adair had been confirmed as an officer. Lewrie strongly suspected that Captain Charles had had a few “runners” in mind, each about as thick as an anchor stock, but might have felt that Burns and Larkin were trials enough for his least-favourite captain on station. Even he, at the last, could not be utterly vindictive!

  Lewrie had just settled down in his folding canvas and wood deck chair (a contraption that most other “sea-dog” captains would look upon as dangerously luxurious) with his feet up on the taff-rail flag lockers, pennywhistle to his mouth and Toulon curled up napping beside his feet on the lockers. He essayed a scale, then launched into a gay hornpipe, when the midshipman of the watch shouted.

  “Hoy, the boat, there!” Mr. Larkin shrilled.

  “Hoy, the ark!” a booming voice rejoined. “Is Noah aboard?”

  “Who, sir?” Larkin gawped, never expecting such a challenge.

  “Your captain, laddy! Buggerin’ camels, is he? Both male and female, did he take aboard?” the voice posed, rather loudly.

  “Aye, he’s aboard, sir! And who would you be, come a’callin’?”

  “Colonel Christopher Bloody Cashman, the Lord of Plunder!”

  Lewrie whooped in glee and got to his feet, his music forgotten.

  “Captain, sir,” unfortunate Mr. Burns said, doffing his hat as he came to the quarterdeck, “but there’s a drunk soldier alongside, is asking for you, and …” He gulped a time or two, fretfully.

  “Tell him I’m fucking a zebra,” Lewrie said with a chuckle.

  “I can’t tell him … that, sir!” Burns said, so embarrassed that his face paled, making his acne stand out like bubonic buboes.

  “Make it ‘carnal knowledge of’—never mind, I’ll tell him,” Lewrie said, gladly trotting to the entry-port to lean over and wave.

  “Permission t‘scamper up that wee ladder thing, sir!” Cashman cried, standing unsteadily in the gently rocking rowboat. “I’ve come t’get you drunk, Admiral Lewrie, and I’ll not be denied, dammit all!”

  “The zebra I was stuffin’ was a virgin, you reprobate, so this had better be good!” Lewrie called down, to the great amusement of his crew.

  “Half dozen o’ Jean-Pierre’s best bubbly, Admiral Noah!” Cashman promised, displaying a bottle from a straw-packed case at his feet in the rowboat’s bilges.

  “Aye, then … scamper on up that ladder thing, General Cashman!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “So this is the infamous Toulon,” Cashman said, stripping away his scarlet tunic, neck-stock, and waistcoat as a seaman fetched in the crate of bottles. He tossed his uniform at the starboard-side settee, then plunked into an upholstered chair, reaching out to the desk where the cat sat, hunkered down over his front paws, uncertain of this newcomer’s antecedents.”Meow, puss. Killed any rats lately?” he asked as he offered fingers under Toulon’s nose. A moment later and Toulon was on his side, tail lashing, and head writhing in bliss to be petted.

  “Fickle bastard,” Lewrie grumbled. “Ah, Aspinall, kindly take the tompion from the muzzle of one of those bottles, and run it out in battery for us, will you? There’s a good lad.”

  “What is that smell?” Cashman asked, wrinkling his nose.

  “Tar, citron oil, and sulfur,” Lewrie chuckled. “Our Surgeon’s Mates are still tinkerin’ with the formula, but it’s cut the number of men who come down sick, and run off the flies and mosquitoes.”

  “Like Satan breakin’ wind under clean sheets.” Cashman hooted.

  “Takes our minds off the bilges and the pea-soup farts,” Lewrie told him as Aspinall produced a loud Thwock! and a flying cork, which made Toulon scramble to his paws and fly off the desk to intercept it. Good flutes were filled, the bottle stood on the desk, then Aspinall faded back into his tiny pantry. “Damn’ fine, even warm. Aahhh, damn fine,” Lewrie said after a first tentative sip.

  “We’ll not see its like this side of Paris any longer,” Cashman mourned. “Jean-Pierre and Maman escaped Port-Au-Prince, and took all their wine cellars with ‘em … their cooks, their families, and their best girls. Hired a schooner, emptied their house o’ furnishings and plate, chests and chests o’ money, and all, and headed for Charleston.”

  “Mighty tempting target, all that pelf,” Lewrie speculated with a frown. “Who’s t‘say the crew won’t turn pirate for an hour or two, and have ’em over the side?”

  “Took a half dozen o’ their bully-bucks armed to the teeth, and their girls and kin, as well,” Cashman snickered, topping them up once more. “Doubt they’d have any trouble on that score. By the by, your darlin’ Henriette sends her love. When in Charleston, look her up, she says.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Lewrie scoffed.

  “Must’ve made a hellish impression on her, old son. But then, you have that effect on all the willin’ little biddies, don’t ya, hey?”

  “Hah!” Lewrie replied, even while wondering if even Cashman had heard rumours from Home, by now. “So, what’s the occasion?”

  “Alan, my boy, we’re havin’ a wake, a proper old Irish wake, in honour of someone … somethin’ that just died,” Cashman grimly stated.

  “You came to the wrong place to celebrate death, Kit. I’ve lost fourteen so far, with five or six more lookin’ peaky,” Lewrie objected.

  “Miser,” Cashman countered. “I lost nigh half the regiment, by now … shot or butchered on Saint Domingue, or to the fevers. Already mourned them. No, I refer to the regiment itself, and my military career with it.”

  “They’ll disband ’em?” Lewrie gawped, sitting up straighter.

  “In the process,” Cashman spat. “Called us ‘excess to requirements,’ now we’ve no majo
r campaign to … wage. Oh, there’s still a deal o’ work wantin’ down on Grenada and Saint Vincent, takin’ on the Black Caribs and the real Caribs, but it’s no concern of ours.”

  “They’ll chuck Ledyard Beauman, then,” Lewrie surmised. “God, I can understand sheddin’ him, but you! General Maitland had you on his staff last year, you told me. Surely, he doesn’t mean to tip you out with the bathwater?”

  “Double-dealin’ sonofabitch,” Cashman growled, tossing back his glass so quick that half of it flooded his shirt-front. “He and that L’Ouverture were correspondin’ all the time, did you know it? Secret negotiations were goin’ on, even whilst we were bleedin’ and sweatin’ in those woods, fightin’ like we really meant it! Men died, while he was dancin’ to and fro with our enemy. Hell, the last week before the evacuation, we fought L’Ouverture seven times, he beat us seven times … but each time there’d be secret letters flyin’ back and forth. ‘Well, ya lost here, my dear Maitland, so will ya give in? No? Then how ’bout this‘un?’ Maitland sayin’, ‘Didn’t we bleed ya enough, still have soldiers and arms for another try, m‘dear Toussaint?’ ‘Oh Dear, now will you pack it in, mon cher Maitland?’ Pah! Even did Maitland get down on his hands and knees and beg me to stay with the colours … even throw in fellatio … I’d still spit in his Goddamned face!”

  “Well, I never,” Lewrie said with a groan, as disgusted as Kit Cashman. He had lost Sevier and Nicholas, Inman and Shirley, and poor old Lt. Duncan had died, all those lost to malaria and Yellow Jack had died in a sham? As a way to save a general’s reputation, before some amateur Black rebel slave out-soldiered him? “The bastard!”

  “Won’t get him titled,” Cashman sarcastically snickered. “No ‘thanks of the Crown’ for him, when he goes home. If Maitland’d stuck it out, L‘Ouverture would’ve strewed us dead on the beaches, he’d’ve had another week, so I can see the temptation to sign anything and get out. L‘Ouverture, Dessalines, Petion, and Christophe … they’re damn’ good, Alan. Samboe versions o’ Julius Caesar, with more troops under their command than Xerxes brought to Greece. Poor-armed, but even so, they just swamp right over you, pick up the guns from their dead, and keep right on comin’. Fine, they beat us fair and square, and so what. What really irks me, though, old son …”

  Cashman leaned forward on his elbows on the desktop, grating deep in his throat, with eyes slit in fury.

  “He wrote his letters behind the backs of his own men, damn him! He could’ve told us, after the first couple o’ defeats and he saw how things stood, he could o’ told us he was negotiatin’, he could o’ asked for a truce, and I’ll lay you any odds ya wish, old Toussaint L‘Ouverture would’ve granted it … he didn’t want any more o’ his men killed, either. Hundreds o’ men would still be alive, the battle that broke my damn’ regiment need never’ve been bloody fought!”

  “Maybe L‘Ouverture would have gone right on and fought us, Kit. Drivin’ out a white, British army’s one thing, but slaughterin’ them to the last man on the beaches is another. His message to the world.”

  “Us leavin’ with our tails t’wixt our legs ain’t enough of a message?” Cashman waved this off, leaning back in his chair and tossing down his fresh glass of champagne. “Shit, Alan. That’s shit, and ya know it. L‘Ouverture ain’t through fightin’, there’s still the Spaniards in the east he wants t’take on, there’s still that half-caste General Rigaud down in South Province against him. There’s probably some of his very own generals just slaverin’ like hounds for a shot at power, too. No, L’Ouverture wants t‘stay alive, and in charge, liberate the entire island of Hispaniola—hell, the whole damn’ West Indies, he needed t‘husband the army he had! He’s too smart t’throw it away on gestures and messages to the world. S’truth.”

  “So, what’ll you do?” Lewrie asked, stretching to refill his own glass. “Resign, or wait to be retired?”

  “Ask for a court,” Cashman told him, brightening a touch. “Get my record cleared … make sure everyone knows for certain it was that fool Ledyard who lost it for us. See, Alan … Maitland and his staff are lookin’ for scapegoats, and damned if I’ll play ‘goat.’ Maitland holds a court-martial and blames Beauman for losin’ him the battle that cost him the entire campaign, why, he can go back to England smellin’ like a bed o’ spring roses! The regular Army’ll love it, ‘cause what can ya expect from Yeomanry, militia volunteers, and amateur officers? Pile up a big, smelly heap o’ shit over here, then you hardly notice the reek from over yonder, d‘ye see. Then, no one’ll take Maitland to task for ‘conspirin’ with the enemy.’ That’s what you can deem secret letters with the foe. You could almost call it treason, and that’s a hangin’ offence, no matter what your rank or titles.”

  “He’ll never allow it,” Lewrie said after a long moment to mull it over. “Ya don’t think Ledyard Beauman doesn’t know about Maitland and L‘Ouverture negotiating already? Better for Ledyard, his lawyer will know of it, and how to use it. The Royal Navy’s just as eager to cover its arse when someone’s mucked it, I know, I’ve seen it close at hand, Kit. Better for Maitland to explain to Horse Guards that he was grossly outnumbered and swamped by bloody waves of fanatics, then only opened negotiations when he saw he had no chance to win. He saved his army, he saved the civilians on Saint Domingue by wangling a promise that L’Ouverture wouldn’t take reprisal on ’em. Remember, Kit, I was at Yorktown, and—”

  “Oh, that tale again.” Cashman waved it off.

  “Lord Cornwallis had had his arse kicked from the Cape Fear to Yorktown, then got himself stuck like a bung in a barrel, countin’ on the Fleet t’save him. Did Graves, Hood, or Denby pay for failing him? Christ no, they didn’t. Did Cornwallis pay for losin’ the last army we’d be able to raise, losin’ the war, for losin’ the Colonies at one stroke? Hell no to that, too! They still love him. This latest rebellion in Ireland we’ve heard about, that French landing under General Humbert, they’re sending Cornwallis t’sort it out.”

  “So Maitland won’t pay, either?” Cashman said as he squinted at his old friend; rather “squiffily,” by then.

  “End of his active career, most-like, Kit, and no honours, but he’ll flap away as free as a dove, with not a harsh word said to him, you just watch and see,” Lewrie prophecied, “and everyone’ll say, ‘What a pity, when just one more regiment, one more battery, just a wee bit more luck and we’d have conquered the place, and we’re better off out of there, anyway,’ d’ye see? He’ll write his memoirs and prove it wasn’t a bit of his doing, and nothing’ll get in the way of that. So, before you pile up your stink, he’ll shed you and Ledyard, disband yer regiment, and then it’s ‘least said, soonest mended’ for everyone.”

  “Not for me, damn yer eyes,” Cashman thundered, “it’s my honour, my good name that’s dragged in the mud! Without a court it’ll always be me who funked it, t’will be me who’s whispered about, laughed about! I’ll not have it, Alan, if I have to challenge Maitland, too, once I’m a civilian!”

  “Oh, don’t talk rot, Kit,” Lewrie scoffed, half worried now.

  “The Beaumans have already begun white-washin’ his odour,” Kit snapped, repouring from the bottle, which was already deeply drained. “Their newspaper friends, those papers sent to England on the packets. Two, three months more, and I’ll be all over the London rags as the one who cut and ran. People in town, already … I’m bein’ snubbed. Goin’ to the other side of the street when I walk by, gazin’ skyward with a ‘cut sublime’ … out at our camp. Wives and children, widows, come to find what happened to their menfolk, and I …”

  In the privacy of Lewrie’s great-cabins, the indomitable Christopher Cashman began to snuffle and swipe at his eyes with his shirt sleeves, making Lewrie wince in pain for him, yet avert his eyes so as not to stare too directly and shame him. To see someone unmanned …

  “Private soldiers know the truth, they try t’tell their folks, but the way they still glare at me, Alan, it’s so … !” Cashman wept.

  S
uddenly, he smashed a fist on the desktop, so hard he made the glasses, the bottle, inkwell, and correspondence box jump.

  “Damn Beauman! Damn him and his kin, damn all those rich, stuckup bastards and bitches t’Hell and gone! They’ll ruin me to save that useless, Goddamned pinch o’ pig shit, take all I have! Take my honour and all I’ve done before, run me outta Jamaica like an ‘untouchable’ Hindoo, too low caste t’swamp out a toilet … make me sell up for a pence to the pound and lose ev‘ry farthing I’ve invested here … well, I’ll not have it. I’ll find a way t’get my own back, if it means that I murder Ledyard, or murder ’em all!”

  “Now you’re really talking rot, Kit!” Lewrie spat back. “Think with your head, not your pride, for God’s sake. Want t’end up hanged? Then where’s your honour, or your good name, hey?”

  Lewrie tossed back his own glass of champagne, then took assay of the bottle on the desk. Talking fools out of idiocy was dry work; he bent down to extract a second bottle from the wood case and ripped away the lead foil, gave the cork a twist, and opened a replenishment, topping them both up. And tossed Toulon a new “play-pretty.”

  “Duelin’ him’s better, remember duelin’?” Lewrie asked once he had taken another deep sip. “What you talked about on Saint Domingue, not two weeks ago? I’ll stand as your second, God help me. Let ‘em retire the both of you, there’s no King’s Regulations preventing two former officers from fightin’. You blow great holes in him or slice him to pork chops, there’s your revenge. But he’ll cry off, I’d bet, and that’ll prove he’s the liar, and a coward to boot. Then you’re able t‘sell up, justified. Might not get full price even so, but the buyers’ll be gettin’ a fair bargain, and not robbin’ ya blind.”

  “He can’t deny me, Alan, his brother’ll make him, so …”

  “So you kill him all legal-like, and take shilling to a pound,” Lewrie snapped, nigh exasperated with trying to make sense to a drunk. “A twentieth or tenth of yer worth beats poverty all hollow, old son.”