“By God, no matter how big a sinner I have been,” Alan whispered in the privacy of his cabin, “I would never have been such a heartless, evil rogue as to do that to anyone.”
Well, perhaps I might have, if pushed to it, he thought sadly. That’s the way I was raised in his house, and without two hundred pounds per annum, or one hundred, I would have been up against it devilish hard. Who knows what I might have done to fill my needs? No! He’s not that much a part of me, and I’m not the base bastard he told me I was, by God! I’m an English gentleman, a damned rich one, at that. I’ve my honor and my good name, and no one’ll ever put a blot on that again. I’ve a name to be proud of now, and can hold up my head anywhere.
Even with Lucy Beauman, he realized. Her father had been chary of him even writing to her, safely removed from his presence as she was back on Jamaica. He had had no people he could boast about, no lands, no rents, no hopes of inheritance, and only the Navy as a future, but it was all different now. With his annuity and promised estate, he could support any wife as well as the next man. Lucy, he figured, would be worth at least four thousand pounds as a bride’s portion, plus land and slaves in the Indies, or an estate back home. He was suddenly a suitable prospect to come calling on her, as good as even the pickiest daddy could ask for.
With that happy thought in mind, Alan opened the packet of letters from the lovely Lucy and began to read them, which activity took more of his patience as he stumbled over the words she had misspelled so badly that he could not discover what she had meant. There had been almost a letter a week in August and early September, full of “bawls” and “tee’s” and a “sworay,” whatever the hell that was, many carriage rides, many dances, an accounting of some Gothick novel so gruesome she had not slept in three nights for fear of something coming for her from the night, her screed about a new harp-sichord to replace the old one that had been eaten by termites so badly she could no longer play it in public and her undying shame at her father’s frugality in not immediately replacing it that very week, a sea voyage from England to import the new one be damned.
The letters became more plaintive in mid-September, shorter and cooler in tone, with much sighing over his silence, much heartbreak that he no longer wished to write her, and more descriptions of the gallants who had “skwyred” her to some party or other. Even though they had been most forthright in their presentations of affection, she still held her heart for Her Sailor.
“Damn the mort, what does she expect, penny post from Yorktown?” he grumbled. He had written to her immediately he had gotten to New York and rejoined his ship, but there was no answer as yet to that one. “I’m dealing with the feeblest woman on God’s earth.”
But he could vividly remember how beautiful she had looked when last they had been together, that final ball on Antigua, and how stunning a beauty she really was, how fine her figure, how lustrous her eyes, and how every male that hadn’t been docked or had the slightest pretension to manhood had panted to be near her. She was short, petite, ripely feminine—and unfortunately, as ignorant as sheep.
“No matter, she’s rich as hell, and she’ll be mine one day,” he vowed. His last letter had been full of derring-do, a flattering account of Yorktown and his escape, just the sort of thing to bring a girl like her to heel once more and excuse his silence. And in so doing, make her feel the worst sort of collywobbles when she reflected on how ill she had used him while he was off risking life and limb for King and Country.
The rest of his mail was interesting; Sir Onsley and Lady Maude back in London were full of chattiness about the Admiralty and the London season, noting how the scandal about his father had been an eight-day wonder and how much sympathy the populace (the better sort, anyway) felt for Midshipman Lewrie. Sir Onsley hinted that there might be a change of command in the Indies, and that he would drop a word in the new admiral’s ear regarding his favorites.
The Cantners wrote to say that with the impending end of the Lord North government, they were retiring to the country for a space, but he would be welcome to call whenever he returned home. They also made much over the scandal, providing clippings from the more aristocratic West End papers. There was also a veiled promise that even in the Opposition, Lord Cantner could still do him good, once Parliament reconvened.
The letter from his grandmother he saved ’til last, and it was a poignant tale of how she had been torn between wanting to rescue him from his father’s house, but not wanting to give Sir Hugo a penny by recognizing him as heir, and her eternal grief that she had left it so late, and that he would not get the full estate. Barbara Nuttbush ( née Lewrie) had evidently not known the full circumstances of his joining the Navy, for she declared him to be a true patriot and a fine English lad to volunteer for Sea Service. Bad as her health was, she lived only to see him once before she passed over, if he should come home when the war ended, and to her poor mind that seemed soon, the way people were talking. There had even been a motion made in Parliament, voted down of course, that anyone who recommended or supported the continuation of the war should be tried for sedition. There was talk of a peace conference, talk of an envoy from the Crown to be sent to treat with this Continental Congress in Philadelphia or Boston.
There was also a postscript full of pride at the honor he had done the Lewrie name by his daring escape from Yorktown, so the report to the Admiralty from Hood, Graves, and the new man, Digby, must have already been released at home.
I can but shew only the most heart-felt Relief and lift up my prayers to the Almighty that you escaped the Clutches of that despicable Monster, and have shewn such Courage and Honour as to be an ever-lasting Credit to the memory of your poor Mother. If it is your Wish to remain a Sea-Officer, then uphold the Lewrie name with Boldness and Pride and pass the name on to your own Sons and Daughters once more untarnished.
Poor old girl doesn’t know me at all, does she? Alan thought. Maybe it’s best she doesn’t. I’d let her down sooner or later.
Still, there was a good name to uphold now. With all the favorable comment in London and in the Fleet once the news got about, he would be remembered, remarked upon, not just for his past deeds, but for Yorktown as well, and for coming out of the scandal with clean hands. Let them say anything about me, as long as they say something, he thought, remembering a piece of advice he had read or heard in conversation. There might be a new admiral in the West Indies soon, to take over from Hood, and he would have gotten a tip in the right direction from Sir Onsley, perhaps even from Lord and Lady Cantner, would have heard the name Alan Lewrie in the papers before he left England, and would know him at least by reputation, which was thankfully good. He had made master’s mate—could a commission be that far away? Would he have to wait four more years to strictly fulfill the qualifications Samuel Pepys laid down so many years before? Or could he count on a promotion by the will of a local admiral, whose decisions on promotions were almost never questioned by higher authorities as long as they made the slightest bit of sense?
Alan got a pot of ink and a new quill from his chest, laid out some fresh stationery, and went out to the mess table where the light was better to write letters. His grandmother first; then his solicitor and then Cheatham’s brother at Coutts’; then Sir Onsley and Lady Maude; then the Cantners.
His hand was cramping by the time he got around to writing to Lucy Beauman with the delightful news of his new fortune, but for some reason the first words he scrawled on a fresh sheet of paper were:
Aboard the Desperate frigate, English Harbor, Antigua
January 5th, 1782
Dear Mistress Caroline,
Now why the devil did I do that? he wondered, ready to cross it out. But that would waste a sheet of vellum, and Lucy would go barking mad if she received a letter headed by another girl’s name, even crossed out, and he was not so rich that he could take that liberty with her.
I am rich enough for even a girl who could bring nothing as her portion but her bedding and linens, he thought. No
, best put her out of your mind, laddy. Just ’cause I dallied with her is no reason to even consider such a thing. She’s an artless country wench and I’d be bored silly raising pigs—don’t know the first thing about farming and bringing in the sheaves and all that. It’s London and Lucy Beauman for me, and if I ever rise before ten in the morning, it’ll be the Second Coming that wakes me. Only livestock I want to see’ll be stuffed removes.
Still, he did not want to waste the paper—it was dear in the islands. He continued the letter, relating his good news about his inheritance, glossing over the reason he had to go to sea, as though he had been cheated in his properly patriotic absence. He was teasingly charming, striking serious notes when asking as to the health of her dad and mother, inquiring about her brothers. He put tongue in cheek and could not resist making the subtlest allusions to their night on deck, and when he read it back, he thought it clever and only mildly romantic, just the very thing to liven the poor gawk’s days.
Only then did he put himself in the proper frame of mind and begin a letter to Lucy Beauman, a short one that could go off in the next packet boat.
Desperate loafed along, conducting a slow cruising patrol on her passage for Barbados to join with the Leeward Islands Squadron, and the Inshore Squadron of smaller sloops and brigs and cruisers now with Hood.
South of Antigua, there were many French-controlled islands, the main one being their base on Martinique, home to de Grasse’s fleet and a host of privateers. There was a possibility that Desperate could snatch a prize or two, take a privateer, or enter combat with a French naval vessel, as long as she was not of overpowering might. That had been the plan, anyway, but so far it had not come to fruition, for the sea looked as empty as on the dawn of the second day of Creation, when there was but ocean and light, and land had been only a project.
Alan didn’t mind particularly; he had had enough excitement in the last few months, and if the war wound down quietly, then that was fine to his way of thinking. The Trades were blowing fresh and cool out of the east-north-east and the ship rolled along gently on a beam reach, a soldier’s wind. He was off watch and skylarking on the weather bulwarks, watching the gun crews go through the motions of loading and firing, jumping from one battery to another as the excess crew took care of reloading while the others competed to be the first run out on the other beam. At his most energetic, he conversed with the yeoman of the sheets on the larboard gangway as that gentleman and some of the topmen rerove fresh rope for sheets and braces where they had begun to chafe, or took a splice aloft to remove the chafed portions but save the ropes.
“Sail ho!” the mainmast lookout called. “Dead astern!”
Alan wandered back to the quarterdeck while Lieutenant Railsford studied the sea over the taffrails.
“See her yet, sir?”
“Yes,” Railsford said, trying to suppress his excitement. “Full-rigged, flying everything but her laundry and coming on fast. Topgallants, royals, and stuns’ls, too. Can’t tell what she is yet, though.”
“French, perhaps?” Alan speculated.
“We’ll know in about an hour, the rate she’s coming.”
“Where away, Mister Railsford?” Treghues demanded, emerging on deck from a nap below. His eyes were rheumy with sleep, his pupils mere dots, which Alan put down to more of Mr. Dorne’s medicaments. While the first lieutenant passed on what little intelligence he had about their stranger, the captain took the telescope and went up the mizzen rigging to at least the beginning of the futtock shrouds to get a better look. He came down minutes later and handed Rails-ford the telescope again.
“Looks like one of ours, I think,” Treghues said. “Still, let’s not be taken by surprise. Suspend the gun drill and get sail on her, all plain sail for now.”
“Aye, sir. Bosun, pipe ’all hands.’”
Treghues went below while the hands lashed their guns down and began to hoist the yards, go aloft, and free the courses and the reefs in the tops’ls, undo the brails on the topgallants and draw them down so they filled with air. Desperate ceased loafing and came alive, leaning her starboard side into the sea, creating a creamy white furrow of foam in her wake. The faster she went, the stronger the wind felt and the more the yards had to be angled to take apparent wind at a more efficient angle. When Treghues came back on deck he had scrubbed his face, put on clean uniform, and stood four-square in cocked hat, new neckcloth and sword.
“Eight knots, sir!” Alan reported, coming from the taffrail where they had done a cast of the log and he had gotten soaked in spray.
“Still coming on strong, sir,” Railsford said after another peek at their strange pursuer. “If she’s French, she’s eager to close with us. Do you wish us to hoist the royals, sir?”
“No, we shall let her,” Treghues said. He took out his silver pocket watch and studied it. “Please be so good as to pipe the rum issue early and have the cooks serve as soon as everything’s hot. We may be throwing the galley fires overboard, and can’t wait for the proper hour for dinner.”
“Aye, sir.”
Alan thought it odd to let the enemy, if enemy she was, get up close. Desperate could go like a Cambridge coach if turned up onto the wind, or could run like a frightened cat to leeward if called upon to do so with stuns’ls and stays’ls. He studied Treghues as he paced the deck, wondering if his eagerness for battle had anything to do with the way the ship had been treated after escaping Yorktown. Did his captain have something to prove, some blot on their name that could only be erased by a victory, a geste of such derring-do that no one could comment on her any longer with a sneer? He had been acting odd enough ever since they had taken Ephegenie back in the Virgins, and Alan would no longer discount anything. A cautious captain would assume the other ship was an enemy and try to outrun her. A rash captain would put about and charge down offering battle. Only a timid and indecisive captain would allow the stranger to close them in this manner, and Treghues had never shown himself to be a timid or indecisive man. Certifiably eccentric, perhaps, but not that.
“Mister Lewrie,” Treghues said, coming to his side in his pacing.
“Aye, sir?” he responded brightly.
“Walk with me.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Mister Cheatham informs me that you have had a stroke of good fortune come your way. And, he implies that you may soon be cleared that whiff of shame that followed you from England. For that I am grateful and pleased for you.” Treghues spoke softly as they walked the weather rail, to the consternation of the other quarterdeck people. Treghues did not look much gratified, nor very pleased, but the words were kind enough, and Alan expressed his thanks.
“You should write your friends and patrons and let them know of it. I suppose you wasted no time informing the Beauman family. You are permitted to write the young lady, I remember?”
“Aye, sir, I already have.”
“And your new friends, the Chiswicks in Charleston,” Treghues said. “Heard from them yet?”
Alan looked at him sidelong; his captain’s face was almost red with shame, and Alan knew he must be crawling to have to solicit information of such a personal nature from an underling. Treghues had formed an instant affection for Caroline Chiswick, perhaps out of pity, or out of long-suppressed longings brought to the surface by his head injury and the dubious “cure” that had followed. Alan was his only link, his only source of intelligence as to their new address, and hard as it was for a proud man, a commissioned officer, a ship’s captain, and a stiff-neck like Treghues to ask, he was asking for a crumb. The girl had not said yes to his proposal to write, after all his charm and pleasantness.
Dammit, captains don’t do such things, Alan thought. Does he see the mail come aboard first, does he know I have a letter from her? If he did, he’d have seen the address, so he wouldn’t be asking. Is it safe to lie? What the hell, I’ll chance it. Caroline did put her name and address on the outside sheet.
“Not yet, sir, though I have hopes.”
“Not well at all, sir, mostly in his mind,” Alan breathed out, not catching any sign of true awareness in Treghues’s voice or expression. “And Mrs. Chiswick, well . . . she may be in good health, but she is not a person meant for adversity, if you get my meaning.”
“That poor young girl,” Treghues said, with such emotion that Alan thought him ready to shudder. “Forced to cope with all that, barely a penny to their names from all that land and property stolen from them by the Rebels, taking care of her parents so dutifully . . .”
“It’s a da . . . a terrible shame, sir, and a burden I marvel she could bear for long,” Alan agreed. “Did you know that her brother, Burgess, told me the principal rogues who turfed them out were their own cousins?”
“Were they?” Treghues said, stopping their perambulations and seizing Alan’s sleeve with an iron grip. “Were they, indeed, sir? God, I pity those who could not flee retribution of that pack of Rebels! What sort of country can they hope to have, built on the blood of their betters, allowing just any fool the right to vote, dictated to by the mob and resorting to bloody revolution and civil strife at the merest trifles. We’ll have to go back in and restore order some day when they find they cannot govern such a herd of malcontents. How shall they collect taxes when they would not pay what they owed the Crown? How often shall they call out the militia or the troops sworn to this rebellious Congress to put down a new outbreak? You mark my words, within ten years they’ll be cheering the sight of a scarlet coat to save them from their egregious folly. I only pray the Chiswicks get away safely to England and are spared the abuse and frightfulness of the mob’s fury.”
The French Admiral Page 46
