King's Captain

by Dewey Lambdin

  Lewrie felt like putting his head on the desk and blubbing.

  “Partways, lad.” Sir Hugo chuckled. “Whorin’ runs in the fam’ly blood … so does artful lyin’. Told her, yes, she’s a newborn and she did name him after you … but for savin’ her and her son, Michael, from rape and butchery … for helpin’ her t’Venice to cash in, thence t’Lisbon and the packet ship for Bristol. Out of gratitude! But I also said I didn’t see a bit of resemblance.”

  “Thank bloody Christ for that!” Lewrie whooshed in relief. “I mean … thank you, Father!” That was hard-wrung from him; Lewrie could not recall too many benefits he’d ever gotten from the man to thank him for!

  “Lied main-well, if I do say so m’self,” Sir Hugo told him, as he smiled. “Your ward, Sophie, did too.”

  “Sophie? Hey? She never knew Theoni, so … Oh! Phoebe!”

  “Aye, that’un,” Sir Hugo chuckled. “Poor chit got flustered … when home, remember, does Sophie begin t’babble more Frog than English, she’s up t’somethin’. But Sophie assured Caroline this Phoebe chit was just a seamstress and maid from Toulon … came aboard your ship as a refugee with hundreds of others, and served Sophie ’til she got off at Gibraltar. Your cabin was arseholes and elbows with emigrés. No privacy anyway.”

  “So what did Caroline make of all that?” Lewrie dreaded to ask.

  “That there’s a damn’ sight too many women so ‘grateful’ to ya t’suit her. Allowed that it all might sound innocent … you bein’ so manly and fetchin’, or so she said. But there’s a bit too much of it. Said maybe the damn’ letter was from some termagant mort you’d spurned … !”

  “Oh, good!”

  “Should there actually be one in that category … hmmm?”

  “Forehead creased?” Lewrie asked, crossing his fingers again.

  “Nigh a yard deep,” Sir Hugo related. “Muttered somethin’ like ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ More fool you, me lad, marryin’ a shrewd woman. I’d o’ cautioned ye t’stick with ‘stupid’ if I knew you felt the marriage itch. Slack-wit women may fluff up ‘jealous’ … never for th’ right reasons, thank God, so ye can get away with more. Now, Alice, Lord … I could’ve had her maid in the soup tureen, and she would’ve said the tang was off, was all.”

  “So Caroline’s mollified? Completely?”

  “Well, let’s say she almost was …’til your solicitor wrote to her,” Sir Hugo said, beginning to smirk and chuckle under his breath as he topped their glasses with the last of the bottle.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Needed seed money, day-labourer’s wages. Feller said that she couldn’t get as much as she’d requested since ye’d promised one-hundred-sixty pounds to some Sheerness women for, ah … ‘services rendered.’”

  “But that was for helpin’ me … they weren’t … I never!”

  “Stap me, didn’t I caution ye. Quality beats Quantity all hollow, me lad?” Sir Hugo had the cruelty to hoot in high humour.

  “Thirty-two of ’em, surely the number told her it was preposterous …” Lewrie spluttered some more, growing numb.

  “I’ll not get in the middle o’ that ’un,” Sir Hugo vowed.

  Aye, it’d look that way, wouldn’t it? Lewrie sighed to himself; I am so well and truly … ruined! Do I go home, I’ll most-like be shot on sight! Her brother, Governour, always was toppin’- fair with pistols!

  “We need another bottle,” his father pointed out.

  “Gad, yes … I expect we do,” Lewrie replied, stumbling over to the wine-cabinet and fetching one himself, stripping the lead foil off and fiddling with the cork.

  “Oh, give it here, cunny-thumbs. I know my way ’round a cork,” Sir Hugo crankily told him. “There … d’ye see? Slap, twist … pop!” “Think it’s safe to go home?” Lewrie enquired, once re-enforced.

  “Not if you care for breathin’, no … not for a while. Gathered from the keyhole like … things’ll be more’n a tad frosty, for quite a spell. ‘Time heals all wounds,’ they say though. She’ll still write … though she suggested separate letters to yer children so ye and she can thrash things out in private missives. I also gathered she’s of a mind that your Navy can have ye …’twas best you’re at sea and absent. At least a year in foreign climes, she said t’me direct. I did fetch a letter along. Sorry, lad. Tried me damnedest, but …”

  He slid a rather slim letter across the desk, making Lewrie lean far back from the edge, half expecting it to burst into flames!

  “And whilst I was passin’ through London on the way here, Alan … I also stopped off t’see your mistress. She bade me bear a letter to ye as well.

  “She’s not my mistress!” Lewrie felt need to growl. “I’ve not seen her since Lisbon, not heard a word …”

  “Oh, is she not?” his father drawled, amusedly. “May have little need o’ yer loot … Hindi word for plunder, by-the-by … but I’ve ears, me lad. I know th’ sound o’ fondness when a lady speaks of a feller … how she asked after ye an’ all?” he added, softer, more kindly.

  He slid the second over; this one was thicker—much thicker.

  And which’ll I end up readin’ first? he asked himself, fearing to touch either, yet unwilling to shuffle them into a drawer together.

  “That damned ‘concerned friend’ letter,” he said instead, “is there a single clue as to where it came from, who wrote it?”

  “No return address o’ course,” his father said, with a shrug of his shoulders, making his epaulets dance and glitter. “As I said, it was a good hand, quite cultured, in fact. Costly paper, but no identifying seal in the wax. Who might’ve known about your Mediterranean doin’s?”

  “Lucy Beauman … old amour from the Caribbean,” Lewrie confessed, “Lady Lucy Shockley now … she was there in Venice. I turned down her advances.”

  “Well, there’s a wonder!” His father hooted once more.

  “Married woman, throwin’ herself at me, and havin’ it off with another Navy officer, Commander Fillebrowne, at the same time!” Lewrie spat, railing at Lucy’s morals.

  “Oh, such shameful doin’s.” Sir Hugo mocked.

  “Well, I quite liked her husband.”

  “Could she be your anonymous correspondent, then?”

  “Doubt it.” Lewrie frowned in thought, all but chewing a thumb nail. “A bold, florid penmanship, as I recall … rich as Croesus even when single, but … sheep could spell better than she could! Well …”

  “Hmmm?” his father prompted, with a purr.

  “Fillebrowne. Clotworthy Chute diddled him with some expensive ‘instant’ antique Roman bronzes. You recall Clotworthy from Harrow?”

  “Unfortunately yes, I do,” his father said with a grimace.

  “Fillebrowne bedded Phoebe, after we fell out. Boasted of it, to row me. How he learned of Claudia though … that was before his ship and mine served together … though Phoebe knew of Claudia. Hell’s Bells, yes! ’Twas the reason we parted! I couldn’t tell her it was orders!”

  “And knows nothing, ah … recent, with which t’plague ye?” his father asked, almost looking relieved. “Beyond Mistress Connor?”

  “Not a damn’ peep,” Lewrie declared, rather relieved by such a revelation himself. “If not him, though … I can’t imagine who’d be such a bastard … or bitch.”

  “Mistress Connor herself? More fond o’ ye than she lets on?”

  “Oh, surely not! Might as well accuse Harry Embleton!” Lewrie scoffed. “And he hasn’t a clue, a decent hand … or the wits!”

  “Well, p’rhaps this’ll blow over then, given time. And when back in Anglesgreen, I’ll tell Caroline how aggrieved ye were by her suspicions … how sunk in th’ ‘Blue Devils’ … took ‘all aback,’ as I think you sailors say?”

  “That’d be a wondrous help, Father. Thankee.”

  “And …” his father began to coo again, “when passing through London, on the way, as it were … might there be anything you’d wish me t’say to th’ handsome Theoni C
onnor?”

  “I … !” Lewrie began to say, staring off at the forward bulkhead, where his wife Caroline’s portrait hung in the dining coach. “I don’t know quite what to say … she deserves more than … I mean. Give me her address. A letter’d be best. A few days’ time to think about it, then write to her before we sail for the Texel again. Besides,” he attempted to make a jape, “I know you of old, dear Father. I’d never put it past you not to inveigle your way into her good graces, and her bed, out of familial, paternal … duty!”

  “If you think I’d do that to th’ only son I care t’claim, then you’ve worse problems than a suspicious wife, my son,” Sir Hugo said, with a wry shake of his head. “Were I not comfortably … ensconced, as it were, already, I’d be sore tempted, I admit. Odd, though, that you would come over all possessive of her. That’s what I mean when I say you’ve a worse problem. Not her … your bastard either. Guilt and a sense of responsibility towards them doesn’t quite explain the sound of your voice. Oh, my son, my foolish son!” he gallingly mocked.

  “Rot!” Lewrie shot back, “Mine arse on a band-box!”

  But he found himself diverting his eyes from that portrait on the partition; found himself, instead, passing a hand over his eyes as if to block it out.

  Gawd. Lewrie squirmed in the beginning throws of agony; too scared t’really face either, read either letter! What t’do, what t’do?

  Get mine arse to sea, that’s what! he told himself; there’s the Dutch, sure to sail out sooner or later. Th’ Frogs, ready to fall on Ireland, or us! Poor Proteus, still so raw and barely battle-ready! Compared to those problems, what matters my puny … ! And if Proteus isn’t ready, then Caroline, Theoni, my children, her child … what if England’s conquered, what life would they have if my Navy doesn’t … ?

  He almost gagged and wished he could throttle himself.

  Oh, right, he chid himself, chagrined; try t’couch it so noble! Such ragin’ patriotic twaddle … what a lecherous fool I am. And in it for sure now … up t’my eyebrows!

  He prayed that Proteus would be ordered back out to sea instanter; to the sea, his final, perfect haven … where a man had a chance to think! Where, it would seem, a man was safe! Where he had no opportunities for stirring up more trouble for himself! Hopefully for a long time to come.

  AFTERWORD

  I’ve always liked to open things with a bang, which is why this installment of the Alan Lewrie saga began with the Battle of Cape Saint Vincent on Valentine’s Day, 1797—quite apt, that holiday, in light of Lewrie’s later troubles with “the Fair Sex.”

  Saint Vincent was the first great break-out event in the career of Horatio Nelson. His actions were totally unheard of and a reason for a court martial and firing squad at the taffrails, à la Admiral Byng, had he failed. Nelson’s solo charge into the teeth of the larger Nor’west part of the Spanish fleet, so they could not shake themselves out in battle order, or close the gap behind Admiral Jervis’s fleet, confounded them. He risked their overwhelming fire, yet boarded and captured one, then used her as his famous “Patent Bridge” to cross and board a second, larger line-of-battle ship that had come to aid the first!

  Nelson was promoted to Rear Admiral and became a household word, got command of a squadron of his own, and began to apply a unique “all-or-nothing” style of sea-fighting (all three good for his craving for glory!), beginning an unbroken string of lopsided, annihilating victories. That’s not to say that I still don’t think Nelson was about three hotdogs shy of a picnic, at times.

  The economic problems when Lewrie got home were true. Taxes were high, wages had not kept pace, the Industrial Revolution had been jumpstarted by the need for mountains of war materiel. Almost overnight, a tranquil, pastoral, rural England was ripped from its doldrums into the Steam and Machine Age, and with Enclosure Acts stealing poor crofters’ common lands drove a horde of displaced farm workers into the cities and manufacturies. Later, this exodus would give rise to the squalor, wage slavery, oppressive day-labourer poverty, and other evils resulting that Dickens wrote of in his condemning novels of the 1840s and 1850s.

  With all this upheaval, following democratic revolutions in the former American Colonies and the republican revolt in France, and now being exported by force-of-arms by French conquests to the rest of Europe (mostly welcomed in the beginning by the Common People who got conquered!) it was no wonder that England and the British Isles looked more than ready for a social explosion from the bottom up!

  The only people who could vote were those who earned, or owned property worth, £100 per annum. In some “Rotten Boroughs,” and in more than a few normal, the number of voters were as few as thirty, perhaps twelve, or a mere three or five! The power-holding voters elected their own kind—the educated, land-holding, well-to-do, even the titled, or the sons and son-in-laws of such, who were easily controlled. The so-called House of Commons was hardly representative of the vast bulk of voteless commoners back then; though there were some progressive New Men who championed commoners’ rights, such as Sir Samuel Whitbread, “the Ale King”—who was rumoured to have been seen conferring with some mutineers near the Nore in the beginning!

  There was already an uprising in Ireland, without the expected French arms and troops, and Anglo-Irish tenant landlords, overseers for the absentee landlords (such as Proteus’s first captain), and Protestants were being burned out or “refugeed” to Dublin. The “Houghers” and the White Boys that Furfy and Desmond mentioned were irregular partisans (pre-IRA) who punished the rich, oppressive, and uncaring; burning, plundering, and ham-stringing (houghing) livestock. British troops and Anglo-Irish militia units quite gleefully returned the favour all over the countryside. The Irish language, music, legends, dances, and the Catholic religion were banned; their bards, priests, teachers, and leaders reduced to being homeless “hedge-folk,” liable to arrest, hanging, prison terms, or transportation for life overseas. All while the songs and stories of Ossian and O’Carolan were madly popular with the English! Great stuff for making the British Isles feel special, and different from “feelthy frog-eatin’ Frenchies”—but not good enough for their original owners, the Irish and the Scots!

  Binns, Thelwall, Place, Priestley, and Thomas Paine (now exiled in France!) were merely a few of the influential men who spoke and wrote for more freedoms, and were harried by the Crown, every meeting broken up by hired government mobs ordered by Tory government ministers like Pitt and Dundas, and prosecuted by the Duke of Portland. Men like the poet Samuel Coleridge, a huge admirer of the American and French Revolutions, saw which way the wind was blowing and ducked for cover—silenced and intimidated. Reformation of politics wasn’t fashionable any longer—and was too dangerous for dilettantes.

  The real danger came from the many more anonymous writers and printers of penny tracts, of a true rebellious, blood-thirsty nature, who called for real radicalism—even if everything had to go up in flames!

  And as industry grew by leaps-and-bounds, so did the first tentative workers’ guilds (not owners’ guilds) and trade unions, although the government had outlawed them. Many a tavern, pub, music hall, coffee house, and printing shop was a forum for dissent and a fertile Petri dish for revolutionary fervour.

  In the spring of 1797, therefore, England had never been closer to massive uprisings of the Mob, the Have-Nots, the Voiceless. And the war had just resulted in the introduction of the first-ever income tax! Even middle-class shopowners and tenant farmers could be dis-affected!

  Which is why books like James Dugan’s, The Great Mutiny, and Mr. Johnathon Neale’s, The Cutlass And The Lash, which cover the Spithead and Nore mutinies, are not catalogued under Naval History, but can be found under Industrial Relations!

  The first mutiny in Channel Fleet at Spithead and later down the coast at Plymouth scared the Be-Jesus out of everybody, though it was, as I wrote of it, a rather respectful and dignified “jack-up,” a strike without smashed machinery, punishment for scabs (for the simple reason that no o
ne in his right mind would trade places with sailors, in those days!), or threats against the nation. No one was hanged when it was over, and the principal organiser, speaker, and representative—Valentine Joyce—went on to participate in many battles. There was no talk of revolution. The Duke of Portland’s agents sifted and probed all over Portsmouth and could find no sign that it had been sponsored by anyone ashore, or from overseas either.

  The Spithead Mutiny was well-organised; the ships involved were united by prior service and contact because they had been based together, sailed together, and worked and fought together for several years.

  Admiral Lord Howe—“Black Dick, the Seaman’s Friend”—met a respectful, pleasant reception when he went down, at long last, to sit with the delegates and settle things. Whatever sentiments among those (for the most part) worthless Quota Men or the infiltrators from the United Irishmen never arose. It was strictly over conditions, money, shore leave, and such that they’d mutinied, and they were intelligent enough to keep it that way.

  By the way, the pay rise wasn’t much, a few more shillings per month for all. The Victualling Board still tried to foist off their flour for fresh meat, but the weights and measures were altered, and they got rid of the worst officers—Lord Bridport among them. All officers had been sent ashore at Spithead and Plymouth, and Admiral Howe and the delegates listed officers and mates to be denied a return by the posts they held, not their names. Without formal courts-martial and lower-class common seamen as witnesses against the Quality, their reputations remained intact. And, as I related, it only applied down at Channel Fleet, a thing only to be abided by HM government once!

  This caused problems later. If Lieutenant Algy Whiphand was the First Officer of HMS Flagellant and got turned out because he was born a brutal, wall-eyed bastard, he’s still free and in good odour with Admiralty when assigned to another ship, since his name was not put on paper, only his position. And, years later, if he runs into some mutineers from Flagellant aboard HMS Pederasty, and he has a long memory, then God help the former mutineers!